Young Adults Encountering Underage Drinking at Parties, Says New FindLaw.com Survey

Slower, More Cautious Hiring Expected in New Year, CareerBuilder.com's Annual Job Forecast Reveals

Content Sites Bracing For 50% Revenue Slowdown

The U.S. economy has likely been in recession for a year, and tech companies have been bracing for a big slowdown in growth. But the fact is that revenues for most Internet-based companies haven’t dropped yet. Amazon, in fact, was able to issue its annual “best year ever” press release the day after Christmas.

That’s all about to change, at least for content sites, starting this week. Display advertising revenue is going to fall of a cliff in January according to a number of content sites I’ve spoken with who rely on advertising for revenue. “Sales through December were mostly strong as advertisers used up their marketing budgets,” said one sales exec. But, he added, “there are few buyers for this next fiscal quarter, and those few that are buying are looking for steep discounts.”

Just how bad will it be? I’ve heard estimates of 30%-80% revenue drops over the next three months from companies that serve a variety of content (games sites, tech news, celebrity news, political news, etc.). The median pessimism point is around 50%. The people I’ve spoken with work at large public companies and small one-person blog shops. Absolutely no one I spoke with said they expect an up quarter.

Some of the companies that survive the next few months will be leaner and stronger when this ends. That’s the upside. But everyone is cutting the fat, and your boss just may think you’re expendable.

Anyhow, on a more upbeat note, guess the movie the image is from, first comment to get it right gets a TechCrunch tshirt.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Clive Thompson on How YouTube Changes the Way We Think [Voices]

By Clive Thompson, Contributing Writer, Wired

Two years ago, a YouTube member named MadV—who silently performs magic tricks while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask—put up a short, cryptic video. He held his hand up to the camera, showing what he’d written on his palm: “One World.” Then he urged viewers to respond.

The video was just 41 seconds long, but it caught people’s imagination. Within a few days, hundreds of YouTube users had posted videos—shot on webcams, usually in their bedrooms—displaying their own scrawled messages: “Don’t quit!” “Tread gently.” “Think.” “Carpe diem.” “Open your eyes.” And my favorite, “They could be gone tomorrow!”

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Less Killing, More Kissing: New Breed of Computer Games Bring People Together [Voices]

By Richard Wray and Jonathan Franklin, Communications Editor and Blogger–respectively–The Guardian

A new generation of designers and developers is putting the social element back into video games, using online networks such as Facebook as platforms to turn people from across the world into poker aces, boffins and the proud and sometimes obsessive owners of virtual pets.

These new games give people the ability to play with their friends rather than strangers, which has sent usage through the roof.

Facebook is already seeing over 2bn minutes of game play a month, and the longer people stay online the more chance the game’s developer and the network itself have to make money out of them, most obviously through advertising.

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Guest Post: Happy Holidays, Mercenaries! Love, The Idealists [Voices]

By Glenn Kelman, President & CEO, Redfin

The year is nearly over, and anyone who has walked through the snow has had a moment to reflect on whether he has made the world a better place.

After three months of blood-letting-money-scrabbling-self-flagellation, few of us have the heart to ask that question aloud. Making the world better was once what every entrepreneur talked about at every opportunity. But now the Segway-riding idealists who ushered in Web 2.0 are in retreat, and the hard-nosed mercenaries are chasing after us.

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More BoomTown 2008 Tech Report Card on Tech Ticker [BoomTown]

BoomTown had no idea how much yammering took place between Yahoo Tech Ticker’s Sarah Lacy and me last week when we did an interview. But here is (hopefully) the final chapter of three videos about the tech scene, looking back at 2008 and forward to 2009.

This one is about the most underrated and overrated in tech–and somehow I manage to call Facebook both. I also note that while Steve Jobs is not overrated, by any means–so back off, you Mac fanatics–the other key execs at Apple (AAPL) are underrated.

Worst investor? Not even close: The winner is Carl Icahn, who has taken a very long and very cold bath investing in Yahoo (YHOO). Let’s hope he knows something we don’t for 2009.

Here are the other Tech Ticker interview videos I posted yesterday, on what I would give tech execs for the holidays and also my likely inaccurate predictions for 2009.

Here’s the latest video:

Will Work for Praise: The Web’s Free-Labor Economy [Voices]

By Stephen Baker, Senior Writer, BusinessWeek

It’s dawn at a Los Angeles apartment overlooking the Hollywood Hills. Laura Sweet, an advertising creative director in her early 40s, sits at a computer and begins to surf the Net. She searches intently, unearthing such bizarre treasures for sale as necklaces for trees and tattoo-covered pigs. As usual, she posts them on a shopping site called ThisNext.com. Asked why in the world she spends so many hours each week working for free, she answers: “It’s a labor of love.”

Later this morning, a half-hour’s drive to the west, a serial entrepreneur named Gordon Gould strolls into the Santa Monica offices of ThisNext. Gould has managed to entice an army of volunteers, including Sweet, to pour passion and intelligence into his site for free.

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Daily Crunch: Indoor Fireworks Edition

Net-gun fun
Are these the cutest photo frames ever?
Discover manhole covers of Japan with a new community website
Programmable vent cover for home heating customization
Wireless midi guitar is not really a guitar
The first ever Columbus, Ohio TechCrunch/CrunchGear Meet-up: Aftermath

Roger Ebert: Two Thumbs Up…for a Movie You’re Unlikely to See [Voices]

By Janko Roettgers, Contributor, NewTeeVee.com

Imagine this: You’re an independent filmmaker and your first animated feature is getting rave reviews. It’s being shown at dozens of festivals around the world, and is taking home prestigious awards, such as that of Germany’s Berlinale festival. But unless you can come up with the $220,000 that music publishers are demanding, it will never see a commercial release. What do you do?

Nina Paley decided to blog about it. She started a little online grassroots campaign to get her animated movie Sita Sings The Blues out to movie lovers despite royalty rates that are higher than the film’s entire budget, and she’s been posting details about her struggle (and explaining it in video interviews) on her Web site for months. Then a few days ago, the person who could turn out to be her most powerful ally emerged: Roger Ebert.

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Insert Bad Surfin’ Safari Pun Here [Digital Daily]

The holidays were particularly kind to Apple’s (AAPL) Mobile Safari Web browser. According to Net Applications, the number of Americans using it to browse the Web via the iPhone and iPod Touch rose dramatically last week — presumably as people tested out their new Christmas gifts.

Browser share for the iPod Touch averaged 0.17 percent between Dec. 25 and 28. That’s nearly three times 0.06 percent it averaged for the for the three weeks prior. Browser share for the iPhone saw a similar spike. Since Dec. 25, its share has averaged 0.65 percent, an increase of about 50 percent over the 0.42 percent share it averaged from Dec. 1 to 24. And those averages appear to be holding steady — for the time being, anyways. An impressive showing for Safari, which may well be defining our expectations for the mobile Web.

A Michael Franti Christmas

Music, film, kids' books, and yoga. It must be a Michael Franti Christmas. At least that's how it felt around our house this year, and it was all my fault. I bought the limited edition boxed set release of Franti's latest CD, All Rebel Rockers, for our 13-year-old (and myself), his beautifully illustrated children's book, What I Be, for our 6-year-old, and his Yoga DVD for Shawn.

As I read about the latest news of more violence in Gaza, I also can’t recommend enough Franti’s 2005 documentary film about the Iraq war and the Middle East, I Know I’m Not Alone. I had the fortunate opportunity to take my son to a screening of I Know I’m Not Alone that Franti presented at a local high school, and we both found it to be a deeply moving film and experience. I was a little concerned about taking my young son to a documentary about war, but Franti has an amazing ability to take on the most serious, heavy, and depressing topics and still offer an uplifting message. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to put a positive spin on what’s been happening in Iraq and with the Palestinian conflict (he deals with both in the film, traveling to Baghdad, Israel, and Palestine), but Franti somehow sees the good in all of us and uses his music as a powerful force for peace.

I really do believe that the world can be changed by music, and Michael Franti is out there doing it. Shawn just chimed in, saying that she thinks his acoustic version of “Nobody Right, Nobody Wrong” should be played at Obama’s inauguration next month. At the very least, we’ll be playing it in our household to drown out Rick Warren’s invocation and keep us thinking positively about the future. Along those lines, Franti’s just added his own Obama-themed song to the mix of musicians paying homage to hope. It’s available for a free download. Power to the Peaceful!

--Bruce

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Avoiding Wasted Time With Prince of Persia

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Video-on-Demand Coming to Wii in 2009

In a move widely anticipated ever since the XBox expanded its service with Netflix, Nintendo announced over the Christmas holiday that it is adding a video-on-demand option to its popular Wii console.

Video-on-demand is one of the most competitive areas in consumer electronics with more and more companies showing a willingness to infuse their main course offering (be it a Blu-ray player or a gaming system) with a bit of saucy video content.

Currently, there are plenty of options for the person who wants video quick and easy. There are specialized set-top boxes for internet services (like Roku's Netflix Box), improved offerings from satellite providers, all-in-one video services (like the Vudu, or even Apple TV), and the strong pull of internet video like YouTube and Hulu.

Mix them all up and you have a huge royal rumble showdown that is either destined to get ugly, or might get big enough to accommodate everyone. With the appetite shown by consumers in the last year for all these services, we're betting on the latter for now.

Over the last year, several rumors placed Nintendo near a VOD announcement. If you've followed Chris Kohler's coverage on Game|Life, you know that Nintendo of America CEO Reggie Fils-Aimes had previously knocked off related rumors surrounding HD content on the Wii, but video was never completely dismissed.

It seems like Nintendo finally felt it was the right time to use their huge reach in the living room to make their mark in this space.

Here's the gist of the announcement:

• Nintendo will partner with Japanese advertising giant Dentsu to create the service, which will offer videos through the Internet.
• Nintendo will start offering VOD in Japan in 2009 during a trial period at first, then it will expand to other countries.
• VOD options means it's highly likely that a large storage accessory will be announced soon. Currently, the Wii offers 512 MB of internal flash memory storage, plus up to 2 GB-4 GB in an external SD card. That's fine if you want to order up a few 23-minute TV shows, but something much larger will be needed for movies.
• The two companies will develop original programming for the Wii, which will be made available through the net. The company is considering developing videos for free but some (or many?) will be available for an as-yet-undisclosed fee.

But perhaps the most important part of the announcement was the mention of a prominent stat: 40% of the 35 million Wii consoles already sold are linked to the internet.

With that level of popularity, the Nintendo Wii has a chance, if it does this well, to obliterate the VOD numbers of its rivals.

Still, the mention of creating 'original programming' might throw a wrench into our plans of the global royal rumble. Nintendo might not intend to compete with the type of content offered by the XBox or a TiVo, since they often like to create their own market categories that are more family friendly than others, as well as more creative than aggregative. But that's something we'll have to see down the line.

New game aims to teach the stock market to aspiring investors

Section: Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Web, Websites

The stock market is a tricky business and it is important that we know how it works before we invest our hard earned money into a failing company.  UpDown.com and Young Money have recently partnered up to create YoungMoney.com, which is a virtual stock market game.  Within this game, users can practice investing virtual money into stocks they think will perform well and they will gain or lose money according to how that stock does in real life.

