Author: Serkadis

Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Chevrolet, Racing

Back in August when General Motors introduced the all-new GT2 class Corvette C6.R, it ran downsized 6.0-liter version of the 7.0-liter V8 from the long-dominant GT1 car. At the launch, Corvette Racing program manager Doug Fehan told us the 6.0-liter was just an interim engine. With revised GT rules on tap for 2010, GM was already planning a brand-new engine for its race Vette.

Unlike the 6.0/7.0, which is a ground-up race engine that only shares basic architectural dimensions with the production small block, the 2010 C6.R’s V8 is a new 5.5-liter unit that will indeed be derived from the production engine found in roadgoing Corvettes. In fact, the 5.5-liter race engine will be built at GM’s Performance Build Center alongside ZR1 and Z06 V8s.

Fehan has confirmed that the 5.5 is running on the dyno and will make its race debut at the 12 Hours of Sebring in March. We don’t have any additional details on the new engine yet, although we were told earlier that it is based on the next-generation production small-block, which we expect to see in the Corvette soon.

Photos Copyright (C)2009 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.

[Source: General Motors]

Continue reading Corvette Racing boss Doug Fehan confirms new 5.5L V8 for Sebring debut

Corvette Racing boss Doug Fehan confirms new 5.5L V8 for Sebring debut originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The idea of working at Google is a dream job for many engineers all around the world. So where better to go to get ready for this career than the Googlle Institute of Software of Software Studies, right? Hold on a second. Read that name again.

Yes, it appears that some jokers in India are attempting to leverage not only Google’s name, but their logo and even favicon to trick people into thinking they their quite-possibly-bogus online university is related to the real Google somehow. Dubbed the “School For Future Software Engineers,” the Googlle Institute has a website that looks like it could some sort of legitimate online training school — if it weren’t for the sketchy naming, branding, and plethora of dead links.

They apparently offer two certifications: “GCPA – Googlle Certified Professional in Advanced Computing,” which promises to teach you technologies related to “Windows Professional” and “Linux Professional.” The other certification is “GCPE – Googlle Certified Professional in E-Commerce,” which gives you more consumer-oriented skills, such as Photoshop. These courses take two years to complete, but the site notes that they also offer “Modular courses – duration 60 days to 90 days that can enhance your computer skills and offer you “GOOGLLE” certification, no matter what your specific requirement.” Oh goody, a Googlle certification.

The site also features a bunch of pictures of students sitting around outside at a campus, sitting in a classroom, graduating, the works. The only problem? As far as I can tell, there is no actual campus. Actually, almost every link on the site leads to dead end pages that don’t actually exist.

This “Googlle” is apparently a division of C.B.Online Pvt. Ltd., which is some sort of online business “solutions” provider based in India. Googlle’s headquarters is apparently in Orissa, India at the Rajarani Petrol Pump Complex. That sounds a lot like a gas station to me, but who knows. Regardless, I’m sure it’s not as nice as Google’s actual offices in India (they have four main hubs for the bustling and burgeoning tech scene there). Hopefully they have something to say about this site.

[thanks Deb]

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

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What is it about the dawn of a new year – and, in this case, a new decade – that inspires such an interminable parade of lists? The 100 best albums of the decade (The Strokes? Seriously?), the 30 best TV series of the decade (The Wire? Seriously?), the 10 most influential games of the decade (The Sims? Seriously?) – even the 10 best conservative movies of the decade (just — seriously?).

Apparently in the days between Christmas and New Year, the world stops demanding actual journalism – or writing. Instead, stuffed large with leftover turkey and re-gifted booze, we’re happy to accept any old rehashed crap, provided it’s appended with the words “…of the year” (2.5 billion results on Google) or “…of the decade” (72.8 million results).

But not so at TechCrunch. There’s a reason why we had more stories on Techmeme’s list of the ‘ten objectively biggest tech stories of 2009‘ than any other single news source, and that’s because – even in a week when no one is reading anything we write – we retain our passion for real journalism and impassioned campaigning, along with our hatred of lazy, crowd-pleasing bullshit.

Nah, just kidding. Here’s this week’s list of the best lists published on TechCrunch this past week…

2010: My Fifth Annual List Of The Tech Products I Love And Use Every Day
Arrington has been doing this for five years now: naming the 24 products and services he can’t live without, presumably so that his legions of fanboys can use the self-same apps and in doing so become even closer to their hero. Let’s just hope Foursquare’s servers can cope with the tsunami of new users signing up just to fake check-in at the Pyramids.

