Google’s Larry Page is secretly developing a flying car

Remember all of those dystopian futures where our skies are filled with grimy flying cars spewing smog across the land? The co-founder of Google is hoping to make that future a reality, at least according to Bloomberg. It’s published a report claiming that Larry Page has been secretly bankrolling Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk, two California startups working on developing a serious flying car. While the former is based on the edges of Google’s Mountain View campus, Page’s involvement has been considered a secret, until now.

According to ten (ten!) sources familiar with the matter, Zee.Aero has developed a pair of prototype aircraft which it tests regularly. It has a facility close to a runway in Hollister in southern California, where locals claim to have seen weird craft hovering overhead. The report describes them as plane-like vehicles, with propellers in the rear — one small enough for a single person, the other seemingly more capacious. Last year, website LongTailPipe found a patent detailing the firm’s thinking, with rotor blades lining a plane-style cockpit. As top-secret as the project is, Zee.Aero engineers have been known to show off their skills, breaking the cruising record for unpowered flight at the 2013 Red Bull Flugtag.

Zee.Aero engineers breaking the world record for unpowered flight.

Kitty Hawk, meanwhile, was apparently spun out by Page as a competing project, led by Sebastian Thrun, founder of Google’s X Lab. Thrun is also famous for being one of the minds behind the search engine’s self-driving car project way back when. Page apparently believes that two companies, competing directly with each other, will help get the job done faster. The smaller firm is working on something closer to a quadcopter drone, reminding us of EHang’s 184 passenger drone.

Unfortunately, Bloomberg believes that merely reporting on Page’s involvement with both firms might kill his dreams dead. It claims that the Google co-founder said that, if his connection was made public, he’d withdraw in an instant. Although maybe he’s better off directing his energies toward a mode of transportation that’ll help solve the problems more people face today, like mass transit.

Source: Bloomberg

ICYMI: Cellphone motor as mic and fuel from sunlight

Today on In Case You Missed It: Researchers created a hack that lets a smartphone’s vibration motor act as a microphone, picking up conversations unbeknownst to the user. Harvard University folk created fuel using artificial photosynthesis that is triple as effective as previous systems, making gas out of sunlight, CO2 and water.

And finally, YouTube user BOOM LLC Robotater has a pretty entertaining potato video on the site; if you’re looking for the case that lets you switch an iPhone to Android, that’s here. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Pebble Launches ‘Happiness’ App, Publishes Fitness Algorithms

Pebble has published the algorithms that drive its native fitness tracking app, following the launch of its crowdfunding campaign for three new fitness-focused smartwatches, the Pebble Core, Pebble 2, and Time 2.

The move is a first in the wearables industry, and appears to be an effort by the company to demonstrate serious ambitions in the burgeoning “quantified self” and health data tracking fields.

Nathaniel Stockham is a Stanford University Ph.D. student in Neuroscience and the person who developed the app’s algorithms. Stockham explained in a blog post called “Opening the Black Box” that one of the published algorithms detects and measures motion, while the other counts steps and can distinguish if you’re walking or running.

Algorithms “are the missing piece in making wearables useful to developers and relevant to healthcare researchers”, according to the company. The idea is that by making its own algorithms available to the public, Pebble is enabling third parties to expand upon its own work.

Pebble has also worked with Stanford to launch a new mood-logging app called Happiness. The app works on a weekly cycle and prompts users to rate their daily mood and energy levels, and also requests contextual details such as location, activity, and social company, and then collates the data in an email report. The app is available for Pebble Time, Pebble Time Steel and Pebble Time Round users, and can be downloaded here.

Pebble claims that the app has allowed some of its own staff to make tangible changes in their life, such as socializing more with coworkers. The company states that all identifying Happiness usage data remains within the app, although it notes that some data may be used in aggregate analytics.

Lastly, Pebble has also published the results of a sleep study it has conducted with the university, looking at the differences between people who consider themselves “night owls” or “morning larks”. The data was able to identify distinct clusters that aligned with the two tendencies, and suggests that these groups represent biologically established chronotypes.

Tag: Pebble
Discuss this article in our forums

Steve Jobs Met With ‘V-Vehicle’ Creator in 2010 to Discuss Interest in a Cheaper, Lightweight Car

Although rumors surrounding Apple’s electric car project began intensifying after the vehicle’s development sped up last September, a new report out of The Guardian looks back before all of the current hubbub began, at the “secret car” that became of special interest to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Called the V-Vehicle and created by industrial designer Bryan Thompson, Jobs flew the designer out to San Francisco in 2010 to discuss Thompson’s plans for the car, and pick his brain on the status of the automotive industry as a whole.

Thompson and the V-Vehicle
Thompson and his team created the V-Vehicle with the goal of constructing a disruptive force in the car industry with “a lightweight, petroleum-powered car that used cheaper materials and could sell for just $14,000.” They had been working on it for two years when Jobs became interested in their progress, and invited Thompson to his home in Palo Alto to see it for himself.

