Articles by Technology Review from March 2013

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverEliminating Cracking During Drying...

A decade-old fix could have easily stopped this weekends attack on an anti-spam company, but the truth is many Web companies simply ignore such fixes.An attack that disrupted Internet service over the...

A three-part blog series from antivirus software maker Norton details the surprisingly long history of mobile malware.Mobile Security, a mobile seucrity news site maintained by Symantecs Norton antivi...

Making liquid fuels from low-carbon sources is better than mounting solar panels on planes.Its being billed as a triumph for solar power, but the Solar Impulse solar-powered airplane could also be see...

My pledge to never use the i-word about technology again. (Ill need help keeping it.)I have a problem with intuitive interfaces, and if you care about how technology connects with people and with itse...

Clogged wireless networks spur a plan to speed data to smartphones, for a price.No matter how quickly you dispatch data over the Internet, the last link is increasingly a wireless link to a customers ...

Googles Keep app copies key Evernote functions, but theres plenty of room for both note-taking apps....

Genetic logic gates will enable biologists to program cells for chemical production and disease detection.If biologists could put computational controls inside living cells, they could program them to...

Lessons from the Razer Edge, the promising new gaming tablet.The Razer Edge, a new gaming tablet running Windows 8, sure looks like the future of computing. The key is its modularityits ability to swi...

A voice-analysis program could help coaches recognize concussions ringside or on the side lines, say researchers at the University of Notre Dame....

University of Calgary researchers create new method for making water-splitting catalysts using abundant metals.One of the main barriers blocking wide-scale use of fuel cells is the expensive catalysts...

The ailing smartphone maker announced better-than-expected results, but still faces its most important moments ahead.BlackBerry impressed Wall Street this morning with its first earnings report to inc...

Interactive Data Visualization App Sheds Light on Energy Use and Inefficient Buildings.Most buildings waste energy but how inefficient one building is compared to others is difficult to know. At a cit...

Mobile phone data reveal the counterintuitive effect that strong social ties can hinder rather than promote the spread of rumours, say social network theorists...

Small reactors have some benefits, but they wont make nuclear as cheap as natural gas.Small, modular nuclear reactor designs could be relatively cheap to build and safe to operate, and theres plenty...

Two studies suggest that microbes play a role in weight loss.Microbes in the gut may be a key to helping people lose weight, according to two tantalizing new studies....

By tracking moving objects, Volvos system could help prevent accidents.Cyclists and drivers have been sworn enemies for as long as anyone can remember. Biking around Boston means dodging opening car d...

Putting genome data into the public domain advances science, but nearly all of it can be linked to someone.Last week European scientists were shamed into cutting off public access to a genome sequence...

Astrophysicists have built and tested the building blocks of a global detector capable of spotting topological defects in the cosmos as the Earth passes through them...

With security, reliability, and legal issues yet to be resolved, the first self-driving vehicles will perform only specific tasks.Drivers who use a parking garage in Ingolstadt, Germany, could be forg...

IBM materials advance shows another promising path to replace the foundation of todays computing technologies.Researchers at IBM last week unveiled an experimental new way to store information or cont...

Qualcomm is already worth more than Intel. Now the chip maker wants everyone to know it.Qualcomm sells chips that go inside TVs, BMW dashboards, game consoles, and, most important, one-third of smartp...

The smartphone revolution will bring with it unprecedented surveillance by companies hoping to make money from user data.The smartphone boom seems likely to bring with it another, less welcome, bonanz...

An Amazonian future of many screens and few processors.A patent application envisioning a new future for computing has recently come to light, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is one of the applicants. The p...

A common piece of advice given to entrepreneurs may lead them to overlook or dismiss good ideas.I read a headline on TechCrunch this week about how the startup, Proven, is helping people apply build r...

Ever wanted to scan another website without switching browser tabs? Glimpse is for you.Thanks to responsive design, most modern websites (including this one) serve up different versions of themselves ...

Replacing terrestrial broadcasts with a cellular network capable of video-on-demand wont make sense unless viewing habits change dramatically, concludes a new study on the future of television...

The optical properties of nanowires suggest a new way to make more efficient solar panels....

An unlikely team comes together with a startup that aims to change retail by becoming the marketplace for the sharing economy.A decade ago, Andy Ruben was in charge of global strategy at a company tha...

When viewers decide whats on TV, who wins?In a salvo against Netflix, which has gained attention for its original series House of Cards, Amazon announced today that it would be producing a pilot for a...

Startup Sherpas predictive intelligence offers valuable insights when and where you need them.Google Now, an app for Android smartphones that serves up useful information such as flight details when i...

