Foldable boats were invented to be convenient — a boat when you want one, a strangely-shaped lump in your garage when you don’t. But the convenience is lost when you have to spend the best part of a perfect fishing day trying to assemble the dumb thing. Enter the aptly named Quickboat, which goes from scattered to seaworthy in three minutes if you’re working by yourself, and under a minute with a helper.
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The Justice League might not normally show up to save the innocent in a crossover utility, but even Superman and Co. could be persuaded by a one-off Kia Sorento complete with custom Jim Lee artwork. The customized car is the eighth in a series of Justice League Super Heroes models Kia and DC Entertainment have produced. The first seven featured each of the seven heroes themselves – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg – while this final model brings all of them together.
While the Sorento might initially seem like an odd choice, it’s actually one of the few cars in Kia’s range that could accommodate the whole Justice League team; it, and the similarly 7-seat Sedona, in fact.
The custom artwork is the handiwork of famous comic book artist Jim Lee, and then hand-airbrushed by West Coast Customs. On the outside, the metallic blue CUV spreads its quote of superheroes on either side, with Justice League branding across the hood, and sits on some impressively oversized special black-finish alloy wheels.
Lee began the process by hand-drawing the design separately, coming up with eight different versions including the all-heroes car that will be auctioned off. West Coast Customs then powered up their airbrushes to splash that custom artwork across the Kia bodywork, a difficult process given there are 3D curves and cut-lines to take into account. Some of the earlier, individual hero cars have been even more outlandish, with Kia cutting Batman logos into the radiator grill, for instance, on the Caped Crusader’s car.
Inside, meanwhile, there’s comic book artwork across the transmission tunnel and door trim, and – our favorite feature – each of the leather seats gets a hero’s logo on the headrest, and matching piping. In case you’re wondering, Superman is driving and Batman called shotgun.
More normally, the Sorento starts off at just over $24k for the somewhat less ostentations LX 2.4L with a six-speed auto transmission. You still get the seven seats, though, as well as SiriusXM radio, Bluetooth streaming, power windows, air-con, and 17-inch alloy wheels. Both front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive versions are offered, with up to 26mpg possible depending on model and driving conditions.
“Kia and DC Entertainment are both global brands sharing a youthful and creative mindset” Michael Sprague, EVP of marketing & communications for Kia Motors America, said of the collaboration. “With Jim Lee’s vision combined with the efforts of some of the best customizing shops in the business, it’s going to be a lot of fun unveiling these cars around the country.”
The limited edition Sorento has been shown off as part of a Kia collaboration with DC Entertainment at Comic-Con 2013, in association with the “We Can Be Heroes” campaign, as well as at other events through the year. Best of all, Kia is selling off the Justice League Sorento in a charity auction. Running until July 27, with a starting bid of $35,000, proceeds will go to Mercy Corps. [Limited edition Sorento auction on ebay]
2014 Kia Sorento Justice League ebay auction exceeds $37,000 is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Happy Friday! We’re all on the edge of our seats waiting for the weekend, aren’t you? SO CLOSE. To help you guys burn the rest of the day as painlessly as possible, we’re all going to hang around in the discussion below talking about whatever the heck you all want.
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If you’ve ever wondered if plugging your smartphone in to one power outlet was charging it up to full power faster than another, there’s a tiny device made by a fellow named David Toledo that’ll get you thinking. What you’re seeing here is a sort of half-way point between a USB port and your USB-based power cord. What the Practical Meter will do is show you a number of lights depending on how fast your device is powering up. With this information, you’ll be able to find the most optimized power source and charge your device up as fast as possible.
In the setup Toledo has created, he’s also made it possible to connect to your microUSB, mini-USB, and iPhone 4S-and-older iOS devices with a single cord. This cord works with a three head system, each of them with their own built-in circuit that Toledo suggests will optimize charge rates once again.
It’s quite simple, really. Each of the bars – the lights, that is – represent another measure of time that will be knocked off your charge time. One bar represents at least 8 hours of charge time before your device is all the way up to full power. Ramping up to 5 bars will bring you to just 1.5 hours of charge time – and that’s just in general. If you’ve got a device that has a battery capacity smaller than the average phone, you may very well be moving quicker than this chart – this chart bing based on the iPhone 4.
