tech

Toyota develops eyelid-monitoring system

If BMW's rumbling steering wheel, Infiniti's Lane Departure Prevention system, and Volvo's coffee-break alert are not enough to keep you awake at the wheel, then Toyota may have developed just the thing for you. According to its announcement today, Toyota has developed an enhancement to its Pre-Crash safety system that can determine whether or not a driver's eyes are open. The system relies on a driver-monitoring camera and image-processing computer, which determine the position of the driver's upper and lower eyelids. The development follows Toyota's existing face-monitoring technology--available on the Lexus LS600h--which tracks … Read more

Ultimate Green Machine on the way?

As we told you last September, BMW has been kicking around the idea of a fourth brand (in addition to MINI, Rolls Royce, and BMW) for a while. This week it emerges that this new addition to the Bimmer family lineup may be a dedicated "green" line of vehicles focused on high fuel economy and lower emissions. If so, the strategy would certainly make sense as it will enable BMW to meet tough environmental requirements without sacrificing too much of its performance-related DNA. BMW is one of a number of premium European brands likely to suffer most at … Read more

Cranky Geeks on tech journalism

I ended my recent posting on Ethernet connections in a hotel room not being secure with "You don't read PC magazine for mutual fund advice, and you shouldn't read the Wall Street Journal for computer advice." The Cranky Geeks did a show earlier this month about technology journalism that made some interesting points along the same line.

The show is hosted by John C. Dvorak, the guests were John Markoff, Gregg Zachary and Sebastian Rupley. The show ran 30 minutes, I found the first half more interesting than the second, your mileage may vary.

Some tidbits … Read more

Bringing seapower to the fight against global warming

The cleantech sector has developed as a major player in the fight against climate change. One of my friends, Dan Whaley, has founded a company called Climos to attack global warming in a new way, sinking massive amounts of carbon into the ocean depths using ocean iron fertilization. The approach has seen significant scientific study, but as he acknowledges, still has a ways to go to prove its effectiveness. That is where Climos comes in. The exciting part is the sheer scale of the potential carbon sequestration (on the order of a billion tons) and the low cost (possibly on … Read more

Review: 2008 Ford Focus SES

Click the image to read the full review

(Credit: CNET Networks)

We just finished up our review of the redesigned Ford Focus, and we suspect that Dearborn may have a hit on its hands. Our top-of-the-line Focus SES tester came standard the impressive Microsoft-designed Sync media and communications interface, which is one of the most sophisticated car-tech systems available. Is this entry-level model the shot in the arm that the troubled Blue Oval needs? Find out in our full review here.

ReadBurner turns Google Reader's sharing features into communal bookmarking

A lot of folks would like a memetracker for Google Reader (myself included), and if the big G's not going to provide one, it's up to third-party developers to attempt to build their own. One of the results has been ReadBurner, a service that tries to determine what items (not just feeds) are gaining in popularity at any given time based on the number of people sharing them on Google Reader.

Think of it like Del.icio.us, but instead of browser plug-ins or voting from the content originator's site, the system picks up on items automatically--that … Read more

uTipu's new screencasting tool takes on TechSmith's Jing Project

Screencasting is not for everyone. Most of the options out there are fairly full featured, but it's hard to find a good, free solution that can do as much as some of the pricey professional tools such as TechSmith's Camtasia Studio (download) or Adobe's Captivate (download). A new service that launched this week called uTipu (download TipCam for Windows) is stepping into the ring and offering up a Windows-only (for now) one-stop screencasting service that combines both a software tool to grab your onscreen action, along with an uploader that will send it off to uTipu's server farm for YouTube-like Web hosting. The hope is that anyone who wants to make a screencast or two will be able to download the app and get going without too much of a hassle, similar to what TechSmith's been up to with its Jing Project (download for Windows or Mac).

Like other software-based screencasting tools, uTipu's got a few tricks to get your screencasts looking right. You can set it to record your entire screen, or just a small section. It can also follow your cursor, and highlight what you're doing with a little translucent yellow circle. There are recording controls to pause and stop the action, as well as an annotation shortcut in case you feel like drawing on the screen John Madden-style. For audio and voiceovers, there's no post-production workspace, so you have to record your narration at the same time as the video and hope you don't make any mistakes.

Advanced users get some nice tweaks, such as VNC server setup to record screens on remote computers, and frame-rate quality controls to bump up how smooth your videos look. The one caveat is that higher frame rates also increase your file size, and uTipu's only serving up 250MB of free hosting for the time being, but about a minute of medium size video at 15 frames per second runs at about 3MB, which means you'll be able to create and send about 16 videos at the five-minute time cap. If you're close to running out of space, you can also skip the option to upload to uTipu's servers entirely by uploading them to any video hosting service that accepts the FLV Flash format.

On the whole, uTipu's off to a good start, but by not providing some post-processing tools to clean up your work, it's not offering a whole lot more than what you can get from its formidable competition, such as the zero-install Screencast-o-matic, and the cross-platform Jing from TechSmith.

I've embedded a sample of a user-created uTipu video after the break. As you can see, it's nice and big, and you can actually read the onscreen text. My less informative one can be found here.

… Read more

Green-tech investment roars onward

Venture capital investment in green-tech companies topped $5 billion in North America and Europe last year and shows no signs of slowing down.

The Cleantech Group on Thursday published results of its quarterly numbers that show investment in the sector was stronger than expected.

Investment leaped from $3.6 billion in 2006 to $5.18 billion in 2007.

Energy generation was the most active sector with 172 deals, totaling $2.75 billion.

Behind that was energy storage at $471 million, transportation at $445 million, energy efficiency at $356 million, and recycling and waste with $291 million.

Cleantech Group said that … Read more

A Hello Kitty assault rifle that actually exists

This was sent to us by a tipster. I don't normally spend my time reading RifleGear.com, but from the likes of this item, maybe I should.

Awhile back we were treated to a hilarious Photoshop job called the HK-47--an assault rifle decorated with images of everybody's favorite nonpornographic, nontentacled Japanese import, Hello Kitty. We were sad to learn that it was, well, Photoshopped.

But now, out of nowhere, here's a real one. As a protest against assault weapons bans, one rifle enthusiast in California decided to create a weapon that would "alleviate the fears … Read more