Where PCs are concerned, faster is invariably better. But things aren’t so clear-cut in human society. The next generation of social robots will be better loved if they adopt more human-like behaviour – even if that means losing some of their raw efficiency. Norihiro Hagita and colleagues at the ATR laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, asked 38 volunteers to click...

Uncharted 2 is the definitive Game of the Year title for 2009 with more industry awards than you can shake a stick at it. Sony recently announced a major milestone for the title in sales and awards. There is no arguing it; Uncharted 2 is the Game of the year 2009, far overshadowing any of its competitors for receiving the prestigious award across the majority of the...

2K’s creepy shooter Bioshock 2 has soared to the top of the PC weekly chart within its first week of release. Football Manager 2010 once again remains second, above The Sims 3 which climbs two places to third. Last week’s number one Star Trek Online falls four places to fifth, above another former number one Mass Effect 2, which falls from third to sixth.

India is well recognized as a leading country of software technology but has not been able to make a name for itself in IT hardware. This notion will appearently soon come to an end with the discovery of Adam tablet PC. This has created enough buzz on gadget blogs and tech websites ever since its first demonstration held in January at the Consumer Electronics Show. This...

GSMA Mobile World Congress February 15 – 18 Barcelona, Spain  This four-day event is dedicated to cutting-edge mobile technology. There is a full program of conferences, keynotes and panel discussions that runs alongside an exhibition of hottest new products and concept designs from the top mobile companies in the field. The Mobile World Congress Awards Ceremony...

Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple’s iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS. On Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google’s Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system based on it, pointed to image and video concepts of a...

 “Today, there is a growing trend amongst hackers around the world to threaten national infrastructures for ransom,” says Dr. Yaniv Levyatan, an expert in information war at the University of Haifa. If someone still thinks that this is science fiction, Dr. Levyatan notes how just recently, in November 2009, Brazil’s electricity was blacked out for more...

Following a period of intense speculation, Apple has confirmed that it’ll be holding one of its special events on 27 January at 10am (PST). This is widely expected to be the launch platform for the as-yet-unconfirmed (but widely expected) Apple tablet computer. Rumours on what form this could take have been many and varied; some believe that it’ll run a powered-up...

Microsoft’s web browser has come under fire from both the German and French governments, who have issued advisories not to use it. The move comes after it emerged that a vulnerability in Internet Explorer was the root of the Chinese hacking attacks aimed at Google (and other companies) last week. Both governments have recommended that citizens switch to an alternative...

Public key encryption works because it’s easy to multiply two large numbers together, but very hard to calculate the factors of a large number. Doing so is largely a brute force process taking an enormous amount of computing power. Such an effort was put on display today by a group of researchers who factored a 768-bit (232 digit) RSA key. In the process they set...