YoungMoney.com is similar to UpDown.com as they both offer competitions between investors.  However, YoungMoney.com takes it a step further as you are able to earn real money based on how much you gain. 

Overall, it seems like an interesting idea, and if for nothing else, you will learn how to accurately invest money in the best company.  Even if you invest in the wrong company, it’s all virtual money so there is nothing to lose.

Michael Reich, CEO and co-founder of Updown.com had this to say about their partnership:

“We’re very excited about sharing our technology with Young Money’s online audience.  The UpDown.com trading simulation and contest platform is a powerful tool for increasing engagement on finance and investing websites.”

On the flipside, Ben Levy, CEO of Young Money, had this to say:

“UpDown.com’s trading platform is a perfect fit for Young Money. We believe that it will help us fulfill our goal of creating entertaining ways to promote financial literacy.”

The concept behind this game seems a lot like fantasy sports, in which you make your own team and gain points based on how those players do.  The stock market game seems like a lot of fun and I’m sure some schools might use these websites to teach their students about the stock market.

Read [YoungMoney]
Read [UpDown]
Via [BusinessWire]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Erase too much and you’re in trouble with this device

Section: Computers, Desktops, Hardware, Laptops, Peripherals, Storage

Isn’t it great when two seemingly different products can combine to make something unique?  Most of the time, when two products combine the result is something useful, but sometimes it’s pointless and unnecessary.  I’m not so sure how useful a USB flash drive and an eraser are when they combine. 

Basically, this flash drive is coated with an eraser and every time you erase, it will steadily dwindle down.  Eventually, it will dwindle down so much, all that is left is the insides of a USB drive.  There isn’t any plastic to protect the device after that (as shown in the picture above) so you will have to be particularly careful in handling the USB drive when you have used up all of the eraser. 

Good or pointless product?  You decide.

Read [Studioroom906] Via [DVICE]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Facebook ban of breast-feeding photos sparks protests (Reuters)

Reuters - Are photographs of a mother breast-feeding her child indecent? The social networking site Facebook has sparked a massive online debate -- and protests -- and after removing photos that expose too much of a mother's breast.

Gamertell Review: GRUVme’s online game site

FROM GAMERTELL - GRUV games is part of GRUVme.com. It’s a gaming site where you can play 100s of short, fun games for no money. These games are quirky, entertaining, complicated and frustrating all in one. Click through for Gamertell’s review of GRUVme… MORE »

The holiday e-retail satisfaction rankings are in (CNET)

How to Hear Better on Your Cellphone

From Salon to Salad: Hair Makes Good Plant Fertilizer

Lotus-Designed Biofuel-Burning Snowspeeder to Detect Cracks in Polar Ice

While most Lotuses are bred to tear up the track, the company's newest racer is built to skate across ice and snow. The prototype Concept Ice Vehicle will scout for crevasses as it leads a caravan of explorers in the Moon-Regan Trans Antarctic Expedition.

Planned for November 2009, the journey aims to raise awareness of the impact of climate change, so the CIV's design specs required that it not spoil the southern continent's pristine atmosphere. To that end, Lotus converted a highly efficient BMW motorcycle engine to run on E85 bioethanol.

The 115-horsepower, two-cylinder motor spins the ultralight propeller fast enough for the CIV to glide over small gaps at a top speed of 84 mph, and the independent suspension (a Lotus specialty) helps the craft pull emergency slaloms around larger hazards. It shouldn't come to that: An onboard GPS-enhanced radar system will detect such voids well ahead of time, and the driver can radio the coordinates back to the rest of the crew — if he's not too busy busting out power-slides in the most badass snowmobile ever.

Engine
Two-cylinder, 115-hp BMW power plant is oil-cooled and modified to run on bioethanol.

Suspension
Three skis are independently dampened with both coil springs and hydraulic shock absorbers.

Brake
Like a spring-loaded crampon, the brake snaps down and digs its teeth into the ground to stop.

Lotus has built the extreme Concept Ice Vehicle (CIV) prototype to aid explorers in the Moon-Regan Trans Antarctic Expedition. In addition to being a pathfinder to larger six-wheeled Scientific Support Vehicles (SSC), the CIV will also serve as a test bed for use of E85 bioethanol in extreme cold.

The Concept Ice Vehicle will act as a lead vehicle in the Moon-Regan Trans Antarctic Expedition scheduled for November 2009. The goal is to raise awareness of the impact of global climate change.

An micro-cooled, 2-cylinder BMW motorcycle engine sends 115 HP to a tri-blade, mirco-light propeller mounted behind the driver cell. Because E85 fuel (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) won't atomize at temperatures below -15 degrees Celsius, the CIV's fuel tank wears a heated jacket.

When you ski recreationally in normal conditions, the snow melts beneath you, easing the path forward. But when you're 10,000 feet above sea level in very dry conditions and exceptionally low temperatures, there is no liquefaction of snow beneath the ski, which causes unwanted friction.

To ensure that the CIV could withstand the rigors of Antarctica, the shrinkage rate of every major component was calculated, and the entire machine was tested to -35°C in Lotus' cold chambers. In all, Lotus engineers went through eight different ski configurations and six outrigger designs during the development process.

Lotus has over-engineered the single-passenger Concept Ice Vehicle to survive at -72 degrees Celsius and cover 3,000 treacherous miles across choppy frozen grounds 10,000 feet above sea level.

Like Lotus' hardcore Elise sports car, the CIV uses a bonded aluminum structure and glass-fiber composites to keep weight down and maintain structural integrity. Three large skis, each mounted on independent suspension, have been specially designed to traverse Antarctica's jaw-rattling corrugations.

The Concept Ice Vehicle will lead two six-wheel-drive Science Support Vehicles [SSV] from one icy Antarctic coast to another. An advanced GPS radar system allows CIV to spot dangerous crevasses in the ice ahead.

King of Bionic Ag Uses Turbocharged Seeds, Precision Chemistry, and a Little TLC

They came over the prairie in their pickup trucks, in the cool, quiet hours before dawn. They rolled through the gentle foothills of the Ozarks in air-conditioned tour buses with paintings of stagecoaches airbrushed on the black-lacquered side panels. They came wearing mud-smudged 10-gallon hats and frayed John Deere baseball caps. And then they stepped down out of their vehicles, each one of these farmers, and set foot on holy ground.

It is here, on the rust-colored loam of Stark City, Missouri (population 156), that Kip Cullers became the soybean king of the world. In 2007, Cullers harvested 155 bushels of soybeans per acre from a small plot—eclipsing his own world record of 139. (The US average is 40.) It is also here, on another section of his 11,000-acre farm in 2007, that Cullers grew 329 bushels of corn per acre—not a world record but enough for a top prize at the National Corn Yield Contest.

Cullers is 44. He is a devout Baptist who named his two sons Noah and Naaman after people in the Old Testament. He is thin—rail thin—and carries the twitchy, antic vibe of an early David Byrne. He blinks constantly and has a habit of furrowing his brow. When he takes a dip of chewing tobacco, he taps his tin of Copenhagen twice, quickly. The farmers have come here from Nebraska and Minnesota and Arkansas to behold his work. Cullers' success has made him a celebrity in the farming world. At conferences and conventions across the US and Canada, he gives speeches to crowds of thousands. He has taken his road show to Argentina and Chile. Missouri governor Matt Blunt has sonorously proclaimed him "the Babe Ruth" of soybean production. Cullers calls himself "an ignorant hillbilly," but there's no doubt he's a genius in the science of yield—and, some argue, a frontline warrior in the burgeoning global food crisis.

With demand for corn-based ethanol mounting, and China's and India's hunger for corn-fed chicken and beef climbing, the cost of staple foods has never been higher. The price of yellow corn has doubled over the past two years, and poor people worldwide are struggling. Thirty-three nations are now at risk for social unrest due to rising food prices, according to World Bank president Robert Zoellick. In Thailand, rice farmers guard their paddies at night. Last spring, in Haiti, five people died in a weeklong food riot that culminated with protestors storming the presidential palace.

This upheaval represents an opportunity for companies like Iowa-based Pioneer Hi-Bred, Cullers' main sponsor. A DuPont subsidiary, Pioneer grossed $3.3 billion in 2007, primarily from the sale of bioengineered seeds; its chief rival, Monsanto, topped $11 billion in 2008. These businesses are based on the promise that science can help farmers boost yield. "We have to feed the world," says William Niebur, Pioneer's vice president of crop genetics R&D, "and we can, by increasing productivity per acre. And if we bring people food, there will be political stability, which leads to economic growth."

Cullers has positioned himself as a liaison between Big Biotech and the farming community. "Kip believes that high yield is his mission, his role," Niebur says, "and so he shares what he learns. He talks with us at Pioneer; he talks with other farmers. It's like he's trying to create a Linux users' group for corn and soybeans. He's open source."

So open that he's hosting some 1,800 farmers in Stark City for Kip Cullers' Record Breaking Field Day. Sponsored by Pioneer and German chemical conglomerate BASF, the event is meant as an opportunity for Cullers to pass on his wisdom—and sing the praises of Pioneer's products.

Cullers walks across the grounds and through the huge wedding-style tents, surrounded by a phalanx of Pioneer reps who confer with him soberly in their matching gold polo shirts. Even at his own party, he seems distant, inscrutable. He inspires wonder. "He's doing shit with soybeans that a lot of us aren't," says Jeff Mezera, a corn farmer from Bagley, Wisconsin.

Eventually, a crowd gathers in the tent dubbed Kip's Conference Room, and Cullers strides to the mic. He's chatty and casual. He jokes that one gold-shirted muckety-muck is "Pioneer's vice president for complaints." He spits a stream of chaw onto the grass and says, "If you got any complaints, you talk to him." Then things get down to the fine details of tending the land. One farmer asks Cullers, "What are your P and K levels?"

Signs identify the Pioneer seed varieties Cullers has planted.
Photo: Beth Perkins

Cullers assiduously logs his phosphorus and potassium levels, and he seems to be combing his brain for the numbers. But then he opts for discretion, more Bill Gates than Linus Torvalds. "They're good," he says, jauntily. "My P and K levels are good."

Competitive corn growing dates to the middle of the 19th century, when America's civic leaders, seeking to instill discipline and industry in children, began hosting contests. A 1951 book titled The 4-H Story describes "young Franklin B. Spaulding" of East Otto, New York, as he stood by his collection of Dutton Yellow corn in 1856: "His pulse must have quickened with sudden, overwhelming triumph when the party of dignified judges, passing by the other exhibitors, walked up to him and handed him 50 dollars as first prize in the state corn contest."

Grown-ups got into the contests, too. Francis Childs, who died in 2008 at age 68, was the most controversial of the competitive corn growers. In 2002, he stunned the Farm Belt with a new world record, growing 442 bushels of corn per acre on his farm in Manchester, Iowa. Like Cullers, Childs lectured throughout the Midwest. He espoused growing techniques that were then revolutionary—super-deep plowing, for instance, and high-dosage fertilizing.

Source: US Department of Agriculture

But in 2003, during a nasty divorce, Childs' wife charged that he had cheated earlier that year when the National Corn Growers Association came to weigh his crops. "He parked wagons out there that already had corn in them," Lois Childs testified, "and you're supposed to have empty wagons."

