|
|
|
|
Do You Hate Being Called an "IT Guy?"An anonymous reader writes "The phrase 'IT' is so overused, I'm not sure what it means any more. OK, maybe it's an ego thing, but I spent a lot of years in grad school, lots of years getting good at creating software, and lots of years getting good at creating technical products and I don't want the same label as the intern who fixes windoze. I'm looking at a tech management job at a content company that is trying to become a software company, and they refer to everything about software development, data center operations, and desktop support as 'IT.' I'd like to tell the CEO before I take the job that we have to stop referring to all these people as 'IT people' or I'm not going to be able to attract and retain the top-tier talent that is required. Am I just being petty? Should I just forget it? Change it slowly over time? These folks are really developing products, but we don't normally call software creators 'product developers.' Just call them the 'Tech Department' or the 'Engineering Deptartment?'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Nov 2009 | 3:07 am Hacked e-mails at centre of global warming debate - Toronto Sun
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 29 Nov 2009 | 2:33 am IBM to buy start-up Guardium for $225 million: report (Reuters)Reuters - IBM , the world's biggest technology services company, is expected to announce this week the acquisition of database security start-up Guardium for $225 million, Israeli financial newspaper TheMarker reported.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Nov 2009 | 1:52 am IBM to buy start-up Guardium for $225 mln -newspaperTEL AVIV, Nov 29 (Reuters) - IBM , the world's biggest technology services company, is expected to announce this week the acquisition of database security start-up Guardium for $225 million, Israeli financial...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Nov 2009 | 1:49 am GPS cell phone apps challenge standalone devices (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Nov 2009 | 1:30 am HTC Droid Eris – Verizon (Review) - Skatter Tech (blog)
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 29 Nov 2009 | 1:07 am Dubai World refused distress-asset sale -reportDUBAI, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Dubai World has refused to offload assets at fire-sale prices to repay obligations, forcing it to seek a debt standstill, a newspaper report on Sunday quoted an unnamed source...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Nov 2009 | 1:04 am Climate 'time bombs' stoke scientists' fearsWhatever the outcome of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Nature may have some extremely nasty surprises up its sleeve, say scientists. They say Earth's biosphere has numerous...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Nov 2009 | 1:01 am Steampunk terrarriumProfessor Alexander's Botanical Vasculum - Steamed 300 watt Moss Terrarium from Etsy seller SteamedGlass is a beautiful blown-glass steampunk Rube Goldberg terrarrium: "This is the largest of our "steamed"...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Nov 2009 | 12:15 am Steampunk terrarrium Professor Alexander's Botanical Vasculum - Steamed 300 watt Moss Terrarium from Etsy seller SteamedGlass is a beautiful blown-glass steampunk Rube Goldberg terrarrium: "This is the largest of our "steamed" light bulb terrariums with a bulb measuring 3 3/4" x 7 3/4". It stands 10 1/4" tall as mounted on the SteamPunked stand made of a simulated cherrywood base, copper tubing, chemistry glass, an adjustable 4x magnifying glass and other ornate trimmings. The bulb houses a small solar powered LED bulb that lights itself when all other lights go out and throws a dreamlike shadow pattern on your walls making the perfect night light. It can also be turned on and off with the old fashioned knife switch mounted to the base." Drool.
Professor Alexander's Botanical Vasculum - Steamed 300 watt Moss Terrarium
(Thanks, Armand!)
Steampunk terrarriumProfessor Alexander's Botanical Vasculum - Steamed 300 watt Moss Terrarium from Etsy seller SteamedGlass is a beautiful blown-glass steampunk Rube Goldberg terrarrium: "This is the largest of our "steamed"...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Nov 2009 | 12:15 am iPhone App Store Rejects Find a New Homeeldavojohn writes "A new site called App Rejections (somewhat slashdoted already) aims to provide a home for misfit apps. With Apple offering no documents or discussions on the matter of application rejections, this site might become a popular place to pick forbidden fruit. Could a third party horn in on Apple's monopoly in the iPhone application market?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Nov 2009 | 12:03 am CCDs: a great disruptor lurking in the techHere's a fascinating rumination on the Bitworking site about how much of the promise of RFID tags is being realized by charge-coupled devices (CCDs -- the sensor in your digital camera) instead. CCDs seems...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:43 pm CCDs: a great disruptor lurking in the techHere's a fascinating rumination on the Bitworking site about how much of the promise of RFID tags is being realized by charge-coupled devices (CCDs -- the sensor in your digital camera) instead. CCDs seems to be subject to Moore's Law, and are falling in price and increasing in capacity at an alarming rate. The potential applications are significant:CCD (via Making Light) (Image: CCD, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from AMagill's Flickr stream)
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:43 pm CCDs: a great disruptor lurking in the techHere's a fascinating rumination on the Bitworking site about how much of the promise of RFID tags is being realized by charge-coupled devices (CCDs -- the sensor in your digital camera) instead. CCDs seems...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:43 pm Australian scientists aim to reduce sheep burpsAustralian scientists are working to breed a sheep that belches less, as they look for ways to reduce harmful methane emissions from the country's woolly flocks, a researcher said Sunday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:42 pm Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: gadgets! (part 3/6)Mark and I have rounded up some of our favorite items from our 2009 Boing Boing reviews for the second-annual Boing Boing gift guide. We'll do one a day for the next six days, covering media (music/games/DVDs), gadgets and stuff, kids' books, novels, nonfiction, and comics/graphic novels/art books. Today, it's gadgets!
Last year's guides:
Source: Boing Boing | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:41 pm Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: gadgets! (part 3/6)Mark and I have rounded up some of our favorite items from our 2009 Boing Boing reviews for the second-annual Boing Boing gift guide. We'll do one a day for the next six days, covering media (music/games...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:41 pm Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: nonfiction! (part 4/6)Mark and I have rounded up some of our favorite items from our 2009 Boing Boing reviews for the second-annual Boing Boing gift guide. We'll do one a day for the next six days, covering media (music/games...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:40 pm Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: nonfiction! (part 4/6)Mark and I have rounded up some of our favorite items from our 2009 Boing Boing reviews for the second-annual Boing Boing gift guide. We'll do one a day for the next six days, covering media (music/games/DVDs), gadgets and stuff, kids' books, novels, nonfiction, and comics/graphic novels/art books. Today, it's nonfiction!
Full
Full
Full Other installments:
Last year's guides:
Source: Boing Boing | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:40 pm Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: nonfiction! (part 4/6)Mark and I have rounded up some of our favorite items from our 2009 Boing Boing reviews for the second-annual Boing Boing gift guide. We'll do one a day for the next six days, covering media (music/games...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:40 pm Charity auction for characters names in forthcoming sf novels by great writersThe Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund is a venerable institution that sends sf fans from North America to Europe and vice-versa, to bridge the world's fandoms (there are other funds that bring together fans from other parts of the world). Frank Wu, Anne KG Murphy and Brian Gray are fundraising for this year's fund, and they've solicited many writers -- Charlie Stross, Nalo Hopkinson, David Brin, Elizabeth Bear, Julie Czerneda and Mary Robinette Kowal and me! -- to donate "tuckerizations" in forthcoming works for a charity auction. Tuckerizing is the inclusion of a real person's name in a fictional piece (previous tuckerizations from charity auctions in my novels include General Graeme Sutherland in Little Brother, Suzanne Church in Makers, and Connor Prikkel in the forthcoming For the Win; my god-daughter Ada has also been tuckerized in my story "I, Robot" and in Makers).TAFF is also auctioning off a first edition of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (!), and John Hersey's "Hiroshima." It's a great cause, and great prizes that make killer gifts (how cool would it be for a kid to grow up with her name on a character in a wonderful novel?)
