French manufacturer Renault launched in the United Kingdom the Clio S range, a model that will be offered with several sporty enhancements besides the features already available on the Expression specification it is based on.

The first things you’ll notice when looking at the car are the 16-inch Polar alloy wheels plus the white front bumper insert and white ‘GT’ rear spoiler, Additionally, the car features optional racing stripes with an "S" incorporated into each of them. In… (read more)

We reported yesterday that the majority of the established Formula One teams have already announced their launch dates prior to the February 1 deadline – when the winter testing season kicks off – with the exception of Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso. As ironic as it may seem, it has now been confirmed that the latter will actually make the Valencia testing next month, unlike their sister team Red Bull.

Toro Rosso will start the winter testing in Valencia on 1 February and we are plan… (read more)

The fresh generation of Ford Focus has been named the Most Significant vehicle of the 2010 North American International Auto Show by the editors at Autoweek magazine.

The car was revealed to the public on Monday, January the 11th, and will be available to the U.S. and European public from the first quarter of 2011. Eventually, the vehicle will be sold in 122 markets, with up to 80 percent parts commonality. It will be built on Ford’s new C platform, which will be found under 10 different mode… (read more)

This effect of the advent of Avatar the movie comes under unintended consequences.  The second item was much more predictable.  That is the establishment of a mass market for 3D spectacle films.  I wonder if it is possible to redo Ben Hur?

The holodeck of Star Trek is at least a generation away, but this will certainly do in the meantime.  Of course, spectacle will overwhelm plot.  Who wants to take a chance on that when hundreds of millions are been spent?

I am pleased to understand that both the trilogy and the Star Wars cycle can be upgraded to this format at what is presently a nominal cost.  In fact, it proclaims that no film of consequence is likely to be without it here on in.

I imagine most fail to remember or properly understand just how revolutionary the advent of Star Wars was on the film industry.  Before it, the artistic types shunned science fiction when it was obvious to informed fans that the genre was a gold mine of visual possibilities.  Yet when I sat down back then to a 12.30 am preview of Star Wars, my expectations were low and I braced myself to be forgiving.  Instead, the film worked and completely exceeded what imagination could have expected.  I walked out knowing the industry had changed forever.

This revolution in visual presentation continues in Avatar unabated, although we are now finding the edges of the possibilities.  The human imagination can be beautifully expressed in a glorious 3D format to its limits.

And yes, the movies are about visual story telling, and plots are merely a necessary skeleton to hang the pictures.  There was a time they were used to hang word imagery.  Let us hope that we soon hang holograms.

The Avatar Effect

China’s moviegoers see a story about private property, not race.

Future Movies and Old Movies Will Be in 3D and Imax

Avnera is announcing today that it has raised $10 million in a fourth round of funding for its business of designing high-quality audio chips.

The round was led by existing investors and Japanese electronics firm Onkyo. That brings the total amount of money raised to date to $52 million. Other investors include Altien Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Best Buy Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Panasonic Venture Group, Polycom and Redpoint Ventures.

Avnera is making Audio Magic chips such as those used in Best Buy’s Rocketfish brand of wireless stereo speakers. Those products eliminate interference and speaker noise, allowing you to take any music device and broadcast the sound wirelessly to any speaker in the house. That gets rid of unsightly wires and gives you music in places such as a sun deck. Avnera collaborated with Best Buy in creating the products, and that’s one reason why Best Buy is one of its investors.

Avnera just announced its second-generation AudioMagic 2G chips, which the company says can play high-quality, uncompressed audio with the quality of wired solutions. That’s because Avnera’s chips have a way to correct errors in transmission, fixing problems on the fly so that the sound comes through clearly, said Manpreet Khaira (pictured), chief executive of Beaverton, Ore.-based chip maker Avnera. The products using the second generation chips will be out this year.

The company competes with other makers of analog audio chips. Those companies, such as National Semiconductor or Texas Instruments, create a collection of analog chips that have to be connected on circuit boards. But Avnera’s talent is taking analog chips that are separate devices normally and combining them all on one chip. These “analog system on chip” devices have lots of applications, of which audio is just one.

There are ten analog system on chip products in the market now. Onkyo and Avnera are working on new products that will use Avnera’s chips. Beyond Best Buy’s products, Avnera’s chips are used in 30 different audio products, each with the Avnera Rocketboost logo, from more than 15 customers.

The company was founded in 2004 and it has 60 employees.

