Akku's World

Morris Minor Gown Van Oddity

2011-09-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

Here's something you don't see every day, or indeed, in my case, ever at all. Its a Gown Van based on a Morris Minor LCV. In this case it appears to be the rare and short lived Austin version as well for extra weird points.

As the name suggests, a gown van was used to deliver fancy ladies dresses back in the day when long gowns were de rigueur for polite society events.

This odd little van has curious proportions and hopefully will be restored by an enthusiast of odd light commercials. Its certainly started cheap enough on its eBay listing but who knows what the reserve may be?

If the van's a rockin' don't come a knockin'

2011-09-23T01:28:00.000-07:00

There is rarely a car on eBay which makes me audibly go "wow" or laugh out loud. This Marina van did both. What we have here is a proper old school custom mini van Brit style.

When I were a lad, and all of this were just trees, the local disco lethario would drive a van like this. Its all there, the draylon, the porthole windows (in the shape of a heart for crying out loud, its perfect) and the curiously inappropriate performance hard-tuned engine.

It all appears in good cosmetic order, the seller claims long term storage and knowing what 1970s British Leyland products are like for rot if exposed to the elements I can only assume this to be the cause of its survival.

The white paint is curiously restrained. I would imagine when built the van should have been treated to a full custom stripe, candy, flake, eerie des, vreeble and fogged paint job. Maybe it was built late in the van fad or maybe it was never finished?

Whatever the story this van is a wonderful survivor of an era when enthusiasm was more important than taste. I miss those days. I think I might sneak a bid. It's here for another 2 days...

Whoever buys it has a wonderful oportunity to either preserve it as it is or perhaps finish what waa started with some nice paint (not matt black puuuuh-lease) and a little detailing.

Retro Throwback Morris Minor hot rod truck

2011-09-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading this blog you'll know I am a bit of an enthusiast of the 70s/80s customs and rods. I especially like it when old cars turn up again. So I was happy to spot the Morris Minor LCV on eBay

This is truly redolent on an era. That looks like Triumph brown to me, as seen on many T2000s and Dolomites when I was a lad. The flip front, Daimler Hemi and bias ply tyres are all period delights. Appliance Wire Mags are definitely the winning wheel on a car like this.

Those wheel arches could only have been formed in a time when taking hallucinogenics in the garage was an acceptable pass time.

Needing work to recommission its currently bid to a little over a grand. No IVA worries here on an old build like this.

Auction is HERE and was still active at time of writing.

Paint yer wagon

2011-07-25T03:18:00.000-07:00

Short on words in this update, but just to let the world know I'm repainting the Fleetwood Brougham. This was one of those things where it had a few stone chips and other little marks on the paint but by the time I'd gotten down to rubbing each one out I had work on every panel so I thought I might as well paint the whole thing.

So I've spent two days rubbing down, filling, stoppering, puttying and yet more rubbing. Its getting there now, I guess I'm about half done. The car has one repaint on the factory paint and I'm rubbing most of that right out as it has some bad "orange peel" effect in the finish.

The photo above should show the orange peel in all its gory glory. Getting back down to perfectly smooth is the big deal here so that when the new paint goes on it will look sharp and shiny. The new colour is going to be a slightly lighter shade of blue in a slightly pearlescent finish. This will be topped off with a clear lacquer rather than the paint on there now which is a single stage paint.

The Boston Strangler - Fad T Rod from back in the day

2011-06-29T00:43:00.000-07:00

Here's some proper British hot rodding history and like a lot of the really famous early cars this one has a proper American connection as well. Some of you will know this car already, and for those who don't I'll just copy the information which is provided on the eBay auction for this historic rod.

Originally built in the 1960's by Rick Heinrick of Boston Massachusetts hence the cars sinister moniker.

The metal flake green body,

327 Chevy four speed

62 Chevy live axle

Whilst on Tour in the USA bought by Rock Star Jeff Beck who in 1969 imported it back to the UK.

Soon after this the “T “had an accident and Jeff Beck re-built it adding a full height screen, black top and purple flake paint.

The “T” then was sold to the late John Bonham of Led Zeppelin. It made a brief appearance in the Led Zeppelinn movie “The Song Remains the Same” along with the Brizio C Cab.

In 1980 “The Strangler” was sold to Terry Richards (Birmingham) who totally re-built it adding the 471 blower auto gearbox and orange paint.

October 1981 The “T” was featured in Custom Car Magazine.

Terry sold the “T” to John Cullen who had more work done by Nick Butler hence the addition of the Butler-style fenders.

A few years on the “T” was bought by Alan Bradley who in 1987 put the car into a pop memorabilia auction at Christie's. The “T” was bought from the auction by Mercedes Specialist John Lewis who often parked the “T” in his Parsons Green Showroom.

After his death the “T” was owned by (T enthusiast) Maurice Takoor insurance assessor. He showed the “T” at the 1st NSRA Super-nationalss at Knebworth in 1991, and again at the NASC Nats in Essex.

Maurice was soon approached by a rep from US Brewery Anheuser Busch who were looking to open a new chain of US style restaurants in the UK called “TJ's” and wanted a radical looking T as a centrepiece for their Farnham Branch.

For Health and Safety reasons the fuel tank, battery and some wiring were removed. Also removed was the windscreen never to be seen again.

The Restaurant chain was not a success leading to closure. The “T” was not heard of again for many years................

Today the “T” is owned by Robert Cumming of Bournemouth Dorset who bought it from the brewery. Robert has had the following works done by Gordon Evans who has bought the “T” back to life.

Rebuilt Holly Carb
New:-
HT leads
Mallory distributor
Alternator
Fuel cell
Brake master cylinder
Brakes
Re- wired
Battery
Windscreen
Gaskets
Plugs
Oil
Etc..........

The car drives and engine runs strong..........

THE CAR HAS DONE NO MILES SINCE 1980 FULL REBUILD

Its on eBay for £7000 start and no bids yet. Its a fantastic piece of rodding history being such a well known car with rock star heritage to boot.

Another Corvette with vintage FIA papers

2011-06-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

Also not for the small of wallet is this delightful C2 Corvette in a superb gold livery with big block power and FIA papers ready to race. Its been on eBay as a classified ad at £135,000.

You get a fair package for your semi-detatched-house-in-the-Midlands money. Its a 396 big block which has just has a fresh rebuild at a cost of some £10K, which is naturally backed with a Muncie 4 speed manual box. The rear end s a 3.55 posi and it has factory dual pin discs all round.

Those lovely looking wheels are wrapped in proper Dunlop 700L rubber. They certainly look the part. The spec also includes chassis sand-blasted , seam welded, gusseted with period trick modifications .SW gauges. Fully working lighting with separated wiring looms for endurance races . Tinted quick lift Perspex door glass in lightened doors. Period-correct interior with side-bolstered 1965 seats and 1967 headrests Foam filled big tank inside car as factory original. Lightweight 1963 grille. Le Mans style Perspex headlight covers. Banana-bunch headers with side-exhausts and adjustable mufflers.

The interior looks very plush for a racer, the racey red is certainly attractive and you have to love the use of a Cadillac tail light as a shift light (I'm assuming thats what its for)

All in all a delightful package and one I would happily find a home for if I didn't have to sell my home to pay to buy it.

What is it with 400E hot rods?

2011-06-24T02:31:00.000-07:00

You know when you think you may have fallen asleep and woken up and the last 20 years were all a weird dream, kind of like Bobby Ewing in Dallas? Some days I look at eBay and its the 80s all over. I do not say that this is a bad thing at all. Witness the number of Ford Thames 400E based hot rods which have been popping up

This is the third in as many weeks. This one features a nice selection of period mods such as a roof chop, nose & deck (or whatever the van equivalent is) and pearly paint.

Whatever else, its certainly prostreet with the de rigeur Micky Thomposons out back on a narrowed Ford 9" axle. Power comes from a mild 318 small block Mopar which according to the accompanying photos has been painted pink. One has to wonder if that was intentional, but then this van has survived the 90s...

The interior is functional, but fully spec'd with gauges and so forth. Over all from the photos the van looks in nice shape and generally ready to cruise or show.

You can check the details out in the eBay listing here.

Austin Devon hot rods "before" and "after" builds

2011-06-17T01:08:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan of Austin Devon hot rods. Well, I'm a fan of pretty much any traditional British tin which is transformed into a hot rod. But the Devon is a favourite of mine. I was interested to see two very different but similar examples pop up on eBay pretty much simultaneously.

The first car is a done deal. Its shiny and its magazine featured and its ready to roll. Underneath that pedestrian post war sheet metal and the raspberry custom paint you get a mix of traditional English rodding and American. The running gear is Vauxhall Magnum IFS and Capri rear axle but the motor is a warmed up 355 Chevy small block.

I think from the ad on ebay that its a fairly recent build although those "Pro Modular" wheels and such give a strong 90s feel to the build. I always liked those rims but right now I'd be rolling this one on slot mags.

I think I'd be tempted to radius those rear arches as well, but colour matching the paint job would be a nightmare.

For £14,999 asking price you are getting a nicely finished leather & shiny paint V8 hot rod, or should I say "street rod". There are those of us on more modest budgets.

Thats where Austin Devon #2 comes in.

Built as a rod in the 1980s the seller claims, and certainly the evidence in the photos suggests this could well be the case, we have a Devon as a project. And one needing some effort to complete. But there are two things to factor in here and the first is the price. Its on eBay for £750 or best offer which leaves you £14,249 to finish it if you are on the £15K budget as above...

There is another very interesting point at issue though which is that if this car really was rodded in the 1980s then so long as you keep to the YSR IFS, Jaguar IRS and the box chassis then you are legal under the BIVA/IVA or SVA regulations to run this rod without additional inspection, regulation compliance and the Q plate registration...

You even get a V8 with it for your £750 or nearest. I can't help thinking this is a no-brainer buy. The body wants some tidying, the mechanical stuff wants refreshing, those wire wheels need some chrome and it will need trimming out but its not rocket science to do. You'll have a neat traditional Brit Rod which is fully legal.

My take would be a nice deep gloss black with flake-tipped flames, retain the cruiser wires, trim it out in red tuck n roll vinyl and you are there.

It would make a great father's day gift. Hint hint.

Ford Thames 400E hot rod van project

2011-06-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

It seems I'm getting all of my inspiration on eBay these days but don't let that put you off. This is still a blog full or ramblings and nonsense. I was struck by the fact that mere days after that Thames pickup with the mid mounted V8 was here on this very blog than there is a Thames panel van on eBay

This one needs a bit more work. I remember a yellow one of these back in the day, tall stance and a roof chop. V6 or V8 power and probably big & little Cragars. No idea if that one is still about in someone's workshop gathering dust or maybe even out at the shows and such. If you know the van, let me know...

These are rare vans now so worth seeing the project through to completion and for sure much better to see this get done than yet another VW.

If you feel the urge, its on eBay at £650 no bids right now.

1947 Commer Hot Rod truck. Old but new.

2011-06-06T01:40:00.000-07:00

It often surprises me how few British truck based rods we see over here. With the enthusiasm for shipping Chevy, Ford and GMC trucks as well as the occasional Dodge, Studebaker and International from the USA you would think that the domestic alternatives already on these here shores would also be in high demand. And you'd be wrong. I can think of a couple of Commers built over the years and a Ford Thames and thats about it. These HGV cabs though offer similar proportions to the US alternatives and were once common over here.

I really like this '47 Commer truck cab rod. The American rad scene is starting to have a fair few truck cab based rods and "rig rods" are another fad we are seeing across the pond. This beast is a delightfully British thing which manages to straddle both these new trends as well as harking back to the days of British rodding ingenuity.

Its also very British in the choice of running gear, that's a Rover V8 motor in there and a Sherpa back axle. Its nicely finished, I'm not normally a fan of matt black but this one is that exception that proves the rule.

Its currently on eBay if you find yourself tempted...

Another vintage Brit tin rod survivor surfaces

2011-05-30T01:45:00.000-07:00

I remember this one. Its a 1936 Austin York "6 light saloon" and it really epitomises what the early British resto rod scene was all about. Its running a 4.2 straight 6 out of a Mk10 Jag backed with a 4 speed manual. Rear end is a Jag IRS and should be fully chromed and polished, front end we have a Nick Butler chrome tub with Transit spindles.

The Austin in happier days

These 70s built cars usually were in a 2 tone, with the wings (never called fenders back then) painted black and the body in a typical stock colour like maroon, navy blue or park-bench green. Stance was level and usually low, wheels were often chrome basket wires, star wires or similar or as in this case the ubiquitous slot mag. There were the days when Truespoke had a full page ad in every issue of Custom Car.

