Internet balloons to benefit small business: Google

A high altitude WiFi internet hub Google Project Loon balloon is displayed in Christchurch, on June 16, 2013(©AFP/File) Google’s plans to beam the Internet from giant balloons sent to the stratosphere could boost small businesses in rural parts of Asia by connecting them online, the company said on Wednesday. Karim Temsamani, Google’s head of Asia Pacific, said in a speech at the Communicasia conference in Singapore,...

Tablets thrust Thai classrooms into digital era

Students use tablets at Ban San Kong school in Mae Chan, in Thailand's northern Chiang Rai province on May 27, 2013(©AFP) In a rural classroom in the Thai highlands, hill tribe children energetically slide their fingertips over tablet computer screens practising everything from English to mathematics and music. The disadvantaged students are part of an ambitious scheme by the kingdom to distribute millions of the handheld...

Echoes can reveal the shape of a room

With more refinement, the technique could someday lead to better ways of designing concert halls for specific acoustics(©AFP/Getty Images/File) A snap of a finger, a handful of scattered microphones and a computer algorithm are all it takes to create an accurate three-dimensional map of a room, Swiss and US researchers said Monday. The method, described in the US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measured...

Robot that runs like a cat springs to life in Switzerland

An artist's rendering of the 'cheetah-cub robot' released by the EPFL on June 17, 2013(©EPFL/AFP) Swiss researchers said Monday they have created a small four-legged, high-speed robot that runs like a cat in a bid to create a new breed of robots for use in search and rescue operations. Researchers added that the “cheetah-cub robot,” the size of a small house cat or cheetah cub, moves as fast as an adult...

Scammers fleece Australians out of $90 mln

A pedestrian speaks on a mobile phone while standing next to a promotional billboard, on May 2, 2006(©AFP/File) Australians were fleeced out of more than Aus$93 million (US$90 million) last year by scammers, and officials on Monday said they believe it was just the tip of the iceberg. The money people lost was up nine percent on the previous year with a big jump in online shopping scams, the Australian Competition and Consumer...