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Posts tagged Traffic
Honda smartphone app reduces fuel consumption, traffic jams
063 days
by J
A Honda smartphone app has been tested in Indonesia, proving that it can significantly reduce traffic jams and improve fuel efficiency by up to 22%.
The idea is to try and synchronize the way vehicles are driven, according to the research, and the experiment took place between September 2012 and February 2013 on a public road in Jakarta, Indonesia.The problem is usually that drivers tend to maintain a safe distance between their car and the one in front, and they reduce speed drastically in order to do so. The car behind them does the same, and so on, decreasing traffic efficiency and increasing fuel consumption.
The application monitors the way the car accelerates and decelerates, and the smartphone app would use color coded screens to guide drivers – when the screen was green, it meant that the car was driven in sync with the other ones. If it wasn’t, it would show a blue screen, as you can see in the image below ( the smartphone used looks like a Samsung Galaxy S3).
Two types of testing using the application were performed, one in which the smartphone worked by itself, and one in which all of the smartphones were connected to a cloud system. Fuel efficiency was increased by 20% for the first type of test, while a traffic jam was delayed by up to six minutes and an average of three. With the second method, where the system was interconnected, fuel efficiency was 22% better, while the traffic jam occurrence was delayed by six minutes (four on average).
The results were obtained by comparing traffic and fuel efficiency on two consecutive days, with and without the system.
Now, I’m sure self-driving cars will know how to manage such things on their own, but until then, this seems like a pretty good idea and hopefully it will be applied in as many places as possible.
Until then, I hope the app will be available to everyone soon. Would you use it, if it were?
The post Honda smartphone app reduces fuel consumption, traffic jams appeared first on Android Authority.
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iPhone 5 ahead of Samsung Galaxy S3 in web traffic, but only by a whisker
097 days
by J
We know that most of you like to focus on the positives when it comes to the Android vs iOS “war”, but you probably remember one particular battle the iPhone 5 easily won against the Samsung Galaxy S3 last fall.
Although it was only out for a few weeks, Apple’s latest had the clear upper hand against the S3 in North American web usage. The score was 56% – 44%, and, with GS3’s hotness declining, it was natural to expect the gap to widen over the following months, right?
But, believe it or not, the two phones are now almost tied. According to Chitika’s latest US and Canada report, if we only take the iPhone 5 and S3 into account, the score is 51% – 49%. That’s based on web traffic from February 1 to February 9, but we have no reason to believe the data doesn’t reflect a wider trend.
Both phones’ shares are on the rise when looking at the mobile phone market as a whole, with the iPhone 5 capturing 6.6% (previously 3%) of the total web traffic and the GS3 at 6.4% (up from 2%). Other iPhones have accounted for a 34.9% piece of the pie, Samsung had 14.2%, while “outsiders” had 37.8%.
Samsung was therefore considerably behind Apple, but on the flipside the trend seems to be favorable to the Koreans. Sammy’s total share of 20.6% is up three points since October, while Cupertino dipped from 46% to 41.5%.
Getting back to the GS3 vs iPhone 5 battle, we have to wonder what exactly happened to turn the tables. Does Samsung’s super-phone get better with age? Are S3 users now more active on the web for a reason? Or was the report a fluke and the iPhone 5 will again widen the gap next time?
