The second version is the Pure Black Carbon that has Italian carbon leather on the back. The case of both phones are made from titanium, with the case being covered in layers of ceramic finish for durability. The ceramic coating gives the surface a matte appearance and soft touch feel. The screen is covered by 42-carat sapphire glass and polished crystal.

The keyboard on the phone is made from surgical steel for durability and lasting style. Gresso will offer these phones in a limited edition of 100 units starting this month. The phones will sell for $2700 each and run Symbian S40 for the operating system. For that price, Gresso should really move Android to provide more functionality.

I have wondered on more than one occasion how many people actually use Google’s DNS servers. Google has offered the answer to that question, and answer is a ton. Google reports that it serves an average of over 70 billion public DNS requests each day. Google says that its Public DNS is particularly popular with international users with about 70% of its traffic coming from outside the US.

Google also notes that it has added Google Public DNS servers in Australia, India, Japan, and Nigeria. It’s hard to imagine 70 million daily requests and the number of servers it would take to handle the workload. Google also notes it is taking steps to support IPv6 with new addresses of 2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844 along with 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

Siri gave up the secret when some geeks simply asked, “what language do you speak?” Siri responded, “I can speak French, English, Japanese, and German… But I’m always learning.” Obviously, Japanese wasn’t there originally. It’s worth noting that Japanese isn’t reported to appear in the Siri settings menu at this point. With Siri already admitting to speak Japanese, the addition must be coming soon.

The strange thing to me is that if Chinese and Russian are coming alongside Japanese, why is Siri not admitting to those languages when asked? If an update was applied to Siri to add Japanese to her responses, why were Chinese and Russian responses not at the same time? The official announcement is expected to come next month, so we hope to learn more soon.

[via 9to5Mac]

This sounds a lot like the Ford Sync system in most Ford vehicles. GMC says that the IntelliLink home screen can be configured by the driver with the icons they want. It has icons built-in for Pandora and Stitcher streaming via smartphones. The system should work pretty much like Ford Sync since it, and IntelliLink are powered by Nuance.

The voice control system also uses the Gracenote media database to provide album art and artist information. This also allows people to find content using nicknames such as “The Boss” and others. IntelliLink’s integration of Gracenote is the first to provide track data via Bluetooth streaming rather than having to have the device plugged into the USB port.

“Gracenote is typically limited to devices plugged in to the USB port,” he said. “With IntelliLink, we are the first company to run Bluetooth streaming audio through the Gracenote database to display album art for music players connected wirelessly.”

Adage reports that Apple has cut the minimum buy to $100,000 per campaign running on the iPhone and iPad inside apps. That is a massive reduction in the minimum buy, which was previously $500,000. That $500,000 was half the original starting price of campaigns using iAd when it debuted in 2010 when campaigns cost a minimum of $1 million. Developers will appreciate the new program, with 70% of those ad revenues generated from ads inside their apps going into their pockets.

Before the changes, developers received a 60% cut of advertising revenue. Along with the minimum buy pricing changes, Apple has also axed an additional fee it previously charged every time users click on an ad. Apple used to charge a fixed rate for every 1000 ad impressions along with an additional click fee.

[via Adage]

The HD 7750 is a performance-level graphics card that doesn’t need a separate power connector operating at under 75 W. Both new GPU’s use the 28nm process AMD has been building GPUs on most recently. The 7700 series GPUs use AMD Graphics Core Architecture for performance and efficiency. The GPUs also support PCI Express 3.0, AMD ZeroCore Power, PowerTune, AMD Eyefinity 2.0 and AMD App technologies.

The new 7700 series graphics cards are both available today the retailers and online sellers globally. Some versions of the AMD Radeon HD 7770 GHz edition with 1 GB of RAM will start at $159 with the HD 7750 1 GB cards starting at $109. The video cards sound like they will offer very impressive performance at a low price that should be appealing to gamers on a budget.

“We were first to 40nm, first to 28nm and now we offer the world’s first GPU at 1GHz; this is a milestone for the graphics industry,” said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, GPU Division, AMD. “AMD continues to deliver superior performance, rich features and world-class power efficiency – we never stop innovating.”

The phone racked up 4412 points in the new Quadrant benchmark. That makes the X3 significantly faster than the Samsung Galaxy Tab that scored roughly 2200 points, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus scored only about 2000 points, and the Nexus S scored about 1500 points. The X3 from LG will be a high-performance device indeed.

