Hard times in Hollywood mean smaller salaries for stars and writers alike as the industry struggles to keep its head above water. The studios may well be keeping a close eye on the Machinima Work Group (and others like them), who are using the 3D engines of virtual worlds like Second Life to create a new breed of cinematic art where the only budget restraint is that of man-hours. And not a moment too soon either, as we hear reports that Second Life is about to become host to another iteration of the inexplicably popular Big Brother franchise – it may be a brilliant PR move, but that’s a big dent in SL’s cultural kudos from where I’m sitting.

Say what you like about DARPA, but sometimes the projects they drop for lack of funding end up proving to be extremely beneficial for everyone, not just the US military. Point in case – the Walrus, from Aeros Aeronautical Systems. The Walrus is a prototype huge rigid-hull airship that was originally designed for shifting whole divisions of military units as a group, but it’s now being considered as a potential revolution for the cargo industry – it could open up land-locked nations to bulk trade and free roads from lorry-loads of building materials headed for urban areas.

In light of the less than positive press RFID tags have been getting in recent months, it’s no surprise to see that the industry is working hard to make them more secure and claw back some public goodwill. The latest patent in the pipeline describes RFIDs that can only be read by special lasers rather than broadcast radio signals. While it’s good news that security issues are being taken seriously, it seems that the necessity of aligning the tags with a laser beam removes the locational convenience that they were designed to offer. And as for more advanced encryption methods, well, I’m going to wait for Schneier‘s word on that.

Hmmmm … those trousers on eBay sure look nice, but how do you know whether the fabric is easy on the skin or more like wearing sandpaper? As things stand now, you have no way of telling, and that’s a gap in our online purchasing lives that needs patching desperately. Fear not, we Europeans are on the case – the HAPTEX project is developing devices that will simulate the tactile feel of textiles over an internet connection. How have we survived without this technology for so long?