Technology – Brian Jaikens

Dutch solar road makes enough energy to power household

Leave a Comment / General, Technology / Brian

You may remember a previous article on my web site about solar road energy. Well looks like somebody has succeeded.

Engineers in the Netherlands say a novel solar road surface that generates electricity and can be driven over has proved more successful than expected.

Last year they built a 70-metre test track along a bike path near the Dutch town of Krommenie on the outskirts of Amsterdam.

In the first six months since it was installed, the panels beneath the road have generated over 3,000kwh. This is enough to provide a single-person household with electricity for a year.

“If we translate this to an annual yield, we expect more than the 70kWh per square metre per year,” says Sten de Wit, spokesman for SolaRoad, which has been developed by a public-private partnership.

“We predicted [this] as an upper limit in the laboratory stage. We can therefore conclude that it was a successful first half-year.”

The project took cheap mass-produced solar panels and sandwiched them between layers of glass, silicon rubber and concrete.

“This version can have a fire brigade truck of 12 tonnes without any damage,” said Arian de Bondt, a director at Ooms Civiel, one of consortium of companies working together on the pilot project.

“We were working on panels for big buses and large vehicles in the long run.”

The solar panels are connected to smart meters, which optimise their output and feed the electricity to street lighting or into the grid.

“If one panel is broken or in shadow or dirt, it will only switch off that PV panel,” said Jan-Hendrik Kremer, Renewable Energy Systems consultant at technology company Imtech.

Five years of research

The research group spent the last five years developing the technology but during the first six months of the trial a small section of a coating, designed to give grip to the smooth glass surface without blocking the sun, delaminated.

This was due to temperature fluctuations causing the coating to shrink. The team is now working on an improved version of the coating. More than 150,000 cyclists have ridden over the panels so far.

“We made a set of coatings, which are robust enough to deal with the traffic loads but also give traction to the vehicles passing by,” said Stan Klerks, a scientist at Dutch research group TNO.

He said the slabs also had to “transfer as much light as possible on to the solar cells so the solar cells can do their work”.

The group behind the project is now in talks with local councils in the Netherlands to see if the technology can be rolled out in other provinces. A cooperation agreement has also been signed with the US State of California.

“Solar panels on roofs are designed to have a lifetime, which is typically 20/25 years,” said de Wit.

“This is the type of lifetime that we also want for these types of slabs. If you have a payback time of 15 years then afterwards you also have some payback of the road itself so that makes the road cheaper in the end.”

Source: Dutch solar road makes enough energy to power household – Al Jazeera English

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Why Microsoft is calling Windows 10 ‘the last version of Windows’

IT’S ALL ABOUT WINDOWS AS A SERVICE

Microsoft has been discussing the idea of Windows as a service, but the company hasn’t really explained exactly how that will play out with future versions of Windows. That might be because there won’t really be any future major versions of Windows in the foreseeable future. Microsoft has altered the way it engineers and delivers Windows, and the initial result is Windows 10. Instead of big releases, there will be regular improvements and updates. Part of this is achieved by splitting up operating system components like the Start Menu and built-in apps to be separate parts that can be updated independently to the entire Windows core operating system. It’s a big undertaking, but it’s something Microsoft has been actively working on for Windows 10 to ensure it spans across multiple device types.

While we’ll witness the results in the coming months, Microsoft is already in launch mode for a number of its apps and services that power Windows 10. The software company is testing preview builds of Window 10 with willing participants, and apps like Xbox and Mail have been engineered for regularly monthly updates. Even Office for Windows 10 will also get regular updates, much like a mobile version, instead of the big bang release every few years.

WINDOWS ISN’T DEAD, BUT THE IDEA OF VERSION NUMBERS COULD BE

When I reached out to Microsoft about Nixon’s comments, the company didn’t dismiss them at all. “Recent comments at Ignite about Windows 10 are reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service bringing new innovations and updates in an ongoing manner, with continuous value for our consumer and business customers,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “We aren’t speaking to future branding at this time, but customers can be confident Windows 10 will remain up-to-date and power a variety of devices from PCs to phones to Surface Hub to HoloLens and Xbox. We look forward to a long future of Windows innovations.”

