Wifi has penetrated lot of cities in US and other countries but it is still not everywhere and there are times when you have to be content with not being connected to the Internet. It happens on roads, some hotels, public places, cafeterias etc.

If you are a road warrior and have the need to be always connected then you should try mobile broadband cards or your cell phones. These cards fit into your laptop’s PCMCIA slots or USB slots and connect to the wireless carriers network to provide you with Internet connectivity. Cell phones can be hooked onto laptops and used to connect to the Internet.

Some options which you have in US are:

1. Sprint’s Mobile Broadband Card: providing download speeds upto 600 kbps
2. Cingular’s LaptopConnect—Wireless Laptop Solutions: features laptop connect cards and some laptops with the card built into them.
3. Verizon’s BroadbandAccess PC Card or BroadbandAccess Built-in or BroadbandAccess Connect: get a card and plug it into your laptop or buy a laptop with access built in or connect your phone to your laptop to get to the net.

If you are traveling to India, there is a similar option available:

1. Reliance NetConnect: PCMCIA card or USB option to connect to the large Reliance CDMA network.
2. Mobile Broadband Cards: you can use with carriers like Airtel and Hutch. According to discussion threads EDGE cards have better speeds than Reliance Card.

Popularity: 5% [?]

This toy version of hydrogen cell futuristic car uses next generation reversible Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cell.

 (click on the image to enlarge)

• Add water to the water tanks located in the back of the car
• Uses the water (H₂0) to produce and store oxygen (0₂) and hydrogen (H₂)
• The car can turn around obstacles by itself, and is powered by clean hydrogen fuel

One can download the brochure for this toy car here. If you want you can order it here.

What is a fuel cell?

A fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device. It produces electricity from external supplies of fuel (on the anode side) and oxidant (on the cathode side). These react in the presence of an electrolyte. Generally, the reactants flow in and reaction products flow out while the electrolyte remains in the cell. Fuel cells can operate virtually continuously as long as the necessary flows are maintained.

Fuel cells differ from batteries in that they consume reactants, which must be replenished, while batteries store electrical energy chemically in a closed system. Additionally, while the electrodes within a battery react and change as a battery is charged or discharged, a fuel cell’s electrodes are catalytic and relatively stable.

Fuel cells since long have been suggested as alternative energy source of energy but have had design problems and were not cost efficient so far. Things are changing now.

The BMW 750hL, a production ready car  is the culmination of three decades of research on hydrogen powered vehicles. The 750hL is a car powered by sunlight and water.

 I wish this environment friendly technology the very best of luck and hope it solves the energy and pollution crisis for good!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Motion C5 is the first product in the new mobile clinical assistant (MCA) category of PCs from Motion Computing.  It is a tablet PC, customized for healthcare.

In a press release Intel announced:

The mobile clinical assistant (MCA) is ready to enable nurses to spend more time with patients, do their jobs on the move while remaining connected, and manage the administration of medications. Motion Computing’s C5 is the first product based on Intel’s MCA platform and has earned support from clinicians and nurses participating in pilot studies around the world.

This is a huge step by Intel to build a platform specifically targeting healthcare, enabling better connection of clinicians to comprehensive patient information on a real time basis.

(click on the image to enlarge)

Some of the features of Motion C5 are:

• wireless connectivity: to access patient information and physician’s order.
• RFID: to identify patients, medications and assets
• integrated bar code reader: to manage medicines or costly supplies
• integrated digital camera (2.0 megapixels): to take pictures and capture video for patient education and required documentation
• sealed design: wipeable for quick cleaning and disinfecting
• bluetooth: to help capture patient vital signs
• security: integrated fingerprint reader, hardware based encryption

This is indeed a great step by Intel and Motion Computing to bring quality to Healthcare. Technologies like this save time, money and energy and enhance the user experience.

For detailed specs visit here. For a virtual tour visit here.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Jefferson Y. Han, a research scientist at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences,  has come up with a cost effective multi-touch, multi-point computer screen, which he demonstrated to thousand or so attendees on the first day of TED 2006, the annual technology, entertainment, and design conference in Monterey, California

Here is a video of his demonstration at TED:

Apple’s new iPhone also supports multi-touch display.

Link to Multi-Touch Interaction Research

Technorati Tags: Jeff-Han, - multi-touch, - TED-2006, - multi-point, - multi-user

Popularity: 4% [?]

Now you have the ability to carry your favorite computer programs along with your bookmarks, settings, email and much more with you on a USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive etc. It can be used on any Windows (and many Linux) PCs.

PortableApps.com is an open platform that works with all the hardware mentioned above. It’s open source built around an open format format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.

They provide a rich suite of applications in their PortableApps Suite^TM . The suite is spyware free and there are no advertisements. The suite can be downloaded from here.

I installed the standard version of their application suite (there is a Lite version also) on a USB drive and it occupied around 250 MB of space. The installation was also very easy as all you have to do is download the installer and run it. Point the install directory to the root of your USB drive or whatever other media you are using and that is it. After install a PortableApps icon sits in your tray bar, clicking on which opens the PortableApps menu. Here is a snapshot of the PortableApps menu with the standard suite installed: (click on the image to enlarge)

The advantage of using portable apps is that all the data which you enter in the program (email, appointments, documents, configurations, bookmarks etc.) are stored on the hardware media on which portable apps is installed. So, when you take your USB stick and plug it into another machine at your friends house or at work, you get all your data.

Some prominent applications that are supported are:

• Firefox
• Gaim
• OpenOffice
• AbiWord
• Mozilla Sunbird
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• VLC Media Player
• FileZilla
• Nvu
• FireFTP
• GIMP
• XAMPP - Apache, mySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin and more in an integrated package
• ClamWin - antivirus program

Here is a snapshot of Sudoku game portable:

PortableApps has a page dedicated to the developers, wherein they explain how to develop new portable applications or adapt an existing one.

Source: PortableApps

Technorati Tags: PortableApps, - Portable-Applications, - Applications-On-USB, - Applications, - Portable, - PortableApps-Suite, - Firefox-Portable

Popularity: 4% [?]