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December
Heads-Up For Hot Hardware
 Over the years you may have
noticed a fair number of reports in the press concerning Lithium Ion batteries
catching fire and even exploding. It’s due to a condition known as thermal
runaway; its precise cause is not fully understood but when it happens, it
happens very quickly Thankfully it’s a rare event but now, with so many of our
gadgets, cars and vehicles being powered by Lithium Ion cells it is bound to
occur more frequently. The good news is that researchers at Johns Hopkins
University have come up with a cheap sensor that can give an early warning of
thermal runaway, well before conventional sensors mounted on the surface of the
cells. Hopefully this will alert the user and battery management systems, well
before the cell fails or catches fire.
2512
Google, it’s Snow Joke…
 Normally we don’t bother
too much with Easter Eggs, those little jokes and fripperies that programmers
like to hide inside applications and web pages, but in the spirit of the
season, here’s a good one from Google. Simply type ‘let it snow’ in the Search
box and it starts falling, big time, all across your browser screen. You can
wipe it away with your mouse and a left click, or make it disappear by clicking
the blue Defrost button.
1912
Lap Cat Trap
 Cat owners with PCs beware.
The
Consumerist website reports that the owner of a HP Elitebook had his
request for a repair under warranty rejected, because he has a cat. The cat, a
long-haired variety, was responsible for furring up the machine’s cooling
system. However the excuse got even better; it seems there was so much fur
clogging the system that HP considered it a biological hazard. Despite much
too-in and froing, not to mention photos and a PowerPoint presentation
slideshow purporting to show the furry contamination Chris, the owner still
hasn’t managed to persuade HP to fix his machine, so you have been warned!
1212
W8 Beta for February?
 Sources close to TheNextWeb
report that sources close to Microsoft reckon that the public beta release of
Windows 8 will happen some time in February. We always take stories like these
with a small pinch of salt, in case they turn out to be mere rumour. But even
if it’s not February, it won’t be long after as it follows hard on the heels of
the W8 Developer Preview, released back in September, the pattern set by
previous versions of Windows, and the scheduled Release To Manufacturers (RTM)
date set for June/July time. RTM is the penultimate stage in the launch
process, with the final, final public version usually available a few months
afterwards – almost certainly well in time for Christmas 2012.
The final feature list of
the public beta remains cloudy, probably because Microsoft are still tinkering
with it, but this will be the first opportunity to have a proper play with the
new OS, so now is the time to start thinking about those processor and memory upgrades
and clearing some space on your hard drive.
0512
November
Personal Jetpack in 18
Months?
 I have been living on the
promise of owning a personal jetpack since the 1960s, when they actually
existed (alas it could only stay aloft for a few seconds…). Once again I am naively
excited by news from New Zealand based firm Martin Jetpack, that its model,
which we have been reporting on for the past three years, could finally go on
sale within the next 18 months. Actually it’s not really a jetpack but a
wearable twin ducted fan jobby. I don’t care, it does all the things jetpacks
are supposed to do, most recently climb to over 5000 feet; check out the videos
on the on the Martin Jetpack website. According
to their sales blurb they’ve been getting a lot of interest from emergency and
rescue services, as well as private aviation enthusiasts, and with a projected
price of only $86,000 it’s not beyond the reach of well off individuals.
Working on the premise that once they get into production the price will
plummet I reckon I’ll be able to afford one in around 20 years time… Keep watching
the skies.
2811
DIY 'Air' Geiger Counter Kit
 One of the unexpected
consequences of the catastrophic failures at the Fukishima nuclear plant in
Japan was huge increase in demand by a worried public for Geiger Counters. The
small number of companies making these instruments simply wasn’t prepared and
there were overnight shortages of key components, including Geiger Müller
tubes, which are used to detect radioactivity. Geiger tubes are actually fairly
simple in design – usually metal or glass tubes filled with an exotic mixture
of gasses at low pressure -- but normally they’re produced in fairly small
numbers, and it takes time to ramp up production. This inspired a small
Japanese company called Bit Trade One to look for alternative way to detect
radiation and to cut a long story short they came up with the Air Geiger Müller Counter, now
being sold in kit form. DIY Geiger  Counters are not exactly new, but what makes
this one different is that you get to construct the actual Geiger Müller tube,
using nothing more complicated than a plastic tube – similar to a 35mm film
canister -- some copier paper, aluminium foil, cling film, glue and a
disposable gas lighter. It’s a truly ingenious design that requires no special
skills, tools or equipment, a real kitchen table job, though builders will need
some soldering skills in order to assemble the electronic circuit. Build time
is in the order of 4 – 6 hours and the finished unit is surprisingly sensitive
for a home build instrument. It is able to detect alpha, beta and gamma
radiation. In fact it is so sensitive that it will respond to natural
background radiation and the very low levels of radioactivity coming from
ordinary household products like Low Salt, salt substitute (the potassium it
contains is mildly radioactive). The kit is now available in the UK for just
under £160.00, including shipping from our sister site anythingradioactive.
2111
Apple Turnover
 Apple has been having a
tough time lately with the batteries that power its gadgets. The most recent
issue has been the poor running times on iPhone 4, launched a few weeks ago. A software
update designed to address them has received a very mixed reception. It’s not
just its new products that are causing problems though. Apple is now recalling
first generation iPod Nanos. Apparently as the batteries age they can
dangerously overheat. Only models made between September 20065 and December
2006 are affected and they’re the ones with black or white plastic fronts and a
silver metal back; models with all metal cases are not included in the recall.
So here’s the good news, if you have one kicking around, probably by now
gathering dust in the back of a drawer, you may qualify for a shiny new
replacement. All you have to do is pop along to the Apple website tap
in your iPod’s serial number and you’ll be told straight away. Don’t forget to
save your iTunes library before you send it back, which should take around 6
weeks.
1411
October
Light and Flexible Twist
 Flexible displays are going
to be all the rage in the next year or so, mark my words, but Auo Optronics are
setting a high benchmark with it’s newly developed flexible e-paper display,
backed by a photovoltaic (PV) panel. E-paper and e-ink, the display technology
used by the likes of Kindle and other e-readers, is an ideal partner for PV
power because of its very frugal demands. This innovative combination of
technologies brings flexible – fold up or roll up – newspapers and books one
step closer. There’s still an issue over the rest of the electronics required
to manage the display, store data, and communicate with the outside world, not
to mention any controls but assuming it’s going to be touch-sensitive as well
all of the circuitry could, theoretically, be incorporated into the thin film
display without creating more than a few small bumps. The only other wrinkle
that needs to be ironed out is that without a battery or other form of power
storage it’s only going to work in sunlight or very bright light, so no reading
in bed. The prototype display is 15 cm (around 6 inches) with an 800 x 600
display and the panel thickness is just 0.127mm.
3110
iPad 2 Hack Uncovered
 As hacks and cracks go,
this one isn’t going to set too many alarm bells ringing, but for those of you
with a shiny new iPad2, you might like to be aware of a simple security flaw,
revealed by 9to5Mac, that can leave your home screen and apps open to abuse. It
concerns the Smart Cover, and once you know the trick you can bypass the
passcode lock. It works like this, on a iPad 2 with its passcode enabled simply
hold down the power button until the shutoff slider appears, close the Smart
Cover, then immediately open the Smart Cover and press Cancel. Open the Smart Cover. At this point you
don’t have full system access, but you can delete apps, and if the user left a
the browser window or email open before they switched off then they can be
read. The solution is simple, just disable the Smart Cover unlocking in the
General section of the Settings menu, and hopefully Apple will come up with a
more elegant fix at some point.
2410
Windows 7 Overtakes XP
 It has taken a while but according to web analyser
StatCounter, Windows 7 now accounts for just over 40 percent of the operating
system market, from its launch in October 2009. XP is now in a steady decline,
down from 70 percent two years ago it now holds around 38.6 percent. Windows
Vista is down too, though it never really got off the ground and when W7 was
released it only managed around 23 percent, but now it’s down to just 11
percent. Mac OS is showing a small but steady rise since October 2009, up from
4.7 percent to 7.2 percent. Linux continues to bump along the bottom of the
graph with a 0.8 percent share, up from 0.6 percent a couple of years ago.
1711
The Smell of Gaming
 If my son’s bedroom after an all night gaming session is
anything to go by it’s pretty bad but help may be at hand, according to Oh
Gizmo, in the shape of a device called Smellit. It’s a smell generator for
video games and it promises to take video game players into what the manufacturers
describe as the fourth dimension. As ever there’s nothing new under the sun and
there have been numerous failed attempts to introduce smells, relevant to the plot
into movies and TV programs. This has either been by injecting niffy chemicals
into the cinemas air condition or providing the audience with scratch-n-sniff
cards (I still have one that came with a video called Polyester, and the less
said about that the better…). Details of this system are still a little sketchy
but a prototype is promised for the Lisbon Design Show, later this month. From
the looks of the concept drawings it comprises a bunch of fans, designed to
blow smells into the gamer’s face, so presumably games will now have to have
embedded smell tracks. It sounds like fun, except that the majority of games
these days seem to involve sweaty men fighting equally unsavoury looking
adversaries, so maybe teenage boy’s bedrooms won’t smell so different after all…
1010
Flying Carpet Takes Off
 Don’t get too excited, the
carpet in question is actually a thin piece of plastic sheet embedded with
piezoelectric actuators connected by flexible conductive fibres. Researchers at
Princetown University in New Jersey have developed a working prototype and when
a current is applied to the actuators a propulsive force is generated and
controlled, by applying waveforms of varying amplitude. The only problem is the
carpet sheet can only achieve an altitude of a few millimetres above a
perfectly flat surface and being only 4-inches in length, it’s has a way to go
before it can be transport a human cargo. Well, it’s a start and whilst a
flying carpet may take a while, maybe they can come up with something a little
less ambitious, how about something like Marty McFly’s hoverboard in Back to
the Future?
0310
September
Stealthy Shiny Shirt
 Memo to would be
terrorists; shiny shirts from Banana
Republic have been found to defeat those fancy new airport body scanners, now
being deployed in the US and around the world. According to the Washington
Post, the scanners, which cost around a gazillion dollars, can’t see through
the fabric. Before the bad guys get too excited, it won’t do you any good, in
fact quite the opposite and the chances are if you’re found to be wearing one
of these shirts you’ll be subjected to an even more thorough hand search, and
that may well include the places that involve the use of rubber gloves. For the
rest of us, it’s enough to say hat air travel is bad enough, so if you don’t
want to make it any worse, avoid wearing shiny shirts…
2609
Windows 8 Preview Download
 Those of you interested in
what the next version of Windows will be like should head over to Microsoft and
download the Windows
Developer Preview Package. It’s a pre-beta release of W8, so there are lots
of disclaimers about stability and warnings about the inevitable changes that
will occur between now and the official release (probably next year) but it
does give a pretty good idea of what the new operating system will look, and
feel like. First impressions are good and it is very clear that it’s designed,
from the ground up, for a touch-screen display and to appeal to smart-phone
users. It looks like it’s going to be a very different experience, from the
opening screen and desktop, dubbed Metro, with it’s app like icons, to the new
tricks we’re going to have to learn, like using the Start button to close an
app. Most of the familiar stuff is there, under the bonnet, but from this very
tantalising glimpse it is clear that the future of computing lies in the fingers
and this may well turn out to be the first nail in the coffin for keyboards and
mice.
1909
Your Last Warning!
 Regular visitors will be
aware of our long running campaign to alert everyone to the danger of robots
crushing humanity by enslaving or wiping us out. Here’s more proof, if it were
needed, and it’s called SkyNet, and yes, fans of Terminator know exactly what
we’re talking about. It’s a small drone quadcopter and it carries a lightweight
Linux based PC, two wi-fi modules, GPS and a cellphone and it’s job is to hunt
down and attack wi-fi networks. It’s the work of a shady sounding organisation
called the Stevens Institute of Technology – a cover for a sinister world
dominating crime syndicate if every there was one – although they convincingly
masquerade as a research institute. Anyway, the SkyNet drone fly around hunting
Wi-Fi networks (how long before it’s hunting humans…?) with the potential to
hijack wireless connections and use them as botnets, for hacking or denial of
service (DOS) attacks. The hardware is mostly off the shelf and costs around
$600 to put together, so keep your eyes peeled, and if you see one of these
pesky things buzzing your home you have our permission to lob something hard
and heavy at it!
1209
Wood You Get Caught?
 This is an old story and
warning to us all! News reaches us of two cautionary tales from the US
involving people buying what they thought were iPads and laptops from
characters in garages and burger restaurant car parks in South Carolina. The
first case involved a woman being offered an iPad for a very reasonable $180
(around £120. It must have appeared authentic, but it wasn’t until she got it
home and discovered that it was just a block of wood. Same town, different woman, this time parting with $250 for a
laptop. This one was made up of a stack of papers, held together with duct
tape; apparently it wasn’t a complete loss, though, as the box came with a
genuine mains cable.
Fake gadgets are not a new
and around 20 years ago there was a brief flurry of holidaymakers returning home from
Spain with carved wooden camcorders.
Making the things was allegedly a local cottage industry, and they
looked very convincing, right down to genuine boxes. Clearly, with so many
freshly liberated gadgets and gizmos circulating in the underworld there’s a
increased risk of ending up either with stolen property, or lumps of wood in
genuine boxes, so it goes without saying -- but we’ll say it anyway – if it
sounds too cheap to be true, it almost certainly is, and car parks and dark
alleys are not the places to buy your electronics goods.
