The SMH reports that the GM Volt is also headed for Australia – First drive: Chevrolet Volt.

With an innovative plug-in electric car set-up, the Chevrolet Volt could have as much of an impact on General Motors as it does on the planet.

The Chevrolet Volt may not be able to save General Motors financially but it could restore its reputation for engineering quality and vision and is a viable yet flawed small car proposition.

A first drive this week around the lumpy concrete streets of GM’s Warren technical centre in the suburbs of decayed, deteriorating Detroit is a cause for rejuvenated hope at a company in bankruptcy just a few months ago.

The Volt – which will be sold in Australia wearing a Holden badge from 2012 – is a plug-in electric car with an innovative twist. While its front wheels are always driven by electricity, a 1.4-litre petrol engine generates power for a powerful lithium-ion battery pack when required.

GM calls it a range extender, but it’s effectively a miniature onboard power station or generator. It means the end of the range anxiety that bedevils electric cars. When the battery pack runs low the petrol engine will ensure it won’t run out, guaranteeing a fuel-tank-like 500km range.

Want to refuel? Then top up the fuel tank just likes a normal small car. Or be new age and plug in to a powerpoint overnight to replenish the battery pack.

“It’s the only electric vehicle that can be your only vehicle,” was how the Volt’s chief engineer Andrew Farah summed it up.

The SMH also reports that Citroen will be selling a rebadged Mitsubishi MiEV – Citroen plugs in to electric craze.

Citroen has unveiled its re-badged version of the Mitsubishi I MiEV electric car ahead of its public debut at the Brussels Motor Show.

The battery-powered C-ZERO is a sister car to the Peugeot iOn that debuted at the Frankfurt motor show last September. Both cars are built on the Mitsubishi platform.

The ‘zero’ suffix stands for zero fuel use, zero carbon emissions, zero decibels from the electric powerplant.

The 47kW motor is powered by lithium-ion batteries, and produces 180Nm of torque. According to Citroen, the batteries can be charged using a household socket, while a higher voltage electricity supply will charge the batteries to 80 per cent in just 30 minutes. A single charge will be good for range of 130km.

We reported yesterday that the majority of the established Formula One teams have already announced their launch dates prior to the February 1 deadline – when the winter testing season kicks off – with the exception of Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso. As ironic as it may seem, it has now been confirmed that the latter will actually make the Valencia testing next month, unlike their sister team Red Bull.

Toro Rosso will start the winter testing in Valencia on 1 February and we are plan… (read more)

I have nothing to write about this week because nothing has interested me in the sports world outside of Stanford lately. My colleagues cover enough over the week, leaving me the tough job of originality. Well, most Stanford winter sports are just gearing up. Lane Kiffin sucks and will probably bring more violations to USC. Pete Carroll isn’t worth writing about. The NBA is boring. There haven’t been enough upsets in college basketball yet. The NFL is reasonably exciting, but let’s come back next week when the Super Bowl spots are on the line. Mark McGwire cheated, but like we were really surprised when we heard that.

Thus, this column is about nothing. It is about the boring, banal, whatever and who cares of sports. It is the things you wish you didn’t know about, the things you don’t understand why you know so much about, or the things you wish just didn’t exist. It is Brett Favre, Olympic race-walking and fishing. It’s golf without Tiger Woods, the NBA regular season and the Pro Bowl. It’s the things that have you going “why?” or “huh?” or screaming an obscenity at the television.

This column is the things about sports that make me want to turn off the TV or put down the newspaper. The things that are surely a hit with somebody around the world, but in my mind are better reserved for the 3 a.m. TV slot. The things that don’t get me excited or make me glad to be a sports fan. The things that make me just want to go “Really?” or “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

It’s a 2-7 poker hand and a 37-0 rout in football at halftime. It’s Roger Federer’s demeanor on the court, the 10th NFL highlight in a row on Sunday, Tony Dungy’s analysis and Pam Ward (YouTube her).

