laser

Any objection to Monday's top tech headlines is overruled:

The Apple vs. Samsung trial is almost at a close. The jury is expected to begin deliberations Tuesday. The two tech giants spent three weeks battling over patents and accusations of copying.

OnLive is facing some rough days ahead. The cloud-based gaming service sold its assets to an investor Friday and laid off employees, but said it will rehire many back as the newly restructured company (which will still be called OnLive). The company says subscribers shouldn't see any problems or interruptions in service during this restructuring.

College students … Read more

The New York Port Authority had egg on its face recently when a stranded jet skier managed to breach JFK International Airport's security perimeter and walk across several runways.

Raytheon, maker of the $100 million Perimeter Intrusion Detection System, has some explaining to do.

But it's not all bad. Inspired by the breach (and Shark Week), Justin Huynh and friends at engineering firm Liquidware have concocted their own intruder alert system for far fewer bucks.

Essentially, it's a simple laser tripwire that sends alerts to Twitter when activated. So far, it works with toy sharks and not hapless jet skiers. … Read more

Have the super-scientific brain needed to develop laser technology for enhancing everything from radar scanning to X-ray machines? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants you, doc.

DARPA this week called on radiation experts and other brainiacs to propose methods of efficiently controlling the electromagnetic spectrum by using ultrafast, pulsed lasers operating at optical wavelengths. It's part of DARPA's program in ultrafast laser and engineering, or PULSE. … Read more

Buying a printer on a budget is tricky -- if you tighten your belt too much, you run the risk of falling victim to the classic bait-and-switch purchasing model and spending more on consumables (ink and paper) in the long term.

That said, the $100 mark is a great place to start shopping for a low-cost printer. At that price, you have the option of getting an all-in-one multifunction device that incorporates a scanner and a copier in addition to the printing functions, and some models like the Epson Stylus NX430 even give you convenient extras like a 2.5-inch LCD touch panel and wireless connectivity.

Both laser and inkjet printers are included in the list below. The general rule is that inkjet printers are better for graphics-heavy documents and photos, whereas laser printers (especially the monochrome models) are better for producing speedy text documents in a business environment.… Read more

Pew pew! From disc drives to sci-fi shooters, we live in a world full of laser beams. And a special laser made waves in the world of medical research this week. Developed by laser applications researchers from the University of Tennessee's Space Institute, it could one day find use as a weapon against cancer.

Known as a femtosecond laser, the high-speed light pulses at one-quadrillionth of a second; when fine-tuned, the powerful beam can be used by doctors to detect, map, and nullify cancerous tumors. … Read more

Earlier this spring, the U.S. Army revealed the existence of a project underway to build a device that could shoot lightning bolts down laser beams to take out a target. Now the military's boffins report success in their first tests.

The technology -- known as laser-induced plasma channel -- is designed to seek out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them.

Although scientists and engineers working on the weapon's development expressed confidence in the physics behind their work, George Fischer, who is the lead scientist on the project, nonetheless cautioned about the technical challenges still ahead. … Read more

There are many ways I can think of to have fun with a laser, especially one described as "the world's brightest laser you can legally own." Popping balloons isn't one of them, but YouTube tinkerer WorldScott's stunt is interesting anyway.

In a bid for a record, he lined up 100 red balloons in front of a Spyder III Krypton and fired away.

As seen in the vid below, it took a while for the 750-1,000mW laser, fired through a focusing lens, to pop each balloon, but it eventually did the trick.

The green beam left a trail of red balloon fragments in its wake. Fortunately it wasn't powerful enough to penetrate the far wall. … Read more

HP has taken the wraps off three new consumer printers, including an update to last year's mobile all-in-one.

The HP Officejet 150 Mobile is a refresh to the HP Officejet Mobile 100, a useful accessory that earned a 7.5/10 CNET Editors' rating back in 2011 for its flexible connectivity options, Bluetooth accessibility, and rechargeable battery. This time around, HP updates the mobile inkjet sidekick with quick scanning and copying directly to a compatible USB drive or memory card.

The printer's physical composition retains the same general clam shell design of its predecessor but adds a 2.… Read more

The last time we caught up with Wicked Lasers, it was to check into the Spyder III Pro Arctic, a laser so powerful it requires wearing special eye protection and comes with the warning that it can blind instantly and set fire to skin.

Since then, Wicked Lasers has dodged a potential Lucasfilm lawsuit and set about figuring out how to make the Spyder even more like a real-life "Star Wars" lightsaber.

The result of that effort is the $100 LaserSaber, an add-on to the $300 Spyder. It's a 32-inch polycarbonate blade with an aircraft-grade aluminum hilt.

According to the sales pitch, the LaserSaber features "an ultrasmooth magnetic gravity system that can 'power up' and 'power down' the blade."

This may sound like a dream come true for legions of "Star Wars" fans, but there are some big, honking caveats involved.… Read more