Alex Reid

Quadrotor Drones are the hippest machines these days.

French company Parrot has created an augmented reality video game using remote control quadrotor helicopters that you can use your iPhone or iPad to control. They act as mini unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), complete with video camera.

Last month a group of French engineers cum artists got together to illustrate a radically new way of building architecture; using flying robots.

The installation, called “Flight Assembled Architecture”, was conceived and built by teams led by my colleagues Fabio Gramazio & Matthias Kohler as well as Raffaello D’Andrea at the ETH Zurich.

Four remote controlled mini quadrotors landed on ”brick dispensers” (the bricks were actually polystyrene foam) and using “grippers” (three servo-powered pins to puncture and hold the brick), they then plucked one brick up at a time, carried each to the “building site” and began creating a warped tower wall. The software used managed control architecture, collision avoidance and freeway based flight.

The team claims this is the first architectural installation to be built dynamically by flying machines.

Intel released their second-generation Intel Core processor recently, showing off some new toys at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and Hollywood is very excited about it.

For one, the chips offer improved efficiency, reduced power consumption and enhanced graphics handling; specifically, the chips are promised to deliver better video streaming (1080 p HD) and other data-rich content like video games.

But there’s something else that isn’t getting much press; anti-piracy technology embedded in the chip. Perhaps a first, Intel has created a chip that not only handles processing tasks, but recognizes intellectual property.

Intel calls it “an extra layer of content protection” or HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection). Intel has been over the top in explaining that this is not DRM (Digital Rights Management) undoubtedly because that term has snowballed so much criticism against it that Steve Jobs denounced it in a public letter four years ago.

The technology known as Intel Insider does one thing and one thing only. It protects movies delivered from service providers that are specifically using Intel Insider to protect their content. It has to be enabled on the service provider side. Consumers with Intel Insider enabled PCs will have access to content in higher resolution (1080P) and potentially earlier release.

Intel Insider in no way affects any other new or existing media. It does not matter if you buy from iTunes, use home movies, or buy from a CD store, rip from vinyl, or from an 8-track, or bit-torrent. Intel Insider will not touch it.

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The only people that will be negatively affected are those who wish to pirate content from services that support Intel Insider.

Intel’s supporters and collaborators on this technology include film companies such as Warner Brothers, Dreamworks and 20th Century Fox.

On Friday, I dropped $1500 and bought a new iMac which marks my third mac.

I’m already enjoying the huge screen, faster processor, speakers, and the crazy touch mouse; this will help tremendously in making videos and doing web work.