If someone up and asked you “who invented the computer,” how would you respond? Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? Al Gore? Or say you’re more historically savvy, might you venture Alan Turing? Perhaps Konrad Zuse? Turing is the guy who, in the 1930s, laid the groundwork for computational science, while Zuse, around the same time, created something called the “Z1,” generally credited as “the first freely programmable computer.”

And yet all of the above could prove wrong, depending on what a British research team and millions of dollars turn … Read More → "Who really invented the computer?"

No modern car (nor any smartphone) is considered complete without some sort of navigation product. Indeed, even my wife’s bottom-of-the-line, not-so-smartphone has a cell-tower-based navigation system. Ironically, my wife never uses it and is never lost, while I have no navigation system on my phone and am lost all the time. Wait, what were we talking about again? Oh yes navigation and global positioning. A group of researchers have come up with an elegant, laser-based method … Read More → "Keeping GPS systems accurate with laser gyroscopes"

Last week, as part of Wired’s nine-week-long geek-list parade, we gave you nine equations that we think every true geek should know or at least pretend to know). This week, we … Read More → "9 geeky equations Wired readers think you should know (or at least pretend to know)"

John Naughton’s Association for Learning Technology keynote, “The elusive technological future,” is a no-holds-barred, kick-ass talk about the systems, blindspots and biases that keep us from understanding where tech has been and where it’s going. John’s the Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University, and he’s the author of the excellent From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, What You Really Need to Know About the Internet. via Boing Boing

</ … Read More → "Why we get the future of tech wrong"

ARM is gunning for leadership in high-performance mobile graphics with the release of its design today for a new graphics processing unit (GPU).

The move shows that visual computing has become so important in devices such as tablets and smartphones (including beefy ones known as superphones) that ARM, the leader in low-power mobile processors, has to focus on providing extra … Read More → "ARM releases a speedy new graphics core for chip makers"

If you’re headed to San Francisco sometime in the near future, make sure to drop by the SFMOMA to see a magical installation. Artist Jim Campbell just recently debuted “Exploded Views,” a random cascade of flickering LED lights…or so you think. Make it up to the 2nd floor landing and watch the lights transform into a 3D screen where human figures magically come to life!

Part sculpture, part cinematic screen, … Read More → "LED lights transform into 3D screen"

The Lightning Foundry is an ambitious project by Lightning On Demand to build two ten story tall Tesla coils that will generate super long discharge effects hundreds of feet in length, or in other words, man-made lightning. The Tesla coils would be the world’s largest, surpassing the current champion, Electrum, also by Lightning on Demand. San Francisco Bay Area-based LOD was … Read More → "The Lightning Foundry, a project to build the world’s largest tesla coils"

Not a huge fan of the paint scheme, but otherwise: cool!

This morning BMW showcased its vision for the future of green transportation as it as it unveiled the i3 electric vehicle and the i8 hybrid-electric roadster for the first time on US soil – and Inhabitat was on the scene to bring you … Read More → "BMW unveils i3 electric car and i8 hybrid electric vehicle on US soil for the first time"

The BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones asks whether it is the only way that inventors can be certain that their ideas can be protected from thieves, or if it is tying innovators in knots. via BBC

Watch the clip here

In an argument studded with references to George Orwell’s “1984” and the possibility that rapid advances in technology would soon allow the government to monitor everyone’s movements, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struggled to articulate how the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures should apply to the tracking of cars using GPS devices. The fit between 18th-century principles and 21st-century surveillance seemed to leave several justices frustrated. via Read More → "Supreme Court casts a wary eye on tracking by GPS"