Eco Factor: Retrofitted Lotus Exige to run on wind power. Ecotricity is known for harnessing nature and developing systems that provide green and affordable electricity to all. The energy company has now taken up the task to develop a wind-powered car, which would actually be a retrofitted version of the Lotus Exige. The company’s founder, Dale Vince, states that he and his team are currently working to transform a Lotus Exige couple with no aspect of the car going untouched. The car would contain 96 batteries and it is expected that the car would have a top speed of...
Let me disclaim one thing before I get into the beautiful details of reviewing Art & Sole: Contemporary Sneaker Art & Design; I'm profoundly unhip. Even though I visited my grandmother in NYC on a yearly basis and spent a few years of grade school in Asia, I spent high school in Nebraska, so my insecure trend-following formative years were a world away from city graffiti or Tokyo fashion. That said, Intercity's Art & Sole blew me away. For those of you like Turtle on Entourage who relentlessly follow tiny variations (and limited editions) of sports-themed footwear guaranteed never...
MacRumors is reporting that the organizers of the MacWorld San Fransisco 2009 have extended early registration until December 8th. If the rumors are correct, this year promises to be exciting due to the hoped for updates to the iMac and Mac Mini, as well as the expected refresh of the remainder of the Cinema displays. Also expected (however unconfirmed by Apple, of course) is the announcement of a 32GB iPhone. Previous versions of the iPhone have been limited in size due to the availability of larger, single memory chips. However in August, Toshiba announced that they would begin mass...
Flash memory, so far identified with consumer products, is set to become commonplace in large enterprises. Intel and Hitachi said they will jointly develop and deliver flash-based solid state drives for servers, workstation and storage systems. The first products are expected to be available in early 2010. "Intel is already in mass production of 32-nanometer lithography," says Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing for Hitachi. "If you already have that it gives you a big advantage in being able to deliver a lot of flash technology at low cost." The new solid state drives are intended to complement...
Apple will be holding their annual Macworld Expo in San Francisco from January 5th to the 9th. Here Apple is expected to announce new products as they usually do. There are plenty of rumors as to what they will announce, but the one that really sticks out is the rumored unveiling of the 32GB iPhone 3G. This rumor does not have much behind it suggesting that it may not be true, but the timing and the hopes of all of us has got to conger up something. The current iPod Touch 2G has double (32GB) the internal storage of the...
While the news of the 400GB Pioneer disc isn’t necessarily new, the fact that it’s made it to production is. Just today at the IT Month fair in Taiwan, Pioneer announced that their 400GB Blu-ray disc would be hitting mass production sometime in 2010.The disc’s ability to pack so much storage is all thanks to a breakthrough in the material used to create reflective layers. According to Pioneer High Fidelity Taiwan, this also allows the pick-up head of the disc to match that of current Blu-ray technology, allowing the discs to be played using current drives.Pioneer’s plan to release...
When Pioneer first introduced its unicorn-like 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray Disc, we weren't sure if the thing would make it beyond the drawing board, let alone be compatible with existing BD decks. Over at the IT Month Fair in Taipei, Pioneer showed up to showcase the capacious disc, and better still, a DigiTimes report asserts that these are indeed compatible with Blu-ray readers already on the market. Currently, the 400GB disc is slated to hit mass production sometime between now and 2010, while rewritable versions won't hit until 2010 to 2012. Not like it really matters though -- a 1TB...
Filed under: Blu-ray, Pioneer When Pioneer first introduced its unicorn-like 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray Disc, we weren't sure if the thing would make it beyond the drawing board, let alone be compatible with existing BD decks. Over at the IT Month Fair in Taipei, Pioneer showed up to showcase the capacious disc, and better still, a DigiTimes report asserts that these are indeed compatible with Blu-ray readers already on the market. Currently, the 400GB disc is slated to hit mass production sometime between now and 2010, while rewritable versions won't hit until 2010 to 2012. Not like it really matters though...
Eco Factor: Battery-powered boat uses solar panels for a recharge. Alan Belle, an engineering lecturer at the Australian Maritime College and his team, has developed a battery-powered, solar-assisted boat dubbed the Greenliner. The designers of this boat hope that the boat can be put to mass production within a year. With the current technology, Greenliner is able to travel for seven hours covering about 35 nautical miles. Belle states that their aim is to improve the range and the speed with the use of lightweight lithium polymer batteries that promise about eight times the speed or eight times the...
