Paul Ridden

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest Global Liveability Report, the beautiful city of Vancouver in Canada is a pretty decent place to live, ranking third in the world. Its environmental footprint is currently unsustainable, though, prompting officials to hatch an ambitious plan to have Vancouver crowned the greenest city in the world by 2020. Helping things along nicely is a new warm mix paving process that makes use of the kind of waste plastic placed in blue household recycling boxes by conscientious citizens, reducing greenhouse gases and improving air quality along the way.  Read More

Much of the abundant mechanical energy around us is irregular and oscillatory and can be somewhat difficult to efficiently tap into. Typical energy harvesting systems tend to be built for low power applications in the milliwatts range but researchers from New York's Stony Brook University have developed a new patent-pending electromagnetic energy harvester capable of harnessing the vibrations of a locomotive thundering down a stretch of track to power signal lights, structural monitoring systems or even track switches.  Read More

About this time last year, Lenovo made a bid for the title of creator of the world's smallest desktop PC, with the launch of the IdeaCentre Q180. Now, an equally diminutive replacement is making a grab for the very same title. The IdeaCentre Q190 is reported to offer up to 80 percent faster processing performance over last year's model, is available with double the system memory, and up to 1 TB of HDD storage.  Read More

One of my most painful (but at the same time wickedly amusing) memories relating to the Guitar Hero and Rock Band gaming boom a few years ago was when a high-scoring king of the button/paddle guitar controller tried to show me how easy it was to play a real guitar. He soon learned that playing a real instrument can be very tough at the beginning, so much so that many would-be axe gods give up before the calluses have even had a chance to form. GuitarBots from Ovelin is a new online learning system that combines challenge and reward computer-based gaming and a real instrument to take string pickers from the tentative first steps right through to more advanced soloing and rhythm play ... and it looks like a whole lot of fun, too.  Read More

In case you can't already sense it, the festive season is almost upon us. Not too long ago, in addition to exchanging gifts with loved ones and eating and drinking way too much, this time of year would see family members gather around the table to play board games or browse old photos with the rest of the family, or sit down and watch a seasonal movie together. ARCHOS has brought such activities well and truly up to date, with the launch of a family-sized tablet named the FamilyPad.  Read More

For the last few years, Puzzlebox has been publishing open source software and hacking guides that walk makers through the modification of RC helicopters so that they can be flown and controlled using just the power of the mind. Full systems have also been custom built to introduce youngsters to brain-computer interfaces and neuroscience. The group is about to take the project to the next stage by making a Puzzlebox Orbit brain-controlled helicopter available to the public, while encouraging user experimentation by making all the code, schematics, 3D models, build guides and other documentation freely available under an open-source license.  Read More

John D'Angelico is regarded by many as the greatest archtop guitar maker of all time. Prized for their smooth, mellow tone and excellent sustain, it's said that only around 1,200 instruments were made during his career in the Lower East Side of New York. This year, the first D'Angelico reissues have been selling faster than they can be made. Fueled by this success, the iconic brand is being relaunched with a new very limited edition USA Masterbuilt version of the 1942 D'Angelico Excel and three standard models.  Read More