Author: Serkadis

Filed under: Car Buying, Sedan, BMW, Luxury

The two least-blistering-but-still-quick-fast siblings in the BMW 7 Series line have been given prices. The 740i will relieve you of $71,025 in standard guise, with the slightly longer 740Li requiring $75,425. Those prices include the obligatory $875 destination and handling charges.

Those figures mean that the 740i will save you a little more than $9,000 compared to the 750i. You’ll be down 85 horsepower and 120 pound-feet of torque, but you’ll be up with Brake Energy Regeneration, part of the EfficientDynamics tech on this model. Despite opting for the “base” model (a term we use loosely), buyers will be able to specify a full range of niceties including the M Sport, Luxury Seating, Driver Assistance, Rear Entertainment, and BMW Individual Composition packages.

For more info on the baby Seven, have a read of the press release after the jump and take a look at it in the gallery of high-res photos below.

[Source: BMW]

Continue reading BMW prices 2011 740i and 740Li six-cylinder from $71,025

BMW prices 2011 740i and 740Li six-cylinder from $71,025 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Gossip World went gaga last month after news of a romance between Jessica Simpson and Smashing Pumpkins founder Billy Corgan hit the Snitch Circuit. Despite the initial buzz, it now appears that the odd couple’s headline-snatching union may have already hit the skids.

Jess was crushed after Billy blew her off over the holidays — instead opting to stay with family in Chicago for Christmas — and the blonde bombshell is certain her weight is to blame for the musician’s sudden lost of interest.

A NW spy claims: “She’s heard on the grapevine that Billy prefers skinny girls and now she’s convinced he’s losing interest in her because she’s too heavy. She’s frantically trying to lose weight, but it’s tough for her. She really loves her dinners out, not to mention the alcohol and late-night snacks she uses to lift her spirits.”

It’s not always down to your weight, Jess. It could be the fact that the two of you have nothing in common….Just a thought.

As recently as this week, even amidst Chevy’s much hyped press conference at which the new Chevy Volt and Chevy Spark were with heavily touted, Lutz mad his opinion known that internal combustion engines would dominate the industry for at least the next 20 years.

Given this trend, Lutz seemed as unlikely to support higher gasoline taxes as one could expect. But that is exactly what he did in a meeting with journalists yesterday at the North American International Auto Show. “If the rise in gasoline prices is gradual, I think that all of us in the industry would frankly welcome that,” stated Lutz ,”because there is nothing more illogical than forcing fuel-saving technology when gasoline is extremely cheap,”. When asked if that meant that he stood in favor of a European style gas tax, he declined to speak for the company but stated that he personally, saw much value in a steady increase.

Lutz mentioned that a gradual and more importantly, expected increase in fuel prices would prompt smart car buying. As it is, “Every time gas prices go back down, everybody starts buying big stuff again. Gas prices go up a buck, the big stuff is unsellable and everyone wants small cars.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stated yesterday at the show that the Obama administration has no interest in any such policy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also dismissed the idea in a press conference yesterday.

-By: Stephen Calogera

Source: CNN

Marcus Carab points us to a rather horrifying story about a family suing a funeral home after the funeral home put their grandmother’s brain in a bag of personal effects and sent it to them. Yikes. But, ignore the story itself for a moment (if you can). What was interesting from our point of view was that the story was written by the Associated Press, and it’s basically a rewrite of a story from The Albuquerque Journal. Here’s how the AP points this out:

The Albuquerque Journal reported on the lawsuit in a copyright story published Wednesday.

Now, there are a few things odd about this. First… it’s an odd phrase to use: “in a copyright story.” Nearly all news stories are covered by copyright, so why even mention it?

But what I find even more amusing is that if you look at the AP report, it’s basically just a quick blurb rewrite of the Albuquerque Journal story. It’s only 125 words, and just summarizes what the other paper wrote. Why is that amusing? Because that’s exactly what the Associated Press has been claiming bloggers unfairly do to it — insisting that others simply rewriting its stories in short blurbs are violating the “hot news” doctrine. Apparently, that doesn’t apply when the AP does it itself?

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Western Lithium’s Positive Scoping Study Results Support Major USA Based Lithium Production

January 12, 2010

America’s #1 banker JPMorgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon had some hopeful words at a healthcare conference in San Francisco yesterday, according to MarketWatch:

“Commercial real estate is a train wreck, but it’s already happened,”

Well that’s a relief, because the numbers we’ve seen still look horrible — >

(via Deal Junkie)

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Commercial Real Estate Delinquencies Are Up 5x Already And They Still Won’t Peak Until 2012
• Bludgeoned Commercial Real Estate Has Begun To Entice Chinese Bottom Feeders
• Now See The Real State Of The Commercial Real Estate Industry

Filed under: UK, MISC

Morgan Aero SuperSports – Click above for high-res image gallery

They don’t build ’em like they used to, you say? Well Morgan does. And now they’re building more of them than ever. So while the rest of the industry was looking at lots full of back stock and factory closures, Autocar reports that Morgan hit record sales figures in 2009, and expects the numbers to climb even higher in 2010.

