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Microsoft wants to help free your Xbox avatarFROM GAMERTELL - Microsoft is thinking of ways to implement avatars into our normal everyday stuff outside of Xbox Live. Its latest effort, called Free Your Avatar, lets you put your Xbox avatar on greeting cards, wallpaper and screensavers… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:24 pm Boing Boing on GOOD: "All the Web's A Stage" For our continuing "Boing Boing on GOOD" series, I wrote a brief essay about the possible psychological dark sides of Twitter, Flickr, and lifecasting that may go beyond amplified narcissism. Are the Truman Syndrome and Abraham Biggs's live suicide on Justin.tv canaries in the coalmine? From my article, titled "All the Web's A Stage" (above artwork by Imaginary Foundation): In 1968, Andy Warhol famously forecasted, “In the future, everyone will be… famous for 15 minutes.” Of course, he was right. Personal computers and the Web have democratized the tools of media so that most anyone can create and distribute their own content without the need for deep-pocketed middlemen. Can’t get on TV? Start your own network. Create your own reality TV show starring you. Flickr already abounds with users who unabashedly post steady streams of self-portraits shot with phonecams held at arm’s length, and fans who praise them. And at microblogging hub Twitter, there are thousands of people delighted to share what they’re eating for dinner or that they’re stuck in traffic, and many thousands more who seem to care."All the Web's A Stage" (GOOD)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 16 Dec 2008 | 1:04 pm Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being PresidentAt 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 16 Dec 2008 | 1:04 pm God-Google-Satan: The Oneness [Digital Daily]
Everyone loves Google. Sounds like so much hyperbole now, but at the time it was essentially a truism. 8 years later, that’s no longer really the case. Today, Google (GOOG) seems a distorted reflection of the ideals that made it so beloved. Google’s enormous success and relentless pursuit of new markets have inspired some to take an evil-empire view of the company. And Google, by virtue of its protean business model and the arrogant righteousness with which it executes on it, perpetuates that view — although it likely considers those that hold it to be luddites. Sure, everyone loved Google in 2001. But in 2008 they fear it. The Google of 2001 was a fascinating corporate anomaly, a company known for its colorful campus, lunar exploration grants and a cafeteria so good it was profiled in Food & Wine. The Google of 2008 is a different beast entirely. It’s a company accused of privacy violations in the states and abroad. It’s a company whose fast-broadening reach has given it unchecked power. And, it’s a company that last month came within three hours of a Department of Justice antitrust suit. No wonder it’s fallen off the TRUSTe/Ponemon Institute’s list of the top 20 most trusted companies in the United States. And it’s quite a tumble Google’s taken. The company ranked 10th in the Ponemon opinion surveys conducted in 2006 and 2007. This year it didn’t even merit a ranking. Quite a blow for a company for whom user trust is critical. But then consumer perception is a fickle animal, as Google founder Sergey Brin once noted. “Some say Google is God,” Brin said back in 2003. “Others say Google is Satan.” Seems the latter camp’s picked up quite a few new members in the ensuing years … [Image Credit: Google Blogoscoped] Source: All Things Digital | 16 Dec 2008 | 1:00 pm Unlocked Taiwanese iPhones Could Cause Gray Import Surge
While freeing the original iPhone from its carrier is a simple one or two click process, the 3G still hasn't seen a baseband unlock (you can jailbreak, or hack them to run unofficial software but you're still tied to the contract you bought it with). And with Euro telcos asking for some ridiculously high monthly charges, the lure of a non-tied handset is strong. We'll see if these things make it onto the gray market, but our suspicion is that demand will be strong, especially in those countries which don't even have an iPhone yet. But remember, those prices are what you pay direct to Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) for the phone. Any Ebayer offering them up will certainly be putting a hefty percentage on top. Taiwan iPhone 3Gs are SIM unlocked out-of-the-box [Digitimes] See Also: 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:56 pm Hulu Has Fewer Eyeballs, Advertisers [MediaMemo]
In a roundup story about the state of online advertising, the Wall Street Journal notes that the video Web site says revenue is still increasing. But Hulu, owned by GE’s NBC (GE) and News Corp.’s Fox (NWS), no longer claims to be “sold out”:
Hulu’s previous claims about being “sold out” were always a bit head-scratching for people who used the site with any frequency: Sure, you were likely to see an ad (good bet: it was from Esurance) when you first loaded up a “Saturday Night Live” clip. But the more video you watched, the more likely you were to see freebie public service announcements from the Ad Council. It’s hard to get worked up over this development. That’s partly because the notion of any Web site being “sold out” is a bit of a theoretical construct: The more people that visit the site, the more inventory it has to sell to advertisers. And it’s also hard to read much into this because the Web video ad market has become a total crapshoot. Hulu says sales for the 4th quarter are still up over last year, and online execs at CBS (CBS) and Disney’s ABC (DIS), say the same thing. But they have little idea what to expect for next year. Which makes them just like everyone else selling online ads. Meanwhile, here’s a Hulu clip featuring the final “Saturday Night Live” appearance from the excellent Amy Poehler, who left the cast after last weekend’s show. She’s getting ready to launch her own NBC sitcom: Source: All Things Digital | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:48 pm Sharp brings Zaurus story to a close after 15 years Zaurus, Sharp's long-running lineup of linux-based PDAs, is no more. Akihabara News reports that "if you happen to own one, you're now the proud owner of a collector piece."
Originating in 1993—and briefly offered in the U.S. in the early 2000s—the last model had a 416MHz CPU and a 6GB hard drive. Once a hugely successful device, the market's become flooded with fiddly open-ish devices that don't quite do enough useful things to justify themselves. But I still love the "minuscule laptop" form factor: phones like the Env don't quite capture it. Bye Bye Zaurus ! Sharp officially discontinue its Linux PDA. [Akihabara News] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:43 pm More cold weather on the way - San Jose Mercury News
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:41 pm AMD aims dual-core Athlons at value desktops - VNUNet.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:39 pm Laptop Pillows for Tired Notebooks
As you would imagine, here at Gadget Lab we get a lot of crap gumming up our inboxes, which we then mine for the precious nuggets of gold that we bring to you, our faithful readers. This morning, I found these laptop pillows waiting for me. At first sight, I rubbed my hands and cackled in anticipation of the hatchet job I would perform on these soft, plush laptop trays. "Look!" I would scream, "See how your computers will melt, MELT I say, sitting atop a fabric cushion!" I would have then attempted a rather pained pun on the words insulate and insult, which – after a few cigarettes and a little consideration – I would have mercifully dropped from the copy. However, these lap-cosies are not all bad. They may be soft, but the buttons on the "Button Pillow" (left) and the open construction of the "Log Pillow" allow some air flow, possibly more than a harder surface that remains closer to the computer's hot underside. Constructed variously from hemp, buckwheat (for the stuffing) and other organic fabrics, they also offer some bonus points for the hippy-minded, and the Log even deconstructs and can be built into an uncomfortable-looking triangular pillow. The prices, though, are high. At $80 each, you might want to try out my alternative, free method. An aluminum baking sheet and a couch cushion. Comfort and cooling in one. Product page [Intelligent Forms. Thanks, Krystle!]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:38 pm Apple will unveil netbooks next month, says analyst - Computerworld
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:14 pm 2000 Year Old Antikythera Computer Lives AgainThe Antikythera "Moon Computer", a 2000 year old Greek machine for modeling and predicting the movements of the heavenly bodies, has risen again. Here it is:
The original 81 shards of the Antikythera were recovered from under the sea in 1902, and it has taken boffins since the 1950s to piece together the story, with the help of some very sophisticated imagining technology in recent years. Now, though, it has been rebuilt. As is almost always the way with these things, it was an amateur that cracked it. Michael Wright is a museum curator in London and has built a replica of the Antikythera, which works perfectly. What is startling about this device is the sophistication. No only does it track the movements of the moon and planets, but it can predict solar eclipses. Be sure to read Rob Beschizza's 2006 Gadget Lab article on the Antikythera. It truly is an amazing device. Antikythera: A 2,000-year-old Greek computer comes back to life [Guardian. Thanks, Keith!] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:13 pm Earnings preview: Recession likely to dent Oracle (AP)AP - Business software maker Oracle Corp. is scheduled to report its fiscal second-quarter results after the stock market closes Thursday. The following is a summary of key developments and analyst opinion related to the period.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:11 pm Ex-Vodafone CEO won't pursue Yahoo job: report (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:07 pm Analyst Report Says 44% of U.S. Homes Will Own DVRs by 2014
A report from a consumer analyst group this week is saying that 52.3 million households, or 44% of all homes with a television, will have a DVR within five years. The findings are significant because they show how quickly people have become accustomed to customizable viewing options since the advent of the TiVo and how these options should grow with customer demand. They also predict the continued erosion of 'appointment television' for prime time network programs, with a kind assist from the millions of content available on the web.
The on-demand industry analysts from Magna reported slight gains across the board for all DVR sellers, and found that (of course!) young people are the biggest influencers in the transition to 24/7 access to content, which oftentimes doesn't even include a set-top DVR. I, for one, watch TV content almost exclusively through the net without spending a dime on cable or TiVo, and I know I'm not alone on this one. Magna senior VP, director of industry analysis Brian Wieser predicts the following DVR-relevant nuggets:
These stats also reveal the tough competition that manufacturers of stand alone set-top boxes will face in the upcoming years. Improved cable company UIs and box offerings, and faster Internet connections (providing increasingly sophisticated free content from sites like Hulu, YouTube, and tens of others, including, hmm, Wired) will pressure them into adapting their boxes for useful efficiency, with dynamic interfaces, and full wireless convergence with it all. And the biggest user difference, as has been noted many times before, is the ability of the viewer to find content specifically suited to her, presumably leading to more judicious TV choices. Of course, DVR tech comes with plenty of potential baggage: greater company access to user profiles and private preferences, equally sophisticated and annoying ads (see: most streaming ad packages in Hulu), and higher rates for closed premium content.
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:07 pm Australia OKs Facebook for serving lien notice (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:07 pm Try life without Google, FranceFriend Eric Scherer recounts the drama when GoogleNews’ Josh Cohen met with a hostile crowd of French news publishers. I’ll get to the details of it in a moment. But to set the stage, let’s...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm It takes a village to sell an electric car (CNET)CNET - It turns out that weaning the auto industry off gasoline isn't as simple as turning out electric cars from a factory.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm Ruffles For Your Waist - Frilly Belts by Borba Margo (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Talk about micro-mini skirts. These flouncy belts by Borba Margo of London look like someone seriously shrunk the laundry. Forget that they are pictured with little else but a body...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:59 am Security Flaw In IE Allows Criminals To Take Control Of Computer - AHN
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:58 am Nintendo's Wii doubles sales, setting Nov. record - Akron Beacon Journal
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:54 am Microsoft Lets You Free Your AvatarThis post is syndicated with permission from GamerFront.net The NXE brought us Mii’s Avatars, which I haven’t really done a whole lot with to be honest. I spent roughly 5 minutes setting mine...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:49 am Alternative Modelling Agencies - Le Freak, Cest Chic(TrendHunter.com) The Alternative Modelling Agency is the brainchild of Australians Peter Coulson and Samantha Shields, an agency created to give greater representation of alternative beauty in the mainstream...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:39 am Club Nintendo Opens Its Doors In The USThis post is syndicated with permission from GamerFront.net Finally, after years of waiting we in the US finally have access to the exclusive Club Nintendo. I sort of feel like that guy that’s been...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:34 am Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.6 Release Offers 36 New Fixes - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:27 am Google's OpenEdge Clouds Its Net Neutrality Stance - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:26 am 33 Color-Changing Creations (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) I like the noncommittal premise behind color-changing innovations. After all, why settle for a product in one color when you can have it in several? These color-coded creations are...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:19 am Mac Software Update Gives the Finger to Older Notebook Owners
Fair enough, you say. It's a hardware feature, right? Well, no. MacBooks which are already able to take three of your fingers simultaneously and can also be trained to take four, as was demonstrated by jealous hacker michaelb last month when he used his young lady's new MacBook installer disc to add the feature to his older MacBook AIr. Worse, the update seems to have narrowed your choices. The shot above, from Apple Daily Times, shows that you can no longer switch off the two-fingered gestures for scrolling or screen zoom, and secondary click (two fingers in the pad along with a click on the button gives a right-click) seems to have been ousted in favor of a secondary tap. It's galling. My MacBook Pro is one of the machines not blessed with four-digits of Apple love, and knowing that it could be makes me mad. Mad, I tell you. This isn't the first time Apple has differentiated products arbitrarily through software. In recent memory, the iPod Touch was passed over for Google Street View. And the fickle-seeming nature of the decisions is the worst part -- nobody is going to ditch a year old notebook just to get these new gestures, so really, Apple, why? See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:11 am Aravo Raises $7 Million Series D Following World’s Largest Single SAAS Deployment Despite the economic downturn, companies that solve real problems are still successfully raising money. Aravo, a SAAS supplier information management tool, announced today that they closed $7 million in Series D funding.
Currently, Aravo claims their GE installation is the largest single SAAS deployment. "We are now managing over 500,000 suppliers and their data in Aravo, and have just gone live in six languages," said Gary Reiner, CIO of GE.
Source: TechCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:08 am Aravo Raises $7 Million Series D Following Worlds Largest Single SAAS DeploymentDespite the economic downturn, companies that solve real problems are still successfully raising money. Aravo, a SAAS supplier information management tool, announced today that they closed $7 million in...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:08 am Palm's Next OS Will Be New, ... - InternetNews.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:05 am League Table: Top Sovereign Default Repeat OffendersGiven news that Ecuador has willfully defaulted on some 2012 bonds -- it could have made the payment, but it chose not to -- its worth scanning the league tables of top sovereign default repeat offenders...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:02 am Windows on the Mac: Parallels vs. VMware Fusion, round 2 (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - A little more than a year ago, I reviewed VMware's Fusion 1.0 and Parallels Desktop 3.0 to see how they stacked up.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Permabit and ZL Technologies Partnership First to Marry Deduplication and File System Virtualization in End-To-End Grid Architecture for Low-Cost, Long Term Enterprise Data RetentionAdvanced e-discovery Features Make High Capacity Solution Ideal to Tackle the Rise in Regulatory and Litigation Requirements CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec.Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am SiRF Spins Off Sweden OperationsKisel Microelectronics now an independent company offering RF system and IC design services SAN JOSE, Calif. and STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Service Providers Have Been 'Very Good' Boys and Girls This Year, According to Their Customers in the US and UKAmdocs' second Experience Matters Index shows that, even in a tough economy, consumers would spend more for a superior experience ST. LOUIS, Dec. 16...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Siemens OpenScape(R) Contact Center Offers Enhanced Multi-Tenancy Capabilities in an Easy-to-Own, Easy-to-Deploy Acquisition ModelRelease Also Provides Virtualized Contact Center Capabilities in Scalable, Pre-packaged Software Modules, So Companies Can More Easily and More Affordably Add Functionality as NeedsSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am STMicroelectronics' Miniature Filters Cut Cellular Noise on Music Phones for a Better Audio ExperienceNew ST filters pass more audio and less noise than discrete or integrated alternatives GENEVA, Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- More than 75% of cellular handsetsSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Air Products Announces Acceleration of Actions to Lower Its Cost StructureLEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Air Products (NYSE: APD) will host a teleconference on this announcement at 9:00 a.m. EST today. Access it by dialing...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Companies Looking for Ways to Reduce Fleet Operating Costs Can Turn to Skypatrol's Online CoolSavings Calculator(TM)MIAMI, Dec. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Skypatrol(R), a leading manufacturer and distributor of GPS-based fleet management and mobile asset tracking solutions, has launched its...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am EMC Appoints Industry Veteran Harel Kodesh President of EMC's Cloud Infrastructure BusinessFormer Amdocs and Microsoft Executive To Lead EMC's Cloud-based Infrastructure and Services Businesses, Including Decho HOPKINTON, Mass., Dec. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Baidu Announces Results of Annual General MeetingBEIJING, Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Baidu, Inc. (formerly Baidu.com, Inc.) (Nasdaq: BIDU), the leading Chinese language Internet search provider, today announced that...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Nation's Largest Educational Institution Selects Panopto Lecture Capture SystemPITTSBURGH, Dec. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Panopto, Inc. announced that Miami Dade College has chosen CourseCast as its lecture capture standard. With eight campuses and over...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Miniature Dinosaur Craft Kits - Laser-Cut 'Tinysaur' and 'Wooly Tiny' for Budding Surgeons (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Kelly Farrells miniature Tinysaur and Wooly Tiny are wee versions of the assemble-it-yourself dinosaur craft kits for kids. These kits, however, are perhaps more appropriate for budding...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 10:59 am SEPULTURA: Classic Track Featured In 'Grand Theft Auto IV - The ... - Blabbermouth.net
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 10:58 am Kenyan cowboy shirts -- Stetson-cut shirts made in Kenya from second-hand clothesBart sez, " I'm a Canadian living in East Africa and we make cowboy shirts in Kenya from secondhand clothes that end up in the marketplaces. This link is to our brand spanking new website which has...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Dec 2008 | 10:56 am Kenyan cowboy shirts -- Stetson-cut shirts made in Kenya from second-hand clothes Bart sez, " I'm a Canadian living in East Africa and we make cowboy shirts in Kenya from secondhand clothes that end up in the marketplaces. This link is to our brand spanking new website which has 58 one-of-a-kind Kenyan cowboy shirts. Each one tells a story and some have some really cool model shots. There are some videos of fabric hunts, fashion shows and interviews with the tailors."
