The light bulb, the symbol of bright ideas, doesn’t look like such a great idea anymore, as lawmakers in the U.S. and abroad are talking about banning the century-old technology because of its contribution to global warming.

But what comes next? Compact fluorescent bulbs are the only real alternative right now, but “bulbs” that use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are quickly emerging as a challenger.

LEDs, which are small chips usually encased in a glass dome the size of a matchstick head, have been in use in electronics for decades to indicate, for example, whether a VCR is on or off.

Those LEDs were usually red or green, but a scientific breakthrough in the 1990s paved the way for the production of LEDs that produce white light. Because they use less power than standard incandescent bulbs, white LEDs have become common in flashlights.

Established players in the lighting industry and a host of startups are now grooming LEDs to take on the reigning champion of residential lighting, the familiar pear-shaped incandescent light bulb.

iPods can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to a study presented by a 17-year-old high school student to a meeting of heart specialists on Thursday.

The study tested the effect of the portable music devices on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, outfitted with pacemakers. Electrical interference was detected half of the time when the iPod was held just 2 inches from the patient’s chest for 5 to 10 seconds.

The study did not examine any portable music devices other than iPods, which are made by Apple Inc.

In some cases, the iPods caused interference when held 18 inches from the chest. Interfering with the telemetry equipment caused the device to misread the heart’s pacing and in one case caused the pacemaker to stop functioning altogether.

A number of companies have sketched out plans to convert algae into a feedstock for transportation fuel, but GreenFuel Technologies is farther along in bringing the concept to market than most.
And the Cambridge, Mass.-based company trotted out numbers at the Think Tomorrow Today conference sponsored by ThinkEquity Partners here (say that three times fast) to illuminate why the idea is getting so much attention.

First off, algae grows rapidly and grows constantly, which means that algae ponds can produce more oil per hectare in a year than traditional plant crops, said GreenFuel CFO Guillermo Espiga.

A hectare pond filled with algae can produce 15,000 to 80,000 liters of vegetable oil a year. Only about 6,000 liters of palm oil can be squeezed out of a hectare a year. Corn is only good for 120 hectares of oil a year, Espiga said.

But there’s more. GreenFuel plans to produce algae in ponds next to coal-fired power plants. The carbon dioxide from the plants is captured and provides the food for growing the algae. At a 100 megawatt coal-burning power plant, 100 acres of algae ponds, optimized with species that grow well in that particular environment, will consume 90 percent of the CO2 from the plant.

The news of the TJ Maxx data breach has rocked the retail and banking industry, and many estimate that it will cost hundreds of millions or even a billion-plus dollars in financial damage. It was already widely reported back in March that the TJ Maxx breach was probably due to an insecure wireless network, but the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that it happened outside of a St. Paul, MN, Marshalls discount store in July 2005 (Marshalls is owned by TJX Cos.) WSJ is reporting that investigators believe that the hacker used a laptop and a telescope-shaped antenna.

Google Mobile Maps is now available to UK users for route planning and local searching.

The service, integrated with Google Earth for showing satellite images, has been available as a Java application for a while. But with the UK launch Google has enhanced the route-planning capability, as well as adding searches for local businesses and traffic information.

Microsoft has posted a patch for Windows Vista that finally allows iPod owners to eject their music player from PCs running the new operating system without the risk that songs will be damaged.

The updates - one each for the 32- and 64-bit versions of Vista - can be downloaded from Microsoft’s support site here.

To taxi officials, the touch-screen monitors popping up in cabs help passengers make the most of the 13 New York minutes spent on an average ride.

Passengers can pay by credit card - no more fumbling for cash and tip. As a cab heads through Greenwich Village, for example, passengers can find ads and reviews for neighborhood bars and restaurants. They can also view news stories and an electronic map of their cab’s progress.

The monitors are now in 200 city cabs as an experiment, but a plan to put them in all 13,000 cabs has angered many drivers. They see the technology as an expensive imposition that would cost them money and allow taxi owners and officials to check up on them.

Web-based phone-calling company Jajah Inc. has won Intel Corp.’s backing for its bid to blur the distinction between phones and computers, the two companies said on Wednesday.

Jajah, which has more than 2 million users of its free or low-cost global calling service, said Intel Corp. has agreed to marketing, patent and distribution deals with it and Intel’s venture capital arm is leading a $20 million financing round.

“Computers are becoming phones and phones are becoming computers,” Jajah Chief Executive Trevor Healy said in an interview.

The deal gives Jajah access to Intel’s sales channel of thousands of dealers, personal computer makers and software developers, and could lead to Jajah becoming a desktop icon on PCs later this year, Healy said, although no plans are set.

Over time, Jajah hopes to see its Internet phone-calling technology being embedded into microprocessors, or so-called central processor units (CPUs) — Intel’s main business.