With Windows 10, it’s time to start thinking of Windows as something that won’t see a big launch or major upgrade every few years anymore. Much like how Google’s Chrome browser gets updated regularly with version numbers nobody really pays attention to, Microsoft’s approach will likely result in a similar outcome. This is really the idea of Windows as a service, and the notion that Windows 10 could be the last major version of Windows. Microsoft could opt for Windows 11 or Windows 12 in future, but if people upgrade to Windows 10 and the regular updates do the trick then everyone will just settle for just “Windows” without even worrying about the version number.

Source: Why Microsoft is calling Windows 10 ‘the last version of Windows’ | The Verge

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Microsoft answers the question, ‘Why Windows Phone?’

Leave a Comment / Windows 10, Windows Phone / Brian

Why Windows Phone?
With no flagships announced, software that is on other platforms and a weak app store for the better part of a year, many consumers have asked what is the value proposition of Windows Phone. Up until last week, Microsoft did not have an answer that they were publicly willing to share but now we know how the company will respond to this question going forward.

Continuum for phones, that is coming with Windows 10, is Microsoft’s ace up the sleeve. The feature, which requires new hardware and will be arriving in new devices this summer, is the ‘killer’ feature that you can only get on Windows 10 for phones and it will not be easily replicated by any other player in the market.

What this feature allows you to do is take your phone, connect it to a keyboard, mouse and monitor and use the device like a desktop PC. This isn’t a watered down experience either, because of how Universal apps are designed, you can run all the Office apps just like you would on the desktop with most of the features being present as well. While we know this may not be a feature everyone will use on day one, it’s easy to see how this functionality will one day replace your laptop.

Looking at how quickly smartphones have progressed over the past 10 years, it’s fair to say that the devices of today are at least as powerful, if not more so, than the laptops of ten, maybe even five years ago. If you think about where the smart phone is headed in the next five years or so, you can only imagine how much horsepower will be under the glass in future devices.

Phone Continuum will likely never replace developer machines or those used for video/photo editing but for some users who only need email, chat and web browsing, this scenario is a very real solution to consolidating their technology.

There are other reasons to choose Microsoft’s mobile platform like Cortana and the many new security features that offer a better ecosystem when you are already using a Windows PC. But for a quick, one sentence answer that is easily directed at consumers, Continuum is the marketing word of choice as it is not only new but forward-looking as well.

When it comes to ‘killer’ features, Cortana, while better than Siri and on equal footing to Google Now, has competitors that now exists but Continuum is unmatched. Yes, there were earlier devices that tried to replicate this experience but they were limited to a few handsets and the apps were simply phone apps on a larger screen; they never gained much attention.

While Microsoft hopes that its new iOS/Android app porting strategy will fill out its store and they will consistently update Cortana, Continuum is the new show pony for the platform.

Source: Microsoft answers the question, ‘Why Windows Phone?’

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Microsoft to KILL OFF PATCH TUESDAY

This is Microsoft Edge, the replacement for Internet Explorer

Leave a Comment / Microsoft Edge, Project Spartan / Brian

Microsoft first revealed its new browser plans back in January. Known as Project Spartan initially, Microsoft is revealing today that the company will use the Microsoft Edge name for its new browser in Windows 10. The Edge naming won’t surprise many as it’s the same moniker given to the new rendering engine (EdgeHTML) that Microsoft is using for its Windows 10 browser.

While Microsoft Edge is the successor to Internet Explorer, Microsoft will keep its ageing browser around for enterprise customers. Microsoft Edge is designed to be basic and minimalist for the future, and early previews include new features like digital ink annotation, Cortana integration, and a built-in reading list. “You’re going to care about the blasting fast technology that’s inside it,” said Joe Belfiore on stage at Build. Microsoft Edge will be the default browser in Windows 10, and the one that most consumers will use to browse the web in Microsoft’s next operating system.

The image of a lowercase “e” encircled by a halo of light is one of the most recognisable items in any computer interface. Familiar though it may be, however, the Internet Explorer icon is more infamous than famous: everyone knows what it points to, but nobody’s excited to go there. Call it the post-IE6 trauma that will never go away.

Microsoft has been on a mission to right the wrongs of its web browser and has got better with every new iteration of IE, and for Windows 10 it’s going one step further and renaming the software with the new title of Microsoft Edge. But that re-branding hasn’t gone all the way. The icon is still a lowercase “e,” still bisected by the ghostly shadow of that dreaded IE halo. it makes Microsoft Edge look like a bold stride into the future that refuses to close the door on the past.

Source: This is Microsoft Edge, the replacement for Internet Explorer | The Verge

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