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- Power Ascender: Ballsy Tool Yanks People, Equipment up Walls What it is: Atlas Power Ascender What it's used for: Rapidly pulling people and their gear up the side of a building or canyon The prototype of the Power Ascender was not easy to use. The battery-powered, waist-mounted climbing assistant yanked people up a dangling rope at a blistering 10 feet per second — almost 7 mph — fast enough to snap their limbs back. So Atlas, a company run by four mechanical engineers outside Boston, set the maximum speed to a more reasonable 5 feet per second and added a variable- speed trigger like on a power drill. Now customers — such as US military personnel — simply clip the 25-pound device onto a climbing harness, push any nonbraided rope through the top, and let it fly. Inside the gizmo, a network of grippers scurries up the line and ensures that it threads cleanly out the side. The Ascender's 10-kilowatt output can lift up to 350 pounds, which is no easy task. "Having that much power that close to your crotch is a huge engineering challenge," says Atlas' Bryan Schmid, "and frankly a bit risky." Sounds pretty ballsy. Wired.com
- Hands On: 'Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep' Birth By Sleep, the upcoming PSP entry in the Kingdom Hearts series, reminded me of why I like this Square Enix/Disney crossover in the first place. Beating things up with a giant key is fun. Wired.com
- Nintendo DS Steals the Tokyo Game Show At the Tokyo Game Show, it's the year of the Nintendo DS. With more than 23 million units sold in Japan alone, and an updated version of the hardware called the DSi on the way next month, there isn't a gamemaker at the show that isn't preparing one or more big-budget games for DS. Wired.com
- Video: 192 Lasers, Nuclear Weapons, and Fusion Power Wired Science visits the high-security National Ignition Facility, which Department of Energy scientists hope will help manage the American nuclear weapons stockpile and provide the key to harnessing fusion power. Wired.com
- Inside Operation Highlander: NSA's Wiretapping of Americans Overseas A top secret NSA wiretapping facility accused of wiretapping innocent Americans abroad was hastily staffed with inexperienced reservists in the months following September 11, where they worked under conflicting orders and with little supervision, according to three former workers at spy complex. Wired.com
- VeriSign, ICANN Square Off Over DNS Root As the U.S. government starts the process of closing a major net vulnerability, two longtime net infrastructure rivals -- the non-profit ICANN and for-profit VeriSign -- are battling over who will compile and verify the net's most important document. Internet experts give the nod to ICANN and bring up VeriSign's greedy past. Wired.com
- What's On Your CSS Wishlist? Cascading Style Sheets are a key component to presenting content on web pages. But the standard, now more than ten years old, has its limits. If you had your say in the discussion to improve CSS, what would you ask for? Wired.com
- Underground Whispering Campaign Could Undermine McCain An e-mail circulating online that looks like a revealing personal account of a vacation taken with John McCain could undermine his image of an upright character since a lot of people appear to believe unverified information forwarded to them by their friends. Wired.com
- Climate Models Trump Financial Models Phew! While earth scientists and investment bankers both employ data-heavy computer models, climate models are on much firmer ground than their shaky financial counterparts. Wired.com
- How to Camp With Less Gear With all the gear you pack up for your camping trip, sometimes you forget what camping is all about. These hardcore tips from Les Stroud of TV's Survivorman should strip us back down to just the essentials and get us back to nature. Wired.com
- South African Electric Car the Crown Joule of Paris Auto Show On the 15th anniversary of Nelson Mandela receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, South Africa is gaining attention for another world-friendly achievement: This time, it's an electric car from Cape Town-based Optimal Energy. Wired.com
- Real Ad Men Talk About Mad Men Every week on AMC TV's Mad Men, the men and women at Sterling Cooper create and design retro 1960s ad campaigns, all while obsessively chain-smoking, drinking and womanizing. Wired.com asks a real-world ad man about the show?s realism and relevance to the advertising industry today. Wired.com
- 'Doctor Who' No. 1 Gal Pal Shares Secrets of Sarah Jane's Success Actress Elisabeth Sladen has played The Doctor's companion at various times since the '70s, becoming the lovable British equivalent of sci-fi legends like William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy. The star of hit Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures talks with Wired.com about developing the character over the years. Wired.com
- Windows 7 Will Be Less Annoying Than Vista Microsoft says it is scaling back the frequency of User Account Control, or UAC, prompts in the next version of Windows. The prompt system, which continually asks users to allow or deny certain actions, is widely seen as an annoyance and is regarded as one of Vista's worst features. Wired.com
- Wal-Mart's DRM Nightmare Just Won't End Wal-mart has pledged to continue supporting all the digital rights management-infected music it sold to unwitting consumers over the past five years. Unfortunately for the retail giant, it could be haunted by Microsoft's failed DRM system for years to come. Wired.com
- Army Orders Pain Ray Trucks; New Report Shows 'Potential for Death' After years of testing, the Active Denial System -- the pain ray which drives off rioters with a microwave-like beam -- could finally have its day. The Army is buying five of the truck-mounted systems for $25 million. But the energy weapon may face new hurdles, before it's shipped off to the battlefield; a new report details how the supposedly non-lethal blaster could be turned into a flesh-frying killer. Wired.com
- Wall Street plunges, continuing devastating losses The devastating selling continues on Wall Street, with investors again dumping stocks in early trading. The Dow Jones industrials, already down 2,271 points in seven sessions, are down more than 300 after dropping nearly 700. Wired.com
