Video: Ultrabook Temptations

Intel is looking to spread the word about the Ultrabook laptop designs which are being built by a variety of manufacturers and feature super-thin notebooks that are both powerful and have long lasting batteries. To that end, they've launched a "social experiment" to see what people will go through to earn one of the computers and they're calling this campaign Ultrabook Temptations.

One of the videos from the campaign can be found below. It was shot on Bondi Beach in Australia, where ten Ultrabooks were hidden in cases and visitors to the beach were encouraged to use a metal detector to find them. They also dropped in things like a kitchen sink or mannequin parts to throw those searching off the scent. The results were often kind of humorous. I especially liked the woman who was continually digging holes as she randomly looked for the prize.

What does this have to do with adventure? Not much exactly, but the videos are kind of charming and the Ultrabooks are fantastic for travel. I own one and love how thin and lightweight it is when I'm looking to pack as light as possible. Definitely worth a look if you're in the market for a new PC.

Video: We Are Living In The Future

I came across this video earlier today and thought that it showed an amazing blend of technologies. It is an 11-minute long tech demo of a Microsoft Surface-powered interface for exploring space. For those who aren't familiar with Surface, it is a touch based interface that is designed to be used on displays that are integrated directly into a table. In this case it results in something right out of Minority Report with some amazing results.

Anyone who is interested in technology and space will immediately want to place an order for this thing. Cost is rumored to be about $8000.

Helmet Cams Now Stream Live Video

I think it is safe to say that over the past few years, one of the biggest innovations in outdoor adventure has been the introduction of the helmet cam. Sure, we've had the ability to record our adventures in the past, but it was usually with bulky, heavy equipment that wasn't a lot of fun to use. But now days, rugged, inexpensive, lightweight video cameras have become the norm, and as a result, we now get amazing video, captured by professional and amateur filmmakers alike, with astounding regularity.

As I write this, the Consumer Electronics Show is in full swing in Las Vegas, where hundreds of companies are unveiling a slew of new gadgets to eager customers. Amongst those new technological wonders are some upgrades to the helmet cams that we've all come to know and love. These upgrades are once again set to change the outdoor world, as the theme this year seems to focus on streaming live video from the field onto the Internet, where fans can watch and follow along.

A few months back GoPro released their new HD Hero2, which brought much higher quality video to their product. But at CES, they shared the details on their new Wi-Fi BacPac which will not only allow you to control the camera from a distance, using an included remote or a smartphone app, but will give the Hero2 the ability to stream live video over the Internet. The remote even allows the user to control up to 50 cameras at a time, which could be very interesting for event organizers looking to build an online audience. The BacPac will be available in February, although price hasn't been announced yet.

Not to be left out in the cold, one of GoPro's main competitors, Contour, has also announced a streaming video option for their excellent Contour+ helmet cams as well. Contour has joined forces with Japanese company Cerevo to introduce the "Liveshell," which connects to the camera and sends the footage directly to the Internet via Ustream. The Liveshell will be available from the Contour website starting on January 21st, at a price tag of $299. The company says that this addition makes the Contour+ the most inexpensive live streaming option in the world.

Finally, GoBandit, another company that makes compact HD helmet cams, has introduced their new GoBandit Live camera. This lightweight acton cam not only features GPS tracking and recording of speed, location, and a host of other items, it also features built in WiFi. At the moment, that WiFi is designed to quickly and easily upload clips to the Internet once you're back in wireless range, but something tells me they're already working on plans to allow the camera to stream in the future as well.

Of course, in order to be able to take advantage of these live streaming options, you'll still need to have Internet access where ever you are. That's getting easier and easier to do as well, although it can still be a technical hurdle for many to over come. If you can make it work however, these companies are opening up a whole new way to interact with the world from remote places and share adventures as they happen.

Sahara Challenge 2012: Solo Across The Sahara

While we're on the topic of very long runs today, an epic new run just got underway last week. Finnish ultrarunner Jukka Vilijanen is attempting to run solo across the Sahara Desert, covering 2000km (1242 miles) in just 35 days. Jukka calls this run the Sahara Challenge 2012.

