Private rocket firm scrubs launch

SpaceX, the private company that wants to put rockets in orbit, scrubbed its second attempted launch on Monday because of technical difficulties that arose when emptying a fuel tank.

"Due to high winds, we placed the countdown on hold and began draining the fuel tank. As we drained fuel from the 1st stage tank, a faulty pressurization valve caused a vacuum condition in the tank. This caused a fuel tank barrel section to deform and suck inward. It is important to note that the root cause is an electrical fault with a valve, not structural design," wrote SpaceX … Read more

Yahoo signs license with JPEG patent company

Search giant Yahoo has decided to take a license out on the so-called JPEG patent with Forgent Networks. Under the deal, Yahoo will pay Forgent royalties but be dismissed from the pending patent suit taking place in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The suit, which involves several remaining defendants, revolves around U.S. patent number 4,698,672. Forgent acquired the patent when it bought Compression Labs in 1997. During an audit of its intellectual property portfolio in the early 2000s, company officials first realized that the patent, in their belief, embodied a method … Read more

World Economic Forum salutes tech pioneers

The World Economic Forum--an annual conference that brings together world leaders to discuss important issues and, according to past attendees, drink late into the night-- unfurled a list of 36 start-ups that it says are tech visionaries. (To attend the Davos, Switzerland gatherings, winners will have to cough up $15,000.)

Many have been profiled on News.com before. One, the two-person Ecology Coatings has developed waterproof paper and fast-drying paint that requires fewer toxic chemicals. Matrix Semiconductor, recently acquired by , designs 3D semiconductors. Another, Amyris, founded by Lawrence Livermore Labs scientist Jay Keasling, has created a way to artificially … Read more

Sun-powered data center beats the heat

A California hosting company has adopted "green building" designs and solar power to keep its energy costs low and market itself to environmentally aware customers.

Affordable Internet Services Online (AISO) on Sunday issued a press release which details the energy-efficient upgrades it has made to the company's building and data center.

AISO is powering its computing gear entirely with solar power from over 120 photovoltaic panels. The company has also adopted a few green building techniques to reduce its overall power consumption.

The data center itself has been reconstructed using steel studs, which the company considers the … Read more

Oil expert Daniel Yergin says the end is not near

Despite all the fears about oil reserves running out, it won't happen anytime soon, said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.

"This is not a world running out of oil anytime soon. It is a compelling image, but not the right image," he told an audience at the International Petroleum Technology Conference in Doha, Qatar.

The problem, he said, is that skeptics often discount the role of technology in allowing oil companies to tap new reserves. In the '70s, offshore oil … Read more

IBM gets national medal of technology for chips

IBM received the National Medal of Technology, one of the premier awards in engineering, for advances in semiconductors, including breakthroughs in silicon-on-insulator, copper manufacturing technologies, and dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

Although Big Blue has had trouble in recent years making money off of its chip division, IBM's research often receives high praise. Over the past few years, it has begun to line up partnerships with companies such as Advanced Micro Devices, Sony and Microsoft. In these deals, IBM provides R&D and chip design for a fee.

The award often goes to individuals such as Caltech'… Read more

Start-up creates tools for verifying, managing online reputation

Reputations can be a slippery thing. If Attila didn't have a reputation for ruthlessness, for instance, Rome may not have fallen so easily. And it's a problem in the online world too. Burk1185 might be one of the best sellers of bike parts on eBay, but Burk 1185 on Yahoo auctions might be a thief.

San Jose-based Opinity has created a service that lets web sites and users get information on a person's reputation, even if that person use several pseudonyms, said CEO Ted Cho at the Dow Jones Consumer Venture Conference taking place in San Jose. … Read more

Samsung shows off fuel cell for notebooks

Samsung unveiled a prototype of a fuel cell that can run a laptop for 15 hours or more and may come to the market in 2007.

Like fuel cells for MP3 players devised by Toshiba and others, the Samsung fuel cell runs on liquid methanol. The methanol passes through a specialized membrane, which extracts electrons.

The fuel cell has an energy density of 200 watt hours per liter. Since notebooks consume around 15 watts to 10 watts on average, which means around a 15 hour run time. (200 watt hours divided by average watts.) It can provide a maximum output … Read more

A notebook-sized screen created by a printer

Britain's Cambridge Display Technology said it has produced screens illuminated by organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) that measure 14-inches across, a milestone in the effort to bring these types of displays to the mass market.

The 14-inch display, which has a resolution of 1280 pixels by 768 pixels, is functional. Moreover, more than one has been made, the company said. Earlier this year, Cambridge Display showed of a prototype measuring 5.5 inches in diameter.

OLED is viewed as a potential successor to liquid crystal displays, used in many flat-panel TVs and computer monitors. Materials in an OLED display … Read more