It’s so tiny, you can’t see it with the naked eye.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered an energy source that you can see only through a microscope.

The researchers devised a process for generating electricity using nanotechnology. They plan to refine the process in hopes of creating a new environmentally friendly battery, among other products.

It works like this: Researchers used tiny wires, known as carbon nanotubes, to create a powerful wave of energy, according to Michael Strano, and MIT associate professor of chemical engineering. He is also the senior author of a paper on this new phenomenon, published in this week’s Nature Materials journal.

After coating these tiny wires with a layer of fuel, Strano said his team generated a so-called thermopower wave and stumbled across a reaction that may eventually be used to power electronics, computers and cell phones.

“This could lead to batteries that are up to 10 times smaller and still have the same power output. In the portable energy and energy conservation arena, we’re trying to find power sources that have a smaller profile but hold more energy,” Strano told CNN Radio.

To build a power source, such as a battery, it’s necessary to move electrons in a material from one end of the battery to the other, creating an electrical current. This thermopower wave MIT researchers discovered, using the class of molecules know as carbon nanotubes, does just that.

Strano said “some of the advantages of this technology [are] you can generate a lot of power from a very, very small device.”

And that’s not all. Most batteries on the market now are made from highly toxic heavy metals, which are very bad for the environment — metals like lead, nickel and cadmium.

Batteries made from this new thermopower technology would be completely nontoxic, Strano said.

“The materials we use to make these thermopower waves are organic. They’re not grown naturally, but they’re made of carbon. In other words, you could essentially incinerate them, or they would degrade over time, there’s no heavy metal residue,” Strano said.

There’s another potential benefit in using a so-called thermopower battery: energy savings.

“Most people don’t realize a battery sitting unused in your laptop is leaking its power away,” Strano said. “If you take all the laptop batteries that are produced in one year, in the off state, they’re leaking an amount of power during that year that we could store in a small nuclear reactor … and that’s power that’s essentially lost and dissipated just from laptop batteries.”

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As you may know I’m pretty excited about the term web 2.0 I know it’s on the chopping board because frankly people think it’s a fake term. Well I don’t, I love the term and have embraced it like a cozy blanket. I love that it seems to wipe everything pre 2.0 out and sets a new standard for web functionality and design. I truly believe the sites responsible for kicking off web 2.0 in all it’s glory is Twitter, Face-book, and Google. They have defined that simplicity is more important then flash and  a smarter design means it’s easier for people use.

If I had a mantra for web design it would be 2.0, I know some people are about to throw up on their computers that read this lol

Here are some bullet points I like in Web 2.0:

Simplicity – With websites like Twitter, Google and Facebook patheing the way for simple but smart designs. I definably see a great trend coming from this.

Less stuff on a web page – I think more people are getting multiple domains and splitting up what used to drown a single domain.

Visitor involvement – I know about you but I’m opinionated and appreciate being heard.

No we all know opinions differ. There are those who see the term Web 2.0 as a fatuous buzzword without weight behind it, while others acknowledge it as a name synonymous with a 2nd generation of online capabilities and utilities in terms of web development and design. So what’s the reality? Well, while everyone is entitled to his or her opinions on what Web 2.0 is or isn’t, it is lately recognized as the term people use to describe the more communicative and widely used, people-friendly online environment that is globally embraced today. The term is used to refer to the means that communicating, the sharing of data, interoperability and associations are implemented on the World Wide Web. It is reflective of the era of Web 2.0 that the progression of web-based communities, host services and web-based applications has been so rapid. Since its inception (after the year 2000) there has been an upsurge in the popularity of social-network sites, media-sharing sites, wikis and blogs.

The person accredited with coining the phrase Web 2.0 is Darcy DiNucci, who made the reference in an article entitled Fractured Future. In her text, DiNucci described the web as it we knew it then to be in embryonic form which she predicted to evolve from a series of static screens to something more in the vein of a ‘transport mechanism’. She envisioned how the web would indeed spread and be made accessible through TV sets and cell phones, joking that even the microwave might one day be equipped with web connectivity. While DiNucci’s observations were incipient and at the time thought by some to be on the whimsical side we can see now that much of what she said has become reality. So much so that the reference Web 2.0 which we attribute to her has since been embraced by others, most famously in 2004 by Tim O’Reilly during the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference. The general consensus is that Web 2.0 refers to the collective revolutionizing of the ways developers of software and web users utilize the World Wide Web.
Distinguishing features of what is widely termed Web 2.0 are:

1. Easier searching — Web searching is now easier and more productive due to the efficacy of keyword searching.
2. Relevancy — Effective and valuable link building from one relevant site to another — both in and outgoing.
3. Ad-hoc guides to pertinent information and authoring — The ability to create and constantly update content using a platform that experiences rapid evolution — an originally small amount of content is in a continual state of renewal and expansion due to updated and interlinked submissions. In wikis, for example, the content is open to reiteration. Users see fit to upgrade, edit and alter each others’ contributions, resulting in informative collective works. In the case of blogs, content has a cumulative quality — posts and comments build up over time, attracting both visitors and active subscribers.
4. Tags — The categorization of content by creating tags: these are simple, one-word user-determined descriptions put in place to facilitate effective searching. The greatest advantage of tags is the avoidance of rigid, pre-assumed categories. In short, the creator or administrator can decide on numerous categories, some of which he or she may invent, under which to tag content.
5. Domain extensions — In the beginning there was DOT COM. Now there are ever more extensions to choose from. Some will bear relation to the geographical location of a given business, such as .co.uk or .de extensions, (the United Kingdom and Germany respectively). Others have more convoluted connotations, but all have their value.
6. Algorithmic power — Powerful algorithms that leverage the World Wide Web as an application platform as well as a matured collaboration environment.
7. Signals — The facilitation of RSS technology allows users to be informed of online content changes with immediacy.

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