ThinSkin writes "Photon processors that transmit data via light, not electrons, are slated to enter production in mid-2006, ExtremeTech reports. Headed by a UCLA professor and a Nobel Prize winner, startup Luxtera claims that its optical modulator clocks in at 10-GHz, tens times that of Intel's optical modulator researchers talked about last year. Since the optical module exists as its own entity, it will require a standard CMOS processes to integrate the optical waveguides. Luxtera has worked closely with Freescale Semiconductor to develop this technology."

An anonymous reader writes "The folks over at iPodlounge just released the 2005 edition of their buyers guide. The 10MB 100-page guide can be downloaded here."

yali writes "Did you get a graduate degree from Berkeley? Or maybe you just applied but didn't go there? If so, your identity may have been stolen. A laptop was stolen containing names, social security numbers, birthdates, and addresses of grad students, alumni, and applicants. University police suspect that the thief just wanted the laptop, but the irony of California's mandatory notification law is that the thief may now know they have something even more valuable. Berkeley has set up a website with information on the breach."

An anonymous reader writes "Make magazine has been out for a little over a month now and was given high marks in a Slashdot review. Ars Technica has taken their review one step further by building the $14 steadicam project and testing it out. (be sure to check out the QuickTime video at the end to see their results...)"

An anonymous reader writes "German electronics company Kleinhenz is shipping a network-enabled Linux system built into an RJ-45 Ethernet jack. "Picotux" has a 55MHz ARM processor, 2MB of Flash, 8MB of RAM, a serial port, and five lines of GPIO. It measures 0.75 x 0.75 x 1.4 inches (19 x 19 x 36mm), and weighs 0.64 ounces (18 grams), packaged in a metal housing. A wireless 802.11 version appears to be on the horizon, too. So, if you've ever wanted to network-enable, say, a robot, boombox, or model airplane, this could be the system for you." Is this really the world's smallest? It looks a bit chunkier than a tiny gumstix machine.

tabdelgawad writes "The Washington Post offers this writeup about how the U.S. Secret Service uses a Distributed Network Attack program to crack encryption on computers and drives seized as evidence. How can brute force still succeed with 256-bit encryption, you ask? Customized password dictionaries from the seized computer's email files and browser cache: People still use non-random passwords."

Mr. Carmack has updated his blog with news of his latest interests. Apparently mobile gaming on cell phones has consumed a large portion of his time of late, and he has some witty commentary on programming for the emerging game platform. From the article: "I'm not a cell phone guy. I resisted getting one at all for years, and even now I rarely carry it. To a first approximation, I don't really like talking to most people, so I don't go out of my way to enable people to call me. However, a little while ago I misplaced the old phone I usually take to Armadillo, and my wife picked up a more modern one for me. It had a nice color screen and a bunch of bad java game demos on it. The bad java games did it."

John Conner writes "With a fairly simple routine, you can model evolution with Lego Mindstorms. In this hackaday experiment, robots were created that could mate, evolve, and become extinct. Similar technology could be used in real applications for deployed robot optimization and automatic software updates. Now that physical robot replication is near, it's only a matter of time before... well... You'd better make robot friends while you can."

karvind writes "Siemens researchers have developed a cell phone featuring a built-in projector system. A laboratory model was presented at CeBIT 2005 in Hanover. The system makes it possible to project a complete keypad or display onto a surface. With a special pen, users can write on the virtual keypad and operate the phone's functions. Other projection keyboard concepts can be found here and here"

karvind writes "PhysOrg is running story about a small autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, named Spray which was launched yesterday (March 25, 2005) about 12 miles southeast of Bermuda. The two-meter-(6-foot)-long orange glider with a four-foot wingspan will slowly make its way northwest, crossing the Gulf Stream and reaching the continental shelf on the other side before turning around and heading back to Bermuda, where it will be recovered in July. Spray made history last fall as the first AUV to cross the Gulf Stream, but this time it is making the trip from the other direction."

