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The Google Ventures Cheat Sheet
Earlier this week, Google finally announced the formation of a new venture arm called Google Ventures. It is where all smaller-scale venture investments from Google will now originate. The day of the announcement, I chatted on the phone with Bill Maris and Rich Miner, the two Google executives who are managing the fund to get a sense of what they are interested in and how the fund will work. It turns out they are open to investing in pretty much anything from the Internet and cloud computing to healthcare and mobile. “We don’t want to artificially limit ourselves,” says Miner. What about space elevators? “Show me one that works,” retorts Maris, “and I will invest in it.” The two of them will run the entire fund pretty much by themselves, bringing in other Googlers as needed for expertise and to help evaluate startups. Both Maris and Miner have done venture investing before: Maris for Swedish holding company AB and Miner for Orange Ventures. Miner will be leaving the Android team at Google, where he negotiated many of the deal with carriers and handset manufacturers. A couple weeks ago, I argued that setting up a venture arm is a bad idea because there are better ways for Google to be deploying its capital. Maris pointed out the relatively small amount of capital involved ($100 million) and responded: “Google has always had a strong belief in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. Google has always made investments in companies, and we will continue to do that.” My big concern, however, was that Google would invest for strategic reasons instead of purely economic ones. Both Maris and Miner assured me that this would not be the case. “It is true that strategics have had mixed results,,” acknowledges Miner, “but we think we can put this money to work. Startups end up doing one thing and then have to shift direction. If you take money from someone who wanted to see you do X because you said you would do X in that first Powerpoint, they may restrict your movement as you need to adapt.” Miner says Google Ventures will avoid that pitfall. If you are an entrepreneur trying to figure out how to navigate your way to a pitch session with them, below is a cheat sheet with the basics you should know.
So where does that leave startups and can they really trust that one-way mirror? Any startup related to the consumer Internet, search, or advertising would be well advised to be wary about revealing too much of themselves to Google Ventures. “This is a self-limiting process,” admits Maris. “We are not going to know the group of people who do not want to talk to us.” I’m sure they will have plenty of people knocking on their door regardless. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 4 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm How Do I Put an Invention Into the Public Domain?Nefarious Wheel writes "I have a couple of inventions — mechanical devices, based on physical principles — that I believe could transform certain aspects of industry. The trouble is, I can't afford to file patents, and even if I could, I'm not sure that would be the best way for these devices to be made available as widely as I'd like. Is there some way to publish the details of these innovations in the public domain in such a way as to protect them from being snaffled away by some patent troll? I'd be happy with a contribution (or simple attribution) model for recompense, which could be zero to whatever, but that's not as important to me as getting the ideas out there for anyone who wants to use them. This isn't copyright, and I know of no patent equivalent to Creative Commons. In short, what's the best way to protect an invention against someone filing a patent on it, short of patenting the device yourself? Can this be done?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Apr 2009 | 2:47 pm If you actually made it, Sprint, I would buy it Source: Gizmodo | 4 Apr 2009 | 2:00 pm Juice Boxes With Realistic Fruit Skin TexturesBy Andrew Liszewski Now that I think of it, I haven’t had a juice box in years, but if I were to find one on a store shelf that was packaged like these, how could I pass it up? Created by Japanese...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 1:53 pm Engineering Students Build Robotic Foosball PlayersAndre writes "As their final-year project, an eight-man team of fourth-year electrical and computer-engineering students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, constructed a robot-controlled, motor-and-actuator foosball table capable of playing against human opponents in a two-on-two fashion; one mechanical player controls two defensive rods (goalies and full-backs) and the other controls two offensive rods (half-backs and forwards). They considered the computers 'medium-skilled' players in that they were very competitive against beginners and fairly competitive against intermediates."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Apr 2009 | 1:32 pm Creative Biblical Advertising - 24/7 Proves They Create Worlds With Post-Production (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) I have to give it up to 24/7, who specializes in post-production services, for having one of the most original and creative ad campaigns I have come across for a while. Dubbed We Create...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 1:19 pm Transcontinental Boutiques - Kate Moss Helps Launch Topshop New York (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) Kate Moss and a long list of A-listers attended the grand opening of the first US iteration of the successful UK high street brand Topshop. Sir Philip (pictured with Kate Moss at...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:59 pm Swedish net traffic halves after new law - VNUNet.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:49 pm BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 3-29-2009Section:  We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:42 pm Vegan Bomber Jackets - Leather is Replaced With Linen for Spring 2009 (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Bomber jackets are an undeniable fashion mainstay, but when made out of leather, the fashionable vegans of the world are all left living a jacketless existence. Now, while I myself...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:39 pm Nintendo’s DSi Hits U.S. Market On SundayNintendo will begin selling its next-generation DSi handheld gaming console in the United States on Sunday. The company is marketing the new product, which will sell for $170, as an all-purpose social and entertainment device. In addition to its game-playing capability, the DSi includes two cameras, a microphone and a variety of tools that will allow users to create and share content.The DSi is the third generation in the DS franchise. It began selling in Europe on Friday and was launched last November in Japan, where it has sold 2 million units to date."This thing is to the digital camera what the iPod was to the MP3 player," Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter told Reuters.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:30 pm PVE, state funds show interest in Opel stake - paperFRANKFURT, April 4 (Reuters) - Private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds have shown interest in the European business of General Motors , the US carmaker's European head told a German magazine. ...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:29 pm Blown Plastic Lights - Nendo Blown Fabric Produces Lighting That Mimics Glass (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Blown Fabric by Nendo will be shown at La Triennale di Milano for the Tokyo Fiber 09 Senseware exhibition at the end of this month. The fabric was created to demonstrate the new possibilities...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:19 pm Believing In Medical Treatments That Don't WorkHugh Pickens writes "David H. Newman, M.D. has an interesting article in the NY Times where he discusses common medical treatments that aren't supported by the best available evidence. For example, doctors have administered 'beta-blockers' for decades to heart attack victims, although studies show that the early administration of beta-blockers does not save lives; patients with ear infections are more likely to be harmed by antibiotics than helped — the infections typically recede within days regardless of treatment and the same is true for bronchitis, sinusitis, and sore throats; no cough remedies have ever been proven better than a placebo. Back surgeries to relieve pain are, in the majority of cases, no better than nonsurgical treatment, and knee surgery is no better than sham knee surgery where surgeons 'pretend' to do surgery while the patient is under light anesthesia. Newman says that treatment based on ideology is alluring, 'but the uncomfortable truth is that many expensive, invasive interventions are of little or no benefit and cause potentially uncomfortable, costly, and dangerous side effects and complications.' The Obama administration's plan for reform includes identifying health care measures that work and those that don't, and there are signs of hope for evidence-based medicine: earlier this year hospital administrators were informed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that beta-blocker treatment will be retired as a government indicator of quality care, beginning April 1, 2009. 