The X3 has a 4.7-inch screen with a resolution of 720 x 1280, 2000mAh battery, and 16GB of internal storage. The device also has a microSD slot for memory expansion, a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera, an eight-megapixel rear camera, and it runs Android 4.0.3. One interesting thing is that the phone that was benchmarked was running Android 4.0.3 and showed a 2.6.39 kernel.

[via Android.Modaco]

The large over the ear headset has a microphone boom for chat during gaming, virtual 7.1 surround sound, and it has vibration effects that can be turned on or off. The headset also has integrated volume control, and the mic can be muted. It connects to computers via USB. The microphone is uni-directional to capture the voice without grabbing background noise.

The headset drivers are 40 mm and have a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz with 32 ohm impedance. Sensitivity is 96 dB, and the USB cable is 2.5 m long. The headset will sell for $79.90 and should be available online soon.

He announced that the cloud based syncing service has over 100 million users currently. Last month Cook announced the service had 85 million users. Simple math shows that in the 21 days since Cook announced the 85 million number, Apple has added 15 million new users to iCloud. Apple considers the cloud service to be a long-term strategy for the future.

Cook calls iCloud a “strategy for the next decade” for Apple. Clearly, Cupertino has big plans for the future that involve the cloud service. iCloud is deeply integrated into Apple iOS 5 and is compatible with the iPhone starting with the 3GS. What do you think the future holds for iCloud?

[via TheNextWeb]

With softening demand, sales prices of screens have declined, hurting profits. The tough road in the LCD panel market is affecting more than Samsung; it’s also affecting Samsung rivals LG and Sony. Some analysts place some blame for the soft market and falling prices on the panel makers themselves for continuing to produce screens over and above market demand. By producing too many screens, panel makers have forced themselves to slash prices to sell the excess production.

Strangely, despite the LCD panel market as a whole being in an oversupply situation Chinese firms are entering into the market and building new production lines only adding to the oversupply in the industry and forcing prices even lower. Prospects for growth in the LCD industry overall are slowing, but the OLED segment is set to boom in the coming years so many of these companies are expected to refocus on OLED panels to spur profits and growth. Samsung has estimated that OLED revenues will increase by 600% from now until 2014. With the difficulty in the LCD market, a spinoff of the Samsung LCD unit would help streamline Samsung’s business.

[via BBC]

NASA had two of the specially modified 747s in its fleet, and one of the jets is called NASA 911. NASA 911 took its final voyage this week on a short flight from NASA’s Dryden flight research Center to Dryden’s Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California. The final flight lasted only 20 minutes. With the space shuttle retired and the program over, NASA only needs one of the special Boeing aircraft used to transport the space shuttle fleet.

The original shuttle carrying aircraft dubbed NASA 905 will continue to serve for short while longer because it will be used to fly the retired space shuttles to the museums where they will spend the remainder of their days. NASA 911 is going to be used as a source of spare parts to keep another Boeing 747 the space agency uses in operation. That aircraft is the NASA Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, which is an aerial platform for a 100-inch reflecting telescope.

[via MSNBC]

The improved power management means that the 9800mAh battery is good for close to 18 hours per charge with use. The tablet has dual stereo speakers, 32 GB of storage space, a microSD port, and a five-megapixel camera. The tablet also has a SIM card slot allowing for 3G connectivity along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The new information we have is that the Wi-Fi only version will land in France and possibly the rest of Europe starting next month for €399. The tablet will come in black or silver and there’ll be a bunch of accessories available. That price is much more bearable than the original €499 that had been tipped last month.

[via Notebookitalia]

Konica Minolta has taken the first step towards that roll-to-roll printing of OLED screens by unveiling the world’s first inkjet printhead capable of printing the displays. The printhead is called the KM128SNG-MB, and it is a high-precision inkjet printhead for printed electronics and OLED displays. The drop size the printhead produces is one picoliter.

Konica Minolta uses silicon MEMS technology to manufacture the printhead. That same technology is we used in semiconductor processing and allows the development of a small printhead measuring 38mm wide with 128 nozzles a row capable of ejecting tiny drops of ink. Konica Minolta says that the MEMS technology will allow the printhead to be made even smaller in the future. The printhead is optimized for resistance to the inks used and for low viscosity inks that are used in industrial applications. The printhead will go on sale in sample quantities this spring.

