For more, visit wired.com/video.

Source: Gizmodo | 6 Mar 2009 | 2:40 am

Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend To The Troops: Keep Your Heads Up, and Your Expenses Down [MediaMemo]

Conde Nast is “having the worst year of any publisher” the New York Post reported last month. So, the fact that that CEO Chuck Townsend sent out an all-hands memo entitled “Managing Through Challenging Times” must have certainly sent a shiver through the magazine empire this afternoon.

The good news: Nowhere in Townsend’s missive does he actually mention sackings, reorg or other personnel cuts. The bad news: Townsend warns employees that “all of us” will “have to make additional difficult decisions to manage costs and ensure our financial well-being”. But he doesn’t spell out what those are.

Conde started hacking at expenses last fall, by shuttering some titles and making cuts of five percent or more at others. Meanwhile, it has refused to cut ad rates, even as competitors pick up some market share with lower-priced pages.

But while there’s constant chatter within Conde about other titles supposedly destined for the chopping block, we’ve yet to see anything materialize. Conde’s cuts are roughly proportional to the ones that Time Warner (TWX) magazine unit Time Inc. also went through last fall.

Just this week, a Conde executive told me because individual publishers were cutting back on costs without a companywide edict, it was unlikely that Conde publisher would need to make bigger cuts this spring.

I’ll update if I get more info.

Click to read Townsend’s complete memo:

(more…)

Source: All Things Digital | 6 Mar 2009 | 2:38 am

March 6, 1899: Tales of Hoffmann's Aspirin

1899: Felix Hoffmann, a young pharmacist working for the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, patents a new pain reliever. The trademark name is aspirin.

Hoffmann, who was said to be seeking an effective pain reliever for his father's rheumatism, successfully synthesized acetylsalicylic acid in August 1897. It would later be marketed as aspirin — "a" for "acetyl" and "spirin" for Spirea, the genus name of the source plant for salicylic acid, the pain-relieving agent.

That August, incidentally, was an especially fertile period for Hoffmann: The month also saw him synthesize heroin, which he accomplished accidentally while attempting to acetylate morphine to produce codeine. Obviously, that discovery didn't pan out like aspirin.

The benefits of salicylic acid as a pain reliever and fever reducer had been understood since antiquity. Salicylic acid, an extract from willow bark, was commonly found in salves and teas of the period. Though effective in reducing pain and fever symptoms, it could also carry some pretty unpleasant side effects, notably stomach irritation.

When Hoffmann produced his acetylsalicylic acid, no less than the head of Bayer's pharmaceutical laboratory, Heinrich Dreser, tried it out to gauge its potential toxicity. Satisfied that this represented a true leap forward, Dreser fast-tracked the new drug from animal and human testing to a patent application.

The application was rejected in Germany, because it turned out Hoffmann had not actually invented acetylsalicylic acid: Two chemists, one German and the other French, had synthesized the substance decades earlier. Hoffmann, however, was the first to synthesize it in a stable, usable form.

The U.S. patent office had no such qualms over priority and issued a patent to Hoffmann and Bayer, which began an aggressive worldwide marketing campaign. The German patent office came around, too, and Bayer AG still holds the rights to the trade name aspirin in more than 80 countries. Elsewhere, as in the United States, the word is often used generically to refer to almost any brand of acetylsalicylic acid and even other over-the-counter pain relievers.

Legal maneuvering aside, Hoffmann's wonder drug was a gold mine. Bayer certainly cleaned up, seeing as how it held a monopoly on aspirin through the end of the First World War.

Following Germany's defeat, Bayer was forced to sell off its U.S. production plants as part of war reparations. An American company, Sterling, acquired the rights to sell aspirin under its own name in the United States.

Although aspirin is not without its own side effects — Reye's syndrome is associated with a reaction to acetylsalicylic acid — it remains one of the world's most widely used pain relievers.

Source: Various

Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 Mar 2009 | 2:00 am

Catalyst and Linguistic Systems Present Seminar on Multi-Language Document Reviews

Online Program will Feature eDiscovery and Language Experts Discussing Tips and Tricks for an Efficient and Effective Multi-Language Review DENVER, March 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Catalyst Repository Systems, the leading international multi-language repository company, and Linguistic Systems, a leading translation and multi-language review company, announce their upcoming educational webinar called, "Mastering Multi-Language Review: Ten practical tips for searching and reviewing foreign-language documents." The program will be held via web and telephone conference on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 2 pm ET (11 am PT).
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Mar 2009 | 1:50 am

State governments love video games, if only for the money

FROM GAMERTELL - State officials are taking a second look at how the video game industry is thriving and, like an old boyfriend whom has seen the error of his ways, has since decided to make overtures to encourage game developers to either establish roots in their states. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 6 Mar 2009 | 1:42 am

Offworld invaded by The Superf*ckers

Recently on Offworld, teenage superhero team The Superf*ckers dropped in to review Guerilla's just released PS3 shooter Killzone 2. The 'f*ckers are easily my favorite comic James Kochalka's ever done (just above this official Hulk comic), so I'm super happy to see them come aboard alongside his Monster Mii series. Elsewhere, One More Go columnist Margaret Robertson turned briefly away from videogames to investigate Werewolf, or why playing games can give you hairy palms, and we looked at Computermusic4kids, a brilliant looking museum exhibit from Marieke Verbiesen that works as as both a history lesson and a baby's-first-chiptune-maker. We also saw an original game coming from the team that ported Quake 3 to the iPhone, watched the nominees for scene.org's demoscene awards, confirmed that PopCap's Plants Vs. Zombies will feature actual plants, and started drawing entries for their Peggle art contest. Finally, we listened to Anamanaguchi's new 8-bit punk EP, drooled over the best Fallout 3 shirts ever made, wished more games came with a 'hug' button, geared up for The Beatles: Rock Band, geared up to torture ragdolls in a new iPhone game, and, wonderfully, saw that recently featured indie fave Jumpman will also be coming to Apple's device.


Source: Boing Boing | 6 Mar 2009 | 1:42 am

RIOE and Philips Show Transparent OLED Prototypes at Tokyo Fair

Philips Electronics and other companies researching future display technologies got together this week at the Big Sight lighting fair in Tokyo to unveil cool new OLED prototypes, including the latest builds of transparent displays.

Philips Research mainly used the event to show its recently announced OLED light display grid, the Lumiblade, a basic, super-bright lamp slab that had previous problems with 'luminance variability.' Apparently, that's been worked out (the lamps light up evenly) and they should start being sold by the end of the year in Europe, most likely for businesses.

But Philips reps apparently had to start talking up its transparent screens (above), since The Research Institute for Organic Electronics (RIOE) stole the show with its own transparent screen window display. The screens, measured at 70-75% of transparency, provide owners with the ability to let light in during the day and then use them as image panels at night.

RIOE hasn't officially revealed its secret sauce behind the transparency, but it should follow the process of its other OLED screens. Mainly, they place an organic EL device layer on a glass substrate and then use heat and 'radiating functions,' a voltage type, generating an energy reaction that lights the panels. RIOE also showed a bright OLED that consumes only 15 watts for hours at a time, perfect for saving some money and electricity.

Last year, Sony and the Max-Planck-Institute in Germany created some of the first transparent displays that rendered moving images, and they did it through the chemical process of photoexcitation. That reaction is caused when rapid-fire lasers excite photosensitive chemicals embedded in a polycarbonate transparent sheet.

As for Philips, they also haven't revealed exactly how they've created their own transparent displays, though it's obvious from the previous examples that an organic polymer layering process is likely used.

For now, none of these prototypes have a price and most (except the Lumiblade) won't be available for another 3-5 years.

Check out the RIOE OLED layer process after the jump.

See also the following related stories:

• Open Your Windows to the Sky With Transparent Displays
• Japanese Start-up Readies Flexible, Transparent Plasma Screens

Philips' Lumiblade OLED Panels

RIOE's Low Powered Panels

Source:  ledinside.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 Mar 2009 | 1:31 am

Core i7 laptop weighs 12 pounds, has a one-hour battery

Remember that Phantom i7 laptop from Eurocom we heard about last month — the one sporting a non-mobile Core i7 processor? Well, there’s a little more info on it now, and it’s even better/worse than you imagined. Check out these ridiculous specs. Remember, this is a laptop.

• 17″ display
• 11.9 pounds (5.4kg)
• Quad-core Core i7 processor
• 8GB DDR3 RAM
• 3 HDDs in RAID
• 12-cell battery (good for one hour)
• Blu-ray writer
• 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 DVI-out, Firewire, parallel, and serial ports

You’re going to have be careful not to get sucked in by the thing’s gravitational field — and hopefully they have enough cooling in there to keep it from igniting the earth. No pictures yet, probably because they couldn’t get the satellites aligned in time for CeBIT.

Source: CrunchGear | 6 Mar 2009 | 1:30 am

Dell comes out with the Studio 15 Special Edition laptop

Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Netbooks, Wireless, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle

Dell recently came out with the fancy upgrade version to their rather vanilla Studio 15 line with the Studio Special Edition.  The Studio edition adds a nifty “Black Vapor” exterior paint scheme, as well a 1440 x 900 LED-backlit display.

The standard RAM is 3GB, but some models will go up to 4GB, with storage capacities ranging from 250GB to 320GB.  You get to pick any one of three different trims that have varying specifications—
you can choose to get it powered by Pentium’s Dual Core or Core 2 Duo processor with an Intel integrated 4500MHD graphics processor (which comes standard), or you can pick the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450.

So, what else do we have on this “Special Edition”?  It has a 15.4-inch high definition widescreen.  An optional backlit keyboard.  It comes with Bluetooth and WiFi capabilities, a Blu-Ray disk reader, surround sound, HDMI and Ethernet connections, as well as a fingerprint reader.  By the way, it runs Windows Vista.

Prices have gone up over the non “Special” editions.  You are looking at a $799 starting price (after an $80 instant discount) for the standard configurations.  Though, even at these prices, you aren’t talking top price machinery.  You can find the Studio 15 Special Edition at your standard retailers, or at dell.com

Read: Dell

 

Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 6 Mar 2009 | 1:07 am

Australian Gov't May Employ a Homegrown Quantum Key System

mask.of.sanity writes "The Australian government is trialling a new Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) system built by Aussie scientists. QKD is considered the world's toughest security because the slightest attempt to intercept the one time keys, coded into lasers at the quantum level, will disrupt the beam. The technology differs from current cryptography tech primarily because it's cheap. Well, less than the $US100k price tag of rival systems. It uses off-the-shelf networking gear instead of proprietary technology, and is built on open standards, so it's easier to install. The random key is encoded at the quantum level in the sidebeam in the phase and amplitude, or brightness and colour, of a highly tuned laser beam. The creators, who built the system in part for their Ph.Ds, said it can be used to transport the most sensitive data like critical infrastructure and secret commercial IP. The days of hand-delivered security keys are numbered."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 6 Mar 2009 | 1:04 am

This transparent OLED lighting is really, really transparent

Philips has created a totally transparent OLED display that essentially becomes opaque when it’s powered. I don’t think I need to tell you the implications of a material which can have its transparency level changed dynamically like this. In the home, in the workplace, just about everywhere could use something like this. Imagine replacing your windows with these, or having a layer over your mirror which you can control by touch. Other solutions are out there, but this one appears to be more transparent than those.

Of course, the uses all depend on various aspects of the displays: how fast is it to dim or light up? How small can you make it? How large? In what shape? And so on. Still, it’s a great technology and hopefully we’ll be seeing it in action soon.

[via OLED-Display.net image credit: Philips]

Source: CrunchGear | 6 Mar 2009 | 1:00 am

Former Visa Chief Executive Carl Pascarella Joins CyberSource Board

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CyberSource Corporation (Nasdaq: CYBS), a leading provider of electronic payment and risk management solutions, today announced the appointment of Carl F.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:42 am

Replace Hardcovers with a Bunch of Big Signs

Boingboing's current guestblogger Paul Spinrad is currently Projects Editor for MAKE magazine and the author of The VJ Book and The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids. He lives in San Francisco. 

