Author: Serkadis

Microsoft is using a widely publicized flaw in Internet Explorer as a way to push users to upgrade both their browsers and operating systems. 

On its Security Research & Defense blog, Microsoft explains that while IE7 and IE8 on Windows Vista and Windows 7 both include the flawed code that was exploited in the recent Chinese attacks on Google, the publicly published exploit code only works against IE6 on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. So the company is urging users to think about upgrading their version of IE, or even their OS (which also results in a newer version of IE).

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Honda today dropped official details and additional high-res photos of its new HSV-10 GT race car, which will compete in the GT500 class of the 2010 Super GT Series.

Power comes from a 3.4L V8 making 500-hp with a maximum torque of 289 lb-ft. It is mated to a Ricardo sequential gearbox with steering wheel paddle shifters.

Makes us wish even more that the Honda / Acura NSX was a real production car.

Honda HSV-10 GT:

Press Release:

Honda HSV-010 GT: Specifications and performance characteristics

– By: Omar Rana

Filed under: Detroit Auto Show, Marketing/Advertising, Crossover, GMC

GMC has always been General Motors’ truck and SUV marque, but the brand could break new ground if it decides to build a small urban vehicle based on the Granite concept from the 2010 Detroit Auto Show. The Granite would likely be smaller and less rough-and-tumble than any other vehicle in the GMC lineup while also carrying a lower base price tag. If GM’s “Professional Grade” brand builds a Granite-like vehicle it could take the marketing road less traveled; television-less advertising.

Buick-GMC advertising director Steve Rosenblum has reportedly told Automotive News that the next step for GMC could be a four-passenger vehicle that slots below the Terrain, and the Granite certainly fits that bill. Rosenblum went on to hypothesize that a Granite-sized vehicle would be heavily marketed to car buyers under age 35, and that its marketing campaign could be focused almost entirely on the Internet. And the tried-and-true “Professional Grade” tagline? GMC could exclude it from Granite ads, says Rosenblum. Hmmm…

GMC could also focus its marketing dollars on “smart phone” advertising. Rosenblum says that by 2011, two-thirds of cell phone users under age 40 will own a smart phone. One application the ad team designed is a brochure for the Granite with bar code designs that can be read by smart phones. The codes would then lead interested parties to a website with features about the Granite, along with a social networking site where interested parties could chat with designers.

Is the Granite a smart direction for GM to be taking with GMC, or is it a bridge too far? Have your say in Comments.

[Source: Automotive News – sub. req.]

GMC to drop TV, harness the power of the interwebs to market Granite. You know, if it gets built. originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A pet cat alerted a Wonder Lake-area couple to a fire in their new house early this morning, saving their lives, a fire official said.

Firefighters were called to the blaze in the 7600 block of Brook Drive in an unincorporated area near Wonder Lake just after midnight to find a single-family home with smoke and flames at the rear and the couple who lived there standing outside with their cat and dog, said Wonder Lake Fire Protection Assistant Chief Mike Weber.

Rather than smoke detectors, “the cat is the one who woke them,” Weber said. The cause of the blaze is under investigation but isn’t considered suspicious.

The blaze was put under control in less than half an hour, but the recently rehabbed home, which the couple had moved into in a few months ago, sustained about $70,000 in damage, and was left uninhabitable, Weber said.

The fire started in the back of the house, while the couple were both sleeping on a couch in a front room. The woman is pregnant with twins, Weber said.

The man was awakened when the cat “alerted them” and woke them up, Weber said.

The man tried to put the fire out with a fire extinguisher, possibly delaying his calling 911 and allowing the fire to spread, Weber said.

The fire destroyed a number of baby items stored in a back room, he said.

About 30 firefighters from Wonder Lake and other area fire departments fought the blaze, Weber said.

Those departments included Fox Lake, Hebron, Richmond, Spring Grove, Woodstock, Crystal Lake and Nunda, and were needed to bring in enough water to fight the fire in an area that doesn’t have hydrants, Weber said.

Crews from Cary and Marengo also staffed Wonder Lake firehouses in the several hours it took firefighters to put out and investigate the fire.

– Staff report

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

There’s still nothing approaching normalcy in Haiti, days after a quake essentially leveled Port-au-Prince. Here, we see a makeshift power strip being used to rent out phone chargers by the hour.

Because even things we take for granted like electricity are extremely scarce, people are forced to share, ration or go without. Today’s Big Picture has a collection of recent photos from the disaster, and they are harrowing to say the least.

