Filed under: Portable Audio, Transportation

Alpine’s cutting straight to the chase with its new iDA-X200 and iDA-X300 headunits. Forgoing a CD mechanism entirely, the two systems are designed primarily for use with an iPod, though they do pack a few extra goodies. The X200 works with Alpine’s Sound Imprint system for some fancy DSP, while the X300 has USB input for pulling media off of non-iPod sources. No word on price or availability.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Popularity: 6% [?]

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Filed under: Transportation

Anyone can claim to be a friend of the environment while proudly jaunting about in a sporty Tesla, so what really separates the hardcore greens from the Hollywood posers is the willingness to shell out nearly twenty-five grand for a no-frills, no hype (and no doors?) solar-powered runabout. It must be this dedicated demographic that a team of builders and racers from Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences are targeting with the vehicle you see above, which is based on their successful design that ranked second of fifty cars in the latest Australian World Solar Challenge. Unlike their single-passenger, 145kph (90mph) race car, however, the multi-seat commercial ride is speculated to max out at around 70kph (43mph); fine for short city commutes, but not really practical for road trips (and with the three-hour battery, forget about cruising around much at night). Still, those ready to fork over an estimated 800,000 New Taiwanese Dollars ($24,617) for a vehicle that only a short-sighted mother could love should be able to order one as early as next year — probably not tomorrow, though.

[Via The Raw Feed]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Popularity: 6% [?]

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CScoutJapan gives us an inside look at Japan’s high-tech Tokyo traffic center, which boasts a Central Display Board that shows “1,000 intersections, and has 15,154 traffic signals in the system.” Click here for first picture in gallery.

…a bunch of people work 24-hour shifts and try to stop the city from grinding to a halt. Cameras, helicopters, 17,000 vehicle detectors, as well as reports from both police and civilians, all contribute toward a harmonious transport system

[via Gizmodo - kn]

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As we reboot the calendar for yet another year, it’s time to take a look at the most popular posts from 2007 on TechBlog, as well as some blog-visit statistics culled from our ace crew of tireless abacus operators.

If you like, you can compare the results to last year’s edition.

Here are the 10 most popular TechBlog entries for 2007:

1. 15 geek movies to see before you die — In which I inflame 90 percent of geek film fans by refusing to include Blade Runner and Tron on the list because they’re, um, not very good. (This was, by the way, the single most-viewed blog post on chron.com, largely because of links from Digg and Fark.)

2. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 ‘freezing problem’ — An oldie-but-goodie from 2005, and the No. 1 TechBlog entry from last year. It’s a testament to the power of how simple, descriptive headlines can draw lots of traffic via Google searches.

3. “Free Public WiFi”? Not! — Another older post kept at the top of the list by Google search results. A lot of folks seem to be interested in free public Wi-Fi . . .

4. Smile, Houston! You’re on Google Maps Street View — Google Street View comes to Houston in a post guest-blogged by Chronicle tech beat reporter Brad Hem.

5. Faster, Vista, Faster! — This 2006 post about using ReadyBoost to speed Windows Vista benefited from a lot of people searching on “make Vista faster”. Ahem.

6. Windows Defender antispyware beta 2 released — The second beta of Windows Defender expired in January, causing the program to quit loading for thousands of users. Google searches for help led them to this post.

7. Road Runner Lite is even lighter — The fact that Time Warner doesn’t advertise its budget tier of cable-modem Internet access sends cost-conscious Web users to Google who, in turn, sends them to this 2005 post.

8. Obsession indulged: More on Vista’s ReadyBoost — A followup to the “Faster, Vista, Faster!” post, which also benefits from Vista users frustrated by lagging performance.

9. Spam alert! Just say no to Quechup — Social networking turned into a spamming nightmare when this British site offered to read users’ e-mail address books, then proceeded to send everyone in them an invitation, without first requesting permission.

10. Comcast taking over Time Warner-Houston system — This 2006 entry on the first news that Comcast would become Houston’s cable TV/Internet provider was kept alive by locals searching for details as the switchover progressed this year.

For those who are curious, the most-viewed categories on TechBlog this year: Windows Vista and the iPhone.

Now, let’s look at the technology used by TechBlog visitors:

• Internet Explorer remained the top browsing platform, with nearly 76 percent using it here. Forty-six percent of TechBlog visitors used IE6, 29.9 percent IE7. The various flavors of Mozilla comprised 17 percent, and 12.9 percent were Firefox 2. Interestingly, IE gained dramatically over last year’s 57 percent, while Firefox declined from nearly 35 percent. Safari was 3.6 percent, down from last year’s 5 percent.

• The percentage of Windows users visiting the site increased as well, up to 92.6 percent from last year’s 90 percent. Windows XP users accounted for 74.5 percent of visitors, while Windows Vista had only 4.4 percent. Macintosh usage was 5.7 percent, down from almost 8 percent in 2006. Linux use also dropped, to .8 percent from 2 percent. (The iPhone, by the way, accounted for just .1 percent of visitors.)

• Dialup continued its death spiral, with only 6.3 percent using a modem to read TechBlog, compared with 8 percent last year. Ninety-three percent use some kind of high-speed connection (our analytics software didn’t break down connections to DSL or cable, as it did last year).

• More than 48 percent read TechBlog on a screen at 1024-by-768 resolution, while nearly 16 percent use 1280-by-1024.

• English is far and away the predominant language used by TechBlog readers, at 97 percent, with Chinese coming in a distant second at .2 percent.

Many thanks to the commenters and readers who make TechBlog what it is — one of the most interesting and intelligent tech communities on the Web! Here’s wishing for everyone a happy and geek-filled New Year!

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One of the first things I did after rolling back into town from a Christmas visit to Indianapolis was make use of my lovely wife’s generous gift — 4 gigabytes of memory for my 24-inch aluminum iMac.

On one level, 4 GB of RAM in a Mac is overkill for everyday use. You don’t need that kind of headroom when surfing the Web, watching videos, working with e-mail, using an office suite. In most cases, 1 or 2 GB will do just fine.

And when I bought my iMac, I configured it with 2 GB, which is more than adequate. But one reason I bought the iMac was to be able to run more than one operating system at once via Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion, and in fact I’d like be able to run more than two at once. Forget visions of sugarplums — my December dream was to have Windows XP, Vista and Ubuntu dancing on my screen!

What made this possible is how far memory prices have plummeted. My wife paid $160 at Crucial.com for a pair of 2-GB, DDR2 PC2-5300 modules. The price has dropped another $10 at Crucial since then. And don’t tell her this, but 4 GB of iMac-compatible memory can now be had for under $100.

Keep my wife in the dark, yes, but someone needs to tell Apple. To upgrade an aluminum iMac to 4 GB when configuring a new unit costs a whopping $850!

That’s just unconscionable! Smart shoppers will order 1 GB of RAM and upgrade the iMac themselves.

And doing so is a breeze. Replacing my pair of 1-GB modules with the two 2-GB sticks took under five minutes, and was the easiest RAM upgrade I ever did. As you can see in this video, the steps are simple:

1. Unplug the iMac from its various cables and lay it screen-down on a soft surface.

2. Loosen a single screw in the center of the iMac’s bottom edge and pull away a small door.

3. Pull on a pair of tabs that release the memory modules.

4. Insert each new module until it clicks, then tuck the tabs back in place.

5. Replace the door, tighten the screw.

6. Reconnect the power and any other cables to the iMac and turn it on.

I’m now able to run Windows XP and Vista at the same time, giving each a full gigabyte of memory. If I needed to, I could even bump Vista to 2 GB and not feel any pain. I haven’t tried a threesome yet by adding a Ubuntu, but it’s high on my list of geeky things to do.

If you have not looked into how much it might cost to add RAM to your computer, you should. You’ll probably be astounded at how little it will cost, and if you’ve got 1 GB or less of memory in your system, you’ll appreciate the extra headroom.

In fact, I’ve got 2 GB of memory in my MacBook, but it will take up to 3 GB. At Other World Computing, I could replace one of its 1-GB sticks with a 2-GB module for just $49.

Hmmmmm . . .

Update: Wow. If you think $850 for 4 GB of RAM from Apple is outrageous, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet found that 16 GB of RAM for a Mac Pro is $4,499 in the company’s online store. The base price of the Pro is $2,499, meaning the memory for it would cost $2,000 more than the whole computer.

Clearly, this is meant as an intelligence test. Would someone actually pay that price?

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• In the DVD War Over High Definition, Most Buyers Are Sitting It Out — It’s Beta vs. VHS all over again.

• Holiday eCommerce Falls Short — But just barely.

• Conroy announces mandatory internet filters to protect children — In Australia, you’ll have to opt-out to get unfiltered Internet.

• Announcing Hoosgot: Resurrecting the Lazyweb — Find who’s got what you’re looking for.

• “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question and Sorry Robert, Advertising is About Audience Size First, Brand Sponsorships Later

• PCWorld.com Year-End Stats: IE7, Firefox, Vista, Mac — Adoption of Vista only 14 percent (for visitors to PCWorld.com).

• Microsoft’s $300 million ‘consumer product blitz’ inches closer

• Who’s choosing XP over Vista? — It’s largely small businesses, based on data found on Dell’s outlet site. Also Does Vista’s stunted growth hint at the death of the desktop?

• Microsoft takes Vista advertising to YouTube

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If you’ve always wondered what lies beneath Pleo’s skin, then check out this long (24-minutes) yet interesting clip. Video after the break.

Believe it or not, things get pretty interesting once the garb comes off, but you’ll have to endure a near-24 minute clip in order to say you saw the entire procedure from start to finish

[via Engadget]

Popularity: 6% [?]

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Honda unveils its revamped Civic Type-R. The Modula CTR boasts “19-inch Modulo wheels wrapped in 225/35 R19 R-compound tires and a revised suspension, along with a new front fascia, rear bumper, side skirts and wing.” Click here for first picture in gallery.

The checkered livery speaks to its track-friendly nature, but the inside of the Civic Type-R is what gains the most attention. Honda replaced several interior panels with carbon fiber components and fitted custom Recaro seats, a new dash display and an F1-inspired steering wheel with integrated shift lights

[via Autoblog]

Popularity: 8% [?]

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Our friends over at TouchMods have just released a video of the first successful VoIP call made with the iPod Touch, running a custom application. Continue reading to watch.

If you missed it, we already told you about the microphone that has been prepared for the iPod touch, which can be preordered now from touchmods directly. Other than that, it’s a waiting game for the app to drop

[via Gizmodo]

Popularity: 6% [?]

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An engineer/LEGO artist has built a self-parking car that uses ultrasonic sensors for 360-degrees range of motion and to avoid obstacles. Plus, “it steers with trapezoid steering instead of parallel steering.” Video demonstration after the break. Click here for first picture in gallery.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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