The Brassy Powerhouse is back in the booth. Christina Aguilera joins forces with entertainment legend Cher in the upcoming movie musical Burlesque. Although she’s making her feature film debut, Xtina never strays far from her roots as a vocalist. Take a listen to “Spotlight,” a retro new track that just leaked from the Burlesque soundtrack!
Rock It or Drop It?
Mitsubishi Motors North America said it is setting its sights on returning to 100,000 units sales in a calendar year. The Japanese brand has suffered a severe drop in volume in recent years.
“I’d say (we’ll hit the mark) probably within three years,” John Koenig, executive vice president-MMNA, told WardsAuto during an interview.
Mitsubishi sold only 53,986 vehicles in the U.S. last year, a whopping 44.5 percent below the 97,257 it sold in 2008. Volume in 2008 was also down from 2007, which was the last year Mitsubishi sold more than 100,000 vehicles in the U.S., 128,993 to be exact.
Of course all this looks really bad for a brand that sold 345,111 units as recently as 2002; however, Mitsubishi sales fell due to a fallout from its 0 percent financing incentive and as the U.S. auto industry faced one of the worst years ever in 2009.
Mitsubishi said that it will focus more on the retail segment with new models.
“We’ve assured (our dealers) we’re not leaving the North American market,” Koenig says. “That’s probably their biggest fear, because they’re reading about it in various journals.”
– By: Stephen Calogera
Barely a week into the New Year I wrote an article entitled Magic Mouse Drains Keyboard Batteries. The clue is in the title. According to reports on the Apple Support forum, people were discovering that their diminutive Apple wireless keyboards were suddenly chewing through battery life faster than a first generation iPod in 2010. The Magic Mouse was blamed, and naturally, we wailed and gnashed our teeth.
Well, last night, Apple released version 1.1 of the Aluminum Keyboard Firmware via Software Update. And as a man almost ready to buy Energizer shares (anything to try to win back the cost of paying for high-performance batteries every week) its description sounded very promising.
“This firmware update improves battery performance of the 2007 aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard when used in combination with other bluetooth devices (eg. Magic Mouse, some bluetooth headsets) and addresses an issue with the 2007 aluminum Apple Keyboard and the 2007 aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard where a key may repeat unexpectedly while typing. The update also addresses other issues.”
Promises Promises; the Aluminum Keyboard Firmware Update
I can’t say I’ve ever experienced the “key repeat” problem but I most certainly have watched in dismay as my keyboard greedily depleted — in record time — every expensive battery I put in the thing. (Remember that scene in My Stepmother is an Alien when Celeste sucks the flashlight batteries dry? Exactly the same.)
Not unexpectedly, the update required a restart — but that was a trifling inconvenience in return for longer battery life! In fact, it was only a few days ago I put in a fresh set of expensive Lithium batteries and I wasn’t eager to have to buy more any day soon. Imagine my surprise when the following message popped-up.
Shocking! Annoying, too. Prior to the update I could coax 9-14 days out of my batteries. The current batteries have been in for only three days and I’m being told they’re on the way out? Surely that’s no coincidence.
So what’s happening here? Bad batteries? Or could it be that Apple’s update has made things worse?
I headed back to the Apple Support pages to see what was being said. The experience of other Magic Mouse / Wireless Keyboard owners is so far somewhat mixed. Here’s what Creator2456 reports:
Did the firmware update […] The keyboard also REFUSES to stay powered on after the update. Already tried several batteries so it is not a power problem. The LED will light when I press the power button and then turn off within 5 seconds without pairing or anything.
Conversely, here’s a more ebullient comment from Xorgoo:
It works ! My alu keyboard (3 batteries) is reborn! 1% lost during the night, compare to 10% before.
And then there’s this warning from Freekarrot:
This update won’t work on recent 2-cell AWKs, which are heavily affected by the bug as well. Letting out an update just for one of the affected devices is ridiculous. It means they know what the problem is and how it is solved, but they either don’t know or refuse to acknowledge that ALL AWKs are affected!
