Author: Serkadis

Filed under: Coupe, Ford

The 2010 Mustang was by all accounts a pretty significant refresh compared to the 2009 model, with a vastly superior interior, better ride and handling and, some would say, improved outward aesthetics. But there was still something missing. The Blue Oval used carry-over powertrains, and in the case of the 210-horsepower V6 model, nothing changed.

For the 2011 model year, Ford is rectifying that mistake two-fold. The 5.0-liter V8 gets a great deal of press for its impressive 412 hp and 390 pound-feet of twist, but many members of the Autoblog team are just as excited to get their hands on the new 305 hp, 280 lb-ft 3.7-liter V6 offering. We’ll likely have to wait a bit longer to curb that urge, but the folks over at Motor Trend have already been given a taste.

MT’s Arthur St. Antoine was invited to Ford’s Arizona proving grounds to spend some seat time behind the wheel in the passenger seat of the updated ponycar, and though he didn’t get to drive he liked what he experienced. St. Antoine calls the new V6 mill “plenty strong,” adding that the engine is smoother, stronger and sounds better than the outgoing 4.0-liter six ever could. After some gentle strolling around Arizona, St. Antoine meandered back over to the proving grounds for some laps in a Performance Package V6 model with vehicle dynamics engineer (and Top Gun-level driver) Jamie Cullen. From the perspective of the right seat, the 3.7-liter Stang reportedly was able to handle anything thrown its way with flat cornering, strong braking and near constant contact between the tires and the track. Head over to Motor Trend to read the report from the passenger seat and make the jump for the video.

[Source: Motor Trend]

Continue reading Video: Motor Trend gets first ride in 2011 Ford Mustang V6, Camaro and Challenger compared

Video: Motor Trend gets first ride in 2011 Ford Mustang V6, Camaro and Challenger compared originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Car Buying, Budget, Hybrid, Hatchback, Honda

Honda Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo doesn’t seem to think that the automaker will hit its worldwide sales goal of 200,000 Insight hybrids in its first year on the market. Why? In an interview with Bloomberg, Kondo is quoted as saying “I think we compromised too much on size in pursuing fuel efficiency” for the U.S. market, he said.

In total, Honda sold 130,445 units of its Insight worldwide in 2009. The car was first introduced in Japan in February and then in the U.S. in March. In the States, the car’s second-largest market, Honda sold just 20,572 units in 2009 – a far cry from the 90,000 it hoped to sell here in the first year.

Further, in reference to the long-expected Honda Fit Hybrid, Kondo said:

There are plenty of people who think that the current Fit meets their needs already [when it comes to fuel efficiency]… a hybrid version might seem expensive. Our engineers are really struggling.

It remains to be seen whether the upcoming CR-Z can bolster Honda’s sketchy hybrid positioning.

[Source: Bloomberg]

Honda: Insight “too small” and likely to miss sales targets, Fit Hybrid a ’struggle’ originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Location-based services continue their hot streak when it comes to funding, as Ambient Industries has received an extension to their seed round to build out their application Flook. Alongside this news, Flook is gaining a number of new features to expand it location-based discovery elements. The extension of the funding from Amadeus Capital Partners and Eden Ventures totals close to $1 million, we’re told. This is on top of the undisclosed amount they raised from the same investors in late 2008.

Flook is a location-based service that has both a web app and an iPhone app. It can probably best be described as a StumbleUpon for location-based discovery, as that’s pretty much how you use it. On the iPhone app, which launched a few weeks ago, users create “cards,” which contain a title, a picture, and a caption. You then tag the card in the correct category (“funny,” “art,” “food & drink,” etc) and when you upload it, Flook tags your location to it, so that others will find it. Users browse these cards on the main screen either by simply scrolling through cards near them or cards from people they follow on Flook. The cards you like the most, you can “collect” to view later.

Here’s a list of the newer features of the application being announced alongside the funding:

• Twitter: Cards can easily be tweeted, either from the web, or from your phone by enabling settings for those who want to use flook to interact with their other social networks.
• APIs: APIs are in closed beta as we are still installing the nuts and bolts, but we encourage companies with interesting applications and integration plans to contact us at [email protected].
• Flickr Import: This is a really cool way to auto-generate flook cards from geolocated flickr photos. Just tag your photo with one of our keywords (for example, flookfunny to make a funny card), and your photo’s title becomes your flook card’s title, with its description becoming the caption. At the moment this functionality is limited to a few people we really like – people with great content on the web that they want to share with their followers, enabling them to find their content when they’re out and about.
• New Content Partners: One of the first of our new partners is Ghost Signs (http://flook.it/community/ghostsigns/). Now, if you’re out and about in London you’ll easily be able to track down Sam’s great content – and use the back of the flook card to start a discussion on it. The Ghost Signs cards are examples of hand painted advertising on walls which are part of a wider collection held within the History of Advertising Trust Ghostsigns Archive. The archive opens for business on 19th March 2010. Flook helps Sam get the word out.
• Collection & Following on the Web: Hey, this is cool! We’ve increased the synergy of flook and its web-based interface. Now when someone emails you a flook card, and you follow the link to the web, you can collect that card for later, or follow its creator. This is a great way to make a great collection of stuff to do when you’re out and about with your iPhone.
• Translation: When not exploring our local area, we are feeding our imaginations by looking at the cards that flookers make all around the world. We have brave flookers starting communities in places as diverse as Taiwan, India, China and Australia. Up until now, we’ve been able to admire the photos, but I haven’t had a clue what people were flooking on about. But now you can just tap the card to bring up the HUD and hit the translate button to turn “G’day mate, this dunny is cactus” to “Hello my good man, I’m afraid this lavatory is inoperative”. Although this feature is in its infancy (you can’t translate comments yet), we think it has great potential. Soon, we think you’ll all be exploring Darkest Peru and Outer Mongolia with flook, and getting fantastic tips for places to visit from the locals rather than the same old same old from an expat guidebook author who probably doesn’t even speak the language.
• We love widgets! Now, if you have your own website, but love to flook, you can invite your people to follow you on flook with a handy widget that you place on your site.

Flook is an interesting way to find a variety of location-based information. It doesn’t emphasize the popular check-in model like Foursquare or Gowalla, or the game-heavy model like MyTown, and instead focuses on visual aspects. The new Flickr import ability seems like a great idea to extend this usage.

Two of Ambient Industries founders, Roger Nolan and Jane Sales, are perhaps best known for their work at Psion, where they contributed the code that would eventually become the Symbian OS.

See more of Flook in the video below or find the free app in the App Store here.

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Article Tags: Alan Caruba

The utterly baseless case for “global warming” is melting a lot faster than the glaciers in India’s Himalayas which, by the way, are not melting.

It is time for the Nobel Committee to rescind the Peace Prize given to Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It is time for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences committee to take back Al Gore’s Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth”, an alleged documentary that became mandatory viewing for students in the U.S. and around the world. Purporting to “prove” that the Earth was rapidly warming due to the rise in “greenhouse gases”, it is a fraud.

In the event the news hasn’t reached you, in mid-August 2009, after repeated requests for the Climate Research Unit’s raw data from which it calculated global temperatures, the CRU at the University of East Anglia (UK), a key element of the UN’s IPCC, announced that it had discarded the data, thereby making it impossible to determine if their assertions of rising global temperatures were accurate and true. Or not.

Source: factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com

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Filed under: Government/Legal, GM, Saab, Spyker

When Koenigsegg dropped out of the running to purchase Saab from General Motors, there apparently weren’t many automakers interested in rescuing the Swedish brand from the abyss. The only company with any serious interest, Spyker, seemed to be a long-shot to bring the brand into its portfolio. Of course, we now know that other investment groups were in the running, but Spyker came out on top to purchase Saab for $75 million and a closet full of clogs. But just like the winding road that led to the sale, the story doesn’t simply end there. According to several reports, the deal could have been done a month sooner were it not for the involvement of the Russia’s Antonov group.

SR International is among several international news agencies to report that the Swedish government was under the strong suspicion that the Antonov group has strong ties to the Russian mafia. The Antonov family is allegedly tied to organized crime and money laundering, and the English government has blocked the family from investing in the UK because of similar suspicions. The Swedish government then reportedly informed America’s FBI of their findings, a move that lead to the U.S. government telling the GM board to stop the sale of Saab to Spyker on December 18. Hans Lindblad, state secretary at the Swedish Ministry of Finance, has reportedly confirmed the situation, adding that the discovery gave the Swedish government more time to help broker a deal.

In the end, Spyker was able to purchase Saab from GM only after the Antonov group was bought out of its interest in Dutch specialty automaker. And we thought the Saab tale couldn’t get any weirder… or convoluted.

[Sources: SR International, The Local]

Report: Spyker investor Antonov’s alleged ties to organized crime nixed earlier Saab deal originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the midst of massive headcount cuts, another AOL exec is departing the newly-independent company. Ralph Rivera, previously the Vice President of AOL Games and AOL Latino, where he was responsible for AOL’s portfolio of online casual games and helped expand its international reach, is leaving to become President of Major League Gaming, Online. MLG is a small but growing professional competitive video game league. Rivera will be tasked to lead digital strategy and online product development for the growing company.

