Toyota recall: Engineers come up with pedal fix
Toyota said Monday that its engineers have cooked up “a precision-cut steel reinforcement bar” that will fix the sticking gas pedal problem that forced the company to suspend sales of a bevy of popular vehicles.
With its reputation on the line, Toyota’s fix is fairly simple on the surface, but now the company has to deploy the solution in the field. Toyota’s recall issue comes at the intersection of numerous business issues ranging from tracking a global supply chain to customer communications to managing partners.
In a statement, Toyota said it has “developed and rigorously tested a solution that involves reinforcing the pedal assembly in a manner that eliminates the excess friction that has caused the pedals to stick in rare instances.”
If you recall, Toyota recalled 2.3 million vehicles due to the sticking gas pedal on Jan. 21. On Jan. 26, Toyota suspended sales of eight models including popular cars like the Camry, Corolla and RAV4. That suspension will continue through the week of Feb. 1.
Toyota added that it will keep dealerships open for extended hours—including 24 hours at some locations—to fix the pedal. Accelerator pedals were getting stuck in an open position.
Here’s a look at the fix in detail:
A precision-cut steel reinforcement bar will be installed into the assembly that will reduce the surface tension between the friction shoe and the adjoining surface. With this reinforcement in place, the excess friction that can cause the pedal to stick is eliminated. The company has confirmed the effectiveness of the newly reinforced pedals through rigorous testing on pedal assemblies that had previously shown a tendency to stick.
Jim Lentz, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales, said:
Stopping production is never an easy decision, but we are 100% confident it was the right decision. We know what’s causing the sticking accelerator pedals, and we know what we have to do to fix it. We also know it is most important to fix this problem in the cars on the road. We are focused on making this recall as simple and trouble-free as possible, and will work day and night with our dealers to fix recalled vehicles quickly.
Contrary to published reports, Lentz said on NBC’s Today show that the gas pedal issue was not related to faulty electronics.
43 seconds with the Android-powered Dell Mini 5
Ok, enough about the Apple iPad. It seems that the gadget paparazzi managed to grab less than a minute with Michael Dell, and during that time we get a glimpse of the Mini 5 in action. Well, depending on what you consider action, that is. Mr. Dell swiped through a few screens, showed the 5 megapixel camera on the back and said, “it has a 5 megapixel camera, 3G … anything you want”.
So, there you have it. We have no idea what chip is inside (1GHz Snapdragon?), or whatever else it’s running (rumored WiFi, Bluetooth), but it does seem pretty speedy and looks slick. No word on price but he did say it would be out in “a couple of months”. Depending on price point, this could be one killer device, especially if it’s running the latest Android OS. Check out the quick demo below, thanks to TechCrunch.
With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands and technologies into the mobile and wireless space. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Steve Jobs calls Adobe ‘lazy’, says Google can’t ‘kill the iPhone’
Apple CEO Steve Jobs isn’t holding back with how he really feels about Google and Adobe – at least according to Wired and some anonymous sources over in Cupertino.
According to the Wired piece, Jobs let loose on his Silicon Valley neighbors/frenemies during an Apple employee Town Hall-style meeting.
The highlights of the speech? Starting off with Google, Jobs fired off that Apple “did not enter the search business,” rather that Google “entered the phone business” and “they want to kill the iPhone” with the HTC Nexus One. But Jobs won’t let that happen on his (probably touchscreen) watch.
He then allegedly roared that Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto is, well, “bullshit.” (But now that quote is being disputed.)
Then on to Adobe, Jobs just thinks they’re plain “lazy.” And if you ever wondered why your MacBook is crashing, it’s all Flash’s fault, he said, continuing on that HTML5 is the way of the future. (Maybe he’s just upset because everyone made a big deal that the iPad doesn’t really handle Flash and it was so obvious at the press event last week.)
So is any of this true? Maybe some of the language is questionable, but I wouldn’t really be surprised about any of this. It’s just business, not personal, right?
