Kinect Now Used In Medical Research In Place Of $150,000 System

TheKinecthas only been out for a few months and it has been used for abunchof different purposes and even broke aGuinness World Recordfor sales. Now, Kinect can add another milestone to its resume: medical research.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found a way to use the Kinect in place of a $100,000 system to monitor children being diagnosed with OCD and ADD. Professor Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos said that,“As a doctor, you don’t have tangible data. We try to provide the tools in order to back up claims of a mental disorder.” The data he is referring to is now gained from a tweaked version of Kinect.

The Kinect has proven itself to be an amazing device, especially at its price point.“Something we can do three years down the line, we can do it today because of technology that was destined for the gaming industry. I don’t think Microsoft has realized that {Kinect} is something that could change medicine,” said Papanikolopoulos.

Theresearchrecently won a $3 million grant from the NSF to use Kinect in observing and analyzing abnormal movements and behaviors in children.

{via1up}

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News Corp: WSJ Tablet Subscriptions Are Blowing Up

I think we are all still pretty skeptical of thetablet-based newspapers right now— nothing against them, it’s just a question of scale and pricing. With surprisingly low pricing like the Daily’s, or (relatively) high pricing like the WSJ’s, can they get enough people to subscribe to make turn a dollar?

As it turns out: yes, at least on the Wall Street Journal’s part. The paper’s publisher, Les Hinton, saysthe number of tablet subscribers to the WSJ has quadrupled since last year, and is now hovering around 200,000. The paper itself has a circulation of about 1.6 million, so that’s not bad at all.

Then there’sthe Daily, which is a different value proposition, being only on the tablet. My guess is they’re struggling for subscribers right now, but they probably expected that to happen. They’re among the first to go all-tablet, and that’s risky. But if they’re willing to spend the money at the beginning, they can work out the process, squash the bugs, and be at 100% when the others launch their inevitable competitors.

Two sure things: the marketisgrowing and people are willing to pay, so it’s too early to call it one thing or another.

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Burton Makes A Serious Camera Backpack: The F-Stop

You don’t have to only make photo gear in order to make decent photo gear, it looks like.This multi-purpose F-Stop packwould be great for the sports photographers and documentary filmmakers who spend a lot of time on the mountain.

It’s got a compartmentalized main cargo area, with room for a large SLR camera, a few lenses, and a few filters, batteries, and so on. There are the usual big-backpack luxuries, like load-balancing straps and a padded back, and this one, being a Burton bag, actually has a big strap system for mounting your board as well.

Looks solid to me. Costs $225, but they’re out of stock now. Check back later.

{viaDoobybrain}

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Dragon Age 2 Comes To The Mac On Day One

The originalDragon Agewas a pretty good game— very free roaming, but precise. It wasn’t uncommon to spend 90+ hours in the main story, but at least the story had substance, just a bit long. Today,Dragon Age 2released, and continuing on the steam from the first, the developerBioWare, has released the game for PC, XBox, PlayStation 3 and Mac OS X simultaneously.

Mac gamers now have a really good game to look forward to, and on day 1 too. Mac users will need a pretty powerful machine. Dragon Age II needs at least a Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86Ghz or faster chip, Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later, 2GB of RAM or more and a minimum ATI HD2600 or NVidia 9400 or better video card (at least 256MB VRAM).

Gamers can grab the game for $60.

{viamacnn}

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DIY Bluetooth Handset For Your Hand (Video)

You would expect someone with blue hair to wear a purpleglove phone. This DIY Bluetooth glove, sourced from a purple fingerless glove and a Bluetooth headset, was made with just a few extra wires and shrink wrapping.

Once fitted, the wires and components were sewn in and a microswitch was added for easy calling and working.

I think this should make a run up on Kickstarter, so that everyone make easy calls with right at their fingertips.

