Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Solar cars, solar boats, solar… gold?



The Week in Green is a new item from our friends at Inhabitat, recapping the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us.

This week Inhabitat peered into the future of green tech as we liveblogged the most exciting moments from this year’s Greener Gadgets Conference. The highlight of the day was the on-stage live-judging and announcement of this year’s Greener Gadgets design competition winner, the AUG/Living Goods Program. Renowned industrial designer Yves Béhar also wowed us by unveiling a brand new design for a “Hackable” solar-electric car that is composed of modular components. (Engadget liveblogged it here.)

Speaking of sun-powered vehicles, Hungarian auto company Antro has just unveiled plans to create an out-there yet undeniably cool solar-powered car that splits into two vehicles. And for those looking to ride the seas in style, take a long, hard look at this giant solar boat. Then again, why ride a conventional vehicle when you could hop aboard this insane futurictic crawler town on wheels? Too bad it’s made out of LEGOs.

Finally, we brought to light several illuminating energy projects: researchers have found a way to generate electricity by shining light on tiny gold nanoparticles, opening the door for self-powered molecular machines, and Phillips unveiled a blooming solar street lamp that soaks up energy during the day and uses it to light up the night.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Solar cars, solar boats, solar… gold? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

HTC Desire’s Sense UI ported to Droid; HTC, Motorola cringe



If you work for Motorola, cover your ears and say “Blur Blur Blur Blur” at the top of your lungs over and over again for the duration of this post, because what we’re about to present is an unholy marriage the likes of which neither Sanjay Jha nor Peter Chou ever intended. It’s not the first time we’ve heard of a version of Sense finding its way onto Motorola hardware, but developers over on AllDroid have posted a bunch of video and stills claiming to have ported an HTC Desire’s (née Bravo’s) Sense-enabled firmware to Moto’s beast — and what’s more, there’s footage of it running Flash. Bear in mind that the speed at which Flash is running here looks downright painful — and we fully expect official Flash support on the Droid later this year anyhow — but anyone conflicted between the Droid’s muscular lines and HTC’s lovely skin might want to keep an eye on this project. It’s still very early in development, but the most important part of the port has already been finished: it shows the proper Droid logo on startup. Follow the break for video.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading HTC Desire’s Sense UI ported to Droid; HTC, Motorola cringe

HTC Desire’s Sense UI ported to Droid; HTC, Motorola cringe originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AllDroid  | Email this | Comments

Viliv S5 MID gets accuracy-boosting HID driver for Windows 7



Viliv S5 MID gets accuracy-boosting HID driver for Windows 7

Viliv’s S5 MID, the little machine that packs the Vaio P‘s Z520 processor in a legitimately pocketable form-factor, just got a breath of fresh air. It’s an HID (human interface device) driver for Windows 7, boosting the machine’s touchscreen abilities and enabling the breadth of Windows 7′s tablet functionality. According to Uber Tablet this greatly enhances usability by, amongst other things, presenting the Windows tablet keyboard rather than relying on the accessibility version and enabling better calibration. The driver being used here is legitimate according to reports we’ve read, but it is not signed and doesn’t appear to be an official release from Viliv, so you may want to exercise a bit of caution before you install — but don’t wait too long. This sounds like a pretty tasty update.

Viliv S5 MID gets accuracy-boosting HID driver for Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Pocketables Forum  |  Uber Tablet  | Email this | Comments

LG’s 15-inch 15EL9500 OLED TV sets sail for Europe, scheduled to arrive this May



We’ve had only tantalizingly brief (or is it briefly tantalizing?) chances to see LG’s glorious OLED television, but each and every time it’s left us with the feeling that our lives are poorer for not having one in our homes. Sure, that says as much about our tech addiction as it does about the 3mm-thick displays, but at least the deep-pocketed among us won’t have to wait too much longer to sate the need for 10,000,000:1 contrast ratios and 0.001ms response times. LG has announced it’ll be bringing it’s 15-inch OLED panel to Europe this May (to be swiftly followed by summer availability in the US) with a hefty MSRP sticker of €1,999 ($2,725) for the Austrian market. Nobody ever said the cutting edge was gonna be a cheap place to live.

LG’s 15-inch 15EL9500 OLED TV sets sail for Europe, scheduled to arrive this May originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink OLED-Display  |  LG Austria  | Email this | Comments

ASUS Eee PC T101MT convertible gets handled twice (video)



ASUS Eee PC T101MT convertible gets handled twice (video)

What’s better than one hands-on report to whet your appetite ahead of the release of a new gadget? Why, two of them, of course, and it’s the convertible ASUS T101MT getting the stereo impressions. The machine has netbook specs (1.6GHz Atom N450 CPU, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD, etc. etc.) combined with a 10.1-inch multitouch screen, which both of the sites giving early impressions rated poorly. Responsiveness is said to be less than stellar, and while one of these previewers was able to improve it with some extra calibration, precision near the top of the screen still sounds bad. Build quality looks good (for an Eee) and the form factor certainly looks nice, but we’re losing a little faith in this entrant after watching the video below. Check it out for yourself and see what you think, but don’t write it off just yet: these are still pre-production models and a little firmware magic could whip this tablet into shape before its release — whenever that will be.

Continue reading ASUS Eee PC T101MT convertible gets handled twice (video)

ASUS Eee PC T101MT convertible gets handled twice (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Touchscreen Tablet, netbooklive.net  | Email this | Comments