What do the Nike+ FuelBand, the Boxee box, and the Xbox 360+ have in common? All were all given a boost by Astro Studios a San Francisco-based design firm you may not have heard of.

A researcher with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, who also served as a consultant on the $200 million movie based on a board game, talks about how Battleship's alien encounter squares with reality.

To jailbreak or not to jailbreak? That was the question on everybody's mind Thursday as copyright regulators, content creators and digital rights groups battled over whether Americans should have the right to tinker with the devices that they buy.

The detention facility that the U.S. built in Afghanistan is state-of-the-art. Except for all the faulty hinges on the cell doors. Or the locks that are, in the words of a new report from the Defense Department's inspector general, "incapable of locking either manually or electronically." Or the construction that's deemed "not up to the standard suitable for a detention facility." The worst part? U.S. military commanders have known about these flaws since the prison opened its doors.

Two small U.S. companies recently launched a line of footwear that uses a GPS device embedded in the heel to track seniors

Stunt performers aren't born to be blown up—they're made. And the odds are good that their making-of story starts at the International Stunt School.

Head-mounted wearable computers present a bit of an interface problem. Voice-based systems give the impression that a person is murmuring to themselves and accelerometer-based systems that rely on head movement make users look like they have a nervous tic. One solution to the head-mounted-computer user interface conundrum is the use of hand gestures.

Calligo may not be the first to take its cloud services HQ offshore, but in the age of software-defined networking (SDN) it could be the start of something bigger.

Apple is cleaning up its energy act. The computer company says that by early next year, the energy used to power its worldwide data centers will all come from renewable sources, such as solar, wind power, or hydro-electric dams. It announced the news Thursday in a post to its website.

Comcast is replacing its strict 250GB monthly data cap for residential users with a higher cap and a way to buy extra data, hoping to stem criticism that the nation's largest cable ISP is throttling the open internet.

COVER: How to Be a Geek Dad / with MythBusters host Adam Savage / pg. 126 WIRED serves up 14 hands-on projects designed to jump-start a lifelong love of science and technology. For all ages and levels of expertise, these activities will inspire parents to have fun with their kids while building geek values. Projects include ...

The Polo Gear Elite Saddle was developed with polo star Nic Roldan, who boldly claims it is the first major reboot of saddle design in 50 years. He says it is the first to emphasize the comfort of the horse as much as the performance of the athlete riding it.

It looks like we'll be getting Retina display MacBook Pros sooner than later -- this based on supply chain indicators and a recently published Apple patent application.

COVER: Marc Andreessen Knows What?s Coming Next / pg. 162? No one has done more to change the way we communicate than Marc Andreessen. At 22, he invented Mosaic, the first easy-to-use web browser. He later helped bring the Internet to the masses by co-founding Netscape and then took it public in a massive IPO. ...

A bill that would require law enforcement agents to obtain a probable-cause warrant to collect geolocation data on an individual would be burdensome to criminal investigators and prevent them from gathering the evidence they need to make a case, according to law enforcement witnesses at a hearing on Thursday.

The new game will occupy the same universe as the Lost Planet games, but E.X. Troopers will drop the hard sci-fi look in favor of the comic book approach.

Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel "Starship Troopers" presents a futuristic war fought by heavily armored infantry, that when suited up, makes you look like a "big steel gorilla." Today, the U.S. Army and Marines are edging closer to the Mobile Infantry of Heinlein's world by reportedly taking an interest in armored face shields.

Mark Zuckerberg is following the example of Bill Gates at Microsoft and Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google, in building Facebook to do nothing less than dominate.

With Microsoft recently beating out Google for providing cloud service to the Los Angeles Community College District, the focus of one report was that the win reflects "how Microsoft can use its lock on conventional productivity software as a springboard into the cloud." Is Office lock-in going to work for Microsoft long-term?

Don't make a web browser? Then you don't have a voice in the future of the web. That seemed to be the message from the WHATWG earlier this week, but fortunately for web developers things aren't really as bad as they may seem.