Hendo Hoverboard

Yes, a fully functional hoverboard. And it’s real this time. The Hendo hoverboard currently levitates over surfaces that are non-ferromagnetic conductors. Unfortunately, the actual hoverboards at the $10,000 pledge level are already gone. You can, however, still back the campaign for other rewards, including a five minute ride, a 60-minute “coach and ride,” and a developer’s kit that includes the hover engine and surface material.

Anura

Drones are cool, but they don’t travel well in your back pocket. The Anura is a mini drone that weighs only four ounces and folds up for easy storage or travel. It’s controlled with an app on your smartphone and has a built-in camera. The Anura's runtime is 12-16 minutes and charges over USB.

Aluminum Rolling Pin

Easier to clean than wood and lighter than marble, the KMN Home aluminum rolling pin looks great and is highly functional. The surface is non-stick and when chilled, it won’t transfer heat to dough. Laser-engraved measurement markings also help measure out the perfect amount of dough.

Mousr

This cat toy doesn’t just spin around in circles; the Mousr is a robotic cat toy that reacts to a cat’s movements. It has Bluetooth connectivity for when you want to take control with your smartphone and play with your cat. You can also switch out its tail for a little variety.

StoneTether

What makes StoneTether stand out among the many tracking devices already available is its range. The creators claim that it has a range of up to 500 feet. It’s small enough to fit on your keychain, backpack, or slipped into your kid’s pocket. It’s also water resistant up to 30 feet.

BeON

The BeON bulb installs and works like a regular light bulb, but is also a smart burglar deterrent. It can learn your lighting habits and simulate them when you’re away. It also activates when someone rings the doorbell and has a backup battery for temporary lighting during a power outage.

Point

Point lets you keep tabs on your home without a squadron of cameras and devices. Point is unassuming and less invasive, according to Point’s makers. Its sensors can detect sound, air quality, temperature, and even if someone’s tampering with the device. With IFTTT support, you can configure a variety of actions and alerts.

Bracket

Tired of plugging and unplugging the same cables into your MacBook Pro Retina all the time? The Bracket wrangles up the power, display, USB, and audio cables into a neat and simple cable dock. The Bracket is made out of aircraft-grade aluminum and makes plugging and unplugging all your cables a single operation.

Hush

Paired with your smartphone, the Hush earplugs block out environmental noise while allowing important notifications in. It uses memory foam for passive noise cancellation and soothing sounds to block out noise. You can choose from white noise, brown noise, pink noise, and more.

Pantelligent

Need a little help with cooking that perfect steak or fish? The Pantelligent’s temperature sensor pairs with your iOS device to help take the guess work out of pan frying your food. It notifies you when the pan is at the right temperature to start, when to flip, and when the food is done cooking.

Ford and Honda stop collisions before they happen with pedestrian detection

Oblivious pedestrians can avoid Darwin’s Law more readily now that mass market automakers Ford and Honda are rolling out pedestrian detection and braking systems. The automakers combine radars and cameras that helps the car ID the culprits, warn the driver, and usually brake in time. They join Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru and Volvo who have jointly taken the lead on these pedestrian safety features.

Most systems work splendidly at 10 mph or below (just not on Lexus’ first pass through theConsumer Reports test track), and most of the time up to 20 mph (32 kph). As speeds approach 30 mph (48 kph), the time to detect grows short, but at least they’ll scrub off speed. (Better to be hit at 5 mph than 25 mph.)

Ford Pre-Collision Assist with Pedestrian Detection

The Ford system is called Pre-Collision Assist with Pedestrian Detection. It combines radar and optical (camera) technology. As with most other systems, the same sensors also warn of rapidly decreasing distance from the car in front, then brake to avoid a crash, or reduce the force.

https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America/US/2014/10/23/pre-collision-b-roll.mp4/jcr:content/renditions/cq5dam.video.firefoxhq.ogg

It debuts first later this year on the 2015 Ford Mondeo. In the US, that’s the Ford Fusion (our Editors’ Choice for midsize hybrids, but there is a gas version too), and the Lincoln MKZ. As for the US, Ford said in its release, “It will then roll out to other Ford and Lincoln products around the world.”

