Only a year ago did Toshiba say that making a camcorder waterproof jacks the price up by close to 200 per cent. Good on them then for launching their first waterproof and weather-resistant model for the equivalent of $185. More »
Camcorder – Toshiba – Electronics – Video – Home
Earlier today, we told you that the new 2011 Mercedes–Benz SLK will make its U.S. debut next year in April and will be followed by the new M-Class by summer. These words came from Ernst Lieb, CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA.
From the same Ernst Lieb, we also found out that a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz E-Class will come in United States in September. Regarding a C-Class with a diesel engine, Lieb said that this engine will arrive in the next-generation which will make its debut in 2013. The GLK compact crossover will also receive a diesel engine. Regarding the new four-cylinder engines in the United States, it appears that these engines will debut in the new B-Class and C-Class in 2013!
[via autonews – sub. required]
Source: Car news, Car reviews, Spy shots
MNN has a look at how much offshore wind power could have been built for the amount of money spent on the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster – Offshore oil vs. offshore wind … who wins?.
In my fact-digging on the now sunken Deepwater Horizon oil rig, I came across a stat about the construction and operational costs of BP’s failed rig which was to tap an estimated 7 billion barrels of oil from two recent oil discoveries (the Kaskida and the Tiber) over a 25-year period. According to Morningstar analysts (who published a study back in March), the projected investment for both wells was between $8 billion and $12 billion U.S.
So that got me thinking, just how much offshore wind could be bought for the equivalent $12 billion investment? My back of the envelope calculations were enlightening. Here we go …
1. What is the cost of offshore wind power?
We have a good comp in the form of Alpha Ventus, a 12-turbine project off the shores of Germany which was recently completed. The project was the first of its kind and as might be expected, it ran over budget. According to Spiegel, the total project cost $282 million (it was estimated at just under $200 million) which includes upkeep costs over 25 years. Alpha Ventus is a 60 megawatt array, enough to power about 50,000 U.S. homes or 550 million kilowatts of electricity per year (a typical U.S. home uses 11,000 kilowatts).
2. How many turbines can $10 billion buy?
Projecting that the next few big offshore projects will drop in price as manufacturing and grid infrastructure improves, let’s say a 60 megawatt project will go for $200 million. Divide that by $12 billion and you get sixty 60-megawatt wind projects, or about 33 billion kilowatts of power capacity per year.
3. How many electric cars does that power?
A typical American drives 12,000 miles per year. The latest plug-in electric vehicles (like the much-anticipated Tesla Sedan) use about 370 wH’s per mile. The typical U.S. driver would need 12,000 x .37 = 4,440 kilowatts per year. Divide 33 billion by 4,440 kilowatts and you get about 7.4 million electric vehicles that could be powered each year by a $10 billion wind investment.
4. How many cars could Deepwater Horizon have fueled?
44 gallons of gasoline are made from each barrel of crude. Deepwater Horizon was to produce 7 billion barrels of crude over its 25 year life span. 7 billion x 44 = 308 billion gallons of gas divided by 25 years = 12. 3 billions gallons of gas per year. Let’s say as cars become more efficient the average U.S. car goes up to a 26 mpg average. 26 mpg x 12.3 billion = 320 billion miles. Divide that by our 12,000 mile national average and you get 26.7 million gas cars per year from the $10 billion offshore drilling investment.
5. What’s the end cost for the consumer?
You can see why as a nation we like oil so much … it yields about 3-4 times more transportation power per dollar invested. But it’s important to note that the cost of gasoline for the end-user is considerably higher than electricity. In the end the consumer pays dearly for all that convenient fossil fuel. Right now gasoline is about $3 per gallon and the typical car gets 22 mpg. So the typical gasoline mile costs us about 13.6 cents or $1,632 per year (oil). Grid electricity is about 10 cents per kilowatt, so one mile on electricity costs only 3.7 cents, or $444 per year (wind). If you figure that 7.4 million Americans would be saving $1,188 per year, that is about $8.8 billion going back into the U.S. economy rather than into the grubby hands of foreign oil companies like BP.
