CAR Magazine in the UK says they have confirmed Jaguar will launch its own hybrid vehicles somewhat soon. Don’t get too excited yet, however, as this one clearly falls in the realm of ‘rumor’ right now. Tata Motors, the parent company of both Jaguar and Land Rover, has already announced big plans for the electrification and hybridization of the Land Rover lineup, so it only makes sense for them to apply the same principles to Jags.
Palm’s preliminary proxy statement to the SEC contained all sorts of juicy details about what happened before the HP + Palm deal was solidified. Today they have filed some other details that appear to be a Q&A meant for Palm’s own employees.
The questions are all of the sort you might expect employees of a company about to be purchased might ask. The good news is that the majority of the answers are some variation of "Business as usual." Hiring will continue, relationships with carriers and vendors is to remain unchanged, and they’re even continuing the summer internship program.
One interesting question was "Did Elevation force a sale?" The answer is a simple "Absolutely not" and a further answer says Palm’s big recent investor supported the sale. It’s also interesting that the document not only suggests that CEO Jon Rubinstein will stay on, but that he will "stay on to run the business after the transaction" (emphasis ours).
Unfortunately, we don’t have any more details on whether HP will keep the Palm brand (memo to HP: do).
The very instant it was announced that HP had purchased Palm, one idea set the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere aflame: webOS-powered tablets. webOS is a wonderfully glorious OS, hindered only by half-baked hardware – strap that thing onto a big ol’ slab of glass, and you’ve got my money.
Aaaaand sure enough, that’s one of the things that HP’s got lined up.
Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
Facebook has unveiled a new mobile web site that will allow people in more than 45 countries, who aren’t accustomed to paying for data plans on the phone, to access its site quickly and for free.
According to a company blog post, the deal has been inked with more than 50 mobile operators around the world, ranging from carriers in Barbados to Indonesia to Madagascar. Facebook says more countries are on the way.
The web site, which is accessible at 0.facebook.com, has all the same key features as Facebook’s regular mobile web site, like posting status updates and viewing the news feed. There’s just one catch: the photos are not viewable from the main page, and to view them, regular data fees will apply.
The deal is still pretty good since usually carriers start charging from the moment a web browser is opened on the phone. With 0.facebook.com, users will only get charged to view photos or to browse to another mobile site. A notification page will appear to confirm that they will be charged if they want to leave 0.facebook.com. Because of this special arrangement, the light-weight version of the Facebook is only available on the certain networks. Other users will still have to access Facebook’s typical mobile site at m.Facebook.com and pay data fees.
While the obvious target market for a service like this is emerging countries where data plans have not become common, like Rwanda, Sudan and Bolivia, there’s also developed nations on the list, such as Finland. Australia, France and New Zealand are coming soon.
Take everything you think you know about displays and throw it out the window. It’s time for a clinic on what display specs really mean-brace yourself for the alarming truth More »
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed Christiana Figueres as the new executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), reports The Guardian. Figueres has been the head of Costa Rica’s negotiating team, and is the daughter of a former president of Costa Rica. She will replace Yvo de Boer, who will quit the post July 1. Some believe de Boer has left because developed and developing countries failed to reach an agreement in Copenhagen (see earlier post).
Figueres said: “There is no task that is more urgent, more compelling or more sacred than that of protecting the climate of our planet for our children and grandchildren.” Urgency will certainly be needed: Figueres will only have five months before before 193 nations meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in December for another attempt to reach a global, legally-binding agreement on greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Some experts see only a first outline of a global agreement taking shape in Cancun, and no real binding agreement.
Given she’s coming from a developing country, Figueres may help bridge the deep divide between developing and developed countries. She can speak from a position of legitimacy — Costa Rica is a leader among developing world nations in pushing for reduced emissions, and is actually practicing what it preaches. Costa Rica plans to be carbon-neutral by 2021. More than a quarter of its territory is covered in national parks and biological preserves. According to Reuters, trees now cover 51 percent of the country, a 10 percent increase over the last decade. Furthermore, the country generates 78 percent of its energy with hydroelectric power and another 18 percent by wind or geothermal power.