TAFF updatery!
(Thanks, Frank!) Charity auction for characters names in forthcoming sf novels by great writersThe Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund is a venerable institution that sends sf fans from North America to Europe and vice-versa, to bridge the world's fandoms (there are other funds that bring together fans from...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:38 pm Charity auction for characters names in forthcoming sf novels by great writersThe Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund is a venerable institution that sends sf fans from North America to Europe and vice-versa, to bridge the world's fandoms (there are other funds that bring together fans from...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:38 pm Some whales double their weight when straining sea-waterHow do giant whales get so big eating such little krill? By using their balleen like a parachute and sucking in their body-weight in water in one go, then straining it out: Since then, Potvin has brought...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:16 pm Some whales double their weight when straining sea-waterHow do giant whales get so big eating such little krill? By using their balleen like a parachute and sucking in their body-weight in water in one go, then straining it out:The Origin of Big (via Kottke) Source: Boing Boing | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:16 pm NASA clamors for safer launches - Florida Today
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:12 pm Games Workshop declares war on best customers. Again.Dan sez, "Game publisher and miniature manufacturer Games Workshop just sent a cease and desist letter to boardgamegeek.com, telling them to remove all fan-made players' aids. This includes scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces -- many of these created for long out of print, well-loved games. GW did this shortly after building a lot of good will by re-releasing their out of print game 'Space Hulk' to much hoopla. And it's not their first attack on their biggest fans"The Games Workshop Files Purge of '09 Source: Boing Boing | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:09 pm Fine art/graffiti photoshopping contest Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: "Graffiti Ren" -- scenes from fine art improved with graffiti.
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:07 pm Eigenharp, crazy sci-fi instrumentThe Eigenharp, a crazy, science fiction instrument from Eigenlabs, comes on two forms, the "Alpha" ("Our professional level instrument allows the musician to play and improvise using a limitless range of sounds with virtuoso skill. It has 120 playing keys, 12 percussion keys, two strip controllers and a breath pipe. Available in a variety of custom finishes.") and the "Pico" ("It's ideal as a solo instrument or for playing in a band. With 18 playing keys and 4 mode keys, a strip controller and breath pipe, the smaller Pico has the majority of the playing features of the Eigenharp Alpha. It plays an unlimited range of sounds and is available in two finishes."). Check out the stunning performance of the Bond theme.
Eigenlabs
(Thanks, Alan!)
PRESS DIGEST - British business - Nov 29Thomas Cook and Thomson owner TUI Travel are both expected to post strong results this week and report a last-minute dash for sun and snow. TUI's results will show that a strong performance in the UK and...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 9:12 pm NSFW: 1200 words absolutely, definitely not about Rupert Murdoch and Google
Throughout the week, my inbox receives a steady flow of emails; from friends, from colleagues, but mostly from total strangers – all containing useful links to stories they “assume I’ve seen”. And always with the same suggestion: “you should write about this in your column!”. Worse than the suggesters are the “trusters”. They’re even more irritating because of their belief that they wield some kind of editorial influence. “Trust you’ll be writing about this in your column this week. Can’t wait to hear your take on it!” they say, blithely assuming that their lack of patience will ultimately be rewarded. Some of them even add a ‘LOL’ to further underline what total and utter wankers they are. In truth, it rarely pays to indulge the recommenders or the trusters. If a subject has blipped across their radar then chances are, by the time my weekly deadline has come around, it will have been done to death by other bloggers and columnists. By Saturday even the person who ‘couldn’t wait’ to hear my take on a subject will be utterly bored with it. The perfect example of this is Rupert Murdoch’s “threat” to remove News Corp content from Google, and his “negotiations” with Microsoft to make articles from The Wall Street Journal and the rest “only available on Bing”. It’s no exaggeration to say that the entire fucking universe has emailed me to say how much they’re looking forward to hearing my opinion on the prospect. Apparently my criticism of the aborted Microsoft adverti-raping of Family Guy means my views on Microsoft and Murdoch somehow matter a damn, and the fact that I’ve worked for old and new media means that I have some unique additional insight. Also, I swear a lot when I talk about Rupert or Microsoft, and people dig that shit. After the eighty-six-millionth email dinged into my inbox, I did almost consider surrendering to popular pressure and dedicating an entire column to my analysis of whether such an arrangement is ever likely to happen and what it would mean for Google, and the wider world. But then I realised that I’m paid to write long, and that a column like that would read as follows (in its entirely)…
…which feels lazy, even for me. The fact is, as a Brit, I’ve seen Murdoch pulling this crap countless times before. The News Corp-owned Sun is the biggest-selling newspaper in the UK, and second biggest-selling English language newspaper in the world. In every national election for as long as anyone can remember, the candidate backed by the Sun has gone on to win. (And not just in the UK – the paper backed Obama for President, even though Murdoch also owns Fox News.) The Sun’s endorsement of winners is, according to some, evidence of Murdoch-as-kingmaker; a man with the ability to shape opinion and to win (or lose) elections. Sure enough, the Sun’s recent shift from supporting Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to Conservative rival David Cameron coincided with a spike in opinion polls for the latter to become the next Prime Minister. But to assume that Murdoch’s backing of Cameron lead to the spike is to flip cause and effect. Murdoch doesn’t create winners, he’s simply adept at spotting where public opinion is heading – waiting until he’s absolutely certain who the winner of a fight will be – and then endorsing them so loudly that when they inevitably win, he can share all the credit. “It’s The Sun Wot Won It”, the paper once declared after an election, when in fact a more accurate headline would be “it’s the Sun wot noticed it”. The idea that Murdoch removing his content from Google will be the beginning of the end for the latter’s dominance is just nonsense. Sure a few smaller news rivals might be dumb enough to heed his rallying cry for a mass-boycott of Google News, but that will just be an added bonus to Murdoch. The numbers show that most searchers wouldn’t even notice if the Wall Street Journal and every other News Corp publication vanished from their results. What would definitely happen, though, is a huge drop in eyeballs and ad revenue for News Corp, which would certainly cost Murdoch far more than he could hope to recoup from a deal with Bing. Again, anyone familiar with the Sun (and its New York-based cousin, the Post) will know that Rupert will always put his hunger for eyeballs above his insistence that people pay for news – to the point where he is happy to slash cover prices to economically-suicidal levels to win readers. But fortunately Murdoch doesn’t need to make that decision: unlike in politics where you can’t endorse both candidates, there’s really no reason for him to pick a horse in the search race. His ideal scenario is to continue to make News Corp content available via both Google and Bing, but to encourage both to display it in a way that drives the maximum monetizable eyeballs. Which is exactly what his current strategy will achieve. By convincing Bing that there’s a chance he might drop Google – for the right price – Murdoch suddenly has a new partner falling over itself to give him prominence in their search results, on his terms. Sure enough, Microsoft has just agreed to help fund the next-generation search crawling protocol, ACAP, which gives content owners like News Corp more control over how their news is indexed. Meantime, Google might not be worried about a mass exodus to Bing, but as more publishers start to consider alternative search services they have to at least begin to take ACAP seriously. After all, if you want to index the world’s information, you have to accept that a big chunk of that information belongs to Rupert. Again, this is win-win for Murdoch who can keep his content on Google, but with the option of locking some of it away behind un-indexable walls in future. And that’s where we see Murdoch’s real genius: he has managed to use his illusion of influence to get all of these benefits without having to commit himself to anything, or expose himself in any way. There is no way in hell that News Corp content will vanish from Google and yet with every headline asking whether Google should be worried or suggesting that other companies might follow Murdoch’s lead, his image as a kingmaker is strengthened. It’s bad enough that he has millions of readers and viewers for his own outlets, without the rest of us doing his dirty work for him. And it’s for that reason that I won’t be swayed by the recommenders and the trusters, no matter how many emails they send. I know Murdoch’s game, and unlike my poor misguided TechCrunch colleagues, I refuse to play it. So, sorry Rupert, I don’t know what my column will be about this week, but one thing’s for sure: it won’t include a single word about you or your…. …oh. Damn you’re good. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors 
Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm STS-129 Ascent Video HighlightsAn anonymous reader sends in this link to a video of 12-/12 minutes of Space Shuttle pr0n. The people at the Johnson Space Center put together this video of the assent of STS-129 using multiple imagery assets — ground, air, booster, and the shuttle itself. The booster's-eye view of splashdown and immersion is something you don't see every day. As a bonus, another anonymous reader shared a beautiful photo of the shuttle flying over rugged terrain after it separated from the ISS last week.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Nov 2009 | 8:58 pm For stars, high-tech gaffes hard to hide (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Nov 2009 | 8:51 pm Text-a-Tip programs allow tipsters to help police (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Nov 2009 | 7:47 pm Microsoft's Top Devs Don't Seem To Like Own Toolsericatcw writes "Through tools such as Visual Basic and Visual Studio, Microsoft may have done more than any other vendor to make drag and drop-style programming mainstream. But its superstar developers seem to prefer old-school modes of crafting code. During the panel at the Professional Developers Conference earlier this month, the devs also revealed why they think writing tight, bare-metal code will come back into fashion, and why parallel programming hasn't caught up with the processors yet." These guys are senior enough that they don't seem to need to watch what they say and how it aligns with Microsoft's product roadmap. They are also dead funny. Here's Jeffrey Snover on managed code (being pushed by Microsoft through its Common Language Runtime tech): "Managed code is like antilock brakes. You used to have to be a good driver on ice or you would die. Now you don't have to pump your brakes anymore." Snover also joked that programming is getting so abstract, developers will soon have to use Natal to "write programs through interpretative dance."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 28 Nov 2009 | 5:00 pm Calling Video Professor a Scampalmerj3 writes in to give some wider attention to a piece on Techcrunch today in which Michael Arrington reacts to Video Professor's desperate attempts to shut him up after he called Video Professor a scam in a piece syndicated by the Washington Post. As described by Arrington, the ways the company's site operates (differently depending on where a visitor comes from) are strongly reminiscent of the practices a Senate committee recently condemned. (Here is a detailed example of another, similar scam, from a not-naive victim. Video Professor's tactics sound even more deceptive.) Video Professor seems to react with belligerence, not to mention legal threats, towards any hint of criticism. Please share any direct experiences you have with this outfit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Nov 2009 | 4:54 pm Watch Out Foursquare, Facebook is Poised To Dominate Geo
But all this time I’ve had a nagging feeling that Foursquare, at least in its current form, is not going to be the next Twitter, as some people have concluded. Because as good as Foursquare is at figuring out where and what your friends are up to, they can’t hope to compete with Facebook. That is, if Facebook does Geo right. While the world’s largest social network has been almost totally silent with regard to its plans for geolocation, we’ve been hearing an increasing number of rumors about Facebook finally coming close to launching these features. Such rumors have come and gone for a long time, but all signs point to the most recent batch being true. For one, Facebook recently edited its Privacy Policy to explicitly allow for location-based features. And perhaps more importantly, the clock is ticking: Facebook’s rival Twitter just launched its Geolocation API, and Facebook can’t afford to be left in the dust. Facebook absolutely needs to implement location if it’s going to maintain its status as the top social network. When it does launch, Facebook is going to have a massive impact on the current location based service environment. Much of this still-nascent space will change. And those that fail to evolve quickly will die. Deconstructing FoursquareI’m singling out Foursquare because it’s currently the hottest startup in location. But many of the issues affecting Foursquare apply to other promising geo-based startups like Gowalla, and the countless others that are surely in the works. During our Realtime CrunchUp, Foursquare VP of Business Development Tristan Walker described Foursquare as a company that “makes things that make cities easier to use. We try to get folks to get out and explore the cities in which they live, or visit, and incentivize them to do so. It’s a little bit of a friend finder, a little bit of a social city guide… and we use game mechanics to tie that all together.”
Then there’s the social city guide element of Foursquare, which could one day be a full-fledged social recommendation feature. But right now it revolves around leaving ‘tips’ about the locations you visit. This is Foursquare’s weakest point. When I look through the tips of various restaurants they’re usually filled with things like “try the chicken noodle soup”. These are occasionally helpful, but they lack context. Most of the tips I’m seeing were left by people who I don’t know at all, and they’re too brief to be any more useful than something I can already find on Yelp. I certainly haven’t reached the point where I want to see the available Foursquare tips every time I check into a restaurant. Finally, there’s Foursquare the friend finder. The first thing you see when you boot the app is a list of where your friends have checked in recently. This is the driving force behind Foursquare’s growing popularity. There have been other services, like Loopt and Brightkite, that have let you keep tabs on your friends for quite a while. But Foursquare’s check-in model has struck a chord because it provides more context (you know what people are up to as opposed to just where they are) and a greater amount of privacy, because you have to explicitly choose to check in. The appeal of the friend finder is obvious — if you see your buddy is at a nearby bar, maybe you’ll walk over to meet him. This isn’t just a gimmick. It appeals to some fundamental human desire to hang out with people you enjoy spending time with. This will never grow old. And it’s where Facebook is poised to dominate. Why Facebook Already WonThe most compelling part of Foursquare is the ability to see at a glance what your friends are up to. Unfortunately, most people don’t know all that many people on Foursquare yet — my current Friends List on Foursquare is dominated by folks who live and breathe tech, without a single person from my ‘regular’ social circle on the service. Twitter has always suffered from the same problem, and even a year of stellar growth and constant press attention hasn’t yet given Twitter an on ramp into mainstream use. Facebook doesn’t have that problem. At most, there are probably a few dozen people who you’d like to share your location with. And you’re already friends with all of them on Facebook. You may even have separated them into a Friends List of “real” friends — the people you hang out with on a regular basis. And that’s why Facebook has already won the battle. Unlike Twitter, where you may be interested in following people you don’t know well, your circle of close friends on Facebook and the people with whom you’d probably like to share your location are one and the same. If Facebook really wanted to, it could probably even look at people you’re commonly tagged alongside in photos to help suggest who to include on your list of ‘location’ friends. There are plenty of other things Facebook has going for it. Facebook already has a robust system for managing privacy settings. Granted, they’re confusing as all hell, but Facebook has made it clear that it’s working on making them easier to use. And over the years millions of people have come to trust Facebook as a relatively safe service — something that is key given the sensitive nature of location. Foursquare is a looming privacy disaster. The other key component is Facebook’s ubiquity on GPS-enabled smartphones. These are essential for updating your location on the go (which is where most of geo’s utility comes from). And Facebook is already dominating here. Facebook is the most popular iPhone/iPod Touch app of all time, and it has a strong presence on other platforms as well (it comes preinstalled on Android and Palm’s WebOS). It is hard to overstate how important these advantages are for Facebook. It may not be particularly difficult for other services to implement privacy features and friends lists, or even to build nice iPhone apps. But getting people to start using them will be incredibly difficult. The Big Question MarkFacebook has made it quite clear that location based something is coming. We’ve heard rumors about it for months, and in their most recent Privacy Policy change they actually included language directly pertaining to location based services. Here’s how it reads:
So it looks like it’s coming soon, but we still don’t know the direction Facebook is going to take. There are two obvious ways Facebook could treat location. It can act as a direct competitor to services like Loopt, Foursquare, and the rest by allowing you to directly check into locations from your phone or via the web. Or, it could serve as something of a central hub for location that third parties could update via an API. In other words, updating a service like Foursquare could then update your Facebook location. It seems likely that Facebook will wind up doing both. Twitter is already trying to become the central hub for geo-positioned status updates through its own API, and Facebook isn’t going to give that up without a fight. Given Facebook’s moves to bolster its other API functions, I think it’s safe to say they’ll be allowing developers to push a user’s geolocation from their service or app into Facebook. Facebook would be foolish to rely exclusively on third parties as a source of location data. Many people update their status messages and photos exclusively through Facebook.com and their official mobile applications, probably without realizing they have other options. The big question is what form this native location functionality that appears within Facebook will take. Facebook could simply allow people to geotag their status updates in the same way that Twitter does. Or it could adopt a robust location feature that more closely resembles Foursquare and Loopt. The change in the Terms of Service leaves room for both of these. Again, I think Facebook will do both. Third parties may be able to tap into this data via Facebook Connect, but they won’t own it. I don’t think Facebook is going to set out to beat Foursquare. Far from it, in fact — I think Facebook is going to readily accept geo data through its API, which makes Foursquare a great potential contributor. But if Facebook chooses to own your location and that of your friends, it will severely undermine Foursquare’s primary feature.
