My latest story for Technology Review (on their brand spankin’ new web site, which is about 30 times faster than the old one): Esperanto for Toasters The ZigBee wireless standard could teach a common language to your lights, appliances, doors, and even your cell phone.

In the not-too-distant future, your cell phone might become the key to your home. By transmitting a signal to a sensor, your phone will announce your arrival and the front door will unlock. And that’s just the first step. Transmitters in the door will send signals elsewhere in your house, switching

Sure, intelligent design is bad science, because its central propositions can’t be tested — more precisely, there is no test that could show them to be false. But doesn’t it give you an extra frisson of schadenfreude to know that ID is also bad religion? J. M. Tyree points out ID’s theological under

by Clara (transcribed, and annotated, by a teacher at preschool) Once upon a time I rided a bike to school. Cause it is hard to get to school on the freeway cause there is traffic. Traffic is so you can’t get through. It never ever lets you. Traffic is cars and they make sure you […]

Link: Mobile Film School Link broken? Try the Wayback Machine.

Palm lovers, get out your hankies. Thisstory is a real tearjerker. The company that single-handedly createdthe personal digital assistant with the Pilot 1000in 1996 is at a crossroads. Down one path liesWindows. Down the other path: stagnation,decay, and perhaps death. If you buy a Treo next year, t

Here’s Clara’s outstanding robot costume, manufactured with a case of Pacifico and a box of Annie’s Mac and Cheese, plus some silver spray paint, a bit of flexible dryer conduit, a Sharpie, and plenty of duct tape — assembled entirely by Karen yesterday evening. It was all Clara’s idea, though, insp

Penny wise and pound foolish is waiting a couple of days so you can get your 1.57% discount on Amazon for using A9 — and in the meantime, the price of the thing you wanted to buy goes up by 5%.

My first freelance article since leaving Mobile last month is out, and it’s for Technology Review: Eyes on the Prize If hefty technology prizes like DARPA’s $2 million Grand Challenge prize push technology forward faster, why not create more of them?

When Stanford University’s robotic Volkswagen Touareg, “Stanley,” won the Grand Challenge last week, robot enthusiasts everywhere cheered. By completing a 210-kilometer course over difficult desert terrain in just under seven hours, Stanley set an unprecedented milestone for autonomous vehicles. Eve

Andrew Orlowski is unusually clear-headed this week, pointing out the phony slump in movie revenues: Listening to our old friend Lawrence Lessig and former MPAA boss Jack Valenti debate each other on National Public Radio last week, it became clear. The dears sounded like a couple of senior citizens

The newly-discovered 10th planet, Xena, turns out to have a moon. They’re calling it Gabrielle, of course.