NEW YORK: Dream kitchens may soon include a computer along with the latest refrigerator or oven. That way, people gathered at the family hub can satisfy their digital needs along with nutritional ones.

Hewlett-Packards new TouchSmart IQ770 PC, which retails for $1,699 in the United States, is designed for that kitchen of the future, where people turn on the computer - along with the coffeepot - and then check the screen for the weather, ball scores and the family calendar as they prepare breakfast.

The calendar on the TouchSmart is easy to use. Entries can be written on the touch-sensitive screen with a finger or stylus, or entered on a keyboard, so that everyone knows what is ahead during the day, from the dentist at 9 in the morning to the parent-teachers association meeting at 7 in the evening.

The computer also has a high-definition television receiver, a DVD player and a 19-inch, or 48-centimeter, screen that moves up and down and tilts, so that people having a snack at the counter or a nearby table can watch their favorite show or video.

Putting a computer in the kitchen is not a new idea. Neiman Marcus, the department store, included an ad for a Honeywell kitchen computer, priced at $10,600, in its 1969 Christmas catalog, said Dag Spicer, senior curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

The ad featured a woman in need of a computer to manage recipe quantities and carried the slogan, “If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute.” But Spicer said the marketing campaign failed.

“As far as we know, Neiman Marcus didnt sell a single computer,” he said.

The latest generation of kitchen computers may be more successful, and not just because the ads are less patronizing. The difference instead may lie in the spread, and speed, of broadband connections and the way that, in turn, is changing peoples computer habits.

“Forty-seven percent of all American adults have a broadband connection at home as of early 2007,” said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That connection has prompted people to do more and more on the computer, from video-watching to discarding phone books and cookbooks in favor of online research.

“Once people get that always-on connection,” she said, “they do more of everything online.”

Much of this home Internet activity is happening in shared living spaces, she said. Seventy-four percent of teenagers who use the Internet at home, for example, do so in a shared space.

Hewlett-Packards new computer is designed for these communal spots, said Amy Clark, who was sent a TouchSmart for review on her Web site, www.momadvice.com. She put it in the kitchen-dining area of her home in Granger, Indiana, and it promptly became a family focal point. In the morning, she checks the calendar; in the evening, she and her husband watch movies on it.

“It also helped reduce some clutter,” she said. The family downloaded hundreds of CDs that were once scattered around the house.

The touch-sensitive screen on the TouchSmart is optically driven; it has two cameras that track hand positions, so that people can use their fingers to play computer solitaire or chess, for example, if they do not want to use the mouse or keyboard. Gloved hands work well, too, as do hands with a bit of left-over spaghetti sauce on them. The screen comes clean with glass cleaner.

People taken with the idea of a computer in the kitchen do not necessarily have to buy one from a manufacturer like Hewlett-Packard. They can economize by assembling one from components. Bill Ekhardt, a Presbyterian pastor taking time off to care for his three preschool-age children in Des Moines, did just that - after first trying to make do in the kitchen with a laptop. That did not work, as the laptop could easily be pulled down from the counter and wrecked by the children, he said.

So when he upgraded his desktop computer in the study, he decided to recycle the leftovers to make a reasonably childproof kitchen computer. He installed the processor from his old computer in a kitchen cupboard, and mounted the monitor on an arm that he bought online. The mounting arm swings out above the kitchen counter.

“I angle the screen down so the kids can see it, or angle it up so that I can see it from where Im cooking,” he said.

UNCASVILLE, Conneticut: Even in a small sea of over-the-top limousines, 28-foot-long black Lincolns, and stretched-out Hummers with not one but three cocktail bars in the back, this was a car that stood out from the crowd.

What made it unique? An environmentally friendly hybrid engine that makes this livery-package Mercury Mariner capable of getting 34 miles a gallon in the city, easily triple the mileage of a maxed-out Hummer.

As limousine-company owners and industry vendors gathered at the Mohegan Sun casino this week for the LCT Eastern Conference/New England Livery Association trade show and convention, one of the showroom-floor vehicles getting its tires kicked the most was the new Mariner hybrid sport-utility vehicle customized for limousine service. It was the first time the vehicle has been displayed outside of Ford Motor Co. dealer meetings.

Many companies have begun in the last year offering chauffeur-driven hybrid livery cars, including PlanetTran in Cambridge and Go Green Airport Shuttle in Pelham, N.H., which both use Toyota Priuses. More than 300 hybrid taxis have gone into service in New York and San Francisco since late 2005.

The Mariner, however, is the first manufacturer-sponsored hybrid made specifically for livery service. Painted in - what else - deep glossy black, with a specialized four-year, 100,000-mile warranty and deluxe business-executive appointments such as leather seats and a front-seat electric outlet for a laptop computer, the car sells for $30,200 in its front-wheel-drive version. Buyers can get a $3,000 federal energy-conservation tax credit.

