I asked Peugeot’s Managing Director, Jon Goodman, about the company’s future fuel strategy:

“We need to have multiple solutions. In about two years we need to have vehicles on offer that use standard fuels but are more fuel efficient than today’s models. We need to offer micro-hybrids — that’s cars that use carbon-based fuels but also recover energy when the car is braking. We need to offer Diesel Hybrids which we will do in 2011 as well as a range of electric vehicles in about three years.”

The BB1 is, Peugeot claims, a mixture of a scooter and a car and seems to be the car manufacturer’s first foray into electric car design. Athanassios Tubidis, the BB1’s designer, told assembled guests:

“The BB1 isn’t about long journeys, it isn’t about linear travel — it’s about the gesture: Stop. Go. Accelerate. Get in. Get Out.”

So clearly the BB1 is aimed at the young urban market in a World where gas prices could rise again to over $100 a barrel and stay there.

The Peugeot BB1 in day-to-day use

The BB1 is entirely electric so it just plugs in to a mains socket at home and the lithium ion batteries charge up in six hours. This electric car is obviously designed for city driving so you won’t be using it for a motorway trip to work but for urban journeys the BB1 provides rapid acceleration, space for four people and a 360° driver view.

The four people claim gives the BB1 an advantage over rivals such as the Toyota iQ and the Smart Car but it should be noted that the rear passengers are straddled on scooter-like seats and their legs actually wrap around the occupants at the front in order to squeeze them into the 2.5 meter BB1. Some people may not like this intimate arrangement!

The scooter analogy doesn’t stop there as the steering of the BB1 is done through a handlebar-like device that also houses an iPod dock. Dock your iPod to the handlebars and the central display uses it to access the internet.

The front occupants sit in a more upright position than most of us are used to. This is necessary to cram four people into the thing and its made possible by the complete lack of any foot pedals.

Propulsion

The Peugeot BB1 is powered by a pair of 20 bhp electric motors driving the rear axle but its the torque of electric motors that will give this diminutive vehicle its agility and responsiveness in urban traffic. Weighing only 600 Kg that’s nearly 40 bhp/tonne. The bubble-roof (a styling reference to the RCZ) has integrated solar panels that drive the air-conditioning system.

Styling

Peugeot has come a long way since the producers of Columbo selected a Peugeot 403 because it was the ugliest car they could think of. Some people will hate the styling of the BB1: it looks as if it’s back to front, the front windscreen leans forward at an odd angle (though this would be effective at removing reflections from the dashboard) but I can’t help loving the many exquisite details the BB1 has to offer from the front and rear lamp clusters to the quirky interior and bubble-shaped roof.

Performance

The BB1 has a top speed of round 50 mph and Jon claims a 0-20 mph time of 2.8 seconds thanks to the “very torquey” electric motors. The batteries give the BB1 a range of about 75 miles which is more than enough for a day’s urban driving.

Should Peugeot build this car?

Peugeot has no firm plans to put the BB1 into production but is listening to feedback from the various launches they’re making in the World’s major cities. The BB1 will be on public show in Covent Garden, London this weekend — you might even get a chance to drive it!

Here’s a movie of celebrity views from the launch party:

So here’s the question: Should Peugeot build this car?

It’s called the “Gavari”  Semiacoustic violin and is prodict of a colaborationbetween designer Gerda and and a professional viennese violin maker to guarantee the sound quality.

The Gavari has curves that seem farmiliar and the instrument is playedin exactly the same way as a traditional violin.

Hopfgartner Gerda says:

The acoustic violin form in the baroque style exists for over 500 years. There has been very little change to it.
This design creates a new modern form, moving away from the baroque style.

Key aspects such as sound criteria, analogies, sledge, boat and corset as well as feminine curves of a woman gave rise to the design of  the Gavari violin.

It was a challenge to create a new modern form for the 21th century, maybe they will change the classical music busines

MiFi explained

So what is MiFi? MiFi or Mobile WiFi is the connection of WiFi-enabled devices to a mobile phone data internet connection.

