Source: Gizmodo | 20 Dec 2009 | 5:30 pm

The Difference between $1 Billion-Plus in Exits and “Success”

I had a lot of theories back in 2008 when I started researching entrepreneurship in emerging markets, and I had one big, glaring question: For all the noted VCs urging me to go check out their companies in Israel, Eastern Europe, China, India, parts of Africa and even Iceland—almost no one mentioned one of the hottest emerging countries: Brazil. In fact, only one person in the Valley urged me to visit any country in Latin America, and that wasn’t a VC. It was Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN which has a core part of its R&D down in Buenos Aires.

How could that be? We’re geographically closer, have a shorter difference in time-zones and while few countries in Latin America are growing as fast as China or even Rwanda, Brazil’s economy just graced the cover of the Economist and anchored a special report in the Financial Times. Hell, the biggest IPO of the year was a Brazilian company. So what gives? It can’t just be the fact that it’s harder to get into Brazil than Harvard.

Silicon Valley is noted as a meritocracy, and one-quarter of successful tech entrepreneurs are immigrants. But for all the Indians, Chinese, Israelis, Iranians and even Africans I’ve interviewed over the years at various seats of Valley power—one group has been notably absent: Latin Americans. Even Pishevar isn’t from Argentina, he’s an Iranian who just fell in love with it in recent years. Given that many of India’s advocates early on were Indian immigrants who’d made it big in the Valley, I wondered if part of the lack of attention on Latin America was the lack of high profile, super-successful Latin role models in the Valley.

Not long after I started work on the book, I dumbly stumbled upon one such role model living in Woodside, practically in my own backyard. (Some reporter I am.) His name is Wences Casares, and he’s almost Marc Andreessen-level of fame South of the border. But for all his accomplishments—ahem, selling three companies for more than a combined $1 billion—he’s gotten little ink in the Valley.

His first company, Patagon, was an online bank for Latin America. It sold to Santander Bank in March 2000—one month before the market crashed– for $750 million. The company wound up writing off most of that value after the fact, but Casares’ reputation in Latin America and among the well-heeled investors who invested in him was cemented. Those investors included George Soros, Microsoft, Intel and Fred Wilson who recently told me Casares one of the best entrepreneurs he’d ever backed.

Casares has since sold two other companies: Wanako Games to Vivendi and Lemon Bank to Banco do Brasil. He can’t comment on price, and they were much smaller than Patagon, but the returns were much better. He’s now building his latest company, Bling Nation, which has raised $33 million dollars. He raised $20 million of that in October as many startups were struggling to raise funds. Bling Nation is building out a mobile payment system for physical goods that can bypass expensive credit card systems. Casares is rolling the system out through small community banks.

Casares doesn’t get attention in part because he doesn’t crave it. The year after he sold Patagon he disappeared on a boat with his family for three years. But he quietly does a lot to encourage Latin American entrepreneurs. He invests. He mentors. He’s on Endeavor’s board—indeed he was one of the first entrepreneurs the non-profit ever selected. And every year he hosts a typical asado at his house in Chile, where he invites a select group of entrepreneurs from Latin America and a few people from the Valley to eat their weight in meat and empanadas.

This year’s asado was a few weeks ago, and since I was in Chile and I’m decidedly not a vegetarian (sorry for the delicious picture above if you are) I jumped at the chance to go. I soon realized by “typical asado” Casares meant a lavish affair for hundreds of people and by “house” he meant castle. I’m not kidding—Casares actually owns a castle in Chile. (Pictured to your left.) Ever the savvy businessman, he is actually making thousands a day renting it out to a production crew that’s filming a show about vampires there.

The more time you spend with Casares, the more interesting things like this you discover. But here’s possibly the most interesting thing about him: He considers the fact that he’s sold three companies—and made himself and his investors hundreds of millions of dollars in the process—an embarrassment. That’s right. In a Valley where everyone obsesses over investing in the “serial entrepreneur,” Casares thinks it’s a sign of failure that he couldn’t take his companies the distance.

He compares those assembly-line-esque entrepreneurs who say they are just “the startup guy” to a 40-year-old man who still hangs out at a disco trying to pick up young girls. It’s fine at a point, he argues, but at some level a really good entrepreneur grows up. Indeed, the most successful tech companies are those where the founder stays well into the company’s life, ie Oracle, Apple, Amazon, Google or Hewlett-Packard.

Casares isn’t totally alone here. That’s a core investing thesis of a lot of newer venture firms started by dot-com era veterans who saw the downside of replacing founders with so-called “grown up CEOs.” Prominent examples include Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund or Marc Andreesseen’s Andreessen Horowitz Ventures.

Casares was an expert at Endeavor’s recent selection panel in Patagonia, where I eavesdropped on several of his sessions and heard him give some blunt advice along these lines that’s worth sharing for anyone thinking about selling his or her company, whether in Latin America, the US or anywhere else in the world.

“I don’t think there are people who are just better at startups,” he said. “I think that’s a character flaw, and I have it. I have sold all my companies, and I wish I hadn’t sold a single one. No matter how much money you make you’ll be surprised at how bad you feel later. I sold them because it got really hard. But a lot of times there are easy things you can do to fix that without selling the company.”

That comment is going to make Bling Nation all the more interesting to watch in coming years.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Dec 2009 | 5:29 pm

Verizon: $350 ETFs are a good thing, and they help the poor - Ars Technica

TFTS (blog)

Verizon: $350 ETFs are a good thing, and they help the poor Ars Technica Verizon tells the FCC that its new jumbo sized early termination fees don't even compensate the telco for the total cost of VZ's latest lineup of smart phone devices. The statement comes in response to an FCC letter of inquiry on the matter. ... Verizon Wireless Defends FeeWall Street Journal Verizon ETF Policies Validate Why We Need the FCCPC World Verizon defends its ETF hikeCNET News PC Magazine -The Associated Press -BetaNews all 183 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 Dec 2009 | 5:13 pm

Vox amPlug headphone amps

It’s a well known fact of life that creativity flows better when the sun is down. The best essays are written the night before class, the best coding is done at 2 AM, and the best music is played when everyone else would rather sleep. Unfortunately, that last one can leave some very angry people in it’s wake. Vox’s series of headphone amps allow you to rock out without your neighbors calling the police.

It’s exactly what you’d think it is. Plug the amPlug into your electrified instrument of choice (bass, guitar, eigenharp, whatever), plug your headphones into the amPlug, and enjoy your tiny musical world of your own creation. They come in 6 different flavors, each simulating a different Vox amplifier. Pick from acoustic, metal, bass, and a few lead guitar tones.

