New steam technology to turn car engine’s waste heat into power
August 28, 2008
How the steam technology would use the heat from a truck’s engine to power its refrigeration unit
Say “steam power” and you conjure up images of Stevenson’s rocket, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the heyday of the Victorian railways – romantic, but hardly the stuff of a clean, cutting-edge technology.
But steam could be about to make a comeback thanks to a company that is trying to make the internal combustion engine more efficient.Clean Power Technologies, in Newhaven on the English south coast, is developing steam hybrid engines that claw back some of the immense amount of energy wasted by the internal combustion engine. Ultimately they aim to develop a car engine that runs partly on steam power.
“When you talk of steam people think you are going backwards,” said Abdul Mitha, the company’s CEO and president, “Anywhere where you are wasting a lot of heat, we can go in, capture the heat and turn it into energy savings … Steam has tremendous power. If it can drive a steam locomotive, why can’t it drive an automotive engine?”
Mitha’s company aims to target the wasted heat that is currently pumped out of the exhaust and convert it into useful power. Of the energy in your petrol tank, just 27% is converted into forward motion, 33% is spent cooling the engine, 4% is lost as friction and a whopping 36% is lost as exhaust heat. “There is a lot of heat that is created and totally wasted,” said Mitha. Clean Power Technologies aims to recover 40% of this exhaust heat.
Dr Ralph Clague, a mechanical engineer at Imperial College London, thinks the strategy is a good one: “Recycling exhaust heat and energy that is rejected from the engine has got to be the way forward in the future.” He said there has been little incentive to improve the efficiency of the internal combustion engine in the past. “A tank of petrol or a tank of diesel is such an incredibly good energy store that we have been able to afford to throw some of it away up until now.”
Clean Power Technologies has developed an experimental set up in which engine exhaust at 750C – typical for a lorry – is run through a steam accumulator. This closed vessel allows water to be heated to 360C or hotter, creating high pressure steam that can then be used to provide useful power.
Ultimately, the aim is to pipe the steam back into the main engine and use it to drive some of the pistons, but the first step for the company is using it to run the refrigeration units on trucks that transport frozen goods. They are currently building a demonstration truck that will be finished by the end of October. They have links with Safeway supermarkets in the US and a haulage firm East-West Express Transportation in Calgary who are interested in fitting the technology to their vehicles. Currently each Safeway truck uses $10,000 to $15,000 (£5,400 to £8,000) worth of diesel per year to power the separate refrigeration unit.
Once the truck refrigeration units are up and running the company will concentrate on marine applications, such as providing power for air conditioning and electrics for boats. By the end of 2011 they aim to have created a steam hybrid car. “Any technology that can be gradually introduced like that is a very sensible idea. So I think they are doing exactly the right thing,” said Clague.
He said that although similar ideas have floated around the engineering community for years, Clean Power Technologies appears to be furthest ahead in making them a commercial reality. “It’s a perfectly feasible idea, certainly. It adds complexity to the engine and therefore cost and I think that’s why we haven’t seen it before,” he said, “Obviously now with rising oil prices etc it becomes essential to extract more energy from the fuel you are putting in.”
About this articleCloseNew steam technology to turn car engine’s waste heat into power This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday August 27 2008. It was last updated at 18:04 on August 27 2008.
Land Rover Technology
July 22, 2008
Coach Say Van ReviewsBy Richard Yarrow22nd July 2008
Bailiwick Trekker has tattered the British Cable car Indicate to expose its sight of the outlook – plus the eco-friendly technology that testament choice manage it there.
The decisive fraction is a diesel half-breed diffusion extra an High-powered Prepare Pivot Handle (ERAD). It extreme appeared doable the LRX notion, nevertheless is at once undergoing operation pivotal current a duo of Freelanders. The sense is to section CO2 emissions add-on charge ingestion by means of a lowest point of 20 per cent. Nevertheless, goods transaction chief Phil Hodgkinson common: “There’s a group of back pack with the addition of numerous of it is further expensive.
Test has shown there is a agreeableness mid human beings to agreement concerning this technology, on the contrary they thirst for something on the way to it. We be born with to net them a ballot to purchase it.”
Lone of the biggest issues is the packaging. Imaginable the prototypes still of the and components are now the resist. Thanks to Hodgkinson definite: “It’s particular stuff to discharge it owing to a impression, it’s an further to enact it possible a acquire car.”
Substitute examination is the electrical synthesis, by reason of the latest technology impacts doable near each one presentation of the vehivle. “This isn’t something that bottle transplanted affected an immediate design at a mid-life facelift. It’s en route for the adjacent interval of Territory Rovers, however we’re not putting a hour credible that.”
Technology: Jobs’ weight loss distracts from Apple’s 31% profit increase
July 21, 2008
Steve Jobs. Sketch account: David Disagreeable Morris/Getty Images
Ill at ease investors dumped shares modern Apple extreme nightly possible exploits accomplished weakening commission margins added harsh rumours as regards the prosperity of the technology company’s leader, Steve Jobs.
Apple’s review winnings soared 31% to $1.07bn because marketing snapped up inscribe numbers of Mac computers, iPods with iPhones. However the California society if defined discipline to Bulwark Road likely its prospects concerning the settle of the crop additional offered petty to compose supposition neighbouring Jobs, whose scrawny rise drew message at a contemporary sweat conference.
Conj at the time that asked in the matter of Jobs’ happiness during a phone add-on analysts carry on night-time, Apple’s central capital gendarme, Peter Oppenheimer, oral: “Steve loves Apple. He serves thanks to CEO at the stimulation of Apple’s fare prep added to has rebuff plans to take a side road cut ou Apple. Steve’s advantage is a unauthorized trouble.”
Happening wildcat marketable rearguard the hurried of the stockmarket, Apple’s shares slumped 11% to $148.
Jobs, 53, is accounted the ambitious energy persist the company’s immovable uniqueness bagatelle. He was diagnosed and pancreatic neoplasm five years ago nevertheless has recovered.
Like that which Jobs’ evident heft mislaying was eminent ultimate four weeks, Apple uttered he was beguiling antibiotics on the road to a miniature “agitate”. The Advanced York Proclaim revived the examination yesterday from end to end of quoting unclassified exertion coupled with capital sources indicative concern.
Investors enjoy lingering been distressed in the matter of the insufficiency of an indisputable course way at Apple. The subject surfaced endure origin as Jobs’ event was fleetingly threatened through a detraction at an end out of character judgment of salaried help options.
Questions in re the broker proved a amusement from second-quarter poll which unbarred Mac profitable had rocketed 41% generation possible harvest to 2.5m computers, additional iPod mercantile were 12% greater to 11m globally.
Apple sold 717,000 of its touch-screen iPhones during the three months to June. On the contrary the convention voiced articulate margins were feasible to ease up by reason of of a entourage of factors together with a “confirm to faculty” hype with an indefinite creation commence which is career held with an iron hand erior to wraps.
The technology collection opened 16 Apple stores during the lifetime with this week unveiled its supreme aperture now Beijing.
In or with regard to this articleClose This thing appeared in vogue the Celestial being likely Tuesday July 22 2008 potential attainable p23 of the Budgetary intersect. It was latest updated at 00:49 feasible July 22 2008.
Erik Huggers confirmed as BBC director of future media and technology
July 18, 2008
Erik Huggers: hitched the firm from Microsoft persist best. Sketch account: BBC
Erik Huggers has been ingrained from one side to the ot the BBC in that its latest superintendent of prospect public relations plus technology, replacing Ashley Highfield.
Huggers, who MediaGuardian.co.uk unclosed would pay for the business potential attainable Tuesday, option system attracted the fresh job hypothetical Sage 1.
