Author: Serkadis

Intel chief executive Paul Otellini said that consumer spending led to a turnaround in computer purchases in the fourth quarter. That, in turn, led to one of Intel’s most profitable quarters ever.

Otellini said server chip sales were strong thanks to a product refresh cycle. Intel launched its Nehalem-based server chips in the spring and stayed ahead of rival Advanced Micro Devices, launching multiple products that made server customers spend more on average. That spending continued in the fourth quarter.

“We are entering 2010 in a very strong position,” Otellini said in a conference call with analysts.

Otellini said Intel will refresh its entire server product line in the coming months as it brings online its 32-nanometer manufacturing process. Last week, Intel launched 25 new chips, including 32-nm chips aimed at consumers. Demand for those new products is excellent,

Intel started moving from 45-nanometer manufacturing to 32-nanometer for consumer chips in the past few months; when it makes such a change, Intel can introduce faster, cheaper, and lower-cost products. On that front, it is well ahead of its rival Advanced Micro Devices. As customers create more power-efficient data centers and demand shifts toward cloud-based services, Intel’s server products are benefiting.

On the low-end consumer side, Otellini said that Atom chips are selling well. The Atom chips are low-power devices that power netbooks, which are smaller than laptops and are meant for web surfing. The new Pinetrail-based Atom chips appeared in 80 different netbook designs. There are 600 Atom-based design wins, 2,000 design plans, across 230 different customers in the embedded space, where Atom processors power non-PC devices. Some 93 of the 230 are brand new customers for Intel.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, Intel and its partners showed off a lot of consumer electronics devices with Atom chips, including the new LG smartphone based on Intel’s upcoming Morristown Atom platform. Otellini said that Atom is thus getting into handheld devices and there will be more announced on that later.

Otellini said that the supply chain isn’t bloated and is operating efficiently. Intel saw stronger sell through and lower  inventory levels, compared to a year ago.

Otellini said that 2009 was an unusual year in that “the lights went off” for the first half of the year and sales recovered strongly in the second half.

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U.S. video game sales screeched to a halt in 2009, falling 11 percent to $20.2 billion as the recession held gamers back for much of the year.

Sales rose a scant 4 percent for the overall industry in December, but that wasn’t enough to make up for eight months during the year when sales were below 2008 levels, according to market researcher NPD.

The numbers are separated into console and handheld game sales, and then PC game sales. The console and handheld hardware, software, and accessory sales were $19.66 billion, down 8 percent from $21.4 billion in 2008. PC game sales were $538 million in 2009, down 23 percent.

But, of course, NPD doesn’t measure the size of the growing part of the industry: online multiplayer games on web sites, Facebook and other social network games, and iPhone/iPod Touch games. All of those sectors are healthy.

Total software sales for PC, console and handheld games were $10.5 billion, down 11 percent from $11.7 billion a year earlier.

“Clearly, 2009 was tough year for consumers and the national economy,” said Michael Gallagher, chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association. “However, the bigger picture is one that underscores the industry’s strength; 2009 and 2008 were the highest grossing years in our industry’s history. That said, our industry’s structure is solid, and I anticipate a strong 2010 with a pipeline full of highly-anticipated titles.”

Portable hardware sales saw a 6 percent increase in 2009, but the overall console hardware sales fell 13 percent in 2009. Console and portable software fell 10 percent, while video game accessories fell 1 percent. No matter how you slice it, it was a weak year. But the industry can look back a decade to 2000, when the whole industry was just $7.9 billion in sales.

In December, overall console and handheld game sales (excluding PC games) were $5.53 billion, up 4 percent from $5.32 billion a year ago. December hardware sales were $2.19 billion, up 16 percent from $1.89 billion a year ago. Software was $2.58 billion, down 7 percent from $2.77 billion a year ago. Accessories were $760.2 million, up 15 percent from $663.9 million a year ago.