Kilakitu | Clothing renewed in Africa
(Thanks, Bart!) Source: Boing Boing | 16 Dec 2008 | 10:56 am Clear2Pay Raises Another €6 Million For Payment Transaction Technology
Clear2Pay delivers globally applicable solutions for e-payments, facilitating banks and financial organizations in their provision of payments services while reducing transaction processing costs. Clear2Pay’s payment solutions offer these organizations a branded way for their customers to pay online, including trade-supporting B2B environments, e-commerce applications and remittance services. The company also offers a ‘Open Payment Framework (OPF)’, which is essentially a library of component building blocks from which payments solutions can be derived. The company has raised nearly €30 million in funding to date, so it seems like the company is simply battening down the hatches for the next years, considering the fact that the majority of its customer base of financial institutions is currently in a very deep crisis. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 10:56 am Adventure Game Interfaces and Puzzle TheoryMarkN writes "It seems like whenever broad topics of game design are discussed on Slashdot, a few people bring up examples of Adventure Games, possibly owing to the age and interests of our members. I'd be interested to hear the community's thoughts on a piece I wrote on Adventure Games, talking about the evolution they underwent in terms of interfaces, and how the choice of interface affects some aspects of the puzzles and design. My basic premise is that an Adventure Game is an exercise in abstract puzzle solving — you could represent the same game with a parser or a point and click interface and still have the same underlying puzzle structure, and required player actions. What the interface does affect is how the player specifies those actions. Point and click games typically have a bare handful of verbs compared to parser games, where the player is forced to describe the desired interaction much more precisely in a way that doesn't lend itself to brute force fiddling. It's a point Yahtzee has made in the past; he went so far as to design a modern graphic adventure game with a parser input to demonstrate its potential." Read on for the rest of MarkN's comments.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 16 Dec 2008 | 10:19 am Review: Iomega StorCenter ix2 Network Storage
Reviewing a NAS is probably not at the top of my list of things to do, but the Iomega ix2 is a dead simple network storage solution that works well. The model I reviewed is the 2TB variety and I finally caved and started backing up my files. Even though I set it up RAID 1 style, 1TB was ample enough to handle all of my content with plenty of room to spare. I wouldn’t recommend this to the more veteran folk, but it’s ideal for novices looking for a simple to use network drive solution. Setup is a breeze. Pop in the CD that comes with the network drive and follow the on-screen prompts for a couple minutes and then you’re up and running. The UI is easy to navigate and this is where you can tweak the drive the way you like. The all-black enclosure houses two 1TB drives, but these can’t be accessed or swapped out. Kind of lame, which is why I wouldn’t recommend this to the more veteran folk, but this particular NAS does support Bluetooth via USB. I don’t typically use Bluetooth for anything, but it’s there and I’m not sure many, if any, NAS servers support BT. You can also expand the storage capacity by hooking up two external USB drives. The ix2 supports both FAT32 and NTFS formats. Score! During a demo of this device prior to my review, the folks from Iomega hooked up an Axis network camera and I had to have one for this review as well. The CG office isn’t that exciting, so I didn’t capture any perps snooping around my cube, but I’m sure the more adventurous can think of ways to use the network camera to record their kids, babysitter, or whatever else you can think of. You can even access the live feed on your iPhone or iPod Touch. I may have to break into John’s house and set this up in his kitchen so I can monitor his eating habits, but don’t tell him! I wasn’t anal enough to benchmark read and write speeds for the ix2 in either RAID 1 or JBOD, but it was neither lightning fast nor was it turtle-like. My only gripe with the Iomega StorCenter ix2 is that you can’t swap the hard drives out and with a one-year warranty, it might not make the long haul. But I’d still recommend this for home use as it’s simple to use and features like Bluetooth support and expandibility are quite nice.
Product Page Source: CrunchGear | 16 Dec 2008 | 10:00 am Twingly Debuts BlogRank, Guess Who Leads The Top 100
The biggest difference is that Twingly breaks down the most popular blogs by language, which they claim is worth much more for local blogs than competing with others at an international level. I tend to agree with that. It’s rather similar to what Wikio is doing (disclosure: TechCrunch France writer Ouriel Ohayon is on Wikio’s board). To demonstrate the technology, Twingly is debuting its Top 100 today, taking another page from Technorati in that regard. We may be a little biased, but we like Twingly’s Top 100 better because we came out on top across all languages tracked (we also lead the English-language blog ranking). In all seriousness, the top 100 lists from Technorati and Twingly look very alike, although The Huffington Post (which is the most popular blog according to Technorati) isn’t even listed at Twingly’s. The startup says this has to do with the fact that they’re more focused on Europe right now, and that they’ve simply never bothered to ping the service anyway. You can find out who leads the top 100 per tracked language (12 so far) in Twingly’s blog post announcing the new feature. Sweden-based Twingly, not to be confused with Twing, doesn’t share much about the underlying technology and only says its ranking system focuses on ‘inlinks and likes among other things’. They also stress that it shows the blogosphere according to their data, and that it’s not necessarily 100% accurate. It’s a nice feature, but late in the game, and you’ve got to ask yourself how obsolete both Twingly’s and Technorati’s ranking would be if Google were actually the next to introduce the next ‘Google PageRank for blogs’.
