Shai Agassi has guided Better Place’s vision of swap-and-go battery stations for electric cars since it was founded five years ago, but now he’s stepped down as the firm’s CEO. Evan Thornley, who helmed the organization’s Australian efforts, has taken up the mantle of global chief executive officer, while Agassi will continue his role as a board member. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the changing of the guard comes at a time when the company has been spending cash faster than it’s generating revenue thanks to the construction of battery swap stations. Idan Ofer, Chairman of the Better Place Board of Directors sees this as “a natural point in the company’s evolution to realign for its second chapter and for the challenges and opportunities ahead.” Something tells us they wouldn’t mind if future chapters are filled with more swappable batteries than Superchargers.
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Better Place founder Shai Agassi steps down from CEO post originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google Tech Talks July 27, 2007 ABSTRACT The CREATE lab and the Global Connection Project have embarked on a series of public projects to try and understand how significant scaling may be feasible using robotics for technology empowerment and community-building. Our work is now hybridizing the Global Connection efforts together with our more traditional Telepresence Robot Kit and CMUcam educational tools, and we are carrying out experiments locally in Pittsburgh and internationally in collaboration with UNESCO. I will describe the current status of our community products, describing both our target communities spanning the cognitive pipeline, and the new technologies we are releasing this year (CMUcam3, a fully programmable, public-domain embedded computer vision system; TeRK, a single-box solution for complete I/O control of robots together with a Linux OS and connectivity to the iRobot Create and other robots; Canary, a new embedded environmental sensor and kinetic art controller; and Gigapan, a multi-billion pixel panoramic image capture, display and annotation system. I will end by describing the beginning of our unified effort at large-scale public, activist robotic art across Pittsburgh, called Robot 250, which is funded by a group of five corporations and foundations. Illah R. Nourbakhsh is an Associate Professor of Robotics and head of the Robotics Masters Program in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He is co-founder of the Toy Robots … Video Rating: 0 / 5
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A browser-based version of Skype now seems inevitable as Microsoft has taken the first steps towards its support of the web Real Time Communication (WebRTC) HTML5 standard. GigaOm reports that Microsoft submitted its own proposal for WebRTC today, as Customizable, Ubiquitous Real Time Communication over the Web (CU-RTC-Web). The standard, essential to a plugin-free video and audio communications in HTML5, will likely be used in future browser-based versions of Skype — something we’ve seen hinted at previously in Skype job listings.
Although Microsoft will implement a browser-based version of Skype video calling in its Outlook.com webmail client soon, we understand this particular implementation will require a plugin and will not use…
Lytro Founder Ren Ng has announced that he’s stepping down as CEO and will be transitioning into the company’s Executive Chairman effective immediately. Charles Chi, the current Executive Chairman, has been named interim CEO until a more permanent CEO has been found.
Ng will remain a full-time employee but will shift his focus to product 100 percent, according to his blog post.
I will remain a full-time employee, 100% focused on Lytro. In my new role I will shift attention from day-to-day operations, to focus again on product vision, technology, and strategic direction for the company. I am very excited to have the opportunity to focus on these areas where I am most passionate.
As a gamer with admittedly poor impulse control, the newly-released Steam app for iOS and Android has me very worried. On the one hand, it seems like an ideal way to to keep tabs on the popular gaming service on the go.
On the other though, I could easily see myself going overboard on buying games I don’t need when I should be pretending to be a productive member of society.
The Steam app sports a set of features that should be familiar to many a PC gamer, including gaming news feeds and the ability to browse the extensive catalog. It’s also very geared toward communication, as it allows you to keep in touch with your fellow Steam buddies by poking through their profiles or kicking off a mobile chat session.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have no Steam friends, so the biggest threat that the new Steam app poses to people like me is that it provides up-to-date information about games on sale, which means that my loved ones will soon notice that I’m spending more time checking to see if Cave Story+ is on sale than, y’know, interacting with them.
Yes, I know I have a problem.
My only consolation is that the app is usable by people who have been invited to the beta, so I’ll be safe from the allure of buying cheap games from the park for at least a little while longer. If you’re lucky enough to be among the select few with beta access, the app is already live in the Android and iOS app stores. Download away, but please don’t tell me what I’m missing out on.
For the past two years, all sorts of gadget, social media and design geeks have descended upon Savannah, GA. The goal is clear: to spend the weekend hearing from the nerds they look up to, including our pal Major Nelson, who spoke back in 2009. This year was no different — and to make things even more interesting — event organizers invited attendees to participate in the first ever Geekend Hackathon. Teams of up to four members, fueled by a copious supply of Mountain Dew and pizza, were given 24 hours to come up with the most innovative desktop, mobile or web application they could. There was just one catch: teams had to incorporate at least three out of five key words that were randomly assigned to them. The only other stipulation was that if the code used to create each app wasn’t already available online, they had to place the open source that they developed in a web repository before the event.
