German Chancellor Angela Merkel is defending the much-criticized outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit as a first step that paves the way for action. Merkel was quoted Sunday as... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Dec 2009 | 3:19 am
Darren Ginter writes "I find many aspects of desktop virtualization compelling, with one exception: the cost of the thin clients, which typically exceeds that of a traditional box. I understand all of the benefits of desktop virtualization (and the downsides, thanks) but I'm very hung up on spending more for less. While there are some sub-$200 products out there, they all seem to cut corners (give me non-vaporware that will drive a 22" LCD at full resolution). I can PXE boot a homebrew Atom-based thin client for $130, but I'd prefer to be able to buy something assembled. Am I missing something here?"
In 2006 I was horrified by Jigsaw, a website that encouraged users to upload people's contact information (often from business cards) for money - $1 per contact. Other people then bought that contact information... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Dec 2009 | 2:15 am
In 2006 I was horrified by Jigsaw, a website that encouraged users to upload people’s contact information (often from business cards) for money – $1 per contact. Other people then bought that contact information.
Even if you found out about Jigsaw there was no way to get the information removed. Hand out your business card to the wrong person and you could suddenly find yourself in vendor cold call hell.
From my original post: “Jigsaw makes money while pushing costs to other people…[by] making private contact information public. The problem here is that Jigsaw’s actions aren’t easily found out by people getting constant cold calls and emails – it’s very unlikely they’ll know that these people got this contact information at Jigsaw in the first place.”
Jigsaw has changed its model since 2006. People can now see if their personal information has been uploaded, and there is a process to have it removed, at least temporarily. And users are no longer paid cash to upload contacts. Instead they receive points that can be used to download contact other people’s contact information.
Fast forward to today. Jigsaw continues to thrive, because there are lots of people out there who desperately want contact information for sales and business development purposes. Revenue is rumored to be around $30 million/ year.
Is Jigsaw still evil?
The company softened it’s approach to data by removing the cash incentive and giving people a way to remove data. But more importantly, the world has changed a lot since 2006. Facebook has been the catalyst for much of the change.
Back in 2006 people still had a notion of privacy online, particularly around contact information. Today those walls are crumbling. People share information today without blinking that they never would have considered sharing in the past. Things that bother us today probably won’t matter much this time next year.
But while sites like Facebook encourage us to share personal information with the whole world, and services like Loopt, Gowalla and Foursquare get us to voluntarily share even our location publicly, at least users still have a choice; it’s their decision. And most people still don’t want to give up their privacy.
Jigsaw doesn’t give people that choice. And they’re sharing contact information, giving people direct access to your email and phone number. As I said nearly four years ago, that pushes the costs of their business, which is people having to deal with unwanted contact from vendors, to third parties.
We have to have control over the distribution of this information. As long as it’s legal (in the U.S. at least) there will be companies that disregard morality and pursue profits.
So for now, Jigsaw isn’t really evil. They’re just amoral. The first purpose of our government is to protect the rights of its people. Data privacy rights should really be no different than property rights.
Jigsaw can’t come and put up posters on my house advertising their service. The same logic suggests they shouldn’t be in the business of selling my contact information, either.
Since Jigsaw won’t get off my lawn, it’s time for the government to make them.
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So the guys at Olive really like you. We gave our free one away to Reader Fares but you guys can pick one up alongside a full 17-disc collection of Beatles hits just as quick as two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Here’s what’s going on:
Buy any Olive 4 or Olive 4 HD by Monday, December 28th and get the remarkable, remastered Beatles 17-Disc collection FREE! This is the Beatles Collection you’ve been waiting for. Every song in the Beatles catalog, every album from Please Please Me to Let it Be remastered to today’s highest standards. A $200 value – it’s yours FREE with your purchase of an Olive 4.
Imagine this in 3D. With like aliens popping out onto your lap. This telesync won’t be like that.
Avatar is now a telesync, in English, but it seems the aliens in the copy are gray and everyone – I mean everyone – says to go see it in the theaters. If you can’t wait and/or you live in Central Europe where it’s coming out on December 24, you might as well whet your appetite with this CAMELOT release.
Here is a nice telesync from CAMELOT, the sound is good and the video is a bit blurry but this is in english. However I recomand the iMAX, definitely worths it.
Spotted this evening on the U.S. government's public data web site, Data.gov. A Republican programmer at captcha provider reCAPTCHA having some fun? Hat-tip ReadWriteWeb's Marketing manager Elyssa Pallai,... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:31 am
Experience Mobile Mobile from James Thophane Jnr on Vimeo. Spotted on Cnet, a "mobile mobile" playing Christmas music. Other mobile mobile installations: -- A Day Without Cell Phones - The installation... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:19 am
American rock musician Lou Reed has developed an iPhone app for the visually impaired. The app, called Lou Zoom, helps magnify the words on the iPhone. In his own words: With Lou Zoom, your contacts... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:13 am
Over at the American Express Open Forum, I provided a list of my favorite applications. Check out the list if you want to see what makes me tick. Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:03 am
If you're new to Twitter, you might be wondering about the basics types of people on the services. I explained the six types over at the American Express Open Forum. Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:02 am
Dozens of protesters shut down the railway line leading to Australia's biggest coal export facility on Sunday, in protest over what they said was the failure of global climate change talks... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 11:56 pm
Charlie Stross has a blog post up that tries to make sense of the mobile phone market and where it's going: where Apple, Google, and the cellcos fit in, and what the point of Google's Nexus One may be. "Becoming a pure bandwidth provider is every cellco's nightmare: it levels the playing field and puts them in direct competition with their peers, a competition that can only be won by throwing huge amounts of capital infrastructure at their backbone network. So for the past five years or more, they've been doing their best not to get dragged into a game of beggar-my-neighbor, by expedients such as exclusive handset deals... [Google intends] to turn 3G data service (and subsequently, LTE) into a commodity, like Wi-Fi hotspot service only more widespread and cheaper to get at. They want to get consumers to buy unlocked SIM-free handsets and pick cheap data SIMs. They'd love to move everyone to cheap data SIMs rather than the hideously convoluted legacy voice stacks maintained by the telcos; then they could piggyback Google Voice on it, and ultimately do the Google thing to all your voice messages as well as your email and web access. (This is, needless to say, going to bring them into conflict with Apple. ... Apple are an implicit threat to Google because Google can't slap their ads all over [the App and iTunes stores]. So it's going to end in handbags at dawn... eventually.)"
The publishers of What's Eating You?: Parasites -- The Inside Story were kind enough to send me a copy of this science picture book for young readers. This is exactly the kind of book I loved as a kid,... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 11:39 pm
The publishers of What's Eating You?: Parasites -- The Inside Story were kind enough to send me a copy of this science picture book for young readers. This is exactly the kind of book I loved as a kid, full of gross and interesting facts about the incredible subject of parasites and their life-cycle. The book has loads of great gross-out moments (rabbit fleas leaving behind poo for their babies to feed on when they hatch from eggs) but quickly moves into the bizarre and wonderful ways that parasites manipulate their hosts (heron tapeworms infect stickleback fish, then turn the fish an easy-to-spot orange and cause them to swim to the surface, where the herons can eat them), the best being the Sacculina sea-crab parasite, which "grows tentacles into every single part of the crab's body, even its brain, to control everything it does...It doesn't breed, but rears Sacculina's babies instead...even male crabs."
Wittily illustrated with simple art, and written in a humorous and engaging style, this is a great kids' science book, and would be a wonderful accompaniment to an afternoon spent with a magnifying glass in the park, or online with a search-engine.
If you've already made your Christmas gifts to EFF and Creative Commons and have a couple of bucks left over? How about buying a gift for the public domain!!
Public.Resource.Org just ordered another 41 titles and spent $560 on some really great FedFlix from the vaults of the National Archive, there is still plenty of great material out there, so we put together an Amazon Wish List. If you see anything you'd like to buy the public domain we'll take your DVD and upload the video to YouTube, the Internet Archive, and to our own rsync/ftp public domain stock footage library.
