GORDON'S FLASH: "Gordon's my name and computing's my game." The San Diego Supercomputer Center has just plugged in the world's first supercomputer that uses 300 terabytes of flash storage instead of disks. Gordon can run massive databases up to 10 times faster than traditional memory and is the 48th fastest supercomputer in the world.
So not exactly Saviour of the Universe. Wired has more.
CLAMPED: People who use manual wheelchairs do an awful lot of pushing. It'd be good to take a break now and again and have the chair drive itself. So how about the WHILL? It's a prototype device that clamps onto a wheelchair's wheels, giving it an electric drive. The device resembles a giant pair of headphones. Two hubs clamp onto the wheels. Each hub contains a 24 volt motor powered by a lithium-ion battery. A central control bar runs across between the hubs and in front of the wheelchair user's body. Top speed is 20 km/h and the range is around 30 km. The user steers by leaning. Interesting, but it looks as though you'd be trapped in the chair until someone came to help unclamp the hubs. Gizmag has more.
PUTTING THE NEW IN NEWTON: Cambridge University Library in the UK have been scanning the written works of Sir Isaac Newton and putting them online. The new site currently has more than 4,000 pages of Newton's works, but more are yet to be added. Once they've finished with Newton they'll move on to works by others, such as Darwin. Better brush up your Latin folks. More info
here and Cambridge Digital Library here.
QUICK SLOW: When we look at the ocean we see the sea, not the individual drops of water that make it up. In the same way, we see light all around us, but not photons. MIT researchers have now created a camera that does see individual photons, as it captures one trillion exposures per second, but only in one dimension. It can see a burst of light travel the length of a soft drink bottle and back again. To create a 2D image the camera must make repeated exposures, then software assembles the image. The camera relies on laser pulses, mirrors and sophisticated timings to capture the images. Each photo takes several hours to produce. So forget this for your baby shots.
Details at and video here.
SAY NOTHING: Decades ago a free way to phone your folks and let them know you needed more money for your OE was to make a collect call and ask for a codenamed person. They'd refuse the call but know to send cash. In India they've escalated this old trick into almost an art form, to the extent it's becoming official. Callers in India are making missed calls, where they let the phone ring once then hang up. It's a way to nudge a friend or tell a company to call you. Now mobile apps and services are incorporating missed calls as an integral part of the system. As with text messaging, you can call a designated number and immediately hang up to receive a reply with a weather
forecast, bus timetable or coupon deal. Which just goes to show how few words you really need to convey a message. GigaOM has more.