Since the arcade heyday of Space Invaders and Pac-Man, coin-op machines have coaxed kids into forking over their pocket change. But once it's GAME OVER, what are you left with? Empty pockets and your initials on the high-score table? That won't buy those Warhammer figurines.

Well, now one of the hottest toy trends out of thrifty Japan is piggy banks that turn stockpiling yen into a game. In 2006, the Tomy company launched its Jinsei Ginko ("Life Bank"), a coin repository with an electronic version of the board game Life. It was such a hit that today there's a range of increasingly sophisticated banks, tailored for both genders and encompassing several genres.

Here's a look at a few piggys that are gobbling up the nation's yen, and the gameplay you get when you drop some dough.

This high-tech piggy bank started it all. The LCD screen is inhabited by a stick-figure avatar who can have various jobs like businessman or musician or president. He is your pet, sort of like a Tamagotchi that you have to feed with yen.

Let's play it safe, join the work force as a corporate warrior. Our young salaryman starts out in a one-room dilapidated apartment, eating bowls of cheap noodles. Five days in, he has only saved a mere 500 yen. Pathetic.

Work, work, work. Endless! Our businessman races back into his office, briefcase in tow, only to end up hunched over a desk late into the night.

Here comes the bride, the stick figure bride! (Isn't she a knock out?) We've dumped thousands of yen into the Jinsei Ginko, and our avatar is moving up in the virtual world. With enough money in the bank and ample stick-figure charm, the salaryman is able to convince a fetching young lady to accept his hand in marriage.

As you move closer to maxing out the bank at 100,000 yen, your avatar moves out of his urban shoebox into a penthouse apartment with a beautiful view of the city. Raise your glass, salaryman-san. You've hit the 2-bit LCD big time!

The worst part of Japanese RGPs is grinding through the damn game, looking for money. Here's a thought: Look in your wallet! Instead of using in-game currency, BankQuest uses your coins.

Still wet behind the ears, our hero enters the Tower, but he's brought an ax to a sword fight — not to mention a stupid-looking hat. Let's plunk some cold hard cashola into the bank so we can level up. Whenever players put change into this role-playing lock box, the gargoyle's mouth glows red and the in-game hero gets credit.

Once you've converted real money into virtual money, your avatar can buy weapons, armor and even health — regeneration potions in the village shops outside the castle walls. "Welcome!" says the shopkeeper.

As you toggle through the goods in the shop, you'll spot cool merch like this blade that looks like it could cut a swath through hundreds of tiny LCD monsters. Must-have.

Back in the Tower, our hero's brandishing his new gleaming sword and fancy hairdo. Just like in a standard RPG, leveling up changes the characters' appearance, and right now you look pretty darn good.

Just like in any standard RPG, enemies pop up asking for a butt-whoppin'. Ack! There's a globby one. But with a badass sword in hand, that monster is so toast. The hero roams dungeons killing monsters and amassing treasure before he faces down the final boss, the dastardly spendthrift Devil Warudollar (waru means "bad").

Why drain your purse on dates with real men? Following schmaltzy romance novel plot lines, Ikemen Bank is a vault you can fall in love with. Literally. This heart-shaped vault is a renai (dating game) that lets frugal gals find romance while saving money. Ikemen is Japanese slang for "handsome guy," and there are five hunky suitors to select from: the cool dude, the TV star, the rich kid, the buff athlete and the sugar daddy. Just look at that dreamboat. He's so, well, dreamy.

Cool guy is hungry, and when cool guy is hungry, you damn well better feed him. Tonight's din-din is a traditional meal. "Delicious!" he says, emptying another bowl of rice.

What. An. Evening. Tonight was truly a date to remember forever and ever. That is, until the next one. But before parting, cool guy pulls you close, whispering sweet nothings. Each time a coin is inserted, he'll say things like "I want to smooch," or "You really look great today," or "Let me give you a shoulder rub." Swoon!

Great date aside, you're totally busy with real world stuff! And you totally forget to insert money into your Ikemen Bank for a whole working week. Your greedy hunk writes you a letter that simply says, "Sayonara." No translation needed.

In June 2005, a balding, slightly overweight, perpetually T-shirt-clad 26-year-old computer consultant named Dan Kaminsky decided to get in shape. He began by scanning the Internet for workout tips and read that five minutes of sprinting was the equivalent of a half-hour jog. This seemed like a great shortcut—an elegant exercise hack—so he bought some running shoes at the nearest Niketown. That same afternoon, he laced up his new kicks and burst out the front door of his Seattle apartment building for his first five-minute workout. He took a few strides, slipped on a concrete ramp and crashed to the sidewalk, shattering his left elbow.

He spent the next few weeks stuck at home in a Percocet-tinged haze. Before the injury, he'd spent his days testing the inner workings of software programs. Tech companies hired him to root out security holes before hackers could find them. Kaminsky did it well. He had a knack for breaking things—bones and software alike.

But now, laid up in bed, he couldn't think clearly. His mind drifted. Running hadn't worked out so well. Should he buy a stationary bike? Maybe one of those recumbent jobs would be best. He thought about partying in Las Vegas ... mmm, martinis ... and recalled a trick he'd figured out for getting free Wi-Fi at Starbucks.

As his arm healed, the details of that Starbucks hack kept nagging at him. He remembered that he had gotten into Starbucks' locked network using the domain name system, or DNS. When someone types google .com into a browser, DNS has a list of exactly where Google's servers are and directs the traffic to them. It's like directory assistance for the Internet. At Starbucks, the port for the low-bandwidth DNS connection—port 53—was left open to route customers to the Pay for Starbucks Wi-Fi Web page.

