BMW look set to become the first vehicle manufacturer to offer in-car web access as an optional extra. It is using a system called ConnectedDrive, which relies on a GPRS cellphone connection to provide the driver and passengers with an Internet connection from a dashboard display and custom browser. Initially there will be restrictions, the driver and front seat passenger display will only work when the car is stationary, Read the rest of this entry »
Following on from last weeks excitement, when the Americans managed to blow up one of their dud spy satellites, you might like to know that the shadowy organisation behind these aerial snoopers has come out of the closet, just a little way…
The NRO or National Reconnaissance Office has its own web site and is publishing some of its satellite imagery. Read the rest of this entry »
Actually it’s a mobile phone with some clever extras. The G450 is officially known as a Four-In-One Mobile Device, the four elements being the aforesaid mobile phone, a high-speed mobile modem, MP3 player, and USB Pen Drive, which it most closely resembles in terms of size and shape.
Just pop in a SIM card and you have a small but still quite useable mobile phone. The tiny OLED display is limited to just phone numbers and a line of text but what more do you need? Plug it into the USB socket on your laptop and you have a mobile modem connecting through 3G/HSDPA networks giving broadband like connection speeds. Read the rest of this entry »
A week or so ago you may recall many newspapers carried a story about an odd looking contraption that you strapped to your legs, which generated power as you walk, enough to power up to 10 mobile phones one report said. Well, here’s something a tad more elegant. Researchers at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with an idea that generates power from nano fibres, that can be incorporated into everyday items of clothing, like shirts and trousers. Pairs of fibres are coated with zinc oxide nanowires and as they rub against each other they generate tiny currents using a piezoelectric effect. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s something to make your eyes twinkle, or water…. Researchers at the University of Washington developed contact lenses with embedded light emitting diodes LEDs and driver circuits just a few nanometers thick. The idea is eventually it could be formed into a ‘heads up’ display for a computer or GPS, night vision system or even an aid for the visually impaired. At the moment the prototypes can do nothing very useful, just a few blobs of light that flash on and off. A means of getting power to the chips in the lens also needs to be figured out, the idea of a couple of wires going onto your eyeball doesn’t bear thinking about, but it should be do-able, using electromagnetic induction or solar power; we’ll just have to wait and see where this one is headed…
