Technology

MIAMI—Students from Florida International University in Miami walked on water yesterday for a class assignment.
To do it, they wore aquatic shoes they designed and created.
“Second year in a row of bragging rights,” noted Alex Quinones, who was the first to make it to the other side of a 175-foot lake on campus in record time—just over a minute.

REHOBOTH, Mass. — It wasn’t voter fraud that delayed the election count in one U.S. town — it was a spider.
Rehoboth Town Clerk Kathleen Conti says one of the Massachusetts town’s aging voting machines malfunctioned Tuesday.
Conti tells The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro that she called a technician, who said a spider web apparently prevented the machine’s scanner from counting ballots.

WASHINGTON — Several NBC websites were hacked on Sunday by a person or group calling itself “pyknic” and suggesting a possible link to the cyber-attack group Anonymous.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Apple Inc. is refusing to stoop to the level of its rivals in the tablet market —it’s pricing its new, smaller iPad well above the competition.
On Tuesday, the company revealed the iPad Mini, with a screen that’s about two-thirds the size of the full-size model, and said it will cost $329 and up.
Apple starts taking orders for the new model on Friday Oct. 26

DETROIT — Amphibious vehicles could soon be zooming out of James Bond’s garage — or pond — and into yours.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal appeals court has sided with Samsung Electronics Corp. in one aspect of its ongoing patent dispute with Apple Inc.
The Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday overturned a judge’s order blocking Samsung from selling its Galaxy Nexus smart phone pending a patent lawsuit by Apple.

LONGUEUIL, Que.—Canada’s robotic arm on the International Space Station was put to work yesterday when it grabbed a cargo ship that arrived at the orbiting space lab.
The unmanned capsule, built by California-based SpaceX, brought supplies to the space station—the first official shipment under a billion-dollar contract with NASA.

GENEVA — The world now has nearly as many cellphone subscriptions as inhabitants.
The U.N. telecom agency says there were about 6 billion subscriptions by the end of 2011 — roughly one for 86 of every 100 people.
In a report Thursday, the International Telecommunication Union said China alone accounted for 1 billion subscriptions, and India is expected to hit the 1-billion mark this year.

NEW YORK — Microsoft founder Bill Gates on Thursday called the new Windows 8 operating system scheduled for release next month “a very exciting new product” and “a very big deal” for the world’s largest software maker.
Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press that he is already using Windows 8 “and I’m very pleased with it.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel previewed a wave of tablet computers powered by a microprocessor that the company redesigned to make a bigger dent in the rapidly growing mobile market.