Anonymous Cow writes “The world’s first international fuel-cell powered motor racing series kicked off in Rotterdam over the weekend. The organisers hope that ‘Formula Zero,’ like Forumula 1, can become a forum for competing technology as much as anything else, helping green consumer cars to become better.”
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Original post by timothy
Lucas123 writes “With gas prices 30% higher this summer over last, telecommuting is back on everyone’s radar. According to a Computerworld story, however, IT and telecommuting don’t have a great record of success. For example, citing negative impacts on productivity, HP ended its telecommuting policy for hundreds of workers two years ago, and this year, Intel began requiring more than half the teleworkers in its IT group to report to the office at least four days a week. So before leaping, some questions you should ask as a manager if you’re considering telework include: How will you define and measure performance? Will creativity suffer? What about employees stuck in the office?”
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Original post by samzenpus
Filed under: Transportation
Japan’s not hurting for trains, but what’s the addition of another going to hurt? Senyo Kogyo and Senyo Kiko have jointly announced plans to construct a test line for an energy-saving urban transportation system this October. Dubbed Eco Ride, the “roller coaster-like” system in Chiba Prefecture will operate “using the height difference on the railway,” and furthermore, there will be drive units (complete with clanks and clangs, we bet) “installed at various points on the railway so that the Eco Ride can obtain the potential energy to run.” Reportedly, Eco Ride would likely remain just a short-distance transportation system even if expanded, but no matter how you slice it, it sure beats taking the Segway to work.
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Original post by Darren Murph
Anyone know more about this? via /.
German police have confiscated what may be the world’s fastest office chair. Police say officers happened on the contraption - the work of two inventive 17-year-olds - in the western town of Gross-Zimmern on Saturday. The pair had added a lawnmower engine, bicycle brakes and a metal frame to the revolving chair - making into a go-kart-like vehicle.
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Original post by Phillip Torrone
Blimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Crossing the English Channel in a Pedal-Powered Airship*… Thanks Sam!
You know it’s hard up here for a blimp. Or so says Stephane Rousson, a 39-year-old Frenchman who’s hoping to cross the English Channel in a homemade, pedal-powered airship. As a child, he was captivated by the Gossamer Albatross, the first entirely human-powered craft to fly the turbulent stretch from England to France. Hoping to repeat that 1979 feat, Rousson acquired Zeppy, a crank-driven zeppelin. Built originally by Jean Marc Geiser and his son Luc back in 1984, the craft’s forward momentum and steering come from a pair of 10-foot movable propellers, churned by a recumbent bike hanging from the ship’s belly; Rousson modified the chassis to improve its stability and power. He has logged more than 30 hours of flight time, including a four-hour hop around the coastal town of Toulon. But so far, no English Channel. The problem: Breezes over 5 mph bat the blimp around like a cat playing with a moth. Also, the heat of the sun raises the temperature of the helium in the Zeppy, which could cause it to explode. With the channel typically experiencing only three windless days a year, Rousson will have to time his five-hour, 34-mile flight perfectly. He plans to try again in September. Here’s hoping the attempt doesn’t go down like a lead balloon.
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Original post by Phillip Torrone
Unfortunately there isn’t any information on the maker of this car, but the pictures are cool. If anyone knows more about this build, please post it in the comments and I will update the entry. If you can’t afford a Lambo, make it!
Checkout the rest of the photo set
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Original post by Marc de Vinck
Sure, writing about cars here is a bit off-topic for The Gadget Blog. But then cars are gadgets, and once you see how funny the following are, you’ll be really grateful!
Tags: top ten, worst car names
Original post by Rico
From the Core77 blog:
The AEOLUS race, to be held in the Netherlands later this month, pits competing single-person land yachts against each other, with the requirement that they sail directly into the wind. The vehicles are therefore quite different from the sail-powered craft of old, using wind turbines to harvest energy and translate it into torque on the ground. A group of students at Stuttgart University called Team Inventus have been documenting their 9-month process of building such a craft (pictured above), and it’s quite a thing of beauty. Featuring a 2m wind turbine and carbon-fiber construction, the craft weighs in at less than 100kg, and the videos are fascinating, if a bit over-produced.
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Original post by Becky Stern
hazehead writes “The growing trend of folks refusing to wait for big-car manufacturers to deliver mainstream electric vehicles is starting to get some press. From DIY tinkerers in Atlanta trying to keep money from going overseas (or simply from leaving their wallets) to a guy in Oregon building an open source Civic conversion kit, Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands.”
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Original post by timothy
Iddo Genuth writes “The European Commission has recently decided to reserve, across Europe, part of the radio spectrum for smart vehicle communications systems. The decision is part of the Commission’s overall fight against road accidents and traffic jams, and the hope is that vehicles’ developers will create wireless communication technology that will allow cars to ‘talk’ to other cars and to the road infrastructure providers.”
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Original post by kdawson
This video shows an incredible 6 tire mod to a standard Segway, which turns it into a cousin of “BigFoot”, the original monster truck. This might even scare away the cops who ride Segways.
via Street Use
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Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen
eldavojohn writes “In an effort to combat air pollution, a Dutch town has paved some of its streets with air-purifying concrete. It contains a titanium dioxide-based additive that utilizes sunlight to turn car exhaust into harmless nitrates. It was shown to do this in a lab and now the scientists are interested in just how much this will affect the air quality around the road. They will sample the air quality by a normal road and by this newly paved one.”
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Original post by CmdrTaco
mnovotny writes “TIME is reporting that TSA will be allowing laptops in approved bags through security checkpoints. “The new rules, announced Tuesday and set to take effect Aug. 16, are intended to help streamline the X-ray inspection lines. To qualify as “checkpoint friendly,” a bag must have a designated laptop-only section that unfolds to lie flat on the X-ray machine belt and contains no metal snaps, zippers or buckles and no pockets.”" Don’t you feel safer? I wish an independent 3rd party group could get together and see what they could get through security without being arrested for the experiment. So little of what the TSA is doing is any more than illusion.
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Original post by CmdrTaco
Meep meep!
An automotive mechanic has driven into the record books - by building the world’s lowest van. Andy Saunders converted a 7ft 8ins high VW Camper into a 3.3ft high version - in just three days. The 1980 Type 25 camper had 70,000 miles on the clock when Saunders and three friends transformed it. The steering had to be lowered and moved to a central position and all the systems altered to make it work. There are two seats behind the driving position, it is fully road worthy and Saunders believes it could get into car parks by driving under the barrier. Although it is possible to sleep in the back, the height of the roof could cause claustrophobia. With a top speed of 80mph the bizarre camper turns heads when Saunders drives it around his home town of Poole in Dorset. Saunders, 45, who bought the van for £1,000, said: “The challenge was to build the world’s lowest van in just three days.
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Original post by Phillip Torrone
Various gadget/toy venues are writing about the Toyota Winglet, a diminutive Segway-like personal transporter. (Toyota took over Sony’s robot division a year back.) It comes in three sizes and offers about a third the speed and a quarter the range of the Segway; on the upside, it charges in an hour vs. Segway’s 10 hours. Wired writes: “The Winglet is the first gadget to duplicate the celebrated, and often mocked, navigation system of the Segway Transporter.”
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Original post by kdawson
Developages - Development and Technology Blog