Fletchnuts - Slashdot User

Submission + - Nanotech battery claims to solve electric car woes

Submitted by rbgrn on Friday February 16, 2007 @03:07PM

rbgrn writes: A123 Systems claims to have invented a Lithium Ion battery that not only can discharge at very high rates of current but can be recharged very quickly without damage to the cells or overheating. From their website: "A unique feature of A123Systems' M1 cells is their ability to charge to high capacity in 5 minutes or less. That's a significant improvement over traditional Li Ion, which typically requires more than 90 minutes to reach a similar level of charge." Using this technology, General Motors has announced a plug-in hybrid SUV and Venture Vehicles is developing a fully electric 3 wheel vehicle. Politics aside, the main technological hurdle to mass adoption of electric cars has been a fuel station replacement when driving distances beyond a single charge worth of range. Will we finally be seeing high current recharge stations in the next decade?

Submission + - myth of the ultimate gadget

Submitted by

some tech geek

on Friday February 16, 2007 @03:07PM

some tech geek writes: "People are always looking for the ultimate gadget : the one gadget that does it all! Of course, I'm one of them :) But I'm beginning to realize that there is nothing like the ultimate gadget. It's just a myth. No one can build it! We're never going to come near it — except may be in a James Bond movie! What do slashdot readers think? What would be your ultimate gadget? What all would it do? How would it look like? How close would the iPhone come to the ultimate gadget?"

Apple TV to be a Centrally Controlled P2P Network? 165

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 16, 2007 @03:04PM from the lean-on-your-neighbors dept.

Rolgar writes "PBS' Bob Cringely theorizes that since the Apple TV will be an always-on device with a 40GB hard drive, Apple may move to content distribution via a P2P network. The ISPs will incur higher bandwidth locally, possibly lose some subscribers to cable TV, but have fewer costs through the Tier II Internet backbone providers. Bob also expects that Google will be involved with their fiber network and advertising expertise, and my hope is that they'll bundle in YouTube content as well. The article suspects that they won't get around to announcing the full details of this plan until they hit a half million units or more, and that this Apple and Google pairing will become the equivalent of a cable TV provider with almost none of the infrastructure costs. Eventually, he hopes, we'll see a real HD revolution from Apple and Google for this service." If Apple rolled something like this out to the service, would you bite on it? What would it take you to move to this over Tivo or MythTV?

Submission + - Robot snowblower lets Pennsylvania man relax

Submitted by davidwr on Friday February 16, 2007 @03:02PM

davidwr writes: A Pennsylvania man can take it easy while his robot snowblower does all the heavy lifting, er, blowing. It's basically a converted golf cart with a snowblower attachment, gear mods, and a remote-control hack. Is this the "must-have geek do-it-yourself-kit" for geeks in snow country next Christmas? Now if only the guys near Buffalo had a beowulf cluster of these babies last week....
Editor: Change icon to Monty Python Stomping Foot

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