Latest Innovations

Chevy VOLT, electric car

2011-12-06T17:28:00.000+05:30

The leading car provider in India General Motors is expected to launch its first ever electric chargeable car in super class segment which will have the capacity to create its own electricity, named "VOLT" yes suitable indeed!!!!

In Chevrolet Volt wheels are operated by electricity produced by on-board battery or gasoline engine. this can be charged in just 8 hours in normal volt condition of 120 and if have installed a 240v outlet it will end up with full charge in a short span time of 3 hours

Spec: 1.4litre, 4 cylinder,4 door, aerodynamic, ABS,EBD,...
Price: 35 to 40 lacs expected

Chevrolet Volt Pros:
Eco friendly, cheaper running cost, comfortable, ravishing interiors and exteriors.
Chevrolet Volt Cons:
Expected to be more expensive than other hybrid cars, few features are kept same as ex launched cars of company.

Mahindra's "X(S)UV" is here..

2011-10-01T15:01:00.000+05:30

The much awaited Mahindra XUV500 is finally set to hit the global markets. Mahindra has done it again fantastically!

When Mahindra announced their plans for the global SUV, which has transpired into the XUV500, enthusiasts and folks were all ears. Ever since then, its been a wait and watch journey which has finally culminated in a surprise like no one can do better than Mahindra.

Speaking about the competition, the XUV500 is set to take on a host of players, not just in the SUV/Crossover category, but some sedans as well. The prime competition being the Tata Aria, however cars such as the Skoda Laura, Toyota Corolla Altis and Chevrolet Cruze plus high end models of the Tata Safari and the Toyota Innova are also bound to fall prey to the stellar pricing of the XUV500, priced between Rs.10.80 and 12.88 lakhs.

Available in three models, the XUV500 is powered by a 2.2 litre CRDe mHawk engine that makes 140 BHP @ 3750 rpm and 330Nm of torque @ 1600-2800 rpm, which is mated to a six speed gearbox. It can be availed either as a 4x2 or a 4x4, however all models come with ABS with EBD and airbags as standard safety features.

Hyundai i30

2011-09-08T16:39:00.000+05:30

Its i30 now after i10 and i20.
The upcoming 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show will host the world premiere of Hyundai's new generation i30 C-segment hatchback.

The exterior styling follows the Fluidic Sculpture design language includes a large hexagonal front grille, wraparound headlamps, a bulging belt line and pronounced front wheel arches.

The new i30 will launch as a five-door hatchback with a choice of fuel-efficient four-cylinder gasoline and diesel engines.

Hope it will soon reach Indian markets. Stay tuned for that.

Mercedes-Benz B-Class Previewed

2011-09-01T14:23:00.000+05:30

The first official exterior photo of the redesigned 2013 Mercedes-Benz B-Class has been leaked in Europe, ahead of the car's public debut at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show.

After several teasers and a few details about the new Mercedes-Benz B-Class, the German car maker has finally revealed all the details and photos of its new car, with which the company is planning on revolutionizing the premium minivan market.

The four-cylinder gas engines that power the B 180 and B 200 displace 1.6 liters. The base engine makes 121 horsepower and 148 pound-feet of torque, while the more powerful unit is rated at 154 hp and 184 lb-ft.

The four-cylinder common-rail turbo diesels displace 1.8 liters. The 180 CDI makes 107 hp and 184 lb-ft, while the B 200 CDI delivers 134 hp and 221 lb-ft.

B-class featuring Adaptive Headlamp Assist, Blind Spot Assist/Lane Keeping Assist, Attention Assist, Speed Limit Assist, Active Parking Assist, Linguatronic, Distronic Plus, PreSafe and radar-based Collision Prevention Assist with Adaptive Brake Assist.

Apple OS X Lion with 250+ new features

2011-06-19T17:53:00.000+05:30

The world’s most advanced desktop operating system's latest version LION coming in july 2011
Mac OS X Lion (version 10.7) is set to be the eighth major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers.

A preview of Lion was publicly unveiled at Apple's "Back to the Mac" event on October 20, 2010. It will bring many developments made in Apple's iOS, such as an easily-navigable display of installed applications, to the Mac, and will include support for the Mac App Store, as introduced in Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.6.

Here are the main features reviewed by Apple

Multi-touch gestures
Mac App Store
Launchpad – App Home screens
Full screen apps
Mission Control – Expose, full screen apps, Dashboard, Spaces all in one
Auto-save
Auto resume app state when launched

0 to 100kmph in 2.9s

2011-04-21T13:24:00.000+05:30

Lamborghini has taken its usual super-car formula and turned it up a notch or two. Named "Aventador" after a Spanish fighting bull.
The Aventador features 'swing up doors', a choice of 13 colours '3of which are matte', 'automatic rear spoiler', 'bi-xenon headlights', and 'flaps' that open and close automatically to either improve aerodynamic efficiency or allow more airflow to vital components.

Power is sent to all four wheels via what Lamborghini calls an "independent shifting rods" clutch pedal-less transmission that's operated by paddles behind the steering wheel. The company claims that the gearbox can change from one gear to the next in 50 milliseconds.

The body shell made from strong but lightweight carbon fibre, that make the Aventador accelerate from zero to 100km/h in a mind-bending 2.9 seconds and hit a top speed of 350km/h.

The Aventador goes on sale overseas at the end of 2011, with a price of approximately £201,900 in the UK

Mercedes-Benz R350 2011 BlueTec

2011-04-21T12:59:00.000+05:30

Back in 2005, when Mercedes-Benz launched a car not a minivan, not an SUV not a wagon thingy, but the R-class, a multi-passenger flagship.The R350 is currently offered in the U.S. with standard 4MATIC all-wheel drive and your choice of a gas-powered 3.5-liter V-6 producing 268 hp and 258 lb-ft of torque.

The diesel’s fuel-economy ratings of 18 mpg city and 24 highway easily trump the gas V-6’s 14 and 19 and achieved a respectable 20 mpg in the BlueTec.Both V-6s are hooked to a seven-speed automatic that, in our tester, provided smooth shifts when driving.

The R350 BlueTec still has old-style Mercedes steering, heavily weighted with a large on-center dead spot. It’s relaxing, and the dead spot is appreciable, because of the tremendous amount of body roll that accompanies steering inputs.

The R350 BlueTec did manage to improve on the R500’s skidpad performance, from 0.75 g to 0.80. Braking from 70 mph takes 177 feet—pretty good for a six-seater—but pedal feel is noticeably absent.

All New 2011 Ford Mondeo

2011-04-21T12:16:00.000+05:30

The blue Oval company has just released the first official images and details of the new generation 2011 Ford Mondeo,will be premiered at the 2010 Moscow Show.

2011 Ford Mondeo is the first one to get the company's 2.0-litre EcoBoost turbocharged petrol engine that develops 240 PS and emits 179 g/km of CO2.

The diesel version of the 2011 Ford Mondeo is powered by the 2.2-litre Duratorq TDCi engine which develops 200 PS. Diesel engine on Ford Mondeo will be offered in three power outputs, 115, 140 or 163 PS and coupled with a 6-speed manual transmission.

The 2011 Mondeo range includes a comprehensive array of driver assistance features, many of which are appearing for the first time in a Ford model, that includes Lane Departure Warning, Driver Alert and Auto High Beam.

New features already introduced in the latest S-MAX and Galaxy models are now extended to the Mondeo range, including the Blind Spot Information System, Speed Limiter, Rear Door Power Child Locks and Rear View Camera.
LED lighting technology is also used for the daytime running lights and rear tail and brake lamps.

Pedestrian Detection System from Volvo

2011-04-10T16:01:00.000+05:30

The Sweden luxury car maker Volvo has claimed to have successfully developed a unique pedestrian detection system that can automatically bring a car to a halt as soon as it find someone stepping out in front of the vehicle.

As Volvo says, the new system incorporates a "support function" that uses a camera and radar technology to detect vehicles and pedestrians ahead of the car. The new technology has been developed in a bid to save lives in crowded urban streets.

Volvo claims that the new pedestrian detection technology remains active at all speeds. However, the technology doesn’t work in nights or poor weather.

It is to be mentioned here that there has been a considerable increase in the number of pedestrians killed in the road accidents in past few years. The rate is increasing day by day.

The Swedish company claims that its new pedestrian detection technology would be able to reduce the number of pedestrians killed by over 20 percent, while the number of pedestrians seriously injured would decrease by over 30 percent. The company also claims that the vehicles equipped with this technology would be able to entirely avoid a collision in over 30 percent cases.

Fastest bus in Dubai travels 250kph

2011-04-09T15:15:00.000+05:30

It isn’t exactly a bus, but it is a public transport ready for the future. Commuters between Dubai and UAE will soon be able to experience 250kph sitting inside one of these.
The “Superbus” can transport 23 passengers in comfort while clocking a mind-numbing 200+kph on its dedicated track.

Designed by a team from TU Delft University of Technology in Holland, the Superbus works on electricity. Public transport usually suffers from either plenty or lack of congestion, pollution and safety.

The Superbus has addressed all three issues, it is claimed. What’s more it is aerodynamic and looks more interesting than a bus or a train. It will go well with the landscape of a modern city.

