Here’s the latest action:
California Air Resources Board waters down pro-electric car requirements — The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has voted once again to dilute the state’s requirements for major auto manufacturers to sell electric vehicles. Instead of eliminating the requirement for zero-emission vehicles, like the state did seven years ago (see a movie trailer below about that), the board this time cut it by 70 percent. More on the specifics at Reuters.
Location-based mobile service Loopt adds Verizon support — Starting next month, Verizon customers will be able to use Loopt’ services to share location information, messages, and location-tagged photos from their phones. While most mobile startups struggle to cut deals with carriers, Loopt has had more success; its other announced partners include Sprint and Sprints subsidiary MVNO, Boost Mobile. The Verizon service will cost $4 a month, and can be purchased through the company’s mobile store. More on how Loopt works, here.
Security experts tracing another IFRAME vulnerability — IFRAME code, an element of HTML web code that lets web sites run independently updating parts of a page, is proving vulnerable once again. Over the past several weeks, IFRAME attacks have been happening on popular sites, where the internal search engine of a site gets hacked. When a user clicks on the search result, the program open an invisible IFRAME window in the user’s browser that redirects the user to a malicious web site that tries to install malware that exposes the user’s computer to further infiltration. Major news sites like USAToday.com and News.com, as well as retailer sites like Target.com have been affected. More here.
Thin-film solar cells getting cheaper — The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is working on thin-film solar cells with record efficiency of 19.9 percent in energy production, almost reaching top efficiencies for multi-crystalline cells. The top cells ever made are more than 40 percent, but are quite expensive. Because thin film is cheaper than silicon-based, making a thin-film cell with efficiency this high could seriously dent the market for silicon.
DIY political ads, that let you get around political campaign rules (and fight dirty) — Votervoter.com is a new site offered by WideOrbit, an advertising conglomerate that is letting users buy and run their own national political ads on television. ReadWriteWeb has a good review, and notes it both lets individuals finance campaigns without being limited by campaign finance rules and it lets supporters run ads that may be aren’t up to the ethical standards of the campaigns themselves. Votervoter is not the only political-ads-for-the-people effort. Spotrunner recently introduced a way to buy local political ads.
Internet Archive, a nonprofit, beginning to offer free, fast internet in low-income SF housing — More here. Now, how about some more low-incoming housing in San Francisco?
Google wants to bring more advertisers to TV — Google TV Ads director Michael Steib told a room full of broadcasters in New York that there are 6,000 to 7,000 national advertisers that use direct mail — and online advertising offered by companies like Google — that aren’t advertising on TV. Google, Steib said, wants to help connect these advertisers with the broadcasters.
4 Comments
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thomas C Gray said:
Only in silly California do they hold to the notion that the electric car is, or ever was, alive. They’ve claimed to have “killed” that deadend technology more times than
Dracula. If they only had a brain, they’d realize that battery-only EVs actually require more gasoline than plug-in hybrids, which can save tons of emissions on every trip, while EVs often cannot even be used and must be replaced by
all gasoline power. The things those California dolts don’t know is only exceeded by the number of false facts they fervently believe. What a collection of morons. It must be the air out there. -
Kerry Matthews said:
I agree. Californians are trying to make the same stupid they did in the past with their euphemistically titled
“zero emissions law” which strangely makes the claim that
very non-zero electricity (650 pounds per megwatthour, no less!!!) can power a vehicle and result in zero emissions. This kind of logic pervades the thinking og the dolts living in that state. Their last zero emissions law blocked the only conceivable solution (plug-in hybrids) in favor of fuel cell and all electric impossibilities. You can now see howdisastrous that arrogance has turned out to be. All that’s been accomplished is a bunch of Prius hybrids that didn’t have anything to do with their ZEVs. Only arrogant, stupid California operates under the delusion that their laws can command the seas to part, and cars to operate without producing emissions. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Fools, total, utter, incredibly stupid fools, those Californians.
They are now claiming that a technolgy that has been completely dead since before World War I is “being killed” by their CARB board. Ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha. -
Franklin Ruth said:
I have a question about the supposed claims that are criticizing the CARB board. How, exectly, do they plan on forcing those people to buy those (non-existent) electric cars, even if some company was stupid enough to build them?
Mitsubishi will supposedly be building an EV for the US fairly soon. If California wants 50000 of these guys why can’t Mitsubiishi supply them? Why does the law require every automaker to produce an EV? Isn’t that rather counterproductive and inane? California apparently is too dumb to realize that an electric car market wil be much more likely to attract the attention of an automaker if they feel confident they won’t have a lot of competition for what would be a very tiny niche market. I mean, how many Californians can possibly make do with owning a car that can only make round trips to destinations less than 40 miles away. Add California heat/traffic ties ups and heavy AC usage and that destination betterbe closer than 30 miles away. Doesn’t California have ANYONE out there who can think logical thoughts? The Union of Concerned Scientists seems to have all the intelligence of a union of concerned
mental retardates. Exactly what kind of “scientists ” are those dimwitted souls? Sociology professors, is my guess. -
Chris Morrison said:
Above commenters: Agreed, a choice of plug-in hybrids would be an excellent solution for the moment. But that’s not really the point. The point is that it’s worthwhile to start developing electrics now. We need hybrids in the short-term; long-term, electrics are both viable and desirable.
Some very reasonable first attempts at electric cars were produced during the first ZEV program (the RAV4 got 80 - 120 miles per charge, Franklin, not 40). Unfortunately, by turning around and dropping the program, the CARB managed to erase whatever progress it had made.
With a little bit of focus and ingenuity, there’s every possibility that electric vehicles could work. See what Project Better Place is doing in Israel and Denmark. You can make the argument that we’d be damaging the business of major car manufacturers by forcing them to make electrics, but nothing thus far has managed to hurt Detroit as much as letting it have its own way.
Finally, if electrics become available, rest assured that some crazed Californians will actually buy the things. Ever heard of Tesla — and its waiting list?
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loopt said:
[...] de link p…http://www.webraider.eu/v4/blog/66/weekverslag.html” rel=”dc:source” property=”dc:titleRoundup: CARB??s new electric car requirements, Loopt on Verizon …Mar 28, 2008 … Here&39s the latest action: California Air Resources Board waters down pro-electric [...]
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Voting for MobileBeat2008 best companies begins » VentureBeat said:
[...] Loopt — a company offering location based applications for users of various carriers, including Sprint and Verizon. [...]