Internet News Record
Edition
Three strikes for Obama Diplomats pressing Iran for word on
— at the bowling alley 3 Americans (AP)
By Patricia Zengerle (Front Row
Washington)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 1:53:22 PM
President Barack Obama may be
struggling to boost a weak economy
and push through healthcare reform,
but he is making undisputed progress
in one area — he’s raised his
bowling score from an embarrassing
37 — out of a possible 300 — to a
144.
The athletic U.S. 47-year-
old, known as an enthusiastic
basketball player , scored one of his
presidential race’s few missteps last
year during a campaign stop in
Pennsylvania when he tried bowling
and posted the 37, a result far below
the respectable range.
So it seemed surprising when his
press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said
Obama, who turns 48 on Tuesday,
had included some bowling in his
birthday celebrations with friends
during the weekend at the Camp
David presidential retreat.
It was even more surprising when
Gibbs insisted that Obama had rolled
an eminently respectable 144, almost
quadrupling his score during the ill-
fated campaign stop. “I watched the
last four throws: three strikes and a
nine. I’m just saying,” Gibbs told an
incredulous White House press
corps. “I told the president, ‘Look if
you’d have done this in
Pennsylvania, my life would have
been a little easier last spring.’”
That awkward performance at a
sport strongly identified with the
U.S. working class was mocked by
Obama’s critics as a sign that the
candidate, a former law professor and
graduate of two of the country’s most
elite universities, could not relate to
regular Americans.
Obama has said since that he has
been practicing his bowling. And
Gibbs insisted the higher score was
accurate. “The bowling happened
right in front of me,” he said.
Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young
03/08/09 - 04/08/09
(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 3:40:46 AM
SAN FRANCISCO – Family
members of the three Americans
being held in Iran after they
apparently illegally crossed the
border from Iraq said they are
concerned for the safety of the group.
Friends and family say freelance
journalist Shane Bauer, his girlfriend,
Sarah Shourd, and a third
companion, Joshua Fattal, were
adventuresome travelers who
accidentally stumbled into the wrong
place at the wrong time on Friday.
"All we care about is the well-being
of Josh and his two hiker friends,"
Fattal's father, Jacob, told reporters
on Monday.
The status of three had been
unknown early Tuesday, despite
efforts by Swiss diplomats to obtain
details from the Iranian Foreign
Minister.
The Arabic language Al-Alam,
however, quoted the deputy governor
of Iran's Kurdistan province later
Tuesday as saying the American
hikers were being held on the
outskirts of Marivan district while an
investigation was conducted. Iraj
Hassanzadeh said the hikers were not
being interrogated.
Bauer's mother, Cindy Hickey of
Pine City, Minn., and Shourd's
mother, Nora Shourd, on Monday
said they hoped the three would be
allowed to safely leave Iran. Also
LibertyNewsprint.com U.S.
Monday, Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton appealed to Iran for
information.
Pacific News Service Executive
Director Sandy Close, who hired
Bauer to cover the elections in
northern Iraq's self-ruled Kurdish
region, said she does not believe the
freelance journalist ever intended to
go to neighboring Iran.
In an e-mail, Bauer told Close he
wanted to "feel out the situation (in
Kurdistan) and get some ideas for
deeper stories."
"Kurdistan is the big story in Iraq
now," Bauer wrote in the e-mail
provided to The Associated Press.
"I'm off to Kurdistan ... "
Close said Bauer sent her e-mails
on Monday and Wednesday, then
went backpacking with Shourd in a
popular tourist area renowned for its
scenery. It was unclear how the two
met up with Fattal. Close said Bauer
wouldn't have deliberately tried to
enter Iran.
A Kurdish official in Iraq has said
the three contacted a colleague to say
they had entered Iran by mistake on
Friday and were surrounded by
troops. Iran's state television later
said the Americans were arrested
after they did not heed warnings from
Iranian border guards.
Bauer and Shourd, both graduates
of the University of California,
Berkeley, had been living in the San
Francisco Bay area. Shourd has
written for a number of online
publications, including Brave New
Traveler. She has also has taught
English.
Ross Borden, founder of an online
travel magazine that includes Brave
New Traveler, described Shourd as
"very professional. She wrote a great
story for us."
"She's obviously a professional
traveler, as you can see by her latest
adventure, going hiking in Iraq," he
said. "Not many people go hiking in
Iraq."
Fattal spent three years recently
living with a group dedicated to
sustainable farming near Cottage
Grove, Ore. He lived with about nine
others and worked as the group's
intern coordinator before leaving
about eight months ago, according to
Jason Brown, who now holds Fattal's
job.
From January to June, Fattal
traveled overseas as a teaching
assistant with the International
Honors Program, visiting
Switzerland, India, South Africa and
China on a global ecology program.
Fattal had been a student in the
program during college, president
Joan Tiffany said.
___
Also contributing to this story were
Patrick Condon in Minneapolis and
Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia.
Michelle Locke reported from
Berkeley, Calif.
2 Politics/ Top News/
McCain opposes former rival’s first Supreme Court nominee
By Thomas Ferraro (Front Row
Washington)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 1:52:22 PM
Nine months after losing the U.S.
presidential election to Democrat
Barack Obama, Republican John
McCain is still taking center stage to
voice disagreement with his former
U.S. Senate colleague.
On Monday, McCain announced in
a Senate speech that he would vote
against Obama’s first U.S. Supreme
Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, a
federal judge for the past 17 years.
7 North Carolina terror suspects due in court (AP)
(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)
“She is an immensely qualified
candidate,” McCain conceded.
But he added: “I do not believe that
she shares my belief in judicial
restraint.”
Echoing the concerns of a number
of Senate Republican leaders,
McCain complained she has ruled
based not strictly by the law but also
personal beliefs.
Despite a wall of Republican
opposition, Sotomayor seems
virtually certain to be confirmed this
week by the Democratic-led Senate.
The American Bar Association
mr.darcy1 buzzed up: With milk
prices low, more Vermont dairies
gave Sotomayor its top rating, she
has been supported by a number of
law enforcement groups, and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, which often
sides with Republicans, urged the
Senate to confirm her, saying her
record shows that she would be fair
to business.
McCain said he monitored
Sotomayor’s testimony at her Senate
confirmation hearing last month. He
said liked what he heard, but didn’t
necessarily believe it.
“She clearly stated that ‘as a judge,
I don’t make law.’ While I applaud
close
4 hours ago 2009-08-04T02:57:43-
this statement, it does not reflect her
record as an appellate court judge.”
“As an appellate court judge, Judge
Sotomayor has been overturned by
the Supreme Court six times,”
McCain said.
McCain lost to Obama after issuing
countless warnings about the now
popular president. He put out another
warning on Monday — this one to
fellow lawmakers.
“The American people will be
watching this week when the Senate
votes on Judge Sotomayor’s
nomination. She is a judge who has
07:00
Internet News Record
forsworn judicial activism in her
confirmation hearings, but who has a
long record of it,” McCain said.
“If she uses her lifetime
appointment on the bench as a perch
to remake law in her own image of
justice, I expect that Americans will
hold us senators accountable,”
McCain said.
Photo credit: REUTERS/Kevin
Lamarque (Obama and McCain talk
at a recent meeting)
Internet News Record
Bill Clinton meets N Korea leader
(BBC News | Americas | World
Edition)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:26:02 AM
Please turn on JavaScript. Media
requires JavaScript to play.
Bill Clinton was given flowers on
his arrival in Pyongyang
Former US President Bill Clinton
has met North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il during an unannounced visit
to the country, state media have
announced.
Mr Clinton is in Pyongyang to
discuss the fate of jailed US
journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.
He is the highest-profile American
to visit since his secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, in 2000.
Analysts say Mr Clinton may also
try to ease the deadlock over the
North's nuclear ambitions.
The Korean Central News Agency
(KCNA) said that Mr Clinton had
"courteously" conveyed a verbal
message from US President Barack
Obama, although the White House
said that Mr Clinton had not carried a
message from Mr Obama.
According to North Korea's official
state media, Kim Jong-il hosted a
dinner for the former US president,
before the two men exchanged what
is described as a "broad range of
opinion".
Face-to-face time with the North
Korean leader is extremely rare for
Western politicians, and granting the
opportunity to Bill Clinton could be a
sign that he is going to be given what
he came for, the release of two
American journalists.
Mr Clinton is also reported to have
delivered a verbal message from
President Obama, but the White
House is remaining very tight lipped.
It says the case of the journalists
must remain separate from wider
political issues.
Washington made no
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announcement of Mr Clinton's trip
prior to his arrival, but in a later
statement stressed that this was a
private visit.
"While this solely private mission to
secure the release of two Americans
is on the ground, we will have no
comment," White House spokesman
Robert Gibbs told reporters.
"We do not want to jeopardise the
success of former President Clinton's
mission."
The secrecy surrounding this trip is
a sign of its sensitive nature,
according to the BBC's
correspondent in Seoul, John
Sudworth - as well as the fact that
this is a gamble by Washington.
The last visit to North Korea by a
former American president - Jimmy
Carter in 1994 - led to an important
step forward in relations between the
two countries, and Mr Clinton may
be hoping his trip could have the
same effect.
But some analysts question the
wisdom of such a high-profile visit
so soon after North Korea conducted
a string of nuclear and missile tests in
defiance of the UN Security Council
- saying it may be seen by
Pyongyang as a reward for bad
behaviour.
Mr Clinton landed in Pyongyang in
an unmarked plane and was greeted
at the airport by North Korean
officials, including chief nuclear
negotiator Kim Kye-gwan and Yang
Hyong-sop, vice president of
parliament.
As he stepped down from the
plane, a little girl came forward to
present him with a bouquet of
flowers.
'Entering negotiations'
No official itinerary for the visit
Top News/ Business/
has been announced.
There had been speculation that Mr
Clinton might see leader Kim Jong-il,
whom analysts say is eager to
improve relations with Washington
as he prepares to name a successor.
Mr Kim is thought to have suffered
a stroke a year ago, and also has
chronic diabetes and heart disease.
Analysts say his third son is already
being lined up to take over power
one day.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee were
found guilty of entering North Korea
illegally across the Chinese border in
March, and sentenced to 12 years'
hard labour.
They were arrested by North
Korean guards while filming a video
about refugees for California-based
internet broadcaster Current TV.
According to KCNA, the two
reporters have admitted entering the
3
country illegally.
But the women's families have
always claimed that Lee, 36, and
Ling, 32, had no intention of crossing
into North Korea.
They fear the two reporters may
become political pawns in
negotiations between Washington
and Pyongyang.
Last month US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton requested an amnesty
for the women asking that they be
allowed to return home.
Former releases
This is not the first time a senior
US statesman has gone to North
Korea to negotiate for the release of
American citizens.
In 1994, then-congressman Bill
Richardson - now governor of New
Mexico - helped negotiate the release
of Bobby Hall, one of two pilots of a
US army helicopter shot down after
straying into North Korea.
Two years later he negotiated the
release of Evan Hunziker, who was
detained on suspicion of spying after
swimming the Yalu river border.
Critics say that Mr Clinton's trip -
coming so soon after North Korea
launched a nuclear test - will be
exploited for maximum propaganda
value by Pyongyang.
Although Bill Clinton's arrival was
covered by North Korea's evening
television news, it was not until after
apparently more newsworthy items,
such as the improving quality
standards at a biscuit factory, our
correspondent in Seoul says.
What do you hope Bill Clinton's
mission will achieve? Send us your
views.
The BBC may edit your comments
and not all emails will be published.
Your comments may be published on
any BBC media worldwide.
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4 Top News/ Gadgets/
Jobs trump fears of terrorists in Michigan town
(AP)
(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 6:37:37 PM
STANDISH, Mich. – To many
people struggling in this job-starved
part of rural Michigan,
unemployment is a bigger threat than
terrorists.
With unemployment at more than
17 percent, many residents say they
would welcome detainees from
Guantanamo Bay in order to save the
280 jobs at a prison scheduled to
close because of state budget cuts.
"We'll take the most dangerous
prisoners the world has to offer if we
have to," corrections officer Paul
Piche said Monday.
The Standish Maximum
Correctional Facility and the military
penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth,
Kan., are possible locations for a
heavily guarded site to hold the 229
suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and
foreign fighters now jailed at the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp in
Cuba, senior U.S. officials say.
In Kansas, the prospect of
incarcerating terrorist was met with
dismay. Some officials and residents
said the foreign detainees would
make the area a security risk.
"This is a bad idea on a hurry-up,
artificial timeline," said Sen. Sam
Brownback, a Republican. "They
should be treated with dignity and
humanely, but not here."
Gov. Mark Parkinson said he
opposed the move because Fort
Leavenworth's facilities did not meet
security requirements, not because of
Rumor: Olympus E-P2 coming by year’s end, to have viewfinder
By Matt Burns (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:30:11 AM
The retrotastic Olympus E-P1
launched last month with much
fanfare. (not pictured above) It turned
out to be an alright camera as Peter
a "xenophobic fear of foreign
prisoners." Parkinson, a Democrat,
also said it would harm the local
economy by requiring increased
security along the Missouri River, a
railroad line and the local airport.
The reaction was far more positive
in Michigan, where signs outside
many businesses and even a Catholic
church bear the message: "Save
Standish Max."
"Anything that keeps the prison
open is fine with me," said Perry
Pelton, owner of Wheeler's
Restaurant on Main Street.
A third-generation resident of the
area, 48-year-old Pelton said he lived
less than 2 miles from the prison and
wasn't worried about the
Guantanamo inmates escaping. The
facility is surrounded by a 16-foot-
high double chain link fence with
razor-ribbon wire. There are five gun
towers, and armed guards constantly
patrol the perimeter in a vehicle.
"No one's ever gotten out of there,"
he said. "They've got a 19-year track
record since that place opened, and
they'd probably have even tighter
security if we get these al-Qaida
people."
The prison holds about 600 inmates
and is the top employer in the
community about 145 miles
northwest of Detroit.
Piche was among half a dozen
employees protesting Monday
against plans to close the prison.
They held signs calling for the recall
of Democratic Gov. Jennifer
Granholm and other messages such
found out. You may want to hold off
buying one just yet though. There
might be another version coming
soon if this rumor is correct.
Photo Rumors is reporting that in
the latest issue of Chasseur d’Images,
an Olympus spokesman revealed that
as "Save Our Town."
Granholm's office said in a
statement that the governor
"continues to have concerns about
the homeland security implications of
relocating Guantanamo detainees to
Michigan" and "is not in favor of
moving detainees to Michigan" until
the federal government addresses the
concerns.
At the Standish prison,
administrative assistant Rebecca
Bailey said the news of Guantanamo
prisoners "caught us off guard. We
don't have any information about it."
Michigan officials have sought
other out-of-state prisoners to keep
the prison open. Granholm sent a
letter in June to California Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger formally
offering to take for a fee some of
the Golden State's prison inmates.
That proposal is still on the table.
Outside a local hardware store,
however, demolition worker Dan
Drouillard said he didn't want
suspected terrorists in the
neighborhood.
"If they don't bring them here, we
won't have to worry about them,"
said Drouillard, 59. "Send them back
to their own country and let them
take care of them."
That was more similar to the
reaction in Kansas, where people
worried about the safety of the
community.
"These people are a lot more
dangerous than anybody we have
here," said Leavenworth resident
A.C. Byrd, a retired Army
the E-P2 should launch by the end of
noncommissioned officer. "Their
mission is to kill Americans and
anyone who disagrees with them."
Resident Gladys Rivard said there
were "soft targets" such as schools
and soldier-family housing that
would be at risk.
Supporters in Michigan said the
possibility of retaliatory terrorist
attacks seemed remote.
"What would terrorists blow up in
Standish? We're not exactly a big
target," said Elyse Sanford, 23, a
hairdresser at a salon near the prison.
Local officials have previously
suggested to Michigan's
congressional delegation that
Guantanamo detainees be sent to
Standish, City Manager Michael J.
Moran III said.
Aside from providing employment,
the prison covers about 25 percent of
the municipal budget with payments
for water and sewer service, Moran
said. It also provides customers for
local businesses.
Moran said he'd heard little
reaction from townspeople but
expected most would support the
idea.
"If anybody did escape, they'd have
a surprise," he said. "We're a
community of hunters. Just about
everybody has guns."
___
Associated Press Writers John
Milburn in Leavenworth, Kan., and
David Eggert in Lansing, Mich.,
contributed to this report.
the year. Plus, said camera is to sport
a viewfinder, which is something that
the pocket E-P1 lacks. Hopefully the
second incarnation sticks with the
throwback digs but ups the photo
taking capabilities a bit. Oh, and no
dead pixels this time.
Internet News Record
US cyber-
security tsar
steps down
(BBC News | Americas | World
Edition)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 2:24:09 AM
The White House's acting cyber-
security tsar has resigned from her
post, according to the Wall Street
Journal.
Melissa Hathaway told the paper
she was leaving for "personal
reasons" and would return to the
private sector.
The former strategist was
appointed as acting national cyber-
adviser in February and was expected
to be offered the post of full time.
President Barack Obama has said
that cyber-security is a high priority
for his administration.
In May, the President announced
plans for securing American
computer networks against cyber
attacks.
In recent years, US government
and military bodies have reported
attempts to infiltrate systems by
hackers.
He announced the creation of a
cyber-security office in the White
House, and said he would personally
appoint a "cyber-tsar".
Ms Hathaway was widely regarded
as the person to fill that post after
taking on the role as acting senior
director for cyberspace for the
National Security and Homeland
Security Councils in February.
In April she completed a review of
cyber-security for the Obama
administration.
At the time, Ms Hathaway said the
job ahead was "a marathon, not a
sprint."
Her successor has not yet been
named by the White House.
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Internet News Record
Police: Dad fatally shoots daughter,
foster dad (AP)
(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:20:25 AM
DYERSBURG, Tenn. – Neighbors
in Tennessee are asking why a
teenage girl fatally shot by her father
was placed with a foster family just
two doors down after he was accused
of abusing her.
Christopher Milburn, 34, killed the
15-year-old and her foster father and
wounded her foster mother before
taking his own life Sunday,
authorities said.
Neighbor Frank Hipps said
Milburn was good friends with Todd
Randolph, the 46-year-old foster
father, and had worked for him in the
past. Hipps, who had known both
men for about eight years, said he
didn't know the details of the abuse
allegations but questioned why the
girl had been placed so close.
"That kid shouldn't have been in
that house," he said. "This might
have been preventable if she had
been placed with foster parents out of
the community."
Neither police in Dyersburg, in
northwestern Tennessee, nor child
services agency spokesman Rob
Johnson would elaborate on the
abuse allegations other than to say
the investigation began last week.
The girl, whose name was not
Video: Demo of Nikon’s S1000pj projector camera
By Matt Burns (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:11:53 AM
Okay, so Nikon’s S1000pj just
launched a few hours ago and I think
we all want to see how it’s going to
work. We’ll have a hands-on shortly,
but here is the official Nikon video
that demonstrates the camera clearly.
Inside Alaska's Answer to Area 51
By Noah Schachtman (Wired
Top Stories)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:00:00 PM
Deep in the forest northeast of
released, had been staying with Todd
and Susan Randolph while the state
Department of Children's Services
investigated, Dyersburg Police Capt.
Steve Isbell said. Susan Randolph,
the girl's foster mother, was released
from a Memphis hospital Monday.
Frank Hipps' wife, Tammy, said the
15-year-old was Milburn's daughter
by a previous relationship. He was
married and the couple had two
younger daughters. The girl's mother
was living out of state and police
were waiting for her to arrive before
releasing the girl's name, Isbell said.
Police found the teenager and Todd
Randolph dead at the Randolph home
and Milburn about a block away,
dead of a self-inflicted gunshot
wound.
Charles Wootton, 71, who lives
across the street from the Randolphs,
said he heard five pops. He looked
out the window and saw Randolph on
the ground near the mailbox.
"My wife opened the door and
walked out and seen the blood. That's
when I called 911," he said.
Wootton said neighbors started to
gather at the Randolphs' house and a
nurse performed CPR on Todd
Randolph, who had been shot
through the neck. Wootton said when
he first looked at Susan Randolph, he
thought she was dead, too.
We just hope that the room doesn’t
have to be pitch black inorder for it
to work. Interstingly enough, the
Anchorage is a military facility that
its military scientists insist does
"She told me who did it," Wootton
said.
The Randolphs have two young
children who were at their
grandparents' house during the
shootings, Wootton said.
Wootton had moved to the
neighborhood about two weeks ago,
and Todd Randolph had mowed his
yard several times.
"The people around here are just
about the friendliest you've ever
met," said Wootton. "I don't know
what happened to that guy."
Isbell said Milburn had no criminal
record in Dyersburg, a city of
approximately 18,000 people about
70 miles northeast of Memphis.
Tammy Hipps said Milburn
worked as a counselor at the
McDowell Center for Children,
which helps at-risk and troubled
children.
The shootings came just over two
weeks after Jacob Levi Shaffer of
Fayetteville, a small Tennessee town
near the Alabama border about 70
miles west of Chattanooga, was
accused of fatally stabbing his
estranged wife, three members of her
family and a neighbor boy to death
on July 18. He also is accused of
beating an acquaintance to death in
nearby Huntsville, Ala.
French version of the video shows a
cream colored S1000pj along with
the matte black model we’re getting
here in the States. It makes you
wonder why we don’t have the color
option here.
nothing having military applications.
What's going on up there, then?
Top News/ Gadgets/ *
Missing Alaska cruise
ship passenger
identified (AP)
(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 11:29:38 PM
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The
woman believed to have fallen
overboard from a cruise ship into
frigid Alaska waters was 45-year-old
Amber Malkuch of Washington state,
Alaska State Troopers said late
Monday.
Malkuch was reported missing by a
traveling companion Monday
morning when the Holland America
ship Zaandam was in Glacier Bay
National Park, about 75 miles
northwest of Juneau. She was last
seen hours earlier after she ordered
room service, when the vessel was
near Alaska's Douglas Island.
A woman's body was found
Monday afternoon after a massive
search but troopers spokeswoman
Beth Ipsen said that body hasn't been
positively identified. However, Coast
Guard Lt. Nathaniel Johnson in
Juneau said Monday night his agency
has suspended its search.
Malkuch was traveling on a seven-
day cruise that left Seattle on Friday.
State troopers planned to meet the
cruise ship when it docks Tuesday in
Sitka, Ipsen said, adding they would
be talking to the woman's companion
and anyone else who could help
explain how she disappeared off the
vessel.
The body was taken to Juneau for
positive identification. Ipsen said an
autopsy would be standard
procedure.
The crew of a commercial
helicopter operated by Ketchikan-
5
based TEMSCO Helicopters that was
helping in the search found the body
at about 4:30 p.m. Monday on the
west side of Douglas Island. That's
about 12 miles northwest of where
the passenger was last seen, Chief
Petty Officer Dana Warr said.
Warr said there was no immediate
sign of foul play or indication that
any of the Zaandam's survival gear
was missing.
Footage from the ship's security
cameras will likely be reviewed,
Warr said, adding much remains
unknown about the circumstances of
the disappearance.
Seattle-based Holland America
Line said in a statement that the
woman was reported missing at
about 9 a.m. Monday by the person
she was sharing a room with. Warr
said it was unclear why that person
didn't report her missing earlier.
Holland America spokeswoman
Sally Andrews did not return several
calls late Monday seeking additional
information, including confirmation
of Malkuch's hometown.
Ipsen said she did not have a
hometown for the missing woman.
The 780-foot-long Zaandam has a
capacity for about 1,430 passengers
and 600 crew members.
Monday's search, which included a
Coast Guard helicopter, focused on a
vast region surrounding Douglas
Island and the national park, which
are 80 miles apart, Warr said. The
glacier-fed waters in the area are 57
degrees.
6 Top News/ Gadgets/ *
Canada probes child
driver video
(BBC News | Americas | World
Edition)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:01:08 AM
Canadian police say they have
begun investigating a video showing
a seven-year-old boy driving a car
along a dirt road while his father
films him.
The video, which Canadian media
told Quebec police about, was posted
on the video-sharing site YouTube
but the date and location of the
events are unknown.
The man films from the front
passenger seat, while a woman and
two children sit in the back, media
reports say.
Police said a Crown prosecutor
would decide about possible charges.
Canadian reports said none of the
people in the car were wearing
seatbelts.
The video showed the boy sitting
on the edge of the seat as a man
identified as his father gave him
encouragement, CBC website
reported.
At 40km/h (25mph) the man says:
Canada on alert as BC fires burn
(BBC News | Americas | World
Edition)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:53:26 AM
Much of British Columbia in
western Canada remains on high alert
as high temperatures and winds
continue to stoke widespread forest
fires.
Some 5,300 people have fled the
latest fires as thousands of
firefighters try to tackle the flames.
Some 800 extra personnel have
been brought in from other parts of
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/nikon-crams-projector-into-compact-camera/
By Charlie Sorrel (Wired Top
Stories)
"It's a little bit fast." When the boy
reaches 70km/h (43.5mph) he laughs
and says: "He's rolling, he's rolling",
the broadcaster reported.
'Smile for the camera'
The man identifies the child as
Samuel from the North Shore and
tells him to "smile for the camera".
The Montreal Gazette said the
footage was shot on a rainy day with
the Honda CRV's windscreen wipers
going.
Police had opened an investigation
after seeing the footage, CBC quoted
Sgt Chantal Mackels as saying.
Sgt Mackels said she was "very
hopeful" that police would determine
the family's identity, although police
were not presuming that the man and
woman were the children's parents,
the Montreal Gazette reported.
A charge of dangerous driving was
unlikely as the driver was underage
and not legally responsible. Other
charges could be applied to the adults
in the car, she said.
Print Sponsor
Canada to help exhausted fire crews.
Since April, more than 2,000 fires
have burned 63,000 hectares
(155,700 acres) in British Columbia,
officials say.
"We're crossing our fingers for rain
but it looks like it will continue to be
warm and dry," British Columbia
Fire Service spokeswoman Alyson
Couch told the AFP news agency.
Ms Couch said the combination of
hot weather and lightning had
produced extreme conditions.
"This is one of our most challenging
Nikon announces the S1000pj, and
along with a nice, big 2.7” screen, a
12.1 megapixel sensor, there’s a
Uribe to tour region over
US pact
(BBC News | Americas | World
Edition)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 6:47:34 PM
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe
is to tour other South American
countries concerned about plans to
increase the US military presence in
Colombia.
Bogota said he would visit this
week Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru
and was planning trips to three other
nations.
Venezuela has expressed alarm at
plans to relocate US anti-drug forces
to bases in Colombia, and Brazilian
officials also say they are concerned.
The US-Colombian deal is
expected to be signed later this
month.
While the final details of the
document have yet to be published, it
seems a 10-year agreement will be
signed allowing US troops, aircraft
and naval vessels access to at least
four Colombian bases, the BBC's
Jeremy McDermott in Colombia
years ever and it's not over," she said.
August is traditionally a fire-prone
month.
Some 2,300 people had to leave the
town of Lillooet, some 213km (132
miles) north-east of Vancouver, as a
fire burned on nearby Mount
McLean.
Officials said on Monday there had
been little progress in tackling a fire
on Terrace Mountain near West
Kelowna, AFP reported.
Print Sponsor
VGA projector inside.
says.
However, there is very little
practical change to the US presence
in Colombia, which has been a fact
of life since 1999 and the launch of
the US anti-narcotics strategy known
as Plan Colombia, our correspondent
says.
He adds that there is no change to
the number of troops that can be
stationed in the country: a maximum
of 800 soldiers and 600 defence
contractors.
Washington's main base was, until
17 July, at Manta in Ecuador but US
troops were asked to leave by
President Rafael Correa after the
lease expired and was not renewed.
In a separate development,
Washington has announced that US
National Security Adviser James
Jones will visit Brazil to discuss a
number of issues of "mutual
concern".
Print Sponsor
Ashlee Simpson-Wentz
Says Jessica Staying
Strong After Breakup
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:57:00 AM
Ashlee Simpson-Wentz talks about
big sis Jessica after her breakup with
Tony Romo.
"I don't think I've ever known
anybody stronger than her," Ashlee
tells Us magazine. "My sister is
amazing. I spend so much time with
her."
The new mommy is back to work
and promoting her new TV series,
"Melrose Place." The actress and
singer is trying to find a balance
between work and family with 8-
month-old son Bronx and hubby Pete
Wentz.
Internet News Record
Microsoft's big new
Xbox update makes
some game installs
much, much smaller
By Tim Stevens (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:56:00 AM
The ability to optionally install
games on the Xbox 360's hard drive
is something we've been jazzed about
for some time, because while the
machine's DVD drive isn't terribly
slow, it isn't terribly quiet either --
and who has time for progress bars?