There’s also an aux input so you can play along to your favorite rendition of The Final Countdown. They’re powered by 2 AAA batteries, and last about 15 hours. At anywhere between $56 and $64, they make a nice, albeit slightly expensive, stocking stuffer for a guitarist you know.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Dec 2009 | 5:00 pm

Lotto ticket sold in Marathon wins $13 million jackpot - MiamiHerald.com

NJ.com

Lotto ticket sold in Marathon wins $13 million jackpot MiamiHerald.com A Lotto ticket sold in the Florida Keys was the only one to match all six numbers in Saturday night's drawing, winning the $13 million jackpot, the Florida Lottery said Sunday. Saturday's numbers were 6, 8, 11, 16, 17 and 48, and the Xtra multiplier ... No jackpot won, but state ticket matches 5, PlayPueblo Chieftain Lucky player wins $1.7m Lotto Plus jackpotTrinidad & Tobago Express Lotteries Feature $100 Million Christmas JackpotsOnline Casino Sphere WESH.com -WSAV-TV -Atlanta Journal Constitution all 169 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 Dec 2009 | 4:17 pm

Grigory Perelman and the Poincare Conjecture

EagleHasLanded writes "Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman doesn't talk to journalists. Actually, he doesn't talk to anyone anymore. So we'll have to settle for insights via his biographer, Masha Gessen, who, strangely enough, has never talked to him either. But she has spoken with just about everyone who has ever had any significant interaction with Perelman, and the result is the book Perfect Rigor, which more than adequately explains why Perelman has gone into self-imposed exile, and why he probably won't collect the million dollars he won by solving the Poincare Conjecture."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Dec 2009 | 4:17 pm

YC-Funded Lingt Uses Games To Turn You Into A Language Learning Addict

If there’s one thing that 2009 proved, it’s that there’s nothing like an addictive game to keep people coming back to your service for more. Over the last year, we’ve seen Foursquare and Gowalla tap into this with their colorful badges, and Zynga is making a killing off games like Farmville. But what if you could turn that habit into something that might actually be helpful to school or your career? That’s the premise behind Lingt, a new startup that’s looking to leverage gameplay elements to help with the mother of all repetitive tasks: learning a new language.

The Y Combinator funded company is launching today in public beta, offering a suite of matching games to help English speakers learn Chinese. Using the app is quite straightforward. First, you choose a set of words that you need to learn. You can use a one of Lingt’s suggested lists, a list of vocabulary words drawn from one of thirty US/Chinese textbooks, or you can manually enter your own words. From there, the site will quiz you on the meaning of the words. You can either input your answers via text, by saying them aloud, or as a matching game (click on one of five choices).

The site uses well established learning principles to make sure that the words stick. The name of the game here is repetition: every time you take a quiz, Lingt will keep track of which words give you the most difficulty, and will present them to more frequently than the words you know well. The site works best when you check in on a near-daily basis, but if you have to you can switch to ‘Cram’ mode, which lets you tailor quizzes to suit your needs. As you progress through your vocab sets, you earn badges and achievements similar to those seen on Xbox Live and Foursquare.

At this point Lingt is still pretty early in development. It only has support for Chinese, but founder Justin Cannon says that it will soon support other languages including Spanish and French. The service was built to make adding a new language very easy — the site just needs to add a new dictionary. But there are a few other things that will take longer to add. At this point, everything in Lingt is based on vocabulary, so this won’t be very helpful for learning grammar rules. This is something that the company also plans to implement (along with cultural information as well).

Perhaps most important though, I think Lingt needs to do more to expand its reward system. The site doesn’t currently have a way to actually share any rewards with friends, so there isn’t as much of an incentive to earn badges. Basic sharing to services like Facebook is coming soon, Cannon says. In the longer term, the site plans to offer features like class leaderboards, so a teacher could invite students to face off against each other.

Other services in the flashcard/memorization space include Smart.fm, Quizlet, and TC50 alum Grockit.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Dec 2009 | 4:15 pm

Three station fliers set off on flight to lab complex - CNET News

Reuters

Three station fliers set off on flight to lab complex CNET News A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three fresh crew members bound for the International Space Station blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early Monday local time, lighting up a cold, pre-dawn sky with a torrent of ... Russian Rocket Blasts offABC News 3 blast off in Soyuz, will join two now in ISSWinston-Salem Journal Soyuz craft launches with three astronauts on board (Roundup)Monsters and Critics.com The Tech Herald -Space.com all 530 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 Dec 2009 | 4:05 pm

Getting free WiFi in the sky

Section: Computers, Wireless, Web, Google

If you happen to be flying anywhere this holiday season, we here at Gadgetell have found a helpful website that will allow you to check up on the latest technology news while 30,000 feet in the sky. Folks over at MyMoneyBlog.com have posted some coupons to get free Wi-Fi while flying.

• If you are flying Delta Airlines between now and the 31st, you can use the code DELTATRYGOGO
• If you are flying Air Tran between now and the 31st, you can use the code AIRTRANTRYGOGO
• And if you are flying American Airlines between now and the 31st, you can use the code AATRYGOGO

And if those don’t work, they provide 3 more codes you can try. They don’t say which specific airline you can use them for, but you can use them through the 7th of January.

• 2287548427snk
• 2472564126dvu
• 2285632980tlk

As an added bonus, if you are flying Virgin America, you can access the internet for free thanks to Google. So we expect to see some comments from the sky on this article. I know I’ll be flying this Christmas so I’ll leave one myself.

Read [Gizmodo]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Dec 2009 | 4:00 pm

Bag Week: Booq Mamba Shift quick video tour

Since the Mamba Shift just came out this week, I haven’t had time to put it through its paces for a full review. But because Bag Week is coming to an end, I thought I should at least give a quick overview for those looking forward to it.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Dec 2009 | 3:02 pm

BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 12-13-2009

Section:

We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does!  Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…

• iPhone Christmas app roundup [updated Dec. 17]
• 25 days of Mac and iPhone savings [updated Dec. 18]
• Appletell reviews the Tenqa SP-109 Bluetooth Speaker
• Appletell reviews the Kensington iPhone Car Mount
• Appletell reviews the iPhone/iPod compatible Pioneer VSX-819H A/V receiver

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Are Hot U.S. Startups The New Bling For Rich Russians?