Eco Factor: Car powered by a hybrid propulsion system. Big cities today are far from being pleasant. Traffic jams, pollution and noise seem to be the requirement for any city to be called a metropolis. Recently we saw several car concepts that were powered by electricity and promised to show a world with no pollution and no traffic jams. These express cities need something much more than just battery power. VW CitiZen is one such concept that has specifically been designed for a metropolis battling with all these problems. The car runs on a hybrid propulsion system which carries...
One of the concerns in the transition to Core i7-based platforms was how Intel's new chips would fare with DDR3 memory exceeding 1.65V. Early reports warned that the higher voltage kits might potentially pose a risk to the processor, prompting memory makers to focus on triple-channel kits with lower voltage than their dual-channel counterparts. But voltage restrictions could become even less of a concern now that Elpida has completed its development of a 50nm process DDR3 SDRAM.Elpida claims its new DRAM features the lowest power consumption in the industry, requiring as little as 1.2V, making them good candidates for eco-conscious...
Eco Factor: Multipurpose robot is powered by solar energy. According to a research conducted by International Federation of Robotics, there were 3.4 million personal service robots in use by the end of 2007. Since most of these robots are programmed to perform a specific task their number is expected to grow by leaps and bounds. Some computer science graduates from the Louisiana State University have developed an unconventional robot that can do anything you program it to do. The Robot known as “Agbot” has been developed with selectable software options and couple of modules to enable it to perform...
We've been hearing about a dual-core VIA Nano processor for some time now, but it looks like things are now finally starting to firm up a bit, as evidenced by the seemingly legit roadmap pictured above. Unfortunately, there's not much more to go on than what's in the image, though we're sure plenty of folks will be relieved to learn that the processor will, in fact, boast "new process technology," not to mention "further performance enhancement." What's more, as you can see, it looks like the first samples will be available by December of next year, which mostly lines...
Even though we still don’t know when we’ll be seeing a production Lexus LF-A and, rumor has it, the program has been considered for cancellation, Toyota rolled out its race version at the Toyota Motorsports Festival at Fuji Speedway. The LF-A — the same one that raced this summer’s Nurburgring 24 Hours — was piloted by Akio Toyoda, the company’s Executive Vice President and chief proponent of the LF-A program. The appearance comes amid mixed rumors of the LF-A future. According to Edmunds Inside Line, Toyoda was able to keep the LF-A alive, albeit in an altered form. Instead of...
SanDisk was first out of the gate with a 16GB microSDHC card, but Toshiba's just two months behind with the announcement of its iteration. Slated for mass production in January of 2009, the capacious SD-C16G should provide plenty of room for your EMF albums and that Rage Against the Machine discography. In related news, Tosh also introduced the soon-to-come SD-F16G and SD-F08G, 16GB / 8GB Class 6 SDHC cards that should handle even the quickest of cameras when they launch over the next few months. No prices to chew on just yet, but we'd wager they'll be competitive.Filed under:...
Eco Factor: Cost effective way to generate hydrogen using electrolysis of water. Solar power can never be the primary source of power, until cost-effective storage solutions are not developed. For now solar energy is stored in batteries and ultracapacitors, both of which are expensive ways to store energy. A chemistry professor at MIT, Daniel Norcera, has developed an ingenious and a cost-effective way to store solar energy in the form of hydrogen. Taking a clue from nature, Norcera has tried to imitate the photosynthesis process of plants. Previous attempts to use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and...
Eco Factor: Radpid-charging battery from Toshiba Toshiba has announced the development of a new kind of lithium-ion battery that needs just 5 minutes of charge time for 90% charging. Known as SCiB or Super Charge Ion Battery, the battery is claimed to be much safer that other types of commercially available batteries that are prone to fire hazards. The battery makes use of a lithium-titanium oxide cathode, which makes the batteries more stable when compared to other batteries available today. The company aims to begin mass production in March 2009, which should make electric cars more viable and easy...