So, rather than pay, Kaminsky used port 53 to access the open DNS connection and get online. It was free but super-slow, and his friends mocked him mercilessly. To Kaminsky that was an irresistible challenge. After weeks of studying the minutiae of DNS and refining his hack, he was finally able to stream a 12-second animated video of Darth Vader dancing a jig with Michael Flatley. (The clip paired the Lord of the Sith with the Lord of the Dance.)

That was more than a year ago, but it still made him smile. DNS was the unglamorous underbelly of the Internet, but it had amazing powers. Kaminsky felt drawn to the obscure, often-ignored protocol all over again.

Maybe the painkillers loosened something in his mind, because as Kaminsky began to think more deeply about DNS he became convinced that something wasn't right. He couldn't quite figure it out, but the feeling stuck with him even after he stopped taking the pain pills. He returned to work full time and bought a recumbent stationary bike. He got hired to test the security of Windows Vista before it was released, repeatedly punching holes in it for Microsoft. Still, in the back of his mind, he was sure that the entire DNS system was vulnerable to attack.

Then last January, on a drizzly Sunday afternoon, he flopped down on his bed, flipped open his laptop, and started playing games with DNS. He used a software program called Scapy to fire random queries at the system. He liked to see how it would respond and decided to ask for the location of a series of nonexistent Web pages at a Fortune 500 company. Then he tried to trick his DNS server in San Diego into thinking that he knew the location of the bogus pages.

Suddenly it worked. The server accepted one of the fake pages as real. But so what? He could now supply fake information for a page nobody would ever visit. Then he realized that the server was willing to accept more information from him. Since he had supplied data about one of the company's Web pages, it believed that he was an authoritative source for general information about the company's domain. The server didn't know that the Web page didn't exist—it was listening to Kaminsky now, as if it had been hypnotized.

When DNS was created in 1983, it was designed to be helpful and trusting—it's directory assistance, after all. It was a time before hacker conventions and Internet banking. Plus, there were only a few hundred servers to keep track of. Today, the humble protocol stores the location of a billion Web addresses and routes every piece of Internet traffic in the world.

Security specialists have been revamping and strengthening DNS for more than two decades. But buried beneath all this tinkering, Kaminsky had just discovered a vestige of that original helpful and trusting program. He was now face-to-face with the behemoth's almost childlike core, and it was perfectly content to accept any information he wanted to supply about the location of the Fortune 500 company's servers.

Kaminsky froze. This was far more serious than anything he could have imagined. It was the ultimate hack. He was looking at an error coded into the heart of the Internet's infrastructure. This was not a security hole in Windows or a software bug in a Cisco router. This would allow him to reassign any Web address, reroute anyone's email, take over banking sites, or simply scramble the entire global system. The question was: Should he try it?

The vulnerability gave him the power to transfer millions out of bank accounts worldwide. He lived in a barren one-bedroom apartment and owned almost nothing. He rented the bed he was lying on as well as the couch and table in the living room. The walls were bare. His refrigerator generally contained little more than a few forgotten slices of processed cheese and a couple of Rockstar energy drinks. Maybe it was time to upgrade his lifestyle.

Or, for the sheer geeky joy of it, he could reroute all of .com into his laptop, the digital equivalent of channeling the Mississippi into a bathtub. It was a moment hackers around the world dream of—a tool that could give them unimaginable power. But maybe it was best simply to close his laptop and forget it. He could pretend he hadn't just stumbled over a skeleton key to the Net. Life would certainly be less complicated. If he stole money, he'd risk prison. If he told the world, he'd be the messenger of doom, potentially triggering a collapse of Web-based commerce.

But who was he kidding? He was just some guy. The problem had been coded into Internet architecture in 1983. It was 2008. Somebody must have fixed it by now. He typed a quick series of commands and pressed enter. When he tried to access the Fortune 500 company's Web site, he was redirected to an address he himself had specified.

"Oh shit," he mumbled. "I just broke the Internet."

Paul Vixie, one of the creators of the most widely used DNS software, stepped out of a conference in San Jose. A curious email had just popped up on his laptop. A guy named Kaminsky said he'd found a serious flaw in DNS and wanted to talk. He sent along his phone number.

Vixie had been working with DNS since the 1980s and had helped solve some serious problems over the years. He was president of the Internet Systems Consortium, a nonprofit that distributed BIND 9, his DNS software. At 44, he was considered the godfather of DNS. If there was a fundamental error in DNS, he probably would have fixed it long ago.

But to be on the safe side, Vixie decided to call Kaminsky. He picked up immediately and within minutes had outlined the flaw. A series of emotions swept over Vixie. What he was hearing shouldn't be possible, and yet everything the kid said was logical. By the end of the third minute, Vixie realized that Kaminsky had uncovered something that the best minds in computer science had overlooked. This affected not just BIND 9 but almost all DNS software. Vixie felt a deep flush of embarrassment, followed by a sense of pure panic.

"The first thing I want to say to you," Vixie told Kaminsky, trying to contain the flood of feeling, "is never, ever repeat what you just told me over a cell phone."

Vixie knew how easy it was to eavesdrop on a cell signal, and he had heard enough to know that he was facing a problem of global significance. If the information were intercepted by the wrong people, the wired world could be held ransom. Hackers could wreak havoc. Billions of dollars were at stake, and Vixie wasn't going to take any risks.

From that moment on, they would talk only on landlines, in person, or via heavily encrypted email. If the information in an email were accidentally copied onto a hard drive, that hard drive would have to be completely erased, Vixie said. Secrecy was critical. They had to find a solution before the problem became public.

Andreas Gustafsson knew something was seriously wrong. Vixie had emailed the 43-year-old DNS researcher in Espoo, Finland, asking to talk at 7 pm on a hardwired line. No cell phones.

Gustafsson hurried into the freezing March evening—his only landline was the fax in his office a brisk mile walk away. When he arrived, he saw that the machine didn't have a handset. Luckily, he had an analog phone lying around. He plugged it in, and soon it let off an old-fashioned metallic ring.

Gustafsson hadn't spoken to Vixie in years, but Vixie began the conversation by reading aloud a series of numbers—a code that would later allow him to authenticate Gustafsson's emails and prove that he was communicating with the right person. Gustafsson responded with his own authenticating code. With that out of the way, Vixie got to his point: Find a flight to Seattle now.

Wouter Wijngaards got a call as well, and the message was the same. The Dutch open source programmer took the train to the airport in Amsterdam, got on a 10-hour flight to Seattle, and arrived at the Silver Cloud Inn in Redmond, Washington, on March 29. He had traveled all the way from Europe, and he didn't even know why. Like Gustafsson, he had simply been told to show up in Building Nine on the Microsoft campus at 10 am on March 31.

In the lobby of the Silver Cloud, Wijngaards met Florian Weimer, a German DNS researcher he knew. Weimer was talking with Chad Dougherty, the DNS point man from Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute. Wijngaards joined the conversation—they were trying to figure out where to have dinner. Nobody talked about why some of the world's leading DNS experts happened to bump into one another near the front desk of this generic US hotel. Vixie had sworn each of them to secrecy. They simply went out for Vietnamese food and avoided saying anything about DNS.

The next morning, Kaminsky strode to the front of the conference room at Microsoft headquarters before Vixie could introduce him or even welcome the assembled heavy hitters. The 16 people in the room represented Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and the most important designers of modern DNS software.

Vixie was prepared to say a few words, but Kaminsky assumed that everyone was there to hear what he had to say. After all, he'd earned the spotlight. He hadn't sold the discovery to the Russian mob. He hadn't used it to take over banks. He hadn't destroyed the Internet. He was actually losing money on the whole thing: As a freelance computer consultant, he had taken time off work to save the world. In return, he deserved to bask in the glory of discovery. Maybe his name would be heralded around the world.

Kaminsky started by laying out the timeline. He had discovered a devastating flaw in DNS and would explain the details in a moment. But first he wanted the group to know that they didn't have much time. On August 6, he was going to a hacker convention in Las Vegas, where he would stand before the world and unveil his amazing discovery. If there was a solution, they'd better figure it out by then.

But did Kaminsky have the goods? DNS attacks were nothing new and were considered difficult to execute. The most practical attack—widely known as cache poisoning—required a hacker to submit data to a DNS server at the exact moment that it updated its records. If he succeeded, he could change the records. But, like sperm swimming toward an egg, whichever packet got there first—legitimate or malicious—locked everything else out. If the attacker lost the race, he would have to wait until the server updated again, a moment that might not come for days. And even if he timed it just right, the server required a 16-bit ID number. The hacker had a 1-in-65,536 chance of guessing it correctly. It could take years to successfully compromise just one domain.

The experts watched as Kaminsky opened his laptop and connected the overhead projector. He had created a "weaponized" version of his attack on this vulnerability to demonstrate its power. A mass of data flashed onscreen and told the story. In less than 10 seconds, Kaminsky had compromised a server running BIND 9, Vixie's DNS routing software, which controls 80 percent of Internet traffic. It was undeniable proof that Kaminsky had the power to take down large swaths of the Internet.

The tension in the room rose as Kaminsky kept talking. The flaw jeopardized more than just the integrity of Web sites. It would allow an attacker to channel email as well. A hacker could redirect almost anyone's correspondence, from a single user's to everything coming and going between multinational corporations. He could quietly copy it before sending it along to its original destination. The victims would never know they had been compromised.

This had serious implications. Since many "forgot my password" buttons on banking sites rely on email to verify identity, an attacker could press the button, intercept the email, and change the password to anything he wanted. He would then have total access to that bank account.

"We're hosed," Wijngaards thought.

It got worse. Most Internet commerce transactions are encrypted. The encryption is provided by companies like VeriSign. Online vendors visit the VeriSign site and buy the encryption; customers can then be confident that their transactions are secure.

But not anymore. Kaminsky's exploit would allow an attacker to redirect VeriSign's Web traffic to an exact functioning replica of the VeriSign site. The hacker could then offer his own encryption, which, of course, he could unlock later. Unsuspecting vendors would install the encryption and think themselves safe and ready for business. A cornerstone of secure Internet communication was in danger of being destroyed.

David Ulevitch smiled despite himself. The founder of OpenDNS, a company that operates DNS servers worldwide, was witnessing a tour de force—the geek equivalent of Michael Phelps winning his eighth gold medal. As far as Ulevitch was concerned, there had never been a vulnerability of this magnitude that was so easy to use. "This is an amazingly catastrophic attack," he marveled with a mix of grave concern and giddy awe.

It was a difficult flight back to San Francisco for Sandy Wilbourn, vice president of engineering for Nominum, a company hired by broadband providers to supply 150 million customers with DNS service. What he heard in Redmond was overwhelming—a 9 out of 10 on the scale of disasters. He might have given it a 10, but it was likely to keep getting worse. He was going to give this one some room to grow.