A blob of intelligent goo can compute solutions to one of the most famous problems in mathematics and produces a route map as well, say computer scientists...

A blob of intelligent goo can compute solutions to one of the most famous problems in mathematics and produces a route map as well, say computer scientists....

An integrated circuit that adjusts to damage shows a way to make ordinary chips more efficient and reliable....

An RFID-reading, motion-sensing wristband buzzes to tell health-care workers if they are washing their hands properly.A startup called IntelligentM wants to make hospitals healthier by encouraging wor...

The man responsible for Amazons mobile shopping strategy talks about app design, shopping habits, and how to make it easier to act on your impulses.Sam Hall doesnt just eat his own dog food, as the Si...

Apple is using a combination of solar, fuel cells, and renewable energy purchases to meet its clean-energy targets.Apple this week said that all of its data centers are powered by renewable energy. Ho...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverRadioAstron a Telescope with a Size of 300 000 km: Main Parameters and First Observational Results...

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will leave a legacy of progress on spectrum policy and broadband expansion in a nation of monopolies charging high pricesIn Hong Kong, Im told you can get 500 megabits-...

HBO mulls breaking apart from the bundle. Will its broadband partners acquiesce?Earlier this week, I mentioned what Aereos CEO had told me would be a metric for progress in TV innovation: la carte pr...

A professional medical geneticists group recommends that certain genetic risk factors be examined in all medical DNA sequence tests.On Thursday, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics r...

As the debate continues over drones in U.S. skies, other countries could show the way.When I visited Australia a couple of years back, I picked up the phrase no worries which I still use in my speech ...

EnerVault later this year will test its first grid-scale flow battery that uses low-cost materials and proprietary pumping system.Flow batteries have emerged as one of most promising ways to store man...

The push to extend fracking to arid regions is drawing attention to water-free techniques.Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, uses large amounts of water injected into wells under high pressure to help...

Thousands of startup companies see mobile computing as their chance to strike it big. We picked five.Some 50 mobile-computing startup companies get funded by investors each month in the United States...

Startup Navisens says it can find people indoors using motion sensors and math.Now that its easy to find your way in the real world with just a smartphone in hand, the next logical navigation frontier...

Keeps paper-like qualities might just beat its computery ones.In January, I did something heretical for a productivity-app-obsessed tech writer: I threw away the list apps on my phone and went back to...

The Chinese government is allowing major solar companies to fail, and thats a good thing.The Chinese government helped finance a massive expansion of the solar industry, helping to create a glut of so...

And the odds would improve further, say physicists, were we to make serious efforts to counter existential threats such as asteroid strikes...

With BrightSources Ivanpah solar plant about to come online, the company looks to its next projects for the economics to improve.BrightSource Energy is planning to complete construction of one of worl...

In some countries, the Internet is confined to certain sites as part of a strategy to help wireless carriers offer starter packages.With more than half the people in the world still not online, Facebo...

By monitoring the path of stem cells in the body, scientists can better explore experimental therapies, and doctors can better tune treatments in patients.Giving patients stem cells packaged with sili...

Study shows mixed answers to the question of whether Tweets drive ratingsrevealing limits to what we know about social medias real-world effectsCan Tweets drive television ratings? Meaning, when peopl...

Smart watches sound neat, but I doubt Ill be wearing one soon. ...

As startup Solexant resurfaces for funds, consider the possibility that thin-film will still have its day.Thin-film solar is back in the news as Solexant, a company thats been hiding out for the past ...

Optical trickery lets a modified LCD produce hologram-like still images and videos.A new kind of three-dimensional display developed at HP Labs plays hologram-like videos without the need for any movi...

Liquid Robotics raised $45 million to build out its fleet of self-propelled marine robots.Liquid Robotics is betting that autonomous vehicles will emerge as the best way to troll the oceans to gather ...

Central Banks could use random investment strategies to make markets more stable, say econophysicists...

Manufactured sapphire is incredibly strong and scratch resistant. Now falling costs and technology improvements could make it competitive with glass.Manufactured sapphirea material thats used as trans...

A startup called Rabbit believes consumers will jump for always-on video chatting that lets you watch movies with an infinite number of friends.With so many video-chat applications already on the mark...

No one really knows if ads on smartphones work.Where consumer attention goes, ad dollars are supposed to follow. That hasnt quite happened on mobile devices....

Laboratory advance shows that nano-imprinting could help the hard drive industry meet its long-term goals for data storage capacity.Researchers at HGST, a major manufacturer of hard disk drives, have ...

