sat

The SAT is a major undertaking for millions of students every year. Studying is tiresome, and vocabulary books are often incomplete or out of date. SAT Words Easy is a universal iOS app that allows users to quickly cycle through thousands of words from an up to date database of previously used words from the SAT verbal test. Quick and easy to install, with no menu screens and multiple study options (next, random, alphabetical) and the ability to copy to a clipboard or share with another user via Twitter or e-mail, SAT Words Easy is a solid companion for anyone … Read more

One of the all-time best sci-fi film taglines is to be put to the test. Is it true that "in space no one can hear you scream"?

You could survive exposure to the hard vacuum of space for several seconds, long enough to attempt a yell or yodel. After that, however, bad things will happen.

But thanks to some British boffins at the University of Surrey's Surrey Space Centre and Surrey Satellite Technology, humanity doesn't need to test the "Alien" tagline firsthand. They've launched a satellite into orbit equipped with a screaming smartphone. … Read more

We're all aware of that corner of the market filled with products targeted at elderly users: mobile phones with limited functionality designed not to confuse, remote controls with huge buttons that are easy to read, and landline phones like the FotoDialer. Could the next product in this niche be a GPS navigation system for your grandma? A £12 million grant from the U.K. government is pushing in that direction.

Newcastle University Prof. Phil Blythe, who is heading up the team researching the project, cites waning eyesight, nervousness, and decreased confidence as issues for older drivers. The navigation … Read more

TomTom sat-navs have been struck down by a "leap year" bug that sees the road-navigating gadgets failing to find their location.

In a statement on its support site, TomTom says the problem is caused by a bug in the GPS receiver's software that has left some devices unable to obtain a GPS position since March 31.

"We are working hard on a permanent solution that we will make available on our website as a downloadable software fix," TomTom assures. The company says a "limited number of models" are suffering from the glitch, so let us know in the comments below if your TomTom is borked.

Symptoms could include a gray screen, or a notice that reads, "Waiting for a valid GPS signal..." or "Poor GPS signal..."

Read more of "TomTom sat-navs broken by 'leap year' bug" at Crave UK. … Read more

PENASCO, N.M. -- After five years of enduring Internet access that provided dial-up speeds for uploading and rarely exceeded 1Mbps down, I now cruise along in my home office on the edge of a wilderness area at 7.5Mbps for downloads. My uploads are 30 times faster at 1.5Mbps.

The path to my recent broadband liberation began on a day last fall when that slow satellite connection went dark for an entire day. A malfunction with the satellite literally caused it to shut down and turn away from the Earth. In the process of reporting the story for CNET, I came across a tangentially related tidbit about the launch of a new satellite, called ViaSat-1, which would soon be in orbit and providing new speed and capacity for my satellite Internet provider (WildBlue, which is a subsidiary of ViaSat).

I shared the good news with my family, but didn't plan to hold my breath for the upgrade to trickle down anytime soon through the layers of middlemen and resellers standing between that beautiful new bird in orbit and my Wi-Fi router. If you've read the rest of this week-long series or live in the sticks yourself, you know how new and exciting infrastructure can remain out of grasp, even when it's physically so close to home.… Read more

Buried among the gadgets, superthin screen OLED TVs, and all the other products we saw at CES this year was something not terribly sexy-looking, but something that will potentially affect millions of people living in rural America.

It's Exede, a new satellite broadband service from ViaSat that just launched this week. Yes, you heard right, satellite, those contraptions that orbit the earth, and until now a very sluggish way to receive Internet service (satellite has frequently been referred to as the Internet service of "last resort").

However, thanks to the launch of ViaSat-1, a next-generation satellite system … Read more

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you've seen the Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker," you know how dangerous bomb dismantling can be. But researchers have developed a system that they say can allow military and police to disarm explosives without risking anyone's life.

The system, developed by scientists at SRI International, is known as Taurus, and it is a miniature robot that can allow a trained dismantler to remotely do the work that used to require getting up close and personal, often too close for comfort, to a bomb.

According to Tom Low, SRI's director of medical systems and telerobotics, Taurus will be in field trials this summer and is expected to be commercially available by early 2012. While he would not say specifically what the 14-inch wide robot would cost, SRI's goal is to sell it for "less than the price of a squad car," meaning that many police departments, as well as military agencies, could conceivably buy it.

I got a presentation on Taurus from Low yesterday during a visit to SRI as part of my Road Trip at Home series. I've been to SRI before and seen things like wall-climbing robots, but seeing the way that Taurus could potentially help save lives was a much starker reminder of the ways that robots can make a real difference.

Taurus is a cousin of some of SRI's previous efforts into remote-controlled telemanipulation robotics. For years, the institution has worked on systems designed to allow remote surgical procedures, such as a military doctor being able to operate from afar on a wounded soldier. Low explained that this work began in the mid-to-late 1980s, and was intended to allow highly-trained surgeons to work on such soldiers within minutes of them sustaining injuries.

Over the years, this technology led to the creation of more general-purpose robots, such as the M7 system, which could allow security personnel to remotely explore, say, an abandoned bag at an airport. Low explained that it was crucial that the system be easy to use and quick to learn. … Read more

Those worried about what location information their phones are gathering might want to scrutinize their car navigation systems first.

Police in the Netherlands have used aggregate data from TomTom's satellite navigation systems to install speed cameras where drivers tend to exceed the speed limit, TomTom said yesterday. The practice doesn't involve any individual data, but TomTom is barring it in the future after customers objected.

The company's sat-nav systems can send position data back to TomTom, and the company uses the information for purposes such as routing people around traffic jams and providing accurate estimates of journey … Read more

Back in the days before home theater, only the most devoted bass fanatics used subwoofers. It's not that people didn't like bass, just that they bought speakers large enough to satisfy their bass cravings. Then again, the bass response required to play music isn't as demanding as movie soundtracks, so even fairly small speakers with 4- or 5-inch woofers could produce satisfying bass.

The best of today's small- to medium-size speakers produce much better-sounding bass than speakers did 10 years ago, so if you're primarily interested in listening to music and your speakers have 4-inch … Read more