Aaron unboxes the Pantech Link, a featurephone that bears a striking resemblance to several smartphones in the marketplace. Complete with a 2.4-inch screen, full QWERTY keyboard, and a 1.3-megapixel camera, is the “Quick Messaging Device” worth a look?
Just a day after criticizing members of the GOP for participating in a closed-door meeting with Wall Street executives, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is in hot water following a report on Tuesday which indicated that he attended a fundraiser earlier this year hosted by the president of Goldman Sachs.
When asked to confirm or deny his attendance at the event, Reid evaded the question and instead read a prepared statement regarding his involvement in financial regulatory reform, MSNBC.com reports.
"I’m leading the effort to rein in Wall Street," said Reid. "I’m going to make sure that in this legislation I do everything within my ability to make sure that banks aren’t too big to fail."
However, later that day Reid’s spokesman Jim Manley confirmed that the Nevada senator attended the fundraiser, stating that the $37,000 that was raised was done so in accordance with campaign rules.
In response to the news, National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brian Walsh told NBC that "one can only presume that Senator Reid will be returning these donations immediately."
Manley indicated on Wednesday the congressman plans on keeping the donations. 
It is said that timeless philosophy sparks innovation. Home entertainment products have been welcome presence in our living room for years, and that’s why they must embody something essential and not look outdated as new trends emerge. Enduring qualities help these products blend in well and constantly satisfy us. But designers must also capture something new, something that makes us want to update our living room, and even our entertainment habits themselves. Sony’s quest to save the world from aesthetically boring products created by competitors has resulted in a new vision called Monolithic Design. In this interview courtesy of Sony Design, we learn from the members of Sony’s Creative Center about the meaning of this concept.
Matsuoka: From the beginning, Sony has stood for doing the unprecedented and staying one step ahead. These principles motivate us to strive for originality, inspire new consumer lifestyles, show the beauty of functionality, and emphasize usability—our design philosophy. All of this is fundamental to our work as designers, and they remain constant goals of ours.
Before designing home entertainment products for 2010, I wanted us to rethink design and take a fresh look at these elements of our philosophy. Our goal was design surpassing traditional trends and techniques, and design that can shape consumer values and lifestyles. In other words, design that can realign people’s values. With this in mind, we set to work.
In creative work, we draw on our own experiences and sensibilities to express ourselves. But groundbreaking inspiration rarely strikes if we face the same routine every day. That’s why our first step was to send some designers to other locations around the world to collect ideas for exploration. I knew that their inspirations, aesthetic discoveries, and exciting experiences there would expand their creative repertoire and prove indispensable in design development.
As soon as they returned, we discussed product qualities they felt people should appreciate. What design themes should be reflected in new Sony home entertainment products? We discussed many potential directions to take, many ideas for textures, colors, and so on. Yuki’s proposal in particular struck a chord with me—the concept of a single panel.
In its purest form, a panel or monolith has no extraneous elements at all. It’s primitive and directly conveys its inherent nature. For this reason, upright panels look attractive and powerful. As timeless, fundamental forms, panels don’t bend to fashion, so to speak. They can stimulate people, enticing us to update our décor and the style in our lifestyle.
The adjective monolithic is also used in reference to integrated circuits, which have various components integrated onto a single chip. For our own purposes, we reinterpreted the word as “something dense, intelligent, and high-performance,” and I think this matches the direction we’re taking in new home entertainment products. In the end, we built on Yuki’s idea of a single panel and distilled the overall design concept for these products down to our version of Monolithic Design.
Kubota: In television design, normally you start with the functionality for watching video images and then consider how to present it in an original way. This time was different. What I designed first was the sense of presence the physical object conveys. An attractive upright stance, and the aura of freshness and pleasant tension this evokes. Then I had to imagine how to encapsulate the television functionality within this abstract framework.
We faced two tasks. Narrowing it down to the purest expression of an instrument for watching video images, with all needless details gone. And then, ensuring it’s beautiful even when off. This meant rethinking what makes TVs look like TVs—the stand and bezel design. What I visualized at this point was the simple image of a glass panel resting on a solid metal bar.
Stand design generally entails making stands more compact and less noticeable. But through Monolithic Design, we abandoned these rigid preconceptions and chose a simple aluminum bar to support the screen. Other examples in this series of televisions express the gestalt of Monolithic Design more abstractly, as in models dominated by a glass screen in front. To make it happen, our engineers worked diligently to develop new production techniques. Thanks to this, it gives the impression of being a sleek, simple glass panel when off, and images seem to radiate from the front surface of the glass when it’s on.
Matsuoka: We have defined the following three elements of Monolithic Design.