Mobile internet connections have historically involved fitting your laptop with a dongle supplied my your mobile provider so that internet data was routed through the mobile data network. 3’s device is a little different though. It is a MiFi router and it creates a mobile WiFi hotspot. And, since it’s battery operated you can carry that hotspot around with you anywhere there’s a mobile signal. It also means that you can hook up a large number of devices instead of just having it just plugged into one machine.

What’s in the box

The MiFi router arrives in a small box containing:

• Card containing SSID and password
• SIM and phone number details
• Stack of cards giving usage instructions
• Power cord
• USB peripheral cable
• MiFi Router
• Miscellaneous ’small print’ documentation

Setting up a mobile WiFi hotspot

The first thing you’re going to have to do is fit the supplied SIM and battery and charge up the router for twelve hours. Once this is done press the power button for two seconds.

The small screen comes to life with a number of esoteric symbols most of which have to be looked up in the accompanying instruction cards to make sense. Annoyingly, these lights go out after a couple of seconds so you have to keep touching the power button to see the status of the device.

You can now use a WiFi device to log in to the WiFi hotspot created by the router.

Incidentally, I found that although the password provided contained spaces you must omit these when typing the password or the login will fail.

But you’re not done yet. Now you must press the connect button on the side of the router to connect to the mobile network. Once done you should have access to wireless internet in ways you never could before.

To change the router’s configuration you have to plug into a PC using the USB cable provided. If you’re running Windows XP or Vista software on the device will auto-start and install all necessary drivers and the WiFi configuration software.

Uses

Many possible uses come to mind for such a device:

• Surf the internet away from home or office (OK, that one was obvious)
• Turn your PSP or Nintendo DSi into a mobile phone
• Turn your iPod Touch into an iPhone (minus the geolocation) – use Skype for calls
• Set up a WiFi network on the train for a group of colleagues

Performance

We wouldn’t expect mobile internet service speeds to match hard-wired broadband either over HSDPA or (slower) 3G and indeed they’re not. But the results I experienced on the fringes of North West London were quite tolerable. Average download speeds of around 2.5Mbps were achieved with upload speeds of about 0.8Mbps. The best results achieved were 3.02Mbps download and 1.0Mbps upload.

The range of the 3 MiFi router was about 25 meters before falling off quite suddenly so there’s plenty of open-air range available. Of course, masonry walls will significantly cut down this range.

Wi-Fi support is limited to Wireless B and G. N is not supported but this should not be a problem while surfing the mobile internet since the provider’s network will be the bottleneck. The only time the older WiFi standard may become apparent will be when transferring files from one device to another.

Specifications

• Power: Li 1500mAh battery, Charger (Std. 3-pin UK), charge time in use: 5 hours
• Connectivity: USB cable (mini plug/standard plug)
• Network: WiFi 802.11b/g
• Memory: MicroSD Memory card supported up to 32GB
• Dimensions: 86 x 46.5 x 10.5mm with 90g weight
• User interface: 5 x LEDs

Summary

The MiFi router is a great way of providing wireless internet services for devices in the home, office or in the field that only have a WiFi interface built-in. I provides a roaming hotspot wherever there is a mobile signal and can accommodate several simultaneous connections. Speed is subject to your mobile provider network but I found 3’s to be adequate.

The screen is confusing and annoying. The meaning of the icons is not always clear and some use colour to convey information which in the days of accessibility and user-friendly design feels clunky and old-fashioned. A improved screen (perhaps LCD)  and user interface and a longer battery life would make this product a no-brainer.

Pricing

The following pricing options are available:

• From free on £12/month, 18-month contract, with 1GB data and 20 text message allowance every month.
• From free on £17/month, 18-month contract, with 5GB data and 20 text message allowance every month.
• At £99.99 with 3GB credit pre-loaded or £69.99 with a capped, £15 a month contract. (top-up and convert to add-on when preload runs out).
• At £69.99 on pay-as-you-go.

