Kia has introduced its Ray EV in Korea, and the zero-emissions city car has the honour of being the country’s first production electric vehicle. The car, which is only for the domestic Korean market, shares a general commonality with the company’s 1.0 litre gasoline-powered Ray CUV launched recently; it has the petrol model’s major dimensions. Operating range is up to 139 km on a single charge.

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Facebook has just launched a new feature: Suggested Events. It scrabbles through your account history to find events you might like to attend in real life. But is that a great idea, or will it generate a bunch of irritating spam?

According to TechCrunch , the tool uses information from your Facebook check-in history, brand page activity, and the RSVPs of your online friends to compile a list of events. It also makes suggestions based on the music you listen to through Open Graph apps — presumably meaning that you’ll see concert tips in the list, too.

The service seems similar to Foursquare’s discovery tool Radar — but given the sheer weight of Facebook users, this will no doubt attract far more users. The feature is already live, and you can see your Suggested Events page here.

On the surface of things, it seems like a positive addition for users: knowing about interesting stuff that’s happening is a good thing. But there’s no obvious way to remove events from the list — you can either join the event or say maybe — so I do wonder just how much spam will accumulate.

And when it does, how useful will the service be? Throw into the mix Facebook’s increasing emphasis on advertising, and you may likely end up with a bunch of corporate crap in your list, too. Let’s see how good Facebook’s software is.

It’s year-in-review time! I love this time of year because all of these lists invariably wind up making me feel like I’ve wasted another 12 months of this all-too-short existence (and who doesn’t love that?) or reinforce the notion that everyone in the world is an idiot. This year’s list of most searched-for terms does the latter.

Here’s the full list, by way of Experian Hitwise:

1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. Facebook Login
4. Craigslist
5. Facebook.com
6. Yahoo
7. eBay
8. www.facebook.com
9. Mapquest
10. Yahoo.com

Two things here: First, yeah, Facebook’s on there four times. Same as last year. That’s idiotic; we’re you’re all idiots. Stop that.

Second, it tickles me that Yahoo’s also on the list twice. Yeah yeah, I know; Yahoo’s still a major portal for legacy users. But it’s a special kind of ironic that all those folks who are still tied to their old Yahoo accounts are presumably using non-Yahoo search engines to find Yahoo. Or are they… searching for Yahoo on Yahoo? Either way, why are you searching for Yahoo? Stop that, too.

It’s been a long December for RIM, and there’s reason to believe this year won’t be any better than the last. This month, the company was sued for its use of the BBX trademark and was forced to change its name to BlackBerry 10; then, it all hit the fan when co-CEO Mike Lazaridis broke the news that phones running the aforementioned OS won’t arrive until late in 2012. And let’s not even get started on the quarterly earnings report. Sadly, it’s not over: BBM Canada, a Toronto-based broadcast industry group that has used the BBM moniker in one way or another for six decades, wants to reclaim its name — used and made popular by RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service — and has filed a lawsuit against the phone maker for trademark infringement. BBM Canada CEO Jim MacLeod says he’s made several attempts to resolve the matter with them in hopes of avoiding the courtroom — even to the extent of offering to rebrand his own company as long as RIM footed the bill — to no success.

MacLeod told The Globe and Mail that “I find it kind of amazing that this wouldn’t have been thought about before they decided to use the name — the same thing goes for BBX.” And according to court documents, it actually was: in February 2010, RIM attempted to apply for the BBM trademark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, was told that it wasn’t registerable, and still went ahead and used it for its BlackBerry Messenger service anyway. We’ll see what kind of explanation the company has for going ahead and using the three-letter acronym in a couple weeks, since a hearing has been scheduled for January 11th.

