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Last Day to Buy Expo Shoes For Toys For Tots, Nominate Male Avatar Hots!Today is the last day of Second Life's Footwear Expo, with SL shoe sales going to benefit Toys for Tots, so go buy some! [SLURL] Here's Iris Ophelia's recommendations. As is it happens, it's also the last...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Dec 2009 | 2:50 am “This Means Something:” Why the Magazine Industry Is Suddenly Crowing About Tablets Whenever companies do something inexplicable, the nerd in me always comes back to that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfus keeps building models of a mountain, culminating in a huge, muddy mess in his kitchen. Throughout it all he keeps saying "This means something."
Well, the latest molehill into a mountain is the move by Time Inc. and Conde Nast, among others, to build a tablet-based interface for their flagship titles. This means something, but what it means is that the homes of Time and Gourmet (oh, wait), aren't going to take the coming industrial disruption lying down.
Source: TechCrunch | 6 Dec 2009 | 2:25 am "This Means Something:" Why the Magazine Industry Is Suddenly Crowing About TabletsWhenever companies do something inexplicable, the nerd in me always comes back to that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfus keeps building models of a mountain, culminating...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Dec 2009 | 2:25 am “This means something:” Why the magazine industry is suddenly crowing about tablets
Well, the latest molehill into a mountain is the move by Time Inc. and Conde Nast, among others, to build a tablet-based interface for their flagship titles. This means something, but what it means is that the homes of Time and Gourmet (oh, wait), aren’t going to take the coming industrial disruption lying down. While I don’t think their preparations will be for naught – there will be some sort of reader device coming soon that will give the magazines what they need and want in terms of interface – I think the most important aspect of this recent upswell in tablet interest is the harsh realization by publishers that the fit is hitting the shan. Make no mistake: none of these publishers know that the Apple Tablet – or any other *Pad, *Tablet, *Reader – is coming. If they did they couldn’t talk about what they’re doing for it. NDAs are very strict and if anyone, from the publisher of Vanity Fair to the CEO of Time, Inc. sat down with Apple to talk about the iTablet and then went on to run his or her mouth about the project, we’d hear more about the lawsuits than anything else. These efforts are based on conjecture and some sort of undying hope that someone, somewhere is planning something cool that these publishers can use. In my opnion, newspapers and magazines should band together to release a subsidized reader. This reader will include a touchscreen, WiFi, and a color display. Offer every subscriber a choice: you can keep getting the dead tree version of our rag for $X or you can get this device for the same amount, maybe less, maybe free, and have access to multiple magazines on the go in a subscription or a la carte payment model. Later you offer third party versions of the reader, dump the reader code into an iPhone app, and then wait for the profit. Even if this initial reader is the CueCat of its generation, publishers will have escaped the terminal fall into unyeilding firmament. Publishing companies want you to think they’re on top of things. Unfortunately, publishing is an entrenched world of power players with little power all jockeying for a blockbuster. That these organizations are now working together shows that they have learned a little bit from the music and movie debacles going on around them but I worry that their reliance on coming technology that may or may not exist is a bit naive. To truly survive they have to take their own destiny in hand and prepare for the worst, the worst being that Apple will take over their potential media marketplace with an iTunes Magazine Store. I’m glad to see some of these companies are proactive in terms of future media. However, they are replicating efforts made by many before them, including Zinio, a company noticeably quiet in this transaction. After all, someone owns the patent for the “reproduction of magazine content on a web tablet” and I assure you it isn’t Anna Wintour. It was probably filed long before the end of the dot com boom, just as the captains of the media industry were dining on truffle oil and gold foil garnished duck. Sadly, those same captains are now slumming with online as their listing ships begin to sink.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2009 | 2:16 am Gazit-Globe to sell 49 pct of 3 properties to REIT 1TEL AVIV, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Gazit-Globe Israel has agreed to sell 49 percent of the rights in three properties to REIT 1 Ltd for 315 million shekels ($83.6 million), the companies said on Sunday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Dec 2009 | 1:43 am Euro-folk not big on the Android
Total Android market share rose one percent, to about 5%, this month. Granted Android’s market share in the US is under 10% but here it’s growing quite quickly. Some dude from IDG notes:
That will change, however, with increased movement in the Android space, probably around February when the Mobile World Congress hits the scene. Interestingly, this entrenchment actually comes from Europe’s early adoption of smartphones, long before the US found them to be useful or popular. Because so many IT shops focused on WinCE/WinMo early on it’s hard to pull those phones out of the enterprise. Add in Nokia’s relative control of the market and you’ve got a tough sell.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2009 | 1:38 am Egypt's Citadel opens trading at 13.70 Eg poundsCAIRO, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Egypt's Citadel Capital shares were priced at 13.70 Egyptian pounds ($2.51) in early trade on Sunday after its public listing, a step taken ahead of a planned rights issue. ...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Dec 2009 | 1:33 am World Concerns About Climate Change Dwindle - Survey - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Dec 2009 | 1:13 am Reducing One Amino Acid Could Increase LifespanJohn Bryson writes "Eating less of one amino acid might lengthen your life. There have been lots of previous studies showing that many species live long on highly restricted calories, but a lot of this benefit may be possible by only restricting one amino acid. Amino acids that have shown this have been tryptophan and methionine. A recent study, published online December 2 in Nature, a highly respected journal, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 Dec 2009 | 12:49 am Pacific plea on migration ahead of climate talksPacific island nations at risk of being swamped by rising sea levels must have a say in the mass migration of their people, an independent think tank has warned ahead of global talks on...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Dec 2009 | 12:37 am US Trade Rep weasels and squirms when cornered on an airplane and questioned about secret copyright treatyRead this account of James Love's conversation with Ambassador Ron Kirk, the head US Trade Representative, on the question of why the Draconian Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is taking place in secret...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Dec 2009 | 11:49 pm US Trade Rep weasels and squirms when cornered on an airplane and questioned about secret copyright treatyRead this account of James Love's conversation with Ambassador Ron Kirk, the head US Trade Representative, on the question of why the Draconian Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is taking place in secret. Love cornered Kirk on a United Airlines flight from Geneva to DC following a WTO Ministerial meeting. Love asks Kirk why the treaty isn't public, and Kirk's answers are -- at best -- total weaselling and at worst fabrications.I had a chance to talk to Kirk about the secrecy of the ACTA agreement. He said the ACTA text would be made public, "when it is finished." I told him it that was too late, and the public wanted the text out now, before it is too late to influence anything.Ambassador Kirk: People would be "walking away from the table" if the ACTA text is made public (via The Command Line)
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 5 Dec 2009 | 11:47 pm TEPCO to invest Y300 bln in Aus LNG project -NikkeiTOKYO, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power Co will invest more than 300 billion yen ($3.3 billion) in acquiring a stake in liquefied natural gas development in Australia, the Nikkei business daily...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 5 Dec 2009 | 11:41 pm Salvation Army Canada lauches Xmas fund raising campaign by SMSThe Canadian Salvation Army is launching a national text messaging fund raising campaign on Saturday, reports Winnipeg News and Media Donors can text the word HOPE to 45678 from any Rogers Wireless...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Dec 2009 | 11:27 pm China pays web surfers to find porn: report (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Dec 2009 | 11:22 pm Clinton records video messages for Afghan, Pakistani peopleUS Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recorded two video messages to reach the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US State Department said on Friday. Washington TV reports. The messages, available...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Dec 2009 | 11:04 pm FourSquare For Blackberry, Almost HereFourSquare for the Blackberry is on its way. The company recently provided access to its beta version to a handful of people and will soon roll it out in batches. You can still sign-up for the app and...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Dec 2009 | 11:00 pm Scientists, lawyers mull effects of home robots (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Dec 2009 | 10:30 pm Has the Mystery of Uranus' Tilt Been Solved?Uranus orbits the sun on its side. Although the consensus is that the gas giant must have collided with something to make it this way, two researchers have modeled Uranus getting "wobbled" by a large moon, tugging it off axis. ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Dec 2009 | 10:09 pm Air Force Extends Plug-and-Play Spacecraftcoondoggie writes "Looking to build strategic satellites in day if need be, rather than months, the Air Force is pushing forward with what it calls plug-and-play spacecraft. This week it awarded a $500,000 order to Northrop Grumman to begin designing the plug-and-play spacecraft 'bus' which will offer standard interfaces for a variety of payload components, much like a laptop computer that immediately recognizes new hardware when it's plugged in, Northrop stated. The order was awarded under a contract that has a ceiling of $200 million."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 5 Dec 2009 | 8:00 pm Iran warns of "consequences" for Swiss over minaret banIran has warned Switzerland of 'consequences' following the recent referendum there on minaret construction. Characteristic Ahmadinejadian subtlety! But here's a thought: when scripted opprobrium flies around the world, it's usually between governments or other impersonal entities. Given Switzerland's unusual direct-democracy, however, where people can enact laws even when the government is against them, doesn't this mean that the condemnations are, for once, aimed directly at a nation's public rather than the government that represents them?
Source: Gizmodo | 5 Dec 2009 | 7:41 pm Lambert scores new ABC appearance after cancellationsABC has at last found a venue for Adam Lambert wherein the probability of theatrical irrumatio approaches zero.
