Store offers innovative flying hovercraft for $190,000

By Tuan C. Nguyen




While owning a Yacht has become somewhat of a rite of passage for the disgustingly wealthy, it’s so yesterday. For a more cutting-edge way to show off, Mail order catalog company Hammacher Schlemmer is offering tycoons a rare opportunity to purchase a flying hovercraft for $190,000.
The 3-seat vehicle features a 130 horsepower twin-cylinder, liquid-cooled engine with a coasting range of 160 miles on two full nine gallon gas tanks. The body consists of carbon composite and wood and features a sleek winged design that enables it to go at speeds up to 70 mph. Beneath the vehicle is a 1,100 rpm 34-inch fan that inflates the vinyl-coated nylon skirt, producing the hovering effect. Using a joystick, the pilot can maneuver over several different terrains like swamps, snow and sand by adjusting the vehicle’s hovering height and traveling mode.

• Related: Giant truck transforms into a high-speed boat in seconds

Hovercraft technology has been used primarily by the military for situations such as search and rescue operations. But there was a time in the 1960’s that companies explored viable designs for commercial transportation. For instance, engineers in France attempted for some time to develop the Aerotrain, a hovertrain that worked similarly to levitating Maglev trains, but without the need for elaborate track systems. Designers felt the concept was promising because flat surfaces like paved roads required very low air pressure, making it energy efficient enough to compete with railways.

There were, however, some troublesome issues. The most obvious being having all that air blowing out from underneath, making it a challenge for passengers to board at stations. Eventually funding problems doomed these early projects and the Maglev train won out.
But like many unique vehicles that never quite panned out commercially, the hovercraft may find a second life as a rich guy’s toy.

Read More

13-year-old student finds cure for hiccups

 By Tuan C. Nguyen

 

 

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

While many middle schoolers have a hard enough time figuring out algebra problems, one had her hands full solving one of life’s most annoying problems: hiccups.
After spending two years ingesting volumes of medical literature and swallowing saltwater, pickle juice and every well-known folk remedy out there, the 13-year-old Mallory Kievman finally came up with a cure that she feels actually works. The next step, which involves filing a patent and forming a company to manufacture, market and distribute her “Hiccupops,” is in the works as she has enlisted the help of MBA students and an established angel investor.
The eighth grader from Talcott Mountain Academy in Connecticut is thinking big — way beyond local science fairs. After winning honors at her school’s invention fair last year, Kievman was chosen to showcase her idea at the Connecticut Invention Convention, where she won awards for innovation and patent-ability. The annual competition for kid inventors was also where she met investor Danny Briere, who founded Startup Connecticut, a state initiative created to assist promising home-grown entrepreneurs. Briere has since become one of Kievman’s biggest supporters and helped arrange for her to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
“It’s very rare, when you’re evaluating businesses, that you can envision a company or product being around 100 years from now,” Briere told the New York Times. “Hiccupops is one of those things. It solves a very simple, basic need.”

• Related: Ancient chinese herb may cure hangovers, alcoholism

The special concoction she found to work best is a blend of apple cider vinegar, acids and sugar served up in the form of a lollipop. Kievman explains that the combination activates specific nerves located in the throat and mouth that cause the hiccup reflex arc. In theory, by overstimulating those nerves, you can cancel out the reflex.
Though it was challenging enough just identifying which ingredients were most effective, she also had to go through more than 40 batches of candy to come up with the a recipe that would enable the candy to harden just right. She’s currently playing with the formula to get the lollipops to taste the way lollipops should.
And while she didn’t receive much help outside of her dad in the research and development phase, Kievman, CEO of Hiccupops, will now have plenty of assistance from UConn’s Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Graduate students from the center have been assigned until the end of the summer to help bring her product to market. Currently, they’re in search of a manufacturer.

• Related: 10-year-old student accidentally discovers explosive new molecule
• Related: Why 13-year-old’s solar power ‘breakthrough’ won’t work

Outside of ensuring that the idea is profitable enough to be sustainable, Kievman hopes her efforts can help those suffering from serious conditions. For instance, hiccups are a common side effect of patients undergoing chemotherapy.
“It always has been really appealing to me to be able to sort of have a product out there that can help people,” she said. “I want to become a doctor and go into medicine.”
(via NY Times, TechCocktail)
Government Photo: Connecticut Senate Democrats

Read More

Seattle ends free Wi-Fi

By Mari Silbey

Proving again that most municipal Wi-Fi efforts end in disaster, the city of Seattle ended its wireless experiment at the end of April after seven years of trying to make free broadband work. An announcement on the city’s website proclaimed:

The SeattleWiFi free community wireless service will be discontinued on April 29, 2012. The pilot project has been serving the University District, Columbia City and four downtown parks (Steinbrueck, Occidental, Freeway, and Westlake) since 2005. The service, provided in collaboration with the UW and neighborhood chambers of commerce, has been well-used and especially in Columbia City, helped contribute to the areas’ revitalization. The City would encourage other providers or sponsors to consider supporting free Wi-Fi service in these areas and other neighborhood business districts.

   
Seattle is only the latest in a string of cities to fail at delivering free Wi-Fi. Although many of these municipal projects began with great promise, a combination of network difficulties, failed management, and opposition from local Internet providers has served to doomed most.
In Seattle’s case, the city claims the cost of maintaining network equipment was ultimately too high. When I lived near Philadelphia, the main issue was a problem with outsourced management to Earthlink, which ended up backing out of the municipal Wi-Fi business entirely. In Philadelphia, however, the muni Wi-Fi effort also ran into resistance from local Internet service providers (ISPs). Comcast in particular is headquartered in downtown Philadelphia, and it saw the wireless venture as a competitive threat. Comcast wasn’t responsible for mothballing the Philadelphia project – which is still stuck in limbo to this day – but it did succeed in working with Verizon to push Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to pass a new statewide law on the municipal Wi-Fi issue. With the exception of Philadelphia, cities in Pennsylvania are now required to give local ISPs right of first refusal in bids to supply high-speed Internet service.
Going back to Seattle, apparently the plan now is to sell off excess fiber capacity to help recoup costs. According to The Seattle Times, the city spent more than $50 million on the network it is now discarding.
On a more positive note, contrast the Seattle or Philadelphia situation with Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chattanooga developed a business case for community-owned broadband and has succeeded in building out a fiber network with Internet speeds up to one gigabit per second. That’s muni broadband done the right way, and it suggests that Chattanooga has a lot to teach other cities about network deployment. Maybe Seattle officials should take a field trip south.

Via The Seattle Times

Read More

Microsoft ‘Kinect Play Fit’ app could track Xbox exercise

By Jenny Wilson

 

A new update to Microsoft’s Kinect software will collect and store fitness metrics, allowing users to see how much exercise they’re getting when they play Xbox 360. Accompanying the introduction of this exercise tracking system is a heart rate monitor called Joule: another way Microsoft aims to help people use video games to meet their fitness goals.

According to Tom Warren of The Verge, Microsoft plans to introduce Kinect Play Fit with a future dashboard update. The new feature will collect users’ exercise statistics from a wide range of Kinect games (even those that are not directly related to sports or fitness) and store them in the cloud so they are available for review. Microsoft’s Joule heart rate monitor will also function with most Kinect games, providing even more data for users trying to track their fitness progress.

Microsoft has yet to officially announce this new system, but some speculate that the company will do so at E3, the video game and conference show held in Los Angeles next month.
[via The Verge]

Read More