A controversial comment on Hacker News makes us wonder if hot U.S. startups are the new vanity purchase for rich Russians.

We weren’t the only ones surprised earlier this year when Facebook raised a new round of financing at a $10 billion valuation. Facebook itself apparently held its nose as it closed the round, but Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies was offering a far richer valuation than anyone else (and, importantly, they didn’t require a board of directors seat).

Now the investment group keeps popping back into the news. First as a possible buyer of AOL’s ICQ property, and more recently they led Zynga’s robust $180 million financing, and last week when word got out that it had increased its Facebook stake to more than 5%.

DST is a legitimate investment firm, according to the companies and co-investors who’ve looked into them. They do have a colorful past – one of DST’s major shareholders, Alisher Usmanov, spent six years in an Uzbek jail for fraud and embezzlement in the 1980s, says the NYTimes.

What’s interesting about DST isn’t their past. It’s that they seem quite willing to dump very large amounts of money into hot U.S. startups at sky high valuations. No one else wanted in at Facebook at that $10 billion valuation (at least without a board seat). And while Zynga had quality co-investors, DST led and presumably priced the round.

Why is a Russian investment firm willing to pay these prices when other’s won’t? Here’s the comment from Hacker News, which appeared on this thread about the Zynga investment:

(Bias disclaimer – speaking as a native Russian.)
What I think is not so obvious to many commentators is that this sort of juggling of outsized investments is an ego / megalomania play on the part of New Russian oligarch backers & small-time industrialists and financiers. The $180m figure has little to no imaginable correlation to any measurable marketability potential, generalised ROI, or anything else that would be deemed a competent valuation process institutionally in the West on something like Farmville. What matters is that the amount be sensational. I think we can all agree $180m is certainly sensational.

This is not news to anyone who remembers the Yeltsin era and understands how wealth was concentrated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdistributed in Russia after privatisation and how it is intertwined with state interests. But despite the numerous outlandish personally flavoured investments Russian wealth barons have made in things UK football clubs, lavish yachts, full-service private jets, summer homes on the French Riviera and in southern Spain, etc. this point still eludes most Western observers.

Example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/jun/15/chelsea-owner

Among numerous others, a key difference between Russia and the US is that in the US, an Anglo-American capitalistic country by heritage, contemporary super-wealth comes from many sources of varying degrees of legitimacy, depending on one’s perspective. Certainly among them includes honest entrepreneurial ambition, innovation and professionalism in the transaction of commerce. In Russia there is only one kind of mega-wealth – politically-connected 90s wealth. It is all one big “family,” though the term is more meant to emphasise the narrow exclusivity and extreme statistical lopsidedness of the club than to insinuate congenital relation among the actors.

This sort of “investment” is not very different from the sort of tribalistic “make it rain” spectacle you saw blowhard masters of local fiefdoms in Dubai pull, or continue to see in other Gulf Arab states, just to point to one widely-recognised example. The constellation of facts inherent in these examples is one of the inescapable cultural idiosyncrasies of the “backward” East from the perspective of free-market development and/or the capitalistically-themed conception of modernity.

The all-around point of this seemingly disorganised rant is that all talk of what Zynga did “right” or attempts to “learn” from its “strategy” in relation to the particular size of this investment is pointless sophistry. Yes, FarmVille – what do the kids say these days, “went viral?” – but rational speculation about how this merits a $180m capital infusion will turn you prematurely grey and bald on account of its futility.
If you are laying awake wondering how enough value and potential was created to legitimately absorb $180m, you’re missing the point entirely — your thinking is too West Coast, and not enough Near and Middle East. Check these projects out and it will help you get the picture, although my picking on Dubai is purely out of desire to make an analogy with something recently in the news and discussed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Al_Arab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands

The symbolic significance of investing a headline-worthy sum of sovereign wealth in a “key” American “new economy” property as a geopolitical move for domestic consumption cannot be overstated either. It is likely, in fact, to be the far more substantial theme here, as there are more efficient ways to flagrantly and gratuitously display opulence and excess, usually involving something tangible, like a personal resort flotilla mounted on a military destroyer frame. You know, Deliverables 1.0 – bricks and mortar, not clicks and mortar. Now, I know Digital Sky did not put up the $180m by itself; what does that matter? They “led the round” — you see, they showed “leadership” here, they “took the lead” while Tiger Global, Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz “participated.” I acknowledge that the enormous importance of this may be difficult to appreciate if you’re not a semi-feudal politician, but work with me.

The bottom line here is that Zynga is the unwitting beneficiary of bread and circus games in faraway places that otherwise have no substantive relevance to them intrinsically. There are no valuable business lessons to be learned here and there is no reason for them to be featured in the next Startup School or anything like that, unless the lesson is “get on the radar of Turkmenbashi and see what falls on your lap next time he goes to exercise his golden systems of elimination in his golden commode.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCrkmenba%C5%9Fy]

I interviewed DST founder and CEO Yuri Milner, who graduated from Wharton Business School in 1992, just after the Facebook investment. And to be fair, he doesn’t appear to be anything other than a mild mannered and successful business guy. But the man is willing to pour money into companies at valuations that make U.S. investors blanch. Maybe the bling value of Facebook and Zynga help sweeten the deal.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Dec 2009 | 2:56 pm

The First Robot To Cross the Atlantic Ocean

Hugh Pickens writes "She was at sea for 221 days, alone, often in dangerous places, and usually out of touch. Most of the time she was out of contact underwater, moving slowly up and down to depths of 600 feet, safe from ships, nets, and storms. Her predecessor had disappeared on a similar trip, probably killed by a shark. 'She was a hero,' says Rutgers University oceanographer Scott Glenn after retrieving Scarlet Knight, the 7-foot-9-inch submersible robot from the stormy Atlantic off western Spain. An engineer working for the company that made the submersible said, 'We think this will just be a precursor, like Lindbergh's trip across the Atlantic. In a decade we think it will be commonplace to have roving fleets of these gliders making transoceanic trips.' The people responsible for building, funding, and flying Scarlet hope the end of the robot's successful voyage will mark a new beginning in ocean and climate research. From its position at each surfacing — when the glider surfaced and called home via an Iridium telephone parked in its tail — researchers could calculate the net effect of currents deep and shallow. After surface currents were measured, the scientists could then make inferences about what was happening deeper in the water column. Scarlet called home to upload data to researchers three times a day. 'When we have hundreds of them, or thousands of them, it will revolutionize how we can observe the oceans,' says Jerry L. Miller, a senior policy analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who accompanied the research team to Spain."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Dec 2009 | 2:46 pm

Ribbit Mobile Gets An iPhone App By Sticking To Voicemail

Ever since Ribbit Mobile launched, I’ve been using it to forward my calls to Skype when I am at my computer and transcribe all of my voicemails, the text of which are then sent to me via email. It’s similar to Google Voice (which Mike uses), except you can use your existing mobile number. So I was pretty excited to hear that Ribbit Mobile now has an iPhone app which was just approved today (iTunes link).

