Here’s the Evolution Mobile Bar, where you can take the party and the booze anywhere with you.  Of course, I think the intended purpose if for commercial uses such as the golf course, where people need instant boozing.

AT&T trying to

Well, it’s not new news that a telecommunication company is trying to scam consumers out of their rights through changes in service agreements.  I remember my credit card company sending me a new service agreement about 3 months after I signed up, now that’s a big scam.

Of course, as consumers we can’t really “prove” they are a scam unless we sue them together.

As for me, I am glad I got of the AT&T (Cingular back then) market.  My cable and internet is Comcast and I use Sprint for my Blackberry.

As for AT&T, I have decided to boycott them long time ago, the only reason I write this is to really bring them down where they belong and alert other consumers that they are a bad company.  (There, I said it in very plain English.)

Whether you decide to believe me or not is not my problem, but do look at that new AT&T agreement and you will finally understand you’ve been “had” again by the striped globe.

My personal suggestion is to boycott any company that sells you slow broadband internet service.  (Yes, I stick by facts and know AT&T itself is all about marketing and hype)

Does your iPhone 3G has slow internet?  (Wonder why?   becaz AT&T did it)

AT&T just sent out an 8,000-word update to its service agreement, and it’s full of all sorts of lovely, anti-customer things. For example, now people will only be given a 30-day notice of price increases when it’s “commercially reasonable.” Also, you can’t sue AT&T. In fact, according to the LA Times, the whole thing might go so far as to be illegal. Oh, AT&T.

via gizmodo

Engineers at Oxford University have come up with a new innovative concept for underwater turbines that use 60% less manufacturing and 40% less in maintenance costs.

This type of new underwater generator involves the THAWT device.  I believe these types of underwater turbines and ocean wind turbines combined will soon be everywhere in the ocean to generate over 90% of our electricity.

The THAWT is considered to be a “second generation” turbine as opposed to the first generation models that resembled windmills. It consists of a cylindrical rotor that rolls around its long axis with the flow of water, instead of turning at right angles. Promising to be more efficient and powerful than other underwater turbines, each THAWT is predicted to produce 12 megawatts of energy - enough to power 12,000 family homes and significantly more than other underwater turbines of today.

via inhabitat

Mazda intros an Innovative

Mazda is working on an innovative stop and go motor that might just save enough gas when your car is idling in front of a traffic signal.  This might be smarter than making bio-fuel as this system could save additional 10MPG on every car, especially those cars in frequent-stop-and-go traffic areas.

Mazda has announced a clever new start-stop system that promises fuel economy gains of 10% or more without the need for an electric motor. The Smart Idle Stop System (SISS) uses only direct injection and combustion to restart your vehicle, while most start-stop systems use an electric motor and traditional engine start-up process. SISS stops the pistons in the optimal position for an engine restart, and then injects fuel into the cylinders before the engine begins to rotate and lets the power of combustion turn the engine over to start. This enables an SISS-equipped Mazda petrol engine to restart in 0.35 seconds, or half the time of start-stop systems using an electric motor. The catch: SISS only works with automatic transmissions.

via autoblog

Google Rocket might give Google Maps better resolution!

Imagine that you could be using GoogleMaps to watch your neighbor’s latest backyard construction in real-time with a resolution as close as seeing your hands close-up.  With the new launch of Google’s partnership with Boeing to launch a new satellite, this might not happen but definitely the resolution of GoogleMaps and its zoom level might get much better than it is.

Of course, there might be more people suing Google for privacy issues but hey, at least we KNOW that North Korea will not be launching a nuclear weapon anytime soon with all the people in the world watching every details of it.

Google has taken the war over exclusive web content into space. Not directly, of course—the satellite that was recently launched into space on a rocket bearing the Google logo was the result of a joint venture between a commercial satellite imaging provider and the department of defense. In return for undisclosed terms, Google got two considerations: its logo on the side of the launch vehicle, and exclusive use of the mapping images that the satellite produces.

The partnerships in the new satellite are extensive. The hardware was built by General Dynamics and put in orbit by Boeing; the funding for the project came in part from a commercial satellite imaging company, Geoeye. The rest of the funding came from the Defense Department’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides map-based intelligence resources. The launch took place yesterday from the Air Force’s Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

via at

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Here’s the video of Giant Mechanical Spider that was featured on our Weird Blog.

A 20-tonne spider that swung from a city centre tower block over commuters is to make its way across the city as part of a show.

Francois Delarozière created the mechanical artwork for La Machine show, which ends on Sunday. The Northwest Regional Development Agency and the Liverpool Culture Company have commissioned the work and show for £250,000.

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Stanford computer scientists have figured how to teach autonomous helicopters how to do stunt maneuvers.

It sounds like a great idea to me if they can apply this to general robotics.

Stanford’s artificial intelligence system learned how to fly by “watching” the four-foot-long helicopters flown by expert radio control pilot Garett Oku. “Garett can pick up any helicopter, even ones he’s never seen, and go fly amazing aerobatics. So the question for us is always, why can’t computers do things like this?” Coates said.

Computers can, it turns out. On a recent morning in an empty field at the edge of campus, Abbeel and Coates sent up one of their helicopters to demonstrate autonomous flight. The aircraft, brightly painted Stanford red, is an off-the-shelf radio control helicopter, with instrumentation added by the researchers.

For five minutes, the chopper, on its own, ran through a dizzying series of stunts beyond the capabilities of a full-scale piloted helicopter and other autonomous remote control helicopters. The artificial-intelligence helicopter performed a smorgasbord of difficult maneuvers: traveling flips, rolls, loops with pirouettes, stall-turns with pirouettes, a knife-edge, an Immelmann, a slapper, an inverted tail slide and a hurricane, described as a “fast backward funnel.”

via engadget, Helicopter Site

Check out this EarthRace Boat which runs on 100% biodiesel and is 100% carbon neutral, meaning this cool boat doesn’t excrete any CO2 or poisonous fumes to the atmosphere.

It’s been an exciting month as we’ve seen green transportation records set on the ground and in the sky, so naturally we are taking the next step and bringing you to the sea with the Earthrace, a 78 ft tri-hull “wavepiercer”. The biodiesel boat recently completed a carbon-neutral tour of the globe in an incredible 60 days and 23 hours, besting the previous world record by 14 days!

via inhabitat

The Dubai Ziggurat - Eco-Friendly Self-Sustaining Pyramid for 1 Million People!

Dubai seems to always spark the public’s interest with things like the tallest buidling in the world.

Well, here’s another great idea that might make it to production, an eco-friendly self-sustaining pyramid that can house 1 million people.

The size of the pyramid should be huge but shouldn’t be a hard task for Dubaians who are already building the tallest building in the world.

The Mayans and Egyptians constructed incredible feats of architecture able to weather the test of time, but they had no idea their pyramids would inspire the shape of the latest carbon-neutral super-structure to hit Dubai. Dubai-based environmental design firm Timelinks recently released some eye-catching renderings of the gigantic eco pyramid - aptly named Ziggurat - with plans for its official unveiling scheduled for the Cityscape Dubai event which runs October 6-9 of this year. The ginormous pyramid will cover 2.3 square kilometers and will be able to sustain a “community” of up to 1 million.

via inhabitat