paris

A new concept car from Renault shows that the French romantic tradition even applies to automotive design. The DeZir represents the first step in a life cycle, according to Renault, that encompasses falling in love, exploring the world, creating a family, working, taking time to play, and attaining wisdom.

Renault's chief designer, Laurens van den Acker, plans a whole line of concept cars that stand for each of these steps.

As the falling in love car, DeZir is bright red, with softly curving lines. More pointedly, this two-seater uses a bench seat, keeping the occupants close together.

To us, … Read more

After Paris 26 Gigapixels was created, it only made sense that someone would one-up the City of Love. Dubai can now be viewed in a whopping 45 gigapixels, thanks to photographer Gerald Donovan.

With the help of a Canon 7D, Donovan took 4,250 photos. He used a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L zoom lens at 400mm. According to a blog he wrote last week describing his feat, it took Donovan about three-and-a-half hours to take a full panoramic view for Dubai 45 Gigapixels. Amazingly, he did the shots in 98-degree weather, which made "the camera and lens...… Read more

If you're a fan of drift racing, you'll like this video clip. It's not quite a trailer, but it is a sneak peek at a new French movie called "Vernal Equinox"--coming out in May.

An equinox is something that occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis isn't inclined away from, or towards, the Sun.

According to director Stephane Benini's Twitter page, the movie is about a student who faces a unexpected situation when he returns home. I'm guessing the plot of "Vernal Equinox" will … Read more

I'm en route to the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris, one of the most respected gatherings of marketing executives presenting and discussing the latest trends in their field. In a way, the story of the conference is the story of marketing itself. The somewhat yesteryear name indicates that a few years ago, when Marketing 2.0 premiered, it was conceived as a forum for pioneers who were early on embracing digital marketing and social media. Times have changed. What used to be at the fringes of the profession has moved into the mainstream, and both program and attendees of Marketing 2.0 reflect that. That's not a bad thing. Digital marketing IS marketing, social media IS media. You would think...… Read more

In yesterday's video blog, we looked inside and out at a production version of the Chevrolet Volt electric hybrid that's set to hit the streets later this year. Car and Driver that clip in late 2009 on location in the parking lot of Dodger's Stadium; however, Chevy assembled and presented at least a few other prototypes before finally coming up with the production-ready Volt you may have seen images of. Today, we're showing you one of the other Volt prototypes that Chevy showed at the Paris Motor Show in late 2008.

Sure, the car doesn't … Read more

If you haven't been to Paris, I have the next best thing for you: Paris 26 Gigapixels.

According to the site, "Paris 26 Gigapixels is a stitching of 2,346 single photos showing a very high-resolution panoramic view of the French capital." The site allows users to pan around the beautiful city of Paris to see important spots. Users can also zoom in on different sections to get more detail on particular buildings.

For those folks who want to find important Paris monuments quickly, the site also boasts a list of 20 places around the city. Upon … Read more

You guys filled up our voice mail box over the weekend with your thoughts on the new Apple iPad, but we have to spread the hate around with a quick chat about last night's Grammy Awards, PETA's robotic groundhogs, and high school reunions. We've also got plenty of your sticker pictures to show off, including one that might be NSFW....big surprise, 404!

The Grammy Awards are becoming less and less significant to our personal music tastes, but something has to be said about a show that nominates NICKELBACK for Best Hard Rock Performance. To make matters worse, the show paired together some of the worst collaborations in the history of live performance.

To quickly recap the night, all you need to know is that Lady Gaga won two well-deserved awards and performed Speechless with Sir Elton John, Green Day took the award for Best Rock Album, poor Stevie Nicks looked pissed to be singing about locker room romance with 16-year-old darling Taylor Swift, and the live studio audience got treated to a 3D clip from Michael Jackson's "This Is It" while the rest of us settled for 2Ds and a subsequent headache.

Speaking of bad news, we've got some bad news about the Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the new Broadway musical coming soon to New York. We just found out that the entire musical soundtrack is composed by U2's Bono and The Edge. Don't get us wrong, the three of us all have a special place in our hearts for U2, but their music just doesn't evoke images of a masked web-crawler slinging his way about town snapping photos of criminals and taking down a few in the process.

Finally, much thanks to everyone for sending in their sticker pictures! We've sent out hundreds of envelopes so far, so keep them coming; send a photo of where you put the stickers and tattoos to the404(at)cnet(dot)com!

J'adore France and the French people. But I'm pretty disappointed with Musee du Louvre, a free but painfully brief virtual tour of the famous museum.

The app consists of four main sections. In Louvre: The Visit, you get a video tour of seven well-known areas of the museum, including The Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa.

However, each "tour" lasts less than 20 seconds, and the default language is French. If you tap the screen to bring up the controls and then tap the language icon, you can select English (or German or Japanese), but there'… Read more

Apple has opened an Apple Store at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, an upscale shopping center beneath the famous Louvre art gallery. We reckon Apple products will look right at home in an art gallery, and we've come up with some suggestions for where Monsieur Jobs should open the next branch of Apple Store.

The new Magasin du Pomme, which opened this weekend, is located beneath the Louvre Museum. It features the usual white decor and split-level glass staircase.

The Paris shop is the first Apple Store in France. A branch in Montpellier was ready sooner, but the … Read more