Mayo Clinic Reports Dramatic Outcomes In Prostate Cancer Treatment

Zorglub writes "Two prostate cancer patients who had been told their condition was inoperable are now cancer-free as the result of an experimental therapy, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester announced Friday. 'Cancer has a propensity for turning off T cells. Dr. Allison hypothesized that if you block the off-switch, T cells will stay turned on and create a prolonged immune response. Dr. Kwon, then at NIH, demonstrated that CTLA-4 blockage could be used to treat aggressive forms of prostate cancer in mice. There was one limitation to that concept — the worry that by simply leaving all the T cells on there may not be enough response aimed at the tumor. Dr. Kwon called Dr. Allison and designed the trial together. The idea: use androgen ablation or hormone therapy to ignite an immune approach — a pilot light — and then, after a short interval of hormone therapy, introduce an anti-CTLA-4 antibody that acts like gasoline to this pilot light and overwhelms the cancer cells.' After the treatment, the patients' tumors shrunk to such a degree that they could be successfully removed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 21 Jun 2009 | 2:30 pm

Centrica prepared to go hostile for Venture-report

LONDON, June 21 (Reuters) - British utility Centrica is prepared to go hostile with its 850 pence a share bid for oil and gas group Venture Production , which is holding out for 950 pence, the Independent...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 2:23 pm

The Newspaper Isn't Dead Yet

theodp writes "Slate's Farhad Manjoo had high hopes for using the Kindle DX — Amazon's new large-screen e-reader — to read newspapers. A good first effort, says Manjoo, who concludes that for now newsprint still beats the $489 Kindle. While he has issues with latency, what he really misses relates to graphic design. The Kindle presents news as a list, leaving a reader to guess which pieces are most important to read. Newspapers, by contrast, opine on the importance of the day's news using easy-to-understand design conventions — important stories appear on front pages, with the most important ones going higher on the page and getting more space and bigger headlines. Also, because of its overnight delivery model, Manjoo gripes that the Kindle suffers from a lack of timeliness, making it not even as good as a smartphone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 21 Jun 2009 | 2:00 pm

Fairtheworld Becoming Another Twitter in E-Commerce Area?

HONG KONG, June 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The concept of Web 2.0 gave birth to emerging, excellent Internet players such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Their focus on...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 1:30 pm

Researchers Find Gaps In Iranian Filtering

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With all the turmoil and internet censorship in Iran making it difficult to get an accurate picture of what's going, security researchers have found a way to locate gaps in Iran's filtering by analyzing traffic exiting Iran. The short version is that SSH, torrents and Flash are high priorities for blocking, while game protocols like WoW and Xbox traffic are being ignored, even though they also allow communication. Hopefully, this data will help people think of new ways to bypass filtering and speak freely, even though average Iranians have worse things to worry about than internet censorship, now that the reformists have been declared anti-Islamic by the Supreme Leader. Given the circumstances, that declaration has been called 'basically a death sentence' for those who continue protesting." Reader CaroKann sends in a related story at the Washington Post about an analysis of the vote totals in the Iranian election (similar to, but different from the one we discussed earlier) in which the authors say the election results have a one in two-hundred chance of being legitimate.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 21 Jun 2009 | 1:09 pm

Windows 7 Features on a Vista or XP System - PC World

PC World

Windows 7 Features on a Vista or XP System PC World Windows 7 features like ISO image burning, Windows Search, and the great new Windows 7 Calculator are a big part of the new OS. Here's how you can get them--or features just as good--on your current Vista or XP system. Drooling over Windows 7 Southtown Star Windows 7 preview bodes well for buyers News Chief Barron's - TMCnet - TechSpot - Rochester Democrat and Chronicle all 9 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Jun 2009 | 1:02 pm

Palm Pre bits: webOS updated to 1.0.3, Tweed updated to 0.9.7 and the lack of available webOS SDK

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile

Despite all of the recent hype surrounding the recently released iPhone 3G S, the Palm Pre has also had its share of news.  In addition to the recent news about the App Market hitting almost 700,000 downloads already, we have recently seen an update to webOS, an update to Tweed as well as learned the slightly disappointing news about the webOS SDK release.

webOS updated to version 1.0.3

First up in this little Palm Pre bits post is the recent update to webOS, which was updated to version 1.0.3.  The update which is coming over-the-air measure in at 13MB and offers a few nice perks such as improvements with Google contacts, the Clock, as well as the Calendar.  Below is a full change list;

Calendar

• Events created in your Google calendar—either in Calendar on your phone or in Google online—that contain a symbol or accented character in the event name can now synchronize. Previously, including a symbol or accented character in an event name prevented the event from synchronizing.
• Changes made to Google events on the phone now sync with Google online within a few minutes.
• The sync interval for Google events has been decreased from every few hours to every 15 minutes.

Clock

• If you create a weekday alarm on a weekend, the alarm sounds only on weekdays. Previously the alarm would sound on the weekend also.

Contacts

• Changes made to Google contacts on the phone now sync with Google online within a few minutes.
• The sync interval for Google contacts has been decreased from every few hours to every 15 minutes.

Email

• Power performance in areas where wireless coverage is sporadic or unavailable has been enhanced.
• Non-SSL Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) mail servers are now supported.

Other

• Miscellaneous updates for Email, Phone, and other applications.