However, those of us still rocking
older, 20GB machines quickly
discovered that the 6-plus GB install
files of some games put a real hurtin'
on what little disk space we had left,
leaving us to choose between
reducing load-times while exploring
the Urban Wasteland or deleting all
those random demos we keep
forgetting about. Microsoft has a
solution, and this time it's not a
moderately less expensive new hard
drive. Included in the upcoming
Xbox 360 dashboard update, due one
week from today, is a previously
unmentioned feature that shrinks
those game installs, sometimes by a
huge margin. King of Fighters XII
went from 3.4GB down to 703MB,
while Raiden Fighters Aces is now
just 484MB. Any of you early bird
previewers finding other titles that
have trimmed the fat?
Filed under: Gaming
Microsoft's big new Xbox update
makes some game installs much,
much smaller originally appeared on
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Internet News Record
The future of fabrication is here: Shapeways
announces stainless steel printing
By John Biggs (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:40:51 AM
Sure you’re not going to make a
Hatori Hanzo sword - yet - but
Shapeways, a 3D fabrication service,
has just announced stainless steel
printing, allowing you to make steel
objects as easily as you would made
resin or plastic prototypes. That’s
right: something that took our ancient
ancestors generations to perfect is
now available to anyone with a
CAD/CAM program and some Red
Bull.
First, the press info:
Innovation Takes the Stage with
Metal 3D printing for modelers and
creatives
Shapeways offers 3D Printing in
Stainless Steel
SIGGRAPH (August 4, 2009) —
Many 3D modelers have found their
way to Shapeways to bring their
personal designs to life by using 3D
printing. Until now the materials
were limited to different kind of
polymers. Today Shapeways
becomes the world’s first company
offering 3D printing in stainless steel
for everyone.
Technique
This is a completely new technique
which deposits stainless steel powder
in a very thin layer, combining it
with a binding material. Printed
objects are built up like this, layer by
layer, gradually creating the form just
as you designed it on the computer
screen. When complete, they are
infused with bronze and cured in an
oven. After cooling, the models can
be left in the original steel finish or
tumbled to get a great polished look.
So, as you see, the objects aren’t
carved in steel like Terminator parts.
Instead they are made of layered steel
powder. This would allow you to
build heavy-duty items including
jewelery and, dare I say it, car parts.
The possibilities, in a sense, are
endless.
That said we’re proud to announce
that one lucky commenter will
receive a stainless steel item of their
choice. This could include items
from the website or a small object
you design yourself. Leave your
email in comments below and we’ll
pick one winner at random on Friday
at noon Eastern.
Gadgets/ 7
Altek crams a dozen
megapixels of wishful
thinking into T8680
cameraphone
By Tim Stevens (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:27:00 AM
There once was a time when a 12
megapixel cameraphone would have
been laughed at, and, though many
are still smirking (guilty), they're
now a reality-- a reality that Altek
wants desperately to be a part of with
its T8680 handset. Its face looks
rather like a PMP with a 3-inch
WQVGA LCD, but on the back is the
standard sort of 3x pop-out zoom that
you'd expect on a compact shooter,
sitting next to a tiny xenon flash. It'll
capture unnecessarily high resolution
images while being crippled to VGA
video, play back MP3 and AAC files,
and tune into the Weekly Top 40
over FM. Yes, it'll even make calls,
but with only tri-band GSM/EDGE
support don't expect to e-mail those
gigantic pictures directly from the
phone. The T8680 is expected to hit
Chinese retailers in about a month for
3000 yuan (about $440), and
probably won't be making much of
an appearance elsewhere.
[Via GSM Arena]
Filed under: Cellphones, Digital
Cameras
Altek crams a dozen megapixels of
wishful thinking into T8680
cameraphone originally appeared on
Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
09:27:00 EST. Please see our terms
for use of feeds. Read| Permalink|
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8 Gadgets/
Netflix rumored to be Palm's ad agency "loves
bringing Watch Instantly to that you're creeped out"
iPhones, skepticism advised by new TV spots
By Chris Ziegler (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:44:00 AM
Multichannel News is passing on
word from "an industry executive
familiar with Netflix's plans" that the
company is prepping an app for the
iPhone and iPod touch (not to
mention the Wii, which we've heard
before) that would let users enjoy
their Watch Instantly queues from
the comfort of the small screen --
likely restricted to WiFi, of course,
because the mere thought of trying to
stream a movie over a saturated 3G
network is about as brutal as
fingernails on a chalkboard. It's a
cute rumor; the overlap in Netflix
and iPhone owner demographics has
to number in the hundreds of
thousands, so it's easy to understand
why the thought of catching up on
Friday Night Lights on the road
would go over well with the
populace.
A couple problems here, though:
first off, Watch Instantly doesn't store
content locally, which means you've
got to maintain an internet
connection to enjoy the show.
Assuming the no-3G thing panned
out -- and rest assured, it would --
who wants to be stuck in a coffee
shop for hours on end because you
want to finish out a movie you've
started? Secondly, if there's one thing
Apple loves, it's maintaining control
of the media ecosystem; we'll see hell
freeze over before we'll see Watch
Instantly on Apple TV, so why
would the iPhone be any different?
Of course, there's nothing stopping
Netflix from creating a Watch
Instantly app, but getting it into the
App Store is another matter
altogether -- and barring some wild
FCC ruling, we're not seeing Apple
letting that happen.
[Via Electronista]
Filed under: Cellphones,
Handhelds, Portable Video
Netflix rumored to be bringing
Watch Instantly to iPhones,
skepticism advised originally
appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04
Aug 2009 06:44:00 EST. Please see
our terms for use of feeds. Read|
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By Joshua Topolsky (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:48:00 AM
Advertising Age has taken a deep
dive into Palm's latest string of
unsettling, polarizing ads -- you
know, the ones with the girl-- in an
attempt to explain the company's
intention with the creepy spots. The
industry paper spoke with Gary
Koepke, the co-founder and
executive creative director at
Modernista, the company which
developed and produced the short
clips. According to Gary, he's happy
that viewers find the commercials
upsetting, stating that "The Pre is
probably being talked about more
than other phones right now because
of the marketing and advertising, and
that's a good thing. Could the ads
work harder to show exactly how the
phone works? Yes, but we knew it
would be polarizing people to have a
woman not shout at them and tell an
interesting story." Apparently the
agency is taking its own stab at
Microsoft's Seinfeld / Bill Gates
strategy, which means viewers don't
necessarily have to like (or even
understand) the ads... as long as they
keep talking about them. Of course,
that game plan may work for a
company like Microsoft, which
arguably has nothing to lose if they
run a few ill-received spots. Palm, on
the other hand, won't get a second
chance to make a first impression
with a lot of people, and since its
fortune is currently riding on the
device these ads attempt to sell to
consumers, it's a pretty risky
proposition. C'mon, how could the
folks that brought you the Foleo be
wrong?
Continue reading Palm's ad agency
"loves that you're creeped out" by
new TV spots
Filed under: Cellphones
Palm's ad agency "loves that you're
creeped out" by new TV spots
originally appeared on Engadget on
Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:48:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
Internet News Record
NVIDIA clings
desperately to XP with
the DirectX10-hating
ION LE chipset
By Tim Stevens (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:21:00 AM
Anything that makes our netbooks,
nettops, and smartphones into
slightly less mediocre video
performers is okay in our book, so
we're fond of NVIDIA's ION
platform and are looking forward to
finding out exactly what the
company has up its sleeve for ION 2.
We weren't, however, expecting an
even cheaper revision of the chipset,
but that's exactly what's been
announced this morning. NVIDIA is
creating ION LE, a sibling of the
existing ION that does everything its
big sister can do except support
DirectX 10. The idea, of course, is to
lower costs while providing all the
functionality XP-packing netbooks
and nettops need, but as Windows 7
sits at home getting made up for its
débutante party we have to wonder
just how much longer Microsoft's old
faithful will be on the market -- and
how much longer DX9 will be
relevant.
[Via SlashGear]
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
NVIDIA clings desperately to XP
with the DirectX10-hating ION LE
chipset originally appeared on
Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
08:21:00 EST. Please see our terms
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Internet News Record
Kensington rolls out iPod dock with extended battery, clock
and weather app, notebook sleeve and stand combo
By Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:00:23 AM
Kensington’s rolling out some new
accessories today, a couple for the
iPhone/iPod and a couple laptop
stands. The two iPod devices are
pretty interesting. First, the
“Charging Dock with Mini Battery
Pack for iPhone and iPod” is pretty
much exactly like it sounds.
It’s a charging USB dock (shown
above) with an included on-the-go
emergency battery that charges in
tandem with your Apple device. The
Microsoft's Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000: ready for Windows 7, just like
your haggard Vista PC
By Paul Miller (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:24:00 AM
Microsoft has, against all odds,
managed to stuff comfort and
wireless into its new Wireless
Comfort Desktop 5000 keyboard and
mouse set. Beyond the usual
improvements to design (and some
Kensington's iPhone / iPod charging dock throws a mini
battery into the mix
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:17:00 AM
At this point, you've probably
assumed that there's simply no way
any company can produce yet
another iPhone or iPod dock that's
significantly different from the
legions of alternatives already out.
And you're wrong. So wrong. In an
effort to milk that Made for iPod /
iPhone partnership for all it's worth,
battery pack is apparently good for
up to 30 hours of music playback, 6
hours of video, or 3 hours of talk
time. It’s available for pre-order with
a suggested retail price of $70, which
seems a tad on the expensive side.
Retailers may sell it for cheaper,
though.
Charging Dock with Mini Battery
Pack for iPhone and iPod
Next, this “Nightstand Charging
Dock for iPhone” is a pretty simple
idea that turns your iPhone or iPod
touch into an alarm clock with
weather info. The charging apparatus
nice new soft touch materials), the
setup includes some Windows 7
optimizations, particularly the
Taskbar Favorites keys for instant
access to corresponding taskbar items
from a row of hotkeys (think your
number row in World of Warcraft,
Mr. Gnome Rogue), along with a
Windows Flip button on the mouse
Kensington has just introduced its
Charging Dock with Mini Battery
Pack, which not only charges your
dock connecting iPod or iPhone, but
also energizes an external battery
pack through the same USB cable.
When you leave, you'll depart with a
charged device as well as a charged
battery pack in case you need to use
3G services for more than eight
minutes. Brilliant, no? It's up for pre-
order now for $69.99.
holds your device in place
horizontally and features big clock
numbers along with weather info in
and keyboard, and Device Stage
[Via iPodNN]
Filed under: Cellphones,
Peripherals, Portable Audio, Portable
the lower left corner. Click the
weather icon and you’ll get a full five
-day forecast. The app itself, called
Kensington Rise&Shine is available
for free from the App Store, while
the charging dock is available for pre
-order with a suggested price of $40.
Rise&Shine, Nightstand Charging
Dock
Finally, we’ve got a couple laptop
docks. First, the “TwoFold Notebook
Stand” is a flat-folding notebook
stand. “Stores flat, then sets up in a
snap,” says Kensington. It’ll cost
around $20 — available for preorder.
support for checking out and setting
up your fancy Microsoft hardware in
glorious detail. The mouse is a
BlueTrack-powered affair, and both
devices hook up to the computer
wirelessly through an included
2.4GHz transceiver. The pair will be
out later this month for $80.
Filed under: Peripherals, Wireless
Video
Kensington's iPhone / iPod
charging dock throws a mini battery
into the mix originally appeared on
Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
07:17:00 EST. Please see our terms
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Gadgets/ * 9
Then, take the same stand and build
a protective notebook sleeve around
it and you’ve got the “TwoFold
Notebook Stand and Sleeve” for $40.
It’s a transforming, flat-folding
notebook stand that doubles as a
protective sleeve for your laptop.
That’s actually not a bad idea at all.
TwoFold Notebook Stand and
Sleeve
Microsoft's Wireless Comfort
Desktop 5000: ready for Windows 7,
just like your haggard Vista PC
originally appeared on Engadget on
Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:24:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments
Lawyer: Katherine
Jackson 'Very Pleased'
With Outcome in Court
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:45:00 AM
Katherine Jackson's attorney,
Londell McMillan, is telling ET what
the mother of the late pop icon thinks
of Monday's court proceedings.
"Mrs. Jackson and family are very
pleased with the outcome in court
today," McMillan tells ET.
Katherine Jackson on Monday was
granted permanent guardianship of
her son Michael Jackson's three
children.
10 Gadgets/ Tech Musings/
Brando tests the limits of
consumer behavior with
folding credit card light bulb
By Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:30:43 AM
I’d love to be a fly on the wall
during one of Brando’s product
development sessions. This product,
for instance, is a folding credit card-
sized “light bulb” that appears to be
nothing more than a little LED
shining upward against some sort of
translucent plastic.
Mr. Brando: What do we have
cooking in the “things that fit in your
wallet category?”
Engineer: Well, not much. Johnson
came up with this stupid idea last
weekend at, like, 3AM when we
iPhone users: This virtual girlfriend will never leave you (video)
By Serkan Toto (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:20:37 AM
There is a number of Tamagotchi-
style apps for the iPhone out there,
were all shitfaced. Get this — it’s a
light bulb that folds down and fits in
your wallet. Except it’s not really a
light bulb, it’s just a dumb plastic
doohickey that–
Mr. Brando: Say no more. I want
this to hit the assembly lines
immediately. Alert CrunchGear.
Doug Aamoth will post anything!
Perfect for… I have no idea. I can’t
imagine this thing being all that
bright. For $10, though, you get what
you pay for. Plus some odd looks
every time you pull it out of your
wallet.
Credit Card Light Bulb[Brando]
but now Tokyo-based Xtone gives us
Amamiya Momo, a virtual catgirl
girlfriend that lives in your iPhone,
speaks to you and expresses
emotions (there are English subs for
Toshiba announces world’s first
64GB SDXC memory card
By Serkan Toto (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:00:46 AM
After unveiling the first 16 GB
microSDHC memory card back in
October 2008, Toshiba today
announced the world’s first 64GB
SDXC memory card, which also
boasts the fastest data transfer rate
out there. The card has a top write
speed of 35Mbps and a read speed of
60Mbps, enough for handling a
2.4GB video file in 70 seconds.
Toshiba plans to ship the first
samples of the new card to OEM
Rebooting the News #19
(Scripting News)
when she speaks Japanese). You can
partners in November, followed by
general sales starting sometime in
spring 2010. In theory, an SDXC
memory card (a next-generation SD
card) is even able to store 2TB
(SDHC maxes out at 32GB).
Around that time, the company also
aims at launching a new SDHC
cards, a 16GB and a 32GB model.
Both versions feature a write speed
of 35Mbps and a read speed of
60Mbps. They are expected to go on
sale in spring 2010.
Show notes.
MP3.
use the GPS function in your iPhone
to let Momo know when you're home
and when you're out. She will act
cuter in the first case and can be quite
cold in the latter. Even though Momo
Internet News Record
Toshiba's capacious
64GB SDXC card
sampling this December,
thrilling next Spring
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:49:00 AM
Mmm, storage. With megapixels on
the rise and the storage ceiling
nowhere in sight, Toshiba has joined
the likes of Panasonic and Pretec in
announcing an SDXC card of its very
own. The 64GB device is expected to
begin sampling this December, and if
all goes well, it should begin pulling
in 35MBps write and 60MBps read
rates en masse early next year. In
related news, a 16GB and 32GB
SDHC card from the company
should also hit store shelves early in
2010, but really, who's interested in
that?
Filed under: Storage
Toshiba's capacious 64GB SDXC
card sampling this December,
thrilling next Spring originally
appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04
Aug 2009 07:49:00 EST. Please see
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Feed.
doesn't want to be touched, you can
pat her head, touch her cheek and
even try to look under her skirt.
Internet News Record
Unifying by Logitech is a
proprietary system we can get
behind
By Matt Burns (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:52:45 AM
Now this just makes sense. Instead
of having a receiver for every USB
wireless device, Logitech managed to
stuff the right goods into its Unifying
receiver. This little guy can pair with
up to six Unifying-compatible
Logitech mice and keyboards at the
same time, just like Bluetooth
peripherals have been able to for
Ancestry.com goes for the IPO
money tree
By Tom Taulli (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:30:00 AM
Filed under: Bank of America
(BAC), Morgan Stanley (MS), Initial
public offerings Ancestry.com has
done something that many sites have
failed to do -- it built a thriving
subscription business. In fact, the site
has nearly one million paying
subscribers.
Capitalizing on things,
Ancestry.com has now filed to go
public and the offering should hit the
markets within a couple months.
ages. The first device should be
picked up by Windows and each
device after that just needs to be
added through the Unifying software
pack.
Four products are launching to help
get the Unifying party started:
Wireless Keyboard K350, Wireless
Keyboard K340, Marathon Mouse
M705, and Wireless Mouse M505.
Expect the whole set to launch in
September staring at $49.99.
Based on the financials and the
steady growth rates investors are
likely to eat up the shares.
Continue reading Ancestry.com
goes for the IPO money tree
Ancestry.com goes for the IPO
money tree originally appeared on
BloggingStocks on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our
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Cramer on BloggingStocks:
Private deals for regional
banks would be a mistake
By Jim Cramer (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:00:00 AM
Filed under: Market matters,
JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of
America (BAC), Barclays plc ADS
(BCS), Wells Fargo (WFC), Cramer
on BloggingStocks From
TheStreet.com Network
• UBS Posts Third Straight
Quarterly Loss
• California Bank Failures Cost $15
Billion
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says
existing players would give better
deals to the taxpayers here.
If the FDIC is poised to split banks
to lure buyers, which is the headline
from last week's papers, the buyers
worth luring are not only the
NewAlliance s (NYSE: NAL) (
Cramer's Take) and the First Niagara
s (NASDAQ: FNFG) ( Cramer's
Take) but also Chinese banks and
HSBC(NYSE: HBC) ( Cramer's
Take) and Barclays(NYSE: BCS) (
Cramer's Take), both of which
reported great quarters yesterday.
We keep focusing on these private-
equity entrees that need to be
intrigued to get in. I say to heck with
them. That's nonsense. We need deep
-pocketed existing banks that want to
be bigger in the United States, not
more handouts to private-equity
firms that then bring them public in
our faces and make a ton of money
off us. We need ones that know how
to run banks and know how to
Malaria Jumped From Chimpanzees to Humans
By Hadley Leggett (Wired Top
Stories)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 2:00:00 PM
Newly discovered strains of
chimpanzee malaria suggest that the
Gadgets/ Business/ *
compete against the new colossuses
like Bank of America(NYSE: BAC) (
Cramer's Take), JPMorgan(NYSE:
JPM) ( Cramer's Take) and Wells
Fargo(NYSE: WFC) ( Cramer's
Take).
Continue reading Cramer on
BloggingStocks: Private deals for
regional banks would be a mistake
Cramer on BloggingStocks: Private
deals for regional banks would be a
mistake originally appeared on
BloggingStocks on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds. Permalink|
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deadly human malaria parasite
jumped from chimps to humans in
the last 2 million years, instead of
evolving along with humans as was
thought.
11
Before the bell:
Stock futures lower
as bulls take a break
By Melly Alazraki
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:32:00 AM
Filed under: Before the bell,
International markets, Earnings
reports, Indices, Market matters,
Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM),
Economic data, Kraft Foods'A'
(KFT), Oil U.S. stock futures
declined Tuesday morning as it
seems bulls were content to rest up
and take some profit after reaching
certain levels the day before.
Monday was the first trading day in
August and following some very
positive news regarding
manufacturing from around the
globe, carmakers reported a strong
July thanks to the cash-for-clunkers
program. Not tired from the recent
gains in July spurred by a generally
better-than-expected earnings season,
investors continued to push stocks
higher with the S&P 500 index
reaching a level above 1,000 for the
first time since last November, and
the tech-heavy Nasdaq closing above
2,000 for a 1.5% gain for both.
Continue reading Before the bell:
Stock futures lower as bulls take a
break
Before the bell: Stock futures lower
as bulls take a break originally
appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue,
04 Aug 2009 07:32:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
12 Business/ Social Net/ *
Tyson Foods beats analyst
expectations by wide margin
By Steven Mallas
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:00:00 AM
Filed under: Earnings reports,
Tyson Foods'A' (TSN)
Tyson Foods(NYSE: TSN) really
improved its fortunes in Q3. Last
year at this time, Tyson earned 3
cents per share. This year, the food
company, famous for its chicken
brand, made 35 cents per share. Sales
actually dipped a little under 3%, but
management is diligently fighting the
good fight when it comes to
efficiencies. Both costs of sales and
selling, general and administrative
expenses went down.
According to Bloomberg, the
adjusted income of 33 cents per share
simply blazed past Wall Street's
expectations. The call was for 22
cents per share. You've got to like
that. Higher prices for poultry helped
Personal income fell in June --
biggest drop in four years
By Connie Madon
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:30:00 AM
Filed under: Bad news, Consumer
experience, Economic data, Personal
finance, Recession
If you are wondering why there
was no growth in the economy last
month, here are some reasons.
Personal income fell 1.3% in June.
We had a small kick to the upside
in May when the one-time stimulus
payments were used. May's gain was
1.4%. According to a Bloomberg
survey, incomes were predicted to
fall 1%. Now, all of that has
evaporated. The consumer is pretty
much tapped out again.
Continue reading Personal income
fell in June -- biggest drop in four
years
the quarter.
Continue reading Tyson Foods
beats analyst expectations by wide
margin
Tyson Foods beats analyst
expectations by wide margin
originally appeared on
BloggingStocks on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds. Read|
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Personal income fell in June --
biggest drop in four years originally
appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue,
04 Aug 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds. Read|
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Vulcan Materials: A logical
trade?
By Steven Mallas
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:00:00 AM
Filed under: Earnings reports,
Industry
Vulcan Materials(NYSE: VMC), a
maker of construction materials such
as cement and asphalt, announced Q2
earnings yesterday evening.
Although the company has a cool
name -- come on, who doesn't think
of Mr. Spock when reading about
Vulcan Materials -- there wasn't a
significant cool factor surrounding
the Q2 numbers. Net income from
continuing operations came in at 14
cents per share. The company made
$1.27 per share from continuing
businesses in the year-ago period.
Big drop, that is. Sales likewise
Options Update: Options contract
percentage totals by exchange
By Paul Foster (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:30:00 AM
Filed under: Options, NASDAQ
Options contract percentage totals
by exchange for July 31, 2009:
AMEX 8.49%, BOX 4.40%,
CBOE 30.67%, ISE 29.08%,
NASDAQ 2.70%, NYSE 9.94%,
PHLX 14.72%.
CBOE Volatility Index S&P 500
Options-VIX at 25.55; 10-day
The Album Is Dead, Long Live the App
By Eliot Van Buskirk (Wired Top
Stories)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:23:00 AM
In small but increasing numbers
artists are not only selling through
headed south: the company booked
revenues of roughly $722 million in
the second quarter. Vulcan Materials
had a top line of over $1 billion in
Q2 2008.
Continue reading Vulcan Materials:
A logical trade?
Vulcan Materials: A logical trade?
originally appeared on
BloggingStocks on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds. Read|
Permalink| Email this| Comments
moving average is 27.96.
Options Update is provided by
Stock Specialist Paul Foster of
theflyonthewall.com.
Options Update: Options contract
percentage totals by exchange
originally appeared on
BloggingStocks on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 08:30:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds. Permalink|
Email this| Comments
the iTunes music store but Apple's
app store. If this trend continues the
idea of buying a bundle of music
won’t die with the album — it will
survive with the app.
Internet News Record
Augmented Reality
Twitter is the
Coolest Thing Ever
By Pete Cashmore (Mashable!)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 3:45:38 AM
…but unfortunately not available in
the iPhone App Store just yet.
It all started last month with
TwittARound, an application for the
iPhone 3GS that uses the GPS,
compass and camera to show where
Tweets are coming from. As the
stunning video below shows, Tweets
are overlaid on the landscape,
augmenting your view of the world.
Twittaround hasn’t made it into the
iPhone App Store yet: the iPhone
SDK doesn’t provide public APIs for
manipulating live video. In other
words: the app is using parts of the
software that Apple hasn’t opened up
yet. Neither is there an unofficial
version of the code available at this
point, although there is an open letter
that begs Apple to open these parts of
the SDK. A New Player Enters the
Market
And yet augmented reality Twitter
apps may be coming to your phone
soon enough. Local Twitter search
provider Tweetmondo is teaming up
with augmented reality service Layar,
the company has announced on its
blog, bringing augmented reality
Tweets to phones running Google
Android. Later, they plan to bring the
service to iPhones. They’ve also
posted the video below demoing
Layar’s existing technology.
So while it’ll be awhile coming,
augmented reality Tweets might be
headed to a phone near you soon.
[ via Venturebeat] Reviews: Twitter
Tags: Augmented Reality, iphone,
twitter
Internet News Record
Green.view: Plucked from the depths Google CEO Quitting
(The Economist: Daily columns)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:14:22 AM
Green.view
Apple’s Board Not
Aug 3rd 2009
From Economist.com It is possibleEnough to Stop FTC
to prevent the collapse of commercial
fish stocks
BORIS WORM, a marine
biologist, has spent much of his
academic life studying fish. In 2006
he came to the depressing conclusion
that by 2048 the world’s commercial
fisheries would have collapsed. Fish
would no longer be on the menu. But
Dr Worm is no pessimist and on July
31st he published a more
encouraging piece of work in
Science. It suggests that, with proper
management, it ought to be possible
to rebuild the world’s fisheries.
Dr Worm, who works at Dalhousie
University in Nova Scotia, Canada,
conducted the study in collaboration
with Ray Hilborn of the University of
Washington, Seattle, who was a
ferocious critic of his initial analysis.
For two years the pair, along with 19
colleagues, gathered data from ten of
the world’s large fisheries. They
found a mixed picture, in which
some species were overfished in
some places and not in others.
What gave Dr Worm and Dr
Hilborn cause for hope was that, in
five of the ten fisheries, steps taken
to curb the damage were beginning to
pay off. They drew this conclusion
Demi Moore Twitter Picture Exceeds 800K Views
[Video]
By Pete Cashmore (Mashable!)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 2:33:51 AM
Top Twitter user Ashton Kutcher
isn’t just giving Twitter props in the
mainstream media: he’s also
inadvertently marketing Twitpic, the
popular Twitter photo posting
service.
On The Tonight Show with Conan
O’Brien last night, Kutcher spent
because exploitation rates (the
proportions of available fish caught)
in these areas were falling. The
researchers examined eight
management techniques used to
rebuild fisheries, including closing
certain areas to fishing, limiting the
catch permitted and restricting the
gear used to haul fish from the sea.
They concluded that although the
details varied with the local context,
a combination of catch quotas
coupled with strategic measures
aimed at specific species, such as
using certain types of fishing nets
whose shape and mesh size are
designed to catch only certain sorts
of fish, usually worked best.
The researchers also recommend
that the “maximum sustainable
yield”, an internationally agreed
measure of how much can be taken
from a fishery, should be thought of
as the upper limit on exploitation
rates rather than as a target. Their
analysis suggests that fishing a little
below this level is the most efficient
way of ensuring a sustainable
income.
The same issue of Science also
reports a second optimistic fisheries-
related study. This looked at the
restoration of oyster beds in
Chesapeake Bay, an inlet that lies
between Maryland and Virginia, in
the United States.
Previous attempts to boost the
numbers of native oysters in the bay
time discussing his Twitter addiction,
a Twitter-related dream about Barack
Obama, and the Twitpic he posted of
wife Demi Moore’s bikini-clad butt
in March.
Suffice to say, that tidbit has led to
by banning oyster fishing had proved
disappointing because the molluscs
failed to re-establish themselves.
However, Romuald Lipcius of the
College of William and Mary, in
Gloucester Point, Virginia, and his
colleagues, did succeed in boosting
the number of native oysters. In fact,
they report the largest restoration of
native oyster numbers anywhere in
the world.
The researchers constructed oyster
reefs in nine protected sanctuaries on
the Great Wicomico River, which
flows into Chesapeake Bay. Instead
of just piling the oysters up close to
the riverbed, as had been done in the
past, they built reefs of various
heights above the bed for them to
grow on. After three years, they
found five times as many oysters
living on reefs that stood high in the
water as were on the lower-lying
reefs. Altogether, there were 185m of
the molluscs. Dr Lipcius thus
suggests that creating high-standing
artificial reefs could help with
restoration projects elsewhere—and
the two groups of researchers
together have shown that it is
possible, if you try, to pluck both fish
and molluscs from the depths of
despair.
Back to top ^^ Readers' comments
The Economist welcomes your
views.
a reposting of the pic(not obscene,
but perhaps not ideal for workplace
viewing) to dozens of blogs today: in
total since March, it has racked up
820,000+ pageviews for the fledgling
image host.
Below, Ashton’s take on Twitter
and the cheeky Twitpic:
Reviews: Twitpic, Twitter
Tags: ashton kutcher, twitter
Economy/ Social Net/
By Ben Parr (Mashable!)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 7:56:47 PM
While the FCC’s investigation of
Apple’s rejection of the Google
Voice iPhone App has been making
big headlines the last few days,
another government investigation
into the two companies seems to be
slowing down (but not stopping):
The Federal Trade Commission’s
(FTC) interlocking directorates
probe.
