Reality Bites
Soda's bad for you, but plastics—especially the petroleum-based PET plastics used widely for bottles—are bad for everyone. Thankfully, after millions of dollars and years of research, Pepsi thinks it's cracked the code on a 100% plant-based PET bottle. More »
The generator is about the size of a saucepot, and would replace the 1,000-pound power train in most cars — no transmission, cooling system, emissions regulation or fluids needed. Norbert Müller and colleagues at Michigan State University showed off the new motor prototype at a meeting with the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency.
It consists of a rotor carved with wave-like channels. Fuel and air enter through central inlets, and the rotor spins to block their exit through a separate outlet. The sudden build-up of pressure generates a shock wave, compressing the mixture. Then it’s ignited, and as the rotor keeps spinning, the outlet opens again to let the hot gases escape. New Scientist explains in further detail.
The novel generator would use about 60 percent of fuel for propulsion, according to MSU. This is a dramatic improvement over typical car engines, which use only 15 percent of fuel for forward movement. The system could also make cars 20 percent lighter, improving fuel economy even more.
MSU received a $2.5 million ARPA-E grant to develop the technology. Müller said he hopes to have an even larger 25-kilowatt prototype by the end of this year.
![Click here to read These Magic Cards Are The "Holy Shit" Moment of Nintendo's New Toy](http://betacache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/03/small_fairymagic_splash.jpg "Click here to read These Magic Cards Are The "Holy Shit" Moment of Nintendo's New Toy")
There will be sixteen games available on the Nintendo 3DS when it goes on sale on March 27, but its best games may be the ones built right into the machine. And video doesn’t show the half of it. More »
This animated short from Sucker Punch shows what happens to the poor fallen soldiers in Zack Snyder’s dark war universe. From the mind behind Harry Potter’s Deathly Hallows animation, Ben Hibon, comes “The Trenches.” Watch! More »
The Japanese Nuclear situation at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is ongoing and ever-changing but if you were curious at how and what happened to cause such problems, this NHK video serves as a great explainer (it’s easy to understand, too). The video details the three safety precautions created to cool the nuclear reactor and discusses how all three have failed in some way. A must watch. [CNN via The Awesomer] More »
Remember the Galaxy Player (or Galaxy S WiFi) we saw back at MWC? Sure you do, it basically strips out the 3G and calling functionality of a Galaxy S phone and leaves you with a Android 2.2 media player or shrunken tablet. Well, it looks like both the 4-inch Galaxy Player 4 and the 5-inch Galaxy Player 5 will be headed to the US this spring. Samsung’s demoing the players here at its NYC Spring Product Showcase today, although it isn’t talking exact timing or pricing. Either way, it looks like this Android 2.2 player (it’s upgradable to 2.3, by the way) with full Market access will be headed stateside sometime soon. We’ve got the full specs after the break and we’ll be trying to dig up more details here — stay tuned.Continue reading Samsung Galaxy Player 4 and 5 to arrive in the US this spring
Samsung Galaxy Player 4 and 5 to arrive in the US this spring originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Mar 2011 11:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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When the new BlackBerry PlayBook finally becomes available there will be several locations to grab one: Rogers, TELUS,, Videotron, Bell stores and retail outlets such as The Source (owned by Bell), Sears Canada and now Staples Canada looks like they might be having available stock. This picture surfaced of what appears to be a “District […]
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The Japan nuclear disaster rates between Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl.
When we launched the new Google Docs last April, one of the big changes was moving comments to the sidebar and letting people reply to comments. Today, we’re updating comments in Google Docs to facilitate rapid and seamless discussions and integrate with email in an intuitive way. Since there are a number of significant improvements, this update is only available for newly created documents for now.
To start, we’ve improved the discussion flow by adding ownership and edit rights to individual comments. Each comment now has a timestamp and profile picture.
Google Docs doesn’t force you to delete comments. Instead, you can resolve comments to remove them from the visible document and view them later by clicking the discussions button at the top of any document. You can even re-open comments from here. 
We know you can’t watch all of your important documents all day to see if there are any suggestions, which is why we’ve integrated comments with your inbox to facilitate more rapid and responsive communication. You can now add someone to a discussion with an @mention. For example, typing @eddy@altostrat.com in a discussion will send a notification email to Eddy with the text of your comment.
Eddy gets a message in her inbox with your question or comment.
The reply will show up in the document as soon as the email is sent.
To turn off email notifications for a document, just select Mute updates from this comment at the bottom of any email or select Discussion notification settings… from the Discussions drop down.
Discussions will be available over the next few days to all users with personal Google Accounts as well as to Google Apps customers on the Rapid Release track. Please note that improved comments are only available in new documents at this time so if you want to try it out make sure to create a new document. The comments you’ve created in existing document won’t be changed.
