April 2, 2012 NASA offered up three sets of its patents at auction last week, but had a hard time finding buyers. While a set of seven software development patents sold for $75,000, two other sets of patents went unclaimed. Read more [...]

April 2, 2012 Continue reading… Read more [...]

March 30, 2012 Senator Al Franken gave a rousing speech to the American Bar Association's Antitrust Section last night, calling for greater antitrust oversight of large media and tech companies as a way to ensure greater privacy protections for Americans. That's not surprising by itself — Franken is the chair of the new Senate subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law , after all — but the senator took the opportunity to blast Google for its controversial new privacy policy and suggest that Facebook would soon have every incentive to share private data in the absence of meaningful competition. "You are not their client. Read more [...]

March 29, 2012 Ladies and gentlemen, our dreams of flexible digital newspapers are nearly within reach: LG just announced that it has begun mass production of a 6-inch, 1024 x 768 e-paper screen that can bend by up to 40 degrees. We haven't been able to find a press release, but several Korean publications are reporting that the plastic-based screen is shipping to Chinese manufacturers to build e-readers right away, and devices based on the technology could be available in Europe as soon as early April. LG is boasting that at 0.7mm thick, the entire display is as thin as a protective film for a phone's screen Read more [...]

March 28, 2012 Cadillac is introducing Driver Awareness and Driver Assist packages on the 2013 XTS and ATS sedans, bringing together an array of cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors to help drivers avoid collisions. The main feature is the introduction of a new vibrating safety seat which indicates the direction of a hazard, providing haptic feedback to a driver through the seat and giving them more time to respond. Read more [...]

March 28, 2012 Video chatting with other people can provide a greater sense of immediacy than an IM or even a phone exchange, but it's still not like being in the same room. Researchers at Osaka University are trying to help cross that gap, however, and their tool of choice is a robot arm that shakes hands. The goal is to provide a greater sense of "presence" when interacting with somebody through a monitor or screen Read more [...]

March 27, 2012 In an attempt to demonstrate just how awesome HTML5 is , Mozilla has teamed up with French developer Little Workshop to release a new massively multiplayer game using the technology. Called BrowserQuest , the browser-based title is reminiscent of classic games like The Legend of Zelda : you'll explore, collect weapons and gear, and fight lots of bad guys, all in a lovely pixelated world. The difference is that you can do so simultaneously with thousands of other players, who you can chat with in-game Read more [...]

March 27, 2012 Someday, the plastic that makes up your cell phone might be able to regenerate itself when damaged, if researchers from the University of Southern Missouri have their way. At the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, Professor Marek W Read more [...]

March 27, 2012 LG stole our hearts at CES this year with its amazing 55-inch OLED TV and now it's about to make a play for our wallets too. Read more [...]

March 23, 2012 Asetek has shown off a prototype of a liquid cooling system for laptops, demonstrated in an overclocked Alienware M18x . It wouldn't be the first liquid-cooled laptop, with companies like Hitachi releasing models as far back as 2002 , but recent years have seen the technology take a back seat in portable devices with the advent of low power, high performance mobile chips. Read more [...]