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If you’re a muscle car junkie like I am, than you’ll know the two things we hate most are hybrids and gas stations. The hybrid stands against everything we believe in as they are generally underpowered, slow and for the most part pretty flippin’ ugly. The reason we hate gas stations should just be common sense, so I won’t even go into that one. A big question for power junkies like myself has always been: If a good looking, powerful and great performing hybrid existed, would we be interested in it? The answer: Sure, why the hell not.

I don’t want to give the impression that we totally and completely despise these things, but there is so much more to just getting good fuel economy when purchasing a vehicle. Style, sound, comfort performance – these all come into play and must be met with flying colors if we’re going to lay out some hard earned greenbacks. Shannon Arvizu, from GreenCarReports.com helps to shed some light on a few big number hybrids by giving us insight into BMW’s new 2010 ActiveHybrid X6 that produces 485 hp and 575 lb.tq. and the 2010 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid that produces 332 hp and 367 lb.tq. These are numbers that would make any die hard muscle car guy grin.

Rea more at: GreenCarReports.com

Last week brought two major announcements from Twitter. On Thursday, the company announced an official application for BlackBerry. On Friday, Twitter announced that it had purchased Atebits, the makers of the iPhone app Tweetie. Over the weekend, there was substantial discussion and a fair amount of hand-wringing by third-party developers, many expressing their frustrations about the company’s direction. Attempting to reassure developers in advance of next week’s Chirp conference, Twitter API lead Ryan Sarver responded by email to some of these concerns.

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Certainly Twitter isn’t the only company at the center of debates about control of a platform (Apple, Google, and Microsoft come to mind), but in light of the flurry of responses to Twitter’s moves, it is worth considering some of the (perhaps contradictory) lessons for startups that can be gleaned from the past week’s events.

Find your niche: Much of the third-party development on Twitter has served to address gaps in the original product: mobile clients, URL shorteners, photo sharing, and search for example. As VC and Twitter investor Fred Wilson argued in a blog post early last week that tipped the hand, perhaps, to where Twitter was headed, there is still room for the development of “killer apps” in social gaming, enterprise, and analytics.

Innovate and adapt: Find your niche, but then be prepared to innovate and adapt. Some have suggested that Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie might not bode well for other Twitter clients like Seesmic and Tweetdeck, unless the two can continue to innovate. By adding new features unavailable via the Twitter website, and by linking streams from Facebook and LinkedIn, they have established themselves as more than just a Twitter client – but the pressure is certainly on for these to continue to distinguish themselves from the official Twitter applications. “Of course we’re hole fillers,” Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur admits, explaining that while that’s a good place to start, it isn’t the right place to end.

Look beyond the platform: As Mark Suster writes of both Twitter and the iPhone, it is important to think beyond the platform, contending that startups should not think of Twitter “as a business but rather as a channel.” In other words, a platform like Twitter should be a used as a way to reach customers but, unless you’re Twitter, should not be the vehicle itself.

If this is the “inflection point” for Twitter, the tasks for startups will be to learn the lessons from this critical juncture in the platform’s history, balancing the sometimes contradictory needs for specificity and flexibility and innovation and stability.

Discuss

For most startups in the early-stages of development, much of the building process includes repetitions of prototyping, testing, receiving feedback and iterating the product several times over. The toughest part of this process isn’t building or making changes, it’s getting that valuable feedback on where your product could be improved. Concept Feedback, a simply named online service, wants to help your startup with constructive criticism from its quickly growing community of over 5,000 designers, developers, marketers and entrepreneurs.

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The process at Concept Feedback is pretty simple: users can upload their concept work for the community to view, other members comment and provide their opinions and feedback for the concept, then the original user can upgrade their product, and even resubmit for further feedback. Companies can choose to post a “premium concept” which will be more visible on the Concept Feedback homepage and for which they can offer cash rewards for the most constructive comment or piece of advice.

Most of the items are site are full web or logo design mockups, but there were a few rough wire-framed sites scattered through the concepts. Other, less popular entries, include films, posters, business cards and a whole lot more. For a small startup team looking to get some fresh sets of eyeballs on their latest project, Concept Feedback could be an excellent resource to do so.

