Red Bull simulate British GP

Posted on July 8, 2010 by admin


Standing in the technical nerve centre of the Renault-powered Formula One team, principal Christian Horner was prepared to divulge only that Red Bull had not started on pole position in last week’s virtual race.

Red Bull romped to a one-two at Silverstone last year with Germany’s Sebastian Vettel leading from pole to chequered flag.

This year’s race promises to be closer, with McLaren’s two championship-leading British world champions Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button handed a big upgrade in their quest for a home victory.

Most teams carry out race simulations before a grand prix weekend and Horner said Red Bull did them once or twice a month as well as during the winter break.

“It’s a virtual race,” he said. “The team manager even has to ‘talk’ to (race director) Charlie Whiting, even though he is probably sat on a beach somewhere. It’s as lifelike as we can get it.”

With teams strictly limited in the number of staff (45) they can take to races as part of a cost-cutting agreement, more and more is being done with engineers and data analysts back at the factory.

Red Bull have an operations room with big screens showing the same data provided to the pit wall crew during a race weekend.

“During a grand prix weekend it will be packed in here,” said Horner, gesturing at the rows of seats and screens.

“They’ve got a live link to the strategists on the pit wall and at the end of a session they can just go back to their desks.”

The Briton said Red Bull, winners of four of the nine races so far this season, had won more of the virtual ones than they had lost.

“Istanbul we won on the simulator but obviously the simulation wasn’t for the drivers getting together,” he said of a race that saw Vettel and Australian Mark Webber collide while running one-two.

The two drivers were both at the factory on Wednesday, spending time in the racecar simulator getting to grips with the new Silverstone layout that they will get a first taste of on Friday.

The Australian said their relationship remained “pretty good”.

“If Seb was drowning in the ocean I’d go in and help him out,” he said. “We don’t hate each other’s guts, I didn’t push him in…(but) it’s not easy to have a beautiful fuzzy warm relationship when he’s clearly a competitor.”
Reuters

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IBM endorses Firefox as in-house Web browser

Posted on March 4, 2010 by admin


SAN FRANCISCO, USA (AFP) – Technology giant IBM wants its workers around the world to use free, open-source Mozilla Firefox as their window into the Internet.

“Any employee who is not now using Firefox will be strongly encouraged to use it as their default browser,” IBM executive Bob Sutor said Thursday in a blog post at his sutor.com website.

“While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be.”

Making Firefox the default browser means that workers’ computers will automatically use that software to access the Internet unless commanded to do differently.

All new computers for IBM employees will have Firefox installed and the global company “will continue to strongly encourage our vendors who have browser-based software to fully support Firefox,” according to Sutor.

New York State-based IBM, known by the nickname “Big Blue,” has a corporate history dating back a century and now reportedly has nearly 400,000 workers.

“Today we already have thousands of employees using it on Linux, Mac, and Windows laptops and desktops, but we?re going to be adding thousands more users to the rolls,” Sutor said.

Sutor is the vice president of open source and Linux at IBM, which launched an Open Source Initiative in 1998. Open-source software is essentially treated as public property, with improvements made by any shared with all.

Firefox is the second most popular Web browser in an increasingly competitive market dominated by Internet Explorer software by Microsoft.

Google Chrome has been steadily gaining market share, last week replacing Apple Safari as the third most popular Web browser in the United States.

“We’ll continue to see this or that browser be faster or introduce new features, but then another will come along and be better still, including Firefox,” Sutor said.

“I think it was Firefox and its growth that reinvigorated the browser market as well as the web. That is, Firefox forced competitors to respond.”

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Google Buys Travel Software Firm ITA

Posted on February 10, 2010 by admin

Forget social networking. Is Google Air the search engine giant’s next big thing?

Not quite, but Google has shelled out $700 million to acquire ITA, a Boston-based software company that specializes in organizing airline data like flight times, availability, and prices, Google announced Thursday.

The purchase will help Google produce new flight search tools intended to simplify the process of searching for flights, comparing options, and buying tickets, Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, wrote in a blog post.

“Today, almost half of all airline tickets are sold online. But for many people, finding the right flight at the best price is a frustrating experience; pricing and availability change constantly, and even a simple two city itinerary involves literally thousands of different options,” Mayer wrote. “We’d like to make that search much easier.”

Travel-related searches are among the highest-volume queries received at Google, but the company denied that it has plans to become a travel agent. The company’s hub will facilitate comparison shopping and ultimately drive traffic to Web sites for online travel agents, Google said; presumably how Google News drives traffic to news Web sites.

“Google won’t be setting airfare prices and has no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers,” the company said.

