The Kano Build-It-Yourself Computer For Kids

 DEC 22, 2013SCOTT LEE4 COMMENTS

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Kickstarter project Kano has managed to raise funding in excess of $1.5M on the crowdfunding website.  The Kano is built on top of the Raspberry Pi and is a build-it-yourself computer which was launched on Kickstarter with the aim of raising $100,000 in crowd-funding to push 1,000 of its Kano kits to the market by the summer of 2014. The campaign has now closed and the Kano guys have raised just over $1.5 million.

The kits are mainly aimed at kids and are designed for an “end-to-end computer” experience.  The cost of each kit is $99, which obviously arrives in pieces, so the curious user can put it together. Kano’s very simple guidebooks lead the user on to start coding and creating things.
This project is a simple and fun, step-by-step computer kit that makes the Raspberry Pi a great deal more accessible to everyone. Kano comes with a Keyboard, an SD card, a makeable casing, some case mods, lots of games and levels, a DIY speaker, Level books with plenty of hours worth of projects and an operating system.
Kano is not just repackaging Pi hardware but building its own software on an operating system, Kano OS, which is built on top of Debian Linux (using the Debian Wheezy distro) and a Scratch-like visual coding environment called Kano Blocks.

The start-up has also taken in seed funding from friends & family to develop the kit over the past twelve months or so, including some funding from Index Ventures via one of its three co-founders, Saul Klein, a partner at that firm.
Kano is opening with the idea of serving global and emerging markets, starting with languages of English, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin versions of its build-it-yourself kit’s guidebooks. The company is also working on adding more languages, including Hindi.
[Image via brit]
SOURCE: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/19/the-kano-build-it-yourself-computer-for-kids-raises-1-4m-on-kickstarter/
   

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Plextor Adds Full-Disk Encryption To Solid-State Drives

 APR 3, 2014SCOTT LEENO COMMENTS

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Plextor, a digital storage technology professional, has announced the initiation of the M6M mSATA and M6S solid-state drives (SSDs).  Due in the second quarter of 2014 in 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB capacities, we look forward to seeing them soon.
The M6M will have a server-grade Marvell 88SS9188 controller, Toshiba Toggle flash memory and exciting firmware, which Plextor has developed.  Plextor’s True Protect technology supports highly developed data integrity checks and 256-bit advanced encryption standard (AES) full disk encryption for data privacy while out and about.

The M6M can reach top speeds of 94,000 Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) as well as 80,000 IOPS; furthermore, with a sequential read and write speeds of up to 520 megabyte per second (MB/s) and 440 MB/s, the M6M is comparable to any desktop computer.
As well as all this, the M6M also supports device sleep (DEVSLP).  This means the SSD can decrease its consumption of power to 2 mW.  This expands battery longevity and continues in just 100 ms.  A practical and light product, the M6M series now includes a 512 GB mSATA, which makes it great for large videos, high-resolution images and audio files.
A product manager for Plextor, Yaping Zheng stated, “The M6M is all about real-world performance. We’ve optimised this compact SSD to deliver the best possible computing experience.  We used the latest generation of components, then included a new version of True Speed for even smoother long-term operation, and focused on increasing the random speeds to give the fastest everyday operating performance.”
The M6S SSD is also capable of delivering identical maximum random read/write speeds and sequential read/write speeds as the M6M.  It also comes with power savings of 30 percent to 50 percent, compared to the M5S.  The 128 GB drive is 50 percent faster then the last one and is also thinner.  The M6S fits into thin notebooks, which should make many people happy!
“The new M6S gives desktop and notebook users the ultimate system upgrade. Its combination of speed and efficiency makes it an ideal replacement for a hard drive,” says Yaping Zheng, “By installing an M6S rather than a traditional hard drive, Windows 7 boots in a quarter of the time, applications start quickly, and saving and loading become almost instant. Our tests even show that notebook users can gain an extra 30 minutes of battery time by using an M6S.”
As always, if you would like to leave a sensible comment, then please do so in the comments section below.
[Image via maximumpc]
SOURCE: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/plextor-encryption-142713
   

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Human To Dolphin Translator

 APR 7, 2014SCOTT LEENO COMMENTS

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A few years ago I was on holiday visiting Cuba.  Whilst I was there, I had a chance to swim with Dolphins.  I have to say that it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life.  As you may know, Dolphins are some of the most intelligent animals that live in the oceans of our planet.  Man has used them in times past to locate weapons, such as mines, because they can be trained to follow instructions; military experts have done this with the desired results.
Although they can be trained to follow instructions, would it be possible to communicate with dolphins in an even more personal manner, through the use of language translation? This field may have been thought up before, but this time around, a group of scientists have been developing a human-to-dolphin language translator.  Believe it or not, it actually sounds crazy enough to work.

