Have you often looked out the window of a plane and wished you could find out about what you're seeing down below? Thanks to a new service that went into alpha testing today, you could soon do just that.

Known as MondoWindow, the service aims to let anyone onboard a Wi-Fi-enabled plane get real-time information about the places they're flying over. And as the service gets more sophisticated, it will likely add all kinds of additional features like audio programming, videos, and games, all related specifically to the places you can see five miles below you.

MondoWindow comes … Read more

ARLINGTON, Texas--In my role as a reporter, I've had the good fortune to visit a number of control and/or command centers, such as those running a massive radio telescope, a nuclear submarine, a national laser fusion facility, and several others.

For anyone who remembers the Matthew Broderick vehicle "War Games," the bar for what a control room looks like is high: massive screens, dozens of workstations, long tables, and people moving around everywhere. But in the commodity PC era, that kind of room is mostly long gone. While I've seen NASA control centers that approach … Read more

At a live event in Tokyo, Sony on Thursday unveiled what many had come to call the PlayStation Portable 2, its long-awaited, all-new handheld video game console. Known officially as the "Next Generation Portable," the device will be available this holiday season. Sony has not yet said what the new PSP will cost.

According to CNET sister site Gamespot.com, the new device will come in a brick form factor and will feature a 5-inch OLED display with four times the resolution of current-generation PSPs. It has touch pads on both the front and the rear and dual … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--As someone who grew up a political junkie, I was always hard-pressed to explain why I had never visited Washington, D.C.

I don't have to make excuses anymore, not after Road Trip 2010, my journey up and down the American Northeast that began in D.C. on June 23 and ended Saturday in Orlando, Fla.

Indeed, the trip--which covered 5,266 miles of driving in a Porsche Panamera through Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, and an accompanying jaunt to Florida--was an opportunity … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Each summer for the last four years, I've been lucky enough to get to pick a region of the country and spend several weeks driving around, writing stories and taking photos of some of the best geek-oriented destinations I could find.

In 2006, it was the Pacific Northwest. In 2007, the Southwest. In 2008, it was the Southeast. And in 2009, I traveled through almost the entire Rocky Mountain and Continental Divide region. Over the four years, I've covered 18,528 miles and visited dozens of the most interesting research labs, military bases, aviation facilities, NASA centers, … Read more

It looks like a cross between a Segway and Wall-E, but a new "telepresence" robot being unveiled Tuesday is designed to help companies save money on travel and expensive teleconferencing technology.

Currently known as the "QB," the $15,000 robot from Mountain View, Calif.-based Anybots, is designed for people in remote offices or locations who want a rich communications experience without having to use a complicated video conference system.

QB, which is slated to go on sale this fall, has both a video camera and a video screen embedded in its "head." It has wheels and can be moved around remotely by computer. It is designed to be able to steer its way clear of obstacles or people. As long as both the robot and the person controlling it both have access to Wi-Fi, QB should work for just about anyone.

According to Anybots COO Bob Christopher, the idea for QB came from new theories about interactions between people and robots. The hope, said Christopher, who previously was CEO of Pleo maker Ugobe, is that QB will engender a "more humanistic approach" to the relationship between humans and machine. … Read more

If I had any doubts that you wanted Halo: Reach beta codes, they were put to rest by the responses I got over the last few days after I offered up 10 codes in return for suggestions of where I should go on my forthcoming CNET Road Trip project.

In response to my offer, I got close to 200 suggestions, many of which were terrific, and some of which I'll likely visit during the trip. And the codes lasted just hours.

Now, however, I've got 10 more Halo: Reach codes to offer you. This time, though, I'm … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Internet of the future is an intelligent network capable of proactively acting on our needs, following us wherever we go, helping provide us with focused health care, and possibly ushering in a new energy paradigm.

This is the vision that James Canton, CEO of San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures think tank, shared with students in the executive program of Singularity University. His broad-reaching, theoretical talk here Wednesday touched on many of the same elements of the all-encompassing network more or less overlaid on people's consciousnesses in science fiction by the likes of Vernor Vinge. … Read more

Is Sony's PlayStation 3 at long last ready to stop being its rivals' punching bag?

With its first-place finish in September in number of units sold, Sony finally has a tangible response to persistent criticism that its PS3 can't keep up with its next-generation video game console competitors, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii.

For the month, according to video game analysts at the NPD Group, Sony sold 491,800 PS3s in the United States, while Nintendo moved 462,800 Wiis and consumers bought 352,600 of Microsoft's Xbox 360s. It was the first time … Read more