Category: News

In August of last year, a company by the name of Devon Motorworks brought us a supercar based on the Dodge Viper called the GTX. Well, if sources are to be believed, Devon has canceled production of the GTX, which was scheduled to start during the first-quarter of 2010. Sources say that production has been canceled due to the discontinuation of the Viper.

Power for the Devon GTX was to come from a 8.4L naturally-aspirated V10 making 650-hp at 6,100 rpm mated to a 6-speed manual transmission.

Only 36 units were scheduled to go into production with prices starting at $500,000 with an optional racing package offered for $25,000.

2010 Devon GTX:

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Automobile

Last CES, Asus unveiled a ridiculous—and ridiculously cool—laptop concept called Airo. It was razor-thin, boldly styled, and most importantly, interesting. Today, they’ve unveiled the final product—the G73—and it’s… a Core i7 gaming laptop, with some extra edges.

There’s nothing expressly wrong with Asus’ new number; actually, it’s a solid option, if you’re into desktop replacement laptops. It’s got:

• backlit keyboard
• rear to front cooling vents
• 1080P screen
• ATI Mobility HD5870 with 1GB RAM
• BD option
• And of course, a Core i7 processor.

Again, it’s fine, but it’s no Airo: this is a perfect example of how a product goes from optimistic concept to generic product line-filler, in a single year. The stealth concept, originally oozing with sex, has morphed into a derivative stealth bomber tribute.

After going from hot rumor to official announcement, it’s time we take a look at what the Nexus One is and isn’t.  We’ll do our best to get to the point and answer any questions you might have about the phone.  Below are the top 10 questions we’ve been receiving from readers and interested parties.  Feel free to add your own questions at the end for others!

What is the Nexus One?
As Google puts it, the Nexus One is the first “superphone”. That is to say it’s the next evolution in what (Android) handsets are capable of.

Who makes the Nexus One?
The handset is made by HTC with input from Google.

What is so special about the phone?
For starters, the Nexus One features a blazing fast 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.  Throw in a 3.7-inch (480×800 AMOLED screen), a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash, wireless support for 802.11 a/b/g/n, a trackball with multicolor LED, and you see where we’re going.  There’s also a compass, GPS, accelerometer, stereo Bluetooth, a 3.5mm headphone jack, light and proximity sensors, and two microphones for “active noise suppression”.  All of this is powered by a 1400mAH battery.  Oh yeah, it’s crazy thin.  Like, less than a pencil, thin.

What else?
The Nexus One comes loaded with Android 2.1, which features the same great software found in the Motorola DROID, plus more.  This latest version also offers great voice integration.  Every text field found within Android 2.1 is voice enabled, meaning you’ll not have to physically type out emails, texts messages and tweets.  There are also ‘live wallpapers’ with interactivity, a new weather/news widget, Google Earth, and an updated gallery.

Where can I buy a Nexus One?
You can immediately order an unlocked GSM Nexus One at $529.00 at google.com/phone.

Will it work with my AT&T service?
Technically, yes.  Don’t expect 3G speeds though as the Nexus One only offers support  for T-Mobile’s 3G bands in the United States – UMTS Band 1/4/8 (2100/AWS/900) and GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz).

What if I don’t want to spend that kind of money?
A subsidize Nexus One can be yours for $179.00 as long as you commit to a 2-year contract with T-Mobile.  The catch here is that you must use it on individual, post paid, rate plans.  Family plans, and FlexPay customers are not eligible at this time.

What rate plan will I have if I get a Nexus One?
As of today, there is only one plan to choose from – 500 voice minutes, nights and weekends, messaging (SMS and MMS) and data.

I don’t want to sign up with T-Mobile.  Are there other options?
A CDMA version of the Nexus One will be available in the spring of 2010 for Verizon customers.

Will there be an unlocked CDMA Nexus One?
Don’t count on it.  The answer that was repeated a couple of times during today’s conference was that there will only be a Verizon-based CDMA Nexus One.