6. What if you factor in environmental costs?
Now if we start factoring in the massive cleanup costs, it changes the game significantly. Current estimates are putting the BP cleanup bill at $22.6 billion. This figure will be matched (at least) by U.S. taxpayers in the form of government assistance programs. So that puts the total estimated Deepwater Horizon pricetag at $55 billion ($10B + $22.5B + $22.5B), assuming it’s even possible to clean up the spill at all.
7. Comparing apples and lemons …
As a comparison exercise, let’s say that instead of sinking on Day 1, the Deepwater Horizon sunk halfway though its lifespan. It would have powered 13.4 million cars at a cost of $55 billion … about $4,100 per car (oil). Our wind turbines would have powered 3.7 million cars at $10 billion or about $2,700 per car (wind). Since “windspills” have never been known to cause any impact whatsoever and oil spills are quite frequent (according to NOAA in one sample year alone there were 257 oil spills) this seems more than a fair comparison and puts wind in the lead, both from the perspective of investment and consumer spending.
Of course, this sad little number game will never make up for the incalculable losses to the fishing industry, the tourist industry, the health of wetlands, the survival of wildlife, the carcinogens that are now leaking into the water systems of Gulf residents — all things for which BP will never pay. We, the American people however, will pay those prices for a very, very long time to come.
You get my drift … it is time to change the way we think about offshore energy resources and start switching to safe, clean wind power.
If you’re reading this post you most likely know a thing or two about content marketing. Content marketing is basically the process of not only creating great content but sharing that content to attract traffic, engage audiences, and maybe even get some natural backlinks to your domain. The process is twofold: writing or producing that great content, and then sharing it. If it’s good enough, the links back to your site will follow. But what content types can you use to best utilize this form of marketing? Let’s examine a few:
Authority Posts
Writing great content is an acquired skill. The hardest part is coming up with a unique idea and then executing it. Thankfully, there are many people in our industry who have done the tough thinking for you; it’s just up to you to figure out how to apply that to your brand. Top 10 lists, tip posts, research oriented posts, guidelines, and how-to’s are a few examples of authority type posts that are great for content marketing. Placing them on your site and then promoting via social media, social bookmarking, through friends and family, and with other techniques is just one example of content marketing.
Videos
Using videos is yet another example of this form of marketing. Developing a blog post or page on your site with embedded videos alongside your content is a great idea. Posting a top 10 list of the best videos of all time in your industry or giving a compilation of how-to instructional videos all in one place can provide you with traffic and links back to your site. That is, if the content and accompanying video are worthy of a look see.
Q&A
Have you ever had a client or prospective customer ask you a question? Of course you have. Yet one other way to use content marketing to help promote your site is to answer these questions on your website. Sometimes those questions are asked by searchers hundreds or even thousands of times per month. Doing a bit of keyword research can yield results that may just surprise you, all lost opportunities if you currently don’t have a piece of content on your site that could get ranked for that phrase.
Infographics
People go crazy about infographics these days. Have a knack for Photo Shop? Try your hand at a handy infographic. There are so many different kinds of infographics: statistical based, timeline based, process based, or geo based. Using some creativity and a bit of skill you’re sure to produce an infographic that will spurn tweets, comments, and links.
The four types of content marketing listed above are just a few of the ways you can market your website. Have some tips or suggestions with regards to content marketing? Leave your feedback in the comments below!
About the Author:
Steve Lazuka is the President of content marketing company, Interactive Media, based in Ohio. His company helps clients with their website content writing needs, including content marketing and promotion. Follow him on Twitter @SteveLazuka.
Gravatar: [email protected].
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The CSM has an article on a deal between Toyota and Tesla Motors, “in which Tesla will buy a defunct Toyota plant in California, and Toyota will purchase $50 million of Tesla stock” – Will Tesla-Toyota deal help repair Toyota’s public image?.
