Remember those tacky laminated menus with photos of the food in dodgy roadside caffs? Well, one chic London restaurant has taken the idea to a whole new level by kitting out its restaurant with digital projectors that beam interactive menus onto the tables, as well of photos of what the dish will look like. We'd have to admit that the tackiness element of those laminated menus is largely absent in this very futuristic dining emporium, ...

The pin-up girl for the mobile telecoms industry, the European Union's media and open society commissioner, Viviane Reding, is aiming to cap roaming text charges at just 11 cents. Already hated by mobile phone companies by forcing them to cap roaming phone call charges, Reding told German broadsheet, Der Spiegel, that she's going to force them to reduce their roaming texting charges in order to put an end to the "rip offs"! She said: "We ...

We all know that Philips pretty much leads the way when it comes to innovative lighting solutions and glowing TVs but now the company is aiming to bring some of its tech wizardry to the sex toy arena. Specifically the Warm Intimate Massager, described as a ergonomically shaped vibrating device to get folk in the mood. Or, for her to finish the job you fell asleep during. The device is the first small step into ...

We all like to grumble about crappy broadband in the UK - and many of us with good reason - but the next generation of super-fast broadband is not going to come cheap. Unless of course you figure up to £30bn is a bit of bargain. According to the government's advisory committee on broadband, the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), rolling out fibre nationwide would cost between £5.1bn and £28.8bn, depending on the technology used. Unsurprisingly, ...

The fart joke. We've all smiled at at least one, or three, of them in our time. You'd have to missing a funny bone not to have smirked a little at the cowboys eating beans round the campfire in Blazing Saddles. Hell, they've even traced the oldest fart joke back to 1900 B.C. - it's not very good, but I'm sure it had ancient Sumerians rolling in the dirt. But, it seems, Apple doesn't get ...

There are other ways to view the stars than sitting outside in the cold. Sega already produces the Homestar series of planetarium projectors for the living room, but now it's upping the ante with the Homestar EXTRA, targeted more at commercial/educational institutions but also to those that have around £350-400 to spare when it launches in December. First off, the EXTRA has 5 times the illumination of the Homestar Pro, which means you don't have ...

As with Size 0 LCD TVs, the fad towards ever more anorexic technology has spread to the keyboard arena, with Logitech's latest offering coming in at 9.3mm from base to frame. Not only that, but the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard even throws in a light show. Improving on existing backlight technologies, Logitech said it has combined microlens reflectors, a multilayer painting process and laser etching to create a 'backlight experience that is brighter, sharper and easier ...

Leonardo Da Vinci might have worked painstakingly on the Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile but the crowd at Mythbusters managed their own version in less than a second at nVidia's NVISION event this week. Of course, the duo of Adam and Jamie were going to have to pull it off in style, if they wanted to demonstrate the difference between single-core CPUs and multi-core graphics processing units (GPUs). And that they did, with the ...

Anyone that has travelled with a bagful of chargers - most of us - will be interested to hear that Intel has just demonstrated wireless power at its IDF event. It may look like one of those planetary educational tools but it's actually two metal arrays connected to a power amplifier. The arrays resonate at a particular frequency to create an energy link which transmits power between them. Based on principles proposed by MIT physicists, ...

Microsoft is being all mysterious today by running a teaser ad for a new mouse technology with the intriguing - or completely misleading tagline - 'Say Goodbye to Laser'. The company looks set to bring something new to the world of computer mice on September 9 and, if the company hopes to have any chance of ousting the fabulous laser mouse, it will have to come up with something really special. Laser mice were a ...

The Hoff (David Hasselhoff), king of chest hair and Germany, has decided that it's high time the world of social networking made room for the man who made talking cars cool and brought a scantily clad Pamela Andersen into our daytime TV homes. As a result, he has just launched HoffSpace, a new social networking site that's, well, not there for you, but for him. I apologise for the photo above, just be glad I ...

There's some good news for rock wannabes from both Sony and Microsoft today as both companies have confirmed cross-compatibility of instruments for its range of virtual band titles. Sony actually announced yesterday that PS3 editions of Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Rock Revolution and SingStar would all be compatible with each other. Not to be left behind, Microsoft has swiftly followed up with a similar announcement and confirmed that upcoming titles from Activision ...

If you thought the guy who built a full-size Formula 1 racing car from almost a million matchsticks was insane/brilliant, then you're going to love Brian Berg, who spent 20 days building the Beijing Olympic Village out of playing cards. And not just a few decks either, as over 140,000 cards went into creating this delicate masterpiece. I say 'delicate' because there's not a drop of glue involved.Berg, referred to as the 'Guinness world record ...

Microsoft might want the world to believe that Vista is a massive improvement over XP but, according to new research in the US, the public strongly disagree. In fact, some startling figures indicate that 1-in-3 are downgrading their Vista PC or laptop to good old XP. Devil Mountain Software said nearly 35% of the 3,000-plus PCs it examined had been downgraded from Vista to XP. Microsoft has already had to extend the life of XP ...

Microsoft might want the world to believe that Vista is a massive improvement over XP but, according to new research in the US, the public strongly disagree. In fact, some startling figures indicate that 1-in-3 are downgrading their Vista PC or laptop to good old XP. Devil Mountain Software said nearly 35% of the 3,000-plus PCs it examined had been downgraded from Vista to XP. Microsoft has already had to extend the life of XP ...

If you thought the guy who built a full-size Formula 1 racing car from almost a million matchsticks was insane/brilliant, then you're going to love Brian Berg, who spent 20 days building the Beijing Olympic Village out of playing cards. And not just a few decks either, as over 140,000 cards went into creating this delicate masterpiece. I say 'delicate' because there's not a drop of glue involved.

We had been told that the cool PlayTV add-on for the PS3 would arrive in September in the UK first and, I'm happy to report, that's still the plan. This time out we have a UK price: a penny shy of £70. It's not exactly chump change, nor the kind of typical £30-40 add-on price you may be used to and hoped for, but it's cheaper than some thought and it will, no doubt, be ...

We had been told that the cool PlayTV add-on for the PS3 would arrive in September in the UK first and, I'm happy to report, that's still the plan. This time out we have a UK price: a penny shy of £70. It's not exactly chump change, nor the kind of typical £30-40 add-on price you may be used to and hoped for, but it's cheaper than some thought and it will, no doubt, be ...

I really did like the spectacle of the 29 giant footprints walking through the sky at the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics 2008 games at the weekend. Now, it seems, the footprints had less to do with superbly orchestrated fireworks and more to do with sweaty teams of digital engineers and CGI. Sure the fireworks went off but the film feed that went around the world contained some meticulous CGI, with 28 out of ...

I really did like the spectacle of the 29 giant footprints walking through the sky at the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics 2008 games at the weekend. Now, it seems, the footprints had less to do with superbly orchestrated fireworks and more to do with sweaty teams of digital engineers and CGI. Sure the fireworks went off but the film feed that went around the world contained some meticulous CGI, with 28 out of ...