fusion

Car manufacturers may be having a tough time moving vehicles off the showroom floor this year, but Ford is crushing it online. Granted, it's because they're giving away free vehicles to enhance characters in The Sims video game.

Players of The Sims 2 with the Nightlife expansion pack have been downloading free Ford vehicles since 2007. To date, there's been more than 5.7 million downloads of the Ford-branded autos, with 1.5 million of them being the iconic Ford Mustang (red with white racing stripes). That's seven times more Mustangs than Ford has sold in … Read more

Fusion-io on Wednesday announced the IoDrive Duo, which the company claims is the fastest to date. Fusion-io also claims Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist.

Targeted primarily at business applications such as database servers, capacities range from 160 gigabytes to 640 gigabytes. And by the second half of this year, this will increase to 1.28 terabytes.

The boards are based on PCI Express data bus and can sustain up to 20 gigabits per second of raw throughput--many times the rate of fast hard-disk drives. Sustained read bandwidth is 1,500 megabytes per second, while sustained write bandwidth … Read more

Ford does not and will not be using soy-foam in the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. Seats are comprised of 85 percent post consumer recycled material and covered in eco-responsible fabric.

The 2010 Fusion Hybrid is the latest Ford family vehicle that to be outfitted with soy-based foam seat backs and cushions, and covered in 100 percent recycled fabric, which goes to show that mileage isn't the only way to measure the environmental impact of a car.

By the end of 2009 model year, more than 1 million Ford vehicles will have been manufactured with these petroleum-alternative seats. Since its debut in 2008, Ford has used the foam in the Mustang, Expedition, F-150, Escape, Focus, Mazda Tribute, and Lincoln Navigator.

Replacing the seat cushions may not sound like a huge technological leap, but the switch from polyurethane foam derived from petroleum to soybean oil-based foam in these vehicles has offset more than 5 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, said to Cynthia Flanigan, a plastics expert in Ford's Research and Advanced Engineering department. It's another step toward reducing the United States' dependence on foreign oil. … Read more

What does Steve Wozniak know about solid-state drives that we don't? David Flynn, the chief technology officer of SSD start-up Fusion-io, provides some insight into why the Apple co-founder is joining the company as chief scientist.

I talked with Flynn on the phone about what the Salt Lake City start-up, founded in 2006, does and what attracted Wozniak.

Enterprise solid-state drives typically offer much better performance than even the fastest hard-disk drives. Fusion-io claims that its IoDrive improves storage performance by as much as 1,000 times over traditional disk arrays while operating at a fraction of the power … Read more

The Fusion CA-IP500 is the latest in a wave of mechanical-free iPod receivers that we've seen, but it's the only one we've seen that features an internal dock. Just open the faceplate, pop in your iPod, and you're off. It seems easy and we were intrigued by its simplicity.

However, upon closer study, we found that while the CA-IP500's internal dock eliminates the need for USB or dock connector cables, it creates a new problem of dealing with multiple iPod sizes and designs with bulky adapter sleeves.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has joined Fusion-io, a start-up specializing in high-speed solid-state drives, the company said Thursday.

Wozniak will be Fusion-io's chief scientist and will also advise the company on technical strategy for product development.

"With the revolutionary technological advances being made by Fusion-io, the company is in the right place at the right time with the right technology and ready to direct the history of technology into the 21st century and beyond," Wozniak said in a statement. "The technology marketplace has not seen such capacity for innovation and radical transformation since the mainframe computer … Read more

When one monitor isn't enough, you may appreciate the monitor management options this free utility provides.

DisplayFusion installs an icon in your system tray that holds a menu for configuring a multimonitor setup for your system. The tabbed menus are well organized and clearly designed for ease of use and reading.

This application performed well in our tests, responding quickly to our commands. We liked that we could configure hot key combinations for a number of tasks, such as moving a window to the center of a monitor, resizing a window, or spanning a window across all monitors. Other … Read more

Hyundai protects buyers who lose their jobs; December's another disaster for car sales; "solar Prius" may be a crock; and sit down for a beer with Wayne, Antuan, and Brian.

• Ford Park Assist: See it in action.

• CNET's Tech Car of the Year announcement is imminent

• Solar Prius? Really?

• Is Chrysler aiming to become America's BMW?

• Car Tech Preview from the Consumer Electronics Show

The Fusion is a big bet for Ford, so it's about time it goes hybrid.

Its new hybrid drive system gets--according to Ford's estimates--5mpg more than the Toyota Camry Hybrid, while the EcoGauge system helps drivers to keep their lead foot in check. Toss in a fantastic sounding Sony stereo system controlled by Microsoft Sync and you've got the makings of a great tech package to go with your green powertrain.

See all coverage of the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show.