A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Google is starting again from scratch with its Glass project, reports the New York Times.
Sales of the controversial smart spectacles were halted in
January and development of the prototype was also believed to have been
stopped.
Glass development is now being driven by former Apple gadget designer Tony Fadell, who has "reset" the project.
The new version will be developed internally and only released when finished, the newspaper said.
Poor performer First revealed in 2011, Google Glass made a big impact in
mid-2012 when the company demonstrated it at its developers' conference
using skydivers and stunt cyclists.
But, said the Times in a lengthy article about the project's
life, many working on the device were unhappy with this exposure because
it meant its final development had to take place in public.
The newspaper said the controversy the project gained gave
rise to tensions among the development team, forcing some key
researchers to leave.
Now Glass is being overseen by Mr Fadell, who helped to bring Apple's iPod and other gadgets to market.
Mr Fadell became a Google employee last year when the search giant bought his home automation company Nest.
Development on Glass was now reportedly all going to happen in-house with nothing released until it was ready.
Technology news site Ars Technica speculated that Mr Fadell's
"rebooting" of the project might take a long time because of the poor
performance of the earlier versions.
"There is very little that Glass does well, so with a reboot, there isn't much to currently work from," it said.
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