Former ministers said to have been caught on camera by journalists

A group of MPs, including former ministers, have been targeted in an elaborate sting operation in which journalists set up a bogus lobbying company and offered to pay them in return for political influence.

Among the politicians approached was Stephen Byers, the former cabinet minister and arch-Blairite, who was filmed describing himself as a "bit like a sort of cab for hire". He offered to trade Westminster contacts for £3,000 to £5,000 a day.

Others who were targeted in the undercover operation included former cabinet ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt. Margaret Moran, the Labour MP for Luton, was also involved.

The party tried to limit the damage last night by saying some MPs were "mortified" by how stupid they had been. However, nothing illegal has been alleged.

Twenty MPs were invited to attend meetings to discuss joining an advisory board and 10 turned up. The meetings were mainly held at offices in London's St James's Square. An undercover Sunday Times journalist asked them how the company could go about influencing policy and how it could improve its chances of winning a government contract.

Byers told her he had saved hundreds of millions of pounds for National Express through his contact with Lord Adonis, the transport minister, and had influenced food labelling proposals for Tesco after phoning Lord Mandelson, the business secretary. The MP said that his friendship with Mandelson was one of his "trump cards".

However, the next day he wrote an email to the meeting's organisers saying he had "overstated" the part he had played in trying to secure changes to the way in which the government deals with issues. "This means that I have not spoken to Andrew Adonis... or Peter Mandelson about the matters I mentioned," he wrote.

Byers issued a statement last night saying that at an informal meeting about a potential job opportunity he had made some "exaggerated" claims. "Having reflected on my comments I knew that I should immediately put the record straight. I did so the following morning by making it clear that I have never lobbied ministers on behalf of commercial interests. I later withdrew my name for consideration. I have always fully disclosed my outside interests," he said. Byers described the set-up as a "massive deception".

The operation is reported to feature in a Dispatches programme to be aired tomorrow on Channel 4.

The journalists set up a lobbying company known as Anderson Perry Associates, supposedly based in the US. Its website described it as a "bespoke consultancy that helps organisations and individuals maximise and exceed expectation". It claimed to have 120 clients in Europe, the Middle East and the US, operating in the health and defence industries.

The exposé is likely to thrust the issue of standards back to the heart of the election campaign as party leaders battle to show they will clean up parliament. The operation, which targeted MPs who are standing down from parliament, also targeted the Lords, with Baroness Sally Morgan, a former aide to Tony Blair, reported to have been approached.

Unless you have been living under a rock all this while, you would have known about the Google Nexus One smartphone that is touted to be a “superphone” by Google, as it squares up against the almighty Apple iPhone which has a worldwide legion of rabid fans, ready to come to its defense any day. Well, the Google Nexus One also has a different moniker, where it is known as the HTC Desire – previously known as the Bravo. Guess all of the hardware specification will more or less remain the same as the Nexus One, as this model will retain more than a handful of quality features to keep you hooked to it. More on the HTC Desire will be explained right after the jump.

The handset itself will run on a rather well executed alliance between the Google Android operating system as well as the HTC Sense user interface which enables users to customize multiple home screens with web feeds and other content that one would find most relevant. Apart from that, you will always be in the loop since the HTC Desire allows you to receive a continuous stream of comments, photos and status updates on popular social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter. To contact one of your friends is a snap, since all possible avenues of communication will be offered, ranging from email to SMS, Facebook and calling. With a virtually endless amount of downloadable apps from the Android Market as well as Google services such as Google Maps, Google Search and Gmail, the HTC Desire sounds like a truly complete handset for any smartphone user.

Hardware-wise, you get a 3.7″ AMOLED touchscreen display with multi-touch capability, offering an above average web browsing and multimedia experience. HTC has also thrown in an accelerometer that makes it a snap to rotate the angle of the display, while a proximity sensor will set the display to standby mode whenever you are entertaining a call, so that there won’t be any accidental selections of options. A 5.0-megapixel camera with autofocus and an LED flash lets you snap quality photos in a jiffy, but don’t expect it to hold up as well as a regular consumer class digital camera. It really depends on which carrier do you want to get tied down to in the UK with the HTC Desire, but most of them often throw in a free gift to make the deal all the more enticing.

Press Release
Coolest Gadgets UK – For all your UK centric tech and gadget news.
[ HTC Desire could be your next superphone copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

In 76 regions of Russia people went to voting stations on March 14 to cast their votes for local mayors and regional legislature representatives. The ruling party “United Russia” has won in most of those elections. However, the victory of the party in power wasn't absolute: in Irkutsk people preferred opposition candidate Viktor Kondrashov but this was the only case. Despite the increasing wave of protests (like in Irkutsk [RUS] itself, Kaliningrad, Moscow and others), “United Russia” managed to keep its dominance in all Russian regional legislatures as well as city administration offices.

One of the secrets of such “political stability” (besides state-controlled mass media) is a range of alleged numerous fraud techniques used both by party members and public officials during the elections. These elections were the first to show the power of Web 2.0. in uncovering them. Bloggers gathered evidence of fraud with their cell phone cameras and published them online.

Particularly members of the election observer association “Golos” [EN] (”A Voice”) were quite active in promoting election transparency and exposing fraud. The association installed a fraud hotline website “88003333350.ru” where everyone could post a fraud report. So far, 561 fraud cases have been noted.

Anti-Fraud Hotline, 88003333350.ru

Telephone Voting, Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk region
Blogger leonwolf made a capture of the local TV programme where a head of the regional election committee was inviting people to vote by using a phone line and without signing any papers (which is illegal). “You can just call, tell your passport details and if they match those in the database your vote will be counted,” the head of election committee said on TV.

Protocol Rewriting, Stanitsa Dinskaya, Krasnodar region.
Russian oppositional newspaper Novaya Gazeta posted a video [RUS], where an employee of the local election committee was allegedly rewriting the election protocol (a document presenting the final result of the election).

Vote For Relatives, Yekaterinburg
In the video below two women confess they were brought to the election station to vote for their parents (probably unable to get to the election station by themselves). Such procedure is legal if a person possesses an absentee ballot. But these two women, as well as the whole bus (can be seen on the background) of their “colleagues,” do not have it. And still they're allowed to vote. Not to mention that their transfer was paid by the regional government, as well as a sightseeing excursion after the election.

