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La gama de versiones de la última generación del SEAT Ibiza se va completando poco a poco y el último en llegar ha sido el compacto diesel más potente del mercado español. Se trata del SEAT Ibiza FR equipado con un motor diesel 2.0 TDI de 143 CV (viejo conocido de la gama).

Los que quieran un compacto deportivo y ajustar algo el consumo, el Ibiza FR TDI consume sólo 4,6 litros a los 100 km, con unas prestaciones muy completas para tratarse de un compacto, acelerando de 0 a 100 km/h en 8,2 segundos y con una velocidad máxima de 210 km/h.

El Ibiza FR TDI de 143 CV se pondrá a la venta el próximo mes de febrero y estará disponible con la carrocería SportCoupé (3 puertas) o en versión de cinco puertas. El precio recomendado para el SEAT Ibiza FR TDI SC es de 19.560 euros y de 19.900 euros para la versión de cinco puertas, y contarán con un completo equipamiento de serie contando con climatizador automático, control de velocidad, paquete eléctrico, ESP, TCS, ASR, ABS, EBD, seis airbags, radio CD MP3, llantas de aleación, asientos deportivos, diseño exterior FR, entre otros elementos.

Fuente | SEAT

Here’s a rumor that we’d like to see play out if only for curiosity’s sake.  According a tipster of ours, Sprint has been working with an unusual partner on a project to help build out their WiMax network.  As we all know the carrier plans to release handsets later this year with WiMax capability.  But what good are these cool phones if there’s no network to support it?  Enter that mysterious partner… Wal-Mart.

Our source tells us that the effort to grow the nationwide WiMax network includes placing place WiMax towers on the top of all Walmart locations.  According to them, they were advised to consider how many stores overlap each other in a 30-50 mile radius.  Essentially, this would be enough to cover a good chunk of the United States. Plus, this would not cost nearly as much as erecting towers and dealing with hassles like zoning permissions.

We’ve seen more ridiculous rumors come to fruition so it wouldn’t surprise if this pans out.  Our source has provided us with information in the past and we feel pretty good about it.

On a side note, if you want to be creeped out, watch this time-lapse video that shows Walmarts as they’re opened by year.

Because there’s no point in building a nanoscopic car that couldn’t crush other nanoscopic cars in a race, Rice University scientists have rolled out their best and baddest “nanodragster” ever. The car, 1/25,000th the size of a human hair, not only has a freely moving chassis but also can turn when one of its wheels is up in the air.

James Tour and his team previously made tiny cars that used carbon-60 molecules called “buckyballs” as wheels, but those wheels could turn on only hot surfaces, about 200 degrees Celsius. No longer. From Futurity.org:

The key to making nanodragsters, Tour says, was putting p-carborane wheels in the front and buckyballs in the back, getting the advantages of both. The front wheels roll easier, while the buckyballs grip the gold roadway well enough to be imaged by Kevin Kelly, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. And the vehicle operates at a much lower temperature than previous nanovehicles.

“The trick to making these nanocars was to attach the smaller wheels first, then deactivate their reactive ends through carbon group attachments that we called ’scythes,’ much like blades on the centers of classical chariot wheels,” Tour says. “Then we could affix the larger C60 wheels to the rear axle.”

No word yet whether any potential nano-races will allow dragsters to gouge each other with those scythes, a la Ben-Hur.

Related Content:
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80beats: Nanoscale Origami: A Box—with Lock & Key—Made Entirely of DNA

Image: Rice University

Last month, I wrote about a growing real estate bubble in China and pondered how the Chinese government would respond. In recent weeks we’re starting to get a glimpse of its springing to action. Its latest moves are more aggressive: it has increased the commercial banks’ reserve requirements and raised rates on government debt to make it more attractive to investors. These actions contract monetary supply and should help to slow its wild economic growth, but just a little. It appears to be a smart move.

Increasing banks’ reserve requirements essentially constrains their lending. The higher the reserve requirement, the more of a bank’s capital is forbidden from being used to make new loans. With less money to lend, less credit is available, and monetary supply contracts. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Starting next Monday, most commercial banks will be required to put 16% of their deposits on reserve and not lend the money, an increase of a half percentage point. In recent years, that reserve requirement rate has emerged as a primary tool for the central bank to fine tune monetary policy.

