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»  Android’s popularity is rising, with big jumps in the number of people who currently own a phone running Google’s mobile OS or who plan to buy one soon. [Cellular News]

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»  Vonage believes mobile Internet calling will help it become profitable. [Forbes]

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Videos, Lexus, Luxury

If you haven’t downloaded last night’s Top Gear through some nefarious means, you missed one of the few palatable car reviews the trio has done this season. In addition to taking the BMW X6 globe-trotting and putting the all-new, 325-hp Vauxhall Insignia VXR though its paces, Hammond track tested the Lexus LFA in a segment that brought out our inner nine-year-old.

Get past the flashy graphics and obligatory power slides, and the TG grew came away with a similar stance on Lexus’ first foray in the world of supercars as us – impressed and perplexed. With more power and just as much tech as a Nissan GT-R and 0-60 time and a raison d’être on par with the Ferrari 599 GTB, it’s the price (and a lack of heritage) that leaves Clarkson and Hammond reeling. Make the jump for both the review and the damp Power Lap, and as always, you can get the full episode in high-def glory over at FinalGear.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading Video: Top Gear takes on the Lexus LFA

Video: Top Gear takes on the Lexus LFA originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While some are saying that France’s “three strikes” law has been delayed until April due to data protection issues, others are reporting that the law is in effect as of January 1st, and people should start getting “warning” messages soon. That same article quotes a French senator who believes that 95% of people will “finish with that bad usage” after the second warning message they receive, but others figure what’s more likely is that people will just move on to other ways of accessing files — ways that can’t easily be tracked. My guess is that like when Napster was shut down or with Sweden’s IPRED law, there may be a temporary bounceback in sales, but as more people learn of ways to go back to accessing music for free in ways that are less likely to be caught, they will do so. Quickly. As much as the entertainment industry and some politicians have trouble comprehending this, you can’t stop what technology allows.

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Copper prices are soaring after strikes in one of the largest copper producing nations in the world, Chile, threaten to scuttle output.

AFP: Workers at two mines owned by Chile’s Codelco company, the world’s biggest copper mining company, went on strike on Monday demanding higher pay and better benefits.

Miners at the Chuquicamata and Mina Sur mines, which together account for four percent of the world’s copper production, are calling for a 7.5 percent pay hike as copper prices soar.

Both mines belong to the state-owned Chilean group Codelco, the National Copper Corporation of Chile, which produces around 1.6 million tonnes of copper per year and employs around 5,600 workers.

About a third of the unionised miners failed to show up when their shifts began at 5 am Monday.

It’s good news for copper prices, but could eventually be bad news for Chile given that copper accounts for 25% of the nation’s GDP. Yet the Chilean IPSA index appears to so far be doing just fine. Perhaps it’s because copper producer stocks rallied on the supply threat.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Chinese Demand Will Keep The Boom Going For Copper And Fertilizer In 2010
• Australia: Copper Production To Slow Next Year, Global Shortage Coming
• Crowded Trade: Copper Theft Is Back

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow will be dying.

Damnit all to hell, Bobby Herrick, you sure write purdy. As I sit in my room after watching the most recent episode of “Jersey Shore” (best show…ever?) with my sister, a mere eight hours away from my drive up to the Farm, I find myself looking back on what has been, and eyeing the now fast-developing year.

The entire concept of new year’s resolutions, of squaring upon a single windmill or two to fruitlessly charge, much less toss aside by second week of February, is simply a waste of time. But what the annual playing of “Auld Lang Syne” (amazing lyrics, by the way–Robert Burns was down to rage) does instigate it a much-needed period of contemplation and reflection, which we as insanely busy characters never spare enough time to do well.

Predicted by some to begin with global mayhem, the 2000s wrapped up for me in a Sooners-filled Howard Johnson motel room in El Paso, Texas, literally a mile and half away from scenic Juarez, Mexico, and right across the street from the classiest of establishments, the Prince Machiavelli Lounge. An unexpected, but nonetheless fitting (question mark???) end to a long, strange trip of a decade.

Like many of you, the ‘00s encapsulated my adolescence and over half of my eventual (knock on wood) undergraduate career, among so many other strange and wonderful and painful events that no college paper column could ever do even a shred of justice.

But there is absolutely no need to devote yet another column to looking back at what transpired in 2009, because “The Dude Abides” has been for 10 months now just that, a semi-coherent record of bygone insanity. Rather, even in spite of my history major obsession with the past, I find the focus being directed toward 2010 and beyond.

