Stories by: Liz Tay

U.S. researchers have developed an autonomous robotic crawler that scans power lines for weak points in an electrical grid. By monitoring and precisely locating problematic sections of cable, the robot is expected to improve the efficiency and reduce the costs involved in power line maintenance.

Carsten Haitzler, who is perhaps better known by his alias, Rasterman, has been the lead developer for the open source desktop shell Enlightenment for the past 10 years. Since attaining a Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of New South Wales in 1997, Haitzler has built a career around his interest in graphics software, and has worked as a core developer at Red Hat and an engineer at VA Linux Systems in the U.S. and Japan.

It was while watching fellow Linux users having to shutdown their laptops in between talks at open source conferences some years ago that Matthew Garrett, now head of the Ubuntu laptop team, was initially alerted to power management issues in Linux systems.

Ethical issues to do with psychological experimentation may be avoided by conducting experiments in a virtual environment, claims a study by psychologists at the University College London (UCL). The finding opens doors to further research into human behaviour under extreme social situations.

Game developer turned author Kathy Sierra is the brain behind best-sellers "Head First Java" and "Head First EJB". During her 17 years in the IT industry, Sierra has worked as a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, founded javaranch.com, and now specialises in metacognition, which is the science of thinking about thinking.

With less than a month before its kick-off, organisers of the world-renowned linux.conf.au will this week announce the final keynote speaker, who is also set to represent a shift in the traditional technical focus of the event.

Keen to get your hands on the eagerly anticipated PlayStation 3? Japanese Web host Shimpinomori is promising to give away a modified version of the powerful console to the first person who is able to hack it.

A severe shortage of local Web application developers is making it increasingly difficult for companies to hire staff for eBusiness and Web-based projects. Meanwhile, the lucky few with relevant skills are netting in correspondingly healthy salary packages, claims one IT recruitment agency.

An underground community of Australia's "elite" will meet in Sydney for the fourth annual hacker conference, Ruxcon, this weekend. The two day conference kicks off on Saturday at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Open source projects have produced some of the most sophisticated pieces of software while defying conventional wisdom about collaborative projects, according to researchers at the University of California Davis. The interdisciplinary research team, consisting of academics from the fields of computer science, mechanical and aeronautical engineering and management, has recently been awarded a three-year, $US750,000 grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate the open source phenomenon.

A project based on the open source software model aims to create free online textbooks for developing nations. Under careful academic oversight, the Global Text Project will produce 1000 textbooks for undergraduate studies in a range of subjects including business, science and arts.