It’s not the first to try its hand at an all-electricpersonal watercraft, but the Ohio-based Silveira Group is claiming that its new so-called Green Samba will be the first “viable” vehicle of its kind. To that end, the company says that the Green Samba will deliver the same 65 mph performance of the fastest 260 bhp sit-down PWCs, and do so while remaining completely silent thanks to a pair of twin direct drive electric propulsion pods. As the company is quick to point out, that also has the added benefit of eliminating one of the biggest complaints about PWCs from the public: their noise. Of course, the other key to viability is the price, and Silveira is unfortunately doing decidedly less talking about that right now, saying only that it will be able to “ballpark a retail price” when it finishes work on the latest prototype in August.
Producers of the new “Sex and the City” movie have made a deal with HP, so Carrie will no longer be seen penning her troubled musings on a Mac. Instead, she will be powered by Windows. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20005440-71.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Technically Incorrect/a/p
Chinese counterfeiters have beaten Google to producing an Android tablet.
The Chinese wholesaler ActFind, which carries knockoffs of many electronics including iPhones and iPods, is selling an iPad-lookalike running the Android OS.
Priced at $150, the Android tablet is haphazardly labeled “MINI iPadⅡ8 Inch Android1.6 Ebook Tablet PC UMPC MID Netbook.” According to the product description, it features an 8-inch touchscreen, Ethernet and Wi-FI connectivity, a USB port, 88MB of built-in storage (expandable to 16GB with a TF card) and an 800-MHz VIA processor. The tablet runs version 1.6 of the Android OS.
China is notorious for its knockoff culture. When manufacturers release products, counterfeiters move quickly to replicate gadgets using cheaper parts to offer inexpensive alternatives through the black market. Shenzhen, the southern Chinese boomtown near the border with Hong Kong, harbors a prolific knockoff market. The town is home to a number of tiny shops selling pirated versions of everything from bootleg copies of Microsoft Windows 7 to fake MacBook Airs, according to Reuters.
Google’s plans to make a tablet are unofficial, but multiple publications have received tips that an Android slate is imminent. Though you can own an Android tablet today thanks to knockoff makers, we generally wouldn’t recommend purchasing counterfeits. The iPhone clone we bought through ActFind in 2008 was one of the worst gadgets we’ve ever tested. Also, legitimate manufacturers have warned consumers that fake products pose potential health hazards, such as exploding batteries.
No monkeys here, but LaCie’s latest is still worth toying around with — particularly if you’ve been yearning for a way to better serve media around your home and / or backup those all-important Match.com email confirmations. The Network Space MAX (which can also be used as a USB 2.0 drive when away from the CAT5) is predictably designed by Neil Poulton, and while it’ll likely attract an unhealthy amount of dust and fingerprints, the internals are what really matters. LaCie‘s shipping these with at least 2TB of space, but with two 3.5-inch SATA HDD slots, you can easily go the 4TB route with a couple of these. RAID 1 and RAID 0 setups are supported, giving the whimsical among us a pair of opportunities to get our lives backed up in case of disaster. Oh, and there’s also inbuilt UPnP / DLNA support, which makes it easy for your PS3, Xbox 360 or Popcorn Hour box to tap into whatever media collection you happen to store here. Check it sooner than you can whisk yourself around and belt out a Lady Gaga lyric for $279.99 and up.
Design student envisions a device made of medical-grade silicone that makes it easy for women to collect their menstrual stem cells. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20005407-247.html” class=”origPostedBlog”News – Health Tech/a/p
If you want to come to this weekend’s do-it-yourself bacchanalia in San Mateo, California, this could be your lucky day. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20005438-52.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Geek Gestalt/a/p
We still have no idea what’s going on with Apple, Verizon, and the iPhone, but it sounds like AT&T isn’t sweating it — speaking at a J.P. Morgan conference today, Ralph De La Vega reportedly “just laughed” when asked when Ma Bell’s iPhone exclusivity would run out, and indicated he wasn’t worried about other carriers potentially getting the phone. According to Ralph, some 80 percent of AT&T iPhone customers are on family or business plans, and they’re generally less likely to switch, so AT&T thinks it can hang onto them if Apple’s phone hits another carrier. That certainly sounds like AT&T’s been giving the issue some thought — another piece of kindling for our ever-smoldering Verizon iPhone Rumor Fire, or just tough talk to keep Apple in line? We might never know — but we do know that it’ll be much harder to keep those iPhone customers if AT&T’s service quality continues to suffer, and Ralph acknowledged the troubles, saying that AT&T’s biggest issue right now is simply getting enough equipment built in China and put into place. We’ll see what happens — we’re not going to believe that a Verizon iPhone is real until Steve asks if we can hear him now.
