Move over Segway, Honda introduces the Uni-Cub
The people mover has gotten an upgrade: On Tuesday, Honda announced its new Uni-Cub, a personal mobility device that lets you glide around the office or the aquarium perched comfortably on what looks like a trash compactor on wheels.
Like the Segway, the Uni-Cub allows the rider to control it simply by shifting her weight forward, backward or side to side.
Unlike the Segway, it is small enough to be used indoors.
A promotional video for the Uni-Cub shows thin attractive people using it to glide down office hallways, and in and out of elevators.
It looks very elegant, but one wonders why these thin attractive people need a mobility device in the first place.
Another prize point for Honda — when sitting on a Uni-Cub the rider is just below eye level of most pedestrians and just above eye level of someone seated on a normal chair.
“This configuration promotes harmony between the rider and others, letting the rider travel freely and comfortably inside facilities among moving people,” the company said in a news release.
The Uni-Cub is not on the market yet, but Honda said in June it will start testing the device at Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation.
It is powered by a lithium-ion battery and has a maximum speed of about 4 miles an hour.
The Uni-Cub also has a nifty wheel design — Honda calls it the Honda Omni Traction Drive System — that allows the device to move forward and side to side with a small two-wheel configuration.
As you can see in the video above, the rider and the device are not much wider than a person would be walking.
The question, of course, is who would want such a thing. Because there is no seat back, the Uni-Cub does not seem to be a replacement for the mobility scooters you see older people using in grocery stores and in Las Vegas.
Ahead of I.P.O., G.M. to Quit Advertising on Facebook
Just days before Facebook is scheduled to hold its first public stock offering, which could value the company at more than $100 billion, one of the country’s largest marketers has decided to remove its advertising from the social network.
General Motors, the third-largest advertiser in the United States, decided to discontinue its Facebook advertising, worth about $10 million annually, after a routine review of how and where it spends marketing money, said Tom Henderson, a spokesman for the automaker.
“It’s not unusual for us to move our spending around various outlets, especially with the growth of social and digital media outlets,” he said, adding that the company is “making adjustments as we need to.” General Motors’ decision was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
For Facebook, which reported $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, the loss of $10 million in ad dollars does not represent a financial disaster but it is a public-relations headache coming so close to the company’s eagerly anticipated public offering. Facebook and investors are expecting a large valuation based primarily on its potential to draw advertising in the future; its advertising revenue had been growing quickly but remains small compared with competitors like Google.
In a public filing last month, Facebook said that its first-quarter ad revenue had actually declined to $872 million from $943 million in the previous three-month period, although it was up almost 37 percent from $637 million for the same quarter from the previous year.
Several analysts believe that GM’s decision will cause other marketers to take at least a second look at their own Facebook strategy. Melissa Parrish, an analyst at Forrester, wrote in an e-mail that the move would force Facebook to listen more closely to marketers.
“My colleagues and I have spoken with several other advertisers who were already thinking of putting their dollars elsewhere,” Ms. Parrish said. “Now that G.M. has done so in such a large and public way, many of the fence-sitters will know that they’re not alone in their disappointment about their results.” According to Forrester, Facebook made just under $4 in revenue per user in 2011.
General Motors, which spends about $3 billion on advertising annually worldwide, has advertised on Facebook since 2008. In January, G.M. consolidated its media planning and buying operations, giving Carat, part of the Aegis Media unit of the Aegis Group, the job. The automaker will continue to have a presence on Facebook with free content like the existing brand pages. Mr. Henderson said Facebook “continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers.”
A person briefed on the discussions between the companies said that G.M. spent a total of about $40 million on Facebook annually, most of that on managing its own presence and developing applications. This person, who asked not to be identified discussing private negotiations, said that Facebook had advised the company to spend less money on developing applications and more money on advertising and promotion. “They didn’t use paid media to get the message out,” the person said.
Debra Aho Williamson, a principal analyst at the research company eMarketer said that “if G.M. is spending $40 million year and $30 million of that is going toward managing its page, that’s a lot of money.”
