Kevin Fubar

Elektra One Electric Airplane

 Technology  No Responses »
Mar 252011
 

We regularly report on new advances in electric cars, and you’ve maybe seen some of these electric bikes. The Elektra One is an all-electric single seater airplane weighing in at 440 pounds with a full contingent of batteries. The plane recently performed two test flights in Augsburg, Germany. This is the first successful flight of this design and marks it’s imminent entry into the European market. Calin Gologan is the CEO of the company marketing the electric aircraft, PC-Aero.

With these first test flights completed, PC-Aero plans to get more than three hours of flight time out of this design. The propeller only spins at 1,400 RPM, keeping this a very quiet, and hopefully efficient, flight. “The three hour endurance goal translates to more than a 400 km (~250 miles) range according to PC-Aero.”

The 100,000 Euro price tag would net you not only the plane, but the hangar and charging system as well. PC-Aero plans to package the planes with hangars built to provide the Elektra One with solar charging. Gologan believes that 215 square feet of panels will give the Elektra one 300 hours of flight time per year without drawing any juice from the grid.

 Posted by Kevin Fubar at 10:00 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

LOL is Now Officially English

 Internet, Technology  No Responses »
Mar 252011
 

The Oxford English Dictionary added a number of networthy initialisms to the ranks of official English words. If you haven’t heard of an initialism before, I hadn’t, you’ll now know that this is a word that is created by making an acronym from the first letters of each word in a longer phrase. The venerable dictionary added and updated a collection of these acronyms to it’s rolls of wordiness earlier today.

LOL officially enters the ranks of real words alongside such internet-chat-spawned shorthand as OMG (Oh My God), IMHO(In My Humble/Honest Opinion), and BFF(Best Friend Forever). The Oxford guys also decided to update the entries to the older terms FYI (For Your Information) and TMI (Too Much Information). Apparently the folks over at the OED neglected to include ROFL and LMAO, most likely because they aren’t used quite as often verbally or in traditional print.

As such usage indicates, many people would consider these recent coinages, from the last 10 or 20 years, and associate them with a younger generation conversant with all forms of digital communications. As is often the case, OED’s research has revealed some unexpected historical perspectives: our first quotation for OMG is from a personal letter from 1917; the letters LOL had a previous life, starting in 1960, denoting an elderly woman (or ‘little old lady’; see LOL n./1); and the entry for FYI [FYI phr., adj., and n.], for example, shows it originated in the language of memoranda in 1941 – OED

The dictionary also added the popular usage of ♥ to heart as a colloquial synonym for to love. So now, writing “I ♥ you” to your sweetie is not only sickeningly adorable, it’s also grammatically correct! I think you’ll all join us in saying, “WTF?”

 Posted by Kevin Fubar at 9:14 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ornithopter Replicates Insect Flight

 Technology  No Responses »
Mar 252011
 

A team at Cornell University’s Computational Synthesis Laboratory has developed tiny hovering Ornithopters. These machines were the first type of design for mechanical flight that people began to experiment with. The team at Cornell has been working on the project design for the past few years, but last year they were able to construct a working model using 3D printing techniques. They mimicked the principles of insect flight to design their hovering machine. These little guys flit around like mechanical lacewings.

The 3D printing techniques allowed the students to quickly redesign the wings of their tiny craft. This tiny ‘thopter weighs in at less than four grams and has demonstrated 85 seconds of stable untethered flight. The trick to the untethered flight comes in the form of two dampening sails attached to the top and bottom of the wings. The sails even give the ‘thopter the ability to right itself by flipping from upside down into a position where lift is produced.

This video posted by the team from Cornell is a compilation of flight demonstrations. It starts by showing the design’s tethered flight capabilities, both at a stable altitude and with a climb and descent. Then it has a few videos of various untethered flight tests, including a slow motion demonstration of the self-righting flip and the 85 second endurance test.

The team was composed of Charlie Richter, Floris van Breugel, William Regan, and Zhi Ern Teoh.

[via Cornell CSL]

 Posted by Kevin Fubar at 8:24 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Facebook Tests Real-Time Ad Targeting

 Technology  No Responses »
Mar 252011
 

By now, we’re all used to targeted ads. Whether you’re getting daily Groupons in your inbox or if you’re one of the 600 million who regularly browse Facebook, you’ve seen a targeted ad. Until now, these advertisers have been aggregating your data, grouping you and targeting ads to you based on these groupings. Facebook has been testing a new service that alters the method by which ads are chosen. Traditional targeted ads are based on aggregated data. Facebook has begun serving ads to a small subset of their users based on real-time data mining.

The new feature being tested does not alter this algorithm other than speeding it up, so ads are served immediately after a status is posted, getting the brand in front of the user much faster, hopefully during decision-making time. – AdAge

That makes simple sense. Now, posting a status update about some random desire could serve you with relevant targeted ads immediately. That’s cool. Really, this doesn’t change much. It’s just speeding up the process that’s already in place. Before, this information had to be filtered and aggregated before the ads were served to your browser. Now, it’s much quicker.

1% of Facebook’s 600 million customers are enjoying this new feature.

[via TIME]

 Posted by Kevin Fubar at 7:20 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
© 2011 Red News Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha