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Amazon’s Thanksgiving weekend, Cyber Monday 2008 game dealsFROM GAMERTELL - Amazon still has some pretty amazing deals that will last until Monday (December 1, 2008). For example, how would you like to own Far Cry 2 for $17.95 or Infinite Undiscovery for $18.95? MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Dec 2008 | 12:39 am Wii Speak can be purchased used after allFROM GAMERTELL - Nintendo offers up replacement download tickets for Wii Speak so even second-hand Wii Speak microphone can be used… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 Nov 2008 | 10:14 pm Could it be a Blue Christmas for Blu-ray? (PC World)PC World - This holiday buying season is going to be the first big market challenge for Blu-ray. This will be Blu-ray's first holiday season as the unquestioned HD format leader, but with the economy in the state that it is, will it be able to actually manage to assert itself as the dominant video format and finally overtake DVDs? I'm having my doubts, and I'm not the only one.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:28 pm Beatles Face iTunes Delay, But Zeppelin's Rocking Online (PC World)PC World - The Beatles may not be ready for iTunes, but another legend from the world of rock 'n' roll is diving deeper into the digital age.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:24 pm Nokia to Pull out of Japanese Handset Market (PC World)PC World - The world's largest cell phone maker is pulling out of one of the world's biggest cellular markets. Nokia said on Thursday that it will stop developing handsets for NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile, effectively ending a push that began five years ago when Nokia re-entered the Japanese market with the launch of 3G services here.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:16 pm Use a CueCat scanner with Collectorz’s Game Collector softwareFROM GAMERTELL - Collectorz keeps the CueCat love alive, allowing the handheld scanner to work with Game Collector and other collector-friendly Mac and Windows software… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gizmodo | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm Dear Amazon, here’s how to sell even more Kindles
The basic idea would be to make the Kindle reach critical mass as a consumer product, similar to how many “average” people own an iPod. Whether iPod owners use it or appreciate it isn’t as important as the fact that they bought an iPod because it’s become the de facto standard for portable music playback. Granted, e-book readers are a harder sell than portable music players as almost everyone consumes music in someway or another but not everyone regularly reads books for pleasure. Still, the idea isn’t to make the Kindle as popular as the iPod, it’s to make the Kindle the iPod of e-book readers. No changes to current hardware My prescription for selling more Kindles to regular people doesn’t involve anything drastic like changing the hardware. It can be implemented easily and instantly. Plenty of pundits would argue that the device is in need of a hardware overhaul – and maybe it is – but let’s work with what we currently have. My plan makes upgrading to newer models enticing for current Kindle owners, too. It’s way too expensive for casual readers I consider myself a casual reader in that I read about ten books per year. Assuming I’d buy all my e-books at ten bucks a pop, it’d cost me over $350 to just get into a Kindle at first, plus another $100 scattered throughout the year. Psychologically, that initial $350+ purchase price is what keeps me away. I keep telling myself that I could buy ten books at the bookstore for less than half that price. For me, as a technology enthusiast, the EVDO data connection is THE killer feature that the Kindle has going for it, but it’s not enough to persuade me to spend almost $359 plus $10 per book on a device that I’m going to use ten times each year. That data connection is, beyond a doubt, the reason for the Kindle’s high price tag. Amazon has to pay Sprint something for access to its data network and that cost is passed along to the consumer. While some have mused that some sort of subscription to the data access could subsidize the cost of the Kindle, Amazon knows that keeping things as simple as possible is in everyone’s best interest. You don’t buy the Kindle through Amazon and then deal with Sprint, you buy the Kindle and use it without worrying about how those books are getting sent wirelessly to your device. How to overcome the price obstacle Here’s how to keep current Kindle-lovers happy while making the device accessible to less avid readers. This model draws from a model previously used by Audible.com to sell subscriptions to its audiobook service. Back when MP3 players were starting to grow in popularity but were still pretty expensive, Audible used to subsidize certain players against automatic monthly audiobook purchases. You could sign up to certain tiers (one, two, or three books per month, for instance) and the higher the tier you signed up for, the cheaper your MP3 player would cost. So for Amazon, here’s what I’d suggest: 1. Keep selling the Kindle for $359, straight-up, just like it’s being sold now. No fuss, no muss, nobody gets bent out of shape. People can buy the Kindle and then spend as little or as much on e-books as they see fit. 2. Sell the Kindle for $249 with an automatic $15 monthly book credit for one year. While most books cost under $15, it’s hard to get two books for that price. Not wanting to waste book credits, people might be persuaded to purchase a second book or a subscription to something every month using the remainder of their monthly credit, plus regular money to make up the difference. That, or Amazon would keep the extra $5 or whatever wasn’t spent ($15 for forgetful users). Buying the Kindle wouldn’t sting as much at first for consumers and Amazon would end up taking in at least $429, minus whatever it pays out for royalties. 3. Sell the Kindle for $49 with an automatic $30 monthly book credit for one year. This would work for avid readers who don’t want to outlay $359 up front for the device plus it’d entice people like me to get into a Kindle for dirt cheap, load up on books for the first year, and then spend the next year or two reading them. Amazon would take in a total of $409, minus royalties, and $30 is easier for consumers to use up on three best sellers each month without going over. Hardware upgrades The monthly credit model would also entice first-generation Kindle owners to upgrade to subsequent Kindle devices. Instead of saying, “I paid $400 for the first one – I’m not paying another $400 for the new one” they might say, “I paid $400 for the first one and spent roughly $30 a month on books, so maybe I’ll pick the new one up for $49 and sign up for the $30-per-month plan.” Possible obstacles The biggest factor for Amazon would be whether or not a system like this would be profitable given the amount of money it has to pay to authors for each book sold. A cursory search on e-book royalties seems to peg the figure at between 15% and 25% to the authors/publishers for each book sold. If that’s true, Amazon would only be eating a couple bucks on each book sold — and we’re assuming nobody forgets to use up their credit for the first year — but the Kindle would be in the hands of so many more people, which is the whole idea. Agree? Disagree? Your thoughts? Source: CrunchGear | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm Games Industry Scores High on Video Game Report Card (PC World)PC World - A controversial media watch group has released its 13th annual report on the state of the video games industry, handing out three As, a single B+, and one nebulous "I" for "Incomplete." Whose homework was gobbled by the dog? Parents, it seems, who received the incomplete in "parental involvement." I guess that's the National Institute on Media and the Family's tongue-in-cheek way of saying "Parents, thy work is never done."Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:57 pm Estonian ISP Cuts off Control Servers for Srizbi Botnet (PC World)PC World - An Estonian ISP that temporarily hosted the command-and-control servers for the Srizbi botnet, responsible for a large portion of the world's spam, has cut off those servers, according to computer security analysts.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:52 pm HTC's Real IPhone Rival Stands Up: the Touch HD (PC World)PC World - High Tech Computer (HTC), the world's largest maker of smartphones that use Microsoft's Windows Mobile software, launched the Touch HD handset in Taipei on Wednesday, a 3.8-inch touchscreen mobile phone that more closely matches up to the iPhone 3G.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:51 pm EFF Berates Apple Over Open-source ITunes Project (PC World)PC World - Apple's attempt to quash an effort to help the latest iPods and iPhones work with non-Apple software such as the Linux operating system is out of line, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said Tuesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:48 pm Fuel-cell powered devices getting closer (AP)AP - Laptop, cell phone and iPod owners tired of having their devices run out of charge after a few hours have been patiently waiting for the next portable power source to arrive.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:45 pm Fla.'s bad weather sends shuttle arrival to Calif. - The Associated Press
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:35 pm MyQuire Gets Acquired, Won’t Tell Us By Whom
