If you need a table saw, a 10-foot pipe clamp or a 20-foot pruner, you’ve normally got three choices: Buy it, rent it or borrow it from a neighbor. Portland is fast becoming a leader in a fourth way: checking it out for free at a tool lending library. About 900 of the more than [...]
The digital divide has narrowed dramatically in the past decade. About two-thirds of American households report using the Internet at home, according to the U.S. Census. In affluent Washington suburbs, the numbers are higher; more than 90 percent of Fairfax households with children have home computers. But even in Fairfax, the digital divide lives on [...]
Late last week, I saw a Verizon van across the street. I’m assuming the people who moved in down the block had their phone service connected. Tuesday was windy here. Every time we’d get a big gust of wind, my dsl connection would drop out. For the past 2 days, my dsl connection had been [...]
A unique project is underway Friday night in Pointe Coupee parish. Officials there are putting together a program to keep communications up and running in case of an emergency. Officials are turning to old reliable amateur radio to do just that. Fordoche mayor Justin Cox says it’s going to be the Pointe Coupee back up. [...]
Virginia Tech officials say a computer crash caused the university’s “VT Alert System” to fail during Thursday’s (11/13) shooting scare. It’s not what they expected for the system’s first real-life test since being implemented following the April 16th shootings. Tech officials are blaming the system’s private contractor. The alert system had previously passed 4 simulated [...]
Apple’s iPhone has shaken up the cellphone business. Its next targets are Nintendo and Sony. The iPhone and the iPod touch, which feature big screens and powerful graphics, are emerging as serious competitors to Nintendo’s DS handheld and Sony’s PlayStation Portable. Game publishers such as Sega Corp. and Id Software Inc. are devoting more resources [...]
Microsoft is pushing out a Windows security patch, marked as critical later today. Microsoft hasn’t sent out an emergency patch since April 2007. Microsoft hasn’t offered many details about the patch, other than to say it should be applied immediately to Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems. Read (Mary-Jo Foley) Here’s a [...]
In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects. So far, most chains have outfitted fewer [...]
Thieves stole an irrigation controller from the wall of a Tucson housing development and then installed at a ranch 80 miles away. They didn’t realize that the controller had wireless capabilities, and after it was installed at its “new” location, it started reporting back to its original owners. The original owners were able to query [...]
Stern Pinball Inc. is the last of its kind in the world. A range of companies once mass produced pinball machines, especially in the Chicago area, the one-time capital of the business. Now there is only Stern. And even the dinging and flipping here has slowed: Stern, which used to crank out 27,000 pinball machines [...]
Long a familiar sight on the roads of Europe and Asia, motorized scooters are still relatively rare in the United States. While much of the world views them as a practical – and often stylish – necessity, they’ve occupied more of a niche market in the car-centric US, where scooter riders were perhaps justifiably seen [...]
The Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis collapsed last August after construction workers had put 99 tons of sand on the roadway directly over two of the bridge’s weakest points, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report. In all, board researchers calculated a load of 1.26 million pounds, including 198,820 pounds of [...]
Roughly 5 to 10 percent of global CO2 emissions are related to the manufacture and transportation of cement, a major ingredient of concrete. With cement production expected to grow exponentially in coming decades, the industry is trying to address its environmental challenges. The manufacture of cement is relatively efficient when compared with other building materials, [...]
Air New Zealand says it plans to mount the first test flight of a commercial airliner partially powered by biofuel. One of the four engines will run on a mixture of kerosene and a biofuel, and is set for late 2008 or early 2009. Read (BBC)
An emergency room might be the last place you’d think would have do-it-yourself check-in. But Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas has three self-service computer kiosks, similar to those used by airport passengers and hotel guests. And so do a handful of other hospital ERs, where the long wait in line to register and explain symptoms [...]
A wearable GPS device that accepts voice commands, takes pictures, and logs evidence could speed up crime scene investigation and reduce errors. The prototype consists of a small, thin computer about the size of a small book, which is equipped with GPS, a digital camera and an RFID tag reader. The computer is worn by [...]
The Toronto Dominion Centre is the most distinctive set of office towers in the city’s financial district. Three of the five black buildings were designed by Mies van der Rohe and built in the late 1960s. So was their air conditioning. The three original towers, which contain about 3 million square feet of office space, [...]
The new Honda Accord, which will go on sale in September, will not be available in a gasoline-electric hybrid version, according to a company spokesman. Honda claims that its hybrid system works better on smaller cars. Honda previously announced that it will introduce a new hybrid car in 2009. That car will be smaller in [...]
Fifty-one years after the first commercial robot went to work, the United States is approaching a tipping point. Within a decade, observers say, the average American household will include one or two simple robots, and though they may not look like the ones imagined in science fiction, these robots – some available now – will [...]
A dozen states are competing intensely to play host to a government research lab full of killer germs like anthrax, avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease – a prospect some of their residents want to avoid like the plague. The states are bidding for a proposed 520,000-square-foot National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility that will cost at [...]