The director of the Wild Dolphin Project and creator of the Cetacean Hearing Telemetry device (CHAT), Denise Herzing, was astounded when he first heard of a successful dolphin translation, which could mean a breach in that huge wall of one way communication between humans and dolphins.
The CHAT device works in this manner; underwater microphones will be used to capture dolphin noises, including clicks and whistles.  This is where the technology comes in to its own, as most of the noises are inaudible to the human ear because of the different frequency.
Instead of translating all the sounds that the dolphins made, Dr. Herzing ‘taught’ the dolphins eight ‘words’ which are related to their environment, including the word ‘“seaweed” and “bow wave ride”. This type of strategy has allowed Herzing to narrow the wide audio range to eight individual noises.  The first of the sounds that were successfully mimicked was “seaweed”, and while it has been heard only once so far, it may be the important first step to a brilliant future.
As always, if you would like to leave a sensible comment, then please do so in the comments section below.
[Image via divetalking]
SOURCE: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/04/human-to-dolphin-language-translator-being-researched-upon/
   

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Robotic Fire-Fighters Tested By US Navy

 APR 7, 2014SCOTT LEENO COMMENTS

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Robots are the future!  Industry and everyday life relies on the work of robots of varying degrees.  Now there are robotic fire fighters who could help put out fires and protect firemen and women from fires they would otherwise, be unable to enter.
As one can imagine, a variety of tasks and commands will need to be performed by these robots: balancing, using fire hoses, extinguishing fire with water and turning valves.  Another key task will be searching for survivors using a vision system. They need to be able to tolerate extreme heat and the US Navy plans on testing the new technology this summer.

Engineers at Virginia Tech, along with other universities within the United States, have built the Shipboard Autonomous Fire-fighting Robot (SAFFiR).
The Office of Naval Research says, “The human-sized autonomous robot is capable of finding and suppressing shipboard fires and working seamlessly with human fire-fighters.”  A machine like this should also be “able to withstand higher heat for longer periods than human fire-fighters,” it adds.
The USS Shadwell is a ship that has been decommissioned by the US navy and is regularly set ablaze in order to test new technology and equipment for fire fighting.  There are two varieties of the robot, created at Virginia Tech and the universities of California, Los Angeles and Pennsylvania by researchers who will test them aboard this ship.  The first robot will be 5 feet (1.5 m) and the other one will be taller but a lot more cutting-edge.
Using robots in the military is not new.  There are many battlefield robots used by the Pentagon’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in order to make battle safer for human soldiers.  As well, they are trying to augment soldiers’ capabilities with exoskeletons and ‘smart’ uniforms.
Now there is a new unit dedicated to researching the cross between biology and engineering.  They aim to create solar cells, renewable energy and man-made super-materials.  Many critics wonder if this move towards technology in the military will head towards creating artificial life.
Meghan Neal, journalist at Motherboard, says: “It makes you think: Why bother with mechanical robots when you can engineer fake human replicants to fight your battles?”
As always, if you would like to leave a sensible comment, then please do so in the comments section below.
[Image via nrl.navy]
SOURCE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26850631
   

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Saturn Moon Has Underground Ocean

 APR 8, 2014SCOTT LEE3 COMMENTS

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Researchers say they have identified an underground body of water that is as large as North America’s Lake Superior, on a small moon of Saturn, called Enceladus.  The water is hidden beneath nearly 25 miles of ice!
The ocean was found at the south pole of the tiny moon.  The moon itself is about as wide as the state of Arizona, ranking the moon among with the likes of Saturn’s Titan and Jupiter’s Europa.  Coincidentally, they are also believed to hold larger amounts of water beneath frozen ice.  In 2005 researchers detected plumes of water vapour ejecting from long fractures in Enceladus’ surface known as tiger stripes.

This research was led by Luciano Less from the Sapienza University of Rome “This moon was believed to be geologically inactive — essentially a dead body…the fact that there are these geysers which eject more than a hundred kilometres over the surface was surprising,” Less said.
Less and his fellow colleagues have determined the presence of liquid water while looking into a gravitational anomaly located around Enceladus’ south-pole region. The team noticed that there was not enough mass at the surface to account for the gravity they were detecting; some mass appeared to be missing, so they knew that something denser must also be present. Because liquid water is denser than ice, its occurrence is able to explain and correct the measured anomaly. These results are being published in the journal; Science.
The data was based on data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which has been traversing Saturn’s moons for approximately a decade now. This information has seen an unexpected turn for Enceladus, which at the beginning of Cassini’s mission was seen as an uninteresting subject to pursue.  The Cassini spacecraft mission was supposed to end in 2008, but it’s been extended twice since, first to 2010 and now until 2017.  ”When you go to visit a planet you have to make up time for unexpected findings and further investigations of these findings…Luckily, Cassini was extended and we had the opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into the interior structure of the body,” Less said.
As always, if you would like to leave a sensible comment, then please do so in the comments section below.
[Image via scitechdaily]
SOURCE: http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/3/5578076/saturn-moon-has-water-ocean-underground-enceladus
   

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Prototype Battery Can Fully Recharge A Phone In 30 Seconds

 APR 13, 2014ALLANAHNO COMMENTS

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An Israeli startup company claims to have created a smartphone battery that can charge in just 30 seconds, thanks to the use of nanotechnology. StoreDot revealed its prototype battery at Microsoft’s Think Next conference on Monday.
They showcased how a smartphone that has 0% battery, can be revived to 100%, in just 30 seconds. The battery, which is currently about the size of a laptop battery, contains bio-organic nanodots, which are miniscule conductive crystals that aid this super quick charge.

SuperDot is hoping that with further development, it can reduce the size of the product so that the final result will be more like the size of a normal smartphone battery.
Word is that production will begin in late 2016 but Dr Doron Myersdorf, StoreDot’s CEO and co-founder, said that “The only disadvantage is that the industry is not ready for it. “We are talking about a new type of materials that can be introduced into different types of devices.”

So from that you can conclude we won’t be seeing the charger commercially available for some time yet but when it does the company says to expect the charger to cost around double that of a normal smartphone battery.
[Image via YouTube]
SOURCE: http://mashable.com/2014/04/08/30-second-battery-charger
   

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