Researchers at the Black Hat conference showed just what mischief a commonly used UK PoS terminal could get up to when they inserted a chip-and-pin card crafted with malicious code.

ENGADGET: Security experts hack payment terminals to steal credit card info, play games

While it's always hard to pin down the exact origins of an idea -- especially one like pulse-code modulation, where a number of parties were involved -- sifting out the large and significant contributions from the gold pan of history tends to bring up the same names time and again.

ENGADGET: Primed: digital audio basics Mobile

Rather than visiting a kiosk to rent a bike, you'll be able to use a smartphone app to locate some available wheels, with position information broadcast by a built-in GPS. Once you find a bike you want to rent, the system will send an unlock code to your handset, which you'll enter into a handlebar-mounted PIN pad.

ENGADGET: NTT DoCoMo Shared Bicycle Initiative hands-on (video)