ZDNet UK Emerging tech Toolkit

Researchers claim lithium-ion battery breakthrough

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:49:02 +0000

A silicon gel could improve lithium-ion battery performance by up to 10 times, say the researchers

Interactive wallpaper turns on the lights

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Carly Newman) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:58:02 +0000

A team at MIT has created electronically enhanced wallpaper that can be used to activate lamps, music systems and other devices with the touch of a hand

Canadian record industry faces $6bn copyright fine

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:13:38 +0000

The Canadian record industry has been particularly active at pushing its agenda for more - and more implacable - laws against IP infringement. Perhaps they should be pushing for business model...

California utility to buy space-based solar energy

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Martin LaMonica) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:39:02 +0000

The state's power provider will purchase electricity from Solaren, which plans to beam solar energy from space starting in 2016

Europe signs sci-tech agreements with Japan, Jordan

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:17:01 +0000

Europe will work with Japan and Jordan on research in areas such as energy, the environment and sustainable development

LHC sets world record for particle acceleration

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:01:02 +0000

Only 10 days after being restarted, the Large Hadron Collider has taken the world record for beam intensity from the Tevatron at Fermi Lab

Beams all round as LHC progress accelerates

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:49:01 +0000

Flagship experiment is making rapid progress towards its first new science, says Cern

Large Hadron Collider up and running again

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:03:36 +0000

The world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, is in operation again after more than a year of repairs. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, Cern, said in a...

GPU to the future

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:53:04 +0000

Its time to state the plain truth, something thats being hidden from us by special effects and shiny chrome: Computing as we know it is dead. Were working with zombie operating systems that...

Dictatorial, disastrous, dire: Mandelson must not pass

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:09:43 +0000

Without debate, without public consulation, without any form of mandate, Lord Mandelson - an unelected politician - is preparing to place the rights of powerful industrial concerns above those of...

Baguette 'dropped by bird' causes LHC disruption

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:22:02 +0000

The Large Hadron Collider was hit by crouton torpedo when a rogue piece of bread caused an electrical system failure

'Gordon' supercomputer uses flash to go faster

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:24:02 +0000

The system, which will use flash memory, will model climate simulations and the effects of earthquakes

HP 'sensing technology' to connect objects, people

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Dong Ngo) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:16:01 +0000

The company has announced a new Mems accelerometer that is 1,000 times more sensitive than existing products on the market

Paving slabs harness energy of pedestrians

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Carly Newman) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:32:02 +0000

The Pavegen system uses flexible paving slabs that convert the energy made by footsteps into electricity

Watch out, your metadata is showing

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:59:09 +0000

The Arizona supreme court has just decided that the metadata of a document is governed by the same rules as the document. If the metadata is attached to a public record, then the metadata too is a...

Typekit for the masses

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:47:10 +0000

Back in May of this year, a new and potentially revolutionary web service was announced that could change the way we literally see the web. That service was Typekit, and the idea is to offer a...

CA moves into eco software market

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Larry Dignan) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:06:01 +0100

Computer Associates plans to unveil an integrated sustainability suite designed to track carbon emissions

LHC cooled to operational temperatures

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:56:02 +0100

The Large Hadron Collider has now been completely recooled to its operating temperature, just two degrees above absolute zero

'Wimpy nodes' could cut datacentre power bloat

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Matthew Broersma) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:23:02 +0100

An experimental computing cluster using embedded chips and small amounts of flash memory could help companies combat spiralling power costs in their datacentres

Mandelson: UK needs entrepreneurs

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:38:02 +0100

The gap between research funding and real products can be closed by entrepreneurs, according to business secretary Peter Mandelson

Party Like It's 2009

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:06:19 +0100

So we went to a Windows 7 House Party. And you know what? It wasnt anything like the video... Were currently in Microsofts home town, so it seemed churlish not to and Microsofts PR...

Arrested al-Qaeda suspect has Cern links

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:34:04 +0100

French authorities have arrested a man connected with Cern over suspected links to al-Qaeda. The 32-year-old man was arrested in the French town of Vienne on Thursday. The European...

IBM applies electronics to genetic sequencing

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Stephen Shankland) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:57:01 +0100

IBM Research hopes its electronic automation technology will give people and their doctors individual genetic records for less than £600

LHC on course for November restart

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:05:02 +0100

The giant particle accelerator should restart in mid-November, and could commence high-energy experiments before the end of the year

Intel aims to make fibre optics mainstream

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Stephen Shankland) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:53:02 +0100

The chipmaker hopes its Light Peak project will bring fibre-optic speeds to ordinary computer users, and USB is the logical path to get there

Geekender Gallery: IDF 2009

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Rupert Goodwins) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:04:02 +0100

Check out the technology that attracted our on-the-spot editor, Rupert Goodwins, at IDF in San Francisco

Smart signs and digital slot machines at IDF

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Staff) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:31:01 +0100

Executive vice president Sean Maloney demonstrates a new digital billboard and virtual slot machine that can be remotely managed and reprogrammed using vPro processor technology

Environmental group publishes phone radiation list

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:28:18 +0100

An environmental lobby group has published a list of the relative amounts of electromagnetic radiation given out by mobile devices. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) said in a statement...