Nothing Is In the BagAll of that said, Facebook could still mess this up. The company has been thinking of location for a very long time now, and has held off largely because of the concerns over privacy. These concerns are certainly valid. Attorneys general from multiple countries are clearly keeping their eyes on the site’s potential safety risks. In light of this scrutiny, there’s a chance that Facebook will roll out location too slowly. Or that what they do roll out will be handicapped. Given how much is at stake I don’t think they’ll let that happen, but it’s possible. How Foursquare And The Rest Can Still ThriveIf Facebook does nail geo, that doesn’t necessarily mean Foursquare is doomed. It just means that Foursquare needs to build a product whose core value extends beyond showing where your friends are. That’s why I think its social city guide is probably the best thing it has going for it. It may be lacking now, but if Foursquare can build out a compelling recommendation engine that introduces you to new people to meet and places to see based on your past checkin history, it could be very cool. It could also continue building out its gaming elements to keep them fresh. Looking forward, services like SimpleGeo and GeoAPI will be able to help apps integrate location very quickly. Facebook is going to own the social graph, but there’s plenty that can still be done beyond that. Games. Dating apps. Hyper-local advertising. These all have very bright futures. They’ll just need to figure out how to use location as a starting point, rather than a core feature. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Source: Gizmodo | 28 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm Modeling the Economy As a Physics ProblemUniversity of Utah physicist Tim Garrett has published a study that approaches the economy and its relation to global warming as a physics problem — and comes to some controversial conclusions: that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day. The study was panned by economists and was rejected by several journals before its acceptance in the journal Climatic Change. "[Garrett discovered that] Throughout history, a simple physical constant... links global energy use to the world's accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn't necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society's future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions. ... 'I'm not an economist, and I am approaching the economy as a physics problem,' Garrett says. 'I end up with a global economic growth model different than they have.' Garrett treats civilization like a 'heat engine' that 'consumes energy and does "work" in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy,' he says. That constant is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, 'each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption,' Garrett says. ... Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 28 Nov 2009 | 2:30 pm A Dual-Screen 10.1" Laptop In Time For the HolidaysJoshuaInNippon writes "Japanese computer manufacture Kohjinsha has announced that it will begin selling a 10.1" dual-screen laptop on Dec. 11 — in Japan only. While it is not the first dual-screen laptop, a title claimed by the monstrous 17" Lenovo Thinkpad W700ds series, the Kohjinsha sure looks much more portable and stylish. The Thinkpad's extra screen pulls out slightly from one side for about a 40% increase on its display, whereas on the Kohjinsha's two full separate screens spread out symmetrically from the center. While specs are admittedly lower than the Thinkpad, the DZ series certainly wins on cost. The starting price will be ¥79,800, about $900, in Japan (exporters will likely mark that price up slightly), compared with the Thinkpad at well over $2,000. Kohjinsha says the laptop is great for working on 'large business documents' (e.g. excessively wide spreadsheets), or watching videos while surfing the Web, which is likely what most users will be doing with it. The timing and the price certainly make the Kohjinsha DZ series a tempting toy idea for holiday giving — perhaps to oneself."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 28 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm You Can Install Chrome OS On Your Dell Mini 10v Right Now You can now run Chromium OS, the open source developmental version of Google Chrome OS, on your Dell Mini 10v. Don't have one? Neither do I, so don't feel too bad.
Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 1:40 pm Hong Kong Crunch: What’s Up In China? Hey, guys. I, John Biggs, will be in Hong Kong and Guangdong next week (November 30-December 5) to visit some folks and would love to meet up with Web 2.0 and gadget purveyors in mother China. If you would like to chat, drop me a line at john @ crunchgear.com and let me know what's up. I'm thinking about doing an informal meet-up on Thursday so advice on places to meet in Hong Kong are welcome.
Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 1:38 pm Hong Kong Crunch: What’s up in China?
Hey, guys. I, John Biggs, will be in Hong Kong and Guangdong next week (November 30-December 5) to visit some folks and would love to meet up with Web 2.0 and gadget purveyors in mother China. If you would like to chat, drop me a line at john @ crunchgear.com and let me know what’s up. I’m thinking about doing an informal meet-up on Thursday so advice on places to meet in Hong Kong are welcome.
