disaster

ioSafe, maker of disaster-proof storage devices such as the ioSafe SoloPro for general consumers, is looking to get people excited about what it's going to unveil at CES 2011.

The company put out a short blog post on its Web site today challenging people to guess, well, what it's going to show off at the world's biggest annual consumer electronic show. The reward for the lucky winner: a sample of the product itself.

Apart from a short clue that reads: "It weighs more than a Cadbury Cream Egg but less than an adult coon hound," the company also posted an ambiguous-looking image of the device, pictured above. To qualify to win, you just have to leave a comment at on the blog post by January 2. Some other restrictions apply, of course.

My guess is as good as yours, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be another superrugged storage product, possibly even bullet-proof, considering the blog teased the users by suggesting a "Napalm-proof NAS."… Read more

IoSafe released on Wednesday a new member of its family of disaster-proof external hard drives, the IoSafe SoloPro.

Measuring 5 inches by 7.1 inches by 11 inches and weighing 15 pounds, the IoSafe SoloPro is about as serious as a single-volume external hard drive can be when it comes to physical size and ruggedness. For comparison, the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk, one of the biggest conventional desktop single-volume external hard drives, weighs about 2 pounds.

All the extra weight in the SoloPro comes from layers of protective materials, which are designed to keep it safe from potential fire and … Read more

The Australian Outback isn't generally a place you go expecting cell phone reception. But a group of researchers has managed to get phones working in the remote wilderness Down Under using a new system that lets ordinary phones communicate without phone towers or satellites.

The three-person team, led by Flinders University's Paul Gardner-Stephen--he of the working Maxwell Smart-style shoe phone--headed into the remote, sparsely populated Arkaroola Sanctuary over the weekend to test their Serval Project with hacked Android phones. Results were promising, with Gardner-Stephen chatting with a colleague on another mobile phone several hundred meters (about … Read more

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON--His face wracked by age and his voice rasping after decades of chain-smoking coarse tobacco, the former longtime Russian minister of nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov knows just how to fix BP's oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

"A nuclear explosion over the leak," he says, nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. "I don't know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and … Read more

Dissatisfied with what he sees as tepid effort on behalf of oil giant BP to stop the flow of petroleum from an exploded well in the Gulf of Mexico, a New York-based video producer named Adam Quirk has started raising money for a stunt designed to irritate its executives to no end with vuvuzelas--those buzzing horns that have been everywhere at the World Cup soccer confab in South Africa (and, by proxy, the Internet) this summer.

"In order to put a bit of public pressure on them, we plan to buy 100 vuvuzelas and hire 100 vuvuzela players off … Read more

When you've gone and polluted so much that a lot of birds are ill, baby, ill, you really have to be careful with your words. However, BP seems to have fallen into the hands of those who defend wordsmithing politicians, rather than those whose emphasis might start with the potential reactions of real people, who use the Web to keep up with the world.

Having assigned itself to a political consulting company called Purple Strategies, BP wheeled out its CEO, a gentleman who claimed, perhaps injudiciously: "I'd like my life back."

In a TV spot that … Read more

Typically, natural disasters come with little advance notice. But after a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, much of the Pacific coast, including Hawaii, came under tsunami watch over the course of the day. That makes this was one time when the news media is poised to catch it all on film.

It may, in fact, be the first time that the developments leading to a potential natural disaster has been broadcast live in this way.

Of course, these days that means streaming on the Web, too; searching live-streaming site Ustream for "tsunami" will bring up … Read more

What kinds of tech gadgets should you have in your emergency kits? We give you some ideas and take some from the audience.

REDMOND, Wash.--The ground-level conference room in Building 25 doesn't look much different than many others in buildings across Microsoft's sprawling campus.

It has a window, though most of the view is obscured by a large bush. It has the usual array of outlets and Ethernet jacks, screens, and projectors. During earthquakes and floods, hurricanes and tsunamis, though, this room is ground zero for Microsoft's emergency response effort.

Even then though, it can be hard to tell that somewhere halfway around the world, disaster has struck. That's because Microsoft's disaster team is a virtual one, … Read more