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Ever wanted to levitate a can or bottle inside an illuminated ring? Of course you have. Well, this device from Chinavasion uses the force to do just that. Unfortunately it uses force of the magnetic variety and not the Jedi kind, but the snappily named Magnetic Suspension Device is sure to be a conversation starter nonetheless. ..
Continue Reading The Magnetic Suspension Device – for all your home levitation needs

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Suspension

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Eco Factor: Sustainable radio powered by solar energy.

Becky Barber, a student at the University of Plymouth, has created a blueprint for a solar-powered radio constructed entirely from bamboo. The designer is hoping that the radio will help build a social enterprise opportunity in Madagascar.

The idea is that the use of sustainable and naturally occurring resources in the construction of the radios can provide jobs and opportunities for people in Madagascar. Becky has produced two models – a desktop version and a portable one constructed from hand-woven reeds.

Via: Physorg

Let’s just say that when France’s fiscal crunch time comes, as it has for Greece and Spain already, it’s going to be inordinately difficult to push through austerity measures. Probably more so than most European nations.

Strikes are already breaking out, just this Thursday, against raising the retirement age past 60 years:

France 24:

“What happens today will be fairly decisive for how things develop,” said Bernard Thibault, leader of the CGT, the largest of the broad coalition of trade unions organising the national protest.

“I’d like to see us exceed the mobilisation we achieved on March 23,” he told Europe 1 radio, referring to France’s last large-scale labour protest, when unions estimated turnout at 800,000 and the police at 350,000.

Two-thirds of voters in France said they were ready to joined the new rallies, according to polls conducted by Le Parisien and L’Humanite. Sarkozy is thus terrified to even speak of tightening the belt right now:

Many of France’s neighbours have announced harsh spending cuts but Sarkozy, who is suffering record unpopularity and faces a re-election fight in two years, has been cautious, refusing to speak of an austerity programme.

Nevertheless, this week ministers confirmed what had long been suspected: that he plans to abolish retirement at 60, a cherished symbol for the French left of its victories under late president Francois Mitterrand.

When the real austerity cuts come, average French perceptions better have changed (hopefully after seeing what’s happening in other nations right now), else the public push-back will unimaginable.

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While courts in nearby Norway rejected attempts to force ISP Telenor to block The Pirate Bay, the story appears to be quite different in Denmark. There, Telenor (which had been Tele2) was ordered to block The Pirate Bay, followed by a higher court upholding the block. Now, the Danish Supreme Court has weighed in and again insists that it’s perfectly fine for courts to demand an ISP totally block a website.

Apparently the ruling hinged on a questionable bit of Danish copyright law that makes an ISP liable for the content sent by users, because “the ISP makes temporary copies of small fragments of the copyrighted work as IP packets pass their routers.” Of course, if you read the law that way, that puts tremendous liability on any ISP. It seems wholly unreasonable to interpret the law that way — and, in fact, some point out that this appears to go against EU law. The article also notes that the questionable clause in Danish copyright law that puts this burden on ISPs was written by a guy who (you guessed it) now works for the recording industry. Funny how that works.

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Lets face it – a Zune music subscription is not going to be included in our cell phone contracts (ample proof of this exists in the KIN One and Two).  It is therefore welcome news that the Zune subscription itself may be dropping from the current $14.99 per month (which includes 10 free MP3s) to something a bit lower.

According to Zune senior product manager Terry Farrell Microsoft is facing un uphill battle with the product, and have seen many of its competitors lower their prices to around $9.99 or even free for streaming music.

“It’s definitely a challenging business,” Farrell said.

RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody service in April slashed the monthly price of a premium music service to $10 from $14.99.

His admission to BusinessWeek that prices may be dropping, at least for streaming, is therefore no real surprise. So far the Zune music service has only managed to gain 2% of the market, while Amazon has managed to claw back 12% largely related to their presence on Android handsets.

How many of our readers who get a Windows Phone 7 device will also get a Zune subscription? Let us know below.

Read more at BusinessWeek here.