One of Wilbourn's immediate concerns was that about 40 percent of the country's broadband Internet ran through his servers. If word of the vulnerability leaked, hackers could quickly compromise those servers.

In his Redwood City, California, office, he isolated a hard drive so no one else in the company could access it. Then he called in his three top engineers, shut the door, and told them that what he was about to say couldn't be shared with anyone—not at home, not at the company. Even their interoffice email would have to be encrypted from now on.

Their task: Make a change to the basic functioning of Nominum's DNS servers. They and their customers would have to do it without the usual testing or feedback from outside the group. The implementation—the day the alteration went live to millions of people—would be its first real-world test.

It was a daunting task, but everyone who had been in Redmond had agreed to do the same thing. They would do it secretly, and then, all together on July 8, they would release their patches. If hackers didn't know there was a gaping DNS security hole before, they would know then. They just wouldn't know exactly what it was. Nominum and the other DNS software vendors would have to persuade their customers—Internet service providers from regional players such as Cablevision to giants like Comcast—to upgrade fast. It would be a race to get servers patched before hackers figured it out.

Though the Redmond group had agreed to act in concert, the patch—called the source port randomization solution—didn't satisfy everyone. It was only a short-term fix, turning what had been a 1-in-65,536 chance of success into a 1-in-4 billion shot.

Still, a hacker could use an automated system to flood a server with an endless stream of guesses. With a high-speed connection, a week of nonstop attacking would likely succeed. Observant network operators would see the spike in traffic and could easily block it. But, if overlooked, the attack could still work. The patch only papered over the fundamental flaw that Kaminsky had exposed.

On July 8, Nominum, Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Ubuntu, and Red Hat, among many others, released source port randomization patches. Wilbourn called it the largest multivendor patch in the history of the Internet. The ISPs and broadband carriers like Verizon and Comcast that had been asked to install it wanted to know what the problem was. Wilbourn told them it was extremely important that they deploy the patch, but the reason would remain a secret until Kaminsky delivered his talk in Las Vegas.

Even as Kaminsky was giving interviews about the urgency of patching to media outlets from the Los Angeles Times to CNET, the computer security industry rebelled. "Those of us ... who have to advise management cannot tell our executives 'trust Dan,'" wrote one network administrator on a security mailing list. On one blog, an anonymous poster wrote this to Kaminsky: "You ask people not to speculate so your talk isn't blown but then you whore out minor details to every newspaper/magazine/publishing house so your name can go all over Google and gain five minutes of fame? This is why people hate you and wish you would work at McDonald's instead."

With a backlash building, Kaminsky decided to reach out to a few influential security experts in hopes of winning them over. He set up a conference call with Rich Mogull, founder of Securosis, a well-respected security firm; researcher Dino Dai Zovi; and Thomas Ptacek, a detractor who would later accuse Vixie and Kaminsky of forming a cabal.

The call occurred July 9. Kaminsky agreed to reveal the vulnerability if Mogull, Dai Zovi, and Ptacek would keep it secret until the Vegas talk August 6. They agreed, and Kaminsky's presentation laid it out for them. The security experts were stunned. Mogull wrote, "This is absolutely one of the most exceptional research projects I've seen." And in a blog post Ptacek wrote, "Dan's got the goods. It's really f'ing good."

And then, on July 21, a complete description of the exploit appeared on the Web site of Ptacek's company. He claimed it was an accident but acknowledged that he had prepared a description of the hack so he could release it concurrently with Kaminsky. By the time he removed it, the description had traversed the Web. The DNS community had kept the secret for months. The computer security community couldn't keep it 12 days.

About a week later, an AT&T server in Texas was infiltrated using the Kaminsky method. The attacker took over google.com—when AT&T Internet subscribers in the Austin area tried to navigate to Google, they were redirected to a Google look-alike that covertly clicked ads. Whoever was behind the attack probably profited from the resulting increase in ad revenue.

Every day counted now. While Kaminsky, Vixie, and the others pleaded with network operators to install the patch, it's likely that other hacks occurred. But the beauty of the Kaminsky attack, as it was now known, was that it left little trace. A good hacker could reroute email, reset passwords, and transfer money out of accounts quickly. Banks were unlikely to announce the intrusions—online theft is bad PR. Better to just cover the victims' losses.

On August 6, hundreds of people crammed into a conference room at Caesars Palace to hear Kaminsky speak. The seats filled up quickly, leaving a scrum of spectators standing shoulder to shoulder in the back. A group of security experts had mockingly nominated Kaminsky for the Most Overhyped Bug award, and many wanted to know the truth: Was the massive patching effort justified, or was Kaminsky just an arrogant, media-hungry braggart?

While his grandmother handed out homemade Swedish lace cookies, Kaminsky took the stage wearing a black T-shirt featuring an image of Pac-Man at a dinner table. He tried for modesty. "Who am I?" he asked rhetorically. "Some guy. I do code."

The self-deprecation didn't suit him. He had the swagger of a rock star and adopted the tone of a misunderstood genius. After detailing the scope of the DNS problem, he stood defiantly in front of a bullet point summary of the attack and said, "People called BS on me. This is my reply."

By this time, hundreds of millions of Internet users were protected. The bomb had been defused. The problem was, there was little agreement on what the long-term solution should be. Most discussion centered around the concept of authenticating every bit of DNS traffic. It would mean that every computer in the world—from iPhones to corporate server arrays—would have to carry DNS authentication software. The root server could guarantee that it was communicating with the real .com name server, and .com would receive cryptological assurance that it was dealing with, say, the real Google. An impostor packet wouldn't be able to authenticate itself, putting an end to DNS attacks. The procedure is called DNSSEC and has high-profile proponents, including Vixie and the US government.

