Google’s Busy Week

I thought December was supposed to be a quiet month, where people go on vacation, and companies don’t launch new things. I was wrong. This week is shaping up to be a very busy one for Google as they could have as many as three substantial launches in three days.

Monday: Tomorrow morning, the company is holding an event in Mountain View, CA to talk about the evolution of its search product over the years. That may sound ho-hum, but they are also promising to introduce a “few new features that we hope will change the way people search in the future.” Presenting will be no less than Google VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, Google Fellow, Amit Singhal, and Google VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra. All heavy hitters.

Is this Google’s answer to the Bing event last week, where they showed off the impressive looking new Bing Maps beta product? You can bet that whatever they unveil, it won’t involve Silverlight. And I wouldn’t bet against it involving Twitter in some way, just like Microsoft’s announcements did.

Tuesday: This is far from certain, but word is that Tuesday could be the day Chrome for Mac beta finally gets released. We know the launch is imminent, as the beta version is now complete and the team has moved on to getting the left-out features working. But there is one bug that might hold up the launch (it popped up late after all the beta blocker bugs were previously eliminated).

It’s definitely worth noting that on the Chromium Development Calendar, December 8 (this Tuesday) is the date listed for “4.0 Beta to Beta Channel.” Chrome 4.0 is already in beta testing for Windows, and before that launched in early November, the calendar featured the same message. No word on the Linux build, but that could certainly go beta on Tuesday as well. Also worth noting is that 4.0 is scheduled to go “stable” on January 12, so that may be the Chrome 4.0 official launch (at least for Windows).

Wednesday: This is the day that Google will officially launch Chrome Extensions, is the latest thing we’re hearing. We noted over the weekend that at some point this week (and probably mid-week) this would happen, and it looks like Wednesday (and possibly Wednesday evening) is the day.

The one-two punch of launching Chrome for Mac beta and then having Chrome Extensions would be nice, except for the fact that Chrome for Mac beta won’t support them right away. But the latest builds of Chromium do, so everyone will be able to try out the new extensions at launch.

The Rest: So that’s the first three days of the week with possible things on each day. And if you count Sunday as the start of the week, I guess you could throw in Google CEO Eric Schmidt finally joining Twitter as another event.

Is Google going to give us a breather on Thursday and Friday? Who knows, but at this rate they’ll probably announce that they are dropping all support for IE on Christmas.

[photo: flickr/bramus]

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Thanko doesn’t stop, now sells USB cat paw gloves

Tokyo’s best gadget maker Thanko seems to be on a roll this winter. They already released a couple of USB-powered slippers, gloves and similar crap gadgets. Their newest offering is the Nekotan, a pair of USB-powered black cat paw gloves [JP]. No, I don’t get it either.

The “purpose” of this gadget is to keep your hand warm while you’re near a computer (or anything else sporting a USB connection) and look cute at the same time. But it actually heats up only a certain part of your hand (highlighted in the picture above).

Thanko is already selling the gloves on their Japanese web site. Head over to Geek Stuff 4 U in case you’re interested in getting a bizarre Christmas present but live outside this country (price: $32.75 plus shipping).

Dead Space 2 Teaser Gets Deciphered - Techtree.com

The Money Times

Dead Space 2 Teaser Gets Deciphered Techtree.com Two days back, Visceral's Dead Space official Twitter account showed a bizarre artwork. To a layman, the image appears to be a random freehand style artwork depicting nothing but a random design. However, gamers who're fans and follow the Dead Space ... Dead Space 2 teaser image decipeheredThe Money Times Dead Space 2 Teaser Image DecipheredGaming Union Dead Space 2 - is this it?CVG Online Blast -EL33TONLINE -Neoseeker all 24 news articles »

Clear2Pay Secures $74 million Led By Aquiline

Pretty big capital raise today. Clear2Pay, an electronic payments company, has secured $74 million (€50 million) to fund its next stage of growth and potential strategic acquisitions. The investment was led by the New-York based Aquiline Capital Partners and previous investors.

Clear2Pay, which is profitable, specialises in secure electronic payments and disrupts the existing legacy payment silos in banks.

This investment is taking place in the context of the sale of all shares held by Belgium VC Gimv to Aquiline. The sale has a positive impact of €2.2 million (EUR 0.10 per share) on Gimv’s last published equity value at 30 September 2009.

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Clear2Pay Secures $74 million Led By Aquiline

Some background on the climate talks

Hot gaming news for the week of 11-29-2009

Section:

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…

• Cyber Monday 2009: Razer’s randomized $1 sale
• Apple App Store gaming update for the week of November 23 to 30, 2009
• Newegg’s Cyber Monday 2009 game deals
• Gamertell Review: Able Planet’s True Fidelity PS500MM stereo headphones
• Europe’s latest PSPgo promotion gets you a free, recently released game

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

Key dates in unfolding story of warming planet - The Associated Press

Telegraph.co.uk

Key dates in unfolding story of warming planet The Associated Press 1750 — Before Industrial Revolution, atmosphere holds 280 parts per million of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2). 1898 — Swedish scientist Svante Ahrrenius calculates that CO2 from coal and oil burning will warm the planet. 1955 — US scientist Charles ... The Truth About 'Climategate'Newsweek Email scandal may be turning against climate change deniersMongabay.com In e-mails, science of warming is hot debateWashington Post Wall Street Journal -Ars Technica -Boston Globe all 868 news articles »

Climate pledges made by countries before summit

WRAPUP 1-Dubai govt ring-fences key assets, shares tumble

Key dates in unfolding story of warming planet

Google’s Coolest 20% Project: Liquid Galaxy

At Google I/O this year, one demo booth stood out above all others: The Holodeck. It was basically eight giant, long screens arranged in a circle that displayed Google Street View imagery. When you stepped the contraption, it was a bit like zooming around outside. Today, Google has taken the time to explain the project a bit, which it now calls “Liquid Galaxy.”

Apparently, the reason for the name change is that the booth now displays much more than just Street View. Google has made a modified Google Earth client so that you can go anywhere in the world in the device now. And you can even go to the Moon and Mars with it. “It felt more like a ride than a computer program, something between an observation-deck and a glass-walled spaceship. As a result of this totally seamless, immersive experience, we decided to name it the Liquid Galaxy,” Google writes.

While the company notes that this is still very much a 20% project for them, they are “working hard to improve it.” Hopefully that means two things: 1) Turning it into a Star Trek-style Holodeck. 2) Figuring out how to make it less than 10,000 degrees inside (thanks to all the screen heat).

Below, watch the video we took of the thing from Google I/O this year. Google notes that it’s currently touring around the world at various tech conferences. And they also apparently have a few on their campuses.

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Google's Coolest 20% Project: Liquid Galaxy

GameStop stock drop blamed on Walmart’s discounted game prices

FROM GAMERTELL - Wall Street is worried about GameStop’s holiday sales due to competitors’ sales but should they be?
MORE »

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HTC 2010 roadmap leaks: HTC Bravo 1GHz Android confirmed - SlashGear

SlashGear

HTC 2010 roadmap leaks: HTC Bravo 1GHz Android confirmed SlashGear HTC's device line-up for the first half of 2010 has apparently leaked, courtesy of xda-developers, after a prototype brochure fell into the wrong hands. The range consists of five Android devices and ... Is this htc's 2010 phone portfolio?Recombu HTC Hero Replacement Will Launch Early Next YearBrighthand HTC 2010 leak shows mini-HD2, new front-QWERTY and smaller Touch Pro 2WM Experts Digitimes -MobileWhack.com -What Mobile all 46 news articles »

Brazil's Hypermarcas to pay $751 mln for rival

Virgin Galactic to unveil commercial spaceship - The Associated Press

Sydney Morning Herald

Virgin Galactic to unveil commercial spaceship The Associated Press LOS ANGELES — After five years of secret construction, the cloak is coming off a privately funded spacecraft designed to fly well-heeled tourists into space. The long-awaited glimpse of SpaceShipTwo, slated for rollout Monday in the Mojave Desert, ... Virgin Galactic to unveil commercial spaceshipWashington Post Would-Be Astronauts Pay $42 Million to Join Branson's SpaceshipBloomberg spaceshiptwo rocket plane set for unveilingmsnbc.com Space Fellowship -Space.com -Spaceflight Now all 396 news articles »

Video magazine recounts the history of the pulps

Steve sends us "The premiere episode of Electro-Pulp Video Magazine, a visual history of pulp science fiction magazines. The premiere episode covers the inaugural issue of Startling Stories from January, 1939. Features Stanley G. Weinbaum's novel The Black Plague, a short story by Eando Binder, the first ever SF story to be inducted into the Scientifiction Hall of Fame (D D Sharp's The Eternal Man), an editorial by Otis Adelbert Kline and a letter column featuring Isaac Asimov."

