With Hyperloop still a twinkle in Elon Musk’s eye, we’ve got to look elsewhere for our futuristic transport. Thankfully, Aerofex has stepped up with its Aero-X, a hoverbike that is finally scheduled to launch in 2017. Two users can ride this motorbike-like vehicle, where the wheels have been replaced with carbon fiber rotors that’ll lift you 10 feet into the air. This first model has a top speed of 45 miles per hour, and a full tank will carry you for an hour and 15 minutes — making it good enough for a short trip to the store. The Aero-X has a weight limit of 310 pounds, so if you’re going to pretend you’ve got a speederbike , probably best to leave the stormtrooper armor at home. Still, it’s available to pre-order right now, assuming you’ve got $85, 000 stashed down the back of the couch, plus the refundable $5, 000 deposit, of course. Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: CNET Source: Aerofex

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You won’t need roads with this $85,000 hoverbike

When 3D printing and nanotechnology get together for a party the results are actually good for your liver, according to researchers at the UC San Diego. They’ve managed to create a device that uses nanoparticles to trap toxins that can damage cells in the body, helping victims of animal stings, bacterial infections and other toxic horrors. Though nanoparticles are already used to help people with liver damage, they need to be ingested like food and can ironically cause secondary liver poisoning. By 3D printing a “hydrogel matrix” to enclose them, a faux -liver can be created and installed outside the body like a classic dialysis machine. A test device managed to destroy all the pore-forming toxins during in-vitro studies, so let’s hope the research continues — for the sake of some of our future livers. Filed under: Science , Alt Comments Via: Gizmag Source: UC San Diego

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3D printed ‘nano-liver’ could help poisoning and infection victims

Running apps from one mobile platform on another is theoretically great for boosting your app selection, but it’s not a trivial task — even BlackBerry’s Android support is rough. However, some Columbia University students have managed the daunting feat of running iOS apps on Android with their Cider compatibility layer. This isn’t a regular emulator or virtual machine , like you might expect. Instead, it simply tricks apps into believing that they’re in a native environment: they adapt code on the fly to make it work with Android’s kernel and programming libraries. Even 3D benchmarks run properly. Unfortunately, it’s not quite the Holy Grail of cross-platform compatibility… at least, not yet. As you’ll see in the ( sadly vertical ) demo below, most iOS apps run at glacially slow pace. They also don’t have access to most hardware features, so GPS tracking and other staple features are right out. This is still better than previous efforts, though, and it raises hopes that platform exclusives won’t be as important in choosing a mobile device as they have been in the past. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Software , Mobile Comments Via: 9to5 Mac , The Next Web Source: Columbia University

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Students get iOS apps running (slowly) on Android

If you’re an email power user, you frequently know what to do with messages as soon as they hit your inbox — even if it’s just to avoid dealing with them until later. Microsoft is more than happy to accommodate your exacting requirements, as it just began rolling out a big Outlook.com update that allows for particularly complex email rules. You can now perform automatic actions based on time limits, the read state, email tallies and the familiarity of a contact. If you haven’t read a friend’s message for a day, for example, you can mark it as important so that it doesn’t get buried. Whether or not you’re that demanding, there are a few other upgrades you’re likely to notice in day-to-day use. You can now respond in-line to an email thread, and it’s possible to undo mistakes in more places. It’s also much easier to sort people depending on whether they’re using Facebook or Skype messaging. You can even switch services in mid-stream; if you’d rather go straight to Skype chat, you can. The Outlook.com refinements will take a few weeks to reach everyone, but it might be worth the wait if you believe that small time-savers make a big difference. Filed under: Internet , Microsoft Comments Source: Outlook Blog

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Outlook.com now lets you create extra-specific email rules

US government spending data can be a pain to track down; while much of it is publicly accessible, it’s scattered across many agencies that have their own ways of presenting information. Soon, though, you won’t have hunt for it at all. The recently signed DATA (Digital Accountability and Transparency) Act will publish all of that financial material on USASpending.gov in an easily readable, software-independent format. The law also calls for both more detailed budget data and a simplified set of reporting requirements. Don’t expect greater transparency overnight. You can visit the website today, but the overhaul may take up to three years to complete. It’s also unlikely to shed light on secret programs at institutions like the NSA, where line-by-line fiscal details are normally kept under wraps. Nonetheless, the DATA Act should eventually make it much easier for Americans to spot wasteful spending, and even fraud — there’s a real chance that the revamp could pay for itself. [Image credit: Mauro Parra-Miranda, Flickr ] Filed under: Internet Comments Via: InformationWeek , The Verge Source: The White House , Senator Mark Warner

