Following the record $1 billion marketing push in the fourth quarter of 2009, Japanese carmaker Toyota announced plans to continue spending big time on advertising its products, in the hope the sales revival experienced in December 2009 will continue into the new year as well. No specific details on how much the carmaker will spend or on how the marketing approach will look like have been provided.
"We will spend more money because there will be more business out there,"… (read more)
A new exhibition at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum chronicles an amazing and sometimes dangerous journey 90 years ago by James Henry Breasted, a famed archaeologist who brought back Egyptian artifacts to Chicago.“Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919–1920,” opens Tuesday, Jan. 12 and will feature artifacts as well as photos and letters documenting the journey of Breasted, who was the first American to receive a Ph.D. in Egyptology.
“The exhibit takes visitors along on a real–life adventure story that follows Breasted and his team as they traveled across the Middle East in the unstable aftermath of World War I, with tribal and nationalist rebellions making the trip extremely dangerous at many points,” said Geoff Emberling, Research Associate and Chief Curator of the Oriental Institute.
“This is a fascinating glimpse of a pivotal moment in history—the birth of the modern Middle East as we know it today, and at the same time, the genesis of modern archaeological research in the cradle of civilization,” said Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute. “It’s one of the best examples I know of the ways that scholarship and politics interconnect in important and unexpected ways.”
Despite the huge sales success it registered in Europe, Ford officially rejected the possibility to bring the Ka in the United States back in November when it revealed that the Fiesta will be the smallest car sold under the Ford badge in its domestic market. However, the demand for small cars, together with the continuously-increasing petrol price, could make Ford change its mind, so launching the Ka in the US re-becomes a main topic on Ford’s agenda.
Still, the US-based manufactu… (read more)
I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am trying to find out who the name of the contracting company or architect company involved in the Holbeck Temple Mill project.I manage school work placements for local students and I would like to ask them if they would be interested in the possibility of providing work experience for a particular student who is training to be a builder but also has a strong interest in Egyptology.
This project would be a an ideal opportunity for the student, even if for only a short time, the student would benefit immensely from observing the process and work involved in this fantastic project.
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Subaru Rally Team USA yesterday revealed their 2010 driver lineup, with four-time Rally America National Champion Travis Pastrana and BMX Freestyle legend Dave Mirra each piloting a 2010 Subaru Impreza WRX STI rally car prepared by Subaru technical partner Vermont SportsCar.
The team will compete in the 2010 Rally America National Championship and ESPN’s X Games 16 Rally Car Racing event, and it will also take part in Rally America’s new European-style Rally Cross exhibition event… (read more)
Wal-Mart has tried twice to deliver movies and TV shows to its customers. Is it ready to try again?
Maybe. Sources tell me Web video startup Vudu is in “meaningful” acquisition discussions, and industry executives believe Wal-Mart is the likely buyer.
Vudu executives declined to comment. I’ve lobbed a call into the Wal-Mart (WMT) press center but haven’t heard back.
It’s a deal that makes some sense on paper: Vudu is one of many services that gives consumers a chance to rent or buy movies over the Web, but it hasn’t gotten much traction. “It’s a beautiful product and a really great service, in need of distribution,” says a person familiar with the company.
And Wal-Mart has tried video delivery twice before but backed away each time. Acquiring a tech team at the right price could help it make a third effort.
After trying for two years to compete with Netflix’ (NFLX) DVD-by-mail business, Wal-Mart gave up in 2005, and agreed to send its customers directly to Netflix. In 2007, with the backing of all the big studios and tech help from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), it tried to launch a download service, a la Apple’s iTunes (AAPL). But it abandoned it in less than a year.
Meanwhile, sources say Vudu has been seeking a buyer — in the form of either a big box retailer or an electronics manufacturer – for some time without success. Internet executive Mark Jung ran the company for a year but left in November 2008; founder Alain Rossmann became interim CEO when Jung left and has kept the title since then.
Santa Clara-based Vudu has raised at least $21 million from Benchmark Capital and Greylock Partners. I’m told that when the company was marketing itself last fall, it was looking for a sale price of $50 million or more. But it may not have much leverage to command a premium.
Vudu started out by marketing an Internet-connected box that consumers plugged into their TVs, but that offering seemed to underwhelm customers (as well as All Things D’s Katie Boehret). It is now focused on building that technology directly into TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players, and marketing itself as a Netflix-like service.
The company’s supposed strengths are a video compression technology that makes it feasible to stream movies in high definition, and a peer-to-peer architecture that cuts down the cost of delivering the the large files.
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CNN’s Larry King Live had scrapped a planned TV interview with reality star Tila Tequila after an ex-girlfriend of socialite Casey Johnson served the newsman with a threat of legal action.
