Hasta La Gadget!

Bloom Energy’s aptly-titled Bloom Box made a splash last year with much hooplah, bringing the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Colin Powell to its unveiling. But while the promise of efficient fuel cell technology is great for the eco-minded and even the long-term penny-pincher, the mid-to-high six-figure upfront cost limits the potential customer base to only the upper echelon of the environmentally conscious. Cue Bloom Electrons — instead of paying for the Bloom Boxes and owning them outright, you can lease a 2MW installation for no money down and pay only for the electrons you use. A 10-year contract is required, which yes does put your smartphone commitment to shame, but Bloom hopes this Credit Suisse / Silicon Valley Bank-backed plan opens the door for educational institutions and non-profits to join in on the fun. Press release after the break.

Continue reading Bloom Electrons’ pay-what-you-consume service thinks outside the Box

Bloom Electrons’ pay-what-you-consume service thinks outside the Box originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been charting the progression of in-home lighting, CFLs replacing incandescents but themselves slowly walking the path obsolescence as LED bulbs get cheaper and more common. It’s much the same on the vehicle lighting front, with LEDs taking over more and more automotive lighting, and now OSRAM Sylvania is giving us another reason to make that happen sooner. LED bulbs can provide the same amount of light as traditional incandescent car bulbs with less than 25 percent the energy draw. On a gas-powered auto that’s not such a big deal, where LEDs are being used primarily because of benefits like cooler temps, longer life, and greater stylistic freedom, but on an EV that reduction in current draw can offer as much as a six mile boost in range on a single charge. That may not sound like much, but if you ever run out of juice five miles from home you might just change your mind.

Continue reading LED headlights can add up to six miles of electric vehicle range

LED headlights can add up to six miles of electric vehicle range originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s just the reality of the world we live in–fall into a fountain with cameras around, and you’re going to wind up on YouTube. That’s precisely what happened to one Cathy Cruz Marrero, who took a dip in a Pennsylvania mall fountain as she was walking while texting.

The surveillance video surfaced on the Web and, naturally, the brief grainy video became something a viral hit, showing up everywhere, including a number of national media outlets.

Marrero herself appeared on TV, telling the world precisely how embarrassed she was over that embarrassing video. “I wanted to roll up and stay gome in bed for days,” she told a local news outlet.” Marrero, it turns out, was texting a friend from church.

Her lawyer, James Polyak, meanwhile, went on Good morning America, sounding a bit more threatening about the whole thing. “We plan to hold all responsible parties accountable,” the attorney told Good Morning America. Morrero, incidentally, has been out on bail since 2009 on theft charges surrounding stolen credit cards.

Just for, um, reference, check out the video, after the jump.

If leaked Verizon screenshots are to be believed, then Motorola’s Xoom will arrive stillborn, dead before it even launches. Pictures showing the MAP, or Minimum Advertised Price, of the upcoming Motorola Android tablet list it at $799. The equivalent 32GB 3G iPad is $729.

The problems are manifold. First, the price of the iPad is widely perceived to be $500, and any other tablet will be compared in the regular consumer’s eyes to that price point, despite it being unfair. Thus, anyone else making a tablet needs a low-end, 16GB Wi-Fi-only model for this reason alone.

And even when compared apples for Apples, as it were, the Xoom comes in at $70 too much. And remember, the Xoom is set head-to-head with the iPad, whereas the already successful Samsung Galaxy Tab manages to be its own category by way of its smaller size.

The one hope for the Xoom is that a MAP isn’t necessarily the final retail price. A MAP is a result of an agreement between retailers and the manufacturer, and the retailer can actually sell at any price it likes. Add to this the likelihood of a carrier subsidy and the Xoom is back in business. Of course, when the Android Honeycomb-based X males it into stores, it will be up against the iPad 2, not the current iPad.

Minimum advertised prices set for Motorola Xoom [Android Central]

See Also:

• XOOM
• Motorola Previews New Android Tablet, Droid Smartphone
• Video: Android 'Honeycomb' Tablet OS Revealed
• What We Know About Honeycomb, the Android for Tablets

Your typical school computer is probably not a machine you’d like to use on a daily basis — perennially behind the curve in terms of technology, since educators can’t afford smokin’ hot video cards and primo processors year after year. Budgets and the resulting reluctance inevitably lead to stale hardware which then goes obsolete… but a tiny startup called Neverware thinks it can end the cycle of woe with virtualization technology. Its single product, the Juicebox a100, can serve up one hundred Windows 7 virtual desktops to existing hardware, pretty much regardless of its age — all computers need is a working LAN jack, a 500MHz processor and 128MB of memory, so schools could keep their beige boxes and just upgrade the Juicebox instead. Founder Jonathan Hefter doesn’t have pricing worked out yet — and his tiny company only has three of the boxes working at present — but he’s piloted the technology in a pair of schools and is planning a beta soon — all the while dreaming about how our mountains of e-waste could be transformed into useful computers for the poorer nations of the world. Good luck, dude! Video after the break.

Continue reading Neverware’s Juicebox 100 squeezes new life into aging school computers (video)

Neverware’s Juicebox 100 squeezes new life into aging school computers (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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