With most of the feedback based around design and aesthetics, startups may still need to look elsewhere for direct usage and feature feedback for their product. The truth is, with this type of feedback, you want people taking a deep dive and playing around with your product for some time before providing their opinion; Concept Feedback seems geared at providing mostly visual feedback, so usability and functionality reviews are much less common.

There are several ways of gathering feedback from actual users of your site; one such service we mentioned in January allows companies to automate phone surveys and displays the results as charts and graphs. But if your goal is to show off the latest design iteration of your site, Concept Feedback is a great place to unveil it and receive some educated opinions to make it look its best before launch day.

Discuss

It is homosexuality, not celibacy, that is linked to pedophilia, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said on Monday, seeking to defuse the sex scandal that has battered the Roman Catholic Church.

On a visit to Chile, Bertone, dubbed the Deputy Pope, also said Pope Benedict would soon take more surprising initiatives regarding the sex abuse scandal but did not elaborate.

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia,” he told a news conference in Santiago.

“This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms,” he said. “The behavior of the priests in this case, the negative behavior, is very serious, is scandalous.”

Bertone’s visit to Chile comes as the Catholic Church has been buffeted by scandals concerning sexual abuse of children — most of them boys — by priests. There also have been allegations of cover-ups and even that the Pope mishandled cases when he was a bishop in Germany and a Vatican official before his election in 2005.

What do you think of this? Is homosexuality to blame for pedophilia? Or did the Catholic Church ordain too many men who were sexually immature and fatally attracted to children at their emotional level?

When will they learn? Apparently, one of the hot book series out there is the “Millennium Trilogy” by author Stieg Larsson. Apparently, the first couple of books have become incredibly popular in the US, but the third in the series has been released elsewhere, but not in the US yet. So, not surprisingly, many fans are ordering it from abroad. Most of the article is about the fans’ excitement for the book, and their demand for it:

“Once you know you can have it, once you know it exists in English and you can buy it, it would be crazy not to.”

But, the US publisher is quoted towards the end threatening those doing so, claiming it’s illegal:

“What I would say to readers is, I would encourage them to shop at their local bookseller here in the United States or their online bookseller in the United States, where no laws are being broken and you are supporting the continuing discovery of world literature.”

As the anonymous reader who submitted this story notes, rather than just reading this statement, you really should hear the audio version of what Paul Bogaards from publisher Knoph says, because it’s not fully conveyed in the written article. First, what he says in the audio version:

“Because it’s against the law. It’s a violation of copyright law.”

But you have to hear the sheer condescension in the tone. He says it as if he’s speaking to pre-schoolers, not huge fans of these books.

The problem here isn’t people violating copyright law, it’s Knopf not realizing that we live in a global world, and then failing to satisfy the needs of consumers, who are seeking alternative providers. It was a business model mistake on the part of Knopf, and insulting the biggest fans of the books doesn’t seem like the best way to handle the situation.

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This is what Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told MSNBC (no link yet):

LIEBERMAN: Yes. I mean, let me say first that I hope I can support ratification of the START treaty, but I’m not there yet. The basic idea that we would reduce the number of nuclear warheads in the world of course is a desirable goal, but as we reduce the number of nuclear warheads we in the United States have in a world in which nuclear weapons are spreading, I think we’ve got to make sure that the remaining nuclear weapons we have work. And we’ve got — some of those warheads are decades old.

There has, in my opinion, been a debate within the administration about whether they want to commit to modernizing and in some places — cases — whether they want to commit to modernizing, in some cases replacing nuclear warheads. There’s some sense that maybe Secretary Gates lost one of those arguments within the administration.

I’ve talked to some colleagues and I don’t think there’s going to be 67 votes for the START treaty unless there’s a clear commitment from the administration that they’re prepared to do what’s necessary to keep our nuclear stockpile working, essentially.

