A rendered prototype image of the Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo Home Server prototype hardware was released today on the web by German magazine, chip.de

The Scaleo Home Server will feature headless operation under Vista Home Server, a two disk 500GB SATA RAID array, gigabit Ethernet, and Energy Star 4.0-compliant energy usage of just 50W. Price estimates are ranging from €500 ($690) to €700 ($965).

Just when you thought the latest desktop computers couldn’t get any faster, think again.  A genius of a professor from the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering has developed something that could be the new wave of desktop computers.  Uzi Vishkin came up with a prototype which uses a method called parallel processing of a single chip.

The single-chip supercomputer prototype built by Prof. Uzi Vishkin’s group uses rich algorithmic theory to address the practical problem of building an easy-to-program multicore computer…Vishkin’s chip unites the theory of yesterday with the reality of today
 

To read the full article go here. 

By the way, he’s also letting the public come up with a name. My suggestion? I have none.   

DARPA is in the works to create the superior prosthetic arm by 2009. One prototype have been tested so far, with a second prototype in the works for a summer run. The prosthetic arm was tested by Jesse Sullivan, who lost both of his arms in an accident. Not only was Sullivan able to move the arm as if it were his own, the arm sent feedback to his brain that triggered the sense of touch.

In order for bionic arms to work, the users will have to be "bionic" as well, with surface electrodes holding tiny sensors being placed into the body. So, yes, it is quite possible that in the future, the "bionic man" will be alive and well and not just a concept.

*Photo courtesy of PopularMechanics*

Vision Robotics’ future fleet of agricultural robots is another step closer to reality with a prototype in the works for next year.

These robotic devices would glide through orchards picking the fruit.

Previous mechanical harvesters were too inefficient because it looked for one piece of fruit at a time. Then engineers actually went into the orchards and had an idea.

"Once you know where all the fruit is, then it becomes an easy job to calculate the most efficient way to pick it all," says Vision Robotics CEO Derek Morikawa.

A working model might have been in the fields right now, Cesar Chavez, the leader of the United Farm Workers, began a campaign against mechanization back in 1978. He wanted federal funding for displaced farm workers.

I hope we are smart enough to realize that this kind of thinking would have kept us in stone-age caves.

When I saw this picture on the Internet I thought to myself, "mmm, now that’s smart". It’s still in the protoyping phase, but it is both smart and eco-friendly, it makes use of light-posts already in place to create additional seating space in the city and it was designed by Daniel Jacobsson . "The two seats provides opportunity for two people who know each other to interact, or two people who do not, to rest without rubbing against each other. An additional feature of this idea is that it provides lighted seating at night".

I bet skateboarders will get the most use out of them.