Information provided by CrunchBase
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 9:46 am Battling Cybercrime: Criminals Can't Escape Their Own Digital Shadow When Investigators Use Voom's Computer Forensics DeviceMINNEAPOLIS, Dec.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 9:20 am North Korea Launches 3G Network - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 16 Dec 2008 | 9:03 am Finjan Announces Formation of Advisory Board and Appointment of Practitioners and Leaders in the Web Security IndustrySAN JOSE, California, December 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Finjan Inc., a leader in secure web gateway products, today announced the formation of an advisory board and its first appointments. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080618/309345 ) "Our new advisory board members will help to guide Finjan as we expand our presence in the global Secure Web Gateway market, delivering our unique Finjan Secure Web Gateway to enterprises for Web security without compromise," said John Vigouroux, CEO of Finjan, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 9:01 am Misys and Finantix Partner to Address New Competitive Arena Arising From Converging Wealth Management and Private Banking SectorsLONDON, December 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Misys plc (LSE: MSY), the global application software and services company, today announces that it has signed a partnership with Finantix, the leader in front-office wealth management solutions. The agreement results in the introduction of Misys Wealth Management, a new solution that will help both new and existing customers penetrate the growing mass affluent retail customer segment and bring a full set of services to a new set of clients in that market. Finantix Components for Wealth Management are to be pre-integrated with several of Misys' core solutions, including Opics Plus, Equation, Midas Plus and all future solutions developed on the new Misys BankFusion platform.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:41 am Zoover Wins at the Prestigious LeWeb '08 Awards in ParisPARIS, December 16 /PRNewswire/ -- - 'Simplicity and Reaching a Large Audience Awarded by Jury' In Paris this week the 5th International Le Web Awards were handed out. Zoover, the website that features independent holiday reviews by and for critical consumers, was one of the big winners in the category 'Start Up'.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:10 am News You Can Lose [Voices]By James Surowiecki, Staff Writer, The New Yorker When the Tribune Company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy, last Monday, Sam Zell, the man who bought the company a year ago, for $8.2 billion, said that its problems were the result of a “perfect storm.” You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from print, and add a steep recession, and you’ve got serious trouble. What Zell failed to mention was that his acquisition of the company had buried it beneath such a heavy pile of debt that any storm at all would likely have sunk it. But although Zell was making excuses for his own mismanagement, the perfect storm is real enough, and it is threatening to destroy newspapers as we know them. Layoffs and buyouts have become routine. The Miami Herald and the San Diego Union-Tribune are reportedly on the selling block, while lawmakers in Connecticut are trying to keep two newspapers there afloat. Even the New York Times Company has slashed its dividend and announced that it would borrow against its headquarters to avoid cash-flow problems. Source: All Things Digital | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:04 am From the Twittersphere: Trophies for the Best Tweets [Voices]By Brad Stone, Staff Writer, The New York Times Hollywood has the Oscars. Broadway has the Tonys. Now Twitter has the…Shorty Awards? The awards, announced last week by the Brooklyn Internet company Sawhorse Media, aim to honor the best Twitterers of 2008 in categories like humor, news and food. Though the company has no formal connection to San Francisco-based Twitter, which allows people to post updates, or “tweets,” up to 140 characters in length, the idea seems to be taking off. “Shortyawards” is currently the most searched term on Twitter, and a number of users have taken a cue from the movie studios and kicked off aggressive lobbying campaigns. Source: All Things Digital | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:03 am Hasbro Finally Drops Scrabulous Suit [Voices]By Mike Masnick, Blogger, Techdirt It’s difficult to see how Hasbro could have handled the Scrabulous situation any worse. Scrabulous, of course, was a Scrabble-like game made for Facebook, which quickly became one of the most popular apps on that social networking site. Hasbro, which owns the rights to Scrabble in the US, didn’t have its own version, and rather than recognize an opportunity, it chose to shoot itself in the foot, suing the brothers who created it. The Scrabulous guys eventually came back with a slightly modified game, which became quite popular as well, while many angry Facebook fans organized boycotts of Hasbro products. Prior to that, of course, the attention brought about by Scrabulous had resulted in a renaissance for the game, leading many people to go out and buy physical Scrabble sets. Yes, Hasbro took a situation that was driving more sales of the board game, and turned it into one where thousands of people were boycotting its products. Source: All Things Digital | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:02 am Are iPhone Users Just Tight? [Voices]By Bill Ray, Staff Writer, The Register Companies developing software for the iPhone are seeing their creations drown in a sea of one-dollar mediocrity as they struggle to gain visibility in the increasingly cluttered Application Store, and some have taken their complaints to Steve himself. In an open letter to the great man, successful developer Craig Hockenberry lays out his problems with the Application Store, and why his company can’t spare the resources to create proper iPhone applications. This argument is taken up by AppCubby, who go further and reveal exactly how much it spent, and made, making and marketing an iPhone application–concluding that success depends factors beyond its control and so it can’t be sure of any repetition. Source: All Things Digital | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:01 am Congress Scores Low Grade on Net Communication [Voices]By Stephanie Condon, Staff Writer, CNET News Attempts by Congress and grassroots advocacy groups to employ different technologies to communicate with each other have done more harm than good, a new report says. “The result has been misunderstanding, frustration, wasted effort, and even anger on both sides, which must be resolved to truly realize the tremendous opportunities for electronic communications between citizens and their representatives in Congress,” according to a report from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Congressional Management Foundation. After interviewing representatives on the Hill, their staffers, and their constituents for nearly 10 years, the group’s report, “Communicating with Congress: Recommendations for Improving the Democratic Dialogue,” concludes that both congressmen and advocacy groups need best practices for communicating effectively. Source: All Things Digital | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am Daily Crunch: Visualization Edition
‘GAMEROX’ chair aimed at fidgety, slouching kids Source: Gizmodo | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am Tower Semiconductor to Present at the 11th Annual Needham Growth ConferenceMIGDAL HAEMEK, Israel, December 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Tower Semiconductor (NASDAQ: TSEM, TASE: TSEM), a pure-play independent specialty foundry, today announced that Mr.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am In Japan, a Billboard That Watches YouAn anonymous reader writes "At a Tokyo railway station above a flat-panel display hawking DVDs and books sits a small camera hooked up to some image processing software. When trials begin in January the camera will scan travelers to see how many of them are taking note of the panel, in part of a technology test being run by NTT Communications. It doesn't seek to identify individuals, but it will attempt to figure out how many of the people standing in front of an advertisement are actually looking at it. A second camera, which wasn't fitted at the station but will be when tests begin next month, will take care of estimating how many people are in front of the ad, whether they are looking at it or not."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 16 Dec 2008 | 7:34 am Katamari on the iPhone? Oh no they didn’t!
I love Katamari can be found here, and it costs $8, which is more than the real game. Or you could spend that money on Noby Noby Boy, the creator of Katamari Damacy’s new game. [via TUAW] Source: CrunchGear | 16 Dec 2008 | 7:20 am Leaked shots of long forgotten BlackBerry Application Suite for WinMo unveiled Waaaaay back in April of 2007, RIM announced that they’d be bringing a virtualized version of the BlackBerry OS to Windows Mobile handsets. In other words, it was pretty much the BlackBerry OS running as a Windows Mobile application, complete with support for BlackBerry services and applications. It would be made available “later this year” (again, this was 2007), said RIM. Alas, a year and a half later, it’s nowhere to be found. Source: CrunchGear | 16 Dec 2008 | 7:09 am Gaia Online Cuts 13% Of Staff Despite Claims Of Record Earnings
Gaia Online, a social network/virtual world hybrid that includes one of the web’s most popular forums, has laid off 36 employees, or around Even more odd: an article printed today in the San Jose Mercury News quotes Gaia CEO Craig Sherman stating that the company is looking forward to a record month.
