New Orleans’ First Tech Incubator, Launch Pad Ignition, Debuts Its Second Batch Of Startups

Screen shot 2012-05-04 at 9.58.47 PMLaunch Pad Ignition, the first tech incubator to make its home in the Big Easy, today officially unveiled the seven companies that participated in its second annual session. The accelerator's 12-week program began the second week of February and culminated yesterday with its own New Orleans rendition of the patented "Demo Day," appropriately called "Launch Fest," which we've been told is "Jazz Fest plus startups, on steroids." Launch Pad's model is a bit different than that of the traditional accelerator, in that Co-founder Chris Schultz tells us it's geared towards building traction, not offering big early funding.

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Galaxy S III Serves Up Big Dollop of Ice Cream Sandwich

Samsung launched the Galaxy S III smartphone in London on Thursday. The device will run Android Ice Cream Sandwich, version 4.0 of the mobile OS. The Galaxy S III's features include facial and voice recognition, voice command capability and eye tracking.

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Farragomate is a social fridge magnet game where you make up sentences

farragomate
You know those fridge magnet kits composed of a whole bunch of words? The ones you put all over your fridge door and then try to arrange into all sorts of juvenile and/or amusing sentences. Well, Farragomate is the social, webby version of that very same pastime.

You get to play with a bunch of random strangers in real-time, and make up sentences out of a pre-set collection of words, including some fairly naughty ones, and all players' nicknames. As you can imagine, some of the results are not child-friendly.

There are ten rounds to a game. Once a round is done, players get to vote for their favorite sentence from that round. You can't vote for your own creation, of course. There's in-game chat, too.

I think the vocabulary could be made a bit more eclectic, but even as it is, it's a nice way to spend a few minutes and meet random strangers on the Internet (always a thrilling experience).

Farragomate is a social fridge magnet game where you make up sentences originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/25/farragomate-is-a-social-game-where-you-make-up-sentences/

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Motorola MOTOACTV GPS Tracker Review

Verizon recently gave me the opportunity to try out the new MOTOACTV.  Well, what exactly is it? A music player? A GPS Tracker? A watch? Actually, it’s all of those. They also lent me the Sports armband. I am definitely a casual runner, and I don’t run much at all when it is cold, but this got me out [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2012/05/03/motorola-motoactv-gps-tracker-review/

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New metal mix could lead to cheap, plentiful sodium-ion batteries in gadgets

Image

Lithium batteries very frequently power our gadgets, but the material itself isn't common and, by extension, isn't cheap. Researchers at the Tokyo University of Science aim to solve that through sodium-ion batteries using a new electrode material. By mixing together oxides of iron, manganese and sodium, Shinichi Komaba and team have managed to get a sodium battery's electrode holding a charge closer to that of a lithium-ion battery while using a much more abundant material. Having just 30 total charges means this simplest form of sodium-ion battery technology could be years away from finding a home in your next smartphone or EV, although it's not the only option. Argonne National Laboratory's Chris Johnson has co-developed a more exotic vanadium pentoxide electrode that could produce 200 charges while keeping the battery itself made out of an ingredient you more often find in your table salt than your mobile gear.

[Image credit: Hi-Res Images of Chemical Elements]

New metal mix could lead to cheap, plentiful sodium-ion batteries in gadgets originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 May 2012 06:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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UC Berkeley freshman shows us his ridiculously automated dorm (video)

Image

Besides beer pong, the whole point of going away to college is to blossom into an independent, motivated, self-sufficient adult. That is, of course, unless your dorm's name is BRAD (Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm), where freshman Derek Low controls devices all around his room without even getting out of bed. An app on his phone can adjust ambient lighting and curtain position depending on the situation. His laptop uses Dragon Dictate to turn shouts into tasks his pile of servos and motors can accomplish. Just saying "Romantic mode" makes a disco ball pop out of the ceiling and plays the epically passionate Elton John song, "Can You Feel The Love Tonight." As if that wasn't enough, the emergency "party mode" button located next to the bed activates a bunch of lasers and strobes, as well as fog and blacklights while a bumpin' stereo system cranks out dance music. This dorm is clearly every college freshman's dream. I mean, who wouldn't want to wake up with Justin Bieber every morning? Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading UC Berkeley freshman shows us his ridiculously automated dorm (video)

UC Berkeley freshman shows us his ridiculously automated dorm (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 May 2012 16:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New metal mix could lead to cheap, plentiful sodium-ion batteries in gadgets

Image

Lithium batteries very frequently power our gadgets, but the material itself isn't common and, by extension, isn't cheap. Researchers at the Tokyo University of Science aim to solve that through sodium-ion batteries using a new electrode material. By mixing together oxides of iron, manganese and sodium, Shinichi Komaba and team have managed to get a sodium battery's electrode holding a charge closer to that of a lithium-ion battery while using a much more abundant material. Having just 30 total charges means this simplest form of sodium-ion battery technology could be years away from finding a home in your next smartphone or EV, although it's not the only option. Argonne National Laboratory's Chris Johnson has co-developed a more exotic vanadium pentoxide electrode that could produce 200 charges while keeping the battery itself made out of an ingredient you more often find in your table salt than your mobile gear.

[Image credit: Hi-Res Images of Chemical Elements]

New metal mix could lead to cheap, plentiful sodium-ion batteries in gadgets originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 May 2012 06:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Ars Technica  |  sourceNature, ACS Nano  | Email this | Comments


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Opera 11.10 includes improved power saving features

opera 11.10 battery power
Just recently, the Opera 11.10 release candidate was made available for download. It brought a handful of important feature additions -- like HTML5 File API support and IMAP enhancements -- and loads of bugfixes. Nestled in amongst the other details in the Opera team's announcement is one more interesting tidbit: Opera 11.10 offers improved battery optimizations.

The timing here is certainly interesting, what with Microsoft's recent report on how much power the top five Web browsers consume. In its findings, Opera 11 was fairly low in the standings. While we've not seen any new benchmarks yet, we're curious to know whether the Opera 11.10 RC offers any significant gains.

If you're running Opera 11.10 on a laptop, let us know if you're seeing an improvement in your battery life while browsing!

Opera 11.10 includes improved power saving features originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/07/opera-11-10-includes-improved-power-saving-features/

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HTC exec: we didn't have much time with ICS when making Sense 4, but our skin is still better

HTC exec: we hardly saw ICS before releasing Sense 4, but our skin is still an 'improvement'

HTC's Drew Bamford is a long-time defender of the Sense UI, but in a fresh interview he's switched tactics and rushed headlong at the competition. He told Laptop that Sense 4 beats native Android 4 (as seen on the GNex) on a number of fronts, possessing a more inviting look, greater personalization of the lockscreen and wallpaper, plus faster camera performance. Of course, he would say that, but having spent many balmy evenings with both the One S and the One X we're inclined to agree that the latest version of the skin is lighter-footed and, actually, pretty nice. What's perhaps more revealing is Bamford's statement that HTC's software guys had "not a lot of time" with ICS before they released Sense 4, and had to build key components in isolation from the new OS. This could explain why HTC was forced to see sense (ahem) and tone down its custom layer. More broadly, if manufacturers are struggling to keep their handset launch schedules in sync with Google's in-house development, it's no wonder that Android skins seem so unsympathetic to the green robot's natural complexion.

HTC exec: we didn't have much time with ICS when making Sense 4, but our skin is still better originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 May 2012 08:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/04/htc-sense-4-drew-bamford/

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