You know those awesome cars we saw that were so different and advanced looking they were awesome to read in the future “what’s coming in the future” magazines back in the day. Well we’re still driving albeit nice looking hybrid cars at best but nothing really advanced looking has actually come to market.
The Aperta is the first of those cars to actually start coming to market, a large departure from traditional car form and a major leap forward in just about everything inside as well. This baby’s full electric and space age looking, in a bit of a surprise Road & Track Magazine has managed to talk their way into a full test drive. Besides them noticing that this car definitely turns heads (in a good way in the way i would imagine). The car isn’t a speed demon but they did mention that due to it’s go-kart style handling and large windshields it makes the pavement easy to see which makes it seem like your moving a lot faster than you really are moving.
R&T Magazine also said that the gull wing doors will take some getting used to for those that aren’t used to them which most people won’t be. While the car is surprisingly small the inside is very roomy. While this is a major move towards seeing this parked in front of your house or say… in front of some luxury hotel rooms. The fact that it’s on the streets being test driven by magazines is definitely a step towards us actually getting our hands on it and driving one home from the distributor.
Source: Road and Track
Posted in Auto, Innovation
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Ok this I definitely did not see coming in my crystal ball, where companies around the world are shedding thousands of jobs at a time and cutting entire divisions (hell i Just posted about Pioneer not making televisions anymore!), in a bit of an odd turn of events Communications Workers of America which has been working on behalf of 20,000 workers with AT&T Mobility to rework their contracts has just gone ahead and authorized the entire 20,000 workers to strike and it could happen quite soon. The vote has taken place and apparently if the negotiations with AT&T doesn’t start to improve and progress we may see those 20,000 on picket lines or staying home.
As it stands now the union won’t start the strike until it gets final approval from the union’s executive board and the president of the union sets an actual date for the strike. AT&T stands by that it maintains a good relationship with the unions for its workers. In fact more of AT&T’s workers are unionized than any other carrier in the US, they shrug the vote off as basically just part of the negotiations progress. From the look of things the union won’t be happy with some promotional pens as a bonus for their workers, as their contracts expired and they wouldn’t be going through the entire big negotiations if it wasn’t for something big. The scary part is that they say their ready for all possibilities including the possibility that the 20,000 workers could go on strike. Personally I think poking the big corporate giants with a stick in this hard economic time isn’t the best idea, I mean even if your contract is expiring this week, most people are fighting to keep a job not bitching about the deal they got or the contract their stuck with.
But that’s just my 2 cents, I mean really I find the concept of 20,000 people getting their contracts all negotiated for together is odd, i mean aren’t we in a performance based world, shouldn’t each of those 20,000 people be evaluated on their own merits?
Source: RCRWireless
Ok when rumors start flying that a major player such as Pioneer is dropping their TV production and dropping their DVD business into a new company things can get a bit dicey. Apparently the original plan was to source Panasonic plasma panels in a way to cut costs, but in the end they ended up still facing a loss of just over one billion dollars, this has pretty much forced their hand to close down their TV development and production completely.
They also apparently are working with Sharp to spin their DVD business into a new company together that would basically shed several thousand employees over the next year or so and close down the Shizuoka plant which would be added to the US and European plant closings we’ve heard are happening. I mean this economic downturn is really pruning the companies that were wasting cash on things or just braking even before it started to turn bad. Though personally I still don’t know what Pioneer will be doing I mean will they be making tv stands and mp3 players? Or are they going to cut all the fat down until their only making cameras or silicon chips or something how far will they keep cutting back. I mean it’s not small things their cutting, LaserDisc is dead, their TV manufacturing is dead, and their DVD business is on 1 leg?
Source: Engadget
It looks like competition has widdled things out to be a little bit too thin for some companies in the downloadable market, and the latest company to walk past the exit signs and close shop is Ruckus Music. It hung on for quite some time even though it was pretty well forgotten when you remember it was up against online music giants like Microsoft and Apple not to mention the countless number of other small online download websites and networks.
The fact that their closing is not surprising but it’s a little bit surprising how they did it, I mean their website all of a sudden just points to the image you see at the top of the post. This does however make me wonder, how many users did they have? Did they use DRM? Because if so they basically screwed the DRM users that bought their music. Or did they actually have no users left that they managed to just close it off without having to worry about things like disappointing users?
Source: Engadget
You know of you look up the stuff that comes out of china, you’ll find everything from bootleg Xbox consoles to bootleg Nixon watches. Considering how popular the iPod is you can bet yourself their have been fake iPod’s in the past.
But considering theirs a war between Microsoft’s Xbox and Apple’s iPod instead of making a fake of each, one Chinese company decided to combine the 2, the case and screen size of the iPod and general layout but the round circle (Yet not iPod quality clicker wheel). For those looking for the worst resolution out of the 3 but actually some pretty nice features such as lots of codec support, USB2 and microSD slot then it might not be all bad to buy the QQ K805. But then remember it is that crappy Chinese knock off quality, so don’t be expecting anything relevantly as good quality as the real zune or ipod.
Source: DAP Review
You know those awesome cars we saw that were so different and advanced looking they were awesome to read in the future “what’s coming in the future” magazines back in the day. Well we’re still driving albeit nice looking hybrid cars at best but nothing really advanced looking has actually come to market.
