Product RFID Tags Now Play Jingles
A computer science student from Durlach in Germany has worked out a way to store a tune on the radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags now attached to many consumer goods. (re: Greg Bear)

Mars Telecommunication Orbiter - Interplanetary Broadband
Lockheed Martin Space Systems is expected to land a $500 million contract to build the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter, intended by NASA to pioneer the use of lasers in planet-to-planet communication (re: George O. Smith)

Flexible Fabric Speakers Are Coming
A Korean research firm has announced that it has developed a technology for the mass production of sound speakers that are as flexible as fabric. (re: Bruce Sterling)

Eye Ball R1 Remote Surveillance Camera
The Eye Ball R1 is a compact wireless 360° mobile display system. It can be used in tactical operations by law enforcement personnel. If only they team up with the Rotundus robot guys... (re: Larry Niven)

Anemone Clock, Hug Shirt, Robot Dentist, Eternal Fridge Light? (They Must Be Fiction)
I sometimes read about devices and things that are so futuristic that they must be fiction. Four such items are described in this article. (re: Various (and none))

UCB - University of California Bone Regeneration
UCLA professors Kang Ting and Ben Wu are developing a new molecule they’ve named University of California Bone (UCB). This technology may be the most significant advance in bone regeneration in decades. (re: J.K. Rowling)

Snake Robot Roundup!
The snakebots are coming; slithering, grinding, undulating robots that slide on their bellies like a reptile across the Earth (and maybe other planets). (re: Various)

Snake Robot Roundup: Part Two
More snake robots - the Polybot-Based snakebot locomotion study and the OmniTread snakebot (most recent of its kind). (re: Various)

Hypersonic Sound (HSS) - Loudspeaker Just For You
Hypersonic Sound (HSS) technology does for sound what lasers did for light - provide a far more focused stream of energy over a greater distance with less dispersion. (re: E.E. 'Doc' Smith)

First Asteroid Belt Found Around Star Like Our Sun
An asteroid belt may have been found surrounding a star much like our own Sun, according to Dr. Charles Beichman of CIT. His team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to make the discovery. (re: Niven/Pournelle)

Minority Report Glove Interface From Raytheon
Defence contractor Raytheon is working on a computer interface taken from the movie Minority Report, which starred Tom Cruise. (re: Stephen Spielberg)

Find Extraterrestrial Civilizations By Their Works
Should we be looking for extraterrestrial civilizations, rather than just listening for them, as we do in the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project? That is the suggestion of a French astronomer, Luc Arnold (re: Larry Niven)

'Pleistocene Park' For Woolly Mammoths?
Scientists with the Mammoth Creation Project hope to find a frozen woolly mammoth specimen with sperm DNA. The sperm DNA would then be injected into a female elephant; by repeating the procedure with offspring, a creature 88% mammoth could be produce (re: David Brin)

Reduce Global Warming By Blocking Sunlight
At a conference last year on global warming, distinguished astrophysicist and sf author Gregory Benford pointed out that the various measures proposed to stop global warming will not do the job soon enough. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Sony Patents Ultrasound Brain Beam Matrix
Now entertainment giant Sony has patented a method of beaming an artificial world of experience - The Matrix - directly into your brain using ultrasound. (re: Vernor Vinge)

Nanostructured Thermoelectric Devices (And John W. Campbell, Jr.)
Nanostructured thermoelectric devices may have a wide variety of practical applications, generating electricity from heat; sounds a lot like John W. Campbell's thermelectrium from a 1935 story. (re: John W. Campbell, Jr.)