The Bosch Group plans to form a joint venture with Ningbo Polaris Technology, a Chinese provider of motors for electrically driven scooters (eScooters), with Bosch holding the majority. The joint venture is to develop, manufacture, and sell a comprehensive product portfolio of eScooter motors. An agreement to this effect was signed on August 13, 2012. It has been agreed that details of the transaction, which is subject to approval by the antitrust authorities, will not be disclosed. Ningbo Polaris Technology specializes in developing, manufacturing, and selling of eScooter motors in China under the POLTM brand. In 2011, the company sold over one million eScooter motors and employed some 450 associates.
“With a growth rate of 6% per year, the market will reach up to 46 million units in 2020,” said Udo Wolz, president of the Electrical Drives division. “Therefore, besides being a strong addition to Bosch Electrical Drives, the establishment of this joint venture is a milestone for us as we move into the global eScooter motor market.”
Bosch is adding to its extensive portfolio of electromobility solutions–a portfolio that ranges from drive units for electrically assisted two-wheelers, also known as pedelecs, to complete powertrain systems for hybrid and electric vehicles. “We can see excellent growth opportunities,” said Dacheng Luo, CEO of Ningbo Polaris Technology. “As a preferred partner of the global automotive industry, Bosch Electrical Drives offers system solutions for automotive applications, and can draw on a broad portfolio of leading motor technologies.”
Bosch Electrical Drives offers system solutions and services for electric actuation of power windows, steering columns, seats and sliding sunroof units, motors for electrical power steering as well as modules for engine cooling, vehicle air conditioning, water pumps and valves, and wiper systems. Bosch Electrical Drives products provide direct benefits to the drivers and passengers as well as to the environment through enhanced driving comfort and reductions in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
We’re fresh from Smart’s LTE Forum today, and just when we thought that there wouldn’t be talk about the official availability of Smart’s ground breaking LTE service, Ron Molina, Senior Manager for Smart Telecommunications announced that the company would be officially launching the service on August 25, 2012. That’s right kiddos – about a week from now, Smart will finally be launching its ground breaking service, and along with it, possibly LTE enabled devices as well. Where exactly is Smart getting LTE devices (aside from the USB LTE dongle that we used during the beta test)? Possibly from partner NTT Docomo, who has had a commercial LTE service starting 2010. Coincidentally, NTT Docomo also has the same LTE spectrum as smart (2100MHz) which means LTE devices from NTT Docomo will work here.
Local cosplay maiden Alodia Gosiengfiao joins the Canon family as she is hailed as the newest brand ambassador for the Image Communications Products (ICP) division.
Interestingly, Alodia has a collection of at least 15 Canon products. She considers Canon to be her brand of choice. “It really targets the community and what they want and need,” Alodia notes.
“I never really imagined being together with Canon because I was such a huge fan before, and I was happy to be using their cameras,” Alodia shares. “And now, to be part of their family—it’s so overwhelming.”
Through this partnership, Alodia hopes to help in envisioning and creating exciting projects for the Canon community. Among Alodia’s plans with Canon are participating in conventions, modelling in monthly photo shoots, and encouraging people to join the photography community.
Samsung’s gaming monster, the unsurprisingly named Series 7 Gamer is getting a refresh, even though this particular notebook has still not arrived in this particular country. Nevertheless, the Korean firm has decided to slightly revamp their gaming model and have dubbed it the Series 7 Gamer Yellow 3D. Aside from the most striking change, which is the bright, yellow color scheme, the new refresh gives the notebook a brand spanking new AMD Radeon HD 7870M GPU, a positive change from the previous GeForce GTX 675M. The notebook also sports a 14.3-inch SuperBright (400 nit) 3D LED display, as well as a 1TB HDD drive and a faster, 128GB SSD drive. No price or availability has been set as of yet.
Source: Samsung Tomorrow via Engadget
Here’s another way to help the flood victims: Support original music from local artists who care.
Rock Ed Philippines, in its effort to raise funds for the disaster victims, is organizing a music folder containing tracks from local bands and artists. When you donate Php 100, Php 500, or Php 1000, you will be given a link to that folder. Those who are interested in supporting this effort can pay through bank deposit (BPI and East West Bank), credit card, or via PayPal.
According to the project site, the folder now contains 68 tracks from bands and artists spanning all sorts of genres. Here’s a list of the contributing artists:
If you’re an artist/member of a band and you want to contribute to the music folder, you can email your track (in 192 kbps mp3 format) to [email protected].
For more info on the project and how to give your support, you can head on over to this link.
If you’ve ever wanted to get that desktop experience on your Android device, but haven’t really found a good solution, switch your Android phone on, launch Google Play, and get yourself a copy of Ubuntu Installer for Android. It’ll download an app, which, once installed, will guide you through a few steps that involve downloading other necessary apps for the actual Ubuntu install to work. The whole process will take a little while (there’s a total of about 1.5 Gigabytes to download), but the rewards are well worth it. You can run Ubuntu on a whole list of confirmed devices, and even if yours isn’t on the list, there is a chance it will work anyway. This install will allow you in run Ubuntu AND Android side-by-side, without having to boot the device exclusively into either mode. The app isn’t free, but for just a little over a hundred bucks for the price of admission, it’s not a bad deal. Hit this LINK to find out more and download the app.
