Category: News

We’ve seen it, we’ve lusted after it and we’ve dreamed of owning it. Combining amazing fuel economy (78 mpg) with rockstar performance (0-60 mph in 3 seconds) and sexy curves, the Porsche 918 Spyder plug-in hybrid concept supercar has been on the minds of green speed freaks ever since its debut in Geneva earlier this year. Porsche has been hinting that they will eventually build it, saying that they’ve never made a concept car they didn’t actually put into production.

Well, now it looks like it’s essentially a sure thing after comments by a Porsche Exec at the 2010 Beijing Auto Show.

(more…)

In a note that’s bullish on mining and commodities, Morgan Stanley’s European Strategy Team produces a few excellent charts on the prospect for demand growth in China.

This one, on the country’s relative lack of urbanization is very nice.

And now, the connection between urbanization and retail demand growth

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Carrier: U.S. Cellular
Retail Price: $299.95 or via ebay
Phone Price: $169.95
Hot Features: 2MP camera, stereo Bluetooth, Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard

 

Last week, we asked you which Japanese automaker had the best vehicle lineup overall. Today we’re switching things up a little and are wondering which luxury brand (in the United States) you think has the best looking lineup.

Let us know your answer in the comments section below.

• You can chose from: Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Infiniti, Jaguar, Lincoln, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz.
• Hold back from thinking as far as Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini, Ferrari etc. – since they compete in a different segment altogether.

– By: Omar Rana

It is no hidden secret that all premium brands are heading to China with their long wheel-base versions of their regular sedans and Mercedes is not the one to be left behind. The LWB version of its E-Class that offers 14 cm more leg space has been unveiled at the Auto China 2010 show. The E 300 L is the first model that has been specifically designed by Mercedes for the Chinese market and the extended wheelbase variant will also be available as an E 260 CGI model. Mercedes focusing on the Chinese market is no surprise as the premium brand has registered 112 percent growth in Q1, 2010 in China.

Nexus One owners, you might want to take a seat for this one. You know the HTC Incredible? That phone that popped up out of no where, matched or surpassed all of the Nexus’ specs, and then killed off any chance of a Nexus One for Verizon? Now, you recall that unfixable issue that the Nexus One has with handling multi-touch input properly?

Yeah.. erm.. the Incredible doesn’t have that issue.

You see, the Nexus One uses a slightly aged touch sensor by Synaptics, called the ClearPad 2000. It wasn’t built to do all the crazy multi-touch stuff that HTC and Google finagled it into doing — hence the wonkiness exhibited when you start to really push the Nexus’ multitouch abilities to the edge. After the Nexus One, HTC has ditched the ClearPad 2000 in favor of a sensor built with multi-touch in mind: the Atmel maXTouch.

The Atmel is a pretty fancy piece of kit. It requires less power, responds faster, and can track as many fingers as you can fit on screen. The bad news? That doesn’t really help anyone with any multitouch-enabled, HTC-made handset that came before the Incredible.

On the upside, this really only affects the small handful of Android games that use multi-touch for more than pinching and zooming. For the very vast majority of use cases, the bug really shouldn’t be an issue.

[Video via AndroidCentral, Source: AndroidAndMe via EngadgetMobile]

When shopping around for a new cellphone plan, or simply a cheaper one, consumers have more choices besides the standard 2-year contract wireless companies try to cram down your throat. But do you go prepaid or with a contract? Which company delivers the best value? It all depends on your usage and what you’re looking for. To help you decide, Lifehacker has put together a bangin’ guide on picking a new wireless plan. Check it.

How to Decide Between a Prepaid or Contract Wireless Plan [Lifehacker]

If you’ve ever played the lottery, here’s your chance to vicariously live through the moment of realizing you’re the winner. Store clerk Chris Shaw recently became a $258.5 million Powerball winner of the Missouri lottery, and here’s the footage of him arriving at the gas station where he bought it and learning he gets all the marbles. If anything he seems pretty aw shucks and humble about it.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

Supports Row, Center Pivot and Drip Applications

Irrigators will find the new RemoteCONNECT™ Telemetry System from McCrometer enhances irrigation by delivering up-to-date flow data via the Internet for centralized monitoring and control, which takes the guesswork out of water management and frees irrigators to focus on other critical tasks.

The RemoteCONNECT System is a turn-key wireless remote monitoring system with 24/7 capability, which reduces costly manual data collection. McCrometer, the irrigation industry’s most trusted flow meter supplier for 55 years, now provides a single go-to source for automated flow measurement system hardware, software, installation, training, support and field service.

RemoteCONNECT comprises all the components necessary for web-based data collection from McCrometer’s Mc® Propeller Meter, or meters from other manufacturers as well as other ag water management sensors. McCrometer has developed two different RemoteCONNECT systems to meet the needs of irrigators with unique needs. Both systems are expandable over time and can be configured to provide soil moisture, water level, water salinity and rainfall data, helping prevent over-watering to reduce costs.