0509
August
Footing the Energy Bill
 As regular visitors will
know we are big fans of renewable energy, so this clever sounding idea from InStep
NanoPower ticked all of our eco-friendly boxes. Basically it’s a
micro-generation plant that fit inside a pair of shoes, theoretically producing
up to 20 watts of electrical power whilst you pound the pavements. Of course
it’s not a new idea, and we have seen all sorts of weird and wonderful
contraptions that attempt to harness leg power, but this one is different. To
begin with it should fit any shoe, just pop it in inside your shoe and plug it
in. Needless to say it can also be built into shoes. Second, according to the
blurb you probably won’t even know it’s there, no straps, levers or cogs to
worry about. So how does it work? Well, the basic idea seems to be that pads or
fluidic chambers positioned beneath the heels and toes pump a special non-toxic
liquid through a ‘harvester’, which uses a process called electrowetting to
convert the movement of the liquid into electrical energy, that’s stored in a rechargeable
battery. So far so good, but where can you buy a pair, we hear you ask? Well,
you can’t not yet, and as with so many of these developments it’s still some
way from being a marketable product. Nevertheless, it all sounds quite
plausible, and assuming it gets off the ground, the next time you get a flat
battery, instead of reaching for the charger, you just go for a walk.
2908
Shortchanged Solar Hero
 It must have been a strange
couple of weeks for 13-year old Aidan Dwyer. It began with news of his apparent
breakthrough in solar power technology spreading across the media and Internet.
As part of the young American’s school science fair project he did some
calculations and carried out experiments that seemed to show solar cells
performed better when arranged in a spiral, based on the Fibonacci sequence.
That’s the number series that appears a lot in nature, its what determines the
spirals in snail shells and the position of seeds in sunflower heads. Anyway,
his tests suggested that cells arranged in a spiral – in a tree-like structure
-- outperformed an identical set of solar cells in the traditional flat
inclined arrangement, by an impressive 50 percent in fact. The blogosphere and
popular press picked up the story, hailing the young scientist as a genius.
Unfortunately it didn’t last very long and wiser heads quickly spotted the
flaws in his experiments. Basically he was measuring the voltage output from
the cells, without a load, which gives a misleading result. The point of all this is not to mock young
Aidan, far from it and we hope he hasn’t been discouraged by all the fuss, but
to question his school science teachers. They should have spotted the flaws and
not allowed this story out of the bag, but the real blame goes to the over-excited
press and websites which carried the story without checking some simple facts. It
wouldn’t have been difficult, the solar industry has been squeezing solar cell
design until the pips squeak, trying to extract the last fraction of a percent
out of their panels. It would have been obvious to even the least scientific
mind that cells facing away form the sun are not going to work as well as those
pointing directly at it.
22/08
Google+ Cracks Down on
Names
 If you are one of those
eager beavers that have signed up for Google+, the fancy new challenger to
Facebook, then you should make sure that you are who you say you are and are
using your own name. Google has imposed a strict set of rules on users, and
those who cross the line, or get it wrong, have a week to sort themselves out,
or have your account suspended. In summary the new rules are that users must
use their full name, in one language. You are not allowed to use initials in
the first name field – Dr and Rev are not allowed for example – nicknames can
only be used in the ‘Other’ name box, no unusual characters are permitted –
e.g. no K@ties or D@ves. Names must represent individuals, no couples or groups
will be accepted and you mustn’t pretend to be someone else. For a service hoping to become the popular and friendly new kid on the block they're in danger of coming across a bit starchy.
1508
Smaller, Faster, Dearer…
 Solid state Derives or SSD, which are basically super fat
flash memories that can replace conventional hard disc drives (HDDs) are now
rapidly coming of age and the latest release from Smart Modular sets an
impressive new benchmark. To date SSDs are mostly used in netbooks and laptops
and the Smart Modular Optimus follows the trend with a 2.5-inch form factor but
it’s the capacity and speed that steals the headlines. To begin with it holds a
whopping 1.6TB of data, more than enough for even the most dedicated
downloader, and if you need to get at your files in a hurry that’s no problem
with a claimed read speed of up to 1 gigabyte a second. It’s no slouch when it
comes to writing data either, with speeds of around 500Mb per second. The
catch, well you might like to hang on a while for the price to drop, various
estimates put the drive at between £1000 and £4000 at launch later this year,
though inevitably that will come down, but the biggest problems is that you will
probably need a new PC, able to handle the data throughput, and that can
support the drive’s non-standard SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interface.
0808
Printed Plane Takes to the Skies
 We are going to be hearing a lot more about 3D printers
over the next few years. We’ve already reported on a Bio Printer that can print
biological structures, and printers that replicate themselves by printing the
parts to make a new printer – clearly it’s only a matter of time before they
start churning out cyborgs... Spooky, and here’s something else to worry about, they can
now fly. New
Scientist reports on a plane made from printed parts and it only took a
week from design concept to first flight. The team behind the plane was led by
Andy Kane and Jim Scanlan of the University of Southampton, used a laser 3D
machine to fabricate the metal and plastic parts. Dubbed Sulsa (Southampton
University Laser Sintered Aircraft) it has a 1.5 metre wingspan and is powered
by an electric motor. Pop in a couple of rocket launchers and a link to Skynet
and one more ingredient of the Terminator scenario comes true. People, you have
been warned, its happening now…
0108
July
Later for Lion
 Mac users eager to download
the latest version of OSX, codename Lion, might like to wait a while, as there
appears to be a few wrinkles that need sorting out. Following a huge 1 million
downloads the web is awash with grumbling Mac owners complaining that the new
OS seems to have a few glitches. There are reports of it scrambling Windows
partitions, there may be problems with NAS support for Time Machine, guest
accounts can crash and several users have complained of compatibility issues
with Microsoft Office. Of course this is nothing new and the kafuffle
surrounding operating system updates and service packs are all to familiar to
Windows users, and it’s not the first time Mac users have suffered either. No
doubt some of the problems will turn out to be false alarms or confined to
particular combinations of software so as always the best advice is not to be
an early adopter (guinea pig…), wait for the inevitable updates and fixes to be
issues and let the dust settle especially if you use your Mac for business or
mission critical applications.
2507
Netflix Heading for the UK?
 While we already a number
of on-line, on-demand movie and TV services here in the UK (iPlayer, ITV/Sky
Player, Lovefilm to name but just a few), it looks like there’s room for more and
one of the really big guns, the US company Netflix, is eyeing up the UK.
According to reports in the showbiz mag Variety it could be coming to these
shores, and Spain, early next year. This follows a series of highly successful
launches in Canada, South America and the Caribbean. It’s a controversial move,
considering the well established competition but the one-price, all you can eat
deal has proved very popular with users, even after several recent price rises,
so expect some fireworks as newcomer tries to muscle in.
1807
Bye Bye MiniDisc?