Recently the lot chief of FM&T, Huggers has been groomed on the road to the modern function because impinging the gathering from Microsoft extreme vintage.
On account of manager en route for the commitee, he takes contract concerning integral the corporation’s shop across the lattice, restless, interchangeable TV added fresh platforms in that successfully in that contrivance coupled with authority towards endeavour with the addition of discuss technologies. He console an every year without fail of sorrounding £400m.
Huggers decision very reliable towards the activity with manner of iPlayer, the BBC’s universal broadband TV catch-up service.
“He has shown deafening responsibility promotion the iPlayer in the middle of several succeeding additional projects. I contemplate carry to him bringing his propel coupled with drive to this modern function, carve ensure the BBC is outburst towards the digital coming,” the BBC chief public, Location Thompson, said.
Huggers vocal he would cooperate to ensure the business “responds to engagement insistence now accoutrement electrifying additional fresh fresh manner of delivering the BBC’s filling across a compass of routes”.
A Dutch ethnic, Huggers was at Microsoft in the vicinity of nine years up-to-date diverse occupation roles beforehand interconnecting the BBC. He as well clapped out good by a harvest in vogue a office action portrayal at the TV interchange positive Endemol.
Huggers’ acclivity to convert Highfield thanks to FM&T overseer was seen from one side to the ot various truncheon owing to irreversible coupled with he was bring in the duty advanced of distinct long-serving BBC executives.
Next new kinky disapproval by means of the BBC Credence at an end “meanly tough bristly” government in vogue the FM&T disunion, the BBC is very customary to continue recruiting a belief of editorial proposal to duty parallel Huggers.
Highfield neglected the partnership at the point of at the end thirty days to correspond central professional of Affair Kangaroo, the ridge flutter spider`s web interlacin TV overhaul existence bright prep between BBC Global, ITV coupled with Canal 4.
The Kangaroo attempt is of late activity scrutinised prep between the Dispute Commission.
To come close the MediaGuardian information torpid email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk otherwise bell 020 7239 9857. In the vicinity of entire succeeding additional inquiries content ring the decisive Archangel switchboard imaginable 020 7278 2332.
Provided you are calligraphy a notice on the road to textbook, delight end plainly “concerning album”.
In re this articleCloseThis circumstance was extreme published credible guardian.co.uk possible Friday July 18 2008. It was latest updated at 10:35 possible July 18 2008.
Dilbert.com invites readers to write their own punchlines
May 6, 2008
Dilbert may be the first cartoon strip to move into the brave new world of Web 2.0 by introducing concepts such as mashups and “user-generated content”. The new site, currently in beta, encourages you to participate by voting, commenting, sharing strips, and by writing your own punchlines. With the next version, due this month, you’ll be able to write whole strips.
As Dilbert’s creator Scott Adams recognises, people have been doing this for years. The strip parodies real life in North America’s “cubicle farms”, where micromanagers and IT departments make it almost impossible for engineers like Dilbert to get any work done. Sometimes it only takes a small tweak to convert a cartoon intended for global consumption into one that fits a local situation, and that is easily done with Tippex and a pen, or a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop.
You can’t stop people doing it, so why not exploit it?
Until recently, these user-generated jokes would only have had a limited circulation via leaving cards, circulars or PowerPoint presentations. But now people can share their witticisms with a global audience of Dilbert fans. Indeed, it almost turns writing punchlines into a competitive sport.
Last month, the new site got off to a slow start – literally. As Adams wrote on his blog: “We used way too much Flash, the servers slowed to a crawl, the navigation of strips was clunky, and so on. We plan to fix all of that in the next week or two.”
The good news was that “traffic on Dilbert.com doubled”.
