lotus

Lotus leads across the ice

Lotus is known for making small, fast cars with Toyota engines, but the company's engineering department gets into all sorts of projects, with the Lotus Concept Ice Vehicle (CIV) being one of the more novel.

Lotus designed this propeller-driven vehicle to lead the Moon Regan Transantarctic Expedition, a scientific expedition which will chart the effects of global climate change while traveling from the west coast of Antarctica, over the South Pole, then north to McMurdo Station.

The CIV is 14.8-feet long by 14.8-feet wide and can run on bio-fuel. The vehicle was designed with a minimum of … Read more

Lotus Omnivore runs on a variety of fuels

Lotus Engineering, the automotive consultancy division of Lotus, is back in the news again, this time with a new engine concept called the Omnivore. Lotus announced that it would be collaborating with Queen's University Belfast and Jaguar Cars to develop the engine, which is said to maximize fuel efficiency when running on renewable fuels. Essentially, the Omnivore is an engine that can run on almost anything, from gasoline to alcohol.

This engine design is expected to significantly increase fuel efficiency for sustainable bio alcohol fuels (such as ethanol or methanol) by using a combination of direct injection and variable … Read more

Lotus 'Safe & Sound' system makes quiet vehicles audible

Due to the almost silent operation of hybrid and electric vehicles running on electric power at slow speeds, blind and partially sighted pedestrians may be at risk while crossing roads or walking through parking lots since they cannot hear the vehicles as they approach.

Lotus Engineering, a name most commonly associated with lightweight sports cars, has announced that it has developed a system to synthesize external sound on electric and hybrid vehicles to make them more audible to pedestrians and cyclists. A simulation of a real engine sound is used on Lotus' Safe & Sound Hybrid technology demonstrator vehicle, making … Read more

Video: Lotus Evora

Lotus launches its family car, with 2+2 seating, a V-6 engine, and an Alpine touch-screen navigation stereo unit. Lotus purists will be horrified.

Video: Lotus Eco Elise

Who says sports cars can't hug trees? Lotus' eco car uses hemp body panels and organic interior materials. Its weight has been reduced so it can get better fuel economy, as well. Too bad it's just a concept.

Four vulnerabilities affect two IM apps

On Thursday, Zero Day Initiative announced four flaws affecting two instant-messaging applications, three affecting Cerulean Studios Trillian Pro, and one affecting IBM Lotus Sametime. Zero Day Initiative is a part of TippingPoint and is controversial in that it pays researchers for finding flaws.

The first flaw in Trillian affects the header parsing code for the msn protocol and could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. The advisory states "when processing the X-MMS-IM-FORMAT header, certain attributes are copied into a buffer located on the stack without any length verification which can eventually lead to code execution with the privileges … Read more

IBM putting Lotus Connections on BlackBerry

IBM and Research in Motion are expanding the reach of IBM's Lotus software onto BlackBerry handsets.

BlackBerry users in companies committed to IBM's Lotus suite of software can now access the Lotus Connections software from their handhelds, the companies plan to announce Wednesday at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando, Fla. Lotus-equipped companies have long been able to deliver e-mail, contacts, and calendar appointments to BlackBerry users, but companies can now allow their workers to get Web 2.0-ified in a safe, staid manner formally approved by the IT department.

Lotus Connections lets you pick the brains of … Read more

Red Hat pitching proprietary lock-in as "open"

Ah, how the mighty have fallen. In what must have been gross oversight, Red Hat is pitching proprietary software on its website under the banner of "No vendor lock-in." The way Red Hat and IBM make it appear, simply running one's software on an open platform like Linux magically removes the proprietary lock-in of the application.

I hate to say this, Red Hat, but it just doesn't work that way. Last time I checked, IBM's Lotus Domino is proprietary software and running it on Linux hasn't changed that fact.

If it did, we'd be calling Microsoft Office open source (Hey, it runs on Linux via WINE) and a whole host of other things "open" and "lock-in free."

Red Hat's positioning of IBM's software on its site is oddly out of character with the open-source leader:… Read more

IBM launches mashups for business portfolio

IBM is mashing up its mashups to create a product line aimed at business people who want to make Web applications fast.

The company on Tuesday announced IBM Mashup Center, which combines a front-end tool for end-users and a server for gathering information. A beta starts on April 15.

Mashup Center is made up of Lotus Mashups, which lets people combine information from different Web sites and present them on a single screen, and also includes IBM InfoSphere MashupHub, a lightweight tool aimed at IT professionals for preparing data feeds from different sources.

IBM will continue to sell the two … Read more