The Solar Impulse HB-SIA experimental solar-powered aircraft completed the first ever solar-powered intercontinental roundtrip journey between Europe and Africa today. The roughly 6,000 km (3,728 mile) trip commenced on 24 May 2012 and consisted of a total of eight legs averaging 800 km (497 miles) before reaching its conclusion with a landing back where it all began in Payerne, Switzerland at 8:30 pm on 24 July 2012, local time.
The final leg of the journey was piloted by Bertrand Piccard, who shared duties in the single-seater cockpit with André Borschberg over the course of the journey. Originally built to prove that an aircraft powered only by the sun’s rays could be flown at night, which it proved in 2010, the HB-SIA prototype aircraft has continued to rack up a number of solar aircraft distance records.
Over the course of its latest record-breaking journey, the aircraft visited Madrid, Rabat, Ouarzazate, and Toulouse. Although its 400 kg (882 lb) of lithium batteries give it the ability to fly through the night, it often landed after midnight to avoid thermals. However, the Solar Impulse team says the aircraft was almost always brought back to the hangar with the batteries almost fully charged.
The next challenge for the Solar Impulse team is around the world flight that it hopes to complete in 20 to 25 days. This flight is currently planned for 2013 or 2014.
[ solar impulse ] photos: ©jean revillard
The Design Museum’s annual Design Awards exhibition opened earlier this month. Called “the Oscars of the design world,” the awards honor the most innovative and progressive designs in seven categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Product and Transport. An overall winner will announced in April, but until then, here are our favorite nominees, starting with what we do best here at Design Applause, Product.
1. Heracleum by Bertjan Pot (above)
A stunning and delicate chandelier powered by ELECTROSANDWICH by Marcel Wanders for Moooi. From the designer:
“Heracleum’ arrived at Moooi as a fantasy. I had the wish to light many LED-lights at the same time. I experimented with bundles of electricity wires that I shaped into a branch structure. During the development of the design it just seemed that too much soldering was required. Then Marcel Wanders had the ‘luminous’ idea to use his ELECTROSANDWICH® to make the design possible. The structure was coated with a plastic layer for isolation and on top of that a conductive layer to supply the LEDs with power. Using this technique it was possible to create a structure more slender than I had hoped for when I started the project. The technique and design are perfect for each other.”
2. Invisible Cycle Helmet by Hovding
Worn like a collar, the helmet automatically inflates like an airbag around your head upon impact. “The airbag is deployed by sensors – accelerometers and gyros – that pick up a bicyclist’s abnormal movements in the event of an accident. The sensors then send a signal to the gas inflator to inflate the airbag.” Watch a video of it in action.
3. The Learning Thermostat by Nest
A touch screen thermostat that remembers every time you adjust it until it learns your habits. It can also be controlled via your iPhone when you’re away from home.
4. Totem, by Bethan Laura Wood and Pietro Viero
A hand-blown Pyrex glass light tower made by stacking various glass shapes.
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The Mojo HD is the longer travel bigger brother to the Mojo and Mojo SL. The “HD” as Ibis calls it, has 6 inches of rear wheel travel, up 2 inches from the other Mojos. The Mojo HD takes the concept of efficient, lightweight ( 22.5 pounds ) long travel suspension a step further giving riders another level of skill and confidence in nearly every situation, combined with uncanny climbing prowess. Carbon frame. $4,000
Carbon frame. $4,000 | Ibis Mojo
[ ibis mojo ]
Maybe there’s something to my chair obsession after all. That’s how Eames legacy started anyway. While “modern design was born from the marriage of art and industry, the Eames office was born from the marriage of Ray Kaiser, a painter who rarely painted, and Charles Eames, an architecture school drop out who never got his license.” So narrates James Franco in Eames: The Architect and the Painter, out now in limited release. Charles and Ray Eames are two people that get talked about all the time and yet never seem to get talked out. I, for one, never tire of perusing pictures of the circus-like environment of the Eames office in Venice Beach, CA, or the myriad chairs and storage nooks and experiments in color theory that a simple Google image search culls. The Eames’ are fascinating both as legends of industrial design and as a working couple.
about perrin drumm
iPad 2 thinner, faster, lighter.
Case
thinner: 33% – 0.34 inches ( thinner than iPhone 4 )
lighter: 15% – 1.33 pounds
color: black AND now also white
cover: magnetic cover protects screen
Processor
The iPad has an A4 ARM Cortex-A8-based core clocked at 1GHz. It’s a fully-integrated system-on-a-chip (SoC), that was rumored to be manufactured by Samsung for Apple.
The iPad 2 introduces the A5, a dual-core chip based on the new ARM Cortex-A9. The A5 is clocked at 1GHz but as is the way with the dual-core ARM design, there is no added power consumption. Despite running at the same 1GHz clock speed; graphics are nine times faster. Also what’s new is iOS 4.3.
Cameras
Front camera: identical to the front camera on both the iPhone 4 and the fourth-generation iPod touch. Back camera: similar to iPod touch.
Video
With a video adapter, you can mirror the iPad 2’s entire screen on an external display. Anything on your iPad’s display can be mirrored on an HDTV, a video projector, or any other compatible video display using a standard HDMI cable.
Etc..
Has GPS chips and a 3x gyroscope. With the existing accelerometer and compass, the sensor package can figure out where the iPad 2 is heading and how it’s moving. Memory unchanged, 16G, 32G, and 64G. Battery unchanged.