First is something we call “On/Off Conscious.” We want to highlight the beauty of the device as a high-performance TV when it’s on. When it’s off, we want it to fade gracefully into the surroundings as an object of sculptural art. Whether they’re on or off, the sets exude high-performance and other desirable qualities.
Next is “6° Upward Style.” At eye level on a stand, large-screen TVs can be truly overwhelming. Ditch the stand, lower the screen, and tilt the screen slightly up instead (by 6°), and it’s not only easier to watch but it frees your living room from that overbearing presence. This may tempt you to update your living room in general—by replacing any old, worn-out stands with a stylish low cabinet, for example.
And last, “Contrast of Materials.” Here, we sought an alluring sense of contrast from a combination of different materials, which we hope you’ll appreciate. The base and the sides are aluminum, and the front is glass. We coordinated the contrasting textures and qualities of these genuine materials, which harmonize with each other.
Of course, in televisions as in other products, styling should be tailored for the particular series or category. That’s why some new sets may not present all three design elements. Still, Monolithic Design is the unifying concept for our line as a whole. Aesthetically, you’ve found a good solution if you’re looking for a consistent ambiance in your living room.
Suzuki: Monolithic Design appears in Blu-ray disc players, surround-sound speakers, and other home theater products. In all cases, our goal is the ultimate expression of the essence of the component. Excessive elements are avoided, as you would expect with subtractive design.
Making televisions and other products look nicely balanced together was something we were careful about. If other components are too slim—whether because manufacturers believe TV sets should dominate the living room or just because thin is in—they end up looking insubstantial in comparison. Instead, a sturdy framework is more natural and gives components a sense of presence. And besides avoiding excessive slimness, we must avoid what’s fake. We think this brings us closer to the essence of AV equipment and our goals in Monolithic Design.
The simpler product design seems, the harder we must sometimes work to arrange it with our engineers and adjust the production line. Other home theater components are produced differently than televisions. To be exact, we can’t use the same styling techniques. In pursuit of contrasting materials in these products, we might try plastic instead of aluminum, but with the kind of body involved, surfaces inevitably became a little warped. Maybe the materials just don’t support our original design goals. Normally we might overcome this by introducing a subtle curve or adopting special coatings. But smoke and mirrors are unacceptable in creating the “ultimate panel” according to Monolithic Design. So we reconsider the issue from the standpoint of production. We try several approaches as we come closer to the ideal texture and flatness of metal.
Eshita: How could we share these design goals and what excited our designers with people through Sony branding for BRAVIA and other home entertainment products? That was my role, and my work ranged from organizing the Monolithic Design concept (concept-building) to helping us tell the story of this development in promotional communication.
I asked myself many questions. What values of ours could we share with consumers? What exactly was this shift in values we sought? In each case, Monolithic Design yielded compelling answers. The first time I saw mock-ups, I sensed how promising they were as unprecedented products that could set a new standard.
I also anticipated that we would need a user interface that matched the product design better, and that we must develop a new image for the UI.
Nishizawa: You’ll notice the familiar Xross Media Bar (XMB) in the user interface, but it has been refined in subtle ways.
On the screen, the graphics seem to hover over the glass panel, supporting the Monolithic Design theme. Our product designers and engineers both applied a little ingenuity to make it happen. In the UI design as well, edges fade into blackness and other subtle visual cues make the displayed interface seem integrated into the product itself.
On-screen lighting effects give an impression of depth and direct your attention to what you should focus on (which seems to float). These touches make controlling the set enjoyable. Once you access Favorites, for example, the main screen drops into the background, and the illuminated options in front of you hover over it.
You’ll also notice that instead of a yellow glow to indicate selected items, there’s a new prismatic effect. The effect builds on colors in underlying images, so it’s both natural-looking and beautiful. You can see how carefully the glow is rendered, too. The selector seems to pulsate, as if breathing, and it changes color over time.
These and many other details contribute to well-integrated product and interface design, rounding out the Monolithic Design and sense of presence the sets convey.
Eshita: In promotional material as well (especially visual communication), we make sure you can appreciate the freshness of Monolithic Design and the values it represents, not to mention the attitudes of our designers.
There are many things to admire in the Sony entertainment ecosystem: superb picture and audio quality, Internet connectivity for access to much more content, and intelligent features that respond to the installation environment, for example.
To demonstrate that Sony home entertainment products have truly changed and excite you about transforming your own living room with a new television, we focused on how fresh Monolithic Design feels—a sense of presence that sets the tone for the room as a whole. Some promotional material draws on a study we conducted after expressing the ambiance of Monolithic Design visually, in order to convey how it can change a living room (and in what ways) clearly.
Maesaka: Specifically, we started by preparing hundreds of visual scenarios with the Monolithic Design product group. Using this material, we set to work verifying how it met our expectations. It proved how versatile this design approach is. The products obviously blend in nicely in home environments, but they even look beautiful outdoors, in natural settings. After adding models representing people to these scenarios, we saw the potential not only of demonstrating how elegant the products are but also of showing how these lifestyles are desirable.
Good examples of Monolithic Design are simple and minimalist, but they yield fresh and fulfilling experiences for us. Focus only on product appearance, and you miss highlighting this valuable quality. What gave us the complete picture was an idea that emerged after repeated study.
In advertising, we have used some key visuals to express Monolithic Design. One visual representing the resolute presence of the home entertainment product group is the figure of a standing girl (as seen in the first image in this story). We chose to have the TV on in the ad, which is our attempt to convey the kind of experience the television affords, so that people can recall some kind of story involving this kind of setting.
Other promotional material introduces what led to the conception of Monolithic Design. But whether in videos such as these or in the details of feature illustrations in printed brochures or online advertising, we ensure the same tone and style in a variety of publicity. We make sure our messages in advertising are consistent. Once you see what we’re trying to convey in stores or on the pages of brochures, we hope you’ll experience it for yourself in your own living room.
Matsuoka: We believe that Monolithic Design introduces new values in home entertainment and will motivate people to update the overall ambiance of their living room. May these products excite you about the new style of entertainment that can be yours.
Here is another incredible video from Sony about the 2010 Sony BRAVIA HDTV design story, of course heavily influenced by Monolithic Design:
According to a new study recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, people who consume a diet rich in vitamin K may have a considerably decreased risk of developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
For the study, a research team from the Mayo Clinic recruited 603 newly diagnosed Non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients as well as 1,007 control participants and had them answer food questionnaires regarding their dietary intake two years prior to enrollment in the trial.
Lead investigator James Cerhan and his colleagues found that respondents who had a vitamin K intake in the top quartile of the study had a 45 percent lower risk of being diagnosed with the disease compared to those in the bottom 25 percent. They also discovered that the link remained after accounting for a variety of risk factors, including age, sex, obesity and smoking.
"Whether the protective effect we observed is due to vitamin K intake, or some other dietary or lifestyle exposure, cannot be definitely assessed in this study," said Cerhan. "But these findings add to a lot of other data that support a diet that includes plenty of green leafy vegetables in order to prevent many cancers as well as other diseases."
Just weeks after announcing that it would be closing its doors due to bad press and financial concerns, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) continues to show its resolve.
Bertha Lewis, the chief executive officer of the controversial anti-poverty group, was on hand at an appeals court in New York on Tuesday to continue to fight for the organization’s federal funding, which was stripped by Congress last year in the wake of several voter fraud and tax evasion scandals.
Justice Department attorney Mark Stern argued that Congress had every right to take action against ACORN’s "widespread mismanagement" of resources, and asked the court to temporarily block a judge’s ruling that the funding cut-off was unconstitutional, according to the Associated Press (AP).
Jules Lobel, attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that the group’s $25 million annual budget was needed to help distressed individuals receive government subsidies to stay in their homes. The three-judge panel has yet to rule on the case.
Lewis indicated after the hearing that a positive outcome in the case could lead to a resurgence for the struggling group.
"If we can survive this, inch by inch, little by little, this organization can build itself back up," she told the news source. "We’re going to fight like hell to stay alive."
You read that right, auto enthusiasts: the History Channel will produce the on-again-off-again American version of Top Gear. The announcement came from TG’s blog and was confirmed on the History Channel’s Twitter feed. NBC had originally promised to produce the American Top Gear, but plans ultimately fell through.
In case you haven’t heard of it and are therefore dead, Top Gear is a (typically) highly entertaining show on Britain’s BBC that combines car reviews, outrageous stunts, and artsy camera work. Older episodes are rebroadcast in the U.S. by BBC America, but that’s apparently not enough for car nuts: the BBC claims TG is one of the most illegally downloaded TV shows in the world.
Production of the first of ten episodes of the American version reportedly starts today, and the show will air this fall. It will be hosted by racer Tanner Foust, comedian Adam Ferrara, and NASCAR analyst Rutledge Wood. We hope the U.S. version isn’t just a stale copy-and-paste of the BBC show, and that Foust, Ferrara, and Wood can capture the same sort of chemistry shared by UK hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May—without a similar rapport between the three Yanks, TG America could be a flop. As TG fans, we’d call such a failure one of the biggest bummers (cue British accent) in the woooorld.
No related posts.
Tesla Roadster S (RHD)
Tesla Motors will be bringing its right-hand drive all-electric Roadster to Japan. The company said that it will ship a dozen Japan Signature Series Roadsters from Port Hueneme, California to Yokohama in early May for delivery to select customers throughout Japan.
