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Filed under: GM, Saab, Spyker

It’s now or never. By the end of December General Motors will either divest itself of Saab by selling the Swedish automaker or by permanently closing its doors. And there is but one company bidding for the Swedish automaker — Spyker — which has yet to turn a profit. GM Chairman and interim CEO Ed Whitacre told a group of reporters at the company’s Detroit headquarters that Spyker is the only automaker left bidding for the perennially struggling automaker. Whitacre reportedly told attendees that striking a deal was “possible,” but he then reiterated that Saab would close if the deal isn’t struck by the end of the year.

At the same time, the General is also reportedly selling off bits to the outgoing Saab 9-5 and the pre-2006 9-3 to Chinese automaker BAIC. Tooling for the vehicles is likely never to be used by GM or Spyker in the future so the move makes plenty of financial sense.

While the potential demise of Saab saddens us, especially when considering how close the Swedish automaker is to launching the new 9-5 and perhaps the 9-4, it’s nice to see that the General is finally moving quickly and decisively to right its ship. Hat tip to MowtownMan!

[Source: Reuters]

REPORT: No alternatives left – Whitacre says it’s Spyker or the Grim Reaper for Saab originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every week we bring you our favorite good eating from our friends at Serious Eats. This week there were several recipes that grabbed our attention (cheap lentil soup, Alice Waters’ long-cooked broccoli, and grilled lamb kebabs) plus a guide to mailing baked goods. Very helpful!

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from various sources, 16 December 2009: The Reclaim Power march to the Bella centre was blocked by Danish riot police using batons, pepper spray, tear gas and dogs. At least 200 peope have been detained, perhaps many more. At least 35 injured have been reported. NGO and developing world delegates from inside the COP15 summit – who had been marginalised by the arrival of the delegations of many heads of government – tried to leave the Bella centre to hold a People’s Assembly with Reclaim Power, but were beaten back and gassed… more

Editor’s note: This week and next, we will be doing a series on how kids can give back to other kids.One huge way kids are giving back to kids is by taking part in medical research studies. If you’re a research subject, or the parent of one, you already know that you’re mainly helping not yourself, but generations of kids to come — so that researchers can better understand the disease and find new and better treatments. In this video, the first of several posts about children in medical research, kids and parents talk about their experiences volunteering for a study and what they hope to gain. It was shot in Children’s Clinical and Translational Study Unit, our own “research central.”

Related posts:

1. Kids giving back to kids: Glen Martin – former Children’s patient
2. Stem cell research: a father’s story
3. Domestic violence: medical records can sound an early warning

In case you missed it, the CDC today recalled 800,000 H1N1 vaccine doses meant for children, age 6 months to nearly 3 years old because they lost some of their strength after being released to the public. The good news is that there are no risks to any child who was vaccinated and you don’t need to get your child re-vaccinated if he or she got doses from the recalled batch; it just may be that your child isn’t quite as protected from H1N1 as you originally thought.

Check out the CDC’s Q&A on the topic.

Related posts:

1. Should my child get the swine flu (H1N1) shot?
2. H1N1 (swine flu) weekly update: Oct. 21 – 27
3. H1N1 vaccination starts at Children’s

Lots of folks have been submitting the story of Microsoft’s China operations being caught with its fingers in the cookie jar in directly copying the code from a small company called Plurk. This isn’t just the look and feel that was copied, but it appears that some of the code itself was directly copied. Of course, this seems doubly amusing, since Microsoft has, in the past, been at the forefront of complaining about “piracy” in China — even as the details have long suggested Microsoft benefited greatly from unauthorized copying of its software in China, by building tremendous lock-in and making Microsoft the defacto standard. Of course, when a Microsoft exec recently announced that “piracy” was no longer a threat who knew he meant because Microsoft had decided to go in the other direction and use it to its own advantage?

Of course, I’m joking there. Microsoft continues to insist that piracy is a huge problem, and over in India, Dan alerts us that Microsoft has actually been fined for harassing “pirates” by trying to take them to court in the national capitol, instead of where the “piracy” actually happened:

According to the Court, Microsoft is needlessly abusing its unlimited cash flow as a power tool to financially hurt the defendants, who will have to travel all across the country in order to defend themselves. This abuse of “money power” to “harass” defendants is unacceptable according to the Court.

