Technology

If it hadn't been for his baby brother's nasty, hacking cough, Deryk Artioli might never have landed on national television.

When he was 9, Deryk would wake up in the middle of the night as his baby brother, Devin Harris, coughed in his crib. His parents had to prop Devin's head up on a pillow to clear the congestion and quiet the cough. But Devin would often tumble off the incline. Then the cough would come again. "It sounded," recalled Deryk, now 11, "like a seal bark."

VIA Technologies is scheduled to launch its new processor core, dubbed Isaiah, in the first quarter of 2008, with the new architecture entering EVT (engineering validation test) stage in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to market sources.

The Isaiah core (engineering codename CN) will replace VIA's Esther processor architecture, which was introduced in 2004.

A European Commission decision Wednesday to let operators of 3G (third-generation) mobile phones use part of the radio spectrum previously reserved for GSM phones.

Schools have been offered guidance on how to implement biometric technology.

The advice from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) is aimed at those involved in introducing biometric tech into schools - such as head teachers and governing bodies – to guide them on how to successfully implement these systems without compromising personal information.

Biometric tech can take the form of fingerprint, retina, iris pattern, voice and even face shape recognition.

Iraq war veteran Sgt. Juan Arredondo can grasp tennis balls and door knobs with his left hand again, now that he's been outfitted with a bionic hand that has flexible fingers. The 27-year-old former soldier, who lost his left hand in 2005 during a patrol, is one of the first recipients of the i-LIMB.

"To have this movement, it's -- it's amazing," Arredondo said Monday as he showed off the limb made by Scotland-based Touch Bionics. "It just gets me more excited about now, about the future."

The prosthetic hand is made of semi-translucent plastics.

Technology is something that has greatly evolved over time, but in order to find the good stuff we had to go through the bad stuff first. Computer World put together a great article today that details what they believe are the 10 biggest technology flops of the past 40 years. So I thought I would take a look at their list and make my own comments…

How would you like to fly through traffic, literally? No sitting in your car during rush-hour, no long drives home from work, simply fly! One company called Moller International is working on a series of Skycars which would allow you to do just that.

On Moller’s website, they say that they’ve developed the “first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing vehicle the world has ever seen.” When they say “personally affordable,” they mean $90,000. Hmmm… definitely not personally affordable for me!

THE European Commission has backed a Nokia-led mobile television broadcasting standard in a move that could spur growth in the fledgling but potentially lucrative sector. The lack of a single technology has held back wider take-up for television on mobile phones and the EU's support for digital video broadcast handheld (DVB-H) could be the decisive factor in the battle to establish a global standard.

The Commission said on its website that DVB-H "appears to be the strongest contender for future mobile TV deployment in Europe" and is already the most popular standard in Europe.

Inventors across the country are being asked to find a way to lighten the load U.S. soldiers carry on their backs -- largely due to the high-tech gear that uses batteries -- and the solution will be decided in a $1 million contest.

The Department of Defense is asking a person or team to come up with a way to lessen the weight of the 20-40 pounds of batteries a solider carries on a typical four-day mission. The batteries power everything from soldiers' GPS systems to their night-vision goggles.

The memory in our computers is getting faster - it has to, as our processors get more powerful and software more complicated, so memory has to speed up to feed our data-hungry computers.

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the place where your computer stores all the data it needs right now to help you do what you want - be it play a game or write a letter.

It is different to data stored on your hard disk because it goes away when you switch the power off, disks are called storage because the data stays on them when you power them down.