To her credit, Andrea Mitchell pressed Lieberman on this — Gates, after all, supports both New START ratification and the Nuclear Posture Review, even if he shifted on replacement warheads — and Lieberman wasn’t prepared to contradict Gates. He eventually said that he just wants “reassurance” that they’ll maintain upkeep on the nuclear stockpile, which ought to come whenever the administration sends emissaries to the Hill to testify in favor of ratification of the treaty. Max Bergmann loses some patience with Lieberman here.

Filed under: Motorsports, Honda, Racing

Round three of the 2010 IndyCar season had the teams visiting Barber Motosports Park in Birmingham, Alabama for the first time. Well, technically the IZOD IndyCar Series was already here, as the track hosted the pre-season test sessions for the series. The 2010 Grand Prix of Alabama presented by Legacy Credit Union, however, was to be the first Indycar race held at the track.

Seeking to pick up where he left off in St. Petersburg, championship points leader, Will Power, was also aiming to set IndyCar history with the first ever three-for-three start to the season. If he managed to grab the checkered flag at the end of the race, Power would be the first to accomplish such a feat and would tie three other drivers for the most wins in a row in series history as well.

Power had already shown he could hold his own at Barber, claiming the fastest overall laps in testing and practice leading up to the race, so it didn’t look good for the competition. But would Power be able to claim the pole? Would he capture that third win in three races and set IndyCar history? Follow the jump to see how the race unfolded in Birmingham.

[Photo Source: Ron McQueeney, Dan Helrigel / IndyCar.com]

Continue reading IndyCar: 2010 Grand Prix of Alabama [SPOILER ALERT]

IndyCar: 2010 Grand Prix of Alabama [SPOILER ALERT] originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Authorities are investigating whether an early-morning fire Monday at a Hemet police shooting range is another in a recent series of attacks on the department.

The fire at the remote training facility off Warren Road broke out shortly after 2 a.m. Much of the building was destroyed in the blaze.

"In light [of] the incidents involving our department over the past three months, we are investigating the possibility that this is related," said Hemet Police Capt. Dave Brown. "But we will not speculate at this point until the investigators are able to complete their work." 

Officers have been on high alert in the wake of four attacks apparently targeting Hemet police and city property since January. The first was on New Year’s Day when someone redirected natural-gas lines at the offices of the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force, making an explosion possible.

A second incident featured a homemade firearm rigged to go off when the gate to the parking lot at the gang task force facility was opened. The bullet narrowly missed an officer.

The third involved what police called a deadly device affixed to the bottom of an unmarked police car that fell off before it could activate. And on March 23, four code-enforcement trucks were torched behind City Hall the day after someone threatened to burn a police car.

There is a $200,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is behind the attacks.

— David Kelly

Photo: Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, center, attends a news conference Hemet Police Chief Richard Dana last month. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

Yahoo announced this afternoon a “Yahoo! Updates Firehose service” that will provide a stream of activity gathered from various Web services, from Flickr uploads to YouTube favorites to blog comments and more.

The firehose will provide a stream of real-time data from Yahoo’s index, which will also include Twitter data, as part of a deal the two companies made last February.

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According to Yahoo, the firehose will include “a real-time feed of every public action taken on our network and elsewhere around the Web that users have authorized Yahoo! to make available.” This data will consist of “status updates, ratings and reviews, comments on stories, Buzz votes, Flickr uploads, Delicious bookmarking, tweets, Open App activity, YouTube favoriting, and Last.fm listening, among many others.”

Developers will be able to access the data using Yahoo Query Language, a “SQL-like query language”, and parse this information by a number of criteria, from language to location to all updates associated with a specific URL.

While companies like Twitter have already offered a firehose of its data, and Facebook is expected to release its in the very near future (likely at the F8 conference), there are few, if any, firehoses of large swaths of data such as this. The closest we came up with at the moment was Gnip, which provides a single API to connect with dozens of other Web services and their APIs.

According to the company, the firehose will provide access to more than 150,000 ratings, 8,000 reviews and 750,000 comments a day.

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RIM is presenting their latest webcast for developers Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 2:00 PM EST. This time around they are talking about the BlackBerry Application Platform Push Service and it is sure to be an informative discussion as always. Pratik Sapra, Mobile Application Development Specialist, and Joe Reda, Application Development Consultant, are the presenters, and you will need to set aside about an hour and a half for the full presentation.

In this webcast, you’ll learn how the BlackBerry Push Service can:

• Push any type of data, text or images without restrictions. Developers can even send large amounts of data (more than 8 KB) by using multiple pushes that get reassembled on arrival.
• Use true push technology to turn your app into a Super App.
• Deliver data to BlackBerry smartphones in the background, providing the user with an always-connected BlackBerry experience.
• Create network-efficient apps. Unlike competitor apps that repeatedly poll servers for new data, BlackBerry Super Apps optimize data usage and battery life.

If you are interested in attending, be sure to sign up! RIM usually makes the presentation available on demand a day or two after the live webcast, so if you can’t make it that option is also available, from the registration link.

For more information on becoming a BlackBerry app developer, or to see what other tools RIM has made available for development, be sure to check out the Developers section at BlackBerry.com.

You’re reading a story which originated at BlackBerrySync.com, Where you find BlackBerry News You Can Sync With…

This story is sponsored by the new BlackBerry Sync Mobile App Store. Grab your free copy today at www.GetAppStore.com from your BlackBerry.

RIM Presenting New Webcast For Developers Tuesday, April 13th

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Are you on Verizon and looking for a phone that can do a little extra, but isn’t quite a full-fledged smartphone? According to BGR, it looks like you may have another alternative in a few weeks – the Samsung Reality. While it’s not a smartphone, it is still considered a 3G multimedia phone and carries some fairly significant specs for a phone of its class. The Reality sports a 3.0-inch touchscreen, a full QWERTY slide out keyboard, a 3.2-megapixel camera, and quite a few other features like social networking options and visual voicemail.  Launching in “Piano Black” and “City Red,” expect to see the device in all sales channels on April 22nd.

No word on the pricing just yet, however since the Reality is a 3G multimedia device, the device will require a $9.99 data plan (at minimum). I imagine that it will be less than $100 considering they’re offering quite a few smartphones in the sub-$100 range, but that’s only a guess.

Via: BGR

General Motors announced earlier this month that it has decided to auction the first of the limited 500 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Carbon Limited Edition models at Barrett-Jackson in Palm Beach. It turned out to be one of the best decisions ever.

Click here to get prices on the 2010 Chevrolet Corvette.

The winning-bid came in at $297,000 and the winner will have the opportunity to watch the car going down the assembly line at the famed Corvette Assembly Plant in Bowling Green, Ky.

What’s so special about the Corvette Z06 Carbon Limited Edition? It’s basically a Z06 turned into a ZR1 without the sweet supercharged engine. So is it worth $297,000? Not in our books.

Click here for our original post on the 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Carbon Limited Edition.

2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Carbon Limited Edition:

– By: Kap Shah

If screen shots like the one above are any indication, Sprint is gearing up for for the release of their HTC EVO 4G handset.  Expected in the “summer” of 2010, the huge, sexy WiMAX-capable phone is being rumored with a June 6th/13th launch.  The picture at the top of this post shows the HTC9292 (EVO 4G) listed in Sprint’s inventory system.  This isn’t saying the phone is going to be arriving any sooner, but it’s nice to see things progressing.

It appears Sprint and HTC are unleashing a whole host of accessories for the EVO 4G as another leaked image shows nearly a dozen items to spend your cash on.  Among the standrd fare of chargers and bluetooth headsets, there’s also the with HDMI output, a car mount, screen protectors, gel skins and protective cases, and replacement shells.  We had a chance to look at these at CTIA and think they could go a long way to personalizing the phone.

Might We Suggest…

• HTC EVO 4G (a.k.a. Supersonic) on Sprint
  It’s here! The “Supersonic” that has been running through the rumor mill has officially been announced by Sprint as the HTC EVO 4G. It has everything they said it would have, and more.

  WiMax
  …

Jon of Tehkseven rounds up all of the big cellular news PhoneDog highlighted the week of April 4-10, 2010.  Watch his fast-paced exciting video of the week. 

Children were “sadistically tormented and also sexually abused” at a Catholic monastery in Pope Benedict’s native Bavaria, according to a new report commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church.

A lawyer investigating accusations of abuse in a Benedictine monastery school in Ettal presented a final report to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising on Monday, including 173 pages of victims’ accounts of abuse.

“My investigations quite clearly show that for decades up until around 1990, children and adolescents were brutally abused in the Ettal monastery,” Thomas Pfister said in a statement.  “The number of victims’ accounts has increased significantly since the intermediary report of March 5,” added Pfister, who said last month that hundreds of pupils had been beaten and some sexually abused at the school.

An archdiocese spokesman said he could not comment on the specific number of victims before a news conference on Tuesday.

A growing sex abuse scandal has rocked confidence in Germany’s Catholic Church.  A survey published on Monday found that a quarter of the country’s Catholics were considering quitting the church in the wake of reports of hundreds of cases, some many decades old, of sexual abuse by clerics.

Read the full story here.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

When Samsung announced the Galaxy S, they confirmed it was headed for the United States but chose not to announce a carrier. Recent speculation suggested the phone could land on AT&T and now the evidence is beginning to pile up.

Boy Genius Report spotted the Galaxy S (GT-I9000) on the FCC’s site sporting the AT&T 3G bands. A good number of these FCC filings never turn into actual launches, but we already know the Galaxy S is coming later this year. It is always possible for this device to launch on multiple carriers, but most Android phones have been carrier exclusives in the U.S.

Which carrier would you like to see pick up the Samsung Galaxy S?

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• Nexus One spotted with AT&T 3G bands
• Disappointment: Engadget goes hands on with AT&T Dell Aero

Have $5,555.55 of spare cash that’s burning a hole in your pocket?  Yeah, I don’t either.  At any rate, the HTC EVO 4G “superphone” has arrived in Sprint’s internal systems (note the A9292 model number in the description), and a few months ahead of the Summer launch at that.  Worry not, EVO 4G lovers – the price will drop prior to launch.

If the screenshot doesn’t do it for you, be sure to check out the (rumored) plethora of in-store EVO 4G accessories.  With the retail stores carrying home docks, silicon sleeves, car docks, extended battery cases, and more, it will be a one-stop shop for those purchasing an EVO 4G at launch.  A few more months remaining – who’s excited?

Via Engadget

Article Tags: Alan Siddons, Reply To Article

Article link Equilibrium Prevents Humans from Heating the Atmosphere by Gary Novak

It’s refreshing to see Gary Novak challenging climatology’s cherished assumptions (as usual), but I believe that more scrutiny should be cast on that minus 19° temperature in the first place. The premise of this widely-accepted estimate is flawed because, due to the 4th power relationship between irradiance and temperature, the average of one cannot agree with the average of the other. Consider, for instance, merely two spots on earth exposed to two different solar irradiances.

Read in full with comments »   

The expanding family of Sony’s XDCAM EX video products now includes two shoulder-mount camcorders that deliver new levels of creativity and flexibility for solid-state digital production. The previously announced Sony PMW-350 2/3-inch CMOS memory camcorder is now available in a ½-inch version, the PMW-320.

“Since it was first introduced, Sony designed the XDCAM EX series to be flexible enough to grow and expand as our customers’ production needs change,” said Bob Ott, vice president, Sony Electronics’ broadcast and professional audio/video products business. “These new products redefine solid-state production, with improvements achieved in features, performance, and ergonomics.”

Both camcorders have three Exmor full HD 1920×1080 CMOS imagers, and are studio-configurable, with timecode in/out, genlock in, and HD-SDI and HDMI out. The PMW-350 camcorder features a DVCAM recording and playback as an option; with both features offered as standard on the PMW-320. Users can choose between the lens-packaged models, PMW-350K and PMW- 320K ($14,800), or versions without lenses, PMW-350L or PMW-320L ($12,800). To enhance editing interoperability with Sony’s XDCAM HD 422 camcorders, both the PMW-350 and PMW-320 camcorders feature 1440×1080 recording mode at 35Mbps.