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How incoming enemy aircraft were detected before the invention of radar Strange acoustic "ears" before radar; old time pictures of listening posts ...

I'm sort of ashamed to admit that Friday night's baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies is the inspiration for this article. As a sidebar to the actual game itself, the broadcasters noted that someone had built a replica DeLorean hovercraft and was riding it around McCovey Cove in San Francisco, Calif.This got me thinking (yes, a replica hovercraft DeLorean inspired me; laugh all you want), what if we could travel into the past, or better yet, into the future to see what products, concepts, and ideas survived and which ones drifted away. Back to the...

The old man turned back at his coffee, took a sip, and then looked back at me.... “In fact, I’ve done lots of things ....Oh really? Like what types of things?, ...All the while, half-thinking he was going to make up something fairly non-impressive....I invented the first computer.....Um, Excuse me? ..... I created the world’s first internally programmable computer.... It used to take up a space about as big as this whole room and my wife and I used to walk into it to program it.... What’s your name?”. I asked, thinking that this guy is either another crazy homeless...

What would you do if your entire digital life started evaporating before your eyes and there was virtually nothing you could do about it? This is the nightmare scenario that greeted US technology journalist Mat Honan, who had all of the contents of his iPhone, iPad and Macbook Air wiped, and lost control of his Gmail and Twitter accounts, all in the span of just over 15 minutes.

Are you a Hotmail user? Microsoft announced a new email service that will replace Hotmail, a product that boasts 325 million customers. Further, the company hopes to woo new users away from Gmail, which is now the most popular email service. Microsoft named the new product Outlook, after its existing email for business users. That’s right, the one you’ve probably been using at the office. “There was a perception gap with Hotmail from tech enthusiasts and youth,” Windows Live general manager Brian Hall told VentureBeat, a highly regarded tech website. “Many of them wouldn’t take a second look at Hotmail...

As Samsung and Apple have been fighting over patents from one end of the earth to the other, most of the coverage, with few exceptions, seems to present Apple's point of view. [Example A, Example B, Example C, Example D, and Example E.] We know how much money Apple is asking for, we know it's claiming treble damages for willfulness, we know it thinks FRAND patents are not deserving of injunction enforcement, and that Samsung is asking too much money for them. But now that we have the redacted trial briefs from the parties, I thought you'd like to see...

Given the recent appalling events in Aurora, Colorado, there’s been a renewed call for greater gun control and a ban on assault weapons. I’m in favor of tighter gun control and a ban on weapons that are unnecessarily powerful but I’m afraid that technology will soon make any legislation that limits the availability of any kinds of guns ineffective. To understand why this might happen, you need to understand a technology called 3D printing. 3D printing allows you to build things that are, as the name implies, three dimensional. A few years ago 3D printers were very rare, hugely expensive,...

Contrary to legend, it wasn't the federal government, and the Internet had nothing to do with maintaining communications during a war. A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet." It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon...

BBC News today reported that “two blind British men have had electronic retinas fitted”. Chris James, 54, and Robin Millar, 60, took part in a clinical trial coordinated by Oxford University and funded by the National Institute of Health Research. Both men have retinitis pigmentosa, a rare hereditary condition that causes gradual deterioration of the light-detecting cells in the retina, which can lead to blindness. The electronic retinas are implants containing light detectors designed to replace the lost light-detecting cells. Immediately following the procedures, when the implants were switched on, both men were able to detect light and are now...

Martin Ford, from the book's introduction: Like most people, I have been giving a lot of thought to the economic situation as the most serious crisis since the Great Depression has continued to unfold. Since I develop software and run a high tech business, I also spend a great deal of time thinking about computer technology, and so I began to focus on how economics and technology intertwine. The current crisis has been perceived as primarily financial in origin, but is it possible that ever advancing technology is an unseen force that has contributed significantly to the severity of the...

After masked men, in bright yellow security vests, ushered one of Bahrain’s most prominent human rights activists into custody over a tweet suggesting the prime minister bribes citizens for support, coinciding with protests against the use of toxic tear gas by security forces. Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was sentenced to three months of prison last Monday by the Lower Criminal Court for defaming the people of Muharraq, who he suggested on Twitter support Bahraini Prime Minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman in return for money. His arrest was filmed by the masked members of the...

