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The electronics revolution shows no signs of slowing down.  When I was a youngster we had dial telephones, AM radio, and black & white TV with a tall antenna on the roof.  We did not have microwave ovens, cell phones, computers, FM radio, or GPS systems and there were no satellites.  Well hang onto your hats, because the revolution has just begun…

X-ray vision is already here… sort of.

Knowing that radio waves can pass through solid materials, in 2006, engineers at Cambridge Consultants in the UK announced they had built a device they called the Prism 200 which can detect people through a brick wall. The briefcase-sized system works by transmitting pulses of ultrawide-band radar and listening for returning echoes.

According to the company, these pulses can pass through building walls over 16 inches thick, and detect human beings behind those walls over a range of up to 50 feet. The device can only detect people when they are moving.

Erwin Biebl’s radar sensor. Biebl’s team at the Technical University of Munich in Germany has built a device that can pick up tiny motions like breathing, or even a beating heart, through a closed door. His device uses Doppler radar to sense small movements caused by the beating of a heart or the movement of the lungs as one breathes.

It’s not a big leap to envision a system worn on the head like night vision goggles.  Think of how valuable that might be in hostage situations, fire fighting, and urban warfare.

Invisibility, not just for Star Trek and Harry Potter

In 2006, a cloaking device was which worked only for microwaves, was unveiled.  Since then there have been a number of attempts to make invisibility cloaks.

Scientists have developed “metamaterials”, made with electronic components that interact with light and send it in the desired direction. The idea is to steer the light around the object. If the light goes around it then you won’t see it. So far it only works with specific bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, the goal being to create something that works with a broad band of frequencies.  The components however, must be smaller than the wavelength of the light they are steering, making them very small.

Recently, a group at the University of California, Berkeley, constructed a material that was able to bend visible light backwards for the first time, and Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews, UK, has demonstrated how metamaterials could work over a range of frequencies.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in China is claiming that it has worked out how to cloak objects at a distance. They suggest using “complementary materials” which have optical properties that cancel each other out making it look as if neither material is there.

They have a long way to go, but don’t be surprised if someday you don’t see something that is right there in front of you.

Unique new sources of energy

All those gadgets…your laptop, cell phone, ipod, and all those other gadgets use electricity. Batteries run down and then what?  How about running those devices with power from your clothing?

In 2008, Zhong Lin Wang at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta wove a fabric made from zinc-oxide nanowires grown on strands of Kevlar. Each time the material is bent or squeezed, it generates a tiny current. Wang and his team found they could harvest it by coating each fiber with a film of metal.  Just plug your cell phone into your pants and start walking.

US soldiers in Iraq are using a device that could become a universal interpreter. SRI International in Menlo Park, California, has developed the system, IraqComm, used by the soldiers, packing a laptop with speech recognition and language translation software.

When someone speaks into the microphone in Arabic, the software turns the phrases into written Arabic, and then translates it into English. When the person finishes talking, the computer speaks the translation.

IraqComm’s software, and other programs like it, learn to translate by studying conversations. The software searches for statistical connections between a series of Arabic statements and English translations. Given enough examples, the software can learn grammar too. A similar system running on a hand-held PDA was developed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

These programs cannot deal with free-flowing language yet. The IraqComm works well because it focuses on around 50,000 words soldiers need. The broader the subject matter, the harder it becomes for the software to distinguish the alternate meanings required in different contexts. “We’ll get there,” says SRI’s Kristin Precoda.

It probably isn’t unrealistic to assume that in a few years tourists visiting foreign lands will carry with them portable speak-into devices.

Photographers are always biased towards a particular brand of digital cameras. You will always find contemporaries quarreling about the quality of pictures, the resolution, the focal length, the pixels and all the implications involved in the art of photography. The most hilarious part of the story is that the debate never reaches a proper conclusion regarding the best brand prevailing in the market space. The comparison drawn here is between the cameras made by Nikon and the ones produced by Canon. Nikon has of late produced some lovely versions like the D Series SLR cameras, the D-Series Digital SLR cameras, the L-Series Digital Cameras, the P-Series and finally the S-Series. Be it the optical zoom feature which helps in taking close shots, the LCD lenses radiating splendor or other enthralling features like the built in GPS, the Ethernet connection or the wireless flash, Nikon cameras are known for their packaging.

Having said this, it is not as if Canon cameras are lagging behind. They have been selling for more than eight decades now and have produced some spectacular series of digital cameras. The DC series is known for its camcorders with the focus being its camcorders. The EOS series is known for its auto focus with the FS Series being stylish, slick and expansive. The HF series is renowned for its memory capacity with the HV series rising to fame for its ability to house SD cards. The IXUS series became famous for its ultra compact cameras which are portable, come with a case and has been very sleekly designed. The MD series shot to fame for its widescreen recording facility and quick start features. The microphone input connection ascertains that even voices can be recorder during the photography sessions. The advanced zoom facility is good which helps photographers a great deal in shooting objects from close proximity. Both organizations pride themselves for producing the most wonderful cameras and both enjoy wonderful reputations in the photography circle.

Debating which brand is better would be wastage of time with the more sensible solution being trying out cameras from both brand and judging which suits the concerned photographer best.

If you love music and this Christmas you are looking to buy an mp3 player or get a new one, if your old one has been broken or you just want to upgrade  than there are plenty products out there for you to choose from. But the main problem is that most of the products have a very high priced tag that some of us can’t really afford.

Craig Mp3 Player is a cheap alternative to the iPod or Zune players, it offers some great features and its curved, slim design fits easily and comfortably into your pocket. Also worth mentioning is the built in graphic equalizer which offers for your screen a wide variety of screen savers with many bars jumping up and down to the tune. The most import feature of the Craig Mp3 Player is the high quality audio that it produces and this is the same or probably better that you get on high priced products like iPod or Zune mp3 players. Another thing that is really cool is the transfers speed that this product has, in just a matter of seconds you can transfer your favorite mp3 tunes to your player without even needing to install any software.

Ipod and Zune in the other hand might have plenty of features and storage capacity but at their core base they do only one thing play music.

So if you are the type of guy who only loves to hear music and doesn’t like to spend a lot than Craig Mp3 Player is the right choice for you.