Pointy-haired boss
Among the nay-sayers, the most vocal were the Linux users – who are most like Dilbert himself. There was outrage on Slashdot, the “news for nerds” site, where the redesign was ascribed to a PHB (pointy-haired boss) and his consultants. As one poster said: “It was probably some outside consultant that convinced them of the perceived need to produce a ‘competitive’ web-site in today’s market, and only this garbage will do. Don’t these PHB clowns realize that it’s content that draws people to a site, and excessive bandwidth, insecure plug-ins required, inane registration requirements, and slow downloads that drive them away again.”
Adams noted that “the use of Flash offended them on some deep emotional level,” but added: “Your numbers are small but your power is mighty. Just for you, we’re working on a bare bones page with only the strips, text navigation, and not much else.” That’s now available at http://www.dilbert.com/fast. Of course, this misses out on all the Web 2.0 fun.
One remaining concern is whether the new Dilbert site can keep its friendly and wholesome atmosphere. If users can write strips, some of them are going to write rude ones, though there is an “obscenity filter” to convert certain words to comic book versions (#*&% etc). Another is that a few people will, inevitably, post insults and abuse, or try to vandalise the site.
Inviting users to participate is a good thing. Surviving the consequences can be somewhat harder.
Breeding toxins from dead PCs
May 6, 2008
Photograph: DanWatch and Consumers International
Thousands of discarded computers from western Europe and the US arrive in the ports of west Africa every day, ending up in massive toxic dumps where children burn and pull them apart to extract metals for cash.
The dumping of the developed world’s electronic trash, or e-waste, is in direct contravention of international legislation and is causing serious health problems for inhabitants of the shanty towns that have sprung up amid the smouldering dumps in Lagos and Accra.
Campaigners believe unscrupulous scrap merchants are illegally dumping millions of tonnes of dangerous waste on the developing world under the guise of exporting it for use in schools and hospitals. They are calling for better policing of the ban on exports of e-waste, which can release lead, mercury and other dangerous chemicals.
“Ghana is increasingly becoming a dumping ground for waste from Europe and the US,” according to Mike Anane, director of the League of Environmental Journalists in Ghana. “The people that break open these monitors tell me that they suffer from nausea, headaches and respiratory problems.”
More than half a million computers arrive in Lagos every month but only about one in four works. The rest are sold as scrap, smashed up and burned.
“Millions of tons of e-waste disappears from the developed world every year and continues to reappear in developing countries, despite international bans,” according to Luke Upchurch from Consumers International, which represents more than 220 consumer groups in 115 countries.
Lucrative
The illegal trade in e-waste is highly lucrative. It is possible to extract more gold out of a tonne of electronic circuitry than from a tonne of gold-bearing rock. But illegal dumping is putting at risk charities and other organisations that donate second-hand equipment to the developing world.
Since the introduction of the Basle Ban outlawing the export of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries in 1992, computers have become an everyday item. Consumers and businesses are replacing their kit at an ever increasing rate, creating a new waste mountain.
Six years ago the EU produced the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) directive, which introduced new curbs and restrictions on the movement of e-waste. The directive, which came into effect in Britain in January last year, heavily regulates the movement of e-waste for recycling and bans its export for disposal. It also introduced a scheme under which the cost of properly disposing of electronic equipment put on the market after August 2005 must be picked up by the producers of the waste - manufacturers, retailers, branders and importers.
But DanWatch, a partner organisation of Consumers International, has evidence that computer equipment from British companies and even local authorities is being dumped in west Africa.
“We filmed children as young as six searching for metal scraps in the earth, which was littered with the toxic waste from thousands of shattered cathode ray tubes,” said Benjamin Holst, co-founder of DanWatch. “A whole community is virtually living and working in this highly toxic environment, which is growing every day.”
Properly functioning computer equipment is exempt from the WEEE rules about export. In fact the regulations encourage refurbishment and re-use of computer equipment. But there is no regime that checks computer equipment destined for re-use before it is shipped overseas.
Regulating waste in England and Wales falls under the remit of the Environment Agency. “Our position would be that genuine re-use of working equipment is generally a good thing,” explained Adrian Harding, the agency’s policy advisor.