Snapstream’s Top TV Trends of 2009
Leena reports on Snapstream’s interesting – if utterly predictable – research into the most frequently used words and phrases on American TV in 2009. According to their findings, which are generated by analysing closed caption text from all of the major channels, this year’s top television obsessions were “Iran, Michael Jackson, Swine Flu, North Korea, AIG, Pirates, Hamas, (The) Inauguration, Ted Kennedy, and Balloon (boy).” In other “no shit” news, we also learn that over-exposed media darling Twitter was mentioned more frequently than Facebook, MySpace and other social media platforms. Twemendous.

Amazon’s Best-Selling Products of 2009
If you were in any doubt that 2009 was the year that ebooks finally reached their tipping point then consider Amazon’s list of best-selling products for 2009, as analysed by CrunchGear. Not only was the Kindle their best-selling electronic item but the utterly mainstream Dan Brown was the device’s best-selling author. What was it Clay Shirky said? Here’s comes everybody!

370 Passwords You Shouldn’t (And Can’t) Use On Twitter
From the depressing to the terrifying, Robin scored an interesting scoop this week by uncovering Twitter’s (not very well hidden) list of banned passwords. To save you the effort of paging through all 370 words and phrases, all you need to know is that there are no fewer than five euphemisms from vagina (not counting vagina itself, which is also there), but only two for penis (with penis itself curiously absent). The word ‘monkey’, meanwhile, is inexplicably on the list twice. Can’t be too careful with monkeys.

Ten Technologies That Will Rock 2010
And finally, while everyone else on TechCrunch was looking backwards, Erick whipped out his crystal ball and tried to predict what we’ll be looking back on this time next year. No surprise to see “the tablet” on the list, or Geo(location) or real-time search. In fact, no surprises at all: if Erick is right (and when is he not?) then 2010 is going to be the most dull and predictable year ever. I mean, HTML5 is going to rock 2010? Would it have killed him to have included hoverboards or robot maids?

X-ray sunglasses?

Cybergeese?

Come on!

…

Still hungry for lists? Here are twelve Lists That Didn’t Make My Top List Of TechCrunch Lists…

Six New Years Resolutions For Apple And The iPhone In 2010
Top Ten Mobile Voice Searches Of 2009
Flixster Users Name Top 2009 Movies
The Top 10 MobileCrunch Posts of 2009
The Best iPhone Apps Of 2009 (Appvee Edition)
Single Most Innovative Product of the Decade
Unexpected Success Stories
Biggest Losers in Tech
The best console games of the decade
PC Games of the Decade
The Biggest Product Flops of the Decade

…and of course…

JibJab’s Year In Review Plays Off 2009, With Help From Keyboard Cat

Have a great year! Of the decade!

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Here’s our rundown of the week’s business and tech news. (Due to the holiday-shortened week, I’m including fewer posts than usual.) First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Nine startups dreams and industries Google crushed in 2009 – A lot of folks, from tiny startups to companies in established industries, found themselves in the search behemoth’s path this year. We looked back some of the dreams that were destroyed.

Apple’s new gadget is an e-reader, says latest rumor — There are reports that Apple’s new tablet computer has a specific purpose: It’s a Kindle-killer designed for reading books, magazines, and news on-the-go.

These are the ten best video games of the decade, dammit! — VentureBeat games writer Dean Takahashi compiles a list of his favorite games from the past 10 years, supposedly because his “annoyance [with other best of decade lists] built up so that it overflowed” and he “felt compelled to retaliate” by creating his own list.

Droid clobbers other Android phones in Xmas app downloads — More evidence that the new Droid is the king of the Android phones: On Christmas Day, the number of Android app downloads from the new Droid phones roughly equaled the number of downloads from all leading Android phones combined, according to a report from app market analysts Flurry.

And here are four more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Peering into MySpace’s collective consciousness with real-time search — We look at the differences in how conversations play out on different online communities. Of course, our comparison is extremely unscientific, but it support speculation that class divisions are playing out on the web.

Our favorite horribly wrong or amusing tech covers — As everyone makes predictions about 2010 and beyond, we tried to provide some perspective by reminding readers of decades of bad predictions from the tech press. We’ll have our own predictions up soon, and some will certainly be wrong, but hopefully they won’t deserve too much ridicule a decade from now.

Stealthy C3 raises $26M to manage carbon, but what will it actually be doing? — C3 already seems to be setting itself apart by recruiting heavyweights like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham for its board. The star power isn’t surprising, considering that the San Mateo, Calif., company was founded by Thomas Siebel — the man who sold Siebel Systems to Oracle for $5.7 billion.

Does voice-to-text technology actually work? — Voice-to-text technology is entering more and more industries, and has the potential to make recording, dictating and communicating a whole lot faster. But after trying out the different services available now, it’s clear that they’ve still got a long way to go.

