“Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system.”
Pass the Raspberry Pi ($35) and the Cotton Candy ($199)! Or, the AllWinner is a cheaper Cotton Candy ($74). Or, now VIA is offering the Android PC System (APC) (neo-ITX form factor, $49), or the Paper/Rock ($79/$99).
Nice overview of some parallel-computation issues: locking, load-link/store-conditional (LL/SC), and IBM's new transactional memory hardware
MIT quadcopter based on the Kinect, can map a room in 3-D in real-time
3-D printing allows rapid prototyping of flying-insect wings
High speed network research: Intel achieves 50Gbps in the lab with silicon photonics (silicon-based laser devices, 12.5Gbps per wavelength, times 4); could scale to 1Tbps.
I'm not the only one to notice that certain Diebold ATMs make Woody Woodpecker sounds (and other Diebold ATMs play the "cavalry charge") when dispensing cash.
The TonidoPlug and the GuruPlug: $99 wall-wart sized (SFF) Linux computers. The GuruPlug has 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth, and ZigBee.
An amazing, fast book scanner that allows you to just rapidly flip the book pages by it; it flattens the curved images. A Google engineer produced this suction-and-sheet-metal scanner (not quite ready for prime time; it shreds a page occasionally). There are various other scanners including the "V-shaped cradle" design used by Google Books and Internet Archive etc.
tweenbots (urban roamers that explore human-robot interaction)
MIT team builds an Indoor Autonomous Helicopter which functions in a GPS-blocked environment, and can autonomously map out an area, avoid obstacles, etc.
Description of the Microsoft/Danger catastrophic data loss disaster (T-Mobile Sidekick phones). More details are emerging.
Yet another reason why I love AMD's HyperTransport. AMD really shines in 4-way and larger configurations (NUMA).
My contact information, brief autobiography (such as it is), and family tree.
