This Opel Corsa OPC in a tuned version was spotted in tests at the Nurburgring where the prototype was being driven by Volker Strycek. It has some changes compared to the OPC currently available, with larger Brembo brakes, new front spoiler, dual exhaust and new extractor. The yellow colour with black roof is a new look too, all of which could indicate a performance version of the Corsa OPC, with a 1.6-litre turbo engine and 192 hp.
Source | Autoweek.nl
If you train around other people, you know how annoying it can be to have you heart-rate monitor pick up other watches transmissions: Oh crap! 180bpm? The Polar F6 Heart Rate Monitor watch uses coded transmissions so you’ll get accurate information from your own body instead of the person running next to you. The OwnZone training program lets you find your optimal exercise zone by running you through a warm-up routine and monitoring your heart rate. From your watch you can select an exercise program based on your goal (aerobic fitness, weight loss, etc) and your F6 will let you know how you’re performing compared to your optimal workout while you train. It’s pretty simple really. Just do whatever your watch tells you to and you’ll be in great shape.
View Polar F6 Women’s Heart Rate Monitor Watch (Green Tea) details
Filed under: Advice, Happiness, Health, Fit Yoga
As both a yoga practitioner and a yoga teacher, I have learned a few essential things along the way about how one can prepare to ensure their yoga class, and that of their fellow yogis, is enjoyable.
Yoga Class Dos and Don’ts
1. Don’t Eat Before It’s recommended that you don’t eat at least two hours before a yoga class. The main reason for this is that full stomach interferes with the postures and your breathing by restricting the space in the abdomen. Also, you want to avoid embarrassment by passing gas in a class so keep in mind, some high-fibre foods such as beans, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage may cause more gas than other types of food.
2. Do Wear Appropriate Clothing You need clothes that give you room to move and provide space for your body to breathe. And ladies, beware of low-cut tops, particularly when practicing in a quick, moving class. I can tell you from personal experience that breasts will threaten to pop out in certain poses when not properly clothed (that exact situation ruined a class for me as my thoughts were on my breasts instead of my breath.) And gentlemen, if you’re going to wear small, loose shorts, please wear fitted underwear, it can be very distracting for teacher and students alike when your stuff is hanging out. There are shorts available with built-in underwear that will remedy this situation.
Continue reading 10 Yoga Class Dos and Don’ts
Filed under: Happiness, Fitness, How I Stay Fit
Laughing until it hurts can certainly feel like a workout — especially in your abs — but does it actually do anything for your love handles? That’s what researchers from Loma Linda University in California set out to find when they began studying the effect a good session of the giggles has on the body.
Chief researcher Lee Berk and colleagues studied 14 individuals, testing their blood and blood pressure before and after movie clips. One clip showed a violent excerpt from Saving Private Ryan, while the other showed comedy stand-up routines.
They discovered that while the violent clip had no apparent influence on appetite, watching the funny one did — it helped decrease appetite-suppressing hormone leptin while increasing appetite-boosting hormone ghrelin. This doesn’t mean participants were hungrier — rather, the clip helped strike a more harmonious balance between the two hormones.
Continue reading Is Laughing a Workout?
Filed under: Health, Healthy Eating, Don’t Eat This
After my KFC Double Down post earlier this week, one commenter on That’s Fit.ca’s Facebook page said she would love to try the “sandwich” and that it was “nothing 35 hours of cardio won’t fix.” This gave me a great idea for a post – let’s call it The Exercise Myth.
One of the main points of the Double Down post was that the widely disseminated means of evaluating our foods is a broken system. Measurements of calories, fat and sodium don’t actually mean anything in terms of whether or not a food is good for you, nutritious or health promoting. One of the consequences of this view point is the exercise myth.
When we deal in calories, we reduce our foods to the idea of nothing more than a number, which makes us think we’re free to manipulate these numbers within an equation. For example, a Double Down is X number of calories, therefore if I eat it, I can burn it off by burning X number of calories working out. Calories in equals calories out and the fast food indulgence is forgotten.
Continue reading OK to Eat KFC Double Down if You Exercise After?
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
The motto of Bonanzle is “everything but the ordinary.” That about sums up the latest news from this Seattle-area startup, which has built a fast-growing online marketplace for niche items and collectibles. I learned through the grapevine that Bonanzle founder Bill Harding has closed a $1 million funding round led by angel investor and venture capitalist Geoff Entress, with participation from a long list of well-known angels around town—plus three prominent venture firms.
It’s a small deal, a classic angel investment, but it’s particularly interesting for this reason: Seattle-area venture firms Voyager Capital (led by Entress) and Ignition Partners (Michelle Goldberg), plus Bay Area firm Matrix Partners (Josh Hannah), have all invested in the deal. All together, the venture firms put in less than half of the total funding amount—but presumably they will be watching to see if this is something they want to put more money behind.