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Indiana, US | Follies and Grottoes

Constructed over ten years on the site of a former handball court on the grounds of the Providence Home, the Geode Grotto was the idea of Father Phillip Ottavi, an Italian immigrant who was inspired by religious grottoes in Europe. As a child he was orphaned by the Messina earthquake, which killed 100,000 or more people in Italy in 1908, which led to his involvement with the Order of the Sons of Divine Providence who are dedicated to helping the less fortunate.

Grottoes have long been associated with Catholic fervor and devotion. The grotto at Lourdes, France, became famous when an appearance of an apparition of Mary to a young girl was followed by miraculous cures. A frenzy of grotto building in Europe began even earlier in the mid 1600s and continued through the Victorian period, fueled by the apparition at Lourdes, with dozens if not hundreds of grottoes being built both on church land and at private residences. In the US the trend never took off with as much gusto, but there is still a good number of religious grottoes primarily in the midwest.

Geodes are abundant in southern Indiana, and the soft rocks with crystal-filled centers have been used locally as building and decorative material for generations. The geodes that are in the Providence Home grotto come from nearby Heltonville, where a ready supply was found early in the project. The main material is the local geode stones, mixed with bits of marble, carved limestone, and found objects, set into poured concrete. The white Carrara marble statues were imported specially from Italy.

The style of the grotto was intended to imitate the famous grotto at Lourdes, but as one builder put it, there were “No blueprints, just inspiration.” The result covers four city blocks in fountains, planters, cave-like openings and gardens. It was built between 1960-1970 under the guidance of Father Ottavi with the help of residents and coworkers from the home. One worker tells the story about Ottavi’s passion – one day he fell from a platform while working on the main grotto, the Mother of God Shrine, but he was back the next day continuing to work.

There are two major shrines: the Mother of God Shrine on the south end, and the St. Joseph Shrine in the north.

The entrance is through Mother of God Shrine, just north of the Providence Home on Bartley Street.

Filed under: TUAW Tips, Snow Leopard

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard introduced a lot of under-the-hood changes and many are not very obvious. One such change is to the authentication requirements for logging in remotely via SSH.

In 10.5 logging in remotely via SSH was a pretty standard affair. In 10.6, however, security has been beefed up a bit to require case-sensitive login credentials. While this requirement has already been imposed on passwords, Snow Leopard now requires a case-sensitive user name as well.

In other words, when logging in via SSH, Snow Leopard differentiates between the username “aron” and “Aron.” This threw me for a loop for quite some time and is another one of the numerous reasons I have held off upgrading my Mac mini to 10.6.

TUAWSSH and the case-sensitive username in Snow Leopard originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Exclusive: Google Nexus One hands-on, video, and first impressions

Exclusive: Google Nexus One hands-on, video, and first impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: SUV, Subaru, Australia

Subaru collaborates with outdoor gear company Columbia in other markets, and the latest result is the limited edition 2010 Forester X Columbia. This version swaps out the standard steel wheels for 16-inch alloys, and adds fog lights, a roof rack, cargo tray, rear step panel, and a $500 voucher for actual Columbia gear. Not bad, but it’s a step down from the 2007 Forester X Columbia, which also got a sunroof and heated seats.

There will be 1,050 examples on offer and they go on sale in Australia beginning Monday, January 4. The “driveaway” price has been announced as $33,990 AUD for the manual ($30,486 USD – note: that’s a straight conversion and does not correspond to the car’s U.S. price), which is $600 less than the Forester X price on Subaru’s Aussie site. Unless we’re missing something, that can’t be all bad for the country’s best-selling crossover.

[Source: The Motor Report]

Continue reading Subaru releases new Forester X Columbia in Australia

Subaru releases new Forester X Columbia in Australia originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Snuggie, the blanket with sleeves, is becoming a phenomenon. But is it justified?

I received a Snuggie as part gag gift, part well-if-you-like-it gift. I believe it came from Bed, Bath & Beyond. My Snuggie is pink to signify that a breast cancer research donation was made from its sale. I think that idea is very nice, but they could have just put a pink ribbon on a gray blanket instead. How many of us have pink decor?

The free book light that was included was passable for a free item. I like how it opens up, but I could never get it angled the way I needed it to be helpful for reading. The Snuggie website and the fact that they throw in a free item makes the whole deal seem very infomercial. I think that’s what they’re going for though.

As for quality, I’d give the product a B minus. The fleece seems cheap and not very durable. If you hold the Snuggie up, you can see light through it. When compared to a higher quality fleece, the Snuggie fabric looks like little balls of fleece on a background, rather than a solid piece of fleece. However, it is warm and lightweight.

Tip: Be sure to wash your Snuggie before allowing it on your clothes. I opened mine just to check it out briefly and was soon covered with pink debris.