Magazine seen - spec sheet is useful

These were simpler, more creative days. Back then you built what you could find cheap and local. You built it with stuff you could find easily in the local bone yards. This was before everyone seemed to get obsessed with building their rides to be exactly the same as the rods being built in the USA.

As today. Just needs paint...

I'm pleased to say and see that British tin and 70s/80s built heritage of our scene are both being seen with fresh interest in the last couple of years (and there are a few stalwarts who never gave up the faith). Its sad to see this one given the faux-rat matt blacking and I hope who ever buys it from its eBay ad will return it to its former glory.

1960 Corvette C2 FIA approved historic race car

2011-05-29T00:07:00.000-07:00

Its got a Le Mans, Spa, Silverstone, Dijon & Brands Hatch racing history as a pedigree, its got its FIA papers so its ready to race. What more could you ask for? Well, its cute as a button too...

Personally I could also be asking for the scratch to pay for it. Ninety five thousand of your English pounds sterling in fact. Its stout cash. But these fully papered race cars are never cheap. This is no po-boy hobby.

And for that reason alone am I watching from the sidelines, but its a dream, a beautiful dream and this is a beautiful way to dream that dream...

If, unlike me, you have the money you can pick this one up on eBay as we speak.

Old school Brit-rodded V8 Ford Thames Pickup

2011-05-28T02:11:00.000-07:00

Stuff just keeps on creeping out of the woodwork doesn't it? If you wondered what happened to all those feature cars from Street Machine, Rod & Custom UK, Custom Car etc. from the 70s and early 80s it seems that a fair number of them are out there awaiting their moment in the spotlight again. It seems only a few months back that the famous "Belch Beers" truck was on eBay as a donor vehicle and I see from this month's Custom Car mag that she's out and about in the show circuit again now.

What we have here is another old feature truck built in the very-British style of the time where the V8 engine was installed through the bed as a mid-engine arrangement and the back end would be a chromed and polished Jag IRS. This one was a feature ride back in about 1983 in Street Machine according to the collective memories of those I asked and threads on Rods N Sods...

The V8 motor was a Daimler Hemi when this was magazine featured, a popular choice for a while but a tricky motor to rebuild and modify now. From the eBay listing it appears they used the much rarer 4.5 Hemi from the Magestic Major. Unfortunately and perhaps understandably this has been replaced by the far more common Rover V8.

I love the murals and hope that these get retained or replicated in some way by whoever buys it. Or if not then some paint job suited to its build era rather than the ubiquitous rattle can satin black which too many old show rods seem to have acquired.

At time of writing its on eBay with £1000 starting bid not made yet.

804 rear wheel horse power "rat look" 2010 Camaro

2011-05-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

OK, this is one of those "marmite" cars. You either love it or you hate it. I Must admit that despite despising most of this fake patina rat look nonsense going around at the moment this beast is hard to argue with when its packing 804 BHP - at the rear wheels... OK the looks are subjective at best. In fact I like to think theres an element of tongue in cheek going on here.

Its difficult to tell where the tongue is or even should be on this car though. Its obviously an anathema to the ol' skool rodz mentality of build what you got and build it cheap and nasty and kool. This is a car with a reputed $150,000 "invested" in it. And its a showroom new model. But hasn't the whole "rat" thing got a bit out of hand and needs someone to bring that into clear focus? Like Rick Dobbertin with his Pontiac J2000 back in '86 marking the moment we realised Pro Street for show had gotten just a bit silly. So will Bill Rombauts' name go down in hot rodding history (or infamy if you prefer) in the same way? His 2010 Camaro "rat rod" has certainly started getting him the coverage...

Under the hood runs the 485 cube V8 with its Kenne Bell supercharger, built by Dave Sherer and Anthony Mussulli at DNA Restorations and tuned and dyno'd at Vette Doctors this beast makes over 1000 BHP at the crank and manages to get 804 of those ponies to the ground. Its drivable and tractible too, having completed the Hot Rod Power Tour.

The idea is apparently to simulate 30 years of neglect. Its an interesting idea and one which is causing not a little comment. My take has to be that its his car, its his money and he's not ballsed up something rare. Good luck to him.

You can see a video of the dyno run at Vette Doctors above.

Bye bye Checker, Caprice and Crown Vic. New NYC cab is...

2011-05-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

NYC's new iconic yellow cab will be some horrific looking Nissan van thing.

practical it may be but charismatic?

For most of us our view of NYC comes from movies and TV. We see those iconic yellow taxis nose to tail in the gridlock over the decades and they have always been big ol' yankeedoodle domestics. But now the pressures of commerce, environment and whatever else have ended this with a Japanese model being selected by the city.


The current city fleet is Crown Victoria based

This is one of those sign-o-the-times things but its kinda sad as the yellow taxi is very much a signature of New York style.


As per the TV show...

But somehow with New York being one of the great multicultural cities its somehow fitting? I'm not sure.

I can haz Twitter

2011-05-15T06:59:00.000-07:00

You can now follow me on Twitter - HERE!

Life's kinda getting in the way of too much blogging right now so maybe a microblog will feed your fix of my ramblings. Or not.

Jaguar's hybrid supercar is more than a concept

2011-05-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

Back in September 2010 when Jaguar displayed their C-X75 hybrid super car at the Paris Motor Show there was an awful lot of "oh year, right" style comments from people who thought it would be just a show car concept. Seems they were wrong.

Jaguar are now taking orders.

Warp factor five Mr Sulu

There is no specific delivery date and the price doesn't seem to have been set and echos of the XJ220 supercar of the 1980s should be ringing in the ears of anyone thinking of putting the £700K down these beasties are rumoured to be selling for.

Who says hybrids have to suck?

Its still an awesome device either way. Exceptional performance and low emissions are provided by one electric motor per wheel and a kind of jet turbine engine which runs on regular unleaded. The space age is now.

Historic British Hot rod for sale...

2011-04-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

Wow. A real old school winner here: Fotofantasy. If you are old enough (or have a big stack of 70s Custom Car mags) then you'll probably know all about this car. Its one of the big name show rods of the 1970s. To see it described as a "ratrod" now is kind of an insult. I'd love to see this restored back to how it was back in its hay-day.

How the mighty have fallen. But at least it survived.

For those of you feeling like a punt, the auction is here...

Laser technology to replace spark plugs?

2011-04-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

You'll never need to set the gaps or file the contacts again if this tech recently developed in Japan takes off.

There is an article on this in The Register

The good old internal combustion engine just refuses to lay down and die even in the face of such well hyped technology as electric motors and hydrogen fuel cells. Heck we've even hooked electric motors to internal combustion engines to create hybrids and some folks have successfully run petrol engines on hydrogen based fuels or even pure hydrogen.

Looking how far the good old IC motor has come since say the days of the Ford flatheads of the early 1950s I wonder where we will be with them in another half century or so, because I'm prepared to bet they are still with us then.

And I struggle with the electronics in an 1980s Pontiac.

12 year old girl is champ race car driver

2011-04-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

I was amazed to see drag racing coverage in The Metro, albeit a very small article, but its worth reproducing here. You can see the original here.

Anyway 12 year old lass by the name of Paige Wheeler (kind of appropriate, huh) has won the European Junior Drag Racing Championship.Paige has been racing for a year and beat competitors up to age 18.

Junior Dragsters

She now goes on to take part in the NHRA Junior Championship in the USA. It would be pretty awesome to have a NHRA prize brought back to the UK.

Autobahns to be limited, Texas to make 55 into 85

2011-04-10T01:29:00.000-07:00

Everything is bigger in Texas and if legislators have their way that will apply to the speed limit too. America's fastest speed limit is in Texas currently at 80mph but deep in the heart of Texas those good old boys are looking at increasing the speed limit on state roads to 85mph. The infamous "double nickle" 55 limit of the 1970s is dead and burried. This comes as road deaths have been sitting at a historical low and cynics may point out that automobile fuel consumption is at a all time high. Texas is an oil state, so...

Either way the Germans are in contrast debating introducing speed limits on the free range of the autobahn for a whole bunch of reasons related to safety, congestion and environmental pressure groups.

The start of summer

2011-04-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

Well, its only *just* spring so premature to be talking about summer already but I must admit I regard the year as being two seasons long: Closed season and show season. Some say that the first swallows are the first signs of spring but I say the first sign of the warm season is the start of the car show season. Not so much the big, well promoted,professionally organised shows (several of which take place indoors anyway) but the grass roots events held on weekday evenings at pubs and such places.

My first of these was the Trent Group of the Triumph TR Owner's club which took place Thursday evening at Stanton By Dale. This is a real traditional British car club meet up. Proper classic sports cars, enthusiastic owners, a traditional English pub, a nice pint and hearty fare on offer for those who missed their supper to be there.

To me these friendly, low key events is what this "scene" is (or should be) about. No fads, no name dropping, no one upmanship and internet bitching, just a bunch of guys who dig cars rolling up and chilling out.

Find your local events, enjoy and support them. That's the life.

If it can be said...

2011-03-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

There used to be an advert on TV for good ol' British Telecom staring Sir Bob Hoskins in which he told us “its good to talk. And before this we had the “If it can be said, phone instead” campaign.

Back then, Sir Bob and BT were railing against such non-spoken communications technology as the telex, the electronic facsimile machine and the telegram service. Pretty much all of these technologies have fallen by the wayside now (can you remember the last time you sent or received a fax?) but the good old telephone is still with us and people are still looking for alternatives to speaking on it.

OK, that makes you feel old doesn't it?

See while the hottest tech out there on the high street (and to an extent in business) is the cellular mobile telephone the big noise is in Smartphones, Andorid iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Phone duking it out for a rapidly expanding market. Or a rapidly expanding niche in an existing market if you prefer. The ability of the modern handset to make and receive voice calls is way down the list of valuable features now in this SMS, MMS, GPS, HSDPA, 3G, 4G, always on, fully connected world. Its about app stores and about data. Last mobile phone contract I signed I was comparing data tariff not voice minutes or SMS inclusive bundles.

Now its all Web2.0 and social media, collaboration tools, user generated content.

So I have been waiting on a new premium web domain for my latest business venture. I have been using my registrar's website, I have been using their submission forms, I have been on forums, I have sent emails. I have been getting nowhere. I have been getting increasingly frustrated. So in an act of desperation I picked up the telephone and I called them. Admittedly I had been avoiding this method of communication because its not free, and the registrar is in the USA and I am averse to paying for international phone calls unless I really, really, have to...

Guess what, the whole matter seems to have been sorted out in like 2 minutes. On the phone. Sometimes it pays to go oldskool, the irony that a 100+ year old wired 1 to 1 system was necessary to sort out problems on my latest high tech system is not lost on me.

Universities showcase sustainable car technologies

2011-03-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

West Midland vehicle technology innovators at Science Capital event in Birmingham indicated technologies from motor racing and aerospace industries could help cement future success for car building in the West Midlands.

The full story is on the UK Dept for Trade & Industry website....

New Car Connectivity Consortium

2011-03-25T03:04:00.000-07:00

Cross industry initiative: Leading automotive mobile communications and consumer electronics companies join a new consortium for in-vehicle connectivity solutions in standards such as Terminal Mode, NFC and more.

The Car Connectivity Consortium was launched this week by eleven companies across several industries, driving global innovation for in-vehicle connectivity, including the "Terminal Mode" standard.

Founding members include vehicle manufacturers Daimler, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai Motor Company, Toyota, and Volkswagen; system suppliers Alpine and Panasonic; and consumer electronics makers LG Electronics, Nokia and Samsung.

With the Terminal Mode standard, the connection of high-performing mobile devices to vehicle-based systems opens up a host of new opportunities for business and a world of innovative applications for consumers. Mobile devices could be tightly connected with in-car systems such as digital displays, steering wheel buttons, rotary knobs and car audio systems. Consumers could use a mobile device via the car controls, as if the device and its apps were integrated into the car itself Terminal Mode is built upon a set of established standards such as Internet Protocol, Universal Serial Bus and Bluetooth.

The Car Connectivity Consortium will focus on further developing the Terminal Mode standard, address certification and branding, and start looking at new promising opportunities for the automotive environment, including NFC and wireless charging. The Car Connectivity Consortium is an open alliance focusing on cross industry contribution. It is anticipated that further leading industry players will join over the coming weeks.

The Car Connectivity Consortium will release its first specification version within the next few months. Several consortium members are expected to present their first commercial products supporting the new standard later this year.

Founding members are vehicle manufactures Daimler, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai Motor Company, Toyota, Volkswagen; system suppliers Alpine and Panasonic; and consumer electronics makers LG Electronics, Nokia and Samsung. The Car Connectivity Consortium is open for any industry member to join as a charter member, a core member or on one of two lower levels. For further information, please visit: http://www.terminalmode.org/en/agenda/consortium/

Ford's Connected Focus gets US mobile deal

2011-03-25T01:36:00.000-07:00

Ford Motor Company and AT&T this week announced an agreement to wirelessly connect the Ford Focus Electric, Ford’s first all-electric passenger car. Announced in January at the 2011 International CES, the new Focus Electric enters production at the Michigan Assembly Plant in late 2011.