Conspiracy theories aside, I really don’t know what to make of this sort of incompatibility. (I’m not sure what else to call it — ‘Not Playing Nicely Together-ness” doesn’t sound very smart; perhaps “malfunction” is better?) I understand Apple doesn’t develop its own Bluetooth drivers (that responsibility is left to Broadcomm, the manufacturers of all Bluetooth radios in Apple’s machines) but even so, for their own equipment to behave in such a flaky, unreliable manner really isn’t the ‘Apple Way’ to which I have become accustomed. It’s all supposed to ‘Just Work’, right?
Think about it; if Microsoft were to build a bluetooth keyboard and mouse that, individually, worked just fine but, together, played very silly games with battery-life, we would be so quick to tut-tut and shake our heads. We would chuckle, too, adding ever-so-smugly (in the manner many Mac-heads are wont to do when commenting on Windows-PC-based problems) “Well, what do you expect from Microsoft?”
Just prior to the Firmware update, the now-very-happy Xorgoo complained;
More Than 100 days, more than 300 posts, and… nothing.
Apple, you have to do something.
And you should at least give us some news.
Do you think time will cure the trouble ? It won’t…
Well, Apple has done something. We now we have an update, but judging from my own initial experience and fresh comments on the Apple support pages, problems remain. Of course, one is a poor sample — my batteries may have already been too far-gone to benefit from the updated firmware. Maybe.
So now it’s over to you. Have you tried updating your firmware? Has it made any sort of difference? Share your findings with me in the comments below. And please… no comments about how we should ditch our Apple keyboards. I don’t care how shiny your Logitech is.
This morning, Facebook investors Yuri Milner of Russian holding company DST and Jim Breyer of Accell put the squash on hopes for a Facebook IPO in 2010.
It’s pretty disappointing news for all of us industry watchers hoping for another IPO bonanza.
Obviously the best person to take our complaints to would be Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Who better to explain why its best for Facebook to stay off the go-go public markets?
But of course Mark can’t and won’t talk about this type of thing.
So here’s do the next best thing: a Q&A with an Imaginary Mark Zuckerberg. We think you’ll find him startlingly candid.
Silicon Alley Insider: So Mark, Facebook revenues just hit a $1 billion annualized run rate and Proctor & Gamble is buliding an office in Silicon Valley just so they can buy ads from you guys. What could you possibly be waiting for?
Imaginary Mark Zuckerberg: Well, it’s true that we turned cash-flow positive last year, beating even our own (publicly managed) expectations for revenues. But let’s be honest: at this point, the suddenly respectable revenue figures have less to do with us “figuring out” brand advertising on the Web and more to do with our MASSIVE scale.
(You know we’re only being careful when we say we have 350 million monthly active users, right? Your grandma uses Facebook. She was user number 567,382,134, OK?)
SAI: Wait, I thought the secret to Facebook brand ads is that they drive users to Facebook “fan” pages, where brands can spam users who agree to become “fans.”
IMZ: Yep. And its not just those users brands can “message.” (Spam is such an ugly word.) Getting into that user’s news feed, they get to spam all their friends too!
But frankly, we have no idea how to quantify how much a “fan” is worth, yet. We might need to poach a few more Googlers first. (Nice “air quotes,” by the way.)
SAI: OK, but what about the $1.6 billion virtual goods business — Zynga and all that? Aren’t you guys are setting up a “Pay With Facebook” payments system that will take a 30% cut from all virtual good sales on Facebook? Didn’t I read some report that said you guys think it’ll double your revenues?
IMZ: Woah woah woah woah. Calm down. Yes we’ve been ogling Zynga’s $250 million revenues for some time now (also a laughably low estimate, by the way). Yes we’re trying out “Pay With Facebook” so we can get a 30% cut of it. Yes we expect the business to be huge. No we don’t want you telling people that.
Remember how when we launched Beacon I said Facebook would change media for the next 100 years, and then we ruined everyone’s Christmas? [Facebook COO] Sheryl [Sandberg] will have me waterboarded if I set expectations that high again.
Tell readers virtual goods are a “bubble.” That always works.
SAI: So we get that you don’t want to go public because you don’t want to answer to public shareholders — but what about your employees. They get paid in equity. Don’t they want an exit?
IMZ: You kidding me? DST bought everybody’s stock last Fall! Employees aren’t rich yet, but they’re set for the next five years or so.
By the way, who told you I don’t like answering to anybody? That’s just not true. Ask any of my cofounders. (There aren’t any around the office anymore, but I’m sure you can find one if you Google hard enough.)