The people of Haiti still need help, and lots of it. If you haven’t donated yet, or have already and are able to do so again, I can’t urge you strongly enough to give as much as you can. [The Big Picture]

Often imitated, but never duplicated: Hilarity ensues when The View and American Idol 9 breakout star General Larry Pratt commemorate MLK Day with a live performance of Pratt’s original single “Pants On The Ground!”

Platt is veteran of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and took part in Alabama’s 1965 “Bloody Sunday March” from Selma to Birmingham with the late Dr. King.

“I was walking one day, and [I saw] a guy with a baby bottle in his mouth, and he had his pants on the ground. And that’s what gave me the inspiration,” the 63-year-old said, explaining the inspiration behind the animated hit that has become a viral sensation.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Troops, doctors and aid workers flowed into Haiti on Monday even while victims of the quake that killed an estimated 200,000 people still struggled to find a cup of water or a handful of food.

European nations pledged more than a half-billion dollars in emergency and long-term aid, on top of at least $100 million promised earlier by the U.S.

But help was still not reaching many victims of Tuesday’s quake — choked back by transportation bottlenecks, bureaucratic confusion, fear of attacks on aid convoys, the collapse of local authority and the sheer scale of the need.

Looting spread to more parts of downtown Port-au-Prince as hundreds of young men and boys clambered up broken walls to break into shops and take whatever they can find. Especially prized was toothpaste, which people smear under their noses to fend off the stench of decaying bodies.

At a collapsed and burning shop in the market area, youths used broken bottles, machetes and razors to battle for bottles of rum and police fired shots to break up the crowd.

“I am drinking as much as I can. It gives courage,” said Jean-Pierre Junior, wielding a broken wooden plank with nails to protect his bottle of rum.

Even so, the U.S. Army’s on-the-ground commander, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, said the city is seeing less violence than before the earthquake. “Is there gang violence? Yes. Was there gang violence before the earthquake? Absolutely.’”

Keen said some 2,000 Marines were set to join 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Monday he wants 1,500 more U.N. police and 2,000 more troops to join the existing 7,000 military peacekeepers and 2,100 international police in Haiti.

While aid workers tried to make their way into Haiti, many people tried to leave. Hundreds of U.S. citizens, or people claiming to be, waved IDs as they formed a long line outside the U.S. Embassy in hopes of arranging a flight out of the country.

Roughly 200,000 people may have been killed in the magnitude-7.0 quake, the European Union said, quoting Haitian officials who also said about 70,000 bodies have been recovered so far.

EU officials estimated that about 250,000 were injured and 1.5 million were homeless.

Even many people whose houses survived are living outside for fear unstable buildings could collapse in aftershocks. And while more than 73,000 people have received a week’s rations, according to U.N. officials, many more still wait.

So many people have lost homes that the World Food Program is planning a tent camp for 100,000 people — an instant city the size of Burbank, California — on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, according to the agency’s country director, Myrta Kaulard.

Bodies still lay in the street six days after the quake, but Haitians had made progress in hauling many away for burial or burning. People were seen dragging corpses to intersections in hopes that garbage trucks or aid groups would arrive to take them away.

Six days after the quake, dozens of rescue crews were still working to rescue victims trapped under piles of concrete and debris.

“There are still people living” in collapsed buildings, U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told The Associated Press. “Hope continues.”

She said some might survive until Monday — and a few special cases could make it further: Rescuers pulled a 30-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman from a ruined supermarket on Sunday. Officials said they had had survived for so long by eating food where they were trapped.

Stunned by images of the disaster, the European Union Commission said it would contribute euro330 million ($474 million) in emergency and long-term aid to Haiti.

EU member states also poured euro92 million ($132 million) in emergency aid, including 20 million pounds ($32.7 million) from Britain and euro10 million ($14.4 million) from France, which also said it was willing for forgive Haiti’s euro40 million ($55.7 million) debt.

“The impact of this earthquake is magnified because it has hit a country that was already desperately poor and historically volatile,” said British Development Secretary Douglas Alexander.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, responded to criticism that they have given priority to military and rescue flights at the single-runway airport, which has room to park only a few planes at a time.

The U.N. World Food Program announced that American officials have agreed to a system giving humanitarian flights priority in landings.

French and Brazilian officials have complained that critical aid flights were not given permission to land and the Haiti operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, Benoit Leduc, said the diversion of three cargo planes to the neighboring Dominican Republic had slowed urgent medical aid.