Source: CrunchGear | 28 Nov 2009 | 1:37 pm 11.28.09 Weekend Update- Black Friday, Blue Saturday Edition [Digital Daily]
Kara was sorely disappointed when she realized that she wouldn’t need her yoga mat for her piece on Asana. Asana, as it turns out, isn’t a pose that helps you channel your chi, but rather a high profile start-up from two former Facebookers aimed at addressing the workplace collaboration and communications space. Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz together invested $9 million in an attempt to tip the karmic balance in Asana’s favor. Kara showed no fear in a post this week, addressing head on the what-ifs raised by our spicy chairman Rupert Murdoch. Rupe has threatened to remove content from search giant Google (GOOG) and Kara decided to fill everyone in, from the inside out. AllThingsD went a little bit Hollywood late in the week and Kara reminded us all to set our Tivos to catch our very own Katie Boehret on Martha Stewart (MSO). Katie headed on to showcase a few cool gadgets for the holidays. Digital Daily wasn’t quite as Zen this week, covering a few of the scintillating conflicts that always seem to plague the holiday season. It was a case of bickering brother and Psystar style early in the week as Apple (AAPL) readied the deathblow against the Mac clone retailer. Apple claims that Psystar’s computers that ship with the Mac OS installed cut too close to home and must be eliminated. Apple may be sandblasting a soda cracker just a little here, as Psystar has already filed for bankruptcy. John followed up Apple news with some thoughts on foreign policy. It seems that Senators John Kerry and Orrin Hatch put on their best Hawaiian shirts, black socks and leather man-sandals this week to play the obnoxious Americans intent on bossing around the European Commission. While there was no word on weather they made a fuss about not getting ketchup with their French fries, they did encourage the EC to hurry up and approve the pending Oracle (ORCL)-Sun (JAVA) deal. Sticking with the European vacation theme, John finished out the week with news that Apple and wireless carrier O2 would begin selling iPhones at Tesco supermarkets in the UK. We assume that, like all things sold in British grocery stores, Tesco iPhones will also come with tiikka masala and malt vinegar options. Media Memo was back up to full speed this week and while we don’t blame Peter for doing his civic duty last week, we’re glad he’s back on the job. He’s been closely following the decline of advertising dollars that have been blamed for everything from the death of newspapers to Lou Dobbs “going rogue.” Peter reported that Yahoo upped the ante this week with a meta-advertising campaign targeted at, yep, ad executives. That’s one way to drum up business, or so believes the team at the new Yahoo (YHOO). In another startling revelation about media consumership, the Olswang media law firm reported that iPhone consumers tend to be willing to pay for some content. Peter echoed the same, reporting some purchases of his own. In yet another story about a potential grab for media dollars, Peter reported that Hulu, the online television giant grew in both content and viewership. Peter reminded us that everyone is holding their breath for when the juggernaut throws up that pay wall. Katie held down the Mossberg fort this week and did so even while simultaneously appearing on TV. Quite a feat, but lady geeks have special two-places-at-once powers. Back underground at Mossberg HQ, she reviewed Clicker, a Website that is aiming to be the place on the web to find any TV you might want to watch. The service will point you to wherever a particular episode may live in electronically viewable format, and does so without cluttering results with the web’s video jetsam. She praised the service on the whole, but warned that it’s not a magic bullet. If you are directed to a site that features a pesky proprietary media player, you will still have to make the download. She said that user account on the site will even let you use it like an online Tivo (TIVO), alerting you when shows have posted and building you a playlist. Please take care while nursing your Post Retail Stress Disorder this weekend, and take solace that while you may never fully use that knee again, you did get your four dollar toaster. Tune in next week. Weekend Update will bring you back to bring you the all-meat, no filler account of the week’s events at AllThingsD. Source: All Things Digital | 28 Nov 2009 | 1:30 pm German energy firm RWE vows CO2 emission cuts: reportGermany's second biggest energy firm RWE plans to significantly cut CO2 emissions from its power stations by 2012, chief executive Juergen Grossmann said in an interview to be published...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 1:21 pm This is why you should read CrunchGear every day
Source: Gizmodo | 28 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 11-22-2009Section:  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 | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:59 pm A Way to Heal the World's OceansYou know that expression people utter when a friend has been dumped, or is the victim of unrequited love? "There are plenty of fish in the sea"...? Well, there aren't. At least, not literally. The oceans are being drained of ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:56 pm Black Friday Continues to Grow Online According to TheFindZhu Zhu Pets, Tech Decks, and Online Discounters Among the Most Popular MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- href="http://www.thefind.com/">TheFind ,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:56 pm Black Friday Shopping: PriceGrabber.com(R) Releases 2009 Online StatisticsRecession drives consumers online to take advantage of the best deals in Electronics and Appliances LOS ANGELES, Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- PriceGrabber.com, a part of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:52 pm Tapering Waveguide Captures a RainbowSubComdTaco passes along news of researchers in the US who have trapped a rainbow in a tapering waveguide. The research is described (PDF) on the arXiv. "In 2007, Ortwin Hess of the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK, and colleagues proposed a technique to trap light inside a tapering waveguide [made of metamaterials]... The idea is that as the waveguide tapers, the components of the light are made to stop in turn at ever narrower points. That's because any given component of the light cannot pass through an opening that's smaller than its wavelength. This leads to a 'trapped rainbow.' ... Now Vera Smolyaninova of Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues have used a convex lens to create the tapered waveguide and trap a rainbow of light. They coated one side of a 4.5-mm-diameter lens with a gold film..., and laid the lens — gold-side down — on a flat glass slide which was also coated with film of gold. Viewed side-on, the space between the curved lens and the flat slide was a layer of air that narrowed to zero thickness where the lens touched the slide — essentially a tapered waveguide. When they shone a multi-wavelength laser beam at the... gilded waveguide, a trapped rainbow formed inside. This could be seen as a series of colored rings when the lens was viewed from above with a microscope: the visible light leaked through the thin gold film."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:51 pm The Zune HD will soon come in more colors
Source: CrunchGear | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:50 pm Nokia busted for showing off an SNES emulator on the N900
If you were a hardware manufacturer and your new phone was a ROMist’s delight you’d be all like “Our phone plays Doom and totally plays Super Mario Bros. 3.” Right? You’d be bragging from here to Scranton. Well, Nokia tried to do that with the new N900 and got in huge trouble with Nintendo. They showed a video of an SNES emulator running on the device with this voiceover.
Ummm, right. Good choice. Nintendo is probably going to totally sue them out of business now. You know they should have just shown Altered Beast on a Genesis emulator and been done with it.