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All of the US government’s spending will soon be available on one website

Square pulled its Wallet app from the App Store Monday in order to make way for something new: Square Order . With Wallet, you could check in to a restaurant and pay your bill using just your name. With Order, you can still pay, except now you can select your artisan grilled cheese while en route to the cafe down the street and complete the transaction on your phone, bypassing the line entirely. It’s not just for restaurants either — we took it for a test drive in February , where we purchased a scarf from Uniqlo. Square followed that trial with beta testing in several take-out restaurants in the San Francisco and New York, which is also where Order is launching today. If you don’t live in either city, you won’t be able to use the app for now. However, you can get roughly the same experience on the web through Square’s recently announced product Pickup . It’s not unlike what some other services like PayPal, GoPago and OrderAhead are already doing — the difference is Square can offer the experience for its existing merchants using the point of sale system they already have set up. As for Wallet, being removed from the App Store doesn’t mean it isn’t going to work anymore – yet. Square says it plans to support the app at least until Order is available everywhere. When it is, the company will reach out to customers who are still using Wallet and encourage them to make the switch, after which it will likely get rid of it for good. By that time, we can’t imagine anyone will complain. Because what’s better than telling someone to put your triple-extra-hot-latte on “Bob?” Not spending 20 minutes in line waiting for the opportunity. Filed under: Wireless , Mobile Comments

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Square to replace its digital wallet app with one that lets you order dinner

Already paid up for Sony’s PlayStation 4 ? Or are you waiting on a certain blockbuster title before you make the move to the next gen? We don’t blame you. However, the PS4’s ancestor — that slightly curved obelisk sitting under your TV, the one with half an inch of dust — still has a few tricks in it. While we wait for Sony to perfect its streaming tech , there’s still no way to play PS3 titles on Console No. 4, unless it gets a fancy facelift … and you buy it again . So, we turn back to our faithful PlayStation 3. Born in 2006, eight years is a pretty good term for a games console. But maybe you don’t want your time with it to be over. We don’t either, and have found a few ways to breathe new life into your gradually graying PS3. Get a PlayStation Plus subscription Really, this should be in past tense: Because you should have gotten in on this surprisingly high-value service a year ago. PlayStation Plus is really that good . For under 10 bucks a month (down to $5 per month if you sign up for a year), you’re offered an “instant game collection” that’s updated every 30 days or so, and that one fee gives you access on every compatible console (PS3, Vita and PS4). As of this writing, the library includes BioShock Infinite, Payday 2, Uncharted 3, Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and eight more PS3 titles. Free games rotate in and out each month, but if you “buy” it to download (even if you didn’t download right then), you can play it for as long as your sub lasts — not just when it’s part of the selection. Past titles (depending on region) have included Super Street Fighter IV, Infamous 2, LittleBigPlanet 2, Far Cry 3, Assassin’s Creed III, to name a few. Yeah, more titles than you’d probably ever have time to play, but the service typically delivers something we actually want to play nearly every month. Since launch, a total of 138 PS3 games and a host of PS1 games have been available on the service. Protip: The “instant game collection” on PS Plus differs from region to region. There are more mainstream titles coming to US and European subscribers, but the Japanese one (you’ll need to pick up some yen-based PlayStation Network credit to buy your sub), has a ridiculous archive of original PlayStation (and, er, PC Engine ) games. Are most of them in Japanese? Yes. Did we get a handful of free PS3 games ( Shadow of the Colossus HD ) games in the process? Oh yes. Upgrade the PS3’s hard drive Rather than delete your downloads to make space for new ones, why not expand? Go from 20GB to 300GB. For your shopping list, you’ll need a 2.5-inch internal SATA drive. Many tinkerers suggest one that spins at 5, 400 RPM to match the PS3’s original drive and to keep the new one from running too hot. It’s not plug-in-and-play simple — y ou can’t just pull out the smaller HDD, insert a new one into the PS3 Slim and play away. After backing up your current setup with the console’s backup utility, you’ll need to remove a few screws and gingerly switch out the drives. The only tricky part is remembering to put a system update file on a USB stick alongside your backup data. Thankfully, SCE has provisioned all the instructions needed here , for all three hardware iterations. Make sure you know what you’re doing here, too. Proceed at your own risk, although despite our apprehension, our own installation went without a hitch. Protip: You saw our first suggestion right? May as well throw in a 500GB — nah, make it a 1TB drive. Game download binge. Use the (much better) PS4 controller with your PS3 Sony’s newest DualShock is just so much better . It’s more comfortable, looks better and even comes with a smartphone-baiting touch panel and share button, although those last two features aren’t going to work here. The rest of the controller, surprisingly, does work . There are some caveats: There’s no PS button, so it’s really only for use during a game, and it won’t connect to the PS3 wirelessly — you’ll have to keep it tethered while you play. Handily, Reddit users have also compiled a list of games that will (and won’t) work with a PS4 DualShock, and for the fantasists among you, you can pretend that you’re playing on a PS4. Protip: Did you know that if you put a PS4 game disc into the PS3… nothing really happens? Did you even read the intro? C’mon . Try PS3 Remote Play on the PS Vita (but don’t depend on it) Yeah, the PS3 did it first . Unfortunately, it didn’t work all that well. On the PS4, Remote Play is fully functional, but on its predecessor, the feature is limited. That said, the HD remasters of Ico , Shadow of the Colossus and the God of War Collection are all worth playing through on a handheld. Should you do so, we advise staying well within range of the nearest WiFi router — in our experience, Remote Play on PS3 is temperamental, particularly when you lack a robust wireless signal. Protip: Give it at least four tries. If you liked the experience, well, maybe you should buy a PS4 . Filed under: Gaming , HD , Sony Comments