'After years of advocacy that cemented immediate beta-blockers in the treatment protocols of virtually every hospital in the country,' writes Newman, 'the agency has demonstrated that minds can be changed.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:18 pm Bio-Shearing Sheep - Scientific Fleecing Avoids Animal Injuries, Increases Wool Yield (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) BIOCLIP is a protein that causes sheep to shed their fleece. When used, mechanical shearing is not necessary. Chemical shearing requires an injection about a month before wool harvest...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:59 am Film Noir Lingerie - Black Lace, Ruffles and Bows for the Fashionable Femme Fatale (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The French are known for decadent and risque lingerie, and Chantal Thomass does the style as well as any. With design cues that evoke a retro femme fatale, the pieces in the gallery...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:39 am Announcing the Guardians Media Talk USAThe Guardian is launching its first US podcast, an American rendition of its wonderful Media Talk show, and I’m proud (and nervous) to say that I’m presenting it, as they say. Here’s...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:35 am Israeli Entrepreneurs: Know What Game You Are Playing
TEL AVIV– The other day I spoke at an Israeli event called Techonomy where six handpicked Israeli startups were demoing new products. The companies were impressive, the audience packed, it was sponsored by blue-chip tech names, and well-heeled experts were on stage offering feedback. In fact, it could have been just like a Silicon Valley event a la TechCrunch 50 in every way except one: Experts and attendees were encouraged—strongly—to offer only positive feedback. To understand how rare that is, witness the daily blog posts calling out Valley startups—even the most successful ones—for lacking a business model, redesigning a home page or just generally “sucking.” Or just read the comment stream on any TechCrunch post. Everyone surrounding the Silicon Valley ecosystem is a critic, and if they’re anonymous, a vicious one. Hell, Michael Arrington gets spit on and half of my career has been made profiting from anonymous, vitriolic haters. And we just write about startups. I don’t like it, but that’s the unfortunate reality that goes along with doing my job. A lot of this insistence on positivity comes from the Godfather of the Israeli Web scene, Yossi Vardi. It’s one of the main house rules at his KinnerNet conference, where he tells people if you don’t agree with something someone else is saying maybe you are the problem. Well said, Mr. Vardi. The amazing thing is how people respect the rule. Vardi invokes a combination of fear, respect and sucking up among Web entrepreneurs in Israel, so when he demands people be nice, they actually listen. He came up to me after the Techonomy event, and I was slightly worried he was about to yell at me for saying one of the presenting companies needed a better logo because you couldn’t decipher its name. (Sort of a problem with a consumer Web business, if you ask me.) Instead, we got into an interesting talk about this insistence on positivity. In short, he wants to promote a comfortable environment where smart entrepreneurs who may be easily intimidated aren’t driven out of the industry. I can understand that. I think a lot of the criticism written about Valley startups is uncalled for at best, and at worst just not that interesting. Many people try to hold startups to an impossible bar. They are startups after all. They are supposed to be doing something that is risky, seems insane and can easily fail. If they aren’t, they’re probably not taking enough risk. Most lazy bloggers and commenters have learned one thing: If you want to maximize the odds that you’re right about a startup, then trash them, because most startups fail. It’s much harder to believe in something, and harder still to say you do. That said, I’m not sure I understand the concept of “constructive positivity.” I think a lot of startups benefit from, well, honesty. And honesty isn’t always nice. Take the first post I did on Israel. Sure, some people think the Dow Jones numbers are understating returns. But no one will argue that Israeli returns have actually been good in the last eight years. Guess what: They haven’t been great in the Valley either, something people write about all the time. You never hear an uproar, because it’s true. VCs, entrepreneurs and the whole Valley ecosystem gets it, knows it’s a problem and everyone is quietly trying various ways to solve it. If people were openly talking about the poor returns in Israel—the way they do in the Valley—would there have been such an uproar? Or would people just wince, nod, and aim to be the exception? I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people in Tel Aviv about this idea of honesty—something Israelis are supposed to be known for. Essentially people have said everything about Israel inflames passion. OK, that’s a fair point and understandable. But the government, entrepreneurs, and investors can’t court mainstream U.S. bloggers and business press for coverage and not expect the same rules by which we write about our own startups, even the standout ones like Facebook and Twitter. That’d be a bit like me saying people should be nice to me because I’m a woman, wouldn’t it? But here’s where Vardi’s view of the world makes sense: He doesn’t aim for his companies to build empires worth a billion or even hundreds of millions of dollars. What’s more, he said it’s unfair to expect them to. He told me after the event that Israeli companies are great at coming up with technology that a bigger company, with a bigger market, and more resources can then develop. He called them “tomato seeds”—there is a lot packed in there, but it’s not going to grow into a tomato plant on its own. And indeed, Vardi has had a good number of exits and made money off them based on this theory. Of course, the natural question then is, should big venture capital money even be in Israel to begin with? I asked Vardi, and he said it was a good question. He noted that big venture capital money shouldn’t be funding Web applications, period, given the low capitalization and relatively small exits. Agreed. One of the main themes in my book about Web 2.0 is the comparatively-low importance of big money in this wave of companies, and that’s why you’ve seen such a different role played by angels and the emergence of strong seed funds like First Round Capital over the last few years. Ideally, I think a mix between the positivity of the Israeli scene and the honesty of the Valley scene would be an improvement for both communities. But, I’ll grant Vardi that companies just aiming to build a product, don’t deserve a Facebook-level of scrutiny and should be nurtured. But, that means as someone who writes for primarily a U.S. business audience, I also probably shouldn’t be flying around the world to cover them. In short, Israeli entrepreneurs can’t have it both ways. I, for one, continue to believe big things can come out of Israel, the same way they can come from anywhere. After just two weeks of foraging, I’ve found a handful of entrepreneurs swinging for the fences and building real, viable companies that I expect to watch for years to come. As someone who gets paid to analyze and ask uncomfortable questions, I’m going to hold those companies to the same bar that I hold any company with potential in the Valley to. And if any entrepreneur doesn’t want that kind of coverage: Don’t call me for a meeting. Information provided by CrunchBase
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:23 am Israeli Entrepreneurs: Know What Game You Are PlayingTEL AVIV-- The other day I spoke at an Israeli event called Techonomy where six handpicked Israeli startups were demoing new products. The companies were impressive, the audience packed, it was sponsored...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:23 am Why Did Sergey Brin Stop Blogging?