Source: Gizmodo | 5 Dec 2009 | 7:00 pm Multiple-Display Power Tools For Linux?shift writes "I've used multiple monitors for years (currently 3) and find that Linux is lacking in power tools for such setups. Even Windows 7 has added the feature to move a window from screen to screen with keyboard shortcuts. Are any of the major desktop environments adding such features? I'm still stuck on FVWM and have define functions to swap the contents of screens as well as move windows from screen to screen and so on. But this just seems like such basic functionality people would want in multi-screen setups that I'm surprised I don't find any of these features in our latest desktop environments."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 5 Dec 2009 | 6:55 pm A HUD in your ski goggles? Only in Sci-Fi for now
Seriously, I’d like to rock these as much as anyone else, but chances are it’s going to be some shiesty low-rez display and it’ll only work under very specific circumstances. I appreciate their dedication, but it’s not going to happen. That said, if they prove me wrong I’ll buy a pair like that. [via GearJunkie and Gizmodo]
Source: Gizmodo | 5 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm Europeans shy away from Google Android phones
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 Pocket-lint.com | What Apple's LaLa Acquisition May Mean for iTunes PC World Apple has struck a deal to buy the streaming and downloading music Web site LaLa.com, according to reports from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It would add to Apple's music empire, but how might this acquision change Apple's tune? ... Apple Has Acquired Lala Apple Acquires Lala Media Apple reportedly buys Lala music service |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 CNN International | DARPA's giant red balloons officially at large CNET News DARPA says the balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads. You may have heard about that DARPA balloon challenge, where the first team to identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 moored weather ... DARPA Launches Red Balloon Hunt How To Find Those Red Balloons US agency's balloon hunt tests internet accuracy |
It was bad enough when Bing put ads on Google and in AdSense during its launch to get people to come check it out. (In fact, it’s still the top sponsored results when you search for “bing” on Google, even though Bing.com is also the top organic result at this point also). But now the shoe is on the other foot and Google is buying search ads on Bing for its fledgling Google Music Search.
Sure, Google only launched its music search about a month ago and most people probably don’t even know it exists unless they search for a song or artist like “Muse” on Google, and even then they wouldn’t know there is a separate site because the playable song results appear right at the top of the regular search results. But try searching for “Muse songs” on some parts of Bing and you get a paid ad for Google Music search. The ads appear for other artists as well, such as Lady Gaga and Radiohead.
Everybody knows that search ads are very effective, especially Google. And if people are searching on Bing for Muse or Lady Gaga songs, buying a search ad is one way to let them know they can also find results on Google. Bing, of course, is happy to take Google’s money (and vice versa). But seeing an ad for one search engine on a competing search engine seems like an act of desperation. It is almost a better ad for Bing because Google is acknowledging that buying ads on Bing is a good idea.
(Hat tip to reader Travis Brown of Spacedex).
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Own a Acer easyStore H340 Windows Home Server? Don’t be like me and spend countless hours trying to figure out why the hell the box keeps randomly shutting off. I spent the last two nights running spy sweepers and virus scans, pulling hard drives and swapping memory in search of a solution. I’m better than that.
What I should have done first is ask Google. She (that’s right, I picture Google as a smart, but seductive, oracle) has all the answers as long as I know what to ask.
It turns out that there is a bug with the WHS LightsOut plug-in that comes pre-installed on the computer. Just uninstall the app via Add/Remove Programs in the control panel and either update to the newest version here or run without it; I did the latter. More info about the bug can be found here and here.
As AllThingsD.com gets its holiday hat on, the reporting team brought a little news cheer our way this week in the form of some acquisitions, freaky gadgets and reassurances that Google was not born with a heart two sizes too small.
Boom Town went Bing early in the week at the Microsoft (MSFT) event that showcased a roll out of features. New tools included an update to its mapping interface and some third-party “mash-ins.” Kara did ringside commentary for the title bout between Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and all the so-called whiny news folk. Her translations paint a slightly less cuddly picture of the search boss’ undertones, but we’ll let you decide for yourself. Just when things were getting a little dicey, Kara lightened the mood with a post about her and Walt Mossberg’s appearance at GadgetFest. Kara finally got a little “me” time, getting her face exfoliated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg live on stage. Gadget freak Greg Harper was there to showcase some of his picks, and Kara rounded it all out by getting up close and personal with the most adorably frightening bear-toy-bot ever.
While Walt did make time to venture west to share his gadget gravitas, he was hard at work this week with the expected combo of tasty tech tips. Walt took a trip to the cloud to see if ZumoDrive could really make it rain. The smallish cloud storage company aims to solve the problem of sharing data across multiple devices by allowing you to keep a “drive” in the cloud that can be virtually mounted on any capable device. He was complementary about the execution of the storage and was able to access his files across a broad array of devices. The caveat, for now, seems to be the price point and a little glitchyness when handling certain kinds of files. Over at the mailbox, Walt addressed some queries about getting rid of that pesky mailbox spam that even shows up on the iPhone. He also provided some sage advice for a laptop seeker with $500 to spend and helped guide a fan through the super-smartphone jungle to a GPS-enabled device. Katie’s gadget of the week over at The Mossberg Solution was the FlipShare TV, a set-top box from the makers of the popular ultra-portable camera line. The video-wrangling box taps into a “channel” of your own videos you create using the bundled FlipShare software. Once your videos are up on your personal channel, the set-top box can tap into and play them right on your TV by grabbing them wirelessly from your computer. The gadget got an A for effort in getting computer content to the living room but didn’t do as well in the intuitiveness and ease-of-use departments.