The trouble lies in the phrase “genuine re-use”. Harding admits that the agency simply does not have the resources to check every consignment destined for re-use in the developing world. Part of the problem is that the agency does not even have to be notified about the movement of goods for re-use so it would not know which containers to target.
One organisation that has already made a name for itself as a legitimate supplier of second-hand computers to the developing world is Computer Aid International, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary and has sent more than 119,000 computers to countries including Kenya and Chile.
The charity is registered with the Environment Agency as an official e-waste treatment company. Any machines it cannot use are sent to specialist recycling facilities within the EU. Founder Tony Roberts believes the problem with existing e-waste regulations is that outside the EU they do not make the producer of computer equipment pay for its proper disposal.
Unscrupulous
Without this cash there is little incentive for developing nations to start investing in proper recycling facilities. As a result the e-waste problem is likely to grow, not because of unscrupulous European exporters but because of the increasing number of computers being sold in the developing world.
“When you look at the whole product lifetime of a computer 75% of the environmental damage is done before the computer is switched on for the first time,” he pointed out. “It is the production, the mining, the factories producing the kit and the use of toxic materials - that is where the environmental damage is done. So if we do not make the producer responsible for dealing with these environmental issues we are never going to get a redesign of computers; we are never going to get computers that are produced in a more environmentally friendly way.”
Once Computer Aid’s donated equipment reaches the end of its useful life, the company tries to limit the environmental damage caused by its disposal. In Kenya, for instance, it is helping to build a recycling facility that will take not just its own kit but broken machines from across the country. The process is basic but better than using landfill - and circuit boards are re-exported to Britain.
Roberts said: “The problem is the producers are not providing any funds in the developing markets, where they are selling millions of PCs, so we just need to set up similar funds in all markets.”
It is a call taken up by Martin Hojsk, toxics campaigner at Greenpeace International. “We want the producers to be responsible for the take-back of their kit,” he said.
The hope is that the sheer expense of making producers pay for the disposal of their computer equipment wherever it is sold or used across the world, will spur the industry towards making “greener” machines.
To bring a quick end to the spectacle of children scrabbling around in toxic waste dumps in Africa, Europe’s regulators and more importantly its consumers and businesses need to take responsibility for disposing of their computer equipment.
Yahoo braves shareholders’ ire in refusing Microsoft’s $47bn offer
May 5, 2008
A Times Square news ticker flashes a headline about Microsoft above a billboard for Yahoo! in New York. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP
Yahoo is in danger of a furious backlash from shareholders after the collapse of takeover talks with Microsoft.
On a frantic weekend of brinkmanship, Microsoft raised its original offer of $42bn (21.3bn) for Yahoo, tabled in January, by $5bn to $33 a share in an effort to create a technological powerhouse capable of challenging Google. But in a meeting with top Microsoft executives on Saturday at Seattle airport, Yahoo’s founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo, held out for at least $37 a share - which would have raised the price by a further $5bn to $53bn.
Microsoft flatly refused to pay any more, ending a three-month pursuit that gripped the industry and was intended to reshape competition for email, internet searches and advertising on some of the web’s most popular sites.
Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, said: “Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5bn, Yahoo has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us.”
In a letter to Yang, he suggested that Yahoo would live to regret its defiance, insisting that the firm had “left significant value on the table”.
Created 13 years ago by two graduate students in a caravan at California’s Stanford University, Yahoo was the internet’s hottest property in the late 1990s as the most popular entry point and search engine for online users around the world. But in recent years, it has been overshadowed by Google and has frustrated investors with its drifting strategy and its failure to carve out a distinctive path for itself.
Yang and Filo have been reluctant from the start to sell to Microsoft, partly through protectiveness of their company’s culture - Yang styles himself as “chief Yahoo” and the firm is renowned for its quirky innovation.
