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Subaru’s Forester combines driver monitoring tech with outdoor style
The boxy Subaru Forester (starting at $24,295) has grown over the years. From a station wagon beset with right angles to an SUV with a tall interior that's got enough room for even the largest Golden Retriever or Labrador. Reviewing this car without a friendly pooch seems very un-Subaru but I'll make do since I don't need a canine and the car keeping an eye on me while I drive.
What you might have missed from the New York Auto Show
Automakers used the New York Auto Show as an opportunity to show the world that they're still all about the electrification of their fleets. From hybrids and long-range EVs to futuristic and America-centric concepts, the Big Apple was home to an impressive amount of automotive news.
Big business analysts looking more kindly on Second Life once again.
It seems like only yesterday, but I guess it was about 6 months ago, that a lot of big business analysts were saying, in rather more business like language, "OMG what's all the fuss about Second Life?" This isn't from the point of view of the casual player, this was stories such as "a responsible IT manager should block access to Second Life because it is a risk to your data security" and "No one can make a decent return on investment in Second Life."Over the last few days I've started to see, directly or indirectly, articles changing this advice: Erica Driver asks does it matter if Second Life appears empty in places for the Forrester Information and Knowledge Management blog; Peter Abrahams, for IT Director, suggests that Second Life is now too important not to be accessible - and whilst he concentrates on disabled accesshe has the underlying assumption that businesses are increasingly using Second Life productively and this will continue to increase in importance; Pham Neutra in his Otherland Blog points out an article from Gartner saying that by 2010, 20% of tier 1 global retailers will have a marketing presence in virtual worlds and online games. That's in 2 years time remember! We are starting to see more and more people working out how to use Second Life - and as Pham comments in his blog, they are starting to learn how to define useful metrics for success in this brave new world.
The Wall Street Journal catches on to HD DVD grey market imports
Hard core HD DVD fans have known for sometime that they can obtain otherwise exclusive Blu-ray titles via overseas websites like Amazon.co.uk; but we were still surprised to see the Wall Street Journal pick up on it. It's not that we don't think people are doing this, but we wonder how many. Sure, early adopter types won't have any problem ordering a title online and paying a bit more for it, but in the grand scheme of the format war, how big of deal is it? The WSJ doesn't know either, but does a great job of describing the reason (distribution rights) for the loop hole and some of the more popular ways (xploitedcinema.com) to do it. Meanwhile, we'll just keep our count to the titles available the average consumer at his local retailer.
The Format War is Blu-ray's to lose
Forester recently came to this conclusion in their latest analysis of the battle to be the next home movie format. They go on to say that Blu-ray hasn't delivered the "knock-out blow" that's needed to win, and in fact has recently lost ground to HD DVD thanks to Paramount going HD DVD exclusive and Blu-ray supported studios not releasing movies. Forester believes that if Blu-ray doesn't release a player around $250 in time for the holiday season, they could lose the whole thing. For the most part we agree, but we blame the studios more than anyone else. Blu-ray's strategy all along has been to motivate people with their exclusive content, and yet here we are over a year into this thing and HD DVD still has more movies than Blu-ray. Even when Blu-ray was releasing Paramount titles, they still weren't very far ahead when you consider the shear number of movies the supporting studios have at bay. The support from Fox is down right pitiful and Disney isn't too far behind.[Via HighDefDigest]
