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The M1 Super Battery
Posted by John Goulden Categories: Corporate News, Misc. Tech, Portable Audio / Video, Transportation,
It’s been said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. While that may have been true some years ago, in today’s ever mobile world, the proverbial mousetrap is now the battery. Electronic devices of all kinds require power, and if it’s not plugged into the wall, that power has traditionally been supplied by the humble battery. Fuel cell technology, while promising, isn’t quite ready for primetime yet so batteries are still center stage. With the battery industry worth billions of dollars, it’s no wonder that companies are always vying to outdo one another for dominance.
With the introduction of the M1, A123 Systems has introduced a remarkable upgrade to the Li-Ion battery. In comparison to a standard Li-Ion cell they’ve been able to double the power density, increase the peak power fivefold, and significantly reduce the time required for charging. Those gains have been accomplished by shrinking the size of the particles that coat the battery’s electrodes from 5-20 microns (standard Li-Ion) to below 100 nanometers for the new M1. Another benefit to the technology is safety. A typical Li-Ion cell when penetrated will explode, whereas an M1 cell will merely emit smoke.
One of the first adopters to bring the M1 technology to market is DeWalt. Their new line of 36-volt power tools have batteries that weigh the same as competitor’s 18-volt products, yet deliver more power and longer runtimes. While DeWalt’s application is all well and good, A123 Systems have their sights set firmly on the automotive industry. For example, the 100-lb battery in a Toyota Prius could have it’s weight reduced by nearly 80% and a quick re-charge to 90% capacity would only take 5 minutes! Certainly a technology to keep an eye on.
Read More 
| A123 Systems via Wired
Wicked Lasers Pulsar And Fusion Quick Review Impressions
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, Misc. Tech,
Not sure if you noticed, but the guys over at Wicked Lasers are on a mega advertising spree across the Interweb right now. Almost everywhere I look - including our own AdSense ads - I am seeing Wicked Lasers. Recently, we hooked up with them and got our hands on a couple of their lasers. We wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out, these things are, um, wicked cool. We shot some video of us playing with the lasers, which will be featured in an upcoming episode of The Bleeding Edge. For now, know that we were able to successfully burn letters into plastic bags by using the lasers to melt the plastic, and that is just the beginning of some of the fun we had with these things.
The two lasers we have in our possession are the 100mW red colored Pulsar, along with the 125mW green Fusion. Believe it or not, the green laser can go 50 miles. We have a bunch more images of these two products, which you can check out after the jump.
Click to continue reading Wicked Lasers Pulsar And Fusion Quick Review Impressions
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This aint your momma’s RC Airplane, folks. This here is our US Army’s latest in high-tech surveillance, which is helping our troops lay the smackdown on those evil-doers. This Raven unmanned aerial vehicle is guided by GPS and is so wicked cool, that when you twitch from drinking too much Jolt cola on those late night missions and crash your bird, it pops apart on impact and makes fixing it a whole lot easier than grabbin some balsa wood, Elmer’s and an Xacto knife. Heck, these RC pilots dont even have to fetch the bird, they just call a local ground-pounder unit to fish that puppy out and bring it home.
“I get paid by the Army to fly remote-controlled planes,” says Sgt. Nathan Wyatt from 3-29 Field Artillery. From his post at LSA Anaconda, he operates the three foot-long Raven unmanned aerial vehicle. Almost every day, he hand-launches one of his three Kevlar and Styrofoam birds into the skies over north-central Iraq. Wyatt controls the Raven with a handheld console while, ideally, an assistant monitors flight parameters on a separate console. Each operator has a screen showing what the Raven sees. With a range of up to 15 miles and both day and night sensors, that amounts to quite a lot. The imagery is beamed straight to a display in the tactical operations center.
All things being what they are, this bird isn’t without it’s faults, but flying it sure is a cool way to earn a paycheck from Uncle Sam. Why the hell didn’t my recruiter tell me about this job? Rock on my RC Drone flying troops…Gear Live and America thank you and all of our troops for putting it on the line every day.
Read More | SoldierTech
Latest Gear Live Videos
Gear Live Podcast 016: Warpdrive Patent Refused, Canon EOS 30D, iPod Privacy Filter
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Cameras, Features, Misc. Tech, Podcasts, Portable Audio / Video,
Today we had a few interesting items come into our radar that we wanted to talk about. In today’s episode:
- Warpdrive Patent Turned Down: We discuss the US patent office rejecting a patent request for a technology that is a far way off.
- iPod Video Privacy Filter: The Digital CowBoy iPod video filter sounds like a good idea. We discuss it’s pros and cons.
- Canon EOS 30D: Finally, we talk about the significance of the Canon EOS 30D camera.
Here’s how to get the show:
|Subscribe| - iTunes
|Subscribe| - RSS
|Download| - Enhanced AAC
|Download| - MP3
Voices: Andru Edwards, Sparky
Length: 10:23, 5 MB
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In a follow-up to a story we posted last week, the folks over at OSx86 Project are back online and the forums have been restored. It seems that Apple was primarily concerned with just a few posts that had some links pointing to some warez that the Apple Legal Department didn’t take to kindly to. In the end it seems things were settled amicably and nobody’s feelings, animals or children were hurt in the process.
