Optical fiber is great for carrying data; silicon is great at processing it. The tricky bit can be interfacing between the two technologies. A joint UK/US team has taken the first steps toward solving this problem by creating optical fibers with silicon semiconductor devices built into the signal path.

Robotic limbs and prosthetics are a great idea – but they really burn up a lot of power, and hence stay tied to a power source. Ray Baughman, a nanotechnologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, is addressing this problem by developing artificial muscles powered by methanol reactions at the nanoscale.

Oil Standard is a Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox that converts dollars to barrels of oil at current prices wherever they appear on websites. In case you don’t feel guilty enough for being a resource-hogging first world citizen, I suppose.

War (uh) what is it good for? Apparently gadget developers, whose latest addition to the infantryman’s bandolier is a rifle-launched camera dart.

If you weren’t hip enough to be at South By Southwest, you can .mp3s of some of the most interesting programming.