But how to turn these molecular tubes into electrical circuits and, eventually, computers? Physicist Peter Hadley and his colleagues at Delft University in the Netherlands have taken an important first step. As they report recently in the journal Science, they managed to take nanotubes, mount them on silicon and attach little aluminum contacts. The result is working transistors, a building block of electrical circuits. The hope is ultimately to make nanotube computers without the expensive equipment and processes of current chipmaking. “The idea is to make some of the components chemically, rather than sculpting them from silicon,” says Hadley. He’s already been able to brew up nanotransistors, pour them over a surface and arrange them into useful patterns. The next step is to get the molecules to assemble themselves into circuits.
Betting on a Contender Sales of computers and electronic gadgets are in the doldrums, with no end in sight. So why did Johnnie Chan, veteran venture capitalist at Tech Pacific in Hong Kong, put $1.6 million in Paion, a South Korean chip-design house–after Sept. 11? Because Paion serves a market that Chan believes will flourish even in a slump. Paion designs low-cost chips that link computers and other devices, even household appliances, to high-speed wireless networks. Such networks are proliferating, and Chan is betting that in a few years they will be the gateway of choice to the Internet. “We may be wrong and this company may go down the drain,” he says. “Or it’s going to be very hot.”
Window Shopping Just about anybody who’s clicked on a Web site recently has experienced what was supposed to revolutionize online advertising: pop-up ads. These are the annoying little windows that jump to the center of your screen. (Their irksome cousins, pop-down ads, appear beneath the main browser after you close it.) Advertising executives have pushed pop ads since earlier this year, but the verdict is mixed. They do drive more traffic to sites, say consultants Jupiter MMXI, but surfers don’t linger. Only 27 percent of visitors to wireless-camera firm X-10’s site stay for more than 20 seconds–too short to buy anything. Analysts still expect the ads to proliferate.
GAMES Osama Online The latest new villain of videogames is none other than the terrorist Osama bin Laden. The Web site newgrounds.com features games whose object is to capture and torture you-know-who or smack him with a fly swatter. The creators have tried to soften any racist overtones. One game (Bad Dudes vs. Bin Laden) ends with the reminder: “You can take out aggression on videogames but please don’t take it out on the kind Arab people of this nation.”