My friend Andy's literature blog recently pointed to this essay by Pat Holt, about how book publishers lose tons of money printing hardcover books. Publishers see them as expensive promotional copies that they need to print in order to get the reviews and interviews that sell profitable softcovers later.

But to use a trite formulation, publishers of hardcover books must realize that they aren't in the printing printed object business, they're in the talking-stick business. We have a shared general public dialog, but because there are more people with things to say than the public has time to hear, we need some object to confer attention-- like the talking stick around a campfire. In our culture, this object is the hardcover from a major publisher, which ideally makes a single timely point to inject into the public discussion.

Here's something less expensive that I think could replace hardcovers. Each publishing house puts a video billboard in a protected, shared area of Times Square or similar that's dedicated to showing the authors/books currently being promoted. I know outdoor advertising in NYC is expensive, but one sign has got to be cheaper than thousands of hardcovers plus distribution. If the signs are properly imbued with significance, which the industry could easily do, they would accomplish everything that a hardcover run does.

The book industry would tell book reviewers, talent coordinators, etc. that the signs are the new hardcover. In other words, this is the pool of people we're putting out there to make the rounds in the media, and other people will be covering them and people will be thinking about them at the same time that you are. Meanwhile, aspiring authors should want to see themselves up on one of those signs. They should be framed with appropriate gravitas indicators (marble, columns) and designed by famous artists.

According to Pat Holt, publishers fear that reeducating the audience away from hardcovers is impossible. But I think it would happen quickly if all the major publishing houses unveiled their signs at once with some fanfare and ribbon-cutting. It would be a major cultural event, and would get plenty of free coverage.

The signs would also establish a site for publishers to compete against one another, telegraphing how well they are currently doing, by things like how big their sign is, how well-maintained, how state-of-the-art the display technology, and any other ways of showing off how much money the house can publicly burn on image.

LATE ADD: With the "single timely point" etc. I'm just talking about nonfiction.

Source: Boing Boing | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:37 am

AppCraver Reaches Its 1200th Post

AppCraver provides detailed in-depth reviews of the latest iPhone apps as well as industry news and interviews with developers. SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 5 /PRNewswire/ -- AppCraver, the leading iPhone application review site, announced that it has reached its 1200th post earlier this week.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:34 am

Yashica releases a USB film scanner for you analog holdouts

If you’re still rolling with the film method, or just have an archive you want to convert to digital, Yashica’s got you covered. Instead of using a big flatbed scanner you can get one of these smaller, portable units. Sporting 3600dpi, it’ll talk to most editing software without a problem.

No news on pricing or availability in the U.S., but it is currently available in Japan.

[via Akihabara News]

Source: CrunchGear | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:30 am

Predicting the Predictions: Sun's Starfire (1993)

"Starfire" was a concept video from Sun Microsystems, developed by a team led by noted interface engineer Bruce Tognazzini. It's full of telepresence, multitouch, and all sorts of other other interactivity that we basically have today. It's from 1993—but it was brought to my attention by PopSci's Stuart Fox, who noticed that it is remarkably similar to a "This is the future" video recently released by Microsoft. Except for the special effects and animation looking similar (as well as being free from the awkward narrative of Starfire), it's really not remarkably different.

What struck me was how much that it's mostly showing off the future of interface. Interesting enough, but it seems to me that the interesting part of how we interact with gadgets in the future will be more than just multitouch and transparent devices, but will be the subsumption of interface directly into our bodies and environments. Still, I like both videos in their way—it's just that Microsoft's is much more immediately believable, as it projects a future that is nearly in reach.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:29 am

Gadget Lab to Go: Wired's iPhone App Gets an Upgrade

The latest version of Wired's iPhone app is here, and it's a substantial upgrade. In this video, I walk you through some of the new features.

This new version, 1.1, lets you browse our entire database of Wired product reviews, as before. But it also gives you easy access to the latest posts right here on the Gadget Lab blog, as well as all the gadget-related videos we produce.

The app is free, and will work with any iPhone or iPod Touch. Get it via the Apple App Store link here: Wired Product Reviews iPhone App

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:19 am

Trends & Innovations - Thursday (Investor's Business Daily)

Investor's Business Daily - Talking on cell phones increases both pedestrian deaths and those of drivers and passengers, say 2 studies by N.J.'s Rutgers Univ. that looked at U.S. phone use and accidents from '75 to '02. The researchers say mobiles initially had a "life-taking effect" when there were fewer than 1 mil phones and people were still adjusting to them. Then cells had a "life-saving effect" in the early '90s as usage grew and they let people call 911 right after wrecks. But as phones hit a critical mass of 100 mil, the increased accidents overshadowed the 911 benefits.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:17 am

Facebook Apps Can Now Use Chat To Go Viral

Facebook has just announced that applications on Facebook Platform can now be able to take advantage of the site’s built-in chat functionality, which launched last spring. Developers will now be able to present users with a list of their Facebook Chat buddies, tailoring the list to best suit their application (for example, they can choose to only present friends that already have the app installed).

Facebook users have been able to use Chat and their Facebook apps simultaneously since Chat launched (one of its biggest selling points is that it remains open at the bottom of the screen, no matter where on the site you go). But until now applications didn’t really have a way to tap into the power of Facebook Chat to help make their applications more social.

Aside from adding an enhanced social element to applications, the new feature could also help apps go viral much more quickly than they would using the standard Email invite system most Facebook apps employ. Developers can now present users with a list their friends who are online (even those that don’t necessarily have their apps installed), who they can then send invites via chat messages. Invites sent over chat have a greater sense of urgency and intimacy, so it’s likely that they’ll be more effective than invites sent through the site’s Email system.

Of course, integration with Chat gives apps on Facebook yet another way to try to spam you. In the dark ages of Platform, when every app seemed to spam users with reckless abandon, I might have been more concerned about this, but I suspect Facebook already has some measures in place to prevent abuse. And even if they don’t, you can always just sign out of Chat if things get bad.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:16 am

Review: 2009 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid

Hey guys remember the WIRED product reviews website? It's still there, chugging out more gear evaluations than you can shake a USB stick at. And we're not just content pumping out five netbook reviews a week. We're getting our mitts onto high performance gaming peripherals, top shelf audio, and automotive. Yep automotive. Like Joe Brown's take on the 2009 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid. From his review:

I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

$74,085 (as tested), cadillac.com

Read the full review of the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid Review here.
 

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 Mar 2009 | 12:13 am

BB Video: "Christmas in Darfur" -- Not "Yet Another" Darfur Documentary

Derek Bledsoe, Boing Boing Video producer, is blogging daily Boing Boing Video episodes while Xeni's on the road in Africa.

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For all the charity and humanitarian aid that's been poured into the Darfur region, and all of the celebrities pleading for change -- it seems nothing has changed. People are still dying, atrocities continue, and the war worsens. This sense of futility is what makes the project we're sharing with you today so interesting.

The ultra-low-budget documentary "Christmas in Darfur?" follows the challenges two amateur filmmakers (and their limited crew) face as they attempt to make a film about what it was like for aid workers to spend their holiday season in this war-torn African desert. Boing Boing Video guest correspondent Sean Bonner interviewed the film's director Jason Mojica about that experience, and we bring you that conversation today, along with clips from the finished film.

Driven by the desire to understand the gap between all the global attention to Darfur and the worsening conditions there -- and with no experience in filmmaking, or any connections in Africa -- the filmmakers' guileless approach takes them deep into the refugee camps of Chad and Sudan.

"Christmas in Darfur?" is about an hour long and available online for anyone to freely view, embed, or dowload. You can watch the full film online at christmasindarfur.org. And you can make a donation to the filmmakers, if you are so moved -- they're still trying to recoup the costs of making the film. Look for the PayPal link on the left side of this page.

UPDATE: According the the AP two British aid agencies working in Sudan, Oxfam GB and Save the Children UK, have had their licenses revoked and have been asked to suspend operations only hours after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Source: Boing Boing | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:55 pm

Yeah, and the iPod Wasn’t a Threat to the Walkman, Either… [Digital Daily]

“I think the iPhone and iPod touch may emerge as really viable devices in the mobile games market.”

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs, November 2008

Sony doesn’t consider Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone a serious rival to its PlayStation Portable. This according to Sony Computer Entertainment’s Ray Maguire, who says a converged device like the iPhone will always be inferior to a dedicated gaming platform like the PSP. “The iPhone has the advantage of being a single device and is growing a reasonable installed base, but it doesn’t have the production power that a PSP has,” he told MCV. “As a specific games machine, the PSP is always going to win out.”

Not that Sony (SNE) is ignoring the fast-developing market for time-waster, or snacking, games that has arisen around the iPhone. Said Maguire, “We’re in a great position to take on the interest in these snacking games and produce them at better quality, lower prices, with lower cost of development–that’s a great business model.”

Source: All Things Digital | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:42 pm

Nvidia Mulls Cheap, Integrated x86 Chip

CWmike writes "Nvidia is considering developing an integrated chip based on the x86 architecture for use in devices such as netbooks and mobile Internet devices, said Michael Hara, vice president of investor relations at Nvidia during a speech that was webcast from the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference this week. Nvidia has already developed an integrated chip called Tegra, which combines an Arm processor, a GeForce graphics core and other components on a single chip. The chips are aimed at small devices such as smartphones and MIDs, and will start shipping in the second half of this year. 'Tegra, by any definition, is a complete computer-on-chip, and the requirements of that market are such that you have to be very low power and very small but highly efficient,' Hara said. 'Someday, it's going to make sense to take the same approach in the x86 market as well.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:38 pm

Cook County sheriff sues Craigslist over sex ads (AP)

AP - Cook County's sheriff filed a lawsuit Thursday against Craigslist, saying the popular online classifieds site not only allows the solicitation of prostitution but has actively created "the largest source of prostitution in America."

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:33 pm

NuRide for mobile devices?

Boingboing's current guestblogger Paul Spinrad is currently Projects Editor for MAKE magazine and the author of The VJ Book and The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids. He lives in San Francisco. 

I love the idea of NuRide, although I've never used it myself. Anyone have some first-hand experience? It's a ridesharing system that hooks up drivers with passengers via the web, and it's running now in a few cities. The way they get past the axe-murderer problem is by having participants sign up via their employers or schools. Maybe the reasoning there is that if employees or students do go psycho, at least they'll be traceable?

Two things that would help would be to put it on mobile devices and get rid of the requirements for joining. I expect that when API's for mobile phone services come out, which someone told me should happen within a couple of years, an open system like this will be written that anyone will be able to use. This would mean way more people using it, which means way more rides offered-- and at some point it would reach a tipping point where people use the service casually, without planning ahead, figuring that they'll be able to get a ride back from wherever they are pretty easily. You could just rely on it the way people in some cities rely on being able to catch a cab.

If so, some custom would likely bubble up to make it worthwhile for the person giving the ride, probably some system for estimating gas and toll expenses. As the classic 70's dashboard sticker warns, "Ass, Gas, or Grass: Nobody Rides for Free." (NuRide rewards drivers with gift cards from participating retailers-- maybe they get money or tax breaks for promoting clean air.)

As for the axe-murderer problem, I think it's less of a liability and insurance issue if it's freeware tapping into a publicly hosted database, rather than a single company owning and running the system. And on the user side, I think there are enough people out there who would trust their own judgment whether or not to get in the car. But I suspect that it might find trust and acceptance faster if it started out only running on Blackberries.

Source: Boing Boing | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:33 pm

Clearwire to Spend at Least $1.5B in Cash in 2009 [Voices]

Clearwire (CLWR) isn’t the easiest company to analyze; still in a development stage, and now combined with the old Sprint Xohm business, trying to draw conclusions from the WiMax-based wireless carrier’s financial results is challenging, to say the least. But here’s what I can tell you about the company’s Q4 results, which were reported after the close:

• Pro forma revenues were $59.7 million, a bit below the Street consensus at $60 million.
• The company posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of $157.3 million.
• CLWR had 5,000 net subscriber adds in the quarter, and now has 475,000 total.
• ARPU rose to $39.70 a month, from $36.09.
• Churn bumped up to 2.8 percent, from 2.4 percent a year ago.
• But costs per gross add fell to $468, from $550.
• Clearwire now covers territory with 18.2 million people, up from 16.3 million a year ago.
• The company has $3.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:25 pm

JVC's New Hybrid Camcorder Takes 9-Megapixel Stills

This week at the PMA camera conference in Las Vegas, JVC announced a high-def hybrid camcorder, the Everio X, which appears to be a symbolic push-back against the recent video breakthroughs in cameras.