Rachel started playing with her mother’s old Brownie camera when she was just a toddler, working her way up from a Hello Kitty point-and-shoot to training on both film and digital SLRs. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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Apple A4 is not a CPU, it’s a ‘system-on-a-chip’
Details are starting to emerge about the chip powering Apple’s iPad – the A4. As it turns out, it’s not a CPU but a complete ‘system-on-a-chip.’
The A4 represents Apple’s entry into fabless semiconductors, and while it’s seems like interesting technology, most of it is based on ARM intellectual property. The A4 brings together a CPU (at this point it’s unclear how many cores the A4 has) and a GPU, along with other features such as memory controller.
Compared to the Samsung processor in the iPhone that chugs along at 600MHz, the A4 ticks at 1GHz, offering the iPad a fair performance boost. Not only is it fast, but it’s energy efficient, allowing the iPad to run for up to 10 hours.
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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Microsoft’s Azure cloud is officially open for business
As of February 1, Microsoft officially jumps into the cloud-computing frey and now is charging customers for developing and running apps in its Azure cloud.
(Update: Microsoft’s Azure team said charges actually won’t commence until Tuesday February 2, in order to sync up billing across time zones. “Microsoft will begin charging for Windows Azure and SQL Azure starting at 12:00 AM February 2, 2010 GMT to ensure that customers and partners are not charged for their free usage in the month of January,” said the team in a February 1 posting annoucing Azure general availability.)
Microsoft has been working on Azure for more than three years; beta testers have been kicking its tires for more than a year. With Azure, Microsoft is attempting to recreate its Windows ecosystem in the form of a utility. Today, developers and customers can develop and deploy on the Windows Azure operating system and make use of the SQL Azure hosted database. In the coming months, Microsoft will make available to developers its Azure AppFabric Web-service utilities. And as 2010 progresses, Microsoft is slated to make available to developers and customers more of the on-premises “private cloud” complements to Azure.
While many (including yours truly), describe Azure as Microsoft’s “cloud,” Microsoft actually has many different public and private clouds. Very few Microsoft properties are currently hosted on Azure. Those that are include Live Mesh, Microsoft’s HealthVault service and its energy-monitoring Hohm service. Mega-scale services like Windows Hotmail and Xbox Live don’t run on Azure. Neither does Microsoft’s hosted Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, CRM Online, its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) or its Danger services for mobile devices. Microsoft hasn’t provided a timetable as to when (or definitively if) it will move these services to Azure.
Microsoft officials say that there already are “tens of thousands” of apps and services running on Azure, a total which includes everything from pilot “hobbyist” apps, to full-fledged commercial ones. (February 1 is the cut-off date, by the way, for those with Azure Community Technology Preview accounts to decide wehther they are going to upgrade to paying account ; Microsoft is advising userswho don’t want to subscribe to export their data pronto so it won’t be deleted.)
But is Azure really ready for prime-time, as Microsoft flips the commercial switch?
Cloud expert and author of Cloud Computing with the Windows Azure Platform (Wrox, 2009) Roger Jennings says yes. He’s been running a Windows Azure Table Sample Project he created and has been seeing a majority of 100 percent uptime weeks.
“I’ve been happy with the capabilities and performance of the SQL Azure Database, as well as the free supporting applications for it, such as George Huey’s SQL Server Migration Wizard and the Sync Framework Team’s SQL Azure Data Sync tool. Both tools export schemas and data from on-premises SQL Server databases to SQL Azure in the cloud.”
Early Azure customers have tended to use Azure for “cloudbursting,” notes Directions on Microsoft analyst Rob Sanfilippo, via which Microsoft’s datacenters provide overflow capacity to add to what customers currently have available on-prmises, so as to be able to handle peak demands without having to make permanent infrastructure investments.
Azure is still “a fledgling platform,” Sanfilippo says, “and it will take large deployments and time to prove its scalability, stability, and security. It doesn’t yet offer administrator control of a Windows Server virtual machine like Amazon currently does, but this has been promised for later in 2010 with an upcoming ‘virtual machine roles’ feature. Advanced features of SQL Server such as reporting and analytics are not yet available with SQL Azure (again, promised for later), and the previously promised Workflow and Live Services components have been delayed. Improvements could also be made by providing more online administration tools and closer parity with Microsoft’s on-premises products (yes, these are promised too).”