That’s about all we know. We got in touch with CEO Michael Dawson but he declined to comment or share any details because the buyer apparently requested full confidentiality on the deal. A tipster shared the following e-mail he received:
The collaboration tool was first launched about 14 months ago at the DEMOFall conference but we hadn’t really heard anything from or about the company since. Even their own ‘press coverage’ and ‘press releases’ pages haven’t been updated since December 2007. Anyone out there who knows a bit more about the acquisition? Here’s a video of Founder and former CEO David Steinberg presenting MyQuire at DEMOFall 07:
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: Gizmodo | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:30 pm The new news mindsetIt’s so great to see more and more news executives face the tough questions in the business and recognize the fundamental and urgent change upon them. Chuck Peters, CEO of a newspaper and TV company...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:15 pm Solving the Knight's Tour Puzzle In 60 Lines of Pythonttsiod writes "When I was a kid, I used to play the Knight's Tour puzzle with pen and paper: you simply had to pass once from every square of a chess board, moving like a Knight. Nowadays, I no longer play chess; but somehow I remembered this nice little puzzle and coded a 60-line Python solver that can tackle even 100x100 boards in less than a second. Try beating this, fellow coders!"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm CrunchDeals: Good Walmart video game two-for deals
Walmart has some pretty good video game deals going on right now. Available games are limited to certain titles, some better than others. For instance, there are 63 Wii titles to choose from but only 21 Xbox 360 titles. Games for the PS3 are nowhere to be found but there are two available PS2 bundles. Here are the available packages:
These deals are online-only so sit back, relax, and grab that credit card. Walmart Game Bundles [Walmart.com via dealnews] Source: Gizmodo | 30 Nov 2008 | 6:30 pm Online Black Friday Not Quite As Bad As Feared [MediaMemo]
This is all about expectations: In any other setting those numbers would be a calamity. But given that online sales for the rest of November have been lower than the previous year, this constitutes good news for the likes of Amazon (AMZN). Thursday’s numbers were even better: Thanksgiving day sales increased 6% over the previous year (click image to enlarge).
But two days of data aren’t enough to make Comscore or anyone else rethink their overall predictions for the holiday season, which remain dour. Comscore thinks overall sales will be flat. Separately, eBay’s PayPal (EBAY) reported that transaction volume on Friday increased 34% over the previous year, and that overall sales increased 26%. PayPal claims that its numbers represent 12% of U.S. e-commerce, but I don’t think those numbers will be nearly has heartening for most big retailers, who aren’t depending on the online payment service. Source: All Things Digital | 30 Nov 2008 | 6:26 pm Hot gaming news for the week of 11-23-2008Section:  No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 Nov 2008 | 6:22 pm Divorce Calculators - Interactive Marriage Survival Statistics (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) We have all heard the dismal statistics on marriage, or perhaps more appropriately, divorce. Now there is a website that can help you calculate the odds of your marriages survival,...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 6:19 pm Iceland whale meat to arrive in Japan: reportJapan is to allow imports of whale meat from Iceland for the first time since 1991, a report said Sunday. Nations across the world are signed up to an agreement not to hunt...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 6:14 pm If gamers ruled the world?
Wow. That’s pretty much the only word that can describe Tom Armitage’s “If Games Ran The World.” Its thesis is that, in the next few years, people who grew up playing video games will become world leaders. People who have played all the big games from every generation—Pac-Man, the first EA Sports games, Resident Evil, MMOs, fighting games, etc. Real gamers. Then point, then, is that this generation of leaders will have already tackled the types of problems that they’ll face once in power. Things like scarcity—you only have so many bullets and saves in Resident Evil 2, so how best to manage this?—resource allocation—looking for tanks and healers to join 25-man raid, already have DPS—and so on. The games these people have been playing their whole life have taught them skills that can be used in the “real world.” It’s a fun read. It’s not a short one, mind you, but it being your day of rest and all, and most of you being gamers in some capacity, you might well enjoy it. Me, I’ll be playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix on and off this afternoon. Source: Gizmodo | 30 Nov 2008 | 6:00 pm Rubber Jewelry - Recycled Accessories by Christiane Diehl (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Christiane Diehl is a jill-of-all trades; in addition to her line of recycled rubber jewelry, Diehl also dabbles in landscaping and photography. The rubber used in Christiane...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:59 pm Climate change fight could create many jobs: aid expertsAid specialists support a claim by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that efforts to adapt to climate change could create "millions of jobs" if enough funding is available. ...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:40 pm Child Consumerism Documentaries - 'Kids + Money' (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) Growing up in Los Angeles, a child quickly learns the difference between the haves and the have nots, and where his or her family stands in that paradigm. A child also quickly learns...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:39 pm Should Taxpayers Back Cars Only the Rich Can Afford?theodp writes "The NY Times questions the $400M in low-interest federal loans requested by Tesla Motors as part of the $25B loan package for the auto industry passed by Congress last year. 'The program is intended to encourage automakers to improve fuel efficiency, but should it be used for a purpose like this, as the 2008 Bailout of Very, Very High-Net-Worth Individuals Who Invested in Tesla Motors Act?' Tesla says it is assembling about 15 cars a week and has delivered about 80 of its $109,000 base-price Roadsters to date, many of which have gone to the Valley's billionaires and centimillionaires who are Tesla investors as well as early customers. We discussed the company's financial difficulties last month."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:00 pm Acuo Technologies Announces Vendor Neutral Archiving Contract With Children's Hospital of PhiladelphiaWith Deployment of next generation archive of Acuo administrators access more than 60 terabytes of data ST. PAUL, Minn., Nov. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Acuo Technologies(R),...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:00 pm Waterborne Workouts - Stand-Up Paddle Boarding (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) Stand-up paddle boarding is making its mark on the Gulf Coast. The YOLO Board company of Santa Rosa Beach Florida in particular has helped to popularize this fast-growing new water...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 4:59 pm Unmanned Russian resupply spacecraft forced to dock manuallyAn unmanned Russian resupply vehicle was forced to dock manually with the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday due to computer problems, a senior Russian official said.Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 4:54 pm High wind scuttles Fla. space shuttle landingDangerously high wind and a stormy forecast prevented space shuttle Endeavour from landing at its home base Sunday, and the astronauts took a couple of extra swings around the world as NASASource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 4:50 pm No more embarrassment: Non-nude body scanner to undergo tests this week in Germany
