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OK, Yakuza fans. You can stop cursing at Sega for not saying anything clear-cut about a localized Yakuza 3. Sega of America’s Aaron Webber has

Sony has detailed the next PS3 system software update, Update 3.15. This one’s optional, but it does have some nifty new features. Two of the things included in the update are a new data transfer feature and

Filed under: Concept Cars, Minivan/Van, Lexus, Scion, Toyota, Design/Style

In anticipation of the debut of the all-new 2011 Toyota Sienna at the 2009 LA Auto Show in December, the folks responsible for the minivan invited us to take a peek inside their Calty design center in Newport Beach, California. Calty Design Research is the Toyota design center that created production cars like the ’78, ’90 and ’00 Toyota Celica, ’07 FJ Cruiser, ’07 Tundra, ’08 Highlander, ’08 Scion xB, and ’09 Venza, as well as the Lexus LF-C, FT-SX, Scion t2B, Scion FUSE, FT-HS and A-BAT concepts.

It’s not very often that they open the doors of this design center to the public – let alone journalists – so we jumped at the chance. We spent a day with the group directly responsible for the 2011 Sienna and also met with Calty and Toyota officials. It was an enlightening day in which we learned about what inspired this third generation people-hauler, what Calty offers to differentiate it from other Toyota design houses, and why full-size clay models are still so important in the world of design, among other things.

Follow the jump to travel with us past the velvet rope and into Calty.

Continue reading Feat of Clay: We take a peek inside Toyota’s Calty design center

Feat of Clay: We take a peek inside Toyota’s Calty design center originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The market was headed lower early on, but Obama’s speech to the Brookings Institute provided no help. He even promised to eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses — theoretically a real supply-side stimulus idea — but that was no help.

So does the market not like Obama? No, that’s not the answer. The answer is that the market doesn’t move on what Presidents say, and if people think otherwise, they’re probably seeing the world through ideological blinders.

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See Also:

• Small Business Income Has Fallen Off A Cliff
• Only 20% Of Small Business Owners Think The Worst Is Over
• Small Business Expansion Plans At The Lowest Level In Years

In our book notes on the Gastrokid cookbook, we said that the recipes weren’t so much recipes as sketches of inspiration and ideas. That’s not a bad thing though, not at all. The book is full of quick and inspirational ideas like this one: High-heat roasted vegetables.

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While the increase of 30,000 American troops in Afghanistan has garnered most of the
headlines, a concurrent increase on the civilian side also is occurring, the U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan told Congress today…

The National Guard is poised to make unique contributions in Afghanistan and
continue operations in Iraq, the National Guard deputy commander of U.S. Army Forces
Command said here Dec. 7…

More than 100 chaplains and chaplain assistants from throughout the Air Force
attended the Chaplain Corps Summit here recently, in part to celebrate 60th
anniversary of the Air Force Chaplain Corps and the 100th anniversary of the
chaplain assistant career field…

More than 20 disadvantaged children in Afghanistan will get new bikes this month
thanks to a group of Anchorage volunteers and an assist from the Alaska Air National
Guard…

Even the most advanced military aircraft needs fuel in order to be of
use…

The Defense Department has made progress in improving its response to the needs of
sexual assault victims, but needs to do more, a special task force has
determined…

Here’s one more book in our list of books to consider as gifts this holiday. This last book is one that I want to devour, but I am forcing myself to nibble it instead — short, delicious essays, consumed one by one.

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We’ve had stories about consumers complaining that ebooks are too expensive and about book publishers complaining that ebooks are too cheap. Guess who’s getting squeezed in the middle? According to this unsourced report (so, perhaps take it with a grain of salt), Amazon is losing $2 per ebook sale, because publishers are wholesaling the books at $12, while Amazon wants to keep selling its ebooks at $10. The conclusion is the same all the way around, however: the publishers are living in a fantasy world if they think that $12 makes sense as a wholesale price for an ebook. Without the cost of printing, binding and distribution, the wholesale price should be a hell of a lot lower.

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Our look at some recent books that would make great gifts for cooks this Christmas continues with the latest from young star chef Marcus Samuelsson. New American Table is a love song to Samuelsson’s adopted country, the United States, and especially to New York City, which practically shows up as an extra character in this book.

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“If you’re a parent, you don’t have time to read cookbooks. That’s why we wrote this one.” That’s how Hugh Garvey and Matthew Yeomans start their new book. It’s a pretty good way to sum up this slim, well-designed, and highly entertaining book for parents fed up with feeding their youngsters.

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Google wants to recreate the world online, at least that’s what it looks like, as it’s been adding all manner of imagery and data to Google Maps. At first, it was satellite imagery of most parts of the world making for a very interesting perspective one that wasn’t available for the public prior to that. Later it started to include Street View images to get a feel for the locations from the ground level. And finally it is now gathering aerial images of major cities around the world in an effort to add yet another perspective. These images aren’t live yet, but Google is making a first step by letting developers access them in two cities in the US, San Jose and San Diego.