Mass Preliminary Vote, Ivanovo
The most popular fraud technique is a directed at a preliminary vote. It's been practiced among soldiers, policemen and sometimes students. In other words, regional authorities try to mobilize as many people as they can, especially if they have channels of pressure. For students such channel of pressure are various: grades, scholarships, ability to passing an exams, etc.

Blogger vitaliy-averin posted this video to illustrate such event:

This video shows a woman checking the absence of students, while these pictures depict a huge crowd at the college hall.

Ballot Insertion, Astrakhan
The video captures two people putting packs of ballots into the ballot box.

All these cases represent current situation with the Russian electoral system. The dominance of the ruling party is based on numerous illegal actions that result in the “expected” election results. At the same time, it shows the weakness of the political system that fails to conduct its political course without such anti-democratic and unlawful measures. But as the bloggers become more and more powerful and as the evidence of the fraud is being more efficiently distributed among Russian netizens, the government's failure to provide free and fair elections can become a real, not virtual, problem.

The unregistered version of iCalamus already offers a cool feature: You can create professional photo books and calendars like in the full version and order high-quality prints at the Photographerbook company. The Photographerbook document service in iCalamus even supports iPhoto calendars (and iPhoto books coming soon) which can be printed at Photographerbook at a lower price.

iCalamus has been developed completely new for Apple's operating system. iCalamus is an excellent choice for all layout purposes from simple posters and business letters over complex layouted magazines up to books and scientific works. Complete Unicode support and the smart PDF import offer easy access to creating and layout work. The reasoned user interface with its low learning curve guarantees for fast success. iCalamus doesn't limit your layout freedom by offering prepared layouts. Its practical tools offer all options for your own creative and productive layout work.

iCalamus is a modular program which will grow in future by external modules, even from third-party developers. Therefore invers Software will create an Open Development Area (ODA) and publish the plug-in interface. iCalamus has been developed in Objective C with intensive usage of Apple's Cocoa library.

You can import all image and text formats which are supported by Mac OS X into iCalamus documents. Images from digital cameras scanners or iPhoto libraries can be imported as well as whole web page content and PDF documents. Grab text content from large PDF documents easily for further text processing. Elaborated masking options and many predefined, partly dynamically changeable frame shapes offer freedom for creativity. Working in precise measurement units is the other side of the iCalamus world. Use virtual copies for multiple document elements and change them afterwards with a few mouse clicks.

Print output uses all printers which are supported by Mac OS X. Optionally output documents in various PDF formats (e.g. PDF-X, encrypted PDF, PDF Fax).

Operating System Compatibility

• New: [650], [651]: Snow Leopard is now supported.
• Fix: Many memory leaks fixed.

• New: [655]: iPhoto 09 is now supported.
• New: Leather books can be ordered.
• New: Books can get book corners and wadded covers.
• New: Books pages can get UV lacquer on both front and back sides.
• New: Photographerbook's product prices have been lowered up to 40%.
• Fix: Document uploads > 2GB are no longer allowed, due to PDF standards which do not allow larger PDF documents.

• Fix: [639]: Images without embedded dpi resolution are no longer re-scaled to 72dpi by default.

• New: [644]: Dialog Edit Text Style redesigned and enhanced.
• New: [79]: The dialog Edit Text Style shows a font preview now, using all available text style parameters.

• New: [640]: New function Create and Apply Text Ruler Styles from Selection in the action menu.
• New: [641]: Dialog Edit Text Ruler redesigned and enhanced.

• Fix: [252], [253], [469], [658]: Text formatting rewritten and enhanced.
• Fix: [593]: Text frames with page text field contents can be copied in all available methods correctly.
• Fix: [610]: Text frames with text field contents can be vectorized.

• New: [418]: Three new Toolbar icons are available now: Document Grid, Page Guides, and Frame Guides. These three icons are equivalents for the relevant View menu items.
• New: [609]: Windows menu offers a Zoom entry now.
• New: [642]: New View sub menu added to Context menus. It reflects the three View menu items: Show Document Grid, Show Frame Guides, Show Page Guides.
• New: A Swedish version of iCalamus is also available now, localized by Karl-Johan Norén.
• New: [671]: The Preferences window dispenses with the still redundant switch Show All.
• Fix: [643]: Number of pages in dialogs New Document and Default Document can no longer be < 1 and > 9999.

Not everybody wants to smile at the camera, but if you’re the type of person who likes to capture a smile on a person’s face, then the Artificial Smile camera is what you’re looking for. Designed by two designers from the University of the Arts, Berlin, the camera would recognize frowns and replace them with an artificial smile, making it look like the person is actually smiling. Of course, if your eyes are blazing with anger or something, we doubt that the camera can do much for that, but as they say “for everything else, there’s Photoshop”, right?

Permalink: Artificial Smile Camera Gives You A Smile from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

If you’re a gadget-lover fed up of filling your home with ice white this and brushed aluminum that, then check out this selection of totally stylin’ items offering a design blast from the past.

Retro, vintage, old school or just classic, whatever your interpretation, we’ve dug out ten gadgets that boast classic good looks as well as bang-up-to-date functionality.

Olympus’ Pen E-P1 is chock full of digital goodness in a design that harks back to the SLR glory days and the original Pen’s release back in 1959, which made a big impact on the camera market with its small dimensions. With a 12-megapixel sensor and capable of capturing movies at 720p, the modern micro four thirds snapper offers digital SLR-standard pics in a more compact format with those vintage looks that are good enough to lick.

Cost: $799.99

Science and Sons’ Phonofone II is a wickedly old-fashioned iPod speaker, or in the words of its creator “audio console.” Using no power, the gramophone-styled device utilizes passive amplification and cunning acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to around 55 decibels. With an entirely ceramic construction, it’s as much sculpture as it is speaker.

Cost:: Currently 240 euros – around $330

So far only released in Korea, LG thrilled fans of retro style when it revealed a classic CRT television, complete with bunny ears aerial and channel-changing knobs. The 14-inch set stands on chrome legs and if you’re doing the back-in-time trip all the way, can display in black and white or sepia. Despite its vintage appearance it offers a digital tuner and does come with a remote control for when you get bored of fiddling with the knobs.