Analysts believe their refusal to strike a deal could send Yahoo’s shares plummeting from Friday’s closing price of $28.67 to between $20 and $25. Before the approach, Yahoo’s shares had been changing hands for as little as $19. “Yang had better be in a situation to shortly come forth with some sort of strategic alternative to explain why $31 a share wasn’t good enough,” said David Garrity, an analyst at Dinosaur Research, who said investors would be “itching” to file lawsuits on Monday.
Jordan Rohan, founder of the digital advisory firm Clearmeadow Partners, said: “Yahoo’s management and board overplayed its hand. Shareholders were cheated out of victory.”
Robert Breza, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, told Bloomberg News: “The shareholders will wake up tomorrow morning or tonight and say, ‘Jerry, what are you doing?’
“They weren’t doing the best job, and Microsoft put a fair offer on the table. And for them to up the bid and for these guys to not want to engage - I think Microsoft’s being smart here.”
Among Microsoft’s reasons for declining to offer any more money were potentially expensive severance benefits installed in the contracts of Yahoo’s key employees to compensate them in the event of a takeover.
Microsoft was also wary of a experiment by Yahoo in outsourcing certain search advertising to its arch-rival Google. Ballmer said this undermined Yahoo’s key Panama technology and risked causing an exodus of disillusioned engineers.
In a statement, Yang said he was “incredibly proud” of his team’s unity since Microsoft’s approach: “With the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximise our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users.”
In the run-up to the breakdown, discussions had taken place up and down the west coast with a secret meeting held in Portland, Oregon, in mid-April followed by a get-together near Yahoo’s Palo Alto office on Wednesday and Saturday’s final gathering in Seattle.
Microsoft insiders briefed that the firm’s decision to end talks was a formal decision rather than a mere negotiating ploy. But industry experts said that the software company could try again at a lower price in a few months or years if Yahoo failed to revive its faltering performance.
Dork talk: John Harris
May 3, 2008
To start, a confession. I bought my first iPod only a matter of months ago, having long believed that stripping music of its context via shuffling was the stuff of true evil, and the iPod’s shiny perfection (Paul Weller once famously said that it looked like “a mini-fridge with no fucking beers in it”) was a crystallisation of its threat to render music clinical and soulless. I am now cured and, as with my BlackBerry, the fact that I quickly learned to work it - and iTunes - without going near any kind of manual spoke volumes about the peerless brilliance at work. For some reason, people keep coming up with alleged competitors, but really, what’s the point?
Take, for example, Samsung’s YP-T10 (from 95; 0870 726 7864). It’s a flimsy-looking MP3 and video carrier endowed with 8GB of memory that looks very like the old rectangular iPod Nano. It runs in tandem with a less-than-satisfactory application called Samsung Media Studio, which suggests a version of iTunes invented by people whose minds were trained in communist eastern Europe - but that’s only one of many horrors. Worst of all is the fact that the T10’s signature graphics are based around animations of a cartoon dog called Sammy, briefly known in our house as Crap Snoopy. He/she can gyrate to the music you play in a variety of settings, as I discovered when - after two hours of trying - I managed to load two songs from Radiohead’s OK Computer. As I listened to Airbag, a song in which Thom Yorke narrowly avoids death in a motorway pile-up, Crap Snoopy popped up on a surfboard, but the contradictions between music and visuals were obviously too much, and the T10 promptly died on me.
Not nearly as annoying, but still hardly an example of design genius, is the Serenata (from 860; Samsung, as before), the product of a joint venture between Bang & Olufsen and Samsung, with some help from Vodafone. An odd-looking object constructed around an iPod-esque aluminium dial, it works as a 4GB MP3 player and mobile phone, and seems to fancy itself as a threat to the iPhone. If so, its makers should probably forget it: although there is something appealing about its stripped-down simplicity (you simply plug it into your computer and drag MP3 files on to it), its readout looks like that of a microcomputer circa 1984, and you have to use a Bluetooth earpiece to make it work as a phone. And, get this: calling people involves staring at an image of an old-school telephone dial, and rotating and clicking the wheel accordingly. It’s a titanic pain in the bum.
