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Watch Tesla's souped-up Model S beat the world's fastest sedan
Tesla's Model S P85D is quick. Or is it fast? Can it be both? Ever since Elon Musk unveiled the company's speediest car ever, it's become the fashionable thing to take the P85D to a drag strip and pit it against some old-school gas-powered muscle. Motor Trend did the same, choosing the all-American Dodge Charger Hellcat (the world's fastest sedan) as the Model S' opponent. Now, it's not the first time that these cars have gone head-to-head over a quarter mile, but when they first met, the 707-horsepower Hellcat had such a dismal run that it needed an official rematch with a better driver behind the wheel. There's a handy explanation on the difference between being fast and being quick at the beginning of the video, but if you just want the action, simply hit the play button below. As for the outcome... well, that'd be spoiling it, but let's just say that things could have been different if the strip was longer.
What you need to know about Facebook's battle with drag queens (update)
Maybe you've seen RuPaul's Drag Race, the flagship show on Logo TV, where men (dressed as women) compete to become America's next drag superstar. At the end of each show, the lowest-scoring competitors "lip sync for their life" in order to stay on the show another week. Now, some drag queens are fighting for their social media lives.
3D printing shows why sharks are so deadly efficient
A shark's fearsome teeth don't end in its mouth, as its skin is also made up of millions of sharp, microscopic "denticles." That roughness helps sharks slip through the water more efficiently by reducing drag, but how exactly? To better understand, Harvard researchers studied a Mako shark's skin, then figured out how to 3D print a simulated version onto a flexible substrate (see below). As expected, the faux sharkskin reduced drag significantly at slower speeds, but surprisingly increased drag in faster currents. After adding a simulated swimming motion, however, efficiency improved dramatically -- showing that denticles only work in concert with a shark's sinuous movement. All that helps them swim seven percent faster and burn six percent less energy than if their skin was smooth. That might not seem like a lot, but let's see you hunt down and kill a seal with your bare teeth. (A decoy seal is pictured above.) [Image credit: Discovery Channel]
Wordpress for iOS gets a new user interface
The Wordpress app for iOS has been updated again, and it features a brand-new interface for browsing, writing and editing posts on the popular blogging platform. As you can see above, the new interface apes Facebook's "side menu" (as have a few other big apps lately), and the update also fixes some other bugs, and adds some performance improvements in regards to emoticons and notifications in general. Wordpress for iOS is an open-source project, and thus you can download it straight from the App Store any time for free.
Visualized: the history of the Formula 1 car in 60 seconds (video)
Formula 1 car technology has come a long way since it first hit the asphalt banks 62 years ago. It's been hard to convey the sheer amount of change in a succinct way, but Rufus Blacklock may have nailed it in exactly one minute. Abstract versions of the cars show us the progression from the bullet-shaped cars of the 1950's through to the low-slung, wing-laden beasts we know today. If the clip is a little too F1-fast, there's also an infographic that details exactly when certain technology changes came into play, starting with the first wings in 1968 through to modern (and at times controversial) introductions like KERS in 2009. Click past the break for the video, and check out the relevant source link for a quite literal big picture.
iOS 5 features: Calendar
iOS 5 has arrived, and with it come some really nice updates to the Calendar app. There aren't a whole lot of new things; the app's basic functionality of saving events on dates and showing them back in various views hasn't changed, but there are a few new elements. First up are the new views. On the iPhone and iPod touch, you'll be able to see a week view where you can scroll all the way through from Monday to Sunday. On the iPad there's a new year view, where you can pick up a wide angle look of what your schedule is like. In the views where it's appropriate, you can now drag event borders around to set up the various end and start times for each event (dragging a meeting from 1 pm to 2 pm to last for an hour, for example). You can add, rename, and delete whole calendars right on your iOS device. And there are some subtle features that really make the app more polished. You can now see event times on the month view -- before iOS 5, you could only see that there was an event there, not when it started -- and when you turn pages, you'll get a nice iBooks-like effect. Calendar is better than ever in iOS 5. Whether you're a longtime Calendar user or are just setting it up to sync up with your standard calendar service, these new changes should be quite helpful.
