Not that I would actually drive that ‘green’ motorcycle but I think it’s a great idea and had to be mentioned.

Designed by Saint Thomas Academy students with the help of a $10,000 InvenTeams grant from the Lemelson-MIT program this enclosed green motorcycle scoot about for 40 miles and reach 60 miles-per-hour thanks to its battery-driven Briggs and Stratton ETEK electric motor.

If that wouldn’t be enough to be considered HOT, they’ve even attached a GPS unit to make sure you get the right turn when you go to work in the morning. With the high oil and gas prices these days this seems like a good solution but I’m not sure if it will ever see production. If it helps, I’d test-drive one of these!

via AutoblogGreen

In the “it never happens to me” series, it did happen to me. Recently my laptop’s hard drives crashed/died and the data I had on it, was crucial. First thing I did was to panic and then I had to find online, a company that would help me recover everything.

After a few hours of search, I decided to leave hard drive recovery to DTI Data. They seemed to be the most professional and the fact that they are one of the only companies to offer free upfront flat rate price quotes on single hard drive data recovery was a big plus for me. But a fair price wasn’t the only thing I had in my mind. Another reason I was lured to go with DTI Data was because of the data guarantee; don’t pay unless they recover the lost data.

How they do it

DTI Data has a biometrically secure (class 100) clean rooms, is authorized by all major hard disk manufacturers and is experienced with recovering data from your laptop or PC hard drive and ca even assist you with DIY Data Recovery Software and file undelete tools. They can also do hard drive repair for larger corporations or home grown businesses. From what I’ve been told all software they have was built in house, so I guess these guys are really good.

 Can they help?

They also maintain a data recovery resources, library to publish articles with tips and tricks on how to recover data by yourself or how to preserve your data. This is where I learned that chkdsk is not a recovery tool and you shouldn’t run it, that heat plays a major role when it comes to the destructions of hard drives, memory or CPU and that dust causes poor connectivity and restricts the air flow.

What they offer

The full list of services includes:

• hard drive recovery
• data recovery services
• data recovery software
• RAID data recovery
• Exchange server recovery
• SCSI hard drive data recovery
• and other specific data recovery needs.

DTI Data did a great job with my laptop hard drive so I guess this is why this article. I’m very happy that I paid a fair price and I got all my data back in a very short period of time. If you needed one more thing to convince you that these guys are good at what they do, you should know that since 1992 they had over 100,000 clients and NASA’s quote “Lockhead Martin referred us” is a very big plus.

We’ve been anxiously waiting for Sharp to bring its 108-inch LCD TV for a while now and the wait is over. The LB-1085 has scheduled its first delivery for June 19 to Shinjuku Piccadilly, Toyko’s biggest multiplex. It’ll stand tall from the 3rd floor of the theater’s open lobby so that viewers on the first floor can see movie trailers and impressively enjoy an ultraclear picture.

The 3.2m² widescreen sports a low-noise, fanless design which has been designed to handle round-the-clock continuous operation - perfect for all night long back-to-back movie sessions, has a resolution of 1920 X 1080 and features 760 million colors.

This massive 430 pound behemoth utilizes a fanless design that minimizes intake of dust from outside, which further improves its level of technical sophistication as a public display.

It is blessed with rich assortment of inputs needed for connectivity to peripheral equipment and devices: it has 3 HDMI, 1 DVI-I, 2 component, 1 S-video, 2 composite, 4 RCA analog auido, and 1 Stereo-mini slots. The expected price for the new Sharp LB-1085 goes around $101, 000 and is aimed to the rich, right?

via Impress

The guy writing gadgets and technology in general may not own the latest laptop, that’s a fact. I’m a very good example because for the last 3 years I’ve been using the same Acer TravelMate 3201 XCi laptop with a Centrino Mobile 1.5GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and Windows XP Pro on it. Why? Because I never got problems with it and for text/image editing I never needed more.

However it comes a time when you feel your rig is getting older and breathes harder and harder. It may be because it’s old or maybe you need a registry cleaner and more RAM? How about a 2GB memory upgrade? Yes that’s definitely what I will do with it, because I love my travel-mate!!!

So what I did? Like always, I checked with Google and found out that MemoryDeal.net may be the specialists I could use to get the thing done. Did you know that adding memory can lead to problems if the wrong kind of RAM or size of memory module is used? That’s not going to happen if you use them.

8GB memory upgrades or a 4GB memory upgrade will make your laptop/computer (if they can withstand that much) scream of joy.

Memory Deal is a new online memory product provider with a single unique focus - to provide customers the exact same RAM modules computer OEMs install at the factory. I will let you know how that went, aight?

Nicholas Negroponte unveiled yesterday at One Laptop Per Child Foundation media event the 2nd generation laptop. The foundation plans to release the 2nd-generation device by 2010. Unlike its predecessor, the XO laptop, the new addition would feature two 16:9 LCD screens and would fold-up like an e-book device.

The new laptop would cost $75, which is very encouraging regarding the $188 price for XO model. The low pricing would be a result of using screens built for DVD players: “The reason you can have the audacity to do this is that the 16:9 displays on DVD players are so inexpensive that to anticipate them costing $20 each is not out of the question,” explained Negroponte.

