Technology

JAPANESE BOFFINS have demonstrated 3Gbit/s WiFi data transmission at 542GHz, part of what is called the Terahertz band.

Researchers have said the so-called Terahertz band, which ranges from 300GHz to just under 3THz, will eventually allow for transfers up to 100Gbit/s, a figure that is significantly higher than the interconnects used in supercomputer clusters. However Tokyo Institute of Technology researchers showed a slightly more modest 3Gbit/s transfer rate at 542GHz, though that was still enough to set a new record in the Terahertz frequency band.

Researchers from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity. 

The scientists tested their approach by creating a generator that produces enough current to operate a small liquid crystal display. It works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. The viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge. 

Texas-based networking company Buffalo announced its first 802.11ac wireless router and wireless media bridge are available today for retail purchase. The two networking products are backwards compatible with 802.11n devices, but also feature the latest ac wireless standard. 

Earlier this year, Buffalo promised the arrival of this next-generation router in the summer, but last month Netgear announced its similar router would be arriving in May. Today, it looks like Buffalo hustled enough to be able to call "first."

A portable USB fuel cell promises to charge your smartphone for up to two weeks without going near a wall socket. Lilliputian Systems says its portable fuel cell will provide juice for your smartphone a dozen times before running out - and then you just need to buy a replacement cartridge.

There isn't even an official standard for DDR4, the next generation of computer memory technology. But memory manufacturers are already shipping samples of the first DDR4 memory units, and preparing to produce them en masse. On May 7, Micron joined the field, announcing it had released its first fully functioning DDR4 memory product for testing.

Identifying people using iris recognition is becoming easier, according to a new report from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The Iris Exchange (IREX) III report which evaluated research of iris recognition software from 11 different sources – is said to be the first public and independent evaluation of commercially available algorithms that use iris recognition for finding an individual match within a large database of potential identities.

L33tdawg: On a somewhat related note, registrations for #HackWEEKDAY: Turbo Edition (which will be held on the 24th and 25th of May alongside #HITB2012AMS) is still open for submissions! 

Google Drive is poised to give IT departments yet another headache to deal with.  

Drive, the name of Google's data-syncing cloud storage service that's rumored to launch sometime next week, will likely offer many of the features of popular storage apps such as Dropbox and Box, including 5GB of free storage with upgrades of up to 100GB of storage for users willing to pay for service.

Storage technology has evolved and matured to the point where it has started to approach commodity status in many data centres. Nevertheless, today's enterprises are faced with evolving needs that can strain storage technologies - a case in point is the push for Big Data analytics, an initiative that brings business intelligence (BI) capabilities to large data sets.

While we have seen our share of smartphone designs, nearly all of of them have one big touch screen on the front. But what if a smartphone could have two different displays on one case? Microsoft has apparently filed a patent that would create such a product. PatentBolt.com has posted up some images and details from the company's filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office.