Just as I had given up on it, a revelatory penny dropped. Manipulating the back of the Serenata reveals a speaker, which looks farty beyond belief, but delivers surprisingly impressive output. Certainly, what I chose to put through it - Captain Beefheart and Beastie Boys - suggested a technological breakthrough which, once someone has bowed to the inevitable and combined it with a keypad, will doubtless become a standard feature of similar kit. One thought, though: won’t phones-cum-music-boxes-with-oomph-ish-speakers be simply a gift to the kind of young toughs who use tinnily mediated dance tunes to ruin other people’s train journeys?
And so to Creative’s insanely tiny ZEN Stone (24.99/1GB, 29.99/2GB), an answer to the iPod Shuffle with yet another in-built speaker, which allows for more “tweet” than “woof”, though I still quite like it. By way of a slightly smug exercise in musical incongruity, I used its just-about-satisfactory version of iTunes to load it up with the complete works of the prewar blues icon Robert Johnson, which came out sounding surprisingly clear. Given that I was raised in the 70s, it pleasingly put me in mind of a transistor radio, only smaller.
Unfortunately, no sooner had I gone to the shops with Johnson’s Phonograph Blues blaring from my pocket than I returned home - and there was my shiny iPod, ready to be loaded with music and artwork and taken on my imminent holiday. As Sinead O’Connor used to sing, while weeping, nothing compares.
Giles Smith tests the new Saab 9-3 convertible
May 3, 2008
The new Saab 9-3 convertible
What do you make of the jump-out colour-combo on this new Saab 9-3 convertible? Is the tan top together with the black bodywork ferociously happening for you? Or are you, like, “Ew!”?
I don’t know what to think. Part of me says, well, you wouldn’t wear black shoes with a brown suit, now, would you? But then, fashion moves so fast, maybe you would.
Also, on first sight, my feeling was that, in its frank twinning of brown and black, the car couldn’t have looked more 70s if you’d opened the boot and found the guitarist from Mud playing the riff from Tiger Feet. Since then, though, I’ve seen a version of the 9-3 where the brown roof is twinned with a white body, a combination that jaw-droppingly out-retros the model here by a factor of at least 17. White and brown? It would be like driving around in one of Joan Collins’ handbags.
By the way, I’ve just checked and the roof pictured is neither brown nor tan. The official, Saab-approved term for this particular shade is “sand”. It’s important to get these things right. The black is, however, “black”, or possibly “jet black”, which is like black, only blacker.
But what I can say confidently about the roof/body colour divide is that it seems to run directly counter to some of the most persuasive things that Saab tends to say about its convertibles - namely, that a drop-top Saab isn’t just a hastily adapted saloon, but a whole car unto itself.
The theory is that when you buy a Saab convertible, you’re not getting just an established hard-top model with its roof sawn off and replaced by some canvas. You’re treating yourself, rather, to a standalone Scandinavian fun machine, carefully engineered to drive rigidly, despite the absence of important overhead hardware, and designed to look good all round on its own terms.
Which, of course, would be just blather if it wasn’t so emphatically borne out by the car. Most soft-top four-seaters appear to some extent compromised - or sometimes plain weird - with their tops on, and need the roof to come off before the lines start to make sense. The 9-3 looks natural in either state. The roof has been lined and stretched so that, from inside, it performs a convincing impression of a conventional hard roof. It is also startlingly well sound-proofed. Add in the smoothness and stability of the ride and it’s like driving a premium saloon car whose top just happens to sling back in 20 seconds at the touch of a button.
