research

Although you can't singlehandedly fix the woes of national health care that are spotlighted in the movie Sicko, many free Web sites at least put a bit more power in your hands to manage personal wellness or a medical crisis. Just share your data wisely.

WebMD (a Webware 100 winner) offers videos, virtual support groups, quizzes, blogs, doctor lookups, and a spiffy symptom checker. Look up drugs by a pill's color, imprint or shape. WebMD won't spam you, but as with its competitors, if you subscribe to e-mail updates about some unappetizing ailment, then prepare for related … Read more

Last week, Opti Technologies announced a patent infringement lawsuit against a bevy of chip companies: Advanced Micro Devices, Atmel, Broadcom, Renesas Technology, Silicon Storage Technology, SMSC, STMicroelectronics and Via Technologies. At issue are two patents for "Compact ISA-Bus" technology.

Opti had recently sued Apple and AMD over three patents for "Predictive Snooping" technology used in some computer chips. And, in August of last year, Opti settled with Nvidia for $11 million plus up to $9 million more if nVidia continues to use Opti's technology in its products. The nVidia action included all five of the above-mentioned patents.

Silicon Valley faithful will remember Opti as a once-respected chip company that fell on hard times. Is the company's recent patent litigation rampage the death-throws of a desperate company or a promising new business model? Let's go through it.

At present, Opti has but one full-time employee, CEO Bernard Marren. And, according to the company's 1995 proxy statement, Marren gets a cut of everything he brings in to shareholders on a sliding scale that starts at 5 percent and ramps down to 1 percent. Mike Mazzoni, the company's part-time CFO, appears to have the same deal.

Do the math; it's not bad work if you can get it.

I had lunch with Marren a few weeks ago. The 71-year-old industry veteran seemed excited about Opti's prospects and he may have reason to be. Marren isn't new to executive management. He's a former founder and president of electronic distributor Western Micro Technology and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). He sits on a number of boards, including Microtune, Infocus and Unipixel. Marren knows his way around the negotiating table.

For better or worse, patent infringement litigation is business as usual in the chip industry. If not for broad cross-license agreements, chip companies might spend more time suing each other than developing products. Nevertheless, some companies have carved out significant niches by developing and licensing technology. ARM, Qualcomm, Rambus, Tessera, even IBM and Texas Instruments, make a solid business of it. But, for the most part, these companies develop technology with that business model in mind. Believe me, they prefer to negotiate than to litigate.… Read more

Hydrogen is lightweight and efficient as a fuel. When it burns, you get water as the exhaust, and the fuel cell technology that burns the gas is well developed. The major hang-up has been how to produce hydrogen without needing lots of fossil-derived energy.

Apparently, the way to cheap hydrogen is through aluminum. Purdue researchers earlier this year announced they'd found a way to use aluminum to get hydrogen from water. Today a Chinese ceramicist who did graduate work in Portugal says there's an even simpler way to derive hydrogen. This process uses powdered aluminum at room temperature, … Read more

American coal experts want more information. And they want the U.S. government to pay for it. Today the National Research Council issued a call for more federal money to find and assess America's coal deposits.

Currently over half of the U.S. electricity is generated by burning coal. But there is uncertainty about future use and availability of coal. And there is the issue of CO2 emissions and other pollution from coal-burning power plants. Plus the U.S. must now compete with China and other nations for use of the world's coal.

In short, says the Council'… Read more

It's taken 27 years to reach 1 billion PCs in use, and market researchers say it will take only five to reach the next billion.

Forrester Research is set to release a report Monday titled, "Worldwide PC Adoption Forecast to 2015," saying that many of those next billion will be used by first-time PC users in emerging nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China. At least 775 million new PCs will be in use in those countries by 2015, according to Forrester.

Not only is access to computers beneficial to those users, it also will represent a … Read more

Researchers at the University of Illinois got a bright idea. They developed a form of lighting that's more efficient than standard incandescent bulbs. And it's lighter and thinner than current fluorescent lights, which require a ballast and glass tubes. The diagram above shows how the researchers' aluminum foil-based "microcavity" plasma system works to produce light.

The researchers say their lighting system would look like a luminous, flat screen that could hang on walls in residential and commercial locations. The technology would even allow for curved and flexible versions of the lights, which could fit a wide … Read more

The University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine spent six years developing a computerized system, called Caveman, that produces larger-than-life 3D images of the human body, and can show how the passage of time--the fourth dimension--affects the body systems being studied.

Part of the medical school's Sun Center of Excellence for Visual Genomics, which was opened in 2002 in collaboration with Sun Microsystems, Caveman features a booth called the "Cave," where physicians, researchers, patients and students wearing special glasses can view oversize 3D images of body parts, diagnostic scans, X-rays and other objects projected by the computerized system.… Read more

A few months ago we wrote about the Graffiti Research Lab, a set of artists who have created LASER Tag, the hacked projector that can be used to create temporary laser graffiti. The guys at GRL got their start at Eyebeam, an art and technology center in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood that always has some Craveworthy stuff going on (a few months ago, they had a real live Mooninite on display!)

Last night, at Eyebeam's tenth-anniversary benefit party, I had the chance to play around with one of the GRL's laser pointers and tag the side of a … Read more

What's your method for research on the Web? If I'm involved with a project that requires searching a lot of sites, I'll probably have a couple of programs running on my Mac, including a browser and some sort of word processing program or text editor.

If I need an outline, I might open another window in my word processing program and set it up there. Taking notes would probably involve opening yet another window for cutting and pasting and adding my own comments. While my usual method is functional, I can tell you from experience that sifting … Read more