New material can soak up pollutants

Aerogel picks up mercury and lead like a sponge, researchers say

• A new porous material can soak up heavy metals from liquids like a sponge, researchers said Thursday, offering a host of potential uses including removing pollutants such as mercury or lead from water.
  
• The material is an aerogel, a type of rigid foam made from a gel in which most of the liquid has been replaced by gas.
  
• “What we’ve made is a new kind of aerogel that is made of the same stuff that semiconductors are made of,” said Mercouri Kanatzidis, a researcher with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.
• Classical aerogels — which are made of silica or carbon — have been around for many decades. “They are white and colorless and don’t absorb any light,” Kanatzidis said in a telephone interview.
  
• Kanatzidis has made aerogels from chalcogenides, which are used in semiconductors. “These new aerogels absorb light and they can be changed in composition from one kind to another,” said Kanatzidis, whose work appears in the journal Science.
  
• He and colleagues placed this new gel in a solution containing smaller metal ions and larger, highly toxic metal ions such as mercury. The aerogel removed almost all of the mercury from the solution and also a number of organic compounds.
  
• “It is very much like a sponge, only the walls of this sponge have a surface that presents sulfur atoms to the solution,” he said.
  
• “Mercury likes to bind with sulfur,” he said.
• The solution used in the experiment contained platinum, which is far too expensive for widespread environmental use.
  “
• We need to replace the platinum with cheaper elements,” he said.
  But Kanatzidis said he believed it was possible and his lab had already had some success with this.

PALM'S NEW MOBILE COMPANION

Business Wire
The Palm Foleo mobile companion has a large screen and full-size keyboard with which to view and write e-mail and and other documents on a smartphone.

• Total PDA re-think?
  


• Palm has announced tthe Foleo, designed to be used with another device – like a Palm Treo – for connecting to the Internet via your cell phone’s Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
  


• There are similar little computers on the market today – for instance Nokia’s diminutive N800 Internet tablet. But unlike the Nokia, Palm’s is a large device.
  


• Foleo is described a 2.5 pound computer with a 10-inch screen with full sized keyboard which runs on the Linux operating system. It reportedly is capable of instant on and off, one-button access to your email, a PDF viewer and software which allows you to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Palm claims five hours of battery life per charge.

HD RADIOS COMING DOWN IN PRICE

Radiosophy
The HD100: A "volks-radio" for the digital age.

• Here’s some good news to report: HD radio prices are on the way down.
  
  


• When I first wrote about the Boston Acoustics Recepter Radio HD it had just been introduced for $500. It now retails for $299.99.
  
  


• Recently, I’ve been testing a Cambridge SoundWorks 820HD table-top radio which also retails for $299.99 after a $40 rebate.
  
  


• But the big news here is a product from a company named Radiosophy. Their small, stylish radio is just hitting the market with an introductory price of $99.95 – and, if you buy one before July 4th, a $40 rebate will make the final cost to you just under $60.

HTC TOUCH TAKES ON THE IPHONE

HTC's Touch smartphone improves upon ebery WindowsMobile device of the past.

• iPhone is getting all the hype – but people should soon be talking about the Touch.
  


• HTC’s Touch is a brand new smartphone design with a very cool touch-screen navigation system – similar to what Apple has reportedly developed for their soon-to-be-unleashed iPhone.
  


• But one of the big differences here is that HTC’s device is built on – and has improved upon – a sixth-generation operation system. The iPhone will be Apple’s first-generation in-house designed smartphone.
  


• HTC, the manufacturer behind some of the best smartphones on the market today (like the terrific T Mobile Dash), has been working on their revolutionary touch screen device for two years – and the pedigree is reflected in the Touch.
  


• HTC based their phone on Microsoft’s just-released Windows Mobile 6 OS. They developed a number of improvements to the standard (boring-but-functional) WM smartphone home screen by, among other things, adding a big digital clock or local weather display as the main focal point. The new screen is not only beautiful it’s also user-friendly.

HIGH-SPEED INTERNET ACCESS VIA USB

Sierra Wireless
Two high-speed wireless modems. One from Sprint - the other from AT&T.

• Access to a Wi-Fi network is a great computing tool when you’re home or at the office. But sometimes it’s difficult to find one to connect to when you’re on the move.
  


• The cellular phone industry has come up with a solution. With the proliferation of new, higher speed, wide-area cellular data networks (such as Verizon’s EV-DO) laptops began to sport built-in modems. Even if you decided against paying for the service you were stuck with the modem inside.
  


