The Lowdown on Google Drive

Google’s online storage service, Google Drive, is finally out with the expected 5 gigabytes of free storage. While the service has been discussed for months, few people had anticipated all that Google included in the service.

Potentially this is a way for people to easily load and share (and eventually, upload to YouTube) lots of video. It can also be used to scan and store documents that can then be edited through online optical character recognition. It can search personal and corporate text and image files using keywords, drawing off of Google’s talents in online image search.

Brian Dawkins calls it quits after 16 NFL seasons

Brian Dawkins says his head told him to retire, not his neck.

The veteran safety called Denver Broncos coach John Fox on Monday morning to tell him that after plenty of prayer and reflection, he’d decided that 16 seasons in the NFL was enough.

Europe loses sight of Earth

With hopes fading fast for the crippled Earth-observing satellite Envisat, researchers are warning that delays to its replacements will leave Europe lacking vital monitoring data for years to come.

Launched in 2002, Envisat is the largest environmental satellite ever built and the mainstay of the Earth-observing programme for the European Space Agency (ESA). The 8.2-tonne satellite has 10 instruments with which to take the planet’s pulse, including radars, infrared and optical imagers, and spectrometers.

Swiss scientists demonstrate mind-controlled robot

Swiss scientists have demonstrated how a partially paralyzed person can control a robot by thought alone, a step they hope will one day allow immobile people to interact with their surroundings through so-called avatars.

Similar experiments have taken place in the United States and Germany, but they involved either able-bodied patients or invasive brain implants.