As a junior, there are casts of thousands of my classmates and friends returning from all corners of the globe after spending the fall immersed in either a Bing Overseas Drinking…er, Studies campus or some other study abroad program. There exists within the ranks of my esteemed class a creeping realization of the transiency that marks our time at the Stan. The graduation of many dear friends in 2009 proved to me what many of my friends who were formerly abroad are now experiencing: the Farm goes on without you, and almost as if you never were here at all.

This will be my last hurrah on the Farm for this school year. I am getting a chance to hightail to D.C. for the Stanford in Washington program during spring, which I am all a-titter about. But as of March 19, what stands between me and the Real World are only three debauched quarters of frolicking among the palm fronds in this sandstone-lined Xanadu (the Samuel Coleridge one, not the house. I have already come clean about my love of the Upper Row). I am neither regretful of my past quarters nor fearful of the future, but this ever-narrowing window of time does force me to pause a bit.

The fact that a winter-quarter junior is getting antsy in the pantsy by the prospect of his final departure from the House That Leland Built is of absolutely no consequence or relevance, much less a new development in the greater history of Stanford students clinging dearly to the University. Not to worry–I got the memo. However, when mulling the undoubted absurdity that will consume my 2010, wherever I may be, the importance of time stands out starkly.

The clock is quite clearly ticking away on my Stanford experience, and having largely found a wonderful little realm (a Warmdom, perhaps?) within the Farm after two-plus years of searching and stumbling, I intend to do everything in my power to see that my remaining days and months are filled with what I actually want to be doing.

All of us at Stanford have our lives to some degree punctuated with inane crap, some of it necessary, but most of it not. We take classes for the simple sake we see others doing the same. We tepidly continue in student groups that have burned us out. Too frequently, we live by standards and ideals laid down by forces other than ourselves.

Fuck ‘em, I say. If it’s starting a student group, pursuing an internship/cute internist, or just planning a gnarly wine social, for god’s sake, do it. Our time is too precious here to be wasted on trifling nonsense. Like this column, for instance. Happy 2010, folks.

“All that we eat, all that we wear, our houses, every comfort, and all our luxuries are brought us to-day by these invisible, but almost omnipotent, genii of the fire and the lamp and the thunder-storm.” That was R. H. Thurston, director of the …

There’s really no sense having any kind of long term policy, because the LHC is going to kill us all.

See also: Top Ten Business Smartphones of 2009

A few readers asked me for a Top 5 Smartphones of 2009 list. One even suggested that I’d promised such a list a few months back. I don’t remember that, but I believe him … and am happy to oblige, as tough as it’s been to settle on such a list.

So here you go, sorta. My Top Ten Smartphones of 2009 is actually two lists: The Top Ten Business Smartphones and the Top 5 Consumer Smartphones. Considering that smartphones are becoming more and more mainstream, and that subtle differences between “productivity smartphones” and “entertainment smartphones” are becoming more and more important to consumers, a dual list seemed like the way to go. 

Bear in mind that this list will likely be close to obsolete before the first three months of 2010 have come and gone – that’s how fast the marketplace changes. But for now, looking at 2009, I’ve made my picks.

And so here’s one half of the list, my ten favorite consumer smartphones of 2009:

Top 10 Consumer Smartphones

1. Apple iPhone 3GS/3G

Fanboys. Haters. Biases. Prejudices. Nothing seems to inspire extreme emotions amongst tech blog devotees like an Apple product. And no Apple product inspires  more of those feelings than the iPhone. 

Fine, whatever. It’s the best consumer smartphone out there right now – as in, if you told me I had to recommend a smartphone to someone who I knew nothing about, and I couldn’t ask any questions about their likes or usage habits, I’d recommend iPhone. Why? No other phone combines Web, Email, Fun, and Usability like Apple did with this thing. And, oh yeah: Apps, apps, apps. You might not care about them, but Average Joe and Jill do. iPhone OS is due for a serious overhaul, as even the average consumer is going to want multitasking out of their smartphone this year. But for now, it doesn’t really matter – so long as Apple and AT&T work out that nasty dropped call business sooner than later.