For the last few months, the FTC
has been investigating whether Apple
and Google have been participating
in anti-competitive practices by
having Google’s CEO on Apple’s
board of directors. Considering
Google has several competing
products (Android, Google Chrome,
Chrome OS), it made some sense.
Now that Google’s CEO has
resigned from Apple’s board, you’d
think the investigation would be
over. Not so, according to the FTC.
They put out a statement earlier
today giving a thumbs-up to
Schmidt’s resignation but clearly
stating the investigation will
continue:
On August 3, 2009, Apple
announced that Eric E. Schmidt,
Chief Executive Officer of Google,
was stepping down from its board.
“We have been investigating the
Google/Apple interlocking
directorates issue for some time and
commend them for recognizing that
sharing directors raises competitive
issues, as Google and Apple
increasingly compete with each
other,” said Bureau of Competition
13
Director Richard Feinstein. “We will
continue to investigate remaining
interlocking directorates between the
companies.”
So why isn’t this case going away?
The answer’s simpler than you might
think: Google and Apple still share a
director: Arthur Levinson, the former
CEO of biotech giant Genentech.
Until he resigns from one of the two
boards, the investigation will
continue. Once he leaves though, it
would be difficult to justify charging
either company with any wrongdoing
retroactively. Expect Levinson to
leave one of the two boards in the
near future.
Besides, neither company was
really focusing on the FTC probe
anyway. Now it’s about the FCC
Google Voice investigation, where
they’re on opposite sides. The events
of the last few days are probably the
beginning of a new era of standing
on opposite ends for the two storied
giants. Reviews: Android, Google,
Google Chrome
Tags: apple, FTC, Google
14 Social Net/ *
HOW TO: Build Your Company’s
Profile on LinkedIn
By Adam Ostrow (Mashable!)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 3:21:12 PM
This post originally appeared on the
American Express OPEN Forum,
where Mashable regularly
contributes articles about leveraging
social media and technology in small
business.
LinkedIn, through its networking,
question and answer, and application
features (which I recently wrote
about on OPEN) is already a
powerful tool for maintaining and
establishing relationships in the
business world. But it can also be an
enormously valuable way to attract
top talent to your company,
especially if you use all of the
options available to you.
While posting a job to LinkedIn is
similar to any other job website –
adding details about the position,
skills, and requirements – where the
site separates itself is with company
profiles, allowing you to provide
potential candidates with a lot more
information about your company and
the people that work there. Here’s
how they work and how to set one
up:
1. To get started, go to the “
Companies” menu on LinkedIn.
From there, select “Add Company”.
2. Enter basic information about
your company, like its description,
number of employees, and industry it
operates in.
3. Follow LinkedIn’s wizard for
Clinton Portis Explains He's Not Gay
By Matt Snyder (FanHouse)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:30:00 AM
by Matt Snyder
Filed under: Redskins, NFC East
Earlier this past offseason (doesn't it
seem cool to say "this past
offseason?" Because the NFL season
creating your company profile –
you’ll be able to add a logo,
locations, and a feed for your
company blog.
Once you’ve completed LinkedIn’s
steps for getting setup, your company
profile will be available. Now is
where it gets interesting though. In
addition to showing off the basic
information you provided, LinkedIn
will pull in data about your company
from around the site.
So, for example, all of your job
listings will automatically show up
on your profile, along with links to
the profiles of all current employees,
former employees, new hires, and
recent promotions. LinkedIn also
does analysis of your company and
the connections that your employees
have on the network. For example, it
will automatically calculate your
company’s median age, top schools,
and other companies that they are
well-connected to.
As you can imagine, all of this
aggregate data about your company
gives potential candidates (as well as
is only a few weeks away!?), Clinton
Portis dyed his hair and facial hair
blond -- you can see pictures by
clicking through here. It's hardly
Earth-shattering news, but he did
look a bit odd.
Anyway, he's presently in Redskins
camp with his same old black hair
anyone else interested in your
company) a lot of information to dive
into and help determine if it might be
a good fit for them. And for you,
once it’s setup, it all happens
automatically as you and your
employees use LinkedIn, though you
can always make edits to your
company’s basic profile information.
LinkedIn recently also added a
premium product – Custom
Company Profiles– that lets you add
more features, like videos about your
company and positions, interactive
polls, and several customization
options for recruiting. These are
worth considering for larger
companies (they come at a price), but
for small businesses, a basic
LinkedIn company profile should be
enough to add lots of efficiency to
the recruiting process – both for
candidates and for you. More
business resources from Mashable:
- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for
Your Small Business
- 5 Business Models for Social
Media Startups
- Social Media for Business: The
Dos & Don’ts of Sharing
- 30+ Apps for Doing Business on
Facebook
Image courtesy of iStockphoto,
Yuri_arcurs Reviews: LinkedIn,
Mashable, iStockphoto
Tags: brand, business, how to,
linkedin, social networking
we've seen his entire career. Now, I
.Eco: The Domain
Extension for
Treehuggers
By Jennifer Van Grove
(Mashable!)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 7:06:25 PM
As far as top-level domains (TLDs)
are concerned, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers ( ICANN) has full control
over whether or not we see new
TLDs make it to the web. Most of us
are pretty content with the ones we
have, like .com, .edu, .net, .org, but
Dot Eco is trying to muster up
support and momentum for a new
TLD: .eco.
The organization has partnered
with former Vice President Al Gore,
the Sierra Club, and a number of
other notably green personalities and
organizations to create awareness for
their .eco environmental initiative.
The domain’s differentiating factor is
that 50% of profits generated by
domain registrations will be donated
to non-profits and environmental
causes.
Dot Eco plans to apply for the .eco
top level domain in the hopes of
giving non-profits free web
addresses, and allowing for-profits to
highlight their green efforts with
don't think anyone would say there's
anything wrong with dying hair. It's
not really my thing, but I'm not
nearly as cool as Clinton Portis. To
each his own. Of course, leave it to
Portis to say something awesome
when asked about his pretty
insignificant decision.
Internet News Record
their domain while supporting
environmental initiatives with
domain fees. To help them make
headway with ICANN, Dot Eco is
asking you to lend your support for
their domain campaign.
Arguments can be weighed for and
against new top level domains.
There’s certainly an active group of
people who believe that new
extensions, like .eco, will only
complicate the web. But, ICANN is
actively pursuing opening their
generic top-level domains program
(gTLDs), which could see a number
of new extensions get released in the
wild. And while we’re not positive
the .eco domain will solve the
world’s environmental issues, we
certainly see it as a potentially
positive way to raise funds and
support well-intentioned charities
and non-profits.
See Also: How Do You Do Good
for the Environment? #ecogood
Tags: al gore, dot eco, eco,
environment
Clinton Portis Explains He's Not
Gay originally appeared on Fanhouse
NFL Blog on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
10:30:00 EDT . Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Linking
Blogs| Comments
Internet News Record
Twitter Phones: When Mobile Apps Aren’t Enough
By Ben Parr (Mashable!)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:41:50 PM
Late last year, we covered the UK-
based INQ phone launch. While we
don’t cover too many mobile phone
launches, we became interested
because its primary function, beyond
phone calls, was social networking
and Facebook. While an iPhone or
Android device has the same
capabilities, the focus on social
media was somewhat unique.
That was only step one for INQ,
though. Today, the company is
following up their “Facebook Phone”
with the release of two 3G Twitter
phones. Yes, their main feature is
built-in Twitter functionality,
although its in-the-box integration
with Facebook, Skype, and iTunes
syncing aren’t shabby additions
either.
The two phones, the INQ Chat and
the INQ Mini, both feature INQ’s
social media application suite –
specifically Skype, Twitter,
Facebook, IM, and email. It’s also an
US Marines Banned From Social Media Sites
By Pete Cashmore (Mashable!)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:36:35 AM
The US Marines issued an order
Monday that bans social media sites
including Twitter, Facebook and
MySpace on its network.
The sites increase the risk of
sensitive information leaking out to
adversaries, the order explains.
The ban, which will last a year,
essentially rules out use of all public
social networks by Marines, unless a
mission-critical need exists. The fully
-capitalized document reads, in part:
THESE INTERNET SITES IN
GENERAL ARE A PROVEN
HAVEN FOR MALICIOUS
ACTORS AND CONTENT AND
ARE PARTICULARLY HIGH
upgrade from the INQ1, the original
Facebook Phone, which didn’t come
with a full keyboard or Twitter
integration.
Once again, these social media
phones are UK-only (but us
Americans still have the iPhone,
BlackBerry, Palm Pre, G1, and others
to choose from). Still, they’re
indicative of a big trend: mobile
social media. More and more users
are demanding these applications,
and companies like INQ are
delivering, even if pre-packaging
these apps in phones isn’t all that
revolutionary.
We wonder about the iTunes
syncing feature, though. Do they
have permission from Apple? Or will
the iTunes maker end up cutting off
INQ phones like they did to the Palm
Pre?
Anyway, if you’re a phone junkie,
we’re including the specs below:
INQ Chat:
- 114.5mm x 61.0mm x 12.8mm
- Widgets automatically push
Twitter and Facebook updates to the
RISK DUE TO INFORMATION
EXPOSURE, USER GENERATED
CONTENT AND TARGETING BY
ADVERSARIES. THE VERY
NATURE OF SNS CREATES A
LARGER ATTACK AND
EXPLOITATION WINDOW,
home screen
- Active address book is presence-
enabled showing live status from all
your contacts, letting you chose how
to contact them
- Built-in plug and play HSDPA
modem to give your PC wireless
broadband access
EXPOSES UNNECESSARY
I N F O R M A T I O N T O
ADVERSARIES AND PROVIDES
AN EASY CONDUIT FOR
INFORMATION LEAKAGE THAT
PUTS OPSEC, COMSEC,
PERSONNEL AND THE MCEN AT
- 2.4 QVGA TFT landscape display
- 3.2 megapixel auto focus camera
- Built-in GPS
- 120MB memory, (expandable to
8GB)
- Brew 4.0 and Java MIDP 2.0 for
application development multitasking
supported by dedicated Switcher hard
AN ELEVATED RISK OF
COMPROMISE. EXAMPLES OF
INTERNET SNS SITES INCLUDE
FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, AND
TWITTER.
That’s not to say that the
Department of Defence is turning its
back on social media, however: a
new DOD site with social media
integration is expected to launch this
month, writes Wired. Meanwhile, the
Marine Corps Facebook page has
more than 75,000 fans.
For most Marines, however, such
sites will be off-limits from now on.
Reviews: Facebook, MySpace,
Twitter
Tags: marines, social media
Social Net/ * 15
key
INQ Mini:
- 102.9mm x 45.8mm x 12.8mm
- Active address book is presence-
enabled showing live status from all
your contacts, letting you chose how
to contact them
- Built-in plug and play HSDPA
modem to give your PC wireless
broadband access
- 2.2 QVGA TFT landscape display
- 2.0 megapixel camera
- 100Mb user memory (expandable
to 8GB)
- Brew 4.0 and Java MIDP 2.0 for
application development multitasking
supported by dedicated Switcher hard
key
Editor’s Note: This post was
originally embargoed until midnight
ET/9pm PT, but since it has already
been published elsewhere, we’ve
decided to run with it now. Reviews:
Android, Facebook, Skype, Twitter
Tags: INQ, Mobile 2.0, twitter
'The Next Food Network
Star''s Melissa Talks To
ET About Her Win
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 3:27:00 AM
Sunday night Melissa d'Arabian
beat out Jeffrey Saad to become "The
Next Food Network Star." Now she
talks to ET about her prize: her very
own Food Network TV show -- "Ten
Dollar Dinners with Melissa
d'Arabian."
ET: How surprised were you when
your name was called?
Melissa d'Arabian: You know
what? I always have to imagine the
success, so in my mind, I was clear
on why I really should win. But I tell
you, hearing my name, there is
nothing that could prepare me for
that. I was surprised in all the best
ways.
16 Social Net/ *
What the F**k Is Social PDFVue gets a new name, storage,
Media? Here’s an Answer tags
By Ben Parr (Mashable!)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 10:35:55 PM
If you’re a regular reader of
Mashable, you’re likely a firm
believer in the power of social media.
We’ve highlighted how the social
web can improve your career, aid
charitable causes, transform
businesses and even change the
world. In short, we’re convinced.
But what do you say to someone
who doesn’t get it? Maybe you have
a boss who thinks social branding a
waste of time or chatted with a friend
who doesn’t believe that Twitter can
help land her a great job. Maybe they
have no clue what social media even
is.
Last year, marketing director Marta
Kagan helped solve this problem
with her presentation What the F**k
is Social Media?. It was quickly a
social media hit for its wit and its
very convincing case for the raw
power of social media.
With the tremendous growth of
Twitter, Facebook, and blogging in
PayPal suffers from e-commerce outage
By Stephen Shankland
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 1:37:00 PM
PayPal suffered a global outage and
slow performance Monday, but eBay
said its online payment system is
mostly back in working order.
"About an hour ago, PayPal started
experiencing site issues that affected
the ability to send and receive
money. We have all hands on deck to
get this fixed," said PayPal
spokesman Anuj Nayar in a blog post
the last year though, Ms. Kagan
thought it was time for a sequel. We
couldn’t agree more. The stats she
cites and the savvy she employs in
What the F**k is Social Media: One
Year Later makes it a worthy
successor.
The next time you need to explain
the benefits of social media to
someone, just send them this post
and make sure they flip through the
entire presentation. Here it is:
Reviews: Facebook, Mashable,
Twitter
Tags: social media
about noon PDT. "We're really sorry
for the inconvenience."
An update at 12:40 p.m. said the
site was working again for most
users.
Nayar said in an interview the
outage was global and the worst of
the outage lasted about an hour total,
though the site wasn't fully recovered
just before 2 p.m. PDT.
$2,000 per second in transactions
The outage could be costly for
those who rely on PayPal to handle e
-commerce transactions. PayPal says
By Josh Lowensohn
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 12:24:00 PM
PDFVue, the online PDF viewing
and editing tool, has a new name, a
new look, and a handful of new
features.
We originally checked out the
service late last year and came away
impressed with its handy Firefox add
-on that let you read any PDF link in
its viewer, and tools for filling out
forms and annotating pages. Now
called DocQ, those things are mostly
unchanged. What's new, however, is
that you can now store, organize, and
share PDFs.
To help keep a handle on all your
files you can add tags as well as
organize them into "smart folders."
These are named folders you can
drag and drop your PDFs into. You
can then filter the ones you want to
see, just by clicking on the folder
name from the top menu. I couldn't
get the search to work, which is the
only way to make use of these
folders and any tags you've assigned.
DocQ's interface remains largely
about $2,000 in payments per second
flows through the system, meaning
that a one-hour outage would cut out
about $7.2 million in commerce.
Nayar declined to comment
immediately about whether sellers
would be compensated in any way or
unchanged since its PDFVue days.
You can still view PDFs and make
quick edits and annotations.(Credit:
CNET)
Another new feature is that you can
digitally sign documents. In DocQ's
integrated editor you can place
multiple signatures within a
document, then send it off to one or
more recipients. Then, whenever the
person (or people) on the other end
signs, they can send it back to your
DocQ in-box. The folks on the other
end don't need to sign up for the
service to use it, since a special log-
in is created from the invitation. For
now, the signature feature can only
work with one user, meaning each
person you send it to is seeing only
their signature. However, coming in
two weeks will be a way to have
multiple people sign off on the same
document.
For now, you can upload up to 10
how eBay handled such decisions in
the past.
As a key driver of growth for eBay,
PayPal is becoming more important
at the online commerce and auction
site.
"PayPal is a business that will be
bigger than eBay," eBay Chief
Executive John Donahoe said in July.
And through a developer release in
July of a new PayPal payment
system, eBay wants to refashion the
service to enable a new generation of
online commerce.
Internet News Record
PDFs at a time. Storage and file size
are unlimited, although that will
eventually change when it becomes a
paid service. There will then be caps
on how many files you're uploading,
and how big they are. DocQ's owner,
Docudesk, also plans to deeply
integrate it into the rest of its PDF-
editing software to let people upload
and share PDFs they've created.
I wouldn't recommend relying on
DocQ for business just yet. I ran into
a handful of slowdowns where I
couldn't get back to my list of files.
And without the search or tag sorting
working, it would have been
problematic if I had more files, and
wanted to access one in short order.
Still, two of the really great parts
about this service--editing and
annotations--continued to work very,
very well.
Related:
Customize PDFs online with these
tools
Other posts about PDFs
Originally posted at Web Crawler
PayPal's developer site said the
outage hit not just its Web page, but
also through PayPal's application
programming interface (API), which
lets applications use the service
without having to go through the
Web site. It first noted the problem at
10:41 a.m. PDT.
Updated with more details at 2:04
p.m. PDT.
Originally posted at News - Digital
Media
Internet News Record
Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans
Conspiracy Flames
By Noah Shachtman (Wired Top
Stories)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:00:00 PM
Todd Pedersen had to hustle— the
sky was scheduled to start glowing
soon, and he didn't want to miss it. It
was just before sunset, a cold
February evening in deep-woods
Alaska, and the broad-shouldered US
Air Force physicist was scrambling
across the snow in his orange down
parka and fur-lined bomber hat.
Grabbing cables and electronics, he
rushed to assemble a jury-rigged
telescope atop a crude wooden
platform.
The rig wasn't much, just a pair of
high-sensitivity cameras packed into
a dorm-room refrigerator and pointed
at a curved mirror reflecting a
panoramic view of the sky. Pedersen
had hoped to monitor the camera
feed from a relatively warm
bunkhouse nearby. But powdery
snow two feet deep made it difficult
to string cables back to the building.
As darkness closed in, Pedersen
tried to get the second imager
working—with no luck—and the first
one began snapping pictures. A few
minutes before seven, throbbing arcs
of green and red light began to form
on his monitor, eventually coalescing
into an egg shape. Other shards of
light shimmered, gathered into a
jagged ring, and spun around the oval
center. "This is really good stuff,"
Pedersen cooed. This wasn't just
another aurora borealis triggered by
solar winds; this one Pedersen made
himself. He did it with the High
Frequency Active Auroral Research
Program ( Haarp): a$250 million
facility with a 30-acre array of
antennas capable of spewing 3.6
megawatts of energy into the
mysterious plasma of the ionosphere.
Source: Darpa Budget Estimates
Bringing Haarp to fruition was,
well, complicated. A group of
scientists had to cozy up to a US
senator, cut deals with an oil
company, and convince the Pentagon
that the project might revolutionize
war. Oh, and along the way they
sparked enough conspiracy theories
to make the place sound like an arctic
Area 51.
But the shocking thing about Haarp
isn't that it's a boondoggle (it's
actually pretty worthwhile) or that it
was spawned by a military-industrial-
petrochemical-political complex (a
hallowed government tradition). It's
that, all too often, this is the way big
science gets done in the US.
Navigating the corridors of money
and power is simply what scientists
have to do.
In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi
received a simple radio signal sent
from across the Atlantic Ocean—dot-
dot-dot, again and again, the letter S
repeated in Morse code. Leading
scientists of the day had said such a
transmission was impossible: Earth's
surface is curved, and radio waves
travel in straight lines. The dots
should have shot out into space.
Instead, they traveled from Cornwall,
England, to a 500-foot antenna
Marconi hung from a kite in
Newfoundland. A previously
unknown, electromagnetically
charged layer of the atmosphere was
reflecting the signal back down to
earth.
At any given moment, the sun is
bombarding our planet with 170
billion megawatts of ultraviolet, x-
ray, and other radiation. Those waves
collide with atoms of air—nitrogen,
oxygen, and so on—stripping away
electrons like spring rain eroding a
snowbank. The result: positively
charged ions drifting free. At high
altitudes, those ions are far enough
apart that it can take hours for them
to bind with a free electron. Called
the ionosphere, these undulating
bands of charged particles stretch
from 50 to 500 miles above the
earth—too high for weather balloons
and, in large part, too low for
satellites. Researchers who study it
jokingly call it the ignorosphere.
For decades, researchers who
wanted to bother with the
ignorosphere did what Marconi had
done—they built an emitter, pointed
it straight up, and watched to see
what would happen next. Those
researchers learned that the
ionosphere contains plasma, charged
gas clouds that are more common in
stars than on Earth. They saw that
regions of the ionosphere expand and
contract depending on their position
over the planet, the tilt of Earth
toward the sun, and the time of day.
(At night, for instance, one of the
ionosphere's layers disappears
entirely.)
But by the 1980s, US atmospheric
radio science had dead-ended. "We
had become a very small field, and
we wanted to try to revive it," says
Konstant Papadopoulos, a plasma
and space physicist at the University
of Maryland. "We needed a modern
facility."
Papadopoulos, now a white-haired,
deeply tanned 70-year-old who goes
by the name Dennis, had worked on
and off with the government since he
left his native Athens in the 1960s.
He knew his way around the federal
science-funding machine. Many of
his fellow ionospherists had similar
experience swaying the folks with fat
wallets. So this loose band of radio
scientists began a campaign of
persuasion in support of a new
research center. "We'll sell it,"
Papadopoulos remembers thinking.
"We'll sell it in good faith, but we'll
sell it."
One of the first ideas came mid-
decade from Bernard Eastlund, a
physicist working for oil-and-gas
conglomerate Atlantic Richfield.
Arco had the rights to trillions of
cubic feet of natural gas under
Alaska's North Slope. The problem
had always been how to get that gas
to the port at Valdez. Eastlund had a
better idea: Use the gas onsite to fuel
a giant ionospheric heater. Such a
facility, he wrote in a series of
patents, could fry Soviet missiles in
midflight or maybe even nudge
cyclones and other extreme weather
toward enemies. That's right:
weaponized hurricanes.
Arco's executives presented the
idea to Simon Ramo, one of the
godfathers of the US intercontinental
ballistic missile program. Ramo
passed it on to the under secretary of
defense, who in turn gave it to the
Pentagon's advanced research arm,
Darpa, and the DOD's secretive
science advisory board, code-named
Jason. Tony Tether, director of
Darpa's strategic technology office,
gave Arco a contract to conduct a
feasibility study. Arco brought on
board none other than Dennis
Papadopoulos as a consultant.
Papadopoulos wasn't very
impressed. Eastlund's tricks wouldn't
work even if the site were in the right
place along Earth's magnetic
field—which it wasn't. But the ad
hoc coalition of radio scientists did
like the idea of setting up a new
heater in Alaska. In those upper
latitudes, the ionosphere intersects
with Earth's magnetic field and
becomes scientifically interesting.
* 17
Luckily, the senior senator from
Alaska, Ted Stevens, enjoyed a
reputation for inserting projects into
the federal budget to benefit his
home state, most notoriously a $223
million bridge from the town of
Ketchikan to, well, not much of
anyplace. In 1988, the researchers sat
down with Stevens and assured him
that an ionospheric heater would be a
bona fide scientific marvel and a
guaranteed job creator, and it could
be built for a mere $30 million. "He
provided some congressional money,
some pork money," Papadopoulos
says. "It was much less than the
bridge to nowhere." Just like that, the
Pentagon had $10 million for
ionospheric heater research.
Now the scientists had some startup
cash, but they also needed
hardware—and for that, they had to
enlist the military. In a series of
meetings in the winter of 1989-90,
the field's leading lights, including
Papadopoulos, pitched the Navy and
the Air Force. Haarp, they asserted,
could lead to "significant operational
capabilities." They'd build a giant
phased antenna array that would aim
a finely tuned beam of high-
frequency radio waves into the sky.
The beam would excite electrons in
the ionosphere, altering that spot's
conductivity and inducing it to emit
its own extremely low frequency
waves, which could theoretically
penetrate the earth's surface to reveal
hidden bunkers or be used to contact
deeply submerged submarines.
That last app caught the military's
attention. Communicating with subs
thousands of miles away, under
thousands of feet of ocean, requires
ultralow frequencies, and that
requires whomping-big antennas. To
do it, the Navy had built an array in
the upper Midwest that transmits its
signal through bedrock, but its
18
STRANGE
continued from page 17
construction required razing 84 miles'
worth of hundred-foot-wide path
through wilderness, including a
national forest. It drove local
environmentalists crazy. But who
would protest an ephemeral antenna
in the sky?
Of course, the scientists said, you'd
need a brand-new, state-of-the-art
ionospheric heater to see if any of
this was even feasible. The Pentagon
somewhat reluctantly went for
it—and began using Stevens'
earmarked cash to fund the
appropriate studies. Haap's array can
beam up to 3.6 megawatts of energy
into the sky.
Photo: Joao Canziani
In 1992, the Navy handed out a
$21.6 million contract. The deal
didn't go to an established
engineering outfit or defense firm. It
went, instead, to Arco, for which
Papadopoulos was a consultant.
For more than a year, planning
proceeded largely out of public view.
Then, in 1993, an Anchorage
teachers' union rep named Nick
Begich—son of one of Alaska's most
important political families—found a
notice about Haarp in the Australian
conspiracy magazine Nexus.
When Begich was 13, a Cessna
carrying his father, a Congressional
representative, disappeared. Neither
the plane nor its passengers were
ever recovered. Over the years,
Begich became obsessed with
uncovering mysteries. Between gigs
as a gemologist, miner, school
supervisor, and Chickaloon tribal
administrator, he regularly lectured
on government mind-control
technology. So you can imagine his
reaction when he began looking into
Haarp: the weather-control patents,
the Pentagon proposals for long-
range spying, the oil company
schemes. Senator Stevens had even
suggested that the ionosphere could
end our dependency on fossil fuels.
"At any time over Fairbanks,"
Stevens said on the Senate floor,
"there is more energy than there is in
the entire United States." Begich had
hit the conspiracy jackpot.
In 1995, he self-published a book,
Angels Don't Play This HAARP. It
sold 100,000 copies. He started
giving speeches on Haarp's dangers
everywhere, from UFO conventions
to the European Parliament. Marvel
Comics, Tom Clancy, and, of course,
The X-Files made the facility an
ominous feature of their narratives. A
Russian military journal warned that
blasting the ionosphere would trigger
a cascade of electrons that could flip
Earth's magnetic poles. "Simply
speaking, the planet will 'capsize,'" it
warned. The European Parliament
held hearings about Haarp; so did the
Alaska state legislature.
Begich told his audiences that
Haarp was a high-powered weapon
prototype. Forget spying
underground with low-frequency
waves—Haarp was so strong it could
trigger earthquakes. And by dumping
all those radio waves into the
ionosphere, Haarp could turn a miles-
wide portion of the upper atmosphere
into a giant lens. "The result will be
an absolutely catastrophic release of
pure energy," he wrote. "The sky
would literally appear to burn."
The military's response only amped
up the conspiracists. When program
managers swore that the facility
would "never be used for military
functions," Begich would trot out
military reports touting satellite-
blinding research plans or then-
secretary of defense William Cohen's
suggestion that " electromagnetic
waves" could alter the climate and
control earthquakes and volcanoes
remotely.
Begich's agitating didn't delay the
project too much. (Government
research projects slip deadlines and
bust budgets just fine on their own.)
But by 1999, when Haarp's first 48-
antenna array was finished, the
project's cost was on its way to
tripling the original feasibility study
estimate, and the military was getting
antsy. Sure, the initial experiments
had been scientifically impressive,
detecting ionization in the
atmosphere caused by a gamma ray
flare from a neutron star 23,000 light
-years away and finding bunkers 300
feet below the earth's surface. But the
Pentagon wanted to know when its
overpriced conspiracy-magnet would
produce that battle-ready technology
they'd been promised.
The Haarp team was caught in an
expectations trap. In theory, the
Pentagon should spend a lot of
money on basic research. That's how
you come up with the Internet and
stealth jets. But in practice, the
generals and Congress want science
that's useful now. Papadopoulos
understood this instinctively: You
have to sell it. Looking at the sleep
cycles of fruit flies? Why, that might
someday lead to indefatigable
supertroops! Building nanometer-
long hinges? You're developing
artificial muscles that could let
soldiers leap buildings! But it was
tough to make that kind of case for
Haarp. "It's like, I talk to my mom
and she says, 'When are you gonna
build something?'" says Craig
Selcher, Haarp program manager for
the Navy. "Mom," he answers, "I'm
trying to unlock the secrets of the
universe!"
So the ionospherists formed a panel
to find a new purpose for Haarp.
Tether, who funded the original Arco
studies and had consulted on the
project, was named chair.
Months later, the group had its
rationale, and it was ambitious to say
the least: post-nuclear space cleanup.
By the late '90s, Cold War fears had
been replaced by worries that a rogue
state could get a nuke. If Pyongyang
set off a bomb in orbit, it would fry
crucial satellites. Theoretically,
ultralow-frequency waves in the
ionosphere would knock the particles
out of their natural spin, sending
them tumbling down into the lower
atmosphere to be harmlessly
reabsorbed. The Pentagon loved the
idea. But it would need a lot of
testing—which could only be done at
Haarp. "You could actually see the
lightbulb flick on," says Ed Kennedy,
a former Haarp program manager.