The first livery cars are expected to reach fleet operators in November or December.

Known for ample, often colossal, fuel-chugging vehicles, the limo business is starting to go green.

“Our biggest challenge right now is the price of fuel, and if you compare the costs, apples to apples, this is a cheaper vehicle to run,” said show attendee Roger J. Richard, president of Associated Cab Ltd. in Calgary, which runs a fleet of 425 taxis and 75 livery cars in the Western Canada energy-industry hub.

Associated uses eight hybrid Ford Escapes in the cab fleet and plans to add several of the Mercury Mariners, a posher cousin of the Escape in size and styling.

“The next five years, there is going to be a huge change in the industry,” Richard added. “There has to be.”

Doug Walczak, limousine and livery manager for Fords North American fleet operations, said in recent months he and other Ford executives have been peppered with inquiries from customers seeking to add hybrids to their fleet, including one Brooklyn limousine operator who was warned by a client that if he didnt add a hybrid to his fleet by New Years Day, theyd drop him.

“A lot of operators said, What are we going to do to listen to the green market? What are we doing to respond to the environmental movement? ” Walczak said.

The EPA rates the Mariner at 34 miles to the gallon in city driving, 30 on the highway, compared with 15 city and 23 highway for the industry-standard Lincoln Town Car built with an extra 6 inches of rear-seat legroom. Depending on weight, customized stretch Hummers and Cadillac Escalades can rate single-digit mileage.

In sharp contrast to gasoline-only vehicles, which normally are far more fuel-efficient on the highway, hybrids do better in stop-and-go city driving, when they can operate all-electric at slow speeds and have batteries repeatedly recharged as the brakes are applied, through the technological marvel known as regenerative braking.

Such companies as PlanetTran, which expanded last year from Boston and Cambridge to also serve the San Francisco Bay area, showed theres a clear market for environmentally minded chauffeured-car customers willing to pay $60 an hour and stuff themselves in the back seat of a Prius.

New York hybrid limo operator OzoCar, which runs a fleet of Priuses and Lexus Rx400h hybrids, and Executive Transportation Group, which runs 17 metropolitan New York black car fleets, plan this fall to roll out franchised hybrid-car limo services in six to eight more US cities.

Roger Hamelin, owner of Prospect Limo Service LLC in Prospect, Conn., who operates a fleet of five cars he drives for weddings, proms, and airport service and night-on-the-town runs to Boston and New York, said hed be leery of offering service in a Prius.

“I wouldnt do that because of the luggage space,” Hamelin said.

Looking over the Mariner, Hamelin said he liked what he saw, but admitted, “Im hoping theyd be able to come in sooner or later with a Town Car hybrid version. Thats the real standard in this business, and people want to be green. People like being able to say, Im using a green car for my limo. “

IT IS the ultimate pub quiz question and has perplexed school children for generations.

But now it appears there might be a definitive answer to the question: ‘Which is the longest river in the world?’

In geography classes, children all over the world learn that the Nile, in Africa, is the world’s longest waterway.

However, scientists in Brazil are claiming to have established once and for all that the Amazon has snatched its title.

The Amazon is widely recognised as the world’s largest river by volume, but has been regarded as second in length to the River Nile in Egypt.

The revised claim follows an expedition to Peru that is said to have established a new starting point further south.

It puts the Amazon at 6,800km (4,250 miles) compared with the Nile’s 6,695km.

The precise length of a river is not easy to calculate and depends on correctly identifying the source and the mouth.

The new claim in Brazil follows an expedition by scientists which is said to have discovered a new source for the Amazon in the south of Peru and not the north of the country as had been thought for many years.

While the exact location has yet to be confirmed from two choices, scientists say either would make the river the longest in the world.

Guido Gelli, director of science at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, told the Brazilian network TV Globo that today it could already be considered as a fact that the Amazon was the longest river in the world.

The Amazon is now said to begin in an ice-covered mountain in southern Peru called Mismi. Researchers travelled for 14 days, sometimes in freezing temperatures, to establish the location at an altitude of 5,000m.

There has been a healthy academic debate over the world’s longest river for some years and the claim from Brazil may not go unchallenged.

The latest findings back up the conclusions of a separate Pan-Amazon Project, developed by five scientists from the Remote Sensing Division of the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE) .

Using satellite images from US space agency Nasa, they created a universal method for measuring riverbed lengths.

“We measured the Amazon and the Nile. There are final analyses to be done, but we can affirm that the former is longer than the latter,” study coordinator and geologist, Paulo Martini told Radiobrs, Brazil’s state news agency.