“It’s a fact. We are two days behind on the operations because of this access,” he said. “Of course it’s a small airport … But it’s clearly a matter of defining priorities.”

With U.S. forces taking a major part in the relief effort, French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said he wants the American role clarified.

“This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” Joyandet said.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, however, urged governments not to squabble over the problem, telling France-Info radio that “people always want it to be their plane … that lands.”

Former President Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea shook hands with doctors and visited patients at the capital’s General Hospital, crammed with about 1,500 patients. He promised that his foundation would provide medicine and a generator so that doctors there can work through the night.

Clinton is the U.N. special envoy for Haiti and he has joined former President George W. Bush in leading a campaign for donations to help the country.

State police at midday were conducting a search of the area along the Edens Expressway where a trucker was found fatally stabbed last week.

Allen Lauritzen, 40, of Sparta, Wis., was found stabbed about 10:45 a.m. Friday in front of his truck on the Edens near Tower Road, south of its junction with U.S. Highway 41 in Northbrook.

State troopers were out combing the area today, making certain that there was no evidence that they had missed in their initial search, said State Police Master Sgt. S. Nowak.

Police said last week they were looking into the possibility that Lauritzen was stabbed in a dispute with another trucker.

For more details on the story, read an earlier story here.

– Staff report

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

OMG — Did Lindsay Lohan actual start a chic fashion trend for once? The trouble-prone actress – whose line of design for Ungaro where critically-panned last fall – braved the L.A. rains and showed up at the InStyle / Warner Bros. Golden Globes After Party decked to the nines in a eye-popping hooded gown.

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Hardware, iPhone

Workers at a Wintek Corp factory in China have gone on strike this week, some of them destroying equipment, according to China Daily. Workers are reportedly protesting poor work conditions and alleged deaths from overexposure to toxic chemicals. The chemical in question, hexane, is used for cleaning touch panels. Wintek is the world’s largest supplier of touch screens for mobile phones, including Apple’s iPhone.

This isn’t the first time labor disputes have arisen within Wintek. Last year, protesters gathered at Apple’s offices in Taiwan to force Apple into pressuring Wintek to clean up alleged workplace labor and safety violations. Back then, protesters appeared to be using the popularity of Apple’s brand name to get attention to their cause.This time things have unfortunately escalated to violence.

There’s no immediate word on how the strike will affect Apple’s supply of iPhone screens. We’re hoping it ends in a manner that’s beneficial to everyone.

[Via AppleInsider]

TUAWViolent strike racks Apple’s touchscreen supplier originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook changed the world by helping 350 million people publish their thoughts, feelings, comments, photos, videos and shared links much more easily than ever before. It’s the King of social networking.

The network grew with a big promise of privacy at the center of what it offered: your information was by default visible only to people you approved as friends. In December that changed, in a fundamental way. We offer below a summary of the changes that were made and key highlights from the debate that’s raging around the world about privacy, public information and Facebook. Given the role that Facebook plays in so many of our lives, this is high-stakes stuff.

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What changed in December: Facebook users are no longer allowed to restrict access to their profile photos and the list of pages they have subscribed to updates from. The list of any Facebook user’s friends were made irrevocably public but after a public backlash, users were given a way to hide those lists from human view and leave them visible only to machine access.

User updates (”What’s on your mind?”), shared photos, videos and links used to be private (visible only to approved friends) by default. If you’d never tweaked your privacy settings, then in December they were shifted by default to public (visible to the entire web) unless you decided when prompted to switch them back to private.

Those aren’t simple changes to understand and there has been a lot of confusion about them. Many people do not like the way this is going. Here are some of the highlights of that debate.

Facebook’s Arguments in Favor of a Shift Towards Public Information

In July we asked Facebook executives point-blank on a press call about some of the initial changes in privacy settings: are you pushing people towards sharing more information publicly on the site. Two out of three of those we asked said yes, they were. Why? The answers have been inconsistent and not very compelling.

Facebook Product Manager Leah Pearlman told us that making more user data publicly visible would help users identify which people were their friends when search results showed multiple people with the same name. Facebook Director of Communications Brandee Barker told us that more public information would help users connect with new people who share common interests.

Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly told us the July changes weren’t about decreased privacy, but about increased control for users over their privacy.

