Computer: General

Even as we are acquiring ever more extraordinary knowledge, we are storing it in ever more fragile and ephemeral forms. If our civilisation runs into trouble, like all others before it, how much would survive?

The more, the better. That’s the fashionable recipe for nurturing new ideas these days. It emphasizes a kind of Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the “wisdom of the crowd” and “open innovation.” Assemble all the contributions in the digital suggestion box, we’re told in books and academic research, and the result will be collective intelligence.

Blio e-reader software, announced at CES, was demonstrated by Microsoft executives Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach in the opening keynote address for CES 2010.

The fellow who first alerted the world to the Y2K bug recently received an award "in recognition of his 1993 warning which alerted the world to the potential disaster that might have occurred on January 1, 2000 and his efforts in the following years to create global awareness of the problem, and the possible solutions."

Video entertainment was “the one that got away” from Apple, but recent moves reveal the company is taking a second stab at the category, and that streaming video will play a major role.

By the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.

How's this for a gripping corporate story line: Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

In our preview of technologies that are well on their way to reality, we look at the connective tissue of USB 3.0, 802.11ac, and 802.11ad for moving media -- especially video -- faster; at HTML5 for displaying video and content of all kinds consistently across all our devices; at augmented reality to see how the digital world will stretch into our physical reality by overlaying what we see with graphics and text; and at 3D TV, which will add image depth and believability to the experience of watching TV.

The new software can identify abuse victims up to six years before these cases would otherwise be found and could eventually be used to diagnose just about any disease or injury.

Now that there’s DateCheck (by Intelius), an iPhone app launched at DEMO for instant social web and background checks, situations like the one we painted above could become quite common place. The free mobile app that advises you to “look up before you hook up” conducts a comprehensive background check using just a name, a phone number, or an email address.