Technical limitations have long frustrated attempts to deliver broadband Internet access over power lines, but the idea is once again sparking interest as its backers tout improvements.

Sometimes a cosmetic change can be the innovation that makes a product catch fire.

My favorite example of “incremental innovation” belongs to Dilbert—the cartoon, not the character. Even before the Internet was a gleam in Jeff Bezos’s eye, Scott Adams—Dilbert’s creator—got his syndicate to agree to attach his e-mail address to the strip.

President Bush’s recently announced initiative to explore and colonize the earth’s moon and Mars elicits a range of responses from excitement to caution to “Give me a break.”
While no money will be budgeted for such a program for several years, the impact on the economy will be substantial when we finally send humans […]

U.S. retail sales over the Internet and other electronic networks surged in the fourth quarter of 2003, making up a record share — almost 2 percent — of total retail sales, the Commerce Department said on Monday.

US scientists are warning of a potentially “serious risk to human health” after the discovery that traditional varieties of major American food crops are widely contaminated by DNA sequences from GM crops.

Mice have been successfully cloned from nose cells, showing that mature nerve cells are capable of producing cloned organisms.

A chap at work was recently the victim of an ATM card skimmer which took his card details, cloned them and allowed the fraudster to take 550 pounds out of his account.

If it’s not alive, but not dead, what is it?
That’s the riddle posed by the new field of ‘partial life’ technologies, to be explored today in a symposium sponsored by San Francisco’s Exploratorium. An international panel of researchers, artists and entrepreneurs will present provocative — and perhaps useful — new projects that blur the boundaries […]

A car that can drive on land, sail on water and fly through the air will be unveiled next month.
Swiss designer Frank Rinderknecht’s two-seater Splash will be on view at the Geneva motor show. Cool pictures.