Twitter app Tweed updated to 0.9.7

In addition to the webOS update, we also saw an update for Tweed, the Twitter app.  This update does offer some improvements, of course it does still leave one important item out—photo upload/integration.  That said, the developer does address the issue and let us know that it is missing because “there isn’t direct support for photo upload in the Palm Mojo SDK, yet.”

Anyway, as for the other changes and additions in version 0.9.7;
Bug Fixes

• Tapping notification banner/dashboard does not load app
• Show loading spinner on refresh
• User Profile tap target was extending past photo
• several memory leaks

Features

• Shorten Urls button in compose tweet scene (urls over 30 char)
• Auto-refresh of active card (3 minutes for refresh, displays banner when there are new tweets)
• Auto-refresh will show New Tweets marker to separate newly loaded tweets from existing tweets in timeline
• Manual refresh (via button) preserves timeline and loads new tweets above existing tweets
• Conversations - icon indicates a message is “in reply to” and popup menu action shows thread
• Home timeline is checked in notifications
• Popup menu action to add marker to tweet timeline—useful for keep track of read/unread tweets.
• Show client/source of tweets

webOS SDK to be available by end of summer

This last bit of news is a little unfortunate to read.  It seems that the webOS SDK is not going to be released for everyone until the end of the summer.  According to the Palm Developer blog;

Our goal is to make the SDK available to everyone by the end of this summer, and to get there in stages:

• Beginning immediately, we’ll accelerate the growth of the early access program, expanding as quickly as resources allow. Over the next few weeks, the program will grow from hundreds to thousands of developers.
• Simultaneously, we’ll begin publishing more content outside the early access program, and we’ll launch new confidentiality rules that will allow early Mojo developers to communicate more freely with the rest of the world.
• As soon as we can, we’ll open the SDK to all legitimate requests.

Not to mention they also go on to give a friendly warning of sorts.

“As on any popular platform, we recognize that some developers will experiment in ways that cross official boundaries, but we believe that our formal offerings – and community efforts built around those offerings – will provide the best experience for the vast majority of webOS developers and users.”

Bottom line, I think just about anyone can admit that after seeing the success of the iPhone and the App Store, that in order for the Pre to really shine apps are going to need to become available.  Take for example, I am a long time Palm user and Palm fan, but am holding off on getting a Pre just for the lack of apps at this time, it is not that the iPhone is perfect by any means, it just has more that I can do.  Hopefully that will all change once the end of summer is here and the SDK is released.

Read [Palm] and [Palm] and [Pivotal Labs]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 21 Jun 2009 | 1:02 pm

Large Hadron Collider Online By September

The world's biggest atom smasher will be put to the test once more in September after scientists have conducted tests and set up additional safety precautions to stop any further mistakes that halted the $10 billion machine after its startup in 2008, the operator announced on Saturday.The Large Hadron Collider was intended to begin again in late September, but most likely will wait an additional two to three weeks, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research said."We're pretty confident about the dates," James Gillies told the Associated Press, noting that scientists think they comprehend last year’s blunder and know how to prevent it from happening again.An electrical error resulting from a faulty splice in the wiring stopped the machine on Sept.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2009 | 12:35 pm

Redbox DVD-Kiosks Give Netflix A Run For Their Money

With more subscribers than ever signing up for its DVD-by-mail service, Netflix Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2009 | 12:30 pm

20 Wacky Wallets - From Fake Food Wallets to Felt Beard Cash Carriers (CLUSTER)

(TrendHunter.com) You probably don't think about how important wallets are in our world until yours is lost or stolen. Sure, a quick phone call cancels credit and debit cards and gets them replaced,...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 12:09 pm

White House Panel Considers New Paths To Space

Neil H. writes "The White House's Human Space Flight Plans blue-ribbon panel (the 'Augustine panel') has posted the material from their first public meeting on the future of NASA's spaceflight program, which was held on Wednesday. NASA officials presented their Ares I rocket plans and their belief that they can work around its design flaws, with projected development costs ballooning to $35 billion. The panel also heard several alternative proposals, such as adapting already-existing EELV and SpaceX rockets to carry crew to orbit; these proposals would have better safety margins than the Ares I, be ready sooner, and cost NASA less than $2 billion to complete, but are politically unattractive."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 21 Jun 2009 | 12:03 pm

Colossal Video Game Screens - Cowboys Stadium Monitor Used to Play Xbox 360 (VIDEO)

(TrendHunter.com) Normally you would expect to see a brilliant sports replay on the 72 x 160-foot LED wall at the center of the new Cowboys Stadium. Of course, watching shots of the Jonas Brothers in...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:49 am

Ebony Tribaltography - Biki Johns Zula is a Celebration of Exotic Extremes (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) Biki Johns Zula photo set is a feast for the senses. This exotic shoot sets off the models gleaming ebony skin with tribal couture, bold colors, festive patterns, giant headdresses,...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:29 am

Video: Layar’s Augmented Reality Browser for Android

Layar is one mobile application that has definitely managed to get quite some tongues rolling and keyboards rattling this past week, including at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference in Spain where I just got back from (video demo below). Layar is a so-called 'augmented reality browser', an application that turns you mobile phone's camera viewer - only on Android-powered phones for the time being - into a full-fledged information portal and local business search engine. It essentially puts an information overlay on top of your camera view, bringing digital data of various sorts into play whenever you're looking at or for something in the real world.