SAI: So the Russians own all the stock — surely they want an exit at some point, right?
IMZ: Sure, but “at some point” is still a ways off for these guys. They are putting no pressure on us at all. And why would they?
Think about it: if we IPO’d then ANYBODY could buy Facebook stock. Right now shareholders looking for cash can either go to the Russians or some weird Web site. The harder it is for anybody else to buy stock, the cheaper it is for the Russians to gobble it all up at a laughably low valuation ($10 billion? Hah!)
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Stocks trounced analysts’ earnings forecasts in both Q2 and Q3 of 2009, each time forcing analysts to become more bullish with their numbers. Q3 in particular set the market’s expectations bar pretty high after 68% of companies’ earnings exceeded consensus forecasts.
Yet so far Q4 is delivering an even stronger showing. A full 70% of the 150 companies who have reported earnings have beaten their numbers this earnings season according to Bespoke Investment Group.
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This doesn’t look like any of the “Save The Date” notices I’ve gotten over the years. Engaged couple, Jeff Wong and Erin Martin, have produced a movie trailer-inspired “Save The Date” video for their wedding guests. Jeff and Erin are tying the knot this fall, on 10/10/10, to be exact. And to celebrate the occasion, the soon-to-be Mr. & Mrs. Wong have put together the mother of all “Save The Date” videos.
For the fourth time in a row, the Treasury has sold off short-term bills bearing no yields at all.
It seems that with a fresh round of jitters hitting the global economy, investors are only all-too-happy to let the government have their money for free, while they wait for other opportunities.
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EU has pledged to keep an eye on UK ISP’s Virgin Media latest plan to monitor illegal file-sharing traffic on its network following a complaint from human rights organization Privacy International. The European Commission said it would monitor how the ISP deploys the software it would use for deep-packet inspection of the t… (read more)
N.C. Wesleyan College senior Meghan Herd was recently honored as a recipient of the Community Impact Student Award presented at a conference of the N.C. Campus Compact at Western Carolina University.…Wesleyan joined the N.C. Campus Compact group last summer as part of its effort to increase campus-wide participation in local community service activities. Campus Compact is a statewide coalition of higher education presidents and chancellors that encourages and supports campus engagement in the community.
»Read the entire article in the Rocky Mountain Telegram.
Frustrated with credits never showing up that Comcast reps had agreed to apply, and the subsequent reps saying he had no proof a deal was struck, Marc Pachtman launched a crusade of sorts. The biggest problem is that no rep would ever send him written confirmation. So he complained to the FCC, his local Congressman, and the CEO of Comcast. He got this letter back, which you yourself can use to demand written confirmations from Comcast reps:
December 10, 2009
Dear Mr. Pachtman,
Please accept my apology on behalf of Comcast Cable for the inconvenience you
experienced related to your cable service.As discussed, if you contact customer service regarding a promotional offer any representative should be able to contact their immediate supervisor or manager to provide written confirmation of the promotional offer.
Thank you for contacting our executive office with your questions and concerns. We at Comcast strive to offer 100% customer satisfaction.
If you have any questions or concerns please contact me at (302) 504-9002 (Monday-
Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.)Sincerely,
Yvette Loftin
Comcast PA-DE Regional Executive Office
Why You Can Get Written Confirmation From Comcast Now [NYT Bucks Blog]
The “Dancing Inmates” from Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center are paying homage to the King of Pop again. The inmates at the maximum security prison in the Philippines rose to fame after they choreographed their own rendition of Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” video in 2007. The video became a viral smash, and the prisoners have gone on to perform several other tributes to MJ, like this one:
The guys were recently treated to a visit by Michael Jackson’s long-time choreographer Travis Payne and dancers Daniel Celebre and Dres Reid, where they learned the steps that would have featured on Michael’s 2009 comeback tour, “This Is It.” The new video — which debuted on Friday — is already approaching 1 million views on YouTube.
