Three billion people living in developing nations, about 42% of the population, are under the age of 15. The Green Wi-Fi project has the goal of bringing internet access to these children, and doing it in a way that makes sense for a developing country.

Unlike developed nations, many of the places where this technology was designed to be deployed lack electricity, so the Green Wi-Fi project designed a self-contained unit consisting of a solar panel, charge controller and battery for power, and a modified Linksys WRT54GL wireless router with a high gain external omni-directional antenna for the internet access part. These boxes form the nodes of a self-healing mesh network. Connect one or more of them to the internet somehow (often via a cellular modem) and you can share that connection across the entire mesh. Since the boxes need no external power, they can be placed on rooftops anywhere to build up the mesh.

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PolyFuel, a Mountain View, California company, announced this week that it has integrated its methanol fuel cell technology into a Lenovo Thinkpad T40 laptop computer. According to the company’s press release:

In PolyFuel’s prototype, the power supply features a detachable fuel cartridge – about the size of a deck of cards – that can be swapped out while the computer continues to run. Long-distance travelers, or others needing continuous, unconnected, easily portable power for their notebooks, would simply carry spare cartridges in their pocket or purse – a someday common practice that has already been approved for commercial aircraft by the various regulatory bodies around the world.

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