"This was something Haarp could
actually help solve."
Haarp's Mission
The heart of the High Frequency
Active Auroral Research Program is
an ionospheric heater that shoots
electromagnetic energy into Earth's
atmosphere. Five generators pump
out 2.9 megawatts each; 180
antennas convert the electricity into
high-frequency radio waves and send
them into the ionosphere, which turns
them into low-frequency waves.
Why? Research. An energized
ionosphere could be used for all sorts
of cool stuff.
Communication
Haarp can bounce signals off the
ionosphere with wavelengths long
enough to penetrate deep into the
ocean and communicate with
submarines.
Protection
Researchers are testing whether
ionospheric waves could nudge H-
bomb-generated electrons out of the
magnetosphere, shielding orbiting
satellites.
Atmospheric Research
At about 125 miles up, Haarp's
waves can energize free electrons,
which collide with neutral atoms to
produce a glow like the aurora
borealis.
Surveillance
How low-frequency waves are
absorbed and reflected by the earth
can reveal what's
underneath—including hidden
bunkers.
Illustration: Rafael Macho
Of course, the facility would need
180 antennas and a lot more money.
But as the panel was winding down
in 2001, cash stopped being a
problem. Tether became head of
Darpa, taking charge of nearly $2
billion a year for research. He put
together a deal for the Air Force,
Navy, and his agency to fund Haarp's
construction—with some
congressional pork, of course. Again,
Arco's construction subsidiary (by
then renamed and sold to giant
Internet News Record
defense contractor BAE Systems)
was selected to handle most of the
hardware, a $35.4 million job that
would balloon to $118.5 million.
And Papadopoulos still had his
separate military funding for
ionospheric heating research. In a
field as small as radio science, it's
almost impossible to avoid such
overlap. By 2007, Haarp was running
at full strength. But it was still
mysterious. Neither the public nor
the press had been allowed inside
since the array became fully
operational.
The highway leading to Haarp dips
and rises like a sine wave. Two
hundred miles northeast of
Anchorage, the Tok Cutoff bobs over
the Gulkana and Gakona rivers, past
trailer homes and rusting pickups. A
black spruce forest stretches to a
volcanic peak on the horizon. Even
for Alaska, this is lonely land. At
mile 11.3, there's a junction with an
unmarked driveway. It ends at a gate
topped with spikes. “Warning,” a
sign announces, “US Air Force
installation. It is unlawful to enter
this area without permission of the
installation commander.”
Tomorrow, for one day only, the
military will grant the public access
to Haarp for the first time since 2007.
Today, I'm getting a sneak peek. I
say my name into a call box. The
gate draws to the left. Ahead, against
the slate-gray sky, resting on a small
hill surrounded by trees, is a
windowless six-story building:
Haarp's control and power center.
Inside, five 3,600-horsepower diesel-
electric generators, each powerful
enough to drive a locomotive,
produce the energy that Haarp
channels into the heavens.
Every few hundred yards along the
road, the forest is cleared and fenced
off into 150-square-foot plots. Each
contains instruments ranging from
enigmatic to just plain odd. Four
golden crosses are planted in one, to
help a radio receiver measure
Internet News Record
Chrome gives Google bookmark sync religion
again
By Stephen Shankland
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:00:00 AM
Google ditched its browser sync
plug-in for Firefox a year ago, but the
idea is resurfacing in Chrome in a
way that makes me think of
possibilities the technology could
hold for Chrome OS.
The company is preparing to build
a system to synchronize bookmarks
across different versions of Chrome,
Google's Tim Steele said in a mailing
list posting on Friday. Google
envisions extending the feature to
other data types, including
passwords, Steele and fellow
programmer Idan Avraham said in a
follow-up posting.
"We wanted to focus on bookmarks
and get it right first before we think
about other data types. We chose
bookmarks both because they are
generally the most important to users,
but also because they are the hardest
data type to sync," Avraham said.
Synchronizing bookmarks is a
fairly basic concept. The Xmarks
plug-in, formerly called Foxmarks,
has solved the issue for years on
Firefox, so users could move from a
work computer to a home computer
and still have their saved Web
addresses intact. Google had its own
though now extinct option, and now
Mozilla itself is building a plug-in
called Weave that synchronizes
bookmarks, passwords, tabs, and
other information. Yahoo's Delicious
service has been available for years
for people to store bookmarks
centrally in the cloud and to share
Kevin Costner Plans to Help Victims of Stage Collapse
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 12:12:00 AM
Kevin Costner says he hopes to
return to Alberta to help the victims
them with contacts as well.
So it's no surprise Google feels
compelled to add bookmark sync to
Chrome--especially given that the
company plans to use a person's
Google Account to save the list.
Google likes the idea of storing the
state of people's applications in the
cloud, even if they're relying on a
local computer's horsepower to run.
Bookmark sync will arrive
gradually; initially there won't be a
way to sync bookmarks using Google
Bookmarks service that can be used
directly or through Google's browser
toolbar, Steele said in another
message. "For the first release, we've
just focused on getting sync to work
between Chrome instances," Steele
said.
The synchronization feature may
be a basic utility, but Google sees it
as much more than just updating a
list of links. In fact, it chose to use
Google's own high-powered Google
Talk infrastructure to handle the
service, the design document states.
Essentially, that means browsers only
need to listen for broadcasts when a
change occurs rather than frequently
check in for them:
To make this sync infrastructure
scale to millions of users, we decided
to leverage existing XMPP-based
Google Talk servers to give us
"push" semantics, rather than only
depending on periodically polling for
updates. This means when a change
occurs on one Google Chrome client,
a part of the infrastructure effectively
sends a tiny XMPP message, like a
chat message, to other actively
connected clients telling them to
of the tragic stage collapse Saturday
in Canada that killed one person and
injured as many as 75, before a
planned performance by Costner and
his band Modern West.
sync.
To put that gain into perspective,
consider a three-minute polling
interval. Three minutes is far from
real time, or "immediately" as our
goal was stated. But already, at the
very least, every three minutes every
client needs to ask the server if
anything changed. Even with just one
thousand users, we're already talking
about a server having to handle a poll
request every 0.18 seconds on
average (or roughly 5.6 queries per
second). And that's just when nothing
is happening! Using XMPP pushes,
the sync servers don't need to waste
cycles for no reason.
There are other synchronization
possibilities for the browser. Peter
Kasting, another Chrome
programmer, offered his personal
wish list: "I'm more interested in
history/visited link/omnibox syncing
than bookmarks," he said in a
posting. Synchronizing those
elements would mean one instance of
Chrome would behave more like
another, for example being able to
retrieve more easily the address of a
Costner's publicist, Arnold
Robinson, tells the Associated Press
that the actor wishes to return to
Canada to help the victims of the
accident.
Web site that a user already visited
on another computer.
But the high-powered infrastructure
raises some interesting possibilities
in the long run. Who needs a hyper-
responsive utility just for
synchronizing bookmarks or browser
history lists? When was the last time
you were saving bookmarks so fast
that there was a danger multiple
updates would run afoul of each
other?
The thought I had is that perhaps
Chrome OS could benefit from a
high-speed message-passing
interface. After all, on Chrome OS,
Chrome gets the glamorous job of
running the Web applications, with
the underlying Linux operating
system handling more mundane
hardware duties.
Perhaps there are situations in
which sending lots of XMPP
messages could help Google-hosted
applications stay in tune with each
other. Google Wave, which uses
XMPP already to power its group-
chat abilities, is one example that
springs to mind. Today that's a Web
application that doesn't need a
browser to handle that lower-level
interaction, but might it work better
if it were built in? Gmail can use
IMAP to keep the same inbox
synchronized among different
computers, but maybe this would be
easier and faster?
Then again, as Freud said,
sometimes a train is just a train.
"My understanding is that they
sustained cuts and bruising,"
Robinson tells the AP about the stage
collapse victims. "Kevin went to the
hospital with (them), they were
* 19
Dr. Arnie Klein Lawyers
on Jackson Children
Custody Hearing
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:35:00 AM
Lawyers for Dr. Arnie Klein, a
dermatologist and friend of Michael
Jackson, are speaking out in a new
statement about Monday's custody
hearing pertaining to Jackson's three
children.
This morning, a Los Angeles judge
awarded permanent guardianship of
Michael "Prince," Paris-Michael, and
Prince Michael "Blanket" Jackson to
the children's grandmother Katherine
Jackson. Lawyers for Klein appeared
in court Monday but were not given a
chance to enter evidence when the
judge found Klein had no standing in
the case.
Lawyers Mark Vincent Kaplan of
Kaplan & Simon and Bradley P.
Boyer of Ropers Majeski Kohn &
Bentley, said in a statement to ET:
"At 9:15 AM today, August 3, 2009,
we appeared on behalf of Dr. Arnold
Klein before Judge Mitchell Beckloff
in Los Angeles County Superior
Court, Probate Department 5, to ask
the Court to allow Dr. Klein to have
an opportunity to present evidence to
the Court for its consideration in
fashioning an appropriate
guardianship order with specific
protection and supervision in areas
relating to Paris Katherine and Prince
Michael's upbringing that were of
particular concern to Michael. Dr.
Klein is not objecting to Katherine
Jackson being the guardian nominee,
but was acting on promises he made
to Michael with respect to assuring
the long term health and stability of
the children and their ability to enjoy
as normal of a life out of the spotlight
as could be reasonably possible.
treated and released, and he did visit
with others that were injured while
there… In the event that there is any
type of benefit to support the victims,
he would hope to be a part of it."
20 * Internet News Record
How to use Twitter to improve your shopping experience
By Don Reisinger
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 9:18:53 AM
Twitter might just seem like a social
place to converse with friends, but
it's actually much more. In fact, with
the help of some Twitter services that
help you either compare prices or the
find the right product for any
occasion, it has become an appealing
shopping tool.
So, if you're looking to save some
cash, you might want to check out
these Twitter tools.
Go shopping
CheapTweet CheapTweet combs
through Twitter to find the best deals,
coupons, or sales, users are tweeting
about. From there, it displays all
those findings on its home page,
allowing users to vote on the deals
they like.
CheapTweet is the like the Digg of
the cost-conscious Twitter world.
The app lists deals on industries
ranging from fashion and beauty to
technology and entertainment. The
most popular deals, as voted by
users, are listed under the "Cheapest
Tweets" option. If you're looking for
new deals, CheapTweet lists those
under "Newest Tweets." In either
case, CheapTweet is a great way to
find deals. But beware that because it
has so few users, you won't find Digg
-like voting tallies.
CheapTweet lists all the best deals,
as voted by users.(Credit: Screenshot
by Don Reisinger/CNET)
CouponTweet CouponTweet finds
coupons from across the Web that
Twitter users have tweeted about.
Right from the site, you can claim
your coupon.
After analyzing tweets,
CouponTweet lists all the latest
coupons on the site. Once you decide
Son of Michael Douglas Arrested on Drug Charge
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:32:00 AM
Cameron Douglas-- son to Oscar-
you want one, you can claim the
coupon and be brought to the
appropriate page to redeem it. The
site lists deals on a variety of topics,
including cell phones, travel, and
tickets to sporting events and
concerts. You can also search the site
for deals you don't find on the home
page.
CouponTweet helps you find great
deals on Twitter.(Credit: Screenshot
by Don Reisinger/CNET)
JustBought.it Since Twitter is a
community, sharing great deals is an
important element. JustBought.it
exploits that by helping you find the
deals JustBought.it users have
already found.
When you start trying to find deals,
winning actor Michael Douglas-- was
reportedly arrested on a drug charge
in New York City.
On July 28, Cameron, 30, was
JustBought.it automatically
determines your location and
displays all the recent deals in your
area. If you live in a small town, you
might not find too many deals. But if
you're in a big city, you'll actually
find quite a few. In either case, the
site is constantly updated with new
tweets from people who used
JustBought.it to tell followers about
the deals they've found. When you
click on the link in their tweets, you'll
be brought to a JustBought.it page,
which displays a picture of the
product. So, consider JustBought.it a
location-based, deal-discovering
TwitPic.
JustBought.it helps you find deals
in your area.(Credit: Screenshot by
taken into custody after he was
allegedly caught dealing
methamphetamine at New York's
upscale Hotel Gansevoort, according
Don Reisinger/CNET)
Schmap Schmap sifts through user
tweets to help you find reviews on
restaurants and bars in your area.
When you first get to Schmap, you
need to input the city you want to
search. From there, you can view the
latest tweets from users in that city
discussing local establishments. If
you want to narrow it down by the
type of meal or drinks you're looking
to have, Schmap lets you do that too.
You can even choose the city district
you want to stick to. All the tweets
Schmap lists are tweet reviews of
different establishments around town.
It also plots all the places on a
Google Maps integration to make it
easier for you to find it. It's really a
to the Associated Press.
The investigation is still ongoing.
AP reports that Cameron was also
arrested in California in 2007 on
neat service. But beware that it's
currently only available in select
cities, so if you live in the suburbs or
smaller metro areas, this tool won't
be all that helpful.
Schmap is worth trying out if you
want to find something to eat in your
city.(Credit: Screenshot by Don
Reisinger/CNET)
TinyMassive TinyMassive is an
online search engine that combs the
Web to find you the best deals on just
about any product you can think of.
But if you're a Twitter user, it goes
one better. Simply tweet a search
query to @TinyMassive. It will then
reply to your tweet with the number
of results matching your query on
TinyMassive.com. If you follow the
link in the TinyMassive tweet, you'll
be brought to the results page. The
TinyMassive tweet also includes the
top result, so you can see if it's
finding what you want. I think it's a
neat way to use Twitter. And based
on my experience, it works quite
well.
TinyMassive lists all the answers to
tweeter queries.(Credit: Screenshot
by Don Reisinger/CNET)
My top 3
1. CheapTweet: With so many
offerings, CheapTweet provides a
really great service.
2. TinyMassive: Answering tweets
with search results? A smart plan, if
you ask me.
3. CouponTweet: You'll probably
find some good deals with
CouponTweet.
cocaine possession charges.
Internet News Record
STRANGE
continued from page 18
ionospheric absorption. In another is
a white telescope dome and a gray
tangle of poles used to observe the
ionosphere's properties. Above the
barbed wire of a third clearing, I can
see a wispy, twisted skeleton of wire
and fiberglass.
But the most striking sight at Haarp
is the facility's largest array: 180
silver poles rising from the ground,
each a foot thick, 72 feet tall, and
spaced precisely 80 feet apart. Every
pole is topped with four arms like
helicopter rotors; metal and Kevlar
wires connect the poles to one
another, to the earth, and to a wire
mesh suspended 15 feet above the
ground. The result is an aluminum
cat's cradle, calibrated to the
millimeter, that spreads out over 30
acres. Geometric patterns form and
reform in every direction, Athenian
in their symmetry. It looks like a
bionic forest. A cemetery for a
cyborg army. Or an infinite nave in a
futuristic outdoor church. Even the
scientists get rhapsodic when they
describe the array. "You stare up at
the stars and listen to the wind in the
guy wires," Kennedy says. "It's as
close to a religious experience as
you're ever going to get."
The ultraprecise calibration allows
the array to broadcast a beam as
narrow as 5 degrees of sky or as
broad as 60. All told, the facility can
pump 3.6 megawatts through its
phased-array radar into the sky,
accelerating electrons and heating the
ionosphere—all within a tightly
Sandra Bullock Gets 'Blind' Sided!
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 12:11:00 AM
'The Proposal' star Sandra Bullock
gets serious in her new project based
on a remarkable true story, and we
have the preview trailer!
In theaters November 20, 'The
Blind Side' finds Sandra as a well-to-
do, conservative suburban woman
who takes in a homeless African-
American teen (newcomer Quinton
controlled set of parameters. Marconi
used the ionosphere, unwittingly, to
reflect and carry radio signals; Haarp
can stimulate the ionosphere to create
anything from direct current to
visible light, spanning 15 orders of
magnitude on the electromagnetic
spectrum. "The science used to be
purely observational, with no knobs
to turn," Navy researcher Selcher
says. "Now you can apply the
scientific method."
During a few weeks in October
2008, for example, the site hosted 31
investigators conducting 42 different
sets of experiments—imaging
ionospheric irregularities, examining
the "ion outflow from high-frequency
heating," creating artificial northern
lights. Physics students flock to
Haarp in the summer. Ionospheric
papers are back in the scientific
literature. Even the space-based
nuclear clean-up experiments are
teaching us lessons about the Van
Allen radiation belts. Online, the
tinfoil-hatted chatter about Haarp
drones on—it's blamed for
everything from Katrina to last year's
earthquake in Sichuan, China. But
after decades of pushing, radio
scientists finally have the
experimental facility of their dreams.
Yet Haarp's future is unclear.
Defense budgets are shrinking, and
the facility costs $10 million a year
to operate. Haarp's patron at Darpa,
Tony Tether, has left his job. The
project's godfather, Ted Stevens, was
defeated in the 2008 Senate election
Aaron) from a broken home to help
him fulfill his potential. Faced with
all-new challenges, the young man
discovers a natural ability playing
football and becomes an All-
American offensive left tackle with
NFL prospects.
Also starring Tim McGraw and
Kathy Bates, the film is based on the
best-selling book by Michael Lewis,
The Blind Side: Evolution of a
Game.
by the mayor of Anchorage: Mark
Begich, Nick's little brother. "I'll
have his ear," Nick promises.
So the radio scientists may have to
look for funding again, which
probably means a whole new set of
rationales. You can imagine how the
conspiracy crowd will react. And the
scientists, in their eagerness, can end
up feeding the paranoia.
Papadopoulos, for example, says he
wants to do another round of
subterranean surveillance
experiments. "Personally, I believe it
can reach 1,000 kilometers. It can't
reach Iran, if that's your question," he
laughs. "But if I put Haarp on a ship,
or on an oil platform, who knows?"
Not that he has concrete plans for
such tests in Alaska, let alone in the
Persian Gulf—though he does
mention a facility in Puerto Rico as a
possibility.
But he has already said enough.
Papadopoulos just wants to do
science. But for suspicious minds,
the implications are there: With just a
bit more funding, a few more
experiments, Haarp can still be a
place haunted by sinister agencies
with three-letter initials and spectral
lights that appear in the sky and then
vanish without a trace.
Contributing editor Noah
Shachtman ( wired.com/dangerroom)
wrote about Net-centric warfare in
issue 15.12.
The Unofficial Thomas Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles
By Mark Horowitz (Wired Top
Stories)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:00:00 PM
Little known fact: Thomas
Bing sees slight uptick
in July
By Dong Ngo (Webware.com)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:19:00 PM
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)
It'll probably still be a long time
before people start saying things like
"I'd spend some time binging that
guy before I go on a date with him,"
but in the U.S. things are looking up
for Microsoft's new search engine,
Bing, which was unveiled in May.
Web analytics firm StatCounter
released analysis Monday stating that
Bing slightly increased Microsoft's
share of the U.S. search market in
July. It now claims 9.41 percent, up
from 8.23 percent in June.
The combined market share of both
Microsoft and Yahoo in July was
20.36 percent, up slightly from 19.27
percent in June. The commanding
lead Google currently has on the
market shrank slightly to 77.54
percent in July from 78.48 percent in
June.
Microsoft and Yahoo reached a
Pynchon, the paranoid poet of the
information age, is L.A.'s greatest
writer. His latest effort, Inherent
Vice, is an homage to when he lived
there in the '60s and early '70s. Help
* 21
deal last week, with Microsoft
powering Yahoo search while Yahoo
becomes the exclusive worldwide
relationship sales force for both
companies' premium search
advertisers.
And according to StatCounter
analysis, worldwide is the place
where the two companies face an
even bigger challenge in the search
market. In July, Microsoft and Yahoo
combined had just 8.77 percent of the
global search market, down from
8.45 percent in June. On the other
hand, Google still dominates the
search market globally with 89.23
percent in July (slightly down from
89.8 percent in June).
StatCounter's data was based on an
analysis of 1 billion search engine
referring clicks (of which 258 million
were from the U.S.) that were
collected in June and July from the
company's network of more than 3
million Web sites.
us map the new novel against
Pynchon's life in L.A. by
contributing your own annotations.
22 * Internet News Record
Grocery deal finder Grocio creeps toward launch
By Josh Lowensohn
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 4:53:00 PM
(Credit: CNET / Josh Lowensohn)
Grocery comparison site Grocio is
inching closer to a public launch. On
Monday it opened up its doors to
beta users in Tulsa, Okla.
The site, which helps people
comparison shop for goods at local
grocery stores, is still a long ways
from being available nationwide. Its
methodology, though, is sound. Each
week founder Gerald Buckley sends
out scans of the latest grocery
circulars--yes, the ones that turn
Sunday's paper into a phonebook-size
behemoth, to Amazon's Mechanical
Turk. Once there, they're transcribed
into text files that Grocio's search
engine can use to do its magic.
The whole process takes about two
hours. After which, users can see
how much the items on their grocery
list would cost, then pick out the
lowest-priced store--complete with
any coupons that they'd need to print
out and bring with them.
Getting that pricing and coupon
information from the circulars is not
exactly the fastest or most cost-
effective method, but so far it's been
one of the only ways to play.
Buckley says that since its launch,
grocers have perceived Grocio one of
two ways: some have gladly handed
New hint of gallery for Chrome themes emerges
By Stephen Shankland
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 7:44:00 AM
This view of Chrome's new tab page
shows a thumbnail for a 'Google
Chrome Themes Gallery.'(Credit:
CNET reader)
It looks like Google is nearing
release for a gallery showcasing
themes to customize Chrome's
appearance, judging by one reader's
experience.
When a person opens a new empty
over the latest pricing information,
while others look at the service as a
threat--something that could chase
away potential customers.
Despite the fact that most shoppers
aren't likely to go across town to pick
up the other half of their shopping
list, some grocers worry that Grocio's
system means they won't come at all
if they're getting an all-around better
price elsewhere.
When Grocio figures out how
much you'll save, it tells you how
much you're saving, where to go, and
browser tab in Chrome, the browser
shows an array of thumbnails of
previously visited sites. One of those
sites, the reader said, was labeled
"Google Chrome Themes Gallery."
The screenshot shows a multicolored
array of themes for the browser.
It's a good thing Google apparently
is working on the Web site, because
already Chrome is ready to be
directly connected to it.
The latest developer version of
Chrome supports themes more easily
for those who want to re-skin the
gives you a printout of your shopping
list and any coupons you need to
bring.(Credit: Grocio)
Part of Buckley's strategy at
winning both sides has been to start
low, and to play them off each other.
He's gunned for the "value-leaders,"
or stores that are running big sales on
what they're selling. Getting these
stores into the system means
shoppers will have to compare those
prices to the higher-margin
competition, who in turn have to step
it up to get noticed.
browser. Most notably, there's a "Get
themes" button in the Options dialog
box that links to what at present is an
To augment that, last month
Buckley introduced a widget that
takes some of the information he's
been harvesting and puts it out there
for users to browse coupons and
create shopping lists. This puts all of
the grocers' coupons online, where
they're more easily accessible to
potential customers who don't
subscribe to a local paper where
they'd usually see them. It can also be
placed outside of Grocio's site and
into places like Pageflakes, Netvibes,
and on blogs.
empty Web page.
Though themes, skins, and the like
offer merely cosmetic changes,
they're often popular among users.
There's even a start-up, Brand
Thunder, that re-skins Firefox for
sports teams and musicians.
Mozilla is working on a better
Firefox personalization system called
Personas.
Originally posted at News -
Business Tech
One of the site's biggest hurdles
may continue to be that it's a digital
solution in an analog market, and that
the conversion of that data could
never be fast, or accurate enough to
keep pace. Between that, and the
hundreds of thousands of price
localizations and differences, it's a
very tough data set to keep current.
Whereas many coupon sites have
flourished with national pricing deals
for a single product like a digital
camera, there are hundreds of brands
of butter with prices that fluctuate
wildly depending on what time of
year it is, and where it's being sold.
The one way to get around that is
with participation from the grocers,
which Buckley continues to fight for.
The site may also face an uphill
battle against consumers who just
don't shop the way the site wants
them to. While shopping lists work--
and work well, people don't always
stick to them, and can (and often do)
make impulsive purchases.
Preparation may save a few bucks,
but the key for grabbing the attention
of this, and future generations of
shoppers may be letting them know
of deals once they're at the store in a
way that grocers haven't been able to
nail.
Originally posted at Web Crawler
Blast Off With 10 Space-
Rocking Astronaut Songs
By Scott Thill (Wired Top
Stories)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 2:03:00 PM
Kick your ears into interstellar
overdrive with Wired.com's sonic
salute to spacefaring explorers.
Internet News Record * World/ 23

iLike revamps iPhone concert app, Is Dusty Baker to Blame for

launches artist app program
By Caroline McCarthy
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:46:00 AM
Music service iLike, best known for
third-party applications on platforms
like Facebook, made its big iPhone
app launch today. The company has
rolled out an app for alerts about
local concerts, and also launched its
previously announced program for
bands and artists to create custom fan
applications.
Apple still has to approve the
"Local Concerts" app, according to a
release, but iLike is excited about its
potential impact regardless.
"It's something that we really felt
was a good idea on paper as we
started developing it," iLike CEO Ali
Partovi told CNET News, "but as it
reached completion and we started
using it ourselves it really started
seeming like a killer app."
iLike already has had a concert app
in the iTunes Store. The company
didn't promote it much, Partovi said,
because the iPhone 3.0 software was
what really made the app worthwhile,
and so iLike was waiting until that
came out.
"We found that there really were a
few key capabilities that the iPhone
OS didn't support at the time," he
explained, referring specifically to
push notifications and some software
tweaks that enable better
personalization. So the revamped
iLike concerts app, thanks to iPhone
software upgrades, will scan the
music selection on an iPhone or iPod
Touch, and send pop-up alerts when
a band or artist that the user listens to
will be in town.
"It turns the iPod into much more of
a live device to be connected to the
world of live music," Partovi said of
the free app.
The custom artist apps, meanwhile,
haven't changed much from when
iLike originally announced the
program in May. Over 250 artists
have signed on to the program, the
company said, including Pete Yorn,
Reba McIntire, and Enrique Iglesias.
iLike takes half the revenues from
sales of the apps, and charges a $99
fee with the right to serve ads if the
artist in question decides to offer its
custom app for free.
CNET News reported last month
that iLike was also in talks with the
major music labels to open a
download store, after a deal to offer
full-length songs through
subscription service Rhapsody failed
to materialize.
Originally posted at The Social
Edinson Volquez's Arm
Problems?
By Pat Lackey (FanHouse)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:00:00 AM
by Pat Lackey
Filed under: Reds, NL Central,
MLB Injuries When it was
announced Monday that Edinson
Volquez had Tommy John surgery,
my immediate gut reaction was:
"Everyone will blame Dusty Baker
for this." Of all of the managers in
baseball, Baker is the most notorious
destroyer of young arms after his
stint in Chicago dramatically altered Cueto last August and September and
nothing jumped out at me as out of
the careers of Mark Prior and Kerry
Wood. the ordinary or abusive. So is it
Dusty's fault that Volquez will miss
With another promising young
starter getting ligament replacement the rest of 2009 and most of 2010?
Is Dusty Baker to Blame for
surgery under his watch, the easy
assumption is that this is just another Edinson Volquez's Arm Problems?
originally appeared on Fanhouse
notch on Dusty's belt. The easy
assumption isn't always the right one, MLB Blog on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
08:00:00 EDT . Please see our terms
though, and immediately blaming
him didn't quite sit right with me. for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Linking
I remember watching how he
handled both Volquez and Johnny Blogs| Comments
Aug. 4, 1693: Dom
Pérignon 'Drinks the Stars'
By Tony Long (Wired Top
Stories)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 9:00:00 PM

Dom Pérignon invented champagne

NHL's Top 50: Eric Staal (No. 18) on this day ... unless he didn't.

By Adam Gretz (FanHouse)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:00:00 AM
by Adam Gretz
Filed under: Hurricanes, NHL
Fans, NHL Videos FanHouse's Adam
Gretz takes a look at his top 50
players in the NHL. No. 18 is
Carolina Hurricanes forward Eric
Staal.
The return of Paul Maurice behind
the Hurricanes' bench in December
ignited a furious second-half rally
that saw Carolina enter the
postseason as one of the hottest
teams in the NHL. The 'Canes upset
the New Jersey Devils in in the
Eastern Conference Quarterfinal,
thanks in large part to an unexpected
meltdown by Martin Brodeur and the
Devils' defense in Game 7. In the
second round, the Hurricanes again
pulled off an upset, knocking off the
No. 1 seed Boston Bruins. Leading
the way was former No. 2 overall
pick Eric Staal. He was a dominant
force through the opening two
rounds, scoring 10 goals in his first
14 playoff games. The NHL's Top 50
Players: See the Entire List
NHL's Top 50: Eric Staal (No. 18)
originally appeared on Fanhouse
NHL Blog on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
09:00:00 EDT . Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Linking
Blogs| Comments
Law and order in Baghdad
By Martin Chulov, Lindsay
Poulton (World news and
comment from the Guardian |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:31:15 AM
Martin Chulov speaks to the city's
police chief and joins a river patrol
on the Tigris
24 * Entertainment/
WEC 42: Frank Mir on
'Phenomenal' Takeya
Mizugaki vs. Jeff Curran
By Michael David Smith
(FanHouse)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:32:00 AM
by Michael David Smith
Filed under: WEC Former UFC
heavyweight champion Frank Mir
will be the color commentator for
WEC 42 Sunday night on Versus,
and all this week he's providing his
insight into the WEC fights. Today I
ask Mir about Takeya Mizugaki vs.