The run officially began last Friday, with Vilijanen knocking off 50km (31 miles) in his first day. Since then, he's been maintaining a steady pace in widely varying conditions, and allowing us to track his progress as he goes. Jukka is using the Sports Tracker mobile app to broadcast his position, which is a very cool approach. Not only does it keep us connected to his run, it is something we could use ourselves in our own workouts.

If you recognize Jukka's name, it could be because we followed his Trans-Kalahari run back in 2010, when he a couple of friends ran across the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. This time he's going it alone however, which will make for a completely different, and more challenging, experience. Throughout the next month, while on the trail, he is expected to consume between 5000 and 7000 calories per day, and will be running 40 marathons in that time frame. It's always nice to have someone to chat with and share the hardships with, but for a solo runner, these long expeditions can be very lonely indeed.

Good luck to Jukka. We'll be following along!

Video: Adventure Athletes Answer "Why?"

This week the annual Consumer Electronics Show will take place in Las Vegas, where thousands of new gadgets will be revealed to the public, who will be eager to get their hands on the new technology. At the show, Nikon will introduce their new D4 camera, which, with a reported price tag of $6000, is anything but "consumer" focused. To celebrate the launch of their new toy, and to show what it is capable, of filmmaker Corey Rich used the new camera to create the video below. It features a number of our favorite adventure athletes (Alex Honnold, Rebecca Rusch, Dane Jackson) doing what they do best and explaining why it is they do those things.

It is a beautifully shot 7 minute film, that captures the spirit of adventure in these athletes very well. It'll also have the photographers and videographers amongst us drooling over the D4, which looks like it is capable of some great things.




WHY - Nikon D4 Release Video from Corey Rich on Vimeo.

Gear Box: Tech4o Accelerator Pro Plus Watch

Every new year brings a host of new resolutions. For many, that includes getting into better shape and generally living a more healthier life. If you've made that one of your goals for 2012, then you're going to want to take a look at the new Accelerator Pro Plus watch from Tech4o, as it just might be the best training partner you've ever had.

As you would expect from any good training watch, the Accelerator Pro Plus offers countdown timers, a 50 lap chronograph, alarms, and more. It is waterproof down to 100 meters and it even tells time – in two timezones no less! But Tech4o managed to pack in some other great features that you don't find on a lot of other time pieces of this type, especially in this price range.

Using its built in accelerometer, the watch can accurately measure your pace and distance, which is fantastic for tracking performance over time. It also keeps track of total exercise and moving times, calories burned, personal best speeds and distances covered, and much more. And when paired with the included heart rate monitor, which fastens comfortably around your chest, it can measure your pulse throughout your workout and provides critical data regarding performance and recovery. The Accelerator Pro Plus even allows you to customize your personal profile to provide visual and audible alerts throughout your run, which can help you stay on pace and alert you when your heart rate moves into the red zone.

All of that data can be extremely helpful for runners looking to increase their speed and distances over time or simply increase their overall fitness. But the Accelerator Pro Plus as another trick up its sleeve in the form of PC-Link, which allows the watch and heart rate monitor to wirelessly upload the data to your computer. The PC-Link software, which is rather basic, yet still quite functional, stores your running logs and allows you to chart your progress over time. It also displays heart rate charts, tracking your minimum and maximum pulse and giving you an average heart rate for your individual runs. It is an excellent addition to the package, which can be a very useful tool for beginner and experienced runners alike. Sadly though, the software is only available for Windows PC's (Win 98/XP/ME/Vista/Win7), keeping Mac users from fully tapping the watch's abilities.

