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Could you tell a few auto shows were going on in California? In case you’ve somehow overlooked it, a number of automakers are showing off some swank new in-car connectivity options, and Dodge is striving to elicit even more fluids from your saliva glands by showing off the Dodge EV. We initially heard about this mythical automobile back in September, and now the very Viper-inspired whip is wowing onlookers in LA. The all-electric plug-in boasts mid-mounted batteries, a 268-horsepower engine, a 150-mile range and a 0 to 60 time of under five seconds. Have a peek at what you’ll be attempting to finance “as early as 2010″ down in the read link.

[Via Digg]

Filed under: Transportation

Dodge EV seen in the flesh at LA Auto Show originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Marc Santora, the New York Times reporter who appears in ads for Dell’s DigitalNomads site, says he received no compensation for the ad, which came from an interview Santora did for Big Think, a website backed by Facebook investor Peter Thiel. What appears to have happened: Dell or its ad agency, Federated Media, created the ad for Dell’s DigitalNomads, using a clip from Santora’s Big Think video. (The interview was also published to YouTube, and DigitalNomads’ producers embedded the clip in a blog post.) From what Santora’s saying, no one asked him or the Times for permission to run the endorsement. If so, Dell could be in rather big trouble — and not just with the Times</em.

FTC rules forbid deceptive advertising — such as an ad from Dell which suggests a New York Times reporter has endorsed its vision of mobile technology, when he hasn’t. The agency also has strict rules governing endorsements, not all of which seem to have followed here. Bottom line: Santora seems to be the victim of a sleazy new Internet-enabled advertising tactic. He does offer this amusing side note: The one time he wrote about Dell was when the computer maker’s “Dude, You’re Getting a Dell” spokesman was arrested on pot charges. Here’s his note to us:

I am not really sure what to say about the item posted on your website about my being a “shill” for Dell. I was asked to do an interview fror a starter web site called “Big Think.” I checked them out and they have interviewed a good number of respectable people and I had heard of no problems. They wanted to discuss the role changing technology has had in covering things like the war in Iraq. Seemed harmless. I received absolutely NO compensation. And I have no idea how they do their advertising.

I am on vacation and on my way to India so will not be checking in much, but thought it might be worth clearing up any improper suggestions linger.

BTW, if it matters — and I can’t believe it does because this all seems a bit silly — the only piece I ever wrote about Dell was when “the Dell Dued” was busted for using pot. I think I wrote a couple of pieces on that actually. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE7DA1F3BF931A25751C0A9659C8B63&n=Top/Reference/Times20Marc

Anyway, going back to my vacation. Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Marc Santora

The company that funded Netscape, Google and Genentech is now focusing on electric cars, solar power and biofuels. New York Times contributor Jon Gertner has been meeting with Kleiner partners since last year. His 8,000-word feature in Sunday’s paper goes deep on details of a few KPCB investments such as Ausra. But it spends a lot of time framing the story for non-techies outside the Valley. Here’s the Sand Hill Road edit:

In many parts of Silicon Valley, it seems misguided to regard the U.S. economy as reliant solely on Wall Street. The future still depends on entrepreneurs and innovations — and green-tech businesses getting “traction.” Most of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’s ventures are long-term investments. And entrepreneurs are still bringing new ideas through the door at a steady pace. “I don’t expect the credit crunch will change that,” said partner John Denniston.

Some of the firm’s fledging green ventures are evolutionary improvements on current technologies that will soon hit the market, like the electric Think car. Others promise to revolutionize various aspects of the energy economy — solar power or biofuels — much as Netscape or Google remade the Web, or Genentech ushered in the biotechnology era.

Kleiner was not the only venture firm that had suddenly seen the future and decided it was green. But Kleiner’s past success tends to legitimize the prospects of business ideas that in many cases have spent decades on the economic fringe.

The most challenging aspect of Kleiner’s endeavor is for green tech to expand into the markets more rapidly than any energy technology has done before. Academics sometimes call this process the diffusion of technology. Diffusion can go very fast, with personal computers or Facebook. But in the field of energy, new technologies have moved quite slowly into the mainstream. It has been 54 years since the silicon solar cell was invented in New Jersey at Bell Laboratories. A front-page article in the Times heralded the breakthrough – in 1954 — as something that promised to revolutionize the world.

John Doerr: “To get solutions at scale, we’re going to have to find answers that are economic for all people everywhere. We’ve got to use policy to harness innovation to make sure that the right thing to do is a profitable thing to do — so it becomes the probable thing to have happen.”

Al Gore believes when the governments of the world assign a price to carbon—within a year or two — demand for carbon-free electricity will explode.

Partner Randy Komisar says the energy market is large and outdated: “I’m not very good at hitting the bull’s-eye. I need a big target. And this is the biggest target I’ve ever seen in my life.”

(Photo by Ausra)

Amidst all the hype around cloud computing, The New York Times points out that if Google locks down your Gmail login for whatever reason (like someone tried the wrong password too many times), you’re basically screwed. If you’re worried, set up an automated email backup using POP.

Netbooks were supposed to be this great inroad for Linux development, but it turns out that the XP side of the netbook business is doing a lot better in the area of customer satisfaction: MSI today told Laptop that, according to internal studies, “The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.”

Lest you think I’ve somehow chopped this figure and embedded it out of context, here’s what MSI’s US sales director Andy Tung told our friend Joanna at Laptop when she asked about high return rates:

We have done a lot of studies on the return rates and haven’t really talked about it much until now. Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don’t know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it’s not what they are used to. They don’t want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.

Check out Laptop for more of the interview. [Laptop]

Wikipedia lovers, you can get a random page from the ‘pedia to just show up automatically on your PC with the Wikipedia Screen Saver. Sometimes you get pretty empty pages in need of work, other times you learn something pithy and new without lifting a finger. Choose Wikipedia from the screen saver drop-down in Display Properties after you install it. [via]

TimesPeople is a new feature on the Times’ website that lets logged-in members “share articles, videos, slideshows, blog posts, reader comments, and ratings and reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels.” It’s been in beta as a Firefox plugin for months, but will go live as a built-in website service and a Facebook app Tuesday morning. Having not tested the real thing yet, I have no witty insights to add.

The writers here at Valleywag have to move fast. So when Carlos Slim Helú invests in the New York Times we just went with the headline that popped in our heads. Today’s featured commenter, Migrant Blogger, did a good job at filling in our shoes:

Headline: World’s second richest man seeks to become third richest, Invests in print