November 29, 1999
The companies displayed a prototype that uses a head-mounted monocle to project a 10 inch display. The PC is controlled by a joystick-like device, no keyboard. They will decide next year when to launch it....
Dr. Phillip Kennedy has developed a device which, once wired into the brain, lets a patient control a computer using thought alone....
A report from the United Nation's World Commission on Water for the 21st Century says half the world's freshwater rivers are threatened. Last year the number of environmental refugees (25 million) outnumbered those displaced by war for the first time....
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, Japan and South Korea have said these are "distinct possibilities". Import duties on most goods will be eliminated by 2010....
November 27, 1999
Two physicists at Cornell University have used a modified scanning tunneling microscope to pick up single carbon monoxide molecules and graft them onto iron atoms....
November 24, 1999
"The Canadian government yesterday introduced legislation to ban the export of water from the Great Lakes and other boundary waters ... The move is a response to growing domestic fears that Canadian fresh water may be turned into commercial goods...
An increase in freshwater flows due to global warming could disrupt the ocean conveyor built which brings warm southern water to North Western Europe, keeping its temperatures above average for such latitudes....
November 23, 1999
The Japanese are beginning a project to drill for methane beneath the ocean floor. Estimates of when commercial use will occur vary from 18 months to 10 years. Mistakes when drilling can be catastrophic with the methan expanding to 160...
More than 16 million have died from Aids-related illnesses, with 2.6 million (a record) in the past year. "Life expectancy in southern Africa is expected to fall from 59 in the early 1990s to 45 between 2005 and 2010." "The...
November 22, 1999
A team at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a transistor ten times shorter than those currently in use. 400 times more of them can be fit on a chip. (via Slashdot)...
Its first unmanned rocket, Shenzhou, was launched successfully, a test for future manned space travel....
November 21, 1999
A collection of articles, scenarios and data on what different aspects of the San Francisco Bay Area will be like in 2020....
In the UK "call centres employ over 400,000 people, a figure predicted to rise to over a million by 2004."...
November 20, 1999
Microsoft, the National Computational Science Alliance, the University of Washington and Sony demonstrated more than 2 Gbps througput on a wide area network....
The middle classes delaying childbearing until later in life will be able to provide very well for their kids, while children born to younger, poorer mothers will be far worse off. The increasing amount of elderly will drain resources from...
November 19, 1999
Teams at Rice and Yale Universities have developed a molecular computer switch using chemical processes rather than photolithography. "'It really looks like we're going to have hybrid molecular- and silicon-based computers within five to 10 years,' Tour said."...
The homeless are taking advantage of Net connections in libraries and special cybercafes set up for them. Free email, classifieds, resum...
A group at Bell Labs have developed a 50-nanometer transistor. It should overcome limits faced by conventaionl transistors....
November 18, 1999
In 1995 Rodrigo Baggio started a computer school in a Rio de Janeiro favela with computers donated from C&A. Now his Committee to Democratise Information Technology has set up 107 schools in 13 states. A school was set up in...
A team at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan have found that mice live up to a third longer if they're missing a certain gene. "It's really the first time that anybody has intervened to extend the lifespan of...
November 17, 1999
The creators of the UK's Legoland are working on a project to build a hotel in space and expect to have it running by 2017. It will be built mostly of scavenged orbiting rubbish, will offer spacewalking excursions to the...
November 16, 1999
If the Human Genome Project and Celera join forces the genome could be complete as early as next year....
A group at the Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany have used the two halves of DNA spirals like velcro to stick together tiny objects....
Stephen Chou at Princeton University has a concept for high density storage using electrons to cut the tiny pits on his penny-sized CDs rather than light (whose wavelength is too long). These CDs can store about 180 GB....
November 15, 1999
A look at how robots will become more common outside factories over the next 10+ years, in industries like meat packing (second highest accident rate after construction), shops, households....
US atronomers have the first visual confirmation after watching a planet pass in front of a distant star. It confirms that calculations about such planets are correct....
A deal has been signed which sets China on course to join the World Trade Organisation subject to member agreement. Easier access to China for foreign companies and to foreign markets for China whose state industries will face increased competition....
More from Nicholas Negroponte (and others). Electronic paper, consumable computers for health checks, computers with common sense, and other more down to earth stuff. Apparently the world's biggest producer of tyres is now Lego....
So says Nicholas Negroponte, who's described as an "internet guru" so it must be true. "Even more products than people will be connected to the web ... 'Think of Barbie dolls. There are likely to be more Barbie dolls connected...
November 09, 1999
Three Dutch scientists are developing a method of mass producing meat without animal suffering. Samples of animal cells are cultivated on a matrix of collagen....
In December the US Air Force will launch a fleet of small experimental satellites. Clusters of tiny satellites weighing as little as one pound are envisioned over the next twenty years....
November 07, 1999
Deposits of methane gas beneath the ocean floor are the planet's largest untapped energy reserves. However, global warming or poor drilling methods it could let the methane loose, and with one cubic metre of this methane hydrate converts into 164...
November 04, 1999
A team from Yale and Rice Universities have demonstrated computer memory with elements the size of single molecules....
Kevin Warwick at the University of Reading, UK, will have a chip implanted in his arm in 2001. It will radio nerve impulses to a computer which will then be able to play them back, causing his arm to replay...
November 03, 1999
University of California at Berkeley researchers are building a fly-sized robot for surveillance. Made of stainless steel with Mylar wings its $2.5 million cost is being funded by the Office of Naval Research....
According to the GartnerGroup. Also that over 95 percent of mobile phones shipped in 2004 will be WAP-enabled and 75 per cent will have Bluetooth....
Of European households with computers only 9 per cent are online (I think it's 25 per cent in the US?). In 1998 the average American user spent 32 hours per week online compared to 22 in Europe....
The Intelligent Autonomous Systems group at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, have developed a robot which kills slugs. It can identify the slugs and captures them at the rate of ten a minute. When it's full,...
General Motors' OnStar system will let you check stocks, weather, email by speaking to it. And hoot the horn when you say "horn"....
November 01, 1999
Sweden's largest electric utility, Vattenfall AB, is going to install servers in over 400,000 homes over the next two years. The servers will be able to connect kitchen appliances, security systems, heating control systems and utility meters over phone lines...
Iowa is testing voting over the Internet alongside its conventional election. Voters receive a unique ID number to enter, and their vote is encrypted and "read anonymously" at a computer clearinghouse. Washington and Virginia have already conducted successful and secure...
