The US Embassy is warning of a possible terrorist attack on Bali on New Year's Eve.

How many scientists does it take to properly install a lightbulb? When that lightbulb is an implant that stimulates retinal photoreceptors to restore one's sight, quite a few -- even if they disagree whether said implant should be placed on top of the retina (requiring glasses to supply power and video feed) or underneath, using photocells to channel natural sunlight. Now, a German firm dubbed Retina Implant has scored a big win for the subretinal solution with a three-millimeter, 1,500 pixel microchip that gives patients a 12 degree field of view. Conducting human trials with 11 patients suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, the company successfully performed operations on seven, with one even managing to distinguish between similar objects (knife, fork, spoon) and perform very basic reading. Though usual disclaimers apply -- the tech is still a long way off, it only works on folks who've slowly lost their vision, etc. -- this seems like a step in the right direction, and at least one man now knows which direction that is.

Subretinal implant successfully tested on humans, makes blind narrowly see originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At the MIX10 conference this past week, MAKE had a booth embedded inside the Coding4Fun exhibit. We showed off MAKE magazine, some of our Make: Books, and a few kits. Our Coding4Fun neighbors had a lot of great projects on display, including their Coding4Fun Cannon, which was a robotic t-shirt launching platform with two barrels. What's more, it was controlled by a Windows Phone 7 app, and they completed it in two weeks. Here's how Clint Rutkas of Coding4Fun described it:

Mid-February, we were asked to build a t-shirt shooting robot for the Mix conference on March 15th, 2010. This required us to pitch our vision and then research, build, test, and ship our project--all in about 3 weeks. After Scott Guthrie gave us approval based on our SketchFlow demo, we had to divide and conquer the application with only 2 weeks left to build the physical robot, the server software, and the phone software. And on top of all that, since we were consuming an unfinished product, everything had to have backup plans.

Read all about it at Coding4Fun: Coding4Fun Cannon - Project Overview
Read a sample chapter from the upcoming Learning Windows Phone Programming at O'Reilly Answers

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!

Our top story this week was about bad news for the big guys: Google, Facebook, Digg's top users. As you catch up on the news, be sure to watch the conversation about China, tech and democracy that took place between activist/artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter's Jack Dorsey and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web and Internet of Things.

Note: We've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format.

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Story of the Week: Nexus One's woes, spies love Facebook, top Diggers lose power

• Oops: Google Denied Trademark on Android Nexus One
• Big Changes Are Coming to Digg: More Power to Publishers, Less Power to Top Diggers
• How US Government Spies Use Facebook (Updated)
• Cartoon: Can't Go to SXSW? We Feel Your Pain
• Nexus One Flopped, but Android Didn't

More coverage and analysis from ReadWriteWeb

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Mobile Web

• Microsoft Updates Bing iPhone App and Removes It from All International iTunes Stores
• Blockbuster Brings New Releases to Android, Windows Mobile Phones
• Mobile App Marketplace: $17.5 Billion by 2012

More Mobile Web coverage

Internet of Things

• Internet of Things Explained (Video)
• 6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home
• 8 Ways to Better Understand the Internet of Things

More Internet of Things coverage

Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App

We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app. As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we've made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes.

Real-Time Web

• OneRiot Brings Its Real-Time Ads to the Web
• Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source

More Real-Time Web coverage. Don't miss the next wave of opportunity on the Web supported by real-time technology! Get ReadWriteWeb's report, The Real-Time Web and its Future.

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

• The Death of the Pageview
• Micropayments and Subscriptions: How Business Models for Startups are Shifting
• 6 ReadWriteStart Lists: Our Best Startup Advice

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.

• Provider Fail: Vodafone Sells HTC Smartphone Loaded With Malware
• Google Apps Offers Migration for Microsoft Exchange

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Our channel ReadWriteCloud, sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

• IBM Makes A Major Move Into The Cloud; Amazon Is In Its Sights
• Rulers of the Cloud: Will Amazon's Computing Fabric Become a New Economy?
• The Oracle Effect: Sun's Best and Brightest Move On to New Places

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Discuss

The Indian government wants to ban her from ever setting foot in their nation again.

Pastoral letter to victims expresses shame and remorse of Catholic church and calls on priests to face justice

The pope today apologised to the victims of child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland, saying he was "truly sorry" for their suffering.

In a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, Benedict XVI castigated Irish bishops for "grave errors of judgment" in their handling of the paedophilia scandal and ordered a Vatican investigation into the Irish church.

But he made no mention of any Vatican responsibility and gave no specific punishments for bishops who have been blamed by victims and Irish government inquiries for having concealed the abuse.

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," the pope wrote, addressing the victims.

"It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the church. In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."