“Starting today, developers will have access through the Google Maps API to high-resolution overhead imagery that is presented in a new aerial perspective. This is currently available in 2 spots in California: San Jose and San Diego,” Randy Wilson and Manish Patel, Google Imagery Team, wrote.

“This new perspective gives users the ability to tilt their view of the world. In addition to seeing hotel rooftops like in our current “satellite” view, users can now see both the rooftop and sides of the hotel at an angle. In fact, users can rotate around all the sides of a hotel to get 4 different views from back to front,&rdqu… (read more)

Dubai’s economic meltdown was a warning sign of further sovereign default troubles for other governments.

CMA, a credit information specialist, tracks the world’s most volatile sovereign debt issuers according to percentage changes in their 5 year Credit Default Swaps.

On top of their list for the greatest sovereign risks are countries from the former Russian Eastern Bloc, conflict-torn nations, and an oil-rich dictatorship.

See the next round of governments to go bankrupt >

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Not surprisingly, delivery services and freight forwarders have been an “industry on the move” recently.  And, as if on cue, FedEx announced before  the bell this morning that it expects to report a profit that is considerably higher than their previous guidance.  FedEx is wayyy out of our field of interest, but there are, in fact, lots of delivery services and freight forwarders in the small-cap world, even if they don’t advertise on the SuperBowl broadcast.

Look at Purchase NY-based Atlas Air Worldwide (Nasdaq: AAWW; http://www.atlasair.com/), for instance.  They may not be cashing in on the Christmas season, but they are delivering big items for big customers.  They just announced this morning, for instance, that they are delivering 55 mine-resistant vehicles to US troops in Afghanistan.  But they do a lot more than just deliver things — they also operate a charter service whose large-client list also includes the US military.  The company sports a market cap of about $725 million, and completed just before Halloween a follow-on stock offering run by Morgan Stanley & Goldman Sachs, raising about $112 million for the general fund.  The shares are trading at $35.07, within kissing distance of  the 52-week high at $37.97, and on good average volume of over 500,000 shares. 

Atlas Air offers a wide variety of aircraft, freight, passenger and logistics services

Then there’s Greeneville TN-based Forward Air Corp (Nasdaq: FWRD; http://www.forwardair.com/), which serves the deferred air freight market — things that need to be moved on aircraft, but not in a mad scramble to get there first.  With a market cap of just under $700 million it is right in our crosshairs, and the stock at $24.02 is not far off its year-high of $26.29, on volume of nearly 700,000 shares a day.

Please do your own diligence before trading or owning any stock — we do not recommend stocks; we just write on interesting companies.

Downers Grove IL-based Hub Group Inc (Nasdaq: HUBG; http://www.hubgroup.com/)   is another case in point.  With a market cap of  just about $1 billion it still qualifies as small cap, and its shares at $26.61 are not far off the year-high of $28.47 on average volume of about 390,000 shares per day.  HUBG is an “asset-light” freight mover that basically contracts its services out in a variety of transport modes, most commonly rail and trucking.  HUBG seems mainly to carry consumer goods and durable goods (your new washer-dryer combo, for instance) in container-size quantities.

Fort Smith AR-based Arkansas Best Corp (Nasdaq: ABFS; http://www.arkbest.com/)  is a less-than-truckload (LTL) specialist, and going on 90 years in the business.  They carry commercial and industrial loads and operate nationwide.  They lost money in their most recent quarter due to the general downturn in the economy, but the way I read their balance sheet, they have around $190 million cash and short-term securities, an almost negligible amount of long-term debt, and a current ratio of a bit better than 1.7:1.  At $27.43, the stock is down from its 52-week high of $34.56 for a current market cap of about $685 million and average daily volume of about 500,000 shares.  Might be worth a gander, since longterm viability does not seem to be a problem.

Finally if special situations appeal to you, have a look at Overland Park KS-based YRC Worldwide Inc (Nasdaq: YRCW, http://www.yrcw.com/) , which is just being dropped from the Dow Jones Transport Index, and is facing a deadline for an exchange offer of equity for debt today (Tuesday the 8th).  The stock has plunged to $1.02 vs a year-high of $6.18.  Today’s market cap is about $60 million, and daily volume on the stock is in the millions of shares as people jockey to get in or out of a company that seems to be accelerating down.  It remains one of the largest transportation service providers in the world, and there are 11 analysts following them who see losses diminishing compared to last year. 

None of these looks like a lump of coal in the Christmas stocking, at least not to us, although YRCW has all the earmarks of a lottery ticket as opposed to a longterm investment.