Some of the things that were predicted that we would have by 2010 hasn't happened yet. This has inspired band names such as We Were Promised Jetpacks, and a lot of us are still waiting for our hoverboards. One thing that's finally starting to come along are quasi-bionic exoskeletons and prosthetic limbs.

Berkeley Bionics, in association with Lockheed Martin, currently has the awesomely named HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) going through military testing to help soldiers. It's a titanium powered exoskeleton that runs on hydraulics, and can help carry up to 200 pounds without the wearer feeling impeded. Endurance is also increased and it comes in an upper and lower body part that can be removed in 30 seconds. I find the use case for this in industrial and medical practices fascinating. This isn't really about "HULC SMASH!" as the name instantly has you thinking. It's more of a 'HULC lift' or 'HULC push' unless they mount piledrivers onto the thing. 

A company called Wicked Lasers is selling an imported device from Hong Kong called the S3 Spyder Arctic Pro Laser on their website. Looks familiar, doesn't it? This $200 high powered laser looks a lot like a lightsaber from... Well, if I have to tell you what a lightsaber's from, you might as well stop reading now.

This little device has drawn the ire of LucasFilm as it drew a legal warning from them to remove this device in its present form as it’s ridiculously dangerous. How dangerous? If that laser touches an eye it will permanently blind that eye! It can also set fire to skin and is one of the most dangerous portable lasers in the market. You could skin a Wookiee with this thing!

In fairness, Wicked Lasers do include an optics kit and they include an electronic SmartSwitch with this but it's still clearly pretty dangerous. I have to side towards LucasFilm on this one. That thing's clearly been made to look like a lightsaber, and some dopey geek (or worse, a dopey parent to a Star Wars nerd) will hurt people with this.

HDMI is pretty much entrenched as the A/V standard, and is on virtually every screen nowadays. There are other interfaces that get as high a resolution such as DVI and DisplayPort, but HDMI is pretty popular for it's "one cable" ease of use for audio and video as well as it having what the industry loves to put on the video content -- HDCP (High Definition Copy Protection, for that digital handshake of authenticity).

There's a new standard in town, though, and it's positioned to replace HDMI. Called HDBaseT, it's launched by LG, Samsung, Sony and others and before your ears steam from fury at yet another plug to deal with, it has some cool stuff to it.

This plug is based on the ethernet cables we all have in our computers so it's a familiar plug to us. HDBaseT can pass full HD video, data, audio and even power through it. It can network multiple sources to multiple screens. It also has more 'reach' than HDMI at 328 feet. Awesome.

It has a 100W limit through the cable. A lot of sets and hardware need more power but in time that will surely go down, and it's a good thing with the green initiative in full swing. So in a sense, this is a greener cable.

The cons? Well, the inevitable adapters for one, and the inevitable headache of adopting a new standard if the manufacturers do what HDMI has done with the 1.2 and 1.3 compatibility headache.

Will one cable rule them all? We'll see, starting later this year and into 2011.

From time to time, I still see people who manually check websites for updates daily, or a few times a day. They'll go and click on their sites for updates on their sports teams, their tech news blog, their favourite forums. And my soul weeps.

Trust me, there's a much easier way.

The easy way to go (and frankly, an addiction for me) is using RSS feeds. See on this site, up where it says 'subscribe' on the top right with that little icon with the radio waves? You'll see this on most sites out there, it's usually orange but sometimes blue as well and it can often be on your browser's address bar as well. What this'll do once you click it is subscribe you to the site's new postings and check the site for you. If you don't know of this, it's a real game-changer for using the internet. It's like surfing the web, but just the surfing part and not the confusing web part.

How to you get to subscribe and read these updates? There's several ways. You can subscribe to these RSS feeds using software that you download, you can get these in your mail client (usually) but many peoples’ method of choice is to get it through a website. That way you can check from whatever computer you're on. For me, I go by Google Reader which is a pretty popular choice.