An ABC app is only a half-step forward.The New York Times is reporting that The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, is developing an app that would live stream ABC content to phones and tablets. Repo...

By reviving lost species, a new company could put a warm and fuzzy face on advanced reproductive engineering.Two of biotechnologys most prolific and far-sighted researchers say theyre teaming up to st...

Abu Dhabi diversifies its energy with $600 million solar project.The oil-rich sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi this week dedicated what it says is the largest concentrating solar power plant in the world, a sig...

Computer scientists have recreated the international and organisational structure of large corporations using publicly available data on social networks...

Advances in genetic engineering have some biologists convinced theyll re-create extinct species.Passenger pigeons once darkened the skies over the eastern United States. Huge flocks would roost on che...

Neuron-level whole-brain activity maps could one day help explain brain function and disfunction.Image: Neurons glow red as they fire in this whole zebrafish larva brain. Credit: Misha Ahrens and Phil...

Enough with innovation for innovations sake.BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins took a shot at Apple today, speaking to a reporter for The Australian Financial Review. While couching his statement in respec...

Mark Weiser, who coined the term ubiquitous computing, foresaw current device trends decades ago.Tabs, pads, and boards. The phrase may sound like a piece of techno-buzzy cud coughed up at a TEDx or S...

Two startups combine Google Street View method with infrared imaging to show homeowners where energy is being wasted.One of the well-worn tools of home energy auditors is thermal imaging cameras that ...

A powerful new search engine designed to help diagnose rare diseases could prove a boon for both medics and the public...

Solar manufacturers like Suntech are struggling. Hundreds need to die for the industry to recover.Suntech, a Chinese company that as recently as 2011 was the worlds largest producer of solar panels, i...

A program called Scribe harnesses humans on the Internet to generate speech captions in under five seconds.Computer scientist Jeffrey Bigham has created a speech-recognition program that combines the ...

Patients can turn off an experimental treatment if side effects get too bad.A unique new cancer treatment uses gene therapy to induce a cancer-fighting immune response whose intensity can then be cont...

Some venture capitalists are avoiding consumer apps and putting their money behind the picks and shovels of mobile computing.Viddy, a mobile video-sharing service that bathed in media attention and mo...

A light-sensitive polymer could offer a new way to develop artificial retinas.A team of neuroscientists and materials scientists has shown that a photovoltaic polymer can restore light-sensing capabil...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverCharged Black Hole Remnants at the LHC...

Early treatment may be key to a drug-free life for a small percentage of patients.Last week, scientists reported that a baby had been functionally cured of HIV (see A Toddler May Have Been Cured of HI...

Google kills its Reader, beloved by many (but not enough).Across the Internet, journalists and news junkies are letting out a sustained cry: Why, Google, why? The company announced late Wednesday that...

A maximum sentence of 25 years for enabling hackers to vandalize a news website is totally nuts.Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it indicted Matthew Keys, 26, Reuters deputy so...

Energy-hungry Japan extracts natural gas from deep-sea methane hydrates, but its not clear whether the flammable ice makes economic and environmental sense.In a move to get closer to developing its ow...

President pushes proposal to fund R&D with money from oil and gas leases on federal lands.President Obama today made the case for using money from oil and gas leases in the Outer Continental Shelf...

Personalized and interactive advertising experiences are becoming a lot more important than just simple banner ads.Would you follow your favorite basketball players shoes on Facebook or Twitter? Thats...

Putting free U.S. college courses online is only the first step to filling higher education needs around the world.As online education platforms like Coursera, edX, and Udacity burst onto the scene ov...

The spread of mobile computers, in numbers.Smartphones have created a bridge between two previously separate industrieswireless networks and personal computing. For Internet firms and device makers,...

Googles brand name made Reader work in Iranians favor.Journalists and other professional nerds are angry thatGoogle is snuffing out its moribund RSS software, Reader. But as Quartzs Zach Seward points...

Sorting concussion patients based on internal brain injury could help doctors identify those with more severe cases.Brain scans may be able to detect two distinct kinds of brain injury in patients who...

Has a product ever provoked as much hostility before even hitting the market as Googles geek specs are generating? Theres something special about the eyes.Almost 10 years ago I spent a day in Toronto ...

A Science article suggests a framework for monitoring research on how to cool the earth.Efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide arent working, so some researchers think we may need to res...

A human-computer interaction luminary rifles through his massive electronics collection to prove todays hottest gadget isnt so new after all....

The mean centre of world lighting is moving east at the rate of 60 km per year, according to a new analysis of archived satellite images...

A new venture lets patients choose how their data is used for medical research and offers sophisticated privacy settings.As advances in genomics, molecular analysis, and data processing have propelled...