Once the province of a few fanatics, more cost-effective chemicals and seeds have led to a boom in competitive farming. In 2007, the number of entrants in the National Corn Yield Contest, steady at about 3,000 for years, soared to nearly 5,000. Last year, it was 6,700. Everyone still wonders: Is 442-bushel corn actually possible, or was Childs a fraud?

At Kip Cullers' Record Breaking Field Day, a solemn respect for the dead prevails. "Francis was a good man," says Dave Knau, a Pioneer sales administrator. "He was a personal friend." But the new king of corn is more cautious. "I ain't even gonna talk about Francis Childs," Cullers says. "I ain't even gonna mention Francis Childs' name."

The relationship between Cullers and Pioneer benefits both. The company provides him tiny batches of prototype seeds. "They'll just give me a handful," he tells me, cupping his palms together, "and maybe there'll only be 10 times that much in the whole world. It's not for any Joe Blow; they only give it to the cream of the crop—you know, the top farmers."

In exchange, Pioneer gets detailed field reports from an obsessed autodidact. Cullers never went to college, but he rises at 3:30 each morning to study plant genetics online. Right now, he's urging Pioneer to genetically weave a bit of stiffening fiber into soybean stalks. Cullers plants 300,000 soybeans per acre, double the national average. In these super-dense fields, he explains, soy plants grow taller, fighting for sunlight. "They fall down a lot," he says, "and you lose photosynthesis. The trifoliates don't pump nutrients to the beans. And you get disease, too. It's crowded and humid out there, down low."

Cullers learned farming as a kid. His stepfather was a dairy farmer who kept 50 cows on a 400-acre spread, but it was his small patches of corn that thrilled Cullers most. "Corn's my passion," he says with a rare flourish of lyricism. "Soybeans are my backup plan, but corn, it's a robust plant. It's something you gotta mature for a long time. It's a challenge: Basically, you have one week every year when you can't screw it up—mid-June, when it's tasseling and pollinating and everything counts. That week is exciting. It feels like the start of a race."

Cullers remembers hiking around his stepdad's farm to check on tasseling corn. At night, he would fall asleep dreaming of perfect corn—10 feet tall, with two ears on every plant and each ear sprouting a kingly 50 rings of 20 kernels.

Pioneer provides Cullers with tiny batches of prototype seeds; in exchange, he supplies the company with detailed field reports.
Photo: Beth Perkins

In his twenties and thirties, Cullers farmed 5,000 acres of vegetables. Every field had to be hand hoed. He oversaw 150 seasonal workers until once, he told me, "we screwed up. We sent a live mouse down there to a baby food company along with our squash. They dumped like thousands of cases of baby food. They was scared they had rodent hairs in them."

Cullers tightened his operation. "I'm a micromanager," he says. "I'm a control freak. My wife thinks I'm stressed out. All I do every day now, all day long, is crisis management. With corn and soybeans, you've got your highest yield potential on the first day you plant. After that"—his tone grows wistful—"things start going wrong. I can walk through a field and find 5,000 things wrong with it. You're always dealing with something hypercritical, like an infestation of Japanese beetles. I work six days a week, right up until it gets dark, and when she's balls to the wall, I work Sundays, too."

Cullers adjusts his cap and stares off into the distance dolefully—trapped, it seems, by his own success. He has become the Grow Man, the superstar of bionic ag, and now he seems resolved to do whatever the role demands. When a BASF film crew approaches him later in the day seeking a sound bite, he dutifully plays along.

"We want employees to know you are pleased to be working with BASF," the producer tells him.

"You know," Cullers begins, "it's great to be working with BASF ..."

How does Kip do it? That's the question on everyone's mind at the field day, of course. Cullers doesn't just put seeds in the ground and hope for the best. Modern farming is science, awash in crazily capable machinery and in technicalities that can befuddle the average farmer of a few hundred acres. Cullers himself owns some 15 tractors, the fanciest of which costs $185,000 and steers itself with GPS tech. He burns up thousands of cell phone minutes each month talking to Pioneer and BASF technical advisers—chemistry PhDs who can expound on the relative merits of Respect insecticide, formulated from zeta-cypermethrin, and `, which is rich in pyraclostrobin.

Dozens of these experts are on hand for the field day. They set up little teaching stations and stand there—in the 90-degree heat, in stagnant air as humid as an athletic sock—explicating Cullers' strategies. At one station, BASF sales rep Dale Ashby extols Cullers' unusually high herbicide use. "What Kip does, to get early-season weed pressure out of the way," he says, "is spray an herbicide before he plants. Kip likes Extreme, and also Pursuit."

Then there are the seeds themselves. Leon Streit, a senior research scientist at Pioneer, touts the lab development of his company's new high-yield Y Series soybeans. Until recently, geneticists have focused on "defensive" genes such as rhg1, which resists soybean cyst nematodes. But in creating the Y beans, Pioneer scientists sought out "offensive" genes—the very material that makes soybeans sprout and grow.

They did so, in part, by employing an ancient agriculture tactic: They took crosses of elite soybean plants and inbred them with thousands of experimental varieties, each with a distinct genetic makeup. They calculated the yield from each progeny—and then they got fancy. Using DNA fingerprinting technology, Pioneer scanned the genes in each plant to determine which correlated with yield. "We were originally looking for a specific yield gene," Pioneer senior research scientist Scott Sebastian says, "but yield doesn't work that way. We learned that it's a complex interaction of many traits and the environment." Pioneer's promotional literature claims that Y Series beans will help farms increase yield by 40 percent over the next decade.

In 2007, on a section of his 11,000-acre farm Cullers grew 329 bushels of corn per acre — not a world record but enough for a top prize at the National Corn Yield Contest.
Photo: Beth Perkins

Still, the Y beans aren't the most celebrated genetically modified product at the field day. Under one tent, guarded 24/7 by the Newton County police, is a small blue plastic tub containing four stalks of corn. The plants appear ordinary, but they sprouted from seeds that feature a patented, proprietary, and as yet unreleased Pioneer trait, Optimum GAT. It makes them resistant to not one but two types of pesticide—glyphosate, a popular weed killer that Monsanto sells as Roundup, as well as a whole family of chemicals known as ALS herbicides.

Pioneer created Optimum GAT in a Redwood City, Calfornia, lab by splicing a bacterium called Bacillus licheniformis into corn and soy genes. The company hails the trait as a deft response to a big problem in agriculture: the proliferation of weeds that, over years, have built up a resistance to herbicides.

Optimum GAT, with its "shuffled" genes, closely resembles bioengineered seeds that Monsanto has been creating for more than a decade. And its principal magic, it seems, is economic: Currently, Monsanto holds the patent to the sole glyphosate-resistant technology, Roundup Ready. Pioneer pays Monsanto tens of millions of dollars a year to license Roundup Ready—and as Cullers puts it, Optimum GAT "will free us all from a certain company in St. Louis."

But for all the wonders of Pioneer's laboratories, the real secret to Cullers' success might be more prosaic. Kendall Lamkey, the Pioneer distinguished chair in maize breeding and the agronomy department head at Iowa State University, doesn't dismiss chemicals, but he feels that technology is not the ultimate answer. "With Kip," he says, "it basically comes down to elbow grease. He walks his contest plots daily. He's checking his soy plants to avoid flower abortion. He keeps his plants cool by spraying a thin mist when it's hot. He pays close attention—that's what a good farmer does. The work hasn't really changed much over the decades."

On the last day, the heat breaks and rain comes gushing down out of the sky in torrents. It is almost biblical: Everywhere you walk, it seems, there is a raging stream with a soggy black Optimum GAT-branded baseball hat floating in it. The guests gather in "Kip's Cafeteria," where local Mennonite women, dressed in prim white aprons and hairnets, dish up lunch. The farmers are mostly gone by now, leaving the Pioneer reps and their BASF counterparts. They sit together, addressing their pork chops and blueberry pie, and speculate hopefully about the future of high-yield agriculture.

"I talked to Kip last night," murmurs Pioneer senior marketing manager Tracy Linbo, "and he said that 200-bushel soybeans are not outside the realm of possibility."

Later, Cullers sits alone in the cafeteria tent, wearing a BASF polo shirt and a pair of Big Smith overalls so baggy he practically disappears in them. The place is a mess, scattered with muddy paper plates and pork bones. "I'm wore out," he says. "At a thing like this, everyone's always tugging at you. I don't know if we ever want to do this again. I've got 5 million things to do." He cracks out his cell and begins making rapid-fire calls. The whole of one message is, "Hey Bruce, give me a holler."

I ask him if he has any qualms about using genetically modified seeds given the controversy surrounding them. "No," he says.

Cullers twists his legs up toward him awkwardly, so that the front feet of his chair are resting on the toes of his boots. He stares at me, waiting.

"You know that passage in Genesis," I say, "the one about taking 'dominion' over 'all the earth'? Does that inspire you?"

"No," he says. "I don't think about that." He looks out toward his corn now. "Corn is my hobby. Some people go fishing. Some people ride bicycles. I grow corn. All I ever wanted to do was grow stuff. I love making stuff grow. I love seeing how far you can push it." He's possessed of a rare simplicity, a purity of focus that exists, usually, only in athletes—in people who spend their whole life in pursuit of perfection and glory.

I say good-bye and drive off over a long, straight gravel road. Corn lines my path. It is high and green in its rows, and I can't even imagine what sort of strange magic these fields will sprout in the future.

Bill Donahue (billdonahue.net), a writer based in Portland, Oregon, has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards.

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6 New Web Technologies of 2008 You Need to Use Now

Every year, we see scores of innovations trickle onto the web — everything from new browser features to cool web apps to entire programming languages. Some of these concepts just make us smile, then we move on. Some completely blow our minds with their utility and ingenuity — and become must-haves.

For this list, we've compiled the most truly life-altering nuggets of brilliance to hit center stage in 2008: the ideas, products and enhancements to the web experience so huge that they make us wonder how we got along without them.

Nitpickers will notice that a couple of these technologies arrived two or three years ago. Others aren't even fully baked yet. But each innovation on our list reached a level of maturity, hit the point of critical mass, or stepped in to fill a burning need during 2008 that resulted in it significantly changing the landscape of the web.

Here's to the technologies currently making the web a better place than it was 12 months ago.

Identity Management

Few things carry more value than your digital identity, and yet most web users have only a tenuous grasp of it. That's because on the social web, identity is no longer just who you are. It's who you know, how you know them and how much you want them to know about you. On the web, your identity is explicitly tied to your relationships, both with your friends and with the websites you visit.

Three great technologies came to fruition this year to help you manage these complex interdependencies: OpenID, Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect.

These ID systems all offer a way to take control of your social capital, that cache of "friend data" you carry with you as you sign up for and use different web services. They also all offer a more tangible advantage — an easy way to log in to any website using one set of credentials. You get one virtual ID card that gives you access to hundreds of websites. As a bonus, you don't have to go through the painful process of filling out a profile and adding or approving friends on every new blog, community or social network you want to join.

The end of 2008 saw a flurry of activity around identity. Facebook Connect, which currently lets you log in to a few dozen high-profile websites using your Facebook ID, went live the first week of December. Google's Friend Connect and MySpace's MySpaceID, similar systems that aren't yet as widely adopted, launched soon after it.

There's a hitch, though. Facebook Connect, while elegant and easy to use, is built on proprietary code and isn't compatible with the offerings from Google and MySpace, which are built using OpenID and other open source standards.