 It may not be the end, but
Sony’s recent announcement that it is to stop making MiniDisc Walkmans in September almost
certainly marks the beginning of the end for the ingenious magneto-optical
format. MD first appeared in 1992 and was meant to be the all-singing digital
replacement for Compact Cassette, which by the early 1990s was way past its
sell-by date. After a brief tussle with
Philips and it’s rival Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) it went on to enjoy
modest popularity as a portable playback and recording system. It made some
inroads into professional recording and broadcast and there was even a Data MD
variant. Sadly MD’s success was fairly short-lived, though and Sony (and
others, it has to be said) failed to anticipate the dramatic rise and rise of
solid-state recording media and the MP3 recording format. Together they
transformed the portable music market almost overnight, leaving MD, for all of
its clever technology, looking decidedly old-fashioned. Farewells are still a
little premature but the writing is on the wall so if you want to grab a little
piece of consumer electronic history to show your grandchildren now is the time
to track down some hardware, and blank discs, while you still can.
1107
Sun Dots
 Paint that converts sunshine into electricity… Now where
have we heard that before? Several times in fact but as usual, we’ll note the
fact that a new development may one day turn into a game-changing commercial
product, but with the usual disclaimer of not to hold your breath. This one is
based on Quantum Dots, which we have mentioned before, and according to the
report in Technologyreview, these nano-sized particles, developed by
researchers at Toronto University, produce electricity when exposed to
sunlight. The problem is that they don’t make very much of it and the
breakthrough has been to produce dots of different sizes, so they absorb
different wavelengths of light, making them more efficient. So called
tandem-junction cells have a theoretical efficiency of 42 percent, compared
with the current best performers, which can only manage around 20-25 percent.
The dots are small enough to be incorporated in paint, though there doesn’t
seem to be much information about how they’ll all be connected together – very,
very fine wires maybe… Anyway if
anything comes of it, and we’re still here, we’ll let you know.
0407
June
Green Heat
 Converting
heat into electricity is nothing new and devices that can do just that have
been around since the year dot, but what is new is a multiferroic alloy so far
known only by it’s chemical makeup of Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10..
It has been developed by researchers at the University
of Minnesota and the way it works is rather clever. According to the report
in Engadget the material has the ability to turn from magnetic, to non-magnetic
as it heats up and cools down even a small increase in temperature will do
this, and when that so-called phase change happens the absorbed heat is
converted directly into electricity. It’s still at the development stage but
work is underway to construct thin film versions of the material that could be
used to charge car batteries, for example, from waste exhaust heat and on a
grander scale, converting heat from industrial processes and plants into useful
eco-friendly energy
2706
Double Dutch
 QR Codes are everywhere
these days. As anyone who has a smart phone with a bar-code reader app knows,
scanning the square-shaped code takes you to a website which may either have
some useful information about whatever the code is on, or more likely it will
try and sell you something. So what are the Dutch up to, putting QR codes on
the back of specially minted 5 euro coins? Apparently it’s for no good reason
that we can see because all the code does is tell your smart phone’s browser to
go to the Dutch royal mint website (http://www.q5g.nl).
Although this application for the technology doesn’t make a lot of sense, maybe
one day it will be put to good use, though quite what that might be we can’t
say…
1306
Crashing Bore
 Please make sure all
cellphones are switched off, your tray tables are in the upright position,
blah, blah…etc. You know the drill by now, and the argument, that cellphones
can affect an aircraft’s sensitive instruments has been going on for
years. Urban legend has it that the
real (and I have to say more plausible) reason is to stop passengers blocking
cellphone networks. As few as a dozen cellphones at 10,000 feet over a city can
potentially log on to dozens of cell-sites, causing the network to collapse.
But now ABC Word News has got hold of a confidential report from the International
Air Transport Association that details 75 incidents from 2003 to 2009 where
aircrew believe that interference may have been caused by cellphones. Twenty-six
reports cite problems with flight controls and 15 claim it affected
communications. It seems that these incidents are mainly anecdotal, and 75 incidents
in 6 years, (how many million flying hours does that cover?) doesn’t seem many.
More interestingly, if there really was a problem it would be inconceivable to
allow a growing number of airlines to install in-flight systems that allow
passengers to use their phones, albeit through the plane’s own expensive cellsite
gateway, so draw your own conclusions, but continue to switch off your phones,
just in case…
1306
Silicon Sun Bag
 Handbags
for men never really caught on, which is a bit of a shame as us guys are now
missing out on the very smart Solar Handbag from Swiss Embroidery company
Forster Rohner. The surface of the bag is smothered in solar cells, which are
used to charge a small but powerful lithium ion battery, built into the bag.
The battery has two jobs, first it can charge up your mobile phone and second,
it powers a low level fibre-optic lighting system that comes on automatically
when the bag is opened. The idea is can now find their purse keys and the other
vital lady stuff that, I’m told, always ends up at the bottom of large bags
like these. The PR guff, which I am grateful to Engadget for bringing to my
attention, over eggs the pudding: ‘the shape of the bag resembles the story
between the relationship between the sun and moon – between light source and
enlightened. Therefore the shape mimics an eclipse where the moon – the
enlightened – interfere or interact with the sun – the light source’, but you
get the drift, and if you have to ask the price, well, you know the answer to
that too…
3005
May
Windows 8 Rumour Mill
 We are still at least a
year away from the official launch of Windows 8, codename Windows Next, but
various leaks and rumours are giving us a possible glimpse into what we have to
look forward to. Thanks goes to Gizmodo for sorting wheat from the chaff and it
seems that W8 won’t look significantly different to W7. Under the bonnet,
though there could be some big changes in the way Windows 8 stores data. Most of
the developments appear to be designed to appeal to business and corporate
customers, with improvements that will help with standardisation and software
deployment but we can expect to hear a lot more about Cloud Storage. Of more
immediate interest is a beefed up Disc Cleanup utility that helps reclaim disc
space and identifies space hogs. Portable Workspace looks like an interesting
feature that lets you create a clone of your desktop, settings and favourite
applications on a USB drive, so it can be plugged into any other PC, effectively
turning it into a copy of your own computer. Face recognition is another likely
contender and this will be used in conjunction with other changes to the way
users log on to their machines. Optimisation for tablet PCs is high on the agenda
and this should include improved touch screen features. Other possibilities
include faster boot up, built in support for pdf and increased security,
designed to prevent piracy.
2305
Creasless Foldable Display
 Thin and flexible Active
Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode or AMOLED displays have been around for a
while but Samsung have now gone one better with one that can actually be
folded, and not leave a crease, according to Engadget. The display comes from
Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology division and the prototype can allegedly
be folded more than 100,000 times without breaking or visible creasing. There
is a 6 percent decrease in brightness along the fold line but apparently is so
slight as to be virtually unnoticeable. The foldability is actually a bit of a
trick and is thanks to there actually being two panels joined and hinged by a
flexible ‘hyperlastic’ material, based on a silicone rubber compound. The screen
can be made touch-sensitive and obvious applications include e-books, twin
screen games consoles and maybe even laptops. No timeline and it’s one of those
things that may or may not make it into production but if it does, we’ll doubtless
let you know.