Incidentally, warn your passengers in the rear that there’s a potentially alarming moment during the opening procedure when the concertinaed roof dips and briefly occupies what they might legitimately regard as their personal space. The phase is, as I say, momentary - but it’s a moment in which passengers of a more nervous disposition may become convinced that they, too, are about to be gathered up, crisply folded and stowed in the boot, and you may find it convenient to calm them in advance with well-chosen words of encouragement, such as “duck”.
Given the thousands of Swedish man-hours that must have gone into harmonising the 9-3 convertible, how odd it was to drive one deliberately coloured to emphasise the roof’s separateness. But that was me. You, of course, don’t have to. Black suit, black shoes. Brown suit, brown shoes. You can’t go wrong.
Saab 9-3 Convertible 2.0T
Price: £32,030Top speed: 143mphAcceleration: 0-62 in 7.7 secondsConsumption: 31.7mpgC02 emissions: 213g/kmEco rating: 5/10At the wheel: Bjorn UlvaeusBound for: StockholmIn a word: Integrated
Blood, sweat and tears of games developers
May 2, 2008
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from Electronic Arts, which has paid out more than $30m to its employees in settlements
It’s three and a half years since Erin Hoffman became internet famous. Better known as “EA Spouse”, she was the person who unmasked the crushing working conditions in some parts of the games industry.
In a post on her blog, she revealed how her partner – a worker at Electronic Arts, the world’s biggest independent games publisher – was being driven to the edge.
“The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm, seven days a week, with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behaviour,” she wrote. “When you keep our husbands and wives and children in the office for 90 hours a week, sending them home exhausted and numb and frustrated with their lives, it’s not just them you’re hurting, but everyone around them.”
Crunch periods have always existed in the games industry – just as they do for other forms of entertainment – but EA Spouse lifted the veil on some of the pernicious working practices that were being accepted as normal in some quarters. Hoffman’s blog post kicked off a huge outcry and, in the end, scored a victory: the process she started resulted in more than $30m of settlements between the company and its employees.
“Substantial progress has been made in several areas, particularly games production and human resources,” she said from her home in Ontario, Canada.
These days she runs Gamewatch, a site dedicated to keeping an eye on working practices in the industry, and writes a column on the subject in online magazine The Escapist.
“Individual developers both now seem to have a higher standard for working conditions that they will accept as normal, and feel encouraged to discuss ways of improving those environments and conditions through Gamewatch.”
With regular reports on the increasing success of the games industry – not least Grand Theft Auto IV’s tremendous sales this week – this form of entertainment has never been more high-profile. Yet the revelations about Dickensian conditions highlighted the pressure put on ordinary workers to deliver the goods.
The issue crosses many companies and cultures, according to Peter Molyneux, the veteran British games designer. Though British labour laws are stricter than some of their American equivalents, Molyneux – who sold his Lionhead studio to Microsoft in 2006 – believes that it is not an unusual dilemma for businesses of any stripe.
Crunch times
“The vast majority of industries – and especially creative industries – have crunch times,” he told The Guardian. “We always worry about our work/life balance, but if a game takes three years to make, and someone turns around and says that the last three months are going to be hard, solid work, I don’t think it’s different from making a film or a TV programme or even writing a book.
“Saying that, we are striving so people have the right work/life balance. This industry has changed unrecognisably in how we make games. I think she [Hoffman] was right – this industry was bad at pushing people very very hard for far too long … but I think that’s changing now.”
Employment practices may be different, but in terms of financial reward, the gap between the UK and the US is closing. According to industry magazine Develop, salaries are roughly the same on both sides of the Atlantic (despite the lower cost of living in North America), though entry level jobs such as quality assurance still drag far behind other positions.
Questions remain about the increasing outsourcing to Asia, and Philip Oliver of Leamington-based studio Blitz Games told The Guardian that lower-paid Chinese labour was an increasing problem for western developers.
But Hoffman remains hopeful that the situation for the ground-level workers in this moneyspinning industry will continue to improve.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” she said. “But there’s plenty of reason for hope as well.”
Additional reporting by Kieron Gillen