Sherman’s statement seems to be misleading - we’ve heard that revenues last month were lower than expected after a product launch didn’t go as well as hoped, and today’s layoffs seem to contradict the idea that sales of virtual goods have not been affected by the recession. That said, it is possible that virtual goods sales have held steady as other streams of revenue like advertising have fallen off, or the cuts were made to preempt a forecasted (but as of yet unseen) slowdown. In any case, the article couldn’t have come at a worse time for those laid off. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 7:05 am Leaked shots of long forgotten BlackBerry Application Suite for WinMo unveiledWaaaaay back in April of 2007, RIM announced that they’d be bringing a virtualized version of the BlackBerry OS to Windows Mobile handsets. In other words, it was pretty much the BlackBerry OS running as a Windows Mobile application, complete with support for BlackBerry services and applications. It would be made available “later this year” (again, this was 2007), said RIM. Alas, a year and a half later, it’s nowhere to be found. Right when we were starting to think the project had been abandoned, BerryReview came through with a series of shots of the mythical OS-within-an-OS running on a HTC Touch Pro. While we can’t determine exactly which version of the OS we’re seeing, it looks to be at least on par with the base version of 4.2. Check after the jump for a few more shots
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: MobileCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 7:03 am Finnish Flander Acquires Swedish Endevo to Become Leading Nordic Quality Assurance CompanyHELSINKI and STOCKHOLM, December 16 /PRNewswire/ -- - Flander and Endevo Join Forces to Drive Software Based Innovation for Nordic Industry Software testing and development company Flander today announced that it has acquired Endevo, the Swedish expert company in Quality Assurance and Software Development.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 7:01 am Pliant Technology Names Eric Shiroke Vice President of SalesMILPITAS, Calif., Dec.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 7:01 am Cellcom Israel Announces Dismissal of a Purported Class ActionNETANYA, Israel, December 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cellcom Israel Ltd.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 6:25 am Fur-faced LED watch TokyoFlash has brought out its long-awaited "Waku" watch, a super-thin LED watch that uses a wide variety of textiles for the face, creating an unbroken loop with the band. You can customize the LED colours, too. We saw a prototype of these when we were in Tokyo in September, and my wife, an avowed non-watch-wearer, was absolutely taken with the "fur" version.
Previously:
Source: Gizmodo | 16 Dec 2008 | 6:15 am Palm gets in on the app store game, launches Palm Software Store
With Apple and Google’s on-device application stores already peddling the wares and RIM’s BlackBerry Application Center just around the corner, Palm’s making an effort to not get left behind. This evening, Palm launched an official on-device application store for both Windows Mobile and Palm OS powered handsets. With “App Store”, “Market”, and “Application Center” all spoken for, Palm’s going with “Software Store”. With that, the store name tap is just about all dried up. Source: CrunchGear | 16 Dec 2008 | 6:08 am Classical music performed by the Muppets: Ode to Beeker and the Blue Gonzo Chicken WaltzThe Muppets/YouTube partnership is bearing sweet, musical fruit. Here are two fantastic musical clips to help familiarize your kids with the cultural significance of the great works of classical music: first, Beeker and his many clones perform Ode to Joy (viddy it, oh my brothers, just viddy it), then Gonzo the Great and his chicken orchestra cluck out The Blue Danube Waltz (by Strauss, the louse, he lives in a house, with Mick-ey Mouse).
(via Kottke) Source: Boing Boing | 16 Dec 2008 | 6:05 am Should employers discriminate against World of Warcraft players?On a gamer forum, a vigorous discussion about whether it's fair for employers to discriminate against World of Warcraft players when hiring, on the grounds that WoW players are never fully out of the game. A surprising number of players agree with this proposition.I met with a recruiter recently (online media industry) and in conversation I happened to mention I'd spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online games, which I described as "the ones before World of Warcraft" (I went nuts for EQ1, SWG and the start of WoW, but since 2006 I have only put a handful of days into MMOG playing - as opposed to discussing them - I've obsessed over bicycles and cycling instead).Topic: Recruiter told not to hire WoW players (via Raph Koster)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 16 Dec 2008 | 6:02 am Lost Landscapes of San Francisco audience-participation archival film showing this Friday in SFMaster archivist Rick Prelinger sez,For the past two years I've been putting together obscure/unknown/lost archival film clips showing the many vanished San Franciscos. This year I'm collaborating with the Long Now Foundation to present the third (and, I think, the best) iteration of Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, as one of their Seminars on Long-Term Thinking.The event's this Friday at 7PM at the Coswell Theatre, click below for details.
Lost Landscapes of San Francisco
(Thanks, Rick!) Source: Boing Boing | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:58 am Palm Gets In On The App Store Game, Launches Palm Software Store
With Apple and Google’s on-device application stores already peddling the wares and RIM’s BlackBerry Application Center just around the corner, Palm’s making an effort to not get left behind. This evening, Palm launched an official on-device application store for both Windows Mobile and Palm OS powered handsets. With “App Store”, “Market”, and “Application Center” all spoken for, Palm’s going with “Software Store”. With that, the store name tap is just about all dried up. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:56 am Australian court rules that Facebook "Wall" scribbles are legal noticeAn Australian court has ruled that a posting on someone's Facebook page can serve as legal notice. I think that this is a bad idea -- I've got a lot of accounts hanging around on various social sites that I never check into (Facebook falls into this category). Lots of us do. Some of them don't even let you resign your account automatically, requiring you to send email to a special address, begging to be removed. The idea that you can have legal certainty that someone's seen your "I'm about to take away your house unless you object" notice because you stuck it somewhere, where someone has created an account under that person's name (how many of these services ask for ID to verify your identity before setting up the account in your name?) is ridiculous. It's like serving notice on me by sticking a post-it on a toilet wall on which someone has written "Cory wuz heer" and declaring it legal. In a ruling that could make legal and internet history, a Supreme Court judge ruled last week lawyers could use the social networking site to serve court notices.Lawyers to serve notices on Facebook (Thanks, Georgie!) Source: Boing Boing | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:55 am Tiny, laser-cut assemblable dinosaurs Mur sez, "Found this tiny mammoth on Kelly Farrell's Etsy store and fell in love. She uses a laser to cut the parts for her designs, and her store is full of tiny things - city rings, tiny T-Rex, and tiny letters. Bonus for some lucky buyers: 'if you live in the NYC area you can even come to the studio and say "FIRE THE LASER" before it goes off.' I haven't the eye or the hand to actually make it, but the fact that it's a kit makes for a challenging and painfully cute project. Little dinosaurs! They're dinosaurs! And little!"
Build Your Own Woolly Tiny (Mammoth)
(Thanks, Mur!) Source: Boing Boing | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:49 am Send your old shoes to Dubya's LiberryGot an old pair of shoes lying around, waiting to be used in a ritual gesture of disrespect? Send 'em to the GW Bush liberry so they can put them on the My Pet Goat shelf.Old Shoes (via Making Light
(Image: Worn Out Shoes, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Eschipul's Flickr stream) Source: Boing Boing | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:46 am Palm gets in on the app store game, launches Palm Software Store
With Apple and Google’s on-device application stores already peddling the wares and RIM’s BlackBerry Application Center just around the corner, Palm’s making an effort to not get left behind. This evening, Palm launched an official on-device application store for both Windows Mobile and Palm OS powered handsets. With “App Store”, “Market”, and “Application Center” all spoken for, Palm’s going with “Software Store”. With that, the store name tap is just about all dried up.
Unlike the aforementioned others, Palm’s not toughing it alone. Palm has called on PocketGear, an app distributor which has rounded up around 50,000 smartphone applications since launching in June of 2008, to power the boutique. It’s a bit strange to see a handset manufacturer so openly sharing their application store’s spotlight with a third party, but it ensures that Palm’s got a full catalog on day one. At launch, over 1,500 developers have already submitted their virtual goods to the Software Store Of course, bringing in third parties means more hands in the cookie jar. Whereas Google and Apple are both giving developers 70% of the cut and RIM has upped the bar to 80%, Palm is cutting it right down the middle: 50% of gross revenue goes to the developer, and 50% goes to the other parties involved. Might this smaller cut limit developer interest? Perhaps. But Palm has one strength here: their device lineup. Of all the on-device application stores currently up and running, Palm’s got the widest array of handsets. Apple’s got three (iPhone/iPhone 3G/iPod Touch) and, until more Android devices start rolling out, Google’s only got the G1. At launch, the Software Store is already pushing purchases to over 25 Palm devices. Palm users can grab the Software Store here. Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies Source: MobileCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:38 am SEC Gives Social Investing Site kaChing Green Light To Take On Mutual Funds
Every social investing site wants to turn the insights of its trading members into financial products that people can actually link to their brokerage accounts. Finding the few brilliant stock pickers in the crowd and then letting everyone else follow their portfolios while taking a cut of the management fees is the business model. KaChing, which is the most popular investing application on Facebook (previously called FSX), just took a major step in that direction by becoming a registered investment adviser with the SEC. Sometime in the second half of next year, it will allow its members to link their brokerage accounts to the portfolios of the elite managers on the site and automatically follow their trades.
