Connected Bikes

These days everything is connected and customized. We do not have the courage to go off the grid...ever. Even if we decide to go out for a nice bike ride, there are plenty of mobile applications that can be right there with you. If you decide to ditch your phone, you can use you bike to gather data about that bike ride. It isn't so leisurely and enjoyable anymore, is it? The Toronto-based Vanhawks crew went whole hog and put all of the “connected” functionality that the Helios bars have into a badass, heck of a good-looking bike. And they took “the internet of bikes” theme quite a bit further than Gibbs did, though he still has one thing on them -- his Helios bars have blinking directional lights, a safety feature we’re surprised the Valour doesn’t seem to have. Designed to make urban bike commuting safer, the Valour does, however, warn riders of dangers lurking in their blind spots. The bike’s mesh network, ultrasonic haptic feedback sensors detect nearby vehicles. When riders veer too close to traffic, the sensors trigger the handlebars to vibrate, another industry “first” the bike’s designers claim they boast the bragging rights to. What do you think of this bike?

The Internet: Again

How long can you go without being online? Would you be able to ignore those internet faxes or emails for more than a day? And what exactly did we do with our time before the internet? It is easy to hate the internet and what it has made us into. People used to have conversations face to face and spent their time meaningfully. Now many of us are checking our Facebook statuses and reading Twitter feeds in between the time we are playing riveting games of candy crush. Admit it, you know it sucks when you run out of lives in that game. These days we actually have to tell our kids that they should never type anything online that they could not say to their mother's face. Anonymity has given people a wall that they use for protection. Along the same lines, what if the internet have left some positive effects? It has been able to connect more people that live thousands of miles away. It has exposed many companies and businesses and made everything more transparent. People have more access to information. The question then becomes, are more people taking advantage of everything that the internet has to offer?