The Mitsuoka Orochi is a Japanese sports car which takes its name from the mythical Yamata no Orochi 8-headed Japanese dragon.
The Orochi was originally built in 2001 as a concept on a Honda NSX chassis for the 2001 Tokyo Motor Show. Mitsuoka then kept revising the car, showing a new version in 2005 and displayed, at the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show, the Orochi Nude-Top Roadster.
In October 2006, Mitsuoka officially launched the production version of the Orochi, now powered by a 3.3 litre 230 hp (172 kW) Toyota 3MZ-FE V6 engine. Production will be limited to 400 units over the next four years at a cost of around ¥10,500,000 (around $89,000 USD).
On January 30, 2008, Mitsuoka Motors announced that they will be producing 20 limited Orochi Zero models. They will be a pre-order release, handed to consumers in June. They said limiting stuff such as making the model available in only one colour, the cost will be around ¥9,340,000, which is cheaper than the original Orochi models.
Founded in July 2006, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging site that allows users to post their latest updates. Twitter allows users to post text updates ("tweets") of up to 140 characters via SMS, instant messaging, email, Twitter’s website and third party applications. Users have their own profile page that displays their latest updates. In addition, users can become “friends” with one another, or simply be a “follower.” Other than reading another person’s profile page, a user can also receive others’ updates through text messages, RSS or third party applications.
Twitter itself is a free service, though users may have to pay text messaging charges to their phone carrier.
A relative new comer to the world wide web, recent statistics show they are gaining in popularity, for example:
March 2008
Total Users: 1+ million
Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/day
The service was started by Obvious Corp, who also started Odeo. In April 2008 Twitter launched Twitter Japan in partnership with Digital Garage.
You can find out more and sign-up at the Twitter.com website.