Source: MobileCrunch | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:12 am

Insect Educational Toys - Ryan Parry's Caterpods Teach Kids About Plants & Gardens (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) These cheerful plant pots are called Caterpods, and they're educational toys for kids created by Ryan Parry. Each hump of the Caterpod opens to unveil a hollowed-out pot into which...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:09 am

Layars Augmented Reality Browser: Literally More Than Meets The Eye

Layar is one mobile application that has definitely managed to get quite some tongues rolling and keyboards rattling this past week, including at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference in Spain where I just...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 10:57 am

Layar’s Augmented Reality Browser: Literally More Than Meets The Eye

Layar is one mobile application that has definitely managed to get quite some tongues rolling and keyboards rattling this past week, including at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference in Spain where I just got back from (video demo below).

Layar is a so-called ‘augmented reality browser’, an application that turns you mobile phone’s camera viewer - only on Android-powered phones for the time being - into a full-fledged information portal and local business search engine. It essentially puts an information overlay on top of your camera view, bringing digital data of various sorts into play whenever you’re looking at or for something in the real world.

Imagine being on the look-out for a great new place in a street nearby your current apartment or house and seeing all the real estate listings, with some details and pricing included right from your mobile device as you’re walking down the street. Imagine watching status updates your friends pushed to social networks roll in with location information attached to them (e.g. ‘Tweets Nearby’). Imagine finding information on ATMs, public transport etc. in a city you’re visiting just by starting up the camera on your mobile phone. And thanks to an integration with Google Local Search, how about being able to look up contact information and reviews for businesses (e.g. restaurants, bars, etc.) in your direct neighborhood with one-click dialing capability?

These are all things that are or will be possible with Layar, and there are so many use cases I could think of in under a minute that you’d really have to make an effort to miss the enormous potential of this application.

Layar is typically one of those cutting-edge things that aggressively shoves you nose-first into the enormous potential of the next-generation smartphones and platforms, giving you an idea of what you can expect from inventive developers and service providers thankfully making use of their ever-increasing capabilities in the near future. I can only hope for Layar that they’re not entering the game too early.

Check out this Engadget video for more hands-on coverage. And in case you were wondering, you can expect a Layar application for the iPhone 3G S this Autumn (and not Springtime, duh).

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

Source: TechCrunch | 21 Jun 2009 | 10:57 am

Motor-Mouthed Tots - Homemade Video of a Blabbering Baby Goes Viral (VIDEO)

(TrendHunter.com) This hilarious homemade video features a blabbering baby who seems to be ranting and raving about something very serious. The father, who is sitting in the back seat next to her, is...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 10:50 am

Palm Pre Nears 700,000 App Downloads in Less Than Two Weeks

Medialets is reporting that as of June 17th, a mere 11 days after its launch, Palm Pre users have downloaded well over 650,000 apps. With only 30 apps in the App Catalog (and none of them fart-related),...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 10:46 am

IPhone upgrades could hurt some applications

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, iPhone upgrades could hurt some applications. The iPhone's latest evolution could affect sales of navigation devices, camcorders and even its own sibling, the...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 10:35 am

Tattoo Culture TV Shows - Lars Krutak Travels the World for Discovery's 'The Tattoo Hunter' (VIDEO)

(TrendHunter.com) I recently found a great article about Lars Krutak and the Discovery Channel's new series 'The Tattoo Hunter' in Wildcat's Expand Magazine. Lars Krutak is a tattoo anthropologist;...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 10:29 am

Twitter on the Barricades in Iran: Six Lessons Learned

Does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two mass protests in a matter of months - in Moldova in April and in Iran last week - oversell the technology? The New York Times reports...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 10:27 am

Facebook Click Fraud Enraging Advertisers

Facebook has a big revenue target this year - $550 million, according to investors who were pitched in the last round of funding. That’s nearly twice 2008 revenues of $280 million.

A big part of that revenue comes from cost-per-click advertising from small self serve advertisers. And right now those advertisers aren’t very happy. They’ve been complaining about click fraud of up to 100% for weeks, and the situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

Scores of complaints can be found at WickedFire, where advertisers are complaining of massive click fraud and an indifferent Facebook. A few of the recent posts (excuse the language):

Tracking 202 is telling me 11 clicks….Facebook is telling me 145. That’s way off the 15-20%, is there a different margin for tracking 202 than there is prosper 202 or did I suffer from one of those click bots?

Sucks how high the numbers are today. Its clear the problem is getting worse daily. I’ve moved most of my shit off facebook for the time being and magically my shit is all positive again. Crazy how that works. There are lots of places to buy traffic, some that will even actually give you the traffic you are paying for. Facebook is never going to admit to whats going on. I can almost guarantee you that.

Facebook is still reporting 20% more clicks than I actually get. This is bullshit. If I were at least getting bot traffic or something that would be one thing, but right now Facebook is simply stealing 20% of clicks that I paid for, which adds up to thousands of dollars. Someone should threaten legal action, this is straight up fraud on Facebook’s part.

FB click fraud update: ratio is now EXACTLY 10:1. 10 clicks reported on FB, 1 click on prosper. No, this wasnt on a small scale either. Were talking 1000’s of clicks. Have fun facebook. Im checking out till you can fix this shit.

