May
17
The changes, which roll out in America first and then around the world, will see different options for search queries grouped into likely sets of possibilities. Writing on the Google Search Blog, Google’s Amit Singhal said that, for instance, the site would now know that a question on the Taj Mahal could be about the …
May
17
If you ever wanted to glimpse into Albert Einstein’s thoughts, now you can. Last week, the complete catalog of about 80,000 documents written by or addressed to Einstein—letters, postcards, notebooks, and other papers—was made available online by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Einstein Papers Project (EPP) at Caltech. The archive is the result …
May
17
One of the most instantly recognizable features of glass is the way it reflects light. But a new way of creating surface textures on glass, developed by researchers at MIT, virtually eliminates reflections, producing glass that is almost unrecognizable because of its absence of glare — and whose surface causes water droplets to bounce right …
May
15
In its early years, information theory — which grew out of a landmark 1948 paper by MIT alumnus and future professor Claude Shannon — was dominated by research on error-correcting codes: How do you encode information so as to guarantee its faithful transmission, even in the presence of the corrupting influences engineers call “noise”? Recently, …
May
15
An explosion of people checking into social networks is being exploited by mobile application makers and private detectives, who say they can use people’s online chatter and photos to track them and find out where they live. In March, Apple stopped downloads of a “stalker” mobile application that told men where women around them were …
May
15
“It’s obvious that people love Instagram,” begins a recent video. “But how are you supposed to share your photos with the 6.95 billion people that aren’t on Instagram?” The video is a spoof that advertises a real-life Instagram camera. Indeed, Instagram hardware is an easy topic to satirize. The popular photo-sharing app has recently rocketed …
May
15
Need something to put things into perspective on a Monday morning? Our suggestion: The largest single-shot photo of Earth ever taken. Eclipsing NASA’s updated “Blue Marble” shot, which is a composite of many satellite images, this image is a single-shot taken from 22,369 miles away by Russian weather satellite Elektro-L No.1. The colors on the …
May
12
On May 2, a blog post on Fast Company lamented the lack of an interface that allows a user to drag files from a computer to a smart phone with the swipe of a finger, eliminating the sometimes-convoluted process of transferring data between devices. The story highlights a conceptualized interface developed by designer Ishac Bertran, but ultimately concludes that, for …
May
09
The Samsung Galaxy Note has been spotted running Android 4.0 at the CTIA show in New Orleans. The trade show is the biggest mobile industry show of its kind in the US, though enthusiasts are disappointed at the lack of major announcements at the event. Nevertheless, there are some interesting bits of news making their …
May
09
Sierra Wireless has revealed the first triple-mode LTE, WiMAX and 3G mobile hotspot, the 4G LTE Tri-Fi, set to hit the Now Network later this month. Promising up to eight hours of active battery life and sharing for up to eight devices over WiFi b/g/n connections, the 4G LTE Tri-Fi Hotspot also has a microSD card slot …