RemoteCOM Telemetry System
The RemoteCOM Telemetry System supports up to 25 flow meter radio transmission units, which feed data to a satellite base station that sends data to a secure web server. With the RemoteCOM Telemetry System, one satellite base station supports 25 propeller meters and makes the system a highly economical solution for multiple meter sites and large distributed irrigation systems.

SatCOM Telemetry System
McCrometer also has developed a SatCOM Telemetry System that is designed for remote locations. The SatCOM Telemetry System supports one flow meter radio transmission unit that sends data directly to a secure web server. This system can acquire data on demand and control equipment in the field.

RemoteCONNECT Online Interface
McCrometer’s RemoteCONNECT online interface is a secure-access, web-based irrigation management tool. It features an easy-to use graphical-user interface that provides flow rate and totalizer data for each propeller meter with a wide range of sophisticated monitoring, alarming and control tools.

Web access to flow data also eliminates the need for local office data servers and modems. Remote data can be collected at customer specified intervals from 30 minutes to 24 hours. A Google Earth view of the site is available too.

With McCrometer’s online RemoteCONNECT, irrigators can monitor water-use quotas, set alarms to indicate high/low usage rates, look at well site images and track data by individual Farm number. Individual flow meters can be accuracy checked for hours flowed, volume and size of meter. Low battery alerts are provided as well. Graph and trend line analysis tools are built-into the system.

Comprehensive availability of flow data tells irrigators how water is applied to ensure accurate billing and water allocation records. This information alerts irrigators when they are close to exceeding allocation limits. Notifications can even be provided to multiple specific users via email and text messaging or paging.

Booth No. 1313
Charlotte Convention Center
501 South College St, Charlotte,
NC 28202, USA

Wednesday April 28 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Thursday April 29 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Visiting Quality Expo provides hands-on access to the newest tools and technologies to ensure quality, reduce costs, and streamline manufacturing processes.

See the Latest Quality Products: gages, quality software, calibration, CMMs, data collection, electronics test, non-contact inspection…and much more.

Meet Top Suppliers who know and serve your industry: automotive/aerospace, electronics, fabricated metals, industrial machinery, medical/surgical instruments, plastics/rubber…and more.
Spend Time Face-To-Face With Technical Experts who are ready to discuss your specifications and requirements and help solve your quality challenges.
Stay Current in Your Field with the latest technical training for manufacturing professionals. The Quality Expo Conference features key sessions covering quality management, principles, tools and practices.

The Talyrond 385 Range
The Talyrond 385 is a fully automated roundness/cylindricity instrument that is unsurpassed in accuracy and reliability, with 6 versions to choose from offering the rightbalance of automation and capacity for virtually every application. State of the art electronics have allowed full control of all axes with fast and accurate modes allowing the right combination of measurement and movement speed for the most challenging of components.

Taylor Hobson’s patented arm orientation provides full automation in almost any attitude making it the most versatile of instruments and an industry benchmark in roundness instrumentation.

Fully Automated arm attitude/orientation mechanism
Automated Gauge calibration
Automatic Centre and level with arm follow mode
High precision air bearing spindle +/- 0.02um
Gauge resolution 1.2nm
300mm,500mm or 900mm Vertical straightness unit

Dayton, Ohio — Motoman has added two new models, the SIA5D and the SIA50D, to its SIA-series (slim, individual arm) robot line. Lean and powerful, these robots feature a revolutionary actuator-based 7-axis design with best-in-class wrist performance characteristics that enable amazing freedom of movement, coupled with the ability to maneuver in very tight areas. These agile, versatile robots open up a wide range of industrial applications to robots and are ideal for assembly, injection molding, machine tending and a host of other applications.

Short axis lengths and extreme motion flexibility allow these slim manipulators to be positioned out of the normal working area (i.e. floor-, ceiling-, wall-, incline- or machine-mounted) without limiting the motion range of any axis. Mounting the SIA-series robots between two machine tools provides open access to the machines for fixture maintenance, adjustment or testing. Additionally, the operator has clear access to the machine operator station for entering offsets, maintenance or other operations.