Honda Pedestrian Collision Mitigation Steering System

Honda says it’s bringing out a system a system to deal safely with pedestrians and close-ahead vehicles, under the umbrella term Honda Sensing. The pedestrian safety component is called Pedestrian Collision Mitigation Steering System. A millimeter wave radar in the grille and a monocular video camera in the windshield sense pedestrians in front and alongside the road. In the case of roadside pedestrians too close for comfort, the car will veer away from the pedestrian, apparently after making sure there’s no oncoming car. Honda says that will be on the Honda Legend, sold here as the Acura RLX, the largest Acura sedan (RLX, TLX, ILX).

The just-shipped 2015 Acura TLX collision mitigation braking system uses the same radar and camera duo to brake for pedestrians but apparently not steer away from them.

More bells and whistles to protect pedestrians

While radar sees fine in the dark and optical cameras work passably well as close distance after dark, automakers such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz are championing infrared night vision systems that produce an infrared view of the road ahead mapped to heat emitted by objects. Algorithms similar to the radar/camera pedestrian detection systems identify humans on foot, cyclists, and large animals, and prevent the view on the instrument panel or center stack LCD. Current systems highlight people and animals and sound an alert. Cadillac and Lexus also offer night vision.

The BMW / Mercedes systems have the ability to disengage one of their steerable multi-beam headlamp array units, aim it at the pedestrian’s feet, and flash it three times. It also can shine a light on deer and other large animals. In the US, the units are dumbed down to deal with US safety standards.

What pedestrian detection can’t do

Pedestrian detection works better in the day than at night. The pre-collision component can be affected by snow and rain, especially for the systems that are optical-only. Automakers are also nervous about describing the max speed where the pedestrian for sure won’t be hit. In Ford’s press release, the company uses “may” five times (“may help,” “may detect”). There’s less time to detect, react and brake at speed: at 30 mph, there’s only one second of reaction and braking time for a pedestrian 44 feet ahead (two and a half car lengths); at 10 mph, it’s 132 feet, almost half a football field.

While Ford and Honda are taking strides forward in affordability and features, the champion of pedestrian safety remains Volvo. If you buy a Volvo – any model, pedestrian and cyclist detection comes standard. It has been standard since the 2014 model year. They also include an early technology, City Safety, that brakes for other cars in urban areas or at city speeds.

Since the radar and camera technologies are sourced from third parties, it’s likely all automakers will offer some form of pedestrian detection within 2-3 years. When all cars have USB jacks and similar fuel economy (for their weight and engine size), safety is a distinguishing factor. If you’re not better than the rest, you can’t be without a safety aid available from your competitors.

HP announces split into two companies, but sadly they won’t be called H and P

HP, after years of will-they-won’t-they deliberation, has officially announced that it will be split into two separate companies: HP Inc, which will focus on PCs and printers, and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which will take over the servers, storage, and other enterprisey aspects of HP. Current CEO of HP Meg Whitman will become the CEO of HP Enterprise; HP’s head of printers and PCs, Dion Weisler, will become HP Inc’s new CEO.

Updated: 5,000 employees will be laid off as part of the split, bringing the total number of redundancies to 55,000 under Whitman’s restructuring measures over the last three years. HP still has over 300,000 employees currently.

In theory, this split will give each company the focus, independence, and flexibility to effectively compete in markets that have become a lot more competitive over the last few years — Lenovo has eaten a lot of HP’s bread-and-butter PC business, and the commodification of the server market (mostly thanks to Intel/x86) has weakened HP on that front as well. Funnily enough, printers are still one of HP’s biggest profit centers — but obviously, that isn’t really a growth market.

Dion Weisler, the incoming CEO of HP Inc.

HP’s split comes at a time when it’s fairly fashionable for larger technology companies to spin-off or break-up into smaller chunks. The idea is that these smaller companies have a narrower focus, and can thus react to market/consumer demands much faster — and, of course, be in a better position to take on the next startup that threatens to cripple their business entirely. Just last week, Ebay announced that it would be spinning off PayPal into a separate company — a move that shareholders were very fond of (Ebay climbed about 8% that day).

HP has been toying with the idea of breaking up some of its divisions for a few years. Backin 2011, HP announced that it was interested in spinning off its PC business — but in the end, then-new-CEO Meg Whitman decided to maintain the status quo for the time being. Now, some two years after Whitman restructured the business, HP still isn’t doing very well — and so it’s time to do something a little more dramatic. Read the full press release for all of the details — but basically, the company is being split along consumer/enterprise lines, with printers and PCs going one way, and every other division/product (servers, networking, software, etc.) going towards HP Enterprise. The split should be completed by the end of fiscal year 2015 — October 2015.