• Now, we can choose the wide-area, high-speed data provider and the services we prefer. Just plug in a nifty, new high-speed USB modem and get connected nearly anywhere on the planet.
  


• I’ve been testing two very similar modems both made by Sierra Wireless. The AirCard 595U works on Sprint’s U.S. Mobile Broadband (EV-DO) network. The AirCard 875U works on AT&T’s Broadband Connect (UMTS/HSDPA/EDGE) network in the U.S. and participating networks worldwide. The two wireless technologies are nearly identical in operation.

WATCHING YOUR IPOD ON A BIG SCREEN

The HomeDock Deluxe - a neat solution for watching iPod content - more than one person at a time.

• The HomeDock Deluxe has one purpose - to allow you to watch and listen to your iPod content on a big-screen TV.
  


• HomeDock Deluxe is a clever, all-in-one, remote controlled cradle and charger unit for your iPod.
  


• It also provides you with a terrific interface that you see on your big screen TV.
  


• Operating the HomeDock Deluxe is simple: you just slide your iPod into the device.
  


• The HomeDock Deluxe works with later iPod models – that means fourth-generation iPods with click wheels, fourth-generation iPods with color displays, fifth-generation iPods with video, iPod nanos (first and second generation) and iPod minis. You can easily adjust the docking station slot to fit your iPod’s exact dimensions.
  


• You connect HomeDock Deluxe to your television set via the composite or S-video connection. There are stereo RCA output jacks for the audio. The HomeDock Deluxe comes with all the wires you’ll need. The HDD does not connect to your computer or to the Internet. Your iPod is meant to do that.

Living with an iPhone

Five iPhones will set you back at least $2,500.

• So you don’t have to peek at the end of this review I’m going to tell you what I really think: iPhone is fabulous. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but its interface – the way you control the device – is truly revolutionary.
  


• The iPhone is thin – but not small. It measures 4.5 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches and it weighs 4.8 ounces. In your hand, it feels a little heavier than it looks – and it looks like someone took an old-fashioned smartphone and flattened it out under a steamroller.
  


• iPhones have a very cool little mechanical device inside called an accelerometer. It senses when you tilt your iPhone sideways – and then automatically changes the picture on the screen from vertical to horizontal. When you’re looking at a Website, photo or video you can turn iPhone sideways and see a much larger picture. The iPhone is not the only smartphone to have this feature: Sidekick’s screen does a 180-degree turn when you open its keyboard.
  


• Inside there’s a four-band GSM world phone, EDGE data capabilities, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth – pretty standard fare for a modern-day smartphone. It sports a very large 3.5-inch diagonal screen.

Like having a cell phone tower indoors

T-Mobile
If you're not sure what a home Wi-Fi router and cellphone have in common -- read on.

• Readers often write me to ask what can be done about not being able to use their cell phones inside their homes. Many people can’t find a usable cellular signal indoors.


• Until now, the best advice I could give them was to stand near a window or walk outdoors to find an adequate cellular signal. Notice I said until now.


• That’s because T-Mobile has come up with a clever way to have near-perfect cell phone coverage in your home. Think of it as having a cell phone tower in your home.


• T-Mobile has rolled out a new service called Hotspot at Home. Using special handsets, the new service routes your cellular calls over your home Wi-Fi wireless, wideband Internet network.

Battle of the luxury smartphones

• Not all high-end smartphones are alike, but they do have one feature in common – they’re expensive.


• The iPhone sells for $500-600. I’ve seen unlocked LG Prada KE850 phones available in the $570 (and higher) range and Nokia’s N95 retails for a lofty $749 when they can keep them in stock.


• We’ve set out to determine which of these new super smartphones is the heavyweight champ.
  
  


• Is it the new iPhone – LG’s Prada phone - or the Nokia N95?

• Apple’s iPod-cell phoneFirst, the iPhone.


• Arguably, it is the new standard by which all other smartphones will be judged. If you haven’t read or heard about Apple’s new handset you must be living under a rock.


• The iPhone’s user interface is the best on any cell phone anywhere. Every person who has tried my phone has been able to master navigating through the iPhone’s features within a minute or two.