I was also pretty surprised. Because Apple wouldn’t approve the iPhone app for Google Voice, which led to an FCC investigation last summer. The main reason Apple gave was because Google Voice substituted its own dialer for the iPhone’s native dialer, and this changed one of the iPhone’s core user interfaces.

Well, suffice it to say that Ribbit Mobile does not attempt to take over any of the iPhone’s telephone functions. Calls are placed through the iPhone’s regular dialer. And you don’t even receive calls through the app. Just like with Ribbit Mobile, the calls are placed through the mobile phone you link up to your Ribbit account.

Instead, the app is more of a voicemail manager. You can see all of your transcribed voicemails, and click them to read each one, or press the play button to hear them. For each voicemail, you have the option to call back (through the iPhone dialer and AT&T), respond via SMS or email, or even record a voicemail response, which you send as an MP3 attached to an email. The app also lets you create a To-Call list to remind yourself which voicemails to respond to directly later on.

Ribbit Mobile’s iPhone app is fine as far as it goes, but I kind of just want it to take over the entire phone function of the iPhone, which is the part of my iPhone I use the least anyway. But if it did that, it probably would never have seen the light of day.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:50 pm

Maine to consider cell phone cancer warning (AP)

AP - A Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cell phones to carry warnings that they can cause brain cancer, although there is no consensus among scientists that they do and industry leaders dispute the claim.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:15 pm

DMCA Takedown Scandal, Part Two

pmdubs writes "Following up on our earlier discussion, Michael Freedman updates us on experience with dubious DMCA takedown notices. As a result of the publicity his initial post received, the Video Protection Alliance has dropped Nexicon, the company to which they had outsourced infringement detection. In this case, while there may be little legal recourse to issuing invalid DMCA notices, the threat of bad press seems to have reined in highly questionable practices."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:11 pm

Barnes & Noble determined to get you a Christmas present

Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks, Household, Miscellaneous

Well… if you were hoping to give a Nook as a present, you might be out of luck. More delays state that some people might not be getting their Nook’s by Christmas-time. For those who won’t get their Nook’s, they’ll get a nifty little certificate saying that they own one at least. So I guess you can wrap the certificate instead of the Nook…

But to compensate you for their incompetence, Barns and Noble will send you a $100 Barnes & Noble Online Gift Certificate if you don’t receive a Nook by Christmas. Plus, they say that you will receive your Nook by the 29th. Now, how much we can really trust that date is up for debate but we can hope I guess.

So, you’ll get to disappoint your friends and family slightly less with a wrapped Nook Certificate this Christmas. And you can even use that $100 to buy some eBooks for them as well… even though they can’t really read them till the 29th. Merry Christmas?

Read [Gizmodo]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:00 pm

Green Tuesday? Tuesday, December 15 Reaches Record $913 Million in Online Spending

RESTON, Va., Dec. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 48 days of the November - December 2009 holiday season.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Dec 2009 | 12:38 pm

Eliot Spitzer proposes open-source investigation of AIG emails

Former New York AG Eliot Spitzer, in a NYT op-ed on what should be done with the emails backlogged on AIG's servers: "Before releasing its regulatory clutches, the government should insist that the company immediately make these materials public. By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of 'open source' investigation."