[via OLED-display]

Angry Birds has certainly become a phenomenon, and the game has been available on the desktop and just about every mobile device out there for a while. However, this marks the first time it has landed on a social network, and the Facebook version has some special features. The special features are power ups that can be used to help defeat difficult levels, in other words, you can cheat if you’re willing to pay.

There are four different power ups that can be accessed using a lightning bolt on the top of the Angry Birds screen. These power ups will cost real money to use, granted it’s very cheap. The power ups cost you one dollar for 20 uses. The Facebook version of the game runs on Flash Player 11 supporting 3-D graphics for enhanced lighting, smoke, and explosions.

[via CNET]

Chinese authorities have seized the school had stock in retail stores around the country already. Proview is now asking Chinese customs to stop the import and export of the Apple iPad. China is a huge market for Apple and one the technology giant isn’t going to walk away from. Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu has said that Apple has the right to use the trademark name in China as part of the original deal. She also notes that Apple’s legal case against Proview is pending in mainland China.

The big kicker in this case, is the call from Proview to halt exports. If Proview wins the export blockage it would mean iPad sales globally will be stopped because the iPad is manufactured in China. Undoubtedly, Proview knows the massive blow to Apple’s income this would be. Apple and Proview have previously been in court over the iPad trademark, and Apple lost. The case was then appealed to a higher court with that case still pending.

[via Business Week]

These old school mainframe computers roughly the size of a refrigerator have been replaced by smaller and cheaper Linux and UNIX systems that are also faster and easier to manage. These mainframe computers certainly served an important role in NASA’s early space exploration programs. NASA is calling the retirement of its last Z9 the end of an era.

NASA doesn’t mention what it will do with all the retired computer hardware. I would imagine the last Z9 would end up being sold off in some government auction. Apparently, the mainframe had been kept operating at NASA to support applications that NASA knew would eventually be retired. Once those applications were retired, there was no need to continue to maintain the Z9 mainframe.

The D1 Q will be a quad core device, hence that Q designator in its name. It is expected to be the first Diamond smartphone, and we don’t really know anything about the hardware at this point. We’re hoping the new MediaPad has better software than its 7-inch sibling we are familiar with. The hardware was never an issue with that tablet; it was the software that bothered us.

We don’t have hardware details on the 10-inch MediaPad right now. There is no indication that it will be a Diamond series device. Scuttlebutt says that there will be a pair of Diamond devices unveiled at MWC, so we are expecting at least one more major product announcement from Huawei at the show. Details are scant right now, but with Mobile World Congress only a few weeks away we don’t have long to wait.

[via Android Community]

The exact point in space that NASA is investigating is known as EML-2, which is near the lunar far side and being investigated as the leading option. NASA hopes that EML-2 could serve as a sort of gateway for exploring other destinations such as the moon, asteroids, and Mars. Some of the foundation elements according to NASA would be the planned heavy lift rocket called the Space Lunch System and the Orion crew capsule.

NASA plans for the station to be a international participation solution along the lines of the ISS. There’s no indication at this point of if NASA has the budget or the inclination to actually take on this project. NASA must have some sort of idea that the project would work at some point in the future to even be considering it. Interestingly, should the EML-2 station come to be it would be the longest distance from Earth humans have traveled.

[via Space.com]

Other than the questionable looks, the car sounds very good specification wise. Both vehicles use a 4.4 L bi-turbo V8 engine outputting 560 hp and 500 lb-ft of torque. The car does promise to have decent fuel economy considering the power averaging a bit less than 10 liter/100 km. The car can do 0 to 100 km an hour in 4.2 seconds for the coupe in 4.3 seconds for the convertible.

Both cars will come with a specially calibrated seven-speed DSG transmission. BMW also fits the car with its latest DSC system and an active M differential to help put the power to the road. Check out the official pictures in the gallery below.

[via Motoward]

Google has disabled the use of prepaid credit cards with Google Wallet. The reason for disabling the prepaid cards is to prevent unauthorized access if the phone is lost or stolen. Apparently, debit cards linked to the Google Wallet accounts are still safe. Google is presumably working on a patch that will repair the vulnerability that Wallet Cracker exposed.

There were steps outlined last week that the user of the smartphone could take to plug the gap that allows the PIN to be accessed. This involved changing settings on the Android device such as activating a screen lock feature. I would bet Google would have a patch for the Wallet issue very shortly since the breach is hurting the trust consumers have in the application.

