- A Google Fiber Showdown in Lone Star State
Google fiber promises competition for AT&T and Time Warner Cable in Austin
New glimmers of competition are coming to the Internet fiber-to-the-home business in the United States: Google is branching out from its Kansas City experiment and staking a claim in Austin, Texas.
- Brinicles and the Origin of Life
Extraordinary tubes of ice that grow down into the ocean from ice sheets could be as significant for the origin of life as hydrothermal vents, say chemists
- A Flexible Keyboard with Buttons That Feel Clickable
Transparent, shape-changing plastics could make touch screens and keyboards that stimulate users’ sense of touch.
A very thin keyboard that uses shape-changing polymers to replicate the feel and sound of chunky, clicking buttons could be in laptops and ultrabooks next year. Strategic Polymers Sciences, the San Francisco-based company that developed the keyboard, is working on transparent coatings that would enable this feature in touch screens.
- Facebook’s Real “Home” May be the Developing World
The new Facebook-centric Android app for smartphones builds on other efforts to court mobile users internationally.
Facebook Home, a new collection of apps that makes the social network dominate Android phones, might have limited appeal to users already besieged with smartphone options—but it could fit nicely into Facebook’s efforts overseas, where the focus is on capturing first-time users.
- Taser’s On-Body Cameras Could Make Cops Self-Policing
While raising privacy concerns, Taser’s cop-cam should help enforce ethical police work.
The Verge has a great report about an emerging trend in policing–cameras that cops wear on the their bodies while interacting with suspects. (The piece is worth reading in full, particularly for the little documentary in the middle, which gives a better sense of how this technology works, as well as an eerie and innovative design element that causes images to elude the viewer scrolling through the article.)
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