The technology behind Google's great results

The technology behind Google's great results

As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

Why Google's patented PigeonRank™ works so well

PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.

When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.

Integrity

Google's pigeon-driven methods make tampering with our results extremely difficult. While some unscrupulous websites have tried to boost their ranking by including images on their pages of bread crumbs, bird seed and parrots posing seductively in resplendent plumage, Google's PigeonRank technology cannot be deceived by these techniques. A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.

Data

PigeonRank Frequently Asked Questions

How was PigeonRank developed?

The ease of training pigeons was documented early in the annals of science and fully explored by noted psychologist B.F. Skinner, who demonstrated that with only minor incentives, pigeons could be trained to execute complex tasks such as playing ping pong, piloting bombs or revising the Abatements, Credits and Refunds section of the national tax code.

Brin and Page were the first to recognize that this adaptability could be harnessed through massively parallel pecking to solve complex problems, such as ordering large datasets or ordering pizza for large groups of engineers. Page and Brin experimented with numerous avian motivators before settling on a combination of linseed and flax (lin/ax) that not only offered superior performance, but could be gathered at no cost from nearby open space preserves. This open space lin/ax powers Google's operations to this day, and a visit to the data coop reveals pigeons happily pecking away at lin/ax kernels and seeds.

What are the challenges of operating so many pigeon clusters (PCs)?

Pigeons naturally operate in dense populations, as anyone holding a pack of peanuts in an urban plaza is aware. This compactability enables Google to pack enormous numbers of processors into small spaces, with rack after rack stacked up in our data coops. While this is optimal from the standpoint of space conservation and pigeon contentment, it does create issues during molting season, when large fans must be brought in to blow feathers out of the data coop. Removal of other pigeon byproducts was a greater challenge, until Page and Brin developed groundbreaking technology for converting poop to pixels, the tiny dots that make up a monitor's display. The clean white background of Google's home page is powered by this renewable process.

Aren't pigeons really stupid? How do they do this?

While no pigeon has actually been confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court, pigeons are surprisingly adept at making instant judgments when confronted with difficult choices. This makes them suitable for any job requiring accurate and authoritative decision-making under pressure. Among the positions in which pigeons have served capably are replacement air traffic controllers, butterfly ballot counters and pro football referees during the "no-instant replay" years.

Where does Google get its pigeons? Some special breeding lab?

Google uses only low-cost, off-the-street pigeons for its clusters. Gathered from city parks and plazas by Google's pack of more than 50 Phds (Pigeon-harvesting dogs), the pigeons are given a quick orientation on web site relevance and assigned to an appropriate data coop.

Isn't it cruel to keep pigeons penned up in tiny data coops?

Google exceeds all international standards for the ethical treatment of its pigeon personnel. Not only are they given free range of the coop and its window ledges, special break rooms have been set up for their convenience. These rooms are stocked with an assortment of delectable seeds and grains and feature the finest in European statuary for roosting.

What's the future of pigeon computing?

Google continues to explore new applications for PigeonRank and affiliated technologies. One of the most promising projects in development involves harnessing millions of pigeons worldwide to work on complex scientific challenges. For the latest developments on Google's distributed cooing initiative, please consider signing up for our Google Friends newsletter.

Solar panels promise to lower your electricity bill by supplementing the energy you buy from the local power company. But choosing and installing solar panels can be an overwhelming task.

Solar cells, which are linked together in a panel, convert sunlight into electricity via photovoltaic materials, such as silicon. When sunlight hits these materials, the light's energy is absorbed, and that energy causes electrons within the material to escape from their position in the atom of silicon or other photovoltaic material. These released electrons are captured to produce an electric current.

As of the third quarter of 2014, more than 17,500 megawatts of cumulative solar electric capacity are operating in the United States, which is enough to power more than 3.5 million average American homes, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Residential solar panels were the fastest-growing category, with 58 percent growth during the quarter, the association reports.

Cloud/Client Architecture

As mobile computing meets cloud computing, centrally coordinated applications that can be delivered to any device will continue to grow. Apps that can use intelligence and storage effectively will see lower bandwidth costs. Expect to be able to use applications simultaneously on multiple devices

     Risk-Based Security and Self-Protection

While 100% security solutions aren’t feasible, advanced risk assessment and mitigation will come into play in the next few years. Security will move away from perimeter defense to multi-faceted approaches. Expect security aware application design, dynamic and static application security testing, and runtime application self-protection

10 Ways Technology Will Change The World By 2025

Wikimedia Commons

As technology changes the way we live our day-to-day lives, it is fascinating to imagine what the future will bring. We may like to imagine one day living on Mars with technology that lets us teleport our toothpaste from CVS and the ability to apparate like Harry Potter.

To help us better imagine what the future holds, Thomson Reuters'Intellectual Property & Science division compiled a report of the 10 innovations they believe will take place by 2025. They looked through research databases to find the top patent fields with the most inventions containing a priority date of 2012 or later.

These are the 10 innovations Thomson Reuters anticipates will become a reality by 2025:

Dementia will decline.

Thanks to a better understanding of the human genome and genetic mutations, doctors and scientists will be better able to detect and prevent diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's disease. By identifying problematic DNA, scientists will be able to produce actual technology to fight the biological decline of one's mental capacity.

Flickr/waynenf

Solar will be the biggest source of energy.

By 2025, methods for harvesting, storing, and converting solar energy will be advanced enough to make it the primary source of energy on our planet. Something called solar photovoltaic energy will use solar panels to heat buildings and water while powering devices at home and in the office.

Type I Diabetes will be preventable.

A human genome engineering platform will make it possible to modify disease-carrying genes and prevent conditions like Type I Diabetes. Doctors and scientists will be able to modify the RNA and DNA sequences that pass on the disease.

Food shortages and food price fluctuations will no longer be a problem.

Lighting and imaging technologies will improve crop growth year round and combat the problems of traditional farming. We will also be able to grow genetically-modified crops indoors. That means that disease and environmental factors will be less of an issue for crops, and the food we buy at grocery stores will be more consistently priced and available.

Bradley Berman/ReadWrite

Electric transportation will be huge.

Tesla is already making a splash, but by 2025 electric vehicles will take over traditional vehicles. Their battery will be able to last longer, so you will be able to travel longer distances more easily. And airplanes will adopt the technology too, which will totally change the way we travel.

Everything will be digitally connected.

Wireless communications will dominate our everyday lives by 2025. Cars, homes, and appliances will be connected, and this will be the case around the world in every location. New technology will be able to store energy and serve as electrodes to deliver this hyper-connectivity.

Biodegradable packing will be the norm.

Packaging will be made of cellulose materials that are plastic-like but actually made of plant matter so it's biodegradable and better for the environment than the plastic bags we currently use at grocery stores.

There will safer, healthier drugs to fight cancer.

The toxic chemicals currently used to treat cancer can have harmful and debilitating side effects on patients, but by 2025, cancer-fighting drugs will be more precise and exact, leading to reduced side effects. More targeted drugs can bind to specific proteins and antibodies to cause a very specific action, and paired with advanced knowledge of gene mutations, this will lead to better treatments for cancer.

We will create DNA maps at birth to manage disease risk.

DNA mapping will be the norm thanks to advancements in single-cell analysis, nanotechnology, and Big Data technology. This could theoretically replace blood tests as a more accurate way of detecting diseases.

Teleportation will be tested.

Recent research related to the Higgs Boson particle, also known as the "God particle," will help forward actual experimentation with teleporting. The idea is that turning off the Higgs Boson particle could let you travel at the speed of light and essentially teleport. It will only be at the beginning of testing, but there is a good chance there will be significant investing in testing teleportation.

After the Epic 5DS, Canon Brings Out the T6i

 

The Rebel series of Canon is perhaps one of the best tools for a budding photographer. This affordable camera family provides the same specs as the higher end 7D cameras but come at an affordable price tag. Canon understands the volume of sales in the segment and puts active efforts into updating these mid-range DSLRs. Now the company has unveiled the new Rebel T6i and Rebel T6s to take on the market.