When December’s changes went down, we had a long conversation with Barry Schnitt, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook. Schnitt told us that the shift towards more public information was big; just like it was a change in 2006 when Facebook became more than just people from colleges.” “Facebook is changing,” he said, “and so is the world changing and we are going to innovate to meet user requests.”

Schnitt said it was clear the world was changing away from a focus on privacy and cited as evidence the rise in blogging, Twitter and MySpace, comments posted on newspaper websites and the popularity of Reality TV.

Then in January Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said publicly that if he were to create Facebook today, the privacy settings would have been from the start just what they are today. He said that notions of privacy are evolving and that the company changed its policies to reflect that. He cited the rise of blogging as his evidence of that change.

Finally, the company has said for some time that more public information will lead to greater familiarity, understanding and empathy between people: that a change towards a public Facebook is good for world peace. This actually might be the most compelling argument of all and it’s not that compelling because of the matter of user trust.

The Arguments Against Facebook’s Change

Two years ago Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told us that Facebook users couldn’t be permitted to take their data from Facebook to other sites they wanted to use it on because privacy control “is the vector around which Facebook operates.” The company has changed its stance regarding privacy dramatically since then.

Many people believe that Facebook is getting ready to file for an Initial Public Offering – to start selling stock in the company to the public. It’s widely suspected that this shift toward more public information is intended to increase website traffic and advertising: the more pages you can look at, unhindered by privacy settings, the more ads Facebook will be able to show you. The more ads Facebook can show you, the more its stock will be worth in the IPO.

We’ve argued that the ways Facebook is justifying these shifts just aren’t believable. Last week we made these three arguments:

Even if society is changing to move away from privacy – that doesn’t justify taking away the option to keep many things private. As Microsoft researcher dana boyd wrote this weekend:

People still care about privacy because they care about control. Sure, many teens repeatedly tell me ‘public by default, private when necessary’ but this doesn’t suggest that privacy is declining; it suggests that publicity has value and, more importantly, that folks are very conscious about when something is private and want it to remain so. When the default is private, you have to think about making something public. When the default is public, you become very aware of privacy. And thus, I would suspect, people are more conscious of privacy now than ever.

As Nick O’Neill wrote on his own blog InsideFacebook:

“When Facebook decided that they would start making these decisions on behalf of users, they crossed the line. Facebook doesn’t need to update their system to ‘reflect what the current social norms are’. Instead, Facebook should give users complete control of their privacy and as a result, user settings in aggregate will effectively ‘reflect what the current social norms are’. Simplifying a system which gives users complete control of their privacy isn’t easy but the value of such a system is priceless and for Facebook it’s necessary.”

Privacy isn’t just about keeping things secret, it’s about respecting the context of communication and not pushing peoples’ communication out of the context it was intended for. Thus, the fact that “nothing is secret on the internet” is beside the point. As University of Massachusetts-Amherst Legal Studies student Chris Peterson writes in a research paper Saving Face: The Privacy Architecture of Facebook (PDF), people today feel their privacy has been violated if what they say to one group of people gets shared with another group in different circumstances. By pushing personal information out of the restricted access of “friends only” – that’s what Facebook is doing.

There are many people who need to maintain control over their personal information, to restrict access to it to trusted friends, as a matter of personal safety. As online identity technical consultant Kaliya Hamlin wrote here last month, Facebook’s push away from privacy represents a violation of its contract with users. Scientists have been able to determine peoples’ sexual preferences by analyzing their friends lists. People with religious or political preferences that are unpopular where they live or work and people who are escaping abusive relationships used to be able to keep their private information (like interests in the form of Fan pages) between trusted friends on Facebook but can no longer.

Here’s how dana boyd explained a similar argument:

Power is critical in thinking through these issues. The privileged folks don’t have to worry so much about people who hold power over them observing them online. That’s the very definition of privilege. But most everyone else does. And forcing people into the public eye doesn’t dismantle the structures of privilege, the structures of power. What pisses me off is that it reinforces them. The privileged get more privileged, gaining from being exposed. And those struggling to keep their lives together are forced to create walls that are constantly torn down around them. The teacher, the abused woman, the poor kid living in the ghetto and trying to get out. How do we take them into consideration when we build systems that expose people?…People care deeply about privacy, especially those who are most at risk of the consequences of losing it. Let us not forget about them. It kills me when the bottom line justifies social oppression. Is that really what the social media industry is about?

