Hasta La Gadget!

A new design wants to give your bike the abilities of a hybrid car, a frequent-flyer program, a gym and a networked navigation device, all by simply swapping out the back wheel.

The Copenhagen Wheel bolts on to any bike and adds a slew of new functions. First is the energy regenerator, which stores energy normally lost when braking and keeps it ready for when you need a power boost. Inside the same sleek hub you’ll find a torque meter, a Bluetooth radio, a three-speed hub-gear, a GPRS connection and pollution sensors.

What on earth is all this for? The answer appears when you take out your iPhone. The phone acts as a controller for all the electronics, and working in concert they will tell you the traffic and air conditions, act as a cyclocomputer by counting calories burned and miles traveled. And the frequent-flyer scheme? Instead of air-miles, you’ll earn bike-kilometers (or green miles, as they are smugly referred to on the video). We assume these will be redeemable for wholegrain organic foods and the like.

The Copenhagen Wheel was designed by a team at MIT and is not yet available to buy. When it is, we doubt that such a visually and literally heavy device will be seen on the fixed-gear bike in the video — with hub-gears it is much more suited to the Dutch city bike. And one more thing about that video. Just who thought it was a good idea to ride cobbled streets on a fixed? Don’t you want to have children?

The Copenhagen Wheel [Senseable/MIT]

If you live in small-town America then you’re already familiar with the hippest hangout around: McDonald’s. Now everyone in the US, not just Zune owners, will be treated to free WiFi to go with their manufactured food purchases. Starting mid-January, some 11,000 Mickey Dee locations will partner with AT&T to scrub the $2.95 for 2-hours of WiFi fee according to David Grooms, CIO of McDonalds USA. The idea is to hook the nation’s loitering youth into purchasing additional items in between Facebook updates chronicling late-night brawls with local rent-a-cops. Thank gawd there’s a middle-aged man-clown out there who likes to babysit children.

McDonald’s WiFi will be free like obesity starting January originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon’s playing catch-up this week in a game some of its rivals have been playing for ages now — the WiFi business — by bundling access to a fairly extensive network of hotspots in the US, Canada, and Mexico with its broadband data plans. It’s a double-edged sword, though, because they’re not stepping up to the plate with as much conviction as AT&T and T-Mobile have; first off, Verizon’s limiting the service strictly to users of its modems and MiFi boxes while the other guys have succumbed to bundling it with smartphone data packages, and secondly, it appears hell-bent on forcing connections to go through the same crapware connection management app used with its data cards. Of course, you could argue that Verizon’s larger 3G footprint gives ’em less impetus to offload users to WiFi, but by the same token, they’re charging more for service — so yeah, we’re gonna predict they relent at some point just as AT&T ultimately did.

Verizon’s mobile broadband customers get bundled WiFi access originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on June 05, 2009 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Tabs are undoubtedly a hot thing these days with more and more applications moving to some sort of tab-like interface. Web browsers are probably the first thing you think of, but other apps like Microsoft Office even have a tab-like interface with the Ribbon. Why not go a little further? With WindowTabs you can extend the tab interface to pretty much any app.

We’ve seen other programs that are capable of doing this, but after having played with it for a bit I’d say it’s one of the smoothest and best looking solutions I’ve seen. As you can tell from the screenshot the tabs currently take on a Chrome-like appearance, which may or may not be something you like. Unfortunately at this stage it’s not something you can customize, but skinning capabilities seem like a natural next step for this app.

What’s cool with WindowTabs is that you can group together any apps, regardless of whether they are the same program or not. Each group will then show just one Taskbar item, and the title/icon will reflect the currently selected tab. So not only does it de-clutter your desktop, but it also frees some space on your Taskbar.

Still not sure if you should try it? Check out this video demonstrating WindowTabs in action. You’ll see just how smooth the whole tab-grouping process is.

There’s just one catch. The free version is considered a “trial” even though it doesn’t have any nag screens and isn’t time limited. Instead you’re not allowed to have more than 3 tabs per grouping. If you want to buy the full app you’ll need to shell out $19. The developer did a great job on this, but I think somewhere around $9.99 would have been better suited for a program like this.

WindowTabs Homepage [via Lifehacker]

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Related Posts:

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Picture this: you’re a skydive instructor with a makeshift helmet apparatus for taking stills and video of your feats. Suddenly, about 3,000 feet from above the ground, your photography mount decides to take its own flight pattern and sets off without you. That apparently happened to a friend of FredMiranda forum member Calin Leucuta, who calculates the velocity at impact was approximately 100 miles per hour. After a 15- to 20-minute search after landing, the video camera was found to be without saving… but the Canon Rebel XT for still was still functional despite a crack in the body and some jerkiness with the zoom lens. We’re still hesitant to take it at face value — it’s a pretty wild and impressive tale, after all — but video is reportedly on the way and we’d definitely like to see that footage remove all lingering doubt from our minds. More pics of the aftermath past the read link.

Canon EOS Rebel XT spits in gravity’s face, survives 3,000-foot drop? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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