Certain strains of bacteria absorb iron to make magnetic nanoparticles that let them navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field. The team at Leeds have extracted the protein behind this process and used it to create magnetic patterns that can store data. The magnetic patterns are similar to those found in traditional hard drives, and wiring, and can be used as storage space on hard drives.

Basically, you can grow your own gigabytes.

Dr Sarah Staniland, head of the research team, explains that traditional manufacturing of computer components can only go so far. On the nanoscopic scale manufacturing machines are clumsy, so by harnessing the power of bacteria they can now create small components, accurately, and easily.

“For this purpose the team used the bacterium Magnetsopirilllum magneticum, a naturally magnetic microorganism. It uses its magnetic property to navigate along the earth’s magnetic lines. The bacterium derives its magnetism from ingesting iron. Once in its system the iron interacts with a protein producing a magnetic mineral called magnetite.

Once they understood how the Magnetsopirilllum magneticum worked its magic, the team figured out how to replicate this process outside its body.

They coated a surface in gold and added the protein in a chessboard pattern. When the surface is dipped in an iron solution, those squares covered with the protein start producing nanocrystals of magnetite. Each square covered with nanomagnets can store one bit.”

At the moment the biological hard drives are still in the experimental phase. Staniland’s aim is to eventually develop a toolkit of proteins and chemicals that could be used to grow computer components from scratch.

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The modified Toyota Prius is entirely computer-controlled, and is capable of performing all the functions of a regular car, just without the driver.

An array of laser sensors mounted on the roof and in the front grill monitors the car’s surroundings at a rate of 20 times per second. It detects objects and hazards in the vicinity, and automatically sets up a buffer-zone to avoid them. Based on the information supplied by the sensors, the computer makes decisions on how to handle the car, e.g. speed up, slow down, and stop.

At this stage, the conditions for ‘driving’ a driverless Google car are that there must be two people inside at all times. One must monitor the computer, and the other must sit behind the wheel, in case something does go wrong. The occupants of the car will also be held responsible for the car’s ‘behaviour’ while it’s out on the road.

The driverless Google car is a great way to reduce distracted driving. If it catches on, we can expect to see a reduction in the number of road fatalities amongst owners of Google cars.

By handing control over to a computer, it eliminates the human error drivers would be prone to. With the computer in control you can now safely put on your makeup in the rear-view mirror, text your friends, or make phone calls without dinging the bumper of the car in front of you.

Eventually Google cars will be able to communicate with one another. Congestion will ease as cars are able to drive closer to one another at high speeds. In self-driving mode the car won’t speed, tailgate, or cut off other drivers.

Furthermore, those currently unable to drive cars will be able to ‘get behind the wheel’, as it were, and drive again. The elderly, sick, disabled, and even children will be able to program the car to take them to their destination.

The benefits of driverless cars are huge, and safety is a factor that features heavily. Computers will reduce the chances of car crashes, but it cannot do anything about the cars still with human drivers. There will always be risk involved in operating a vehicle, and it behooves us to remain vigilant, whether we have autopilot or not.

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SoundWave is software that can be installed on any computer with speakers and a microphone in order to work. It uses the speakers and microphone to sense in-air gestures around the device, and translate them to on-screen motions.

SoundWave works by generating an inaudible tone, which is frequency-shifted when reflected off moving objects around the computer. The microphone detects these shifts, allowing the computer to pinpoint the type of motion that has occurred, and translate it to an on-screen movement. SoundWave is also able to operate whilst the speakers are in use for other things, like listening to music or watching videos.

With SoundWave installed, you can use it to boot up or power down your computer, simply by walking towards it or away from your computer. If nothing in the immediate environment is moving, the tone the computer’s microphone detects will be constant. If something is moving toward the computer, that tone will shift to a higher frequency. If it’s moving away, the tone will shift to a lower frequency.

SoundWave will be formally presented as collaboration between Microsoft Research and the University of Washington in a paper at the 2012 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing in Austin, Texas.

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It’s thinner, lighter, and much faster than the Galaxy S II, with some interesting little add-ons thrown in to make owning one of these rather nice.

With a 4.8 inch, HD Super AMOLED screen, you have a wide working space in which to operate. Sending texts won’t be such a pain anymore, as you’re far more likely to hit the key you wanted, first time, giving the backspace button a breather.

