This week, how implanted microchips and sensors are changing the lives of amputees and those with spinal cord injuries, hands-on with the Belkin Qode Ultimate Pro keyboard case, Apple announces a recall of the Beats Pill XL speakers, and an ASL interpreter channels Eminem.

Brain implants help people control prosthetics

When you take a step, your leg and foot make countless adjustments during the movement. For someone with a prosthetic leg, though, that’s difficult to do, even if the joints are fully articulated.

But Össur, an Icelandic company, has come up with the Proprio Foot, which can receive information sent by the brain into the leg by sensors implanted in the leg itself.

The result is more natural walking because the Proprio Foot can make rapid adjustments in the same way a flesh foot would.

Meanwhile, a tetraplegic man in California has controlled a robotic limb using a brain implant. As reported by the BBC, two sensor chips monitor the activity of about 100 neurons (our brains have some 100 billion neurons in total). With practice, the man is becoming more adept at controlling the limb.

Hands-on with the Belkin Qode Ultimate Pro Keyboard Case

There’s one thing that keeps me from getting rid of my laptop for an iPad. I need to be able to type on my lap when I’m at press events. WIth the Qode Ultimate Pro Keyboard Case from Belkin, I can.

It’s a two-piece setup, including a lightweight back case for your iPad Air 2 (it also works with the first iPad Air) and a separate keyboard. Belkin’s used magnets to hold things together. You can place the iPad into the keyboard partition in either landscape (horizontally) or portrait (vertically).

And while the magnets are strong enough to keep the two pieces together, it’s easy to pull them apart, too, if you want to use the iPad in tablet mode. Apple’s Smart Cover fits nicely over the Qode back, too.

And the keyboard automatically powers down when the iPad is pulled away, conserving power.

The responsiveness of the nearly full-sized keys is remarkable, and the keyboard can pair with two Bluetooth devices — your iPad and your iPhone, for example — and you can switch back and forth with the press of a simple key combination.

The Qode Ultimate Pro Keyboard Case is US$150, and it’s worth the expense. Belkin has a couple of variant Qode keyboard cases, but in addition to being heavy, they don’t come close to providing the same level of functionality.

Apple recalling Beats Pill XL speakers

Anyone who purchased a Beats Pill XL speaker is being asked by Apple to stop using it. Customers who return their speakers can get a refund of Cdn$395.

There is a risk, the company says, of the battery overheating, which is a fire hazard.

If you’ve got a Beats speaker and aren’t sure what model it is, the Pill XL has the words “beats pill XL” on the handle of the device. It came in five colours: black, metallic sky, pink, titanium, and white.

While Apple acquired Beats last year, the Pill XL was released in November 2013.

Apple has a web page with details on how to return a Beats Pill XL.

Another reason the interwebs are amazing

There are so many reasons that our digitized world is astounding, and one is that nothing ever gets deleted. So videos like this one, which was posted last September, can resurface and get some recognition.

Shelby Mitchusson reportedly created the video as part of an application for a job with the American Sign Language (ASL) team at Austin City Limits.

In it, she signs to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” and proves that a skilled interpreter can perfectly convey tone and content for a deaf audience. Why shouldn’t they appreciate music, too?

A warning that the song that is signed in the video below contains explicit language.

This week, Drex and I talked about the strong indie development scene for video games that exists in Vancouver, and some of the games made here, including Open War League, Rocketsrocketsrockets, and Invisible Inc., that have been recently released.

We also talk about the latest revelations from Edward Snowden about the efforts of the Communications Security Establishment and other spy agencies to hack into the app stores for Google and Samsung, and Slack, the communications tool that could finally kill email, and its first podcast.

Another note of interest: I learned today that Drex and his team have started using Slack. Buh-bye email.

This week, what’s new in video games, how the Canadian spy agency and others played with hacking your mobile phone, and the Slack Variety Pack podcast.

New games from Vancouver developers

Among the new games to play are three by Vancouver indie developers. Open War League is a free-to-play strategy game for the iPad. Players build bases and armies and try and take over territory, fighting, or allying, with other players.

Rocketsrocketsrockets and Invisible Inc. are two games for Mac and Windows computers.

Rocketsrocketsrockets, from Radial Games, is like a colourful arcade-style ballet, described as “dogfighting meets figure skating in space”. Designed for multiple players, you fly around trying to shoot down the other rockets that are also flying around.

Invisible Inc. comes from Klei Entertainment, and is a slick, stylish, stealth-meets-strategy game.

Other fun games to consider include Crypt of the NecroDancer, Broken Age, part 2, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles, and Splatoon, a fun shooter for the Wii U.

