Building the Transportation System of 2050 Public transportation has to be improved significantly in many parts of the U.S., but that’s not going to happen magically. There are lots of people working on moving things in the right direction (activists, urban planners, politicians, citizen groups, bloggers, etc), and some of them recently met last week in Portland for the Rail-Volution 2010 conference. Our friend Clarence was there and had a chance to interview some very interesting transit heroes. Check it out! Via
Continue reading …Photo: youtube You Never Forget Your First Time Thanks to the nice people at Autoblog Green for pointing out this pretty cool video of a young boy (I’d say around 8 years old) taking his first ride in a Tesla Roadster 2.5. The whole video is just a reaction shot, and what a reaction! Check ou the video below (and notice the boy’s comment — he’s very articulate)…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …RIM’s PlayBook just got real — quite literally — at Adobe’s MAX conference today. Granted, out-of-the-box Flash and Air support are being billed as a big deal for the PlayBook, but it still seems a little strange that the company showed non-functional dummies running video loops encased in Plexiglas at its developer conference just a few weeks back, only to let Adobe show the good stuff at its own event here. There is some logic behind it, for what it’s worth: Adobe and RIM have announced availability today of an Air SDK targeting the PlayBook’s QNX -based platform with deep hardware integration, giving devs plenty of ramp-up time considering that the tablet won’t be available until early next year. Kobo was among the companies on-hand to talk about the sheer awesomeness of the dev environment, and the general attitude toward the PlayBook’s ease of development seems to be a positive one; we all know how important third-party apps are to a mobile platform’s success at this point, of course, so we’ll need a few thousand more Kobos on board to leave these guys with a happy ending. Check the full demo from the MAX keynote stage after the break. Update: RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis — who was up on stage with Adobe’s Kevin Lynch for the demo — announced that devs who get PlayBook apps approved into App World will get a free PlayBook. Not a bad incentivizer, if we do say so ourselves. Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook demoed in the flesh at Adobe MAX, Air-based SDK launched BlackBerry PlayBook demoed in the flesh at Adobe MAX, Air-based SDK launched originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …It’s pretty hard to argue with George Will on this one : There are hundreds of plausible nominees for the title of America’s Second-Smarmiest Politician, but surely the top spot is un-contested. Americans of all political persuasions can come together in affirming one proposition: Public life would be improved by scrubbing Rep. Alan Grayson from it. This act of civic hygiene probably will be performed Nov. 2 by voters of Florida’s Eighth Congressional District. Polls indicate that a majority of them plan to deny Grayson, 52, a second term by electing his resonantly named opponent, Daniel Webster. Grayson, never missing an opportunity to live down to his reputation, ridicules Webster’s “18th-century name.” Given Grayson’s relentless advertising of his intellectual shortcomings, it is surprising that he recognizes the name. Grayson’s preferred name for Webster—he used it in an ad—is “Taliban Dan.” Grayson’s idea that whatever rhymes is witty is sophomoric. His innuendo is worse. Consider: Webster, 61, the third-generation manager of his family’s air-conditioning business, served in Florida’s legislature for 28 years, becoming the first Republican speaker of the state House in 122 years—since Reconstruction—then serving in the state Senate until retired by term limits two years ago. A devout Christian who home-schooled his six children, in 2009 he addressed a religious conference of men in Nashville on the subject of how to be a good husband. Concerning relations with their wives, he urged the men not to focus on biblical verses that enjoin wives to be submissive: “Don’t pick the ones that say, ‘She should submit to me.’ That’s in the Bible, but pick the ones that you’re supposed to do. So instead, ‘Love your wife, even as Christ loved the church he gave himself for it’ as opposed to, ‘Wives, submit yourself to your own husband.’ ” Grayson sliced and spliced a videotape of Webster’s words to depict Webster as saying, “She should submit to me. That’s in the Bible.” When asked about his lie-by-editing, Grayson blithely said, “These were his words.” Grayson’s ad says: “Religious fanatics try to take away our freedom in Afghanistan, in Iran, and right here in central Florida…Daniel Webster wants to impose his radical fundamentalism on us.” Hence “Taliban Dan.” Will goes on to explain how Gov. Charlie Crist could certainly deserve consideration for this award, and Will’s column was written before yesterday’s embarrassing Crist performance on CNN during which he refused to let Marco Rubio speak and heckled him during a debate . Crist deserves honorable mention for America’s Worst Politician. Back to Grayson, Will sticks the knife in and twists it with this closing paragraph. The vulgarity of Grayson’s brief congressional career validates the axiom that there is unseemly exposure of mind as well as of body. Concerning his nonstop anger, whether real or feigned, remember: “Anger is not an argument.” So said Sen. Daniel Webster (1782–1852). Grayson will probably end up with his own show on MSNBC.
Continue reading …Photo: Picsio , Creative Commons And this man aims to fix them … There were more than a few folks critical of standard NGO and conservation group practices at this year’s Poptech conference . For instance, Ned Breslin, the CEO of Water for People, tells me that reports from the field show that as many as 60% of the wells installed i… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Sunday evening, Eric Meyers – an emergency management coordinator in Navarro County, Texas, videotaped his incredibly close encounter with a powerful tornado. (Oct. 25)
Continue reading …In Illinois, police are trying to identify human remains found in a park. Police say they have recovered items consistent with property belonging to NIU student Antinette ‘Toni’ Keller, who disappeared while walking toward a park. (Oct. 25)
Continue reading …MSNBC's Chris Matthews and CBS's Lesley Stahl were two of the targets in the latest “Media Mash” segment on Fox News Channel's “Hannity” program. NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the October 22 edition of the program
Continue reading …So, Bluetooth — last fall didn’t end up being as frightful as you had probably imagined, but this fall is bound to be different. Or so the Wi-Fi Alliance says. If you’ll recall, Wi-Fi Direct promised to do what Bluetooth had been doing for years, but with far less fuss and on a protocol that’s much more widespread. A solid year has come and gone, and we’ve heard nary a word from any company who plans on implementing it. Thankfully for us all, that changes today. Starting in mere moments, Wi-Fi Direct devices will begin the certification process, and while we couldn’t extract exact product details or a release time frame for future wares on a media call regarding the announcement, we did get the impression that at least a few partners were trying to get Wi-Fi Direct wares onto shelves before Christmas. As for functionality, the claims are fairly impressive. In order to make a direct device-to-device connection over WiFi, just one of the two need to be Wi-Fi Direct certified. In other words, a Wi-Fi Direct printer can recognize and interface with your Latitude D410 laptop from 1999, as all Wi-Fi Direct certified devices have to be able to control the one-to-one relationship. The goal here is pretty simple — it’s to create a protected connection between two devices over WiFi with as little hassle as possible. Think Bluetooth, but using WiFi. We also learned that “most” products certified will also support “one-to-many” connections, enabling a Wi-Fi Direct laptop to be in contact with a printer, connected HDTV and a tablet simultaneously, with no router in-between at any point. We should also point out that while 802.11a/g/n is supported over 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, there’s no requirement for Wi-Fi Direct products to support 802.11b, so legacy users may want to pay attention to that quirk. There’s also no new hardware requirements here, so in theory, any existing WiFi chipset could be upgraded via firmware to handle Wi-Fi Direct — whether or not that’ll happen on a large scale was a question the Wi-Fi Alliance couldn’t answer for us. Finally, they noted that the app ecosystem is likely to make this whole rollout a lot more interesting, particularly considering that Direct is simply a pipe that software can dictate as it sees fit. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the developments here; we’ve waited way too long for this to blossom, but we’re pretty jazzed about the possibilities. Head on past the break for a video overview of how Wi-Fi Direct works. Continue reading Wi-Fi Direct certification begins today, device-to-device transmission starting soon Wi-Fi Direct certification begins today, device-to-device transmission starting soon originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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