urban

Photos: Intel forum in review--from Atom to Tolapai

Update with Dunnington and Core i7 photos, text.

The latest and greatest silicon and derivative products is what the Intel Developer Forum is all about. Moorestown, Tolapai, and Canmore are just a few of the chips detailed at IDF this week, while UrbanMax, new netbooks, and the first laptops based on the quad-core mobile processor were among showcased products.

Intel Chairman Barrett brought out Carnegie Mellon University's Johnny Chung Lee, who demonstrated how cheap, off-the-shelf technology--in this case a makeshift whiteboard--can go a long way. "To be interesting today, technology has to be the fastest, the best, the brightest, the lightest, but here you can see if you sacrifice a little bit of capability and performance for dramatic savings in cost, you can have a pretty dramatic impact," Chung said.

One of the more novel devices demonstrated was the 10-inch Intel UrbanMax a computer that can switch between a laptop and tablet. This by itself isn't groundbreaking because tablet PCs from Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba already do this. The novelty is the size and design: it is smaller than an ultraportable--like the Toshiba Portege--yet is designed like an oversize mobile Internet device such as Compal JAX 10. When configured as a tablet, the keyboard is hidden but can morph into a laptop by sliding out the keyboard, which tilts the screen.

An Intel official demonstrating the device said that "UrbanMax is an innovation platform from Intel. This is a product-ready concept." UrbanMax uses "Montevina" Centrino 2 small form-factor (SSF) silicon. SSF chip packaging is used in the MacBook Air and results in lower voltage and smaller size than typical Intel low-power mobile processors.

It is interesting to note that major PC makers have adopted Intel concept designs in the past. Last year, Intel offered a ultra-thin laptop concept design that was eventually adopted by HP for its Voodoo Envy 133 notebook. … Read more

Urban Outfitters' retro-hip cameras: Like, woah

The manufactured quirk, the out-of-the-box individuality--Urban Outfitters is becoming like Target for hipsters. You can get your ironic clothing, mod bedspread, dirty reading material, slightly dinged-up but brightly colored coffee table, wall mirror (in which you pretend not to narcissistically check your intentionally mussed hair)--and now, your retro-hip plastic camera, too. At this point, Urban just needs to start selling organic avocados and MGMT CDs and it'll truly be a one-stop shop for hipsterdom.

But I digress. Heard of pinhole photography? Of course you have, you went to a liberal arts school and took a whole class on … Read more

Cities to count emissions with Carbon Disclosure Project

How can cities reduce the role they may play in global warming? Could fire departments, garbage collection services, residential building codes, and industrial regulations be greener?

Attempting to help address those questions, 21 U.S. cities, including New York, Las Vegas, and New Orleans will describe their major sources of greenhouse gas emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project, one of the world's largest repositories linking such data to climate change.

The nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project comprises 385 institutional investors with assets of $57 trillion, from ABN Amro to the RBS Group. It has been collecting data on corporate greenhouse … Read more

UrbanDaddy heads south to Miami

Since the new-media press has been gushing about e-newsletter start-ups for the past few hours, here's another tidbit: UrbanDaddy, a daily missive about luxury culture for the young and hedonistic, is set to announce its Miami regional edition, adding to New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and a "Jetset" travel edition. (For the record, that's "daddy" as in "mack daddy," as this e-newsletter clearly has zilch to do with parenting.)

UrbanDaddy, which has about 315,000 subscribers and says it's doubling that year-over-year, is particularly notable for two quirky … Read more

Flight of the Panda

An Israeli company has conducted the first in a series of test flights on the Panda, a new ducted-fan, unmanned aerial vehicle prototype that looks kind of like a flying stretcher, bringing us closer to what could be the ultimate medivac.

The company, Urban Aeronautics, already produces the Mule UAV and the X-Hawk, larger versions that can be configured for front-line resupply, medical evacuation, utility maintenance, taxi, high-rise rescue, and probably window cleaning. (See video)

The technology is based on the "classic ducted designed pioneered in the early 1960s," as the company Web site points out. This model … Read more

Robotic cars take their rematch to the track

Further details about this event have emerged. Please refer to this story for more information.

The robotic stars of last year's DARPA Urban Grand Challenge, an autonomous car race, will have a rematch at the Toyota Grand Prix in Long Beach, Calif., later this month.

This time, their competition will be solely about speed.

"Boss," an autonomous Chevy Tahoe from Carnegie Mellon University and winner of the $2 million Urban Grand Challenge, will compete once again against "Junior," a robotic Volkswagen Passat from Stanford University, which took second place in the contest. The two teams, … Read more

You are here, sort of: Fire Eagle and Urban Mapping

Where are you right now? It's a simple question for humans to ask and answer, but for Web services, location is a complex and sometimes fuzzy concept. Right now, I'm in San Francisco, and I don't care who knows it. Where in San Francisco? That's not so public. I started writing this at home, with a specific address that I don't want to print here but that I'm OK with my friends knowing. Where's my house? It's in the Noe Valley neighborhood. Although, a real estate agent might be able to get … Read more

Video: Trackside at the DARPA robot race

The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge represents a new frontier in autonomous vehicle technology. We were live onsite for the final of this year's event, which saw 11 robot cars compete in a six-hour contest in a simulated urban environment, complete with traffic, intersections, and parking lots. The rolling robots varied from a driverless 12-ton Oshkosh truck to an autonomous Toyota Prius. Check out our video diary from this weekend's event.