Yven Rossy has recently achieved what many just read about in cartoon magazines and movies. With his latest adventure in the sky, flying across the channel from France to England, he has brought to life and cemented the concept of a “Jet Man”.

Before being part of a plane, Yves served as a fighter and a commercial pilot. He is now the first person to build and the first person to successfully fly a jet engine-powered wing strapped to the back.

Rossy developed and built a winged pack with solid aeroplane-type carbon-fiber wings, having a span of approximately 8 feet (2.4 m), and four small kerosene-burning jet engines under the wings; these engines are large versions of the ones used for model aeroplanes. Rossi wears a heat-resistant suit, such as worn by firefighters or racing drivers, to protect him from the hot jet exhaust. In his trip over the British Channel, he reached a top speed of 186mph.

After being lifted by a plane, Rossy jumps out with his wings folded, unfolds them while in free-fall, turns on the engine and navigates using his body movements and hand throttle, then lands using a parachute.

His first successful trial was on 24 June 2004, near Geneva, Switzerland, and Rossy has made more than 30 powered flights since.

A similar trip across the Channel, 99 years ago, helped launch the era of mass aviation — just prior to World War I, and spurring innovation in plane designs. Now we’ll see how mass produced this latest innovation can realistically become.

I saw this heated walkway and had to post. If you live in California, Australia or someplace with hot and sunny weather 365 days a year, you might want to skip over this post. However, if you live up North, you need to check it out. I almost want to buy the mat just for the novelty factor and the look on my neighbor’s faces. Imagine how great this would be for that little old lady who can’t rightly shovel her walkway. Basically, it’s a heated traction mat that stays out all winter long and you would turn it on when it starts to snow – heating up and melting the snow.

Specs? Of course. The mat can melt up to 2” of snow per hour, and plugs into any standard 120V outlet. Price wise it comes in a little over a grand, for a 15′ long x 24” size. Larger versions are available but will cost more.

My particular corner of the world doesn’t receive quite enough snowfall to warrant such a purchase, but I can imagine those living farther east finding it very useful.

As a webmaster, there are few things more frustrating than logging on to do some work, only to notice that one of my sites is down. Or, being involved in another project, only to be interrupted by customer emails telling me that they’re unable to access a website. Down time can mean a loss of readership, customers, and confidence in a business’ viability. It’s the online equivalent of a “closed” sign.

A lot of webmasters may not even be aware of how much downtime their website experiences, having a false sense of security by host company’s promises of up-time. We simply can’t all be at our computers twenty four seven (nor would we want to be), or afford to hire a team of people in order to enjoy around the clock coverage.

In that regard, I would recommend signing up for a free account with Internet Uptime Monitoring Server Software, as they will actively monitor your website at regular intervals and provide notification if the website is unavailable. The service is able to notify the user via text message, to ensure you’re alerted no matter where you are.

Besides the obvious advantage of knowing when your website is down, a benefit to using this software, is that you can get a better idea of how reliable your web host is, and if necessary, make the switch to a hosting company that will better deliver on their promises. Personally, I have several websites, both blogs and static sites, and need to know if they are off-line, so I use the service as a necessity.

Despite some lukewarm reviews of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, you have to admit, the virtual reality aspect of playing a video game with  a Wii saber is pretty darn neat. Frankly, these are no question the most unique and intriguing game controllers I have ever come across, and Star Wars really isn’t even my thing. I haven’t found them in any stores around here, but they are made by a company calling itself Thrustmaster (no comment), and are available from Amazon.com.

The sabers are designed to hold the wiimotes inside their handles, providing for a more authentic star wars experience. Also, they glow (either red or blue) when turned on. And yes, you will look fantastic wielding your Wii Sabre.

The Nintendo marketing genius must be making a killing off all of the wiimote accessories they get to peddle along with the actual games and the Nintendo Wii console.

In a market where iPhones and Gphones are getting all the hype, Nokia holds a special place in my tech loving heart, as the company that has produced most of the reliable cell phones I’ve chosen to use over the years. I’ve yet to have an issue with them, either. Knock on wood, just in case, though.

Canadian Web Hosting has been in the web hosting business since 1998 and throughout the years added several services to stay in tune with its user base.

This host offers low cost solutions while getting high rankings for quality. The company is 100% Canadian Owned and Operated. In order to provide their customers with secure and reliable web hosting, the company has chosen a first class collocation facility to operate from, with its servers located at Harbour center in downtown Vancouver. The company offers a shared and VPS Linux package, a Windows VPS and ASP.net package, as well as a dedicated hosting plan. As with other major hosting companies, all accounts come with a 30-day money back guarantee.

Other services offered by Canadian Web Hosting include a Site Builder page that can help users build a 3-page, 30-page, or 70-page ecommerce site.

