Technology Review: Thin Displays as Wristbands. Sweet! Widescreen Dick Tracy! http://ping.fm/VmADb

National Ignition Facility Fires Up

The National Ignition Facility completed the first dry run of what is at the moment the world's most powerful laser. The facility focuses on fusion energy research as well as simulation of nuclear explosions for defense researchers. Links here to articles from Wired and Laser Focus World.

Ipad frenzy revisited

I have owned an iPad for several months now, and I have to say that I am reasonably impressed. It is the 3G version and honestly does have some utility as an email machine on the road, and as an entertainment device. It doesn't replace my laptop, but I can do a number of the things on it that used to require breaking out and booting up the laptop, as well as some things that I couldn't do on the laptop as I don't have a 3G card for it.

The iPad should be lighter and more feature rich, and certainly needs to be less expensive, so its not ideal (yet). Despite these criticisms, I find the iPad to be a useful device, and my guess is that some of the shortcomings will be rectified in the next generation or two of devices.

Lots of competitive tablets are on the way, so expect the market to drive extensive innovation in the next few years.

Graphene Overview and Nobel Prize

A really nice article about the Nobel prize awarded for the discovery of graphene with links to a number of other articles about graphene from ElectroIQ which covers semiconductor manufacturing and nanotech / mems among other topics.