Gadgets Blog » 2010 » June

In 2007, Indian automotive giant Tata Motors announced a partnership which could lead to the commercial production of Europe’s first compressed air car. Three years later, the idea has seemingly fallen off the radar. The MiniC.A.T sounds like a great idea, so where has it gone? Was it really just too good to be true?

The Specs & Numbers

The MiniC.A.T is a lightweight, zero-emissions, fiberglass vehicle that is fueled by compressed air and a 1 liter tank of vegetable oil. With one charge, the MiniC.A.T keeps drivers going for 10 hours or for 200-300 kilometers – numbers that are nearly double those of electric-powered cars.

While a gas car needs an oil change after 5,000 miles, the MiniC.A.T keeps going for 50,000 kilometers until it needs a new tank of vegetable oil. Recharging the car with compressed air would take between 2-3 minutes and cost approximately 1.5 Euros. If fueling stations are unavailable, the MiniC.A.T will come with an attached compressor that refills the tank within 4 hours.

In the ongoing battle between these two computing titans, there’s been a great deal of buzz lately about the rivalry. First of all, the release of the iPhone 4 brought the attention of the media onto Apple, but Google has a strain of independently developed smartphones boasting Android as an operating system slated for release this summer as well.

While Apple might retain the edge over Google in the world of gadgets and electronics, Google remains an Internet giant, and today’s news story only works to further highlight this status.

Google Chrome, the company’s entry into the world of web browsers, was announced to have overtaken Apple’s Safari browser in terms of market share. Safari, which comes standard on Apple computers, was reported in Geek Juice to have a market share of 8.88 percent, with Chrome holding a slight edge at 8.92 percent.

The electronic distribution model has seen some remarkable growth over the last several years, thanks in no small part to the advent of high speed Internet. With a growing availability of a quick net speed, the Aughts (or whatever you’d like to call the 2000s) were a transforming time for retail. Fast forward to present day and a number of companies succeed in an electronic distribution model. iTunes brings us music, NetFlix brings us movies, and Amazon brings us books all with a simple download. In this same vein, Steam brings us video games.

Steam is a quickly-growing service that takes this distribution of gaming and makes it an entirely-online endeavor. Developed by video game company Valve, who are responsible for gaming classics like Half-Life and Left 4 Dead, the service provides a means for gamers to peruse an extensive library of games from both major and independent developers. The games can then be purchased over the internet, then downloaded to your home computer. You don’t need a net connection to play them, they instead become your own, able to travel with you from computer to computer.

Stop the presses! This week marks a new generation in smartphone-dom, as well as Apple fanboy-ism. The release of the iPhone 4G, despite some worries about the number of available devices on the market, triggered a mass-rush to pick up the hot item. Apple’s been on a roll the last few months, with the iPad only setting the tone for this week’s new gadget. With Steve Jobs and company poised to take over the world, and the tech news-media salivating over the company’s every move, it seemed like nothing could possibly go wrong. Right?

Unfortunately, there seems to have been a bit of rain on Apple’s parade. The much-anticipated next-gen iPhone was indeed released to thrilled crowds of gadget-lovers, but a second wave of reports began streaming in that seemed to point to some serious engineering failures on the part of Apple. Namely, the new iPhone has some issues with its WiFi and 3G reception caused by interference from the user’s hand. While any wireless device experiences a bit of this interference when in use, the iPhone’s issue is related to the lower left hand corner of the device, a common area to be covered while holding the phone in your hand.

YouTube, one of the Internet’s most visited websites, won a great victory today in a lawsuit that threatened the very nature of the website itself. One of the primary reasons the site was initially purchased by Internet giant Google was its freedom under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Under this piece of federal law, the parent company of a website such as YouTube could not be prosecuted for hosting illegal materials (such as clips of trademarked television shows) so long as they were cooperative in removing video when notified of a violation. While Google has certainly been cooperative in this endeavor, this wasn’t enough for media company Viacom, which filed a lawsuit worth $1 billion in damages.

Today’s top news story also makes for a great way to discuss a nifty gadget: the e-reader. On Monday of this week, Barnes & Noble proudly announced they would be cutting the price of their in-house gadget, the Nook, to the spectacularly low price of $149. It wasn’t available for all editions of the Nook, just those with only WiFi support (as opposed to the more luxurious model which boasts WiFi and 3G coverage). Scarcely hours later, Amazon.com struck back with a price cut of their own, knocking the Kindle down to $189. The result? A price war just before summer reading. But which one to buy?

The Kindle has stood as the favorite in the e-reader arena for some time now. Hitting the market before the Nook, it was one of the first devices to exist solely for the reading of electronic books, and made a sizable impression in the market. Lightweight and portable, with battery life lasting a staggering amount of time, the Kindle offered up a great way to take an electronic library on the go. Factor in how the device was tied to Amazon’s burgeoning online book empire, the availability of texts was an excellent addition to a serious reader’s gadgets.

The Nook, on the other hand, is the challenger in this fight. Barnes & Noble’s gadget offers up some features that improve upon the ideas found in the Kindle, and advantage it gained by being the latter of the two devices to be released onto the market. The Nook features a touch-screen instead of the bulky Kindle keyboard, and also enables the user to “lend” a book to another Nook user for up to two weeks. The better-looking of the two gadgets, the Nook is somewhat troubled by its slower loading speed and shorter battery life.

While writing about today’s unique gadget, I face what must be a lack of understanding. Both of my parents wear glasses, either for reading or daily vision, but I’ve personally been lucky enough to have perfect vision. I have, however, witnessed some of their struggles with their lenses.

It can be difficult at times for a person who is either near-sighted or far-sighted to adapt their vision for times when the corrective lenses aren’t needed. While bifocals help to one degree, today’s gadget takes the entire realm of glasses technology and gives it the greatest upgrade since convertible lenses.

Developed by American firm PixelOptics, the new electronic spectacles use some of the same technology that goes into your smartphone to create glasses lenses that adjust their focus based on the distance at hand.

The technology combines traditional glasses with a layer of micro-crystals that can be adjusted in the middle of the frame.

It’s remarkable to think about how much computers have changed, even in my own short lifetime. Growing up with the family desktops, I recall upgrading from 8 to 16MB of RAM on an old IBM machine.

There were the programs run in MS-DOS, there were the bulky tube-based monitors and trips to the Apple 2-E computer labs at my grade school to play Oregon Trail.

All of these memories were of machines that boasted less power than is in my current telephone. It’s the remarkable thing about technology, the rate at which it progresses. Size and power leap upwards in exponential jumps.

While you can certainly find an external hard drive larger in size than Samsung’s new SSD Solid State, you’re not likely to find one boasting the same kind of specifications.

In the world of technology and gadgets, a couple of important things happened this week (as they do every week). We all understand that it’s tough to stay in the loop about absolutely everything tech, so keep checking back with us to keep you in the know about the most important milestones from around the web. We’ll cover stories with economic importance, tech-forward thinking, and just plain cool ideas.

This week’s biggest themes – deals, data, & cell phone carrier competition:

Few television programs in the United States have the same legacy and pedigree as “Jeopardy!” The game show, hosted by legend Alex Trebek, is a trivia program that has been a household name for several generations. Contestants are posed with questions, frequently worded in idiosyncratic ways intended to trick the players, who must then respond in a question format.

The television show challenges both the trivia knowledge of the contestants as well as their ability to interpret these clues, which often involve wordplay and combinations of unlike terms. It’s a game intended to showcase the sharpest of human minds… until now.