water

An average of one water main breaks somewhere in the U.S. every two minutes, according to the latest U.S. Geological Survey.

It's no wonder then that 85 percent of American voters agreed the government should invest money to overhaul the nation's water infrastructure, according to a report released Wednesday by water systems manufacturer ITT Corporation.

Voters are also willing to pay for the upgrade.

When asked if they were willing to pay 11 percent more on their monthly water bill "to help ensure continued access to a reliable and consistent supply of clean water," … Read more

PVT Solar is entering the solar-panel market with a twist: its system generates electricity as well as heat.

The San Francisco area-based start-up today said that it has raised a series B round of $13.7 million from Sigma Partners and named a former SunPower executive, Vikas Desai, as CEO. The money will be used to expand the company's operations, including sales and distribution.

Price competition in the global business for solar photovoltaic modules is brutal, with prices for panels falling steadily. PVT Solar is seeking to differentiate itself with multipurpose modules that produce electricity and harvest the heat … Read more

IBM is tapping into its own network of PC owners to help figure out how to clean up drinking water.

Big Blue announced Monday a series of high-tech projects related to creating safer drinking water, which IBM notes is a rare resource for at least 1.2 billion people worldwide.

To drive the initiatives, the company is calling on its World Community Grid, a network of PC owners who pitch in computing time to help scientists tackle global problems. People who volunteer for the Grid allow their idle computers to be used by IBM to collectively run simulations and other … Read more

Six students from Rice University have spent the past month in Morocco figuring out how best to capture drops of water in the foggy Atlas Mountains so that nearby villagers have better access to safe drinking water.

Working in Sidi Ifni, Morocco, with the Dar Si Hmad Foundation--which was founded by 1998 Rice graduate Jamila Bargach--the students used structures resembling volleyball nets with a polyethylene mesh to capture tiny droplets of water that drip down the nets into tubes and then (thanks to gravity) down larger pipes that lead to a water storage tank at the bottom of the … Read more

IoSafe released on Wednesday a new member of its family of disaster-proof external hard drives, the IoSafe SoloPro.

Measuring 5 inches by 7.1 inches by 11 inches and weighing 15 pounds, the IoSafe SoloPro is about as serious as a single-volume external hard drive can be when it comes to physical size and ruggedness. For comparison, the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk, one of the biggest conventional desktop single-volume external hard drives, weighs about 2 pounds.

All the extra weight in the SoloPro comes from layers of protective materials, which are designed to keep it safe from potential fire and … Read more

SereneScreen Marine Aquarium is a realistic, high-definition screensaver that converts your computer screen into a vibrant, colorful saltwater aquarium. You can choose from 27 different exotic fish species--from the Addis Butterflyfish to the Yellow Tang--and SereneScreen can display up to 30 fish at a time, with an easy interface for creating and customizing your own sets of fish (including an option for random species). You also have settings for autopanning, framerate, iTunes playlists, and a bubble column (from a virtual aerator, with optional bubble sound).

SereneScreen has an optional "crystal" paperweight in the tank, too, which you can … Read more

It's probably not a good sign that the first thing people ask me when they notice I'm holding an iPhone 4 is always something about how I deal with the reception issues. I've said here before that I have yet to experience dropped calls or any other issues related to "Antennagate" (yeesh, will we--as a society--ever get over the whole "Whatevergate" meme?), but that's probably largely just luck; maybe I'm fortunate that where I go in my daily life is covered pretty well by AT&T. I suspect I could be a rare exception.

The interesting thing to me is that the reception issues and "Death Grip" have been all over the news here in the U.S., but reports trickling in from other countries are quite the opposite. An Australian publication, The Daily Telegraph, gave a very positive review to Apple's iPhone 4 today saying finally about the reception issues, "Is the antenna an issue? No it's not. Have I dropped calls? No, I have not." Another story out of Norway (via AppleInsider) had similar results, with the writer concluding that the issues are more about weak U.S. mobile networks than they are about the iPhone 4 itself.

So my question is, even though the "Death Grip" might reduce your signal by a bar or two, if Apple had announced a deal with Verizon (or some other carrier) at launch, would we even be talking about "Antennagate?" I think I know what Steve Jobs would say if he thought nobody else was listening.

This week's iPhone AppsGate includes a fun tool to make stop-motion movies and a water-racing game sequel that is a huge improvement over the original.… Read more

Aqueduct takes a page from those popular classic pipeline-type puzzle games, bringing the same challenging gameplay to your touch-screen iPhone or iPod Touch. Like many online versions of the game, the mission in Aqueduct is to use available tiles to create a pipeline between a spigot and drain before you turn on the water supply. Aqueduct adds to the old pipeline formula by including conveyor belt tiles, teleports, door switches, and more, to create a fun and challenging time-waster that's easy to pick up and play wherever you are.

When we first started playing Aqueduct, we weren't immediately … Read more

Cleaning a water bottle is not an easy process, especially if you've been drinking something other than water from it. Even scrubbing the bottom of the bottle seems entirely impossible.

A bottle may look clean, but if you use it long enough, you can never get it to smell clean again--powdered mixes are particularly nasty culprits. The Clean Bottle takes a different approach than encouraging us to try to scrub out a bottle through one small opening. Instead, the Clean Bottle has a screw-off bottom so that you can access to the entire bottle when cleaning it. The bottom … Read more