Researchers at Tufts University announced Sunday they’ve created an electrical motor many thousands of times smaller than the width of a single human hair, a breakthrough they claim could eventually lead to innovations in healthcare and technology.

The microscopic motor is the size of a single molecule and is electrically charged, an innovative feat since previous single-molecule-sized motors were powered by chemicals or light. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been another wild and crazy week for the security community.

Scotland Yard arrested two suspected members of Anonymous and LulzSec Thursday.

Meanwhile, the major players in the browser market – Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Microsoft(Nasdaq: MSFT) and the Mozilla Foundation – have chopped Dutch certificate DigiNotar off at the knees, apparently because it was slow to warn that hackers had broken into its network and issued rogue SSL security certificates. Read the rest of this entry »

My first thought was that someone was engaging in click-bait journalism. Even the title of the post — “Android GPLv2 termination worries – one more reason to upgrade to GPLv3″ — is something I would expect from anti-Android trolls, not the Free Software Foundation. Read the rest of this entry »

Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test, an app from Ookla, is available for free at the App Store.

For the most part, I barely notice the incoming speed of my Internet data connections on my iPhone 4 or iPad 2. Sure, if I want to download something large, I make sure I’m on a WiFi connection. If I’m in a car (riding as a

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We have crazy months from time to time, but August will likely go down in history as one of the biggest tech news months of any year. From the torpedoing of Android by Google(Nasdaq: GOOG), to the off-again, on-again TouchPad sales, to the departure of Steve Jobs, to the slashing of Oracle’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) US$1.3 billion settlement, to the… Read the rest of this entry »

Ludology or narratology?

These are the two generally accepted approaches to thinking about games. Though not incompatible, these two branches of knowledge nonetheless contend for pre-eminence among video game designer priorities. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) announcement of its upcoming iCloud service has sparked a flurry of excitement in the industry.

Some analysts expect the iCloud will help Apple keep customers closer to its bosom — make them “stickier,” in analystspeak. Others think the iCloud will give a boost to cloud computing. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody expected AT&T (NYSE: T) to have an especially easy time convincing regulators to allow it to buy up rival wireless carrier T-Mobile. AT&T announced its intentions last Spring to purchase the fourth-largest U.S. carrier from parent company Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) for US$39 billion, and critics from all corners wasted no time expressing why they thought that would be a very bad idea. Read the rest of this entry »

The HP (NYSE: HPQ) TouchPad’s demise and semi-resurrection seems to have lent new strength to rumors that Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) is working on its own tablet.

Some rumors hold that Amazon will offer one tablet; others contend it will offer two. The speculation is that Amazon will sell the hardware at a loss and make up for that through selling content, which it has in abundance. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mozilla Foundation is enhancing the tablet version of its Firefox browser.

It’s leveraging Android Honeycomb but retaining familiar visual elements of Firefox such as the signature big back button and distinctive tab shape, according to a blog post by Ian Barlow, who works on Mozilla’s mobile user experience team. Read the rest of this entry »