The monitor resolutions are 1440 x 900 which isn’t so great on their own but do combine to create some considerable screen real-estate. The screens can operate in continuous desktop mode (as above) or clone mode.

The base not only supports the screens but also houses a 1.3MP webcam and three USB 2.0 ports.

Both the flat panels can pivot vertically so both can be orientated to a comfortable angle but the clever bit is that they can pivot right over so that someone on the other side of the monitors can see your work. The screen contents is automatically rotated to compensate.

EVGA is currently pitching the system to business users but I can see a lot of home-owners seeing the benefits of a system like this. Available from the company for $649.99.

Here’s what is currently strongly suspected an upcoming Apple tablet device

• Screen size: 9.7 inches
• Chipset: Intel dual core or Samsung ARM11
• OS: App-store-compatible version of OS X
• Release date: October
• Price: $500 – $800

The two later gems of wisdom have come to us courtesy of a China Times article which states that Apple is working on a large touchscreen device. Chinese supply companies are all quoting October as the release window.

It’s great to see the idea of an Apple tablet format machine becoming a reality but I’ll be very dissappointed if, as rumours seem to be indicating, the new device is just a large format iTouch that can only run the AppStore programs. For $800 I’d want the full flexibility of a tablet format Macbook.

Let us know your thoughts.

The Cheetah will join other mechanical animals, a giraffe and elephant, in the collection that stalk the imaginary ‘Timmy’ underworld created by Andrew Chase who says:

Before I started this latest project, I promised myself that this time, things will be different. I shall remember history, I will learn from the excesses of  my past. I will build it small, I will build it light, and above all, I will build it quickly. I failed on all three counts. Dismally. Ah well, as the great sage Dirty Harry often said, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

The cheetah measures 24″ high and 50″ nose to tail and weighs about 40 pounds. She took about 60 hours, spaced over 10 weeks time, to build. She’s constructed out of electrical conduit, transmission parts and 20-gauge steel.

Th following youTube movie shows the sculpture animated to look like a robotic cheetah running.

More mechanical cheetah pictures below:

[via bornrich]

They’ve done this not by reducing the energy usage of the tent itself but by focusing on the recharging of all those little gadgets that you’re bound to have taken camping with you.

Orange, alongside US product design consultancy Kaleidoscope, has used “Cutting edge eco-energy technology” has created a tent that allows campers to power their gadgets from a WiFi-enabled control panel incorporating a magnetic induction driven charging point. The charging point is in turn powered by photovoltaic fabric mounted on three ‘glides’ that slide over the top of the tent throughout the day so they’re always pointing towards the sun.

Kaleidoscope strategist, McKenty Aim said:

The development of photovoltaic fabric will revolutionise festival tent design, in working with Orange we have created a vision of camping that we believe is glimpse to a great future.

The tent also comes with a few other features:

The ‘glo-cation’ feature makes the tent glow when the camper gets close to it (using RFID or an SMS message) so you can find it in the dark!

You won’t get cold at night either since the ground sheet incorporates under-floor heating.

Orange’s Solar tent is just a concept at the moment but will be on display at this year’s Glastonbury festival.

Via: Pocket-Lint

My first paragraph remarks may sound a little harsh. After all it may be to Apple’s credit that the expected changes to it’s operating system and its phones are so minor when Microsoft is busy re-writing Vista and trying to convince us that Windows 7 is a completely different animal. So here is a rundown of the recent updates to the hardware and software of a company whose products actually work:

15-inch MacBook Pro

Recent changes to the 17 inch MacBook Pro are applied to the 15 inch version including the Unibody. We also see the ExpressCard slot replaced by an SD card slot (can’t we have both?).

The updated MacBook Pro comes with what seems to be the same built-in, non-removable battery as in the current unibody 17-inch machine. Phil tels us that the cell will last the average user around five years (1,000 recharges), and a charge could last around seven hours under ideal conditions.