Nintendo sold 3.81 million Wii hardware units in December and 3.31 million DS units. Microsoft sold 1.31 million units in December, the first time in a while that the Xbox 360 was outdistanced by the PlayStation 3.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 sold 1.35 million units in December in the U.S., an 87 percent increase over a year ago. For 2009, Sony said the PlayStation brand generated $5.1 billion in revenue, or 26 percent of the total. Sony sold 333,200 PlayStation 2 consoles and 654,700 PlayStation Portables.

For the calendar year, Sony said its sales grew 22 percent to 4.3 million, up from 3.5 million in 2008. Sony said that December set records for both PS 3 hardware and software sales in the U.S. The PlayStation Portable saw an increase of 122 percent from November to December. Patrick Seybold, spokesman for Sony’s U.S. game division, said that 2009 was a turning point for the PS 3, with a big response to games such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which has an average review score of 97 on Metacritic, which aggregates review scores, and which I named the best game of the year. Uncharted 2 sold more than a million units in North America.

In December, Nintendo and Activision Blizzard fared well for game sales. Nintendo had the top games with the New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii, Wii Fit Plus, and Wii Sports Resort taking the top three titles. Then Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 took the fourth position (Xbox 360) and fifth positions (PS 3) on the chart of the top ten selling games of December. Electronic Arts had only one title in the top ten: Left 4 Dead 2, at No. 9.

Sony’s big launches coming this year include MAG, God of War III, and Heavy Rain. The company is also launching a new motion-sensing controller this spring, and it is pushing 3-D glasses-based gaming as well with its newest TVs.

Microsoft also added its own figures to the NPD numbers. It disclosed earlier it had sold 39 million Xbox 360 consoles to date since 2005, including 10 million in the U.S. In 2009, it sold $4.8 billion worth of Xbox 360 software, hardware and accessories. Gamers bought $2.7 billion worth of software in 2009, contributing to 8.8 games sold per console to date. Xbox Live reached a peak of 2.2 million users on at the same time.

Big Xbox 360 exclusives coming this year are Mass Effect 2, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction, Alan Wake, Crackdown 2, Fable 3 and Halo Reach. By the holidays, Microsoft plans to launch Project Natal, a way to control a game with your body movements.

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Every so often, some company comes along and tries to get us to change how we type, or what kind of keyboard we use. The MiniGuru is the latest example of this phenomena, using programmable keys and macros to produce a functional keyboard with a tiny footprint.

It’s a known fact that a touch typist is faster if they keep their fingers on the “home row”, and this is the concept that the MiniGuru builds on. There might be a problem when you try and use the modifier keys to use things like arrow keys, or the function keys – it could become counter-productive. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t work, but honestly the amount of time required to learn how to use the new keyboard may make it rather pointless. I could see this being useful for an HTPC or other type of hobbyist application though.

If you want to try one, the MiniGuru will be available sometime this fall, with no word on the cost.

[Via Gizmodo]

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So there is this podcast, Fear the Boot, and I accidentally stole their logo for this post involving boots. The resulting ruckus on that post’s comment thread is currently out of control and I am truly sorry that I unleashed this cancer on all of you, my dear, dear readers.

That said, go ahead and listen to these guys. The podcast is top notch and the guys have real voices for radio. They want you to come to their Con, for one thing and they also want you to listen to their podcast here. Like China, these people are rapacious and will stop at nothing to comment about “werebears.” To that end I encourage you to give into their meagre demands.

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I just wanted to put a little attaboy in here for Google. The quake in Haiti will of course prompt a humanitarian response (donate if you can), and accurate aerial imagery will help get it to where it needs to be most. Helicopters are probably occupied ferrying passengers and supplies, so I’d imagine few can be spared for reconnaissance; satellite imagery is the best way to go for a snapshot of the area, and Google contracted GeoEye to shoot some shots for just that purpose.

Check out Google’s Haiti relief and imagery page here. It’s good to note every once in a while that the technology we take for granted can actually be used for things other than finding the nearest coffee shop. This kind of quick and helpful response (thanks as well to the mobile companies and their texting donations) is heartening.

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Matt: The color display is psychedelic, man.