Last week’s attacks in India have reminded us all of the keen danger that terrorism poses. But one tool that was to be employed at airports to combat terrorism, those body scanners that sometimes reveal a person’s, well, person, came under criticism. Fighting terror (inasmuch as you can fight it) is great and all, but should people literally be exposed in the process? The Germans say no, and are developing a body scanner that, while it does its job (detecting weapons and so forth), doesn’t show off your nude body to the leering airport screeners. The new scanner will undergo proper laboratory tests this week. The full-on “naked scanner” is already in use in other European countries such as the Netherlands. Also, Germany-Netherlands make a fine football rivalry. Three cheers for random, tangentially related information! Source: CrunchGear | 30 Nov 2008 | 4:39 pm Wind Scuttles Fla. Space Shuttle LandingDangerously high wind and a stormy forecast prevented space shuttle Endeavour from landing at its home base Sunday.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Nov 2008 | 4:30 pm Problems prompt manual docking at space stationA Russian cosmonaut used a joystick to guide a modernized cargo ship to the international space station Sunday after problems with an automated system prompted a last-minute switch to a...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Nov 2008 | 4:18 pm iPhones, FStream and the Death of Satellite RadioStatesman writes "Only a little over a year ago, the FCC approved the merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio companies and the combined stock was trading at $4 a share. Despite being a monopoly — or perhaps because of it — the company is failing. They are losing subscribers, the stock is now trading around 22 cents a share (a 97% decline), and they have written off $4.8 billion dollars in stock value. So, what happened? The CEO is blaming pretty much everyone except himself and his business model. But is pay-for-bandwidth even a viable business plan anymore? With millions of iPhone and gPhone users out there, free streaming audio applications like FStream, and thousands of Internet radio stations to access, the question is: why would anyone want to pay for proprietary hardware and a limited selection of a few hundred stations all controlled by one company?" Read on for the rest of Statesman's thoughts.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 30 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm Linux Foundation Says All Major Distros Are IPv6 Compliantruphus13 points out news from the Linux Foundation, which announced that all major Linux distributions meet certification requirements for the US Department of Defense's IPv6 mandates. The announcement credits work done by the IPv6 Workgroup, whose members include IBM, HP, Nokia-Siemens, Novell and Red Hat. Quoting: "Linux has had relatively robust IPv6 support since 2005, but further work was needed for the open source platform to achieve full compliance with DoD standards. The Linux Foundation's IPv6 workgroup analyzed the DoD certification requirements and identified key areas where Linux's IPv6 stack needed adjustments in order to guarantee compliance. They collaboratively filled in the gaps and have succeeded in bringing the shared technology into alignment with the DoD's standards."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 30 Nov 2008 | 2:35 pm Unmanned Russian resupply spacecraft docks with ISS - Space Daily
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 30 Nov 2008 | 2:02 pm The First-Time CEO’s Recession Survival GuideEditor’s note: The following guest post is written by Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate broker. His industry went into recession a year ago, so he’s had a little more time than most startup CEOs to think about how to deal with the current downturn. Below is his advice to his fellow entrepreneurs. Startups can be the most conservative organizations in the world. We spend so much energy nurturing our delicate egos against naysayers and self-doubt that we can hardly admit mistakes. This is especially true of first-time CEOs. Thousands of new web companies were born in the last few years, and many of us just got the job. We set off with the same directions: tackle a big problem, listen to customers, work hard, pinch pennies, hire slo Not that we don’t still have a long ways to go. We’re still on track for our first profits in 2009, but we’re going to have to fight to make it. The time we have left to succeed or fail is really just the measure of how long it took to adapt to our downturn. If I had been more experienced, we’d have adapted faster. Here’s the survival guide I’d give my former self, the one just starting to face the storm: 1. Compete With Your Successor I often think about what my replacement will do after I’m fired. She won’t have emotional commitments to decisions that I already regret. She’ll look at everything as an outsider—as a customer—refusing to tolerate problems that have lasted so long I’ve forgotten they’re there, re-considering initiatives we already passed over for want of imagination or energy. And she’ll have nine or even twelve months of leeway to build the business, so she can think long-term. Worst of all, she’ll get credit for turning Redfin into a successful, thriving business. I think, “I hate her! I hate her!” And then I try to be her. 2. Act Like an Owner You’ve probably spent most of your life hating your boss, pleasing others (so you can blame them later) and spending other people’s money. These are hard habits to break. When I was still settling into being a CEO, I wasted a lot of time driving initiatives designed to please others, acting as if someone wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do with Redfin. My moment of clarity came when a board member said, “as far as I’m concerned, you’re the owner of this business.” And he was right: you won’t own all the proceeds if the company succeeds, but you’ll certainly own a failure in its entirety. This sparked several reptilian impulses:
3. Get a Board You Connect With (Not Just One With Connections) Startups have so much size anxiety that nothing can stop us from recruiting big shots onto our boards. But first-time CEOs need someone we can talk to about practical details, too. So in our case, Redfin chairman Paul Goodrich recruited Marc Singer for his experience with businesses run out of the cash register: restaurant chains, bean-bag manufacturers, installers of electronic animal fences. I used to be dubious that we had anything to learn from these companies. Not anymore. Now I catch myself gazing at a parking-lot coffee cart and thinking, “what a great business” (it’s more profitable than most venture-funded startups). Marc has cultivated a nuts-and-bolts, make-money-now execution focus at our company. Where I’d always imagined my board conversations would be like Richard Gere’s in “Pretty Woman” or even Willem Dafoe’s in “Spiderman” — conversations with Marc were more like telling a guy on a Greyhound bus about a bad breakup, where it all just came pouring out. In tough times, you need a board you connect with more than a board with connections. 4. Run Weekly Revenue Meetings A job applicant from Amazon suggested holding a weekly revenue meeting, which has been an immediate hit. We focus on what we can do to drive revenue from week to week—tactical stuff, like hiring another field agent or changing a call to action on our site. We catch glitches that could otherwise last all month. 5. Automate Bad News Bad news travels slowly—or sometimes just sits in your stomach—unless you pump reports straight out to the board, on revenues, traffic, customer service. Add spin if you like, but in a separate note so you don’t hold things up. This helps you avoid the-dog-ate-it board meetings. 6. (Just Ask to) Meet Your Peers My natural tendency is to avoid meeting people outside of Redfin. I tend to measure my own work in keystrokes, and I begin to miss my computer after I’m away for 30 minutes. In hard times especially, it’s easy for a startup to become like a teenager’s basement bedroom: insular, stale, reeking of dude. Yet there are very few hours that have raised Redfin’s value as much as meetings with other entrepreneurs. A year before our cash-evaporation date, one CEO told me to start raising money. Another told us to get on the stick about our Google search rank. For someone wary of most consultants and experts, these meetings are one of my only sources of new information. And it’s important to gather new information: line managers have to focus on the jobs in front of them, but executives should be awake to what’s happening in the larger world. Anyone will meet you if you just ask for her help. 7. Create Simplicity When Obama first heard the proposed slogan “yes we can,” his reaction was: “too simple.” But a leader’s job is to create simplicity. Over the past year, our real-estate executives slogged through ambiguous data on conversion rates, close rates, tour fulfillment. Decisive meetings felt like a math test where we ran out of time. Yet it never occurred to me to stop, step back and be precise and insistent about what we needed to know to make a decision. When something is hard to explain, you don’t understand it and you make mistakes. It’s a cliché to “keep it simple, stupid,” but the real challenge is to make it simple, mastering complexity instead of ignoring it. Entrepreneurs instinctively want to speed things up. What’s really hard is knowing when you have to slow them down. 8. Go on the Attack Your competitors are hurting too. Be the aggressor, not the victim. 9. Be a Roman What disgusted the ancient Romans about barbarians was their lack of discipline. Oxford Professor Peter Heather writes, “As far as a Roman was concerned, you could easily tell a barbarian by how he reacted to fortune. Give him one little stroke of luck, and he would think he had conquered the world. But, equally, the slightest setback would find him in deepest despair…” This is why, 2,000 miles from home, several hundred Romans could slaughter several thousand barbarians. Startups are founded by barbarians. But to survive the ups and downs, you have to make yourself into a Roman. The most talented entrepreneur I know nearly self-destructs on the 18-month birthday of each of his ventures. By that point a startup isn’t brand-new anymore, and it isn’t Google either. The closer you get to becoming a real company, the less glamorous reality seems: you’re grimy from clawing for money and breathing hard now from exertion, which would be fine if you could convince yourself you’re not the only one struggling. Everyone struggles. Keep fighting. 