Technology and Gadgets Online

Faxing no longer means buying a traditional fax machine.  Though it was very useful when it was introduced, traditional faxing now feels slow and old.  The Internet has brought a new speed in communications, and now we can enjoy a mix of faxing with Internet speed thanks to email fax technology and fax services.

Email fax services allow you to use your email address to send and receive fax in a digital format, while retaining 100% compatibility with fax machines (which are still used by many companies).  Faxes are sent in a similar way email messages are sent and you receive them in the form of email attachments straight in your inbox thanks to a virtual fax number that is provided to you when you open an account with a service.  This technology allows you to receive and send fax from Gmail or any other free provider.

This new technology is also portable.  At first this meant that you could fax anywhere using just your laptop and an Internet connection, but offers have gotten more interesting with the introduction of smartphone technology.  Nowadays you can basically turn your smartphone into a mini electronic fax machine thanks to the development of apps to fax from iPhone as well as Android and Blackberry devices. Let’s take a look at the current mobile fax options.

Mobile Fax Services

Ringcentral Fax.  RingCentral offers a cool plan called “RingCentral Mobile”, which makes full use of their app. Besides faxing you also get VoIP and can even redirect your current number for convenience. Of course, you can also opt to just use the fax features with a common faxing plan. RingCentral offers packages for different fax volumes.

MyFax.  This is another excellent fax service which offers an app to receive fax in all smartphones.  This app is very easy to use and has all the basic capabilities to keep your incoming faxes organized.  Additionally, Myfax is one of the fax service providers that offers international fax at no extra cost.

eFax.  This company offers perhaps the most interesting iPhone fax app currently available on the App store. It doesn’t only allow you to receive faxes, but it also takes advantage of the phone’s built-in camera to take pictures of documents and send them!

All of these options are available to download for free in your smartphone, but they only work if you have an existing fax account with these companies.  Luckily you can start out for free, given that all of them offer 30 day free trials with all features enabled.

Let me just start this article with the fact that nuclear fusion is highly experimental, and even if the research has come a long way, we are still several decades away from using this energy source commercially. However, nuclear fusion has several major advantages over convectional energy sources today, and even though the principles behind are somewhat similar to nuclear fission, the potential is on another level.

What is Nuclear Power?

Nuclear power is the source of energy that fuel most of the processes in the Universe, responsible for the creation and destruction of starts, as well as the being the life force behind them. It is the solely most potent form of energy we have so far discovered and scientist have been working the last 70 years on how to tame and harness these processes for generating useful energy.

They have come a long way. It did not take many years after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, before nuclear fission reactors started popping up around the globe.

Nuclear Fusion

Nuclear fusion is the name of the process where two lighter atoms merge into one (the opposite of nuclear fission), and in the process has net loss of mass. This mass is converted into massive amounts of energy through Einstein’s formula E = mc^2, where the constant c is the speed of light. There are several large obstacles when it comes to harness nuclear fusion, one of them being finding the right material to sustain the amount of heat that is required to actually make these atoms merge together.

Abundant Fuel

Nuclear fusion can use (unlike nuclear fission that requires uranium or similar heavy atoms) seawater as fuel. That is we extract the deuterium hydrogen isotopes out of seawater. It has been estimated that about 1 liter of seawater is equivalent to 100 liters of petrol.

Relatively Low Radioactivity

The other major advantage of nuclear fusion is the fact that the radioactivity (both in half-life and strength) of the byproducts of nuclear fusion are much milder than that of nuclear fission.

Fusion is The Future

If we one day are able to harness the awesome power of nuclear fusion (the same source that fuel’s and keeps the sun alive and burning), then we have reached a major milestone in human history. This is the day our energy system is transformed, our dependency for non-renewable and polluting energy sources is lost, and we are closer to a completely green and clean future. You might want to read more up on nuclear fusion in How Does Nuclear Fusion Power Plants Work?

Wind turbines have been around for several decades now, providing reliable wind power at affordable prices for the consumer. What is offshore wind power? In many ways, offshore wind power, is almost exactly the same as the wind power we see on land, but there are some major differences. I’m going to go through the most important ones as well as telling you why offshore wind is going to be an important part of our future.

The wind resources offshore differ from onshore wind in two main ways: They are stronger and more reliable (stable). This of course, along with the fact that offshore wind turbines possess a smaller threat to the environment and the overall aesthetics, is got the renewable industry so interested.

The foundation that offshore wind turbines are structured at is very different from what we see on land. Because these foundations need to provide a stable fundament for the turbines on sea, more caution has to be taken into account when developing them. There are mainly two different types of bases of an offshore wind turbine:

Fixed Base

These can support wind turbines at depths up to about 100 meters. As the name says, these bases are fixed in the bottom of the ocean, and therefore limiting the depth they can be installed at. There are several different types and manufacturers of these wind turbines, each offering their own advantages and disadvantages.

Fleeting Base

Then there’s the fleeting base structure. These can be used to installed wind turbines at much greater depths (estimated for up to 700 meters). What this means is that we have access to much larger wind resources and a lot of the ethical and aesthetical downsides of both onshore and near-shore wind turbines diminish. There are currently only one wind turbine that is installed offshore at this time, but if it is successful we can expect a lot more of them in the near future!

Bottom Line

Offshore wind has had a very impressive growth in the last few years. Denmark, England and China are currently the leading countries, each one of them having a tremendous potential for developing offshore wind. They have many ongoing projects that potentially could tenfold the current installed offshore wind-output. There is no doubt that we will see more offshore wind in the future!

You can read more about these technologies at EnergyInformative.org, a site dedicated to bringing the latest news about both renewable and non-renewable energy sources.

There is a new Android Straight Talk phone out right now.  You may wonder why this news warrants an entire article written about it.  Well, this is a nice piece of news because now you can utilize the popular Straight Talk unlimited plan with the high end Android platform.  Not only does Android’s platform give you access to email (multiple accounts in fact), it also allows you to download songs, music, and of course applications.  Apps are the cool little programs that let your phone do all kinds of cool things.

Android-Powered Prepaid Phone

The new Straight Talk Android phone is out right now and available on the official website.  It’s called the Samsung Galaxy Precedent, so it’s part of the powerful Galaxy family of Samsung phones.  These phones have done quite well in the marketplace and with all kinds of phone plans.  The Straight Talk Precedent has a solid touch screen and all the nice features you would expect out of an Android smart phone at this price point.  Since I mentioned price, you should know that the phone costs $149 with no contract.  That’s right, you don’t need to sign a contract in order to use this phone.  All you need to do is pay for the phone and then pay for the Straight Talk monthly unlimited service plan.

Straight Talk’s Plans

There are two Straight Talk plans, but only one of them works with this phone.  All of the smart phones from Straight Talk work with the unlimited plan.  It’s just how it works.  But this is the plan you would want anyways with the new Android Straight Talk prepaid smart phone.  Otherwise you would be throttling your talk time, text messages, and Internet browsing.

Other Phones

There is surely a lot of competition out there in the prepaid phone business, so before you make a decision, have a look at some of the “competition.”  Virgin Mobile, T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, AT&T, and even Net10 all have Android phones now or soon will.  MetroPCS so far is one of the leaders in terms of bringing Android Prepaid phones into its plans.  The Family Plan may be worth looking at if you need to provide more than one phone to family members.  See the competition and make an informed decision about the phone you want or need.