How can you tell that podcasting has jumped the shark and gone mainstream? Because even Her Royal Majesty is down with it.

Superconductors that can be used at reasonable temperatures have moved out of the laboratory and into the factory. By 2020, high temperature superconducting materials are expected to be price competitive with copper wire. [geekpress]

Sun Microsystems employs a large proportion of remote workers. To deal with the inevitable difficulties of combining present and telepresent workers in the same meeting, they’ve developed the porta-person, a device with a screen, stereo speakers, and a motor that allows it to swivel towards speakers in the room. [futurewire]

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have invented a sandwich of electronics that can charge any (suitably equipped) device placed on them. The technology overcomes a drawback of most induction charging schemes that either supply only a low charge or require a highly concentrated charging point by sensing the presence of devices and directing the electrical flow appropriately. [kurzweil]

Benson Space Company just gave SpaceDev $330,000 to SpaceDev to do a Phase 1 study on it’s Dream Chaser spaceship concept. Since Benson Space Company is former SpaceDev owner Jim Benson’s own company that he left SpaceDev to found, it isn’t as impressive as it sounds, but it’s nice to see forward movement on the Dream Chaser concept.