[via AndroidCommunity]

That satellite is designed for high-accuracy laser measurements to test aspects of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The spacecraft is set to launch at 10:00 GMT from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. The Vega rocket is also packed with sensors to monitor all aspects of its first flight, though sensors are important if the first flight happens to fail. The data will be used to determine what caused the failure so it can be addressed.

The rocket will be used to launch satellites that way less than 2.5 tons each. The rocket has four stages with the first three burning solid fuel and the fourth stage using a liquid fuel allowing the rocket to be stopped and started repeatedly to achieve precise orbital insertions. BBC reports that the failure rate for maiden launches of new rocket systems is 58%. In exchange for taking this big risk with the satellite payloads, all the organizations that have satellites on the rocket for the maiden flight are getting the ride for free.

[via BBC]

The cost of those 33,500 new aircraft is estimated to be $4 trillion. Carriers in Asia-Pacific region alone will gobble up 35% of the estimated need with the new aircraft expected to be worth $1.5 trillion. Boeing splits out the estimated 33,500 aircraft expecting that 60% of the new planes will be needed for expanding fleets, while the remainder will be needed to replace aircraft that are getting too old.

An estimated 80% of the new aircraft in Asia-Pacific fleets will be needed for expansion. Boeing is planning to serve these new and growing markets in all aircraft ranges from single isle to very large aircraft such as the 787 Dreamliner. Boeing is also considering a larger aircraft able to carry more passengers than the Dreamliner called the 787-10X, able to carry 320 passengers.

[via AFP]

The goal of the Air Force is to implement the tablets to reduce the workload of flight crews. The tablets would be used for digital charts and manuals just as American Airlines is using the iPad for already. The FAA approved the iPad for use in flight in the cockpit of commercial aircraft in December of 2011. American uses the tablets for digital versions of its charts and flight manuals. These digital versions are said to be easier to use and the weight reduction helps save on fuel costs as well.

The bags filled with manuals and navigation charts that the Air Force pilots carry weighs as much as 40 pounds according to an Air Mobility Command spokeswoman. If the Air Force buys 18,000 of the Apple tablets, it would be the one of the largest purchases of tablet computers yet by the US military.

[via EconomicTimes]

The new owners at MySpace are Tim and Chris Vanderhook, and they plunked down $35 million to get their names on the deed. News Corp had paid $580 million for the site in 2005 and proceeded to run it into the ground admittedly making every mistake possible. The new owners have been working to turn MySpace around by emphasizing the site as music and entertainment hub, and apparently it’s working, to some extent, so far.

The NYT reports that MySpace is set to offer its first good news in a long while. The good news is that MySpace has attracted 1 million new users since the Vanderhooks took the site over. The million new users have come to MySpace since December, 2011, which was the same month MySpace unveiled a new music player. According to Chris Vanderhook, MySpace went from zero sign ups per day to 40,000 per day with the unveiling of the new music player. It’s also worth noting that the Vanderhooks other partner is Justin Timberlake.

[via NYT]

TNW reports that Apple is the country’s top tablet maker with combined sales of original iPad and the new iPad 2 getting Apple 70% to 80% of the tablet market inside the country. According to reports, Apple has sold 700,000 iPad devices since the tablet launched in the country last April through the end of 2011. Sales of iPad devices this year put Apple over the 1 million mark.

One more interesting things from this report is that the number could actually be well over that 1 million tablets sold mark to South Korean consumers. This figure does not take into account the number of people who bought the iPad from other countries or through the gray market before the iPad was officially available in South Korea.

[via TheNextWeb]

The photo that replaced the website homepage showed that the responsible parties for the hack were EvilShadow team – 7z1&Ancker. The hackers are apparently from China and at this point, there’s no indication of why they hacked the site. The hackers were also able to upload an additional photo some verbiage the read “Unsafe system will be baptized.”

The part of this hack that will concern people who have done business with the Microsoft Store in India the most is that the database was breached, and passwords were stolen. The passwords were reportedly stored on the server in plain text. As of now, there’s no word on whether credit card data was stolen in the hack.

[via WPsauce]

The dock has dual 1.6-inch stereo speakers for mid and high range sounds. The bass is delivered by a 3-inch subwoofer promising power and deep bass. This may be a great dock for music and movie fans. The dock has 10W and 2.1 amps of charging power, and the stand tilts for additional comfort. That means it will charge and play from your iPad at the same time.

The docking station comes with adapters that have to be swapped to use the iPad or iPad 2, depending on which you own. The dock is available right now directly from Scosche for $149.99. This nice dock would also be very useful if you like to use your iPad as a second screen at your computer.

