Jeff Zwart's 2011 Porsche 911 GT2 RS at Pikes Peak.
Last month we showed you a video chronicling Jeff Zwart's 1,132 mile road trip from Southern California to Pikes Peak in his quest to break his own 2WD Time Attack record in a stock Porsche 911 GT2 RS. The second video, showing Zwart's run up the mountain, has now been released. The footage of the attempt is excellent.
While Zwart didn't manage to come up home with the title, it would be difficult to not consider his drive a success. He smashed the Pikes Peak record for stock production cars, and his time of 11:07.869 bested his previous attempt in a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup race car by 24 seconds. Only Zwart's good friend Rod Millen was able to top him on the day, albeit by a mere three seconds and with a fully-prepped race car producing over 700 horsepower.
You can watch Zwart drive his 911 GT2 RS up Pikes Peak in the video after the jump.
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Abarth Punto Evo EsseEsse
It had be all too easy to forget about the Punto. But Fiat offers more than one model, and so does its tuning division, Abarth.
The Grande Punto has been around since 2005, and was updated in 2009 as the Punto Evo, something of a stopgap until its eventual replacement comes along. Abarth offers its own version of the Punto Evo for those who find the 500 either too small or too cutesy, and has now rolled out an even more powerful version of the Italian performance hatch.
Instead of the 165-horsepower turbo four in the existing Abarth Punto Evo, the EsseEsse version gets a more promising 180, thanks to revised ECU programming and bigger turbocharger. The brakes are also upgraded, as are the springs, dampers and wheel/tire package. The result is a 7.5-second sprint to 62 and a 134 mph top end.
Best of all, the modifications in the EsseEsse kit can be ordered and installed from the dealership up to a year after the car was purchased. Although the model was unveiled nearly a year ago in Paris, it's only just hitting the market. Read more about it in the press release after the jump.
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Lotus Evora Type 124
Lotus has a lot planned for the coming years, but before its next generation sports cars comes along, rumor has it some significant revisions are planned for the current Evora.
Among the 147 upgrades reportedly planned are a revised interior, a new exhaust and a sharper transmission. Convertible and plug-in hybrid versions are also reportedly under consideration, but Lotus is said to have another trick up its sleeve.
Taking a page out of the "more power, less weight" playbook used on the likes of the Ferrari 430 Scuderia, Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera and Porsche 911 GT3 RS, a hardcore Evora GT4 or Type 124 racer for the road could be in the cards. In the process, the 345-horsepower supercharged V6 in the current Evora S could get tuned up to 400 hp. Those are some changes we could get behind.
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This is sample post to show some new features added in ASP.NET Blog Starter Kit which help users to post articles, news or blog post with integration of galleries, pictures in a clean professional way.
Note: Such type of galleries only supported if your application include & support both ASP.NET Blog Starter Kit & ASP.NET Photo Sharing Script
User or admin can easily integrate photo galleries within post by using simple BBCODE style custom tag. tag or code will fetch gallery information based on gallery id provided within tag from database, create neat style gallery and integrate gallery within post at first time of post submission.
Below gallery generated by sending gallery id 6 within tag mentioned above.
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Asymco’s Horace Dediu has done some number crunching, comparing the current enterprise value of Apple’s major mobile competitors against the liquid assets that it has on hand. The results illustrate how dominant of a profit force that Apple’s mobile business has become in just 4 years.
Dediu has compared the four main standalone competitors to Apple but has also made some educated estimations of the mobile divisions of larger companies like Samsung and Sony. At the moment only the inclusion of Samsung prevents Apple from having enough cash to cover a purchase of the whole mobile industry.
Dediu explains that he chose the four major manufacturers that sell 75% of all phones sold worldwide for this comparison. The enterprise values of those companies are as follows:
- Nokia $22.6b
- RIM $13.8b
- HTC $25.4b
- Motorola Mobility $4.2b
He says that it was more difficult to calculate the value of mobile subsidiaries like Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG but was able to generate an estimate using multiples of trailing operating profits. Given the troubles that RIM is in right now, its inclusion in this list isn’t too surprising.
Apple currently has estimated liquid assets of $70B, greatly outstripping the enterprise value of all of its competitors combined, excepting Samsung.
If Apple’s growth several continues as it has for the past several quarters in a row, even Samsung won’t be a barrier. Apple could soon have enough cash on hand to purchase all of its major competitors without breaking a sweat.
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Yahoo shutters its Maps API, points devs to Nokia’s Ovi Maps
Yahoo will shuttering down Maps API service completely in upcoming 13th of September. So it means Yahoo again floundering with trying to figure out wat it is. Developers who have used its Maps API are in for an unpleasant surprise when know about this announcement.
In short, if you were using any of the following, you’ll need to make some changes to address the closing:
Yahoo Announcement:
As part of Yahoo!’s commitment to creating deeply personal digital experiences, we have been reprioritizing our current portfolio of mapping products to refocus on a great consumer Mapping and Local Search experience.
Yahoo does extend the olive branch somewhat, stating that its Placefinder API for geocoding and the combination of Placemaker and Local Search API will remain alive for geocaching. Interestingly, instead of pushing abandoned developers toward Microsoft’s Bing Maps, Yahoo is ushering them toward Nokia’s Ovi Maps API.
The “even worse” news? If you’re hoping to use Nokia’s product for navigation right now via a Yahoo product, you’ll have to wait a while — “This work is in-progres
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ASP.NET Blog Starter Kit has been introduced as standalone product by mediasoftpro which is already builtin part of asp.net video starter kit solution. It is integrated in this website in order to allow users to test not only video related features but also explore various great features available related to blogging engine, photo sharing, gallery creation and more.
ASP.NET Blog Starter Kit is a complete blogging solution with all basic and advance features written in asp.net, c#, vb.net which can help users, developers or IT professionals to build simple to highly sophisticated, scalable, professional, social blogging, article, news posting website easily while consuming less amount of efforts and resources.
ASP.NET Video Starter Kit is now part of core scripts togather it can be used to build huge, professional, data driven, scalable social (friends, messaging, groups, communities, custom channels) media (videos, audio, photos, galleries) sharing (social activities, facebook, twitter) web site.
Core scripts include