power

Cities' green action plans; Yahoo loses a couple of prominent employees; and Republican and Democrats cast a vote for Microsoft.

City governments' response to climate change ranges from cutting-edge distributed energy to adding more bike lanes and trees. Climate change experts from four cities--London, Toronto, Chicago, and New York--spoke at the Mass Impact Symposium Monday in Cambridge, Mass., and CNET News.com intern Holly Jackson had the chance to chat with reporter Martin LaMonica about what they said.

Plus, Yahoo loses a couple of high-level employees--and it's getting set to announce a deal … Read more

If fry grease can run a Mercedes, why can't it power the restaurant it came from?

That's the idea behind Owl Power Company's Vegawatt power system, a machine that converts a restaurant's waste oil into electricity and hot water.

Co-generation, where a fuel is burned to make electricity, is regularly done at landfill incinerators or industrial biomass generators. There are also home co-generators, such as the Freewatt from Climate Energy.

Owl Power's twist on co-generation is that it lets restaurants use what's normally a waste product as a fuel for themselves.

James Peret, the … Read more

Summer is fast approaching, and Power Downloader is fielding lots of vacation-related questions. Kitty Kilobyte wants to know what's the best way to send her friends and family photos and video of her upcoming trip to South America. Pando for Windows and Mac is the way to go, says Power D.

Power then explains that with Pando installed, Kitty can drag and drop her large folder of images and WMVs into the Pando interface, which lets her send Power D, Francois Foto, and virtually anybody else in her address book a message with a link. When Power clicks that … Read more

Several new developments in the laptops graphics department from ATI and parent company AMD were announced at this year's Computex show in Taiwan.

To compete with Nvidia's just-announced GeForce 9M series of laptop GPUs, AMD now has the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 series. The company says, "The new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 series offers notebook manufacturers the ability to deliver fast graphics performance, energy-efficient 55nm graphics processor technology, amazing video playback, and, for the first time ever, ATI CrossFireX technology for a mobile graphics solution."

You can already get two Nvidia GPUs in select … Read more

These always sell out fast, so I'll cut right to the chase: Buy.com has the Black & Decker Pocket Power on sale for $10 shipped -- no rebates required.

This portable, rechargeable battery pack promises up to four hours of extra power for your mobile electronics: cell phones, iPods, digital cameras, etc. Just plug in your regular USB or AC charger and you've got juice. (On the plus side, that means no "tips" to manage, as with other portable chargers. However, it also means you have to bring along your power/USB cables.)

For 10 … Read more

Hewlett-Packard is licensing flat-panel display technology to a start-up that could lead to dramatically more productive--and aesthetically pleasing--solar panels.

The deal, announced Wednesday, allows Livermore, Calif.-based Xtreme Energetics to use HP-developed transparent transistors to bend light in concentrating photovoltaic, or CPV, solar arrays. CPV systems squeeze more electricity from panels by maximizing the light that hits solar cells.

The company is in the process of raising an "imminent" $5 million series A round of venture funding, and it anticipates a series B $35 million round, CEO Colin Williams said.

It intends to have a first-generation solar array … Read more

I just saw an interesting piece over on the EE Times website (here) written by David Carey, president of Portelligent, an analyst firm well-known for doing teardowns of popular electronic products.

Here are some of the key points I learned from the article:

According to Portelligent, the LCD is pretty similar to previous transflective LCDs (that is, LCDs that can work from transmitted backlight or reflected ambient light) except for the arrangement of the color subpixels. I've seen nothing particularly remarkable about mine. It offers poor off-axis image quality, as I described in my first look (here), and doesn'… Read more

As some people insist on turning their cars into vehicular workstations, we can expect to see more peripherals to help make their offices more efficient behind the wheel. One under-utilized spot is the cupholder--and that's where this next item comes in.

The "Targus 100W Cupholder Style Auto Power Inverter" fits snugly in the space that alternately holds your coffee and powers your gadgets with 100 to 150 watts through its 120-volt AC plug, according to Uncrate. Additional convenience comes in the form of USB and PPS ports for mobile phones and other handheld devices.

The only downside … Read more

Mariah Power says its Windspire vertical-axis wind turbine is now commercially available, after having passed performance tests.

The Windspire costs $4,995, which includes the inverter, pole, and other equipment.

Typically, small-wind turbines such as Southwest Windpower's 1.9-kilowatt Skystream, are best suited for homes with a substantial amount of land.

Mariah Power said the Windspire is aimed at residential customers in urban, suburban, and rural areas. It has already been installed in a handful of U.S. locations.

"(Its) efficiency is on par with most propeller-based wind turbines, but it is priced much lower. It is also … Read more