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Think will begin selling its all-electric City cars in the New York metropolitan area within the coming months, the company said Thursday.

Think's City model is a highway-legal electric vehicle that runs solely on a lithium ion battery system and gives off zero emissions. The car, which has a top speed of 60 mph, can be charged from either a standard U.S. 110-volt household outlet, or a fast-charging 220-volt station that can be installed for home use. The small two-door car, clearly intended for city driving and parking, has a battery system with a range of about 112 … Read more

Palm is hoping its new developer's kit can lead to better games and richer apps for its smartphone users.

Palm announced on Tuesday that a public beta version of its new WebOS Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) is ready for developers to download via the company's Developer Center Web site. The PDK lets programmers create plug-ins using C or C++ to enhance existing WebOS applications.

The WebOS is the software platform for Palm's Pre and Pixi smartphones.

Unveiled at this week's Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, the PDK is being targeted to designers who want … Read more

BOSTON--If the green-tech industry had its equivalent of the iPhone, it would be the electric car, a product that has cachet with consumers. But it's still unclear what will drive sales of plug-ins: will it be consumers willing to pay more for a greener ride or government mandates for fuel efficiency?

Speakers on a panel about electric vehicles on Saturday at the MIT Energy Conference said that both consumers and government policies will drive electric and plug-in hybrid car adoption. But they also expect electric cars will be premium products desired both because they are cleaner than gasoline-only cars … Read more

TOKYO--The Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in hybrid could hit Japan's shores as early as next year and go head-to-head with the country's hybrid and electric vehicles.

Sumito Ishii, managing director of GM Asia Pacific Japan, told reporters that General Motors is studying a Japan launch for the Volt in 2011 or 2012.

The car, which is powered by an electric motor and has a small gasoline engine to recharge the battery, goes on sale in the United States late this year. Ishii said last month that Japan was not part of the Volt's initial global rollout plan, but … Read more

Internet Explorer fans can now get a taste of the video elements in HTML5 without having to switch browsers. Through a new in-development plug-in bundled with codecs from Xiph.org, users can activate rudimentary support for OGG-formatted HTML5 video on Windows 32-bit and 64-bit computers.

There are several problems that the plug-in has yet to solve to bring it up to parity with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and the latest Opera beta, which natively support HTML5 in full. The plug-in leaves out support for H.264, lacks playback controls such as seeking, doesn't offer any HTML5 interface, and requires changing … Read more

Perian is a free, open-source plug-in that can help QuickTime users play more formats, including most major codecs.

Billed as a "Swiss Army Knife for QuickTime," Perian installs a preference pane and automatically installs components for over two dozen formats--everything from AVI, FLV, and DivX to curios like DTS Coherent Acoustics audio, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and various subtitle formats. The settings give you a few options, for the likes of alerts and audio output, but most of Perian's functionality happens invisibly during playback.

The one format that Perian won't help with is WMV (so you'… Read more

Apple's built-in support for the PDF format has allowed for a number of programs to easily implement its use. Safari is one of these applications, and when you click on a PDF link you should be able to view PDFs without having to load any plug-ins or other software. Despite this, a number of people are having problems viewing PDFs in Safari, in which the browser will show a blank white or black screen instead of the selected PDF file.… Read more

Quake is one the most popular first-person shooters ever to addict hapless gamers. This free plug-in from Quake's developer, id Software, lets you play the online multiplayer version of Quake, Quake Live, using Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7 or greater. To play you need only register for a free account at the Quake Live Web site.

As with all online versions of sophisticated video games, you really need a broadband Internet connection as well as a reasonably powerful computer, enough RAM, and, most importantly, good graphics capabilities. You can still play if you just squeak by in system requirements, … Read more

Plug-in electric cars have technology geeks and the well-heeled excited, but how will they play in Peoria?

Ernst & Young on Thursday released results from a survey of 1,000 licensed U.S. drivers that found 10 percent of drivers would consider purchasing a plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle. That represents about 20 million American drivers, enough demand to sell out 2010 and 2011 electric vehicles.

Automakers are betting the electrification of power trains is the future of the auto business, as was clear from this week's North American International Auto Show in Detroit. But even as automakers prepare … Read more