Ground | Thats Bad Ass! Tech News and Reviews

Posts Tagged ‘ground’

Switched On: Higher stakes, higher ground for crowdfunding, part 2

|

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Fast payday loans For Every One

Last week’s Switched On discussed the issues around crowdfunding liability, offering examples of some recent tech projects that delivered late or inconsistently, and explaining the justification for sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo denying accountability. Given this, there are a few options in how consumers choose to engage with crowdfunding sites.

Filed under: Misc, Internet

Comments

Incoming search terms:

All Rights Reserved Use of our service is protected by our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service ross archery

Visualized: JetBlue and ViaSat test Fly-Fi in-flight WiFi… from the ground

|

Author: Jon Daniels

Gogo’s ground-to-air transmitters typically mandate evaluating service while jetting around the country above 10,000 feet. Sure, you don’t need to waste fuel flying around an empty airliner, but even the company’s small jet can burn through quite a bit of cash. ViaSat, on the other hand, can do much of its service testing on the ground, using that fairly ordinary Ford van pictured just above. The reason, of course, relates to the location of the company’s transmitter — namely, the ViaSat-1 satellite, positioned some 22,000 miles above the ground. In the air, planes will actually be nearer to the orbiting device, rather than farther away, and assuming a line-of-sight link from the road, the truck can work out kinks at a fraction of the cost.

That white dome atop the van, which is similar to the device that’ll soon be mounted on JetBlue’s fleet, maintains a constant connection by rotating instantly as the van moves — if the vehicle’s heading changes, the antenna array will turn, too, so it’s always pointed directly at the sat in the sky. You may have seen ViaSat’s van driving down Southern California’s freeways, but the rig has just arrived in Orlando, for some additional testing a few degrees away from the company’s Carlsbad home. Assuming all goes well here, you’ll be shooting around the web courtesy of Fly-Fi in no time at all.

Filed under: Transportation, Wireless

Comments

Incoming search terms:

Switched On: Higher stakes, higher ground for crowdfunding, part 1

|

Author: Jack Schmidt

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Turned on, a column about customer technology.

The power of crowdfunding is that, by aggregating reasonably modest donations from exactly what is often hundreds or even countless backers, consumers can help artists and creators turn ideas or ideas into truth. The Pebble smartwatch that set the record for funds raised on Kickstarter was popular for breaking the $ 10 million barrier. That cash, however, came from nearly 69,000 backers.

Today, the two greatest crowdfunding destinations, Indiegogo and Kickstarter, provide different approaches to what gets presented on their sites. Indiegogo is a totally open site; there is basically no screening of projects. Kickstarter, on the other hand, is a curated website. Tasks need to fulfill a range of criteria. As co-founder Yancey Strickler just recently described at Engadget Expand, the roots of Kickstarter were in the funding of imaginative and social pursuits. Kickstarter has been a sanctuary for artists such as photographers aiming to develop a picture book or musicians seeking to cut a first cd or create a video.

Filed under: Misc, InternetComments

Incoming search terms:

Vavuud Wind Meter For Smartphones Contains No Electronics, Delivers Accurate Ground Wind Speed Readings

|

Author: Jon Daniels

Smartphones have a lot of on-board sensors, but do they really have enough? No way, say a slew of recent hardware startups, of which Danish Vavuud is only the most recent. Vavuud is turning to Kickstarter to help build a smartphone-compatible wind meter, one that miraculously contains no electronics and yet still can communicate accurate wind speed measurements wirelessly to iPhones and Galaxy devices.

The Vavuud wind meter provides an easy way to measure wind speed exactly where you are, with a device that’s remarkably inexpensive and deceptively simple. It plugs into the headphone jack of your device, but that’s to give it a stable base; it actually uses two magnets in the rotor, which generate a magnetic field that the smartphone can pick up and process using algorithms normally used for sound processing to translate it to wind speed data. Vavuud co-founder Thomas P. Helms says it’s been tested with iPhone 4, 4S, and 5, as well as Galaxy SII and SIII so far, and it has been calibrated in a wind tunnel at the University of Denmark to ensure accuracy.

“To our knowledge we are the first to use the magnetometer in smartphones in this way, so we of course think the technology itself is kind of cool,” Helms explained via email. “It’s also cool because on a mechanical level it appears quite simple, but there is some relatively complex math behind it .”

It’s likely that Vavuud will be able to work with any modern advanced smartphone with built-in magnetic field sensors (which is pretty much all of them), so the limited existing test pool shouldn’t frighten away potential backers. The Vavuud is designed to be used by anyone who might find accurate current windspeed readings useful – a potential group of users that includes windsurfers, sailors, paragliders, model plane pilots and more.

“Surfers, sailors, paragliders etc. have needed an online anemometer for ages to be able to create and share crowd-sourced wind information,” Helms explained. “Because conditions at your favorite spots may depend on very local factors like mountains, could be affected by thermal conditions, and on and on.”

Vavuud is looking to ship the Wind Meter by June of this year, with pre-orders beginning at the £15 level. iOS and Android apps from Vavuud itself are expected to become available at the same time, but it’s easy to imagine how, as with the Thermodo, the developer community might embrace another means of collecting information about the world around you and integrate Vavuud into their own apps.