In a move that may provide a spark for the electric automobile industry, Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is teaming up Tesla Motors Inc, the makers of the only highway-legal all-electric car in the United States.
The companies announced a deal yesterday in which Tesla will buy a defunct Toyota plant in California where it will produce the model S, an electric sedan slated for 2012.
Toyota, meanwhile, will buy $50 million worth of Tesla stock, and the two companies announced Thursday that they will work together to develop new electric vehicle technologies and refine manufacturing methods.
In this symbiotic business deal, Tesla will likely benefit from direct knowledge of Toyota’s economy of scale and links to a vast supplier base.
Toyota, for its part, might get a boost in its competition with other carmakers over the growing environmentally friendly vehicle marketplace. Tesla’s advanced lithium-ion batteries, for example, might steer the way for Toyota as the Japanese automaker looks to replace the older nickel-metal hydride units found in its hybrid Prius.
It does’t look like we’ll be seeing much Tweeting-from-the-bench on the Supreme Court any time soon, but the Hillicon Valley blog highlights an amusing moment at a recent House Judiciary subcommittee meeting, attended by two Supreme Court Justices — Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer in which they’re asked if they plan on using Twitter any time soon. Scalia says he doesn’t even know anything about it — and notes that his wife refers to him as “Mr. Clueless.” Reassuring to know that of a Supreme Court Justice. Breyer, however, seems to indicate a realization that Twitter, as a communication platform, really could be quite powerful.
Subcommittee Chair Steve Cohen: Have either of y’all ever consider tweeting or twitting?Justice Scalia: I don’t even know what it is. To tell you the truth, I have heard it talked about. But, you know, my wife calls me Mr. Clueless — I don’t know about tweeting.
Justice Breyer: Well, I have no personal experience with that. I don’t even know how it works. But, remember when we had that disturbance in Iran? My son said, ‘Go look at this.’ And oh, my goodness. I mean, there were some Twitters, I called them, there were people there with photographs as it went on. And I sat there for two hours absolutely hypnotized. And I thought, ‘My goodness, this is now, for better or for worse, I think maybe for many respects for better, in that instance certainly, it’s not the same world. It’s instant and people react instantly… and there we are. It’s quite a difference there and it’s not something that’s going to go away.
You can watch the exchange below:
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by Julian Ku
The Washington Times has an editorial that seems to argue that because Elena Kagan supports the teaching of international and comparative law, she actually believes that “foreign law trumps the Constitution.”
It was under Ms. Kagan’s leadership while dean of Harvard Law School, for instance, that Harvard dropped constitutional law as a required course for graduation, while adding a requirement for a course in “International/Comparative Law.” The de-emphasis on the Constitution itself is part of a horribly misguided trend in liberal academia. To replace con-law with international law is symbolic of a mindset that runs far afield from the basics of American legal tradition.
As someone who teaches both constitutional law and “international/comparative law,” I would say that both should be required for law school graduation. At the same time, given the politics of the constitutional law faculty at Harvard, I think the Washington Times would actually be happier that Laurence Tribe and Mark Tushnet have fewer students in their conlaw classes. And given that there is pretty much nothing in Kagan’s written work that reflects the”transnationalist” perspective, this is pretty thin stuff that will make her critics look silly.
Google Reader is already the world’s most popular feed reader, but it’s still getting better, or at least evolving, all the time. In a latest round of updates, Reader gets a revamped and simplified comment system. However, it also dumps support for legacy browsers and, unfortunately for some, for Google Gears as well.
… (read more)
When we think two events are causally related we perceive the time between them to be shorter. Although this is news to me, it turns out the ‘time compression’ effect has been well researched.
Several of the studies have found that when we view two events but believe the first causes the second, time between them seems have gone quicker than when we perceive exactly the same scenario but think the two events are not connected.