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Here’s the latest action:

Apple’s lawyers send Valleywag “proof” that the tablet exists — Valleywag was offering lots of cash to anyone who could prove that Apple’s rumored tablet computer exists. Then it got a letter from an Apple attorney asking Valleywag to call off the search because Apple has “maintained the types of information and things you are soliciting … in strict confidence.” The fact that Apple is up in arms about this suggests that there’s a tablet whose existence Apple wants to hide.

Lalawag’s Sean Percival joins MySpacee — Percival, who created the Los Angeles tech gossip blog and has also written a book on MySpace marketing, will serve as the social network’s director of content socialization. I’m not exactly sure what he’ll be doing at MySpace, but the company says he will “help lead the charge to create compelling social experiences for MySpace users by developing new and alternative ways to leverage social media activities.”

Microsoft’ veteran Bill Veghte leaves — Veghte has been with the software giant for 19 years, starting out as an associate product manager on Office and most recently heading the business side of Windows. He’s moving on because he wants to run a business “from end to end,” and Microsoft doesn’t have room at the top for him.

Intel says AMD exec would never buy AMD chips — In its latest response to an antitrust investigation spurred by competitor AMD, Intel included a statement from Henri Richard, the company’s highest sales executive at the time, saying, “I certainly would never buy AMD for a personal system, if I wasn’t working here.”

RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser quits — Glaser wanted to leave the Internet media company that he founded through a gradual transition, says Business Insider, but the board pushed him out sooner.

Yahoo rolling out search improvements next week — The company says the features will give advertisers more control and transparency. Yahoo also claims the continued improvements prove that it still cares about search, despite outsourcing its core search to Microsoft’s Bing.

NetHope seeking $25,000 to bring Internet connectivity to relief agencies in Haiti — The nonprofit says it wants to give agencies the Internet access they need to coordinate the delivery of food, water, healthcare, and information in the aftermath of this week’s earthquake.

iPhone app maker tries to bribe his way onto tech blogs — VentureBeat actually received the same offer of $300 for a mention of Jon Atherton’s Wobble 2 app, but we didn’t even bother to respond. TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters, on the other hand, told him to buzz off, at which point Atherton upped the offer to $1,000.

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Ah, here we go again: another report from iSuppli breaking down the bill of materials (BOM) for one of our favorite smartphones. This time it’s the Droid / Milestone under scrutiny, Motorola’s beefcake slider that currently sells for $560 month-to-month on Verizon ($199 on contract). According to iSuppli’s analysis, Droid brings a $187.75 bill of materials that breaks down into $179.11 worth of components and $8.64 in manufacturing costs. Naturally, the BOM does not include licensing fees, software costs, accessories, or the massive outlay this device has received in advertising support. Nevertheless, it makes for interesting apples-to-apples fodder when comparing costs with the Nexus One ($174.15 in materials only), iPhone 3GS ($178.96 materials and manufacturing), and original Palm Pre ($138 materials and manufacturing). The single most expensive component on the Droid is the 16GB removable microSD card ($35) bundled with the Droid. And after a controversial MOTO report that demonstrated a lackluster capacitive touchscreen on the Droid, it’s interesting to compare the Droid’s 3.7-inch TFT LCD ($17.75) and capacitive touchscreen overlay ($17.50) with that of the iPhone 3GS ($19.25 spent on a smaller 3.5-inch LCD and cheaper $16 touchscreen overlay) and Nexus One (whopping $23.50 for 3.7-inch AM-OLED display and $17.50 for the touchscreen assembly). Rounding out the top-end costs are the Droid’s 5 megapixel autofocus CMOS sensor ($14.25), Qualcomm baseband processor / RF chip ($14.04), and TI application processor ($12.90).

Droid more valuable than Nexus One or iPhone 3GS according to iSuppli originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As reported everywhere, conditions in Haiti are awful and help must be delivered to millions over the next three of four days.  The question is how?

Effectively all the building stock is uninhabitable.  At present it is a desperate race to dig out the handful of living and recover the dead.  The only mercy is that it is warm and obviously not the rainy season.  Had this occurred in Northern China, those trapped would already be frozen to death.

Right now someone needs to facilitate support from the Cuban military and medical system and even pay for it.  They have medical personnel and likely sea lift to move victims quickly out of harms way onto the Cuban hospital system.  Most important, they can put those boots on the ground which is what is needed right now.   More critically, they are used to the local conditions.

