After much anticipation, the 2008 Ducati 1098R has finally arrived and after a day of pounding out laps on the bike that is supposed to swing the World Superbike balance of power back to the Italians, we came away impressed with everything about Borgo Panigale’s new flagship superbike.
When the 1098 debuted back in 2006, Ducati [...]

(I'm liveblogging from TED 2008, in Monterey, CA) Presenter: Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Foundation on rethinking museums. After showing slides of works by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rubens, Manet, Picasso, Mondrian, Warhol, Gehry, 1948 Indian Chief motorcycles, Krens asks: How do these objects of beauty tie together? How do we experience art, truth and beauty? Do art museums work as a territory for encountering these ideas? The art museum is an 18th century idea (the encyclopedia) in a 19th century box (the extended and recycled palace) that more or less fulfills structural destiny sometime toward to end of the 29t century. Art museums conjures up a Greece that never existed. It belies the fact that these sculptures were colorfully painted. Museums should be agents of agitation, social information and cultural change. Museums as platforms and networks of exchange. Trying to establish bridge to Middle East. Wants to work with Abu Dhabi. The ruler of Abu Dhabi has a master plan to divide main island (1/2 size of Manhattan) into six centers. Wants Guggenheim to design cultural center of island with museums, parks, artist installations, a Yale cultural campus, a wold cultural forum, performing art centers, and grand canal through the island dividing it into 19 pavilions. Guggeneim Abu Dhabi is much bigger than Bilbao and will extend into desert....

2002 Suzuki GSX1300RX HAYABUSA, completely chromed out, custom wheels, air suspension, strobe lights, LED lights, 250 kit, 9500 original miles, in showroom condition, a definite must see!

Hey i baught this bike brand new last year its a great bike really quick to. It has a 2 YEAR WORRENTY! still on the bike it also comes woth a 400 dollar helmet its blue silver. It mathes the bike. I a

Tricia Helfer has posted some personal photos on her blog that show her with fellow Battlestar Galactica actress (and possible Cylon) Katee Sackhoff riding motorbikes through California's Santa Ynez

5 Vote(s)

photo title: DJ Lea Luna - Pretending To Be Holy & In Control of Some Unknown Something or Other Involving Sound Equipment or Mutated Furniture Scabbed Together With Parts From Gurneys, Abandoned Motorcycles, Polyester Resin and Other Crap. from merkley???

VW, Tata Motors Plan Thai Plants by Anthony Fontanelle

Volkswagen AG and Tata Motors Ltd. have both submitted applications to build assembly plants in Thailand, reported Automotive News Europe. The assembly plants are poised to produce fuel-efficient 'eco' cars.

The Volkswagen plant would reportedly have capacity for 100,000 units a year, of which 65 percent would be built for ASEAN export markets, said the Auto Industry.

Tata Motors, India’s third largest automaker, already has a venture with Thai truck-maker Thonburi to assemble pick-up trucks and other vehicles, and has said that it planned to use the country as a manufacturing base to expand its sales in Southeast Asia. 'Tata Motors has submitted a proposal, the details of which are confidential at this stage,' a spokesman said.

Tata Motors, which has been named as the front-runner to buy Ford Motor Co.'s Jaguar and Land Rover brands, would invest eight to nine billion rupees or $200 million to $230 million in the plant, according to an Economic Times release.

The Indian automaker will assemble a new low-cost car at the plant and also build a component hub, the newspaper said citing industry sources, adding Thailand would consider the proposal next week, Reuters reported.

The maker of VW multi rib belts, meanwhile, scrapped plans to partner with Malaysian state-owned carmaker Proton in November but still aims to build up a production base in the ASEAN market, and confirmed its interest in Thailand's eco car programme.

'We have submitted an application around mid-December,' a spokesman for VW said, adding that Thailand was not the only site it was considering in an economic region that also includes large markets like Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. ASEAN also groups countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

The Bangkok Post reported earlier this week that VW applied for approval to invest 27 billion Thai baht or $806.9 million. A VW spokesman declined to comment on the matter. The factory is expected to build 100,000 units annually, 65 percent of which would be exported.

Additionally, Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co. and Suzuki Motor Corp. have announced plans to make fuel efficient eco cars in Thailand, which has offered tax breaks, duty exemptions and other incentives if manufacturers invest a minimum five billion baht. What’s more, the government is also offering import duty exemptions and other incentives to lure more investors. The automakers should invest at least $150 million and produce 100,000 units by the fifth year of operations.