I can complain about quality all day, but the truth is that I use the Snuggie. I don’t always put my arms into the holes while sitting on the sofa, but that option is there if I feel especially cold. I’ve also been able to utilize the Snuggie during late-night blogging sessions when it gets rather chilly in my office. (I’m trying to keep the thermostat down to save energy.)

In all, I’d say if you’re getting this for yourself, you know what to expect, a low-quality novelty product you might actually use. If you’re getting this as a gag gift, perfect, but rather expensive for a joke. If you don’t know whether someone would like a Snuggie, you should probably look for something different.

How do you feel about Snuggie?

(Image via amazon)

Post from: Blisstree

Is Snuggie Really All That?

Google’s Chrome browser has only been on the market for 16 months, but it has already taken a good share of the market and beat out Safari for the number three spot. Safari, for the first time ever, is now ranked fourth. By the end of December, Chrome was up at 4.63% market share whereas Safari fell to about 4.46%. Of course, the big boost likely came from the fact that Chrome Beta became officially available for Mac and Linux. Top dogs are still Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, with IE8 still at the top but failing to see any real growth. So tell us, what browser are you currently using and why (speed, extensions, apps, etc)?

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Filed under: Accessories

There’s a group of users on Apple’s Discussion Boards who claim that their Bluetooth keyboards have been devouring batteries since they started using a Magic Mouse. Despite switching to rechargeable batteries and running all pertinent updates, the problem persists. Most of the thread’s participants claim to need new keyboard batteries weekly.

Some have guessed that the Magic Mouse is preventing the keyboard from going into sleep mode. One user swapped his Magic Mouse with a Logitech model and saw the problem disappear, while another claims to have heard from Apple Tech Support that this is a known Bluetooth driver issue and that a fix is in the works.

This thread appeared on November 12, 2009, just a few days after Apple released Wireless Keyboard Update 2.0 on the 9th. The update was meant to “…use the function key one-touch controls of your Mac with your aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard,” and doesn’t seem related to the battery issue.

The Magic Mouse was released on October 20, 2009, and is the first consumer mouse to have multi-touch capabilities. Together, the mouse and keyboard make a pleasant, clutter-free desktop, but aesthetics are worthless if you’re constantly buying batteries. Have you experienced this issue? Let’s hope it gets fixed soon.

TUAWMagic Mouse draining Bluetooth keyboard batteries originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the last quarter, Chrome, Safari and Opera all set new personal bests for browser market share with 4.63, 4.46 and 2.4 percent respectively. This period marks the first time Chrome has pipped Safari to third spot, while their collective prosperity comes at the expense of IE, which continues to hemorrhage users at a rate of 0.92 percentage points a month. Microsoft’s 62.7 percent slice might still look mighty, but projections from Net Applications suggest it could shrink to below 50 percent by May of this year. Unless something magical happens. You’ll probably also want to know that Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites and generates a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors each month — making the veracity of its claims pretty robust. One hidden sign of our collective laziness: 21 percent of all users last quarter were still fulfilling their browsing needs with IE 6. For shame.

Internet Explorer losing users as other browsers set share records originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rome, Italy | Optical Oddities

The Jesuit church of Saint Ignazio was supposed to have a glorious dome, but when the money ran out in 1642, the plans were scrapped. Instead of foregoing the dome entirely, painter and Jesuit brother Andrea Pozzo proposed that he paint a life-sized illusion of a dome that would fool the eyes of visitors (as long as thy looked up from the proper angle).

His masterpiece still fools the eye today. Painted between 1685 and 1694, it is a remarkable piece of perspective work.

Pozzo painted another illusion for the barrel-vaunted ceiling of Saint Ignazio. The huge painting depicting the life and works of Saint Ignatius lifts and expands the simple building skyward, with forced perspectives of figures retreating into the heights. The technique is known as quadratura, a mixture of geometrically accurate architecture in forced perspective, and elements of fantasy, like cherubs and floating saints. Pozzo wrote a book on the subject called Perspectiva Pictorum and Architectorum, which was very influential for other Baroque painters.

Both the dome and the central illustration are painted on one 17 meter canvas. His work on the illusions was so well received that he was granted the commission for the rest of the artwork in the church.

In April of 1891 an enormous powder magazine explosion just outside the city rocked Rome and damaged the ceiling artwork (it also collapsed part of the roof of the Parliament building and sent the city into a general panic). A restoration in 1961 repaired the illusion.

The best way to view the illusion is to enter the church, keeping eyes low until you reach the circular marble marker that indicated the ideal vantage point for the dome illusion. A second marker on the floor indicates the ideal viewing spot for the rest of the ceiling.

In 1703 he repeated his dome illusion in Vienna, in a Jesuit church now called the University Church and at the Church of the Gesù in Frascati, Italy.