Portable, sustainable wireless networking: At a celebration of sustainable existence and other laudable goals in England, a wireless network with a satellite network was run through solar power -- and a lot of excellent kludges. [via Adam Engst of TidBITS]

7:34:58 PM    comment   

Bluetooth silicon costs currently run approximately $7, making the technology extremely attractive to automakers, and ABI predicts costs will continue to fall. Besides cost, the key automotive driver is Bluetooth's continuing proliferation into mobile handsets. Because the greatest portion of a handset's use is inside a vehicle, automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are looking to link the handset with onboard systems. Since Bluetooth car kits are relatively simple and inexpensive to install, OEMs are proactively installing them, realizing the growing probability they will be federally mandated.

[The Bluetooth Weblog]
7:29:16 PM    comment   

The ITU estimates that there were 689 million landlines in 1995 and a few more than 1 billion by 2001. This amounts to an average annual growth rate of slightly more than 7 percent. Put another way, half as many landlines were laid in the last six years of the 20th century as in the whole previous history of the world.

7:19:41 PM    comment   

GM is now experimenting with drive-by-wire systems for cars.  These cars are computer controlled, and use fuel-cells to power electric motors on the wheels.  What's possible with this?  Massive improvements to car design.  Much better maneuverability, radically enhanced driving characteristics, computer mediated corrections for out of control driving situations, lightweight construction, larger and more flexible cabins, and lower costs.  It might even create a situation that revises the car industry.  

How?  It could provide a means to componentize the car business by making it work much like the computer industry.  Car companies could focus on developing a single light weight chassis and sophisticated computer controls for operating the car.  Resellers could then purchase the generic chassis and add shells that cater to specific marketplaces and programs that provide specific driving characteristics.   The first company to do this in a scalable, efficient way could become the Intel of the car business.  Allowing clone assemblers and parts suppliers to compete to cater to every whim of the car buying public.  It would also let the chassis provider focus on a core set of attributes:  fuel cell operation (power, cost, size, and efficiency), electric motors, lightweight chassis design, and computer drive-by-wire hardware/OS combo (feature set, bundled applications, APIs, development environments, etc.).  Very cool.

Is this the prototype for the 8088 of the car industry???  Will it be GM inside or Honda inside? [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
7:17:01 PM    comment   

... Mr Wright (a scientist that has built a scale model of the device) is convinced that his epicyclic interpretation is correct, and that the original device modelled the entire known solar system.

7:15:41 PM    comment   

Because further down the street, beyond the reach of my system, another neighbor has put in Wi-Fi. And another, and another. Think of a pond with one water lily, then two, then four, then many overlapping, with their stems reaching into the Internet. (Credit for the water lily analogy goes to Alessandro Ovi, technology adviser to European Commission president Romano Prodi.)

7:14:07 PM    comment   

Two thirds of patients undergoing major heart operations suffer some form of mental impairment afterwards, such as a reduced ability to perform mental arithmetic or remember phone numbers.   In half of these patients the problems are permanent.  The cause is still controversial, but most researchers think that minute fat droplets lodging in the blood vessels of the brain are responsible. It is thought these block the supply of oxygen to tiny clusters of nerve cells.

6:47:56 PM    comment