Out at your local bar, and faced with an enchanting, but obscure, slice of music, you can call up an app, hold your mobile device aloft like a scepter, and all the vitals — song, artist, album — are swiftly known to you.
The main difficulty facing the designers of micro air vehicles is that battery life limits how long the devices stay aloft, he says, so "any tips or tricks which enhance aerodynamic efficiency will be warmly welcomed".
A parachute and wire device was rocketed aloft, trailing a wire that unwound at high speed from a bobbin on the ground with the object of snagging the aircraft's propellers or shearing off the wings.
Directed by Paul Devlin, this absorbing documentary flirts with metaphysics — one of the scientists, a Christian, muses on God's participation in both the Blast project and the nature of the universe — but mostly it keeps an amused eye on the effort of these driven brainiacs to set aloft an extremely sophisticated and fragile recording device.
In the meantime, ActionAid is continuing its campaign to empower women in Ghana, which is why, in a local church in Treba, Greater Accra, two women are holding aloft condoms, contraceptive pills and an intrauterine device as they lecture a 100-strong and predominantly female audience on sexual health and sexual rights.
Most sightings of slow moving objects with flickering lights indicate a device with a flame which is keeping the object aloft.
The device, which swoops uncertainly through the sky, suggests a bicycle borne aloft on giant butterfly wings.
As Mr. Jarvis can attest, a growing number of frequent fliers are using their mobile devices to create an informal travelers' community in airports and aloft.
The device also acts like an airplane wing (it provides the "lift" necessary to keep a vehicle aloft and maneuver it).
As for getting it aloft (which isn't just for fun; it increases radio range and of course makes the device troublesome to shut down), some people are thinking quadrocopters or the like, but it's more likely that a semi-permanent lift method would be used – balloons, for instance, with some propellers to keep it in position.
Similar drawbacks have scuppered attempts to integrate personal organisers, digital cameras and other devices into watches.Technology Quarterly Watch this space Mashing the web Sailing ships with a new twist The doctor in your pocket Summer camp for coders Held aloft by hydrogen A new way to stop digital decay The policeman on your dashboard Hear no evil Building a better battery No jam tomorrow?