But implementing a massive and complicated protocol like DNSSEC isn't easy. Vixie has actually been trying to persuade people for years, and even he hasn't succeeded. Either way, the point might turn out to be moot. Kaminsky ended his Las Vegas talk by hinting that even darker security problems lay ahead. It was the type of grandstanding that has made him a polarizing figure in the computer security community. "There is no saving the Internet," he said. "There is postponing the inevitable for a little longer."

Then he sauntered off the stage and ate one of his grandma's cookies.

Contributing editor Joshua Davis(www.joshuadavis.net) wrote about the rescue of the foundering Cougar Ace in issue 16.03.

LOS ANGELES — Scientific accidents have brought some of the most groundbreaking discoveries — vulcanized rubber, X-rays, penicillin — and now scientists at UCLA have accidentally discovered a material that could make digital cameras as we know them obsolete.

Graduate student Hsiang-Yu Chen was working on a new formula for solar cells when something went wrong. Instead of creating electricity when hit with light, the conductivity of the material she was working with changed.

"The original purpose [was] to make a solar cell more efficient," says Chen. "However, during the research we found the solar cell phenomenon [had] disappeared." Instead, the test material showed high gain photoconductivity, indicating potential use as a photo sensor.

Thanks to this lucky mistake, a new breed of camera sensors that are cheaper, higher-resolution and have lower distortion could be on the horizon. Click through the gallery to learn how this new breakthrough works and tour the labs where the magic happens.

Left: A piece of glass houses five strips of this new material, held between tweezers in a glove box.

Here, materials science Ph.D. student Hsiang-Yu Chen takes a polymer sample from a tray inside a glove box. Researchers in this lab test hundreds of samples before a material with desirable properties is found.

When Chen made the discovery, she was working on plastic-like substances with quantum dots — nanoparticles (roughly the size of a virus) with properties similar to a semiconductor.

The nano-size quantum dots could give photo sensors much higher resolution than current models. And because this new photo-sensing material is a polymer film, it's flexible and could someday be inexpensive to produce.

At left is a pair of stills that concentrate polymer solutions. Later, the solutions will be tested for their response to light.

Currently, the sensor in your camera that detects light and allows you to capture an image is made out of silicon. This makes it relatively expensive as well as flat and inflexible.

Having a flat sensor doesn’t seem like a big deal until you consider how your lens works. Lenses are curved, which shapes the image they see. When you project the spherical image onto a flat surface you get distortion around the edges. A flexible sensor would prevent this distortion.

The polymer- and metal-coated slide from the first photo of the gallery is now placed into an electrode clip (the white, rectangular portion of the setup). The electrodes on the clip will enable sensors to take readings from the material when it's exposed to light.

The sample in the electrode clip is inserted into the test chassis. The wires on the right send any electrical activity from the material to a computer for analysis.

A very bright, wide-spectrum light source is connected to the glove box. It's attached to the portal using a standoff header that keeps the light a fixed distance from the sample. The light appears blue because the light in the room has a yellow cast, it's actually much closer to the color of daylight.

Hsiang-Yu Chen checks the results of the test using a computer and laboratory graphing software. The graphs show the response levels to the light that the material exhibited.

In her initial experiment she was expecting to see electricity produced when the light hit the material, but instead the light stopped the flow of electricity. This means that her material acted as a photo detector instead of a solar cell.

The lab still remains committed to developing a better solar panel, but now that their findings have been published it may only be a matter of time before camera companies take notice of the technology.

An atomic force microscope is used to image the polymer sample to view its physical makeup. The AFM traces the surface of the polymer with a nanoscopic needle, the same way the needle on your record player tracks over vinyl.

This needle is attached to a cantilever that reflects a laser beam, which then determines the three-dimensional topography of the surface. Inset is the resulting micrograph of the surface from the AFM. This view allows researchers to make sure the quantum dots are properly aligning in polymer.

This tunneling electron microscope (TEM) is used to view the physical makeup of the polymer. The level of detail visible from the TEM micrographs is a few hundred nanometers. Inset is the micrograph created by the TEM of the photosensitive polymer.

1952: It's front-page news when George Jorgensen Jr. is reborn as Christine Jorgensen, gaining international celebrity and notoriety as the first widely known person to undergo a successful sex-change operation.

Jorgensen, who grew up in the Bronx, in her words, a "frail, tow-headed, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games," was drafted into the Army just after World War II. Military service only reinforced Jorgensen's belief that she was, in fact, a woman trapped inside a man's body.

After receiving her discharge, Jorgensen returned home and first heard about "sex-reassignment surgery," which was being performed only in Sweden. (It was illegal almost everywhere else, including the United States.)

Encouraged, Jorgensen began taking female hormones on her own, then headed for Sweden. She never made it. Stopping in Denmark to visit relatives in Copenhagen, Jorgensen was introduced to Christian Hamburger, a Danish surgeon who specialized in the kind of surgery she was seeking. He agreed to take the case and put his patient on hormone-replacement therapy as they prepared for surgery.

Several surgeries were required, the first one consisting of castration, which was only carried out after permission was obtained from the Danish minister of justice.

At the time of Jorgensen's transformation, Hamburger did not give her an artificial vagina, so she remained "anatomically incorrect" for several years before undergoing a vaginoplasty in the United States.

