In the 2009 model year, Porsche introduced a dual-clutch transmission across it’s sports car range (Boxster, Cayman, Carrera). Canadian Driver has a good technical overview of Porsche’s implementation of this technology, unique because it has a tall 7th gear available to lower fuel consumption.

I’m a big fan of dual clutch transmissions, one of the few technologies out recently that both save fuel and offer higher performance. Prior to 2009, other cars have had it ranging from supersports cars like the Nissan GTR, to basic commuter cars like the VW Golf.

Time Magazine posted the “Top 10 Everything of 2009“. It’s a massive collection of top 10 lists – worth checking out. It’s very USA focused.

Google Maps, long a staple of site for me, is really losing it’s luster. I find it to be horribly inaccurate for the Toronto area. In the picture above, it denotes the CN Tower right in the middle of the Yonge/Bloor intersection. It’s placed Starbucks locations where they are not, and often list businesses that are long closed.

The problem? The “points of interest” are generated automatically – with very limited human intervention. Moreover, the “report a problem” feature doesn’t seem to generate any fixes – I’ve reported a number of problems with POI in my neighborhood over a week ago.

While I am no big fan of Microsoft, their Bing Maps is more up to date, and the Toronto area is in much higher resolution than Google. However, Google does have the most accurate traffic reporting, with their Blackberry and Android apps able to report driving conditions experienced by their owners. This crowdsourcing allows traffic reporting for many of the non-highway streets in the city.

Bell Canada is running a new service to Toronto – Bell Entertainment Service is a new service that allows for 20MBit/s Internet access and IP-based television services (IPTV). It’s an interesting service and right now they have a promotion for 50% the fee for the first year.

Features unique to this service is the smart PVR, which allows you to set recordings from any web browser or mobile phone; 20Mbit internet access (upload speed is not rated), watching PVR’d content on any tv at home, and wireless Internet service included.

There’s very little, if any, technical information on the service but on a Ben Lucier’s Blog there’s more information. He also links to the Bell User Guide. What’s important to note that this is NOT Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). The last mile is actually just a fast implementation of DSL. Another thing to note is that DSL link is shared between your intenet service and television service. You can get download speeds of 20MBit using internet alone, but each channel you watch will knock off about 3Mbit off your download speeds. Not a big deal, but you should be aware of it. There is a 60GB monthly download limit on the internet portion of the service, which is small compared to the limits on Roger’s offerings. Hopefully they will increase it to be in-line with their competitors.

The biggest question I have is the picture quality of the HD channels – are they as good as non-compressed signals found on ExpressVu? Rogers has been compressing the HD channels of it’s service in recent years and picture quality is down quite a bit. I’m itching for a reason to switch and this IPTV service might be it.

With the strong Canadian dollar, it’s very tempting to buy camera equipment from the USA. However, there’s a big disadvantage when it comes to Nikon by doing so. Nikon does not honor warranties from equipment bought outside Canada. You would have to get it serviced in the USA. A summary of the different warranty programs is on this site.

I watched this series on TV recently but an article at the Toronto Star mentioned that the entire series is available online. It’s a great showdown between Canada’s best chefs for charity.

Gizmodo listed these quotes from 2007 before the launch of the iPhone. Most of them from Apple’s competitors, and how they predicted the iPhone was doomed. Were they honestly surprised by Apple’s success, or were they posturing because they knew that it would dramatically change their business?

Go to the full article to see a video of Steve Ballmer laughing at the iPhone.

John C. Dvorak

Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.

Jon Rubinstein, Palm CEO

Is there a toaster that also knows how to brew coffee? There is no such combined device, because it would not make anything better than an individual toaster or coffee machine. It works the same way with the iPod, the digital camera or mobile phone: it is important to have specialized devices.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.

Ed Colligan, ex-Palm CEO

We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.

Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia Chief Strategist

The development of mobile phones will be similar in PCs. Even with the Mac, Apple has attracted much attention at first, but they have still remained a niche manufacturer. That will be in mobile phones as well.