June 29, 2009 Issue Posted June 18, 2009, 5:00PM EST

BTW

Jonathon Rosen

Germany's Ossies Are Catching Up Fast

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former East Germany is growing faster than the rest of the country by several key measures—and seems to be weathering the economic crisis better. East Germans are still poorer than their Western counterparts, says the government's latest unification status report. But their region has grown faster, with per-capita output at 71% of Western Germany's level, up from 67% in 2000. East Germans are also neck and neck with the "Wessies" in the percentage of residents starting their own companies. And amid the global economic crisis, East German companies—smaller, nimbler, and focused on such growth industries as solar energy—have registered less severe sales declines than West German businesses. West Germany, dominated by such multinationals as carmaker Daimler (DAI), has been slammed by plummeting exports.

—Jack Ewing

Satellites for the Rest of Us

Until now, one corner of the tech world had missed the trend toward miniaturization: the satellite industry. The average weight for the 21 commercial satellites launched so far in 2009 is 257,000 pounds, says the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee. But this trend could shift if a new breed of micro-satellite takes off. NASA researchers have launched more than 50 CubeSats over the past few years: 7 lb. satellites the size of a half-gallon container, with price tags as low as $250,000 each. Now the agency is focusing on launching these micros in "constellations"—groupings of three or more. "The technology is hitting its stride," says Andrew Kalman, a consulting professor at Stanford and CEO of Pumpkin, a San Francisco developer of an early CubeSat. CubeSat constellations, Kalman says, could allow insurers to monitor natural disasters or energy companies to track oil-rig output across the globe.

—Dean Foust

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