Is the Thomas Edison 1881 invention, one of the most successful invention of the 19th Century, will disappear soon due to its high consumption ? 

Today the World starts to wake up and governments finally show some concern about our ever growing power consumption and all its side effects. This may indicate that time has come for the incandescent bulb to retire. It exists, for many years now, some economical lighting alternatives (fluorescent ) to the incandescent bulb but most of them were not really welcome into our living areas (living room, bed room, etc..) due to the livid bluer color and their acquisition cost.

Then the LED (light-emitting diode) finally jumped out of electronics equipments and started to invade the streets (traffic lights, flashlights, bicycle, etc..). They may replace soon all incandescent and halogen bulbs we still have at home. Brasil and Venezuela have started the phasing out of incandescent lightning and Australia wants to get totally rid of them by 2010.

During "LED EXPO and FPD KOREA 2007" MK Electronics presented its LED lighting 'Lumi-Forta' which can present more 512 colors via remote controller.

In comparison with other bulbs the LED, once its price will be reduce, have lots of advantages

                               Incandescent     Fluorescent     LED 

Lifetime               ~3'000 hrs         ~10'000 hrs     >30'000 hrs
Input Power         60-100 W          20-50 W          7 W      
Temperature        60°C                 45°C               38°C
Color Change        n/a                   n/a                up to 512 pattern
Bright Control       external             n/a                10 steps
Main Issue           Input Power        Recycling        Unit price

Sources : Mkhunics, Ubergizmo, Wikipedia

As advertising on Fon web pages says it :

• At home you're a "Wi-Fi King"
• Away you become a "Wi-Fi beggar" 
  (or sometime even a Wi-Fi thief)

  so, why not to

• Share some Wi-Fi at home
• and get free WiFi access wherever you find a FON Wi-Fi access point (+360'000 members worldwide)

 That's the concept of Fon Movimiento but you can find more details on Fon pages or Wikipedia.

Hardware requirement :  

Benefits :

• Cheap wireless AP (with an "easy to get" voucher or invitation) : 20€ with shipping included.
• You're a Linus and get free access to others FON Wi-Fi access points
• You're a Bill and get 50% of the fees, currently $3.00, charged to Aliens (non FON members) for a day pass to connect through their route.

Risks :

• Your ISP may not like it, even if on their side they sell unsecured access point. So, it's up to you.. ask your ISP if you can share your connection.. or don't !   

Installation :

• Sign On Fon.com and order your Fonera
• Once you have it, connect it to your Internet router
• From your computer connect to the open FON_AP wireless network
• Launch your browser, you're automatically transfered to fon.com pages.
• Log On, change settings of your Fonera (password, SSID, WPA Key, etc..)
• Restart the Fonera or wait 24 hours
• Connect to your newly created wireless private network (by default named "my place").
• That's it… the whole process took about 10 minutes. 

Sanyo will release next month its first USB charger specially made for their Eneloop "ready to use" upon purchase rechargeable batteries.

The charging time is approximately 280 minutes for two AA size and 120 minutes for two AAA size batteries. The charging speed is doubled when users charge only one battery at a time.

 
The cable of the USB charger can be rolled up and stored within after use.
Dimensions : 93mm x 47mm x 17.5mm for 48g.

Eneloop are Ni-MH rechargeable batteries that can be used like a dry cell battery - ‘immediately after purchase" and later recharged up to 1000 times.

Sources : Ubergizmo, Sanyo