“When the constitution of India provides equality before law, this equality has to be all pervasive and cannot be allowed to be diluted because of money power or lobbying power,” Judge Dhingra commented on the case.

So, it’s fine to try to bankrupt “pirates” as you’re pirating software yourself? Of course, Microsoft will squirm out of this one just fine. It’ll claim it was a mistake, probably throw some money at Plurk (who just got a ton of free PR) and move on, still claiming that “piracy” is bad, bad, bad and must be stopped (especially in China).

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The first annual Inside Gaming Awards were held last December 11th in Los Angeles, and looking at 16 awards that the guys at Infinity Ward took home, it’s safe to say that they were all over the

– Easy in-field upgrade to corner sealing
– Low machine height enables higher production speed and increases Overall Efficiency Equipment (OEE)
– Economic entry model with multiple in-field upgrade options

The machine’s low height and the numerous in-field upgrade options make the new SVI vertical bagger series from Bosch Packaging Technology ideal for a wide range of food and non-food applications. The intermittent SVI machines can produce bags with corner seal and doy style bags with optional zippers. For corner sealing, an in-field upgrade of the machine is made with an additional module. The production of a doy style bag can be easily performed by turning the machine cross seal jaws to a 90 degrees position. Whenever the package style is changed, there is no need to adapt the machine height or dosing platform. This efficient changeover reduces machine downtime during format change and increases the overall performance of the equipment.

For the production of several standard bag styles the operator simply changes the forming set. This flexibility allows manufacturers to produce a high variety of packaging styles for point-of-sale diversity with a very short time to market. The SVI series is designed to package an unlimited range of food and non-food products, such as powders, bakery and confectionery items, tea, coffee, fresh pasta, as well as pet food and non-food products such as detergents.

The SVI series consists of two machines for packaging different format ranges: the SVI 4020 packages bag sizes with a maximum 400 mm width, while the SVI 2620 forms a bag with a maximum 260 mm width. The machines have an output ranging from 10 to 120 bags per minute.

“The uniqueness of the SVI series is its combination of low machine height, and bag format flexibility due to its versatile upgrade capabilities,” says Eric Aasen, Product Manager Vertical at Bosch Packaging Technology. “The series is the most cost-effective and competitive solution for customers looking to increase their production efficiency and differentiate their products at point-of-sale with a diverse choice of bag shapes and styles.”
The flexible SVI series offers heatsealing and polysealing options, with freely adjustable sealing temperatures. The various up- and downstream interfaces are part of Bosch’s modular machine design concept (Module ++), which allows the easy integration with other packaging machine modules into an efficient packaging line.

Drill or Sneaky Business Trick? You decide!

There are a lot of marketing tricks that businesses use to drill into your brain that you you must buy their product. Being aware of these can help protect you from your subconscious mind. Of course, the flip side is that if you are business, you can use these tricks to make more sales.