Finally, thinker and author Nick Carr weighed in this weekend as well with a withering article titled “Other Peoples’ Privacy.” He discussed both Facebook’s shift away from privacy and Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent statement that “”If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Carr drives home the significance of these anti-privacy moves and statements by calling them a threat to human liberty.

Reading through these wealthy, powerful people’s glib statements on privacy, one begins to suspect that what they’re really talking about is other people’s privacy, not their own. If you exist within a personal Green Zone of private jets, fenced off hideaways, and firewalls maintained by the country’s best law firms and PR agencies, it’s hardly a surprise that you’d eventually come to see privacy more as a privilege than a right. And if your company happens to make its money by mining personal data, well, that’s all the more reason to convince yourself that other people’s privacy may not be so important.

There’s a deeper danger here. The continuing denigration of privacy may begin to warp our understanding of what “privacy” really means. As Bruce Schneier has written, privacy is not just a screen we hide behind when we do something naughty or embarrassing; privacy is ‘intrinsic to the concept of liberty’:

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that – either now or in the uncertain future – patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

Privacy is not only essential to life and liberty; it’s essential to the pursuit of happiness, in the broadest and deepest sense of that phrase. It’s essential, as Schneier implies, to the development of individuality, of unique personality. We human beings are not just social creatures; we’re also private creatures. What we don’t share is as important as what we do share. The way that we choose to define the boundary between our public self and our private self will vary greatly from person to person, which is exactly why it’s so important to be ever vigilant in defending everyone’s ability and power to set that boundary as he or she sees fit. Today, online services and databases play increasingly important roles in our public and our private lives – and in the way we choose to distinguish between them. Many of those services and databases are under corporate control, operated for profit by companies like Google and Facebook. If those companies can’t be trusted to respect and defend the privacy rights of their users, they should be spurned.

Privacy is the skin of the self. Strip it away, and in no time desiccation sets in.

Desiccation means to dry something out by removing the water from it; Carr argues that the removal of privacy from our lives would suck dry our liberty, our individuality.

Those are the arguments being made. We don’t expect this debate to die down anytime soon.

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When you search for a local business on Google Maps, Google displays general information like address and opening hours about this business. Since December 2009, Google Place Pages also present a sentiment analysis based on comments on sites like CitySearch, Zagat, OpenTable and TripAdvisor. Now, Google has started to display reviews from hyperlocal blogs and news sites as well.

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As Mike Blumenthal, whose excellent blog focuses on analyzing developments related to Google Maps and local search, points out, it isn’t quite clear how Google defines ‘hyperlocal’ blog and how the company decides which blogs and news sources to include on Place Pages. Blumenthal was able to get confirmation from Google Maps product manager Carter Maslan that this is indeed a new capability of Google Maps.

For users, this means that Google’s meta-analysis of customer reviews is now able to look at a broader base of reviews. For businesses, however, this means that they now have to pay more attention to reviews on blogs. For local bloggers, as Blumenthal rightly points out, this means that their reach and influence could increase exponentially once Google includes their blogs on these pages.

Should Review Sites be Afraid?

When Google launched the sentiment analysis section on Place Pages last year, we wondered if Yelp and other review sites should be afraid of Google. After all, Google’s meta-reviews and scores are more detailed than similar reviews on Yelp and based on a wider variety of sources. It’s worth noting that Yelp doesn’t allow Google to index reviews from its users.

For the time being, though, review sites form the backbone of Google’s analysis. Given that it’s a lot easier for most users to post a review on CitySearch than to set up a blog, chances are that hyper-local blogs will become an important part of the review ecosystem on Place Pages but won’t replace CitySearch and UrbanSpoon anytime soon.

Just last week, Google launched a small but interesting update to Place Pages in Google Maps that gives local business owners the ability to quickly post updates to their Place Pages.

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Tributes celebrating the life of CLTV political reporter Carlos Hernandez Gomez spanned the White House to the statehouse in Springfield today, a day after his death following a more than year-long battle with cancer at the age of 36.

“I was saddened to hear of the passing of Carlos Hernandez Gomez.  Our paths first crossed when I was a State Senator.  He was a throwback in the style of Chicago’s storied political reporters,” President Barack Obama said in a statement.

“He loved Chicago, and he relentlessly sought to tell its story with the commitment to truth and the insatiable curiosity that any good reporter has to have,” the president said.

“I quickly learned that when you saw his sharp fedora in a crowd, hard questions were coming.  But Carlos always played it straight.  And I always enjoyed our interactions in Springfield, Chicago, or on the campaign trail.”

