BMW’s ‘Light & Charge’ street lamps double as EV chargers

If you own an electric car, your two main charging options are plugging in at home or connecting to a public charging station like one of Tesla’s Superchargers. Home charging is simple enough, but there aren’t a huge amount of public terminals available. BMW has been experimenting with ways to power its growing number of electric cars in public spaces, and came up with the idea of turning LED street lamps into charging locations. The lamps, known as Light & Charge, have a modular design that BMW says “can be installed anywhere” and utilize up to four LED modules for night lighting on main roads or two in quieter areas.

The idea itself isn’t new: BMW announced the Light & Charge project last year, but showed them off for first time yesterday at Low Carbon Oxford Week in the UK. Like other smart street lamps, BMW has integrated controls that will adjust the amount of light needed depending on the time of day (like switching off when no one is around). The car maker also says that its new street lights will feature a standard EV connector, allowing drivers of other electric vehicles to patch into its chargers with the swipe of a card. The only requirement for Light & Charge is that lamps are installed where there is ample parking nearby (as they already draw power direct from the national grid), making them perfect for busy town and city centres.

[Image credit: Autoblog]

Filed under: Transportation, Alt

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Via: Gizmodo UK

Source: BMW

Canon’s pricey PowerShot G3 X compact is all about the zoom

By recent standards, Canon’s new PowerShot G3 X is a nicely-equipped compact camera. But, arriving days after Sony’s RX10 II, it’s hard for it to avoid tough comparisons. Both cameras have 1-inch, 20.2-megapixel sensors with 25,600 max ISO. The G3 X’s main weapon is the 25X optical zoom with a 24-600mm (35mm equivalent) field of view, handily trumping most models, including Sony’s. It also has five axis image stabilization, which is a surprisingly high-end feature for a compact camera and handy with such a big lens. Other features include a 2.36-megapixel EVR, 3.2-inch multi-angle LCD screen, dust and water resistance, WiFi/NFC wireless capability and 1080p/60fps video with clean HDMI output.

That’s all well and good. But! Canon’s big lens has a variable f/2.8-5.6 aperture, and many photographers would gladly trade that for the RX10 II’s 24-200mm fixed f/2.8 lens. The 60fps, Full HD video is also fine, but Sony has moved that bar a lot. The RX10 II now shoots 4K video using its improved XAVC S codec without any line-skipping or pixel-binning. It can also shoot slow-motion video at up to 960fps, and Full HD video at 240fps, or four times the frame rate of the Canon. You might question how useful those features are, but if you want ’em, Sony’s got ’em.

The RX10 II can also shoot at 1/32,000 of a second and 14fps, handily besting the G3 X’s 1/2,000th of a second shutter and 5.9fps shooting speed. All of that speed is due in large part to Sony’s more advanced “stacked” 1-inch CMOS sensor, which can read out extremely quickly thanks to a built-in DRAM chip. Meanwhile, Canon decided to ditch 1.5-inch sensor used in the lower-end G1 X Mark II, opting for a 1-inch version instead. We think that the bigger sensor — which lies between micro four-thirds and APS-C sizes — would’ve appealed to lots of compact shooters and helped offset Sony’s technological advantage.

That takes us to the price. The Canon PowerShot G3 X runs $1,000, significantly cheaper than the $1,300 RX10 II. But if you’re already dropping a grand on a compact camera, what’s another $300 for a lot more features? That said, the crazy long zoom is one of the biggest you’ll find on a 1-inch chip camera, so it may find fans looking to shoot distant vistas. If that includes you, it arrives next month.

Filed under: Cameras, Canon

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Source: Canon

BBC experiment lets you control iPlayer with your mind

Instead of grabbing the remote or poking at your smartphone, the BBC thinks the future of TV navigation could lie in mind control. For its latest experiment, the broadcaster is testing a brainwave reading headset developed by This Place that lets you launch iPlayer and choose programmes with your thoughts. The device uses two sensors, one on your forehead and one on your ear, to interpret electrical activity as “concentration” or “meditation.” Depending on your preference, focusing your mind will trigger a contextual command, such as launching the app or selecting from one of five programmes on a scrolling carousel. Once the app lands on your chosen TV show, you simply have to “think” until a pink volume bar fills on the left-hand side of the screen. The functionality is basic, but the BBC hopes it can be adapted to assist viewers with disabilities. For now it’s just a proof of concept, but maybe in the future we’ll all be using brainwaves to tune into BBC Two.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02tx270/player

Filed under: Home Entertainment

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Source: BBC, This Place

Minions’ Paradise reactions from E3 2015!

We are still rocking the show floor at E3 2015 and I wanted to give you my personal reactions on a game I know many of you will totally enjoy. It turns out Gameloft is not the only one trying to capitalize on the Minions franchise, as EA has also announced Minions’ Paradise. These games are very different, though, and I will show you how.

So Minions’ Paradise is pretty much a builder/harvest game. I hate to make this reference, but it’s slightly similar to something like Farmville (or Sim City?). Users get this piece of land, which they are able to manage. More specifically, it’s an island where you can build different types of structures and put together a functional community of those little yellow creatures we all love.

The game is a bit more complex than I thought it would be. I was surprised at how deep the it goes, actually. Especially considering it looks super cute and it’s all about… the Minions. The game is very extensive and pretty much endless, so if you enjoy it you will be spending many, many hours playing it. Remember, the most successful games are not the necessarily most elaborated, but the most addictive. Minions’ Paradise sure is addictive, and there is so much you can do!

The game is free to play, but EA has to make money somehow – right? There will be a virtual currency you can purchase in order to speed up your progress. Regardless, you can probably still play it and have fun without ever having for fork out a single penny.

I do think those who have some sort of fascination for Minions will love this game, so make sure to check it out. Minions’ Paradise is coming to both Android and iOS, and it is already in a limited release, but everyone will get access to it later this year. More details will pop up, so make sure you stay tuned to Android Authority, your source for all things Android!