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Current news items regarding technology, tech companies, the Internet, the government, etc.

The Green Microgym’s members powers its lights, reduces its CO2 footprint

2 Comments / Miscellaneous, News, Sports, Health & Fitness, Outdoors / By /

the green microgymIf you live in Portland, OR, and want to improve your carbon footprint while getting/staying in shape, then take a look at The Green Microgym. In a nutshell, Green Microgym (TGM) offers an environmentally-conscious gym experience.

The actual neat details include the fact that the exercise machines are hooked up to the building’s energy grid, and your workouts actually help to power the lights and other electricity needs. TGM estimates that their carbon footprint is less than half if they were run as a regular gym.

Another nice benefit is that for every hour you workout, you get a $1 credit towards their store. Workout for 10 hours and you get a 50% off coupon at a local adidas store.

They’re franchising, so you can grab your own TGM for your town.

Memristors could take over from Transistors, increase # and power of chips

1 Comment / Computers, News / By /

Transistors may make way for a new type of switch for computer chips. Called a memristor (short for memory resistor), they are simpler than transistors and can store information even without an electric current.

memristorAt the speed at which technology normally moves, it’s a bit surprising that this device first conceived of in 1971 by Leon Chua at UC Berkeley, has only seen the light in the past 2 years.

HP is leading the memristor charge and have announced significant progress. In particular, they have come up with ways to stack layers of switches upon each other, hugely increasing the density of chip components.

As for size, current transistors have sizes of 30 to 40nm (nanometers), while HP has been toying with 3nm memristors. That’s a 10x improvement in size, and that’s not even including the stacking advantage.

via NYTimes

Amazon.com gets patent to put your order packaging on video

1 Comment / Miscellaneous, News / By /

amazon patent imageAmazon.com has had yet another patent approved, this time for a way to send their customers images and video clips of their orders being packed up for shipping. Yes, you read that right.

The idea is that it assists customers as well as Amazon and their associated merchants. We’ll see how this pans out, and of course, it could end up being rife with issues, or it may actually be able to cut down the amount of unverifiable finger-pointing that occurs in online shopping and order fulfillment.

Post a comment the first time you notice a video/image in your Amazon order e-mail.

BuyMyTronics.com pays you for your old Electronics

1 Comment / Miscellaneous, News / By /

It’s always great to see more companies involved in recycling. In the past, we’ve featured electronics recycling sites like YouRenew, MyBoneYard and Gazelle (and even Costco/Gazelle) that pay you to take your old cell phones, computers, MP3 players, etc. off of your hands.

buymytronics.com logo

We’re pleased to tell you about another such site: BuyMyTronics.com (think of it as ‘buy-my-tronics’ or ‘buy-my-electronics’). BuyMyTronics.com touts their free shipping, will take electronics in any condition (excellent!), and get this: their facilities are 100% wind-powered.

How much you get for your electronics depends in large part on how much damage a gadget has. BuyMyTronics.com currently takes iPods, cell phones, game consoles, desktop computers, PDAs, eBook readers and more.

Arctrieval lets you correspond electronically with your health care providers

1 Comment / Miscellaneous, Networking & Internet, News / By /

It’s pretty amazing that in the year 2010 when we all spend a significant part of our lives online, that we’re still surrounded by so much paper – books, magazines, bills, records. Lots of official records still exist with the local and federal authorities and with your doctor(s) and hospitals on paper.

Arctrieval logoArctrieval is a startup that is taking a step towards changing that by allowing for electronic correspondence between you and your doctor/hospital/insurance company.

Arctrieval is a Web-based service that allows you to send communications to your health care provider via e-mail, fax or snail mail, and lets you monitor those comms. You can also manage all of your family’s communication as well. For electronic messages, Arctrieval uses the ubiquitous PDF file format. Arctrieval also facilitates transferring your medical records to other online repositories (such as Microsoft HealthVault).

Arctrieval is free for consumers – you can sign up here.

Incidentally, even if you don’t sign up, you can also make use of some forms that Arctrieval makes available for free.

Google teams up with Intel, Sony to make Google TV set-top boxes

Audio/Video, Home Theater, News, Software / By /

Google is pushing to get Android into other hardware, such as set-top boxes, and in turn to get their ads into more markets and in front of more eyeballs. To that ends, they have teamed up with Sony and Intel to develop something called, naturally, Google TV.

google tvGoogle TV is pretty much a re-imagining of the ill-fated WebTV, where a set-top box brings the Web to your TV screen. Of course, today, there are many different set-top boxes vying for your dollars and space in your AV shelf, including but not limited to media centers, DVRs, place-shifting boxes (like the Slingbox) and much more.

Who knows? Perhaps this version could fare better (think Palm vs the Newton). Of course, the Internet’s pervasiveness is exponentially greater than when WebTV first appeared.

One additional difference will be that the Google Android platform will allow for the software to be embedded in more devices than just the set-top box.

Press Release

Sprint and HTC announce world’s 1st 4G smartphone, EVO 4G

2 Comments / News, Phones / By /

sprint htc evo 4g smartphoneWe normally try to feature gadgets that are available right now, but this upcoming gizmo, a doozy of a smartphone is sure to make a huge impression this summer. It also helps makes the case for a Sprint that is not dead yet.

Sprint recently announced (at CTIA) its latest Android smartphone, the HTC EVO which also happens to be the world’s first 3G/4G phne. The EVO matches up really well with other Android stars – the Google-branded HTC Nexus One (on T-Mobile & others) and the Motorola Droid (on Verizon). Here’s a nice comparison of the 3.

Apart from its 4G cred, the EVO sports a 800×480 touchscreen with the Sense UI, 1GB of internal storage, an 8MP camera with video recording up to 1280×720, and get this, a front-facing camera. So now you can do some real video conferencing right from the palm of your hand.

The other noteworthy feature is the HDMI out connector. The EVO 4G is really being pushed as a video-savvy phone.

No word yet on pricing or exact availability, but you can be sure it’ll make a big splash. Pre-register for more info at http://www.sprint.com/evo.

Crackberry Owners willing to trade for iPhone

News, Phones / By /

An interesting article by Arstechnica state that 40% of Blackberry users are willing to trade in for an iPhone. Does this mean Obama’s BlackBerry endorsements are wearing off?

The more likely scenario is that RIM is unable to keep up with features consumers want more of that are incorporated in the iPhone and Android. To muddy the waters even more, Windows Mobile 7 has been rebuilt from the ground up and will become more of a threat in 2010 to BlackBerry business. In fact, I know several gigantic enterprises that have switched from RIM to Microsoft’s Mobile devices porting apps and removing all traces of RIM from the environment.

It seems current iPhone and Android users are happy with their device as 90 percent plan to stick with their current platform for their next upgrade.

Google most likely exiting China

Networking & Internet, News / By /

Oh well. So much for the big G trying to throw their weight around to convince the big C to give a little on their censorship stance, following the hacking attacks. Google will most likely close its search engine business in China, google.cn.

They’re going to make an orderly exit, and take steps to protect their employees there. Does China care? Not really. They can (and have) created their own search engines that are more compliant with their way of thinking.

via FT.com

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