“Body power” for cars may replace their batteries
“As battery manufacturers race to produce more efficient lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, some scientists are looking to make the cars themselves a power source.
Researchers are currently developing a new auto body material that can store and release electrical energy like a battery. Once perfected, scientists hope the substance will replace standard car bodies, making vehicles up to 15 percent lighter and significantly extending the range of electric vehicles.”
Google developing universal translator for cellphones
“Google is developing software for the first phone capable of translating foreign languages almost instantly — like the Babel Fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Google also has a voice recognition system that enables phone users to conduct web searches by speaking commands into their phones rather than typing them in.
Now it is working on combining the two technologies to produce software capable of understanding a caller’s voice and translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language. Like a professional human interpreter, the phone would analyse “packages” of speech, listening to the speaker until it understands the full meaning of words and phrases, before attempting translation.”
“www.1e100.net” – isn’t that Google itself?
“A new Google domain — 1e100.net, a nod to the company’s famously misspelled name — is now the net’s 44th most visited site. Google says the domain is used to ‘identify servers’ on its internal network, hinting that reverse DNS plays a role. The domain was registered in September and launched in October, about the same time Google unveiled Spanner, a new addition to its backend infrastructure designed to shift loads automatically among its data centers.”
And the Nobel Peace Prize nomination goes to…. Internet!
“It’s official. The Internet, which has virtually revolutionized world communication, has been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize!
Organizers said signatories to its petition backing the nomination include 2003 peace laureate and exiled Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi — which would make it a legitimate entry.
The nomination was proposed by the Italian edition of Wired magazine for promoting ‘dialogue, debate and consensus through communication’ as well as democracy.”
Freezing water by warming it up!
Israel’s Weizmann Institute have figured out a way to freeze pure water by warming it up. The trick is that pure water has different freezing points depending on the electrical charge of the surface it resides on.
They found out that a negatively charged surface causes water to freeze at a lower temperature than a positively charged surface. By putting water on the pyroelectric material Lithium Tantalate, which has a negative charge when cooler but a positive change when warmer; water would remain a liquid down to -17 degrees C., and then freeze when the substrate and water were warmed up and the charge changed to positive, where water freezes at -7 degrees C.
Buy Gadgets Online – Pay More!
Buying your next laptop computer or smartphone online could suddenly get a lot more expensive if a little-known U.S. Department of Transportation proposal to tighten rules around the shipment of small, battery-powered devices by air goes through.
Across the US on 25 gallons?
“San Francisco recently saw the unveiling of the world’s first algae fuel-powered vehicle, dubbed the Algaeus.
The plug-in hybrid car, which is a Prius tricked out with a nickel metal hydride battery and a plug, runs on green crude from Sapphire Energy — no modifications to the gasoline engine necessary.
The set-up is so effective, according to FUEL producer Rebecca Harrell, that the Algaeus can cross the US on approximately 25 gallons of fuel — a figure which is currently being tested on a coast-to-coast road trip.”
802.11n approved by IEEE as a standard
“The IEEE has finally approved the 802.11n high-throughput wireless LAN standard.
Bruce Kraemer, the long-time chairman of the 802.11n Task Group (part of the 802.11 Working Group, which oversees the WLAN standards), has sent out a notification to a listserv for task group members, which includes a wide range of Wi-Fi chip makers, software developers, and equipment vendors.
This process began in 2002.”
‘Your tweets belong to you’: Twitter
“Twitter has modified its terms of service to state unequivocally that messages posted belong to their authors and not to the company.
‘Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute” your tweets because that’s what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you,’ wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in a blog post Thursday announcing the modifications.
Twitter is still hammering out a set of guidelines for developers on the proper use of the company’s API.”
