Computing

An international group of scientists proposes a "knowledge collider" to bring supercomputing to bear on social problems. While crunching the numbers won't be a problem, figuring out what they mean will prove more challenging.

The Norwegian firm Elliptic Labs’ booth at CES next week will feature several implementations of a touchless, gesture-based interface for tablets and mobile devices, according to the company. Unlike the Kinect, Elliptic’s interface, called Ultrasonic Touchless Input, graphs hand movements using echolocation. Bathing the user in a silent ultrasonic torrent, it measures the return time of rebounding sonic impulses to ...

After fifteen years I've finally found the perfect writer's machine in the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air. It fuses together both the best software and hardware of which a writer could ever dream, while boasting all of the slender and effortless portability of a composition journal. It is a writer's terminal in the purest sense: with its excellent battery life, ephemeral weight, satisfying keyboard and instant-on capabilities, the new MacBook Air is perfectly suited to be the nexus into the inner chaos of my own thoughts, feelings, hang-ups, pretensions and emotions as a blank page. So why isn't writing any easier?

Engineering beneficial computer viruses to protect wireless devices, researchers learn to treat time as a network.

A business-machine brand and icon of twentieth-century design jumps into the tablet race.

By studying the search algorithms of ants, researchers are discovering ways of making computer networks faster and smarter.

An ancient device for predicting the occurrence of solar eclipses gets a fun, lucid reboot�in interlocking plastic blocks.

The latest example of the periodic-table-of-elements meme is�wait for it�a periodic table of elements.

Artist and technologist Aram Bartholl is mortaring USB drives into brick walls and curbstones throughout New York City and inviting people to use them to share files. His "Dead Drops" project offers a glimpse of a utopian, DIY darknet in RL.

In the excitement around the new MacBook Airs, another Apple product rollout has received less attention: the addition of a letterpress-printing option in iPhoto. But Apple's foray into craft printing should come as no surprise; Steve Jobs has always been an aficionado of classic typography.