air powered cars are two years away from hitting the US market

zero pollution motors reckons they can build air-powered cars (dual fuel) ready for use. The article itself talks about it being available in the US but I'm guessing they'll go global.

pretty cool huh?

bang bang... he shot me down...

... not in real life!
If you like playing 'shoot em up' games, then Pivotal Games one of our lovely clients has just launched Conflict: Denied Ops

[Spoken in that guy off the cinema trailers voice]

"Conflict: Denied Ops features two Agents from the CIA's Special Activities Division (SAD), a clandestine unit responsible for carrying out covert paramilitary operations deep behind enemy lines. Graves, a grizzled Special Forces veteran, is paired with Lang, an impetuous newcomer, on a mission to prevent a third-world dictatorship from gaining nuclear weapons. Their mission will take them across three continents and pit them against the ambitious, powerful and dangerous men who control the nuclear arms smuggling trade. - Out now to own on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC!"

better than free

in a world that seems to be heading towards giving consumers what they want (finally), Kevin Kelly is exploring how we can make money from free stuff by making it better than free. In short he says that there are eight different attributes to things that people will willingly pay for even though it's available for free in some other form:

• interpretation: more money is made by manuals on zope and zope consultants than by zope itself. Now think about Linux, OS Commerce etc .. Clever, eh? :-)
• authenticity: for those who can afford it (it's a risk getting stuff that is illegally free) - take the radiohead album online thing for example
• accessibility: having it available anywhere (backed up, centrally hosted etc)
• embodiment: something touchy feely to have and to hold and love and squeeze (digital content isn't tangible but the interface is, and availability in different formats enable you to experience it in better quality)
• patronage: owning a piece of your favourite band.. see radiohead again. If you like a band you're going to want to know that they're going to be around to make the next album :-)
• findability: the publicity angle of giving something away - it means you're suddenly in the public eye. Priceless?

Whilst he didn't list advertising he did refer to it. We've still all got a long way to go to find an acceptable model for advertising that will be easier to swallow by the public.

The social networking craze has shown that marketshare is equivalent to currency to some, providing they can capitalise on it when they get it.

mmm lunchtime... think I'll go eat something.

Obese people and smokers are more cost effective

in medical terms that is. According to research by some Dutch scientists, it costs more to treat healthy people because they live longer. You'll have to read the article but in effect what it implies is that it is probably going to get cheaper for obese people and smokers to get medical insurance. Funny old world, eh?

Microsoft makes a bid for Yahoo!

According to the bbc site (and probably others but much earlier :-)) Microsoft has made a bid to take over Yahoo!. Yahoo has been in trouble for a while, and has been in need of significant investment in order to stop hemorrhaging money. You only have to look at the market share Yahoo! has in relation to MSN in order to make sense of it all. Unless the worm turns, Microsoft won't be buying Google any time soon (and the day that happens, I'm leaving the universe for pastures new).