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Automotive theatre at its best
By Nauman Farooq

Product placements can be the best thing for a company and its products. But they can also be a kiss of death. Take Aston Martin for example. Most people recognize the brand for its association with James Bond and quite frankly many people like that. But some people are uncomfortable with this tie-up because they feel people will look at them as wanna-be agent 007.

So today we won’t look at this 2010 Aston Martin V8 Vantage Coupe as James Bond’s potential company car (007 does prefer the bigger DBS model afterall), but instead focus on it as just a car, to see how good or bad it actually is.

Let’s start with the looks. It was penned by Henrik Fisker and was first shown in concept form back in 2003. Time has done nothing to diminish its appeal. It always was and still is one of the most breathtakingly gorgeous automotive designs ever. Even now it turns heads everywhere it goes, drawing in admiring glances. So if you don’t like getting noticed, look elsewhere.

If you like cheap, plasticy interiors that rattle, look elsewhere again, because the quality of materials used to make its interior can only be described as first-class. Almost every surface is covered in leather or aluminum, and any bits made of plastic are made from the finest stuff. The minute you open its swan-like doors (they tilt slightly up as you open the door, so you won’t scrape them on a high curb) you can tell by just the smell that this is an exquisite machine, built mostly by hand. Having toured their production facility in Gaydon, England, I can tell you first hand that the people working there love their work and take their time making sure everything looks and feels perfect.

Slam the light aluminum doors behind you as you sit, and you will first notice the comfortable, form fitted seats. You will also notice that you sit rather low in this vehicle. Even after adjusting the seat to my liking, it still felt like sitting in a go-kart. This takes surprisingly little time to get used to.

The dials in the instrument cluster also take a little getting used to. Yes, they are absolutely gorgeous to look at, but the white numbering on an aluminum finish is not the easiest to read. You’ll also notice that while the speedometer turns clockwise, like it should, the rev counter turns anti-clockwise. This also takes a little getting used to. But if getting used to its few nuances means spending more time with it, that is hardly a chore now is it!

Spending more time in it means going for a drive, and that is where its beauty shines the brightest. The second you plop in its key into the center of its “Engine Start” button (why they haven’t gone for a keyless ignition system like the ones found in all the new Jaguar’s is beyond me), and press it all the way in, you hear the starter motor whirring for about a second before the engine fires up with a fierce growl. This motor means business, but that wasn’t always the case.

You see, when the V8 Vantage was first introduced, Aston Martin was owned by Ford Motor Company, who also owned Jaguar at the time. To save money, Ford gave Aston a Jaguar motor, which itself had been around for awhile. The AJ26 motor started life in 1996 as a 4.0-liter lump, producing 290 hp. In 2003, it was enlarged to 4.2-liters and made 300 hp. When Aston Martin first got hold of this engine, they enlarged it slightly to 4.3-liters, but managed to coax 380 hp. While this motor sounded great from the get go, it lacked the performance one expected from such a car. It wasn’t slow by any means, but neither was it jaw droppingly quick. Now though, the car has finally got the engine it always deserved.

It might still only be a variation of the old Jaguar motor, but it now displaces 4.7-liters and produces 420 hp and 346 lb/ft of torque. So now it goes as well as it sounds. Accelerating from 0-100 km/h is dealt with in 4.9 seconds according to Aston Martin, but in reality it feels quicker than that. Top speed is quoted at 290 km/h, which makes it faster than the planes the O.P.P. uses to patrol our highways.

But figures are one thing; its how the car makes you feel is what makes this such a joy to drive. Because while it is no where near the fastest car you can buy for under $200,000, the emotions it creates in you certainly makes it one of the best.

You will love how sharp the throttle response is, you will love the immediacy of its brakes, and you will love how the steering translates the roads in the palm of your hand.

I’m sorry if I am sounding like I am writing a brochure on this car, but it truly is that good.

It even handles well, not race car well, but well enough. It prefers taking flowing corners rather than be tossed through tight corners. The culprit is its weight. Despite its almost all-aluminum construction (even the chassis is made from bonded aluminum), this car weights in at 1630 kg. That is quite hefty for a car that is smaller in size than the current Ford Focus sedan.

So this is not a track day toy, it is best suited for a grand tour. Fittingly, Aston Martin’s only dealer in Ontario is called Grand Touring Automobiles.

So if you want to go far away with a companion, you’ll find this two-seater has ample luggage space under its hatch. It won’t cost you much to drive it either because it easily manages 14-liters/100km, and that is despite having some full-throttle runs along the way.

It will cost you quite a bit to buy though. The V8 Vantage starts at $135,495. Throw in options like special paint, parking sensors, Bluetooth, satellite navigation, N400 package sills and a sports pack, and that price can rise very quickly indeed. My very loaded test car came to $175,000, despite it having just a regular six-speed manual gearbox rather than the optional Sportshift gearbox with pedal shifters.

So cheap it ain’t, but then again, buying an Aston Martin was never a rational decision. You’d buy it if you’d fall in love with its looks and personality. Afterall, you wouldn’t marry someone just based on their stats; you marry the person that makes you feel a certain way. The Vantage has enough charms to woo just about anyone, and this latest version is such a big improvement over the old Vantage that if you had driven the old model and were not particularly impressed, you seriously need to have a go in this new one.

Let this automotive love affair begin.

The ABC has an article quoting Peter Newman and Kjell Aleklett talking about peak oil and the credit crunch (personally I think oil prices were just one factor causing the GFC, and not the main one) – Global downturn cushioned peak oil impact.

One of the Federal Government’s top infrastructure advisers is warning of an oil crunch that could send the global economy spiralling back toward recession.

Curtin University Professor Peter Newman sits on the Government’s Infrastructure Australia Council and says peak oil – when demand outstrips dwindling supply – has already hit but that the global downturn has kept prices low.

Professor Newman even blames oil for causing the global recession in the first place, and he is not alone.

It is an issue being taken seriously by some local councils which have drawn up peak oil contingencies. Proponents of the scenario said the cost of oil and therefore petrol would rise exponentially in the first decade of this century when increasing demand outstripped finite supply.

With oil now hovering at about $US85 a barrel it does not seem to have happened – at least in the original timeframe. But Professor Newman says the world reached peak oil in 2008 when it spiked at about $140 a barrel and sent petrol prices soaring.

“Peak oil did happen I believe in 2008 and it didn’t happen because some oil exporting country had a revolution or something. It just happened because we couldn’t produce enough to meet the demand,” he said.

Professor Newman largely blames the global financial crisis on oil prices. “Subprime mortgages were mostly out on the urban fringes miles away from work. People had to drive and when the price of fuel tripled in American cities they couldn’t pay their mortgages,” he said.

As the global economy has strengthened in recent months so has the oil price, and Professor Newman says it does not bode well for recovery. “As the demand increases again the supply crunch will happen and the price will go up,” he said.

Peak oil solutions

Professor Kjell Aleklett, the Swedish-based president of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, is in agreement with his Australian counterpart. “The fact is that we are producing less oil now than we did in 2008, so just now we have 2008 as the peak year for peak oil,” he said.

Professor Aleklett says he thinks the world will find a way around the problem simply because it will grind to a halt if it does not.

The Silicon Valley Mercury has an article on making the Empire State Building more energy efficient – Silicon Valley company to replace every window in the Empire State Building.

Some people don’t do windows. Kevin Surace does. In a very big way.

The Silicon Valley CEO is about to oversee a green-building project on the most high-profile stage in the world when his company — Serious Materials, in Sunnyvale — begins replacing all 6,514 windows in the Empire State Building.

And no, all that glass — an estimated 26,000 panes — will not be dumped into New York City’s trash bins.

Instead, over the next nine months, laboring at night so as not to disturb tenants and tourists in New York’s 102-story Art Deco landmark at Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street, Surace’s workers will use a high-tech process to remove every window from its frame and separate the glass. Renovating roughly 50 windows a night, they’ll install a clear, mylar-like plastic sheath in between the double panes, then fill the windows with an argon-krypton gas, reseal them and rehang them.

The result? Silicon Valley meets the Big Apple: windows that are four times more insulated than the old ones and will save $410,000 a year in heating and air conditioning costs.

