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Toyota returns to 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours with LMP1 hybrid race car

Toyota announced Friday that it will compete in the 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours with a new race car powered by a petrol hybrid powertrain.

According to the automaker, the LMP1 will be a collaborative effort: Toyota Motorsport in Germany will design the chassis, and the car will be equipped with a hybrid gas powertrain engineered by Toyota in Japan.

A new race team will be organized out of Toyota Motorsport's Cologne headquarters, the company said in a press release. And in addition to competing in the 80th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours (June 16 and 17, … Read more

Gore tweaks climate call with '24 Hours of Reality'

Climate change activist, former vice president, and near-president Al Gore will present a 24-hour live Webcast--"24 Hours of Reality"--on September 14-15 that's meant to counteract what a statement about the event calls misinformation on global warming.

The Webcast consists of 24 back-to-back screenings of a new multimedia presentation by Gore, introduced live by presenters in 24 different parts of the world, and in 13 different languages. It heralds a new focus for Gore's nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection, which is changing its name to The Climate Reality Project. Reads a statement on the Reality Project's Web site:

This campaign comes at a critical time. As the impacts of climate change are growing more prevalent, so is the resistance to finding the truth and implementing solutions. Just like the tobacco companies that spent decades in denial that smoking causes cancer, oil and coal companies are determined to sow denial and confusion about the science of climate change, ignore its impacts, and create apathy among our leaders. This event is the first step in a larger, multi-faceted campaign to tell the truth about the climate crisis and reject the misinformation we hear every day."

… Read more

Premium presentations

We've encountered programs like ActivePresenter before, and to be quite honest, we weren't really looking forward to reviewing this one. Most of the software of this type that we've tried has been unintuitive and a huge hassle to use. So imagine our surprise when we opened ActivePresenter and successfully created a presentation almost without knowing it. If you're looking for a simple way to create tutorials, presentations, and anything else using video screen captures, look no further than ActivePresenter.

The program's interface is incredibly intuitive, with commonsense menus and buttons across the top. To get … Read more

Nikon Coolpix L24 review: For casual use only

The Nikon Coolpix L24 is nearly identical to the model it replaces, the Coolpix L22. The only difference is a resolution bump from 12 megapixels to 14 megapixels. The rest of the camera remains the same: easy to use with a 3-inch LCD and AA batteries for power. Pop in its batteries and the camera has a nice weight to it making it feel like a sturdy, well-built camera. And, like most in its class, the L24 is very much a fully automatic point-and-shoot with little to adjust except for maybe picking an appropriate scene mode.

However, like the L22, … Read more

Who needs high-resolution music?

Most of the music people enjoy doesn't sound very good. That's not to say it isn't good music, just that it doesn't sound great. I'm not picking on digital or contemporary music; most of my favorite Motown and Stax soul music from the 1960s and 1970s sounds like crap. Most rock music from any decade sounds cruddy; that's just the way it is.

A lot of today's best bands, including alternative darlings Arcade Fire, make awful-sounding recordings. I'm specifically referring to their Grammy Award-winning "The Suburbs" album from 2010; it'… Read more

MIT flow battery breaks mold for cheap storage

Instead of filling up with gasoline, electric cars with a new design may one day refuel their batteries with "Cambridge crude."

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today published details on a battery design that reinvents the operation of traditional lithium ion batteries by using flowable, rather than solid, materials. In a paper published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, they said the approach has the potential to boost battery storage capacity many times today's levels while being inexpensive to manufacture for both electric vehicles and grid storage.

The technology developed in the lab has been licensed to 24M, … Read more

Efficient organizer for manly types

Efficient Software's personal organizer comes in several versions, including freeware editions that offer most of the functionality but fewer features than the full versions. There are also versions optimized for men and women, Efficient Lady's Organizer Free and Efficient Man's Organizer Free. It's the same program, except that the ladies' version is decorated with pink hearts while the men's version is skinned in bolder, starker tones. Sure, it'd be easy to joke about gendered software, but at least there's a choice that doesn't involve a default theme that looks more like a … Read more

Digital vs. analog audio: Which sounds better?

The analog vs. digital debate has been raging for nearly three decades, and there's still no clear winner, because it's really just a matter of personal preference. I'm fine with that, but there's a lot of sniping in the analog/digital wars, and each side never misses an opportunity to put down the other side as misguided, deaf, just plain stupid, or worse. Each side claims its chosen format is superior and the opposite's is garbage.

I'm an analog guy, but I'd admit that analog's distortions, speed variations, and noise/hiss make … Read more

Smartphone weather widget for PCs

What you see on your smartphone's screen increasingly resembles what you see on your desktop, and vice versa. HTC Home Portable for Windows is a simple widget that recreates the animated clock and weather display from HTC smartphones on the Windows desktop. It works in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and 7. It's free and also portable.

Clicking the extracted program file opened HTC Home Portable's attractive display, which resembles an early digital clock's flipping tabs but also displays location, day and date, weather conditions, and temperature as well as a five-day forecast … Read more