ge

The government's $19 billion incentive package to compel doctors and hospitals to digitize their inefficient paper record systems is nice and shiny. But until a platform exists to support the easy yet secure flow of highly sensitive personal information, that promise could also be empty.

Seeing a business opportunity, General Electric unveiled on Thursday its new unit, eHealth, a suite of solutions that aims to provide the necessary infrastructure. (GE reports that it is investing $90 million to launch eHealth.) It is a daunting task, but if it works, a digital record system that streamlines connectivity between clinicians and … Read more

Appliance manufacturer Whirlpool has received $19.3 million in U.S. Department of Energy funding as part of its Smart Grid Investment Grant program, the company announced Thursday.

Whirlpool, which markets appliances under the brand names Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Brastemp, Consul, and Bauknecht, joins General Electric in what seems to be a quest for designing the most well-behaved appliances.

Similar to GE's smart-appliance ambitions, Whirlpool plans to develop home appliances that can connect and communicate with municipal smart grids. The machines will be able to receive signals from a smart grid, letting it know of off-peak hours, … Read more

Molly and I go off on the Net neutrality debate, not so much about what the meaning of it is, but more on why you shouldn't use lies to defend your position. We also discuss the attractiveness of the Nook from Barnes and Noble, and Molly and Rafe have a BlackBerry fight. About the phones. Not the fruit.

Retail distribution may tip e-reader race; Barnes & Noble rolls out Nook http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=26305

Barnes & Noble’s … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--In a wide-ranging interview at the Web 2.0 Summit, Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, announced a low-cost and very portable ultrasound scanner called the Vscan.

"It's about the same size as a BlackBerry," Immelt said, holding up a white device that appeared to fold in the middle like a flip-phone. The top of the device showed an ultrasound image (of a patient's liver, we were told), while the bottom showed control keys.

"This is Moore's law," he said, saying that the device had the same power as a console ultrasound … Read more

Israeli start-up Solar Edge has secured $23 million in funding to further develop its technology for increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic panels.

GE Energy Financial Services was a principle contributor to this latest round of funding and made the announcement Wednesday.

In May, SolarEdge unveiled a boosting technology for photovoltaic panels that it said could increase a solar power system's output by as much as 25 percent.

The SolarEdge system is a junction box with an integrated circuit that is embedded into existing solar photovoltaic panels to minimize the amount of electricity loss, thereby maximizing the amount of power … Read more

Abu Dhabi's planned green community, Masdar City, will be testing General Electric's smart appliances in a handful of residences and coordinating them with its power grid, GE said Monday.

GE's Consumer & Industrial division announced in October 2008 that it was developing home appliances that could ease the strain on electrical grids by coordinating with a grid's off-peak hours to perform flexible functions.

A refrigerator equipped with a "smart" meter, for example, communicates with the local power utility. That refrigerator then waits to run its automatic defrost cycle until it has received a signal … Read more

In the U.K., you don't have to be in the presence of someone to serve them with legal papers. So now Twitter has become a way to get served. We also are happy that the U.S. government is taking cybersecurity seriously, but maybe they could lay off with the cyber prefix a little. And we try to care more about the Palm Pixi. We really do.

Vista/IE market share slide, Win 7/Firefox/Chrome surge http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=5700… Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--General Electric plans to give its solar business a charge within two years by introducing panels with the same solar cell material used by industry cost leader First Solar.

In 2011, the energy giant expects to produce solar panels made with cadmium telluride, a thin-film solar cell material, Michael Idelchik, vice president of advanced technologies at GE Global Research, said here Wednesday at the EmTech conference. The company now sells solar panels that use silicon solar cells, but its long-term bet is on thin-film--and specifically cadmium telluride--because it offers the cheapest cost per watt, he said.

Last year, … Read more

General Electric filled out its offshore wind turbine portfolio by buying ScanWind, which makes direct-drive turbine components.

GE on Monday said that it has completed the acquisition, which was valued at a about $18.5 million. ScanWind, which is headquartered in Trondheim, Norway and has a design center in Karlstad, Sweden, is now testing 11 turbines off the Norwegian coast.

ScanWind makes a drive train that eliminates the need for a gear box in a wind turbine. Direct drive turbines typically add cost to turbines but they are gaining use in small turbines and other places where low maintenance is … Read more