scales

eSolar on Tuesday said that it will build solar thermal power plants that will make 245 megawatts of electricity for Southern California Edison.

The plants will be built in the Antelope Valley of Southern California and begin operating in 2011.

The company, created by Idealabs and funded by Google.org, makes utility-scale concentrating solar power systems with a modular design.

Software-controlled heliostats, or mirrors, reflect light onto a tower where the heat turns water to steam that turns a turbine.

The company raised $130 million in April.

California is a hotbed for utility-scale solar power because the state has relatively … Read more

I have a pan of brownies sitting on my counter. I keep an eye on what I eat, but that doesn't mean that I can't eat a sweet or two. The problem that I run into is that it's hard to decide just how much brownie I can have. I've looked around, but I haven't found any helpful information. One recipe suggested that 1/20 of a pan is the appropriate serving size for a brownie. However, I'm not going to spend my time dividing a pan that precisely.

The EatSmart Nutrition Scale provides … Read more

When it comes to solar these days, it's go big or go home.

Utilities are being pushed to use more renewable energy, heating up the business of large-scale solar power. (Click here for related photo gallery.)

There are competing designs for utility-scale solar farms. By concentrating light to make steam, some designs use heat to generate electricity. In parallel, other companies concentrate light onto photovoltaic cells to generate electricity.

The latter, known as concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems, may make more sense in a broader set of geographies, compared with concentrating solar thermal. Both forms of concentrating solar power are … Read more

A few days ago we ran an item noting the faux pas of giving a Wii Fit as a Mother's Day gift and suggested sarcastically that a scale be included to round out the package (pun intended). Some disagreed with our post and, we fear, may actually make matters worse by doing just that.

For those misguided souls we have another unsolicited suggestion: Rather than a scale used to weigh Mom, here's one for the kitchen instead that's a little more subtle. Tanita's stainless steel KD-400 is supposedly the Cadillac of kitchen scales, "designed to … Read more

It's not often that we have one of those why-didn't-I-think-of-that moments at Crave, but this is definitely an exception. That's probably why we just write about inventions instead of create them and retire.

The idea behind the aptly named "Spoon Scale" is as useful as it is disarmingly simple: Just scoop what you think you need and let the integrated digital meter do the fine-tuning. Showing immediate results on its built-in LCD, this battery-powered scooper is purportedly accurate to "down to the last 1⁄10 gram," according to OhGizmo--and, thankfully, can be programmed … Read more

Every now and again, we'll come across a piece of technology that works just fine, does exactly what it's supposed to, and yet, and yet... Something about it just isn't right. We can't put our finger on why, but even thinking about it makes us feel a bit funny. This is technology that's just... wrong.

Crave UK has highlighted, in no particular order, some of the inventions that we could happily live without, and would in fact prefer if they'd never been invented. We've placed each wrongosity onto our patented "Scale of … Read more

We should have seen this one coming after learning of Matsushita's plans to make slimmed-down massage chairs. Now another Japanese company has developed what appears to be the ultimate fat-analysis machine.

Tokyo-based Tanita--whose slogan is "the body fat experts"--has gone well beyond its bevy of smart scales to produce "a precise electronic, abdominal fat meter that can measure the amount of fat deep inside of you, even around your organs," according to Popgadget. The AB-101 does seem more civilized than being assaulted by those inhumane calipers, but it still looks like a cross between … Read more

There may yet be a day when the ubiquitous treadmill is replaced by the Wii at the gym, and the first step could very well be on the Wii Fit. The machine, as you'll recall, senses the movement of your entire body using a device that resembles a scale. And, like a scale, it can insult you by breaking if you weigh too much.

There's just one problem: The weight limit is 300 pounds. That may be fine for the petite Japanese, but it had better be able to handle more weight if it wants to succeed in … Read more

There was a relatively small acquisition on Tuesday: nCipher, a U.K.-based encryption specialist, purchased storage encryption appliance vendor NeoScale Systems. This could be looked at as basic industry consolidation, but the impact could ripple further.

Encryption and, more specifically, key management really needs a set of standards to prosper and grow. Key management standards must include standard ways to connect encrypting devices to key managers, key managers to key managers, and so on. There are a few nascent standards efforts in this area, but nothing concrete.

Here's how this niche merger could impact the stalemate. nCipher has … Read more