If you’ve been staring lustfully at an electric motorcycle but needed that little extra push to make the jump, Zero Motorcycles has a unique incentive in store: it’ll pay for your first 25,000 miles on the road. Should you take the keys to any one of the company’s two-wheelers between now and the end of May, you’ll get a Visa gift card for the amount within a few weeks. Of course, the reason it can make such a seemingly generous offer is through the sheer efficiency of an electric engine: at a typical 10 cents for every kilowatt-hour, you’re looking at just under $200 for what’s likely several months or more of driving, even if you’re particularly enthusiastic. Knowing that riding the same amount with a gas-powered bike practically requires taking out a small mortgage in the current economy, though, we’d say that Zero is just reminding us of an an advantage e-motorbikes already have.

Zero Motorcycles will pay for your first 25,000 e-motorbike miles, wants you to ride guilt-free originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 15:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is the new BMW M135i, a 316bhp hatch and the fifth model to emerge from BMW’s new M Performance Automobiles tuning arm. While the new vehicle made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show this year as a concept car, the production version comes out slightly differently.

The M135i is powered by a turbocharged 3.0-litre straight-six producing 316bhp and 332lb ft sent to the rear wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox. The BMW also offers a chunky front spoiler, grey strakes in the front bumper and door mirror caps, bigger sills, a new rear bumper with two exhausts and 18″ wheels that come standard.

As for the interior, the M135i sports both cloth and Alacantra trim and a new steering wheel, gearstick and handbrake.

The vehicle also features “an upgraded cooling system on the 135i, a unique ECU and special engine sound tuning” with an overhaul on suspension as well.

View the official pictures in the gallery below:

BMW recently revealed that it has begun work on its 1-series convertible that will be introduced in 2014 as a 2-series model.

Source: Car Magazine

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RENTON, Wash. — At 5-foot-10 5/8, former Wisconsin and current Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson has one obvious “handicap” in the way of his eventual NFL success, and very little else impeding his progress. The man who led the NCAA in passing efficiency in 2011 was described by Seahawks general manager John Schneider as the kind of player who could “tilt a room” after he was selected in the third round, and on the first day of Seattle’s rookie minicamp, Wilson showed that he’s got a lot on the ball when he’s flinging it around.

There were other rookie quarterbacks on the field at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center Thursday afternoon, but rookie Chris Hart from Webber International and Jacksonville’s Josh McGregor were the Invisible Men — Wilson took just about every snap during a brisk two-hour practice in offensive drills and the team portion of the workout.

“I thought he did really well,” head coach Pete Carroll said after practice. “We wore him out. He went all day long and he probably had like 70-something plays today — he threw the ball a bunch. I thought he handled it really well — not beyond expectations in terms of handling the terminology at the line of scrimmage and the huddle and all of that, that’s no big deal to him. He seems like a veteran in that regard. But he threw a lot of really good balls in a lot of tight windows today and did some good stuff. He had a little trouble on the deep ball — the defense played some things well. But all in all, I was really impressed with his first day. I was hoping it would look good, and it did, and he showed us some cool stuff today.”

Wilson’s height probably kept him from the first half of the first round, but he displayed several ways around the obvious disadvantage. He was nifty in the pocket to find defensive gaps, his overhand throwing motion has the ball coming out as it would for a quarterback a few inches taller, and his quick release allowed him to exploit those lanes before they closed again. Of those “70-something” throws, Wilson had just two balls batted down — one was after a bad snap — and he had one interception on a ball that sailed on him. The incompletions that were his fault could be counted in the single digits. He ended practice with another pick, but he had proven his point by then.

Wilson had a knack for throwing with anticipation at Wisconsin and at North Carolina State before that, but that fact that he did so with receivers he’d never thrown to before, against a faster (non-contact) defense, was sufficiently impressive.

“It’s definitely a bit more difficult when you haven’t thrown to some guys, but you play football,” Wilson said, when I asked him how some quarterbacks are able to throw their receivers open more consistently than others. “Everybody here has played a lot of football in their day so most guys are pretty much on the same page, same timing and you just see him drop his hips and let the ball loose — play with confidence and let it go.”

Wilson showed other positive characteristics, as well. Time after time, whether in the pocket or rolling to the right or left, he made accurate stick throws downfield. His command of play action caused the young defensive backs he was facing to cheat their eyes to the backfield, and he made them pay by throwing over the top for a few long completions. He looked very comfortable with the rhythm of the game, and when larger defenders got in his face, he would adapt by side-arming throws to the hot route receiver underneath.