Good Morning America weather anchor Sam Champion and Philippe Cousteau Jr. , renowned environmentalist and oceanographer, dove into the Gulf for the first underwater look at what the dispersant Corexit has done. BP has used this dispersant widely, despite safety concerns from the Environmental Protection Agency:

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Here’s the fourth episode of the Audi A1 Next Big Thing movie featuring Justin Timberlake and this is more of what we like to see – some serious A1 driving action. The guy in the rabbit jacket is gone, thank heavens and we can enjoy a car park drive off in our favourite A1 colour – red. Enjoy.

Eco Factor: Zero-emission electric car harnesses renewable solar energy.

The Opel Flow is a concept vehicle designed by Miika Heikkinen to represent Opel in the year 2049. The Flow is a single-seat zero-emission vehicle that allows people to navigate the city in a relaxed and clean way. When not in use the vehicle integrates to the infrastructure to provide resting places and to recharge onboard batteries.

The vehicle is intended to be made using lightweight materials and includes clear solar panels as the main power source. The Flow comes with an adjusting seat for more comfort. The weight of the battery packs keeps the vehicle stable.

The vehicle includes electric motors in the wheels. In addition to generating solar power for recharging the batteries, the vehicle’s chassis also collects energy from the body’s movement.

Via: Miika Heikkinen

When Verizon launched Skype Mobile for their Android phones earlier this year, we were under the impression they had locked up a long-term exclusive deal. Skype removed the Skype Lite client from the Android Market and only Verizon customers were allowed to download the full version of their app.

Now we learn that Skype Mobile for Android will be coming to all carriers around the globe and it will happen later this year. Skatter Tech questioned Skype when they would release Skype Mobile for the Sprint EVO and they responded with the good news. Android users can currently connect to Skype through apps like Fring and Nimbuzz, but many have longed for the official client.

Skype will also be taking on Fring and Qik with their own video calling service. Over one third of Skype’s calls happen via video so it makes sense for them to implement this feature now that we have Android phones with front-facing cameras.

“We will be bringing a direct to consumer app to the Android marketplace later this year. This application will be available for all consumers globally to download regardless of carriers. We’re betting big on video, and we intend to set the bar on mobile video calling, and it’s something we’re going to do this year.”Brianna ReynaudSkype PR

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Nuestras esperanzas de ver el nuevo deportivo japonés en las salas de exposición durante el 2011 se han esfumado completamente, pues los recientes informes de la red indican que la compañía nipona ha retrasado su lanzamiento hasta el 2013.

Se menciona que el Toyota FT-86 será rediseñado completamente, sin embargo debemos recordar que hace un par de meses las especulaciones sobre un cambio de imagen fueron señaladas.

Y según las declaraciones realizadas en Febrero por el jefe de diseño del proyecto, Jaromir Cech, los cambios que recibiría el coche se reflejarían sólo en aspectos menores que permitirían cumplir con las normas de seguridad de los peatones y otros; por lo tanto la esencia del diseño se mantendría intacto.

No existe mucha información al respecto y la mayoría de las opiniones en los foros especializados expresan que el deportivo se mantendría lejos de las calles hasta que la situación económica sea favorable en el viejo continente.

En fin, desde que se anunció el desarrollo del coche varios rumores han circulado alrededor de él y hasta ahora el fabricante japonés no brinda detalles oficiales; por lo tanto ¿deberíamos mantener nuestras ilusiones?

Vía | Motor Authority

Eco Factor: Sustainable development to achieve LEED Silver certification.

Griffin Enright Architects have designed a sustainable mixed-use project for Venice California that will feature living units, office and retail space and a new church. The development will also include a landscaped pedestrian walkway along the back of the units that connect the residential parking areas and allow the work spaces to open on to and interact with the walkway.

Designed with the intent of achieving a LEED certified silver rating the development will include solar energy generators, roof garden and the use of recycled and renewable building materials. Energy-efficient lighting and HVAC systems will also be incorporated to reduce the building’s energy demands. Moreover natural ventilation and natural day-lighting are also included into the project.

Via: Griffin Enright Architects

This chart argues that a rebound in U.S. stocks is well in order. Bearish sentiment has spiked, as measured by ta survey of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). Historically, spikes in sentiment have correlated with short-term market troughs, as shown below courtesy of Bespoke.

(Tip via Abnormal Returns)

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We knew for awhile that Android was going to receive a nice performance boost with the new JIT compiler found in Android 2.2. Google proclaimed a 2x-5x performance increase when they unveiled Android 2.2 at Google I/O and now a select few with Nexus One phones are reaping the benefits.