In Burst mode the camera shoots at 5 fps.

This time around Canon seems to have given some thought into their product. The last offering known as the T5i (Canon 700D) was just a nominal improvement over its predecessor T4i (Canon 650D). Canon T6i gets 24.2 Megapixel APS-C sensor with 19-point autofocus. It offers an ISO range of 100-12800 which is expandable up to 25600. The camera shoots continuously at 5 frames per second (fps) which is great for shooting action shots.

The Rebel T6i comes with a 24.2 Megapixel APS-C image sensor

The 3 inch swivel display also returns to this device that comes handy while shooting videos. Like the Rebel models before it, the T6i allows you to shoot 1080p videos at 30 fps.

The second launch from Canon is the T6s that offers a few additional features over the T6i. The T6s lets users shoot HDR video and also offers a built-in electronic level meter. The unique bit added to the T6s is the LCD data panel on the top. This feature till now was only available with the models above the 60D.

The Rebel T6s is the first Rebel DSRL with an LCD information display.

The T6i is priced at $749.99 for the body-only, $899.99 with an EF-S 18-55mm STM lens and $1,099 with an EF-S 18-135mm STM lens. The T6s will cost $849.99 the body-only and $1199 with an EF-S 18-135mm STM lens. The cameras are expected to arrive in the market by the end of April.

Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard

The Logitech Bluetooth

Multi-Device Keyboard K480 is designed for use with up to three devices, regardless of computing platform. Now, you can work on a report on your computer, and with the flick of the Easy-Switch dial, respond to a message on your smartphone or type a tweet on your tablet – all from the Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard K480.

Rocket-Powered Car Aims to Break Land Speed Record

To the average person, 800 mph (1,290 km/h) might seem blisteringly fast. But for a rocket-powered car, that's pretty slow — at least to Mark Elvin, lead engineer on a project that aims to break the world land speed record with a supersonic car.

The so-called Bloodhound car is designed to go superfast. The goal is to accelerate to 1,000 mph (1,609 km/h) during the ultimate test drive, which is scheduled to take place in 2016. But first, the car will undergo a series of tests at lower speeds — and even those test drives could break the existing land speed record.

The Bloodhound SSC organization, which is supervising the car's design and build, recently released a "model kit" that shows the different pieces of the vehicle.

"You may walk into the workshop and see the chassis sitting on the bed where we're building it, but that's not all we've got," Elvin told Live Science. "It's a really good way of illustrating to the public that we're deadly serious about this, and we've got a lot of car there."

The team hopes that the test runs, slated to take place this summer and fall, will drum up more interest in the project. 

World's First Robot-Staffed Hotel to Open in Japan

What if you could check into a hotel, have your luggage carried to your room and order a coffee — all with help from a team of robots?

A new hotel at a theme park in Nagasaki, Japan, hopes to make that dream a reality. The Henn-na Hotel (whose name means "strange hotel") will be partially staffed by androids that work as reception attendants, robot waiters, cleaning staff and a cloakroom attendant, The Telegraph reported.

Developed by Japan's Osaka University and manufactured by the Japanese robotics company Kokoro, many of the "Actroid" robots resemble a young Japanese woman. The bots will be able to speak Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English, make hand gestures, and pull off the somewhat creepy feat of mimicking eye movements, according to The Telegraph. 

The android-staffed hotel will be part of a theme park called Huis Ten Bosch, which is modeled after a typical Dutch town. Hotel guests will be able to access their rooms using facial recognition software instead of keys, if they choose.

"We'd like to draw visitors to this setting surrounded by nature by establishing a smart hotel, which could be something we could spread through Japan and the world, a spokeswoman for Huis Ten Bosch told The Telegraph.

If the robot hotel is a success, another one may be opened in 2016, the spokeswoman added.

Room rates at the Henn-na Hotel will start at about $60 U.S. (7,000 yen), but will likely remain well below the rates for the park's other hotels, which start at around $170 to $255 (20,000 to 30,000 yen). The use of robots and renewable energy will help the hotel keep its operating costs down, The Telegraph reported.

