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The search for intelligent life has been ongoing for decades; the thought that we are not alone in the universe is quite an exciting thought and has prompted many different forms of attempted message sending for just as long. We have thoughts of an alien race being friendly – benevolent even but what if they’re not? What if we actually contacted a tyrannical race of blood thirsty butchers I mean let’s not sugar coat it what would humanity have to offer a far superior race? It’s not like the human race as a whole is striving forward for the good of our kind; we are scared, suspicious creatures who seem to have lost the ability to help our fellow man. We’re still happy to march in file to fight and kill people we don’t even know for somebody sat behind a desk counting numbers because there’s an argument as to who owns the majority of the oil.

2 days ago there was a meeting held at The Royal Society in London Organised by Dr Martin Dominik and Professor John Zarnecki to discuss ‘The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society’

“…Astronomers are now able to detect planets orbiting stars other than the Sun where life may exist, and living generations could see the signatures of extra-terrestrial life being detected. Should it turn out that we are not alone in the Universe, it will fundamentally affect how humanity understands itself – and we need to be prepared for the consequences…” we’ve know for a while that there are many gas giants, like our sun, that are able to support life but looking at them through a lens doesn’t get us any further to contact.

“Part of me is with the enthusiasts and I would like us to try to make proactive contact with a wiser, more peaceful civilisation. Given that the consequences of contact may not be what we initially hoped for, then we need governments and the UN to get involved in any discussions.” Dr Marek Kukula commented, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

“My basic argument is that, contrary to most neo-Darwinian thinking at the moment, evolution is much more predictable than people think. In particular, I would argue that the emergence, by evolution, of intelligence, cognitive capacity and all that stuff is an inevitability.” – Conway Morris, who gave a talk entitled; predicting what extraterrestrial life will be like and preparing for the worst. So I guess it’s yet another case of sit tight and let the big boys and girls sort out what’s best for us.

So with all the rumours flying around about Apples new offering what do we know for sure? Well we know it’s one of the most hyped devices since the combustion engine for a start. There’s no actual confirmation as to its real name, some are calling it the iSlate someone else referred to it as the iHype which is somewhat fitting. There are other claims that it will be very similar to a large screened iPod. How have Apple been able to keep this under wraps? Almost everything gets leaked onto the net weeks before release. With Ebook readers becoming ever more popular are Apple making a supremo version while the iron is hot? Imagine never having to queue for the morning papers, pre ordering best sellers and not waiting for midnight releases outside supermarkets, the still ever increasingly popular Twitter and Facebook linked directly to headlines “crikey, check this out’ you post on Twitter at five to eight on Monday morning. But is this all another step to becoming somewhat lazy or is it genuinely saving us time? I can see its merits from a paper saving view though.

Then we have the entertainment side of things, for one (I assume) you’ll have a portable TV, DVD player and jukebox (provided you’re willing to spend a small fortune with iTunes) which you can take anywhere. I can imagine a hot summers day, picnic in the local park, maybe a coolbox with a cheeky bottle of wine in there and suddenly your peace is shattered by Noel Edmonds “Are you ready for the question…” like the chavs on the bus with tinny sounding phones playing r n’ b – sometimes it’s just nice to leave all that at home…

Do we really need another all singing all dancing device that we can’t wait to show people? Don’t get me wrong, I love tech but I also like leaving it at home and going out and about. It’s quite liberating to leave your mobile phone on the kitchen table and go out for lunch, try it you might like it

I’m not kidding. IVF treatment took a backseat for a couple who were trying for a baby for 4 years until she found an iPhone app to help become pregnant! Lena Bryce and partner Dudley used the fertility application after almost giving up hope. It works by inputting your daily body temperature and then the app calculates when she would be most fertile. Lena fell pregnant after just 2 months of using the software!

‘I typed in “get pregnant” and downloaded five apps, The Free Menstrual Calendar was easiest to use so I stuck with it and in two months I was pregnant. Now we have our gorgeous daughter and couldn’t be happier.’ Lena told The Sun. Congratulations to the pair of them! So I guess there’s an app for just about everything! Wonder if there’s one that encourages hair growth…

Hong Kong Hardware giant Lenovo announced plans for their own take on the Smartphone earlier this month. It will be android based and have a clamshell design. I must admit it does look pretty funky and will carry all the features that the big hitters have. China is looking to see its first handsets around may this year and then pushed out to a host of other countries towards q3, although no confirmation that the UK will see this particular handset. It will have a great looking screen with a superb resolution of 800 x 480, a full ‘qwerty’ keyboard mounted via the clamshell configuration but get this, the phone will detach from this allowing you to carry half the phone! Ok, so not sure how useful that will be but we all like to see something out of the ‘norm’.

Anyone who’s worked around computers for any length of time has probably seen the above statement several times. The latest issue, which you may have seen in the news, is the ‘cyber attacks’ on Google where hackers accessed Googlemail accounts of civil rights activists in China. Google then threatened they would pull out of the Chinese market. This sent a mild ripple of panic across a large portion of Europe where government officials advised to stop using IE. The actual press release wording was “the vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer”. Hackers and code jockeys are always going to try and break the ‘big boys’ code it’s always been the way of things “I got one up on Bill Gates” yak yak. Good news for the rivals though; Opera, Chrome (which I use and thinks great!) and Mozilla’s Firefox.