10. The Journey is the Destination Startups alternate between nostalgia for the garage and millennial longing for a lucrative exit. But what I always keep in mind is how disconnected and purposeless I felt before Redfin or my earlier startup, Plumtree. All I ever wanted was to get into a situation where I could win. Everybody has that dream. Even though you’re a second-string Little Leaguer, you dream that you’ll find a way into the World Series, that, with the game on the line, you’ll manage to hit just one major-league pitch. And if you do hit it, I promise you won’t be as happy as you were the moment before you swung. If you’re still playing, you can still win. And playing’s the thing. Enjoy it. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 30 Nov 2008 | 1:19 pm Diet of Fast Food and Candy May Cause Alzheimer'slurking_giant sends along a Reuters report on research out of Sweden indicating that a diet rich in fat, sugar, and cholesterol could increase the risk of Alzheimer's, at least in mice. "'On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain,' [said] Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center... 'We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's.' ... These mice showed chemical changes in their brains, indicating an abnormal build-up of the protein tau as well as signs that cholesterol in food reduced levels of another protein called Arc involved in memory storage."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 30 Nov 2008 | 1:05 pm Non-threatening CCTV Cameras Shaped Like Dolls Help Japanese Feel Safer Surveillance cameras can sometimes give you a creepy feeling (especially the ones you can't directly see) but the nation of cute- and friendliness, Japan, now offers two solutions for that problem.
One example of a "friendly" CCTV camera is the Daruma surveillance doll. Daruma is a wish doll in Nippon so that many Japanese people see the little guy in a positive light by nature (even though it says "security camera" on the doll in the video after the jump).
Source: TechCrunch | 30 Nov 2008 | 12:02 pm Twitter In Controversial Spotlight Amid Mumbai Attacks - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 30 Nov 2008 | 11:21 am Royal Society of Chemistry Slams UK Exam Standardscheesethegreat writes "The Royal Society of Chemistry has sharply criticized the 'catastrophically' falling standards for UK school exams in the sciences. The RSC had 1,300 highly achieving students take an exam made up of questions taken from the last 50 years. The students averaged an appalling 15% on 'hard' numerical questions set in the 1960s, but managing much higher marks on the more recent 'soft' non-numerical questions. This latest report has garnered mainstream media attention. The RSC has also created a petition on the UK Prime Minister's official website, calling for urgent intervention to halt the slide, which has garnered over 3,000 signatures. The issue of declining exam standards has been an ongoing concern in the UK, with allegations that exam results have been manipulated by the government to increase pass rates and meet its own targets."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 30 Nov 2008 | 11:01 am Japan Post goes ecological, plans to use over 20,000 electric vehicles for mail services
It seems that Japan is getting greener almost by the week. Now Japan Post announced it will start a field test with electric vehicles (EVs) for postal services and other business activities as early as next month. The company plans to convert all of its fleet of more than 20,000 cars to electric vehicles by 2016. Mitsubishi’s mini car “i MiEV” (pictured above) will be used in the Japan Post office in Ginza in central Tokyo for about 2 months from Wednesday, December 3. The i MiEV is planned to be used mainly for client visits.
The company said it plans to use Fuji Heavy Industries‘ “Subaru Plug-in Stella Concept” (pictured above) for its collection and delivery services in the Yokohama Port office for about a year from Tuesday, December 2. Last fiscal year, Japan Post used around 70,000 liters of gasoline, costing over $105 million. Source: CrunchGear | 30 Nov 2008 | 10:23 am Want A Kindle Before Christmas? Get Ready To Pay
But eBay and Amazon stores have them for sale. New ones are going for as much as $975 (some are less) for buy it now. The market price for used ones seems to be in the $700 range, but some one is just $429. I saw save a few dollars and wait for the new one to come out. You don’t want to be the guy who’s reading the old model on the plane. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 30 Nov 2008 | 10:18 am New BlackBerry Storm challenges the iPhone - Louisville Courier-Journal
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 30 Nov 2008 | 9:38 am 2 examples for Japanese style nonthreatening CCTV cameras
One example of a “friendly” CCTV camera is the Daruma surveillance doll. Daruma is a wish doll in Nippon so that many Japanese people see the little guy in a positive light by nature (even though it says “security camera” on the doll in the video above). Another solution is to manufacture surveillance cameras with a wooden body. In the video, you can see a traditional Japanese guest house (ryokan) use these cameras in order to give guests a sense of security without interfering with the design of Japanese style wooden ryokans. Via Japan Probe Source: CrunchGear | 30 Nov 2008 | 9:26 am Peak Population: when will population growth stop, why, and how?Worldchanging's Alex Steffen's got a good, thoughtful piece up about "peak population," the idea that we'll crest humanity's most rapid period of population growth and that it will -- and should -- slow down from here. I love this quote from Kim Stanley Robinson, speaking of birth control: "empowering women is the best climate change technology."It would be a mistake, however, to fail to see peak population as a hugely important insight, because when we know that we are riding a wave of increasing numbers (and increasing longevity) that will crest sometime after the middle of this century, we can also see thatPeak Population and Generation X Source: Boing Boing | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:30 am James Boyle's "The Public Domain" -- a brilliant copyfighter's latest book, from a law prof who writes like a comedianJamie Boyle, of the Duke Center for the Public Domain, has a new book out, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. Boyle ranks with Lessig, Benkler and Zittrain as one of the most articulate, thoughtful, funny and passionate thinkers in the global fight for free speech, open access, and a humane and sane policy on patents, trademarks and copyrights. A legal scholar who can do schtick like a stand-up comedian, Boyle is entertaining as well as informative.I've got a copy on its way to me, but while I'm waiting, I'm delighted to discover that Jamie talked his publisher, Yale University Press, into offering the book as a free, CC-licensed download. And right there, in the preface, I'm hooked: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, Download The Public Domain, The Public Domain on Amazon Source: Boing Boing | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:26 am Nerf factory riot in ChinaRiots are breaking out in factories in Dongguan as bankruptcies and layoffs throw thousands out of work with wages owing. South China, "the world's factory," is in chaos, faltering. After the mid-autumn festival, enormous numbers of workers simply stayed home in the provinces, rather than returning to work in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Dongguan.This AP story talks about a riot in the factory where Nerf toys were manufactured for Hasbro -- and no, they didn't fight with Nerf bats. Workers riot at Chinese toy factory (Thanks, Jennifer!) Source: Boing Boing | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:18 am Suketu "Maximum City" Mehta on the Mumbai attacksSuketu Mehta, author of the Pulitzer-nominated "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found" has a wracked and impassioned op-ed in today's New York Times about the Mumbai attacks. Mehta says that the terrorists want to kill the golden dream of Mumbai, and pledges himself to improving the city and its injustices, calling on all of us to renew our commitment to one of the largest, most beautiful, most maddening cities in the world.I spent some time in Mumbai in September, and met some of the warmest, cleverest, most driven people I've ever encountered, from the slums of Dharavi to the IT parks to the Bollywood studios, it was a bottomless well of ambitious strivers who loved their city and worked and played around the clock. The poverty was crushing, the bravery inspiring, the city beautiful and terrible at once. Like most foreigners who visit the city, I stayed in the tourist quarter in Colaba, where many of the attacks occurred -- I had dinner at Leopold's, tea at the Taj, tried to get a train at VT. I hope that all my Mumbai friends are safe and sound. I've been avidly reading the traffic on one of the Indian mailing-lists I lurk on, watching as the Mumbai residents check in, trade stories, give thanks for being alive and, like Mehta, pledge to answer the problems of their city with love instead of hate. What They Hate About Mumbai (via Jon Taplin)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 30 Nov 2008 | 8:09 am Vintage space age illustrations Here's a lovely little gallery of space age illustrations, perfect for collaging into Christmas cards or other crafty projects. Most of these come from the superb Modern Mechanix blog (a bottomless, never-ending, priceless trove of fantastic scans from vintage pulps), but there are a smattering from elsewhere as well. 45 Vintage ‘Space Age’ Illustrations (Thanks, Samantha!)
