Did that headline get your blood pumping? Good. In the future you’ll make a great battery.
This is because, in the future, scientists seem to think that piezoelectric nanowires could find a nice home inside our blood vessels. There, they’d use the energy created by blood flow to power our gadgets, pacemakers, or any number of other people-powered devices future inventors can think up. That sounds great in theory, but I assume that, like with most things I put in my body today that sound great and feel good, it will probably cause cancer or something.
Regardless, the scientists want to let us know there are no practical or commercial uses planned for these zinc oxide nanowires. Not for a long while anyway. This means you can stop digging around for that vein now.
Tracy Jones-Harris Science & Design Blood, Energy, Nanotech, Nanowires, Piezoelectric
File this one directly in the “why didn’t I think of that?” folder. As the bathroom gets more and more eco-friendly, the EcoDrain is stepping in to take advantage of all the hot water that goes to waste each time you shower. Put simply, this user-installed heat exchanger transfers heat from hot shower waste water to cold incoming water, essentially cutting water heater usage by as much as 40 percent. Of course, we’ve never seen a plumbing job that was anything close to simple, but for savings like this, it may just be worth the trouble.
Tracy Jones-Harris Science & Design EcoDrain, green, heat exchanging
Sure seems like your handheld is a lot more secure than your computer, at least in some sense — although the desktop versions of IE 8, Safari, and Firefox were each almost instantly cracked on the first day of the Pwn2Own contest, no one claimed the $10,000 bounty placed on each of the major smartphone platforms. That’s certainly reassuring, but it may not ultimately mean much: according to contest organizers Tipping Point, the bugs in Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and the iPhone and BlackBerry OSes are still there, but they’re harder to exploit because of device, OS, and carrier variations. That makes any vulnerabilities even more valuable — one of the contestents apparently had an iPhone exploit ready to go, but wasn’t willing to part with it since he wanted more than $10K for it. Tipping Point says it’ll try and nail down specs of each platform earlier next year to make it easier on hackers, but let’s hope the results are similar.
Tracy Jones-Harris Mobiles Android, Blackberry, Hackers, iphone, Pwn2Own, Smartphones, Symbian, Windows Mobile
Its been an ongoing debate throughout the world lately in terms of government enforced Internet censorship. With thousands of individuals signing online petitions and writing letters has it made a difference?
It has been announced today that The New Zealand Prime Minister announced his Government will throw out the controversial Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment (New Technologies) Act and start again. The proposed law changescontained ‘guilty upon accusation, without appeal’ clauses and heavy compliance costs to ISPs and businesses. The changes were hours away from being signed but a series of online protests, a petition on Government grounds, as well as public rebuttal by a large ISP and by Google contributed to the Government changing course and respecting the wishes of the IT industry. Looks as if voices have been heard! Lets see what the new act will bring.
However in Australia we seem to be one more step forward with ISP iiNet today confirmed it’s exit from the Australian governments Internet filtering trials. iiNet had originally taken part in the plan in order to prove the filter was flawed. Citing a number of concerns, their withdrawal leaves only five Australian ISPs continuing to test the filter. Does this spell the end of Internet censorship in Australia? I think we have a way to go yet.
Tracy Jones-Harris Uncategorized Censorship, Internet Filtering, Section 92A
Reportedly, brainiacs from Edinburgh and Manchester University have created a molecular machine that could be used to develop quantam computers for making “intricate calculations” far more quickly than current supercomputers. Essentially, these gurus relied on molecular scale technology instead of silicon chips; more specifically, they achieved the so-called breakthrough by “combining tiny magnets with molecular machines that can shuttle between two locations without the use of external force.” Not surprisingly, there’s still more work to be done, with Professor David Leigh of Edinburgh University noting that “the major challenges we face now are to bring many of these qubits together to build a device that could perform calculations, and to discover how to communicate between them.” In other words, check back in 2012.
Tracy Jones-Harris Science & Design Molecular machine, quantam computing
The annual Pwn2Own competition, where hackers compete to crack software as fast as possible so you don’t sleep at night, browsers were on the first day’s menu. And Safari went down in seconds.
Security researcher Charlie Miller hacked Safari in just 10 seconds, then used a remote-execution exploit to take over the up-to-date MacBook and make it do his dirty bidding. Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 fell within a few hours to Nils, a master’s student who busted all three browsers wide open. They each won $US5000.
Day 2 will bring $US5000 for those who can find bugs in the new Firefox, Crome & Safari.
Tracy Jones-Harris computers "Nils", Browsers, Charlie Miller, Hackers, Pwn2Own
“Ericsson has achieved data transfer rates of more than 500Mbps in what it said is the world’s first live demonstration of a new VDSL2-based technology. The demonstration achieved data rates of more than 0.5 Gbps over twisted copper pairs using ‘vectorized’ VDSL2. Vectoring decouples the lines in a cable (from an interference point of view), substantially improving power management, and reduces noise originating from the other copper pairs in the same cable bundle.”
Tracy Jones-Harris computers 500mbps, Ericsson, VDSL2
Korean company Modistech says it’ll debut its thin-and-flexy OLED lights in 2011. According to Aving.net, the the company will begin mass production of the sheets later next year. Each sheet is expected to retail for $US212. It’s kind of expensive, especially if that price is just for the sheet in the pictures at Aving, but that’s par for the course with new tech .
Tracy Jones-Harris Science & Design Korea, Modistech, OLED, Super Thin
Need a reminder telling you not to do drugs? Well, not you, since you’re mature enough and intelligent enough to make those kinds of decisions for yourself. But the youth of America (apparently) only really pay attention to social messages they can turn into bling.
The Sound Advice Project wants you to talk to your kids about drugs, and to make it easier on you, they’re offering you a bracelet to bribe them with. The bracelets are custom made, and the arrangement of beads represents a sound wave that you record. The Project wants you to say something positive and about drugs. But you don’t have to, as far as I can tell, and you can use the six seconds to make up a physical, wearable incarnation of whatever phrase you’d like.
At only $18, it’s not a bad little geeky gift idea.
Tracy Jones-Harris Uncategorized anti-drugs, Bracelets, Sound Advice, sound wave bracelets
It doesn’t exactly have the same space age looks of the Aptera 2e he helped design, but this new EPIC 23e wake boat from Chris Anthony’s Epic Boats shouldn’t have any trouble attracting attention nonetheless, and not just because of its paint job. The key bit here is the boat’s Flux Propulsion EVO 8.1 Marine Drive System, which allows for all-electric operation most of the time, with the gas engine only kicking in to power the generator that recharges the lithium ion batteries. According to the company, that should translate to about four hours of operating time and as much as a 50 percent reduction in fuel, not to mention a 90 percent drop in carbon monoxide emissions. Of course, with some Aptera brains behind it, you’ll also get plenty of on-board gadgets, including a touchscreen interface, GPS Speed Control, and a full-fledged on-board entertainment system for passengers. No firm word on a price, but it apparently could cost “as much as $150,000″ when it launches in July, though the company eventually hopes to get that down to around $70,000.
Tracy Jones-Harris Science & Design electric, EPIC 23e, Hybrid, Wake Boat