We should expect this battle for your personal data play out over the next year, maybe longer. But 2008 will be remembered as the year that identity stepped into the spotlight.

HTML 5

One of the most important technologies on this list doesn't fully exist yet — HTML 5 — but in 2008, key features started to trickle out.

HTML 5 will eventually replace HTML 4.01, the dominant programming language currently used to build web pages. But the governing bodies in charge of the web are still drafting the details, and nobody expects HTML 5 to fully emerge as the new standard for at least a few more years.

But HTML 5 is no vaporware. Many of the changes to the way the web operates as outlined in early versions of the new specification are already being implemented in the latest browsers, and some of the web's more adventurous site builders are already incorporating HTML 5's magic into their pages.

HTML 5 will be great step forward, standardizing things like dragging and dropping elements on web pages, in-line editing of text and images on sites and new ways of drawing animations. There's also support for audio and video playback without plug-ins, a boon for usability and a worrisome sign for Adobe's Flash, Microsoft's Silverlight and Apple's QuickTime. The language will also give a boost to web apps, as there are new controls for storing web data offline on your local machine.

Want Gmail on your desktop? HTML 5 makes it possible. Alas, the blink tag isn't invited to the party.

Lifestreaming

A new breed of social app has arisen to help us manage the mess of information overload — the lifestream.

Not long ago, keeping track of your friends on the internet was pretty easy. Everyone belonged to Friendster or MySpace and that was it. Now, the web is littered with thousands of social sites, each with its own special purpose — Flickr for photos, Last.fm for music, Twitter for tweeting. Even the most rudimentary services are tied to the social web. Renting a movie, buying a book or writing a blog post? Let all your friends on Netflix, Amazon and Blogger know about it.

Keeping tabs on your friends now is all too easy and all too much, all at once.

Sites like FriendFeed, Plaxo Pulse and Digsby serve as social-network-activity aggregators. They're like virtual funnels. Dump in all the notifications, feeds and updates from your various networks, and the services will bring it all into one master stream, relieving you of the responsibility of visiting a dozen or more sites to learn what your friends are up to, what they're listening to, who they're snogging and so on. Controls let you dial back the flow by sorting and filtering the flow, pruning it down to only what matters most.

Many such services have emerged, but FriendFeed, an elegant and simple site designed by a crew of ex-Googlers, is our favorite.

Oh, and don't expect to be able to add Facebook to your lifestream. The network lets all sorts of data in, but precious little out.

Firefox 3

Firefox has been around since 2004, but when version 3 of Mozilla's browser arrived in June 2008, it got everything right. Mozilla's browser is faster and more secure than ever before, and it's open source, so you get the feel-good factor, too.

One of the most highly anticipated software releases of the year, more than 8 million people downloaded Firefox 3 on the first day. Third time's a charm, indeed.

The genius bit of engineering was bringing search front and center — just type what you're looking for in the location bar, and FF3 searches your history, bookmarks and the web to bring you the page you want, lightning fast.

Performance enhancements made it one of the web's fastest browsers — especially for surfing the recent swell of web apps — and improved security features made it one of the safest.

Mozilla continues to build upon the concept with its Ubiquity add-on for Firefox, which lets you search and interact with any number of web services by typing text commands into the browser.

It's still the second-most-popular browser after Microsoft Internet Explorer by a wide margin, but Firefox 3 is the feisty favorite of the web's elite.

Google Chrome

Its debut release in September was not expected, nor was it greeted with as much fanfare as the arrival of Firefox 3 a few months prior. But Google's browser was instantly recognized as a potential game-changer, both among browser-makers and within the world of web apps.

Chrome is a browser built to empower web applications.

Its killer feature is a new approach to page rendering that isolates web applications inside each of the browser's tabs — a crashing web app might cause a single tab to go south, but that won't affect anything outside that tab. The rest of the browser remains stable.

When you're doing mission-critical work in a web app and the browser crashes, it isn't an annoyance, it's a deal breaker. E-mails are lost, documents have to be rewritten, web forms need to be filled out again. Chrome's ability to sidestep a full crash strengthens Google's bid to replace desktop apps with its own web-based alternatives.

Chrome reached official 1.0 status in December. It's Windows-only for now, but we should expect official versions for Mac and Linux soon. It's also still very young. Future releases will have support for add-ons, offline syncing of web data through Google Desktop and — knowing Google — probably a few other bells and whistles nobody's thought of yet.

Location Awareness

In 2008, location-based information ceased being a fancy add-on and instead became a requirement of any serious, successful web service.

Hit a button on your laptop or phone to tell a web service where you are, and it tells you what restaurants are close by, where the new Bond movie is playing (and when, and if there are tickets left), and which of your friends are within shouting distance if you need a date.

The tipping point arguably came when a wave of GPS-equipped mobile web devices hit the market. The iPhone 3G, the T-Mobile G1 and the latest Nokia N-series devices all have GPS built in. They also all have real web browsers and the tools necessary for access to web APIs, opening the door to more-relevant search and localized mobile services.

On the iPhone, you can use Yelp's app to get a list of nearby venues, restaurants and hangouts with the touch of a button. Or, in the case of Google's local-search app, you can simply speak your request and get local results. An app like Say Where queries multiple search sites.

The benefits aren't limited to mobiles, either. Social networking sites and desktop search apps can take advantage of new technologies like Yahoo's FireEagle, where users can update and store their location data, or browser plug-ins like Google Gears or Firefox's Geode, which users can set up to report their location automatically.

Whether they're using a desktop browser or an iPhone, users now demand the high levels of relevance and convenience on the web that location awareness affords.

The World Wide Web Consortium, the web's governing body, has stepped up and formed a think tank to develop a set of standards for handling users' geodata that ensures privacy and interoperability. The W3C Geolocation Working Group hopes to have its first recommendation filed by the end of 2009.

Dec. 30, 1924: Hubble Annnounces Andromeda Is a Galaxy

1924: Astronomer Edwin Hubble announces that the spiral nebula Andromeda is actually a galaxy and that Milky Way is just one of many galaxies in the universe.

Before Copernicus and Galileo, humans thought our world was the center of creation. Then (except for a few notable stragglers) we learned that the sun and planets did not revolve around the Earth, and we discovered that our sun — though the center of our solar system — was not the center of the universe or even an important star in our galaxy.

But we still grandiosely thought our own dear Milky Way contained all or most of the stars in existence. We were about to be knocked off our egotistical little pedestal once again.

Edwin Hubble was born in Missouri in 1889 and moved to Chicago in 1898. In high school, he broke the state record in the high jump, and went on to play basketball for the University of Chicago. He won a Rhodes scholarship and studied law at Oxford. He earned a Ph.D. in astronomy, but practiced law in Kentucky. After serving in World War I and rising to the rank of major, he got bored with law and returned to astronomy.

He trained the powerful new 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson in Southern California on spiral nebulae. These fuzzy patches of light in the sky were generally thought to be clouds of gas or dust within our galaxy, which was presumed to include everything in the universe except the Magellanic Clouds. Some nebulae seemed to contain a few stars, but nothing like the multitudes of the Milky Way.

Hubble not only found a number of stars in Andromeda, he found Cepheid variable stars. These stars vary from bright to dim, and a very smart Harvard computationist named Henrietta Leavitt had discovered in 1912 that you could measure distance with them. Given the brightness of the star and its period — the length of time it takes to go from bright to dim and back again — you could determine how far away it is.

Hubble used Leavitt's formula to calculate that Andromeda was approximately 860,000 light years away. That's more than eight times the distance to the farthest stars in the Milky Way. This conclusively proved that the nebulae separate systems and that our galaxy is not the universe.

Cosmic though it was, the news did not make the front page of The New York Times. The paper did notice the following Feb. 25 that Hubble and a public health researcher split a $1,000 prize ($12,000 in today's money) from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.

Hubble went on to discover another couple of dozen galaxies. Before the 1920s were over, he added another astronomical achievement to his reputation. By analyzing the Doppler effect on the spectroscopic signals of receding stars, he established that their redshift was proportional to their distance.

When the 200-inch Mount Palomar telescope was completed in January 1949, Hubble was honored to be the first astronomer to use it. He died in 1953. NASA named its space telescope after him.

Source:Various

12 Good Gadgets for Hard Times

Will Sleep for Food

Posted to Peter Nidzgorski's frequently beautiful "This isn't happiness" tumblog today, with the caption "This is our cat Bob. He died today. He was 20 years old." A colleague of mine lost a cat on Christmas Eve who had been a loving four-pawed companion for about that long. Losing a pal like that is a sad thing. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Columbus TC/CG Meet-up: The Aftermath

The first ever Columbus, Ohio TechCrunch/CrunchGear Meet-up: Aftermath

So we had about 45-50 people at the event tonight and I was amazed at the energy and excitement here in my hometown, good old Columbus. I met the guy who sold me a car this weekend and the guy who invented the PowerSquid. There are a few start-ups and products I’m going to highlight this week and I’m pleased to say that these folks are amazingly excited and enthusiastic, even in a down economy.

Here’s to you, Columbus. I’ve been so coast-centric this decade that I failed to see your true worth and the beauty of your bar culture. Special thanks to CG writer Scott (scott at crunchgear.com, if you want to get in touch with him) for suggesting the joint.

AMD Releases Open-Source R600/700 3D Code

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Global Garde attempts to kill piracy dead

Section: Computers, Security, Software / Applications

Raise your hand if you remember the Spore SecuROM fiasco.  The community backlash, and the resulting huge amount of pirated copies of the game that became available.  You’d think that somebody would try to create a form of copy protection that both copyright holders and consumers can be okay with.  Apparently the people at CD Digital Card didn’t get that message.

CD Digital Card is trying to bring 2 Geeks In A Lab’s Global Garde copy protection to mass market.  Apparently the code is small (only about 250 to 500 KB), takes only five minutes to install, and is supposed to be invisible to consumers.  According to the press release it’s currently hailed as “the holy grail of anti-piracy and copy protection.”  In other words: the bane of those who simply want to access the content that they paid for, or those who want to pirate it.

Global Garde works by randomly checking back to see if the content is OK.  This is done multiple times during installation, as well as when the content (apparently everything from a single PDF file to music CDs and computer programs) is in use.  If something goes wrong, then the application or file stops working, and quits.  Then you have to re-open it and try again.  The horrible flash product demo claims that the code contains a lot of dead-ends for hackers and that the authentication continually changes so there’s less of a problem with pirates.

I understand that copy protection is important.  If I were a programmer or musician, I would hate to see people taking my work without supporting me.  But there must be a better way of controlling this without draconian software.  Consumers want to be treated as consumers, not criminals.  There’s no reason to put copy protection on everything.  Pirates will eventually get into it; it happens eventually.  If people really want access, they will find access to software.  I understand that no DRM is also a bad thing, but there has to be a happy medium somewhere, someone just need to find it.

Read [Business Wire]
Read [2 Geeks In A Lab]
Read [http://www.2geeksinalab.com/demo/sellfolio.html]

Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

RjDj Continues To Be The Most Trippy App On The iPhone (And I Love It)

Back in October I wrote about a new iPhone app called RjDJ, which I described as “An Awesome, Trippy Soundtrack For Your Life“. The application includes a set of entrancing songs that go on forever, using the iPhone’s internal microphone to ‘listen’ to the noises and voices heard in your proximity to dynamically create music. It’s a bizarre and totally unique experience that you should try if you haven’t already (you can grab the full version here or a one-song trial here).

