Category: Business

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From Autoblog: Report: Fisker Flambé: Second Karma spontaneously combusts

Fisker Karma on fire

By all accounts, the Fisker Karma is one hot car. For a couple of owners though, perhaps it’s too hot.

Similar to a situation in May, when a Karma caught fire for no apparent reason in a Texas garage, another has burst into flames in a Woodside, CA parking lot. Rudy Burger was returning to his car after grocery shopping when he caught in the act of self-immolation. According to Jalopnik, he immediately called Fisker, which, in turn, advised him to call 911.

Firefighters arrived quickly and the flames were subdued before much more than just the front driver’s side was consumed. Considering that the A123 Systems‘ battery runs down the center of the car under the passenger compartment, it is possible that the pack was not responsible for the blaze. Wired got a statement from Fisker, which furthers this line of thought. It reads, in part:

Fisker understands damage was limited to the driver’s side front corner of the car, away from the lithium ion battery and electric motors. The car was not being charged at the time.

In an electric vehicle, immediate suspicion is focused on the battery and high voltage components. The location of the damage to the vehicle in this incident appears to rule out that suspicion. Fisker has not had any battery or high voltage fire incidents with any of its vehicles.

Fisker has hired “an independent fire expert to assist the investigation” and says that once the probe is complete and the cause pinpointed, it will issue a statement on the matter. Fisker’s current statement – and a video of the Karma conflagration – is posted below.

 

from Autoblog

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From Engadget: Best Buy founder wants slashed prices, Apple-style customer service in $10 billion rescue plan

Best Buy founder wants slashed prices, Applestyle customer service in $10 billion rescue plan

Best Buy founder Richard Schulze is proposing a plan to turn around the ailing electronics store as part of a $10 billion buyout. He’s proposing the retailer slashes prices to compete with online rivals like Amazon, while offering Apple Store-levels of customer service. He’s concerned that the current closure and size-reduction policy will spell the end of the business, which is rumored to announce another round of closures shortly. It’s yet to be seen if his plan, which would mean running Best Buy at a loss for several years, would be accepted by the company’s management, who are meeting to discuss the proposals at the end of the month.

 

from Engadget

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From Engadget: NVIDIA Q2 earnings bounce back through Tegra: $119 million profit on $1.04 billion in revenue

NVIDIA logo

NVIDIA’s fiscal performance in its second quarter shows the rewards of patience in the mobile sphere. It just saw its profit double versus a glum first quarter to $119 million, even though the company only slightly edged ahead in revenue to $1.04 billion. In explaining the success, the company is quick to point to a confluence of events that all worked in favor of its bank account: a slew of Tegra 3 phones and tablets like the Transformer Pad TF300 made NVIDIA’s quarter the brightest, but it could also point to a much-expanded GeForce 600 line on the PC side and the shipments of the first phones with NVIDIA-badged Icera chips. The graphics guru expects its revenue to climb more sharply in the heat of the third quarter as well — between the cult hit Nexus 7 tablet and a role as a major partner for Windows RT, NVIDIA has at least a temporary license to print money.

 

from Engadget

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From Geeks are Sexy Technology News: OOH-YAH: Indie Gaming Comes to TV Sets

An Android based games console has destroyed its targets to become the second best-funded project ever on Kickstarter. The makers of the OUYA console had bid for $950,000 of funding from the public but wound up with just short of $8.6 million.

The idea of the console is to combine the creativity and independent spirit of today’s smartphone and tablet games with the wow factor of playing on a TV screen. It’s designed to be an alternative to the major consoles where games often have high budgets and thus low creative risks.

Developers will be able to release games for OUYA without any restrictions, other than at least some of the gameplay must be free of charge, even if it’s just a demo. The developers are then open to charge a subscription fee, a one-off upgrade fee for the full game, or offer in-game purchases. As with most mobile game platforms, the developers take 70 percent of any revenue, with the other 30 percent kept by the console makers.

It’s already confirmed that Final Fantasy III and a prequel to Human Element will be available on the console, while Minecraft is also set to appear at some point.

Any existing Android apps can be ported to OUYA and can make use of a touchpad built into the controller. Users can root the console if they choose, as well as creating new peripherals for USB or Bluetooth connection. The software development toolkit for creating games will be available directly on the console itself.

The developers of OUYA haven’t explained the name, though it’s pronounced “ooh-yah” in the style of a Randy Savage impersonator from the deep south. The console might be a bit tricky to market in parts of Africa as the name reportedly sounds similar to the Swahili version of a particularly vulgar insult beginning with c.

The console is scheduled to be shipping next spring and will sell for $99 with one controller and $30 for an extra controller. Between the various Kickstarter options, 58,000 consoles have already been pre-ordered.

[OUYA]

 

from Geeks are Sexy Technology News

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From Engadget: Amazon launches its own game studio, goes social with Living Classics on Facebook

Amazon launches its own game studio, goes social with Living Classics on Facebook

Amazon is committing itself to gaming much more seriously than providing a storefront: it just launched its own game development house. The simply titled Amazon Game Studios is starting out gently by producing a Facebook hidden object game, Living Classics, that lets the socially inclined dig around through scenes from well-known literature — what else would you expect from the Kindle’s creator? While the free, me-too game isn’t going to give Microsoft or Sony any frights just yet, the company has the ambition of making “innovative, fun and well-crafted” titles. Amazon is actively recruiting more help for the studio as we write, so we’d expect more grandiose work before too long.

 

from Engadget

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From Technology Review RSS Feeds: Epic Games Finds New Customers

The graphics software used to create 3-D game environments is being adapted to create better, cheaper training tools and simulations.

Software frameworks known as game engines are opening up new markets for game designers and making high-quality simulations available to companies that otherwise couldn’t afford them. With help from software based on the technology used to create the immersive virtual worlds of video games, paramedics and firefighters are finding ways to train more effectively and inexpensively, and architectural firms are showing designs to clients at an unprecedented level of detail.




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