Startling Stories on the Premiere of Electro-Pulp Video Magazine! (Thanks, Steve!)

Video magazine recounts the history of the pulps

Tibco Takes After Twitter [Voices]

By Ben Worthen, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Business software makers are increasingly drawing inspiration from social-networking Web sites and other online tools popular with consumers. The latest to do so is Tibco, which is known for making software that integrates data from different corporate systems.

Integration software seems pretty far afield from, say, Twitter. But Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadive makes a direct comparison, calling his company’s forthcoming product “Twitter on steroids for the enterprise.” Similar to the way people use Twitter to share a sentence or two about their lives, Ranadive says Tibco will let business people turn corporate information like an expense report or a sales figure into a short update.

Tibco’s more traditional software has long accessed these data and making it available to humans and not just machines was relatively easy for the company, Ranadive says.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Not All iPods — Vinyl and Turntables Gain Sales

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thai villages sink as erosion, climate change bite

Massachusetts Company Plans to Market Wireless Electricity System [Voices]

By David Colker, Business Reporter, Los Angeles Times

A Massachusetts company said that within 18 months it will have on the market a wireless electricity system to power — through the air — lights, computers, televisions and even the chargers for electric cars.

The announcement was made at the TEDGlobal conference, a gathering of technologists and scientists, that wrapped up Friday in Oxford, England.

The company, WiTricity of Watertown, Mass., had previously demonstrated the technology, as had Intel Corp., which is also working on a wireless electricity project.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The Clicks That Bind: Ways Users "Agree" to Online Terms of Service [Voices]

By Ed Bayley, Adjunct Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation

“I Agree.” We have all, at some point while online, clicked on a button bearing these words. Whether it is registering for a new social media account or just trying to get to our bank statements, one almost cannot visit a website today without eventually being asked to agree a listed set of “Terms and Conditions.”

But by clicking on such boxes, or even in some cases just by using the website, we as online users may be binding ourselves to legally enforceable contracts with the online service provider (i.e. website, MMORPG, etc.).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Memories of a Paywall Pioneer [Voices]

By Scott Rosenberg, Co-Founder, Salon.com

Beginning in early 2001 we had a Salon Premium programme that involved gating off a very small amount of content on the site – maybe one or two pieces a day, out of a dozen or more original articles – and removing the ads for paying subscribers. This programme was moderately successful in keeping some cash coming in the door for our company, which had seen advertising income plummet after the dotcom bust began kicking in in mid-late 2000.

Immediately after 9/11, the advertising revenue that was already low went, essentially, to zero.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The Rise and Fall of MySpace [Voices]

By Matthew Garrahan, Reporter, FT.com

In summer 2005, having spent the best part of four decades ­building a newspaper, film and television empire, Rupert Murdoch decided that the time had come to get serious about the internet. As founder and chairman of News Corporation (NWSA), one of the world’s biggest and most powerful media conglomerates, Murdoch controls an eclectic portfolio of businesses ranging from The Sun newspaper to the movie studio 20th Century Fox.

Yet with young people “watching less television and reading fewer newspapers”, as he observed that summer, News Corp desperately needed a bigger presence online.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Beware Social Media Snake Oil [Voices]

By Stephen Baker, Senior Writer, BusinessWeek

For business, the rising popularity of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media Web sites presents a tantalizing opportunity. As millions of people flock to these online services to chat, flirt, swap photos, and network, companies have the chance to tune in to billions of digital conversations. They can pitch a product, listen to customer feedback, or ask for ideas.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

CrunchGear Week in Review: Icy Conditions Edition

Here are some highlights from the past week on CrunchGear:

The Canon 7D loves inclement weather, even at Antarctic levels
Greatest luggage of all time turns into a SCOOTER
Autom, the fat-fighting robot, is coming in 2010
Electric skateboard features 600-watt motor, top speed of 19 miles per hour
Quentin Tarantino in a Softbank Commercial

UPDATE 2-Carlyle in $889m approach for Shanks

UPDATE 2-Carlyle in $889m approach for Shanks

UPDATE 1-Cadbury to respond to Kraft offer on Dec. 14

Carlyle behind approach to UK's Shanks -source

Victims Daughter Takes the Cellphone Industry to Court

China closes down more video sharing websites (AFP)

AFP - Chinese regulators have closed down hundreds of video sharing websites in a new push to control Internet content, reports said Monday.

How to get a new iPhone app noticed

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Twitter (With An Awful Name)

Back in March, Google CEO Eric Schmidt caused a little controversy when he was quoted as thinking of Twitter (and the other micro-messaging services like it) as a “sort of poor man’s email systems.” He later clarified his remarks a bit. Tonight, he has joined the service.

Current Googlers such as Hunter Walk (YouTube) and former Googlers such as Chris Sacca welcomed Schmidt to the service tonight, pointing to his account, eschmidt0. Yes, you’d think he could have gotten a better name (for example, ericschmidt is currently suspended, and presumably available). But maybe he’s continuing Google’s love affair with 1s and 0s.

So what was Schmidt’s first tweet? Like any good Twitter user, he took some time for self-promotion:

CNN GPS with Fareed Zakaria on Nov 29th, starts around minute 17; Fareed is a very good interviewer http://bit.ly/6GwGjn

His second tweet? Another self-promotional one:

WSJ op-ed on newpapers and online news; thanks to the WSJ for publishing ! http://bit.ly/895j8L

Yeah, he’s going to fit right in here. (Well, as soon as he gets a real avatar, at least.)

Back in April, talk swirled that Google was thinking about buying Twitter. Apparently, the company didn’t not want to sell — even for a billion dollars. Twitter has since raised a huge new round of funding at a billion dollar valuation.

In August, Schmidt sat down with us for a interview that spawned two posts (and a mention of Twitter).

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

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Twitter (With An Awful Name)

TSA can't redact documents properly, releases s00per s33kr1t operations manual

TSA can't redact documents properly, releases s00per s33kr1t operations manual

The TSA makes another stupid move

Mirror of TSA screening doc (redactions removed)

What do ISPs charge the law to spy on you?

What do ISPs charge the law to spy on you?

One of the more remarkable elements of Yahoo's document is the sheer quantity of material that Yahoo retains for very, very long periods. From /.: "IP logs last for one year, but the original IPs used to create accounts have been kept since 1999. The contents of your Yahoo account are bought for $30 to $40 by law enforcement agencies."

Yahoo! will seek reimbursement based on the actual time expended by Yahoo!'s compliance staff in complying with the request. The average costs related to compliance matters are listed below for your convenience. These estimates are neither a ceiling nor a floor but represent the average costs of typical searches. Time spent may vary considerably based on the wording of the request and the information available about the user. These time estimates are also based on narrowly tailored requests that do not require extensive searches in multiple databases. These estimates are not price quotes, budgets, or guarantees and should not be used for budgeting purposes. Yahoo! reserves the right to adjust its estimates and reimbursement charges as necessary.

* Basic subscriber records: approx. $20 for the first ID, $10 per ID thereafter

* Basic Group Information (including information about moderators): approx. $20 for a group with a single moderator

* Contents of subscriber accounts, including email: approx. $30-$40 per user

* Contents of Groups: approx. $40 - $80 per group

Study: people who buy counterfeit bags likely to buy real ones later

Gosline's future work will explore the persistence of brand cachet among middle-class consumers. For instance, in another working paper she just finished this fall, "The Real Value of Fakes," Gosline interviewed hundreds of consumers who knowingly bought fake luxury apparel, many at "purse parties" where such goods are sold. Gosline found that within two years, 46 percent of these buyers subsequently purchased the authentic version of the same product -- even though other people could not necessarily tell the difference. Such behavior is another twist on Veblen's thesis: For some status-seeking people, at least, the social power of luxury goods means that consumption must not just be conspicuous, but real.