Tonight the RjDj team has released a followup to its original app called RjDj Shake. The application has a similar purpose, using external input to dynamically generate music. But instead of using sound, Shake relies on the iPhone (or iPod Touch’s) accelerometer to adjust the audio any time the phone senses movement.

Each song (or “scene”, as the app calls them) responds to movement in a different way - some scenes are designed for passive movement, playing tiny bells whenever you take a step, while others are meant to be used when you’re jumping, dancing, or waving your iPhone around. You can also record your songs for future listening, though it doesn’t look like there’s an easy way to export them.

In my brief testing I found Shake to be less trippy and captivating than the original application (likely because it doesn’t feature weird echoing voices), but it’s still fun to play around with. I’m hoping that eventually RjDj will incorporate the technology from both Shake and the original into a single application so we can get the ultimate in bizarre musical iPhone tripping.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: Gizmodo | 30 Dec 2008 | 3:56 am

Fennec shaping up to be the mobile browser to beat in ‘09

We’ve seen Fennec in an early form before, but apparently the new beta is much more featured, and the promises being made for Mozilla’s mobile browser are going to really shake up the scene if they follow through.

Mobile browsing is getting better and better, although my G1’s built-in one is too slow, Opera Mini is a little weird, and Safari is too limited. Firefox aims to hit all three where it hurts, being fast, easy to control, and open to expansion. Add-ons for Firefox are supposed to work for Fennec eventually, which sounds fishy but would be totally awesome.

Mozilla is looking at a major release for as many mobile platforms as possible, including things like e-book readers. How sweet would it be to have a full-featured web browser on a Kindle or eReader-type device? Hopefully that’ll happen sometime in the next 6 months.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: MobileCrunch | 30 Dec 2008 | 3:19 am

Fennec shaping up to be the mobile browser to beat in ‘09

We’ve seen Fennec in an early form before, but apparently the new beta is much more featured, and the promises being made for Mozilla’s mobile browser are going to really shake up the scene if they follow through.

Mobile browsing is getting better and better, although my G1’s built-in one is too slow, Opera Mini is a little weird, and Safari is too limited. Firefox aims to hit all three where it hurts, being fast, easy to control, and open to expansion. Add-ons for Firefox are supposed to work for Fennec eventually, which sounds fishy but would be totally awesome.

Mozilla is looking at a major release for as many mobile platforms as possible, including things like e-book readers. How sweet would it be to have a full-featured web browser on a Kindle or eReader-type device? Hopefully that’ll happen sometime in the next 6 months.

Source: CrunchGear | 30 Dec 2008 | 3:19 am

12th Annual PC building competition to take place at CES 2009

Section: Computers, Desktops, Gadgets / Other, Trade Shows, CES

The 12th annual Build Your Own PC Race for Charity hosted by TigerDirect, CompUSA, AMD and Systemax is set to take place again from 5:30 - 8:00 p.m. on January 8, 2009 at the Wynn Hotel.  In case you aren’t familiar with this charity event, basically 30 tech journalists/companies work amongst themselves to design a PC in the shortest amount of time.  For first place, $10,000 gets donated to that companies’ chosen charity, second place gets $2,500 to their charity, and then third gets $1,000 for their charity.

To give some perspective on how fast these computers can be assembled, last year’s winner, Maximum PC’s Will Smith, made his PC in 10 minutes 30 seconds. 

Some of the companies and tech journalists involved in this competition include PC World, Maximum PC, Gizmodo, Revision3, G4TV, Wired, Computer Shopper, Yahoo! Tech, Seattle Times, Fox Morning News and a few others.  Now, each company/person has to build a computer centered on the AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core processor in the shortest amount of time possible. 

Gilbert Fiorentino, Chief Executive of the Systemax Technology Products Division, had this to say about the competition:

“While the buzz at CES revolves around new products and technologies, TigerDirect.com and CompUSA have been able to use the time over the last 12 years to bring journalists and various technology companies together to raise over $2 million for non-profit organizations and schools around the country.  We’re extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and look forward to raising more for charity in the future.“

Lastly, AMD is sponsoring another race that will take place for the first time and it is called the Overclocking Race.  Basically, more famous tech journalists are competing against each other to see who can maintain the highest frequency on air and water cooled PCs using AMD’s Phenom II X4 quad core processor.  This will take place before the actual PC building race from 5:45 - 6:45 p.m.

Overall, it will be interesting to see who wins this year’s PC race.

Via [PR Newswire]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Dec 2008 | 3:14 am

Spy shots: Android on OpenMoko hardware

I swear to god, if you have a real lens (as I can see in the 2nd pic), use manual focus for things like this. I guess beggars can’t be choosers, since this guy is the only one with pics of Android running on the OpenMoko hardware, but jesus! Click on for the rest of the shots — such as they are.

If you don’t remember much about the OpenMoko project, check out its homepage or our previous coverage.

OpenMoko spy shots

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Source: CrunchGear | 30 Dec 2008 | 2:52 am

Sony Cuts PlayStation 3 Component Costs by 35 Percent (PC World)

PC World - Sony Computer Entertainment has cut the cost of materials used to make its PlayStation 3 game console by 35 percent, according to market research firm iSuppli.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Dec 2008 | 2:50 am

Crunchdeals: 9 Free e-books

Into e-books? Me too. I’m just not overly fond of how they charge almost the same price for the paper version as they do the electronic version. Here’s something interesting from eReader.com though: they are giving away nine titles for free.

These should work on any reader, including the iPhone. There is some software to download to use them with some readers though. The good news is, these aren’t crappy, unknown authors either. There’s some top shelf stuff here. The only catch that I could find is that you have to use a credit card to get your free titles. The offer is good through December 31st, so move quickly if you are interested.

[via The Cheapskate]

Source: CrunchGear | 30 Dec 2008 | 2:45 am

Amazon announces most popular items this holiday season

Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, HDTV, Portable Video, Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Gaming, Console, Web

As you may or may not know, Amazon reported that they had their best holiday season, while many other companies reported losses.  It is no surprise that Amazon had a good holiday season because there isn’t any sales tax applied to your purchases, their prices are usually cheaper than in stores, shipping is usually free.  Overall, you can shop without having to leave the comfort of your house.

Now, the category that sold the most items was electronics - what a surprise.  The most popular items were Samsung’s 52 inch HDTV, the iPod, Acer netbook, and the Nintendo Wii.  Amazon did not provide us with any specific model numbers for the HDTV or iPod.  In addition, an astonishing 6.3 million units were sold on December 15 alone and Amazon sold goods to more than 210 countries between a time period of November 14 and December 24 - and 99% of these orders made it before Christmas. 

It will be interesting to see how the top products change from this year to next year, but I expect that HDTVs will still be up there. 

Via [AFP]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Dec 2008 | 2:20 am

Windows 7 May Add Spice to CES (PC World)

PC World - Software could overshadow gadgets at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, with Microsoft expected to shed light on its upcoming Windows 7 OS.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Dec 2008 | 2:20 am

Microsoft files new patent, reaches deeper into your wallet

Microsoft thinks they may have come up with a new way to print money. In a patent filed on Christmas day, Microsoft outlined a new model for pay-as-you-go computing.

The PC would essentially be free, and then whenever you used it you would be charged based on the type of application you were using. The interesting thing about it is, this could be something that would actually work. Seems to me like a good way to get low cost systems to people who only occasionally need access. Until the product is actually launched however, I’ll remain skeptical.

Source: CrunchGear | 30 Dec 2008 | 2:10 am

Supposed Buyer for NYT’s Boston Red Sox Stake Says He’s Not Interested [MediaMemo]

One of the supposed buyers for the New York Times’s (NYT) stake in the Boston Red Sox–one of the few assets the paper can unload as it tries to bail itself out of a cash crunch and looming debt problem–says he’s not buying. Here’s the report from the Boston Globe (which the Times owns):

Both Boston Herald publisher Patrick Purcell and former Boston advertising executive Jack Connors separately flatly ruled out being involved in deals to buy the Boston Globe, which is owned by the New York Times Co. Connors further said he had no interest in buying the Times Co.’s stake in the Boston Red Sox.

The Times has put its 17.5 percent stake in the Red Sox up for sale, and recent news accounts have reported that the company has also offered to sell the Globe, too. The Financial Times reported last week that Connors was in talks with Times executives to buy the Globe and the Red Sox position.

‘There’s nothing to it,’ Connors told the Globe. ‘I’m not buying the Boston Globe. I’m not buying anything that the New York Times owns.’”

As denials go, that’s a fairly strong one. And while that doesn’t mean the Times can’t find someone else to buy its stake in the baseball team–it was reportedly seeking up to $300 million, while other estimates peg the value in the $170 million range–the market didn’t react well to the news. Shares in the Times’ beaten-down stock dropped more than seven percent in after-market trading.

The fate of the Boston Globe, sadly, doesn’t mean much for the Times in terms of solving its financial mess: A few years ago, former GE CEO Jack Welch was reportedly interested in spending up to $600 million for the paper; today it might fetch $50 million or so.

Late today the Times also announced that it had filed a shelf registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission–essentially a placeholder document that allows the company to move quickly with a debt or equity offering if it decides to pull the trigger. Spokesperson Catherine Mathis:

In these difficult markets, the Company wants to ensure that it has maximum flexibility and, accordingly, is filing a shelf that would permit it to offer both debt and equity.

But convincing investors to buy anything is only getting harder for the paper, given the miserable sales numbers it has been reporting: Even before the after-market drop, the stock was worth 60 percent less than it was a year ago.

Source: All Things Digital | 30 Dec 2008 | 2:04 am

Spy shots: Android on OpenMoko hardware

I swear to god, if you have a real lens (as I can see in the 2nd pic), use manual focus for things like this. I guess beggars can’t be choosers, since this guy is the only one with pics of Android running on the OpenMoko hardware, but jesus! Click on for the rest of the shots — such as they are.

If you don’t remember much about the OpenMoko project, check out its homepage or our previous coverage.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: MobileCrunch | 30 Dec 2008 | 2:00 am

Soldering for dummies me

Make has a great piece on how to solder, a skill in which I’m sorely lacking. My buddy Paul actually built me a Nixie clock from scratch, soldering each freaking component on by hand. Impressive, to say the least.

The trick is to use the right solder - don’t use acid core, incidentally - and to practice.

Practice soldering
Sometimes it is a good idea to practice on junk. You can try soldering a wire onto a coin, US pennies work pretty good for that, they are mostly zinc with a bit of copper. Lots of other countries have other alloys, often with lots of aluminum in them, so I don’t know about that. Aluminum wicks the heat too fast, so it probably wouldn’t work.

You can also break apart an old radio or other device, cut some wires, get some parts and just solder some stuff together. After a bit you get the hang of it.

They even have a complete primer for your edification.

Source: CrunchGear | 30 Dec 2008 | 1:44 am

Worlds.com Sues NCSoft Over MMO-Patent

Lulfas writes "Worlds.com today sued NCSoft over a patent filed in 2000 (granted this February) over its patent on a scalable virtual world. This is a very broad base patent, and there is no reason to expect they will only sue NCSoft, when they should be able to use the same patent against other companies. 'Specifically, the suit claims that NCsoft has infringed on patent 7,181,690, "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space" through its games, including City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tabula Rasa.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2008 | 1:38 am

Man involved in plane crash survives to Twitter about it

Section: Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Websites

When a passenger on the Continental Airlines flight that skidded off the runway in Denver was brought to safety, he did what came naturally.  He posted about it on Twitter.