Cost: Sadly N/A

A professional USB mic, the Snowball from Blue Microphones claims to offer plug’n'play ease of use with both Macs and PCs but the power to capture anything from the softest vocals to the loudest garage band. Angled as ideal for podcasting, the vintage appearance of this modern peripheral may serve to remind users of the rich heritage of broadcasting and inspire them to podcast about more than the hilarious antics of their cat. That, and it will look wicked-cool on your desk.

Cost: $99.95

Available in black, white, red and an outrageously retro avocado green, say goodbye to fiddly modern earbuds with these totally cool cans from Panasonic. The Panasonic Old School Monitor Stereo Headphones, to give them their full title, offer leather-cushioned listening comfort you can only dream of if you’re used to in-ear audio efforts and look so darn cool you’ll be tempted to wear them out — even when you’re not listening to music.

Cost:: $59.99

Sure, headsets are all well and good but there’s no romance in looking like a call center phone operator. The P*PHONE from Hulger will give you the satisfying feel of a proper chunky handset in your hot little paw and turn a VoIP call into a conversation. Available in white, black, red and green, the P*PHONE is offered on its own for $50 and with a cool desktop base for $99. As well as working with certain mobiles (and certain others with adaptors) the P*PHONE offers easy USB hook-up to a PC.

Cost:: From $50

Back in the olden days folks would create real-life music “tapes” with playlists recorded on to them to either share with a friend or loved one or enjoy themselves (“Best Driving Songs Ever”, “My Breaking Up With Dave Tape”, etc). Help make sure the art of the mixtape is not lost with this USB effort that takes on the form of an old analog blank audio cassette tape (complete with sleeve that you can scrawl the track list on) but with a brand spanking new USB flash drive nestled in the middle.

Cost:: $15.99

Mathletes with a penchant for the past will enjoy this retro calculator’s baby blue looks and oversize dimensions. Whether you’re totting up the cost of your new flared jeans, or calculating how much cheese you’ll need to melt to make the perfect fondue, your numerical queries will be solved in Seventies style.

Cost:: Approx $23

You’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a vintage deck, but in fact it offers more modern tech than many music systems. Sure, there’s the option to take your vinyl for a spin, but there’s also playback from SD memory cards and USB storage devices as well as from iPods and other MP3 players. In addition to normal playback this turntable can record your records to your computer, which means you won’t have to re-purchase all your vinyl to get it digitized, and it has an FM radio.

Cost:: $150

While the wider world gets hyped up about Sony’s Move and Microsoft’s Project Natal, sit back, relax and enjoy some 8-bit gaming with the Retro NES USB Controller from ThinkGeek, described as perfect for creating old school gaming nostalgia on your laptop. With a USB connection, it’s perfect for MAME and other emulators and is sooo much cooler than trying to save the princess using your keyboard.

Cost:: $29.99

Tags: gadgets, hulger, LG, Panasonic, retro

Yes, this is quite belated. I’ll explain why in a subsequent post.

linux.conf.au this year was in Wellington, New Zealand. It just keeps getting better! It’s always great meeting people you otherwise only know online. I was especially impressed by the OLPC NZ team.

Immediately following linux.conf.au, I jumped on a plane to Christchurch to embark on a week-long tour of the South Island. Long story short, it was the time of my life! I made some amazing friends. I also saw and did incredible things, including:

• awe-inspiring views of glaciers, glacially-formed landscapes, turquoise-coloured rivers and lakes, beautiful skies and more
• helihike: a helicopter trip onto a glacier, then hiking on it
• a night on a boat on Milford Sound, probably the most beautiful place on Earth
• every extreme activity I could get my hands on, including:
  • three bungy jumps (thrillogy combo): Kawarau Bridge (43 metres), Nevis (134m) and Ledge (47m)
  • two swings: two of the scariest jump styles — Backwards and Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood
  • a 15,000ft skydive
  • the Triple Challenge: a Shotover jet boat ride, followed by a helicopter transfer to rafting on the Shotover river
    
  • a wilderness safari along the Dart River, including walks through forests and a scenic jet boat ride

I have most of my photos online now:

• 2010-01-24 New Zealand holiday, Day 1, pt 1
• 2010-01-24 New Zealand Holiday, Day 1, pt 2
• 2010-01-25 New Zealand Holiday, Day 2, pt 1
• 2010-01-25 New Zealand Holiday, Day 2, pt 2
• 2010-01-26 New Zealand Holiday, Day 3, pt 1
• 2010-01-26 New Zealand Holiday, Day 3, pt 2
• 2010-01-26 New Zealand Holiday, Day 3, pt 3
• 2010-01-27 New Zealand Holiday, Day 4, pt 1
• 2010-01-27 New Zealand Holiday, Day 4, pt 2
• 2010-01-27 New Zealand Holiday, Day 4, pt 3

I think what surprised me most was how adventurous I can be when I’m not in my ‘natural habitat’. I’m not normally a thrillseeker at all, but in NZ I made the decision to take a holiday from myself as well as from work and home. I even made a concerted effort to not touch computers at all. My phone was offline for most of the trip (I was using it as a camera). I never thought that being cut-off could feel so liberating.

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

Continue reading 'Second Sight' turns PSP camera into an augmented reality learning tool

'Second Sight' turns PSP camera into an augmented reality learning tool originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading 'Second Sight' turns PSP camera into an augmented reality learning tool

'Second Sight' turns PSP camera into an augmented reality learning tool originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

• 
  Twist Alarm Clock needs you to use your brains
• 
  Mood Swing Lip Gloss
• 
  JVC has new Everio camera ready to rock and roll
• 
  Casio unveils Pathfinder PAG110C-3 timepiece
• 
  Cloaks of Invisiblity are now a reality
• 
  Legend of the Sikker
• 
  Laptop doubles as its own carrying case
• 
  Cardboard Record Player
• 
  Industrial Double iPod Dock

JVC of Japan is back with a spanking new Everio camera which will go one up on all of its other rivals – why do we say so? Well, it comes with integrated Bluetooth wireless technology that allows it to “talk” to other similarly equipped wireless devices. Of course, let us not get sidetracked by this and focus on what the Everio GZ-HM550 can do as a camcorder first before moving on to see the capabilities of Bluetooth connectivity. The Everio GZ-HM550 will sport a 10.6 megapixel CMOS sensor for recording high quality Full HD video and nine megapixel digital stills, and 32GB of internal flash memory which can be further expanded thanks to an SD/SDHC memory card slot.

