Brand new Electric Vehicle Forum Launched EVdomination.com

I have launched a brand new online community forum to discuss EVs (Electric Vehicles). This forum was created as the global EV market is now recognizing this new market segment. Please check out http://www.evdomination.com

The EVdomination community forum has been created to discuss EVs, share ideas, get help and support from the community, buying advice and much more.

There are new products that are being developed every single day. These new products are mostly forking or twists on existing products. They have the potential to become their own market segment in the long run.

If we look at technology in general, a good example of this was the smartphone. It became an overnight phenomenon around 2007 and onwards. Everyone was buying into this new trend and a whole new market segment was born. Supporting market segments took off subsequently, this included:

  • Smart phone accessories
  • Internet data caps and competition amongst mobile networks
  • Gaming phones
  • Mobile apps for everything under the sun
  • Thousands of other things I can’t think of right now

There are many other similar IT market trends that took off as recently as 2015

Examples from last few years:

  • Home automation and IOT
  • Drones
  • 3d Printing
  • NAS
  • Mesh Wifi
  • Smartwatches
  • Wireless headphones
  • NFC
  • Blockchain
  • AI

One such area that is steadily growing but has not hit its peak is Electric vehicles (EVs). They are forks of the good old combustion engine vehicle. There is still a huge amount of skepticism with EVs however, it is quickly diminishing as EVs become more mainstream, battery technology improves and more miles are claimed per charge. Range anxiety is the biggest deterrent for EVs adoption but in the very near future (a matter of months), range anxiety will be a forgotten term.

With the advent of Tesla taking on this market segment earlier on, this segment has ballooned and now everyone wants to get into the game.

The biggest players in the auto world are now seriously looking at launching EVs as fast as possible.

  • WV
  • Audi
  • BMW
  • Mercedes
  • Kia
  • Hyundai
  • Nissan
  • Porche
  • etc

Some new players are starting with EVs from scratch. They don’t have any combustion engine baggage:

  • Rivian
  • Lucid
  • Byton
  • Etc

You will notice a few brands missing, this is because some companies are holding their cards close to their chest. Everyone knows the move to electric is inevitable, however, some companies like Toyota, Lexus, Mazda, Ford, GM are not announcing anything as of yet, there are financial reasons for this that are explained very well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_df0QWmYog&t=450s

If you are interested in EVs and want to join the conversation, please visit EVdomination today and sign up. We are waiting to welcome you.

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My SUPERSONIC Android Smartphone – The Samsung Galaxy S II

Don’t you think its amazing that you can now have a multifunction computer with a dedicated graphics processing unit, a high definition screen, high fidelity sound, speech recognition, touch sensitivity, satellite navigation, compass, full Internet connectivity, fm radio, voip phone, point and shoot camera and camcorder with 1080p, ftp server, print server, ebook reader, audio / video streamer, remote control and all the apps you will ever need in the palm of your hand? Crazy no? We are living in exciting times.

I have been a faithful android fanatic ever since it launched. I used to have windows smartphones before this, but I am sure you can understand why I would want to move away from that OS.

I just bought the Samsung Galaxy S 2, after flogging my Nexus S on fleabay.. what a device I tell you.. simply A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Its got a 1.2 Ghz dual core processor and all of the android communities prowess behind it. Its going strong and is currently the most advanced Android smartphone out there. Check out the monster specs sheet n GSMArena.com and a hands on review on Engadget

Samsung Galaxy S2
The kickass Samsung Galaxy S2

I wanted to try out homebrewed android ROMs after rooting my device over the weekend, as its the all the rave right now. I tried out a few including one called VillianRom. Although there are a few other ROMs out there, this seems to be the most mature. So anyways, I wanted to get the latest android release on my phone, which currently is Gingerbread 2.3.4 so after installing VillianRom I can report that the phone has become truly supersonic. The quadrant benchmarking scores are off the ROOF, and Linpack reports 86 megaflops on multithread.

There is a lot I can say about this phone, actually I can’t stop talking about it, so I’ll stop here. I will however list some of the apps I most frequently use.

Coolest Apps On The Android Market as of July 2011

  1. My Backup Pro
  2. Audiogalaxy
  3. Astro file manager
  4. Shazam encore
  5. Rom Manager
  6. Set CPU
  7. Root explorer
  8. HulloMail
  9. Whatsapp
  10. Remote VNC Pro
  11. Barcode scanner
  12. Zabihah
  13. Adfree
  14. Swiftkey X
  15. Shootme
  16. Skype
  17. Pulse
  18. Cube Extended
  19. Llama
  20. Google+
  21. Go Weather HD
  22. Tubemate (unavailable on the market right now)
  23. BBC news
  24. Total recall

Some screenshots for to make this post a little colourful.

 

Home Screen Galaxy S2 Stock ROM
Home Screen Galaxy S2 Stock ROM

 

Quadrant score for galaxy S2 on Stock Rom
Quadrant score for galaxy S2 on Stock Rom

 

Linpack Score for Galaxy S2 Stock ROM
Linpack Score for Galaxy S2 Stock ROM

I will do some more posts about Android in general and how to squeeze every bit of juice out of your android device including tips and tricks as well as some serious reviews on some Android devices I have tested and used including:

  • Motorola Atrix
  • Acer Iconia A500 tab
  • Samsung Nexus S
  • ZTE Blade
  • HTC Desire S
  • HTC Desire
Stay tooned!