Meg Whitman — soon to be CEO of the new HP Enterprise group

Moving forward, the new HP Inc will focus on “new computing experiences” and “new markets” like 3D printing, ultimately working towards “inventing technology that empowers people to create, interact and inspire like never before.” HP Enterprise will “accelerate innovation across key next-generation areas of the portfolio.” Overall, the main thing is that the new companies will be able to focus their R&D efforts and financial resources on things that will directly benefit them. Presumably HP Enterprise will continue to work on The Machine. It will be interesting to see if HP Inc finally gets into the smartphone market, after Whitman said way back in 2012 that they really should get into that market.

Some memristors — one of HP’s better inventions over the last decade or so, which will hopefully used by The Machine

Personally, I’m a bit disappointed that the two new companies aren’t called Hewlett and Packard — but it probably is the right move to make, business-wise. HP, along with other big tech giants from the pre-Google days such as Dell, Microsoft, IBM, are now being faced with the hard truth that the wellsprings that made them hundreds of billions of dollars will probably dry up a lot faster than they expected. In the olden days, technology and consumer demand moved slowly enough that companies could keep up — but now, it’s becoming increasingly hard for these behemoths to fulfill that demand before a sprightly little startup arrives on the scene and quickly lays down roots. The split into HP Inc and HP Enterprise, if they are managed well, could be a very savvy move.

Samsung develops 60GHz WiFi capable of 4.6Gbps, will be in devices next year

Samsung has announced that it’s entering the 60GHz 802.11ad WiFi game. Samsung says it has a commercialized version of 60GHz WiFi (aka WiGig) that’s capable of 4.6Gbps, or 575 megabytes per second — about five times faster than current dual-stream 802.11ac devices, or fast enough to download a movie in a couple of seconds. Samsung says the first devices supporting its 60GHz WiFi tech will be available in 2015.

This announcement is a little bit fishy. Samsung is dressing this up like it’s solely responsible for developing 60GHz WiFi — but in actual fact, 802.11ad has been in development since 2009 and was standardized way back in 2012. Back then it was known as WiGig (because of its gigabit speeds), but in 2013 it was consumed by the Wi-Fi Alliance and became part of the WiFi family of wireless networking standards. We have been writing about WiGig/60GHz WiFi since at least 2011, and got our first hands-on demo in 2012 – but, seemingly for technical reasons, very few WiGig products have actually appeared on the market. Presumably Qualcomm’s acquisition of Wilocity means it will have a commercialized 802.11ad solution soon, though.

Calling 802.11ad “60GHz WiFi” is a bit of a misnomer. Until now, WiFi described a set of relatively-low-frequency (2.4GHz and 5GHz) technologies for (mostly) creating wireless LANs. As a result, WiFi has generally had a range of between 50 and 200 feet — the kind of distances that you’d usually be loathe to run a cat 5 cable. 802.11ad, because 60GHz radio waves require line-of-sight and can be disrupted by just about anything — cats, humans, bad atmospheric conditions, a closed door — generally has a range of just a few meters. As such, 60GHz WiFi has a fairly short list of decent applications, with “wireless docking stations” probably at the top.

Original WiGig concept art, from 2010. Notice the distinct lack of obstacles and handy line-of-sight. 60GHz WiFi will be great in minimalist homes…

While there’s only a few hundred megahertz of spectrum down in the 2.4/5GHz range, up in the unlicensed 60GHz range there’s around eight gigahertz of free bandwidth. A single 802.11ad channel – a swath of 2.16GHz around the 60GHz range — has a max throughput of 4.6Gbps. A single 160MHz 802.11ac channel maxes out 866Mbps — and there aren’t any 802.11ac chips that support 160MHz channels yet. Multi-stream 802.11ac is capable of similar speeds to 802.11ad, though.

Why is Samsung making such a huge deal about its 802.11ad solution, then? Well, it seems the company has found a way of overcoming the inherent difficulties of using 60GHz radio waves. The press release is sadly lacking in technical details, but apparently Samsung has developed “the world’s first micro beam-forming control technology” and a “wide-coverage beam-forming antenna” that improve the 802.11ad connection quality. Samsung doesn’t actually offer any numbers or examples, though; as far as we can tell, Samsung’s 60GHz WiFi is probably still mostly targeted at static solutions (docking stations, wireless audio/visual devices) rather than smartphones and laptops, which have a tendency to move around a lot and break the finicky 60GHz beam.

