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Okay, so the US Congress is moving on a bill to foster the sale of new fuel-efficient cars and trucks. Dubbed CARS, for Customer Assistance to Recycle and Save, the cash-for-clunkers rebate looks like it might be available at car dealers sometime soon.If CARS passes Congress and gets the President's signature, the government will dish out vouchers valued from $3500 to $4500 to car dealerships. So, if you trade-in an eligible vehicle and purchase a new one, they will pass along that hefty discount.Of course, the new car must meet or exceed specified fuel economy improvement standards. The idea is to replace older vehicles with new ones that use less fuel, while giving the struggling automobile industry a shot in the arm. The seed money for the CARS program, to the tune of $4 billion, is part of the government's $800 billion so-called stimulus package.If you buy a new car, and your old gas guzzler qualifies, the government could poke as much as $4500 into the deal. To qualify for that, your old car has to have ...

Since AT&T gained the exclusive US rights to the iPhone they have added two-and-a-half million subscribers to their rolls. Not a huge number compared to the world’s total number of wireless subscribers, estimated at two hundred and seventy million by the industry; but a serious enough number to put a dent in the competition.The same is true for those who desperately want to use a Palm Pre phone but don’t have a subscription to Sprint Nextel. Or, we are told, those who are Google Android hungry but aren’t on T-Mobile…The mobile phone market is one of contracts and exclusivity. Lock in a subscriber for a year, or even two years. Look after them reasonably well and maybe they won’t notice that the contract period is over and they are free to move elsewhere. Don’t take care of them, or confuse them over billings (a very popular complaint) and you lose that subscriber to one of the other carriers – especially when there is a new handset out there that is more attracti...

Given the exciting reports leaking out of Iran, it’s easy to marvel at how a handful of determined people and a little bit of innovative technology can help sow the seeds for democracy right under the nose of a tyrannical dictatorship – even if it’s not exactly what’s actually going on. I, too, am not immune to the hopeful signs coming out of one of the oldest and most socially complex nations on the planet. Sadly, my enthusiasm is tempered by a little historical perspective that indicates we’re witnessing not so much a revolution as an arms race between the forces of freedom and oppression that’s playing itself out in many nations: including our own.An insightful blog post from my friend Loring Wirbel pointed out how the media is abuzz with glowing reports of how Twitter, podcasts, and other Internet-based communications have unleashed an unstoppable tsunami of democracy within Iran while they fail to report on many of the other important social and political forces at wor...

I love batteries. One of the first engineering toys I enjoyed when I was a youngster back in the early 1950s was a dc motor that my father and I built from a kit. A pair of series-connected D cells powered the motor. It was quite a treat when my dad gave me two shiny new Burgess D cells when the old ones wouldn’t turn the armature anymore. Today, I still get the same satisfying sense of renewal whenever I pop new AAA cells into my camera or PDA. I’m not the only one who goes ape over batteries. Battery technology garners lots of attention in this era of portability and mobile electronics. Exploding Sony laptop batteries aside, you have to marvel as auto makers make the leap from nickel-metal-hydride batteries, as used in today's hybrid automobiles, to much higher-capacity lithium-ion chemistries, as used in battery packs for the proposed Chevrolet Volt and Chrysler ENVI.Micro Power SourcesAlthough high-powered applications are stealing the battery limelight, there are intriguing developments at th...

The phone in your pocket rings. You pull it out, look at the screen and don’t recognize the number. Well, you don’t remember everyone’s number, right? Your hello is returned with a voice asking whether you would like to take a call from your mother. In my case I faint, as she passed on some years ago. Others would immediately say, “of course” and then you find you are connected to someone trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner.Well, that’s a kind of nutty scenario, but the intrusion could be real if a UK “service” that starts next week is copied by commercial operators in other countries. On June 18, 2009 a company called Connectivity, with a web service address http://www.118800.co.uk, will be offering a connection service to mobile (cell) phones. The company says that it has a database of 15 million UK mobile phones (out of an estimated total of 40 – 45 million) that they acquired from “legitimate” lists where people offered their mobile nu...

While lots of folks are talking about generating electrical power from wind turbines and photovoltaic arrays, there's also worldwide concern about a looming global water shortage. There's an abundance of breezes and sunshine, but potable water is a bounded resource in parts of the world, especially in countries where deserts dominate the landscape. That picture is changing, in part thanks to electronics.Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Germany are working on a system that literally pulls drinking water from the air. What's more, the Fraunhofer scientists are doing it using renewable energy, focusing on parts of the world where there are no lakes, rivers, or groundwater.In these regions there may be sufficient amounts of water stored in the air. In the Negev desert in Israel, for example, the annual average relative humidity is 64%. That means that in every cubic meter of air there's 11.5 ml of water, or more than a third of an ounce.Humidity To Drink Wor...

Having gotten off a ten hour flight from London a few days before, the loss of Air France’s AF447 A330-200 Airbus en-route from Rio to Paris was a reminder that humans are vulnerable to mistakes, misdesigns, and Mother Nature.It now seems clear that somewhere between the Arquipélago de Fernando de Noronha (Brazilian tourist territory about 350 miles Northeast of the mainland city of Natal) – probably on its own navigation, for such a low traveled route, to the civilized Cape Verde Islands and then on to The Canaries, Madrid, and Paris – a catastrophic event took place.The debris field from the flight is reportedly so huge that it is clear that the airplane came apart at its cruising altitude, said to be Flight Level 350 (35,000 feet). That is sort of good news for the 228 souls on board. A decompression, however it occurred, would have rendered them all unconscious in a couple of seconds and they would have suffered no pain at all. Forget the briefing you get on the ground about the o...

The electrical department at my local big box home equipment store stocks myriad compact fluorescent lamp offerings. There are CFLs in standard incandescent lamp shapes, as well as globular lamps. In fact, there are so many CFLs that it's hard to locate conventional incandescent lamps anymore! CFL buyers are enticed with rebates and low prices, and I must admit I've taken the bait. We've retrofitted just about every candelabra socket in our house with CFLs of one form or another.While CFLs cut energy consumption, there are drawbacks. When improperly disposed, mercury contamination can be a problem. CFLs also have a warm-up period that can be annoying if you want immediate full intensity lighting. CFLs are somewhat vibration sensitive, too, and don't seem to be available in a range of color temperatures (warm to cool).There are companies now offering alternatives, however. The list of LED suppliers is growing exponentially. Hardly a day goes by without at least one LED-related press announcement crossing my de...

I’m having a great time watching multi-billion-dollar corporations from General Electric to IBM embracing green energy as a core part of their business strategy: technologies that they would not have touched with a 10-foot pole a few years ago. Whether these companies are motivated by ever-tighter regulations, ever-rising energy costs, or the billions of dollars in economic stimulus money being doled out for green energy projects, the technologies, products, and business practices they are developing will eventually make a big dent in our collective environmental footprint. But as exciting as all these top-down corporate efforts are, there are innovative developments going on at the grassroots level whose ingenuity and long-term impact rivals any billion-dollar program.%IMG_left_full_805%Take for example my college buddy, Steve, who runs a small factory in Brattleboro, VT, that makes high-efficiency doors and windows. Being the sort of guy he is, Steve has spent the last 20 years figuring out how to mak...