The niche British automaker has consistently sold around 280 cars in its home market every year, and this year was no different. What changed for Morgan this year was the expansion into new markets, including strong sales in France and Germany that contributed to 690 units built and sold in 2009 – a massive increase on the usual 400 unit-per-annum level that the company’s grown used to.

For the new year, Morgan is starting production on the SuperSports which, unlike its fixed-roof predecessor the Aeromax, is destined for American shores. With a bigger market on tap, a £125k (~$200k) price tag and a production run of 200 examples in store, Morgan expects to built some 750 units in 2010, nearly doubling its typical sales figures.

[Source: Autocar]

Report: Morgan hits record sales in 2009, targets even higher for 2010 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Side-splitting staff shagger David Letterman has some advice for how his competitors at The Peacock can salvage the mess they’ve made of their late night lineup.

Dave shares his ideas for what to do about Jay “Big Jaw” Leno, Conan, Jimmy and that other guy (Carson)?

“I’m a little worried about Conan,” he said in Monday night’s monologue. “What about Carson Daly? I’ve never seen him before in my life….He’s really screwed, but nobody seems to care….”

Any web developer knows that it’s a lack of universal standards that can make designing and maintaining a web site unbearable. Startup venture VigLink says it’s here to handle at least one consistent issue – keeping affiliate link programs bringing in the bucks. The service says it is going to go even further and recover affiliate dollars you didn’t know you were losing.

Sponsor

The company announced today that it closed a seed investment round and it has a laundry list of technology insiders as backers, including First Round Capital, Google Ventures, LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, longtime Google executive and current LinkedIn VP of Product Deep Nishar and a number of noted technology entrepreneurs.

CEO Oliver Roup and Architect Rodrigo Leroux co-founded the company in March of last year and Roup told us today that the company was set to go live in the next few months. At the moment, it is still in beta-testing, but we had a quick chat with Roup over what to expect.

Affiliate Marketing

VigLink is looking to stand on the in-between ground of affiliate marketing, betwixt merchants and affiliates. Before we move on with the what and how, let’s briefly clarify our terms. In affiliate marketing, a merchant rewards an affiliate for traffic and pays commission on purchases made by referred visitors. Referring a friend to sign on with a cell phone company and getting $10 off your next month’s bill is an example of affiliate marketing. In this case, the cell phone company is the “merchant” and you are the “affiliate” or “publisher”.

According to VigLink’s web site, more than half of all affiliate links are improperly formatted, which means that the affiliate loses out on hard earned commission dollars. If the customer cannot be tracked, the affiliate cannot get paid. The service solves this problem with a JavaScript snippet inserted into the affiliate’s web site, which makes sure all links are properly formatted.

Changing the Name of the Game

But while formatting affiliate-links properly can be a time-consuming pain, any web developer worth their salt should be able to handle the task. It’s not here that the service is going to make a difference. CEO Oliver Roup told us today that the real focus is all the money that is being lost, not only on improperly formatted links, but links to sites with affiliate programs that your site is not enrolled in.

“Every time a link leaves your site, value is being created,” he explained. “You should be able to capitalize on that value.”

The interesting new twist that VigLink introduces to the affiliate marketing game is that you don’t even have to know that you’re linking to a merchant to make a commission. It’s almost like having an agent. If a visitor from your site makes a purchase, VigLink keeps track and collects the commission for you, taking a percentage for itself.

The company’s success now relies on getting some big name merchants involved. Since the service is free to affiliate members, it won’t take as much to get followers on that end of the spectrum. Pending that, we think that this is an idea that could be going places.

Discuss

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Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures put up a very important post last night titled We need an independent invention defense to minimize the damage of aggressive patent trolls.  His partner Fred Wilson echoed Brad’s thoughts on his blog with a post titled Why We Need An Independent Invention Defense.

Brad’s post starts out with the following:

“Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls. Is it possible that one third of the engineering teams in our portfolio unethically misappropriated technology from someone else and then made that the basis of their web services? No! That’s not what is happening. Our companies are driven by imaginative and innovative engineering teams that are focused on creating social value by bringing innovative new services to market.”