The company has raised an angel round from some heavy hitters in Silicon Valley, including Marc Andreessen, OpenTable CEO Jeff Jordan, Benchmark Capital partner Andy Rachleff, and Kleiner Perkins partner Kevin Compton. Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark, Doug Mackenzie of Kleiner, and former Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz are also investors. (All the VCs invested individually). The size of the round was not disclosed. Competing social investing sites such as Cake Financial (which launched at TechCrunch 40), Covestor, and PersonalRIA (which launched at TechCrunch 50) all have the same plan. All of these sites want to disrupt the current mutual fund industry by broadening the spectrum of potential money managers. PersonalRIA sticks with professional investment advisers, whereas Cake, Covestor, and kaChing each provide a platform for talented individual investors to attract a following. In some respects, kaChing is the most extreme example of pure social investing. Cake and Covestor both track real trades in real portfolios, whereas anyone can create a fantasy portfolio on kaChing. There are absolutely no barriers to entry. CEO Dan Carroll argues this is a good thing because you could be a brilliant investor but not have the money to actually trade. KaChing levels the playing field. The counter-argument is that following people who are investing real money is less risky because at least they have something at stake. It’s not just play money. The recent returns of most professional money managers, however, doesn’t necessarily bear that out. Carroll says that risk is taken away by forcing everybody to be open about their investment strategies and showing their entire holdings and each trade as it happens. In other words, the data doesn’t lie. Carroll says:
Well, not complete transparency. He won’t say how much he raised from his angel investors, after all. But he does demand transparency from the investors who use his site. I guess that is what he meant. Carroll himself, by the way, has a pretty impressive stock-picking record. His portfolio is up 25 percent in the past six months, during a time when the S&P dropped 36 percent.
Some other members on the site have done even better. Richard Jones has an eye-popping 372 percent six-month return, while Nick Kwok has a 97.8 percent six-month return. Who are these people? I have no idea. Richard Jones appears to be from the UK and uses a dog picture as his avatar. On the Internet everyone’s a dog, but would you invest your money with someone who actually presents himself as a dog? Carroll thinks it doesn’t matter. You can see his holdings and you can see his risk-adjusted returns. And the site gives you tools to evaluate whether or not Jones is good or just lucky. Carroll has some ex-Google engineers (who doesn’t these days?) cranking out algorithms like the SuperCruncher, which comes up with a skill score for each investor by comparing the source of their returns with their stated investment strategy. If your strategy is to invest in large cap value stocks, but all of your returns are in small cap growth stocks, you might just be lucky. As it turns out Richard Jones’ skill score is 0%. Maybe he lets his dog pick his stocks. Nick Kwok, in contrast, has a skill score of 100%. So at least he is accomplishing what he has set out to do, which is to make money by investing in financials and large caps. But his research score is low. (Each investor is encouraged to write out the reasons for each trade, and the research score is determined by how many other members indicting that they agree, disagree or think it is worthless). Of the 350,000 portfolios on kaChing, 1,500 have actually generated positive returns over the past seven months, which is no mean feat. The idea that a tiny percentage of kaChing’s members can beat the market is really appealing, and I hope that Carroll is right. But we need more data. How many of those 1,500 can stay in positive territory, or even just beat the market? It is quite possible the leaders will keep switching out, making it very difficult to invest in a winner over the long run. The iron law of investing is that, over time, everyone’s performance returns to the mean, or worse. Why should a bunch of investors on Facebook prove any different?
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:01 am SlideShare Sends PowerPoint To The Cloud With New Plugin
SlideShare, a startup that we’ve likened to a YouTube equivalent for PowerPoint presentations, has released a new plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 that allows users to edit and publish presentations directly to their SlideShare accounts. You can download the free plugin here. Beyond publishing new PowerPoint documents to the web, the SlideShare plugin can import SlideShare files from the cloud (both your own and those that are shared by others), which can then be modified on your native PowerPoint client. The plugin features an integrated search so you can browse through files from your SlideShare contacts and groups, as well as support for Twitter and FriendFeed so you can broadcast a new presentation without leaving Office, adding a social component to PowerPoint that extends beyond typical group collaboration. SlideShare’s plugin offers a peek into where cloud-based document editing is probably ultimately headed for most consumers. While most online-only services like Google Docs are free (Office isn’t), the vast majority of computer users have been using the Microsoft suite for years, and aren’t keen on learning a new interface loaded with new quirks. Even with the offline capability afforded by Google Gears, Docs still feels foreign. Expect plugins with functionality similar to SlideShare to emerge for all of Microsoft Office (Microsoft already offers its own similar service) as consumers desperately look for familiarity as they make their first steps into the cloud. Other players in this space include Scribd, DocStoc, and SlideRocket (a cloud-based PowerPoint alternative). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Expired-Tired-Wired
Source: Wired Top Stories | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Digital Spoon Scale Weighs Foods to the NanobiteThis little scale satisfies serious cooks, who love scales for exacting recipes. It measures to the nearest 10th of a gram – or gives those gastro nerds the option of spoon scoops for dry goods.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Dec. 16, 1770: Beethoven's Birth in Bonn Leads to Longer CDs1770: Ludwig van Beethoven is born to a family of musicians in Bonn, Germany. His Ninth Symphony will play a role in determining the length of the music CD. Exactly how big a role is a matter of debate. Had it not been for his untimely death in 1827, the immortal Ludwig van would today have been 238 years old and likely immortal in more ways than one. No record has been found listing Beethoven's exact birth date. What we know is that he was baptized Dec. 17 in a time and place when infants were usually baptized the day after their birth. Beethoven revolutionized orchestral music, leading it out of the Classical and into the Romantic era. His stormy personality molded much of his music, as did his progressive, democratic politics and his personal triumph over the deafness that struck him in midlife. Among such career-crowning masterpieces as the Missa Solemnis and the late string quartets, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ("Choral") with its famous "Ode to Joy" finale has also achieved widespread popularity. And therein hangs a tale. The Ninth Symphony runs over an hour, even when performed at breakneck tempo. In the era of LP records, it generally took three sides — and hence had to be coupled with one of Beethoven's shorter symphonies, like the Eighth, to complete a two-disc set. When Sony and Philips were negotiating a single industry standard for the audio compact disc in 1979 and 1980, the story is that one of four people (or some combination of them) insisted that a single CD be able to hold all of the Ninth Symphony. The four were the wife of Sony chairman Akio Morita, speaking up for her favorite piece of music; Sony VP Norio Ohga (the company's pointman on the CD), recalling his studies at the Berlin Conservatory; Mrs. Ohga (her favorite piece, too); and conductor Herbert von Karajan, who recorded for Philips subsidiary Polygram and whose Berlin Philharmonic recording of the Ninth clocked in at 66 minutes. Further research to find the longest recorded performance came up with a mono recording conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler at the Bayreuth Festival in 1951. That playing went a langorous 74 minutes. But Philips engineer Kees A. Schouhamer Immink, who participated in the technical negotiations between his firm and Sony, says that's only part of the story. Writing in the December 2007 issue of the IEEE Information Theory Newsletter, he notes that, yes, there was pressure from execs to fit the Ninth on a single CD, but commercial and technical considerations played a bigger part. For one thing, Sony knew that Philips already had a factory capable of producing 115mm CDs and Sony wanted to change to a 120mm standard to erase Philips' headstart in manufacturing. Also, as negotiations neared an end, Philips engineers made a technical breakthrough that, at the data compression then planned, would have allowed 97 minutes of music to fit on a 120mm CD, or 75 minutes on a smaller disc. That, Immink writes, was never seriously considered, because the higher-ups had already decided on 120mm, for reasons perhaps competitive and perhaps Beethovenian. Instead, engineers increased the track pitch from 1.45 µm to 1.6 µm, and the bit length from 0.5 to 0.6 µm. The 30 percent lower information density made production easier and playback more reliable. Maximum laying length was set at 74 minutes, 33 seconds. That was theoretically long enough for Furtwängler's Ninth, but in reality it wasn't. The real limit for CDs started at 72 minutes, the maximum length of the U-Matic videotapes then used for audio masters. So the Furtwängler performance couldn't be released on a single CD until new digital audio technology made that possible in 1997. Links to the simplified Philips version that is often cited for the Beethoven story go to a Not Found message: "We are sorry, the page you are looking for has a new URL or is no longer available." That, despite the fact that the Philips website's own search function gives the same URL with this tantalizing summary:
Optical Recording - Beethoven more important than technology
It was not always the technical arguments that won when choices had to be made. For example, the playing time of the CD was determined posthumously by Ludwig van Beethoven. The Philips PR department in the Netherlands didn't answer our e-mail query on whether the page has been made unavailable because it's perhaps only corporate lore or urban legend. The rumor busters and urban-legend experts at Snopes.com call the Beethoven CD story neither true nor false, but "undetermined." So, there's a hole in our story, just like the hole in the middle of the CD. The diameter of that hole, the Philips website takes the trouble to point out, matches the size of an old Dutch coin. So, even if the Japanese prevailed on the diameter of the disc, the Dutch called the shots on the hole. In any event: Happy Birthday, Ludwig. And to his fans everywhere, be sure to take time to listen to some of his music today, whether it's on CD, an old LP, an even older 78, FM, satellite radio, all-Beethoven web radio or an MP3-loaded iPod. The flame still shines. Source: Various
Source: Wired Top Stories | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am 'Art of Participation' Connects Viewers, Artists : Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comSAN FRANCISCO — The new S.F. Museum of Modern Art exhibit The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now turns the typically quiet gallery walk into a hands-on interactive experience. The pieces in the retrospective exhibit show how artists have dabbled in two-way communication with viewers over the past 60 years. The refreshingly self-reflexive exhibition draws on a rich history and examines the relationships among museums, artists and the public. The show explores "how the public relates to the museum and vice versa," says Rudolf Frieling, the museum's curator of media arts. "Art frames you as a participant and art is framed by the museum." Click though the slideshow to sample the historic and contemporary work in the show, along with visitors' interactive reactions to the exhibition or interactive art. The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now runs through Feb. 8 at SFMOMA. Left: Museum visitors examine a contemporary version of German artist Hans Haacke's News, first shown in 1969. Haacke's original used a telex machine to print a news stream from German press agency DPA. In the updated work, a printer in the gallery spews out news reports obtained from RSS feeds of several online news sources, bringing events of the outside world into the gallery in real time. The printed news spills onto the gallery floor, creating a sculptural representation of virtual information — a tangible material archive of global news — throughout the duration of the exhibition.  : Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comAmber Isbilen and Kevin Johnson, both of San Francisco, use their breath to create abstract, colorful images on a television set in this 1998 version of Nam June Paik's Participation TV. Known as the "founding father of video art," Paik designed a series of these manipulated televisions in the 1960s to be "played like instruments." "It's like bringing a microorganism to life," Isbilen said.  : This image is a video still of American composer John Cage surrounded by onlookers in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as he performs what became his most famous and controversial conceptual composition, 4'33". The piece consists of four minutes and 33 seconds during which no notes are played. With the absence of music coming from the perceived performer, the ambient sound created by audience members and the environment becomes the music. First performed in 1952 by pianist David Tudor at the Benefit Artists Welfare Fund concert in Woodstock, New York, the piece initially angered audience members who expected a conventional concert. "They haven't forgotten it 30 years later," Cage said. "They're still angry." You can catch a live performance of this seminal work live at SFMOMA as part of the Art of Participation exhibition. Bring your sense of humor. Image: Video still from Nam June Paik's A Tribute to John Cage (1973, 1976)/Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Camille W. and William S. Broadbent Fund  : Another example of re-creating a historically innovative work, American artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz's black-and-white video projection Hole-in-Space uses documentary footage of their 1980 "public communication sculpture." The original, unannounced public event utilized satellite technology to connect pedestrians at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City with pedestrians at Century City Shopping Center in Los Angeles for two hours each day from Nov. 11 to 14, 1980. People at each location could see and converse with pedestrians on the other side of the country in real time. Once word got out, friends and family members from the two cities were able to arrange meetings with loved ones on the opposite coast. In the museum installation, footage from the two locations is projected on two separate, parallel walls that face one another — "a formal reference to the windows at the original sites" that displayed the projections, according to the artists. Photo courtesy Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz  : Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comCalifornians Diana Meehan (left) of Napa and Jann Nunn of Oakland eyeball each other in a re-creation of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark's Diálogo: Oculos, or "Dialogue: Goggles," originally created in 1968. One of Clark's "propositions," the piece invites viewers to try on goggles that have been modified with mirrors to alter perception. Meant to be shared with a partner, the goal is to rediscover the meaning of a routine gesture. Other "propositions" by Clark featured in The Art of Participation include: Diálogo de Mãos or "Hand Dialogue," Rede de Elástico or "Elastic Net," and Máscaras Sensoriais or "Sensorial Masks."  : For Life2 (2006), San Francisco Bay Area artist Lynn Hershman Leeson worked with the Stanford Humanities Lab to create a virtual archive of her historic project The Dante Hotel that can be explored and altered by avatars in Second Life. Hershman Leeson's historic project, which Life2 revisits, existed in a residence hotel room in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. For a period of nine months from 1973 to1974, visitors could get a key from the front desk any time and check in on the fictional occupants. The hotel room is re-created in Life2, along with artifacts from the original installation. Life2 can be viewed in the museum using pre-existing avatars on two different computers, and from your own computer. Screenshot courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art  : In Ant Farm Media Van v.08 (Time Capsule), a 1972 Chevy C-10 displays video and collects a digital archive of random media from visitors who share images, videos and music files from their personal electronic devices. The viewers' files, uploaded through a console called the media hookah, will become part of a digital time capsule available for access in 2030. Chip Lord and Curtis Schreier of historic multimedia-art collective Ant Farm teamed up with Bruce Tomb to create the piece, which was commissioned by the museum. The piece is based on a 1971 journey that Ant Farm took across the United States in a van customized with media equipment, interacting with the public along the way. The video displayed in Ant Farm Media Van v.08 (Time Capsule) is documentation from the 1971 Media Van project. Photo: Ian Reeves/Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art  : Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comPauline Andrie of Boston tries out Edwin Wurm's Keep a Cool Head, modeling her pose on the artist's instructional drawing. Wurm's One-Minute Sculptures, several of which are featured in The Art of Participation, invite the viewer to "perform" a temporary sculpture by following the artist's often-absurd instructions on how to use everyday objects — in this case, a modified refrigerator. For Andrie, this piece was "all in the name of fun." Of the overall show, she said: "I've never seen anything like this before."  : Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comTomo Saito of Japan and Adrien Segal from Oakland, California, attempt large-scale origami using two sheets from Felix Gonzalez-Torres' mass-produced, poster-size prints stacked on the gallery floor (Untitled 1992-1993). The stack of prints is replenished by the museum as often as necessary, and visitors are welcome to take them home. In the background is John Baldessari's painting Terms Most Useful in Describing Creative Works of Art (1966-68). Commenting on the unconventional dynamics of The Art of Participation, Saito said the "audience has more power than the artist."  : Like Edwin Wurm, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer also asks museum visitors to perform. His interactive installation Microphones (2008) uses modified 1930s Shure microphones that contain hidden speakers and circuit boards connected to a network of computers invisible to the participant. A participant who speaks into the microphone is illuminated and audio-recorded. Immediately afterward, the microphone plays a recording of a previous participant. Photo: Ian Reeves/Courtesy SFMOMA  : Photo: Brita d'Agostino/Wired.comGallery attendant Francisco Montero rocks the mike in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's installation Microphones. An artist himself, Montero said he likes to encourage visitors who are timid to participate with show's interactive pieces.  : Set up on a computer in the gallery and accessible from anywhere you can get online, Communimage is a web-based piece by c a l c (the pan-European collective casquiero atlantico labortorio cultural). The work encourages participants to upload an image of their choice along with basic meta-information to a grid system to create a "virtual, collective sculpture." Communimage was created in 1999, before the explosion of sites like Flickr and YouTube that thrive on user-generated content. Screenshot courtesy c a l c and Johannes Gees  : Recognize your picture in this detail from Communimage? Communimage and Life2 aren't the only internet-based works featured in the show: SFMOMA's website has a full list of online artwork from The Art of Participation. If you are artistically inclined and itching to exhibit at SFMOMA, you can bid on eBay for the chance to exhibit in a designated room in the museum as a part of the 1st Public White Cube, conceived by artists Blank & Jeron and Gerrit Gohlke. Reflecting the collaborative spirit of The Art of Participation, you must contend with an artist's work that is already set up in the gallery. The next auction starts Jan. 1. Screenshot courtesy c a l c and Johannes Gees  : In his piece The Gift, German conceptual artist Jochen Gerz utilizes the museum as both exhibition space and production studio. His work invites the public to sit, with an open expression, for a digital photographic portrait taken by a young artist. The portraits are then printed and framed in the museum and displayed in rotation along a wall in the gallery. The whole creative process is on view: the subjects, the production (including the printing and framing), the exhibition and finally the distribution of the work. The portraits can also be viewed online at The Examiner. The studio is open Mondays, and Thursday through Saturday. Screenshot: The Examiner  : On the last day of the show, the artist will randomly redistribute portraits from The Gift to participants. The expectation is that the portrait each participant receives, most likely of a stranger, will be exhibited as a work of art "on permanent loan" from the museum. This image is from the end of a previous installation of the piece at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporain in Tourcoing, France. "Reality is a great teacher," artist Jochen Gerz said in an interview. "Art should distribute itself.... The artist should disappear." Photo courtesy Gerz Studio --- For more information on the show, check out the excellent book The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now that accompanies the SFMOMA show. The exhibit runs through Feb. 8, 2009.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Mercury or Bust: Chasing Down the Galaxy's Fastest PlanetIn December, NASA's Messenger probe will execute a deep-space maneuver, burning through 151 pounds of fuel to tweak the trajectory of its 4.9-billion-mile, seven-year journey. The destination: an orbit path around Mercury. Just 27 months to go! Here's how to catch a planet going 30 miles per second.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Digital Spoon Scale Weighs Foods to the NanobiteThis little scale satisfies serious cooks, who love scales for exacting recipes. It measures to the nearest 10th of a gram – or gives those gastro nerds the option of spoon scoops for dry goods.Source: Gizmodo | 16 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Lots more macs being added to the workplace, but XP still reigns
68 percent of 700 companies said they would allow employees to use their macs as work computers, twice as many as answered just eight months ago. Great news for Apple, but hard times for IT departments: macs are generally more secure, but they are less modular (difficult to repair) and may have compatibility problems with existing systems. Of course, you can always run Parallels, and new Apple laptops are far more reconfigurable, despite unresolved RAM issues. The trend is accelerating, and the only thing that looks like it might do anything about it is the rather distant release of Windows 7, which many companies are planning to upgrade to, leapfrogging Vista. Can’t blame them, can you? When 7 comes out, companies will be upgrading hardware, software, and probably salting the earth behind them to avoid another situation where they were simultaneously supporting XP desktops, Vista and OS X laptops, and Linux servers. Source: CrunchGear | 16 Dec 2008 | 4:55 am Injectable Artificial Bone DevelopedAn anonymous reader writes in with the news that British scientists have invented artificial "injectable bone" that flows like toothpaste and hardens in the body. This new regenerative medicine technology provides a scaffold for the formation of blood vessels and bone tissue, then biodegrades. The injectable bone can also deliver stem cells directly to the site of bone repair, the researchers say. "Not only does the technique reduce the need for dangerous surgery, it also avoids damaging neighboring areas, said [the inventor]. The technology's superiority over existing alternatives is the novel hardening process and strength of the bond... Older products heat up as they harden, killing surrounding cells, whereas 'injectable bone' hardens at body temperature — without generating heat — making a very porous, biodegradable structure."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 16 Dec 2008 | 4:50 am Magellen surrenders product line to MiTACSection: Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation
As the recession in the United States continues and hits many companies hard, it has recently hit Magellan especially hard. We can’t say we didn’t see this coming, like the auto industry, Magellan just wasn’t making products that the public wanted. As a result, they’re forced to give up their products to MiTAC. MiTAC, as you may or may not know, is the parent company of Mio, so it makes sense that they bought Magellan out. For the time being, not many details have been released on this acquisition, although we do know that it will take place in January 2009, but the financial terms have not been disclosed. Stay tuned for more details as they become available. Press release is below. Via [GPS Review]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 16 Dec 2008 | 4:30 am Wall Street points out Apple’s soft spots
The analyst said that while Apple is still strong, in the short term they may find it difficult to reach sales targets on the MacBook Pro, and the ever popular iPods. He also said that it’s appearing unlikely that Apple will release a new product at MacWorld this year, which would further reduce short term gains. Frankly, while I’m not a big shot analyst, I think he’s wrong (so there). Apple is still very strong, and while they aren’t necessarily seeing the same levels of sales they saw a year ago (for obvious reasons), they are continuing with a very diverse product line, and in the long term is looking at steadily increasing market share. They’ve got the demand — I mean, who wouldn’t to find an iPod Touch under the tree? In any case, the shares were down only 0.05% at market close today. Take that, analysts. Source: CrunchGear | 16 Dec 2008 | 4:27 am US Patent Office Grants Patent for Destiny Media's Digital Media Distribution SystemVANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Dec 2008 | 4:05 am U.S. Postal Service Beefs Up RIBBS WebsiteResource for Business Mailers Offers Addressing Solutions From A to ZSource: Gizmodo | 16 Dec 2008 | 4:00 am Motorola Wins 'next Generation' Mobile Contract in China
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George W. Bush Presidential Library
Apple’s shares took a little bit of a hit today, after a Wall Street analyst 
I've been looking for something like this my whole life — and of course now that I've found it, I can't have it. 
It’s no secret that cell phone batteries typically suck, sometimes not even lasting us until we get home in the evening. What’s the secret to good battery life? The general rule of thumb is that if your phone is doing anything, your battery power is being drained. And if you’re doing something fun on your phone, you can bet your battery meter will be running low shortly. This means photos, games, and web surfing will all impair your battery’s performance significantly more than regular use. So what are some steps you can take to maximize your battery life without sacrificing the fun? Read on for 10 things you can do to increase your phone’s battery life:
Wikipedia, one of the greatest collaborative volunteer collective knowledge projects of all time and one of the most visited sites on the web, has finally released a mobile-formatted site - 
On Dec. 10, Visa released its first official Android Market app - 
This morning, a Harvard professor and his students will defend two Rhode Island residents from the RIAA, which is suing their son for sharing 7 music files on Kazaa. Although Arthur and Judie Tenenbaum are not named in the suit, the RIAA is attempting to force them to turn over their computer to be inspected for further copyright infringement. They don’t seem to care that they didn’t even own the computer when their son’s alleged illegal file sharing was done.