In an NFL that frequently turns the most impressive college quarterbacks to mush at first blush, it was a compelling performance — even with the caveats that there was no contact allowed, and Wilson was facing rookies and a handful of veteran hopefuls.

As Carroll said, it will be different when the “varsity” shows up … but so far, so good.

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As service providers and government officials in the United States seemingly look to further limit Internet freedoms, Dutch lawmakers have passed Europe’s first net neutrality bill, digital rights advocate Bits of Freedom reported on Tuesday. The legislation prohibits Internet service providers from throttling users or disconnecting their access unless in extreme circumstances. The bill also includes an anti-wiretapping provision, which restricts Internet providers from using invasive wiretapping technologies to monitor its users, although wiretapping is permitted with a warrant. A technical error in the law might still be corrected in a vote scheduled for May 15th.

Read

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Nevada is the first state to grant Google a U.S. license to test driverless cars. The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed on Monday that it had approved the company’s application to test autonomous vehicles on public streets. Google will be required to have at least two people in the vehicle while testing it, however, including one in the driver’s seat. Prior to being approved, the Mountain View-based company had been testing the car on freeways in neighborhoods around Carson City and Las Vegas, according to Fox News. The tests showed the car was just as safe, if not safer, than cars operated by human drivers. “It gets honked at more often because it’s being safe,” said Nevada DMV Director Bruce Breslow. The driverless vehicles will be required to wear red license plates that contain an infinity symbol, which the DMV says represents their status as “the car of the future.” If testing goes as planned and the vehicles are ever used by the general public, the license plates will be green. “They’re designed to avoid distracted driving,” Breslow said. “When you’re on the Strip and there’s a huge truck with a three scantily clad women on the side, the car only sees a box.”

Read

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Rui Viana isn’t a full-time app developer and he hasn’t learned how to use Apple’s iOS software development kit. Yet last week his newly released iPad game, Cargo-Bot, managed to become of the top 10 most downloaded iPad apps in the U.S., with more than 200,000 downloads in over a week.

By day he works as a programmer on Wall Street. In his free time, Viana built Cargo-Bot not with a traditional computer and the iOS SDK, but with an iPad using another iPad app called Codea, and the result was the first iOS game available in the App Store actually created on the iOS platform.

I spoke with Viana about how he rather accidentally became an iPad app maker and about how the shift in computing — and now programming — continues its march from desktop to mobile.

[Note: This Q&A is edited and condensed from two separate interviews.]

Q: Why did you go this route with Codea rather than the traditional iOS developer route?

I work in a programming language that’s similar to C. Apple’s [SDK uses] a version of C but the APIs that are in there are complex. I could understand if I spent a little time [but] Codea took a day to pick it up.

I haven’t built other games. This is the first time I did anything on the iPad. The thing for me that I think is really cool is it’s a different way to interact with users that you can’t get anywhere else. I always felt Apple’s API and structure for programming was pretty hard to understand. When the Codea guys had this I was really excited.

Q: How long did it take you to make Cargo-Bot?

I picked [Codea] up one night and really liked it, so I started doing a bunch of games. I did a version of Pac-Man and a [version of a] racing game in Codea that I used to like as a kid. But this is the first original one I did. The original prototype took a total of 10 hours, over a week. The hard part is polishing and the details. After that, we’ve been working on it for the past four months.

Q: The game did pretty well for a brand new independent developer. Were you surprised by the response?

I was. I was hoping it would get a thousand, so it surprised me a little bit. It was mostly targeted for people who are quantitative — programmers, engineers, math people. They seem to really enjoy it. Some people said it coudl  be good for kids, I thought it would be a hard game, but it’s visual so some people said their kids got into it so that was unexpected and was cool as well.

Q: Do you think any of the appeal was that it was made on an iPad? Or does that even matter to people who just want to find a good game?

I think the story of it being the first game made on the iPad helped the downloads a lot. I think after Apple made it one of the new and noteworthy section people were downloading because it was there and it had a lot of visibility.

Q: What’s your take on this shift in developing games? If people who have day jobs in other professionas can easily make an app on the side with just minimal programming knowledge, what do you think that means for the App Store and for mobile apps in general?

I think what this means is it’s easy for people to try out ideas. The Codea app is really easy to pick up and do something with. If you have an idea for a complicated game you want to see how the mechanics work or how it looks. With Codea you can do that with a few days of work.