Source: CrunchGear | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:47 pm Call of Duty franchise surpasses new milestone - Afterdawn.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:44 pm Orbeos OLED lights are warm and round
But these Orbeos OLED lights are as bright and efficient as any LED or CFL, but are both warm, diffuse, and dimmable. I might choose them over regular bulbs just because they have the best of all worlds. They’re extremely flat, so they can go just about anywhere, but that same flatness means they won’t work to illuminate a whole area unless you have a few. Some OLEDs, however, are flexible, and once they can stretch the matrix into a light bulb-esque shape, you might be able to put them into your regular sockets. [via OLED-Display.net]
Source: Gizmodo | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm Black Friday Continues to Grow Online According to TheFindMOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- TheFind, shopping's leading vertical search engine, reported a 120% year over year surge in search queries on Black Friday and a 75% week over week jump in its mobile search traffic.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:56 am Black Friday Shopping: PriceGrabber.com(R) Releases 2009 Online StatisticsLOS ANGELES, Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- PriceGrabber.com®, a part of Experian, revealed today that shoppers continued to take advantage of Black Friday promotions and incentives in popular product categories, such as MP3 Players, Plasma & LCD TVs and GPS.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:52 am Free Apps roundup for November 27th, 2009FROM APPLETELL - I think it’s appropriate to be thankful for all these free apps we find every week. So, thanks, developers. Check these out to keep yourself occupied this weekend. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:47 am Microsoft Advice Against Nehalem Xeons Snuffed OutEukariote writes "In an article outlining hidden strife in the processor world, Andreas Stiller has reported the scoop that Microsoft advised against the use of Intel Nehalem Xeon (Core i7/i5) processors under Windows Server 2008 R2, but was pressured by Intel to refrain from publishing this advisory. The issue concerns a bug causing spurious interrupts that locks up the Hypervisor of Server 2008. Though there is a hotfix, it is unattractive as it disables power savings and turbo boost states. (The original German-language version of the article is also available.)"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 28 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernovadavecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Nov 2009 | 10:50 am Newegg’s Thanksgiving weekend game dealsFROM GAMERTELL - And you thought the deals ended with Black Friday? Silly shopper. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 28 Nov 2009 | 10:37 am iPhone's debut in S.Korea means paradigm shift: experts (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Nov 2009 | 10:14 am Pub fined £8K after user infringes copyright with its WiFiA British pub has been fined £8,000 because someone using the WiFi there allegedly committed a copyright infringement. Even though British law exempts people who provide Internet access from liability for their users' copyright infringements, the pub was still fined (the details of this are confused).Graham Cove told ZDNet UK on Friday he believes the case to be the first of its kind in the UK. However, he would not identify the pub concerned, because its owner -- a pubco that is a client of The Cloud's -- had not yet given their permission for the case to be publicised...Pub 'fined £8k' for Wi-Fi copyright infringement (Thanks, Zoran)
Source: Gizmodo | 28 Nov 2009 | 10:00 am Hot gaming news for the week of 11-22-2009Section:  No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 28 Nov 2009 | 9:21 am It’s Not Easy Being Popular. 77 Percent Of Facebook Fan Pages Have Under 1,000 Fans In this age of instant Internet celebrity, anyone can become famous for 15 seconds (to rework Andy Warhol’s oft-quoted maxim). But what does famous mean exactly when anyone can have a Facebook fan page—those public pages on Facebook set up by brands, media outlets, celebs, and wanna-be celebs. As it turns out, being popular is not as easy as it looks. A full 77 percent of Facebook fan pages have less than 1,000 fans, according to an upcoming report by Sysomos, a social media monitoring and analytics firm. Once a fan page is set up (here’s ours), anyone on Facebook can become your “fan,” which is like following someone on Twitter in that it doesn’t require a reciprocal friendship. Sysomos analyzed 600,000 fan pages on Facebook and came up with the distribution curve in the chart above. The vast bulk of fan pages have between 10 and 1,000 fans. Only 4 percent have more than 10,000 fans, and less than 1/20th of a percent have more than a million fans. It breaks down as follows:
The Internet has long been defining celebrity down, and now we know by how much (if you accept that Facebook, the world’s fourth most popular Website with more than 300 million members, is as good a proxy as there is for the Web as a whole). To be Facebook famous, all you need is a moderately popular fan page, with the biggest chunk of those pages (42 percent) having between 100 and 1,000 fans. Another 30 percent have between 10 and 100 fans. The categories Facebook fan pages fall into are remarkably evenly distributed. Celebrities, products, stores, restaurants, bars and clubs, websites, music, organizations, and non profits each make up between 6.9 percent and 7.5 percent of fan pages by category.
The biggest product page is Facebook’s own page, with 5.8 million fans (hey, is this rigged?), followed by Starbucks with 5.1 million (the page is filled with wall comments such as, “MMMMM Pumpkin Spice Latte!”). Sysomos drilled down further, looked at the 297 pages with more than one million fans, and properly categorized them—or at least tried. It turns out many of them (39.2 percent) are uncharacterizable such as “Nights Out With Friends.” But the rest can be broken down into music (16.7 percent), celebrities 16.0 (percent), products (11.9 percent), TV shows (8.5 percent), films (3.4 percent), and games (1.4 percent). And that’s just like it is in the real world. If you have more than a million fans, chances are you are either a rock star or an actor.
And unlike on Twitter, where popularity is correlated with how many times you Tweet, Facebook fan pages tend to be updated only once every 16 days. And that’s really the big difference between Facebook fans and Twitter followers. On Twitter, you follow someone because you want to hear what they have to say. On Facebook, you fan them just to show your support of affinity. Too often, it’s a throwaway gesture. But then, fame is fleeting. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am eBay Maps Out Black Friday Online Transactions While Black Friday has long been a popular phenomenon for brick and mortar stores, the deal frenzy has been extending to e-retailers and online stores. Now, sales on the web are equally as lucrative as those in the stores. eBay is launching a campaign to capitalize on the holiday shopping season, called “12 Days Of Deals,” and has also rolled out a new Deal-focused iPhone app and partnered with Microsoft to offer deals directly from Internet Explorer 8. Today, the e-commerce giant is launching a interactive map that shows all of the transactions that took place on eBay on Black Friday. The map provides a visualization of all U.S.-based buyer and seller transactions that occurred on eBay on Black Friday. As the clock runs, points will appear on the map, representing the occurrence of buyer and seller transactions on eBay. eBay says the map visualization is based on raw data that includes eBay sales and purchases occurring in approximately 33,000 U.S. ZIP codes. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 8:53 am Deer Antlers Are A Materials Scientist's DreamPrized for their impressive antlers, red deer have been caught in the hunters' sights for generations. But a deer's antlers are much more than decorative. They are lethal weapons that stags crash together when dueling.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Nov 2009 | 8:20 am Exec says Nokia must speed up transformation: report (Reuters)Reuters - Nokia needs to speedily boost its offering of mobile internet solutions, marketing head Anssi Vanjoki told a German magazine and did not rule out a sale of its core handset manufacturing business in the long term.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Nov 2009 | 8:11 am GPS cell phone apps challenge standalone devices - The Associated Press
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Nov 2009 | 8:01 am You can install Chrome OS on your Dell Mini 10v right now
You can now run Chromium OS, the open source developmental version of Google Chrome OS, on your Dell Mini 10v. Don’t have one? Neither do I, so don’t feel too bad. It make take some time to set up. For one, the download (an image file), as put together by a few of Dell’s Linux guys, weighs in at 7.5GB. Not only will that take a while to download, but you’ll also need a flash drive with at least 8GB of free space on there—another thing I don’t have. You’ll also need access to another Linux-based computer (well, any computer that can run the “dd” command) to get everything up and running. Beyond that, it does appear to be fairly painless to instal. You download said image file then copy it from the Linux computer using “dd” to the flash drive. You take this flash drive, stick it into you Dell Mini 10, and away you go! What’s your reward for going through all that? Running Chromium OS, of course. Think of it as Google Chrome OS, but way alpha. I’m going to file this under the “Why would you bother doing that? Because you can” category. via Liliputing