Source: Boing Boing | 20 Dec 2009 | 12:18 pm

Not Easy Being Green

MIT historian Harriet Ritvo explains how a battle to save an English lake helped found modern environmentalism — but might worry greens todayIt was a battle to save a cherished piece of nature from the forces of economic growth. Preservationists formed groups to present their case, and public figures across the country spoke up about the matter. Yet in the end, industry and commerce triumphed, changing the natural landscape.Offshore oil drilling? Mountain-top coal mining? Actually, this was the controversy in the 1870s over Thirlmere, a picturesque body of water in Britain’s Lake District. The city of Manchester, 100 miles away, wanted to dam Thirlmere and create a reservoir to meet its growing water needs. This infuriated local activists and generated national debate.If this story sounds familiar, it should: The fight over Thirlmere created a “template for subsequent environmental struggles” we still see today, writes Harriet Ritvo, the Arthur Conner Professor of History at MIT. Ritvo’s new book, The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism, published this fall by the University of Chicago Press, explores this episode and its long-term impact.Thirlmere, Ritvo asserts, was the first political battle over nature that involved most of the elements we see in modern environmental confrontations: Most opponents of the dam were not locals directly affected by the project, but instead conservation-minded activists making the novel argument that the public could claim a kind of property right on nature. “Thirlmere was the beginning of a sense that the public could fight to preserve the resources it enjoyed,” says Ritvo. “It is striking how similar the positions held then are to the positions people espouse today.”Yet Thirlmere also contains a jarring message for environmentalist readers today: Their side lost. As someone teaching environmental history, says Ritvo, “It is very sobering.”From England to CaliforniaWith Manchester growing rapidly, the city announced plans in 1877 to buy up local property around Thirlmere and dam it, creating a large reservoir that would raise the water level and submerge much surrounding land. Opponents of the scheme formed the Thirlmere Defense Association, a local group that quickly gained support from public figures across England trying to preserve the much-heralded beauty of the Lake District: Scholars from Oxford and Cambridge, church bishops, the writers John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, and others. Despite vocal opposition and pitched debates in British parliament, by 1879 the government approved the dam, which was completed in 1894.In defeat, environmentalists realized one gain, however: Their movement got off the ground. “Even though the preservationists lost, nobody would have expected they could rally so many people to their cause,” says Adam Rome, an environmental historian at Penn State University. By unearthing this episode, virtually ignored in previous scholarship, Ritvo’s book will be “a revelation to environmentalists who haven’t heard of this debate,” Rome adds. “You can’t read it and not think about what’s the same and what’s changed since then.”One thing that remains similar about these progress-versus-nature battles, Ritvo observes, is the superior economic clout of developers. Manchester, for example, could afford to buy up all the property it needed from small landowners to construct Thirlmere’s dam and pipeline. The city’s victory represented “the forcible overpowering of the opposition, not the conquest of their hearts and minds,” she writes. Conservationists today must work harder than their opponents to build broad popular support, Ritvo suggests, “because they have less money on their side, less political power.”Yet Thirlmere also helped pro-development forces become politically sophisticated. When officials in San Francisco wanted to build the Hetch Hetchy dam and reservoir near Yosemite National Park, they faced resistance from the Sierra Club and its leader, John Muir. In 1910, the city sent its lead engineer, John Freeman, to England to study Thirlmere — not so much for a lesson in technology, but to review the civic debate. After consulting with Manchester officials, Freeman returned with a strategy emphasizing the beauty of the proposed reservoir. Muir had been an influential force in preserving western wilderness areas, including Yosemite and Sequoia National Park, but ultimately Hetch Hetchy was built, and today supplies 85 percent of San Francisco’s water.For that matter, the Thirlmere story also shows how environmentalists struggle to capture public attention. Thirlmere was neither the first nor last large dam built in Britain. It became the most famous because the Lake District was already “an iconic location,” says Ritvo. “But there wasn’t much concern when Birmingham and Liverpool flooded large areas of rural Wales [to build their own dams]. Similarly, with Hetch Hetchy, if Yosemite hadn’t been a national park, there would have been much less fuss.”On the other hand, Ritvo notes, environmentalists have acquired more factual ammunition over time, which has helped them score some major victories, such as the series of federal laws curbing dangerous forms of pollution that the United States passed in the 1970s: The Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, and more. And the effective dissemination of scientific knowledge has led to some environmental achievements of international scope, like the 1987 Montreal Protocol that protected the ozone layer by limiting use of chlorofluorocarbons.“We have massively more information about the environment than they did,” Ritvo says. “We have a sense of ecology, the interconnection of things in nature, which was barely considered back then.” Whereas the Thirlmere conservationists largely made their case in aesthetic terms, environmentalists can now detail the ecological or public-health effects of development, adding another layer to their arguments.Warm waterGlobal economic changes may make the Thirlmere episode resonate even more in the near future. Manchester badly needed water because industrialization was producing a massive urban migration: The city grew from a population of 75,000 in 1801 to more than 300,000 by 1851. Today, half of the world’s population lives in cities, and the level will rise to 60 percent by 2030, according to a report last year from Harvard University and The Nature Conservancy. That concentration of people could lead to an increase in water disputes between urban and rural interests.And while climate change has earned the most attention recently among environmental issues, public access to water remains a pressing concern. “Water is simmering there as an issue,” says Ritvo. Indeed the two matters seem increasingly intertwined; as The New York Times reported this week, shrinking glaciers have already created acute water shortages in some parts of Bolivia. Scientists also announced this week that droughts are leading to the rapid depletion of water sources in California’s Central Valley.For these reasons, tomorrow’s struggles over water will involve “more than just environmental preservation,” Ritvo notes. Instead, she concludes, “The situation in California is an indicator of where we’re going. I think the form water politics is going to emerge in during the next few years will have to do with scarcity of supply — perhaps for everyone.”Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office---Image 1:  The sun rises in England's Lake District. MITImage 2: Harriet Ritvo’s new book, 'The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism'. Courtesy of the University of Chicago Press
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Dec 2009 | 12:15 pm

Hollywood adds money, talent to made-for-Web shows (AP)

AP - Web sites that buy original video clips often pay so little that "The Bannen Way," a flashy crime thriller debuting online, looked destined to be made poorly if it could be made at all.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Dec 2009 | 12:09 pm

Next-Gen Lens Promises More Control

Image 1: A close-up view of the new lens. Credit: Duke University PhotographyImage 2: David Smith, left, and Nathan Kundtz about to test the new lens. Credit: Duke University Photography
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Dec 2009 | 12:09 pm

Hot gaming news for the week of 12-13-2009

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…

• Walmart’s December 20-24, 2009, ad offers last-minute discounts
• Toys R Us holding 50% off one-day sale December 16, 2009
• Toys R Us offering gift cards when you buy games, iPod nano
• Target discounting DS games and music game bundles until December 19
• Guitar Hero inspires Christmas Light Hero light show and game

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

Avatar: Good News for 3D TV and Blu-ray? (PC World)

PC World - There's little doubt that James Cameron's much-hyped Avatar will be a hit during its theater run, but what impact will the sci-fi epic have on 3D entertainment in the home?
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Dec 2009 | 11:45 am

Global Temps Could Rise More Than Expected

The kinds of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide taking place today could have a significantly larger effect on global temperatures than previously thought, according to a new study led by Yale University geologists.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Dec 2009 | 11:45 am

When Developers Work Late, Should the Manager Stay?

jammag writes "A veteran developer looks back — in irritation — at those times he had to work late and his unskilled manager stayed too, just to look over his shoulder and add worry and fret to the process. Now, that same developer is a manager himself — and recently stayed late to ride herd over late-working developers. 'And guess what? Yep, I hadn't coded in years and never in the language he had to work with.' Yet now he understood: his own butt was on the line, so he was staying put. Still, does it really help developers to have management hovering on a late evening, even if the boss handles pizza delivery?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Dec 2009 | 11:43 am

Faster, Cheaper DNA Sequencing Method Developed

Image 2: A team of researchers led by Boston University biomedical engineer Amit Meller is using electrical fields to efficiently draw long strands of DNA through nanopore sensors, drastically reducing the number of DNA copies required for a high throughput analysis. Credit: Figure copyright, Nature Nanotechnology, 2009
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Dec 2009 | 11:15 am

Behold Kincaid’s Law. My Law.

“The amount of fun you’re having at a party is inversely proportional to the number of times you’ve tweeted about it.”

Last week, I tweeted these deeply profound words to my 4,844 followers. The vast majority took the proper course of action and ignored them. But there were a few exceptions. SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar responded that this should henceforth be known as Kincaid’s Law. Never one to shy away from getting my own eponymous law, I agreed. Then something truly unexpected happened: I received the unsolicited endorsement of none other than Bob Metcalfe, the man behind Metcalfe’s Law. Metcalfe also founded 3Com, co-invented Ethernet, and has been inducted into just about every tech Hall of Fame out there.

Yes, I know he was joking. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to print that tweet out and frame it. And who knows, maybe real-life interaction will eventually prove to be more important than social media when it comes to human happiness.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Metcalfe’s Law states that “the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system”. It’s up there with Moore’s Law in terms of well known tech “laws”. I’m in very good company.