Jeff Curran.
Michael David Smith: The last time
we saw Takeya Mizugaki was in his
loss to Miguel Torres at WEC 40, in
one of the fights of the year. How do
you think he matches up with Jeff
Curran?
Frank Mir: I think that is a very
exciting fight. Both guys have
excellent hands. Jeff might try to be a
little bit of a grappler in this fight,
but I don't think it's going to go to the
ground much. I think we're going to
see a very explosive fight, with both
guys going at it. I don't see this fight
going to the ground or going the
distance.
Sneak a Peek at 'Rescue Ink Unleashed': Eight
Tattooed Tough Guys Come Together to Save
Abused Animals!
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 3:05:00 AM
In New York's war on animal abuse,
the worst offenders are pursued by an
unlikely band of heroes -- a group of
tattooed, motorcycle-riding misfits --
who have one noble mission: to save
animals in danger. You can watch
these eight tough guys, who risk their
WEC 42: Frank Mir on
'Phenomenal' Takeya Mizugaki vs.
Jeff Curran originally appeared on
Fanhouse MMA Blog on Tue, 04
Aug 2009 07:32:00 EDT . Please see
our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Linking
Blogs| Comments
lives to rescue helpless, abandoned
and abused animals, and their
unbelievable salvation stories on the
upcoming series "Rescue Ink
Unleashed" on the National
Geographic Channel.
"If you don't like us from the way
we look, we can't help that. But, If
you're not part of the solution, you're
part of the problem, so stay out of the
Tip-Off Timer: '84 Draft Stands
Alone
By Tim Povtak (FanHouse)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:00:00 AM
by Tim Povtak
Filed under: NBA Draft Tip-Off
Timer counts down the days until the
first game of the 2009-10 NBA
season. On Tuesday, there are
exactly 84 days left.
We've already talked about the
most disastrous draft in NBA
history(1986) and the calamity it
caused, but if you backtrack two
years, you can make a good case for
just the opposite, the finest class of
players ever to enter the league at one
time.
The '84 NBA Draft stands alone.
This is the Draft that produced four
future Hall of Famers, three others
that played in at least one All-Star
Game, and a handful of guys who
had long and productive NBA
careers.
way," says tough-talking Joe Panz,
leader of animal rescue group
"Rescue Ink."
Take a look at the eight motorcycle
men and the adorable animals of
"Rescue Ink Unleashed," which
premieres Friday, September 25 at 10
p.m. on the National Geographic
Channel.
Tip-Off Timer: '84 Draft Stands
Alone originally appeared on
Fanhouse NBA Blog on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 10:00:00 EDT . Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
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Blogs| Comments
Sneak Peek: Adam Richman eats hot
stuff on a new Man vs. Food
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:10:00 AM
Filed under: Food/Home/DIY,
Video, Reality-Free The new season
of Man vs. Food starts tomorrow on
Travel Channel. If you've never seen
it, host Adam Richman goes around
to various eating establishments
Internet News Record
UFC Still
Dominates MMA
By Michael David Smith
(FanHouse)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:46:00 AM
by Michael David Smith
Filed under: UFC, WEC,
Strikeforce
After Fedor Emelianenko signed
with Strikeforce, I wrote that he was
a game changer, and that the
combination of the heavyweight
champion of MMA and the best
women's division in MMA made
Strikeforce a major player in the
sport.
But I should also acknowledge
something that should probably go
without saying, but sometimes goes
overlooked among hard-core MMA
fans: The UFC still completely
dominates MMA.
UFC Still Dominates MMA
originally appeared on Fanhouse
MMA Blog on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
09:46:00 EDT . Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Linking
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across the country and eats stuff. Not
just anything on a menu, we're
talking about giant hamburgers, a 13-
pound pizza, 12 egg omelets, stuff
like that. In tomorrow's episode he
eats a burger so hot he has to wear
gloves.
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Internet News Record
UFC Twitter Predictions: B.J. Penn
vs. Kenny Florian at UFC 101
By Michael David Smith
(FanHouse)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:04:00 AM
by Michael David Smith
Filed under: UFC I asked the
followers on my UFC Twitter page to
give me their predictions of the UFC
101 lightweight title fight between
BJ Penn and Kenny Florian in 140
characters or less, and we got a wide
range of answers from 14 people who
like Penn to remain champion, and
11 who think Florian will pull off the
upset.
Read all the Penn vs. Florian UFC
101 Twitter predictions below.
UFC Twitter Predictions: B.J. Penn
vs. Kenny Florian at UFC 101
Remains of the Day: Google Versus the World
Edition [For What It's Worth]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 4:00:00 PM
Google takes aim at Microsoft
Office with a new Google Apps at
Work campaign, their CEO resigns
from Apple's board, and Pizza Hut
has a delicious little iPhone app.
• Google aims at commuters with
Google Apps ads Google's launched
a new ad campaign tempting
commuters to switch their
workplaces over to Google Apps.
[CNET/ Google Apps at Work]
• Twitter Now Filtering Malicious
URLs Short URLs are a potential
disaster for phishing from sites like
Twitter, and now Twitter's looking to
Sorry Visa, Our Credit Cards Have Light Bulbs Now [LEDs]
By Mark Wilson (Gizmodo)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:29:05 AM
Carrying a lightbulb around in your
pocket has always led to precariously
sharp pocket lint. Or worse. Or
originally appeared on Fanhouse
MMA Blog on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
08:04:00 EDT . Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Linking
Blogs| Comments
do something about it. [F-Secure]
• Dog Bites Man: Schmidt Resigns
From Apple Board Google CEO Eric
Schmidt steps down from Apple's
board—interesting timing,
considering how close it is the the
Google Voice iPhone debacle.
[Wired]
• New NetNewsWire sync option
isn't for everyone A lot of us were
happy to hear that popular desktop
worser.
One visionary has steamrolled
Edison's design with this credit card
light bulb. Tiny LEDs take the place
of fragile incandescents, popping out
to spread their light through a murky
Just Let Brett Favre Be ... Brett Favre
By Terence Moore (FanHouse)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:40:00 AM
by Terence Moore
Filed under: Jets, Packers, Vikings
This Brett Favre thing makes
absolutely no sense. It's bizarre. It's
irritating. It's frustrating. It's
shameful. And, no, I'm not talking
about his actions, but about those of
nearly everybody else in his universe.
What did the guy do to deserve all
of this bashing?
Nothing.
It is misplaced, and it has to stop.
Just Let Brett Favre Be ... Brett
Favre originally appeared on
newsreaders NetNewsWire and
FeedDemon were moving to Google
Reader sync, but for folks who liked
the previous offerings or who would
rather not give more information to
Google, it's not necessarily the best
of news. [Macworld]
• Pizza Hut's Delicious iPhone App
Tops 100,000 Downloads In Two
Weeks Say what you will about the
quality of their pizza, but the Pizza
matrix of plastic and unidentified
* TechTips/ Gizmos/
Fanhouse NFL Blog on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 08:40:00 EDT . Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Linking
Blogs| Comments
Hut iPhone app is smart and savvy.
[TechCrunch]
• Oy Tenenbaum! RIAA wins
$675,000, or $22,500 per song RIAA
wins yet another absurd settlement,
charging a PhD student over $22-
grand in damages for each of the 30
songs he'd downloaded via Kazaa.
Somehow those damanges seem a bit
unrealistic. [Ars Technica]
floating flecks—all of it shaped like
our old pal the light bulb.
It'll run you $9 or $10, depending
on your crazy gadget retailer of
choice. [ brando and gadget4all]
25
Make Real Oatmeal
Without a Long
Wait [Food Hacks]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:30:00 AM
Instant oatmeal is good for quick
fixes, but it's not the same as a real
bowl of oats, cooked the proper way.
With this cooking method, you won't
have to wait an hour for true oatmeal
in the morning.
Photo by thebittenword.com.
Digging into its food magazine
collection for usable recipes, The
Bitten Word blog finds a recipe for
making steel-cut oats, also known as
Irish oats, with the cooking time
seriously reduced and split between
morning and night. Bring six cups of
water to a boil the night before, add
in 1 1/2 cups of steel-cut oats and
boil for one minute, then cover and
turn the heat off. The next morning,
bring that pot of oats and water to a
boil for 7-10 minutes, then serve.
The oatmeal will be just a bit
chewy, but soft and filling, and you
can top it with whatever fruits, nuts,
spices, and sweeteners you'd like.
The recipe calls for chopped almonds
and dried cranberries, the Bitten
Word folks enjoy sliced bananas and
chopped walnuts, while the
Lifehacker Northeast cafeteria has
served its oats with chopped walnuts,
pumpkin pie spice, and a dash of sea
salt on recent mornings. By all
means, though, tell us how you prep
your own morning meals with half
the effort, oats or otherwise, in the
comments. Overnight Oatmeal: Steel
-Cut Oats in 10 Minutes[The Bitten
Word]
26 TechTips/ Web/
Save on Your Insurance by Asking
[Insurance]
By Jason Fitzpatrick
(Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:30:00 AM
We're big fans of simply asking
companies if there is a way you can
save money and it turns out that
insurance companies are fair game.
Save money on your insurance
policies by simply asking. Photo by
foundphotoslj.
At the financial blog
FiveCentNickel, they've put together
a guide to saving money on your car
insurance which includes tips like
increasing your deductible and
dropping unnecessary
coverage—both tips will work for
home insurance too. The easiest tip
by far though is simply asking what
you can do to save:
You might qualify for discounts for
being accident-free, renewing your
policy, driving relatively few miles
each year, taking a defensive driving
course, etc. Be sure to talk to your
agent and get what you have coming
to you.
How Does Your Day Match Up to the National Average? [Data
Porn]
By Azadeh Ensha (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 2:00:00 PM
Time is a finite commodity, which
makes knowing how to allocate it
well all the more important. The New
York Times looked into the daily
habits of thousands of Americans and
rounded up the results in a beautiful
chart in ten-minute increments.
(Click the image above for a closer
look, or just hit the link below for the
interactive NYT graph.)
Not surprisingly, sleeping, eating,
The last time I talked to my home
insurance agent, for example, I asked
her if there was any discounts I was
unaware of. She checked my policy
and said the only discount available
that I wasn't already taking advantage
of was the discount for having a
home alarm system. The discount for
having a monitored alarm was a
whopping $400 a year, more than the
actual cost of having a monitored
working, and watching television
take up two-thirds of our average
day. According to other statistics
culled by The Times, at 6 p.m. most
Americans are looking to finish up
work, while at 8:50 p.m., four
percent of Americans are traveling.
And by 12:40 a.m., 87 percent of all
Americans are in bed. As for time
spent on personal care (which
includes showering and grooming)?
Americans spent an average of 47
seconds per day making themselves
look and feel good.
alarm system. Simply by asking I
essentially got a "free" monitored
home alarm with no change in my
yearly expenses.
If you've had a similar experience
asking uncovering savings by taking
advantage of insurance discounts,
let's hear about it in the comments
below. How To Save Money on Car
Insurance[FiveCentNickel]
All of this leads us to ask: How do
these findings reflect your own
habits? Do they mirror how you
spend your time? If not, tell us what
activities do take up most of your
Assembla Adds Private
Installations to its
Collaboration Platform
By Steven Walling
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 3:58:27 PM
Assembla, which makes
collaborative workspaces for
software development teams, has
added a version you can download in
order to run private installations.
Every day, more pure play SaaS
vendors in the collaboration space
appear, but Assembla is a startup that
also offers a robust self-hosted
version as well.
Assembla is a wide-ranging
software package for distributed
teams: there are browsers for Git and
Subversion code repositories, project
management, activity streams, as
well as ticketing, bug tracking, and
issue management. In addition to the
download that's now available, you
can get a free public space or a
private instance on EC2.
hours and how, if at all, that's
changed over the years? How
Different Groups Spend Their
Day[New York Times]
[Sponsored] Drain the Ocean -
Internet News Record
Sponsor
The downloadable package runs as
a VMware virtual appliance and
includes the full source code and
development kit. It's also the only
option with LDAP integration and
unlimited project spaces, which
should make it extra appealing to
development teams in larger
enterprises.
The new private offering by
Assembla mimics the strategy that
some of the most successful vendors
of collaboration software — such as
Atlassian, Jive, Socialtext, and
Mindtouch — are taking with their
products. By providing the full range
of choices, from free and public to
behind the firewall, Assembla is
making a smart choice.
Discuss
Sunday August 9 9P e/p
This is a world you have never seen
before, a world normally hidden
under miles of water...the landscape
of the ocean bed. Click to learn more
www.natgeotv.com/draintheocean
Ads by Pheedo
Internet News Record
Score $9 Flights On JetBlue Lost, Other ABC Shows
[Dealhacker] Arrive on Netflix Streaming
By Azadeh Ensha (Lifehacker)
[NetFlix]
Submitted at 8/3/2009 2:30:00 PM
Vacations can get pricey, especially
where purchasing airline tickets is
concerned. Luckily JetBlue is
offering some cost savings in the
form of one-way Monday flight deals
for as little as nine bucks.
Photo by mrkathika.
The promotion is part of JetBlue's
Twitter deals, where you can score a
one-way ticket for less than ten
singles. A sampling of today's
JetBlue $9 fares includes a one-way
ticket from Syracuse (SYR) to New
York (JFK) or one from Long Beach
(LGB) to San Francisco (SFO), as
well as a $9 flight from Burbank
Nvidia Ion LE: So Windows XP Netbooks Don't Have Crappy Graphics Either [NetBooks]
By matt buchanan (Gizmodo)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:18:36 AM
The Ion LE is a quiet launch from
the usually boisterous Nvidia: It's a
(BUR) to Las Vegas (LAS). Here are
the restrictions:
• Cheeps fares are only available for
purchase on Mondays between 10
a.m. and 6 p.m. EDT or while seats
last.
• All Cheeps fares are one way for
travel on Saturday, August 8, 2009.
• Seats are limited. Each flight only
has 10 to 50 seats available at the
amazing fare advertised here, so
hurry and book if you want one!
United Airlines also offers its own
Twitter deals. If you know of other
airlines that do, share them in the
comments. JetBlue and United Give
Twitter a Try to Sell Airline Seats
Fast[USA Today]
cheaper version of their Ion graphics
chip for netbooks, stripped of
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:30:00 AM
Living a life without cable just got a
bit more feasible, at least if you're a
fan of ABC's sci-fi castaways, angst-
y doctors, or medieval heroes, and
have a Netflix streaming account.
As of Monday, the first four
seasons of Lost and "select seasons"
of Desperate Housewives and
Legend of the Seeker are available
through any device that can stream
Netflix offerings. Next month, the
fifth seasons of Grey's Anatomy,
Lost, and Desperate Housewives
arrive on the streaming scene.
Combined with ABC's recent entry
into the Hulu scene, there's now a
DirectX 10 support, which is only
needed in Vista, so hopefully it'll find
wider variety of ways for anyone
near a computer or media center to
get television shows straight from the
net, with or without commercials.
But we're wondering—what shows,
or entire networks, still lack a viable
online presence? Which series would
tempt you into giving up more live
television browsing for a more net-
focused entertainment life? Tell us
your tipping point in the
comments."Lost," "Grey's Anatomy,"
"Desperate Housewives" and
"Legend of the Seeker" from ABC
available to stream instantly from
Netflix[The Official Netflix Blog via
Mashable]
its way into more cut-rate XP-
powered netbooks. [ Fudzilla via
Engadget]]
TechTips/ Gizmos/ 27
Measurement
Conversion Apron Saves
Time in the Kitchen
[Stuff We Like]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 3:00:00 PM
If you're a master in the kitchen,
you may not blink an eye when it's
time to figure out how many
tablespoons are in two-thirds cup.
For the rest of us, there's this handy
measurement conversion apron.
(Click the images for a closer look.)
Once you've got the ball rolling in
the kitchen, nothing puts a damper on
your head of steam like an unwieldy,
unfamiliar unit conversion. Sure you
could use Google's conversion
calculator, but your hands are
covered with flour and your
keyboard's already dirty enough as is.
That's why we love the idea behind
this clever apron. In addition to
sporting a simple conversion table
between cups, ounces, tablespoons,
and teaspoons, the apron also offers
common substitutions for various
baking pans.
As you can see in the picture, the
conversion table is upside-down,
making it easy to read for the wearer.
The apron will set you back $19 on
Etsy, but if you're not keen on the
price, you could surely steal the idea
for your own DIY version. Thanks
Gil! Measurement Conversion
APRON[Etsy]
28 TechTips/ Web/
Cool Yourself Down for
Better Sleep [Sleep]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:05:00 AM
Scientists say there's an optimal
temperature range for inducing your
brain to get sleepy. If your own body
is the temperature problem, a hot
water bottle might help fix it.
Photo by Alyssa L. Miller.
A National Institutes of Health
study suggests that the optimal
temperature range for good sleep is
between 60 and 68 degree
Fahrenheit. In those temperatures, the
core body temperature lowers, and
one's body usually begins to fall into
a sleepy state. If you've just eaten a
big meal, though, or have regular
problems with insomnia or feeling
generally restless, it may be that your
own core temperature hasn't gotten
there.
In that case, the Times and a study
by the journal Nature(direct PDF
link) suggest putting a bottle of hot
water near one's feet. Sounds strange,
indeed, but as blood vessels dilate in
the feet, it can help lower one's
internal temperature to a more sleep-
ready state. For other tips on staying
cool at night, try the previously
mentioned "Egyptian Method". The
Claim - Cold Temperatures Improve
Sleep[NYTimes.com]
As the EBook Market Matures,
Amazon Will Face Stiff Competition
By Frederic Lardinois
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 8:04:13 PM
According to a new report by
Forrester Research's Sarah Rotman
Epps, eBooks and eReaders are
slowly but surely becoming
mainstream. However, while
Amazon is the current market leader
among early adopters of this
technology, Rotman Epps predicts
that later adopters will not feel the
same loyalty towards Amazon. This,
according to the report, will open up
a lot of opportunities for other
players in the market, including Sony
and large mass-market retailers like
Walmart.
Sponsor
According to Forrester's data, just
about 1.5% of all US online
consumers currently own an eReader
- but it's important to note that this
number is up from 0.6% a year ago.
Forrester estimates that about 3
million eReaders will be sold in the
US in 2009. By 2013, this number
will grow to 13 million. Now, more
consumers than ever before are
aware of the existence of eReaders
(37%) and the number of survey
respondents who intend to buy an
eReader in the next six months has
grown to 6% compared to 2% last
year.
Amazon currently has the lead
among early eBook adopters. Once
eBooks become mainstream,
however, Rotman Epps argues, this
lead could easily dissipate. While
Rotman Epps doesn't talk a lot about
hardware devices in her report, the
reality is that the Kindle isn't exactly
a major step forward in the history of
industrial design. Early adopters and
'tech optimists' (as Forrester likes to
call them) are willing to look beyond
this, but in the mainstream market,
hardware design might play a major
role in consumers' buying decisions.
The Next Wave of eBook Adopters
According to Forrester, the next
wave of eBook adopters tends to read
more books per months than early
adopters and will probably consist of
younger males who are less likely to
be married and have children. The
problem for eReader manufacturers,
however, will be to get this group to
buy dedicated devices. Rotman Epps
argues that a large percentage of this
group will probably read eBooks on
devices they already own (like the
iPhone), unless prices for eReaders
come down significantly (under
$100).
It's All About the Price
Forrester's Rotman Epps argues
that the high price of eReaders is
currently holding back mainstream
adoption. A $99 device, Rotman
Epps notes, would bring a lot of
additional readers to eBooks and
eReaders. Most importantly, though,
the eBook and eReader market is still
in flux. As the next generation of
readers is likely to be very different
from the previous generation,
Amazon will have to work hard to
keep its current lead. Can Amazon
Hold On to Its Lead?
Unlike Rotman Epps, however, we
think that Amazon will likely be able
to hold on to its current lead. After
all, it has already forged strong -
though sometimes contentious -
relationships with most publishers
and it currently offers the best
integration between its store and its
eReader. Barnes & Noble's new
eBook store will be a strong
contender here, though we have yet
to see the Plastic Logic eReader
device that B&N will use to compete
with the Kindle. Sony, too, is making
a major push in the eBook market
again, though in terms of mindshare
in the US, Amazon and the Kindle
are currently the clear leaders (both
in the mainstream and among early
adopters).
Internet News Record
While "Later Adopters May Not Be
As Loyal To Amazon.com" makes
for a good subtitle, the next
generation of eBook adopters is just
as likely to consider Amazon as the
natural place to go to for eBooks,
especially given that the company is
already the #1 online retailer for
regular books. What About the B2B
Market?
The Forrester report only focuses
on consumers. We would argue,
however, that there is also a large
professional market for eReaders,
where the current price isn't too big
an issue. Just last week, for example,
iRex, an eReader manufacturer that
mostly aims for the B2B market,
announced the launch of its
electronic flight bag for pilots- which
is basically an iRex eReader with
Jeppesen's charts loaded on them.
What's the Killer Product for
eReaders?
The Forrester report argues that
once eReaders hit the $100 barrier,
users will quickly start to adopt these
devices. But is price really the only
issue here? Are there any other
"killer apps" or devices that could
drive mainstream adoption even
before $99 eReaders become a
reality?
Our own Dana Oshiro just argued
in our backchannel that a
subscription book club (maybe run
by Oprah) could bring a lot of new
users to eReaders. And then, of
course, there is still the mystical
Apple tablet that might make for a
great eReader - among other things -
and which will surely cost more than
$99. Would You Buy an eReader?
What is holding you back from
buying an eReader? The iPhone? The
price of the current generation of
eReaders? Or the well-designed
reading solution called 'the book'?
Discuss
Internet News Record
MySpace to Unveil Integration With Sites Around the Web,
Using Open Standards
By Marshall Kirkpatrick
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:52:10 PM
MySpace will announce in the next
few weeks a major new feature being
added to its MySpaceID product that
will allow third-party websites to
write updates into the MySpace
activity feed just like Facebook
Connect, but will also incorporate
open semantic microformat code in
order to comprehend what those
updates are about and make more
sophisticated update highlighting and
recommendation decisions.
It's a major move being worked on
with both the Activity Streams and
Open Social communities - it could
push the rest of the web, outside of
Facebook, in a direction that supports
radical app innovation through the
creation of a level playing field of
readable data. And it could make
MySpace a lot better, too.
Sponsor
"We don't want to do anything
without semantics, to be honest,"
Monica Keller, group architect for
activity streams at MySpace, told us
by phone today. "We can't afford to
show a user content on their home
page that they aren't going to like."
At a time when MySpace is in
serious trouble and trying to regroup,
a home run by Keller and crew could
make MySpace more relevant to
people again and impact the rest of
the web in positive ways radically
unlike the impact of Facebook's
proprietary software.
Keller told us today that MySpace
is working on increasing the amount
and sophistication of user activity
updates on the site in a number of
The Circle of No Life [Image Cache]
By Jesus Diaz (Gizmodo)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:20:00 AM
Move over, Lion King. Erin
different ways. In case anyone is
chuckling and thinking MySpace
doesn't matter, we should remember
that only ten sites on the web are
visited more often than MySpace still
today. MySpace may be on the
decline, but it's still hugely important
and these moves it's making could
help it become even more so. Adding
"Write" Functionality
MySpaceID currently allows sites
around the web to offer sign-in using
MySpace account credentials. The
sites can then pull in some amount of
a user's data from MySpace and use
it to personalize the experience they
have on the new site - friends lists
can be synced and taste information
can be gleaned from a profile to
customize recommendations, for
example.
The next step will be to bring in
user activities from these third-party
sites and display them in your
MySpace user activity feed, much
like Facebook Connect allows. This
gives other sites access to
distribution inside MySpace.
Developers of other sites will be able
to offer users the option of publishing
their activities on these other sites
back onto their MySpace profiles and
friends' activity feeds.
Here's how MySpace's plan is
unlike what Facebook is doing. The
updates will be marked up for the
types of activities they represent with
standardized microformat code,
beginning with the events format
hCal and soon to include the book,
movie or other review format
hReview. Those little bits of code
that will be added could have big
consequences.
Keller says the company
Hanson's genius has reinvented you
for the intarwebs. I like her take on
Apple vs Apple even better:
I should stop licking my iPhone. [
acknowledges that this won't be a
small task for third-party developers,
so in the meantime she is working on
automated methods of pulling user
data in from other sites' Application
Programming Interfaces (APIs) and
marking them up automatically, with
the microformat code communicating
what kind of updates they are
(events, reviews, etc.) Why This is
Important Consider this analogy:
Mozilla has been good for the whole
web because it pushed everyone to be
more standards-compliant in the
browser market and thus made it
easier for developers to build stable,
universally usable and more
sophisticated applications.
By giving the web a reason to build
out software that publishes
information in the standardized
format of the Activity Streams spec
and semantic microformats,
MySpace grows the pie of that kind
of data and gives developers a greater
incentive to develop more in that
same fashion. Standardized data is
the soil in which fields of new
applications grow.
This kind of data normalization
creates the level playing field of
information that allows new
applications to be written and scale
up through accessing and processing
large quantities of information that
have effectively been translated into
the same "language." You want to
build an application that processes
hCal events? That will be a lot more
appealing when the MySpace
ecosystem of connected sites is all
speaking that language.
Flickr via Dark Roasted Blend]
Keller says that MySpace and the
community of people working on
building a common Activity Streams
specification for all sites have been
working closely with the Open Social
community, the Google-led cross-site
application platform that competes
with the Facebook App platform.
Keller says MySpace's new activity
feed functionality will be delivered
from within but extend upon the
Open Social framework the company
uses to connect with other sites now.
There isn't any indication yet that
MySpace will make these marked-up
updates available in bulk to
developers for analysis; they will
likely remain authenticated and
limited in visibility to friends who
have given approval. That would be
an even bigger boost for innovation,
but the promotion of the standardized
data format is a huge step
nonetheless. What's In It for
MySpace?
So if this has a lot of potential to be
good for the web - what's in it for
MySpace? Two things, primarily.
First, as Facebook grows rapidly in
both user numbers and integration
with sites around the web through its
similar product Facebook Connect,
MySpace is no longer the center of
the web for millions of people. This
kind of product facilitates that kind
of relationship, and offering outside
developers write-access to MySpace
will incentivize more of them to
support ongoing user-connection
with MySpace. The microformatted
markup makes this a lot smarter than
Facebook Connect, frankly.
There is a risk that all the smarts in
the world won't interest people in
MySpace's declining profile, but the
Web/ Gizmos/ 29
site remains one of the most popular
on the web and a viable competitor to
Facebook. (Facebook said they may
or may not comment on this move by
MySpace; we're still waiting to see if
they'd like to.)
The goal for the program that
Keller shared with us was different.
She says that the microformats
markup will enable the company to
make smarter decisions in
highlighting friends' updates and
offering users' recommendations.
Keller says that MySpace is
working on and will soon deploy
technology that closely monitors
what kind of friend updates users
show interest in. If I often click on
your photos but never read your blog
posts, or I am very interested in your
book reviews but don't care about
your events listings, then MySpace
will feature those kinds of your
updates in my friends' activity feeds
more or less prominently. Knowing
what kinds of activities are being
brought in from other sites will help
make that more possible. The same
information will facilitate smarter
recommendations of content you
might like.
That's why Monica Keller says
"We don't want to do anything
without semantics, to be honest. We
can't afford to show a user content on
their home page that they aren't going
to like."
Watch for these new technologies
to be announced in the coming
weeks. They could have a big impact
not just on the future of MySpace,
but on much of the rest of the web as
well. Discuss
30 Web/ AppleBlog/
Digg Opening Up? New Read/Write API Coming
Soon
By Sarah Perez
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:10:08 AM
According to news posted this
morning to API-tracking web site
ProgrammableWeb, the social news
community at Digg.com may be on
the verge of opening up. In a recent
message shared on the Digg mailing
list, developer Jeff Hodson
announced that the forthcoming Digg
API will allow people to "not only
read data, but also contribute data,
too." In other words, a Read/Write
API.
The implications of this decision
are huge. Where before Digg was the
place to find and share interesting
links from around the web, that role
has, as of late, been taken on by
microblogging site Twitter.com. To
combat Twitter's threat, Digg has
tried new launching new features like
the DiggBar and their own URL-
shortening service, but nothing
they've done so far could have as big
of an impact on their future as the
new API.
