- Google’s quest for world domination rolls on. With its
many facets and tentacles, this unspoken quest is growing by the day and Google
Engineering Director Scott Huffman recently announced its next phase. Huffman
said the company sees its handy virtual assistant, Google Now, reaching past
its current sphere of influence to the car and the living room. Google wants to
battle Apple and Microsoft on those fronts and intends to do so by developing
in-car technology for the luxury brand Audi. The partnership has not been
officially announced yet, but the two companies and chipmaker Nvidia are
reportedly in the process of developing e an Android-powered in-car system that
will control everything from navigation to music to various other apps and
services. Cars – with people spending so much time and doing so many tasks
while in them – are becoming an intense point of focus for tech companies. In
June, Apple debuted iOS in the Car, a system that mirrors the iPhone screen in
the in-car display (assuming you have a fancy enough whip to have an in-car
display) and allows Siri to – sadly, this is true – act as a driver’s co-pilot.
Apple is already working with Honda, Volvo, Hyundai, Chevrolet, Kia and Ferrari
and looking for other automakers to jump on board. Microsoft is also hammering
away on such an effort and its Sync platform has been installed in over 10
million Ford vehicles over the past six years. Android’s global brand name
could open some doors internationally, especially in Asia and Europe. Google’s
best in for the market could be Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk announced it will be
switching the in-car browser in the Model S car to Google Chrome in October.
Musk is the kind of risk-taker who just might want to team up with Google on
its latest endeavor……..
- Big whoop-de-doo. Beyonce Knowles (she still hasn’t earned
the one-name right that all-time icons possess) releases a self-titled new
album without any advance notice, has a huge release party with her rap icon
husband and now she wants the world to be impressed that she (allegedly) recorded more
than 80 songs for her new album. she In a promo video released on her website, Knowles
says before the surprise release of fifth album, “Beyonce,” she cranked out
nearly seven dozen tracks and had to work vigorously to cut that number down –
lest she release the rare quintuple album that costs $59.99 on iTunes. "When
I started picking the songs that I gravitated towards – because I recorded
about 80 songs – it was the songs that were more effortless for me that stuck
around that I still love that I loved a year ago when I recorded them,” Knowles
said in the video. She went on to explain how “Drunk in Love,” one of the
album’s most-discussed tracks, stemmed from a "really hard" beat
producer Details brought to her and she recorded during a party with husband
Jay-Z, Details and Timbaland. "I kind of freestyled the verse, and Jay
went in and he started flowing out his verse. We just kinda had a party,” she
added. “It was so great, because it wasn't about any ego, we weren't trying to
make a hit record, we were just having fun, and I think you can hear that in
the record.” The fun has extended all the way to illegal music downloaders, who
have poached the album 240,000 times in the first 10 days since its release,
resulting in $3.8 million of lost revenue for Knowles and eliciting zero
sympathy outside the artist world for a woman who wouldn’t realize $3.8 million
was gone from her money piles unless you told her………
- The message seems positive at best, innocuous at worst:
Support our troops. Those words were plastered on a red, white and blue
billboard posted by Simple Truth Church in Nevada County, Calif. recently. The
billboard stands 20 feet tall and eight wide and resides along busy Highway 49
in Nevada County. “Nevada County is a very patriotic county, they love our
troops,” Pastor Jeff Alaways said. The county may love America’s troops, but
the powers that be there do not. If they did, they would not be ordering the
church to remove the billboard immediately…right? Although church members
insist they only wanted to help their community, county officials informed them
that no person or group can simply renovate a neglected billboard, even if
their message is one of love and support. County laws stipulate that no changes
can be made to an existing sign without getting approval from the county
planning department first. “(It) had nothing to do with what the sign is
saying, what it has to do with is it’s out of compliance with county ordinance
on signage,” Alaways said. The Nevada County Planning Department sent Simple
Truth Church a letter stipulating that the sign be taken down until the proper
permit is procured. Planning Director Brian Foss said officials spoke with the
property owner weeks ago and told him the same thing they are now telling the
church, a message that individual seems to have forgotten or ignored. Still,
Foss insisted he is looking forward to meeting with church members, ironing out
the details and making sure their newly legal billboard can be put up and look
exactly the way it looks now……..
