Chad's News

Here’s an interesting concept. You know all the power that radio and TV stations use to broadcast signals over the airwaves—most of which just dissipates away? This prototype Nokia phone uses that energy to recharge its battery. The power isn’t very much and won’t necessarily keep the phone fully charged while being actively used, but it would at least make the battery last longer between “wired” recharges. Expect to see this technology go live sometime in the next 3-5 years.

Link: http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/…
(via digg)

For web designers, dealing with images is simple. You just use the <img> HTML tag, and the browser knows how to handle it, whether the image type is PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, or whatever. The same cannot be said for video content. Adobe Flash has become an informal standard, but even then you have to use the nonstandard <embed> tag with lots of vendor-specific information, or the horrible <object> tag that’s official but even more cumbersome. HTML version 5 hopes to do away with all this by making video content as easy to handle as images are today. The browsers will have built-in codecs to display the video, and all the designer will have to do is use the <video> tag. No more browser plug-ins for Flash, Silverlight, or JavaFX.

This is only one of HTML 5’s new features. For instance, there’s an <audio> tag for (you guessed it…) audio content.

HTML 5 is still in draft form and won’t see widespread use for years, but some newer browsers already support certain features. And it will make life much easier for web developers.

Link: http://www.infoworld.com/…
(via Slashdot)

As CFLs have been replacing standard incandescent light bulbs, so will LED bulbs displace the CFLs. They last longer, use less electricity, and don’t contain hazardous materials. Right now, however, they’re way too expensive ($40 to $80 for the ones described here). One of the LED bulbs in the linked article even has a remote that allows you to change its brightness and color, which is a bit over the top for my tastes. But CFLs were super-expensive when they first came out, so I expect the LED bulbs will drop to a reasonable price as well.

Link: http://sharp-world.com/…
(via Engadget)

Microsoft is working on technology where your fingers do the walking on the back of the device, thus leaving more space on the front for actually displaying stuff. It sounds promising.

Link: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

The folks at D-Wave Systems have done it again, this time with a 128-qubit quantum computer. The chip still needs testing to verify that it works as intended, but this is a big deal. Forget about securing your super-sensitive data with public key encryption—in another few years it’ll be trivial to crack.

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/…

When I was in the military working with critical systems, we put a lot of emphasis on single points of failure. We dealt with satellites, and it wasn’t unusual for a new spacecraft to have multiple failures caused by the stresses of being launched. Nearly every piece of hardware was redundant, however, so we would just route processing around the failed components.

Apparently the folks at CERN have not learned this lesson. The Large Hadron Collider, a $5.4 billion atom-smasher is expected to be out of commission for a year due to a single, badly soldered electrical connection along its 17-mile length. Repairs will cost about $20 million. Now that is an example of error-intolerant design.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…

It wasn’t that long ago that scientists discovered how a Gecko is able to climb sheer walls. The neat thing about gecko adhesion is that it has a strong grip in one direction but can easily be peeled off. Several variations of gecko-inspired tape have already been created, and researchers have now duplicated the effect with sheets holding carbon nanotubes—resulting in a stronger bond than other materials. I think we may see it as a consumer product in the not-too-distant future.

Link: http://technology.newscientist.com/…
(via NAACL)

CNN’s election-night coverage had a new special effect that it called “holograms.” I had my doubts about this, and the linked article sets the record straight. The 3-D “hologram” images were special effects added to the video feed and were not visible to the newscasters in the studio (even though they appeared to be).

Link: http://www.cbc.ca/…
(via digg)

Update: Here’s more information on how the system works.

This paradigm could radically change the way we use computers. And it’s coming soon.

Link: http://blogs.computerworld.com/…
(via digg)

A company named D-Wave Systems has produced a working 28-qubit quantum computer and plans to sell time on it. This is a big deal. Quantum computers can solve problems that are too complex or time-consuming for conventional computers, and they have the potential to change the world.

Link: http://www.tomshardware.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Thinking about purchasing one of those monster-sized LCD/plasma TVs for thousands of dollars? Well you may want to hold off for a couple years and get an OLED TV instead.

Link: http://news.smh.com.au/…
(via Kim Komando)

The linked article has a three-part video tour of the inside of a Lego factory. The vast majority of the manufacturing is automated.

Link: http://gizmodo.com/…
(via Slashdot)