Background: these videos were made at US taxpayer expense, and they are in the public domain. However, they aren't distributed for free by the National Archives; instead they're sold through Amazon as a money-maker for the government, which charges you to get access to the stuff you already own and paid for. The Archives get a minuscule amount of money by doing this: $3,273.66 over the past two years! In order to make a measly three grand, the National Archives have closed off the entire USA's access to its video treasures.
Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, If you've already made your Christmas gifts to EFF and Creative Commons and have a couple of bucks left over? How about buying a gift for the public domain!! Public... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 11:05 pm
The Pope has created a special (and weirdly incoherent) copyright in his name, image and symbols. This "copyright" appears to prohibit using these words and symbols to denote goods or services ("Pope Secondary... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 11:00 pm
The Pope has created a special (and weirdly incoherent) copyright in his name, image and symbols. This "copyright" appears to prohibit using these words and symbols to denote goods or services ("Pope Secondary School," "Pope Soap," "Pope Burgers"), all of which are covered already under trademark and fraud laws, and need no copyright to protect them.
The statement cited a "great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father" in recent years as contributing to a desire to use the Pontiff's name for all manner of educational and cultural institutions, civic groups and foundations.
Due to this demand, the Vatican has felt it necessary to declare that "it alone has the right to ensure the respect due to the Successors of Peter, and therefore, to protect the figure and personal identity of the Pope from the unauthorized use of his name and/or the papal coat of arms for ends and activities which have little or nothing to do with the Catholic Church..."
"Consequently, the use of anything referring directly to the person or office of the Supreme Pontiff... and/or the use of the title 'Pontifical,' must receive previous and express authorization from the Holy See," concluded the message released to the press.
A team of Chinese architects just unveiled an art installation in Shenzhen that consists of two giant monster footprints in the middle of a public park. They're made of pink rubber and function as a children's play area.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian hospital ship torpedoed by the Japanese during World War Two with the loss of 268 lives has been located in waters off the coast of the northern state of... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 10:29 pm
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IPhone app developer Tapulous says its sales have approached $1 million a month, providing fresh evidence of the growing success of start-ups designing programs... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 10:24 pm
The NY Times has a Bits Blog piece speculating on some of the fallout if the FTC prevails in its anti-competition lawsuit against Intel. The Times picks out two among the 26 remedies proposed by the regulator, and concludes that they add up to Nvidia being able to license x86 technology. This could open up 3-way competition in the market for combined CPU-graphics chips. There is a good deal of circumstantial evidence pointing to the possibility that Nvidia has been working on x86 technology since 2007, including the presence on its employment rolls of more than 70 former Transmeta workers.
“So that’s your advice is it? As my agent? On the week my book comes out in paperback, I should produce my own pirated version and give it away free? Why don’t I just punch my publisher in the face? That would be less work.”
My agent rocked back in his chair (a chair bought with 15% of my earnings) and laughed. “I didn’t say it was my advice, I just said there’s nothing they can do to stop you.”
Before our meeting had taken its subversive turn, we had been talking about ebooks: a subject that’s on every publisher and agent’s mind this week after the decision by Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, to make his books available exclusively on the Amazon Kindle. Covey’s move has caused a highly effective shit-storm because he made it in direct defiance of his paymasters at Simon & Schuster who won’t see a penny from the deal.
‘Seven Habits’ was originally contracted back in the pre-ebook days of 1989 and as such Covey claims that the electronic rights remain with him to do with as he wishes. Simon & Schuster, perhaps unsurprisingly given that they sold 136,000 paperback copies of the book this year, disagree – arguing that Covey’s contract precludes him from publishing any ‘competing works’. “Our position is that electronic editions of our backlist titles belong in the Simon & Schuster catalog, and we intend to protect our interests in those publications.” said an S&S spokesman, ineffectively.
It’s no huge coincidence that Covey’s decision came just a few days after Simon & Schuster, along with several other publishers, announced that they were postponing the ebook release of dozens of titles on the basis that Amazon’s $9.99 price point for electronic titles was cannibalizing hardback sales. Hardback sales – especially of popular titles – are one of the cash cows of publishing, costing just a few cents more to produce and distribute than paperbacks but with a far higher cover price. Ebooks on the other hand sell for less than paperbacks but, by and large, pay a larger royalty to authors: somewhere in the region of 25% of the cover price, leaving even less profit for the publisher. The hardcore book buyers who regularly buy hardback books are also the ones most likely to have an e-reader – meaning that delaying ebook releases should result in more hardback sales. Or so goes the publishers’ logic.
The problem is that book sales are not a zero sum game. Your average Kindle owner, on discovering that a new release is not available electronically, is unlikely to set down his expensive gadget and drive down to Borders to buy the hardback. Instead he’ll simply choose a different title from the hundreds of thousands that are available. Hardcore fans of a particular author might still insist on the hardback, but they would anyway given that it’s much harder to get an ebook signed by their hero.
Meantime, as ebooks become an increasingly important distribution channel for books, authors who aren’t convinced by their publisher’s digital strategy won’t hesitate to take matters into their own hands. New authors will simply choose a different publisher, while veterans like Covey will try to exploit loopholes in their existing contracts to maximise ebook returns.
For Covey, the problem with Simon & Schuster’s digital strategy seems to be largely financial. The company that he has chosen to publish his new Kindle edition – Rosetta Books – has made a big play of the fact that they’re paying him a significantly higher royalty on sales than he was previously making on ebooks. Meanwhile Amazon has promised a huge site-wide promotional campaign for the titles. Other authors choose a publisher because their digital strategy reflects their principles. Cory Doctorow publishes many of his books with Tor Books because they agree to allow him to give away the electronic versions of his books, on the day of publication, without DRM protection. By contrast, when Apple refused to distribute the audio book of his ‘Makers‘ anthology in the iTunes store without DRM, Doctorow walked away from the deal rather than compromise his principles.
I can’t fault my publisher on money: Weidenfeld & Nicolson has paid me not one, but two generous advances to write books about myself, and I’m certain I’ve cost them the same again in lawyers’ fees thanks to the legal threats I seem to attract prior to publication. I earn a decent royalty on ebook sales in the UK and Europe and, because I still own the US rights to my books, I was free to produce my own Kindle edition – limited to US customers – and take 100% of the profits. Equally, I can’t fault W&N on supporting my principles: largely because I don’t have any.
No, the reason I found myself in my agent’s office earlier this week bitching about my publisher’s digital strategy was something even stronger than money and principle: my monstrous ego.
Since moving to the US and started to write for TechCrunch, I now have more people reading my words each week in North America than I do in the UK. Every week I delight in annoying commenters by promoting my war-of-the-worlds-winning book, to the point where people seem genuinely upset when I miss an opportunity to do so. And yet barely a day goes by without someone telling me they tried to find my book in the US, only to be disappointed that – due to publishing’s ridiculous obsession with territories – it’s only available outside North America. “It’s available on the Kindle” I say. “Pft” they reply, “I don’t have a Kindle”. In most cases I end up emailing them a PDF – a distribution model that doesn’t really scale.
The logical solution would be to publish the PDF on my site. The print version of the book has been available for 18 months now – it’s had plenty of time on bookstore shelves and with the publication of the paperback in the UK and no US publisher on the horizon, any future sales are just part of the long tail. There’s already a pirated version available on Limewire – that’s where I got the PDF from in the first place – and the more time that passes, the easier it will be to find an unauthorised digital copy.
By releasing the ebook myself for free at this stage of its life, it would do very little damage to sales but will get my words into the hands of a whole new US audience: readers who might then seek out other things I’ve written or pay me to write new things, or buy the properly-formatted Kindle edition with clickable footnotes – or any of the other myriad benefits that Doctorow cites for wanting to give his books away free.
But that’s where W&N’s digital strategy lets me down. The company has the rights to all digital sales of the book outside North America and their parent, Hachette Livre, has decreed that they will not allow any ebooks to be distributed for free, or without DRM. If I make the ebook of Bringing Nothing available for free in the US then there’s nothing to stop foreign readers downloading it, which would breach W&N’s contractual rights. As I explained to my agent, owning the US rights to the ebook is pointless if I can’t do anything with them without pissing off my publisher.