Developers have a number of tools for not only migrating existing apps to Azure, as Jennings points out, but also for developing new apps from scratch. Microsoft has been working with a variety of partners to make open-source tools available for Azure — everything from Eclipse, to PHP. Silverlight can be used for SQL Azure clients, “but most Windows Azure devs probably will stick with ASP.NET Web roles for now, move to MVC with Visual Studio 2010, and Silverlight as they come up to speed with it next year,” Jennings says.
Microsoft faces some big competitors in the cloud, ranging from Amazon, to Google, to Salesforce, to IBM. It also already is facing pricing pressures, with developers pushing the Redmondians to offer a lower-end, hosting-centric pricing to compete with ISPs (as opposed to the full-fledged operating-system-centric infrastructure that Azure currently is). Microsoft still has yet to articulate exactly how it and when it plans to mirror its public-cloud Azure environment for customers who want and need to keep their data in-house. (Microsoft has said it plans to offer a public-to-private cloud. And it still has a lot of behind-the-scenes work to do to get its reseller partners onboard with Azure.
MIcrosoft is counting on developers and customers wanting more, not less, in the cloud. Microsoft is banking on coders wanting a (mostly) familiar operating environment, middleware and development infrastructure whether they are writing apps that can run on-premises, in the cloud or both. Now that the meter is running, we’ll see whether devs and users agree….
Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 20 years. Don’t miss a single post. Subscribe via Email or RSS. You can also follow Mary Jo on Twitter.
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Google Chrome steals usage share from IE/Firefox, Win 7 breaks 10%
Net Applications’ data for January is out, and there are some interesting trends displayed.
First, the data shows that Google’s Chrome browser has managed to snatch usage share from Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Here’s the data:
- Chrome: 5.20% (up from 4.64% in Dec ‘09)
- IE: 62.18% (down from 62.69% in Dec ‘09)
- Firefox: 24.41% (down from 24.61% in Dec ‘09)
Note: While we may debate as to whether Net Applications is a reliable metric or not, Mozilla both accept and use its data in its PR propaganda.
Note that this is the second month in a row that Net Applications has shown a decline in Firefox usage.
I noticed over the holiday period that Google was aggressively pushing Chrome through ads, even going as far as to offer customized downloads that could be sent as gifts via email.
The top browser spot has also changed hands, now belonging to IE8, with 22.31%, beating IE6 (20.07%). Still far too many people browsing the web with IE6 … UPGRADE PEOPLE!!!!!
In other news, Windows 7 global usage share hit 10% on January 31st. Overall, Windows 7 ended January with a 7.51% usage share (leaping ahead from 5.71% for Dec ‘09). Also interesting is the data that shows that Redmond WA, home of Microsoft, shows the highest Windows 7 usage share within the US, a robust 42%.
Overall, Windows usage is down to 92.02% (from 92.21% in Dec ‘09 – even strong Windows 7 gains can’t halt the slow erosion of Windows’ usage share), Mac is up to 5.13% (from 5.11% in Dec ‘09), which I admit probably isn’t significant, and Linux is unchanged at 1.02%. iPhone OS platform is also up marginally to 0.47% (up from 0.44% in Dec ‘09).
Net Applications measures operating system usage by tracking computers that visit the 40,000 sites monitored for clients, which represents a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. This data is then weighted based on the estimated size of each country’s Internet population.
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
Want to get in touch? Got a tip? Feel free to drop me a note! I ALWAYS respect anonymity. I’m also on Twitter (@the_pc_doc)
Right to Reply: Should any industry representatives wish to comment on any posts on Hardware 2.0, I will be happy to publish their reply verbatim on this blog.
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// //
‘Pain chains’ and the IT Devil’s Triangle
The IT Devil’s Triangle binds together enterprise customers, technology vendors, and system integrators in an unholy trinity that leads directly to failed projects. These failures are fraught with “pain chains,” a term used by Altimeter Group partner and enterprise strategy analyst, Ray Wang, to describe clusters of difficulty that cause angst between IT customers and their line of business counterparts.