Right, on to the Bluetooth now – it basically allows you to control the camera using nothing else but a smartphone, while you can also geo-tag your recorded videos as well as snapped photos through a compatible Bluetooth headset. Needless to say, you will still need to install the application which it ships with before it is able to pair up with a compatible Bluetooth-equipped smartphone. Using this software, one can control the camera remotely, letting you record, zoom and play operations. With a GPS device in tow, it is a snap to record location data of where movie and still files were recorded. All relevant data stored will be synchronized with Google Earth when viewing the file on a PC, and you can also take advantage of a Bluetooth-equipped headset to monitor the recorded sound or for voice recording. Hmmm, sounds fine and dandy for the rest, but don’t you think a regular remote control would work just fine for this camcorder if you want to operate it from afar? Guess having the Bluetooth option allows you to lose the remote without feeling a tinge of regret or panic.

Other hardware specifications include a 10.62 megapixel Back-illuminated CMOS sensor, 1920 x 1080 Full HD video shooting, real nine megapixel digital stills, a KONICA MINOLTA HD LENS with 16x dynamic zoom without suffering from any degradation of picture quality, an LED light and a flash for shooting in dark situation, Advanced Image Stabilization and advanced shooting functions. All that shooting could prove to be painful on your arms, which is why the Everio GZ-HM550 comes with a redesigned grip belt that works in two ways, as that of a conventional handle-style grip when both ends are snapped in place, or as a strap when one end of the belt is released. Expect to pick up the JVC GZ-HM550 Bluetooth-enabled camera for $799.95.

Press Release
Coolest Gadgets UK – For all your UK centric tech and gadget news.
[ JVC has new Everio camera ready to rock and roll copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

To the left can (barely) be seen cellphone and handwarmers, to the right (under the bungies) the camera and handwarmers. The warmers are used to keep the equipment from freezing.

That's Long Island to the middle-left, the Hudson River, bottom-middle, and Jersey, middle-right.

And it's just that easy -- or at least the folks at Island Labs make it seem so. John Abella sent us these pics of their recent camera balloon launch. Great job, guys!

Balloon Launch Flickr set

More:

• DIY SPACE - Make: Video Podcast
• Near Space Balloon Update: The Ultimate Easter Egg Hunt.
• Successful High Altitude Balloon!

With the amount of gear that most of us carry around these days, it is no surprise that various chargers tend to bulk up our luggage as well. The MOSeco ES905 charger aims to make life slightly easier on you, featuring built-in batteries that can be charged when connected to a power source via mini USB or placed under direct sunlight to take advantage of its solar panels. If all else fails, there is always the hand-crank to some good old fashioned muscle power. The MOSeco ES905 charger has a plethora of adapters for most cellphones, smartphones, MP3-players, digital cameras and portable media players among others. Additional hardware specifications include a flashlight with three LEDs, a digital watch, alarm clock functionality as well as the ability to indicate air temperature and battery level.

Permalink: MOSeco ES905 charger from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

The MTK MTK6516 phone might resemble some of the good stuff that HTC has come up with in recent times, but this model goes one up since it has dual core functionality, working in a Windows Mobile environment. As mentioned, the main draw would be its dual core 460MHz ARM9 main processor which will be used to handle system tasks, while a 280MHz ARM7 Modem processor will take care of the telephony module segment, featuring a 3.2" display, Windows Mobile 6.5, 256MB RAM, 256MB ROM, a 3.2-megapixel camera and 1.3-megapixel secondary camera for video calling purposes, and Wi-Fi connectivity. No idea on about pricing, but it ought to be released soon.

Permalink: MTK MTK6516 phone gets dual core from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

The GigaPan Epic Pro was the Gigapan we were waiting for it. It’s, well, professionally epic and capable of using nearly any DSLR camera/lens available thanks to its large magnesium chassis. It was originally going to start shipping sometime in April, but apparently something changed because we just got word from the company itself that its available now.

Too bad the somewhat high, but understandable, $895 price didn’t change. Probably more than a few photographers would have rather seen a bit shaved off that rather than the shipping date.

When it comes to accessing Wikipedia on your iPhone, there’s no shortage of options. This week, a new app entered the arena dubbed Articles, and for users who value a solid interface and pleasant viewing experience, it’s an excellent choice.

The app, which is $2.99 in the App Store, features some innovative features, like viewing articles based on your location, a really great photo viewer (complete with the ability to either copy photos or save them to your camera roll), and a multi-page interface that works the same way as Mobile Safari.

The app also features a pull-down menu, a la Tweetie 2, that can set the device’s orientation — perfect for those that want to view Wikipedia articles while in bed or on their side.

You can search both article titles and content, bookmark your favorite articles in folders of your choice, and even view an article at random by shaking the device.

The presentation of the app really takes things to another level: text is clear, readable and beautifully arranged. By double-tapping and dragging on the device, you can easily scroll between sections. Furthermore, clicking on an info box quickly enlarges that section.

We do have a few niggles with the app, however. First, as nice as the double-tap and drag feature is for moving between sections, it’s not a replacement for a table of contents that apps like Wikipanion feature. Second, while reference information appears when you do searches, references aren’t listed in article pages. For normal reading, that’s fine, and it makes the app clean; however, if you want to know about the source of a certain fact, you can’t view it inside the app itself.

Those deficits pale, though, when compared to the overall presentation of the app. One of my favorite features is that you can tap and hold on an intra-wiki link and open up the link in a new page — just like in Safari. I also like how text can be magnified or made smaller by using pinch zoom.

If you’re looking for a way to access Wikipedia and you want the best looking experience possible, give Articles a shot. It has been localized in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish — so it’s a good option for multi-lingual iPhone users too.

What is your favorite way to access Wikipedia on the iPhone? Let us know!

Tags: apple, articles, iphone, iphone apps, wikipedia

If you’re a photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or Aperture. Probably Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros — and the latest version seems to be an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly intended to draw casual shooters using iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot. Since so many of these amazing new features are direct side-loads from iPhoto, it smooths the process and makes the program as a whole more approachable, though whether existing Aperture users will find them helpful is questionable. Brushes, on the other hand, are a welcome addition to any photographer’s toolset, and depending on how dedicated you are, may be worth the price of admission.