Incoming search terms:

Pokemon Game Recreated In 3-D From The Ground Up

|

Author: Jesus Sargent

Pokemon 3D is a follower effort to recreate Pokemon in a 3D environment. It was constructed from scratch and is moddable so if you wish to make all the Pokemon appear like your pals so you could view them fight it out to the death, you can. You want to make all the trees appear like naked women? Go all out. You wish to kiss me on the first date? Don’t even consider it! You know exactly how at wedding rehearsal dinners someone always tells this stunning tale about exactly how the couple-to-be first satisfied? Well that’s constantly a lie and 9 times out of 10 they fulfilled at a bar and slept together the opening night. Which’s not simply me projecting, that’s simply me recounting exactly what all my friends have done. Especially Chris and Jen, Rich and Nicole, and Robert and Ellen. Oh– and David and Joanna (although if you ask Joanna she’ll tell you it was just a handjob).

Struck the jump for some gameplay footage, but look into the project website if you want to download the game yourself.

Unmanned Ground Vehicle by white box robotics

|

Author: Matthew Baker

Unmanned Ground Vehicle by white box robotics
Video Rating: 0 / 5

Incoming search terms:

Apple and Samsung fail to find common ground in mediation talks, says Korea Times

|

Author: Jon Daniels

Tim Cook iPad

A court-ordered mediation session between the CEOs of Apple and Samsung appears to have gone for naught, producing no breakthroughs in the ongoing patent litigation between the two industry giants. Despite Tim Cook and Choi Gee-sung being in the same room, they ultimately reached “no clear agreement,” reports The Korea Times. According to FOSS Patents, minute orders filed by Judge Spero reveal that Apple and Samsung met for nine hours on Monday and seven hours yesterday, but don’t mention any results of the mediation sessions. The dispute is now slated to enter the trial phase in July.

It would seem Tim Cook’s distaste for litigation — the chief executive said last month that he preferred “to settle versus battle” — lost out to…

Incoming search terms:

UK department store John Lewis launches broadband service, get in on the ground floor

|

Author: Jon Mitchell

If you live in the UK, and were thinking “If only I could get my broadband from the same place I get my crystal tumbler set” then maybe now you can. Department store John Lewis, a favorite for wedding lists, furniture and homeware is branching out into the British ISP game. The standard package will be £11 a month (not including line rental,) offering “up to” 16Mb speeds and a 20GB data cap. More eager users can pay and extra £7 to remove that download limit. Both bundles benefit from a free phone support, no activation fee and, of course, wireless router. Sound like your kind of deal? Head down to the source link, or past the haberdashery section to find out more.

UK department store John Lewis launches broadband service, get in on the ground floor originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 06:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Pocket-lint | source John Lewis | Email this | Comments

OCZ Octane SSD benchmarked, new Indilinx controller holds its ground

|

Author: Jesus Sargent

Maybe it’s just interference from our seasonal goggles, but isn’t there something quite cheery about SSD reviews? In the case of OCZ’s Octane drive, our good spirits derive from the sturdy performance of its freshly-conceived Indilinx Everest controller, which ought to keep big players like SandForce and Samsung on their toes. HotHardware just reviewed the $ 369 512GB variant and found that it delivered fast boot-up times, strong read speeds and writes that were just shy of enthusiast-class drives. Follow the source link for the full and possibly festive benchmarks.

OCZ Octane SSD benchmarked, new Indilinx controller holds its ground originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source HotHardware | Email this | Comments

Tiny Tower breaks ground on Android

|

Author: Troy Barnes

Android takes another step closer to iOS’s arguably superior gaming offering, adopting cult low-fi sim Tiny Tower. Froyo is the minimum requirement for the game run, but given the very dominant status of Android 2.0 and up, most won’t find it an issue. This management sim lets you create a mix of businesses and attractions to draw Bitizens (the pixelated chaps you see above) to come live, work and play in your property. There looks to be some kind of smartphone game exchange going on, with this not-so-tiny timesink transfer following the recent appearance of Minecraft on iOS. Those willing to write off the rest of the weekend can download it now at the source below.

[Image credit: Box Brown]

Tiny Tower breaks ground on Android originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Nov 2011 02:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Android Central | source Android Market | Email this | Comments

Posts Tagged ‘ground’

Switched On: Higher stakes, higher ground for crowdfunding, part 2

Incoming search terms:

Related Posts:

Visualized: JetBlue and ViaSat test Fly-Fi in-flight WiFi… from the ground

Incoming search terms:

Related Posts:

Switched On: Higher stakes, higher ground for crowdfunding, part 1

Incoming search terms:

Related Posts:

Vavuud Wind Meter For Smartphones Contains No Electronics, Delivers Accurate Ground Wind Speed Readings

Incoming search terms:

Related Posts:

Pokemon Game Recreated In 3-D From The Ground Up

Related Posts:

Unmanned Ground Vehicle by white box robotics

Incoming search terms:

Related Posts:

Apple and Samsung fail to find common ground in mediation talks, says Korea Times

Incoming search terms:

Related Posts:

UK department store John Lewis launches broadband service, get in on the ground floor

Related Posts:

OCZ Octane SSD benchmarked, new Indilinx controller holds its ground

Related Posts:

Tiny Tower breaks ground on Android

Related Posts: