The iPad. Oh the iPad. Here, all wrapped up in one post, is everything you need to know about the device itself. We played with it and were blown away with its speed. Adam, however, was not impressed, and the internet went crazy over his list of 8 things that suck about the iPad. Wilson explained why the iPad is the gadget we never knew we needed. Joel alleged that with the iPad, Apple is trying to assassinate the computer.

We had hoped Apple's tablet would offer an inventive input solution. It did no such thing. We offered a visual guide to the iPad interface and checked out a video of all the gestures it involves. We looked at how it is going to change the app store. That was after we pondered how we are going to hold the damn thing. People reacted to it. Stephen Fry, who got a hands on at the event, wrote at length on why he loved the new gadget.

Fujitsu had some piece of crap called the iPad back in 2002. They're not going down without a fight. Before it was unveiled, McGraw from McGraw Hill confirmed the tablet. After it was unveiled, they denied their confirmation.

Dan put together a handy chart of how the iPad stacks up with all the other tablets floating around, including the JooJoo, the HP Slate, and the new Archos.

Steve Jobs and Walt Mossberg chatted about the new device, and Steve went off script about eBook prices and battery life. This was after Walt Mosspuppet reviewed the device itself.

The iPad doesn't have Flash. Adobe was quick to respond. Later, they tried to win our hearts by playing the porn card. Google's Eric Schmidt wondered what differentiated a tablet from a really big phone. Some funny people made light of it all. To the delight of some, a kickstand appeared.

But as I said, life existed beyond the iPad.

Jason reviewed Microsoft's compact Arc keyboard.

Mark valiantly continued his defective yellow-screened iMac crusade and showed off the internal Apple memo someone leaked him.

John interviewed the Panera Bread iMac Man.

Joel reminded us that manufacturing isn't making and took Chris Anderson to task for his cover story in this month's Wired.

A noted astrophysicist answered the question on everyone's mind. What would happen to your body if you fell into a black hole?

HP has a slate of their own and we got some more info on it.

The PS3 exploit announced last weekend was released.

What do you get when a talented special effects artist just happens to have an interest in hoaxes? These crazy clips showing UFOs and shuttles destroyed in orbit.

Monopoly's getting a circular facelift for the new decade, and its bank is going paperless.

There's a shiny new gun with a unique safety feature: it won't fire unless the shooter is wearing a special watch.

In the form of an HTML5 web app, Google Voice makes its way to the iPhone and the Palm Pre.

You guys took some incredible motion blur photographs for this week's shooting challenge. It was on purpose, you swore!

Alienware's M11x gaming netbook got the laptop-like price tag of $800.

Rejoice, Wii-owners! The Classic Controller Pro is arriving stateside this spring.

A brave soul ventured into the heart of SkyMall and lived to tell the tale.

Jon Stewart provoked Bill Gates on the Daily Show.

Mark said, "tablet? What tablet?" He was too busy playing Mass Effect 2.

Historians are searching for a 90 year old frozen camera that could rewrite the history books on Everest's first climbers.

If Steve Jobs just had one wish, this would be it.

Soon the BBC is airing Chimpcam Project, a documentary about chimps, filmed by chimps, for the viewing pleasure of slightly more evolved chimps.

Prisons refuse to let inmates play Dungeons and Dragons because it promotes gang activity. There are still dungeons, just no dragons.

We came across a funny website that emulates Windows 3.1 right in your browser.

Air New Zealand is getting high tech and commmmffffyyyyyy.

For tea drinkers who are also submarine lovers, there's no better infuser than this one.

We deemed this tiny, tiny radio a choking hazard.

Speaking of FM radio, Belkin showed off their new radio transmitter that leaves the controlling to your iPhone.

192 lasers came together to bring us one megajoule closer to nuclear fusion.

2KSports is offering a million dollars to the first person to pitch a perfect game in MLB2K10. That is quite the offer.

We beheld a board with 80 USB ports. Yes, 80.

Finally, it was confirmed that those magic wand bomb detectors were a complete fraud.

Source: Gizmodo | 30 Jan 2010 | 1:00 pm

AT&T Touts Network Investments to Support iPad - PC World

Telegraph.co.uk

AT&T Touts Network Investments to Support iPad PC World Now that AT&T has taken its lumps from competitors and users over the size of its 3G network, the company is determined not to be caught flat footed again. Just one day after Apple announced that its new iPad tablet would be available on both AT&T and ... Will Strong iPad Sales Undo ATandT's San Francisco, NYC Efforts?eWeek Verizon takes hit as Apple chooses AT&T for iPadThe News Journal Apple iPad Adds to Pressure on AT&TBusinessWeek Atlantic Online -ABC News -Register all 849 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 Jan 2010 | 12:27 pm

1Gbps Optical Wireless Network Might Replace Wi-Fi

Mark.JUK writes "Pennsylvania State University has developed a new method of indoor Optical Wireless network that does not require a line-of-sight and runs at speeds of 1Gbps+. The system uses a high-powered laser diode — a device that converts electricity into light — as the optical transmitter and an avalanche photo diode — a device that converts light to electricity — as the receiver. The light bounces off the walls and is picked up by the receiver. Traditional radio frequency systems (Wi-Fi , WiMAX etc.) do not require line of sight transmission, but can pass through some substances and so present a security problem. Light, in a room without windows, will not escape the room, improving security."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 30 Jan 2010 | 12:20 pm

How To Get the Most Out of Twitter

Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Features, Originals

Twitter’s popularity continues to grow as more and more people discover what a fun and useful tool it can be. Many companies now use it for both promotion and customer service, while individuals use it to network and stay in touch. To get the most out of Twitter, here are some tips and tricks to follow.