Of course, it was the actual content of the second blog post (the one after the obligatory introduction one) that was the real story there. After all, an executive of a major, public company sharing his genetic predisposition to Parkinson’s disease is not exactly an everyday thing. The unusual blog post, evidently hosted on Google’s Blogger service, garnered quite some press coverage, and made a lot of people curious about what other insights in Brin’s personal life would follow. After all, the first post said the blog would be reflecting the man’s ‘life outside of work’, and it allowed moderated comments (although none were ever approved after all). But there never came a third post, and the blog quietly slipped out of the attention stream for lack of updates. Today, the blog is still online, but it’s as dead silent as it’s been for the past 6 months. So maybe the real question is: why did Sergey Brin start blogging? I think this excerpt from the blog gives it away:
23andMe is the biotech startup that was co-founded by Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki. The company can map customers’ DNA and help them find information about their ancestry and their risk of getting certain diseases (Mike tried it). Google ended up taking a $3.9 million stake in 23andMe in May 2007, after Brin had personally loaned the company $2.6 million. It’s always been a strange story, and I doubt we’ve heard the end of it. So what I’m wondering: did Sergey Brin actually start the blog with good intentions, hoping he would find the time in his busy life to share tidbits about the personal part of it, or was this just a way for him to draw a lot of attention to his genetic mutation and - conveniently - how his wife’s new startup plays a role in it? I guess we’ll never know for sure, unless of course he responds to this on his blog. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: TechCrunch | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:21 am Why Did Sergey Brin Stop Blogging?Remember back in September 2008 when Google co-founder Sergey Brin started a personal blog? TechCrunch was the first to spot it, and it was interesting enough for the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:21 am Nintendo, Biting Back at iTunes - Washington Post
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:14 am DSi midnight launch party to feature free i am 8-bit stuffFROM GAMERTELL - The art site, gallery and sometimes book, i am 8-bit, has teamed up with Nintendo for a midnight launch of the Nintendo DSi. The free party will start 9 P.M., April 4, 2009, ending at midnight (April 5, 2009) and will take place at… Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:12 am As West warms, some fear for tiny mountain dwellerThe American pika _ a short-legged, hamster-sized fur ball that huddles in high mountain slopes _ isn't built for long-distance travel. So as the West's climate warms, the tiny pika has...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 11:00 am Inbreeding taking toll on Michigan wolvesAlthough confirmed only recently, the problem apparently has been festering for decades in the small, isolated packs in Michigan's Isle Royale National Park. The abnormalities, also foundSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 10:59 am Italian Football Referees Banned From Using Social Media
In Italy, it’s generally forbidden for football (that would be soccer) referees to make any public statements in the media even after a game has finished. The memo presumably simply wants to make it clear to the officials what the Association understands ‘media’ to encompass, so it included a detailed list of what they should be avoiding. Literally, the message translates as: “referees are barred from making statements in public including via email, their own websites, mailing lists, forums, blogs or discussion groups such as Facebook and similar systems.” Officials who break the rules will be deferred to the Disciplinary Commission. Strangely, this contradicts earlier reports that Nicchi was actually thinking of ‘revolutionizing’ Italian football by scrapping the rule that prevents officials from being interviewed by the media about finished games. We intend to get to the bottom of this, of course, because the public needs to know what is really going on here! Meanwhile, anyone else is still free to bash the referees on social networks, forums and blogs, so no harm done really. (Via Mazi on Twitter) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 4 Apr 2009 | 9:55 am Larrabee ISA RevealedDavid Greene writes "Intel has released information on Larrabee's ISA. Far more than an instruction set for graphics, Larrabee's ISA provides x86 users with a vector architecture reminiscent of the top supercomputers of the late 1990s and early 2000s. '... Intel has also been applying additional transistors in a different way — by adding more cores. This approach has the great advantage that, given software that can parallelize across many such cores, performance can scale nearly linearly as more and more cores get packed onto chips in the future. Larrabee takes this approach to its logical conclusion, with lots of power-efficient in-order cores clocked at the power/performance sweet spot. Furthermore, these cores are optimized for running not single-threaded scalar code, but rather multiple threads of streaming vector code, with both the threads and the vector units further extending the benefits of parallelization.' Things are going to get interesting."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Apr 2009 | 9:13 am Why URL shorteners suckDelicious founder Joshua Schachter says that URL shorteners like TinyURL are a bad idea, because they make the web more fragile, dependent on the shortener services as central points of failure. They also assist spammers, undermine googlejuice, and expose users to security vulnerabilities. I agree -- and I like Kottke's suggestion: "With respect to Twitter, I would like to see two things happen: 1) That they automatically unshorten all URLs except when the 140 character limit is necessary in SMS messages. 2) In cases where shortening is necessary, Twitter should automatically use a shortener of their own."The transit's main problem with these systems is that a link that used to be transparent is now opaque and requires a lookup operation. From my past experience with Delicious, I know that a huge proportion of shortened links are just a disguise for spam, so examining the expanded URL is a necessary step. The transit has to hit every shortened link to get at the underlying link and hope that it doesn't get throttled. It also has to log and store every redirect it ever sees.on url shorteners (via Kottke) Source: Boing Boing | 4 Apr 2009 | 8:19 am HOWTO Make a business-card catapault
Instructables user Clide has created a business card that you can assemble into a papercraft catapault! "After seeing the business cards with gears a few months back (normal and planetary), I started thinking about what else could be made to fit in a business card. I wanted something unique and memorable that could represent me and my creativity. What I came up with was a business card that can convert into a rubber band powered desktop catapult."
Cardapult the Business Card Catapult
(via Craft) MIT designs viruses that can build batteries - VNUNet.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Apr 2009 | 7:21 am Twitter: Building Businesses Tweet by Tweet - BusinessWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Apr 2009 | 7:08 am New Palm Pre apps underscore Apple's iPhone limitations - Apple Insider
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Apr 2009 | 6:23 am Large Ice Shelf Expected To Break From AntarcticaMollyB sends this excerpt from CNN: "A large ice shelf is 'imminently' close to breaking away from part of the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists said Friday. Satellite images released by the European Space Agency on Friday show new cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf where it connects to Charcot Island, a piece of land considered part of the peninsula. The cracks are quickly expanding, the ESA said. ... The Wilkins Ice Shelf — a large mass of floating ice — would still be connected to Latady Island, which is also part of the peninsula, and Alexander Island, which is not, said professor David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey. ... If the ice shelf breaks away from the peninsula, it will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already floating, scientists say. Some plants and animals may have to adapt to the collapse."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Apr 2009 | 6:09 am Supercomputer Pioneer David R. Miller Dies at 82DENVER, April 4 /PRNewswire/ -- David R. Miller, a pioneer in scientific computer design and supercomputer development, died March 30th in Parker, CO, at the age of 82. Mr.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Apr 2009 | 5:57 am Banks resisting pressure to swap debt for stock-WSJWASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - Banks that have loaned Chrysler LLC $6.8 billion are resisting government pressure to swap more than $5 billion of that debt for stock, the Wall Street Journal reported...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 5:12 am "Marx was... second???"Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger It looks like it was actually Thomas Jefferson who came up with the concept of "fictitious capital"! Since the "Marx was Right!" post proved so darned popular, I thought I'd do a lil' bait and switch, but looky at what we have here:
Via Infectious GreedSource: Boing Boing | 4 Apr 2009 | 4:19 am Beer TV commercial featuring a Moog, c. 1970sThis phenomenal 1970s commercial for Schaefer Beer features Edd Kalehoff, composer of The Price Is Right theme music, on the Moog synthesizer. (via Boing Boing Gadgets) Source: Boing Boing | 4 Apr 2009 | 4:08 am Quebec Says 'Non' To English-Only Video Gamesdaveofdoom writes "The French-Canadian government of Quebec is saying 'non' to English-only video games if French versions are available. 'It's causing a lot of consternation among retailers and gamers alike, who fear the rules will lead to delays in video games arriving in the province, and may not accomplish what the law intends, which is to promote and protect the French language.' This is a ridiculous rule, as game companies can simply stop creating French versions of games to bypass the restriction."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Apr 2009 | 4:04 am The Terminator as Metaphor for LifeWhen I first started working on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the studio gave me a general idea: They wanted to do a show about John and Sarah Connor, set some time after Terminator 2. So, as I was sort of staring at the concept, trying to figure out how I would approach it, I realized that the thing that works about Terminator is the relationships. But we needed a central relationship to anchor the story. The first Terminator movie was a romance, really, between Kyle and Sarah. The second movie is a father-son story between John and the Terminator. So I thought my show, at its core, would be a family drama, a relationship between a mother and a son who is coming of age. But if we're going to be about Sarah and John, there should be a girl. That's what usually breaks up that Oedipal relationship. And I decided to make the girl a Terminator. But before I could actually start writing the show, I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. I had to have an operation to remove the tumor, which meant I couldn't write it for that season. So I had a couple of months when I couldn't do anything, and I was in pain. I had this crisis — I went to a therapist, and I said, "What am I doing? I'm going to write a fucking show about a scary robot? Who cares?" But when she calmed me down, I started reflecting upon it, and I realized that this show really was about my life. It was about mortality. The first voiceover I ever wrote for the series started with "I will die. I will die, and so will you. Death gives no man a pass." That's what the Terminators are — they're death coming to get us. I still go in every six months for a scan, so I'm constantly reminded of this. It's something we talk about a lot in the writers' room. You know, cancer is cell mutation, and the artificial intelligence Skynet is in some ways a mutation. But more metaphorically, it's about predestination. Can you change your future, or is it something inside you, unchangeable? I had this idea, taken from T3, that Sarah had cancer, but then on our show she time-travels forward, past her death date. So did she jump over her death or merely postpone it? When Sarah did all that exercise in T2, she was doing it to gird herself externally. But I thought it would be interesting if she was doing it to chase something inside herself as well. She has her own personal apocalypse out there in the future — could she exercise enough or take enough vitamins to make it go away? To me, the show is about what you do with life in the face of death. I mean, yeah, it's a genre show. It's the Terminator, and it's kind of pulpy, and some people think it's past its prime. But you can find yourself in this show. I definitely found myself in it. Josh Friedman, executive producer of the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, thought he was making a fun TV show. Then he got cancer — and found a metaphor for life. He told this story to Wired senior editor Adam Rogers. Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Apr 2009 | 4:00 am It's Back -- Why the Terminator Is UnstoppableIt's back. Naturally. That's what Terminators do, after all: They come back. You shoot them. They get up. They're dependable that way, even honorable. Gumpishly innocent, too—they kill dutifully, dispassionately, without malice. (And they run like Forrest: flat-out and stiff-armed.) They're even kind of old-fashioned—or as old-fashioned as cybernetic assassins from the future can be. These new-model droids they've got nowadays—the Cylons from Sci Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica, the sentient programs from The Matrix—they're practically indistinguishable from humans. But Terminators are more like '50s robots: prone to speaking in monotone, strangely unable to master normal human neck-swiveling, and adept at the thousand-yard stare. These are union-made, working-class killing machines. They just punch in and whatever happens happens. 
Illustration: John Ritter
T3: It's Not That Bad
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines has long been derided as a pump-priming political exercise for the then-future Governator, cleverly disguised as a 109-minute Toyota commercial. But c'mon, a campy Arnie and rampant product placement aren't new to this franchise. (There was more Pepsi flowing in T2 than in the theater lobby.) Sure,The Terminator and its follow-up are solid, but T3 deserves some love, too. For starters, it stars the best actors in the trilogy. (Nick Stahl and Claire Danes, as predestined lovebird rebels John Connor and Kate Brewster, can at least claim careers outside of T3.) Then there are the key robot upgrades, specifically a Terminatrix with enlargeable cyborg breasts. (Thank you, Kristanna Loken!) Plus, T3 hits its crowd-pleasing marks: Silly clothing-acquisition scenario? Check. Sassy catchphrases? Talk to the hand! Killer special f/x? The best of the franchise. But director Jonathan Mostow shows elegant restraint in his vision of Judgment Day, a scene we'd been waiting nearly 20 years to see. When the nukes fly, our view is of a red barn, framed by the smoke trails of Earth-bound missiles, then a shot from space. It's a moment of quiet awe and, in retrospect, eerily similar to the robot attack on planet Caprica in BSG. But don't get me started on those gods damn toasters.—Scott Dadich Photo: Warner Bros/Everett The same could be said for the 25-year-old Terminator franchise, a science-fiction workhorse jerry-rigged from used but sturdy parts (a Harlan Ellison concept here, a Phil Dick theme there) and beloved by bazillions for its unfussiness, its jeeplike versatility, and its simple trudging perseverance in the face of plot holes, cast changes, and long years between installments. In May, a fourth movie, aptly subtitled Salvation, promises to reboot the whole darned robocalypse and lay the groundwork for two more films that should take us through at least 2013. We'll never turn up our nose at a brand-new, planned-out Terminator trilogy—fresh helpings of crushed skulls and battling bots, huzzah! But a word to the film's mono-monikered director, McG: It's the saga's lack of a mapped-out, multiplatform, multipicture mythos (à la Star Wars) that's actually Terminator's greatest strength. Abandoned by its creator after two smashing yet ideologically divergent chapters (the first a Reagan-era meditation on the inevitability of human self-destruction, the second a post-Cold War adventure where there's "no fate but what we make") and eventually auctioned in the wake of its producers' bankruptcy, Terminator survived to spawn yet another film, a TV series, books, comics, heaps of merch, and an attraction at Universal Studios theme parks. All of this with no blueprint or business plan, in a media jungle so complex nothing can be left to chance—there's no fate but what we make. How is that possible? It's possible because of Terminators themselves. They're the draw here. Like many beloved phenomena—penicillin, the Internet, Letterman—they're not planned. They just happen, and they are awesome. Their programming is refreshingly simple: Destroy. Occasionally protect. And, when necessary, quip. These basic directives trump everything, even the time-tangled narrative, a story so contorted and paradox-laden it could induce scoliosis in a Möbius loop: In a not-so-distant future, where civilization has been nuked by intelligent machines, the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, sends a fellow soldier back through time to 1984 to protect his future mother, Sarah, from a robotic assassin—a Terminator programmed to eliminate Connor before he's even born. (Dick Cheney wasn't the first cyborg to devise a doctrine of preemptive defense.) But that's just half the soldier's mission; the other half, the half Connor doesn't tell him about, is to sire Connor by having sweaty terror sex with Sarah in a grungy motel. (Pimping your best friend to your once-and-future mom, from across time, to engineer your own birth—that is so awesome.) Meanwhile, the Terminator sent back by the globe-killing AI is also on self-fathering duty: It unwittingly leaves a bread-crumb trail of super-sophisticated scrap that leads human engineers directly to the creation of ... the globe-killing AI. "God," sighs Sarah at the end of T1, "a person could go crazy thinking about this." That's the principal lesson from The Terminator: Don't think. Run. "Come with me," goes another trademark line, "if you want to live!" Yes, it's all pretty clunky if you stop to think about it. (Which you absolutely should not, at the risk of insanity.) But, hey, we like the clunk. We like the cheesy demon-red eyes, sunk into that gleaming metal skull. We like the lumbering. We like the pre-CG, John Carpenter-esque, irreplaceably physical heft of it all. If we're gonna fight machines, let's fight machines, big shiny ones, and let's fight 'em for real, here on the physical plane. And if we're gonna travel through time, let's do it naked. (Don't worry! The laws of time and space dictate that we will land near a leather jacket—and in our size, too!) Trailer: Terminator Salvation
For more, visit wired.com/video.
