So, you’re cruising the Sprawl with your cyberdeck, looking for a node through which to jack into the Net. Only Bill Gibson’s neural interfaces aren’t quite street level technology yet, worse luck. So the only sensible answer for any self-respecting hip-hacker type is to build a device that allows you to sense wi-fi networks by touch – because dropping into every coffee shop you pass and just asking would be way too 20th Century. [BoingBoing]

The ‘water on Mars’ question has been current since before I was born, and hence I might be forgiven for a little skepticism when anyone comes out with a definitive answer either way. Technology, however, I trust slightly more – so I’m tentatively stoked to hear that the Mars Express probe has sent back results suggesting there’s enough ice at the Martian South Pole to cover the whole planet ten meters deep if it melted.

General consensus seems to be that our planet is in trouble, even if we’re still arguing over the cause (which is a bit like asking who left the gas on while your house burns down). But we’re starting to look at ways of fixing the problems – and scientists are starting to consider science fictional technologies as potential tools in these efforts. Man-made volcano, anyone? [Advanced Nanotechnology]

Things are definitely changing in the world of creative media. Oh, you want proof? How about George Lucas’s Lucasfilm outfit sponsoring a Star Wars fan fiction movie contest, then? [SlashDot]

That’s not my buzzword, either – that’s exactly what Nanoident are calling their new environmentally-friendly semiconductor production systems, which create electronic circuits by printing them instead of growing them the old-fashioned (1.0) way. They’re claiming that printed circuits will soon be as ubiquitous as the normal kind are today, and I can’t see many reasons to doubt it.