Invasion of the iPhoto features

As long as I’ve been using Aperture, I’ve considered it a processing application. Its photo management was troublesome here and there, and iPhoto had the best ways of showing off your shots, but I dealt with it since maintaining two separate libraries of the same photos would be disk space suicide. I’ve only used Lightroom a little bit (and a version or two back) but all my friends say that it just has a better workflow for serious photo work — importing a couple hundred shots, scrubbing through them, doing the necessary adjustments, and outputting to the necessary format. Not that I have trouble doing that in Aperture, but apparently it’s faster and better in Lightroom.

Confronted with such a fearsome opponent, Apple decided that it would be better to flank than to risk a frontal assault. Hence the expansion of Aperture’s incorporation of iPhoto features Faces and Places. I question their relevance in a photo processing application, but given Apple’s tendency towards coalescing functionality, I’m guessing that iPhoto will eventually be Aperture: Gimped Edition, and the only real choice for organizing and messing with large numbers of photos will be Aperture.

There are some kinks to be worked out. Faces plainly doesn’t work. After it spent literally five hours going through my photos (about 1000 per hour), this is what it has come up with:

No, it didn’t have a lot to go on (I hadn’t “trained” it much yet) but really now. After giving it a few more pointers on what I looked like, it still mistook a three-year-old tow-headed girl, my friend Monica (who is Indian, and in a wedding dress), some E3 booth babes, and Casio president Kazuo Kashio for pale, bearded, Devin Coldewey. The cork board background is jarring and the interface for going through your shots is terrible. I realize this is a technology still being perfected, and that is why I am wondering: what is it doing in my RAW editing program?

Places is useful if you have a geotagging camera (still rare) or want to spend a few hours dragging and dropping stuff onto the map. It can be fun, actually, if you take a lot of pictures of your friends, and want to drag and drop this or that night onto the location you went to; it’s like creating a different kind of album (“Linda’s Tavern”), and indeed you can make a browsable smart album from locations. If you’re like me, you won’t feel complete until the photos are more or less where they were within the city, and not all grouped in a single pin, smack in the middle of the city. This could have some promise, but with a backlog of several thousand shots, getting a library up to date in Places is a task I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

It’s a mistake to judge Faces and Places by simply saying “well we were fine before them,” because it may just be that we found ways of working in the old system of organization (Project>Folder>Album) that approximated what these new features do. But I don’t think it’s wrong to say they just don’t really do much, and feel out of place to boot. You have to work at them, or shoot for them, in order for them to really be worthwhile. Still I have to give credit where credit’s due: if you just consider Faces and Places new columns to organize by (like rating or date) then they’re worth their salt. As flagship features, though, they’re duds.

Lastly, the slide show thing. It’s like finding a trout in the milk. Not that it doesn’t work — it works as well as iPhoto’s thing, and I suppose it’s better to have than not. It’s just a little weird to have a sort of… aftermarket feature popped in there next to the serious editing tools. Its little presets are, like in most Apple programs, 25% solid, 75% fluff. Who in the name of all that is holy is going to pick “Shatter” as their slide show transition? It’s ghastly.

The new features are very well explained in little videos accessible through the “Welcome” screen, which will be handy for new users — if they can find the screen after they close it (it’s in Help>Welcome to Aperture).

The good stuff

So if the iPhoto features are icing, the actual cake is the RAW editing, adjustment tools, and user interface. Let’s start with what I would say is the best new feature: Brushes.

You can see a pretty thorough overview of the feature at Apple’s site, but the gist is that it allows you to apply certain effects in limited areas using a brush of adjustable size and intensity. That’s great! I can’t count the number of times I’ve vacillated between two versions of a photo where an adjustment necessary for one part ended up blowing out another, or I just wanted to bring out the color in the eyes but not in the background. A lot of fiddling could usually approximate the effect I wanted, but it would be so much easier to just use a brush. I’ll be using the hell out of this feature, and it’s perhaps the only real step Apple took against Adobe in this update.

(combination Brushes and Help Video screenshot)

The brushes are non-destructive, like any of the dials and curves you can play with in the adjustments panel, so you can feel free to experiment, layer, and try out different effects. One thing I often have to do when shooting review shots is emphasize the color of LEDs, but if the subject is well-lit, the LEDs are going to be barely visible. No problem; make a little brush, add in a little contrast right there, bump the saturation just in the one area, and boom, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Brushes are useful for lots of little things like that.

The new full-screen browser is handy but not really a revolution. They’ve added the ability to get around your library a little more, which is nice, but it’s not as streamlined as the regular browser, which is always accessible by a single keystroke. The fullscreen presentation has definitely been improved, however, and when showing off photos to friends or clients, it’s a better option than either the plain editing window or a slide show.

The preset adjustments, I think we can agree, are being blown way out of proportion. These are the same kind of “professional adjustments” that you have been able to apply on cheap point-and-shoots since the beginning of time. There are a few quick adjust things like high-contrast black-and-white or exposure +1 that are nice to have previews for (the live preview window is handy), but let’s be honest, these are just filters. I’d like to be able to say that they’re carefully adjusted so you won’t see weird color effects, blackouts, or blowouts, but the fact is every one I tried looked cheap and overdone. The others, like white balance and so on, seem pretty redundant considering the actual controls for adjusting those aspects are mere pixels away in the same window.

Click to see it larger. You can’t really tell here, since this photo isn’t very high contrast, but in several of the other shots I tried this on, the vintage look was really purple, cross-processing was really green, and toy camera pushed the contrast way too far. Subtle adjustments these are not.

The good news is that people new to the program might try a couple, see that they were created by dragging curves and color bars around, and then make their own. I’ve had my own “base” adjustment for years now, which was just as easily accessible and just as customizable. Putting together a “look” for a shoot using this feature might be easier now than before, but it’s still just a toy at this point.

The ability to have multiple libraries is nice; splitting work and personal stuff would be my move, so that if a meteor crashed into TC HQ (or, more likely, I’m fired for insubordination), I could free up a couple gigs in one clean sweep. It’s also convenient for backing up and sharing; “here’s my whole ‘wedding’ library, feel free to do what you like with it” rather than “here’s a folder full of RAW files.”

