Never one to settle for an open standard when the opportunity to push a proprietary alternative presents itself, Sony has announced that it will wade into the next-generation short-range interconnect wars with a proprietary new wireless spec called TransferJet
The One Laptop Per Child project is turning its attention to children in the United States. The XO laptop developed by the OLPC was conceived to boost educational efforts in developing nations. Now the OLPC has set up a US office and has begun talking to state governments about ways to get the laptop into the hands of the poorest American children. The organisation said it would formally launch its XO programme in America later in 2008
Contrary to earlier predictions, Duke University engineers have found that a three-dimensional sound cloak is possible, at least in theory. Such an acoustic veil would do for sound what the invisibility cloak
previously demonstrated by the research team does for microwaves — allowing sound waves to travel seamlessly around it and emerge on the other side without distortion
For ten years their home has been a 20ft cage set into the cliffs of Monte Carlo. But last week — for the first time in their lives — leopards Sirius and Pitou ran free across the plains of Africa. They tasted their new freedom in a game reserve after being rescued from Monaco zoo following a five-year campaign by The Mail on Sunday and The Born Free Foundation
One of the greatest challenges neurologists face is successful delivery of drugs to the brain. This is because a special filtering layer of tissue, called the blood brain barrier, protects the brain and spinal cord. Kumar and his colleagues from Harvard Medical School have developed a potentially revolutionary drug delivery method, taking advantage of a known master infiltrator of the brain: the virus responsible for rabies, also known as the rhabdovirus
It’s not often that an ad catches my interest, but the recent ad that Showcase has been running for Dexter is one that does.
Unfortunately, others didn’t seem to appreciate it and there were enough complaints that it has been withdrawn. I can only guess that the offended viewers were staff members from the Adelaide tourist bureau.
Last week, seven Swedish MPs wrote to a prominent Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen
to express their dissatisfaction with proposals for dealing with copyright infringers. Now, that number has increased to 13, and the issue seems to keep growing
The agency that governs educational technology in the United Kingdom has advised schools in the country to keep Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system and its Office 2007 software out of the classroom and administrative offices. Becta officials said a study the group commissioned found that upgrading school systems from Windows XP to Vista and Office 2007 would increase costs and create software compatibility problems while providing little benefit
A Polish teenager allegedly turned the tram system in the city of Lodz into his own personal train set, triggering chaos and derailing four vehicles in the process. Twelve people were injured in one of the incidents. The 14-year-old modified a TV remote control so that it could be used to change track points
Kaiser is talking to another dog. My little guy isn’t this chatty.
Is the RIAA as we know it about to disappear? As rumours continue to swirl that EMI will pull its funding from music trade groups like the RIAA and IFPI, an IFPI spokesman says that the group is in the middle of a major internal review of its operations
Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time. More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000
Sony BMG announced that it would become the fourth and final major label to begin selling digital music on Amazon.com, offering its entire catalog in the MP3 format by the end of the month
Matsushita will change its name officially to Panasonic, a name that has been used for many years for the firm’s consumer products around the world
Spinal cord damage blocks the routes the brain uses to send messages to the nerve cells that control walking. For years, doctors believed that the only way injured patients could walk again was to regrow the long nerve highways that link the brain and base of the spinal cord. Now, for the first time, a UCLA study shows that the central nervous system can reorganise itself and follow new pathways to restore the cellular communication required for movement
Microsoft said that it will offer $1.2 billion in cash for Fast Search and Transfer (FAST), a big player in the enterprise search market. The move is sure to shake up the enterprise search market, which thus far has been dominated by a series of smaller players like FAST, Autonomy and Vivisimo. Google has made some inroads, but for the most part the market is the realm of niche players. Microsoft is about to change that with FAST. You can expect Google to make a purchase in enterprise search along with traditional enterprise players like HP, IBM and the usual suspects
A failed effort to soften the noise from British military helicopters led to a breakthrough enabling surfaces from mobile telephone screens to car roof liners to be turned into stereo speakers. The technology was sold to Cambridge-based NXT, which christened it SurfaceSound
and arranged for it to be crafted into Toyota cars, Gateway computers, greeting cards and more
The expected price reconciliation between the iTunes UK store and the other European stores is officially in the works. Interesting to note that Apple is throwing down the gauntlet with the labels on UK vs Eurozone wholesale music pricing, so that we might see some subtractions from the UK store if the labels don’t jump in line
TiVo’s international general manager, Joshua Danovitz, has confirmed that TiVo in Australia will be able to record all free to air channels, it will also have access to a movie download store and about 100 free internet video channels. Exact pricing and a launch date is still unconfirmed, we will get the high-end series 3 version of the device. The series 3 contains dual high-definition TV tuners, so users can record two shows at once while at the same time watching a previously recorded show
Space shuttle astronauts will attempt an unprecedented in-orbit repair of key Hubble Space Telescope instruments during the servicing mission scheduled for August 2008. The repairs, along with the addition of two new instruments, will make Hubble 90 times as powerful as it was after its flawed optics were corrected in 1993
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