Liquid radio — Could temporary jets of seawater be used as functioning radio antennas?
Apparently so: as PopSci reports, “communications are vital” for vessels at sea, but deck space for “all the large antennas necessary for long-range (and often encrypted) communications” can be hard to come by. “So U.S. Navy R&D lab SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) engineered a clever scheme to turn the ocean’s most abundant resource…
This Week’s Best Web Video
This week is set to inspire information-overload: from tech news to lessons with a Drunken Master, we dare you to walk away without learning something new. WEB My Roommate The Cylon: Battlestar Galactica fans, if you don’t know about this Web series, shame on you. Though, if you’re not a BSG fan, you might not…
Building bigger bugs
Giant insects are stalwart monsters in science fiction, and million of years ago, arthropods grew to Brobdingnagian sizes. But why aren’t ants the size of rats disrupting our picnics today? Giant insects make great movie monsters. Everyone deals with bugs on a daily basis – usually by squishing or exterminating them. We all know what…
Gizmodo University: Guest Lecture
This week, Gizmodo University is proud to have a very special, super-secret guest lecturer! This is presented in addition to our normal curriculum and in conjunction with Sparkle Labs so step on into class and see who we’ve brought! Good afternoon class. As you know, we were scheduled to begin Discover Electronics week 3: Sensors…
To Improve Online Maps, Microsoft Analyzes GPS Recordings of 30,000 Beijing Cabbies
Cab drivers know their cities intimately, using shortcuts and side streets to bypass traffic jams and (hopefully) get you to your destination more quickly. Now Microsoft is hoping to tap into this talent and design better driving directions for online maps. Engineers at Microsoft Research Asia are analyzing GPS data culled from 30,000 Beijing cab…