Were is all this going? im not really sure but it is making me wonder if opening a Battery shop is a good idea!! You can buy batteries from a lot of different places, but.. there isn’t a one stop high street shop for buying your batteries. If you look online there are some brilliant battery suppliers were you can buy wholesale batteries at good prices. You could realistically stock all sorts of batteries (apart from car batteries!!) and make money from it, The battery industry is so vast these days with mobile phones and wireless controllers for game systems the demand for a battery is higher now than it ever has been.

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The Cigarette industry may be taking a knock in the UK and US and other European countries however one persons downfall is another persons gain. This is were we have the introduction of e-cigarettes. An e-cigarette is a fairly new device which is a smoke free flame free method of taking in nicotine. The e-cigarettes do not produce smoke but they produce a vapour from mixing water flavourings and nicotine with heat from a battery inside the e-cigarette.

Many anti smoking organisations however refuse to back the electronic cigarette saying nothing has been proven in terms of the safety to your health with these. Many pro smoking organisations are claiming they are a cheaper and healthier alternative to real cigarettes which can contain up to 1000 different chemicals

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All of the vending machines that offer assistance to people in natural disasters sport signs on the front explaining how people can get free drinks from them when there is an emergency. The idea is that the machines are able to provide people with vital liquids when their areas have been cut off from water, and help can’t get to them quickly.

Fuji Keizai is a marketing and consultation firm in Japan. They said that demand for vending machines increased by as much as 35% in the last 2 years, and expected to increase further over the next few years to be as high as 7 billion yen by 2013.

Each vending machine comes equipped with a battery back-up so that should there be a power cut they are still able to dispense vital liquids without needing to be plugged in. There are 35 of these vending machines in all of the subway stations in the Japanese city of Kyoto.

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Many stores have now stopped offering plastic bags as standard now and only give out promotional bags during sales or big events for the business.

In response to Apple’s announcement, Progressive Bag Affiliates of the American Chemistry Council (PBA) has welcomed Apple’s decision stating:

“In addition to promoting recycling, many of our efforts are focused on helping retailers to avoid the use of excess or unnecessary bags. In the case of Apple stores, where many customers purchase computers and often make other single-item purchases such as iPods, we applaud Apple for taking steps to discourage shoppers from accepting bags that may not be necessary.”

With the exception of promotional bags, no bags will now be given out without a request at most Apple stores in future.

However, the PBA stressed the need for consumer choice and iterated the fact that plastic bags are actually more energy efficient to create and recycle than paper counterparts.

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Microsoft has entered into several different markets since company formation in the mid-Eighties and its attempts with its encyclopaedia were a major part of its focus. However, after 15 years of life, Encarta is being killed off as of October this year.

This is a sign that Microsoft simply could not compete with Wikipedia, the free, user-created online encyclopaedia which receives 97% of online encyclopaedia traffic in the US. Encarta was the second most popular, but with only 1.27% of encyclopaedia visits, it was a distant second.

The statement announcing the discontinuation of Encarta made no reference to Wikipedia, but it would be naive to think that site’s popularity was not greatly influential in the decision. Microsoft instead made reference to people’s changing ways of consuming information, which may refer to the constantly updated nature of Wikipedia versus Encarta’s static and quickly dated content.

Shortly after the company’s formation, Bill Gates approached Encyclopaedia Britannica regarding a project to translate the book into a new media format. They rejected his approach and this inspired him to start Encarta in partnership with Funk and Wagnalls reference books. Now that project is at an end.

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ARM-based architecture, having established its dominance in mobile-phone chipsets, is making way into the next generation netbooks. Currently, Windows Mobile is the lone Windows version that runs on ARM architecture. Nicholas announced that next version of XO would be based on ARM architecture, and the first XO 2.0 will be out in 12-18 month’s time. He said he was confident that Microsoft will develop Windows version on ARM by that time.

The existing dual-boot XO laptop gives user options of using either Linux-based or Windows XP operating system. Negroponte in his email mentioned that OLPC has to decide its funding model out of 3 options, including single sponsor approach, consortium approach and ‘Give One, Get One’ approach, which is extensively availed by the people in developed countries, where they keep one for themselves and lend one to a child.

He declared that more details about XO laptops will be released in next 3 weeks.

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The single sign-on service, Facebook Connect, enables sharing of content between affiliated sites. OpenSocial is a set of Google’s “Application Programming Interfaces” (APIs) joined by other networks, that enables running of developers’ app on supporting member sites. Both the tools were released by different website owners to attract developers’ interest.

According to Yahoo’s head of developer network, Chris Yeh, many website owners are embracing ‘open’ platforms to lure developers from competitors’ camps. He added that every major web company, with objective to integrate third-party developer applications, has opened its own website properties.
The developer community has grown in number in last 2 years, particularly outside the US, and most projections are putting this growth two to four times the US developer market growth, primarily due to current trend towards ‘open’ technologies, informs Yeh.

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Since its introduction by Taiwan’s Asus, all major players in PC business including HP, Dell, Lenovo and Acer jumped into netbook manufacture.

Netbooks’ low computing power and no-frills design could make it easier for hackers to create prefect storm and viruses.

According to Sam Yen, marketing manger for China at antivirus software maker Symantec, internet, regardless of make of computer people are using, is full of risks. The fact that netbook is basically used for surfing internet; those risks are multiplied many-fold, particularly if antivirus software is not installed in the machine.

Due to costs as low as £210, netbooks are provided without gears such as firewalls and other antivirus software, especially provided on expensive computers, making them quite vulnerable to attacks.

According to an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research, there is no security in netbook design as yet. PC brands do everything possible to keep costs low, even sacrificing on security.

Netbooks, according to IDC research firm, could outperform PC market in 2009. IDC predicts that shipments could increase two-fold to over 21 million units in 2009, compared to 4% growth for all PCs to 305 million units.

Netbook pioneer Asus claims its models are equipped with built-in security and other features sufficient enough for typical user. People can use Asus’s tie-up with Symantec by paying little extra for additional security, informed Samson Hu, in-charge for company’s netbook operations.

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