I was impressed with how easy this watch is to use. Similar time pieces can be a bit cryptic in their interfaces, but after just a couple of runs,  I found that I was using the Accelerator Pro without thinking twice. That's a major plus for runners who just want to hit the trail and not have to fiddle with their technology while focused on their run. I also found this watch very comfortable to wear, even when not working out. The face isn't overly large and it isn't heavy either. Considering I pretty much wear a watch of sometime at all times, I appreciate both of those features.

Now for the best part of all. Tech4o managed to bring this fully-functional training watch to the market at a price that is difficult to argue with. The MSRP on the Accelerator Pro Plus is just $129.99, including the heart rate monitor and wireless PC-Pod for connecting to your laptop. That's a great deal, and I've paid similar prices in the past for watches with the half the functionality.

If you're looking for a great new training tool, then look no further. The Accelerator Pro Plus will give you everything you need in one great, affordable package. Now's the perfect time to grab one as well and start using it to realize all those New Year's Resolutions you've made.

Five Great Laptops For Travelers

My recent trip to the Caribbean was filled with lots of fun activities, including hiking, snorkeling, scuba diving, and sailing. It wasn't all just about fun in the sun however, as the trip was hosted by Microsoft, who assembled a group of travel writers to give us the scoop on some fantastic tools and laptops that could be of benefit for travelers of all types.

Some of those tools included cloud storage service Skydrive, which is a great way to share video and photos from your trip, and Movie Maker and Windows Live Photo Gallery which help to edit them into masterpieces that your friends and family will actually want to look at.

But the real treat was getting to play with some hot new laptops that have a lot to offer travelers who want to stay connected while on the go. For the past few years, Apple's MacBook Air has been the undisputed king of travel computes, but now Windows users have some really good options as well. Here are five of them to consider when it comes time to upgrade your technology.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
This is a laptop designed for adventure travelers. The ThinkPad X1 is a ruggedized PC that can withstand plenty of punishment and even features a water resistant keyboard. You can, quite literally, pour a bucket of water over the machine, and it will continue to run just fine. Sure, ruggedized PC's have been around for while, the Panasonic ToughBook is a well known example, but the X1 weighs in at just 3.7 pounds and is less than an inch thick. It features USB 3.0, which is perfect charging gadgets on the go, a 160GB solid state drive, and a battery that lasts nearly 6 hours on a single charge. Lenovo has built a rugged computer that can go just about anywhere and survive the rigors of the road.

Take this one with you to Everest Base Camp. (MSRP: $1773)

Asus Zenbook UX21
For travelers who like to travel light, the new Zenbook from Asus is the perfect option. This laptop features an 11 inch screen and weighs only 2.4 pounds. It's also super-thin, just 3mm in the front and 9mm at its thickest point in the back. Battery life is a respectable 5 hours and the Intel Core i7 processor provides plenty of power for all your mobile needs. Slip this one into your carryon bag, and you'll barely know its there. The Zenbooks stylish good looks will likely turn heads as well.

Take this one with you on a month long trip through Europe (MSRP: $999)

Sony Vaio Z
The SonyVaio Z is the workhorse of this group, providing mobile workstation power in a thin and light body. The Vaio Z is just 2.5 pounds and .7 inches thick, which is remarkable for a machine that has the ability to drive three external monitors at once. This machine is truly designed for the business traveler, as it features a 7 hour battery life out of the box and gives you have the option to add a sheet battery that extends that life to an amazing 16 hours, without adding much in the way of bulk. That means, you can hop a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, use your laptop the entire way, and never have to worry about a recharge. Designed for to handle everything from e-mail and games to heavy duty video editing, this is a great option for when you absolutely need to get work done while you travel.

Take this one with you on a flight across the Pacific. The rest of the cabin will be jealous when their machines run out of juice before the halfway point. (MSRP: $1999)

Toshiba Portege R830
Another light and thin, yet durable option, Toshiba has built the Portege R830 to be both powerful and affordable. With a magnesium case and a specially designed shock-resistant system, this laptop is built to withstand the abuse that comes along with travel. Slightly heavier and thicker than other machines on this list, the Portege is unique in that it still includes a DVD drive, something that is becoming increasingly rare in our cloud-based, streaming media world. Battery life is a strength as well, keeping you up and running for eight hours, while powering the LED-backlit screen and surround sound.