{viainstructables}

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800 Swiss ETA Movements Stolen From Watchmaker In Porrentruy

Thieves took a a cache ofBuran-signed800 ETA movements from a watchmaker in Porrentruy, Switzerland. They included some 2824-2 and 7750 movements. The7750sare used in chronographs.

ETA movements are become increasingly more rare as the company’s owner, the Swatch Group, is cracking down on their international distribution. This cache, while small, could be work up to $800,000 depending on the quality and type of movement.

WatchmakerTorsten Nagengastis asking folks to keep an eye out for Buran-branded movements in the wild.

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Enjoying Conspicuous Consumption With Gresso’s iPhone 4 Black Diamonds For Lady

Got some extra gold bricks lying around? Check out the GressoiPhone4 Black Diamonds for Lady. It’s not a case, rather the phone has been modded to house 6 carats of black diamonds, edging in platinum, a 2 carat diamond home button and a frame of white diamonds. The back of the phone is made of a 200-year-old African Blackwood.

So far price is not known, but the versionwithoutdiamonds is $10,000. I’d rather use a white iPhone.

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Yikes, A RoboRoach Made By Grafting A Toy Bug To A Real Bug

Some aspiring Dr. Frankensteins have taken the circuitry from aHexbugremote control critter and grafted it directly to the nervous system of a large cockroach. They can now steer the cockroach.

I’m not taking any kind of moral high ground here, and this stuff is very interesting to me, but it still squicks me out to think that we are capable of doing this bio-manipulation so easily.Backyard Brains, the company who made this“RoboRoach,” are planning on offering a kit. A mind-control kit for bugs!Oh my god, you guys.

{viaBoingBoing}

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Doom: The Love Child Of D&D And NeXT

We here at CrunchGear love John Carmack. HisQuakeworld 2010 keynoteremains one of ourfavoriteno-nonsense tech talks, up there with the unveiling of the iPhone. So when he speaks, we listen with interest. Unfortunately, he wasn’t at GDC to talk about the origins of Doom, everyone’s favorite mom-shocking FPS from the early 90s. Fortunately,JohnRomeroand Tom Hall were. Man, I wish I was there!

I’ve always been interested in the development of Doom and Quake, since those games were a serious cut above the competition at the time, and have aged extremely well. Some stuff is known about the incubation process of the game, but Romero and Hall today talked about how they digitized clay models on their NeXT Cube, played and replayed levels, and how they basically were inspired by (read: ripped off) D&D for a lot of their levels and monsters.

1up has more info on the panel, but I’m hoping a full transcript or video will be available later, this super-early game development stuff is really interesting to me.

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Exterminate Enemies With The Ride In Dalek

Here’s a toy for the youngsters: aRide In Dalek. It allows your kid to be the mutant in a mechanical shell. There is an electric motor that allows for 360-degree movement and there is an illuminated cockpit with 10 different sound effects and Dalek phrases. Also, the manipulator and arms can be moved.

The whole thing breaks down into three pieces for charging and storage. (Kinda jealous of kids right now.)

Price is£199.99 with free delivery.

{via7gadgets}

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Tobii Technology Unveils Eye Tracking Laptop, A World First

A new technology that we’ve been hearing about for a few year finally is getting unveiled today at CeBIT in Germany.TobiiTechnology has partnered up withLenovoto create a laptop with integrated eye tracking control. It is said that it will add to the functionality of a keyboard and mouse, rather than killing them.

Thetechnologywill track user’s eye movements in efforts to make suggestions based on where the user looks. For example, when looking at the bottom of the screen, the task bar could appear; also, if it notices that you stumble around a word, it may bring up a definition. These are just a few of the potential capabilities.

Finally, the technologies can be used in gaming where the characters can interact with eye movements— imagine first person shooters now. Right, now we aren’t too sure how well the technology works, but as soon as we get a glimpse of what they show at CeBIT, we will let you know.

