AT&T and Verizon join National Clear Fleet Program, thumb their noses at petrol

Thought the Prez was just kidding about those alternative fuel initiatives? Think again. Just hours after stating that the US government fleet would be 100 percent alternative fuel, hybrid, or electric vehicles by 2015, Obama has announced the National Clean Fleets Partnership, an initiative of the Department's Clean Cities program. It's a rather unique public-private partnership, and it'll be assisting large companies to "reduce diesel and gasoline use in their fleets by incorporating electric vehicles, alternative fuels, and fuel-saving measures into their operations." A handful of Charter members have made themselves known, with AT&T, Verizon, FedEx, Pepsi-Co and UPS all committed to deploying over 20,000 advanced technology vehicles in the years to come -- an effort that should save over seven million gallons of fuel per year. Ma Bell in particular will be replacing over 15,000 rides with 7,000 hybrids and 8,000 compressed natural gas vehicles during the next decade, while Verizon looks to use a raft of cars (er, vans) that rely on biodiesel and ethanol. Whether or not such a program leads to the installation of more EV charging stations remains to be seen, but if it's good enough for Brown, surely it'll be good enough for your future Tesla. Vid's after the break, kiddos.

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Pentax releases O-GPS1 add-on for DSLRs, appeals to astronomy nuts

Pentax's Optio WG-1 GPS point-and-shoot satisfied geotaggers out of the box, but owners of its K-5, K-r and 645D DSLRs have had to make do with third-party taggers like the PhotoTrackr or Eye-Fi. The new hotshoe-mounted O-GPS1 module fixes that oversight by recording latitude, longitude, altitude, Coordinated Universal Time and shooting angle. Everyday snappers might find an extra hotshoe attachment cumbersome, but astro-photography enthusiasts could well be enticed by the device's interesting "ASTROTRACER" function. This helps you take clearer photos of celestial bodies by using the in-built sensors to calculate a star's movement and then employing the camera's shake reduction system to compensate. Sounds clever, but be advised: this module is only for Pentax DSLRs -- and only for very specific models at that. You'll get full functionality with the K-5 and K-r cameras, and geotagging (no ASTROTRACER) with the 645D. Oh, and you'll need to make sure yo

Commodore USA puts the new C64 up for pre-sales, unveils far-less-retrotastic VIC-Slim

Desktops Commodore USA puts the new C64 up for pre-sales, unveils far-less-retrotastic VIC-Slim By Sean Hollister posted Apr 6th 2011 8:43PM Now that Commodore USA has sufficiently piqued your curiosity with a revamped Commodore 64 prototype, it's ready to capitalize on the idea. Quite literally, we might add. $595 buys you the basic basic model with an 1.8GHz dual-core Intel Atom D525 chip, NVIDIA ION 2 graphics, 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive -- which it promises to deliver by "early June" -- with hundred-dollar increments adding premium features like an additional 2GB of memory, a Blu-Ray drive, up to 1TB of storage, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth. However, if you're simply looking for a compact keyboard computer (rather than reliving 80's nostalgia) there's another option on tap -- a likely rebadged thin wedge of a machine that Commodore's

CNC mill and Sixaxis controller make beautiful DIY music together (video)

Have you ever thought to yourself, "my CNC mill is pretty cool, but I really want to make it more awesomer"? Well, first, "awesomer" totally isn't word, and second, have we got a hack for you! A reader wrote in to the DIY hub Adafruit to show off his CNC being operated by a PS3 Sixaxis controller -- mimicking features found on high-end machines that allow you to trigger jobs from a distance and manually control the mill. Best of all, it's a pretty simple mod that uses a program called QtsixA to map the gamepad as a keyboard and mouse, allowing you to interact with a Linux box running EMC2, which is used for controlling the mill, lathe, plasma torch, or a number of other fun and dangerous tools. Check out the video after the break. Adafruit dammitdarrell (YouTube)

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