The video was allegedly shot by some sort of government-employed engineer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia. The man who posted the video is Michael Cohen. The video is very brief and very blurry. I say that no further than where the person shooting video is standing from the creature crossing the river, the video shooter would’ve clearly been able to see what sort of an animal it was.

It looks to me like some sort of brown bear trotting across the water with a large fish flopping around, hanging from its mouth. It appears in the video the section that is supposed to be the “trunk” is actually a much lighter color than the rest of the animal. Watch the video for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments.

[via MSNBC]

Presumably, that data can be used to tweak your insurance premiums if you drive at high speed, on a bumpy road, during a high-traffic time of the day. The data that is collected is then remotely transmitted to the insurance company, and the driver can access that data online. I can see parents going for this, so they can see how their kids are actually driving when they are alone.

AA spokesman Ian Crowder also notes that the data the box collects could be used to determine who is at fault in an accident, but that data would only be released by court order. The data sent to the insurance company could also result in “a stern e-mail” being sent to the driver if high-speed driving is recorded. I also suspect a premium increase notice would come along with the e-mail. What do you think about this sort of insurance? I think as long as the driver is willing, there’s nothing wrong with having a black box attached to your car.

[via BBC]

The tip came from Activision’s recent earnings report, which clearly stated the Q1 2012 outlook does not include a new release from Blizzard. Activision did report that two new releases from Blizzard Entertainment were expected in 2012. Some other good gaming news came out of the earnings report with Activision noting that the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection will come in March, and a new game in the COD franchise is expected this year.

Another new title expected this year is Skylanders Giants. During the earnings report, Activision also noted that World of Warcraft lost 100,000 subscribers leaving 10.2 million active users globally. The game is still the top subscription-based MMORPG around the world.

[via Tom's Hardware]

Love or hate Apple, you have to admit that the company is growing in a massive way on the backs of incredibly popular products such as the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook notebooks. The massive growth the Apple has reported since the untimely death of Steve Jobs is nothing short of astounding. While Apple is growing hand over fist, Google and Microsoft aren’t seeing the same sort of growth.

In fact, shares in Google fell more than 9% last month after the company missed expectations from Wall Street on earnings and revenue. Microsoft, on the other hand, met expectations, but its revenues from Windows operating system slipped. Much of the success of Apple is due to the iPhone, which continues to sell in huge numbers.

Apple is doing so well that it’s also pulling ahead of many of the largest firms outside the technology world. For instance, Apple is worth more than Exxon Mobil, which has a market cap of about $402 billion. The thing that really pushes home the massive amount of money that Apple is worth to me is this; Apple is worth more than the gross domestic product of Sweden, which is $458 billion. Apple is also worth more than all the gold ($350 billion) in the Federal Reserve Bank.

[via AppleInsider]

Roku has now announced that the UK customers will also get access to BBC iPlayer. That access allows customers to catch up on current BBC programs right on the TV with no need for a computer. That means no missing out on Top Gear and having to slum it by watching the program on your small computer screen.

UK fans will be able to buy the Roku LT and the Roku 2 XS. Those players will sell for £49.99 and £99.99 respectively. Each will offer over 40 channels of streaming content, including Crackle in the UK and a lot more. The players also support casual games such as Angry Birds. The content available on the devices does vary by country.

“Roku recognizes the importance of region-specific programmes so today we are excited to announce the addition of BBC iPlayer to our platform,” said Clive Hudson, vice president and general manager for Europe at Roku. “This is among the first of many significant content partnerships for Roku in Europe and we look forward to making additional announcements in the coming weeks.”

The personal version of The Pirate Bay is now ready for you to grab. It’s interesting to me that complete listing of torrents that the infamous website hosts is only 90MB. That means you can host your very own copy with just about any flash drive you may have laying around, even if that drive is years old. The 90MB download allows you to host your copy of The Pirate Bay as a proxy site.

The 90MB file size comes from a script created by a Pirate Bay user going by the name allisfine. The script creates a snapshot of all the torrents on the website. Using the script the title, ID, file size, seeds, features, and magnetic links 1,643,194 torrents were copied. The comments on all of those were not copied to make the file smallest possible. All of that data totaled 90MB when zipped and 164MB unzipped. The photo here is what a copy of the site looks like.