Use discretion when following

It’s always great to see your follower count rise, but it’s important not to fall into the habit of following everyone that follows you. Take the time to check out their profiles before clicking that follow button. Anyone that is following far more people than are following them, tweets only URLs, or seems to post the same things over and over or many tweets in a short period of time should be blocked and reported as they are almost always spammers. Some of these spammers use bots that post tweets every few minutes or scan tweets for specific keywords and respond with spam.

Another reason to be picky when choosing people to follow is your newsfeed. The more people you follow the more unmanageable your newsfeed can become. Follow only those people whose tweets you truly value and find useful and/or entertaining.

When it comes to tweeting, quality is better than quantity

No one wants to know what you ate for lunch or that you’re bored. Make your tweets interesting and/or useful. Share your opinions on news stories, humorous quotes, links to interesting sites, etc.

Post links in moderation

Sharing links is an important part of Twitter, but don’t go overboard. Be sure to post some link free tweets as well and when do you post links, always post an explanation along with them. Most links on Twitter are shortened using services like bit.ly, which makes it impossible to see where they link to unless clicked on. Spammers and malware distributors love this. Letting your followers know where your links lead to is courteous and lets them know it’s not spam or malicious in nature.

Tweet with care

It’s important to remember that unless you chose to protect your tweets, they are completely public. While you may be tempted to vent about your boss or brag about a drunken exploit, think twice. Everything you tweet about can be easily re-tweeted so that even people who aren’t following you can read it. People have been fired and even sued over things they posted on Twitter, and if you are one of the many people looking for work these days, beware. Many potential employees now search Google, Twitter, and sites like Facebook as part of the application process. A good rule of thumb is to never post a tweet you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of a newspaper.

Twitter is fun and useful, and by following these tips you will get the most out of it!

There's nothing wrong with wanting your sanctuary to take the form of a futuristic pod. But you have to be willing to find one that doesn't disrupt your backyard's harmony with nature. The Archipod, like a coconut, is brown and rugged on the outside but white and smooth when you open it up and look inside.

Created in the UK, the Archipod was conceived out of "frustration at the commuting lifestyle, with its attendant road congestion, air and noise pollution, road rage, running costs and time loss."

Indeed, if you're looking for a home office that will make you feel like you're several light-years away from modern society and its discontents, head over to Archipod's website and prepare to open the pod bay doors. [Archipod via Make]

Source: Gizmodo | 30 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Google Nexus One for AT&T Practically Confirmed - Brighthand

Financial Times

Google Nexus One for AT&T Practically Confirmed Brighthand A device that's almost certainly an AT&T-compatible version of the Google Nexus One has been approved by the FCC. Currently, the only version of this very high-end Android OS-based smartphone available offers full support for just T-Mobile's network. ... T-Mobile data issues hit Nexus One ownersCNET Google Nexus One users report T-Mobile service outageSan Francisco Chronicle T-Mobile Network Outage Stymies Nexus One UsersPC World infoSync World -BusinessWeek -Computerworld all 125 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 Jan 2010 | 11:51 am

'iPad' Name Makes Waves For Apple

Apple’s newest creation, the iPad, is getting slammed by fans and critics over its name, but technology analysts are brushing off the ridicule and focusing on the product's key feature: a speedy new microprocessor.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 30 Jan 2010 | 11:39 am

The next frontier: Converting 2D to 3D

Remember at CES when all of the companies were like “We’ll convert your 2D to 3D?” Yeah, ummm, nah. What will happen is that studios will back-convert some of their old movies – or movies not shot in 3D – to 3D using a time-consuming, partially automated process. Like in love, the first cut is the deepest:

The first step is to separate the shot into somewhere between two and eight layers of depth. Take, for example, an image of a man standing in front of a brick wall, with a blue sky behind the wall. The graphic artist might separate the shot into three layers: the man, the wall, and the sky. Then, he would take each layer and draw contour lines around any object that appeared there. He’d start by marking depth lines on the man using a computer, turning the image into a sort of topographical map. He’d repeat the process for any objects in the other layers. (If there were a bird in the sky, he’d draw lines there, too.)

This creates layers that the computer can then ‘tween based on surround frames. If the spot where a character was before is visible later, the computer can approximately assess what should be “behind” the character. While it sounds more like the Turner-ization of black and white movies (you have to be pretty old to remember that golden period in television), it’s the only way you’re going to be able to see Shaft in 3D.

