IRL: iRobot Roomba 700

We’re not sure how long it takes for someone to become an honorary Tokyoite, but whatever the answer, it’s clear Mat Smith is still fairly green. After two years as an Engadget editor based in London, Mat moved to Japan last summer to run our coverage there. And run it he does. But can he call himself a transplant? Probably not yet. But adopting a robot was a good first step.

When in Japan, you buy a robot vacuum. That’s the rule, right? I needed no persuasion, although I’m already imprinting pet-owning behavior on the not-sentient Roomba 770, which I’ve now named TBD-3000. I managed to game the multiple chains of electronics retailers here in Tokyo, cutting around $150 off its MSRP, but even then, robot vacuums (the decent, sensor-loaded types) aren’t cheap. The argument goes they’re more of a supplementary dust and hair remover you can add to your existing OCD cleaning arsenal. I don’t believe that: I don’t own a normal vacuum cleaner. Instead, I go for the old-school dustpan and brush when the TBD can’t clean where I want it to.

One month in, I’m still very much in the honeymoon period of robot vacuum ownership. When it bumps into the same table leg umpteen times in a 30-minute period, it’s still adorable. The iRobot models are far quieter than regular upright vacuums, but by no stretch are they silent. I’ve scheduled mine to clean mid-morning as a sort of brutal alarm clock to ensure I make the most of my weekends. My apartment is practically built for a robot cleaner too: it’s a one-floor affair, with hard flooring and a few rugs, none of which the bot had trouble getting onto. Disposing of what the robot finds is easy and pretty much mess-free, and I’ve been pleased with how much cleaner the floor remains. As long as the Roomba manages a few circuits every two weeks (you can schedule specific days too), I don’t need to concern myself with floor cleaning at all.

It’s not perfect, however. Sometimes it simply peters out of power, and I’ll later stub my toe on it under the dining table, or beneath the corner of my bed. It also likes to chew up the mat next to my kitchen sink — this is where I find it most days, stuck. It’s also gone through one pair of iPhone headphones and two USB cables, coercing me into being tidier. A little more disturbingly, I often catch TBD-3000 chewing its own AC charger, which hooks into its charging dock. That’s not going to end well.

– Mat Smith

Filed under: Household

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Inhabitat’s Week in Green: smog safety bubbles, the Tesla Gigafactory and transforming furniture

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

Extreme weather is dominating the headlines yet again this winter. California is in the midst of a historic drought, which has many observers wondering if desalination is the answer to the state’s water problems. This week, workers broke ground on what will soon be the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere near San Diego. Man-made fixes like desalination plants aren’t likely to solve the problems brought on by climate change, but they could help mitigate the effects. For example, a team of researchers found that offshore wind farms could reduce wind speeds, wave heights and storm surges resulting from hurricanes. A string of harsh winter storms has battered most of North America all winter, but here’s one vehicle that can cut right through the snow: A Quebec man created a crazy battery-powered sled that can navigate the most treacherous terrain. And architects from the London-based firm Orproject have drafted plans for large inflatable bubbles that would give residents of Beijing a place to escape from the city’s suffocating smog.

Tesla has been ruling the electric car world recently, and now the company has another feather to put in its cap: Consumer Reports just named the Tesla Model S the Best Overall Car. Tesla also announced plans to build a new large-scale “gigafactory” that could reduce the cost of lithium-ion batteries by more than 30 percent. In other automotive news, Hyundai announced that it will begin leasing a fuel cell version of its Tucson crossover in the US next year. When the car becomes available, drivers in Southern California will be able to power it using processed sewage. In Spain, the Electric Mobility Company developed a solar-powered recharging station for its Xkuty One electric bike. And one of Inhabitat’s editors tested out the ShareRoller, a new compact device that can transform any Citi Bike into an easy-to-ride electric bike. In Italy, a retired schoolteacher bought a used Ape motorbike and modified it to create a portable library that houses 700 books.

The tiny house trend has taken off in recent years, and now tiny homes are being used to help solve America’s homeless problem. From Portland to Provo, people are building micro dwellings to give homeless people a place to sleep. Small-space living isn’t just popular in the US — in Tel Aviv, architects from Raanan Stern’s studio designed a highly efficient 15-square-meter apartment that’s filled with transforming furniture. On the island of Sandhornøya in northern Norway, Solardome Industries built a large geodesic dome that contains a three-level cob home. Architect Vincent Callebaut recently released renderings of a futuristic city district designed for Kunming, China that consists of 45 energy-positive villas set on a huge community orchard and food garden. And the Swiss Alpine Club recently redesigned a hut nestled in the heart of the Valais Alps that is completely powered by the sun.

In environmental news, scientists have confirmed that a piece of zircon found in Jack Hills, Australia is the oldest fragment of Earth ever found. Last week, Google Earth users were surprised to see a massive mysterious spiral in the Sahara Desert — turns out it’s an immense land art installation created by three artists near the Red Sea over two years. Google also unveiled Global Forest Watch, a new online tool that allows organizations to monitor deforestation around the world. Fitbit announced that it is voluntarily recalling its Force fitness-tracking bracelet after some users complained of rashes and burns on their wrists. And for tech-savvy moms and dads, Sleekbit has created a new Android app called Dormi that can turn smartphones into mobile baby monitors.

Filed under: Misc

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5 Tips To Boost Your Blog SEO

Search engine marketing or Search Engine Optimization is essential to the success of your blog. Get it proper and you will see floods of free traffic coming to your web site from the search engines. Get it mistaken and your blog could be dead within the water before you even start.

There are specific things that the bots are looking for when they’re crawling your site. They need to know immediately what your weblog is about. Also they need to have the ability to navigate round your site and from page to page easily. If they can do this then they will give you good credit within the search engines.
A great place inside Google, Yahoo and Bing can ship you numerous pretty free, focused traffic.

seotipsblog.net

These are the 5 issues that you must do to increase your probabilities of an excellent ranking.

Key phrase Analysis: As soon as you already know your area of interest the following job is to define your primary keyword. You’re in search of an essential key phrase that describes your area of interest effectively, that has good search quantity however low to medium competition has. For those who get this proper than half the battle is done. While you determine on your predominant keyword, look for 5-10 Lei (Layton Symantec indexing) keywords. These lengthy tail keywords might be what Google determines are valid and linked to your fundamental keyword.

Your Blog URL: Now you could have your foremost keyword, this keyword must be in your blog URL. Or no less than function in your URL. Let’s simply say your key phrase is “pet coaching” your weblog URL would want to include the key phrase “pet coaching” in some form.

Your Weblog Title: Again your keyword needs to be in your blog title. This manner when the bots and folks search for a key phrase and your site comes up with that keyword in the URL and in the title they’ll know immediately what your blog matter is.

Weblog Classes: We talked earlier about lengthy tail keywords (LSI). Ideally these 5-10 keywords should make up your category titles. When the various search engines have a look at your site they will see your major key phrase but also keywords that they affiliate with your primary keyword. Subsequently providing you with higher recognition in the serps.

Inside Linking: Inner linking is a key part to your own web page SEO. This means that all your posts and pages should connect to every other. When you write a put up put a link in it to a previous post. Another good tip is to have a listing of hyperlinks to relevant posts underneath each post. This not solely gives your reader more selection, it also hyperlinks all your posts together making navigation easier.

The identical goes to your pages; you can link to them from your home web page, however then link the pages to each other as well.

When first creating your weblog, it’s fairly simple to get your on page web optimization right; it is nevertheless a bit harder as soon as your weblog is up and running. Comply with the following pointers and your weblog will rank fairly simply in the search engines.

Watch out Kinect, AllSee does gesture control without a camera

What if you could turn the music down on your phone by just waving your hand? That’s the idea behind AllSee, a new gadget under development by computer scientists at the University of Washington. Built by the same guys who created the gesture-recognition in the Galaxy Nexus, the tiny sensor works completely different than the feature in devices like the Galaxy S5 that require the use of the forward-facing camera. Instead, AllSee uses TV signals to not only help it recognize gestures, but also as exceptionally efficient source power. That means it doesn’t need a battery to operate and can see your movements even when your phone is out of sight in your pocket — pretty awesome.

AllSee is able to do that by working essentially as a wireless receiver. When you move your hand, you disrupt the wireless signals around you in a way that it can recognize and then translate into a command. The best part? AllSee is able to do it all at a price of less than a buck. While the tech is currently being demoed on a phone, it’s a pretty neat trick that we can see implemented a number of pretty fantastic ways. A robot to bring you a drink with a simple ‘come hither’ motion, anyone?

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Via: Gizmodo

Source: AllSee, University of Washington