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Microwaves are a fine way to warm water. So are stoves. But neither of them quite compare to dropping in a sphere of red-hot Nickle to do the trick. Thanks to a little something called the Leidenfrost effect, the ball actually surrounds itself with a blanket of steam that keeps the rest of the water away. More » 
from Gizmodo
The idea of private space tourism is certainly taking off, but at such high costs, only 1 percent of the 1 percent will be able to afford it. But, what if you could just do it all yourself? You’re going to need some infrastructure to get you started, and luckily, NASA is reportedly looking to lease or sell off some Kennedy Space Center assets it no longer needs. While that list has not been made public, it apparently includes Launch Pad 39A, a landing strip, the Launch Control Center, and various other high-tech equipment and buildings from its late shuttle program. NASA also wants some quick deals before anything falls into disrepair, so if you’re serious about your new space venture, you might be able to snag a bargain or two with some strategic low offers. Now you’ve just gotta wait for a cheap rocket deal to pop up on eBay and you’re good to go.
Filed under: Misc, Science, Alt
Via: The Loop
Source: Orlando Sentinel
from Engadget
Yesterday, we told you about StickNFind, a nifty electronic sticker that lets you locate anything you tack it to, and MeterPlug, the smartphone-compatible power monitor with cost estimates and realtime consumption readouts. Now, the folks that brought you those Bluetooth-enabled tools have a new connected toy to share. It’s called BluTracker — a “StickNFind on steroids,” according to its creator. Both devices are tasked with sending location information to a smartphone app, but BluTracker adds GPS and a whole lot of power, offering a range of 2,500 feet or more outdoors, or a few hundred feet if you end up with some walls in between you and the compact rechargeable device. Inside the water-resistant housing, you’ll find a Bluetooth module that “uses WiFi chips” to boost the range, along with GPS for providing realtime location information and a battery that can reportedly keep the device powered for at least two months.
This isn’t a tracking device in the traditional sense — while it provides location info, it doesn’t retain coordinates, so you can’t pop this on a vehicle to see where your kids really go after school. It will help you find your dog that’s wandered a bit too far from the front yard, though, assuming he’s still within a half mile or so (like walls, trees can get in the way of the signal, too). An onboard motion sensor can trigger an alert on your smartphone, letting you know that whatever you’ve tagged is on the move, so that bicycle thief won’t get far before you’re on the trail. We tested the device indoors — located near a window, it picked up a GPS signal easily, and transmitted its location to a map within the iOS app even as we walked 100 or so feet away, past several walls. That figure may not be terribly impressive, but we didn’t exactly push the BluTracker to its limits during a quick Manhattan office demo. The device just hit Indiegogo with a $69 “pre-order” price and an estimated April ship date, and it’ll likely retail for just shy of $90. Check it out now in the video after the break, then hit up the source link to get your name on the list.
Gallery: BluTracker Bluetooth Tag hands-on
Continue reading BluTracker lets you locate your stuff within 2,500 feet, we go hands-on (video)
Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Mobile
Source: BluTracker (Indiegogo)
from Engadget
Even with the popularity of cloud computing and terabyte servers, most US offices are still drowning in a sea of dead trees; around 10,000 sheets of paper a year per worker, according to the EPA. Enter Paperless 2013, a campaign that will email you monthly tips on how to make the paperless office a reality. It’s funded by the “Paperless Coalition,” a group of digital solution companies comprised of Google Drive, HelloFax, Manilla, HelloSign, Expensify, Xero and Fujitsu ScanSnap — none of which have any ulterior motive behind encouraging this paper-free existence. None at all. Of course, you don’t have to go with these specific companies to go eco-friendly (Dropbox and PDFPen are a couple of other options) but if you need some advice on how to shed those wasteful printing habits, then go ahead and sign up at the source. Or you could do what we did and unplug our printers altogether — just in case it gets possessed.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Paperless 2013
from Engadget
When Steven Vicinanza got a letter in the mail earlier this year informing him that he needed to pay $1,000 per employee for a license to some “distributed computer architecture†patents, he didn’t quite believe it at first. The letter seemed to be saying anyone using a modern office scanner to scan documents to e-mail would have to pay—which is to say, just about any business, period.
If he’d paid up, the IT services provider that Vicinanza founded, BlueWave Computing, would have owed $130,000.
The letters, he soon found out, were indeed real and quite serious—he wasn’t the only person getting them. BlueWave works mostly with small and mid-sized businesses in the Atlanta area, and before long, several of his own customers were contacting him about letters they had received from the same mysterious entity: “Project Paperless LLC.”
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from Ars Technica
NASA’s (and President Obama’s) vision for sending a manned space mission to a distant asteroid by the 2020s doesn’t seem to be gaining much steam, but a conceptual mission under development by the Keck Institute for Space Studies in California could bring an asteroid much closer to home in that timeframe. An estimated $2.6 billion could fund a mission that would send a robotic spacecraft out into interplanetary space and drag an asteroid into orbit around the moon where robots and even humans could explore it far more conveniently.
The reasons for doing this are many. For one, a manned mission beyond the moon to a faraway asteroid would likely take six months or more to reach even the closest passing asteroid of interest. During that time out from under the protective umbrella of Earth’s magnetic field, astronauts would be exposed to long periods of cosmic radiation–the effects of which aren’t exactly defined. Moreover, it would be costly, dangerous, and might not yield that much scientific benefit. But an asteroid in orbit around the moon meshes well with some other initiatives NASA has cooking, including placing a fixed space station at a Lagrange point on the far side of the moon from which human inhabitants could tele-robotically explore the moon (and, if available, an asteroid).
The Keck concept calls for an Atlas V rocket to launch a slow-moving, solar/ion powered spacecraft toward a rendezvous with a target asteroid. This wouldn’t be an Earth killer or anything even close–the Keck study calls for something in 20-25 feet wide. The spacecraft would then literally haul the asteroid in a huge bag back to lunar orbit. Total mission duration: six to 10 years.
NASA’s not the first entity to speak seriously of moving asteroids into more favorable orbits for human observation (and consumption). Last year billionaire-backed private space startup Planetary Resources announced an ambitious agenda to explore and mine minerals from asteroids, including potentially moving a target asteroid from deep space into an orbit more accessible to mining robots. The idea is not only to extract minerals for export back to earth, but also to create “orbital gas stations” where water ice on asteroids could be processed into hydrogen and oxygen to refuel rockets in space. That’s an idea that’s also been kicked around NASA over the years where the future of deep space travel is concerned. Pulling a small asteroid into lunar orbit would be a good start.
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from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