Apple may launch Nano-based iPhone

iPhone manufacturer could release a smaller, cheaper version of the touchscreen phone later this year, JP Morgan analyst says.

iPhone 5.0:What's next

Long lines of people turned out June 29 when U.S. sales began for the iPhone, a mobile phone with a music player and Web browser. Analysts have estimated that sales in the first weekend were as high as 700,000 units.
Chang said a way to follow up the iPhone with a cheaper version would be to convert the Nano into a phone and price it at $300 or lower. The iPhone sells for $500 and $600, depending on storage space.
"We believe that iPod Nano will be converted into a phone because it's probably the only way for Apple to launch a lower end phone without severely cannibalizing iPod Nano," he said, noting that the new phone could have "rather limited functionality."
Another analyst, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, said he expects Apple to bring out iPods that resemble iPhone, which features a touch-sensitive screen, later this year. Such products would help stop iPhone from eating into iPod sales.
"We believe the iPhone reveals much of what the iPod will soon be," Munster said in a note to clients, adding that "iPods with some of the touchscreen features of the iPhone should lessen the impact of cannibalization."
Kerris also declined comment on Munster's note.

New gen of sharper screens to rival LCDs

Novel displays glow on their own, stretch battery lives and are super thin

TAIPEI/SEOUL - A new generation of super-thin, power-sipping displays is making its way to the market, stretching battery lives to new limits and perhaps one day posing a challenge to heavier, energy-gobbling LCDs.
New screens that glow on their own are taking on their clunkier liquid crystal display rivals — which require powerful backlighting — by producing sharper video images for smartphones, game consoles and portable media players.
But industry watchers say it will be years before a clear winner — if any — emerges with the clout to outdo LCDs.

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and bi-stable technologies are the most likely challengers to LCDs.
An OLED screen uses as much as 40 percent less power than a comparable LCD and could be twice as thin because it does not need backlighting.
These technologies are already being used in some smaller portable devices, such as music players from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Reigncom Ltd. and a thin mobile phone from Kyocera.
And Sony Corp. plans to sell small-sized TVs using the OLED technology later this year.
“In hand-held devices, display consumes power most. It’s all about power and then maybe brightness,” said Lehman Brothers analyst James Kim in South Korea.
Analysts reckon Apple’s iPhone, which launched in the United States on Friday, may end up using more energy-efficient screens, such as OLED, given the short battery life of its pilot models with LCD screens.
“It makes sense (for Apple) to move to OLED screens. They are working to improve the battery issue,” said Kim Woon-ho, an analyst at Prudential Investment & Securities.

Pilots shot down in Iraq tell of dramatic escape

Comrades rescue ambushed officers

• 
  
  "We're taking fire!" Chief Warrant Officer 2 Steven Cianfrini, 27, yelled to his co-pilot as he looked out the helicopter door and saw tracer rounds flying his way.



• 
  
  It was the first ominous sign Monday morning as their OH-58D Kiowa attack helicopter banked over palm groves, fields and canals on a reconnaissance mission to flush out Sunni insurgents in rural areas south of Baghdad.
  



• 
  
  It was also the opening salvo of what participants described as a dramatic ordeal of combat and survival, with two Army pilots crash-landing their aircraft, taking cover in neck-high water and reeds in a canal, avoiding insurgent fire, and dashing to a helicopter that lifted them to safety.



• 
  
  Hearing Cianfrini's warning, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mark Burrows, 35, banked right to evade bullets from a heavy machine gun that had opened up across a field. Then a second machine gun began firing at them. Burrows turned again, only to face a heavier barrage.
  



• 
  
  'World just opened up'"The whole world just opened up on us, it seemed like," Cianfrini said in a telephone interview from Iraq. "We zigzagged, whatever we could do, to get out of the guns' target line.



• 
  
  Then we started taking rounds from behind. That . . . took the aircraft down."
  



• 
  
  Insurgents attack military helicopters in Iraq about 100 times each month and manage to hit about 17 of the aircraft, using weapons such as heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder-fired missiles, according to U.S. officials. Since January, at least 10 American helicopters, including two belonging to contractors, have been shot down. Since October 2001, the Army has lost 33 helicopters to hostile fire in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  


• 
  
  In a new tactic that has downed several U.S. helicopters in recent months, insurgents use guns mounted on trucks to fire at the choppers from multiple directions. The U.S.military has targeted cells conducting such attacks; on May 31, northwest of the Baghdad airport, U.S. attack helicopters spotted and destroyed insurgents in five trucks outfitted with 14.55mm machine guns.
  



• 
  
  On Monday, though, insurgents struck again. This account of the events that followed is based on U.S. military interviews, unclassified documents and video footage from the responding aircraft.
  



• 
  
  "This was a deliberate air ambush," said Brig. Gen. Jim Huggins, assistant commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, which oversees the volatile region where the helicopter was downed, several miles east of Mahmudiyah.
  



• 
  
  Hit ground tail firstAs it lost altitude, the Kiowa started to shake violently, its main rotor damaged. Burrows said he decided to head into the field but the aircraft began to spin uncontrollably, and at about 20 feet above the ground he had to cut the power. The helicopter hit the ground tail first, bounced over an irrigation canal, crashed nose down and slid into a ditch beside a dirt road.
  