The Canon 5D Mark II brought beautiful high-end video to cameras for the first time last year, leaving many camcorders in the dust.  Despite a significant price barrier that failed to place it in competition against mainstream camcorders, this camera offered people a high-quality video option (with the added benefits of better lens optics) that many saw as the beginning of a long-term feature raid by cameras.

So, it was only a matter of time before camcorders boosted their still-photo features to keep up appearances in that space, while still offering the best video bang for the mid-range buck.

On the surface, the compact Everio X (or GZ-X900) seems fully feature-packed for both video and stills.

It shoots video at a pixel resolution near 1920 x 1080, and is extremely pocketable and small at only .66 lbs. Using a 10.3-megapixel CMOS sensor, it takes nine-megapixel pics (see pic quality at right), has a rapid-fire mode that shoots 15 images a second, and promises simultaneous 5-megapixel still shooting during HD video recording (at a shutter speed of 1/4000.) It also has an interesting 10 x slow shooting mode (at three different speeds) that seems to combine both video and stills into a potentially seamless action scene mode (see pic sequence below).

Since it's nicely designed for portability, the camcorder also has a 'one-touch' feature built-in that facilitates video downloads to YouTube, just like the iFlip.

At $1000, this camera is going to have to definitely push the hybrid angle. It could potentially suffer against similarly-priced camcorders that don't have the HD camera feature but might surpass it in video-only quality. But for those looking to use only one device while traveling, this one has a lot of potential.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:21 pm

Amazon launches videogame trade-in store (AFP)

AFP - Amazon launched an online videogame trade-in store on Thursday, granting credit at the online retail giant to customers who send in used games.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:17 pm

Chinese gold farming

Great Guardian piece about Chinese gold farming, an elusive and fascinating and weird phenomenon:

For thousands of Chinese workers such as Li, "gold farming" is a way of life. Workers can expect to earn between £80-£120 a month which, given the long hours and night shifts, can amount to as little as 30p an hour. After completing his shift, Li is given a basic meal of rice, meat and vegetables and falls into a bunk bed in a room that eight other gold farmers share. His wages may be low, but food and accommodation are included.

These virtual industries sound surreal, but they are fast entering the mainstream. According to a report by Richard Heeks at Manchester University, an estimated 400,000 Asian workers are now employed in gold farming in a trade worth up to £700m a year. With so many gamers now online, these industries are estimated to have a consumer base of five million to 10 million, and numbers are expected to grow with widening internet access.

These figures mean big business. The gold farming industry may be about playing games, but these companies take their work seriously. At Wow7gold, a sophisticated division of labour splits workers into different departments, including production, sales, advertising and research. What's interesting about this "virtual division of labour" is that traditional concepts of "men's work" and "women's work" still apply. While young, largely unskilled "playbourers" such as Li spend their days toiling in the virtual field, highly skilled female graduates receive higher salaries working as customer service operators.

Welcome to the new gold mines

(Image: Anthony Gilmore)


Source: Boing Boing | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:16 pm

Reid Hoffman Tells Charlie Rose: “Every Individual Is Now An Entrepreneur.”

Reid Hoffman is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. He worked at Paypal, founded LinkedIn, and invested in dozens more. Last night, he appeared on Charlie Rose (full interview embedded above, full transcript below), where he talks about the rise of social networking in general, and LinkedIn’s success in particular (it is adding one million professionals every 17 days and is emerging as a “low cost provider of really good hiring services”).

Yesterday, Hoffman wrote a post for us with some concrete suggestions for a Stimulus 2.0 plan led by startups. He hit some of the same themes on Charlie Rose. The best part of the hour-long interview, however is towards the end where Hoffman discusses the role that entrepreneurship can play in getting America out of its rut. Some excerpts:

REID HOFFMAN: I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not. . . . Average job length is two to four years. That makes you a small business. . . . You are the entrepreneur of your own small business. How do you get to your next gig? How do you do your career progression? All these things now fall on the individual shoulders. And so, they’re essentially an entrepreneur. . . . They’re entrepreneurs in terms of the business of themselves and how they drive that. So it’s how they get, like, their next job opportunity, how they get a promotion. All of that stuff comes from how they manage the network around them. Which is, by the way, what gave me the idea for LinkedIn.

But I think that one of the key things — the reason why I think risk tolerance is important is because what happens is people delude themselves they’re not taking risks. They say, oh, I’m going to get a job at, you know, Hewlett-Packard or I’m going to get a job — and that’s not risky. Well, look at current economic climates. Everything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it. And people who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don’t.

Hoffman is troubled by the government’s current stimulus plan because it repeats some of the same mistakes that got the economy into trouble in the first place.

REID HOFFMAN: Well, over-leverage — I mean, this is actually one of the things that makes me mildly nervous even on the stimulus package, because if you think about, well, our problem is leverage. What is the stimulus package? Borrow money, spend it.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.

REID HOFFMAN: So I think it’s really…

CHARLIE ROSE: With the model being that it will create jobs and therefore…

REID HOFFMAN: Well, and therefore, I think to do it successfully, you actually have to make sure that the stimulus that you’re spending it in is actually creating sustainable jobs. So I’m a huge believer in the way that you actually get out of these economic downturns is through entrepreneurship, because that creates new kinds of jobs that actually have longevity and strength to them.

If you’re investing in an industry that has, for example, known problems, you’re just delaying the problem. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

So what is the answer? Entrepreneurship.

I think entrepreneurship is really what has a chance of accelerating us through the recession, that LinkedIn kind of providing the tools for entrepreneurs will help with that, because obviously everyone’s worried about, you know, is this like the 1930s.

. . . And I think, you know, part of the benefit of a network is bringing together financiers, employees, customers, advisers, et cetera, and bringing all of us all together in a really powerful way. And I think that– I think that if you look at what’s going on in the Valley, people are still trying to figure out how, like OK, we have a problem, we have an economic recession. What kind of things can I build that will work now?

What he is talking about is not just that everybody needs to go out and build a startup, but that if more people start thinking like entrepreneurs we’ll get out of this economic mess much faster than if everyone just has their hand out.

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Transcript

CHARLIE ROSE: Reid Hoffman is here. He is chairman, CEO and co-founder of LinkedIn.com. The professional networking site has over 36 million users in over 200 countries and territories. While the recession has taken a toll on the technology sector, LinkedIn has thrived. The site now adds one new user every second. Reid has been called the most connected person in Silicon Valley. His track record in investing in successful companies speaks for itself. He has helped finance over 60 companies, including Facebook and Digg. He was also a senior executive at Paypal before it was sold to eBay. I’m pleased to have him here on this program for the first time. Welcome.

REID HOFFMAN: Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: That’s a very impressive record there, if I may say so. I mean, what is it you have?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, there’s always a lot of luck in this. I also think that part of what has attracted me to the Internet is what kinds of applications can you have, now that everyone can participate? So unlike kind of traditional media, a little bit, you know, the background of television and radio, etcetera, where it’s principally broadcast, the fact that you have millions of people participating, what kinds of new applications can change people’s lives? And I have at least a reasonably
good nose for it.

CHARLIE ROSE: But there’s also this idea of — and I’ve explored this before — with community. I mean, what is it, and is that one of the principal things driving the future usage of the Internet?

REID HOFFMAN: One of the things I think that is going to be happening is I think there’s going to be a lot more intelligent use of groups. That — in the kind of the first iteration of the web, like chat rooms and stuff, were kind of strangers talking to each other without a purpose. There was no reflection into how your real life worked.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

REID HOFFMAN: And…

CHARLIE ROSE: It was simply the capacity to have a dialogue with somebody who you didn’t even know who it was.

REID HOFFMAN: Exactly. And I think — I mean, part of the whole web 2.0 and also social networking, professional networking revolution is now you’re actually taking your real relationships and putting those online, and then having those kind of influence your life. Because talking in the chat room randomly to people you don’t know is usually not that interesting. Talking to people that, for example, you’re connected to or you share a professional interest with or you share a hobby interest with,
that is something specific and kind of topically driven, and sometimes even driven by, like, real relationships, like this is part of the whole social professional networking, tends to improve your life a lot more.

CHARLIE ROSE: When you look at them, are they going to be considerably different? Are we just simply waiting for this more specific use of social networks? Or professional networks?

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. When I founded LinkedIn, I decided there was going to be this kind of new generation of Internet applications that are all based on the fact that now people are going to — as opposed to kind of like going into a virtual world where you didn’t know anybody and you were just kind of exploring this as this kind of fantastical new place, people were going to be taking their lives with them and they were going to be interacting with the people that matter to them in their lives.

And my decision was, I was going to invest in the social side, right? So I would invest in, you know, SixApart and Digg and Wachia (ph) and Facebook and Friendster and all these others, and I would start the professional side. Because the professional side, you know, people have — kind of 40 years of their life is in the professional world, and how do you influence and change all of that?

And so it’s always been very strong in my thesis that there will be at least two, like you’ll have two profiles online. You’ll have — and there may be three. Like, maybe there’s room for family or maybe there’s room for sports, or these other things, but I think there’s at least two.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. You just mentioned Friendster. Is Friendster going to be taught in the business schools as an example of what?

REID HOFFMAN: Let’s see. I think it’s probably — well, I think they’re actually going to be successful, but it’s one of those cases where snatching defeat from the jaws of victory I think is the way of inverting the expression.

CHARLIE ROSE: They were on the right idea and it slipped away.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. And I think it’s principally a challenge of they had a lot of difficulty getting their execution together. And when you actually end up with very, very slow page load speeds, people just kind of gave up on it eventually, because it was growing like this, and then it
just stalled.

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, is that because they didn’t know how to do it or they couldn’t find the right, you know, software, or they just weren’t paying attention?

REID HOFFMAN: I wasn’t an insider to the company, I was an investor. But I think it was the then management team didn’t pull together to solve that specific problem.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. See, that’s an interesting lesson in business right there. Sometimes there will come along a difficulty that will crush your business unless you take care of it.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: It has the capacity to prevent you from reaching some kind of mach speed that’s necessary.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. Or in that case, they actually had the mach speed of growth, and what they needed to do was keep their systems in line to continue to do that. And they just — they — I don’t know what diverted their focus, but they just didn’t focus and solve that problem.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Tell me the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook and the difference in Facebook and MySpace.

REID HOFFMAN: OK. So, LinkedIn is essentially what you do in order to solve professional tasks. So it’s looking for expertise, sharing information on a professional problem you might be solving.

CHARLIE ROSE: Like what?

REID HOFFMAN: So for example, you know, I posted a question on LinkedIn about where should we locate our European headquarters, right? And within a day, I had about 20 answers, which included some components of information that actually hadn’t occurred to me. Like, so it hadn’t occurred to me multiple direct flights to the location would actually be a really useful way of coordinating…

CHARLIE ROSE: Why wouldn’t that occur to you?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, because what I was thinking was, where is the tech talent, how much does it cost, what does the taxation look like. There was a list of things that I was actually already thinking about, but I hadn’t gotten to down to the specific logistics of coordination.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, of transportation.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, exactly where it’s at. OK, well, if you actually have two headquarters, you need to be able to sometimes travel very easily and fluently.

CHARLIE ROSE: So somebody on the network said…

REID HOFFMAN: Said, hey, you know, you should actually consider only these kind of cities where you actually have multiple direct flights, because when we’ve done this before, it’s been challenging in this way. And I was like, oh, obvious, right. And you know, part of what happened is I then followed up with that person, because they wrote something that was useful, and you can see their name in the bio. And I said, hey, what else did you learn? Is there anything else I should pay attention to when I’m doing this? And that’s getting the information that helps you solve a task.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. So here’s the question. Suppose you select something and this person pointed you in a certain direction. So what happens then? I.E., do you just send him a thank you, or do you…

REID HOFFMAN: Well, it depends.

