After two years of prep, Formula E cars are here and ready to race
What does it take to create an entirely new motorsport? In Formula E’s case, two years, ten teams and ten city-street circuits, which will play host the first championship. Since the idea of Formula E started taking shape towards the end of 2012, several public demos have kept buzz for the all-electric racing series alive, but the atmosphere was different at the UK’s Donington Park circuit yesterday. Attendees of the official opening of Formula E’s operational headquarters and team facilities at Donington weren’t there to watch a traveling circus visit a racetrack, but to witness a milestone in a sport where, until now, petrol has been king.
Donington’s utilitarian HQ and team garages reflect the aggressive development timeline Formula E’s been working to, having been built from scratch in 15 weeks. But, there was more to look at: not the polished, logo-blazoned cars that’ve appeared at publicity events (a couple of which do sit in the new HQ’s reception), but raw, carbon fiber Spark-Renault SRT_01E vehicles that the teams will actually be competing in over the ten-race season.
Ever since Formula E’s inception, many motorsport insiders have shown “little belief” in the new class, as championship CEO Alejandro Agag put it. And, it won’t be until the teams arrive in Beijing in September for the first official race — following plenty of preparation and race testing at Donington — that they’ll get a chance to convince doubters an all-electric championship can be a success. If all goes well, the hope is Beijing will attract an army of fans, and plenty of sponsorship interest to boot. This is a business intended to make money from selling broadcasting rights and inking sponsor deals, after all, but Agag hopes it’ll add true value by accelerating R&D within the electric vehicle space.
“It’s not just about racing, but the development of new technology that’ll filter down to road vehicles,” he said at the event. For the first season at least, every team — several of which know something about performance EVs already — will use the same stock Spark-Renault SRT_01E and 200kW motor with minimal scope for modification. In later championships, Agag believes the teams will be under pressure to innovate as they’ll “have to develop the technology to win the races.” The principle impact Formula E’s CEO believes the championship will have on the mass market is in addressing issues with energy storage. “We need to find new ways, either with more efficient batteries, or with other devices like super capacitors and fuel cells. We need to find a solution for that. That’s why we’re doing Formula E.”
Filed under: Transportation
Push links, files, locations and more with Pushbullet! [App of the Day]
It’s always fun to see what kinds of apps are out there that push the boundaries of what our devices can do. For those of you who want to be able to share things between your smartphone and laptop or desktop computer, you should absolutely try Pushbullet. It’s a neat app that makes it easy to “push” a link, file attachment, street address, list, or a quick message between your phone and computer, and it’s all possible by downloading the app, creating an account, signing into that account on your computer, and voila! You are then able to quickly push all sorts of stuff from your laptops’s web browser to your phone and vice versa.
There are a number of situations that make Pushbullet very handy, such as pushing websites to your phone as you’re about to leave your desktop, or pushing a cool photo you took with your phone to your laptop for editing, or even pushing a street address really fast to a friend who you can add to your send list.
Probably my favorite part of the app is the mirroring feature, which displays your phones notifications at the bottom left corner of your computer when you get them. This allows you to see your phones activity while on your laptop, so you don’t miss something important while your phone is somewhere else. This is a great app that binds your smartphone to your computer or other devices so you don’t have to sweat about transferring data the hard way.
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ROM of the week: CyanogenMod 11
So if you’ve searched for any type of custom ROMs for your Android devices I am sure you have seen CyanogenMod. It is one of the most popular ROMs available for Android devices and probably the easiest to install for novice users.
Now you’re probably asking, “What is a ROM and why would I want it?” Well, you’re not the first and certainly won’t be the last! A ROM is customized version of the current Android OS running on your device. A new ROM can bring you the latest version of Android before your manufacturer does, or it can replace your manufacturer-modded version of Android with a clean, stock version. Or, it can take your existing version and just beef it up with awesome new features—it’s up to you.
Below is a list of top features I have gathered from Cyanogen’s website:
- CM Updater: Never miss an update!
- Privacy Guard: Control what your applications can learn about you and your contacts.