It was that point that he made his brilliant suggestion. The kind of suggestion that makes all those 15%s worthwhile…
“Why don’t you do it anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re allowed to publish it in the US, so why don’t you just do it? If some people in the UK or Australia download it, then so what? It’s not your fault; it’s W&N’s fault for not having a global ebook strategy. And anyway, they should be delighted at the publicity.”
They really should. So what if a few people outside the US download the free version? If they haven’t bought the book by now they almost certainly weren’t going to. And who knows, if they like the ebook they might be encouraged to buy a hard copy either for themselves or as a gift for a friend. They’re certainly more likely to pre-order the next book – which is what really matters to W&N at this point. The only question was how W&N’s legal department would feel about my agent’s advice.
“I didn’t say it was my advice, I just said there’s nothing they can do to stop you.”
Semantics. I emailed my publicist to asked her, hypothetically, what would happen if I somehow convinced a US-based publication to allow me to give away the ebook of Bringing Nothing – strictly to North American readers, of course – but with no real way to stop anyone else in the world downloading it. Her reply – after speaking to the lawyers – was brilliant: “The consensus seems to be that we can’t exactly stop you. But I’ve been asked to remind you that Hachette policy is not to offer free ebooks and all our ebooks are DRM protected. So there you are. Reminded.” Just another reason why I love my publicist.
All that remained was for me to somehow convince a sufficiently popular US site to act as a patsy for my dastardly, egotistical plan. I sent an email to TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, setting out my case and asking if TC could be that site. I was expecting it to be a tough sell, and I was right.
“YES!” she argued.
And so here we go. The entire ebook of Bringing Nothing To The Party – True Confessions of a New Media Whore: my egotistical Christmas gift to you, and your reward for enduring my weekly attempts to convince you to buy it.
The main PDF download is here, there’s an HTML version (with linked footnotes) here and an entirely impractical DocStoc version below. The ultimate TL;DR.
It’s published under a Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial) License, so by all means re-distribute it however you see fit, as long as you link back either here or to PaulCarr.com. Also, if you do repost it anywhere, make sure you let me know the link either in the comments or on Twitter so I can say thank you. As an added incentive, I have ten copies of the paperback edition sitting on my desk and this time next week I’ll choose ten random re-posters and send each a specially customised copy.
Finally it’s worth saying that, for all of my ego, the book is actually quite a hard thing for me to give away: its 275 pages tell the story of a very strange few years of my life – years that cost me my career, my reputation, the love of my life, and very nearly my freedom. In other words, it’s a real feel-good Christmas romp.
I really hope you like it.
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When I was growing up, one of the most popular PC games was Wolfenstein 3D. It was a great first-person shooter in general, but let’s be honest, there was one reason that everyone really loved it: The goal was to kill Nazis. Fast forward to this year, one of the most popular movies in 2009 has been Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. It’s a great movie in general, but again, let’s be honest: People love it because it’s about killing Nazis. And a new iPhone game follows in this timeless tradition.
In Inglourious Basterds, Brad Pitt’s character, Lt. Aldo Raine, gives a speech to the group of soliders he’s recruiting for a special mission: “Each and every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps. And all y’all will git me one hundred Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazis. Or you will die tryin’.” The speech is the driving force behind 100 Nazi Scalps, a new side-scrolling iPhone game that has just gone live in the App Store. The goal is very simple: Collect 100 Nazi scalps before you are killed.
Using an array of different weapons, you must kill the Nazis coming at you, and use either a knife or a club to take their scalps once they’re dead. Morbid? Sure. But remember, these are Nazis. And Apple, which is famously cautious letting certain types of content into the App Store (well, sort of), apparently had absolutely no problem letting this game in (with a 17+ rating). Oddly enough, it looks like Apple has pulled the Mein Kampf app that it previously made available. Meanwhile, it was actually a piece of content related to Inglorious Basterds that contributed to Someecards app originally being rejected.
100 Nazi Scalps creators also don’t shy away from the fact that the game is clearly influenced by Tarantino’s movie. In an email, they write, “This quality side-scrolling arcade game was inspired by a long-expected movie by Tarantino ‘Inglorious Bustards’. And although it is not affiliated with the movie, provides its fully own characters and unique plot, the game immerses players in that “killing Nazis” atmosphere so popular these days.” Fair enough. And though there isn’t much to the game, it seems well worth the $0.99 price to get 5 full levels of Nazi killing. Find 100 Nazi Scalps here in the App Store.
By the way, if you’re interested in more Nazi-killing fare, Wolfenstein 3D is also available in the App Store in its full FPS glory.
See 100 Nazi Scalps in action in the video below (if you don’t like cartoon violence, then the video is NSFW).
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adeelarshad82 writes "Three library associations have asked the Justice Department to oversee Google's plans to create a massive digital library, so as to prevent excessively high pricing for institutional subscriptions. They said that there was unlikely to be an effective competitor to Google's massive project in the near term. They also asked for academic author representation on the Registry board. Google's plan to digitize millions of books has been criticized by a variety of sources and has recently been shut down in France."
The Nexus One has been all over the news lately with the leaked photos and such by Google employees. And all the things we have learned so far, have been mostly positive. Very thin, Android 2.1, iPhone killer, etc etc… But what we really haven’t heard is any downsides to this new phone. And I mean, what Google employee would really release any info that would downsize the phones reception so far. Well tnkgrl Mobile doesn’t seem bound to that creed.
The first semi-bad thing we have learned is that the browser and Google Maps on the Nexus One does not support multitouch. So no pinch zoom or anything else like it. The good side though, is that we haven’t heard anything that tells us that OS and other hardware aren’t multitouch capable. So there is an upside to still.
This “con” to the Nexus One is also seen in Verizon’s Droid and that is a relatively popular phone so I can still see a pretty big light at the end of the tunnel. I guess we will have to wait two or three more weeks before we can try this out on our own. Oh, and apparently, it is a very fast phone as tnkgrl mentions it quite a few times in her blog.
FROM GAMERTELL - SplitFish will show the Dual SFX Evolution and Dual SFX Frag Pro which combine console and PC gaming controllers into an unique and highly customizable package… MORE »
The Mac community and TechCrunch love giveaways, but nothing beats the MacStories giveaway. MacStories is giving away over 450 licenses to Mac and iPhone applications, that total to over $10,000. Crazy, right?
The event, which is run by Federico Viticci, is called “The Christmas Apps Tree” and features interviews with designers, bloggers and developers, plus some cool guest posts and of course the big giveaway.
Imagine one person having over $10,000 worth of Mac applications for almost nothing at all. All you have to do follow MacStories on Twitter (@storiesofmac) and tweet the following message:
MacStories Christmas Apps Tree – 450 Licenses of Mac and iPhone Apps Up for Grabs Worth $10.000 http://mcstr.es/t/97 #appstree
You’ll also have to leave a comment on the blog post with a link to the tweet, and which apps you like the most. The contest ends on Tuesday, December 22nd, so get your tweets and comments in before time runs out! Oh, and if anyone can beat this giveaway — let us know!
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
PC World - Rackspace experienced an outage yesterday--a recurring issue this year for the hosted data center provider--which took down a number of high profile sites including the popular blog site TechCrunch. No network is impervious to outages, but a company like Rackspace needs to provide consistent and reliable service. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Dec 2009 | 4:22 pm
The BBC has a report on a proposal that will be submitted to NASA for funding — a mission to Saturn's moon Titan that would deposit a lander of its hydrocarbon sea. (We recently discussed the widely circulated photo of sunlight glinting off one of Titan's seas.) "The scientific team behind the idea is targeting Ligeia Mare, a vast body of liquid methane sited in the high north of Saturn's largest moon. ... 'It is something that would really capture the imagination,' said Dr Ellen Stofan, from Proxemy Research, who leads the study team. 'The story of human exploration on Earth has been one of navigation and seafaring, and the idea that we could explore for the first time an extraterrestrial sea I think would be mind-blowing for most people,' she told BBC News. ... The Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) has already been under study for about two years. It is envisaged as a relatively low-cost endeavor — in the low $400m range. It could launch in January 2016, and make some flybys of Earth and Jupiter to pick up the gravitational energy it would need to head straight at the Saturnian moon for a splash down in June 2023."
