At the TED conference I saw an amazing demonstration from MIT's David Merrill, on his latest project called "siftables". At a crude level, they look like electronic scrabble letters. As you arrange them into a word, they tell you when you're right. Then they reshuffle thems...

After four days of inspiration and making new friends at my first TED, to say I am exhausted simply doesn't cut it. After all I have experienced life living in the canopy of a forest and the wonder (and the iminent disaster) of the depths of the ocean; I've learnt how bacteria communicate ...

PW Singer is a military analyst who gave a talk at TED this week, on how warfare has become open source. He discussed various technologies, mostly focussed on remotely operated equipment (including robots). Much of the equipment has video so you can see exactly what's going on - as if you were...