Software Engineer Makes His Own Electric Car

Raul Atkinson, a software engineer, wanted an electric car for himself, but couldn't find one on the market that was affordable or good looking. So did what any reasonable person would do, he built his own.

He calls it the Raptor. And he spent 2,000 of his spare hours building it from a 1965 Shelby Cobra body kit.

NBC(via Jalopnik): The car runs on a 3-phase AC induction motor and is currently powered by 290 nickel metal hydride batteries (Atkinson says the next version will use a lithium ion battery). It can reach speeds up to 100 MPH and can travel from zero to 60 mph in about eight seconds. The time it takes to charge the car is typically three hours, which will allow it to travel up to 80 miles depending on the driving environment.

Atkinson estimates the car cost about $85,000, but for some reason thinks it could be made for cheap as an alternative to the Prius.

Our unsolicited advice to Mr. Atkinson: forget the mass market. Go high end. Think Lamborghini, Porsche. You'll make a profit, and you'll be less susceptible to the rise and fall of gas prices. Rich people don't need to worry about getting hurt at the pump.

Atkinson's tracked the progress of the car at Electric Marin Wheels. Here's a selection of photos that chart his progress as the car went from kit to hot rod.

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See Also:

• Fisker Explains Why You Want A Karma Over A Roadster Or Model S (VIDEO)
• Tesla CEO Musk: Gas Should Be $10 A Gallon
• The Complete Guide To Electric Cars (SLIDESHOW)

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Overstock follows Amazon, Drops Affiliates in Four States

First Amazon paved the way for ecommerce sites like Overstock.com to exist and do business. Now it's paving they way for them to stick it revenue-hungry state governments. Overstock today followed Amazon and severed links with affiliates in four states.

Residents of California, North Carolina, Hawaii and Rhode Island will no longer be receiving referrer payments for Overstock.com products sold through their websites. The whole issue revolves around sales tax.

The states want Overstock to collect sales tax when an affiliate sells an Overstock item, as if the affiliate was actually a physical store selling its products. Overstock and Amazon beg to differ, since the affiliates are just that-- affiliates, not links in their supply and distribution chain.

Overstock appears to be pre-empting California's e-commerce sales tax legislation, since it hasn't been passed but is likely soon to be reconsidered by a state legislature desperate for revenue. As we noted yesterday, the upside for Amazon, and presumably Overstock, is that while the affiliate program was previously costing them marketing dollars, both companies can now keep revenue generated from affiliates, without actually having to pay omissions!

That's because despite the canceled commissions, the affiliates themselves are unlikely to immediately pull down their Overstock and Amazon links.

The move by both companies is viewed as throwing down a gauntlet to other state legislatures who get any funny ideas about passing new ecommerce sales taxes. All the battle seems to probably be just prelude. As one commenter said yesterday, "This is a constitutional matter and will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court."

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See Also:

• Amazon Says "Aloha" To Hawaiian Affiliates
• Now's The Time For An Internet Sales Tax
• Get Ready For A Web Sales Tax (AMZN)

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Video Interview with Founder of Vanilla, "A WordPress for Forums"

Longtime forum moderator Mark O'Sullivan's Vanilla, an open-source, standards-compliant, fully extensible discussion forum CMS, is a favorite of many designers and webmasters alike.

One reviewer said it best: "Forget how 'normal' forums are done - Vanilla strips it back to what's important: the conversations. Not the smileys, the bandwidth-hogging signatures, the mailbox, the forum categories. It pushes discussions to the forefront and uses subtle AJAX to make the experience of communicating with others fast and simple." Read and watch on for a discussion of the product itself as well as open-source monetization and forum culture versus the real-time web.

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Vanilla was selected for this summer's TechStars program, and the public beta for Vanilla 2 was released this April 27.

O'Sullivan actually wrote a follow-up blog post regarding our brief chat about how the real-time web and its constant firehose of information are affecting forum discussions and culture. "There is an intrinsic value in being able to take part in a discussion on your own time," he wrote. "We can't all be online, let alone awake at the same time, so in these situations the real-time web doesn't work. Forums are always on, and they are expected to operate on a different schedule than real-time."

And while O'Sullivan continues to write that there isn't a competition between real-time and forum discussions, he does state that the quality of forum information can often be much higher than info procured from real-time sources, in his opinion.

