SUSO

W.m.d

Fry the lot of ‘em, with the Weapon of Mosquito Destruction.

A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the “Star Wars” defense system to knock Cold War Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito.

Lead scientist Jordin Kare says that the laser will be able to sweep an area and "toast millions of mosquitoes in a few minutes." Responding to questions about any potential harm the laser could pose to the eco-system, Kare said: “There is no such thing as a good mosquito, there’s nothing that feeds exclusively on them. No one would miss mosquitoes.”

It fires at mosquitoes once it detects the audio frequency created by the beating of its wings (very cool). The laser then burns them on the spot. This is not a sci-fi fantasy, the project aims to prevent the spread of malaria.

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Categories General Tags Technology Science

By on 1/4/09

Projecting Glory

Take a peek into the future (blown up huge on your living room wall...)

Despite the presenters - two big kids that seemingly have been dropped in an industrial sized sweet shop - this film should excite the most blasé of mobile technology users. This is projection on a whole new scale, and as Dick or Dom points out, the exciting thing is that this will soon be in all our mobile phones. Well done to the creators, Microvision, who look set to convert years of hard work into mass adoption. This is a little gem of an invention.

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Categories Design Tags Mobile Technology

By on 25/2/09

Giving It Away

Moby’s Gratis project shows the majors how it’s done.

If we’re being honest, it’s not every day we find ourselves wistfully browsing the pages of www.moby.com. But the king of ad soundtracks has uploaded an open-ended letter to EMI - who own Mute, the label he releases on - that caught our attention via one or two external music sites this morning. The message is hardly wrapped in cotton wool; addressing EMI directly, he openly questions their approach to digital distribution. Why do they limit sales of his music to iTunes when the majority of his listeners buy their music from Beatport where tracks sell for two or three times as much? The letter itself is interesting, but it doesn’t really tell us anything new - we know what the majors are like and still the world looks on with bewildered eyes. More interesting, to us at least, is the MobyGratis project, a free resource of unreleased Moby material made available for independent filmmakers struggling to covers the costs of licensing audio for their works.

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Categories Music Tags Music Technology

By on 2/10/08