- Scientists: Virginia Shark's Pup a 'Virgin Birth' Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark. In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male. Wired.com
- Tutorial: Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Join Webmonkey as we offer a comprehensive introduction to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, the powerful photo editing application for professionals and serious amateurs. Lightroom helps you make the most of your DSLR camera, giving you a "digital darkroom" for organizing, tweaking and exporting your RAW image files, producing stunning results along the way. Wired.com
- Flash Clickjacking Vulnerability Exposes Webcams and Mics Click once in the wrong site and hackers will be able to both see and hear you through your own webcam and mic. The vulnerability is caused by clickjacking, a method of highjacking your mouse clicks. Creepy? We'll show you how to avoid it. Wired.com
- Review: 'Resident Evil: Degeneration' Takes the Zip Out of Zombie Movies The CG-animated flick doesn't bring anything special to the popular horror videogame franchise. If anything, the latest game trailer looks better than this boring puppet show. Wired.com
- The Tanking Economy Can't Slow Down Innovation on the Web The entire tech industry is preparing for tough times, but what does the current economic downturn mean for innovation on the web? Will the momentum that drove the defining advancements of the Web 2.0 era fizzle out? We say it ain't so -- the web has never stopped evolving, and a dearth of cash won't lead to a drought of creativity. Wired.com
- Oct. 10, 1861: The Journey Begins for Nansen 1861: Fridtjof Nansen is born. He will become a towering figure in Arctic exploration, the natural sciences and international diplomacy. Nansen, born outside of Oslo, Norway, grew up hard and fit ? and intellectually curious. He developed an early interest in science and studied zoology at the university before shipping aboard the Norwegian sealer Viking in 1882. He made extensive observations of the Greenland fauna, especially bears and seals, and returned to serve for six years as zoological curator at the Bergen Museum — meanwhile earning his doctorate by defending the neuron theory as it pertains to the central nervous system. But Fridtjof Nansen also returned with a passion for the Far North and an unquenchable thirst for adventure. Nansen returned to Greenland in 1888, skiing from east to west across the interior's massive ice fields. The trek yielded new scientific information about the frozen island, but it also served as a dress rehearsal for Nansen's attempt, in 1893, to reach the North Pole. Sailing into the Arctic Ocean aboard his purpose-built ship, Fram, Nansen realized it would be impossible to reach the pole in any way but by foot. He left the Fram in the pack ice at 84 degrees 4 minutes north latitude and, accompanied by Hjalmar Johansen, struck out for the pole with skis, dogs, sledges and kayaks. On April 9, 1895, the two men reached 86 degrees 14 minutes north latitude before turning back. It was, at the time, the farthest north any explorer... Wired.com
- 10 Hottest New Bike Gadgets for Gearheads : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com Cyclists are often overlooked in the gadget-lust category because their gear usually doesn't involve a screen, but no one craves the newest gizmo more than a biker with money to burn. The litany of bike models, the sophisticated engineering and the personal stat analysis also attract avid data addicts who appreciate product legacy and innovation. Here at Wired.com, we have more than a few resident pedal pundits who love to accessorize. Click through the gallery to see the latest bike gadgets and apparel that got even our empty wallets salivating. Left: Quarq Bicycle's new Power Meters allow you to measure pretty much any stat imaginable from your bike rides. The Quarq CinQo is compatible with your Garmin Edge 705, their own Quarq Qranium or the new iAreo, giving access to power, heart rate, speed, distance, torque and altitude. The Qranium computer runs on Linux and comes with 512 MB of memory. Quarq says they are lightweight, waterproof and come with a user-changeable battery. The system runs about $1,200, plus the price of your crank of choice. : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com The Pinhead prototype Bubble Lock is seen here with one wheel lock, a seat-post lock and a headset lock. Pinhead's disc-locking system allows you to carry around one key for all your bike parts and avoid elaborate lock jobs. Just turn the key on your wheels, seat and the bubble-shaped U-lock, and you're set. This convenience will set you back $75, with the... Wired.com
- Teen-Friendly 'Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe' Feels Wrong Somehow Say goodbye to the gore goodness of the good ol' days -- the upcoming iteration of the classic fighting game will be toned down considerably. Sure, the potential audience will be wider, but is nothing sacred? Wired.com
- How to Convert Vinyl LPs to MP3s Got stacks of Stax soul? A trove of treasures from Treasure Isle? It's remarkably easy to convert those old vinyl sides to play on your iPod. All you need is a turntable, a good audio cable and some free software and you'll be reliving vinyl's glory days in crystal-clear (and wear-free) digital sound. Got extra tips? Log in and contribute. Wired.com
- Video: Embryo's First 24 Hours Watch the first-ever video of the first 24 hours of an embryo at the cellular level. A zebrafish embryo goes from a single cell to 20,000 cells that have begun to organize into specialized tissue. Wired.com
- The Loneliest Organism on Earth Scientists discovered the only known ecosystem that consists of just one organism. Found in a gold mine in South Africa, the ecosystem could be a model for early life on Earth or other planets. Wired.com
- Rufus Sewell Channels Brainy Biophysicist for 'Eleventh Hour' The Brit actor ditches the serious bad guys he's played in the past for an IQ-boosting role as a crime-busting scientist. He's hoping to get typecast as a brainiac. Wired.com
- Apple Likely to Launch New Notebooks Next Week Apple sends out press invitations to a special event next week, where it is expected to launch sub-$1,000 Mac notebooks. Wired.com
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