A game without a point hits the iPhone and is well worth the wait

www.tgdaily.com:
YOU WON’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES
Zen Bound challenges you to wrap a rope around mid-air suspended object to cover its surface with paint. This ingenious idea is combined with great use of both touch and tilt controls, resulting in unique meditative experience. On top of that, Zen Bound features perhaps most convincing graphics we have seen on iPhone to date, with super shading, immersive sound backdrop and moody tune.

See Video at page 2 of original article.

IP Man – very good kung-fu drama, recommended

IMDB:
Tagline: The celebrated Kung Fu master of Bruce Lee.
Plot:      A semi-biographical account of Yip Man, the first martial arts master to teach the Chinese martial art of Wing Chun.

Air-breathing planes: the spaceships of the future?

www.newscientist.com:
For decades, engineers have dreamed of a better way: a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle that would be lighter, cheaper, and easy to reuse. A fleet of these vehicles, supporters say, could be almost as easy to maintain as conventional jet planes, reducing the preparation time before each launch from months to days or even hours.

Since most of a rocket’s weight is taken up by oxidiser, one logical approach is to save weight by developing an engine that can use oxygen from the atmosphere to burn fuel at least part of the way.

Are we getting any closer to this goal? Last week, the UK firm Reaction Engines announced they had received €1 million from the European Space Agency to develop three key parts for an air-breathing rocket engine. The firm hopes those components could one day help fulfill a decades-old plan to build a space plane called Skylon, which could take off and land on a runway like a conventional jet.

The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time

www.wired.com:
Netbooks could drive production of even crazily cheaper, lighter-weight computers. “If everything you’re doing is online, then the netbook becomes a screen with a radio chip. So why do you need a motherboard?” OLPC designer Mary Lou Jepsen says. “Especially if you want the batteries to last. Why not just make it a screen and a really cheap $2 to $5 radio chip?” The cloud is also probably going to get powerful in ways that now seem like fantasy. AMD is working on an experimental 3-D graphics server farm that would run high-end videogames, squirting a stream out to portable devices so you could play even the most outrageously lush games without a fancy onboard processor. Patrick Moorehead, AMD’s vice president of marketing, recalls that in 2007 gamers had to buy special powerful desktop machines loaded with RAM and $600 graphics cards to play Crysis: “Now imagine you’ve got servers running Crysis and streaming it to an iPhone or a netbook, sending just the vectors that let you navigate the game.”

Is Aging an Accident of Evolution? -A Galaxy Insight

www.dailygalaxy.com:
“Everyone has assumed we age by rust. But how do you explain animals that don’t age? Some tortoises lay eggs at the age of 100, there are whales that live to be 200 and clams that make it past 400 years.”

Top 10 Google Earth Finds – Photos

www.time.com

Big Dog’s US Army Antics Keep Freaking Us Out – amazing video

i.gizmodo.com:
If you were freaked out by the spooky Big Dog quadruped robot, you are going to love seeing it in action alongside US Army soldiers, following them like a smart giant dog.

And that’s what it is: A really smart giant dog. Big Dog—which is being developed by robotics company Boston Dynamics—has some of the most advanced artificial intelligence and navigation systems in the planet. In fact, US Army officials are stunned by its programmed behaviors, which make Big Dog extremely helpful in the battlefield.

Chair kills teenager

www.tgdaily.com:
Chicago (IL) – That gas cylinder in office chairs we don’t really think about could be more dangerous than generally believed. A 14-year old Chinese teenager suffered heavy blood loss after the device exploded and turned out to be fatal.

Introducing the gel-filled army helmet that will crush bullets as they penetrate it

www.dailymail.co.uk:
On the face of it a layer of orange jelly may not sound the best way to protect a soldier’s head from high velocity bullets and shrapnel.

But the British Army’s standard-issue combat helmet is set to be upgraded with a liner made from gooey miracle gel, which responds to a sudden impact by locking instantly into a solid form – absorbing huge amounts of energy harmlessly.

A UK-based technology company was today celebrating a £100,000 contract from the Ministry of Defence to develop its D3O shock-absorbing gel to help save the lives of British troops fighting on the frontline in Afghanistan.