Through the new MyFord Mobile smartphone app, using the embedded AT&T wireless connection, Ford Focus Electric vehicle owners will have the ability to send and receive data about their car providing command and control of vehicle settings while away from it.

“Ford has been at the forefront of developing market leading telematics and infotainment services for its vehicles and we’re thrilled to be a part of this exciting and significant next step with the upcoming Focus Electric,” said Glenn Lurie, president of emerging devices, resale and partnerships, AT&T. “Connecting consumers directly to their electric vehicles in this new and innovative way is going to drive innovative and exciting levels of interaction.”

MyFord Mobile technology provides Focus Electric owners in North America with a powerful tool to stay connected, monitor and control their vehicle. Through a smartphone app or secure website, MyFord Mobile invites Focus Electric owners to plan trips, monitor the vehicle’s state of charge, receive various alerts for vehicle charging, as well as provides several other features designed to simplify the electric vehicle ownership experience.

“With a wireless connection, we’re putting battery charge and vehicle range information, along with an interactive, data-driven trip planning app, directly at the fingertips of our customers,” said Ed Pleet, product and business manager for Ford Connected Services. “This technology will keep drivers connected to vital information, enhancing their electric car ownership experience. The AT&T network is an important part of this equation and we’re pleased to have AT&T on board.”

MyFord Mobile will connect through the AT&T network, allowing the car to communicate off-board through standard wireless technology. From an internet connected mobile phone or computer, owners can:

Find current and projected state of charge information including estimated range and the amount of charge time necessary for additional distances
Program vehicle charging with utility input, allowing the car to start charging immediately or when electricity prices are lowest with the value charging feature, powered by Microsoft
Features powered by MapQuest available on the MyFord smartphone app:
Locate charging stations and get the destination sent to the vehicle
Know if the vehicle can reach a specific charge station from its current location with the current charge level
Create a journey with multiple stops, and determine the likelihood that the car has adequate charge for the full journey
Find the car by creating a route from a mobile phone to the vehicle
Receive alerts if the vehicle isn’t charging when it’s scheduled to, or if charging stops unexpectedly due to a power outage, plug removal or other event
Receive alerts during recharge when the vehicle has reached a particular preset charge level or has the ability to reach a particular destination
Engage remote vehicle preconditioning, using grid power to heat or cool the vehicle interior
Remotely lock/unlock doors
Use the built-in GPS system to locate the car
Download performance and system data
Fun ways of understanding your driver behavior, with ratings from ‘Zen’ to ‘Zippy’
Receive information personalized to the driver, depending on which key the driver used

How the system works

At launch, the MyFord Mobile app will be available for most major smartphones, along with a mobile web application for compatibility with any phone supporting HTML-5 browser-based access, or feature phones with WAP 2.0-supported browsers. The feature also is accessible via a secure Ford website.

Owners will use the smartphone to communicate with a cloud-based highly secure server, which stores information provided by the embedded wireless module in Focus Electric. Using a cloud-based architecture ensures users will have up-to-the-minute access to information through the AT&T wireless network

Facebook and the post-privacy age.

2011-03-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

So I have rejoined Facebook. Now why would I do such a thing after successfully deleting my Facebook profile before? And yes, I did say “delete” not “disable”. Well, I've come to terms with the beast that is the western world's favourite social media network and I've come to terms with how I expect to use it and how I expect it to use me.

You see one critical thing you need to remember with Facebook, and I can't remember the source of this quote, but its a good one: With Facebook you are not the customer you are the product. Snappy, huh?

Facebook exists not to provide you and I with an outlet for sharing our photos and reconnecting with people we haven't seen in 10 years and then ignoring them but it exists to make money for Mark Zukkerberg and his investors. How it does this is through targeted advertising and selling off your “personal” data to carefully selected third parties. And “carefully selected” means anyone who pays for it. Why is it you cannot delete your profile now, nor even your photos? Because Facebook own these not you.

If you approach Facebook with eyes wide open to what is going on then you can't really complain about Facebook then doing exactly what Facebook does. I started out in life from a IT Security perspective as that’s been a big chunk of my job for the last five or more years. However when Facebook hits back at privacy campaigners this week saying “well what the heck do you expect when you plaster this so-called private data all over the flippin' internet you numpties” (or words to that effect) I have to admit a certain level of sympathy for the devil on this matter. The Register has neat coverage.

You also have to be a bit savvy. Facebook would like you to use your real contact details, but they can't force you to. I understand you have to confirm you are at least 14 years old to comply with various rules on child safeguarding but no, I don't want them to have my real date of birth as much as I don't want them to have my real bank account number and mother's maiden name. Meh, maybe I'm paranoid but that doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

Again The Register covers why I'm twitchy about this, giving unspecified third parties access to my address and phone number etc. And you wonder why Facebook are so damn keen to get you to register your mobile with them? You wonder why I registered on Facebook with a “burner” mobile? Ha. And guess what, despite me marking this (my email address and my gender, which is “male”) as “Private” some odd glitch in the machine means my public profile has my gender displayed as female and there for the world to see is my mobile number and email address. Oh, you shouldn't be surprised I registered with a “disposable” email address...

To be honest this was not the reason I dropped off Facebook last time around though.

Now with all this paranoia about Facebook you'd be forgiven for thinking they are the only awesome power for supreme evil in the world. And you would be wrong. You see I have reconciled myself to Facebook in part because I am already reconciled to Google. See we've known Google is an evil leviathan of data snaffling and privacy abuse well before the court rulings against the theft and retention of Wi-Fi data (The Register has a ton of articles on this here, and here, and here, and here - you get the idea, there is a ton of this) with these articles on Google privacy concerns going back to '06 and '04...

Google Chrome, Gmail, Google Search and Google Tool Bar are all spy tools when it comes down to it and most of us are fully acclimatised to that. I'm a fairly careful person with my “private” data yet during a short Skype session my brother was able to demonstrate how easy it is to pull private data on specific people out of Google. As I say, I'm careful and I watch my digital footprint but just working from my name and location he was able to get my home address, wife's name and that I have a preschool child at home. Next up was my work address, work phone number, my boss' name, and a couple of company related documents in which I was named. My work email address, one of my home email addresses, and more.

I think there are two main groups of people. Those who don't realise how privacy is a myth and those who either flat don't care or have resigned and accepted it. The noise is made by the people transitioning from the first group to the second.

When eCommerce is made of PHAIL

2011-03-22T08:29:00.000-07:00

OK, I try not to be too picky, admittedly not very hard, but I do try. Sometimes things just get the better of me and my picky-picky nature boils up.

Now eCommerce, that's where you put together a website and allow members of the general public to buy stuff off you. Why you do this is because its easy to get your customers to "self serve" and it means you don't have to do tiresome expensive things like speak to them in person. Even offshore call centres are more expensive than an unattended website. You can pass this economy on to your customer in part (and low prices should encourage more sales), and put the other part in your own pocket as a bit of extra margin.

Why do I feel the need to explain this?

Because so many websites I deal with on a regular basis seem not to get this. If I need to phone, email or use Vulcan telepathy to contact you to get information which is essential to complete the sale then you have flat plain utterly-butterly failed.

www.thetrainline.com I am looking at you right now.

Imagine you are faced with this situation:: You want to book a ticket to travel from the sunny garden city of Nottingham down to Heathrow and then return another day. You are recommended a "Super Saver Return" by the eCommerce site. OK, £61 seems good. Hell, what kind of a world we live in where sixty quid is a reasonable price for a cattle-class ticket, but I digress. The beautiful moment comes as you are about to put your credit card details in and it casually comments "This ticket is subject to travel restrictions".

Now in the fantasy world I inhabit what happens next is you click on the words "travel restrictions" and you get a nice little page pop up which explains what the travel restrictions are for a Super Saver Return Ticket. This is not what happens. So I try searching the site, browsing the site and screaming "YOU SUCK" for a few minutes. The best I can come up with is that (and I paraphrase) "Super Saver Return tickets are subject to restrictions as to when they may be used. Please see your ticket for details". Now excuse me but surely when I have paid my £61 and received my ticket a week later is just a bit late to discover that I cannot travel on my intended return train with the ticket I have bought. There is a "Chat to an adviser" button but this just caused an error message to be displayed. This was the point the shouting started.

Now I have traveled on trains enough to know that there are many times I hear the announcement "passengers intending to travel on the return portion of a super saver return ticket should be aware that they are not valid for this service" so I know that the sort of trains I like to travel on are usually not allowed. Even Google could not help me as National Rail and other such sites all offer veiled advice about same day super savers only being valid for departures before 0:30 a.m. the following day.

In the end I was forced to phone their 10p a minute service line, where after 4 attempts at navigating my way through their call-tree system I was finally routed to a helpful chappy somewhere the other side of the world who was finally able to help me despite my lack of a booking reference number (no, I'm not actually booking until I know I can use the frikkin ticket).

So, the smooth, simple easy process of booking a return train ticket was turned into 20 minutes of abject misery and technorage because of a really simple and to my mind pretty obvious omission of key information needed to make a decision on the suitability of the product offered for sale. People, don't make these basic errors. It makes your customers want to shop elsewhere. When designing websites for customer use you need to think like a customer and think what the customer will need. If your customers have to leave your site to find that info you risk losing them, if they have to phone you to find it you add cost to your sale.

If there is one other important lesson to be learned from all this it is simply this, Super Saver Open Return Tickets may be used on any off-peak return journey where a peak time is defined as before 9:30am or after 15:30 and before 18:30.

Saab fan gets top job through blog...

2011-03-21T03:08:00.000-07:00

An interesting story is reproduced in the Register regarding the tale of a Tasmanian fellow who started a blog about Saab as a regular guy fan site type thing. Saab like it so much they have given him an exec job. Readallaboutit here....

I'm reminded of the time when NTL bought out NThellworld, a "fan" site of NTLworld. Different story there though.

Browser Wars: Microsoft's IE9 Salvo

2011-03-17T02:52:00.001-07:00

Well the production IE9 is out and anyone who really cared has been on the Beta or RC for weeks or months anyway. If you want a serious technical debate about the whys and wherefores of browser choice then I think you know better than to come here for that. What you get here is opinion! And its pure, raw, undisguised opinion. I like to think of it as “informed comment”. What you think of it is up to you.

The thing I find interesting about the browser wars is how low key its all become. There was a point at which fanbois of whichever browser was soup-du-jour would be screaming from the rooftops about this feature or that and the relative security of each, about open source components or proprietary standards.

Seems to have gone pretty quiet. Even the annual browser hacking contests don't provide the flurry of excitement they perhaps aught to. Every now and again you get a new release of one of the “big three” browsers and these seem to be met with a decreasing level of interest. This is very odd as more and more applications are delivered through the web now (home user and business) and more and more sites are all about RIA, Web 2.0, and security is a big issue online as we do more business, banking, shopping, etc. in cyberspace. So really the browser is more important now than its ever been – down to the fact Google's own OS is basically just a browser...

So IE9 is out and IE9 is actually good. It appears quicker and more reliable than IE8. It has a lot of the things about Chrome which I like. There’s a lot of stuff “under the hood” which is goodness. I'll leave it at that, it gives the impression I know what that’s all about...

The best thing about IE9 is that it doesn't work on Windows XP. Much like IE6 Microsoft needs to kill WinXP dead, kill it to death and burn it with fire. XP is pretty much a reworked W2K. This is technology more than a decade old. For some reason there are a lot of IT pros who just can't move on. I thought IT peeps were supposed to be forward looking and tech-savvy yet when it comes to OS upgrades I've never met such a bunch of luddites.

I hear out there in blogland that IE9 is PHAIL because it doesn't run on XP. Sorry, dude, you are PHAIL because you are still running XP.

Perhaps one of the reasons browser wars are cooled down now is that most people have twigged you don't need to have just one browser. On my office PC I have Windows7 and it runs IE9 and Firefox. I use different browser for different reasons. We have a lot of SharePoint and Exchange so IE is my default browser. It just works better that way. I installed Firefox as some sites weren't IE9 ready and I liked IE9 to be using it as my default browser from the Beta. At home I use Chrome as my PC is a little slow and Chrome is quick. I also have IE8 and Firefox on there. I need to upgrade to Win7, IE9, etc. on that box. IE9 might even replace Chrome as Chrome don't play nice with other browsers and IE9 seems as quick as Chrome.... For balance I have Ubuntu on a laptop and Firefox on that. So yeah, you can run whatever combo of browsers you like which is why some of the market share data on browsers can be a bit iffy. After all, Firefox has 100% of the market where I am. This despite the fact I use Chrome and IE more.