We saved BT execs from jail, claims Azul Systems

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:12:45 +0100

Azul Systems makes corporate Java compute appliances - big boxes of custom multicore processors that run Java virtual machines orders of magnitude faster and at hugely less power than can...

Lego Mindstorms robot solves Sudoku puzzles

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:22:24 +0100

Swedish hobbyist Hans Andersson has build a robot that can complete a Sudoko grid all by itself, a report in The Escapist has noted. On his Tilted Twister website, Andersson said that the robot,...

Symantec seeks shift in cloud security

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Vivian Yeo) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:42:02 +0100

The company is working to make it easier for customers of its existing products to manage their data stored in the cloud

Government rejects Bletchley rescue petition

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:55:25 +0100

The government has rejected a petition calling for extra funding to save Bletchley Park, the base for the UK's codebreakers during World War II. The petition, which gained just under 22,000...

Weather puts Discovery launch on hold

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:52:18 +0100

The launch of the space shuttle Discovery, set to take place at 6:36 this morning, has been delayed for 24 hours due to weather conditions at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, CNET News.com...

xG opens its doors, closes its mouth

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:39:02 +0100

I've not written about my old Floridian muckers in xG Technology for a while, because there's not been anything to write about. That's changed. There have been press releases and intense online...

Video ad to appear in magazine this autumn

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Caroline McCarthy) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:21:01 +0100

Broadcast network CBS plans to advertise its autumn TV season with a video-chip ad in the September issue of US magazine Entertainment Weekly

Usability conference promises scents and sensible IT

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:12:21 +0100

If you're involved in creating any sort of IT and don't care about usability, you're wasting your time, your users' time, and quite probably holding back the human condition from evolving to a...

Views sought on Europe's digital agenda

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:15:29 +0100

The European Commission has opened a consultation into Europe's digital strategy for the period from 2010 to 2015. The online questionnaire went live on Tuesday, and is open to individuals and...

Micro Focus tables Tech-Manifesto at House of Lords

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:42:24 +0100

After accepting an invite to the House of Lords I would expect more than just a press release; thankfully I did get a little more than that yesterday morning. Micro Focus used the Cholmondeley Room...

Surrey, London and Peking get a yuan for spintronics

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:37:41 +0100

Researchers from the University of Surrey, the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Peking University's Institute of MIcroelectronics have been awarded a £430,000 grant to get busy devloping...

Topological insulator is hot new discovery

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:10:53 +0100

Bismuth telluride. Thats the latest material to spark interest among the physicists in their search for exciting new things to do with electrons. Recent investigations using high energy X-rays at...

Reports of GPS' death are greatly exaggerated

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:29:02 +0100

The latest GPS satellite is in trouble, which has triggered another round of the "Satnav is going to die!" rumours we had a couple of weeks ago. But it turns out that the satellite - GPS IIR-20(M)...

Twitter ye not

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:28:11 +0100

Weve had the hype of celebs I cant even be bothered to name helping raise the profile of Twitter, and now were getting the research that says Twitter aint necessarily all it is cracked up to...

Spintronics - new physics just keeps pouring out

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:24:09 +0100

Innovation, eh? Does it really mean just another smartphone with a slightly whizzier interface? Yet another x86 processor that makes servers go a bit faster? A search engine that throws up restful...

ZDNet.co.uk Scoops BBC on Techie Survival Training

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:39:14 +0100

I like to work with BBC World News on in the background over here in Budapest. Working on your own is fine but you get used to noises of a busy(ish) editorial office so its nice to have some buzz...

Face login experiments

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:45:50 +0000

Quite a lot of notebooks have integrated cameras these days. The cameras are good for video conferencing and taking photos, and if accompanied by appropriate software, also for face login. ...

Packing 2GB in your finger

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:36:22 +0000

News web sites are reporting the story of Finnish software developer Jerry Jalava. He lost part of a finger in a motorcycle accident and decided to give himself a USB keydrive-toting...

Apple headphone DRM - what are these people on?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:39:18 +0000

Sometimes, a chap just despairs. Take Apple's latest Shuffle iPod music playing thingy. As everyone on the planet now has at least five MP3 players, Apple has had to come up with various...

A new spin on battery technology

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:21:41 +0000

Researchers at the Universties of Miami, Tokyo and Tohoku have discovered a new form of battery. Charged by the application of a very strong magnetic field, the Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ)...

Where'd all the Green IT go?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:41:42 +0000

Last year the CeBIT tech show in Germany had a small but worthy Green IT section. This year they decided to give it more space. Here's the result: Now, is this verdant wasteland the result...