Devin: Featuring the hit game “Super Mario Tweakers”

Dave: “In that moment, Steve realized that buying a game system off of e-bay wasn’t the best idea in the world”

Nicholas: Screw Leno

[via imgur]

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Filed under: Car Buying, Motorsports, Coupe, Performance, Auctions, Ferrari, Lancia, Racing

Last sold on these shores in 1982, the Lancia brand has pretty much slipped into obscurity for most Americans, but there was a time when Lancia was on top of the world. From the mid-’70s to the early-’90s, Lancia racked up an impressive tally of international race wins and championships with its doorstop-like Stratos and Montecarlo successor. With the recent Chrysler/Fiat nuptials, the Lancia brand is having a bit of a renaissance, but only as a source of future badge-engineered Chryslers. That’s why it’s so refreshing to come across something like the car we just found on Craigslist: A genuine Lancia LC2 Group C racecar.

In 1983, Lancia introduced the LC2, a closed-cockpit Group C car co-developed with Ferrari. It went up against the legendary Porsche 956, and later the 962, with a big power advantage courtesy of the dual-turbocharged Ferrari V8 in the engine bay. Its 720 horsepower helped the LC2 win a string of pole positions, but the car wasn’t very reliable. It did win a few races for Lancia from 1983-1986, and continued to run in privateer campaigns until the early ’90s, but Lancia eventually dropped out of sportscar racing altogether at the end of 1986 in order to concentrate on rallying. The Lancia Delta went on to be one of the most successful rally cars in history, but the LC2 remained the pinnacle of Lancia’s rise to glory in international sportscar racing.

The LC2 available on Craigslist is chassis number 2 of just 5 ever built. It ran under the works Martini livery from ’83-’86 scoring a win at the Imola 1000K in 1983 at the hands of Teo Fabi and Hans Heyer. Bob Wollek and Alessandro Nannini piloted 002 to a fastest lap after winning the pole at Le Mans in ’84. It finished 8th in that 24 hour run, but followed up with a 246-mile-per-hour Mulsanne Straight clocking the following year when it qualified P3 and finished 6th. Chassis number 002 ran in more races than any other LC2 before retiring in 1986. Riccardo Patrese, Michele Alboreto, Mauro Baldi and Lucio Cesario were the other drivers who got seat time in Chassis 002 before it was sold off to a private party in 1988.

Canepa recently put 4,000 hours and $350,000 into a 100-point restoration of the car and is now offering it for sale at $1,250,000. That might seem like a lot of money for a racecar that only scored one win and never really lived up to its promise, but it’s not likely you’ll find another LC2 cheaper anytime soon. For fans of the Lancia marque, the LC2 ranks right up there with the Fulvia HF, 037 Rally and Delta S4 in the pantheon of Lancia racecars.

[Source: Canepa Design via Craigslist]

Craigslist Find of the Day: Rare Lancia LC2 Group C racer originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware, Rumors, Software, Odds and ends, iPhone

Bloomberg is the latest outlet to come up with some rumors about the possible new iPhone model coming this year (the iPhone, not the tablet, although doesn’t it seem like the flood of tablet rumors has encouraged all kinds of Apple speculation lately?). They say that the new handset will include a 5 megapixel camera to match Google’s Nexus One, and will also include a touch-sensitive casing, working similarly to the Magic Mouse. That one just seems strange — what would you gesture on the back of the iPhone while you’re using it?

They also say, quoting Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Chen, that there’ll be plenty of new innovations in the software as well. We certainly hope so. According to this round of rumors, the new phone would go into production in April, and be released to stores in June or July, a timeline that actually matches up with what we’ve heard before.

Rumors are a dime a dozen, and even if a new phone does come out in July, that’s too long to wait if you need to buy a phone right now. But we’ll keep our ears open — there certainly is a lot of increased speculation about Apple hardware lately, and there ought to be something in the pipeline driving it all.

TUAWBloomberg: New iPhone with touch-sensitive casing coming originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com.
Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author.

