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At first glance, this bike may look more like a fashion statement than an environmental one. But its wheels, which resemble spinners adorning the tires of some inner-city SUVs, are actually circular solar panels soaking up energy from the sun's rays.

The "E-V Sunny Bicycle," which claims to be "the first all solar electric bike," generates enough natural power to charge the batteries that run a 500-watt motor attached to the front wheel with a top speed of 19 miles per hour, according to OhGizmo.

The price of this 75-pound bike is fairly steep at $… Read more

As with most things, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about electric vehicles. Last Friday, Ian Wright and I spent a couple of hours around my conference table discussing our philosophies on electric cars. Wright knows something about this topic, as he was formerly an executive at EV start-up Tesla Motors, and is now the founder and CEO of Wrightspeed, a Silicon Valley-based start-up whose first car is going to be a high-performance electric supercar, price tag just shy of $200,000. And as it's electric, Wright expects it should out-start, outrun, out-turn, and … Read more

THREE RIVERS, N.M.--I just hit exactly 2,000.0 miles since leaving on Road Trip 2007, my journey around the Southwest.

And given that there happened to be a little piece of shoulder to pull off on here in the middle of nowhere--truly a remote road--and a good enough signal via my EV-DO card, it seemed worth blogging.

So, if you care--and I'm sure at least 11 of you do, that's what I'm doing: Commemorating that since I left the Bay Area a week ago Monday, I've driven exactly 2,000 miles.

Last year, … Read more

TEMPE, Ariz.--One of the things I've found on my Road Trip around the Southwest, and on plenty of previous travels, is that motels are a terrific place to get a good, free Wi-Fi signal.

Most often, motels provide better Wi-Fi than pricey hotels, and that's something I've been railing away at for some time, hoping that I can make a small dent in those establishments' arrogance towards their paying customers.

So when I pulled into this city just south of Phoenix Sunday night, I was pleased, but not surprised, to discover that my room would have … Read more

AT&T says it has spent an additional $50 million in the months leading up to the iPhone launch to upgrade and add more capacity to its 2.5G EDGE network, but a company official said that subscribers shouldn't expect to surf the mobile Net any faster.

"We don't want to set unrealistic expectations," said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T. "We have been upgrading the network on an ongoing basis, and we've made an additional investment in anticipation of demand for the iPhone."

AT&T has spent over $… Read more

Qwest Wireless customers will soon be able to wirelessly surf the Net at 3G speeds on their laptops.

The company says it will offer its customers wireless broadband service using Sprint Nextel's evolution data optimized (EVDO) network. Qwest has been using the Sprint wireless network to provide nationwide coverage for its cellular subscribers since 2003. Now the carrier will be able to offer nationwide broadband wireless too.

Qwest Mobile Broadband customers can choose one of three plans based on the amount of data they will be uploading or downloading. Service plans start at $70 a month. The unlimited plan … Read more

We know the HSDPA Motorola Razr V3xx is coming to AT&T/Cingular but we still haven't heard anything regarding U.S. carrier availability on the equally powerful Motorola Razr Maxx. And that's too bad as the Razr Maxx promises to be the most appealing Razr to date.

But now it appears we may get our wish, just in a different form. Howard Forums has published marketing photos of a promised EV-DO variant of the phone, the Maxx Ve for Verizon Wireless. Details are sketchy at this point but it's rumored the Maxx Ve will offer … Read more

These days, if you're not rocking some mobile broadband on your laptop, you might as well not even leave the house. The latest notebooks to jump on the EV-DO Rev. A bandwagon (for those speedy 800KBps downloads) are the Panasonic Toughbook W5 and the T5, originally released in September. The provider of choice in this case is Sprint.

Our enthusiasm is only somewhat dampened by the fact that those two models are what Panasonic calls "business-rugged." That means these laptops have a magnesium-alloy case designed to withstand a 1-foot drop, and shock-mounted hard drives rated for a … Read more

If you can't get enough of exploding Mentos in Diet Coke bottles or the guy who showcases the history of dance, Verizon Wireless has some good news for you. The carrier announced today that it signed a deal with YouTube to bring a limited number of videos to Verizon's 3G handsets starting in early December. Users also will be able to use their phone's camcorders to record their own videos to share with other Verizon customers or YouTube viewers. Granted, the video quality from a camera phone won't be spectacular but if you want to catch … Read more