This interesting Volkswagen Beetle might look all beat up from the outside, but inside the boot you’ll find an electric engine. The entire setup costs $29,995 - but think about the amount of dough you’ll save in the long run whenever you laugh at friends who moan and groan about ever rising oil prices. It costs just two cents per mile to charge its batteries, and comes with a 120 volt built-in charger. This electrified Beetle can hit a top speed of 75 MPH with a 70 mile range, and will be able to make it from San Franciso to New York and back at the cost of a mere $112. Acceleration-wise, this car ain’t too shabby either, hitting 40 MPH from a standing stop within 6 seconds.

Duravit has unveiled its e-mood furniture range that boasts a lighting concept that comes with different programmable mood lighting. The light and color programs are controlled by touch LEDs located on the product itself, giving you the perfect ambience as you wind down after a hard day’s work. The multi-functional e-board accommodates a soap dispenser, a tissue dispenser, a cosmetics shelf and a power outlet - all without ugly looking cables sticking out. There is also a built-in light sensor that turns on the night light automatically whenever dusk falls so you won’t accidentally stub your toe against a piece of furniture in the kitchen.

Students from Blakewater College in Blackburn, England have managed to come up with blinds that not only prevent sunlight from seeping into the room, it also helps keep the earth green by absorbing sunlight and converting it into energy. The environmental impact of such an invention would be tremendous assuming it takes off on a large scale - buildings will be able to collect solar energy every single day, storing power for use at night. Hopefully some manufacturer will sit up and take notice of the potentially huge market where solar-powered products are concerned. Guess these solar-powered blinds would go down extremely well with Solar Energy curtains.

You know how cordless mice come with dongles that are attached to your mouse when not in use? Chinese company Naxin has developed a cellphone known as the NX788. This GSM dualband handset comes with a standard Bluetooth headset located behind which can be unlatched when required, and placed in position whenever you need to charge it. In addition, the NX788 boasts Bluetooth A2DP support and a dual SIM card function, a 1.3 megapixel camera, a microSD memory card slot, the ability to play MP3 and MPEG-4 files as well as a QVGA touchscreen display. It currently retails in Hong Kong for $190, so you’ll probably never see it Stateside.

What happens if you’re all cooped up in your cubicle the whole day long with no chance whatsoever to sweat it out on the basketball court? An alternative would be the USB Basketball Dunking Game, but what if you do not have a USB port in the vicinity? There is always the manual Desktop Basketball game that comes with a couple of launchers, two miniature basketballs and a single backboard. Hone your skills alone or pit your finger power with another friend to see who races to 24 points first. The Desktop Basketball retails for £4.99 a pop.

ProStreet CPU case comes covered with a whole bunch of fans - 20 on both the left and right sides, 8 fans on the rear and front sides as well as 10 located on top for a grand total of 66 fans. While it might keep everything running cool and just dandy, you will definitely agree that it is one of the ugliest casings ever to date. All those fans being stucked in places that aren’t supposed to be there in the first place do not a pretty PC case make.

We mentioned about unlocked iPhones going on sale in Germany yesterday, and here are the latest developments. It seems that T-Mobile will be offering the iPhone without any contract for an insanely high price of 999 Euros. In addition, T-Mobile has to unlock free of charge for customers who bought the iPhone since November 19th. Logically speaking, an unlocked iPhone would mean the lack of Visual Voicemail, although that remains to be confirmed. Do you think this locked iPhone issue is overblown, and Apple ought to stick to its original strategy of selling the iPhone with a plan, or to just bow to consumer and industry pressure by offering standalone units?

Mexicans can finally stop drumming their fingers in anticipation of an online Apple Store in their country as the long wait is finally over. This online store allows Mexican shoppers to take advantage of better value instead of shopping at the US store. As part of its grand opening, lucky folks will be able to pick up a MacBook each day as well as an iPod nano each hour. One down, plenty of other countries to go.

Find all the sources, and discover more consumer electronics news and reviews at Ubergizmo.com.

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My article on ‘The Failure of the Green Media to Communicate Simply‘generated a very rich discussion amongst readers. All agreed on the importance of not overwhelming people with extensive green to-do lists, and the need to direct the focus instead, on the top household contributors to greenhouse gases emissions.

