Daimler AG is of course best known as the producer of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, cars that usually sit toward the higher end of their respective classes. BYD , on the other hand, makes batteries, cellphones, and inexpensive cars that often look an awful, awful lot like other, rather more expensive ones. Strange bedfellows, these, but according to a “knowledgeable individual” quoted by The Wall Street Journal the two are getting closer to finalizing plans for an electric vehicle, freezing the design ahead of production to begin toward the end of 2012. The car is said to be called the GOLF, standing for Green, Oxygen, Light, and Friendship — though that L could also double for Lawsuit given VW already sells its Golf in China. This partnership is similar to what BMW is doing, working with Brilliance China Automotive to get a foothold into the potentially Chinese EV market, which is already starting to heat up and should only continue to do so over the coming years. Daimler and BYD’s GOLF electric car getting closer to completion? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Neverware’s Juicebox 100 squeezes new life into aging school computers (video)
January 24, 2011 No Comment
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 . Permalink
Continue reading …Holocube scales up with life-sized, 70-inch, HC70 holographic projector (video)
January 24, 2011 No Comment
First they were little , then they added touchability , now Holocube’s holograms in a box are going big time — in that the company’s latest model is physically much larger than the others. It’s the HC70, a new version with a 70-inch transparent screen that can be viewed from both sides. It’s powered by a Windows 7 Embedded machine with 40GB of flash storage from which it can loop between eight and 18 hours of video, displayed via 1080p projector. You can see it in action below showing a… slightly mesmerizing collection of random bits of footage. Let us know if you can find the hidden meaning. Continue reading Holocube scales up with life-sized, 70-inch, HC70 holographic projector (video) Holocube scales up with life-sized, 70-inch, HC70 holographic projector (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 07:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …NVIDIA Tegra 3, equipped with 1.5GHz quad-core madness, teased by a familar slide
January 24, 2011 No Comment
How aggressive can NVIDIA get? That’s the question puzzling our brainboxes right now as we gaze upon the complete version of the slide that let us know about a potential Tegra 2 3D chip over the weekend. It’s not every day you hear of a 1.5GHz quad-core mobile SOC, but our discovery of corroborating evidence for the T25 module sitting alongside it makes us more willing to credit the possibility of a Blu-ray-crunching, 13,800 MIPS-capable, multicore Cortex-A9 Tegra 3 . Moreover, the roadmap of production samples in Q4 of 2010 fits perfectly with NVIDIA’s claim that Tegra 3 was ” almost done ” in September of that year. The ULP designation on this listing stands for Ultra Low Power in NVIDIA parlance, which would indicate an aggressively tuned power management system — the only way we can envision a quad-core anything operating within a tablet. Fall 2011 is when we should know for sure. NVIDIA Tegra 3, equipped with 1.5GHz quad-core madness, teased by a familar slide originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 07:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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This won’t be the first (or by any means last) video you’ll see the Xperia Arc starring in, but it is the most comprehensive look we’ve had so far at this finely crafted Android Gingerbread handset. The guys over at HDBlog.it have somehow sourced both the silver and black variants of Sony Ericsson’s upcoming 4.2-incher and they’ve given the pair a nice and thorough video overview. They happily report that Timescape and Mediascape, Sony Ericsson’s pervasive features in the earlier X10 , have been scaled down to mere widgets, making them “far less intrusive” and resulting in the rest of the UI being “faster and easier to use.” Make the leap past the break to get the full dish on SE’s latest and greatest. Continue reading Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc subjected to a thorough video preview Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc subjected to a thorough video preview originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 06:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …McDonald’s to start accepting contactless Visa payments in all UK restaurants by this summer
January 24, 2011 No Comment
The UK already has a big old investment in contactless technology with London’s rather successful Oystercard travel scheme, but now the whole Kingdom can get a taste for airborne payments thanks to a new initiative from McDonald’s and Visa . The two giants of commerce are uniting to bring NFC tech to all of the former’s 1,200 fast food restaurants within the UK, allowing hungry Brits to pay for meals costing up to