A quick note

Just a PSA: installation of Aperture 3 took ages. Plan on losing at least a working day to 100% processor usage as it converts your library, searches for Faces, and reprocesses your RAW files with the new profile. I’m not holding this against Apple (it’s a LOT of data to sift through) but it’s just something to be aware of.

Conclusion

Aperture is still a great program, in my opinion, and the budding photographer would be a lot better off with this than with iPhoto if they’re planning on doing anything more than collecting snapshots. I’ve gotten used to Aperture’s workflow and they haven’t changed it much in 3, in fact they’ve provided a couple serious improvements with Brushes and potentially Places and Faces — you know, if you’re into that kind of thing.

The trouble I see is that Aperture, once a rather single-minded program, is being diluted with features that have nothing to do with its core functionality. Why not have a new program, called “Collection” or something, that hooks into all your libraries, allows for creating robust slide shows, exporting directly to Facebook, and all that sort of thing? Putting all this junk into Aperture is doing to it what Apple has done to iTunes: once a sleek and straightforward program, it has now grown bloated beyond comprehension; it’s a bit like seeing a once-great fighter gone to seed. I have more of an attachment to Aperture than to iTunes, but if Aperture 4 continues along the vector indicated by Aperture 3, you can consider me a Lightroom conversion.

Give Aperture 3 a 30-day trial for free here. $199 to buy, $99 to upgrade.

Ahead of the release of Shank, which was met by protests from locals during filming, a look at some other location shoots that went bad

Question: if you peaked out your window, and noticed a ragtag gang of knife-wielding teens storming past, what would you do? Call the police, of course. That's exactly what residents of the Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle did, only to find their estate was actually the film set of dystopian thriller Shank, where knife-wielding gangs roam free, starring Kaya Scodelario (Effy from Skins), Kidulthood's Adam Deacon, and oddly, Tim Westwood. "I can see," offered the director Mo Ali, "how residents might get the wrong impression".

Long gone, of course, are the days of parking your entire film in the MGM lot and making do with a plastic tree and the contents of the fire bucket to make Elvis look like he's in Hawaii. But with the credit crunch, more places than ever are eager to take the film companies' dollar. David Boice – who runs BeforeTheTrailer.com, a fansite that tracks location shoots – points out that previously unlikely locations are now tripping over themselves to give generous tax breaks and entice film crews, with Michigan leading the way. The result? "In the past year the city of Detroit has filled in for Washington [for Red Dawn]. Rather than filming 'on location', they just film where there's the best incentives."

Last April, the LA Times reported that LA-based location shoots had fallen to their lowest level since records began. Put another way: everywhere is anywhere now. But with more locations, come more problems. The films that have been protested about because of the nature of the film are too numerous to mention – from Brick Lane due to perceived prejudice against the Bangladeshi community to Basic Instinct, which, well, take your pick – anti-woman and anti-gay were the main ones.

But, like Shank, what about the effect on the locals? And what, more importantly, about the house prices? You can forgive the residents of London's Kentish Town (Zone 2, tube, nice pubs), for instance, for being concerned when filming commenced on Nick Love's hooligan film The Firm, as they prepared for a brawl scene involving 140 actors, stuntmen, extras, and with dire warnings of "noise and swearing". That wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all. With Timmy listening! The locals protested, and filming was soon moved to Hackney. "Residents of Hackney were happy for the fighting to take place on their streets," reported a London freesheet, who declined to mention if the residents actually noticed the difference.

Still, brawling in the UK is one thing. When location shoots go global, it can be far worse. Of course, we all know the foreign shoots that went south – Terry Gilliam's aborted crack at Don Quixote, Coppola going cuckoo during Apocalypse Now – but at least those two can say one thing: they didn't bar people from the Almighty. Last September, Julia Roberts was on location near Dehli filming the Brad Pitt-produced Eat, Pray, Love, in which she plays a woman who finds God via food and Hindu spirituality. All well and good. The only problem was, no one else could find God, as their temple was shut. Villagers hoping to celebrate the beginning of Navratri – a nine-day Hindu festival of worship and dance – found their temple sealed by Roberts's security team, which featured the small matter of 350 guards, bulletproof cars, and a chopper. It was a security detail that essentially said: We have your God now. He's shooting a movie. And he's not available for comment. One villager threatened a break in: "I am going to barge in for the evening aarti [ritual]. Let's see who stops me. What is it that they are shooting that we cannot even enter our own temple?"

Of course, upsetting the faithful is one thing. But won't someone, please, think of the dangerous criminals. Not, it seems, Mel Gibson. For his latest, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, in which he'll star as a career-criminal sent to a harsh Mexican prison, 300 real-life inmates were made to relocate from their prison in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz this January to make way for the film crew, causing not just demonstrations by relatives, angry at having to travel further to visit their incarcerated ones, but a full-scale prison riot. "Mel Gibson, it's your fault they want to take away our relatives," read a banner of one of protesters, who clearly wasn't big on irony.

Yet if you can't find it in your heart to feel for the muggers and murders crushed under Hollywood's unfeeling foot, at least spare a thought for the prostitutes. When Ed Harris-starring drama The Third Miracle was filming in Ontario, Canada, in 1998, they unwittingly became the third consecutive production to shoot in the red light districts of Sherborne and Carleton, causing out-of-pocket street workers to protest about lack of earnings.

Yet sometimes, it's not even that their home has been disrupted, trampled on and destroyed. It's that they're not getting enough credit for it. When filming A Quantum Of Solace in the small town of Baquedano, Bolivia, local mayor Carlos Lopez took matters into his own hands by jumping in his car, nearly hitting two police officers as he sped through the barricades, storming the set, and coming to a skidding halt between Daniel Craig and the cameras. The reason? Bolivia was being used to represent local rivals Chile, and that wouldn't do at all. He was swiftly taken into police custody. But as for Bond himself? Not just shaken or stirred it seems, but, according to Lopez, a full-scale pants disaster. "He fled in terror!" he said after being released. "When he saw me, James Bond ran off!" 007, really ...

