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Smart News / Smart News Ideas & Innovations

This Camera Ball Creates a Panoramic Image When You Throw It in the Air

It’s unclear whether a $600 ball camera can be competitive in a market where most smart phones now have a “panoramic” function. But it is still nifty

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Meet the First Robot to Ring the NASDAQ Bell

As trading gets more and more automated and computers more integral to the process, it was probably only time before some sort of robot rang the bell

Learning Another Language Could Help Delay Dementia

Kids who know two languages think faster and more creatively. And research even suggests that being bilingual could fortify the brain against dementia

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These High-Tech Cocktail Garnishes Take a Hint From Plants And Animals

In the coming years, biomimicry could be the newest upscale dining fad, much as molecular gastronomy was in the late 1990s and locavorism is today

This Robot Is Powered by Pee

From bug eaters to pee drinkers, these robots of the future will be part of the food chain

The Inventor of Videotape Recorders Didn’t Live to See Blockbuster’s Fall

As far as Charles Ginsberg was concerned, the video tape was “one of the most significant technological advances” since the television

Sweetie, a virtual 10-year-old Filipino girl

A Virtual Ten-Year-Old Girl Helped Identify 1,000 Online Predators

Over a ten week period, Sweetie accrued around 20,000 solicitations for virtual sex from men from around the world

This Movie Has Been Rated S for Sexist

Even with the bar set incredibly low, most movies fail this simple test for sexism

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This Robot Always Wins Rock-Paper-Scissors

To do this, the Japanese robot takes advantage of humans comparatively slow visual processing time

Google Wants to Enable the Amateur Etymologist in All of Us

A quick Google will now give you the history of your word

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The Earliest Bike Design Is Getting a Modern, Electric Reboot

What would early bike designers think of this Tron-like reboot of their classic wheels?

This Drone Hunts Down Apple Disease

These drones are striking against a different kind of enemy: apple scab

Dell Laptop Users Weren’t Crazy, Their Keyboards Really Did Smell Like Cat Urine

Some users speculate that polymers could have been to blame, though others pointed to nitrogen, one of the main components of urine

These Scientists Are Using Bees to Spread Pesticides

Since they’re already going to the flowers anyway, why not give them some pesticides to carry?

Lockheed Martin’s networked spy rocks

Networked Rocks Could Let the Military Keep an Ear on the Ground

These rocks can not only spy on you, they can communicate with each other and report back to base

If Anyone Can Make the James Bond Submarine Car Work, It’s Elon Musk

Musk bought the Lotus Espirit car from the movie The Spy Who Loved Me for $866,000 at auction

Glitches in the Common Application Have Seniors Pulling Their Hair Out

Should the Common App fall down entirely, we’ll probably hear the collective wail millions of high school seniors all over the country

The GeoEye-1 satellite

This App Tells You When Satellites Are Watching You

For the paranoid among us, an app that says when you may be being watched

Luke Skywalker’s prosthetic hand from The Empire Strikes Back

Advances in Prosthetic Limbs Brings Back a Sense of Touch

This new prosthetic mimicked rhesus macaques’ sense of touch

This New Burial Technique Turns a Corpse Into a Tiny Pile of Freeze-Dried Fertilizer

In the future wills may include specifications for the type of flower or bush we’d like to fertilize rather than the make of coffin or urn

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