• 
  
  Cianfrini climbed out one door, and Burrows got out the other. They met at the nose and discovered that they had suffered only scratches, they said. The Kiowa was by then on fire, its engine blowing up inside. Insurgents were shooting from across the field, and the pilots could hear rounds hitting the burning helicopter.
  



• 
  
  "Where's your weapon?" Burrows yelled to Cianfrini.
  



• 
  
  "I have no idea," came the reply.

Gates no longer the richest man in the world?

• Bill Gates appears to have been dethroned as the world's richest man. But based on his past comments, he probably isn't disappointed. The Microsoft Corp. chairman and co-founder has been overtaken on the world's richest list by Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim, according to a Mexican financial news service quoted by Reuters.
  
• A 27 percent surge in the stock price of Slim's wireless company, American Movil, in the second quarter has put his worth at close to $67.8 billion, Reuters reported Tuesday.
  
• Reuters quoted financial tracker Eduardo Garcia, from Sentido Comun, an online financial publication. Garcia estimated that Gates was worth $59.2 billion, Reuters reported.
  
• At a Microsoft conference in Redmond last year, advertising executive and TV host Donny Deutsch asked Gates if he would be upset if someday he were no longer the world's richest man.
  "I wish I wasn't," Gates replied. "There's nothing good that comes out of that."
  
• "It's better than being second," Deutsch said.
  
• "No," Gates replied. "You get more visibility as a result of it."
  
• On this spring's Forbes list, Slim was just behind Warren Buffett, an investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, who had been second on the list for years.
  
• Forbes reported then that Gates, who had topped its list for 13 years, and Buffett were quickly losing ground to Slim. In April, Forbes reported that Slim had overtaken Buffett and was on his way to passing Gates.

Aston Martin pair set off on world-first Asia-London adventure

• Trail-blazing Brits Richard Meredith and Phil Colley set off from Tokyo today (June 25) at the wheel of an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, with their sat-nav set for London’s Trafalgar Square.
  
• They are aiming to become the first people in the world to cross the full extent of the Asia-Pacific Highway, whilst bringing attention to road safety and raising money to increase road safety awareness among children in developing countries.
  
• Their 10,000-mile journey in the factory-prepared V8 Vantage will take them through 16 countries, including South Korea and China. At times they will face inhospitable terrain, intransigent bureaucracy, intense heat, and a variety of other difficulties which will test them and their near-standard car to the limit.
  
• Dr Ulrich Bez, Aston Martin’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “Richard, Phil and the V8 Vantage face a tough journey, but I have every confidence all three will succeed.”
  
• Richard, a 58-year-old teacher who lives in Newport Pagnell, Bucks., said: “I have dreamed of making this journey for two years, and in Aston Martin I found a partner with the confidence and enthusiasm to subject its car to a very public trial in the name of road safety.”
  
• Londoner Phil, 42, a travel specialist and tour operator, said: “We are proud, in our small way, to be joining in the effort of focusing attention on road safety among the young.”
  
• The trip has attracted the support of the regional commission of the United Nations and a variety of international companies, and a team based in the UK has been set up to monitor progress and organise help if it is needed.
  
• Richard and Phil are scheduled to arrive in Trafalgar Square on August 13.
  

Top 10 product hits - and misses

The hype surrounding the iPhone is hardly unique. Splashy product launches are a time-honored tradition in the American marketplace -- and so are the stunning flops that sometimes follow. Here's a look at some of the more noteworthy hits and misses.

Nintendo Wii

• Hit Nintendo had been a gaming giant, but fell on hard times when the N64 and GameCube systems missed the mark -- and sales expectations. It was a track record that didn't bode well for the Wii, especially considering that the console was being released head-to-head in late '06 with Sony's breathlessly anticipated PS3. But gamers, and perhaps even more impressively, non-gamers have gone wild for the Wii, demonstrating that Nintendo can still make a great system.


• As for the battle with the PS3, it was a rout: It's been the Wii all the way.

Tickle Me Elmo

• Hit Tickle Me Elmo continues its juggernaut with the junior set, over 10 years after the chortling red doll first hit store shelves in 1996. Witness the toy store melees that were sparked by shortages of Tickle Me Elmo Extreme last Christmas. "There's speculation that a lot of these product `shortages' were just to create demand," said Julie Hall, vice president of the Consumer Group at Schneider Associates. "Whether that's true or not, it generated a lot of excitement around the product."