This is where numbers come in. I searched and found this chart from the Energy Information Facts Agency at the Department of Energy, the best in my opinion, in terms of its ability to showcase actionable data.

Another way to massage those numbers is to aggregate car and home contributions and rank the resulting contributions, in terms of percentage of direct household emissions:

1. car 49%
2. space heating 24%
3. lighting and appliances 12%

1. drive less and drive more fuel-efficient and less polluting cars; carpool, take mass transit, walk, or bike whenever possible
2. use Energy Star appliances, replace your old light bulbs with CFLs (compact fluorescent lights), and ask each household member to be responsible for turning off different appliances, lights.
3. contact your city for home energy audit; insulate your home, and install programmable thermostat, set temperatures to recommended levels.

Still a lot to chew on, for most people, myself included. But a useful framework for green communication strategies and behavioral interventions at the household level. Next, I will try to address my friend Anne’s request of ‘Tell me the one green thing I should do‘.

By La Margueritte,

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This week, Atelier reviews what is trendy on the web magazine of our great expert contributor. Ubergizmo.com is dedicated to consumer electronics news and reviews.

Virtual computer runs on no hardware

Retrevo.com new version: matching people and gadgets

HTC Touch gets a facelift

Shopping carts get text displays

Maya Single media apparatus

NifNaks creepie crawly USB flash drives

Blowable computer interface

Solar roofing tiles from DRI Energy

Find all the sources, and discover more consumer electronics news and reviews at Ubergizmo.com.

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Based in the California wine country town of Sebastopol, just 50 miles north of San Francisco, cleverly named Vinovation is not a fancy winery. It’s a huge warehouse filled with reverse osmosis machines—designed to adjust alcohol content in wine—and unlabeled barrels waiting to be picked up by their anonymous owners. Wine quality enhancement has become a philosophy here, but most of Vinovation’s 800 clients, which include big names in the California wine industry, want to remain incognito. This has a lot to do with famed wine columnist Matt Kramer’s reference to Vinovation’s affable cofounder, Clark Smith, as “the anti-Christ” in the fight for the soul of wine. His sin? Daring to alter the percentage of alcohol in wine, in the quest for the perfect blend. His hero and inspiration? A French wine consultant named Patrick Ducourneau, known as the father of micro-oxygenation, a process that introduces oxygen into wine to soften its tannins.

To pundits who accuse him of altering the soul of wine by manipulating its alcohol content he replies that electricity, stainless steel, inert gas, packaged microbes and enzymes, all in common use, dispensed with the romantic notion of totally “pure” wine long ago. Smith is as outspoken about what he does as his clients are shy about being associated with him. (He claims to have signed about 5,000 confidentiality agreements.) The first thing you see on entering his office is what he calls the “Wall of Shame,” with framed articles by naturalists and terroir advocates criticizing his winemaking techniques. He also edits winecrimes.com, a webzine that provides an open forum on the good, the bad and the evil of manipulating wine.

In California, due to the scarcity of autumn rain, “we often have excessive alcohol at true ripeness, which means that the wines are often too sweet,” Smith argues. He also likes to call reverse osmosis (RO) “reverse chaptalization,” a technique named after Napoleon’s agriculture minister Jean-Antoine Chaptal that corrected alcohol balance by adding beet sugar during fermentation. To Smith, the backlash against so-called wine manipulation can be explained in large part by a shift in the popular attitude toward science and technology. “In 1900 science was all about progress. But then we had Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the Challenger disaster. Our environment is full of pollutants, and on top of that we are inundated with [technology-enabled innovations] that make our life a living hell, from junk mail to calls from telemarketers. In the midst of all this, wine is supposed to be the one pure thing. But the truth is that winemaking changed, unalterably and forever, as soon as we started using electricity and all the 20th-century [devices].”

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Based in the California wine country town of Sebastopol, just 50 miles north of San Francisco, cleverly named Vinovation is not a fancy winery. It’s a huge warehouse filled with reverse osmosis machines—designed to adjust alcohol content in wine—and unlabeled barrels waiting to be picked up by their anonymous owners. Wine quality enhancement has become a philosophy here, but most of Vinovation’s 800 clients, which include big names in the California wine industry, want to remain incognito. This has a lot to do with famed wine columnist Matt Kramer’s reference to Vinovation’s affable cofounder, Clark Smith, as “the anti-Christ” in the fight for the soul of wine. His sin? Daring to alter the percentage of alcohol in wine, in the quest for the perfect blend. His hero and inspiration? A French wine consultant named Patrick Ducourneau, known as the father of micro-oxygenation, a process that introduces oxygen into wine to soften its tannins.