Source: CrunchGear | 28 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am Exec Says Nokia Must Speed Up Transformation (PC Magazine)PC Magazine - Nokia needs to speedily boost its offering of mobile internet solutions, marketing head Anssi Vanjoki told a German magazine and did not rule out a sale of its core handset manufacturing business in the long term.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Nov 2009 | 7:02 am Windows 7 Sales Beat Mac OS X Market Share - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am Chrome OS available for the Dell Mini 10vSection: Computers, Netbooks, Software / Applications  Black Friday sales, while helpful, can get tired after a while. Sometimes its cool just to try something new with the tech you might already have. Enter Doug A from Dell, who managed to hack together a working version of Chrome OS for the Dell Mini 10v. Before you get too excited about the prospect of running Chrome OS on your Dell Mini 10v, you should know that the Chrome OS version isn’t exactly the most stable. For one, the wireless is a bit wonky, and is said to take five to ten minutes for the OS to see access points, which is quite long time. There is also the issue of rebooting the netbook. There is no reboot/shutdown menu, so you have to hard shut down by pressing and holding the power button each time. Oh, and the image is really only designed to be put onto a flash drive, so unless you’re brave enough, it’s not meant to replace your current OS. The fact that people are so quick to jump on top of Chrome OS, and putting it on devices (whether through virtualization, flash drives or built-in SSD) seems to bode well for the OS. The fact that Dell would host an image of an unstable version for one of its netbooks is a good sign that companies might support the OS when it is actually released next year. Sure, it might not work for everyone, but for most of what netbooks are capable of, it is certainly a more than capable OS. Read [Direct2Dell] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 28 Nov 2009 | 6:57 am Winner’s Curse: Why Losing A B-School Biz Plan Competition Is Better Than Winning
One of the best things about being an academic is being able to mold young minds and guide them to success. When one of my students, Andrew Leblanc told me he was entering the Duke Startup Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition, I told him to come and see me and do a practice run. After all, I had judged several of these contests at Duke and other universities. I thought I knew what worked. After the eleventh iteration, Andrew got it right. He wasn’t trying to pack his presentation with unnecessary details. He had slowed down his pitch, added a personal touch and was now exuding confidence. Andrew even researched the background of the judges and tailored his message to their interests. So after two hours of intense preparation, I had little doubt that Andrew would win. Andrew lost. I was surprised. But what I told him afterward is that it really doesn’t matter. Contrary to what the organizers of these competitions will tell you, university business plan contests don’t produce winning companies. Yes, a number of companies have emerged from business plan bake-offs that have been moderate or small successes. But not a single home-run has emerged from this now-omnipresent practice. This is not to say that the contests are bad. Instead, they educate students in entrepreneurship and motivate them to come up with interesting ideas. But for all of you out there who think a biz plan victory is a ticket to the big time, think again. And for all the engineering students who think any outcome but victory is a waste of time, you also need to think again. Even though he lost, Andrew met a potential partner and also got to speak with Bill Maris of Google Ventures, a priceless encounter. (Bill promised to introduce Andrew to the Google Power Meter team. Don’t forget, Bill!). In fact, let me throw out a radical thought. I submit that losing in a business plan contest is actually more beneficial than winning. There is a growing body of research that children who are praised too early and too easily end up under-performing peers who are not praised but are told, in constructive terms, they can do better. This is one of the core tenets of Po Bronson’s new book on parenting, “Nurture Shock.” Extending this to the realm of entrepreneurship might be a leap (and it could be great fodder for a future PhD dissertation). But to me the outcomes don’t lie. Business plan competitions don’t breed winning businesses. Rather than winning a beauty contest, building a business is a marathon that requires steady and constant effort, surmounting regular difficulties, and living through emotional peaks and valleys. The very roots of the current business plan craze go back to one of the periods that represents a low-point in sane business practices. The business plan competitions first started in the dotcom days. At that time, there was a frantic rush to start new companies. Entrepreneurs would create professional-looking, buzzword-laden business plans. Venture capitalists would then trip over each other to fund these plans, usually with way too much money. The prevailing theory was that a good business idea and enough money were enough to create the next hot IPO. B-schools readily jumped on the bandwagon and soon an arms race ensued to see which school could offer a bigger prize to winners. With the bursting of the dotcom bubble, the tech world was reminded that even a great idea funded by venture capital didn’t necessarily produce business success. In hindsight everyone saw that it took more than a good idea. It took a thorough understanding of the market, excellent management, and the ability to navigate rough waters to build a thriving enterprise. Some of the biggest dotcom winners came from me-too ideas that were executed better than the originals. Nor was this anomalous. Ask any seasoned entrepreneur in any industry, and he or she will likely tell you that his or her first business plan was probably the best work of fiction they ever created. A glimpse back through the big winners of the Dotcom Era also underscores the lack of impact business plan competitions actually had. Amazon, Google, Ebay, Yahoo—none of them won a business plan contest. In fact, not a single home run from that era won a business plan contest. And one of the biggest successes of its time, Akamai Technologies, actually lost the M.I.T. $100K contest. After the great Internet Bubble burst, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs quickly adapted to the new reality and went back to basics. But no one told the b-schools. From Silicon Valley to Research Triangle Park to New Delhi and Shanghai, new contests are still sprouting. Only now, the prizes have gotten bigger and the competitions more serious. Yet real successes remains non-existent. (If I’m wrong in five years on this, then call me out). But failure is no surprise for these b-school business launches Without a solid understanding of market needs and real-world validation of their ideas, few young entrepreneurs can achieve their business-plan projections. The hottest startup methodologies of today, built around ideas fostered by Y-Combinator and TechStars emphasize giving startups almost no money and encouraging them to get a product to market as quickly as possible in order to get real world validation. This is almost the exact opposite of the current business school competition ecosystem, where market validation is non-existent. So realistically, few of the business school plan entrants can even understand whether their business plans even make sense. Business plan judges, for their part, are equally in the dark most times. Andrew’s plan involved utilities and power management, a topic I know virtually nothing about. B-school contest judges are usually generalists who have only superficial insights into the internal dynamics of the industries at which these plans are aimed. It would seem, then, that the insights of long-time experts in those industries would likely be far more valuable to a prospective entrepreneur. Again, I am not at all saying that business school plans are inherently bad. To the contrary, Andrew learned an enormous amount about starting a business, the importance of understanding markets, utility and power management technologies, and team building. His plan to build software that would allow residents of college dorms to track their power usage through a visual interface and more easily understand the direct impact of their behaviors on electricity consumption was not a bad idea. In fact, it was a good enough idea that many others are currently attempting similar types of systems for various social settings and environments. My colleague, Lesa Mitchell at the Kauffman Foundation believes that these contests foster collaboration between business school students and engineers or scientists. This, she says, teaches valuable lessons about launching businesses to both potential inventors and would-be CEOs alike. Finally, let’s not confuse failure to execute or unrealistic plan expectations with bad ideas. Young CEOs going into industries they barely know armed with b-school plan competition money are like lambs to the slaughter. But the core idea behind their plan may be quite innovative and powerful. My takeaway from all this? If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, don’t win a business plan competition. If you do win, your first act might be to hire a CEO with industry experience. And win or lose, the most valuable lessons you’ll learn will come more from playing the game than from coming up with the best plan. Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 6:01 am Internet Gambling Ban DelayedThe US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve central bank say they will be granting American financial institutions an extra six months to comply with new legislation to outlaw Internet gambling, pushing the deadline back from December 1 of this year to June 1 of 2010. Key congressional leaders hope to repeal this piece of Bush-era legislation and replace it with a Democrat-crafted version.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Nov 2009 | 5:50 am Call Of Duty Series Tops $3 BillionActivision Blizzard Inc said its "Call of Duty" video game series has topped the $3 billion mark in global sales on Friday.The latest title in the franchise, Infinity Ward's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, broke box office and videogame records with a worldwide estimated five-day sale throughSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Nov 2009 | 5:45 am “Misunderstanding”: Twitter Japan Now Says There Won’t Be A Subscription Model (Update)