Over at Digital Daily, John brought news of what may come to be known at the “great perv-purge of aught nine.” Some 4,500 registered sex offenders in the state of New York had their social networking privileges revoked. Weekend Update supposes the law is in place to keep the popular and harmless “Facebook stalking” pastime of perusing your friends photos from turning into the less desirable “actual stalking.” Next up, we had to shout; egad, gadzooks and holy-48 cores, Batman! John covered the unveiling of a next-generation super-chip that boasts 10 to 20 times the computing power of Intel’s current Core CPUs. Finally, John always does a great job of sniffing out a story before it gets huge, and Motorola’s investment into a high-tech multitouch platform may trigger the next big smartphone battle. The haptic touch technology, which enables virtually any material to become touch sensitive, may pave the way for a new generation of devices.
Down the hall at MediaMemo, Peter reported on what might be the shiniest news of the week. Time Inc. (TWX) released a concept video of Sports Illustrated as it may appear on a large multitouch device. The end result is a mag-as-multimedia-showcase that might exist as soon as a suitable device is released to the public. In an effort to reduce some of the cash that has been weighing down its bank accounts, Google picked up AppJet, the makers of the web-based collaboration software EtherPad. Peter rounded out the week with a purchase of Apple’s (AAPL) very own. The iTunes maker purchased online music service Lala, reportedly at a steep discount.
With the holidays looming and lots of frenetic travel ahead, you can always rely on this site for a little direction in any particular (technological) storm. We cant help it, we’re just givers.
Hats off, gentleman — hats off. I can say with certainty that this is the best roller bag ever made. Why this particular bit of genius hasn’t caught on, I can’t imagine. Possibly because, like those who ride the accursed Segway, riders of this contraption would give off a certain “punch me” vibe. And yet, one can’t entirely suppress the feeling of wanting to switch places with them, if only for a moment. Shameful, but understandable.
The Trolley Scooter from Samsonite und Micro Mobility is the perfect tool for bloggers like myself who, at trade shows like CES, must walk miles (miles!) with packs full of gear just to bring you guys the freshest news. I’d rather scoot. I’d rather scoot than do most things, to be perfectly honest.
No price is given and I can’t find it on Micro Mobility’s site, but I would ballpark its cost at around 100€ — $120 or thereabouts.
[via Reddit]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 The Money Times | Verizon's Going to Have to Answer to the FCC (and Customers) PC World The carrier is being questioned by the regulatory agency about its fees, and so far it has supplied a non-answer. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent a letter to Verizon demanding answers about why it increased early termination fees for ... Verizon Wireless asked by FCC about increased termination fee FCC Investigating Verizon' ... Feds Probe Verizon's Early Termination Fees, Accidental Data Charges |
Hope you already bought the Windows 7 Family Pack. Well, if you were planning to; you could be the type of person who still writes “M$” without a hint of irony. Anyhow, the Family Pack is now sold out.
The Windows 7 Family Pack, you’ll recall, was a special edition of the operating system that came with three Home Premium upgrades for $150. (A single Windows Home Premium upgrade retails for around $110.) The thing is, Microsoft had always said that the pack would be a temporary offer, sold while supplies lasted.
Supplies have been exhausted! Well, inasmuch as supplies of software can be exhausted.
The point is, the Family Pack is damn near impossible to find now, and Microsoft has no plans to produce any more.
Of course, you could be totally unscrupulous and “find” Windows 7 from somewhere else, but that’s none of my business.
Mortimer Mutated Bear Plush by *Undead-Art* (via Superpunch)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Crispy Gamer | Apple's Game Changer, Downloading Now New York Times IAN LYNCH SMITH, a shaggy-haired ball of energy in his late 30s, beams as he ticks off some of the games that Freeverse, his little Brooklyn software company, has landed on the iPhone App Store's coveted (and ever-changing) list of ... Playing catch-up in 2010: Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian In mobile, do developers or consumers matter most? Apple Should Approve Fewer But Better iPhone Apps |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Digital video tech provider KIT digital spent about $21 million this year acquiring companies like The Feedroom (which previous investors had put over $60 million into) and Germany’s Nunet. The publicly listed company now says it will be “retiring” both brands next week after successful consolidation and integration of their IP and resources, and concentrate all marketing efforts on the KIT digital brand.
The company has also shared 2009 expectations and milestones, as well as its strategic objectives for next year.
KIT digital expects 2009 revenue of approximately $46 million with an operating EBITDA margin in excess of 10% for this year. According to Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, chairman and chief executive officer of KIT digital, all operational targets have been achieved, including reaching free cash flow-positive status and listing on the NASDAQ Global Market (KITD).
The company board and management team have defined four strategic priorities for 2010: complete the integration of Nunet and The FeedRoom, roll out its new VX2 platform on a global scale, work on improving its corporate marketing and visibility and expand in the BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). KIT digital suggests it might be making some strategic acquisitions in the regions for reaching the latter objective.
