As part of the automaker's move to globalize all of its platforms, the next-generation Fusion and Mondeo will be essentially the same vehicle sold around the world, unlike the current models which are the same size but share almost no parts. Currently Mondeos for the European market are built in Genk, Belgium. Unfortunately the current problems in the European market make it difficult to justify building the Mondeo there because there just isn't enough demand to fill a whole plant. 

Ford's global strategy could address that because all of the refreshed plants around the world are using the same production processes and could easily build any variation for any market. Here in North America, production of the Fusion has begun at the Hermosillo Mexico factory and earlier this week Ford announced that the Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Michigan http://fordfusionstory.com/latest/index.php/2012/09/10/flat-rock-assembly-plant-becomes-a-new-home-for-ford-fusion/ would add Fusion production in 2013.

With the available capacity at Flat Rock and Hermosillo, Ford could almost certainly meet all of the European demand for Mondeos along with the Fusions needed here. Best of all, if Hermosillo were to produce Mondeo wagons, it could even open up the possibility of building some Fusion wagons for America (here's hoping anyway!)

Reshared post from +DeWitt Clinton

"When Schiller unveiled the iPhone 5, it rose from the stage floor on a smoothly-rising and rotating pedestal, pinpoint spotlights hitting the phone and only the phone. The rotation of the iPhone atop the pedestal was in perfect sync with the rotation of the iPhone projected on the big screen at the back of the stage. There’s no store where you buy such pedestals; Apple designed and engineered it specifically for this event. It was on stage for about a minute." -John Gruber

Oh, you have a smoothly rotating pedestal? Tell me again how hard that was to build.  : )

The new connector does not support the method of extracting audio and inputting control signals that was on previous Apple devices. That means you'll have to plug in a jumper cable from the audio jack and control everything from the device instead of using any of the controls on the dock. 

Good thing I wasn't planning to buy any new i-devices anyway.

Let's see; 4-inch display, 8 megapixel 1080p HD camera, HD front-facing camera, 4G LTE, 5 rows of icons, turn by turn navigation, panorama photography. Nope nobody has ever done those before, least of all, Motorola, HTC, Samsung, LG, Hauwei or any of the countless other manufacturers making Android phones. Except for the LTE, I have all of those on my Droid 3 that I've been using since July 2011 and several of them were on the OG Droid I got in 2009!

All in all, meh!

Reshared post from +Mike Elgan

Where Microsoft has more taste than Apple.

It must surely be a sign of the impending apocalypse that Microsoft’s operating systems have “more taste” than Apple’s. I’m referring to Apple’s inexplicable use of skeuomorphic design in iOS and OS X apps, and contrasting that with Microsoft’s stark avoidance of such cheesy gimmickry in Windows 8.

http://www.cultofmac.com/180084/where-microsoft-has-more-taste-than-apple/