Researchers Build 'SpeechJammer' To Mute The Human Voice
Japanese researchers have created a device to perpetuate the definition of "silence is golden," by remotely cutting off human speech without any physical discomfort or intervention. So with what looks like a handheld speed camera, you can literally mute a person: a piece of technology many of us here wish we can acquire.
SETI Live Crowdsources The Search For Extra Terrestrials
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence needs your help, in a rather novel online concept called the 'SETI Live' program, allowing you to examine radio waves for alien activity.
The free-to-use service presents users from around the world with a series of radio frequency signals, which were gathered by the recently restarted Allen Telescope Array (ATA), that emanate from the Kepler field. They've picked this field in particular because it's gathered significant traction of attention recently, as a series of earth-like planets that could support life have been spotted there.
iPad 3 Concept Uses Retina Display And 3D Holograms
Ahead of the iPad announcement on March 7, Aatma Studios have released an iPad 3 concept features video, with retina display and the use of 3D holographics and table projections.
The first extravagant conceptual design choice to immediately take note of is the use of an edge-to-edge display measured at 2560x1140 pixels (a.k.a 'retina'). With the complete surface being a screen, alluding to a larger display, the entire front panel works as the home button to the user.
Microsoft Researchers Show Off Interactive, Transparent 3D Desktop
Why be confined to using an archaic mouse and keyboard configuration when all you need to interact with your desktop PC is your own two hands? That’s what researchers at Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group will be hoping to pose to its potential consumer base in the near future, that is if their prototype 3D display – which allows users to manipulate on-screen objects with varying hand gestures - ever sees the light of day.
US Navy Test Fires New Railgun
The Navy have been persistently active in their research into a ship-mounted railgun for their vessels, and have allowed a public insight into the progress of this project, releasing a test shot video from the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia.
Hardware Review: PlayStation Vita
You have to give Sony credit. It takes a ballsy company to release major new hardware at a price upwards of £200 in such economically difficult times (and at a time where we're constantly reminded of the games industry's troubling outlook), but it takes even more confidence to launch hardware that, essentially, swims against the tide of current gaming trends. In a market now chock-full of often-shallow social games, 59p Apps for mobile devices and free-to-play triple-A titles, it's an immensely risky strategy to put so much marketing grunt and belief behind a portable gaming machine in which off-the-shelf titles are priced comparatively to their console equivalents, and where going all-in for the hardware is likely to cost much more than buying another home console.
MG Siegler: "Links From The Wall Street Journal Mean Dick"
The latest controversy surrounding former TechCrunch editor MG Siegler erupted when the Wall Street Journal wrote about Apple' acquisitions startup Chomp without citing MG Siegler's source article. MG, justifiably enraged, published a long tirade on parislemon, his personal blog. What's most interesting about his post is a choice quote from the middle: "I honestly do not care if WSJ links to TechCrunch at all. I’ve been doing this a long time — one thing I know for certain: a link from WSJ means dick. Basically no one clicks through."
Man Shoots Himself At Point-Blank Range To Test Bulletproof Vest
Balls. No, not the spherical kind, the figurative kind – common knowledge to mean possessing tremendous levels of courage, the mettle and the bravery to put yourself in danger's trajectory. It's also what this man holds in abundance, pointing a 10mm Glock at his midriff and firing it toward his stomach area in the name of 'testing' his bulletproof vest. Sheer foolishness or the purest form of product testing?
Offbeatr: Kickstarter For Porn
Yes dear reader, we understand that the title maybe misconstrued; but that is the most blunt way we can define Offbeatr. It literally is a version of Kickstarter for the porn industry, providing a crowdsourced way of funding such projects to hit the likes of youporn and spankwire.
A 'Back To The Future' Hoverboard That Actually Hovers
So not too long ago, Mattel officially announced the release of their hoverboard which featured in Back to the Future II, giving many-a-nerd such as myself a profound sense of pride. Not so impressed that it doesn't actually hover though; but that's where one genius has brought us closer to the realisation of our dream.
Google’s AR ‘Smart Glasses’ To Be Released By 2013
Reporting on technology and science news daily doesn’t come without its own fair share of truly astounding things to deliver to you all from time to time. But even by those standards, the news that Google is planning to launch a pair of “smart glasses” (appropriately named the ‘Google Goggles’ for the time being) by the end of the year is quite remarkable.
