The promise of Microsoft's Kinect was never simply to allow us to play games sans peripherals, but that one day an entirely new peripheral-free language would arise between us and our machines (many writers might pause here to mention the film Minority Report, but we're going to refrain). We're not all the way there yet, but a San Francisco startup is making a sub-US$100 attempt at throwing open the door. Leap Motion's Leap 3D system will allow users to control their computers with hundredth-of-a-millimetre accuracy using touch-free gestural cues.

The dirt cheap Raspberry Pi microcomputer has now officially launched here in Australia, but there's an extreme shortage of devices in Australia, given the demand. Not surprising for a teeny tiny AU$41 computer.

Sorry wannabe Google Gogglers, but your Terminator-styled visual overlays are not going to be here as soon as you might have wanted. Google is still being quite dodgy with the details surrounding its much-anticipated augmented reality glasses, but CNET confirms after spending some time at Google HQ that informational overlays will be more restricted, displaying above the normal line of sight, "about where the edge of an umbrella might be."

Your office mates, whether they're people or pets, can probably tell when you're feeling stretched too thin - heavy sighs, hand-wringing and general signs of stress are fairly easy to spot. Yet your computer takes no notice, its beach ball of death spinning away incessantly and its processor failing utterly to work any faster. Now a new brain-computer interface could turn your computer into a more sympathetic partner, taking over some of your tasks when it senses you're overworked.

If biomimicry is the instance of technology emulating natural processes, then this must be something like the opposite: researchers at Kobe University have built a computer out of crabs. Placed within a geometrically constrained environment, swarms of soldier crabs can be effectively used to emulate logic gates. In other words, researchers have replicated the fundamental workings of a computer - with crabs.

Google Maps is bringing traffic estimates back to its estimated travel time feature, and this time it's relying on realtime data obtained from third party reports and drivers voluntarily running Google's "My Location" feature on their Android phones. The reboot hopes to stifle user frustration with the old traffic estimate feature and, hopefully, to make Google Maps a more accurate predictor of transit times in urban areas around the globe.