Managing to avoid the unemployment line isn’t enough to keep Americans who still have jobs happy at work.

A Conference Board survey of 5,000 U.S. households showed just 45% of respondents say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted.

The drop in job satisfaction between 1987 and 2009 covers all categories in the survey, from interest in work (down 18.9 percentage points) to job security (down 17.5 percentage points) and crosses all four of the key drivers of employee engagement: job design, organizational health, managerial quality, and extrinsic rewards.

The decline also spans all age groups. “These numbers do not bode well given the multigenerational dynamics of the labor force,” says Linda Barrington, a managing director at the Conference Board. “The newest federal statistics show that Baby Boomers will compose a quarter of the U.S. work force in eight years, and since 1987 we’ve watched them increasingly losing faith in the workplace.” Twenty years ago, some 60% of Baby Boomers was satisfied with their jobs. Today, that figure is roughly 46%.

Lower job satisfaction over the past 20 years has come as more companies have dropped or cut pension benefits and asked employees to contribute more to health care. Meanwhile, wage growth has been relatively stagnant. Ironically, the two-decade decline in happiness has coincided with substantial increases in worker productivity. Gains in the tech sector have ensured that even as workers become more unhappy, they have become more productive.

Parasite Rex has made a very special list of books to read after you get dumped. To quote from Lemondrop over at the AOL collective:

Do you need something to so totally fill you with paranoia and fear that you can’t even think about the worm that just dumped you? How about a terrifying book about worms! AGH! You’ll never walk barefoot in the street again, plus you’ll be so full of disgusting factoids that you won’t even have time to mention what’s-his-name at a party — you’ll be too busy grossing people out. FTW!

I would suggest waiting to find a new special someone until the book has cleared your system. I was still single while I was writing Parasite Rex, and the book made going out on dates very awkward.

So, what’s your next book about?

Parasites, and why they’re totally awesome. See, like, there’s this worm that crawls across your eye…

Check, please!

On the plus side, it’s a very quick test to see if your date shares your taste for the grotesque.

AdMob iPod stats: Some figures that hold up the prediction that iPods would be big sellers this holiday season. AdMob says iPod Touch usage more than doubled, growing by 126%, on December 26, compared to the week before. Ad requests from iPod touch handsets increased by 96% in the same period, while ad requests from iPhones increased by only 12%.

BBC Food: The UK public broadcaster’s commercial division, BBC Worldwide, is launching its Good Food Healthy Recipes App for the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) store. It will sell for £2.39 ($3.80) and offers low-calorie recipes, videos and interactive features. This is the second food app to be released by the BBC. Release.

Icera IPO: The UK-based wireless chip maker is planning to list with a value estimated to be up to £618 million ($1 billion). From the FT.

Article Tags: Met Office

Heavy snowfall is expected across southern areas of England, which have not seen snow so far during this cold spell, as freezing conditions persist across the country.

The heavy snow that has been affecting Scotland and northern England is moving south and the heaviest falls over the next 24 hours are expected across parts of central and southern England and south-east Wales.

Source: metoffice.gov.uk

Read in full with comments »   

One of our readers has encountered a problem with his Nexus One upgrade. Despite being a T-Mobile customer that qualifies for the full $180 contract price, his phone rang up at $379. HTC seems to think this is a-ok. UPDATED:

I just tried to order a nexus one from google as an existing T-Mobile customer and found that I was only seeing a $150 subsidy discount. I called T-Mobile and they indicated that I should see the full discount. They patched me through to HTC who then said I will only see the $150 as existing T-Mobile customer and that is the agreement. Looks like some lines are crossed or Google/HTC are holding existing customers hostage. Needless to say, I’ll wait around and see if this changes.

Is this an isolated incident, or did you experience a similar problem as an existing T-Mobile customer? What about those of you that switched to T-Mobile for the Nexus One? [Thanks Quinn!]

UPDATE: According to the pricing FAQ on the Nexus One, $379 is the price for existing customers who are updating their data plans, $279 is the price for existing customers adding data plans and the $180 price seems to be reserved only for new T-Mobile customers. That’s some crap right there.

