Yahoo’s First Site Aimed At A Single Demographic 

Yahoo Inc. on Monday launched a site for women between ages 25 and 54, calling it a key demographic underserved by current Yahoo properties. The site, Shine, is aimed largely at giving the struggling Internet company additional opportunities to sell advertising targeted to the key decision-maker in many households.

With Shine, Yahoo plans to expand its offerings in parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology.

Yahoo is entering a market already served by Glam Media Inc. and iVillage, a unit of General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal. It is Yahoo’s first site aimed at a single demographic, although other Yahoo sites like Finance and Sports already draw specific audiences.

So far, Crest Whitestrips looks like the largest (showing 2 advertisements on the home page).

The MacBook Air Is Less Than An Inch Thick 

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at Macworld Tuesday, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it’s opened. At its beefiest, the new computer is .76 inches thick; at its thinnest, it’s .16 inches, he said. It comes standard with an 80- gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.

The new laptop, which has a 13.3-inch screen and full-sized laptop keyboard, will cost $1,799 when it goes on sale in two weeks.

For Only $320 Million, An Airbus Can Be Yours (Customized Furnishing Not Included)

 Singapore Airlines new Airbus 380 “Superjumbo” has just completed its maiden commercial flight and there are already plans to transform the world’s largest passenger plane into the pinnacle of private luxury — an executive jet.  Two European companies — Germany’s Lufthansa Technik and Switzerland’s Jet Aviation — have announced their intention to convert the enormous airliner into a flying mansion replete with private bedrooms, a movie theater, and a gym fitted with saunas and jacuzzis.

Rumors swept the European media in September that Lufthansa Technik, a subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, had received an order for a VIP-configured A380 from Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Experts say only national governments and very few of the super wealthy can afford massive price tags that come with the higher category, such as a Boeing 767 that is three times the size of an average executive jet.

Lufthansa Technik already has drawn up a general design for a customized luxury A380 interior. A rendering of the layout provides the owner with two spacious private bedrooms on the upper deck, separated from a reception area with plush sofas and a wood and brass bar next to the central stairway. The private quarters allow for maximum comfort and convenience. A master bedroom includes an office, private dining room, dressing room, a fully fitted bathroom and a gym featuring both a steam bath and exercise machines. You can practically disappear for years living on that thing.

 Singapore Airlines better have a strong cleaner for those love stains.

Luxury cabins will return to the skies this month with the launch of a new ’super-first’ class on the Airbus A380 double decker. Singapore Airlines, which took delivery of the first of 19 A380s in Toulouse today, revealed that the planes will have 12 private suites for its top paying passengers.  

Each suite contains a leather seat and a full-sized bed with mattress. Unlike many airline ‘flat beds’ no part of the seat converts into the bed. The bed will be made up by cabin crew with Givenchy-designed duvets and cushions. The two middle suites can be converted into doubles for couples. Entertainment is provided through a 23-inch flat-screen TV, with a choice of 100 films and 180 TV programmes, and 700 CDs. Notice there’s no roof over this suite. People will be able to “peek” over the top. Mile high club and voyeurs galore.!

You can’t kill an electric car you can’t catch

Tesla Motors is a car company that’s both decades ahead of its time, and a year behind schedule. Soon, it will become clear which is more important to Tesla’s long-term future, and the future of the disruptive ideas the company represents. For those who somehow missed the blizzard of publicity that has swirled around this company for the past 18 months or so, Tesla (www.teslamotors.com) is a Silicon Valley start-up, bankrolled by some of the same people who brought you the Internet boom of the late 1990s. The company’s stated ambition is to develop over the next several years a full array of electric cars. Many influential leaders of Silicon Valley’s “clean tech” green-technology movement see Tesla as an icon of the broader effort to make big money by unshackling the U.S. economy from petroleum.

Tesla’s first model will be a $98,000 electric roadster, developed around the architecture of a Lotus Elise, that uses 6,831 lithium-ion batteries similar to those used in laptop computers, a patented electric-motor system, and a highly sophisticated package of controllers and software to deliver an exotically attractive car that zaps from standstill to 60 miles per hour in under four seconds and can travel up to 245 miles on a single charge. Tesla isn’t planning any traditional advertising, but if it did, one slogan could be: “You can’t kill an electric car you can’t catch.”

Tesla recently told potential customers that it can no longer guarantee delivery of 2008 models. Newcomers to the waiting list might well get 2009s. Tesla’s Big Idea was to start with an electric car that appeals to the id, not the superego. From the start, co-founder Martin Eberhard says he wanted a car that could outrun a Porsche in a 0-60 trial, and would go 250 miles on a charge. The production Roadster will hit the under four-second target for the 0-60 dash, and will get very close to the original goal on range.

Tesla so far has raised $105 million from venture-capital firms and Chairman Elon Musk, the PayPal founder who was a ground floor investor. That’s a lot for a tech startup, but it’s chump change in the auto industry, where car programs with century-old, conventional technology can easily cost $500 million to $1 billion.

How did they pick the name Tesla? Tesla is named for Nikola Tesla, the godfather of alternating current and radio who nonetheless died poor, in part because his weirdness wound up obscuring his genius. In recent years, Tesla has become a patron saint of Silicon Valley.

Honda Makes Stylish Attempt With Hybrid CR-Z

Hybrids can be muscular and stylish, too. That’s the message Honda hopes to send at this month’s Tokyo auto show with its new gas-electric hybrid sports car CR-Z. The vehicle has maintained “the essence of the sports car” while still delivering good mileage and less pollution, he said.

Hybrid vehicles tend to be bulkier than sleek sports cars because of the size and complexity of the hybrid systems, which include a battery, motor, engine, converter and other parts. They’re usually not known for their torque, acceleration, handling and innovative design. The CR-Z comes with a new hybrid system developed by Honda whose breakthroughs allowed designers to get around such restrictions to achieve its lean cutting-edge look. The model will be on display at the biannual Tokyo Motor Show, which opens to the public Oct. 27 in the Tokyo suburb of Chiba.