A startup called Energous aims to let you charge your gadgets without plugging them in.
“Do you want us to charge your phone?” George Holmes asks. Normally, that would be an odd question. But Holmes is the vice president of sales and marketing for Energous, a company that is developing technology called WattUp that will allow you to charge smartphones, tablets, and other small gadgets from across a room without wires.
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Are companies ready for billions of everyday objects to join the Internet?
The technology industry is preparing for the Internet of things, a type of computing characterized by small, often dumb, usually unseen computers attached to objects. These devices sense and transmit data about the environment or offer new means of controlling it.
New technologies give vaccine developers a boost in early development, but large-scale testing and production are bogged down by high costs and lengthy trials.
Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, is spreading across the globe, and while a vaccine could be developed, there’s little commercial incentive to make one.
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Fitness bands like the Jawbone Up are in an unusual and enviable position in the electronics business: people rarely take them off.
If you wear a Jawbone Up24 around town, people might ask what it is. The wristband looks like a piece of futuristic jewelry, skinned in a rubbery plastic with a wavy pattern. Even in matte black, the most unexciting of available colors, it stands out.
Although major reports conclude that avoiding climate change is affordable, costs could skyrocket without smart, immediate action.
Major reports are concluding that stabilizing greenhouse-gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change is possible and can be done at a relatively low cost. But the details of the reports make it clear that when you factor in real-world issues—such as delays in developing and implementing technology and policy—the cost of solving climate change gets much higher. Switching from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources of energy will cost $44 trillion between now and 2050, according to a report released this week by the International Energy Agency. That sounds like a lot of money, but the report also concludes that the switch to low-carbon technologies such as solar power—together with anticipated improvements in efficiency—will bring huge savings from reduced fossil-fuel consumption. As a result, the world actually comes out slightly ahead: the costs of switching will be paid for in fuel savings between now and 2050.
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A movable smart-watch screen makes it easier to read a map or play a game.
The first time I tried out a smart watch with a touch screen, I quickly went from feeling excited to feeling clumsy. Tapping or swiping the small display on my wrist often failed to yield the response I expected. It might have been the quality of the screen, but it may have also been simply that the screen was too small and my fingers too big.
A unique gathering of 13 companies showcases a coming year of launches.
It was a rare meeting of minds. Representatives from 13 commercial space companies gathered on May 1 at a place dedicated to going where few have gone before: the Explorers Club in New York.
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Other big Chinese e-commerce companies, including JD.com, merge social networking, payments, and mobile.
The planned initial public offering of the world’s biggest e-commerce site—China’s Alibaba—will do more than mint a horde of new millionaires. It will draw attention to other Chinese e-commerce sites, many with homegrown technology, that are itching to gain the eye of American investors.
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Animal studies on the revitalizing power of young blood suggest new drug targets for treating conditions like dementia and heart disease.
Researchers and investors are already dreaming up ways to devise medical treatments based on the near-fantastical findings that the blood of young mice can rejuvenate older mice. In some cases, a single protein found circulating in the blood is sufficient to restore muscle tissue and improve brain activity.
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Silicon Valley investors and startups are trying to improve our food. Do they bring anything to the table?
Most tech startups are silent spaces where earbud-clad engineers peer into monitors. Not Hampton Creek Foods. The two-year-old company’s office—a filled-to-bursting space in San Francisco’s South of Market tech hotbed—grinds, clatters, and whirs like a laundromat run amok. That’s the sound of industrial-strength mixers, grinders, and centrifuges churning out what the company hopes is a key ingredient in food 2.0: an animal-free replacement for the chicken egg.
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The way some emergency doctors are using Glass highlights the promise, and the limitations, of wearable technology.
Kermit the Frog showed up in the emergency room at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston recently, complaining of chest pain. A quick tilt of my head showed me Kermit’s records—his EKG results, the radiology tests ordered for him, and his medical history.
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Coal power plants in Saskatchewan and Mississippi will produce fewer emissions, but rely on special circumstances.
Two of the world’s first coal-fired power plants with integrated carbon capture are nearing completion in Saskatchewan and Mississippi, providing a rare lift for a technology that has languished in recent years.
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Tiny hardware imperfections in smartphone and tablet accelerometers lead to unique “fingerprints” within the data they produce, researchers find.
The sensor that lets your phone know which way the screen is oriented also—thanks to minute manufacturing variations—emits a unique data “fingerprint” that could allow your phone to be tracked, even if all other privacy settings are locked down, researchers say.
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