A round-up of the latest technology news from around the globe.
TWEET ME UP: There are the words we use and the words we find in the dictionary. The just released 3rd edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English now includes such words as microblogging, social media, netbook, dictionary attack, paywall and tweet-up. Word up Scrabble players. Details at the Independent.
HIGHWIRE ACT: Balanced on a live wire hundreds of metres above the ground isn't where I'd spend my working days. But the Canadian LineScout robot eats it up. The robot scans and repairs high power cables, all the while sending video back to base. It can navigate around obstacles too. Trapezes next? More at Engadget and video on YouTube.
3G LEAKS: In Israel some water meters send out a 3G signal every 11 to 30 seconds. A remote operated drone flies around reading the signals and looking for unusual rates of flow that could indicate leaks. I guess there's no water in the dead zones. More at FastCompany.
NIGHT RIDER: Night vision goggles convert photons into electrons that hit a phosphorous screen. An organic semiconductor detector instead displays the image on LEDs. The new device is tiny, cheap and made of plastic rather than heavy glass. Look for this soon in cellphones, spectacles or even a heads-up display in the car. A very handy piece of kit. Details at Discovery.
PROBABLY SAVED: Lyric Semiconductor has created 'probabilistic'
analogue computer processors. Where traditional computers deal with absolute ones and zeros, the probabilistic processor allows for other values: each bit stores a probability that a value is 1. This could be important for spam filtering, shopping cart recommendations and spotting fraud. I'm not sure I'd like my computer to 'probably save' my documents. More at ArsTechnica.
- Miraz Jordan knowit.co.nz.