“With its combination of high-level car enthusiasts and interest and appreciation of cutting edge technology, Japan is a natural market for the Roadster,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “The Tesla Roadster is a no-compromise (dakyo no nai) vehicle that makes no sacrifices on performance, design, or engineering.”
Click here to get prices on the 2010 Tesla Roadster.
Tesla said that the Japanese government is currently working toward a full-scale electric-vehicle roll-out program and is working with regions around the country to install power outlets for vehicle charging.
Japan hopes to reduce carbon emissions 25 percent by 2020.
– By: Kap Shah
Despite the negative comments that have made their way through the tech space as of late, AT&T appears to be unaffected. The nation’s second largest wireless carrier released its first quarter earnings report today, and things are looking good. Among the highlights, the company gained 1.9 million customers (the highest first quarter in the company’s history) to close with 87 million total subscribers. iPhone activations continue to be incredibly high as well, with 2.7 million new devices introduced to the network during the quarter.
Postpaid churn dropped to 1.07 percent, while total churn stood at 1.30 percent; both record lows for AT&T. Postpaid ARPU (average revenue per user) increased 3.9 percent to $61.89 while data ARPU rose 21.9 percent to $20.13 (thanks to 26.8 million “3G postpaid integrated wireless devices” on the network). Though the Q1 net income of $2.4 billion was down year-over-year, it’s still a nice load of cash to throw in the bank.
Needless to say, it was a fantastic quarter for AT&T, and proof that they don’t need to aggressively respond to competitor’s claims. Despite the repeated attacks, they continue to bring in customers at a record pace. What’s more, coverage in New York City appears to be improving (slowly but surely), as the company reported that 3G dropped calls are down six percent in Manhattan, and down nine percent in the New York City metro area.
That’s all well and good, but let’s hear from those that are using the service in real life. Are you pleased with the coverage? Wanting to switch? Kind of “meh” about the entire situation? Jot your thoughts down below!
Additional Q1 2010 Reporting (as it is available):
Filed under: Hybrid, Chevrolet, GM, Electric
According to Consumer Reports, Chairman Ed Whitacre has said that the Chevrolet Volt will go on sale this October. Of course, we’ve heard this rumor before, and each time GM says that the original target date is not moving. Last year, for example, Jon Lauckner, General Motor‘s vice president for global product planning, said, “Our date with destiny is November of 2010.” Given the intense scrutiny GM is under with this particular vehicle program, we wanted to hear form the source if anything has changed. Dave Darovitz, who handles corporate communications for the Volt
and the fuel cell Equinox, told Autoblog:
As you can expect, we’re pretty excited about the market potential for the Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle. Our plans and focus have not changed – we continue to drive toward a flawless consumer experience when we launch in the fourth quarter this year in California, Michigan and Washington D.C.
Kind of cryptic. Darovitz doesn’t say it won’t be October, but also makes it clear that GM’s plans remain what they have always been. Guess we’ll have to keep waiting, for the Volt and to learn about the real release date.
Gallery: 2011 Chevy Volt
[Source: Consumer Reports, GM]
Is the Chevy Volt coming in October? The news is cryptic originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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New Powertrain and More
Dave Van Sickle, Canadian Auto Press
Ford’s Super Duty is already the most popular heavy-duty pickup on the market, sometimes outselling heavy-duty Dodge and Chevrolet trucks combined. The new 2011 Super Duty lineup demonstrates that the Ford truck team isn’t resting on its laurels, but still focused on continuous improvement.
2011 Ford Super Duty
And those improvements are everywhere. The real news, however, is the all-new powertrains, one of which features the new 6.7-litre Power Stroke V8 turbocharged diesel engine. For years, Ford equipped its heavy-duty trucks with diesel engines supplied by Navistar. That’s all changed. Designed and built in-house, the new Power Stroke delivers 735 pound-feet of torque at 1,600 rpm and 390 horsepower at 2,800 rpm – 85 pound-feet and 40 horsepower more than the outgoing product.
For those who don’t want or need a diesel, the new 6.2-litre V8 gasoline engine delivers 405 pound-feet of torque at 4,500 rpm and 385 horsepower at 5,500 rpm; the new engine is E85 (Ethanol) compatible, useful if you travel to the south or can find a station that sells it north of the 49th.
The new diesel engine features inboard exhaust architecture, where the exhaust manifolds are located in the valley of the engine and the intakes are on the outside. The cylinder heads are essentially turned around from where they would be in a conventional V8.
