A moving walkway, a robot maid named Rosie and a wife named Jane...sound familiar? It most likely does if you're George Jetson--or a visitor to the 2006 Sunset and Popular Science House of Innovation in Alamo, Calif. The house--which is open to the public until Nov. 12--showcases new technologies coming to a home near you.

One of the most fascinating pieces is the wine cellar. Cold, dingy basements will be extinct with this General Electric innovation. Not only can you store your wine, but you can have it catalogued and bar-coded--all from one touch-screen machine located on the … Read more

Miasole, one of the fast-rising companies in solar technology, will try to do an IPO within 12 to 18 months, said CEO David Pearce (no, not the guy from "Frasier").

The goal for 2007 for the company is also to be profitable for the year.

It's a tall order for a start-up, but the timing is pretty good. Solar panels are in short supply these days. Miasole specializes in CIGS solar cells. CIGS stands for copper indium gallium selenide. Unlike silicon solar cells, CIGS cells can be printed on flexible sheets of foil or other material.

CIGS … Read more

This from Christine Peterson at the Foresight Institute: an Australian company called Nanovations has come up with an antibacterial paint by swirling in silver nano particles.

Silver has been known to kill germs since the Roman era. Nanohorizons incorporates it into socks to make stink-free gym socks, while Samsung sells an antibacterial washing machine that kills germs with nano silver.

Nanovations plans to sell the paint to hospitals. The paint, though, must be handled with care.

(Peterson, by the way, gets credit for coining the term "open source." She slipped the phrase in during a meeting with some … Read more

What's the new polyester? Feathers.

Researchers at the University of Nebraska are trying to create fabrics made from chicken feathers and rice straw to replace the petroleum-based artificial fabrics in bike jerseys, jackets, carpets and other garments or items. The chicken feather fabric will feel more like wool, while the straw fabric will resemble cotton, so you won't resemble a scarecrow or a homecoming float mascot.

Success, of course, could turn the fabric industry upside down. The cost of fabrics could decline because the base product would be waste product. Oil exports could drop a bit, and farmers … Read more

Hydrogen-powered vehicles are out, and they are lumbering around the warehouse.

Six companies--including Wal Mart and Bridgestone--are currently conducting trials with fork lifts that run on hydrogen rather than lead acid batteries, according to John Sheridan, CEO of Ballard Power Systems, which makes hydrogen fuel cells, at the ThinkEquity Partners Growth Conference taking place in San Francisco this week. Cellex Power and General Hydrogen produced the vehicles, which run on fuel cells from Ballard.

Granted, a fork lift isn't as glamorous as a four-seater hydrogen-powered convertible, or a 21st Century version of the Hindenburg, but the application fits pretty … Read more

SunPower, the fast-growing Silicon Valley solar powerhouse, will come out in the fourth quarter with a solar cell that converts 22 percent of the sunlight into electricity, said Manny Hernandez, the CFO of SunPower.

That's good news for the company. SunPower's current high-performance panels, on average, convert about 20 percent of the light that strikes it into electricity. Conventional silicon solar panels convert about 14 to 17 percent of light.

The theoretical maximum is around 26 to 27 percent, said Hernandez. (A few others have said it could go slightly higher, but most predictions are around this level.) … Read more

Oil will move faster through a pipeline if it's clumped together in small particles, according to a new report from the American Chemical Society.

By applying a magnetic or electric charge (depending on the oil you are dealing with), the oil will clump into larger particles and zip through the pipeline faster. Clumping reduces viscosity.

As the recent spill in Alaska shows, pipelines remain a feat of engineering, but they aren't easy to maintain. But, since very few people are giving up their cars voluntarily, we have to deal with them. A company, Fiber Optic System Technologies, has … Read more

The American Red Cross of Central Florida has adopted an emergency messaging service from MessageOne that will allow it to send simultaneous messages to 1,500 emergency volunteers at once. Sort of an important thing after the recovery fiasco of Hurricane Katrina last year.

AlertFind essentially takes an e-mail message from a sender and blasts it out to hundreds or thousands of individuals at once. The system also gathers responses. If no response comes, it then tries alternative methods--cell phones, pagers, home numbers--to reach recipients who didn't reply.

The key to making rain where it wouldn't ordinarily fall could be an extremely large black tarp.

Researchers from the University of Brussels and Ben Gurion University of the Negev want to cover several kilometers of the desert in a special solar-absorbing material that they say could cause clouds to form and rain to fall. Unknown ecological disasters aside for the moment, the technique could be used to transform barren regions into farming centers.

The material, from a company called Acktar, is a thin, relatively light black-colored polymer that can stretched onto frames. The frames would then be placed … Read more