Larry had been scheduled to interview the bisexual vamp about her relationship with the recently-deceased Johnson & Johnson heiress. However, attorneys for Jasmine Lennard issued a warning to King, the producers of Larry King Live and TV network CNN, which airs his daily show, threatening action if Tequila defamed their client on the program.
In a letter to King and his producers, obtained by TMZ, the attorneys warned them not to let Tequila use the show as “a platform to make further false and defamatory allegations” about Lennard. “These include making allegations suggesting Lennard has a criminal record or outstanding warrant, among other sensational claims,” the letter continued.
Tila is trapped in a legal dispute wit Lennard over a scathing online blog she posted blasting the model last week.
Johnson’s family opposed King’s plans to interview Tequila about her fiancee’s death.
Kimi Raikkonen may seem optimistic about his chances to return to Formula One when he pleases, but some of the F1 pundits beg to differ. One of them is former racer in the series Johnny Herbert, who is anything but convinced Raikkonen will have an easy task finding a seat in 2010.
One reason for that is that Raikkonen doesn’t want just a regular seat, but a winning one. And all positions already seem covered for the 2011 season, apart from Red Bull’s Mark Webber (whose deal with t… (read more)
Scott Brown, the insurgent GOP candidate in the Massachusetts special Senate election, had an amazing night last night.
In a sign of the intensity of his support, and the interest in his campaign — which could potentially derail historic healthcare reform — he raised over $1 million in online donations last night.
Of course, other politicians have had amazing online fundraising operations (think Ron Paul, Howard Dean) with little to show for it on election day.
But then, Brown does have the poll numbers to back things up. The election is a week from today. Get ready for a wild sprint.
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A study came out today saying that electric cars–both battery electric and plug-in hybrids–would make up as much as 16-percent of new car sales in New York City come 2015. That’s roughly 70,000 vehicles.
But what’s driving these EV sales? Governments are expected to impose higher restrictions on CO2 emissions, for one. Plus, subsidies and tax benefits for EVs are expected to increase.
It’s not like last Friday’s disappointing jobs data needs more folks to point out what a flop it was, but Albert Edwards, the SocGen uber-bear, has an interesting take.
In a research note, he discusses the significance between the divergence between the establishment data and the household survey.
Take a look, via ZeroHedge:
The 85,000 decline in December’s non-farm payrolls jolted (briefly) the markets back to reality. For it had almost been forgotten in the post-November payroll euphoria that we remain in the midst of a long-lasting balance sheet recession. Yet surprisingly weak though the December payrolls were, this disappointment pales into insignificance compared with the massive 589,000 decline in employment as measured by the Household Survey (the monthly Employment Report contains surveys of both Households and Company Establishments each month). Typically the employment measure preferred by the markets is the payroll data collected from the Establishment Survey, as it tends to be less volatile on a monthly basis (but the unemployment rate data is derived from the alternative Household Survey).
Although the household measure of jobs is typically more volatile on a month-on-month basis, it is notable how it has seen a far more marginal improvement on a trend basis when compared to the payroll series (see chart below), and just how bad Decembers outturn was.
Which of these indicators should one be following?
Typically, at turning points, the Household Survey measure of employment growth tends to be a leading indicator of the payroll data. Payrolls often get revised much later to fall into line with the Household Survey measure. One key difference between the two surveys is the difficulty the Establishment Survey measure of employment has in picking up what is going on in the smaller company sector. These diverging trends appear to be particularly wide at present (see chart below).
Thus the Friday numbers, far from being a huge shock, were entirely consistent with what we’ve been seeing for awhile. There’s just no recovery at the small business level in terms of sentiment, credit, or hiring. In fact, what these charts show is that there was optimism, and there was a slowdown in firing, but that’s stalled, so you can’t argue that it’s simply a matter of small business not yet having turned the corner, to so speak.
You hear over and over again about how small business is the key to the recovery. Politicians love to say it. Too bad putting that into practice is a different matter entirely.
Read the rest of the report at ZeroHedge — >
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While most carmakers are displaying their latest goodies at the 2010 NAIAS, Nissan is planning to debut its new crossover at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show in March. Nevertheless, the Japanese manufacturer gives its best to keep things secret when it comes to the appearance of the production model.
But here are a couple of computer-generated images (CGIs) supposed to give us a glimpse into how the future model will look like. Codenamed Juke, the crossover will be smaller than the … (read more)
The Bachelor beauty accused of bedding a show staffer while romancing pilot Jake Palveka says the sex rumors are a “blatant” lie.
Rozlyn Papa, a 28-year-old divorced mom, denies she was sleeping with one of the show’s producers in a shocking turn of events that sparked this season’s so-called “Bachelor Scandal.”
