prizes

With a little help from Al Unser, Jr., electric car-maker Zap this week will move onto the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize finals. Unser will pilot Zap's spiffy three-wheeled sports car, Alias, thanks in part to the latest generation of Firestone Firehawk tires.

The X Prize is a global competition that started with 142 competitors. Zap was one of the first group of teams that entered, signing on back in June 2007.

A series of scored performance and evaluation events began on April 26, 2010. Currently, 13 teams with 15 clean, production-capable vehicles remain in the competition. The vehicles … Read more

Electric vehicle pioneer ZAP and Zhejiang Jonway Automobile delivered the first electric taxi produced through their China venture, ZAP Jonway, to Korean distribution partner Samyang Optics. Several new ZAP electric vehicles will be on display at the automotive engineering technology expo EV KOREA July 14 to July 16 at the Coex exhibition center in Seoul. Samyang Optics and ZAP Jonway are the official sponsors of the event.

The ZAP Taxi is an electric SUV based on the Jonway A380 with an electric drive train designed and integrated by ZAP. Also on display is the Alias, a futuristic-looking electric car designed … Read more

If Ford's MyFord Touch and the Chevy Volt's digital instrument cluster are any indicator, future vehicle instrumentation may be much more complex than the handful of analog gauges to which we're all accustomed.

Judging from the ideas of high school students tasked with designing conceptual dashboards that encourage green practices, teenagers may have a hand in shaping that future dash.

Their suggestions include an in-dash avatar that coaches drivers toward efficiency, a smart navigation system that tells you when it's better to skip the car and take public transportion, and a Web-connected dash that rewards the … Read more

At a gala charity event Saturday night featuring "Avatar" director James Cameron, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and a who's who of tech industry luminaries, the X Prize Foundation laid out its vision for the next five years.

Already in 2004, the foundation has paid out $10 million in prize money for the winner of the Ansari X Prize, which in 2004 went to the first non-governmental team to launch a vehicle into space twice in two weeks. The prize winners were Burt Rutan and the Paul Allen-backed team that built SpaceShipOne.

The foundation offers … Read more

If you're anything like me, you'd really, really like to have an iPad--but you don't have an extra $500 lying around. (Or $600. Or $700. You get the idea.) Resorting to crime is not an option, so that leaves just one other possibility: contests.

With a little investigative legwork, I found four contests offering an iPad as the grand prize. Some require a little hoop-jumping on your part, like creating a video for YouTube, whereas others are as simple as completing a short entry form. Here are your best bets for winning an iPad:

Netflix, the Web's top movie-renting service, announced Friday that it has canceled plans to hold a second contest that awards a prize to whoever could come up with the most accurate system of predicting user film choices based on their viewing histories.

In 2006, Netflix launched the Netflix Contest and offered $1 million to anyone who could improve its recommendation engine. In September, the company finally awarded the prize to a team that included three AT&T researchers. To compete, competitors studied millions of demographic data, including age, sex, ZIP code, and previously rented movies.

The Federal Trade … Read more

This year's Lemelson-MIT Student Prize has gone to a man who has his intellectual fingers in the pots of biotechnology, genetics, sensor technology, applied mathematics, and even evolutionary linguistics.

Erez Lieberman-Aiden, graduate student at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, has been awarded the 2010 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. His body of work to date includes inventing a 3D mapping tool and using it to discover new info about the inner workings of the human genome, developing a sensor-laden sneaker to assist the elderly, and co-developing a mathematical method for tracking widespread and complex evolutionary changes in things … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--For Rob Nail, Saturday was a bonanza of opportunity.

Over dinner that night in building 20 at the NASA Ames Research Center here, Nail found himself discussing 3D printing and housing with X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis. Already, Nail had been considering buying some farming land in Northern California and had been interested in the nascent concept of 3D printed buildings. He told Diamandis that he wanted to try that on the land.

"He says," Nail recalled, "I want to make this introduction," and grabbed Nail, pulling him a few tables over to … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Having already set private space travel in motion, the organizers of the X Prize are ready to unveil the future of the cutting-edge competitions.

On May 15, at a gala fundraising event to be held at George Lucas' Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco, X Prize Foundation Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, along with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and "Avatar" director James Cameron will unveil their five-year vision for the famous awards.

The X Prize first gained fame for its promise of a $10 million prize to the first private team … Read more