The company’s knowledgeable staff provides 24/7 customer support through toll-free telephone service, as well as e-mail and online chat.

Canadian Web Hosting also offers a lucrative affiliate program where affiliates can earn $35-75 per each sale on all hosting packages. Affiliates can track their account with real-time statistics for sales and traffic, a detailed reporting page, as well as payout details and account management.

For quite some time now, in an endeavour to live a greener, more earth friendly life, I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a hybrid vehicle. It’s only recently become a financially feasible option for me, and now can consider such a purchase an allowable expense if I can find one at the right price.

After conducting a plethora of research on many top brands, I’m looking closely at the 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid, and consider it the front-runner for my hard-earned dollars. My reasoning for favoring the focus hybrid is because it’s reasonably priced, well equipped compared to other vehicle’s in its class, and most importantly, offers exceptional mileage. Having an attractive, eye-catching design doesn’t hurt either, does it?

The internet helps bundles in my research, as it’s impractical for me to test drive many vehicles for any substantial amount of time. One site I find particularly helpful is thecarconnection.com, as they take the time to find the advantages and disadvantages for me, and provide an honest review.

The CarConnection website includes photo galleries, ratings, and a “bottom line” which tells it like it is. Also, I appreciate their vehicle comparisons, which offer up choices similar to the one you’re considering – so you can do all your homework before embarking on such an important purchase.

Ford Cars Hybrid Cars

The G1 Google Android

wireless phone is certainly a rising star, hitting Sarah Palin levels of interest this week. I’m not sure which one is garnering more interest, but it’s clear in either case, that people want to know more. I’ll leave the political news media to pursue Palin, while I consider the Android Google “Gphone” cell phone.

The G1 device, which is being produced by Taiwan’s HTC and sold in the US by retail wireless carrier T-Mobile, surely appears to be serviceable mobile, but with all the hype surrounding the G1 device, that’s hardly going to be enough to win over many critical tech-fanatics – which are, of course, used to the Apple iPhone’s sleek design and abundance of features.

Gphone features include a good sized touch screen, (hidden) QWERTY keyboard, 3G, Wi-Fi, 3-megapixel camera, navigation ball, dedicated internet button, and built in web apps. To build on this foundation, many more applications are offered through Google’s Android marketplace.

The heart of this endeavour and the hype going a lot with it, is Google’s open-source Android software, which is a Linux-based, open-source operating system for wireless phones that will work with Google applications. Google has promised that it will be free for manufacturers to work with, though there has been some debate throughout the blogosphere on whether that is entirely accurate or not.

As for cost, the price tag is a lot more decent than previously speculated, at $179 with two data plans available for $25 and $35 respectively. Currently, the G1 phone is only available to current T-Mobile customers through their website, however look for the new device to be featured at all T-Mobile locations by the end of October.

For a retro viewpoint, check out our previous Gphone update here.

Google G1 Phone

Chalk one up for good ol’ common sense. The Governator recently signed a bill banning the practice of texting or even reading text messages while operating a vehicle in the state of California. A-men!

This law comes after a previous measure that banned holding a cell phone while driving, however was so riddled with loopholes that it didn’t even cover text messaging.

As a Canadian resident, I can only hope that we’ll follow suit, as I have witnessed the old drive-and-text countless times – including one particularly scary time on the freeway. It’s no doubt a shame that we need such laws to keep people from doing something so obviously dangerous, but sadly this is the case. Honestly, what information contained in a text message could be so important that a person would feel the need to respond while driving at highway speeds? It’s beyond me, but I’m glad to see others opening their eyes to this problem.

Digital cameras have become increasingly popular in recent years. When compared to traditional film cameras, it is very simple and inexpensive to take pictures using a digital camera. As a result, many people have already accumulated thousands of such digital images. These pictures often represent memories, and for this reason they are extremely precious and often priceless. Relatedly, the worst thing that can happen is the loss of such pictures. Such loss can occur either if the storage device which contains the images is formatted, or due to a physical damage, or if they are accidentally deleted.

AcuteTools, a software utility company, offers a solution called Photo Nose™. This Photo Image Recovery Software can help in recovering images from any type of storage device such as camera memory cards, hard drives, portable music players, USB drives, etc’. The software permits the users to work on any kind of digital image, from jpeg to bmp, tif, gif, rif in addition to a series of proprietary formats from Canon, Kodak, Minolta, Nikon, Fuji, Sigma, Pentax and Sony—and this software does even more.

Since digital cameras and mobile phones record audio and video tracks, PhotoNose can also address deletions of those files. The software can recover the following additional file types: wav, mp3, mp4, mid, avi, mov, mpg, asf, etc’

Notably, the software is absolutely free to try, however, in this trial version only thumbnails of the recoverable files will be visible. If a user likes how it works  they can purchase the standard version for $29.95 and fully recover the files.