Author: Serkadis

Here’s how not to signal strength and confidence to the rest of the world: Let your 77-year old finance minister fall ill, go to the hospital, ask to resign, and then reject his request, presumably because there’s nobody who can step into fill his shoes.

Up until late last night, that was the situation with Hirohisa Fujii.

Well, finally prime Minister Hatoyamai is letting him off the hook. According to Kyodo newswire, he will be replaced by his deputy Naoto Kan.

What a fiasco.

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See Also:

• Japan Is About Lose Another Finance Minister, As Exhausted Hirohisa Fujii Offers To Quit
• Finance Ministers Of Japan And Ireland Reveal Health Problems In The Same Week

Running at the same time with the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), the 2010 Tokyo Auto Salon, Japan’s custom and after-market parts exhibition, will witness a powerful display of Nissan vehicles and technology.

Among the stars of Nissan’s lineup will be the Roox Highway Star Urban Selection (a premium model based on the Roox and equipped with custom parts such as an advanced HDD navigation system, lighting components with custom exterior, and stylized cabin interio… (read more)

Although the Paris’ Tribunal de Grande Instance overturned the FIA’s lifetime ban for Flavio Briatore, the international motor racing body still claims that the 59-year old Italian is very much guilty of fixing the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

Indeed, the French judges did not issue any verdicts as to whether Briatore was guilty or innocent in the crash-gate, but only referred to the FIA’s right to issue a ban for a person that does not have a racing driver’s license. And, in a pres… (read more)

It seems that Aussies who had some money to spend on a luxury vehicle this year preferred the BMW brand. According to 2009 official industry figures, the Bavarian brand has been crowned king of luxury sales in Australia for the sixth year in a row. This year BMW managed to sell more than 17,000 passenger cars.

To record sales in excess of 17,000 units for the third consecutive year is a testament to the strength of the BMW product range and dealer network, says Stavros Yallouridis… (read more)

Update: The original title to this post said “Democratic Nightmare” and it’s true that this is turning into a nightmarish year already for the incumbent party.

But in reality, this specific news can be interpreted as good for Democrats, especially if you figured that Dodd was goose-meat come general election time.

The new candidate — most likely AG Richard Blumenthal — should do better against whichever GOPer gets in.

So, the Dodd retirement is emblematic of the nightmare, but not necessarily a nightmare itself.

Original post: Wow, this really is going to be the year of the elephant.

Two key Senators will not be standing for re-election in November. The first is ND Senator Byron Dorgan, who announced his retirement plans late afternoon yesterday.

The STUNNER though was Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Senator, who, according to various news reports, has decided to throw in the towel as well.

Dodd’s close ties to the financial industry made him vulnerable in this time when anti-Wall Street sentiment runs deep.

The political winds, plus the depleting funds of his core base (hedge funds, insurance, etc.) has put him in a tought spot. A trio of eager Republicans — Peter Schiff, Linda McMahon, and Rob Simmmons — are vying for that seat.

That seat could still be a hold for Democrats, though Dorgan, in deep-red North Dakota may be a lost cause.

Anyway, there goes 60, and in reality, there goes a lot more, both in the House and Senate, because if there were any remaining doubt that it’s a bad year to be a Democratic Candidate for Congress, this is just the icing.

Throw in the tight Mass. Senate race, and you have to figure that the Obama administration has, oh, about a week left to pursue its agenda.

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See Also:

• Another Blow To Embattled Dodd: Senator Caught Cutting Bomb-Detection Funding To Fund A Pet Pork Project
• Upset In Massachusetts Special Senate Race May Be The Political Earthquake Of 2010
• Dear Wall Street, Your Worst Nightmare Is Coming To The Senate

Andy Rubin, pictured above surrounded by press after the Nexus One event today, is the guy who founded Android and sold it to Google in 2005. And he’s starting to remind me a little of another product fanatic, Steve Jobs.

Everyone knows about Jobs’ amazing ability to build hit products and disrupt entire industries. I wrote extensively about this in What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?. Jobs is all about the product. Every last detail. And it shows. He’s disrupted the mobile phone, music, film and television industries, and we haven’t even mentioned the Macs yet.

But Jobs is also notoriously touchy and difficult to work with. He demands perfection and doesn’t really work well with others. And Jobs is distrustful of the press. Apple’s PR group is mostly there to not return calls.

We forgive him all that, of course. Because he’s changing the world, and forces competitors to do better just to try to keep up. The world, particularly the tech world, is a far more colorful place because of Jobs. There is no one at Apple who has the product vision to push that company forward once he steps down. He’s the Alexander the Great of today’s tech world. And he’s also able to captivate a crowd when he’s on stage.