I’m targeting small, specific demos, Facebook reports exactly twice as many clicks as hit my LP. Facebook is stealing our money, fuck this shit.

This is experienced by not just those that use 202. When in doubt, look at your raw apache logs - which I did. The result: 15% - 20% clicks never make it to my LP. Clearly a case of click-fraud going on. Tested on 3 different servers at 3 different DCs (not a network issue).

These aren’t the standard click fraud complaints that advertisers have leveled against search engines for years. In those cases, bots are racking up the fake clicks, which obviously never convert to any sort of purchase or other action. But at least the advertisers see the clicks.

In this case advertisers are saying that Facebook is recording and charging for clicks that don’t exist at all, even from bots. Their tracking software (many use Prosper202, but others are using raw Apache logs) shows one set of numbers, which is 20% - 100% lower than what Facebook is recording.

According to the WickedFire posts Facebook isn’t officially acknowledging the problem or giving any refunds so far. But they are asking some advertisers to send in logs to show the discrepancy. So far, advertisers who go to the trouble to do this aren’t getting the response they wanted: “I was asked to send in my logs so I spent over an hour compiling logs over the time period in question, and they replied with their fucking scripted bullshit. I was sooo fucking pissed, since I took the time to do that and they churn out a 2 second response.”

We have an email in to Facebook for comment. Image is from a 2006 BusinessWeek report on click fraud.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 21 Jun 2009 | 9:03 am

EFF and PK Reluctantly Drop Lawsuit For ACTA Info

mikesd81 notes a press release on the EFF website that begins "The Obama Administration's decision to support Bush-era concealment policies has forced the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge (PK) to drop their lawsuit about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Federal judges have very little discretion to overrule Executive Branch decisions to classify information on 'national security' grounds, and the Obama Administration has recently informed the court that it intends to defend the classification claims originally made by the Bush Administration. ... Very little is known about ACTA, currently under negotiation between the US and more than a dozen other countries, other than that it is not limited to anti-counterfeiting measures. Leaked documents indicate that it could establish far-reaching customs regulations governing searches over personal computers and iPods. Multi-national IP corporations have publicly requested mandatory filtering of Internet communications for potentially copyright-infringing material, as well as the adoption of 'Three Strikes' policies requiring the termination of Internet access after repeat allegations of copyright infringement, like the legislation recently invalidated in France. Last year, more than 100 public interest organizations around the world called on ACTA country negotiators to make the draft text available for public comment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 21 Jun 2009 | 8:43 am

Summer Solstice is Here, Find Out Why - NBC Chicago

Chiropractic News (press release)

Summer Solstice is Here, Find Out Why NBC Chicago By BY PAIGE WILLIAMS AP Carl Klinkenborg, left, and his wife Gigha had their wedding ceremony at Stonehenge in west England, during summer solstice early Saturday. Summer Solstice celebration Examiner.com Solstice marks longest day of the year, start of summer Schenectady Gazette The News-Press - Bristol Press - Peshtigo Times - My Fox 8 all 41 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Jun 2009 | 8:15 am

BHP ends dispute with Philippine partner-government

MANILA, June 21 (Reuters) - BHP Billiton and Philippine partner Asiaticus Management Corp have agreed to end a legal dispute, the Philippines environment secretary said at the weekend, clearing the way...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 7:55 am

iPhone App Roundup: Sirius XM, Bento, DocsToGo and more

Big week, eh? For most of us, the iPhone OS 3.0 was exciting enough: cut and paste, full search, in-app purchases, voice memos and landscape keyboard support. And don’t forget MMS and tethering… Oh wait, never mind. AT&T sure does know how to kill an iPhone owner’s buzz. Fortunately, Apple knew how to bring the party back to life - 3G S style. But even during the week of OS 3.0 and the 3G S, apps kept flowing into our inbox. Here’s a look at a handful of them:

App #1: Sirius XM made some headlines this week, and it wasn’t all good news. They finally launched their long awaited iPhone app (Sirius XM Premium Online) — without some of their most popular channels. That said, I got a chance to tinker with it a bit and was pretty impressed. Even over the EDGE network, I found the sound quality to be crystal clear and the connection solid. It also has some great features - on-screen while you’re listening is the name of the song (or radio show) that’s playing, and with just two taps you can buy it off iTunes, all without missing a beat. So, if you can live without Stern, NFL and MLB radio, and really love Sirius XM radio (as opposed to the alternatives) then it might be worth the $16/month ($3 extra per month for current Sirius XM subscribers).

App #2: If you use the iPhone for both business and personal purposes, you should definitely check out DataViz’s DocsToGo with Exchange Attachments and Desktop Sync. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF viewer and editor on the iPhone. The document viewer is not much different than the iPhone Mail application, but the value comes from the editing and sync features. Currently, you can only edit Microsoft Word documents, but support for Excel is soon-to-come. Through your WiFi connection, you can seamlessly sync your docs from your iPhone and specified folders on your desktop. I’m impatient for Excel and PowerPoint support come, but am nonetheless happy that I can edit my Word documents on the go. Perfect for the airport or on public transit to and from work, DocsToGo is easy to use and has a fantastic value proposition. You may want to wait for the Excel editing update, or you could buy it now for $9.99.

