A new invention out of the Imperial College of London could forever alter how we think about batteries — and powering cars for that matter. Researchers have patented a mixture of carbon fiber and polymer that can store and discharge electricity , meaning that eventually the body of your car could also be running its engine. This technology could be game changing for three reasons. First, the material could replace lithium-ion batteries as a source of energy storage for plug-in cars, consumer electronics, the electrical grid and more. With lithium supplies dwindling and getting pricey, it could be the next best option sooner than later.
Between Y Combinator’s Startup School , the influx of seed fund incubators , the list of legendary mentor / investors and the dotcom bust’s school of hard knocks, is there really any reason to go to grad school? At ReadWriteWeb we’re supportive of lifelong learning and universities that coach entrepreneurs , but a recent post by Venture Hacks founder Naval Ravikant has us wondering, “What is the value in grad school?” Sponsor Ravikant suggests that incubators and accelerators like YCombinator and Techstars are the new grad school. He writes, “In some ways, it’s better” and includes the fact that unlike business schools, YCombinator pays entrepreneurs, allows founders to be their own boss and encourages original work. In addition to Ravikant’s points, the fact that every incubator participant is connected to advisors through a financial agreement means the group may be motivated to maintain their network and share contacts.Nevertheless, before dismissing the idea of grad school altogether, it’s good to remember many of the top entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley are MIT, Harvard and CalTech grads (including some of the Venture Hacks team). Perhaps the argument here is not so much about incubators over traditional institutions, but in the fact that good mentors have a stake in your success and do not rest on the laurels of a tenured position.
Netflix Watch Instantly fans could be due for a big upgrade, as CNET has heard the company will roll out 1080p and 5.1 surround sound later this year. No word on timing or any other details, but this could mean its moving to version 3 of Microsoft’s Silverlight streaming platform with its additional tweaks for adaptive streaming and hardware graphics acceleration . Also unknown is how much bandwidth would be necessary, but considering Microsoft already uses very similar technology for its 1080p Instant On videos on Zune Marketplace through the Xbox 360 while only requiring 3 Mbps and VUDU HDX 1080p videos only state a minimum of 4500 Kbps, a massive jump in available bandwidth might not be necessary if you already get clear 720p video. The last big hurdle? How much content will be available that way, Gizmodo points out only about 6 percent of current offerings stream in HD we’ll be watching carefully if the pace picks up going forward.
Filed under: Gaming , Software , Developer , iPhone , App Store Yes, PopCap is at it again — this time, their crazy addictive (just like all of their games) take on the tower defense genre, Plants vs. Zombies, is headed off to the iPhone. They just tweeted confirmation a little while ago, and released this trailer showing all of the flower vs. undead action that we enjoyed so much in the other versions of the game, squeezed into the smaller screen of the iPhone. They don’t mention a price point, but I’m guessing it’ll come out at $4.99, since that’s what most of their releases have debuted at (though if you’re patient, it’ll probably drop down in price after a while).
Geolocation social networks are set to be in 2010 what microblogging was in 2008 – the next big thing. Currently the space is being dominated by Foursquare , with others like Gowalla , MyTown and Loopt trailing in its wake. While Gowalla has secured a large amount of funding, some $8.5 million, and My Town claims more check-ins than the other services, Foursquare is happily ticking along on the seed money provided by its founders (after they sold their original effort, Dodgeball, to Google), and creating a community of developers who are eager to build secondary applications. There are two reasons Foursquare is gaining so much ground over its competitors. Sponsor This is a guest post by Simon Salt, the founder and CEO of IncSlingers .
Electronic Arts is launching a number of big titles in the coming fiscal year that should get gamers excited, according to the company’s conference call with analysts today. EA typically announces titles during its quarterly calls to get gamers frothing and to give analysts guidance about its expected financial performance. Those titles could always be delayed, but EA has been shipping more games on time than it used to. During EA’s conference call with analysts, EA chief operating officer John Schappert ticked off a number of titles that should set tongues wagging, including some mysterious titles in the fourth fiscal quarter that ends March 31, 2011. One of them is a first-person shooter game coming from Epic Games, the maker of the Gears of War and Unreal shooting games.
Filed under: Hardware , Retail Looks like they might. That’s the opinion of a note out last night from Credit Suisse quoting meetings with Apple executives. The Wall Street Journal this morning quotes Senior Analyst Bill Shope as saying “While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated).” This is a similar situation to the original iPhone launch in 2007, where the original price quickly dropped US $200 from the original $599 retail. Agitated early adopters got a $100 Apple store credit from Apple. Apple will be watching sales of the device carefully in the early days, and the company appears to have enough margin built into the iPad to take some hits if it is slow moving.
