Ori Levi apologized as he took the stage at an October 2017 CryptoFriends Netup meeting in Barcelona. He had been up until 6 a.m. the night before, he said, and wasn’t used to public speaking. Never mind: his speech raised eyebrows among the investors and blockchain experts at the event. He was there to present Gladius, a venture that aims to […]

Are our machines turning into gods? So it seemed to 19-year-old Ke Jie in May. Jie, the world’s best player of the world’s oldest board game, Go, had just met his match… in the form of a program called AlphaGo. In the space of a year, the program had become “almost like the god of Go,” said Jie after losing […]

When web expert and BluPoint founder Mike Santer toured sub-Saharan Africa to ask what people were getting from the Internet, he thought he would see smiles all round. Instead he was shocked. “You’re not aware how costly it is for people to get online in Africa,” he says. “In rural areas, people were spending up to 70 percent of […]

Bobbies are known for protecting the streets of London and their classic uniforms are about to get an upgrade. Thanks to a deal with BT, the officers will soon wear some of the hottest tech on the market: body cams that can record vital scenes in as the police go about fighting crime. While police forces across the United States widely […]

Picture yourself reading this. Your phone rings. So you answer it. With your mind. Sounds absurd? Not at all. The power to control machines through thought alone is much closer than you might think. Some people are doing it now. For fun. If you wanted to, for instance, for just $25 you could buy a […]

You’re on a TelePresence call with a potential supplier. They’re bidding on a vital contract. You need to know they can do the job on time. “Sure,” they say. Then you notice a signal flashing on your desktop. Suddenly you know it’s time to end the call… because they are lying. This is fiction, for now. But […]

It’s a sad fact that one of the world’s greatest charity fundraisers never lived to see the fruit of her efforts. On July 23, 2011, nine-year-old Rachel Beckwith was killed in a tragic car accident on highway I-90, near Seattle, Washington. Shortly before the accident, she had opened a fundraising page to raise $300 for charity: […]

There’s a scene missing from all those flash auto ads parading across our screens. You get the open roads, the panoramic curves, the grip of tire on tarmac. But you don’t get to see the stressed driver trying to squeeze their shiny vehicle into a tight parking spot. No surprise: parking is the part of […]

Visitors and citizens in Spain’s two main island groups are to get a taste of networked living with a EURO€30 million (US$32 million) government scheme. Ten of 11 major islands in the Balearic and Canary archipelagos have submitted bids for a ‘smart island’ initiative scheduled to run up until 2019. The program follows smart-city investments […]

Climb behind the wheel of a Tesla Model S and it’s immediately apparent that technology now plays a big part in auto design. As well as a speedometer, the all-electric sedan comes with a large touch-screen dashboard that you can customize with apps ranging from maps to stock tickers. Under the bonnet, meanwhile, sophisticated electronics […]

New advances in big data analytics are helping companies get a better understanding of what their customers are saying about them online. And that information could help them provide a better level of service in the future. A company called Websays, for example, is working with local councils and retail brands to track corporate reputation based on the […]

Going anywhere nice this year? If technology is your thing then why not stop off at one of these locations while away on your next vacation. Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, United Kingdom While perhaps not as grand as its Mountain View counterpart (see below), the U.K. Centre for Computing Historyhas a treasure trove of […]

Could a criminal mastermind one day hold a smart city to ransom? On December 22, 2014, hackers stole “non-critical” data from computer systems owned by Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power. There was no danger to Korea’s 23 nuclear reactors, authorities said. However, the incident raises concern over the growing number of information systems being connected […]

You can expect futuristic vistas and cutting-edge technology on screen. Behind the scenes, however, the television and movie industries have lagged behind others in adopting new technology. Broadcasters, for example, have only started to get to grips with Internet-based video in recent years. And on the production side, even though digital recording has been around […]

Alex and Isabella love their smartphones. But like many mobile phone users of their age, there’s one thing the two 13-year-olds from Barcelona, Spain, won’t bother using their devices for: voice calls. “The last time I made a phone call?” ponders Isabella, who knows a new iPhone is out of the question for her 14th […]