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Tech/Sci
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Oh Hey, Google’s Buying Motorola
15 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
And for the first time in years I actually have a reason to want a Motorola. Google today agreed to acquire the handset division of Motorola, Motorola Mobility, for $12.5 billion (around 90 billion ZAR). It’s always nice to have money lying around for these little impulse buys.
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The Science Of Beer Goggles
15 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Finally, science has validated what those posters have been telling us for years. Apparently, beer goggles do turn ‘bow’ into ‘wow’. A team of scientists at London’s Roehampton University have killed a considerable bar tab investigating why people who are intoxicated by alcohol seem less critically receptive to the physical appearance of others, or for the rest of us: “Beer goggles – why?”
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These Guys Made A Robot Bird [VIDEO]
15 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
They made a robot seagull. It flies by flapping its robot seagull wings. I mean yes this is a huge breakthrough in terms of flight engineering, but even if that’s not your jam, you’re going to want to take a look at the awesome two-metre wide flying robot on display at TEDGlobal.
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Levi’s Drops Advert In The UK Depicting Riot Scene [VIDEO]
15 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Trying to get your brand to tap into certain subcultures’ wallets is hard at the best of times. Increasingly, brands are pushing the limits of message delivery, but Levi’s certainly couldn’t have predicted that their new advertisement featuring scenes from protests resembling the London riots would cause such a stir.
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Blackberry May Cause Riots, Says Westminster
12 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In a rather bizarre twist, as the UK government and security forces attempt to make sense of the wave of violent rioting and looting that swept across major UK cities this week, Prime Minister, David Cameron, called into question the role social networking platforms, such as Blackberry’s BBM (Blackberry Messaging) facility might have played in stirring up unrest that saw millions of pounds worth of damage caused to property around the UK.
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We Live In The Future: Electronic Temporary Tattoos
12 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
I know temporary tattoos are usually pretty lame, but the ones they’re making over at the University of Illinois are looking pretty rad. Because unlike regular temporary tattoos that fade within two days and look like awful birthmarks, these guys come with diagnostic sensors, LEDs, wireless antennas, and solar cells for power. Take that, Kinder Surprise.
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US Military Hypersonic Jet Is So Fast, Even They Can’t Find It
12 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle is not only 22 times faster than a commercial jetliner, it’s also capable of reaching Mach 20, which is roughly 21 000 kph. So basically it’s kak fast. It’s so fast that the company that created it, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), have lost it at sea. Again.
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Chinese Rail Company Issues Massive Bullet Train Recall
12 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The second largest train maker in China will recall 54 bullet trains which are used on the new impressive Beijing-Shanghai line for safety reasons, the company said today. The recall of the high-speed trains by China CNR Corp Limited comes three weeks after 40 people were killed in a high-speed rail crash.
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They’ve Invented A Date-Rape-Detecting-Straw
11 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Two Israeli scientists say they have developed a sensor that can accurately detect date-rape drugs in drinks 100 percent of the time – a tiny, drink-stirrer-looking device that, when dipped into your appletini or other refreshing beverage, can detect the presence of dissolved drugs. Nice job, science.
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Hong Kong Securities Exchange Hacked, Partly Suspends Trading
11 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Not even security exchanges are immune to hackers these days. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, the world’s biggest security exchange operator by market value, suspended trading yesterday for companies including HSBC. This came after its website was hacked in what’s been described as a hack with malicious intent at a critical time.
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Meet Virgin Galactic’s First Astronaut
11 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Dave MacKay, 53-year-old British pilot, will be the first captain of Virgin Galactic‘s commercial space fleet, taking up the role first with the maiden voyage of SpaceShipTwo, scheduled for 2013. MacKay has over 30 years of regular flying experience, but like pretty much everybody, he’s wanted to fly spaceships since he was a kid.
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Crowdsourcing London’s Riot Clean-Up
10 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
There is something encouraging coming out of the past three days of rioting and looting, even if it is a remote silver lining: the online mobilization of volunteer clean-up operations, mostly organized via Twitter and Facebook. By this time yesterday, #riotcleanup, was the second-highest trending topic worldwide.
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“Swallowable Parfum” Makes Your Skin Emit Perfume
08 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Australian artist and ‘body architect’ Lucy McRae, in collaboration with Harvard biologist Sheref Mansy, is releasing these little digestible capsules that make human skin emit perfume scents. Which is nice and futuristic, I think. And by futuristic I mean I have no idea how this thing works.
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Google Has First Self-Drive Car Accident – Who’s Responsible?
08 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
When I first heard about Google’s self-driving cars I was excited. Google weren’t the first to experiment with this kind of thing, and technology is evolving, but deep down I always knew it would be hard to trump KITT from Knight Rider or DeLorean DMC-12 from Back to the Future. Prius on Prius car love after the jump.
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NASA Launches Spacecraft To Jupiter
05 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Just when we thought NASA was going to take a backseat and let privatisation take the wheel for a while, they squeeze out yet another project. It just happens to be one of the space agency’s most ambitious missions too, and will attempt to discover the secrets behind the largest planet in the solar system – Jupiter.