Now that Google Chrome has entered the world of fully-extensible browsers, with its recent addition of extensions and Greasemonkey scripts , you’ve likely found yourself perusing the libraries and tweaking until your heart’s content. With that, however, comes the inevitable – browser crashes. While Google Chrome doesn’t have a safe mode in the same way the Firefox or Windows does, it does offer another option that provides the same functionality and can save you a whole bunch of trouble. Sponsor The folks over at the Google Operating System blog pointed out this tip today and we thought it was a worthwhile how-to for our readers. If you’ve found yourself in the terrible position of having a broken version of Chrome and you don’t want to uninstall and start over from scratch, you can instead launch Chrome using “incognito mode”, which disables extensions and allows you to disable your the bad apple extensions.
Panasonic ’s recently unleashed Lumix DMC-FX550 has just been pretty extensively reviewed over at Trusted Reviews . Up first, the Lumix DMC-FX550 — a 12.1 megapixel affair with a 5x zoom lens. The reviewer found the touchscreen to be mostly useful and functional in conjunction with the hardware controls. The 1280 x 720 pixel resolution video recording is found to be nice quality, though the cam loses points for its mono audio, which is deemed “not too good,” while the startup time for the camera — about 3 seconds — is also a bit slow. Ultimately, however the DMC-FX550 is not very much of an upgrade over the previous DMC-500 model, though the reviewer gives it points for build quality.
Late last week, tech biz bloggers were shocked — and a few were cruelly happy — to read that TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington had fired 17-year-old intern, entrepreneur and Internet fameball Daniel Brusilovsky . Arrington said the teenage overachiever had accepted a computer from a company in exchange for coverage on TechCrunch. Brusilovsky also admitted, Arrington said, to asking a different startup for a MacBook Air, which led that company to complain to Arrington. Not only did Big Mike cut Brusilovsky from staff, he removed all of Daniel’s posts — I counted 70 of them in Google’s cache — and posted a candid and legally-vetted description of the events, titled “ An Apology to Our Readers .” So of course the hot topic of discussion among local journalists over the weekend was, is TechCrunch’s reputation shot now? TechCrunch isn’t a newspaper, so its staff aren’t bound by the well-established and very strict boundaries given to print news writers.
As more and more of our friends and favorite organizations start publishing updates online, being able to organize them well is becoming even more important. Niche-popular desktop social media stream-reader Tweetdeck issued a software update this morning and the most striking change is in its handling of user groups. It’s beautiful. The new Tweetdeck is faster, more flexible and easier to navigate. Groups, we have argued, are the secret weapon of the social web .
We’ve always heard to strike while the iron’s hot, and that’s exactly what Peratech seems to be doing. Just weeks after we heard that the company’s pressure-sensitive touchscreen methodology was being seriously considered by the powers that be, along comes Samsung Electro-mechanics to take ‘em up on their offer. For those unaware, Samsung EM provides components to loads of leading phone makers, which could mean that Paratech’s pressure sensitive 5-way input device is on its way to your next mobile as we speak. These so-called Navikeys will supposedly provide a greater level of immersion when interacting when phones, and we get the feeling that those aging dome switches are feeling mighty frightened by all this encroachment. The best part?
Intel announced its Itanium 9300 series microprocessor today, a high-end supercomputing chip with 2 billion transistors on a single chip. The number of transistors, or basic on-off switches that control the flow of electrical signals in a chip, is about twice as much as what Intel and other big companies normally put in a chip. Kirk Skaugen, vice president of Intel’s Architecture Group, said that Intel will be able to put eight microprocessors together in a single server system. Each microprocessor has four cores, or computing brains, on one chip. Hence, a system can be built with 32 computing cores, and some companies may be able to do more than that, based on their own custom work.
Filed under: Hardware , iPhone Hutchison Austria is following in the wake of the iPhone and is offering a subsidized iPad to users willing to commit to a 2-year data contract, Engadget reports. When you sign up for a €29.90, 5GB monthly contract, you’ll get a €333 markdown on the iPad — which may or may not be all that much since we still don’t know how much an iPad is going to cost overseas. Instead of built-in 3G service, a Huawei i-Mo 3G modem will be provided. It’s not a bad idea, and we’re likely to see more carriers jump on this particular bandwagon as the iPad gets closer to release. What I would love to see from carriers is a way to extend existing service for iPhone customers to those who want an iPad plus iPhone.
In what will surely be a common trend over the next few years to take advantage of China’s growing population of media consumers, Reuters is reporting that a Disney-led consortium is in talks to buy a portion of China’s largest in-bus media firm, Bus Online. Google is a part of the consortium — even as they are currently seeking out the NSA’s help to deal with their recent security breach in China. According to anonymous sources, the consortium is planning to buy a portion between 30 and 40 percent of Bus Online for more than $100 million through “a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements.” The sources went on to say that Disney “wants to be a strategic partner not just a financial investor” in Bus Online due to the company’s increased presence in China — like the upcoming Shanghai-based Disney theme park. Google is aiming for a smaller stake in the deal than Disney. It’s interesting that the company is still pursuing the arrangement given their recent spat with China.
