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We’re stoked about electric cars, but unless their range can exceed the 100 miles or so of today’s electro-cars, they’re going to be a nonstarter with mainstream consumers. IBM aims to change all that with its Battery 500 Project, just kicked off at the company’s Alamaden Laboratory in San Jose, California.
They’re pooling the resources of 40 of the world’s best engineers and scientists, with a goal of creating lithium-air batteries with a 500-mile range, 200 miles farther than a typical gasoline-fueled car. Not only do they intend to make car batteries more efficient, they also aim to make them smaller and much lighter.
If IBM can create a 500-mile car battery cheap enough for the rest of us to afford, we might all be driving electric cars a few years from now. Armed with an impressive brain trust, key patents, and hopefully some serious economic-stimulus bucks, the Battery 500 Project could change the world.
Smarter Technology, via Engadget
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Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve, wear it on your wrist with the StressWatch. This attractive design concept gathers heart rate and body temperature data and then interprets them as levels of stress on its multicolored screen. It’s like wearing a lie detector on your wrist.
The black bar graph at the bottom of the watch is the stress line, and if the colors on the watch face are cool greens and blues, you’re pretty laid back. If they turn into hot pink, red or orange, look out.
Why would you want to publicly display stress levels? The idea is not to be a stress exhibitionist, but to remind you to slow down your breathing and use visual biofeedback to calm yourself down. Like most other stress-relieving potions, elixers and devices, this could be pure woo-woo hooey. Nice watch, though. More pics:
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Intel’s been dabbling in its Moblin (get it? Mobile + Linux = Moblin?) operating system for a couple of years now. Aimed at netbooks and mobile internet devices running Intel’s Atom processors, Moblin’s already gone through a couple of versions. Now, the company is touting version 2.1, and it looks like it’s about ready to show up in Atom-running cellphones someday soon.
Moblin 2.1 does some neat tricks, including displaying numerous widgets for plenty of social networking, and multiple applications that can all run the same time in a panels-based user interface. One of the best features is its nearly instant boot time.
This micro Linux distribution running the Gecko browser is still early in its prototype stage, and Intel’s not talking about when it might actually see the light of day. When it debuts, there will be even more competition in the mobile operating system arena.
Via MidMoves
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Babies have a lot of needs and no way to tell you what they are specifically at any given time. Instead they just cry, and parents have to figure it out.
This Baby Cry Analyzer looks to change that, analyzing the frequency of your baby’s crying to determine whether the little tyke is hungry, bored, annoyed, sleepy or stressed. Is it accurate? Who knows, but I’d be surprised if it can beat a parent’s intuition.
Amazon, via Book of Joe
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There are good microphones, and there are bad microphones, but pretty much all of them are limited by the nature of the technology — specifically, the diaphragm that moves in response to air. The structure of that diaphragm will affect the sound that’s recorded, even if that influence is minute. There’s simply no way around it.
Or is there? David Schwartz at the Rochester Institute of Technology says his Laser-Accurate micorphone is capable of recording “pure sound.” Instead of conventional transducers, Schwartz’s mike uses lasers to scan an air chamber filled with microscopic particles (read: smoke). When the particles move in response to sound, the laser detects the motion without disturbing the air (at least not in any acoustic way), so the vibration — and thus the recording — should be as close to acoustically perfect as possible. In theory.
The laser mike looks like a promising new technology, but it’s clearly in the infant stages. If you check out the second vid through the Continue link below, you can see Schwartz has to shout to get the smoke microphone to get a decent recording. If he can somehow get a working product, though, it would certainly quickly become the go-to mike for the recording industry.
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Local power companies all over the country are helping to built a 21st century smart grid, complete with smart meters, which talk back to the grid, attached to your home. Control4 is getting ready to deploy its home Energy Management System (EMS) EC-100 so you can monitor and control not only your home’s energy consumption via data provided by the smart meter, but your A/V system, security, lights, HVAC, etc.
In March 2010, the EC-100, which has a 5-inch LCD touchscreen, will be initially deployed by the Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative in Austin, TX, in 35,000 homes in the first wave and an additional 30,000 in a second wave. The control module actually displays your energy use in a variety of sub-categories (lighting, kitchen, air conditioning, etc.) in dollars, and lets you automate your home to conserve energy. For instance, as the sun comes up, an expanded EMS Control4 Home Area Network (HAN) system could automatically lower the shades or, when you leave a room or your house, the system automatically adjusts the thermostat to use less power – in other words, your house could run on energy-saving cruise control.
In case you’ve never heard of them (honestly, I hadn’t until I got to Atlanta for CEDIA), Control4 sells arguably the most affordable and simplest home automation system around, along with a whole bunch of inexpensive modules to control everything from your A/V system to window blinds, all controlled using the ZigBee wireless control spec from your HDTV via one simple remote.
As the smart grid/smart meter trend grows, Control4 will supply the EC-100 to local power companies to distribute or sell at a subsidized price to their customers, or perhaps sell them directly to consumers. All to be decided.
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With all this talk of OLED screens on the way, it had to happen: an OLED laptop. Samsung says it aims to roll out this beauty with a 12.1-inch, 1280×768 AMOLED screen by the end of next year, and it might even be available as early as the third quarter.
Samsung SDI is the world’s largest OLED screen manufacturer, so it would be only natural for it to be first up with an OLED notebook. This will certainly be a premium item — nobody’s talking price, but we’re guessing this sexy lappie will probably cost at least $5000. Fast forward five years, and OLED laptops will be commonplace … and cheap.
OLED Info and techradar, via Gizmodo
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Put on these magic glasses, and suddenly your know-nothing automotive skill set transforms into that of a BMW mechanic. This kind of step-by-step visual assistance is on the way for BMW, reading the field of view and superimposing animated directions in real time, complete with an audio track to talk you through the repair.
Augmented reality might be great for mechanics, Ikea furniture assembly and piano lessons, but surgeons, this is not for you. Never mind that — it’s not even ready for cars yet, and BMW’s not saying when it will be. The idea is compelling, though. What else could this be used for?
Via Jalopnik
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The idea’s been proposed and kiboshed before, but a team of British scientists and engineers are taking a look at gravity as one way to protect the Earth from asteroids.
NASA’s Near Earth Object program currently has 145 potentially hazardous asteroids on its list out of 1,062 objects larger than one kilometer in diameter, and 6,292 total discovered objects. What’s all that mean? Well, that there’s a lot of stuff out there that could potentially impact our planet — some of it pretty big.
So instead of sending shuttle crews up at the last minute to blow an approaching asteroid up, British astronomers at the Astrophysics Research Centre are planning to build a 10-ton “gravity tractor” spacecraft that will influence the object’s trajectory. The process would take some time — a craft would have to be launched 15 years in advance to really have an effect — but, once the tractor arrives, it’d hover close by an asteroid and gently guide it along a different path.
Besides the inordinate amount of time it’d take, the “gravity tractor” program — still in its early stages — would cost so much and require so much in terms of personnel that it would take either the backing of a government or several to ever see it through.
Via BBC
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