Personally I’m more excited about the proliferation of multi-stream 802.11ac devices, such as this Linksys WRT1900AC router, as seen outside my house in England.

Moving forward, I’ve never been particularly convinced by 60GHz networking technologies. Once we move towards tri- and quad-stream 802.11ac devices, 802.11ad isn’t a whole lot faster — and it’s a whole lot more temperamental. Perhaps most importantly, though,802.11ax is already coming down the pipe — and unlike 802.11ad, it’s a standard, long-range, 5GHz-based WiFi technology. A single 802.11ax stream should be capable of 3.5Gbps — and the spec will go all the way up to 4×4 MIMO, for 14Gbps, or about 1,750 megabytes per second.

Anyway, if you’re still interested, Samsung says its 802.11ad technology will be available in 2015. I don’t think the average consumer will see a lot of WiGig/60GHz WiFi — instead, 802.11ac will cement its grip in 2015 in 2016, and then slowly hand over to 802.11ax after that.

Android 5.0 Lollipop: All the details and features of Google’s sweetest treat yet

Google revealed many details about the new version of Android a few months ago, but we didn’t get a name — it was simply “Android L.” Now there’s finally a name and a version number to go with it. Android 5.0 Lollipop is a seismic shift for Android in both design and features. With all the details of Android 5.0 now in the wild, it’s time to tell you all about the latest, largest, and greatest Android release yet. Buckle up and sit back: There’s a lot of awesome new features to run through.

Materially different

Google’s last design language was known as Holo, but that has been replaced by Material Design. This was thoroughly previewed when the developer preview was released, and Google went on to update the design guidelines for developers to start making Material apps. However, Google is stressing something new with the unveiling of Lollipop — consistency across devices.

From your phone, to your tablet, to your watch, to your car,  to your TV — it’s going to be Android Lollipop all the time. Well, as soon as your device maker gets around to pushing out an update. There will still be manufacturer skins, but Google is trying to create a vibrant new UI that OEMs will have a hard time covering up. The use of “hero” colors in apps is an example of this. The header color will carry over to the status bar (if the developer supports it), and that color is then shown in the header when you open the app switcher. OEMs loveto skin the app switcher, but doing so now will mean taking away useful new UI cues, so why bother?

The preview of Android L came along at a time when there were almost no Material apps to test, but that won’t be a problem when Android 5.0 starts rolling out. It wasn’t clear last spring just how important (and cool) animations were going to be in Android 5.0. Developers have been trying to come up with ways to fake all the subtle button morphing and panel layering of Lollipop on KitKat devices, and these do add something, but Android 5.0′s native support for Material Design is going to make even cookiecutter apps looks amazing. The updated UI samples and upcoming SDK are looking great.

Battery life fixes

Android phones have long suffered from battery life issues caused by the way apps and services can behave in the background. Any app can be granted the power to wake up a device and keep it awake (called a wakelock). This is an important feature of the platform, but sometimes apps are coded poorly or there’s a minor incompatibility that causes a device to stay awake too long. Android 5.0 is supposed to prevent that while also providing you more information about when you’ll have to charge up.

Google is also introducing a power saving mode, which has always been missing from stock Android. It’s not as extensive as what Samsung or HTC are doing with their low-power modes, but it’s a start. You’ll be able to restrict syncing, background data, and screen brightness when you need to eke out a little more battery life. This mode seems to have the same basic options as it did in the preview, but it’s probably tuned better.

The battery use menu has also been revamped with a better graph containing information about which apps and processes are causing drain, rather than just foreground tasks. You also get estimates of remaining battery life based on current and past usage patterns, and a time until charged reading when plugged in. That’s especially cool for devices with Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 2.0 feature, like the Nexus 6 (which calls it Turbo Charger).

Notifications

One of the headlining changes available in the preview of 5.0 was the updated Notification system. The entire look and feel of notifications on Android is changing with easy access on the lock screen, a revamped pull-down menu, and a new heads-up style floating notification that pops up at the top of the screen.

The changes to the layout and location of notifications were already known from the preview, but they are no less notable now. Lock screen widgets are gone in Android 5.0, but that’s probably a worthwhile tradeoff. Lock screen widgets never really took off and having easy access to notifications — even on secured devices — is a big deal. One tap on a notification and you can unlock the phone to the corresponding app.

