News
Solar panels on your car shelter
Written by Olivier Adam on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 14:12
In some countries in the world, the sun shines enough to see some good benefits from solar panels. Normally, solar panels are installed on the roof of the house which can feed some quite interesting energy savings all year long. The problem is that sometimes, the roof orientation is not optimal to capture the most solar energy. Also, some roofs are made of materials that are not appropriate to install solar panels like clay roofing tiles. A French company came up with a car shelter with solar panels on the top. This makes it very easy to deploy and offer some benefits in addition of providing free, clean energy. Savings can be up to 2000 euros ($2700 US) if the shelter is deployed in a sunny area.
Freshly printed book anyone?
Written by Olivier Adam on Monday, 18 May 2009 12:13
Many would argue that the life of books is counted. Indeed, it seems that with tools like the Amazon Kindle and other of the genre, books (and newspapers) will become a niche product at best in the future. On the other hand, some will argue that it is quite satisfying to open a fresh new book and to devour the pages, discovering what is inside. The Espresso book machine plans to create a solution right in the middle. Instead of printing millions of books, many of them will end up being unsold (or sold at a tenth of the price in the bookstore discount bin), this machine allows you to print books "on-demand". What is quite interesting is that this machine gives the possibility to offer a very large choice of publications, with a very limited space. It would become more interesting to have very specialized publications available, as the cost of keeping those would be nearly non-existent. Hopefully, we will start seeing those machines in our bookstores, libraries, etc. soon so we can start benefiting from all it can bring us.
City 2.0 - A new concept
Written by Olivier Adam on Saturday, 16 May 2009 07:53
A new concept is making its way; after Web 2.0, we are now talking about City 2.0. This concept is actually regrouping multiple technologies like:
- Smart Grid (Two way communications between the users and the production facilities of energy so we can produce just the exact amount at any given time. Appliances and other energy consuming devices would know as well the optimal period in the day during which to operate to minimize the impact on the grid)
- Social Networking for Cities (Give the community a chance to discuss on ideas for the city and let the mayor and his team communicate more openly with the citizens)
- Citywide wireless coverage (be it either WiFi or WiMax, there are projects in development like this all over the world)
This is a well thought concept that encompass many of the popular technologies being deployed these days in cities, most often time as test projects and hopefully soon as full deployment.
- Sustainable data centers (Connect all the city services together, reducing waste and optimizing their efficiency)
- Cloud-Computing (to connect all those ideas together)
A faster way to recharge your electric car
Written by Olivier Adam on Thursday, 14 May 2009 20:09
Wired just published an article about a new way to recharge electric cars. We know that electric cars are the way of the future but they still have some major flaws that need to be improved. One of those challenge is the length of time required to recharge the battery at the "gas station". Even though they now have a way to recharge the battery in as little as 15 minutes, this is still too long for normal use if you have more driving to do. Better Place came up with the idea of switching the battery completely instead of trying to recharge it. This way, they can keep fully charged batteries on the side and the driver can come in and get his battery changed in just a few minutes. Many challenges are still associated with this idea, but this is a step in the right direction for electric cars.
Augmented Reality - A new way to see things
Written by Yannick Adam on Thursday, 26 March 2009 07:17
We are surrounded by more and more devices and gadgets that gives us feedback according to the environment we evolve in. Let's take a GPS as example. The feedback received can be audio or visual, but we need to move our attention from our current focus - the road - to read and use it's signals. Now imagine what Augmented Reality will let us do with such common devices in the coming years...
Augmented Reality - Plug into the smart gridPage 6 of 8