“The advertising on Facebook helps brands extend their message,” said Ms. Williamson. “The challenge for G.M. is, can they do that without actively marketing and paying Facebook for advertising?”
When Facebook held its first advertising conference in February, the reaction from marketers was mixed. Rumors that Facebook would announce its own ad network, allowing advertisers to buy inventory on the site in real time, did not materialize. Instead, advertisers were given more places to put their ads, including on the log-out page and in a user’s news feed.
Ben Winkler, the chief digital officer at OMD, an agency in the Omnicom Media Group, said that while Facebook was a great mechanism for communicating and sharing content, it did not provide advertisers with the amount of data and analytics that they want from the site. “It will cause a ripple effect,” Mr. Winkler said about G.M.’s pullback. “It will make advertisers consider what they are spending.”
One company that disagreed with G.M.’s decision was its Detroit rival, Ford. In a statement, the company said, “We’ve found Facebook ads to be very effective when strategically combined with engagement, great content and innovative ways of storytelling, rather than treating them as a straight media buy.”
CNBC: Facebook to increase IPO size, value to $18.5B
Facebook plans to increase the size of its IPO by 85 million shares, says someone familiar with the matter, a move that could value its upcoming offering at as much as $18.5 billion.
The social network’s 25 percent upsize plan will be filed with regulators at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday morning, this person said.
Facebook’s expected move takes the size of its new issue from roughly 340 million shares to roughly 420 million, a change that, combined with the greenshoe — additional shares that could be sold by bankers in the aftermath of the IPO — could value the total deal at nearly $20 billion.
A final decision on Facebook’s IPO price, which is expected to be somewhere between $34 and $38 per share, will be made Thursday evening.
Box Office: The Avengers Continues to Break Records, Dark Shadows Has Grim Debut
The Avengers continued to obliterate records at the box office – becoming the first film to make more than $100 million in its second week of release, Box Office Mojo reports.
The Avengers grossed an estimated $103.1 million to easily hold on to the top spot. The Marvel superhero film also became the movie to reach $300 million and $350 million the fastest, and the movie with the highest eight-day, nine-day and 10-day grosses.
The Avengers crushes box office records
Dark Shadows, a remake of the popular TV show and the latest collaboration from Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, took in a disappointing $28.8 million to come in second.
At No. 3, Think Like a Man continued to show muscle, drawing $6.3 million. The Hunger Games nabbed fourth place with $4.4 million. The Lucky One completed the top 5 with $4.05 million.
PSA: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Galaxy Player 4.2 now available online
Not willing to give up your old dumbphone, but still need something to feed your Android addiction? You’re in luck: Samsung’s serving up two devices today rocking Google’s dessert themed OS, the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and the Galaxy Player 4.2. Sammy’s latest slate rings in at $400, buying 16GB of internal memory (expandable to 32GB via microSD), a 1GHz dual-core processor and a serving of Ice Cream Sandwich. The Galaxy Player 4.2, on the other hand, can be found munching Gingerbread for a mere $200. If you’re looking for a new Galaxy that makes phone calls, however, you’ll have to wait for the Galaxy S III.
Virgin Mobile Offers 4G With Three New Devices
Boost Mobile isn’t the only prepaid carrier who’s getting 4G service. Today, Virgin Mobile also announced 4G service with its no-contract plans. To accompany the announcement, Virgin Mobile announced the HTC EVO V 4G smartphone, Overdrive Pro 3G/4G mobile hotspot, and U600 3G/4G USB Stick. The HTC EVO V 4G will be available for $299.99 on May 31. This smartphone runs on Android 4.0 and HTC Sense 3.6. Key features include a 4.3-inch qHD touchscreen, 1GB RAM/4GB ROM, and a 5MP camera.
For Virgin Mobile’s Broadband2Go customers, the Overdrive Pro 3G/4G mobile hotspot by Sierra Wireless ($149.99) and the powerful U600 3G/4G USB Stick by Franklin Wireless ($99.99) will be available online beginning May 31. Virgin Mobile’s plans will offer unlimited 4G data where available via Sprint’s WiMAX network.