VMware's Dual OS Smartphone Virtualization Plan Firms Up

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jasmina Tešanović: Report from anti-Berlusconi demonstration in Rome

(Guest-essay by Jasmina Tešanović, photos by protest participants.)

Italian people are at their best in a piazza. Yesterday, the international "No B day" was held all over the world, in public squares. The largest event happened in Rome in Piazza San Giovanni. For those few who don't understand, "No B" means No Berlusconi, the right-wing Italian president who has been ruling Italy for the past two decades, undermining its brightest democratic traditions with his private and public scandals.

Only a couple of days ago, a protected mafia witness testified that Berlusconi was involved in mafia crimes. This latest allegation among many triggered many protestors to carry the banners: "no mafia in the state." However, the real hero of this manifestation was Berlusconi's ex wife, who a year or so ago denounced him as womanizer and a corruptor.

The organizers claim that they were one million participants in the Rome march, which ended in a big piazza where non politicians addressed the crowds. This country has too many parties without people and too many people without a party, said one of the participants.

"No Berlusconi" day was organized via internet, without political parties or partisan movements. The people on the streets were dressed in purple as a sign of protest, with many masks and disguises.

The king of commedia dell arte, Dario Fo (with his partner Franca Rame), the Nobel prize winner for literature, spoke from the stage to the people: witty and poignant as usual. This author won the Nobel for his political improvised tragic comedies on the mafia state, which has a long bloody history in democratic Italy.

In the meantime Berlusconi, living in denial as usual, was on a fast track train between Milan and Turin, triumphantly opening the route that will join the two power centers in northern Italy.

Riot police were all over the streets in Torino because of the soccer derby between Milan and Turin team and the voyage of its problematic president.

In many other cities of the world, like Berlin or Sydney, people gathered to protest against Berlusconi. These days, as in the days of Borgia or Caligula, Italy generates news for its mafia and sex scandals, not from a squalid underclass but from the very top. The people have to stand up in the piazza risking their lives for democracy, so dear to their hearts and temper.

But yesterday, nobody dead, nobody hurt, just a great carnival of political alternative: a good start.

Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:

• On Marina Abramovic, a "grandmother of performance art"

• The Murder of Natalya Estemirova.


• Less Than Human

• Earthquake in Italy

• 10 years after NATO bombings of Serbia

• Made in Catalunya / Lou and Laurie

• Dragan Dabic Defeats Radovan Karadzic

• Who was Dragan David Dabic?

• My neighbor Radovan Karadzic

• The Day After / Kosovo

• State of Emergency

• Kosovo

• Christmas in Serbia

• Neonazism in Serbia

• Korea - South, not North.

• "I heard they are making a movie on her life."

• Serbia and the Flames

• Return to Srebenica

• Sagmeister in Belgrade

• What About the Russians?

• Milan Martic sentenced in Hague

• Mothers of Mass Graves

• Hope for Serbia

• Stelarc in Ritopek

• Sarajevo Mon Amour

• MBOs

• Killing Journalists

• Where Did Our History Go?

• Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide

• Carnival of Ruritania

• "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"

• Faking Bombings

• Dispatch from Amsterdam

• Where are your Americans now?

• Anna Politkovskaya Silenced

• Slaughter in the Monastery

• Mermaid's Trail

• A Burial in Srebenica

• Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal

• To Hague, to Hague

• Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties

• Floods and Bombs

• Scorpions Trial, April 13

• The Muslim Women

• Belgrade: New Normality

• Serbia: An Underworld Journey

• Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006

• Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006

• Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006

• The Long Goodbye

• Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade

• Slobodan Milosevic Died

• Milosevic Funeral

Google Promotes Place Pages in Shop Windows (PC World)

AP ENTERPRISE: Timber law becomes vast entitlement (AP)

AP - A federal program that began as a safety net for Pacific Northwest logging communities hard-hit by battles over the spotted owl in the 1990s has morphed into a sprawling entitlement — one that ships vast amounts of money to states with little or no historic connection to timber, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.

You've Got Freedom: AOL ends ties with Time Warner (AP)

AP - AOL is shaking loose from Time Warner Inc. and heading into the next decade the way it began this one, as an independent company. Unlike the 1990s, though, when AOL got rich selling dial-up Internet access, it starts the 2010s as an underdog, trying to beef up its Web sites and grab more advertising revenue.

Apple Confirms Lala Music Service Acquisition (PC World)

Cool Toys for Nerds, Ages 8 to 80

Cool Toys for Nerds, Ages 8 to 80

PAC Worldwide Selects Trintech for Account Reconciliation and Certification

Dec. 7, 1999: Recording Industry Sues Napster

Gallery: Chevrolet Volt Sure Drives Sweet

See That Funny 2D Barcode In The Store Window? It Might Pull Up A Google Listing.

What if every store had a bar-code sticker on its window so that you could pull out your iPhone, wave it in front of the bar code and get all sorts of information about that business—the telephone number, photos, customer reviews?  Starting on Monday, you’ll be able to do that at up to 190,000 local businesses throughout the U.S.

Google has mailed out window stickers with two-dimensional bar codes (aka, QR codes) to the most-searched for or clicked-on businesses in its local business directory. Anyone with a QR code reader in their phone can scan it to call up a Google Mobile local directory page for one of these “Favorite Places,” which generally includes a map, phone number, directions, address, reviews, and a link to the store’s website. (It’s a mobile version of Google Places).

Local businesses can also set up coupon offers through their Google directory page, which would turn the QR code into a mobile coupon, and help entice someone standing outside a store to come in: “If you found us on Google, you get 20% off.”

Japan is already QR-crazy. Google wants the U.S. to be next. In conjunction with the QR code sticker roll-out, Google is also giving away 40,000 Quickmark QR Code Reader apps for the iPhone, which normally cost $1.99 apiece. But you can use any QR code reader. There are a bunch of free ones, some on Android phones as well.

There are now over a million local businesses which have claimed their Google local listing, up from a few hundred thousand last summer. If these QR code stickers become popular in the U.S., it could encourage more small businesses to claim their listings and give Google cleaner data.

In the near future, Google Maps on mobile phones will also start including businesses as points of interest.  Google calls these “smart maps” internally.  As the businesses are added, they are clickable, and their Places page pops up.

Google will be adding these businesses incrementally. “They are selected based on their PlaceRank,” says John Hanke, VP of Google Earth, Maps, and Local. PlaceRank is like PageRank for places It tries to figure out how prominent a place is based on factors such as “references on the Web, reviews, photos,” says Hanke, “how many people know about it, how long its been around.”

Maybe they should put the PlaceRank on the sticker. A high PlaceRank could become a badge of honor, like a high Zagat’s score.

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

Apple confirms acquisition of music site Lala - CNET News

MiamiHerald.com

Apple confirms acquisition of music site Lala CNET News Apple has acquired struggling streaming music service Lala, an Apple spokesman told CNET News on Sunday. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling confirmed the acquisition but did not disclose the terms of the deal or what the company intends to ... Apple May Buy Music Service LalaBusinessWeek Apple confirms acquisition of streaming music site LalaMacworld UK Apple Buying Lala : What It Means For The Rest Of Us?ITProPortal PC Pro -MSN Money -The Tech Herald all 260 news articles »

Motorola Droid ad gets nasty

Altamont, 40 years later

With Lure of Cash, MIT Group Builds a Balloon-Finding Team to Take Pentagon Prize - New York Times

Times Online

With Lure of Cash, MIT Group Builds a Balloon-Finding Team to Take Pentagon Prize New York Times A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology edged out about 4300 other teams on Saturday in a Pentagon-sponsored contest to correctly identify the location of 10 red balloons distributed around the United States. ... Social networking power & recursive incentive helped MIT team win Balloon huntWhite Hat News DARPA Launches Red Balloon HuntPC World MIT team wins Darpa's treasure hunt in less than one dayguardian.co.uk Washington Post -ABC News -BBC News all 89 news articles »

Motorola and du Implement Mobile WiMAX Network for Dubai Metro

Brightcove Announces Major New Customer Wins in Japan

Rakuten Taps the Brightcove Platform for E-commerce Online Video Initiatives

AU Shippin' Out December 7-11: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - GameSpot

Référencement Internet-Web

AU Shippin' Out December 7-11: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks GameSpot Link sets out to rescue the princess once again in his latest outing on the Nintendo DS. Link returns this week and swaps his boat for a steam train in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. This time, however, he's got ... The top five Legend of Zelda gamesGlobe and Mail The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks GuideIGN Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Launch TrailerCinema Blend Big Shiny Robot! -Destructoid -CVG Online all 25 news articles »

Palm Sued Over Palm Pre GPL Violation

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Aardvark Mulls Over A $30+ Million Offer From Google

Social search service Aardvark is considering accepting a $30+ million offer by Google, say multiple sources close to the companies (one source says it’s $40 million). The company, which was founded by ex-Googlers, has raised around $6 million in venture capital to date.