In just 16 days, it’s soared up the charts with over a million downloads on the first day of availability. Now, the iPhone version is the third most popular for Opera Mini downloads worldwide, and number one in the US. More »

By Laura Grimes

I said hello and called her name. She sat on the side of her twin bed, reading an aged book. She didn’t respond. I called her name again. I stood in front of her for several moments. I raised my voice. Nothing. I finally stooped down and looked into her face.

Josephine raised her head just a little, looked at me and smiled. She put a mark in her book and closed it. Gold serif type spelled out two words on the blue cloth cover: Silent Spring.

I put my bag on the floor and moved a portable potty out of the way to give her a sideways hug.

I looked at her square in the front again. “Hello,” she said cheerfully. “It’s been a long time.”

“I know. I never meant to stay away so long.” It had been more than four months.

I looked around for the low wooden stool I usually sit on and found it under a wastebasket. She was wearing a purple dress with white polka dots, the material a thin synthetic. Two strands of Mardi Gras beads matched the color of her dress, one of little hearts and one of little dice. She wore a short-sleeve jacket with a cut out lacy design on the collar, all white like her hair.

She rummaged around. “I was going to tell you what books I’ve been reading.” She picked up a piece of paper and checked a list.

“I read Huckleberry Finn again. I like to read books again. Meditations by Marcus Arelius. I wasn’t very happy about that. I don’t think Marcus Arelius realized there was another sex. Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

“You’re on a Jules Verne kick.”

“What?”

“You’re on a Jules Verne kick,” I said louder.

“I ought to,” she nodded, as if I had suggested she do something.

She checked her list again. “Little Dorrit. I started to read Anna Karenina, but I had great difficulty reading it and I had to give up. My right eye is getting clouded over, which is affecting my reading.”

She showed me a story she had written. It was nearly two pages, typed. She wanted to have it published in The Columbian. It was about when she and her husband, Pat, lived in Boston. He came home from work and she was eager for him to drive her to see the surf. It was stormy and the waves were big. Their car was small. It took them a long time to get home because trees blocked the streets and water covered the low areas. Near the end, she wrote of an account of how a man had bought a new barometer. It was stuck on “hurricane” so he took it back to the store to complain. When he got home again his house was gone.

The storm they trudged through came to be known as The Great Hurricane of 1938.

I handed the papers back to her. “How have you been?” I asked.

“I’m getting old. I’m feeling all of my 93 years, and I don’t want to live to be a hundred.”

“How come?”

“It’s just not comfortable. I have pains here and there. Nothing I can do about it.”

She recently memorized the nine muses, and she happily recited them:

1. Calliope – epic poetry
2. Clio – history
3. Erato – lyric poetry
4. Euterpe – music
5. Melpomene – tragedy
6. Polyhymnia – sacred poetry
7. Terpsichore – dance
8. Thalia – comedy
9. Urania – astronomy

The muses are handwritten in a small, thick book with blank, lined pages. Another page has a list of songs such as Amazing Grace, My Wild Irish Rose and Winter Wonderland. Another page has a list of fairy tale themes such as “Old women are usually wicked witches.” Another page has all the U.S. Supreme Court justices.

One page says simply in all uppercase printing:

THE SOUL
UNIVERSAL NATURE
NATURE

As I scribbled the words, she said, “When I think of you, I think of you sitting there writing. Have you been writing?”

I smiled. “A little bit.”

I noted the time and said I have to go. I gathered my things. I moved the portable potty to give her a sideways hug. I put the low wooden stool back under the wastebasket. I stooped down so she could see my face. I smiled, blew her a kiss and waved goodbye.

She grinned and blinked her eyes.

*****

RHYTHMS
by Josephine Paterek

Bubbling crest–
Slick smooth trough
The wave topples and then reforms
Into bubbling crest–
Slick smooth trough–
And again–and again–and again,
In the long sea swell or the choppy bay
Or the crashing surf on the desolate beach.

The surge and excitement of new enterprise;
The tranquil reflection in the aftermath.
Days when assurance beats the proud drum.
Nights when foreboding sinks into despair.

A vagrant sea breeze riffles the surface
As the plans of others cross our paths,
But the undersea swell remains the same,
The shape of the beat …
Repeat …
Repeat …

*

ILLUSTRATION: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, 1962 Houghton Mifflin Company Boston.

*

Meet Josephine in Chapter 1 here.