(Image: Traffic of the Future (1959) by Klaus Bürgle, as seen in Veloopity's Flickr stream) Source: Boing Boing | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:52 am MS Says Windows 7 Will Run DirectX 10 On the CPUarcticstoat writes "In what could be seen as an easy answer to the Vista-capable debacle, Microsoft has introduced a 'fully conformant software rasterizer' called WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) 10, which does away with the need for a dedicated hardware 3D accelerator altogether. Microsoft says that WARP 10 will support all the features and precision requirements of Direct3D 10 and 10.1, as well as up to 8x multi-sampled anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and all optional texture formats. The minimum CPU spec needed is just 800MHz, and it doesn't even need MMX or SSE, although it will work much quicker on multi-core CPUs with SSE 4.1. Of course, software rendering on a single desktop CPU isn't going to be able to compete with decent dedicated 3D graphics cards when it comes to high-end games, but Microsoft has released some interesting benchmarks that show the system to be quicker than Intel's current integrated DirectX 10 graphics. Running Crysis at 800 x 600 with the lowest quality settings, an eight-core Core i7 system managed an average frame rate of 7.36fps, compared with 5.17fps from Intel's DirectX 10 integrated graphics."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:48 am George Orwell: Egg man (koo koo ka joob)I've been riveted by the latest installments in the Orwell Diary blog, in which the Orwell Society posts one diary entry from George Orwell's 1938 journal every day as a blog-post. Since mid-October, the journal entries have been from a rented villa in Marrakech (sic), and Orwell's journals have grown increasingly obsessed with the number of eggs his hens are laying (not many). Every time I see an entry like this: "21.11.38: Two eggs," I crack up.Where will it end? The suspense is killing me!
See also: Orwell's diaries in blog form Source: Boing Boing | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:47 am Paper bottlesBrandImage (whose site in an unnavigable, unlinkable Flash blob) have come up with an all-paper bottle. This looks like a concept, not a product, but it's an intriguing one nevertheless.360 Paper Bottle (Thanks, Rian!)
See also: Paper bottles for mineral water gluggers Source: Boing Boing | 30 Nov 2008 | 7:22 am Reports Of New Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Hard To Believe
The UK’s Times Online is reporting that “Microsoft is in talks to acquire Yahoo’s online search business for $20 billion.” The report is filled with lots of juicy, specific details that lend it credence, but don’t make a lot of sense when you drill down into them. The new deal, according to the Times Online, is a complex transaction that involves Microsoft supporting a new management team made up of former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller and former Fox Interactive Media president Ross Levinsohn, who are investing partners at Velocity Interactive Group. Levinsohn, however, tells VentureBeat there is “no truth” to the story. (Although there were rumors a while back that Microsoft wanted Levinsohn and Miller to run Yahoo, which is where this might be coming from). And unlike Microsoft’s earlier offer to buy Yahoo’s search business outright, this one is for a long-term operating agreement. In fact, the $20 billion deal that sells the story in the headline is a red herring that refers to a call option that is part of the supposed deal. Here is how the story actually describes the supposed terms of the deal:
So the deal is really that Microsoft would put up $5 billion to help a new management team buy preferred shares and warrants that would give it a 30% stake in Yahoo. In return, Microsoft would get a 10-year operating agreement to run Yahoo’s search business. Let’s just compare this to the deal Microsoft previously offered to buy Yahoo’s search business outright. That involved an $8 billion direct investment in Yahoo in exchange for 16% of the company, plus $1 billion in cash for the search business. And that was expected to generate an extra $1 billion in operating income. So how does the new deal generate twice as much income going into an economic downturn? And why would Microsoft agree to anything other than complete ownership of Yahoo’s search business? And how does the search business go from being worth $1 billion earlier this year to $20 billion in two years? Like I said, it doesn’t make much sense. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: Gizmodo | 30 Nov 2008 | 6:30 am A Modest Proposal For The Auto Industry: Stop Building Cars
There’s always the “be more like Apple” advice that’s been going around for a couple of years. Make the iPod of cars. One that people love so much that they’ll pay a premium for it. Robert Scoble handed out pounds of this kind of advice a couple of weeks ago. But there’s a reason why the car companies can’t build the iPod of cars. It’s because they’re so weighed down with all the logistical nightmares of actually building the stuff that goes into those cars. Apple doesn’t actually make any of the parts that go in the iPod or iPhone. Factories, mostly in Shenzhen, China, do that. Most of the big PC manufacturers don’t actually build computers or any of the parts that are in them. Every part is made by different companies that specialize in building that particular thing. Even final hardware assembly is outsourced. Dell and some others do some final assembly themselves to allow for easy customization, but they are quickly getting out of that business, too. If the car companies want to be more like Apple, they need to stop building any actual cars. Vertical integration kills real research, because every company is doing their own work. With personal computers, every component has a vibrant and competitive market that drives innovation, quality and cost control. The big PC brands just design the final product and outsource the actual building of it. Every major car manufacturer designs their own engines and drivetrains, manufacturers many of the important parts of the car, assembles it, manages a network of dealers and own their own finance companies to help people pay for those cars. Over the years they’ve dabbled in outsourcing, but the current trend is actually more vertical integration, not less. Who’s the Intel of engine manufacturers? Why isn’t there one? The best way forward for the automotive industry is to rip itself apart and start doing things sensibly, like the PC industry does. It won’t make any one company more stable, of course. In fact, it means competition will regularly drive companies at every point in the process out of business. But none of those companies will be in a position to drive our economy south if they do go out of business. Someone better will just take their place. Does this mean our cars will be built in China? Yeah, it does. There’s no avoiding that. U.S. workers are just paid too much to build cars any more. Detroit may become the center of the car design world, with highly skilled and highly paid workers designing the iPod of cars, but the parts will be built elsewhere, and assembled elsewhere. There’s a counter argument, that Toyota is the most vertically integrated car company in the world, and also the largest and healthiest. I argue that they’re the only ones that can do it profitably over the medium run in such an inefficient market because they have scale. If the market changes, which it is, that vertical integration model will fail. And here’s the thing - this kind of change could never happen quickly in a normal market. There are just too many people negatively affected to make it work. But right now, with the auto-makers on the edge of collapse anyway, all we have to do is nothing to make this happen. Let the big car companies fail. Don’t bail them out. Their assets will efficiently move to the highest value use. There’s a good chance that ten years from now we’ll have a whole new crop of U.S. auto companies designing (and overseeing the assembly of) some really awesome cars. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: TechCrunch | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:44 am “Total Fiction”: There Is No $20 Billion Microsoft Deal to Buy Yahoo Search (Not Yet, at Least!) [BoomTown]
