Labor Day may have made for a shortened week on most sectors, but the relentless march of technology and gadgetry stops for nothing. So settle in and let's take a look at some of the high points that hit this week.
First came reports of a new innovation from NASA, which unveiled the PhoneSat system, a series of small, inexpensive satellites – also called "nanosatellites" – designed to do much the same things that current satellites do, but for much less. The nanosatellites use a lot of current smartphone technology and can be built for just $3500 each, yet can still take digital photos of Earth and send them back.
Next, we examined the concept of Internet addiction, and the very real potential that it has a larger genetic component than previously realized. As it turns out, the genetic structure of those who have what is called a "troublesome relationship to the Internet" have a similar genetic mutation to those who are addicted to nicotine. This knowledge may ultimately yield better understanding of the Internet addiction as a whole.
Next came an unexpected revelation that suggests that the Web is about to get a lot bigger, with half of humanity – somewhere around 3.5 billion individuals – expected to be using the Internet by 2017. Given that as far back as 1999, half of the world had never so much as made a telephone call, this represents a significant jump in the world's overall technological prowess.
Then we saw a report that suggested that Steve Jobs (News - Alert), for all his seeming prescience about technology, seemed to be wrong about the concept of tablet screen sizes. His belief that a tablet with a screen size of under 10 inches was suboptimal seems to have been swallowed up by the advancing numbers of devices--including an upcoming one from Apple (News - Alert) itself according to many reports – and moreover, by the steadily growing demand for small tablets.
Finally, we got a look at the Wireless Window Sentinel, a device that can incorporate itself with a security system to function as a hard point of monitoring, but without the need for wires to connect it, or batteries to power it. A combination of technologies go into the development of the Wireless Window Sentinel, and as such, provide an unexpected solution to home security needs. The device is expected to go into mass production by the end of next year.
And that was the week in technology and gadgets. But don’t just wait for our Week in Review coverage every weekend; tune in to the wires yourself and see what’s happening on TechZone360!