Mike Wilson used his iPhone to post entries about what he’d just been through, starting with a play by play of the actual crash:

Wilson described the takeoff as normal “when we suddenly veered off.“ Wilson described a “sudden bottom-dropped-out feeling and then a jolt” when the plane dropped into the ravine.
“I believe it was after the jolt that the right engine, which was near my row, caught fire,“ he said. “By the time the plane stopped we were burning pretty well and I think I could feel the heat even through the bulkhead and window.“

He then went on to complain about losing his glasses and being refused drink service by the airline once he was safe at the airport lounge.  His postings earned him interviews with NBC and Fox News.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has been at the forefront of breaking news.  The social networking site was also used to get information out about the Virginia Tech shootings and the California fires.  It’s also been used by two people who were arrested (an Egyptian student and a journalist covering the Olympics in Beijing) and was instrumental in their quick releases.  The service is breaking new ground in the field of journalism as its users find themselves reporting breaking news before the big networks, proving that blogging is much more than just an online diary.

Read[Washington Post]

Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Dec 2008 | 1:30 am

Deal of the Day: 50% off of Blu-ray 'Short Circuit'

Amazon.com is selling a large number of Blu-ray movies at 50% off in an extended deal that lasts until January 4th. The internet retailer is clearly hoping to entice the growing number of people who've bought players in the new format.

According to figures released by the Blu-ray association, Blu-ray players are seeing a huge purchasing growth in the U.S. during the holiday season.

But the best value among the available titles is the one that stars the little champion of truth, ingenuity, and true American humor. I'm talking about the Nova Robotics Robot Johnny Five, in his original starring vehicle Short Circuit, of course.

If you scoff at the notion that this movie is one of the great new classics of the cinema, well, Sir or Madam, I will say without reservation that you have no heart. You probably share the sentiments of a former co-worker, who fastidiously dismissed the movie as the 'ultimate in painted 1980s cheese.' But said man is a duplicitous snob raised on the dry, colorless Scandinavian cinema of Ingmar Berg-man and is obviously cursed with ice-cold blood and little feeling.

But I'm talking about robots here.

Johnny Five is not just a robot with a penchant for reading novels every two seconds, or one easily duped by moronic henchman preying on the sweetness of his disposition. Yes, he's a sensitive soul that can barely crush a grass hopper. But he is also one who, along with R2, T2, and various other animatronic creatures, set a standard for entertaining usefulness that will always have a place in the cultural history of robot-human relations and has inspired many a boy or girl to get into robotics in the real world.

In case you were wondering, I have no personal financial incentive from the selling of this movie, even if Steve Guttenberg and I share the closed chin cleavage that sadly attracts little specks of dirt.

So forget about the nasty cackling of the film cognoscenti and check it out. The Blu-ray version is supposed to come with extra features showing the full process behind the robot, as designer Syd Mead and his team of puppeteers and robot operators put the soul into Johnny.

And if you're disappointed by the movie, well, you know where you stand with me.

Source: Amazon.com 50% Off Sale

Source: Gizmodo | 30 Dec 2008 | 1:30 am

Georgetown Not Smiling on Apple Store [Voices]

By Yukari Iwatani Kane, Blogger, WSJ.com, Digits

Apple’s highly successful retail stores may be lauded for their sleek modern design and smart layout, but the Georgetown district in Washington, D.C., doesn’t seem to care.

Both the Georgetown Advisory Neighborhood Commission and the Old Georgetown Board, a design committee that must approve designs for all buildings in the historic district, rejected a resubmitted proposal from the Cupertino, Calif., company for the third time earlier this month, according to the Georgetown Current.

Apple announced more than a year ago that it was planning to build a store in Georgetown. Though Apple won’t confirm it, the Old Georgetown Board says the company has a site on Wisconsin Ave. in the heart of the historic district. Apple so far has been unable to come up with a plan that passes the review process.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 30 Dec 2008 | 1:27 am

Prank signs: "Public Urination Permitted After 7:30PM"

Nottingham pranksters have been putting up official-looking signs that say: "Public Urination Permitted After 7:30PM."

Source: Boing Boing | 30 Dec 2008 | 1:23 am

Discover manhole covers of Japan with a new community website

This isn’t really a fetish of mine, but there are some who find joy in discovering the various manhole covers of Japan. Those who stress over not having enough time to explore all the manholes can use a new community website called Ittemaia Zensen, which launched in August this year. Contributors can add photos of manhole covers to the site from their phones and can also add GPS data to mark their locations on a map. Happy manhole finding!

Source: CrunchGear | 30 Dec 2008 | 12:45 am

Second Authority-Based Twitter Search Engine Launches: Twithority

As bloggers continue to debate the finer points of nothing, yet another entrepreneur has gone out and just built a filtered search engine for Twitter. A couple of days ago Twitority launched (although it appears to be down now). Today, it’s Twithority, by the same guys at Tsavo that created Daymix.

Twithority is notably faster in returning results, and it looks farther back (1,000 results v. 50). It ranks results by rank (highest ranking users first) and time (most recent first) by the top 10,000 Twitter users.

Some people will continue to hate the debate over Twitter authority, but ultimately the market will decide if there’s demand for this kind of product.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Dec 2008 | 12:26 am

Borange: A Social Activity Timeline For Your iPhone With Free Group Texting

Borange, a new app that just went live on Apple’s App Store, is looking to turn your iPhone into a casual social planner. The application effectively adds a basic calendar function to the iPhone’s address book, allowing users to view a timeline that details when their friends will be free to hang out that day. You can download the 99-cent application here.

Borange is very well designed, and feels like a natural extension to the address book. To get started, you scroll through your list of contacts, checking off the ones you’d like to send your availability information to (you can also send out mass notifications to groups or your entire contact list). Contacts that are Borange members will see your available times listed as part of a comprehensive timeline that also includes schedules from their other Borange-using friends.

Those contacts that aren’t using Borange will get their updates via SMS or Email, which include links to a map of your current location as well as your contact information. Borange is less impressive when you don’t have many friends using the iPhone app because the nifty timeline view becomes mostly useless, but it’s still an effective way to handle group messaging (and all outgoing SMS messages are free, as they are routed through Borange’s servers).

There are a number of other apps available on the iPhone that are also geared towards helping users pair up with friends, but most of them just use GPS to tell you when you’ve got a friend close by and leave the logistics up to you. Borange has less of an emphasis on geolocation and is instead focused on streamlining the invitation process, which could make it a worthy addition to your iPhone. And even if you can’t get your friends to start using the iPhone app, it still makes for a great free mass text-messaging service.

For more on Borange, check out their demo site.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Dec 2008 | 12:24 am

Spb Online adding more Internet streaming TV

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Web, Online Music/Video

Internet streaming television is slowly building up steam.  A large portion of the 2008 Olympics was streamed live online and several news stations are streaming online at the moment.  However, those streams are useless if you have no way of viewing them.  The obvious choice is on a desktop or laptop computer, but there’s also an option for watching the streams on your Windows Mobile device.  Spb Online launched their TV streaming service in September 2008, and are now adding more to the service.

The new channels are nice, but a bit disappointing for those that can only speak English. 

The new channels include Deutsche Welle (Germany), Channel One Russia, CCTV (China) and MAD TV (Greece).  There’s no list of what stations are available, though from the Spb Online site I can see that there’s a CNNi channel and a MTV Dance channel, both of which should be accessible to English-speakers.  If the line-up is anything like Livestation’s, then there should be at least a small amount of English content that can be found easily.

I love the idea of live Internet streaming alongside standard television broadcast.  Though we can watch a large amount of TV content online after the fact, it would be nice if more American stations offered streaming services.  Ideally these would be free, but I would imagine someone would pay for them.  It’s just a little depressing that the only American companies that do stream are CNN and MTV.

Read [Spb]

Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Dec 2008 | 12:22 am

Bugs, filtering problems with Playstation Home

Playstation Home is having problems again after a rough start. Following numerous delays and a less than smooth rollout, Sony’s new virtual world is still far from perfect. Some users are having issues with the censoring system, like this gamer from Norwalk Connecticut who is unable to start a gay-straight alliance club because words like “gay” and “lesbian” are filtered out. Even the word “hello” is filtered because it starts with “hell.” Fail much?

Some users reported problems logging into Home and cases of items disappearing from their “virtual apartment.” Others complain about racist and sexist comments and other harassment, despite the filters.

Sony hopes that user feedback and patches will hopefully improve Home. But with these persistent obstacles making for a less-than-satisfactory experience for some, will Home ever reach the level of popularity that virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life have? I’m going to go with “no.”

Source: CrunchGear | 30 Dec 2008 | 12:20 am

Gaza Attacks: Two Related Reactions, in Second Life and Twitter

Joshua Fouts, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, says,

Two very interesting things happened today that you might be interested in -- both unfolded/ing rapidly. While the two are not directly linked, they are illustrative of an evolving use of the social networking world in interesting and dynamic ways.

1. Since Saturday people in Second Life have been protesting the attacks in the Gaza strip. About 30 people per day, mostly based in Egypt but using Second Life as their voice. We took some photos: Dozens Gather in Second Life to Protest Gaza Attacks.

2. Now here's what I think is really interesting. Just today the Israeli Consulate in NY launched two Twitter accounts and tomorrow (December 30) they'll be hosting a Twitter press conference to respond to questions people might have about Gaza. Summary here: Israeli Consulate to host Twitter Press Conference on Gaza.

The thing that's interesting to me is that this is such a fantastic risk and so ungovernmentlike that it's fun to watch. We'll be participating for sure.

Related BB post: Global Voices' coverage of Gaza Strip Bombings (and how to keep the coverage alive)

Source: Boing Boing | 29 Dec 2008 | 11:56 pm

Modular Robot Concept Design Digs In

A new robot concept is raising the hopes of the building industry that the high-tech future will be populated with smart excavating robots that will easily replace the high-cost of insurance-needing human contractors.

If the Eddy machine comes to pass, it also appears that gravediggers soon will be looking for a job.

The Eddy is a useful robot in the same tradition as the iRobots used by the U.S. Army. It is remote-controlled and can serve as a physical extension of its operator. It's supposed to suck up dirt, debris, and other nasty stuff in the endless, joyless fashion of super tough engineering materials.

According to the designers, the key to the design is the wide pipe embedded within the center of the robot. Because it is flexible (exact materials aren't specified) the robot can extend its reach mid-dig at larger angles than regular big digs, has greater flexibility, and also better maneuverability and speed than current digging operators.

Probably the best part of the design, however, is that it fits in a modular outlook to excavation, with a dash of robot individualism. Smaller Eddys can be used throughout a construction site and when they need more power, they can jack up to a large Big Daddy suck-up machine. This means you can continue using some Eddys strategically while using one for the dig that needs the most power.

This will also be useful in case you find a dead body on the front porch and don't want to get your hands dirty.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 29 Dec 2008 | 11:42 pm

Best Present We Saw this Year

Hi Boingers!