I can tell you some things that this column is not. It’s not Chad Ochocinco (or whatever his last name is) — it’s not NHL playoffs, Chris Johnson, Venus and Serena Williams, the NBA Dunk Contest, a shootout in soccer or Shaquille O’Neal.

This column is the Super Bowl halftime show post-Janet Jackson, Bill Belichick interviews, a JaMarcus Russell-led offense, Walt Harris’s Stanford play calling, terrible sports movies, the World’s Best Dog competition and David Beckham.

It’s not the World Cup, college football overtime, a play that features a triple option, March Madness, the 100-meter dash, the “C’mon Man” segment of Monday Night Countdown, Gus Johnson (YouTube him) or when Ed Reed intercepts a pass.

It is the Favre-Childress saga, the discussion of why the Colts decided to rest their starters, ESPN’s Mike & Mike (especially Greenberg), archery, arena football and the XFL, and billiards on TV.

It’s not Kobe Bryant at the buzzer, SportsCenter commercials, Jimmie Johnson, Sunday at the Masters, the night session at the U.S. Open or Nick Robinson at the Stanford-Arizona basketball game in 2004.

It is minor league baseball, the WWF and UFC, Lil Wayne’s columns on espn.com, Tim Tebow’s 50th inspirational video segment, golfers from South Africa and athletes taking Twitter too far.

It’s not Darrelle Revis, Derek Jeter, the challenge rule in the NFL, New Year’s Day bowl games, a good version of the national anthem before a big game, beach volleyball, the Arthur Ashe ESPY award for courage, Peyton Manning’s commercials or sports montages.

It is the Papajohns.com and Little Caesar’s Pizza bowls, the opening coin toss, an intentional walk, Bible verses written on fake eye black, seemingly endless timeouts at the end of a basketball game, player holdouts for bigger contracts, badminton and the “Kiss Cam”.

It’s not the Kentucky Derby, Mariano Rivera, a triple, icing the kicker, the Little League World Series, a perfect game, Toby Gerhart, Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest and Boise State’s trick plays.

Next week I’ll have something more exciting. Come on, men’s basketball.

Danny Belch clearly did not realize that the MLS Draft took place yesterday. Contact him at dbelch1 “at” stanford.edu.

The fresh generation of Ford Focus has been named the Most Significant vehicle of the 2010 North American International Auto Show by the editors at Autoweek magazine.

The car was revealed to the public on Monday, January the 11th, and will be available to the U.S. and European public from the first quarter of 2011. Eventually, the vehicle will be sold in 122 markets, with up to 80 percent parts commonality. It will be built on Ford’s new C platform, which will be found under 10 different mode… (read more)

This effect of the advent of Avatar the movie comes under unintended consequences.  The second item was much more predictable.  That is the establishment of a mass market for 3D spectacle films.  I wonder if it is possible to redo Ben Hur?

The holodeck of Star Trek is at least a generation away, but this will certainly do in the meantime.  Of course, spectacle will overwhelm plot.  Who wants to take a chance on that when hundreds of millions are been spent?

I am pleased to understand that both the trilogy and the Star Wars cycle can be upgraded to this format at what is presently a nominal cost.  In fact, it proclaims that no film of consequence is likely to be without it here on in.

I imagine most fail to remember or properly understand just how revolutionary the advent of Star Wars was on the film industry.  Before it, the artistic types shunned science fiction when it was obvious to informed fans that the genre was a gold mine of visual possibilities.  Yet when I sat down back then to a 12.30 am preview of Star Wars, my expectations were low and I braced myself to be forgiving.  Instead, the film worked and completely exceeded what imagination could have expected.  I walked out knowing the industry had changed forever.

This revolution in visual presentation continues in Avatar unabated, although we are now finding the edges of the possibilities.  The human imagination can be beautifully expressed in a glorious 3D format to its limits.

And yes, the movies are about visual story telling, and plots are merely a necessary skeleton to hang the pictures.  There was a time they were used to hang word imagery.  Let us hope that we soon hang holograms.

The Avatar Effect

China’s moviegoers see a story about private property, not race.

Future Movies and Old Movies Will Be in 3D and Imax

Avnera is announcing today that it has raised $10 million in a fourth round of funding for its business of designing high-quality audio chips.

The round was led by existing investors and Japanese electronics firm Onkyo. That brings the total amount of money raised to date to $52 million. Other investors include Altien Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Best Buy Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Panasonic Venture Group, Polycom and Redpoint Ventures.

Avnera is making Audio Magic chips such as those used in Best Buy’s Rocketfish brand of wireless stereo speakers. Those products eliminate interference and speaker noise, allowing you to take any music device and broadcast the sound wirelessly to any speaker in the house. That gets rid of unsightly wires and gives you music in places such as a sun deck. Avnera collaborated with Best Buy in creating the products, and that’s one reason why Best Buy is one of its investors.

Avnera just announced its second-generation AudioMagic 2G chips, which the company says can play high-quality, uncompressed audio with the quality of wired solutions. That’s because Avnera’s chips have a way to correct errors in transmission, fixing problems on the fly so that the sound comes through clearly, said Manpreet Khaira (pictured), chief executive of Beaverton, Ore.-based chip maker Avnera. The products using the second generation chips will be out this year.

The company competes with other makers of analog audio chips. Those companies, such as National Semiconductor or Texas Instruments, create a collection of analog chips that have to be connected on circuit boards. But Avnera’s talent is taking analog chips that are separate devices normally and combining them all on one chip. These “analog system on chip” devices have lots of applications, of which audio is just one.

There are ten analog system on chip products in the market now. Onkyo and Avnera are working on new products that will use Avnera’s chips. Beyond Best Buy’s products, Avnera’s chips are used in 30 different audio products, each with the Avnera Rocketboost logo, from more than 15 customers.

The company was founded in 2004 and it has 60 employees.

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Here’s the latest action:

Apple’s lawyers send Valleywag “proof” that the tablet exists — Valleywag was offering lots of cash to anyone who could prove that Apple’s rumored tablet computer exists. Then it got a letter from an Apple attorney asking Valleywag to call off the search because Apple has “maintained the types of information and things you are soliciting … in strict confidence.” The fact that Apple is up in arms about this suggests that there’s a tablet whose existence Apple wants to hide.

Lalawag’s Sean Percival joins MySpacee — Percival, who created the Los Angeles tech gossip blog and has also written a book on MySpace marketing, will serve as the social network’s director of content socialization. I’m not exactly sure what he’ll be doing at MySpace, but the company says he will “help lead the charge to create compelling social experiences for MySpace users by developing new and alternative ways to leverage social media activities.”

Microsoft’ veteran Bill Veghte leaves — Veghte has been with the software giant for 19 years, starting out as an associate product manager on Office and most recently heading the business side of Windows. He’s moving on because he wants to run a business “from end to end,” and Microsoft doesn’t have room at the top for him.

Intel says AMD exec would never buy AMD chips — In its latest response to an antitrust investigation spurred by competitor AMD, Intel included a statement from Henri Richard, the company’s highest sales executive at the time, saying, “I certainly would never buy AMD for a personal system, if I wasn’t working here.”

RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser quits — Glaser wanted to leave the Internet media company that he founded through a gradual transition, says Business Insider, but the board pushed him out sooner.

Yahoo rolling out search improvements next week — The company says the features will give advertisers more control and transparency. Yahoo also claims the continued improvements prove that it still cares about search, despite outsourcing its core search to Microsoft’s Bing.

NetHope seeking $25,000 to bring Internet connectivity to relief agencies in Haiti — The nonprofit says it wants to give agencies the Internet access they need to coordinate the delivery of food, water, healthcare, and information in the aftermath of this week’s earthquake.

iPhone app maker tries to bribe his way onto tech blogs — VentureBeat actually received the same offer of $300 for a mention of Jon Atherton’s Wobble 2 app, but we didn’t even bother to respond. TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters, on the other hand, told him to buzz off, at which point Atherton upped the offer to $1,000.

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Ah, here we go again: another report from iSuppli breaking down the bill of materials (BOM) for one of our favorite smartphones. This time it’s the Droid / Milestone under scrutiny, Motorola’s beefcake slider that currently sells for $560 month-to-month on Verizon ($199 on contract). According to iSuppli’s analysis, Droid brings a $187.75 bill of materials that breaks down into $179.11 worth of components and $8.64 in manufacturing costs. Naturally, the BOM does not include licensing fees, software costs, accessories, or the massive outlay this device has received in advertising support. Nevertheless, it makes for interesting apples-to-apples fodder when comparing costs with the Nexus One ($174.15 in materials only), iPhone 3GS ($178.96 materials and manufacturing), and original Palm Pre ($138 materials and manufacturing). The single most expensive component on the Droid is the 16GB removable microSD card ($35) bundled with the Droid. And after a controversial MOTO report that demonstrated a lackluster capacitive touchscreen on the Droid, it’s interesting to compare the Droid’s 3.7-inch TFT LCD ($17.75) and capacitive touchscreen overlay ($17.50) with that of the iPhone 3GS ($19.25 spent on a smaller 3.5-inch LCD and cheaper $16 touchscreen overlay) and Nexus One (whopping $23.50 for 3.7-inch AM-OLED display and $17.50 for the touchscreen assembly). Rounding out the top-end costs are the Droid’s 5 megapixel autofocus CMOS sensor ($14.25), Qualcomm baseband processor / RF chip ($14.04), and TI application processor ($12.90).

Droid more valuable than Nexus One or iPhone 3GS according to iSuppli originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As reported everywhere, conditions in Haiti are awful and help must be delivered to millions over the next three of four days.  The question is how?

Effectively all the building stock is uninhabitable.  At present it is a desperate race to dig out the handful of living and recover the dead.  The only mercy is that it is warm and obviously not the rainy season.  Had this occurred in Northern China, those trapped would already be frozen to death.

Right now someone needs to facilitate support from the Cuban military and medical system and even pay for it.  They have medical personnel and likely sea lift to move victims quickly out of harms way onto the Cuban hospital system.  Most important, they can put those boots on the ground which is what is needed right now.   More critically, they are used to the local conditions.

Hopefully the political types can quickly get over their issues for a time in order to pull this chunk of fat out of the fire.  In the meantime, Cuba already had 300 doctors in country and that means that fresh doctors can be absorbed instantly as well as medical supplies.  In fact, the one bright spot besides the pleasant weather, it that we have a good number of foreign aid groups already in country able to absorb manpower and supplies now.

The immediate advent of several thousand troops from the US will allow some order to be brought out of the present chaos and the built up areas can be quickly cleared of people.  This is necessary because bodies are already beginning to deteriorate and the living need to get food and water now and that is easiest done at marshalling points. 

The challenge is to get the boots on the ground to control and manage the necessary supply tail that is been mobilized.  Essentially three million people are about to spend the next few months under canvass and everyone else will be struggling to access broken distribution networks. 

It is also a surety that most of the damaged buildings will have to be bulldozed.  It is therefore a great time to plan a new city and to establish better building codes. 

Aid workers in Haiti face ‘logistical nightmare’

The number of powerplants currently in use seem not to be enough for the baby-SUV from BMW, so the German carmaker announced today the availability of a new entry-level engine to fit under the current model. Starting March, the X1 will be offered in sDrive18i guise, with a four-cylinder gasoline engine featuring VALVETRONIC under the hood.

The new entry level develops 150 hp at 6,400 rpm and delivers peak torque of 200 NM of torque. It accelerates from a standstill to 100 km/h in 9.7 second… (read more)

We all have them nice external storage solutions. They don’t cost much either but how safe is your data on it?

I guess most of us will loose everything when our home would burn down and that is a shame to loose all those memories all those holiday photo’s all those documents all gone forever.

But why? You know for just a little bit more you can own an external hard drive from ioSafe and they can be underwater or even in a fire and your data is still safe. If you don’t believe me search for iosafe on Youtube and see what they do with those drives.

You see data can be safer then you have it now and if that isn’t enough ioSafe would even pay if you disk is not readable any more. They would pay up to 1000 dollars to a data recovery company to get you data back.

I would say go check out the IoSafe Solo 2 TB Fireproof and Waterproof Desktop External Hard Drive with 5 Year Data Recovery Service and see how to safe your important files.

Early next month, Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker at a political convention in Nashville, Tennessee. But rather than addressing the Republican National Committee or the mainstream Conservative Political Action Conference, whose invitation she rejected, Palin will be headlining the first annual National Tea Party Convention.

The fact that this event even exists might come as a surprise to many–this disparate group of zealous protesters is trying to form an actual political party? Indeed, the convention will pull together various Tea Party and anti-government organizations from across the country, giving them the opportunity to network and coordinate future activities. With the attendance of Palin and U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, the prospect of this loose-knit coalition of ultraconservatives forging a single, structured party seems increasingly plausible.

Moreover, the Tea Party movement has shown broad appeal beyond the fringe of right-wing extremism. While only 28 percent and 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, 41 percent have a positive view of the Tea Party movement. The support does not seem constrained by geography either, with ordinarily moderate states such as Maryland and Florida becoming hotbeds of Tea Party action. In fact, a growing number of Floridians have turned against Senate candidate and popular moderate Republican Governor Charlie Crist in favor of a new conservative named Marco Rubio–the first potential Tea Party senator? Even with the well-documented malcontent over the future of America, only recently has the possibility of going in an entirely new direction become so real.

Naturally, liberals and moderate conservatives have scorned this rise. These sentiments are entirely reasonable given the rancorous hatred Tea Party protestors have engaged in; they have called the president everything from a communist to a Nazi to a terrorist, held posters of him as a caricatured African witch doctor and thrown around the n-word with no heed. There is no doubt that some, even many, of their members openly wish harm upon members of the federal government and anyone who supports them. Some are unabashedly racist and filled to the brim with hate.

Yet, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of these people. And while much of this might be attributable to many voters’ having only a passing knowledge of the Tea Party’s actual nature, that is certainly enough support to garner attention.

The Editorial Board cautions against simply dismissing the Tea Party as a benign assortment of backwoods bigots; reactionary populism of this kind must be observed with caution and alertness.

How best to confront the issue of these Tea Partiers remains an open question. Perhaps largely ignoring their presence on the national stage will be successful in allowing the enthusiasm to fade. Maybe they can be subdued by, as the Board has suggested before, engaging the moderate right in real bipartisan progress that will give some conservatives a better venue for their beliefs. Any course of action has its benefits and its flaws. But what we absolutely must not do is give this movement what it wants. We, the Stanford population, are the highly educated, largely liberal elite that these people love so much to revile. By scoffing at the Tea Party or disparaging its members, we play into the caricature they have created for us and fuel their fire of anger–which, at the moment, represents their only real foundation.

Google is betting hard on Place Pages and, since launch in September 2009, has been constantly updating and improving the feature. Now, in another clear move to get ahead in the local businesses market, it has enabled business owners to claim their Places and even post small updates to them. The idea is to get small entrepreneurs hooked on… (read more)

While other carmakers are complaining that 2009 was a difficult year and post extremely disappointing sales figures, Renault’s Romanian brand Dacia keeps growing. And we’re not only talking about its domestic market but the global one, as the company posted an increase of 20.5 percent in new car sales in 2009.

The company delivered a total of 311,282 cars and curiously, Romania wasn’t Dacia’s largest market. 84,708 of the cars sold last year were purchased by Germans, while French buyers boug… (read more)