The Reg celebrated the 50th anniversary of the James Bond films and arrival of Skyfall with a month-long series of articles and quizzes celebrating the science and technology of Ian Fleming’s stories and of the movies, commissioned by me and written by me with Reg and freelance writers and experts. We covered: The physics of making [...]
Pong was the first successful arcade and then home-entertainment system from Atari, which paved the way for Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and others. Ahead of Pong’s 40th anniversary I spoke to Al Alcorn, the engineer who built Pong from scratch twice about its unexpected and unintended success, Atari founder and front-man Nolan Bushnell, and how home [...]
Firefox shop Mozilla Foundation is reacting against the trend among tech companies of throwing up proprietary app stores that fence off the web, with a store and architecture serving webbified apps to devices regardless of maker or operating system. It might win the approval of a worried Tim Berners-Lee, but Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft [...]
They’ve been rebooted, re-imagined and uncut, but now Space: 1999 is getting its own on-screen revival next to sci-fi classics Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek and Star Wars. “We are indeed re-imagining the franchise and bringing something new and relevant to today’s audiences,” said Jace Hall of the re-write – Hall’s company was behind ABC’s 2009 [...]
One of the web’s fastest growing browsers is turning into a platform for cracking newspaper paywalls. How long before Rupert Murdoch tries calling Google to heel? You can read my expose of the paywall busters here.
A David-versus-Goliath US legal case that’ll determine the fate of music services from Amazon and Google is heading towards a decision. I talk to tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson about his four-year prosecution by EMI, and how a victory for Robertson would mean record labels must license music on reasonable terms and give consumers greater freedom [...]
Nine years into Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, it is hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman’s destruction of everyday objects with high explosives that stick in most fans’ memories. Their detonations in – shall we say – “unconventional” settings, however, has lead to contracts with the US government devising light-weight blast-resistant armor for combat vehicles deployed in [...]
No guns firing beams of light. No photon torpedoes. And, sorry, no aliens. When Battlestar Galactica delivered the science part of “sci-fi” it was more mind-blowing – and realistic – than anything that had gone before. I talk to the show’s science adviser Kevin Grazier as his book – The Science of Battlestar Galactica – [...]
With the BBC under attack once more, this time over “celebrity” presenters and pay, the license fee is again in question. The Beeb could learn a thing or two from US public-service broadcasters, who are denied similar funding. Read my piece for Beehive City here.
Steve Jobs says he loves newspapers and wants to help them make money online using the iPad. I explain why publishers should be wary of this Silicon Valley geek bearing gifts, for Beehive City here.
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