Note here that the meter itself doesn’t actually speed your charging up – it only tells you the power being pushed through it. If you’re plugged into a wall socket, you’ll get more lights than if you plug into your average laptop USB port. Sound like a device you’d like to toss into your pocket? Have at it!
Thanks for the tip, Frank!
VIA: Practical Meter
The Practical Meter aims to tell you how fast your phone is charging is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Despite the fact that the Moto X hasn’t even been officially announced (unless you count Eric Schmidt’s Idaho flaunt-fest or Dennis Woodside’s D11 talk as “official”), there’s a lot we already know about the device. What we haven’t heard for certain yet are which carriers in the US will offer the new handset, though FCC docs and other leaks have revealed AT&T, Verizon and Sprint as likely candidates so far. Does T-Mobile fit into the mix? Whether or not the UnCarrier will really pick it up, a variant of the Motorola X known as the XT1053 has made its way through the FCC approval process with all the bands you’ve grown to love and use on other T-Mo devices, such as AWS HSPA+ and LTE (along with bands 2 and 17, making this theoretically compatible with AT&T as well). This is a pretty clear indicator that worst-case customers will be able to purchase an unlocked version of the device with the right frequencies in tow. Additionally, we noticed evidence that 802.11ac will also make an appearance. Have a look at the docs for yourself below, if you so desire.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Google, T-Mobile
Source: FCC
The newest installment in the saga of the Southwest 737 airplane that skidded to a fiery halt
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At some point, the world of 3D printing had to fold back onto itself, leaving us all slack-jawed and wondering when 3D printers will start printing things for printers themselves? That moment is now.
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If you ordered Google Chromecast
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A lot of gadgets have passed through the halls of iFixit, getting their turn on the chopping block and having their internal guts dissected. Some of them have been extremely difficult to open up, while others are pretty easy. The Chromecast, on the other hand, is just a piece of nothing if you ask the iFixit folks. They didn’t even give it a repairability score.
Essentially, the Chromecast HDMI dongle is a motherboard with a heatsink, encased in a plastic shell. The shell is fairly easy to open, as it just takes a little bit of prying to get access to the innards. Overall, there just wasn’t much to teardown. After iFixit took off the plastic shell, that was pretty much it.
So why didn’t they give it a repairability score? Well, because there’s nothing to repair. If the device breaks you have to replace the whole thing, unless you’re really, really good with soldering tiny parts together. iFixit calls the Chromecast “a throwaway gadget” thanks to its very small price tag and the fact that you just can’t repair it.
However, that doesn’t mean that the iFixit team didn’t discover some “cool stuff” on the inside. The Chromecast uses an Azure Wave AW-NH387 802.11 b/g/n WLAN, Bluetooth, FM combo module IC, along with a Marvell DE3005-A1 SoC, similar to the Marvell DE3005. It also has 4GB of flash memory and 512MB of RAM.
In the end, iFixit calls the Chromecast “essentially a luxury item with a limited use.” It’s certainly nothing special, and if anything, it’s mostly the price that has folks raging about it. Then again, for $35, it’s a pretty awesome device that can do a lot of neat things, and with the SDK out and about, we can only see the device getting better from here on out.
SOURCE: iFixit
Google Chromecast gets iFixit teardown treatment is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
3D printing just keeps getting better and better, and while the printers themselves seem to be gradually overcoming their resolution and speed limitations, materials continue to be the bigger challenge. Now, there is yet another way to enhance 3D printing, and it is awesome.
What you’re looking at here wasn’t actually printed on a 3D printer though – these gold-plated brass pieces are cast from 3D-printed models. The guys at Shapeways are now offering this material for outputting your digital models, and it’s quite spectacular.
The process involves printing a wax model with a hi-res 3D printer. Then the wax is placed into plaster to form a mold, after which the wax is melted out. This plaster mold is then used for casting the 3D model out of molten brass. Once cooled, the piece is polished, and then electroplated with nickel and then 24K gold. So while the latter stages are traditional jewelry-making processes, it’s the first step that creates truly innovative forms.
Sure, it would be cool if you could 3D print directly with precious metals, but we’re not there yet. For now, this process results in impressively detailed and shiny models which would be nearly impossible to envision being hand-sculpted in wax, resulting in unique works of art and jewelry.
Shapeways’ gold-plated brass material sells for $35(USD) per cubic centimeter, and can currently produce objects measuring up to 100mm x 100mm x 30mm.
[via SolidSmack]
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