Go figure.

Anyway, if you are committed to IE as a browser then IE9 is just another reason to ditch XP and upgrade to a modern damn OS.

"Taking the fun out of motoring"

2011-03-11T03:20:00.000-08:00

There has been a general opinion in the world of forums, blogs and general banter of late regarding the removal of the “fun” element of motoring. This is something which has been gently becoming the default attitude on motoring by most people you speak to now.

The argument is that this is all the fault of “the man”. The problem, according to many I speak to, is that “the man” is determined to remove every last bit of fun from our lives and quite high on his list is the fear that we Brits may actually enjoy driving our cars.

There are two sub-groups in the proponents of this argument. Firstly the folks too young to remember this supposed golden era of motoring which occurred at some fairly unspecified point in the past but must have been before they passed their driving tests, and the second group are those elderly curmudgeons like myself who have been there, seen that and of course it was all much, much better “in my day”.

I'm going to ignore the youngsters in this, they are just buying into the same nostalgia packaging that my parents' generation used to convince me as a kid that the 60s were the swingingest time and that I had missed out by growing up in the 80s.

The grumpy old man perspective is part fashion (hense all the TV programmes, books, newspaper columns and the like devoted to “grumpies”) and part a feature of, well, just growing up. Or at least growing old. See when you are young, you are full of energy, drive, enthusiasm and this great desire to see all the wonders that the world has to offer. Then you get to 30 or so and you realise that you've pretty much seen the great diversity and that although you haven't really seen it ALL, what of it that there is left unseen is just more of the same with a slight iterative variation. Cars, bikes, booze, women, music, comedians, movies, and so on and so on. Yes, you appreciate them, yes you may be enthusiastic still, but the edge is gone. Some try to maintain the buzz they had in their 20s or whenever by just ratcheting up the level and going to a wild excess. But that really isn't sustainable.

So we end up looking back at our 20s as a golden era and telling ourselves and everybody else who'll give us the time of day that those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end. And seriously, Mary Hopkins was cool once. Or so I am told. So when some old git like me is telling you that the fun has been taken out of motoring what they mean really is that they are old, and getting grumpy. One of the big things you have to ask is what the fun is which has been taken out of it. And for many people its the having a laugh with your mates, tear-arseing about, chasing girls and getting in a few scrapes, laughing it off and then going clubbing. Or whatever. Honestly, my life was just like a Fast & The Furious movie, but with Capris, Mantas, Cortinas and so forth. That bird just don't fly when you are 40.

There is another way of looking at this and its one which I have been noticing myself over the passing years. Motoring in the UK is becoming more tiresome, yes, and not just because of the additional mileage on my bones. But its not the price of petrol, the price of insurance, the encroaching regulation of IVA/BIVA and laws to make you insure your car whenever it is taxed. Its not even the speed camera. Its traffic. To be honest most of my driving I am lucky to get anywhere near the speed limit let alone to be worrying about speed cameras. There are quite simply way more cars on the road now than there were 10, 20 or 30 years ago. If you then equate “the fun of motoring” to be linked directly and proportionally to your ability to drive really quickly on public roads without getting held up by other traffic then, yup, you are screwed.

There are plenty of folks pouring scorn on younger car enthusiasts who modify their cars – not to go faster or handle better – but to be more “pimped out”. Styling, accessories, audio and entertainment equipment seems to be the order of the day. But if you can only insure a 1.2 litre Vauxhall Corsa then what IS performance? If you live in the urban sprawl and can never get to more than 40 MPH, what does performance matter? One hot rodders' adage I like is “its not how fast you go, its how you go fast” and for British metropolitan motorists its not even about “fast”.

You have two choices really. Redefine what fun is by enjoying owning a car which is cool, and is still cool even if its stuck doing 20 MPH in a school zone, or crawling up to roadworks on your congested commute, or you do something about the congestion. Seems to me that half the cars on the roads are driven by people who have no interest in actually driving, they just do it because its the default way to get from where they are to where they need to be. Restructuring how non-enthusiasts get about would certainly free up some road space for the rest of us.

I don't see that happening. Any attempt to improve public transport is viewed as being an opportunity for the government to chuck a pile of money down a well and any attempt to discourage folks from “unnecessary” use of their cars is reviled as a new form of Stalinism.

So that takes us back to the point about redefining fun. I've moved on from thinking love is being drunk and trying to persuade some equally drunk lass to come back to my place, or at the very least up an alley and behind some bins. Equally I have to say I don't have to drive at ten tenths every minute I'm behind the wheel, I get a kick from when people point or wave or photograph my car, from the fact that just driving it is cool. For ten tenths there is still the rac

Metropolitan Fire Truck

2011-03-11T00:45:00.000-08:00

Spotted in the ads on Hemmings is this neat Nash (nee Austin) Metropolitan fire truck. I really get a kick out of these kinds of conversions on vehicles so exceptionally unsuited for the task that you have to wonder if they were a purposeful novelty when built new.

The ad for it has no story. I assume from the "Junior fire dept" logos that it was used to promote fire safety in schools or something. If anyone knows, let me know...

Ford's Fully-connected Focus

2011-03-09T03:36:00.000-08:00

As regular readers of the blog will know I am a bit of a fan of connectivity in cars. I want Audiogalaxy in my dash. I want my tweets read out to me. I want internet radio on the move. I want seamless integration with the technology I use when my backside is resting behind the wheel and when my backside is resting behind the keyboard. I am a geek on wheels I guess.

Not a pretty dash, but fully connected.

Ford have announced their Sync product for the UK market now. This is an integration tool
for the connected automobile. Basically an electronic control hub in the car links with your iPhone, Blackberry or Android phone to integrate these with the Ford inbuilt entertainment and navigation functions. Link it with an OBD reader as well and I'll be smiling. Smiling is not what everyone will be doing though. The feature which automatically calls the police if you have an accident may seem a little “spy in the cab” for most!

RCA ports for AV, USB and data cards

Ford have bundled voice control (which is the bit they seem to be hawking the hardest) as
well as a host of media ports - a couple of USB ports, Bluetooth, an SD card slot and RCA jacks for AV hookups – to ensure your media requirements are met. The Sync system also provides you with a Wi-Fi hotspot in the car which either comes from tethering your mobile or alternatively through an optional extra dongle.

The UI - its Microsoft based BTW.

No word on pricing as yet, and the first car to get Sync is the Focus.

Reyland 6 litre Firenza project

2011-03-08T06:22:00.000-08:00

I don't know how many people following this blog are also members of the Overclockers forum but there is a spectacular HC series Vauxhall Firenza (flat front) which has been outfitted with the serious Chevy 6 litre LS motor.

My words cannot do this one justice. Go see for yourself HERE

The only words I can think of are "muthahuggin awesome" - forget ramraiding Halfords in a Corsa, this is how to modify a Vauxhall...

Bad science. Is there any other kind now?

2011-03-02T02:14:00.000-08:00

I'm a little behind on my bile so these two stories are not quite the cutting edge of the news that they were last week, but they are current enough to use as further examples of bad science and woolly thinking in the media. Or rather woolly thinking on what constitutes a meaningful study.

The first item is the Which? report on organic food. This was widely reported middle of last week. Which? concluded that there is no value in organic foods based on its testing of three foodstuffs which include potatoes and tomatoes, these being the two of the three which “prove” their case. The “proof” being that non-organic potatoes have more vitamin C than organic potatoes and that non-organic tomatoes taste better than organic ones. Which when stated this way does seem damning. Until you consider a few things. Most consumers who buy organic do so because of the reduction in pesticides and intensive farming methods which the organic movement believe are harmful to the environment in general. That is a completely different argument which I don't propose to get into here but it is one which Which? is not addressing. At the risk of a pun its not comparing apples with apples.
The principle behind the organic movement is that people buy organic because they think they are saving the planet. Vitamin C content has nothing to do with it.

The next thing you have to ask is how were the varieties selected? Were they the same strains and were they grown in a comparative manner? Some types of potato may naturally contain more vitamin C than others anyway and the difference is in a completely different reason than organic vs. not. I'm not sure vitamin C levels in potatoes is really part of the deal anyway. I've read a fair number of people say we get too much vitamin C anyway, the excess just passes right through you. If you are concerned about your vitamin C levels then rather than mess about which potatoes you eat you could always try an orange or something...

As for the “tastes better” argument – this is matter of opinion and will have all manner of variation based on age, personal preference, ethnic background and whatever. Personally I like Cadbury chocolate better than Green & Blacks. So is dairy milk “the best” or even “better” chocolate? Probably not. But I'm sure I could get a taste test panel together which proves it. This was just another meaningless report in a sea of “diversion” news articles to take your mind off the conflict in Libya or the death toll in Christchurch.

The one which really got my goat was an article on Radio 4 in which the correspondent rolled out an allegation that IT had failed to reduce paper in the modern business. There was much scoffing over “the paperless office” and so forth. Now you can pick on the organic vegetables all you like but you start on “progress” and “IT innovation” and such in your thinly veiled pro-Ludd agenda and I am raised in ire.

You see what they had done was to take a 10 year viewpoint and say that because paper consumption in the UK has increased something like 1% in that time that the IT industry has failed to make an impact on paper consumption. Again on the face of it this seems a statement which has a factual base. The thing which is the first concern is that the BBC think a 1% increase is a statistically relevant increase. For the most part that is “margin of error” for an unchanged volume.

Next thing is that they are not talking about the paper used in offices, nor even “industry” or the whole commercial sector. That is all use of paper including as a packaging material and magazines and even toilet paper. So in packaging we have moved away from polystyrene and polypropylene and all those nasty materials and now most packaging is some form of recycled paper based stuff. Now consider the fact that the population of the UK has grown, and probably by significantly more than 1% over ten years. That's an increase in the noses to blow, bottoms to wipe, and an increase in the number of items in packaging to be bought. Even nappies are made from paper based product. So I don't have the real numbers to hand, and I would venture to suggest that the people at the BBC who produced that programme didn't either so my opinion is as valid as theirs!

My opinion is that the facts support the fact that if paper consumption in the UK has gone up by a mere 1% in the last decade and that the uses for paper in the consumer market place have increased in real terms it must mean that paper consumption in the office environment has been reduced.
We don't have a paperless office. We don't have a waste-free world. I have to say I get 1000 times more junk email than I get junk in the real mail. The volume of catalogues and flyers and so forth I get is radically reduced. Most of my bills are online now (both for business and at home) so IT has reduced paper consumption.

Maybe we can do an assessment of how many journalists have based articles for print or radio on opinion and their own bias and presented this as fact using flawed logic, poor research and a total misunderstanding of the need for real research methods. I suspect the trend is upwards. Anyone got any figures? Made up ones will do. So long as it supports my hypothesis I'm not going to question them.

Presidential wheels

2011-02-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

Over on TechRepublic there is an interesting little photo gallery of the official cars of the President of the USA over the years. You can find the article here

A few notable items from the article are reproduced here.

William Howard Taft was the first president to completely ditch carriages for cars with the purchase of his White Motor Company Model M. The 40-horsepower 7-seater was the first Presidential State Car.

FDR's "Sunshine Special" Lincoln V12 featured a siren, 2-way radio, extra-wide running boards, and grab handles for Secret Service agents and was the first car built specifically for presidential use.

President Nixon ordered a 1972 Continental limousine. The vehicle featured armor plating, bulletproof glass, and 7.5-liter V-8 engine. This was the same vehicle that President Ronald Reagan was entering in 1981 when an assassination attempt was made. This one is my personal favourite.

Return of the Slot Mag

2011-02-19T10:50:00.000-08:00

Seems everything is retro these days. Wolfrace have got in on the action by re-releasing their popular Slot Mag wheel from the 70s. When I heard that the Slot Mag had been the winner in a poll run on the wheel maker's website I assumed that “Wolfies” would be dusting off the old tooling and running up some 7x13s in Ford 4 stud to fit Capri or Cortina and so forth. I hear that they are going to be from all new tooling with sizes up to 18” and probably in a series of offsets to suit modern cars. Which frankly is odd and wrong. The thought of a Citroen Saxo or Audi A3 rolling round on 18” slot mags is some form of distorted nightmare, surely...

an approved use of original type slot mags

Of course Wolfrace are late to the slot mag party (and if truth be told they were back in the day) as ET Wheels, American Racing and others have been producing slot mags for a while now in traditional (US) fitments as well as “plus sizes” for modern muscle or the pro-touring crowd.