CHARLIE ROSE: Say meet me in Brussels, or what do you say?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, it depends on what kind of — just like when you’re talking to someone at a conference. Just depends on what kind of a connection you form. I mean, say, for example, you start exchanging tips and you go, hey, this is really great. Well, next time I’m going to be in Brussels, why don’t we grab coffee and get to know each other.

CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly. OK. So that’s what you do. Facebook is different?

REID HOFFMAN: So, Facebook is principally driven by this kind of sharing notion. A huge amount of it is sharing pictures, right? There’s also a lot of social gaming. Like, one of my recent investments, a company called Zynga, which sells social games on Facebook. And then I look at MySpace as more kind of how you trick out your profile. Right? It’s kind of the most unique profile, looking very cool.

And so the difference is, you know, LinkedIn is where you’re essentially trying to solve professional tasks. Sometimes those tasks are what is my next job, or who am I hiring. But that’s only a subset of them. Facebook is where you kind of — I mean, I think — you know, I last read there was somewhere over half the pages are photo sharing. So you’re sharing pictures and that sort of stuff.

And then MySpace is how you have kind of a — it’s the most customizable profile you can have. Right? It’s — in terms of like background and all kinds of different colors and everything else, all of
that sort of stuff is on MySpace.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you have strong opinions about who owns all this, if somebody decides they no longer want to be part of the network?

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. Both I and LinkedIn does. And it’s the individual owns their data.

CHARLIE ROSE: That was a no-brainer for you?

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. And it’s actually ultimately — I mean, the problem that, you know, I thought Facebook did the right thing and back off on that particular thing.

The problem is they’re also trying to make sure that while I as an individual own my data, when I’m putting it into a service, make sure that the service can operate and distribute the data in a way that I’m participating in the service, right? So that was the problem they were trying to solve.

CHARLIE ROSE: And suppose they were looking for a job. What would they do? They would post their interest?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, so, depending on how actively, right. So one basic thing is to post a full profile and get connected to the people you trust. Because if you’re connected to those people and you posted a profile, then when other people are searching for people, they might find you.

CHARLIE ROSE: And how would that happen?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, so for example…

CHARLIE ROSE: They type, media…

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, so they could go in to search and…

CHARLIE ROSE: Media, news, blah, blah, blah.

REID HOFFMAN: You know, I’m looking for a web producer, experienced in television, et cetera. And then they might say, oh actually, you know, Charlie knows this person, and this person is in fact — you know, I can ask Charlie, hey, is this person really good? Charlie says oh, this person’s great.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.

REID HOFFMAN: They say, oh, well, great, could you introduce me to them, can I talk to them, that sort of thing. So that’s the passive way of doing it. The active way is say, for example, I decided that I wanted to work on the CHARLIE ROSE SHOW.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

REID HOFFMAN: Right, so…

CHARLIE ROSE: The next question was, how do you seek a replacement for a person who decides to go somewhere else.

REID HOFFMAN: Well, that’s hiring. Right? So that’s the, you know, you will look for a web producer or, you know, or, you know, engineer or product manager or any of those sorts of things, and you can search for the right people.

Now, when you’re the job seeker — for example, I looked before I came on the show to see if you were on LinkedIn. We will convince you, but we haven’t yet. But when I typed in “Charlie Rose,” you have a web producer in New York named Matt or something…

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

REID HOFFMAN: And so, I found I was two degrees away from him, so I could get an introduction through someone I knew to him if I wanted to talk to him.

CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, I see. So, two degrees away means what?

REID HOFFMAN: Means that I know someone who knows him.

CHARLIE ROSE: I see. So therefore, you could use that person…

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. And say I was looking for a job on your show? Well, then I could say, hey, could you introduce him and let him know that I can do this, this and that sort of thing. And so then, as opposed to just kind of being a random resume that shows up, you know, in the stack of stuff that comes in, I actually get a personal recommendation from someone who actually knows what I’m capable of.

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, we have a job for a Web producer, are you
interested?

REID HOFFMAN: Not today.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: I think you’re fairly occupied.

Do you get a look at lots of venture opportunities? I mean, obviously, there is a kind of — my understanding, you can correct me — there’s a pecking order out here in Silicon Valley. Somebody gets to see everything. I would assume Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia or those people.
Right?

REID HOFFMAN: Those are two great…
(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Two big ones. And there are two or three others, I don’t know how many more. Then, you know, you seem to have some kind of investment in some of the major success stories in Silicon.

REID HOFFMAN: So…

CHARLIE ROSE: How does that happen?

REID HOFFMAN: So it’s…

CHARLIE ROSE: You have money.

REID HOFFMAN: Well, being able to be an investor and having a track
record is important.

CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly.

REID HOFFMAN: I think it happens for a couple of things. So one is, that people come to know that actually, I’m very good to consumer Internet stuff. So I can help companies. I can recognize what they do. I’ve seen the play a lot. I’ve been on the boards of some companies. I’m capable of
doing that. Then the next thing is people who work with me, including venture capitalists, other angel investors, all go, oh, Reid’s a really good person to have involved in these kinds of consumer things. And so most often, I mean I actually basically don’t take a meeting with a perspective entrepreneur if they don’t come referred. It’s actually one of the ways that I use my own personal LinkedIn profile, which is come to me on a referred basis, get someone I know who says, oh, this is really
interesting.

CHARLIE ROSE: In other words, you’re looking for money for a venture deal.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: Before they get to see you, they have to be referred by someone you know.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, exactly. And someone whose opinion I trust.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Give me the profile of — is there a profile of a typical LinkedIn user?

REID HOFFMAN: I think the average age is 40.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

REID HOFFMAN: I think when I last saw a study, we had kind of a similar profile with the people who read “The Wall Street Journal.” So household income of like 110k. Generally a little bit more experienced in their job, although we have everything down to 18-year-olds and everything
up to 70-whatever year-olds. I don’t know if we know the — we don’t ask birth dates, because birth dates aren’t relevant professionally. We ask for, like, where did you work and where did you go to school and these kinds of things in order to help you connect with other people you know.

But generally speaking, it’s experienced professionals.

CHARLIE ROSE: How much of it is job seeking?

REID HOFFMAN: Relatively…

CHARLIE ROSE: Or job requesting?

REID HOFFMAN: So for example, 27 percent of our subscribers are recruiters and hiring managers. So there’s a healthy percentage of it. But it’s actually not the — it’s — it’s kind of like a modest plurality. It’s not the majority. It actually ranges across a whole variety of things. So for example, you know, hedge funds use it to source experts.

CHARLIE ROSE: Have you used it yourself for anything like that?

REID HOFFMAN: I use it for private placement investing, which I most certainly do. So for example, Flickr came to me on referral through LinkedIn. Right? So I got introduced to one of the co-founders of Flickr through a connection of mine, who said basically, hey, you’re going to be talking at this conference, and I almost never talk to people when they approach me after a conference because I don’t know who they are. He said, I’ll be there, can I talk to you about this new cool thing I’m doing? And since he had been introduced to me by…

CHARLIE ROSE: You said OK.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And it led to an investment.

REID HOFFMAN: Exactly.

CHARLIE ROSE: There was a private placement deal, and it led to an investment.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: You came back to this company as CEO.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why?

REID HOFFMAN: Oh. So Dan and I, Dan, the former CEO, good friends and still are today.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

REID HOFFMAN: We were talking in…

CHARLIE ROSE: Dan is the son of somebody, isn’t he?

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. Joe Nye.

CHARLIE ROSE: That’s right. The Harvard professor.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. Exactly.

CHARLIE ROSE: Who coined the phrase “soft power.”

REID HOFFMAN: Exactly. And his brother, Ben Nye, is a venture capitalist today.

(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: … superachievers.

REID HOFFMAN: Exactly, it’s a great family. We were talking about what LinkedIn needed for the next year or two, and one of the things that we saw as an opportunity, both of us — this was a collaborative conversation — was that there’s a lot of innovation still to do. And one of the things that I specialize in is actually invention, is innovation.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

REID HOFFMAN: So I just recently hired a guy from Google, Dit Mashar (ph), to be our head of product, working with Dan and doing this. And it was like, OK, well, the way we would operate is Dan was like not really chaffed (ph) about the idea of like my standing over his shoulder, oh, no,
do that, oh, no, do that, oh, no, do that…

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.

REID HOFFMAN: If you need to do that, we need to have you do that as the CEO. So we collectively made that decision kind of early December. I forget which day, it was like the 5th or the 6th, and then we pretty quickly moved through it.

CHARLIE ROSE: You have this strong interest in sort of doing good and doing well?

REID HOFFMAN: My principal motivation is how do you change the world, right? I don’t think that, you know, when you look at — one of the questions that I ask executives when I’m interviewing them is you write your obituary, what is happening? What makes you…

CHARLIE ROSE: When I read that, I thought, how smart is that?

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: Such a great idea.

REID HOFFMAN: It’s a question of what do you want to be known for? What meaning do you want your life to have had? And you know, he or she who dies with the biggest bank balance isn’t a terribly interesting life. I mean, fine, you were successful playing this game business, but that’s not really it. And…

CHARLIE ROSE: And you can’t take it with you.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. And is that really the meaning, the measure of a
life, right? So — and so for me, the reason I was…

CHARLIE ROSE: It says to you what it is their passion is about interms of the life they want to lead.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, exactly.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do they want to make a difference? Do they want to becreative? Do they want in a sense to create something that will offeropportunities for a range of people and perhaps create some product or someendeavor that will influence people?

REID HOFFMAN: And which audiences matter to them. Because somepeople say, look, what I care about is being a good friend or a goodparent. Right? And those are great. Those audiences are important,right? But for me, it’s how do you change the lives of millions of people, right? And when you do stuff in the economic arena, you’re trying to do that both with the business you’re creating, and then also, I mean whatmoney is a form of kind of rarefied (ph) power control over resources, and then you can spend that on things.

CHARLIE ROSE: Suppose that you wanted to go to heaven and there is a heaven and you’ve asked me to make the case for you.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: What is — what is my strongest piece of evidence?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, I’d say — well, I guess everyone could say poll all your friends. So I guess I would say, you know, I served on — so, with LinkedIn, I’m trying to transform a lot of people’s economic lives. I’m trying to make them more effective and more productive and a better match-making between economic opportunities and improving people’s lives. And then generally speaking, most of the things I do, like I’m on the Kiva board for doing micro finance. Most of the things I do are aimed at how do people live kind of healthier, you know, have more self-empowerment intheir lives.

CHARLIE ROSE: I believe — this is not exactly on point, but that theGates — Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is — has been successful, will be increasingly successful because of Melinda and Bill, you know, wanting to impose a structure, an architecture, a standard of efficiency and results to do good.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, absolutely.

CHARLIE ROSE: You said, for example, once, when you want to influence the structure for millions and millions of people, you actually need to have a strong economic model that scales.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: If you can create structures where the interest of hundreds of thousands of millions of people are aligned with the group’s interest, then you can actually create things that generate a lot of value in the system.

REID HOFFMAN: Exactly right. And if it’s — if it has a powerful economic model behind it, it means it survives. So the difference between a company which is a dollar profitable and a dollar unprofitable is essentially immortality and death. Right? So if you want to have an influence over, you know, decades, hundreds of years, thousands is probably too much to hope for, create sustainable models, which in the action of that organism — I look at companies as organisms with an ecosystem. Within the action of it, it produces good.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.

REID HOFFMAN: And if you do that, you’ve created a massive amount ofgood.

CHARLIE ROSE: If you could look at the most successful people in that you have known, in this arena of technology, would they also have been the brightest?

REID HOFFMAN: Some and some.

CHARLIE ROSE: Some and some, but not necessarily.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: What would be the difference for those who were notnecessarily the brightest? What would they have had?

REID HOFFMAN: What would they have had?

CHARLIE ROSE: As a core competence or a core skill or a core value structure that enabled them to do well?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, so there’s always some luck, right?

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. So one, we said brains, yes, but not necessarily.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: Luck but not necessarily.