The CPU is also upgaded. Phil tells us:

“…it’s the fastest notebook we’ve ever made. Up to a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, and up to 8GB of RAM. You can get up to 500GB in hard drives, or up to 256GB SSD.”

There will be three standard configurations:

• $1699 (2.53GHZ, 4GB RAM)
• $1999 (2.66GHz, 4GB RAM 320GB HD)
• $2299 (2.8GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD)

13-inch MacBook

The updated MacBook comes with the same battery as the Pro and the SD card slot. Apple has also added:

• Up to 8GB of RAM
• 50GB Storage
• Backlit keyboard
• FireWire 800 port

In addition Apple has added the 13-inch MacBook to the Pro Range.

Prices will start at $1199.

They’re also updating the Air with more aggressive configurations and prices which will now start at $1799 — $700 lower than before.

Phil boasts that these are now the greenest laptops money can buy.

Snow Leopard

Bertrand Serlet inytroduces us to Snow Leopard which enjoys a large number of tweeks but nothing revolutionary:

• Exchange support (mail, calendar, address book)
• Finder rewrite:
• Fewer wait cursors
• New eject manager
• Out of process plugins
• Faster cancellation
• Customizable search scope
• Put back from trash
• Contextual menu consistency
• Animations
• Enhanced icon previews
• Faster icon drawing
• More consistent click-through
• Faster empty trash
• Icon size adjuster
• New services menu

Bertrand enthuses about some of the user interface features:

“Next up, the Dock — we’ve had a feature that we use to deal with clutter, called Expose, and now we’ve built it into the dock.”

You click and hold on an app and it automatically zooms out your active windows.

“We’ve made installs 45% faster. And after you install, you recover disk space… it’s over half the footprint of the previous version.”

Thats going to be very handy for those of us already running out of disk space.

“Preview, we’ve changed the way text selection works — we use AI to find the right text in the right place.”

Some other features:

• Handwriting recognition for the trackpad!
• Safari Is updated to version 4 on Leopard, Tiger and Windows.
• All major system apps are 64-bit
• General Central Dispatch – coordinating threads accross Leopard

Bertrand then announces OpenCL, a C-based technology that Apple claims moves beyond OpenGL and that all the major graphics card manufcaturers are behind. Here’s a list:

iPhone

Phil Schiller is back and announces that there are now more than 50,000 apps in the iPhone app store. He then moves onto the new OS 3.0 features

• Cut copy and paste
• Shake to undo
• Developer APIs
• Cocoa Touch support for text
• Landscape on key apps
• MMS

MMS will be supported by 29 carriers when Apple launches. Here’s another list:

• Spotlight can now search anything on your phone, including apps
• You can now use iTunes to rent and purchase movies right from your phone.
• AutoFill remembers user names and passwords to login to websites
• Tethering  allows you to share you connection with your computer.

Tethering works with Macs and PCs, wired over USB, or wireless with Bluetooth. It is a seamless experience. There’s no need to run any software once it’s turned on. This requires carrier support. Apple has 22 partners in 44 countries.

Bertrand then explains a new technology to help you find a lost iPhone:

“Hopefully you haven’t had a 30 Rock experience, but this is why we created Find My iPhone. If you lose or misplace the phone, you can login to MobileMe on any browser and it will show you where the phone is. Now, if it is lost or stolen, you can send a remote wipe command which will delete all of your data.”

He demonstrates and sure enough a Google map apears showing the location of his phone.

iPhone 3GS

Phil:

“This is a really fast iPhone. Something as simple launching messaging, 2 times faster… everything is faster. These are all speeds against an iPhone 3G.”

If the iPhone was a car the 3GS would be the sports version. SunSpider tests show the 3GS to have less than half the rating of the 3G with 3.0.

The 3GS also comes with a brand new 3 megapixel autofocus camera (iPhone users are still getting low resolution cameras when 5MP cameras have been on phones for more than 2 years now). However — hang on to you’re hats — it records video!

