As the Wikipedia page on Tesla coils puts it, ‘large systems can deliver higher energy, potentially lethal, repetitive high-voltage capacitor discharges from their top terminals’. A large coil can generate up to half a million volts, and as any museum tour guide that operates a Tesla coil will tell you, the arcs will destroy electronic equipment, coils can catch fire if they’re run for too long and they’re usually housed inside a Faraday cage (the same thing that stops microwaves leaking out of your microwave oven). … Continue readingSuper Power

Picture this; you leave work and stop at a coffee shop on the way to the bus stop. You’ve in the queue when your mobile beeps. When you answer, Maia’s familiar voice cheerily says ‘hey, you know if you drink coffee after 3pm you won’t sleep, and you’ve got that early meeting tomorrow’. … Continue readingTomorrow’s AI Helper, Today

Is it an investment opportunity or a new way to pay for coffee? Will it upend commerce as we know it or be the Betamax of the 21st century? It

Continue readingThe Colour of Money

As usual, Apple looms large over CES despite having no official presence here, with the hottest new form factor being the Ultrabook, a term trademarked by Intel to describe the new thin, light and inexpensive yet fully specced laptop. … Continue readingEnter the Ultrabook

“Electromagnetic radiation causes increased risk of disease by causing DNA strand breaks,” says Dr Michael Wald, a director at US-based Integrated Medicine & Nutrition, “that’s what causes cancer.” … Continue readingRadiation and the mobile phone

If there were only one reason to buy the HP 4510 series it would be the typing experience. With a full extended keyboard, it takes a keyboard layout approach we’ve seen far too rarely. Each key is only a few millimetres above the chassis and needs only the slightest touch, and a small gutter between each key cuts down errant keystrokes dramatically. … Continue readingHP 4510s

If you’re starting your own design studio from scratch or you’re working on software so old it makes sense to upgrade it all at once, Adobe Web Bundle will be the most value for money purchase you’ll make on software this year. … Continue readingAdobe Web Bundle

Sure, it might not be designed to handle an incoming 4Gb of fonts, but plenty of publishing houses have libraries that size, and nobody — least of all layout artists on deadlines — has time for prima donna software. … Continue readingExtensis Suitcase Fusion 12.0

Surrendering slices of the pie it knows it can’t win, Corel have released a self-styled ‘essential Microsoft Office users’ graphics companion’ and created a strong, lean suite. … Continue readingDesigns on Office Users

A hard drive can go wrong for a whole lot of reasons, and when it does it’s usually cause for the most panic as you’ve potentially lost the only thing on your computer that can’t be replaced — your data. … Continue readingDoing the Hard Yards