Google accidently sent out a pre-release version of Android 2.2 that many manually installed on their phone. I’ve been running that firmware on my Nexus One for nearly a week and I can honestly say I  have noticed a big difference in all areas of my phone. Apps launch quicker, games perform faster, and my phone never slows down.

We have been in search of a comprehensive Android benchmark for quite awhile, but none have stood out so far. I recently came across Quadrant from Aurora Softworks and I think it’s what I have been looking for. Quadrant performs a series of tests which benchmark the CPU, memory, I/O, and 2D/3D graphics.

All the scores are grouped together in the free version (available now in the Android Market), but a professional edition is coming next month that will allow the user to run individual tests and monitor the results.

I wanted to see how the current high-end Android phones stacked up, so I benchmarked the Nexus One, HTC EVO, Droid Incredible, and Droid. As expected, the Nexus One running Android 2.2 came out on top by a wide margin. The EVO and Incredible ran neck and neck, but that is no surprise since they both use the same Snapdragon platform running Android 2.1. Pulling up the rear was the Motorola Droid, which features a slower 550 MHz TI OMAP3430 processor.

Based on this single benchmark suite, it looks like the Android 2.2 firmware boosted the scores by almost 300%. Android users who owns a high-end device should be pleased by these results because most will eventually receive Android 2.2. The Droid is expected to be updated first and then be followed by the EVO and Incredible later this year.

The benchmark only takes a couple minutes to download and run through all the tests, so share your scores in the comments. I’m curious what all the overclockers out there can achieve.

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Combines a standard spinning platter drive (HDD) in 250, 350 or 500 gigabyte versions with four gigs of single-level cell (read: robust) Flash memory. Right now these are just about doubling the cost of standard drives with similar capacity.

The result is a combined drive that approaches the performance of solid state drives, but at a fraction of the price. According to Seagate’s own tests, the Momentus XT is 80% faster than a traditional notebook hard drive, and 20% faster than an ultra high-performance 10,000 RPM HDD.

The speed boost is due almost entirely to the drive’s Adaptive Memory algorithm, which learns which applications and files a user accesses most, and dumps those in the 4 GB of flash memory. Flash has 150 times the access speed of a traditional hard drive, but only 2 times the read/write bandwidth.

The technique of balancing a cache of expensive flash memory, which is great at randomly accessing many small files, with a large hard drive, which is many times cheaper per gigabyte and is good at reading and writing large files, mirrors a similar approach currently being explored in the data center.

Seagate’s hybrid drive. Credit: Seagate.

Here are Amazon links to the 250 GB version, the 320 GB version and the 500 GB version of the Seagate Momentus XT.

Eco Factor: Zero-emission vehicle powered by an electric engine.

Bugatti has built an all-electric car that gets 800bhp of power from onboard batteries. The working prototype is believed to be packed on the chassis of a Bentley Continental GT and includes an advanced battery pack and two powerful electric motors delivering 2200Nm of torque.

Sadly, the car might never be displayed to the public as insiders believe it’s been prepared to demonstrate the technology and allow engineers to explore the ultimate performance available from electric cars.

Via: AutoExpress

Japan has been rocked by accelerated deflation and a spike in unemployment.

Consumer prices fell 1.5% in April, which was faster than the 1.2% experienced in March.

Moreover, the unemployment rate hit 5.1%, the highest level since January according to the Associated Press.

Here’s the most telling fact of them all — exports surged 40% in April.

Japan’s economy is still dead, only kept on life support by surging international demand.

Its GDP is comprised of a rotting domestic core kept hidden by a shiny export shell, yet one which is rapidly being eroded thin by other Asian manufacturers moving up the value chain and towards Japan’s vaunted position for capital equipment and electronics.

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BLUR – Powered up Racing – Blur™ is the ultimate powered-up racing experience, dropping players into heart-pumping, electrified action with multiple cars trading paint as they charge towards the finish line …

Hon Hai Precision Industry has announced that it will raise the salaries of employees at its Foxconn factory by about 20 percent. The company claims that the raises were planned for a while and aren’t in response to recent suicides. More »










Foxconn – Apple – Suicide – China – Business