- Anger and blame were the operative words after the NFL’s
regular season wrapped up over the weekend. With five coaches fired in a
24-hour span, scapegoats for failed seasons were plentiful as owners sought
fresh starts and players wondered what was next. Even among teams that fell in
the awkward gray area between being bad enough to axe their coach and making
the playoffs were angry, perhaps none more so than the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Mike Tomlin’s men entered Sunday with a miniscule chance to make the playoffs,
needing to win and have three other teams ahead of them in the race for the
AFC’s final wild card spot lose. Yet there they were, watching the San Diego
Chargers in a late afternoon game like millions of other Americans, having
already had two of those teams (Baltimore and Pittsburgh) lose. San Diego
appeared headed that way despite playing a Kansas City team resting 20 of its
22 starters and as time ticked down in regulation, the Chiefs lined up for a
potential 41-yard game-winning field goal. Kicker Ryan Succop missed wide
right, the game went to overtime and the Chargers won, 27-24. Yet the drama was
far from over for those involved. See, the
Chargers should have been penalized for having seven players on one side of the
snapper, a five-yard penalty that would have given Succop a second chance at
the field goal from five yards closer. Twitter flew into a frenzy and within a
few hours, the NFL felt compelled to release a statement acknowledging the
missed call. That statement did nothing to appease Tomlin, who was clearly
unhappy about the situation but refused to make excuses. "Obviously,
there's a lot of work [to do] from an officiating standpoint," Tomlin said
Monday during his season-ending news conference. "I think it's been
well-documented in the last several weeks, not only in stadiums we've played
in, but others [too].” As a member of the league’s competition committee, which
considers and proposes rules changes or new rules, Tomlin literally could affect
some sort of change if he can mount a convincing enough case. He tacitly
admitted that he had some choice words for the television while watching the
San Diego game when asked about his reaction. "I'll leave that between myself,
my sons and our basement,” Tomlin said. One idea that has been proposed is
making officials full-time employees, allowing them to ditch their regular
jobs, focus fully on the NFL and receive more training to ensure they don’t
blow game- and season-altering calls………
- Something just went boom in eastern El Salvador and
coffee drinkers need to pay attention. The Chaparrastique volcano in the San
Miguel region in the Central American nation belched a column of hot ash high
into the air to celebrate the end of the weekend (possibly not the actual
reason), sending terrified residents scurrying to get away and prompting
authorities to order evacuations in the area. The good news is that there were
no immediate reports of injuries….at least to human beings. The region is also
known for its coffee plantations and with evacuations mandated for those living
within 1.9 miles of the volcano, that leaves coffee beans in danger and no one
around to care for them. Those who might tend to the beans were directed to
emergency shelters to wait out the danger. "The evacuations began
almost right after the explosion," said civil protection official Armando
Vividor, adding that some 5,000 people lived around the volcano. Chaparrastique
is located about 86 miles to the east of the capital of San Salvador and it spewed
ash over a wide area, cloaking the region in the foul smell of sulfur and
rendering nearby towns virtually uninhabitable. For those who didn’t reach an
emergency shelter, authorities recommended breathing through moist
handkerchiefs. Santos Osorio, a member of a local coffee growers union,
confirmed the raining ash and said local coffee plantations would be checked
for damage. That is ominous news for El Salvador’s coffee crop, which has
already been blighted by an outbreak of leaf rust that has reduced output in
all five of Central America's coffee producers. The eruption isn't a
surprise, as El Salvador has 23 active volcanoes and the Chaparrastique volcano
is considered one of the most active. This is believed to be its 26th eruption
in the past 500 years………
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