The EPOC Game Controller: It's All in Your Head

Tuesday - August 5, 2008Luke Skywalker, eat your heart out. Emotiv's elegant, lightweight EPOC headset is a piece of cutting-edge technology that grants Yoda-like telepathic powers, allowing players of computer games to move items on screen with merely their thoughts. Due for release by year's end, the $299 device will come bundled with an adventure game in which players complete tasks for an Asian sensei. "We're hoping to help evolve the way humans interact with machines," says Tan Le, CEO of Emotiv, an Australian company with researchers in Sydney and an engineering lab here in San Francisco. [More...]

Rotor-Powered 'Jet Pack' May Propel Solo Fliers to New Heights

Wednesday - July 30, 2008Flying isn't just for superheroes anymore. A personal aviation machine that made its debut at an air show in Wisconsin this week is raising the profile of solo flying devices. The machine -- named the "Martin Jet Pack" -- lets you soar into the skies for as long as 30 minutes and reach altitudes of 8,000 feet, its creators say. [More...]

Yahoo, HP, Intel Give Ivory Towers a Stairway to the Cloud

Wednesday - July 30, 2008Yahoo, HP and Intel are collaborating on an ambitious research endeavor called "Cloud Computing Test Bed" -- designed to support cloud computing research and education at universities. Users will be able to develop and test software, data center management, and hardware associated with cloud computing on this large-scale grid. [More...]

Technology and the Aspiring Methuselahs

Friday - July 11, 2008More than 200 scientists and longevity activists gathered at UCLA recently to discuss advancements in repairing humans. New technology is making it possible to imagine a world with ever greater life spans, but old world issues pervaded the discussions. The Methuselah Foundation's Aubrey de Grey organized the event and kicked it off with a theoretical explanation of how human aging might be reversed in the future. [More...]

Tech Firms Team Up to Spark Fuel Cell UMPCs

Thursday - July 10, 2008MTI Micro and NeoSolar, a portable device manufacturer, announced a deal Thursday to develop fuel cells for NeoSolar's portable devices including its ultra mobile personal computers. The two companies will use MTI Micro's Mobion fuel cell technology to ultimately build external Mobion power sources such as chargers and snap-on attachments as well as embedded Mobion power sources for integration into NeoSolar products. [More...]

Meet Motorola's In-House Tech Anthropologist

Sunday - July 6, 2008Crysta Metcalf has eavesdropped on the conversations of strangers, pored over their personal photographs and grilled them on their closest relationships. Such nosiness is all part of her job of studying people and how they communicate. Metcalf is the principal staff anthropologist at Motorola. Her responsibility is to spot long-term trends in how people socialize and interact. [More...]

Former Intel Chair Andy Grove: Energizing the Rollout of Plug-In Cars

Saturday - July 5, 2008Former Intel Chairman Andy Grove has a knack for sensing when circumstances should force changes at a company or an industry -- and how to respond. He even has coined a term for it: the "strategic inflection point." Now the retired chairman of the world's largest computer chip maker thinks the term applies to energy and transportation. [More...]

Genomics Meets Sacramento

Friday - June 27, 2008Personalized medicine is touted as the wave of the future, but recent government action points to problems for Americans looking to join the health revolution. Last week, California's Department of Public Health issued cease-and-desist letters to 13 genetic testing startups, threatening to deny service to consumers curious about their DNA. [More...]

Payment System Uses Voice Print as Signature

Monday - June 23, 2008The Voice Commerce Group has announced the development of a banking system that will enable the use of biometrics-based "voice signatures." "Voice Transact uses a voice biometric to pull together the retail and Internet banking sectors of the market, and will also open up the mobile payments market," VCG chief executive Nick Ogden said. [More...]

Scientists Cook Up Nano Noodles

Thursday - May 29, 2008Japanese scientists say they have used cutting-edge technology to create a noodle bowl so small it can be seen only through a microscope. Mechanical engineering professor Masayuki Nakao said Thursday he and his students at the University of Tokyo used a carbon-based material to produce a noodle bowl with a diameter 1/25,000 of an inch in a project aimed at developing nanotube-processing technology. [More...]

Researchers Sound Nanotube Cancer Alarm

Wednesday - May 21, 2008Nanotechnology may be considered one of the most promising new technologies emerging today, but it's also the source of considerable concern about potential risks to the environment and human health. A new study published Tuesday in Nature Nanotechnology, adds further evidence that there's good reason for that concern. [More...]

Power Suit: Real-Life 'Iron Man' Rig for Peace and War

Friday - May 16, 2008Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly and plays tennis and skis when time allows. However, the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds -- that is, until he steps into an "exoskeleton" of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times. [More...]