Hopefully the political types can quickly get over their issues for a time in order to pull this chunk of fat out of the fire.  In the meantime, Cuba already had 300 doctors in country and that means that fresh doctors can be absorbed instantly as well as medical supplies.  In fact, the one bright spot besides the pleasant weather, it that we have a good number of foreign aid groups already in country able to absorb manpower and supplies now.

The immediate advent of several thousand troops from the US will allow some order to be brought out of the present chaos and the built up areas can be quickly cleared of people.  This is necessary because bodies are already beginning to deteriorate and the living need to get food and water now and that is easiest done at marshalling points. 

The challenge is to get the boots on the ground to control and manage the necessary supply tail that is been mobilized.  Essentially three million people are about to spend the next few months under canvass and everyone else will be struggling to access broken distribution networks. 

It is also a surety that most of the damaged buildings will have to be bulldozed.  It is therefore a great time to plan a new city and to establish better building codes. 

Aid workers in Haiti face ‘logistical nightmare’

The number of powerplants currently in use seem not to be enough for the baby-SUV from BMW, so the German carmaker announced today the availability of a new entry-level engine to fit under the current model. Starting March, the X1 will be offered in sDrive18i guise, with a four-cylinder gasoline engine featuring VALVETRONIC under the hood.

The new entry level develops 150 hp at 6,400 rpm and delivers peak torque of 200 NM of torque. It accelerates from a standstill to 100 km/h in 9.7 second… (read more)

Google is betting hard on Place Pages and, since launch in September 2009, has been constantly updating and improving the feature. Now, in another clear move to get ahead in the local businesses market, it has enabled business owners to claim their Places and even post small updates to them. The idea is to get small entrepreneurs hooked on… (read more)

While other carmakers are complaining that 2009 was a difficult year and post extremely disappointing sales figures, Renault’s Romanian brand Dacia keeps growing. And we’re not only talking about its domestic market but the global one, as the company posted an increase of 20.5 percent in new car sales in 2009.

The company delivered a total of 311,282 cars and curiously, Romania wasn’t Dacia’s largest market. 84,708 of the cars sold last year were purchased by Germans, while French buyers boug… (read more)

The British division of Japanese manufacturer Nissan announced yesterday the introduction of the right-hand drive market of the new Nissan 370 Roadster. The news is a bit surprising, as the carmaker was announcing back in September 2009 that the new car will not be able to hit British roads until at least March this year.

The 370Z Roadster wears a price tag of £29,900, while the GT version can reach £36,150 (with Sat Nav included). Nissan is offering a limited number of additional options fo… (read more)

Fernando Alonso refused to spend too much time responding to Lewis Hamilton during the media meetings Ferrari held at the Madonna di Campiglio ski resort in northern Italy. Earlier this month, his former McLaren teammate bragged in the British media that he blew Alonso away in his first year at the Woking squad, something that almost made up for the lost title in 2007.

Obviously, the international media present at the Wrooom event in Italy decided to piggyback on the topic and asked Alonso to… (read more)

Addressing a captivated audience in Cubberly Auditorium on Thursday evening, Prof. Emeritus Philip Zimbardo praised heroes and examined villains. While he considered good and evil parts of the human condition, Zimbardo said he holds the system responsible. (JUSTIN LAM/Staff Photographer)

System perpetuates evil actions, Zimbardo says

Attacking a system that produces villains, Stanford Prof. Emeritus Philip Zimbardo lectured at Cubberley Auditorium Thursday evening, interspersing jokes with mentions of Hitler, obesity and torturing puppies.

During the lecture, the first in the newly-created Meng-Wu lecture series put on by the Center for Compassion and Altruism in the School of Medicine, Zimbardo explored how humans turn from good to evil.

Grabbing the audience’s attention from the beginning, Zimbardo blared his “evil warm-up music” – Carlos Santana’s song “Change your Evil Ways” – through the auditorium.

As he danced and mouthed along to the song, audience members chatted excitedly in the background about seeing Zimbardo “in the flesh,” as many were familiar with the professor’s past research, including the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Zimbardo, who considers good and evil as part of the human condition, blamed the system for producing such modern day “villains” as Stalin, Hitler, Chairman Mao, Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney. According to Zimbardo, the people themselves are not at fault; instead, the system had set them up to become evil.

“It’s not that someone is born good or born evil,” he said. “We are born in capacity to do both at any time.”

