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Armstrong leads his crewmates to the launchpad. He believed there was only a 50% chance of a successful moon landing. Photograph: Getty As the first person to walk on the moon, he is a man whose name will be remembered for generations to come. But perhaps one of the other well-known things about Neil Armstrong is that he hardly ever gives interviews.It was therefore something of a coup for Alex Malley, chief executive of Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia, to secure almost an hour of Armstrong's time to discuss the astronaut's trip to the moon.In the illuminating conversation posted online on the CPA Australia website, Armstrong revealed how he thought his mission, Apollo 11, only had a 50% chance of landing safely on the moon's ... Continue reading →

COMPETITION LAUNCH 10 May 2012 SUBMISSION DEADLINE 10 July 2012 FINALISTS ANNOUNCED 10 August 2012 WINNERS ANNOUNCED 10 November 2012 WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR This innovation challenge focuses on journalism and the news media. We are looking for disruptive digital ideas for improving the way that news is collected and disseminated. By digital ideas, we mean tools or strategies that use the Internet, mobile platforms, data driven journalism, computer assisted reporting, digitally augmented reality, or other electronic means to improve the relevance and impact of news media. Your ideas should be focused on providing pragmatic solutions to realworld challenges facing Africa’s media. Your innovation should fall into any of four broad categories: news gathering; story telling; audience engagement; or the business of news. Within these ... Continue reading →

posted May 21st 2012 6:01pm by Caleb Kraft filed under: transportation hacks The original story is in French, and the Google translate is very rough. Please forgive us if we don’t get this completely accurate. While traveling through the desert somewhere in north west Africa in his Citroen 2CV , [Emile] is stopped, and told not to go any further due to some military conflicts in the area. Not wanting to actually listen to this advice, he decides to loop around, through the desert, to circumvent this roadblock. After a while of treading off the beaten path, [Emile] manages to snap a swing arm on his vehicle, leaving him stranded. He decided that the best course of action was to disassemble his vehicle and construct ... Continue reading →

When I look at the tech scene in Africa, there is a single question that consistently runs through my mind. What foundational parts of the technology ecosystem do we own, and what are we reliant on others for? What I’m talking about here are the items deeper down the stack, the core components that allow a country to own its own technological future. Here are some examples: Do we build our own software, or are we importing it? Can we prototype and build our own hardware, even if not at the scale of China? Are we investing in our own startups, or is that being done by foreigners? Do we have our own researchers, or are we okay with people parachuting in from abroad to ... Continue reading →

Silicon Valley isn't completely without its critics, but to the outsider's eye, it seems to be a fairly insular environment with its own rules and codes of conduct. Increasingly, however, Silicon Valley makes products which are pivotal to many of our lives, and the characters — the investors and the CEOs — determine how our online lives are managed, stored, and even displayed. Enter Andrew Keen, the author of The Cult of the Amateur and host of an interview show, Keen On, for TechCrunch, and as of today, the author of a new book, Digital Vertigo. Keen is something of a shit-stirrer, and where he took aim at the “amateur hour” of bloggers, MySpace and YouTube in his last work, he's got his sights set ... Continue reading →

Future of mobile phones? Robot can climb out of your pocket and whisper in your ear This is wild. From mother nature network. Chinese researchers have invented the world's first cloth-climbing robot, which can grasp onto creases and climb up your clothing, perch on your shoulder, and potentially whisper messages into your ear, according to IEEE Spectrum. One possible application for the so-called Clothbot involves inspiring a new generation of mobile phones that are capable of autonomously crawling up to your ear whenever the phone rings. It gives new meaning to the idea of owning a "mobile" phone. And as if having a phone crawl out of your pants isn't creepy enough, researchers also envision the device doubling as a Tamagotchi-like pet, which could roost ... Continue reading →

In 1848, a freak accident sent a 3-foot metal rod through the skull of railway worker named Phineas Gage, piercing his frontal lobe. Gage famously survived, but underwent dramatic personality changes after the accident. Now, scientists reconstruct the most famous case study in the history of modern neuroscience in order to understand what happened to Gage through his connectome. Continue reading →