Battery-powered 'Black Current' VW Beetle flaunts itself in drag (video)
Electric supercars have been hitting some crazy speeds recently, but this is on another level. The Black Current is a Volkswagen Beetle reborn as an electric drag racer. It hits 135mph and demolishes the quarter-mile straight in 9.51 seconds. What's more, it does it quietly -- all you can hear is the delicious screech of sticky rubber. Plug into the video after the break for a taste of what it's like behind the wheel. And can someone please explain why that other car on the left even bothered to turn up?
Dragster - drag and drop file management and transfer with a twist
Ambrosia Software, those crazy kids with the Snapz Pro X and WireTap Pro, have unveiled the latest trick up their sleeve in the form of Dragster, an interesting approach to drag and drop file management and transfer. This utility, as you can see, lives in the Dock and is more or less like a drag and drop command center, allowing you to specify a number of locations you frequently need to move or send files to, such as remove servers, specific folders and more. These locations pop up when you drag items over Dragster's dock icon, allowing you to take care of your business right then and there, instead of rooting around in the Finder or tediously connecting and reconnecting servers. One feature I find a bit more interesting than its Dock icon abilities is the Contextual Menu that offers the same functionality. To me, this seems a bit easier to use and more efficient than dragging icons all around the display.Either way, try it out for yourself. A demo is available, while a license costs $19. Dragster, as most other new applications these days, is a Universal Binary.
Sandvox 1.0 official release
I'm really glad to see all this innovation in WYSIWYG web editing software, and from my experience, Sandvox from Karelia Software is poised to lead the pack. Yes, I've been going on about how excited I am about the iWeb 1.1 update, but after playing with Sandvox's beta editions, I'm going to give this official 1.0 release a good run-through, as it offers quite a bit of power and some nice tricks that other products like RapidWeaver and iWeb can't claim.The feature that impresses me the most about Sandvox is their innovative "Pagelets" feature. Pagelets are small chunks of rich content that you can simply drag and drop around your site's theme. Don't like where your blogroll is? Just drag its pagelet somewhere else. Pagelets in the pro version can also allow you to insert your own HTML and even PHP code into any portion of your site or sidebar. Speaking of site themes: Sandvox's are stellar, and a bit more creative than iWeb's. Sandvox comes with two dozen themes, with more available.Sandvox also does a lot of the, dare I say, 'standard' WYSIWYG web design-ish stuff that I've come to expect on the Apple platform. You can drag your audio podcasts into a Sandvox site and get them submitted to the iTMS, as well as drag images from iPhoto, etc.Overall, despite lightning striking twice for Karelia Software, Sandvox looks like a solid product that presents a strong array of features for the WYSIWYG designer that demands a little more from their web design app.
Review: iWeb's enhancements are exactly what it needed
In the most recent iLife '06 software update that Damien mentioned, iWeb understandably received the largest bump of new features and bug fixes; after all, it is the latest to arrive at the iLife party. Considering that I've been pretty vocal about my gripes with this otherwise fantastic addition to both iLife and .Mac, you can imagine my enthusiasm for Software Update to work its magic asap.After tinkering with the new features in iWeb 1.1 like blog comments and drop-dead simple photo album page creation, I thought I'd post a quick review of what's new, as I think iWeb is finally starting to fit into its role of a strong, WYSIWYG 1.0 application from Apple.
Access iPhoto and iTunes libraries with a simple Automator action
You could also file this under "fantastic Automator actions that Apple should've advertised when Tiger was being released."A post at macosxhints has discovered a simple Automator action you can use to open panel containing your entire iPhoto or iTunes library (pictured), complete with albums/playlists, DnD and even search abilities. This is for all those times you groan at having to start iPhoto just to grab an image or two. Bonus points for the iTunes library action: songs are playable from this panel.Check out the macosxhints post for the drop-dead simple 3-step process (it's really only two steps) for creating this handy panel.
