Filed under: Hybrid, Wagon, Hatchback, Specialty, Design/Style

Valentin Technologies IngoCar - Click above for high-res image gallery
Interested in a five-seat, four-door, sportwagen that "is brimming with innovation" and was designed in Elm Grove, WI? How about if the car were to get 170 miles per gallon? Yeah, that got our attention, too.

The car in question is the IngoCar from Valentin Technologies. But how does this midsize passenger car wring that much distance out of a gallon of fuel? Here's how Valentin describes the powertrain:
This extraordinary fuel efficiency is achieved by a revolutionary hydraulic-fluid drive. This hybrid gasoline/hydraulic drive system can deliver acceleration from 0-60 in 4 seconds. Using a small gasoline engine, fluid is pumped into an accumulator. The fluid then drives hydraulic wheel motors for shiftless acceleration. During braking, motors are reversed and pump the entire recuperated braking energy back into the accumulator. This innovative technology and the car's light weight give an estimated range of 1,000 miles for a full 6 gallon tank of fuel. Sound reasonable? It could work, but energy isn't free and we don't know how much of the energy spent to move the vehicle forward is recuperated back into the accumulator. Still, Valentin Technologies has a been working on hydrostatic powertrains for a while, so we're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now. An earlier version of the IngoCar got "just" 130 mpg and, but the designers dropped 600 pounds (down to 1,600 lbs.) and improved the engine efficiency by 20 percent. We want to see the technology in action, but Valentin says that $3.8 million would be needed to prototype the IngoCar.

For now, we'll have to make due with the video posted after the jump and the first teaser sketches by Davide Tonizzo, of designD, from Toronto. Sure is a lot of the original Honda Insight and the Nissan Leaf in the rear end, don't you think? You can hear Tonizzo discuss his design on the CBC Radio show Metro Morning. Find the March 5th episode and click on "Futuristic Car Design" to listen.

Gallery: IngoCar teaser sketches

[Source: Davide Tonizzo]

Continue reading Valentin Technologies releases teaser images of 170-mpg IngoCar

Valentin Technologies releases teaser images of 170-mpg IngoCar originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Western Digital is extremely well known for its line of storage devices where backup is concerned, and this time round they have come up with something that targets folks who are running on the Mac platform – we’re talking about the Western Digital My Passport SE for Mac. Available in two capacities of 750GB and 1TB, the My Passport SE for Mac is a portable USB drive which has been specially formatted before leaving the factory to work in a Mac environment right out of the box, complete with Apple Time Machine software compatibility.

These ultra portable USB drives are a snap to tote around, and since they do not require any external power adapter as they derive juice by virtue of being plugged into your computer, it will certainly go a long way in reducing the amount of weight that you would have needed to carry on your travels. For those who are a bit concerned about security, fret not – these puppies are equipped with 256-bit hardware encryption with password protection for that added level of security, where a relatively small drive with such huge capacity should still let you sleep peacefully at night since you know that your data will protected from unauthorized access or theft.

Too bad this is still stuck in the USB 2.0 era, as we would have pretty much preferred to see something much faster along the lines of FireWire 800 or USB 3.0. Well, at least the Western Digital SmartWare software ought to deliver much needed calm whenever you make a backup since you can see it as it happens, making sure that no stone is left unturned. Apart from that, continuous backup ensures you will always have a second copy of whatever was just added or changed. Should the unthinkable happen, you can always retrieve valuable data to its original location, regardless of whether you have just lost the entire gamut of data or overwritten an important file. The 1TB model is going for $199.99 a pop, while those who opt for the slightly smaller 750GB model will have to fork out $179.99 for it.

Press Release
Check out the Coolest Gadgets 2008 Gift Guides, Christmas shopping made easy.
[ Western Digital My Passport SE for Mac copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

A study from Arizona State University shows that using chubsters in weight loss ad campaigns lowers womens' self-esteem and makes them less likely to buy a product...but more likely to eat an carton of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

JogStats is a GPS-based companion for exercise buffs. Use your phonesGPS to track stats while jogging and analyze them when you arefinished. Stats recorded include time, distance, speed, pace, caloriesand altitude. Each session also has weight a ...