The pain chains concept recognizes that the organizational impact of IT failure is multi-dimensional. Similarly, the Devil’s Triangle states that broad, rather than narrow, conflicting agendas among the trinity of customers, vendors, and integrators cause failure.
- Related: Exploring the Devil’s Triangle
The shared themes of interdependence, shared responsibility, and impact characterize both pain chains and the Devil’s Triangle. Therefore, I view large, serious IT failures as a constellation of dysfunctional activities that come about from overlapping, conflicting, and distorted relationships.
In some cases, inexperienced customers bring higher cost and waste upon themselves through sheer mismanagement of their own affairs. Other times, unscrupulous external consultants or software vendors take advantage of the customer’s lack of experience.
Either way, in the aftermath of failure it’s tempting and easy to unfairly shift blame onto one party or another; however, such finger pointing often ignores shared and inter-dependent causes of failure.
Here are three examples that illustrate no-win situations spawned by the Devil’s Triangle:
1. Software vendor’s sales person promises something the software actually can’t do.
Potential solution: Directly ask the software vendor for specific examples of organizations where it has successfully deployed the features in question. If you’re buying software based on certain key features, perform plenty of due diligence on that particular functionality. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes a practical impossibility to learn the truth about specific points of reliability until after you have bought the product.
2. System integrator makes technical scoping errors that remain undiscovered until mid-project.
Potential solution: To avoid such mistakes, try to define your requirements with greater accuracy (but I’m sure you already tried your best on that front, anyway). In general, try to keep the project scope tight, because larger projects are always more at risk than smaller ones. You can also hire independent experts to verify major project decisions before moving ahead. If may drive you batty to pay one expert just to check another’s work, but that’s why they invented auditing. In the end, however, the truth about bad scope decisions often don’t emerge until after it’s too late.
3. Customer’s culture and IT capabilities are not up to the task.
Potential solution: You’ve hired the right resources, ensuring everyone involved has the correct technical skills, and still your project gets screwed because IT just doesn’t have the chops. When you’re done cleaning up the mess, it’s likely you’ll find the solution by looking in the mirror. Yes, if you hired them, then perhaps it’s time for that refresher course on planning and executing projects. This might also be a good time to dust off the resume, because you may need it soon.
========
I asked Bob Warfield, HelpStream’s CEO and a longtime enterprise expert, to comment on these examples:
In my mind, there are no easy answers to reducing these failures except to be a lot harsher on the initial project scope. Most of the big projects are trying too hard to boil the ocean because it is not politically sound to say “no” to some constituency. It’s all too easy to say “yes” when the sales guys and the fancy architectures are telling you, “Yes, this is software, anything is possible.” Sure, that may be true, except for shipping that customized software on time or within budget.
My take. Pain chains and the IT Devil’s Triangle make clear that failure is typically a partnership in which numerous parties share ownership. Blindly casting blame may feel good or be politically expedient, but does nothing to explain why a project really failed.
It’s far better to dissect, as dispassionately as possible, the true causes of failure to accurately understand where things went wrong. Although difficult, that’s the best method to prevent failures from occurring in the future.
[Image from iStockPhoto.]
Michael Krigsman is CEO of Asuret, Inc., a software and consulting company dedicated to reducing software implementation failures. Click here to discuss this post with him on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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Walmart rolls out its Super Bowl HDTV deals on Sony, Vizio LCDs
Much like Peyton Manning does, retailing giant Walmart has waited for the competition to show its strategy before reacting with its own plan for Super Bowl Sunday. Its special pricing on HDTVs for the big game won’t be available until Sunday, but we were given a sneak peek at some of the deals, including three Vizios and two Sonys:
Sanyo 37-inch 1080p DP37649 for $448
Vizio 55-inch 1080p 120Hz VF550M LCD TV for $1,298
Vizio 47-inch 1080p 120Hz SV470M LCD TV for $898
Sony 46-inch 1080p Bravia KDL-46S5100 for $778
Sony 40-inch 1080p Bravia KDL-40S5100 for $668
Vizio 32-inch VO320E 720p LCD TV for $368
How do these prices stack up with online competition? Pretty well when it comes to the bigger Vizio sets. The VF550M is selling for $1,399 at Dell.com, while Buy.com has the SV470M for $1,059.95. But the 46-inch Bravia is just a dollar less than at B&H Photo Video’s site, and the 40-inch model is a dollar less than at JR.com. Oddly, the 32-inch Vizio is currently priced at $349 on Walmart.com—$19 cheaper than the sale price.