This is a summary of the effect from a recent study that investigated whether your beliefs about how one thing is causing another affected the amount of time compression:
How much time might have elapsed between the launch of an economic program and the emergence of an economy from recession, between joining a dating service and finding someone you want to marry, or between giving your child a tough lecture about trying harder in school and seeing an effect on his or her performance? Recent research has shown that people subjectively bind such cause–effect events in time and “compress” the time elapsed between them. Hence, for instance, if a parent believes that the tough lecture was the reason for an improvement in the child’s performance, the parent would estimate the interval [between the two] to be shorter. Several behavioral studies have established that people judge the time elapsed between pairs of historical events to be shorter when they perceive the events to be causally linked than when people do not perceive them to be so (Faro, Leclerc, & Hastie, 2005).
Similar effects occur on a shorter time scale. For example, in another study, when participants intentionally made a movement that appeared to cause a sound, they thought the events were closer together than when the two events occurred with no apparent causal connection
The new study helped explain the effect and showed that our beliefs about how we think one thing caused another are crucial to our experience of time.
It found that if people believe that cause and effect happened by a mechanical or physical process that was time limited the ‘time compression’ effect increased, whereas if it was an accumulative or ‘building up to a tipping point’ process, time didn’t seem so short.
Link to PubMed entry for time compression study.
The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), which is a benchmark rate at which banks borrow money from each other, has been rising.
While the current Libor, at just above 0.5%, is far below the sky-high levels of 4.81875% reached at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, it is still a significant jump from 0.25% as recently as March.
Yet as shown in the Wall Street Journal graphic to the right, 3-month LIBOR, which is a measure of trust in banks, is higher for European banks vs. U.S. ones, thus showing less trust.
On Monday, German state-controlled lender WestLB AG said it cost 0.565% to borrow dollars for three months, up from 0.38% a month earlier. U.S. banks are reporting lower costs: Bank of America Corp., said its three-month dollar Libor stood at 0.48%. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. reported a 0.47% rate.
Higher borrowing costs cut into profits, and could add further strain to troubled European banks, pushing more over the edge.
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Want to turn your Mac into a DVR with full access to premium cable or satellite TV content? Elgato says its customers can do just with its EyeTV HD, that lets users watch, record, edit and enjoy cable and satellite TV in high-definition, including all their premium channels, on a Mac. What’s more, the EyeTV HD includes a unique dual-format capture mode that records in iPad and iPhone formats at the same time, allowing users to stream live and recorded TV to an iPhone or iPad using the optional EyeTV app…
Continue Reading Elgato EyeTV HD PVR lets users watch and edit cable and sat TV on a Mac
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Apartment building loans are experiencing soaring default rates, in what could be a signal of things to come for the broader commercial real estate sector.
The default rate for apartment building mortgages held by banks soared to 4.6% in Q1, which is nearly twice what it was in Q1 of 2009.
Defaults on so-called multifamily mortgages rose from 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter and from 2.4 percent during the same period in 2009, the New York-based real estate research firm said today. Commercial-mortgage defaults also rose in the first quarter for loans against office, retail, hotel and industrial properties, Real Capital said.
“Apartment defaults are leading other commercial real estate,” Sam Chandan, global chief economist at Real Capital, said in an interview. “Banks tended to make more aggressively underwritten apartment loans earlier during this last cycle. Credit and pricing reached their peaks for office properties and other commercial assets later.”
Here it comes.
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Candy & Caviar presents a Fall/Winter 2010 collection that puts daytime elements into pieces meant for evening wear. Silhouettes such as blazers and various long sleeve button downs are paired up with slacks and bowties for that day meets night look. The cuts are pretty standard but there are a few items that get a touch of detail for something a little more unique.
Continue reading for more images.
From the current issue of Nature Genetics: Gene improves grain yield in rice
Alleles at the OsSPL14 gene alter rice plant architecture and enhance grain yield in rice, according to two independent studies published online this week in Nature Genetics. In small numbers of test rice plots, favorably altered alleles of OsSPL14 led to approximately a 10% increase in grain yield.
It is thought that crop yields need to double by 2050 in order to adequately feed the world’s growing population. Identification of genetic variants that can enhance crop production is an important approach toward this problem.
