Technology

For BMW, engineering the impossible comes naturally. The company's engineers heard that hydrogen will be the fuel of the future, so they took a 7-series sedan and converted it. Instead of the 10-plus years of development that's gone into other automakers hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles, BMW needed only a couple of years to build the Hydrogen7, which it showed off at the Los Angeles Auto Show. But the Hydrogen7 uses a completely different approach than a fuel-cell vehicle. BMW Vice President Dr.

Online dating is so last year. Now, if you're thinking romance, look to your mobile phone.

Match-making companies are creating new services that allow people to post their dating profile online and then automatically receive a text message on a GPS-enabled phone when a match is nearby, say, at a coffee shop around the corner.

An Anglo-Greek team of scientists has revealed what they consider the true workings of the Antikythera mechanism, a 2,000 year-old analog computer recovered from a Mediterranean shipwreck over a century ago.

While Nokia took a walk on the dark side earlier this week announcing a solution for mobile operators that would allow them to effectively block certain types of traffic like (specifically P2P VoIP systems like Skype) on their networks, the company has now pronounced its love for all things IP. The Nokia announcement of an upgrade to its Flexi Intelligent Service Node (ISN) allows operators to identify and manage data streams according to its type of service.

David Hanson's robots can creep people out.

Their heads are so lifelike, their skin so textured and realistic, that Candy Sidner, a competing roboticist, called his Albert Einstein robot "spookily cool ... a giant step forward."

Hanson, who started his career as an artist and spent time working in Disney's Imagineering Lab, said he flirts with being too realistic for comfort. His work, he said, "poses an identity challenge to the human being."

Oakley Networks is expanding its insider threat protection tools by offering software that can locate missing laptops and wipe their hard drives remotely. Once installed on a laptop, Oakley's SureFind acts as a locator beacon if a laptop is reported stolen. The software "calls in" to Oakley and reports any activity that has happened since the theft, including information about downloads and logins.

BMW and other car manufacturers think hydrogen is the future, but is it? With hydrogen taking more energy to produce than it delivers, why the ridiculous distraction from creating clean electric cars with hundreds fewer parts than combustion engines? Forget about a hydrogen car, you?ll never be driving one. An article from the Toronto Star waxes lyrically about BMW having created a hydrogen car, and how it is environmentally friendly. A number of other articles have also appeared now that BMW has released the new BMW Hydrogen 7, a hydrogen powered card.

Embracing a technology that has unnerved media and telecommunications companies, a major European wireless provider will let customers watch their home cable TV on a cell phone if they also have a device called the Slingbox back at the house.

3 Group will launch the new service in Britain first, starting December 1, followed by three more of its 11 markets in early 2007, the wireless company announced Thursday.

It's not just James Bond who gets to play with all the cool gadgets. More and more business executives are investing in secret agent-style hardware to make sure their top-secret company plans stay under wraps.

Bug-detectors disguised as fountain pens, keyboards that can secretly record everything typed on them, and clock radios with hidden cameras--devices once only of interest to spies--are now being bought by company chiefs who fear they are being spied on.

Computers with superhuman intelligence, machines that can react beyond their inputs and the prospect of robotic helpers will be with us by 2056, leading scientists have predicted.

To mark 50 years of New Scientist magazine, the world?s most eminent scientists were invited to gaze into their crystal balls to see what the next half century will bring planet Earth.

ICT advances were tipped to enhance our understanding in a range of areas, to eventually prove extraterrestrial life forms, eradicate sexual violence and offer an endless supply of human limbs.