Rick’s Short Circuit: Fantasy office, sealed batteries, µnukes
Computer makers including Apple are sealing batteries within their laptops, allowing higher capacity without adding heft. The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg tested “…two new Apple laptops…using my own harsh battery test, which I apply to all laptops I review. The results were excellent.” One machine, he says, operated for just under five hours, while the other ran for five hours and 21 minutes. He estimates that under normal conditions the machines would come close to meeting Apple’s claqim of seven-hour operation.
I would be more interested in how long they would operate after, say, 100 or 200 or 300 charge/discharge cycles, and Mossberg cautions, “I was unable to verify Apple’s claim that these sealed batteries can be fully recharged up to 1000 times….”
• “An online virtual world is usually a place of imagination and fantasy, where gravity is an option,” writes D.C. Denison at Boston.com. But who needs that when, as Denison says, IBM Lotus Sametime 3D offers you this alternative: “Instead of exotic islands and futuristic nightclubs, IBM’s digital universe features conference tables, a gigantic appointment calendar, and a flip chart. At least one of the avatars, the computer-created characters that stand in for real people using the service, is wearing a tie.”
• Bob Metcalfe, now a venture capitalist with Polaris Venture Partners, praises the new generation of compact nuclear reactors in the Wall Street Journal, writing, “As an Internet guy, these small fission reactors seem to me like the microprocessors that took over from the huge, air-conditioned, glasshouse mainframe computers.” He cites startups working on the technology, including Hyperion, NuScale, and Tri Alpha. Alas, he says, he isn’t inclined to invest in such firms, adding, “The problem with their business plans weren’t their designs, but the high costs and astronomical risks of designing nuclear reactors for certification in Washington.”
• The BBC says that UK furniture store Habitat is sorry for the appearance of words (hashtags) in its tweets related to the crisis in Iran. The store “…has apologised for causing offence after accusations it exploited unrest in Iran to drive online Twitter users to its products,” the BBC reports, adding that “Contributors to Twitter posted messages claiming Habitat should be ‘ashamed’ and saying it was ‘piggy-backing’ on the political situation in Iran.” The store said the use of the hashtags was "not authorized."
In “Rick’s Short Circuit,” I tour general-interest Web sites looking for technology news to summarize for you so you can spend more time visiting www.edn.com and www.tmworld.com or following me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Rick_editor.
From yesterday’s EDN and Test & Measurement World newsletters:
EDN Electronic News Today: iPhone 3G S teardown; lithium-air batteries; more…
T&MW’s Machine Vision & Inspection News: Solar-cell inspection; new cameras; wafer positioning; more…
EDN on Embedded Processing: Tee up your multiprocessing options; multiprocessing taxonomy; don’t blame the software developer; more…
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