2. HTC Droid Eris/Hero

HTC’s Hero was the first Android phone I really got excited about. Why? HTC took what they’d learned from years of making Windows Mobile more usable and applied it to a modern, open-source mobile platform in Android. Sense UI means that users who aren’t interested in tinkering get home screens full of useful goodies right out of the box. HTC’s custom apps mean they also get iPhone-style pinching and zooming on the Web and in their photo albums. Sprint’s version of Hero traded the European version’s iconic angles for a rounder (some say blander) look, and then Verizon came along with a thinner, slightly faster take on what Sprint had launched. The result is my current favorite of all the Android phones out there.

In responding to a lengthy review (.pdf), the Internal Revenue Service has decided that it needs stricter oversight of firms that prepare tax returns. It wants these parties to register, prove competency, perform continuing education and follow ethics guidelines. While these new rules seem sensible at first glance, I think they miss the point.

Here’s a key statistic from the report:

For 2007 and 2008, over 80 percent of all federal individual income tax returns were prepared by paid tax return preparers or by taxpayers using consumer tax preparation software.

80% is a lot! So the logic goes, since so many people use prepares, the IRS better make sure that these parties are doing things right. Given the current convoluted and overly-complex tax system, this probably makes sense. The IRS is one of those government agencies with too small a staff to possibly ensure that everyone is paying their taxes properly.

Even though the press release talks a lot about protecting consumers, I can’t help but believe that this is really being done mostly to ensure that Uncle Sam gets his taxes. That’s one way to increase tax revenue.

As an honest taxpayer, I’m okay with that. Whenever I hear someone talk about their “tax guy” who saved them thousands of dollars this year, I always squirm. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons out there to claim deductions, I have little doubt that there are quite a few shady tax preparers who stretch the truth a little too far and ignore the intended purpose for many tax deductions.

Despite the fact that this regulation might seem sensible, I would have responded differently to the statistic I quoted above. If over 80% of people hire others to help prepare their taxes, my immediate reaction isn’t to demand more regulation of those preparers — it’s to demand a simpler tax code. If we had a clearer, less-complex tax system, then we wouldn’t have to waste money hiring people to help us with our taxes. Heck, I used to work in finance and have a degree in physics, but I still use tax software to avoid wasting countless hours to fully understand the tax code. As we all know, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is now technically the head of the IRS, has also used such software in the past — and made mistakes!

So yes, in the current framework, regulate tax preparers. But a much better solution would be to construct a new tax system where we don’t need tax preparers. Maybe I’m crazy, but I think more simplicity is a far better alternative to more regulation.

Russia and Belarus failed to renew thier crude oil agreement that expired on New Year’s Eve, increasing the likelyhood of yet another fuel shut-off during the dead of winter.

The disagreement pertains to export tarrifs on crude oil, similar to a dispute that went on for weeks last year between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas prices and transit fees.

This year, the crude oil pipeline under dispute is a crucial component of Siberian petroleum exports to Western Europe via the Druzhba pipeline system.

The New York Times:  As is the case with natural gas pipelines in Ukraine, about 1.3 million barrels of oil per day shipped along the Belarussian spur of the Druzhba pipeline supply both the internal market in Belarus and the more lucrative markets in the European Union, like Germany and Poland.

On Sunday, Reuters cited two oil traders as saying that Russia had begun curbing supplies to the domestic market by cutting the flows to two refineries, Naftan and Mozyr. In Ukraine last January, that was a first step toward a more general shutdown.

Russian officials have emphasized that the export volumes will continue to flow, but have not commented on the report of a local shut-off in Belarus.

Read the whole thing here.

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See Also:

• The Emerging Ukraine-Russia Energy Crisis
• China And Russia End Up As Huge Winners In The Iraqi Oil Auction

On The Early Show Monday, CBS correspondent Maggie Rodriguez announced that she is four months pregnant and expecting her second child on July 1.

“You guys are going to be uncles!” an excited Rodriguez told co-hosts Harry Smith and Russ Mitchell and meterologist Dave Price on this morning’s show. The beaming 40-year-old then stood up and modeled her petite baby bump.

Maggie and her husband Michael Rodriguez — a marketing executive for Telemundo — are already the parents of a 4-year-old daughter, Daniella.

It’s the start of a new  year and a new decade and it’s the perfect time to resolve to get healthy. Walking just 30 minutes a day, quitting smoking, eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grain and reducing the amount of red meat in your diet are just a few simple things you can do to get started. Here are a few tips for keeping your resolutions.
Photo by: Georgy