[via TorrentFreak]

Over the last few months, we’ve seen several projects that have been successful in racking up significantly more money than the project owners figured they needed. Kickstarter has announced that there are now two products going on the site that have racked up huge sums in pledges. In fact, both the Elevation Dock for the iPhone and the Tim Schafer video game project dubbed Double Fine Adventure have both surpassed the $1 million mark.

The Elevation Dock hit the $1 million donation mark as of yesterday at about 1:30 PM Eastern. Double Fine Adventure hit the million-dollar mark yesterday as well. That is very impressive, the Schafer project was seeking only $400,000. I wonder if racking up such a huge amount of money above and beyond what the project was seeking is a blessing or curse. Having to build and ship a physical product such as the Elevation Dock for the iPhone in such a massive quantity could potentially be a burden to the new company with limited resources.

[via TheVerge]

WolframAlpha boasts the new Pro version brings users fundamentally new and remarkable capabilities. The biggest difference in the Pro version and the existing version, is that the Pro version requires a subscription with pricing at $4.99 a month for normal users or $2.99 a month for students. There is a free trial subscription to let you try out and see if you like the service before subscribing.

The Pro version offers the user access to their history once logged in and allows the defining of favorites for easy access. You can also now download raw data that is behind output from WolframAlpha to a spreadsheet in formats for raw data and formatted data. The Pro version also adds support for Computable Document Format, which is format that lets people create documents that have computations. The number of new features in the Pro version are too numerous to list, suffice to say if you enjoyed the free version and use it frequently you will want to check out the free trial account of the Pro version.

[via WolframAlpha]

With the new and much faster USB 3.0 port now available on many computers and notebooks, Apricorn has unveiled a new version of its Padlock that uses the new speedy port. The drive supports a PIN number that ranges anywhere from 6 to 16 digits and five different numbers can be assigned to various users. Encryption keys and PIN numbers are never exposed to the host system and are protected with a cryptographic algorithm.

The drive uses 256 bit AES-XT hardware encryption that is FIPS PUB 197 validated. The drive also has encryption circuitry that is sealed in epoxy to prevent the removal of the electronics to access the data. The drives are available in 1 TB to 3 TB capacities with prices ranging from $239-$369.

[via EverythngUSB]

The gun is being manufactured by Japanese company called Neca and looks exactly like the weapon from the game. This weapon has always reminded me of a spider with a fat butt. The gun will glow blue or orange depending on which type of portal you’re creating. The replica will be up for pre-order this week.

I wonder if they’ll ship these to the US. The Portal gun sells for ¥16,000, which works out to about $208 in the US. I could certainly see fans of Portal shelling out $208 to on this replica weapon. I’m honestly surprised we’ll see more replica weapons such as these in the toy aisles at stores around the world.

[via RegHardware]

The heart of the vehicle is the Aston Martin V12 that displaces 6L it has 510 HP and 420 pound-feet of torque. I guess I’m a little jaded by 2013 Ford Shelby GT500 that has a supercharged V8 engine of 5.8L with 650 hp and 600 pound-feet of torque. Those four extra cylinders don’t do the Aston Martin much good in output department compared to the Ford V8.

Aston Martin will only build 150 of the special Zagato vehicles, and you need to be very wealthy to get your hands on one. Each vehicle will sell for £330,000 plus taxes. That makes it one of the most expensive cars Aston Martin produces as well as one of the coolest looking cars to wear the Aston Martin badge.

[via Top Gear]

However, the California store is not open to the public and is strictly for Google workers. However, the average Google fan can order the same merchandise online. A retail store would presumably allow Google to sell more than just T-shirts and bibs. A retail store could also be used to sell hardware running Android such as Chromebooks, smartphones, and tablets in a set up similar to an Apple Store.

Perhaps this move was in mind since Google started its purchase of Motorola Mobility. With the popularity of Google and the Android operating system, I think a retail store would be very popular. Bloomberg reports that Google purchased the site for the Dublin retail store for about €100 million. Do you think the Google retail store is a good idea?

[via Bloomberg]

The Acadia will be the first vehicle to get the center airbag technology. This tech was unveiled in September of last year and is making its way to 2013 model vehicles. In an accident, the center airbag system deploys from the right side of the driver seat. The goal of the new airbag tech is to protect the passenger and the driver from far side impacts.

A far side impact would be an impact on the passenger side with the driver was alone in the car. GM feels that the new airbag technology has a real potential for life saving. This sort of far side impact accounts for 29% of all belted front occupant fatalities in side-impact accidents. Check out the video to see how airbag works.

[via Lansing State Journal]