« March 2006 | Main | May 2006 »
BMW develops ecofriendly city-car
With gas prices on the rise again, hybrid vehicles once again come to mind.
But let's face it, those Toyota Priuses make you look as hip as if you were wearing Tevas to a night club.
All the style conscious tree huggers therefore should be rejoicing that BMW is developing a city vehicle that will get 100 miles to the gallon, including BMW styling and coolness.
At such fuel consumption rates, it also starts to make sense to use a hybrid vehicle. Because the current generation of hybrids are lacking in several areas, as the NY Times pointed out recently. A fuel sipping hybrid only really benefits in the city. On the highway the electric motor won't do you any good, just forcing you burn gas to haul the battery's weight around.
Even worse, some of the new hybrids such as the Ford Escape Hybrid and Lexus RX Hybrid are still gas guzzling monsters. They're just somewhat less gas guzzling monsters.
Consumers aren't biting, and wisely so. Driving a Toyota Prius Hybrid for five year and 75,000 miles is likely to save the owner a whopping $300, while some of the other models actually cost more than a gasoline vehicle.
Lexus RX Hybrid: posing as eco-friendly but guzzling at a rate of 31 miles per gallon in the city and 27 per gallon on the highway.
Tags: hybrid, bmw, toyota prius, lexus RX hybrid
April 29, 2006 at 02:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Student busted for PSP porn
Police in Bismarck have charged a 14 year-old student with a class C felony after he brought porn images to school on his Sony PSP.
Well, that and showing it to his fellow students, which in legal term amounts to "promoting obscenity to minors".
The student got into even more trouble when he retaliated against a fellow student who had told on him, scratching him a key. It just goes to show that nothing good comes from porn.
April 29, 2006 at 02:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (126) | TrackBack
F-Secure casts some stones
Blogs can be a powerful tool to spread information, but this week we were saddened when F-Secure chose to use its blog to wrongly accuse vnunet.com of spreading misinformation (full disclosure: this blog is part of vnunet.com and its author is a vnunet.com employee).
Vnunet.com reporter Matt Chapman at the Infosec security expo in London spoke with F-Secure's UK country manager, who told him about a new Symbian worm that allegedly sends text messages to premium numbers. Smelling an interesting news story, Iain assumed that a country manager for F-Secure qualified as a trustworthy news source, and proceeded to write his story.
F-secure on Thursday responded on its blog, claming that Iain had his facts mixed up. But while the blog post was written at F-Secure's corporate headquarters in Finland, they failed to check with either F-Secure UK or with vnunet.com. While accusing vnunet.com of poor reporting, they failed to check their facts and rushed to conclusions.
An audio recording soon popped up that set the record straight (audio linked below). While it took some time and several friendly emails, F-Secure has now updated its blog and removed all accusations against vnunet.com.
The question remains how many of the people who saw the original blog posting will also read the updated version. Blogging isn't just nice PR tool, but comes with a certain responsibility too.
But no hard feelings.
Misinformation can lead to embarrassing situations
Photo: steven todey
Tags: f-secure, security, blogosphere
April 29, 2006 at 01:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft ups the piracy stakes
Microsoft's latest security update offer a little more than just that. Users running a pirated copy of the operating system found out that they will now receive periodic, nagging reminders of the fact that their copy of Windows failed to pass an authenticity test.
But rest assured, the reminders are easily defeated.
This is just another step in a never ending game of cat and mouse between pirates and commercial software makers.
But how long will Microsoft continue to play nicely? If the company can give you a nagging reminder, it can wipe your entire hard drive. That potential threat plus the fact that using pirated software is just as bad as stealing beer from the super market, should be enough reason to stop using illegally copied software.
Besides, there are plenty of free software applications available. All the more reason to go for the free beer instead of stealing some.
Tags: Microsoft, windows genuine advantage, piracy
April 28, 2006 at 01:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Sun's new corporate strategy
Observing Sun sometimes can be like watching a metronome in action, swinging back and forward and touting every new product as the next big thing that will squash IBM, Intel, Dell and HP (either one or all of them, depending on the day of the week).
But after seeing Sun's "wheel of strategy", it all made sense again (click on the image to view a slightly larger version).
Via: JWZ
Tags: sun microsystems, strategy, jonathan schwartz, scott mcnealy
April 27, 2006 at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Intel's admits to harsh market realities
Intel is preparing a new reorganisation to meet " business realities", Intel CEO Paul Otellini said at a financial analyst conference this morning.
These things always sound so much better after they are polished up by public relations. But the reality is that Intel failed to anticipate AMD's competition as well as several market trends.
