I'm probably abnormally excited about the Sony Reader.  Possibly because I was so in love with my beloved, but now departed, Librie.  So it is with considerable fanboyism that I present to you several sweet photos of the Reader from Gizmodo, as well as some accessories that will accompany the release of the Sony Reader.

 

  

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Capacitors are amazing little devices that litter your circuit boards storing and discharging small amounts of energy as needed. For quite a while, folks have been attempting to use the abilities of capacitors to store energy for use in larger power storage systems. In particular, it would be great if a lot of energy could be stored in a capacitor, and then slowly released to power a car. 

But, so far, this has been impractical.  First, because of the size of the capacitor that would be needed, and second, because capacitors tend to want to release their charge all at once, not over 500 miles of driving.  Texas start-up EEStor, however, seems to have overcome many of these problems.  Ultracapacitors, capacitors that can store huge amounts of charge, and release it in a relatively controlled fashion, have already started showing up in hybrid cars, but EEStor seems to have taken this further. 

They claim to have an ultracapacitor that can store enough power to drive a car 500 miles.  Not only are ultracapacitors entirely free of toxic substances, they can be charged extremely quickly and never lose capacity. 

EEStor is already licensing the technology to Toronto based Feel Good Cars and they should be on the road by 2008. Soon after, we could see them in larger vehicles, as well as portable electronic devices.

 

Via Business 2.0 

We've been waiting for those numbers for quite a long time.  The Sony Reader was supposed to be the next e-ink reader more than six months ago.  In the meantime, my Librie broke and the iRex iLiad debuted with a $600 pricetag and I have found myself entirely e-readerless. 

Well, there's still a bit more waiting to do, but the wait to find out how much waiting I'd have to do is over.  The Sony Reader, a high-quality, non-DRM-crippled ebook reader will be available on or before Halloween. The device looks spectacular, and the Sony Connect Store (already used for Music Downloads) will be launching a book download services at the same time.  The prices we've seen (saving about $4 on the cover price of a new hardback) isn't inspiring much confidence. But the book's ability to read any text, PDF, or Word document more than makes up for that. 

 

Some shots of accessories are on their way. Boy do I wish they could get the Times Reader running on this thing.  Soon enough, I imagine. 

 

Via Engadget 

It's been a long time since a newspaper was delivered to my house.  And I'm not the only one who's given up on the printed page.  But that's not because I didn't like the format.  Frankly, reading news online is bad for the eyes and the web is a very limited format for typography and display. 

 The New York Times knows this.  And they also know that their print business is crashing. So, much to my amazement, they're embracing digital display by taking it off the web.  The Times Reader is an amazing program with high quality text and images that is designed to look great on any screen and allow a huge amount of user customization. 

Images get smaller and bigger, advertisements change based on the space left on the page, text size can be altered, display of content is marked as read or unread, it is automatically updated, searchable, and hilightable. 

I find it to be simpler to use and prettier than the web. And, as it looks great on any size display, I can hardly wait to get it onto an electronic ink reader. 

This really is a commitment from the New York Times to digital display, and it is extremely well done.  If they can deliver this to my Sony Reader, I will absolutely join the Times Select program and actually pay for content.

 

Via TreeHugger 

In our computers there is a device that is based on decades old technology and has not been significantly improved since the early days of computing.  As every other component of the computer has either become magically more powerful, or entirely obsolete, the power supply has remained largely unchanged. The New York Times reports that Google is trying to change that. 

 

Google, which owns a heck of a lot of computers, has a lot of interest in making power supplies more efficient.  It turns out that creating a standard voltage that the motherboard can then alter itself, instead of having power supplies that deliver variable voltages, can double the efficiency of the computer. 

There's really no reason not to do this right now, and you'll probably hear Google pushing for it quite a lot as they stand to save quite a bit of money from that bump in efficiency. But so does the rest of the world.

Power supplies currently eat up about 2% of America's electricity.  A switch to constant-voltage power supplies would drop that closer to 1% and simultaneously make alternative power sources like solar a much more attractive option for powering computer banks.

 

Via NYTimes 

Holy moly...I really don't quite know where to come down on this one.  Apple has been trying to decrease its environmental impacts for some time, in my opinion, they've been fairly successful. In the last year, they've instituted recycling programs, cut way back on brominated flame retardants and they've actually been a leader in developing alternatives toxic substances. 

 

But this website, created by GreenPeace, slams apple for its environmental record, and makes the company seem entirely uncaring. 

Without a doubt, Apple doesn't have the best environmental record.  Yes, there are still some toxic materials used in their laptops and no, they don't yet have a cold-fusion powered iPod.  But to slam them so wholly and in such a mean-spirited way seems out of proportion. 

I've worked in the environmental movement for some time, and I know that this is a killer campaign that will get GreenPeace a ton of press, a ton of members, and might actually convince Apple to change some of it's practices. 

But the more we punish companies after they take steps in the right direction, the more we seem like a movement of wackos.  I think GreenPeace is doing a disservice to our movement while being disrespectful of a company that, really, isn't environmentally unfriendly, just high-profile enough to attract media attention.

An EcoGeek should always be entirely without TV.  Not only are they power sucking beasts full of heavy metals, they display completely obsolete media.  A good EcoGeek has one, maybe two displays in his house, and they are both LCD monitors.  But, just in case there weren't already enough reasons to avoid televisions, I'm bringing you two new ones. 

