Great fun was had this week as I was out on about testing one of my favourite forms of transport! Yes, I was testing an super electric bike from those clever people at KTM.
I even brought the bike into the studio to show everyone and nearly managed to run over a musician in the green room.
The KTM eStreet P is a really nice electric bike which makes great use of pedal assistance with the 250w motor giving you up to 400% assistance. I’m really impressed with the bike and I will be reviewing it in full later this week. For now listen in to the stream and find out about this very nice eBike.
Massive thanks to Louise Johnson at KTM Industries UK for all her help in getting the bike to me.
This morning I chat to Mark about the EE Power Bar. The Power Bar is a rechargeable battery pack which can supply power to your phone on demand. Like other battery packs, the Power Bar is recharged via USB cable. You can use the included usb cable to charge your phone, or you can plug other USB cables to charge your iPhone.
It also has a torch and flashing light function, which is useful if you are scrabbling around in the dark.
If you are an EE customer, you can pick up a free Power Bar, you have to send a text message to get a redeem code from EE first and this text costs 35p.
The really great thing about the Power Bar is that if you are out and about and you have used up all your charge, you can simply nip into an EE shop and they will swap your flat Power Bar with a fully charged unit, great if you are a heavy phone user.
It’s a nice little gadget and the fact it is almost free is even better.
This week I talk to Mark about the Aqua-Massage XL-250 Pro, a dry hydro-massage system. The massage is dry because the water used to massage your body from top to bottom is safely sealed away behind a waterproof membrane.
This means, that other than removing your shoes, you can stay fully clothed when having your massage. As you can see from the video below, the Aqua Massage uses a high pressure water system to massage your body, these massages can be fully customisable to your needs and is mean’t to be up to 4 times more efficient that a normal massage, plus you don’t need to get undress or have to shower afterwards.
In fact after a restful drink of chilled water, we were ready to get back to work. This makes for a very useful option for todays time precious world, you can benefit from a full massage, but without taking hours out of your day.
A 15 minute Aqua Massage is available from InvigR8 for for £15, we thought it was amazing value for money and we think you will to!
What’s more, InvigR8 are giving away 5 FREE 15 Sessions on the AquaMassage, to win the chance to try out this amazing equipment, enter use the widget below.
To enter, please visit InvigR8 on Facebook to find out more about their business, for an additional chance to win, follow us on Twitter.
There are 5 sessions to give away, please only enter if you are able to visit their Spa in Ipswich, Suffolk, United Kingdom. There is no cash alternative to this prize. If you are the lucky winner, you will be emailed with your special password which you will need to quote when contacting InvigrR8 to book your massage session.
This competition is NOT affiliated with the BBC or it’s partners and is being delivered by InvigR8 Ipswich. The competition opens on Monday 15th June 2015 and closes at midnight on Friday 19th June 2015.
The winners will be published here
Thanks to Kay and Richard for allowing us to try out the Aqua Massage.
This week I talk about Google Cardboard and Google I/O Extended from Adastral Park. The event was the brainchild of Mark Thomas at Coderus, they are situated on the Innovation Martlesham also.
Google I/O Extended are events which enable people to experience the keynotes of I/O in Silicon Valley in their own countries. BT provided some amazing facilities to web cast the event to a large auditorium and Coderus were on hand to demonstrate some amazing Google products such as Chromecast and the Nexus Player. We also enjoyed Google themed cupcakes and sandwiches which were delicious.
After the keynotes were finished, there was a question and answer session hosted by Jim Milne from Innovation Martlesham and featured guest speakers from the tech area to answer questions and queries about the direction that Google is taking and there were some very interesting discussions about the nurturing role we can all take with young people to help encourage a new generation of UK based IT expertise.
For those of us that waited until the very end of the evening, we were very pleasantly surprised to receive our very own Google Cardboard to take away.
Google Cardboard is a VR system developed by Google engineers David Coz and Damien Henry in their 20% time. It was first released at Google I/O 2014 developers conference.
Google Cardboard
This year, Google have updated ‘Cardboard’ to support phones of up to 6 inches screen size and now it works with the Apple iPhone (but check your screen size is big enough!). Google Cardboard headsets cost about £12 to construct and the plans and specifications are freely available to buy online for about a tenner.
They are very simple to use, you install the Google Cardboard app on your smartphone, then slide it into the back of the ‘device’. There is normally an NFC tag with the headset which automatically identifies itself and tells your phone it is ready to work in ‘3d’.
The two lenses built into Cardboard focus onto the screen on the phone and produces the impression of stereoscopic 3d.
The apps are the real gem in the whole idea and there are hundreds available and most provide and incredibly immersive experience, it’s a fantastic opportunity to try out VR and at a low entry cost it means it’s accessible to everyone with compatible smartphone.
Thanks to Mark Thomas and everyone at Coderus for the evening, it was very interesting. You can find out more about the company by visiting their website here or following them on Twitter here
We had a wonderful day at the World Endurance Championship’s 6 Hours of Silverstone last weekend. Not only were we guests of the wonderful people at Porsche Motorsports, we were also able to chat to the Technicians and Drivers and find out more about how the idea of Hybrid power translates to the worlds fastest racecars.
Matt Porter interviews Mark Webber about the Porsche 919 LMP1
During our day, we were able to speak to former Formula 1 driver Mark Webber who is now racing the Porsche 919 LMP1. We also spoke at length to Alexander Hitzinger who is in charge for the 919’s development as Technical Director for the LMP1 and Michael Christensen who is the works driver for the Porsche 911 RSR.
I would like to thank the ever amazing Mark Webber for his patience after a long day! Sam Lloyd at Lloyd Bell Productions and Nick Perry at Porsche Cars Great Britain for their help making the day so memorable.
Massive thanks to Paul Shalan for attending with me and taking so many AMAZING photographs!!
You can listen to this weeks episode at the top of the page or below.
This week we look at the Motorola Moto 360 Smartwatch. With traditional round face and high end looks, this is one of the most appealing smart watches on the market at the present time.
Listen to the stream and find out what we thought of it. Stay tuned for a full review of the Moto 360 online here soon!!
This week we chat about a tablet with an integrated detachable keyboard. This is the 10.1 inch ASUS Transformer TF103C.
Both myself and Mark agreed that tablets are great, but when you need to do some serious typing, keyboards are even better. The Transformer allows the best of both worlds and I really enjoyed using the device.
Thanks to Lauren at Hotwire PR for providing the device!!
When thinking about electric cars, most people conjure up images of 60 sci-fi movies with passengers sitting in a bubble of glass on empty elevated roads. This is very far from the reality of 21st century electric vehicles, which are very similar in look to their petrol drinking cousins and literally bursting at the seams with technology.
Over the past months, I have been given the amazing opportunity to test five of these vehicles, from the quirky two seater Renault Twizy to the awesome BMW i8. However nothing was going to prepare me for the most recent vehicle, designed and built by a Silcon Valley based company headed up by Elon Musk who spends the other half of his day heading up SpaceX, the private space rocket business.
The KTM eStreet P is a really nice electric bike which makes great use of pedal assistance with the 250w motor giving you up to 400% assistance. I’m really impressed with the bike and I will be reviewing it in full later this week. For now listen in to the stream and find out about this very nice eBike.
