Author: Serkadis

The 2013 Tesla Model S has received a rave review from Consumer Reports. This was just published (though a subscriptions is required), and is bound to be huge for the car maker.

The car got a 99 out of 100, which is reportedly the highest it has ever rated a car. Here’s Consumer Reports’ overview:

The Tesla Model S takes everything you know about cars and stands it on its head. It’s a very agile, super-quick electric luxury sedan (with a hatchback!) that seats seven and gets the equivalent of 84 mpg. Got your attention yet? With the 85 kWh battery, the largest available, it can go between 180 and 225 miles on a charge, depending on the weather. That’s about twice as far as any other electric car. With optional equipment, it can be charged from empty in as little as five hours. Performance all-around is exceptional, with short stops, a superb ride, and an eerily hushed cabin. Almost all controls are done through a quick and capable iPad-like center screen. Tight access and visibility and initial teething pains are demerits, as is the luxury-car price.

Here’s their quick take:

“We’ve been testing cars at Consumer Reports for a very long time, but we’ve never seen anything quite like the Tesla Model S,” says Jake Fisher, Director, Auto Testing at Consumer Reports. “This car performs better than anything we’ver ever tested before. Let me repeat that – not just the best electric car, but the best car. It does just about everything really, really well.”

The car, he says, ties as the quietest car they’ve ever tested, in addition to be extremely energy efficient.

It turns out that 99 out of 100 was originally 110 out of 100. Matt Hardigree at Gawker’s Jalopnik says:

I spoke with CR’s Jake Fisher who explained to me that the car actually scored 110 out of a 100-point scale, but that because of the limitations still inherent in owning an electric car (range, access to charging) they regularly subtract about 10% from a car’s score. It’s still the best score they’ve ever given, tied only with the 2007 Lexus LS but that car, according to Fisher, isn’t even in the same league as the Model S.

The car is designed and built in California. The rear wheel drive vehicle does not use gasoline, and is engineered to perform in both hot and cold climates. It accelerates to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds, according to Tesla (though Consumer Reports said a “lightning quick 5.6 seconds”). More specs here.

Ouya, the company behind a small $99 Android gaming console, has picked up $15 million in funding. The investment, announced on Thursday, follows the $8.6 million raised by Ouya on the crowd-sourced Kickstarter platform in August of 2012. Long-time executive at EA, Bing Gordon, will be joining the Ouya board as part of the deal, which was funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), along with participation from the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures, and Occam Partners.

The Ouya console is a small box, designed by Yves Behar, that runs Google’s Android software on an Nvidia Tegra 3 chip. The console costs $99 with additional controllers priced at $49 each. Unlike other gaming devices, Ouya focuses on a free-to-play model:

“For gamers, every game will be free to play: what this means is that there will at least be a free demo, or you’ll be able to play the entirety of the game for free but may have access to additional items, upgrades, or other features that come at a cost.

For developers, free to play means that they can set their own prices. Developers know best: There is no better way to sell a game than to have folks that have actually touched the game share glowing reviews with their friends. By allowing some form of free play, we’ll help them do just that.”

Some early Kickstarter backers of the Ouya project have received their devices but the general public won’t be able to purchase one until June 25 in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. through retailers Amazon, Best Buy, GAME, GameStop, and Target. The company is taking pre-orders now, however.

While the funding is important to help the Ouya founders complete their vision, the bigger help may be having Gordon join the board. Early reviews show the Ouya to still be a work in progress in areas, while some have even called the device a “beta”. With guidance from Gordon — and the additional $15 million in funding — Ouya could prove to be a better gaming console than originally expected.

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While we’ve seen nothing official, and Facebook has specifically said that it will not comment on speculation, reports have come out that the company is buying mapping/traffic app Waze for up to $1 billion.

TechCrunch points to reports in the Israeli press from Calcalist, Ynet and The Marker (all in Hebrew) indicating that Facebook is in “advanced due dilligence on a deal,” and that negotiations have been going on for six months.

TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden reports: “We have been digging too and have picked up confirmation from a source that both sides have privately confirmed that the deal is happening, and that the pricing reported first by the Calcalist [between $800 million and $1 billion] is accurate.”

The deal would apparently be a move for Facebook to capture more mobile users, not unlike its famous Instagram deal.

Reports of Facebook’s interest in Waze are nothing new. There was talk that the two companies were in discussions at least as far back as August, when Globes reported, “The purpose of the talks is not known, but the two companies are reportedly headed for collaboration, possibly involving the use of Waze’s application via Facebook. Alternatively, Facebook may acquire Waze.”

Waze is an Israeli startup, but its main office is in Palo Alto.

Might & Magic: Heroes VI – Shades of Darkness is a long name for a video game, and a bad sign when it comes to the quality of the experience offered by the expansion created by Ubisoft.

There are two new campaigns to enjoy, one focused on the new Dark Elves and their Dungeon city, and another linked to the Necropolis.

