Articles by Technology Review from July 2013

Reputation.com says its ready to unveil a place where people can offer personal information to marketers in return for discounts and other perks.It has become the Internets defining business model: fr...

See the best new ideas in computer graphics and interaction from last weeks Siggraph conference.Dazzling new techniques in computer graphics and provocative new ideas about interaction were shown off ...

Can an armband that controls gestures by measuring muscle activity make it as a mainstream gadget?When it comes to gesture-control systems like Microsofts Kinect, some applicationslike gamingare obvio...

Researchers manipulate mouse neurons to create a false memory; the work could lead to a better understanding of how memories form.Scientists have created a false memory in mice by manipulating neurons...

Atlas is meant to assist in emergencies, but it could also inspire other machines to walk in our footsteps....

Can wearable devices augment our activities without distracting us from the real world?Ever talk to someone at a party or conference reception only to discover that the person you are talking to is co...

Computing pioneer Doug Engelbarts inventions transformed computing, but he intended them to transform humans.Doug Engelbart knew that his obituaries would laud him as Inventor of the Mouse. I can see ...

Leap Motions low-cost gesture-control device is not as easy to use as you might think.For the past couple days, Ive been gesticulating even more than normalat times, subtly, at other times, wildlywhil...

Researchers unveil one of the most complex electronic systems ever built on plastic.A sheet of thin plastic that emits lights with an intensity that precisely reflects the amount of pressure applied t...

Udacity cofounder and CEO Sebastian Thrun says more AI is coming to online education, but well still need humans to grade our English essays.Sebastian Thrun has worn many hats in the tech world: Stanf...

Researchers have launched a crowdfunding campaign for a propulsion system that could send loaf-sized satellites on interplanetary voyages.A mini-satellite, no bigger than a loaf of bread, could push i...

Tony Hsieh believes the formula for innovation is more collisions and, occasionally, llamas.Tony Hsieh doesnt really like sports, but he loves llamas and community gatherings. So once a month during b...

Technologies that can pull tumor cells from patients blood are giving researchers an unprecedented look at cancer.In the near future, oncologists may be using a finger-size plastic chip with tiny chan...

A layer-by-layer fabrication tool lets researchers quickly form complicated biological tissue in three-dimensional space.By adapting a programmable device used to manufacture integrated circuits, rese...

Startup scenes are popping up in cities all over the world. Brad Feld is part of the reason.The fever for startups is now planetary. Every city seems to have a growing scene of young software companie...

New humanoid robots will compete in a contest designed to test the ability of machines to take on extremely dangerous and high-stakes human jobs.The latest innovation from the U.S. Defense Departments...

A government research facility uses a megawatt-scale simulator and supercomputer to test futuristic grid technologies without disrupting todays grid.A new $135 million research facility aims to solve ...

As Google Glass gains momentum, companies and researchers are trying to decide what will be the next big breakthrough in wearable technology.Were just starting to see the early adopters of wearable co...

Wireless connections in cars are becoming faster and more capable, bringing new features, new servicesand new problems.Most new cars roll off the production line today with as many sensors, computer c...

One man, Kai-Fu Lee, did more than anyone else to turn the Chinese capital into a technology powerhouse.Cities all over the world have tried to duplicate Silicon Valleys prowess at churning out startu...

By exploiting some exotic acoustic techniques, researchers have built a window that allows the passage of air but not sound...

Aerospace companies are working on hybrid electric airplanes, and the earliest versions will likely arrive before the end of the decade.Last month Siemens and EADS demonstrated a new gas-electric vehi...

Protesters rallied behind a printed petitionbut modern technology also played a role.It started not with a Facebook group or Twitter hashtag but a paper form. The day before what may have been the lar...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverIs The CMB Telling Us That Dark Matter Is Weaker Than Weakly Interacting?...

Falling costs are making fuel-cell vehicles look like a plausible alternative to conventional cars.Hydrogen-powered vehicles have been out of the spotlight for years, but theyre about to make a surpr...