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Old console, new tricks: Getting the most out of your PS3

Repairing seriously damaged bones is normally a delicate art; while you want to regrow bones quickly, you also have to carefully manage that growth to produce the right shape. Thankfully, Rice University has created a gel that makes it easier to produce only the bone tissue a patient needs. The material kickstarts bone regeneration using a patient’s stem cells, but it also dictates where that growth occurs by forming a scaffold that degrades only when tissue takes its place. Effectively, doctors just have to fill an area with the gel and wait for nature to do the rest. The technique should initially be useful for repairing skull damage, but it’s likely to be handy for both less vital operations and cosmetic surgery — don’t be surprised if doctors can eventually give you a facelift by reshaping your cheekbones. [Image credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University] Filed under: Science Comments Via: Geek.com Source: Rice University , Biomacromolecules

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New medical gel grows bone tissue exactly where you need it

It’s already the hate-figure for taxi drivers , but now Uber wants to alienate the rest of the 99 percent . The smartphone-based cab service is launching UberJET, a private airline service that’ll operate during the forthcoming Cannes Film Festival . Between May 12th and May 18th, users can book an Uber Black car to take them to Paris’ Bourget airport, where a jet, operated by Goodwill Airlines, will fly you to Nice, and then a second car will drive you down the road to Cannes. The price for the service is €6, 490 ($8, 930), and you’re able to split that between three other passengers during the journey. Assuming, that is, that you haven’t just decided to get the train — it may be five hours long, but it’ll only set you back $200. Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: RudeBaguette Source: Uber

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Uber’s offering private jets for the rich kids of Cannes

