Microsoft's upstart search engine Bing continues its push to compete with Google in terms of usability and overall cultural impact. The latest effort being a tie-up with the popular Star Trek franchise.
Here at DVICE, you have our attention anytime someone talks about a universal translator, so we're definitely interested in the latest developments from Microsoft in which chief research officer Rick Rashid demonstrated software that converted his speech into Chinese — in real time, and in his own voice.
Hear that, Star Trek? Technology is catching up! The University of Alabama's Aerophysics Research Center, NASA, Boeing, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are all getting together to develop an "impulse engine" that's powered in part by "dilithium crystals."