Hasta La Gadget!

The climbing season for Mt. Fuji, a symbol of Japan and the new World Heritage-listed site, officially opened today. Because of its new status, many people expect (and are even a bit concerned) that there will be many more climbers than usual visiting Mt. Fuji this year.

Because today is the first day of the climbing season, we would like to introduce the “Private Mt. Fuji Tour” tour packages planned by major Japanese travel company, JTB. There are 2 kinds of tours:

1) Mt. Fuji Climbing Private Tour (2 Days)

English speaking tour guide will pick you up by car and take you to the “5th station” of Mt. Fuji (the usual starting point for hiking the mountain). Once summiting has been completed, you can enjoy the beautiful sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji. Then, a hot spring and Kaiseki-style traditional lunch near Lake Kawaguchi/Yamanaka await you.

Price: ¥94,000 or more (depending on the number of people)

2) Mt. Fuji Climbing and “Exploring immense Nature by Walk” Private Tour (4 Days)

This is a very challenging walking tour. The tour begins from Mt. Takao in Tokyo and covers 100km to finish at Mt. Fuji. You can stay at ryokans (Japanese style hotel) and enjoy hot spring and Japanese style food along the way.

Price: ¥248,000 or more (depending on the number of people)

Both are private tours with a dedicated luxurious car and tour guide.

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

Summer is finally upon us, and polluting companies are feeling the heat as President Barack Obama announced a groundbreaking climate action plan this week that calls for cutting CO2 emissions and building more resilient communities in the face of climate change. Meanwhile, innovators around the world are continuing to tackle some of our biggest challenges. Rust-Oleum launched NeverWet – an incredible new spray that can completely waterproof any surface or object. IKEA unveiled a new solar-powered flat-pack shelter that could be easily deployed as emergency housing. Cardboard Technologies announced plans to mass-produce a $10 bicycle made almost entirely from recycled cardboard. And in one of the week’s most exciting green transportation developments, England’s Drayson Racing set a new land speed record for electric cars this week, shattering the previous mark by nearly 30 MPH.

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In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.

This week is Microsoft’s time to shine. Its Build conference, typically held later in the year, kicked off on Wednesday and along with it came a lot more about Windows 8.1 — which we thought we already knew plenty about, honestly. But there was more to learn, including a new milestone for the Windows Store: 100,000 apps. Well, almost 100,000 apps. Steve Ballmer said the store was “approaching” that number and has racked up “hundreds of millions” of downloads. A bit of a far cry from Apple’s 50 billion, but hey, it’s early days yet.

More interesting to me is the inclusion of native 3D-printing support in Windows 8.1. Good ‘ol 2D printers were certainly common before the traditional driver came into standard practice, but that market didn’t really take off until they effectively became plug and play. One could say it’s perhaps a bit early for that kind of native support to be needed in Windows for a 3D printer, but better too soon than too late.

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With the goal of capturing frequent snapshots that show the planet’s changes in real-time without breaking bank, California company Planet Labs has revealed its plan to launch 28 teensy satellites called “Doves” to space. Existing imaging satellites are extremely expensive to make and usually capture huge pictures that take days to send back. Each Dove, however, consists of relatively affordable 10-centimeter-wide Lego-like building blocks called CubeSats and will quickly beam back mid-res photos. The firm has yet to mention how many CubeSats will go into each Dove, but the two test satellites launched in April (see sample images they took at the source below) had three pieces each. If everything goes off without a hitch, the fleet could be orbiting the Earth at a low altitude as soon as December. Once operational, we can use the pictures they send to update online maps and monitor melting ice caps, deforestation, or even traffic jams.

[Image credit: NASA]

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Via: Technology Review

Source: Planet Labs

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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