wireless hackers take to the air

BBC reports on a group of Australians that use airplanes to fly over the city (Perth, in the south-western tip of Australia, if I remember correctly) and find open Wireless Access Points. Cool. With the advent of ad hoc, these practice will hopefully be unnecessary: everyone will have a node close to them that will be ready to act as a secure relay. It won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen sooner or later.

latin american backlash against "free markets"

The Economist has an article this week about the perceived backlash in Latin America about free markets. As they say, its it's not that simple. But there is a lot of suspicion for IMF-led policies that have obviously not worked in the past and that many times are geared more to helping banks (US-owned mostly) and target abstract "macroecnomic" goals rather than trying to make better the lives of the people. That's the real problem. Purely macroeconomic approachs just don't work. Time for new ideas.

baby steps in mass-produced nanotech

A first step: NEC confirms that they will begin mass-production of carbon nanotubes within the next 3 years. Still a long way from a nano-assembler, but it's a first step.

future portables

Notebook computers will, in a few years, be faster and smaller. Oh, and they will run on methane.

While the methane bit is probably the most attention grabbing element of this News.com article, the really interesting bit I think refers to wireless. Once all notebooks come with for example Bluetooth and 802.11 as standard, ad hoc "edge" networks will explode. And then things will get really interesting, methane or no methane.

finally an apple handheld?

Rumors on Apple releasing a handlheld have been making the rounds for years (although they seemed to quiet down a bit after iPod was released). Well, here they are again. Will this be it--finally? It's probably. Considering Apple's success with iPod, a similar repackaging of an old concept (Handheld+cellphone) might also give them a successful product.

If they do it, one thing will be for sure: we'll finally have a cool-looking, easy to use cellphone/PDA.