Energy Bulletin has an article from Steve LeVine on the history of battery – The humble battery: 210 years later, the breakthrough we still await.

The battery could be a shoo-in for the most confounding of all technologies. Invented in 1799 by Alessandro Volta, it not only has yet to be perfected, but has operated all along on essentially the same chemical principles. Were that it were different: If engineers could figure out how to store sufficient electricity in a sufficiently small, light, safe container, there would be a cascading revolution — in super-utilities, electric cars, laptops and mobile phones. With the possibility of a trillion-dollar industry at stake — if consumers en mass decide that they want plug-in hybrids, for instance — engineers and scientists from the Silicon Valley to Japan, China and Korea are manically working on the technological challenge.

Henry Schlesinger, a New York-based science journalist, sets out to right a gaping authorial wrong in his new book, The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution. In the introduction, Schlesinger notes rightly that an omnibus account of the this exceedingly fascinating technology — from Volta to today — simply doesn’t exist.

It still doesn’t. This is less a history of the battery than a romp through some of the biggest names in the most exciting periods of invention in the last two centuries — Davy, Faraday, Edison and Marconi. It reads like an extended Google search of such personalities, with a special focus on electric-powered devices. Schlesinger hints as to why the book turned out this way: “If there are detours,” he writes, “it is only because the facts uncovered were either too interesting or too much fun to leave out.”

Point made. The missing history of the battery is still missing. Yet the result is still fun. Schlesinger’s zest for those detours is infectious.

A bit of advice: Skip the first 18 pages, in which Schlesinger orphans far-afield basic science history. From there, he plunges in to his broad tale. …

Yet we do end up understanding that batteries are important. In the last few pages, Schlesinger casts his gaze on current efforts to realize the battery’s potential, hop-scotching through carbon nanotubes, genetically altered virus batteries, and bio-batteries using vodka, sugar or urine. The book ends on a hopeful note. Schlesinger writes, “Battery development is, at long last, catching up to related fields.”

The new Citroen Metropolis concept will be presented at the 2010 Shanghai motor show on May 1st. The large sedan prototype has been designed by Citroen’s Shanghai design centre, but although a luxury vehicle, it still has an ecological focus. It’s a very large sedan (over five metres long), likely to appeal to the Chinese market, but no production plan has yet been revealed.

The futuristic Metropolis concept is equipped with a hybrid plug-in system which produces just 70 g/km of CO2 emissions, according to Citroen. It’s quite a novelty for the PSA group and has an innovative system based around a 2.0-litre V6 petrol engine with 272 hp and a dual-clutch, seven-speed transmission. The electric motor has a constant power output of 55 hp, with a peak output of 95 hp.

Other features of the Citroen Metropolis include 21-inch wheels, 265/35 tyres, and a platform based on that of the Citroen C6. In overboost phase the car can rely on 460 hp and 430 Nm of torque. It has all-wheel drive but it’s not known whether it’s the same Hybrid4 system seen recently. See the video after the jump.

On Tuesday’s Morning Edition, Evan Thomas, discussed his new book, The War Lovers. During the last few years he realized that the reason America invaded Iraq war was because of the lust for war on the part of the Bush administration and a bunch of reporters (including himself) who thought it would be really exciting to have a war. When he realized that, he decided to look at another American War of choice: his book covers the Spanish-American war in which the US decided to grab an empire.

Thomas didn’t spend much time on the modern war but did acknowledge it was a lust for war that drove our country into this war. But, what really got me about this story was although he realized there was no good reason to invade Iraq (except people wanted to “kick some ass”), he doesn’t think things turned out too bad.

“We got sucked into something that actually has turned out OK. We did achieve some war aims, but we did it at great cost, and clearly we didn’t know what we were getting into.”

Nice that he thinks that, but it might be good to ask the Iraqi people how about America’s war of choice has been for them. Perhaps someone can send Mr. Thomas a copy of Amnesty International’s latest report describing how it is to live in Iraq these days where the government of Saddam was better at providing the basics (electricity, law enforcement, schools) than the current government. I’m sure the Iraqis are more than happy that people like Evan Thomas got their chance to kick butt on the Iraqis backs.