REID HOFFMAN: Exactly.

CHARLIE ROSE: What else but not necessarily?

REID HOFFMAN: A capacity for taking risk.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

REID HOFFMAN: Right, so…

CHARLIE ROSE: So if you can’t take risk, if the risk does not burn in your being…

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: … then you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. Exactly. Well, actually, everybody — see, one of the things is — so I now think part of what’s been happening over the last couple of decades is I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not. Because it used to be that you got a job at one company and you were there 20, 30, 40, years. That’s been dead for decades. That’s even dying in Japan. The salary man no longer even exists in Japan.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.

REID HOFFMAN: Average job length is two to four years. That makes you a small business.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

REID HOFFMAN: You are the entrepreneur of your own small business. How do you get to your next gig? How do you do your career progression? All these things now fall on the individual shoulders. And so, they’re essentially an entrepreneur. Now, they’re not an entrepreneur a la, I’ll go create, you know, Google, LinkedIn, a business. They’re entrepreneurs in terms of the business of themselves and how they drive that. So it’s how they get, like, their next job opportunity, how they get a promotion. All of that stuff comes from how they manage the network around them. Which is, by the
way, what gave me the idea for LinkedIn.

But I think that one of the key things — the reason why I think risk tolerance is important is because what happens is people delude themselves they’re not taking risks. They say, oh, I’m going to get a job at, you know, Hewlett-Packard or I’m going to get a job — and that’s not risky. Well, look at current economic climates. Everything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it. And people who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don’t.

CHARLIE ROSE: You know, some say that risk has been given a bad name because of what’s happened on Wall Street.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. Well, there’s a huge difference between intelligent risk taking and stupid risk taking. Now, the trick is to know the difference.

CHARLIE ROSE: Or leveraging so much that…

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: … the slightest tweak will send you…

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, exactly. Well, overleverage — I mean, this is actually one of the things that makes me mildly nervous even on the stimulus package, because if you think about, well, our problem is leverage. What is the stimulus package? Borrow money, spend it.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.

REID HOFFMAN: So I think it’s really…

CHARLIE ROSE: With the model being that it will create jobs and therefore…

REID HOFFMAN: Well, and therefore, I think to do it successfully, you actually have to make sure that the stimulus that you’re spending it in is actually creating sustainable jobs. So I’m a huge believer in the way that you actually get out of these economic downturns is through entrepreneurship, because that creates new kinds of jobs that actually have longevity and strength to them.

If you’re investing in an industry that has, for example, known problems, you’re just delaying the problem. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

CHARLIE ROSE: You once said, I think, or predicted that LinkedIn would double its membership in 2009 and you were trying to sign up, get this, one in four of the world’s population.

REID HOFFMAN: We’re still trying to do one in four of the world’s population.

CHARLIE ROSE: How long will that take?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, depends on how much we accelerate. So currently we’re doing a professional every second, and we’re doing about a million every 17 days or so. Right? So that would be — I haven’t actually done the calculation and haven’t predicted how much the world population is growing. I mean, it would take probably, you know, six or seven years, maybe eight years at that pace, presuming also connectivity, Internet and all the rest of that.

We hope to accelerate that number.

CHARLIE ROSE: How do you monetize it?

REID HOFFMAN: So we’ve been profitable last two years. Q4 was actually our highest revenue quarter ever.

CHARLIE ROSE: This calendar year?

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, Q4 last quarter. And we — our primary revenue streams, we have three of them. One of them is subscriptions on the site. You can take out your credit card, you get better search functionality, a better way of contacting people directly in order — and we figure that’s
useful when you’re trying to accelerate your business practice, you’re using LinkedIn as a serious business professional.

We have a software service business, primarily driven by recruiting. And as a surprise, we’re actually doing quite well at that currently. You would think that with layoffs and everything else that that business was being hit.

Currently we’re the (INAUDIBLE) low-cost provider of really good hiring services. When you’re hiring 50 people as opposed to 1,000 people, we’re still growing there. So that’s useful. And then advertising, comparable to the “Wall Street Journal” demographic.

CHARLIE ROSE: So look ahead for me for the next 10 years, you know. What role will social networking play and professional networking and how will it change?

REID HOFFMAN: Do you normally get answers on 10-year questions from Silicon Valley people?

CHARLIE ROSE: Can we stay within this year.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, exactly. Or two, maybe.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

REID HOFFMAN: So what I think is going to happen is, so I think social and professional networking are distinct. I think you establish distinct profiles there. In social, it’s how you fun, entertaining, why
you’re good to go on a date with, et cetera.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.

REID HOFFMAN: Professional is what are you good at, what should people hire you for, what should they consult with you. If they’re creating a group for shared interest on — you know, involving the best professional practices, who should they invite in, you know, that sort of thing. Alumni for universities and corporations. That sort of thing.

So I think that in both of these cases, I think everyone’s going to have both a social and professional profile. I think they will be connected to people they trust, you know, in — and there’s some overlap
between these, but it’s — I find in my own personal experience it’s about a 20 percent overlap. Right? There’s — about 20 percent of people are both social, like people I want to share pictures with, and people who are professional, but the other ones are distinct.

And I think that people will use it within a few years, I think it will be even more than daily. It will be at least for professional, you know, a couple of hours in terms of how you’re solving problems.

CHARLIE ROSE: I actually think that solving problems is a huge partof the future.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: There is also this, and we have to close. It is — I always ask this, so I’ll make this first and then I’ll follow up. What’s the biggest new idea? What’s the great new idea out there waiting to happen?

REID HOFFMAN: What LinkedIn is betting on, which I think is a big idea — I don’t know if it’s the biggest idea. It’s one I spend the most time on is, is we live in a world where it’s going flat, and global and competitive.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

REID HOFFMAN: And how do you as an individual stay competitive as a professional? How do you manage yourself as a business? And I actually think that what’s going to happen is we’re going to have an accelerating productivity, like what you saw in the Industrial Revolution, as a basis of
people getting sharper in how they work and how they execute tasks and information they find…

CHARLIE ROSE: More efficient, more productive, more everything.

REID HOFFMAN: Exactly. And I think…

CHARLIE ROSE: Because of tools.

REID HOFFMAN: Because of tools. And I think it will go both on the Internet and then the Internet going to mobile. Like, iPhones orBlackBerries.

CHARLIE ROSE: Everything will be on the mobile.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And so, what does that mean for the PC? You’ll still use the PC but for different purposes or what?

REID HOFFMAN: Well, I think you’ll use it…

CHARLIE ROSE: Or a Mac or whatever.

REID HOFFMAN: Well, I think you’d use PC for various — and I use both a PC and Mac — for large information consumption. So for example, I’ve always been a fan of using very big monitors, because I write an outline and then I write the thing next to it, and I write really quickly. And when you need a monitor for that kind of processing or interacting with information, that’s really critical.

And you know, however good your phone in your pocket becomes, you know, a screen like this is only so much. Now, the screen like this helps you real-time where you’re always on…

REID HOFFMAN: … on the go. But for example, even though I’ve been, I was one of the earliest BlackBerry users in California and have been what we call it CrackBerry frequently here for a very long time, I still prefer to author e-mails on my computer, because I can type — like, I can see the
information, I can hold up what I’m replying to, and I can be going, OK, oh, I need to make a point about this, OK, I need to make a point about that.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.

REID HOFFMAN: And so, that sort of information participation is still much more useful in a higher form, faster, with a better keyboard.

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you carry in your pocket?

REID HOFFMAN: I carry a BlackBerry, an iPhone and a regular cell phone.

CHARLIE ROSE: So do I, those three, exactly. Explain to the world. I’m tired of explaining. Would you explain it? It’s also true of Eric Schmidt. And it’s true of a lot of people I know.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. Well, I hope he has a G1 now, but the…

CHARLIE ROSE: The Android or whatever it is?

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. Exactly. So the regular cell phone is my daily phone. I don’t use a desk phone. I basically — it’s the phone that I meet with people, talk — well, it’s my communications device. BlackBerry is e-mail, address book and calendar, and the iPhone is web.

CHARLIE ROSE: That’s exactly what — the way I see it. I’m notnearly as proficient as you are.

REID HOFFMAN: It’s a good combination, yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: Everybody will say, from Bill Gates around and Sergey and Larry and all these other wizards on this coast will say that we’re just beginning in terms of the potential of application and productivity from the Internet.

REID HOFFMAN: They’re absolutely right.

CHARLIE ROSE: We’re in the second inning.

REID HOFFMAN: (INAUDIBLE) yes. We are at the end of the first inning. Because basically, we’ve just — if you look at a lot of the growth in the Internet in the last decade, a lot of it is entertainment.
You know, watching clips of videos on YouTube, et cetera, sharing pictures and all this sort of stuff. We’re just beginning to explore how effective finding of information and communication and distribution of information makes you a lot more effective. We’re just beginning that. And all the cloud computing stuff and moving into (ph) the cloud, that is valuable, but you already know we’re…

CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly right.

CHARLIE ROSE: You can do it somewhere else too.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes. But what happens when it’s network? When you get the network of intelligence behind it? It’s — I think it’s going to be spectacular. And I actually hope it will accelerate us through this recession. Right? I mean, it’s one of the things…

CHARLIE ROSE: I haven’t spoken of that, so I’m glad you brought me to that. So what’s the impact of the recession on the world you live in?

REID HOFFMAN: So Silicon Valley, because it’s very future- and investment-oriented is still I think less badly hit than many areas of the world and country. You know, I have a modest hope — this is back to the change-the-world stuff — because I think entrepreneurship is really what has a chance of accelerating us through the recession, that LinkedIn kind of providing the tools for entrepreneurs will help with that, because obviously everyone’s worried about, you know, is this like the 1930s.
Right? And can we get through it faster and more effectively?

And I think, you know, part of the benefit of a network is bringing together financiers, employees, customers, advisers, et cetera, and bringing all of us all together in a really powerful way. And I think that– I think that if you look at what’s going on in the Valley, people are still trying to figure out how, like OK, we have a problem, we have an economic recession. What kind of things can I build that will work now?

CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for coming.

REID HOFFMAN: My pleasure.

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Source: TechCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:11 pm

Why Kindle for iPhone Won’t Hurt Kindle Sales (PC World)

PC World - Some tech analysts are wondering if the free Kindle for iPhone application will cannibalize sales of Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. A BusinessWeek article suggests that Amazon's no-cost app for the iPhone and iPod Touch may give consumers one less reason to buy the pricey Kindle 2:
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:09 pm

Optelecom-NKF Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2008 Results

GERMANTOWN, Md., March 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Optelecom-NKF, Inc. (Nasdaq: OPTC), a leading global provider of Siqura(R) advanced IP-video network solutions, today announced fourth quarter and full year 2008 results.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:05 pm

UnPirate: Mixing software alternatives to Virtual DJ

Section: Web, Downloads, Web Apps, Features, Originals

The Pirated: Virtual DJ

Virtual DJ has been steadily one of the top downloaded applications on Pirate Bay due to its unique features, like advanced Mp3 and video mixing as well as turn table lists, digital scratching and special effects.  The electronic version of the software will cost you $299, so you may want to try some free alternatives first before turning to the dark side.

Get help with DJ Helper

WinAmp has a DJ Helper program that can allow you to mix audio files in order to create amazing sounding tracks.  Features of DJ Helper include 3 cue points, tempo/speed controls, crossfade, volume normalization, and more.  The best thing about DJ Helper is the simple to read and user interface, which will only take about 15 minutes to master.

Site: [DJ Helper]

Make a mix with DJ Mix Lite

DJ Mix Lite is an automatic mixing tool that works with Mp3 files.  The software utilizes a tool called Beatlock Technology, which analyzes the file to find all of the different beats within the song. You can then use the program to make your DJ mixes or a mix CD. This software is ideal for someone that wants a no frills mixing application.

Site: [DJ Mix Lite]

MixSense-Freeware for the pros

For the pro DJ, a program like MixSense would be better suited than DJ Mix Lite.  One of the main appeals of MixSense that it is zero latency with any sound card.  This feature ensures that all of your mixes will not be out of sync and will not experience delays. Other features include special audio effects, 10 cues, auto beat matching, auto BPMs and auto mixing.  The interface is a little more complicated than DJ Helper, but can be grasped after experimenting with a few test mixes.

