Technology Effect

Suzuki Burgman scooter runs on fuel cell LONDON--A new hydrogen-powered fuel cell hybrid electric scooter will enable city commuting ease without harming the environment, the chief executive of Intelligent Energy said at the bike's launch here. The Suzuki Burgman Fuel Cell Scooter, made by clean power systems company Intelligent Energy and Suzuki Motor, will be tested in Loughborough from this month, with further road tests planned for London later this year. "We see a market pull for more energy-efficient products and there is a real drive to bring hydrogen vehicles to market en masse by 2015," Henri Winand, Intelligent Energy's chief executive, told Reuters in an interview Wednesday. Motorcycle manufacturers face a clampdown on air pollution and climate-warming emissions in the European Union, and the industry says it is ready for pan-European rules. Climate officials of the 27-country bloc have put transport emissions at the top of their agenda for 2010 as the EU ...

Indian students make electric appliances operable via sms Bangalore: Your electrical appliances at home can soon be controlled by a simple SMS, thanks to a new 'low cost device' developed by the students at Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. The device, which was developed by Abdullah Azhar and Kamal Gupta, both final year B.Tech students of Department of Electronics, will enable users to operate electrical appliances at their home from anywhere in the world at any time at a very low cost, a college spokesman said. According to him, existing technologies for home automation require internet, Bluetooth and wi-fi systems, which are comparatively expensive. The device has also won the second prize at the international exhibition of 'Electrical and Industrial Electronics' held in Mumbai recently.

Now, a software to translate as you speak on phone Bangalore: Internet giant Google, which has also made an entry in the mobile world with its own phone Nexus One, is working on a software which will interpret foreign languages as a person speak. The translation is done almost instantly and Google hopes to have a basic system ready within a couple of years, reports Chris Gourlay of Sunday Times. Google has already developed an automatic system for translating text on computers, which is being polished by scanning millions of multi-lingual websites and documents. So far it covers 52 languages, adding Haitian Creole last week. Recently Google also launched a feature where a user can search on the search engine by saying the key words instead of typing. Now it is working on combining the two technologies to produce software capable of understanding a caller's voice and translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language. The phone would analyse "packages" of sp...