As the number of cyclists in New York grows each year, more and more bike shops have popped up around the city to meet demand. A growing group of them specialize in entirely handmade, custom bike frames—like six-year-old Horse Cycles, a custom steel frame workshop in Brooklyn. This week Horse’s founder, Thomas Callahan, gave me a tour of his incredible workshop and some insight about Horse and where it’s going.
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If you’re lucky, your smartphone’s battery can just make it through a full day, with the percentage meter dropping to the single digits as you finally get a chance to plug in. With 10 hours out and about, some handsets can’t even last through dinner, though, and out of reach power outlets make juicing up at the restaurant a tad inconvenient. Beginning this summer, public power will be much more accessible in New York City. AT&T is partnering with Goal Zero to deploy Street Charge stations in a handful of parks and other locations around NYC. They’ll be coming to Fort Green Park on June 18th, and will roll out to Brooklyn Bridge Park, Coney Island, Riverside Park, Rockaways, Summerstage in Central Park, Randall’s Island, Governor’s Island, Union Square, and Hudson River Park over the next few weeks. Each solar-powered pole, designed locally by Pensa, sports six USB connectors: for iPhones and iPads, there’s 30-pin and Lightning plugs, Android and Windows Phone users can hook up to micro-USB, and everyone else can use their own cable with one of three female USB connectors.
There’s three 15-watt solar panels and a 168 watt-hour battery, enabling each Street Charge to power up to six devices for several days without exposure to the sun. Sure, it’s probably impractical to fill your gadget’s cell completely, but if you have a few minutes to spare, you’ll be able to juice up and go. You can plug in phones, tablets, cameras, or even a Pebble watch — each cable can pump out up to two amps of 5V power, providing support for just about any USB-powered device. Each weatherproof unit will have AT&T branding, which seems reasonable, considering the carrier is footing the bill here. You should start seeing these pop up at several TBA locations in New York throughout the summer, with more stations to come if the trial’s a success. Take a closer look in the hands-on video after the break.
Gallery: Street Charge hands-on
Source: Pensa
Brooklyn-based MakerBot is a darling of the 3D printing community, and it recently moved into its new digs in Sunset Park, so the crew can more efficiently build and ship their shiny new Replicator 2 and 2X printers. Call it a classic case of growing pains — once demand for 3D printers started picking up, the MakerBot team soon found themselves aching for even more space to work in, and we got the chance to tour the new 50,000-square-foot facility when it opened last week.
All things considered, it’s a nifty operation, and the move should help MakerBot cope with growing prominence as the 3D printing movement slowly moves into the mainstream… especially as it attempts to make the printing process easier with its forthcoming desktop scanner. Of course, MakerBot’s position as a high-profile purveyor of 3D printing wares has reportedly made it an attractive target for a potential acquisition, with Minnesota/Israel-based Stratasys and even Amazon (which just recently opened a 3D printer section) being pegged as potential purchasers.
MakerBot’s ebullient founder Bre Pettis was keen to downplay that acquisition chatter, as he cut the ceremonial ribbon at the factory’s grand opening (using a partially 3D printed pair of scissors, naturally), but he did later note that they weren’t going anywhere. But while those conversations continue behind closed doors, the roughly 100 employees at MakerBot’s new Brooklyn outpost will continue assembling those printers by hand for a while to come — why not take a look and see what they’re up to?
This time it was no hype. Sandy rampaged through New York, New Jersey and the rest of the Northeast. The damage has been enormous: more than a hundred dead, massive flooding everywhere, collapsed buildings, generator malfunctions in hospitals, multiple fires, city-wide blackouts and explosions in power plants. More »
Google, we’re not in Kansas anymore, we’re in New York, where Time Warner Cable is planning to drop $25 million on expanding its (up to) 1Gbps fiber broadband infrastructure. Specifically, the additional network is hitting neglected areas in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but it’s not for general consumption — it’s strictly for businesses. Don’t feel too disheartened though — you might not be getting a slice of this particular fiber pie, but it’s all you can eat, all the time at the free WiFi buffet.
Filed under: Networking
Time Warner Cable expanding fiber broadband coverage in NYC, only businesses to benefit originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Hear those school bells in the distance? It’s hard to believe, but the start of the school year is just a few weeks away — and all week we’ve been rounding up some of our favorite eco-friendly back-to-school essentials. From green school supplies to sustainable backpacks, we’ve got all your back-to-school needs covered. And to top it off, we’re giving away a laptop-charging Voltaic solar-powered backpack (worth $389) stuffed with green school supplies for a total prize package worth over $500. If we could go back to school and live in any dorm, we’d probably choose Copenhagen’s Tietgenkollegiet dorm, a circular building with community kitchens, cafes, music rooms and a central courtyard. And if we could choose any gadget to take with us, it would have to be the P&P Office Waste Processor, which can transform a basket full of waste paper into fully-formed pencils.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Inhabitat’s week in green: solar powered toilet, pollution-fighting mural and the world’s largest rooftop wind farm originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 10:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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