In a twist that leaves many Android users a little miffed, NASA will be updating curiosity’s software to “better suited for tasks ahead” including better driving and support for its robot arm. This is pretty cool given that the UHF data transmission cap is pegged at jut over 31 MB per day, and that’s with all the other information that command center sends, images Curiosity sends back and other data from sensors. NASA purposely designed the system to be able to receive updates at the speed of light, over-the-air throughout the course of the whole mission, and that makes things really very cool, and begs the question: “Why can’t we get Jellybean on our phones?” Read the whole release from NASA HERE.
uTorrent has the distinction of being one of the most used Torrent clients in the world, and the founders of the company has decided to use that fame for a bit of monetary gain. The company has decided to add “sponsored torrents” to their list of monetization plans, which will take effect in the next major release of the software. “You are all very familiar with how we have paid the bills so far. These new changes mark our next step towards finding that difficult balance between keeping our lights on and providing a positive user experience,” they explain.
The torrents will appear on the top of the program, and although users cannot turn these off, they can individually click away the ads.
“This new build will display a featured torrent at the top of your torrent list. This featured torrent space will be used to offer a variety of different types of content. We are working towards bringing you offers that are relevant to you.”
“This means films, games, music, software…basically anything that you will find interesting. We may not get it right on the first try but we will continue to improve our efforts based on your feedback,” BitTorrent Inc. adds.
Source: Torrent Freak
Want Windows 8 but don’t like the new UI? Well, tough luck. Leaked RTM builds of Windows 8 has revealed that Microsoft has blocked all avenues where users can bypass the UI, which means if you want Windows 8, you’ll have to contend with the UI. On previous versions of Windows 8 before it hit RTM, there was still a way to bypass the UI, which generally meant that users could create a shortcut to bypass it. On the new RTM versions of Windows 8, this is no longer possible, which has irked a lot of users who would have to upgrade to the latest version of the OS when it hits.
Source: Network World
Have you ever wondered just how much arms and ammunition go around this blue sphere of ours that we call home? Well, Google, the Igarape Institute and the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers teamed up to deliver this stark visualization of just how much arms and ammunition went around the world from 1992 to 2010. And yes, before you ask, the Philippines is a huge importer and exporter of both arms and ammo, and managed to rack up quite a number in 2010, importing $25 million worth of arms and exporting $18.5 million. Check it out yourself on the link below. You will need either a modern web browser and OpenGL for this to work.
Source: Google
Id software’s Doom 3 is one of those games that every self-respecting FPS player will have played at some point in their life. When it came out, it was reason enough for many people to upgrade their machines just to get in on the experience. Now, a rogue developer has taken it upon himself to create a port of the critically-acclaimed game for the Android operating system, and it now (sort of) runs on his HTC Desire HD. It’s still an early early aplha, so there are a lot of things missing, like, movement, enemies and, well, gameplay, but the project shows serious potential, and at the rate he is going, you should be able to get the game running on your device before Doom 4 hits the shelves. Watch a quick video of the game running on’droid HERE.
The Crysis series of games have always been about pushing the envelope of what graphics could do, and the latest game in the series, Crysis 3, is no exception to that. The newest tech demo from Crytek demoing CryENGINE 3 and Crysis 3 shows just how unreal things have gotten when it comes to computer graphics. Volumetric smoke, DX11 and a whole cornucopia of visual effects are shown in the short tech demo, which really, really makes us wish that our PCs would still be able to run the game when it finally ships. We’ve embedded the video below, but for maximum enjoyment, it’s best to put that sucker up in full screen and hit the 1080p button.
Microsoft’s Excel is the preferred tool of teachers, CPAs and other pencil pushers out in the world, but who would have thunk that it could also potentially be used to create stop motion animation? Well, leave it to Joe Penna, better known to the internet as Mystery Guitar Man to make it happen. He and his team of musicians shot and filmed a performance against a greenscreen and then proceeded to recreate it using Open Office and Excel by hand. We’re not sure how much patience is required to pull this thing off, but we’re pretty sure it was all worth it. Catch a video of his performance below.
In case you’ve been away from the Internet for the past week, we, the human race, have just landed another rover on Mars. Said rover has also been sending photos back to Earth via a few on-board 2-Megapixel snappers. While that’s really very cool, some of you kids might be wondering why the resolution on the cameras sent over are so low. There are a few reasons that range from the tech being settled on a few years ago, data issues and simple things like compatibility. Don’t worry, though, a low pixel count doesn’t mean cruddy martian images. Just head over HERE to read a more detailed article and a pretty cool panoramic shot of Mars.
Via The Verge