A report in the Times of London in which Microsoft would buy Yahoo’s search business in a convoluted $20 billion deal that would include well-known Internet execs Jon Miller and Ross Levinsohn, is–in the words of one key player–”total fiction.” Actually, that’s Levinsohn speaking, on the record. But that’s also the essential word from all key players regarding the Times’s report. BoomTown has spoken to top sources at Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) too and all scoff at such a deal now taking place or that either side has been in any such discussions of late. Yahoo’s entire market cap, in fact, is only $16 billion. Rumors of Microsoft buying all of Yahoo have popped up regularly since it abandoned its failed takeover bid, all of which have been untrue. That’s not to say there will not be some search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, which seems more than likely at some point. It makes sense on many levels and is supported by Carl Icahn, the Yahoo board member who upped his money-losing stake in the company last week. That stock purchase should be enough of a reason for there to be no Microsoft-Yahoo search deal imminent, given Icahn would be more than well aware of it and buying up almost seven million Yahoo shares–now at historic lows–only days ago would smack of insider trading. Still, the report in the Times has an unusual level of detail, involving Microsoft giving large gobs of money to Levinsohn and Miller. Wrote the Times:
Sounds good, except it’s the first time Levinsohn has heard of the plan, he said. Sources at Microsoft and Yahoo also said there was no deal like that in the making at this point in time. Earlier this year, there was also another deal involving Icahn, before he gave up his proxy fight against Yahoo in exchange for a board seat, which did involve Levinsohn and Miller taking over Yahoo. But, as has happened to many schemes involving Yahoo, it never came to pass. Interestingly, there was also a similar investment deal as the one described in the Times, many months ago, just after Microsoft had walked away from its takeover battle for Yahoo. It involved a very complex transaction involving Microsoft buying a large stake in Yahoo shares, running Yahoo’s search business for a time period and giving Yahoo a huge guaranteed revenue stream. But that deal had already been spurned by Yahoo for the search-ad deal with Google (GOOG), which collapsed recently under intense regulatory scrutiny. That has focused a lot of attention back on a possible deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, the No. 2 and No. 3 players in search, both of which have been chasing Google without any success. Microsoft, despite spending billions, has been lagging badly behind Yahoo, which has more than doubled its share. And that is precisely why it has long been interested in acquiring Yahoo’s search business. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said the software giant is not interested in buying Yahoo many, many times, although he has not ruled out a search deal of some sort. But Microsoft, many sources said, has been waiting for Yahoo to get another CEO in place, after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang recently said he was stepping down to make way for a new leader. Yahoo has also said in recent days that it is not currently engaged in any kind of talks with Microsoft, even about a more likely search deal. At least in this chapter of the drama that has engulfed Yahoo over the last year, believe them. [Full disclosure, though run separately, The Times of London is owned by News Corp. which also owns this Web site.] Source: All Things Digital | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:40 am All Is Bright for Jupiter, Venus - Washington Post
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:18 am Medion launches GoPal P5430Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation
Medion, a GPS company based in Europe, recently added to their GoPal lineup of GPSs by launching the new GoPal P5430. The P5430 is a high-end GPS that comes loaded with some pretty cool features such as a nice 5-inch touch screen, full maps of Europe by Navteq, TMC antenna to avoid traffic jams, fingerprint sensor for added security, runs on a SiRF Titan 600 Mhz processor, text-to-speech capability, Lane Adviser, Speed Adviser, audio playback, and 3GB on onboard memory. It is available right now and is set to sell for 175 Euros, or $225. Read [Medion] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:14 am NTSB: JetBlue A320 Had Fractured Nosewheel Steering Lugs - Aero-News Network
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 30 Nov 2008 | 5:11 am Atheros Hardware Abstraction Layer Source Is Releasedchrb writes "With the recent discussion here on proprietary blobs in the Linux kernel, it's nice to see that today Sam Leffler has released the source for the Atheros Hardware Abstraction Layer under the ISC license, which is both GPL and BSD compatible. The Atheros chipset is used in many laptops, so this is another important step towards running a completely free distribution."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 30 Nov 2008 | 4:20 am Linux for iPhone May Open the Door to Android iPhone - Gizmodo
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 30 Nov 2008 | 4:00 am Microsoft, Yahoo said in talks on search deal (CNET)CNET - Updated 6:15 AM PST November 30Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Nov 2008 | 3:56 am 10,000 iPhone Apps… and grooooowing
A tribute page shows a mini icon for every application. And it also gives some interesting data. About 24% of apps are free; 35% cost $.99. The average cost is $3.12, including free apps. About 34% are games or entertainment, and there are 49 weather related apps for the iPhone despite the fact that a weather app is built in. If you’re an iPhone user, tell us the apps you can’t live without in the comments. The ones I use every day: Aqua Hoops, Recorder, SearchMe, iGolf, Google, Zombie (its cathartic), iThread (CrunchBase on the iPhone), and the social networks (Loopt, Facebook, MySpace). Source: CrunchGear | 30 Nov 2008 | 3:21 am BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 11-23-2008Section:  We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 Nov 2008 | 3:00 am TechCrunch slams netbooksTechCrunch's own takedown of netbooks is actually a much-needed counter to the insane hype surrounding these mobile mediocrities, but it misses the point and lards the piece with baffling errors. "A typical Netbook has a 7 inch screen." "Some make do with as little as 256 MB." "Netbooks use Intel Celeron, Intel Atom, or Via Nano CPU" "The iPhone or iPod Touch, with a tiny 3.5 inch screen, has a vastly better browsing experience." "Any normal adult can’t type fast on it ... it isn’t much better than a Blackberry-type mobile keyboard" Oh, please. As far as this can be taken seriously at all, it should suffice to say that I type just fine on netbooks—and I have blunt hobbit-fingers that can barely navigate a smartphone. "Normal adult" indeed! "Even the lower end XP and Linux, with normal computing is a heavy chore for these machines." After saying the netbook's keyboard is too small, TechCrunch again pitches its keyboard-free touchscreen tablet concept again: "That’s a device people will want." It's a fantastic proposal, but the notion that it's an "answer" to the "problem" of netbooks—which are selling in the millions—isn't fully baked. An abiding belief that little tablets are the future is something that Intel and Microsoft have been throwing cash at for years and years: HPCs, UMPCs and MIDs have been serving imaginary consumers for at least a decade. There is a fundamental problem with these Star Trek props: none of them ever hits a sweet spot, and that probably means that there isn't one. I can juuuuust imagine Apple succeeding with a bigger iPhone-like tablet, but it could do so only because of the foundations already built, not because it's a fundamentally appetizing idea. Here are three things that will really improve netbooks, right now: 1. Fix the chipset power consumption problems so we really do get a full day on a 6-cell charge, 2. Give us more than 600 horizontal lines, and 3: Cellular modems as standard in the U.S. Three Reasons Why Netbooks Just Aren’t Good Enough [TechCrunch] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 30 Nov 2008 | 2:26 am The intersection of social media and the cloud
The competition for the next wave of enterprise computing has heated up since Microsoft announced its Windows Azure strategy a month ago. While the jury is out in some quarters about Microsoft's ability to actually deliver the reliability, security, and even the interoperability that is promised, the timetable has accelerated the plans of competitors and forced some to define themselves in terms of the cloud at a dangerous moment.