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World’s First Flexible Microprocessor Made With Organic Semiconductors

This week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, European researchersshowed offthe world’s first flexible microprocessor made with organic semiconductors. Right now, processing power is similar to what was found in the 1970′s, but the advantage is that the processor is flexible. What’s so good about the research is that it can lead to fully bendable displays and sensors; something we could begin to see in clothing, gadgets and biomedical applications.

The bendableconducting plasticcontains only 4000 transistors (todays, have hundreds of millions). You can imagine what this could bring.

{viaslashgear}

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Daily Crunch: Knife Fight Edition

Pro Tip: Fruit Roll-Ups Make Solid Flash Gels
World’s First Flexible Microprocessor Made With Organic Semiconductors
Clock Clock Is A Clock Of Clocks
The Creditor Carbon Fiber Money Clip Knife Keeps Your Money Safe
Gadg-Art: Love It, But Don’t Really Use It.

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Pro Tip: Fruit Roll-Ups Make Solid Flash Gels

Photographer John Crane was out hiking around a few days ago, and came across a sweet ice cave that he felt would look great if he used a green filter on the flash. Unfortunately, he left all his gels at home— but his friend suggested using one of the Fruit Roll-ups they’d brought along for snack time.Lo and behold, it worked.

The lesson here isn’t really that Fruit Roll-Ups are awesome photography accessories, but that creativity doesn’t end in the composition or post-work. A photographer should be ready to improvise, use what they’ve got, put himself and his camera at risk if it meansgetting the shot.

It’s for this reason that I dislike studio photography and big setups. I think there are control issues going on there.

{viaStrobistandPetaPixel}

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Startup Company QuakeGuard Develops Early Warning System For Earthquakes

Silicon Valley startup company, QuakeGuard, is expanding its state-of-the-art earthquake detection system first piloted in Palm Springs, CA. Now, there are twelve locations, and 120 more on the way and they can provide early warnings to people who use the system.

Thesystemis currently in use by schools and emergency support (fire and police stations). The system works with sensors placed around strategic places to detect initial P waves given off from quakes and comparing with S waves to determine quake strength and likelihood. QuakeGuard can provide as much as a few minutes warning to those using the system.

Not only can alerts be provided, but also special macro jobs can initiate: fire stations can open garage doors, city utilities (gas and water) can be shut off. During the pilot program in the Coachella, Tom Kirk from the Coachella Valley Association of Governments, said that, “For {the city's} fire station, doors roll up; for {the} school, an alarm might sound, teachers tell the kids to duck and cover; for a hospital, maybe backup generators go on.”

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Yahtzee Versus MindJack

I’ve only seen bad reviews of this MindJack game, andZero Punctuation’s take on itis even more savage than usual. It blows my mind that two or three guys can get together and put out something amazing like Braid or World of Goo, yet a couple dozen people manage to take far more money and time and barf out something like this.

You don’t even have to make it great, people. Just make an okay game! I remember playing a game called Chaser, which wasn’t good, wasn’t bad, but it had some cool parts, a bargain price, and didn’t try to be anything but a solid shooter. But it seems like the MindJack team decided all they needed was a gimmick, and the rest would take care of itself.

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Video: Buying A Cell Phone In Portlandia

I’ve been looking for an excuse to post a clip from the new sketch comedy showPortlandia, a dead-on parody of the Northwest and modern online life. I just found it.

This is from episode four. The context is that the mayor has disappeared, not that it’s really necessary to get the mobile-related jokes.“It’s just a one time fee that you pay annually.” It’s funny because it’s true.

Yeah, it’s on Hulu– sorry to our international readers. If you haven’t seenPortlandiayet, check it out— it’s on IFC. Call them up. Tell the man you want it.

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Board Up The House, The Walking Dead Video Game Is Coming

You knew this was going to happen. It was inevitable. The Walking Dead succesfully made the jump from a comic book to cable, so it’s only naturual for the right’s holders to milk the franchise a bit more. And so the video game was born.

Telltale Games heard the call and entered into a“multi-year, multi-platform, multi-title” partnership. Specifics weren’t given, but chances are various games are in development for gaming consoles and portables as well as perhaps a PC title.Kirkland indicated in an IGN interviewthat the game will follow the comic books rather than the TV show. Either way, there’s bound to be a good amount of zombie slaying and that’s all a gamer could ask for.

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Does Your PC Meet Crysis 2′s System Requirements?

Crysis was (and still is) notorious for needing a pretty high-spec system to run well, but Crytek has said time and time again that the engine poweringCrysis 2, CryEngine 3, is far more robust, and therefore won’t require the same kind of horsepower to run well. You know where this is going. VR-Zoneclaimsto have the game’s recommended system requirements, and they are as Crytek claimed: not too crazy.

My own self-made PC (Radeon 5970, which has greatly disappointed me vis-à-vis CrossFire performance but whatever, i7 860 OC’d to 4.0GHz, 8GB memory, all running at 1920×1200) would appear to meet the“highly recommended” specs. I won’t be playing in 3D, but what are you going to do?

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DIY Sous Vide Cooker

So you want to make fancy food like all them chefs in them fancy Franch restaurants up in the city there? Do you, fancy boy? Well then you’d best get out into the garridge and start building because me and muther aren’t buying you any Sux Vid cooker for $450 so’s you can cook eggs like some fancy Franch cook. When I was in the army we din’t have food processors, just a jackknife and a pail and you cooked a thousand potatoes in half an hour or the other guys’d come in an beat you in the head. So you go make yourself a Sux Vid cooker if you want but I ain’t eatin’ any blanched beans, let me tell it to you that way.

Project Page

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Video: Those Flying Fish Are Called Air Swimmers

Would you buy atoy fish that flewin the air wagging its tail as if it were swimming? If you answered yes, then check this out: it’s calledAir Swimmers. Air Swimmers consist of a helium-filled balloon with motorized fins that flap in the air. From the video you can see it looks pretty cool and the‘swimming’ doesn’t look too bad either. One battery in the fish, three in the remote, and the bag of helium should last a few weeks.

They’ll be about $40 when they come out in July.

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The Final Night Of IBM’s Jeopardy Challenge: How Did Watson Do?

There we have it. TheIBM Jeopardy Challengehas concluded, so what follows is a brief review of what happened tonight. Once again, West Coasties (and anyone else who didn’t get to see the final episode live) should probably click away for now—there will be spoilers. You have been warned.

One last warning: that way spoilers lie!

In a victory for science, Watson, the IBM-developed artificial intelligence, has indeed won. The final scores were $77,147 for Watson, $24,000 for Ken Jennings, and $21,600 for Brad Rutter.

At the beginning of the show the previous night’s total were totally wiped, only to be added to tonight’s score after Final Jeopardy. Watson started the game on a tear, like always. Ironically enough, Watson had trouble with the“also on your keyboard” category. In fact, Watson struggled for much of the first round, tripping over the seemingly more “pun-y” or idiomatic categories.

The second round was an epic battle between Watson and Ken Jennings. It was incredibly tense.

All three contestants answered the Final Jeopardy question correctly, but by then Ken Jennings admitted what we’ve all been thinking: it’s time to welcome our new artificial intelligence overlords.

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IBM Jeopardy Challenge Day Two Report: Spolier Alert!

OK, let’s try thisagain. What we have here is a quick summary of night two of the IBM Jeopardy Challenge, starringWatsonand two other past Jeopardy champions. There will be spoilers, so West Coasties are encouraged to watchfunny YouTube videosfor the time being.

Are you ready? Because here come the spoilers.

At the end of last night the totals stood at $5,000 Watson and Brad Rutter, while Ken Jennings had $2,000.

Watson opened night two absolutely crushing his human competition, opening the scoring and not looking back for several straight minutes. Watson wagered some $6,000 and change in the first Daily Double—he got it!

The first few minutes were simply outstanding for those of us cheering for Watson. And how weird it was to seehumansin the audience cheering on the A.I.

Our only hope is that Watson doesn’t rebel against his masters and take overà laShodan(not that I’m altogether opposed to a robot takeover, mind you).

The night ended with Watson at $35,734 Brad Rutter at $10,400, and Ken Jennings at $4,800 after an exciting round of final Jeopardy in which Watson, bizarrely, thought Toronto was a U.S. city.

Until tomorrow!

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Nokia’s Qt Isn’t Dead Yet

When Microsoftpartneredwith Nokia, many thought the Symbian operatingsystem diedthat day. But, it’s not entirely dead yet.Qt, the cross-application framework used by Nokia’s Symbian operating system developers, is said to continue going forward with the release of SDK 1.1 due out soon. Nokia’s CTO, Rich Green, said that, “We are still very much big fans {of Qt}.” And that,“We will continue working on Qt, enhancing it.” So there you have it. There’s no need to worry..yet.

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The PS3 Move Ain’t Got Anything On This Rig: Mouse And Book Make Motion Sensor

Niel de la Rouviere(him onTwitter) wanted to control Quake 3 with a real gun. Instead of, you know, doing electronics he decided to do something amazing: he taped a mouse to a stick and then taped a book to his desk. The result: a motion-controller that works wildly well.

via Reddit

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Greenpois0n Strikes Again, For Apple TV Too

With the latestGreenPois0n release, we are now able to jailbreak the latestiOSupdate, iOS 4.2.1. All iDevices including the Verizon iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and nowApple TV 2, can undergo untethered jailbreaking. The latest GreenPois0n, RC6, can be applied over RC5 and will fix general bugs with the emulators.

{viaOSXDaily}

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Pico Projectors Aren’t Far Off From Next-gen Smartphones

We’ve talked aboutpico projectorsquite a bit. Right now, there’snothing terribly excitingabout them; the images are dim and projectors themselves aren’t small enough to be super useful. We know that pico projector integration into smartphones is imminent, but when?

Starting next week at MWC, a new pico projector developed by STMicroelectronics and bTendowill be on display. The overall volume of the projector is less than 2.5 cubic cm and shorter than 6mm. This very small projector should be able to render more vivid color and sharper images than current-gen projectors.

According to the CEO of bTendo, Dana Gross, the projector will be able to display high-res movie clips on any surface. Right now we are sure on specific like resolution and brightness, but if the technology is really that small and competent, then we could see more pico projectors making their way into smartphones very soon.

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Antec’s New Rockus 2.1 Desktop Speaker Set Promises 3D Sound

Antec is mostly known for their PC cases and components, but a lot of those manufacturers have been getting into other games over the last few years, and some, like Corsair, have actually come up with some really well-reviewed audio gear.Antec’s soundscience rockus system(yes, they have it in all lower-case, because they’re emo) was just announced, and hopes to put itself onto desktops around the world by promising in-speaker 3D virtualization of stereo sound.

Bunk? Maybe. But we’ll find out when we review‘em.

Each of the satellites is 25W, plus 100W in the subwoofer, which they claim provides a lot of oomph for its size. The 3D effect can be switched on and off via the little control pod, which also lets you switch between the optical and analog inputs. I don’t see a headphone port on there, though, which isn’t a good sign. Gamers love headphones, and theydon’tlove climbing around behind their desk to plug them in.

The new speakers areavailable now for $250. Hopefully we’ll get our hands on a pair soon and let you know if they’re worth it over, say, the capable, (and penguinish)Logitech Z623s, which cost $150.

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Ronald Reagan Library Gets Apple iPod Tours

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library has recently undergone a $15 million tech renovation. The technology in the library is pretty impressive: 180 video screens, two teleprompters, a green screen and 250iPodtouches have been added to make things interesting.

The iPod toucheswill be used to guide visitors through the library, with audio narration as people move around. Also, the iPods will allow guests to take video and pictures to remember the experience and share how cultured you are onFacebookandTwitter. How fun!

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Sony To Go After More PS3 Hackers, Including Linux Hacker Graf_Chokolo

Sonyis apparently going aftermore hackersthan just George Hotz and fail0verflow. Sony is looking to get DMCA suits against allPS3 jailbreakerswho share Sony’s source code on Github. Well-known PS3 hackers Waninkoko, KaKaRoTo, Hermes, Kmeaw and Graf_Chokolo have been named indocumentsto Github requesting all docs and posts from the users, as well as all contact information.

This comes just a few days after Graf_Chokolo claimed to have a fully stable version of Linux running on the PS3 with all of the GameOS features. Graf_Chokolo posted acomment on XorHack saying:

And here we go Linux is officially back on PS3 3.41. It’s even better now 

It has all GameOS features, it has access to all HDD, VFLASH and FLASH regions. It can communicate with Dispatcher Manager, Update Manager, SYSCON Manager, it can run isolated SPUs, and of course RSX 

I uploaded some screenshots of the Debian distribution i installed on my PS3 HDD. The Debian distribution is a just normal PPC64 Linux without any modification, all i changed was my dutifully and beloved Hypervisor 

I modified the Hypervisor so far that it boots the Linux bootloader petitiboot from VFLASH and petitboot loads the Linux distribution installed on a HDD region.
And what is better than Linux to boot Linux ? 
I practically implemented Dual Boot feature GameOS+OtherOS in the Hypervisor Linux is not the only OS which can be booted like this from PS3 HDD.

Now we don’t need GameOS anymore to run our code, no need anymore for SELFs and we can start now programming our own games on PS3 on Linux 

I will make everything public 

And greetings to SONY Hand me over the maintance and implementation of PS3 Hypervisor I will improve it and maintain for free We all will benefit. HV hacking is great fun 

He also sharedphotosof his hacks. We’re unsure if all hiswill help his case against Sony.

{viadukio}

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Darpa Tries Open-source, Goes After Professionals For XC2V Combat Support Vehicle

DARPA, the Defense Department’sR&Dwing, does some prettyamazingstuff. And when they aren’t getting what they want from their engineers, they let others help. Like in the Grand Challenge and its related programs— sometimes just dangling a cash prize and some specs out there is worth more than all your eggheads and skunk works combined.

The race this time is to build a combat support vehicle (the“XC2V”), and it’s said to be an excellent opportunity for engineers and designers to get involved. Local Motors is getting the word out and organizing the competition, which will have winners taking home up to $10,000—a drop in the bucket for the US government. The challenge has already begun and the final submissions are due March 3, 2011, so you should probably hurry. You can find out morehere.

{viascience.dodlive.mil}

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Bioshock Creator: New Consoles Would Be“Bad For Everybody”

Ken Levine is best known for having createdBioshock, one of the more cinematic and high-production-value franchises out there. So it seems a little strange at first to hear him saying that a new generation of more powerful consoles would be such a problem.

Speaking on anIrrational Games podcast, he said:

At this point I have no desire as a developer and zero desire as a gamer to see the next generation come out where I’m sitting right now.

It still costs us a fortune to make games on this platform. If they’re going to up the scale, up the art, up the content, I don’t know how to make that and sell it to anybody for under $100 a game. Who wants to do that? It’s bad for everybody.

That really puts into perspective, right? It’s an objection Iraisedregarding the PSP2/NGP. The amount of work and money being put into AAA games is pretty insane, and if your platform is built around that kind of game, there’s a tradeoff. And right now it seems we’re more or less at the limits of what the consoles and development tools can do on a decent budget.

Personally I’m heartened in this debate by the fact that indie and downloadable games aretaking offlike crazy. You don’t need a thirty million dollar budget to make a great game, and while there will always be a place for the big guns, the word these days seems to be“diversify.” Sony and Microsoft have both taken this to heart, but interestingly it’s Nintendo that seems to have fallen into the bigger rut. That said, it’s actually Nintendo who would benefit most from a new console. We live in interesting times for gaming, friends. Live it up.

{viaEurogamer}

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Nintendo’s 3DS Industrial Design Subtleties, Explained

When I first saw the3DSsix months ago, and even later when I saw theofficial pictures, I pretty much just thought of the 3DS as a slightly chunkier DS. But of course the people in charge of designing it know better than that, and when you’re making a device that will be held for hundreds of hours by tens of millions of people… every little thing counts.

Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata, whom I see oftener than I see some members of my family these days,interviewed the design team for the 3DS, talking about what the hard decisions were, what came down from above, what their ideas were, and so on.

It’s actually quite interesting— I like these little peeks behind the veil, like when you get to see theoriginal sketches of the Pac-Man mazeand stuff like that. They don’t shy at details, and it’s nice to hear how hands-on Iwata himself was in the process as well:

Iwata:The reverse taper was designed so the system would be easy to open, but if something hit it, all the force would hit one place, so it had a drawback when it came to durability against impact from dropping.

Akai:Right.

Ehara:I thought the shape might have to change.

Iwata:You talked about that during the second presentation.

Ehara:Yes.

Akai:But we didn’t want to change the design, so we searched for a stronger synthetic resin.

Iwata:You instinctively knew that you couldn’t produce that design unless you found a stronger material.

Akai:Yes. Looking for a new material was the first thing I did after moving to the Research& Engineering Department.
Iwata:And what did you come up with?

Akai:A material Nintendo has never used before. A type of high rigidity nylon with glass fiber in it. It’s stronger than other more common resins, but less suited to mass production.

Iwata:It does sound like it would be difficult to shape.

Akai:It is. You fill the metal mold7 with the resin to shape it, but it’s tough because of the glass fiber in it. As you repeat the process, the mold begins to wear, so we were concerned the lifespan of the mass production equipments would be shortened.

So if you end up buying a 3DS, you can be sure it was designed with love and care, and for keeps.

Read the full interview over at Nintendo.

{via1upandSiliconera}

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Renault’s Kangoo Electric Is Quite Promising, Except It Requires A Subsciption

The electric Kangoo is Renault’s version ofFordTransit Connect Electric. Its a small van on a car frame and is very popular in the commercial fleets. Think of it as a vehicle for people who drive less than 100 miles per day and park their vehicles in the same spot every night. It doesn’t offer the most flexibility for everyone, but for some it’s quite promising, except for certain rental fees.

It’savailable for orderright now in France with delivers later this year in July. The electric motor produces 59 hp with 167-lbs/ft of torque and the battery capacity is 22 kWh. The official range is 100 miles, though maxing out the 1,430 lb payload will probably reduce range. The batteries, housed underneath the floor, have the exact same cells in use by the Nissan Leaf. Sounds pretty good, right? Except the nearly $32,000 price tag doesn’t include a battery, and you cannot buy one.

So how does the car actually..um..run? Well, you have to rent the battery; it costs $1,500 a year. So while the burden of paying for gas is gone, it costs an additional $125 a month, even if you don’t drive it. However, it’s not all sad news. Those who will use it as a work truck in a fleet can almost guarantee that the battery will always work— once it dies, you just rent another.

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Taurus’The Raging Judge: Looks Like A Handgun, Shoots Shotgun Shells, Likely Illegal

Next time someone gives you the“You talking to me?” speech, you might be able to respond with a confident,“yeah.” This massive shell shooter, dubbed“The Raging Judge,” offers a very pragmatic approach to settling disputes— even .57 Magnum dualers will shake in their boots. The Judge creator, the Brazilian armsmaker Taurus, recently revealed the 28 gauge firearm.

Don’t expect to see it anytime soon. In fact, Taurus pulled it from their booth at the SHOT show is Las Vegas, and said they weren’t going to make the superfluous handgun.

{vianeatorama}

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