Systemic social norms affect peoples’ behavior – to positive or negative effect. To prove his point, he cited social connections as the prime cause of obesity.

“The worst is to have a friend who is a fatty,” Zimbardo said. “You’re going to become fat 147 percent of the time.”

He reserved blame for society, rather than “evil” individuals.

According to Zimbardo, people claim that only the sadists would engage in sadistic behavior, but a study proved that 65 percent of people would fully electrocute someone when egged on.

“It’s not that you’re an evil person,” he said. “You’re just trapped in the situation.”

Audience members looked uneasy as Zimbardo brought up a study in which students were asked to electrify a puppy for the sake of their grades. According to him, though many subjects were crying while watching the puppy struggle and squeal, they still proceeded to raise the shock level when told.

Most shockingly, Zimbardo drew a parallel between his famous Prison Experiment with photos taken at Abu Ghraib. Audience members sat quietly, but in awe, as Zimbardo showed a dramatic slideshow of the pictures taken at the Abu Ghraib prison.

“Power without oversight is a recipe for abuse everywhere,” he said. “People who usually do good might do otherwise when under certain situations.

“It’s systemic and not limited to Abu Ghraib,” he added. “If the problem was bad apples, then they could be sent to prison and the situation would be fixed. But no, the Army knew that the situation would make the soldiers do evil.”

Calling the incident entirely predictable behavior, he also blamed the government for the soldiers’ actions.

“[The U.S. government] gave them permission to do whatever the hell they want without any surveillance at night in the dungeons,” he said. “The government just didn’t think that they would take pictures, but the soldiers did, and even used them as bragging rights.

“It’s hard to say that the things people are doing are not systemic if the system is supporting them,” he added.

But he stressed that heroism existed as an antidote to evil, and he encouraged everyone to do “good” in the world.

“Very few people do good shit and very few people do bad shit,” he said. “Most just do no shit at all.”

Zimbardo flipped through slides of heroes and explained each story of heroism, from Rosa Parks to Holocaust resistors to a man who recently jumped onto train tracks in order to save a man having a seizure.

Unless someone speaks out, the cycle of violence will perpetuate itself, he said. Zimbardo then admitted that the only reason he had concluded the Stanford Prison Experiment early was because his current wife, his personal hero, commented on how sadistic the experiment was.

Students were impressed by the information the professor presented.

“I heard a little bit about [his research] before, but his full theories in detail were really cool,” said Stewart Macgregor-Dennis ’13. “He gave us a more whole way of viewing the world instead of just dismissing people as evil.”

Macgregor-Dennis added: “I think his heroes research is going to be really cool – hopefully, he’ll come up with some practical suggestions about how people can be in the world.”

There’s plenty on offer from Mini in 2010, with a new petrol engine range for all Mini First, One, Cooper and Cooper S models in the hatch, covertible and clubman ranges. The Mini First and Mini One will now have a 1.6-litre engine which replaces the 1.4-litre, and will have more power and torque with better fuel consumption.

A new Mini Rainbow colour option is available, and the Mini Graphite Special Edition model range will now include Clubman models. The Mini Rainbow series will offer three different paint options of Sunlight Metallic, Asteroid Metallic and Nightlife Metallic, and will be available in March/April 2010.

A Mini One Covertible car will also now be able, providing an entry level model in the open air range that previously included just the Cooper, Cooper S or John Cooper Works models. The Mini One Convertible will have a 1.6-litre engine with 98 hp and 153 Nm of torque, and should cost less than 15,000 pounds. Check out the new Mini Rainbow paint job in the gallery!

The official debut of the Ford S-MAX and Galaxy took place yesterday at the 2010 Brussels Show, as they prepare to enter the market and take lead of Ford’s sales in the new year. The two are important in the carmaker’s lineup as they are the first to feature Ford’s new 2.0l EcoBoost petrol engine.

"We’ve given both models a fresh new look and more premium appeal, but it is beneath the skin that the major changes have been made," John Fleming, Ford of Europe CEO said in a release.
… (read more)

Although the International Automobile Federation (FIA) made it quite clear that they would appeal the decision issued by Paris’ Tribunal de Grande Instance in the Flavio Briatore case, Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone begged to differ.

Present at Ferrari’s Wrooom event in the Madonna di Campiglio ski resort in northern Italy, the F1 executive told the media that he thinks little of the FIA’s appeal options. The 79-year old Brit admitted he doesn’t think the ruling body will go forward wi… (read more)