SIA-series robots are controlled by the next-generation Motoman DX100 robot and system-level controller that uses patented multiple robot control technology to easily handle multiple tasks including control of up to eight robots (72 axes), as well as I/O devices, and communication protocols. Featuring a robust PC hardware architecture, the DX100 controller uses a Windows® CE programming pendant with color touch screen.

www.motoman.com

Surelite EX is designed to be the ultimate pump source for OPOs and Ti:Sapphire systems. With an optimized laser cavity, Surelite EX provides a uniform distribution of energy across the beam profile while minimizing hot spots and modulation.
This optimal beam quality allows for maximum energy conversion in OPOs and Ti:Sapphire systems making Surelite EX the ideal choice for these applications. To satisfy the most stringent requirements,
Continuum offers a seeded version of the Surelite EX that produces a smoother repeatable temporal pulse shape and much
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Surelite™ EX
For more information, please contact your local Continuum representative,
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Goldman’s Gerald Moser outlines a long oil, short retail pair trade in his latest portfolio strategy piece. The argument is that oil stocks have underperformed both many other industries as well as the rally in oil prices. Thus they should be buoyed by oil’s strength in the upcoming quarters while stocks hurt by rising oil prices will start to feel the impact of them, particularly retail.

Goldman:

We have long been overweight the oil sector in our portfolio. With the recent breakthrough in oil prices, we reiterate our positive view. But increasing oil prices should start to have negative effects on other sectors as oil-related costs, such as transport and packaging, rise. Retail is among the sectors that could be affected the most. This comes at a time when other potential headwinds could weigh on the retail sector, especially general retailers. We recommend positioning for long oil vs. short retail.

Higher oil prices can of course negatively affect some sectors. Retail is one of them. There is the direct effect of higher transport, energy and packaging costs and the indirect effect, as consumers have to pay more for gasoline and hence have less to spend on other items.

There might be a valuation argument behind the trade as well. We believe the charts below encompass the firm’s global oil and retail coverage.

(Via Goldman Sachs, Strategy Expresso: Oil vs. retail, Gerald Moser, 23 April 2010)

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Just last week, we asked the question if the world needs yet another mobile operating system (Samsung’s Bada). Now it turns out Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier, NTT DoCoMo, apparently thinks the answer is yes. The telecom behemoth (55 million customers in Japan) today announced [press release in English] the development of a brand new “application platform for mobile phones”, which is planned to go global, too.

DoCoMo is teaming up with four leading mobile phone makers, namely Sharp, Panasonic, Fujitsu, and NEC (who are joined by chip maker Renesas). The new platform is optimized for audio and video applications and will be compatible with both Symbian and Linux.

In Japan, the first handsets with the OS on board are expected to ship sometime between October 2011 and March 2012. DoCoMo will be the first company in Japan to introduce LTE services in December this year.

DoCoMo says the new OS will be incorporated into all of their next-generation handsets. One of the main goals of the project is to cut development time and costs for cell phone makers by about 50%.

The six partners also plan to market the software overseas (good luck with that). The reason is simple: while Sharp, Panasonic, Fujitsu, and NEC together command 67% of the Japanese mobile market, their combined international market share stands at a mere 2%.

Found under: Archos, Android, Tablet, Home, Google,,

Been awhile since we mentioned anything about Archos and their plans for that Home Tablet they call the Archos 7. This Tablet is both powerful and cheap but most consumers might not find the Archos 7 Home Tablet that appealing to warrant a purchase. For me it has to do with the resistive touchscreen and the likely ugly custom UI that would end up spoiling everything.Price for the Archos 7 is the main thing that could kill or make this device luckily Archos got the price right and anyon

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There are a select few players in the market with production vehicles that hit a top speed higher than 250 mph; however, Lamborghini and Ferrari aren’t one of them. As consumer behavior takes an expected twist towards fuel-efficiency (and as governments set higher fuel-economy regulations), supercar manufacturers have vowed to offer more economical sports cars.

Click here to get prices on the 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo.

Well, thank god for people like Underground Racing, which recently exceeded 250 mph in their highly modified Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera with their 1500-WHP twin-turbo package.

The event took place at The Texas Mile, where Richard Holt piloted the twin-turbo Gallardo Superleggera to a top speed of 250.1 mph.

Hit the jump for the video.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: autoblog.nl (via WCF)

Creo que el año pasado, eramos muchos los que creíamos que el Opel Ampera pasaría a mejor vida en la cúspide de problemas que comenzó a tener Opel en Europa, cortesía de la inestabilidad de GM. Sin embargo, el Opel Ampera se mantuvo entre las aspiraciones de Opel, como el primo europeo del Chevy Volt, un coche casi obligado para GM a ambos lados del charco. y ya llegamos a la etapa de pre-producción, con el primer prototipo del Ampera viendo la luz en EEUU.

Desde la planta de Warren, en Michigan, nos llega la noticia de que el primer Ampera, prototipo de producción, ya fue fabricado. En los meses que siguen se producirán más modelos Ampera semejantes, que tendrán como objetivo ser usados (conducidos) en pruebas bajo condiciones reales de conducción.

En estas fases de pruebas, también se darán los últimos toques al software del vehículo, así como los ajustes finales de los controles de los coches, como lo anunció GM. Inicialmente, los primeros Ampera serán construídos en EEUU para ser exportados a Europa, a partir de fines del próximo año. Posteriormente, la producción se trasladará a una de las plantas de Opel, probablemente en Inglaterra.

Vía | Autoevolution

Ezra Klein had a post last week about the accuracy of projections about health care, in which he called reports like the recent one from HHS a sort of Rorschach test–conservatives and liberals each see in them what they want to.  I think this is true, to a point.  The history of health care spending projections is considerably more checkered than either liberals or conservatives acknowledge.  Over time, it is true that far more health care programs have busted their budgets than have come in considerably under budget; on the other hand, some cost cutting programs have ended up netting more than expected.  But virtually all of the reports written on this question consists of simply cherry picking your examples very carefully in order to generate the answer you want.  This would be a perfect job for the CBO, except that members of congress request those reports, and I doubt either party is willing to risk getting the wrong answer.

But there is one example of “cost underruns” that I keep hearing, which I think should be used cautiously if at all.  That’s Medicare Part D, which came in substantially beneath projections. 

As it happens, I just turned in the first draft of a piece on the status of prescription drug pipelines.  You’ll have to wait to read my opinions on that question, but investigating the question has given me a better appreciation of just how unique an environment surrounded the enactment of Medicare Part D.  There was a broad shift in the market for pharmaceuticals on several fronts:  fewer blockbuster drugs were being approved, and more blockbuster drugs were going off patent.  Meanwhile, pharmaceutical benefit managers were really cracking down on what drugs went into their formularies. 

A drug like Eli Lilly’s Effient platelet inhibitor would have been a
blockbuster ten years ago–it causes slightly more bleeding, but it’s
also more effective than Plavix, its main rival.  But Plavix goes
off-patent in 2011, and is less expensive even now, so Medco, a major
pharma benefit manager, is funding its own research to find ways to identify the small subset of patients who will do better on Effient.  In other words, private firms have started to do the sort of comparative effectiveness research that the architects of health care reform promised.

There are several good reasons to think that this won’t generalize well:

• Secular changes in the health care environment are random  That is, in this case, Medicaid undershot projections.  But that’s not because the CBO was “too conservative”; the savings came from broader shifts in the healthcare market, not something that the legislation did.  Broader shifts in the healthcare market can move either way; there’s no special reason to think that they are more likely to be downside surprises.
• Medicare Part D worked through the private sector  Medicare Part D used private insurers at a time when they were severely cracking down on the drugs they were willing to pay for.  Medicare Part D benefited from this because it worked through private insurance firms.  However, the bulk of the coverage expansion in the new law comes from Medicaid expansion.  Medicaid benefits from that famous ability to centrally negotiate–but not so much from what private firms are doing.
• Falling prescription drug costs do not mean falling health care costs  To the extent that these secular trends in the prescription drug market continue–and unfortunately, I think they will–that’s bad news for health care reform cost control.  There’s some pretty decent evidence that new drugs hold down health care costs overall because they substitute for labor-intensive options like surgery and other sorts of therapy.  Labor is the one component of health care costs that is probably hardest to control.  So if we’re getting few new prescription drugs, that may mean that estimates of cost growth in other sectors are too low.
• Services expansions historically seem to overshoot their cost estimates  A lot of effort has been expended on the pro-reform side singing the praises of unexpected cost savings from things like delivery payment reform.  Leaving aside arguments about the methodology of the underlying studies, I’d say a survey of the history of health care reforms indicates that changing the payment formulas seems to be a lot more successful on the cost front than broad coverage expansions, which–except for the one case of Medicare Part D–always seem to cost much more than expected.  So even if you think it’s possible that various delivery forms will deliver higher-than-expected savings, you have to allow for the possibility that higher-than-expected utilization will eat your savings, and then some. And that’s exactly what’s happened from most of the coverage expansions in our nation’s history.  It’s ridiculous to talk about some changes to Medicare payments while ignoring the fact that reform in Massachusetts is already costing about 20% more than projected.  Not to mention, umm, every other state-level coverage expansion I’m aware of. 

Many of these arguments run the other way as well, of course; these things are by their nature unpredictable.  There could be all sorts of changes in the healthcare market which will make the price of hospitals fall along with the price of prescription drugs.  But I wouldn’t suggest that you bet a lot of money on that possibility.  I mean, aside from the small fortune you already have.

Sprint has lowered the price on the Palm Pixi from $50 a pop to free. New Sprint customers and those willing to re-up on their contracts can now grab the strikingly thin handset from Sprint’s online store for free with a new 2-year contract.

This marks the second major price drop on the Sprint Palm Pixi since its debut last November. The current offer is only found on Sprint’s website at this time, however other channels and perhaps retail stores (& happy meals) may be soon to follow.