It wasn't too long ago that we didn't need to worry about our cellphones dying at inopportune moments. In fact, the batteries could last us for days without needing a charge.
But now that our smartphones are, well, smarter, and we use them for dozens of functions, their batteries drain a lot faster.
A German student has built an electromagnetic harvester that recharges an AA battery by soaking up ambient, environmental radiation. These harvesters can gather free electricity from just about anything, including overhead power lines, coffee machines, refrigerators, or even the emissions from your WiFi router or smartphone.
This might sound a bit like hocus-pocus pseudoscience, but the underlying science is actually surprisingly sound. We are, after all, just talking about wireless power transfer — just like the smartphones that are starting to ship with wireless charging tech, and the accompanying charging pads.
HP will be launching its first Chromebook in February, according to a leaked document found on the HP website.
Chromebooks are Google's name for laptops that run its stripped-down, Web-friendly Chrome operating system.
The document is no longer on the site but it revealed pretty detailed plans and specs for a device called the HP Pavilion Chromebook.
It will have a 1.1GHz Celeron processor, 2GB of RAM, a 16GB solid-state drive, and a 14-inch, 1366x768 display, reports Nathan Ingraham on The Verge.
1.6 billion people in the world don't have access to electricity, says the founder of a company called "MPOWERD."
These folks and another 1.5 billion people on lousy electrical grids often use kerosene-powered lamps to see at night.
The problem with kerosene lamps is that kerosene is expensive, and the lamps pollute the air that these folks breathe. So kids grow up with clogged lungs, etc.
So a company called MPOWERD has invented a cool little solar-powered lantern called "Luci."
Tired of smiling and nodding along while your electrical engineering buddies debate the finer points of electromagnetic theory? If you're taking a critical eye to the definitive guide to batteries, you've got to understand what electricity is to begin with. Here's a crash course on the fundamental force that's driving our digital revolution.
The average human, at rest, produces around 100 watts of energy. This equates to around 2000 kcal of food energy, which is why your recommended daily intake of calories is around 2000 kcal. Over periods of a few minutes (or a few hours in the case of trained athletes), we can comfortably sustain 300-400 watts — and in the case of very short bursts of energy, such as sprinting, some humans can output up to 2,000 watts.
Consumer tech gets most of the attention but enterprise tech is really the stuff that's changing the world.
It is changing the way you work, the way you find a job, even the kind of jobs available.
Plus, it's enriching investors. Where Facebook's IPO was a mess, enterprise IPOs from Jive, Splunk, and Infoblox were big hits. And there's more hot enterprise IPOs coming.
So it's time shine a spotlight on the enterprise tech that is quietly rocking your world and the people who are leading it.
Networking is important for any business for a number of reasons. Whether you're seeking out contacts that could help fuel your company, looking for industry advice from experts in the field, or are on the prowl for a business partner, there's no better way to achieve your overall goal than networking.
Networking can serve as a lifeline for some businesses, which is why these relationships are important to cultivate. Keep in mind that networking doesn't begin or end at a networking event. Networking can be done anywhere; at a bookstore, over lunch, during a conference or in your office kitchen.
One of the biggest issues preventing the electric car from taking over the roads is their incredibly limited battery life. But researchers at the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan have demonstrated a new system that could let electric cars constantly recharge while they're being driven.
A common complaint from smartphone users, whether they own an Android, iOS or Blackberry device, is how quickly their battery runs out. Moderate smartphone users tell me they typically can’t go a whole day without having to recharge their device, while heavy users often can’t make it much past lunch without plugging in.
Batteries are essential in our everyday lives. But their prevalence doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy to understand how they work. In this video, the engineering guy Bill Hammack takes a look at perhaps the most basic battery of all—the lead-acid cell—in order to explain the fundamental science behind every single battery you've ever used. Building on that basic knowledge, he also explains why you can't use the same battery for every single application; so now you know why your car doesn't use LiOn.
A storm this weekend knocked out power to millions of buildings in the mid-Atlantic region. About 443,000 lost electricity in the Washington, DC area, and over 200,000 outages occurred in southern New Jersey. The utilities that serve those two markets, Pepco and Atlantic City Electric—say it might take until midnight on Friday, July 6, before everyone gets back online. July 6th? Are you kidding? Why does it take so long?
They’re not the most beautiful songs, or the most musically important. In fact, a few could literally drive you nuts. But the following tunes—some as old as Mozart, others as current as Beyoncé—have fundamentally altered the world we live in at some point in the last quarter century. They’ve saved lives, brought glory to America, and gotten teenagers to use deodorant. Somehow, they’ve made a difference. So, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the ultimate power playlist. Let the countdown begin!
A moving collection of iconic photographs from the last 100 years that demonstrate the heartbreak of loss, the tremendous power of loyalty, and the triumph of the human spirit. Warning: Some of these will make you weep.
With huge cutbacks slated for the U.S. military, the Marines and Army in particular, private security firms are sure to be getting a boost.
The Army is cutting 50,000 soldiers over the next few years and the Marines are looking to shave about 20,000 servicemembers over the same period of time.
So while business was booming for this group private military contractors, who take their military training and offer it to the highest bidder, it's likely to grow even more.
Modern-day mercenaries are stationed throughout the world fighting conflicts for governments that are reluctant to use their own troops or where foreign troops are unable or unwilling to go.
Propaganda serves to rally people to action, take up arms and fight, vote for someone or something, make a change socially or politically – propaganda is a relevant and effective tools used everyday by government and private industry.
Do you believe smoking is bad for you? You can probably thank years of targeted propaganda for that. Unless you’re one of the few people that base all their decisions on fact and science, you probably feel a certain way towards smoking because of an anti-smoking campaign. Maybe everyone around you hates smoking too and that help, but it wasn’t always that way. 50 years ago smoking was regarded as healthy, mostly do to propaganda. These campaigns can shape the way society views issues and makes decisions. Recall the anti-smoking poster still in use today, “Mind if I smoke… Care if I die,” this suggests that because second hand smoke is so dangerous it’s alright to be rude to someone to prevent them from smoking around you. It uses charged language and glitzy glamorous images. The point is, this is just as much propaganda as anything we saw from the World War II era.
With more and more people becoming conscious of their energy consumption, many keynote speakers and inventors have focused their attention to the promotion of alternative power source proposals.
While solar and hydro power are two of the more commonly used, sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels, there are many new technologies and products by which eco-friendly power is being derived.
Plant-based fuel sources are being examined more extensively, as there have been breakthroughs in various extraction methods poised to remove a viable amount of energy from the foliage without leaving a lasting impact on the ecosystem. Bio-fuel and bio-waste are becoming more prevalent to power everything from cars and planes to electronics. Furthermore, scientists have been experimenting with various bacterial sources which can turn something traditionally seen as a negative product into a positively productive commodity.
With "The Avengers" hitting theaters this weekend, superheroes are on everyone's mind. But not all superheroes are as cool as Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, and Captain America. In fact, some superheroes are just plain bizarre. Sure, most comic book heroes have the abilities of flight and super strength, but how many can vomit acid? Or communicate with squirrels? Or make their own arms fall off?
Well, the 19 heroes below can do all that and more. Some of these characters you just have to see to believe. We don't expect an "Avengers"-type movie with this cast of characters, but we can at least appreciate them for the utterly absurd realities they have created within the comic book universe. Which character do you think the most bizarre? Vote and let us know!