The hormone therapy resulted in profound changes to Jorgensen's body. Fat was redistributed, and she began to take on the contours of a woman. Subsequent surgeries completed the process until she was ready to step into the spotlight.

Jorgensen's sex change, which may have been leaked to the press by Jorgensen herself, hit the headlines Dec. 1, creating an international sensation. "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty" screamed the banner of Jorgensen's hometown New York Daily News.

In fact, Jorgensen was not the first person to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. During the rollicking Weimar period, German doctors performed the surgery on at least two patients. The difference, in Jorgensen's case, was that she underwent hormone-replacement therapy in conjunction with the surgery. The earlier surgeries were strictly cut-and-paste.

Although Jorgensen complained frequently about the jackals of the press, she did become something of a publicity hound and took most of the tasteless remarks with good grace, laughing off jokes such as, "Christine Jorgensen went abroad and came back a broad."

She turned to acting and became a nightclub singer as well, performing, predictably, "I Enjoy Being a Girl."

But Christine Jorgensen's world was not an enlightened one, particularly when it came to transgenderism. She paid the cost for this lack of sophistication. A first announced engagement fell through, and a second one failed as well, when the state of New York refused to issue the couple a marriage license. Her intended husband also lost his job when the marriage plans became known.

She later traveled the lecture circuit, talking about her experiences and advocating for the nascent transgender cause.

Jorgensen died of cancer in 1989, a few weeks short of age 63.

Source: Various

1952: It's front-page news when George Jorgensen Jr. is reborn as Christine Jorgensen, gaining international celebrity and notoriety as the first widely known person to undergo a successful sex-change operation.

Jorgensen, who grew up in the Bronx, in her words, a "frail, tow-headed, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games," was drafted into the Army just after World War II. Military service only reinforced Jorgensen's belief that she was, in fact, a woman trapped inside a man's body.

After receiving her discharge, Jorgensen returned home and first heard about "sex-reassignment surgery," which was being performed only in Sweden. (It was illegal almost everywhere else, including the United States.)

Encouraged, Jorgensen began taking female hormones on her own, then headed for Sweden. She never made it. Stopping in Denmark to visit relatives in Copenhagen, Jorgensen was introduced to Christian Hamburger, a Danish surgeon who specialized in the kind of surgery she was seeking. He agreed to take the case and put his patient on hormone-replacement therapy as they prepared for surgery.

Several surgeries were required, the first one consisting of castration, which was only carried out after permission was obtained from the Danish minister of justice.

At the time of Jorgensen's transformation, Hamburger did not give her an artificial vagina, so she remained "anatomically incorrect" for several years before undergoing a vaginoplasty in the United States.

The hormone therapy resulted in profound changes to Jorgensen's body. Fat was redistributed, and she began to take on the contours of a woman. Subsequent surgeries completed the process until she was ready to step into the spotlight.

Jorgensen's sex change, which may have been leaked to the press by Jorgensen herself, hit the headlines Dec. 1, creating an international sensation. "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty" screamed the banner of Jorgensen's hometown New York Daily News.

In fact, Jorgensen was not the first person to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. During the rollicking Weimar period, German doctors performed the surgery on at least two patients. The difference, in Jorgensen's case, was that she underwent hormone-replacement therapy in conjunction with the surgery. The earlier surgeries were strictly cut-and-paste.

Although Jorgensen complained frequently about the jackals of the press, she did become something of a publicity hound and took most of the tasteless remarks with good grace, laughing off jokes such as, "Christine Jorgensen went abroad and came back a broad."

She turned to acting and became a nightclub singer as well, performing, predictably, "I Enjoy Being a Girl."

But Christine Jorgensen's world was not an enlightened one, particularly when it came to transgenderism. She paid the cost for this lack of sophistication. A first announced engagement fell through, and a second one failed as well, when the state of New York refused to issue the couple a marriage license. Her intended husband also lost his job when the marriage plans became known.

She later traveled the lecture circuit, talking about her experiences and advocating for the nascent transgender cause.

Jorgensen died of cancer in 1989, a few weeks short of age 63.

Source: Various

Among the scents of fresh pine garlands, pumpkin pie, mulling spices and roast turducken filling your home this holiday season, you may catch a whiff of that old familiar vapor.

Yes, that special time of year has come again. We are officially accepting nominees for the annual Wired.com Vaporware awards, our yearly showcase of the products pitched, promised and hyped, but never delivered.

2008 is actually gearing up to be much more exciting than years past.

Some of last year's favorites won't be eligible this time around.

The Tesla Roadster is rolling off the assembly line, albeit slowly. Spore sprung to life. The Optimus Maximus keyboard successfully separated overpaid design fetishists from their Google stock dividends just in time for the market crash.

Even poor Axl Rose managed to perform his six millionth ProTools edit and get Chinese Democracy onto shelves after a 14-year wait.

All that action cleared the way for a whole new crop of crap. So, let's get to it and fill up the list with some fresh FAIL.

Got a nominee for Vaporware '08? Here are the rules:

Send your submissions to wiredvaporware@gmail.com. To make it easier on us, please put the name of the company and product in the subject line of your e-mail, as well as in the message body. And don't forget to include a couple of acerbic comments we can quote. Links are a big help, too.

The final list will be assembled by Wired.com's editors. Awards will be handed out in late December.

For the past six years, Wired magazine's Found page has presented our best guess at what lies over the horizon, from touchscreen windshields to organ farming. Turns out, this little exercise in futurism is one of your favorite pages (as we learned recently when it took a short sabbatical). So we've decided to turn Found over to our readers — what do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years?

