Voici les premières images du concept Alfa Romeo Pandion, pensé par le carrossier Berton afin de célébrer les 100 ans de la marque italienne. Un coupé 2+2 futuriste doté de larges surfaces vitrées et d’une calandre en V. Plus d’images dans la suite de l’article.
Dans le même esprit : Alfa Romeo Fastback Sedan
It’s not every day somebody gives you a call and hands over millions.
That is unless you’re Nigel Page and Justine Laycock, the Gloucestershire couple who won £56m on the lottery last weekend… or Jimmy Wales.
The Wikimedia Foundation – the organisation that runs Wikipedia- scored its own unexpected windfall yesterday, when it officially announced that Google was giving it a $2m grant.
This is the Wikimedia Foundation’s first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical infrastructure to support rapidly-increasing global traffic and capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the organization’s efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more accessible.
“Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet,” offered Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online.”
For the website, the donation comes as the icing on the cake. Over the last few months, Wikipedia’s been on a rather relentless fundraising drive that ended up bringing in $8m of cash to keep it going.
And it shouldn’t be a complete surprise that Google is dipping into its pocket – after all, the internet goliath is not above supporting projects that help its users in some way. In the past it has pumped money into projects like Mozilla’s Firefox and various university research projects.
But why Wikipedia?
Well, in general Google focuses on giving money to causes that will help make life better or easier for its users. That might be opening up a database that improves search results, offering a browser that is faster or more flexible than others, or finding new ways to collect and disseminate information.
Seen in that light, the Wikipedia grant is simple: the site’s vast database of articles and search-engine friendly approach means it gets featured heavily in Google’s results pages. Studies have shown how much traffic is sent from Google to Wikipedia, and on any number of queries, a Wikipedia result will be one of the first thing that a Google user sees.
What is good for Wikipedia – making the site faster, more reliable and more accessible – helps Google’s users get what they want, and is therefore good for the company itself. It’s not a grant, it’s an investment in making sure it can keep dominating search.
Still, though, it doesn’t hurt to be wary of Google’s long-term motivations. After all, it was the company’s support of a popular open source browser like Firefox that begat (in part) its development of Chrome.
However, there may be one reason that Wikipedia isn’t worried: it’s already seen off one attempt by Google to encroach on its territory that came a couple of years ago in the shape of Knol – remember that?
The system – touted at launch as Googlepedia, and called “an attack on the media industry in general” here on this very blog by Jack – Knol has become yet another one of Google’s projects that fell by the wayside.
In the official announcement, Jimmy Wales skipped past all that kerfuffle.
“We are very pleased and grateful. This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia,” he said. “Both organisations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone.”
Let’s see where this leads.
• The seemingly unstoppable Facebook has hit a new milestone, surpassing Yahoo to become America’s second most popular website (after Google). That’s partially the result of counting methods used by Compete.com (which mean that services such as Flickr don’t count towards Yahoo’s total) but even so, it’s clear what direction the two companies are headed in. I’m not sure whether this marks a high point for The Church of Zuckerberg or a low for Yahoo – which, despite the heavy criticism over the years, has remained one of the biggest web properties around.
• Thursday could see the end of the saga surrounding the Google book settlement, the never-ending, highly controversial plan to pay $125m to authors and publishers for the right to scan in-copyright books and make them available online. I’ve previewed the announcement here, but right now it’s anyone’s guess as to which direction Denny Chin – the judge who’s examining the case – will go.
• Perhaps one of the most surprising things about Windows Phone 7 series announcement earlier this week was that it looked nice – well-designed and visually appealing, two things that are very important to making an intuitive touch interface on a small screen. But if you want to get a better idea of how WP7 stacks up against the iPhone, you can run through this really nice side-by-side comparison of the two. We’ve still got to see how WP7 manages across lots of different hardware, but the basic feel – similar to the Zune HD – manages to make Windows Mobile feel modern again.
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Présenté à Barcelone cette semaine par la marque HTC, voici ce mobile multi-touch tournant sous Android 2.1 avec un design entièrement unibody. Une coque en alluminium pour ce téléphone baptisé “HTC Legend” et équipé de la nouvelle version de l’interface HTC Sense.
