Hasta La Gadget!

For generations, Santa has been cruising around Christmas Eve in his red sleigh pulled by his flying reindeer. Scientists at GE think it’s time for Santa Claus to update his ride with some new high-tech materials. So scientists have come up with a greener and smarter sleigh to help Santa get around the world tonight delivering gifts.

The concept sleigh would use 3-D printed parts, including a more aerodynamic blade design that improves energy efficiency. It’s also sprayed with nanotech Icephobic coatings to repel ice and water. The sleigh is constructed using Ceramic Matrix Composites in the frame, enabling it to travel into space and return to Earth without burning up on re-entry. Considering this thing is an open top sleigh, Santa will need a spacesuit.

The sleigh is also equipped with an electric traction motor that has MEMS switching technology to take over the powertrain when the reindeer to rest. In addition, it’s connected to the Internet, allowing Santa to navigate efficiently around air traffic and keep an eye on the last minute naughty or nice list updates. Check out more details about Santa’s shiny new ride in the Flash widget below:

I know hordes of Internet geeks out there like me were hoping that Google would roll out its insanely fast gigabit Google Fiber Internet service all around the country. I’ve been wishing that Google had plans to make the service widely available after it saw how successful it was within Kansas City. However, new details have surfaced that all but rule out a broad rollout of their crazy-fast Internet speeds – at least any time soon.

According to a report from Business Insider, Telco analyst Jason Armstrong of Goldman Sachs published a note estimating it would cost Google nearly $140 billion or more to deploy its epically fast Google Fiber service to the entire United States. If Google chose to target only major metropolitan areas in the US, the price would be a slightly more modest $70 billion.

Google is certainly worth a lot of money, but the search giant has under $45 billion in cash on hand. That’s a far cry from the $70 billion mark needed to service major metropolitan areas. Unless it takes many, many years to build out the network, Google would need some large partners or a massive loan to equip any significant portion of the country outside of Kansas City with Google Fiber service.

The report estimates that if Google were to go a more conservative route, spending about 25% of their annual $4.5 billion Cap Ex on the project, they could roll out the service to only about 830,000 homes per year, or 0.7% of US households. At that rate, they wouldn’t be able to cover the whole country for about 142 years.

[via BGR]

Who hasn’t dreamed of having heads-up display screens directly embedded into their eyes? I guess years of playing Cyberpunk 2020 and reading science-fiction novels have made this a fixture in most settings. While it won’t make readable contact lens displays feasible any time soon, it looks like scientists have actually been able to make contact lenses with embedded LCDs.

Belgian researchers at IMEC were able to create an LCD-embedded contact lens in a working prototype. This LCD display is curved so that it fits the eye. For now, the lens can display rudimentary monochrome graphics, and their images can only be viewed by others, not by the wearer due to the eyes inability to focus on objects so close. However, there are applications where these could be useful. They could work like sunglasses by automatically darkening, as cosmetic enhancements by changing colors, or as an artificial iris.

Now, if they could only figure out the focusing issue, we could someday be walking around like human Terminators.

[via Phys.Org via Ubergizmo]

Everyday objects are slowly being infused with modern technology.  There are fridges that can monitor their contents and automatically order online to restock themselves, socks that know how many times they’ve been washed and now, with the help of a tiny device, your car can be made so smart, it knows when it’s being towed and will tell you so.

This device is called the moj.io. I know, I wish they had come up with a better name. But the folks behind it probably spent all their brain power on the device itself, because it sounds very promising. The moj.io connects to the Internet via cellular networks and to your car via the On-Board Diagnostics OBD-II port (found in all major automotive lines since 1995). Once connected and paired to your mobile device, the moj.io can tell you where your car is located, if it’s being towed, the car’s overall condition and more. moj.io apps can also be more proactive. They can hold calls and text alerts while you’re driving to keep you safer or send text message alerts based on the speed and location of the car. Parents and obsessed lovers will find that one useful.

Pledge at least $89 (USD) on Indiegogo to reserve a moj.io unit. But because it needs to be online – as of now, it’s partnered with T-Mobile in the USA and Rogers in Canada – expect to pay extra for an Internet subscription. U.S. pricing is $7.99/month or $79/year, and canadian pricing is $12.99/month or $119/year. Though if you buy on Indiegogo, you get your first 3 months of service for free.

I’m sure some people have a few privacy concerns with having a device like this available to everyone, but I think that overall the benefits outweigh the risks. Besides, tracking technology has been available for a long time now, it’s just that now it’s in the hands of common folk.

A group of British researchers at a company called Reaction Engines has announced new aircraft technology that could make air travel much faster. The researchers have created what they describe as “the biggest breakthrough in propulsion since the jet engine.” The Sabre engine use a fancy compressed helium cooling system able to cool air entering the engine from 1000°C to -150°C in 1/100 of a second.

The technology is able to cool the incoming air at incredible speed and without creating any ice that could cause problems. The new cooling system could allow jet engines to run at much higher levels of power than is currently possible without overheating. The researchers believe that aircraft using these engines could reach speeds of over 2000 mph, propelling an aircraft from London to Sydney in about 4.5 hours.

The company also believes that these engines might allow aircraft to go from atmospheric flight to space flight in a single stage. The aircraft engines may also be able to gather enough oxygen from air at low altitudes to create their own fuel before switching to internal fuel sources for higher speed travel.

[via Telegraph]