Cafe Technology

While Linux is running our phones, friend requests, tweets, financial trades, ATMs and more, most of us don't know how it's actually built. This short video takes you inside the process by which the largest collaborative development project in the history of computing is organized.

Welcome to Rocky Mountain Flyboard, home of the hottest new extreme watersport to hit the Wasatch Front. Whether you want to rocket 45 feet out of the water, swim like a dolphin, or soak the top deck of your group's houseboat at Lake Powell, riding a Flyboard is an experience like none other! Website

We check in with the team at Liquipel, a company that impressed us last year with its water-resistent nano-coating for smartphones. Dunking an iPhone into a tub of water and watching it still work perfectly is still amazing and something our brains struggle to comprehend.

Being able to calculate the failure front velocity of a Prince Rupert's drop is a pretty big deal. For years this was a scientific mystery. High speed camera technology is only recently fast enough to provide data like this. Thanks to Vision Research for letting me use the V1610 to try to unravel this mystery for the public in general.

Fast. Beautiful. Powerful.

3D sound must be experienced with headphones and you must close your eyes Holophonics, by inventor Hugo Zuccarelli is the aural equivalent of visual holography, a technology with the capacity to record sound exactly as it is. Spatial dimension, ambience, emotion, and the living spirit of the source are presented in such a way that our brains have little choice but to tell us that the content of the recording is, in fact, real life. No processing, no special effects, just a pure signal, blended with a healthy dose of genius.

Chickens have a great ability to keep their heads stable. Our bodies use a gyro-like mechanism in our ears which has 3 mutually orthogonal inertial measurement devices. Modern motion processors use something called an Inertial Measurment Unit (IMU). These devices provide movement data which can be used to compensate for the movement. Chickens apparently have the same type mechanism only with a higher update rate.

Ultra-Ever Dry is a superhydrophobic (water) and oleophobic (hydrocarbons) coating that will completely repel almost any liquid. Ultra-Ever Dry uses proprietary nanotechnology to coat an object and create a barrier of air on its surface.

This amazing sculpture is made out of 714 metal balls which move under the command of a combination of codes, electronics and mechanics. This kinetic sculpture needs a surface of six square meters in order to function properly. The 714 aluminum balls are individually controlled by a computer stepper-motor, and they are hung with very thin steel wires which have a diameter of under 0.2 millimeters.

So we have all seen a quadrocopter before, but just look at the size and agility of this one. Needless to say that sound is quite scary when it just comes out of nowhere! Turn your volume up for a jumpy ride.

Google Maps is releasing panoramic imagery of one of the world's most spectacular national monuments: the Grand Canyon. These Street View images cover more than 75 miles of trails and surrounding roads, making our map of this area even more comprehensive, accurate and easy to use than ever before.

We know that it will get us our email faster or help us navigate smarter with GPS/Maps or apply special filters to our photos and send them and the world instantly.

Sure, your phone can take a decent picture, but it's not even in the same universe as the best camera the government's got. At 1.8 pixels, the DARPA-developed ARGUS-IS the highest resolution surveillance platform in the world, and, when mounted to a drone, can single-handedly do the work of an army of 100 predator drones watching the area of one medium-sized city.

Hanson Robotics collaborated with researchers at the University of California at San Diego to create this boy robot they've named Diego-San. The face was built by Hanson Robotics, and the body was built by Japan's Kokoro Co. Diego-San can see with HD cameras in his eyes, and uses artificial intelligence software "modeled on human babies" so that he learns.

A futuristic highway that can save energy and improve road safety is set to be installed in the Netherlands by mid-2013.

With Google+ Communities, you can talk about the stuff you're into with people who love it too. Plan events, start hangouts, and share with your communities from across the web.

Artist and TED Fellow Aparna Rao re-imagines the familiar in surprising, often humorous ways. With her collaborator Soren Pors, Rao creates high-tech art installations -- a typewriter that sends emails, a camera that tracks you through the room only to make you invisible on screen -- that put a playful spin on ordinary objects and interactions.

Tel-Aviv University demos quantum superconductors locked in a magnetic field.

A father who lost his arm in an accident six years ago has been given a new lease of life by a hi-tech bionic hand which is so precise he can type again. Nigel Ackland, 53, has been fitted with the Terminator-like carbon fibre mechanical hand which he can control with movements in his upper arm. The new bebionic3 myoelectric hand, which is also made from aluminium and alloy knuckles, moves like a real human limb by responding to Nigel's muscle twitches. Incredibly, the robotic arm is so sensitive it means the father-of-one can touch type on a computer keyboard, peel vegetables, and even dress himself for the first time in six years.

Some Australian dude upgraded his Surface table (which ran a special version of Windows 7) to regular Windows 8 -- and here's what it looks like. What's the matter with you, Microsoft? Are you going to wait until Apple has a giant touch desktop on the market for four years before you try to enter the market?

Watch as these talented performers use electricity to entertain the crowds at Belfast Festival