The game also introduces new heroes, new units, an Artificial Intelligence that’s supposed to be smarter, and a host of other improvements.<... (read more)

You likely haven’t heard of AIO Wireless yet, but AT&T hopes you will soon. Launching Thursday in three cities, AIO Wireless is a pre-paid and BYOD, or bring your own device, service provider and is a subsidiary of AT&T. The pre-paid nationwide service is now available in Houston, Tampa and Orlando with expectations of opening stores in various U.S. markets over the next year. AT&T still has it’s own branded GoPhone pre-paid service.

I took a quick look at the new AIO Wireless (pronounced “A-O”) website and the plans remind me a bit of T-Mobile’s new Simple Choice offerings. There are just a few choices, and each advertises unlimited talk, text and data, although some of that data is at “high speed” while some is not. AIO will reduce or throttle speeds once you reach the limit for your specific plan.

For $40 a month, 250 MB of data is served at high speed while $55 each month bumps the fast data capacity to 2 GB. A $70 plan boost the fast data cap to 7 GB. You can pay $15 for a tablet to get on the data network but only get 250 MB of high speed service. The press release mentions “4G download speeds of up to 4Mbs”, so the company isn’t offering LTE. Adding an additional gigabyte of fast data service or international calling is available for $10 a month.

Handset choices are as expected for a pre-paid provider, ranging from $30 feature phones to $50 low-end smartphones all the way up to various iPhone models, both at reduced (refurbished) prices to $649.99 for a new iPhone 5. You can also check to see if your own device is supported — I’d be surprised if an AT&T-compatible phone weren’t — but if you have an LTE radio in it, it won’t be used.

It seems that the two largest U.S. carriers, AT&T and Verizon, are following suit when it comes to their expensive investments in LTE network upgrades: Keep the fastest services for those on contract. This helps recoup the investment faster by nudging high speed data users to generally more expensive monthly plans that practically guarantee an income stream for two years.

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There is currently a lot of web interest in river otters as more places are opening up North American river otter exhibits. Wildlife DNA lab recently received an $18,000 grant to research them.

Residents of San Francisco with an interest in river otters, or just cute animals, will be happy to know that an exhibit is coming to the Aquarium of the Bay.

The exhibit will open this summer. The aquarium says it will serve as an education and conservation resource and will provide an opportunity for guests to understand environmental changes. Here’s a brief description:

With design efforts led by EHDD, the approximately 1,000-square-foot exhibit will extend from the Aquarium’s Touch the Bay exhibit, taking over the Farallon Room which was previously used for events and classroom programs, and provide sweeping views of San Francisco Bay. A six-foot tall living wall adorned with live plants will act as a unique backdrop to this $1.3 million expansion. The modern, gallery-like exhibit will feature deep and shallow pools for the otters to cavort in, plus plenty of dry land and living foliage to explore and a small waterfall to play on. They will share the exhibit with live fishes and crawfish. Enclosed in nine-foot tall glass walls, visitors will experience an almost 360-degree view of the exhibit.

“This whole exhibit is about connecting people to the upper watershed,” says John Frawley, President and CEO of Aquarium of the Bay and The Bay Institute. “River otters are the perfect animal to demonstrate the importance of the watershed. They’re charismatic and fun to watch, and they simultaneously create an opportunity for us to speak to our lifelong learners about the critical needs of our ecosystem.”

The exhibit will be the first of a two-part expansion plan for the Aquarium. The second phase involves including new classrooms, which will be called “Watershed Discovery Labs.”

Continue reading…

Always pleased to see Minnesota companies using social media creatively – even when it’s a really big Minnesota company. The Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal reports on Target partnering with Facebook on a new social media app…

Target Corp. is teaming with Facebook for a new digital-sales program, called Cartwheel, that’s one of the biggest-ever efforts by both companies to bridge the worlds of social media and real-world commerce.

Ad Age reports on the program, launched by Minneapolis-based Target, which will let customers select promotional deals at Target through their Facebook accounts. If they make the buy, their activity is shared with friends through their Facebook news feed.

On the one hand it’s cool and I always like a bargain, on the other hand I wonder how much I want my friends to see what I’m buying or frankly to know what they’re buying. Apparently they are thinking about that aspect of the project – but I have to wonder what constitutes a personal purchase. Using their example below, I don’t care if people know I buy underwear – but no one needs to know about daily purchases of gummi bears. Personal is in the eye of the beholder!

Ad Age notes that Cartwheel is similar to a Facebook offering called Beacon, which was shelved after a backlash over privacy. Target seems to have that in mind. Sales of some personal items, such as underwear, won’t be pushed onto a user’s news feed, and you can shut the sharing aspect off altogether if you want.

Google along with the US Geological Survey, NASA and TIME has shared a quarter-century of photos taken from space that show the surface of the earth and the changes that have happened over that period. From Google’s blogpost:

We started working with the USGS in 2009 to make this historic archive of earth imagery available online. Using Google Earth Engine technology, we sifted through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 terabytes of data—to find the highest-quality pixels (e.g., those without clouds), for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth. We then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year.

The changes on our planet are stunning. A glacier has almost vanished, a new city has been created and Amazon rainforest has been decimated. Our capability as humans to destroy our planet and re-create it is astonishing. The whole project makes you realize that in order to understand something important and profound, you have to look at it over a period of time.