Each month, we'll propose a scenario. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision, then go to wired.com/wired/found to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. We'll use the best suggestions as inspiration for a future Found page (giving full credit to the creators, of course). We’ll also select one (image-based submission) as our favorite, and note it in an update at the bottom of this text block. This week's assignment: Imagine the future of the truck stop.

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best Found idea and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The image must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your idea and how you made it.

We don't host the images, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).

Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next few weeks to vote on new submissions, and look for an update announcing our favorite submission!

Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your found idea.

(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)

Back to top

Here's our vision of the future of Wall Street in 2013. The logo of the New York Stock Exchange is written in English and Chinese. Ticker tapes, blaring cable news network updates, and new advertising overlays all bespeak a bummed out bear market that never bounced back.

We'll continue to create a new Artifacts from the Future in upcoming issues of Wired magazine. But we'd like to see your prognostications too. What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20 or 100 years? Each month, we'll propose a scenario. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions and vote for your favorites. Check out this month's Truck Stop of the Future challenge.

The concept and most of the text for this Found came from Senior Editor Jason Tanz. Contributing Wired magazine designer Walter Baumann, photo assistants Sarah Filippi and Daniel Salo, deputy photo editor Anna Goldman Alexander, senior editor Chris Baker and production director Jeff Lysgaard helped create the image.

The Chinese flag hangs side by side with the stars and stripes.

Bloomberg reports Cramer's hunger strike enters third week.

Refill your 401K with Schwab's Scratch and Win Ultra-Lotto!

CloneCo announces 2-for-1 split.

Suze Orman's latest book, Solvency Is a State of Mind, tops the charts.

Time machine futures collapse.

Finish this sentence: Bioterror is....

This Mobile Device Only Does Email — Perfectly

Not every gadget needs a carnival of features. Take the Peek, which tackles just a single task: mobile email. No phone, no browser, no camera—and no apologies. It won't satisfy convergence-rabid smartphone fetishists, but for the rest of the world (i.e., the majority of it), this one-trick pony is a godsend. In terms of looks, its slim profile stands up to the big boys. But the real treat is the interface. Instead of forcing you to wrestle with laborious setup menus, the Peek asks for a name, email address, and password. That's it. Message from your Comcast.net account? Done. Gmail, Hotmail, and other webmail accounts? No sweat. Peek has an army of techies behind the curtain to handle the digital diplomacy that makes their device work flawlessly with every major email purveyor — and quite a few minor ones. It runs on T-Mobile's massive cellular network, so even the most itinerant technophobe can use it on the go. —Terrence Russell

$100, plus $20/month

Sleek Sony Cam Shows Off Family Photos on the Spot

Face it: No one checks your Flickr page. The only time friends see your photos is when you whip out the old digicam and cruise through whatever happens to be stored on it. The crafty folks at Sony know this, which is why they made the Cyber-shot DSC-T700, a pocket snapper that's as adept at displaying images as it is at capturing them. Just 0.7-inch thick, the sleek case incorporates a 10.1-MP sensor and Carl Zeiss lens, giving pictures a crispness rarely found in compact cameras. Flip it over and you'll find that the back is literally all display — a 3.5-inch, 16:9 touchscreen that replaces every hard button except Review, Zoom, Power, and Shutter. But this rig's beauty goes way beyond the surface: 4 gigs of onboard memory hold up to 950 hi-res shots. So enough with the uploading. Quit spamming the world with links to 40 shots of your lunch and start bragging with this. —John Mahoney

$400

Stage a Water-Cooler Ambush With Pump-Action Nerf Blaster

Workplace warlords must master a complex arsenal — the preemptive status report, the perfectly timed personal day, the BCC. And ever since Nerf released its N-Strike line of "toys" in 2002, we've had one more: the foam bullet, expertly aimed at your coworker's concentration-furrowed brow. For the serious open-plan warrior, there's no better weapon than the Recon CS-6. This pump-action blaster comes outfitted with a shoulder stock and a red-dot sight for cubicle sniping. Should you get caught in a watercooler ambush, the CS-6's six-shot magazine staves off the dreaded hollow click. But if you're going under cover, you'll need a sidearm you can conceal behind a manila folder. No problem, because the Recon is a transformer. Remove the stock and barrel extender and it becomes a stealthy Nerf pistol. Keep one in your desk drawer and those hooligans from accounting will never even look at your parking space again. —Cliff Kuang

$20

Commute-Friendly Electric Cycle Does 0 to 30 in 3.8 Seconds

The electric vehicle is a cool idea too often poorly executed. Today's batteries don't have the oomph or range to be practical — unless you drop 100 grand for a Tesla. That's why Brammo's gearheads started with motorcycles. They're so light that even readily available batteries can make one commute-worthy. The 285-pound Enertia is proof of that. At its heart is a lithium-iron-phosphate power cell designed to be as safe as it is efficient. "A plasma fire is not something we want to see," company founder Craig Bramscher says. The Enertia charges in just over three hours and is good for 45 miles. The 13-kW motor silently propels the electro-cycle to 30 mph in 3.8 seconds — quick enough to beat that cab away from the light — and to a top speed of 53 mph. Brammo hasn't created a highway-ready monster (yet), but Bramscher takes heart in what his creation can do: The electric motor's instantaneous torque is perfect for wheelies. —Chuck Squatriglia