The turbocharger is located in the engine’s valley so it can be directly connected to the exhaust manifolds. A dual-sided compressor wheel runs in a single housing, allowing a single unit to function as a twin-turbocharger system in a smaller, more efficient package. It combines the fast response of a small turbocharger with the ability of a large turbocharger to move and compress large amounts of air. This arrangement shortens the connections between manifold and turbo, reducing the system’s overall volume, resulting in faster spool up and reduced lag. It also places components that need to be in cooler air away from hot exhaust pipes.
The fuel system injects fuel at more than 29,000 psi to eight-hole piezo injectors that deliver up to five injection events per cycle to spray fuel into the piston bowl. The direct-injection system is calibrated and phased for optimum power and fuel efficiency.
The exhaust gas after-treatment system meets the new, more stringent 2010 emissions requirements for nitrogen oxides, which have been lowered by approximately 80 percent. The system is the same as that offered by other automakers, using a three-stage process that requires the use of a urea solution that Ford calls Diesel Exhaust Fluid. This widely-available fluid, commonly known as Ad Blue, is added to an onboard storage tank through a port next to the fuel fill port.
The valvetrain features dual hydraulic lifters, improving performance and reliability by using two pushrods per cylinder instead of the conventional single pushrod.
An all-new six-speed automatic transmission was designed to manage the high torque produced by the new diesel engine. The improved fuel economy – up 18-percent over last year’s truck for best-in-class results – and greater capability – towing of 11,975 kilos (26,400 pounds) and a 2,957-kilgram (6,520-pound) payload – is due largely to the all-new 6R140 heavy-duty TorqShift six-speed automatic transmission. The new tranny is responsible for more than half of the overall improved fuel economy.
The new transmission features enhanced Tow Haul with integrated engine exhaust braking and SelectShift Automatic capability, which includes Progressive Range Select and a manual mode. A convenient rotary selector on a steering column-mounted stalk controls manual shifting.
A new, stronger torque converter is core to the improved transmission performance. It was designed to allow the transmission to lock earlier, and at a lower rpm—that translates into less slip and better fuel efficiency. The new design has more precise control of the lock-up clutch, allowing better control of converter clutch slip for smoother lock-to-lock upshifts.
The new transmission has a wide ratio span so the transmission now has a lower first gear for better off-the-line performance, and a taller overdrive ratio for improved highway efficiency. While the gearing itself is important, the key to overall efficiency is matching that gearing to the correct axle. With the diesel engine, up to four axle ratios are available on the pickups – 3.31, 3.55, 3.73 and 4.30.
The Power Take Off output gear is linked through the torque converter to the engine crankshaft. This allows the transmission to power auxiliary equipment such as snowplows, aerial lifts, tow truck lifts, cement mixers or dump trucks. The power is available any time the engine is running.
The 2011 Super Duty offers a factory-installed fifth wheel and gooseneck substructure directly attached to the frame. The upper fifth wheel structure can be removed from the bed in less than a minute, making the bed available for regular hauling chores and the gooseneck hitch ball can be removed in seconds. The electrical connection is mounted on the side of the bed wall, for a clean installation.
Ford’s Trailer Sway Control system, integrated with AdvanceTrac and Roll Stability Control monitors the truck’s motion when a trailer is attached. Trailer Sway Control can determine from the yaw motion of the truck if the trailer is swaying and can apply precise braking or reduce engine torque to help stop the trailer sway.
Normal braking is proportional to driver brake pressure for smooth brake stops. If the vehicle’s Anti-lock Brake System is engaged, the trailer brake kicks in to minimize trailer wheel lockup. In trucks with Trailer Brake Control towing trailers with electric brakes, the Ford system can, during a sway event, also apply brakes to the trailer to help stabilize it.
There’s much more to the new Super Duty—things like an information window on the instrument panel that you can scroll through to calculate travel time, average speed, distance and fuel economy. You can even get precise directions about connecting a trailer and it reminds you to plug in the wiring harness, hook up the safety chains and fold up the tongue jack.
And there’s a better ride, better handling and above all better fuel economy. If you really need a truck, take a look at this one.
Available now, 2011 Super Duty prices range from an MSRP of $35,499 to more than $80,000, from the base F-250 right up to the XXXL F-450. The body configurations and load capacities are as varied as your needs require and then some, allowing for the ideal truck for almost any requirement.
Well, you had to know this was going to happen. In the last year, there had been an awful lot of talk about a previously considered obsolete concept of “hot news” — which created a copyright-like protection for factual information, without any statutory basis. It’s a very troubling concept that shouldn’t have any real basis in the law, but does exist due to a nearly century old Supreme Court case. Lots of news publishers have started making noises about “hot news,” and in March we had the first ruling that blocked a publication from reposting factual information under a “hot news” claim. Once that ruling was made, you had to know that more lawsuits would follow pretty quickly.