Check it out on Google’s Timelapse website.

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Ariel Castro was arraigned on Thursday, appearing in court for the first time since he and his two brothers were arrested in the case of the three kidnapped women in Cleveland. The brothers were not charged, but Ariel was arraigned on four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

Castro reportedly spent the majority of the hearing looking down at his feet. USA Today reports:

In a brief explanation of the charges, prosecutor Brian Murphy alleged that Castro had “snatched three young ladies from the streets” and forced them to endure a “horrifying ordeal for more than a decade.”

“They were never free to leave this residence,” he said, referring to Castro’s home on Seymour Avenue.

Bail was set at $8 million. Judge Lauren Moore ordered that he have no contact with the victims or their families, should he post bond.

Two of the three women – Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus – returned home on Wednesday. The third, Michelle Knight, remains in a hospital in Cleveland.

Jenn Allen, an ex-girlfriend of Techcrunch/Crunchfund Founder Michael Arrington, recently took to Facebook to make abuse allegations against him. While rape was not mentioned in the initial post, she later brought that up in comments on a Gawker article about her first post. Arrington, who has strongly denied any abuse or rape, has now filed a suit against Allen.

Here’s what Allen said in her initial post:

Last post on someone i’m completely over. I’ve never been lonelier in my entire life. To all my friends who loved me for who I am – thank you. Power hungry people, I loved Michael Arrington for 8+ years starting when i implemented Eurekster search at the time on Techcrunch in 2006 and throughout the years i didn’t know he cheated on me multiple times, then tells people it was me immediately after he did it. It hurts when you love someone borderline and they can’t feel anything at all for you, and threaten to murder you if you told anyone about the physical abuse – all for keeping his reputation. The emotional abuse was equally bad. On a positive note, it can’t get any worse than this and I can’t get myself of this bed.

And here’s what she said in the comments on the Gawker article:

I’ve looked inward and outward long enough to finally say something and know exactly why I had to say it. His lies, abuse, threats and what he did to a friend of mine 5 months ago was unforgivable as well. He raped her, and she told me in person he called her to confirm he did it after the fact. I’ll leave it up to her if she ever wants to report it or say anything. This madness needs to stop, or he needs to start controlling his rage and rape ‘disorder.’

Arrington remained quiet for a period, while others rushed to throw in their judgments of his character, until finally, he put out a statement saying:

There have been some extremely serious and criminal allegations against me over the last week. All of the allegations are completely untrue, and I’ve hired a law firm to represent me in the legal actions against the offending parties.

I’ve also asked my attorneys to contact appropriate law enforcement agencies about these false allegations. Given the gravity of the claims, I think it’s important that the police be involved in this now.

The whole thing had largely been ignored by the media and blogs other than a select few, until Arrington’s statement, then everyone started covering it. Likewise when former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde jumped to Arrington’s defense. She wrote:

During my five years at TechCrunch, there were no complaints or cases of sexual harassment or misconduct against Michael Arrington. If there had been any rumors of misconduct from staff or other third parties, I would have taken the matters seriously and investigated them. Many people, including Michael’s friends and girlfriends, sought me out as a confidante for disagreements or challenges they faced with Michael, so I would have been aware of rumored bad behavior.

You can read her full post here.

About a month ago, Arrington posted a detailed letter refuting the allegations. Here’s that letter:

And now this week, the lawsuit has been filed. In it, Arrington alleges that Allen felt “betrayed and slighted,” and aimed to “destroy his reputation and to deter third persons from associating with him.” The suit includes a demand for jury trial, and seeks $75,000 in damages.

Here’s the court document:

Connecting devices to the internet helps solve the problem of turning on your lights without ever leaving your chair, but a 1980s device called The Clapper did the same thing. To really bring connected devices into the future people are using them to build services. That’s fun, but it gets even better when you add machine learning to the data those devices collect.

That’s what ThingWorx did when it signed a partnership with Jeff Hawkin’s hot data startup Numenta. Hawkins who was the creator of the Palm Pilot, has tried to build out a series of algorithms that look at data in the manner a human mind does to make predictions. But it can process a lot more data than a human.

In this week’s podcast Russ Fadel, CEO of ThingWorx, talks about the partnership and how predictive intelligence plus connected sensors are changing farming and improving medical care.

(Download the Internet of Things Show)

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Show notes:
Host: Stacey Higginbotham
Guest: Russ Fadel, CEO of ThingWorx

• How farmers are using the internet of things to improve their crops.
• Adding more intelligence to connected devices means they can tell you what to do (and eventually those sensors may tell a robot what to do).
• Does a secure internet of things mean a closed system?

PREVIOUS IoT PODCASTS:

Podcast: Power to the people — and all their connected devices

What you really need to know before buying connected devices

How the internet of things may make parents less worried but more neurotic

Shark Week for the internet of things

What the Internet of Things can learn from Minecraft and Lemmings

Podcast: How IBM uses chaos theory, data and the internet of things to fix traffic

Electric Imp aims to make the Internet of Things devilishly simple

When devices can talk, will they conspire against you?

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