sierra

Toyota to sponsor Earth Day activities

Toyota and 24 participating Audubon sites nationwide will host TogetherGreen Volunteer Days in celebration of Earth Day to provide thousands with opportunities to take hands-on, local conservation action.

Activities will take place on April 18, April 25, and May 2. Activities will include habitat and trail restoration, river and lake cleanups, invasive species removal, nest-box building, wildlife, and plant surveys.

To date, 5,850 TogetherGreen volunteers have donated more than 28,000 volunteer hours at 40 Audubon locations. More than 40 partner organizations, including the Sierra Club, AmeriCorps, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Toyota employees and their … Read more

Sandblaster clears for landing

There are many challenges in waging war for oil, not the least of which is fighting in a big sandbox--it's hard on soldiers and it's murder on helicopters.

Enter the Sandblaster. This is a helicopter avionics system commissioned by DARPA that integrates advanced flight controls, a "see-through" sensor, synthetic vision and data fusion to allow the pilots to fly safely in a zero-visibility, howling haboob, according to Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.

Using the Sikorsky system, the pilot has only to press a button to bring the chopper from en-route flight to a low, non-drift hover over a … Read more

Can clean tech stem China's environmental woes?

A steady stream of bad news over the past year has brought China's environmental woes into clearer focus.

To point out the country's run-away energy demand, speakers at clean-tech conferences often say that China is building one coal-fired power plant a week.

Air and water quality are health issues. And China's skyrocketing energy consumption raises greenhouse gas levels, a matter of concern for everyone.

Even in the supposedly clean industry of solar power, there has been trouble. A recent Washington Post investigation unearthed toxic chemical dumping at a Chinese solar cell manufacturing plant.

The picture has been … Read more

Episode 606: The Kindle is coming!

Episode 593: Resist Melissa's siren song

The Gizmo Report: Option's GT Max 3.6 Express for AT&T

You might wonder why I'm posting again so soon after that twelve-post blogging marathon at Hot Chips. Well, I got a new gizmo last night and I just had to write about it.

Two years ago yesterday, I bought a Sierra Wireless AirCard 860 (a PCMCIA cellular modem card) from Cingular for my Apple PowerBook G4. I also… Read more

Sierra's studio-grade iPod speakers

At Crave we're very fond of iPod-ready speakers and we're not averse to those that claim to be of a superior quality. How do you think we felt this morning to see a set that look like our studio monitor speakers and claim to be the most dynamic-sounding smart speaker system on the market? We felt good inside.

Sierra Sound has a history of producing high-end studio audio equipment, so theoretically it should know what it's doing designing the iN Studio 5.0 iPod speaker system. (We don't think the same can be said of … Read more