Analysts believe that insurgents in Afghanistan form similar networks to street gangs in the US. So the software for analysing these networks abroad ought to work just as well at home, say military re...

Analysts believe that insurgents in Afghanistan form similar networks to street gangs in the US. So the software for analysing these networks abroad ought to work just as well at home, say military re...

New tricks will enable a life-logging app called Saga to figure out not only where you are, but what youre doing.Many of us already record the places we go and things we do by using our smartphone to ...

Laboratory advances hint at how additive manufacturing technology could change the way some electronic devices are made.Todays 3-D printers can generally only build things out of one type of materialu...

A sight-restoring implant approved for sale in the European Union on Wednesday is the second artificial retina to become available in the region....

Back when computers were still just number-crunching machines, Douglas Engelbart foresaw their more powerful application in helping humans collaborate.One summer day in 2000, I was in the Silicon Vall...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reviews big changes in energy use since the Declaration of Independence.Its easy to forget just how recently we started using fossil fuels in large amounts. ...

A mixture of three cell types self-assembles into a liver bud that can be seen with the naked eye.In work that will raise hope that organs could be repaired or even grown from scratch using a patients...

Google cofounder Sergey Brin says the wearable computer Google Glass has taught him the value of communicating using only photosCan it be long before Google adds photo-based messaging to its wearable ...

Many poorly-secured company servers are exposed online, offering attackers ready made backdoors to wipe or steal dataA security researcher that (gently) probed every computer on the Internet to discov...

Astrophysicists believe that our galaxy must be filled with more dark matter than ordinary matter. Now astronomers say they can find no evidence of dark matters gravitational influence on the planets....

For 50 years, people have tried to figure out what makes Silicon Valley tick. The answer is people.By 1960, Silicon Valley had already captured the attention of the world as a teeming technology cente...

NREL shows that Cornings Willow glass can be used to make flexible solar cells that could be installed in place of roofing shingles.Researchers at the U.S. governments National Renewable Energy Labora...

The Pebble smart watch has risen from being reliant on crowd-funding to appearing on shelves at a mass-market retailer....

The 2013 Global Innovation Index looks very similar to last years, but its ranking of the most efficient innovators features several new names.What makes a nation innovative? A series of factors that ...

Justin Rattner, who just stepped down as Intel CTO, discusses mobile computing and the future of Moores Law.Intel came to dominate computing by consistently beating others at packing transistors ever ...

The ability to control one quantum particle by manipulating another somewhere else sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Now physicists say they know how to do it...

An early-stage company aims to commercialize new optical materials for denser data storage and better cancer treatments.A startup focused on developing novel optical materials received $1 million in f...

A decade after the Enron scandal, the companys internal messages are still helping to advance data science and many other fields.Former Enron executive Vincent Kaminski is a modest, semi-retired busin...

The first of the low-cost smartphones running the Firefox OS will start selling on Tuesday in Spain.On Monday, Mozilla announced the rollout of the first smartphones running its Web-based Firefox OS. ...

Improved technology enabled the NSAs mass surveillance programs and future improvements will make collecting data on citizens easier and easier.Recent revelations about the extent of surveillance by t...

Improved technology enabled the NSAs mass surveillance programs and future improvements will make collecting data on citizens easier and easier.Recent revelations about the extent of surveillance by t...

A study of the social network behind the Occupy movement shows that the most vocal participants were highly connected before the protests began but have now largely lost interest, say social network r...

A computer can learn to recognize, and respond intelligently to, users emotional state.Even a good teacher may not always be able to tell, at a glance, which students are quietly struggling and which ...

Whats the secret to becoming the next technology hot spot?...

In Googles backyard, a startup has its eyes on glasses that offer more ways to interact with the digital world.While Google toils to perfect the head-worn mobile computer known as Google Glass, a star...

In Googles backyard, a startup has its eyes on glasses that offer more ways to interact with the digital world.While Google toils to perfect the head-worn mobile computer known as Google Glass, a star...