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Andrew Grove, a co-founder of Intel and the man who coined one of my favorite concepts, the strategic inflection point (SIP), is rallying corporate and government support for electric cars in the US. He realizes that Americans are reluctant to buy an all-electric vehicle, however:

While car makers have been developing plug-ins, Grove says the nation should consider ways of retrofitting the 80 million low-mileage pickups, sport utility vehicles and vans on the road to make them capable of running on both gasoline and electric power.

Giving these vehicles “dual fuel” functions would be similar to changes made in other technologies. DVD players, for example, were often combined with VCR tape players when they were first introduced to help consumers make the transition.

See this Associated Press article titled Ex-Intel head pushes electric cars for more details.

Related articles and pages on billso.com

• Strategic inflection point
• 12 November 2007: I want a better television - but it’s not ready yet
• 7 March 2007: Microsoft vs. Google

Segway inventor Dean Kamen has his own take on water purification, the Slingshot. His machine weighs 45 kg and can produce 1000 liters of clean water a day from really dirty water. The machine is a vapor compression distillation system that is powered by a Stirling engine. Stirling engines are small, efficient, and can use a wide variety of fuel sources. The engine produces waste heat that can be used to boil processed water, cooking or other purposes.

He also demonstrated a prototype Slingshot on The Colbert Report on 20 March 2008. The prototype cost at least US$100,000, but Kamen hopes to lower the production costs to US1000. The video is available at the show’s web site, Wired and Gizmodo, with a brief article about the machine. There’s more information at Wikipedia, Sentient Developments, RexResearch and sfgate.com

Pedal power

The video below describes the Aquaduct, a bicycle that also filters 8 liters of water. It’s an interesting concept that addresses transportation, fitness and public health concerns in developing countries.

The bicycle is designed for women, but anyone over the age of 12 could ride it comfortably. I have no idea of the tires are solid rubber or inflatable. Solid rubber tires would be much more durable on trails, of course.

This ZDnet article has some more information

The vog (haze or volcanic fog) has been very heavy here on Oahu for the last two days.

This morning’s Honolulu Advertiser has a good article about where the vog came from, and how the haze is affecting local residents.

I was on the North Shore yesterday, installing a VoIP phone system for a client. I took these pictures from their site, which has an excellent view of the North Shore and the Pacific Ocean. The horizon is almost completely obscured, which is very unusual.

I have larger versions of each image on my Flickr gallery.

This is what the view usually looks like. I took this picture on 24 August 2007.

This morning’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin has a great feature article on the Ball aluminum can plant in Kapolei. Manufacturing beverage cans takes more technological capability than most consumers would believe. It’s good to see a mainland company that is still producing products on Oahu for the state of Hawaii.

I still don’t understand why Frito-Lay closed its chip plant in 2006. See this Pacific Business News article for more details. It makes much more sense to bring the raw materials to Oahu in bulk on container ships. Why is Frito-Lay making its chips on the mainland and shipping them here when the finished product is fragile and filled with air? We can fit many more potatoes than potato chips in a cargo container.

From the Associated Press: electric companies in the southeast USA are growing concerned over possible summer droughts. Nuclear power plants require tremendous amounts of water for cooling. Reservoirs, rivers and lake levels in some areas may fall below the intake pipes. If that happens, nuclear plant operators have no choice but to shut down their facilities and pray for rain.

Electricity produced for the grid cannot be stored on a massive scale. It’s consumed within a second of production.