For those Luddites who prefer a human touch, the hotel will also employ 10 human staff members.

Just four credit card clues can identify anyone

     Drop the disguise: your metadata still gives you away. Four pieces of information is all that's needed to match                individuals to their anonymised credit card records. 

    The findings suggest that tougher measures must be put in place to protect users' privacy, because real identities          may be too tied in to the rich metadata, such as GPS coordinates, collected by modern devices.

Identity by numbers

"We're building this body of evidence showing how hard it actually is to anonymise large sets of data like credit cards, mobile phones, and browsing information," says de Montjoye. "We really need to think about what it means to be make data truly anonymous and whether it's even possible."

The results align with similar experiments performed on supposedly anonymised data. In 2013, de Montjoye's team successfully identified 95 per cent of people from their mobile phone records. Another study, published on Tuesday by researchers at the University of Birmingham in the UK, replicated the results with GPS data collected by phones in New Hampshire and taxi cabs in San Francisco (arxiv.org/abs/1501.06814 ).

Altogether, the research highlights how hard it is to make data anonymous, even for well-intentioned organisations that take steps to strip the data of personal information. Some have suggested using new tools – like de Montjoye's openPDS and the European Union's di.me project – that allow users to control how much of their data third parties can see.

Wireless Power Transmission

Wireless power transmission has been a dream since the days when Nikola Tesla imagined a world studded with enormous Tesla coils. But aside from advances in recharging electric toothbrushes, wireless power has so far failed to make significant inroads into consumer-level gear.

What is it? This summer, Intel researchers demonstrated a method--based on MIT research--for throwing electricity a distance of a few feet, without wires and without any dangers to bystanders (well, none that they know about yet). Intel calls the technology a "wireless resonant energy link," and it works by sending a specific, 10-MHz signal through a coil of wire; a similar, nearby coil of wire resonates in tune with the frequency, causing electrons to flow through that coil too. Though the design is primitive, it can light up a 60-watt bulb with 70 percent efficiency.

Gesture-Based Remote Control

Soon you'll be able to simply point at your television and control it with hand gestures.

Soon you'll be able to simply point at your television and control it with hand gestures.

We love our mice, really we do. Sometimes, however, such as when we're sitting on the couch watching a DVD on a laptop, or when we're working across the room from an MP3-playing PC, it just isn't convenient to drag a hockey puck and click on what we want. Attempts to replace the venerable mouse--whether with voice recognition or brain-wave scanners--have invariably failed. But an alternative is emerging.

What is it? Compared with the intricacies of voice recognition, gesture recognition is a fairly simple idea that is only now making its way into consumer electronics. The idea is to employ a camera (such as a laptop's Webcam) to watch the user and react to the person's hand signals. Holding your palm out flat would indicate "stop," for example, if you're playing a movie or a song. And waving a fist around in the air could double as a pointing system: You would just move your fist to the right to move the pointer right, and so on.

When is it coming? Gesture recognition systems are creeping onto the market now. Toshiba, a pioneer in this market, has at least one product out that supports an early version of the technology: the Qosmio G55 laptop, which can recognize gestures to control multimedia playback. The company is also experimenting with a TV version of the technology, which would watch for hand signals via a small camera atop the set. Based on my tests, though, the accuracy of these systems still needs a lot of work.

Gesture recognition is a neat way to pause the DVD on your laptop, but it probably remains a way off from being sophisticated enough for broad adoption. All the same, its successful development would excite tons of interest from the "can't find the remote" crowd. Expect to see gesture recognition technology make some great strides over the next few years, with inroads into mainstream markets by 2012.

Memristor: A Groundbreaking New Circuit

What is it? As its name implies, the memristor can "remember" how much current has passed through it. And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties. Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off, making it a great candidate to replace today's flash memory.Since the dawn of electronics, we've had only three types of circuit components--resistors, inductors, and capacitors. But in 1971, UC Berkeley researcher Leon Chua theorized the possibility of a fourth type of component, one that would be able to measure the flow of electric current: the memristor. Now, just 37 years later, Hewlett-Packard has built one.

Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and far faster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. They could also replace RAM chips as we know them, so that, after you turn off your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of cost and consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-state computers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster than today's PCs.

Someday the memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states that today's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroes around.

Wireless Power Transmission

Wireless power transmission has been a dream since the days when Nikola Tesla imagined a world studded with enormous Tesla coils. But aside from advances in recharging electric toothbrushes, wireless power has so far failed to make significant inroads into consumer-level gear.

 This summer, Intel researchers demonstrated a method--based on MIT research--for throwing electricity a distance of a few feet, without wires and without any dangers to bystanders (well, none that they know about yet). Intel calls the technology a "wireless resonant energy link," and it works by sending a specific, 10-MHz signal through a coil of wire; a similar, nearby coil of wire resonates in tune with the frequency, causing electrons to flow through that coil too. Though the design is primitive, it can light up a 60-watt bulb with 70 percent efficiency.

 Numerous obstacles remain, the first of which is that the Intel project uses alternating current. To charge gadgets, we'd have to see a direct-current version, and the size of the apparatus would have to be considerably smaller. Numerous regulatory hurdles would likely have to be cleared in commercializing such a system, and it would have to be thoroughly vetted for safety concerns.

Assuming those all go reasonably well, such receiving circuitry could be integrated into the back of your laptop screen in roughly the next six to eight years. It would then be a simple matter for your local airport or even Starbucks to embed the companion power transmitters right into the walls so you can get a quick charge without ever opening up your laptop bag.

Nehalem and Swift Chips Spell the End of Stand-Alone Graphics Boards

When AMD purchased graphics card maker ATI, most industry observers assumed that the combined company would start working on a CPU-GPU fusion. That work is further along than you may think.

 While GPUs get tons of attention, discrete graphics boards are a comparative rarity among PC owners, as 75 percent of laptop users stick with good old integrated graphics, according to Mercury Research. Among the reasons: the extra cost of a discrete graphics card, the hassle of installing one, and its drain on the battery. Putting graphics functions right on the CPU eliminates all three issues.

Chip makers expect the performance of such on-die GPUs to fall somewhere between that of today's integrated graphics and stand-alone graphics boards--but eventually, experts believe, their performance could catch up and make discrete graphics obsolete. One potential idea is to devote, say, 4 cores in a 16-core CPU to graphics processing, which could make for blistering gaming experiences. Intel's soon-to-come Nehalem chip includes graphics processing within the chip package, but off of the actual CPU die. AMD's Swift (aka the Shrike platform), the first product in its Fusion line, reportedly takes the same design approach, and is also currently on tap for 2009.

Putting the GPU directly on the same die as the CPU presents challenges--heat being a major one--but that doesn't mean those issues won't be worked out. Intel's two Nehalem follow-ups, Auburndale and Havendale, both slated for late 2009, may be the first chips to put a GPU and a CPU on one die, but the company isn't saying yet.

The Future of Mobile Phones

Use Any Phone on Any Wireless Network

The reason most cell phones are so cheap is that wireless carriers subsidize them so you'll sign a long-term contract. Open access could change the economics of the mobile phone (and mobile data) business dramatically as the walls preventing certain devices from working on certain networks come down. We could also see a rapid proliferation of cell phone models, with smaller companies becoming better able to make headway into formerly closed phone markets.

 Two years is an eternity in the cellular world. The original iPhone was announced, introduced, and discontinued in less than that time, yet carriers routinely ask you to sign up for two-year contracts if you want access to their discounted phones. (It could be worse--in other countries, three years is normal.) Verizon launched the first volley late last year when it promised that "any device, any application" would soon be allowed on its famously closed network. Meanwhile, AT&T and T-Mobile like to note that their GSM networks have long been "open."