A half point isn’t drastic, but also isn’t insignificant. Usually, when central banks raise rates, they do so gradually. So this step is meaningful, not so much because of its magnitude, but because of the signals it sends: China is worried about excess monetary supply and is beginning to apply a strategy to rein it in. And that’s not all:

Also on Tuesday, the central bank raised the yield it pays on its one-year bills, a move also designed to siphon cash out of the financial system by making the debt securities more attractive for banks to buy.

By making this debt more attractive, investor will shift more money into the less risky assets. That takes money out of the credit markets and freezes it in government bonds. Again, monetary supply declines.

Central bank moves like this are always highly contentious. For example, if the U.S. Federal Reserve did this kind of thing right now, then that could be extremely dangerous: contracting monetary supply at a time when an economy is struggling to recover from a deep recession could throw it back into the trough. But China’s economy is in much better shape right now that the U.S.’s economy. Its real estate prices are appreciating; it’s receiving a lot of foreign investment; and its exports appear to have recovered. So while it’s impossible to know if the central bank’s timing was perfect, there’s definitely a strong argument that its move makes sense.

In fact, it seems particularly warranted in light of the real estate bubble that I mentioned last month. One of the criticisms of the U.S. Fed is that it failed to draw in monetary supply during the housing boom, causing the real estate market to overheat. Clearly, China doesn’t want to repeat our mistakes.

The other fear, of course, is inflation. China wants to ensure it isn’t a problem. The WSJ says:

At this point, inflation is under control, although the consumer price index turned positive for the first time in November and rumors are widespread the December number will show a jump.

Economists say headline inflation rates in China are likely to rise rapidly in the next few months, even if only because current prices are being compared to the extremely-depressed levels of early 2009.

Again, in light of that, tightening credit makes a lot of sense.

As usual, investors will be less than amused by this monetary restraint. When a central bank decides to take action like this, it usually means that the party is over for the bulls. So look for Chinese equities to take a hit when the market opens (the announcement was made after market close yesterday). But don’t take the market’s reaction to be a meaningful verdict on whether the central bank’s move was wise — just reflective of its crankiness that it probably can’t expect as irrationally high returns through 2010 from investment in China if its central bank continues down this path.

More than a week after her sudden death, Johnson & Johnson heiress Casey Johnson was laid to rest during a memorial in New Jersey on Tuesday, PEOPLE has learned.

Casey — romantically-linked to reality star Tila Tequila — was found dead in her West Hollywood home on Jan. 4. The socialite will be buried in a family tomb in New Bruinswick.

After Sunday night’s fights, WEC general manager Reed Harris (pictured with Urijah Faber and Miguel Torres) said that the Zuffa-backed promotion will have a pay-per-view show in the first half of 2010. Though the WEC puts together reliably exciting shows, they aren’t as well known as the UFC. Pay-per-view success isn’t automatic for the WEC as it has been for the UFC.

That doesn’t mean that the WEC couldn’t make pay-per-views work, but to do that, they’ll need to put together one amazing event. It would need some of these elements:

Faber vs. Aldo: This is non-negotiable. A title bout between the WEC’s most bankable star in Faber and their most exciting champion in Aldo must happen for this card to work.

Miguel Torres: Behind Faber, Torres is the WEC’s most well-known star. His journey back to a title shot after losing his belt to Brian Bowles is one of the most interesting stories currently in MMA. He’s fighting Joseph Benavidez on March 6, but that would hopefully give him enough time to recover for a PPV in the first half of the year. 

Scott Jorgensen, Antonio Banuelos, Damacio Page and/or Anthony Njokuani: These fighters bring it every single time they walk in the cage. Their fights are exciting and often feature highlight reel knockouts or fight-of-the-night caliber performances. If one of them are fighting, I’m tuning in even if it costs me some cash.

The introduction of flyweights: The WEC has been teasing us for a while about adding 125-lbers to their mix. Their first PPV will bring about tons of publicity, which would be the right time to bring out their newest batch of fighters.