And off we go. What’s interesting here is that it appears that it’s Rupert Murdoch testing the waters this time. Murdoch, of course, has been making odd claims about Google “stealing” content, while also suggesting that fair use doesn’t exist. But rather than take on Google in court, it looks like Murdoch is targeting easier prey. Murdoch-owned Dow Jones is suing Briefing.com for copyright infringement and hot news appropriation. You can read the full complaint below:
Either way, my guess is that this particular lawsuit has little to do with Briefing.com — or even Dow Jones and its newswires. This is Murdoch testing the waters on hot news. Of course, he may come to seriously regret doing so, given how many of his own sites probably violate the same hot news concept.
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By Tim Shoemaker
Newmoney.gov has recently unveiled their modifications to the $100 bill.
I would have to agree with YAL’s blogger-in-chief Bonnie Kristian, the more changes they make, the more worthless it appears. H/T Bonnie
By Doug Bandow
The U.S. government is worried. Counterfeiters around the world are at work. Printing fake greenbacks has become big business.
So the Treasury has unveiled a new banknote. Reports the Wall Street Journal:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke unveiled a new $100 bill equipped with two new security features.
The bill will go into circulation Feb. 10, 2011.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke unveil a new $100 bill equipped with two new security features. The News Hub takes a look at the new bill, which goes into circulation Feb. 10, 2011.
The Fed, along with the Treasury Department, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Secret Service, “continuously monitor the counterfeiting threats” for each denomination and redesign decisions are made based on those threats, Mr. Bernanke said.
“This job has become more complex in recent years as technology advances and U.S. dollar flows expand and increase,” he added.
The bill-the highest denomination of all U.S. notes-circulates widely around the world, with circulation in the past 25 years growing to $890 billion from $180 billion.
About two-thirds of all $100 notes circulate outside the U.S.; Mr. Bernanke said the agencies must ensure people around the world are aware of the design change. Over the next several months, officials at the agencies will work to educate cash handlers, consumers and others about the design and explain how to use its security features.
Benjamin Franklin is still on the latest makeover of the $100 bill, unveiled Wednesday, but he has been joined by a number of security features as part of an effort to stay ahead of counterfeiters.
The 6.5 billion or so $100 notes in circulation now will remain legal tender, Mr. Bernanke said.
Okay, so now the counterfeiters will have a harder time. (Though as long as older notes are legal tender, nothing prevents counterfeiters from faking the old currency.)
But who’s going to stop the Fed from running the printing presses? Just like killing is illegal murder when conducted by individuals but legal war when conducted by government, counterfeiting is illegal when private individuals pass the notes onto unsuspecting people but legal when the government forces private individuals to accept its currency as “legal tender.”
Who’s going to put a stop to legal counterfeiting?
A couple weeks ago I gave a talk at the MFA in Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. The video for the talk and Q&A session is online now. When Liz Danzico invited me to speak at the SVA, I thought it would fit the university setting to share some theory behind our design process at 37signals.
One book that heavily influenced my approach to design is Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Many designers cite the book as an influence, but few really explain what it’s about or teach how to apply the ideas in everyday work. So I took the opportunity to explain the key points of the book and show how we use Alexander’s model to do design at 37signals.
Here’s the video of the talk:
Some of the screenshots are hard to see around 38:30. Check the images below if you’d like to see those screens more clearly.
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| Highrise history | Options behind a link | A new link to notify | Embedded notification form |
The talk was followed by a Q&A session. The Q&A touches on customer feedback, design vs. evolutionary selection and trusting your intuition.
Here are some things to check out if you liked the talk.
I’d love to know if people are interested in this material. Post a comment here or write me at ryan at 37signals dot com with your thoughts.
Ted Lilly(notes) returns from the disabled list this weekend, so the Cubs have decided to send Carlos Zambrano(notes) to the bullpen — not Tom Gorzelanny(notes) or Carlos Silva(notes), but Zambrano.
Big Z struggled on opening day, per his usual. But in his three most recent starts he’s pitched 18 innings, struck out 25 batters, and allowed eight earned runs. He is inarguably one of his team’s most talented starting pitchers. April has been Zambrano’s worst month historically, yet he’s never posted an ERA above 3.95 in any full season. In case you’re wondering, he’ll earn $17.9 million this year, $17.9 million in 2011, $18 million in
2012, and he has a vesting option for 2013.
According to MLB.com’s Carrie Muskat, "The Cubs didn’t want to move Carlos Silva into the bullpen because he’s been on a hot streak, and southpaw Tom Gorzelanny wouldn’t fit as well in relief."