A Scottsdale, Arizona-based startup is now selling batteries that promise to be a cheaper alternative for grid backup.After years of development, a novel battery technology from the startup Fluidic E...

Apple and Samsung, beware. Practically anyone can make a smartphone these days.A little over a year ago, 38-year-old entrepreneur Liang Liwan wasnt making smartphones at all. This year, he expects to ...

Netflix now allows frictionless sharing of the movies you watch on Facebook.Back in 2011, following Facebooks F8 developers conference, a new phrase began to buzz: frictionless sharing. Soon, news-sha...

The technology for making fuel from wood chips and grass is late, but still on the way.A few years ago, large scale, billion-gallon-a-year cellulosic ethanol production seemed around the corner. Inste...

The worlds first electrostatically-driven graphene speaker matches or outperforms commercially available earphones, say physicists...

Some studies suggest we can easily drop nuclear and fossil fuels, but they raise serious questions.Every once in a while someone will publish a roadmap for running the world (or a state) on 100 percen...

The New York Times prototypes a new site design for readability, while The Daily Mail mints money by actively thwarting it.The New York Times revealed a prototype of a new online article experience ye...

Fast reactors can shrink nuclear-waste stockpiles, but can designers tame the inherent hazards?Fast reactors, whose high-speed neutrons can break down nuclear waste, are on the road to commercializati...

A viral phone game in Pakistan trains people to use their keypadand gives them the skills they need to hunt for a job.The global spread of mobile phones has brought new opportunities to many poor peop...

Two studies suggest venting on so-called rant sites isnt great for you. Grr.Fans of ventingonline and offmay find this interesting: According to recently published results of two studies, people who r...

After its IPO on Wednesday, Silver Spring Networks will try to become profitable by helping utilities manage energy demand.One of the oldest smart grid technology companies, Silver Spring Networks,is ...

A $70 device will tell you how efficiently youre driving, and can even call 911 for help in the event of an accident.You probably have a rough idea of how much you spend on gas each week, but chances ...

Ptolemy corrected the brightness of stars he observed in a way modern astronomers only invented 2000 years later, according to a new analysis of his ancient star catalogue...

Transatomic is developing a new kind of molten-salt reactor designed to overcome the major barriers to nuclear power.Transatomic Power, an MIT spinoff, is developing a nuclear reactor that it estimate...

The worlds largest search engine is now experimenting with jewelry that would eliminate the need to remember dozens of passwords.As part of research into doing away with typed passwords, Google has bu...

In which I upgrade my dumb phone reluctantly.You may recall that I have become one of these Thoreau types who has forsaken all society, by which I mean that I have given up my iPhone. Or, not quite g...

Autonomous technology is being developed at a remarkable rate. This could raise new fears about cars malfunctioning....

Philips invites developers to write apps for its Hue wireless LED light bulbs.Home lighting has gained new status in the world of network-connected digital gadgetry....

Cyber-espionage is old news. Whats new is the rhetoric, which is reaching a fever pitch right now.For technology that was supposed to ignore borders, bring the world closer together, and sidestep the ...

Algae-like structures inside a Sri Lankan meteorite are clear evidence of panspermia, the idea that life exists throughout the universe, say astrobiologists....

Using smartphone microphones, the crowdsourcing tool could deduce the current atmosphere at bars and eateries.A research project called Bing Now, demonstrated at Microsofts headquarters last week, cou...

Broadband communication and custom signal-processing chips power a new brain-recording device that may one day help paralyzed people.A new wireless brain implant could be an important step toward tech...

New electronic tattoos could help monitor health during normal daily activities.Taking advantage of recent advances in flexible electronics, researchers have devised a way to print devices directly on...

Suneet Singh Tuli, the man behind the ultracheap Aakash 2 tablet, says the West doesnt understand mobile business in the developing world.A devout Sikh, Suneet Singh Tuli, 44, has found his own way to...

Hysteresis + path prediction = slick UX.Drop-down menus and submenus are a necessary evil of graphical user interfaces. For a site like Amazon, which forces the customer to manipulate an endless ...

There are now many general-purpose consumer LED bulbs that give off good light. With so many, how can you tell the difference?After years of work, LED lighting company have finally achieved their goal...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverDark Energy From Entanglement Entropy...

Illumina will work with SynapDxs to find a blood-test that could allow treatment to start earlier.Massachusetts startup SynapDx announced on Wednesday that it will work with DNA sequencer manufacturer...

An iconic Silicon Valley company says its in the second year of a five-year turnaround plan. But the IT business is moving much faster than that.I met with two top executives from Hewlett-Packard this...

