On a 3,210 mile trip from New York to San Francisco, the Mercedes ML 320 diesel beat the Lexus RX400h in fuel efficiency. German Car Magazine Auto Bild conducted the test to underscore the importance of diesel in the reduction of fuel consumption. The diesel engine beat the hybrid 37 MPG to 33 MPG. The magazine also reports that in urban areas, the hybrid did a scant 2% better than the diesel.
Opera is celebrating its 10 year anniversary and is giving out free registration codes as party favors. The only company in the world who charges for a web browser has decided to give something back to community.
Opera has made many attempts lately to steal some of Firefox’s limelight. Including claiming the CEO of Opera would swim from Norway to the USA if the new version was downloaded over 1 million times. Despite meeting the download mark, this never happened.
I think this is only for a very limited time, like today only.
There are currently over 200 photos of damages from Hurricane Katrina. See the entire Hurricane Katrina Flickr pool.
Birdwatchers rejoice, because the BirdPod is here. How much would you pay for an iPod, complete with over 300 MB of bird songs? Try $397.95, but can you really put a price on bird calls?
At it’s core, birdPod is an extremely well organized series of bird song playlists. Generated from a large collection of excellent recordings (the Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs, Eastern Region), these playlists group birds by habitat or family group—which makes the playlists very useful for both learning bird songs and the identification of birds.
Currently the this only covers birds in the Eastern United States.
Locked-out CBC employees begin podcasting to fill the void left by the labor distribute. The employees say that they are using podcasting and blogs to get out their side of the story.
“Our listeners know us through the radio, so we had to communicate with them in an audio format,” said Jacques Poitras, a CBC reporter who wrote the script for the podcast and appeared as a guest representing the union.
You can subscribe at CBCUnplugged.com.
Does your car have a Blue-Tooth enabled smart device interface to a key-less automatic car door entry system? How about an XM modulated navigation system that intercepts traffic real-time and presents you with alternative routes? Or maybe a road noise system driven by negative frequencies with strategically placed mics routing sound through the automobiles 14 channel sound system?
Cnet has done a wonderful job outlining in their eyes the top 10 tech savvy cars for 2005. They considered price as an object with a limit of $50,000 including destination charges. This keeps out the $330,000 Maybach sedans which would naturally include high-concept technology.
Read the entire article here.
And I had always thought sharks were top in the sea. Apparently not.. Charlie Smith has a nice link to a PBS video showing a shark attempting to kill an octopus. What really boggles my mind is the complete opposite of what you’re thinking. The octopus annihilates the shark.. A very interesting video.
As promised John Carmack has released the Quake 3 source code. The full source is licensed under the GPL. So developers are free to modify and redistribute games and mods.
And if I am not mistaken, it seems two new Quake games are on the way, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Quake IV. Both are suppose to use the Doom III engine.
Blue Shift is now available as a download on Steam. All those who own the original Half-Life or have the gold or silver Half-Life 2 package can download Blue Shift for free.
The 2001 expansion, where you controlled security guard Barney, has reportedly not received the source engine port given to the original Half-Life. But the graphics have been updated.
See more about Blue Shift @ Planet Half-Life.
Now for sale, in the USA, is the world’s first cordless 2-in-1 Skype Internet telephone.
This cordless phone will connect to your PC via USB and your landline, at the same time! And fully supports SkypeIn and SkypeOut. The Cordless DUALphone will let the user move up to 300m from the base stand and still allow you to chat with your Skype buddies. It will show you when Skype users are online and allow you to talk to them for free.
The bad part is the DUALPhone currently only supports PC, no OSX. The company doesn’t offer any clue whether that would be available in the future.
You can purchase the DUALphone direct for a mere $139.99.
The marketing pitch:
Go wireless with the Cordless DUALphone
Untie yourself from the PC to make Skype™ and SkypeOut calls. See who’s online with one push of a button on the handset.
Make and receive regular calls using your standard phone number. It’s a cordless Skype™ phone and ordinary landline phone in one.
Box contents:
- Box Contents: One Cordless DUALphone Handset
- One Cordless DUALphone Basestation with fixed USB cord
- Basestation stand (removable)
- One power supply for the base station
- One telephone line cord
- One Handset battery pack (rechargeable)
- Handset battery compartment cover
- One Handset belt clip
- Two (2) click-on display covers in different colors
- One software installation CD-ROM (including Skype™)
