Blue Is The New Green

First, some numbers. The United Nations estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will face periodic and often severe water shortages. And the problem is not limited to the developing world. Here in the U.S., water managers in 36 states are predicting significant shortfalls within the next decade. Even in regions that do have sufficient supplies, aging infrastructure, inadequate treatment facilities, and contamination pose more problems. No surprise, then, that battles over water rights are becoming commonplace, pitting states and sometimes nations against one another in increasingly bitter conflict. read more

Saleen Automotive For Sale

Saleen Automotive is the latest American carmaker to announce that it is seeking a potential buyer, with management acknowledging the firm has suffered financially from the economic downturn and rising fuel prices. read more

Bill Gates Starts A New Mystery Company

Just months after his Microsoft farewell, Bill Gates is quietly creating a new company — complete with high-tech office space, a cryptic name and even its own trademark.

Public documents describe the new Gates entity — bgC3 LLC — as a “think tank.” It’s housed within a Kirkland office that the Microsoft co-founder established on his own after leaving his day-to-day executive role at the company this summer. read more

Karl Fisch - Did You Know on Globalization and Technology

An Interview with Marc Andreessen

At 37, Andreessen is a legend in Silicon Valley. He created, with Eric Bina, the first graphical browser while at the University of Illinois, then co-founded Netscape Communications with überentrepreneur Jim Clark in the early 1990s. Netscape’s browser brought the internet to the masses, set off the dotcom boom, and so angered Microsoft at the time that Steve Ballmer, now the software giant’s C.E.O., led employees in “Kill Netscape!” chants. By bundling its Internet Explorer browser into Windows, Microsoft eventually drove Netscape into the arms of a suitor: AOL bought Netscape in 1999 for $4.2 billion.

Andreessen hasn’t had a success of that magnitude since. But he did create another billion-dollar company, Loudcloud, a tech-services outfit that later changed its name to Opsware and was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. More recently, Andreessen started Ning, a website that lets anyone create a mini social network. Its most prominent customer: 50 Cent. read more

Obama vs McCain on Technology and Sustainability

WIRED Magazine put together a great comparative of Obama and McCain’s policies that are important to their readers - here’s the wrap-up.

Topic Covered:

1. Broadband
2. H1B issues
3. Investment in green tech
4. Net neutrality
5. Spectrum

read more

Xerox Invents Self Erasing Paper and Temporary Documents

The Paper that Self-Erases Within 24-Hours
Recycling’s better than sending good paper to the landfill. Even better is not printing in the first place. But there’s still a lot of stuff that comes out of printers and some studies show that more than 40% gets discarded on the day it was produced (and a lot of the rest gets discarded not much later, or gets stuffed in a box and is never looked at again).

The researchers at XEROX looked at that problem and came up with a paper that self-erases within 24 hours and can then be re-used. read more

Google’s Super Satellite GeoEye One Captures Its First Images

This bird’s-eye view of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania was the first image ever seen by the GeoEye-1, the world’s highest-resolution commercial satellite sponsored by Google, when it opened its camera door earlier this week.

The 4,300-pound satellite collected the image at noon EDT on Oct. 7 while moving from the north pole to the south pole in a 423-mile-high orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, or 4.5 miles per second. The spacecraft can take photos at a resolution of up to 41 centimeters — close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond, according to Mark Brender, GeoEye’s vice president of communications and marketing. read more

Oakley’s New High Tech Headquarters

Directions to Oakley headquarters in Foothill Ranch, California, read like coordinates to a secret rebel base: Turn on One Icon Drive. Pass the abandoned motocross ramp. Take a right at the helipad. And we’re the 400,000-square-foot gray fortress at the top of the hill. Yeah, the one with the giant cylindrical spikes protruding from it. There’s a torpedo out front. Can’t miss it.

Inside, beyond heavy, unmarked doors, stands a cathedral-ceilinged chamber of riveted steel, like the air lock for a massive interplanetary docking station. As your pupils adjust to the dim interior light, it becomes clear that the creatures seated in the four B-52 ejector seats are not alien foes but surfer types who couldn’t be more psyched to be here. read more

The new T-Mobile Google Phone - Android

The T-Mobile Google Phone powered by Google new ANDROID platform.

Today’s debut of the T-Mobile G1 is the first public appearance of an almost fully-baked consumer “Googlephone” — a phone based on Google’s Android operating system.

There’s just one problem: There is no Googlephone*. And that’s something Google must fix, and fast, if it wants its mobile operating system to succeed. read more

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