Continue reading …Genovation G2 aims to be the greenest thing you can drive, will be made from renewable and recycled parts
January 24, 2011 No Comment
One big sticking point for those still unwilling to embrace the eco-friendly credentials of electric vehicles is the undeniable fact that building an EV costs plenty in terms of resource and energy use. Hoping to counter this concern, Genovation is working on developing a new G2 electric car (the G1 was a Ford Focus modified with off-the-shelf parts to run on batteries), which will try to maximize the use of renewable and recycled materials in its construction. It’s just completed the first phase of its development, where quarter-size models have been built by Tata Technologies and a bunch of simulations, analyses, and performance tests have been run. Phases two and three will involve the building of functional prototypes and pre-production road vehicles, with phase four presumably being the onset of our sustainable living utopia. Continue reading Genovation G2 aims to be the greenest thing you can drive, will be made from renewable and recycled parts Genovation G2 aims to be the greenest thing you can drive, will be made from renewable and recycled parts originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 05:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …HTC HD2 can now dual-boot Windows Phone 7 and Android, promises to love them equally
January 24, 2011 No Comment
You’ve seen Windows Phone 7 and Android both ported to the stately HTC HD2, now how about having them on the same device at the same time ? Well, not literally at the same time, that’d be all sorts of confusing, but the restless souls over at xda-developers have figured out multiple ways to install both WP7 and Android on the HD2 while using the same SD card. We’ve looked at them and none of the methods seem particularly trivial or, you know, easy, but then what would be the point of a dual-boot solution if everyone could just up and do it? Detailed instructions await at the source link. [Thanks, engadgeteer] Continue reading HTC HD2 can now dual-boot Windows Phone 7 and Android, promises to love them equally HTC HD2 can now dual-boot Windows Phone 7 and Android, promises to love them equally originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 04:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Consider this little slice of photography uncorroborated for now, but we just couldn’t ignore a device that’s ostensibly running MeeGo software while sporting a bold Nokia logo front and center on its shell. This mysterious slate has cropped up over at the mobile-review forums, where amateur sleuthing has already noted that the landscape centering of the Nokia logo is atypical — both the N97 and N900 have it off-center — which may well suggest this is a landscape-centric tablet first and a phone second (if at all!). Assuming the brand name imprint is the same size as on the N8 (Nokia loves to standardize those), we could be looking at a 4.5-inch screen on what is either an internal test device, or, more optimistically, a prototype for actual hardware. It’s worth noting that the MeeGo seen on board is of the stock variety, whereas Nokia intends to ship its new flagship device(s) with an as-yet-unseen set of UI customizations collectively known as Harmattan. So we’re certainly not looking at anything close to a final hardware / software pairing, but we are looking at something. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Continue reading Is this Nokia’s tablet-shaped MeeGo device? Is this Nokia’s tablet-shaped MeeGo device? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 03:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Phase One straps 80 megapixels to your camera, USB 3.0 for ginormous image transfers
January 24, 2011 No Comment
We’re still trying to wrap our brains around the idea that a 80 megapixel camera sensor exists at all, but there’s already a second light-devouring silicon rectangle on the way — the Phase One IQ180, which technically hails from the very same company as the Leaf Aptus-II 12 . That doesn’t mean the company simply rebranded its subsidiary’s giant CCD, as this unit’s got an extra half-stop of dynamic range, captures a tenth of a second quicker at full resolution, and supplements the standard FireWire 800 connector with USB 3.0. There’s also a 3.2-inch, 1.15 megapixel touchscreen with a pseudo-Live View for easy framing and 1GB of RAM to buffer the gigantic images you’ll be pumping out. Improvements don’t come cheap, though, as you’ll drop $43,990 in April at launch. If you can settle for a slightly lower resolution, though, there’s no need to sell your Lexus quite yet — the summer months will bring lesser models with 60.5 megapixels and 40 megapixels respectively. Phase One straps 80 megapixels to your camera, USB 3.0 for ginormous image transfers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 02:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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