Parachutes were an invention that revolutionised the delivery of troops into battle. But they’re inherently limited – beyond a small degree of control, it’s a case of just jumping out and floating down to where the wind takes you. A German company is trying to address this problem with the development of modular carbon-fibre wings for paratroops which will enable them to swoop, eagle-like, over distances of up to 200km before they reach the ground.

If you haven’t seen the video of the Smackbook Pro in action you’ve got to check it out. Virtual desktops rock, but switching virtual desktops with a tap on the side of the computer has got to be the best thing since file folders.

Cynicism aside, Wired’s lengthy consideration of the new trend toward mass creators is worth a read.

You ask me, putting Nike and Apple together on the same product is asking for trouble. You heard it hear first: those two behemoths together make an unstable mass, and we’re all going to get sucked in when it collapses into a branding black hole.

NASA’s Spitzer telescope has captured an unexpected anomaly. It seems that a stellar corpse of the type known as a neutron star is emitting continuous powerful streams of matter into space, in a manner only previously observed in black holes. That’s another few pages out of the cosmology rulebook.