Sun Microsystems has been under particular pressure to realign; analysts and even Sun employees such as Tim Bray have been outspoken in their pleas for Sun's executive team to jettison unprofitable ventures in favor of some kind of cloud strategy. CEO Jonathan Schwartz has hinted in recent months of some wood behind what Sun calls its Grid effort, and will this week roll out Sun's JavaFX 1.0 front end technology to compete with Flash/Air and Silverlight.
JavaFX could be one of the casualties if Sun decides to pare technologies along with the 18% of its employees it's trimming. Other cuts might include the NetBeans development environment, which has kept pace with or even bettered Eclipse in quality but not in uptake, and OpenOffice, the free Office replacement. Unfortunately for Sun, Google Docs has stolen some of the strategic thunder with an on-demand product from a company that can afford it.
Source: TechCrunch | 30 Nov 2008 | 1:52 am An Ethical Question Regarding Ebookstytso writes "Suppose there is a book that you want to read on your ebook reader, but it is out of print (so even if you purchase the dead-tree version of the book used, the author won't receive any royalties) and the publisher has refused to make it available as an ebook. You can buy it from Amazon as a used book, but that isn't your preferred medium. It is available on the internet as a pirated etext, however. This blog post outlines a few possibilities, and then asks, 'What is the right thing to do? And why?' I'm also curious if the answers change depending on whether you are a Baby Boomer, or a Gen X, Gen Y, etc. — I've noticed that attitudes around copyright seem to change depending on whether someone is a college student or a recent college graduate, versus someone who can remember a time when the Internet did not exist."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 30 Nov 2008 | 1:49 am Tuna limits criticized - United Press International
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 30 Nov 2008 | 1:36 am Joost iPhone App makes us remember Joost again
I’m sure it’s a temporary issue, but the application just doesn’t work yet. I tried to play multiple videos, including the full length version of Men In Black, but an error message reads “The connection to the server was lost. This may be because of poor network quality. Please try again later.” Meanwhile, YouTube videos are playing promptly. Still, when the app settles down and works properly, it will be a nice addition to the iPhone. Lots of great shows to watch while wiling away the hours on a plane. At least until the battery runs out. Information provided by CrunchBase
Information provided by CrunchBase
Source: CrunchGear | 30 Nov 2008 | 1:12 am So Hot Right Now: Top 10 Gadgetell posts for the week of November 23, 2008Section:
Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week? Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 Nov 2008 | 1:00 am Firm offers DNA testing for child athletesA Colorado company is offering a new service for parents -- genetic testing to determine if they should steer their toddlers toward speed or endurance sports. Atlas Sports Genetics in Boulder charges $149 to determine what variants a child carries of the ACTN3 gene, The New York Times reported Saturday.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Nov 2008 | 12:46 am Comment of the Day: Ask a Query!
Can you, sir? Can you? Source: CrunchGear | 29 Nov 2008 | 11:24 pm Gadgetell Review: Navigon 2200TSection: Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Lifestyle, Transportation, Reviews, Features
This is a guest review by Robert Borgesi. Rob co-hosts the website review program, “ChannelFlip Web” with Iyaz Akhtar on ChannelFlip.com. Additionally, Rob is a tech enthusiast with years of computer building experience.
OverviewThe Navigon 2200T features a 3.5-inch touch screen in a thin form factor and comes with free traffic updates for life. Navigon products feature the “Reality View Pro” which displays highway signs as they appear in real life to make navigation simpler. The Navigon 2200T comes with mounting hardware and a car charger.
Out of the boxThis GPS has a low price at about 200 bucks. The 2200T is a very compact device. While it has a large and easy to read 3.5-inch screen, the whole device can easily fit in your pocket. The mounting arm is quite good. It is easily adjustable, sticks to the window well, and it stays where you put it.
Using the 2200TThe Reality View and Lane Assistant Pro feature shows 3-D exits and close-ups of turns which allow you to see the road as it looks in real life and tells you which lane to be in. The Navigon 2200T also gives you speed warnings which tell you when you are over the speed limit and can be set to warn you when you are over the speed limit by 1, 5, 10, 15, or 20 mph. More importantly, the warnings can be disabled all together. This model comes with lifetime traffic service which give you traffic alerts without having to pay fees.
Long term testingOver the course of using the Navigon 2200T there were a few things that stood out. First of all, navigating the screens was not intuitive and took a lot of getting used to. You have to enter location, then press “navigate” more than once before you finally get to the actual navigation. Also, it was difficult to figure out how to cancel or change navigation once you have started and get back to the home page. Define: “Local”Another issue I had while using this device was with the Points of Interest. I was only 20 miles from a major international airport and when I asked to navigate to an airport close to me; the airport was not listed until I was within 5 miles of it. I guess I didn’t know “local” meant within walking distance. Avoiding TrafficOne feature I found very helpful was the traffic alerts. There was a huge accident on one of the major highways I was traveling on and the Navigon informed me of the problem and rerouted me around the accident saving me hours of sitting in traffic. Wrap UpSo overall, for a low cost, you get a very functional GPS unit with a few quirks that may turn some people off. However, the benefit of lifetime traffic service set it apart from comparable GPS units and makes it worth buying.
