Re*Move

links for 2008-05-24

• Giant 'telescope' links London, New York - CNN.com
  A great art exhibit this - a live 'telescope' between London and New York. Thanks to Robb for the tipoff. Posted by Mark
  (tags: events london newyork)
• BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US car dealer in free gun offer
  Amusing car sales incentive. A free gun with every car. Posted by Mark

links for 2008-05-23

• AppleInsider | Latest iPhone 2.0 beta adds geo-tagging to Camera photos
  Potentially important evolution for CoolWalls. Posted by Mark.
  (tags: gps coolwalls)

links for 2008-05-19

• Guess how many people drive a Prius
  Greenbang reports that of more than one million Priuses now sold, about 100,000 have gone to Europe since 2000. Posted by Mark
  (tags: prius toyota hybrid)

Saying bye to the Trijets

Amsterdam Schipol offers splendid views.

It also happens to be, as the base of KLM, and a key cargo airport, one of last places in the world where you are surrounded by lots of three-engined jets close up.

They're disappearing quickly and KLM's large passenger fleet is unlikely to last too long before they switch to big twins. This is the final evolution of the DC-10, designed during 1967. I always stand and marvel at how the Douglas engineers got that engine up onto the tail. They patented the tail design, apparently.

John Newhouse's 1982 book, The Sporty Game, tells the astonishing story of how two over-confident US aircraft manufacturers - Douglas and Lockheed - effectively killed eachother's commercial airliner businesses by designing two competing airliners when there was only ever a market for one. The DC-10's rival, the Lockheed TriStar, technically the better plane, lost Lockheed $2.5 billion by the time production ended in the early 1980s. And that was in 1982 money. McDonnell Douglas, the demon of the pair because it launched the spoiler product, couldn't keep pace with Airbus's growth, had no development cash and sold out to Boeing in 1997. The upgraded MD-11 was dropped. By the 1990s there was enough confidence in the reliability of high bypass engines, still an unknown quantity when the DC-10 was designed, to fly long distances over water (and over the Rocky Mountains) on a 'big twin'.

If you pass through Schipol, enjoy the sight this year. Everything else looks the same now.

Posted by Mark Charmer. Mark is founder of The Movement Design Bureau.

Originally uploaded by Charmermrk

Mini COOL WALL 13th May 2008

This is from my morning run around some leafy bits of West London - took my phone with me to capture some of the sights along the way. Sorry for the poor picture quality.

As ever, click on the picture to go to the original flickr set.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 13th May 2008

The first contributed COOL WALL

He did this ages ago, so apologies for not getting this up onto the site before now, but we've received our first contributed COOL WALL - from Thomas Bjelkeman Pettersson.

This is exactly the sort of thing we're looking for, giving a fantastic sense of insight into what's happening on the streets of Stockholm. So if anybody else (you know who you all are!) wants to join in, remember all you need to do is bung some shots up onto a Flickr account (if you haven't got one mail me, and you can have the password for mine) and we'll do the rest. You'll get financially rewarded should any of your photos end up being used commercially, and get the added benefit of getting your name up in lights...

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 11th May 2008

Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson is a co-founder of Akvo, the open source for water and sanitation. His flickr photostream can be found here.

Joe's COOL WALL early May 2008

As the sun appears to have finally come out in London, expect an increase in cool wall postings from both of us over the next few weeks, as the weather becomes more conducive to photography, and the more beautiful things (and people) that are worth photographing, come out to play in London. Read more about Cool walls here.

Click on the photo to go to the original flickr cool wall photoset.

Related articles:
Welcome to coolwalls

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 11th May 2008

Fisker's statement of intent

Several sites are currently carrying pictures of what (in the greater scheme of things) are relatively undisguised mule shots of the Fisker Karma hybrid sports saloon undergoing testing in Southern California.

Continuing with the new-wave EV scene's predilection for turning normal car-convention on its head, the car seems to be testing almost completely unaltered - in terms of exterior design, to the concept car shown at the Detroit auto show and Art Center's Systems, Cities and Sustainable Mobility conference (above).

But that's not the big news. What's interesting about this is that it appears to be a real statement of intent from Fisker, to show that the Karma isn't 'vapourware', and more pertinently, that Fisker doesn't intend to let a little local difficulty with Tesla Motors get in the way of it having a fully functioning plug-in hybrid saloon on the road by late 2009.

Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen. Should Tesla win its law suit, it could have the ability to prevent Fisker marketing the car for some time. More interestingly, what none of the reports I've read have made any mention of, is whether this thing was making any noise at the time the photos were shot... in other words, are there really a load of batteries and electric motors under that zebra body skin? Because it could of course simply be a bodywork mule testing some other component of the car, which has a completely different powertrain under it to the one that will actually make it's way into the real car...

Who knows? But its proof that things are pretty hot right now in the Californian EV scene. So we'll watch and see how this one develops with some interest.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 10th May 2008

Images: Blue Fisker Karma: Joseph Simpson, Zebra Karma Prototype: Fisker Automotive via Wired Autopia