Spy agencies target mobile phones through app stores

The latest report stemming from the classified documents from Edward Snowden claims that Canada and the other countries involved in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance were looking for ways to hack into mobile phones.

The plan was to use the Google and Samsung app stores, which provide software for Android devices, to get software onto mobile phones for the purposes of collecting data and even to send “misinformation” to a handset.

Representatives from the spy agencies reportedly worked on this during a series of workshops in late 2011 and early 2012.

At the same time, they discovered that the UC Browser app for Android mobile devices, the most popular Internet browser used in Asia, was entirely porous, and was leaking information about users’ devices and accounts.

UC Browser is developed by the Chinese company, Alibaba. The company says that the security flaws have since been updated.

One big question, though, is why government representatives, who have identified a risks in software, wouldn’t disclose that information in the interest of public safety.

The answer, it seems, is because they wanted to exploit it.

Slack, the communication tool, now has a podcast

The Slack Variety Pack is exactly what the title suggests it is: a variety show. It’s light, and smart, and has the same kind of sound layering that is common among contemporary radio programs.

Now Slack is not an entertainment company, but a technology company. Slack is a communications tool. But the company, founded by Vancouver’s smart Stewart Butterfield, is valued at US$2.8 billion.

Slack has some money to spend, and spending it on a smart, funny podcast is, frankly, a good business decision. The podcast is not without it’s subtle hints. One segment has a bunch of smart kids telling their grandparents to stop using email: “You asking me why I don’t reply to your email is like someone asking you why you have not replied back to their telegrams.”

The podcast is produced by Pacific Content, a group of equally smart people with plenty of tenure in radio and digital culture.

The result is a good blend of interesting stories, including a fairly good deconstruction of what a quantum computer is and does, with a look at Burnaby’s D-Wave Systems, with gags and gimmicks, like “what does an emoji sound like?”.

I’m an early adopter and a big fan of Slack. And I listen to the podcast, too.

Drex and I talked about the smart teens from B.C. who took home top honours in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the bionic lens developed in the Lower Mainland that will give us all better than perfect vision, how smartphone cameras can be used to detect eye cancer, and what the Fermi Paradox is all about.

This week, Vancouver teens take top science honours, how you can get bionic eyes, how you can use your smartphone as a diagnostic tool to detect cancer, and where are all the aliens in outer space?

Vancouver’s smart science students

Last week, two Vancouver teens took top honours at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair held in Pittsburgh.

Raymond Wang received the Gordon E. Moore Award (named after this guy, who developed his famous Moore’s Law 50 years ago) for his work on how to reduce the transmission of pathogens in airplanes by changing how air flows through the cabin. Wang, who attends St. George’s School, gets US$75,000 as part of the award.

York House School student Nicola Ticea won $50,000 as one of two Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award winners. She invented a device to more easily diagnose HIV testing kit that requires only a drop of blood and provides results in an hour.

Bionic lens will gives everyone perfect vision

Optometrist Garth Webb is another smart person from the Lower Mainland. He seems to have developed a bionic lens. Webb showed off the lens, which would be implanted in a ten-minute procedure similar to how cataract surgery is conducted, to a group of ophthalmologists at a recent convention.

It’s already possible to get a lens replacement or implant, but the difference with Webb’s intraocular lens is that he claims it will improve a person’s entire range of vision, allowing them to see better up close as well as far away.

I can’t quite figure out exactly how the lens works, but sign me up.

Webb hopes to have the bionic lens approved and available within two years.

While we’re on the topic of eyes

Turns out that the cameras we’re all carrying around in our pockets can save lives.

The “red eye” phenomenon that we see from the light of flashes reflecting off the retinas of our subjects eyes is normal. And if you see something other than that it may indicate a problem.

In particular, when one eye has a white reflection, instead of red, it can be a sign of retinoblastoma, a rare type of eye cancer that affects young children. The technique is effective enough that the Childhood Eye Cancer Trust, a charitable organization in the UK, has a web page with information on what to look for.

We’re all taking pictures of our kids all the time, anyway. This is just something else to look for when you review the day’s photos.

Where are all the aliens?

So we know that the universe is huge, and we now know that it’s filled with stars and trillions upon trillions of planets. Statistically, if even a tiny percentage of those planets are supporting life, there should be lots of alien life out there.

That we haven’t any evidence of them is the basis of the Fermi paradox. And it’s the topic of the video below, which aims to lay out explanations for why we’re not already talking to aliens.

One hypothesis is that there’s a powerful, ancient race of aliens that eliminate civilizations that progress too far. Queue Douglas Adams.