App #3: Want one app to keep all of your recipes, to-do items and event plans in order? You’d probably like FileMaker’s Bento for the iPhone. Bento is a file organizer for the iPhone with a whole lot of features. You can do everything from using it as a basic CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool to keep track of your sales calls or as an exercise log to help you shed that last 5 pounds you need to fit into your prom dress. Regardless, it has great functionality and a lot of pre-designed templates. The diversity available in the app is what makes it valuable, as it literally allows you to track or store anything you want. If that sounds like something you need to keep your affairs in order, then download Bento for the iPhone for $4.99.

App #4: California Gold Rush by Digital Chocolate is a great new puzzle game for the iPhone. In it, you are Mandy, a female miner, and your job is to mine the ground looking for gold. Basically, you break rocks in order to go deeper and deeper underground in an effort to find gold and jewels. It sounds simple enough, and it is, but there are enough twists in the game to make it interesting. For one, if you don’t remember to build supports along the way, the tunnel you’ve dug could collapse and ruin your day. At $2.99, this game has 30 levels of enjoyable and innovative gameplay.

App #5: Sick of Tap Tap Revenge and want something that has a different look and feel with the exact same gameplay? Look no further than GameLoft’s DJ Mix Tour. It’s basically the same thing as Tap Tap Revenge, except instead of hitting notes as a musician you’re a DJ trying to hit the beat right. The music selection is solid and you can create your own mix tape. More importantly, there is a decent story mode with multiple locations to play at and many hit tracks (such as “Let’s get it Started” and “Womanizer”). All that said, it’s $4.99. Why would you buy that instead of the $0.99 Tap Tap Revenge with its bajillions of tracks?

Alright, ladies and gentleman. That’s the end of our show for today. See you next week, and don’t forget:
if you have an app worth checking out, shoot us an e-mail at gaganATcrunchgearDOTcom (with the obvious substitutions in place, of course).

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 21 Jun 2009 | 5:42 am

Variable iTunes pricing a moneymaker for artists

DENVER/NASHVILLE (Billboard) - In April, soon after Apple gave labels the ability to set different prices for their songs on iTunes, every track on Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" was...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 5:35 am

Variable iTunes pricing a moneymaker for artists (Reuters)

Reuters - In April, soon after Apple gave labels the ability to set different prices for their songs on iTunes, every track on Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" was raised to $1.29.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 Jun 2009 | 5:35 am

Memory Usage of Chrome, Firefox 3.5, et al.

An anonymous reader writes "This experiment graphs the memory usage of Chrome and Firefox 3.5 (along with Safari and Opera) over a series of 150 Web page loads using an automated script. Firefox 3.5 shows the lowest memory usage in all categories, including average memory usage, maximum memory usage, and final memory usage. Chrome uses over 1 GB of memory due to its process architecture. Safari 4 and Opera show memory usage degradation over time, while Chrome and Firefox 3.5 are more reliable in freeing memory to the OS." IE 8 was not included "because the author could not find a way to prevent it from opening a new window on each invocation of the command."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 21 Jun 2009 | 5:21 am

Norwegian oil refinery aims for change

Norway's most polluting industrial site, the Mongstad oil refinery, is now looking to lead the way on fighting climate change. Located on the country's west coast, the refinery spits out
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 5:12 am

Reports: Apple CEO Steve Jobs had liver transplant (AP)

AP - Apple Inc. co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, whose recovery from pancreatic cancer appeared less certain when he had to take medical leave in January, received a liver transplant two months ago but is recovering well, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 Jun 2009 | 4:46 am

Images From The #iranelection

As the world watches the violence and post-election protests escalate in Iran, startling images from the streets of Tehran are disseminating through various social media. Many of them are tagged #iranelection, a hashtag which started on Twitter but is spreading to Flickr and elsewhere.

Since it is difficult to find photos in the sea of Tweets using the same #iranelection tag I’ve been using Twicsy, an image search engine for photos posted to Twitter which we wrote about yesterday. If you search “iranelection” or “tehran iran”, dozens of images from the protests will pop up.

Fair warning: these images are raw and unfiltered, and some of them are quite gruesome, showing people getting shot and lying in pools of blood. The most tragic one shows what is described as a woman protester bleeding to death after being shot today. This same incident was caught on someone’s video or cell phone video camera and uploaded to YouTube. (I hesitate to link to this because it is so hard to watch, but you can find it by searching for “An innocent girl was shot by Iran riot police” on YouTube).

There’s been plenty of debate about how big a role Twitter is playing in events in Iran. At the very least, it is being used as a channel to distribute information and images to the rest of the world. It is not always clear where these images come from or who took them. Some of the images are credited to professional news agencies such as the AP, Getty, Reuters, and Arabic news organizations and are being spread around by bloggers both inside and outside Iran. Others look like they were taken in haste or on a cell phone. (For other images from Iran taken by citizen photojournalists, check out Demotix/iranelection).

Below are a few images circulating on Twitter. The first one was uploaded on June 14, 2009 and has no attribution (if anyone knows the photographer, please tell me in comments). Update: The photo is by Olivier Laban-Mattei/Agence France Press/Getty Images:

This one was also uploaded on June 14, and is also uncredited:

This one was taken by Farhad Rajabali of news.gooya.com:

So was this one (Farhad Rajabali/news.gooya.com):

Beyond Twitter, you can find a slide show of Iran protest images on the New York Times. And on Flickr, Faramarz Hashemi has collected the set of #iranelection photos embedded below (some of them overlap with the ones on Twitter).