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 29 Nov 2008 | 11:22 pm Google's Gatekeeperstheodp writes "With control of 63% of the world's Internet searches, as well as ownership of YouTube, the NY Times reports that Google is the most powerful and protean of the Internet gatekeepers, exerting enormous influence over who can find an audience on the Web around the world. Deciding what controversial material does and doesn't appear on the local search engines Google maintains in many countries — as well as on Google.com, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and Orkut — falls on the shoulders of Nicole Wong and her colleagues, who have arguably been given more influence over online expression than anyone else on the planet. Some find Google's gatekeeper role worrisome: 'If your whole game is to increase market share,' says Lawrence Lessig, 'it's hard to do good, and to gather data in ways that don't raise privacy concerns or that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Nov 2008 | 11:16 pm The Cost of Prudence
Bureaucracy kills innovation. We all know that. But why? Partly, it’s because bureaucracy grows out of prudence, a desire not to repeat the mistakes of the past. With the current economic crisis, for example, you can be sure that a lot more checks will be put into place—both in Washington and in corporate boardrooms—to prevent the excesses that got us into this situation from happening again. Governments and corporations alike react to crises by implementing more rules and regulations. Putting checks in place, after all, is the prudent thing to do. But bureaucracies, and the checks they impose on companies, have their unintended consequences. Paul Graham takes a stab at exploring these costs in a new essay. He writes:
The bureaucracy of large corporations can be just as bad. He gives the examples of checking to make sure suppliers are solvent before allowing them to bid for business or approving large software purchases by committee. On the surface, these are prudent precautions, but they end up imposing costs that also need to be taken into account:
Suppliers, whether they are plastic manufacturers or software vendors, will incorporate the cost of complying with bureaucracy into their price. And it is not just outside vendors that make this calculation. So do employees. Throw too many rules at the employees who create your product and the most talented ones may decide it is not worth their while. Graham gives the example of software programmers frustrated by longer release schedules after their startup has been acquired by a larger company with more rules in place. He warns:
This is the cost of prudence. Sometimes it is worth it, sometimes it is not. Releasing software that actually works might be better than releasing early and releasing often, depending on what type of software it is and on your customers’ tolerance for failure. Stronger rules regulating the buying and selling of credit derivatives would have definitely been in the “worth it” category. Imposing Sarbanes-Oxley equally across companies both big and small was overkill. Rules need to be judged not only by what they are designed to accomplish or protect against, but also by the hidden costs they end up imposing on everyone who follows them. (Photo by redjar). Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 29 Nov 2008 | 11:06 pm Terrorists used BlackBerrys to cause horror
From the Courier Mail:
These fuckers turned our tools against us and it’s an embarrassment - and a reminder - that the tools that make our lives easier and, dare I say it, better, can also be used to sow doom and destruction. The story says that the commandos were “trained” in their mission, learning how to shoot AK-47s with some accuracy but knowing the MO of the average US school shooter - buy gun, shoot at hillside, write screeds, kill - these boys could have been just kids with a death wish and an understanding of the Internet. Either way, this is horrible and it makes me want to stop propagating news about methods of communication. But then again the Dark Ages weren’t so hot either. I hope you and your family are safe this holiday. Source: CrunchGear | 29 Nov 2008 | 10:56 pm 10,000 iPhone Apps
A tribute page shows a mini icon for every application. And it also gives some interesting data. About 24% of apps are free; 35% cost $.99. The average cost is $3.12, including free apps. About 34% are games or entertainment, and there are 49 weather related apps for the iPhone despite the fact that a weather app is built in. If you’re an iPhone user, tell us the apps you can’t live without in the comments. The ones I use every day: Aqua Hoops, Recorder, SearchMe, iGolf, Google, Zombie (its cathartic), iThread (CrunchBase on the iPhone), and the social networks (Loopt, Facebook, MySpace). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 29 Nov 2008 | 10:02 pm Facebook Loses Members’ Notification Settings. What Will They Lose Next?
In case you’ve noticed more notifications from Facebook in the past 24 hours, it’s probably not because you’ve suddenly become more popular. It looks like Facebook’s email notification problem is getting worse. Facebook lets members turn email notifications on or off for more than 30 different actions on the site. These include anything from when someone sends you a message inside Facebook, invites you to an event, or adds you as friend to when someone tags you in a photo or sends you a poke. Facebook sent out the email below to anyone who is affected:
So if you got this e-mail, it means that all of those 30-plus notification settings, including ones for individual apps you’ve installed, are all now set to “On.” As far as data loss goes, this isn’t that big a deal. The only data that Facebook lost was preference data, not any messages, photos, videos, or the like. But preference data is also important. What if Facebook had lost everyone’s privacy settings instead of just their e-mail notification settings? It would be (slightly) more serious. The lesson here: Don’t put anything on Facebook you’d hate to lose (or reveal to the world, for that matter).
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 29 Nov 2008 | 9:15 pm Why Homebrew is BetterEvery professional performer always does the same thing at exactly the same moment in every show they do. What I like are things that are different every time. That's why I like amateurs.
The beer that you buy is made by pros with the goal of replicating the same recipe each time; the same ingredients, the same process, the same consistent result. If you make your own beer, you can forget the same-old, same-old. In fact, it's rather hard to brew the same exact thing each time following home-made processes. As an amateur, you get to enjoy these small but noticeable differences. Homebrew has its own design goals, mainly exploring lots of variations that allow you to see how different beers can be. For instance, we've used fresh hops that I've grown when they're in season; we can dry the hops for use later in the year. We'll also buy hops from the brewing supply store.
I've got a setup for all-grain brewing at home and it takes about six hours to get a batch ready for fermentation. In the photo below, you can see the underlying IPA recipe and my notes outlining the steps. The notes help me structure the process and remember to do everything I need to do. I also use the notes to record times and other measurements.
The photo at right is next-to-last step, siphoning the cooled-down brew into a 7-gallon glass carboy. We'll add yeast and the fermentation will start. It takes several days for the sugars to be converted into alcohol. I like to check on the batch and see this vigorous activity up-close.
Brewing is fun to do with a group of people. The brew room, like a workshop, becomes a hangout and you get to talking while you're doing something. My daughter's fiance, Ryan, is learning to brew along with me. Ryan understands much more of the science behind brewing. We made a tasty Pumpkin Ale for Thanksgiving. Yesterday, we started a batch of light-colored German-style beer, which we'll eventually bottle for holiday presents.
More serious home-brewers try to perfect a recipe and repeat it each time, especially those who enter competitions. But not everyone needs to have that goal. To cite a phrase made popular by Perl programmers, there's more than one way to do it. That's what makes homebrew so interesting. Source: Boing Boing | 29 Nov 2008 | 8:05 pm Antarctic ice shelf shows new rifts - United Press International
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Nov 2008 | 7:15 pm SanDisk’s Cyber Monday dealsSection: Audio, Accessories, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Imaging, Accessories, Peripherals, Storage
If you’ve got a phone that uses micro SD cards or a camera that uses SD cards, SanDisk is having a big Cyber Monday Sale starting today. There are some good deals here including some USB flash drives in case you’re a fan of sneakernet. You can pick up a SanDisk 16GB flash drive for under $44 (which is down from $79.99). SanDisk also makes some MP3 players and they are discounted as well. Sale ends Monday, December 1st. Check out the full details after the break.
Read [SanDisk CyberMonday]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 29 Nov 2008 | 7:07 pm
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Love it or hate it, Amazon.com’s 
The company behind 
Last year Amazon had trouble filling orders of the then-new Kindle, so eBay took over and prices 
Each person has a different breaking point. For one of my students it
was United States Patent number 6,004,596 for a “Sealed Crustless
Sandwich.” In the curiously mangled form of English that patent law
produces, it was described this way:
In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.
Everybody these days has some advice for the beleaguered U.S. auto industry. Bail them out. Break up the unions. Do something about the dealerships. Do something about spiraling health care and pension costs. Design cars people will love. Etc.
What Andy Warhol said about professionals vs. amateurs is true not just in theatre, but in lots of DIY pursuits such as brewing your own beer. Homebrew is better because each time it's different.