New rules from the Federal Trade Commission, requiring bloggers to disclose free gifts from companies whose products they review, came into effect on December 1st and the first major announcement of 2010 just occurred today.

The Google Nexus One mobile phone was unveiled this afternoon and all the members of the press who were on-site for the announcements received free phones from Google. This is the most-anticipated phone to hit the market in years. It’s like a unicorn sparkling with magic, perhaps. Almost no one at all has disclosed getting a free unit in writing their reviews.

Sponsor

The idea is that receiving free goods from a vendor makes a writer more likely to write positively about a product than they would otherwise. Readers deserve to know if a writer has a financial interest in the company or has received free stuff, so that the readers can take product reviews with gifts associated with a grain of salt. Some people believe that this is essential to safeguard the trustworthiness of media in a “new media” era, others believe it is unfair to small-time bloggers who deserve a chance to profit from their writing just like the pros do.

In this case, though, it’s the pros we’re talking about. Blogger Robert Scoble tells us that all the attendees were given a choice: receive the phone as a gift or sign an agreement to borrow a Nexus One on loan for 30 days. Scoble signed up for the loaner.

VC blogger Fred Wilson wrote in his post “I received a gift from Google. It was a Nexus One.” Michael Arrington has said that TechCrunch will give away the phone he received at the press event. Scanning over Techmeme’s survey of coverage, we’re unable to find anyone else who makes mention of the freebie.

It may be the case that big-name tech review bloggers like Walt Mossberg or Engadget are just expected to always send back the review copies of things they get and so there’s no reason to disclose on every post. (Here’s Mossberg’s ethics page, where he says he never accepts free gifts. He also makes more money than all but a few journalists ever have in history, for what it’s worth.)

It may be that all the press who got a Google Phone today is planning on giving the phones back in 30 days. How should disclosures be handled though if you’re writing an article and you haven’t decided whether you are going to send something back as a loaner or keep it?

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we try hard to always make casual but clear mention when we have a financial interest in a company we are writing about. We try hard to mention the same if we are writing about a competitor to a company we have a financial interest in. And we always do our best to disclose it if we ever get free stuff from vendors we write about. That doesn’t happen very much.

Sometimes the lines aren’t clear, either. The community manager at Postrank.com sent me a sock monkey she made last year and I write about that company often. (I use it daily for essential work.) I’ve never mentioned that sock monkey before, though.

This is a phone made of pure sunlight and hype, though. Is it a poor reflection on the FTC’s new disclosure requirements that so few have disclosed their free Google Phones, or is it a poor reflection on our group of tech bloggers?

Discuss

The Oil Drum hosts a research piece that wonders why peak oil isn’t even discussed or worried about by energy experts in governments all around the world.

We’d add that peak oil isn’t really discussed by most energy companies around the world either when they host analyst calls or talk about their strategy.

At least nowhere near the degree that peak oil disaster scenario believers do.

Yet, interestingly, rather than confront their own assumption that peak oil is the global disaster they make it to be, this article at The Oil Drum ignores this and concludes that non-believers around the world are either A) suffering from psychological ‘cognitive biases’ or B) in it together in a giant global cover up (combining many enemy governments at odds with each other, plus competing corporations we might add).

It seems the peak oil disaster boat is sinking. You be the judge, emphasis added:

The Oil Drum: Anyone aware of peak oil has had to wonder (at least briefly) why the world’s governments seem to be ignoring the issue.

…

“The growing popular debate on ‘peak oil’ has had relatively little influence on conventional policy discourse. For example, the UK government rarely mentions the issue in official publications and …..’does not feel the need to hold contingency plans specifically for the eventuality of crude oil supplies peaking between now and 2020′.”3 The report notes that “the UK is one of many countries that are failing to give serious consideration to this risk.”