If you were looking at a new phone as a present for yourself (or others… I guess) this holiday season, Best Buy is your best friend. They are offering a free or reduced price HTC Droid Eris if you are one of Best Buy’s Reward Zone members.
If you are just a regular member, like most of us, you can get one for $49.99 instead of $100.00. That in itself is not such a bad deal. Especially if you were looking at getting one anyway. But for those of you special people who are Reward Zone Premium Silver members, you can get one of these phones for no cost up-front.
This deal, through Verizon, includes a two-year commitment which is where they get the profit from but you still save some on the phone itself. But this deal won’t last forever. You have until Christmas to take advantage of this deal so get on it!
Palm has mentioned that it would be at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next January, but it didn’t reveal much about what it planned to unveil. Well, at least not until now. It seems that Palm has loosed up about a few details regarding what kind of improvements we’ll see from its webOS smartphone platform.
Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein revealed during an earnings call thatwebOS 1.3.5 will be on display at CES. The latest version of webOS will include:
More storage space for users to install apps
Usage tweaks that enable better battery life
Changes that will “increase Pixi speed and responsiveness”
Stronger support for WiFi and app performance
Palm has also offered clues about what we likely will not see at CES, and that’s a webOS tablet. Though Internet tablets are the buzz item heading into CES, Palm is unlikely to debut a product of that kind. Instead, the company is focusing on improving and expanding the Pre and Pixi experience to more carriers. CEO Jon Rubinstein said:
We will be launching with new carrier partners in the near future and we’re pleased to have their committed, strong support. We at Palm will be working hard on the marketing front to support our partnerships, including the introduction of a new, broad-based campaign to drive better awareness of Palm products and our new carrier relationships.
Expect more talk of expansion at and after CES. The Pre and Pixi are currently available only on Sprint in the U.S., but the Pre is expected to come to Verizon next year, and both phones will appear on more networks in other countries.
loconet writes "This article in Gizmodo claims that Android's fragmented model is harming it, but Google has the power to save it. The rumored Google Phone could be a ploy to upset the wireless industry, or it could be an expensive niche device. Either way, it would be a bid to take Android back from the companies that seem hell-bent on destroying it. '...once handset manufacturers (and carriers, through handset manufacturers) have built their own version of Android, they've effectively taken it out of the development stream. Updating it is their responsibility, which they have to choose to uphold. Or not! Who cares? The phones are already sold."
With AT&T’s contract with Apple ending in 2010, the question on everyone’s mind is, Who get’s the iPhone next? Will it be another grueling few years on AT&T’s shady and unreliable service, or Verizon, the consumer choice in just about all cities?
Well apparently Verizon thinks it has the better shot at getting the rights to the iPhone this year. Verizon Wireless’ Chief Technology Officer, Anthony Melone, made a statement to Business Weekly saying, “We have put things in place already. We are prepared to support that traffic.” The traffic, of course, referring to the flood of iPhone users that will switch from AT&T in a heartbeat.
If Apple is smart, they will go with Verizon. AT&T has caused too many problems by limiting the features of the iPhone (ahem, wheres tethering?). And now that Verizon is boosting their service just for the phone, consumers will be more confident in making the plunge for the iPhone knowing that they will be able to use it for its main function, a phone.
The only question that remains is: What will happen to AT&T after their beloved iPhone leaves?
AP - The Associated Press-Stanford University Environment Poll on global warming was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media from Nov. 17-29, 2009. It is based on landline telephone and cell phone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,005 adults. Interviews were conducted with 705 respondents on landline telephones and 300 on cellular phones. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Dec 2009 | 1:30 pm
Kara covered three web companies this week, two with very 2.0 names and one about as Web 1.0 as it gets. BoomTown caught up with Mark Pincus of Zynga, the social gaming juggernaut, right after the company raked in about $180 million from private investors. She got into it with Pincus over those questionable “offer” adverts in the video. Kara was back in familiar territory with a post about Aol. (AOL) this week. The rebranded company, which went public a little over a week ago after its spinoff from Time Warner, was still trading pretty much flat as of Friday. And Kara rounded it all out with an attempted peek at Google’s Christmas list. Google (GOOG) has reportedly been drooling over Trulia, the real-estate search site valued in the $150 million range. I guess we mere mortals will just have to wait and see if Trulia’s little green pin marks start showing up on Google’s maps.
Before signing off for the holidays, John managed to bring a week of business bah-humbug to Digital Daily. Apple (AAPL) finally poured the last of the concrete for Psystar’s “special shoes”, by winning a permanent injunction against the Mac clone maker. The holidays are always stressful, and the seasonal tension has been heating up over GPUs, between Intel (INTC) and Nvidia (NVDA). John posted a victory lap in the form of a memo from Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang, addressing the recent lawsuit brought by the FTC against Intel. John rounded out the week with some somber news from Palm(PALM), as the smartphone maker released a larger than expected loss for the last quarter of 2009. It might be a lean year under Palm’s tree.
Peter reported that Prime Minister Burlesconi wasn’t the only one to get a black eye this week, as Google took a major hit in Italian court over copyright violations on YouTube. Mediaset, a broadcaster owned by Burlesconi, is reportedly seeking at least $730 million in damages. No word yet if Mediaset will be demanding cash, or the standard Ferraris and underage models arrangement. Also in big media news, Sony (SNE) and News Corp (NWSA) struck a deal over content that will now be delivered exclusively to Sony’s Readers. Peter reported that the deal wasn’t big enough to change the balance of power in the content-ebook world, but was a clear signal about the future directions of the two companies. Finally, peter reported on Google’s apparent hunger for Yelp and all its delicious restaurant ratings. If the acquisition does happen, analysts expect Google to shell out at least $500 million for the right to add another amorphous noun-verb to their arsenal. We need a new part of speech to describe all these noun-verb companies. I’m coining one. From now on, Google is a “Nerb.”
Maybe it was just the anticipation of all that holiday fudge, but Walt was all over a new generation of glucose meters from Bayer. As the name suggests, the Contour USB offers an important departure from its predecessors, in that it connects to your home computer to help you track your blood sugar in a more meaningful way. Walt dutifully pricked his finger several times a day to test the unit and pronounced it a welcome direction for the tool that served millions of users daily. While software issues and web connectivity are lagging a little behind, Walt was positive on the device that seems perfect for the diabetic tech-head. Over at his mailbox, Walt answered some letters about REALLY erasing personal data from a computer prior to donation of an older machine. Readers also were curious about Open Office as an alternative to Office for use on a netbook. Walt finished off his bit of pre-Christmas advice by confirming with a reader that Windows 7 could indeed be installed on an Intel-based Mac, just like XP. Katie covered a home stereo gadget that should make the post Christmas lives of audiophiles a little more merry. The Sonos ZonePlayer S5 can send audio all over your house via your home network. This is the first Sonos product to work right out of the box. The player system got high marks all around for usability, and even was able to play music form a networked computer’s hard drive, as well as various internet-based music services.
Weekend Update wished everyone a happy holiday, and will be back on the 26th to bring you a wrap up of all the techie holiday fun you missed while in your nog-coma.
Espen sez, "The Norwegian broadcaster NRK recently made a 7 hour program about the very scenic train journey from Bergen to Oslo. The program was hugely successful (the TV version offered interviews and various things along the ride). The raw film from the front camera is now being offered as a free Bittorrent download under a CC license and there is even a competition (in Norwegian) for best reuse.
USS_Natas writes "Capitol Records and other labels have sued Vimeo in federal court, charging that the site's emphasis on 'original works' only extends to videos, and that songs are widely used on Vimeo without a license. The plaintiffs hope to prove that Vimeo staffers know about the infringement, since they've been doing it themselves." NewTeeVee has a PDF of the court filing in a Scribd frame.
I’ve seen Avatar twice now, which is saying something when you’re talking about a nearly three hour movie that was released 36 hours ago. But we lined up on Thursday night for the first midnight showing. And then I saw it again yesterday at the TechCrunch screening in San Francisco.
