The world's emerging economies are surging, but when economies surge, they tend to use a lot of resources. And we're a little light on resources these days. New Ventures is trying to buck that trend, investing in small businesses that ...READ»
PayPal has handed over nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to buy Zong, a leading provider of mobile payments. It's safe to say PayPal is serious about future innovations in mobile-pay tech.READ»
Stock prices, consumer spending, and carbon emissions have all rebounded now that the economy is back on track. Until we find a way to "decouple" growth from pollution, we'll be forced to choose between poverty and the planet.READ»
It's been a couple of years since I last visited Peru, and more than five since I had an apartment in Chile, and these gaps highlight an unmistakable trend. The center of the world is shifting from the developed to the developing world. READ»
Nokero, a Hong Kong-based company, has debuted the world's first solar-powered LED lightbulb. Costing $15, the Nokero N100 has kerosene lamps in its sights but, at $15 a pop (although that drops to $10 if you buy 48 or more) it's ...READ»
Dr. Hans Rosling is a legendary TED presenter: He's appeared there a half-dozen times, using stats in ingenious ways to dispel common myths about the developing world. A professor at Karolinska
Institutet in Stockholm, he's got a ...READ»
Bill Gates is going atomic. The Microsoft founder's startup TerraPower is partnering with Toshiba to build a traveling-wave reactor. These reactors run on depleted uranium, rather than the enriched sort found in light-water reactors, ...READ»
The BigShot build-it-yourself digital camera kit has adjustable lenses, gears and dynamo (the camera is powered with a hand crank), to teach kids about optics, mechanics and energy.READ»
When the sun goes down, much of the world goes dark. At-home productivity sinks--you can't read or learn without light--unless you can afford to buy kerosene, which emits noxious fumes.
D.Light, a company that originated as a ...READ»
The netbook sector is one of the hottest spaces in tech, so it’s no surprise that IBM has thrown its hat into the ring with its new Smart Work package. What is surprising is that the computer giant is angling for market share in ...READ»
Tata Motors, India's largest automobile company, has unveiled plans to build what might be the world's cheapest high-rise apartments--ranging in price from $7,800 to $13,400.
The company is already famous for it's $2,000 ...READ»
The visionary architect Buckminster Fuller believed that a single design could save the world. That ethos is being carried forward by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, which every year holds a contest to create a design with maximum ...READ»
High-tech prosthetics can easily cost $50,000. They're a luxury usually afforded only to Westerners. But an engineer at Stanford has just unveiled an artificial knee that costs a mere $20. Last year, Joel Sadler was presented ...READ»
Grandiosely titled The Universal World House, a new temporary home is being touted as a solution to homelessness and displaced persons in disaster areas around the world. And amazingly it's made of paper.Well, cellulose from recycled ...READ»
