Communications
Breakthroughs are coming thick and fast – or should that be thin and fast – in the field of nanoscale lasers. It wasn’t even a month ago that we reported on the development of a laser emitting 'metal-semiconductor-metal sandwich', made up of a semiconductor as thin as 80 nanometers laying between 20-nanometer dielectric layers. But now researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have reached a new milestone in laser physics by creating the world's smallest semiconductor laser, capable of generating visible light in a space smaller than a single protein molecule. Read More
The SY Thalia is a yacht with a difference … while it’s a beautiful looking vessel outside, it’s what’s inside that really takes your breath away. The 159-foot ketch is fitted out with an award-winning array of the latest and greatest AV gear that is usually reserved for luxury homes. In total, the $300,000+ installation has 12 entertainment, video and navigation zones, including five video screens, one of which is a home theater. Read More
In a collaborative effort between the Arizona State University and Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, researchers have found a way to make optical lasers much smaller than it was previously thought was possible, making dreams of speedier computers and faster Internet access closer to reality than ever before. Read More
When eBay bought Skype from Joltid in 2005, the whopping US$2.6 billion price tag didn't include the Global Index peer-to-peer software that the world's biggest Internet Telephony system is based on. And now, Joltid is trying to cancel Skype's license on the Global Index technology in a move that threatens to shut Skype down once and for all. Is it just a canny commercial chess move to force eBay to sell Skype back to Joltid at a huge discount - or is it the end of Skype as we know it? Read More
C,mm,n (pronounced common) is an open community design project that is not only counting on its members to help design a car but is also tasking them with producing a whole new mobility solution to cope with the challenging demands of the future. The blueprints for the proposed electric car concept and the mobility concepts are freely available under an open source licence and contributions are welcome from anyone and everyone. Read More
Devastating wildfires are burning around the Mediterranean this summer and down south, Australia is still recovering from its worst wildfire season in history in which more than 150 lives and 1800 homes were lost on ‘Black Saturday’. Telecommunications are paramount to helping save lives and direct fire-fighting efforts in wildfires but unfortunately, infrastructure such as mobile and fixed line phones and Internet services are often early casualties in fire ravaged areas. The country’s major telco, Telstra, has launched a portable solution to this issue with the unveiling of a AUD$200,000 Mobile Exchange on Wheels (MEOW) which can be quickly deployed to provide temporary fixed-line communications including broadband. Read More
E-mail has been dawdling along in much the same form since the early days of the Internet. In fact, e-mail now feels like a pretty stodgy, clunky and formal style of online communication. But hold onto your seats, because Google is about to turn e-mail on its head with the release of a revolutionary new technology called Google Wave that's due to start trickling into users' hands this September. Wave combines the strengths of e-mail with the immediacy of instant messaging and the collaborative power of social networking - and wraps that all up into a killer web application that can then be embedded into any web page or used as a private communication system. Sound complicated? It is - but you'll understand it perfectly after watching this ten-minute video. Read More
Is it a bird, a plane, a UFO, or a piece of space junk hurtling towards Earth minutes away from catastrophe? Hopefully, before too long we won’t have to guess. The U.S. Air Force has awarded USD$30 million contracts to defense technology specialists Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to help create the prototype of a new situational awareness network dubbed "Space Fence". The Space Fence system will enable the Air Force to better detect, report and track very small objects in low Earth orbit. Read More
Atmospheric humidity can strongly influence radio signals by scattering them in all directions, weakening and making it much harder to detect on the receiving end. A team of researchers from the University of Tel Aviv has now found a new, promising way of exploiting this phenomenon to accurately predict the intensity of imminent floods and other natural catastrophes. Read More
Japanese telecommunications company NTT Com is currently seeking volunteers to test a pungent bit of kit which produces different smells at the request of programs downloaded from the Internet. There will be two separate trials of the i-Aroma conducted in Japan from mid-July to the end of August. One course will send out smells matching "the rhythm of daily life" while the other will release odors based on an ancient astrological system. Read More
