If you just can't wait until 2009 for GM's next-generation Camaro, Baldwin-Motion has just the car for you. Inside LIne is reporting that the company that won GM's Best Design Award at SEMA 2005 for its Camaro SuperCoupe is launching two limited edition Camaros - the SS-427 and the Phase III 540.
The company builds its cars using original 1969 Camaros with extensive modifications. Both big-block-powered cars can be ordered with your choice of horsepower options, including supercharged or twin-turbo versions rated up to 1,000 horsepower. Only 12 cars will be built, priced from $169,000.
If there's anyone who should understand big-block GM power, it's Baldwin-Motion. From 1967 to 1974, the partnership between the Baldwin Chevrolet dealership and Joel Rosen's Motion Performance cranked out some of the hottest Chevys on the planet. The Phase III big-block street cars came with a guarantee that the car would turn at least an 11.5 second quarter-mile at 120 mph. Today's incarnation of Baldwin-Motion is Motion, LLC, located in Sarasota, Florida.
If you're prepared to spend close to $10,000, that is ($9,930, to be precise) the Dell's XPS 600 Renegade gaming rig can be yours. So, what do you get for that price, other than the dubious ability to boast that you spent ten grand on a Dell, d00d? For starters, it's got NVIDIA Quad-SLI graphics and an overclocked Pentium 965 Extreme Edition running at 4.26 GHz. Dell is also throwing in their 30-inch 3007WFP display, which regularly goes for $2,199, making this a veritable bargain!
The OSx86 project has launched a new contest for getting Microsoft Vista to dual-boot on an Intel Mac, but this time the prize will be a bit smaller- thousands of dollars smaller, actually. In order to prevent a large reward from "holding us back from sharing what we learn," the project coordinators have decided to forgo the donation pot from the XP contest in favor of a flat $1 bounty. "Plus, it's fun," they add sadistically. Clearly they were also having fun when codifying the rules of the contest, as the very lax restrictions only require that entrants have a computer, be carbon-based life forms, and prove a hatred of Nancy Sinatra for eligibility.
Ageia to debut PhysX "physics processing unit" for gamers
Ageia is hoping gamers will latch onto their new PhysX card that takes over physics related duties from the CPU, leaving it to worry about AI and it's taxes. Compared to modern GPUs the card sounds ancient, with 128MB of RAM, 130nm manufacturing, and a mere PCI interface, but it should be enough to deal with the current physics experiments being performed in recent games like F.E.A.R., Half Life 2, and the forthcoming Unreal Engine 3 which pledges support for the card. Ageia will work with other manufacturers to provide the actual boards, much like NVIDIA does, but there's no word on when the cards will be sold seperately. PhysX boards are going into Alienware PCs as we speak and should be ready to ship next week. Dell and Falcon Northwest have also been announced as launch partners.
Half-Life 2 running on a Mac... and there goes a flying pig
The video shows a MacBook Pro booting Windows XP, opening Steam and running HL2 in what appears to be software mode. Full 3D acceleration is still a while off (the hackers have only just managed to get the Mac mini's integrated graphics chip to work, albeit very flakily) but hopefully it won't be long until ATI or another enthusiastic Mac gamer/hacker steps up to the task of providing dual platform video drivers for Intel Macs.
Earlier at the Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei, the South Korean-based manufacturer demonstrated a 32GB notebook version of the solid state disk.
These mini marvels require only 5% of the power needed for today's hard disk drives, and are projected to hit storage capacities of 100GB by next year. They also read data three times faster than hard disks, which will make them appealing to desktop and console gamers, as well as road warriors.
Isabella Fiore's Might Platform Sandal have a cutout design and contrasting lime and cuoio color scheme. Made of exotic python embossed leather, it features a padded insole for comfort and is leather lined. The stacked heel measures at 3 1/2". Also available in black. Price: $355.
Piaget will be unveiling the Polo Tourbillon Relatif at the upcoming SIHH 2006. This watches has a flying tourbillon suspended on the minute hand. The tourbillon spins once per minute on its own axis and then circles the watch face once her hour. The case is done in 18K white gold with a silver dial with gold Arabic numerals and hour markers. It uses an in-house manual-winding caliber 608P with 27 jewels, beating at 21,600 bph and with a 70 hour power reserve. The watch has a black alligator leather strap with an 18K white gold folding clasp.
Elliott Lucca's Ariana Satchel is more subdued with its woven leather and skip stitch detailing. It has a top zipper closure and and two exterior front pockets. The shoulder drop is 10". Bag dimensions: 15 1/2"W x 7 1/2"H x 5"D. It is also available in gold. Price: $248
New Swedish carmaker Laboratori Bebi isn't pulling any punches as it attempts to enter the supercar world. Its Quercianella, named by the legendary designer and Quercianella contributor Giotto Bizzarrini, has a 2.4L V8 according to a post on Inside Line's blog, which is capable of launching the vehicle from 0-60 in about 3 seconds thanks to its weight of 1147 lbs. We're thinking that's either a typo or some info is missing, like what kind of forced induction is feeding that tiny air pump. Top speed is 300 km/h, or about 186 mph for us Yankees.
Development on the somewhat unpopular Google Reader has dropped a new feature that lets you share selected items from feeds you read with your friends. Now each label in Google Reader has a "make public" option, and when you enable it two links are generated: One that your friends can click on to subscribe to those items in Reader, and one for an Atom feed that they can use in any feed reader. It also works for starred items. You can also do the same for your starred items. On top of that, there's also a new "clip" feature similiar to yesterday's Feedo Style that lets you add a live list of your shared items to any web page by pasting a snippet of code on your site. You can customize the box's title, color scheme (you have eight predefined choices).
Bryan Los began his labor of love back in May 2000 when he purchased a beat-up Pac-Man arcade cocktail machine for $1,699. Nearly six years later, and roughly $3,000 in the hole, Los has a brilliantly restored (and functional) slice of gaming history. Head over to the Scripted Lizard for the full adventure.
There's an entire page of eBay's quarterly power-seller newsletters dedicated to time-saving tips and tricks. Previously, the availability of high-quality eBay listing tools is a bit limited for macs.
Thus GarageSale, the OS X shareware lister that is one of the best out there on any platform (and one that supports eBay Motors, too). Perhaps coolest of all, GarageSale supports iPhoto, so doing multi-photo listings is a snap. If you sell complex items on repetetive basis, this application can be a huge time saver.
A new version of Yahoo Messenger, includes Skype-like PC-to-phone calling features, and of course, PC-to-PC calls, which remain free, while Yahoo will be charging a fee of one cent per minute, minimum, for calls to outside phone numbers.
Yahoo gains extra points for including voicemail for free--a service for which Skype charges extra. Plus, the voicemail feature is integrated with Yahoo Mail--again, very cool. This is the sort of thing I'd hope Apple would do with iChat, but alas, there's still no Mac version of Yahoo Messenger with Voice. But as a side-note, we've been assured by Yahoo's voice people that a Mac version is indeed coming.
The TakaraTomy Nano Channel, one of the first new products from the combined company, is a fairly average digital audio player, available in capacities from 128MB to 1GB, with MP3 and WMA compatibility, along with MPEG-1 and 2 video playback on its 1.2-inch display. The 1GB version is expected to sell for ¥17,000 (about $145).
Partnership with Evolution will power next-gen WowWee bots with sight, position-awareness
WowWee, makers of such popular bots as Robosapien and Roboraptor, has licensed both the ViPR (Visual Pattern Recognition) and Northstar tracking technologies to "meet [customers'] increasingly sophisticated expectations" for "intelligent robots that can function autonomously..." Northstar is sometimes referred to as "Indoor GPS," and uses a projector for throwing invisible light spots on a wall that are used by a properly-equipped mobile device to determine its relative position. Along with the Vex Robotics Kit, and Lego's upcoming Mindstorm NXT set, the updated Robofriends should finally put fairly sophisticated, powerful, and inexpensive sensor and programming technology into the hands of the casual hobbyist and hardcore Battlebot fiends alike.
The 13th Singapore Robotic Games is a competition held for tertiary students and hosted for the first time this year by Nanyang Polytechnic. Organized by various tertiary institutions, the Singapore Science Centre and the Robotic Games Society in Singapore, the Games draw some serious entries, as is evidenced by the entire year it took the eight senior-year mechatronics students (also from Nanyang Polytechnic) to complete their dual slithering creations, a pair of robotic snakes that have emerged the winners of the competition.
-Lytir1