The letter described the sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by priests, brothers and nuns as "sinful and criminal", saying they had betrayed the trust of the faithful, brought shame on the church and now must answer to God and civil authorities.

"Conceal nothing," he said. "Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God's mercy."

Benedict criticised the Irish bishops for having failed, "sometimes grievously", to apply the church's punishments for child abusers, which include defrocking them. But he did not rebuke them specifically for having failed to report cases of abuse to police.

"I recognise how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice," Benedict wrote.

"Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. And this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness."

In recent weeks, the Vatican has been trying to contain damage as a string of scandals over sexual abuse of children by priests has hit Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

The pope ordered a Vatican investigation into some diocese, seminaries and religious orders. Such inquiries only occur when the Vatican considers a local church unable to deal with a problem on its own, as in the case of sexual abuse by US priests.

Victims have demanded that bishops resign. Three Irish bishops have offered to step down but the pope has not accepted their resignations.

Three official inquiries, ordered by the Irish government, documented how thousands of Irish children suffered rape, molestation and other abuse by priests in their parishes, and by nuns and brothers in boarding schools and orphanages. Irish bishops did not report a single case to police until 1996 after victims began to sue the church.

Benedict said he recognised that nothing could undo the victims' pain and he compared their suffering to that of Christ on the cross.

"Christ's own wounds, transformed by his redemptive sufferings, are the very means by which the power of evil is broken and we are reborn to life and hope."

• Pope Benedict XVI
• Catholicism
• Ireland
• Religion

David Batty
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Did ESPN's Kornheiser forget to take his medication before a recent show? I don't know what happened, but he ended up spewing hate against Washington DC cyclists, telling his listeners and co-hosts that he could barely contain himself from "running them down". Rockstar cyclist Lance Armstrong responds.

BBC News
Sleuths Trace Clues to Predict iPad Sales
Wall Street Journal
Weeks before the iPad, Apple Inc.'s new tablet computer, is released, amateur analysts are reading the digital equivalent of tea leaves to estimate early sales. But their findings might not be as clear as the forthcoming device's color ...
Calendar app and sailboat-racing game: iPhone apps of the weekCNET
Apple Sets March 27 Deadline for First IPad AppsPC World
Apple to iPad devs: on your mark, get set, submit!Ars Technica
GamePro.com -PC Magazine -Wired News
all 553 news articles »

A brief introduction to a tokenizer implementation in C++

Burglar Helps Washington Police Find Him By Using Store's Computer To Log Onto MySpace

Luis Villa's Internet Home: "I can’t go to bed because Mairin is right on the internet and so I want to (1) say she’s awesome and (2) add two cents on mailing lists and using the power of a web interface to make them better. Bear with me; maybe this is completely off-base (probably I should just stick to law), but it has been bouncing around in my head for years and maybe me writing it down will help the lightbulb go off for someone who can actually implement it :)"

Contrary to what you might think, populations grew by 16 per cent on average between 1970 and 2004

MIKE Rann and Isobel Redmond both have refused to concede the South Australia election.

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday apologized personally to victims and their families in a letter to Irish Catholics, but did not refer directly to immediate disciplinary action.

Do you reach for your iPhone first thing before giving your wife a good morning kiss? Do you spend more time looking at your shiny new 3GS in bed than reading one of the growing pile of great books next to you? Do you get more excited about new apps than you do about new albums?

MojoKid writes "As it turns out, news this week is that the same features that made IE9's hardware-acceleration possible probably aren't compatible with Windows XP. Microsoft initially dodged giving a straight answer to the question of XP support but has since admitted that the new browser won't be XP-compatible when it launches. This has created a small tempest of protest from those users still using XP, but this is less of an arbitrary decision than some appear to think. It's literally impossible to port Windows Vista/Win 7-style hardware acceleration backwards to XP. Microsoft would have to either develop a workaround from scratch or create a CPU-driven 'software mode.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Grey's Anatomy beauty Katherine Heigl avoids a potentially embarrassing situation at the ShoWest awards.

Silverlight is on around 60% of all PCs around the world and it does much more than just playing videos. Silverlight runs on Macs, Linux, PCs, and will soon be seen on Windows Phone, Symbian, and MeeGo. It is attracting clients right from eCommerce sites like eBay to social networking sites and applications. So what does [...]

A new version of Microsoft’s Bing iPhone app has just been launched. It gives users access to Bing maps, directions, image search, news search, and other of its core services.The best way to gain access to Microsoft’s “decision engine” on your iPhone would be to use the Bing iPhone app. This is only for those [...]

A new app from Wikipedia called “Articles” has now hit the App Store for only $2.99. The app has some amazing features including a multi-page interface similar to the way Mobile Safari works, location-based article viewing, and a photo viewer that can copy photos and even save them to your camera roll. Tweetie 2 is [...]