energy

DAVIS, Calif.--Reporters who covered software in the '90s will remember Karl Jacob. Microsoft bought his company, Dimension X, in 1997. He was chatty. Occasionally, some reporters referred to him as "sources close to the company."

After leaving the big M, he went off to Keen, Benchmark Capital and a few other things. And now, he's the world record holder of the standing mile speed record.

In July, Jacob cranked up his modified Dodge Viper from a standstill to finishing a mile in 27.41 seconds. He hit 220.7 miles an hour during the sprint, a … Read more

Davis, Calif.--This is truly a creepy presentation, this one being delivered by Kamal Hassan, CEO of Skymeter.com right now at the GoingGreen conference in Davis, California.

The company has come up with $130 boxes that, when placed in cars, lets the authorities turn public roads into toll roads.

"You could price every road in the state" with enough cars, he said. The cars also have to have GPS units.

Gee, thanks.

The company doesn't have signed contracts yet, but apparently toll roads are growing in popularity. Singapore has been putting in more toll roads since … Read more

DAVIS, Calif.--A lot of time gets wasted in traffic.

Americans lose 3.7 billion hours a year in traffic jams, both anticipated jams and unexpected ones, according to Mygistics CEO Michael Ostrom, speaking at the GoingGreen conference taking place here.

Those delays result in 2.7 billion gallons of gas being burned unproductively. And 5.8 billion gallons of gas a year could be saved if Americans chose to work one day a week at home.

Why is Ostrom such a font of national traffic patterns? Because Mygistics is trying to create a dynamic, national-scale traffic model. The company … Read more

Some large corporations now have a million square feet worth of floor space dedicated to data centers.

It's a factoid that Peter Van Deventer, CEO of SynapSense and a former Intel exec, likes to fling out. The company, which evolved from research at UC Davis, makes software and sensors for mapping out the weather in data centers. The sensors measure temperature, pressure and other environmental factors on a continuous basis.

Data center owners can then take this data and tweak their air conditioning and cooling systems. Soon, the SynapSense's technology will also be able to automatically control the … Read more

The winds of change are apparently upon us, quite literally, where alternative means of transportation are concerned. Just yesterday we wrote of a flying boat to come out of Brazil, for example, and now we learn of a trimaran that runs on kite power off the shores of Hawaii.

We're not talking about ordinary sails here, but high-tech kites that "harness higher winds above the water, reduce wetted surface with a lifting force, and improve hull stability," according to Maui-based Kite For Sail. The system, which provides far more propulsion than conventional sails, is meant to supplement … Read more

Is Microsoft Vista global warming friendly? Could Vista be the best-selling clean-tech product in the world? I was thinking about this question the other day, and started e-mailing the Microsoft press relations folks looking for an answer.

The Microsoft answer--yes, it is. They have a recent release titled "Windows Vista Power Management Features Can Help U.K. Companies Reduce Their Carbon Footprint" on some independent research they had done by PC Pro Labs in the U.K.

Here's their quote:

"Windows Vista is Microsoft's most energy efficient operating system to date with its power … Read more

Canada's General Fusion has received $1.2 million in venture funding to conduct further research on its fusion reactors, according to VentureWire.

The company's ultimate plan is to build small fusion reactors that can produce around 100 megawatts of power. The plants would cost around $50 million. That could allow the company to generate electricity at about 4 cents per kilowatt hour, relatively low. (By contrast, roughly $250 million was spent on a 64-megawatt solar thermal plant in Las Vegas recently.)

General Fusion has adopted the Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) model. In this scenario, an electric current is … Read more

The explosion in clean tech investing has been a boon to material scientists and engineers from the semiconductor industry. Sources at Intel tell me that many of them have seen co-workers depart for solar start-ups or companies working on new types of batteries.

But software experts shouldn't feel left out, notes Warren Weiss, a general partner at venture capital firm Foundation Partners in a stopover at the firm's offices last week (They are right next to Sunset Magazine in Menlo Park, Calif.). In clean tech, one of the bigger opportunities, he says, is with companies that want to … Read more

The Airborne Laser has taken another step forward in its long slog off the drawing board and into the Pentagon's arsenal.

The first-of-its-kind 747-400F this month completed a series of low-power test flights, using onboard infrared sensors to locate "an instrumented target board" on an Air Force NC-135E aircraft. Once the Airborne Laser(ABL) found the target, two solid-state illuminator lasers tracked the target and assessed atmospheric conditions--the later function being key to plotting a path to the target for the weapons laser. Since the high-energy COIL (chemical oxygen iodine laser) weapons system has yet to be … Read more