Site: [MixSense]

Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 5 Mar 2009 | 11:01 pm

Nokia confirms that the 5800 XpressMusic is ready to return to the shelves

Calling the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic’s North American launch a rough start would be a bit of an understatement. After inventory issues, faulty speakers, and reports of connectivity woes, it looks like the 5800 might be returning to the shelves soon. Nokia has issued a statement confirming that the lingering 3G issues were caused by improper firmware configuration, and have since been fixed.

Folks who managed to snatch up a 5800 during their brief stint on the shelves should call Nokia customer service, or stop by one of the flagship locations to swap their unit out with a working on.

Nokia’s word on the matter:

“Following the introduction of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in North America, some consumers reported difficulties connecting with the local 3G network. As customer satisfaction and product quality are a priority for Nokia, we took immediate action by temporarily suspending sales and moving quickly to identify the root cause and resolution.

We have concluded this was an isolated situation related to a configuration change in the North American variant. We have now adjusted the configuration and will resume sales shortly. Those few customers of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic who experience a 3G signal issue are advised to contact Nokia Customer Care. Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience.”

[via Engadget]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 10:55 pm

Sheriff Sues Craiglist For Prostitution Ads

Amerika writes "Craigslist is 'the single largest source of prostitution in the nation,' according to Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Thomas Dart. He has announced that he's filing a lawsuit against the popular classifieds site. Craigslist says it's determined to prevent criminal activity." NewYorkCountryLawyer adds a link to the 28-page complaint (PDF), which "alleges that Craigslist maintains 21 classifications of sex-for-hire, coded as 'w4m,' 'm4m,' 'm4w,' etc." and that it has facilitated child prostitution and kidnapping and human trafficking.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 5 Mar 2009 | 10:50 pm

Doctors Silencing Online Patient Reviews Via Contract

Condiment writes "Next time you're sick, take five and actually read the pile of contracts your doctor dumps on your lap, because it's becoming more and more likely that your doctors are banning patients from posting reviews on the Web. You heard that right: as a prerequisite to receiving medical care, patients are in many cases required to sign away their First Amendment rights!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 5 Mar 2009 | 10:03 pm

MPAA: RealNetworks 'Destroyed' Evidence in Copying Lawsuit

The Motion Picture Association of America claims RealNetworks destroyed evidence in a lawsuit the studios brought challenging the company's DVD copying software.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Mar 2009 | 10:00 pm

State of Colorado Calls Firefox Insecure, IE6 Safe

linuxkrn writes "The State of Colorado's Office of Technology (OIT) has set up a work skills website. The problem is that the site says 'DO NOT use FIREFOX or other Browsers besides IE. It has been decided that Mozilla based, non-IE browsers pose a security risk.' (Original emphasis from site.) If the leading IT agency for the State is making these uneducated claims, should the people worry about their other decisions?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:43 pm

TV Converter Coupons Back In The Mail Soon

An official said Thursday, the agency that mails out coupons for digital TV converter boxes expects to eliminate its wait list in two and a half weeks.The economic stimulus package helped the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) by budgeting $650 million.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:40 pm

Leaked shots of new Instinct hit the webs

What could this be? Spy shots of the new Instinct? It seems that brave forum-goer Phonetec got his hands on Samsung’s latest and took a few snaps with his Blackberry. He says it’s smaller, more lightweight, and that the interface is the same. Well! How exciting!

I certainly like the new look a lot more. We’ll have more info and/or pictures as soon as we get ‘em. Here’s the forum link.

Update: Instinct Mini? Probably.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:39 pm

Live Stream: Y Combinator’s AngelConf Offers A Crash Course In Angel Investing

Today some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent angel investors and entrepreneurs are coming together for AngelConf - a crash course in angel investing that is designed to get the many wealthy tech veterans littering the Valley involved in the startup scene. The event was put together by Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, who believes that while there are many potential investors in Silicon Valley, most of them are unsure how to actually get started (he suggests there may be only one actual investor for every 100 would-be angels). AngelConf is designed to help these potential investors get on their feet, with tips on everything from the legal paperwork involved to picking out the best startups. For more details, check out our past coverage here.

The event is being streamed for free by Justin.tv.

Watch live video from Angel Conf on Justin.tv

Included among today’s speakers are:

Michael Arrington
Paul Buchheit
Jeff Clavier
Ron Conway
Michael Dearing
Paul Graham
Carolynn Levy
Dave McClure
Page Mailliard
Mike Maples
Ariel Poler
Naval Ravikant
Aydin Senkut
Jim Young
Andrea Zurek

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

Source: TechCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:37 pm

Nokia Fixes Faulty U.S. 5800 XpressMusic Phones

Nokia has found a fix for the 5800 XpressMusic phones that made their debut two weeks ago to a slew of customer complaints regarding connectivity to some 3G networks.

"We have concluded this was an isolated situation related to a configuration change in the North American variant," said a Nokia spokesperson in a statement. "We have now adjusted the configuration and will resume sales shortly."

Nokia sells the 5800 phones for $400 as an unlocked and unsubsidized device in the U.S. and the phone is available only through the company's stores.

Last week buyers reported problems with the phone that prevented the device from connecting to 3G networks such as AT&T's. Users did not have any issues logging on to the EDGE network. Nokia pulled the U.S. version of the phone off its shelves and offered the European model temporarily. It was a setback for Nokia which introduced the phone in Europe last year to great success. The phone was billed as the company's first touchscreen device for the mass market. It includes free year long access to any music as part of the company's 'Comes With Music' service. But in the U.S., the phone has been offered without any carrier support.

Nokia now says the updated 5800 XpressMusic phones will be available in all its stores next week. The company has also fixed issues around some of the earpieces selling with its phones. A few users had complained about the quality of the earpieces. "This was a hardware problem impacting a limited number of units," said the Nokia spokesperson. "In an unlikely event that customers are still experiencing this issue, they should contact local Nokia Care where the audio component will be replaced."

See also:
Nokia's Upcoming Music Phone Takes a Shot at Apple

Photo: (Jonathansin/Flickr)

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:34 pm

Google’s Tip Jar Uses Crowdsourcing to Help People Save Money

Google is using its Moderator product to help people share ideas on how to save money in recessionary times. Moderator is a tool that helps groups determine which questions should be asked at all-hands meetings, conferences, and online Q&A sessions, among other scenarios. Google has set up a site called Tip Jar, which is powered by Moderator, to gathers money-saving tips in one place and allow visitors to vote and rank them in order of usefulness. The most popular tips will rise to the top of the list. And users can submit tips to the lists as well.

Google’s Tip Jar breaks down tips by categories, which include finance, shopping, food, vacation, family and others. A sample of some of the more popular tips include:

• “Go to the grocery store with your belly full. You won’t buy too many things because you just ain’t hungry.”
• “Utilize online bill pay with your bank. It keeps you in much closer contact with your money, as you can keep a very close eye on your balance and be in much less danger of overdrafting. It saves you money on stamps and paper checks.”
• “Buy a flask and carry your coffee/tea to work with you. Coffee and tea only costs pennies to make yourself, but costs $1 or more elsewhere.”
• “Eat out one fewer time each month. If it costs you $25 to eat out, but only $5 to eat in, then the $20 you save each month allows you to almost completely fund a $500 emergency savings account.”

Although Google designed the site to provide tips about saving money, there are many users who are making suggestions on other subjects, such as how to be more environmentally-friendly in everyday tasks. Those tips could easily be an entire separate site, so there is definite potential to create Tip Jars for popular and trendy topics.

Tip Jar is a good example of the power of Moderator. Google Moderator is a fairly useful tool to engage a crowd, whether it be within an organization or across the entire web. Google Moderator even caught the eye of the Obama Administration, which recently used Moderator to power part of its Open Government initiative on Change.gov. Moderator was built by Google Platform Engineer Taliver Heath as a side project on top of  Google’s App Engine.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:27 pm

OpenAir Named 2009 CODiE Finalist

OpenAir's Leading PSA Solution Nominated as Best Project Management Solution
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:25 pm

No Patch For Excel Zero-Day Flaw

CWmike writes "Microsoft said today that it will deliver three security updates on Tuesday, one of them marked 'critical,' but will not fix an Excel flaw that attackers are now exploiting. 'It doesn't look like we're going to see patches for any open Microsoft security advisories,' said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security, pointing to three that have not yet been closed. Those include two advisories issued last year — one from April 2008, another from December — and the Excel alert published last week. 'I'm not really surprised that the Excel vulnerability won't be patched, what with the timeline,' said Storms, 'but the others have been open for a long time.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:18 pm

WonderCon 2009: 10 Things We Would Have Bought

:

SAN FRANCISCO — Comic conventions like WonderCon aren't just great places to meet celebrities, get sneak peeks at movie trailers, and gawk at awesome (or awesomely bad) costumes. They're also excellent venues for parting with your entire disposable income, and some of the indisposable income, besides — who needs to eat when you can have that limited-edition 1/8 scale Slave Leia statuette?

With economic times as they are, I (mostly) kept my wallet in my jeans while walking the WonderCon show floor last Friday. But here's what I would have bought if I felt I needed even more junk.

Left: For comparison purposes, all prices will be compared to the cost of an autograph from Mark Hamill, who charges a cool $100 for his silver-penned signature.

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1. As the popularity of Japanese animation, comics and films continues to grow in the West, so does the presence of Japanese otaku swag at WonderCon. From the scatological brain of Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama comes the adorable bou tsuki unchi (literally, poop on stick). This plush toy sold for $10, or just 1/10 of what it costs to get Mark Hamill's autograph.

:

2. The obscure indie comic adventures of Sam and Max are much more popular these days thanks to the videogame from Telltale Games. Symbiote Studios was selling this $75 statue featuring the dog and rabbit team of freelance police. If that sounds expensive, consider that $75 would only buy you three-quarters of Mark Hamill's autograph, and you would have a signed picture of Luke Skywalker that read simply, "Mark Ham."

:

3. Plush hearts are one thing, but plush lungs? Plush livers? And — my God — even a plush spleen? I Heart Guts, the creation of artist Wendy Bryan, is a collection of stuffed toys, shirts, stickers, etc. made of cute versions of the internal organs and glands that make up the fascinating human body. Our favorite shirt depicts two amorous kidneys with the slogan "When Urine Love." Prices range from $14 to $18, roughly equivalent to the approximate sales tax and handling fees for one signed photo of Mark Hamill.

:

4. Street Fighter is back, and so are Street Fighter action figures. You know, back in the day, we had to make do with ugly G.I. Joe–branded Street Fighters that barely resembled the characters they were supposed to. Today's Street Fighter toys, like this limited-edition figure of one-eyed Muay Thai fighter Sagat, are much more awesome. The statue costs $120, making it 20 percent more valuable — as if such a thing were even possible! &mdash than the autograph of Mark Hamill.

:

5. A tiny handful of WonderCon vendors sold collectibles that extended back from even before the Golden Age of comics. This unlicensed, horrifically ugly Popeye chalkware statue would have been given out as a prize for winning a carnival game in the 1930's, said vendor Kookie Enterprises. Nowadays, it sells for $75, the same price as the much more attractive Sam and Max statue and still cheaper than you-know-what.*

*Mark Hamill's autograph

:

6. Immediately around the corner from where Mark Hamill sat and hawked his John Hancock was this giant box of naked G.I. Joes. They could be yours for the low, low price of $5 each, even the headless one. An experiment we forgot to try was to see if we could trade Mark Hamill 20 naked G.I. Joes for one autograph.

:

7. Mattel is currently, for about the third or fourth time, attempting to resurrect the groundbreaking He-Man toy line for an audience of adult collectors. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I bought into it the last time they tried this, and am now the proud owner of five giant plastic bins full of the redesigned He-Man figures. The Masters of the Universe Classics collection goes back to the series' roots, which has apparently resonated with fans: The aftermarket prices on these limited-print $20 figures have skyrocketed. He-Man costs $80 — equals "Mark Hami."

