Darren Quick

How often have you thought, “I’d like to be a fly on the wall in that room”. Well, a team at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is hard at work trying to make that desire a reality by developing a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV), which they claim is the smallest flying, camera carrying ornithopter in the world. The DelFly Micro weighs just 3 grams and measures 10 cm from wing tip to wing tip. It has a range of 50 meters and is powered by a 30 mAh lithium polymer battery, which provides enough power for three minutes of fight time. To keep the weight of the unit down the wings are made from Mylar foil, while the body and frame is made up from carbon and balsawood.  Read More

A research team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has developed a plastic motor that is powered solely and directly by light. Unlike solar-powered motors, which use photovoltaic cells to convert light to electric power and therefore require wires and batteries to deliver and store the power, the light activated motor converts light directly into mechanical energy. The first of its kind motor achieves this by using a belt made from a special elastomer whose molecular structure expands or contracts when illuminated, depending on the wavelength of light. An 0.08-millimeter thick belt coated with the shape-shifting plastic is able to turn a pair of wheels measuring 10 millimeters and 3 millimeters in diameter at 1 rpm, and although the device is still quite inefficient in terms of converting light into energy at this stage, the idea throws up an amazing number potential applications.  Read More

Scientists in the US have developed robots that are capable of climbing walls. BBC News has reported a team in SRI's Mobile Robotics and Transducers Programme have used the same principles behind electrostatic charges to develop machines about the size of a remote-controlled car that can scale a range of surfaces including brick, wood, steel and glass.  Read More

While tethering (using a 3G phone as a modem for a laptop) is a feature included in almost every 3G phone on the market, AT&T have come out and said they will not support tethering on the 3G iPhone. That oversight has spurred hackers into action and resulted in the circulation of a tutorial for doing what AT&T won’t. Remember that this might be against your use license agreement with AT&T and result in much unpleasantness – or they may do nothing at all.  Read More

Video games have evolved to the point where they fairly accurately depict what a real racing car driver experiences as they hurtle around the track. Gamers can compete against friends and strangers across the globe thanks to the Internet, but now BBC News is reporting on a new technology that will allow gamers to take on real opponents in real races in real time, using GPS data from the cars.  Read More

The popularity of so-called subnotebooks such as the Asus Eee PC has led to PC maker CherryPal releasing a low-spec, low-cost desktop computer called the CherryPal C100. CherryPal have dubbed the C100 a “cloud computer” as instead of accessing programs and data from the desktop computer, the majority of information is processed and stored on the web in a secure environment called the CherryPalCloud.  Read More

DICE Electronics have joined the glut of FM iPod transmitters already on the market with their Universal Car kit for iPod. The offering from DICE however differs from its competitors by using FM RDS technology - the communications protocol standard that sends small amounts of digital information such as time, track/artist info and station ID alongside conventional FM radio broadcasts. Using RDS allows song and artist name info from the iPod to show up on the screen of a compatible car radio.  Read More

For those that find the touch screen on their iPod Touch or new 3G iPhone too small, Honlai Technology have introduced their QingBar MP101 iPhone projector. The portable unit that measures 102mm wide x 76mm long x 54mm high can throw images from 15 to 27-inches onto a wall or screen in a 4:3 aspect ratio at 640 x 480 (VGA) pixel resolution.  Read More

No, that’s not a giant strawberry in the accompanying picture – it’s a mini speaker. The Sony HT-IS100 BRAVIA Theatre Micro System is a 5.1 channel system delivering 450 watts (RMS) of power through a subwoofer with integrated 32-bit S-Master digital amplifier and five incredibly small speakers roughly the size of a golf ball. Designing the system at people who don’t want their home theater system to overpower their décor Sony says the “HT-IS100 packs all the power of a conventional home theater system in five discrete speakers that practically disappear in your living room.”  Read More