What do I think? I think I’m going to go see it again this weekend at an IMAX theater. Because the movie is awesome in 3D, but I want to see it in 3D on a 50 ft by 70 ft screen. Movies will never be the same after Avatar. Like the iPhone in the mobile world, this movie disrupts an entire industry.
I didn’t know much about the movie until I read an article about it in Wired on a flight to Europe last week. A movie James Cameron has been working on since 1994, but he had to wait until technology caught up with his dream, and he invented a new kind of camera along the way.
The amazing thing about Avatar isn’t the story – it’s simply a passable tale that’s part Pocahontas, part Dances With Wolves. But it’s a story played by ten foot tall blue people with tails who fly around on miniature dragons and generally kick ass. And suddenly the special effects in every movie you’ve ever seen seem trite in comparison. Jurassic Park type special effects, which seemed so awesome in the 90s, are now laughably dated.
There’s no point in the movie where you can really tell the difference between real imagery and CGI. You become completely lost in the world of Pandora, the setting for Avatar. And if you thought Zoe Saldana was amazing in Star Trek earlier this year, wait until you see Avatar. An entire generation of teenagers are now going to have a lifelong crush on a huge blue woman with a tail named Neytiri.
The movie grossed just $27 million in its first day at the box office, which pales in comparison to Twilight Saga: New Moon ($72 million) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($62 million). But don’t forget that Cameron’s Titanic made just $28.6 million on opening weekend. And that movie did ok in the end.
Avatar, like Titanic, is one of those movies you’ll want to see over and over. But don’t wait for the DVD. This is a movie that has to be seen in 3D. And for that you have to go to the theater. Go see it, you’ll thank me later.
PC World - The Motorola Droid might be partially responsible for a huge jump in consumer awareness and popularity of the Android operating system, but there is still one thing the Droid does -- but doesn't do very well: support multitouch. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Dec 2009 | 12:38 pm
The Barnes & Noble Senior VP of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Mary Ellen Keating, just confirmed to us that indeed some Nook orders were pushed back again. She claims that only a very small percentage of customers will not receive their Nook before Christmas though. B&N apparently offered affected customers both a holiday certificate in case the Nook was a gift and the $100 BN.com gift card we learned about from a commenter yesterday.
It's hard to feel sympathetic to B&N. The bookseller obviously misjudged customer demand from the start, but inventory and supply management should have seen this latest shipping problem a lot earlier. Our tipster ordered his Nook back on November 12th and saw his order constantly pushed back at the last minute, which was no doubt a ploy by B&N to keep cancellations down to a minimum. All it takes to keep most consumers happy is timely, honest communication, not emails days after the delay is obvious.
The Barnes & Noble Senior VP of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Mary Ellen Keating, just confirmed to us that indeed some Nook orders were pushed back again. She claims that only a very small percentage of customers will not receive their Nook before Christmas though. B&N apparently offered affected customers both a holiday certificate in case the Nook was a gift and the $100 BN.com gift card we learned about from a commenter yesterday.
It’s hard to feel sympathetic to B&N. The bookseller obviously misjudged customer demand from the start, but inventory and supply management should have seen this latest shipping problem a lot earlier. Our tipster ordered his Nook back on November 12th and saw his order constantly pushed back at the last minute, which was no doubt a ploy by B&N to keep cancellations down to a minimum. All it takes to keep most consumers happy is timely, honest communication, not emails days after the delay is obvious.
The vast majority of customers who pre-ordered nooks and were given a pre-holiday estimated shipping date should receive their devices in time for the holidays. We are working very hard to keep up with the demand and to get all nook orders out the door and to customers on or before Dec. 24. Unfortunately, there may be a very small percentage of customers who may not receive their nooks before the holiday. We communicated with this handful of customers yesterday, offering our sincere apologies and providing them with the following: 1. A nook Holiday Certificate, in case they ordered nook as a gift and 2. A BN.com gift certificate that can be used online.
Any customer who has not yet received their device but whose ship date prior to the holidays has changed in any way should have received an email yesterday from Barnes & Noble with updated timing. They can also check their order status or contact a customer service representative (1 800 THE BOOK) if, for some reason, they did not receive the email.”
elyons writes "Another neat discovery has come from the lab of Larry Lyons at UCLA. As reported earlier on Slashdot, Lyons' group studies the dynamics of auroras. Their most recent discovery reveals for the first time the sequence of events leading to dramatic space-weather disturbances. Using a network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA's THEMIS mission, they recorded over 200 instances of auroras colliding, causing brilliant displays of northern lights (see time 8:22 for such an example)."
Three astronauts from the United States, Japan and Russia received the go-ahead Saturday for a holiday season rocket launch to the International Space Station from Russia's remote space... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 12:04 pm
Amidst growing talk from pundits of all political persuasions that the Copenhagen climate conference was a royal flop, President Barack Obama attempted to challenge these interpretations on Friday, saying the United States, China and other participants had achieved an “unprecedented breakthrough” in the battle to cut global climate emissions.After months of anticipation and two weeks of intense political wrangling, diplomats from around the world — including representatives from growing financial powerhouses like India, South Africa, Brazil and, of course, China — have said that they will take action to cut pollution, though specific benchmarks and targets have not yet been announced.Specifically, Obama mentioned that the U.S. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Dec 2009 | 11:55 am
Google, which is currently on one heck of a spending spree, is closing an acquisition of San Francisco based DocVerse, a service that lets users collaborate around Microsoft Office documents, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the deal. The purchase price is supposed to be around $25 million.
DocVerse is a product Google is likely to keep. The company was founded by Microsoft veterans Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui. Shia drove product strategy for SharePoint and SQL Server, $1.6B and $3.0B products, respectiveley. DeNui ran Microsoft SQL Server’s web strategy.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Sushi will soar to new gastronomic heights next week when a Japanese astronaut blasts off for the International Space Station with a load of raw fish. Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 11:02 am
Bored with making apps for your phones? Can’t stand another fart app? Well now, Ford gives you the chance to listen to those fart apps in your car!
In all seriousness now, Ford is opening up their API in 2010 to developers to make apps for Sync. Since the iPhone, having other people make your devices famous has become all the rage; and now Ford too is jumping on this bandwagon. They plan to release Ford Sync version of the app store next year so you can download apps for your cars.
Now, if your like me and can’t really think of anything you would want to download for your car, here are the two apps students at the University of Michigan have developed.
This first is called SYNCast. SYNCast allows drivers to control Internet music, news and talk show streaming sites. So I guess if you want to search failblog while driving, there’s your chance.
The second app those students developed is called FollowMe. FollowMe does pretty much what it sounds like it does. It gives cars turn-by-turn directions to follow a lead car wherever they are going. I guess this app is probably the most useful app i could think of. Instead of giving directions, just say “Click that button, it will tell you where to go.”
We all know someones going to try and develop a “SyncFart.” Let’s just hope it doesn’t get approved.
CHICAGO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice and 14 states have opened investigations into the sale of Diebold Inc's voting machines business to Election Systems & Software that could... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Dec 2009 | 10:45 am
This article at CNet takes a detailed look at the growth of social gaming through Apple's iPhone, a market many developers — and Apple themselves — are still struggling to figure out. The piece also speculates on how such games and networks will continue to evolve. Quoting: "While competition has spawned better features among these services, the future brings a growing need for a more unified network. Even if all these networks begin to become impossible to differentiate, users are eventually going to want a less-disjointed platform when jumping from game to game, and app to app. Thus far Facebook, and even Twitter to some degree have provided that constant, just by giving users a way to log in to these platforms. The unification can shake out in a number of ways though, the most likely of which is consolidation. Open Feint can continue to grow until it's snatched up by a larger company (like Apple). Or it can begin absorbing, or muscling out the other, less popular networks. As mentioned before, Apple plays a big part in this: not only in how it changes the hardware, but also how it continues to evolve the business of the App Store and information sharing between applications."
There’s no shortage of wine-focused iPhone apps that help users access listings, varietals and recommendations on the go. Wine.com, a popular wine retailer with a fantastic domain name, is launching it’s own free iPhone app to help wine lovers everywhere find the perfect bottle.
