Monday, August 29, 2011

Ford to sell solar panel system along with electric cars

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Ford Motor Company is teaming up with solar panels on the basis of the San Jose maker of SunPower to offer option on the roof of the solar system, which will be sold along with the upcoming EV Ford focus. "Drive green for life", as it is called, includes installation of solar panels on the customer home.

These panels will not be used only to charge the focus, however. They really help offset the cost that comes with the need to charge the car, what most electric car owners do every night.

Solar panels 2.5 kilowatt system compensates for the cost of about 1000 miles per month, "said Ford. After the federal tax rebates, the cost would be around $ 10000. Some local and State benefits may also be available, but it's still pretty expensive system.

At least Ford and SunPower were relevant demographic. Parameter must refer to the environmentalists, who want to buy an electric car, but don't want to feel guilty about consuming all additional electricity to charge it. In the end it is not this "green" to drive electric when charging your car with the use of fossil fuels.

The solar system consists of 147-square-foot rooftop panels. There are 11 panels, size 4 to 2 feet. Customers will be able to monitor the work of the panels, online and through specially iPhone app. SunPower also provides you with a 25-year warranty for the system that is installed on the clients home Best Buy Geek Squad. Best buy also has a contract with Ford for installing home Chargers.

Pricing and exact launch date for the new Ford Focus 2012 is not yet available, but the car will go on sale first in California and New York in the 4th quarter of 2011. Ford also plans to start 5 other electric or hybrid electric models in 2012 in North America and in Europe by 2013.



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Acer Iconia tab A100: Dual-Core, cellular, starts at $ 329

Chris Velasco — mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time he was a News intern for MobileCrunch, and between them, he worked in wireless sales at best buy. After graduation, he returned to the new TechCrunch for mobile as a full-time writer. He counts the advertising works, musical theater ... ? Read More

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If Acer's previous tablet effort was a little too strong for you, then consider this: Acer has just announced that their 7-inch WiFi only Iconia tab A100 begins today in retail stores across the country.

This is the first 7-inch tablet to sport the latest cellular (Android 3.2 If you are tracking) and it weighs up to 1 pound of hair. A100 comes, taking your typical complement of ports: MicroUSB and micro HDMI (support mirroring) means that this tiny tab works just as well is connected to your TV and your computer.

Like its big brother A100 also supports streaming through Acer clear .fi service, allowing users to connect and wirelessly share media between DLNA-compatible devices. In the meantime, 5 megapixel camera around the back ensures that you will always have a cache of embarrassing photos are ready to share.

A100 is no slouch when it comes to horsepower of NVIDIA Tegra either: there are 2 dual core processor and 1 GB of RAM, running the show. I hope that the energy helps with Flash in the often lackluster Android performance as Flash 10.3 comes pre-installed.

Two models will be available at launch: $ 329 nets you 8 GB of onboard storage, while $ 349 bumps you up to 16 GB. Hoarders media among you may scoff, but both pills can accept MicroSD cards up to 32 GB — have fun filling it all up.


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TinyChat iPhone App allows you to video chat with up to 12 Facebook friends

Alexia Tsotsis currently works at TechCrunch as a writer. She is also a blogger who attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. She majored in writing and art, moved to New York shortly after the end of the work in the entertainment industry and media. After four years of his life in New York and to attend courses in New York. ? Read More

Video chat launch TinyChat released their first iOS TinyChat FB app, which allows you to transfer video chat with up to 12 Facebook friends from your Smartphone. TinyChat co-founder Dan Blake tells me that what sets TinyChat FB separately from other services like Fring or Tango or even Skype is the fact that end users do not need to have the service installed to participate in the chat. Facebook, which just launched video calling with Skype still does not have this functionality for mobile devices.

Users can connect to the app with Facebook after downloading, and he immediately show them a list of their friends. Clicking on user allows you to invite them to chat, send a link to a Facebook message I video chat on my iPhone, click on the link to the video chat with me. " To switch back to your friends list will allow you to invite other users to chat and you can delete users by clicking on their name on the users tab.