When an obsolete design sticks around, it's for a reason. Sure, we marvel at the new models—the liquid-metal T-1000 from T2, more mercurial than Jeremy Piven and a certified visual wonder in 1991; Kristanna Loken's slinky, Transformer-ish T-X in T3, who wreaked the same carnage Arnold did in his prime, only backward and in heels; Summer Glau's Cameron in TV's The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the first cyborg to look like she could credibly front a Canadian indie-rock band. But the secret of their success is the same as Arnold's: implacability. Bells and missiles aside, we want the same unblinking Asperger's case—the flesh of the face half-ripped away to reveal the silvery endoskeleton beneath—shooting its way calmly through a mall in steady pursuit of a target or jerking expressionlessly as the LAPD pesters it with yet another fruitless fusillade. Terminator Salvation aims to dispense with the fleshy sheath and show us the Full Clunky, but the principle is the same: Dodging bullets is fine for a while, but in the long run aren't you more interested in (and terrified by) the guy who just takes it? Who. Just. Keeps. On. Coming? Maybe that's why we like 'em so damn much. Maybe that's why Terminator is so hard to kill. 
Christian Bale plays John Connor, leader of the human resistance, in the upcoming Terminator Salvation.
Photo: Richard Foreman Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Apr 2009 | 4:00 am Evolution of a Killer Franchise -- The Terminator (1984-????)In October 1984, a low-budget techno-thriller starring that funny-accented bodybuilder from Conan the Barbarian became a runaway hit. The Terminator has since morphed into a multibillion-dollar global enterprise that includes every type of media and merchandise imaginable—from roller coasters to boxer shorts. Here's how a killing machine evolved into a killer franchise. 1984 
The Terminator debuts, directed by James Cameron and coproduced by his future wife, Gale Anne Hurd, and Hemdale Films. Made for $6.4 million, the film pulls in $78 million worldwide. Meanwhile, the first wave of novelizations hits bookstores, and a franchise is born. 1988 
The first Terminator-based comic—a 17-issue run by NOW Comics—is published. Some of the series' subplots are silly—a village filled with T-800 bakers, cops, and nuns?—but NOW later releases Terminator: The Burning Earth, award-winning artist Alex Ross' first published work. 1990 
The first Terminator videogame for PCs hits the streets, sparking more than two dozen iterations across a wide array of consoles. Flush with Rambo dough, indie film studio Carolco Pictures acquires Hemdale's rights for a film follow-up. Cameron signs on to direct. 1991 
Terminator 2: Judgment Day—at $100 million, then the most expensive production in Hollywood history—is the top-grossing movie of the year, eclipsing $200 million in the US and $520 million worldwide. 1992 
T2-mania is in full swing. Metallic T-800 skulls show up on backpacks, boxer shorts, lunch boxes, and cubicle walls as licensees like Kenner and MacFarlane Toys see total sales for Terminator-related merchandise climb into the nine-digit range. 1995 
Thanks to pricey flops like Cutthroat Island and Showgirls, Carolco files for bankruptcy. Because the company owns half the Terminator rights, suddenly the franchise's future is uncertain. 1996 
T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, a 12-minute theme-park attraction, opens at Universal Studios in Orlando. One of the priciest ($60 million) and most complex attractions ever, it's codirected and written by Cameron and features original performances by all of T2's principal actors. 1997 
Producers Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar pay $8 million at auction for Carolco's half of the rights to Terminator and, later, fork out an additional $7 million to acquire Hurd's half. The third installment of Terminator lurches forward—minus Cameron, who passes on directing. 2003 
Director Jonathan Mostow spends a whopping $187 million to make Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. It makes a modest $44 million on opening weekend, but its ultimate box-office gross lifts the film franchise's total to $1 billion worldwide. 2007 
Privately owned Halcyon buys all Terminator rights from Vajna and Kassar for an undisclosed amount. After suing MGM for holding up production on a sequel, it signs a deal with Warner Bros. Charlie's Angels director McG is tapped to helm T4, the first installment of a new trilogy. 2008 
Fox's The Sarah Connor Chronicles, starring Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, and Summer Glau, debuts to 18.3 million viewers. It's a critical darling but struggles for ratings and is hobbled by the Writers Guild strike. Nonetheless, Fox renews the series for another season. 2009 
Warner Bros. is set to release the $200 million, postapocalyptic Terminator Salvation, starring Christian Bale, in nearly 4,000 theaters on Memorial Day weekend. A battalion of next-gen videogames is in the works, and a $10 million, 2,850-foot-long Terminator roller coaster opens at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Illustrations: John Ritter; Photos: 1984: Everett; 1992: Allen Shope/Treasure-cove; 1995: Getty; Furlong: Everett; 1997: Getty; 2003: Warner Bros/Everett; 2008: Michael Desmond/Fox Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Apr 2009 | 4:00 am Inside Terminator Salvation's Bleak WorldThe Terminator is a multibillion-dollar global enterprise that includes every type of media and merchandise imaginable — from roller coasters to boxer shorts. How'd it happen?Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Apr 2009 | 4:00 am Creator James Cameron on Terminator's Origins, Arnold as Robot, Machine WarsI first remember being aware of geopolitics during the Cuban missile crisis. When I was 7 or 8, I found a pamphlet for fallout shelters on the coffee table in my family's house in Ontario, and I remember thinking, "What's this about?" I had the sudden sensation that my coddled existence was a facade. Something dark and terrifying lurked behind it. I've been fascinated ever since by our human propensity for dancing on the edge of the apocalypse. So when I wrote the first Terminator outline around 1982, I was just working out my childhood stuff. It was also born out of the science fiction movies and literature I grew up with. For the most part, they were warnings—about technology, about science, about the military and the government. You couldn't escape those themes or the fear of nuclear holocaust. 
Illustration: John Ritter
T4: Please Don't SuckFull disclosure: We're on the fence about Terminator Salvation —the trailers look great, but McG as director? Really? Herewith, a few reasons to be hopeful ... and to be afraid, very afraid.