To pundits who accuse him of altering the soul of wine by manipulating its alcohol content he replies that electricity, stainless steel, inert gas, packaged microbes and enzymes, all in common use, dispensed with the romantic notion of totally “pure” wine long ago. Smith is as outspoken about what he does as his clients are shy about being associated with him. (He claims to have signed about 5,000 confidentiality agreements.) The first thing you see on entering his office is what he calls the “Wall of Shame,” with framed articles by naturalists and terroir advocates criticizing his winemaking techniques. He also edits winecrimes.com, a webzine that provides an open forum on the good, the bad and the evil of manipulating wine.

In California, due to the scarcity of autumn rain, “we often have excessive alcohol at true ripeness, which means that the wines are often too sweet,” Smith argues. He also likes to call reverse osmosis (RO) “reverse chaptalization,” a technique named after Napoleon’s agriculture minister Jean-Antoine Chaptal that corrected alcohol balance by adding beet sugar during fermentation. To Smith, the backlash against so-called wine manipulation can be explained in large part by a shift in the popular attitude toward science and technology. “In 1900 science was all about progress. But then we had Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the Challenger disaster. Our environment is full of pollutants, and on top of that we are inundated with [technology-enabled innovations] that make our life a living hell, from junk mail to calls from telemarketers. In the midst of all this, wine is supposed to be the one pure thing. But the truth is that winemaking changed, unalterably and forever, as soon as we started using electricity and all the 20th-century [devices].”

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Atelier organizes events that provide you with a complete, critical overview of any given market alongside its application to technology.

Last week Atelier hosted the French Bloggers event, gathering them to share their vision on blogs around a glass of wine. I took the opportunity to say “hello” to Vinvin – a very well known French blogger who recently relocated to San Francisco to join Loic Le Meur’s new start-up Seesmic.

Mathieu Ramage
Media and Editorial Manager

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This week, Atelier reviews what is trendy on the web magazine of our great expert contributor. Ubergizmo.com is dedicated to consumer electronics news and reviews.

RHex robot

 

Natural Wave keeps things hot

Radiators sure come in handy during winter as you don’t have to freeze your butt off even when you’ve escaped the biting cold outside. The Natural Wave ceramic plate helps harness the heat generated by an old school radiator by turning into a heated plate that keeps your drinks and snacks warm without the need for additional power such as energy-consuming microwaves or ovens. Designed by Byung-seok. You has any other company already manufactured something like this?

Drive Erazer to clean a drive without a computer

You don’t want to throw away a hard drive full of information, but it is quite a hassle to connect it to a computer to erase the data… If you are in this situation, you might be interested by the Drive eRazer, a stand-alone device that can wipe clean a hard disk, and by "clean", we mean multi-pass military-grade deletion of files. It works with many drives (with optional adapters): "Used with WiebeTech’s v4 Combo Adapters, DRZR-1 and DRZR-2 can be used with many drive types. The most common include 2.5" and 3.5" IDE/PATA and SATA drives. It will erase most flash drives, PCMCIA, ZIF drives and DOM drives"

Zeiss lens for infrared

Lensmaker Carl Zeiss has come up with a fair number of new lenses that have been optimized to grab light from the infrared end of the spectrum, and they are the Planar T 85mm f/1.4 and Distagon 25mm f/2.8 ZF-IR lenses. These lenses aren’t meant for casual photography though, as they were specially designed for both forensic and scientific applications. Of course, more serious shutterbugs would know that a little experimentation with infrared photography could result in a whole load of fun. There is no word on pricing though. Anyone wants to take a guess when such lenses will end up in a cellphone?

Chinese Trojan on Maxtor hard drives

Word has it that a Maxtor hard drive has been infected with a Trojan by a manufacturing sub-contractor in China, freaking out Taiwanese authorities who recently discovered samples of the infected kit. The pre-installed Trojan known as AutoRun-AH was discovered by Kaspersky Labs on Maxtor 3200 external hard drives sold in the Netherlands, although Seagate (who owns Maxtor) did express their skepticism about the reports initially. I guess it is time to get their heads out of the sand and face the issue head on. For those who purchase the Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drives after August 2007, you could be a victim of AutoRun-AH - so keep your guard up.