My impression is it’s harder to do with the SDK Apple provides. For develping a professional game you still need to use [the] actual Apple SDK but i think it would bring more people to try to develop apps and increase quantity of and quality apps available.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015

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Andrew Luck’s first full weekend in Indianapolis has already given him a glimpse into what rookie life will be like.

He’s getting acclimated to a new locker room, new teammates and a new playbook, all while contending with the seemingly impossible job of replacing one of the city’s biggest sports icons, Peyton Manning.

Welcome to Indy, kid.

The kickoff officially came Saturday night, when Luck’s second day of rookie workouts at the Colts complex was upstaged by Manning’s return to Indianapolis.

It’s not the first time Manning has returned to the city he called home for 14 seasons, but it’s the first time he’s been back since the Colts started holding offseason workouts, and it’s a stark reminder of the pressure the No. 1 overall draft pick will face in 2012.

“He’s a great player, a great kid and he’ll fit in perfectly,” Manning said of his successor. “I reach out to most of the rookie quarterbacks because so many of them have been to our camp at the Manning Passing Academy, so I’ve always kind of kept up with them. Andrew attended our camp and that’s what I think is really the reason he was the first pick, because of all the great coaching he got down there.”

Manning was in a playful mood before serving as the master of ceremonies for a fundraiser for the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital at St.Vincent.

While he joked with reporters about everything from his new digs in Denver to how the NFL’s new offseason rules benefit teams such as the Colts that have new coaches, Manning took a serious tone when it came to the hospital that bears his name and the people that would be recognized during the celebration.

In the previous four years, the gala raised $3.4 million, and this year could be the best yet

The list of items on this year’s auction block included a collage of autographed baseballs from Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams; two guitars, one signed by Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, the other by the Rolling Stones; a clipping from a contract signed by Marilyn Monroe; an autograph of Mother Teresa; a signed Johnny Unitas jersey and an autographed photo of five American presidents — George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon.

And Manning intends to stick around and keep doing this kind of work in Indy.

“Peyton is no longer a Colt, but he’s been on our team since 1998 and he will continue to be on our team,” said Vincent Caponi, CEO of St.Vincent Health.

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RENTON, Wa. — Former Green Bay Packers backup quarterback Matt Flynn may be the Seattle Seahawks’ current clubhouse leader when it comes to contract size, but that is by no means an indicator of his future security as a starter for his new team. When Flynn, a free agent after spending four seasons as Aaron Rodgers’ reserve, signed a three-year, $26 million on March 18 with Seattle, it set him on a path less certain than some with similar contracts around the league.

Not only is Flynn in the sights of head coach Pete Carroll’s “Always Compete” meme, he’s also in a parallel depth chart situation with Tarvaris Jackson, who fought though a pectoral injury in 2011 to play just well enough to keep his name in the hat … and not well enough to keep other quarterbacks away from his once-assigned parking space.

“It’s different because I know I’m going to be competing and I know everything I do matters,” Flynn said after his first mandatory/voluntary workout session at the team’s Virginia Mason Athletic Center facility. “In Green Bay, I kind of had the luxury of sitting back and learning and being able to take my time in the progression of becoming a better quarterback. Now I get to come in here and compete and get the opportunity. That’s what I came here for and that’s what I’m excited about.”

“Who said ‘competition’ the most?”, Carroll joked after practice, when asked who’s in the lead. “Whoever said that word the most when they were up here getting interviewed, he’s ahead right now.”

Jackson, who won the job by default in a lockout-compressed 2011 offseason because he was familiar with the system run by new offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell from their days together with the Minnesota Vikings, understands the fight — he’s been in that battle his entire career. Now, unlike his time behind the will-he-or-won’t-he versions of Brett Favre, Jackson at least has a shot against a former Packers quarterback.

“It’s a lot different,” Jackson said of 2012. “Last year was so last-minute. When I got here I still wasn’t able to practice, but now we’re able to get in together and go through a full offseason, compete throughout the OTAs, throughout the training camp and just see where it lands. Last year I had more of a grasp of the offense being that it was such a short period of time that we had to get ready for the games, so that kind of gave me the lead on Charlie [Whitehurst]. But it’s a lot different this year. I’m just here to compete like always and just see how things play out.”

Jackson and Flynn aren’t the only ones in this quarterback derby, either. There’s second-year backup Josh Portis who has more of a realistic chance to get fourth-game reps in the preseason and little else. The X-factor this year hasn’t even arrived yet — third-round pick Russell Wilson, the height-impaired Wisconsin quarterback who led the NCAA in passing efficiency in 2011.