You can research and buy from Wine.com’s database of 45,000+ wines, save them to your “cellar” to keep track of what you like and buy, create wish lists and more. The app also provides nifty recommendation lists, such as “90+ Point Rated Wines Under $20.” There are definitely practical uses of the app, which could be useful when you’re out at a restaurant and need more info on a particular wine, or want to compare prices and see how much the wine has been marked up.
Wine.com also recently released its API for third-party developers to create and enhance wine applications connecting to the site’s e-commerce and wine database platform. The online wine industry is steadily growing with wine-related startups raising significant amounts of funding. Online wine store and community Vinfolio got a $4.5 million infusion recently and social wine review site and retailer Snoothraised $1 million earlier this year. And the newly re-launchedCorkd has added a social stream and a new business model. In makes sense for these sites to venture into the mobile space to engage wine lovers on the go. Vinfolio and Snooth both have iPhone apps.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
As you're sitting down this morning enjoying your Saturday morning coffee, be sure to check out this new short film from the American Museum of Natural History, "The Known Universe" -- a mind-blowing six-minute tour taking us from the peak ... Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Dec 2009 | 10:13 am
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Verizon is defending its decision to double its Early Termination Fee from $175 to $350 after being called to account by the FCC. They claim it's because the higher fees allow them to offer more expensive phones with a lower up-front cost (PDF), and they also say that because they pro-rate the fee depending on how much of your contract is left, they still lose money. Apparently doing something about the Verizon customer service horror stories isn't as good a way to retain customers as telling them that they have to pay several hundred dollars to leave."
FROM GAMERTELL - Tommy Tallarico talks to Gamertell about upcoming PBS exclusive airing of Video Games Live and followup home video and CD releases… MORE »
The NPD Group is reporting that the sale of music games like DJ Hero, Band Hero, Oboe Hero, and Violin Concerto Band are falling with a bullet, leading analysts to expect the category to crash this year.
The report finds that the Rock Band: The Beatles sold 800,000 units, missing its 1 million forecast and that Guitar Hero 5 sold 500,000 units in its first month of sales, down from 1.4 million for GH3.
Analysts blame “too much music in too short a time,” saying that the games just filled up the player’s heart with so much value that they could handle it. However, I suspect that the average gamer has room only for one or two freaking drum set ups in their living rooms and those with enough floor space have already filled it up with bongs and electric ATVs this winter, leaving little space for George Harrison’s RB:B flute attachment.
These games are great for parties but at some point you tell your host, no, you don’t want to play them anymore. Maybe you play New Super Mario Brothers or maybe you just drink beers and wrestle instead. However, the comet that was the “band game” is passed, friends. It’s sad but true.
So, your going on vacation. Driving to Texas from Wisconsin let’s say. Thats a good 2-3 day trip by car if you stop to sleep. Unfortunately for you, every town you drive through isn’t going to offer city-wide wi-fi for you to do your work on. But now, Chevy is giving you that opportunity, sort of.
They aren’t going to put wi-fi in every city in America, no that wouldn’t be too practical. But they will begin to offer dealer-installed wi-fi into their vehicles. So that way, you can do your work while you are on your way across the country.
Now, the biggest issue that’s going to come with this is going to be the people that decide to work on there laptop while they drive. You know, the same people that try and change pants while going down the freeway. Yea those people…
But the coolest part is the fun-factor that is going to come out of having a mobile wi-fi hotspot. You could drive slowly around town, teasing everyone with free wi-fi for a few minutes then speeding off, taking the wi-fi with you. Or you could do the same to your friends, go park in there driveway for a min or two just to be mean.
This option is called Chevrolet Wi-Fi by Autonet Mobile and is going to be offered in the Equinox, Traverse, Silverado, Tahoe, Suburban, Avalanche and Express. Price is $400 but through the end of the year, they offer a $200 mail-in-rebate to knock that price in half. So go and enjoy your mobile Starbucks cafe, minus the whole coffee and treats and other goods they offer except the wi-fi.
Edition Reuss recently released Black Tattoo Art: Modern Expressions of the Tribal, a photographic homage to a particular genre of skin art. The book is curated by Marisa Kakoulas (lawyer, writer, circus lady, and blogger.) Above and after the jump, Boing Boing's exclusive peek at some of the hundreds of striking, full-page images you'll find inside.
The 536-page hardcover includes work by tattoo artists from Borneo, Argentina, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Europe and North America. The book weighs nearly ten pounds, and the binding is stitched with silver embossing. It's fat, heavy, and gorgeous.
"There has never before been a book on this style of tattooing in English," Marisa told Boing Boing over email. "The style is called 'blackwork,' where the artists are limited to one color and so they have to stretch their imagination in terms of design elements to create original works, rather than having a palette of colors and shading techniques to chose from as in other styles of tattooing."
Some of the photos we selected to share on Boing Boing also include the use of a single additional color.
Black Tattoo Art examines how indigenous tattooing has evolved over the years, beginning with a history section, then each of the styles that originate in tribal arts.
Lots more photos from the book after the jump. NSFW-ish warning: one of them is a human hiney.
I've seen a lot of black tats on friends' bodies in my time, but the 'Art Brut' chapter was new to me. "Popularized in France and Belgium, this style takes street art and harmonizes those aesthetics with the body -- a key element in tribal tattooing," explained Marisa. "It's a completely new tattoo style that has never been curated into any volume before until now."
Interviews in the book include Leo Zulueta, the "godfather of tribal tattooing," who popularized the NeoTribal tattoo movement. Another interesting profile in this book: Peter Schachner, who was imprisoned in Thailand in the early 1990s. There, he learned the hand-craft of Thai tattooing from fellow inmates during four years spent at Lard Yao prison.
The book also devotes an entire chapter to the use of stippling techniques, which resemble pointillism.
If you have tats like this, or know and love someone who does, I can think of no finer holiday gift. Except maybe more tats.
Development and morphology of insect-mimicking spots on the flower petals of a South African beetle daisyDark spots on flower petals are common across many angiosperm plant families and occur on flowers such as some lilies, orchids, and daisies. Much research has been done on the physiological and behavioral mechanisms for how these spots attract pollinators. But have you ever wondered what these spots are composed of, how they develop, or how they only appear on some but not all of the ray florets?Dr. Meredith Thomas from the University of Cambridge and associates from England and South Africa were interested in exploring these questions and published their findings in the December issue of the American Journal of Botany. They focused on the South African endemic beetle daisy Gorteria diffusa (Asteraceae), which has a unique, raised, dark spot at the base of some of its ray florets."I find this plant/pollinator system very exciting to study because of the amazing morphological variation in the flowers between populations," Thomas said. "The spots on the flowers mimic the plant's pollinator, a small fly, which is attracted to the plant because of the spots. The plant is dependent on the pollinator for reproductive success, so it's incredibly important that the plant attracts the flies."What we found surprising," Thomas continued, "was how complex the petal spots are in a few populations, when other populations seem to get by with a very simple spot or even no petal spot at all."By peeling away layers of the tissues that make up the spots on mature ray florets and examining them under a simple dissecting scope, Thomas and associates found that the spots of G. diffusa are more complex than most. These spots are composed of three different types of specialized epidermal cells: the central highlight cells that reflect UV and lack pigment; the interior cells that are shorter, rounder, variously pigmented, and raised above the highlight cells; and, surrounding the spot, a circle of multicellular papillae that are swollen, shiny, and filled with anthocyanin. Moreover, each spot spans four congenitally fused petal lobes, meaning that each lobe contained only part of the spot (and only some cell types) in its genetic makeup.So what attracts the pollinators? Because there is a lot of spot variation in this species, the authors hypothesize that the elements that are found in common among the various populations, such as the presence of anthocyanin pigment or UV reflectivity, might do the trick.The authors also wanted to know how only a subset of the floral rays develops a spot. Using scanning electron microscopy the authors looked at how the spot developed, or its ontogeny, over time. They found that only the first few ray florets that develop contain the spots, whereas the rest do not. Thomas noted that "the plant has evolved a very clever way of distributing the pollinator-mimicking spots around the inflorescence so that they appear random, as if a few flies had just landed on the inflorescence, when in fact the position of the spots is mathematically pre-determined according to the plant's phyllotaxy [or the order and location in which new floral organs are initiated]." The authors hypothesize that the genes that control the appearance of the spot are turned on initially and then fade with time, such that only the first, and oldest, rays to develop have the spots. Thus, the development of the spots is complex not only at the cellular level, but at the organismal level as well."What we now plan to investigate," concludes Thomas, "is whether the development of this adaptive floral trait is regulated by a similarly complex genetic regulatory pathway, or if this plant has simply co-opted and modified a pathway commonly used in plants to produce other types of specialized surface structures, like hairs."---Image Caption: This is the Nieuw morphotype of Gorteria diffusa, which exhibits striking dark petal spots at the bases of some ray florets. Scale bar = 1 cm. Credit: Courtesy Meredith Murphy Thomas. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Dec 2009 | 7:27 am
If Earth is headed for a mass extinction like the previous five, in which more than 75 percent of all species were wiped out, then North American mammals are one-fifth to one-half the way there, according to a University of California, Berkeley, and Pennsylvania State University analysis.Many scientists warn that the perfect storm of global warming and environmental degradation - both the result of human activity - is leading to a sixth mass extinction equal to the "Big Five" that have occurred over the past 450 million years, the last of which killed off the dinosaurs 68 million years ago.Yet estimates of how dire the current loss of species is have been hampered by the inability to compare today's species diversity with that of the past.By combining data from three catalogs of mammal diversity in the United States between 30 million years ago and 500 years ago, UC Berkeley and Penn State researchers show that the bulk of mammal extinctions occurred within a few thousand years after the arrival of humans, with losses dropping after that. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Dec 2009 | 7:19 am
When Preetam Mukherjee started Marcellus.tv in March 2007, his company was one of the very few players in the professional online video hosting space. He believed he was building a killer product that would become a blockbuster and would compete handily with the one established player in the space, Brightcove. To ensure that he wouldn’t tip off any potential competitors, he went into “stealth mode”. Secrecy was the key to success. He would not even tell his close friends what he was building until his product was complete (after all, who can you trust these days?). Then he would send Mike Arrington an email, get a TechCrunch feature and watch fame and fortune beat a path to his door.