Equally of course the new slots are not a reissue of the old ones, like the Daleks on Dr Who they have had a style makeover and from feedback I have seen so far the jury is still out.

a slot mag Jim, but not as we know it

I like it. It seems a reimagining of the Centerline Hammer more than a Wolfie, but there were reverse offset look ones back in the day. And they sucked a bit then too... From the website it seems 7x15 is the only size they are doing unless more sizes are coming soon.

Find out (a little) more on the Wolfrace slotmag page.

10.10 good buddy

2011-02-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to keep up (more or less) with the happenings of FOSS and the desktop OS world at large I decided it was time I got my hands on the latest release of Ubuntu from Canonical which is “my favourite” Linux distro. I will admit to being critical and sceptical about FOSS on the desktop of the common man (no offence guys) so after years of Microsoft certified (and certifiable) training I am pretty engrained with a certain way of doing things.

I like Ubuntu 10.10

I thought I best get that one out of the way early on.

Also to get out is that some of the things I like in 10.10 were there in 10.04 as well. Yes, I know, and those I didn’t know, well, that’s immaterial...

Now any OS has to get a few things right: security, user friendliness, interoperability being the three I find at the front of my mind. These also being the three things I have found most of the Linux distros I have looked at in the past to be lacking on in one way or another. There is an expectation in the FOSS community at large that closed source will not be supported in a utopian FOSS environment. However most real people don't live there and do actually own an iPod, listen to MP3s and watch Flash content or animation. Ubuntu makes no bones about wanting to be the popular kid of the Linux school yard and 10.10 seems utterly seamless in its support of these closed format options. OK you have to enable MP3 support specifically but you get a prompt to do so. The whole interface feels slick, polished and professional. This is retail grade software.

Another feature I like is that you have what Ubuntu calls Key Ring or something like that (hey, you want in depth researched and technically accurate info, you are in the wrong place!) which is basically an implementation of UAC type functionality which is neat and well done. I know a lot of people hate password prompts for “admin level” tasks but its an essential part of keeping a modern OS secure. Like it or not UAC or whatever you want to call it in your OS is here and here for a reason.

Quite apart from interoperability issues with file formats and so forth a lot of complaints you always used to hear about Linux was the problems with getting drivers to work, or to suit specific hardware, and not even especially esoteric hardware at that. I have to report that Ubuntu 10.10 had plug & play installed the correct drivers for everything I've attached to it thus far. Its as slick and straight forward as plugging in a device under Windows 7. Plug in, wait a few seconds while the driver is installed, then use the device. It shouldn't impress me because this is basic stuff, but its basic stuff that needs to work and doesn't do so equally well across all platforms...

I installed the Netbook Remix of 10.10 on an aged Acer Travelmate laptop and Ubuntu was able to correctly select, install and configure screen, trackpad, keyboard drivers integral web cam and also those for external USB devices such as pen drives, a compact Cherry keyboard and USB wheel mouse. Suitably reassured I attached my HTC HD2 (Windows Mobile / SenseUI) mobile phone to it. Instantly I was presented with a dialogue box asking if I wanted to open the folder or import photos from the device using the Shotwell Photo tool. At the risk of repeating myself, it works just like you'd expect it to under Win7. Except quicker. Even on the high spec desktop I use in the office you get a delay while that bubble pops up to tell you new hardware has been found and searching for the correct drivers, installing said drivers and than now your hardware is ready to use. Now the delay of like 5 seconds while it does this is no big deal. But it is symptomatic of the differences between the two OS. If I'd not left it at home I'd have tried out my HTC Hero as well to see if the FOSS-ish Android phone hooked up as easy.

The hardest part of getting Ubuntu installed was persuading the laptop to boot up off the USB pen drive, and thats a feature of Acer's BIOS not Ububtu. If your chosen PC has a CD ROM (the old laptop doesn't) then you shouldn't even have the faff of rearranging the boot order so that USB takes precedence over the hard drive.

I've already hit on performance and that is a selling point of most Linux distros. I ran Ubuntu 10.4 on an older HP desktop as a test rig in the office for a while and I had to say I never saw any performance increase there. I did a very rough side by side boot from cold this morning between my old Acer lapdog and my spanky quad core Dell Optiplex which runs Win7. The Acer was booted and I was done going through my Gmail in Firefox before the newer, more powerful machine was up and into Outlook. I think the Dell even had a few seconds head start on the Acer too. OK this isn't a fair test as the Acer didn't need to authenticate to a domain etc. but on the other hand it did need to connect to a wireless broadband connection.

As for setting it up, all the stuff you are likely to need (with an exception I will detail in a moment) is bundled with the Ubuntu download package. Once you are up and running (which takes like no time at all once you have created your USB stick with the installer package on it) you will find you have a neat music and media suite called Rhythmbox, which is kinda MediaPlayer/iTunes like (includes such as LastFM and all the usual stuff you'd expect), Open Office, a web cam tool, IM client, Email client, Firefox browser a few simple games and more. For the majority of home users you are up and running out of the box. I haven't tried connecting and iPod yet and management of an iTunes library could be a fun one if you already have invested in a lot of DRM downloads. More on this one later if I can be bothered to faff about with it, almost all my music was ripped as high rate MP3 from my own CDs and LPs so I don't have a lot of downloads DRM or otherwise to worry about.

For those who need more than the package installs with there is an app store which is a concept which should be familiar to anyone with a smart phone and it works much the same way. The app store makes a distinction between those native Ubuntu applications and those which are from the wider Linux community.

The one thing which I will still be critical on is a matter of security. Love it or loathe it Windows Defender does a decent job of making sure that PC users install and update antivirus, anti-malware, anti-spyware and firewall software. Ubuntu still leaves this up to your discretion and I think this is a mistake. My personal preference would be for it to suggest (or package) a firewall and other security suite items as well as providing a more of a nag box for downloads of critical updates. The default in the download centre is manual. OK, those nasties out there which are expecting to find a windows based PC to infect won't harm my Linux'd Acer but there are still plenty of threats out there and it makes basic good practice sense to protect against these from the get go. I have installed Firestarter as a firewall and I think I will look at the other ones as I'm a bit “meh” on the config of Firestarter. The Ubuntu app store has a few options for me to try. I will also be looking at options to “harden” the version of Firefox which is installed in Linux and other stuff to deal with the Malware, adware, tracking cookies and so forth. There seems to be plenty of options.

I don't propose to write a getting started guide for Ubuntu here, mostly because I'm still getting started myself, but I will recommend you find one. If you are a Windows or Mac person then you will find a lot of the terminology and layout different and you will make mistakes. I know I did and luckily I was happy to just reformat and reinstall to start from fresh with what I had learnt I had done wrong.

The question is where does Ubuntu go from here, for me at least? And how does that affect whether this is a recommendation to run it or give it a miss? Well, I think its early doors for me to make a call on whether Ubuntu is “for me”. The file structure/navigation gives me a headache – reminds me of Silicon Graphics workstations back in the day! But the functionality is there, and its pretty easy to find and fiddle with. Unlike previous FOSS OS I have encountered I feel motivated to persevere with this and I haven't even got as far as the much vaunted cloud based music storage which allows you to access all your media collection from any device you own which is internet connected.

Canonical have got their sights on making this work for sure. There are desktop and server remixes available and Canonical are in bed with Amazon for the use of EC2 cloud infrastructure which opens up all manner of opportunities to get a FOSS based private-public blended cloud based solution which not only will appeal to some of the more forward looking SME but also gives you an instant win in buzzword bingo.

I think Canonical have an uphill struggle to get this into the enterprise, and its they who are the private cloud target audience. Microsoft really has been working hard on enterprise level management tools, the efficiencies of which on operations mean that the cost differences between FOSS (free) and Microsoft (big cash) are less of an issue as there are costs offset elsewhere in the operation which tip the balance. For the smaller business the bar maybe just got raised though. No longer is it the case that if setting up a new business I would default to MS Small Business Server package and Windows 7 desktops. Corporate clients will be interested in such options as full disc encryption and some remote management tools (which are doubtless available somewhere in the Ubuntu package) and cloud services, most of which are fully OS independent have to be a part of the mix.

The decision for the home user is a lot simpler. Question: does this do what I need it to? And for a large number of people (principally those who are not PC gamers etc.) the answer is going to be yes. Next project is to roll Ubuntu 10.10 out to Mrs Ku's Lenovo laptop which has shown disappointing performance even since we moved it on from Vista to Win7.

Its Tucker Time again

2011-02-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

As reported on the Hemmings blog and also on the Tucker club forum (how exclusive must that club be?) there is a Tucker which has been unearthed down in Brazil. This one has been largely molested due to installation of Cadillac drive train (as per the repro Tucker I posted a little while ago) but as with all things, you can restore anything you set your mind and budget to...

Cadillac V-Day video

2011-02-16T11:05:00.000-08:00

This one came in by email from a chum and was sufficiently jolly for me to share here. It appears to be a Shanghai market launch of Cadillac's excellent CTS-V and as I'd linked in the CTS-V wagon on the blog a few posts back I thought y'all might get a kick out of this. Its a couple of years ago but this stuff still rocks.

I would move there if they do this...

2011-02-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

In the words of a UK "news" paper - you can't make this stuff up. I would make a special visit to go see it if they do name it after the controversially pronounced former mayor. See the YouTube video up above and join in the snickering. Yup, it will port Fort Wayne on the map. Same as I do love the Gaylord Center in Orlando, Fl. I'mnot sure if "National Gaylord" sounds better or worse.

Sneaky bloomin' insurance

2011-02-11T11:33:00.000-08:00

You know we love insurance companies. And I love Post Office Insurance Services so much I thought I'd mention them by name. Despite very carefully ticking the box which says "Please do not renew my insurance automatically" when I took the policy out, when I get the renewal offer letter from them, what do I find, a line which says "if you want to accept this quote then you don't need to do anything, for your convenience we will renew this insurance automatically unless we hear from you".

This is not for my convenience, this is so Post Office Insurance Services can gouge a premium out of me whether I have aranged alternative insurance or not... This happened to a friend of mine who didn't spot this and ended up with two insurance policies...

While we are on the subject, beware Post Office (and indeed most of these cheap call centre based places) if you think you might want to modify your car at all... They are all very well for the run of the mill standard cars for standard useage, you phone up and ask about adding coilovers, alloys or even uprated brake pads and all of a sudden "sorry we can't even quote for that kind of modification"

Moral of the story, stick with "proper" insurers if you have a proper car... Peter James Insurance, Footman James, SureTerm, Adrian Flux, ClassicLine, ...

Bullet proof disc arrays - litterally

2011-02-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

I've heard of Americans shooting their TV sets, and even their lawn mowers but understandable as “computercidal” urges are I don't recall hearing too many instances of people actually shooting their computers. There is one story which sticks in my mind from a while ago about a chap from Salt Lake City, Utah who had enough one day and shot the servers in the place where he works. Or that should be, the place where he worked. That story is covered on the Salt Lake Tribune

Anyway an American company by the name of ioSafe would like us all to know that you can shoot its hard drives with a shotgun and they will be OK. Maybe gun related hardware failures are more common stateside than we would give credit for. In order to prove this lead-resistant survivability the company invited a bunch of journalists to come get all Joshua Lee Campbell on their hard drives and see for themselves. Its a bizarre yet strangely cool stunt. Read all about it in the Techrepublic report.

Yeah, but can you drive it drunk?

2011-02-07T13:08:00.000-08:00

I suspect the answer to the title question would be an emphatic “no” for obvious reasons, but sadly that was about the first thing to come to mind when I saw this. What “this” is would be SATRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) which is a driver-less car project which got the not for public spending approval from the EU at the end of last week.

Shown above is the first test of the technology outside a simulator, which was carried out at Volvo's Hällered test track near Gothenburg in Sweden in December. The Volvo S60 is being directed and controlled by the truck, which is being driven by a professional driver. The S60 also has a driver, but he is reading the paper and drinking a coffee and the articles I saw didn't mention his qualifications either in driving, coffee drinking or newspaper reading. Such points do matter as we'd hate to think of any Health & Safety regs being breached here.

Volvo are in on this one on account of its existing lane assistance and adaptive cruise control car production technology - which monitors and controls the distance between cars - to form the basis of the automated convoy but the project is headed up by British company Ricardo UK.

Volvo technical leader for active safety functions Dr Erik Coelingh told silicon.com (where I lifted the photos and most of the info for this from!) the vast majority of accidents are caused by human error. He also anounded that the sky is blue and that the defecation habbits of wild bears are often related to the proximity of dense woodland areas.

Official EU suggestions to what drivers may prefer to do than drive

The European Commission estimates that human factors cause at least 80 per cent of road traffic accidents, so automating some of the driving functions should cut down accident rates. The automated road trains could also relieve traffic congestion due to the smaller gap between vehicles and consistent speed of platoons. Due to more efficient braking and acceleration, the project estimates up to 20 per cent fuel savings, which would also reduce CO2 emissions.

