James Bond would love this Casio Men’s G-Shock MT-G Atomic Tough Solar Watch, which is solar powered, has world time settings for 29 time zones and includes alarms, plus a stopwatch. Of course, it also looks super-spy cool!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Green Car Show Case
When I turned on my laptop this morning, a piece of news caught my eyes “Tesla’s share price drops below initial sales price”. Never a big car fan myself, it has been a while since the last time the name Tesla came to my attention. It reminds me of 2 years ago when I first listened to Elon Musk’s inspirational speech at Silicon Valley TiE conference. At that time, like hundreds of audience, I was filled with respects for this brave entrepreneur and dreamer. Two years later, I was surprised to know that Musk is broke after pouring all his savings and loans into his 3 “crazy companies” – SpaceX, Solarcity, and Tesla, and again realized the sacrifices a great dreamer has to make.
Why did Tesla’ share price drop? First, it seems the market isn’t so optimistic about the demand for electric vehicles in the coming years. Second, Tesla is priced too high compared to other brands. But to be fair, its gorgeous design, longer mileage range and bigger space make a huge difference. But exactly what are the differences? Out of curiosity, I did some comparison of the three most talked EV in the market, highlighting the key measurements that a layman like me would be interested. For full information, I have added links to their official websites below.
Here we go.
No.1 Tesla Model – S: It looks absolutely gorgeous!
Price: $49,900
Range pack: 160 miles. (230-mile range pack and a 300-mile range pack will also be available but more expensive)
Charging time: 4 hours for full charge and 45 minutes for a quick charge
Space: 5 adults and 2 kids
Technologies: BATTERY PACK THERMAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, METHOD OF BALANCING BATTERIES, FLUX CONTROLLED MOTOR MANAGEMENT, ETC. Please refer to www.patsnap.com for details.
Tesla is the earliest and most passionate advocate of electric cars. Model-S is the first mass-produced highway-capable electric car. Great vision, beautiful dream and a serial-entrepreneur CEO Elon Musk who started Paypal. But the company hasn’t been on luck recently. Looking at the fall to 7% below its initial offer price, Josef Schuster, founder of IPOX Capital Management LLC commented "The company is a great concept with relatively weak fundamentals."
Tesla Model -S
http://www.ecogeek.org/images/image/teslamodels2.jpg
Check out more specs on official site: http://www.teslamotors.com/models/specs
NO.2 Mitsubishi – iMiEV
Price: around $40,000
Range pack: 100 miles.
Charging time: 6 hours for full charge and 30 minutes for a quick charge to 80% of capacity
Space: 5 adults
The first mainstream manufacturer to offer an electric car. It’s said that the car maker’s research effort started more than 15 years ago. It is not on the market yet but the demand seems to be very promising. Mitsubishi plans to make 5,000 cars in year 2010, 150% increase from the initial estimate of 2000.
more details at: http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/programs/environment-etv-techimiev-eng-126.htm
No.3 Nissan Leaf
Price: $25280
Range pack: 100 miles
Charge time: 8 hours for a full charge
Space: 5 adults
Nissan has been something of a laggard in publicly promoting an alternative fuel strategy. But this slim and smooth looking Nissan Leaf certainly changed its conventional image towards the better. Smart looking, truly spacious and competitively priced. However, it is said that this car will only be available to US consumers towards the end of 2010 and mass production will not start till 2012.
Check out more specs on official site: http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index?intcmp=Electric_Car.Promo.Homepage.Home.P2#/leaf-electric-car/index
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Google Patents V.S. PatSnap V.S. Freepatentsonline
Patent Number Format Comparison on Free Patent Search Tools
Currently, I’m working on a new project that requires large numbers of patent search, for which I usually refer to such patent search tools as PatSnap-patent search, google patents and freepatentsonline. Generally, things go on smoothly; sometimes, however, I find it rather hard due to the different format requirements of different search tools. Now, I’d like to share with you some tips on patent number format.
1. Slashes
All slashes are omitted on PatSnap. But on google patents and freepatentsonline, patent numbers are usually with slashes.
e.g. WO/2008/013586
On freepatentsonline, slashes can either be omitted or left there.
On google patents, you cannot find this patent because only US patents are available.
On www.patsnap.com, all slashes shall be omitted so the correct format should be: WO2008013586.
2. Country code
The country code can either be kept or omitted at the beginning of the patent number on PatSnap, and it is similar on freepatentsonline. While on google patents, US patent numbers are solely made up of figures, excluding country code.
e.g. US6482233
on www.patsnap.com, you can use either US6482233 or 6482233.
It’s the same for freepatentsonline.
On google patents, you have to use 6482233 without “US”.
It is the same for European and World patents.
The above is my personal experience in using the above patent search tools. Hope it is helpful. =)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)