We had heard that unlimited online viewing had been granted to select Netflix subscribers last month, and suspected it’d get a full rollout soon. Well, soon is tomorrow—as the AP notes, a day before MacWorld, where Apple is expected to unveil its video rental-killer rendition of iTunes.
The only people who aren’t getting cut in to the infinite viewing parade are the cheapos who only rent a pair of DVDs a month for $5. Whether or not turning the stream access into a smorgasbord is enough to fend off the looming iTunes threat is doubtful—Mac-compatibility would be a nice little shot to the balls, though—but it’s not like Netflix is totally without a battle plan for the infinite format war. [SF Gate/AP]

Original post by Leon

The latest edition of Nature magazine details a new method scientists have derived for converting heat energy into electricity, using silicon to instigate the conversion. Researchers have more investigations to carry out, but if preliminary findings are indicative of what is to come, appliances that charge using your own body heat may be on the horizon.

Using “rough” silicon wires, produced by a process known as “electroless etching,” where silicon nano-wires are synthesized in an aqueous solution, over a thin, semiconductor crystallized base, the scientists have been able to exploit the process of galvanic displacement of silicon. This displacement technique, which uses silver ions, causes the thermoelectric efficiency to be increased on the rough surfaces of the nano-wires.
The breakthrough comes from the boffins at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, who believe they have found a way to [...]

Original post by Leon