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British Inventor Josh Silver has developer a pair of eyeglasses that are instantly adjustable. They've got a liquid-filled sac in the middle—add more fluid to make the glasses stronger, deflate to weaken them.
Today's crushing blow to our self confidence comes to us from India, where a 9 year old girl has become the youngest person to ever pass a Microsoft Certified Professional examination.
The terrorists in Mumbai might have committed inhuman acts, but in at least one way, they are just like you and me. When authorities cut the cable feeds to the hotels where the terrorists held over 200 hostages, they relied on another piece technology to monitor the police response and the world's reaction to the attacks: BlackBerrys. Commandos were not only surprised to find the devices in the terrorists' rucksacks, but that they used the internet to look beyond local Indian media for information, watching the global reaction in real-time as well.
After a 25-minute descent, Chandrayaan-1's Moon Impact Probe has successfully crashed on the Moon's surface, taking images of the descent like these ones and making yet another man-made hole on the battered Earth's satellite.
Impoverished Indian families can look into getting the e-charkha, an electricity-generating version of the ubiquitous yarn-making spinning wheel, as a way to increase productivity without a boost in energy costs. The e-charkha, designed by RS Hiremath, generates juice as the charkha spins and diverts it into a free battery at the bottom of the machine.
The Chandrayaan-1, literally "Lunar Craft", launched today from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on the southeastern coast of India. The spacecraft will orbit the Moon for two years, charting its mineral composition, searching for ice, and helium-3, all three fundamental for the establishment of a lunar outpost. Or a call centre. It can go either way. Chandrayaan-1 is India's first mission to our satellite, and it's also NASA's return to the moon after the Apollo missions:
Meizu's iPhone copycatting M8 mobile phone is to be vaporware no longer thanks to GeekITstores, who will be launching it in China then India from December onwards. The 8GB model is apparently due to cost somewhere between $US380 and $US470, and will be launched with "complete fanfare"...presumably because it's the "iPhone killer," or so says the press release. In fact, GeekITStores really seem to love the device, saying it was looking for a "better, cheaper alternative" to the iPhone for Indian customers. Read on for the press release.
Despite repeated assurances by experts that the Large Hadron Collider would not bring about the end of the world, it appears that one 16-year-old girl in central India decided to commit suicide by drinking pesticide rather than face that remote possibility. Her father noted that several Indian programs aired doomsday predictions in the days leading up to the test run, which left her inconsolable. As tragic as this is, I can't help but wonder why someone would rather go out by drinking pesticide than being painlessly vaporised. [news.com.au via Uberreview]
In what appears to be the endless spread of Firefox, a new addition to the unofficial Firefox catalog has been spotted—in India. On the back of a bus. We're guessing the bus doesn't have on board WiFi to make use of its web browser of choice, but we admire the support. Also, if that text in yellow above the artwork doesn't read "Safari and IE blow", well, then we'll eat our cats...I'm seriously mixing up my modern proverbs this weekend. Dammit. [Neatorama]
It's really unlikely that this Movie Phone from the Indian mobile maker Spice would make it anywhere besides India, but it's an amazing phone because of what it's got on the back: an optical drive. This h.264 optical drive loads into the back of the phone much like UMDs into a PSP, and can fit a 2.5 hour film into one disc. There's going to be 40 movies available in India at launch, which will be followed by 1,000 more movies later. We only have one question, which will probably be the only time anyone on earth ever asks this question: Why didn't they just go with UMDs instead of making a proprietary format? [Tech Digest]
