Browsing: World

Inside a remote mountain in Texas, a gargantuan clock is being pieced together, capable of telling the time for the next 10 000 years. Once the clock is finished, people willing to make the difficult trek will be able to visit the vast chamber housing it, along with displays marking various anniversaries of its operation

Apple unplugged the rumour mill and fired up new hype machine on Wednesday, announcing the next-generation iPad and an upgraded Apple TV. “Apple has its feet in in the post-PC future,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook, kicking off the event by saying that Apple has sold 172m “post-PC” devices, including the iPhone

Apple has long been known for its intense focus on consistent branding and beautiful simplicity. Although this week’s Apple event unveiled a couple of new improvements to an expected line-up of products, it also revealed a certain sloppiness that was absent from earlier, Steve Jobs-led launches. This wasn’t anything major

On the eve of Apple’s much-hyped iPad HD event, Google has fired a shot right at Apple when it comes to media with its new Google Play store. Google Play will combine all of Google’s other stores like the Android Market and Google Music into one cloud-based marketplace

For a generation of baby-boomers it has been a source of huge disappointment. They grew up believing that one day they would fly to work in their very own sky cars — only to find themselves still very much grounded. More than a century after the Wright brothers first took to the air, personal aviation remains an

Apple and BlackBerry aren’t the only fruit-flavoured brands that can cause a stir with new hardware releases. The UK-developed Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized, bare-bones computer selling in two variations for US$25 and $35 respectively — slightly less than an iPad 2 plastic cover. After the Raspberry Pi’s pre-order

Sunny countries are often poor. It is a shame, then, that solar power is still quite expensive. But it is getting cheaper by the day, and is now cheap enough to be competitive with other forms of energy in places that are not attached to electricity grids. Since 1,6bn people are still in that unfortunate position

Towards the end of the Gulf war in 1991, an American armoured scout unit in Iraq’s southern desert stumbled upon a much larger elite force of dug-in Iraqi armour. Rather than retreating, the nine American tanks and 12 Bradley fighting vehicles attacked. When the battle ended about 25 minutes later, the Americans

Imagine yourself with a thousand small crates that must be moved from A to B along roadways. Inside each is part of an intricate construction that cannot be complete until every piece has arrived. You have options. One is an oversized lorry that may pass only along the largest motorways, but can carry all

“Ideas are like rabbits,” said John Steinbeck. “You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” The same could be said of ideas fora, whose population expanded again in February with the birth of Solve For X, an experimental Google-sponsored conference where entrepreneurs