The company is also talking with other potential buyers, say our sources. And even if no one else comes to the table, they have a difficult decision to make. At least one venture capitalist has offered to put new money into the company at a similar valuation, and the founders may be in a position to sell some of their personal stock in that round as well.

So the decision comes down to sell now and take the guaranteed money, or roll the dice and go for the big win.

This is a fairly common situation. Automattic (the creators of Wordpress), for example, turned down a $200 millionish offer to be acquired in 2007 and instead raised a new round at a similar valuation, taking money off the table for founders/execs.

Aardvark lets users ask their friends and others for advice and information. They recently launched a website version of the service as well.

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

Facebook to Enhance User Safety Through Formation of Global Advisory Board

The Oracle Divines Electric Vehicles Everywhere by 2030

With iTunes, Apple Conditioned Us For The App Store

As you may have read by now, Apple decided to grace The New York Times with its presence for a long post about the App Store this weekend. There’s really isn’t anything new in the story (though a side story does reveal what apps Apple SVP of Product Marketing Phil Schiller actually uses), but there are a handful of quotes from Apple executives about the store. At one point, Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president for iTunes, compares the App Store to a rocket ship and notes, “We’ve been able to leverage a lot of our iTunes technology for the App Store.”

That speaks to what I think is an obvious, but largely overlooked part of the success of the App Store. While Apple’s two sexy devices (the iPhone and the iPod touch), make apps very simple to use, it’s the iTunes experience that makes them easy to obtain. Without the latter, the former simply wouldn’t matter.

We’ve spoken previously about how Apple’s tight control of its ecosystem and its competitors lack of such structure has helped build the App Store into what it is, and insured that it continues to outpace its rivals. But at its core, the App Store works so well because it was built upon a foundation that was proven: iTunes.

Since Apple was able to grow iTunes into the biggest force in online music (and actually, the biggest force now in retail music overall), it conditioned its customers with something very important: The idea of paying for digital goods with one click through a piece of software. Customers had already bought billions of songs through iTunes by the time the App Store was born. And the App Store offered the same exact process, using the same method of payment already stored in iTunes.

This is crucial. Imagine if someone else had tried to launch an app store as its own entity, do we really think it would have exploded in the same way? That seems unlikely, and actually, others had tried similar ideas before, but they never took off. As the blog Webomatica pointed out today, we live in an online world now where many of us expect apps connected to the web to be free. That’s really all iPhone apps are too (though yes, some are more involved and take longer to develop), yet we’re okay with paying for many of them.

“Example: I wouldn’t pay a dime to play Bejeweled 2 online. But paying $2.99 to play it on the iPhone seems reasonable. That reality-distortion is illogical, but it’s here right now, and a very big deal.” blogger Jason Kaneshiro writes. This fact hasn’t escaped me either. I won’t pay to play a game online, but in the App Store it’s “click buy, click buy, click buy” without a moment’s hesitation. It’s just so easy and I’m used to spending a certain amount of money on iTunes every month.

Again, there is no doubt that the iPhone/iPod touch played a huge role in all of this, but my point is that Apple made it as easy as can be for customers by placing the App Store on top of iTunes. And as a result, since customers are wiling to pay for these apps, it lit a fire under the third-party developer community, which continues to fuel the App Store.

It’s a cycle. And it remains one that will be very hard for a competitor to break because they don’t have this iTunes ecosystem. It’s the gift that keeps on giving for Apple.

[photo: United Artists]

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

Intel Larrabee Graphics Chip Cancelled - InformationWeek

TopNews United States

Intel Larrabee Graphics Chip Cancelled InformationWeek The plan to field a multicore graphics engine, which would have put Intel into direct competition against Nvidia, has been put on hold for now. By Alexander Wolfe Intel's plan to field a standalone multicore processor dedicated solely to advanced ... Intel Drops Larrabee GPU PlansTechtree.com Intel Shelves “Larrabee” Graphics ChipeWeek Intel Larrabee Cancelledbit-tech.net Wall Street Journal -TG Daily -PC Magazine all 116 news articles »

The Canon 7D loves inclement weather, even at Antarctic levels

More and more the 7D looks like the camera for me. Not that I go to Antarctica a lot, but when I do trek about, my camera comes with me rain or shine. My old 350D/Rebel XT survived quite a torrent in Kyoto, but I wouldn’t trust it or my newer Rebel XSi in a blizzard. Luckily, my job can be done from home; I don’t have to crawl on my belly through frozen mud and risk seal bites every day at magic hour. This guy does.

Ole Jørgen Liodden does field reviews of Canon gear, and he recently took the new 7D down to Antarctica to test it out alongside a 5D mk II and 1DS mk III. It performed admirably, I’m happy to say, though you can read the reservations and details in his write-up, which I won’t repeat here.

BY THE WAY. Did you notice the terrifying seal maw in the lower left right corner of the picture above? How would you like to take video of penguins with one of those bastards chewing on your tripod — or worse? The life of the nature photographer is a strange and terrifying one to be sure.

Apple Tablet and CrunchPad: Do Consumers Want These Things? (PC World)

Apple confirms purchase of music site Lala.com (AP)

AP - Apple Inc. has purchased online music retailer Lala.com, a Silicon Valley startup that has threatened "the end of the MP3" with its fast song-streaming application.

How Will Verizon Defend Higher Early Termination Fees? - PC World

TopNews United States

How Will Verizon Defend Higher Early Termination Fees? PC World What will Verizon tell the FCC about its decision to double the early termination fee it charges customers who quit their wireless contracts early? That's a question asked across the industry after the Commission on Friday sent a ... "So, Verizon, about those doubled early termination fees..."Ars Technica FCC Investigating Verizon' ...PC Magazine Feds Probe Verizon's Early Termination Fees, Accidental Data ChargesWired News Washington Post -Wall Street Journal -Register all 276 news articles »

Iran Slows Internet Access Before Student Protests

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lazy Sunday: Twitter Takes The Day Off

Usually when Twitter goes down it happens in the middle of some sort of event that causes a rush of tweets. Today is just a regular old lazy Sunday, and yet here we are, with it being down.

It’s so lazy, in fact, that no one is even bitching about Twitter being down on FriendFeed, even though it has been for a good 30 minutes now. There is also no update on the status blog. It’s weird. It’s eerie. Twitter is quietly down.

It is really news anymore when Twitter goes down? Not really. But they’ve been doing such a good job at staying up for a while now that hiccups like this and the one last week are at least worth noting. Especially when new COO Dick Costolo emphasizes how Twitter will have absolutely no problem scaling going forward.

As always, you should study up on our list of 15 alternate things to do when Twitter is down.

Update: And she’s back. A little over a half hour of downtime it looks like.

Update 2: Deja vu? Looks like Twitter has a canned message for the Status page to note downtime, so I’m not sure why it takes them so long to get it up. It’s smart to default to “about” 10 minutes ago though when it’s really “about” triple that.

