Researchers at two British universities have successfully powered a cellphone using urine. The project involves microbial fuel cells, which are ceramic cylinders filled with bacteria. As the bacteria eats fuel supplies, it creates a small electrical charge as a by-product. The technique works with micro-organisms that would normally, where oxygen is present, produce water as […]
A Kenyan firm has unveiled a modem designed to deal with the unreliable power supply and connectivity issues in the African market. The BRCK device is designed to deal with the fact that although many areas of Africa have good Internet access and/or cellphone coverage, electricity supplies can often be unreliable and cut out with […]
Comcast has revealed that it plans to use home customer’s routers to expand its public WiFi network. But it insists the system works on a separate signal and won’t affect privacy or service. The company is calling the idea a “neighborhood hotspot initiative.” If you subscribe to Comcast’s Xfinity service and have a wireless gateway […]
A firm that already offers free fixed-line and mobile broadband services is now offering a totally free of charge cellphone package including voice calls and texts. And not surprisingly there are some major catches. The company, Freedom Pop, offers a range of freemium services. Last year it launched a special iPhone case with a built-in […]
The chief of Motorola says the company is interested in using electronic “tattoos” in place of passwords for security on smartphones. Dennis Woodside says the idea works in testing, though concedes it might not be in handsets for some time. The testing used a device from Massachusetts firm MC10. Despite the “tattoo” name, it’s actually […]
The closest thing to a “Facebook phone” has been delayed indefinitely in Europe. Officially it’s to allow time to tweak some of the software, but it follows a poor initial response in the United States. Facebook has always insisted it won’t make a handset itself, reasoning that there’s no point putting its efforts into something […]
Google has confirmed it is barring current buyers of its Google Glass spectacles from passing them on to somebody else. It’s not clear if the restrictions will still apply once the devices go on general sale. At the moment the only way to get hold of the glasses is to be invited to purchase them […]
The Drug Enforcement Agency has told staff that it can’t find a way to beat the encryption used in Apple’s iMessage system. Even if it could decrypt the messages, a legal loophole might make it problematic. The revelation comes in an internal DEA intelligence note leaked to CNET. It notes that even with a federal […]
The US military is working on ways to improve security on wireless networks. It’s suggested adopting some of the tactics used by credit card firms and eBay. The project is the work of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is effectively the military’s gadgets division. It’s previously worked on making a robot that can […]
Google will pay $7 million in penalties in the US for a pattern of drive-by data nabbing across 38 states. While the money isn’t much for the search giant, it has also agreed to long-term work to prevent it happening again. The settlement is part of a long-running international saga involving the Street View mapping […]