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Former CIA Counterterrorism Director Warns Of Impending ‘Code War’
04 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Speaking at the Black Hat hacker’s conference in Vegas yesterday, former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center Cofer Black voiced concerns about a future “code war” where hackers tamper with the technology that runs our day-to-day interactions. Then a fire alarm accidentally tripped, which was nice and thematic.
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Internet Explorer Study Is Elaborate Hoax
03 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
I was amused when I read that the article we published yesterday about Internet Explorer users having a lower average IQ than users of other browsers was a hoax. Not because I dislike IE users, but because this would have been the push they needed to, explore other browsers. Unfortunately though, sometimes global news agencies do get it wrong.
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BlackBerry On Verge Of Launching iPhone Challenger
03 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
At least that’s what Mike and Jim at Research In Motion would have the industry believe. RIM is expected to launch several new BlackBerry devices today in a desperate effort to win back its market share, particularly in North America.
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We Live In The Future: GM’s Smartphone-Controlled Pod Cars
02 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
GM’s Electric Networked-Vehicle (EN-V), the pod-shaped hands-free electric vehicle unveiled last year, is set for release soon. Confined to metropolitan areas, we should be able to live out our Jetsons inspired fantasies a little sooner than we’d planned, once GPS technology catches up a little.
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How Much Is That Robo-Seal In The Window?
02 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The future is officially nuts. It’s getting to a point where stuff like this probably won’t shock you anymore. It should. Be shocked. These robo-seals, called ‘Paro’, not only bring comfort to recovering Japanese tsunami patients, they also sing, clap, and even take part in the residents daily exercise routines.
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Internet Explorer Users ‘Have Below-Average IQ’
02 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
A study, and a fairly quantitative one, is suggesting that the dinner conversation talk I think some of us may have had about the average Internet Explorer user may be true. AptiQuant offered free online IQ tests to over 100 000 people and then plotted the average IQ scores based on the browser on which the test was taken.
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Skype iPad App Released Prematurely
02 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
An official iPad app for Skype has been pulled mere hours after being made available for free via the iTunes Store. No specific reason was given, except for a Skype tweet claiming the release was “premature.” Awkward.
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Foxconn Increases Reliance On Robots For Manufacturing
01 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Because robots can’t get depressed over awful working conditions and commit suicide, you see. Also we don’t have a robot union yet, so Foxconn (the guys who manufacture the iPhone and iPad) won’t need to worry about the slowly increasing factory worker wages in Taiwan, which are driving overhead costs upwards throughout the fancy-technology-making-industry.
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Is The End Of Spam Nigh?
01 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
How many hours has it been since you were on the receiving end of an unsolicited spam SMS, or spam email? Did you know that South Africa has a national opt-out registry for that kind of thing? That’s true. You add your name to the national opt-out registry, and direct marketers (who are largely responsible for the spam SMS you got just a minute ago) aren’t allowed to contact you. The question is, who’s going to manage the list?
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‘Thoughtful’ Cycling – Is It The Way Of The Future? [Video]
01 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Toyota and bicycle maker, Parlee have developed a bike that can read your mind. The Prius X Parlee changes gears by registering the cyclist’s brain waves, through the use of an experimental iPhone app and a fancy thought sensitive helmet.
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Real Life Sat-Nav Racing Game Grips Britain As Drivers Attempt To Beat The Clock
29 Jul 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
The idea behind the game is pretty straight forward: you must beat your satellite navigational system’s estimated time of arrival. I’m quite sure this has crossed some of our minds a few times but apparently some seven million British drivers are actually partaking in the potentially lethal new craze.
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Some British Communities Become “Shariah Controlled Zone’s”
28 Jul 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 7 Comments
Bigoted members of British society must be speedily wringing their hands and tensely furrowing their eyebrows in anger that this has happened. While not quite the same as the Name Your Hood campaign, Islamic extremists have launched a poster campaign across the UK proclaiming areas where Shariah law enforcement zones have been set up.
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Piers Morgan Might Have Been Fibbing About His Phone Hacking Knowledge
27 Jul 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Piers Morgan might have been speaking nonsense when he made the modest claim that all he knew of phone hacking was that someone once told him that it was possible. The embattled CNN host, who has spent a fair amount of time defending his knowledge on hacking lately, appears to have forgotten about a 2009 interview.
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IMF Gets Tough On US And Europe, Over Debt Crisis
27 Jul 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Speaking in New York yesterday, the former French finance minister and now new IMF head, Christine Lagarde, warned that despite the positive response in the financial markets to bailouts, fresh turmoil could easily boil over if debt crises aren’t properly managed now. She also really wants the Republicans and Democrats in Washington to stop squabbling so much.
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Old Spice Guy Vs Fabio, Mano-A-Mano, Live Tonight [VIDEO]
26 Jul 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Where are you going to be at 18h00 this evening? I know what I’m going to be doing – and let’s be honest about this – you know what you should be doing too, right? Something awesome might happen. The Old Spice Guy has accepted Fabio’s challenge and they will have some sort of bathroom face-off, live, on YouTube.
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