TinyChat FB works on the iPad, iPad, iTouch 2 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. Web Flash-based component.

My biggest problem with this is that I can't think of any reason why people like Facebook video chat with 12 people. Blake insists that people are doing, namely teenagers. "Tiny chat right now does not have a list of contacts and, where necessary," he said, "certainly Skype juggernaut. We are here to give you more creative use TinyChat via Skype.

He also said that this application is not all, end all mobile TinyChat, and that a full-featured client for the service in its path.

TinyChat makes more than 30 million minutes of video chat per day according to Blake, and 100 K new users per day. The App had raised $ 1.5 million in financing from the triumvirate of Ashton Kutcher, p. Diddy, Lady Gaga and others who think of it, will probably make a pretty interesting video chat.


TinyChat is dead simple to use video/audio/desktop chat system. This entirely Web-based, requires no downloads or plugins (aside from Flash) and works in all browsers and. ..

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doubleTwist now has 1 million active users — every day

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later moved to Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in "society and genetics". You can contact him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (it has other addresses too, so don't worry if you have another). ? Read More

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doubleTwist, slick Media Player for Android is growing. A lot.

In February, we reported that the application has passed an important milestone, drawing one million users per month between mobile and desktop applications.

Today, the company uses much more: they get 1 million users per day between doubleTwist on Android phones and tablets.

Now, it is clear that this does not mean the user base increased by a factor 30 (some people are going to use several times a month). But it is a sign that the company receives significant traction, and that its users keep coming back for more. This is especially important for mobile, where users are notorious for being fickle and giving up on the application in a day or two.

doubleTwist President Monique Farantzos said that the increase stemmed from increased brand, the company received the start of construction for Android. The first version of their Android app was released in June 2010, and since they introduced numerous updates as excellent AirSync, which allows wireless sync photos, music and movies between Android device and the computer without the need for wires (you don't even have to sync it automatically initiates when you connect to a wireless network). Farantzos said that companies, in partnership with T-Mobile also provided an early boost.

Some other key stats: 84% of the users application from English speaking countries, and today the company is rolling out internationalized versions with support for Chinese, Korean, German, French and other languages to help boost international growth.

And it also has some great news to share: while doubleTwist has focused exclusively on Android for awhile, he's going to start expanding to other platforms. Intel said it has licensed its wireless synchronization technology for AirSync MeeGo platform, and it sounds like the application can come to Windows phone and possibly Web OS down the line (it is not confirmed, but pointed out that Android alternatives can see increased traction after the transaction, Motorola/Google).


doubleTwist's mission is to organize and feed content to any device.

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Sunday, August 28, 2011

OMG/JK: with Google, it's all big game

MG Siegler wrote to TechCrunch since 2009. It covers web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, in fact all. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, mg attended the University of Michigan. He had previously lived in Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where ... ? Read More

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Although this is at the end of summer and the beginning of a slow to a crawl tech news, there are actually quite a bit of talk about the OMG JK this week. In this episode, Jason and I focus on three key things: Amazon's Kindle reader web Messenger, Facebook and Google + games.

With Apple screwing Amazon? Facebook, screwing with SMS? With Facebook screwing Google? These are the main points of discussion. We are also a kind of VEER off into a debate about whether Google + all one big game in a more metaphorical sense.

And as a bonus, you can see our awkward transitions between stories.

Here are some of the key stories, we are talking about this week:

Subscribe to us on iTunes!


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The mystery of the Android vulnerability detailed reasonably hackers

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He wrote for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts, it would like you to read: the perils of externalization of knowledge | Generation I | Surveillant society | Select two | Frame war | User manifesto | Our great sin his personal site — coldewey. cc. ? Read More

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Shane Macaulay and Riley Hassell were all set to go on stage at Black Hat and describe several methods of hacking Android devices. But they never appeared: in the last minute they decided not to disclose the vulnerabilities they discovered. Why? "To avoid an unacceptable risk to consumers window throughout the world and to guarantee the loans, where he was."

