nature

If you asked geeks which manufacturer would be the first to take a shot at the MacBook Air, Lenovo probably would not be at the top of the list. Yet a rumored update to the manufacturer's X series line of ultraportables could do just that.

Gizmodo is thanking Best Buy for spilling the beans on the ThinkPad X300, which will reportedly replace last year's ThinkPad X61s. The ThinkPad X300 is said to feature a 13.3-inch wide-screen LED-backlit display, full-size keyboard, and 64GB solid-state drive. (Sound familiar?) Even better, the laptop is expected to include an integrated optical … Read more

Has Silicon Valley acupuncturist Ted Ray come up with the cure for jet lag?

FlyRight is an herbal concoction that Ray says will ameliorate the effects of jet lag. Jet lag is often caused by the disruption in a person's circadian rhythms--the rhythms an individual establishes with the day/night cycles where they have been living.

But there are other causes--canned, recycled air; stress; dehydration; and poor blood circulation. All of these symptoms can be attenuated by the various herbs in the liquid, he says. Ginkgo? Good for swelling and fatigue caused by poor circulation. Linden works on circadian … Read more

Against all odds, land lines are valiantly forging ahead in hopes of making an unlikely comeback. Though thoroughly mocked by other gadget blogs, for instance, Motorola debuted its "MOTOLIVN" home phone this week for the European market.

Maybe that's a key part of the strategy: Europe. Because Doro, a manufacturer based in Sweden, is also expanding its continental land-line business. And like other European phone makers--namely Philips and Siemens--Doro is focusing its efforts on form as much as function, if not more.

The company says its "NeoBio" line of DECT phones, for example, comes … Read more

My first thought when stepping into the Powerset offices: "Overfunded." The company, which aims to create a better search engine than Google, already has some of the search giant's trappings: fancy offices (though rented), a game room, and a victor's arrogance. Yet if the Powerset team can pull off what it's set out to do, it will indeed revolutionize search and the way people use the Web, not to mention its economics.

You may have missed this on your favorite blog site, and you definitely missed this if you looked at American TV news. Reunion Island got smashed on Saturday. Big waves. Lots of damage. It was not a tsunami this time. Certainly earthquakes can pack an enormous wallop, but the supporters of wind power surely have something going as well.

The European Space Agency (ESA) satellites were tracking the course of the big swells. Ocean swells, not rich guys with big heads. Big, really big waves. Some that slammed into Reunion without warning were over 35 feet high.

First, the satellite … Read more

We now know a lot about tsunamis that we didn't know a few years ago. There's even been significant research showing how hurricanes and tsunamis can act alike once onshore. Today, we learn a little more about a tsunami that occurred 400 years ago.

Scientists now conclude that it was a tsunami that flooded the Bristol Channel in western England. It flooded hundreds of square miles and scoured the landscape, killing about 2,000 people. And that was on January 30, 1607. Long before anybody in England ever heard the word "tsunami." At the time, it … Read more

Those friendly Russians want to bring more energy directly to your doorstep if you live in North America. That means digging the world's longest tunnel. The proposed project would dig a tunnel over 60 miles long beneath the Bering Sea, surfacing at two islands en route.

Next week a coalition of Russian businesses will present this plan to Canada and the U.S. If it moves ahead, the tunnel would be twice as long as the one now connecting Britain and France.

The tunnel would connect major highways and pipelines yet to be constructed. The hope is to deliver … Read more

This LG laptop may be named "Return to Nature," but we're not buying it. After all, it's not made of bamboo or anything.

The limited-edition "Xnote S1" does have some nicely engraved foliage adorning its case, somewhat reminiscent of Medion's crystal flower design. More impressive is what's inside the 15.4-inch-screen computer--a 2.15GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive, according to BornRich.

The price of the laptop, which is destined for the Korean market, is unknown. We hope only that it's a tad less … Read more