A Knight in Dragonland

The United States lags way behind many other industrialized nations in broadband quality. In a recent study sponsored by Cisco and carried out by researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Oviedo, “broadband quality scores” were calculated based on measurements made in May 2008 by Speedtest.net. The United States ranked [...]

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This bit of news, covered by several major media outlets (including Reuters, The Economist, Forbes, and Time), falls into the category of truly bizarre but cool and innovative at the same time.
Nina Fefferman, an epidemiologist at Princeton University, and her former student, Eric Lofgren (last profile on the page), described how the outbreak of Corrupted [...]

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This is old news, but it caught my eye.  On May 21 of this year, British mountaineer Rod Baber made two cell phone calls … from the top of Mount Everest!
I’m sure Verizon is trying to get him as a spokesman.
Hat Tip: Budi Putra.

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Machinery that can be manipulated by thought alone has long been the realm of science fiction.  Long before Neo asked the question “what is the Matrix?,”  there was Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Max Headroom, Johnny Mnemonic and the CyberPunk and Shadowrun RPGs.  Well, the fiction part is rapidly drifting away.  Check out this Newsweek article.
Neuroscientists at [...]

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I was perusing through Time’s Best Inventions of 2006, when I ran across this sweet wonder – MooBella. Quote from the Time article:
Most commercial ice cream machines dispense pre-frozen desserts. The MooBella makes its treats on the spot, storing milk, sugar and other natural ingredients in sterile, airtight containers (think Parmalat). Key in an [...]

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You think that phrase is just for Star Trek? Think again! Researchers at Duke University, Imperial College London and the San Diego company SensorMetrix have developed a rudimentary cloaking device that was able to bend microwaves around a test object – a copper cylinder in this case (Science abstract here, New York Times [...]

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