Lotus Cars has released more information about its new Europa S - a more refined daily driver to complement its minimalist Elise and Exige models(the Europa S only weights 2,189 lb). Lotus will debut the new model at the Geneva Motor Show.
The 2-liter Ecotec turbo puts out a modest 200 hp, but a broad torque band (90 percent of maximum at only 2,000 rpm) with a peak of 194 lb-ft at 4200 rpm helps hustle the lightweight car from 0-60 mph in a respectable 5.5 seconds.
Lotus forecasts production of only 500 per year, with no exports to North America planned at present. The Europa will be available in the U.K. later this year, for about $57,500.
A four head KVM extender up to 820 feet from your workstation, Matrox's new Extio F1400. Basically it's a remote graphics unit that shifts your desktop experience from right next to your box to wherever you want it within 820 feet, via high speed fiber optics back to the GPU. For a desktop extension without a thin-client solution, the Extio F1400 is probably as sophisticated (and expensive) a solution as you're gonna find.
Chocolate Xbox 360 controller gets candy console companion
Here's a sculpted masterpiece that "takes the cake" in this nascent art, an entire chocofied Xbox 360 console that's located in Microsoft's European BeNeLux headquarters, that manages to look both entertaining and delicious at the same time. Microsoft engineers say that they are very close to producing a fully functional version of this chocolate 360, but they're being held back by a problematic power brick design- apparently the darn thing keeps melting itself on startup.
If you work in film or video, or just want to put together the next great Star Wars fan film, Springboard is designed to make the storyboarding easier. Or at least computerize the process. It does have some nice tricks, like a good collection of easily editable arrows for camera moves. The vector-based camera blocking tools look like a lot of fun to use. What's more, you can draw on your frames, and later animate your storyboards as animatics, complete with transitions. All of this can be spit out to a web page (images) or movie file. Springboard is sort of free. You have to "update" to a new free version every four months, and there's a few printing and "export" limits. Some of that might be a deal-killer for you, because all too often you have to eventually dump to paper and move things around manually.
The bags and jewelry designs of Judith Lieber are always beautfiully ornate and her sunglasses line is equally embellished. We got some pictures of the new models for spring and summer 2006. These Lace sunglasses have a light and airy look for summer although they might leave some interesting tan lines.
Louis Vuitton Monogram Perforated series wallet has the perforated monogram canvas and a brightly colored microfiber lining that shows through. It has two separate compartments for bills and credit cards and one for coins. The wallet sells for $540.
Black and white are not the first colors for Spring - But, Kenneth Cole's Hook & Eye Weave Tote would look great with a white eyelet dress and a pair of black high heels. The handles are long enough that you could wear this on your shoulder or on your forearm. It's made of canvas with a leather trim and braided detailing. The interior features a pocket and compartments for your cell. Price: $398.
Halo, Metal Gear Solid and MechWarrior custom LEGO designs
Justin R. Stebbins is a LEGO fanatic. His site, Saber-Scorpion's Lair features dozens, if not hundreds, of custom LEGO designs ranging from Metal Gear Ray to The Bushwhacker(a mech from MechWarrior 4). Justin designed and built every single LEGO set on his site - he also makes a point of never cutting or painting the Lego bricks on his custom models.
The Pillar of Autumn - despite the design's small size, it looks strikingly similar to what the ship looks like in-game.
The Pelican - Justin's design features a troop compartment and thrust vectoring. Talk about comprehensive!
The Mad Cat Mk.II - I've always had a soft spot for this 300 ton killin' machine.
No idea what this thing is, if it's real, or if it's the same kind of factory leak we saw the day of Steve Job's "One more thing..." keynote where he introduced the 5G iPod, but this does look a bit promising as the video iPod that people have been speculating about for a while now. (And yeah, we're assuming that would be a touchscreen on there.)
It's time for the nitty gritty book scanning, which you can accomplish with your very own Fullauto Bookscanner made from LEGOs and other spare gear. The crux of the system is an upside down flatbed scanner, surrounded by LEGO parts to raise and lower the book and automate page turning. It's all controlled by a laptop which also receives the scans.
Marvel at this mechanical masterpiece, a B15 Sentra (current gen.) with a VQ35DE engine. The VQ engine used for this project is the same venerable six-cylinder found in the Altima, Maxima, 350Z, G35… you get the picture. The VQ makes those cars fast, but it makes this car ridiculously fast. Try passing the traps in 12.9 seconds at 105 mph in a FWD pocket rocket normally restricted to 15.7 seconds at 88 mph.