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

Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2009 | 4:00 pm

How Men and Women Badly Estimate Their Own Intelligence

theodp writes "In investigating the question of whether men are smarter than women, British researcher Adrian Furnham came up with some startling results. His analysis of some 30 studies showed that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ, but women underestimate their own intelligence while men overestimate theirs. Surprisingly, both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations — both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and their grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers. And if there are children, both men and women think their sons are brighter than their daughters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Will Tabbed Windows Be the Next Big Thing?

kai_hiwatari writes "The recently released KDE SC 4.4 Beta 1 has introduced tabbed windows as a new feature. It is now possible to tab together windows from different applications. This looks like it will be a very good productivity tool. Like the tabbed browsers, this may well end up as a feature in all desktop environments in the years ahead."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 6 Dec 2009 | 2:40 pm

Most Recent Week of Online Holiday Shopping Season Achieves Above Average Growth as Three Individual Days Surpass $800 Million in Spending

RESTON, Va., Dec. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 34 days of the November - December 2009 holiday season.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Dec 2009 | 2:39 pm

Getting It Right And Getting It Wrong With The New Media

The internet (the blogosphere to be precise) is still a bit of a mystery to many in tech and entertainment. It's weird to think that companies whose job it is to reach tech-savvy consumers aren't using this tool correctly, but it's also no secret that the biggest and most influential companies are often the slowest to adapt. At any rate, they're learning, but some are learning faster than others. Here I chronicle just a few standout cases. Note that many companies are bunched under the PR heading, which is in the second half of this post for reasons which will become obvious. Also, it's a bit awkward talking about the "new media" right after I denied its existence, but for the purposes of this post please just consider it to mean big blogs, news aggregators, and social or bottom-up media.

Source: TechCrunch | 6 Dec 2009 | 2:22 pm

Getting it right and getting it wrong with the new media

The internet (the blogosphere to be precise) is still a bit of a mystery to many in tech and entertainment. It’s weird to think that companies whose job it is to reach tech-savvy consumers aren’t using this tool correctly, but it’s also no secret that the biggest and most influential companies are often the slowest to adapt. At any rate, they’re learning, but some are learning faster than others. Here I chronicle just a few standout cases.

Note that many companies are bunched under the PR heading, which is in the second half of this post for reasons which will become obvious. Also, it’s a bit awkward talking about the “new media” right after I denied its existence, but for the purposes of this post please just consider it to mean big blogs, news aggregators, and social or bottom-up media.

Doing it right

Comcast

Wait, what? Comcast is doing what right?

Easy, there. I don’t say that Comcast is doing everything right, only that they seem to get the new online power structure. It wasn’t long ago that big companies like this could hide their inadequate service, loppy pricing, and other issues simply by isolating them. Say a Comcast guy put a hole through a priceless heirloom in order to run a cable through it — not exactly far-fetched by Comcast standards. A few years ago, they could give the family free service for a year and that would pretty much be the end of it. Not even a neighborhood newspaper would pick that up. But nowadays, Comcast is on so many naughty lists that the slightest mix-up on their part gets blogged and reblogged until it seems like all Comcast has done lately is drill through antiques.

Fortunately, Comcast gets it here. They recognize that every blog post or minor news item is a seed that may grow and eventually blossom into a meme-flower, strewing bad PR-petals all over the internet. Yeah, that was a bit overwrought, and they probably don’t think of it exactly like that, but I have to get in my extended metaphors when I can. So, case in point: last week a Comcast tech told me that higher-ups in Seattle were trying to pawn off weak, end-of-life cable modems on customers who didn’t know better. It’d hard to say how true that is, but certainly evidence was in favor of it; I’d had one of these modems installed just a few months prior. So I wrote it up.

Within 10 minutes I had a comment from Bonnie, who officially disapproved of the situation, checked up on the facts and corroborated my story, and left her email address — that last bit unwise, perhaps, but noble. She continued to monitor the post, responding to other commenters who voiced other concerns, related or not. In this way Comcast nipped this whole thing in the bud, as already-addressed problems are unlikely to spread, and if my post were to become an attractive one for Google, you’d see the prompt response from Comcast. They get it.

Valve

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that such a new and successful games developer (and publisher) should be doing it right, but there are plenty of examples to the contrary. Valve is a good example, however, because of the way they engage the community. They actually listen, they actually give back, and they actually like doing it. I mean, if you just cold send an email to Gabe Newell, you’ve got a seriously good chance of getting one back. But they also get that you don’t just keep an official blog and throw the community a bone every once in a while. They realize the potential of the blog-and-meme-based intertrons and hence do something like this:

Are you kidding me? It’s the greatest thing ever created, except for this luggage scooter. See, they get that the best advertising isn’t advertising at all. If it’s good, it advertises itself. Valve does the best it can to let their content do just that, and now they’re rolling in cash as the rest of the games industry looks on in exasperation.

Smaller, single-serving companies

Startups and single-device companies like Peek and Drobo are great at individual communication, quick resolution of problems, and other caring and feeding for your blogger issues. I can’t name them all individually, but you little guys are doing it right for sure. Keep it up.

Doing it wrong

Apple

Whoa there, calm down. Read first, then flame if you must. The standard “I’m typing this on a mac” preamble applies. Plus, the fact is that whether or not Apple gets or does the blogosphere, their current strategy is working. But my point isn’t that they aren’t successful or suck at PR, just that they’re not utilizing the new media well. And of course, they don’t really need to — the new media pretty much use themselves without Apple’s help. But here’s the thing: despite writing thousands of words on Apple products, sometimes good, sometimes bad, I’ve never heard from them. Not in a comment, not in an email — nothing. Oh, we’ve got someone to talk to if we need to RSVP for a press conference or whatnot, but that’s not the same thing. The fact that I can write a mean-spirited dismissal of iFrame and not hear a word from Apple means they don’t get it or don’t care enough, and either way it’s not a good thing.

Apple is good at doing what I mentioned above: letting the product sell itself. But they don’t engage the community. They don’t need to comment on rumors or address every little thing, but when it’s shown that thousands of Apple laptops have faulty video cards, I think it’s in their interest to go around doing a little damage control.

Nintendo

Yet another glossy, white company that seems to think that because they’ve been successful so far, they don’t need to lower themselves to the level of the blogs. I may be off the mark here because I don’t work at a gaming publication, but it seems to me that Nintendo’s PR is a little bit like a state newspaper (I stop short of saying propaganda, but it’s in the vicinity). One only needs to think of Nintendo Power, the original official Nintendo magazine; it was essentially Nintendo reviewing its own products. Things haven’t really changed since then: they guard their games carefully and issue carefully-constructed PR salvos via official and semi-official sites. Sure, Sony does this a bit on the Playstation Blog, but they’re more along the lines of “Hey, new update for PS3 coming out next week, we’ll let you know what’s up with that later,” while Nintendo is more “Experience the magic that is Wii Music! Miyamoto describes the game as ’soul-scaldingly good’ in this interview with a Nintendo employee.” See what I mean?

Like in Apple’s case, it doesn’t seem to have affected their success much. But I also think that the ivory tower approach to PR is one that is losing its legitimacy.

Canon

After Vincent Laforet shot Reverie and Nocturne on Canon DSLRs, Canon shut them down despite being involved in the process. I understand sometimes there’s a left-hand-right-hand issue in big companies, but this kind of thing is beyond ridiculous. Also, they’re hogging all the 7Ds. They’ll have a 9D out before I get that sucker reviewed. Come on!

Almost every PR company out there

Our… troubles with PR companies are well-known by our readers. CrunchGear relies on them a bit more than TechCrunch, however, since we spend all day sifting through the press release haystack, looking for the occasional needle. Familiarity breeds contempt, but boy have I bred myself some contempt for the standard PR email and press release. The few companies that actually know how to engage a blog or news outlet are like shining beacons on a stormy night, while the dim stars of the rank and file PR drones do little to illuminate the dark.

Current PR practices include such bizarreries as:

• Sending an email to ask if they can send an email
• Not including product photos in a release, then sending 10MB 300DPI TIFF files hours later
• Calling every single thing they put out “revolutionary”
• Reading out loud every word of a presentation they’ve sent, as if we were children
• Leaving other blogs in the address (Dear Engadget!)
• Pitching us for things which are so clearly unrelated to what we cover that it’s insulting
• Asking for a social security number before sending a review item

The list goes on. And on. I don’t mean to exaggerate our own importance (I know this piece is coming off a bit that way), but seriously, know who you’re emailing at least. These kinds of mistakes are so elementary (or so weird) that I have no hope of their being fixed.