So said Aram Jabbari, Manager of Public Relations and Sales for Atlus, when he shared some info about their upcoming RPG for the PS3, 3D Dot Game Heroes over at the Playstation Blog. And thanks to Jabbari’s post, the game has become a must-buy for me. Why? Because the character editor promises to be a lot of fun, kinda like a simpler and retro-styled version of the Spore character creator. You can create and play as anything that fits within the size limit. I’m not sure, but I think it’s 16 x 16 x 16 of the game’s dots/pixels. You want to play as a single dot? It’s possible! Here’s a shot of a spider-hero being created…
…And then played in the actual game:
Players will have to make several “poses” for their custom characters, such as “Walk 1″, “Walk 2″, “Attack 1″ etc., but Jabbari promised that the editor will be very easy to use, thanks to its copy-pasting mechanic and overall intuitive interface. If you really don’t want to mess with the editor (which I doubt), you can start the game with any of the custom characters, like the gorilla seen below. Jabbari says that the North American version of 3D Dot Game Heroes has more custom characters compared to the Japanese version.
Jabbari also boasted about the game’s real-time lighting engine, which supposedly makes your custom character – whether it’s a detailed armored knight or a random swarm of dots – look nice and purrty:
Can you see that? A dog as the main character! Players will be able to upload and share their creations on Atlus’ forums. Jabbari didn’t explicitly say that players will be able to download and use other players’ created characters, but it would be a damn shame if that’s not the case.
A game where you can be a shark’s fin and hold a big-ass sword?! Only a cold, dead mind would not want such a thing! You can pre-order 3D Dot Game Heroes on Amazon for $37 (USD). The game starts shipping on May 11. Atlus, prepare to be flooded with penis creatures and other monstrosities on May 12.
[via Playstation Blog]
Julien Jaborska’s bicycle tire belts make for nice and unique gifts for bike enthusiasts. Not only do they look good, all of the treads are recycled, so if you get one of these you’re helping the environment too.
As you can see the belts are made from treads with varying textures and types “rescued” from the trash. Since they’re not made from stock parts, each belt is really one of a kind.
You can order the belts at Jaborska’s Etsy shop for $30 (USD) each.
[via CoolMaterial]
Are these some of Ben Heck’s controller mods? Nope.
Actually, they’re iPods and an iPhone covered with Michael Tesch’s Infectious ES skin!
I think the iPod Classic design is the best looking one. All versions are available at Infectious for $15 (USD) each.
Jacek Galanciak has created a nice visual transition library, Quicksand, that filters and shows a set of data in an interesting way.
The jQuery plugin has you quickly calling quicksand like this:
and you have the data to transition between:
You can customize the effect (set the easing, setup data, and the like). Seethe docs and demos for more.
I think that’s actually an understatement. The Rotobotmouse is one of the stranger computer mice that I’ve seen in my travels – and I’ve seen lots of mouses.
Created by artist Aaron Ristau, the Robotomouse definitely has some steampunk underpinnings, but it’s really got a look that’s all its own. The handmade mouse features a round body design and moves across the desktop with a “go-cart like handling”. The Robotomouse is a fully-functional optical mouse, complete with retro typewriter “L” and “R” buttons, an archaic scroll wheel, and a glowing red light that illuminates the palm of the user’s hand. Did I mention that you stick your pinky finger through that copper loop when you use this mouse?
Click to View Embedded Video Clip
This unique mousing creation is selling for $300 (USD) is available over on Aaron’s storefront in the new Makers Market. Be sure to check out Aaron’s other wondrous creations while you’re there. I’m especially enthralled with his Subatomic Disintegrator. I could really use one of those.
This is definitely the biggest SD card I’ve ever seen. But despite its ridiculous size, it can only store 60 photos.
This giant-size SD card is actually a photo album for holding on to your 4″x6″ photo prints. I like how they even put the metallic contacts on the back of the album for added realism. Can you imagine the memory card reader you’d need to transfer files from this thing?
Now I rarely convert my digital images into prints these days, but for the occasional time I want something more tangible than pixels, I would want one of these to keep my hardcopies in. The SD card photo album ships this April, and is available for pre-order over at Spinninghat for £9.99 (appx. $16 USD).