It’s 15m long (about a bus’ length) but with the height of a typical SUV with eight doors on each side. Powered by lithium iron phosphate batteries, the Superbus, makes use of rear wheel steering.

It has at a total 8 doors and can accommodate 23 passengers at a drive. The first road tests were successful in Holland last year.

At present, it is proposed to service in the Abu Dhabi - Dubai two line and will cover in 30 minutes.Several other similar routes are under evaluation.

Name The HDD Partitions In Ubuntu

2011-04-08T18:08:00.000+05:30

Many ubuntu users who migrated from Windows are annoyed on the way ubuntu names the harddisk partitions.Ubuntu names the root as ‘File System’ and the partitions as ‘xx GB File System’ where ‘xx’ is the capacity of partition in GB.But they are not aware of the way to name the partitions.

Here is a simple step by step explanation on the proceeding. Don’t worry it can be done in a GUI method.

Go to System => Administration => Disk Utility
Select the item ‘xx GB Hard Disk’ The one you need if you have many HDD.
In the Volumes section, click on a partition you want to label with a name of your choice.
Click ‘Edit Filesystem Label’.
In the Label box, enter a name, eg: Disk-Drive1, and click Apply.

The file manager should now show the partition label, instead of xx GB Filesystem.If the option for “Edit Filesystem Label” is not shown, click “Unmount Volume” before hand. In case you can’t unmount a volume, try Storage Device Manager to unmount it.
Copyright 2011 by technostreak

New A-Class Concept

2011-04-07T22:23:00.000+05:30

Mercedes-Benz reveals the first glimpse of the brand new Concept A-CLASS that will premiere at the Shanghai Auto Show

The bold styling of the A-Class concept car hides a move to a more conventional design which is expected for the next car, which will compete with the likes of Audi’s A1 and the BMW 1 Series.

The concept is front-wheel drive and has a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine producing 210bhp that wears Mercedes' Blue Efficiency badging, meaning it is designed to be as economical as possible.

A production version of the car is likely to be revealed at September’s Frankfurt motor show.

Personal Computing Online

2011-04-07T15:58:00.000+05:30

Personal computing is steadily migrating to the Web, as people use sites like Facebook and Flickr to store photos, videos, and other files they previously would have stored on a PC. A startup called ZeroPC hopes to provide the desktop for the Web computing revolution--a page that looks and acts like a desktop interface, from which users can access all of their content wherever it is stored online.

A user logging in to ZeroPC is presented with an interface much like Microsoft Windows: icons on a desktop that provide access to files stored in folders and to applications for e-mailing, document editing, and more. But the desktop is delivered using the same technologies used to build interactive Web applications.

ZeroPC's file browser provides a way to manage all of the photos, videos, and other content uploaded to sites including Facebook, Flickr, and Google Docs as if they were in different folders on a local hard drive. A user can, for example, select several photos hosted on Facebook and drag them into a Flickr folder. Behind the scenes, ZeroPC logs in to those services and copies the files between the sites.

ZeroPC was founded by Young Song, who also founded NComputing, a company that provides low-cost boxes that connect a monitor, mouse, and keyboard to a copy of a Windows or Linux operating system running on a remote server. ZeroPC's desktop is less powerful than what NComputing's boxes provide, but it can be distributed and accessed without dedicated hardware.

Companies have tried before to make Web-based desktops, but these attempts were less fully featured than ZeroPC's, because Web standards were less powerful, and there were fewer widely used Web services to link up.

However, although ZeroPC's desktop experience is closely modeled on Windows and is compatible with it, it isn't the same thing, notes Hereafter. "By allowing full Windows 7 on old machines, we are extending the current framework that schools use, such as software that only runs on Windows," says Richard Sah, a vice president at ZeroPC, which launched at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week.

Copyright 2011 by technology review

Microsoft will help connect Toyota cars to Internet

2011-04-07T15:43:00.000+05:30

SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp and Toyota Motor Corp unveiled a plan on Wednesday to work together on bringing internet-connected services to Toyota's cars.

The world's biggest software company and the biggest automaker said they were investing 1 billion yen or about $12 million in Toyota Media Service Co, a Toyota unit that handles its digital offerings for customers.

The unit will focus on combining telecommunications and data for drivers in the form of GPS, multimedia, and managing power on electric and hybrid vehicles.

Toyota is planning to set up a network based on Microsoft's Azure "cloud computing" platform by 2015, which would allow customers across the world access to Toyota's digital services.

One of the services Toyota is planning will monitor and integrate a person's power usage across the home and car to maximize efficiency.

The partnership with Toyota is a departure for Microsoft, which so far has focused most of its auto industry technology efforts on Ford Motor Co.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.