ryan.freebern.org

Many people are becoming more environmentally conscious in general and opting for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Even those who don’t care about the environment are watching the steady rise of gas prices and realizing that fuel efficiency is good for their wallet. As a result, SUV sales have been declining fairly consistently for the last two years.

Last year, GM lost over $10 billion due to its focus on SUVs and large trucks and disregard for compact cars and trucks. Investors got scared. GMAC, their financing arm, is weakened and about to be partially sold. Their credit rating has been dropping lately, and they’ve been given a negative outlook by investment firms.

So what does GM do to reassure its investors that things will be okay? How do they say “look, we know what’s causing the problems, and we’re going to correct it”? That’s right: by increasing production of its full-size SUVs, the same ones that they haven’t been able to sell for the past year. Good move, GM.

Meanwhile, sales of hybrids continue to climb at an astonishing rate. Ford has realized this; why hasn’t GM?

Hong Kong – 14 March 2006 – Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT), a global leader in wireless communications, today announced the name for its newest and most advanced smart phone, the Motorola MING (previously announced as the A1200), and confirmed that units are already shipping to distributors in Hong Kong.

[...]

“The name MING was chosen to resonate more deeply with people in Hong kong than a traditional model name or number can,” said Terence Ma, director of sales, Mobile Devices Business, Motorola Hong Kong. “Like the design and usability of the phone itself, MING will help bring our smart phones into entirely new market segments.”

Flash Gordon was unavailable for comment.

Press release here, if you feel the need to read it.

37 Signals says that less is more when it comes to web apps. They say make something simple that does one thing well, and people will use it. They’ve proved it over and over with their various web apps, so I figured it was a good idea. Today, I decided to follow their lead, and created WebMeditate, a yogic meditation aid for the web.

In the spirit of 37 Signals’ “Getting Real” philosophy, I’ve gone from concept to execution to release in approximately a minute and a half; WebMeditate is fully functional, tested, and ready to go. It has incredibly frugal screen real estate usage, an interface so simple a baby could use it, a zero-time learning curve, supported by all major browsers, able to handle an infinite number of users without trouble, and it’s 100% bug-free. It even has an offline mode.

Visit WebMeditate now and clear your mind, Web 2.0-style!