For more information about your parts needs like VW multi rib belts, visit your trusted online source.
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Anthony Fontanelle is a 35-year-old automotive buff who grew up in the Windy City. He does freelance work for an automotive magazine when he is not busy customizing cars in his shop.

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As the putt-putt of motorbikes eclipses the clip-clop of donkey hooves, some residents of Siwa, an oasis town in western Egypt, think development is moving too far, too fast.

Tucked away in a secluded bungalow in West Hollywood's Château Marmont, a hotel as famous for those who stay there as it is infamous for those who have died there, a world reimagined comes into focus.

Standing hands akimbo, a nonplussed expression planted firmly on his almost cel-shaded face, Niko Bellic could easily be a touched-up still. But it's no bullshot. The world around Bellic is bustling with activity: Bits of trash float on a digital drift of wind, people walk by, cars cruise in and out of the shot, an almost familiar skyline fills the hazy background. A palette of city sounds laid over this living diorama completes the effect.

"We decided we wanted to go back to the basics and reimagine the world," Jeronimo Barrera, Rockstar Games Vice President of Product Development, says. "The results have been incredible."

Grand Theft Auto IV is, its creators tell me, the biggest leap forward in experiential sandbox gaming to ever come to the franchise, larger even than the one that brought the once 2D top-down series into the third dimension.

"In many ways it's a bigger leap going from San Andreas to GTA IV than it was going from 2D to 3D," Barrera says.

That shift isn't delivered in one mighty leap, he adds, but rather in a collection of tweaks and changes made to the basic nature of the franchise.

"It was about hitting reset and reworking a bunch of things," he said. " We reworked everything from locomotion to targeting."

Bellic is on the street, a local tough has asked him to kill off a guy who's about to talk to police. Instead of telling him where the guy is, he suggests Bellic get his hands on a cop car and use the laptop to find out where he usually hangs out.

Bellic calls 911 on his cell phone and then when the cop car arrives, he carjacks it and drives away. In this latest GTA your wanted level corresponds to the place in which you commit the crime. As soon as you break the law a shaded circle pops up on your radar showing you where police are looking for you. If you can get out of that area before your spotted you can lose the cops and, eventually, your notoriety.

Bellic tears around the corner and drives to an area where he can pull over. When he taps into the cop car's computer a screen comes with tons of options including one to search for suspects either by name or photo. Using a pop-up QWERTY keyboard, he taps in the name and gets an address to go to which is added to the car's in-board GPS.

When Bellic tracks the guy down he runs, kicking off a car chase. The drive through town doesn't look or feel like a scripted event, and a Rockstar employee is in full control of Bellic and his stolen car, but some of the things that happen, like a large truck dumping its load of barrels onto the street, were written about by other publications which saw the game as well. I suspect that there might be a number of events like this which can be automatically triggered depending on where you are and what's happening.

After zipping through the rolling barrels, Bellic catches up with his quarry, whose car is marked with a red arrow, on a bridge and manages to fire off enough shots to first flatten the suspect's tires and then set the engine compartment on fire. The car, riding on rims now, tries to zip between two cars and misses the gap, fishtailing into a vehicle before rolling. The bad guy is thrown from the car, sliding across the bridge to stop near the railing, and then the car explodes, catapulting the would-be informant up and off the bridge.

The Rockstar guys erupt into laughter. "Did he just go off the bridge?" one asks, laughing.

The mission's complete, but Bellic still needs to get off the bridge and two cop cars are speeding toward him from the other side. He zips past them and comes to a stop. Getting out of the car, he pulls out a rocket launcher, which slides out of his pocket like a gag from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and fires a shot off at the police cars blowing both up. Instantly, Bellic's wanted level is raised to three stars and the cacophony of an approaching army of police can be heard in the distance.

"You're three stars? How'd you get three stars?" Barrera asks of the demo player. "Oh you blew up those cop cars."

"You told me to."

The sound's getting louder.

Bellic hops back into his car and makes his way toward the other side of the bridge, as he approaches we can see that it's been blocked by police and not just police cars, but what looks to be police humvees. Bellic rams his way through and tears down into a tunnel. He makes it up through the other side as police follow in hot pursuit, guns firing. The car, now on its rims and engine smoking, rolls slowly into a gas station.