Phil continues:

“There’s another great feature — we call it voice control. You can hold down the home button, and a brand new UI pops up — the voice control interface. And talk about easy to use, the commands you make are scrolling by as you use it. You can make calls with your voice, you can control your iTunes by voice. I can ask my phone, ‘what’s playing now’ and it’ll speak the title and artist back to me.”

Phil seems to be getting into his stride:

“There’s also a built-in digital compass. The compass app is a new one that comes on the iPhone — you can tap to go right into Maps, and if you tap a second time, it will orient the map to where you’re facing.”

“And something businesses have asked for … hardware encryption. All new iPhone 3GSs will have it.”

The battery lasts for up to 5 hours 3G talk time, 9 hours of WiFI internet. The basic model comes with 16GB of storage and will retail for $199. The 32GB model will cost you $299. The original iPhone 3G will be reduced to $100.

The iPhone 3GS will be available in the US and prime export markets in a week and a half (19th June) and will be in 88 more countries by 9th August.

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The NEC CRV-43 comes with some astounding specs:

• Seamless curved screen
• 2880 x 900 double WXGA native resolution
• 200 cd/m² brightness
• 0.02ms Rapid Response
• 10,000:1 contrast ratio
• 100% coverage of sRGB colour gamut
• 99.3% coverage of Adobe RGB colour gamut
• 32:10 aspect ratio
• Single link DVI-D and HDMI 1.3 input connectors
• USB 2.0 connectivity for easy use of peripherals
• Front panel controls
• On Screen Display (OSD) and software-based GUI

Keith Yanke, Director of Product Marketing for NEC Display Solutions said:

“The NEC CRV43 curved display provides an excitingly immersive viewing experience for any type of user. Its lightning-fast response time coupled with its seamless curved screen provides enhanced comfort, decreased frustration and increased productivity. The monitor eliminates the bezel and screen gap issues that have complicated users’ work environment for years.”

NEC is aiming the CRV-43 at professional users such as graphic designers, educators, government workers, financial professionals, command and control and home office. This is an interesting departure from Alienware’s very obvious targeting of ’serious’ games adicts. The CRV-43 would also be an ideal monitor setup for simulations.

The CRV-43 will be on display at InfoComm on June 17-19 at Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. It will then be on sale from July at a retail price of $7,999 (£4,878).

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The Soliloquy has been designed by Alastair Callender of Coventry University and extracts its power from wind, solar and Hybrid Marina Power (HMP)a technology developed by Solar Sailor Holdings Ltd.

Hybrid Marine Power couples a range of hydrocarbon and alternative fuels with electric drives. The choice of fuel source is made by a computer with the aim of minimising the use of fossil fuels. A HMP vessel can also use its rigid solar panels to charge its btteries or to sail.

Dr Robart Dane, CEO of Solar Sailor says:

When Alastair approached us to sponsor his final year major project, we were immediately impressed by his resume, and the concept itself seemed a perfect match with Solar Sailor. As a result, Alastair has developed a radical 58m, rigid-wing superyacht, powered by our solar, wind and hybrid marine power technologies.

Alastair Callender says:

In this ever-increasing environmentally conscious time, I wanted to focus my attention on looking at possible solutions to some of the current problems associated with the superyacht industry. Eco-luxury should no longer be viewed as an oxymoron. ‘Soliloquy – the Super-Green Superyacht’ is a true metaphor to show that this ideal is viable.

But the Soliluquy isn’t just for rich hippies. Innovative features include:

• Ever-evolving superstructure that will create a striking visual display to all onlookers
• Socializing areas include alfresco living spaces on the main deck
• The use of the superstructure has been improved by the photovoltaic surfacing.

Without charge the Soliloquy can run at 8 knots for as long as the sun shines. The interiors have been specified to reduce the vessel’s carbon footprint.

Solar Sailor Holdings Ltd. will exhibit a scale model of the super green luxury superyacht in Majorca on June 25.

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