Now excuse me while I go stand in front of a mirror and tell myself how awesome I am.

Image by Craige.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Dec 2009 | 10:49 am

A Look at Titan's Lake

The Cassini science team has released humanity's first picture of what sunlight glinting off a lake looks like on another world. This is Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which has lakes of liquid hydrocarbons on its surface. NASA says its scientists ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 Dec 2009 | 10:36 am

One Step Closer To Cracking The Histone Code

Reference: Enzymatic and Structural Insights for Substrate Specificity of a family of Jumonji Histone Lysine Demethylases. J.R. Horton, A.K. Upadhyay, H.H. Qi, X. Zhang, Y. Shi and X. Cheng. Nature Struct. Mol. Bio. 17 (2009).
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Dec 2009 | 10:34 am

Palm Pre Development In the Browser

introspekt.i writes "Palm is building upon the Mozilla Bespin project to deliver an IDE for the Palm Pre entirely in the web browser. Apps can be developed on the server and then downloaded and deployed locally. It is an interesting tool, especially given that WebOS is so web-centric. This tool comes as a supplement to the existing development tools for Eclipse and the command line released by Palm earlier this year. The project is open to anyone who registers as a Palm developer, which is free to do."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Dec 2009 | 10:17 am

Scientists study mental orgasms through MRIs

Guest columnist Lydia Leavitt writes about sex and, oddly enough, social media. For more information on the latest intimate technology as well as the full interview with Kim Airs, check out 69adget.com.

Click through to read the NSFW article.

Kim Airs speeds into Newark, New Jersey with her leather chaps on, riding her motorcycle decorated with dildos big and small. She’s here to meet Dr. Barry Komisaruk, an Associate Dean and researcher at Rutgers University where he is researching the female orgasm. Kim, a free spirit, founder of Grand Opening, and a Certified Sex Educator (PPLM), waltzes into Dr. Komisaruk’s lab only to be strapped into a MRI machine where she jokes “Oh, it’ll be like a bondage session. Won’t be my first, won’t be my last!” Kim has been chosen to participate in the doctor’s study on the female orgasm because she has a very unconventional talent: this woman can will herself to orgasm. Without toys. Without lube. Without another person. That’s right people, she can do it with her mind alone.

In our interview, Kim describes her unique skill:
I have pretty much always been multi-orgasmic and always thought: why just go for one? Orgasms are some of the best free entertainment one can have! So I had the basics of what it’s all about but never had the formal training until 1995, when I attended my first breath and energy workshop with the beloved (and amazing) Annie Sprinkle. Then I did quite a few workshops with The Body Electric that was a program developed by Annie that combines spirituality and sexuality but without any religious overtones (except maybe a few “Oh God! I’m coming!”s in it). Seriously, it does focus on breath work as well. I was part of the first intensive of the Body Electric for women held over several days in Northern California and when you’re focusing on breathing and moving energy for hours at a time (no kidding), you begin to get the hang of it. It wasn’t until 1997 that I really made all the connections to be able to do this without touching myself and being able to “think off.” I let it flow through me whenever it damn well pleases. It can be if a memory comes back to me and I close my eyes and my body slightly convulses, I usually get flushed in the face and yes, sometimes, people pick up on that when it happens. If I see someone that’s hot, I can pop one off then, too.

And this is exactly the type of woman Dr. Komisaruk, author of The Orgasm Answer Guide, wants to study. Why? Because the doctor is using MRIs to study brain activity during a female’s orgasm in an attempt to isolate the regions active during the big O. Someone who can will themselves off will not have any motor movements to skew the MRI results. During our interview, the doctor describes the female orgasm as a “remarkable phenomena,” explaining that it has been linked to reduced sensitivity to pain as well as increased feelings of joy and happiness…duh. The doctor hopes that by figuring out what’s happening in the brain during orgasm, researchers can use this information to develop better anti-depressants, better pain management drugs, and increase sexual satisfaction.

What the study has revealed thus far is that women who can will themselves to orgasm mentally, experience the same brain activity during orgasm as women who use stimulation to get off. If women can experience the same orgasm from stimulation as they can just through mentally willing it to happen, it proves just how large of a role the brain plays in female orgasm. This got Dr. Komisaruk thinking: if it’s not so much nerve stimulation as it is an action in the brain, can disabled women such as para or quadriplegics with zero sensitivity possibly experience orgasm? The answer is yes. He states that “we have identified a novel functional sensory pathway that conveys sensory activity from the vagina and cervix directly to the brain, bypassing completely the spinal cord.” What that means is that even women with spinal cord injuries who have no feeling in their lower body, have the potential to feel sexual satisfaction. Hooray! By better understanding the orgasm, the doctor hopes that scientists can develop better anti-depressant drugs, better pain management drugs, achieve better sexual satisfaction for the disabled, and BETTER more enhanced sex for the rest of us. Until a time when researchers can definitively explain and utilize the findings from studies such as Dr. Komisaruk’s, men will have to be content knowing that female orgasms are more mental than we ever thought before. Geez, good luck guys. Thankfully, Dr. Komisaruk has just been offered a grant to study the male orgasm.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Dec 2009 | 10:00 am

Motorola DROID hacked with stable version of Android 2.1

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile

Can’t wait for Android 2.1 but don’t want to risk it with the questionable ROM that was offered before? Well now Greek35T over at AllDroid has a Christmas present for you. They have a stable version of Android 2.1 for you to play around with. And word on the street is that it is “super fast.” So if you get stuck with socks and underwear for Christmas, at least you have this to look forward to between “Thank-you"s.

Heres a video of the 2.1 ROM in action.

On a safety note, Greek recommends (and we here do as well) that you get a microSD-card reader for your phone so you can back it up in case anything goes wrong. And if you don’t want to risk it, word on the street is that some phones will be getting 2.1 in the first half of 2010 so no worries.

Read [Engadget]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Dec 2009 | 10:00 am

Top 10 Gamertell posts for the week of December 13, 2009

FROM GAMERTELL - Haven’t caught all of the Gamertell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles! Toys R Us holding 50% off one-day sale December 16, 2009“There was a new sales circular in my mailbox today advertising a one day sale at Toys R Us… MORE »

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am

Nomadesk, Not Just Another File Sharing Service, Launches FolderLink (Video)

The hundreds of web and desktop clients built for sharing, backup or on-the-fly synchronization of digital files that have sprung up in the past ten years have made the whole concept of having the cloud at least partly remove your computer hard drive’s reason for being largely a commodity.