Major League Gaming has shown strong growth in the past few years. The company claims 10 million unique visitors per month, more than double from a year ago, and 6 million video streams. The company has taken $46 Million in funding since inception and have recently landed Doritos and Hot Pockets as advertising partners.

Rivera believes MLG is at an “inflection point” and hopes to help it scale into a larger property. He joins a growing list of long-time executives to jump ship as AOL begins to purge 1/3 of its workforce. As the churn continues, many AOL vets are staring somewhere instead of building up the ‘New AOL’.

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Have any idea what a SureType keypad would look like if it were removed from a BlackBerry and (barely) enlarged? We’re guessing it’d look a little something like this. Designed by Mobience, the smallQWERTY keyboard is meant to give you a more tactile option when it comes to texting or inputting characters into your phone, MID, UMPC or pretty much any other handheld device. There’s no mention of a price, and we’re not told exactly how long it’ll take to master this thing, but we’re bubbling over just thinking of the fun we could have from hacking into the text input fields of nearby devices with this. Shh… you didn’t hear that from us.

Mobience smallQWERTY keyboard saves the lives of touchscreen detesters originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like Fusion Garage is out to remind people that there’s more than one $499 tablet in the world today: CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan is talking up the Joojoo tablet’s pre-orders, and the company’s lawyers have filed a delightfully snippy motion to dismiss TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington’s lawsuit over the device formerly known as CrunchPad, saying his claims are “legally barred, facially flawed, and fatally imprecise.” As we predicted from the outset, the argument boils down to the fact that there was never any contract between Fusion Garage and Michael Arrington or TechCrunch — and Fusion Garage also points out it can’t have stolen an idea that Arrington posted “all over the Internet.” Snap. It’s a little more complicated than that, though — we’ve broken it down after the break, grab the PDF and follow along.

Continue reading Fusion Garage files to dismiss CrunchPad lawsuit

Fusion Garage files to dismiss CrunchPad lawsuit originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As we approach the 4:00 PM finish line, it looking like the Bulls will pull off a win for today.

The Dow is up 105 points to 10,172, with the NASDAQ and S&P up 20 points and 12 points, respectively.

The energy sector is seeing nice gains today, along with tech and banking.

Commodities are enjoying a rally as well. Gold is killing it, now up to $1106, up $23. Silver is up 3% to $16.68.

Crude oil is trading at $74.72, up 2.5%.

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See Also:

• Dow Now Up Over 100 Points, Commodities In Control
• A Tumultuous Day For The Market As Stocks Post A Last-Minute Rally
• Equities Rally, Gold And Oil Up, Greece Fears Take A Back Seat

The Tester it’s the reality show for gamers, by the guys who bring you games. All those other reality shows may have numbed your interest for another one, but the PlayStation Network isn’t gonna let their

Alienware M11x ‘netbook’ gets detailed, headed to Japan this month originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When the Google Nexus One was announced early last month, Android fans went giddy with excitement, especially since there is an option to buy it unlocked. The only downside was that if you wanted 3G service, you were limited to T-Mobile’s decent, but smaller network. AT&T users are still out of luck and limited to EDGE speeds on the handset, but according to documents filed at the FCC, the Nexus One will support the 3G bands used in North America. That means AT&T, Rogers, Bell and Telus customers can enjoy the Nexus One in all its glory (whenever the Canadians manage to get their hands on the device).

Read the rest of this post at MobileCrunch>>

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With the Super Bowl less than a week away, I am reminded of the 2002 New England Patriots team which defeated the St. Louis Rams to win the NFL title despite being labeled a clear underdog. During the player introductions, after each Rams starter soaked up the limelight one after another, the Patriots chose to enter the stadium as a team, waiving their rights to player-by-player introductions. The Patriots went on to shock the world by upsetting the talented Rams team, and ever since, Super Bowl teams have followed in their footsteps by entering the field as a team.

But what does football have to do with startups? According to Zynga’s Mark Pincus, football of a different sort helps enables him to identify which people would be successful in business and management. Recounting a story from his days of playing soccer in school, Pincus says teamwork, not talent, helped his school reach the state quarterfinals – a lesson he has carried with him to the boardroom.

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“The one thing I learned from that was that I actually could tell what someone would be like in business, based on how they played on the soccer field,” Pincus said in an interview with Adam Bryant of the New York Times. “So even today when I play in Sunday-morning soccer games, I can literally spot the people who’d probably be good managers and good people to hire.”

With smaller companies, its easier to communicate with each employee and make sure they’re all on task and contributing to the game plan, says Pincus. But when companies expand to hundreds of employees, this becomes impossible for one C.E.O. to manage, so why not make more C.E.O.s? That’s exactly what Pincus did.

