- Nano-scale Optical Antennas Could Have a Big Impact
A lab at Harvard is developing materials with potentially revolutionary optical characteristics.
The antenna, a century-old technology, is everywhere. Listening to the radio? Making a call on your cell phone? Surfing the web over Wi-Fi? The antenna made it all possible.
- More Reasons to Clean Up Tweets
Stock plunge another reminder of social media’s power – and the need for fact-checking
Yesterday saw the most extreme example possible of why rapid crowdsourced corrections of Tweets and other social media (see “Preventing Misinformation From Spreading Through Social Media”) are critically needed– an issue that came to the fore last week as misinformation spread about the Boston bombings.
- Your Body Does Not Want to Be an Interface
Have you heard that Google Glass will let you snap photos by winking? Why that’s still going to feel weird.
The first real-world demo of Google Glass’s user interface made me laugh out loud. Forget the tiny touchpad on your temples you’ll be fussing with, or the constant “OK Glass” utterances-to-nobody: the supposedly subtle “gestural” interaction they came up with–snapping your chin upwards to activate the glasses, in a kind of twitchy, tech-augmented version of the “bro nod”–made the guy look like he was operating his own body like a crude marionette. The most “intuitive” thing we know how to do–move our own bodies–reduced to an awkward, device-mediated pantomime: this is “getting technology out of the way”?
- First Enzyme-Based Memory Created in the Lab
Some clever biochemistry has led to the world’s first enzyme-based memory capable of learning, say biochemists
- Questions over Gene Patents Shake Diagnostics Industry
The impending Supreme Court ruling on gene patents is creating uncertainty in the molecular diagnostics sector.
At this week’s Biotechnology Industry Organization show in Chicago, a panel of law experts bemoaned the recent Supreme Court hearings on whether individual genes can be patented, saying there was no sign that anyone involved in the case truly understood the technology or the business implications of their arguments. That’s disturbing, because the decision could have important effects on industries including the developing field of molecular diagnostics.
- Apple’s R&D Spending Rises, But It’s Still Small Change
Apple plans to keep inventing new product categories without much of a boost from its cash reserves.
As its gross margins shrink and the company casts about for its next hit product categories, Apple is continuing to spend more on research and development than it has in the past (see “Can Apple Still Innovate on a Shoestring?”).
- Preventing Misinformation from Spreading through Social Media
New platforms for fact-checking and reputation scoring aim to better channel social media’s power in the wake of a disaster.
The online crowds weren’t always wise following the Boston Marathon bombings. For example, the online community Reddit and some Twitter users were criticized for pillorying an innocent student as a possible terrorist suspect. But some emerging technologies might be able to help knock down false reports and wring the truth from the fog of social media during crises.
- Software Predicts Which Companies Are an Easy Sell
A former Yahoo search engineer raises funds to bring sophisticated data mining and modeling to the business world.
A startup called Infer, led by a former Yahoo search engineer, plans to help salespeople identify potential business customers by gathering useful information from news sites and the Web. For example, marketing department job postings online might be one clue of a company’s readiness to buy marketing software.
- Google Joins PayPal-Backed Effort to Kill the Password
The search giant has signed up to a consortium that wants hardware to have a role in authenticating people.
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