Technology

The United States has long been considered an "innovation nation". But last year, John Kao, an accomplished jazz keyboard player, Yale philosopher, Medical School graduate, and an MBA from Harvard Business school sounded the alarm: America was ... losing its innovative touch. In his book, prepared for the 2008 presidential election candidates (inspired by Hillary Clinton), Kao points out that innovation drives geopolitical position and America is losing it. (Source: businessweek.com ) The main justifications for his position come from the globalization phenomena. He cited several observations in ... (view more)

Japanese mobile phones consistently deliver high-speed connections, digital television broadcasts and super-fast video downloads. It's not that Japan is hoarding the technology; the country is very willing to share their innovations with the global ... market. Still, some Japanese products (despite their efficiency) continue to fair poorly in North America. A number of Japanese manufacturers are once again venturing westward in the hopes of financial success. Their North American promotional tour will be headlined by the "wallet phone". Don't let the name fool you. The "wallet" tagline does not ... (view more)

They're the stuff of Disney fantasy and childhood dreams, but invisibility cloaks are something University of California scientists stay they are one step closer to developing. The scientists at the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center, lead by ... Xiang Zhang, are creeping closer to perfecting 'metamaterials', artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index. These metamaterials have recently undergone successful tests allowing scientists to cloak 3-D objects. The technology works when the metamaterials scatter the light that ... (view more)

The Olympics are not the only thing rocking Asia this past few weeks. In South Korea, Samsung is set to reveal their latest entry in the field of environmentally conscious mobile phones, known throughout the industry as "eco-phones". The Samsung ... E200 Eco contains parts that are made from bioplastics, that is, materials extracted from corn. Amazingly, it is not the first mobile phone to contain such materials. It is the first, however, in which the entire phone casing is made from bioplastic materials. (Source: reghardware.co.uk ) But what features does a phone made from corn have to offer? In ... (view more)

Grameen Solutions, an affiliate of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has teamed with Obopay, a mobile payment company based in California, to provide banking to a billion people using cellphones. The service targets customers who wish to send money to ... friends and family, charging 10 cents for every transaction. Obopay is already very active in the United States. Once an account has been opened, the user can transfer money between bank accounts, credit cards and even other mobile phones via text messages. When we really think about it, we are lucky to be living in a part of the world that offers ... (view more)

CSI cast members take note, a new technology called DESI (desorption electrospray ionisation) can tell much more from fingerprints than someone's identity. The system, pioneered by chemists at Purdue University in Indiana, "involves spraying a tiny ... (0.15x0.15mm) area of a fingerprint with an electrically charged mixture of methanol and water. When these charged droplets come into contact with the surface of the print they collect any substances deposited on it, creating a thin liquid film. As more drops are sprayed on the same spot, some of this film is scattered and sucked into a mass ... (view more)

There have been times in our lives when we have had to make important phone calls that we would much rather avoid. In these instances (and in-between whispering to ourselves "please don't pick up") we anticipate the salvation that comes when hearing ... the beep of an answering machine, signaling that an unwanted conversation has just been avoided. Wouldn't it be great if we could jump straight to the answering machine without having to wait out the seemingly endless ringing period? Now thanks to Slydial, unwanted phone conversations are a thing of the past. Slydial is an emergent technology that ... (view more)

Finally, software tools for those that have difficulty remembering things. Both IBM and Microsoft are currently testing software designed to improve individual memory. Let's face it, people today are overwhelmed with information and data -- so much ... so that they can't process it or retrieve it when needed. The new software will help with that by combining pictures, sounds, dates, times, locations, and text that is recorded through some type of everyday mobile electronic device (like a smart cell phone) and indexed for later retrieval. (Source: computerworld.com ) The IBM version of the ... (view more)

Researchers have discovered that the ancient Greeks used a primitive 'computer' to set the dates of the Olympic Games. Historians already knew that the first games, held in 776BC, were scheduled to begin on the full moon closest to the summer ... solstice. But until know they hadn't worked out how the Greeks managed to perform the complex and detailed calculations needed to work out that date. The answer lies in a mechanical brass calculator known as the Antikythera Mechanism, found in a shipwreck in 1901. It had a series of bronze wheels and dials, and dates from around 100 BC. Experts said it ... (view more)

British businessman and publicity hog Richard Branson recently revealed the first of two aircraft capable of carrying tourists into space. The new, high-altitude jet will act as a sky-bound home base for spacecraft that take two crew and six ... passengers on sub-orbital flights. Dubbed "Eve", the aircraft was recently unveiled amidst space fans and engineers a Mojave Desert hangar. Branson's Virgin Galactic is behind the project, which contracted aerospace designer Burt Rutan to complete both Eve and the spaceship that will launch from Eve. Although the number of space nuts having already paid $ ... (view more)