Wendel Trio, Greenpeace International climate policy coordinator, said: “Christiana Figueres has been lead negotiator for a country that aims to become carbon-neutral by 2021, the type of attitude we need on the global stage. We hope she can really engage all countries in a fast-moving dialogue to get agreement on a global deal that will save the world from dangerous climate change.”
In other climate change news, The New York Times writes that the U.S. Senate has finally released a new 978-page bill. “The bill’s overall goal is to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 percent (compared with 2005 levels) by 2020, and by 83 percent by 2050. The targets match those in a House bill passed last year and in the Obama administration’s announced policy goal.” The Senate will need to pass legislation complimentary to the House bill in order for climate and energy legislation to get to the President’s desk for signature.
Filed under: Podcasts, Etc., BMW, Ford, GM, Earnings/Financials
Our iTunes feed for the Autoblog Podcast is still busted, thanks to the TV Squad debacle with an update gone wrong. We’re still waiting on resolution of the issue, and the real fix may involve each and every one of you having to resubscribe. We’ll let you know.
In the meantime, if you subscribe to The Autoblog Podcast via iTunes, you may not automatically receive this week’s episode. The easiest workaround until we get this fixed is to use the link below to download the MP3 file directly and drag it into iTunes. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience, thanks for your ongoing patience.
For Episode #178 of the Autoblog Podcast, Chris Shunk, Sam Abuelsamid, and Dan Roth cover GM’s profit announcement, the delayed Honda Civic redesign, the 40 mpg fuel economy rating for the Ford Fiesta, and wistfully pine to have been part of our recent sports car comparison test. It starts with the Autoblog Garage and ends with a couple questions, with 82 minutes between snippets of theme music. See you next week!
Autoblog Podcast #178: GM Profit, Civic Redesign, 40 mpg Fiesta
In the Autoblog Garage:
BMW 750Li
BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo
Toyota Tacoma
Hosts:
Chris Shunk, Sam Abuelsamid, Dan Roth,
Runtime: 1:22:04
Autoblog Podcast #178: GM Profit, Civic Redesign, 40 mpg Fiesta originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 18 May 2010 17:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Felix Salmon points to someone who asks, Is the European crisis good for America? A piece at Politico suggests that Midterm fury might leave Nancy Pelosi safe. Journalism of this sort would get very boring, very soon, if the journalists actually had to place any money on their musings, either directly by changing their investment portfolio, or getting involved in betting markets like Intrade.
Hurd: after @Palm close expect to leverage webOS “beyond smart phones into form factors such as slates and web-connected printers” $HPQ
HP Official News
hpnews
The very instant it was announced that HP had purchased Palm, one idea set the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere aflame: webOS-powered tablets. webOS is a wonderfully glorious OS, hindered only by half-baked hardware – strap that thing onto a big ol’ slab of glass, and you’ve got my money.
Aaaaand sure enough, that’s one of the things that HP’s got lined up. At the tail-end of their quarterly earnings call today, HP CEO Mark Hurd proudly proclaimed that they’re planning on making use of webOS “beyond smart phones into form factors such as slates and…” — wait for it — “web-connected printers”
Well, that’s one product idea we hadn’t thought of. It’s a bizarre idea at first, but with a bit of brainstorming, it makes sense: plenty of printers already have basic applications for stuff like printing Flickr photos and movie tickets from online services. The apps just tend to suck, and the operating systems are almost always completely locked down. webOS, at least in theory, fixes that. Hurray!
Now, someone go make a webOS app that generates ink.
[Thanks J.!]
SEAT ha actualizado las motorizaciones y los equipamientos de muchos de sus modelos, en concreto el SEAT Ibiza y el León. Además se incluyen como opcionales dos colores nuevos, el Blanco y el Amarillo Crono, éste último en exclusiva para estos dos modelos.
