Parallella: supercomputing for the masses?

A Kickstarter campaign seeking to build a US$99 "supercomputer for everyone" saw its funding target of $750,000 comfortably met on Saturday, raising just shy of $900,000 in pledges. The Parallella is billed by its designers at Adapteva as an affordable, open and easy parallel computing platform based on the company's own multicore Epiphany chips.

Long-distance collaborators create inexpensive prosthetic finger

When South African craftsman Richard Van As lost most of the fingers from his right hand in an industrial accident, he decided to try and create a prosthetic finger to regain some of his lost mobility. In order to bring this about, Richard recruited the help of Washington State native Ivan Owen, after being impressed with the latter's mechanical hand prop which he had posted on YouTube. The result could be a boon to amputees everywhere.

Eco-friendly circuit board releases its electronics when exposed to hot water

As our smartphones and computers continue to become obsolete and get discarded, the environmental problem of electronic waste gets worse. Needless to say, the greater the number of electronic components that can be reclaimed and reused, the better. That’s why scientists from the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have developed a printed circuit board that falls apart when immersed in hot water.

LG unveils Windows 8-optimized Touch 10 monitor

If you’ve recently installed Windows 8 onto your PC and would like to try the new operating system’s much-hyped touchscreen features, then LG’s newly-unveiled Touch 10 may be worth considering. The Touch 10 is a touchscreen monitor which has been optimized for Windows 8, and allows all ten digits to be used on-screen, simultaneously.

First true “all-carbon” solar cell developed

Researchers at Stanford University have developed an experimental solar cell made entirely of carbon. In addition to providing a promising alternative to the increasingly expensive materials used in traditional solar cells, the thin film prototype is made of carbon materials that can be coated onto surfaces from a solution, cutting manufacturing costs and offering the potential for coating flexible solar cells onto buildings and car windows.

Samsung Galaxy Smart Dock turns a Galaxy Note II into a mini desktop PC

With Samsung’s Galaxy Note II already blurring the lines between a smartphone and a tablet – earning the moniker “phablet” – it seems the Korean electronics giant is now looking to have the device blur the lines between a phablet and a desktop computer. The company’s new Galaxy Note II Smart Dock gives the Galaxy Note II a mini desktop PC form factor to turn it into what Samsung calls “a productivity powerhouse.”