1605
In Space no one can hear
you go
 You know you want to know,
just how to astronauts go to the loo in space? Without the help of gravity it
has the potential to turn into a really messy business, so how do they do it?
Well, who better to answer that tricky question than a real astronaut, in the
shape of Leyroy Ciao, blogging for Gizmodo
on that very topic, there’s even a video, but don’t worry, no actual doings
occur. If you just want the potted, or should that be the potty version, then
it’s all down to suction, good aim and for gentlemen space persons being very,
very careful not to touch the sides, at least not if you want to hang on to
your precious…
0905
More Efficient Solar Cells,
pt 23
 Yes, I know you’ve heard it
all before and like many developments in this area they disappear without trace
but who knows, this could be the big one. It comes from the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory (yes, the same outfit that helped develop the
A-bomb back in the 1940s), but nowadays they’re keen to promote their green
credentials. This development boosts the normally puny efficiency of
photovoltaic to convert light into electricity by almost 80 percent. The trick
is to overcome the transport of charges through the various regions of the
cell, and the solution, is nanocones. These are three-dimensional cone- shaped
n-type semiconductors, made from a zinc oxide compound, and surrounded by a
p-type semiconductor matrix made from polycrystalline cadmium telluride. This layer
absorbs the incoming photons, and because of the cons-shaped structure, more of
the resulting charge is passed into the n-layer. In a conventional cell this
conversion process has an efficiency of around 1.8 percent, in the new cell it’s
around 3.2 percent. The bottom line is that more of the good stuff comes out of
each cell, and if they can figure out a way to produce them cheaply enough solar
power will be one more step closer to saving the planet.
0205
April
Leaf It Out
 Artificial leaves that
replicate the process of photosynthesis – turning light, water and air into
energy – have been around for a while but to date they’ve been little more than
laboratory curiosities. Not any more, according to Popsci. Researchers at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed the first practical
artificial leaf that one day could be as efficient as the real thing. It’s made
of silicon, various chemical catalysts and some electronics, so mimicking
nature is still quite a business, but it has the potential to do something
useful one day, like powering homes, producing electricity in the third world
or contributing to the much-vaulted Hydrogen Economy. Previous attempts at
artificial leaves have had short lives, been unstable, unfeasibly large or have
involved very expensive or rather nasty chemicals. The stuff used by MIT is
based on nickel and cobalt, and the prototype is not much larger than a playing
card. Needles to say Mother Nature still has the edge when it comes to making leaves,
but they’re working on it…
1804
Reach For the Stars
 How would you like to help
America be awesome once again? Well, you can by signing up for this appeal from
Kickstarter. They’re looking
for money and volunteers to build a working life-size AT-AT. In case you’ve
been living in a cave for the last 30 years or have never seen Star Wars, and
in particular The Empire Strikes Back here’s what you need to know The AT-AT or
All-Terrain Armoured-Transport is a giant walking tank, driven by the bad guys,
that goes around blasting the good guys. Ultimately it falls prey to the old
trick with the snowspeeder grappling hook canon, but the point is. These guys want
to show that America still has that can-do spirit that put a man on the moon, so
building a 22.5 metre (50 foot) tall walking machine should be a doddle. They’re
looking for mechanical engineers, project managers and contactors, legal
people, accountants, welders, electricians and specialists of all types. So come
on, there must be loads of budding AT-AT designers out there, and I’m willing
to bet that everyone involved will get to ride in it when it’s finished.
1404
Nuclear Fallout on ebay
 Vintage Geiger Counters and
radiation monitors, which previously sold for a few pounds or dollars on ebay
have now been fetching astronomical prices on the auction website ebay. The
nuclear accident in Japan, fanned by media misinformation understandably scared
a lot of people and the supply of ancient Cold War monitors, produced in the
1960s quickly dried up and the relatively small number of companies now making
these devices have been experiencing shortages of key components and have been
unable to meet demand.
The real problem, though,
is that most of the devices on sale are no use whatsoever for detecting fallout
and contamination from the stricken Japanese nuclear plant – unless you happen
to be right next to one of the leaky reactors. They stand absolutely no chance
of picking up the miniscule amounts of contamination in air and water 25 miles
away, let alone in the US or Europe. But even highly sensitive monitors are
useless to untrained users who won’t know how to interpret the results. Worse
still are the claims being made for devices that cannot even detect low to
medium levels of radioactivity. So called Survey meters, like the American CDV
715 (pictured above) or Plessey PDRM 82, used by the British, were designed to only respond to
highly radioactive fallout following a nuclear detonation. If anyone using one
of these devices ever sees the needle twitch or the display show any sort of
reading, they are already dead. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, devices that
are totally incapable of detecting nuclear (ionising) radiation are also being
misleadingly flogged on ebay for ridiculous amounts. Billed as ‘radiation’
monitors, they are actually designed to respond to non-ionising electromagnetic
radiation from cellphones and radio transmitters, or ultraviolet radiation from
the Sun.
1104
Olympic Giveaway, Taken
Away
 A few weeks ago the media
was abuzz with news that the London Underground system was to be fitted out for
cellular coverage, in time for the 2012 Olympics. Hooray, just what the
capital’s commuters and visitors have been waiting for. It was all thanks to a
very generous offer by dongle makers Huawei, who agreed to stump up £50 worth
of hardware. Now, it transpires, the deal has bitten the dust. Mayor Boris was
insistent that no public money would be involved and the entire cost would have
to be met by interested parties, like the mobile phone companies. It seems they
weren’t so keen on the idea, moreover a number of unexpected technical problems
have arisen, making it increasingly unlikely that it could be up and running by
next summer. The only very small piece of good news is that plans to equip more
than 100 stations with Wi-Fi will still go ahead
0404
IE9 Greenest Browser…
 The newly unleashed Internet
Explorer 9 is okay, nothing too dramatic in the way of features or facilities
but Microsoft has managed to pull a rather unexpected rabbit out of it’s hat by
claiming that it’s the most energy efficient browser around. Hmmm, it’s
probably not something you’ve ever considered but according to Microsoft, its
own tests have shown that basically because it’s quicker it uses less energy.
Quite how they came to this conclusion, and the methodology used looks
convincing, and it is explained
at great length, with lots of impressive looking graphs and photographs but
quite honestly we can’t be bothered to waste the electricity to pick it part. For
the record, it seems there’s not much to choose between IE9, Chrome and Firefox
but if you really want to blow some watts the bad boys are Opera 11 and Safari
5.
3103
March
True Blue?