It’s a fantastic description of the fundamental problem with software patents.  For example:

“The problem is that the patent system has fallen way behind the pace of innovation, especially in information technology. Originally designed to protect the brilliant independent inventor of a better mousetrap, the patent system has been stretched to be applied to software. Software is a language and like any language, it can be very abstract. Everyone applying for a patent pays a lawyer to take their invention and render it into the broadest, most abstract language they can slip through the patent office. A mouse trap is a mouse trap, but a method of allowing one piece of software to talk to another (the generalized language often used to describe a software system) can be almost anything, and can, if approved, impact markets the original inventor could never even have imagined.”

Brad goes on to discuss the specific problem of patent trolls and proposes a solution to address this – that of an independent inventor defense.  If you’ve gotten this far, go read Brad’s full essay on the independent investor defense.

I’m extremely excited to see Brad and Fred come out so strongly against software patents.  I’ve been talking against this for a long time and I expect my rants against software patents are well known to any readers of this blog (if you aren’t familiar with them, feel free to indulge yourself if you are so inclined.)  But this is the first time that I’m aware that any of my peers – other than my partners at Foundry Group – have come out so strongly in public against software patents. 

I purposely limit my “special initiative” work and try to focus on a few things that I think will make a substantial difference in the world of software / Internet entrepreneurship (the domain that I’ve chosen to dedicate my professional life to.)  Right now I’m deep in the effort to get a Startup Visa created but have continued to pay attention to the software patent issue while looking for the right time to scale up an effort.

That time is now.  I just emailed with Brad and he’s game to lead a charge with me.  I saw tweets from several friends last night including Chris Sacca who knows this issue firsthand.  As with the Startup Visa there are plenty of other credible smart people who are putting real intellectual energy into this issue, such as the End Software Patents initiative and Wendy Seltzer, a well known researcher who is currently spending a year at Silicon Flatirons researching software patents and innovation (disclosure: I’m providing some of the funding for this initiative at Silicon Flatirons.) 

It’s now time to get the practitioners (entrepreneurs and investors in software innovation) to get organized around this.  If you are interested in helping out substantively, leave a comment on this blog with your email address as I start to get organized.

By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s

GameStop (GME) late Monday announced plans to buyback $300 million of its common stock, as part of its “2010 Capital Allocation Plan.” The video game retailer intends to spend another $200 million to open 400 new stores and for other capital spending, with $100 million reserved for acquisitions.

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Warren Buffet is one the richest men in the world and one of the most successful investors in stock market history. But his life and investing style offer no guidance that is useful for investors.

It’s easy to see why people can be seduced by the idea of investing “like Warren Buffett.” Most of us have no hope of making money like Bill Gates because we cannot reinvent computing. We don’t have access to the oil wealth of a nation, like a Saudi prince or a Russian oligarch. We’re never going to become a monopolist robber baron. Even the fortunes of those hedge funders seem beyond reach since they so often involve buying things like derivatives that most of us cannot lay our hands on.

Warren, on the other hand, made his fortune by investing, something anyone in the world is capable of doing. He talks in folksy ways and lives a simple life. Supposedly, his investing style is based not on any big secret but just some things he picked up reading a very old book by a guy called Benjamin Graham.  Even his style of investing, “value investing,” sounds like a wholesome and simple way to make a fortune.

It’s as if greed has had all the sin wrung out of it by rubbing it against the virtues of diligence and right judgment. If God didn’t like people who invest like Warren Buffett, why would He allow Warren to be so rich?

But this is an illusion and trying to invest like “Warren Buffett” is among the stupidest things anyone can do with their money. Buffett is a freakish outlier whose success no one can explain. Stock picking is a losing game for most people, whether over the long or short term. No amount of meticulous research will allow you to consistently outsmart the market.

And that’s the key to value investing. To invest like Warren you have to consistently outsmart the market, or at least outsmart the market to such a large degree that it overwhelms the times the market outsmarts you. This is what finding a stock that is “undervalued” means:

• that the market has made a mistake about the prospects of a company;
• that mistake is detectable by a hardworking working investor who does research;
• that the mistake, although detectable, hasn’t been detected and disseminated in a way that would effect the stock price;
• this combination of error and ignorance persists despite the huge fortune available to those who detect and correct it;
• this kind of mistake, detectability and widespread ignorance is common enough to form a lifetime investment strategy; and
• even the widespread knowledge of “value investing” hasn’t changed this situation.

It is vaguely possible that in Warren’s earliest days, this strategy was novel enough or wrongly discredited that it created opportunities. In a sense, “value investing” itself might have been an “undervalued” strategy. Adopting it was a version of “outsmarting” the market. So Warren’s first move was a kind of meta-investing strategy. 

What’s more, stocks markets were less liquid, less transparent, and had a narrower investor base. Public companies were subject to less stringent disclosure rules and accounting practices were still developing.

