WorldCarFans.com was able to get some shots of a new Nissan SUV that is scheduled to debut in 2008. It definitely takes some lines from the Murano, but in a smaller version.
According to insider information the new Nissan compact SUV is going to be a world car, for launch some time in 2007.
Nissan ran a student design contest with some pretty cool results. Check out the article at GizMag
Here's what going down this weekend:
I have a PDA. I have a cellphone. I have a digital camera. I use Outlook like it's the most important thing in my life. The problem? I never have anything aside from my cellphone because who wants to carry all those devices. I'm all about convergence, but I don't want a brick in my pocket.
Life brings along the Treo 700w, the first Palm smartphone with the Microsoft Mobile operating system. It has a 1.3mp digital camera...not great, but good enough to take some decent pictures. PDA, bluetooth, wireless syncing, phone, and it's not too big. So far, I love it! There are a couple gripes that I have with it, but overall I can live with those. I bought it used, so I'm not in contract and can sell it to go back to the old cellphone whenever I want.
For now, I live a more organized life thanks to my new toy :)
Nissan announced on Saturday that they would start selling the Infiniti brand in Russie starting this summer. There will be three dealerships opening up in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the parts of the country which have more people with high income. Infiniti wants to start off selling four to five different models, and will potentially increase the number of dealerships based on sales results. The Infiniti brand is sold in five different countries currently.
I made it a goal to myself to do more reading, but I want to make sure that I'm further increasing my own knowledge. I picked up Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids about Money - That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki. So far I've read about half of the book, and I'm very inspired by it. This will probably the first of many Robert Kiyosaki books that I end up reading. The second book I got was Taking Your Business To The Next Level by Francis McGuckin. I'm hoping that this helps me polish up some of the ways ActiveTuning works overall. I'll post more about that when I get into it.
It was supposed to rain on Saturday, but it never did. Since the weather looked good, I took the Z out to the Ultimate Performance/Mach V meet in Dulles, VA. There was a ton of STI's and Evo's representing, and the shop was open for parts sales as well as dyno sessions. A few Z's showed up, and we even had an NSX and a Gallardo. Overall, I'd say there were a good few hundred cars! You can check out the ton of pictures from the event here on the NASIOC forums.
My Z is the orange one of course. The owner of the red Z is the tall guy with the red shirt behind my car. That's Kelly (aka KCobean), his car was just featured in this months NissanPerformanceMag. The guy to the right of him is Mike, the one we'll be doing a video with shortly (we'll probably have Kelly involved as well). Mike's Z is popping out a tiny bit in front of Kelly's. Next to Mike is my girlfriend Crystal, and you can see me just peeking next to her. You should see all three of our cars in April's Hot Import Nights at the Dulles, VA convention center.
One more picture of the Z for good times (and yes, I know the front bumper needs to be re-painted):
Since we carried a dash kit for an 05-06 Altima, we decided to add the 02-04 as well. You can find the product page here.
Nissan released their productions, sales, and export statistics for February today. Sales seemed to be down quite a bit globally, but up in the US. Japan sales fell 15.8% compared to last Feb, Canada dropped 13%. In the US sales rose 2.2%, giving Nissan a record month thanks to strong performance from the Murano and the Sentra. Infiniti sales in the US were down 5.5% due to slower sales of the G35.
At least once per week I stop at Ferrari of Washington in Sterling, VA. This is my absolute best inspiration that I can get. The place is full of all of my dreams cars, and I get to drive by and just drool. They happens to have the new Lambo's in :)
This is inspiration at its best.
Brian Cooley from CNet takes a look at an interface that VW designed. From connecting to your PDA for e-mail/contacts to an input for your iPod to turning off your appliances, this I would love to see in the future.
Nissan announced that they opened up a research facility in China. This new facility will help develop new cars for the China market, as well as help reduce cost on development by working with China-based suppliers.
Another new Google product for ya, Google Finance. This is actually very nice, especially when looking up a quote and the dynamic way they are doing the charts. Also the compilation of information that is being provided, including relevant blog posts, helps you keep up-to-date on your portfolio. Worthy of checking out!
This unit allows you to retain your factory steering wheel controls when using an aftermarket headunit. Keep in mind the headunit must have a remote, as that is what's used to program this unit. Here's the compatibility list:
We're now carrying the iPod2Car which is compatible with the 99-02 Nissan Quest. There's also a long list of compatible non-Nissan/Infiniti vehicles from Acura, Honda, Isuzu, Mazda, Scion, and Toyota. Make sure to take a look at the product page for more details. We're offering free shipping for a limited time.
This unique interface allows you to control an iPod directly from the factory radio. The iPod2car interface delivers CD quality sound directly into the factory sound system via the CD changer port and eliminates the use of noisy RF modulators. The factory radio enables track selection and FFWD / RRWD just like using a CD changer. The iPod2car also keeps the batteries in the iPod charged and ready for on the go use.
Update 4/12/2006: Full vehicle pictures here
Next months New York Auto Show will debut the redesigned 2007 Nissan Altima. Details for the changes aren't available yet, but here's a shot of the new rear, which include redesigned taillights. Based on the picture, consider the front will be re-done as well. I think the sneak peek picture of the taillights looks great! Stay tuned.
Nissan will also release revamped versions of the Sentra and the G35 Sedan. The three models alone account for 41% of Nissan's 2005 U.S. sales.
Tonight I'll be heading down to Baltimore to catch up with some friends from college and go out for some green beers. Ever since starting to work, I haven't really gone out that much, and moving to VA made it a lot harder to see my friends. So I'm going to take this opportunity to see everybody since they'll all be down there. If you plan on being in Canton, make sure to say hi!
Tomorrow I'll be hanging out with our buddy Steve working on some dirt bike stuff. St
eve's a dirt bike guru, so he's going to teach me some things by taking one apart and giving it some life again. My roommate and I just went out riding on a dirt bike with Steve for the first time recently, and I think we're both hooked. This is most likely the gateway into getting a true sports bike sometime in the future.
Sunday, Mike will be stopping by with his 350Z to shoot some car video stuff. It'll be the first time I'm taking my Z out in a while, so I'm really looking forward to it. Look for the video in a future blog post!
I should also be adding a niche couple Nissan/Infiniti products to our lineup, so look for that.
I do a lot of reading online in a given day, so I thought you might be interested in what I look at at least once a day:
I'm a big fan of the tC. It's a great looking car for a great price. So I'm excited to see what Scion has up their sleeves in April's NY auto show. They are planning to release a new sports coupe to add to their lineup...what it looks like, nobody knows!
Nissan has developed a new safety feature that automatically helps a driver maintain a uniform distance from a car in front that's moving at slow speed. I can see this being useful to some people, but they need to make sure to have the functionality to turn this feature of for enthusiasts like ourselves.
Nissan is planning to debut 2009 commercial models of the Titan. It will be based on the upgraded pickup chassis Nissan is developing, and will offer a diesel engine and other heavy-duty equipment.
Google has added a new addition to its Maps series, after Google Earth, Google Moon, it now has released Google Mars.
Some students at Virginia Tech built a 24 monitor display using 12 Linux servers! You can see they are running Quake 3 on it!
This might be the thing that blows the Segway away, the Bomardier Embrio:
We've got a new product that we're now carrying the Accele Flush Mount Color CCD Camera. This is perfect for a rear-view camera solution, and would go great with our recently released RGB2+ OEM navigation interface. This unit offers a high quality wide-screen image, and we're currently offering free shipping!
This is a pretty good read about pennies if you have some free time on your hands. Did you know that keeping pennies in circulation costs about four hours and $60 annually per person?
Convergance is a great thing! Samsung has just announced a 10 megapixel digital camera, that is also a cell phone.
Not sure how much time I'll have to browse around the net today and tomorrow. I'm taking an all-day training course on PHP. I've tried to self-teach myself a few times, and I basically can understand what the code is doing, but I can't really just sit there and code it myself. Hopefully the class will help, and I'll be able to reap the benefits for some additional features on ActiveTuning.
Audi has launched a preview site for the new TT. If you're interested in more info they give you the option to sign up.
Here's a few commercials that I thought were worth watching: - Addidas Climacool - Volkswagen Unpimp Your Ride - M. Knight Shymalan's AMEX My Life My Card
The popularity of telecommuting has grown very rapidly over the past few years. With better technology and more expensive commuting costs, it makes more sense in many cases. A survey was done about telecommuters which found some interesting results. 12% of males and 7% of females are naked when working from home. Check out the press release for more interesting numbers.
At the upcoming IDF, Seagate will be announcing their wireless USB portable hard drive. Just another thing to make wireless, and all the better.
The 2007 Shelby Cobra Mustang will be the last Ford SVT vehicle produced. Ford has completely cut the program. It's a shame to see this happen.
I read a great article about how some big name people manage their time. Included in the list is an interview with Carl Goshn, the CEO of Nissan/Renault. I find it amazing that these people can manage so much responsibility in one day. I think on a daily average, I receive about 50-100 e-mails a day, and our company is really in it's infancy. I can't imagine what to expect a couple years down the line. Articles like this help me plan my own time better, because who else to follow but those that are already successful.
If you couldn't tell by now, I'm all about modern things. I love the look. You should see my place now, it's basically black/silver/chrome/glass...and that's it. I could easily say this house is my dream pad.
I've been working on a new logo for ActiveTuning. You can see the process here. Do you like any of them? So far, it looks like I'll be working with something very similar to this one:
What's your opinion?
I finished the first season of 24 finally, and I thought it was awesome. I can't believe this is a TV show! I just started watching season two, so far so good. Once I finish all the season, I'm told that I need to try Lost...so that's the plan! By the way, I put Season 1 on Craigslist if you're interested.
The potential plan is that Google can store 100% of your data, and your local harddrive would act as more of a cache. Would you trust Google with all your data though? They state that it would be more secure then a local computer...but this seems a little too powerful. They would need to have some serious privacy statement for me to even consider doing something like this. It would definitely be one-step closer to a more connected world though.
I found a good article on 12 ways to irritate your visitors. I have to admit that we do a break a couple of those, but I think overall our site is pretty good. There's a few improvements I'd like to do, but from a cost/technical standpoint, it doesn't make sense at this time. Anything about our site irritating to you? Let us know by posting a comment.
TomTom will be releasing a new line of navigation devices that do way more than previous versions.
Infiniti will be opening a fourth regional office in Atlanta, GA. The plan is to help support the dealerships in the southeast, and should be operational by this Summer. Infiniti sales have increased dramatically over the past three years. Now that I have a G35, I'm more keen to seeing them on the road. I think I see at least 5-10 per day. Go Infiniti!
I had to go back to NJ again this weekend, so I've been working remotely anytime I could. This week will be a very busy one. There's a lot of catching up to do, and some non-AT things I'll be working on. More to come on that later. I have to catch up some sleep now, but keep checking back for updates on Monday!
It's true. 50 Cent is having is Murcielago blinged out in chrome courtesy of Alsa's MirraChrome finish. Check out pics and updates here.
Back on Monday I announced that we now carry the RGB2+ unit which allows video input into OEM navigation screens. I've just added pictures to product page:
Through new advances in a casting process that uses super lightweight magnesium alloys, future cars will be lighter, but just as strong. The technology, called T-Mag, was developed by a team of research engineers from Australia's.
With Windows Vista coming soon, memory makers normally get prepped for higher sales since the OS usually requires higher system requirements. Well this time, memory won't be changing that much, but storage requirements will be. With computers becoming more of a media center (PVR functionality, video storage, etc), 100GB just doesn't cut it anymore. Some systems right now are shipping with as much as 1TB (1,000GB), but in an interview with VoodooPC, they mentioned that they are planning an 8TB system. Pricing would be expected to be around $8,000-$9,000.
When I was looking for audio/video solutions for our 350Z I had highly considered getting the Pioneer AVIC N-1. One of the main complaints is that the DVD player had to be either DVD OR navigation. You had to switch the DVD's everytime.
Eclipse has a solution, the AVN6600, which has two in-dash DVD players with a 6.5-inch double-din display. On top of being able to keep the navigation disc in at all times, you can even set the 2nd DVD player to output to an external video source. For example if you've got kids in the back with headrest displays, they can watch Aladdin while still maintaining your GPS functionality up front. On top of that, the unit is MP3 capable. Take an 8GB DVD and burn MP3's onto it, we're talking about A LOT of songs on one disc.
When I first posted about the Europa S, my original thoughts was it looks ok, and I didn't really like the back that much. Now that I've seen the pictures from the Geneva show, I've changed my mind completely. I think the original pictures angles just didn't look right...the car looked too short, and it just didn't look as good. Take a look at these pics, my first thought was "wow". This is a gorgeous car:
Just the fact that it looks little longer than I originally thoughts made all the difference in the world to me. It looks more Ferrariish now.
I found an interesting article on CNNMoney that talks about 25 companies that have the potential to be the next "it". As an entrepenuer myself, I'm always on the lookout for the latest trends in order to capitalize on them. A lot of the companies listed I know about and even visit, but some were new to me.
The CCX finally debuted in Geneva, and Autoblog has the scoop. It turns out the car didn't beat the Veyron for the world speed record, but still has a top speed of 245MPH.
