September 27, 2007 at 9:14 am · Filed under Cars, Video
In my autoblog travels this morning I found this GooTube video of two Lexus ISF’s drifting and burning out at Laguna Seca race track.
This video is significant because Lexus hasn’t really had an offering this powerful before and is expecting to compete with BMW’s M3, Audi’s R/S4 and various ‘hotted up’ offerings from Infiniti/Mercedes and others.
This V8 sedan will churn out 400+ horsepower from it’s 5.0 litre powerplant, and will row through 8 gears on it’s way to a reported (but false) top speed of 200 MPH with it’s 8-speed automatic transmission (say what?!?) The likely top speed will probably be somewhere between 150-175 is my guess, most likely limited to keep people from killing themselves and others.
Here’s some good Wiki information about the other good parts of the Lexus IS-F:
The IS-F promises 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) acceleration under 4.9 seconds.[15] The vehicle featured an 8-speed automatic transmission, a new sport version of Lexus’ electronic stability control system (Vehicle Dynamics Integrated Management, or VDIM, featuring three distinct on-off modes), and was equipped with Brembo brakes stamped with the Lexus emblem.[16] Other design features included a four-passenger cabin with carbon-fiber panels, steering wheel paddle shifters, and 19-inch BBS forged aluminum alloy wheels. The vehicle body was lowered by 1 cm (0.5 inches) compared to the standard IS.[17] Noticeable about the IS-F’s design are its quad exhaust tailpipes comprised of two vertically stacked dual exhaust pipes on the left and right rear.
There are many services and programs available on the web to help you make money with your blog. Some allow you to embed ads and earn money from clicks, some offer affiliate agreements with a percentage paid for every completed transaction and everything in between. I’ve decided to highlight some of the services I use at Josiah Cole dot com as well as my small network of other blogs.
Details: Chitika ads don’t appear on this blog, but I do run them on my other network blogs and other review blogs using various ad type formats. Chitika’s most popular ad format called eMiniMalls offers embeddable code that displays a “mini site” with information about a certain product or comparison among several products. The interfaces are tabbed and you are paid if the user clicks through the ad. Chitika ads are most effective on blogs where the target market can be identified and an appropriate match made within the Chitika system. For example a blog about cell phones would be perfect for Chitika as tech products are plentiful on the Advertising side of Chitika.
Payout: The payout so far for me with Chitika has been somewhat low (although some people make out very well), but I just started using the service again and I’m reserving my judgment until I have a larger sampling of data.
At Music Overy you can listen to music depending on your mood. There is a neat interface that looks kind of like an Ipod and you click on it to play music. There are several different categories of music you can listen to including: Hit List, Any year, Genres, Dance and Moods. If you click to the right side of the interactive interface than you will hear more dance style music, and if you click to the left side of the interactive interface you will hear more smooth and dark music. It’s neat to check out and hear different music online depending on your mood.
I don’t know if you’ve been to Yahoo! Shopping lately, but it’s a complete disaster of a shopping portal and Yahoo should be ashamed … ASHAMED! of having that atrocity in their mature web portfolio.
First some history …
I happened across Shopping.Yahoo.com not because I was ’shopping’ but rather I was following the story on Woot! about a new “partnership” they rolled out with Y! Shopping (anyone else find it weird that Woot! and Yahoo! both end! with! exclamations?! Jason Toon is hilarious by the way, and his blog announcement of the “selling out” is a good read.\
Getting back to Y! Shopping, if anyone hasn’t seen the home page, it’s a disaster of banner ads, links that look like banner ads, and poorly structured navigation and changing page layouts … it’s that bad.
Here’s a screenshot, see the large version at Flickr.
Here’s a screenshot with my commentary, and the larger version at Flickr.
The Problems as I See Them:
1. The main store navigation looks like a poorly disguised ad placement, more commonly seen on spammy landing pages setup by domain prospectors. 2. There are ads, everywhere. Too many ads and not enough product highlights and shopping tools. Amazon makes Yahoo! Shopping look downright silly. 3. Wasted space. Not only do the ads take up valuable real estate, the spacing is bad and Yahoo uses an entire section to tell me I’m not logged in that could be devoted to … selling? (what a concept) 4. Woot! Their best feature is halfway down this depressing page, and offers the only glimmer of hope (and slim chance that someone still has a pulse) over at Yahoo! Shopping.
Look, I’m sure Yahoo! makes an assload of money from this portal, and probably sells a crap load of ads and makes a tidy profit. But it’s just downright horrible, and they could make a lot more if they’d devote a little attention (and some expensive Stanford PHD brain time) on devising a better shopping experience, and in turn better ROI for their advertisers.
I was browsing Mahalo on this sunny afternoon in an attempt to find information on credit cards (curiously I found nothing) and found what looks to be the first reported SPAM in Mahalo.
On the Jesus in Food page, constructed by Mahalo veteran Jonathan I found the following link:
GoldenPalace.com: Put your face on a grilled cheese WARNING: Pop-Ups
The subsequent website you are taken to when clicking the Golden Palace link has no content relating to Jesus in Food nor does it spawn pop ups in FF or IE6 (as Mahalo warned me it would).
What’s the deal? I thought the Mahalo approach was SPAM proof? Did Golden Palace put up content and then pull the ol’ bait and switch with the editors at Mahalo?
I registered with the site and reported it in the Message Board.