$15,000

3-D-Ready HDTV Uses Laser Light to Double Color Range, Save Energy

Mama always told you not to stare into the sun. She might have added lasers to the list of no-nos — looking directly at the concentrated beams can burn your retinas. So who'd have thought they'd make an ideal light source for televisions? Mitsubishi's 65-inch LaserVue taps this tech to produce an astonishingly vivid picture. The rear-projection set's color range is twice as broad as a typical HDTV's, yet it consumes 33 percent less energy than a similar-size LCD. Though this 3-D-ready TV may seem straight outta Solaris, you don't need to fear its newness; unlike most nascent technologies, lasers have stamina. The company claims they'll never need replacing. So go ahead and screen those Lost DVDs 24/7. Or if you're feeling reckless, fire up your Blu-ray player to savor Angelina in all her Beowulfian glory. Kind of like staring at the naked sun, only hotter. —Jose Fermoso

$7,000

USB Stake Helps Brown Thumbs Turn Green, Monitors Soil Conditions

Those cacti on your windowsill don't deserve to die. Even if you regularly fail at horticulture, the EasyBloom can help. Just leave it in your proposed planting area for 24 hours, either stuck in the dirt or propped up in its cradle, then plug it into your computer's USB port. The gizmo measures soil conditions, sunlight, temperature, and humidity, comparing the results with an online database to recommend species that will thrive there. And should the weather be wacky that day, the EasyBloom is smart enough to check the National Weather Service for local averages. Your data is stored online for quick reference. If you've already killed everything in the garden, plunk the sensor down in your little Death Valley, set it to Monitor mode, and let it tell you what you're doing wrong. But here's a tip: If you find yourself running the autopsy repeatedly, it could be something basic. You do have to water the crops, you know. The EasyBloom can't do everything for you. —Elizabeth Livengood

$60

Svelte Ultralight Notebook Comes Fully Loaded

Ultralight notebooks come dressed to impress, but most disappoint when it's time to roll up the sleeves and get to work. Not the Voodoo Envy 133, a glossy black Kubrickian slab of awesomeness that makes other ultralights weep from their USB ports. Encased in carbon fiber, the Envy is just 0.7-inch thick and weighs 3.4 pounds when outfitted with a solid-state hard drive. Its looks will induce pangs of jealousy in the boardroom; back in the hotel room, the Envy proves that it's not just a pretty face. Even the base model rocks the tiny-team roster with a 1.6-GHz Intel processor, 2 gigs of RAM, swappable battery, LED-backlit display, and the widest array of ports — HDMI, eSATA, and ExpressCard — in its class. Like most of the svelte set, the Envy is heavy on wireless (802.11n, Bluetooth), but wired users aren't locked out. Since the case is thinner than an Ethernet jack, Voodoo built the connector into the power brick, which generates a dedicated wireless link with the computer. An instant-on OS lets you surf the Web or make Skype calls without booting up Windows. It all adds up to one drool-worthy package. —Christopher Null

$2,100, and up

Cycling GPS Tells You Where You Are — and How You Got There

At Wired, we love cycling almost as much as we love melting the chrome off passing cars with our high-powered laser. Almost. But even the combustion crew couldn't help raising an eyebrow at Garmin's top-tier, GPS-enabled cycling computer. This Tour-worthy unit tells you not only where you are but — thanks to heart rate, distance, and elevation tracking — exactly how you got there. The 2.2-inch color screen is as easy to read in the noontime glare as a sundial and offers more data-customization options than a crooked accountant. The Edge plays nice with wireless power meters to let you monitor the wattage you're generating while you pedal. It even lets you beam saved routes to other nearby 705 users. Optional street maps ensure that you can always find your way around town. So program this into your new Edge: 520 Third Street, San Francisco. Just don't roll up on some chromed-out fixie, because not even the 705 can see Lazor coming. —Mathew Honan

$500

It's the All-Digital Future – $100 Netflix Box Streams 15,000 Films

At the start of 2008, the Web-streamed movie experience still felt like a half-baked preview of its potential. Digital delivery required expensive hardware, and you paid extra for each rental (cough, Apple TV ... cough, Vudu). It wasn't the future we'd hoped for. Then came Roku's Netflix Player, the $100 video box that could summon more than 15,000 titles at no charge for Netflix subscribers. It was a revelation, wherein we learned what streaming video was supposed to feel like: nothing. That nothing changed everything. So go ahead, tear through all four seasons of The Office on a whim (then the original British version for good measure). Watch Strays because there's nobody home to exercise a Vin Diesel veto. For movies you can't stream, you still get your little red envelopes. And the same Roku box you love now will support hi-def streams when Netflix offers them. This little treasure chest is the real thing, straight from the all-digital future. —John Mahoney

$100

Try This at Home: Camera on a Flex Cable Finds Lost Objects

Milwaukee may have designed it to help home inspectors spot hidden mold or shoddy repairs, but the M-Spector is just too much fun to leave to the pros. Did your 5-year-old really drop your diamond ring down the sink — or pawn it for Fruit Roll-Ups? Want to find out the easy way how many bananas your "hilarious" brother-in-law stuffed in your tailpipe? Grab the M-Spector, thumb the power button, and the 2.5-inch screen lights up with 320x240-pixel color video, transmitted from the tiny CMOS camera on the end of its flexible neck. A camera-mounted LED illuminates dark and dismal places, letting you see anywhere you can cram the 3-foot-long cable. Sure, cops could use the M-Spector to peer around corners or ferret out shanks in prison cells, but it's equally effective at locating the perfectly good grape that rolled under your fridge. Just don't get too creative; you'll probably want to draw the line at home colonoscopies. —Chuck Cage

$250