The Link Between The World's Smallest Combination Lock And IT

Bleeding Edge

from the mechanical,-digital,-who-cares? dept

It’s common to look for digital solutions to digital problems, but with the growing interest in MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) people are beginning to realize that there is a place for tiny mechanics in a digital world. The latest is a tiny mechanical lock that clamps shut if the wrong combination is entered – and won’t open again until manually reset by its owner. The creators of the lock claim that it makes it “virtually impossible to break in to websites”, which seems to be only asking for trouble. Based on just this article, I could already see how someone could cause problems for anyone using such a system. Just keep sending an incorrect passcode. Each time, the machine will lock up, and no one will be able to access it until it’s been manually unlocked – at which point a new incorrect passcode can be sent again.

Toshiba May Bid Laptop Batteries Goodbye

Bleeding Edge

from the yes,-but... dept

There has been a ton of hype in the last couple of years about how fuel cells will eventually replace lithium ion rechargeable batteries. Now,

Toshiba says they’ve developed a working prototype, that they think can be offered commercially sometime next year. Since I own a Toshiba laptop that has, without a doubt, the worst battery life of any laptop I have ever seen, the idea of a long lasting fuel cell is certainly appealing. However, I imagine it will take a few generations before the quirks are worked out. However, more importantly, I’m not sure consumers will rush to fuel cells. Certainly, they do last much longer than standard batteries, but people like rechargeable batteries – since they don’t need to carry replacement parts around with them. The fuel cells require replacement methanol cartridges, which most consumers will think of as “batteries” that they need to constantly buy and replace. From the perspective of an end-user, the question now becomes if I’m willing to have to keep buying “fuel” (literally) to keep my laptop running.

California Experiment In Telemedicine Brings Health Care To Rural Areas

Bleeding Edge

from the seems-like-a-good-thing dept

The State of California has apparently become one of the leading places for experiments in “telemedicine” to supply rural areas with at least some expertise of doctors in larger cities around the state. It’s apparently saved many rural residents from having to make extraordinarily long trips to get care for ailments that can now be treated “virtually”. While this article talks about how wonderful it all is, I wonder if insurance companies will start to use systems like this to cut back even further on patient care. Why have certain experts in each hospital, when one in an entire state will do?

NASA's Profit Mission

Bleeding Edge

from the commercialization-under-fire dept

There are plenty of products on the market these days that claim to have been created as part of NASA’s space program. Now, Newsweek is looking at how

NASA’s commercial efforts have come under fire. This apparently started well before the recent Columbia disaster, as many people are wondering why NASA should take part in any commercial activities at all. Defenders of the program point to some of the results and say that it’s great that NASA can apply it’s resources in a way that gives something back to society. Others, though, think that it’s a waste of time and money (since NASA often pays for the research, and gets little in return). Even worse, some think it may be a distraction for NASA.

More On Gunshot Detection

Bleeding Edge

from the there-are-ears-above-you dept

Joe Schmoe writes in with a link that is basically a followup story to a story we had a few months ago about remote sensors that can be used to detect the location of gunshots. The idea is for police or military uses, but I can see how it could easily be expand in the same way that security cameras work. Forget security cameras, why not get security “ears”? Pop in some voice recognition, and you could catch people on the street just talking about the crimes they plan to commit.

Word Bursts May Reveal Online Trends

Bleeding Edge

from the analyze-everything dept

At Cornell, anyone who talked about Jon Kleinberg would usually throw in the word “brilliant” fairly quickly. He was the first person I ever heard talk about using inbound links as a way to determine how popular a website was (the method now refined and used by Google). I hadn’t heard much about him lately, but it appears, he’s still up to his old tricks looking for ways to make “search” better, with a new technique for analyzing greater trends by searching for “word bursts”. His research shows that if there’s a noticeable “burst” of a certain word or set of words, it can often indicate some larger trend is happening. He thinks that such a system could be used to scan blogs for bigger trends. If a bunch of blogs start using a word or certain particular words, it can be the sign of a new trend. When simplified to that level, it sounds obvious, but no one has really done much with it. However, when you look at it in terms of Google’s purchase of Pyra, it becomes more interesting. Having better ways to automatically pick out what people are really talking about could make searching for information much more practical.

New Robot Has A Human Face, But Faulty Software

Bleeding Edge

from the facial-expressions dept

Never underestimate the power of a single researcher and a little hard work. A grad student has created a robotic human face that can mimic many facial expressions – and the whole thing was built for about $400. Of course, such a shoestring operation has its limitations, which may explain why the software used during the demonstration crashed. People definitely do respond to human facial reactions, so I imagine such a robotic face system could find its way to all the new robots coming out that are designed to interact with humans.

Yet Another Invisibility Technology

Bleeding Edge

from the everything's-going-translucent dept

Invisibility is the next big thing, apparently. Last week we had the story of Japanese researchers working on an invisibility system, and now there are reports from researchers in Europe working on terahertz radiation “photographs” that would let people see through certain objects. Everything apparently gives off terahertz radiation, but the waves can pass through some materials. In the article, they talk about a photograph of a hand was taken through a stack of papers and (get this) a human body was shown through the clothes they wore. After years of cheap plastic glasses claiming they could see through clothes, this technology might actually make it possible. Forget medical uses and bomb detection stuff: just think of the market for teenaged boys…

A Glimpse Of A Future In A New Kind Of Light

Bleeding Edge

from the focus-on-the-LEDs dept

The NY Times is really interested in LEDs these days, as they’ve had a number of articles on the subject recently. The latest article is definitely worth reading, as it goes a bit beyond most articles about LEDs in describing some of the more radical ideas about LEDs, and how they may create an entirely new “lighting industry”. The article refers to current lightbulb technology as “heaters that happen to give off visible light”. LEDs, though, have potential well beyond just replacing lightbulbs, and already people are working on all sorts of new applications that only make sense in an LED-lit world. Some of these ideas aren’t life changing – like a videogame system that changes the color of all the lights in a room in order to better simulate what’s happening in the game. However, things like flexible, low power, long lasting displays have huge potential in many different areas. Even the small things are worth noting – like the idea that LED brakelights light up a fraction of a second faster, allowing people driving behind those brakelights to stop faster. When new technologies come along, too many articles are written about how they simply replace an old technology – without realizing how they can completely change many different things as well.

Scientists Converge On The Very Small

Bleeding Edge

from the it-all-fits-together dept

When people in the tech industry talk about “convergence”, they’re usually talking about cramming the features of one device onto another device. This NY Times article, though is talking about a very different kind of convergence. It’s a convergence of scientific practices to allow formerly separate areas of science to work together in reaching some interesting breakthroughs. All of the focus surrounds nanotechnology, but the idea is to take that nanotech, and pass it off to biotechnology, electronics and brain researchers. They’ve even given the “converged” group an acronym: NBIC (for nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science). The people involved with NBIC say that it’s important for scientists from various fields not to pigeon-hole themselves, but to work collaboratively.