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

Source: TechCrunch | 21 Jun 2009 | 4:16 am

Damages of $1.9 million could backfire on music industry - Reuters

MiamiHerald.com

Damages of $1.9 million could backfire on music industry Reuters By Ben Sheffner LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - The recording industry secured a resounding victory last week when a Minneapolis jury awarded the four major labels $1.92 million in damages after unanimously finding that a 32-year-old mother had willfully ... Bankruptcy could protect Jammie Thomas CNET News Has the RIAA's Fight Against File Sharing Gone Too Far? PC World eWeek - ZDNet - The Money Times - New York Times all 1,203 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Jun 2009 | 3:31 am

Most endangered feline brought back from the brink

Road signs throughout the vast Donana National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in southwestern Spain, warn drivers to watch out for lynxes. But actually there is little chance of...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 3:26 am

Streaming music service Spotify basks in praise

DENVER (Billboard) - At first glance, Spotify isn't much different from other on-demand streaming music services. It includes roughly the same library of songs, pays the same per-stream...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 3:26 am

Streaming music service Spotify basks in praise (Reuters)

Reuters - At first glance, Spotify isn't much different from other on-demand streaming music services. It includes roughly the same library of songs, pays the same per-stream licensing fees for music and contends with the same poor ad-sales environment.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 Jun 2009 | 3:26 am

UPDATE 1-NHL-Molsons agree to buy Canadiens hockey team

TORONTO, June 20 (Reuters) - Geoff Molson and his brothers, Andrew and Justin, tentatively agreed to buy control of the National Hockey League's Montreal Canadiens on Saturday, returning the sport's most...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2009 | 3:13 am

Best Handset For Freedom?

Father Thomas Dowd writes "The images we are seeing of Iran are being captured on cell phones and the text is being twittered over SMS. Still, the government has some control over the networks, and we are all familiar with fears of wiretap technologies to spy on users. If the cell phone is the new tool of freedom, what would the best 'freedom handset' contain? I'm thinking of a device with an open OS, where each phone could be a router for encrypted messages passed through Bluetooth/WiFi/whatever, thereby totally bypassing physical infrastructures when necessary. Of course, some sort of plausible deniability encryption a la Truecrypt would also be good, in case the secret police catch you with your phone. What else might we need?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 21 Jun 2009 | 12:45 am

German Member of Parliament Joins Pirate Party

Political Observer writes "Jörg Tauss, a member of the German Parliament (Bundestag), left the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is part of the coalition government, and announced that he is joining the German Pirate Party (Google translation; original German article). Tauss resigned from the SPD after all but four of the party's members voted for a new censorship law, which passed the parliament on Thursday. The law, which aims at reducing child pornography, introduces an infrastructure for DNS-based content blocking and is the subject of major criticism from Internet users. In March 2009 Tauss became the subject of investigations by the German police for possession of child pornographic material. He said he had this material only for research as part of his role as a member of parliament. Investigations are still continuing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 21 Jun 2009 | 12:44 am

Man records TSA harassment with iPhone

At CNN:

On a recording a TSA agent can be heard berating Bierfeldt. One sample: "You want to play smartass, and I'm not going to play your f**king game."

They pulled him aside because he was carrying $4,700 in cash -- not because they had any indication he was a threat to flight safety.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 20 Jun 2009 | 11:27 pm

Free Apps roundup for June 19th, 2009

FROM APPLETELL - A huge week on the App Store, it was. This week’s list is full of stuff you should be paying for, like a full featured Twitter client, SIRIUS XM’s streaming radio, and two games that used to not be free.
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Jun 2009 | 11:08 pm

Work starts on New Mexico spaceport - BBC News

KRQE

Work starts on New Mexico spaceport BBC News By Simon Hancock and Alan Moloney Ground has been broken on the construction site of Spaceport America, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. Video: Ground broken on Spaceport America KRQE.com A 'Flying Launch Pad' Cruises New Mexico Skies Space.com Register - CNN - KRQE - iTWire all 351 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 11:06 pm

The Corpse Flowers of Sumatra

Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.

Carnivorous plants have always held a special place in my heart. Watching a Venus Flytrap catch its dinner still fascinates me. Recently another type of plant that is just as strange and wonderful as the carnivores has caught my attention; Corpse Flowers.

You might imagine that smelling the world's largest flower would be a lovely experience. You would be very, very wrong.

The Rafflesia arnoldii, a rare and endangered plant known as the "giant panda of the plant world" bears the world's largest flower. A parasitic plant the Rafflesia lives most of its life within the roots of another plant. Eventually a blossom breaks through the root, grows up to three feet wide, and smells almost exactly like a dead body.

Known as a corpse flower or Carrion flower the Rafflesia releases a scent that smells like a rotting corpse, and the flowers petals bear a similar coloration to that of rotten meat. And while the flower smells terrible to humans, it smells like dinner to the carrion beetles and flesh flies which swarm all over the corpse flowers helping them to pollinate.

While the Rafflesia gets big, it has nothing on another corpse flower, the Amorphophallus titanum.

Translated from the greek Amorphophallus titanum means "giant misshapen penis," and while the Rafflesia has the world's largest flower, the titan lays claim to the largest unbranched cluster of flowers in the world. At full size the titan can reach 9 and a half feet tall and 10 feet in circumference. The titan also generates a great deal of heat, the tip reaching approximately human body temperature, which helps strengthen the illusion of rotting meat that attracts the meat eating insects. It, like the Rafflesia, smells terrible.