…

Nate Hagens has argued here “that despite facts, we exhibit certain cognitive biases that prevent us from acting on complex or frightening subjects outside of our day to day realities.”9 This category would include the notion of “cognitive dissonance” and other psychological factors that save us the trouble of facing difficult facts or “truths”, including that of our own mortality. The sheer difficulty of believing, or grasping, as consequential a figure as Hubbert’s Peak, is well supported by anecdotal evidence among peak oilers who commonly report a “glazed-over” response to their efforts

…

What if the silence on peak oil is not a betrayal of national interests, but a policy choice informed by national interests? What if, with Mike Ruppert, we accept that there are “conspiracy facts”, and that the silence on peak oil is one of them?

“Most people have… a serious misconception: That misconception is a belief that there is an urgent need to somehow make key decision makers and leaders of American and global life aware of the immediate problems of Peak Oil and Natural Gas. Nothing could be more off base. The world’s key decision makers have been aware of and planning for this crisis for years.”

Read the full article at the Oil Drum and tell us if we’re wrong >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• How Rising Oil Prices Will Force U.S. Into A Post-Industrial Wasteland
• New Russian Oil Dispute With Belarus Puts European Supply In Jeopardy
• Goldman’s Jim O’Neill: Easy Money And High Oil Prices Make Russia The #1 BRIC For 2010

Here at DISCOVER, we do our best to keep you informed of all the crap scientific advice that celebrities dispense, be it Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vaxxer yarns, Oprah providing a platform for new-age nonsense, or soccer star Robin Van Persie’s praise of placenta massage to heal injuries. But with so many celebrities and so much bad advice, it can be hard to catch it all—TMZ might catalog the whereabouts and philandering of the rich and moderately famous, but not necessarily their quackery.

Never fear, though, because once again the British organization Sense About Science has pulled many of the year’s worst offenses together in a handy compendium. The charity’s annual review pairs celebrity claims with reality-based quotes from doctors and scientists.

Here’s one choice gem: Heather Mills, the animal rights activist and former wife to Paul McCartney, claimed that when you eat meat “[it] sits in your colon for 40 years and putrefies, and eventually gives you the illness you die of. And that is a fact.” Thanks for the info, Heather!

More from New Scientist:

Other celebs have been pulled up this year for apparently not realising that natural substances such as hormones are chemicals, and that ovulation is suppressed naturally by pregnancy and prolonged breastfeeding. Actress Suzanne Somers, for example, was quoted as saying that the contraceptive pill must be unsafe “because is it safe to take a chemical every day, and how would it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation?”

Actor Roger Moore, meanwhile, was taken to task for claiming that foie gras causes Alzheimer’s disease, and Sarah Palin for dismissing evolution.

Apparently playing James Bond not only gets you good tables at restaurants, it also makes you think you have medical expertise.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Soccer Star Seeks Out Serbian Placenta Massage to Speed Healing
Bad Astronomy: Oprah: Shame on You
The Intersection: On Vaccination and Autism: Don’t Believe the Hype

Image: flickr / Wonker

According to General Motors’ sales executive, Susan Docherty, a total of 1,712 Saturn and Pontiac vehicles remain in the company’s inventory. Docherty told reporters and analysts that only 796 Pontiacs and 916 Saturn units remain, as compared to 32,000 Saturns and more than 70,000 Pontiacs the company had in May as it filed for Chapter 11.

While GM waits for a successful bid for Saab, it is continuing to wind down the brand. As of right now, 1,235 Saab vehicles remain in inventory. Hummer, which is being sold to a Chinese company, has 2,176 units.

Together, the four brands represented 9 percent of retail sales in December, compared with 15 percent in May 2009.