Sponsor
Digg Knows How to Get Traffic
and the API Will Deliver That Much
More
To drive traffic to their service,
Digg launched a couple of different
initiatives this past year including a
browser toolbar and a URL-
shortening service. First, there was
the controversial " DiggBar" which
initially drove traffic to Digg.com via
a short URL service that displayed
the news story within an iframe
wrapper. Later, they changed the way
their short URL service operated to
redirect anyone clicking the URL
directly to Digg.com - even if they
weren't currently logged into the
Digg web site. This quickly became
known as Digg's attempt "bait and
switch" its users. Instead of getting
sent to the news story as expected,
users were unwittingly ending up on
Digg.com. Despite the outcry (and a
confused founder Kevin Rose who
wasn't aware of the change), the site
continues to operate their URL
service in this way. And why is that?
Because, at the end of the day,
Digg.com needs traffic to stay
competitive. The soon-to-launch
read/write API will simply be
another way to get those valuable
clicks.
With a read/write API, developers
will be able to add "Digg This"
functionality to their third-party
applications. Adam DuVander on
ProgrammableWeb notes this means
developers could do a number of
things like "automate posting stories
and incorporate it into a publishing
system,...save a link once and have it
go to Digg, your bookmark service
and Twitter...allow anyone to create
their own interface to Digg, which
would also provide Digg itself with
additional content." The potential is
nearly limitless. Heck, you could
even incorporate a "Digg This"
button into a Twitter client app like
TweetDeck, for example.
To encourage developers to
actually build apps or integrate Digg
functionality within their existing
applications, Digg recently allowed
commercial use of their API. That
means developers can actually
monetize their applications "with full
ownership and free of frees," says the
Digg API license agreement. That
gives the developer community even
more incentive to put the API to use.
Digg Needs Traffic to Fight the Real-
Time Web
The API change is arguably a
brilliant move by the (potentially)
fading social news site to combat the
threat that comes from the real-time
web.
There was a time when Digg.com
was the king of link-sharing on the
social web. Getting "dugg" sends
massive amounts of traffic to your
web site, often overwhelming servers
and bringing a site down - a problem
that soon became known as the "Digg
effect." While Digg still has that
power today, Twitter is quickly
becoming the link-sharing site of
choice for many users. The reasons
for that are many, but one key reason
is that Twitter levels the playing field
a bit - getting "dugg" is notoriously
hard and getting something to the
front page seems to be controlled by
an elite crowd of diggers...no matter
how hard Digg tries to combat that
problem. Twitter, on the other hand,
is easy. Anyone can share links and
through the power of "re-tweets," it
too can drive large amounts of traffic
to a web site. Although there's no
"Twitter effect" just yet, its time may
be coming soon.
With Twitter. we've seen the
dispersal of information sped up.
Where it can still take hours - and
sometimes even days - to see a hot
story make the front page of
Digg.com, breaking news on Twitter
moves at a much more rapid pace.
Within minutes, the news spreads
like wildfire, overtaking people's
timelines and making its presence
known in the Twitter trends.
Although today Digg is still going
strong, if they can't transform their
service into more of a real-time news
site where information isn't "old
news" by the time it reaches an
audience, then they will eventually
find themselves outpaced by other
services.
By opening up their API, Digg
could deliver even more traffic to
their site than they've ever done
before. And with the additional
traffic, stories could move through
their system faster. Getting the
necessary number of diggs needed to
make a story "go popular" could, in
theory, take minutes instead of hours
if enough diggs came though. With
additional traffic speeding up front
page turnover, Digg could remain
competitive with other real-time
services attempting to steal their
glory. Soon, one of those services
may include the likes bit.ly, whose
URL shortening service is now the
default for the Twitter community.
According to recent news, bit.ly
plans on mining the links they collect
to create a real-time news service a
lot like Digg's, but based on Twitter
instead. There's no doubt that Digg is
aware of this potential threat and that
has at least partially influenced their
decision to open up.
Still, despite Digg's plans, we have
to wonder: will the read/write API be
enough for Digg to compete further
down the road? Let us know what
you think in the comments. Discuss
Internet News Record
MacBook Pro
owners report
hard drive lag
By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 8/3/2009 4:30:00 PM
Filed under: Hardware, Macbook
Pro There's a thread at Apple's
Discussion Boards about an issue
that's bothering a number of users.
Specifically, the current model 17"
MacBook Pros seem to be
experiencing hard drive lag. Several
users report hearing the hard drive
park itself, but at inappropriate times,
causing the Marble of Doom to
appear and bringing all tasks to a
halt. This comes a short time after
other users have reported a strange
beep.
One user reported no red flags
while running Activity Monitor while
another went so far as to swap the
hard drive to no avail. If you're
having this issue, or if you've solved
it, please let these folks know.
Update: A user calling himself
theycallmefreddy reportedly fixed
the problem late this morning by
creating a 2nd user account. You can
read his post here.
TUAW MacBook Pro owners
report hard drive lag originally
appeared on The Unofficial Apple
Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 03 Aug
2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
Internet News Record
Litmos: Online Training
Management That Needs
Improvement
By Jolie O'Dell (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 11:00:10 PM
Affiliated with both Rackspace and
BizSpark and armed with an
aggressive PR strategy, Litmos is an
online training management app suite
poised for a big splash in the startup
pool.
Ostensibly a power player in the
online education game, Litmos
comes with its share of challenges,
drawbacks, and shortcomings, as
well. Between site glitches and a UI
that leaves much to be desired, the
apps we reviewed were frustrating
for users and showed little promise
for actually measuring trainees'
learning. Check out our screenshots
and feedback below.
Sponsor
Litmos is a web-based training
system for the development and
delivery of training courses. Courses
are built by uploading videos,
PowerPoint presentations,
OpenOffice documents, and other
content. Assessments and surveys are
added to test knowledge retention
and gain feedback.
We found course creation to be
simple enough. In-browser survey
creation was easy and quick. We
were also able to embed multimedia
content from other sites. However,
the site failed to upload our own
videos, and creating a slideshow
through the site led to browser
crashes and timeouts. Worse yet,
adding users to courses was a tedious
process that would be completely
unusable for training or educational
programs with more than 20 users or
so.
From the trainee end, user
experience was a disaster. Comments
from our testers ranges from "lots of
ordinary" to "hard to navigate" to
"really, really bad." One reviewer
said, "This might be the worst UI
ever." We can't honestly disagree
with any of these comments.
In addition to suffering through the
usual navigational site bugs and
tedious UI issues that plague newer
apps, we couldn't find a way to test
trainee knowledge through the site.
In other words, although we could
survey those involved in the course,
we couldn't designate correct answers
or assign grades for individual users,
nor could we view individual users'
answers to our survey. This is a huge
gap in the app suite's capabilities that
cripple Litmos' ability to compete in
an ever-more-competitive market.
Even the worst interfaces can be
excused when innovations or
integrations of technology promise to
make a product greater than the sum
of its parts. Unfortunately, though,
we couldn't see any evidence of
outside-the-box thinking here.
Litmos doesn't integrate particularly
well with existing online groups or
media, and it doesn't allow for easy
importation of contacts via email or
other social networks, even LinkedIn.
According to the Litmos blog,
"People pay a lot of money to go to
college, stay in dorms and get into
the lifestyle. If students or parents
realise that for considerably less
money their kids can study online
and not really miss out on anything,
then the campus could be at risk of
becoming obsolete for some
faculties."
While we won't argue that college
courses cost a lot of money, we also
can't vouch for an online app or app
suite - especially one with so many
readily apparent glitches and
omissions - replacing traditional
instruction methods any time soon.
And while Litmos modules might
someday be able to provide a
welcome online companion to
standard methods of education, we
also know that most online education
clearinghouses have their own tested
and reliable proprietary systems in
place for delivering materials. Litmos
needs a major instutitional
partnership from either a well-known
company training its employees or
one of the new guard of online, for-
profit educational entities if it is to be
a major player in this game, and that
kind of partnership will not come
while so many UI problems still exist
within the site.
In the end, many online training
modules exist outside the startup
realm. Although they may not be
particularly innovative, neither is
Litmos. And the tried-and-true
products will at least work. Discuss
Hunting dogs savage
New Zealand jogger
(World news and comment from
the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:24:00 AM
• Victim undergoes nine hours of
surgery
• Woman, 29, arrested and dogs
destroyed
A jogger in New Zealand was
airlifted to hospital with multiple bite
wounds after eight pig-hunting dogs
attacked her as she ran past a rural
property on North Island.
Margit Christensen, 36, suffered
scores of bites to her scalp, arms and
legs before the dogs ran off. Rescue
services flew her by helicopter to
Waikato hospital, where she had nine
hours of surgery overnight, Dr John
Bonning, an emergency specialist,
said.
"There were serious injuries pretty
much all over her body," said
Sergeant Jason Shailer, of Te
Awamutu police in central North
Island.
Christensen's husband, Sven , said
a friend was cycling nearby when she
heard the mother-of-two screaming.
"She was screaming with three dogs
on her, trying to kick them off, when
another five or so dogs came flying
across and she fell to the ground," he
told Radio New Zealand.
The friend alerted a neighbour and
called Sven, who got to the scene
before medical help arrived.
"By the time I got there the dogs
were off … Margit was basically just
sitting. She looked like a big blob of
blood on the side of the road."
He said the dogs' owner had helped
drive the pack off his wife. "She kept
whacking them with sticks and they
kept trying to come back and come
back, and then she managed get them
off."
Web/ World/ 31
Margit Christensen told Bonning
that she curled into a foetal position
to protect herself during the 15-
minute attack – a move that saved
her life.
"She was the most seriously injured
person that has been injured by dog
bites I have ever seen. She had
injuries all over her body – to her
arms, her neck, her back, her legs and
it sounds like an absolutely horrific
attack," he told the radio network.
"Blood loss is certainly a way you
can die from injuries such as these,"
he added.
Christensen was in a stable
condition after extensive surgery, but
Bonning said she needs many skin
graft operations.
Police said the dogs had been
seized and destroyed after their
owner signed a destruction order.
A 29-year-old woman has been
arrested and faces eight charges of
owning a dog that caused injury. She
was released on police bail to appear
in court next week, Shailer said. Her
name was not released.
The mauling follows a similar
attack on a teenage cyclist a year ago
by four pig-hunting dogs that bit the
13-year-old more than 100 times. He
was saved when a passing motorist
pulled him into her car.
A woman and a man have died in
separate dog attacks in recent years
and several children have been badly
mauled. New Zealand dog control
laws have been stiffened to require
the destruction of animals involved.
• New Zealand
• Animals
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this
content is subject to our Terms &
Conditions| More Feeds
32 Web/ World/
Spotify to Close Up to $50M Round Sudan police attack
Before US Launch trousers protesters
By Dana Oshiro
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 10:03:09 PM
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has the
Midas touch. In anticipation of the
company's US launch, the on-
demand music streaming site is
finalizing what is rumored to be a
$50 million dollar round of
investments. According to the
Financial Times, if Spotify closes the
round with Wellington Partners and
Li Ka Shing Foundation, the Swedish
company will be valued at $250
million dollars.
Sponsor
Spotify's only real revenue at this
time is it's "premium" or ad-free
subscription service. Critics may
argue that this service will never earn
the company enough to offset the
cost of licensing music; however, the
Telegraph's Shane Richmond reports
that Spotify's iPhone application will
only be available to premium
subscription users. And if you're
questioning whether or not the
subscription is worth it, you
obviously haven't seen the demo.
Unlike other mobile streaming
music applications, the Android and
iPhone applications allow members
to cache streaming files for offline
listening. In other words, there is no
need to download a file for listening.
It's an amazing mobile feature for
users, but as a free application it
would cannibalize Spotify's revenue
stream from downloads. However,
with the subscription requirement,
the company is destined to make
money from both downloads and
streaming lists.
If the application doesn't make it
into the App Store, Spotify has other
opportunities to generate revenue
with downloads. Ek announced plans
in late June to launch a one-click
download solution for easier on-site
purchases. The company's ability to
gain referral sales revenue shows
potential, but the access model is less
attractive than subscriptions. Spotify
could offer a tiered file pricing
system without compromising its
existing service. The company could
continue to stream compressed files
for free while offering higher-quality
files or rare releases for purchase and
download. This option might appeal
to diehard music fans, but it certainly
doesn't have the cool factor of the
mobile applications.
Regardless of Spotify's revenue
streams, the company's US release is
widely anticipated. Americans are
eager to see what UK and Swedish
audiences have been raving about.
Some of the company's latest 3rd
party tools look like amazing
additions to the community. Spotify's
blog featured the following:
1. SpotifiTunes: Independent web
developer Phil Nash's iTunes playlist
tool allows you to upload your
iTunes library and generate
additional links to your favorite
artists in Spotify. Members can
discover new album releases and
sometimes surprising band
collaborations from the past.
2. We Are Hunted: The curated We
Are Hunted music community
created a Spotify playlist complete
with the site's top tracks and artists.
Once users can cache this on their
devices, they'll have the ability to
listen to the community's 99 hottest
streaming songs in offline mode.
3. Share My Playlists: This site
contains almost 4000 pre-compiled
Spotify playlists for your listening
pleasure. The service offers amazing
potential to leverage the popularity of
existing celebrity deejays, music
bloggers, labels and music properties.
Just think about the range this service
could offer. From indie electronic
labels to Motown, if brands were to
release weekly tribute playlists you
can bet there would be listeners.
After this sort of a build up for the
North American launch, it would be
a let down if American audiences
thought the service was anything
short of fantastic. We won't have to
wait long for a reaction, the release is
expected before the end of summer.
Discuss
By Xan Rice (World news and
comment from the Guardian |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:55:03 AM
Case against former UN worker
Lubna Hussein, who faces 40 lashes
for 'indecent dressing', is adjourned
Police fired teargas and beat
supporters of a Sudanese woman
facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers
in public shortly before her trial was
adjourned this morning.
Police in Khartoum moved in
swiftly and dispersed about 50
protesters, mostly women, who were
supporting Lubna Hussein, a former
UN worker charged with "indecent
dressing" in violation of the country's
Islamic laws.
Some of the women demonstrators
wore trousers in solidarity with
Hussein. "We are here to protest
against this law that oppresses
women and debases them," said
Amal Habani, a female columnist for
the daily newspaper Ajraa al-Hurria
(Bells of Freedom).
Hussein's trial was later adjourned
until September by a judge to seek
clarification from Sudan's foreign
ministry over her status.
At the time of her arrest, Hussein
was working for the media
department of the UN mission in
Sudan, which gives her immunity
from prosecution. She submitted her
resignation after her trial began last
week because she wanted to go on
trial to challenge the dress code law.
A defence lawyer, Jalal al-Sayed,
said the judge wanted to know
whether Hussein still had immunity
because her employers were still to
accept her resignation.
Internet News Record
The trial is seen as a test case of
Sudan's harsh indecency laws.
Hussein, a widow in her 30s, was
arrested with a dozen other trouser-
wearing women at a restaurant on 3
July. Ten of the women accepted the
punishment of 10 lashes, but Hussein
and two others did not.
She sent out hundreds of cards
inviting people to her trial and has
used her case to campaign against the
strict dress codes that exist despite
the large cultural differences between
northern Muslims and mainly
Christian southerners.
Hussein, who is a Muslim, says the
decency laws are not consistent with
Islam. Her case has drawn support
from some women's groups in Sudan,
and dozens of women attended last
week's hearing.
Hussein, who wore the same
trousers to court as on the day of her
arrest, said she was resigning from
her job to have the chance to prove
her innocence.
Public order cases usually involve
quick summary trials with sentences
delivered shortly afterwards.
"I am ready for what may come,"
Hussein said earlier. She said the
protesters showed that "Sudanese
women from different political
parties and groupings stand with us".
• Sudan
• United Nations
• Islam
• Gender
• Human rights
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this
content is subject to our Terms &
Conditions| More Feeds
Internet News Record
UN and Google Create Climate
Change Mapping Resources
By Dana Oshiro
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 1:16:55 AM
In January 2009, only 41% of US
voters believed that global warming
was caused by fossil fuel emissions
and other man-made causes.
According to the report, the majority
believed that global warming was
part of a natural planetary trend that
will reverse itself over time. In a
panic to sway public perception and
environmental decision making, the
United Nations Climate Change
Secretariat recently teamed up with
Google to create a Greenhouse Gas
Map detailing man's environmental
pollution. The map is a color coded
Google Maps mash up that pulls
national greenhouse gas inventory
and Kyoto Protocol data to display
toxic emissions in industrialized
nations. The tool was created in
anticipation of the UN's Climate
Change Conference to be held at the
end of this year.
Sponsor
As the Kyoto Protocol expires in
2012, leaders from more than 150
countries will convene in
Copenhagen to establish a post-
Kyoto global climate change
agreement. A simple look at the
map's lethal levels of carbon dioxide
make a good case for stricter
emission limits. While the project is
certainly one of the more recent
environmental map mash ups, a
number of efforts have already been
Toshiba 64GB SDXC Card Is Will Be the World's Largest, Fastest [Flash Memory]
By John Herrman (Gizmodo)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:39:20 AM
On one hand, it's great to see the
SDXC standard—which theoretically
tops out at 2TB—flexing its muscles
a little bit. On the other, I kinda wish
implemented. Below are four
additional green mapping projects.
1. Atlas of Our Changing
Environment: The United Nations
Environment Program uses Google
Earth to exhibit time lapse and
environmental changes. From the
effects of coal exploitation in
northeastern Wyoming's Powder
River Basin, to controlled burning in
Australia's Wyperfeld National Park,
to the growth of the aquaculture
industry in Ecuador's Guayaquil- the
map shows human implications on
the environment. One of the great
things about this tool is that in
addition to negative effects, you can
also see how proper urban planning
can help preserve large sections of
forest.
2. Stopping the Coal Rush Map:
The Sierra Club also utilizes Google
Earth to make its case for
environmental responsibility and
Toshiba wouldn't announce a record-
breaking SD card six months before
release.
Toshiba's upcoming SDXC line
stretches from 16GB to 64GB, with
read speeds of 60MB/s (that's mega
bytes, folks) and write speeds of
clean energy alternatives. The
organization has mapped the
country's planned coal plants in
recognition that the air pollution
pumped from these plants is likely to
increase public health issues and
global warming. The colored
pinpoints on the map signify the
building status of the coal plant and
the details behind the site's permits.
In some cases you can read where
Sierra Club has lobbied the
Environmental Protection Agency to
overturn air permits.
3. Earth Knowledge: This site
mashes up Google map information
with news stories on biodiversity,
climate change, geology and water
pollution. News sources like Science
Daily and Reuters offer stories on
global sustainability and alternative
energy. Users can also discuss topics
with other community members.
4. Home Project Maplet: For this
year's World Environment Day,
Google launched the Home Project- a
full length feature film on climate
change. Shot by Yann Arthus-
Bertrand, the movie is an aerial look
at the planet and climate change. In
conjunction with the movie, Google
released an amazing map applet,
complete with geo-tagged Wikipedia,
video, web cam and photo layers.
Users can also find tagged
information on biodiversity, global
warming factors, water and poverty.
Discuss
35MB/s. The one we're really
Web/ World/ Gizmos/
Taliban rockets hit
Kabul ahead of election
(World news and comment from
the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:30:33 AM
Insurgents aim to show Afghan
government cannot ensure security in
capital ahead of presidential elections
A string of rockets struck Kabul at
dawn today in the first major attack
on the Afghan capital in the run-up to
this month's presidential election.
Officials said at least eight rockets
hit, one damaging a senior interior
ministry official's house near the US
embassy. A Taliban spokesman
claimed militants fired nine rockets at
the international airport and two at an
Afghan military headquarters, in a
neighbourhood of embassies and
government buildings, to show that
the government could not ensure
security in the capital.
"We are in control," said Zabiullah
Mujahid, warning the Taliban could
fire more rockets at the capital before
the elections.
Elsewhere, a suicide bomber killed
five people and wounded 18 in
southern Afghanistan today, and a
provincial governor escaped injury in
an attack on his convoy.
In recent years Kabul has been
mostly spared the bombings, suicide
attacks and gun battles common
across much of Afghanistan,
although a handful of large-scale
attacks have targeted ministries and
an international hotel.
An interior ministry spokesman,
Zemeri Bashary, said a police count
showed eight rockets were fired
interested in is obviously the 64GB
unit, since prior SDXC cards, while
fast, haven't hit capacities beyond the
highest end of the SD H C spec. And
look! Sample shipments for the
largest card start arriving in
November! That's great, if you're an
33
today, most of them landing in
residential areas next to the airport. A
child and a man were slightly
wounded.
Bashary said the rockets came from
Deh Sabz, about five miles north-east
of Kabul. The Deh Sabz district
police chief, Mohammad Haydar
Tayeb, said police found a ninth,
unexploded rocket there. He said
police suspected the militants fled
after activating a crude device that
uses slowly dripping water as a timer
to set off a charge from a car battery.
Tayeb said several suspects were
arrested and handed over to
intelligence services.
In another attack today, a suicide
bomber detonated an explosive vest
in Zabul province next to a vehicle
used by agents of the National
Directorate of Security, killing one
agent and four civilians. Eighteen
people were wounded, including
three children, according to police.
Another bomb detonated under the
convoy of the governor of Wardak
province as he travelled to his office
from Kabul, but no one was hurt.
With 74 troops killed, July was the
deadliest month for international
forces in Afghanistan since the US-
led invasion in 2001.
• Afghanistan
• Taliban
• Global terrorism
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this
content is subject to our Terms &
Conditions| More Feeds
OEM manufacturer. Regular folks
will have to wait for "Spring, 2010"
to splurge on one of these, however
much it'll cost; these SD cards, which
are literally from the future, haven't
been priced yet. [ Toshiba]
34 Web/ World/
One Year On: Imeem Hype Falls Flat
By Richard MacManus
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:00:00 AM
One year ago we reported that
music-based social networking site
Imeem was experiencing strong
growth and making key deals with
record labels. Our conclusion at the
time was that "Imeem's growth rate
and buzz is reminiscent of that of
YouTube just before it got huge."
Big words indeed. To see if that
You Tube comparison was justified,
let's check back in with Imeem one
year later and assess how they're
doing now.
Sponsor
Imeem is a social networking site
that offers streaming music. At the
time of our report last August,
Imeem was the third-largest social
network in the United States after
MySpace and Facebook, and the No.
1 streaming music site in the US.
Key competitors for Imeem were
(and still are) MySpace Music,
last.fm and Pandora.
The tale of the tape is usually a
good indication of growth; and
according to Compete Imeem has
actually declined by 10.5% in unique
visitors this past year. The chart
below doesn't include Facebook and
MySpace, because they are much
larger than Imeem. While Imeem is
still larger than last.fm and Pandora,
the chart below shows a definite dip -
whereas last.fm and Pandora grew.
If we add in MySpace and
Facebook, you can see the gulf
between Imeem and the other two
large social network players. We also
see the massive growth of Facebook
over the past year; it passed MySpace
in Dec '08 - Jan '09 according to this
data.
Statistics don't tell the whole story
of course, however we've also seen
other evidence of problems at
Imeem. The company appears to be
under pressure financially - in
October '08, Imeem laid off 25% of
its staff. The product is also under
strain. In late June this year we
reported that Imeem will remove
photos and videos from its features,
in order to simplify the service and
focus on the service's core social
music features. That move did not go
down well with Imeem users.
We also note a relative dearth of
news this year - just 2 news
announcements at Imeem so far this
year (into the 8th month), both about
Imeem Mobile. Our review of Imeem
Mobile was tepid.
We don't want to be too negative.
There's much still to like about
Imeem - its design has improved and
the list of record labels is impressive.
But it's obvious that the hype that we
saw one year ago (including our own
comparison to YouTube!) just hasn't
panned out.
With Miley Cyrus now draped all
over the Imeem homepage and Jonas
Brothers in the default playlist, it
seems that the site is now aiming to
attract the teeny bopper audience that
perhaps MySpace and other online
music sites don't serve too well.
That's great, but it's far from the
diverse mainstream audience that
Facebook and MySpace attract.
Unfortunately, Imeem is heading
the wrong way in terms of its growth.
And there are newer, arguably better
music streaming services rising up -
Spotify has gotten rave reviews so far
from international markets and it's
about to launch in the U.S.
Can Imeem turn it around? Let us
know your thoughts on Imeem in the
comments. Discuss
Iranian TV confirms
arrest of three US hikers
(World news and comment from
the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:16:41 AM
State TV claims trio, who crossed
mountainous border area between
Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish areas,
could be journalists
Iranian state media has confirmed
that the three Americans who strayed
across the border from Iraq have
been arrested for illegal entry.
A newscaster on state television
claimed their case is being used by
the west for propaganda against Iran
and cast doubt on whether they were
hikers who had lost their way, saying
western media had also reported
some of them were journalists.
The three were detained on 31 July
hiking along the mountainous border
area between Iraqi and Iranian
Kurdish areas where the frontier is
not clearly marked.
"While BBC said they were
mountain hikers, some websites say
they were journalists," said Khabar
TV, the main state news channel.
"Since occupation of Iraq by the US-
led forces, American journalists in
Iraq have travelled to neighbouring
countries illegally."
One of the Americans, Shane
Bauer, has been identified as a
freelance journalist.
The hardline Fars news agency
quoted the deputy governor of
Iranian Kurdistan province as saying
the three were detained near the
Internet News Record
Malakh-Khor border crossing at
Marivan.
"Two of the three are men. They
were not interrogated," Iraj
Hassanzadeh, the deputy governor of
the province, was quoted as saying,
adding that anyone crossing the
border illegally would be arrested.
Bauer is a freelance journalist and
photographer based in the Middle
East who has reported from Iraq,
Syria, Sudan's Darfur region and
Yemen, according to his website.
Another one of the detained has been
identified by family members as
Joshua Fattal. His father, Jacob, said
on Monday that he did not have any
updates from the US state department
about his son, who graduated from
the same university as Bauer.
The identity of the third American
has not been confirmed, but other
media reports have identified her as
Sarah Shourd.
In Washington, secretary of state
Hillary Clinton appealed to Iran
yesterday for information on the
three Americans to help determine
their whereabouts.
• Iran
• Iraq
• United States
• Middle East
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Internet News Record
Bill Clinton meets Kim Jong-il
By Tania Branigan (World news
and comment from the Guardian
| guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:24:54 AM
Former US president reported to
have talked with Pyongyang leader
during trip to negotiate release of
American journalists
Bill Clinton today met the reclusive
North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il,
and passed on a verbal message from
Barack Obama, according to the
state's official news agency. The
meeting came as the former US
president arrived on a surprise
mission to seek the release of two
imprisoned American journalists.
The highest-profile visit to the
country by an American for almost a
decade follows a steady mounting of
tension between Washington and
Pyongyang over the stalled aid-for-
disarmament talks and North Korea's
nuclear test and missile launches.
Radio Pyongyang and the Korean
Central Broadcasting Station said
Kim had hosted a dinner for Clinton
at the state guesthouse. At the event,
the two men exchanged "a broad
range of opinion", according to the
reports, during which Clinton
"courteously" conveyed a verbal
message from Obama, for which Kim
expressed his thanks.
Clinton, who flew in on a private
jet, was greeted by North Korea's
chief nuclear negotiator and vice-
foreign minister, Kim Kye-gwan, and
a high-ranking parliamentary official.
A girl presented him with a bouquet
Interview with Apple logo designer Rob Janoff
By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 8/3/2009 3:00:00 PM
Filed under: Apple Corporate,
Apple History There's a great
interview at CreativeBits today with
Rob Janoff, designer of the Apple
logo. That simple Apple with the
chunk bitten out is as iconic as the
on his arrival.
In a brief statement, the White
House described his visit as a "solely
private" attempt to negotiate the
freedom of Laura Ling and Euna
Lee. The press secretary, Robert
Gibbs, said the Obama's
administration would make no public
comment while Clinton was on the
ground, adding: "We do not want to
jeopardise the success of former
President Clinton's mission."
But such unofficial meetings
provide a back channel for
discussions between North Korea and
the US, which do not have
diplomatic relations.
Daniel Pinkston, an expert on
North Korea at the International
Crisis Group, said: "There is a long
agenda of issues between the two
countries. Of course they will discuss
those things.
"I think there has to be something in
the works or he wouldn't go –
particularly since his wife is secretary
of state."
The US journalists were detained
while on a reporting trip for
California-based Current TV – co-
founded by Al Gore, Clinton's former
vice-president. They were sentenced
in June to 12 years of hard labour for
entering the country illegally and
engaging in "hostile acts".
Washington is believed to be
working behind the scenes to
negotiate their release. Hillary
Clinton has said "everyone is very
sorry" about the incident, and urged
Pyongyang to grant them amnesty.
company and products it represents.
The logo has undergone several
tweaks over the years, from the
original rainbow to the aqua version
that accompanied the original iMacs
to the glassy version we see today.