Merchants Selling ‘Sent From My iPhone’ Signatures To Online Chat Users
Can’t afford an iPhone and stuck with your long-defunct mobile, but still want others to believe that you are in fact amongst the ‘elite’ of mobile owners prestigious enough to own Apple’s £500 smartphone? Simple, fake it. That’s what merchants on China’s largest consumer-to-consumer online marketplace, Taobao, are offering prospective buyers, a service that grants the seller the rights to hack into the buyer’s QQ account –- an instant messaging service -– in order to attach a ‘Sent from my iPhone’ signature to every message sent thereafter, reports The Financial Times' Kathrin Hille.
Google Adds Request For Wallet Signup During Gmail Registration
Google has begun asking customers to sign up for Google Wallet when they sign up for Gmail. The third step in signing up for the search titans email services is now entering credit card information for Google's payment processing service. A brave move considering a section of recent public opinion towards the company's farming of data and privacy concerns.
Chaotic Moon's Mind-Controlled Skateboard
Just over a month on from their modestly titled 'Board of Awesomeness,' Chaotic Moon have emerged from the workshop with an improved model, swapping out the Kinect sensor bar in favour for an Emotive EPOC headset, and renaming it to the also modest 'Board of Imagination.'
Simply put, it's an electronic skateboard you control with your mind.
Voiceless Comedian Performs Stand-up Routine With Help Of iPad
Lee Ridley, also known as the 'Lost Voice Guy' performed his very first stand-up comedy routine in Sunderland earlier this month - something that he didn't even imagine happening since he can't actually speak.
Microsoft Burns Google With 'Googlighting' Video
They issued a press-beatdown around Google's change in privacy policy, and now they're back for round two, taking a swing at Google Apps: described as "what happens when the world's largest advertising business tries to sell productivity software on the side."
The video, titled 'Googlighting' stars the rather clumsily named "Googen Apperson," who is applying for a job at what seems to be a large business. However, throughout the interview, he fails to answer key questions about functionality in Google Apps that feature in Microsoft's counterparts, meaning he fails in his escapades.
Call Of Duty Is Coming To Vita This Autumn, Black Ops 2 Listed On Amazon
A game talked up to be a potential ‘system seller’ is one thrown around all too often for our liking. Sure, Resistance might well be an enjoyable, if slightly mediocre, Sony-exclusive first-person-shooter. But a system seller? LittleBigPlanet, though adored by us and many Sony fans alike, is unlikely to be considered in the same vein as God Of War, Gran Turismo or Uncharted when trying to summate what it is has allowed the PS3 to claw back Xbox 360’s early sales success. A ‘system seller’ by rights doesn’t come around too often, but when it does it can make all the difference in the world. Now confirmed for the autumn, Call of Duty’s debut on the Vita might well be (and we believe it definitely will be) Sony's crowning glory for its follow-up to the PlayStation Portable (PSP).
NASA Budget Highlights
Last Monday NASA held a conference call to go over their budget for the 2013 fiscal year. The conference call, attended by members of the press and prominent Twitter users, inadvertently managed to highlight just how much trouble NASA is in.
In the midst of trying to put a positive spin on recent budget cuts and unrealistic Congressional mandates NASA officials awkwardly tried to engage with social media (the communications director opened the program by Tweeting a grainy photo of the attendees) and paint a rosy picture of what is going on with the federal agency; all the while managing to perfectly illustrate what is wrong with the American space program today.
Star Wars Fan Builds Beautiful Model Lightsaber, Gets It Autographed By Luke Himself
Bradley Lewis, a video game developer and industrious fan of classic science fiction, has put together a brilliant recreation of Luke Skywalker's lightsaber from A New Hope. The lightsaber was built for Celebration V: a massive Star Wars convention in Orlando. Mr. Lewis managed to get the lightsaber done in time for the show, where he was lucky enough to get Mark Hamill to autograph it.
Mac OS X Mountain Lion Unveiled
Apple, not resting on it's software-related selection of cats, has released the developer preview of Mac OS 10.8, more easily acquainted to most as 'Mountain Lion.' If one thing can be taken from the new implementations and functionality, it's that the desktop is moving further into the space of iOS.
So what are the major new upgrades...or old, depending on whether you're willing to consider ideas already found in Apple's touch-orientated operating system as 'new?'