Latest in our quest for Green Geeking… Audi has caused quite an adrenaline rush among greeners and auto enthusiasts alike… announcing E-Tron at the LA and Frankfurt auto shows. They started making a viral statement about the car a few months ago…
As you may expect, coming from Audi, this car has been in the making for some time, and is boasting specs that will make companies like Tesla pretty grumpy. The car has 3,319 pounds of torque (anyone familiar with torque, compared to engine horsepower, just dropped their jaw), goes from 0 to 60 in 4.8 seconds, and 60 to 120 in 4.1 seconds (this is what’s truely amazing, compared to any normally aspirated engine) – a level of power unprecedented in any real electric car. A 42.4 kilowatt-hour liquid-cooled lithium ion battery powers 4 motors, one at each wheel (E-Quattro?). more…
I launched Techbriefing.pro on January 20th. One of my first posts here was about “White House 2.0″. There seemed to be some great programs being proposed by the Obama administration between election and inauguration… supporting technology and collaboration. It sounded exciting… and seeing some real follow through after just a few months is inspiring to put it mildly.
We’re all on the web. Everyone. We’re working, socializing, being entertained, learning, publishing… digitizing. There are some great diversions online… endless really. Some are wicked substantive though… like the Open Government Initiative section of WhiteHouse.gov…
We see the same cable “news” segments over and over every day, about the same few political issues that offer the most buzz… the economy, the military, health care, etc. There are also new programs and initiatives being developed by the new administration that, like most any other method of really informing yourself, require some intellectual curiosity. The programs and online environments mentioned here are just a few. I urge you to take the administration’s new websites for a spin. more…
Tesla Motors is daring us with their new electric car, the Model S. The Model S is a meant to be within reach, and tempting at that. Not just because of it’s looks… if you look closely at this technology, and then watch the car take off rapidly, and silently, from a dead start… you want to be the first on your block. I do.
Right to the juicy bits… 300 mile range / 45 minute QuickCharge / 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds / Seats 7 people / More Cargo space than most any station wagon / Twice as efficient as hybrids / 17 inch infotainment touchscreen.
Tesla has worked toward a high performance, high end electric car with their first Roadster, instead of an economic electric. Hopefully this means that the new S, by the time it starts showing up on the street in early 2011, will be refined and exhibit great built quality. If it does, Tesla Motors will be tapping a completely new market. more…
At both the business end and the consumer end, the green products we need have got to yield the type of benefits we’re used to, in order to succeed significantly. Clean energy has got to make some money for the business investors and managers taking the lead, and consumer products have to offer more than the warm fuzzies that come from knowing your “doing the right thing”. The sacrifices some are already making without these perks or considerations have been incredibly important for the awareness and momentum of global issues, but if our resource management is to ever make a societal sweep and change our direction, it needs to address the capitalism and carnality in our DNA. Ya know… “teaching abstinence” is ok if you believe in it, but pretending it’s transformative is denial. more…
As the iPhone advances it’s presence in the enterprise, there are some milestones that earn it genuine respect, and this is one of them. Cisco just released WebEx for the iPhone. “Cisco WebEx Meeting Center” is now a free application in Apple’s “App Store” on every iPhone screen and iTunes desktop application. Cisco is about as serious as you can get when it comes to enterprise networking, WebEx is a benchmark itself in collaborative software and services, and Apple continues to grow loyalty and love for it’s ability to create high quality, incredible tools that feel like toys.
I just downloaded it directly to my iPhone and opened it up for this post, in about 30 seconds. It’s surprisingly unflashy, getting right down to business with a schedule and brief information about joining a meeting… in the familiar native iPhone UI style. more…
Sometimes it seems the more great communications tools we create, the more explanation there is needed to define them well enough. It’s because so many of these tools offer uncharted capabilities, and that’s what people are interested in, and what drives the industry forward, or… mostly forward anyway. In discussions I’ve had this past year, the ah-hah moments appear when unique capabilities are clarified, not the technologies behind them.
The most productive discussions marketers and brand managers can have begin with objectives not definitions. Before automatically creating bullet points or budget entries for “SEO” or “Web 2.0″ discuss who and where your ideal audience is. Then how you can reach them, who can champion the effort, and how to measure the results. The options, opportunities and reach that entrepreneurs and small businesses have is remarkable if they understand technology as well as their audience… enough to know what is right for them, and what isn’t. more…
It’s not necessary for me to spend much time justifying iPhone gushing here. There is so much great coverage out there already (including our friends at iPhoneFreak.com), so I’ll try to limit myself here, to just the juiciest bits. Opening up the native SDK (software developers kit) for the iPhone has caused a software publishing land rush. It may not be the biggest ever jump in software publishing, but I’ll bet it’s the most diverse… ever. Since it’s release this summer, Apple iPhone users have downloaded well over 300 million applications for their iPhone from the “App Store”, found on the home screen of every iPhone. Many of these are not just cute little widgets that deliver info-nuggets or games to your cell phone. There is vast creativity and technology empowerment happening on this device. Because there are many places online to evaluate iPhone apps already, I won’t get into reviewing any specific apps here…. except when it’s noteworthy from a technological view. Or once in a while, when I just do. more…
Google is announcing their open-source development system, called Native Client. Native Client is designed to let web developers create powerful programs that can work directly with an operating system, rather than having to use a browser. As incredibly useful as RIA’s (Rich Internet Applications) have become, this is a progressive move for Google, and has Microsoft and others even more leery of the internet giant.
Google’s Brad Chen explains… “Modern PCs can execute billions of instructions per second, but today’s web applications can access only a small fraction of this computational power. more…
There are a variety of technological issues in developing successful email campaigns, and as with anything happening on the net, they are evolving. Beyond basic document composition and delivery methods, there are some additional things to consider that keep us focused on the scope of reaching out via email.
Looking at your audience means looking at their tools. For instance, a B2B marketing program should focus mostly on the display characteristics of Outlook. Microsoft, in it’s ongoing objective to keep us on our toes (and keep rein of some newly vulnerable markets) is constantly updating their apps. For instance, their Word code set is used to display emails now, in Outlook 2007. Outlook 2003 used Explorer. For anyone who previously bought into the idea that Word can create web content, this is meaningful. It’s taken two steps forward and one back. Anyone sending rich email to business people using CSS is taking their message into their own hands. more…
The U.S. Space Shuttle Endeavour landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base today. Endeavour’s mission was the last by a U.S. space shuttle this year. The next NASA shuttle flight is scheduled for February to install the space station’s last solar wing panel.
The Endeavour, and the crew supporting it back at home, have new software that could streamline the process of problem reporting and analysis. The software, called the Problem Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action (PRACA) system, was created by the Human-Computer Interaction Group at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and is designed to give a wide cross-section of people in the ecosystem access to a single database package for tracking problems with the Shuttle and its associated infrastructure. This software package is replacing a set of more than 40 different database systems that had been used over the past 30 years by the many different parts of that Shuttle ecosystem.
NASA’s new PRACA software, was written using open-source Bugzilla tools… not kidding. more…