Link to the extraordinary flora category in the Atlas which is in desperate need of more plant wonders, a list of titans in cultivation, and to an online carnivorous plant museum. (Apparently some of my other boingboingers have a love of corpse flowers as well, previous boingboing mentions here, here, and here)

Source: Boing Boing | 20 Jun 2009 | 10:44 pm

US House Democrats Unveil a Health Care Plan

gollum123 sends in this piece from a political blog in the NY Times. Here is the text of the bill in question (PDF). "House Democrats on Friday answered President Obama's call for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system by putting forward [an] 852-page draft bill that would require all Americans to obtain health insurance, force employers to provide benefits or help pay for them, and create a new public insurance program to compete with private insurers — a move that Republicans will bitterly oppose. ... But the chairmen said they still did not know how much the plan would cost, even as they pledged to pay for it by cutting Medicare spending and imposing new, unspecified taxes. The three chairmen described their bill as a starting point in a weeks-long legislative endeavor that they said would dominate Congress for the summer and ultimately involve the full panorama of stakeholders in the health care industry, which accounts for about one-sixth of the nation's economy. ... House Republicans, who have had no involvement in the development of the health legislation so far, quickly denounced the Democrats' proposal as a thinly disguised plan for an eventual government takeover of the health care system. ... The House Democrats' plan is one of three distinct efforts underway on Capitol Hill to draft the health overhaul legislation. In the Senate, both the Finance Committee and the health committee have separate bills in the works, and in recent days those efforts seem to have stumbled."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:45 pm

Steve Jobs received liver transplant: report

Source: Gizmodo | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:15 pm

Ray Bradbury Loves Libraries, Hates the Internet

Hugh Pickens was one of several readers to let us know that, according to a NY Times story, the 89-year-old Ray Bradbury hates the Internet. But he loves libraries, and is helping raise $280,000 to keep libraries in Ventura County open. "Among Mr. Bradbury's passions, none burn quite as hot as his lifelong enthusiasm for halls of books. ... 'Libraries raised me,' Mr. Bradbury said. 'I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.' ... The Internet? Don't get him started. 'The Internet is a big distraction,' Mr. Bradbury barked... 'Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,' he said, voice rising. 'They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet." It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:11 pm

It Really Should Have Been Called The iPhone 3G V - For Video

Disclosure: I have not bought an iPhone 3G S — I’m still unsure if I will. Apple gave me a review unit to play with for 60 days.

So, I’ve now had a full day with the latest iPhone, the 3G S. So far, so good. This isn’t meant to be a full review — that will come later. But I wanted to give an initial reaction based on the last 24 hours, because as someone who has more than extensively used both the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G, a lot of users may be interested to know what immediately strikes me as different in this version.

The obvious answer would be its speed. There’s no denying it, it is fast. But that speed is severely hampered by AT&T’s often bad service and the fact that while this phone is capable of transferring data about roughly twice the speed of the iPhone 3G, AT&T’s network isn’t yet capable of doing the same, rendering that advantage moot. So instead of iPhone 3G S, I really would have called this thing the iPhone 3G V — for video. Because that feature, quite simply, is awesome.

Yes, plenty of other devices have done video in the past, but the combination of the overall package of the iPhone with this video recording capability is a game-changer in my opinion. And as we wrote last night, this could spell big trouble for the Flip. Others are saying the same thing. The way that the 3G S handles video is more than good enough for the average consumer. And I think we’re going to see that play out over the next several months.

Not only does the 3G S shoot video in fairly nice (VGA) quality (with the possibility of doing HD quality someday), it is dead simple to upload to YouTube — it is literally the click of one button. Almost immediately after unboxing the 3G S I shot a quick 30 second video (embedded below), and within minutes it was online being viewed on YouTube — and that was transferring it to YouTube via 3G. (Over WiFi, it’s obviously even faster.) No, that’s not as real-time as live video streaming that a service like Qik would like to offer (but is currently being restricted from doing so), but again, it’s fast enough for most consumers, and it’s much better quality to boot.

And one thing that sets it apart from competitor smartphones with similar functionality, like the Google Ion (aka the G2 or HTC Magic), is that the 3G S has dead-simple video editing capabilities right on the device. You simply drag your finger across the video timeline along the top of a video to trim it down to just the part you want before you upload it. And playback of these videos on the device itself looks great.

But really, it’s the whole package of the iPhone as an extremely consumer-friendly device mixed with this video functionality that is killer. Just think about all those popular Twitter applications on the iPhone. When those add video sharing functionality, these iPhone videos are going to be everywhere, just as iPhone-shot pictures are.

And it’s already happening. The increasingly popular yfrog was the first such service to support video from the 3G S, as it already is offering it through Twittelator. And the video attachments are already coming in from the new device. You can expect a surge of other Twitter apps to follow, as TweetDeck, Tweetie and Twitterrific are all ready to launch video support with yfrog, we hear.

And you can bet that other services like TwitVid, the other TwitVid, 12seconds and possibly even TwitPic are sure to follow. But the fact that you can record a video and upload it with one click to YouTube is huge. And with YouTube’s new social features, those videos can auto-tweet out when you upload them, as I learned yesterday.

