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Ultimate Green Machine on the way?

As we told you last September, BMW has been kicking around the idea of a fourth brand (in addition to MINI, Rolls Royce, and BMW) for a while. This week it emerges that this new addition to the Bimmer family lineup may be a dedicated "green" line of vehicles focused on high fuel economy and lower emissions. If so, the strategy would certainly make sense as it will enable BMW to meet tough environmental requirements without sacrificing too much of its performance-related DNA. BMW is one of a number of premium European brands likely to suffer most at … Read more

Bringing seapower to the fight against global warming

The cleantech sector has developed as a major player in the fight against climate change. One of my friends, Dan Whaley, has founded a company called Climos to attack global warming in a new way, sinking massive amounts of carbon into the ocean depths using ocean iron fertilization. The approach has seen significant scientific study, but as he acknowledges, still has a ways to go to prove its effectiveness. That is where Climos comes in. The exciting part is the sheer scale of the potential carbon sequestration (on the order of a billion tons) and the low cost (possibly on … Read more

My Bono moment...in 3D

PARK CITY, Utah--Last night I saw U2 live in concert here at the local high school performing arts center...at least it felt that way.

Bono and I even had a moment--during "Sunday Bloody Sunday" he reached out his hand and almost touched me. He had to be singing to me, and not Robert Redford, Google's founders, or the rest of the Hollywood glitterati in my company. Right?

It wasn't actually a concert. Rather, I was attending a screening for the concert film U2 3D at the Sundance Film Festival. But same diff. It really felt … Read more

Gaming preview: Ubisoft brings us back to Vegas

Ubisoft held the company's latest press event in New York this week, and we were lucky enough to get in some time with a few highly anticipated new games coming from the publisher this year. Yesterday, Will Greenwald told you about Far Cry 2, with its Crysis-like physics and effects. Today, we'll shed some light on Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

Just when we thought we had enough of Las Vegas (CES can do that to a man), Ubisoft throws us right back into the mix of things in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2. While the first Vegas had us running through casinos and garage lots at night, Vegas 2 takes place more during the daylight hours as you'll be seeing back alleys and the grittier side of the town. Rather than giving us an "add-on" to the first title, the team at Ubisoft Montreal has built a game worthy of being labeled as an official sequel. So rest assured, this is certainly not Rainbow Six Vegas: Out of Cash.… Read more

Better your Gmail, again

Better Gmail 2 is a Firefox extension that collects a bunch of Gmail customization scripts from Greasemonkey under one control panel. The latest update, to Version 0.3, brings Better Gmail 2 mostly up to speed with features that were in the original Better Gmail, but had to be abandoned when Google rewrote Gmail's code last November.

The biggest of the latest additions include a revamped insertion of Google Reader into the Gmail user interface. This is not merely a rehash of what came before, but a better-looking, faster-loading UI that makes switching between Gmail and Reader seamless.

… Read more

Gaming preview: 'Far Cry 2:' Cry Harder

Sequels make me nervous. If you have a great game and a sequel gets approved, more often than not it'll become an overworked mess that ignores some of the best parts of the original title while tacking on additions that serve no purpose and make the game a chore to play. This becomes even more likely when the new game is handed off to a different developer. Naturally, when I heard that Far Cry 2, the first genuine sequel to Far Cry (and not a pseudo-sequel with the format Far Cry Additional Word) would be developed by Ubisoft Montreal … Read more

Car rental firms join carbon-offset bandwagon

With green issues dominating the headlines at this week's Detroit auto show, you may find yourself wondering how much it costs to assuage the gas-guzzling guilt you feel when picking up your next rental car. The convenient answer is $1.25 (plus applicable taxes). That is the price at which Enterprise, National, and Alamo are selling carbon offsets to their customers in a carbon-offset program launching today. According to the companies, the $1.25 offset charge represents the cost of offsetting the CO2 impact of the average rental vehicle operating in the company's fleet. TerraPass, the company responsible … Read more

A fingerprint safe recommended by the NRA

This certainly isn't the first personal safe that's controlled by biometrics, but its design is a definite improvement over previous models we've seen. The "BioVault 2.0 Fingerprint Safe" from Sequiam Biometrics has the kind of futuristic look that's appropriate for a security technology of the future--in fact, it reminds us of the Enterprise's sliding doors on the original Star Trek.

It does seem kind of curious, however, that one of its highly touted features is the ability to work with the fingerprints of up to 50 people; we thought the idea was … Read more

Photos: White-hot Asus F8P leather laptop

Vegetarians should look away right about now--Asus has unveiled yet another leather-clad laptop in addition to its UE2, aimed at posers, fashionistas, and pretty much anyone from Essex. Ladies and chavs, introducing: the new and updated Asus F8P Stylebook.

We're being terribly harsh here. The F8P is prettier than most laptops and is available in black as well as white. The palm rest is finished in real leather and the lid in a matching ivory effect--although we doubt the latter is derived from the tusk of an actual elephant. Shiny metal accents around the edge and above the keyboard … Read more