Category: Cool

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From Autoblog: Quick Spin: 2013 Hyundai Elantra Coupe

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Fashionable And Fun – In That Order

2013 Hyundai Elantra Coupe

It’s an interesting time for the compact car class. On one hand, we’re seeing the rise of the hatchback. On the other, we’re seeing the compact coupe market dwindle. Think about it: When the Chevrolet Cobalt became the Cruze, the coupe bodystyle went away. And when the Ford Focus was redesigned for 2012, the two-door died, but the five-door returned.

That said, it came as no surprise that when Hyundai replaced its Elantra Touring with the stylish new GT, it took on a more traditional five-door shape. But that isn’t the only new addition to the model range for 2013. We now have this, the Elantra Coupe, which the Korean automaker hopes will appeal to a younger set of buyers desiring something that’s more fashionable than all-around useful. Call it, “cheerleader chic.”

With its attractive design and affordable price point, the Elantra Coupe certainly appears to be a hit with that younger, more style-conscious demographic. We donned our best sunglasses and hit the coast of California to see what’s what.

Continue reading 2013 Hyundai Elantra Coupe

 

from Autoblog

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From Geeks are Sexy Technology News: 100 Worthwhile DOS Games of the 90s

While surfing Reddit I found this image that depicts 100 of the best DOS games of the 90s and it makes me want acquire many of them to relive the nostalgia of my early PC gaming days.

Here is the poster, but you will have to click on it to see the full res version.

I love how the images are sorted on stylized floppy disk templates. I kind of wish this is how the games were presented back in the days instead of on black or beige floppies. It also staggers me that these disks each held 1.4mb. That’s with an “m” there kiddos. Megabytes. While most of these games did come out on multiples disks (and some on Cds too) it puts a lot in perspective when we consider our smart phones are now more powerful than the computers that ran these games.

On this list, the most nostalgic of them for me has to be Betrayal at Krondor. I played the crap out of that game. And the hidden gem Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure and its sequel Twinsen’s Odyssey took up a lot of my time too.

Day of the Tentacle and Carmageddon were also pretty amazing. And it was Descent that earned the honors of being the first game to actually give me motion sickness with its 3D environments and 6 directions of travel.

Of course there are classics on this list that have franchises even to this day, like Elder Scrolls. However, Duke Nukem was better back then as the new long awaited version sucks.

I recently bought the Jedi Knight collection on Steam, which included the DOS version of Star Wars: Dark Forces from 1995. My monitor now supports six times the resolution that this was intended for, so I had to run it in windowed mode. The game was 72MB, so it downloaded and installed in a snap!

Some great nostalgia here as well as a potential poster for my wall!

 

 

from Geeks are Sexy Technology News

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From Ars Technica: Google officially reveals $199 7″ quad-core Nexus 7 tablet with Android 4.1

Google

Google unveiled its own Nexus tablet, the Nexus 7, at the Google I/O conference Wednesday in San Francisco. The 7-inch tablet running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean will have a 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor as well as a 1280×800 IPS display with a 178-degree viewing angle.

The tablet, which Google says is “built specifically for Google Play,” will have a 1.2-megapixel camera, 1GB of RAM, and a 4235mAh battery that will get it 8 hours of battery life “during active use” or 9 hours of video playback. The tablet weighs 340 grams, just shy of 12 ounces, and is 10.45mm thick (2.6 ounces lighter and just under a millimeter thinner than the Kindle Fire). Both 8GB and 16GB configurations will be available. Bluetooth, WiFi, and NFC all come standard, and there is no version of the tablet that can connect to a cell network.

Dan Goodin, Ars Technica

When Google showed the device, it made special note of the fact that the user’s content collection is front and center, much like on the Kindle Fire. When demonstrating the magazine viewing experience, a Google employee was able to swipe through a pile of magazines, and a “view text” link would reflow a visible article into a formation that is “optimized for reading.” The tablet will also have a “new recommendation engine” for content that will show users content tailored to their tastes.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: The World’s First LED Lightbulb You Can Control With a Smartphone

Insteon Bulb Insteon

There will come a time when our homes are completely automated, just like in several horror movies in which a house slowly murders its unsuspecting occupant. The Insteon is a pretty good step towards that inevitable murder–it’s the first LED lightbulb that you can control with a smartphone app.

Lots of LED bulbs have some kind of remote triggering–I’ve been using the GiiNii speaker-in-a-bulb lately, which can be controlled with a little remote–but this is the first we’ve seen to have a smartphone app. It assigns each bulb in your house a unique IP address, so you can trigger each one independently with an app (compatible with iOS and Android). And for the system to really be worth the cost, you’ll want to outfit your whole house in these things. The bulbs cost $30 each (which is not too bad; LED bulbs last for decades and even the current best LED bulb on the market runs $25), but the real cost is the $100 Insteon SmartLinc Controller you’ll need to buy if you want to hook up devices like smartphones.

[Insteon via SmartPlanet]

 

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now