Open access is partially here: You can use almost any unlocked GSM handset on AT&T or T-Mobile today, and Verizon Wireless began certifying third-party devices for its network in July (though to date the company has approved only two products). But the future isn't quite so rosy, as Verizon is dragging its feet a bit on the legal requirement that it keep its newly acquired 700-MHz network open to other devices, a mandate that the FCC agreed to after substantial lobbying by Google. Some experts have argued that the FCC provisions aren't wholly enforceable. However, we won't really know how "open" is defined until the new network begins rolling out, a debut slated for 2010.

With the iPhone, "multitouch" technology (which lets you use more than one finger to perform specific actions) reinvented what we knew about the humble touchpad. Tracing a single finger on most touchpads looks positively simian next to some of the tricks you can do with two or more digits. Since the iPhone's launch, multitouch has found its way into numerous mainstream devices, including the Asus Eee PC 900 and a Dell Latitude tablet PC. Now all eyes are turned back to Apple, to see how it will further adapt multitouch (which it has already brought to its laptops' touchpads). Patents that Apple has filed for a multitouch tablet PC have many people expecting the company to dive into this neglected market, finally bringing tablets into the mainstream and possibly sparking explosive growth in the category.

It's not a question of when Multitouch will arrive, but how quickly the trend will grow. Fewer than 200,000 touch-screen devices were shipped in 2006. iSuppli analysts have estimated that a whopping 833 million will be sold in 2013. The real guessing game is figuring out when the old "single-touch" pads become obsolete, possibly taking physical keyboards along with them in many devices.

PARALLELLA

Parallella is going to change the way that computers are made, and adapteva offers you chance to join in on this revolution. Simply put, it’s a supercomputer for everyone. Basically, an energy-efficient computer built for processing complex software simultaneously and effectively. Real-time object tracking, holographic heads-up display, speech recognition will become even stronger and smarter with Parallella

Smart City a new era of technology

Smart IT and Communications is the nerve center for Smart Cities

• India ranks 122 in the world for fixed broadband penetration, with only 1.1 per 100 inhabitants having access to fixed broadband. (Source: The Broadband Commission)
• India ranks 106 in the world for mobile broadband penetration, with only 4.9 per 100 inhabitants having access to mobile broadband (Source: The Broadband Commission)
• India has around 243 million internet users, with 70 percent accessing the Internet through mobile phones and tablets, and the rest through desktops and laptop computers
• India has around 933 telecom subscribers: 59 percent urban and 41 rural (Source: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India)
• Despite being Facebook’s second largest market worldwide, social media penetration in India remains at just 8 per cent or 106 million active users
• India’s average Internet speed is 1.5 Mbps, the lowest among Asia Pacific region. Only 4.9 per cent of Indians have access to speed higher than 4 Mbps. (Source: Akamai Technologies)

The governments and residents are starting to recognize the role of technology in meeting objectives and to make cities more efficient. IT and communications technology will be a key component of the investments allocated by the Governments to build smart cities.

City administrations are aware of issues like public safety, security, prevention of accidents, terrorism, etc. and to provide swift responses with the help of technologies to monitor, manage and detect critical situations.

To implement Smart IT and communications, policymakers must develop a strong wired and wireless broadband network, and ensure its availability throughout the city to all its residents.

Smart cities will use IT to improve the quality of life of its citizens by providing citizen services over communication networks.

Doxie One Scanner

Doxie One

The Doxie One is a scanner designed to scan all your paper, photos and receipts without the need for a computer. Its compact form factor allows the scanner to be stowed away in a drawer, and setup is quick: You just plug it into a wall socket. Unlike a bulky traditional flatbed scanner, an automatic feeder starts automatically and pulls the sheet through in seconds. Captured images are saved on an included SD memory card, much like in a digital camera. This can then be loaded onto a Mac or PC through a standard flash memory card reader, or to an iPad tablet with Apple’s iPad SD Card Reader.

Price: $149

Livescribe Echo Smartpen

Livescribe Echo Smartpen

The Livescribe Echo Smartpen allows you to record audio while you’re taking notes, and then play them back later. You can save and share interactive notes to your computer, iPad or iPhone via a micro-USB connector that also allows you to recharge your pen. The memory storage holds 400 or 800 hours of recorded audio, depending on the model, and includes an OLED display that makes it easy to navigate smartpen apps.

