Pricing is not yet known for the Brookstone fuel cell itself, but we do know that the cartridges (made of plastic and hold butane) will cost a few dollars. People will be able to buy refills and fuel cells online or through Brookstone catalogs. When the fuel cartridges are empty, they can be recycled through municipal recycling programs.

Lilliputian believes that the first customers will be early technology adopters, travelers, college students, and teenagers. “Anyone who wants to be liberated from sticking a phone into a wall outlet,” said Mouli Ramani, VP of business development at Lilliputian Systems. Lilliputian is the first fuel cell system to depot a solid oxide fuel cell membrane onto a silicon wafer.

“The problem of all the other (previous) devices, which usually used methanol or sodium borohydride, is that when they actually built the product, it was not any better than carrying a lithium ion battery around,” he added.

Lilliputian’s fuel cell will be able to charge an iPhone 4 between 10 and 14 times with one cartridge. The cartridges will be made by cigarette light makers and can be carried on airplanes. Lilliputian is aiming to sell the device and cartridges through other retail stores.

Check out the press conference of the event below:


Video streaming by Ustream

Georgia Tech’s director of the Augmented Environment Labs Blair MacIntyre agreed with Mistry. “You could not do AR with a display like this. The small field of view, and placement off to the side, would result in an experience where the content is rarely on the display and hard to discover and interact with. But it’s a fine size and structure for a small head-up display.”

The Project Glass video is a concept video, but MacIntyre believes Google may have created a level of over-hype and over-expectations that their hardware cannot live up to. Another issue is that a display that shows overlaid graphics may perform find indoors, but when walking outside in the brightness, the imagery would be washed out.

So far students have worked through MIT course material on their own and were not tested. Soon enough, MIT students will be able to see sought after professors in videos, participate in discussion groups, and take exams through OpenCourseWare.

“It is making MIT available on a grand planet scale,” stated MIT’s Computer Science and A.I. Lab director Anant Agarwal. “This is a great way to marry our mission in education and our mission in research.”

Students that want to earn certificates through the MIT online program will have to pay a fee. The fees have not yet been set. Currently it costs $40,732 to attend MIT for one year. University officials stressed that this program would not be replacing a campus experience and online courses are just as rigorous as the classes that are outside the virtual world. “This is not MIT-lite,” stated Reif.

OpenCourseWare launched about a decade ago and over 100 million people have used the software to study subjects that range from Anthropology to Gender Studies. Stanford and Yale have similar online learning courses.

[Reuters]

Microsoft researchers sorted through data from a consortium of hospitals including the Ragon Institute, MIT, the Center for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV. They used a biology tool called PhyloD, which uses data mining to help identify virus patterns.

“It turns out there are a lot of similarities between the way spammers evolve their approaches to avoid filters and the way the HIV virus is constantly mutating,” said Microsoft Research on their blog.

Using PhyloD and the company’s computing center, Microsoft was able to process a year’s worth of data resulting in several days.

[ThreatPost]

“Ford is focused on leveraging innovations in materials that save weight and boost fuel economy, helping our vehicles travel farther on less gas,” stated Ford group vice president of global product development Derrick Kuzak. “MuCell is a great example of this effort.”

[eGMcartech]

MIT’s Backtalk project, now preparing for display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, asks the question “what if our devices kept talking back to us after we disposed of them?” and demonstrates visually where our abandoned tech goeswhen we leave it behind. The MIT SENSEable City Lab team used GPS tracking to trace the journey of discarded gadgets, from printer cartridges and batteries to cellphones and netbooks. The associate director of the lab, Assaf Biderman, calls the forgotten electronics “both a toxic liability and a potentially valuable resource.” The MoMA exhibit, which opens on the 24th of this month, will give consumers some idea of the future of the technology we own, and how we could handle tech we’re ready to abandon. [Engadget]

Reddit cofounder Aaron Swartz has been charged for data theft by Carmen M. Ortiz, the US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. He is charged with stealing more than 4 million documents from MIT and academic archive JSTOR. The charges could result in up to 35 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. Swartz’s charges include computer fraud, wire fraud, criminal forfeiture and obtaining information from a protected computer. [The New York Times]

“We agree with HubSpot’s belief that search engines, social media and mobile devices have fundamentally changed how businesses should market themselves,” stated Google Ventures partner Rich Miner. “We’re thrilled to support their efforts to help thousands of small and medium businesses reach potential customers.”