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Usually, mobile homes are not associated with terms such as long-term quality or environmental friendliness. Now, a professor of architecture at Mississippi State University (MSU) wants to change this. He has developed the concept of the GreenMobile home, an ultra-affordable and ecological-minded, factory-built housing unit. The first prototypes of these homes, which could be used as regular houses or for disaster relief housing, should be built in March 2008. And their cost is expected to be in the $50,000 range. Not too bad, especially if the value of these houses increases in the future as expects the development team. But read more…

Japanese car giant Toyota has reported a rise in quarterly profits as demand in emerging markets such as China offset a slowdown in the US.

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I’m sure that some of you remember Jini, an initiative launched in 1998 by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems. This software was supposed to turn all the devices we use into ‘network citizens,’ as Joy said. It never really worked. And even if the electronic devices we own are increasingly network compatible, they still are unable to work together intelligently. This is why the European Union has funded a project to allow your fridge or your TV to communicate with your phone or your PC. This project, named Amigo, will end in February 2008 and was granted €13 millions by the EU. This project enrolled powerful partners such as France Telecom, Microsoft or Philips which pay the rest of the bill, expected to reach €23 millions. The researchers think their approach will be successful because it’s an entirely open source project and everyone can participate. But read more…

village in India without electricity, residents have to walk 12 miles to a neighbouring town to charge their mobile phones. Poverty and isolation mean that the phones are key to communicating with the outside world in the event of emergencies

As you probably are aware, future communications networks will certainly be based on optics. A research team led by Duke University physicists has done an important discovery which might lead to these future super-fast optical communications networks. The team has found a way to store information coming from a beam of light by converting it to sound waves. More importantly, it was able to retrieve it again as light waves. These reversible data transfers from light to sound are today limited to labs. Several years will pass before commercial companies can use this technique because there are still some technical issues to solve. But read more…

Would you like to use a light-powered toothbrush which needs no toothpaste and no batteries? It’s already available in Japan and North America and it costs about $30. Its rod contains titanium dioxide that generates a plaque-removing electrochemical reaction. This ’solar’ toothbrush of the future ‘works by releasing electrons that then react with the saliva in the mouth and help to breakdown plaque.’ It just needs some light — so you’ll be able to wash your teeth in your garden or on your balcony. And as it has no batteries, this is a very eco-friendly device. It is currently tested today by 120 students at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, but it’s already available online.

According to Penn State engineers, transmission rates of 100 gigabits per second are possible today over copper. But only on distances of less than 100 meters. And only with high-end Category 7 copper cables. These Ethernet cables are made up of four pairs of twisted wires shielded to reduce crosstalk. The Penn State technology could provide an alternative to glass fiber optics cables in computer datacenters where distances between systems are not too big. In other words, it would be possible to interconnect servers inside a building at speeds similar to the ones provided by more expensive fiber optic cabling.