Reuters has a short article detailing how the UK has been successful in luring a growing number of foreign entrepreneurs to open up shop (or even move their companies to the UK). While there are still plenty of foreign entrepreneurs starting or moving companies to the US, it’s got little to do with the US government — which often makes it quite difficult for foreign entrepreneurs to relocate here. While, thanks in large part to Brad Feld’s activism, there is finally some movement on a startup visa concept, the US government still takes a rather hostile view towards foreign entrepreneurs and foreign startups. With other countries actively courting and welcoming them — and backing it up with some infrastructural changes, this should be seen as a serious problem for US innovation. Of course there’s a lot more to this issue, and there are certainly institutional reasons why the US has long had a strong startup culture, but we shouldn’t merely assume that we can just rest on our laurels, especially as others are ramping up their efforts to attract hot startups.

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When asked what shapes Portland’s startup culture, Silicon Florist blogger Rick Turoczy named 3 defining aspects of the industry – hardware roots, open source projects and iPhone development. Turoczy has been in Oregon for the past 15-years and started Silicon Florist as a way to cover the region’s early stage startup scene alongside other Portland tech sites like Mike Rogoway’s Silicon Forest blog and Strange Love Live. Since then he’s watched his town grow into a bustling tech hub and enjoyed every minute of it. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Rick and a few other Portland influencers to get a feel for the scene.

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Turoczy explained, when Tektronix and Intel hung their hats in Oregon, scores of great developers and technologists found themselves settling the once sleepy blue collar region. As employees broke off to start new ventures, a startup community was born out of it. Concurrently, the open source communities and iPhone communities sprung up.

Entrepreneur and Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton manages to keep a foot in both the open source community and the iPhone community. While Urban Airship focuses on building out iPhone infrastructure for developers, Kveton is also well known for working with Oregon State University to start the Open Source Lab – the first state-wide open source development curriculum. Coupled with the fact that O’Reilly’s OSCON and the Linux creator Linus Torvalds call the region home, Oregon’s developers understand the value of shared knowledge and community. When asked how the open source movement has shaped Oregon’s entrepreneurs, Kveton replies, “Portland has a live free or die attitude. We engage in community and unlike other groups we really share our knowledge.”

The majority of ReadWriteWeb’s team calls Portland home. Agrees Marshall Kirkpatrick, “There’s a very supportive community, lots of very creative people and a great history of geekery.  People interested in open source, wikis, RSS and mobile apps will find some of the most influential developers and companies in the world available to connect with in Portland.”

Raven Zachary is one such developer. Zachary helped start BarCamp Portland, Ignite Portland, iPhoneDevCamp and still serves on the board of Legion of Tech – a group that organizes Oregon-based tech events. Through his work as the President of Small Society he’s built iPhone apps for a number of influential campaigns including the Obama ‘08 iPhone app. When asked what he thinks of Portland he explains, “Portland attracts people – people who want to stay here and ideally work for local businesses. We have a huge population of telecommuters in this city working for out of state employers, many in California. The talent is here, the greater challenge is the receptivity of investors to bet on Portland-based tech companies.”

Portland Entrepreneur Josh Friedman knows as well as anyone how hard it is to raise funding. Friedman took the skills he’d learned from Intel and applied them to start Eleven Wireless and startup co-working facility Nedspace. Says Friedman, “It was hard as hell to raise money and at the time I was pretty well connected.There’s a gap in funding resources for Portland entrepreneurs looking to raise between $25,000-250,000 dollars and it needs to be addressed…While our Angel investors are great, they simply aren’t doing the volume to take chances on early-stage companies.” Friedman is looking to expand Nedspace to ten additional cities in 2010 and is rumored to be raising a seed fund for Portland-based startups. Says Friedman, “If it wasn’t exciting here I don’t think I’d live here. I really believe in my heart and soul that Portland can be the best city in the world to start a business. The fact that it’s a cheap to live, in addition to being a clean and cool place makes it a good place for entrepreneurs. If we combine that with the right investors, people will move here in droves.”

Says Rick Turoczy, “In some ways this whole town is an incubator. People here view technology as an artistic pursuit and they like to muck about in coffee shops and co-working facilities. In the 15 years I’ve lived here it’s the most cohesive and collegial community yet. This sort of creative spirit doesn’t always come with a business plan, but as more companies like Jive and JanRain get funding, we’re starting to see the developers and VCs get on the same page.”

Additional Resources

Oregon Entrepreneurs Network: OEN helps Oregon and SW Washington-based entrepreneurs manage their early-stage companies. The group’s programs include the Portland Angel Network, Women’s Investment Network and Oregon Angel Fund. The group also hosts conferences including Angel Oregon and Venture Northwest as well as a series of business-related PubTalks on the second Wednesday of every month.

Portland Ten: Portland Ten is an incubator program where companies buy into their own development and make a goal to reach to $1M in revenue by Oct, 2010.

Coworking Portland Wiki: This wiki keeps a list of local co-working spaces and requests for shared spaces.

Beer and Blog:On Fridays between 4-6pm Portland residents meet up at the Green Dragon to share in their mutual love of beer, blogs and all things Portland.

If you’ve got more resources for the Portland area let us know in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Stu Seeger

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Google is trying to come just one step closer to answering any question you might have before you even ask it. This time around, the increasingly omniscient search engine will now cater its search suggestion list on Android powered devices and iPhones according to your location.

The search suggestion list is that set of terms that appears below the text entry field on Google, made famous by often saying the things we only think – or type into Google.

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Google’s blog post uses the above example. The same search text is entered into a phone’s browser in two different locations – Boston and San Francisco. A user in Boston would see “Museum of Science Boston”, whereas a user in San Francisco would see “Museums in San Francisco”.

The blog has one instruction for users to ensure the new feature works properly.

Make sure you have turned on “Save recent locations” and “Allow use of device location” under the Settings link on the google.com home page.

I bet this feature could have saved me some trouble last time I was in Manhattan and searching for Chinatown and was told to go to the town of China.

Luckily, we only made it a block or two before zooming out.

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French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently announced the so-called Google tax, which would tax online advertising revenues and then use the money to help “legal music platforms.” The tax was, among a few other ideas, suggested by a committee lead by Patrick Zelnik. (Funny enough, Zelnik is also the producer of France’s First Lady and pop singer, Carla Bruni Sarkozy.) That committee’s mission is to suggest ideas to boost digital music sales in France when at the same time, the controversial HADOPI law, which targets illegal file sharers, is about to take effect.

The way the French government handles the booming French digital revolution is quite unique. But the Google tax is just the tip of the iceberg, and is part of a very frightening story, at least for a country that thinks of itself as the inventor of modern democracy.

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This guest post was written by Fabrice Epelboin, the editor of the French edition of ReadWriteWeb. He took an active part in fighting the HADOPI “three strike and you’re out” law. He’s a Creative Common evengelist, an entrepreneur and is active in social media and webTV.

The HADOPI law, known abroad as “three strike and you’re out,” will monitor file sharing, and will cut Internet access – after three warnings – to illegal file sharers. But wait. One more thing: French netizens, to prove their innocence will have to install special spyware, which will report their every move to the French administration.

The law, which led to an intense battle between the blogosphere and the government, was rejected by the French Assembly when it was first voted on. Then it was rejected by the French Supreme Court after a second vote, and received some severe warnings from the European Union. A third vote was needed by the French Assembly to pass the law, despite a close to zero support within the French population.

Happy new year

2010 is a brand new year. HADOPI has been voted on and there’s nothing we can do about it anymore, even if it still makes the headlines in the local bloggosphere for its technical difficulties, or that it will probably be a financial disaster, or, more recently, because its brand-new logo illegally used a font licenced exclusively to France Telecom, the state-owned leading French ISP.

This year, President Sarkozy has a new law to pass regarding the Internet. Its name is LOPPSI, and only a small part of it is related to the Internet: filtering it.

The LOPPSI law, which could be voted on in March, will make filtering the French Internet a reality, “the Chinese way”, like Deputy Jacque Myard recently said. Contacts have been established between the French UMP party and the Chinese Communist Party to talk about “Democracy and Internet access” (video, in French), and just like in Australia, pedophiles were used as a very good reason to filter the Internet.

