Google is saving the environment, one renovated coal plant at a time

What better way to bid adieu to a coal plant than to build a renewable-energy-powered center right on top of it? In the ultimate victory for environmental activists, Google is planning to spend $600 million on a server farm that will span a whopping 350 acres of land near Chattanooga, Alabama, and will ultimately be 100 percent powered by green energy.

In a blog post released earlier this week, Google announced that they would be “building on the grounds of the Widows Creek coal power plant in Jackson County, which has been scheduled for shutdown.” Patrick Gammons, the senior manager for Google’s Data Center Energy and Location Strategy continued, “Data centers need a lot of infrastructure to run 24/7, and there’s a lot of potential in redeveloping large industrial sites like former coal power plants. Decades of investment shouldn’t go to waste just because a site has closed; we can repurpose existing electric and other infrastructure to make sure our data centers are reliably serving our users around the world.”

The sleek, classy and almost bezel-free Oppo R7 can be pre-ordered for $400 in the U.S.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo announced the R7 and the R7 Plus at an event in Beijing during May. The expectation was for the R7 to have a bezel-free display, a feature which had been the focal point of most leaks, but in the pictures the final product appears to have a relatively normal display, albeit with thin bezels and covered in 2.5D glass. Here’s everything you need to know about the new phones.
Updated on 06-25-2015 by Andy Boxall: Added in news the R7 is available to order in the U.S.. Pre-order for shipping in July
If you’ve been lusting after an Oppo R7 since its announcement, but never thought you’d be able to order one in the U.S., then we’ve got some good news. Oppo sells its smartphones internationally through its own OppoStyle online store, and the R7 is now available for pre-order, with delivery to North America.

Samsung wants to stick giant video screens on the back of semi trucks

Samsung wants to put huge video displays on the back of trucks.

No, this isn’t some bizarre entertainment-based initiative designed to make the lives of trailing drivers less stressful by screening a selection of TV shows to help pass the time, though thinking about it, that might not be such a bad idea.

Instead, Samsung’s idea focuses on improving road safety, particularly along two-lane roads where impatient drivers can make poor choices when overtaking slow trucks in front.

The technology involves fitting a wireless camera to the front of the truck that provides live-view imagery to a giant four-screen display – Samsung made, of course – fitted on the back.

The Cubot R8 Apple Watch clone claims to be the worlds thinnest smartwatch

Although the innovative spark seems to have dimmed a little, Apple continues dictating trends that the Chinese phone market find hard to ignore. With the launch of the Apple Watch we have seen plenty of wannabes, and now Cubot are here with a super slim option.

Cubot are a well known company that have some good quality handsets, and have now turned their hand at producing a wearable.  The Cubot R8 is dubbed the “slimmest smart watch in the world” with a metal body that only measures 8.8mm thick which is actually quite thinner than Apple’s watch. That said the thin body does come at the cost of some design features like curved glass, replaced instead with a bezel in the metal chassis.

comebuy-cubotr8-smartwatch-01Other design aspects includes 45 x 44mm body, packing a 1.54-inch IPS display with resolution of 240  x240. The R8 display also comes protected with a G+F lamination for scratch proofing. The Watch is described to be waterproof, but so far there are no mention of IP certifications in the device and therefore, there is no certainty about it yet.

IROBOT SCOOBA 450 REVIEW

You probably know iRobot as the purveyor of robotic vacuum cleaners, but they do more than just Roomba. In addition to the company’s iconic carpet-cleaning bot, the company also produces robotic servants of all kinds, including gutter cleaners, pool cleaners, and autonomous floor scrubbers. Not being fans of manual labor, we had to get our hands on one of the latter to see if it was actually better than scrubbing floors manually. Here’s what we found.

These headphones won’t just help you sleep better, they may help improve your memory

“I didn’t sleep for three days before the Kickstarter campaign launched,” Tim Antos, co-founder of sleep-tracking headphones startup Kokoon told me. The irony of looking overtired when you’re promoting such a product was not lost on him, but any cause for concern was unwarranted. The device smashed its $100,000 target within a few days, and is now well past $600,000.

The team didn’t know what to expect prior to the launch, and freely admit they weren’t as prepared as perhaps they should have been. “We just wanted to get it out there, and not waste our time if it turned out not to be something people wanted,” fellow founder Richard Hall said. Thus they decided to stretch the campaign time to 60 days. Now, still with another month to run, Kokoon is gearing up to expand the team, and further enhance the product.