Electric cars show big improvement at Pikes Peak

Greg-Tracy-breaks-the-EV-record-at-Pikes-Peak-2014Gasoline powered cars still dominate the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, but electric cars are showing big improvement and may be challenging fossil fuel cars in the near future.  The Mitsubishi shown here cut 38 seconds off of last year’s electric car time, and was only a few seconds behind the overall winner’s time (but almost a minute slower than the course record set last year by Sebastian Loeb).  Will 2015 be the year that an electric race car beats a gasoline one?  I can’t wait to find out!

Also in electric car racing news, Formula E has its first race in September of 2014!  Another milestone in automotive history as those battery-powered race cars take to the track for a one hour race.

via AutoWeek

Supreme Court rules against Aereo

In a big blow to cord-cutters, the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo, essentially dealing the small startup a death blow.  If you’re not familiar with Aereo, they had equipment installed in major cities with one antenna per subscriber.  Each subscriber could tune their antenna to record any over the air TV signals, and then stream that data to their computers or mobile devices over the internet.  Aereo’s position was that the one-antenna-per-subscriber made them different than a traditional cable company, but the Court ruled otherwise in a 6-3 decision.  Bummer.

Read more at TechCrunch or SlashGear.

The Wil Wheaton Project

So, if you’re a true geek, you probably know by now that Wil Wheaton has his own weekly TV show now, called, you guessed it, The Wil Wheaton Project (I hope they didn’t spend too long thinking up that name…).  If you didn’t already know about it…it’s a weekly look into geek culture, and is, so far, not bad!  My one complaint is that he talks about Game of Thrones…which I still haven’t caught up on (but that’s my own fault). Wil has a long blog post about the history of the show that’s worth reading, too.

Cord-cutters won’t have an easy time watching the show as it’s not available in iTunes.  You can find it on Bittorrent of course, or if you have family members that have cable or satellite and are willing to share their login with you, you can watch episodes on SyFy.com the day after they air.  There’s also a SyFy iPad app that works the same way (you need a cable/satellite login)…but allows you to then play that video on your TV via an AppleTV.

Walking boosts creativity

silhouette-man-walkingA recent study has found that walking boost creativity by about 60% compared to sitting.  Surprisingly, it didn’t matter whether study participants were walking on an indoor treadmill, or walking outdoors, both were beneficial.  The mental boost continued for around eight minutes after sitting down.  So, get out there and walk!

You can read more about the study at The Entrepreneur.

Withings Activité activity-tracking watch

ActiviteWithings has announced its new Activité watch with built in activity tracker, though it’s not due to ship until fall (when it’s likely to face challenges from Apple and Google).  It looks like a normal watch, and is even powered by a normal watch battery (size CR2025 if you’re curious, which last about one year).  Note the 0-100 dial though…that helps you track your activity goals.  Withings is not new to this scene; I’ve been using their Pulse activity tracker for over a year now and really like it.  Throwing those electronics into a watch body could be a really nice solution for those who want that combination and not a full ‘smart watch’.  At $390 it’s not cheap compared to activity trackers, but you really need to compare this to nice watches to justify its price.

For more info, go to Withings’ website or check out their press release here.

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