The Galaxy S III is powered by a quad core processor, making its graphics run 65% faster than the S II. It has an 8 megapixel camera, flash, and loudspeaker, as well as a microSD slot to save and remove data.

Depending on the model, you can store 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of memory, giving you plenty of space to load movies, music, and documents to the phone.

This year, Samsung has added a new, free, Scan and Match feature into its media service. Designed to compete with iTunes Match, Scan and Match scans the songs on your hard drive and suggests similar tracks that are in your library.

Connection options for the Galaxy S III include Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi Direct, DLNA, and MHL-compatible micro-USB port and headphone socket, with NFC connected to the battery unit. The phone’s battery is removable, and wireless recharging is currently in development by Samsung.

The 8-megapixel camera has face-detection and tagging options, and is able to take 6 photos in one second.

When watching a video, there is the option to minimise it, and perform other functions, like texting or browsing the net, whilst it plays in the corner.

The most interesting feature of the Galaxy S III is its facial and verbal recognition technology. Now you can program S III to recognise your voice and commands. For example, you can set it turn on by simply saying, “Galaxy, on.” The phone can also be programmed to unlock itself when it sees your face and hears your voice. Verbal commands can also be used to control the music player and take photos.

According to Samsung, the Galaxy S III will be available in the USA this June. No details have been released regarding price or New Zealand release dates.

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And yours could be one of them.

Since 2007, a trojan virus created by a ring of Estonian hackers has been running amok on the internet, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers, and earning the hackers a pretty penny indeed.

The purpose of the trojan was to redirect the victims’ browsers away from the sites they wanted to visit to webpages owned by the Estonians. The advertisements present on their webpages earned the hackers millions of dollars in revenues as redirected traffic was exposed to them.

In November 2011 the FBI arrested the six Estonian hackers responsible for creating the trojan virus that infected 500,000 computers. It was discovered that an estimated 350,000 computers were still running on those DNS servers.

Surrogate servers were put in place to support those 350,000 computers, with U.S. taxpayers footing the bill. But on July 9th the servers will be turned off, and any computers still running on the DNS servers will be cut off from the internet.

Luckily, there is still time to ensure you don’t own one of those infected computers.

Click here to check if your computer’s DNS server has changed.

Click here to report any changes to the FBI.

This wasn’t the first scam to hit the internet, and it won’t be the last. Protect yourself by keeping your antivirus software up-to-date, running regular scans, and never ever clicking on anything that looks even remotely suspicious.

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Despite the growing popularity of smartphones, websites are not built with them in mind. As a result, accessing the internet has unexpected side effects like excess battery consumption.

Stamford University ran tests using Android smartphones on loading and rendering 25 webpages, noting the energy consumption each page required. They found that loading Wikipedia’s homepage used 1% of the mobile’s battery life, and loading the Apple homepage used 1.4% (link).

Some of the energy consumption was due to pictures, advertisements, and other large files loading onto the page but not being used. But a large part of it is also due to the inefficient code run by websites.

The university researchers demonstrated that it was possible to cut power consumption by as much as 30% by rewriting the Javascript of Wikipedia, and other websites, to perform just the functions required in opening and collapsing pages without affecting the user-experience.

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(Video)

Unfortunately, not. AV Concepts is the company responsible for developing the holographic projection cameras and screens that created a life-sized realistic image of Tupac rapping and interacting with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

The way it works is using Ghost Technology that was first developed in the 1800s. High-definition and high-resolution signals are processed by special projectors, and are projected onto a screen that reflects the image up into a vertical holographic representation.

Technically they are not 3D, nor are they holograms- they are merely illusions that create the impression of such.

This means that sometime in the future we can do away with those 3D cinema glasses that never seem to fit on your nose properly.

The holographic display is not perfect- you can see a slight blue-ish tinge around the edges of the image when viewed from a distance. However, it’s solid-enough looking that unless someone told you, you’d simply think it was the lighting.

For a brief moment in time, Tupac was brought back to life to perform for the world once more. It can only get better from there. If they can bring back Tupac, then you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll be bringing back Elvis, The Beatles, Queen and more.

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Intel and Microsoft have teamed up to roll out the latest generation of PCs: the Ultrabook.

The Ultrabook is a lightweight laptop that can be converted into a tablet at the user’s discretion. Very similar to the Macbook, the Ultrabook caters to the hundreds of thousands of Windows-users who lust after the portability and convenience of a laptop with a touchscreen that weighs less than your lunchbox and can be booted up at a moment’s notice.