For the record, Silva’s hot streak is exactly two games old. Opposing batters have hit .303 against him over the course of his nine-year career. Silva’s lifetime ERA is 4.67. Gorzelanny’s is 4.80.
Zambrano is not an immediate threat to take over Carlos Marmol’s(notes) closing role, of course. He’s just another guy in the ‘pen for now. Instead of giving him his typical 200 innings, the Cubs have apparently chosen to give him 80 this year. Here’s manager Lou Piniella:
"This makes all the sense in the world and I appreciate Carlos doing this," said Piniella of the decision. "It gives us some power at the end of the ballgame. With Zambrano and [Carlos] Marmol, it gives us some firepower."
You didn’t ask for my opinion, but here it is: This decision isn’t merely stupid, it’s weapons-grade stupid. Total organizational failure. Even if Zambrano is successful in the setup role, this is an atrocious use of resources. This move is neither bold nor innovative. It’s just insane.
I can’t possibly talk you off the ledge, Cubs fans. Perhaps our commenters can help…
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Photo via US Presswire
Any debate over open vs. closed systems has to touch on open-source software and the ways in which companies are attempting to build code as a community effort, while still profiting from it in some way. So I chatted with Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, the company that supports Ubuntu, about how his company walks the line between spending to support open-source software and finding a business model that works.
Canonical’s 330 employees are responsible for maintaining, supporting and selling service for Ubuntu, an open-source version of the Linux operating system for servers, desktops and computer manufacturers. About 120 to 150 of the Canonical employees contribute directly to the new releases of the software that come out every six months, and most of the company’s revenue comes from supporting enterprise server customers and maker’s of computers who want to put Ubuntu on desktops. Consumers also download the software, but few pay Canonical for support. The company is not yet profitable.
Shuttleworth believes that in order to develop a strong business model around an open approach, one has to create an open option early, ideally through a strong standardization process and one also needs to have a lot of different open source projects fighting it out. For example, in the operating system world there wasn’t a strong history of open alternatives, which meant that Ubuntu had to out-open its proprietary competition, which has high costs.
In that way it has pushed Canonical perhaps further out toward open on the spectrum. Shuttleworth calculates the direct costs of being so open as bringing people together in way that empowers them and makes them feel like members of a community, and reaching out and putting in place the infrastructure to create a company. However, there are indirect costs as well.
“There is a myth that being open is necessarily more efficient and cheaper, but there are no hordes of people showing up to do the hard stuff,” Shuttleworth says. “Occasionally wonderful, magical things happen — really incredible things do happen, like people show up unexpectedly with brilliant ideas — but it’s still hard and expensive and you still have to be willing to do all the hard and expensive things and do it in an open fashion. And you’re still likely to be accused of being open only when it’s convenient.”
He points to the cloud-computing market as one that tends to give a lot of lip service toward openness but where a lack of a big standardization effort and robust open source competition could lead to a relatively closed ecosystem.
“The basic story there is pretty bad at the moment,” Shuttleworth says. He notes that proprietary infrastructure, hypervisors and even the APIs and ways data is stored can lock folks into one cloud for life. “We need real open alternatives early in the process, making it possible for people to build own cloud infrastrucutre that responds to the same APIs that Amazon’s do,” Shuttleworth says.
He’s accepted that Amazon Web Services’ APIs for its web services, while not created through an open standards group, have become a de facto standard and said that it’s more efficient to build open source code around Amazon APIs rather than try to develop new ones for accessing the cloud. Canonical has a partnership agreement with Eucalyptus, which offers open-source software to create an AWS-compatible cloud, where people can use Ubuntu and Eucalyptus to create their own cloud computing platform. But Shuttleworth would like to see more open-source options other than Eucalyptus for building out a cloud computing service of your own.
At the platform-as-a-service level, the issue around openness will be around moving data from cloud to cloud easily. There’s room there for an open standard or open databases, he said. But at every level, when considering building a business around open source software, he he believes that “you want a common and clear standard with competing open source versions using that standard.”
That keeps proprietary vendors at bay, and gives the companies building a business around the open source software a chance to decide where they want to be on the open-to-closed spectrum. But it also introduces the prospect of fragmentation, which we’ll leave for a later post.
Filed under: Budget, Europe, Hatchback, Fiat, Russia, South America
The crew at Carscoop have managed to get their hands on a bevy of images of the new Fiat Uno. Judging from the photos, it looks like the company will be offering its tiny hatchback in two varieties – the standard base model and the Uno Way. Expect the Way to boast a slightly taller ride height and off-road inspired looks once the cars hit markets in Brazil, Europe and Russia.