A reasonable price: $44.99 — the cost of a non-HD UFC PPV — is a little steep for the WEC to start out with. Somewhere closer to $30 would be better and would be less likely to scare away viewers who aren’t used to paying for their WEC fix.

What would you need to spend money to watch the WEC? 

Last week, we reported that former CIBC World Markets Inc. chief economist, Jeff Rubin had predicted the price of oil to reach $100 by the end of 2010. 

On Monday, CNBC contributor John Kilduff sliced Rubin’s prediction in half, claiming that oil will hit $100 a barrel in the next six months, thanks in part to a humming Chinese economy, Business And Media reports.

When Kudlow asked whether the U.S. should look to windmills in the Nantucket sound to provide a new power source, Kilduff stated he opposes the idea, and mentioned a huge oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday morning.

And he underscored the fact that he does not believe in peak oil. The necessary technology to prove the theory, he said, did not exist when the idea was conceived.

Peak oil is a theory that there exists a point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached. However, a recent BusinessWeek article disputed this theory and Kilduff explained that when this idea was conceived, there wasn’t the technology to confirm such a theory.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• What Is Peak Oil?
• Jeff Rubin: Oil Will Blow Past $100 By Year’s End
• Oil Discovery Under Shallow Gulf Waters Estimated To Be Biggest In Decades

…Stephanie Strom of The New York Times asked “Does service learning really help?” It’s a good question. Ms. Strom, whose beat for theTimes is philanthropy, focused mainly on the question of whether the students engaged in service learning are really benefitting the nonprofit service organizations they are trying to assist. Not surprisingly, some of her respondents who run the nonprofits were not so sure that their student volunteers were worth the effort that necessarily goes into supervising them.

»Read the full article in The Chronicle of Higher Education

Google has finally made the move plenty have been awaiting for years now, it has come up with its own cloud storage service. Unfortunately, some people’s expectations may have been higher than what Google actually delivered, but it’s still a pretty big announcement from the company. Google now says that users will soon be able to up… (read more)

CES 2010 Wrap-Up: Noah’s Top 5 Mobile Devices

Three years ago I went to CES in Las Vegas and had to search high and low for a compelling mobile tech story to cover. Sure, there were phones and all sorts of portable computers, but “mobile” – as in the wireless telcom industry – wasn’t really a focal point of the show. Mobile waited past January back then to unleash news at MWC in February and CTIA Spring in April. Not so anymore.

Palm broke the mold, to some extent, by unveiling WebOS and the Pre at last year’s CES. This year? Everyone and their uncle made mobile a part of their CES presence, it seemed. While we may not have seen a ton of US phone launches, there were a handful of ’em – and another pretty newsworthy one from Google the day before I headed out to Vegas. But more importantly, we saw launches and previews of many devices incorporating cellular connectivity into all sorts of form factors and headed to both the US and global markets.

So what caught my eye? Besides 3D TV, that is (I’m not sure if it’s “good” or not, but I couldn’t stop watching 3D polar bears swim through the water at Sony’s booth).

Here are my Top 5 mobile devices from CES 2010:

1. Lenovo LePhone

Lenovo’s LePhone was the most compelling new mobile phone shown at CES, even if it’s not destined for a North American release at this point, and probably wasn’t the “best” phone at the show. Why? First off, Lenovo entering the smartphone game with an Android device for the Chinese market speaks volumes to what’s happening to the mobile industry:

• Internet consumption is going from portable (laptops and netbooks) to pocketable (smartphones) and PC makers want in on the action. 
• Android’s cheap, customizable OS-as-business model is starting to make real inroads. Look for this trend to explode in 2010.
• China. Is. Huge. If Chinese consumers are ready for smartphones, you betcha the world’s consumer electronics makers are ready for the Chinese market.

Subaru rolled-out its Hybrid Tourer Concept this morning in Detroit and what a feast for the eyes it is. Featuring gullwing doors, an array of screens including one integrated into the steering wheel and a wide open interior facilitated by a flat floor design, the Hybrid Tourer first seen at the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show is a showcase for the company’s planned development of a gas/electric hybrid system based on the boxer engine set to hit the market in 2012.
..