Cost: Starting at $169.95

Google Creates Fake Human Skin to Test Cancer Fighting Nanoparticles

 

Science fiction has for long imagined an idea of a wonder pill that takes on all the diseases at once. Now Google is attempting to transform that idea into reality. The project is being undertaken at Google’s secret research facility known as Google X.

The Silicon Valley giant had reported last year that it was working on magnetic nanoparticles that would locate cancer cells in the bloodstream. Once they’ve located the cancerous cells, they’d report back to a wrist-worn wearable. Now to test the technology, Google is also working on creating synthetic human skin.

The nanoparticles can be introduced into the body through a pill. These particles are so tiny that over 2000 of them can be stuffed inside a red blood cell. The nanoparticles will transmit the information they possess to the wristband through light signals, and this is where the need for the skin arises. The scientists at Google will study various types of skin based on color, thickness and other features to resemble real human skin. They have already created a pair of arms that have “the same autofluorescence and biochemical components of real arms.”

The study still has a long way to go. According Andrew Conrad, the head of Google’s Life Sciences department, the path ahead is long and hard but they envision it becoming a reality in years and not decades. If successful, this can be a great step ahead in the field of medicine. The nanoparticles can be later programmed to detect all forms of illnesses before they come to the surface. With this, Google once again impresses us with its world-changing research efforts.

Amazing future technology predictions by Ray Kurzweil

Underwater Robots Could Sniff Out Smuggled Drugs, Weapons

A warning to all smugglers: A new underwater robot could be used to sniff out contraband — including weapons and drugs — hidden aboard ships.

Developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the new, oval-shaped robot may be small (it's slightly smaller than a football), but it features some big crime-stopping abilities. One side of the bot is flat, which enables it to slide along the bottom of a ship to perform ultrasound scans of the vessel's hull.

This ultrasound capability not only lets the robot monitor what's inside a ship, but it also enables it to detect false hulls and propeller shafts, which are commonly used by smugglers to hide contraband, according to the researchers. And best of all, the bot's propulsion system is specially designed to minimize visible wake, making the bot a good fit for jobs that require stealth, such as underwater patrolling.

"It's very expensive for port security to use traditional robots for every small boat coming into the port," Sampriti Bhattacharyya, the robot's co-designer and a graduate student in mechanical engineering at MIT, said in a statement. But the MIT robot is relatively inexpensive because it uses 3D printing to make the main structural components for each robot, Bhattacharyya said.

“If this is cheap enough — if I can get this out for $600, say — why not just have 20 of them doing collaborative inspection? And if it breaks, it's not a big deal. It's very easy to make," Bhattacharyya said.

The part of the bot that houses the ultrasound panel, as well as other electronic components, is waterproof. This half of the bot contains a lithium-ion battery that can keep its charge for about 40 minutes, the researchers said. But by making the propulsion system more efficient, the researchers think they can increase the amount of time the robot can spend underwater(before it needs to be recharged) to 100 minutes.

The propulsion system is housed on the other, permeable side of the swimming bot. This half of the robot is made up of six pumps, each of which expels water through rubber tubes.

Some of these tubes are vented at the rounded side of the bot (the side opposite from the flat, ultrasound-emitting part of the bot). This keeps the device pressed up against the side of whatever ship it is trying to inspect. The other pumps vent out at either end of the robot, allowing it to move both forward and backward in the water. Initial tests of theunderwater robot showed that it can propel itself in a straight line while scanning the hull of a ship, the researchers said.

The new bot is of particular interest to military officials, who would like to use it for a range of underwater operations, including detecting smuggled weapons or drugs, or finding stress fractures in the hulls of ships and other vessels, said Nathan Betcher, a special-tactics officer in the U.S. Air Force.

The robot could also be used to speed up the processing and routing of regular maritime traffic, Betcher said in a statement.