Technology Facts

Google Maps helped a kidnapped boy find his home 23 years later!

Luo Gang was just 5 when he abducted from the Fuijan province in China 23 years ago, and taken almost 1000 miles away. During his absence, he says he forced himself to re-live the life he spent in his old home so he wouldn't forget.

However, being only 5 when he was taken away, he didn't remember much. In fact, the only thing he remembered about his hometown were 2 bridges. He drew a map of what he remembered and posted it to a website called "Bring Lost Babies Home."

People there helped him narrow down his search to a town that looked familiar to him. However, he used Google Maps to confirm his suspicions: That was his old hometown. He was finally reunited with his birth family, 23 years after he was taken from them.

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Volkswagen made a car that had fuel efficiency of 235 miles per gallon!

Volkswagen is a car manufacturing company from Germany, famously producing the Volkswagen Beetle, or as you may know it, the Punch Buggy. Besides making cars that are destined to create a punching war among friends and family, Volkswagen has produced a car named the L1, or rather 'the 1-litre car'.

On a single tank of diesel fuel, the car is able to drive 100km, which is an incredibly fuel efficient turn around. Don't worry, the car is completely road safe and up to all the necessary qualifications the vehicle needs to drive on the road legally.

The reason the car can get so far on such little fuel, is through a combination of elements that make up the car. The car is made of lightweight materials, designed with a streamlined body, and with an engine and transmission designed and tuned for someone who's looking to drive cheap.

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Goldeneye 64 had a ZX Spectrum emulator with 10 games hidden inside its code!

GoldenEye is a classic game for Nintendo 64. While most gamers must think that all it's secrets had been discovered, they would be wrong. Or at least they would have been wrong. In 2012, a fan discovered an Easter Egg that Rare had hidden in the game’s code.

The egg was a fully functional for the ZX Spectrum system, complete with ten games. Considering it took so long to find this hidden Easter egg, it makes sense that the explanation of just how to find it is rather complex.

It turns out the emulator was designed as a side project. The designers did it to see if such emulation was even possible on the N64. GoldenEye was being made at the time so they decided to hide the emulator in there. Rather than remove the egg from the game before it was shipped, it was instead disabled. A fan created a patch that re-enabled it.

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The CW television network once put a cell phone in a magazine ad!

We previously told you about Microsoft putting a Wi-Fi hotspot in select copies of Forbes magazine. However, it turned out that late last year. CW decided to put a phone(yes you read that right, a smartphone) in a magazine. Some bloggers found a copy with the phone in it & managed to extract it.

The phone was a barebones screen with a 3G radio and was designed to promote the CWs new shows. The phone was described as old and underpowered. However, it still worked, had some apps and even made phone calls. Check out the source for a video of the phone in action!

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MIT has built a robot that can assemble IKEA furniture on its own!

Roboticists at MIT have created a robot that can put a flat-pack IKEA furniture together all by itself. It has a specialized gripper hand that can grab the pieces and put the product together with no human help.

All humans need to do is feed the robot a CAD file that describes the product (eg. How many pieces, what do they look like, where the screw holes are, etc). They do not need to be instructed how to do it. Just from knowing what the parts look like, their software can decipher how something needs to be put together.

Check out a video of the robot below.

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