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Audi’s mid-size executive jet is due for an overhaul.

We surely can’t say Audi has been lazy recently. The Bavarian carmaker has been churning out one new product after another, from the R8 supercar to the 10Best-winning S4, and the upcoming A1, a technology-laden premium city car.

But we haven’t heard much lately from the comfy and powerful executive sedan that’s the backbone of the brand, the A6. And that’s because the current model is just about ready to retire. Its successor’s design was locked in a year ago, and we expect the next car to be unveiled at any of this fall’s upcoming auto shows, likely in Paris or Los Angeles.

Keep Reading: 2012 Audi A6 Rendered – Car News

Related posts:

1. 2012 Audi Q3 Confirmed – Car News
2. 2014 Saab 9-1 Rendered – Car News
3. 2010 Audi A8 / 2011 Audi S8 – Car News

A disgruntled Nokia fan has made a video showing the gap between marketing fantasy and the smartphone reality and while the video is pretty amusing, I am sure the issues will resonate with many Windows Mobile users, and to me largely illustrates that if you are looking for issues, you can find it in any mobile OS.

Via NewMobile.com

Ugur Sahin has brought us some wonderful concepts in the past including the Corvette Z03 and the GT-S Passionata Concept. Sahin has now released his latest creation called the Aston Martin Concept Design Study Gauntlet.

As Sahin puts it:

The main goal of the Aston Martin Gauntlet Concept was to design a car which is technically almost identical to the existing production Aston Martins while defining a design character that outmost respects the impressive history of the brand and combine the timeless lines of the past Aston Martins with the modern interpretation of the existing styling.

Sahin said that his goal focused on being coherent balance between past and the future without overlapping each other to fit the taste of today’s design definitions. Too much of the past would look “Retro” while too much of the “Future” would look unrealistic.

“I believe that Gauntlet matches these two worlds exactly without exaggerating,” says Sahin.

We agree and we like.

Hit the jump for the high-res image gallery.

Ugur Sahin’s Aston Martin Gauntlet:

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Ugur Sahin

Dramedy Fans are still in an uproar over the cancellation of Ugly Betty. The ABC series that was groundbreaking for the Latino and homosexual communities will take its final bow in a two-hour finale airing this Wednesday night.

The once-popular campy hit has gained new life in its final episodes: Hilda married Bobby, Ignacio is now happily dating Elena, Justin came out to his family — finally, and even Daniel’s beginning to see Betty in a new light: and fans (That includes me!) are eager to see how things wrap up.

Here’s a sneak peek look at next week’s series finale.

A recent editorial in the Mankato Free Press applauds the Ultra High-Speed Task Force recommendations for more public and private partnerships to deploy broadband. In fact, according to the article, Mankato has been on the ball for implementing public-private partnerships…

Fortunately, some public/private collaboration has already happened in the Mankato region.

In February of this year, HickoryTech and the South Central Service Cooperative agreed to expand and develop an Internet, data and video conferencing service to 69 schools and libraries in a 12-county region of south central Minnesota.

The goal, as you might assume, is elearning.

The Mankato editorial was less optimistic at some of the other Task Force recommendations. They were skeptical of the broadband advisory committee when there will be little funding for such a venture in the Legislature although they seemed to agree that such a concerted statewide initiative is necessary.

Many children have a “bug period”–a time of life when bugs and creepy crawlies are a source of endless fascination and learning. Naturalist Edward O. Wilson jokes that unlike other kids, he never grew out of his bug period.

Luckily for this biologist, his lifelong passion for ants has yielded a career rich in accomplishment and accolades. He is not just the world’s preeminent expert on the social behavior of ants, but also the recipient of the National Medal of Science and two Pulitzer Prizes for nonfiction. Now, at the age of 80, Wilson has taken a stab at fiction. His first novel, Anthill, combines two of his greatest loves–his childhood home, Alabama, and the ants that have been his lifelong friends.

Described as an “six-legged Iliad,” Wilson’s Anthill draws parallels between human and ant societies. Though there are no ant symphony orchestras, secret police, or schools of philosophy, both ants and men conduct wars, divide into specialized castes of workers, build cities, maintain infant nurseries and cemeteries, take slaves, practice agriculture, and indulge in occasional cannibalism, though ant societies are more energetic, altruistic, and efficient than human ones [The New York Review of Books].

The book’s first and third sections deal with the adventures of an Alabama boy named Raphael Semmes Cody, called Raff. The boy grows up poking around the lush pine savanna of the Nokobee Tract; he’s drawn to its natural wonders, and uses the forest to escape from his parents’ toxic marriage. In this pristine woodland he literally leaves no stone unturned as he discovers the forest’s rich flora and fauna. Raff grows up and heads to Harvard to study law, returning later in life to protect the Nokobee from feckless developers. But fans of Wilson’s science will be most interested in the book’s middle section, where the author inserts a mini-novella describing the trials and tribulations of the ants living in the endangered forest.

In this second section, “The Anthill Chronicles,” the reader embarks on an epic entomological journey that’s told from the ants’ point of view. In an ant colony called Trailhead, the worker ants realize that their queen dead. She has been dead for several days, but the ants don’t realize it until they smell the death chemicals; this is one of the many ways Wilson shows how pheromones drive behavior and life in the colony. Without a queen at its head, the colony faces its next trial–an attack from the neighboring colony of Streamside. Luckily for the Trailhead colony, nature steps in, producing a genetic mutation that results in the birth of many queens or queenlets. Without giving much of the plot away, suffice to say that what ensues is Wilson’s depiction of how balance is restored to the natural order.

Reviews of the book have been mixed. Writing for the The New York Review of Books, Margaret Atwood praised Wilson for his first novel, saying that his love for his subject shows in the exuberance of the prose, and in the inventiveness of the plot. And—with the exception of small stretches of awkwardness and preachiness—the reader will have a great time reading it [The New York Review of Books].

The Washington Post stomped on the book, calling it clumsy, heavy on exposition, and full of digressions. However, that reviewer suggested that Wilson might have produced a masterpiece had he just stuck to writing about the ants, and declared that in “The Anthill Chronicles” section almost everything we learn of the ants’ enemies and friends, their memories and emotions and ways of communicating, their divisions of labor mirroring our own, is oddly engaging, even riveting [Washington Post].

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Discover Interview E.O. Wilson
DISCOVER: E. O. Wilson Says Ants Live in Humanlike Civilizations
DISCOVER: The Man Who Found That “Genes Hold Culture on a Leash”
DISCOVER: The Most Incredible Things Ants Can Do (photo gallery)
80beats: A Novel That Laughs Along with Climate Change: Ian McEwan’s Solar
80beats: How Henrietta Lacks’s Cells Became Immortal and Changed Medical Science

Image: W.W. Norton and Co.

Filed under: Safety, GM

We love crash test videos because there’s nothing quite like a 35 mph collision between a two-ton automobile and a cement barrier done in the name of science and safety. When we watch the slow-motion footage we marvel at the twisting metal and the busted glass, but unless the crash test dummy’s head falls off, we rarely give the anthropomorphic stiff the time of day.

That may change after watching the two-minute video after the jump that explains the work that goes into making a General Motors‘ test dummies. The video tells us that each unit can have 50 to 100 information channels and a data collection box that is about as big as a Blackberry. The video also details why the dummies wear clothes and why those duds are pink. Hint: it has nothing to do with fashion.

[Source: Voltage]

Continue reading Video: GM shows off how to make a crash test dummy

Video: GM shows off how to make a crash test dummy originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“Erotic stimulation by the use of vacuum cleaners or electric brooms appears to be a common form of masturbation. Unfortunately, and contrary to apparent public appreciation, injury due to this form of autostimulation may not be unusual. Five cases of significant penile trauma resulting from this form of masturbation are presented, with a spectrum of severe injuries, including loss of the glans penis.”

Image: flickr/Nevada Tumbleweed

Related content:
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Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Oily balls.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Does ass size correlate with penis length? The answer may surprise you!

SunPower, the California solar panel maker, announced today that it’s issued another $30 million in debenture notes, an indication of  investor confidence in the medium – to – long-term prospects of  solar companies.

SunPower  initially issued $220 million in debenture notes but had allocated an aditionnal $30 million to meet additional investor demand.

The notes are due in 2015 and can be converted  into Class A SunPower share at the end of 2014.

Deutsche Bank Securities,  Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi and Credit Suisse were the initial buyers of the notes– see full press release.

Back in early March, I revisited Fluid for Mac OS X. Today I’m making the rounds with old software friends again (well, not that old), this time with Evernote. I tried Evernote when it first came out for Mac. I was most excited about the ability to free-text search business cards, receipts and other docs that I had snapped with my iSight camera. Alas, I could never quite get that to work well for me, and it was more a hassle than help. This one problem caused me to reject Evernote entirely. I tried again when the first iPhone version came out, but it was buggy and yet again, didn’t take hold in my daily workflow.

I recently started a massive landscaping project at my house. It involves removing a lot of plant material, moving some plants, and adding new ones. It also involves putting in a new driveway, parking court and patio, as well as a new privacy fence. To get everything we want, I’m serving as general contractor, and I needed a single place to store notes, shopping lists, links to websites with products or inspiration, task lists, and more. On a whim, I launched Evernote and got the latest update. It fit the bill perfectly.

To manage all of this project’s information, I set up a notebook in the sidebar for the whole project, and I’m using individual notes for sub-projects. For example, we want a privacy fence that fits the historic character of our neighborhood (1880-1930) but also reflects our own, more modern sensibility.

This is a challenge, so I’m collecting links and photos of various fence designs in a single note, along with names, phone numbers, and price quotes from materials suppliers and installers. Getting info into Evernote via the menu bar icon and keyboard shortcuts is a snap, and I can organize and format to improve readability and findability. I’ve also linked external files, including the Numbers spreadsheet I’m using to track expenses.

Perhaps the best thing about my re-introduction to Evernote, especially as it relates to this project, is the iPhone version. Often, I’ll find myself near a nursery or other supplier, and I can call up Evernote to show an example of what I’m looking for or a shopping list for plants and supplies. I also love the photo and voice note capabilities.

A few times recently, my wife and I have seen examples of something we like that we might want to incorporate into our landscape, so I simply create a Snapshot note to add to the project notebook. The current version of the iPhone app is not buggy like I remember earlier versions. I have to say, I’m really looking forward to using Evernote on my iPad 3G, especially since all my notes are automatically sync’d to all my devices.

I’m glad to have become re-acquainted with Evernote. It’s making it easier for me to create, store, organize and retrieve notes when and where I need them.

From the track Bonkers by Dizzee Rascal, who turns out to be a remarkably insightful lyricist when he’s not rapping about working it with the ladies:

I wake up, every day is a daydream
Everything in my life isn’t what it seems
I wake up just to go back to sleep
I act real shallow but I’m in too deep
And all I care about is sex and violence
And a heavy bass line is my kind of silence
Everybody says that I got to get a grip
But I let sanity give me the slip

Link to video for Bonkers.

It’s $59, but who cares? Bacon iPad cases are what money was invented for, people. Well, that, and both actual bacon and actual iPads. [Etsy] More »

Cuando a mediados del año pasado repasaba el proyecto MOVELE y aparecían en el catálogo de los vehículos eléctricos modelos de BYD (fabricante chino conocido por ciertos diseños con parecidos razonables) me llamaba la atención la tecnología que utilizaría su modelo eléctrico, el E6, una mezcla entre monovolumen y SUV que tenía buena pinta al menos en la teoría.

Pero poco a poco me va sorprendiendo más la marca, al ver como va afianzando sus planes de llegada al mercado español, y de la mano del conocido Grupo Bergé. La última noticia la conocíamos gracias a un comunicado de Endesa y del Grupo Bergé donde nos explican el plan de colaboración entre ambas empresas para el desarrollo de varios proyectos orientados al uso del vehículo eléctrico.

Endesa se encargará de la implantación de la infraestructura de recarga para los vehículos eléctricos, y a su vez, Bergé suministrará vehículos de la firma BYD a Endesa para el proyecto “SmartCity” que se desarrollará de forma piloto en Málaga, y que plantea un nuevo modelo de gestión energética en las ciudades.

Vía | Autoblog en español

In his earlier role as enforcer of Roman Catholic Church doctrine, Pope Benedict XVI, when asked to defrock a California priest accused of child sexual abuse in 1985, said he needed more time to consider the impact of the case on “the good of the Universal Church,” according to records released Friday. Following is the text of a November 1985 letter in Latin signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Oakland Bishop John S. Cummins. It was translated for The Associated Press by Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

Most Excellent Bishop Having received your letter of September 13 of this year, regarding the matter of the removal from all priestly burdens pertaining to Rev. Stephen Miller Kiesle in your diocese, it is my duty to share with you the following:

This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favor of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner.

It is necessary for this Congregation to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time. In the meantime your Excellency must not fail to provide the petitioner with as much paternal care as possible and in addition to explain to same the rationale of this court, which is accustomed to proceed keeping the common good especially before its eyes.

Let me take this occasion to convey sentiments of the highest regard always to you.

Your most Reverend Excellency Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

RELATED:

Future pope had concerns about defrocking California priest accused of molestation, letter shows

DOCUMENTS:

 The letter | Records released Friday

Photo: The signature of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the bottom of the letter. Credit: Kim Johnson / Associated Press

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Apple has been challenging Google on many fronts this week — first with its mobile platform, then with its advertising platform. Earlier today, its developers launched the first volley in the battle’s third front, releasing the first public code for the next WebKit rendering and processing kernel that will likely drive the Safari 5 browser.

With Google Chrome using a reworked form of WebKit, the Apple team did something that perhaps any other free and open source developer would be publicly stoned for doing, but which Apple might just have the savvy to get away with: It openly one-upped another developer’s open contribution.

“WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the Web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process,” wrote Apple developer Anders Carlsson to WebKit’s public mailing list yesterday. “This model is similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients to use it.”

The “process split” model to which Carlsson refers is the architecture that enables processes spawned by the browser, including add-ons and Web apps, to be run as separate processes in the operating system while still being protected by the browser’s “sandbox.” Google’s Chromium team developed the first such model in working form for its Chrome browser.

But it was the Chromium team that tried one-upping Apple first, by extracting just the WebKit rendering engine from its open source project files, and replacing its JavaScript interpreter with V8. That may have been a smart move from a performance standpoint at the time. However, in implementing its innovative multi-process model, the Chromium team split the rendering code into two components: a single process host, and a multi-process-capable agent. The two components were designed to communicate with one another via proxy, as Chromium’s developers first explained: The renderer and rendering host jointly comprise, they said, “Chromium’s ‘multi-process embedding layer. It proxies notifications and commands across the process boundary. You could imagine other multi-process browsers using this layer, and it should have dependencies on other browser services.”

We could imagine it, certainly; but sharing open source concepts often comprises doing something more than merely imagining. The WebKit team that originated the components that Chromium split into parts, have imagined something different: They foresee moving the user interface components into the multi-process realm, and then enabling APIs from other applications to communicate with those forked processes individually. That way, conceivably, a new single kernel can drive multiple browser tabs whose processes reside on different CPU cores.

“Notice that there is now a process boundary, and it sits below the API boundary,” reads a document published by Apple’s WebKit team yesterday. “Part of WebKit operates in the UI process, where the application logic also lives. The rest of WebKit, along with WebCore and the JS engine, lives in the Web process. The Web process is isolated from the UI process. This can deliver benefits in responsiveness, robustness, security (through the potential to sandbox the web process) and better use of multicore CPUs. There is a straightforward API that takes care of all the process management details for you.”

Unlike Chrome and the Chromium team’s work, the WebKit team goes on, they have a responsibility to provide a framework for others to explore and use for their purposes. So if they do a multi-process framework, then it must be in such a way that other developers (even including Google) could facilitate it. However, the facilitators themselves have no such responsibilities. WebKit gently chided Google for having developed Chrome under strict secrecy (something I suppose Apple knows nothing about).

“That was an understandable choice for Google — Chrome was developed as a secret project for many years, and is deeply invested in this approach,” reads WebKit’s wiki today. “Also, there are not any other significant API clients. There is Google Chrome, and then there is the closely related Chrome Frame. WebKit2 has a different goal: We want process management to be part of what is provided by WebKit itself, so that it is easy for any application to use. We would like chat clients, mail clients, Twitter clients, and all the creative applications that people build with WebKit to be able to take advantage of this technology. We believe this is fundamentally part of what a Web content engine should provide.”

That element which distinguishes WebKit’s development philosophy from that of Chrome and Chromium (at least in Apple’s eyes) may very well draw a new contour around the type of program — or rather, the type of platform — that Safari may yet become. Rather than having a tab for Twitter and a tab for Facebook and a tab for iTunes, a future Safari for all platforms (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows) could include a kind of “embedded desktop,” or Web-top, where independent applications may reside. They might not appear to run under the context of the browser at all, and if you looked inside each of these processes, you might consider them independent too, capable of being accessed independently through API function calls. But a proxy/stub relationship may connect these processes to the WebKit2 core.

That would go a long way towards solving the iPad’s single-tasking problem. The new architecture might also provide a kind of extended platform for something else Apple launched this week: its iAd revenue-sharing advertising system. Imagine, if you will, an advertisement that runs out of the context of the browser. It would not even have to run in the context of the Web page; instead, it could be delivered through one of the applications to which the Safari user subscribes. It might not even be something you can block, not through the ordinary means with which Firefox and IE users are already accustomed. It could even be a potential new revenue stream (or, more accurately, a river) for iTunes.

While you’re imagining that…we’ll be right back.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Following the initial joint announcement to make the world’s first FIFA World Cup available in 3D, FIFA and Sony unveiled insights into what the football fans around the globe can expect from this innovative undertaking to add a third dimension to the football viewing experience. Coinciding with the rapidly growing consumer interest in 3D fueled by the release of blockbuster movie titles in 3D and impending launch of 3D TV sets for the home, the first ever FIFA World Cup in 3D will further capture the excitement for millions of football fans around the globe.

Check out this great Reuters video covering the FIFA/Sony 3D World Cup story.

With a total of seven pairs of Sony’s professional HDC cameras on rigs at every match (model: HDC-1500, above), the action on the pitch will be captured in a stunning 3D quality enabled through its proprietary multi-image processor (model: MPE-200, below) and 3D Outside Broadcast truck.

Sony’s cutting-edge processor, the only one in the market to date, makes an end-to-end workflow possible in the production process and automatically adjusts the depth-of-field to ensure an unprecedented and optimal 3D viewing experience around the world. Starting from the FIFA Confederations Cup last year in South Africa, Sony has been working on enhancing the 3D capturing of fast-moving football action and has since conducted a number of 3D filming trials in Europe.

3D filming will be conducted at five out of the 10 FIFA World Cup stadiums: Soccer City and Ellis Park in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town (above) and Port Elizabeth. 25 matches in total will be filmed and broadcast in 3D, which will include a carefully chosen selection of those games expected to attract most public attention, including the opening game on June 11 at Soccer City (South Africa vs Mexico) and the crowning final game on July 11 also in Johannesburg. Other games to be captured in 3D are:

• June 11 16:00h RSA v MEX
• June 12 16:00h ARG v NGA
• June 13 20:30h GER v AUS
• June 14 13:30h NED v DEN
• June 15 20:30h BRA v PRK
• June 16 16:00h ESP v SUI
• June 17 13:30h ARG v KOR
• June 18 16:00h SVN v USA
• June 19 13:30h NED v JPN
• June 20 20:30h BRA v CIV
• June 21 20:30h ESP v HON
• June 22 20:30h NGA v KOR
• June 23 20:30h GHA v GER
• June 24 16:00h SVK v ITA
• June 25 16:00h POR v BRA
• June 27 20:30h 1st B v 2nd A
• June 28 16:00h 1st E v 2nd F
• June 28 20:30h 1st G v 2nd H
• July 2 20:30h Quarter finals
• July 3 16:00h Quarter finals
• July 3 20:30h Quarter finals
• July 6 20:30h Semi finals
• July 7 20:30h Semi finals
• July 10 20:30h 3rd place match
• July 11 20:30h Final

“The 3D feed from these 25 matches will be made available for broadcast on 3D channels, which can be enjoyed by consumers on their 3D-compatible TV sets in the comfort of their home, almost as if they were in the football stadium themselves,” said Niclas Ericson, Director of FIFA TV. “Whilst discussions with major broadcasters are ongoing, I am very pleased to announce the first confirmed partners for the 3D live broadcast, who are ESPN in the US and Sogecable in Spain. We expect further announcements to be made shortly,” he added.

In line with FIFA’s and Sony’s endeavor to make this new exciting 3D viewing experience available to as many football fans as possible, a dedicated global 3D public viewing project will debut at this year’s FIFA World Cup. Eight matches will be fed live to digital cinemas and selected venues in 3D HD quality around the globe. To this end, FIFA has appointed Swiss-based Aruna Media AG to manage the exclusive 3D cinema and entertainment venue rights for live games in 3D. Aruna plans to broadcast live 3D coverage of matches to around 26 countries and is in advanced discussions with several major markets.

Reaffirming its leading position at the forefront of the emerging 3D market, Sony is the key technological enabler of this new viewing experience and enhances the excitement of football fans, either watching a football match live in the stadium or enjoying a new 3D experience through 3D TV channels or at the public viewing events around the world. “Sony has long standing credentials in the creation of professional 3D technology and content for theatrical use,” said Hiroko Saito, Deputy General Manager of Global Sponsorships, Sony Corporation. “True to our strategy eFrom the lens to the living-room’, we are actively involved at every stage of the 3D value chain and proudly draw on the strengths of the e3D World created by Sony’, which encapsulates our expertise in professional solutions, consumer electronics, movie making and gaming alike. We are very excited to capitalise on these strengths and to be able to complement our compelling 3D proposition by bringing an entirely new viewing experience to the world of football through our partnership with FIFA,” Saito added.

Complementing the 3D live broadcast and public viewing activities, the general public will also be able to exclusively enjoy the 3D promotional trailers shown on Sony 3D BRAVIA TVs in around 4,000 Sony-affiliated retail stores worldwide, including 200 Sony flagship stores (total number of Sony-affiliated retail stores: 1,500 in North America, 1,300 in Europe, 500 in Japan, 200 in Asia, 200 in Latin America, and 30 in South Africa). Furthermore, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment today unveiled plans to produce and distribute the official FIFA film in 3D on Blu-ray Disc this year.

Published April 9, 2010
Dori O’Neal, Tri-City Herald staff writer

Jeff Hamilton will headline the evening entertainment at this year’s Jazz Unlimited Festival happening April 9-10 and 15-17 at Columbia Basin College in Pasco.

The festival is a competition that involves 4,500 student musicians from all over the Northwest, including high school and middle school students. Competition categories include concert choirs, jazz bands and jazz choirs.

There is no fee to watch the daylong competitions, which begin at 7:30 a.m. each day on the CBC campus.

There is a charge to the Hamilton concert on April 9, but the rest of the festival’s evening entertainment is free. Tickets to the Hamilton concert, which begins at 7:30 p.m., are $15 for adults and $10 for students and senior citizens.

Hamilton, who’ll perform with his trio that includes Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown, is world renowned as a versatile drummer with a unique style.

David Badham, music critic with the Jazz Journal International, referred to Hamilton’s recent album, Heart and Soul, as, “the finest modern big band sound I’ve heard.”

Opening the Hamilton concert will be performances by the CBC Orchestra and the CBC Jazz Ensemble.

On April 10, Hamilton will play with the jazz ensemble starting at 5:15 p.m. in the Gjerde Center. Then on April 15, CBC’s FreeForm jazz group will sing songs from its latest CD release starting at 7:30 p.m. in the theater.

For a complete schedule of events, go to www.columbiabasin.edu/jazzunlimited.

Additional news stories can be accessed online at the Tri-City Herald.

More gears and fewer cubic inches for Audi’s big people mover.

Just as it followed the VW Touareg and Porsche Cayenne into the marketplace, the Audi Q7 now will be following their lead on engine downsizing. While its recently updated exterior remains unchanged, the 2011 Q7 loses both of its current gasoline engines, the 280-hp, 3.6-liter V-6 and the 350-hp, 4.2-liter V-8. They get replaced by two variations of the supercharged TFSI 3.0-liter V-6 found in the A6, S4, and S5.

Keep Reading: 2011 Audi Q7 – Official Photos and Info

Related posts:

1. 2011 Audi A8 – Official Photos and Info
2. 2011 Audi A1 – Official Photos and Info
3. 2011 Audi TT and TTS – Official Photos and Info

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) insists he will not run for president in 2012.

Speaking at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) on Friday, Jindal said, “I am not running for president of the United States. I’ve got the job I want.”

The SRLC is a cattle call for potential presidential candidates such as Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Texas Governor Rick Perry (R).  Jindal is a first term governor who was on John McCain’s VP shortlist in 2008.

Jindal also took a swipe at the RNC, saying, “I do have a word of warning to RNC staffers, you may want to stay away from Bourbon Street, just a word of advice.”

Bourbon street is a world famous party street in the French Quarter and is also home to a myriad of strip clubs. Many in the room took the remark as a direct shot at the RNC scandal in which nearly party coffers paid a $2,000 bill at a West Hollywood topless night club..