We’re excited to be doing this and are honored to be included with such esteemed bloggers, both the regulars and the guests! We’ll be posting on a diversity of topics, with less sex and hip culture, and more kids’ books, dub music, skulls, jellyfish, and working toward sustainable living (or at least raising chickens and growing lettuce). Bruce is a political blog junkie and techno-gadget geek, while Shawn leans toward crafty blogs and irreverent humor, so be prepared for something like The Huffington Post meets Postcards From Yo Momma and Cool Tools paired with Design Sponge.

To start things off, we’d like to share the best Christmas present we’ve seen this year. Our friends Dave and Jen Sims got stuck in Thailand for an extra week after Thanksgiving due to the protests that closed the Bangkok airport. They finally made it home and just got these T-shirts as a gift:

The background image is a real photo of the protesters who took over the airport in Bangkok. You can read more about their experience here and here. Did you get any special gifts or see any that struck your fancy? Tell us about them in the Comments.

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Source: Boing Boing | 29 Dec 2008 | 11:30 pm

Today on Offworld

Today on Offworld, we recapped all the holiday stories we missed late last week, including a number of developments on the iPhone: the appearance of match-3/RPG PuzzleQuest, Jason Rohrer's momento mori art-game Passage, Flashbang's excellent dino-catcher Raptor Copter, and the surprise announcement that Hudson will be bringing Kloonigames' Crayon Physics Deluxe to the App Store. We also took another look at LittleBigPlanet's brilliant Metal Gear Solid level pack, read advice on making machine-mediated user-generated content more prevalent in games, and about the 2008 game that finally did drunk right after years of /drinks. Finally, and most wonderfully, we read about the technical ins-and-outs of Twit 4 Dead, the automated twitter bots bravely tweeting their struggle against the horde.

Source: Boing Boing | 29 Dec 2008 | 11:30 pm

Wind Waker unplugged

Multi-instrumentalist Fredrik Larsson, 23, plays an incredible acoustic cover of Legend of Zelda's Wind Waker theme. Check the video at Boing Boing Offworld. Wind Waker Unplugged

Source: Boing Boing | 29 Dec 2008 | 11:28 pm

FBI Issues Code Cracking Challenge

coondoggie writes to tell us that the FBI has issued another cracking challenge for a new cipher on their site. Tens of thousands responded to a similar challenge last year. In addition to the challenge, the FBI is also offering a few primers on the subject. There are a number of sites offering cipher challenges, but it's funny to see the FBI encouraging such behavior.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 29 Dec 2008 | 11:23 pm

HP Makes Home Server PC & Mac Friendly

The PC Guy and the Mac Guy in those commercials could soon have one thing in common: HP's latest MediaSmart Server that's compatible with both Windows and Mac computers.

The server allows users to automatically back up and access digital music, videos, photos and documents among other things from multiple computers on a home network, says HP.

The MediaSmart server ex485/ex487 also includes media streaming, centralized iTunes music libraries, and PC and Mac hard drive backup. It comes with an Intel Celeron 2 GHz 64-bit processor and 2 GB DRAM.

The interoperatability between PC and Mac though comes at a hefty price tag. The ex485 with 750 GB hard disk storage will cost $600, while the ex487 with 1.5 TeraBytes of storage will be $750.

Maybe the PC and the Mac guy would like to go back to bickering with each other. It was more fun that way.

Review of HP MediaSmart Server ex487 [MediaSmartServer.net]

Photo: MediaSmart Server (tris/Flickr)

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 29 Dec 2008 | 11:19 pm

Dog eats bean burrito in 1 second

This is how my kids eat. (Via Bits & Pieces)

Source: Boing Boing | 29 Dec 2008 | 11:09 pm

Fractalius: Photoshop plug-in

Fractalius is a trippy image filter for Photoshop. Windows only. The Fabulous Fractalius Pool on Flickr has many more examples.

(via Forgetomori)

Source: Boing Boing | 29 Dec 2008 | 10:52 pm

New Quad-Core AMD and Intel Chips Surface (PC World)

PC World - Computer chip makers Intel and AMD are ending 2008 with a quad-core bang. Intel has a new mobile processor - the Intel Core 2 Quad Mobile Processor Q9000 - that is being hyped by Acer in its just announced Acer laptop. AMD reportedly already has its upcoming Phenom II processors popping up online for pre-orders to consumers. The catch, neither AMD or Intel have made official announcements about either chips - yet.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Dec 2008 | 10:41 pm

California Man Pleads Guilty in International Child Exploitation Enterprise Case

WASHINGTON and PENSACOLA, Fla., Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Dec 2008 | 10:31 pm

Resurrecting Old Games, What Works?

There has definitely been a resurgence of old games being made new again through various methods. Unfortunately, any time you reinvent an old classic you risk either alienating the original audience or not making it appealing enough for the a new audience. "Capcom has been at the forefront of the recent remake boom, re-imagining a number of their classic titles as downloadable games. Bionic Commando, for example, was given a high-definition 2.5D makeover, and a rockin' remixed soundtrack with Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Capcom also re-released a new version of Street Fighter II on the way, with the lengthy new title Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Interestingly, both games are coming out near new entries in their respective franchises: Street Fighter IV and Bionic Commando. But the question remains, how do you decided what games will still appeal to the current gaming audience? " What games can be counted amongst the success stories, and which can be chalked up as utter failures?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 29 Dec 2008 | 10:11 pm

BBtv Favorites from 2008: TechShop, a Community Tinkering Space

(Flash embed above, downloadable MP4 link here.)

Continuing in our retrospective of favorite Boing Boing tv episodes, we revisit the fun we had checking out TechShop, an open-access public workshop that's kind of like a health club with heavy machinery and sparks instead of treadmills. Tinkerers, inventors, and hackers pay a membership fee, and in turn receive access to professionally-maintained gear, workshops, mentors, and a community of like-minded makers.

Currently there is only one site in Silicon Valley, and it opened in 2006. But founder Jim Newton (a lifetime maker, veteran BattleBots builder and former MythBuster) plans to open a number of locations around the US -- and eventually, the rest of the world.

John Todd, who you'll meet in this episode, wrote this article about the membership-based machine and fabrication shop in a recent edition of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools zine. Snip:

I've been a member since before TechShop really even started, back when it was just some guys passing out flyers trying to gauge interest. For $100 a month, members can use any tool in the shop on which they've received training. MUCH cheaper than buying your own gear. The list of equipment is pretty extensive, too, and new items are arriving frequently (like a new hot-wire foam cutter).

John shares an additional note with BBtv about the company's business model:

TechShop is unusual in the way it's funded - community members are the financial backers. To date, TechShop has been funded by taking loans from members and repaying them at a nominal rate. Typically backers contribute $25k and up, and are then paid back over several years. There is an "A" round being raised now to fund the nationwide expansion, and the first funding source again is going to be the community instead of focusing on traditional VC sources. It's an unusual way to keep members excited about what they do at TechShop, and to keep them focused on making the whole experience better. Jim Newton (CEO) and Mark Hatch (COO) are looking for additional interested people who want to become members and funders - contact TechShop for details.

Do watch the second half of this episode. We take a joyride in a three-wheeled electric car, while wearing ridiculously inappropriate shoes. That's the little vehicle, above, with me (helpless passenger) and the guy who invented it (driver, going way too fast for comfort). It was a total blast, and all lulz aside, this guy's invention is pretty badass.

Source: Boing Boing | 29 Dec 2008 | 10:09 pm

EMBARQ to Participate in Citigroup Conference

OVERLAND PARK, Kan., Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Dec 2008 | 10:00 pm

DMFail Fails, Twitter To Fix Private Messages Snafu

Say goodbye to the fun of reading private Twitter messages sent improperly and gathered on DMFail. Sometime today, Twitter says in an email, they’ll change the way private messages are sent so that you can use either [D + username + message] OR [DM + username + message].

It’s a subtle feature change, but one that will avoid embarrassment for people who’ve accidentally made their private messages public.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch | 29 Dec 2008 | 9:57 pm

It’s Not How Many Followers You Have That Counts, It’s How Many Times You Get Retweeted

Over the weekend a lot of tech bloggers got into a tizzy over a suggestion that Twitter search should rank Tweets by authority, with Tweets from people who have the most followers coming up first. Some bloggers quickly objected that this was somehow undemocratic or would give spammers more of an incentive to trick people into following them, and thus would be easy to game. One developer went ahead and created exactly that search experience with Twitority anyway. (Update: Make that two, check out Twithority also). While others didn’t understand what the big deal was in the first place because their relatives in Scranton have never heard of Twitter (sigh).

One thing that is clear is that there needs to be a better way to filter Twitter (which is a finalist for a Crunchies Award this year) as it grows into a broader public communications and publishing system. I like to think of Twitter as public IM. But with possibly more than one billion Tweets out there, how do you know which ones to pay attention to? What is the best way to measure the authority of a Tweet (and, thus, where it should rank as a Twitter search result)?

A better proxy for authority than the absolute number of followers someone has on Twitter may be how many times their messages get retweeted. Retweeting occurs when someone takes an original message on Twitter (a Tweet), sticks an “RT” in front of it, and spreads it further to their followers. It’s another way to separate some signal out of the cacophony of Twitter.

These numbers are, of course, related because the more followers someone has, the more likely that one of their messages will be retweeted. But they are not exactly the same. For instance, here are the top 100 people on Twitter ranked by number of followers and here is another list ranked by the number of retweets. Guy Kawasaki is No. 1 on the Retweet list (his messages have been retweeted 335 times in the past week), and is No. 9 on the followers list (with 40,496 followers). Not surprisingly, he thinks looking at retweets is the way to go (so he tells me).

The nice thing about retweets is that it offers a potential way to sort though not just people on Twitter, but their individual Tweets. An important Tweet that gets replicated around the world from someone with 5 followers or less (which is a third of all Twitterers), should have more authority than a Tweet from Kawasaki or Robert Scoble or even Barack Obama that has no impact.

You could go even deeper than just the number of retweets a person has. An even better proxy might be the number of retweets per follower. Someone with a high ratio might be worth listening to more than someone with simply a lot of followers.

Looking at the propagation of retweets is also helpful. Dan Zarella, the man behind the retweet list, recently crunched some numbers and found that most retweets die after the second retweet. That is they get picked up by one follower and that’s it. Only 7.57 percent get retweeted again. But the retweeting rate then grows after that. He refers to it as the “depth” (See chart below). Messages that have ben retweeted three times have an 11.47 percent chance of being retweeted again. By the time a message has been retweeted five times, it has a 48.44 percent chance of being retweeted. I would love see all Tweets that have been retweeted three or more times, especially whenever I do a Twitter search.

The problem with retweets I suspect is that not many people use them or even know what they are. What’s with all the abbreviated commands on Twitter, anyway? How hard would it be for Twitter to add a retweet button or link, at least as an option? (In fact, they should take the most popular commands and turn them into buttons—usage would skyrocket).