Volvo's Coelingh said more tests will take place in 2011 with more vehicles being added to the road train during the summer. The expectation Volvo are setting on this one is for there to be public road trains in about 10 years.

Ultimate Dadmobile

2011-02-02T14:06:00.000-08:00

I'm not normally into new cars, and not normally into new car reviews and such but I just need to point you over towards Yahoo! Autos' excellent review of the Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon. It is written to make you smile. Plus the CTS-V was already on my lust list, but create a Sport Wagon out of it and I am so there dude and so forth.

Sport Wagon. For cool dads.

Anyway, I could plagerise the review but you can read it in its original over on Yahoo! Autos

19p a litre for unleaded?

2011-01-31T14:38:00.000-08:00

Never again in my lifetime will we see real unleaded at 19p a litre. However Cella Energy is claiming that's what we would be paying for a hydrogen based fuel which can be used in existing petrol engine cars "without modification". Well, without adding a hydrogen tank etc. of course.

I've been watching the development of hydrogen based fuels for internal combustion engines for a while as its a very renewable (water derived) source of power and burns in a car engine with only water vapour as the by product. Yes, a zero emission vehicle. Older cars will have some hydrocarbons in the tail pipe simply because of oil washing past the control rings into the combustion chamber but this is about as green as it gets for the old four stroke.

I am aware of research being done at the University of Sheffield who have a Ford Focus already running on Hydrogen gas. They claim close to zero emissions at the tailpipe and no noticeable loss of power when switching between unleaded petrol and the gas system. Sheffield were also talking about a home-user solar powered hydrogen generator at the time which answers the critics who whine that hydrogen isn't renewable as you need electricity to make it and (regardless of what Eon etc. tell you) the proportion of mains electricity coming from renewables is slim right now.

As I understand the conversion it is similar to an LPG conversion, just with a cleaner gas. However it does seem Cella are suggesting a liquid fuel could be marketed which goes in the regular petrol tank. Even better...

I am interested as to the calorific value of hydrogen compared to unleaded and its octane equivalent. IE how good is this fuel going to be at supporting real big power and huge boost in forced induction applications? Has a whole new avenue of tuning just opened up?

I hope so.

Custom Tucker

2011-01-28T13:27:00.000-08:00

I have always harboured some lust for the Tucker Torpedo, and when I heard that they had made a number of GRP replicas for the movie "Tucker, a man and his dream" I did wonder what the chances of turning a decent clone out would be. Seems Rob Ida had the same idea.

You can read all about the car which is quite simply awesome in every concievable way here on the Car Audio Mag website

Imagining the future

2011-01-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

Detroit Auto Show has turned up a selection of interesting concept cars, most of which are models rather than full sized or fully functioning prototypes but show some of the future thinking which is coming from Detroit and from the colleges and so forth who provide the talent of the future. All of which looks a bit Sci-Fi right now. Here's some shots courtesy of TechRepublic

I'm still waiting for my nuclear powered hover car.

Free Pizza is best pizza

2011-01-25T11:58:00.000-08:00

Random thought. Free Pizza. Popped into the Co-op to pick up one of their very nice fresh pizzas, found it to be reduced to £2 for a pepperoni one. Smart deal. When I paid I was given a £2 off my next purchase voucher. FREE PIZZA!

Yeah! Free Pizza!

Well, thats all I have to say on that subject, but felt the need to share my good fortune.

Honda lost in NCP for 3 years

2011-01-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

Just a quick one to tip y'all off to a wonderful story about an 80 year old fella by the name of Gerald Sanctuary who parked his Honda in a multi storey car park and couldn't find it again when he came back. Now on this score I can sympathise. I'm sure we've all been there. What separates Mr Sanctuary from the rest of us is that rather than wandering through the rows of parked vehicles swearing profusely until finally finding the mislaid vehicle, our Gerald thought "meh, what the hell" and went home on the bus. He and his family spent three years looking for the Honda, although I suspect with declining enthusiasm for the task, until one day an eagle-eyed parking attendant noticed a very dirty silver hatchback which didn't seem to move and got the police to run the plates. The Metro has the story, although its pretty much all that I have told here.

The long lost Honda

Mitsubishi in worst car name eVaH + "shocking" new eco city car...

2011-01-18T12:59:00.000-08:00

Mitsubishi must have been checking my blog and having seen my interest in the Ford Focus with plug in power decided now was the optimum time for them to launch their own fully productionalised electric car into the UK market. The i-MiEV (catchy name, huh?) goes on sale today at a not inconsiderable £24K. And every one of these that goes to a punter has also cost you and me the British tax payer £5K in subsidies from the public purse to the pocket of the Mitsubishi buyer. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but “happy” wasn't the first word to come to my mind.

Car engine or washing machine? You decide.

So the i-MiEV is not cheap for a little car, and thats the thing which hit me first, but I appreciate that we have to stop equating “size” with “value” and “quality” - even with motor cars, is biggest always best? I have to struggle to say no being as I drive a Cadillac Fleetwood as a daily driver but I digress.

UK version of the i-MiEV

£24K (really £29K without the subsidy) may seem a heck of a lot compared to another small well spec'd car but when you think there is no petrol to pay for, no road tax and no congestion charge If you live in an area affected by this extra taxation (areas outside London are getting it too boys and girls) then you can offset all this against the purchase cost. Buyers will get the choice to have the Mitsubishi, Citroen or Peugeot badge on the car as the French manufacturers have a rebadging scheme in place so they can sell them through their own dealerships. With the french reputation for vehicle electrics I would be surprised if less than 97% of these things ship with the Mitsubishi logo on them...

I'm sorry but this just made me ROFL

It looks kinda groovy, the dash is very sci-fi, and road test reports tell me it drives well, and it can take 80% charge on its 93 mile range in just 30 minutes. But you know what? I don't want one. If the option were this or a G-Wizz or Sinclair C5 then I think I'd change my tune. Now if you'll excuse me I need to speak to my mortgage advisor about raising the capital to buy another tank of unleaded for the Caddy.

Mitsubishi's pages for the car are here

Electrifying Focus

2011-01-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

Also at CES Ford have announced their all-electric Focus. Ford claim its a class winner with lowest costs in its market segment. Specifications are that charge time is 3-4 hours from a 240V outlet, common as domestic supply over here but not in the US. With a full battery will let the Focus hit a top speed of 84mph. Ford haven't specified the maximum range for the car which is the killer for most of these more than actual performance. The statement just says “Focus is designed to offer enough range to cover the majority of daily driving habits of Americans". Whatever that is supposed to mean.

Looks like any old Ford Focus

A smart 4.2” display gives you all the info on discharge and recharge and is also tied to a smartphone ap, for reasons I am yet to discern.

Pricing, release date and European release have yet to be confirmed.

With an interior styled like one of those Dixons hifi systems.

Sign O The Times

2011-01-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

I am a simple man. I thought this was amusing. I am not quite sure why. A sale at Poundland. Enjoy.

Everything a pound. Except those that are not.

Asteroid brings Android to the car dashboard

2011-01-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

This is tech I like.

French Bluetooth kit manufacturer Parrot has designed an in-car head unit. The Asteroid runs Google Android (a rehashed phone implementation by the looks of it) to offer a real integrated next-generation experience. Or at least that is the theory. With GPS and Google Maps and Parrot's own turn-by-turn navigation this doesn't offer much we've not seen before. Where things do get interesting is with 3G connectivity which comes via an optional dongle.

Android in the dash - consumer style

Now the world of digital radio, internet radio and other streaming media such as Spotify is offered to the dashboard in a convenient package without having to build yourself a carputer. I would hope the Asteroid offers support for iPlayer for BBC radio. What I want is to be able to load my music to the cloud and listen to it anywhere on any device: My PC, my phone, my car stereo, my friend’s PC, the TV in the room in the hotel I'm checked into... I'm sure the Asteroid isn't a perfect solution (its a v1.0 product after all) but device independent music streaming just took a step closer. Now what about the data bundles, restrictions and costs associated with the 3G on this thing?

More here, and here and then here

Labour: reminding you why you voted them out.

2011-01-04T11:53:00.000-08:00

Maria Eagle, the new shadow transport secretary, wants to use the UK’s network of average speed cameras to provide incentives for motorists to observe the law. Yup, Labour don't just want to record the 'plates of cars caught speeding, they seem to be suggesting a national database of every car and its average speed in relation to speed limits posted according to this interview printed in the Daily Torygraph.

Maria Eagle - looks more like Maria Evil.

No no no, this is not a revival of pay as you drive, in fact its economically being promoted as the opposite, but it does give some credibility to the suggestions which came about at that time which were that the scheme was more about building a giant tracking database rather than anything else. Guess what the big common factor here is? A big tracking database. I was one of those who dismissed this suggestion as scaremongering last time out but I'm prepared to adjust my opinions to fit the prevailing facts. Hmmm.

Spy in the sky (well, on a pole anyway)

Oh well, at least Maria will have moved on to some other shadow cabinet post by the time of the next election. Also a politico with an odd name Eric Pickles (he's the Communities Secretary) has announced that "the war on the motorist is over" according to an article in today's Metro. Which is a relief. I don't know about you but avoiding IEDs set up by my local council and fending off marauding raiders from the Department for Transport was really slowing up my commute in the mornings. Don't you just love the way these prize buffoons like to over-egg everything?

Eric Pickles - fatwah on drivers to be lifted.

Yeah, sure the previous administration had policies which were not exactly helpful to the average car owner (and worse still for the abnormal car owner like myself) but lets be honest to call it a war is demeaning to the intelligence of all concerned and an insult to those who have past and present actually fought in wars... Pay an annoying extra tax or get shot at by terrorists? Not much of a comparison is there.

What does this say about me then?

2010-12-30T02:35:00.000-08:00

Hmmm. I sold my Mustang and I bought a Cadillac. Also in unrelated news I found a grey hair. OK, I found a bunch of grey hairs. Being as I have been dyeing my hair black for 20+ years its tricky to say how long the swines have been hiding, waiting to pop out and depress me. On the other hand my Mustang was "only" a Mustang II with the V6 and the Cadillac is a V8 Fleetwood.

This is not a "grandfather car". Oh, OK, it is...

I was feeling like I was rolling with the big dogs, blowing it up G style and all that when my dear wife commented "why is it you always go for cars like someone's grandfather would drive". We have different stereotypes of what a Cadillac Fleetwood driver is all about I guess.

Tim Westwood must get this all the time.

The scourge of the evil clampers

2010-12-29T12:39:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the quiet spot in the blog, life's been, you know... I spotted this interested nugget of info on the web and its a bunch of useful info all in one place so thought I'd pass it around in the manual link aggregation stylie...

Yahoo's guide to what to do if your car gets clamped

The Hardware Hustle

2010-11-09T03:21:00.001-08:00

Is it just me or is there some kind of conspiracy in the air right now? In the last few weeks pretty much every IT news and online resource I use has carried an article on the dangers of aging hardware. I attended a shin-dig just this Thursday where one speaker managed to get a reference in to the topic as well despite it not being on the agenda. However as he was from one of the hardware companies I suspect it’s always on his agenda.

Is this just a chance confluence of events? Or is the hardware industry trying to drum up trade using scare tactics? You gotta know which one I favour.

You see I am employed to get a job done, and to get it done at the lowest overall cost to the company who employ me as I can. We are not a charitable foundation established to keep Hewlett Packard or Dell sales bonuses high for Christmas so little Timmy can have an iPad. We are here to align the business need to the available technology. And if, in hardware terms, that means 5 year old technology then that is just what I will use.

Let’s talk about the environment. I like “sustainable ICT”. I follow the mantra of all the Rs. (or is that a mantra that’s all a load of arse? I do struggle to remember these days)

Reuse

Repair

Repurpose

Refurbish

Recycle

Replace

But it makes economic sense as well. I am particularly fond of HP’s DC7600. It’s a desktop PC from maybe 4 years ago. I own a couple of hundred of them. And I bought maybe 50 more of them off eBay for £70 a pop. They are the backbone of my workforce PCs. They slog on and they do the job. They require no hardware maintenance because (and I hate to sound like I am the HP fanboi here) HP built them well, very well. We bought cheap RAM, and didn’t scrimp on CPU when we bought them and guess what? They run Vista and W7 just fine. We don’t permit local storage of data and our principal business applications are web delivered (hey I can maybe pass this off as private cloud and look tech-sexy?) so the tiny hard drives common to desktops 4, 5, 6 years ago work fine for me. They aren’t great if you have users who need a power user type machine or workstation so for those users we give them a new (or at least newer) PC. Job done. Seriously, we have had one pop a fan, and one fail a HDD, and that’s about the lot.