So

That’s the end of this little editorial. I wish I could give better advice, but really, it’s not that hard to engage your online audience. Take a look at your company’s practices in this field, if you are in a position to do so, and then look at how the masters are doing it. You don’t have to put together fake comic books and send them to your fans, but it might be nice to at least acknowledge that the new social media exists and should be catered to separately just like any other medium.

This is far from a complete list, it’s just a few impressions I’ve gotten from the last few months of tech-blogger business as usual. Feel free to add to the naughty or nice list in the comments.

Quick update: Apologies if your PR email is in the picture. I didn’t pick those because they were bad, but rather as a representative sample of the deluge of PR we wade through every day.

Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2009 | 2:00 pm

Devices To Take Textbooks Beyond Text

An anonymous reader writes with a New York Times piece about the tumultuous transition to electronic devices, instead of printed materials, for text. "Newspapers and novels are moving briskly from paper to pixels, but textbooks have yet to find the perfect electronic home. They are readable on laptops and smartphones, but the displays can be eye-taxing. Even dedicated e-readers with their crisp printlike displays can’t handle textbook staples like color illustrations or the videos and Web-linked supplements publishers increasingly supply. Now there is a new approach that may adapt well to textbook pages: two-screen e-book readers with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in color."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 6 Dec 2009 | 1:36 pm

Impotent futurism: the design of Allende's cyber-utopian boondoggle

Greg Borenstein sez, "This is a video version of a paper I delivered with Jem Axelrod at the 2009 PAMLA Conference about Project Cybersyn, an early 70s socialist pseudo-internet built by British cyberneticist Stafford Beer in Chile. The video explores how Beer's writing, infographics, and industrial design worked together to create a science fictional narrative of omniscience and ominpotence for Salvador Allende's socialist government."

Free As In Beer: Cybernetic Science Fictions (Thanks, Greg!)

Previously:

• Futurism, fictional and science fictional - rambling and inspiring ...

Source: Boing Boing | 6 Dec 2009 | 1:19 pm

Study Group Time: Here Are the Legal Briefs for eBay-craigslist Trial Tomorrow! [BoomTown]

The trial begins bright and early tomorrow morning in Delaware between online auction giant eBay and Web classified kingpin craigslist.

Since BoomTown is in a “Paper Chase” mood, I expect everyone to bone up on the legal issues of the Silicon Valley faceoff by reading the pretrial briefs below.

If not, as John Houseman playing Professor Charles Kingfield, said so memorably: “Here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer.”

To review, here are the particulars of the case:

Fact: eBay holds a minority ownership position in craigslist (which was its first mistake, really).

Currently, the San Jose, Calif.-based eBay (EBAY) owns less than 25 percent, although it had acquired about 28 percent in a deal in 2004.

That dilution is what’s at stake here, with eBay filing a lawsuit last year against the privately held craigslist for making that happen, via a “coercive plan,” by issuing more stock and thereby causing eBay to lose its board seat.

Of course, craiglist has put forth its own lawsuit in San Francisco, alleging that eBay stole confidential information to create a competing classified service called Kijiji, and other misdeeds.

First up tomorrow will be former eBay CEO Meg Whitman–who is running for the Republican nomination for California governor and who takes the stand to talk about the original deal with craiglist.

She will be followed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and others.

So, here are the prebriefs from both companies to consider:

Pretrial brief for craigslist:

craigslist pre-brief –

Pretrial brief for eBay:

Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2009 | 1:00 pm

Quentin Tarantino in a Softbank Commercial

Ah, Japan – where logic and stars go to pass fitfully into that good night.

This is much better than “Suntory time,” though.
via Giz

Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2009 | 12:50 pm

The Perl 6 Advent Calendar

An anonymous reader writes "Larry Wall wasn't joking when he said that Perl 6 would be ready by Christmas. Perhaps not this Christmas, but that hasn't stopped a group of people (including head Rakudo developers Patrick Michaud and Jonathan Worthington) from putting together an Advent Calendar, featuring one cool Perl 6 feature every day until Christmas. Topics currently covered include how to get and build Rakudo (the most actively developed and progressed implementation of Perl 6) and the new Metaoperators. For those wondering when Perl 6 will be finished: Rakudo will be having its official 'production release' (dubbed Rakudo Star) April 2010."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

TC50 DemoPit Startup LIFEmee Lets You Record And Share Your Entire Life Online

Envision a web service that lets you record and share your entire life online: That’s the lofty goal LIFEmee wants to achieve. The eponymous Tokyo-based startup behind the service (which is available in both English and Japanese) relaunched its site today with a redesigned interface and a set of new features. (LIFEmee launched back in September this year as a TechCrunch50 DemoPit company.)

To recap, LIFEmee allows you to store, manage and share all significant aspects and events of your life: Your daily health condition, relationships, jobs, schools, possessions, hobbies, family members, pictures, notes etc. etc. The main idea is to give users a platform for organizing their lives online by collecting and structuring this kind of information for lifetime use. Users can not only review all data they fed into their “lifestream” (all data aligned along a time line) in retrospect but also lay out their plans for the future. The information can be shared or kept strictly private.

LIFEmee is still loaded with too many buttons and icons, but the new site is much simpler to use than the TechCrunch50 version. The site’s co-founders say after having collected feedback from early users all around the world, they tried to make it more accessible, integrate it with existing social networks and redesign the entire layout. A Japanese version was added a few weeks after TechCrunch50, too (at the event, LIFEmee launched in English only).

In the new version, users don’t need to register on the site anymore but can log in via Facebook Connect. Status updates on LIFEmee can now be pushed to Facebook and Twitter profiles automatically. But what’s more interesting is that it’s now possible to scrape Facebook status updates and tweets and post them on LIFEmee where they will be (theoretically) stored forever and in one place.

Layout-wise, a few key elements were dropped from the splash page. You won’t find the “Last Will” button anymore, for example (early LIFEmee users deemed the option to upload a Last Will and Testament as “too dark”).

The central “MyLife” area was replaced with two distinct functions, DailyBoard and LifeBoard. Whereas DailyBoard operates similarly to Twitter (asking “How are you feeling now?”), the LifeBoard is the place to go for writing a diary, keeping track of your health condition or making future plans. For example, you can upload a picture of the dream house you plan to buy 5 years later on the LifeBoard and lay out which steps are to be made by which points in time to achieve that goal.

And LIFEmee added a number of other bells and whistles (i.e. a new search function that lets you search up comment and status update from LIFEmee, Twitter and Facebook at the same time, easier uploading of pictures and items, additional options to invite friends etc.) that make the service a bit more worthwhile. But the question is if we are already at the the stage where we are willing (and dedicated enough) to store our entire lives on the web.

LIFEmee is still in alpha, which means there are still a few kinks that need to be ironed out, but the site is ready for you to take at least a test run. LIFEmee competes with similar offerings like dandelife, thisMoment and Rseven on the mobile.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 6 Dec 2009 | 11:56 am

Earth More Sensitive To Carbon Dioxide

Image Caption: The temperature response of the Earth (in degrees C) to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from pre-industrial levels (280 parts per million by volume) to higher levels (400 parts per million by volume).
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2009 | 11:43 am

Mutant teddy bear

Undead Ed's plush Mortimer Mutated Bear is sweet and sickly all at once. I love those eyes!

Mortimer Mutated Bear Plush by *Undead-Art* (via Superpunch)

Previously:

• Mandelbrot the fractal teddy-bear
• Teddy Bear USB drive is a headless horror - Boing Boing
• HOWTO make a teddy-bear remote-control - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Gun that fires teddy-bears on parachutes
• Exploding teddy bears - Boing Boing
• Teddy bears turned inside-out: photo book by Kent Rogowski - Boing ...
• Zaphod Beeblebrox-inspired teddy bears from Douglas Adams fan-club ...

