The good oil: Like the real thing

Carmaker Volkswagen, internet company Google and California graphics specialist nVidia are working on a 3D satellite-navigation system they describe as more "real looking than anything available today". Driver and passenger will be able to instinctively recognise where they are in relation to the surrounding topography.

By the book

A city guide intended as a bible for taxi drivers in Edinburgh, Scotland, has proved to be a runaway hit with global readers. Edinburgh taxi driver Bob McCulloch's My Fare City tracks the history of the Scottish capital and tourists and local residents are snapping it up. "I wrote it with taxi drivers in mind so there are lots of sound bites about places they can reel off." said McCulloch. "Other drivers have been really impressed, although I'm not sure whether it is the content that impressed them or the fact I wrote a book."

Park Appeal

Take a few leggy California blondes, throw in a passion for luxury cars, plenty of parties and a distaste for parking your own vehicle and what have you got? A multimillion-dollar, female valet parking business, where struggling models and actresses dressed in bikinis, mini-skirts or lingerie park the cars of the rich and famous in L.A. Beverly Hills-based Girls Valet Parking opened for business about six months ago and has already taken over a rival company and announced plans for expansion. "Given the option of hiring acne-riddled teenage boys in red vests, or beautiful and sexy models and actresses trained in safety and hospitality, we're betting our success that [clients] will prefer the latter," company founder Brad Saltzman said. Sales are expected to rise to US$14 million ($20.5 million) by 2010.

Fuel for thought

US President George W. Bush followed up his State of the Union message about developing new technology to help ease Americans' "addiction" to oil with a similar speech in Nashville. He told his audience: "Let me talk about cars, and one area where we can achieve a lot of independence. We use a lot of foreign oil in our automobiles, and we drive a lot. But it seems like to me, if you recognise the fact that being dependent upon oil is a problem for the long term, then why don't we figure out how to drive our cars using a different type of fuel?"

We are the world

Three men who stole a car in California were arrested days later trying to break back into it. They told police, who stopped to find out what they were doing, that they had locked the keys inside. Police later found the keys in one of the men's pockets.

* Florida man Landon McQuilkin, 21, is awaiting trial after he allowed the man he had abducted and allegedly threatened to kill a last request: to visit his girlfriend before he died. McQuilkin waited in his car while his victim went in to the woman's house and called police.