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Backups Get Sexy with Quanp's 3D Storage Service

Quanp, a new service from office electronics company Ricoh, has just launched a beta of their online storage system which offers an interesting twist to the usual backup services: a visual search tool that displays your data in 3D. The 3D viewer is actually a desktop application designed for Windows PCs, but Mac users aren't entirely out of luck - there is an online version of the service, too.

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Once we got past the site's terrible name (short for "quantum paper" - huh?) and focused on what it was offering, we were intrigued. Using a desktop widget called quanp drop, you simply drag-and-drop files from your computer to the online service, be them documents, photos, mp3s, or whatever else you want. It's a similar concept to the widget used by file-sharing service Dropbox; but unlike the Dropbox widget, installed via an executable file, quanp's widget is powered by Adobe AIR. You can even pick which style you want to use for your icon.

Then, depending on your computer (Mac or PC), you can either download the Windows-only desktop client or head over to the online service at quanp.net. Unfortunately, non-Windows users using the online service miss out on the sexiest thing about this new service: the 3D file browser.

For Windows Users

In the Windows desktop client, you browse through your files using its visually stunning interface. Although pretty, visual browsing isn't always the most efficient way to locate a particular file, so quanp's software also lets you search by keyword, tag, date, and more. The client even includes a basic reader for Microsoft Office files so you can see the content without having to launch the office software.

For Mac Users

Non-Windows users can use the online site to browse through files, but there's nothing all that exciting about this part of the service. It doesn't even offer an web version of the 3D interface. However, you can view files and their metadata, share them with others, plus upload or download files using buttons provided on the site.

Sexy, But Useful?

For the most part, a lot of what makes quanp fun to use is its visual eye candy. However, for users of the free Windows Live service, there may be some hesitation in switching. Although lacking a drag-and-drop widget of its own, Windows Live users can upload both photos and videos to online services using Photo Gallery software - and not just to the online service provided by Windows Live, but to flickr, Facebook, and YouTube as well (the last two via plugins). They can also tag files, identify faces, edit photos, and browse through files - just not in glorious 3D.

Of course there are plenty of other online storage services out there, but Windows Live is the most apt comparison since it, like quanp, is a combination of desktop software and an online component - a "software + services" arrangement. Most other online storage services either don't offer desktop tools at all or don't offer tools that also function as a way to elegantly browse and edit your files.

To determine if quanp is the better choice for you, think about whether you need to upload more than just photos or videos - if so, then quanp will work (although visual search of docs isn't quite as fun). Also of note, quanp offers 10 GB to Windows Live's 25 GB. However, the company plans to offer graded pricing in the future for additional storage, but no official decision has yet been made on exactly what that will be.

Of course, for some early adopters, "sexy" beats "practical" any day. If that describes you, then you should sign up for the quanp beta here. (But sorry world - the beta is U.S.-only!)

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When it Comes to Spam, Everything Old is New Again

Google released some interesting data about the volume and types of attacks its spam detection software identified over the last quarter. According to Google, overall spam levels in the second quarter of 2009 were 53% higher than during the first quarter, and 6% higher than a year ago. Even though the total volume of spam dropped by 70% after the the takedown of the infamous McColo ISP, it only took four months for spam levels to get back to normal. Last month, 3FN, an other large ISP spam source was also shut down, but spam volume only dropped by about 30%, and chances are that the spam market will simply rebound within a few months, as new spammers get into the market.

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The Return of Image Spam

Interestingly, Google also notes that image spam, which is generally filtered out quite well by modern spam detection software, has seen a major resurgence. Amanda Kleha, a member of Google's message security and archiving team, theorizes that this might be due to new spammers getting into the market after the shutdown of McColo and 3FN, and these new players are starting out with well established methods, even if they are not very effective. Kleha also notes that spammers might just be testing how well the current generation of spam filters handles these messages in order to perform statistical analysis based on which subject lines and content make it into users' inboxes.

Google also notes that one of the largest spam attacks in the last quarter was based on an old school "newsletter" template (with malevolent links and images thrown in there for good measure). This attack unleashed about 50% an average day's spam volume in only 2 hours. So while it might not have been highly sophisticated, there was surely a massive network behind it that was able to send out this huge amount of spam in such a short time.

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