MOSS LANDING, CA — MBARI’s Division of Marine Operations, under an agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sent a high-tech robotic submersible to the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The goal is to collect information about the oil plume from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident for NOAA.
Archos just released its Archos 7 Home Tablet, an Android-running, low-cost Wi-Fi slab that can put the Internet in your hands for a mere $199. The price seems way too low, especially given the apparent quality of this attractive handheld device. However, it has one fatal flaw, turning our opinion of it from love at first sight to sheer loathing with the mere touch of a finger.
In this high-tech world of Internet-connected devices, the key to users’ affection is not specifically high tech, but high touch. With that in mind, as we the Archos 7 Home Tablet in our hands, we were impressed with its sturdy yet lightweight (0.8 lb) quality. When we flipped it on, its home screen booted up surprisingly quickly. But our hearts sank as soon we touched it. Oh, no! It’s a resistive touchscreen, and it’s awful.
Eight year old Jerry is a big Lurcher boy who was rescued from the pound. He’s gentle and affectionate and just wants a comfy bed all of his own and someone special in his life. Jerry is good with other dogs, but needs a cat-free home.
On behalf of the Oldies Club committee and all the dogs helped by the charity, we would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our volunteers.
Although little more than an idea on paper right now, Sauter Carbon Offset Design has set its sights on being the first company in the world to cater to the as-yet-non-existent ultra-rich luxury green yacht crowd.
The first vessel they hope to sell will be the Transcendence, a 49 meter superyacht with a Mercedes Benz diesel powerplant hooked to a generator to provide the electricity to run the props, a lithium-ion battery system to store power from the grid when plugged in at dock, a bunch of solar cells to help provide a bit of power when out at sea, and a top speed of 25 knots. The company says the boat will have a “50 to 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” when compared to its counterparts.
Does this herald in a new generation of luxury yachts, or is it simply the wish list of a company that has no chance in hell of succeeding?
Editor’s Note: Scientific American’s George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels in Solar at Home (formerly 60-Second Solar). Read his introduction here and see all posts here .
In the first installment of this post, Arnold Mckinley of Xslent Energy Technologies described how "reactive power" — that is, power stored momentarily by electrical appliances and then released — destabilizes the electrical grid. Here he explains how home solar arrays can help.
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George Musser – Electricity – Energy – Photovoltaic module – Renewable
After last week’s announcement that Indian automaker Mahindra & Mahindra had bought Indian EV maker REVA to form the bigger, badder Mahindra REVA, GM has now decided it’s in their best interest to pull out of a partnership with REVA that had aimed at developing low-cost electric vehicles for emerging markets.
It seems GM didn’t feel that sharing EV tech with a company that will likely be a major competitor in the years to come was a wise move.
I like earbuds. I like Lego bricks. But when you combine those two things? Get out of town.
This Lego earbuds feature a red 2×3 brick on the outside of each bud. So when you’re walking down the street, listening to music, everyone will be able to see what your favorite toys are. Even better, however, is that you could conceivably build something off the side of these guys. Maybe a sword going in one side of your head and out the other? You couldn’t make anything too heavy, sure, but the possibilities are there. And can you say that about your normal earbuds?
Mollaspace via Swiss Miss
Hooo-kay, Sony. Your new device that allows cats to have their very own Twitter feed? I don’t get it.
Here’s how it works: it’s a little box that hangs around kitty’s neck. It has a camera, an acceleration sensor and a GPS receiver on board. It keeps tabs on what the cat is doing, be it eating, running around, sleeping or hanging out with other cats. It then sends out one of 11 set texts via Bluetooth to a computer than then posts it to the cat’s Twitter feed. The messages are presumably things like “Meowsers, I’m eating right now!” or “My owner is a sad and lonely person!”
There’s no word on when this thing is being released, if ever, but it should sell better than the Sony Rolly in any case.
Tech-On via Boing Boing
You’re looking into the eye of a monstrous processing beast. Intel just showed off this 50-core processor it’s calling “Knights Corner,” an energy-efficient 22-nanometer processor that will somehow shoehorn more than 50 cores onto a single chip. Sheesh, and we thought 12 cores was mind-blowing.
