$9 Computer with Built-in WiFi

Its Kickstarter description says CHIP is a computer for students, teachers, grandparents, children, artists, makers, hackers, and inventors. It includes a fully integrated battery power circuit that allows you to make your project mobile with just a 3.7v LiPo battery. The dev board-looking device has specifications at par with standard traditional computers: 1GHz processor, 512MB … Read more

Consumer Sovereignty and the Apocalypse-proof Dream

Dreaming tiny dreams has become a favorite pastime in the past five or 10 years.  The “tiny house movement” is gaining greater traction as ever more people choose to downsize for economic or ecological reasons. A small house, usually being defined as one offering less than 400 sq ft of space, offers a stimulating challenge about living … Read more

Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways

This is probably the biggest acquisquishin’ candidate we’ve ever seen. Just think about the number of J.P Morgan wannabe’s that would like to see this initiative die a premature and speedy death. The inquest report would likely mention the usual suspects such as public utilities, the energy monopolies, even the pollution remediation industry. Talk about making … Read more

Internet Providers Deliberately Slowing Traffic

Five major internet service providers in the US and one in Europe have been accused of abusing their market share to interfere with the flow of the internet for end users. The accusations come from Level 3, a communications company that helps connect large-scale ISPs like Comcast or AT&T to the rest of the internet. … Read more

A Battery That Lasts Forever

If it lives up to its billing, it will help accelerate the big green future. Companies and homeowners could pull the plug on their local utility by banking electricity from solar arrays and wind farms for use when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. A 250-kilowatt battery system installed in … Read more

Net-Neutrality = Press Freedom

Net-Neutrality is the principle that data packets on the Internet should be moved impartially, without regard to content, destination or source. Throughout the history of the United States “Freedom of the Press” has been touted as a fundamental right when, in fact, such freedom has truly existed only for the one who owns the press. … Read more

Three Models of Microfinancing

The Disruptive Influence of Microfinancing Ten percent of the world has access to traditional banking. And traditional banks often refuse to finance low-income or unemployed entrepreneurs, no matter how viable their ideas are. Now, enabled by the spread of mobile technology and wireless internet access, microfinancing organizations are attempting to eradicate this problem through small … Read more

New Life for Nitinol

Nickel titanium, also known as nitinol, is a metal alloy of nickel and titanium, where the two elements are present in roughly equal atomic percentages. Nitinol alloys exhibit two closely related and unique properties: shape memory and superelasticity (also called pseudoelasticity). Shape memory is the ability of nitinol to undergo deformation at one temperature, then … Read more

HVDC — High Voltage Direct Current

The company that commissioned the world’s first 800 kilovolt UHVDC systems, the longest overhead HVDC link to go into commercial operation, and the world’s longest underwater and underground HVDC links, is now writing the next chapter in the evolution of this technology. ABB has successfully designed and developed a hybrid DC breaker after years of … Read more

Shedding Retardant Forces

Thomas Jefferson said it best. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. Today we should be asking, What is the regimen? What motivates it? What will our future be like if … Read more