Tech with a twist of lime! & FLHybrid Club.

I said I'd revisit sync when I knew more. Take a look at this video:

I still think there is nothing technical keeping this technology with Ford... (Read More)

The Windows Vista Bus Gadget was causing some viewers with Internet Explorer 6 to experience  browser slowdowns and crashes.   Users with Firefox were never able to see the map.  So if you have IE 7 you can find the bus gadget on the FAQs page on the right hand side.  It will be removed when the Windows Vista Coach Tour is complete.  I did have the opportunity to visit the team at Disney, I'll have a writeup of my experiences after I visit the team again later today.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  IE 7 has made great strides toward following web standards, if you don't use Firefox, upgrade to IE 7. If your web applications are properly coded they won't break in the new browsers, if not coded properly they probably will only work with IE 6.  I wrote a long article on the topic of coding to standards about a year ago, I'll try to look it up and re-post.

Kacey Green
www.grlt.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"

Crave & Gizmodo report: 1/17

If you recall, a young lady recently died possibly because of water intoxication resulting from a "Hold Your Wee for a Nintendo Wii" contest put on by a radio station that had people drink large quantities of water and not go to the bathroom. The 10 people responsible for the contest were canned and the show, Morning Rave on KDND-FM, has been suspended.

Update: And the plot thickens. Commenter Auger282 found this live recording of the actual show where the DJs joked about water intoxication, and emphasized the fact that release forms were needed to be signed. Just go take a listen for yourself and prepare to be shocked.

A preliminary autopsy indicated that Jennifer Strange, 28, died from water intoxication after participating in KDND-FM 107.9's on-air "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest Friday. The participant who drank the most water without using the bathroom was promised a game console valued at $250. During the match, contestants were given two minutes to drink an 8-ounce bottle of water, then given another bottle to drink after a 10-minute break. (Credit: KDND-FM 107.9)After drinking two gallons and becoming one of two final participants, according to witness reports, Strange began to feel ill and had to quit. She called in sick to work after the contest, complaining of a bad headache, and about five hours later, her mother found her dead in her Rancho Cordova, Calif., home. An excess of water in the body can lead to the dilution of vital fluids. That in turn can lead to swelling of the brain, seizures, comas and in some cases death. John Geary, vice president and general manager of Entercom/Sacramento, the parent company of KDND, sent an e-mail to reporters Tuesday stating that "effective immediately, the 'Morning Rave' program is canceled and 10 employees are no longer with the station." Among the fired employees were three morning disc jockeys. Strange, a mother of three, took part in the contest hoping to win the system for her children, according to reports.

This is crazy to both put on such a contest and to participate beyond any safe limits, two gallons of water is crazy.

Please use the new comments feature to tell us what you think of this whole situation.

Kacey Green
http://www.grlt.com/
"Tech with a twist of lime!"

Global Auto Index reports: 1/16

Wow!  After yesterday's news that BMW was putting features of an idle-stop hybrid into their new 5 Series Global Auto Index breaks this news (I have quoted the press release they provided).  BMW is introducing a 1 Series that gets 60.1 MPG and has many features of full hybrids. The steering is electric, and the other accessories disconnect from the powertrain when not in use.

The new BMW 1 Series goes on sale in spring 2007 and features a model line up that includes the most fuel efficient production vehicle BMW has ever produced. The introduction of a three-door model and a revised five-door come as a raft of new fuel-saving innovations are rolled out across the range.

The BMW 118d, BMW’s most economical car, manages its record 60.1mpg figure courtesy of these features in conjunction with the use of further lightweight engineering. The car now has an aluminium crankcase to save weight. Aside from the BMW Hydrogen 7, the BMW 118d also posts the lowest ever CO2 emissions of any BMW recording 123g/km (putting it into the Band C category for Vehicle Excise Duty).

Other engines in the new 1 Series range record economy improvements of up to 24 per cent compared to the previous model, while emissions have also been cut by up to 21 per cent. These improvements have not been to the detriment of driving pleasure. The new 1 Series is powered by a range of engines whose outputs have increased by up to 20hp with a consequential improvement in performance figures.

ArsTechnica reports: 1/16

My family used to subscribe to Netflix, if I were a Netflix subscriber I'd probably use this feature to watch movies as my PC handles all of my multimedia (its a PVR.)  If they had this service when my family was subscribing we probably would have used it to preview movies to watch in our living room.  Its an interesting concept and I'm curious as to how Netflix plans to get the content to the living room in the future.

Netflix subscribers will soon get access to movies delivered over the Internet, finally allowing the company to live up to its name. For those with the bandwidth, this is a nice (and free) extra, but users with slow connections will want to stick with DVDs.

The new service streams movies to Windows PCs instead of downloading them first. This has the dual benefit of 1) appeasing content owners who worry that full downloads of their movies might be cracked and 2) providing instant gratification to customers in need of a cinematic fix. Netflix claims that, with the aid of a one-time browser applet download, customers can begin watching films within 15 seconds of clicking the "play" button.

Streaming high-quality video with little buffering requires a fast connection. Netflix says that its new technology throttles the streaming speed based on available bandwidth. Users will need a minimum of 1Mbps to watch films, but these will be far below DVD quality. 3Mbps connections are required to watch movies in their native resolution (no support is currently planned for high-definition content). With the increasing ubiquity of broadband, this should pose no problem for most power users, but plenty of 768Kbps DSL connections (and slower) still dot the landscape.

Kacey Green
www.GRLT.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"