But as happens to nearly all secretive startups like Marcellus, the blockbuster never materialized, and the attention never came. When Marcellus did come out of stealth in September 2008, there were many online video platforms available, most of which had better features than Marcellus. Preetam got his TechCrunch mention and experienced a huge spike in traffic for a few days. But when the dust settled, he found himself back in obscurity. Moreover, it was like having a really bad hangover—his product didn’t entirely meet customer needs and no one seemed to care.
As I’ll tell you later, Preetam’s story does have a happier ending, but that’s not how it is for most startups. That’s the problem with stealth. Startup guru, Eric Ries says one or two of every 10 companies he meets have what he calls a “stealth-disease”. They are too afraid to show something imperfect to the world or are afraid that a competitor will steal their idea. And they think that when they launch their product will make front-page news and grant them blockbuster success. Wasn’t it Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”?
Well, Emerson was wrong. The harsh reality is that even if you did build a better mousetrap, no one would find you. To be known, you have to have a great story and tell it to the right people. And to build a great product, you need to get all the feedback you can from potential customers, marketing experts, venture capitalists, lawyers and accountants.
When you’re starting up, you usually have a great idea and think you know what your customers need. But your customers don’t even know what they need—they know what they don’t like and think they know what they want—but they don’t know what they need. Customers will ultimately buy only those things they really need – no matter how good your product or sales pitch.
Learning what a customer needs is an iterative process. You try something, get feedback. Both you and your customer learn more and you try again. You keep doing this until you have something which is so compelling that the customer will pay money to have it—that’s when you know you have a killer product. But you can’t get feedback if you’re in stealth. You only have yourself to talk to.
Most entrepreneurs say they are in stealth because they are worried about competitors stealing their ideas. This can be a risk if you have such a simple idea that just by hearing it, someone can replicate it. If this is the case, then you do have a lot to worry about. But even in this case, what will ultimately make the difference between success and failure isn’t your idea but your ability to execute and dominate your market very fast. You need a superb management team including top notch marketing and sales staff, great industry connections, and deep-pocked investors. You aren’t going to get any of these things by staying locked up in your basement.
If you’re competing with the big guys and are worried about them stealing your ideas, it’s the same story—it boils down to execution. As Eric Ries says, “If a startup can’t innovate faster than a much larger competitor, stealth isn’t going to make the difference —they’re toast”. It may also be that fear of big companies is overblown: those who have worked for one know that it’s incredibly hard to get a manager at a big company to do something new, even if your goal is to give your ideas away.
What about the big PR moment? This is also not so simple. To get beyond a TechCrunch launch feature, you need to build a relationship with journalists and analysts. They need to speak to your customers and learn what they think of you. They want to see detailed market analysis and to gain a deep understanding of why this market is important. Beyond press mentions, PR is about relationships. If you want to get quoted, you need to be an easy source—be accessible, willing to give information on background, and don’t expect to be quoted.
There is no linear ROI in PR, which can be hard for techies to understand. It’s all about relationships and patience. Once you are mentioned in one publication, then it becomes much easier to leverage that into other coverage because you have a stamp of approval. But make no mistake, PR is a never ending process. One TechCrunch article may be a good beginning but it is never sufficient to ensure the success of a company. So all that time you spend in stealth not talking to journalists is time your competition has to build a strong relationship with the media while you sit around admiring yourself in the mirror.
In a few rare instances, stealth may make some sense. Celebrity involvement is one example pointed out to me by Mike Butorin, founder of Projec.to and Song.ly. If Ashton Kutcher is launching a company, then operating in public may actually distract the engineers from their jobs to the point that nothing gets done due to the media circus that ensues. Another good reason to be in stealth is if a company is built around a technology or idea that it hopes to patent but has not yet filed. In that case, stealth protects the intellectual property and the future of the company by raising high barriers to entry in the future. But these types of examples represent the tiny minority of startups. Most startups use ideas that others have had and will live or die based on how well they execute on those ideas.
So how did things turn out for Marcellus.tv and Preetam? They managed to recover from stealth-disease but only barely. After launch, Marcellus.tv spent a year in a closed beta, performing rapid-fire iteration based on regular feedback from early customers. Marcellus launched out of beta as a white-label video hosting and streaming service in August 2009 and was one of many in the space. But the company managed to keep prices at rock-bottom levels through smart usage of cloud computing. The sales team worked the phones and existing customers both to get feedback and leads. Word spread and the customer base grew. They expect to be profitable early next year. The company never developed a PR juggernaut but having loyal customers willing to recommend the service to others has thus far overcome that weak spot. Preetam’s parting shot to me was quite clear. “To hell with stealth,” he wrote in an email. Words to live—or die—by.
Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
A company called New Kinetix is unveiling an attachment that turns your iPhone or Touch into a Universal Remote. Useful? Nah, since most of us don’t want to leave the iPhone lying around on the coffee table and then poke at it with Cheeto powdered hands while we watch Dr. Who. There a reason why standalone universal remotes exists. It’s because remotes get beaten up and broken.
We’ll see more of this at CES, but I’m not dancing a jig just yet. Besides, the RedEye from ThinkFlood seems like a more complete solution.
If you haven’t seen this already then you are in for a treat. Bonnier teamed up with the minds behind Wired and Popular Science to create a new concept of tomorrow. This time it’s to save the failing magazine industry.
The basic idea is to make a tablet that will allow you to read magazines that you are subscribed to. However, it is much more then that. An elegant interface and easy access tools such as search and one-touch social media makes the experience deeper than just reading a magazine. As you can see, it also has its fair share of multitouch gestures that allow the user to navigate through various articles and issues without a problem.
This is the future I enjoy thinking of. If done right, this concept will beat out a basic tablet no matter what. When the focus is on the content and how you interact with the content, the consumer always wins.
At least thats the plan. By the way I want whatever they are using to make that table so awesome.
Short Version: A rugged, reliable, and attractive bag — but its layout may not be suited to those who like to pack in lots of stuff.
