Tech News

A doorknob that knows whether to lock or unlock based on how it is grasped, a smartphone that silences itself if the user holds a finger to her lips and a chair that adjusts room lighting based on recognizing if a user is reclining or leaning forward are among the many possible applications of Touché, a new sensing technique.

Two lamps are brighter than one. This simple truism does not necessarily apply to lasers, as a team of scientists found out. When one laser is shining and next to it another laser is turned on gradually, complex interactions between the two lasers can lead to a total shutdown and no light is emitted anymore. For technologies connecting the fields of electronics and photonics, this result may be very important.

Lawyers for Oracle and Google try to figure out where we could go from here on the copyrights phase of the trial.

There are still people, like me, that have unlimited data on Verizon, but we now hear that this service will be killed off to transition people to a shared data plan sometime this year.

Facebook says it will sell 25% more shares than first planned in its forthcoming flotation in response to strong demand.

A Nokia spokeswoman criticises Apple after it appears to "override" its Siri software over the question: "What is the best smartphone?"

In an information economy, the most valuable company assets drive themselves home every night. If they are not treated well, they do not return the next morning. - Peter Chang

Hardware: where the people in your company's software section will tell you the problem is. Software: where the people in your company's hardware section will tell you the problem is. - Dave Barry, Claw Your Way to the Top