The final announcement of Android Lollipop includes a few new features of notifications. For one, notifications will be intelligently ranked based on the contact they are from or the app that produced them. So a text message from a favorite contact is at the top and that nagging alert from a social game is down at the bottom (you should really turn those off).

Also new is Priority Mode, which sounds fantastic. Basically, the volume slider has a setting for limiting notifications to only important items. So the text message from above would get through, but the other stuff doesn’t bother you. This appears to be an expansion of the Do Not Disturb setting from the preview, but much more refined.

Security

A recent development in Android land is the news that Android 5.0 will include encryption by default, something that has made the intelligence and law enforcement communities none too happy. You can encrypt an Android device right now, but it’s actually quite a pain. You need to plug the phone in and leave it to do its thing for at least 30 minutes. If something goes wrong, your data could be forever lost.

On Android 5.0 this will happen automatically from the start, so you don’t have to worry about anyone harvesting your data if the phone is lost or stolen. Even if you have a lock screen, unencrypted data can be accessed with a variety of workarounds, but there’s no good way to break the kind of strong cryptography utilized by Android.

If you do lose the phone, the new version of Android comes with factory reset protection or a “kill switch.” It’s an opt-in feature, so it won’t happen automatically like with iOS. You’ll be able to set the phone or tablet to require your Google ID and password to trigger a full wipe of the system. That means a stolen or lost Android Lollipop device is a useless brick to anyone but you.

Google is also confirming that Smart Lock will come to stock Android. This was discussed at I/O 2014, but didn’t show up in the preview. Smart Lock is a way to automatically disable your secure lock screen when a trusted Bluetooth device is paired. For example, you could set your Android Wear watch to automatically bypass the lock screen when it’s connected. Lose that connection and the phone will ask for a password again. You can do the same thing with a fitness tracker or even a Bluetooth headset.

Windows 10 Tech Preview gets its first big update: One-click upgrade is awesome

When Microsoft released the Windows 10 Technical Preview at the start of October, it promised that we’d get lots of rapid updates as it fixes bugs and rolls out new features — and it wasn’t lying! Yesterday, just three weeks after the initial Technical Preview release, Microsoft rolled out the first major update. There are three major new features in Windows 10 build 9841 — a notification tray, Battery Sense, and Data Sense.

In my eyes, though, the most important aspect was that it was really easy to install the new build; you just click a button. With Windows 10, has Microsoft finally tackled the abomination that is the Windows upgrade process?

The glorious one-click upgrade to Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9860

Upgrading to the new build was very easy: You head along to PC Settings, hit “Update and recovery,” click the “Preview builds” tab, and then “Download now.” The new preview build took a while to download — it’s about 2GB or so – but eventually an “Install now” button appeared.

After clicking the Install button, you go through a process that looks a lot like a normal Windows 8 installation. You get a number of black screens with the Windows flag on it, with messages like “Setting up a few more things” at the bottom. Eventually, after a few reboots, you get the rainbow-colored “OMG, Windows 10 is almost ready to go!” sequence — and about 60 seconds later, you’re at the login screen.

The whole process — upgrading from build 9841 to 9860 — took 13 minutes. As far as I can tell, nothing was broken by the upgrade — though I think a few settings, like my microphone volume, were reverted to the defaults. Sadly I didn’t time how long it took my laptop to upgrade from OS X 10.9 to 10.10, but I think Windows 10 was faster by a few minutes. Overall, I am very impressed by Windows 10′s new one-click in-place upgrade.

You cannot perform this upgrade process from the Desktop Control Panel applet called Windows Update. I don’t know if you will be able to in the future, or if Microsoft is going to continue on with this rather odd and clunky interface dichotomy.

Windows 10 notification tray/Action Center (work in progress)

What’s new in Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9860?

Here’s a quick list of the new features in build 9860:

• The Action Center (i.e. notification tray) is now in. As I noted previously, the Windows 10 Desktop interface gains the top-right-corner toast notifications from Windows 8/Metro. Now, there’s also a notification tray (which Microsoft calls the Action Center) available from the bottom right corner of the taskbar. It’s a very rough implementation at the moment.
• Battery Saver. Just like the Windows Phone feature of the same name, Battery Saver allows Windows 10 to limit background activity and scale back hardware performance to conserve battery life.
• Data Sense. Again, just like on Windows Phone, this feature lets you track WiFi and cellular data use — and to set limits on how much mobile data apps can use.
• More keyboard shortcuts. Windows Key + Shift + Left/Right again moves apps between multiple monitors. There are probably some more shortcuts, but I haven’t found them yet.
• New animations! Rather oddly, there’s a bunch of new animations in Windows 10 build 9860. First, it seems there’s now a whole range of animations for opening, minimizing, and closing programs. I am hesitant to say this, but the animations are almost… cute. Personally I really dislike them (and you can turn them off from System > Advanced system settings > Performance) — but maybe I’ll grow to like them… in time. There’s also a new sliding animation when switching from one virtual desktop to another via the Windows Key-Tab switcher.