The iPads have sold 15 million to date. Overall tablet sales are predicted to have 80% of the market by year end. Prices unchanged, starting at $499 to $829. Availability March 11, 5 pm. Not sure if 3G will be available.
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ipad 2 vs ipad]
steve jobs today introduced the next generation macbook air, which he described as “what would happen if a macbook and an ipad hooked up.”
There are two models, one with a 13.3 inch display and another with an 11.6 inch screen. They both have a unibody construction, much like like other MacBook laptops.
The larger model is 0.68 inches thick at its thickest, and just 0.11 inches thick at its thinnest. It weighs 2.9 pounds. That makes the new model a tiny bit smaller than the original which weighed 3 pounds and measure 0.76″ to 0.16″ thick.
It has a 1440 x 900 pixel display with a full sized keyboard, and a webcam. The laptop still has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chip has also been replaced with an NVIDIA 320M chip.
The new MacBook Air models have solid state storage and no optical disc. Apple says like the iPad, the McBook Air will feature “instant on” capabilities and up to 7 hours of battery life while surfing the web over WiFi, and up to 30 days of standby time. Both models come with 2GB to 4GB of DDR3 memory.
The 11.6 inch model starts at $999 with a 64GB solid state drive, while the 13.3 inch model starts at $1299 with 128GB of storage. That’s not exactly netbook money, but it’s a lot better than the pricing for the original MacBook Air.
The smaller model will also have a slower processor, with a choice of a 1.4GHz or 1.6GHz chip, and a choice of 64GB or 128GB of storage, while the larger is available with a 1.83GHz or 2.13GHz processor and 128GB to 256GB of storage. Perhaps the most surprising difference? While both models have 2 USB ports, only the larger version has an SD card slot.
The 11.6 inch model has a 35Whr battery while the 13.3 inch model has a 50Whr battery. As far as I can tell neither battery is user replacable.
The new MacBook Air models are available for purchase starting today. The next generation of Macbooks.
there’s a reason students love the word “free” considering the cost of education today. three schools have just announced that all freshmen this fall will be given an apple ipad, a web-enabled portable computer tablet.
one school, the illinois institute of technology says students will be able to download lecture notes and powerpoint presentations and call them up on their iPads during class. they also can use the devices to read books, check e-mail and surf the internet.
faculty, particularly those who teach engineering and computer science, can build applications specific to their courses. IIT already offers courses on the development of mobile applications.
tuition at IIT is $31,000, the ipad retails for $499.
two other schools giving away the tablets are seton hill university in pennsylvania and george fox university in oregon.
there will probably be more announcements.
the ipad tablet is a concept that may reshape the way we use the computer.
chris anderson, wired magazine editor, “tablet computers are going to be huge. they’re going to sell in the tens of millions of units and reach standards on how we interact with digital media and how we pay for it. … tablets will allow us to do digital magazines that are intelligently designed, flow correctly and have the artistic intent preserved.”
richard stengel, managing editor of time magazine, ” any new technological form creates new ways artistically and journalistically of doing what we’ve always done. the thing about the ipad is that it’s a work in progress: it will transform how we do what we do, but until we see how it works and how people use it, we won’t really know. just the way movie cameras changed the way we covered world war II, video cameras changed how we covered vietnam and even how twitter changed the way we covered the iranian revolution, the ipad will transform the way journalism works. it will become a new way of storytelling.”
ROHO collection sets new standard for bpa-free hydration bottles. The new line of reusable stainless steel bottles fuses modern art with functional design.
ROHO™ is the latest addition to the historically trusted and reputable line of BPA-free Thermos® products. Influenced by global, political, cultural and environmental issues, the new reusable stainless steel hydration bottles feature a variety of vibrant designs to reflect personal style without compromising safety. Offering safety and convenience advantages over current bottles on the market, the ROHO collection raises the bar of what is expected from a hydration bottle.
“Hydration bottles may have a trendy design on the outside, but many are still made with unsafe materials on the inside where attention to detail matters most,” said Kim Flanagan, ROHO brand manager. “The ROHO collection finally combines everything you’ve been looking for in a hydration bottle.”
Uniting innovative design and safety, the ROHO collection hydration bottles are made from 18/8 stainless steel and polypropylene, which means there is no BPA, no aluminum and no interior coating to be concerned about. The long neck shape of the bottle provides an ergonomic hand grip, while beverage capacity is still a generous 24 oz.
The initial ROHO collection will be available in 18 different designs with a variety of colors and graphics offering new ways to express individual style and personality. Each ROHO stainless steel bottle can be identified from other hydration bottles by the distinct leak-proof red flip-top lid.
The striking lid design also features a one-hand push button and an integrated carrying loop.
“The ROHO brand name was inspired by our signature red lid and our global focus,” said Flanagan. “Rojo means red in Spanish, making the brand fun, approachable and memorable.”
The ROHO collection will be available at Target stores and at Thermos.com.
Price: $14.99-$17.99.
Producer: thermos
Milan 2010. Milan Design Week ( iSaloni ) attracts thousands of design worshipers each year.
Pavilions, new structures, abandoned lofts, galleries, outside public squares, everywhere, you’ll find a reminder, directions, and information. The beautiful glass roofed pavilion shown is the Rho-Pero designed by Massimilliano Fuksas. We are looking at this year’s 2010 effort.
Event: isaloni
Location: Milan
