BP looks to soften their Big Oil image with new commercials

Has anyone else seen the new BP Commercials on tv lately?

Nothing rebuilds a questionable image like cartoons and a catchy jingle.

Advertising agencies and major corporations have been using cute animation and a catchy toon to hook the buying populace on their products since television began. Before television there was Radio. Before radio there was… well let’s stick with the History from the past 100 years for now.

Let us take a look at some other tasty cartoon pitchmen.

While some plugs are quite frowned upon in todays culture…

Others cartoon pitchmen still have a favorable connotation associated to them…

The Cartoon pitchman and the use of Jingles are storied and very rememberable, which is why they are so often used. When in times of trouble (like a federal audit, being pulled over for speeding, caught cheating on a spouse) just try a catchy jingle and make a cartoon face and watch as they melt into an adoring consumer to what you are selling.

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Transformers Unleashed on the Big Screen and Gaming World

As if the movie trailors have not done enough to excite anyone who grew up with the Transformers in the 80’s they are now reaching out to a new market: the Gamer. This summer a Transformers video game will be released for most game consoles.

Here is a look at the latest trailor for the game:

There may still not be too any cars on the road that transform into robots (that we KNOW of), but this game may provide for those who wish there were a taste of what it might be like. Ofcourse, if there are ever Transforming cars on the road I sure hope they are a little less violent.

For those who have not seen any yet, here is a trailor for the Transformers movie set for release on July 3rd:

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All too Subaru

As the 2008 Subaru Impreza WRX reaches the showroom this summer the excitement of the sporty, all-wheel drive sedan (Subaru prefers we not refer to the car as a wagon anymore) continues to be subdued. From the onset in 2001 the WRX brand brought to market a mixture of a functioning wagon with sport-tuned acceleration and athletic handling. The 2008 version of the WRX does nothing but improve upon those intentions and that performance, yet still fails to improve upon the one overshadowing deficiency that has plagued the WRX line all these years: It is still a Subaru.

Innovative or expressive styling has never been a trademark of the Subaru brand. They seem to have a notion of what their cars are and what they want them to be and that is what they stick to. But even with the groundwork of the Impreza residing beneath it the WRX could still do more to provide an aggressive or exciting facade to match the exilirating 244 hp engine that beats within. With zero to 60 times around 5.3 seconds, the impressive performance of this sleeper sedan may continue to go unnoticed by many still as it parks rather indistinguishably among its Impreza brethren.

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Imagine being able to travel to the Ferrari base in Maranello, Italy, walking ...

Imagine being able to travel to the Ferrari base in Maranello, Italy, walking up to gates and being waved through, check out the cars and drive off in one, no questions asked! Sounds to good to be true? Well you may be pleasantly surprised.

It has come to light that there is such a thing as a Ferrari Passport, yes that is what it is called and means the what it is says. Yet unlike your average passport that has its own value, depending on where it is issued, like the US passport, the must be one of the most desirable in the world for an ordinary person, but should you be a super rich high flyer then Switzerland may be your choice of domicile. But regardless of wealth or fame the Ferrari passport is not given out to just anyone, in fact you really have to be somebody quite special to be even considered for one.

What are benefits of having one? This is obvious, the passport gives the holder complete and total access to anywhere within the Ferrari complex which includes all the restricted places too, imagine being able to walk around there, but even more so you could go up to the car park where the new cars are waiting to be delivered and ask to borrow one, with no questions asked you will be given the keys and off you go.

My application has just gone off to the Ferrari Embassy, so hopefully I will be a citizen of Ferrari very soon, what do you think?

Source [Auto Blog]

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The car in question is a Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso, which has to ...

Best known for his tough image, actor Steve McQueen was also a collector of rare cars. The car in question is a Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso, which has to said, is one of the Italian sports manufacturer classic cars, and it is said that this is the car that he used on a daily basis.

Steve McQueen had an habit of collecting the cars that were starring in his films, the two most popular being one of the Mustangs for the film Bullit and two of the Porsches from the car racing film LeMans, these were a 917and a 911s, but it is the Ferrari that is the most desirable car, probably because it was his own personal drive and as with many of these cars is believed to have been a personal build, it is this that makes this car so interesting.

The auction is due to take place in August this year, but the car will be on show at various locations across the US before then, the price is expected to reach around $1,000,000, but with an auction it depends on who is there and how much they want the car, so this will be interesting to watch.

The �Lusso� is the luxury car, which really set a precedent for sports cars, leading up to the type high end luxury cars we see now. This particular model has been totally restored to very high standards; in fact some believe that this could actually be the best example of this car in the world today.

The auction is being organized by Christies and will be held in Monterey in August.

Source [Auto Blog]

This may at first appear to be over the top, but the sat nav is updated ...

Well we have all heard the stories of people being sent the wrong way down one way streets and there are those who have ended up in the middle of nowhere, but just imagine for a minute what would relying on your sat nav would be like if somehow a hacker has managed to get into the system that you are using and change it! Could not happen, well you maybe be surprised.

For some people using sat nav has become a way of life, some people use it virtually all the time no matter where they are going, it may even be just a trip down the road to the shops. This may at first appear to be over the top, but the sat nav is updated to warn users of traffic and road works etc, so by using it would appear to be a sensible move, after all nobody wants to be caught up in long traffic jams etc.

Yet it appears that two security experts, Andrea Barisani, chief security engineer for Inverse Path Ltd. and Daniele Bianco, a hardware hacker at Inverse Pathhave, proved that it is most defiantly possible to get into the sat nav system and change the information being shown, now it seems that they have used some very standard equipment that anyone can buy from their local computer store to enter the system and change the data that is on the sat nav system sitting on your dash board.

This frightening revelation will be announced at the CanSecWest a security conference taking place this week in Vancouver this Friday. They will present evidence of a test hack that they managed to breach a system and where able to send messages through the system which would eventually end up being shown on the sat nav in users vehicles, now do you believe what you sat nav is telling you?

Source [Top Speed]