Rubin isn’t Steve Jobs. He doesn’t have the product track record that Jobs has (no one in the world does). And Rubin is shy on stage – he doesn’t make any real effort to win over the crowd. There was no “and one last thing” line at today’s Nexus One launch by Rubin. Only Steve Jobs can really pull that off.

But Rubin is a product fanatic in the same way that Jobs is. The NY Times did a good overview of Rubin in 2005. One line about Rubin, a former Apple engineer and cofounder of WebTV and Danger, stuck with me from that article: “Mr. Rubin is a proven member of an earlier group of engineers-turned-entrepreneurs who have a passion for building complete digital systems.”

I’ll say. A lot of credit for the Nexus One goes to his senior team, particularly Mario Queiroz and Erick Tseng (two people Google put on stage today). But the vision for the Nexus One was all Rubin, we keep hearing from people at Google. And he wouldn’t compromise, even after it was clear Google would miss their original deadline of shipping the Nexus One in time for the 2009 holiday rush. “Rubin kept saying it has to be thinner,” mumbled one tired team member to me after the event, “so we made it thinner.”

He has incredible power within the Android group at Google, and even VPs at Google there make sure not to cross him. People who work with him have told me of his amazing attention to detail and his unbending demands that a product be perfect before it goes out the door. A lot of that shows in the Nexus One, Google’s first complete end to end hardware and software system.

Rubin has many of the same personality traits as Jobs. He’s a product visionary and fanatic who likes the dictatorial style of product development. He’s not great with people, and doesn’t deal well with the press. At today’s Nexus One event you could see his barely contained frustration at the questions fired off at him during the Q&A session. “I’m just not going to say anything else about that” was one quip he fired off after a reporter kept asking the same question over and over. Jobs, of course, doesn’t do Q&As.

And that’s just fine with me. I don’t care if the people we cover are likable, or like me. Being affable or loquacious isn’t a job requirement for Awesome Product Guy. You just have to have a strong vision, be unwilling to bend, and have the means of following through with that product to launch.

Like Jobs, Rubin has known failure. He’s even been fired from his own company, Danger. But like Jobs, he went on to bigger and better things. For Jobs it was NeXT and Pixar, then back at Apple. For Rubin, it was Android.

Is the Nexus One as disruptive as the iPhone? No. Apple started this party and the Nexus One is part of that same revolution. But it’s disruptive in different ways, and its openness (and paring with Google Voice) is pretty exciting. And I get the feeling that his team is just getting started with this whole Android thing.

Ten years from now we’ll look back. Rubin may just be another exec at another big company. Or he may be something more. Heck, he may even be running Apple. His personality would fit right in.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Some products I am not meant to understand. I know that. Take the Polar Bear TV from Hannspree. In my book, it’s one of the complete losers of the CES Unveiled, the opening press reception for the Consumer Electronics Show. I can’t tell you how appalling it would be to play Modern Warfare 2 on a TV like this, with the polar bear looking back at you every time you squeezed the trigger of your machine gun in the video game.

But I’m not a 9-year-old kid who likes cute and cuddly things. This $299 television has a 17-inch screen and it can display 720p digital TV. It’s available this March for anybody who has a streak of silliness in them. And if this one doesn’t float your boat, you can also get an apple-shaped TV as well.

I’m sure the folks at Roku, the set-top box maker, think the next one is a loser too. The Popbox competes with Roku’s offering and delivers just about everything to your TV. It’s one of those boxes that can play just about any type of video or display different kinds of photos. And it organizes a lot of things on a TV screen that you would normally view on the web, from Netflix to Twitter.

You can use it to view apps such as Photobucket, Shoutcast, Revision3, Channels.com, Fun Spot Games and lots of other stuff. It will be available in March for $129 or $149 for a version with built-in Wi-Fi. You can use it for movies, music, games, social networking and news. Put this one in the winner camp, but I’m sure there are going to be a lot of other services just like it.

Inada has been coming to CES Unveiled for years with massage chairs that seem like they’re from science fiction. This year, they have the Doctor’s Choice by Inada chair, wihch the company says “fits the human form like a glove.” It’s designed to give you posture correction benefits. It wraps around you and gives you 800 square inches of massage coverage and customizes to 106 body types. Of course, the price tag is crazy at $5,799. But the company kindly points out that if you use it for more than 10,000 massages, which would cost about 58 cents per massage. Uh, I can’t say this one is a winner for that many people.

iGo showed up with a bunch of products that are aimed at saving energy. The iGo Power Smart Tower has eight outlets so that you can charge eight different devices at the same time. Since it has iGo Green Technology, it will charge a device until it is fully charged and then won’t consume any energy after that. It is available now at $79.99. Other products include the iGo Green Laptop Anywhere Charger ($129) and the iGo Power Smart Wall ($29.99). All of the devices are aimed at eliminating energy vampires that suck electricity even when they’re done charging. It’s a winner, but it competes with other rivals such as Green Plug.