Demand for PCs is starting to level off, and Intel's premium brand positioning makes it a second tier supplier for price conscious markets that show the most growth.
The chipmaker meanwhile is using its platforms to ignite demand for its forthcoming processors. The Viiv platform for instance will entice consumers to put a PC in their living room where there was none before, allowing Intel to sell additional processors. Meanwhile the vPro platform promises to reduce desktop maintenance costs. Those cost savings, Intel hopes, will persuade businesses to purchase systems with the latest Intel chips instead of opting for an older (and therefore cheaper) model.
But it will take several months because those efforts will provide any pay-off. In the mean time Intel will have to see how AMD continues its march forward, and rubs in the Intel's past mistakes.
As Intel is shaking up things, perhaps its time to reconsider the "Leap ahead" new corporate tagline as well.
Mr. Otellini on Monday, facing a leap backwards in the comapny's financial succes.
Tags: intel, AMD, corporate restructuring, paul otellini
April 27, 2006 at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yahoo ships do-it-yourself Tivo
Yahoo has released a free application that transforms your computer into a digital video recorder that you can hook up to your television.
The Yahoo! Go TV software provides an interface that can be used from a living room couch, featuring large buttons and icons. And as an added bonus you get some free internet television content in the form of music videos.
A television tuner card is required to record television shows, but the software is worth a look even without one, because the application also plays photo slideshows, DVDs, as well as movies and music stored on your computer hard drive.
Yahoo! Go TV essentially gets you a Viiv PC without the Viiv price tag and the need for Windows XP Media Center Edition. If Yahoo would only provide a version for OS X or Linux, then they can really give Intel and Microsoft a run for their money.
Yahoo Go TV is available for US users only, but the site will still let you download and install the application from anywhere in the world. It will check your location based on the IP address, but instructing your firewall to block all traffic from "YGTV.exe" will solve that problem (although it will also disable all the online features). You could try using a proxy server based in the US, but that requires a bit more of an effort.
Tags: yahoo go TV, yahoo, intel viiv, microsoft, windows xp media center edition, WinMCE
April 27, 2006 at 05:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yahoo prepares YouTube competitor
Yahoo! could be looking to expand its Yammy video hosting service to regions out side of South Korea, where the service was developed.
David Rice, the a vice president for product strategy with Yahoo International touted the service as "YouTube on steroids".
He declined to comment on Yahoo's plans (if any) to launch the service outside of Korea, but was quick to add that "video is very important for us."
Yahoo so far has missed out on the user generated video trend, instead linking to videos that are hosted on third party websites as well as YouTube.
This is admittedly a case of reading between the lines. So to let you judge for yourself, I've posted an audio segment where Rice talks about the Yahoo!'s plans for online video.
David Rice
Scribbling the grand Yahoo! vision on the whiteboard
Tags: yahoo, google, youtube, yahoo video, david rice
April 27, 2006 at 12:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Investors say: Yeah! McNealy's gone, and quickly come to their senses
Sun Microsystems' stock price celebrated McNealy's departure for about 1 hour this morning before it dropped back to it pre-shake up level.
Sun needed some new leadership, but the brief spike demonstrated that investors realized his departure won't result in an instant turnaround.
The fact remains that Sun is struggling to reach profitability. And it might have a nice product technology portfolio, but great technology doesn't always translate into great revenues.
Sun is actually living proof of that. It's up to Schwatz to proof that he can break out of that cycle.
tags: sun microsystems, scott mcnealy, jonathan schwartz
April 25, 2006 at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Former CA chief takes responsibility for his greed
CA's former boss Sanjay Kumar has pleaded guilty to charges that he manipulated the company's revenues.
A sentence has yet to be set, but the big question isn't about Kumar's jail term, but about what will happen to an outrageous bonus package.
Manipulating CA's revenues allowed Kumar to qualify for a $100m bonus. The figure is outrageous by itself, but even more so because the company prided itself with contributing to several charities – Kumar himself fled Sri Lanka because of the conflict going on there.
The company had a number of pet charity projects. During CA World in 2003 for instance, the company handed out chips to delegates that represented a donation that they could make one of several selected charities. During his keynote presentation at the show, Kumar displayed a video of puppy-eyed children that were saved by those charities.
"I always get a little wet in my eyes when I see that," he commented after the video ended.
That's the same feeling that investors must have gotten when Kumar entered his guilty plea yesterday, admitting that he defrauded them out of millions for his personal financial gain.
Kumar
Photo: CA
Tags: CA, sanjay kumar, fraud, white collar crime, computer associates
April 25, 2006 at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Spanish
