Yet more weirdness from the metaverse. Firstly, you can now view meteorological data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in real-time from a location in Second Life – which could be useful for checking if it’s raining outside without having to turn away from the flatscreen. Secondly, and in case that’s a little too ‘meatspace’ for you, go check out a new ecosystem simulation which has an open API that allows you to create your own critter and add it to the foodchain. I just wish I had enough time in my life to spend a few hours a day playing god…

There are plenty of examples of technologies thought up by science fiction authors long before they were even plausible as real products – so much so that there’s a site dedicated to keeping track of them. Well, here’s another one for the list. Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune featured a life-support system called a ‘still-suit’ which enabled its wearer to survive the ferocious arid desert climate of the planet Arrakis by recycling all bodily fluids in a closed system. It seems the NASA brainstormers thought that was a pretty elegant idea, and are basing a prototype ISS system on the same theory.

Any marketeer worth his salt will tell you that kids are an easy mark – they don’t look beyond the surface of what you’re selling. This may be the rationale behind a Scottish school’s adoption of biometric palm-scanners as a payment system in the school cafeteria – the kids are stoked with the novelty of the James Bond-esque procedure. Mind you, this attitude may well change once the devices are rolled out as planned to control classroom access and keep tabs on attendance figures. Oh well – start ’em young, as the saying goes.

Anyone who has used Google Earth for an hour or two is surely aware that there are satellites watching the surface of the planet with a calm and disinterested gaze. But not all of them – some of them are learning to choose things that are more deserving of their attention, like the prosaically named NASA sat ‘EO-1’, which has an evolving artificial intelligence that enables it to assess geological regions that may be about to undergo major disruptions or disasters, and start watching them closely. Which is all good, I suppose, but I just hope they didn’t fit the thing with anything it could hack into a weapon when it nears the end of its working life and realises its masters won’t come upstairs to fix it…

So, you’re a musician, and you’re feeling a bit left out of this massively-multiplayer online revolution that’s going on? No need for envy – now beatmakers and bedroom producers can get their collaborative jam on using netpd, a free open-source program that allows sound sculptors across the globe to link up and create an interactive multi-user masterpiece that can be tweaked and adjusted in real time by any of the contributors. This could be the shot in the arm the dance music scene has been waiting for.