CMOS News and updates

FCC making some money again. aul Marks, senior technology correspondent After paying around £5 billion each in the UK auction for 3G frequencies in 2000, Britain’s cellphone companies are gearing up to bid for the next round of over-the-air bandwidth after the telecomms regulator Ofcom announced that two chunks of 4G frequencies will be auctioned

Helen Thomson, biomedical news editor A paralysed woman was still able to accurately control a computer cursor with her thoughts 1000 days after having a tiny electronic device implanted in her brain, say the researchers who devised the system. The achievement demonstrates the longevity of brain-machine implants. The woman, for whom the researchers use the

Hmmm, but can she cook?   Roxxxy with Creator Douglas Hines AFP Just a few blocks away from CES, at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, innovation took a different form as the world’s first commercially available life-sized AI robotic girlfriend enjoyed her big coming out party.   Standing five feet seven inches and weighing 120

By Rebecca Boyle Posted 03.11.2011 at 1:00 pm 5 Comments   So Fast It’s Blurry via YouTube If you thought Watson’s “Jeopardy” victory over mankind was painful, check this out. A manufacturing robot wipes the floor with us humans in the popular iPhone game “1to50.” The Adept Quattro robot takes just 6.6 seconds to complete

By John Timmer | Last updated about 18 hours ago Following the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan has been challenging. At best, even those present at the site have a limited view of what’s going on inside the reactors themselves, and the situation has changed rapidly over the last several days.

  Humanity recorded some 2,900 billion billion (2,900,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes of data in 2007, information researchers report, a data explosion from 1986 to 2007 abetted by a 58% annual increase in computing power. That sounds impressive, but it is still less than the amount of data contained in our genes, or the computational power of the

First there was the all mighty serial port, then parallel port, then the hi-tech usb port. Firewire popped in there too. Well now there is this new type of port that will replace them all.  Wow !!! THUNDERBOLT™ TECHNOLOGY The Fastest Connection To Your PC Experience‡ From the company with the fastest processors comes the

Just add water and you get power. I like it (grin) Ok, how about drinking a beer and then pissing in the container, and still getting power !! SiGNa Chemistry Inc. is launching a hydrogen-producing cartridge, the mobile-H2™, that will work with a portable, pocket-sized fuel cell charger to provide instant power for cell phones

Hmm, I did this a few months ago. I also know a few other people that took the plunge and made big changes in their life. Dr. Kev Last month, I took a little break from all the hustle and bustle of the Internets and decided to focus on trying to get a better handle

Amazon.com Widgets Things just got real folks! At their big event today, HP finally announced its swanky new tablet to the world, and it’s a beauty! Called the HP TouchPad, the tablet is the result of Palm being absorbed into the world of HP with webOS beating at the heart of the device. With more

The Internet is about to run out of new addresses, a milestone that is spurring Web giants like Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. to develop new versions of their sites and prompting carriers like AT&T Inc. and others to upgrade networks. This week, the last batch of existing Internet protocol addresses is set to run

Amazon.com Widgets Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration Robonaut 2, dressed for pigskin punditry. But is it a Packers fan or a Steelers fan? —-  Wow, he has his own Facebook and Twitter Account — › NASA to Launch Human-Like Robot to Join Space Station Crew › Star Wars Meets UPS as

Way back in the 1970s, hardware-hacker hobbyists built kit computers like the Altair 8800 — and in doing so paved the way for the computer revolution that would reshape every facet of modern life. Today the same breed of people are building and selling kit flight controllers for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Just sayin’. Drones

Seems like the U.S. needs to get their act together or we are going to get passed up again. Kev _____________________ China is on course to become the world’s second-largest consumer market by 2015, according to Credit Suisse, reports Reuters. Credit Suisse projects that the value of Chinese consumption will hit $8.8 trillion by 2020,

Amazon.com Widgets Image via Wikipedia In a step toward a generation of ultrafast computers, physicists have used bursts of radio waves to briefly create 10 billion quantum-entangled pairs of subatomic particles in silicon. The research offers a glimpse of a future computing world in which individual atomic nuclei store and retrieve data and single electrons