Obama called Hernandez Gomez “a role model to many and an integral part of the Chicago story he strived to tell.”  He offered his thoughts and prayers to Hernandez Gomez’ wife, WGN-TV reporter Randi Belisomo Hernandez, and his family.

Obama, as a state senator, U.S. senator and as president, was among several politicians whom Hernandez Gomez covered in a colorful career, rat-a-tatting questions rapid fire through several campaigns and news events.

Earlier today, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the chamber’s 2nd ranking Democrat, hailed Hernandez Gomez as a real professional whose “word’s good and they’re up on the news and they’re nice people to be with.”

“He’s the kind of person that’s a great credit to the profession and did a great job for people across Chicagoland and America to understand the real issues we face,” Durbin said.

Gov. Pat Quinn called Hernandez Gomez “a man of great humor and commitment and dedication. So, losing Carlos is a loss for everybody in Illinois and our country.”

Comptroller Dan Hynes, Quinn’s rival for next month’s Democratic nomination for governor, said Hernandez Gomez was “taken too early” and said his death was “a real loss for civic debate here in this city and state.”

Services for Hernandez Gomez, who covered politics for WBEZ-FM prior to joining CLTV, are pending.

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

A few weeks ago, we saw the HTC A9292 makes its debut on a leaked Sprint inventory list. Dubbed a WiMAX candybar, the A9292 is rumored to be the HTC Supersonic, an Android-powered beast with specs worthy of its codename. The Supersonic was tipped to include a 4.3-inch LCD display, Android 2.1 with Sense UI, WiMAX connectivity, a kickstand on the back like the Verizon Wireless Imagio, and, though Snapdragon is not confirmed, it is reportedly Snapdragon fast. The Supersonic’s software is reportedly still buggy so a launch date is assumed to be a little ways off. Though it’s a time frame that fits nicely with Clear’s projected  2H 2010 launch window for the first 4G-enabled smartphones to hit.

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Many people have been watching the technological advances coming to cars this year, with electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids finally becoming a reality. But there are plenty of high-tech changes coming to bicycles too. While the aluminum frame is staying the same, MIT, Cannondale, Sanyo and others are working to change just about everything else.

Very little has changed about the bike since its introduction in the nineteenth century. Until about the middle of last year, special features included full suspension, hydraulic disc brakes and carbon fiber. Now riders have a new range of options to make their riding experiences more enjoyable. Here is a review of some of this technology and why every bike enthusiast should now about it.

The Copenhagen Wheel — Introduced by several students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the U.N.’s climate talks in Copenhagen in December, the wheel is designed to take some of the cardio out of bike riding. Pictured here in a single-speed frame, the red hub contains an electric motor, battery and computer. As a cyclist pedals and brakes, more and more power is stored in the battery. That way when he or she heads up hills, the electric motor senses the strenuous effort involved and gives the bike a boost. When it’s officially released, the Copenhagen Wheel could be installed in any bike at any bike shop. Most electric bikes are heavy, ugly and not very practical to pedal. The Copenhagen takes your existing bike and elegantly adds a bit more brawn.

The Sanyo Eneloop — This model made a splash at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. While electric bikes aren’t exactly new, Sanyo is working to give them more crowd appeal. The Eneloop line integrates Sanyo suspension forks, its easily recognized frame and carbon fiber construction. Pedals drive the back wheel while a hub on the front wheel houses a motor. Between its all-wheel drive, electric propulsion and light-weight frame, the bike has a bit more zip than its predecessors.

Cannondale Simon — Pictured as part of a whole bike here, the Simon technology is located in the front suspension. While traditional suspension forks use hydraulics and a coil spring or an air shock to control damping forces, this little gizmo uses an accelerometer — a computer and piezo-electric valving to fine-tune your suspension in real time. This means you can hit pot holes, curbs, speed bumps and rough terrain with impunity. It’s not on the market yet, but is coming soon.

All of these innovations are part of a broader trend toward bikes becoming a more practical option for commuters. In the years to come, bikes will have even smarter suspension systems that take the guesswork out of tuning, and streamlined electric motors that can make riding bicycles enjoyable (and not too strenuous) for the average person.