:

8. Let's not worry about No. 8. You know what? There is no No. 8. Moving right along ...

:

9. The most valuable comic book ever is still Action Comics No. 1, the first appearance of Superman. But gaining value these days as the character gains more notoriety is Amazing Fantasy No. 15, the first appearance of Spider-Man, pre-hyphen. The comic originally sold for 12 cents. That's a whopping 84 cents in today's green, but get this: High Grade Comics was offering three different copies at its booth. One in merely "good" condition costs $5,000. This restored near-mint copy fetches $17,000. But the question remains, if you had 17 G's to blow, would you buy this, or 170 signed, 8x10 glossies of Mark Hamill? I think we know the right answer.

:

10. Actually, forget the Sam-and-Max statue; if I could buy anything at WonderCon I would buy Sam-and-Max creator Steve Purcell. When I asked him how much he would cost if he were for sale, he replied that it would be the cost of the individual elemental building blocks of his body, which are only worth about $1 combined. I would recommend he instead go with the price of his body organs on the black market, which Wired magazine actually estimated, in 2003, to be worth $46 million. This, coincidentally, is approximately how much money Mark Hamill cleared in three days of autograph-signing.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:15 pm

Press shots of the Moto RUSH 2 leak out

The Moto RUSH 2 confuses us a bit. It’s not exactly gorgeous, but it’s not terribly ugly. It doesn’t look dirt cheap, but it doesn’t look like something we’d expect to pay more than $99 bucks out the door for. One of the product shots implies it has a touchscreen (note the on-screen dialer), but it’s a tiny one. It’s as if Motorola set out to make the most average phone they could.

Mobile-review was able to dig up these pictures of the RUSH 2 sporting a Verizon badge. According to them, it’ll be known as the A455 when it hits VZW, though no one knows when that might happen. Official product shots usually don’t lead their relative releases by too much, so we’d expect it some time in the next few months at most. We’ve got a special place in our hearts for low-mid-range QWERTY handsets - if Moto and Verizon push this thing out the door at a budget-friendly price, we’ve got nary a bad thing to say about it.

[Via Unwired View]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:08 pm

Skype releases its audio codec for free

Section: Audio, Communications, VoIP, Computers, Web

There’s a pretty good chance that if you use VoIP, you’re probably using Skype.  With 405 million registered users, it’s quite the popular client.  With the new 4.0 release I’m told the voice quality is a lot better (being on Mac, I’m using the Mac 2.8 beta, and it’s not clear if it uses the same codecs).  It’d be only natural that Skype would keep that technology a secret so nobody could copy it, apparently that’s far from the truth.

Skype has announced that it would release the codec for its Silk technology which is what provides for its clearer sound.  The codec is able to translate well over degraded networks, continuing to get decent quality on networks worse than the previous minimum.  It actually “plays back” at 12 kHz, compared to the 3.4 kHz of most telephones, which even to non-audiophiles should obviously be a good thing.

The release of the codec means that Skype can actually be ported to more devices than the current computers, Android and Nokia cell phones.  It could easily be ported to other smartphones, MIDs, and maybe even java capable “dumb” cell phones.  It probably won’t make its way over to the iPhone any time soon, but it can’t have everything, can it?  Either way, wideband audio for making calls should be accepted just about anywhere else the codec, and possibly Skype itself, winds up.

Read [Information Week]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 5 Mar 2009 | 9:02 pm

Sunlight Turns Carbon Dioxide To Methane

Dual catalysts may be the key to efficiently turning carbon dioxide and water vapor into methane and other hydrocarbons using titania nanotubes and solar power, according to Penn State researchers.Burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal release large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Mar 2009 | 8:45 pm

Shizzow's Social Location Service Marries 'Where' With 'What'

The new geo-location web service Shizzow encourages users to broadcast their whereabouts, along with a quick note about what they're doing, to their friends. Context for the "where" data of location-aware services adds social value to a trend some find privacy-eroding and intrusive.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Mar 2009 | 8:35 pm

Drought Threatens Amazon, Speeds Warming

The Amazon's carbon reservoirs are being depleted by drought, research shows.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Mar 2009 | 8:30 pm

Amazon.com To Accept Game Trade-Ins

revjtanton writes "Amid all the discussion and argument about Gamestop's two-billion-dollar trade-in industry it seems Amazon.com is getting in on the action. Like Gamestop, Amazon asks for the games to be in good condition, however they offer just a few more dollars for your discarded game (Gamestop listed Left 4 Dead for the 360 at $24 while Amazon had it at $26.50 trade-in value). Gamestop had already ruffled feathers in the developer and distribution communities with its practice of accepting used games; does Amazon joining the practice legitimize it?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 5 Mar 2009 | 8:27 pm

Dueling Reviews: Watchmen for Fanboys, Comics Virgins

Whether you've read Watchmen a dozen times or never laid eyes on the graphic novel, Wired.com has got you covered. Twin reviews tackle Zack Snyder's monumental movie from differing perspectives.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Mar 2009 | 8:20 pm

Vista SP2 Release Candidate Gets a Wider Audience (NewsFactor)

NewsFactor - Microsoft has unleashed its Vista Service Pack 2 release candidate to a wider audience for testing. The operating system update, which covers both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, features improvements based on extensive feedback from Microsoft customers, the software giant said.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Mar 2009 | 8:14 pm

Ballmer on WinMo: We need to hurry up

It’s a tough time to be an IT guy in charge of mobile right now. Employees go home and get their daily dose of Apple from their friends, family, and television, and come back to work wondering why they’re still using Windows Mobile. At Microsoft’s CIO Summit yesterday, a member of the audience took the opportunity to grill Steve Ballmer on the matter:

Question: With platforms like the Google phone and iPhone coming out, it’s really tough to continue to stand behind Windows Mobile when our employees are bringing these consumer devices into our environments,” the questioner explained. “And in your presentation you put Windows Mobile right in the center there, but it was a phone that doesn’t work in America and an operating system that you haven’t released. I’m wondering what your commitment is to continuing to get newer versions of the operating system in our hands so that we don’t have to fight this battle on the ground.”

Ballmer: “We have a significant release coming this year,” he said. “Not the full release we wanted to have this year but we have a significant release coming this year with Windows Mobile 6.5….We still don’t get some of the things that people want on the highest-end phones. Those will come on Windows Mobile 7 next year. Certainly I’m not, um–there’s opportunities for us to accelerate our execution in this area, and we’ve done a lot of work to really make sure we have a team that’s going to be able to accelerate. With that said, we did sell more Windows Mobile devices last year than Apple did iPhones–just an important factoid to have. Blackberry was a little bit ahead, and Google was nowhere to be seen, except in Silicon Valley, I’m sure. But we’ll do our best to help you with that challenge.”

Now, we can ignore much of that answer because its irrelevant to the question The key part lays right in the middle, where Ballmer pretty much flat out says they need to pick up their feet - and that they’re working on it. It took over a year to get from Windows Mobile 6 to Windows Mobile 6.1, and it’s looking like it’ll take just as long to make the jump from 6.1 to 6.5. Then it’ll be around another year before the release everyone’s actually waiting for (Windows Mobile 7) sees the light of day. That’s roughly 3 years between major OS updates - which is an eternity in the mobile world. Yeah, we’re gonna have to agree with the whole needing-to-hurry-the-hell-up thing.

[Quote via AllThingsD]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 8:12 pm

Chicken manure can biodegrade crude oil

Chinese scientists say they've discovered chicken manure can be used to biodegrade crude oil in contaminated soil. Bello Yakubu, Huiwen Ma and ChuYu Zhang of Wuhan University said they determined bacteria contained in the manure breaks down 50 percent more crude oil than in soil lacking the manure. The scientists said current approaches to remove soil contaminated by crude oil caused by equipment failure, natural disasters or human error come with additional environmental costs.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Mar 2009 | 8:01 pm

Ustream Launches Mobile Video Broadcasting Apps

Live video startup Ustream is making a big push into mobile. Today it is launching a mobile business division, as well as a new set of mobile video broadcasting apps (which can be found here, after login). Right now, the apps work on a wide variety of Nokia phones, including the N95, and on the iPhone, but only jailbroken ones. Alas, the company is still waiting for approval from Apple to release the app through iTunes. Meanwhile, its view-only iPhone app for watching live video streams is approaching one million downloads. The broadcasting app, however, is what we are excited about. It includes integrated chat, audience polling, and GPS mapping. The polling lets broadcasters ask their audience what they want to see or what actions they should take in a live broadcast situation. Another key feature: mobile video broadcasters can send out a message via Twitter or Facebook to their audience to tell them when they are about to start streaming live. (See video below). Under the hood, Ustream has developed its own low-latency streaming technology which reduces the amount of transcoding that needs to be done on the server as well as the amount of buffering that needs to be done on the phone.

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:56 pm

Domesticated Horses Date Back 5,500 Years

People and horses have trekked together through five millenniums of history.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:54 pm

Smaller Towns Produce More Female Athletes

More than 80 percent of female pro soccer and golf players are born in smaller towns.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:54 pm

Non-Fan Review: Watchmen Actors Trumped by Awesome Visuals

With style to spare and an epic tale to tell, director Zack Snyder crafts a bloody yet strangely bloodless superhero story for the screen.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:46 pm

Fan Review: Watchmen Film Straddles Line Between Loyalty, Heresy

Drawing heavily from its complex source material, Zack Snyder's film is one part faithful adaptation, one part deviant abomination.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:46 pm

Ustream Launches Mobile Video Broadcasting Apps

Live video startup Ustream is making a big push into mobile. Today it is launching a mobile business division, as well as a new set of mobile video broadcasting apps (which can be found here, after login). Right now, the apps work on a wide variety of Nokia phones, including the N95, and on the iPhone, but only jailbroken ones. Alas, the company is still waiting for approval from Apple to release the app through iTunes. Meanwhile, its view-only iPhone app for watching live video streams is approaching one million downloads.

The broadcasting app, however, is what we are excited about. It includes integrated chat, audience polling, and GPS mapping. The polling lets broadcasters ask their audience what they want to see or what actions they should take in a live broadcast situation. Another key feature: mobile video broadcasters can send out a message via Twitter or Facebook to their audience to tell them when they are about to start streaming live. (See video below). Under the hood, Ustream has developed its own low-latency streaming technology which reduces the amount of transcoding that needs to be done on the server as well as the amount of buffering that needs to be done on the phone.

Ustream wants to bring its large audience for live streaming videos on the Web (it claims 15 million monthly uniques across both its site and embedded players) over to mobile phones. In the mobile video streaming race, it is fighting for position with Qik and Kyte (their official iPhone apps don’t allow for broadcasting yet either, although Qik has one for jailbroken iPhones). But this is a battle for the hearts and minds of tomorrows mobile video streamers. Taking a page from Kyte, Ustream is getting celebrities and rappers like Lil Wayne to broadcast using Ustream.

Below is a promo video showing UStream’s new mobile app on an iPhone:

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

Source: TechCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:37 pm

World's highest microbial ecosystem found

U.S. scientists say they've discovered volcanic gases are aiding microbial life near the top of the 19,500-foot-tall Socompa volcano in the Andes Mountains. University of Colorado-Boulder researchers said the microscopic life they found is the world's highest-known microbial ecosystem.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:33 pm

Every phone in your home is a Skype phone

Section: Communications, Cellphones, VoIP

Yesterday, Xtreme Technology Corporation announced a new feature in their Xlink device: Xconnect.  While Xlink connects your cell phones to your home phones (allowing customers to use their cell line via their home phones), Xconnect allows you to use your home phones as Skype phones as well.  The software currently works with Windows Vista only (eek!) but support for others is on the way.

With the software installed and the Xlink device connected to your computer via a USB cable - gosh I need more USB ports - all home phones will ring a distinctive tone letting users know a Skype call is coming in.  The Skype caller ID is displayed on the phones as well, pretty handy. 

Xlink connects to your cell phone via bluetooth and to your home phones by plugging into any phone jack.  The unit is a huge help to those walking away from traditional landlines.  Xlink sells for $99 for their base model for just cell lines.