Features:
Truck tarp waterproof lining
Laptop section fits up to 15″ laptop
Velcro and snap fasteners
Built-in strap pad
MSRP: $140
Pros:
Very water-resistant
Separately sealed compartment for laptop means extra protection
Feels very well-constructed
Cons:
Not as much space as other bags this size
Anything large in cargo compartment messes with bag shape
Full Review:
Here’s a video tour and brief review so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about.
I’ve been through quite a few messenger bags, but it never really occurred to me that I should get a weather-proof one. I can see now that there is a significant difference, and while I don’t intend to use whatever bag I have as an umbrella, or leave it in the rain, or wear it while surfing, it does add a feeling of security.
Because, as you may know, there are things that happen to bags other than rain. Coffee and Beer are probably the most common things to hit a bag that I bring with me everywhere, and who here hasn’t accidentally set their stuff down in puddle or something? It’s nice to know that you can throw pretty much anything at the Buran and it’ll shrug it off.
As for the bag itself, it’s a good one, but it wouldn’t be my main bag. Mainly because of the placement of the cargo compartment: between the laptop portion and your back. That means if you pick up a couple apples at the store, or have a large book or pair of headphones in there, they’re going to be squished up against your hip when you walk. If you’re willing to risk that, or if you’re used to it from previous bags, then it’s no problem. But I personally prefer the cargo part to be on the far side of the laptop compartment.
For carrying anything less bulky, though, the smaller pockets are just fine. Power brick, headphones, a notebook, an energy bar — plenty of space for those.
It’s a good bag, just not suited for people who carry a whole lot of stuff, or for people who are picky about where pockets are (like me). But the weather-proofing does take a lot off your mind if you live in as wet a city as I do.
Matt here again. Just like with the Soyuz bag, I’ve been using the Buran as well. This one is more my style being a casual messenger bag. There isn’t anything fancy here. It’s just a good utilitarian notebook messenger bag. The construction and materials are top-notch. I bet this bag will out-last me.
But like Devin says, there isn’t much to it. There are three pockets on the front and two within the main compartment, with one being the padded notebook sleeve. The bag doesn’t have a dedicated pocket for your MP3 player, cell phone, sunglasses or insulin pump. The Buran doesn’t have any of that nonsense and I like it.
CERN's Large Hadron Collider set a new record this week in its quest to recreate Big Bang conditions and allow scientists to gain a better understanding of the nature of matter, Reuters reported.Now, CERN plans to shut the collider down for a few months in order to get ready for even higher energy work."This first running period has served its purpose fully: testing all the LHC's systems, providing calibration data for the experiments and showing what needs to be done to prepare the machine for a sustained period of running at higher energy," CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer told Reuters."We could not have asked for a better way to bring 2009 to a close," he said in a statement.CERN scientists say the world's most powerful particle accelerator set a record by colliding beams at 2.36 tera-electron volts (TeV), after its relaunch in November. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Dec 2009 | 5:45 am
As the battle for the digital reader market heats up, Amazon reports that sales for its Kindle electronic book reader has bypassed its monthly record for December, and only half way through the month.According to Reuters, the online retailer claims the Kindle was the most wanted product during Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Dec 2009 | 5:20 am
FROM APPLETELL - Last week’s list was pretty awesome, but I think you’ll enjoy this week’s list, too. Plus, this week, the App Store saw a facelift. MORE »
Google has made a change to Chrome OS to move the user login from the machine to the browser. Our guess is Google is, or will eventually use, Google Friend Connect to facilitate login.
The feature was first mentioned on October 13: “Using Chrome as our login manager has a number of potential benefits.
Explore these tradeoffs and decide what to do about the login manager.” The code was checked in on December 14: “An early version of this change is finally in. It’s not ready for daily use yet, and we haven’t gotten the network picker on there or anything yet, but at least we’ve got a baseline in there. I’m filing issues for the follow-on work.”
There are lots of potential benefits to having users log into machines via the browser. In particular it makes syncing easier and furthers the notion that you can log into any Chrome OS machine and have exactly the same experience as you would on any other machine. The fact that users can’t download any software to Chrome OS computers furthers this experience.
But it’s also clearly interesting from an identity standpoint. Facebook and Twitter are both making strong plays as the defacto online identity for hundreds of millions of Internet users. Facebook Connect in particular is becoming a very popular way for third party sites to easily add identity and login features to apps (it’s what we use on our own CrunchBase).
But people using Chrome OS devices will be logging into the Internet first and foremost with a Google account, or via Friend Connect (which currently allows signin via Google, Twitter, Yahoo, AIM, Netlog, OpenID, etc.). By centralizing authentication once, Google can then use the same Friend Connect credentials to automatically login to sites that support it.
If Chrome OS becomes popular, it will be a very powerful weapon for Google to compete with Facebook Connect.
See here for a look at how Mozilla is thinking about all of this.
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Who cares if this dude’s story of getting fired from Microsoft for not enthusiastically saying Bing is made up, mocking Steve Ballmer is good fun. Watch out for the NSFW language though. Things get a little out of control.
Good morning. We have a week until Christmas and we've been pounding out giveaways left and right. We've had Smart Pens, Olive Hi-Fis, and your own personal Ninja for a year (didn't see that one? There's a reason.) But today we're here to announce the final big giveaway: a $500 gift card towards anything you want from the kind folks at Lottay.com.
Here's what's up.
In 2006 
If you've already made your Christmas gifts to 
The statement cited a "great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father" in recent years as contributing to a desire to use the Pontiff's name for all manner of educational and cultural institutions, civic groups and foundations.
“So that’s your advice is it? As my agent? On the week my book comes out in paperback, I should produce my own pirated version and give it away free? Why don’t I just punch my publisher in the face? That would be less work.”
When I was growing up, one of the most popular PC games was Wolfenstein 3D. It was a great first-person shooter in general, but let’s be honest, there was one reason that everyone really loved it: The goal was to kill Nazis. Fast forward to this year, one of the most popular movies in 2009 has been Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. It’s a great movie in general, but again, let’s be honest: People love it because it’s about killing Nazis. And a new iPhone game follows in this timeless tradition.
The Nexus One has been all over the news lately with the leaked photos and such by Google employees. And all the things we have learned so far, have been mostly positive. Very thin, Android 2.1, iPhone killer, etc etc… But what we really haven’t heard is any downsides to this new phone. And I mean, what Google employee would really release any info that would downsize the phones reception so far. Well tnkgrl Mobile doesn’t seem bound to that creed. 
If you were looking at a new phone as a present for yourself (or others… I guess) this holiday season, Best Buy is your best friend. They are offering a free or reduced price HTC Droid Eris if you are one of Best Buy’s Reward Zone members.
Palm has mentioned that it would be at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next January, but it didn’t reveal much about what it planned to unveil. Well, at least not until now. It seems that Palm has loosed up about a few details regarding what kind of improvements we’ll see from its webOS smartphone platform. 
With AT&T’s contract with Apple ending in 2010, the question on everyone’s mind is, Who get’s the iPhone next? Will it be another grueling few years on AT&T’s shady and unreliable service, or Verizon, the consumer choice in just about all cities?
I’ve seen Avatar twice now, which is saying something when you’re talking about a nearly three hour movie that was released 36 hours ago. But we lined up on Thursday night for the first midnight showing. And then I saw it again yesterday at the
There’s no point in the movie where you can really tell the difference between real imagery and CGI. You become completely lost in the world of Pandora, the setting for Avatar. And if you thought 
The Barnes & Noble Senior VP of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Mary Ellen Keating, just confirmed to us that indeed some Nook orders 
Google, which is currently on 
So, your going on vacation. Driving to Texas from Wisconsin let’s say. Thats a good 2-3 day trip by car if you stop to sleep. Unfortunately for you, every town you drive through isn’t going to offer city-wide wi-fi for you to do your work on. But now, Chevy is giving you that opportunity, sort of.
Short Version: A rugged, reliable, and attractive bag — but its layout may not be suited to those who like to pack in lots of stuff.
Google has made a 
Good morning. We have a week until Christmas and we've been pounding out giveaways left and right. We've had Smart Pens, Olive Hi-Fis, and your own personal Ninja for a year (didn't see that one? There's a reason.) But today we're here to announce the final big giveaway: a $500 gift card towards anything you want from 