All that has changed now. Warren Buffett’s success has made value investing famous. Markets are highly liquid, far more transparent, and subject to far more disclosure and sounder accounting rules. These days, it’s doubtful even Warren Buffett could start investing like Warren Buffett.

In short, investing like Warren Buffett is expensive. Actually, it’s far worse. It’s impossible. Attempts to do by ordinary investors are errors themselves. Lots of people in the market are very busy trying to exploit that very error.

Warren Buffet has consistently beaten the market with an annualized rate of return of around 22%. You cannot do this, especially not by mimicking what you think you know about Buffett’s strategy. 

There are sound ways for you to invest. But “investing like Warren” isn’t one of them. In fact, anyone who tells you different is probably trying to scam you.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• 12 Things You Absolutely Must Know Before Investing Again
• The Life And Awesomeness Of Warren Buffett

If you missed last night’s hotly-anticipated musical number on How I Met Your Mother, here it is. Rejoice in Barney’s ode to suits!

The planned introduction of the new Holden Cruze in Australia has been postponed by the Australian manufacturer by six months, pushing the launch in 2011 and leaving the current year with no major model launching. The most likely date the new Cruze will be available is now March 2011, with the main reason behind the delay being the fact that it was too hard launching the sedan before the hatch.

We would have to run out the imported car and introduce the new one, then we would hav… (read more)

Filed under: Aftermarket, Classics, Convertible

Allow us to clarify: the Tucker Torpedo Convertible we wrote about recently should herewith be referred to as the purported Tucker Torpedo Convertible. The droptop claiming to be a Torpedo will be up for auction in Scottsdale soon, offered by Russo and Steele. A note from the Tucker Automotive Club of America, however, states that it knows of no such car ever having been made by the Tucker Corporation. The statement says, in part:

“The Tucker Automobile Club of America, Inc. (TACA) has never been presented with-nor have been able to find-any credible evidence to prove the authenticity of this or any other vehicle as being a Tucker Corporation intended convertible and therefore we can not certify it as such.”

The club does not say that the convertible in question is definitely not a genuine Torpedo. The club’s position is that it has never been able to successfully prove the provenance of said car, “nor has the seller responded to [the club’s] request seeking the engine serial number and data plate information.” Without a single piece of documentation to support the car among the library of papers detailing Tucker’s rise and fall, about the only thing to say for it is: buyer beware. Hat tip to Jeff.

[Source: Tucker Automobile Club of America]

Tucker Club reiterates doubts about authenticity of auction convertible originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the technology industry, 2009 was a pretty tough year, but Forrester says the tech downturn is now ‘unofficially over’.

The research firm says the global technology industry will see an 8.1 percent increase in IT spending in 2010, with software and computer hardware leading the charge, and IT consulting services following.

After declining 8.2 percent last year, U.S. IT spending will grow 6.6 percent in 2010 to $568 billion, according to Forrester’s latest research report. Global tech spending, which dropped 8.9 percent in 2009, will rise to more than $1.6 trillion in 2010.

Forrester is particularly optimistic about IT spending of businesses and governments in the United States, with Forrester Research VP and principal analyst Andrew Bartels predicting a the tech recovery that will be stronger than the overall economic recovery, with technology spending growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010.

Bartels said he sees 2010 as poised for a tech spending rebound and the start of a longer growth cycle, especially for technologies involving service-oriented architecture, server and storage virtualization, cloud computing and unified communications.

But the regions where growth is predicted to be the strongest in 2010 (when not measured against local currency) are Western and Central Europe, where tech purchases are forecast to rise by 11.2 percent, boosted by the dollar’s decline against the euro.

Forrester Research expects IT purchases in Canada to grow by 9.9 percent, Asia Pacific by 7.8 percent, and Latin America by 7.7 percent.

(Image via BusinessWeek)

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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El día ha llegado, Fernando Alonso ha lucido por primera vez la equipación oficial de la escudería Ferrari. Ya podemos ir acostumbrando al color rojo ya que apartir de ahora será el que represente al piloto español. Por el momento Alonso no ha vestido el mono oficial sino el resto de prendas oficiales.

En fin, en definitiva esta noticia no es más que una curiosidad que todo el mundo esperaba con muchas ganas y es que la temporada 2010 cada vez esta más cerca y todos estamos deseando que los pilotos vuelvan a competir en el asfalto de los circuitos.

Como siempre, os mantendremos informados sobre el resto de novedades ya que aun quedan algunos asientos en diferentes escuderías que no tienen piloto.

Related posts:

1. Ferrari confirmará el fichaje de Fernando Alonso en el GP de Japón
2. Ferrari confirma el fichaje de Fernando Alonso
3. Fernando Alonso podría correr para Ferrari en el GP de Monza