The XO 2.0 was designed by the hardware design firm Pixel Qi. The double-screened device is smaller than XO laptop, that being an advantage for the children and consumes only 1 watt. OLPC has announced to launch a new version of the XO model (XO 1.5) that would have a price tag around $100.

via xconomy

Remember all the hype around Microsoft acquiring Yahoo? It’s back. Steve Ballmer has come with a new round of negotiations. The new deal refers only to Yahoo’s search engine along with the search marketing business. All the others groups of the company would remain in Yahoo’s yard.

This new deal seems to please Microsoft’s stockholders which were not too happy with the first one. On the other hand, Yahoo’s stockholders have put pressure on their board of directors which have not too many choices at the moment. Thus, the transaction could go as fast as we can imagine. Obviously, Microsoft would pay much under the $40+ billion full buyout. Tech Crunch editor suggested Yahoo’s board of directos could go back for the former deal, but I don’t think they want that. We shall see.

via TechCrunch

Moving hosting, for an established blog is not an easy thing to do mostly because it takes time to investigate and get the best web hosting deals for a fair price and believe me this is a time consuming job. For anyone that would like to choose a new hosting for their sites here are the steps I’ve thought of.

1. Reliable hosting. This was my first concern. If the site ever gets a spike in traffic I don’t want to be called by the hosting company because they’ve shut me down. That’s not the way I like to do business, so I had to seek a reliable company at first.

2. Server Specifications. Though I’m geek, servers and bandwidth are not my best qualities so I had to search for some web hosting articles and see what exactly I need. How much RAM, how much bandwidth and if it’s ok to get a shared server.

3. The price. Spending hundreds of dollars for a dedicated server wasn’t a solution and to be honest not a necessity, but I already knew what I was looking for, so I went on WebHostingGeeks to read their web hosting reviews. Though I wasn’t planning it really paid off spending the time on the site, and I learned a lot. They actually made me understand what I want. You can also try webhostingchoice.com for other reviews and costs.

4. Payment options. I don’t like giving my credit card or Paypal details to every new hosting company that pops out like mushrooms after rain. I want to make sure that those guys are at least trying to protect people’s data.

5. Customer support. Excuse me if I don’t eat PHP or Apache at breakfast, but everyone is good at something else. When it comes to server problems, I want to be sure I can rely on a person (phone, email or support ticket) that will address my problem in a timely manner. For me online chat for support is of great value, so it really counted when I made my choice.

These are the things that influenced my decision to choose a new hosting provider, but yours may be different or you could add to these.

Is it just me or the new Samsung Instinct is going to be a milestone in the cell phones market? Sprint, the exclusive seller, is going to start their biggest marketing move spending some $100M for the little guy.

The Instinct will have a full touch-sensitive display with haptic technology, GPS navigation and high speed connectivity (3.1Mbps in downlink and 1.8Mbps uplink) it is “a product from a usability standpoint that can compete” with the iPhone, though it wasn’t meant as a clone from the first time.

It’s an EVDO rev.A handset and comes with a 2 megapixel camera/camcorder, stacks up to 8GB of data using a microSD card, has Bluetooth and can be used as a modem if you need to connect your laptop to the Internet. Rumors talk about two 1,000 mAh batteries that should be able to keep it live after 5.75 hours of talking.

A few Sprint services that it will have are Live Search, Sprint TV, Sprint Exclusive Entertainment for sports and entertainment video programming network, Sprint Music Store, and Pocket Express for updated news.
So far all we know is that it’s going to be released in June, but it looks like NowIsGood has it on pre-order.

Bill Ogle, Chief Marketing Officer for Samsung Mobile, said that the Instinct was developed after years of work on the innovative touch screen and the most interesting feature is the “just one touch” that allows a user to access everything easily.

“Samsung feels the Instinct will increase our status as the fastest growing mobile phone manufacturer in the U.S.” he said.

Here goes the problem of storing music on our hard drives.

Researchers at the University of Rochester managed to digitally recreate a music file that is almost 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file. A 20 seconds clarinet solo that takes less than a kilobyte was possible using a computer that literally reproduces the original performance based on what it knows about the real-world physics of clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player.

Behind the computer model of a clarinet is Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and two of his doctoral students, Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling.

“This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music. Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn’t really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music” said Bocko.

Here are the audio files, in WAV format for Web comparison :

Human performance recorded using MP3 format

Virtual performance using Bocko’s new compression

Though not perfect, it is very difficult to tell the synthesized sound from the original sound. Future improvements of the method will include more than just one instrument, and Professor Bocko is confident that the synthesis algorithms will improve and the future of music could be “reproducing performers and not recording them”.

A recent study from Solutions Research Group, came up with a staggering fact. We, men, are no longer the absolute owners of gadgets and the real definition of “geeks”. Girl geeks are now ahead of men in activities like streaming network TV, DVR use, and casual gaming, the Women and Digital Lifestyles report (PDF link) said.

70% of women say they played a PC game last month vs. 69% of men.

Though I don’t like men to lose supremacy over gadgets and tech in general I’m certain having more women to talk the Gadgetish (new language) is good. We have a lot in common now, don’t we? I wish they will love football and soccer in the near future …

via I4U