Update: AT&T just sent us a tiny snippet of de la Vega’s comments:
Having said that, all the improvements that we have seen are not just driven by the iPhone. The non-iPhone customer churn has seen the same reductions as the overall total postpaid customer churn improvement levels. So we’ve seen improvements in churn that are driven by the iPhone and by non-iPhone customers. And so we view that having a great portfolio of devices and services has been the key to our success and will continue to be. And I think the iPhone will be a part of our portfolio. And I think that customers are still going to come to us, like they’ve done in the past, looking for great choices, great devices and great services.
Interesting — it certainly doesn’t sound like he’s betting too heavily on keeping the iPhone exclusive, but we’d like some more context here. We’re looking for the full transcript (or better yet, video), so stay tuned.
Update 2: And here’s the followup question specifically regarding exclusivity:
Q: I thought you might share with us the exclusivity end date, Ralph. A: No, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that, Mike. (laughs)
Some Christmas family traditions include baking a cake together or going caroling. But Tony DeRose and his family have their own way of doing things.
This year, that involved an animated, fire-breathing robot dragon.
For the last three Christmases, DeRose and his two sons have decided on a project for the coming year. Then they built each one, aiming to complete whatever it is in time for Maker Faire.
This year’s creation was a fire-breathing dragon called Saphira, inspired by a character from the Eragon book series.
“She’s very articulated,” says DeRose, of his dragon. “She can really move her head around and she will be breathing a 8-foot to 9-foot fireball.”
Saphira, along with more than 600 exhibits, will be on display at the fifth annual Maker Faire Bay Area, which will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday, May 22 and 23, in San Mateo, California. The annual event, put on by O’Reilly Media, is a celebration of DIY culture, arts and crafts, and will likely draw more than 70,000 attendees, organizers say.
The dragon, built out of parts from the hardware store and online specialty shops, combines pneumatic actuators, flame effects and an Arduino microprocessor to put on a spectacular show.
“We wanted the head to be pretty highly articulated so we wanted it to go up and down, side to side, and we wanted the jaw to be able to open and close,” says DeRose, who works at Pixar Animation. “Designing a mechanism for the head was very tough.”
To get started, DeRose and his sons created pencil sketches of how they wanted the dragon to look. In earlier projects, he says, he has used Google’s Sketch-Up design software, but the dragon’s design and different angles made it easier to draw on paper.
In its crouched position, the dragon will be about 3½ feet high and have a wingspan of about 8½ feet.
Balancing the weight of the finished sculpture will be the biggest challenge, says DeRose. Saphira weighs about 45 pounds.
“It has to be lightweight but strong so it couldn’t wave around too much. The penumatic actuators are light, but once you add tubing, spark plugs and transformers it adds up,” says DeRose.
To control the beast, the team uses a Logitech game joystick connected to a Mac laptop. The Mac is connected to an Arduino board that drives pneumatic solenoid valves using a SN75441 motor controller chip. For the flame, they use propane gas.
Overall, the project cost him about $1,200. At Maker Faire, DeRose and his family hope to have Saphira breathe a giant ball of fire at least twice every hour.
See below for more photos and a video of Saphira.
Check out the video that shows the making of Saphira.
Looks like Magellan isn’t messing around with its new Spring lineup of RoadMate navigation units — and by not messing around, we mean not changing things very much. Totaling ten units in all, the company’s new lineup features models with 4.3-inch, 4.7-inch and 5-inch touchscreens, and seemingly similar specs across the board otherwise, with the biggest difference being the inclusion of lifetime maps, lifetime traffic, and Bluetooth on some models. Look for the whole lot to start trickling out to retail over the coming days and weeks, with about half of them already available on Amazon and directly from Magellan for between $169.99 and $299.99.
As our extensive KIRF library shows, China’s one wild country that can make almost anything you don’t want, so don’t mind us while we inspect this new finding with extra caution. This particular Chinese online seller not only claims to have parts for the next-gen iPhone, but also one white face plate — something not seen on iPhones thus far. While we drool over the thought of an all white Apple handheld, there are still questions to be answered here: the seller wasn’t able to explain what that silver bit above the speaker is, nor have we seen white back plates to match this. Furthermore, we were given a “maybe” for a bulk order of 15 to 20 units, which is quite a lot for something that’s not even out yet, but we were told over the phone that there’s always a back door to Foxconn as long as you wave cash at someone. Not that you should engage in such risky business, plus this piece’s authenticity will be revealed in about three weeks’ time, anyway. One more shot after the break.
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