“I have not seen it before. It’s something unusual,” says Entress, who has joined Bonanzle’s board. “Probably an example of the experimentation” that VCs are doing around “how do you play at this earliest stage, especially when a lot of these companies don’t take much money.” (Venture firms usually need to put in a few million dollars to make it worth their time.)
And here’s a partial who’s-who list of angels participating in the deal: Dan Shapiro, formerly of Ontela and Photobucket, Andy Liu from BuddyTV, Kelly Smith from Inkd and Curious Office, Kevin Saliba from Imagekind and CafePress, Ben Elowitz from Blue Nile and Wetpaint, and Chris DeVore of Founder’s Co-op. Let’s just say that’s a lot of investor firepower for a $1 million deal; the closest thing we’ve seen might be when all the tech investors in town agreed to back TechStars, which opens in Seattle this fall.
I first wrote about Bonanzle on April Fools’ Day, 2009. But this company is no joke. Founded in 2007, it started out as a Craigslist-like service for local sellers, but shifted to become a national, social online marketplace. Bonanzle rolled out its public site in September 2008 to connect buyers and sellers of collectible items like comic books, posters, and jewelry. Its key advantages over others in the sector are its social features—buyers and sellers can send messages to each other in real-time—and the fact that it focuses on rare, used, and hard-to-find items. The company has been profitable since February 2009, and its sales have quadrupled in the past year. Its site now has more than 3 million items for sale, a quarter-million registered users, and almost 2 million unique monthly visitors. All without taking any outside investment.
So why take the money now? A year ago, Harding told me the company was “waiting for [an investor] to make an offer that shows us they understand the vision of Bonanzle and will work with us to make a plan.” Well, it sounds like he has found the right group of investors and expertise. For example, Matrix Partners has deep experience with companies like eBay and PayPal. And the track record of the Seattle-area investors speaks for itself.
Harding says the new money will allow him to hire two more developers, a designer, and a product manager, to add to the current team of three full-timers and a handful of contractors. “It’ll still be a small company,” he says. The key is to “provide users with a really strong …Next Page »
UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS
As a response to the high dealer demand in the U.S., MINI had confirmed that the John Cooper Works World Championship 50 Edition will immediately be available throughout the country. 50 of the hand-built vehicles will be delivered to U.S. dealers, scheduled to begin in late spring or in early summer.
Based on a MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop, the World Championship 50 Edition is painted a special color called Connaught Green, classically combined with the roof and bonnet stripes in Pepper White. For that reason, the color scheme is said to hark back to the famous color of British race cars of the 1950s and 60s era.
The 50 Edition is then equipped with the John Cooper Works Aero Kit, gloss black versions of the 17″ Challenge spoke wheels, custom numbered side scuttles, a unique Championship Red Lounge Leather interior and carbon fiber accents throughout.
In the interior, the 50 Edition also features special floormats with red stitching that matches the red stitching found on the shifter and parking brake boots. John Cooper Works’ signature adorns a special plaque that is affixed to the instrument panel trim.
MSRP for the MINI John Cooper Works World Champion 50 Edition will be $39,600; Destination and Handling costs are $700, for a total cost of $40,300.
There will be Android related announcements coming in a couple weeks at Google I/O and all signs point to the public unveiling of Android 2.2 (Froyo). We already speculated that Android 2.2 was coming and predicted Flash 10.1 would drop at I/O and now it looks like May 20th is the date. Given that Flash 10.1 is tied to Froyo, this bodes well for a joint announcement.
On the second day of Google I/O, May 20th, there are several Android sessions scheduled for the afternoon that are listed as TBA. They likely have no topic because they are related to Android features that have not been publicly announced. Google did this at last year’s I/O when they revealed Google Wave on the second day and directly followed it up with a series of sessions.
If you follow our Googlers Twitter list you might have noticed several employees tweeting the sessions link and pointing out the TBAs. Recent Google addition Tim Bray (who now runs the Android Developrs Blog) even said, “I don’t think that I’m telling any secrets when I say that there will be Android-related announcements at that event.”
Many insiders believe the Nexus One will be the first to receive Android 2.2, but we could see a simultaneous release on the Motorola Droid. Google already shipped every paid attendee a free Android phone and they were giving out the Droid and N1. Adobe has also regularly used the Droid when taunting us with all those Flash demos.
I’ll even go out on a limb and predict some first gen devices might see an upgrade as well. A new version of the Market was pictured on a myTouch 3G with Android 2.2 and we have been told all first gen U.S. phones will eventually be upgraded. Actually, Google has stopped selling their ADP1 (HTC Dream) so maybe that device is on the way out.
En el más que interesante Salón del Automóvil de Pekín Chevrolet aprovechó para enseñarle al mundo la versión hatchback de su modelo Sail. También ha sido diseñada por Shanghai Chevrolet y presenta ineludibles referencias a Chevrolets muy europeos como el Aveo.
