Technology of the Future: Checking on the Status of Flying Cars, Teleportation and More

If you’re reading this blog, you probably agree with us that the development of technology is basically the most fascinating thing ever. It’s strange to think, though, that when you look back at old movies and TV shows set in the future, you don’t really see anything like the Internet or Facebook-enabled smartphones

2013, where is hell my flying car?

Honda Air conceptualized by advanced design studio in Pasadena, California
For decades pop culture has been telling us that flying cars were supposed to be all the rage of the 21st Century. Movies, TV shows and even cartoons have been fixated on the notion of flying cars.

Apple Details 'Economic Impact' On Cupertino As It Readies New Spaceship-Inspired Campus

 

Apple AAPL -0.62% released an 82-page report today, detailing the “economic impact” the company has had on its hometown of Cupertino, California, and will continue to have on the local economy after  it builds a  proposed new spaceship-inspired headquarters called Apple Campus 2. Among the interesting data points: Apple’s “conservative” expectation that it will grow the number of Cupertino-based, full-time employees by a modest 10 percent in the next few years from its current headcount of 16,000.

Government Informant Adrian Lamo Testifies To Bradley Manning's 'Idealistic' Motives In Leak Trial

Adrian Lamo’s decision to finger Bradley Manning as one of WikiLeaks’ most prolific sources of secrets may have led to the young Army private’s arrest three years ago. But on Tuesday, Lamo provided courtroom testimony that could draw an important legal distinction in Manning’s motives: that Manning leaked his troves of classified documents to WikiLeaks for what Lamo believed were “idealistic” intentions, rather than a desire to aid America’s foreign enemies.
Responding to a series of questions from Manning’s attorney David Coombs, Lamo confirmed that he believed Manning to be “ideologically motivated,” “idealistic,” and “well-intentioned,” responding in the affirmative to each of those descriptions as Coombs offered them. Over several minutes, Lamo offered terse answers such as “yes” and “correct” to dozens of questions describing Manning and Lamo’s instant message chats in 2010, in which Manning confessed to Lamo that he had leaked thousands of classified Pentagon and State Department to WikiLeaks. Lamo later turned those chat logs over to Army investigators.

Social Networking Superstars

 

No. 1 Justin Bieber

Twitter followers: 15.4 million
Tweets: 12,537
Facebook fans: 38.2 million

Why Enterprise Is Avoiding Windows 8

Despite Microsoft MSFT -0.73% shipping more than 100 million Windows 8 licenses, Redmond’s newest operating system is not making much headway in the enterprise world, with IT decision makers deciding to give it the cold shoulder.

Invasion Of The Machines: iRobot Hunts Bombs, Cleans Floors, Now Wants To Heal You This story appears in the June 10, 2013 issue of Forbes.

As he mashes the joystick controls, Colin Angle grins like a 6-year-old boy playing with his first radio-controlled car, freshly torn wrapping paper thrown aside. But the 45-year-old iRobot IRBT -2.95% cofounder and CEO isn’t testing out a toy–he’s putting a $100,000-plus piece of machinery to work, a remote-controlled 60-pound minitank with four cameras, rubber treads and a 6-foot extendable arm.

Can Data Storage Ever Reach An Absolute Limit?

Yes. The maximum possible amount of data you can cram into a given space is the Bekenstein bound.

So what does that translate to? Well, the E is actually mass-energy. But assuming your storage device is a spherical thing that has mass, the number of bits you can store is around (2.57*10^43)*(mass of your storage device in kg)*(radius of your storage device in m).

Yahoo's Top 10 Biggest Acquisitions

. Broadcast.com

Yahoo’s biggest acquisition to date took place in 1999 with its purchase of internet video streaming service Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion. Yahoo promised to

Twitter Just Launched Two-Factor Authentication To Foil Hackers: Turn It On

After a series of nasty hacks of high-profile accounts, Twitter just turned on a feature that’s becoming the new normal in Web application security: two-factor authentication.
As the video above shows, Twitter users can now sign up to have a unique code sent to their phone by text message whenever they log in from a new computer. That ensures that any hacker who tries to steal your password, say with a phishing attack or keylogging spyware, would also have to compromise your phone, too, creating a serious security barrier.

Banks Looking To Cash In By Mining Social Data

Across industries, organizations are collecting and using large sets of data to get a leg up on the competition. One industry that has been particularly aggressive at harnessing the power of data is the banking business.

How Xbox One's New Kinect Could Reinvent TV Navigation

By now you may have heard a little about the new Xbox One’s Kinect, the motion tracking sensor that will ship with every Xbox One later this year.
The companion device, which was introduced yesterday at the Xbox One unveiling at Microsoft ‘s Redmond campus, is a blocky little bar with a small camera and highly-sensitive microphone that looks pretty much like the first-generation Kinect.

Why The New Google-NASA Partnership Marks A New Era In The History Of Computing

It’s easy to become jaded about announcements in the tech world.  Slick, media savvy CEO’s announce “revolutionary” new products with metronomic regularity.  Version 1.0 becomes 1.1 and eventually 2.0 and on and on.  It all seems like a blur.

Google Continues To Play Catch-Up With 'All Access' Music Service As Critics Sound Off

Google CEO Larry Page on stage at Google I/O 2013: "We should be building things that don't exist." (Jonathan Hall/ Forbes)

On Wednesday during the closing segment of a three-and-a-half hour keynote presentation at his company’s developers conference, Google CEO Larry Page chided the media for its interpretation of his company’s relationship with other technology firms. Making one of his first public appearances since missing company events with vocal cord ailments last year, Page made it clear that he was unhappy with the portrayal of Google as a divisive figure in Silicon Valley.
“Every story I read about Google is kind of ‘us versus some other company’ or some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting,” said Page. “We should be building things that don’t exist.”

Why Facebook Should Buy Waze

By Tomio Geron and Ryan Mac
Mark Zuckerberg in early April held a flashy press conference to launch Facebook FB -2.01% Home, a new app for Android that turns a phone into an always-Facebook device. Its Cover Feed takes over the phone’s home screen with wall updates. Its Chat Heads messaging system has photos of your friends in cute circular icons that can be accessed from other apps.