Windows 10′s new close-window animation. Don’t look at this animation for too long (it made me a bit nauseous).

The new switching virtual desktops animation in Windows 10

Overall, Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9860 is rather impressive. It’s obviously still very much a work in progress, but I’m excited by Microsoft’s accelerated release cadence. If Microsoft can keep it up and release a new build every couple of weeks, and it continues to listen to tester feedback, then the final release of Windows 10 might actually be a useful, decent operating system.

RIP Nokia: Microsoft Lumia is the new face of Windows Phone

Microsoft has announced that the Nokia Lumia brand is dead; there will be no more Nokia-branded Windows Phones. Instead, we’ll now get Microsoft Lumia devices — and in the next few days, all of the existing branding, websites, and social channels will be rebranded as Microsoft Lumia. It will be interesting to see how the Lumia range does, now that it has been fully excised from Nokia. Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest Q1 2015 earnings, released yesterday, highlight that sales of Lumia devices were only slightly up over the last year — and I doubt that the transition to Microsoft branding will help matters.

Back in September 2013, Microsoft announced that it would acquire Nokia’s phone business for $7.2 billion. At the time, it was given a temporary license to use the Nokia name on products — but now it’s time for Microsoft to relinquish one of the world’s top phone brands and forge ahead with making its own name. Incidentally, the other half of Nokia — the network equipment company that retained the right to the “Nokia” brand — is having a whale of a time since it palmed off the devices division to Microsoft; yesterday, it announced that it had its best quarter in long time, finally returning to profitability.

Nokia is historically a maker of networking gear – and after selling its phone division, it’s back to focusing on making the equipment that underpins the world’s mobile networks

Things aren’t so good over at Microsoft. During its Q1 2015 earnings call yesterday, CEO Satya Nadella said the company had sold 9.3 million Lumia Windows Phones — only slightly up from 8.8 million during the same quarter last year. Considering the Lumia brand essentially is Windows Phone, that doesn’t bode well for Windows Phone’s continuing fight against iOS and Android. (For comparison, Apple sold about 40 million iPhones last quarter. We can only guess at how many Android phones were sold worldwide — but probably upwards of 100 million.)

Nadella also admitted that most of the Lumia gains last year were in Europe with lower-priced devices — a region that is historically a Nokia stronghold. Microsoft strategically maneuvered towards low- and mid-range phones last year when it realized that it couldn’t compete against iOS and Android in the flagship segment — but I’m not sure how well Microsoft will do in these markets once the Nokia label is replaced by Microsoft. Remember that, for some 10 years prior to the first iPhone, Nokia had a complete stranglehold on the mobile phone market in these poorer, non-Western countries — Microsoft, however, was just the software company that made your pirated copy of Windows XP.

Microsoft Lumia phone, back, in orange

It’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft mixes things up in the wake of the departing Nokia brand. The first Microsoft Lumia device will be unveiled “soon,” according to an interviewwith Microsoft’s head of phones marketing — though we have no idea what that device might be. Moving forward, the word “Microsoft” will replace the iconic “Nokia” at the top of every new Lumia handset, and “Microsoft” along with the flag logo will appear on the back of the phone as well. Funnily enough, while Microsoft can no longer use the Nokia name on its Lumia handsets, it has a 10-year license to use the name on entry-level phones such as the Nokia 130 — so, if Windows Phone doesn’t work out, I guess Microsoft always has that incredibly low-margin business to fall back on.

In other news, Microsoft’s Q1 2015 earnings were actually quite strong — $23.2 billion in revenue, $4.5 billion profit — with most divisions posting decent gains. Cloud revenue grew a massive 128%, and Server posted strong gains of 13%. Perhaps most importantly, Surface revenues were $908 million, up from $400 million during the same quarter last year — presumably because of strong sales of the Surface Pro 3. (“Presumably” because Microsoft still refuses to release actual sales figures for the Surface tablets.)