- Global Blacklist: Baked right into the OS is the ability to flag telemarketers, robo-callers, annoying people (yes even the in-laws) and blacklist them.
- Quick Setting Ribbon: Embed quick toggles (and even your camera) right in your notification drawer. Just one swipe away.
- Quick Settings Config: Whether using the ribbon view, or the larger grid view, customize the layout and order of your quick settings.
- Status Bar Behavior: Customize your status bar and unlock some additional behavior. Tap the time to quickly set an alarm or tap the date to access your calendar.
- CM Account: Get remote find and wipe capabilities (for free) so even if you lose your device, you still have some control.
- Display and Lights: Control brightness, rotation, wallpapers, remote displays, notification lights and battery lights. You decide what suits your tastes.
- Profiles: With profiles you can control application, sounds and even connectivity to quickly adapt to the environment in which you are using your phone. Go one step further and set up a profile to be location aware, or use NFC to trigger a profile change.
- Button Configuration: Enable additional functionality from your hardware keys, or even remap them altogether. Your choice.
- Navbar: Why stop at hardware buttons? Customize the software navigation bar to your liking as well.
- LockScreen: Add quick unlock targets to access your favorite apps directly from the lockscreen. Use our custom lockscreen widget to increase your productivity – show the weather and your calendar events without unlocking the device.
- Tethering: Share your device’s data connection with your PC, tablets, friends and families with built in tethering over USB, WiFi and Bluetooth.
- Superuser: Manage what apps you’ve granted root access to, check access logs, and revoke their when you are done.
- Root Access: Useful to developers and users alike, control your exposure to root applications and debugging tools.
- Performance Options: Push it up to eleven and access power tools to over-clock, manage device governors and more. Recommended for advanced users only.
- SMS Rate limit: There are bad apps out there, and one common vector is to make money off of spamming bogus SMS message services. Get a notice if your phone is sending higher than normal message counts. Or maybe you just have a teenager and this is perfectly normal.
These are just some of the great features CyanogenMod has to offer, a more detailed list with pictures can be found at their website here.
If you are interested in CyanogenMod, just head on over to their website, here and follow the easiest steps known to man, to get once of the best custom ROM experiences for your Android device. If you have CyanogenMod already installed or have any questions, let us know what you think of it!
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Amazon rewinds to 1994 to remind you how good music was back then
Jeff Bezos must be an Oasis fan, because Amazon UK has gone all retro to mark the 20th anniversary of the band’s iconic Definitely Maybe debut album. If you pop on over to Amazon’s Music section right now, you’ll see what the company thinks its store might have looked like back in the mid-nineties. Three Oasis videos are available in the Amazon Artist Lounge, including live performances of Digsy’s Dinner and Live Forever, which are also available as free music downloads. To keep things authentic, Amazon features the exact album chart from May 16th 1994 as well as “new and future releases” from the Manics, Pulp and The Prodigy. If it’s got you feeling nostalgic, then why not crack out that old Weezer CD and celebrate the very best nineties music had to offer, dodgy graphics and all.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Amazon
Via: Unreality TV
Source: Amazon
Verizon announces 60, 80 and 100 GB shared data options for business
Verizon has become the first carrier to offered a shared data package for up to 50 devices. Along with this, they are also offering 60, 80, and 100 GB data plan options for the account. Some businesses require a combination of voice and data devices while others may need data-only devices such as tablets, USB modems and Jetpacks to run their business.
The plans give customers unlimited domestic and international messaging while in the US so businesses can maintain constant communication with global clients or suppliers. Shared voice minutes for calls to and from Canada and Mexico can also be added for an additional monthly access fee, as well as global data plans. Verizon is slowly trying to make their services more flexible and attract a new range of business customers.
Source: Verizon
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Gimbal beacons breaking Bluetooth on Android
A very interesting video has appeared on Vimeo by user, samjasuja, who is showing how the Gimbel beacon completly trashes your phone through Bluetooth and ultimately leads to a factory reset. Don’t let this happen to you!