Intel, you’re teasing us — no release date was announced. But as soon as this baby’s unleashed, computers will be able to do lots more things at once — in this case, 50 processes at the same time.
Meanwhile, programmers will need to know how to write software that can be efficiently multi-tasked by this 50-headed beast, so Intel’s now seeding a few developer kits to get code writers working on this multi-headed hydra. When they do, computers will be a lot faster, one step closer to the Singularity, when computers are as smart as humans.
Via Electronista
For smartphones to be embraced by 100% of the cellphone universe (and completely choke AT&T), they’re going to have to be a lot easier to use. Or there’s got to be some dead-simple training tools to bring the uninitiated into the fold. That’s the idea behind this “Out of the Box design” concept, placing a smartphone inside a cutout portion of the book, with easy-to-read labels pointing out each of its features.
It’s a great idea. If tech companies insist on going to the trouble and eco-unfriendliness of printing instruction manuals, why not make them so easy to use that even a two-year-old could navigate them? Sure, the rest of us gadget geeks will just pick up a new phone, wander around its operating system, and wonder why its designers didn’t make it easier to use. But for our moms, this could be the breakthrough that finally allows us to send them text messages.
Clara Gaggero, via OhGizmo
TTXGP 2nd place winner Michael Barnes with the Lightning EV1-powered bike.
Earlier this month, I wrote about the season opener of the TTXGP, the first electric motorcycle racing series. In that article I mentioned one of the things that makes this series so special — the unique ownership structure, Trust.eGrandPrix.org. The TEO enables teams to own a piece of the TTXGP series. Nobody can buy into the TEO, it’s only open to competitors. Normally, teams spend a lot of money to compete, much of which is paid by sponsors, while the organizing body pays to hold & market the events, then collects all of the income from TV rights, ticket sales, and event sponsorship. If TTXGP grows as popular as MotoGP, or even a national series like the AMA, this has enormous potential.
For example, Dorna, the company which manages MotoGP, showed operating profits reported at €51.1m for 2008. For an established series like MotoGP with sizeable purses for winners, it might not make sense to share ownership amongst the competitors. But for a new series in the startup phase, it’s a great way to reward racers for their loyalty to the cutting edge. This new ownership structure rewards loyalty in a number of ways.
Japanese visionaries at construction firm Shimizu Corporation take that saying “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood” literally, with six of the boldest megaprojects ever imagined. Topping the list is Luna Ring, a lunar solar power plant. It’s a 6,800 mile belt of solar panels built around the moon’s equator, whose power is transmitted back to Earth using microwave and laser wizardry.
There’s no need to transport all the raw materials to build this gigantic plant to the moon — it will be built by robots using moon rocks and dust. These guys have even figured out a way to create water with lunar soil and hydrogen mixed together. We think unicorns might be involved, too.
Anyway, once all that energy is gathered and transmitted back to Earth, it’s converted back into electrical power at numerous terrestrial power stations. This might be a great idea if no one’s invented a practical way to achieve fusion yet by the time all this technology is finally figured out.
This is just the beginning for these forward-thinking geniuses. Check out their five additional far-out ideas, and see if you can pick which one will actually happen. Either way, it pays to dream.
Via Pink Tentacle
In a classic case of sustainability layering that borders on downright slathering, the City of Tsukuba in Japan is set to test-host a new car sharing system using electric vehicles that are powered almost exclusively by solar energy. According to a recent report on the solar electric car sharing plan, the partnership involves the Mazda2 (aka the Demio in Japan) with electric vehicle drive trains from Think, using lithium ion batteries developed by the U.S. company EnerDel, and all based on the ZipCar car sharing model.
The choice of Tsukuba as a test community is no accident, considering its moniker “Science City.” By design and population, the city is an ideal laboratory for giving sustainability concepts a real-world workout.
With gadgets and laptops getting smaller and thinner by the day, manufacturers need hard drives that are moving in the same direction. And Hitachi’s newest 7mm HDDs do just that, shrinking down the size while ratcheting up the speed to 7200rpm.