I hear people bleating about difficulty of managing old PCs. Well, you are doing it wrong then. We got off XP and W2K because W2K is old and sucks and XP does not enable a lot of the ace features in Windows Server 2008. We had a business case, we went for it. Also a nice thing is that “longhorn” era OS are hardware agnostic. One image to rule them all my precious. And get your patching, updates, inventory management up to scratch and you can manage an estate of disparate hardware of various vintage and it’s no real bother. There are some great tools from Microsoft to help you do this, as well as a bunch from freeware and cheap third parties.

I hear further bleating (or scaremongering) about the fact that these old PCs are terribly insecure. This is on the assumption that you are running a mish-mash of badly patched semi-obsolete OS platforms and so forth. There is no reason you can’t run a decent OS on an old PC. The FOSS camp will encourage you to run some Red Hat or Ubuntu estate, carefully crafted to maximise performance but I don’t think you get the easy management that way. Prove me wrong and I’ll become a convert. Pick the OS which works for your shop. Avoid bloaty security products and stick to the ones which do what needs to be done and you’ll have the resources to run a secure network on old kit. Also the older PCs won’t have come with DVD writers and so forth as default, non-delete options so you are at a lower risk of data theft. Use W7/WS2008R2 group policy to manage data via USB and you are golden. Older kit with a CD ROM only is actually more secure!

Energy use is often cited as a reason to replace your old kit. While I am committed to every possible avenue to reduce energy consumption in my business (especially in our data centre where power = heat = more air conditioning = more expense = more power used = power circuit upgrades = more expense etc.) I am unconvinced by the argument that I need to rip and replace to save a fortune on PC desktop power consumption. I have looked at people presenting figures on this in the past and on each occasion I found the numbers to be flawed or just plain wrong. The last one I looked at actually worked back to say that our PCs used 40% more power than the whole power consumption of our company in total. Beware the “assumptions” people build into these proposals. If you have a nice modern OS and a nice modern server OS then you can manage Windows Power Management by group policy, and do it moderately well. The newer the combo of client and server the better the results seem to be but this is still an area where the real world application falls short of the advertising. Good power management is important for good patching. Wake on LAN has to work.

This whole thing is starting to be less relevant because of the cloud. Some CIO of note who’s name and company I immediately forgot says that Windows 7 will be the last mass OS deployment. In the same way that many (including Bill Gates interestingly enough) predict that Blue Ray will be the last disc based distribution format. Certainly the variety of devices upon which corporate data is being accessed is broadening daily. And I have to ask if you can pick up email and review a word document on a 600Mhz processer mobile phone why do you suddenly need 4 GB RAM and a 4 GHz processor to do the same job on a PC?

The workforce we manage tomorrow will be working in very different ways, or they will be Chinese. I doubt very much that the PC platform and the traditional server hardware will be what we are talking about with any great relevance, not in the mainstream of IT services anyway. This push for hardware sales is possibly a death throw of an old industry. Look how the big PC manufacturers are repositioning themselves as “business services” and cloud providers and the like. Look how IBM, HP, Dell and the like have been reshaping their businesses. I think that probably tells you as much about the importance of the old fashioned hardware refresh as does my ramblings...

This is how ecommerce is supposed to work.

2010-11-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

I use a company called Rock Auto LLC who is based in some far off part of the USA. I use them because it’s quicker and easier and often cheaper to deal with them than it is to deal with a local supplier here in the UK. A couple of years ago I’d never heard of them, but now they are on my MVP list. Why? Because I appreciate the fact they have ecommerce down right. Let’s take a look at the Rock Auto customer experience and you’ll see why I am impressed.

It'll never go back together again...

The website is not flashy, it’s not gimmicky. It gets straight down to business. It’s easy to look at and easy to work out where you go to get what you want. It’s equally easy to browse or search depending on your preference on how you want to shop.

Once you have drilled down to the parts you need for the car you have you are presented with a range of choices based on the manufacturer of that part, shipping location (vital information for an overseas customer, you want all your bits to ship from the same location to keep the costs down) and you can even see photos of the part, diagrams, spec info, etc. Everything you need is there to make it easy for you to select the part you need.

You can select prices to be in US Dollars or converted to your local currency (in my case GBP) although they still bill in US Dollars so the price in your currency is indicative rather than precise.

When you get your basket together you select your shipping options. There is a well placed link to explain shipping options in terms of shipping time and cost. Most shipping options then allow prepayment of the import duty and VAT (taxes for any non-Brits reading this). This may seem like a small point, and to some an annoyance if they are hoping to sneak parts through the postal system without getting caught for import taxes but it really is a good thing because most carriers charge between £6.95 and £15.00 to process import duty and VAT at this end. Pre-paying saves this charge.

The basket also allows you to include items “saved” (by entering a quantity of zero) so you can pick them up next time without searching, just go into your basket and change the quantity back to 1, 8, 16, whatever.

There is a live chat option which I have never used but seems a good idea too. I have no idea what hours it is manned though, so those of us shopping in different time zones may not be able to use this feature as easily.

Once your card is processed and your order is on the system you get useful update emails automatically generated. They are well thought out too. For example your confirmation email gives a link back to each item you purchased, order status and separate link takes you directly to the tracking section of the carrier’s website which is shipping your order, right into your actual shipment. It’s all just so seamless, its “joined up” and it works.

When there is a query on your order, for example I ordered a rotor arm as part of an order and this part was actually out of stock at their warehouse despite having been listed as available on the website, a real person sent me an email and the email contains hyperlinks back to my order and the item in question. My options are explained and I just have to ping an email back to confirm my choice. Easy.

None of this is rocket science. This is just good ecommerce design/practice. So why do so many other companies utterly PHAIL to offer a good web experience? I’m afraid I have to name and shame JC Whitney as an utterly frustrating company to try do business with as an international customer due to the convoluted and slow methods of getting international shipping prices and options and placing an order to ship to UK. Jegs and Summit also need to get demerit points because they charge a surcharge (around $20) to international buyers for no other reason than I guess they just can. Summit were at least offering online international shipping options although that appeared to have gone last time I used their website.

I have no idea how big Rock Auto is and how many people it employs. It does however prove you don’t need to be the size of Amazon to offer a proper online shopping environment which supports your customers and has them coming back time and again as well as telling their friends how good it is and even writing blog posts on the subject...

Britain's angriest drivers, apparently.

2010-10-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

It's good news for the persecuted white van man as a recent poll by insurance website Gocompare.com has revealed BMW drivers to be the UK's angriest. Although the white van man still features highly on the list, he has been overtaken at some speed by BMW drivers. Over half of the 3000 drivers who took part in the poll said that they had suffered at the hands of a BMW driver with the most frightening of behaviour being tailgating (58%), drivers pulling out in front of people (40%) and speeding (39%). And BMW drivers find that they are not the sole German manufacturer in the top 10, Audi, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz drivers are considered to be fiery tempered when they get behind the wheel.

See where you fall among the top 10 angriest drivers -

1. BMW

2. White van

3. Audi

4. Ford

5. Land Rover

6. Lorry

7. Vauxhall

8. Range Rover

9. Volkswagen

10. Mercedes-Benz

What rattles me about these kind of press releases (you want to guess who released the info quoted above? Huh?) is that it’s just rubbish research. It’s nothing about the driving ability or “anger” of BMW drivers but it’s all about the social attitudes towards BMW drivers. You take a straw poll of a bunch of people “which drivers are worst/angriest/most aggressive” and even worse give them a list to pick from and I bet that people would pick BMW and white van even if some bizarre act of parliament had banned all BMWs and white vans from the roads a year previously. It’s just ingrained to believe all BMW drivers are... because we like to stereotype people. The BMW sticks in the mind more when it happens “Oh, typical BMW driver” but the 10 times you were cut up or tailgated by a Honda, Toyota, Fiat, VW, Skoda etc. does not really register. You will note when ever these “worst driver” polls are conducted you will find “premium” brand cars make up most of the list. That should tell you something.

If you want to know who Britain’s worst drivers are by brand of car they drive then ask the Association of British Insurers. They keep records and stats on how many of what type of car get involved in accidents. It’s how they work out “risk” which then goes into the grouping system which calculates insurance premiums.

Steampunk Morris and other fables

2010-10-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

OK, now I’m impressed. I love that whole “Steampunk” thing and this Morris Minor has certainly nailed the steam part of that, STAT. I just can’t imagine how cool you’d be chuff-chuff-chuffing through the traffic in this one. It’s just beyond cool.

I’d be tempted to livery it up in the logo of the Sodor Steam Railway Company or some such. It starts my mind idly wandering to other oddball engine technology transplants. I have often thought it would be a chuckle to make one of those huge mid 70s FWD Cadillac Eldorado into a Hybrid. My thought is using the electrics to run the rear wheels using a RWD rear axle should make it a fairly easy conversion. Control systems would be a challenge though.

While we are on the subject of steam on the roads, this caught my eye from yesterday’s Metro. Not so much the runaway train as the runaway traction engine but even so probably one of the most unusual accidents of the week...

In car computing - OEM style?

2010-10-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve been musing what I would want out of an online car for a while now, there are plenty of guys out there constructing “carputers” which are basically in-car installations of PCs, usually to provide a high storage MP3 / video facility in the car but also some integrate other functions such as GPS and even interfacing with the OBD module to provide vehicle data and stats on a nice PC based screen. Mobile phone network 3 now offers a My-Fi device which takes a HSDPA (mobile broadband) data connection and turns it into a local wi-fi hotspot, these are available for walk-about use or in-car now.

There is an easier way to get a PC in a car...

Ford in the US has a system called MyFord which links some vehicle systems and entertainment functions with online add-ons too. MyFord provides a Bluetooth link, GPS, entertainment system linkage and also web browsing in-car. You can check out the video HERE

Google are reputedly in cahoots with General Motors to provide an Android based online dashboard for GM’s US prestige cars in a service which would presumably replace OnStar eventually. No scoping has been published but I bet Google is eyeing all that lovely data it can harvest with a salivating tongue. RIM (manufacturer of the Blackberry smartphone) has also bought out a manufacturer of automotive electronics recently.

Which brings me back to the question of what I would want in on online enabled car; perhaps the GPS could update Facebook Places with the exact location of my car so my friends know where I am parked and so TWOCers could come and lift it while my I am in the cinema (as my RFID chipped card has also updated Twitter that I am going to see “Battleship Potemkin 2: This time its personal” at the Cineplex so I’ll be out of the way for three hours...) Maybe not.

However... I already have a CD/MP3 head unit which can control my iPod. Bluetooth linkages with mobile phones are common enough. Sat-nav is sufficiently common even my mate Steve has one (sorry Steve) and there is a proliferation of other devices which people are plopping into their cars (I am holding off on an in-car DVD until my daughter really, really demands one...) The opportunity to integrate the control of these devices has to be a win. Also there are loads of new services coming out the whole time, some location based, some not. Subscribers to LastFM, Spotify and the like could have their music on the move as well as being able to access online content from your favourite WebTV providers, LoveFilm or whoever. Ubuntu users can now stream music to Android devices and services like LiveDrive now support media streaming. Maybe I could search for a restaurant close to my GPS position then check their menu and read a review and ask to find a route to it all in one interface. I for one would like to dock my camera and upload photos taken at events straight to Flickr and update my blog... Sure, I can do this from a netbook (if I owned one or wanted to carry one around, assuming I tethered it to my mobile phone, if I could be arsed), but this is all about the user experience. Putting the services where people want them and making them easily usable.

Maybe when you hear Apple has an agreement in place with Toyota then we can expect a fully consumerised UI?

Review: Mankind Razor Pit

2010-10-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

Mankind Razor Pit: It will change your life.

OK, perhaps I’m overstating the case a little here, but even a little change is a change, right? What we have here is the Mankind Razor Pit available from Mankind. It’s a wonderful little gadget and its damned simple. Basically this is a device to clean your razor blades.

Ever noticed how your razor gets “blunt” after it’s been used a couple of times? You rinse it out and reuse it a couple of times but it begins to snag and not shave smooth or close. So what now? You throw it away and use another. And guess what? Those blades are expensive. You add up what you spend on blades and its quickly going to add up to the £25ish the Razor Pit plus P&P will set you back.

The thing is you see those “blunt” blades are not actually blunt. You think your stubble is really hard enough to take the edge off stainless steel? What has happened is that they are covered with a sticky icky residue made of body grease, hair, shaving foam, etc. which coats the blade and prevents it cutting. What the Razor Pit does is wipe that gunk off so you can keep reusing the blade.

