Word: teche
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...What's the 21st century's pet rock? A jumbo Tamagotchi pet? Nah. French tech company Violet (www.violet.net) has created Nabaztag, a plastic, 23-cm-tall (with ears up) white rabbit with a constant wi-fi connection. The device provides access to other Internet users and vital daily information like traffic reports and the weather. Programmed by its owner, Nabaztag (rabbit in Armenian) relays the information in a slightly cartoonish female voice, and flashes colored lights on her tummy when new e-mails arrive. The wi-fi rabbit, which also plays MP3s and MIDI files and dances a jig, flags...
...around the time when information technologies created highways over which ideas could easily traverse the planet. Just as railroads and telegraphs in the mid-19th century made copyright and patent theft commercially important, so the Internet and associated information technologies redefined the market for inventions. Communications networks allow a tech employee of a Zhuhai company to search patent registrations internationally and look for legal vulnerabilities. IT also made the promulgation of digital content instantaneous and cost-free. Movies can be secretly recorded in a theater in New York, uploaded to the Internet minutes later, and downloaded in China and pressed...
...help in building a dashboard monitor for a Prius that he and CalCars, his group of plug-in advocates, had converted into a crude plug-in. (The original Prius' batteries charge up when the car brakes.) Hanssen was inspired. He enlisted the support of another privately held firm, Clean-Tech, to devise a more sophisticated version of the plug-in Prius. Hanssen recently showed off his prototype at the 2005 Tour de Sol, a green-car race in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where it didn't win but did deliver a fuel economy of 102 m.p.g. over a 150-mile course...
EnergyCS and Clean-Tech have launched a start-up called E-Drive Systems, which plans to sell by next year kits to convert the Prius into a plug-in (though the modifications will void the warranty). At speeds below 35 m.p.h., Hanssen's Prius sails along on its 18 lithium batteries for up to 30 miles at a go--well within the range envisioned by Gaffney. The conversion cost isn't cheap: $15,000, which Hanssen hopes to cut to around $10,000. "It won't pay for itself in gas savings," Hanssen admits, "but neither does the Prius. People...
Whether the market rises, plummets or flattens, whether it happens over one year or five, it will not undo changes that the boom has wrought in the relationship between homeowner and home. The tech crash and the market slump didn't erase the culture of stocks. Even after day-trading mania disappeared, there remained a broad class of people buying stocks and mutual funds who were more knowledgeable than they used to be about the market and more closely attuned to business news...