As a very white hat! Yes indeed, Hassel and Macaulay were worried that going public with these vulnerabilities can lead to scientific discussion and plugging security hole, but holiday Haq as millions of mobile phones succumbed to an unpatched exploits. They also learned just before going onstage, opening them can replicate some of the earlier findings, and they wanted to make sure they have proper confirmation. So they no-showed.

What is vulnerability? They are not telling just yet. And according to Google, "identified no errors appear in Android." is very Illuminating! About this, we'll see, I am sure.

In the news these days, that I felt just right to draw attention to a couple of guys to do things right so much a relic of hackers and hacks. That happiness will fix this security hole (which does not exist), and we will all be a little more next week.


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EZOfficeInventory SMB allows you to easily track and manage the assets of the company (the cloud)

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

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Office list control systems: not exactly the world's sexiest software to be sure. Nevertheless, without inventory and asset management systems, many businesses likely will work similar pace DMV. Currently, small and medium-sized businesses have no shortage of funds to choose from when selecting a software system for tracking asset management and inventory; However, most of these settings requires working tirelessly with Excel or using a desktop product like TurboSystems data or, in the village of FoxFales, to name a few. If the company has more than a few dozen staff, however, Excel, and desktop solutions can be a pain in the ass.

Ali Sayeed, a former employee of Sun Microsystems (before the company was acquired by Oracle) and his team and software geeks, said that they were tired of having to deal with repeated instances of inventory of obsolete and mismanagement in the modern tracking solutions. Saeed said that he and his team collectively has worked with many different companies that, for example, actually keep property lists, but specific information related to who has what (as track records check outs) are often completely missing or worse deprecated — not to speak of the fact that the wrong assets often are assigned the wrong employee even may not work in the company anymore.

As you can imagine, very numerous. To help solve these problems, Syed and his team today are EZOfficeInventory, SaaS-based solution that untraditionally asset management approaches through the delegation model, in which responsibility is shared by the inventory, reducing the load on administrators.

The solution allows the assets of the joint bureaux will be tracked easily through check-in and check-out mechanism for staff members, as well as the activities of news to administrators, allowing them to review and take responsibility only when necessary. Employees can also find free tools that they need to carry out its work and can instantly access the guides and drivers.

Since the EZOfficeInventory live in the cloud solution uses QRCodes as asset tags so that asset with a unique URL in QRCode, employees can quickly provides links to information on capital assets and determine the rightful owner, if something is lost. And employees can do this with a quick scan of the iPhone or Android device with QRCode reader and Web client.

The decision also works to minimize efforts during inspections, as administrators can request photos of an asset or other custom workflows from employees by using a few mouse clicks. EZOffice also allows administrators to view reports, track the checkouts and checkins, total cost of ownership and even serve the story on their assets.

Companies can also change the security settings in their decision that it was compatible with existing business processes and add additional privacy features when needed.

Some readers may find the following images news like Basecamp (a well-known product released by 37Signals, the same company is home to David Heinemeier Hansson, the guy who created the Ruby on Rails). EZOfficeInventory is also implemented in Ruby on Rails, as Saeed said that he is an avid fan "in the Web development platform.

EZOfficeInventory offers a free trial of the two months of its cloud app with packages for more than two users, starting at $ 29 per month.

Asset management system is still in very early stage (seed and start-up) at the moment and there is work to be done on Web design and user interface (and name), but the software itself attacked a major pain for many small and medium-sized enterprises.

At the time of deposit of the responsibility for the management of the assets in the hands of staff (along with, of course, the system of checks and balances) may well be to increase the efficiency and confidence among these employees, it is risky. But Saeed said it was "part of the fun of mergers with Web development and the process of using Web technologies to target the problem of the enterprise. This shot of the status quo, and the Director-General believes that this shot is worth taking, despite the risk.

More on EZOfficeInventory click here.


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