PicoChip makes flexible wireless chips that can be the heart of a femtocell access point. These are cool devices that you put into your home or any weak spot for cellular reception. They essentially serve as small, self-configuring cellular basestations. They can give you perfect voice reception in a place where you normally don’t get good coverage, like indoors. It’s already being used by 17 customers such as Alcatel Lucent and Sagem who are selling the boxes. The chip maker, PicoChip, is venture-backed and is contemplating an initial public offering. Consider it a winner.

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So, what is it about the number 100 today? To celebrate 90 years in the business, Rollei is bringing out the Flexline 100, a very minimalist digital camera that looks a bit smartphone-esque once you flip it over.

The backside slightly resembles a smartphone that’s been covered in that fantastic plastic with the leather wrinkles that was all over cameras in the Fifties and Sixties. And, despite the slightly twee Disney-esque icons, you’ve still got to admit it’s a bit of a looker – as long as you don’t go for either the blue or pink options. So that’ll be the black, Modom.

For all its simplistic design, the Rollei packs a bit of a punch. (Well, I say that, but we’re talking Lilliputian proportions here, not Brobdignagian). There’s a 10 megapixel CCD sensor, an internal 3x optical Apogon zoom and 21 programmes, including smile and face detection. Add anti-red eye touchy-uppy, a high-speed serial pictures function that gives you 30 pics per second, and all of this for just 200 euros ($287). It’s just a shame you can’t phone out on it.

[Let’s Go Digital]

You can watch music videos on your laptop, watch an entire season of Lost on your desktop, even sports events are now online. The PC is taking over the TV in a big way, but for once the TV is going on the offensive and borrowing something from the computer. No, it’s not Twitter, that has been done before , now TV viewers will have the option to chat with their friends and family with Skype from the comfort of their couch. It’s teleconferencing for the living room, or at least that’s what Skype and the manufacturers are claiming.

“We’re bringing Skype into the living room, so that you can share family moments – celebrating a birthday, organising a holiday or just having a chat with friends on a Sunday evening – all on the big screen,” Skype’s Peter Parkes wrote. “Thanks to our TV manufacturing partners LG and Panasonic, we’ve been able to embed Skype in the latest generation of internet-connected widescreen HDTVs.”

The high-end TV sets from LG and Panasonic are hitting stores in a few months time, but will be unveiled at this week’s CES. These are pretty top of the range Internet-enabled HDTV devices. There is no word on the pricing, but the Skype functionality will require an additional video camera which will sell separately for about $100 to $200.

Still, Skype on the TV, did anyone really need … (read more)

The new Renault Megane Coupe Cabriolet will be presented at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show on March 2nd. The Renault Atelier in Paris will also feature the new Megane on March 5th. The new coupe-cabriolet will extend the Megane line-up, with the sports style coupe and open top cabriolet combined. The Megane Coupe-Cabriolet will feature a fold-away glass roof, although no further technical details, including engine options, are available.

Ford’s plan is working. This is how Ken Czubay, Ford vice president for US Marketing Sales and Service sums up the sales results posted today by the American manufacturer. With a 33 percent increase in sales in December and the first full-year market share gain since 1995, we have to agree: Ford’s plan IS WORKING.

Ford’s plan is working, Czubaysaid. Customer consideration continues to grow for our high-quality, fuel-efficient vehicles. In 2010, we will introduce an even higher nu… (read more)

Acura, the luxury vehicle division of Japanese automaker Honda, has just revealed sales figures for December and year end for the North American market. According to the reports, the TL performance luxury sedan led December sales with 3,167 units sold, closely followed by the TSX sports sedan, with sales of 2,926, up 17.9 percent.

Strong sales of light trucks helped Acura achieve December sales of 10,575 units, a decrease of 8.1 percent based on the daily selling rate. Acura year… (read more)

Thirty months ago, iLive’s streeetchy iPod dock/surround sound bar looked like this. Well, now it looks like this. They’ve moved the dock to the left, which looks aight. Not sure about the other 32 products, though. *cough* Thanko. *cough*

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Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes