GreenPlug gets its first big supporter
Recently, eco start-up GreenPlug announced that it would attempt to revolutionize the AC adapter/charger market by launching a program that would see manufacturers combine forces to create the foundation for a universal charger. By embedding chips into devices such as digital cameras and laptops, a universal adapter could be used to work with any product (eliminating that absurdly over populated market of AC adapters). Furthermore, a GreenPlug charging station, envisioned as units in internet cafes as well as homes, would communicate using GreenTalk to report power levels as well as offering several modes of power streaming. Perhaps most poignant is the feature that stops supplying power when a device is fully charged, unlike most modern adapters. However, since its inception one major hurdle has opposed the GreenPlug movement and that’s convincing manufacturers already in a penny-pinching mode to include these chips and forgo cashing in on the AC adapter market. So it’s nice to hear that GreenPlug has made its first major signing in Westinghouse.
Benefits to manufacturers include decreased shipping costs (as AC adapters would be localized into a single universal unit) as well as avoiding potentially hazardous recalls as well as being environmentally friendly.
Source
Conservatives see online rebuke to copyright bill
It’s been a short but tumultuous road for Bill C-61. It first caught the publics’ attention back in December when it appeared in its crudest form. That proposition was quickly shot down by net neutrality advocates. On Thursday the bill appeared in revamped form and in no time it saw an equally vicious backlash. Just a day after Industry Minister Jim Prentice announced Bill C-61 a Facebook in opposition saw its membership jump by 7,000. The group was founded by net neutrality activist Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa internet law professor, in response to the first proposed bill. The Facebook group now counts 48,000 members.
NASA to kiss the sun
Many astronomers have gazed up at the sun and cried out ‘I can’t see!’ Meanwhile, other, more resourceful, astronomers have decided to launch a probe that will get closer to the big yellow guy as no other before: 7 million km. It seems that several, quirky aspects of the sun have been troubling minds at NASA for too long now. The first mystery is the temperature difference that exists between the surface of the sun and its outer atmosphere; the surface measures 6000 degrees C while further away, in the outer atmosphere, the temperature is more than a million degrees Celsius. The second mystery is best described by a NASA egghead: “Mystery #2—the solar wind: The sun spews a hot, million mph wind of charged particles throughout the solar system. Planets, comets, asteroids—they all feel it. Curiously, there is no organized wind close to the sun’s surface, yet out among the planets there blows a veritable gale. Somewhere in between, some unknown agent gives the solar wind its great velocity. The question is, what?”
So when will we get these unsolved mysteries, uh, solved? NASA is hoping by 2015.