El SEAT Ibiza introduce el motor 1.2 TDI CR de 75 CV en el acabado Reference en sustitución del motor 1.4 TDI de 80 CV. Este tres cilindros reduce de 4,3 a 3,8 el consumo a los 100 kilómetros y de 114 gr a sólo 99 gramos a los cien kilómetros recorridos de emisiones de CO2 a la atmósfera. Su precio será de es de 15.240 € para la versión 5P y de 14.900 € para la versión SC. Además antes del verano llegará también la versión Ecomotive, con sólo 89 gr 100 y se introduce el SEAT Good Stuff, en colaboración con Shakira.
El Seat León tb introduce un nuevo motor para ahorrar combustible, añadiendo el motor 1.2 TSI de 105 CV con cambio de 6 velocidades en el acabado Reference. Las emisiones y los consumos de este cuatro cilindros se reducen en un 20%, pasando a arrojar unas cifras de 5,7 litros a los 100 y 132 gramos cada cien kilómetros. Se introduce el sistema de ayuda de arranque en pendiente de serie en toda la gama salvo en el emoción, teniendo este modelo un precio de 17.200 €.
Seat se ha puesto las pilas en cuanto a consumos y emisiones, reduciendo ostensiblemente ambas para apuntar a un público cada vez más preocupado por la propaganda que se hace de la ecología en el mundo del motor.
Fuente | SEAT
The Land Rover LRX concept has been a subject of much speculation and critique over the past few years. For a company such as Land Rover, the LRX represents a huge departure from what they’ve been associated with for decades — an attempt to appeal to a younger, broader crowd and meet the ever increasingly strict global fuel economy standards.
Now Land Rover — who still hasn’t officially dubbed the production model the ‘LRX’ — says that both 2WD and 4WD versions of the vehicle will be on sale in 2011… followed in 2013 by a diesel hybrid.
Thierry Legault is a gift to astronomy bloggers. He just sent me this:
Holy.
Hale.
Akala.
The big yellow thing is the Sun. But look at the upper right section. See those two dark blips? The one on the left is the Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis and on the right is the International Space Station! Incredibly, Thierry caught them as they passed directly in front of the Sun! To give you an idea of how talented Thierry is, the entire transit lasted just over half a second.
Click to embiggen. I mean it, click it. The full-scale image is drop-dead incredible. Mind you, Atlantis had just started its pitch maneuver, designed to show its belly to the crew on the ISS so they can inspect it for heat tile damage. That means this image was taken shortly before the Orbiter docked with the station, on May 16th. Thierry was in Madrid specifically to get this shot.
Un frakkin’ believable.
Get a good look. This is the last mission of Atlantis (unless it’s needed as a rescue mission later this year), so we won’t get too many more views like this.
Related posts:
Extremely cool 3D Space Station video taken from the ground
Check. This. Out. Amazing photo of the Sun
Image used with permission by Thierry Legault.
James Franco is headed back to Port Charles.
The Spider-Man actor and professional student, who guest-starred on ABC’s General Hospital for two months last fall, will return to the Emmy-winning soap to reprise his role as bad boy performance artist “Franco” in a guest-arc kicking off next month, GH executive producer Jill Farren Phelps teased on Tuesday.
The show promises a tantilizing storyline that will take fans on a “wild ride of mystery, music, murder and mayhem.”
Franco’s first General Hospital episode will air June 30.
From Green Right Now Reports
Photo: James H. Miller, USDA
Here’s one more reason to bemoan the spread of kudzu throughout the southeastern United States: When the ubiquitous “vine that ate the South” isn’t gobbling up landscapes and devastating ecosystems, it also is adding to ozone pollution, a new report says.
In the May 17 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researcher John Hickman and colleagues (who worked together at Stony Brook University) concluded that kudzu is able to fix atmospheric nitrogen at a high rate, potentially altering the nitrogen cycle. Hickman, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, compared nitrogen cycling and nitrogen oxide fluxes from both invaded and unaffected soils.