Tags: AWD,
Electric,
Hybrid,
naias 2010,
Subaru

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• Paris Motor Show highlights: Honda’s new Insight hybrid

Naughty Bear is an upcming PS3 and Xbox 360 game from Artificial Mind and Movement and 505 Games. It stars a bear who, as you can glean from the title, is naughty. How did he become this

Everywhere you look these days, someone is putting an iPod dock into something to try and convince you to play your favorite audio device through their product. SI Products has launched a few interesting variations on the dock theme at this year’s CES trade show in Las Vegas including a voice-controlled alarm clock, a “Roman Clock” and a news and weather information center…

Tags: Apple,
CES 2010,
Clock,
docking station,
iPhone,
iPod,
iPod touch,
iTunes,
LCD,
News,
Remote Control,
Subwoofer,
Voice recognition,
Weather

Related Articles:

• Sony’s latest iPod dock range
• ZN9 Dual Alarm Clock Radio
• Waterdrop Weather Station
• Sony’s ICF-CL75iP combination alarm clock, photo frame and iPod dock
• The cheapest iPhone dock available
• Talking alarm clock teaches kids to tell the time… and stay in bed longer

Who would have thought that one day we’d mention Ferrari and Chrysler in the same sentence – but with Fiat and Chrysler now working together, that day has become a reality.

While the 458 Italia is no where in plain site, Ferrari is using a little section at Chrysler’s display to show off the Ferrari 599XX.

Power for the Ferrari 599XX comes from a 6.0L V12 engine making 700-hp with a maximum torque of 479 lb-ft. Ferrari also added a new F1 inspired gearbox that transfers power to the wheels with gear change time cut down to 60 ms.

The Ferrari 599XX is only available to a select group of clients and we’re not one of them.

Click through for more high-res images from Detroit.

2010 Detroit: Ferrari 599XX:

All Photos Copyright © 2009 Omar Rana – egmCarTech.

– By: Omar Rana

The Real Housewives of Orange County’s Gretchen Rossi has made good on her threat to launch a music career. Yikes…..

Gretchen premiered her debut single, “Nothing Without You,” on Cali’s “Valentine In The Morning” on Tuesday. The socialite will donate proceeds from the sale of the single to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and his Jeff Beitzel Foundation.

(Sidebar: I had no idea this song was done it memory of Gretchen’s fiance. My apologies for the harsh critique I made of it earlier…..)

Click Here To Listen To Gretchen Rossi’s Debut Single “Nothing Without You….”

“NOTHING WITHOUT YOU” Lyrics:

Fallen down

I’m nothing without you

Subaru of America has officially announced that it has achieved an absolute sales record of 216,652 units for 2009, representing a 15% year-to-year increase over the 2008 figures.

In a bit more interesting announcement made at NAIAS, the company has presented new versions for its sales leader, the Forester compact crossover SUV.

The Forester will now feature a 10 way electric driver seat as standard for the 2.5X Premium version and bluetooth wireless capability for… (read more)

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] today announced that it will provide systems design, development and testing services for the U.S. Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS).

IBCS is part of the Army’s modernization effort; it will integrate current and future air and missile defense systems into a common battle command system.

“The integration of sensors, weapons and battle management software through IBCS will provide the warfighter with a unified, open-architecture environment and the capability to counter continually evolving air and missile threats,” said Dave Pope, Boeing director of Command and Control Enterprise Solutions.

“Boeing’s experience as a system-of-systems integrator will help ensure IBCS increases warfighter effectiveness against these threats.”

Boeing is a member of the IBCS team led by Northrop Grumman Corp. [NYSE: NOC].

Boeing is responsible for leading the IBCS test activity, including developing the contractor test plan, testing software and hardware, and verifying and validating system requirements.

Boeing also will lead the design, development and testing of the IBCS “plug-and-fight” interface, which will serve as a bridge between the existing legacy systems and the new battle command system.

IBCS is expected to be fielded by 2014.

About Boeing Defense, Space & Security

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world’s largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world’s largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $32 billion business with 70,000 employees worldwide.

MEDIA CONTACT:Christina E. Kelly, 714-896-1486
Boeing Communications
[email protected]