Apple doesn’t “have it in” for our site; they were simply concerned with a few links posted by our members. Those links have been removed and we’re back.
You can read the full story as well as OSx86’s point of view on how news of this event was misreported by the media, at their site. Welcome back OSx86!
Read More | OSx86 Project
Biometrics do have their disadvantages, but the technology is undeniably cool. Automotive Technology Research and Development (ATRD) has brought biometrics into your car as an aftermarket option to help deter vehicle theft with the Biometric Immobiliser. The premise is simple enough - you have a fingerprint reader that is placed in an easily accessible location and positive identification of your finger is required before the car can be started. The brains of the Immobiliser are in a steel enclosure designed to be hidden away within the car, and the unit is capable of working as a stand-alone device or in conjunction with an existing alarm system.
Read More | ATRD via Coolest Gadgets
Solio Solar Charger for your iPod: Back in Black
Posted by Frank Bisono Categories: Accessories, Apple, Cameras, Smartphones, GPS, Handhelds, Misc. Tech, Peripherals, Portable Audio / Video,
For those of you planning to conquer Mount Everest in the near future, you know you can’t possibly do this without taking your iPod with you right? Well how the heck are you gonna charge that sucker on your way up to the summit? Solio has the answer for ya. All the goodness and eco-friendly power of the sun can now be harnessed just for you so that you can power all those gadgets for free, courtesy of that shiny ball of light in the sky. But what about all your other gadgets? Relax Skippy, have sunlight, will travel…
Solio is a portable, renewable power source that draws energy from sunlight, storing it in an internal battery and using it to charge virtually all mobile electronic devices, including:
• Cell phones
• iPods/MP3 players
• Digital cameras
• PDAs
• GPSsSo wherever you are…whenever you need power…Solio is there.
Anything: Powers virtually all your hand-held electronics
Anytime: Stores power for whenever you need it
Anywhere: Chargeable from the sun or wall socket
Anyone: Easy to use by attaching a cable and pushing a button
How’s that for gadget coolness? The latest Solio now comes in black, along with the older Coldplay version. Pretty spiffy for those of you with a black nano or 5G Video iPod. Now you can climb and conquer in style, while maintaining maximum fashionability. Rock on…
Read More | Solio
Seagate Unleashes 12GB Monster Mini Hard Drive for Cell Phones
Posted by Frank Bisono Categories: Smartphones, Misc. Tech, Portable Audio / Video,
Just when you thought you would never have enough SD or Memory Stick cards to quench your appetite for storage, Seagate announces their new 12GB one-inch hard drive for mobile devices. Talk about a mobloggers dream. This puppy is now going to demand those higher-megapixel camera phones to hit the market pronto.
Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX), the world’s leading manufacturer of Consumer Electronics (CE) hard drives, today announced the newest member of its diverse CE product portfolio, the Seagate ST1.3 Series 12GB 1-inch hard drive. With a footprint 23% smaller, 50% more storage capacity, and 30% less power consumption than Seagate’s current 1-inch hard drive, the ST1.3 Series also offers a new optional drop sensor for increased robustness, delivering the features most requested by handheld device manufacturers. The ST1.3 Series hard drive is Seagate’s second hard drive with perpendicular recording and the company’s first drive utilizing perpendicular technology in the 1-inch category.
This little Giga-Wonder-Disk has all sorts of cool new technology in place to make sure your digital media keeps up with your fast paced lifestyle. Things like Run-on Technology and G-Force Protection will make sure that whether working out or those accidental slips-of-hand, your device will continue working and playing music without skipping a beat. We can’t wait to see which devices will hit the market first using this new drive.
Read More | Seagate
Conspiracy theories are born of concepts like this. Riya Photo Search is a photo-sharing website similar in nature to Flickr, SmugMug and Picturetrail, but with a twist. That twist is Riya’s software that performs facial recognition of the subjects in your photos. It works like this: you upload your images to Riya, go through those images and select the faces of people in them and associate names with those faces. Riya will then allow you to search your photo collection (as well as other’s publicly shared photos) for images that match who you’re looking for. Looking for that picture of Aunt Sally? As long as you have tagged a prior photo of her, Riya will pick out every photo that she is in. The software is also capable of text recognition so searching for street and business names becomes a reality. Riya’s beta phase starts soon and they are taking applications for people who want to give the service a try. Neat concept, but very creepy. We have hung with a few of the Riya peeps (like Tara Hunt) in the past - their team is damn cool.
Read More | Riya Photo Search
Mac mini NOC - Ghetto Style
Posted by Frank Bisono Categories: Apple, Misc. Tech, Mods / Hacks, PC / Laptop,
For those of us on a Mac Mini computing budget with Xserve level taste, if you want to make your own Network Operations Center at a fraction of the cost, you should check out the how-to guide on MetaSkills. Ken does a great job detailing the steps he took to create his own homebrew ghetto-style version of a NOC for his home computing pleasure. Beware though, this guide does get into a little bit of high-level network admin stuff, so it’s not for the uninitiated. If you want to set up a killer little rig at home, and on a budget, this is a great read.
Read More | MetaSkills
