John Mahoney

USB is as close as we're probably going to get to a universal gadget-charger standard. But to charge something without occupying a precious free port on your computer, you need a power brick adapter. Not with these $10 wall sockets from True Power.

These will fit with the wiring already in your home, giving you two powered USB ports (or "holes" as Prickly Pete would say) for each wall socket. They're available next year.

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This photo was taken by Nonja. She is an orangutan. Like many of us, she is interested in keeping her friends up to date on what she's up to in her pen at the Schönbrunn zoo in Austria. She takes and immediately uploads photos to Facebook with her specially modified Samsung ST-1000 point-and-shoot (it dispenses raisins!).

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This is what goes on behind the scenes whenever you open your mouth to speak.

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Much of the debate on the place of advanced prostheses for the disabled in competitive sports often downplays arguably the most important perspective: that of the athletes who couldn't compete without them. In light of the recent MIT research project that found prosthetic limbs offering no advantage over natural legs, sprinter and double Cheetah leg user Aimee Mullins has some even more thought-provoking (and first-hand) analysis of the issue.

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We've come along way since the age when every office's communications nerve center depended on its switchboard operators tucked discreetly inside a windowless room somewhere. Or have we?.

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"The Cassini team sends 'bats wishes' for a happy, healthy and fun Halloween." Oh, scientist humor.

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I'm not quite ready to stop thinking about NASA's Ares I-X rocket test earlier this week--and neither is Boston.com's Big Picture blog, where a great collection of images today goes from the rocket's construction to its first launch.

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When rockets go fast, they break the sound barrier. And when the sound barrier breaks, we get the Prandtl–Glauert singularity. That's the official term for the beautiful cone of vapor that forms around a craft moving very, very fast through the atmosphere. And it makes for a great photo.

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NASA's first test of the Ares I-X rocket is on hold, waiting for stormy Cape Canaveral weather to pass. The four-minute countdown is expected to resume at 10:54 EST.

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Good idea: ditch the annoying scroll nipple (especially annoying on Apple's previous mice) and turn the entire top surface into a multitouch trackpad. That's what Apple's done with the Magic Mouse. Is this the end of the scroll wheel?

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Less than a week after Nikon wowed with its D3S, with previously unseen light sensitivity up to ISO 102,400, Canon has unveiled their own night-vision pro DSLR, the 1D Mark IV. But where the D3S falls short in the video department, the 1D Mark IV pushes things forward.

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Even though the ring-shaped Air Multiplier fan isn't particular powerful at $300, it's still, well, a bladeless ring! And while the answer to what comes next can only truly be known in the jetstreams of genius cycloning around in Dyson's head, cartoonist Tobias Lunchbreath has taken a stab at what ring-shaped future luxuries we may have the pleasure to purchase in the future.

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As an electronics mega-retailer, Best Buy isn't normally interested in anything but moving huge quantities of TVs, computers and appliances out of its gaping doors. But the Houston St. location in Manhattan did something unexpected last night: it approvingly looked the other way while video artist Borna Sammak took over every single HDTV in the store for to display his latest work.

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As you can see, we've freshened things up a bit here today. We've tweaked the site's navigation a bit to make things clearer to read and easier to find the articles you seek. Here's what's new.

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Cyborg monkeys surf on OLED pickles. Ships emit slime, and our own Mikey Sklar's Benz runs on vegetable oil. And a knife-wielding, thought-controlled robot still can't conquer Japan. This is the Future.

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