In a FAQ posted online that asked whether Google wanted to compete with companies like Orbitz or Kayak, Google said it is interested in building a flight search tool that will send customers “to sites where they can buy their tickets” and that Google hopes to have “productive partnerships with as many online travel companies and industry players as possible.”

Google currently has two travel-related search features available via Google.com: searching for flight information (like “United 741″) as well as available flights (like “New York to SFO”), which returns links to sites like Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Orbitz, Kayak, and CheapOair.

“Both features are aimed at improving search quality and neither is based on any financial compensation to or from Google,” the company said. “Neither feature relies on data from ITA Software.”

“ITA has built a very successful QPX business, and we’re looking forward to working with their current and future customers,” Mayer wrote. “Google will honor all existing agreements, and we’re also enthusiastic about adding new partners.”

QPX is an ITA database with searchable information about flights and prices.

Work on the project will not begin until after the deal is approved, Google said. It will likely be subject to regulatory review, which “could take some time,” Google said. As a result, the company did not have any additional details on the design of the new travel interface or when it might launch.

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Nimoy and Saldana give Yoostar film karaoke a whirl

Posted on January 5, 2010 by admin

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Star Trek legend Leonard Nimoy and new-generation star Zoe Saldana on Wednesday put their acting skills to the test in a Yoostar “film karaoke” videogame.

Both were won over to the game, which taps into motion-sensing and camera capabilities of Xbox 360 and PlayStation Move to virtually insert players into movie scenes to play the parts of beloved actors.

“It was awesome,” Saldana said after giving “Yoostar 2″ a try at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.

“It’s really amazing. This ups the ante and just makes the enjoyment of you loving films even greater.”

Nimoy opted for a shot at the part of a robotic killer played by actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original “Terminator” film.

Nimoy donned dark sunglasses and was trasported into the film to utter the famous line “I’ll be back.”

“Eat your heart out Schwarzenegger,” Nimoy shouted after nailing the scene.

Yoostar software erases a chosen character in a scene, then replaces it with video of the player taken by cameras linked to videogame consoles. The game rates players on their timing and movement in scenes.

“What’s exciting is you are going to have something great to do on a Saturday night besides just sitting with your friends and singing karaoke,” said Saldana.

“To get the opportunity to be in a movie either I couldn’t get or I wasn’t born at the time but I can share the scene with certain actors I admire is wonderful. You will see me probably on the Enterprise with Mr. Nimoy.”

Saldana, who will be 32 on Saturday, played the part of a young “Uhura” in the blockbuster “Star Trek” film released last year.

“What was it like to kiss Spock,” Nimoy asked Saldana in a playful reference to a romantic scene in the latest Star Trek film.

After she replied “Awesome,” Nimoy quipped “That makes me so jealous.”

Nimoy, 79, became a part of pop culture for his role as “Spock” in the original “Star Trek” television series in the late 1960s and in films made with the same crew.

Yoostar launched last year with a version of the videogame tailored for personal computers. Players had to use “green screens” as background and web cameras to insert themselves in scenes.

Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360 consoles and Sony Move for rival PlayStation 3 employ camera and motion-sensing technologies that let Yoostar insert players directly into scenes in a new version of the game.

“It is really the first time you can immerse yourself in a film without a green screen,” said Yoostar co-founder and co-chairman Patrick Bousquet Chavanne.

“You pick a scene and get directly into the action.”

“Yoostar 2″ will be released later this year when Kinect and Move hit the market, according to Bousquet Chavanne, who added that pricing of the videogame would be disclosed later in the year.

The videogame comes with 60 film scenes ranging in length from 30 second to three minutes, and Yoostar has hundreds more snippets available for download online at yoostar.com.

Several players can take parts in the same scene, and game options include being able to ad lib one’s own lines.

“It gives people an opportunity to relive or experience on a deeper level a film they love,” Saldana said. “I feel karaoke did that for music, so now its the same in film. It’s so exciting.”

Yoostar, which was founded two years ago, has made deals with major film studios and nearly 1,200 actors to clear the way for people to become their own stars on screen.

Players will be able to upload performances for friends to see at Facebook or other websites, according to Yoostar.

“The things we are seeing in films today are so far beyond anything we had five, 10, 15, 20 years ago,” Nimoy said.

“It is great you can do all kinds of stuff, but we are still dependent on a good story. If technology serves a good story it is a great thing.”

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Judd Apatow developing new Pee-Wee Herman flick

Posted on December 10, 2009 by admin

LOS ANGELES – Pee-Wee Herman is coming back to the big screen in a Judd Apatow production.

Apatow’s publicist, Matt Labov, says the writer-director-producer is developing a movie with Pee-Wee’s creator, Paul Reubens.