The first is the Hauppauge Win TV-HVR-950 hybrid ATSC / NTSC TV tuner.  Now, for $100, your computer can plug into your cable and your monitor can double as your television.  That is, if you still have any interest at all the cable television (I will remind you that The Daily Show encourages distribution on YouTube, so I'm not sure why you'd want cable.)  Just pop this TV tuner into a USB port, install the software and plug in the cable and you've got absolutely no reason for a separate display.

But for those of you who have complete discarded the idea of television as media, you'll be even more interested in Revision3, a new project of Kevin Rose (creator of Digg.)  "Revision3 aims to prove that on-demand, distributed online content is better, faster, more effective, and better targeted to what YOU want to watch."  So, basically, cooler than TV, but more high quality and consistent than YouTube.  Right now, on Rev3, you can watch Diggnation (pretty hilarious show about things floating around the tubes), ctrl-alt-chicken, a cooking program, and several other tech-themed shows that have been taking off recently. 

Maybe I could sit on my couch, drink beer, and talk about innovations for the environment. If only I had a camera...

Kill your TV!

 

TV Tuner Via Engadget 

Cell phones may soon begin giving energy-saving instructions to their owners. It's not an entirely new idea, but a mobile industry task force led by Nokia is thinking about it more seriously than we thought they would. 

The taskforce is working on decreasing the environmental impact of the mobile technology industry.  Though, in terms of power use, they're already quite slim, simply unplugging all cell chargers while they aren't in use could save as much energy as is used by 60,000 average European residences. 

To combat the problem, the taskforce is considering having cell phone's announce "Please unplug the charger," when the phone finishes charging. I'm not a huge fan of electronics that talk back, but I'm also not a fan of wasting wasted energy. Nokia says that the alerts will be in place on their phones by 2007.

 

Via TreeHugger and ZDNet 

So, you've noticed that there hasn't been the same volume of EcoGeek content that there once was, and you were wondering if something was awry at EcoGeek.  Well, no, not at all, it's just that I, Chief Editor Hank Green, just got banded and bound to Katherine, who has been my partner in crime for about eight years now. The wedding was marvelous, lots of friends, video games and dancing.  But it wasn't particularly EcoGeeky, so I'll keep this short. 

EcoGeek is by no means a one-man show, but things were slow in the last week, and will be slow again when we go to Italy in a couple of weeks. But we'll keep providing all the news of environmental innovation that sparks in our brains or wonders across our plates. I often feel like there's a lot of despair in the environmental movement, but my marriage and my magazine are both completely contrary to the idea of despair.  The world is getting more awesome every day, that's what my marriage is about, and that's what EcoGeek is about. 

Our needs for portable power keep growing. Electrical and electronic devices are great, and the features and functionality they provide continues to expand. But none of these devices are worth anything without the power to make them work.

In addition to some of the other new battery technologies we've recently featured, there are some portable power generation methods. First, nano-engines could generate electricity efficiently from small amounts of fuel.  And second, small fuel cells can producing power from hydrogen gas. Both of these use some kind of fuel (hydrogen, alcohol, or hydrocarbon in liquid or gas form) to run the system and generate electric power.

The miniature engine is the project of a group of researchers at MIT. They recently announced that they have fabricated all the components necessary to produce micro scale gas-turbine engine that could provide 10 times longer life than a comparable weight of batteries (storage per kilogram.)

Creating these micro-turbines uses the same etching technology used to create computer chips. While the individual components have been developed, the next step is to get all of the components working together to demonstrate the abilities and effectiveness of the device.

Simultaneously, development is continuing on micro fuel cells as another promising avenue of development. Like larger scale fuel cells being developed for automotive use, these systems produce electricity directly when fuel is supplied to a catalyst. There are already some fuel-cell projects in the works, including cell phone chargers, and portable lights. 

The move from power storage to power generation could be a powerful shift for portable electronics as well as for the automotive industry.  Creating fuel-powered electric cars might seem like a step backward, but not when the fuel is hydrogen, and the power per kilogram is so very high. 

via: BoingBoing

Lithium ion batteries are great.  They've taken us miles beyond traditional non-rechargeable batteries. But, and you might have heard about this, they sometimes explode.  They're also reaching the limit of their capacity per kilogram.  One hundred fifty watt-hours per kilogram is a great number for a Li-Ion battery, but in the tech world, everything needs to double every few years, and if we're not going to do it with Li-ion batteries, we need to find something new.

And thin film batteries are certainly something new.  The batteries are actually composed of flat layers of pure lithium electrodes and an electrolyte bonded to a glassy surface.  The batteries never lose charge, can withstand extremes of heat and cold, can charge quickly and discharge slowly or quickly an infinite number of times, can pack a ton of power into a small space, and will not explode in your lap if you dent them.

Increasing the power to kilogram ratio is extremely important, not just in mobile computing, but also for electric driving, where the weight of batteries is a huge problem.  Lighter electric batteries means less electricity is needed to power the car, and so the car can go further, faster, and weigh less. 

Thin film batteries are, of course, currently far to expensive for retail.  But if Silicon Valley has taught us anything, it's that a technology in demand never stays expensive for too long.

The Fiat Panda has two models. One runs on either methanol or gasoline, while the other runs on methanol, gasoline or E85.  This is the kind of multi-fuel vehicle that we will likely be seeing more of in the future.  Based on the needs of the environment, the economy, the user and the car, these multi-fuel cars can swap between fuel sources and even between engines (as we've seen in hybrid cars.)  The drawback is that these cars need to be heavier, incorporating more tanks and fuel lines and, in the case of hybrids, even a whole other engine.

But the advantages often outweigh those problems, especially when calculating the effect on the environment, as both methanol and E85 are cleaner and have lower net CO2 emissions than gasoline.

 

Via Autoblog