– By: Omar Rana

Source: AutoObserver

It’s a new year, and the January 2010 issue of Teaching Music contains new approaches to music eduction puzzles. The features include:
 

• From Haydn to Hip-Hop: a profile of an inner city Arizona music teacher
• The Cover Story: The Wonderful World of the Musical (Check out the members-only online bonus content for this feature, including sections on costume and stage design, accompaniment concerns, and working with volunteers.)
• Adventures on the Conference Circuit
• Climbing the National Board Certifcation Ladder
• Information Exchange: Pass those great ideas along


UpBeat, the news section, includes need-to-know stories about MENC projects and events. Among them:

• The Virtual Voting Booths are Open: Vote for MENC President and Division Officers
• January is All-American Marching Band Month for MENC
• The National Honor Ensembles Deadline is February 1
• Check out MENC’s New Legislative Memo
• MENC Executive Director John J. Mahlmann resigns and the search for a new executive director is underway
• Music Educators Present Creative Stagings for the World’s Largest Concert
• MENC Seeks Student Compositions for Music Education Week 2010

And don’t forget — MENC members can always visit the MENC Forums to discuss these and any other issues on your mind.
 

—Roz Fehr, January 5, 2010. © MENC: The National Association for Music Education

Uno de nuestros probadores de cabecera, Javi Vicente, hace poco tiempo nos ofrecía la prueba del Renault Mégane Coupé 1.6 dynamique, un modelo intermedio del Megane que ofrecía un coche de marcha tranquila, sin grandes pretensiones deportivas, pero práctico y a un precio atractivo. Ahora Renault nos ofrece el primer teaser de la versión cabriolet del mismo modelo, el Megane Coupé-Cabriolet.

Siguiendo los dictados de las reglas generales de los teaser, tan de moda últimamente, la versión cabriolet del Megane Coupé no nos permite apreciar algo más que la trasera y parte del perfil derecho.

Se puede apreciar que se ha creado una forma limpia, sin obstrucciones que puedan causar los parantes de apoyo del techo cuando está cerrado. Pero una de las atracciones de esta versión cabriolet será su techo plegable de cristal, así que es de imaginar la pequeña maravilla del mecanismo elevador del techo.

El nuevo modelo será presentado primeramente en Suiza, el día 2 de marzo, así como en L’Atelier Renault, el día 5 de marzo, con el escenario de los Campos Elíseos en París. Una presentación por todo lo alto que seguramente atraerá más teasers, gentileza de Renault.

Fuente | Media Renault

Last year saw big changes at the FDA — starting at the top with a new commissioner, appointed by a new administration — but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the number of drugs the agency approved.

The Obama-era FDA approved 26 new drugs last year. That’s a hair’s breadth from the 25 new drugs approved by the Bush-era FDA in 2008, according to figures out today from Washington Analysis, a research shop whose customers are institutional investors.

Of course, the drug approval process is a long one, and changes put in place last year may take a while to play out. Ira Loss, a senior health policy analyst at Washington Analysis, suggested that a recent increase in funding for the agency could speed up the decision-making process.

Companies “are going to have a better experience trying to get to the end of the line,” Loss told us when we got him on the phone this afternoon. “Better funding of the agency is going to mean that there are fewer delays.”

The FDA approved seven biotech drugs and 19 traditional (i.e. small molecule) drugs last year. While the number of small-molecule drugs approved was comparable to the figures from recent years, the number of biotech drug approvals was up from two in 2007 and four in 2008.

If we were in an expansive mood, we might suggest that the increase reflects big pharma’s big push into biotech. But maybe the numbers are just a blip. After we got off the phone with Loss, we emailed him to ask what he thought. Here’s his reply:

I think it has the potential to be a breakout, but I am not prepared to say so based on one year. If there is a repeat performance in 2010 then I would be prepared to say the long awaited breakthrough in therapeutic biotech approvals may in fact be here. But not yet!

The FDA expects to report its number of 2009 drug approvals by Friday, but the agency reported 25 new drugs approved as of Dec. 1, according to the Associated Press. You can search the FDA’s reports on drug approvals here.

Bonus Approval: Take a walk through 2009 with the Health Blog. Read our posts on some of last year’s new drugs: Multaq from Sanofi-Aventis, Effient from Eli Lilly and Daiichi Sankyo, Simponi from J&J and Onglyza from Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca. For more on some of last year’s key approvals (and delays), see this story from Dow Jones Newswires.

In December, I visited Parrot‘s development labs in Paris to check out the company’s newest project. While Parrot is mostly known for its Bluetooth headsets and speaker systems, the company’s newest project combines augmented reality with a remote-controlled helicopter. This helicopter – the AR.Drone – features four rotors that keep it stable and a front-mounted camera that is linked to an iPhone or iPod touch. The rig is controlled via an iPhone or iPod touch and the device’s screen can show an augmented view of what the helicopter’s camera sees.

Sponsor

AR Meets the Real World

What’s most exciting about this product is how it combines a real helicopter with this augmented reality view. Instead of just looking at an augmented view of the world through the phone’s camera, you get to see the world through the drone’s camera. The iPhone takes the view of the camera (via Wi-Fi) and replaces markers with anything from walls to dinosaurs.

During our discussion with Parrot in December, we couldn’t get any information about the price of the AR.Drone out of the company’s representatives. Given how sophisticated the hardware is, however, chances are that it won’t be very cheap. The drone, for example, features two cameras. Besides the camera that feeds the video to the iPhone, the drone also features a second camera that is mounted underneath the structure and augments the drone’s autopilot.

Hands-On With the AR.Drone

We got a chance to play with a prototype of the AR.Drone in Parrot’s labs, and it took a while to get used to the controls (the app uses a combination of the phone’s tilt sensors and on-screen controls to manipulate the drone). The video on the iPhone was surprisingly clear and didn’t show any noticeable lag. Sadly, we didn’t get a chance to try out the AR features of the app, though.

Parrot will launch the AR.Drone later this year. The company plans to demo the helicopter at CES this week but the exact date of the public launch remains unclear.

A Drone for Developers

In its current iteration, the hardware and software is clearly laid out for gaming, but Parrot also released an SDK that will allow developers to use the hardware for other purposes as well. It will definitely be interesting to see what games and other tools the developer community will come up with once the AR.Drone is launched. Parrot told us that it hopes that developers will look at the hardware as a platform, and the company hopes to create an active developer ecosystem around the AR.Drone.

More Videos

Click here for more videos of the AR.Drone in action.

Disclosure: Frederic met with Parrot during a trip that was partly sponsored by Parrot.

Google has finally made the HTC Nexus official today, which means its time for a comparison between the two Snapdragon superphones.

	HTC HD2	HTC Nexus One
Operating system	Windows Mobile 6.5	Android 2.1
Processor	1 Ghz Snapdragon	1Ghz Snapdragon
RAM	448 MB	512 MB
ROM	512 MB	512 MB
Screen	4.3 inch TFT, Capacitive	3.7 inch AMOLED, Capacitive
Multi-touch	Yes	No
Size	120.5 x 67 x 11 mm	119 x 59.8 x 11.5
Weight	157g	130 g
Battery	1230 mAH	1400 mAH
Battery life	Talk time 5.3 hours on 3G Standby 390 hours on 3G	Talk time 7 hours on 3G Standby 250 hours on 3G
Camera	5 megapixel with Dual LED Flash	5 megapixel with LED Flash
Video	640×480 at 30 fps	720×480 pixels at 20 fps
Connectors	3.5mm headphone, microUSB	3.5mm headphone, microUSB
Control	5 hardkeys, volume keys	4 softkeys, illuminated trackball, volume keys
Additional features	proximity sensor, digital compass, car cradle	proximity sensor, digital compass, dual microphone

Engadget has posted a review of the Nexus, and note the AMOLED screen is very oversaturated and washes out extremely badly in bright light, negating one of the major features of the handset. They also note the trackball, which serves to increase the height to virtually the same as the HD2, appears completely superfluous and does not contribute to the use of the device.

In the end the device does not appear to be either very ground breaking or much more super than existing devices, including the HTC HD2, and the new additions to the UI strangely serve to bring it closer to the HTC Sense and again not very groundbreaking.

What do our readers think?  Let us know in the comments below.