Reubens is co-writing the film, which is described as an on-the-road movie built around a big adventure.

Pee-Wee’s first film, 1985′s “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” spawned a cult TV show featuring the kooky, overgrown boy. Reubens revived his character on stage this year, and that show is set for a 48-performance run on Broadway starting Oct. 26.

Apatow’s film credits include “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”

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The Insider’s Choice in Menswear

Posted on November 2, 2009 by admin

Paris – Judging from the applause at the end of Lanvin’s latest menswear runway show, the best received collection in Europe these past 10 days in either Milan or Paris was that of this storied French brand.

A cunning distillation of several ideas – the revival of the dandy, bohemian tailoring and sensitive chic – the collection won a standing ovation at its finale on the morning of Sunday, June 27, in Paris.

Staged in the Mineralogy Gallery of Paris’ elegant Botanical Gardens – the cast got dressed before man-sized crystals in the backstage – the collection was a great statement of libertine French gentleman’s style. They were clothes that most every guy in the audience wanted to wear, and which women would love to see their husbands or boyfriends buy.

“Half the shows in Paris had men skirts; so we thought a little jewelry would not go amiss,” joked the house’s creative director Alber Elbaz post show. It was not shy jewelry, by the way, but massive chokers, leather pendants with grommets and shells on neck chains.

The house – a major trend maker in footwear – also showed striking, new sandals with tire style soles and cloth tops, that will be very influential.

Elbaz is arguably the finest draper currently designing women’s clothes, and he lent some of that skill to a natty series of jerseys that curled around the upper torso heroically.

And, just when one felt the looks were getting a bit too much, Elbaz and the house’s men’s director Lucas Ossendrijver socked you with some active sportswear mixes – like track jackets, vertical stripe jockey tops or brilliantly cut jogging pants.

But the high point was the open-seamed, arty, rascally tailoring; deliberately looking a tad aged and lived-in, climaxing with bubbly crepe suits in dazzling hues of imperial purple and faded gold.

“We wanted to get away from the whole macho thing, from the stigma of being sensitive,” added the designer, as models knocked back champagne on the sun-filled gallery steps.

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Mourners bid farewell to popular SKorean actor

Posted on October 15, 2009 by admin

SEOUL, South Korea – Grieving mourners from both South Korea and Japan bid farewell Friday to a popular South Korean actor and singer who committed suicide earlier this week.

A funeral ceremony was scheduled for Park Yong-ha, 33, who killed himself Wednesday in distress over career and family pressures, the latest in a string of high-profile suicides in the Asian country.

Park’s suicide stunned South Korea and neighboring Japan where he was one of the most popular South Korean celebrities. One of his fans was said to be Japan’s former first lady, Akie Abe.

About 100 wailing fans — mostly Japanese women in black mourning attire — stood outside a hospital and surrounded the hearse carrying Park’s coffin to a cremation site, briefly preventing it from departing. One tearful fan held up a T-shirt expressing love for the late actor. Another reached out to touch the vehicle.

Police have said Park had been under stress because he had to juggle management of his entertainment company and career while his father was fighting stomach cancer. The actor had been taking sleeping pills due to insomnia, police said, citing Park’s mother.

Park debuted in the late 1990s and starred in the 2002 television drama series “Winter Sonata,” which was also watched by fans in Japan and Southeast Asia. He held several concerts in Japan and released eight CDs there.

He was supposed to hold 12 concerts across Japan from July 2 to Aug. 22 and the tickets were sold out, according to Japanese record company Pony Canyon Inc.

South Korea has the highest suicide rate among the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Choi Jin-sil, one of South Korea’s most famous actresses, committed suicide two years ago. In March, her younger brother, Choi Jin-young, also an actor, killed himself in Seoul.

Former President Roh Moo-hyun jumped to his death in May last year while embroiled in a widening corruption scandal.

APTN cameraman Yong-ho Kim and Associated Press photographer Young-joon Ahn contributed to this report.

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Utah artist known for Washington painting dies

Posted on September 26, 2009 by admin


SALT LAKE CITY – Arnold Friberg, a Utah artist best known for his painting of George Washington in prayer at Valley Forge, died Thursday, his family said. He was 96 Jayna Friberg-Cleamons said her father-in-law died at a Salt Lake City rehabilitation center following hip replacement surgery.

Friberg, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also painted portraits of figures from the Book of Mormon.

“He didn’t want to be known as Mormon artist,” Friberg-Cleamons told The Associated Press. “He just wants to be defined as an artist that painted a wide range of things.”

Friberg-Cleamons said Friberg became an expert in any subject area he depicted, from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to the history of college football. She said his paintings are full of emotion.

