It was one of the most ambitious computer product announcements in history. On April 2, 1987, at twin press conferences in New York and Miami, IBM unveiled its plans to reinvent the PC industry which it had jump-started less than six years earlier with the introduction of the first IBM PC. The company introduced four new computers dubbed the PS/2 line, including an $11,000 model which it said was seven times faster than current models. The new products were rife with advanced features, including 32-bit processors, fancy graphics, 3.5″ hardshell floppy-disk drives and optical storage.

And the new … Read More → "25 years of IBM’s OS/2: the strange days and surprising afterlife of a legendary operating system"

IBM has announced that it has landed a massive contract to develop a new supercomputer and related technology to help decipher the huge amount of data collected by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON). The contract is worth $42 million and will have IBM working with ASTRON to research exascale computer systems.
via Read More → "IBM lands contract to research exascale computing for astronomy"

One of the great unsung heroes of 20th century science is Claude Shannon, an engineer at the famous Bell Laboratories during its hey day in the mid 20th century. Shannon’s most enduring contribution to science is information theory: the idea that underpins all digital communication. 

In a famous paper dating from the late 1940s, Shannon set out the fundamental problem of communication: to reproduce at one point in space, a message that has been created … Read More → "Shannon’s Mathematical Theory of Communication applied to DNA sequencing"

When it’s built, the Square Kilometer Array will be the world’s largest radio telescope. Then, when it goes online, it will spit out 1,000,000 terabytes of data each day—and IBM is trying to make a computer which can handle it.

The Squarer Kilometer Array—which will be made up of 15,000 small antennas and 77 larger stations—will … Read More → "IBM’s $43 million computer for the world’s largest radio telescope"

Skyscrapers is a colorful new music video by OK Go directed and choreographed by Trish Sie, who along with Moti Buchboot do a beautiful Tango dance that carries the action through the video.
via Laughing Squid

Love it.

… Read More → "Skyscrapers by OK Go"

Robotspeak does not sell actual robots — though I never tired of getting that question from people who wandered through the door. There are many delightful things you buy on San Francisco’s historic Haight Street, but to the best of my knowledge, robots are not one of them.

In spite of the occasional befuddlement of robot shoppers, Robotspeak is a fitting name for a shop that specializes in the type of unique audio gear and music recording software perfect for composing symphonies of synthetic bleeps and squelches.

Robotspeak’s walls are lined with synthesizers, … Read More → "Robotspeak: An electronic musician’s toy store"

If the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey taught us anything, it’s that computers know when we’re telling a lie. While that may not actually be the case for most computers in real life, it could be if they’re running a program created by scientists from the University at Buffalo. Building on a previous psychological study, the team produced software that allowed a computer to assess a speaker’s eye movements, to determine whether or not they were telling the … Read More → "Computer outperforms humans at detecting lies, by watching the speaker’s eyes"

It doesn’t look like much, kind of a simple RC car. That is, until it jumps.

Boston Dynamics just released a video of their Sand Flea robot, and man can it jump. It rolls around, then stops, rears back on its hind wheels, and springs over walls and onto roofs – up to 30 feet high! It’s jumping is accurate enough that it can even leap into a second story window. You wanna scare the neighbors?

A CO2-powered piston gives the 11 pound Sand Flea its jumping power. … Read More → "Sand Flea robot leaps onto tall buildings 30ft high"

In our inked up future, vibrating tattoos will buzz when your phone rings, and change color when your blood sugar is low. But a new kind of sensor made of graphene could one-up them all–tattooed to your teeth, these sensors will be able to tell when you’re ill, and even possibly what’s … Read More → "Tooth tattoo will tell you why you’re sick"