Category: Top stories
Goodbye, Blue Monday: Kurt Vonnegut Jr. dead at 84
Having recently experienced brain damage during a fall, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., top American science-fiction author, has died at the age of 84. Author of such works as Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle and The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut explored space…
BT's new social network for businesses
It’s called BT Tradespace, and it’s basically a MySpace for small-to-medium sized businesses (SMEs) who want a new way to engage with their customers.
Wii outselling PS3 in the UK, with publishers scrambling to adapt
According to leaked figures from Chart Track, 17,000 PS3s were sold in the UK last week, compared to 25,000 Wiis (and that’s with limited stock on the shelves for the latter). On the surface, its not great news for Sony’s console, although it’s still too early to claim it’s lost the next-gen console war.
Interview: Honda on the future for its Asimo robot
At the CES show this year, Honda’s humanoid Asimo robot was one of the big hits. He didn’t just walk and trot up and down stairs. He ran. He played football. He danced. And through it all, he cracked jokes like a Vegas pro. You can watch our videos of it here.
Naturally, Honda isn’t pumping millions of dollars into Asimo’s R&D to get a few cheap laughs. The company uses the bot in its TV ads for starters. But in the long-term, Honda wants Asimo to become a genuinely helpful companion for us humans. I talked to Stephen Keeney, North American Asimo project leader at Honda, to find out more.
Ministry of Defense vision of future: we're all going to die
A new report from a Ministry of Defence team projects a future loaded with Marxism, EMP rifles and drastic population swings. A militant middle class, the militarisation of space, and a new caste of technomancers with heads full of…
Tinker, Tailor, Spousal Spy
Having a long and semi-foolish history of involvement with both spies and snoops of the professional and amateur variety, this article noting that Suspicious minds turn to technology was completely unsurprising. Over half of Britons have apparently snooped their…
Silicon chip mimics brain cells
“A repairman doesn’t need to understand music to fix your broken CD player," says Ted Berger. He and Vijay Srinivasan are working at USC’s Center for Neural Engineering to develop silicon chips that'll fix everything from momentarily memory lapses…
How green are your gadgets, and do you care?
It was interesting to read yesterday’s story about Greenpeace’s latest chart of how eco-friendly consumer electronics firms are. Lenovo came top, followed by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Dell, Samsung and Motorola.
John Edwards' Twitter feed shows politicians don't get micro-blogging yet
It seems like everyone and their Dog 2.0 is hooked on Twitter, the most addictive new technology since the BlackBerry. And not just us mere web users either. Senator John Edwards wants to become the next Democrat presidential nominee in the US, and he’s using Twitter to do it.
Microsoft sues schools for reselling cheap software
Microsoft has filed suit against nine schools in Jordan, alleging the schools bought educational-discount licenses Microsoft software, and resold them to Internet retailers, making "millions of dollars" in the process. The software was marked "student media" and "not for…
