Researchers Develop Bionic Contact Lens

Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision

University of Washington researchers have been developing an electronic contact lens that could someday display important information in your field of vision. Early prototypes have been tested on rabbits for short stints without any adverse effects and the researchers say lenses that can display a few pixels worth of information will be available soon.

The research is being funded by the National Science Foundation and scientists recently presented their findings at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ conference. Using super-thin plastics and electronics just a few nanometers thick, they managed to fashion some circuits and red light emitting diodes into a lens. These lenses were then placed onto the eyes of rabbits for up to 20 minutes.

A working bionic lens could be a boon to tech workers who need quick access to important information. Of course you can bet the military would be very interested in this technology for their soldiers.

Lotus Notes on the way for iPhone

lotus-notes-and-iphone.jpgIt’s looks like Lotus Notes will soon be available for the iPhone, IBM (who own Lotus Notes) look like being the first official iPhone third party application to be available.

“we have a lot in common [with Apple]. We’re going to cross-pollinate.” Said IBM

It’s kind of an interesting development that will give would give the Mac platform a serious competitor to Microsoft Office and, in the case of the iPhone and I guess the iPod touch give it the productivity software all detractors claim currently prohibits it from being a true smartphone.

No formal announcement has been made about this by Apple yet but we await to see what happens.

The Best Companion Tools for YouTube and other Web Videos

Sites like YouTube, MySpace and Google Video host millions of video clips that you can either watch online or embed them in your web pages. And then there are “unofficial” tools to help you download YouTube movies to the hard drive.

You know them all so let’s look at a different set of YouTube tools that are incredibly useful and yet very simple.

If the owner has removed the video from YouTube servers or the YouTube staff have deleted the video on their own for violation of policies, DelUTube may help you watch the video as it could be still residing on one of the YouTube servers.