Product page: [Xlink]

Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:14 pm

Google's Latitude to Tell Cops, 'I Don't Remember'

A Google offering that lets your phone constantly tell your friends where you are got a new feature Thursday: total amnesia. The company worked with the EFF rights group and now will forget where you've gone so that there's nothing to tell snooping government agents.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:10 pm

U.S. might loose technological leadership

A Duke University survey indicates half of U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Mar 2009 | 7:09 pm

Climate change is affecting Europe's birds

A British study shows climate change is having a detectable impact on birds across Europe,. Durham University researchers said their findings are the world's first indicator of climate change impacts on wildlife at a continental scale. The scientists -- working with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds -- said they showed a strong link between recent population changes of individual species and their projected future range changes associated with climate change.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Mar 2009 | 6:51 pm

No Single Source Found For Bee Decline

Growing evidence shows that there is likely no proof that a mysterious disease has resulted in the deaths of billions of bees, BBC News reported.Increasing incidences of unexplained bee deaths have been reported all over the world in what is now being called “Colony Collapse Disorder,” yet U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Mar 2009 | 6:50 pm

A little nitrite can benefit the heart

A Boston University School of Medicine study suggests short bursts of nitrites can be beneficial in protecting the heart from stress. The study, researchers said, demonstrated for the first time that short elevations in circulating levels of nitrites are sufficient to have a lasting impact
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Mar 2009 | 6:35 pm

BizShark Takes A Crack At Creating An Automated CrunchBase

If you are looking to do some quick competitive analysis, a new site called BizShark offers a wealth of data about companies. Bizshark is a nifty automated information aggregator. It pulls together the latest business profiles, news, financials, web analytics, social footprint, marketing strategies, and other business information by searching across more than 50 Internet business databases. The site is pretty comprehensive and features a particularly useful tool that compares businesses with their competitors by analytics, traffic and news volume. Using its “CompetitorSort algorithm,” BizShark constantly monitors online discussion threads on related companies, products, and services and then uses a filter to rank the competition by link authority.

BizShark aggregates data from Wikipedia, our own CrunchBase, Technorati, Compete, and Google Search. Secondary sources for information include Yahoo, Quantcast, Alexa, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Indeed, BackType, and other sites. BizShark doesn’t allow users to edit or contribute data to its system, forgoing the Wiki model. Its approach is similar to Quarkbase and KillerStartups’ Dataopedia, an information aggregator that lets users see all the data it can find about a website (Dataopedia also uses Crunchbase data).

BizShark also offers premium services, where uses can pay a monthly fee of $19 to $69 per month to access employee contact information, SEO intelligence and in-depth revenue analysis. Guy Kawasaki, a fan of all things aggregated, is an adviser.

This is undoubtedly a useful tool to find business, analytics and financial information about a company in one centralized place. But without its own human input, particularly on the information that is more difficult to track by an algorithm, such as job moves, funding announcements or product introductions, there is always the possibility of misinformation. We’ve seen other aggregators, such as automated tech news site TechMeme, add a human element to their operations after realizing that algorithms aren’t perfect. But BizShark argues that because it relies solely on aggregation and algorithms for information, it is completely objective. While objectivity is good, accuracy is better.

Regardless, BizShark is definitely worth checking out. Here are a few screenshots:

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

Source: TechCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 6:26 pm

Kepler spacecraft set for Friday launch

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Mar 2009 | 6:23 pm

HTC Magic gets spotted in black

Not diggin’ the vanilla look of the HTC Magic that was shown during the announcement? Looking for something a bit more stealth? Like the yin to the white model’s yang, an all black model of the HTC Magic has hit the floor at this week’s CeBIT show in Germany.

Like the model we saw at MWC, this version isn’t quite final - the narrow buttons will be replaced with round ones before they hit the shelves - but it gives you a pretty idea of what it’ll look like decked out in black. And boy, does it look pretty.

[MobileCowboys via IntoMobile]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 6:01 pm

Gadgetell Review: Clarion MiND mobile Internet navigation device

Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Communications, Email / IM, Mobile, Computers, Mobile Computers, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Transportation, Reviews

I have recently had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Clarion MiND, a mobile Internet navigation device.  The MiND is a mixture of mobile Internet device (MID) and a standalone GPS unit. It was almost like having a standalone GPS device (think Navigon) and Internet Tablet (think Nokia N810) rolled into one.  The MiND offers a wide variety of features and for what it is, has a pretty decent set of specs.

Whats in the box:

• Clarion MiND
• Stylus
• 850 mAH Battery Pack
• AC Adapter with plug converter
• Car Adapter
• Standard Car Cradle with suction cup mount
• Film Screen Protector
• Quick Start Guide

Hardware Features

• 4.8-inch display with an 800 x 480 screen resolution
• 800MHz Intel Atom processor
• 512MB RAM
• 4GB Internal Storage
• SiRFstarIII GPS module with 20-channel GPS receiver
• Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
• Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR with DUN (dial-up network) profile
• External Speaker (on the back)
• microSD card slot
• USB port
• miniUSB port
• 3.5mm Headphone Jack
• Dock Connector

Software Features

Browser: A decent version of Firefox that supports tabbed browsing and also plays Flash.  When browsing you are presented with a full (regular) web page and then have to scroll up and down as well as left and right.  You can also zoom in and out.

E-Mail: A nice addition, but not a feature that I would use personally.  I did test it out and found it to be nice for a mobile client, but with the lack of cellular connection it seems a little unnecessary at times.  I would stick to getting my email on a laptop or cellphone while on the go.

RealPlayer: Though not my personal favorite.  Honestly RealPlayer seems a little dated now and it did perform well.  It plays audio, video and serves as a photo viewer.  The video was nice thanks to the large display.  One drawback with the media aspect is that (although the MiND does have an external speaker) you will feel the need to use headphones.

YouTube: What seems to be a “must have” for an Internet tablet.  The video playback seemed to work well when streaming over Wi-Fi.

MySpace: Any current MySpace users (or Clarion) can get angry at this comment, but this, simply put is a fail.  I do not use MySpace, nor would I just because of this icon.

Calculator: What can I say, it is a calculator.

Notepad: A nice way to jot down notes.

Files: Simple file manager, easy to use, but I found it was rarely needed.

Control Panel: Just like you would think, the Control Panel allows you to set-up your device.  Of course you can also do things like change (or download new) themes.

Connection: Setup, manage and maintain your connectivity.

Map: This was one feature that just did not seem to work.  I am not sure if it was me or the unit.  However, every time I launched the Maps I just saw a black screen.

Navigation (GPS): This is where the MiND really shines and deserves the most credit.  The GPS functionality offered a nice overall setup that was a breeze to use.  Everything from getting your route setup, to re-routing, to offering a nice amount of voice prompts to help make sure I do not miss my turn.  The GPS also has a nice selection of points of interest (POIs) which came in very handy when looking for places like gas stations.  It also offers multiple views, as well as give you speed limit information and road information.  Finally, and this is a bonus for me, the voice was not terrible to listen to.  I am not a huge fan of text-to-speech alerts, but this was rather good and surprised me a few times when pronouncing roads that I just assumed would have been butchered.

Performance

The Good:

• Overall ease of use for the entire unit.  I would feel good giving it to just about anyone to use.
• Great GPS functionality.  Again, this is where the unit really stood out for me.
• The large display was nice for both watching video and also using the Navigation.
• Internet browsing was great using this version of Firefox.

The Bad:

• Large overall size (6.7” x 3.78” x 1.05”).  I will note that it felt great in-hand, but seemed rather large when attached to your window using the included suction cup mount.
• The touchscreen at times was a bit hard to use requiring a few tries.  Again not bad in hand, but quickness when using a GPS device is key, especially when trying to make a quick adjustment at a stop light.
• Lack of customization of the software.  Getting back to those pre-set icons like MySpace.  It would be nice if I could either remove them, or even change them to launch a web page of my choosing.  Of course, this could likely be changed with a future software update.
• Battery life was disappointing.  It seemed like you can almost watch the battery drain in front of your eyes.  Granted, I would use this primarily in my car, and it does come with a car adapter, but you have to really pay attention when it is unplugged.

One other comment; although this is a small issue and is more of a personal issue I think it is important to mention.  At times it would have been nicer to get a little louder volume.  The built-in speaker sounded good, however between the car stereo (even turned down low) and the regular road noise it became hard to hear and caused me to have to glance down at the display more than I feel I should have to.

Final Thoughts

Bottom line here, the unit I received for testing was nice and overall it was very easy to use.  It did have some faults such as the quickly draining battery along with a fairly large overall size, but that said, I do feel it did a great job at what I would consider its main purpose—navigation.  This is where it gets a little touchy for me, the MiND is selling for $650, which seems a little high in my opinion.  Basically, I would say that the Clarion MiND was a good device to use, but I am not sure I could commit to a purchase.  Personally, I think I may opt for a less expensive “mobile internet device” such as an iPod touch or even a cheap netbook and use a standalone GPS unit for my navigation needs.

Product [Clarion MiND]

Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 5 Mar 2009 | 5:30 pm

Yahoo’s Inquisitor Makes Search Shine On The iPhone

Last May, Yahoo acquired a startup called Inquisitor which offers a search plug-in for all the major browsers. Today, Inquisitor is available as an iPhone app and it shows how certain features, such as Yahoo's Search Assist, really shine on a mobile device where you want to keep your typing to a minimum. When you start typing a search in Inquisitor, a list of suggested keywords automatically appears below (just as it does on Yahoo's regular search engine on the Web). The more letters you type, the more refined the suggestions become, allowing you to select one before completing the word in the search box. Results are presented in large, easy-to-read gray boxes, with favicons and two lines worth of text. Abbreviated news results from two sources appear at the very top if they are available, and can be clicked through to see only news results.

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 5:13 pm

Japanese Astronaut to Try 'Flying Carpet'

Astronaut Koichi Wakata will perform 16 tasks in space suggested by everyday folks.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Mar 2009 | 4:54 pm

TV converter box coupons start flowing again (AP)

AP - The agency that mails out coupons for digital TV converter boxes expects to eliminate its wait list in two and a half weeks, an official said Thursday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Mar 2009 | 4:32 pm

The other football: Fox Soccer Channel starts text message alert service

Starting tomorrow, Fox Soccer Channel boldly enters the year 2004, figuring out this whole “text message thing.” The channel, of which I’m a huge fan, will start a text message service that will remind fans of upcoming matches, team news, etc. It’s your standard sports news service, but one tailored to FSC’s niche. Imagine things like “Don’t miss Inter v. Genoa, this Saturday at 12pm Eastern on FSC!” and “News flash: Arsenal have finally scored a goal!”

Fox Soccer Channel isn’t the first sports network to offer text message alerts. ESPN, which, well, doesn’t exactly have the same audience as FSC—does the average guy watching Baseball Tonight know the difference between the FA Cup and the Premier League?—has its own ESPN Alerts service, for example.

Now, in order to sign up for the service, you’ll have to send the text message FSCTV to 37288; all the major carriers are supported, but be prepared to pay per text message unless you’re on one of those all-you-can-text programs.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 4:00 pm

BLOG: Cave Bats Get Heaters

Caves get outfitted with heaters to help bats survive a devastating fungal disease.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Mar 2009 | 3:44 pm

Palm Pre delayed?

Some guy over at some blog is spouting off about the Pre being officially delayed. He says a Palm design employee tipped him off “that the Pre is officially delayed.” Palm went on the defensive this morning on Twitter and said it was still on track for first half of 2009. Yeah, because the Pre was dated in the first place, right?

Tinycomb via ZDnet

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Mar 2009 | 3:23 pm

McMansions Repulsive? Blame Style and Size

Research suggests McMansions' style matters as much as size when it comes to fitting in.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Mar 2009 | 3:10 pm

'Dinochicken' Scheme Puts Evolution in Reverse

Leading paleontologists are attempting to reverse-engineer dinosaurs from chickens.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Mar 2009 | 3:10 pm

Lunar Cycle Turns Hurricanes Into Beasts

Hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean are found to strengthen when the moon is new or full.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Mar 2009 | 2:10 pm