Facebook App Center: More showcase than store, actually
The app store model is winning the evolutionary battle for software businesses. It’s how operating system manufacturers are making ongoing money, especially on mobile devices. But now Facebook, which has a social networking platform and not an operating system of its own, has figured a way to take advantage of the model.
The challenge, for a platform like Facebook, is that it has to build a store on top of these other existing stores. It is especially tricky to build on top of the Apple App store, which remains the only legitimate channel for users to get apps onto iOS devices. Facebook, instead of opening a store per se, has announced that it’s opening a hybrid marketplace: Part store, part showcase.
Best Buy Opens Up Pre-Orders for Sprint HTC EVO 4G LTE
Best Buy has just opened up pre-orders for the HTC EVO 4G LTE for Sprint. There is still no firm launch date. Those who pre-order will receive a $50 Best Buy gift card when you activate the phone. It’s priced at $199.99 and this is with the requisite 2-year contract agreement.
Twitter hack breaches thousands of accounts
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — A Twitter hacker on Monday revealed thousands of user names and passwords for the microblogging site, but here’s the good news: Most of the compromised accounts appear to be spam.
Word of the breach began spreading Tuesday after hacking news and activist hub Airdemon posted a dispatch saying 55,000 accounts had been compromised. It linked to Pastebin pages containing the allegedly compromised user names and passwords.
A Twitter representative said the company is investigating. He also downplayed the extent of the potential breach, which hit a small sliver of Twitter’s 140 million active users.
“It’s worth noting that, so far, we’ve discovered that the list of alleged accounts and passwords found on Pastebin consists of more than 20,000 duplicates, many spam accounts that have already been suspended and many login credentials that do not appear to be linked (that is, the password and username are not actually associated with each other),” Twitter spokesman Robert Weeks said.
Still, Twitter is taking precautions.
“We are currently looking into the situation. In the meantime, we have pushed out password resets to accounts that may have been affected,” Weeks said.
Twitter needs to be especially sensitive to security breaches. In March 2011, the Federal Trade Commission finalized a settlement with Twitter stemming from a pair of data breaches in 2009 that let hackers gain control of Twitter accounts.
Under the settlement’s terms, Twitter faces fines and other penalties if it fails to maintain “a comprehensive information security program.”
But Twitter has had a few other recent glitches.
Just two months ago, Twitter was forced to temporarily suspend the Web version of its TweetDeck software after a glitch allowed some users access to other users’ accounts. Twitter repaired the bug the day after it was publicly exposed. To top of page
Google gets Nevada driving licence for self-drive car
Driverless cars will soon be a reality on the roads of Nevada after the state approved America’s first self-driven vehicle licence.
The first to hit the highway will be a Toyota Prius modified by search firm Google, which is leading the way in driverless car technology.
Its first drive included a spin down Las Vegas’s famous strip.
Other car companies are also seeking self-driven car licences in Nevada.
Accident
The car uses video cameras mounted on the roof, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic.
Engineers at Google have previously tested the car on the streets of California, including crossing San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge.
For those tests, the car remained manned at all times by a trained driver ready to take control if the software failed.
According to software engineer Sebastian Thrun, the car has covered 140,000 miles with no accidents, other than a bump at traffic lights from a car behind.
Human error
Bruce Breslow, director of Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicles, says he believes driverless vehicles are the “cars of the future”.
Nevada changed its laws to allow self-driven cars in March. The long-term plan is to license members of the public to drive such cars.
Google’s car has been issued with a red licence plate to make it recognisable. The plate features an infinity sign next to the number 001.
Other states, including California, are planning similar changes.
“The vast majority of vehicle accidents are due to human error,” said California state Senator Alex Padilla, when he introduced the legislation.
“Through the use of computers, sensors and other systems, an autonomous vehicle is capable of analysing the driving environment more quickly and operating the vehicle more safely.”
![[Valid RSS]](valid-rss-rogers.png "Validate my RSS feed")