I asked YouTube for its thoughts on the new iPhone. “It’s a truly amazing world - and great for YouTube - if everyone has an IP connected video camera in their pocket 24/7. Examples such as the protest videos in Iran display the incredible impact of getting video online and shared with the world. The 3G S is only going to increase the velocity of realtime creation and sharing via YouTube,” Hunter Walk, the Director of Product Management at YouTube, tells us.

I can already see it — there will be so many simple ways to get video from your iPhone 3G S to the web, that we’re about to enter the next phase of mobile social sharing: Full-on video. And I think that’s fantastic, I just hope all these services are ready as obviously video is an entirely different game than pictures are. Yfrog claims to be ready, as does YouTube. “We’re already seeing thousands of uploads from new iPhones, but we’re built for scale and receive more than 20 hours of video every minute, so overall quite confident that iPhone users will have a great experience sharing via YouTube,” Walk says.

Really, the only thing I see inhibiting this video revolution on the iPhone 3G S is, not surprisingly, AT&T. How the service is going to handle all these relatively big video files flying over its network all the time now is a huge question mark. We already saw that it couldn’t handle a few thousand geeks with iPhones being in the same place at the same time during SXSW this year — just imagine the first event where there are thousands of geeks with thousands of iPhone 3G Ss, uploading video.

AT&T says that it is continuing to upgrade and improve its network. But the company couldn’t even get MMS ready to go in the U.S. for the iPhone 3G S launch, so I’m skeptical.

The time for excuses is over for AT&T. If it wants to prove it deserves that iPhone exclusivity, it needs to be ready for what’s about to occur. The mobile video revolution is upon us. And that’s why this device should have been called the iPhone 3G V.

Below find a couple more tests, one in widescreen (horizontal) mode, one in vertical mode — featuring me as I am in most social situations, on the iPhone.

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Source: TechCrunch | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:09 pm

Activision Hints That It Might Cut Out On Sony PS3

Chief Executive of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, said in a published report that due to soaring costs and meager sales, they might stop designing video games for Sony's PlayStation3.Kotick complained in an interview with the Times of London that the price of $399 for a PS3 is too high for its waning popularity, leaving them wondering if its worth it to support the console.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:06 pm

AOL’s PoliticsDaily Quickly Surpasses Rival Politico, MediaGlow Sites Continue To Grow

AOL’s new political news and blog site, PoliticsDaily.com has surpassed rival Politico.com in unique visits in May, after being launched only a month and a half ago. According to May’s comScore results, PoliticsDaily.com received 2.4 million unique visitors compared to 1.1 million unique visitors on Politico.com in May. PoliticsDaily, a “news magazine” site which primarily focuses on in-depth political commentary as opposed to breaking news, provides only original content, from long-form analysis to blog posts on issues in the U.S. political landscape. You can read our original review of PoliticsDaily here.

This is a big deal for AOL and representative of the company’s ambitions to become a dominant player in the online content space. PoliticsDaily is the brainchild of Martin Moe, senior vice president at AOL and is built under Bill Wilson’s new MediaGlow division, which is building new content brands distinct from AOL itself. MediaGlow, which recently launched topic directory Love.com, runs AOL News, Engadget and TMZ.com, among other properties.

AOL may be on to something. MediaGlow reports that sites as a whole, rose 5% year over year, with unique visitors climbing hitting 76.3 million, according to May’s comScore data. AOL’s Technology Network – which includes Engadget, , Switched, DownloadSquad, and others, saw the most growth out of all the MediaGlow networks, seeing 35 percent growth in year over year.

As TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington wrote earlier this month, the MediaGlow team is looking to pick up the remnants of the dying print magazine business and digitize this content. With the print business in shambles, a lot of high quality talent is suddenly willing to take a job in online, even at a much lower salary. And AOL has some cash from the dialup business.

High quality talent may be what is helping PoliticsDaily stay competitive in a crowded field. Wilson credits editor and former New York Times Washington Correspondent, Melinda Henneberger’s leadership and “dream team” as the primary reason for the site’s rapid growth. PoliticsDaily launched with a venerable list of experienced political reporters from both new and old media, including Walter Shapiro, former columnist for USA Today and former Washington bureau chief for Salon; Jill Lawrence, former national political correspondent for USA Today and columnist for the Associated Press; Carl Cannon, former Washington bureau chief for Reader’s Digest and White House correspondent for the National Journal and the Baltimore Sun; and others.

Of course there are still other political news-driven sites that are getting more unique visits than PoliticsDaily— The Huffington Post saw 5.3 million unique visits in May, over twice the amount of traffic than PoliticsDaily. But HuffPo’s a content aggregator and PoliticsDaily is focused more on long-form original content. And it seems that PoliticsDaily is still growing and may be a model for where magazines should head in the future.

In the grand scheme of things, AOL’s strategy towards monetizing niche content online seems to be working out. And since they’ve already got the publishing platform with MediaGlow, new brands can be inserted or built at little marginal operating cost. If the brand tanks, which is likely to happen at some point, then AOL isn’t losing too much. It will be interesting to see what digital content brands AOL unveil next. Wilson says that MediaGlow will be launching several sites in the near future, but declined to give specifics. Perhaps they’ll reinvent some of the dying magazine brands at former parent company Time Inc.?

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