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HP EliteBook 2740p tablet due out this Spring? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve never heard of Astri before, but it sure seems to be one ambitious company. We figure it’s got to take real ambition to create a pocketable dualscreen device with not just one non-working touchscreen, but two! In theory, the Marvel-powered MID or My Interactive Device (not to be confused with Mobile Internet Devices) runs Android on its 4.8-inch LCD touchscreen, while its neighboring 5-inch e-ink Wacom-enabled touchscreen is meant for reading and taking notes. The concept is similar to the much-more-polished Entourage Edge, or even Spring Design’s Alex, though we have no idea if Astri intends the two displays to communicate with one another. We’ll be siding with those alternatives until Astri can work out its many issues, though we do like the idea of the more portable e-reading device. Oh, and please don’t miss one of the most abusive hands-on videos ever after the break.

Continue reading Astri’s dualscreen Android e-ink MID looks and acts like a knockoff

Astri’s dualscreen Android e-ink MID looks and acts like a knockoff originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s kind of hilarious that William Shatner opened the IBM Lotusphere event today, especially now that IBM is launching Project Vulcan.

As one blogger asked: “You could not get Leonard Nimoy?” This is a geek dream come true: a full-on collaboration environment with an open API and a name right out of Star Trek fame.

Project Vulcan is catching some attention here at IBM’s annual Lotusphere event in Orlando. It isn’t set for developer release until the second half of this year, but its potential as an all-encompassing cloud-based collaboration service is causing many to compare it to Google Wave.

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Project Vulcan is being described as the next generation of Lotus Notes. It’s an aggregation or federation of email, calendars, profiles, to do lists and social analytics all in one place. It’s designed to filter out noise from real-time conversations, make recommendations and provide relevant content.

Sounds a lot like Google Wave.

Here’s how IBM’s Ed Brill describes the Project Vulcan concept:

“IBM Project Vulcan is not a brand-new effort. It builds on the existing capabilities, and represents the future versions of, the IBM Lotus product portfolio – including Notes. One of its key themes is social analytics and business analytics combined and applied to industry-specific scenarios – making collaboration more focused and relevant. The vision of Project Vulcan intends to deliver collaboration across company boundaries; make it easy to deploy the technology; and include developer-friendly services and APIs.”

We think Project Vulcan looks pretty exciting. It’s being built with the right foundation, as a platform of loosely coupled systems. As Brill says:

“This makes sense in an increasingly-expected hybrid environment, and will simplify deployment and adoption of collaboration and productivity within your organization. Web services, xPages, HTML5, RESTful APIs, will all be tools in pushing Project Vulcan forward.”

IBM is looking like it has its act together in the collaboration space. Project Vulcan is being developed out of LotusLive Labs, the new R&D pipeline for cloud-based collaboration.

The lab is developing collaboration services that are being previewed here this week at the Lotusphere conference. These include:

• Slide Library: A collaborative way to build and share presentations.
• Collaborative Recorded Meetings: A service that records and transcribes meeting presentations and audio/video for searching and tagging.
• Event Map: An interactive way to visualize and interact with conference schedules.

Project Vulcan fits right into the future of enterprise collaboration. Its Web-oriented architecture and open APIs give it a foundation that will be well suited to how the enterprise will function in the years ahead.

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FOND DU LAC, Wis. — Police responding to a complaint of loud noise have cited a Fond du Lac man for “rocking out” to the music of John Denver.

A police who responded to the man’s apartment last week could hear Denver’s music through the door.

The officer pounded on the door but the man didn’t answer.

Finally the officer found out the man’s name from a neighbor and called to him, bringing the man to the door.

When asked why he had the music so loud, the man said he was “rocking out.”

The Reporter newspaper in Fond du Lac reports that the 42-year-old was cited for unnecessary loud noise. The ticket could result in a fine of about $210.

The late singer is known for such hits as “Rocky Mountain High” and “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

– Associated Press

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

BMW is planning to co-develop and share the next-generation Mini platform with another automaker.

“The door is still open,” said Wolfgang Armbrecht, Mini’s vice president of brand management. “Today in the car business, you have to create fascinating cars. But, on the other hand, you have to be realistic as far as economics are concerned.”

PSA / Peugeot-Citroen SA currently supplies Mini with a 1.6L gasoline engine.

BMW Group CEO Norbert Reithofer said last March that the company ended discussions to co-develop and share the next-generation platform with Alfa Romeo.

“After intensive examination, we have determined that cooperation involving the Mini and Alfa Romeo brands with regard to a possible common platform doesn’t make any sense,” Reithofer said. “Even in the future, a Mini has to drive like a Mini.”

– By: Kap Shah

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)