The Zagato Alfa Romeo TZ3 Corsa is a race car, honouring 100 years of races and victories across the whole 20th century. The TZ3 Corsa is based on a mono shell carbon fibre tubular chassis, coupled with a tubular frame and a lightweight aluminium body. It boasts Technical Partners such as OMP and Pirelli.

Following Zagato’s gentlemen-driver heritage, the car has been commissioned by the Alfa Romeo Zagato collector Martin Kapp, during the Zandvoort Tribute to Zagato event, where more than 130 Alfa Romeo Zagatos were celebrating the 90th Anniversary of the brand.

Even the grandiose Quadrifoglio Verde was placed on the bodies of Zagatos of the Alfa Corse team numerous times. Among the most glorious moments is the victory of the Formula 1 championship of Juan Manuel Fangio, aboard his Alfa Romeo 159 bodied by Zagato, as well as the victorious Alfa Romeo 3000 CM bodied in 3 samples by Zagato.

Source: Lincah.Com – New Car and Used Car Pictures

New reports are coming in implying that Infiniti is developing a new compact crossover off a Daimler platform specifically for the European market. This is contrary to older reports that it is considering the use of Mercedes-Benz powertrain in future models.

The French publication L’Automobile said that the Daimler-Renault-Nissan alliance would enable Nissan to design a smaller CUV for Europe. The vehicle, which is named as the “DX” will be slotted under Infiniti’s current small crossover, the EX, enabling the brand to target BMW’s X1 and the forthcoming Audi Q3. Continued after the jump!

L’Automobile says that it’s possible that the crossover would ride on the same underpinnings as Mercedes-Benz’s A- and B-Class vehicles. Infiniti is believed to either approach Daimler for a four-cylinder engine for the Euro-only model or it could turn to parent Nissan for an economic engine.

To date, the Alliance has confirmed platform sharing to proceed only with its small cars. It’s probable that a certain design will be shared by the next-generation Smart ForTwo, ForFour, and the Renault Twingo. If the DX does get produced, it will be considered as an indication that Nissan is concerned about marketing the Infiniti brand in Europe.

Recently, the brand started installing turbo-diesel V-6 engines into its Euro-spec EX and FX crossovers. The new M that will be launched abroad is likely to receive the same engines. Infiniti added that it is likely to introduce a premium compact car, which will rival the BMW 1 Series, Lexus CT200h, and Audi A3. This model is expected to be launched years from now but it’s believed that it will be fitted with some components or designs that originated in Germany.

[via automobilemagazine]

Source: Car news, Car reviews, Spy shots

In an interesting and frankly bizarre move,  Microsoft has signed a patent agreement with HTC that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for HTC’s mobile phones running the Android mobile platform.

“HTC and Microsoft have a long history of technical and commercial collaboration, and today’s agreement is an example of how industry leaders can reach commercial arrangements that address intellectual property,” said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. “We are pleased to continue our collaboration with HTC.”

HTC is currently under attack from various sources for patent infringement, but the highest profile case has been Apple’s attempt to block HTC from importing its phones into USA.  Most of Apple’s claims have been based on the Android software running in most of HTC’s devices.

While under the agreement Microsoft will receive royalty payments from HTC, the development would still appear , in an increasingly litigious market, to remove a major selling point from Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Windows Phone OS.

Does Microsoft’s decision make sense to our readers? Let us know your thoughts below.

Via MSMobiles.com

Being the 28th of April, it figures that iPad 3G pre-order customers have begun receiving confirmation their iPad 3Gs are shipping. They should be dropping on doormats this Friday, or available in-store after 5pm that day. [9to5Mac] More »

Brazil’s laws concerning liability for online posting continue to haunt Google for no good reason. For years now, we’ve been hearing about lawsuits against Google in Brazil because of comments made on Orkut, Google’s social networking site that (for whatever reason) is mostly popular in Brazil. Brazil doesn’t seem to have a concept of safe harbors or of actually applying liability to those who actually did the actions. Instead, every time that someone does something mean on Orkut, Google gets blamed and fined.

Slashdot points us to the latest such case, an appeal of an earlier ruling against Google, where, once again, the judge found that Google should have magically stopped a supposedly defamatory message from being posted:

“By making space available on virtual networking sites, in which users can post any type of message without any checks beforehand, with offensive and injurious content, and, in many cases, of unknown origin, [Google] assumes the risk of causing damage [to other people],” judge Alvimar de Avila said.