Cast
Script
F/X
Director
Photos: (left to right): Getty; Transformer: Paramount/Everett The idea of a hit man from the future trying to change past events was certainly not new. What I thought was cutting-edge was deciding to not have the Terminator be a guy in a robot suit. That's how it was typically done. But a flesh-covered endoskeleton? That was new. So for me it was all about how we could develop stop-motion animation and puppetry to create a true robotic endoskeleton. The team at visual-effects house Stan Winston Studio jumped into it and made it work. Casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as our Terminator, on the other hand, shouldn't have worked. The guy is supposed to be an infiltration unit, and there's no way you wouldn't spot a Terminator in a crowd instantly if they all looked like Arnold. It made no sense whatsoever. But the beauty of movies is that they don't have to be logical. They just have to have plausibility. If there's a visceral, cinematic thing happening that the audience likes, they don't care if it goes against what's likely. I don't think anything resembling The Terminator is really going to happen. There certainly aren't going to be genocidal wars waged by machines a few generations from now. The stories function more on a symbolic level, and that's why people key into them. They're about us fighting our own tendency toward dehumanization. When a cop has no compassion, when a shrink has no empathy, they've become machines in human form. Technology is changing the whole fabric of social interaction. We're absorbing our machines in a symbiotic way, evolving to become one with our own devices, and that's going to continue indefinitely. I kind of turned my back on the Terminator world when there was early talk about a third film. I'd evolved beyond it. I don't regret that, but I have to live with the consequence, which is that I keep seeing it resurrected. I'm not involved in Terminator Salvation. I've never read the script. I'm sure I'll be paying 10 bucks to see it like everybody else. Meanwhile, the original film was recently selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. So there's a good possibility that when the machines actually do take over someday, The Terminator will still be in existence. And the machines can have a good electronic laugh about that. -- As told to Wired writer Steve Daly.
Source: Gizmodo | 4 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am The Scene: Legendary Detroit TV dance showRichard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest bloggerThe Scene, a daily dance show that featured many national and local guests artists as well as many youngsters from the community. The show ran for a record twelve consecutive years from 1975 to 1987 and retired as one the most popular and successful shows in the history of WGPR-TV, Channel 62. The Scene had a strong loyal following of viewers that grew to include city and suburb, white and black, the young and the young at heart. Nat Morris, executive producer and host, provided opportunities for unknown artists, launching many careers that went to national and international fame. The Scene paved the way for all the Detroit local entertainment TV shows that followed and had the impact on Detroit Black television in much the same way that Soul Train and Don Cornelius had on a national level."Check out these moves: The Scene website Thanks Tara McGinley! UPDATE: Dodongo posted this in the comments, it simply must be seen to be believed! Source: Boing Boing | 4 Apr 2009 | 2:46 am United Launch Alliance Atlas V Successfully Launches AF WGS-2 SatelliteCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., April 3 /PRNewswire/ -- A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket successfully launched the Air Force's second Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellite...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 2:42 am AT&T Changes TOS, Limits Streaming, TetheringMojoKid writes "Just one day after announcing plans to subsidize netbooks, AT&T wised up to the fact that those netbooks and connections could be used to download movies and enjoy other bandwidth-intensive applications. Apparently trying to avoid bogging down their network, the company revised its data plan service terms to single out and prohibit 'downloading movies using P2P file-sharing services, customer initiated redirection of television or other video or audio signals via any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device, and web broadcasting...' The license agreement further prohibits tethering the device to PCs or other equipment. That's a pretty strict set of rules. After all, the new terms of service seems to limit applications such as SlingPlayer, Qik, Skype, and Jaikuspot, which many AT&T customers are currently using without issue." Update — April 4, 02:50 GMT by SS: Reader evn points out an Engadget report that AT&T quickly retracted the changes.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 4 Apr 2009 | 2:00 am Facebook’s Newest Funding Source: You
Here’s why Facebook likes the product - you pay for the credits with cash, to the tune of $1 per 100 credits. That’s enough incentive for them to test this out, despite the fact that anyone who looks at it for more than a moment will realize it’s doomed to fail. There’s no real world parallel to this gift, like Facebook’s existing (and reportedly underperforming) virtual gifts product that lets you give someone an image of a cupcake or whatever on their birthday. My strong guess is very few people will use this, I can’t imagine someone saying “nice status update, here’s some fake money.” But it’s another weapon that the giant will use to try to eke out a profit during these tough financial times. And it’s far better than having to return to the capital markets to raise money at what’s likely to be an embarrassing large discount from that ridiculous $15 billion valuation that Microsoft gave them in 2007. Maybe if enough users buy credits that can never be redeemed back for cash they can stretch their runway a little farther. It’s been a rough week for the fast growing network. They fired Gideon Yu, their third CFO in less than two years, on Tuesday. Facebook’s PR group flat out lied to the world about it, telling everyone who’d listen that the reason was they wanted to go public and they needed a CFO with public company experience. In rushing to get the message out they failed to note that Yu already had public company experience, at both Yahoo and Google, and is one of the more respected CFO’s in Silicon Valley. All Facebook succeeded in doing was to cement their reputation as an organization that will say anything they like, damn the truth, even going so far as to unfairly trash their own employees. Not much backbone there, and it’s no surprise that they can’t hold on to executives. Any future candidate worth their salt would do well to think twice before joining. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 4 Apr 2009 | 1:37 am Mooch Takes Aim At GameStop With Video Game Swapping Market
Mooch is a new video game trading site looking to help users trade games directly with each other, allowing them to bypass middleman stores like GameStop and save money in the process. Depending on how new and popular the games being traded are, members can expect to save as much as $30 per trade, and simply have to mail their games to each other after establishing a trade on the site. Mooch uses an automated system to calculate the value of each game, taking into account factors including its lowest price on Amazon, how old it is, and how popular it as. Each game is assigned a point value (new games seem to be around 200-300 points each), and to trade for a game you need to offer something of the same value, or buy more points to match it. If you come up short you can buy extra points, but they don’t come cheap - they’re around $15 for 100, but the purpose of the service is to encourage trading games, not buying them through a roundabout method. At this point the market is nearly empty, and won’t become very useful until it can attract a sizable number of users (it’s the classic chicken-and-the-egg problem). To entice users, Mooch is totally free to use during its beta period, with plans to shift to a $20 annual subscription model later on.