Here’s the reply statement from RIM:

Since its launch in July 2005, BlackBerry Messenger has become a tremendously popular social networking service. In 2010, RIM started to formally adopt the BBM acronym, which had, at that point, already been organically coined and widely used by BlackBerry Messenger customers as a natural abbreviation of the BlackBerry Messenger name. The services associated with RIM’s BBM offering clearly do not overlap with BBM Canada’s services and the two marks are therefore eligible to co-exist under Canadian trademark law. The two companies are in different industries and have never been competitors in any area. We believe that BBM Canada is attempting to obtain trademark protection for the BBM acronym that is well beyond the narrow range of the services it provides and well beyond the scope of rights afforded by Canadian trademark law. RIM has therefore asked the Court to dismiss the application and award costs to RIM. Further, for clarity, RIM’s application to register BBM as a trademark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) is pending and we are confident that a registration will eventually issue. The inference by BBM Canada that CIPO has refused RIM’s BBM trademark application is quite frankly very misleading.

Sony Ericsson’s been putting its foot on the gas when it comes to releasing Ice Cream Sandwich update information for its 2011 smartphone lineup. Today the company announced that updates will begin in either late March or early April of 2012, just a touch later than previously suggested, while providing a schedule for when each phone can expect to receive the company’s skinned variant of Android 4.0.

The first set of updates, due in late March or early April, will target the following devices:

• Xperia Arc S
• Xperia Neo V
• Xperia Ray

A second wave will roll out starting at the end of April or in early May:

• Xperia Arc
• Xperia Play
• Xperia Neo
• Xperia Mini
• Xperia Mini Pro
• Xperia Active
• Live with Walkman

The updates will be available for download over 3G or Wi-Fi, with a tethered option also available. While Sony does caution that not all updates will be release simultaneously, the news should give some peace of mind to users considering a SE device this holiday season.

SOURCE via Sony Ericsson

Hackers in China have recently gotten attention for reportedly attempting to steal industrial technology secrets and hacking US satellites, and now a Wall Street Journal report claims Chinese citizens were discovered hacking US Chamber of Commerce in May of 2010. The first breech is believed to have occurred in November of 2009 or even earlier, giving the hackers at least six months of administrator-level access to the Chamber’s network. It isn’t know (or wasn’t revealed) exactly how much information was stolen; the Chamber says that fewer than 50 of its members were compromised, but they also said the hackers stole at least six weeks of emails from four individuals who worked on Asia policy.

As to how the hackers got in, it sounds like a “spear phishing” attack was to blame, with targeted users clicked on fraudulent links or email attachments. The FBI found out about this breach and alerted the Chamber, which then hired outside investigators to determine the extent of the data theft. The Chamber has since overhauled its network security and prevents its employees from taking mobile devices into countries with a high infiltration risk (like China) — but there’s still some strange and suspicious behavior, like a printer spontaneously printing pages of Chinese characters. At this point, the Chamber feels the best thing it can do is find breeches quickly, because it believes it’s “nearly impossible” to keep hackers out entirely.

The Rose Bowl – The Grandaddy Of Them All, as they say – is one of the most storied bowl games in college football, and the pre-game parade is a big part of the pageantry of the event. Last year, Natural Balance broke the record for the world’s largest float with an 84,300-pound rolling display, but the pet food company seems thirsty for more world-record glory.

For 2012, Natural Balance is building a 100,000-pound monstrosity that is 116 feet long and contains a 65-foot wave pool built specifically for one Tillman the Dog. Tillman will be surfing the waves on the float, which sounds impressive if you didn’t already know that this super dog is also an avid skateboarder.

To tow this massive float, the folks at Natural Balance are counting on power from the tried-and-true Ford 6.8-liter V10. The 362 horsepower mill, which boasts 457 pound-feet of torque, is completely stock. The same can be said for the six-speed automatic transmission, save for a custom gear reduction setup behind the output shaft to get the float moving. The beefy 10-pot was pulled directly from an F-650, but we’re guessing the 28-foot long truck won’t be getting a 100,000-pound tow rating anytime soon.

Hit the jump to check out the entire infographic for yourself. You’ll learn that the float is larger than 2,000 Tillmans, and you’ll also catch a glance of the custom rig that will house Ford’s big V10. Read more…