 OLED or organic Light
Emitting Diode displays have been making steady inroads into the cellphone and
MP3 player market and indeed a multitude of other pocket sized gadgets but the
much promised transition to larger display formats has yet to materialise. To
be fair there have been a number of prototypes and demos, and Sony has put
super thin OLED display into production but we’re still waiting for the big
breakthrough that will oust plasma and LCD in the consumer market and pave the
way for mega displays and OLED wallpaper. Well, maybe it’s one small step close
with news from the University of Michigan that they’ve come up with a way of
doubling the efficiency of fluorescent OLED display elements. Traditionally
blue LEDs have always been difficult to make, and it seems that fluorescent
OLEDs are no different. However, don’t get too excited, existing fluorescent
blue OLEDs have an efficiency of around 5 percent, the new Michigan OLEDs are
10 percent efficient, so there’s still a way to go, but the signs are good.
2803
Spec-Less 3D 10 Still Years Away?
 If you are holding back on
buying into 3D TV in the hope that someone is going to do away with those
horrible glasses, you may have a bit if a wait on your hands. According to
Slashgear, Samsung, who are one of the leading lights in 3D TV technology, say
that there’s little chance of a glasses-less system making it onto the market
inside 10 years. It can be done, and Toshiba, amongst others, have demonstrated
prototype displays, but the big problem is that there are just a few ‘sweet
spots’ so only a few people can watch the screen, and see the 3D effect, at the
same time, and they have to hold their heads still, everyone else sees a nasty
blurry mush. Clearly this isn’t much use for family, let alone communal viewing.
So far the best demo screen has only been able to manage around 9 viewing
positions, and this was on a big 55-incher that probably wouldn’t fit in with most
people living rooms, let alone pockets. Samsung reckons workable prototypes may
be developed within 5 years, but it will take another 5 yeas to get them into
production, at a price the likes of you and me can afford.
2403
3D Overload
 Some of us are already
getting fed up with 3D; the term is being bandied about all over the place and rapidly heading the
same way as the word digital ten years ago, being applied to everything from
pencil sharpeners to cat litter, well, maybe not cat litter, but you know what
I mean. Back now to 3D and its latest outing is on cell phones, and no, we’re
not talking about the screen, this time it’s being applied to the
antennas. Our thanks to Engadget for
news of the development form the University of Illinois where researchers have
come up with a way of printing nanoparticle ink onto a curved surface. Why you
may ask, well, the theory goes that the 3D shape increases efficiency, which
basically means more bars, better signals and crisper conversations in poor
signal areas. We shall see…
2103
Chattering Teeth?
 Having ever only
experienced mild and temporary deafness I cannot begin to imagine what it is
like to be totally deaf in one ear, but help may be at hand for some sufferers
with a new type of hearing aid. The Sonitus SoundBite fits in the users
mouth and uses the well-established principle of bone conduction to transmit
sound through the wearer’s teeth to auditory organs deep in the inner ear.
This, it is claimed, allows the user to regain spatial hearing ability,
delivering clear, high quality sound captured by a microphone that fits in and
around the wearer’s ear canal. It’s non-surgical, easy to fit and remove and
invisible in use. The ITM (In The Mouth) device is custom made to fit on to the
users upper or lower back teeth – no dental work required – and both the ITM
and mike modules are powered by batteries that are charged using a cordless
induction system.
1703
Salt Sized Spy
 We’ve seen some really titchy digital cameras over the
years but this one is going to take some beating. This microscopic camera has
been designed to look deep inside the human body, seeking out tumours,
blockages and that sort of thing, which means getting into some very small
spaces. It was developed by the Berlin Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and
Microintegration (IZM), and apparently it’s so cheap – thanks to a new
manufacturing process -- it’s disposable. The trick has been to reorganise the
wiring on the sensor chip. Normally the contacts come out of the side of the
chip, in this design they run through the chip, which is integrated with the
lens. Usually each chip has to be individually sawed out of the wafer, mounted
and wired, which is a slow and laborious business. That step is bypassed in
this case and the finished result is a sensor and lens assembly that’s not much
larger than a grain of coarse salt, but still able to manage a resolution of 62,500
pixels. Needless to say others, outside of the medical profession are showing
interest in the camera and there’s talk of it being used to monitor driver’s
eye movements, to trigger an alarm if the camera indicates that he or she is
about to nod off. No doubt there are others busily thinking up even more
devious ways to use it; the trouble is, unless you are very suspicious and
carry a magnifying glass around with you, you’ll never know…
1403
Light Damage
 From the ‘he’s only gone
and done it…’ department, here’s news of a genuine blast your socks off 1
megawatt pulse laser gun, and it’s home made. The home in question belongs to
one Patrick Priebe, who built it in around 70 hours. It’s fully self contained
and powered by a pack of lithium ion cells. One megawatt sounds a quite lot but
it’s not quite into Star Trek Phaser territory, nevertheless it can pop
balloons, burn holes in thin plastic, scorch wood and almost certainly blind
anyone daft enough to look down the barrel. Patrick has since sold his
prototype but he’s open to offers to build more, though be warned it’s not
going to be cheap. Be warned also that it almost certainly qualifies as an
offensive weapon and probably illegal to wave around in public, but we can all
dream. There’s more information and a short video of it in action on the Hacked Gadgets
website.
1003
My First Stun Gun
 It seems to me that toys
these days are not much fun, thanks to the PC brigade. When I were a lad we had
airguns, catapults, sheath knives and chemistry sets that you could do real
damage with. Well maybe things are looking up for the younger generation, and
by way of preparation for the horrors of the real world we have news from the
far east of an electric shock ‘stun gun’, specially designed for kids. The CN
Police Electric Shock Baton is billed as an ideal joke, reusable and not
dangerous ‘if used properly’. But bizarrely the blurb adds, ‘not for children
or elders’. Sadly it’s not going to give your kids the opportunity to deliver the
full 50,000 volt belt of the real McCoy, the claimed output of just 3.6 volts is
only going to bother small insects, in fact we seriously doubt that it’s going
to have any effect whatsoever – unless applied to the victim’s tongue, but it
does have a built-in torch, and once again there’s the reassurance that ‘it is
safe to use if you don’t touch the shock button’.
0703
February
Hair Today…?
 Hair loss worries a lot of people and that can sometimes make them prey
to snake oil salespersons and do daft things. The tiny handful of treatments
that have been medically proven to actually work are all expensive, sometimes
painful and mostly only temporary, so what are we to make of the Apira iGrow? Well we’ll
leave that up to you, but the device is basically a helmet, with built in
headphones so you can listen to your favourite tunes whilst your scalp is bathed
in light coming from a set of lasers and red LEDs. Whether or not it’ll make
your hair grow is open to debate but it will definitely shrink your wallet, to
the tune of £500 or so, but it comes with a six-month money back guarantee, so
what could possibly go wrong?
2402
Disposable
Flash on the Cards
 USB
flash drives are now so cheap they are virtually disposable but Art Lebedev
design studio has taken it to its logical conclusion. It has come up with a
range of drives, called Flashkus, they’re
made out of cardboard, and sold on perforated strips. Of course the actual
memory chips are not made of card, that would just be silly, but when you think
about it there’s no good reason why the rest of it can’t be made from something
so cheap and recyclable as pressed paper. Apart from anything else there’s a
significant weight and space saving, and the lower cost should make it more
attractive to companies giving them away for promotional purposes. It is still
a work in progress and there’s no news yet when they’ll be available but if and
when they do, the word on the street is that they’ll be available in 4, 8 and
16Gb capacities.
2102
Wheely
Clever Idea?
 Still
hankering after a Segway? Well, at £3000 a pop and virtually nowhere you can
legally ride the thing in public, here in the UK at least, this particular form
of personal motorised human transport is not looking so attractive. So how
about the Solowheel? It’s a
motorised gyroscopically self-balancing unicycle that can propel you along at
around 12mph; the battery should be good for around 12 miles on he flat. No
doubt the authorities will have something to say about it, and insist it’s
fitted with indicators and stop lights before it’s allowed on the road, let
alone the pavement, but here’s the thing. It’s really small and it has an
integral carrying handle, so if you see the old Bill coming just hop off, pick
it up and walk nonchalantly away, whistling innocently as you go. Expect it to
cost the thick end of £1000 when it goes on sale later this year. First reports
suggest it’s fairly easy to ride, but getting on and starting off takes a bit
of practice, and someone (or something) to lean on.
1602
Windows Update Helps Beat
USB Viruses
 Windows XP and Vista allows
executable programs to run from USB drives the moment they are plugged in. It
was supposed to be a helpful feature – and it can be -- but it has also allowed
viruses and a good deal of malware to spread. In one well-documented instance a
nefarious visitor to an army base left a number of USB drives lying about on a
lavatory floor and within hours dozens of highly sensitive military computers
had been infected. To be fair to Microsoft such dastardly uses for USB AutoRun
couldn’t have been foreseen back in the mid 90s but it was put right in Windows
7, and now a new security update that disables the feature is about to be
rolled old for older versions of Windows. By the way, it’s not compulsory and
if you install the patch it can still be undone.
1402
iPlayer App Mixed Blessing
 This is one of those good
news, bad news items, so lets begin with the very welcome announcement from the
BBC, via Engadget, that it will be launching an official iPlayer app for both iPad and
Android, probably in the next day or so. The facility to watch BBC programs,
old and new on your phone or tablet is long overdue and there’s even a hint the
iPad app may work for overseas users, though we wouldn’t be surprised if
there’s a subscription sting in the tail. And now for the bad news, it has been suggested that the Android
app only works on the recently released Froyo Android 2.2, and tablets and
phones will also need Flash Player 1.0. This will be a huge disappointment for
all those early adopters who have first generation and mostly non-upgradeable
tablets and phones running Android 2.1 or earlier, and we’re guessing they still
make up the bulk of Android users.
1002
Watch This
 Telling the time, if you
are visually impaired, can be a bit of a problem. Over the years numerous
solutions have been devised, with varying degrees of success. Specially
designed Braille watches, with a lift-up face revealing a dial with raised dots
and tough hands – so the wearer can ‘feel’ the time have been around for
decades. There have also been vibrating watches, and in the 1980s talking
watches, which remain one of the most popular options to this day, though
obviously they are of limited use in noisy environments. Now we have a new take
on the Braille watch in the shape of the Haptica, by David Chavez. It’s an
ingenious design with a row or rotating dials, each with it’s own set of raised
pips that can be read with the fingertips. It’s still at the concept stage and
funding is being sought to continue its devolvement so if you are interested
head over to Kickstarter,
which is helping to promote the project.
0702
Are You Ready For IPV6?
 You’ll probably be reading
and hearing a lot about how, in the next few weeks, the Internet is going to
dry up and run out of IP addresses. Whatever the media say, don’t panic, just
make note in your diary for June 8th because that’s World IPV6 Day. Time for an
explanation, IP or Internet Protocol addresses are the four blocks of numbers
that uniquely identify every website, computer and device connected to the
Internet. (You rarely need to worry about them as DNS or Domain Name Servers translate
website names into numbers when you type them into your browser). The present
numbering system, known as Ipv4 is such that there are around 4.3 billion
combinations and one way or another they’ve all, or are about to be allocated.
That doesn’t actually mean they’ve been used up and there can be no more
websites or users, but it does make life tricky for the people who operate the
web and over the next few years something is going to have to be done about it.
In fact they’ve known it’s going to happen for some time and back in 1998 they
came up with a new standard, called IPV6, which allows for 340 gazillion web
addresses (actually 3.4 x 1038 addresses), which is more than enough
for everyone on the planet to have several dozen websites. It’s a big change,
though and a lot of work has to be done to the web’s infrastructure to make it
work and the first big test will be on June 8th when a large number of web
companies will be trying it out.
But, you’re probably
asking, where does that leave me? You can check your own level of readiness by
visiting the test site at http://test-ipv6.com/.
The good news is that the answer is probably that you need do nothing and it’s
down to your ISP and web techs to sort things out. Windows from XP onwards can
handle IPV6 and most recent routers are fine with the new protocols but even if
you are using vintage equipment no websites are going to disappear. The two
systems will run alongside each other for the foreseeable. The worst that will
happen is you won’t be able to access IPV6 only sites, and there’s not likely
to be many of those anytime soon.
0302
January
Pullover for Pads
 Saints preserve us. Hang on, a quick
check to make sure it’s not April 1st. No, still January so this must be for real; it’s the PadX-1 Ledge Wearcom,
a sort of pullover designed to hold your iPad. As you can see from the photo,
it opens up and holds it in position so you can keep both hands free to use it.
Now don’t your get any ideas and try copying it, it has been patented; and be
warned, a version for the Samsung Galaxy is also in the pipeline. It’s made
from advanced waterproof thermal Polartec softshell and the ‘load bearing’
pocket harness built into the chest protects your tablet from impacts (which
may come in handy if you wear one of these things in some parts of town…).
Available now in small, medium, large and extra large sizes, and any colour you
like, as long as it’s black.
3101
Cold Fusion For Real Again?
 Cold Fusion stories pop up
every now and again, only to disappear without trace a few weeks or months
later. In case you need reminding Cold Fusion is the holy grail of energy
production, effectively harnessing the power of he Sun but in a controlled and
relatively low temperature environment in the hope that more energy comes out
than goes in. This latest breakthrough come from Italy where two scientists,
Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi, have demonstrated a low energy nuclear reactor
that appears to generate 12 kw of energy from an input of just 400w. What makes
this one a little unusual is that the experts who routinely dismiss the idea
haven’t been quite so vociferous. The usual explanations are that the excess
energy is coming from a chemical reaction, or is a simple miscalculation, but
these seem to have been effectively countered by the two scientists very
thorough demonstration. The group is planning to build a prototype commercial
reactor within a few months, so we will just have to wait and see.
