Technology

How do you say "Big Brother" in Chinese? Visitors to the Beijing Olympics need to be careful what they email (and what websites they peruse) according to Senator Sam Brownback, the senior Republican from Kansas. Based on hotel documents, Brownback alleges that the Chinese government has spent millions of dollars installing spy software in major hotel chains to monitor its guests' email and web surfing.

"The Chinese government has put in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying," said Brownback.

Virginia company Ceres Nanosciences claims it has the first drug test capable of detecting human growth hormone in an athlete's urine. Validation of the test will require at least six months, meaning cheaters in the 2008 Olympics need not be concerned. The test claims it could detect HGH usage up to two weeks prior to testing, unlike blood tests, which can monitor only the past 48 hours.

Today marked the public debut of the Martin Jetpack, a ducted-fan-equipped personal flying vehicle that could keep pilots aloft for 30 minutes or more. Inventor Glenn Martin has been working on the jetpack—which isn't technically a "jet" pack, given the fans—for 27 years, but he has kept it secret until now. Even his son, Harrison, the 16-year-old test pilot, wasn't allowed to tell his friends that he'd been cruising around the yard back home in Christchurch, New Zealand in a revolutionary flying vehicle.

Today, in Oshkosh Wisconsin, the future is being unveiled. We'll be bringing you live updates throughout the day, but first up is an exclusive interview with 16 year old Harrison Martin--pilot of the most promising jetpack yet unveiled--and footage of the pack in action. Yeah, it sounds like a vacuum, but it's a friggin jetpack!

Check back throughout the day for more comprehensive coverage, and be sure to thumb through staff photographer John B. Carnett's slideshow from Oshkosh, here. Onwards and upwards!

Virgin Group head Sir Richard Branson unveiled the latest addition to his air- and spaceline fleet at the Mojave Airport in California today, accompanied by the craft's chief designer, Burt Rutan.

The White Knight 2 is a four-engine jet that will carry an 8-seat spaceship called SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 48,000 feet so that the spaceship can drop off and fire its rocket engine for a brief run to suborbital space. Branson's Virgin Galactic hopes to begin regularly scheduled passenger service to space in 2010.

If you subject yourself to as many RSS feeds as I do every morning, then you might be wise to the fact that there’s a bit of mutiny percolating in parts of the blogosphere—a mutiny against tech darlings Apple and Google. Yes, Microsoft is, has always been and will for the foreseeable future continue to be the big bad wolf of the tech world. But as each new version of Windows comes out antiquated or broken before it ever goes on sale, and the company comes up short in the search, advertising and online services sectors, it seems as though the wolf may be losing its bite.

This Sunday at 11 pm, catch a sneak peek at the debut of Food Detectives, the new prime-time television series created as a collaboration between Popular Science and the Food Network. Your charismatic and learned PopSci editors--Megan Miller, Jake Ward and others--join host Ted Allen to investigate, test, and debunk common beliefs and myths about food.

The pole vault is all about energy conversion. The kinetic energy built up during the vaulter’s run turns into potential energy stored in the pole as the vaulter bends it nearly 90 degrees. When the pole recoils, it unleashes that energy to help propel the vaulter up and over the bar. Of these stages, Peter McGinnis, a professor of kinesiology at the State University of New York at Cortland, has found that the most important is the speed of the vaulter just before he plants his pole. The energy built up during the run accounts for almost 60 percent of the vault’s height.

You've ditched your Hummer, recycle with a vengeance, and read your Hemingway by candlelight. But what kind of shoes are you wearing? Brooks Running launched a shoe this week containing its new midsole, called BioMoGo, which degrades 50 times faster than a normal one. According to Brooks, a standard shoe can last 1000 years in landfill, while BioMoGo will be gone in just 20. Brooks estimates it will save 30 million pounds of landfill waste over a 20-year period.

In Olympic shooting, athletes have to think fast and shoot faster. The double trap event involves two clay targets fired simultaneously at 50 miles per hour at different angles, so getting off both shots quickly, and in the proper rhythm, is incredibly important. But how fast is fast enough? The British Shooting Team brought that question to the scientists at BAE Systems.

New research by Eryn Grant, a Ph.D. student at Queensland University, says the virtual reality game, Second Life, boosts people’s ability to socially interact. The game, according to Grant, improves social connections between complete strangers by making it easier for people to find common interests.

Real time biofeedback from athletes is popping up everywhere. From heart rate monitors to electrolyte sensors, there’s a push to know what’s happening inside the body. For each sensor, a good ‘connection’ to the body is critical for obtaining accurate data but that often requires that something be stuck to the athlete. Now, a new technology developed by ConText, a European research collaboration, hopes to monitor EMG signals without attaching to, or getting under, an athlete’s skin.

At the starting dock of the Olympic triathlon trials, the expression on Andy Potts’s face seems to say I will kill you with my eyes. As the starting gun fires, he plunges into the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and, in a burst of white foam, quickly pulls ahead of nine rivals. The second-ranked Hunter Kemper manages to hold pace with Potts for a few minutes, then drifts back into third place.

Just when you thought you couldn't waste enough time on your Xbox 360, Microsoft has decided to add another way to get you to stare at your tube for longer, by streaming movies and TV shows through its popular game console. The tech giant announced its partnership with the movie-rental company Netflix this week at the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles. While video-gamers were leaping for joy at the convention when Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360, avid movie fans were leaping even higher to hear about Microsoft's movie deal.

No two fads are growing faster than getting fit and going green. Is it possible that by achieving the former, one could also accomplish the latter? Harnessing human movement has long been a holy grail of renewable energy, but real-life implementations have been relegated to advertising stunts and commercially impractical gadgets. But ReRev.com, a startup company from St. Petersburg, Florida, thinks its technology can let us improve our own health, and that of our planet, by working up a sweat.