“I said, ‘By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful’,” says Pincus. “And that way, everyone knows who’s C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it. And there was nowhere to hide.”

Pincus says this management style has allowed Zynga to achieve more without his direct involvement in every decision. By placing more trust in his employees and empowering them to take control of their piece of the puzzle, Pincus has been able to focus on doing his job – being a C.E.O.

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb is a syndication partner of the New York Times.

Photos by Flick users dearbarbie and Crunchies2009.

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The same guy who reviewed the Phantom Menace, apparently while sloppy drunk on a mixture of Percocet and vodka, just reviewed Avatar. His bottom line? Cameron made an affective film – affective in its purest form. Everything is “perfect,” culturally.

Part two is after the jump. Good stuff.

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This week, we officially welcomed the arrival of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus to Verizon.  We also were inundated with a ton of hoopla related to the Apple iPad announcement. Our sister site, The iPhone Blog has extensive coverage (in case you actually missed something).  And our own Dieter Bohn had some interesting thoughts in his post:

The one thought we can’t get out of our heads: the iPad combined with Mobile Hotspot on webOS sounds like a match made in heaven, doesn’t it?

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“Pants On The Ground” Mania isn’t done with us yet. General Larry Platt and the global phenomenon set off by his hit track fires on more than two weeks after the Atlanta senior citizen debuted the tune to the world during an audition on the 9th season of American Idol. After news broke that offers from record labels were on the table for the overnight sensation, an official studio recording of the song that made him famous has hit the web!

But more money almost always means more problems, TMZ is reporting that the General is on the outs with his former manager, Jason Mills, who’s releasing the song to radio stations without Larry’s consent.

COVINGTON, KY—The United States Attorney’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation jointly announced today that Foster Haley, 46, of Burlington, Ky. was sentenced yesterday to 115 months in prison for robbing a bank in Erlanger, Ky.

U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning also ordered Haley to pay full restitution.In the course of his guilty plea, Haley admitted that he robbed the Fifth Third Bank on Commonwealth Avenue on April 10, 2009.

He obtained approximately $3,750 after passing a threatening note to the teller.

The teller also reported that Haley made a gesture toward his shirt as if he had a weapon under it. An off-duty police officer confronted Haley as he attempted to flee in his vehicle.

Haley attempted to drive away and dragged the officer alongside his car for approximately 35 feet, causing minor injuries and striking an unoccupied car.

Under federal law, Haley will have to serve at least 85 percent of his prison sentence before being released.

He will also be under the supervision of the United States Probation Office for three years after the completion of his prison sentence.

Haley possesses a lengthy criminal history that includes convictions for arson, burglary, assault, as well as numerous theft offenses and crimes involving stolen credit cards.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI and the Erlanger Police Department.

The United States was represented by Assistant United States Attorney Anthony J. Bracke.

Article Tags: Newspaper Article

IPCC sources student’s essay to make melting ice claims

Climate boss uses 1.8litre car to make a 1mile journey to work

Chief scientist: ‘Climategate’ emails ‘were hacked by spies

The UN’s climate change panel has been caught making unfounded claims for the third time in just two weeks.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used a student’s essay and an article from a climbing magazine to make claims about reductions in ice on mountains.

The IPCC has also been found to have used data that had nothing to do with global warming to warn of looming catastrophe in the Amazon rainforest.

Click source to read FULL report from Fiona Macrae and David Derbyshire

Source: dailymail.co.uk

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We were quite taken with the M11x when we got some hands-on time with it at CES, and while newly leaked info on the gaming ultraportable aren’t exactly what we expected, they don’t at all dampen the excitement.

We knew already about the Nvidia 335M graphics running the show on Dell’s 11.6-inch machine, but now the processor options have been detailed as well in slides that showed up on Sina.com. The M11x will apparently ship with either a Pentium SU4100 or Core2Duo SU7300, giving it more power than you would typically expect from such a small laptop.

The slides also indicate that the M11x will ship as early as Feb. 5th, earlier than the “later this year” we’d gotten earlier had indicated. It also apparently prices out starting at $899, presumably for the Pentium model, though it’s not entirely clear based on the slide. UPDATE: According to the Alienware M11x Sweepstakes website, pricing will start at $799. So we’ll have to wait and see exactly what configuration that $899 price point is referencing. (Thanks, Tyler!)

Time will tell if this information holds up, but if it does, that’s sounds like a pretty good price for such a powerful and portable gaming notebook.

UPDATE: Looks like the specs held up better than the price and date. [Sina via Engadget]