It’s so simple and it works so well. Before I could get 2 or maybe 3 shaves out of a blade before it needed to be replaced. Now I can use the same blade for maybe 2 months. And I shave every day, sometimes more, I am one bristly mother lover.

This is a remarkable return on investment, works on disposable razors and most types of blade, you’ll save a hod of cash and be far less likely to run out of blades at an inopportune moment. Plus it means less waste which is better for the environment. WIN all round.

Opensource – you can’t give it away...

2010-10-18T11:54:00.001-07:00

I like a freebie as much as the next guy but I have never been much of an enthusiast for open source operating systems. And neither is the rest of the world come to mention it. Last time I ran a report over at NetApps it seems only about 1% of internet users have an Open Source operating system on the computer they use to browse with. I’m going to be fairly cocky and state categorically that this means only about 1% of computers in the world run an open source OS.

Now if it really is the case that “everybody hates Microsoft” which we hear so often in the pub and on forums, why is it that we all still use Windows when there is a free alternative? The open source guys will tell you a whole load of reasons why Linux, and specifically their favourite version of Linux is so much better than Windows as well as being free.

One reason is that the blowhards and Linux fanboi types you meet on the internet or at techy conventions are a very small proportion of computer users. If you asked my wife for example, she doesn’t give a monkeys what OS her notebook runs. It just runs. She can get on the internet and she can pick up emails and she can sync her iPod and copy photos off her camera etc. Like most PC users she is interested in what it does not what does it.

Windows is the default because every new PC ships with an OS and that OS is almost always MS Windows. While the user is of course paying for the licence they don’t see it as a separate line item and as such regard it as free, or just a part of the package in the same way as you don’t get a separate bill for airline food when you fly long haul, the meal just comes. You paid for it as part of the ticket, but it’s not charged for so it doesn’t feel like it cost you anything...

What is even more interesting is that (historically at least) people will pay extra for MS Windows. I am reminded of the Netbook boom of a couple of years ago. Many Netbooks were offered in Windows or Linux versions. The Linux version was always cheaper because there was no OEM OS licence cost in there. In fact, many Linux Fanbois point to the netbook boom as proof of the case for Linux. What they don’t point out it’s that consumers rejected Linux. Figures from Best Buy show that the return rate on Linux netbooks was about 70-80% (you know I’d look way smarter if I could ever remember the exact numbers) and that most of the returns were exchanged for MS Windows versions...

OK, that was then, this is now. Linux (and Windows) has moved on since then. But it proves that simply being free isn’t enough to make it happen. It also proves that all those advantages touted by Linux proponents are also not going to win any regular users over.

So what will?

User experience.

Ordinary non-techie consumers are going open source like you would not believe in one market sector: mobile phone handsets. Android has open source Linux at its core. In the smart phone marketplace there are many established players such as Microsoft, Apple, Blackberry and Nokia. Android is eating all of them for lunch, with the exception of Apple who it is saving for dinner. How has Android got into this position? Not by being free or even because of the ease of third party application development. The answer is that some guys with a vested interest took it and made it work, and made it work well enough that it became an aspirational technology. No longer do I want a smartphone, I want a GooglePhone. Or more exactly in my case a HTC Desire-HD. iPhone sells because it is aspirational as much as because it works or because of its app-store or whatever. Android is just doing the same thing.

This is what the open source guys need to be doing. And they are finally catching on. Ubuntu 10.4 launched a while back and the interface was made over, the whole user experience was upgraded. But still it did not quite seem to be consumer-ready, not in that same “ooh, must have that” way that the better flavours of Android are. Now we have release 10.10 of Ubuntu and there is some really rather groovy thinking going on at Canonical. Stream your own MP3s as a cloud based service to your iPhone or Android handset or to any other compatible device (PCs included!) which you may be using. Inherent support for this sort of application and technology is what is going to make the Linux based OS the WIN for the consumer. And while we are on the subject of MP3s and supported formats we need to get past the puritan nature of the FOSS crowd over what is and isn’t a “kosher” open format or standard. Sure, in an ideal world we’d all subscribe to the FOSS standards of freedom and openness but in the real world the consumer has DRM, MP3, AAC, MP4, AVI and Flash and wants access to that without having to hear a pile of whining about how it’s a closed standard and we should reject all but the true FOSS ideal blah, blah, blah. But I just want to sync my iPod...

Security is an interesting issue with FOSS offerings. Many Linux types seem to believe that they, or maybe their OS, walk on water. I have heard this from the Mac quarter as well. “You don’t need any security software on a Mac or Linux box because viruses all work only on Windows”. This is not true. The majority of viruses are written for Windows but there are viruses for Mac and Linux too. Also remember specific malwares out there which run in a virtual machine like Java don’t care whether you are on Mac or Linux they run like the scripts on web pages run. If you can access Web2.0 functionality of say Facebook then you can run the malware too. “I don’t need security” is sloppy thinking and I just don’t like sloppy thinking. Understand the threats and take appropriate action. But recently, you know what? There are some neat security suites coming out for the various FOSS operating systems. I’m still dubious about open source in any environment which is really high security (I mean, you publish the source code, so only the good guys will read it? Yeah?) but for the average user who isn’t running a nuclear facility or whatever, meh. Secure enough...

One of the big current barriers to Linux adoption though is the FOSS community at large. At the moment FOSS fanbois are a fairly exclusive club. They like to explain how their stuff is better than Microsoft and so forth and they like to tell anyone prepared to listen how they should also switch to open source. But really, I think they like their little club of l33t users... I say this because most people I know, and I include myself in this, who have tried on open source OS or other significant product have come across the same issues. The Linux guys will tell you “all the support you need is available free from forums etc.” and the problem is that, well, that. Telling new users with queries that they are lame, n00b, need to read the FAQ or whatever when asking questions is not going to endear that new user. One line answers which are 99% code and 0% actual explanation are either stereotypical poor communication skills or a desire to look cool and clever rather than a desire to help and spread FOSS into the wider community. Also the FOSS world needs to get over itself when talking about commercial products. Telling someone to “ditch that MS crap in place of a proper FOSS product” is not going to fly. Business users will very likely need to make FOSS products live in a mixed environment with Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, whatever. Much as many of us would probably love to walk away from complex legacy systems with expensive bespoke support and development costs the reality is that business sponsors won’t pay and more often won’t take the risk. Again, the consumer will have toys which run proprietary formats and drivers which aren’t part of the open source remit and won’t want to junk these (not while they are still fashionable anyway).

Many Linux proponents talk about the ease of making your PC dual boot so you can retain all the stuff which is unsupported in Linux. This is the one big thing I think they are doing most wrong. The minute you admit Linux can’t do what Windows does - you prove to 99% of the PC using world that they are better off sticking with MS Windows. Most of us don’t want a dual boot PC. It’s more complicated and it’s a faff. You are in the middle of doing something and you need to do something else? Switch between applications is OK but between OS? C’mon! Again, some of the Linux distros seem to be looking towards more compatibility with the non-FOSS Windows stuff and this is a good thing, even if the die-hards will call it selling out the principal.

To my mind I can see Linux moving forward in the work place first. Most users will use at home what they use at work because they can’t be bothered to learn two systems so this will probably drive the home user too. The joy of Linux for the business environment is that users will not be installing all their own junk on it, there just isn’t the same ability to grab unauthorised (and potentially malware ridden) software off dodgy websites and so forth. There is less opportunity for them to be installing their own communications packages and operating outside of the corporate safety boundaries. So long as you can configure your chosen distro and OpenOffice and any other items you may need for business use then you are in business and life is looking peachy.

With the rush to the cloud and SaaS the OS itself becomes less important strategically. So maybe for some businesses a free OS and maybe locally installed office suite would be attractive with them accessing their CRM, finance system and any other apps of that nature from the cloud. The big killer for this idea though is the incredibly slick ways you can now manage Windows desktops either remotely or even via automation. It goes without saying to get the best of this you need to be up to date with your desktop, server and management suite (let’s just say System Center Suite because it’s easier to say it than afford it) but there are amazing efficiencies which come through this tried and tested stuff which many CIOs are going to be reluctant to walk away from even for the price of a free OS. I can see the enterprise level IT being Microsoft core for a long time.

We’ve had a decade or so of people centralising around a Microsoft core. 94% of Office “productivity suites” out there are MS Office. Pretty much every data centre has MS server OS running in there, and for many it’s the exclusive OS of business. Now my crystal ball suggests fragmentation of this homogeneous state of affairs with businesses looking to a range of solutions or blends of those and some new players will be seen as the heavy hitters (e.g. expect Amazon to be real big in the business services space before long). If FOSS wants to be more than a niche player it needs to come up with a differentiator which is more than its purchase price. It’s done that on the phone platform, but by allowing proprietary technology and monetisation thereof. If it is going to have a real stab at the desktop and server market this is a lesson the FOSS community has to learn, and be able to stomach.

Googlebot autocar

2010-10-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

It seems that nobody wants us to actually drive cars any more. From Mercedes’ productionised “adaptive cruise control” and the Lexus that parks itself through to VW’s recent vision of the car as a shared community resource which I poked a bit of fun at recently there seems to be a fair amount of cybernews and views on the subject of getting robots (or inbuilt technology) to do the business of driving our cars.

None of this is new and the motivation for it is that very sage bit of safety advice from years ago that “the most dangerous part of a car is the nut behind the wheel”. This was originally some form of validation for manufacturers not to fit seatbelts or collapsible steering columns or other basic safety features in the then new cars of the 1950s. Now it seems since we have all the airbags, crumple zones, active braking systems and so forth that this last rogue element needs to be addressed!

Semi-surprisingly Google are on the case. Much like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer becomes a trucker and discovers the hidden “Auto Drive” function in his big rig the world has discovered that Google has logged 140,000 miles on public roads with a car which drives itself. A real person sits in the car to keep an eye on things. Apparently switching from Google Driving to normal human control is as easy as switching off the cruise control. I am reminded of an episode of Chips where the guys have to chase down a Lincoln Continental or similar which has its cruise control jammed on but I digress. The big inhibitor to reverting to manual control has to be the fact that as soon as Joe Public gets his hands on this he’ll be literally asleep at the wheel.

Don't mess with Ponch.

The proponents of this technology tell us that globally we kill 1.2 billion people in road accidents every year and that driver error is the number one cause of accidents. If follows that taking the driver out of the equation makes for safer roads and also studies suggest that “road trains” of automated cars cruising would lower emissions than the stop-start fast-slow snarl of our congested highways. Certainly I can’t imagine anyone could argue that driving on the M1 on a Friday afternoon is any form of “fun” motoring and the ability to press a button, slip into auto and catch up on some Zzzs or maybe read a book or watch TV is appealing.

Its the Prius if you hadn't guessed

But I’m still way far from comfortable with this... I’ve seen I, Robot...

NY Times also carries the news

The mystery of the missing cat

2010-10-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Have another little view of Hong Kong from my travelling camera. I spotted this homemade poster and it made me smile. I like the “Missing Cat (not baby)” element to it. I wonder if “Missing Baby” posters are common in the region and hope that they are not. On this occasion its a little bit more about position than content. You see, or rather you don’t because I got the close shot not the wide shot, this poster notifying the good people of Mui Wo about the missing cat is right where the sign is to “Mui Wo meat market”. Juxtaposition which I found amusing but my travelling companions (cat lovers, what can I say) did not.

The Autonomous Car

2010-10-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

VW have spent quite a lot of time and effort coming up with a series of concepts to support their vision of the “autonomous car”. In the future, say VW, you won’t need to bother with driving because the car will do that for you. Better yet, you won’t need to worry about parking your car because the car will drop you off where you need to be and then go off and park itself. When you are done shopping, working, eating, whatever it was you were up to, you can use an iPhone app to let the car know you are ready to be picked up and it will come and get you. VW even envision a future where people won’t need to own a car themselves, they will have a kind of time share arrangement in a car (or perhaps a pool of cars) which they then use as and when they need them. They have quite a natty little video telling you all about their vision.

YouTube link

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned to VW that there is this thing called a taxi.

Jaguar's jet engine electric sports car

2010-09-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

Electric cars are boring. Electric cars are for lentil munchers and hair-shirt wearers. Hmmm... Maybe not. Jaguar are celebrating 75 years in the automobile game (although William Lyons was making cars before then, but lets not be too picky) with this rather impressive C-X75 supercar.

Don't get too excited just yet as its only a concept, and likely to stay that way due to obvious engineering issues around the jet engine at the heart of it (yes, JET engine) but the productionisable (yes, that it a real word) part of the car is its electric motors. Its these which give it the 205 MPH top speed and 0-60 in 3.2 seconds and 600 mile range on one tank of fuel. Replace the attention-grabbing jet with a petrol or diesel motor and you have what is essentially a hybrid...

Who thought they'd be fun?