Fanatics will remember that the
logo was introduced with the Apple
II in 1977. Rob talks about this and
other insights into the design's
Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at
Seoul's Dongguk University, said
Bill Clinton's visit could serve two
purposes: securing the women's
release and improving ties between
the two countries.
"I think it's not just about
journalists. It will serve as a turning
point in the US-North Korea
relations," he said.
Pyongyang has increased tensions
in recent months, but many analysts
suggested its primary goal was to
push the Obama administration into
engaging with it. Last week it said it
was open to talks on its nuclear
programme - an apparent call for
direct discussions with the US.
Washington has said it could talk
bilaterally with the North, but only
on the sidelines of six-party talks -
also involving China, Japan, South
Korea and Russia – which
Pyongyang has denounced.
Clinton is the second former US
president to visit North Korea.
Jimmy Carter visited in 1994, when
Clinton was in office, and met the
then-leader Kim Il-sung, the late
father of the current leader. The visit
came amid escalating nuclear
tensions and led to a breakthrough
deal months later.
Six years later, Clinton's secretary
of state, Madeleine Albright, visited
Pyongyang for talks with Kim Jong-
il. But when George Bush took
office, he declared the North to be
part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and
Iraq.
Hillary Clinton – who is currently
history, like the fact that he originally
presented only two versions of the
World/ AppleBlog/ Gizmos/
in Kenya for a trade conference –
enraged Pyongyang's leaders last
month by likening them to unruly
children seeking attention. Some
analysts suggested North Korea
would see her husband's trip as a
reward for bad behaviour.
But Pinkston argued: "If there's
nothing but punishment all the time,
what incentive do people have to
cooperate and do anything good?
"You certainly have to be careful
not to be manipulated, but you have
to look at the outcome."
There was no immediate response
from Clinton's New York foundation,
and Gore's spokeswoman, Kalee
Kreider, said she could not comment.
A senior US official travelling to
Africa with Hillary Clinton told
reporters : "While the mission is in
progress, we will have no comment
... Our interest is the successful
completion of the mission and the
safe return of the journalists."
North Korea is also holding a
South Korean worker accused of
insulting the North's political system
and the four-man crew of a South
Korean fishing boat that strayed
north of a maritime border last week,
after experiencing navigational
problems.
• North Korea
• Bill Clinton
• United States
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logo to the Steves (Jobs and
Wozniak): One with and one without
the "bite." Other tidbits include why
the original design had stripes and
what the bite really represents. It's an
interview worth reading.
Rob has been interviewed many
times before, naturally -- see these
past conversations for more insight.
TUAW Interview with Apple logo
35
The PS3 Slim
Approaches (So the
Evidence Says) [PS3
Slim]
By matt buchanan (Gizmodo)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:40:00 AM
Whether it's the PS3 Slim or the
PS3 Rocket Ride, something is
happening in Sony land. Let's review
the crazy (and growing) pile of
evidence:
• The 80GB PS3 is being
discontinued
• Digitimes reports Sony is
seriously ramping up orders for "key
PS3 components," enough to build a
million consoles over the next three
months. Even though, you know,
they've been selling fewer PS3s.
HMMMM.
• Amazon lists a PS3 "Konsole
Slim." Hmm.
• Last but not least, speculation that
we'll see the PS3 Slim show its
prettier face at gamecom on August
18. HHMMMMMM.
designer Rob Janoff originally
appeared on The Unofficial Apple
Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 03 Aug
2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
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36 World/ AppleBlog/
Vatican accused of 'excessive
sensibility' to Jews
By Riazat Butt (World news and
comment from the Guardian |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:11:32 AM
Head of ultra-conservative Catholic
sect says he is 'embarrassed' by Holy
See's reaction to Holocaust
comments
The head of an ultra-conservative
Catholic sect has attacked the
Vatican for the "excessive
sensibility" shown to the Jewish
world following comments made by
a Holocaust-denying priest.
Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior
general of the Priestly Fraternity of
Saint Pius X (SSPX), told the Italian
news agency Apcom that he felt
"embarrassed" about the Holy See's
behaviour when it emerged last
January that Richard Williamson, a
member of the conservative sect,
denied that millions of Jews were
murdered in Nazi concentration
camps, as well as denying the
existence of Nazi gas chambers.
Fellay also said Jews should not
concern themselves with church
affairs, referring to an outcry over a
prayer that called for their conversion
to Roman Catholicism.
In the wide-ranging interview,
given last Friday, he said: "It is not
their religion. Leave us alone. They
Microsoft: how to port iPhone apps to Windows Mobile
By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:30:00 PM
Filed under: Multimedia, Portables,
Software With just a few months to
go before launching the Windows
Marketplace for mobile applications,
Microsoft has published details on
porting iPhone apps to its Windows
Mobile platform. It's a case study of
are matters which concern the
Catholic church. If we wish to pray
for the Jews, we will pray for the
Jews in the manner we see fit. I do
not know if they pray for us, but I
would say that this is their problem."
Williamson's comments, made in
November 2008, during a Swedish
TV interview, coincided with the
lifting of an excommunication on
Williamson and his SSPX
colleagues. Intended to be an olive
branch for disenfranchised
traditionalists and a step towards
unity with the breakaway group, the
lifting of the excommunications
instead became one of the most
challenging periods of Benedict's
four-year papacy. He drew heavy fire
from rabbis around the world and the
uproar prompted him to publish a
letter acknowledging his mistake and
reorganise key departments in the
Roman curia.
Fellay played down the Williamson
furore. "He [Williamson] is a
completely marginal problem. What
he said has no relation whatsoever
with the crisis of the church, the core
issue with which we have dealt for
30 years, it is a historical matter. The
question of knowing how many and
in what way the Jews were killed is
not a matter of faith, it is not even a
religious matter, it is a historical
the app Amplitude [ App Store link],
which lets users hear far-off sounds
with ease. It's a detailed writeup that
takes readers through the entire
process.
Microsoft will have quite a task
ahead of them in this market,
considering Apple's considerable
lead and foothold. However, there
are many (to say the least) Windows
Mobile devices out there as well as
matter."
He said Williamson's removal from
the SSPX was temporary.
"It is not to be exaggerated … at the
moment, I see no grounds for
expulsion. It depends on him, on the
situation in which he placed himself
… he has seriously damaged his
reputation. He has already been
sufficiently punished, pushed to the
margin, with no position."
Relations between SSPX and the
Holy See have been strained since its
founder, Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops in
1988 without papal permission. The
society's leadership has also
continued to denounce Vatican II,
which introduced doctrinal and
disciplinary reforms in the Catholic
church.
Despite the recent tensions caused
by the Williamson saga and a spate
of ordinations decried by the pope as
illegal, Fellay suggested that a
meeting with Vatican officials could
take place this autumn.
• Catholicism
• Holocaust
• Religion
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people for whom "Windows Mobile"
means business.
Thailand plane crash
kills pilot
By Matthew Weaver (World
news and comment from the
Guardian | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:26:26 AM
Dozens injured as Bangkok
Airways flight skids into control
tower on Koh Samui island
A pilot was killed and 34 people
injured, including two Britons, when
a Bangkok Airways flight skidded
off a runway and hit a flight control
tower on the Thai island of Koh
Samui today.
The co-pilot and six others were
seriously injured after the aeroplane
landed in stormy weather and hit the
airport's old tower, said Kanikka
Kemawutanond, director-general of
the department of civil aviation.
The two injured Britons were taken
to hospital where they are expected
to make a full recovery.
"The heavy damage was at the front
of the plane where the pilot was. It
looks like he suffered from the
impact," police chief Sayan Sartsri
said.
Kanikka said the ATR72-500 twin-
turboprop had 68 passengers, two
pilots and two crew members on
board when it crashed in heavy rain
It will be interesting to see if and
how iPhone/iPod touch app
developers choose to move their
products to Windows Mobile. The
Windows Marketplace for mobile
applications is expected to drop
between September and December of
this year, as are Snow Leopard and
Windows 7. It's going to be an
exciting autumn.
[Via Macworld]
Internet News Record
into the unmanned tower. It was
flying from Krabi, another popular
resort on Thailand's mainland.
"The weather was bad, and it was
raining when the plane skidded off,"
an official said earlier.
The British pair were travelling
with the Preston-based Gold Medal
holiday company, which is part of
the Thomas Cook group. A Gold
Medal spokeswoman said: "Both
have been transferred to local
hospitals where we have made
contact with them and, while they
have sustained some injuries, we
understand they will make a full
recovery.
"Our local representative has visited
them and we will be offering all the
help and support possible during this
time."
Koh Samui, 300 miles south of
Bangkok, is popular with foreign
tourists.
• Thailand
• Plane crashes
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iPhone apps to Windows Mobile
originally appeared on The
Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:30:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Internet News Record
The history of the mythical iTablet
By Chris Rawson (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 8/3/2009 11:45:00 PM
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion,
Portables, Rumors Stefan
Constantinescu of IntoMobile has
written a lengthy piece dissecting the
long, tortuous history of the Newton
II/Apple Tablet/iTablet/Tablet Mac.
It's a pretty comprehensive look at
seven years worth of speculation,
rumor, outlandish analyst claims,
more speculation, more rumor, and
event after event with no release of
what's become Apple's most
infamous vaporware product.
The article is definitely worth a
read (as long as you're not sensitive
to its occasionally salty language),
but the conclusion Constantinescu
reaches at the end of the article is
perhaps most interesting of all:
"The Apple Tablet does not exist.
What do I believe will happen? [...] I
believe what will be announced at the
end of this year, or early next year, is
a new MacBook with a 10 or 11.6
inch screen. The screen may or may
not be touch enabled. This will be the
first Mac portable with a 16:9 aspect
ratio LCD. Why wide? One reason:
foot print. With a wide LCD, a laptop
in the open/closed position can house
Snow Leopard is the top Amazon pre-order
By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 8/3/2009 1:45:00 PM
Filed under: Apple Corporate, OS,
Retail, Snow Leopard We're eagerly
awaiting Snow Leopard at the
TUAW offices, and we're not alone.
It's currently the number 1 pre-order
item at Amazon. While there's no
official release date available,
Amazon notes that Snow Leopard
can be expected "...sometime in
September."
What's interesting is that Apple's
$29US release will be issued only a
a wider keyboard."
While that certainly sounds
plausible, there's one thing I have to
wonder: aside from a slightly wider
keyboard and a possible touch
screen, what distinguishes that
theoretical miniature MacBook from
the glut of netbooks made by other
manufacturers, products that Apple
has derided as underpowered
machines that provide a dismal user
experience?
While Apple does have a history of
taking existing products, putting their
own spin on them, and gaining
industry laurels for innovation as a
result (iMac, iPod), the introduction
of a product like the one
month before Microsoft's Windows 7
(in fact, reader Chris Tebb points out
that many Amazon users checking
out Snow Leopard go on to buy Win
7). Microsoft hopes to dig itself out
Constantinescu is talking about
seems a little bit too much "Me too!"
even for Apple. Such a device would
also heavily cannibalize sales of the
MacBook Air, to the point of making
that device largely irrelevant.
After reading this piece, our own
Aron Trimble noted, "I don't think it
makes any more sense to speculate
on what Apple will not do than to
speculate on what Apple will do."
Despite the fact that I pretty much
did just the same thing, I agree with
him.
The only thing that's certain about
all of this: until Apple releases
something like an iTablet, or
definitively says "We will never, ever
make this product, and we mean it,
pinky swear!" the speculation will
never end.
What do you think? Do you agree
with Constantinescu that the long-
rumored Tablet Mac will never see
the light of day? Let us know in the
comments.
TUAW The history of the mythical
iTablet originally appeared on The
Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:45:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
of the hole created by public reaction
to Vista, while Apple is giving Mac
OS X Leopard a shine. For more on
Snow Leopard, check out the official
page and our own continuing
coverage.
[Via MacDailyNews]
TUAW Snow Leopard is the top
Amazon pre-order originally
appeared on The Unofficial Apple
Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 03 Aug
2009 13:45:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
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AppleBlog/ 37
More red meat for the
FCC to chew on with
AT&T and Apple
By Mel Martin (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 8/3/2009 3:30:00 PM
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion,
Steve Jobs, iPhone, App Store
Reflecting on my last post-- and how
unbelievable the AT&T statement
was that they have nothing to do with
what gets approved in Apple's App
Store -- convinced me I needed to
refresh my dimming memory banks.
Remember all the flames about
whether Skype would come out for
the iPhone last year? Then, at the
2008 conference last year, none other
than Steve Jobs told the assembled
multitudes that he would love to see
a VoIP application for the iPhone as
long as it used Wi-Fi and not the
cellular data network. That, of
course, was designed to protect
AT&T, and while AT&T might not We may yet see some changes in
have insisted, Jobs knew he couldn't some of these restrictive policies and
allow a full version of Skype or any more competition among cell phone
other similar voice client. providers and carriers. That benefits
That caused the internet advocacy just about everyone. Perhaps the fight
group Free Press to complain to the over crippled or banned apps like
FCC, but nothing really happened. Skype, Google Voice and the
Now there is a new president, with a
different view of net neutrality than
SlingPlayer for iPhone has ignited a
debate that could finally change
that held by the Bush Administration. things.
There's a new FCC Commissioner as TUAW More red meat for the FCC
well, Julius Genachowski. to chew on with AT&T and Apple
originally appeared on The
I would expect this whole area of
restricting freedom of access to be a Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
big issue in the coming weeks and on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:30:00 EST.
months. We may not hear what Please see our terms for use of feeds.
answers Google, AT&T and Apple Read| Permalink| Email this|
give to the FCC queries right away, Comments
but they'll likely leak out eventually.
38 AppleBlog/ Gizmos/
Writer's tools:
WriteRoom wreally
wrocks
By Steven Sande (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:00:00 AM
Filed under: Software, Reviews As
you've probably gathered by now,
I'm on a search for the perfect writing
tool. I did a short blurb about Ulysses
2.0 a few weeks ago, I read Megan
Lavey's Friday Favorite review of
Scrivener with interest, and I'll have
a detailed review of Storyist v2 soon
-- if I can get over the writer's block I
seem to have picked up with regards
to that post.
There are two main schools of
thought when it comes to writing
tools. The first type is the do-
everything tool, complete with
project management and
storyboarding, bulletin boards to pin
notes on, even places to write up
biographies of your characters.
Storyist is a perfect example of one
of these tools. The second genre, of
which Ulysses and WriteRoom are
members, is the minimalist school.
Why Gizmodo Went Down [Announcements]
By Jesus Diaz (Gizmodo)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:58:00 AM
As you most probably noticed this
weekend and yesterday,
Gizmodo—and all the Gawker
sites—went down in flames for a
couple of days. We are now back at
full power, and have a pretty accurate
idea of what happened.
These type of writing tools pare the
user interface down to a minimum
and are designed to give authors an
environment in which to concentrate
on putting words on paper. The
analogy is sitting in front of a
typewriter and writing.
WriteRoom[US$24.95] was last
covered by TUAW back in 2007, and
it is has been interesting to see the
evolution of this product and its
siblings over the past two years. It's
currently in version 2.3.7, and there's
a free trial download available on the
website.
Continue reading Writer's tools:
WriteRoom wreally wrocks
TUAW Writer's tools: WriteRoom
wreally wrocks originally appeared
on The Unofficial Apple Weblog
(TUAW) on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
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It was a Distributed Denial of
Service attack—aka DDoS:
A Distributed Denial of Service
attack is, simply put, like two or 10
people hitting refresh on Gawker
millions of times a minute.
Obviously, this is not a hack for the
faint hearted (or unskilled).
Sometimes it's one person, others it's
multiple. Sometimes the damage is
GarageBand updated to 5.1
By Joachim Bean (The
Unofficial Apple Weblog
(TUAW))
Submitted at 8/3/2009 10:10:00 PM
Filed under: iLife, Software Update
On what seemed like a somewhat
slow Monday, Apple has updated
GarageBand '09 to version 5.1. This
update adds a few new features,
improves compatibility and stability,
and also fixes a security issue.
The changes include:
• GarageBand track effects and
Audio Units can now be added to a
guitar track.
• Improved support for Apogee
audio interfaces.
• Faster switching to full screen in
temporary, others it is permanent.
We don't know who did it and why,
Magic GarageBand.
• Improved access to audio
monitoring settings.
This update weighs in 139.29MB,
and is available to download in
Software Update or from Apple's
support download page. If this
updates improves or fixes any
problems you might have in
GarageBand, feel free to leave a
comment below.
TUAW GarageBand updated to 5.1
originally appeared on The
Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:10:00 EST.
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but we know it was targeted at one of
Gawker's former properties:
Consumerist—which is not loading
at the time—a site that defends
people against corporations' abuse. It
seems that some company or group
of individuals decided to use to dirty
tactics to attack them. Anyone has
any tips about who that may be? [
Gawker via mediabistro via Twitter]
Internet News Record
Kensington Dock
Charges Mini Battery
Alongside Your
iPhone/iPod [Apple]
By Danny Allen (Gizmodo)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:15:24 AM
There are more than a few
iPhone/iPod battery packs floating
around these days, but Kensington's
gone and thrown one in with its new
$70 charging dock.
The err, adventurously named
'Kensington Charging Dock with
Mini Battery Pack' comes with its
own mini battery that charges next to
your dock-compatible iPhone/iPod.
Kensington claims it'll provide an
extra 30 hours of music or 6 hours of
video on an 3rd generation iPod
Nano, and an extra 3 hours of talk
time on an iPhone.
Kinda cool, but enough to make
you excited for yet another iPod
dock?
[ Kensington via Engadget]
Internet News Record
Eric Schmidt Should've Left Sooner [Google]
By John Herrman (Gizmodo)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:00:00 AM
Everyone's trying to pinpoint
exactly what pushed Eric Schmidt to
leave Apple's board—or Apple to
oust him—but whether it was Google
Voice or the FCC doesn't really
matter. Eric Schmidt shouldn't have
been there in the first place.
Schmidt's presence the Apple board
of directors has been conceptually
weird from the start, but in the last
year or so, he's been treading in
dangerous territory. Many saw these
concerns crystallize when the FTC
invoked a century-old antitrust law
that prohibits "interlocking
directorates"—essentially, the
sharing of leadership between two
competing companies to investigate
the companies after Google
announced Chrome OS (an
investigation which is still moving
forward, despite Schmidt's exit). The
NYT, discussing the issue in May:
Antitrust experts say that
investigations of interlocking
directorates rarely lead to major
confrontations between companies
and the government. Executives
typically choose to resign from the
board of a competitor if it poses a
problem rather than face a lengthy
investigation or a bruising legal fight.
The thing is, until just now, Eric
Schmidt didn't step down, nor did he
seriously talk about it. He didn't feel
he had to, because of a disingenuous
loophole:
Under the Clayton Act,
interlocking directorates are not
considered a problem if the revenue
from products in which the
companies compete is less than 2
percent of either company's sales.
Followup on NYC rssCloud roadshow
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 10:38:12 AM
Last Thursday we had a very
successful meeting in NYC to
discuss development of the 140-
Google's competing services are
generally free, including Android and
the upcoming Chrome OS, and
therefore don't directly account for
much—or depending on how
stubbornly literal you want to be
about it— any of the company's
revenue. This should have be a clear
cue to step the hell aside, but it
wasn't taken that way. Schmidt was
comfortable staying, and wasn't
afraid to say so as early as last week.
In an interview printed in the
Mercury News on Friday, Schmidt
said "the board question can be
character loosely-coupled message
network built on rssCloud.
The main immediate followup was
to create an place for online
discussion.
Let's use the comments on this post
solved by recusing yourself, which I
do with the iPhone," hardly talking
like a guy who was about to walk
away. He was comfortable with this
relationship; the regulatory bodies,
the public and, most importantly,
Apple, were not. It's hard to imagine
Steve Jobs, or Apple's various board
members, taking kindly to the
consistent surprises they were getting
from Google. As they saw it, the
iPhone begot Android, Safari begot
Chrome, and in a small way, OS X
begot Chrome OS. Steve Jobs didn't
waste any words in their press release
to begin.
Gizmos/ Tech Musings/
on Schmidt's departure, and made
these concerns pretty clear:
Unfortunately, as Google enters
more of Apple's core businesses, with
Android and now Chrome OS, Eric's
effectiveness as an Apple Board
member will be significantly
diminished.
Chrome OS was announced in
May, and Android in November of
2007. To Jobs and Apple, Schmidt's
overlapping interests were old news;
to Schmidt, it's safe to assume they
were ancient history.
The Google/Apple relationship has
been steadily getting more awkward
since people first started talking
about it, and at a fast clip since
Schmidt's been onboard. The
relationship was unnecessarily
strained as it was, but now Schmidt's
company is giving Apple some
serious headaches, all the while
looking like the innocent party in a
confusing PR nightmare that's drawn
the wrath of the FCC. Granted, they
deserve it, but having a Google CEO
to step over only muddles the issues.
It bears repeating: nothing good
could've come from Schmidt staying.
He'd either be accused of collusion,
sabotage or both—his presence was a
lose-lose proposition. He didn't seem
to mind, but it looks like Apple
finally did.
Drawing a thicker line between
these corporate structures is good for
everyone, no matter how this plays
out. If Apple and Google turn into
direct rivals, they need distinct
management. If they want to
continue working together, like they
do on browsers, iPhone software, or
some as-of-yet-unannounced project,
they need the exact same thing.
My preference is to set up a
YahooGroup, but if there's a
consensus to use some other
collaborative environment, I'll go
with it.
39
Chrome
bookmark
synch
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 4:58:53 PM
I've been asked if Chrome's
announced bookmark synch is
enough to get me to switch from
Firefox.
Short answer: No.
Why?
1. Right now all my machines run
Firefox, and most of them are Macs.
Chrome doesn't run on Macs. Yes I
know they have a pre-alpha. Let me
know when it's solid. And I might not
do it even then.
2. I don't like it when a BigCo
plays hardball with a little guy. I like
XMarks. It works, and before
Chrome competes with it, they
should give them a chance to support
their browser.
3. I like XMarks because a focused
developer is going to care more about
the service than a huge company that
has lots of irons in lots of fires. They
could easily forget about bookmark
synch, if for example, a key engineer
quits, or gets interested in something
else. Bookmark synch is how
XMarks' bread is buttered.
4. I'm scared of giving Google all
my data. What if someday they
decide I don't exist. What recourse
would I have?
40 Entertainment/ Internet News Record

Emmy producer defends The Closer: Identity Theft

By Allison Waldman (TV Squad)
pre-taping eight awards - Submitted at 8/4/2009 2:30:00 AM

Filed under: Other Drama Shows,

TCA Report Episode Reviews, Reality-
Free(S05E09) Every episode of The
By Joel Keller (TV Squad) Closer is a puzzle of sorts, and this
Submitted at 8/3/2009 9:55:00 PM

Filed under: Industry, TCA Press

Tour, Awards, Emmys, Reality-Free
The final panel of CBS's day was for
the 61st Annual Emmy Awards,
which the network is broadcasting.
Given the controversy over the news
that the academy is going to pre-tape
eight awards before the main
ceremony goes live and play edited
versions of the presentations during
the show, it promised to be a bit of an
inquisition. In fact, it was such a hot
topic that show producer Don
Mischer was more sought after for
answers than host Neil Patrick
Harris, who appeared via satellite
from Montreal.
Mischer showed us what he had in
mind, culled from a presentation
from last year's low-rated ceremony.
Essentially, he trimmed the reading
of the nominees, then cut a lot of the
one surely qualified, especially since
it began in court with the case
already decided. All that remained
was the formality of Russell Clark --
guest star Bruce Davison -- elocuting
to the judge. Well, not so fast. There
were a few hiccups requiring
Brenda's immediate attention.
The moment Cynthia Watros
showed up as the victim's widow,
anxious to reclaim her husband's
belongings from the crime scene,
suspicions were raised. But first
Brenda had to figure out why Russell
Clark had confessed to the crime, if
he was covering for his
edited might not feel that way. But
Mischer has a pretty legitimate
reason why he and the Academy are
doing this: They need to make the
broadcast more accessible.
schizophrenic son, James -- if James
was capable of the murder in the first
place, and then there was the
question of what to do with Mama.
Yes, Willy Ray was there, along with
Fritz and Charlene, Brenda's niece.
Continue reading The Closer:
Identity Theft
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Food Network cooks up new concept
for its new star
By Allison Waldman (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:02:00 AM
Weeds: Suck n
Spit
By Jane Boursaw (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 3:50:00 AM
Filed under: OpEd, Episode
Reviews, Weeds, Reality-Free
(S05E09) "Night farts happen,
especially since I've been dieting." -
Andy to Nancy, about sharing a bed
The THINGS you see on Weeds!
WEEDS: page 41

walk-up to the podium, the hugs and
kisses, and some of the winner's
speech. But, it seemed to keep the
essence of the speech intact. Yes, I'm
sure those people who are being
Survive this: Rob and Amber have a baby
By Allison Waldman (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:04:00 AM
Filed under: OpEd, The Amazing
Race, Survivor, Celebrities Romance
on reality TV is rarely as real as the
producers want us to think. However,
at least one romance seems to be the
real thing: Rob and Amber from
Survivor.
They met on Survivor, thrived on
The Amazing Race, flopped on their
own show, but have remained a
happily married couple four years
Continue reading Emmy producer
defends pre-taping eight awards -
TCA Report
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
after they wed. Now the game really
begins for these two reality TV vets.
Rob and Amber Mariano are the
proud parents of newborn Lucia
Rose.
Little Lucia was born July 4 in
Pensacola, and chances are she's
going to be raised as a Red Sox fan.
Considering how difficult Survivor
and The Amazing Race are, and how
well Rob and Amber did on both
shows, raising a kid should be a piece
of cake.
Continue reading Survive this: Rob
and Amber have a baby
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Filed under: Food/Home/DIY,
Programming, OpEd, Casting If you
watched the finale of The Next Food
Network Star, you know that
homemaker, non-pro cook Melissa
D'Arabian was the big winner.
Hopefully, you really, really like
Melissa and not just the pilot she
created for the competition, Kitchen
Ten Dollar Dinners with Melissa
Survival Guide, because Food
Network has shucked the concept. D'Arabian.
That's right, less than 24 hours after Continue reading Food Network
cleaning up the confetti, Ms. cooks up new concept for its new star
D'Arabian was handed a new show Permalink| Email this| | Comments
with a new angle. The title will be
Internet News Record
Nurse Jackie: Nosebleed
By Jane Boursaw (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:30:00 AM
Filed under: OpEd, Episode
Reviews, Reality-Free, Nurse Jackie
(S01E09) "She's just a nurse." - Dr.
Cooper to Melissa, talking about
Jackie
Sometimes I think Dr. Cooper is
starting to be a human being, and
then he turns around and says
something really stupid. Females are
naturally more empathetic than guys,
so I would think that having two
Rumor: Alleged Apple tablet to be game console
By JC Fletcher (Joystiq)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:04:00 AM
If you spend any time on the
Internet at all (hi!), you've no doubt
heard the rumors of an upcoming
tablet device from Apple --
supposedly, the company plans to
enter the netbook market not with a
tiny computer, but with a giant
iPhone. And according to a nameless
moms would have made him a little
bit more sensitive. Guess not.
He really was a jerk in this episode,
and I imagine Jackie having to make
the decision about the organ donor
(the PETA card!) will come back to
haunt her. But what's a nurse to do?
Get another doctor maybe? I don't
care if he DID stay awake for 53
hours once.
Continue reading Nurse Jackie:
Nosebleed
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
analyst who claims to have seen the
device, as reported by Barron's, this
new thing will play games.
The analyst reports that the tablet,
with a 10-inch touch screen, is
designed to be used as a "home
media hub," streaming content over
Wi-Fi connections and connecting
with other Apple devices in the
house. It's also reportedly designed to
play games. Whether that means
WEEDS:
continued from page 40
Sometimes I don't know whether to
be amused or shocked, so this week,
I chose a little of both. The sight of
Andy suckling Nancy to ease the
pain of her swollen breasts ... well,
that just never would have occurred
to me after I had my babies and
found myself in that situation.
And I'm standing by my feeling
that Andy goes above and beyond
what's called for in a brother-in-law.
Is Shark Week cool or does it just, um,
bite?
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:30:00 AM
Filed under: Programming, TV
Squad Polls, Documentary, Reality-
Free Sorry for the lame headline.
We're in the middle of the
Discovery Channel's annual Shark
Week celebration, a whole of
programming involving sharks,
sharks, sharks, sharks, and the people
who love/fear them. But David
Zurawik over at The Baltimore Sun
doesn't understand why some people
get excited about it. He wants
stretching existing App Store
products or running new games
Entertainment/ Tech Games/
Then again, suckling the breast of the
woman you love probably isn't that
much of a stretch for him. But
swallowing the milk is a whole other
story.
Continue reading Weeds: Suck n
Spit
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
someone to explain its appeal.
View Poll
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
designed just for the device remains
to be seen, as does, you know,
whether this thing really exists.