But recently, child molesters weren’t even used as an excuse. President Sarkozy announced filtering will be used to “automatically de-pollute networks and servers used for piracy.” Greentech? Think again.

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Beta

Many French Internet experts see Deep Packet Inspection coming, event though France’s State Sec. for Digital Economy Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, recently answering numerous Twitter requests, has denied DPI was on its way and took some strong positions in favor of net neutrality.

If nothing is done, within a year, not only might Big Brother-like spyware be mandatory on every French computer, but everything that goes through its pipes could be scanned for possible copyright infringement.

France is more and more looking like a beta test for the proposed multi-country Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and it’s not looking good for free speech and democracy.

So far, not a single French newspaper has written anything about ACTA, and before the first battle against HADOPI was won, last March, by the opposition at the French National Assembly, very few had written about HADOPI. The same is happening again with LOPPSI; if you want some information, the only place to go is the Internet and the blogosphere.

Filtering the French Internet has not made the news, either here in France or in the international press: everything is about the Google Tax. Don’t let this fool you. In France, the truth is elsewhere.

France-China photo by Flickr user neo2004pf. Face photo by Flickr user Alexx Sky Productions.
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Big ticket purchases may seem like good ideas at the time, but when you break down how many hours a week you have to work to make your monthly payment on that flat screen, you may see it in a different light.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

Finance blogger Matt created a graphical representation of how the things you own actually own you until they’re paid off in full. Using data from his own “over-leveraged” youth, he demonstrates just how hard he had to work to keep his head above water. After accounting for his home mortgage, car payment, and other bills, Matt was working 17 out of every 20 days just to break even.

Setting up your own visual representation is easy—all you need to know is your base salary and the amounts of your monthly bills. Then:

Calculate your daily post tax bring home pay. Take a look at your pay stub or direct deposit receipts, and convert this number to your annual, post tax bring home salary. Then, divide this number by the number of days you work each year. For example, assuming you work a standard 9 to 5, five day a week job, let’s say your biweekly direct deposit total is $1500 post taxes, retirement contributions, etc. Simply multiply $1500 by 26 paychecks, then divide this number by 260 work days. In this example, the total will equal $150 per day.

Once you’ve got that figured out, take a look at each bill and determine how many days each month you have to work to accumulate the money you need to pay it. For instance, if your car payment is $600 a month, you’ll need to work four days a month to pay it off. That might not sound like much, but when you factor in rent or mortgage, utilities, and more, you might discover you’re working most of the month just to cover the basics.

In the end, Matt used the information to dial back his spending and finding ways to get out of debt quickly. Check out the post for some tips that worked for him. Have you ever used a similar method for getting a handle on your spending and debt? What works for you to keep your cash flow under control? Let us know in the comments.

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Detroit 2010: Wrap up

After safely navigating back from Detroit, we take a look back on the show that was with one all-encompassing post.

Back on Track: Classic STP livery returns on Ferrari 430 Scuderia GT3

The STP livery is back on an unlikely racer: the Ferrari 430 GT3 from Chad Racing.

Spy Shots: 2011 Mercedes-Benz SL gets some SLS-inspired rhinoplasty

The Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG’s upright nose and massive grille is set to infect the rest of the M-B line up, beginning with the next SL.

Also of interest:

• Saab Saga Update: Genii and Spyker pondering joint bid? Workers rally in Trollhätten, etc.
• Hyundai-Kia stamps out own steel plant… celebrates with awesomely bad video?
• Report: GM to idle Hummer production on Monday until China deal goes through
• Chevrolet debuts Synergy Green Camaro
• Fewer Cylinders, More Power: Car outlines the 2011 BMW M5

Browse our archive of Daily U-Turn posts or subscribe to the RSS feed

Daily U-Turn: What you missed on 1.14.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Slate: What’s the best way to dig through rubble? 
Discovery.com: Sniffer dogs converge on Haiti
Scientific American: Quake not that surprising
The Engineer: How Haiti should be rebuilt …(read more)

Filed under: Sedan, Performance, Chevrolet, Rumormill

Bob Lutz is at it again, telling Drive.com.au that he would love to see a Commodore-based sedan back in America as a Chevrolet. Or, to use the quote-machine’s own words:

“If we can pull that off and we have the next generation Commodore in as a police vehicle then we want to take a look at reintroducing a civil version as a high-end Chevrolet. Because when you get down to it the thrill of high performance driving is unmatched by anything that doesn’t have rear-wheel drive, bags of torque and a nice transmission. So there’s a possibility of a premium Chevrolet sedan that would be sold in limited numbers. Think of it as a kind of four-door Corvette.”

