Technology

An Ohio firm has developed a new software system which promises to reduce the time and money people waste waiting for deliveries and repairmen to show up on call. According to TOA Technologies, US workers lose about $37 billion each year because of ... vague schedules that keep them pinned down, waiting for delivery and service personnel. Software Monitors Real Time Events, Not Schedule The problem of delivery and service call scheduling has long been a tough nut to crack. TOA's new system, however, tackles the problem by calculating both the amount of time that a given job might take, and the ... (view more)

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion's fall from grace continued on Thursday as the Canadian company's stock value continued to plummet. Now, analysts wonder if the firm, which helped pioneer the smartphone device, will be able to recover. Times have ... been tough of late for Research in Motion (RIM), the Waterloo, Canada-based firm whose BlackBerry handheld device was once the darling of the smartphone market. Besides a major outage in early October that affected users around the world, the company has seen BlackBerry sales slip steadily in recent years. Beyond that, RIM also flubbed in its ... (view more)

One of the most exciting, applicable but often ignored areas of technology research is that involving the development of prosthetics. A new project aims to give amputees the ability to reacquire limb functionality by effectively connecting the brain ... to a prosthetic limb through a computer interface. A first look at the new technology may cause some film fans to shudder. That's because the new prosthetics, free of their synthetic skin and flesh, look eerily similar to the exoskeleton used in the movie 'The Terminator'. New Technology Transfers 'Feeling' to the Brain The technology allows ... (view more)

A couple weeks ago embattled BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) suffered a massive service outage that affected an estimated 10 million users around the world. The service remained down for up to 5 days. (Source: theinquirer.net ) At first, ... the problem seemed to spare North American users, with only Europeans, South Americans, Africans, and residents of the Middle East reporting problems, but soon after Canadian and American BlackBerry owners were complaining that calls were being dropped and text messaging a complete and total mess. Now, frustrated and angry BlackBerry users are ... (view more)

Microsoft has recently released the first major overhaul of its Windows Phone operating system and it's getting some generally good reviews. The revised system is powering a range of devices, including the first significant results of the ... Nokia-Microsoft partnership. Windows Phone 7, released late last year, was a much-delayed revamp of what had previously been Windows Mobile. Although the system was generally praised, it appeared to come far too late to overcome a significant loss of market share to systems such as Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Sales of the Windows Phone 7 handsets thus ... (view more)

Tired of the stress associated with fighting traffic on your daily commute? General Motors (GM) predicts such battles could be a thing of the past by the end of this decade. The company recently forecasted a rise in the number of driverless cars ... before 2020. In a recent report, GM notes that there are a number of reasons to look forward to a driverless future. For one, the Detroit-based company believes such technology would see to a 15 per cent reduction in fuel consumption and says that, as the tech improves, reductions could actually increase as time goes on. (Source: tested.com ) The ... (view more)

The number of wireless devices in use in the United States now outnumbers the nation's human population. The figures include tablet devices but the numbers are mainly driven by cellphones. If anything, the numbers are an understatement as they are ... based on subscriptions to wireless services. That means people who have devices such as the iPad but only use them via a WiFi connection aren't considered. On the other hand, the numbers do include people who have 3G data subscriptions for portable computers. According to CTIA, the wireless industry's trade body, there were 327.6 million wireless ... (view more)

If you're a big fan of the 'Back to the Future' movies, you'll be very pleased to hear that the company which produced the films' iconic vehicle, DeLorean, will soon release an electric version of the slick ride. Called the DMCEV, the car will go ... into production in 2013 and cost $90,000. The exotic DeLorean, complete with hard edges and gulf-winged doors, is undoubtedly a big part of 1980s pop culture. Featured in all three 'Back to the Future' films, the vehicle has remained a cult favorite in the years since. The DeLorean Motor Co., which is based in Humble, Texas, to this day continues to ... (view more)

A Florida woman got the shock of a lifetime this week when she opened her cellphone bill only to find the total roughly equal to the price of a slick Ferrari sports car. Even more surprising, the bill wasn't a mistake on the part of T-Mobile, ... meaning the woman was on the hook for the full charge. Celina Aarons, a resident of southern Florida, was recently charged $201,000 for a single month of charges to a cellphone registered in her name. Aarons was stunned to find that charge because she hadn't made any phone calls over seas, and immediately contacted her cellphone provider. Phone Bill ... (view more)

A tandem of researchers in Singapore claim to have discovered a way to use table salt as a means to increase the density at which bits of data can be stored on a hard disk drive platter. Early projections indicate that this 'salty' method is ... actually 5 times more efficient than current hard disk densities. The method was first introduced by Joel Yang, a scientist at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) at Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research. Yang was able to hone his method using an extremely high-resolution e-beam lithography -- the same process by ... (view more)