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Welcome to my new and second blog. My intention is to identify consumer products that work well or badly, focusing on design and and quality. No I am not an engineer, but as I mention in my blog profile, I love mechanical and electronic things. My experience includes working in factories and machine shops and a very good lay understanding about how motors and things you'd find in those venues work. My first blog, by the way, was The Dodge Report at my former publication, Electronic Business.
My first victim is the suction cup bracket that came with my Garmin GPS nüvi 350. The nüvi is a great little GPS unit, but the suction cup that holds the unit to the windshield sucks. Or actually, it doesn't stay sucking like it should, constantly falling off the windshield even though it feels solidly built and looks smartly designed. Part of the problem might be that I keep removing it so as not to advertise the presence of this nifty little $600 unit (which tied for first place in Consumer Reports tests on portable GPS devices). Still, it should stay put every time I affix it to the windshield. Such irony: Garmin can get the sophisticated electronics right, but blows it with something as trivial as the bracket. When the whole thing collapses, it's very irritating and what will be even more of a travesty of a mockery of a sham is if the nüvi ends up breaking the next time it crashes against the console of my car.
The nüvi is a great little GPS unit, but the suction cup that holds the unit to the windshield sucks.
We looked at a number of sources to determine this year's greenest cars, from KBB to automotive trade magazines to environmental organizations. These 14 cars emerged as being great at either stretching fuel or reducing carbon footprint.
Researchers at MIT and Sandia National Labs have observed a reaction in lithium-air batteries that could help improve the design of these cells for electric vehicles and other applications.
Healthcare might seem to be an unlikely target application for the Internet of Things technology, but recent developments show small ways that big-data is going to make an impact on patient care moving into the future.
As energy efficiency becomes more and more a concern for makers of electronics devices, researchers are coming up with new ways to harvest energy from sound vibration, footsteps, and even electromagnetic fields in the air.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 3
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
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