Toyota has announced its support for a group of engineers who are developing a flying car.
The Japanese auto maker will give 40 million yen ($355, 000) to the Cartivator group that operates outside Toyota city in central Japan.
The Nikkei Asian Review reports Toyota and its group companies have agreed in principle to back the project.
So far, crowdfunding has paid for development of the so-called Skydrive car, which uses drone technology and has three wheels and four rotors.
Measuring 9.5ft by 4.3ft, Skydrive claims to be the world’s smallest flying car.
It has a projected top flight speed of 100km/h (62mph), while traveling up to 10m above the ground.
The team of 30 volunteers developing the Skydrive car hopes its prototype could be used to light the Olympic flame when Tokyo hosts the summer games in 2020.
Flying cars are something of a flavor-of-the-month at present, with companies from the US, Germany, Netherlands, China and Japan looking to turn science fiction into reality.
Microsoft has officially released Windows 8.1 – an update to its Windows 8 operating system – during a keynote speech at its annual developers conference in San Francisco.
The free test version of the update is available to download now and the full version will be released to Windows 8 users later this year.
The lock screen is being turned into a “cloud-powered photo frame” that will shows photos stored on the device and in SkyDrive.
Microsoft has officially released Windows 8.1
Windows 8.1 also includes a vastly improved “search” function, which allows a user to search for documents, apps, or items on the Internet from a single search bar.
It also allows users to see all their applications immediately in a grid by swiping down or pressing a button on-screen.
There are new personalization options for tiles including colors and fonts.
Users can also customize the start screen much more easily; changing sizes of app icons or controlling which apps appear.
For the first time, it will be possible to open two windows simultaneously in the new-look interface.
Windows 8.1 includes Microsoft’s latest browser, Internet Explorer 11, and lets the user restore the address bar and tabs to the screen view.
Microsoft is overhauling its free webmail service, dropping the Hotmail brand it has used since acquiring the product in 1998, and adopting the name Outlook.com.
The revamped service will help sort messages as they arrive and allow users to make internet calls on Skype.
It said the move would help tackle the problem of “cluttered” inboxes.
The action may also be designed to win over users of Google’s rival Gmail service.
Microsoft said that in many cases email had become a “chore” because its users accounts had become “overloaded” with material.
Its solution is to automatically sort messages into different areas to distinguish between emails from contacts, newsletters, package delivery notices, social network posts and other identifiers determined by the account holder.
Microsoft is overhauling its free webmail service, dropping the Hotmail brand, and adopting the name Outlook.com
In addition it is taking steps to link the Outlook account with other services the user might have subscribed to.
“We are giving you the first email service that is connected to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google, and soon, Skype, to bring relevant context and communications to your email,” the firm’s Chris Jones said on its blog.
“In the Outlook.com inbox, your personal email comes alive with photos of your friends, recent status updates and tweets that your friend has shared with you, the ability to chat and video call – all powered by an always up-to-date contact list that is connected to your social networks.”
In what may be perceived as a dig at Google, Chris Jones added that the firm would not scan email content or attachments in order to sell the information to advertisers or others.
He also announced that web versions of the firms Office apps were built-in, potentially helping it counter competition from other web-based application suits such as Google Docs and Zoho Docs.
Outlook.com also links up with Microsoft’s Skydrive cloud storage, allowing users to send photos and other documents via the service to avoid the risk of going over their attachment size limit.
This could pose a threat to the rival Google Drive service as well as Dropbox, Sugarsync and others.
Chris Jones said the firm had built a “brand new service from the ground up”. But Matt Cain, an analyst at the tech consultants Gartner, played down the suggestion of a major leap forwards.
“Outlook.com represents reverse-consumerisation – taking a ubiquitous business tool and recrafting it for the consumer market,” he said.
“There really is no new technology here – the filtering tools have been around for some time as well as the social network integration.
“What is new is the cleaned up user interface, and the marketing spin, and the tight integration with office web apps and Skydrive, and the forthcoming integration with Skype.”
Microsoft is offering the service in a “preview” mode for the time being and has not announced an official release date. While it advises users to upgrade, Hotmail subscribers can stick with the old system if they wish – at least for now.
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