Still, protests from the locals are what you expect. While filming Australia – the Baz Luhrmann multimillion pound movie/tourist board infomercial – the protests came from closer to home. Extras were appalled when actors climbed upon a first world war memorial in the tiny town of Bowden during a cattle stampede scene, and lobbied to ensure the actors stood their ground and took the marauding 2,000lb beasts like men. Rumours that another memorial was needed for the fallen thesps are, as yet, unconfirmed.

There's even been the odd occasion where it wasn't the filming itself that caused the disruption, but what those filming asked the locals to do. When a crew was about to film aerial scenes for The Dark Knight in Hong Kong, they sent letters to building residents requesting they keep their lights on to present the city in its full illuminated glory. For six days. From 7am to 11pm. Unsurprisingly, they declined. "Producers are able to create the same effects through post-production," argued Gabrielle Ho at Green Sense, "but instead they are asking us to turn on so many lights, wasting so much energy."

Though there is one thing to be said about all these disruptions: they ended once the filming did. The crew of The Beach not only got permission to film in what was part of a protected national park in Thailand – Maya Bay on Phi Phi Le island – in 1998, but also to make it even "more" of a paradise, uprooting trees, removing natural vegetation that held the sand formations together, levelling sand dunes, and adding 100 non-native coconut palms. Fox promised to put everything back the way it was, but there was erosion, and in 2006 Thailand's Supreme Court upheld an appeal court ruling that the environment had been harmed. Still, Leo had had a look, and it seemed OK to him. "From what I see with my own eyes, everything is OK," the self-described environmentalist said in a statement. "I have seen nothing that has been destroyed or damaged in any way – I cannot tell you the reasons why people have been saying the opposite. It is beyond me." It's beyond us too, Leo. Those inconsiderate, unfeeling bastards.

Shank is out on Friday

• Julia Roberts
• James Bond
• Terry Gilliam
• Skins
• Mel Gibson
• Baz Luhrmann

For all y’all out there who think that the iPad leaves much to be desired, we’ve got the video for you. This parody, made as an assignment for a Comm 340 class (I hope they got an A), highlights all that’s lacking in the mythical device.

It doesn’t have a camera, you can’t use it to make a phone call, and the name itself has spawned countless parodies — not to mention throwbacks to ‘90s television — that’s basically this video’s beef with Steve Jobs’s newest shiny, shiny baby.

Check out the video below and let us know in the comments: What changes would you like to see in the iPad 2.0? Personally, I’m still waiting on Spice 2.0.

[via TUAW]

Tags: apple, humor, ipad, viral video

Filed under: Crossover, Ford

Gallery: 2011 Ford Edge Ordering Guide

Gallery: First Ride: 2011 Ford Edge Sport

2011 Ford Edge ordering guide hits the Intertubes originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This method of book digitization allows you to scan an entire book by fanning through the pages. It uses a high-speed camera that captures 500 frames per second to get a good look at each page. Processing software isolates each pages, analyzes any curve in the paper due to the flipping, and smooths out the image for better optical character recognition results. The greatly reduces the time it takes to digitize a book, even compared to setups that automatically flip pages.

[Thanks Erico]

When you watch Stupid for Movies, an independently-produced movie chat show live-streaming weekly on Ustream at 8 PM PST, you see Los Angeles-based film critics Mark Keizer and Wade Major sitting side by side on a red-curtained set that invokes the golden days of Siskel and Ebert at the Movies, reacting to an enthusiastic audience’s applause. Keizer and Major banter back and forth about the week’s new releases and films the audience should “Buy, Burn or Rent,” while director Mike Rotman chimes in occasionally on the banter.

With five cameras, a small crew and live-streaming technology provided by NewTek, Stupid For Movies has been running for two months now, with the live episodes archived on Blip the following day. Last night’s episode’s stream received a total of 5,799 views, with 300 live viewers tuned in around 8:40 PM PST — a viewership number that is only built upon once the episode is archived and spread around to its distribution partners.

The magic all happens in a converted garage up in the San Fernando Valley — one of Los Angeles’ most suburban sectors, where most of the houses look the same. Inside that garage, though, is a surprisingly professional operation crammed into a space that would barely be able to fit two Volvos.

The exterior of the studio/garage.

The production behind-the-scenes was a mix of laid-back and professional, with the breaks provided by short clips from films used to adjust camera angles and touch up makeup. On screen, that attitude carried through: Both hosts were confident and relaxed on camera, with only the occasional moment of hamming on the part of Major. (Mocking Major’s shirt appears to be a running theme.)

I consider myself a movie nerd, but watching Keizer and Major identify random obscure films from the last 40 years made me feel ignorant — their film knowledge is wide and all-encompassing, to the point where it seemed that many of the films suggested by viewers for the Buy/Rent/Burn segment were submitted just in the hopes of stumping them (which only sort of happened once with the old Wes Craven film Deadly Friend, though they quickly recalled it once given a hint).

Major and Keiser get ready for their close-ups.

The key to Siskel and Ebert’s dynamic was always that they weren’t prone to agreeing with each other, but while Keizer and Major (who also host IGN’s Digigods podcast) do demonstrate some distinctively different taste in films, Major estimated in a post-shoot conversation that they agree with each other about 65 or 70 percent of the time. What that contributes to, though, is a very distinctive point-of-view about the film world, one that has no patience for video game movies and dismisses the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films out of hand — but does genuinely love film. The audience attracted to such a perspective is thus pretty specific, but with real potential for loyalty.

Rotman, who’s known Keizer and Major for years, has been working in web video for some time and currently directs The Kevin Pollak Chat Show on Sundays. When he came up with the idea for Stupid For Movies, he shopped it around to a few different parties but wasn’t happy with any of the deals he got — hence deciding to produce the show on his own, a decision made easier when he found a house for rent that had a soundproofed garage, thanks to its former tenant, a musician.

Chad Vader waits to chime in via Skype.

Currently on Stupid for Movies, online video legend Chad Vader does a weekly news rundown and at least once so far, Kevin Pollak has Skyped in to give the guys grief. Future plans for the next few weeks include bringing in celebrities to discuss their favorite movies ever, more giveaways, and possibly a sponsorship by one of the obvious movie-related brands online, leaving Stupid poised to become a much bigger player in the live-streaming world — especially for those who love movies.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Case Study: 1 vs. 100 Live’s Glimpse of the Future

Last week we told you about how Chevrolet, a division of General Motors, was bringing an augmented reality (AR) marketing promotion to SXSW in Austin. Now General Motors is kicking it up a notch with some experimental technology that will bring the world of AR to car windshields and provide a heads-up-display (HUD) experience.