The industry may hate it, but video game trading isn’t something that’s going away soon - at least until game downloads with DRM become the norm. And stores like GameStop (and more recently, Amazon) don’t really offer much value to gamers that frequently trade their games, often exchanging games for significantly less than their true market value. Mooch saves users money, but it also comes with its own problems. For one, you have to rely on other members to ship your game promptly, and there’s always the fear that they may never do it at all (though Mooch does appear to guarantee trades, promising to refund with Mooch points should one go awry). Mooch isn’t the first player in this space, either. SwapTree supports video games, and other sites like the now-defunct PeerFlix and the old Lala tried to swapping models for other forms of media without much success. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 4 Apr 2009 | 1:36 am Oddball Tech: President to turn off the Internet, goof off to save the economy, and GPSs may be evilSection: Communications, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Lifestyle, Web, Websites  President with his hand on the buttonWith one decision, the President can do the unthinkable. If the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 passes, the President would have the ability to turn off private Internet networks. Now the bill was introduced on April 1st, but I don’t think they do April Fools’ Day bills in D.C. The bill has some vague terms in it that could raise some Constitutional issues, so don’t expect it to pass in its current form. [Source]
”I’m goofing off for the good of the company, sir.”Those kindhearted Australians have come up with a way to justify screwing around at work. According to a new study from the University of Melbourne, people who goof off, uh, I mean, people who browse non-work related sites at work are 9% more productive than those who don’t. The idea is that people need to reset so they concentrate. So the next time your place of business wants to restrict Internet access, cite this study. [Source] This is why GPS devices have warnings.When GPS devices say something, people listen. Who knew that these devices were actually sent from the future to kill mankind? A woman listened to her GPS when it told her to travel in a snowmobile trail. The only problem was she got stuck. After traveling several miles through over a foot of snow with her car, she decided she knew better than the machine and wanted to turn around. Her car said, “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Well, her car didn’t literally say that, but it it couldn’t turn around in all that snow. Remember, people, GPS devices can be wrong and may or may not be trying to kill us. [Source] Source: Gizmodo | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:30 am James M. Sweeney Named Chairman and CEO of IntelliDOT- Serial entrepreneur, pioneer in wireless healthcare, bedside patient safety solutions - SAN DIEGO, April 3 /PRNewswire/ -- IntelliDOT Corporation, a leading...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:28 am WiMAX for EVAR! or so says Clearwire chairman
What else would he do? It’s his stuff. You didn’t expect him to talk about Sprint’s major woes and how the wireless carrier is losing subs left and right? Hells no. WiMAX for life, playa! Source: CrunchGear | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:27 am Free calls and air traffic control: iPhone apps of the week - CNET News
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:22 am Creditors object to Polaroid auction resultNEW YORK, April 3 (Reuters) - Creditors objected on Friday to the results of the auction sale of bankrupt Polaroid Corp, won by private equity firm Patriarch Partners, saying a joint offer by two liquidation...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:17 am Creditors object to Polaroid auction resultNEW YORK, April 3 (Reuters) - Creditors objected on Friday to the results of the auction sale of bankrupt Polaroid Corp, won by private equity firm Patriarch Partners, saying a joint offer by two liquidation...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:17 am Gadget Lab Podcast #69: Cellphones and Tea
In this week's sensuous episode of the Gadget Lab podcast (#69), we highlight the exciting opportunity to get free iTunes video lessons on developing iPhone applications, courtesy of Stanford and Apple. We segue into the not-so-exciting product announcements at this week's CTIA wireless convention in Las Vegas. No — Danny still wasn't allowed to touch the Palm Pre. But he did get to check out the Magic, HTC's second handset to run the Google Android operating system. Then we stray out of the gadget universe to talk about the "finer things in life" — specifically, tea, which seems to be a new fad among geeks who are as obsessed with having energetic bodies as they are with fast computers. (Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss are, at least.) This week's podcast features Danny Dumas, Brian Chen and editorial assistant Maren Jinnett, with audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso. If the embedded player above doesn't work, you can download the Gadget Lab podcast #68 MP3. Use iTunes? Subscribe to the Gadget Lab Audio Podcast in iTunes. Do it now! Like video? Aim your browser at the Gadget Lab Video Podcast — available on iTunes and right here on the Gadget Lab blog. Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:17 am UPDATE 1-Amylin board battle heats up with proxy filingBOSTON, April 3 (Reuters) - Eastbourne Capital Management filed preliminary proxy materials on Friday in its battle to elect five nominees to the board of Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc , which makes the diabetes...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:16 am Web 2.0 Expo: An “American Idol” for Start-Ups [Voices]During the “Launch Pad” session, five start-ups took a grilling from developers, journalists and venture capitalists, then faced a crowd vote at the Web 2.0 Expo’s version of “American Idol.” As attendees texted their votes, moderator John Battelle, founder of Federated Media Publishing, jokingly asked: “Want to have a dance-off?” None were necessary. The techies in attendance were starry-eyed for all things mobile, picking Nitobi’s PhoneGap, an open-source tool for building mobile apps, as the People’s Choice winner. Life-tracking site zeaLOG was a close second. The start-ups were selected by a panel including Microsoft’s (MSFT) Anand Iyer, ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick and VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall, who quizzed the start-ups on their elevator pitches and offered both compliments and criticism. Andre Charland of PhoneGap told the crowd that the company had just released an emulator that would allow developers to build applications for multiple platforms and see what they look like on different mobile devices, from RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone. Rather than having to write an application in multiple languages, PhoneGap uses HTML and JavaScript, he said, and will work from a cloud-based service. Mr. Charland said that developer interest was mushrooming, with the company’s mailing list doubling every month. Source: Gizmodo | 4 Apr 2009 | 12:00 am FBI Seizes All Servers In Dallas Data Center1sockchuck writes "FBI agents have raided a Dallas data center, seizing servers at a company called Core IP Networks. The company's CEO has posted a message saying the FBI confiscated all its customer servers, including gear belonging to companies that are almost certainly not under suspicion. The FBI isn't saying what it's after, but there are reports that it's related to video piracy, sparking unconfirmed speculation that the probe is tied to the leaking of Wolverine."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 3 Apr 2009 | 11:58 pm Exar Corporation Closes Hifn AcquisitionFREMONT, Calif., April 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Exar Corporation (Nasdaq: EXAR) announced today that it has closed the previously announced acquisition of hi/fn, inc. ("Hifn"), effective April 3, 2009.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Apr 2009 | 11:57 pm Brit firm developing solar powered parking spots
Currently, the company only has the awnings only installed at their UK headquarters, but word is that they have received a ton on interest from various sectors. I absolutely love this concept, it would help to defray some of the concerns people have about where the electricity for these all-electric cars would come from. Just plug in the car when you get to work, and let it charge up all day! Each parking space is expected to generate about 1100 kilowatt hours of electricity annually, and they can be linked to the electrical grid so no energy would be wasted. [via Gearlog] Source: Gizmodo | 3 Apr 2009 | 11:30 pm Verizon Unveils Music, App Stores - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 3 Apr 2009 | 11:25 pm Cybersecurity review closely scrutinizing telecom policy - CNET News
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 3 Apr 2009 | 11:24 pm Surface app for doctors improves their bedside manner
Source: CrunchGear | 3 Apr 2009 | 11:20 pm Can Yahoo Out-Google Google in Image Search?
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 Guantanamo Bay is one of the world's controversial prisons. This may be its final chapter. With unprecedented access, National Geographic has the story you haven't heard. Both sides, told from the inside, before its doors close forever. Click to learn more and go Inside Guantanamo >> natgeotv.com/guantanamo |
AP - You're never far from a camera in Britain, a country that has accepted the presence of millions of surveillance cameras in its streets, shopping centers and public spaces.
Pete Verrando has built these prototype CD turntables. I don't know if they actually work, but he's patented it, so don't get any funny ideas.
I wonder how difficult it would be to actually make this work, since the reading laser normally moves in a straight radius from center to edge, but a turntable would have an arc. (Probably a simple formula, but one that is not hard-wired into a regular laser assembly.)
