Toyota remains world's largest automaker for third year in a row despite troubles

Despite weathering a rocky 2010 marked by repeated recalls, Toyota managed to remain the world's largest automaker last year. According to Bloomberg, the Japanese manufacturer saw its sales rise by eight percent to 8.42 million units if you include Lexus, Hino and Daihatsu. That figure beat out General Motors, which saw its sales increase by 12 percent with 8.39 million units sold.

While Toyota's sales in the U.S. market dropped by 0.4 percent due to safety concerns, the automaker saw large increases in China. The company's sales in the People's Republic jumped by 19 percent, though General Motors saw its Chinese sales increase by 29 percent.

Volkswagen, meanwhile, managed to move 7.14 million vehicles during 2010, cementing its place as the third-largest automaker in the world. That figure marks a 14 percent increase over 2009, and VW says that it fully expects to see sales increase by five percent in 2011.

Toyota is forecasting its sales to hit 8.6 million vehicles in 2011.

This Must Be the Craziest Computer Den In America

Even You Can Park Your Car in Miami's $65 Million Parking Garage

 

The top floor, offering stunning city and ocean views, hosts weddings and yoga classes. Above that is the owner's private penthouse apartment. The floors below showcase Rolls Royces, Ferraris and Bentleys. Welcome to Miami's new $65 million public parking garage.
The garage, a joint effort by a local developer and world-renowned architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, helps alleviate South Beach's chronic parking problem. But not without a (large) dash of the city's somewhat characteristic extravagance.

What they produced, in early 2010, was all those things: a garage with floor heights of up to 34 feet, three times the norm; a striking internal staircase, with artwork embedded in its base; precarious looking (and feeling) ledges that rely on industrial-strength cable to hold back cars and people; and a glass cube that houses a designer clothing store, perhaps the first in the middle of a parking garage.
In a final flourish, the architects created a soaring top floor that doubles as an event space, with removable parking barriers. It can be rented for about $12,000 to $15,000 a night.

Parking in the lot usually costs $4 an hour, as opposed to about a dollar an hour for municipal lots, but for many, especially the owners of luxury cars, it's worth it. Douglas Sharon, a financial adviser, parks his gray Ferrari in the garage several times a week. "I wouldn't even think of parking anywhere else when I'm downtown," he told the New York Times. You know what they say—your car's only as nice as the garage you park it in. Oh, they don't say that? Then they should.

The $300 Action Movie

Director/writer Michael Ashton took $300 and an obvious understanding of cinema basics and special effects and made this 12-minute short film called Lazy Teenage Superheroes. It's quite impressive! The acting, not so much.
This isn't to say the movie is a flop or undeserving of our praise, because it is! And the acting isn't terrible, actually, because I watched all the way to the end earlier today. There's just this whiff of cheese about most of the performances and edits. Something to consider for the inevitable sequel, I suppose.
As a demo of what one can pull off with just $300 and a bit of skill this is quite a feat. I was nearly motivated to open iMovie and start something up myself before I realized I can barely write, let alone make movies.