The new technology, still very much in the testing phase, uses an array of sensors which track both objects on or near the road, as well as the position and angle of a driver's head and eyes. By combining the data from these sensors, GM can then project images onto the windshield with lasers to help drivers stay safe when driving.

Sponsor

"Let's say you're driving in fog," says Thomas Seder, group lab manager for GM's research and development. "We could use the vehicle's infrared cameras to identify where the edge of the road is and the lasers could 'paint' the edge of the road onto the windshield so the driver knows where the edge of the road is," Seder said.

In other words, it would be like having a fighter pilot's HUD in your car, except instead of tracking the sky for bogies, your car tracks the road for possible dangers. The display works by coating the windshield with transparent phosphors which emit light when excited by a laser. GM says this is better for the driver because the entire windshield can be used to display information, not just a portion of it like current in-car HUD systems. The technology also includes the ability to recognize and read road signs and alert the driver to when they are driving too fast or if construction is ahead.

The company says that while this exact technology will not be in any cars in the near future, some of the features will start to be rolled into upcoming models. What this likely means is the transparent phosphor windshield will be placed in cars and used to display other HUD information, like speed, gas and other indicators.

The hard part of this technology doesn't seem to be displaying it; rather, the barrier is in the sensor work between tracking objects on the road and tracking the position and angle of the driver's eyes. Since it's much easier to simply display objects that don't rely on exact positioning for the driver's point-of-view, it's likely we'll see these additions before the true AR experience becomes a reality.

Eventually, however, GM hopes technology like this will make for better turn-by-turn directions and make it easier to find locations upon arrival. We've all heard our GPS systems say, "You have arrived at your location!" only to look around and not necessarily know where it is. With this new system, GM hopes they can solve the problem of "the last 100 yards" by displaying indicators of specific locations based on the sensor readings.

This certainly seems like the future of driving, but I wonder if it will be displaced by cars that simply drive themselves. If we can create sensors good enough to find the lanes in the road and nearby vehicles, why not just let the car drive it self and skip the HUD? Either way, its great to see AR taking steps forward beyond marketing and into practical application in a consumer space, even if it is years in the future.

A new torrent has been uploaded to U2Torrents.com.

Torrent: 5759
Title: 2001-10-10 * Joyce Center * University of Notre Dame * South Bend, IN * JEMS archive masters DVD
Size: 7.66 GB
Category: Elevation
Uploaded by: JEMSHQ

Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U2
Joyce Center
University of Notre Dame
South Bend, IN
October 10, 2001
JEMS masters

Video Source: live satellite feed > satellite receiver > forgotten professional format video tape (likely Betacam) > Digital 8 tapes
Audio Source: live satellite feed > satellite receiver > Casio DAR-100 DAT

Master Digital 8 tapes and DAT tape > Vegas edit, sync and author > Dual Layer DVD-R > VIDEO_TS

Data Size: 7.66 GB

Video Info:
Authored with menu
NTSC
MPEG-2
720 × 480 (4:3)
29.97 fps
8.00 Mbps

Audio Info:
PCM stereo, 48 kHz, 1.54 Mbps

01 Beautiful Day
02 Until the End of the World > Two Tribes
03 New Year's Day
04 When Will I See You Again
05 Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of
06 What's Going On
07 New York
08 Pride (In the Name of Love)
09 Sunday Bloody Sunday
10 Kite
11 Angel of Harlem
12 Staring at the Sun
13 Bad > Molly Malone
14 Psalm 116 > Where the Streets Have No Name
15 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
16 With Or Without You > Shine Like Stars
17 Elevation > Creep
18 Mysterious Ways > Sexual Healing
19 One
20 Peace on Earth (tiny glitch on both audio and video masters)
21 Walk On

So…some of you know that JEMS recorded the 2001 Notre Dame webcast direct from the satellite feed. I posted that audio a couple years ago and the response seemed to be positive in that it was considered the best version yet to circulate (oddly, a webcast-sourced version was posted to U2T a few months ago that some preferred even as the capture, by its very nature, should be inferior. Not throwing stones, I just don't understand how a direct capture from a satellite receiver could be inferior to a webcast downstream of the same source given the state of broadband in 2001).

While we were not able to capture live video ourselves, live video was recorded from the satellite though not of the multi-camera feed. From what I was told, this was because the feeds were coming through in PAL as that was the video system U2 employed on the road, but the so-called Bono-cam was NTSC and that feed was recorded. Now I honestly don't recall to what tape format the Booncam was captured (it was most likely Betacam), but well after the fact, JEMS was able to borrow and dub those pro tapes to what was the best format we could put our hands onto on short notice, Digital 8.

This DVD is the first time those Digital 8 tapes (three of them) have been transferred and circulated. Our good friend KS did the authoring and the syncing to the DAT audio source. He has done great work in the past and this one is no exception. He felt the quality was strong enough to author as a dual-layer DVD which will annoy some of you but at this point dual-layer burners are pretty common. This will be the only version.

Now, the real question is, is this better than what's circulating? I know at least one other satellite capture was made of the Bono-cam and it has always been my presumption that it was the source for all the copies in circulation. I have compared ours to the screen grabs at Achtung Bootlegs and it does appear to be an upgrade. The colors aren't as washed out (look at the green of Bono's guitar). The picture edges are more defined (read the word "Security" on the jackets near b-stage), and the audio should be an improvement. I have attached screen grabs of the menus and a few other frames to help guide you.

Sorry about the upload speed. This is going to take awhile and it will probably be turned off a few times over the weekend.

Butterking for JEMS

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can use the URL below to download the torrent (you may have to login).

http://u2torrents.com/torrents-details.php?id=5759&hit=1

Take care!

Live U2
_________________________________________________________________________________
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Please visit the U2torrents.com Help section at http://www.u2torrents.com/help/ for helpful information or to Ask a Question.

Filed under: Sedan, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, GM, Police/Emergency

Charting the Five-Ohs: Next-gen Cop Car Comparo originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.