Interesting Information

Your smartphone is the one thing that never leaves your side because it can do it all. But the best smartphones do everything well. A great handset takes amazing photos, offers a bright and crisp HD screen and has enough speed to help you multitask with ease. There’s also plenty of variety out there when it comes to software and the overall user experience. That’s where we come in. Once you’ve decided on your platform of choice - Android, iOS, Windows Phone or BlackBerry - then it’s time to pick a device. At LAPTOP we test every major smartphone on the market and rate each one based on design, features, performance and battery life to help you make the right call. Here are our top 10 smartphones, ranging from the most sleek and compact handsets to the biggest phablets. Samsung Galaxy S4 The Samsung Galaxy S4 takes Android phones to the next level with an awesome camera, innovative gesture controls and best-in-class multitasking.

Exotic particles called neutrinos have been caught in the act of shape-shifting, switching from one flavor to another, in a discovery that could help solve the mystery of antimatter. Neutrinos come in three flavors — electron, muon and tau — and have been known to change, or oscillate, between certain flavors. Now, for the first time, scientists can definitively say they've discovered muon neutrinos changing into electron neutrinos. The discovery was made at the T2K neutrino experiment in Japan, where scientists sent a beam of muon neutrinos from the J-PARC laboratory in Tokai Village on the eastern coast of Japan, streaming 183 miles (295 km) away to the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in the mountains of Japan's northwest.

The first powered airship took to the skies on September 24, 1852, and the golden age of this type of aircraft ended with the tragic Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937. These days, we mostly see airships in the form of floating billboards. However, some have refused to let go of the notion that airships may have an important role to play in the future of air travel. Science fiction authors and filmmakers often feature reinvented takes on airships. And as it turns out, they could be onto something. Manufactured by Montebello, California-based American aircraft company the Worldwide Aeros Corporation, the Aeroscraft is a far cry from the blimps of the past. From its rigid structure to its control of static heaviness (COSH) system, it’s a modern aircraft that incorporates many cutting edge and ground-breaking technologies. The first functioning prototype, a more basic model known as The Pelican, was successfully floated on January 3, 2013 in Tustin, California. The Pelican w...

Depleted uranium rounds sound exactly like the kind of thing you’d want to stay right the hell away form. Even with the “depleted” bit thrown in there, these things still sound worse than wasps made of anthrax. In a nutshell, depleted uranium rounds are exactly what you’d expect: rounds with a small amount of uranium crammed in them, because the pointy metal thing that flew at you at 400 MPH wasn’t dangerous enough. It’s not what these rounds do to the human body that makes them terrifying though; it’s what they do to armour.

Getting into your house, protecting your data, and finding your stuff gets help with sophisticated devices new to the market. Here are eight security products that will help get you indoors, safeguard your valuables, and help you find things. Goji The Goji Smart Lock is a lock for your front door that replaces your deadbolt, and that you can control with your smartphone. Via the Goji app, your phone can receive a picture, text, or app alert whenever someone is at your door. You can schedule access via the app, text, or email, if you want to let a friend inside while you're away. And for people in your life who don't own smartphones, Goji comes with old-fashioned keys and programmable Bluetooth Low Energy fobs. The lock runs on batteries, though, so make sure you have spares on hand.

Months before Hurricane Sandy hurled the Atlantic Ocean into houses and cities along the East Coast, another record-breaking cyclone battered North America, helping push this year's Arctic sea ice to a record low, a new study finds. Arctic sea ice has been declining for decades, reaching a record low in September 2007 and hitting that record again in 2012.  "The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012" arose in Siberia on Aug. 2 and crossed the Arctic Ocean to Canada, lasting an unusually long 13 days. The cyclone hit a pressure minimum of 966 millibars on Aug. 6, the lowest ever recorded for an Arctic storm, professors Ian Simmonds and Irina Rudeva of the University of Melbourne in Australia report in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The pressure reading is only 26 mb higher than Hurricane Sandy's record low of 940 mb. (A typical low-pressure system usually hits around 1,000 mb.) "This pressure minimum and cyclone long...

Most Amazing The Pavilion Protects Your Car and and VOLVO Developers The 'NO DEATH' CAR Although solar power is a resource that most of us agree we should be taking far more advantage of, the truth is that solar panels are often just as visually uncool as they are inefficient relative to other sources of energy. However, as manufacturing processes evolve to allow for more adventurous designs, the shift to aesthetically pleasing solar harvesters is gathering momentum, as exemplified by this new device created as an add-on to Volvo's V60 electric vehicle. Designed by Los Angles-based architecture studio Synthesis, the idea is the winner of the international "Switch to Pure Volvo" competition that called for an innovative solution to showcase the automaker's latest electric vehicle. The collapsible pavilion uses integrated photovoltaic panels tensioned over carbon fibre rods to create an attractively futuristic butterfly wing-like covering that bot...

In today's computer processors, much of the power put into running the processor is being wasted. A research team at Case Western Reserve University came up with a novel idea called fine-grained power gating, which saves power and money in a couple of ways: less energy would be used, and less heat produced. "Using less power produces less heat. Less heat means less cooling is needed," said Swarup Bhunia, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and an author of the research. "That can avoid the need for a big fan to cool off the processor, which saves a lot of money." Processors are used in a variety of products, from computers to cell phones. Operational costs could be cut by more than one-third, the researchers say. Bhunia, PhD student Lei Wang and PhD alumni Somnath Paul, whose work was funded by the Intel Corporation; presented their idea at the 25th International Conference on VLSI (Very-Large-Scale Integration) D...

