World's oldest digital computer restored to life at age 60

Welcome to the newsletter for Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine. These are the headlines for December the 3rd, 2012. World's oldest digital computer restored to life at age 60 The Harwell Dekatron computer is a 1950s computer having roughly the weight and size of a Hummer H3 and the computing power of a four-function pocket calculator. Having been restored to its original operating condition using 95 percent original parts, it is now the oldest functioning programmable digital computer in the world. Guinness might have been onto something, when, in 1973, they named the Dekatron the Most Durable Computer in the World. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile New hypercars - 1500 hp Hennessy Venom GT2 and 1400 hp Koenigsegg One:1 The horsepower proliferation war between the world's hypercar elite looks set to explode again in the next 12 months when both Koenigsegg and Hennessy will debut new versions of their Agera R and Venom GT respectively, both with significantly enhanced performance. Only Hennessy has officially released details to us at this stage (along with projections that its new Venom GT2 will have a top speed of 287 mph), but some very credible images and details have emerged on the internet to confirm the existence of the outrageous Koenigsegg One:1. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Poseidon Resorts completes underwater hotel design The buzz around Poseidon Undersea Resorts has been around for a few years now (c.f. our 2007 report on the conceptually-similar Hydropolis in Dubai). Poseidon Resorts has announced that it has completed the design and engineering of structural works, indicating that the sci fi-esque undersea project is closer to getting off the ground, or better, into a lagoon on a private island in Fiji. The company is now working to secure capital for construction, which should take two years to complete, it says. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile 2013 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 10th Anniversary Edition revealed in LA To call the Jeep Wrangler "iconic" would be something of an understatement. With a body shape that traces all the way back to that World War II workhorse, the Willys, the Jeep is an enduring symbol of Americana. Ten years ago, to counter accusations of the brand having gone "a bit soft," Jeep introduced the hard-core Rubicon Wrangler variant, named for one of America's toughest mountain trails. Now comes the Anniversary Edition, packed with even more off-road ruggedness and ability – and a nice bit of red leather. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile SKYLON spacecraft's engine passes critical test Reaction Engines Ltd. announced on Wednesday the completion of a critical round of testing of its SABRE engine's precooler system. The SABRE is a radical type of hybrid jet/rocket engine capable of propelling a spacecraft into orbit or an aircraft in the atmosphere, at a velocity of Mach 5 (3,800 mph, 3,300 knots, 6,115 km/h). It's intended for Reaction Engines' SKYLON spacecraft and its airliner derivative, the LAPCAT A2 hypersonic aircraft. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Best iPhone apps of 2012 Five years ago, the iPhone didn't support third-party apps. Today, it's a fully-fledged computer that fits in your pocket. There are now apps for editing photos and videos, playing recent console games, and composing electronic soundtracks. Which of those stood out from the crowd this year? Let's take a look at the best iPhone apps of 2012. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile 2013 Volkswagen Beetle Convertible debuts at LA Auto Show Gizmag was on hand when Volkswagen unveiled the convertible variant of its new second-generation Beetle at the LA Auto Show ... second generation of the modern front-engined modern version, that is. The first generation was a relatively successful exercise in retro nostalgia, complete with dash-mounted bud vase, that appealed to a distinctly feminine demographic. This time things are more serious and less "cartoony," with a wider, longer, lower body shape and a level of design and finish that offer real value and less novelty. It's only right and proper that the iconic rag-top version should be launched in California. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Video road test: Triumph Speed Triple R There's nothing exceptional to point out on the Triumph Speed Triple R's spec sheet. Its power figures are quite modest compared to the big guns in this day and age, it doesn't look particularly special, and it doesn't come loaded with sophisticated rider aid technology like a lot of the bikes we've reviewed lately. And yet, I've never had so much fun on two wheels, or fallen so hard for a bike so fast. So what is it about this snub-nosed British bad boy that makes it such a compelling ride? Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile StickNFind system uses your phone and coin-like tags to find lost items If the number of "finding" systems cropping up lately is anything to go by, we seem to be quite a forgetful bunch. One of the latest such systems, known as StickNFind, looks to be particularly simple – just some little adhesive tags, and an app on the user's smartphone. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile New small fission reactor for deep-space missions demonstrated Exploring the regions of deep space beyond Mars means sending probes where solar power isn't practical. Since the 1960s, NASA has equipped its Apollo missions and unmanned explorers with Radioisotope Thermal Generators (RTGs). These have worked very well, but they run on plutonium 238, which is currently in short supply. Therefore, the Los Alamos National Laboratory is developing a new small nuclear reactor for spacecraft that uses uranium instead of plutonium to power Stirling engines and generate electricity. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Tretta AWD Bicycles put that lazy front wheel to work Although they're very seldom seen, 2-wheel drive bicycles have existed in one form or another almost as long as their traditional rear-wheel-drive counterparts. While most of them have been one-off experiments or short-run production models, Japanese bicycle manufacturer Arte Co Ltd has decided to give the 2WD thing a shot nonetheless, with its Tretta AWD Bicycle line-up. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Lenovo claims IdeaCentre Q190 is world's smallest full-function desktop PC About this time last year, Lenovo made a bid for the title of creator of the world's smallest desktop PC, with the launch of the IdeaCentre Q180. Now, an equally diminutive replacement is making a grab for the very same title. The IdeaCentre Q190 is reported to offer up to 80 percent faster processing performance over last year's model, is available with double the system memory, and up to 1 TB of HDD storage. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Spark smartens up any standard light socket The common thing amongst the various smart light bulbs we've seen recently, such as the Lumen, Philips hue, LIFX and INSTEON, is that all the enabling wireless technology is built into the bulbs themselves. This means that when the bulb inevitably fails, you're faced with replacing the whole expensive kit and caboodle. Spark overcomes this problem by separating the expensive wireless components from the bulb, thereby allowing a standard bulb to be connected to the internet. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Treeasy – a Christmas decoration for lazy minimalists Christmas decorations normally comprise of a tree (whether real or fake) covered in baubles and tinsel. But there are alternatives for those who don't feel the need to uphold tradition, and (perhaps more importantly) don't want to have a part of the outdoors brought indoors for the season. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Sony's new F5/55 4K Cameras gunning for RED and Arri The disruptive impact of the RED One 4K digital cinema camera when it was introduced in 2007 can't be overstated. After a few of years of denial that 4K was even necessary and thousands of RED camera sales, broadcast giants Sony began to get their act together and move toward 4K image capture. The stunning F5 and F55 cameras are the culmination of those efforts and more interestingly, an indication of a complete, and necessary, change of attitude at Sony. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile ESA's Mars Express relays Curiosity data NASA's Curiosity Mars rover got a bit of help from the European Space Agency (ESA) in October. Beaming data back to Earth from the surface of the Red Planet is often tricky, and Curiosity regularly uses satellites to act as relays when a proper line of sight isn't available. On October 6, the ESA probe Mars Express took up the slack by relaying data and images for the rover as part of an ESA-NASA support agreement. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Laser-projecting bicycle light takes to Kickstarter for crowdfunding When we first came across Emily Brooke's BLAZE, a bicycle attachment that projects a cycle lane symbol on the road ahead of the cyclist, it was little more than a concept. That was in June of last year. Since then, Brooke's launched her own company, developed working prototypes, and taken to Kickstarter to fund fabrication of the first batch. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Prototype robots autonomously strip paint from aircraft using lasers If you think stripping paint off an end table can be a messy, time consuming job, imagine removing paint and other coatings from an aircraft like the C-130 transport plane. Tasked with developing a robotic system that would take such a chore out of the hands of maintenance personnel, Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) and Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, developed a team of robots that gets the job done – using laser beams, no less. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Best Android apps of 2012 2012 has been a good year for Android. The Galaxy S III has been a sales behemoth, the Nexus 7 proved that Android tablets can sell too, and there have been plenty of great new apps. As 2012 comes to a close, let's take a look at the year's top Android apps and games. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile The Leatherman Raptor: a multi-tool built to save lives Having the right tool can make all the difference in a life-or-death situation, as multi-tool manufacturer, Leatherman, knows full well. That's why the Oregon-based company's latest product is a pair of medical shears designed specifically for military and civilian emergency medics. The Raptor is equipped with a range of features and tools aimed at helping field medics get people out of dangerous situations and into proper medical care as quickly as possible. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile NORUSCA II camera sheds new light on auroras Even those of us not lucky enough to have witnessed them in person will likely have marveled at photos of the stunning auroras caused by high energy particles from the Sun colliding with atoms in the Earth's atmosphere. A team of space-weather researchers has now developed a new camera called NORUSCA II that has produced the first-ever hyperspectral images of the aurora borealis (or northern lights) and may have uncovered a previously unknown atmospheric phenomenon. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile GuitarBots online learning game is played with any real guitar One of my most painful (but at the same time wickedly amusing) memories relating to the Guitar Hero and Rock Band gaming boom a few years ago was when a high-scoring king of the button/paddle guitar controller tried to show me how easy it was to play a real guitar. He soon learned that playing a real instrument can be very tough at the beginning, so much so that many would-be axe gods give up before the calluses have even had a chance to form. GuitarBots from Ovelin is a new online learning system that combines challenge and reward computer-based gaming and a real instrument to take string pickers from the tentative first steps right through to more advanced soloing and rhythm play ... and it looks like a whole lot of fun, too. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Award-winning device harvests energy from railway track vibrations Much of the abundant mechanical energy around us is irregular and oscillatory and can be somewhat difficult to efficiently tap into. Typical energy harvesting systems tend to be built for low power applications in the milliwatts range but researchers from New York's Stony Brook University have developed a new patent-pending electromagnetic energy harvester capable of harnessing the vibrations of a locomotive thundering down a stretch of track to power signal lights, structural monitoring systems or even track switches. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile LHC proton-lead collisions may have created new form of matter In September, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was being tuned to enable it to study proton-lead nucleus collisions for a data run next year. Eventually it ran and data was collected on the collisions for a period of four hours. When the data was analyzed, it revealed that some particle pairs produced in the collision were traveling in the same direction – a highly unusual situation. Although the data is not sufficient for certainty, the consensus appears to favor this as evidence for production of a color-glass condensate, a new form of exotic matter that has so far only existed as a theory. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Special promotion for Gizmag readers Become a web developer from scratch, learn everything you need to know to develop a website with HTML5, CSS and PHP Learn to develop a website, from scratch, even if you've never written a line of code. This online course, "Become a Web Developer from Scratch", includes over 231 lectures that will take your from HTML all the way to PHP, XML and JSON. When you are done with the 40 hrs of content, which you can cover at your own pace, you will be ready to create a fully, functioning, interactive website using today's most popular web development technologies. Gizmag subscribers get 60% off on this great course! Don't miss this offer, click here to learn more. Read More You are receiving this email because you signed up for our daily newsletter at http://www.gizmag.com. If you would like to switch to our daily newsletter, click here If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter please click here to unsubscribe. COPYRIGHT GIZMAG (C) 2012