Smartphones are increasingly becoming the remote controls of our lives. Car owners can use theirs to check on the battery level and driving range and adjust the climate control system. An MIT project explores new ways to use smartphones to help drivers cut fuel costs. Read more »
Southwest Airlines is rolling out new fuel-efficient flight-path technology that could save the company up to $60 million a year — and help the global airline industry shave its carbon footprint as well. Read more »
I’m now primarily a Mac user, but back when I was on Windows, my multi-protocol IM client of choice was Miranda IM. It’s a lightweight, highly extensible and unobtrusive open-source tool. The Miranda IM team this week released version 0.9, which contains some useful new features: Read more »
EcoMotors, a 2-year-old developer of highly efficient engine technology backed by Khosla Ventures, has struck an $18 million deal with automotive supplier Zhongding Holding (Group) Co. and engineering services firm Global Optima. Read more »
AAA’s latest study on vehicle ownership costs reads like a case for fuel sippers, if not for deserting personal cars altogether in favor of alternatives like car-share networks, which often cover fuel, maintenance and insurance costs, and larger “mobility on demand” systems. Read more »
A heaping pile of pounds will be injected into Britain’s green car industry over the coming years, with automakers and the government both throwing cash into a major buildout of manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries, fuel-efficient engines and other parts for lower-emission vehicles. Japanese automaker Nissan announced […] Read more »
With these tools, you are no longer required to send your tweets in real time, because you can write them in advance. This is a perfect solution for those of us who can’t find the time to jump on Twitter on a consistent basis. Read more »
What can software do for hybrid fuel economy? Ford Motor and researchers at the University of Michigan plan to find out in a new project meant to speed development of more fuel-efficient hybrid systems. According to an announcement from Ford yesterday, the pair will run up […] Read more »
The “cash for clunkers” program created as part of a military spending bill last month has been hanging in limbo for the last few weeks. The program, which effectively knocks up to $4,500 off the price of new fuel efficient vehicles if you trade in an […] Read more »
Updated with additional information from MIT: The MIT students behind startup Levant Power have already won over some tough crowds, drawing interest in their energy-harvesting hydraulics from the U.S. military and several U.S. truck makers. Today the Levant team won the nod of the university from […] Read more »
Transonic Combustion, the Khosla Ventures-backed startup currently developing a high-efficiency fuel injection system that could lead to 100 mpg vehicles, said today it’s raised a third round of funding, though it declined to say exactly how much. Venrock, Rustic Canyon Partners and Saints Capital also participated […] Read more »
If you have your eye on a 50 MPG gen-3 Prius hybrid or a 150 MPG plug-in Volt, the new CAFE standards won’t seem like much. But the Department of Transportation’s plan to require automakers’ car and truck lineups to have an average fuel efficiency of […] Read more »
Kevin was all over the rumors out of Asia yesterday that Apple is ready to produce a netbook this year. The unconfirmed rumors have Apple getting a bunch of 10-inch touch-screens for inclusion on their netbook, even though they have stated emphatically they don’t do netbooks. […] Read more »
Updated: On Monday, Qualcomm announced a location-based recommendation engine powered by Xiam, which it acquired last March. The service (offered through carriers) takes demographic information, a user’s personal preferences and geographic location, and serves up lists of places and events that the user might enjoy. For […] Read more »
Japan’s second largest wireless carrier, KDDI, has taken the plunge into the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard, by building an LTE overlay on top of its existing CDMA network. KDDI is using equipment from Nortel and Hitachi for the fourth-generation wireless network, which will be operating […] Read more »
Just in time for Earth Day, the Department of Transportation said it couldn’t wait until 2020 for the increase in the national fuel efficiency that was approved by Congress to take effect. In January, as part of the Energy Bill, Congress voted to raise the corporate […] Read more »
Web workers on the go live and die by connectivity. In the olden days this used to mean finding a spare ethernet drop at your client’s office, but fortunately, we’ve advanced since then. Now we get the bulk of our connectivity over the air using a […] Read more »
I neglected to mention that a week ago I took the bride to Verizon as it was time to replace her aging RaZR phone and she got the LG Voyager. You remember the advance look I gave you (and 200,000 others) of the Voyager and how […] Read more »
Looks like Amazon.com (AMZN) is the big winner in the NBC vs. iTunes spat: NBC has decided that its content will appear on Unbox, Amazon’s digital video download service. Unbox customers can pay to download hit NBC shows such as The Office and Heroes, as well […] Read more »
Umair points to an interesting list of Urban Games John Gruber defends Apple’s digital music strategy. As always he is right on the money. Opportunities at the bottom of the pyramind. You read this in my story, Rise of The Instant Company. Nice to see validation […] Read more »