Formerly called Roo TV, KIT digital raised $20 million in 2008 and went public this year to little fanfare, although it is clearly positioned right in the center of a growth market (see this Seeking Alpha profile for more). The company has made 5 acquisitions to date (The Feedroom, Narrowstep, Visual Connection, Nunet, Morpheum and Kamera).
Frankly, it’s quietly turning into a very attractive acquisition target of its own.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Just look at it.
Banana Saver Clip by Evriholder Products (Thanks, notthemessiah!)
 The Money Times | Microsoft's Week: Bing v2.1, And Death to the Black Screen of Death eWeek Microsoft's week involved the release of several new features for Bing, its search engine, including new-and-improved Bing Map applications. Bing users can now view local terrain at eye level in 100 cities, in a feature seemingly designed to compete ... Bing's 30-Minute Outage: A Sally Field Moment? Microsoft's Bing Outage And The NFL Parallels Behind last night's Bing outage |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Update: The challenge has been won by the M.I.T team (see final map below).
This morning DARPA launched ten red balloons across the U.S. in a Network Challenge to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the precursor to the Internet, Arpanet. The first team to correctly locate all ten balloons will win a $40,000 prize.
The idea is to see how people can self-organize on the Internet and how information disseminates through social and viral networks. There are thousands of people looking and teams set up on the Internet. They offer different incentives for participating.
For instance, a group at M.I.T. is offering $2,000 for each correct balloon sighting submitted (you can join the TechCrunch team here). The 10 Red Balloons team claims to have already found pone balloon before the contest even started. And the Open Red Balloon Project is taking more of a, well, open approach. It wants everyone to report their sightings and guesses, make all of that data available to everyone, and then let the first person to make sense of the data win the entire $40,000. You drag ten balloons around on a map. Known locations turn red. It already shows ten reported balloon locations on its map (whether those are correct or not, only DARPA knows).
And there’s always Twitter. Just search for #redballoon or #redballoons. One’s supposedly been spotted near the public library in Brainerd, Minnesota. But beware of false reports! That is just another strategy to throw people off the scent.
If you are balloon hunting today, here’s a theme song to keep you focused on the prize:
Update: Final winning map:
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
xkcd++ String Theory (Thanks, Noah!)
 Techtree.com | Microsoft alters settlement with EU over browser exclusivity Apple Insider Microsoft has modified its antitrust settlement with the European Union in response to complaints from other browser makers. Microsoft's offer to give consumers a choice of browsers to comply with antitrust claims by the European Union ... Microsoft Decision Brings It Closer to Settling Case Microsoft to randomly generate EU browser ballot list Report: Microsoft to randomize Europe's browser screen choices |
Every time I publish a research paper on immigration or write an article for BusinessWeek or TechCrunch, the xenophobes rush out of their caves to launch mindless attacks. They fill the comment sections with bile, send me nasty emails and sometimes threaten to do me harm. I was convinced that my last BusinessWeek column on the Startup visa presented such a compelling argument that even these poor souls would support it.
After all, this visa is about creating American jobs and moving innovation here which would otherwise happen in other countries. We can boost the economy without any cost to taxpayers. It’s not about admitting H-1B visa holders who sometimes make Americans compete for high-paying jobs, but bringing in entrepreneurs who expand the pie for everyone. Not only do the Democrats support this, but so do the Republicans (their thought leader, Newt Gingrich blogged about my previous TechCrunch post on immigration and his staff told me that he was a supporter of the startup visa). So this seems like a no-brainer.
But, no, logic doesn’t prevail with this crowd. I got the same stream of hate mail that I’m used to, and the xenophobes hijacked the BusinessWeek reader feedback section again. Most of their statements are illogical and uneducated. But there are two potentially meaningful arguments which opponents of the startup visa make, which are worth discussing: that the founders we are bringing in aren’t always the “best and brightest” and that there is already a visa category for geniuses called the O-1 visa.
I know we’re not always bringing in the best and brightest. Most are just average techies. I can offer myself up as an example. When I came to this country in 1980 from Australia, I was just a low-level computer programmer. Yes, I took pride in being able to write the slickest Assembler code (anyone remember what this is?). But I was pretty average in my education and skills. I had no PhD. I had no patents. No one would ever have thought of giving me an O-1 visa. But I came, I worked hard, and I learned. And I developed ideas for how to make better software.
Years later, technology which I invented formed the basis of a software company which employed over 1,000 people and changed the way enterprise client-server systems were built. I don’t know my total value-add to the American economy but I certainly added hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of my two startups. And now I’m giving back to America by contributing my time and energy to 3 great universities, Duke, Harvard and UC-Berkeley.
Now let’s discuss the genius visa. Any immigration attorney will tell you that qualifying for this visa is so hard that even Einstein wouldn’t have cut it. You’ve got to have a perfect academic record, have topped every class you took and have as many as 10 independent authorities say you walk on water. I happened to meet someone at a talk I gave at Berkeley last week, who qualified for this. He has a remarkable story which shows how screwed up our immigration system is.
Alex Kosorukoff learned programming in high school in Russia and started working part-time as a software developer. He later joined Ivanovo State Power University and worked part-time as a researcher in a Russian-American joint venture. He came across several American books on entrepreneurship, read them, and started thinking about becoming an entrepreneur.
Alex persuaded two friends to start a company in 1991. (Let me remind you that this was very, very early in the transition in Russia from Communism to Democracy). They built accounting software which became a big hit. Alex rode the rising tide of entrepreneurship and launched several other companies. In 1995, he won a U.S. Information Agency “Business for Russia” contest. Part of the prize was an exchange program at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. He came to the U.S. for 2 months, learned more about American business and went back home to solve some of our problems. (Like nearly all foreigners who come here, he fell in love with America and wanted to share the American Dream).
The flower, by runnerfrog (Cristian René)
Alex started researching why organizations struggle to scale well, why decision processes become more inefficient and why talented employees leave. Alex looked around at the natural world and noticed that biological organisms do a better job of scaling up. He designed a form of participatory organization based on evolutionary algorithms and prototyped it with a website that attracted hundreds of participants in 1998-99. His research was discovered by Prof. David Goldberg (University of Illinois), who invited the young Russian to join his lab. Dr. Goldberg’s lab was amongst the top in the field of evolutionary computation.
Alex expected he would have the best of both worlds by coming to America—performing groundbreaking research and becoming an American-style entrepreneur. Once he got to Illinois, however, Alex realized that neither his academic research aspirations nor his entrepreneurial ambitions would be completely fulfilled. The university told Alex that he could not work outside the strict classification of his visa, could perform no side work, and definitely could not launch a company. “They even told me I couldn’t continue to run my website, since it had ad-generated income. I had to move it to Taiwan and have a friend over there run it for me,” Alex explains.
Since the focus of his research was forming companies using evolutionary computation, Alex realized he would not be able to take his theorems and try them out in the real world, as he had done in Russia. “I had to postpone all my entrepreneurial activities and resort to simulation and doing related evolutionary computation research for other professors, but that meant a big switch away from my main area of interest,” says Alex. Still, he managed to win a number of awards for his research.
In fact, Alex’s work did manage to stimulate entrepreneurial activity. Garrett Camp, who founded Stumbleupon, read Alex’s work and used parts of it in conceiving a social sharing company which ultimately sold to EBay for $75 million. If you take Camp at his word, Alex may have been modest in telling me this story. Says Camp, “Alex pioneered the concept of human-based computation. His work on human-based genetic algorithms provided a lot of insight during the design of StumbleUpon, and I referenced several of his papers in my Masters thesis”.
After Alex finished his Ph.D., he got an offer from StumbleUpon (ironically, a company that was founded in Canada in 2001 and later relocated to Silicon Valley). StumbleUpon uses human-based evolutionary computation techniques as does Wikipedia. Alex was clearly grateful for the offer. But it’s pretty easy to tell that he is itching to start his own company, something he’s done successfully several times before in Russia in what might be considered a far harsher business environment. So what’s he doing right now? Waiting for his green card to be approved.
In the meantime, the unemployment rate in California is now over 12%, a near record high. The national rate is at 10%. Credit markets are totally frozen and small businesses—the most dynamic part of the U.S. economy are suffocating for lack of operating capital. So slightly tweaking a law to allow smart foreigners to jumpstart our economy would seem to be a really easy decision politically and economically. Rather than listening to the emotion of misguided anti-immigrants, we need to listen to reason. After all, it is immigrants like Alex who have started 52% of Silicon Valley’s tech companies in recent times.
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.
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The folks over at Astro Gaming wanted to share some holiday cheer and are giving us one of their new Astro A40 BxR SE Audio Systems to hand out to one lucky CrunchGear enthusiast. The new BxR system comes with a headset, in either red, blue or military green (we’re giving the green one away), and a MixAmp.
This headset comes with 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound, allowing you to hear everything around you in any game that supports it, and a noise-canceling microphone. Additionally, you can add your own soundtrack to any game by connecting your MP3 player to the A40 MixAmp. The game and voice balance integrated into the MixAmp also lets you adjust the volume levels of each to your liking.
The BxR Special Edition sound system has a significant upgrade from their predecessor the Astro A40’s. The MixAmp has a new USB adapter that will work seamlessly with the PS3 (previously it worked solely with the Xbox 360, and the PS3 needed an extra adapter).
I have a pair of these and honestly can’t think of gaming without them. They improve the gaming experience exponentially.
Sound off in the comments section if you want a chance to own this $250 system. Tell us what games you’d be pumped to play these with.
Ferrofluids are basically just iron nanoparticles suspended in a liquid. In the presence of magnets, they do some pretty cool things. For instance, ferrofluids flow to place where the magnetic flux--the strength of the magnetism--is strongest. So if you magnetize the screw from a meat grinder so the magnetic flux is denser at the top than it is at the bottom, the ferrofluid will climb the screw like staircase.
Thumbnail image courtesy Gregory Maxwell, via CC
Google promised that Chrome would be fast to launch and fast to load web pages, but people predicted it would fail with the arrival of its extensions. Well, the extensions are here (at least for some of us) and surprisingly they do not affect the browser’s performance. And not only that, but playing with Google Chrome Extensions is like child’s play, whether you’ve added a new extension, or deleted one, you won’t need to restart your browser. Extensions are so easy to manage and use that once you have access to them, I’m sure you’ll be looking forward to testing everything in this Cromeextensions Directory.
This is what I basically did. I tried most of the extensions, then realized I’m not ready yet to ditch my beloved Firefox, and I’m guessing that you won’t be either. On the other hand, there are some plugins that are worthy of a mention and from that list I’ve culled some cool ones to get you started. If you already have extensions enabled (lucky you), you are welcome to try the ones in this list. If Chrome is not allowing extensions for you just yet, try to upgrade to the developer’s version (don’t worry, all of your Chrome settings will be saved).
Gmail Compose
One useful and lightweight chrome extension is “Gmail Compose.” It quickly allows you to compose an email through your Gmail account, and works instantly and with a single click. However, the problem with this extension is that once you click outside the extension area, the window closes and your email is automatically discarded. Personally, I prefer to have an extension that instantly lets me send a recipient the link & text of the page I’m currently viewing. Direct download
QuickSearch
Perform a search from Wikipedia, Yahoo, Amazon, Google, and more with the QuickSearch extension. QuickSearch provides searching on your choice of search engine, right from the Chrome browser, and also enables you to customize it to the search engine of your choice. Unfortunately, you can’t delete already existing engines, you can only edit and delete additional search engines that you add. Direct download
Google Tasks for Chrome
If you use Google Task List, or are a fan of to-do lists in general, you should try Google Tasks for Chrome. This simple-to-use extension gives you full control over your tasks from the Browser and provides synchronization with your Gmail task list. Direct download
Chrome IE Tab
Some web pages will only work properly when viewed with Internet Explorer (go figure…). The Chrome IE Tab extension allows you to run IE from within a tab in Chrome enabling you to display such web pages without leaving Chrome. The awesomest thing is that you can configure the extension to do so automatically for URLs you specify in the setting for each page. Some users complained about this plug-in crashing their Browser, but it works like a charm for me on Windows7. Direct download
Bubble-Translate
Translation was the first plugin I was looking for in Chrome, but so far there aren’t too many to choose from. Luckily Bubble-Translate seems worthwhile enough to use, but even this extension needs some improvement (more setting would be nice to have). Anyway, this is what you get once you install Bubble-Translate: You’ll be able to translate text on web pages from any language to yours. The extension uses Google Translate for in-line translations. How it works: After installation, go to the plug-in options, chose your desirable language, shortcut & theme. A small icon will show up in the URL address bar. Select text, then click the icon (or use one of the shortcuts suggested in the setting), and the tool tip is automatically displayed. Direct download
Chromereader
If you use Google Reader, this extension should make your life easier. Chromereader provides one-click subscription to blogs and websites that you like. When you see a page that you want to subscribe to, simply click on the Chromereader button and it’s goes straight into your Google Reader list – Simple as that. Direct download
Fittr
A really nicely done extension is Fittr, which adds some helpful features to Flickr pictures. What does Fittr offer? First of all, lots of small and easy common shortcuts, which you can see by clicking ‘?’ at any given time. It auto-completes tags by showing the most popular tag that matches the prefix you’ve already entered. Quick access to a subset of the EXIF properties by clicking the link added at the bottom left of a photo. Also, a better view of an image with the lightbox tool. But the most significant addition is the ability to see Flickr’s short URL in the right sidebar of any picture, just click it to copy to your clipboard (and may I suggest that Flickr needs this one feature badly). Direct download
Chrome-Metrist
There are some Twitter extensions for Chrome (again, not many, but some). However, all of them are quite simple and don’t support too many features. But since we must have at least one decent Twitter client for Chrome, I recommend Chrome-Metrist. There’s also Chromed Bird extension, but I had some problems with it, so I gave up and switched to Chrome-Metrist instead. (But you are welcome to try them both for yourself)
After you install the extension, it will automatically lead to a pop-up configuration screen so that you can enter your Twitter log-in information (only the first time). You can also choose the font size, but other than that, the options are really small. The interface alone makes up for the few options available and the other issues, it really just looks awesome. Direct download
Delicious
If you’re a true geek, than you still must use Delicious. For me, it is one of the most important information sources on the web today, so of course an extension to Chrome is more than welcome and needed. The one that caught my eye is a simple plug in that allows you to easily save a bookmark to Delicious, see all of your bookmarks, and get quick access to your Delicious inbox (which unfortunately, not so many people use). Very simple, very clean, and a very useful extension for Delicious freaks. Direct download
Google Wave Checker
The future of Google Wave is still a mystery, but we all know it’s here to stay so it’s better to be prepared with all the relevant tools. Who knows, you might find yourself using it on daily basis 
Google Wave Checker is very similar to the Wave Notifier addon for FireFox, it simply notifies you about any unread Waves you have. Here’s an interesting stat: So far 11,446 people downloaded Google Chrome Wave Checker, compared to 23,539 on FireFox - and most Chrome users do not use extensions yet. Direct download
Jamendo Radio
I saved the best for last – The Jamendo Radio extension enables you to listen to music from your Browser like never before. Forget about Google’s 30sec-music, Jamendo gives you hours of free music. The service stores 27,475 independent albums, all are free to listen and free to download. And the wonderful thing is that you can listen to all of your favorite albums right from your browser. Direct download
The configuration is a bit complex however: After you install the extension, go to its options. You have the ability to add albums that you like to the Jamendo Radio playlist. For that you’ll need to go to Jamendo’s site, pick an album, grab the number of the album from its URL address, and add it in the options as shown in this short demo:
I can only assume this list of extensions will grow to overwhelmingly huge dimensions sometime in the near future and then it will be harder to select just a few of them to review. Although the supply is still very small, you can still stream music, or tweet from your browser, and have a list of utilities to start with—you just need to try and see if any of these suit you. And if they don’t for whatever reason, now is the perfect time to go ahead and build something or wait for someone else to build the next big extension. The niches are all ripe to be filled. Soon we will have more extensions than we need.