Source: Vimeo
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HTC finally confirms red One M8, but only in Taiwan
HTC has finally confirmed that red is coming to their lineup of colors for the HTC One M8. However, it is only available in Taiwan for the moment being. HTC has not commented on an global release of the red variant, but they did provide a really nice 3D render of it.
Could Verizon be seeing the red variant soon? It has been rumored and it would make sense, given that Verizon is “The Red Carrier” and had an exclusive at launch. There has also been rumors of a metallic blue version as well. Hopefully we’ll see more colors added to the already fantastic HTC One M8. If you haven’t checked out our HTC One M8 review, check it out here.
Source: Twitter
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‘Halo 5: Guardians’ and live-action Halo TV show set for fall 2015 launch
We’ve known for a while that there’s new Halo game coming to Xbox One and that it could possibly make its debut this year. Today, Microsoft and 343 Industries provided some additional details on the project, most notably that the next instalment in the franchise will be called Halo 5: Guardians and that it will be pushed back to a fall 2015 launch. So what can we expect? Game specifics are scarce but we know that, like Titanfall, Guardians run on dedicated servers. However, unlike its mech-smashing counterpart, it will run at a glorious 60 frames-per-second.
“Halo 5: Guardians is a bigger effort than Halo 4,” says 343 general manager Bonnie Ross. “That applies to content and scope of the game, as well as the technology in what’s now a brand new and more powerful engine.” Ross also confirmed that the live-action Halo TV series, which sees 343 Industries team up with Steven Spielberg to bring Master Chief to life, may also debut around the same time as Guardians. While you’ll have to wait until next year to enjoy both the game and the TV series in their full form, Ross suggests Microsoft and 343 will have more to reveal in the coming months, starting with the Xbox 2014 Media Briefing at E3 on June 9th.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Source: Xbox Wire
EFF praises major tech companies for doing more to protect your data
The jury (or rather, congress) is still out on how Snowden’s now-legendary leaks will effect the NSA, but it’s certainly changed how companies handle user data. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s latest “Who Has Your Back?” transparency report, 2014 is a landmark year for user privacy — Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Twitter all earned perfect scores in the report’s six-point evaluation. The scoring metric awards stars for companies that require the government to get a warrant before collecting user data, or to firms that publish their own transparency reports. Overall, the report shows a marked improvement over last year, but the EFF still highlights other big companies that could do a lot more to protect and reassure their users.
“Transparency reports have become the industry standard for major tech companies,” the report reads. “But Adobe, Amazon, Foursquare, Myspace, Wikimedia and Snapchat have yet to publish a report.” The EFF specifically chews out Amazon for having “a tremendous amount of user data,” but no clear way for users to evaluate its policies on how law enforcement can access that data. Even so, the EFF ends its conclusions on a high note, saying that most companies are “heading in the right direction.” Check out the full report at the source link below.
[Image credit: Shutterstock / Galushko Sergey]
Via: CNET
Source: EFF
Fancy ash tray rewards smokers for not littering with a song and light show
Some places impose hefty fines to prevent cigarette littering, but a group of Dutch designers believe that the answer lies in rewarding smokers for doing the right thing instead. So, the team designed a souped up trash can called Fumo that lights up like a disco ball and plays music like a jukebox when you toss in a cigarette butt. It even starts blinking the moment you step close, just so you know it’s not some boring receptacle before you even get the chance to try it out — and no, check the calendar if you must, it’s not an April Fool’s joke. The designers say the trash can can also be tweaked depending on the purpose: for instance, it can incorporate interactive elements for festivals or play solemn music if it’s meant to be installed in front of a hospital. According to a recent research, around 4.5 trillion cigarette remnants end up as trash every year, so it really is a big issue that might only be solved by banning filters altogether. As to whether Fumo has the potential to minimize cigarette litter or if it’s just a gimmicky idea whose novelty will wear off quickly, you tell us after watching it in action after the break.
Filed under: Misc
Via: Fast Company
Source: ioglo
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