Hasta La Gadget!

Deforestation is a big problem in the Amazon rain forest, the largest such forest in the world, and now technology is being used to help fight the issue. Amazonian trees are being implanted with microchips in order to prevent illegal logging.

Each chip contains a variety of useful information, including the location and size of the tree. This information gives those who buy the wood the knowledge of where it came from and who cut it down. With this information buyers can determine whether or not the tree was cut down by an illegal logging operation. The hope is that the technology will help deter such activity.

“People talk a lot these days about wood coming from sustainable forestry practices–this is a system that can prove it,” forestry engineer Paulo Borges told Reuters.

It’s no secret that the Pope likes his green tech, and it looks like the rest of Vatican City does as well. It may be the smallest nation on Earth, but it turns out that it’s also the greenest.

The tiny state garnered the green label after a recent solar panel installation, which raised the solar energy production per capita to a staggering 200 watts per resident. That’s more than double the next highest country, Germany, which manages 80 watts per person. According to Vatican City representatives, the solar installation has saved the nation the equivalent of 90 tons of oil.

The photovoltaic solar installation cost an estimated $600 million and takes up 740 acres. It joins a rooftop installation on Paul VI’s conference hall, which was installed two years ago.

Via Treehugger

Paul Buchheit created and served as the lead developer for Gmail. He also developed AdSense and is the guy who coined the company’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Bucheit left the company to found FriendFriend, which was later acquired by Facebook.

Since Google doesn’t sign his checks anymore, Buchheit can feel free to talk a bit of smack about the company’s current projects–projects like Chrome. Buchheit used his Twitter account this week to suggest the upcoming death of Google’s latest baby, “Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year (or ‘merged’ with Android).”

Buckheit went deeper in a FriendFeed post, writing,

ChromeOS has no purpose that isn’t better served by Android (perhaps with a few mods to support a non-touch display). I was thinking, “is this too obvious to even state?”, but then I see people taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some reason.

Google has largely insisted that the two operating systems serve different markets. But, as TechCrunch points out, Sergey Brin himself has suggested that the company will someday focus on a single OS.

The friending, the liking, the status updating: Sooner or later we all grow to hate it, but we can’t stop. More »

Russian entrepreneur Mikhail D. Prokhorov may have big plans for moving the Nets downtown and turning them into the Brooklyn New Yorkers, but another of his big plans will stay a little closer to home. Well, his home anyway. It’s the ë, the Cyrillic character “yo,” and a funky name for a recently revealed hybrid that has scored the billionaire’s support. The ë is a little four-door, four-seater car with a top speed of 80mph and a range of 680 miles, delivered by a hybrid powertrain with two electric motors and a single internal combustion lump. However, unlike the parallel hybrid Prius and the (mostly) series hybrid Volt, both of which rely on expensive and heavy battery packs, the ë will only be able to hold a small charge. Instead the engine, which uses a rotary vane design, will run continuously, spinning a generator and providing the current to turn the wheels. It’s an unusual layout for a car, but if it can deliver its supposed 67mpg at its proposed $14,500 MSRP when it’s slated to hit the streets of St. Petersburg in 2012, you can call us converts — and comrades.

Russian Yo hybrid said to offer 67mpg, cost under $15k, gets a billionaire’s backing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 12:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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