The actress says claims her new weight-loss program is a Scientology front are "disturbing"

#saleschart { border: 0px solid #333; border-collapse: collapse; } #saleschart td { padding: 7px; border-bottom: 0px solid #ccc; vertical-align: top; margin: 0; line-height: 1.3em; font-size: 100%;} #saleschart th.bottomrow { border-right: 1px solid #333; } #saleschart tr.features1 { border-top: 1px solid #333; } #saleschart td.bottomrow2 { border-right: 1px solid #333;} #saleschart th { font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; padding: 4px; background: #f3f3f3; border-top: 1px solid #333; } Why California's new electric vehicle rebates are good, and why they're not so good
When $5,000 isn't the same as $5,000.
Video: General Motors continues to develop fuel cell toward 2015 production
Littler. Orange-ish. Different. Better.
Mini E driver discusses range anxiety, how his friends worry too much
Hey, guys, don't fret. Other news:

• Firefly turns off the lights, files Chapter 7
• Honda reports 8,000 orders for CR-Z hybrid in less than 3 weeks
• BMW confirms plans for front-wheel drive, low emissions targets

AutoblogGreen for 03.18.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Things made of carbon fiber tend to be appealing-looking, light-weight, and durable. But sometimes we just plain wonder how on earth someone decided to choose the often pricey material for a particular piece of gear. More »

Things made of carbon fiber tend to be appealing-looking, light-weight, and durable. But sometimes we just plain wonder how on earth someone decided to choose the often pricey material for a particular piece of gear. More »

We’ve reported in many one-wheeled vehicles before, such has the supercharged UnoCycle and the probably never to be developed Audi Snook.

This would be the Hornet, a superbike developed by Liam Ferguson. I realize that it looks very unsteady, and I would have to agree. But it actually has two wheels, placed side by side, to keep it “balanced gyroscopically whenever it is parked”. Whenever the rider accelerates the motorbike, it can tilt forward to lift its rear stabilizer wheels off the ground to put all weight on the central wheel.

It has a dual 74 horsepower (55 kW) in-wheel hydrogen fuel-cell six-pahse Neodymium-Iron (Nd-Fe) electric engines, good for keeping a top speed of 235 kilometers per hour.

I’m guessing that the driver straddles the seat here, and grabs what looks like handlebars. That certainly looks like that could take you were you want to go, fast. It certainly looks like it won’t take you there safely, but maybe this is the point.

It sort of reminds me of a vehicle from Mega Race in the movie Spy Kids 3: Game Over. I remember thinking that those vehicles were extremely odd and could never actually run, and I am wondering, after viewing this Hornet, if I am right.

Source
Coolest Gadgets UK – For all your UK centric tech and gadget news.
[ Hornet Superbike has one wheel copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Fair, thorough, enterprising and in context - that's what we're looking for in the journalism we read, isn't it? At a time when shallow ranting takes up so much space in public discourse, a new media evaluation technology offers hope, inspiration and is a lot of fun to use.

NewsTrust is a media technology organization funded by the Omidyar Network and MacAurthur Foundation. Yesterday it launched a personalized news filtering tool called MyNews. The tool helps users review the quality of journalism from all over the web and discover high-quality content they and their friends might enjoy. A light-weight, crowd-sourced, personalized recommendation engine that adds value on top of existing content? Sounds like our kind of app!

Sponsor

When reading content from around the web through NewsTrust, the user is presented with a well-designed interface through which to review the quality of journalism in question. Users are prompted to evaluate stories based on things like how well they were sourced, whether both sides of a controversy were explained and how enterprising the story was. Short and long reviews are supported and it's easy to review a story in less than 30 seconds if you feel so inclined.

The ability to post links to Twitter and Facebook with a single click means that users who already share articles around social networks have an opportunity to pause briefly and add another layer of value by using NewsTrust.

The new MyNews product released yesterday leverages that network of reviewers to draw in a stream of high-quality links from around the web, on particular topics. In addition to NewsTrust reviewers, the service also delivers stories discovered and vetted algorithmically and it pulls links shared by your friends on Facebook and Twitter into the NewsTrust ecosystem. It's one thing to get a vote of apparent approval from friends sharing links on social networks, it's another to peruse those links through a lens of community grading for journalistic quality.

The end result is a personalized news reader populated with generally high-quality topical stories that have been reviewed by other readers. It's a useful product and one that would work well as a mobile app, where browsing through lots of content of variable quality is less appealing.