According to Thompson, within their fifteen minutes together — Jobs sitting in the driver side and Thompson in the passenger side — he “learned more about plastics than in his years in design school and auto industry combined.” The former Apple CEO discussed his thoughts on the V-Vehicle, focusing a lot of his time on the materials of its body, which were made of polypropylene and glass fibre. The results were a car that was 40 percent lighter than a normal steel-made vehicle, not to mention would cost 70 percent less capital to produce.

The inside of the V-Vehicle

Jobs told Thompson to think about emphasizing the plastic rather than disguising it. “Let the material be honest,” he said, noting the dashboard, which was made of fibre-wood, a composite of synthetic resin and wood pulp. He suggested it would look better designed as one piece that “evoked a sense of high precision” – an idea Jobs often returned to with Apple’s chief design officer Jonathan Ive.

Jobs continued to tip Thompson to take another look at the V-Vehicle’s interior, telling him that “a taut surface has a sense that it’s full of energy, like an animal ready to pounce. It’s a subconscious thing that gives the product an impression of high quality and confidence.” Thompson took Jobs’ advice to heart and immediately began reworking a few subtle design changes in the car’s interior on his flight back home.

Despite the V-Vehicle’s potential for success, the business ultimately failed after venture funding evaporated and long-term plans for subsidized manufacturing plants failed due to tighter state budgets. Eventually, Thompson’s designs were bought by LCV Capital Management in 2015, and V-Vehicle was renamed Next Autoworks, with a renewed plan to build the car in Italy.

Steve Jobs was said to have passed on building a car in 2008 to focus on the recently launched iPhone, although the former CEO remained interested in the vehicle project throughout the years. Rumors that have ultimately pegged the Apple Car for a 2020 launch began in early 2015, when mysterious vans linked to Apple began being spotted driving around Northern California.

Thompson’s redesigned interior sketch
Those were in fact related to a mapping project, as Apple confirmed later, but the media interest in the potential for an Apple-made vehicle continued to fuel rumors surrounding a car that could potentially “give Tesla a run for its money.”

Now, some of Steve Jobs’ hopes for the V-Vehicle might be coming to fruition, including Apple’s rumored talks to use BMW’s i3 as a basis for Project Titan, which would fall in line with Jobs’ appreciation of a precise, lightweight unibody material thanks to its carbon fiber outer shell. Those talks reportedly didn’t end in an inked deal, but could “resume at a later stage,” according to sources within BMW.

You can read The Guardian’s full story on the meeting between Steve Jobs and Bryan Thompson here.

Related Roundup: Apple Car
Discuss this article in our forums

Move over Tesco, Amazon starts to deliver groceries daily in UK

Amazon has launched Amazon Fresh, its online groceries shopping service, in London.

Fresh food and supplies can be ordered in 69 central and east London postcodes, with Amazon Prime members able to get their weekly shop from the retailer.

There are over 130,000 products on offer, so the service is thought to rival the big, high street supermarkets directly.

Amazon has partnered with supermarket chain Morrisons, plus food and drink producers including Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Danone and Warburtons for the vast majority of the items on offer. It has also announced that it will offering local produces from independent shops and markets, including some small businesses in Borough Market.

Prices, says Amazon, will be set to match the big supermarkets in the UK.

Amazon

There is an additional fee of £6.99 a month for Amazon Fresh, on top of the existing Amazon Prime subscription at £79 a year. However, this includes unlimited Amazon Fresh deliveries seven days a week for orders over £40.

READ: Can I get Amazon Prime Now one-hour deliveries in my area?

One-hour delivery slots are available from 7am to 11pm every day of the week, including Sundays. Same-day delivery is also possible if an order is placed by 1pm. Same-day orders will be delivered after 5pm.

Amazon Fresh runs parallel to Amazon Pantry, which is a nationwide service. At present, only London is covered by the new service,

You can find out more and order your first shop at amazon.co.uk/fresh.

Flagship Moto Z devices to launch today at Lenovo Tech World

Lenovo will throw open the doors of Lenovo Tech World – its annual technology showcase – today, and top of the billing will be new devices from Motorola that promise to bring a big change.

Teasing its new smartphones, Lenovo invited us to “watch Moto transform mobile in a snap”.

With the Moto G announced in late May, it’s the turn of the Moto X replacement, believed to be called the Moto Z. As with the last generation of Moto X handsets, we’re expecting two new devices, the Moto Z Style and the Moto Z Play, with slightly different price points and configurations.

READ: Motorola Moto Z: Release date rumours and everything you need to know

However, returning to the “snap”, Lenovo’s Moto innovation looks to be coming in the form of modular accessories, called MotoMods. The idea is you’ll be able to attach a more advanced camera or speakers, for a seamlessly integrated experience.

With names like JBL and Hasselblad said to be involved, that could be an exciting proposition, presenting a challenge to the LG G5, which launched with modular accessories in March 2016.

Aside from launching the Moto Z, Lenovo will also be announcing the first Project Tango smartphone. This work with Google’s Project Tango a system designed to accurately scan 3D spaces, allowing you to augment reality in a simple way.

Full details of Lenovo’s new tech will be revealed later today.

READ: Lenovo Tech World 2016: Watch the Moto Z and Project Tango phone launch live