Aston Martin hit by the struggling economy.
After last years announcement that it would be reducing its workforce by 600 to cope with a slide of 28% in sales over 2008, Aston Martin is now cutting it’s remaining staff’s working time down to a 3 day week. Of the 1250 people still working at the Warwickshire plant over half are said to be affected by the cutback and will now be working a Monday to Wednesday week.
This is the second of Britians big marques to be hit by the hardships face by car makers in the UK, with Bentley announcing production cuts on Wednesday. The British government has pledge around £2.3 billion worth of aid to car manufacturers, though I doubt little of this money will goto the high end manufacturers that a small percentage of the population can actually afford.
New Zealander gets his hands on US Government Data
Shopper Chris Ogle got himself more than he bargained for after snatching up a £12 ($18) MP3 player from a second hand shop in Oklahoma. Rather than the usual music, photos and maybe the odd video file you might stumble upon with a second hand device Chris found himself faced with documents from the US Military’s personnel & deployment records. The information went into such details as soldier’s names, addresses and even which female troops were pregnant. Not so bad by itself but coupled with documents detailing of equipment deployments to bases in Afghanistan and some top-secret mission briefings this turned out to be abit of a blunder for the US Government.
The US Government defended themselves by stating that the data was from 2005 so it was unlikely to compromise the countries security. However a reporter from TV One News tried calling some of the numbers and found them still active, maybe the information isn’t so out of date as they think.
Since the news broke of leaked documents Ogle has gladly handed over the device to the US Government and happily recieved a replacement from them, a turn up for the books since the first device turned out to lack the function of playing music. I wonder if he got an upgrade?
iLife ‘09 Shipping today
After it’s annoucement at MacWorld 2009, according to a press release issued yesterday by Apple, iLife 09 is shipping today for $79. For users who bought Macs after January the 6th then you can upgrade to iLife 09 for $10.
The new version boasts a feature list longer than most arms at the forefront of which is iPhotos new tagging system which allows you to tag places and people in photos, based on either their faces or the location they were taken (which can be automatically added using your camera or iPhone 3Gs GPS). Another biggie is the addition of music lessons to Garageband, by the artists themselves naturally including big hitters Sting and Fall Out Boy, delivered to your screen in full HD glory for only $5 a pop. iMovie has had a complete re-vamp after the less than stellar reception of iMovie ‘08 including new image stabilization for shakey footage & precision editing, a suspected upgrade for skimming from ‘08.
You’ll need at least Mac OS X 10.5.6 which you can grab, along with the new iLife ‘09 from Apple’s Online Store, Retail stores or the Apple friendly Amazon.
BT + T-Mobile + 3 = ?
Is home phone giant BT considering making a comeback to the mobile market? According to The Observer’s ”city sources” the 3 big hitters have been meeting up for informal talks regarding a joint venture into the migration of broadband and internet services to mobile devices such as mobile phones and laptop dongles. BT may be joining the party abit late and with their track record of racking up £30bn of debt with previous venture 02 (BT Cellnet) could this be the wrong move for a company with already wary shareholders?
Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile and Hutchison Whampoa’s struggling 3 mobile are said to be interested in expanding their British business operations. A merger with the BT could be a bad move since more of it’s competitors are offering mobile broadband solutions and britains biggest mobile network, 02, offering a combined package for mobile, home phone and broadband the competition could be a bit too much.