Miami police will use the spy-in-the-sky technology to fight against crime. An unmanned drone created by Honeywell International, will soon appear in the skies over the Florida Everglades. The drone is capable of hovering and spying using its infrared sensors and other optical devices.

If the Federal Aviation Administration will approval the drone, Miami-Dade Police Department will flying the drone over urban areas. Miami police said that it will use the drone only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes. Other law enforcement agencies are showing a growing interest in using drones for domestic crime-fighting missions.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection are flying drones over the Arizona desert and southwest border with Mexico since 2006. Other drones will be deploy in North Dakota to patrol the Canadian border and modified versions of Predator B drones will fly over the Gulf of Mexico.

In Palm Bay, Florida police used an 8-pound (3.6 kg) UAV for surveillance before the FAA stopped them; Cyber Defense Systems build that UAV.

Honeywell MAV weighs 16 pounds when empty and 18 1/2 pounds when fully loaded. It is 14 inches in diameter and 22 inches high.

The CIA is developing a dragonfly-sized UAV known as the “Insectohopter” for laser-guided spy operations singe 1970s.

Privacy advocates say that rules and ordinances need to be drafted to protect civil liberties during surveillance operations.

A new company tries to change the way we heat everything and investors are waiting to get a piece.

ThermoCeramiX Inc. developed in 1997 a spray on coating that heat to temperatures of 240 degrees Celsius almost instantly.

ThermoCeramiX uses a electroresistive coating when superheated and sprayed on a substrate that can cover more area and can be applied to a wider array of surfaces that the usual heaters and it uses less power.

Richard Abbott said that the material heats almost immediately and requires about 40 percent less power to generate heat.

Verizon and AT&T won the $19.12 billion auction of the 700MHz. the two companies $16 billion of licenses, they will be used to enhance the existing voice and data services, and creating a new wave of wireless technologies. 

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon and Vodafone Group Plc, won six large licenses in the C-Block that give it a national license to provide next-generation wireless broadband. It also secured most of the A-Block and 77 licenses of B-Block.

AT&T won 227 B-Block licenses in regional licenses around the United States. Earlier this year AT&T acquired Aloha Partners with $2.5 billion. And it spent a total of $6.64 billion.

Qualcomm spent $1 billion on licenses. And it was also the only one that showed interest for the D-Block spectrum

AT&T spent a total of $6.64 billion and Verizon spent $9.63 billion.

The 700-megahertz airwaves are considered valuable because they travel long distances and penetrate thick walls.The 700MHz band will be used for broadband access for mobile phones and wireless broadband for laptops.

X Prize Foundation has announced that the first 10 teams have entered the Google Lunar X Prize. Google Lunar X Prize requires landing a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon, exploring the terrain for at least 500 meters and transmitting results of the trip back to Earth. The first prize is $20 million; the second prize is $5 million and $5 million bonuses.

Sergey Brin said that when he and Elon Musk conceived of the contest, they thought that landing a rover on the moon 40 years after NASA’s last mission would cost in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Burt Rutan who won the Ansari X Prize four years ago is an aspirant to the Google Lunar X Prize and hopes to make money by developing a transport system for the moon.

Teams:

Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) from Romania, participate with the craft “European Lunar Explorer.” They were a contender in the Ansari X PRIZE.

Astrobotic team from Carnegie Mellon University and Raytheon. They participate with“Artemis Lander” and “Red Rover.”

Chandah founded by Adil Jafry. The spacecraft will be named “Shehrezade.”

FREDNET: a multi-national team.

LunaTrex: a team of company’s universities and individuals. The spacecraft will be named “Tumbleweed.”

Micro-Space from Colorado. Micro-Space has been a competitor in the Ansari X PRIZE. The spacecraft will be named “Human Lunar Lander”.

Odyssey Moon is a private commercial lunar enterprise based in the Isle of Man. The spacecraft will be named “MoonOne (M-1).”

Quantum3 a US based team led by Paul Carliner. The spacecraft will be named “Moondancer”.

Southern California Selene Group. The spacecraft will be named “Spirit of Southern California”.

Team Italia from Italy, Team Italia is gathers several universities.

Intel and Microsoft have committed $20 million for the next five years to create research centers focused on parallel computing.

The companies will work with University of California and Berkeley University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The two schools will contribute $15 million to the research centers.

Parallel computing allows division of tasks over multiple microprocessors instead of using only one processor to perform a task at a time.

Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have already started making chips that have multiple cores that are precursor to parallel computing.Parallel computing will lead to major advances in robotics, supercomputers, desktops and laptop computers.

The Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers at the two universities will include more than 100 faculty’s, graduate students, researchers and postdoctoral researchers.

US government auction of wireless airwaves ended Tuesday raising $19.59 billion, but for the moment the winners were not made public.

The C block spectrum is sought by Google, that would make it accessible to any device or software application. Television broadcasters are moving from analog signals (700-megahertz spectrum) to digital signals in early 2009. The signals are valuable because they can go long distances and penetrate walls.

Identities of the bidders have been kept secret during the auction; the winners of the licenses will be announced in a couple of days.