The findings from two independent studies by Jiayang Li, Moto Ashikari and their respective colleagues suggest that OsSPL14 may be useful for increasing rice crop production.
The euro is tanking once again, breaking $1.23.
The IMF came out with a fresh report on Spain today warning that Spain must make tough reforms to its economy. Yet the nation is at the same time challenged with a weak economic recovery as well, which can make reforms harder to push through.
Spain’s economy needs far-reaching and comprehensive reforms. The challenges are severe: a dysfunctional labor market, the deflating property bubble, a large fiscal deficit, heavy private sector and external indebtedness, anemic productivity growth, weak competitiveness, and a banking sector with pockets of weakness. Ambitious fiscal consolidation is underway, recently reinforced and front-loaded. This needs to be complemented with growth-enhancing structural reforms, building on the progress made on product markets and the housing sector, especially overhauling the labor market. A bold pension reform, along the lines proposed by the government, should be quickly adopted. Consolidation and reform of the banking system needs to be accelerated. Such a comprehensive strategy would be helped by broad political and social support, and time is of the essence.
The euro’s about to wipe out its entire rally from the end of last week, perhaps due to the fact that markets aren’t confident Spain will be able to make the hard reforms mentioned above.
Still, the Spanish ten year bond yield is holding steady and actually eased back slightly, to 4.03% according to Bloomberg. So Spanish default isn’t the concern, but the costs to the Eurozone of a Spanish rescue could be.
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Fox TV network had captured the attention of many viewers around the world because of the “24” series finale that was aired last May 24. The 2 hour finale episode made a bang and was a great success to its viewers. Fox will also be giving us an eleven hour episode marathon of “24 TV series” uninterrupted. There is a rising plan that 24 will be taking its toll on your movie screen since it was a huge success and now being considered to be made as a movie.
It was last 2001 where Kiefer Sutherland who is also known as Jack Bauer on 24 TV series was first aired. Through the success of the other seasons, the producers finally decided to stop at season 8 and will continue Jack’s agent life in a feature film that will be titled “ 24: The Movie.”
There is no exact date when the movie will be released but one thing is for sure, that viewers will be anticipating for this movie and it can be another blockbuster movie.
“24” has been one of the most popular dramas on TV. It also got 68 Emmy Awards while the lead actor Kiefer Sutherland managed to have a best actor award.
Season 8 is finally over. All we have to do is wait for the movie film that will blow our seats away.
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Eco Factor: Environmentally friendly future city for China.
Gu Wenda has recently turned to reflect social issues such as environmental protection in his work and is trying to help offer a solution for a sustainable future city. The artist has modeled China Park, a future city that combines traditional Chinese concepts and architectural idea of traditional Chinese gardens.
The China Park has been designed to offer a blueprint for an ecologically friendly future city. The green calligraphy garden will be crafted out of natural evergreen trees, and artificial streams and ponds together form the shapes of Chinese calligraphic characters.
The artist now hopes that someday his blueprint is realized, either in the form of a large-scale public entertainment park or a residential complex.
Via: Xinhuanet/ChinaDaily
![Click here to read Just Say "I Boo" (-lean) For These Coders' Wedding Cake](http://cache-01.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2010/05/160x120_code-cake.jpg "Click here to read Just Say "I Boo" (-lean) For These Coders' Wedding Cake")
Pity the poor baker who had to ice USB logos, smiley-emoticons, power symbols, @ signs and all that syntax. Guess it was easier than icing that dead AT-AT, mind. [Wedinator – Thanks, Kate!] More »
Wedding cake – Cake – Shopping – Home – Cooking
Porsche Cayenne tv commercial which focuses on the different definitions of the Utility part of SUV. The Cayenne has never seemed particularly Porsche to me, but the success of this vehicle for the company shouldn’t be underestimated. This ad proves just how much Porsche believes (sales considering) that the Cayenne is really part of the family and represents the Porsche brand like any other sports coupé in the lineup. The new Cayenne is an impressive development on the previous generation and should prove every bit as successful.