Credit for the engine swap goes to a member of the SR20 Forum by the name of unlucky who eventually plans to offer his swap as a kit for not only the B15 Sentra, but the B13 (1991-1994) and B14 (1995-1999), as well. He’s looking for a donor car on which to prototype those kits, so if you’re insane and have $4,500 to donate to the project, you’ll end up with a Sentra whose front wheels turn to the tune of 250 wheel-horsepower.
Partition-Saving is awkwardly named but incredibly useful app for transferring the bits of one drive to the space on another drive. It's kind of like Norton Ghost, but free. The utility works in DOS only, and is excellent for any techies. Partition-Saving can also save parts of a drive, like the Master Boot Record or partition tables. The documentation is extensive, and I appreciate the effort, as clearly English is not the developer's primary language. Pretty handy app for freeware.
Petals of the Rose is more of a puzzle than a game. Based on a dice roll, you guess the number of petals around a rose. Get 10 in a row and you become a Potentate of the Roses, whatever that means. This puzzler gets addicting fast if you're into it. And for added fun, check out the story of how Bill Gates looked at the puzzle back in 1977.
According to Edmund's Inside Line, the rough-and-tumble offering will be screwed together in Mexico using engineering from Mazda of Japan and Ford of Europe. The model will have a production twin under the skin as well, in the form of a sub-Focus five-door hatchback.
The Bronco will be built on Ford's current Fiesta subcompact's mechanicals (a replacement chassis is already under development, but the Bronco will get today's greasy bits due to cost issues) in Ford's Cuautitlán factory, which presently builds the Latin-American market Ikon sedan (which is likewise Fiesta-based). For reference, the auto show star of 2004 was based on Ford's Fiesta-based EcoSport crossover.
The good news is Ford feels that it can bring it all to market for under $10,000 in an effort to burnish the Blue Oval with a little of Scion's swagger.
James Kaya, who is based in Boston, describes his style as architectural and his work is influenced by his homeland, Armenia. Kaya has been in business for two decades but last year won the New Designer of the Year at the Mort Abelson Award and his business has been expanding rapidly. Kaya and his team of jewelers do everything by hand, from sketch to mold to creation. His website features not only his jewelry, which is striking, if a bit sharp-edged at times, but also sketches of the pieces.
This being the week of Link's 20th anniversary, Vintage Games ponders the idea if Zelda could become a successful MMORPG. From the article: "I think since the Zelda games are action-adventure games, that the gameplay of a Zelda MMORPG should be action-role-playing. That is, you swing your sword and do actions in real time, but you could build up experience and raise your stats over time."
Honda announced that its ZEST minicar, what appears to be a Scion xB fighter on a slightly smaller scale, scheduled to go on sale in Japan on March 1. The little box's claim to fame is the low-floor platform technology, which results in lots of interior room given its diminutive size, along with a low tailgate. Like the aformentioned xB and similar vehicles, the car will likely become a success story with handicapped consumers: a wheelchair accessible model goes on sale starting March 17.
Honda’s i-DSI engine or i-DSI turbocharged engine mated to a four-speed transmisison will haul it through the streets of Japan by its front two wheels. The company is also bragging that some models put out 75-percent less emissions than legally required in Japan at the moment.
Google has released a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web page authoring tool that requires no knowledge of HTML whatsoever, called Google Pages. Users can simply log in using their Gmail account if they have one, and begin creating a web page in seconds. The pages are hosted by Google at an address like "username.googlepages.com/home". The editor gives you a large array of different themes to base your page on, then acts much like an online word processor. In fact, editing pages truly is as easy as writing a document in Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, the pages that you can produce using Google Pages are very "Web 1.0" - there is nothing cool and Ajaxy or RSS-enabled about it. But you get to make static web pages quickly, easily and for free.
Engineers with the US Army recently completed tests on a 20-ton unmanned Stryker vehicle, intended to be used as part of a convoy. In the tests, the robot vehicle was able to follow a manned vehicle at speeds averaging 22 miles per hour, topping out at 40 on straightaways. The robotank was also able to detect obstacles laid down by the lead vehicle and maneuver around them. One of the big advantages of the vehicle appears to be the ability to operate without GPS, instead relying on terrain data sent from the lead vehicle and data gathered from on-board sensors; soldiers will remain in the vehicles for now, but in the future, these mech-warriors could be used for tasks like resupplying forces in dangerous environments.
Tenchu: Dark Shadow contains a healthy number of ninjas. This means that, aside from flipping out and killing people, you can expect to engage in all sorts of sneaky tactics whilst you eliminate your evil warlord foes. It's fair to say that the stealth genre hasn't been truly well represented on the DS yet, and so lets hope that this game will quietly put things right.
-Lytir1