Windows 10 Technical Preview deep-dive: A promise of better things to come

The Start Menu is back, in a hybrid of the familiar Windows 7 Start Menu (jumplists and all) and the Windows 8 Start Screen, complete with Live Tiles.

Windows Store apps now run on the Windows desktop, in their own fully resizable and snappable windows, alongside existing Windows desktop apps.

The new quadrant snap feature in Windows 10 helps arrange app windows, both desktop and Windows Store, to take advantage of monitor screen real estate.

Microsoft has received over 200,000 feedback submissions for Windows 10

Microsoft’s next generation operating system is off to a solid start. In less than two weeks, more than a million people have signed up for the company’sWindows Insider Program to provide feedback on their experience with theWindows 10 Technical Preview.

In a blog post on the matter, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore said they’ve received more than 200,000 pieces of feedback via the Windows Feedback app.

Interestingly enough, 64 percent of Windows 10 Technical Preview installs are on actual PCs while the remaining 36 percent of users have installed it on a virtual machine. These numbers suggest that a lot of the feedback that Microsoft is receiving is based on “medium-term” use and not just a few minutes of experimentation.

Belfiore also points out that the number of app-launches that happen on a device is a good indicator of solid use. Microsoft has found that 68 percent of users are launching more than seven different apps each day while a quarter of users are launching more than 26 apps each day.

A script-base analysis of the top feedback requests show that most people want the ability to move or disable the new search and / or taskview buttons. Other popular requests include wanting Microsoft to add an animation or transition when opening the Start menu, make it easier to use a local account and to add tabs to File Explorer
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Hydrogen-Powered Personal Helicopter

A personal helicopter weighing just 230 lb created sizzling news when it flew on hydrogen with zero emission. With an ability to carry payloads up to 800 lbs, this pocket Hercules can fly for 90 minutes. Fitted with easy controls, this reaches a speed of 100 knots thanks to a pair of small yet powerful motors mounted on it. Two common and easily available things – Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and a catalyst – combined to bring about a milestone in personal aviation history with attention to the environmental issues as well!Avimech has combined these two to power engine in to an innovative machine.

YouTube: Avimech Dragonfly | More Videos

A unique combination:

Avimech has combined two ideas – a rocket and a helicopter – to create this cute little personal aviation machine baptizing it as ‘Dragonfly.’ Actually this idea to utilize H2O2 and a catalyst has been around for some time. But to use them to power this hybrid version of a rocket in a helicopter is the brain child of Avimech.

Motors at rotor tips:

There are two powerful small motors fitted at rotor tips which resemble rocket nozzles. These nozzles propel the rotors getting power from the reaction of H2O2 with the catalyst. There is no gearbox. There are two fuel tanks to store H2O2. The H2O2 reacts with the catalyst in the rocket nozzles and the reaction powers the rotor nozzles which sets the rotor tips in high-speed motion.

Common ingredients:

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is very safe environmentally and easily available chemical. Usually printing presses are cleaned with H2O2. This commercial-grade H2O2 is diluted and used in the rotor nozzles. The reaction of H2O2 with the catalyst produces the high pressure which sets the blades into motion.

A simple but great machine:

The motors are 8-inch long and they can generate 102 hp which helps the aircraft peak a speed of 100 knots. The H2O2 is diluted to about 50-70%. And when the catalyst reacts with the H2O2, only water vapor gets released and no other harmful emission occurs.

“(ERA) helicopter:”

Acclaimed as the first ever created environmentally responsible aviation (ERA) helicopter, Dragonfly certainly deserves this epithet. Emitting nothing but water vapor and running on only hydrogen- an environmentally safe fuel, this helicopter does not pollute the space with harmful emissions like carbon.

Future plans? 

This hydrogen-powered, zero-carbon-emission environmentally friendly but expensive helicopter has been the brainchild of Ricardo Cavalcanti of Avimech. Though at present the engines are not fuel-efficient – guzzling 11 gallons of fuel per hour, the day may not be far off when this is also rectified and a perfect eco-friendly personal aviation machine may be available.

Audi Testing Water in Electric Car Production

                                                               The entrepreneurial Audi is planning to take advantage of changes portended in the automobile market with an eye towards emission-free vehicles. Until now Audi has not shown any interest in electric car production but now that there is a growing demand for small and electronically-driven cars, Audi is keen to join the race.

YouTube: Audi Zero | More Videos

Others in the foray:

Rival manufactures like BMW with Megacity electric vehicle and Daimler with Smart ED have already taken the leap with cute little electric cars on their way to produce vehicles with zero carbon emission. Now Audi is joining the arena and the world is keenly interested to see what kind of a car will be Audi’s gift to the automobile world.

Supermini:

A supermini is reportedly the car on the anvil as per a report by What Car? Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler says,”…so we are planning for a changing market when customers will be ready.” Audi is already busy on the electric sports car planned with a limited number release by 2012, to be marketed under the E-tron name.

Audi Zero?

The plan is on for a mass-market electric car – supermini – is very much ongoing as confirmed by CEO Stadler in Munich at the launch of Audi 7 Sportback. Audi’s electric car can either be something similar to A1 e-tron Concept or a smaller platform named ‘Audi Zero’. Audi will not do any spin-off versions like Skoda or Seat had done.

Future plans:

Audi is working on the basis that in about 3-5 years time, market will be ready for such electric cars and that will be the time when these cars will also be viable. In Stadler’s words, “What we then need are customers willing to pay a premium these vehicles demand… We are a technical company planning technical solutions, but we are also entrepreneurial, so we are planning for a changing market… in 10 years time I see a point where we have clean energy too. Then the situation will be perfect.”

World’s Largest Solar Boat Prepares for World Tour

PlanetSolar enjoys the distinction of being the largest solar-powered boat in the world, and it’s ready to take on the world. This beauty’s vital stats are: weight: 60-ton, a 470-square-meter are covered by 38,000 solar cells to generate 103.4 kW of energy. 18 million euro ($24.4 million) was spent to adorn this beauty in environmentally friendly way. SunPower Corporationhas provided the all vital 38,000 black photovoltaic cells to generate power for this catamaran. These solar panels have a pretty decent conversion rate of 22%. This solar powered ship will be launched this month to get the real taste of water from the Knierim Yacht Club in Kiel, Germany.

YouTube: PlanetSolar Boat | More Videos

Jorn Jurgens of SunPower expresses his joy, “We are proud to support the unveiling of the world’s largest solar boat. SunPower’s technology will enable the catamaran to circumnavigate the globe with the speed and performance expected from the planet’s most powerful solar.” This wonderful solar powered ship can cruise at an average speed of 8 knot (14.8 km/h) but is also capable of reaching a top speed of 15 knots. Apart from being the fastest solar boat to cross the Atlantic Ocean, SunPower will be the first to cross both the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

We are dependent on 90,000 ships for transporting of the world’s goods in exchange of 1.4 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. It amounts to twice the quantity of air transport. Now theUnited Nations Environment Program has come out with another dampener associated with progress i.e. sea transport, which will jump 70% by 2020 as global trade progresses. This project comes at an apt time. It wants to create an awareness regarding environmentally friendly fuels and to replace conventional fuels.

The 60 tonne vessel can hold 50 passengers. Raphaël Domjan is the skipper and chief executive and founder of the Planet Solar. Raphaël Domjan has chosen the perfect time to start a world tour with PlanetSolar. Domjan conceptualized the solar-powered vessel in 2004. PlanetSolar’s construction started early in 2008. Raphaël Domjan received funds fromRivendell Holding AG, a Swiss firm that invests in renewable energy. Raphaël Domjan will be assisted by navigator Gérard d’Aboville. He was the first sailor to row the Atlantic Ocean. They will begin the awareness solar power world tour in April. What a fine example of lead by example by this duo! They will highlight the role of sea transport in cutting down on global carbon emissions.

The solar panels installed on this ship will generate 103 kilowatts of power but the engine needs only 20 kilowatts. The rest of the power can be stored and utilized for other purposes. They needed an innovative battery storage system to store so much power so they opted for a lithium ion battery. This is being tested by a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.

This ship will be launched in April. In May, the boat will make a public appearance at celebrations for the port of Hamburg. Later on the boat will be out for sea trials until September. In 2011, it is supposed to cover 40,000 km. PlanetSolar will depart from France to the Panama Canal, across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, through the Suez Canal and across the Mediterranean back to Marseilles.

Before PlanetSolar Japanese shipping giants Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Nippon Oil Corporation launched the Auriga Leader in late 2008 to be partially propelled by solar power.