The small-on-purpose social network adds new features, but no clear purpose.The tech world was buzzing about Facebooks redesign yesterday, but I was more interested in what was new at the anti-Faceboo...

With Microchips BodyCom technology, the human body is the medium for short-range authentication.Leave a gun lying around, and anyone who picks it up could fire it. That could change, though, with newl...

Companies showed off their latest clean energy innovations at the ARPA-E Summit.The Department of Energys Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy funds R&D in energy technologies that are too...

Everpix organizes photos after analyzing them with software that can detect things such as animals, outdoor scenes, and people.Browsing digital photos usually means scrolling through them chronologica...

Some of the nuclear power plants shut down after the Fukushima disaster could restart soon.As the second anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima nears, Japan is considering restarting nuclear...

Smartphones are digital Swiss Army knives that do just about everything. Can the worlds leading GPS company survive?Garmin was once one of the worlds hottest growth companiesthe next Apple, according ...

The social network is adapting to the popularity of image sharing and mobile devices.The worlds biggest social network has a problem. As the Web becomes increasingly mobile and image-centric, it must ...

Test in California shows edge over Google Maps and WazeBack in September we wondered whether Appleslaunch of a disastrously bad mapping application was a shark-jumping moment for the much-loved compan...

Humans may be wired to respond more to immediate issues like fracking than longer term ones like global warming.An interesting post at The Breakthough Institute website makes a case that environmental...

Tablets have a place in the classroom, but are far from a panacea.Yesterday, at the SXSWedu conference in Austin, Amplify, the education division of News Corporation, debuted a new tablet computer. Th...

Researchers explain the goals and structure of a new brain-mapping project.A proposed effort to map brain activity on a large scale, expected to be announced by the White House later this month, could...

Live updates from the launch event at Facebook headquarters.1:45 p.m.And were out! Zuckerberg has left the front of the room. Im running over to join the Zuck scrum thanks for tuning in!...

Microsoft shows how it tracked the spread of more than 1.4 billion tweets....

Einstein railed against the possibility of spooky action at a distance because it violates relativity. Now Chinese physicists have clocked it travelling more than four orders of magnitude faster than ...

The hype around Googles new wearable computers might not translate into a big market for apps for a while.Last summer, Ian Shakil, then a recent graduate of Stanford business school, got to try on Goo...

To help recruiters, a startup called Gild has created a database of four million software developers and rated their work. Could other fields be next?Winning over recruiters and potential bosses can b...

Researchers have demonstrated a way to give concrete surfaces the ability to heal when small cracks appear, an advance that could allow bridges and other structures to last longer.Even the tiniest cra...

Scientific data not yet in on how much crime-reduction software predicts, and how much it motivates.Seattle last week became the latest city to install software that tries to predict where crime will ...

Philips and Cree predict bright, general-purpose LED bulbs under $10 will be an industry tipping point.Lighting companies are within reach of a price point they think will make bright LED light bulbs ...

Censorship on Weibo, Chinas version of Twitter, is near real-time and relies on a workforce of over 4,000 censors who stop work during the evening news, according the first detailed analysis of censor...

BMWs approach to quelling range anxiety differs markedly from the tactics of other automakers.While they wait for cheaper batteries that can store more energy, carmakers are trying a range of strategi...

The fortunes of the worlds largest social network depend on how much it can earn from mobile advertisements.Scarcely a year ago, Facebook was the poster child for Internet companies blindsided by the ...

Backing a Kickstarter project that works out gives you a rewarding feeling of power over what reaches the market....

An eye transplanted to a tadpoles tail can detect and interpret light.The latest addition to the strange menagerie of engineered animals is a group of blind tadpoles that see out their tails. The find...

Electrically stimulating the brain may enhance memory, but impede with a persons ability to react without thinking.We would surely all love a way to boost our brain power. But new research suggests th...

A modest proposal.Apple is nothing if not brilliant at marketing. Put a lowercase i in front of anything, and it immediately conjures the Cupertino company and its products. Here is a company that pra...

Brain wave patterns show a clear transition to a coma-like state in patients under general anesthesia.Researchers have identified patterns of brain activity that correlate to the loss and recovery of ...

When Google Glass launches it will be used by kids as well as adults.Babies and kids love smartphones and tablets: theyre brightly colored, noisy, respond to touch and belong to adults. Kids will prob...

Cree introduces an LED bulb that mimics the design and shape of traditional incandescent bulb to entice consumers to try LEDs.If youve had any experience with LED light bulbs, you know they can look p...