“Kudzu had the potential to add a lot of nitrogen to soils, so we expected to see some pretty big impacts on the soils of invaded ecosystems in the United States,” he said. “It turns out that the changes you can’t see in a kudzu invasion are just as dramatic as the ones you can.”
Measurements in Georgia showed that some rates of nitrogen cycling were up to ten times faster in soils where kudzu had invaded. In addition to profound changes in rates of several components of nitrogen cycle, the researchers found that kudzu caused a doubling of emissions of nitric oxide from soils. Along with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitric oxide is the key precursor to ozone pollution in the lower atmosphere.
“Air pollution is a risk that hasn’t been considered much in the conversation about invasive species, but it’s something we may have to pay more attention to,” Hickman said.
Though it wasn’t examined in the study, kudzu also emits isoprene, a VOC produced in large quantities by certain plant species, which is involved in reactions with NOx to form ozone.
“In the case of kudzu, you have a plant that is generating NOx from the soil and emitting VOC’s from its leaves—it’s like a living tailpipe,” Hickman said.
“Maybe they’ll start calling kudzu ‘the vine that choked the South.’”
We’re winging our way out to Google I/O development conference in San Francisco (follow us on Twitter for the inside scoop), where we’ll spend a couple of days deep within the Google development community, hear a couple of keynote addresses — oh, and likely get our first real look at the next major version of Android: Froyo.
We asked your favorite Android Central writers and Smartphone Experts editors about their homes, dreams and fears for Google IO. Check ’em out, after the break.
With work now complete on the firm’s Rapide and One-77 models, Aston Martin has turned its attention to the DB9 grand tourer. The DB9 appears to be in line for a slight revision, with the two-door gaining some styling cues from the DBS.
Judging from the latest spy shots, the DB9 appears to be in line for a new front bumper, DBS-like side skirts and a bigger rear spoiler. New exterior colors and a few new wheels options should round out the DB9’s exterior updates.
Inside, expect a few tweaks, although the DB9’s cabin will remain largely the same. A bump in power is also likely.
The revised DB9 should make its world debut at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, with sales following shortly after. The DB9 Volante will eventually get the same changes, but expect that model to trail the coupe by several months.
Source: Leftlane
Filed under: Government/Legal, Recalls, Toyota
Toyota has officially handed over every last cent of its $16.4 million fine for not notifying the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration of potential defects in a timely manner. That figure marks the largest fine possible under the law, though by paying it, the Japanese automaker has somehow managed to skip out on admitting any wrong doing. We’re still having a hard time wrapping our fragile journo minds around that one.
NHTSA came down hard on Toyota for bumbling the recall of accelerator pedals that wouldn’t spring back once depressed. Meanwhile, the automaker claims it did everything it was supposed to in handling the problem and notifying the government of the issue. Even so, Toyota has declined to fight the “civil penalty” or appeal the government’s decision. The cash will be put directly into the U.S. Treasury.
Toyota is also under investigation for all-weather floor mats that could have contributed to the rash or unintended acceleration claims that cropped up in recent months as well as steering linkage issues in older T100 pickups and 4Runner models. The NHTSA has yet to rule on either of those issues.
[Source: Reuters]
Done Deal: Toyota wires $16M fine payment to U.S. Treasury originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 18 May 2010 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Here’s some good news: the newly-updated MacBooks can now send both video and audio out via Mini DisplayPort, which is good news for people who hook their laptops up to a TV via HDMI. This is something that the current crop of MacBook Pros and iMacs can already do, so it’s all about bringing the cheapest member of the family up to par with the rest of Apple’s computer lines. [MacRumors] More »
Grade Rubric is a useful app for professors and teachers who grade papers and assignment using rubrics. If you can break an assignment up into categories of things you’re looking for, you simply grade each category and Grade Rubric handles the rest. It even has an option to auto-generate a detailed grade report for your students.