There’s no word on whether or not the Brazilian-built machines will find their way to the U.S. via Fiat’s new partnership with Chrysler, but judging from what’s rumored to be under the hood, we doubt it. Odds are both the standard Uno and the Way will get their grunt from tiny 1.0- or 1.4-liter engines – not exactly American fare.
The new Uno resurrects a name that had been abandoned by Fiat since the early 2000’s, and the company says we can expect the model to slot between the Panda and the Grand Punto when it hits the scene.
Gallery: 2011 Fiat Uno
[Source: Carscoop]
Fiat Uno supermini leaks out originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Mobile-phone subscribers in the U.S. spent nearly 60 percent of their time on the phone accessing a social networking site, making the category the most visited by far when on the phone. In fact, time spent on social networks easily exceeds other high-profile sites such as online portals and typically well-integrated carrier sites.
According to Ground Truth, a measurement firm that receives data directly from the carriers and other sources, the average subscriber initiated 68.1 sessions, consisting of 310 pages viewed for a total time of 52 minutes and 12 seconds on social networks from the phone’s browser. The data does not include usage from mobile applications. During the first full week in April, top social networking brands, like MySpace (NYSE: NWS) and Facebook, did fairly well, but the true highlights were mobile-specific brands like MocoSpace, AirG and MBuzzy. In terms of the amount of time spent with an individual site, MySpace averaged 40 minutes; Facebook, 30 minutes, MocoSpace and AirG an hour and a half each, and MBuzzy for one hour and nine minutes.
Other categories didn’t even come close. After social networking, portals (presumably sites like Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and Google), were only used 13.65 percent of the time; operator portals were even visited less frequently at 9 percent.
Ground Truth’s VP of Marketing Evan Neufeld said in a release: “Facebook and MySpace may be the most addictive pastimes on the PC, but sites like Mocospace and AirG command more attention on mobile phones…This data points to the fact that there is a whole universe of media properties advertisers need to consider that have to date been largely ignored. It also demonstrates that traditional media companies that are not focused on the Mobile Internet—both browser- and application-based usage—risk losing market share to leaner, more mobile focused companies.”
When it comes to keeping secrets, the U.S. Air Force knows how to stay mum. On Thursday, the Air Force will launch its secret space plane, the unmanned X-37B aircraft, from Cape Canaveral. The project has been a decade in the works and cost millions of dollars to develop–but we civilians have little idea what it’s for.
Once launched via an Atlas V rocket, the plane is expected to spend days or weeks orbiting Earth and performing classified experiments before landing back in California. If successful, the launch will fulfill the Defense Department’s long-time dream: the orbital flight of a military vehicle that combines an airplane’s agility with a spacecraft’s capacity to travel in orbit at 5 miles per second [Popular Mechanics].
The project itself has had an interesting past. It was begun by NASA in 1999 but was later adopted by the Defense Department, and was first placed under the auspices of DARPA before finally finding a home with the Air Force. The Air Force immediately threw the X-37B behind a veil of secrecy, leading some experts to speculate that this could be the military’s attempt to weaponize the final frontier. There are also concerns that the mysterious project could set off an orbital arms race with countries like China.
The 29-foot-long delta-wing spacecraft looks like a miniature version of a space shuttle. The unmanned X-37B is capable of cruising around the globe for more than nine months at a stretch, experts say, keeping close tabs on targets below and monitoring the space above. Its small size and simplicity are great assets to the military, because they’ll allow for the aircraft’s quick deployment in emergencies. Theresa Hitchens, a space policy expert and director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research says the X-37B might be intended to be an orbital first responder. “The first thing that comes to mind is a pop-up reconnaissance vehicle for a place where you don’t have satellite reconnaissance or can’t move a satellite fast enough” [Popular Mechanics], she says.
Though the air force has been mum about the space plane’s potential uses, experts speculate it could conceivably be used as a bomber. The craft could fly over targets within an hour of launch to release cone-shaped re-entry vehicles that would both protect and guide weapons through the atmosphere. A craft the size of the X-37B could carry 1000- or 2000-pound re-entry vehicles armed with precision munitions like bunker-busting penetrators or small-diameter bombs, or simply use the explosive impact of kinetic rods cratering at hypersonic speeds to destroy targets. [Popular Mechanics].
When the first X-37B returns to Earth, scientists will determine how many of its components survived the flight and how long it will take to get the craft back into the air. The shorter the turnaround time, the better, since that would mean fewer X-37s would have to be built, regardless of its ultimate mission [The Christian Science Monitor]. For now, the Air Force is simply preparing for tomorrow’s launch and refusing to spill the beans on the space plane’s potential uses. But the military seems optimistic about this long-delayed program; Air Force officials have admitted that they have a second X-37B in the works, which they hope to take out for a test flight by 2011.
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Image: U.S. Air Force