1. Limited Time Offer – Act now! It is designed to stop you from hemming and hawing and just make the purchase. If you snooze, you lose out on the good deal. On a completely related note, today is your last day to take advantage of CollegeAdvantage’s free $50 dollars. Act now! [Update: The deadline is extended until the 18th!]
2. Limited Availability Offer – The first 100 customers get a free extra Shamwow! Well, I don’t know if that’s really true of Shamwow, but you see it all the time in those infomercials. The thing is that the infomercials are running all day and night all over the country. So pretty much everyone is going to be included in that first 100 customers. They really have no way to track it.
3. Affiliate Program – This isn’t so sneaky actually. A company, like the CollegeAdvantage offer above, offers to give people a commission for bringing them sales. It’s a cheap form of marketing for the company and they figure that you’ll probably take my somewhat less biased (but probably still biased) word that they offer a good product. In the CollegeAdvantage case, I had written about them in my choosing a 529 plan far before they had an affiliate program.
4. The Surprise – A Trader Joe’s near me came up with the concept of Mystery Beer which I quickly dubbed one of the best ideas ever. It was literally a sealed brown bag of a selection of microbrew beers. Oh what fun to get to the car and see what you got! It brought back the feeling of collecting baseball cards when I was little (another surprise). Can you imagine the amount of sales McDonalds gets each year from people who just want more Monopoly pieces? By the way… that brings me too…
5. The Contest – This is not always used to get you buy something, but more to get you to do something. You can see that you have a chance to win $5,000 from Taco Bell for giving them feedback on your service. That’s bargain-priced market research for a company like them. To explore how this might work, I ran a contest where I asked for readers Valentine’s Day tips and a few days later, I used those tips (with proper attribution) to write Save Money on Valentine’s Day (17 Tips Inside). It was cheaper than hiring a writer and more cost effective than me spending hours trying to research it. The end product came out better too, don’t you think?
6. Portion of the Proceeds go to Charity – This is one of my favorites… especially when they don’t really say what the portion is. For instance, a company that makes $45 bottles of juice, MonaVie, has created a seemingly legit charity called The MORE Project. It’s a non-profit and don’t doubt that they do good work. However, I think the charity exists more to make MonaVie seem like less of scam to potential customers. That’s not to say all charity offers are bad, Coldstone Creamery has an annual event where I believe all the proceeds aid the Make a Wish foundation. Maybe the difference is that I don’t believe Coldstone needs to give back to support their competitively-priced product while MonaVie has to pull out all the stops to get someone to pay 10x more than what you would in a store.
7. The Rebate – It seems like most people know about the rebate’s sneakiness… or maybe it’s just because I’m 33 now and my crowd knows it. When I was 20 though, it got me. The rebate is effective for two reasons 1) the difficulty in filling out the required paperwork… and 2) people’s… ahem… laziness. Between the two, a lot of rebates don’t get processed something that companies call “breakage.” If you see a company put a $300 television out there with a $50 rebate, the company can expect to really get $270 in money from that television as some will pay $300 and not get the rebate and some will get the $250 price after rebate. However that $250 price sure is enticing.
8. No Payments for 18 months! – This is similar to the rebate. It seems like a great deal at the time and may make you buy the product thinking that you don’t have to pay. However, if you are one day late, you get 18 months of credit card late fees tacked on. These places are assuming that some portion of the people are going to pay late, so that’s just extra money for them. Even if all that money just goes to the credit card company, the offer helps the store make more sales.
9. Charging a Premium Price – This doesn’t sound like much of a business trick. However, do you think Tiffany’s jewelry is better made than other jewelry? Are their diamonds different than diamonds you can find elsewhere? Do they have magical special silver than other companies don’t? No. They simply brand themselves as a high-end seller and people start to believe that owning the product is a symbol of status. This is why you don’t see Tiffany’s sell too much at a cheap price… it would erode the premium brand (and premium price) that they’ve built up. And you can’t forget about the price-placebo effect.
10. Multi-Level Marketing – This is a lot like an affiliate program, but with a bit of a twist. Instead of a company just paying people a commission to sell the product, they put a hierarchy into the system where people can actually make more money recruiting other people. They get people excited to earn millions of dollars like the few people who were early in and now at the top of the hierarchy. I’m not a fan of such systems. As a consumer, I don’t want people pitching a “get rich” opportunity, especially when I can look at the numbers and say, hmm… 99% of these people aren’t getting rich. However, from the company’s perspective this is a cheap way to not only recruit millions of salesman, but also millions of customers by convincing them to buy the product themselves.

You may note that a certain company that I mentioned above actually uses quite a few of these business tricks.

Related posts:

1. Top 5 Ways Companies use Psychology to Trick You Over the last month or so, I’ve taken note…
2. Chase is Chasing My Business Away Earlier this weekend, my wife was saying that she’s not…
3. Lending Club Opens For Business Again Lending Club has opened for business again. They come back…
4. Get a Free $50 for Opening a 529 Educational Plan Every now and again Ohio’s 529 Plan, CollegeAdvantage, offers a…
5. My New Business (Take 2) I had mentioned previously that was looking to start a…

Casio rocks it this year with the Exilim Zoom EX-Z280 digital camera, and we like it enough that we are recommending it in this years gift guide. It sports a dedicated Easy Mode, making it easy enough for pretty much anyone who enjoys pressing buttons to operate, while still maintaining the advanced features for more experienced pros, including ones that you don’t typically find on budget-priced digital cameras. One such feature is mechanical (instead of digital) image stabilization, giving you nice clear shots while you stumble around during a holiday party after one-too-many eggnogs, as well as a 4x optical zoom lens. In addition, it shoots video in 720p, so it can even take the place of your Flip-style camcorder. You can grab one now for $173 on Amazon.