“There’s something about the light that (he) put in these paintings that just touches” people, she said. “His work inspires people.”

Friberg also painted Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, his daughter-in-law said, holding forth in his own studio at Buckingham Palace for the commission.

Friberg started drawing cartoons in his youth, according to the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.

“I drew an original cartoon every day because I wanted to be a cartoonist,” he told the Deseret News in 2003.

A recorded message at Friberg Fine Art in Salt Lake City said the office will be closed until Tuesday in remembrance of Friberg, who also was nominated for an Academy Award in costume design and painted scenes for the movie “The Ten Commandments.”

Friberg’s “The Prayer at Valley Forge,” which he created to commemorate the United States’ bicentennial in 1976, is displayed at the Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. It depicts Washington kneeling in the snow beside his horse.

In 1999 a federal judge ruled that bronze sculptures made by another artist were illegal copies of “The Prayer at Valley Forge” and violated Friberg’s copyright for the oil painting. Friberg had sued Jonathan Bronson in 1997, contending the two versions were unauthorized copies.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said in a statement Thursday that “The Prayer at Valley Forge” hangs in his office and that it inspires him daily.

“Utah is proud to call Arnold Friberg its adopted son,” Herbert said. “His work is instantly recognizable and has inspired countless people, whether it is through his religious illustrations or his patriotic pieces.”

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‘Twilight’ eclipses record with $68.5M debut

Posted on September 5, 2009 by admin


LOS ANGELES – Fans are over the moon for “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” which pulled in $68.5 million in its first day to set a new record for a movie debuting on Wednesday.

The third installment in the vampire romance surpassed the previous Wednesday record of $62 million set last year by “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

But “Eclipse” fell short of the all-time best opening day, a record held by its predecessor, last November’s “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” which took in $72.7 million. “New Moon” opened on a Friday, typically a busier day at theaters than weekdays.

“Eclipse” opened in a record 4,416 theaters and expands to 4,468 cinemas Friday for the Fourth of July weekend, one of the biggest box-office weekends of the year.

With so much money already in the bank and a long holiday weekend ahead, distributor Summit Entertainment hopes “Eclipse” can top the $200 million haul for “Revenge of the Fallen” in its first five days, a record for a movie opening on Wednesday.

“It certainly is a target for us,” said Richie Fay, head of distribution for Summit. “I’d be real hesitant to say that we will break that. We would love to and are striving to. We have the location and screen count that could get us there. But if the weather isn’t in our favor, if people are out barbecuing and looking at fireworks Sunday night, we may not get there.”

In a single day, “Eclipse” took in a fraction more than the $68 million the movie cost to produce.

Fay said “Eclipse” followed the pattern of “New Moon,” whose audience was 80 percent female. With generally better reviews on “Eclipse” than its predecessors and a marketing campaign that played up the movie’s action, Summit executives hope the latest sequel will draw in more males as the weekend progresses, he said.

“Eclipse” continues the story of brooding teen Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), caught in a love triangle involving her vampire boyfriend (Robert Pattinson) and her werewolf pal (Taylor Lautner). The new movie forces vampires and werewolves to set aside old rivalries and unite against a band of ravenous newborn bloodsuckers.

The franchise concludes with a two-part adaptation of “Breaking Dawn,” the final novel in Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling series. Part one of “Breaking Dawn” is due in theaters Nov. 18, 2011.

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Banks borrow slightly more from Fed

Posted on August 12, 2009 by admin


WASHINGTON – Banks borrowed slightly more last week from the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending program, but are still well below levels seen during the 2008 financial crisis.

The Fed, in a report issued Thursday, said banks averaged $162 million in borrowing for the week ended Wednesday. That’s up from $151 million in the previous week.

Loans from the central bank’s emergency lending program, known as the discount window, had surged to a high of $110 billion a day during the height of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. At the time, banks turned to the Fed as a lender of last resort because their sources of credit were frozen.

With financial and economic conditions improving, the Fed has been winding down its special lending programs. Still, the central bank’s balance sheet has swollen to $2.3 trillion, more than double its pre-crisis level of less than $1 trillion.

The economy, meanwhile, is fragile.

High unemployment, Europe’s debt crisis and a stalled housing market are weighing on the rebound.

That means the Fed is likely to keep interest rates at record low well into next year — and possibly into 2012. If the economy shows serious signs of backsliding, the Fed could revive some crisis-era programs, such as buying mortgage securities. The Fed’s $1.25 trillion mortgage program, which shut down at the end of March, drove down mortgage rates and helped boost the crippled housing market.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who met privately with President Barack Obama earlier this week, said the Fed will be taking stock of both economic development in the United States and overseas in charting out any future policy moves.

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