We had the chance to meet Steve Burns when he came to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit earlier this month. Steve Burns is the CEO of AMP Electric Vehicles, a Cincinnati, OH-based company that is creating electric vehicles without building cars themselves. AMP believes in electrifying vehicles, but doesn’t think you have to build an entirely new car in order to to do it. Instead, they are converting a stock Saturn Sky to run on electric power by removing the internal combustion engine and gas tank, and putting in batteries and direct drive electric motors, and entering it in the XPrize competition to be run later this year.
Steve has founded a number of companies over the past decade, most recently iTookThisOnMyPhone.com, a mobile photo and video-sharing technology company, as well as now serving as CEO of AMP.
We asked Steve Burns to be our EcoGeek of the Week and to tell us more about the AMP approach to building electric vehicles.
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Here are two interesting but conflicting opinions on the iPad, pro and con.
Con: Tech author Rafe Colburn says the iPad is a scary harbringer of the closed future of consumer computing.
“General purpose computing is too complicated for most people anyway, and the iPad’s descendants along with similar competing products from other companies will offer an [...]
Face it, given a chance, everyone would like to fly. A lot of adventure sports seek to satisfy that craving. Skydiving, balloon rides and gliding to name a few. Needless to say, these sports involve a lot of risks unless you are trained to practice them. That’s where simulators come into the picture. A bunch of Ozs realized this and have designed what they call a “Portable Gliding Simulator.” They have done so because they believe that the Australian public is not into gliding despite the weather there being so very right for the sport. So the Portable Gliding Simulator comes into the picture with a very noble intention of increasing the pilots that would be gliding in the years to come. By the by, let us just warn you that the Portable tag might actually be a bit of misnomer, since the whole paraphernalia is about 450 kgs and needs to be towed by a car! And yet since there practically none that a less bulky, we’d have to go with this.
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Last year, the government promised $10.5 billion in funds for high-speed rail development and the first state to receive some of that money is Florida. Tomorrow, President Obama will be awarding $2.5 billion to the state to jump-start the first phase of their train system that will run from Orlando to Tampa.
Phase 1 will run along the heavily traveled I-4 corridor and take passengers to Orlando Airport, Orlando, Disney, Lakeland and Tampa at speeds above 120 mph – not a bullet train, but still faster than a car. Phase 2 will connect Orlando to Miami by two different routes (I-95 and the Turnpike). The system will eventually connect all the major cities in the state and points in between.
The first phase will cost $3.5 billion, so after the government funds the state will still have to raise $1 billion from private investors to complete the project. The state expects the first trains to be running by 2014.
Ideally, Florida’s train system is just the beginning of a much larger train network linking the whole East Coast and the nation. With $8 billion left to be doled out, I’m excited to see which area is the next recipient.
via Inhabitat
Yeah those tablet rumors were very true, and the new Apple iPad tablet was revealed today. This 9.7″ touchscreen tablet measures just .5″ thick. It features a 1Ghz Apple A4 processor, 802.11n wi-fi, Bluetooth, 3G (on some models) and hardware accelerated OpenGL graphics. It is available with your choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB SSD drive.
The iPad starts at just $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB model and $699 for 64GB. To add 3G support, it costs and additional $130 up front, with unlimited 3G data from AT&T for $29.99 a month (with no contract).
Want to know more? Click here to get the full details and specs of the new Apple iPad.
There’s some pretty good jokes is this Barely Political mash-up of President Obama’s State of the Union address and Steve Jobs’ iPad presentation.
Via Giz.
Bringing the tropical rain-forest to the UK, Proctor and Matthews Architects has come up with a biodome called “Heart of Africa” that will replicate rain-forest habitats of the African Congo. Located around the Chester Zoo in northern England, the 112 foot-high zoological attraction will feature a jungle canopy and provide shelter to different animals, including gorillas, chimps, okapi, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles. Spreading in 172,000 square feet area, the biodome is gonna be the Europe’s biggest conservation and animal attraction when it’ll open to the visitors in 2014.
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Exclusive Alternate edit from Modern Collective of Dane Reynolds, Jordy Smith, Dion Agius and Mitch Coleborn.
Algae has seemed like a great biofuel candidate because it’s extremely efficent at creating energy from sunlight and it could potentially form closed loops for power plants – absorbing exhaust while creating new fuel – but a recent study has knocked algae off its pedestal.
University of Virginia researchers have found that the life cycle of algal biofuel produces high levels of greenhouse gas emissions — much more than it sequesters.
The culprit is the large amount of fertilizer used to produce the algae. The fertilizers come from petroleum-bases sources and emit nitrous oxide. The researchers propose using fertilizer from sewage plants as a way around the problem.
It looks like we’re still far away from an ideal biofuel, if there is one.
via Yale e360
This is my last chance to say something before the great and terrible Steve holds his tablet aloft (and even then, rumormongers might have beaten him to the punch), so let me give you a bit of a long view perspective, something usually left out when we’re discussing whether we’ll see a 10 or 11″ [...]
The ancient game of chess, which dates back to the 6th century, is one of the most famous games known to man. Inspired by ancient Greek architecture, this set of chess by Finnish designer Krisztian Griz tries to break free of the usual forms and shapes of traditional chessboards. The design is limited to the chess figures, as it does not consider storing and transportation of the game. The figures have specific characteristics that make them easier to distinguish, though it can take a little time to get used to them. All of the figures use the same basic shape to stand on; this makes them look part of the same family, but in the meantime each figure tries to emphasize its role and feature. Moreover, the chess set puts emphasis on the grip of the figures, for each piece has a different head, separating it from the rest. And the board, though not an integral part of the design, maps the play area on a slim surface with a raised column as if the game is played on a rocky island.
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Well, it’s finally here: Tablet Week. Or, as I like to think of it, it’s time for there to be Just One More Thing. We all know how significant we expect this announcement to be. A major new advancement in computing, a killer device for a market that has failed time after time, and, just [...]
You may have boarded the business class of an airplane many a time to travel across places, but residing in a luxury suit made inside an aircraft will definitely give a whole new experience that’s not just flight specific. Located rather grounded at Teuge Airport, Netherlands, the hotel makes use of a 120-seater German plane of the 1960 to confer the residents with luxurious sauna, jacuzzi, 24/7 hostess, 3 flat screens, Blu-Ray player and so on. Earlier serving as a restaurant for 15 years, the Cold War-era plane has now has now become a luxury hotel suite to host the rich and wealthy. Featuring the interiors and luxury facilities installed by Dutch company Hotelsuites.nl, the one of a kind hotel also opens the untouched cockpit to take the guests back into the Cold War-era. Moreover, the hotel guests can enjoy parachute jumps or stunt plane rides to make their vacation unforgettable.
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