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Filed under: Videos, Motorcycle

The last time we were out riding a sportbike, it occurred to us that the most pressing thing missing from modern two-wheelers is weaponry. No, really. Think back in history for a moment… back to the days when horses provided the bulk of our transportation options. Whether it was the days of armored knights or mounted cavalrymen, one thing was constant: weapons. So, shouldn’t we be packing a little sumthin’ on our modern-day steel horses?

At least one enterprising 2006 Honda CBR owner seems to agree with us, and thankfully he’s taken the initial steps to do something about it. How so? By adding a side-mounted rocket launcher. One button click is all it takes to send what appears to be a bottle rocket shooting off into the distance ahead. We’ll go ahead and assume more substantial artillery will come with future revisions. Click past the break to watch the video. Hat tip to yknott!

[Source: The Biker Gene]

Continue reading VIDEO: Motorcycle + rocket launcher = mayhem

VIDEO: Motorcycle + rocket launcher = mayhem originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The market is down today, though it continues to hover somewhere around its highs of the year. But not Goldman Sachs (GS). It’s lost around 16% since early October.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Surprise: Goldman Got Played On Its TARP Warrants (GS)
• Roubini: Here’s Five Reasons The "Barbarous Relic" Gold Is Going To Tank
• Jim Chanos: We’re Shorting Autos, China, And Commodities But Not Financials

The beverage container industry continues to fight state and national container legislation despite evidence that such laws could contribute significantly to greenhouse gas reduction while providing energy, recycling and litter control benefits. The industry says community recycling programs, which put the cost burden on communities rather than container manufacturers, are a superior system for processing bottles and cans.

The latest weapon in the industry’s arsenal is a report commissioned by itself; the American Beverage Association (ABA) that says bottles, cans and packages made by its members are easily recyclable because community recycling programs that can handle them serve an overwhelming majority of Americans. Getting more consumers to capitalize on the programs, the study suggests, is the best way to recycle the containers.

But it’s not that simple.

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Need some last minute holiday gift ideas? Here’s a look back at our gift guides and lists from this year’s holiday season.

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Filed under: Coupe, Geneva Motor Show, Hatchback, Audi, Rumormill

There’s still two months to go before the production 2011 Audi A1 is finally scheduled to get its internet close-up ahead of its public debut at the Geneva Motor Show, and the hype machine is already in full swing. No wonder, really, considering how much the Mini line – which, along with the reborn Fiat 500, Audi is obviously targeting with the little A1 – and its excellent advertising campaigns have impacted the public psyche.

One very large question remains, though: Will Audi sell the A1 in the States? We’ve heard from Audi’s head of sales Peter Schwarzenbauer multiple times that the car was designed with the U.S. market in mind, but today we see a conflicting report from Insideline quoting an unnamed Audi insider.

The decision on whether or not the A1 makes the trek to America may well depend on its ability to make money at Mini’s established price points and how strongly Audi believes that U.S. buyers have signaled their willingness to spend premium bucks on small cars. We’ll see…

[Source: Insideline]

REPORT: 2011 Audi A1 not coming to the States originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It turns out that the iPhone isn’t the only new handheld frontier Dirk the Daring is out to conquer this month. Digital Leisure today announced that Nintendo’s DSiWare service will soon be home to Dragon’s Lair as

from davenportgrandjury, 14 December 2009: “For those late in the game, I was recently subpoenaed to a grand jury in Davenport, Iowa and was subsequently charged with conspiracy under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). Grand juries are secret proceedings, and those subpoenaed do not have a right to an attorney or a judge during questioning by the prosecutor. Historically, this legal process has been used in abusive ways to investigate and intimidate social movements…” more