Here Comes the Copenhagen Wheel

Last December 15, 2009 the Copenhagen Wheel, “the wheel that turns your ordinary bike into a smart electric hybrid”, was unveiled during the COP 15 UN Climate Conference. This device is supposed to turn your everyday bike into a hybrid e-bike without much effort or without too many wires or bulky batteries. It stores unused kinetic energy from cycling and braking for later use. You can also use your smartphone for unlocking or locking the bike, changing gears and controlling the motor in the bike.

As you bike along your usual route, the Copenhagen wheel collects data on pollution levels, road conditions, as well as temperature and humidity. You access this data through your smartphone to plan out a better and healthier route to your daily destination. Aside from your own personal use, you can also share the data to your friends or even the authorities anonymously, giving your own contribution to the information database about the environment within your locality.

Aside from these features, it can also serve as your personal trainer by giving you feedback on your effort level and fitness. The wheel itself can be easily installed in any bike making this a welcome development for people who value both their health and the environment. See the video below:

Source: senseable.mit.edu

Mobile Video Calling Anyone?

Saygus, a small telecommunications firm based in Utah, is marketing the world’s first mobile video calling device. Dubbed as the VPhone, it won the Best in Innovations award in the wireless handsets category during the 2010 Design and Engineering Awards early last month.

The VPhone will be the first mobile calling device to be certified through Verizon’s Open Development Initiative. Its video calling feature allows for calls at 24 to 30 frames per second and it can also serve as a wireless entry point for up to eight devices. Aside from the front forward camera, it also has another 5 MP main camera with flash, FM radio and runs the Android 1.6 (although some people think it should go for the Android 2.0).

This is definitely a nice phone to have if you want to go out on a nice day at the fairway while holding your meeting with the board of your company. Initially the this mobile video calling device will be available only through Saygus.

sources: saygus.com, cnet.com, engadget.com

The Rube Goldberg Machine

According to wikipedia.com, the term Rube Goldberg machine is a "deliberately over engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually a chain reaction". Or in others words, doing easy things the hard way.

Well, I created this blog in order for me to try to learn the rudiments of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Although SEO in itself is something that is quite complicated for non-techie guys like me and one can easily find videos or self-study sources over the web, I want to learn the ropes in SEO by going through the process itself. As the old saying goes, What we learn to do, we learn by doing ,I want to learn how to make my blog Search Engine Optimized by trying to do it myself. Just like the concept behind the Rube Goldberg machine, I am trying to learn something that is relatively easy by going through the Herculean task making an ordinary blogger account into an optimized page.

Although I have already been blogging for the past three or four years, this will be the first blog that I will make which will try to do what I always wanted to do for a long time - learn how to optimize web pages. Whatever will be the outcome of this little experiment of mine, I hope that something good will come out of this.

Anyway, the focus of the blog will basically be about gadgets and gizmos that I can find over the web. Aside from gadgets, I will probably feature also bits of news related to technology.

Well that's all for now I'll just leave off with my own short list of SEO sites where you can get to learn something for free:

• http://www.nitropixel.net/
• http://www.seochat.com/
• http://www.addme.com/newsletters/issue324.htm
• http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm

Although I have not really used these sites yet, you may want to try them out yourself.