One thing Walmart can offer that online retailers can’t: a “gametime feast” (including hot dogs, cookie and other snacks) for eight people for as low as $44. That’s convenient, but if you find a better TV elsewhere, I’m sure you can manage to stock up at the local supermarket.
Toyota recall taints reliability reputation; highlights reliance on suppliers
Toyota said on Friday that it has remedied the problem behind its recall of 2.3 million vehicles in the United States, but the hit to the company’s legendary reputation for reliability remains so because of its reliance on a vast network of suppliers.
Cars are complex machines with thousands upon thousands of parts that can be made by outside manufacturers. Toyota’s suspension and recall of eight models due to a sticking accelerator problem — linked to a “disproportionately high number of deaths,” according to Democratic representative Bart Stupak — shows that it has lost quality control over its partners.
The problem is technically the fault of U.S. firm CTS Corp., which made the accelerator pedals in question. CTS says it manufactured the pedals based on Toyota’s design specifications, but Ford recently halted production of a Chinese model that uses CTS-made pedals.
Nevertheless, the cars have Toyota’s name on them, and drivers hold the company responsible.
Toyota is long-known for owning many of its Japanese suppliers outright, keeping the entire operation much more tight-knit than its rivals. It’s renowned for practicing the “just in time” inventory strategy that minimizes inventory and carrying costs.
But after aggressive expansion overseas in the last decade, the question is whether Toyota has rushed into relationships too quickly with parts makers for which it can’t vouch.
Toyota maintains that it inspects every part before it’s installed in a vehicle. The question is whether the parts were defective before installation or because of it.
Worse, the company is under fire for cutting costs too aggressively across the supply chain, despite complaints of runaway vehicles. Cost-cutting has been even more prevalent in the wake of the recent global economic downturn.
Now the company’s on the defensive, batting back criticism that it pursued the bottom line at the expense of its management strategy.
The backlash could ripple through the dozens of other industrial companies Toyota owns, including a steel manufacturer, precision equipment maker and auto parts maker Denso Corp.
Windows Home Server ‘Vail’: A web based media center?
Mary Jo and I were talking last night about Windows Home Server “Vail”, the upcoming operating system to take over previous home server editions. After a half-hour download and an additional fifteen minutes installation time, I had it installed on my home computer.
I have a long history with Windows Home Server. Back in 2006 when I was blogging with a group of friends, I personally infuriated Bill Gates after I announced basically what he was going to speak about in his keynote speech at CES that year – the initial launch of Windows Home Server.
Gallery
To view the full screenshot gallery of Windows Home Server ‘Vail’, including the remote web interface and server options and configuration, click here.
After playing with this edition for no more than a day, it’s clearly no where near finished and stands in at the fourth community technical preview at this stage. But the potential is huge, and I genuinely see this as a fantastic solution for house-sharing students.
It only comes in 64-bit as it is based on Windows Server 2008 R2, the server system designed to support Windows 7. It requires at least 120GB to install and the download/installation package comes in at just over 3GB.
Read more: Early version of Windows Home Server ‘Vail’ leaks to the Web
The most fun I had was through the the remote web interface; allowing you to remotely view your files, documents, music and videos from anywhere else in the world with an Internet connection.
The web interface looks and feels like Windows Live Home (wave 4), and when playing music or video acts between Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. While this build is an early one, they have this functionality in place already and can only expect bigger and better things.
Raiden Splash 