Este interesante vehículo solo presentará una motorización: el 4 cilindros 1.2i 16v S-Tec de 87 CV y 115Nm. Esta propulsión irá asociada a un cambio de 5 velocidades manual o manual con embrague pilotado. También se sabe que en un futuro se añadirá el 1,4 litros S-TEC III de 103 CV. Por supuesto, ambos cumplen la normativa Euro 4.
La idea de Chevrolet es sin duda llegar a la mayor cantidad de clientes posible. También en Pekín presentaron el mismo modelo en versión sedán, por lo que dejan clara su intención de copar todos los nichos posibles. No sabemos como les saldrá la jugada finalmente.
El precio del vehículo rondará los 6.000€, por lo que tenemos bastante claro que Chevrolet pretende jugar la baza de la calidad/precio. Este precio se mantiene incluso si equipamos extras de seguridad, por lo que admiten que su idea es competir con vehículos algo desfasados en esta materia.
Vía | ActualidadMotor
CNet has published a short editorial on why millions still buy Windows Mobile phones, despite the upcoming Windows Phone 7 and the presence of alternate mobile OSs.
They note that it is still the best device for native Outlook and Exchange integration, the phones come in numerous form factors, there are a huge legacy of useful 3rd party applications, the devices are cheaper due to the impending obsolescence and that for basic features the bugs have pretty much been worked out, unlike less mature platforms.
Have CNet missed any? Let us know below.
I mentioned a few days ago using osTicket, we have been using it for a while. We also have to make it public facing so our customers can use it, and so we can use it from outside of the office. The problem is that since we are using our AD credentials to login there is a major security concern since by default, osTicket is not encrypted. We opted to use SSL encryption on our ticket system.
No big deal right? Well, we also want to make it so users don’t have to remember to type in the httpS part in the address. We want them to be able to type support.companydomain.com and have it automagically go to our ticket system. Likewise, on the admin page we want to make it so that when you go to support.companydomain.com/admin it automagically gets SSL encryption too. One way to do it is to drop an index.html file in with a redirect, that works ok too, but what if you want to ensure that if the S in httpS is removed, users still get forced to use SSL without any errors? Well in this case I used a little PHP magic.
I created a file called encrypt.php with the following code:
<?
function secure_page()
{
if ( !isset($_SERVER[‘HTTPS’]) || strtolower($_SERVER[‘HTTPS’]) !== ‘on’ )
{
header (‘Location: https://’.$_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’].$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]);
exit();
}
}
secure_page();
?>
On any pages where I wanted to ensure SSL, I added the following line:
require(‘encrypt.php’);
Similarly, in our old ticket system (Which we are upgrading today now that Ubuntu 10.04 is out!) we added a custom reCaptcha on the ticket request page. Since we weren’t hosting the reCaptcha ourselves we couldn’t encrypt it with our SSL cert, and users would get prompted if they wanted to display the unsecure items. That confused people, so we wanted to make sure that page was not encrypted with SSL.
To do that, we did the same as above except this time we created a file called decrypt.php with the following code:
<?
function unsecure_page()
{
if ( isset($_SERVER[‘HTTPS’]) || strtolower($_SERVER[‘HTTPS’]) == ‘on’ )
{
header (‘Location: http://’.$_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’].$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]);
exit();
}
}
unsecure_page();
?>
And once again on that page we added the following line:
require(‘decrypt.php’);
Done, now on all the pages we want to be encrypted, it is encrypted, and on the pages we don’t want to encrypt it isn’t. Luckily in the new version of osTicket captcha is built in, so I can encrypt all pages without issue.
In both cases, since we wrote those files we can include them on any page we want, including on our phpMyAdmin page! Boom!
Do you use this method to force SSL on your LAMP servers? If not, what do you do? Let us know in the comments.
It’s beeen a while since we last heard from from homebrew coder Alekmaul, but now he’s back to release a new version of AmeDS, a Amstrad CPC 6128 emulator for the Nintendo DS.
Download:
Eco Factor: Solar-powered plug-in electric vehicle charging station.
Electric cars might only be good for reducing pollution if the electricity grid is getting powered up with renewable sources. Industrial designers have thought over the “green” credentials of electric cars and have often raised questions on their eco-friendliness. Designer Tom Miller is seeking solutions using solar energy.
Howard Lovy wrote:
Bruce Legge is on a mission to infiltrate the Detroit area’s defense industry and report back to his iRobot overlords in Bedford, MA. For a lone flesh-and-blood vanguard of a future invasion of metallic warriors, he’s not doing too badly.
Legge is a card-carrying member of the Michigan Homeland Security Consortium and is planning events for the Great Lakes chapter of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). It’s all part of a “hearts-and-minds” strategy for iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT), which wants to become an integral part of the already established robotics landscape in Southeast Michigan.
