Hasta La Gadget!

The Week in Green is a new item from our friends at Inhabitat, recapping the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us.

This week Inhabitat followed the ongoing saga of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as we tracked BP’s latest attempt to plug the leak with yet another containment dome. We can’t help but wonder why BP refuses to use hair mats donated from thousands of businesses to clean up the slick, but we’re glad that the nuclear option is off the table for now. We also looked at one inventor’s plan to lead sealife to safety using a swarm of remote-controlled fish-like robots!

Several exciting advances in sustainable development also took place last week, starting with the announcement of this year’s Buckminster Fuller Challenge — Operation Hope! Led by Allan Savory, the organization has pioneered a new way to transform desert into fertile farmland using a whole systems approach to range management. We also watched as London opened the UK’s first desalination plant in a bid to secure a sustainable water source — they’ll need it, as 700,000 people are expected to move to the city by 2021. On this side of the pond, California is on the brink of becoming the first state to ban plastic bags – take that Pacific Gyre!

Renewable energy also saw an upswell this week as a recently released report showed that wind could power 35% of the western states without major infrastructure upgrades. Biofuels are also on the rise as a clean burning fuel made from sewage sludge was recently projected to cost just 10¢ a gallon more than petrol. Finally, we followed one Japanese firm’s blue-sky plan to shoot for the moon with a massive solar-powered lunar base that beams energy back to the earth.

In other news, we watched the worlds of tech and fashion collide as we showcased 7 celebrities who are pushing the envelope with awe-inspiring examples of wearable technology. We were also wowed by this prototype for a futuristic computer bracelet that would blow Dick Tracy’s mind.

Finally, as our Spring Greening DIY Design Contest comes to a close we’d like to shine the spotlight on two of our favorite designs – check out this pint-sized snack serving robot and this stunning crystalline chandelier made from recycled plastic hangers.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: containment domes, robot fish and lunar bases originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on December 09, 2005 by CyberNet.

A hacker recently claimed to have a flaw for Microsoft Office Excel that would exploit a user’s computer. This flaw was put on eBay to be sold and until Thursday night was up to $60 until eBay decided to pull it. Microsoft says that they are aware of the flaw and are working at a solution for it. I guess there always has to be something entertaining on eBay.

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When Adobe said Flash gives you the full web experience, it meant it. Part and parcel of the web, as we all know, is the good old hacking community, which has been “actively exploiting” a vulnerability in Flash Player 10.0.45.2 (and earlier versions) and Adobe Acrobat and Reader 9.x to overtake people’s machines and do hacky stuff with them. This so-called flaw also causes crashes, but that’s probably not what’s worrying you right now. Adobe says the 10.1 Release Candidate for Flash Player looks to be unaffected, while versions 8.x of Acrobat and Reader are confirmed safe. To remedy the trouble, the company advises moving to the RC for Flash, and deleting authplay.dll to keep your Acrobat from performing undesirable gymnastics. Oh boy, Steve‘s gonna have a field day with this one.

Adobe’s Flash and Acrobat have ‘critical’ vulnerability, may allow remote hijacking originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen some wacky prototypes of electric vehicles over the years, but never anything quite like the Weng. It’s a product of graduate students at Stanford, and it stands for Where Everyone Needs to Go. Where does everyone need to go? Less than 30 miles at 35mph apparently, as that’s the maximum range and speed of this conveyance, which stylistically has more in common with a utility trailer than something you might want to actually want to pilot. But, pilot this thing you can, controlled by a twist grip on the right and a little PS3-style thumbstick on the left for steering, meaning it’s both drive and steer by wire. Power comes from a pair of brushless scooter motors in the (scooter-sized) wheels, and from what we can see from the video below power looks to be rather scooter like as well. The kicker? An anticipated $10k price tag if this ever did come to production. Cool project, guys, and that you threw it together in a few months is hugely impressive, but in our estimation this is not “what a modern vehicle needs to be.”

Continue reading Stanford’s crazy Weng electric car doesn’t have a prayer of seeing production (video)

Stanford’s crazy Weng electric car doesn’t have a prayer of seeing production (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Jun 2010 16:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s oftentimes easy for us to get swept up in Android mania and forget that Google’s mobile platform is still in its infancy. Then we get cold hard numbers like these — showing iPhone OS owning 28 percent of the US smartphone market and closing in on RIM’s leading 35 percent — and we face up to the realization that Android handsets still account for less than one in every ten smartphones owned by Americans today. In spite of collecting 28 percent of all consumer smartphone purchases in the first quarter of 2010 (according to NPD), Google’s OS was only able to climb up a couple of percentage points in terms of total market share, showing just how long a road lies ahead of its world-conquering plans. Guess that now explains why Apple’s response to the earlier numbers was so nonchalant.

Other intriguing figures include a high rate of loyalty among iPhone OS and Android users, with 80 percent of the former and 70 percent of the latter expressing a preference for the same OS in their next phone — both rather shaming Microsoft and RIM’s numbers, which were a mediocre 34 and 47 percent, respectively. Funnily enough, despite its inflammatory title, this report finds Android and iPhone users are more similar to each other than anyone else — an uncomfortable fact for both parties to deal with, we’re sure. The source link contains some more demographic comparisons, so why not go check them out and drop some sage analysis for us in the comments?

‘iPhone vs Android’ report finds Apple has three times Google’s market share originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Jun 2010 15:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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