Of course, that makes no sense. Does that mean webhosts are automatically responsible for any content that people put online? Claiming that just creating a place where people can post messages means liability for the provider creates huge chilling effects. It doesn’t make sense for any internet company to operate in Brazil if it has any user-generated component at all. The liability is way too high.

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Garmin-Asus’ latest Android smartphone has been outed, the 3.2-inch HVGA nuvifone A10.  Targeted at pedestrian navigation users, the A10 obviously comes with GPS but Garmin-Asus also preload mapping data onto the handset rather than leaving it to the whims of the cellular network while you’re on the move.

There’s also a 5-megapixel camera with geotagging support, an accelerometer and a 1,500mAh battery; Garmin-ASUS don’t actually suggest how long that will last you while navigating.  In the box there’s an in-car windscreen mount that both recharges the smartphone and has a speaker for amplified voice guidance prompts.

The usual Android apps together with Microsoft Exchange support are loaded, and there’s the Android Market too; no word on whether the screen is capacitive or resistive, but it does support multitouch.  The Garmin-Asus A10 will go on sale in Europe and Asia-Pacific midway through this year; no word on pricing at this stage.

Press Release:

Garmin-Asus announces newest Android smartphone with Garmin navigation

A10 focuses on pedestrian-friendly features and navigation for Europe and Asia-Pacific

Cayman Islands/April 28, 2010/Business Wire — Garmin-Asus, a co-branded alliance between Garmin® Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), and ASUSTeK® Computer Inc. (TAIEX: 2357), today announced the Garmin-Asus A10, a touchscreen smartphone running on the Android™ platform that is optimized for pedestrian navigation. The A10 is expected to be available in mid-2010 in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

For those times when walking is the best way to go, the A10 is ideal for city navigation because of its bright, 3.2-inch HVGA touch screen, electronic compass and long-lasting 1500mAh battery. As with other Garmin-Asus Android-powered devices, the A10’s GPS capabilities are optimized to ensure that customers have the best location and navigation experience a smartphone can offer. Detailed maps are preloaded on the A10 so that users do not have to pay and wait for third party maps to download from a server, nor will they lose their turn-by-turn, voice-prompted navigation if they are out of cell phone coverage. In addition to pedestrian navigation, the A10 is ready for use in an automobile out-of-the-box, and it comes with a powered audio mount that magnifies the volume of the device’s voice commands.

The A10 is a full-featured smartphone on the Android platform that integrates Google™ Mobile Services with one-click access to Google Maps™, Gmail™, YouTube™, calendar, contacts and Android Market™, where users can find more than 30,000 applications to expand and personalize their phone to fit their lifestyle. Android applications that include location-centric content are also able to utilize the A10’s enhanced GPS capability.

To optimize a user’s ability to stay in touch with family, friends and business contacts, the A10 is compatible with Microsoft Exchange server and will wirelessly synchronize contacts, calendar and enterprise email. Account setup is quick and easy, and in a few simple steps users will have their contacts, calendar and email ready to go.

Additional A10 smartphone features include a powerful WebKit browser with multi-touch,
five mega-pixel camera including auto-focus capability that automatically geotags images with an exact location reference. The built-in accelerometer will quickly change the display so that screens may be viewed in portrait or landscape mode.

The A10 also supports optional cityXplorer™ maps, which makes it possible to plan and use routes that include public transit options such as bus, tramway, metro and suburban rail systems.

The Garmin-Asus A10 is expected to be available in mid-2010 in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Additional information about Garmin-Asus products is available at www.GarminAsus.com.

About Garmin-Asus
Garmin-Asus is a co-branded strategic alliance that enables Garmin Ltd. and ASUSTeK Computer Inc. to combine their complementary resources to develop world class LBS-centric mobile phones.

About Garmin Ltd.
The global leader in satellite navigation, Garmin Ltd. and its subsidiaries have designed, manufactured, marketed and sold navigation, communication and information devices and applications since 1989 – most of which are enabled by GPS technology. Garmin’s products serve automotive, mobile, wireless, outdoor recreation, marine, aviation, and OEM applications. Garmin Ltd. is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and its principal subsidiaries are located in the United States, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit Garmin’s virtual pressroom at www.garmin.com/pressroomor contact the Media Relations department at 913-397-8200.

