VIU – 3 Wheel Concept Car

Viu is a futuristic concept car that has been designed with a living feel and has given the sensation about not only its aesthetic like a motorbike, but comprehensive safety of a 4 wheeled car. This lighter and smaller vehicle comprises more aerodynamics to make it more efficient and environmentally friendly with its 2 electric engines that never emit anything bad at all. The sporty and technologic outlook enables wheels, suspension or rear suspension to be seen in action from the driving position inside. Moreover, cameras with the floating rear view mirrors, air side intakes, aggressive LED front lights and carbon fiber elements have given the car an innovative and dynamic image.

The interior of VIU was designed aiming the needs of the future users by serving as a living means of transportation. The design of the dashboard stimulates the eye with two lateral LED lights that indicates an efficient driving meter and a tachometer. The 1+1 sitting arrangement of the car offers the exciting movement of a motorcycle together with the safety of a closed car. As the road turns, the car cabin inclinates with the turn and the back seat rotates following the turn to offer maximum driving excitement to the driver.

Up the drivers seat, there is a fan to blow on the drivers back and shoulders to motivate him and to provide an excitingly fresh environment during the hot season when moisture accumulate on the seat, another air fan is there to dissipate the moisture. The steering wheel is actually a drumming pad, which can jam in the speakers when the user drums on the wheel spontaneously. This extremely cost-effective vehicle will cost five cents only with Eneloop batteries for one month, eight hours a day use.

Designer : Quim Vila-Masana Mas

VIA: TUVIE

LinkedIn Reaches 45 Million Users

LinkedIn celebrated their 45 millionth user sign up on Aug 12, 2009, according to LinkedIn’s Marketing Project Manager Florina Xhabija’s Twitter message.

According to comScore, LinkedIn had 16 million worldwide monthly unique visitors and 331 million page views in June 2009, up from 7.7 million and 114 million a year ago, respectively.

The company was valued at around $1 billion in its last (2008) round of financing, and says they’ve been profitable for 2+ years.

LinkedIn has gone through numerous changes at the CEO role with founder Reid Hoffmanchanging the guard once again in June of this year after yet another change in December of 2008.

The company is a strong 2010 IPO candidate. Hoffman told us earlier this year “we can go public any time we want to.”

by Daniel Brusilovsky

YouTube Places New Emphasis On Search With Homepage Tweaks

by Jason Kincaid

As the most popular video portal in the world, it comes as little surprise that YouTube is also effectively the second most popular search engine, coming after only Google in overall search queries. With that in mind, it’s a bit surprising that the site hasn’t done a better job at featuring this ridiculously popular functionality — instead of placing the search box at the far left or right side of the screen, as most sites do, YouTube has instead tucked it a bit off center, embedded in its somewhat cluttered masthead. In light of this, YouTube has decided to totally revamp the design of the top of its homepage, and will be rolling out a new version today.

The new version has eliminated most of the clutter and color of the old design, in favor of something that’s unquestionably more Googleish. Before now, navigation buttons like “Home” and “Videos” were likely the first thing people looked at — now, there’s no question that the default action on the site is going to be search. The layout also does a better job categorizing the main features of the site: the left side is now dedicated to finding videos, the right is dedicated to uploading and managing the clips you’ve seen.

It may not sound like a huge deal, but just as very small tweaks on Google can have a major effect, a minor change to YouTube’s design may well change the way people use the site. I won’t be surprised if YouTube sees a marked boost in search queries as a result of the new masthead.

New Masthead

Old Masthead

VIA: TECHCRUNCH