Gadgets

NASA is serious about going to Mars, and not just for a quick visit, either. It just committed $65 million, spread over two years and six companies, for the purpose of developing and testing deep-space habitats that could be used on the way to — and on the surface of ...

Kids suffering from cerebral palsy may soon have a powerful new physical therapy technique in the form of robotic assistance for their legs. A study is being conducted on the potential benefits of the system, newly adapted for the use of children. Lokomat is a “robotic gait training program” that’s ...

Two years ago when the international 3D printing industry was still a much-contended space a small Polish company called Zortrax made waves – and raised capital – on the news that it had signed a contract with Dell for 5,000 3D printers. I reported the news in 2014 and researched ...

He’s won a couple of Oscars, he’s worked with some of the best directors in the biz, and he’s even played a Bond villain. So, where does Christop Waltz go from here? Phone commercials, obviously. The acclaimed Inglourious Basterds actor has signed on with Samsung for a silly new ad ...

The field of artificial intelligence is so huge, and the potential applications so numerous, that it would be folly to try to explain it all in one — no, wait, IBM just did. So back in June, the White House published a formal request for information, or RFI, about the ...

Anyone interested in the history of personal computing will surely have heard of the Xerox Alto, but when’s the last time you got to play with one? It’s been a while even for Paul Allen — long enough that he decided to have a couple restored at the Living Computer ...

A team of researchers at MIT has developed a device designed to give home owners a better picture of how much power their individual appliances are eating up. The gadget, which was outlined in a paper published in a recent edition of the IEEE Sensors Journal, offers a simple installation process ...

Awair, the IoT product that sits in the home and measures the quality of your air, has today announced integrations with a number of other platforms to improve the experience. The company behind Aawir, Bitfinder, has teamed up with Nest, the Amazon Echo, and IFTTT to offer users new ways ...

Facebook needs you to fill its News Feed, Oculus Rift, and Gear VR with 360 content. So today it put all the hardware and software designs of its Surround 360 camera on Github, after announcing the plan in April. Thanks to cheeky instruction manual inspired by Ikea’s manuals, you can ...

As has been the case with so many industries, the pendulum of VR will eventually swing back from dedicated apps towards web-based systems — and when that happens, Google will be ready. It published details of a new method for delivering serious surround sound over the web, a system it ...