Apart from the ability to show how cool you are, this new innovation from Monkey Light Pros (currently in Kickstarter), will make you  quite visible to motorists and other road users during the night time.. That said, I’m really not looking forward to the possibility of too many Nyan cats flooding our city streets..Hey, as long as it saves lives and gives you a reason to get on the bike, I’m all for it :)

Image via Gizmodo

Gadget/tech stuff blog Gizmodo offers the following details:

• It utilizes a quartet of LED-impregnated bars that fit along the the spokes inside of your wheel. As the wheel spins, the bars rotate and generate the 256-color animated GIFs by exploiting the persistence of vision effect.
• Each unit weighs just 500 grams and fits on a 26 to 29 inch rim using the standard 32 or 36 spoke pattern.
• The system can load up to 1000 frames in a variety of media formats (JPG, GIF, PNG, AVI, MPEG, MOV, QT, FLV) onto a web-based playlist for display (think about blitzing around the town with a different GIF every day! AWESOME!)
• Users can also download the Mac/Linux API to create custom light shows though the system comes preloaded with 10 animations.
• The integrated 7000mAh Li-ion battery supplies 3 – 8 hours of power at full brightness (up to 48 hours on lower settings).
• Cost: a single light system with a $700 and a pair for $1400. They’ll retail for $895 a pop if and when the program funds

(Source: TED)

Forget about the hybrid auto — Shai Agassi says it’s electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

Just over a year ago, BusinessWeek ran a great piece aboutShai Agassi and his audacious plans to produce a mass market electric vehicle and thereby revolutionize the auto industry. So it was great to get an update from the former software entrepreneur turned zero emission transport guru on the main TED stage earlier today.

Business Week’s report on Mr. Agassi’s TED presentation offers this:  “Much of what Agassi had to say was familiar, but it was fascinating to hear how the Better Place project is scaling to places such as Australia and Hawaii (it started life in Israel, with the support of politician Shimon Peres.) The emergence of Car 2.0, as Agassi described it, entails an entirely new business model for car ownership, whereby drivers will pay for miles as they currently pay for minutes on a phone. And Agassi, who cut an imposing and definitive figure on stage, professed to be interested in only two figures: Zero, as in zero emissions; and infinity, as in this model should be available for every driver, worldwide.”

The quote from Wired Magainze nicely captures Mr. Agassi’s personality – Charismatic &  convincing. 

“Shai Agassi has only one car, no charging stations, and not a single customer—yet everyone who meets him already believes he can see the future.” – Wired

Here is Mr. Agassi’s presentation at TED. 

(Via istockanalyst.com)

Logo: http://www.energyintel.com

Energy Intelligence, a leading publisher of energy information services, today launched a new web portal, Obama Energy Vision, to track the evolution of US energy policy under President Barack Obama, at: http://www.energyintel.com/obama

Rating the energy sector second only to the economy in his priorities, the new president is pursuing a radical vision of a new energy economy, which includes reducing US dependence on foreign oil, restructuring the transport sector, developing alternative energies and addressing climate change. If successful, the policy will amount to a revolution for the energy industry, with repercussions around the world. Key aspects of Obama’s foreign policy also have important implications for the energy industry.

To read entire article, click here