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Google's Bay View Googleplex Google is known to use some of the most famous offices in the world as their workplaces, but they actually never built a single office themselves, until now! The center-core of the Googleplex  in Mountain View, California, hosts a suburban office park once occupied by Silicon Graphics which Google, being the new owner, "Google-ized it to suit its needs. In the past two years, Google did a little brainstorming about building something totally  from scratch. It went so far that the company decided to hire the German architect Christophe Ingenhoven to design a new, eco-friendly structure on a site next to the existing Googleplex but they abandoned the project upon radically deciding to build in anleother part of Mountain View, closer to San Francisco Bay, and hiring a different architect: NBBJ from Seatt, a bit more conventional in nature. The more you look at the plans, the more it hits you. The new complex has 9 somewhat identical buildings, most o

Argus II bionic eyes Following approximately twenty-over years worth of research, development and trials, and an EU-approval in 2011,  Second Sight Medical Products was granted US approval from the FDA for the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System . The Argus II is the 1st bionic eye implant to treat advanced Retinitis Pigmentosa , a degenerative eye disease that usually results in nearly complete blindness. The bionic eye includes a tiny camera, a transmitter which is mounted on a pair of glasses, a Video Processing Unit (VPU) and a retinal prosthesis ( artificial retina ). The Argus II bionic eye is able to effectively replace the degenerated cells in the patient's retina and lets the patient see shapes and movement. Images captured by the camera are transformed into data that is then transmitted wireless to the retinal prosthesis. However, the vision you get from the Argus II bionic eyes is certainly not comparable with regular sight. The Argus II has 60 electrodes implanted in t

Artificial Intelligence Machine learning New research conducted by the University of Indiana in the USA concluded that  Artificial Intelligence  or machine learning  which was responsible for the development of  voice recognition, self-driving cars and credit card fraud detection to name a few, can also greatly improve the cost and quality of the healthcare sector globally. By deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) frameworks, and utilizing Dynamic Decision Networks and Markov Decision Processes, they demonstrated how simulation modeling (which predicts the outcomes of treatment) can potentially improve patient treatment outcomes and lower costs as a result.

Buy your very own Jetpack A jetpack , with a price-tag of "just" 80,000 Euro's was introduced at the International Defense Exhibition in Abu Dhabi. Martin Aircraft Company (not to be confused with  Martinair ), the manufacturers of this Jetpack point out that this product is now available for sale targeting the defence sector, aid sector as well as consumers who wish to explore the product for leisure purposes. The Jetpack weights 40 kilo, can get you up into the air to a maximum of a mile high and has a maximum speed of about 60 miles per hour.

The rumor is not confirmed yet but Windows Blue could become a stand-alone version. Windows Blue (9) will be a must-have revamp of Windows 8, and it would fix a lot of the problems within the current Windows operating system which is why it's wise to re-check all previously known details about Windows Blue. Keep in mind though that all of these are just rumors because Microsoft  doesn't say anything about Windows Blue officially. The name Windows Blue Although it's easy to assume the next version would be labelled as Windows 9, internal Microsoft sources have leaked that Microsoft was (again) changing course in the product-name field. Windows Blue didn't seem to be the only code-name that attracted Microsoft. People from within the company revealed that they earlier decided on Windows 9 (obviously) and later on Windows Next . At the end, it seems like Windows Blue is now the premier choice even though we can still expect Microsoft to change the name just before the off

Handheld and portable DNA genome sequencer Although we are dealing with an economic crisis, the DNA genome sequencing industry continues to grow in rapid pace. After the Human Genome Project concluded in 2003, the potential for personalized medicine began to be realized. It had taken close to fifteen years and billions of Euro's to identify and map all 3,3 billion base pairs in the human genome. However, the methods used to achieve this had begun to improve exponentially, at a rate even faster than Moore's Law seen in computer chips. From 2008 inwards  the cost per genome was going down very fast. By 2013, it was possible to sequence an entire human genome for less than a hundred Euro's. And the next few years bring even greater advances. One big trend in recent years has been the increasing portability of DNA genomes analyzing devices. These are becoming so sophisticated that they can provide results in a matter of seconds, at negligible costs. Handheld DNA genome sequenc

Windows Blue (Microsoft Windows 9) Okay, it may be way too soon to confidently label Windows 8 either a success story or a big failure, but you can agree with me it's never early enough to ask the "what's next" question, especially in conjunction with a rumored mid-2013 update secretly referred to as “ Windows Blue ”... Microsoft will have to deliver a funky balancing act with its next Windows 9.  It should be able to satisfy its existing users while at the same instance make a transition from the "old" desktop paradigm to the new "touch-first" interface. As it now stands, there's absolutely room for improvement! The Windows team recently declined to give any answers about how it might build on Windows in the near futurecso here's one suggestion to showcase a potential track towards Windows 9. Kill the desktop! With Windows 8, Microsoft denoted the desktop user interface. Instead of being the main attraction when you turn on the device, i

From: W3C, World Wide Web Consortium The RDFa Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of HTML+RDFa 1.1. This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDFa Core 1.1 and RDFa Lite 1.1 specifications for use in HTML5 and XHTML5. The rules defined in this specification not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but also to HTML4 and XHTML documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules. Comments are welcome through 28 February. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.