Author: Sal McCloskey

There are food shortages around the world. People die from hunger in all countries and regions. Keeping the seven billion residence of the world fed has been a problem since the dawn of humanity. What will happen when there are 12 billion mouths to feed? According to Anjan Contractor, the human population will not be sustainable once we reach “peak” population, which is one reason why NASA is granting him the money to explore using 3D printers as a way to produce food and minimize waste? It doesn’t sound appetizing, but it may be necessary according to Contractor, who received a 6-month, $125,000…

No. Go ahead and mark this one down as one of those nifty features that Google puts out there without telling many people that sits around until they decide that it failed and they shutter it. In this case, it won’t necessarily ever be shuttered, but it will likely sit there as an obscure menu item like The Flying Dutchman at In ‘n Out. The concept is this. Send money by “attaching” it through Gmail. It connects directly with Google Wallet and allows the receiver to do so without even having a Gmail account. It’s simple, elegant, and very easy to implement. It’s arguably easier to get going than Western…

Over the last few decades, the way that data is stored has evolved faster than just about any form of technology. What used to take large rooms to hold can now fit in one’s fingertips. The pace is increasing, particularly in just the last few years. A decade ago, it wasn’t uncommon to pay hundreds of dollars for data storage devices that now cost less than $10. Today’s data is served more quickly. It maintains its integrity for longer. It’s portable, cheap, and easy to access. The infographic below takes a look at some of the data storage options and the costs associated with them over the past several…

The good news: Samsung has made a breakthrough that inches us closer to having 5G mobile broadband technology at our fingertips. The bad news: it likely won’t be available to the public until around 2020. According to their Samsung Tomorrow blog: Samsung Electronics announced that it has successfully developed the world’s first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications. The new technology sits at the core of 5G mobile communications system and will provide data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current…

Today’s kids are digitally adept. That much is very clear to anyone with a toddler and an iPad. They seem to have a natural ability to take a gadget that is touch-driven and make them do magical things, often at a level higher than adults. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? The good parts are clear. Education, imagination, and integrating with today’s world are easy components with which to make arguments for the use of touchscreen devices by children. The good comes with bad components as well as the infographic below depicts. Here are some of the repercussions of having children so engulfed in the use…

The internet. It has become such an integrated part of our lives that many do not spend more than a few waking hours without being connected in some way. We post to Facebook, check our emails, visit websites, read the news, and generally connect throughout much of our days. How does this translate into actual activity on the internet every day? It means that there are over a hundred thousand websites launched. It means that we’re spending over 3 hours a day on social media. It means that there are more minutes of video watched every day than the entirety of a year’s worth of television shows produced….

iOS 7 is rumored to be doing many things. First, it’s rumored to be launched in June. It’s rumored to be flatter much like the Windows Phone interface. It’s rumored to be able to predict earthquakes up to a day ahead of time. Okay, so we made the last one up, but it’s not far off from the types of rumors that seem to surround everything that comes out of Cupertino, even something fairly insignificant like the iOS 7 release. The thing that makes it so important, perhaps more important than previous releases, is that they’re coming off an embarrassment with their last operating system release due to the…

Some would call it a slow news day. We call it an epic day for space, for Canada, and for science. Canadian Space Agency’s Chris Hadfield has made a name for himself as being a combination of Bill Nye the Science Guy and Buck Rogers with his series of videos demonstrating things that so few people will ever be able to experience themselves. Living on the International Space Station can be lonely, but for Commander Hadfield, it’s just a way to make his dreams come true in spectacular fashion. In his most recent video, he’s demonstrates something so mundane on earth but so spectacular in space that it might…

The email that Sony sent to its Playstation subscribers marketing the Transformers: Fall of Cybertron had a neat little Easter egg available when opened with image loading turned off. As Redditor sarranoob discovered, behind the cover art was the Autobot emblem. One might go so far as to say that the email was properly optimized. Apologies for the pun. Here’s the screen capture of the email:  …

The ebb and flow of design trends always seems to navigate towards and away from simplicity. Today, simple is hot. Flat is hot. Depth, texture, and complex are all out and Facebook is following the trend with their new logo release. They removed the lower bar that gave it a sheen for a minor 3D effect and are now bleeding the “f” off the bottom edge. It’s also a little larger than before. It’s clean, plain, and simple. It’s very 2013. The new logo can be downloaded from the site. Reactions have been positive from around the blogosphere. While beveling and depth are often used to denote a clickable button,…