2010 Toyota Avalon Limited: What I drove last night:
During my stint in the Avalon, we made a trip north to deliver wedding supplies to the family, loading most of the items, including a suitcase, in its mammoth trunk. In fact, it swallowed up everything with room to spare.
R2-D2 Droid 2 Comes With Themed Dock [Android]
A collection of new images of the R2-D2 skinned special edition Droid 2 have been unlocked on Verizon’s advertorial web site, showing the phone in much more detail—and revealing this rather nice themed dock. More »
Report: Former GM CEO Fritz Henderson to lead Sunoco spinoff
Filed under: Hirings/Firings/Layoffs, GM
If you’ve been wondering what former General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson has been up to since getting the boot, The Detroit News has the skinny for you. Henderson is now headed to Sunoco to fill in as the company’s senior vice president, at least for now. The company is currently planning to spin off its SunCoke Energy arm during the first half of 2011, and when that happens, Henderson will become the subsidiary’s chairman and CEO.
SunCoke produces metallurgical coke used to manufacture steel. The company currently operates plants in Virginia, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and is currently building a second, high-capacity facility in the Buckeye State. That plant, in Middleton, is slated to produce 550,000 tons of coke while at max capacity.
Coke is formed by super heating coal to bond carbon and ash. The process burns off contaminates like water and coal tar to create an energy-dense fuel. Byproducts of the process are typically used to generate electricity, as in the case with the Middleton plant.
Henderson, a long-time GM man, held the company’s reins for a short time starting in 2009, but was replaced with Ed Whitacre amidst concerns that the company’s turnaround wasn’t moving fast enough.
[Source: The Detroit News | Image: Joe Raedle/Getty]
Report: Former GM CEO Fritz Henderson to lead Sunoco spinoff originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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3 ways to improve entrepreneurial success
John Osher, developer of the low-cost spin toothbrush, was a successful entrepreneur because he thought differently. William Sahlman, professor at Harvard Business School, breaks down the three most important factors in Osher’s success in this entrepreneur thought leader lecture given at Stanford University in 2007.
The key to improving your fortunes, he says, comes down to:
- Reflecting on your experience to improve your understanding.
- Looking at the situation differently to successfully innovate.
- Scanning your environment to find new opportunities.
Tags: Stanford University
People: John Osher, William Sahlman
iTunes 101: Using the Album Art widget
Here’s a cool new feature in iTunes 10 that we haven’t mentioned yet: when listening to any song in your library, you can double click on the album art window in the lower left hand corner to detach it from the main window and see it full size. That’s not new — you could get a closer look at the art in previous versions of iTunes. But what is new is that when you mouse over that detached art, you now get full QuickTime-style controls for your tracks. You can then minimize the main window (using those weirdly-aligned buttons, of course), and then just control the music directly from that square widget (which can also be resized any way you want).
Pretty neat, and somewhat hard to find if you don’t usually zoom in to see your album art full size. This replicates some (not all) of the functionality provided by CoverSutra and a number of other “iTunes controllers,” so it looks like Apple has (yet again) decided to make a popular function in third-party apps part of the official thing.
iTunes 101: Using the Album Art widget originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
iTunes 101: Using the Album Art widget originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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For The Next Episode Of Jalopnik’s "Ask Me Anything"… [Ask Me Anything]
Since you liked last Friday’s “Ask Me Anything,” today we’ll have Justin Hyde taking questions at 12:30 PM EST. Look for the link atop the page. More »
Apple’s Ping Overrun with Spam
Only 24 hours after the launch of Apple’s new social network, Ping, the service has been overrun by spammers. The fraudsters have created iTunes profiles and are posting links to a number of online scams, including ones that promises “free iPhones” or “free iPads” in exchange for filling out online surveys. For the most part, these suspicious links are being posted in the comments sections of the most popular artists on Ping, like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, U2 and others, all of whom are among the recommended accounts linked to from the Ping homepage.
Sponsor
As security expert Chester Wisniewski points out, Apple doesn’t require a credit card or any other positive identification in order to establish an account on Ping, which itself is a part of newly launched iTunes 10. Doing so wouldn’t be advisable, either, as it would lock out a lot of “credit card-less” kids, teens and young adults from using iTunes. There’s actually quite a bit of free content available from the iTunes Store, from apps to music to video, allowing parents to feel comfortable in letting their children manage their own iTunes accounts without close supervision.
Given those lax requirements sign-up requirements, however, it’s somewhat surprising that Apple didn’t build in a good spam filtration system into its social network, too. The types of links being posted now are what any halfway decent blog commenting system like Disqus or Echo would pick up automatically, or at least flag for review, especially since the posts contain links.
Although not mentioned by Wisniewski, we think the lack of attention to this security detail should have new Ping users concerned, or at least wary. If Ping’s spam filter (assuming one even exits) doesn’t block links to obvious online scams, how can we be sure it’s blocking links of a more nefarious nature – like those to sites containing viruses, trojans or other phishing scams?
Where’s the Spam Filter?
What’s odd is that Apple is managing other aspects of the Ping network’s security. User profile pictures have to be approved before becoming visible, we’ve yet to see blatantly offensive comments or posts which seems to indicative some sort of filter, and, as the Apple-watching blog MacRumors notes, there is a “report activity” mechanism in place. Clicking the “report” link on any spammer’s comment brings up a dialog box of choices such as “offensive comments,” “inappropriate photo or video” and “spam.”
But typically a report mechanism would be used to deal with the items the spam filter missed, not as the first line of attack. Due to the rampant nature of the spam – we’ve yet to see an artist profile not affected by this problem – that means that either Ping’s spam filter needs major improvement or the report mechanism is the only spam filter Apple has.
We would ask Apple for comment on this, but they never return our calls. (Working in Apple PR must be a great, right?) So we’ll just leave you with this warning instead: you can’t get a free iPhone from filling out an online survey, OK? Don’t click those links.
The virtual play-by-play: talking StarCraft 2 with Mike Husky
StarCraft 2 has been doing some serious business: Blizzard has recently announced that the game has sold 3 million copies in the first month of availability. Mike Husky is certainly doing his part to keep the game popular; his YouTube channel has just under 200,000 subscribers, and his videos have over 64 million lifetime views.
The demand is there for high-quality commentary on StarCraft 2 matches, and Husky wants to help fill it. “It is my goal to support and promote StarCraft as much as possible,” he told Ars, and his success shows the promise of “on-air” personalities in competitive gaming.
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Decrease Tax Burden by Donating Your Decluttering Purges [Charity]
If you’re doing some major overhauling of your space, be it decluttering your closet or remodeling your office, it pays to skip the dumpster and donate as much as you can. More »