Carroll and general manager John Schneider can’t say enough about Wilson, and IMG performance coach Chris Weinke recently told Yahoo! Sports Radio that of all the signal-callers he’s worked with (including Cam Newton, Ryan Tannehill, Christian Ponder, and Kirk Cousins), Wilson is his favorite. Most draft experts and several NFL teams agree than if Wilson was a hair taller than 5-foot-10 5/8, he’d have been a top 10 overall pick. As it is, the Seahawks see no issue with throwing Wilson into the ring for the short and long term. He’ll be in town for next weekend’s minicamp.

“We’ll take a good look at Russell,” Carroll said. “I can’t wait for this (next) weekend coming up with the kids coming in just to see him get on the field with the guys and see what he can do, see how he does things. I have really high expectations for him — that he’s going to learn the system before he ever gets here. He’s going to be able to be out here and execute. I just really can’t wait to see him in our uniform and playing ball with us. We’ll see where it goes. We’ve done everything we can to make this position as competitive as possible. It’s a crucial position on the football team and we’re going to do everything we can to figure that out as we go down the road.”

A quick look at the offense Wisconsin ran in 2011 reveals when Carroll meant when he talked about Wilson learning the offense before he gets to Seattle — the coach wasn’t leaning on Wilson’s estimable intelligence. Like the Seahawks, the Badgers favored a run-balanced attack with power-blocking and motion concepts that transferred to the passing game. What made Wilson interesting on his college film was his ability to throw consistently from the pocket despite his height, and his command of an offense that could truly be termed “pro-style.”

Flynn said that the play verbiage is similar in Seattle to the stuff he learned in Green Bay, but of the new guys, Wilson might be best able to best superimpose his former offense onto his new one.

Soon after he was drafted, Wilson was asked why he will succeed in the NFL. “I think the main thing is this has been my perspective my whole entire life. My height doesn’t define my skill set. I believe I have all the skills and I believe that you have to work at it every day. I know that I’m five-foot-eleven, but I have to stay tall in the pocket, I have to make accurate throws, I have to deliver the ball on time with arc and pace and just play great football — be great on third down, be great in the red zone and do all the things that I can possibly do. One thing I can control is my work ethic. I can also control my knowledge of the game, how I study and how I get into the film room and how I just try to learn as much as I possibly can to give me that much more of an advantage.”

And there you have it. Flynn may be the guy right now, but he’s not THE GUY by any means, and the designation looks to change through the summer on a very fluid basis. If he wants that title attached to his name, he’ll have to work harder than he ever has before.

Like every other quarterback on Seattle’s current roster, the only thing he’s been promised is a chance.

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It’s been two years since we last heard of the 98-foot-long solar-powered boat, which at the time was gearing up for its big journey around the world. Well, some 19 months and 37,286 miles after setting sail from Monaco, the MS Turanor PlanetSolar has finally made it home. The PlanetSolar broke four Guinness world records along the way, including the all-important “first circumnavigation by solar-powered boat,” and it made stops on six continents to promote solar energy. Oh, and the team fended off Somalian pirates in the process, too. Now that it has a moment to catch its breath and soak up some rays at leisure, the MS Turanor could become any number of things — from the world’s largest solar battery to a “green luxury yacht.” The latter option would certainly befit its chichi home port.

First solar-powered boat to circle the world pulls into home port, contemplates next move originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 May 2012 20:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The wet weather in Wiltshire this past month hasn’t stopped extraterrestrial forces from laying down the first crop circles of the year near Stonehenge. Crop circles are an annual event for the fields in Wiltshire, a phenomenon that attracts plenty of attention and tourists to the area. The first crop circle this year was reported on April 15 at Hill Barn, near East Kennett in an oil seed rape, or canola, field.

Another more striking crop circle was reported on April 28 and is now visible in another canola field at Yarnbury Castle near Winterbourne Stoke. This second one oddly resembles the Spotify logo, but the company could not be reached as to whether or not they had a hand in this typically extraterrestrial endeavor.

More circles will likely be cropping up as the weather gets drier. The intrigue behind the crop circles is that they are said to form in under 20 seconds under incandescent or brightly colored balls of light with the plants bent but not broken. They also tend to form near ancient sites and reportedly harness natural healing powers and even cause electromagnetic equipment failure.

[via Wiltshire Times]

First crop circles of the year appear at Stonehenge is written by Rue Liu & originally posted on SlashGear.
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