Cre8txt Desktop SMS Keypad

This keypad will let you feel the pain of typing text messages on a desktop PC. If you don’t speak "SMS shorcuts", it comes with software that translates SMS slang into normal English. Unless you’re training for the SMS Olympics, I don’t see why you would ever get one. Marketing Pitch Mobile phone communication platforms have been using SMS text for a considerable time, and that has caused the development of a whole new language "SMS Text Slang". Originally developed to save space on the then restricted 160 character text messages, it substitutes shorter character combinations in place of longer words. Young people have developed this language for both mobile phone use and PC messaging platforms. This audience is both competent and efficient users of this technology. (Cre8txt page)

Solar Powered Bluetooth Headset

Those who wear their Bluetooth headset all day long will appreciate the idea behind this solar-assisted Bluetooth headset. The small solar panel can increase the battery life by up to 21hrs (according to the manufacturer…). Note that this number assumes that the panel is in direct sunlight. Real-life numbers might be a lot less impressive, but still, we’ll take any battery life gains that we get.

 

Find all the sources, and discover more consumer electronics news and reviews at Ubergizmo.com.

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Last weekend, in an abandoned military base, an hour away from Los Angeles, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) pushed the limits of robotics by running the Urban Challenge. The challenge is quite simple: to have autonomous cars driving 60 miles in an urban environment while adhering to the California driving rules.

If you thought robots were small toys for your kids or vacuums for your house, think again! This year, DARPA’s Urban Challenge robots were (somewhat modified) manufactured cars (and one truck) that you and I drive. No human were controlling the cars at any time (except for emergency stop). Only computers were allowed as pilots. Contrary to last year DARPA’s Grand Challenge, where there were no other moving vehicles on the course while the robots were racing, this year’s event was all about other cars in motion.

Over 100 teams registered for the Urban Challenge. Among them, DARPA selected 35 semi-finalists that were invited last week for the National Qualification Event (NQE). During the week, all 35 teams had to demonstrate that their autonomous vehicle was safe to operate. The golden rule was: no matter what you do, do not hit anything. Out of the 35, 11 made the cut and were allowed to race last Saturday for the $2 million Grand Prize.

What seems easy and obvious for human drivers on the road every day is a fantastic challenge for a robot as our eyes are by far superior to any camera or sensing devices we ever invented. The best analogy is that each team is trying to program a computer to drive, with the sensors that can only see like an old lady. In fact, compared to human, these robots are really driving like old ladies (safe and slow — The average speed was 14 miles per hour –).

 -Dr. Norman Whitaker, Urban Challenge Program Manager

1st Place - Tartan Racing, Pittsburgh, PA

For this event, DARPA set up a complex course and hired 55 stunt drivers (with specially equipped cars) to create the traffic all around the robots. Each robot had 3 missions to accomplish including traffic circles, merging, four way intersections (which means detecting the intersection, detecting other vehicles at the intersection, defining who has the right of way and then pass at the right time), parking (yes the robot had to find a parking spot and park itself) and passing cars. In total, each robot had to drive 60 miles in less

By Regis Vincent, a valued Contributor.

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Last weekend, in an abandoned military base, an hour away from Los Angeles, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) pushed the limits of robotics by running the Urban Challenge. The challenge is quite simple: to have autonomous cars driving 60 miles in an urban environment while adhering to the California driving rules.

If you thought robots were small toys for your kids or vacuums for your house, think again! This year, DARPA’s Urban Challenge robots were (somewhat modified) manufactured cars (and one truck) that you and I drive. No human were controlling the cars at any time (except for emergency stop). Only computers were allowed as pilots. Contrary to last year DARPA’s Grand Challenge, where there were no other moving vehicles on the course while the robots were racing, this year’s event was all about other cars in motion.

Over 100 teams registered for the Urban Challenge. Among them, DARPA selected 35 semi-finalists that were invited last week for the National Qualification Event (NQE). During the week, all 35 teams had to demonstrate that their autonomous vehicle was safe to operate. The golden rule was: no matter what you do, do not hit anything. Out of the 35, 11 made the cut and were allowed to race last Saturday for the $2 million Grand Prize.