The U.S. space program, after five decades of setting the agenda for exploration, appears increasingly stymied when it comes to new cooperative ventures with other countries. Russia and the European Space Agency, or ESA, are moving to team up on unmanned rovers intended to eventually retrieve soil samples from Mars, even as they seek to entice other nations to join them on potential lunar missions. ......NASA's current leadership, according to space experts on both sides of the Atlantic, seems ineffective in leading or influencing other cross-border initiatives. Buffeted by budget cuts and domestic political pressures, the agency's latest policy and...

Michelle Amaral wanted to be a brain scientist to help cure diseases. She planned a traditional academic science career: PhD, university professorship and, eventually, her own lab. But three years after earning a doctorate in neuroscience, she gave up trying to find a permanent job...she took an administrative position at her university, experiencing firsthand an economic reality that, at first look, is counterintuitive: There are too many laboratory scientists for too few jobs. That reality runs counter to messages sent by President Obama and the National Science Foundation and other influential groups, who in recent years have called for U.S....

Belarus will participate in the construction of a space base in the eastern Venezuelan state of Aragua to be used for launching satellites, Venezuelan Ambassador to Belarus Americo Diaz Nuñez said Wednesday. "Belarus will participate in the construction of the space base in the state of Aragua in Venezuela. The construction of that base is planned not to launch nuclear rockets, but to send into space scientific research satellites," the diplomat said at a press conference. The space base will be just one of the projects that will be carried out by Venezuela, China and Belarus, Diaz Nuñez said. "The...

Google's self-driving car has fascinated our minds with its technological promise since being introduced in 2010. But yesterday, the self-driving car touched our hearts. Google posted a video of the self-driving car taking a legally blind man for a spin, showing one of the possibilities and benefits that could come from the technology. "Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility to go to the places I both want to go and need to go when I need to do those things," Steve Mahan says in the video. The self-driving car takes Mahan...

Got mass? Scientists observe electrons become both heavy and speedy Electrons moving in certain solids can behave as if they are a thousand times more massive than free electrons, but at the same time act as superconductors. A new study led by Princeton scientists shows that this happens because of a process known as quantum entanglement that determines the mass of electrons moving in a crystal. The discovery can help improve understanding of how certain materials become superconducting, which may have applications in areas such as power network efficiency and computing speed. Credit: the Yazdani Group A Princeton University-led team...

Zuck's smiley-face KGB getting even spookier In an undisclosed purchase thought to be in the neighborhood of $90M, the Big Blue Beast devoured tech startup Face.com, and it's sure to raise even further privacy concerns for users of snoopy ole Facebook (along with pretty much everybody else): a face recognition firm that's developed the ability to identify and tag faces in pictures... including any found on the internet. Add to that the fact that 'gigapixel' digital photos upwards of one billion pixels already allow individuals to be picked out of massive crowd shots in minute detail and soon the they can...

In an announcement falling somewhere between a suicide note and an expression of optimism for the future Finnish cell-phone has-been, Nokia (NOK) announced yesterday that it would be laying off 10,000 employees between now and the end of 2013. Obviously the negative part was the plan to lay-off nearly 20% of its existing work-force. The upside was that Nokia seems to truly believe the company will exist as a freestanding concern in 18 months. Unwilling to see the glass as anything but half-empty, Wall Street sent NOK shares down 16% Wednesday. Nokia shareholders should be used to such pain by...

As we move toward an age of quiet gadgets that do everything possible not to get in our way, we’re losing our appreciation for all the magic under the hood. Not long ago, the sounds our devices made reminded us that they were doing something truly important, whether that task was connecting us to the Internet or bringing us back to the beginning of our favorite VHS movies. A child born today has a greater chance of hearing a real cloned dinosaur roar than a busy signal. But for those of us who lived through the beginning of the PC...

South Korea unveils robotic prison guards, promises futuristic cavity searches To round out their drug-sniffing clone dog army, South Korean authorities are now experimenting with robotic prison guards. Lest you think these cyber-wardens will be equipped with gatling guns in the style of Robocop's ED-209, know that this alarm-equipped bot has more in common with the Death Star's delivery droids. Of course, the robots' responsibilities may expand as the technology improves. Explains Reuters of these security machines' potential uses: The robot has been designed to patrol a prison autonomously, but an IPad will allow manual control as well. The next...