Vrogy writes "RoboGames (formerly RoboOlympics) kicked off on Friday in San Francisco with competitor check in and sub-Lightweight class fights. This competition, following in the footsteps of events such as Robot Wars and Battlebots, pits remotely-controlled fighting machines against each other in a bulletproof steel arena. The Competitors are many and tickets are still available. Saturday and Sunday will feature up to 340, or Superheavyweight robot combat, with such crowd favorites as Alcoholic Stepfather, a superheavy that spews flame nearly 25 feet, and Megabyte, a heavyweight that spins a steel shell of doom. RoboGames isn't only for fighting robots, though, it will also feature miniature robotic wrestlers called Robo-Ones, Lego bots, BEAM bots, robotic soccer games, and all kinds of art bots- it's like a festival of robots!"

lousyd writes "Offering hope for new forms of ambulatory robots, biologist Christine L. Huffard, at UC Berkeley, has caught individual octopi sneaking away from predators by using two of their arms as legs. They use the other six arms to make themselves look like coconuts or algae. The research is being done as part of a project on robotics. This reminds me of the Far Side cartoon where the cows drop to all fours when humans come around, but resume standing on two legs otherwise." And I for one welcome our new mollusk overlords.

OnePragmatist writes "Cyberinfrastructure Technology Watch is reporting that BlueGene/L has nearly doubled its performance to 135.3 Teraflops by doubling its processors. That seems likely to keep it at no. 1 on the Top500 when the next round comes out in June. But it will be interesting to see how it does when they finally get around to testing it against the HPC Challenge benchmark, which has gained adherents as being more indicative of how a HPC system will peform with various different types of applicatoins."

wired_parrot writes "If you have trouble waking up, try this: MIT media lab has created an alarm clock that, when you press the snooze bar, runs off into a corner, a different hiding place every day. Try hitting the snooze bar again now!"

chadwick writes "It seemed like a sure thing: the iPod mobile phone. What could be more irresistible than a device combining the digital-music prowess of Apple Computer (AAPL) with the wireless expertise of Motorola (MOT)? Motorola sent its buzz machinery into overdrive in January when it leaked word that the product would debut at a cellular-industry conference in New Orleans in mid-March. Well, hold the phone. At the New Orleans confab, a frustrated Edward Zander, Motorola's chief executive, stood before a roomful of analysts and reporters and said the handset's debut would have to wait. "

Mentifex writes "As reported in the New York Times, Kansas City Star and other news media, Jeff Hawkins (co-author of On Intelligence) and Donna Dubinsky, co-founders of Palm Computing and Handspring, along with Dileep George as the principal engineer, are starting an AI company named Numenta as a follow-up to Hawkins' recent work on visual processing."

karvind writes "Physorg is running a story about OmniTread: a serpentine robot designed to traverse extremely difficult terrain, such as the rubble of a collapsed building. The 26-pound robot is developed at the University of Michigan U-M College of Engineering. It moves by rolling, log-style, or by lifting its head or tail, inchworm-like, and muscling itself forward. Link to videos. Check out there other robots as well."

Lisa Gade, the chief geek over at MobileTechReview.com, reports that they've just published an in-depth review of the Electrovaya Scribbler SC2200. "It's a Windows XP Tablet Edition with lots of the features you'd expect on a high end slate machine like a 12.1" screen you can write on, a Dothan 1.4GHz processor and WiFi. But its real claim to fame is the huge capacity 10,200 mAh SuperPolymer battery which will get you through a work day without a charge."

aws910 writes "Reuters is running an article on how flashy web design is impacting the usability of internet-enabled mobile devices, with quotes from Tim Berners-Lee. Although the article is sparse on details, it is an interesting topic for discussion. Having recently bought an internet-enabled cellphone, I can honestly say that most websites are painful to view on a 240x320 screen over a GPRS connection(EVDO is expensive/US-only). Have we moved away from 56K-modem-oriented design, only to be pulled back in that direction?"

PCM2 writes "MobilePC magazine is running an exhaustive history of portable computers, going all the way from the IBM Portable 5100 to last year's OQO. Do you remember the three-pound Epson HX-20 from 1982 that boasted a 50-hour battery life? Or that the first color portable came from Commodore? Interesting stuff." They have the compaq luggable I learned BASIC on in middle school in the 80s. 28lbs of power baby!