generator

According to a recent Bloomberg article, the Nissan Leaf all-electric vehicle will be equipped with a noise generator that will add a futuristic sound to the silent vehicle at low speeds.

Nissan Motor engineer Toshiyuki Tabata was charged with recreating the sound of a gasoline engine to increase safety for blind pedestrians and to address the potential for U.S. and Japanese mandates for adding artificial sounds to silent EVs.

"We fought for so long to get rid of that noisy engine sound," said Tabata, Nissan's noise and vibration expert. With electric cars, "we took a … Read more

Web 2.0 sites that enable people to create content are increasingly used to carry out a wide range of attacks, according to a new security study.

Websense's State of Internet Security" (PDF), released Tuesday, notes that attackers are focusing their attention on interactive Web 2.0 elements. Some 95 percent of user-generated comments on blogs, message boards, and chat rooms are either spam or contain malicious links, the security vendor warned.

"The very aspects of Web 2.0 sites that have made them so revolutionary--the dynamic nature of content on the sites, the ability for anyone … Read more

Please raise your hand if you've spent a lot of time in a basement environment while attempting to master one computer-related art or another.

I'm referring to any room with a noisy ventilation system, windows that don't open, and dim fluorescents overhead. You know the one. It was either so sweltering that you ended up wearing shorts in January, or kept so cold for the sake of the servers that you wore a scarf and fingerless gloves year-round.

Well, that universal rite of passage for computer lovers seems to be over for Carnegie Mellon University students thanks … Read more

Whether you are a professional academic or a family-history hobbyist, GenoPro 2007 can undoubtedly meet your genealogical needs. GenoPro lets you do everything you would expect from genealogy software, such as create family profiles, link individuals, and add such information as birth and death dates. But where GenoPro excels is in the collection of additional metadata.

The best example of this is the program's options to characterize the emotional relationship between two people. The software cuts to the chase, offering such unique descriptions as Violence, Cut-off/Estranged, and Manipulative. Moreover, you are not limited to creating families: the software … Read more

This timekeeping tool has limitless possibilities for both teachers and administrators. Educators can plan their schedules down to the most finite details with this exhaustive program.

aSc TimeTables has an attractive, colorful interface, resembling newer versions of Microsoft Word, but it's not so intuitive. Thankfully, the program has an excellent tutorial that we found necessary to watch in order to understand how to get started. There is also a Help tab that provides users with many resources for further information. The wizard feature made creating a timetable very easy. Users can create and customize all the necessary variables: school, … Read more

Citizen news site NowPublic has been sold to another company in the "hyperlocal" space, Examiner.com, the two companies announced Tuesday.

The two sites will operate independently, but Examiner will integrate NowPublic's technology into its site and will encourage NowPublic's contributors to also write for Examiner--right now, the buyer says it has grown 200 percent since the beginning of the year (it launched in April 2008) and has 15,000 active contributors, hoping to hit 30,000 by year's end.

NowPublic's executives, including CEO Leonard Brody, will join the management team of Clarity Digital … Read more

Passwords by Mask is a basic program that allows users to generate random passwords and usernames. Although the program is not particularly attractive, it works well enough as a password generator.

The program's interface is a mess of buttons and is sort of hard to look at. The appearance is somewhat dated and clunky, and it could definitely be better organized. Each button represents one of the potential 20 characters that the generated password can contain. Click on a button, and you can select whether you want each character to be completely random, or a number, upper or lower … Read more

Hewlett-Packard's new back-to-school campaign, dubbed Declare Yourself with HP, isn't your typical laptop sales promotion. It probably could be used instead as a case study of how members of Generation Y tend to gravitate toward products that inflate their egos.

The online campaign, which rolled out this week in partnership with Viacom's MTV Networks, enables users to "declare" their goals with one-line summaries. HP is "hoping that this promotion will help (students) set obtainable goals that will help further personal growth."

Obtainable goals, eh? Let's check out some of the goals my … Read more

MB AstroNumero Match Software allegedly analyzes birth dates to determine if two people are an astrological match. The program's results are so sparse and vague that it's a complete waste of time.

Like other software from Mystic Board, the first screen is a cluttered mess of advertisements for Mystic Board. Past that, users enter the names and birth dates of the two lovers in question. The program then provides LifePath Compatibility, Destiny Compatibility, and a Comprehensive Reading. The first two each contain a couple of vague sentences that could apply to any couple. Our Destiny Compatibility, for example, … Read more