/mandel/


Source: Boing Boing | 6 Dec 2009 | 11:41 am

"Lawful Spying" Price Lists Leaked

ogaraf writes "Wired has a story about how the site Cryptome.org leaked the price lists for 'lawful spying' activities of Yahoo and other companies, and subsequently received a DMCA takedown notice from Yahoo. The documents, however, are still posted online, and in them you can learn, for instance, that IP logs last for one year, but the original IPs used to create accounts have been kept since 1999. The contents of your Yahoo account are bought for $30 to $40 by law enforcement agencies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 6 Dec 2009 | 11:32 am

Aggression-Promoting Pheromone Discovered In Flies

Study, published in Nature, also identifies pheromone-detecting neurons in the fly's antennaHave you ever found yourself struggling to get your order taken at a crowded bar or lunch counter, only to walk away in disgust as more aggressive customers elbow their way to the front? It turns out that flies do much the same thing, according to biologists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).Reporting in the advance online edition of the journal Nature, the scientists say they have identified an aggression-promoting pheromone that controls such behaviors, and have pinpointed the neurons in the fly's antenna that detect this pheromone and relay the information to the brain to elicit aggression. Their results provide an important first step toward unraveling the mystery of how aggression—an innate (unlearned) behavior—is hardwired into the brain by an animal's genes.Pheromones—specific chemicals used by a particular species to communicate and to control their behavior—have been identified in the scent glands of other insect species, such as ants and beetles, and have been shown to elicit aggressive behavior when presented in synthetic form to the insects. It has been difficult, however, to prove that the insects normally use these pheromones to control their aggressive behavior, notes study coauthor David Anderson, Caltech's Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator."Obtaining such proof required the ability to experimentally interfere with the insects' capacity to sense the pheromone," he explains. "And that, in turn, necessitated identification of the receptor molecules that detect aggression pheromones, and of the olfactory sensory neurons that express these receptors."As it turns out, the only insect in which these conditions could be met was the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster, explains Liming Wang, a graduate student in Anderson's lab and the Nature paper's first author. "The genetic/molecular architecture of the olfactory system in Drosophila is well understood," Wang explains. "Thus, one can easily test whether a specific olfactory receptor, and the sensory neurons expressing it, are involved in a given behavior."Wang discovered that 11-cis-vaccenylacetate (cVA)—a pheromone present in the male fly's cuticle—"robustly promotes aggression in pairs of male flies," Anderson says.Aggressive behavior in Drosophila consists of brief "lunges" in which one fly rears up on its hind legs and snaps down with its forelegs on its opponent. When Wang and Anderson added synthetic cVA to an "arena" in which combatant flies were tested, the frequency of lunges was dramatically increased. Building upon earlier work from other laboratories that had identified the receptors for this pheromone, Wang next showed that silencing the neurons in the fly's antenna that contain these specific receptors could block the ability of synthetic cVA to promote aggression.These findings allowed Wang and Anderson to test whether flies can actually detect the release of this pheromone from other flies—and whether such detection promotes aggression.To do this test, they trapped between 20 and 100 "donor" male flies—so called because they "donate" the volatile pheromones into the surrounding environment—in a tiny cage surrounded by a fine mesh screen. The screen allowed pheromones to escape, but kept the donor flies inside.The researchers then measured the effect these donor flies had on the aggressiveness of a pair of "tester" male flies placed on top of the cage. The tester flies were close enough to sense the pheromone, but were prevented from coming into contact with the donor males by the mesh screen. "Remarkably," says Anderson, "the presence of the caged donor flies strongly increased aggression between the tester flies, and this aggression-promoting effect increased with a higher number of donor male flies."Most importantly, the effect of the donor flies on the aggressiveness of the tester flies could be blocked by inactivating, in the tester flies' antennae, the neurons that sense the aggression pheromone."These experiments suggested that the presence of high densities of male flies in a local environment can indeed promote aggression through their release of cVA and its detection by other flies," Wang explains.Based on these findings, Wang and Anderson began to speculate whether this pheromone might play a role in limiting the population density of male flies in a given environment. Normally, male flies are attracted to food in order to feed and because it gives them the opportunity to mate with feeding female flies. If the density of male flies on a food resource is too high, however, the competition between the flies might prevent feeding and mating. Since aggressive flies tend to chase away their competitors, an aggression-promoting pheromone should tend to keep the density of flies from becoming too high.Wang tested this hypothesis by allowing a small number of flies to compete for a limited supply of food, while genetically manipulating their cVA-receptor neurons to make those neurons hyperactive.Surprisingly, says Anderson, the flies with the hyperactive neurons quickly dispersed, leaving the food resource behind. "They fought one another until a dominant fly became 'king of the hill' and drove the other flies away," he explains."In contrast," Anderson adds, "flies whose genes weren't manipulated in this way ate happily together, like cows grazing placidly on an alpine meadow."According to Wang and Anderson, these results suggest that when the population of male flies reaches a high-enough density, the concentration of cVA rises to a level that promotes aggression, forcing some of the flies off the food. The departure of those flies causes the ambient concentration of the pheromone to decrease, thereby decreasing aggression. "Once this occurs," says Wang, "the population becomes stabilized at an optimal density until more flies become attracted to the food, and the cycle repeats itself."Although their observations of this behavior were made under artificial laboratory conditions, the researchers believe that it should be possible to test their hypothesis in the wild.The discovery of the fly's response to an aggression pheromone raises a number of intriguing questions, such as whether this fly pheromone might be sensed by humans. This is very unlikely, says Anderson, as pheromones have evolved as a "private" chemical communication channel within a given species.But that does not mean humans lack aggression pheromones altogether, he notes. After all, aggression-promoting pheromones have been discovered in mice, which are evolutionarily closer to humans than flies. It is possible, therefore, that humans have their own aggression-promoting pheromones."Do these pheromones keep the lines from getting too long at a crowded lunch counter, as irate patrons jockey for position in the queue and some walk away in frustration?" Anderson asks. "Only time will tell."The work described in the Nature paper, "Identification of an aggression-promoting pheromone and its receptor neurons in Drosophila," was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.---Image Caption: One way a male Drosophila shows aggression is by "lunging," in which it rears up on its hind legs and snaps down with its forelegs on its opponent. Credit: Caltech/Liming Wang and Michael Maire
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2009 | 11:20 am

It's Lonely Here in Space

With the departure last week of European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne, Canada’s Bob Thirsk and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, life aboard the International Space Station has gotten a whole lot quieter. Until a new crew arrives on Dec. 23, ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Dec 2009 | 11:13 am

Farmville, Social Gaming, and Addiction

MarkN writes "Facebook has been trumpeting the fact that Farmville, the most popular game on its site, has more users than Twitter, with 69 million playing over a month and 26 million playing each day. Combined with Facebook's announcement that they have hit 350 million users, that means one out of every five people on Facebook is playing Farmville. Gamasutra has a post taking a critical analysis of Farmville, its deceptively slow level grind, how a number of gameplay features end up as simply decorative since they aren't balanced with the benefits of raising crops, and discussing why Farmville succeeds so well in virally spreading itself and addicting people."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 6 Dec 2009 | 10:15 am

The Wind Turned On My Dishwasher

Someday you might find yourself explaining to your friends that the wind turned on your dishwasher last night, if Pamela Sporborg gets it all worked out. Pamela is working on a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory project to "economically integrate variable ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Dec 2009 | 8:31 am

So You Cheated. Now What?

Technology has made it easier than ever to get caught cheating. Tiger Woods may have been the latest to get caught with his text message and voicemail pants down but many celebs and non-celebs have gotten caught just by sending texts or posting messages on the wrong Facebook wall. All it takes is one snooping partner to completely blow up your whole cheating operation. Especially if the entire relationship takes place online via cell phone or computer, these two things in particular can be the smoking gun when it comes to being caught. How can a cheater continue to cheat, and not get caught by the very technology that allowed for cheating in the first place?