But right now, Legge is still an army of one.
When I first spoke with Legge in July 2009, he had just established the Troy, MI, office of iRobot and was getting ready to ink some military contracts and start hiring employees. As of today, none of that has happened. Why? Well, when we talked again in late February, he started to tell me why, and then stopped himself.
I asked whether it was one of those situations where he’d have to shoot me if he told me.
No, nothing that “top secret,” the retired U.S. Navy submarine officer says. The company is simply waiting for some government funding to come through. Later, Legge indicated that the funding might come from the Recovery Act.
Meanwhile, there is still a great deal of ground-preparing for iRobot to do in the Detroit area. In a region where once-thriving industrial robotics companies are either changing or dying, iRobot practically stands alone as one that has experience in both the mass consumer and defense markets. That makes it one to watch, and perhaps emulate.
Robotics companies that once counted solely on the auto industry are learning, like many other auto suppliers, to diversify or die. iRobot comes to Detroit already diversified. We’ve all heard of the Roomba, the company’s robotic vacuum cleaner, which recently topped 5 million units sold. For the consumer product, Massachusetts is as fine a home as any. But for its “government robot,” Legge says, the Detroit area “is where the customer is.”
In 2007, when the University of Michigan launched its Ground Robotics Reliability Center, Legge “could really sense that the center of gravity was coming to this area for unmanned vehicles.” More recently the Robotic Systems Joint Progress Office (RSJPO) moved from Huntsville, AL, to the U.S. Army Tank-automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM) in Warren, MI, leaving little doubt that …Next Page »
Found under: Android, Freeware, 3D, Augmented, Panoramas,
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Eco Factor: Shoes generate renewable energy using piezoelectric materials.
Dr. Ville Kaajakari, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Louisiana Tech University, is developing a technology that will allow users to generate energy with a generator embedded in the sole of a shoe. The technology is based on the use of circuits that convert piezoelectric charge into usable electricity.
We just got done exploring how German privacy regulators are "horrified" about how Google is (just as many other companies have been doing for years) gathering publicly-available Wi-Fi hotspot data for GPS triangulation and localized search. Of course the data being collected can’t really identify users outside of their router brand preference and use of nerd SSID humor — but that didn’t stop a flood of hysterical articles that assumed Google was using this data for some nefarious purpose. As if on cue, Germany’s complaints have now drawn the attention of UK regulators — who say they’re now going to quiz Google about the practice. While Wi-Fi clearly confuses many regulators and the press (look at the usual reaction to war driving), it is important that Google is transparent about this process, but so far there’s every indication they’re doing a good job on that front. The company posted another blog post this week and sent this filing (pdf) to privacy regulators in multiple countries highlighting exactly what’s being collected, what it’s being used for, while reiterating that the data can’t identify specific users and isn’t being published. So the question then is: how long before U.S. and other European regulators start to freak out?
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Eco Factor: Eco-friendly concept truck powered by solar energy.
The Urban Mini Truck by industrial designer Buldur Liviu is designed to make commuting more efficient on the streets which are bound to be stuffed with vehicles. This compact four-wheel steering truck features 4 electric engines mounted on its rimless wheels and incorporates solar panels on the top arc.
If you have a hacked G1 or myTouch 3G, take note. Many developers have released custom ROMs based off Android 2.1 for the HTC Dream and Magic for awhile now, but most were not fully working. Devs had been waiting on updated hardware drivers which supported the Android 2.1 kernel and those were finally released earlier this month.
After several weeks of a lot of hard work, the team behind CyanogenMod is close to releasing a public beta of their latest ROM – version CM 5.0.7 Ds. The new ROM is finally using Android 2.1 and includes many of the enhancements found in the CyanogenMod for Nexus One.
As of this writing there are still a few bugs to work out, but look for a beta release tomorrow night.
Android 2.1 will fit onto the myTouch 3G (HTC Magic) with no problems, but it will not fit on the G1 (HTC Dream) without some modifications (damn those pesky storage limitations). G1 users must install the infamous DangerSPL which re-partitions the NAND flash inside the device. If you have never flashed the DangerSPL, the guys on the CyanogenMod forum are putting up a how-to guide.
First time hackers might just want to wait a few weeks and see what Google reveals at I/O on May 19-20. For all we know, Android 2.2 could magically appear for some first gen phones.
Our friend @kmobs is back with another video giving a quick walk through of the new test ROM on a G1. It looks like one of our shirts found its way to his desk.
For the latest on this CyanogenMod, visit the official site for follow @cyanogen on Twitter.
For those who are not able to participate in person, the TEDx Calgary event is being webcast in full on April 29th, running from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (MST).
I want to thank the TEDx Calgary team and volunteers for organizing this event in Calgary. Looking forward to meeting them and other TEDx Calgary participants tomorrow.