"Oh, a gas station," someone in the room says.

There is, it seems, a moment of breathless anticipation as Bellic jumps from the car and runs past rows of gas pumps. He turns to see dozens of police cars descending on his still smoking car. And then the world explodes, the image on the screen literally blurs as the car, the gas station and all of the police cars near it turn into a blooming fireball.

Bellic turns and runs down a grass hill to another highway, but two police cars are already descending on him. Above a helicopter is following. He pulls out that rocket launcher from his pocket, looks up at the sky and fires off a shot at the copter. It's hit, smoke billows from its engine, it starts to spiral, dropping suddenly to the ground about 100 feet from Bellic and explodes.

An alert pops up on the screen "ONE MAN ARMY ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED" before the demo player quickly gets rid of it and uses a cheat to rid himself of his escalating wanted level.

While the setting for this latest Grand Theft, based on Manhattan and its surrounds, isn't as large as San Andreas in terms of land mass, it's more detailed and there's more to do, the Rockstar guys tell me. You can drive boats, helicopters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, hail cabs, but you can't fly a plane.

"It's not like people in New York fly airplanes around, it's more of a helicopter town," Barrera says.

The games intertwined storyline takes place over a number of months in the city with two minutes of gameplay translating to an hour in the game world.

The game now incorporates auto-saving to make it a bit more player friendly this time around. After every mission the game saves.

"It makes it more accessible," Barrera says, "gamers shouldn't have to fight against the save system to enjoy a game."

Other neat tweaks include a cinematic mode which slows time to a crawl on the fly and can be used at anytime in the game, making it easier to do things like slip through rush hour traffic at high speeds, cab rides which can either be enjoyed from beginning to end or, for a small fee, skipped entirely. You can also bribe the cabbie to break traffic laws to get you to your destination faster.

The game's once tragically flawed targeting system has also been heavily reworked. I got a good look at the system in a mission that involved Bellic having to take out a bunch of mobsters from a construction site.

The mission starts with Bellic sniping three guards from atop a nearby high rise. The demo player takes out the first two guards with headshots. The first man toppling from his position high atop the construction site, tumbling end-over-end until he lands with a thud on the ground below, his rifle popping out of his dead hands and letting off a single shot.

The third man is taken out with a shot to the leg. As he falls to the ground, he appears to weakly flail. The man's body finally crashes into the roof of the car, crushing it flat.

Once Bellic clears the guards he makes his way across the street. The demo player, hurrying to get into the heart of the mission, lets a car clip Bellic, who falls to the ground. Getting up slowly, Bellic plants his hands in front of him, gets to his knees and then slowly stands, a nice touch.

Once in the construction site is cleared, Bellic moves into the yard and almost immediately has to duck for cover, a new addition to the game's fighting system that allows you to stick to cover like you can in games like Drake's Fortune or Gears of War.

Once in cover, Bellic can fire blindly from his hiding spot or lock onto a target and plug away at them. You can also now free fire in the game.

"It's comparable to a shooter," Barrera said.

A target's health is shown in the targeting reticule when you lock-on, while Bellic's appears in a green bar that wraps around the radar. A blue bar shows his armor, like a bullet proof vest. As Bellic's adversaries die the items they drop glow in the dark showing where to find ammo, weapons and cash. And when Bellic finally, inevitably, dies in the heat of battle the world fades to black and white.

The game will, Rockstar has said, feature multiplayer, but they're not quite ready to talk details on what that will entail. They did tell me that there won't be cooperative multiplayer because it wouldn't really fit in with the game's story.

'There's really only one main character, so it wouldn't fit," Barrera said.

As with most of Rockstar's games there are definite cultural themes at play in Grand Theft Auto IV, though in this game it might not be as easily definable as the gang culture of San Andreas or school culture of Bully.

"There is an immigrant theme, a world culture theme," Barrera says. "This is Rockstar's ten year anniversary and when we got started we all moved to New York at the same time, so there's a lot of that in there.

"The beauty of our games is that we don't hire a research firm to figure out what we should be making games about."

Instead they make it about the things that interest them, and it it shows.

MCN Chief Road Tester Trevor Franklin is at Ascari in Spain where he has just had his first go aboard one of the most eagerly awaited bikes of the year – KTM’s stunning, all-new RC8. This is what he has to say:
“There’s been a huge amount of hype about the RC8 and great expectations too, [...]