Hasta La Gadget!

You don’t have to go far in most parts of the United States to see a number of small trucks cruising the highways. Many of the major automakers make small trucks including Nissan, Toyota, and Chevrolet. For number of years Ford was in the small truck market with the Ranger. However, Ford ended production of the Ranger in December of 2011.

Ford believes that small trucks that overlap significantly with full-size trucks in size, price, and fuel economy make no sense. However, Ford believes that there is still a demand for a compact truck that is actually compact. Ford also believes that any future replacement for the Ranger may not need traditional truck body-on-frame design and the key to making an appealing small pickup could be a unibody frame.

Rather than trying to compete with the rather large “small” trucks from Nissan and Toyota, Ford thinks there may be a true place in the market for compact truck with about 1000 pounds payload capacity, 3000 pounds of towing capacity, and dramatically improved fuel efficiency compared to full-size trucks. For now, Ford has not given the green light to a replacement for the Ranger.

Ford says that it looked at its global Ranger truck and decided that it had too much overlap with a large and robustly selling F-150. The automaker doesn’t feel that adding a smaller four-cylinder engine or a diesel would set the global Ranger apart enough from its larger siblings to be successful. Ford says the big challenge is making a business case to support the cost of designing a new automobile and the automaker is still working on that.

[via Car & Driver

Ford mulls unibody Ranger truck replacement is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve seen many leaks and teasers for HTC’s M7 handset, rumored to arrive as the One, but apart from a grainy TV screenshot, we haven’t seen its palm-friendly side. French site NowhereElse has allegedly come into possession of yet another press shot of the all-but-unannounced handset, with the back of the black model mostly on show. The side-by-side position of the camera and flash matches the mystery white phone Peter Chou was caught with, and apart from that, we can see a couple of shiny bands near the bottom and top, a small Beats Audio brand, the HTC logo and no apparent loudspeaker grille. We’ll inevitably get the full story at the HTC event starting later today, and we’ll be there to liveblog every minute of it.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC

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Source: NowhereElse

If you grew up in the 70s or 80s, someone you know had one of the Polaroid instant cameras. Odds are your parents had one of these instant cameras and you and your siblings probably fought over who got to shake the picture until it developed. If you would like to own one of these instant cameras again, a company called PolaPros is now offering a wide range of refurbished units.

If you are ready own one of the Polaroid instant cameras that doesn’t work, they can also repair it for you. Repair services start at $80. The company offers 12 different camera models to purchase including the SX-70 Original all the way through the SLR690. Pricing for the complete camera starts at $350.

The company also offers some new vintage cameras that were never sold and are still in the original factory packaging. A brand-new SX-70 Original will set you back $515. A refurbished version of the same camera costs $395. Pricing for the cameras varies greatly depending on the model you choose.

The company also offers a number of accessories for these cameras including external flash units, cases, remote shutter buttons, and various lenses. One key item that I don’t see listed is film for the cameras. This might not be a big deal to vintage camera buffs who only want to collect the camera itself, but if you want to shoot pictures you’ll have to source your own film.

[via PolaPros]

PolaPros offers a wide range of refurbished and new Polaroid instant cameras is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The scientific community is still following the meteor that exploded over Russia last Friday closely. The meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia at approximately 7:20 PM PST. The explosion had enough force to blow the Windows out of hundreds of buildings and cause injury to an estimated 1200 people, mostly from falling glass.

The fireball seen in the Russian skies on Friday happen to be close in time to asteroid 2012 DA14. NASA has announced that the Russian meteor was unrelated to 2012 DA14. NASA has offered some revised size estimates for the meteor that entered the atmosphere over Russia.

The original size estimates for the meteor put it at 49 feet in diameter and NASA has revised its size estimate putting the meteorite at 55 feet in diameter. NASA also increased the estimated mass of the meteorite from 7,000 tons to 10,000 tons. NASA scientists estimate that the energy released by the object was equivalent to nearly 500 kilotons of explosives on.

The new information about the meteorite was collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world. The first recording of the event was captured in Alaska, over 6500 km from Chelyabinsk, Russia. NASA also says that with an object of this size, a large number of meteorites would be expected to reach the surface of the planet and the scientists believe in this case, there were probably some large fragments. Scientists also say that the duration of the event means that the meteor made a very shallow entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

[via NASA]

Russian meteor had nothing to do with 2012 DA14 asteroid flyby is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When EE activated its LTE network part-way through its fourth-quarter, there was an assumption speed-hungry Brits would storm the company’s numerous stores to get at that super-fast mobile data. The reality, however, seems to indicate that it takes more than a Kevin Bacon commercial to send the homeland into a frenzy. The company’s financial results show that the network only added 201,000 customers between October and December 31st — 49,000 fewer than in Q3 and 112,000 fewer than signed up in the same period in 2011. EE also isn’t breaking out figures for how many of its existing customers made the change — so for now we’ll have to assume that the UK isn’t as sweet on the guy from Footloose as Olaf Swanee had hoped.

Filed under: Cellphones

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Source: EE