Lets get small !!!!!!  (grin) Image via Wikipedia   Lasers have revolutionized the communications and medical industries. They focus light to zap tumors and send digital TV signals and telephone communications around the world. But the physical length of an ordinary laser cannot be less than one half of the wavelength of its light, which

I like this design. It has some nice features too. _______________________________ Some pocket cams are big. Some are small. Some are waterproof. But they’re are basically the same. At least when you compare ‘em to the Casio Tryx, a 1080p cam with a fairly ingenious new design. Er, several designs. Take your average camcorder and

Bifocal and progressive lenses suck. They’re old tech. Like, Benjamin Franklin old. PixelOptics take a more 21st century approach—liquid crystal lenses that adjust their focus in a fraction of a second, for differing focuses when you need them. Image via Wikipedia All that’s required to shift the glasses—which can be fitted into any design of

If last year’s International Consumer Electronics Show was overshadowed by Apple’s about-to-be-announced tablet computer, the iPad, no-show Apple will have an even bigger presence this week in Las Vegas. Richard Doherty, an independent analyst at the Envisioneering Group, says that more than 100 companies will attempt to ride on Apple’s iPad coattails with their own

Visionary garage tenants Faber and Haberle.   CAMBRIDGE, MA—In the summer of 1980, MIT graduates Donald Faber and Peter Haberle moved into an empty two-car garage and started work building their first ever personal home computer. Almost 30 years later, what began as a humble two-man operation has since grown into an even more humble,

So here we are in a new decade, and the technologies that are now available to us continue to engage (and enthrall) in fascinating ways. The rise and collision of several trends—social, mobile, touch computing, geo, cloud—keep spitting out new products and technologies which keep propelling us forward. Below I highlight seven technologies that are

Editor’s note: Guest author Stephen Martin is an entrepreneur and author. His forthcoming book, The Enterprise of One, is due out next year. While the economic climate in the United States remains uncertain, economists and pundits alike continue to define our recent fiscal crisis with words like recession, downturn and depression. But labeling America’s current

When Gretchen Baxter gets home from work as a New York City book editor, she checks her BlackBerry at the door. “I think we are attached to these devices in a way that is not always positive,” says Baxter, who’d rather focus at home on her husband and 12-year-old daughter. “It’s there and it beckons.

CANTON, OH—QT2D-7, an 11-year-old electric assembly-operations robot, was laid off Monday when the Lawn-Boy plant that has employed him relocated its manufacturing headquarters to New Delhi, India. Enlarge Image QT2D-7 in front of its former place of employment. “Query: What am I going to do now?” QT2D-7 said, panning its infrared eye across the empty

To measure is to know, said Lord Kelvin. But as marketing departments get more and more creative with their published specifications, what we’re left measuring—and by extension, knowing—about our gear is increasingly worthless. Image via Wikipedia With the gadget-buying squarely in season, most of us will soon be turning to those ubiquitous columns of numbers,

Confession: Until a few days ago, I’d never calibrated my TV. There are a couple reasons for this. First, and most simply, I’m not down with buying a calibration disc that I will likely use once then never touch again. And second, to me, HDTV calibration is the gadget geek’s equivalent to chasing the dragon.

Back in the days when a decent TV cost $4,000, I never hesitated to recommend spending $300 or so on professional calibration. But now you can get a pretty good set for less than $1,000. Far be it from me to tell you what your priorities should be, but to me, spending three bills to

We’ve had the Parrot AR.Drone — an iPhone-controlled, indoor or out, four-propeller rotorcraft — at the iFixit offices for months. We bought it for a teardown, but we just couldn’t stop playing with the flying bugger long enough to take it apart. Until now. Image by Sophia AZN via Flickr The AR.Drone is earth-shattering. It

There’s no dearth of sophisticated gear for the aspirational ATM thief. But skimmers don’t exactly have an aisle at Wal-Mart. In this Gizmodo investigation, we take a look at the scary internet black market where fraudsters get their tools. When it comes to new and creative ways of pilfering personal financial data, ATM crime is