Take this one with you when you have kids to entertain. The DVD drive will come in handy and the machine can handle the abuse from kids too! (MSRP: $799)


Samsung Series 9 - Special Edition
Built from Duralumin, the same material as some modern aircraft, the Samsung Series 9 is both rugged and beautiful. The metal casing protects the laptop nicely, while keeping it thin and light at the same time. The Series 9 is just .6 inches thin and tips the scale at a shade under 3 pounds. It still packs plenty of technology however, including a 13.3 inch backlit LED LCD screen, USB 3.0 and HDMI ports, a 7 hour battery life, and an illuminated keyboard. Throw in premium sound and a 128GB SSID drive, and you have a laptop that would make James Bond jealous.

Take this one with you everywhere! (MSRP: $1649)

New Ski Goggles Keep You Connected On The Slopes

In addition to being a fan of adventure, exploration, and travel, I also happen to be a technology and gadget guy. I love playing around with new tech toys and finding interesting ways that they can improve my life. When I find a cool gadget that would also be fun to use on my travels or outdoor sports, than I really get excited. Such is the case with a new heads-up display system from Recon Instruments that fits inside specific ski goggles. Recon has just released their MOD and MOD Live devices, both of which look like they would be a lot of fun to use on the slopes.

The basic MOD system incorporates a micro-optics display (MOD) inside your goggles and displays such data as your current rate of speed, vertical distances traveled, the temperature and so on. The system also incorporates a GPS chip so that it can track your location and the routes you take on the mountain. It even includes a sophisticated chrono/tracker for showing you real-time info on your current run.

All of that is pretty cool stuff, but it is also technology we've seen in goggles before. Step up to the MOD Live system however, and you really get some cool additions. MOD Live is powered by Google's Android operating system and links up to your smartphone via Bluetooth technology. With a data connection enabled, the MOD Live can add navigation cues to your screen and includes a database of a ton of resorts across the world to show you the best runs and points of interest. It'll also allow you track the location of your friends who are also using the Live system, and will display text messages and caller ID on the screen.

I had a chance to play with a pre-release version of the device at Outdoor Retailer this past August and thought that it was very cool. While I wasn't actually on the slopes of course, I did get to see what the tiny screen is capable of, and came away quite impressed. The outdoor-enthusiast-slash-tech-guy in my was drooling a bit over the possibilities, and its good to see that MOD and MOD Live are now available. Price? $299 and $399 respectively.

Check out the video below to see more of what these devices are capable of.

Recon Instruments Fall 2011 Product Lineup from Recon Instruments on Vimeo.

A 360º Panoramic Video Mountain Bike Ride Through Moab

Moab, Utah is considered one of the best places to go mountain biking in the U.S. – if not the world. There are an abundance of trails for a variety of skill levels and the views are simply spectacular. One of the more popular of those trails is Slickrock, a 13-mile long loop that offers a significant physical and technical challenge. In short, it isn't a trail for beginners.

For those of us who haven't had the opportunity to ride Slickrock, there is a great new panoramic interactive video that allows us to check it out for ourselves. The video was made by three men – Joergen Geerds, Dan Finkler and Mark Sevenoff– who used six Sony Xperia Android phones to capture the entire 360º view around them as they rode. The result is a very cool interactive video that allows you to switch views, pan and zoom, and generally experience the entire ride without fear of crashing.

You can check out this amazing interactive video by clicking here. I've also embedded another video below which gives you an idea of what the project was all about and how it was made, using rather simple technology. It's an interesting piece, but really only sets the stage for the interactive version, which will keep you entertained for some time. Be sure to switch between the various views. The "Little Planet" option is especially trippy.

iGE - interactive Grammar of English

I've not normally used this blog to plug commercial products and my income from Amazon ads has amounted to a massive 29 pence, but this product's been developed by colleagues of mine at UCL (and if they sell enough, I might just keep my job).

