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Gadgets

Heads-Up Display Embedded In Glasses

By Posted on 6.3.2009 21 Comments
If your mother yelled at you about ruining your eyes by sitting too close to the TV, she is going to go nuts if you come home wearing a pair of these. The German research society Fraunhofer has developed a pair of glasses with lenses that project a heads up display right onto the user's retina.

6.3.2009 at 12:14pm - Comment by techgirl

Very cool !! Technology marches forward.
Cars

Flying Car Succeeds in Test Flight

By Posted on 3.19.2009 8 Comments
Terrafugia's prototype roadable aircraft - or flying car - recently completed its first successful flight after six months of road and runway testing. The company announced the flight of the Transition, an aircraft with foldable wings that can drive at highway speeds and fit into the average garage, at Boston's Museum of Science yesterday, calling the feat a historic milestone in aviation. "This breakthrough changes the world of personal mobility," says Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich. "It's what aviation enthusiasts have been striving for since 1918."

3.19.2009 at 03:17pm - Comment by techgirl

Looks like moller is going to be beaten to the market by this guys in plattsburg.
Science

Robot Love

By M. Farbman Posted on 3.10.2009 5 Comments
"Socially interactive" robots are being developed that can interact naturally with people, such as turning toward a person to give the impression of paying attention. The goal is to have such machines perform assistive tasks from hugging to encouraging stroke victims to perform important exercises or children with autism to imitate behavior. Researchers designing what such robots will look like also have to avoid the "uncanny valley" -- a phrase based on the idea that people are most comfortable with robots that look either completely human, or identifiably not human. Also in today's links: blaming quants, mapping science, imaging religion, and more.

3.14.2009 at 02:25pm - Comment by techgirl

This is nothing really new or ground-breaking. Available software now like talkingdesktop software already responds to your speech and to sound in its immediate environment allowing the computer to wake-up (come out of hibernation) when the user sits down at his or her computer and the computer greets you. This software is less than $100 and not the hundreds of thousands of $ to develop these robots.
Science

The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be

By Posted on 3.6.2009 12 Comments
Predictions for the future generally come in two flavors: blighted hellscape or techno-utopia. Last week, Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop introduced Microsoft’s vision of 2019 with a slick new video, and it is a future that falls decidedly in the later, more optimistic category. The problem? The 2019 Microsoft details with this video is almost identical to the 2004 predicted in this video produced by Sun Microsystems in 1992.

3.7.2009 at 03:07pm - Comment by techgirl

There is nothing revolutionary about this vision, just evolutionary, bigger screens, more pervasive tech, touch access. Where is the speech recognition and AI. Programs like Talkingdesktop software are already showing features to users that you would think be part of this Microsoft version of the future.
Gadgets

PopSci.com Giveaway: Win Advanced Lithium Batteries from Energizer

By Posted on 1.21.2009 135 Comments
Leave a comment (any comment) for a chance to win a pack of Advanced Lithium batteries from Energizer. 20 lucky winners will be chosen randomly on January 31, 2009.

1.30.2009 at 12:22pm - Comment by techgirl

Lithium batteries are the wave of the future.
Cars

Return of the Bodacious 'Bots

By Julia Wallace Posted on 12.22.2008 7 Comments
It's the ultimate geek fantasy: a metal-and-plastic woman of your own, brought alive by technology (the geek's own stock-in-trade), who somehow becomes hopelessly devoted to you. In both science and science fiction, the creation of female robots has tended to revolve around a housekeeper-whore dichotomy: the fembot is either a docile domestic helper, or a sexually uncontrolled, well, sex machine. Historically, she has simultaneously embodied men’s deep desire for idealized domestic companionship and their fears of being destroyed by unbridled female sexuality.

12.18.2008 at 11:40am - Comment by techgirl

For now Talkingdesktop 's Jessica software personality keeps me interested. But it would be nice if someday Jessica evolved into Rachael. One can only hope.
Science

The Hands-Free Future

By Lisa Katayama Posted on 10.22.2008 5 Comments
Using motion sensors, brain signals and a heap of creativity, several new technologies promise to do away with cramped typing fingers, videogame-fried eyes and hoarse phone voices. This past summer in Tokyo, for instance, a paralyzed man with electrodes attached to his head took his Second Life avatar on a virtual walk just by envisioning his character strolling.

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11.5.2008 at 10:59am - Comment by techgirl

Don't forget that hands-free software is here and a keyboard and mouse can be replaced right now by talkingdesktop software, able software, etc and with speech recognition and text-to-speech. These are not the only companies in this field who ares offering a voice command option with hands-free computer operation. This future is the present right now for many people with disabilities where speech gives them access to the internet and computer control.
Technology

Inflatable Surveillance Balls for Mars

By Corey Binns Posted on 9.26.2008 12 Comments
By next fall, NASA plans to launch its biggest Red Planet rover yet, the $1.8-billion, SUV-size Mars Research Laboratory. Even though the MRL will be able to haul five times as much equipment as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that are already on Mars, a group of Swedish researchers say that they could accomplish far more if accompanied by a squad of helper ’bots. Fredrik Bruhn, the CEO of Ångström Aerospace Corporation, and his colleagues have designed the small inflatable scouts to assist bigger, less mobile rovers in their hunt for signs of microbial life on Mars.

10.4.2008 at 10:44pm - Comment by techgirl

I seem to remember that nasa tests designs up in the canadian arctic for similar conditions. It would be interesting to know if this has been done and how well this ball locomotion performed.
Science

Video: Why Artificial Intelligence Threatens Actual Intelligence

By Abby Seiff Posted on 10.24.2008 20 Comments
Way back in 1919 Sigmund Freud postulated his concept of the uncanny. In the (cleverly named) The Uncanny, Freud explored a problem of aesthetics—when something is both familiar and unknown the experience of viewing it can be strongly unsettling. Fifty years later, roboticist Masahiro Mori presented his own work on the uncanny. Drawing heavily on his predecessor's work, Mori developed his "uncanny valley" hypothesis.

10.3.2008 at 06:59pm - Comment by techgirl

We are already seeing forms of intelligence creep into programs like talkingdesktop.com where the software uses sound to "sense" that a user is present. Where will this lead to if all software starts incorporating types of general intelligence into their operation ?
Gadgets

Hands-Free Computing

By Paul Adams Posted on 9.18.2008 11 Comments
This week everyone's at the Web 2.0 Expo at New York City's Javits Center. Abby reported on a technology that makes your computer talk to you; I met a couple of brothers who were at the show to promote their invention, wherein you talk to your computer.

9.27.2008 at 07:20am - Comment by techgirl

Paul - more talking computers and voice software articles would be interesting. Most stuff seems to be about hardware and gadgets so some looks at cutting-edge software would be great. Thanks