 |
July |
Newsletter |
|
Issue
56 |
Included in this months issue:
A vintage day... and night
Le Mans Classic is an amazing event, and this year's was no exception. See you again in 2012...
The full 13km Circuit de la Sarthe hosted the fabulous spectacle that is the bi-annual Le Mans Classic. Unique to this historic event is the non-stop timetable of 24 hours of racing, with eligible cars from the period 1923-1979 split into six grids. Each grid raced three times, offering spectators and competitors alike, an unrivalled experience of both day- and night-time racing.
A record crowd of 96,000 baked in temperatures that reached 36 degrees, but were rewarded with a superb turnout of 460 cars and 1000 drivers. And 41 of them had competed in the main Le Mans 24 Hours race.
By Rod Laws
Apple offers free iPhone 4 cases
Apple is offering a free case to every owner of its iPhone 4.
Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled the offer at a press conference called to tackle the ongoing speculation about the iPhone 4's antenna problem.
The case will help overcome a widely reported issue in which phone signal strength was drained when the phone was held a certain way.
Declaring "We're not perfect", Mr Jobs said reception problems were endemic throughout the smartphone industry.
From BBC Technology News
Dell Precision M6500 17 Inch Notebook Comes With 32GB Of RAM
Dell has just updated its Precision M6500 notebook, and you can now purchase it with a massive 32GB of RAM. The Dell Precision M6500 is the first 17 inch notebook to offer 32GB of RAM.
As well as the massive 32GB of RAM, the Dell Precision M6500 comes with an Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processor and NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M graphics.
By Roland Hutchinson
Bubble-baron Bigelow bags Boeing boosters
Farnborough Colourful inflatable space-bubble kingpin Robert Bigelow has allied with US aerospace globocorp Boeing for the purpose of "making space travel commercial the way air travel became commercial a century ago".
Bigelow and execs from Boeing's Space Exploration division briefed reporters yesterday at the Farnborough Airshow on plans for Boeing to build a new, low-cost manned launch vehicle called Crew Space Transportation (CST) 100.
CST-100 could carry up to seven passengers or cargo to manned space stations in orbit. It would be aimed at NASA's new Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative, intended to contract the business of moving US astronauts to and from low orbit out of NASA and into the private sector. Commercial crew launchers are intended to replace the space shuttle fleet for carrying crew to an from the International Space Station (ISS), while NASA moves forward with "deep space" manned missions beyond the Moon.
By Lewis Page
Model of Bloodhound supersonic car unveiled
The British team hoping to drive a car faster than 1,000mph has unveiled a full-scale model of the vehicle.
The 1:1 replica of the 12.8m-long (42ft) Bloodhound SuperSonic Car (SSC) is the result of three years of aerodynamic study.
The model is a star turn at this year's Farnborough International Air Show.
The team has announced that aerospace manufacturer Hampson Industries will begin building the rear of the real vehicle in the first quarter of 2011.
Another deal to construct the front end with a second company is very close.
"We now have a route to manufacture for the whole car," said chief engineer Mark Chapman.
"We would hope to be able to shake down the vehicle on a runway in the UK either at the end of 2011 or at the beginning of 2012," he told BBC News.
Assuming no major issues arise from those runway tests, Bloodhound will be shipped straight to a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa, to begin its assault on the world land speed record.
By Jonathan Amos
Phonemakers cry foul on Steve Jobs 'We're all alike' attack
Steve Jobs may have calmed some of the Antennagate ruckus with his spirited defense of the iPhone 4 on Friday, but he also stirred up a hornet's nest of response from other phone manufacturers, including RIM, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, and HTC.
In Jobs' Friday press conference, and on a new section of Apple website entitled "Smartphone antenna performance", three competing smartphones are singled out for having similar signal-attenuation problems as the iPhone 4: the BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris, and Samsung Omnia II.
The makers of those phones, as might be expected, aren't happy.
"Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation," wrote RIM co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in a statement obtained by CrackBerry.
By Rik Myslewski
1984's MacPaint source code hits web
Apple has donated the source code of the groundbreaking graphics app, MacPaint, to Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum, located in Mountain View, California.
Accompanying MacPaint is the source code for its underlying graphics-display library, QuickDraw. You can download both from the Computer History Museum here — and the museum also provides a nostalgic history of this seminal software.
In these days of Adobe Photoshop CS5, GIMP, and the like, it may be a stretch to remember exactly how much MacPaint contributed to genesis of graphics software. The lasso selection tool, paint-bucket fill tool, block eraser, pencil — all appeared originally in MacPaint. All worked inside a 416x240-pixel fixed window inside the Mac's 512x342-pixel display.
By Rik Myslewski
Concept Nokia Kinetic Phone Stands Up For Calls
This unique concept Nokia phone by Jeremy Innes-Hopkins Design uses an original method to notify you of an incoming call, by standing up.
The mechanism works using an electromagnet that shifts its weight in the curved base when an incoming call is received, making the phone lift vertically into the air.
By Julian Horsey
|
||
 |
Registered Address |
|