These drives could allow the next generation of MacBook Air style super-thin laptops to be even thinner and lighter. With hard drives and batteries generally being the biggest, heaviest elements of a laptop, shrinking one of them down can make a big difference.
Of course, these are platter-based hard drives, not flash drives. And flash drives are what act as storage in cellphones, iPads and some higher-end laptops, as they’re smaller and more resistant to bumps and drops than platter drives. Is Hitachi perfecting a type of hard drive that’s no longer relevant? We’ll have to wait and see what the next generation of super-thin laptops packs inside.
BusinessWire via Gizmodo
This would be an easy way keep your living space feeling fresh: get wallpaper that changes. Of course, you’ll also have to flood your room with red, green or blue light to make it happen.
The optical illusion is the work of Italian design studio Carnovsky. Under normal conditions the pattern on the wallpaper looks insane as you’re looking at all of the different iterations at once (so it looks like a 3D image when you’re not wearing 3D glasses, basically).
Toss in some light, though, and that’s when things get exciting. With red, green or blue light only certain designs on the wall would be visible. You wouldn’t have to stick to iterations of a skeleton as Carnovsky has done here, and, as you can see above, the more light on the wall the better the effect.
Via MAKE
Ella is the ideal dog. She’s a 10 year old Weimaraner who is fit and active. She loves to play with other dogs and is great with children. If you want a gentle, friendly and very affectionate companion, Ella’s your girl.
This big cuddly bear is Vinny, a 7-8 year old Rottie who has had a bad time recently. He needs a quiet, loving home where he can get the home comforts and love he deserves. He’s perfectly behaved and very undemanding and will make a wonderful compani…
If you’re a fan of Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2, then you’ve no doubt already recognized the model above as the massive Citadel space station, which serves as the HQ for the galaxy’s government. Brandon Bannerman brought the station to life using LEGOs — twice.
Twice because he had a little accident trying to take a work-in-progress shot: “This thing isn’t exactly very stable,” Brandon — who goes by Catsy — writes. “Frustration led to a marathon session of building out the wards and fixing the ring, and before I knew it I was pretty much done.”
A handful of days, 1,040 translucent orange blocks and black LEGO bricks later and Brandon had him a space station replica worthy of boasting of. Check it out in more detail in the gallery below.
Citing hacking vulnerabilities, Google has announced that the company will no longer use Windows-based computers. All incoming employees get two choices instead: Macs with OS X or PCs running Linux.
That’s some pretty rough news for Microsoft, no doubt. Google accounts for 10,000 folks all the world over, and none of them will be using Windows at work anymore.
The purge has been ongoing since January, though at that time employees were still allowed to have Windows on their laptops if they like — just not their desktops. Now, if a Google worker still wants to use Windows, it requires special permission from high up in the ranks (from a CIO, or chief information officer).
“But wait,” you cry. “Doesn’t Google have its own operating system?” Just so, and a Google employee told the Financial Times that this move is also to make way for the company’s own Chrome OS, adding, “It was a long time coming.” Chrome OS will most likely be offered as a choice for workers alongside OS X and Linux.
It was the hacking attacks in China that spurred Google to batter down the hatches. Windows, the most widely-used OS in the world, is a greater target for hackers in comparison to Apple’s OS X and Linux.
Financial Times, via Boy Genius Report
The world cannot afford to dump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Yet it is not cutting back. All indications are that the concentration of CO 2 will continue to rise for decades. Despite great support for renewable energy, developed and developing countries will probably burn more oil, coal and natural gas in the future.
For transportation, the alternatives to petroleum appear especially far off. Onboard energy storage for electric vehicles is difficult; for a given mass, batteries hold less than 1 percent of the energy stored in gasoline. Carrying hydrogen on vehicles requires 10 times the storage volume of gasoline, and the high-pressure tank needed to hold it is very heavy. Although a few maiden flights of airplanes powered by jet fuel derived from biomass have taken place, it is unclear that biofuels can be produced at the quantities and low prices required by airliners … or by ships for that matter.
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Biofuel – Carbon dioxide – Renewable energy – Petroleum – Energy
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