NewsTrust and MyNews aren't for everyone, though. Only so many people will be interested in a news consumption interface so closely wedded to review activities. Many people will, no doubt, bristle at the prospect (or reality) of amateurs reviewing the quality of professional journalistic product. Some will find the site too left-leaning for their tastes. (Though it tries hard not to be.)

Many people will enjoy MyNews, though, and we suspect everyone who follows social software in general will find this project particularly interesting. Projects like this may or may not be able to change the way news producers operate, but the news consumers who use it will likely find MyNews a helpful way to enrich their time on an otherwise all-too often low-quality web of news content.

Discuss

SEGA a donc profité d’une conférence de presse à Tokyo pour parler d’un mystérieux “Project K”, un nouveau projet mettant en scène la licence Yakuza. La firme a donc fait défiler sur un écran géant quelques phrases (”A young guy appeared in Kamurocho”, “The young guy knew it”, “The weight of the crimes he continued to commit”, “However, the young guy didn’t know it yet” et “A cruel fate soon awaited”), laissant entendre au choix que le personnage emblématique de Kiryu Kazuma pourrait être remplacé, où que la série pourrait s’orienter vers un nouveau spin-off.

On attend d’en savoir plus…

Lire la suite..

Multiplayer puzzler Piece Walker.

Konami's putting considerable weight behind PSP Metal Gear Solid game Peace Walker. Case in point: a viral web-game based around matching squares in a grid of a greyed-out, game-related picture.

The meta-game is called Piece Walker and you can try before registering, although there don't appear to be any costs involved anywhere.

When playing, simply match your coloured piece to one on the grid to earn a point. There are keyboard shortcuts to speed-up placings and you can cycle through pieces, which is a useful tactic for collecting all the tiles in one area. Doing so bestows a bonus.

Read more...

Microsoft has taken a big step toward standards-based web video by announcing support for HTML5 and the H.264 encoding format in Internet Explorer 9, the next version of its web browser. At its MIX10 developers conference, Microsoft became the latest company to throw its weight behind H.264-based HTML video playback, following YouTube and Vimeo.

Using HTML5, publishers will be able to serve video directly into certain modern browsers without an external plugin like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. Up until recently, however, most browsers didn’t support H.264 as the default encoding format. Today, users can access HTML5 video encoded in H.264 with Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer with Google’s ChromeFrame installed. That means that only about 25 percent of users can actually watch HTML5 video encoded in H.264, according to Vimeo. But adding H.264 support to the latest version of Internet Explorer could boost the number of people that will be able to view video in browser without requiring a plugin.

Although Internet Explorer has been losing share for years, it still holds a sizable portion of the browser market — more than 60 percent in February, according to NetMarketShare. Launched about a year ago, Internet Explorer 8 has roughly 22 percent market share, while IE6 still holds a surprising 20 percent, despite being nearly 10 years old. But that could end soon, as multiple sites, including YouTube, are ending support for that version.

While H.264 is slowly becoming the default encoding format for video on the web, it isn’t yet supported by Firefox and Opera. Despite the fact that H.264 licensing body MPEG LA announced that it will extend its royalty-free license of the video codec for an additional five years, Firefox creator Mozilla continues to shy away from supporting H.264. Instead, Mozilla has decided to support video through the Ogg Vorbis encoding format, which is open source and therefore isn’t encumbered by licenses.

While Microsoft’s support of HTML5 and H.264 could potentially give in-browser video viewing a big boost, there are a number of issues that need to be resolved before the standard goes mainstream. In addition to lack of universal browser support, HTML5 also lacks support for advertising, the majority of which is built in Flash.

Related GigaOM Pro content:

What Does the Future Hold For Browsers? (subscription required)

The TimelineX 1830T is an 11.6" notebook featuring an HD 1366x768 display. Portability is one of the selling points for this laptop, as it weights about 3lbs and measures under an inch thick. It's not 100% certain if it will sport an Intel Core 2 Solo or an Intel Core i5 CPU, but either way Acer is promising excellent battery life as well. Other features include HDMI out and 802.11a/b/g/n, with options such as Bluetooth or 3G for those interested.

Pricing and exact availability are not yet known.

Shop for Acer laptops at Amazon.com

Windows: If you'd prefer the Open and Save As dialog boxes to have fewer file-type options for easier selection of the ones you actually use, Format Customizer cuts out the dead weight. More »