Those who didn’t fall for the Macbook Air will be very pleased with the Ultrabook. Not only does it run on Windows 8 (including all the Windows applications that are useful for work and school), but it also features the latest Intel Ivy-Bridge Processors (the same company that built the processors for the Macbook).

The Ultrabook has several advantages over the Macbook. Firstly, there will be a greater choice in design and vendor. You won’t be forced to buy the same product from the same company as everyone else. Second, for the same price as a Macbook you get a 13” screen with more memory, and more ports for your cables and USBs, and finally, you get access to those Windows applications (like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) that so many people depend on.

Check out their Desperado video below, and tell us what you think!

Ultrabook Desperado

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In a video shown from the perspective of a young man going about his daily routine, Google shows all the ways in which they believe the Google Glasses will come in handy. From making appointments and getting directions, to taking photos and video calling- these glasses seem to do everything a smartphone can.

The glasses deliver real-time information in a heads-up display (HUD), and include GPS navigation, 3G/4G data connections, and motion sensors to track your eye movements.

Project Glass has a lot of people excited, and has sent Google’s competitors scrambling to keep up. According to Topeka Capital Markets analyst, Brian White (as reported to Boy Genius Report), a number of rivals to Google have similar products in the works, although details as to who they are and what they are making have not been revealed.

However, one competitor has come forward on their own to reveal a different version of the Google Glasses. Vergence Labs released information on a set of glasses being put into production that are a lesser version of the Google Glasses. They aim to operate more on the capturing of data from the first person perspective, (like videos and photographs you take throughout the day), and the uploading of these to a computer or direct to the internet. This appears to be all they can do- unlike the Google Glasses they can’t give you directions or tell you the weather. They are expected to be priced at US$299, and available from 12^th December, 2012.

As for Project Glass, they have given no specified release date for the Google Glasses, apart from a generic “later this year”, and the price range has been kept under wraps.

The reveal of Project Glass, according to Google spokespersons, was to allow the public the opportunity to give them feedback. So, what do you think?

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We are so used to being constantly connected to the world that there is nothing more frustrating than our phones going for a walk.

With the dawning of the smartphone age, information and personal data crucial to our daily routines is stored on our phones. We carry it around with us and barely give it a thought until the time comes when we need to access it.

Smartphones store our photos, text conversations, dates, appointments, and all those irreplaceable contacts. All this would be irritating to lose at the very least, and devastating at the worst. And what’s more, it is unlikely that you have that information backed up somewhere. The stress of daily life means that very few people can be bothered. After all, you’re not going to lose your phone, are you?

Well, they say prevention is better than cure, so here is a brief summary of how to back up data for iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries.

When you connect your iPhone to your computer, it automatically syncs with iTunes, performing a back-up equivalent, and storing the information in iTunes itself. When restoring your data to your phone, make sure you know the difference between ‘restore’ and ‘restore from backup’. One will reset your phone to default factory conditions (wiping all your data), and the other will load your data from iTunes onto the phone.

Android users have to perform several functions to ensure all their data is backed up. First, the contacts list can be stored in the Cloud if the user has a Google account. Simply open the contacts list, press the menu button, select import, and tick the ‘Google Contacts’ box. Backing up everything else requires you to download special applications. These three; ‘SMS Backup and Restore’, ‘Call Logs Backup & Restore’, and ‘APN Backup & Restore’ copy your data to a microSD card for easy storage. You can also back up your Android applications using the ‘Astro File Manager’ app.

Blackberry users have it easy with the application ‘Blackberry Desktop’ pretty much doing everything for them. With one click, the program downloads the data on your phone and stores it in a single file (convenient for USBs and HDDs).

So now you’ve taken precautionary measures, and the next day your phone is nicked. What to do?

First things first- immediately call your service provider and let them know, otherwise you could be billed for the activities of the person who ‘finds’ your phone.

Next, activate the ‘Find My Phone’ application (download required) to pinpoint the location of your smartphone. Then you can get the police involved, and hopefully retrieve your phone. In the meantime, lock the device remotely, and if worst comes to worst, you can erase all the data on your phone from your computer. But this is only recommended when you know for sure you’re not getting it back.

Be smart with the data you put on your phone; make back-ups a weekly ritual to avoid frustration; and take care not to leave your phone at the bus stop.

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