Hasta La Gadget!

On Thursday, Toyota unveiled its 2014 Tundra pick-up truck at the Chicago Auto Show, showing off a newly designed interior and larger, more built exterior. The truck is slated to be available in September, but no word was given on how much this beastly-looking vehicle will cost. In an effort to boost sales, Toyota will also be offering two luxury Tundra models.

The 2014 Tundra will be available in three varieties, two of which are meant to appeal to those looking for high-end, sophisticated offerings in a pick-up. The first of the two higher-end models is the 1794 Edition, which is named after the ranch where the manufacturer’s factory in Texas was constructed. Second is the Platinum Tundra, which has a big-city feel to it.

As its name suggests, the 1794 Edition is aimed at those who want an old world feel, with the truck boasting embossed leather. The Platinum edition, meanwhile, will have black leather-trimmed heated seats and a 12-speaker system. Buyers can choose between a double cab, which is a four-door option, a CrewMax four-door cab, or a regular cab.

Powertrain options include a 4-liter V6 with 270 horsepower, a 4.6-liter V8 with 310 horsepower, and a 5.7-liter V8 with 381 horsepower. Neither a hybrid Tundra nor a diesel option are available, although according to USA Today, Toyota stated that both are possibilities in the future. While some have expressed doubts that Toyota’s dolling up of the Tundra for those demanding luxury won’t have the effect on earnings hoped for, the manufacturer remains confident, stating, “The segment is moving more in that direction.”

[via USA Today]

Toyota unveils the 2014 Tundra pick-up truck at Chicago Auto Show is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week, the designers were given a task perhaps more intimidating than anything seen on “Project Runway” to date. They were asked to design a dress for Heidi Klum. Ben Mach was already feeling pressure after two back-to-back losses, and the additional stress caused a lot of emotional baggage from his past to come up.

He’d suffered a lot of emotional abuse in a relationship, leaving his sense of self-worth in tatters. “It’s taken a lot for me to build myself back up and to build up my confidence as a person, but to also build up my confidence as a designer,” he said.

Unfortunately, the additional emotional turmoil only made his work suffer even more. His dress almost didn’t make it to the runway at all, and when it did get there, it wasn’t very well received.

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DHAKA, Bangladesh — A passenger ferry capsized Friday after colliding with another ship on a river in central Bangladesh, dumping as many as 100 people into the water, officials and witnesses said.

Police said there were no immediate reports of casualties after the ferry, MV Sarash, went down on the River Meghna in Munshiganj district, 32 kilometers (20 miles) south of Dhaka. There was confusion over the number of passengers on board the ferry at the time of the accident, but those at the scene said some people were missing.

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It’s an embarrassing day for Bing, with the search engine officially falling in ranking under the apparently not-completely-obscure Russian search engine Yandex, which now holds steady as the fourth largest search engine in the world. This information comes from a ComScore report that shows Yandex as hitting a higher number of users per month in both November and December 2012 than Microsoft’s offering.

Not surprisingly, Google came in at number one with a total of 114.7 billion searches, totaling a whopping 65.2-percent of the market share. Baidu, a Chinese search engine, held steady in second place with 8.2-percent of the market share and 14.5 billion searches. Yahoo! came in at a modest third place with 4.9-percent market share and 8.6 billion.

Then, in a surprising turn of events, Russia’s Yandex came in number four, with 2.8-percent of the market share and 4.8 billion searches. This nudged Bing out of its fourth-place slot by a relatively small amount. Microsoft’s search engine is ranked at 2.5-percent of the market share with 4.4 billion searches.

Although Yandex is not a common name in much of the world, it is a popular search engine in Russian-speaking locations, responsible for over 60-percent of searches performed in Russia. Its ranking is likely established for the same reason Baidu’s is – the large population to which it caters. The thing to keep in mind, however, is that while Microsoft’s search engine score is determined by multiple services/properties, Yandex is just Yandex – a Russian search engine that stands on its own, with no outlier software, that still beat Bing.

[via Search Engine Watch]

Bing falls in the rankings, is replaced by Russian search engine is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This past week, reports have come out about a top secret US drone base inside Saudi Arabia. The base was built two years ago, had been used for dozens of drone attacks in Yemen and was originally hidden by the news until it was revealed this week. Now, Bing Maps may have found it, reports WIRED. Satellite images show a mysterious airfield base in Saudi Arabia that could very well be the US drone base. More »