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My very first HTPC build

So I needed something powerful. Something that could cope with my routine resource hungry applications. Something that would effortlessly kick my HP small form factor workstation’s posterior into oblivion. So I embark on this very interesting and rewarding mission to build myself the ultimate Home Theatre PC. I had a budget in mind and I aimed exactly for that.

After a full 2 months of loitering around hardware review sites like Tom’s Hardware and Overclockers.co.uk forumsas well as taking on advice from trusted overclockers at my local “raging technophiles” committee, I started my quest for overclocking bliss. With all things IT, (or all things generally) just remember, the Goog is your buddy.

This was not built for gaming mind you, it was built to quench my thirst for super warp speed with applications as well as the desire to learn a little more about overclocking and why people do it. From the application list below, I will attempt to justify the build.

24/7 applications:

  • 29 mailboxes on my outlook 2010
  • Mozy Online Backup (8TB of continuous incremental backup)
  • Windows Media Server for streaming media across home (PS3, Android phones, Mac mini, Laptops)
  • Audio Galaxy (Android Music Streaming application)
  • VNC Enterprise Server
  • Windows Server 2003 virtual machine for FTP and UAT web server
  • uTorrent (always downloading something)
  • Microsoft Security Essentials
  • Time lapsed Ajax based web service calls for my 123vouchercodes.co.uk project
  • A very very strict firewall, I forget the name

On demand applications:

  • Sony Vegas Pro for editing AVCHD raw video from my Panasonic TM900
  • Adobe Photo shop CS5
  • Sitemap Writer Pro (takes 8 days to generate a sitemap)
  • Unusually large text and excel files with millions of records
  • The odd 1080p movie with K-lite codec pack

Ok, so without further ado, here is the list of components sourced for this build.

1. SilverStone Lascala LC17B HTPC full ATX case
Bland, but black and wonderfully vented. Does the job well.

Silverstone LC17B HTPC Case

Silverstone LC17B HTPC Case

2. Intel Core i7 2600k Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
Fully unlocked and ready to be unleashed for overclocking supremacy.

Intel Core i7 Sandy Bridge

Intel Core i7 2600k

3. Asus P8P67 EVO Revision 3
The mobo with a mojo and automatic self tune and overclocking ON DEMAND (no really)

Asus P8P67 EVO Rev3

4. Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz
Goodbye virtual RAM, hello overclockable DDR3 awesomeness

Corsair Vengeance DDR3

5. OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 6GBps SATA 3 Solid State Drive
Will only be used for Windows 7 OS and all the program files. Currently fully booting windows in under 8 seconds… whhaacck (judo chop impression)

OCZ Vertex 3

6. 1GB Sapphire HD 5750 Vapor X Radeon Graphics Card
Crisis 2? Bring it. 1080p? yawnnn

Sapphire HD 5750 Vapor X Graphics Card

7. 5x Seagate Baracuda 2TB 5900 RPM 8ms seek Hard drives
All configured with RAID 0 for a single 10TB hard drive.. oh yeah. Any recommendations for what I should name this drive?

Seagate Baracuda 2TB

8. Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro Series 7.1 Sound Card
Avoid the built in mobo sound card like the plague. My MP3s sound like FLAC now, and the 7.1 through my Yamaha RXV 1700 amp is MAD. THX certified, DTS, Dolby Digital all out of the box.

 Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro Series

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Noctua NH-U9B CPU Cooler Noctua NF-R8 silent fans
This cooler is MASSIVE. its as big as my size 13.5 shoe. Near soundless operation though.

Noctua NH-U9B

Noctua NF-R8

10. Cooler Master Silent Pro M 600w PSU
PSU? yeah, PSU too.. I will PSU your ass all the way to China with this mofo.

Cooler master silent pro

11. Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BD-ROM & DVDRW Combo Player
Why not huh? I have a PS3 too.. but why not… come on

Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BD-ROM & DVDRW Combo Player

So thats all the hardware list apart from the odd cable, fan splitters or sticky tape etc. I was pleased when I started up the beast, WHAM BAM THANK YOU MAAM.. boot up perfect. All hardware detected in one go, BIOS taking a bow. I would have loved a much nicer HTPC case I guess.. but all in good time right? Have a look at this beauty by OriginAE…

Origin AE

AND… here are some pictures of the finished build. Click on the images to see FULL SIZE!

 Build 1

Build 2

Build 3

Build 4

Build 5

Build 6

Build 7

Windows Experience Rating

windows experiance rating

SSD Life

CPU-Z

CPUZ

Although I have not had the chance to properly overclock the system to tested and stable 4.9GHz speeds, I am reading up on this threadto see how far I can push the boundaries. I have meanwhile used ASUS’s own auto tuning feature. It has overclocked the PROC to 4.2GHz stable. DDR3 next.

I am pleased with this sufficiently powerful piece of modern machinery, I may well find out that it is over powered for what I thought I needed with all that serious grunt under the hood. If that may be the case (should become apparent in a couple of months of use), I am happy to put the extra horse power to good use with the Folding@Home project. This will add to the 24/7 applications list above.

I have already gotten some useless feedback from a few people I told. Most of them came back with the same “why do you even need so much power?” retort to which my response is usually a projectile spit bomb.

My next project?

I came across quite an interesting concept recently while searching for ways to play FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) in my car.  Currently, there is no way of playing FLAC in your car with anyafter market in car entertainment systems. Do a search for it, you will see what I mean. But then, I came accross this very cool concept called the “Carputer“, yup, you guessed its a “car-computer”, imagine Windows 7 Ultimate in your car way hey! Perhaps my next project? Maybe…………. 0