BusinessWeek

Google and NASA are developing smart robots designed to fly around the International Space Station and eventually take over some menial tasks from astronauts with the aid of custom-built smartphones.

Since 2006, three colorful, volleyball-sized robots have been slowly floating around a 10-foot by 10-foot by 10-foot space inside the ISS. Scientists used them for research projects such as a study on the movement of liquids inside containers in microgravity environments.

NASA now plans to attach smartphones to the flying robots to give them spatial awareness that would enable them to travel throughout the space station. The Android-based phones will track the 3D motion of the robotic spheres while mapping their surroundings.

“Our goal is to advance the state of 3D sensing for mobile devices in an effort to give mobile devices human-scale sense of space and motion,” says Johnny Chung Lee, a technical program lead at Google.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing to limit the amount of airwaves any single company can purchase at the largest US spectrum auction since 2008, a person briefed on the plan said.

Top US wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon Communications have said curbs will reduce revenue the government reaps from the planned sale, and unfairly favor smaller competitors Sprint and T-Mobile US. The agency is to sell airwaves given up by television stations so the frequencies can be used by the growing number of smartphones and other wireless devices connecting to the Internet.

Finding more spectrum to meet soaring mobile-Internet demand is a goal of President Barack Obama’s administration.

Christopher Ruddy, 49, the chief executive officer and founder of conservative media company Newsmax Media, plans to launch NewsmaxTV, a 24-hour cable news channel that will be, he says, a kinder, gentler Fox.

“Our goal is to be a little more boomer-oriented, more information-based rather than being vituperative and polarizing.” Ruddy says he can make NewsmaxTV profitable entirely through advertising and selling Newsmax’s consumer products over the air. It’s the same business model that’s been successful for QVC, Home Shopping Network, and numerous televangelists, but no one has tried it in cable news.

He’s quick to add that he doesn’t need to beat Fox News, he just needs to shave off a little of its audience -- particularly those conservatives who feel Fox has drifted too far to the right. “If we take 10 to 15 percent of the Fox audience,” he says, “and they are making $1 billion a year, then we are going to be hugely profitable.” Newsmax, which had revenue of $104 million in 2013, up from $85 million the year before, is perhaps best known for its namesake, 200,000-circulation monthly magazine. A conservative reimagining of the traditional newsweekly, Newsmax publishes political stories such as “President Obama’s Outrageous Power Grab” and ads for gold coins and hearing aids.