The interactive Grammar of English (iGE) is an app for the iPhone 3 and 4, iPod Touch and iPad, designed to help you develop your understanding of English grammar. It uses examples of real English from ICE-GB, the International Corpus of English and contains many interactive tests and tasks.

If you're looking for a way into understanding grammatical frameworks for A level English Language or for developing your grasp of higher end concepts for undergraduate or post-graduate study, it will definitely be really useful.

One interesting area of debate about language which has already been raised in a 3-star review of the app on the American i-Tunes site is about the use of "incorrect" English in examples of spoken language:

IGE English grammar - ★★★

I'm a substitute teacher and was looking for an app that I could quickly refresh my memory. This is an okay app but there are some errors. I was always taught to not use uhm and ah in a sentence, however, in the test areas the sentences often use uhm as if it had been created by someone dictating. There are also run on sentences and incorrect punctuation in the tests. The glossary seems to be correct and will be a good reference when I need it.

Should a grammar app use "good" English examples which avoid uhms and errs, and run on sentences? Well, we would argue that analysing grammar is not just about analysing "perfect" written English but about looking at all types of English - written and spoken - and studying their grammar. Part of the appeal of an app like this which uses a corpus of genuine English , rather than made-up examples, is that it allows us to look at how English is really used, and to describe its grammar rather than judge it.

Twitter gives descriptivists a treat...

...or a tweet. In this article from the Greensboro News Record, Mike Clark takes a look at arguments about outside influences on our own ways of communicating: be they accents in new areas we move to, or technologies like texting and Twitter. He makes a number of interesting points for English Language students about how our individual language (idiolect) changes based on the contexts we're using it in and goes on to suggest that we'll switch between different types of language:

How you talk is often influenced by where you are, by the context of the communication, and that’s just fine. Kids who are born and spend a few years in one part of the country and then move with their families to another will often become bi-dialectal. They’ll play with their new neighbors outdoors, speaking with the patois of those new friends, and revert to the dialect of their own family when they’re in the house. I feel pretty confident that the same transformation can occur, will occur, in fact, does occur with today’s young people as they move from technology-based talking to formal writing, from daily talk to giving a speech, and so on.

Far from being responsible for the demise of formal written English that some prescriptivists have argued, texting and Twitter messages might actually help us develop clearer and more creative language styles:

And think about those parameters. Imagine what a good exercise it is to write something in 140 characters (including punctuation and spaces) max. I think it was Pascal who wrote: “I’m sorry for the long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” If you’re a teacher, you must like that kind of discipline for your students; it forces them to focus, to write with attention and precision. The preceding sentence is 141 characters. Can you effectively remove one character? Twitter people can, even the young ones. Let’s say hello to a new age of talking.

Language change gets owned

New words reflect new values, and language change often feels insidious rather than enabling.

So says Henry Hitchings in a review of a new book, The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English by Mark Abley in today's Telegraph. According to a quick check of Google definitions, it's a battle between language change "working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way" (insidious) and language change making things possible or allowing them to take place (enabling). So, it's basically down to the age old debate about prescriptive versus descriptive views.

According to Abley's book, "words seem unusually volatile" at the moment and change is taking place at an incredibly rapid pace, driven in part by the spread of electronic communication. He looks at the growth of virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft and the influence they have had on mainstream language, along with the ways in which "plastic words" are used by governments and business to obscure meaning.

The review makes the book sound like good reading for any A level Language student, and it would also be good preparation for next year's new A levels for any teachers looking at the growth of hybrid languages such as Hinglish and Spanglish, as English spreads around the world and is put to use by locals in combination with their own native languages.

If you're revising for ENA5 Contemporary Language Change, have a quick look at the review and see if you can identify the prescriptive vs. descriptive positions noted above. You might also find this link to language change and technology helpful.

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change
ENGA3 (new spec) - Language Explorations