We’re excited to hear what you think so let us know on in the comments.
Posted by: Nick Cooper, Software Engineer
Sanjay Jha and various leaks already told us as much, but here’s the official word: the WiFi-only Motorola Xoom is launching on March 27th for $599. Retail availability will be truly widespread, with Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Staples and Walmart all offering up the Honeycomb tablet. Other than the omission of the 3G and 4G radios of the original Xoom, you’re basically looking at an identical hardware package. That includes a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, and a 10.1-inch display with 1280 x 800 resolution.
Continue reading Motorola makes WiFi-only Xoom official: $599 on March 27th
Motorola makes WiFi-only Xoom official: $599 on March 27th originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Mar 2011 09:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Have you been struggling to stay on top of your mobile bills ? With these Android applications, you can send free sms and monitor your mobile usage, so that you’ll never have to go over your monthly mobile allowance.
To accomplish this, we will use two Android applications: HeyWire for sending free local and international sms, and Droid Stats to monitor our monthly phone usage. Both of these applications are available for free from the Android market, so head over to the market, and install them when you are ready.
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| How to Enable Google Chrome’s Secret Gold Icon | How to Create an Easy Pixel Art Avatar in Photoshop or GIMP | Internet Explorer 9 Released: Here’s What You Need To Know |
Developers have accused Apple of pushing them to use the App Store by making web apps appear slower on iOS devices.
According to The Register, web apps launched directly from the home screen are being disadvantaged through the use of an older JavaScript engine. Web apps are created using JavaScript and…
Workers have returned after a temporary evacuation from the Fukushima power plant.
iPhone users have been able to avoid radar speed guns using Cobra’s iRadar system since late last year, and it looks like Android users will soon finally be able to get in on the act as well. Cobra used the gdgt Live event at SXSW to announce that iRadar will be available for Android phones sometime in April. That consists of a standard dash-mounted radar detector and, of course, an app, which also takes advantage of your phone’s built-in GPS capabilities to provide warnings of photo enforcement zones and other potential impediments to your inability to drive 55 — you’ll apparently soon even be able to share radar alerts with other iRadar users. Head on past the break for a video of the iPhone version.
Continue reading Cobra iRadar detection system coming to Android next month
Cobra iRadar detection system coming to Android next month originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Promising an overview of the deepest holes in the world certainly leaves one open to any number of (hilarious, sure) jokes about orifices. But man, before you get to all that, would you seriously take a look at these actual gigantic holes? Okay, good, thank you. More »
Radiation from Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami is not expected to pose a safety risk to Canadians, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says.
For over a month, we’ve held onto a document — allegedly a Staples tablet guide — that’s been looking increasingly wrong as the days fly by. Tablet release dates were too soon, and prices were far too high, which made us think it was either a forgery or sorely out of date. (Curious? See our copy after the break.) This week, however, Droid-Life published a far more likely looking copy of the very same thing, which appears to be both quite recent and fairly interesting. You’ll see that Samsung’s 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab makes a cameo, as does the 7-inch HP Opal we told you about early this year, and both the BlackBerry PlayBook and Dell Streak 7’s appearances align with recent rumors we’ve seen. The only outlier is an April release date for the Motorola Xoom WiFi, which ads peg for March 27th. The rest is practically a who’s who of upcoming tablets, so we’ll spare you the full churn of the rumor mill. If you want to know what we know about the lot, simply refer to our coverage below.
Update: Oh, and that HTC tablet is listed as a 10-inch one — could it be the EVO View we’ve been waiting for? [Thanks, Morgan]
Read – Dell Streak 10
Read – Acer Iconia Tab
Read – Toshiba’s unnamed Tegra 2 / Honeycomb tablet
Read – HP TouchPad
[Thanks, Billy F.]
Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Tom’s Hardware got up close and personal with a sweet-looking AMD Eyefinity spread at AMD’s Ontario office. It’s running off one of the new Radeon 6990s, and the 5×1 mode lets you use portrait orientation to minimize horizontal seams. But when are we going to get some of these bezel-less monitors I keep hearing about? I know LG’s working on it, but hurry up, dudes.
Check out the video here. I’d probably get sick playing Dirt like that.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)—the company that runs the Fukushima nuclear plants—says that 70% of the fuel rods have been damaged on the reactor 1 and 33% have been damaged on reactor 2. "The reactors' cores are believed to have partially melted" says the Japanese news agency Kyodo. Sadly, this confirms the judgement of international experts, who criticized Japan for underplaying the crisis. More »
Radiation from Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami is not expected to pose a safety risk to Canadians, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says.
