Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
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While not the first bike to do away with spokes , the Shadow might be the first to see mass production. And its certainly the first to be wireless. Yes, that’s correct. Wireless bicycles. The Shadow’s designers determined that most eBike malfunctions occur at connection points or due to loose wiring. So hey! Why not just get rid of them? Instead, the breaking system, throttle, pedal-assist system are all controlled wirelessly. The housing within the wheel well holds all of the necessary electronics. Specifications: HEIGHT: 1.1 meter WIDTH: .61 meter LENGTH: 1.7 meter TIRES: 26 inch WEIGHT: 59 lbs / 26 kilos MOTOR: 500W or 1000W RANGE: 50km Single Battery / 100km Dual Battery CONTROLLER: Daymak Drive™ POWER CHARGER: 36V – 110V/220V INCLINE: 20° Single Battery / 30° Dual Battery TOP SPEED: Limited to 32 km/h Only 300 are being made in the first run, so if you’re looking to get one of these Canadian constructions, get your fifteen hundred bucks out now. via [ RedFerret ]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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We’ve heard of wind harvesting , wi-fi harvesting , and even corpse harvesting , but who would have thought to harvest the energy from traffic noise and all the other ever-present vibrations of the city? Some researchers at the University of Michigan are putting together a variety of battery that gets its power from irregular, low-frequency vibrations — a person walking up stairs, for instance, or the vibration of a moving car. Since the generator isn’t keyed to a specific frequency, it can harvest power from a variety of sources. Not a lot of power, of course — current yield is about half a milliwatt. But that’s plenty of power for small devices like watches, or pacemakers, replacing the battery of which can be a serious problem. I doubt you and I will see too much of this technology in our day to day lives, but you can be sure it’ll benefit quite a few people down the line.
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
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Now here’s a delightful story. A gentleman in Austin, Texas was laid off from his job as a car mechanic. The thing is, he was “pretty good with computers.” So, in order to get petty revenge on his former employers, he used a system to remotely disable more than 100 cars . Fun! The man, one Omar Ramos-Lopez, 20, didn’t take kindly to behind laid off. Hey, it’s tough out there, so I can understand that he’d be upset. The shop where he worked used a system that can be used to remotely disable the ignition system or cause the horn to honk uncontrollably. (It can’t be used to disable an already on car.) So, activate the system! And he did, causing the cars to either not start or, more hilariously, honk until the battery was removed. The system used a Web interface to remotely control the cars. Its original, non-prank intention was to kindly remind people to make their car payments. Police were able to trace the “attacks” to Ramos-Lopez by examining the site’s logs. The logs pointed right to his IP address. You’d think he’d at least run the attacks through a proxy server or whatever…
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
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AT&T’s ZERO draw charger will turn itself off when it isn’t actively charging. That is all. It’s the eco-friendly charging solution for your mobile phone. Conventional chargers left plugged in – even when not actively charging – can draw as much as 5 to 20 times more energy than stored in the battery. The advanced, energy-saving AT&T ZERO Charger outperforms other chargers by automatically shutting down when not in use. “Vampire draw” is 100% eliminated and you’ll never have to unplug your charger again! Plus, USB compatibility makes the AT&T ZERO Charger a convenient charging station for many mobile devices! You can give them your email address . Why you would want to I don’t know. They should just put the product into every box that goes out the door.
Posted by 010081
Tech
Friday, March 12th, 2010
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Laptops are becoming smaller and smaller and after we saw and lusted after the Sony Z series we were curious how the new Viliv S10 would perform. First off, it looks great. It’s very slim and the battery life is promising thus far. Is it an iPad replacement ? Sure. It’s light enough and small enough and quite cute. I think netbooks will end up being more like the Blade than actual laptops. The touchscreen makes more sense in this small scale except that this still uses a stylus, a big sad-maker for me. We’ll have a full review shortly. Specs Windows 7 Multitasking Flash support Unlocked 3G modem Webcam 2 USB ports SD card slot Video out
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
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Short version: An excellent camcorder with few faults except one big, fat, glaring one: it only records in 1080i. What year is this again? Features: Extremely light and compact 20x optical zoom and two levels of image stabilization 40GB of built-in storage Touch-sensitive controls (not touchscreen) MSRP: $499 Pros: It really is very light and compact Image still sharp at 20x zoom, stabilization works great Focuses extremely close Cons: 1080i is your only video option (several quality levels) Touch controls feel inexact Full review: 1080i is a technology that is, at this point, several years past its pull date. TVs universally support 720p and 1080p, consumer editing software is designed around working in the format you distribute in, and web video (by far the most popular distribution method) is 100% progressive, usually at 30FPS. So it didn’t even occur to me that this JVC camcorder might shoot interlaced video. It doesn’t say “1080i” anywhere in the product announcement — only “Full HD,” — so they can’t be proud of it. And in fact, I didn’t even notice until I shot some sample video for the review and pulled it up to edit. The following picture should not be viewed as representative of the overall quality of the video from this camera, but rather a simple indictment of interlaced video: (click for the full version, where the interlacing is very clear) Believe me, if you care at all about your video quality, that’s all you’ll notice even if you shoot with the best 1080i camcorders out there, of which undoubtedly this JVC is one. But, as the saying goes: that’s like being the thinnest kid at fat camp. But let’s leave that topic for a minute (I’ll address interlacing in a separate post soon) and look at the camera itself. Now, I’d like to be very clear here that apart from the interlacing and some clumsiness in the menu, I found this camera absolutely delightful. Here’s an idea of its size: As you can see, it’s quite a cute little bugger. It’s just big enough that you can grip it normally (like a cold beer, in fact) and it’s just heavy enough that you know it’s there. They say it’s the smallest and lightest traditional-style HD camcorder out there, and I believe it, but the whole class of pocket cams pretty much beats it, though their lenses are garbage one and all. My hand rested on the zoom rocker naturally and the record/stop button is well-placed as well. I tended naturally to support it with the other hand, since the shake of your hands will definitely show on such a lightweight device. Speaking of shaky hands, let’s take a look at a sample video. You may have noticed that this video review is not in 1080i. It’s in progressive HD at 30FPS on Vimeo, and it would be similar (though slightly lower quality, I find) on YouTube, Blip, DailyMotion, or any number of sites out there. Not to mention that H.264 (not AVCHD) is being adopted as part of the HTML5 web standard, and soon you may not need to upload to a web video sharing site at all — that is, after you re-encode your 1080i, a step you could skip if you were shooting H.264 to begin with on one of the many pocket cameras out there. There are four modes: UXP, XP, SP, and EP. They all record the same quality audio, but recording 15 seconds of video yielded file sizes of 45, 32, 26, and 11 megabytes of data, so you can extrapolate that out however you like. It’s difficult to show the difference between the formats without looking at the raw video files, so I’ll just say that quality was significantly effected in SP and EP, but XP looked almost as good as UXP with a significantly reduced file size and bitrate. So you can cound on about 130MB/minute, or a gig every seven minutes. That’s a bit large, but not unheard-of. The GZ-HM340 has 40 gigs of space inside, and the GZ-HM320 has 20GB. Plenty for almost any situation. As for quality, well, it’s interlaced, so it looks nice when things are still and terrible when there’s action or movement. Low light was pretty damn muddy, so like most small camcorders you’ll want to stick to the brights. Skew (the wobbly look of consumer-level video resulting from slow sensor pull-down) is really pronounced when you’re zoomed in, as you can see when I was focusing on the plant in the bottle in the video above. But that’s to be expected. The zoom and image stabilization worked great. The zooming is pretty loud, though; if you’re in a quiet environment the mic will definitely pick it up. There are two levels of stabilization, one which crops the video a bit and realigns it digitally. I found them to be plenty effective and have no real trade-off unless they drain the battery a bit more. Here are some 100% center crops of the recording modes; as you can see, there is some difference but mainly in the details, like type and the cartridge illustration. Then there are grabs from a high-light and low-light situation you can inspect for noise. Click for the full-size version. Not exactly amazing, but it’s decent. You can also record “for upload to YouTube,” which results in a similarly sized file to XP mode. I couldn’t spot any difference, really. The paper and virtual manuals aren’t very enlightening on this point. You can also trim stuff and re-encode for YouTube in-camera, but the interface doesn’t really lend itself to that at all. Note that there are no other modes of recording; it is 1080i at 60FPS or nothing. There are few, precious few ways of viewing interlaced content these days; everything is progressive and nothing uses 60FPS. The camera claims to “upscale” its 1080i to 1080p for HDMI out, which seems specious. If it could create 1080p video, why wouldn’t that be an option to record? I’m guessing it just deinterlaces on the fly. It does have many outputs: HDMI, component, and plain video out. These outputs are easily accessible on the panel behind the LCD, and for charging and PC connection there is USB and power underneath a little hood above the battery. There are no issues at all with these, all functioned well and are conveniently placed. The LCD itself uses what they call “laser touch” for navigation, which is… well, it works for the most part, but four buttons on the side would have been just as functional, and rather less prone to mistaken touches and clumsy movement. You can use any part of the touch panel as a button, or slide your finger up and down it. It’s rather small, though, so you might accidentally pull up the zoom menu instead of changing the stabilization level. The little touch buttons on the bottom are responsive, though. It’s not a big issue, but if you have large hands it could be troublesome. It also includes a time-lapse mode and a auto-record mode that records upon detecting changes in contrast. Handy if you like that, but these things are also available on some point-and-shoots. Conclusion: You may think I’m being a little harsh on this camera. Well, yes, I am – and I’ll be just as harsh on any camera as long as they continue using 1080i. JVC, Sony, Canon, and others still recording to interlaced AVCHD are just running down the clock, trying to sell as many of these outdated cameras before people catch on to the idea that interlacing is something we should have left behind a decade ago. The camera itself is great, and if you truly don’t care that you’ll be recording interlaced video, then you’ll love it. But if I were you, I’d wait for JVC and the rest to get with the program and buy the 1080p version that will probably be coming out next year. Product page: JVC GZ-HM340
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
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We have reported about electric bicycles multiple times in the past , but today Sanyo in Japan announced [press release in English] the “eneloop Hybrid Bicycle” whose battery riders can actively charge while pedaling on flat roads. Previous models, for example this one Sanyo released in 2008, mainly harness energy from braking when the bike goes downhill (“Loop Charge Mode”). Dubbed Eco Charge Mode, Sanyo will use the new system in their next eneloop models, the CY-SPL226 (26-inch wheel diameter/pictured on top) and CY-SPL224 (24-inch wheel diameter). Riders can still charge the 25.2 V-7.6 Ah battery via the Loop Charge Mode, but now have more options to save energy for longer riding distances with the new system (Sanyo says the Eco Charge Mode increases the assisted travel distance by about 53%). The two new models feature an assisted travel distance of up to 55km and even 68km when equipped with an extra battery. A full charge of the battery takes 280 minutes. Sanyo plans to start selling the new e-bikes in Japan on April 28 (price: $1,800 each). The company unfortunately doesn’t say if the eneloop bikes will ever be sold outside Japan (where 350,000 bikes have been sold last year) as well.