The Culprit: Facebook
Scenario 1: Facebook ruined your relationship thanks to incriminating photos
Facebook has become a common source of argument for couples. In the old days people could lie about their whereabouts and their bf/gf would never be the wiser. But now, thanks to Facebook, one tag and your true whereabouts could be revealed at any time. Besides just frantically detagging pictures from your mobile phone or computer, there are a few simple steps you can take to make sure you’re not caught red handed. 1. Don’t take photos at the bar! 2. Set your Facebook user settings to Private by going to Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile > Customize and choose that “Only Me” can see pictures tagged of yourself. This way, wifey won’t be able to search Facebook for incriminating photos in her spare time.

The Culprit: Caller ID
Scenario 2: You say you’re working late and your significant other tells you to call them from your work number… what to do?
Enter Spoofcard. This bad boy lets you change the way your number will show up on caller ID. Display your work line and your husband or wife might actually fall for the “I’m working late” excuse. Spoofcard was recently in the news when socialite and Publicity Director for Dolce & Gabbana Ali Wise was arrested for hacking into ex boyfriend’s and their new girlfriend’s voice mails using the Spoofcard. Probably wishing he had thought of this idea, Tiger Woods would probably prefer to face arrest rather than having that incriminating voicemail that he left so his mistress could play it on repeat nationwide.

The Culprit: GPS
Scenario 3: Your significant other tries to monitor your whereabouts with a GPS tracker
The same way Michael Strahan busted his wife cheating on him, more and more suspicious people are turning to GPS trackers. These devices are becoming smaller and oftentimes come in magnetic cases that can be slapped to the bottom of a car unbeknownst to the driver. If you think your boo is capable of tracking you, then you need a GPS and bug detector. These hand held toys let you find all bugs, cameras, and GPS trackers, no matter how hidden. Another way to protect yourself from those pesky GPS trackers is with an In-Car GPS Jammer. But beware, these GPS jammers may or may not be legal where you live.

The Culprit: Your Cell Phone
Scenario 4: Your wifey raids your phone AND e-mail and boom you’re busted
Leave your computer or phone in the open for a second and you may be subject to a full cavity search. That’s why you need to use anonymous text message and e-mail systems. A system like Anonymousspeech.com allows you to send and receive e-mails via an anonymous IP address. Raunchy e-mails won’t be tracked back to your computer so you will never be busted again. Like the anonymous e-mail server, there’s also an anonymous text message center called AnonTxt.com. This system lets you send completely anonymous text messages that cannot be traced to your cell phone. So leave your computer or phone in the open, they got nothing on you!

The Culprit: The Infamous Jerry Springer Polygraph Test
Scenario 5: You used these tricks to keep your cheating discreet, but your significant other is still questioning you. If he or she subjects you to a polygraph test, you can beat it
First of all, if your bf/gf is making you take a polygraph, it’s time to reevaluate the relationship. Lie detectors are based off the assumption that if you’re lying you will probably freak out. Measuring nervousness as a sign of a lie, polygraph tests can be beat if you know how to skew the results. Experts recommend doing something mentally complex during the control questions like long division. Other methods include pressing down on a tack hidden in your shoe or biting your tongue to elicit a painful response. This way you will always seem like a high strung, nervous person whether the question is easy or hard. When the interviewer asks you a real question like “would you ever cheat?” it will look like the same level of stress as when he asked you the control question.

Unlike Tiger Woods, Jude Law, and the millions of others that have been busted thanks to their careless use of technology, hopefully these tips will let you lead your double life without interruption.

Guest columnist Lydia Leavitt writes about sex and, oddly enough, social media. For more information on the latest intimate technology, check out 69adget.com.

Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2009 | 8:30 am

Scientists, lawyers mull effects of home robots (AP)

AP - Eric Horvitz illustrates the potential dilemmas of living with robots by telling the story of how he once got stuck in an elevator at Stanford Hospital with a droid the size of a washing machine.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Dec 2009 | 7:26 am

Photographers win British war on photography?

Is Britain's war on photography coming to an end? After the Independent newspaper got senior officials to admit that anti-terror legislation was being "widely abused...to question and search innocent photographers," the Association of Chief Police Officers has sent out a strongly worded memo to all officers ordering them to cease the practice. The harrassment of photographers by police officers is said to have senior officers "exasperated, depressed and embarrassed," and they characterize officers' belief that anti-terror laws prohibit photography as an "internal urban myth."

Chief Constable Andy Trotter, chairman of Acpo's media advisory group, took the decision to send the warning after growing criticism of the police's treatment of photographers.

Writing in today's Independent, he says: "Everyone... has a right to take photographs and film in public places. Taking photographs... is not normally cause for suspicion and there are no powers prohibiting the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place."

He added: "We need to make sure that our officers and Police Community Support Officers [PCSOs] are not unnecessarily targeting photographers just because they are going about their business. The last thing in the world we want to do is give photographers a hard time or alienate the public. We need the public to help us.

"Photographers should be left alone to get on with what they are doing. If an officer is suspicious of them for some reason they can just go up to them and have a chat with them - use old-fashioned policing skills to be frank - rather than using these powers, which we don't want to over-use at all."

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act allows the police to stop and search anyone they want, without need for suspicion, in a designated area. The exact locations of many of these areas are kept secret from the public, but are thought to include every railway station in and well-known tourist landmarks thought to be at risk of terrorist attacks...

Police U-turn on photographers and anti-terror laws (Thanks, Mutant Rob!)

Previously:

• Current TV on photo bans in UK - Boing Boing
• UK cop: 'War on terror means no pictures of police vans in ...
• UK mall bans grandparents for trying to photo their grandkids ...
• UK man hassled by cop for not having a "camera license" - Boing Boing
• BBC photographer prevented from shooting St Paul's because he ...
• London cops declare war on photography - Boing Boing
• UK Home Secretary green-lights harassment of photographers in ...
• Another London photographer arrested for "terrorism" (i.e. "taking ...
• BBC photographer prevented from shooting St Paul's because he ...
• London's Spitalfields market: shoot the architecture, we take away ...

Source: Boing Boing | 6 Dec 2009 | 7:20 am

Apple Purchases Lala, Details And Plans Remain Unclear

Pioneer online music vendor Apple Inc has recently purchased digital music service Lala.  As more and more newcomers attempt to edge their way into the online music industry, many analysts see the acquisition as a savvy move by the media monolith in an effort to trailblaze new means of marketing music and stay ahead of the competitive curve.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Dec 2009 | 6:25 am

Ancient Volcanic Blast Illuminates History Of Early Humans

Image Caption: Illustration of what the eruption might have looked like from approximately 50 miles (80 km) above Pulau Simeulue. Courtesy Wikipedia
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2009 | 6:20 am

Verizon To Explain Smartphone Fees

Federal regulators have asked Verizon Wireless to explain why it doubled the fee customers pay for terminating smartphone contracts.The Federal Communications Commission made the request in a letter Friday to the largest U.S. mobile telephone provider.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Dec 2009 | 6:11 am

Google Buys AppJet

Google recently acquired Appjet, and is merging its technology with its Wave communication platform.AppJet stated, "We are happy to announce that AppJet Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Dec 2009 | 6:06 am

Rice Farming A Major Source Of Global Warming?

Though you may not hear much about them in talks of the effect they have on global warming, Asian rice farmers actually have a vital role in helping the world reduce the output of greenhouse gases.When it comes to the fight against global warming, the world has mainly focused on the burning of fossil fuels and the logging of rainforests.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2009 | 4:50 am

Augmented Reality Becomes Reality

The Dutch city of Rotterdam attracted technophiles and developers looking for the next big tech breakthrough on Friday where they heard "augmented reality" being presented as something that could change the way we perceive the world as we know it.Augmented reality is different than virtual reality in that it combines real-world images with computer-generated images on a screen, usually in real time.It would mean that someone holding up a mobile phone that has a camera, a global positioning satellite (GPS) sensor, compass and the right software, can point to a city street and overlay older pictures of historic buildings or streets, reported Reuters.One of the leading providers of the software that makes augmented reality feasible is Dutch company Layar, which is now available on Apple Inc’s iPhone 3gs and Google Inc’s Android-based mobile phones."Wouldn't it be great to stand somewhere and see what this place looked like sometime in the past?" said Claire Boonstra, one of Layar's founders.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Dec 2009 | 4:45 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.

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 opinion, 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 unyielding 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

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