How do you know if making the move to an electric car will work for you? It may depend where you live, if there are charging stations within your battery range limitations, your driving habits, and your lifestyle. And it’s an expensive proposition at the moment as the battery alone accounts for $10,000 of the purchase. There’s a new app that can measure your driving habits and needs to help make the decision to move all out to an EV or hybrid.
the new app is Virtual Test Drive that operates on your smartphone, compiling data every time you drive your car.
Drivers can log onto Virtual Test Drive’s website and view where they have recently driven and see range issues and cost savings. The company also compiles all data and could be a resource for future EV infrastructure development.
At the moment the app is only available to beta testers. If you want to check out the app yourself, sign up here
producer: virtual vehicle company
New software for smart phones and tablets finds a video of an event captured in a photograph, i.e., pictures come to life. [RK] via nytimes
Samsung just announced their two new Galaxy Tabs, the 8.9 and the 10.1. Just 8.6 millimeters thick and support 4G, WiFi, and Flash 10.2.
via techcrunch [RK]
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]
if the last time you raised your hand in mrs. murphy’s third grade classroom was a couple of decades ago, it’s hard to imagine the grade school experience with laptops playing just as vital a role as pencils and wide-ruled paper.
But imagine your day now. How many hours do you use your laptop? Just like the rest of the world, schools are becoming increasingly reliant on laptops, but as learning tools, not to YouTube the Double-Rainbow guy for the third time this week. Lots of schools around the world can hardly afford the roof over their heads, let alone laptops. That’s why One Laptop Per Child is an important, socially impactful charity that uses donations to get real results.
They even developed their own laptop, the XO “rugged, low-cost, low-power” laptop that’s easy to read outside for those schools that don’t have buildings to operate from. In countries where libraries are small and outdated, or, in some cases, nonexistent, access to the Internet is an invaluable resource for children who would otherwise have no contact with the world outside their own. Children in many developing nations are already becoming more educated than their parents’ generation, meaning they will be the first crop of young adults with the knowledge and ingenuity to pull their struggling economies out of a slump, and these laptops are the first step. All donations are accepted. $199 buys a laptop.
about perrin drumm
Hybrid can run solely on renewable energy or get over 200 mpg at highway speeds
Urbee is a two-seater hybrid vehicle and the first prototype ever to have entire body and glass panels 3D printed. Urbee is envisioned as an environmentally sustainable, safe to drive and fuel efficient vehicle. The electric / liquid-fuel hybrid reaches more than 200 mpg, highway and 100 mpg, city in U.S. gallons with either gasoline or ethanol.
For combined city and highway use, the Urbee gets about 150 mpg and costs only 2 cents per mile. This is only about 10 percent of the fuel consumed by a typical SUV. And on the highway, it costs about 1 cent per mile, or 95 percent less than that same SUV.
The car is charged overnight from any standard home electrical outlet. Alternately, it can be charged by renewable energy from a windmill or a solar-panel array small enough to fit on top a single-car garage.
All exterior components were created using an additive manufacturing process using Stratasys’ digital manufacturing service – RedEye on Demand. The development partner is Winnipeg engineering group, Kor Ecologic.
Source:
urbee
stratsys
kor ecologic