About ASUS
ASUS is a leading company in the new digital era, with a broad product portfolio that includes notebooks, netbooks, motherboards, graphics cards, displays, desktop PCs, servers, wireless solutions, mobile phones and networking devices. Driven by innovation and committed to quality, ASUS designs and manufactures products that perfectly meet the needs of today’s home and office users. ASUS won 3,268 awards in 2009, and is widely credited with revolutionizing the PC industry with the Eee PC™. With a global staff of more than 10,000 and a world-class R&D design team, the company’s revenue for 2009 was US$7.5 billion. ASUS ranks among BusinessWeek’s InfoTech 100, and has been on the listing for 12 consecutive years.

ASUS is a registered trademark of ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Garmin is a registered trademark, and cityXplorer is a trademark of Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries.
Google, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Android and Android Market are trademarks of Google, Inc.
All other brands, product names, company names, trademarks and service marks are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

Every life form present on this blue planet needs water for survival. That’s the reason we see environmentalists over the world encouraging individuals to save every drop, as those precious drops might be what someone is desperately in need for. Since many potable water sources are contaminated, there are some designers who’re looking toward humid air to quench the thirst of millions. Here are some of the best devices that harvest fresh water from thin air:

(more…)

Despite a fan frenzy that left his mom picking herself up off of the floor, teen sensation Justin Bieber made the most of his short time in New Zealand by throwing himself off a bridge. Bieber bungee jumped while in Auckland and posted a video of it on his Twitter account saying: “BUNGY!!! I love New Zealand!!”

Veja o sensacional salto do piloto Sébastien Loeb com o seu Ford Focus no Campeonato Mundial de Rally 2010, etapa da Turquia, a galera foi ao delírio.

Francesca Woodward wants you to join the Oxjam team and lead volunteer campaigners throughout 2010.

Love music? Love going to gigs? Love changing the world? Hate injustice? Me too.

In the past, Oxfam has campaigned at a number of band tours, some big, some small. We go along and hope to raise awareness about poverty and suffering through our campaigns, and try to inspire people to take action.

With the summer fast approaching music gigs start to pick up audiences, so it’s an excellent time to campaign. Oxfam is looking to recruit motivated, happy-go-lucky people willing to donate a few hours of their time (sometimes at evenings and weekends) to help coordinate our campaigning presence in their local towns.

We call them ‘Local Events Campaign Coordinators’! We need you in over 30 major cities across the UK, to lead and manage teams of volunteer campaigners at numerous exciting events throughout 2010, and to help campaigning during our legendary Oxjam festival in the autumn.

It’s an excellent opportunity to gain some really useful experience of inspiring a team of volunteers, organising campaigning tactics at events, as well as a fantastic opportunity to see first hand how an organisation like Oxfam is run – all invaluable stuff you can put on your CV .  Aside from the more practical benefits of getting work experience and learning new skills along the way (oh yes, we will train you too!), you will be supporting Oxfam in fighting the good fight against poverty and injustice (right on! Right?). Our motto is “do what you love doing, just change the world while you do it”, and this is just the chance for those of you that want to make a difference, and have loads of fun whilst you’re doing it.

Oh, mentioning fun… I almost forgot the really good bit. Band tours. Some really rather lovely musicians have let us have a ‘campaigning presence’ at their gigs… Ever heard of a band called Coldplay? They’re our mates. We’ve been on tours with them, as well as Editors, Just Jack, Feeder and Embrace to name but a few, and in a couple of weeks we will be joining the lovely Florence and the Machine on tour!!!

Sooooo exciting! Oh yes. But we want more. We believe that music makes the world go round, it is a fantastic unifier of people and music events are a fantastic campaigning opportunity.

As a Local Events Campaign Coordinator, your role would be to make sure that our campaign presence at events in your area is effective, well managed, and a good representative of what Oxfam stands for. If you think that you’re up for the challenge, if you stand for what we stand for, and if you love music and music events, this could be the start of a fantastic summer. Give us your time. We’ll give you our love.

So if you’re interested email me on [email protected] and we will send you an application form.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Frankie

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