Well, please forget it, this won’t happen. Just a few minutes ago, Digital Garage (the company responsible for Twitter operations in Japan), issued a press release (English PDF, Japanese PDF) stating there won’t be any fee-based services of any kind on the site and that Twitter in Japan will remain completely free for the foreseeable future. There’s also a blog post by the Twitter Japan team (who just copied and pasted the press release text, providing no further explanation). Digital Garage says the media reports on their plans to monetize Twitter are based on a “misunderstood presentation by a DG subsidiary, DG Mobile”. So what happened? Kenichi Sugi, not really a nobody but DG Mobile’s COO, delivered a presentation [JP] during a mobile tech conference in Tokyo where he talked about the future of the digital content business. IT Media, one of Japan’s most biggest online media companies, reported in Japanese (quoted in Robin’s article yesterday). The report was later picked up by Japanese media (i.e. Slashdot Japan) as well, as it laid out all the details of the plan: launch in January 2010, monthly fees ranging from $1.16 to $11.60, pay-per-tweet micropayment option, 30% cut for Digital Garage, celebrities as likely candidates to draw paying followers, etc. So first the company gets into such details and now says it’s all just a misunderstanding? Or is it the (mostly negative) initial reactions by Japan’s Twitter users that triggered this development? Whatever the reason, the payment model is scrapped for now. (We reached out to Digital Garage for a comment.) Asiajin is providing additional background on the relationship between Twitter Inc. and their partner in Tokyo. On a side note, it would have been interesting to see if paid accounts worked as a way for Twitter to monetize the service in the world’s third largest Internet market. The concept has proven to be successful in similar fashion elsewhere in Asia. Filipinos, for example, can subscribe to their favorite celebrity’s “lifestream” via SMS (not using Twitter but a service called KText). Every time the celebrity in question writes a message to his fans, all subscribers get billed a certain amount and pay via their cell phones. Some celebrities have tens of thousands of subscribers and share the revenue with KText (thanks @mikewalsh for the pointer). This is something Digital Garage had in mind for Japan, too. A comeback of their idea to monetize Twitter isn’t impossible, at least in some places in Asia. Here’s Digital Garage’s press release in full (”Recent Press Coverage about Twitter Service in Japan”):
Update:
It seems they really don’t know what they’re doing. And as of this writing, the text in Joi Ito’s blog post is the same as the one used in the first press release I quoted above. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 5:14 am Industry Stalwarts Underline Critical Need to Wire Up SMEsNEW DELHI, Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- The Indian SME can only grow if he gets wired. And that is possible if his dependency on people is removed, according to Bharat Goenka, Chairman and Managing Director of Tally Solutions.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Nov 2009 | 3:11 am Apple's iPhone arrives in tech-savvy South Korea (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Nov 2009 | 2:50 am Video Professor Tries To Bully Washington Post, Fails
Essentially Video Professor is arguing that they didn’t have the chance to respond to our post before we published, and that in general we aren’t behaving very journalistically. One of my favorite habits of journalists is that they refuse to state an opinion. Instead, they find a source to say whatever it is they want said and then quote them. And when I say “favorite,” what I really mean is that I hate it. The story the journalist writes has the look of objectivity but really it’s just the same as if the journalist wrote what she or he meant, directly, in the first place. A gold star journalist will then find a “balancing” quote from someone else, often the person or entity being attacked. “When did you stop beating your wife,” etc. I prefer to just skip all that nonsense and get right to the meat of a matter. And most of my favorite bloggers do the same. None of us have the audacity to think that we are your only news source. You can find other opinions elsewhere, and judge them on their merits, too. The Video Professor Scam Video Professor was a side note in our original Scamville post, just one of a bunch of scams that were making their way into social games on Facebook and MySpace. But now we’re focused on them like a laser. Video Professor is unlike mobile scams which look to get a relatively small $10 – $20/month subscription on your mobile bill and hope you never notice. They go for the big kill: $190 – $290 charged to your credit card on time. I haven’t found the Video Professor scam on Facebook social games since the Scamville posts, but the site is still live, and there are still lot of links from Google and Facebook (they still advertise directly on Facebook). What you see when you first hit the site depends on how you got there – directly or via an advertising partner. The least scammy version is what you see if you go to videoprofessor.com directly. On the home page in very small font is a statement that you are going to be charged $290 if you engage in a transaction with them. But that’s the only on-screen disclosure you’ll see. Click on a product and go to the next page and you are told you get lots of stuff for free, all you have to do is pay up to a $10 shipping charge. You choose your product and you’re on to the checkout page. Nothing is stated about the $290 charge. After that you are on the final checkout page, showing a total price of $4.56. There’s no fine print, just two links on the page to pages with hugely long agreements with text hidden in the middle of it all that you are actually being sent tons of products and you’ll be charged $290 for them all if you don’t cancel in ten days. Needless to say, people who get this stuff either don’t read fine print and are charged, or try to return it. There are hundreds of user complaints about refunds not being paid. 271 complaints to be exact, on RipoffReport alone. I’ve put the purchase flow at the bottom of this post. Remember that this is the least scammy version I’ve found (here’s how they lured people in from Facebook a couple of weeks ago). For users who hit the site via Facebook, Google or other advertisments, it’s even scammier. Is This A Scam? You’re damn right it’s a scam. Users are obviously being tricked into buying something they don’t understand and wouldn’t want even if they did understand the details. The company says they comply with federal and state laws. But they continually refine the landing and checkout pages to comply with the bare minimum of legal requirements while maximizing ROI. Jump to 3:15 of this video for a description of how services like these trick users into buying useless products. Here’s an easy way to determine if something is a scam – would users pay for it if they knew exactly what they were buying? In Video Professor’s case, the answer is no, and the company has to resort to tricking the user into paying nearly $300 for a bunch of CDs. Our governments should be protecting us from this nonsense, but they can’t or won’t. I’ll be damned if I’ll stop writing about it, though. Here’s what people have to say about video professor. See this article and comments, as well as Amazon and epinions reviews. And to the people behind these companies – how do you sleep at night knowing that you are nothing but a deadweight loss to society, taking money from people who aren’t Internet savvy enough to know they’re being scammed? When you’re 80 and look back at what you’ve done with your life, is this really what you want to have spent your time doing? History Of Threats I’m not surprised that Video Professor is going to so much effort to shut me up – this is how they do business. Video Professor has gone after people who’ve criticized the company. Some of the links in this article pointing to other criticisms are now dead links – victims of litigation? When Video Professor sent me an email after my post arguing that they weren’t a scam, I replied “It’s a huge fucking scam. And you know it.” Which pretty much summed up my position on the matter. Here’s the letter they sent to the Washington Post. Note that they argue that they simply want to tell their side. I argue that their website tells their side of the story:
The Washington Post’s response? In a nutshell, “you’ll have to discuss directly with the editors at TechCrunch.”
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 2:35 am
|
Since then, Potvin has brought his expertise on parachute physics to these parachuting whales. He and the other scientists have developed a sophisticated new model that tracks the incoming water more carefully. It's a lot of water, the scientists have found: in one lunge, a fin whale can momentarily double its weight.
One of the most tiresome group of people you encounter when you write a weekly column is the “suggesters”.
Over the last six months just about all of my tech friends have started using 
First, let’s look at Foursquare the game. Whenever you check in on Foursquare, you’re rewarded with points and (sometimes) badges with clever names. These are fun initially, because you can easily compete with your friends for bragging rights. But while these game elements are a good way to entice users, they’re ultimately just a gimmick. In two year’s time, will any of these people seriously care about how many checkins they have? I doubt it. Certainly not enough to motivate them to check in every time they enter an establishment. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a lifelong gamer, it’s that even the most engaging, addictive games out there get tired after a while. And Foursquare’s gameplay simply isn’t that engaging to begin with.
The 