If Apple really is making a game
console, what an inopportune time
for Apple to lose one of its game
producers. Of course, every single
day so far has been an inopportune
time to be a game producer at Apple,
so we understand.
[Via Engadget, Develop]
41
The Matrix Online's
final moments
documented
By David Hinkle (Joystiq)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:00:00 AM
Friday was the last day for SOE's
The Matrix Online. We've been
following the collapse of this older
MMO for a few months now and,
thankfully, our brothers and sisters in
the resistance over at Massively were
there to experience and document the
end. There was some merrymaking,
lightning and even a bit of ... eyes
dripping blood? Check out
Massively's gallery below for all of
the endgame ceremonies.
The Matrix Online's final moments
documented originally appeared on
Joystiq on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
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Rumor: Alleged Apple tablet to be
game console originally appeared on
Joystiq on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
10:04:00 EST. Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this|
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42 Tech Games/
Rumor: 80GB PS3 to be
discontinued in Japan, parts What Sega is making now:
ordered for new Sony consoles lots of swag
By Griffin McElroy (Joystiq)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 10:31:00 AM
We've got a bunch more kindling
for the ever-burning PS3 Slim rumor
today, so try and keep up. First and
foremost, Kotaku recently uncovered
a document from a 7-Eleven in Japan
(where 7-Elevens are apparently
respected games dealers), which asks
that stores stop taking pre-orders for
80GB PS3s as of August 9 -- at the
behest of Sony. If legit, this move
could be the start of the 80GB's mass
exodus, as foretold by the Ars
Technica mole in the " Great PS3
Slim Prophecy of 2009."
Other rumors come to us in the
form of a Telegraph report, which
rounds up a number of potential signs
pointing to the svelte system's
existence; one of which is an excerpt
from a DigiTimes article that states
Sony has "ordered enough parts to
make one million consoles in the
third quarter of this year," which is
twice as much as was ordered in the
past three months. Are these parts
being used to make Slims? PSP Gos?
A weaponized mech suit for Kaz
Hirai?
From there, Telegraph drops a
bunch of unsourced details which
should be taken with a sizable grain
of apprehensive salt. First, the outlet
claims a PS3 Slim announcement
"could come later this month" during
the GamesCom convention in
Cologne, with the actual console
appearing by the holidays. According
to Telegraph, the console "is
expected to" come in two flavors --
40GB and 80GB -- and will include
two unnamed games. Best of all, it
will supposedly have a lower price
point than current models. Ah, now
they're playing our tune.
Rumor: 80GB PS3 to be
discontinued in Japan, parts ordered
for new Sony consoles originally
appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 10:31:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
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By JC Fletcher (Joystiq)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 4:00:00 AM
Sega of Europe had a bunch of
swag made up for its "Summer
Sizzle" event and, knowing how
much we enjoy looking at things with
the Sega logo on them, posted some
pictures of the bounty handed out to
lucky attendees. We'll highlight each
item while also highlighting a video
game that Sega passed over in favor
of inconsequential swag.
• Sega t-shirt (produced instead of
the Wii Jet Set Radio game)
• Sega water bottle holder ( just cut
into the budget that would have gone
into a new traditional Phantasy Star
RPG)
• Sega fan (sorry, human Sega fans -
- no Yakuza 3 localization!)
• Sega flash drive (the data for
Panzer Dragoon Saga 2 might fit on
here, if Sega made it)
• Sega flip-flops ("We're making
Shenmue 3! No, no we're not.")
To everyone who attended the
event, and to future winners when the
company gives this stuff away on
Twitter: enjoy your t-shirt!
What Sega is making now: lots of
swag originally appeared on Joystiq
on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:00:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Internet News Record
Iwata continues
to deny Wii
price drop
By JC Fletcher (Joystiq)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:36:00 AM
Following its quarterly financial
report, Nintendo released an investor
Q&A with president Satoru Iwata. It
has yet to be released in English, but
Andriasang translated a few key
excerpts. Most notably, Iwata's
continued denial of any plans for a
Wii price drop."At present, we're not
thinking of doing anything with the
price," he said. Not that he'd
announce it beforehand. Iwata didn't
mention it, but we suspect the black
Wii will reinvigorate sales in Japan,
even at the original price.
Iwata also admitted that last
holiday's Wii lineup, specifically Wii
Music and Animal Crossing: City
Folk, didn't have the long-term sales
Nintendo expects from its big titles.
He has high hopes for this year's big
three games: Wii Sports Resort, Wii
Fit Plus, and New Super Mario Bros.
Wii. In fact, he expects all three of
these to break ten million sold by
March 2010, the end of Nintendo's
fiscal year.
Iwata continues to deny Wii price
drop originally appeared on Joystiq
on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:36:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Internet News Record
Warner Bros. highlights
Mortal Kombat, Spy Hunter
IPs in Midway acquisition
By David Hinkle (Joystiq)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 8:30:00 AM
After snatching up Midway and
dumping some of its execs, Warner
Bros. looks like it's finally starting to
get somewhere with its acquisition.
There's a new guy heading up what is
now WB Games Chicago and,
according to Develop, Warner Bros.
has confirmed that Mortal Kombat
and Spy Hunter are now part of its
forthcoming plans.
Acquiring these Midway properties
gives Warner Bros. opportunities not
only for new games (or re-releases of
old ones), but also projects "adapted
Sony wipes out interfering ad from WipEout HD
By Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 9:10:00 AM
Sony has removed a controversial in
-game ad from WipEout HD, which
slammed the hover brakes on the
futuristic racer by increasing load
for film or TV, leveraged for
consumer products, or licensed to
third parties." While we wouldn't
mind seeing someone take a stab at a
new Mortal Kombat game, we
desperately hope Warner Bros.
doesn't go for a new movie. The
world does not deserve any more of
this.
Warner Bros. highlights Mortal
Kombat, Spy Hunter IPs in Midway
acquisition originally appeared on
Joystiq on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
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times. A Sony representative
informed GI.biz that the commercial
was removed while the company
attempts to make sure that ads do not
affect gameplay. The obtrusive
commercial was part of a new deal
between Sony and Double Fusion, an
Eliza Dushku: Games
'acceptable and cool for grown
ups'
By David Hinkle (Joystiq)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:00:00 AM
BBC News caught up with Eliza
Dushku recently, noted actress (uh,
you've seen Bring it On, right?!) and
voice of protagonist Rubi in the
upcoming A2M-developed Wet.
When it comes to games, she's
apparently a fan and says they're a
pretty acceptable form of
entertainment (thanks!).
She says that games have "almost
become acceptable and cool for
grown ups -- not for people who are
in-game advertising firm. Definitely
Tech Games/ TechNews/
just in their teens." In fact, some of
her own friends and colleagues used
to be ashamed of their gaming, but
now do so "loud and proud." In all
fairness, though, most of her friends
are Blinx: The Time Sweeper fans,
so they probably should be ashamed.
Eliza Dushku: Games 'acceptable
and cool for grown ups' originally
appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 04 Aug
2009 07:00:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
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not a good sign when the first ad out
of the gate ends up being a picture-
perfect example of consumers' worst
fears about in-game advertising.
Sony wipes out interfering ad from
WipEout HD originally appeared on
Joystiq on Tue, 04 Aug 2009
43
Is Serendipity
Lost Online?
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 5:15:00 AM
I'm a big fan of Damon Darlin, at
the NY Times, but I'm a bit confused
by his latest, claiming that
serendipity is being stamped out
online, because people just go find
stuff they want, rather than randomly
discover stuff. Perhaps I'm just
speaking for myself, but I end up
finding random stuff all the time --
whether it's from seeing random links
on Twitter/Digg/Fark or other sites,
having people send me stuff or just
chatting with people. I'd argue that I
end up finding a lot more that's new
and interesting than I did before the
internet was around. Darlin tries to
brush off the fact that people get stuff
from friends on social networks, by
saying that's "filtered" by who you
choose to follow, but his own
example of serendipity at the
beginning of the article is: "When we
walk into other people's houses, we
peruse their bookshelves, look at
their CD cases and sneak a peek at
their video collections." Isn't that
"filtered" by whose homes you
happen to walk into? I walk into
strangers' homes a lot less often than
I hear about a new book, album or
movie from someone on Twitter.
Permalink| Comments| Email This
Story
09:10:00 EST. Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
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44 TechNews/
European High Court Biologic Drugs Likely To Get
Will Examine DRM Anti Separate 12-Year Monopoly
Protection Beyond Patents
-Circumvention Rules
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 3:13:33 AM
A European directive from a few
years ago included a DRM anti-
circumvention clause that even made
it illegal to host an "organized
discussion" of techniques for
circumventing DRM. That seemed
excessively broad (and unfairly
limiting) to Mikko Rauhala, who set
up a discussion site where people
could discuss CSS, the notoriously
lame copy protection used on DVDs
that has been broken for ages. He did
it mainly to get the issue into court --
which it did. Two years ago, a
Finnish court had an odd ruling on
the case, in which it claimed
circumvention was okay if the DRM
was ineffective. That's because the
directive specifically claims that it
applies to "effective DRM." Of
course, taken to its logical
conclusion, one might think that
means if you can break DRM, then
you haven't violated the anti-
circumvention language, because
Bit.ly's Business Plan To Datamine Links?
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 7:56:19 PM
A lot of folks have been mistakenly
mocking Bit.ly, the popular URL
shortening service, which some
dismiss because the functionality is
quite simple to replicate (and, in fact,
it was hardly the first or last such
service). But, as has been discussed
the real value in Bit.ly isn't so much
you've proven that the DRM is
ineffective. It's a bit of a logical
pretzel. So, while I agree that it's silly
to make discussion of circumvention
illegal, the legal reasoning was a bit
twisted.
So, it came as little surprise a year
later, when an appeals court
overturned the lower ruling.
However, from a free speech
perspective, this was still quite
troubling. Banning any organized
discussion about a technology seems
tremendously questionable. The good
news (as found via Michael Scott, is
that the case is now going to the
European Court of Human Rights.
One hopes they'll recognize this as a
violation of basic civil rights. It's
troubling enough that simply
circumventing copy protection on
legally purchased goods is
considered breaking the law. It's
much worse to say that even talking
about it is against the law.
Permalink| Comments| Email This
Story
the fact that it shrinks URLs, but in
all the data it collects. The fact that
it's become such a popular URL
shortening service, means that it has
all sorts of data on what's popular
online at any given time -- including
how many times something is added
to a social network and how many
clicks it gets. Part of the reason the
service itself has been so popular
already is the datamining it lets users
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 6:58:00 AM
A few weeks ago, we noted that
some biotech firms were pushing
hard to get a separate monopoly on
biologic drugs, that went beyond
patent protection, as if that wasn't
enough. While we had some
thoughtful comments from some
industry insiders, claiming that the
issue could be more about liability. If
that's the case, then deal with the
liability question, not the monopoly
protections. Either way, Robert
McClelland alerts us to the
unfortunate news that our elected
officials have caved in to what the
big pharma companies wanted and
agreed to a new plan that would give
a twelve-year monopoly on these
sorts of "biosimilars." It's still not
clear why this is needed at all, other
than to wipe out competition and
make drugs much more expensive.
The two congressional reps who
pushed this through were
do, so they can see how many clicks
something gets, and apparently, the
company behind it is planning to use
that data to create its own news site,
highlighting what's popular out there.
Who knows if this will work (being a
news aggregator hasn't made many
companies very much money lately),
but it does show how something as
simple as a URL shortening service
actually could have more going on
Representatives Anna Eshoo and Joe
Barton. This is no surprise from
Barton, but Eshoo, who represents
part of Silicon Valley should know
better than to be increasing
monopoly protections.
Oh wait... a quick look over at
OpenSecrets.org shows that (take a
guess...) the single largest contributor
to Eshoo's election campaigns has
been (yup) pharmaceutical
companies. Oh, and they've already
been the largest contributors to her
2010 re-election campaign. And
people wonder why Larry Lessig's
Change Congress movement is
getting attention. Even if she's being
totally sincere in her position, how
else can you look on this without
saying it smacks of corruption with
bought-and-paid-for legislation that
gives pharma companies an extra
monopoly to gain significant
monopoly rents at the expense of the
public?
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Story
behind the scenes, and shouldn't be
written off because it can be
replicated in just 10 lines of code. If
you can get people to use your ten
lines of code, the data itself can be
quite valuable, if you know what to
do with it.
Permalink| Comments| Email This
Story
Internet News Record
Gag Order Clause
Comes Back To Bite
Apple In 'Exploding'
iPod Case
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 5:00:00 PM
We've been getting a bunch of
submissions from people about a
Times Online story concerning
Apple's supposed attempt at
"gagging" someone who had their
iPod explode. The company agreed
to give a replacement, but the terms
of the deal made them agree never to
talk about it. While this may seem
draconian, I'm going to give Apple
the benefit of the doubt here: this is
pretty standard legal language on
such things. I had a laptop whose
hard drive died 5 times in six months
a few years back, and when the
manufacturer finally agreed to
replace the laptop (after multiple
escalations of the issue), it had a
nearly identical clause. But, it was
pretty straightforward. Before faxing
the agreement back to the company, I
just crossed out the clause that said I
was barred from ever talking about it,
and the guy from the company called
me immediately and said: "I see you
crossed it out -- our lawyers won't
like it, but that's fine, I just want to
get you a new machine." Who knows
if Apple would be so
accommodating, but I think this story
is blown a bit out of proportion. This
kind of language is standard legalese,
rather than some nefarious attempt
by Apple to shut up those who have
had their iPods explode. Still, the fact
that this clause is suddenly
generating press attention should put
corporate lawyers on warning. These
standard clauses are PR nightmares
waiting to happen. Take them out of
such "replacement" agreements, or be
ready to see a similar story appear in
the press soon...
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Internet News Record
Internet Filter Blocked
Educational Sites, But Left Open
Porn
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 9:56:00 PM
The Australian gov't has been
pushing for widespread internet
filters for a while, but perhaps they
should take a look at some of the
smaller scale tests being done in the
country. Someone who prefers to
remain anonymous, alerted me to the
news that filters installed for high
school students by the NSW
education department were found to
block educational sites, while letting
Insight Community Webinar On
Enterprise Knowledge
Management
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 6:05:00 PM
A few weeks back, we had an
Insight Community case, sponsored
by Sun & Intel, soliciting proposals
for a webinar on enterprise
knowledge management, targeting
mid-market companies. We're happy
to announce that this Thursday,
August 6th, at 9am PT, we'll be
hosting that webinar, moderated by
me, led by Joel Alleyne, a member of
the Insight Community, and a widely
porn flow through. Of course, with
any filter there's going to be some
Type I and Type II errors, so this
shouldn't be a surprise. But, for some
reason, there are many people who
seem to think that filters must work,
when they really tend to just give a
false sense of security - people think
that if filters are in place, they no
longer need to worry.
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recognized expert on knowledge
management, along with some
additional guests as well. If you're
interested in enterprise knowledge
management, especially in the mid-
market, hopefully, you'll be able to
attend. If you have any useful
questions that you'd like addressed in
the webinar, feel free to ask them
here and we'll see what we can do!
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Little Mermaid Statue Free To Be
After Artist's Estate Didn't Expect
Negative Publicity
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 12:57:19 AM
On Friday, we wrote about how an
artist's estate was going after a small
town in Michigan, for daring to have
a "Little Mermaid" statue to play up
many of the town's Danish ancestors.
There's a famous Little Mermaid
statue in Denmark, and the artist's
estate (the artist died fifty years ago)
apparently thinks all such statues
The Count: New Tool Sheds
Light on Baseball History
(WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 10:34:49 AM
Baseball historians have a new
resource for analyzing the best
players of all time, and how their
careers developed. Associated Press
Andruw Jones ranks as one of the
best fielders of all time.
Angels blogger Sean Smith has
estimated wins above replacement —
an all-encompassing statistic that
expresses how many wins a player
contributes above a hypothetical
replacement player — going all the
way back to the 1870s.
Because certain statistics needed to
make that calculation don’t go back
that far, Smith writes that some of the
statistics he used “are not to be
trusted as anything more than a
reasonable guess.” Nonetheless, his
numbers are already sparking new
analyses that weren’t previously
possible. A few examples:
Justin, from the blog Basement
Dwellers, reviews the top 14 catchers
TechNews/ Sports/
infringe on its copyright (even
though this statue was very
different). However, in our
comments over the weekend
Christopher alerted us to the news
that the estate had withdrawn the
copyright infringement claim,
apparently citing the publicity as the
reason. Apparently, being a copyright
bully can have a bit of a backlash...
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of all time.
Jeff Zimmerman looks for the best
fielders of all time overall, and for
such attributes as turning the double
play and throwing from the outfield.
Tom Tango examines the total
value of fielding in the majors, by
age of player.
45
An Old-School
Tiger Woods
Beatdown
(WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)
Submitted at 8/3/2009 8:44:44 AM
For a while there, things seemed to
be getting complicated. It used to be
— back in the good old days, like
two or three years ago — that we
could just pencil in Tiger Woods to
win just about any tournament he
entered. But there was the injury, and
the putting problems and the
puzzlingly desultory cut-missing at
the British Open and and calm down
everybody. It’s Tiger Woods. He’s
got this. Tiger’s three-stroke win this
weekend in the Buick Open — his
third win there, and 69th PGA Tour
win overall — was a suspense-free
no-doubter. Reuters Tiger Woods is
back to his normal self, squishing the
rest of the PGA like so many polo
shirt-wearing bugs.
It felt like old times to Yahoo’s
Devil Ball blogger Jay Busbee.
“Tiger thoroughly dominated both
the field and the course, posting a -20
after finishing the first day a mere -
1,” Busbee writes. “That, friends, is
how you do business.”
It likely didn’t hurt that the crowd
at Michigan’s Warwick Hills was
cheering Woods on with a fervor that
matched what Tom Watson heard at
the British Open or what carried Phil
Mickelson around Bethpage Black at
the U.S. Open earlier this summer. In
the Detroit Free Press, Michael
46 Sports/
OLD-SCHOOL
continued from page 45
Rosenberg described the vibe as
something of a New Orleans funeral.
The Buick Open is unlikely to return
next year after 51 years, and
everyone was getting busy making
some enduring memories. Even the
usually poker-faced Woods veered
unusually close to emotion, even
tossing a ball into the stands on the
17th. “The famed 17th hole looked
like any other hot spot after the party
ends,” Rosenberg writes. “Beer cups
were scattered. Empty water bottles
were strewn along the ropes. Fans
walked around the green. The
flagstick had been removed; they
won’t be needing that anymore.”* *
* homophobic slur is not news to me,”
Last week, at a WAC preseason
press event, University of Hawaii
football coach Greg McMackin
uncorked a mega-dud of a non-joke
when he described a Notre Dame
team dance with an anti-gay slur as
part of a rambling monologue that
included several other instances of
the offending word. Totally
predictable and richly deserved
outrage ensued, although the self-
righteousness of it all did seem like a
bit much. Not because McMackin’s
comment wasn’t stupid (it was) or
because his display of contrition after
the fact wasn’t authentic (he cried
during his public apology). Neither is
it to say that McMakin’s suspension
— 30 days without pay, which will
cost him about $169,000, although he
won’t miss a game — was either too
harsh or not harsh enough. Rather,
the phony part was the studied
manner in which everyone involved
acted shocked (shocked!) and
disturbed that a football coach — of
all people! — would use such
language.
“The thing is, the man just signed a
five-year $1.1 million a year contract
exactly because he talks like this,”
AOL Fanhouse’s Greg Couch writes.
“It’s the language athletes respect.
You don’t like the way a player is
practicing? Alter his name a little to
make it a girl’s name. Don’t think
McMackin is alone, or even a
dinosaur. He’s a reflection. They talk
about respect and code, but the code
doesn’t really allow for respect, does
it?”
At ESPN, LZ Granderson is less
surprised at a crusty coach getting
some shoe-leather in his mouth than
he was by the response of the writers
who listened to — and audibly
chuckled at — his commentary. “A
football coach throwing around a
Granderson writes. “Quite frankly, it
isn’t news to anyone, really. But the
people in the room who egged him
on with their laughter are the real
story. A room full of educated,
supposedly sensitivity-trained media
professionals taking delight in
McMackin’s slurs.”* * *
A small but passionate audience
actually follows the America’s Cup,
but the rest of us at least generally
know what it is — that’s the one with
the sailboats, right? In the
Washington Post, Angus Phillips
explains that, due to the machinations
of rival moguls Ernesto Bertarelli
and Larry Ellison (of Oracle fame),
the next America’s Cup is going to
be very different than the ones that
came before. “Since Bertarelli’s
Alinghi team successfully defended
the Cup in 2007 in Valencia, Spain,
the event has been mired in one legal
wrangle after another,” Phillips
fumes. “So tangled is the web that
the next Cup very likely will be in
some blistering Middle East port next
year between two immense, engine-
assisted multihulls bearing little
resemblance to anything that’s ever
raced before. How did it come to
this?”* * *
The day had to come sooner or
later. Vin Scully is 81 years old, after
all, and his 60 years with the Dodgers
organization stretch all the way back
to the franchise’s tenure in Brooklyn.
But the announcement that Scully is,
at long last, considering retirement
— not this season, but likely at the
end of 2010 — couldn’t help but
make an impression on the
generations of fans for whom a
baseball season without Scully’s
voice wouldn’t quite be baseball
season. The Chicago Tribune’s Phil
Rosenthal delivers a well-turned,
much-deserved appreciation of the
broadcasting legend. “Everything
about him is precise, from the part in
his hair to his language,” Rosenthal
writes. “He is conversational and not
given to shouting, which has to wear
better over time — on him, and
perhaps his audience as well. Scully
also adheres to a maxim of the late
Rep. Tip O’Neill: Speak only if it
improves the silence.”* * *
The NBA Development League has
helped shape many young NBA
players without ever really moving
the cultural needle. Some of this can
be laid at the doorstep of the NBA
itself, which runs the league and has
insisted on anti-innovations that are
sometimes flat-out counter-intuitive.
For instance, some D-League teams
function as farm clubs for up to three
different, and often geographically
distant, NBA franchises.
The owners of the Bakersfield Jam
estimated that they lost $1 million
last season, and briefly folded the
team in May. How do the team’s
owners plan to turn things around?
By doing about the opposite of what
any other minor league team in any
sport has ever done, the Bakersfield
Californian’s Zach Ewing reports.
“Jam owners Stan Ellis and David
Higdon further unveiled Friday their
revamped business model for the
franchise, and it includes $40,000-a-
year suites for 12, a cigar room, an
open bar and dinner served to all 550
guests at the Jam Center,” Ewing
writes. “That’s right, only 550, and if
you can’t pay for a 21-game season
ticket — the cheapest season seats
range from $3,000-$4,000 — you’ll
have a hard time getting in.”* * *
Cities around the world compete to
host the Olympics for any number of
reasons, but turning a profit on the
experience usually sits far from the
top of the list. This is as true today as
it was in 1978, when Los Angeles
was the only city to enter a formal
bid for 1984’s Summer Games.
While those games are best
remembered for the Iron Curtain
boycott and the resulting bumper
crop of U.S. gold medalists, the 1984
Summer Olympics were also unique
in that they generated a sizable
financial benefit for the host city. In
the Los Angeles Times, Cathleen
Decker explains what became of it.
“The very things that made the Los
Angeles Games financially sound —
among them the refusal by organizers
to build enormously expensive sites
— allowed a startling $232-million
surplus,” Decker reports. “Of that,
$93 million was promised to youth
sports in Southern California, with
the expectation that the money would
run out within 20 years. Five years
past that date, the money is still
coming.”
– Tip of the Fix cap to reader Bob
Berliner.
Found a good column from the
world of sports? Don’t keep it to
yourself — write to us at
dailyfix@wsj.com and we’ll consider
your find for inclusion in the Daily
Fix. You can email David at
droth11@gmail.com.
Internet News Record
Plaxico Burress
Starting to Regret
That Gun Incident
(WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)
Submitted at 8/4/2009 7:38:43 AM
Plaxico Burress has spent much of
his football career known as a
talented headcase. Then he caught
the winning touchdown in the New
York Giants’ win over New England
in Super Bowl XLII, which allowed
him to be known as eccentric. He
was also known as a very rich dude
after he signed a $35 million contract
extension before the 2008 season.
Reuters Plaxico Burress during his
court appearance yesterday. He opted
for a suit instead of sweatpants.
Since then it’s fair to say he’s
bought himself a penthouse
apartment back at Headcase Towers,
with perhaps a second residence in
the clink. Burress shot himself in the
thigh in a New York nightclub last
November, was released by the
Giants in April and on Monday was
indicted by a grand jury on weapons
charges. He faces two counts of
criminal possession of a weapon and
one count of reckless endangerment.
If convicted, he faces 3 ½ years in
prison. Giants linebacker Antonio
Pierce was not indicted by the same
grand jury.
“For Burress, the nightmare
continues,” Newsday’s Bob Glauber
writes. “He once was one of the
NFL’s most gifted receivers, but his
career very well may be over. In fact,
it should be over. After all, what
Internet News Record
PLAXICO
continued from page 46
team in its right mind would take a
chance on Burress now?”
A lot has changed for the Giants
since Burress shot himself in that
nightclub. “In those 243 days, a 10-1
team steamrolling toward another
championship was bounced in its
first playoff game,” the Star-Ledger’s
Steve Politi writes. “In a little over
eight months, the goodwill from a
ticker-tape parade was replaced with
perp walks and press conferences on
the steps of the courthouse. They do
not get to pick up where they left off
on Nov. 28 — that opportunity is
gone forever. They enter this training
camp still without a replacement for
Burress’ significant presence on the
field, too. Has the window on this
team closed? Only the coming
months will tell. But, at least now,
the team can move on.”
But maybe they haven’t learned
their lesson. In the New York Daily
News, Gary Myers writes that
Burress wasn’t the only player with
questionable character on the
Giants.* * *
Two national championships in
three years have paid off handsomely
for Florida’s Urban Meyer. On
Monday, Meyer signed a six-year
contract worth $24 million, making
him the SEC’s highest-paid coach
and the third-highest overall, behind
Southern California’s Pete Carroll
and Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis.
Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples
says the new deal will likely lead to
bigger paydays for Alabama’s Nick
Saban and LSU’s Les Miles.
There’s at least one positive to
Meyer’s long-term deal for Gator
fans. It might end all those Notre
Dame rumors, the Tampa Tribune’s
Martin Fennelly writes — for a
while.
Still with college football, in the
Washington Times, Dick Heller says
Army’s program hasn’t been the
same since Aug. 3, 1951, when 37
players were expelled for academic
cheating.* * *
A 17th straight losing season is a
forgone conclusion for the Pittsburgh
Pirates, who haven’t won a World
Series since the days of Willie
Stargell, Dave Parker and Kent
Tekulve in 1979. The roster has been
purged again. Ryan Doumit is the
only player remaining from the
team’s 2008 Opening Day starting
lineup. But that’s not necessarily a
bad thing, ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick
writes.
While small-market teams in
Pittsburgh and Kansas City have
struggled for years, another low-
budget MLB operation has gotten
great returns on its investment. The
parsimonious Florida Marlins have
won two World Series titles in their
17-year history and in three years
hope to open a new baseball-only
stadium. Once again this season, the
Marlins are competing for a playoff
spot, Dave Sheinin writes in the
Washington Post.
In the Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
Gil LeBreton writes that the next 10
games might determine the Rangers’
playoff destiny.* * *
Here’s something you don’t see
every day: women headlining a
mixed martial arts event. But on Aug.
15 in San Jose, Calif., Gina Carano
(aka “Conviction”) faces off against
Cristiane Santos (”Cyborg”). In the
New York Times, Michael Brick
writes about how an outfit called
Strikeforce is putting the spotlight on
female fighters.* * *
The St. Louis Vipers, the San
Diego Sockers, the Winnipeg Jets
and the Baltimore Stars have
something in common: Those teams
were respective champions in the
final seasons of Roller Hockey
International, the original Major
Indoor Soccer League, the World
Hockey Association and the United
States Football League. Add to that
47
list the Philadelphia Soul of the
Arena Football League, which will
fold this week after more than two
decades in business. Writing for CBS
Sports, Ray Ratto says the AFL
never was “ the next big thing.”* * *
Jim Murphy is a three-time
strongman champion in
Massachusetts, lifting all sorts of
oddball items like enormous tires and
Atlas balls and pulling a 60,000-
pound dump truck. The 29-year-old
will be competing for another title
this weekend, Bella English writes in
the Boston Globe, but this time with
a new heart.* * *
In the New York Daily News, Matt
Marrone writes about famous origins
in sports, including the terms “slam
dunk” and “March Madness.”
Finally, the Columbus Dispatch’s
Rob Oller has some of the strangest
sports quotations of all time.
– Tip of the Fix cap to reader Don
Hartline and to fellow Fixer David
Roth.
Found a good column from the
world of sports? Don’t keep it to
yourself — write to us at
dailyfix@wsj.com and we’ll consider
your find for inclusion in the Daily
Fix. You can email Garey at
ris84rap@gmail.com.