DARPA has hankered after better high-bandwidth links with jet pilots for a long time, and it seems they might finally get their wish. The TTNT program is equipping jet fighters with datalinks comparable to true Internet Protocol connections, running at 2Mb per second. Question is, will they be using IE or Firefox?

When I saw my first GUI desktop, I actually wanted an Amiga rather than a PC (for about half an hour at least). But things haven’t changed much in the way a desktop is used for interacting with files since then, if you disregard sharpness of images and so on. We need a revolution, brothers – and it looks like the BumpTop could be the GUI I stand beside, as it operates on the same ‘messy-piles-of-documents’ dynamic that my meatspace workplace does. Take a look at the future.

Anyone who knows space knows that getting stuff up there is very expensive indeed, and risky too – there’s nothing quite so upsetting as having your new satellite blow up on the launch pad. So now there are plans to keep the astronomers happy with new space telescopes that ride on solar-powered super-blimps, almost at the outer edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.

In between evangelising about the Singularity and appearing in an unfeasable number of interviews and conferences, Ray Kurzweil likes to crank out the occasional innovative invention. His latest output is a device that can photo-scan text documents, and read them back to a blind user. Kurzweil has always had a soft-spot for reading machines, and this is the latest in a line of devices that started with his first washing-machine sized prototype back in 1981.

Nanosolar are that rarest of things – a Silicon Valley start-up with a clear mission and business plan. They are looking at using roll-printing methods to dramatically lower the price of solar panels, and have just won $100m of funds to open their new factory next year. Their thin-film technology will hopefully bring us to the ‘economic tipping-point’, when there will be an explosion of take-up in solar energy projects.