TiVo and Entertainment Weekly team up, but who’s helping whom?

With so many new TV shows debuting each fall, it’s hard to keep on top of what’s worth watching. If you choose poorly, you could wind up wasting time on shows doomed to cancellation while falling weeks behind on a decent series. Well, TiVo users will soon get a little extra help. The company has teamed up with Entertainment Weekly to allow TiVo subscribers to automatically record the magazine’s regular list of must-see TV.

Most analysis paints this EW deal as a desperate push by TiVo. The company, which pioneered digital video recorders a decade ago, has lost considerable ground to DVRs offered by cable companies. TiVo “has only 1.7 million subscribers out of an estimated 26 million DVRs in...
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Will lasers brighten nuclear’s future?

Inside a bland industrial building in Wilmington, N.C., an experiment is in the works that could vastly reduce the cost, time, and space needed to make fuel for nuclear power plants and, some nonproliferation experts say, for nuclear bombs as well.

In that building, secret uranium-enrichment technology licensed by GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy is nearing a pilot test. If successful, the new technology will enable the company to supply low-cost nuclear fuel to power reactors worldwide, officials say.

Only broad outlines of the “Separation of Isotopes by Laser EXcitation,” or SILEX technology, are public. Most details are classified under the Atomic Energy Act.

But it would not take much – just a signal from Wilmington of SILEX’s success in the months...
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Kindle is the new backpack

There are several rumors bouncing around the web that Amazon is putting the final touches on a new model of its Kindle ebook reader. The target audience: students.

Just as college kids played a huge role in the success of the iPod – and many iDerivatives – Amazon is banking on them ditching hardcovers and adopting E Ink textbooks. At least that’s what the “confirmed” reports say.

The new line of Kindle “is significantly thinner, has a better screen, is more stylish, and includes fixes to some of the user interface annoyance with the first version,” says Business Week’s Peter Burrows. He compared this college-bound Kindle to Apple’s purse-friendly iPod Mini – take the bulky original and...
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A would-be spy plane that soars on solar

While the wind-powered Greenbird waits for favorable conditions before its land-speed record attempt, another British craft was proclaimed a record-breaker yesterday. The Zephyr-6, a solar-powered plane, flew nonstop for 82 hours and 37 minutes, according to its UK makers.

The propeller-driven craft runs on solar energy, and charges lithium-sulfur batteries by day to keep it aloft at night. Its solar arrays are paper thin and glued to its pair of 30-foot wings. On July 28, three guys hand-launched Zephyr with a running start. Remote controls then guided the plane to its cruising altitude, where a combination of autopilot and satellite correction kicked in until it descended July 31.

The clocked flight soared past the previous record for an...
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Greener storm sewer system

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Horizon highlights — Obama’s web strategy, shooting the moon, and a wearable motorcycle

E-Politics – How Obama really did it
“The social-networking strategy that took an obscure senator to the doors of the White House.” [via Technology Review]

Space – NASA’s plan to bomb the moon and find water
“Short on time and tight on money, a team of NASA engineers aims to solve the mystery of lunar ice in late winter – by crashing its low-budget kamikaze spacecraft into a crater.” [via Popular Mechanics]
From the Monitor’s archive – Will US-Russia tensions extend to space?: “International cooperation in human spaceflight may be facing its toughest test since the cold war. The immediate concern: Will US astronauts be able to ride Russian rockets between 2010, when the...
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New rays of hope for solar power’s future

From five miles away, the Nevada Solar One power plant seems a mirage, a silver lake amid waves of 110 degree F. desert heat. Driving nearer, the rippling image morphs into a sea of mirrors angled to the sun.

As the first commercial “concentrating solar power” or CSP plant built in 17 years, Nevada Solar One marks the reemergence and updating of a decades-old technology that could play a large new role in US power production, many observers say.

“Concentrating solar is pretty hot right now,” says Mark Mehos, program manager for CSP at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Co. “Costs look pretty good compared to natural gas [power]. Public policy, climate concern, and new technology are driving...
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Microsoft’s Photosynth stitches pictures into 3D collages

Last night, Microsoft agreed to share one of its favorite web toys. Photosynth, a dazzling application that’s been kicking around Microsoft’s back shop for more than a year, released a public beta version on Wednesday.

The clever code takes flat digital images and sows them into a 3D collage. For example, if I’m selling my condo, Photosynth can take some pictures of the apartment and turn them into a full walk-through tour. It recognizes when objects – a sofa, bookcase, doorway – appear in multiple frames and automatically figures out how to overlap the images to give the greatest sense of depth and accuracy. A prospective buyer could then virtually walk around a room, taking it all in from...
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Evergreens scrub out the poultry smell

Scientists looking for ways to take the “phew” out of poultry farming – at least for the farms’ neighbors – may have found an answer in trees.

Researchers from the University of Delaware have found that by ringing a farm with trees, they could cut off-site ammonia and dust emissions by more than half and odors by nearly 20 percent. So far, the best arrangement appears to consist of a border of broadleaf trees or trees with waxy leaves, enclosed within two additional rows of evergreens. The broadleaves catch the heavy particles during summer, when a farm’s exhaust fans are working hardest. The evergreens scrub the finer particles that get by the first row. In winter, when the broadleaf trees...
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Burning toxic fumes for cleaner air

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