Bicycle Archive

  • Nokia’s €15 bike charger will abide

    Nokia’s €15 bike charger will abide

    Posted on June 3, 2010 | No Comments
    We've been seeing dynamo-powered gadget bicycle chargers for, well, ever. But it's good to see a company with the global reach of Nokia getting into the action with a €15ish kit all its own. Nokia says that a 10 minute bike ride at 6mph (10kph) will produce enough power for 28 minutes of talk time or 37 hours of standby. The kit, primarily intended for developing markets, ships globally before the end of the year with a handlebar mount, dynamo, and 2-mm charger jack. But there's nothing stopping you from picking up a micro USB adapter (at your own cost) and using the charger with Nokia's smarter (and more power hungry) handsets like the N97, N900 and forthcoming N8**. Coupled with Nokia's free turn-by-turn guided Ovi Maps, the kit could be quit handy when navigating the countryside on a long weekend bike ride, or for navigating within cities, like, oh we don't know, Amsterdam.

    ** Nokia N8 can be charged over 2mm or micro USB connectors, fancy.

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    Nokia's €15 bike charger will abide originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Google Maps for Android adds bike routes, sharing, dedicated navigation icon

    Google Maps for Android adds bike routes, sharing, dedicated navigation icon

    Posted on May 11, 2010 | No Comments
    If you're running an Android phone and you're lucky enough to be using 1.6 or above (our deepest apologies, CLIQ owners), we might recommend you pop open the Market and score the latest version of Google Maps that just launched today. What's new? It adds support for bicycle routing (something they've had on the desktop for a while now) and sharing of destinations via the usual array of mediums like email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on, but the most significant change might also be the smallest: the addition of a dedicated icon for Google Maps Navigation. The product is still in beta, but this seems like an early sign that it's starting to come of age -- and on a more practical level, this obviously makes it quite a bit easier to launch right into a route when you saddle up in the car. Anywho, Motorola, about that CLIQ update?

    Google Maps for Android adds bike routes, sharing, dedicated navigation icon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 May 2010 18:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Hotel lets patrons pedal for their supper

    Hotel lets patrons pedal for their supper

    Posted on April 21, 2010 | No Comments
    Here's a surprisingly green idea from a hotel in Copenhagen. The ultra-modern Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers has set up two stationary bicycles and attached them to generators, with an iPhone connected to the handlebars. Time to work for that dinner!

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  • Rat Rod bikes – the bicycle as art?

    Rat Rod bikes – the bicycle as art?

    Posted on March 23, 2010 | No Comments
    Living in Nevada, I get to see all kinds of art projects on the road as Burning Man approaches. I will admit however, that none of them look quite as cool as these, a combination of the "rat-rod" and an art bicycle.

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  • Nine mechanical engineers build a spokeless bicycle

    Nine mechanical engineers build a spokeless bicycle

    Posted on February 16, 2010 | No Comments
    Nine mechanical engineering majors had a dilemma: what do you do for your mechanical design class when you only have a semester? Well, this guys decided to build a spokeless bicycle. Admittedly, only the back wheel is spokeless, but there are reasons for that.

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  • Yamaha Japan announces 5 new electric bikes

    Yamaha Japan announces 5 new electric bikes

    Posted on January 11, 2010 | No Comments
    While electric bikes are gaining more and more ground in Japan, the situation in the rest of the world (at least for highly advanced models) is quite different. These vehicles seem to have a hard time in America in particular, although there's anecdotal evidence the concept does have the potential to catch on in the US as well - basically speaking. But most of the makers of these bikes, powerhouses such as Panasonic or Sanyo, never tested waters outside Japan. Yamaha, another such company, now announced [JP] a total of five electric bikes over the weekend, all of which are likely to never find their way outside Japan. The new models are part of Yamaha's series of PAS electric bikes.

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  • Pedal Brain iPhone kit smartens up your bicycle

    Pedal Brain iPhone kit smartens up your bicycle

    Posted on December 28, 2009 | No Comments
    Cyclists already have a range of dedicated devices to choose from that will help them with their training, and it looks like they'll soon have an iPhone app / accessory kit to call their own as well. While the folks behind it are apparently still working on the finishing touches, they've nonetheless decided to get official with their so-called Pedal Brain kit, which more or less promises to be a Nike+ alternative for cyclists. That means it comes with an accessory (a case) that relies on the ANT+ wireless protocol to relay all the necessary information form your bike, which in turn is processed and analyzed by the Pedal Brain app (all of which will also work with an iPod touch). Pedal Brain also goes one step further with a coaching component, which will actually let you make your own training plans and sell them through the app (you'll also be able to determine the price, but Pedal Brain will apparently take a $4 a month cut). No word on an exact price or launch date for the kit itself just yet, but it will apparently sell for somewhere between $130 and $200 (or more if you want the spiffy carbon fiber case).

    Pedal Brain iPhone kit smartens up your bicycle originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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