HP Memristor update time for more Moore's Law

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:04:06 +0000

A report from physorg.com points me at a paper in PNAS, where HP researchers say they've mixed up memristors and transistors on the same silicon substrate "to form fully integrated hybrid memory...

Government tackles Greenwash (does that include its own spin...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:33:22 +0000

Not a specifically IT-related missive but given the amount of greenwash sloshing around the tech sector, IT companies should take notice. Defra has just announced that its recruited a steering...

Country vicar 0 - evil technology 1

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:45:02 +0000

My father, the retired country vicar, is used to the vagaries of technology. At midnight on Christmas Eve, for example, a 400v electrical surge took out just about every electrical gadget in the...

Speaking: the truth

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 12:41:28 +0000

I have a certain fondness for people who make remarkable technological claims. They appeal to my sense of the dramatic, my addiction to proper science fiction, and my journalistic laziness. If...

Steorn is at it again!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:33:26 +0000

My personal energy levels received a free boost today with the delightful discovery that those Irish perpetual motion fiends at Steorn have risen from their Dublin slumbers. With commendable...

Stephen Fry stuck in lift - breaking news!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:28:03 +0000

I'm not quite sure how online technology has come to this. However, I am now monitoring, second by second, the peculiar story of Stephen Fry being stuck in a lift in the Centre Point building...

Is this story a waste of ink?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:00:48 +0000

There's an aspect of technology journalism that I'm finding troublesome. Perhaps you can help. A good example is this story, which I reproduce in part with thoughts interspersed. In this case...

Compliance Part 2a: Data Protection

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:43:17 +0000

Complying with the The Data Protection Act (DPA) like most compliance tasks is part government imposed chore and part something you really should be doing anyway, as much due to risks to the...

Europe pumps money into space

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:25:06 +0000

Ambiguous headline I know -- I couldn't resist, sorry. Member states are going to pour ten billion Euro into the European Space Agency (Esa) funding, the BBC reports. The budget is for the...

Three-year sentence for software fraud

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:08:11 +0000

A Wolverhampton man has been sentenced to three years in prison for illegally copying and then selling software and DVDs worth a possible £1m. Steve Adams bought an apartment in Spain, a Range...

IBM's HERMES helps the aged

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:03:37 +0000

IBM has partnered up with a European consortium for a project that aims to "help support active aging and prevent cognitive decline in the elderly population". The HERMES Cognitive Care for...

Tuned transistors make cheaper chips

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:12:13 +0000

In the same way that a pillow filled with pebbles is harder to get smooth than one stuffed with sand, chip makers are finding it harder to make transistors behave predictably as they shrink. Here,...

LHC - what actually happens when superconducting magnets go...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:23:02 +0000

I came across a very interesting explanation of what actually happens in an incident such as the one which felled the LHC, from Vern Paxson, vern@icir.org. He worked on software for the 1980s big...

A Solace for Quantum Computing

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:36:06 +0000

A year on from a spectacular controversy in quantum computing, it looks like rationality is breaking out. Last year, D-Wave Systems, the only commercial start-up in the highly demonstrated a 16...

'Solar' breakthrough reveals green ambitions

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:29:38 +0000

A reader points me at an energy story that comes larded about with exciting predictions. MIT Energy Storage Discovery Could Lead To "Unlimited" Solar Power! Illustrated with a large picture of a...

Microsoft takes a sideways look at touch technology

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:01:41 +0100

Always a pleasure to report on Microsoft doing good stuff - and this is good stuff. The company's researchers have studded the sides of a mobile phone with infra-red sensors, which can detect the...

More boson goes on - computing with excitons...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:18:54 +0100

A long way away from the LHC, work proceeds on different sorts of bosons to the Higgs type. Bosons are particles - or can be considered as particles, anyway - and some of them are made up of other...

Hacking nature - news from the silicon/carbon interface

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 14:45:13 +0100

Running through the RSS feeds this morning, I'm struck by the number of bio-engineering projects mentioned. This is just one day's (mainly) mainstream media coverage; if you actually go looking,...

The LHCgasm continues...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:04:50 +0100

I was lucky enough to visit CERN just days before the Large Hadron Collider went live (w00t!), and check this out: the geekiest keyring in history... What that perspex souvenir contains, my...

LHC Win: Beaming smiles all round

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:15:30 +0100

Just back from a Science & Technology Facilities Council event in Westminster to observe, via video-link, the first beam going round the Large Hadron Collider. As you by now surely know, this...

Transparent solar cell? Can't see it myself

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:17:58 +0100

News from the Far East: Japan's National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) has built a prototype boron nitride solar cell. Boron nitride (BN) is one of that interesting class of materials that...

It's not just the LHC that could rewrite physics

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:06:20 +0100

There's more than one way to pick apart the fabric of space and time. You can dig an enormous hole in the ground, fill it with enormous amounts of cash, and send particles screaming to their...