Filed under: Budget, Europe, Hatchback, Volkswagen, Quick Spin
At last year’s Geneva Motor Show, we got our first in-person look at the all-new fifth-generation Volkswagen Polo, the brand’s popular B-segment model that slots in below the ever-expanding Golf and Jetta range. While subcompact vehicles like the Polo have been a staple in Europe for decades where fuel prices hover around $8/gallon, in the last few years, Americans have finally started to take a serious look at cars of this size. With the Honda Fit and Mini Cooper well established, the Ford Fiesta and Mazda2 twins on the way and an all-new Chevrolet Aveo coming late in 2010, the market for subcompact runabouts is picking up steam in the States – and VW is taking a long, hard look at adding the Polo to its North American lineup in the next few years.
With that in mind, VW trotted out a fleet of Polos for us to sample on its home turf near Wolfsburg, Germany recently – and while the automaker has yet to make a firm decision about importing the Polo to the U.S., they clearly wanted our feedback. Here’s what we told VW of America CEO Stefan Jacoby and his staff.
Photos by Sam Abuelsamid / Copyright (C)2009 Weblogs, Inc.
Continue reading Quick Spin: 2010 Volkswagen Polo TSI 1.2 could preview what’s to come
Quick Spin: 2010 Volkswagen Polo TSI 1.2 could preview what’s to come originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
From Green Right Now Reports
Photo: Bill Sullivan
A pair of research teams operating independently has come to the same conclusion: The Southwest portion of the United States, which has experienced rapid population growth, may become even more arid as global temperatures continue to rise.
That prediction is based on a study of seasonal rainfall variations between 56,000 and 11,000 years ago as recorded in cave stalagmites. Geoscientist Stephen Burns of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and colleagues at the University of New Mexico published their findings in Nature Geoscience, which also featured a second study that offered similar results.
According to Burns, data from his group’s study supports modern evidence that the polar jet stream shifts to the north in response to climate warming. When the polar jet stream retreats, winter precipitation in the Southwest decreases.
“Likewise, in periods when the Northern hemisphere’s climate is cooler, the polar jet stream sinks southward and winter rains increase in the desert Southwest, probably in response to advancing glaciers in Northern latitudes,” Burns says.
Only a few research teams have used isotope analysis from calcite sampled from ancient speleothems to analyze long-term patterns, but the new method is believed to be more precise than previous studies of lake bed sediment records. Any doubts about reproducibility were eliminated when another team (without prearrangement) reported similar conclusions in the same journal from tests run in a different cave.
“Results from our two groups reproduce each other incredibly well, which is a quite exciting and satisfying validation of the overall method,” Burns said.
TD Bank, through the TD Charitable Foundation, recently donated a more than $25,600 to statewide organizations in Vermont as part of the bank’s commitment to giving back to the communities it serves (including).…
Vermont Campus Compact, which is a statewide consortium of college and university presidents and their partners committed to the civic mission of higher education.…
»Read the entire article in the Burlington Free Press.
Filed under: Government/Legal, Videos, Misc. Auto Shows
Today at 12:30PM EST, our friends at Autoline will be hosting a live webcast from the 2010 Washington Auto Show. Special guests include Ford CEO Alan Mulally, President of Audi America Johan de Nysschen and President of BMW North America Jim O’Donnell, among others.
In anticipation of the show, you can submit questions for any of the guests by visiting this link. Then follow the jump to watch John McElroy and his team do their thing from D.C. at 12:30PM EST.
Autoline going LIVE at 12:30PM EST from Washington Auto Show, now accepting questions originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Human rights, including women’s rights, must not be traded away or compromised during any reconciliation talks with the Taleban in Afghanistan, Amnesty International said on the eve of a London conference set to discuss deteriorating security conditions in the country.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, other leaders and foreign ministers are to discuss security arrangements in Afghanistan for the next two years, including reconciliation programmes to reintegrate so-called moderate elements of Taleban.
"Any discussions with the Taleban must include clear commitments that they will respect and promote the rights of the Afghan people," said Sam Zarifi, director of Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific programme.
"The Taleban established a terrible record of violating human rights during their rule and they have done nothing since then to indicate they will act differently if they return to power."
"The policymakers gathered in London this week have to show that they will not sacrifice the well-being of the Afghan people at the altar of political and military expediency."
Similar deals with the Taleban in neighbouring Pakistan led to increased human rights violations in areas under Taleban control and a significant escalation in conflict and insecurity.
The Afghan government and insurgent groups must both adhere to Afghanistan’s obligations under international human rights law and domestic law, Amnesty International said.
