5) “TV-licence” extends in many countries
Sweden was one of the first countries to do it and now more countries follow. UK is about to do it as well.
We’re talking about extending the “TV-licence”, the fee put on every television owner in a country to fund the public service TV and radio stations, to include other devices as well. More and more public service stations have taken the leap into an online environment and with this, they feel that computers should be included as well.
Certain countries even include smartphones and game consoles into the licensable devices.
This is a sign that the world is going more and more into the virtual environment of the Internet for every day.
4) Bionic animatronic
German scientists have produced the first ever bionic animal, an entirely mechanical animal. The biomechanical leap was taken quite literally as the team at Festo created a mechanical kangaroo, capable of not only jumping and then recovering its balance, but also to store the energy recovered when landing for its next jump. This mimics the function of a real kangaroo perfectly.
The mechanical animal has no commercial use, but it instead used as an example to get more aspiring students interested in biomimetics, the study of mechanical applications of designs in nature.
3) Marvelous plans
Marvel has high ambition for their current series of superhero movies. The movies that center around the heroes in the team called Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy will be produced for a long time. The current production schedule extends all the way to 2028, according to Marvel Studio president Kevin Feige.
Future comic characters to be put on the big screen are Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and Ultron.
2) Amazon enters the console war
Amazon has recently announced their contribution to the console war, currently ruled by Microsoft, Sony, OUYA and Nintendo. Amazon Fire TV will be a multimedia console capable of not only gaming, but streaming from services like Hulu, Netflix and Youtube as well as access everything you have uploaded to your Amazon Cloud.
The company has announced several top-name brands as prospects for the released games. Among these are Ubisoft, TellTale Games, EA and Mojang.
1) The Author Assange
Julian Assange, who is most famous for creating the government secret-leaking site Wikileaks, have taken the final steps to become an author. His debut book will be ‘When Google Met Wikileaks’ and will detail his visions for how the Internet should be shaped in the future.
The story centers around a historical meeting between himself and the Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who has very different views on what Internet should be shaped like.
Assange wants to see an Internet that is harder to censor, while Schmidt wants to see one that is easier to control.
‘When Google Met Wikileaks’ will be available from OR Books in September this year.