2701
Hang Onto Your Maps
 Here’s a cautionary tale
from the US, and a warning to anyone who has come to depend on GPS navigation –
don’t throw away your maps and atlases just yet! In what serves as a stern
reminder that the GPS system is owned and operated by the US Military, and they
can switch it on and off at will; news reaches us that they are planning to do
just that between now and February 22nd in a series of ‘tests’. The good news
for us in the UK is that it’s only going to affect reception in the southeastern
US. The warning comes from the Federal Aviation Authority FAA and so far only
pilots have been alerted and given 24 hours notice. Apparently the tests last
approximately 45 minutes and are followed by a 15-minute shutdown. No one is
saying exactly what these tests are for but it is well known that the US
military have long been concerned that GPS can be used by terrorists, for
missile guidance and so on. The system available to civilians is deliberately
downgraded to reduce accuracy, however, improvements in GPS receivers and
processing mean that the GPS in your car or smart phone is capable of
pinpointing a location to within a few metres, so it would be at all surprising
to learn that ways are being sought to rapidly jam or misroute GPS signals if a
threat was detected, or just remind everyone that it’s always wise to have a
fallback, just in case they decide to tinker with it over here.
2401
First Map of the Internet
 Maps of the Internet tend
to be colourful but unfathomable patterns of fine lines criss-crossing and
connecting with one another, but it wasn’t always like that. This is the first
Internet, or Arpanet as it was known, back in 1972. It was a computer network,
set up by the Pentagon and linking researchers a number of key universities. Its
original purpose was to provide a secure communication system that would continue
to operate, even if parts of it were destroyed or failed. This was of course at
the height of the cold war with fear of the atomic bomb at its height and such
scenarios seemed not only possible but virtually inevitable. Anyway, needless
to say it was a success and rapidly expanded, beyond the universities and into
the public domain and evolved into something really useful, or as evil and
destructive and just as likely to bring about the end of civilisation as the
nuclear war it was designed to survive, depending of course on your point of
view
2001
Cycle Logical Warfare
 And it is war out there, as
any cyclist will tell you. Riding a bike in some parts of the country can be a
high risk enterprise and any health benefits are more than offset by the likelihood
that some idiot will clip you, squeeze you or open their door in your path. But
it’s the ones that you can’t see, that creep up behind you that you really have
to watch out for. The Cervellum Hindsight
is dubbed a ‘digital bicycle mirror’ and it is based around a rear-facing
camera that fixes to the saddle or seat post. The image is shown on a handlebar
mounted 3-inch LCD screen, so you can see who’s about to wallop you, but here’s
the really clever bit, it has a recording capability. If you take a tumble it
stores the recording so you’ll have some hard evidence that could bring the
dangerous clown to book. No word on price but expect it to be a bit dearer than
a regular mirror when it goes on sale in the next few months.
1701
Cutting Edge Flash Memory
 Victorinox are at it again
with the latest update of its Swissbit Swiss Army Knife (SAK) with flip out flash
drive. You may remember when they first came out, two or three years ago, the
drives, which sat alongside the ubiquitous scissors, multi-role nail file/screwdriver
and blade came with a measly 256Mb capacity, though if you were filthy rich you
could opt for the 512Mb version. The range has been upgraded to include models
with lasers, fingerprint recognition and capacities up to 32Gb but now they’ve
gone and stuffed in what’s claimed to be the world’s smallest 256Gb drive into
it’s latest model. The drive is a SAK in it its own right, with an on-board
32-bit processor, hardware error correction, encryption and an e-ink display
that shows filenames and drive usage. No prices yet but we understand for
lesser mortals there will also be 128 and 64gig versions, and a 512Gb model is
already in the pipeline for later in the year. Fantastically useful, especially
for travellers but if you plan to fly make sure you get one of the bladeless
(and sadly near useless) ‘Flight’ versions, or remember to pack it in your hold
luggage.
1301
A Vision of the Future?
 As a lifelong specs wearer,
with a brief foray into contact lenses, I heartily welcome any development
that’s going to make it easy to see better. Pixel
Optics sounds very promising indeed and these smart glasses used a
composite LCD element to automatically enable change the lens’s focus, using an
accelerometer to detect when the wearer’s head tips down, whilst reading for
example.
It’s not a new idea and
glasses with variable focal length lenses have been around for a while. One of the first appeared back in the 1960s
and was a purely mechanical device based around a hollow lens made of a
flexible material; its shape or curvature was altered with a small piston built
into the glasses frame, that injected a clear liquid into the flexible lens.
The idea later resurfaced with a Canon camcorder autofocus system, which used
tiny servos to change the shape of a flexible lens. This one, though, is all
electronic and the LCD part works by changing the refraction index of what’s
called an ‘electro-active’ layer within the lens. All clever stuff but it’s not
necessary to know how it works, just that it does, in a fraction of a second,
so the wearer isn’t aware that it’s happening. Now it’s all up to you
Specsavers…
1001
Geriatric Battery
 Thanks to Gizmodo for news
of a battery that has been quietly working uninterrupted for sixty years. It’s
called Karpen’s Pile and it was made by a Romanian chap called Vasile Karpen back
in the 1950s. This story turns up every now and again and it was recently
re-visited by a newspaper doing research in the country’s National Technical
Museum where Karpen’s work is housed. Details of how this battery works remain
sketchy, and some say it isn’t even a battery but some sort of thermodynamic
generator, producing power from temperature changes but however it does it,
it’s showing no signs of running out of puff and it’s the closest we’ve got to
a perpetual motion machine. The cells consist of two sealed ‘piles’ connected
in series – it has been suggested it uses electrodes made of gold and platinum
immersed in highly purified sulphuric acid. The output is used to drive a small
galvanic motor that flips a blade operated switch back and forth. Measurements taken every few
years indicate that the batteries produce exactly one volt and this hasn’t
changed in the past 6 decades. It seems very unlikely that this could ever be
developed for commercial use – the energy it produces is miniscule -- but it’s
an intriguing novelty and here’s hoping it will keep confounding the experts
and run for another 60 years.
00601
Cunning Crimebusting Cane
 Bad guys beware. Think
twice about mugging old folks with walking sticks, they could have a Zap Cane
stun baton, in which case you’ll be on the wrong end of a one million volt belt
that’s claimed to be enough to know down any attacker. The length of the Zap
Cane is fully adjustable and it’ll support up to around 20 stone or 113kg so
almost anyone can use it. There’s a super bright LED torch built into the
handle, it comes with its own custom carry case, the stun gun module is
rechargeable and it costs a little under £70. Sadly it’s only available in the
US and not in all states either. You’re unlikely to see it this side of the
pond anytime soon as under UK law stun guns are classified as offensive
weapons. On the other hand any walking stick makes a formidable weapon and old
people are famously willing to have a go, so the best advice we can give to would
be robbers is don’t do it!
0301
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