Hawaii,United States

It can sometimes be a little unclear (especially first day of a new year) how the previous year changed the world. No one guessed in 1946 that the Magnetron Spencer Percy was developing for use in a RADAR system (and that subsequently melted a candy bar in his pocket) would one day become the microwave oven. But I like to think that we can make some pretty good guesses about which of this year's innovations are going to be with us, and changing our world, for a good long time.

If you had to make a list of US states leading the green tech revolution, who would be on the list? Probably West Coast states like California and Oregon. Maybe Texas, with its burgeoning wind industry. Maybe even Massachusetts, which is becoming a center for developing battery technology. But no matter who you put on your list, don’t leave out Hawaii.

The Khronos Group on Monday announced that its OpenCL 1.0 specification has been ratified and publicly released. Apple proposed the spec six months ago.

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is the first open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and handheld/embedded devices.

Ocean Power Technologies and the Navy have joined together to create a small wave farm off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. The company has installed one of its PowerBuoy units one mile off the Kaneohe Bay Marine Corp Base, with plans to install others in the near future to generate 1MW.

David Biello  in Scientific American: