Geek Round-Up

The news stories that will really get your geek juices flowing

Real Minority Report Computer

This video of a talk at TED shows John Underkoffler discussing the future of computing and user interfaces. His speech is insightful and informative, especially if you have a burning desire for the minutiae of computing, but the real prize here is his demonstration of a working prototype of the Minority Report computer interface, a machine oft cited as the future of computing by prophetic 15 year olds, complete with gloves and ultra-sleek gesture controls. It’s a hugely powerful machine and is apparently already in the wild, with large companies already using it to tackle problems of logistics and resource management.

SpaceX Falcon 9

This register article gives a moment by moment walk through of the flight of the commercial spacecraft set to revolutionise the way that the space business is run. NASA is contracting out work that it previously did itself, such as transporting supplies to space stations, and this SpaceX contract could be the foot in the door that allows free market businesses to recreate the way space travel operates. With its focus on profit and efficiency, it has been argued that businesses could make much cheaper, better crafts that NASA could ever have. Also, theres some really cool pictures of a rocket.

Life on Saturn’s moon

NASA has hypothesised that there could be life on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. Two seperate studies have reached the conclusion that the lack of hydrogen gas near the surface discovered by the Cassini probe could be due to Methane Based Lifeforms living on the surface of the moon, the only one with a dense enough atmosphere to support such biology. While it is still just a theory at the moment this the greatest piece of evidence for a different form of life from Earth’s Carbon based life.

Space Tourism Photo Gallery

To continue the space theme, the Telegraph has a photo gallery filled with photos of space exploration and artists concept images of the future of space travel and space tourism, including some extremely sexy looking virgin galactic ships.

iRobot designs killer tankbot

iRobot, a large robotics company which has been gradually diversifying into military contracting has released video of its Warrior robot, the product of US army tank research and development and the US Marine Corp. They show off its capabilities to clear paths of mines, tripwires and iRobot has insisted that the machine is purely a coutermeasures device with no offensive capabilities. The video shows the huge explosion the robot creates from several terrifying angles and while it is nominally clearing a path I don’t doubt it could also be used to blow a big old hole in something. Watch the video and see for yourself.

USB Cufflinks

Ever found yourself lacking flash storage at a fancy dinner party?

Me either, but just in case Cufflinks.com is selling a pair of USB cuff links that rock 2GB storage a piece to handle all of formal memory needs. Aside from there almost complete uselessness these are actually very cool pieces of kit and they look pretty nice as well.

Ewok Karaoke

To end on a note of absurdity, here is a video of Ewok Karaoke. Thats right, someone has created a karaoke video of the Ewok celebration song from Return of the Jedi. You shouldn’t find this cool, but you will, oh you will.