As if you needed any reminder, GM is introducing the Chevrolet Caprice PPV as a law enforcement-only model this year, and naturally there’s rumblings of a civilian version or a re-reborn Commodore version being offered sometime in 2012 carrying the Chevy SS moniker. Despite our love of all things G8 (dead or not), we’ll believe it when we see it. Yet again.

[Source: Drive.com.au]

Lutz says Commodore-based Caprice could be sold as “high-end Chevrolet” originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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These days cooked ROMz have become the thing to flash when you get your new Windows Mobile phones, well I want to know what do you want. I am asking all the readers and beyond, what the want in a cooked ROM, because if you have read my previous post, I am a flash-a-holic and so I flash about once a week minimum and four times a day max. This addiction has driven me to think, “What do people really want in their ROMz”.

I am asking you readers to comment, tweet and even email us and tell us what you like in your ROM, because Windows Mobile is starting to becoming a whole new system and your opinions are always good for us, and maybe Windows Mobile developers that might be reading. With that said, just comment and say “ I am Wen and I would like a stable good looking ROM that does not have to beat the speed of light but does everything and has skyfire and some other applications that I like a lot, and I would like the theme to be white not dark and I use a Touchpro2”.

-Remember the broad that went batshit after someone effed-up her cheeseburger at Mickey D’s? Well, the cops found her. Alesha McMullen was unhappy with her meal and wanted everyone to know about it. The 19-year-old trashed a Kansas City McDonald’s to the tune of $3,000 last month, and it was all caught on tape. She tells officers she was angry because she was having “a bad day….”

–RhymesWithSnitch.com has allegedly gotten its hands on Gary Coleman’s nude scene from the upcoming bomb Midgets & Mascots. I refuse to believe that thing belongs to Gary. (Not Safe For Work, Life, or While Eating!)

-DJ AM Wrongful Death Lawsuit Settled….

-Fantasia’s VH1 trainwreck is a hit!

–The Real Housewives of New Jersey’s Teresa Giudice’s husband was charged Thursday with driving under the influence after crashing his car into a telephone pole in New Jersey….

-Jimmy Choo for Uggs!

–Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, and Ricky Martin will be among the presenters at the 2010 Grammys later this month…..

-Bossip thinks R&B heartthrob Trey Songz is a part of The Rainbow Tribe…..

-Alec Baldwin prefers to date women his own age – because he has nothing in common with younger ladies…..

–Project Runway Season 7 premieres Thursday night on Lifetime…..

-Teddy Pendergrass Funeral Information…..

-Speaking of the legendary singer, Complex has a list of the Greatest Hip-Hop Samples inspired by Teddy P….

-Like free beer? The Washington State Blood Bank may have a proposition for you….

-Donald Goerke, the Campbell Soup executive who created Spaghetti O’s and Chunky Soup, died Sunday. He was 83.

–Kelis tells PETA to kiss her grits…..

-Woman Arrested For Cursing Out Daughter’s Principal…..

-Carrying more than three condoms in Washington, will get you thrown in the pokey. Maybe someone should tell the cops that DC has the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in America — Washingtonians need all the condoms they can get….

-Cristiano Ronaldo for Armani!

-Wanna get rid of acne? There’s an app for that. A Houston dermatologist has created an iPhone app that treats acne…..

-First grader accused of sexual harassment!?

Please take a moment to help those affected by the devastating earthquake in Haiti. It just takes a moment to donate to the Red Cross via text message — just text “Haiti” to 90999. You can also donate to Wyclef Jean’s Yele! Haiti Foundation….