Technology

It's getting difficult to overstate the importance of battery technology. Compact, high-capacity batteries are an essential part of portable electronics already, but improved batteries are likely to play a key role in the auto industry, and may eventually appear throughout the electric grid, smoothing over interruptions in renewable power sources. Unfortunately, battery technology often involves a series of tradeoffs among factors like capacity, charging time, and usable cycles.

Stephen Wolfram has a track record of scientific breakthroughs and some controversy. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Caltech in 1979 when he was 20 and has focused most of his career on probing complex systems. In 1988 he launched Mathematica, powerful computational software that has become the gold standard in its field. In 2002, Wolfram produced a 1,280-page tome, A New Kind of Science, based on a decade of exploration in cellular automata and complex systems. The book stirred up a lot of debate in scientific circles.

Concerned that international terrorists are prepping their attacks with help from services like Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and Google Street View, a California lawmaker hopes to airbrush certain structural details from countless public buildings pictured on these web-based virtual landscapes.

San Diego-based Assemblyman Joel Anderson recently introduced a California bill that would bar "online mapping services" from serving up overly-revealing images of schools, hospitals, churches, and government buildings.

THE idea that robots might one day be able to tell friend from foe is deeply flawed, says roboticist Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield in the UK. He was commenting on a report calling for weapon-wielding military robots to be programmed with the same ethical rules of engagement as human soldiers.

“Get your hands off me, I have been stolen,” the laptop shouted. That is a new solution to laptop computer theft: a program that lets owners give their property a voice when it has been taken.

The program allows users to display alerts on the missing computer's screen and even to set a spoken message. Tracking software for stolen laptops has been on the market for some time, but this is thought to be the first that allows owners to give the thief a piece of their mind.

Virtualisation might save your budget, but it could increase the security risk facing your business, a McAfee researcher has said.

As the economy drives many firms to cut costs, many are turning to virtualisation, but should be aware of the security risks, McAfee security analyst Greg Day told [i]IT PRO[/a] ahead of VMworld Europe this week.

ARM-based netbooks will beat those using Intel's next-generation Moorestown platform on price, match it on performance, and enable a new class of device costing as little as $150 (£100), the UK chip designer has predicted.

Both companies were at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week showing sample mobile internet devices (MIDs) and netbooks based on their architectures.

More than 350,000 virtualised desktops will be introduced to Brazilian schools in what is claimed to be the world’s largest-ever implementation of the technology. Virtual desktops are to be used in all Brazil’s 5,560 municipalities, with software and hardware costing less than $50 (£35) per seat.

The project is an initiative from the Brazilian Ministry of Education and will see every computer converted into up to 10 independent workstations running the Linux operating system, which will be used in the education of millions of schoolchildren.

A Korean-U.S. research team has developed technology that could increase computer storage capacity more than 10,000 times, in theory allowing 12,500 films to be stored on a single DVD.

Copying a few pages from the playbook of Apple Inc's iPhone strategy, which brings many of the powers of the Internet to mobile phones, is no way to beat the computer interloper at its game.

But that's exactly what many of the world's biggest handsets makers are trying to do with new copycat phones and services that ape key features of the iPhone.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the world's biggest annual trade show for the wireless industry, Apple is everywhere and nowhere. The company avoids such events, preferring to unveil products at its own venues.