The Detroit News is reporting that Tesla has closed on a $465 million low-cost loans from the Energy Department to work on its next electric vehicle, the Model S sedan.The funds will apparently be used by the company to build manufacturing plants in California. The loan, which closed on Monday and was approved back in June, will come from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, which has about $25 billion to dole out to automakers manufacturing energy efficient vehicles. The Model S will, when complete, boast an up to 300-mile driving range, and will hit up to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds. It’s supposed to hit production in 2012 with an output of 20,000 units (that means cars) per year.
Win a Plantronics’ Voyager Pro UC Bluetooth headset, which comes with a plug-and-play Bluetooth USB adapter that the company says will improve the experience of using Skype and enterprise softphone applications on your PC.
Computers in movies look nothing like the beasts we lug around today. They’re thin and light, a single pane that jumps to life when touched. Technology follows Hollywood dreams; here’s hoping this montage is a portent of what’s coming soon.
The world will be shocked if Apple doesn’t reveal a tablet computer next week. It won’t be the first, not by any stretch, and it won’t be the first multitouch device, naturally. But as we envision it, the tablet represents the fusion of two of the most steadfast dreams of sci-fi nerds and ordinary people alike.
This reel, compiled for Giz by Mike Byhoff and Frank Cozzarelli as a celebration of sci-fi’s longstanding love affair with tablets and touch interfaces, is pretty self explanatory, but there are a few things to think about:
• The greatest literary device in sci-fi history, the actual Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was, in fact, a tablet.
• Gene Roddenberry was—like some tech analysts these days—in favor of the tablet coming in large and small sizes.
• The Incredibles, created by Steve Jobs’ Pixar, not only has the most Apple-like vision of a tablet, but shows it sliding out of a manila envelope, three years before Steve drew the slender MacBook Air out of the same.
• We’re not sure what Bart Simpson is doing to that iMac either, but apparently “Mapple” beat Apple to the punch with touchscreen all-in-ones.
• It is physically impossible to craft a montage of sci-fi interfaces without showing Tom C. in Minority Report.
• You may say that the tablets of Moses weren’t exactly interactive. Fine, believe what you will, but take our advice and stay the hell away from golden calves.
There are plenty more crazy touch computer sightings in TV and movies—if you can track any down, be sure to post them in comments.
Special thanks to Mike Byhoff and Frank Cozzarelli of Gawker TV for working overtime to pull this reel together. The catchy music—chosen for its sci-fi-friendliness, its nice buildup, and its utter lack of resemblance to 1990s techno—is “Lovely Allen” by Holy Fuck, which you can (and should) buy here at Amazon, or here on iTunes.
Sure, we’d love to be hanging out with this device in person, but we suppose this is second best. ASUS UK has some shots of the upcoming DR-950 e-reader, sporting 9-inches of grayscale SiPix e-paper. It admittedly looks pretty great under these idealized lighting conditions, and the homescreen interface looks simple and oh-so-touchable. Hopefully we get to put the device through its text-to-speech, 3G and ePub paces soon enough.
It’s likely that if you were told to describe what you think would happen if someone asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to autograph a MacBook Pro, it would go something like this:
Steve would fly into a blind fury, grabbing the laptop and smashing it against a far wall with the force of ten men, laughing as the computer shattered and sparked out of existence. He would then leap towards the young man who’d made the request and pin him to the floor, pulling out a Bowie knife while whispering that he would like to “Gut [him] like the pathetic animal he is.” Next Ballmer would dash out of the room only to return with a canister of gasoline, some hairspray, and one of those long lighters, all while shouting that he would “Show the world what [he’s] really made of.” Ballmer would escape from this scene of utter destruction in a helicopter, but not before circling the college campus (or wherever this took place) and dumping toxic waste on hundreds of students.
But, no. He pretty much just signs the laptop. See it all happen after the break.
This day simply wouldn’t be a day between January 18, 2010 and January 27, 2010 without a new gaggle of Apple Tablet rumors to sift through, and while we’re gritting our teeth as we skim every word, we’ve the latest and greatest most far-fetched rounded up here for your perusal.
The rumor: The Apple Tablet will “strike a familiar chord with owners of the original iPhone, with similarities in industrial design trickling all the way down to the handset’s button and connectivity components.” Our take: Honestly, we can believe this one. Apple has had a great deal of success with the iPhone, and we’ve already seen the “tablet PC” as it’s known today take a nosedive. Apple Insider is saying that the device may look a lot like a “first-generation iPhone that’s met its match with a rolling pin,” and while we’ve obviously no inside way to confirm nor deny, we can get why Apple would stick close to a design that it knows will work. Oh, and be sure to peek two more clearly fake mockups after the break.
The rumor: New York Times Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. won’t be at Apple keynote next week. Our take: So? Just because the head honcho from The Times is planning to be in Davos, Switzerland next week while Apple unveils its tablet doesn’t mean that Jobs can’t showcase the device’s ability to video chat across oceans in front of the masses… if Apple even has a deal with any publisher. If Apple really is reaching out to publishers for content deals, you can bet your bottom dollar the NYT is listening. And be honest — if you had the option of being in Davos or some convention center in San Francisco, which would you pick?
The XL 330-S is new–not refurbished–so you not only get a full one-year warranty, but also a free download of the latest maps from TomTom. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-10439516-58.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The Cheapskate/a/p
Company buffs its green credentials with another patent application relating to solar cells integrated onto the surface of small devices, such as iPods. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10439525-54.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Green Tech/a/p
We’ve gotta say: after witnessing the ASUS press event at CES this year, we have a whole new love for the company and its outspoken Chairman, Jonney “megatrend” Shih. The man, myth, legend recently sat down with Silicon.com and talked a bit about his own brand of the future. Apparently ASUS has slate PC prototypes in its labs, along with netbooks running Android and Chrome OS, but there’s nothing he’s convinced is ready for market yet. For slates specifically, “Content is still not attractive enough today to the customer,” according to Shih. He expects there to be content stores from Apple, Google and Microsoft to obtain content tailored to touchscreen tablets, and plans on waiting until there is such a compelling use case before bringing something to market (though those color e-books sure look raring to go). Another potential category that ASUS is hedging its bets on is the smartbook. He likes the price advantage, but isn’t sure users are ready to abandon Windows yet. “When people talk about cloud computing, unfortunately it’s still not there yet,” he says, but: “as time goes on you will see more advantage of being always connected.” The solution to all of this madness? WaveFace, naturally. A post-netbook era, perhaps five years from now, will diverge from the “regular, dull PC roadmap” and put more emphasis on portability, wearability and intuitive use. A couple of concept renders doesn’t have us convinced ASUS is positioned to deliver this, but we’re happy to watch and find out.
If you’ve been counting down the hours until the next release of Firefox hits doorsteps, you can now officially reset the clock. Firefox 3.6 has dropped its beta label and shimmied out into the wide world, boasting a slew of new add-ons and features which should make even the most selective browser enthusiast jump gingerly skyward whilst clicking one’s heels. Included in the latest and greatest is support for browser thumbing via “Personas,” which seem to be a response to Chrome’s theme functionality (allowing users to change looks with one click), improved Javascript support, and most interestingly, improved support for HTML5 video, which further opens the window for all kinds of Flash-dashing activities. We’re still not seeing nearly the performance bump present in Safari or Chrome when it comes to page rendering, but if you’re going for maximum compatibility, it’s hard to beat Firefox. As you can probably guess, the download is free and available now, so go get it.
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