Feel free to share your thoughts about these extensions or recommend other ones.
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Guestblogger Paul Spinrad is a freelance writer/editor, and is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine. He is the author of The VJ Book and The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids, and was an early contributor to bOING bOING when it was an online zine. He lives in San Francisco.
It's fantastic that so much written knowledge is becoming generally accessible and cross-linked these days, but this is just an intermediate stage-- a universal library on the way to becoming a universal brain. The missing piece is encoding the underlying meaning of the stored text, the deep-structure logic behind it. It's one of the oldest challenges in Computer Science, and there has been lots of progress and companies dedicated to doing this. Powerset, for example, has software that has parsed and can answer questions from all of Wikipedia.
The thing is, you really still need a person to get it most reliably right, because people understand the way the world works. Luckily, we already have people whose job is very close to doing this already-- they're called fact-checkers or researchers, and they work for every reputable publication.
I don't think the fact-checking process is very well understood by the public-- it's hidden from view and uncredited (which is lame), and I didn't understand it myself until I began working with magazines. Basically, someone combs through a piece of text and makes sure every fact is verified. They look things up in established references, they call people on the phone, they call their friends who have experience in some area, or whatever else it takes. If they're doing it on paper, they start with a printout of the article, and then when they're done every word, every clause, and every spelling of every proper name, has a pencil mark through it.
I have wondered for years, as magazines, newspapers, and other news organizations have been hemorrhaging money and employees, why someone hasn't gone into the contract fact-checking business. Like, it could be an extension of Snopes.com. There's a huge redundancy in every publication having their own research desks, so they could lay off all of their fact-checkers and then outsource the job to the new, independent company that the best of them then all go to work for. Meanwhile, the company could also be hired by anyone else. Then, when the public sees the "Fact-Checked by MiniTrue (SM)" seal on someone's independent blog, they know the information there has the same credibility as the big boys.
Now, what if these fact-checkers didn't just vet and correct the text? While they dig into the logic and accuracy of everything, as usual, they could also use some simple application to diagram the sentences and disambiguate the semantics into a machine-friendly representation. Just a little extra clicking, and they could bind all the pronouns to their antecedents, and select from a dropdown box to specify whether an instance of the string "Prince" refers to the musician Prince or to Erik Prince-- the president of XE, the company formerly known as Blackwater-- within an article that for whatever reason mentions both of them.
Then you would really have something. The text wouldn't just be fact-checked; its underlying meaning could be added into a shared pool of human knowledge, chained through, verified or denied, and used in other ways by any technology that may now exist or may exist in the future.
Many of big ideas that computer visionary Douglas Engelbart came up with in the 1960's have come true, but a couple of them haven't yet. One of these is his notion of the "Certified Public Logician." Engelbart predicted that a new class of knowledge worker would act as front-ends to the machine-enabled collective intelligence. Part logician, part notary, these "Certified Public Logicians" would review texts for logical consistency and then tag them up with appropriate envelope information and enter them into the machine. It's a great idea, and I think we could promote all of our fact-checkers into Certified Public Logicians pretty easily.
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![european-union[1]](http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/european-union1.jpg "european-union[1]")
I’ll be in Europe most of December so I’ll assess this on my own but it seems that the Eurozone doesn’t quite know what to make of Android. This is partially because they don’t have many Android phones in circulation and partially because of WinMo and Symbian entrenchment on the continent.
A couple weeks ago, Google 
This particular issue is far from settled, since it is a fact that certain levels of radiation lead to transcription errors and such, but at the very least, studies like this one reinforce the idea that we're not all of us going to drop dead in a couple years.
As usual, this does not prove anything, but it would be coincidental indeed if every Scandie managed to avoid brain cancer by chance, while also happening to be among the most mobile-friendly areas on Earth.
