Speedboat cum Car!!!

It might look like something from a James Bond movie - but this could be the future of public transport. On land, the Aquada is a sports car, but on water, it transforms into a speedboat. The three-seat combination vehicle, to be built by British-based Gibbs Technologies, can reach speeds of up to 30 mph on water. The Aquada is expected to go on sale in 2009 at a price of around $85,000. The company is also hoping to develop an amphibious military vehicle, the Humdinger, and a personal water craft, the Aquaski.

B-2 Spirit, the Ultimate Warrior

The B-2 Spirit, made by Northrop Grumman, is an American multi-role stealth bomber able to drop conventional and nuclear weapons. A dramatic leap forward in technology, the bomber was a milestone in the U.S. bomber modernization program. The B-2 is the most expensive plane ever built. Estimates for the costs per plane range from $1.157 billionto $2.2 billion.



Its stealth technology is intended to help it penetrate defenses previously impenetrable by combat aircraft. The original procurement of 135 aircraft was later reduced to 75 in the late 1980s. Finally, President George H. W. Bush reduced the final buy quantity to the 21 already bought in his now famous "New World Order" State of the Union speech, January 1991.

Design:

Deploying payload ::

Blu-ray Technology

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit.

Guess what it is.....

It's a hard disk, the volume and size of a 5MB memory storage in 1956!!!!

In September 1956, IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5MB of data.

Gosh.....all the while, I had been cribbing about my PC of having only 40 GB space.....I am contended with what I have now..

The Air Car!!

A car that runs on air could soon be a reality for Indians. Tata Motors has signed an agreement with Moteur Development International of France to develop a car that runs on compressed air, thus making it very economical to run and be almost totally pollution free. Although there is no official word on when the car will be commercially manufactured for India, reports say that it will be sooner than later.

The car -- MiniCAT -- could cost around Rs 350,000 in India and would have a range of around 300 km between refuels. The cost of a refill would be about Rs 90.

Click here to read more on it....

My take on it.... just on a lighter note...all these days, I was happily going around breathing as much as I can like a snorting bull until my lungs get stuffed with air. Lucky for me the 2007-08 Budget just got over. You never know, one fine day you would be forced to shell out that fresh crisps of paper in the name of "Air Tax" courtesy of course the article mentioned above. Psst... psst...just between us, am doing a crash course from the prestigious University of Assumification and Dingolfication of Fumigation (sic - dictionary of Antz), and I can forsee a scenario, the day where we stand in never-ending queues with our nostrils wide open ready to be refueled at the so-called Oxygen Bunks....

The above paragraph might sound nonsensical to many (no harm in accepting the fact.. it is.. teehee). Switching gears, say for instance, Indians built REVA, an electric car, the first of its kind. How many have we seen it on the road. I am quite good in maths, can count till ten without any hiccups. I could figure out only two of them chugging lazily along. The hype and media attention created both pre-launch and at the time of launch was amazing, but even before REVA could make a mark, it was already dumped into the junkyard just like the rest. Hope we don't happen to see the same plight with MiniCAT

Actions speak louder than words. We need to stick on to it...