In the case of Time Warner Cable, customers will be charged from $29.95 to $54.90 a month, based on data consumption and desired connection speed. Customers will be charged $1 for each gigabyte (GB) over their plan's cap. Time Warner Cable offers four cap levels of 5, 10, 20, and 40 GB. A download of a high-definition movie typically eats up about 8 GB. A recent report from Sanford C. Bernstein suggests that a family on the 40 GB plan that streams 7.25 hours of online video a week (a fraction of the 60 hours Americans spend watching TV in a week) could end up spending $200 per month on broadband usage fees. And that's just for video viewing, before factoring in such Internet activities as music downloads and photo sharing. "To put it mildly," says Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, "the decision to limit data consumption can be expected to have profound implications for [consumer] behavior."
Photo: Traffik
Update: Jeff Simmermon, Director of Digital Communications at Time Warner Cable writes:
1) We're also developing a "super-tier" at roughly 100GB. Haven't figured out the pricing yet, but it's in the works. For some reason the BW article left this out.
2) We'll be giving our customers a "gas gauge" that sits on their Roadrunner.com dashboard that will allow them to track their usage. Customers are free to change their plan upwards or downwards at any time into the one that's right for them.
3) Customers in our trial markets will have three full months from the time they get a formal announcement from us -- to come in the early summer, depending on markets -- to track their usage, get used to the meter, and register feedback with us. We don't want anyone getting any nasty surprises on their bill.
4) Bills for bandwidth tiers will start appearing in September, roughly -- again, varies slightly by market, but all customers will have three months' grace period. Because this is a *trial*, these caps are subject to change. If they don't work -- or the whole project doesn't work -- we'll make changes or try something else.
What will send us the best, and most useful message is if customers go through the grace period, interact with the "gas gauge," and send in feedback. There's plenty of time to switch providers before bills hit if that's something that you think is right for you. Part of the trial is seeing how this actually works before bills hit and getting feedback. If you want to let us know your thoughts, we've set up an e-mail address at realideas@twcable.com to centralize thoughts and criticism.
5) These caps don't apply to our business-class customers, or customers under an existing contract.
Here’s the video of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone with Stephen Colbert last night on the Comedy Central cable television show.
Stone–the spokesmodel for the hot microblogging service–does very well and is even charming, even though Colbert nails the problems of the San Francisco-based Twitter cold in the lively interview.
“How would you make money?” asked Colbert, after some preliminary joking with Stone about Twitter’s 140-character limit.
When Stone went on about how Twitter planned to be a “strong, profitable, independent company,” Colbert was ready with a zinger.
“You and Pets.com.”
Still, it was semi-cute when Stone told Colbert that “if i have a son, I should name him Flint.”
Yabadaba–don’t, Biz.
(Stone’s actual first name, by the way, is Isaac.)
Here’s the video:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Biz Stone | ||||
| comedycentral.com | ||||
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Matt Nolan makes lots of interesting cymbals, including ones that are shaped like giant hands. Music Radar interviewed him inside the clattering percussion hall at Musikmesse '09.
I recall the old police shack in Times Square dripping with cables stretching all over the back wall, but the new shack must have finally put those all underground. [Gallery @ Royal Pingdom]
Neither Sun nor IBM will confirm that the two companies are even in talks, but the two will reportedly announce their merger on Monday–not today, as previously thought. That’s the word from Bloomberg, which confirms claims that IBM (IBM) intends to pay between $9 and $10 a share for Sun (JAVA). The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, pegs the price at $9.55 per share, or about $7 billion. At that price, the acquisition will be the largest in IBM’s history, surpassing even its $5 billion purchase of Cognos in 2007.
And after the deal, then what? Massive layoffs, most likely. Analysts say redundancies between the two companies’ businesses could cause IBM to sack as much as a third of Sun’s employees in one of those “resource actions” it’s so fond of. “This deal is definitely going to lead to a lot of combined layoffs,” Forrester Research analyst James Staten told Forbes. “And it wouldn’t be a surprise if most of that bloodletting happened on the Sun side.”
"It's the one to have when you're having more than one." (Thanks, Ricarrrrdo!)
Hutchinson Technology (HTCH) shares have collapsed after the company disclosed that Seagate (STX) intends to phase out the purchase of suspension assemblies from the company. Hutchinson says the change will occur over 18-24 months. In the March quarter, Hutchinson said, Seagate was about 19 percent of sales.
The disk-drive component supplier also warned that March quarter results disappointed. The company said it shipped 107 million suspension assemblies in its fiscal second quarter ended March 20, down from 155 million in the December quarter. Combined shipments for the mobile and enterprise segments were down more than 50 percent sequentially, while shipments for the 3.5-inch ATA segment increased sequentially.
Section: Video, Portable Video, Communications, Mobile, Reviews
Recently launched on March 31st, Spb TV is a downloadable software client that delivers an incredible range of news television content to your Windows Mobile device.
This is not a Verizon V-Cast or AT&T Mobile TV replacement. This client delivers mostly public English language news channels such as Britain’s Sky News, China’s CCTV and Germany’s Deutsche Welle TV plus a range of foreign language channels. So, if you are looking for TV entertainment fare this isn’t it, but if you are a news junkie – welcome to your fix.
Both touch screen and non-touch screen owners of Windows Mobile cell phones.
Most importantly: No monthly fees! Available for a one-time $14.95, the paid version delivers 16 English and 28 foreign language mainly news television channels, while the shareware version is limited to 3 English and 4 foreign language channels. Installation is straightforward: simply download and run the version of choice from Spb Software. This sets up an automatic install for the next time you sync your Windows Mobile cellphone to your PC. Once installed, click on the new Spb icon and select the channel you want to watch. It couldn’t be simpler.
Video is delivered at a maximum bit rate of 348Kb/s. Under ideal network conditions this will provide an acceptable viewing/listening experience. As network conditions deteriorate and the bit rate drops you will note audio sync problems with the audio and compression artifacts in the video that range from mild to severe.
It is certainly interesting to watch the different perspectives on news from around the world and the Spb TV software can deliver that to you. When you are able to receive a full bit rate signal you will have a good viewing experience but as the network deteriorates, you’ll shut it off. I would download the shareware version and check out the signals in your normal surroundings before buying the full app.
Worth checking out. And, oh, if you are learning a foreign language and want to practice your French or Italian or Spanish or even Serbian - yes, you can tune in to the Serbian language station, RTV Pink – this is an interesting way to do that. Think I’ll go tune in to One TV and practice my Maltese.
Full Story » | Written by Anthony Gargano for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
“What hath God twat?”
– Stephen Colbert speculates on the text of the very first Tweet.
Because of that short and wide lens, there is no real need to focus — the depth of field will take care of that. Therefore, the only controls you have are the shutter release and the film winding wheel (remember those?). There isn’t even a viewfinder — instead you have to frame things with the flip-up frame on top. although as this is a fisheye you really only need to point it in the general direction to be sure of capturing your subject.
It looks like a lot of fun, and a great antidote to the constant fiddling you can do with the modern digicam. The only problem is the price. This is really nothing more than a dime-store design, and certainly contains no more parts than a $5 disposable 35mm camera. The $65 that the Co-Op Store wants for it, then, is quite ridiculous. Nevertheless, I’m actually quite tempted.
Product page [Co-Op Store via Retro Thing]
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