It’s the reason why we don’t exactly jump up and down out of sheer excitement when another such service launches and asks for a TechCrunch review.

It’s what I keep telling my friend Filip Tack, CEO of Nomadesk, one of the many players in this field: that in order to make waves in this space it’s far from enough to build a great product, and that it’s at least as important to have a better-than-average distribution model and a PR and marketing strategy that allows you to get noticed almost on a daily basis by people who can spread the word. And then some.

For what it’s worth: Nomadesk really has an awesome desktop client (Windows and Mac) that goes far beyond most of what competitors have to offer, and the distribution part of the equation is slowly coming to fruition as well (the company recently signed a deal with Bell Canada for the company to use Nomadesk’s solution as a white-label service they can offer directly to their customers, and has similar agreements in place and in the pipeline).

But while the company has been consistently growing after its inception a couple of years ago, albeit slowly, the startup has received very little attention from tech press and industry pundits so far. I genuinely think that Nomadesk deserves more of it, as its service stacks up against most proponents in this space, particularly in the way you can control your virtual fileserver(s) from your mobile phone.

Maybe a new feature being launched today will raise some eyebrows: Nomadesk is today introducing a welcome feature that allows users to share an entire folder – regardless of its size – with anyone with an Internet connection and a browser. Simply use the desktop client to right-click any folder you’d like to share, and you can relay the link to whoever you would like to share it with, and they don’t need to have the software installed let alone be a registered Nomadesk user to access all the files in the folder.

As you can tell from the video below, it’s pretty easy to do and it ‘just works’, and the fact that there’s no folder size limit is very appealing. The only thing it really lacks at this point is the ability to preview documents and videos from the Nomadesk interface, but I’m told that’s coming shortly.

For your background: Nomadesk (formerly Aventiv) was founded in 2004 and is based in Belgium (which, whether you like it or not, doesn’t exactly help with getting on influencers’ radars). The company has raised about €3.3 million euro (roughly $4.75 million) from GIMV, one of the largest investment firms in these parts, and while it has a direct sales channel through its website its strategy is to offer the service as a white-label plug and play solution to as many OEMs as possible.

You can sign up for Nomadesk and enjoy a one-month free trial with no restrictions on their website, so I suggest you try out both the desktop client and the mobile website (nomadesk.mobi) to see how the service stacks up to its competitors.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am

The Environmental Impact of PHP Compared To C++ On Facebook

Kensai7 writes "Recently, Facebook provided us with some information on their server park. They use about 30,000 servers, and not surprisingly, most of them are running PHP code to generate pages full of social info for their users. As they only say that 'the bulk' is running PHP, let's assume this to be 25,000 of the 30,000. If C++ would have been used instead of PHP, then 22,500 servers could be powered down (assuming a conservative ratio of 10 for the efficiency of C++ versus PHP code), or a reduction of 49,000 tons of CO2 per year. Of course, it is a bit unfair to isolate Facebook here. Their servers are only a tiny fraction of computers deployed world-wide that are interpreting PHP code."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Dec 2009 | 8:52 am

Beyond Realtime Search: The Dawning Of Ambient Streams

The following guest post was written by Edo Segal (@edosegal).

It was 1993 and I had just decided to drop out of college. I was a graphic design major in a great art school but decided I want to start my second company. Knowing this would mark the conclusion of my studies there I set out to create my final project. I would write a short story, design and produce it in print. I put out an edition of 300 and gave it to my friends and people who inspired me like author William Gibson.

Cut to November, 2009, when I returned from sitting on a panel at the second Realtime CrunchUp. I had urged the audience and participants that when thinking about the realtime web we should not consider the challenge through the lens of how consumers behave today. I argued that the future potential of the realtime web is not in the misnomer “realtime search,” as the consumption of this signal will predominantly be in what I call ambient streams. These are streams of information bubbling up in realtime, which seek us out, surround us, and inform us. They are like a fireplace bathing us in ambient infoheat. I believe that users will not go to a page and type in a search in a search box. Rather the information will appear to them in an ambient way on a range of devices and through different experiences.

A few days after I got back from the CrunchUp, I was organizing some old documents when I stumbled on I Was Just Dead< , a cyberpunk short story I wrote 16 years ago. A story about a world of augmented reality. A world where at birth a chip is embedded in people’s brains creating a reality where they no longer discern what is “real” and what is augmented in their surroundings (Hear the audio-book or download the free eBook below). It was strange to hear my former self calling out about the importance of augmented reality from across the span of almost two decades of experiences in the digital world, half of which were spent solving the problem of how to filter the massive realtime stream.

When trying to understand something potentially transformative, knowing what questions to ask is more than half the challenge. We are still in the early stages of these changes and don’t yet have the necessary metaphors to make the leap into the future. It is for that purpose that I want to suggest what I consider to be the building blocks of our next big evolutionary leap in how we use technology. The four main building blocks are:

1. Realtime Web (Twitter, news flows, world events, and other information which relates to changes in the world)
2. Published Information (sites, blogs, Wikipedia, etc.)
3. Geolocation Data (your location and information layers related to it, including your past locations and that of your friends, as well as geo-tagged media)
4. Social Communications (social graph updates, IMs, emails, text messages, and other forms of signal from your friends).

Before these building blocks can create an ambient stream which is not overwhelming, all of this data needs to pass through a filter. The Holy Grail is a filter which only serves up information which is relevant based on who you are, your social graph, what you or your friends are doing now, what you or friends have done before, and in context of other information you are consuming. It needs to be delivered wherever you are and on whatever device or display can deliver the ambient stream: mobile phone, laptop computer, TV, heads-up display in vehicle or inside your glasses. The future of how ambient streams might enter our world is illustrated with the following simplistic diagram:

Putting all of these building blocks together will be an industry-wide task. There are a relatively small number of people who have already managed to spend a lifetime thinking about this problem. It has bred several academic disciplines and many sci fi novels and films. These related fields include pervasive computing, everyware and the buzzword du jour augmented reality (AR). All of these technologies produce ambient streams. AR, in particular, (which is focused mostly on methods of how to render information visually) is capturing the imagination of innovators around the globe. The underling technologies that allow devices to marry data to physical locations continue to evolve at a fast pace, and with other disciplines jumping into the mix the magic is finally starting to happen.