Netscape’s story reads like a proper fairy tale: takeovers, fierce and hostile competition, split-ups, a giant payout and even a dragon! While Netscape may now only be a sweet, sweet memory to those who used it to first discover the web, the browser’s monstrous impact has cemented it as one of the first and most important startups to shape the internet. Netscape’s founders successfully plucked a brilliant idea from academia and pushed it onto the world’s stage at a time when competition didn’t exist, websites were not much more than plain-text blurbs and inline images were still revolutionary. Consider the battle that would ensue between this web pioneer and Microsoft. The “browser wars, ” as they came to be known, would ultimately lead to creation of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s antitrust suit and the formation of the Mozilla Project and Firefox. Netscape was born the child of University of Illinois graduate Marc Andreessen and Silicon Graphics’ Jim Clark. Andreessen had spent some of his time at university working on the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) Mosaic browser and understood full well the potential it offered. With Clark’s help, the two created Mosaic Communications Corporation in April 1994, pulling in many former SGI and NCSA employees. The team then churned out the first point release in October of that year: Mosaic Netscape release 0.9. By the end of December, the company underwent a significant transformation, adopting the name Netscape Communications and launching Netscape Navigator 1.0. Jim Clark (left) with Marc Andreessen. The company launched Netscape Navigator into the market without even a glimmer of real competition and the browser went on to become the de facto portal to the web in early 1995. Of course, Microsoft was working feverishly in the background to play catch-up with a browser of its own creation, licensing Mosaic’s tech to build the first iteration of Internet Explorer. On August 9th of that year, the then roughly 1-year-old Netscape went public with its initial stock offering at $28 per share. By close of day, the company’s valuation skyrocketed to nearly $3 billion. It was around this time that Microsoft was preparing to release Windows 95 and a separate add-on pack: Windows 95 Plus! Pack, which included Internet Explorer 1.0 and TCP/IP, the protocol needed to use the web. At last, Microsoft had arrived with its first effort at a Netscape killer. The company launched Netscape Navigator into the market without even a glimmer of real competition and the browser went on to become the de facto portal to the web in early 1995. Netscape and Internet Explorer traded releases in lockstep throughout 1995 and 1996, but by the time Internet Explorer version 3.0 was released, Microsoft had fully caught up and was able to match Netscape feature-for-feature. In an attempt to differentiate from its IE rival and grow its user base, Netscape took a stab at the enterprise crowd and launched the Netscape Communicator 4.0 bundle in late 1996. Communicator added in a Usenet client, web editor, e-mail app and even an address book; in short, it quite handily defined the very early days of sales- and management-driven bloatware. The move, however, failed to gain much traction with the suit-and-tie set. Netscape’s browser icon through the years. Netscape continued to develop both Netscape Navigator 3.0 and Communicator 4.0, but the looming threat of Internet Explorer , with version 3 bundled into Windows 95 service release 2, still lingered heavily in the background. The rivalry was compounded even further when Microsoft’s browser team apparently dropped its massive IE logo off at Netscape’s campus the night of Internet Explorer 4’s launch. The Netscape crew understandably took issue with the slight and toppled the giant IE logo over, placing its Mozilla dragon mascot atop it and holding a sign that read “Netscape 72 Microsoft 18.” In January 1998, Netscape announced its intention to release the source code for Netscape Communicator to the public; a move that gave rise to the Mozilla Organization . Unfortunately for Netscape, this also had the effect of stalling development on its browser platform through much of that year, essentially giving Microsoft the lead it needed. And that summer, Internet Explorer finally overtook Netscape as the most used browser, a mantle Netscape was never able to win back. Netscape responds to Microsoft’s prank by putting its mascot atop a toppled Internet Explorer logo. The company, however, was far from being completely wiped out: AOL recognized some value in the struggling company and purchased it in November 1998 for a whopping $4.2 billion. The acquisition did nothing to spur development efforts though, and it wouldn’t be until April of 2000 that preview versions of Netscape 6, based on Mozilla code, saw the light of day. A further two years later, Netscape 7 was released, serving as the last major build version to come from that source code. AOL recognized some value in the struggling company and purchased it in November 1998 for a whopping $4.2 billion. Not long after, AOL shuttered the Netscape department and laid off most of the staff in 2003, opting instead to continue development in-house with Mozilla’s Firefox as its code base. The once proud web app was also re-branded as Netscape Browser and AOL eventually outsourced successive releases to Mercurial Communications, a Canadian software developer. Mercurial babysat and pushed out versions 8 through 8.1 of the Netscape Browser between 2005 and 2007 to a public that largely didn’t care any longer. And, in a sad final gasp, AOL cobbled together a dev team to push out Netscape Navigator 9, its first internally built browser effort since version 7. Its release would signal the end of Netscape the browser, as AOL pulled the plug on it in February of 2008 . While Netscape didn’t stand the test of time quite like its chief rival Internet Explorer has, its open-source transition into Mozilla did eventually birth Firefox — a browser success story in and of itself. But Netscape’s precipitous rise and fall in those early internet days wasn’t without lasting effects: Its brief stint at the top and tense rivalry with Microsoft laid much of the groundwork for innovation in the browsing space. [Image Credit: Associated Press; snafu.de ] Filed under: Internet , Software , Microsoft Comments

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Whatever happened to Netscape?