Meet the man who invented email

The name, V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai may not ring a bell, but perhaps some of you might figure that "shiva" gives away the name as of Indian origin. It was in 1978, as a 14-year high school student in New Jersey that Mr.Ayyadurai invented email. He was part of a select group of students who were working as interns at Brookhaven National Laboratory with top notch scientists (Les Michaelson in this case).

"He was given a room to put his first computer in and start the lab for computer science, which was one computer and one HP mainframe. And Les said, “Hey, would you like to create an electronic mail system?” So I said, “Yeah,” and I was just nodding my head, thinking he meant sending electricity through paper, because this guy’s a particle physicist." (excerpt from Time, see the link below for more interesting details)

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/11/15/the-man-who-invented-email/#ixzz1dmZImlgm

How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

Once a secret project, Google's autonomous vehicles are now out in the open, quite literally, with the company test-driving them on public roads and, on one occasion, even inviting people to ride inside one of the robot cars as it raced around a closed course.

Google's fleet of robotic Toyota Priuses has now logged more than 190,000 miles (about 300,000 kilometers), driving in city traffic, busy highways, and mountainous roads with only occasional human intervention. The project is still far from becoming commercially viable, but Google has set up a demonstration system on its campus, using driverless golf carts, which points to how the technology could change transportation even in the near future.

You can read more (and watch relevant videos) by clicking on IEEE Spectrum.