Les solid-state disks, SSD de leur petit nom, sont voués à remplacer à long terme les disques durs classiques ou “mécaniques”, limités par la technique. Ars Technica se penche sur leur cas.

If you don’t want to install Google Toolbar to use Sidewiki or if Google Toolbar is not available for your favorite browser (Opera, Safari, Chrome), you can now use a bookmarklet. It doesn’t notify you when the current page is annotated and it doesn’t open in a persistent sidebar, but it’s a decent alternative.

Drone autonome du MIT

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using “open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day. Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

There are two ways to get Google Wave to work on your iPhone. The first way is to simply go to wave.google.com in mobile Safari on your iPhone. It warns you that you are not using a browser supported during the preview, but if you click through, it works pretty well. The site has obviously been optimized for Webkit-based browsers like the one on the iPhone and Google’s own Android phones (I tried it on Android, and it works there as well). You can select different conversation “waves” (or threads) and contacts, or dive into a specific wave.

50 ans d’exploration spatial en une Image at As-map Blog

Dans le détail, l’OS de Google devrait compter dans ses rangs 14,5% de part de marché (76 millions de téléphones), soit bien derrière Symbian (qui motorise une grande partie de la gamme Nokia) qui lui disposera de 39% du marché (203 millions de mobiles).

Et l’iPhone dans tout ça ? Il ne sera pas très loin avec sa troisième place : 13,7% de part de marché, soit 71,5 millions de mobiles estimés. Suivront Windows Mobile (12,8%, 66,8 millions d’appareils), RIM (12,5%, 65,25 millions de BlackBerry). Palm est bien loin derrière, avec 2,1% seulement (11 millions, ce qui ne serait déjà pas si mal !).

Japanese Exoskeletons

Robo-One Tournament shows off thought-controlled robot

We now have more proof from the front lines of robotics research that the upcoming sci-fi epic The Surrogates is simply an early look at the very real near future. Created by indie-tinkerer Taku Ichikawa of the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, this new robot actually responds to the thoughts of its master.

Put a satellite into orbit for $8,000

InterOrbital Systems (IOS) is — in the words of their website — a “rocket and spacecraft manufacturing company” that locates itself at the Mojave Airport and Spaceport in Mojave, California. They recently announced that they were offering to send people’s personal satellites into low-earth orbit on a NEPTUNE 30 rocket for the low low low cost of $8,000.

(via The 8k Personal Satellite (and Other Space Adventures) | h+ Magazine)

robovie-nano

vstone has announced the commercial release of the entry-level humanoid robot the robovie-nano.
the small device is pretty impressive measuring 23cm tall with 15 individual moving joints. the robot
is lightweight and comes with integrated speakers. users can utilize the robot’s software to program
different motions, enabling the device to appear as if it is running autonomously. it also supports
additional options such as a pair of gripping hands that enable it to pick up objects or colourful body
armor to protect the interior parts.

http://vstone.co.jp

Google Labs has been very active lately. The most recent service launched in Google Labs is Fast Flip, a visual version of Google News that encourages serendipitous discoveries. (via Google Fast Flip)

Warehouse Robots at Work

IEEE spectrum (http://spectrum.ieee.org) takes you inside Kiva Systems’ robotic warehouse, where orange robots make inventory move instead of workers. Over time the system becomes increasingly efficient, with the robots learning from the wisdom of the crowd.

Zoomdoggle’s Amazing BuckyBalls in action!

PlayStation 3 bringing 3D to all games in 2010

3D is becoming more and more prevalent in movies, so why not in video games? Why not indeed. The PlayStation 3 is hopping on the 3D bandwagon next year, bringing a 3D mode to the console that’ll work with all existing games sometime next year.

Of course, in order to enjoy this, you’ll need a new TV that supports 3D. So it may be more than just the year it takes for Sony to get this firmware out to PS3s to make it commonplace. But it’s an exciting look at where consoles will be going in the not-too-distant future, or at least whenever you buy your next TV.