water

A competition held by nonprofit ImagineH2O highlights the close connection between water and energy.

ImagineH2O, a not-for-profit company formed to foster innovation around water, last week announced that the three winners to its Water-Energy Nexus Prize, a competition for the best business ideas to reduce the energy needed to move and treat fresh water and wastewater. Winners out of the more than 50 participants were awarded $100,000 in cash and in-kind services.

The top prize went to Hydrovolts, a Seattle-based company that makes a hydrokinetic turbine designed specifically for manmade canals. Flowing water turns adjustable wings to generate electricity. … Read more

Here's what I can tell you about the drinking water situation in the tiny Rwandan village of Mwite. The few closest spring catchments--basically cement basins with a pipe of flowing water--are working, but not producing as much water as they should. The catchment further to the west, a handmade system nearly a century old, is no longer functioning, so the best bet will probably require a walk to the northernmost safe water source in the area, the newest cement-encased spring catchment, built in 2007.

I didn't speak to anyone in Rwanda for this story, or to anyone who had recently been to Mwite, north of the capital city of Kigali, but I can confidently relay details about the water situation in that far-flung rural village thanks to...what else? An Android-based app.

The agencies and nonprofit organizations that work to ensure that places like Mwite have clean drinking water will tell you that infrastructure is just one challenge, among others being highlighted today on World Water Day. After the pipes and pumps are installed, there's the never-ending task of monitoring and maintaining thousands of sites spread across the challenging terrain of places like Rwanda, Liberia, or Bolivia.

For years, teams would go into the field with pounds of paper questionnaires, cameras, and maybe an expensive GPS, and gather data on individual sites--all of which would then be stuffed in a file cabinet somewhere back in the capital city, spending most of its time collecting dust.

Today's high-end smartphones combine all those monitoring tools into a single, inexpensive, convenient device that not only collects data on water projects but can also analyze, map, and share it--tasks that would have in many cases taken an unthinkable amount of time just a year ago.

That's when Water for People, a Denver-based nonprofit working on water and sanitation projects in 11 countries, started thinking about an easier way to monitor its projects. The group brought in developer Dru Borden of Gallatin Systems to design an application that could handle survey results, photos, and geolocation data in a single package. The result is Field Level Operations Watch, better known as FLOW. Water for People deployed a team equipped with smartphones loaded with FLOW for the first time in Rwanda last August. … Read more

Yes, you have come to the right place. Yes, this is where you will get to see the Jennifer Aniston "sex tape."

You will notice that the phrase "sex tape" is embraced by flying commas, so you might fear it won't be the precise sort of sex tape that might get you through your day.

Still, please put your feet up and your trepidations aside while I explain.

Aniston wants to sell you water. Smart Water. However, she understands that she need to succumb to the needs of the age and make "a video … Read more

Great-sounding albums are becoming increasingly rare, so when I find noteworthy efforts I'm happy to share the news. The goal is highlighting new stuff--or at least newly recorded/remastered music--so there's no need to include Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" or Steely Dan's "Aja." I assume you're already hip to the best music from decades past; I'm trying to spread the word about the best new music over a range of styles, with something for every taste.

For more sonicly superior music, check out my "How to make your speakers sound better: Play better-sounding music&… Read more

For those who haven't heard of WaterField, it's a San Francisco company founded by a former Boston bike messenger and professed "bagophile." The company takes pride in the fact that its bags are made in San Francisco, "where rent is high, labor is expensive and competition is intense," and made a bit of a name for itself with with its Cargo Bag. However, more recently it's branched into a lot of gadget categories, including the iPad and Kindle.

While its products aren't inexpensive, they are some of the swankier, well-built gadget cases … Read more

Oracle, Sun's new parent, is paying out $46 million over kickback allegations that got Sun in a bit of trouble.

Levied by the U.S. government, the fine will settle claims that Sun Microsystems had paid kickbacks to technology partners such as Accenture in return for recommendations that key government agencies buy from Sun. Sun allegedly paid outside consulting companies any time one of them convinced a federal agency to purchase a Sun product or service, the Department of Justice announced yesterday.

Beyond Sun, several other tech players were caught up in the kickback allegations, including Hewlett-Packard, which was … Read more

Here's one for all the fitness and gadget gurus: the i-dration device.

The prototype bottle, which developer Cambridge Consultants is calling the first in a new generation of hardware apps (although we've found others), dispenses hydration advice by wirelessly transmitting real-time data to a smartphone. The bottle's sensors monitor not only fluid quantity but also temperature and drinking frequency.

The corresponding smartphone app, in turn, uses the phone's built-in accelerometer and gyroscope to measure exercise levels, and then fuses data from a heart-rate chest band with pre-entered details (i.e. height, age, weight) to assess the … Read more

ioSafe, maker of disaster-proof storage devices such as the ioSafe SoloPro for general consumers, is looking to get people excited about what it's going to unveil at CES 2011.

The company put out a short blog post on its Web site today challenging people to guess, well, what it's going to show off at the world's biggest annual consumer electronic show. The reward for the lucky winner: a sample of the product itself.

Apart from a short clue that reads: "It weighs more than a Cadbury Cream Egg but less than an adult coon hound," the company also posted an ambiguous-looking image of the device, pictured above. To qualify to win, you just have to leave a comment at on the blog post by January 2. Some other restrictions apply, of course.

My guess is as good as yours, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be another superrugged storage product, possibly even bullet-proof, considering the blog teased the users by suggesting a "Napalm-proof NAS."… Read more

In the beginning there was tap water. (Well, not the beginning-beginning, but it's a good place to start.) Faucets everywhere poured forth the most essential of ingredients: water. Jugs, buckets, and bottles were filled with H2O and carried about. Eventually, somebody figured out that people would pay for individual bottles of water, and industry took notice. Now, water bottles populate store shelves, seemingly outnumbering soda in the amount of varieties available. Problem is, all those water bottles are a terrific waste.

Luckily, water is readily available, and the stuff that comes out of a tap is regulated. However, regulated … Read more