Paint Your City - Tagtool Paint your city with light and record the results with Tagtool, a fun iPad app that enables you to create your own animations and project them onto urban surfaces. You can even collaborate with another user to create interactive light shows for a crowd. An AV adapter brings the fun inside, if you’d rather just play around at home. If real life is just boring compared to the fantasy role-playing games you play online, you can extend that world into your actual surroundings.  Shadow Cities  turns your neighbourhood into a “magical battleground” wherein you go exploring, hunt down rogue spirits, and obtain new spells as you level. Contribute to Local Info - GeoData Extension GeoData Extension is a Wikipedia app for iPhones and Andriods that enables users to geo-tag articles, add photos, and submit new information. It also makes it easy to find points of interest nearby, with an interactive map that will take you on a virtu...

In an effort to help improve the vision of patients suffering from eye disease, engineers from the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego have developed a telescopic contact lens that can switch between normal and magnified vision. A team of engineers has designed a telescopic contact lens that can switch between normal and magnified vision by using slightly modified off-the-shelf 3D television glasses. The researchers, led by Joseph Ford, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, San Diego, built a prototype of the lens and tested it on a mechanical eye. Researchers report their findings in the June 27 online issue of Optics Express, an open-access journal of the Optical Society.

Interesting Roll Up and Washable Bluetooth Keyboard is the Flexible Bluetooth Mini Keyboard is designed for durability and portability. It is a Bluetooth-enabled keyboard for the iPad, all Android tablets including the Galaxy Tab, and other tablets. The keyboard comes with a USB charging cable which can be used when it is low on power. 

The computer mouse as we know it today was invented and developed by Douglas Englebart during the 60's and was patented on November 17, 1970. While creating the mouse, Douglas was working at the Stanford Research Institute, a think tank sponsored by Stanford University, and originally referred to the mouse as a "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System." This mouse was first used with the Xerox Alto computer system in 1973. However, because of its lack of success the first widely used mouse is credited to being the mouse found on the Apple Lisa computer. Today, the mouse is now found and used on every computer. The picture to the right was taken by Maracin Wichary at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, and is an example of what the first computer mouse looked like. As can be seen by the picture, the mouse was much larger than today's mouse, square, and had a small button in the top right corner.

2D or 3D? Drawing or sculpture? These dichotomies break down as you build up a physical model using a traditionally two-dimensional technique, tracing lines in the air that harden in real time to form objects.

In this mod, Jake von Slatt researched Victorian era stages and discovered they were approximately 4:3 aspect ratio – the 16:9 wide-screen ratio from the cinema. He coated the 24? wide screen monitor base with black spray lacquer and topped the supports off with some pieces of a brass chandelier. Then he fashioned

The last thing a spy wants is to have his or her own data stolen. Going beyond encryption and biometrics, a new form of magnetoresistive RAM will render data unusable if the chip is compromised. Philips is currently

Need to scan a document on the sly, as quickly as possible? The Docupen by Planon is hardly bigger than a regular writing instrument, but pass it over a sheet of paper or a photograph and it will capture and store the documents, ready to be uploaded via USB or Bluetooth to any computer.

It’s all too easy to listen to someone’s conversation using little more than a laser beam. Laser microphones use a laser beam to measure the vibration of sounds on a surface, usually glass windows, transmitting those sounds back to the listener’s receiver. DIY instructions abound on the internet, including this tutorial by Lucid Science.

While some inventors enjoy fame and fortune thanks to their inventions, for a handful of inventors, their devices proved their own worst enemies. Here are 12 unlucky (and in some cases, foolhardy) inventors who perished thanks to their own creations. Franz Reichelt or François Reichelt, the Flying Tailor (1879-1912) This Austrian-born French tailor is remembered for his accidental death by jumping from the Eiffel Tower while testing his own invention, a wearable parachute suit for pilots who would escape from a damaged plane. The first tests were quite successful with using dummies, so he wanted to jump himself. The 187-foot (57 m) fall to the icy ground killed him instantly. William Bullock (1813-1867) The father of the web rotary printing press and modern printing was killed by his own invention in a bizarre

A group of researchers has managed to create the most detailed and complete map of the human brain to date. BigBrain, the 3D digital reconstruction of the brain of a 65-year-old woman, reveals its details with microscopic precision.  The brain is made up of numerous networks of neurons that vary enormously in size, shape, and layers. Scientists can now see cerebral neuronal distribution with greater detail using this new model.  The finding, published in the journal Science, could drive further research into a wide range of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.  BigBrain will serve as an atlas for neurosurgery and give researchers invaluable insight into how the brain processes emotion, cognition and language. Lead author, Katrin Amunts, from the Research Centre Jülich, Germany, said that "it is a common basis for scientific discussions because everybody can work with this brain model." 

Yeah you could in theory use any pen as a weapon, but is your lonely Bic pen going to withstand the rigors of real hand to hand combat? Doubt it. That’s why you need the Benchmark 1100 pen. Built by a company known for knives, not shavers, you can be reassured that your writing device is always combat ready. The