Then, just as Webpages and Websites have different link authority, individual Tweets and Twitterers could gain retweet authority. A Website that gains link authority over time has an advantage over others, just as someone like Kawasaki has an advantage over other Twitterers by dint of how often his messages have been retweeted in the past.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch | 29 Dec 2008 | 9:52 pm

Albatross endangered by predatory mice

The critically endangered Tristan Albatross suffered its worst breeding season ever and is threatened by predatory mice, British researchers report. The number of chicks surviving until they are fledglings now is one-fifth what it should be because the mice -- which were introduced into the birds' habitat -- are eating the chicks on Gough Island, a south Atlantic British territory that is the birds' only home, ScienceDaily reported. We've known for a long time that the mice were killing albatross chicks in huge numbers.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 9:39 pm

USDA accepting telemed grant applications

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 9:26 pm

UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Abstinence pledge ineffective, study shows BALTIMORE, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Teens signing pledges to remain virgins until marriage are likely to engage in premarital sex and more likely not to use birth control, U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 9:23 pm

Weeds used for weed control

Organic plant waste has proven to be an effective weed control for citrus trees, Egyptian researchers reported Monday. Researchers from the National Research Center in Giza, Egypt, studied the effects of plant mulches compared to synthetic mulch and other weed control methods on the quality of mandarin fruit, the American Society for Horticultural Science reported Monday in a news release. Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 9:23 pm

JumpStart Invests in Wireless Environment, LLC

CLEVELAND, Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Dec 2008 | 9:00 pm

The Best Keyboards For Every Occasion

ThinSkin writes "ExtremeTech has written an article on the best keyboards in every category, such as gaming keyboards (macro and hybrid), media center keyboards, keyboard gamepads, and so forth. Of course, the big companies like Microsoft and Logitech dominate these lists, while smaller companies like Razer, Ideazon, and others play an important role as well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 29 Dec 2008 | 8:56 pm

BlackBerry Storm, Or Possibly Just The Winter, Causes Major AT&T Outage

Someone at InformationWeek could probably use a vacation right about now.

Earlier today the site ran a post titled “BlackBerry Storm Causes Major AT&T Outages“, in which it described the network issues the telecom giant has been having over the last day. The title refers to BlackBerry’s recently-launched (and widely panned) touchscreen handset that is supposed to take the iPhone head-on. It might even make sense - perhaps enough people bought the phone over the holiday that a traffic spike took the network down.

Unfortunately the story is about a weather-related power failure that took the network offline, and appears to have nothing to do with the BlackBerry Storm, which isn’t even available on the AT&T network (it’s a Verizon exclusive).

From the article:

“The wireless carrier said a weather-related power failure in Bloomfield, Mich., was the cause of the problem. The disruptions varied for subscribers, as some experienced dropped calls, while other had no access to voice or data services. Other users experienced slower mobile data service, or no access to AT&T’s 3G data network.”

InformationWeek corrected the goof quickly, but not before it was snagged by Google News and a few other syndication portals on the web. You can also see the original version in the site’s cache.

Obviously someone over there has written the phrase “BlackBerry Storm” a few too many times.

Thanks to Colby Lavin for the tip.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch | 29 Dec 2008 | 8:49 pm

Toronto Puts Zambonis on Ice

Electric-powered ice resurfacers are about as common as Jamaican ice skating champs, but they're starting to appear in Toronto and National Hockey League arenas. The iconic Zamboni may soon be a thing of the past.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 29 Dec 2008 | 8:45 pm

Onstream Media Corporation Reports Fiscal 2008 Fourth Quarter Financial Results

Full Year Revenue Up Over 45% Year-Over-Year Full-Year Audio and Web Conferencing Services Revenue Increases 77% Year-Over-Year Company Expects Government Sector and Global iEncode Distribution, to Drive Fiscal 2009 Growth POMPANO BEACH, Fla., Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Dec 2008 | 8:41 pm

Ruckus Wireless ZoneFlex 802.11n Smart Wireless LAN System Named 'Editor's Choice' by PC Magazine

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Dec 2008 | 8:31 pm

Hifn to Present at the 11th Annual Needham & Company, LLC Growth Conference

LOS GATOS, Calif., Dec. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hifn (Nasdaq: HIFN), the catalyst behind storage and networking innovation, announced today that Albert E.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Dec 2008 | 8:31 pm

HSN, Inc. Adopts Stockholder Rights Plan

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Dec. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Interactive multichannel retailer HSN, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Dec 2008 | 8:15 pm

Microsoft: Pay-As-You-Go Computing

Microsoft is looking to start metered, pay-as-you-go computing.The company filed a patent for a business plan where a "standard model" of PC is given away or heavily subsidized by someone in the supply chain.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Dec 2008 | 8:10 pm

Innov8 with AT&T-friendly innards passes through the FCC

Even without any sort of US Carrier availability, the Samsung Innov8 managed to crack at least one of our Top Picks of 2008 lists. As usual, however, the fact that it’s superb doesn’t equate to it being easy to buy.

Fortunately, it looks like that might be changing. Amazon just started peddling the International Version this morning, but with an oh-so-hefty $799 price tag. If that’s a bit rich for your blood, the FCC’s looselips have let on that a 850/1900Mhz model, perfectly suitable for 3G use on AT&T (or Rogers, though the Innov8 is nowhere to be seen on the 2009 Rogers Roadmap), is on the way. Go ahead, AT&T - Make it official.

[Symbian Guru]

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

Source: MobileCrunch | 29 Dec 2008 | 7:55 pm

Campaign to Open Source IBM's Notes/Domino

Ian Tree, an IT consultant from the Netherlands, has started a campaign to convince IBM to open source the code for Notes/Domino. Hoping for results similar to the push for Sun to open source Solaris, which finally saw success in 2005, Tree makes the simple point that it won't happen until someone asks. "By being an open source product, Tree is also hoping that Domino becomes something schools use to teach groupware and application development concepts, which is the holy grail for future market adoption. This is how various Unixes, relational databases, Linux, and a raft of other products eventually became commercialized. While the idea of open sourcing any proprietary program is appealing, in as much as it sets a program free to live beyond the commitment (or lack thereof) of its originator, it is hard to see why open Notes/Domino would have any more impact than OpenSolaris."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 29 Dec 2008 | 7:42 pm

BLOG: For SpaceX, More Launches, Less Money

Irene Klotz chats with Elon Musk, founder of the startup company SpaceX.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Dec 2008 | 7:09 pm

2008: Year of the Natural Disaster?

Natural disasters killed more than 220,000 people in 2008, among the worst years ever.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Dec 2008 | 7:09 pm

Rumor: Casio Exilim cameraphone coming to Verizon

Spyshots of a supposed Verizon-branded Casio Exilim camera-phone have surfaced on a Korean blog.  The images (posted by a random forum member) of this rumored clamshell device reveal that it will include a 5.1mp camera…and not much else.

Originally, Casio’s Exilim digicams were some of the slimmest snap-shooters around (see Exilim Card), bringing the “thin is in” fad from mobiles (a la RAZR) to digital point-and-shoot cameras.  Unfortunately, based on these spyshots, this apparent Verizon Exilim handset appears to have put on some extra holiday weight when compared with its more svelte Exilim ancestors or its newer Japanese brethren.

[via MobileBurn]

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: MobileCrunch | 29 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

Report: HP sells printers in Iran with third party (AP)

AP - Hewlett-Packard Co. could be breaking U.S. trade sanctions by using a third-party distributor to sell printers in Iran, The Boston Globe reported Monday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Dec 2008 | 6:52 pm

Samsung S8300 AMOLED Touchscreen Slider lacks kitchen sink

While I can’t say I agree with the color scheme (Orange and black? I can’t decide whether it looks like a Halloween toy or a cheap pair of Reeboks), it looks like Samsung has managed one hell of an engineering feat with the just-leaked S8300.

According to DailyMobile.se, this thing comes packed tight with a 2.8″ WQVGA AMOLED touchscreen, 8 megapixel camera with autoflash, GPS, microSD support, FM radio (with RDS), Bluetooth 2.1, and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in brickphones, but in a 12.8mm thick (just a millimeter thicker than the Samsung-made Helio Mysto, and one thinner than the Samsung Soul) slider? We’re impressed.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: MobileCrunch | 29 Dec 2008 | 6:36 pm

Web Case Studies Help Develop Career Skills

Landscape, horticulture students gain practical experience through technologyA survey of employers in the landscape industry revealed the importance of arming landscaping and horticulture students with technical knowledge, practical application, and problem-solving skills.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 6:31 pm

Interclue and What Going Proprietary Can Do

Linux.com (which shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has an interesting look at what going proprietary can mean for your overall effectiveness. Using Firefox extension "Interclue" as the object lesson, the piece looks at both the engineering and social difficulties surrounding the project. "Even more significantly, the efforts to commercialize only detract from the software itself. The basic idea behind Interclue would make for a handy Web utility, but seems too slight to build a business around. The effort to do so only leads to complications that do nothing to enhance the basic utility, and to pleas for donations that can only annoy. The result is that, if your position on free software doesn't lead you to avoid Interclue, the efforts to monetize it almost certainly will."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 29 Dec 2008 | 6:24 pm

Classic Art Used As Tool For Measuring Erosion

A coastal engineer thinks that nineteenth century artwork is a functional device for considering the effects of coastal erosion.Robin McInnes reviewed the exactness of geological and topological qualities in 400 paintings of the Isle of Wight and Hampshire coastline.McInnes thinks these classic artists allow engineers to have the opportunity to view coastal features prior to changing from industrial development.McInnes has a huge collection of paintings, prints and etchings showing coastlines in England, where he was in charge of coastline management.When viewing the paintings of the local coastlines, geology and coastal erosion, he invented a technique of evaluating their importance as markers of coastal change."From the late 18th Century, Europe was cut off by the Napoleonic wars, this resulted in travelers and artists paying greater attention to the picturesque landscapes of the British Isles," said McInnes.McInnes started examining paintings from the 1770s to the 1920s.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 6:15 pm

Abstinence pledge ineffective, study shows

Teens signing pledges to remain virgins until marriage are likely to engage in premarital sex and more likely not to use birth control, U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 5:58 pm

Japanese Whalers Disrupted by Activists

Sea Shepherd activists prevent Japanese whalers from harpooning whales.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Dec 2008 | 5:48 pm

Female circumcision prevalent in Kurdistan

Female circumcision is widespread in Iraq's Kurdistan region, despite it having what is considered a more progressive society, women's advocacy groups say. A study this year indicates more than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, and in at least one territory 95 percent of women have undergone the ritual, The Washington Post reported Monday. The practice -- involving the removal of external female genitalia -- and the Kurdish Parliament's refusal to ban it, point up the plight of women in the region, say advocacy groups, which call it female genital mutilation.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 5:43 pm

Human Hair Good For Plants?

Agricultural crop production relies on composted waste materials and byproducts, such as animal manure, municipal solid waste composts, and sewage sludge, as a necessary nutrient source.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 5:20 pm

Sprayed Aerosols Could Ease Climate Woes

Seeding the atmosphere with aerosols could help release heat into space.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Dec 2008 | 5:06 pm

Secrecy of manual's changes criticized

Revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders should be made openly instead of hidden from the public, a critic of the process says. Psychiatrists working on the update to the manual must sign a confidentiality agreement, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Dec 2008 | 4:48 pm

How Visiting Your Family Warps Your Brain

New research helps explain why we're so hard on our family members during the holidays.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Dec 2008 | 4:00 pm

Did Drought Help End Roman Rule?

Clues preserved in an ancient cave link the fall of the Roman Empire with drought.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Dec 2008 | 2:33 pm

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