One only needs look at a teenager today as they do their homework, watch TV, play a game, and chat while watching their Facebook stream to get a sense for humanity’s expanding affinity to consume ambient streams. Their young minds are constanty tuning and adapting to an age of hypertasking .A very useful metaphor is that humanity is constructing its own synthetic sixth sense. An ambient sense that perceives the context of your activity and augments your reality with related information and experiences. Increasingly, we will be sensing the world with this sixth sense and that will change the way we collectively experience the world. Going back to the point made earlier, the watershed event is when we will be experiencing this “ambient sense” without being in a retrieval mode (i.e. not when we go to the computer or our mobile device to find information but rather as a product of our activity, location, and profile in context with the events and information available to us in a wired world).

We will be seeing the first swells of this coming tsunami in the years to come, but for our children the ambient sense will play a bigger and bigger role as it slowly evolves and weaves itself into their consciousness much like Google search weaved itself into their memory functions. The challenges we face in terms of making real progress stems from the fact that the overarching goal is one that requires a multi-disciplinary approach across a myriad of data sets. While there are many companies executing in each of the quadrants few are in a position to access the full scope of data and therefore the ability to create the Holy Grail of filters is limited. This is where the world of walled gardens and deals with major search providers presents a challenge for progress. Many iterations and mistakes need to be made before we arrive at the right way to collate and filter all these different streams of data into an ambient sense. If only one or two companies are in a position to iterate, progress will be very slow and the probability of success diminished. For success, it is necessary to create an ambient sense that will manage to balance the level of interruption with insight and arrive at the true goal of any sufficiently advanced technology, which is to be transparent and taken for granted as part of the human experience. It may sound like science fiction, but there are engineers and entrepreneurs out there already trying to make it fact.

Is it possible in the age of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple for a startup to innovate across the entire stack to come up with this sixth sense? Chime in at #ambientstreams

Guest author Edo Segal (@edosegal) has launched and sold several companies. In 2000 he founded eNow, which he sold to AOL in 2006 (after it was renamed Relegence). Today, he runs his Incubator/Investment vehicle Futurity Ventures, which recently launched a new search engine for wisdom.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Dec 2009 | 8:15 am

Youku Completes $40 Million First Closing of Expansion Round

BEIJING, Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Dec 2009 | 8:01 am

Climate Change Could Wipe Out African Leaf-Eating Primates

Monkey species will become ‘increasingly at risk of extinction’ because of global warming, according to new research. It reveals that populations of monkeys and apes in Africa that depend largely on a diet of leaves may be wiped out by a rise in annual temperatures of two degrees Celsius.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Dec 2009 | 8:00 am

Guy brings whole computer rig into B&N, the world snickers

This dude probably had to get some work done and decided to mooch off of B&N’s free Internet. But seriously? Did he really have to do it in this fashion? I mean, he’s just further advancing the general public’s view of nerds.

Socks with sandles, buddy? That’s it. You’re out of the club. Hand back in your nerd card. [imgur via Reddit]

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Dec 2009 | 7:37 am

Survey: Australians Say Man-Made Climate Change Real

Most Australians believe climate change is happening now and is caused by human activity, according to preliminary results from a new national survey.Preliminary results from the survey by the UNSW City Futures Research Centre for the Australian Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Settlements and Infrastructure (ACCARNSI) have indicated that a large majority – 78 per cent – of Australians believe climate change is happening now while a further 14 per cent expect it to happen within 10 to 50 years.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Dec 2009 | 7:25 am

Google to gobble Yelp?

Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Web Apps, Websites, Google

File this under rumor, Google is looking into acquiring Yelp, the social recommendation site popular for restaurants.  It is said Google will pay near $500 million for the company to get its hands in local advertising.  Try as it may, Google has yet to strike gold in local online advertising.

Last month, Google paid $450 million for AdMob, a mobile ad network.  Yelp has $30 million in revenue and forecasts $50 million next and was created by folks who started PayPal.  Google looks to be paying a big premium for a company many feel are built on fake reviews and strong-arm sales tactics. 

From a post I wrote back in February of this year: “New allegations surfaced from a San Francisco area newspaper claiming Yelp is suppressing bad reviews of establishments in exchange for advertising revenue.  The allegations are by nine businesses who claim they are contacted regularly to move bad reviews as part of their advertising budget. “

Is this what Google wants to get into?  Whether to augment their local search efforts, where they recently sent out decals to merchants that feature a special barcode users can scan to get special coupons and reviews of establishments or to provide the backbone for mobile advertising in their free GPS navigation system.

Read: [BusinessWeek]

 

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Dec 2009 | 7:17 am

Ancient Koalas Were Loud And Lazy

Skull fragments of prehistoric koalas from the Riversleigh rainforests of millions of year ago suggest they shared the modern koala's "lazy" lifestyle and ability to produce loud "bellowing" calls to attract mates and provide warnings about predators.However, the new findings published as the featured cover article in the current issue of The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology suggest that the two species of koalas from the Miocene (24 to five million years ago) did not share the uniquely specialized eucalyptus leaf diet of the modern koala (Phascolarctos cinereus).The shift to a wholly eucalyptus diet by modern koalas was an adaptation that probably came later as Australia drifted north, causing its rainforests to retreat and Eucalypts to become the dominant tree of most Australian forests and woodlands.Modern koalas – the sole living member of the diprotodontian marsupial family Phascolarctidae –are among the largest of all arboreal leaf-eaters.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Dec 2009 | 7:10 am

Beijing’s Roads Choked By 4 Million Vehicles

The amount of registered vehicles in Beijing hit 4 million last week, state media announced, which means one fourth of the 16 million inhabitants in China's capital are driving, according to AFP.The amount of capable drivers in the area also reached 5.68 million, Xinhua news agency said Friday,
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Dec 2009 | 5:00 am

CrunchGear Week in Review: Link Nook Edition

Here are some stories from CrunchGear this past week.

Bag Week, People!
This dude made a Zelda game in C++. What did you do this year?
Bad Ideas, vol. CMXVII: Xylophone Table
“Butterfly Touch” from Packard bell sounds weak but looks sweet
B&N confirms Nook shipment delay, says only “very small percentage” affected

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Dec 2009 | 4:00 am

CrunchDeals: Buy an Olive 4 or 4 HD and get Beatles Remastered

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.

Pop over here to pick up your unit. Happy holidays.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Dec 2009 | 2:09 am

Avatar has hit telesync, but by all reports you should just pay your money

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.

Says scnsrc:

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.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Dec 2009 | 1:52 am