We were there to catch the results, which showcased a mixed bag of entertaining (and useful) applications. Projects ranging from an app tracking vegetable eating habits to one that uses image recognition to bring your favorite comics to a mobile device showed just what could be done in a day — given enough caffeine, of course. Another allowed you to feed your urge to hug every cat, while a neighborhood advocacy community enabled concerned citizens to vote on issues in their area. Rounding out the field was a field trip database for teachers to share ideas on sites to take their students for the best experience. Two winners — judge’s choice and people’s choice — received a super geeky trophy (pictured above) and a major boost to their street…er online cred. If you’re yearning to find out more about this year’s happenings, hit the coverage link below and start booking your trip for next year.
[Gallery credit: Geekend]
Gallery: Geekend 2011
Geekend steps its game up with a 24-hour Hackathon, promises boost to nerd cred originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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For the past two years, all sorts of gadget, social media and design geeks have descended upon Savannah, GA. The goal is clear: to spend the weekend hearing from the nerds they look up to, including our pal Major Nelson, who spoke back in 2009. This year was no different — and to make things even more interesting — event organizers invited attendees to participate in the first ever Geekend Hackathon. Teams of up to four members, fueled by a copious supply of Mountain Dew and pizza, were given 24 hours to come up with the most innovative desktop, mobile or web application they could. There was just one catch: teams had to incorporate at least three out of five key words that were randomly assigned to them. The only other stipulation was that if the code used to create each app wasn’t already available online, they had to place the open source that they developed in a web repository before the event.
We were there to catch the results, which showcased a mixed bag of entertaining (and useful) applications. Projects ranging from an app tracking vegetable eating habits to one that uses image recognition to bring your favorite comics to a mobile device showed just what could be done in a day — given enough caffeine, of course. Another allowed you to feed your urge to hug every cat, while a neighborhood advocacy community enabled concerned citizens to vote on issues in their area. Rounding out the field was a field trip database for teachers to share ideas on sites to take their students for the best experience. Two winners — judge’s choice and people’s choice — received a super geeky trophy (pictured above) and a major boost to their street…er online cred. If you’re yearning to find out more about this year’s happenings, hit the coverage link below and start booking your trip for next year.
[Gallery credit: Geekend]
Gallery: Geekend 2011
Geekend steps its game up with a 24-hour Hackathon, promises boost to nerd cred originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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BO is right — slap some Old Spice up in them pits!
Seen here looking eerily human, Boston Dynamics’ bipedal humanoid robot PETMAN has been upgraded with arms (capable of pushups!) and a smoother gait. Well thank God! If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a goofy-walking robot. OMG — did you see PETMAN walking on his toes? What a sped!
Hit the jump for a very worthwhile video of his capabilities.
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As NASA’s steps get smaller, China’s space program is making big leaps with plans to have a manned space station in orbit by 2020. This morning (around 9pm in China), the Tiangong 1 space station module blasted off from a desert in the northwestern area of China. The reported purpose of this mission is to practice docking with other modules, which is essential to building a space station (obviously).
Tiangong 1, literally meaning Heavenly Palace, was carried into orbit by a Long March-2FT1 rocket, reports TIME. It provides 15 cubic feet of space in which up to three people can live and work. The plan is that the space module will orbit the Earth for about a month, at which point another unmanned spacecraft called Shenzou 8 will dock with Tiangong 1. This will be China’s first mission involving docking, and completion of the nine-year plan will make it the first country to launch and maintain its very own space station.
A prepared statement from China Manned Space Engineering Project spokeswoman Wuping:
The main tasks of Tiangong Ⅰ spaceflight include: to provide a target vehicle for space rendezvous and docking experiment; to primarily establish a manned space test platform capable of long-term unmanned operation in space with temporary human attendance, and thus accumulate experiences for the development of the Space Station; to carry out space science experiments, space medical experiments and space technology experiments.
Short term goals aside, it’s worth wondering what China plans to do with this space station once it’s completed. It’s clear that China has been getting more and more aggressive with its space program, completing space walks, increasing the number of astronauts in each mission, and planning a trip to the moon by 2030. The overall goal, however, is still a mystery.
Check out footage of the take-off below:
It looks like the LG Marquee’s gearing up for its coming out party. We first caught wind of the Optimus Black clone when it surfaced in blurrycam form at a Radio Shack briefing, running what appeared to be vanilla Android, and branded for the Now Network. Well, thanks to a leaked press shot over on PocketNow, we can clearly see that the device is, indeed, sporting a lightly-skinned version of the pure Gingerbread experience, with Sprint ID replacing the browser in the phone’s launcher. Cosmetically, you’ll also notice the new grey-colored chassis has a striped band sweeping down the battery cover, although the camera placement remains similar to its European cousin. Aside from that, the only other notable difference is in the design and arrangement of the capacitive buttons. The specs seem to fall line with its elder LG stablemate, as the handset’s purported to pack a single-core 1GHz processor, 5 megapixel camera and 4-inch display. The only question that remains is whether you’re willing to forgo impending beastliness for elegance this October when it’s rumored to launch.
LG Marquee steps out in leaked press shot, coming this October? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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