Technology

In a nondescript manufacturing plant on a quiet San Fernando cul-de-sac, a khaki-green machine the size of a buffet table sucks in bright pink ribbon and spits out one of the hottest features in theme parks. Here, Precision Dynamics Corp., a company that began making plastic hospital wristbands out of a Burbank garage more than 50 years ago, has become the nation's top producer of a new microchip-enhanced wristband for amusement parks, concerts, resorts and gyms.

As Hollywood rushes headlong into 3-D filmmaking, few companies have as much to gain -- or lose -- as RealD of Beverly Hills. The privately owned technology company with 75 employees has emerged from obscurity to become the leading provider of 3-D systems for movie theaters, outflanking established players such as Dolby Laboratories Inc. RealD's products -- which include an adapter that attaches to the lenses of digital projectors and lightweight glasses -- account for 90% of the U.S. market.

Ge Wang blows softly, his fingers move lightly, and "Auld Lang Syne" comes floating out in ethereal electronic notes. Then his instrument rings, so he answers it and starts chattering away. It's an iPhone, transformed through Wang's software genius into an ocarina -- a computerized version of an ancient Aztec flute. Wang, an associate professor of computer music at Stanford University, is the co-founder of SonicMule Inc.

Could this be the end of electric power cords? A Massachusetts company said that within 18 months it will have on the market a wireless electricity system to power -- through the air -- lights, computers, televisions and even the chargers for electric cars. The announcement was made at the TEDGlobal conference, a gathering of technologists and scientists, that wrapped up Friday in Oxford, England. The company, WiTricity of Watertown, Mass.

They can spot the smile on a suspected smuggler's face from 10,000 feet in the air, record full-color video of his run for shore and simultaneously track 5,000 ships spread over hundreds of miles of ocean. Flying above the Atlantic about halfway between Florida and the Bahamas, the latest addition to the government's anti-smuggling arsenal can track the trajectory of a boat leaving Cuba and compare it -- in seconds -- to every filed course plan for vessels on the water.

A little bit of the future is coming to Los Angeles freeways later this year in the form of "smart" road studs that gauge road conditions and traffic flow and open and close a freeway lane accordingly. Caltrans has contracted with a New Zealand company to pilot the "dynamic-lane" system on the 110 Freeway where traffic backs up in a tunnel at the single-lane connector to northbound Interstate 5.

One warm August afternoon in 2003, a power failure originating in Ohio coursed through the electrical grid in the Northeast, sparking the nation's largest blackout and leaving millions in eight states without air conditioning, traffic lights and cellphone service. Energy experts say that shutdown, which cost an estimated $6 billion, might have been averted by a "smart grid."

FINA, the international governing body of swimming, is attempting to put the genie back in the bottle. The genie would be the high-tech swimsuits, starting with the well-known Speedo LZR Racer, that dominated the run-up to the Beijing Olympics last year, and the next generation of controversial successors.

With soothing walls of turquoise tile and a vase of orchids on the front desk, the Colon Health Center of Delaware has been selling an alternative to one of medicine's most unloved procedures -- the colonoscopy. Rather than insert several feet of tubing into patients' lower intestines, clinicians slide patients into a computed tomography, or CT, imaging machine that can quickly scan the abdomen for signs of cancer.

Children and seniors demand many of the same things from their technology: They want it to work right away. They don't want it to do a million things. And they need it to be secure. "Both groups need simple things with less functionality and more protection," said Robin Raskin, a former PC Magazine editor who founded twin conference sessions on technology for the two age groups at this week's Consumer Electronics Show.