The Taleban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan have shown little regard for human rights and the laws of war, deliberately targeting civilians, launching indiscriminate suicide attacks in which civilians are killed and engaging in the wholesale destruction of girls’ education.
According to UN figures, the Taleban were responsible for two thirds of the more than 2400 civilian casualties in Afghanistan last year, the bloodiest year yet since the fall of the Taleban.
In areas under their control, the Taleban have severely curtailed the rights of girls and women, including the denial of education, employment, freedom of movement and political participation and representation.
Afghan civil society groups, in particular women’s groups, have voiced serious alarms about the prospect of ceding any type of political control to the Taleban.
"Diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict are a positive step forward," said Sam Zarifi, "but the rights of the Afghan people must never be negotiated away.
"It is our experience that peace without justice or human rights is not real peace and could ultimately lead to further conflict."
From Green Right Now Reports
Image Credit: NASA/GISS
If 2009 left you a little hot under the collar, there was more to that feeling than job losses, bankruptcies and foreclosures.
Turns out it actually was pretty hot out there.
According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2009 tied for the second-warmest year on record, trailing only 2005. In the southern hemisphere, ‘09 was the warmest year since the inception of record-keeping in 1880.
The NASA report confirmed predictions made in a study issued by the World Meteorological Association late last year.
In all, 2009 finished tied with five other years (four from the 2000s) for the second-warmest year ever. With so many of the hottest years in that decade, the period between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009 became the warmest on record.
“The (yearly) ranking often misses the point,” Dr. James Hansen, GISS director, said in a press release. “There’s substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino–La Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated.”
L.A. County sheriff’s deputies have arrested two people after discovering a hallucinogenic-mushroom-growing operation in a vacant Lake Los Angeles home.
Deputies arrived at the 1,600-square-foot house in the 40500 block of 159th Street East on Monday to find a man and woman, several firearms and a psychedelic mushroom operation in a small bedroom closet.
They arrested Joseph Scott Jackson, 37, and Angela Coffey, 41, who had apparently been stealing electricity to grow the "magic mushrooms." Unlike pot plants, psilocybin does not require special lights to grow, and it was unclear what the electricity was being used for.
While some mushrooms were growing, others had been laid out to dry, presumably in preparation for sale. A deputy said discovering a mushroom farm is unusual.
"We don’t see a lot of that — mainly in the last couple years we’ve seen marijuana growth inside public residences," said Deputy Keith Ho.
The county dispatched a hazardous materials team to clean up any toxic spores. Jackson and Coffey were being held at the Sheriff’s Department jail in Lancaster on $50,000 bail each, Ho said.
— Amina Khan
More breaking news in L.A. Now:
Storm could bring more snow and closures to mountains
Former owners of medical center to pay $10-million settlement in alleged Medicare fraud scheme
79-year-old jewelry thief, subject of Halle Berry movie, arrested at South Coast Plaza
A Super Bowl ad featuring Heisman Trophy-winning football star Tim Teborw has been protested by women’s rights groups who object to the commercial’s pro-life stance on abortion.
Tebrow set to star in the thirty second with his mother, who fell ill after a trip to the Philippines during her pregnancy with the pro athlete. She was told to have an abortion, but refused. Months later, in mid-1987, Tim was born.
Groups like the National Organization for Women and the Women’s Media Center in New York feel The Tebows’ Super Bowl ad and its pro-life stance have no business airing during football’s biggest night.
“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year – an event designed to bring Americans together,” Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center, said in a statement Monday.
What do you think?
Two years after the recession started, why is the credit bubble still intact and/or growing?
A new report by McKinsey Global Institute says that globally we have avoided the necessary deleverage process.
Governments like the U.S. have increased total leverage through deficit spending. Meanwhile, they boosted leverage in areas like housing through programs that promote spending.
In other words, we have delayed the deleverage process until some time right around now.
If we’re lucky. Otherwise we’re looking at this nasty option:
McKinsey: We therefore see a risk that the mature economies may remain highly leveraged for a prolonged period, which would create a fragile and potentially unstable economic outlook over the next five to ten years. They may then go through many years in which, all else being equal, GDP growth is slower than it would have been otherwise as debt is paid down.
In a series of charts, the global consulting firm spells out how we blew up the bubble…
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