“I absolutely feel betrayed by the show. … They want the ratings, and that’s what they’re getting,” Rozlyn told Entertainment Tonight Monday. “This seeps into my personal life. I have a 7-year-old little boy at home that I want to look up to me, and to have this blatant lie out there perpetuated by the show itself, it’s hurtful. It’s scary to think what my son will think of me.”
Last week, Jake confirmed the rumors of an affair.
“Why would you go on national television and throw a mom under the bus like that?” Papa said, insisting that her relationship with the producer — who has since been fired by ABC — was nothing more than a friendship.
We’ve covered in great detail how DigiProtect purposely seeds files of content from its copyright holding partners, in order to send anyone who downloads the content a “pre-settlement” letter that seems not very different from the traditional extortion “protection” rackets (“pay us, or we’ll sue.”) Those who don’t pay are actually discovering that the pre-settlement letters may be handed over to collections agencies despite no agreement to pay nor a court order requiring payment. It turns out this shakedown business is quite profitable but of very questionable legality.
A new report in Germany is suggesting that DigiProtect and a few similar firms in Europe may have sent out 450,000 such letters last year. Unfortunately, NewTeeVee, in reporting on this, claims that each of these are “P2P lawsuits,” but that’s not true (and a large part of the problem). Nearly every one of these letters are sent without any corresponding lawsuit. The whole idea is to shake people down by threatening a lawsuit, but never having to go through the expense of filing one (or the trouble of actually proving the infringement — which is a big deal since many, many, many bogus letters have been generated, snaring many innocent users). But, with little in the way of penalties for such bogus pre-settlement letters, there’s simply no reason not to keep sending them. Apparently, enough people just pay up to make this an incredibly profitable business.
However, with the massive increase in such letters, and increasing scrutiny about the whole practice, you have to wonder when European governments will start to crack down on this behavior. It’s difficult to see anyone defending these actions with a straight face. They clearly have nothing to do with preventing file sharing or unauthorized use of content, but are very much about just getting people to pay up under the threat of a lawsuit.
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Vimeo has just rolled out the broader mobile support it first announced last week. The site is making a couple of big moves one with the wider availability of 1080p videos and the second being better support for most smartphone platforms. Subscribers to Vimeo Plus can now use the mobile version of the site to convert their videos into mobile-friendly formats…. (read more)
Часть описаний проектов уже изложено в ветке Красноярского края на этой странице – http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth…=975470&page=3
I don’t know about you, but I hate flying. Hate it. But I might just change my tune if I get a chance to board the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplane. Boeing revealed the Dreamliner a few weeks ago and it’s slated to go into commercial use by the end of 2010.
Unlike the jarring environment of most airplanes, the Dreamliner is designed to promote a soothing experience by using three stage LED lighting in the cabin.
Instead of tiny portholes, the Dreamliner users the largest windows available on any commercial aircraft, giving you a better view of the horizon. The windows even feature “smart glass” which can be dimmed at the flip of a switch.
Now if they could just add an extra 12 inches of legroom I might just be happy on my next flight.
[via PSFK]
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The excitement is building at KUSI as work continues on the one hour prime time special report on Global Warming: The Other Side. The telecast will make its TV debut on KUSI on Thursday evening at 9 PM. Set your DVR for this one. I have been writing feverishly and doing a series of interviews with experts, but that all fades when compared to the big news break we are preparing to reveal for the first time. We will be bringing the Climategate scandal from England to the United States. Remember in late November a huge file of emails and computer codes from the Anglia University Climate Center in England were leaked or hacked and the revelations of manipulations of temperature data and collusion among the scientists there and those in the U.S. with whom they worked were mind boggling. Well, on our program an even greater degree of manipulation from the United States will be revealed for the first time. It ought to make national news in the days that follow. We continue to work diligently on the program.
Meanwhile, a highly significant new understanding of what may be the real natural force behind global warming and cooling may be unfolding on the internet. Anthony Watts, the intrepid meteorologist and friend of mine, runs a great blog called Watts up with that. From the posts on his site he collects the data and writes:
Source: kusi.com
TruCaller is an application that makes it possible to know who is calling you, even if that person is not in your phone book. The video above from an earlier version shows it in action. The software supports 21 countries and can take around 2-3 rings to look up the information about a caller from national databases over 3G or WIFI.
The latest version, 1.20, adds many new features including:
– Update phonebook: Update all your contacts with missing information such as city, zip code, address
– Twitter integration: Tweet your calls!
– Google maps integration
– Completely rewritten code
– All new improved user interface.
Read more about the software at TruCaller here.