Read more about it at Slate.

via Giz

Source: CrunchGear | 30 Jan 2010 | 11:26 am

"Perpetual Motion DeLorean" Scammers Face $26M Judgment

An anonymous reader writes "Back in 2002, we discussed a story about the so-called 'Perpetual Motion DeLorean,' which could 'supposedly go "hundreds of miles" at speeds over 100MPH without stopping to recharge.' More than seven years later, the final shoe has dropped on this saga, with a $26 million judgment against Carl Tilley and his wife, who propagated this scam that ran for several years. Probably the height of its audacity was when Tilley told his shareholders in May of 2002 that GE had offered $2 billion 'sight unseen' to buy out the technology."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting with a novelty t-shirt that displays the strength of Wi-Fi signals in the area, an Instructable user lived up to his matching user name and license plate of "MacGeek" by hacking together this Wi-Fi detecting window decal.
While it may not be entirely useful for finding access points, except maybe to a laptop-wielding driver behind you in a serious bumper to bumper, it will definitely be useful for announcing your geek pride to your fellow drivers. [Instructables]

Source: Gizmodo | 30 Jan 2010 | 11:00 am

BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 1-24-2010

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…

• Live blog of Apple’s January 27th media event
• iPad “Not for sale or lease” until the FCC says so
• More evidence of AT&T losing iPhone exclusivity
• Apple’s January 27th event rumor roundup
• “Meet the iPad” video

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Jan 2010 | 10:55 am

Apple Pulls Flash Content From iPad Promos (PC World)

PC World - It looks like Apple's iPad really is magical after all. Marketing materials for the iPad mysteriously morphed overnight following complaints that they misleadingly depicted the device showing Flash-based content. As of Saturday morning, presto-change-o: The Flash is gone.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Jan 2010 | 10:35 am

Cellphone Curbs May Not Decrease Car Crashes - Wall Street Journal

CANOE

Cellphone Curbs May Not Decrease Car Crashes Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON—Laws that forbid motorists from using hand-held phones or texting while driving don't appear to result in a significant decrease in vehicle crashes, according to a new study by the Highway Loss Data Institute expected to ... Study: Distractions, not phones, cause car crashesCNET AAA calls for comprehensive cell phone ban for driversNorristown Times Herald California's hand-held cellphone ban hasn't reduced crashes, study saysLos Angeles Times FOXNews -TechNewsWorld -kgw.com all 408 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 Jan 2010 | 10:31 am

Weekend Giveaway: Sporty Friends Commemorative Olympic Swatch Watch

Yeah, guys! Do you like Yetis? Penguin things? Vancouver? Well today is your lucky day because we’re giving away one sexy Swatch watch commemorating the upcoming 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

What do you have to do? So very, very little.

Simply name those two sporty friends in a comment and we’ll pick one winner at random on Monday. While I’m sure those guys have real names, I prefer to call them Burt Reynolds and Meg Ryan. You?

UPDATE – While it does, in fact, seem that these guys are named Quatchi and Miga, I’d prefer it if you gave them your own names. Like Ponch and John.

Source: CrunchGear | 30 Jan 2010 | 10:00 am

The Apple-Amazon Book War Heats Up, and Claims MacMillan as a Casualty [MediaMemo]

Apple has yet to sell its first e-book, but it is already engaged in a bruising battle with Amazon for control of the market. The most recent salvo: Amazon has stopped selling all books — both digital and physical — from MacMillan, apparently in response to the publisher’s plans to sell its books at a higher price point through Apple.

Amazon (AMZN) sells most of its e-books at $9.99 or less, and Apple (AAPL) plans to sell its e-books for 30 percent to 50 percent more. How long can that disparity last? It won’t, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told Walt Mossberg on Wednesday: “The prices will be the same”.

The implication of that comment is clear: Jobs believes publishers will use Apple’s (AAPL) e-book store as leverage to force Amazon’s (AMZN) prices up.

As I noted earlier, this is an inversion of Apple’s relationship with the big music labels, where it demanded that those companies sell their songs as $1 songs instead of $15 CDs — and helped accelerate the industry’s demise along the way.

In that scenario, the labels didn’t have an option but to play along, because Apple controlled the digital music market. Here, Amazon has the clear lead in digital books, having sold “millions” of Kindles, but the market is still nascent, so that lead alone isn’t enough.

But Amazon does own the market for physical books sold on the Web, so pulling those off its virtual shelves is a powerful leverage indeed.

Next step: Keep an eye on books from the other four publishers Apple touted during Wednesday’s iPad launch — Pearson’s Penguin Group, News Corp.’s (NWS) HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, CBS’s (CBS) Simon & Schuster.

All of them are still selling their wares through Amazon for the time being. Wonder how long that will last.

Below, Kara Swisher’s video of Mossberg’s chat with Jobs following the iPad debut, in which the two men discuss the brewing book war.

Source: All Things Digital | 30 Jan 2010 | 9:56 am

Dell Streak/Mini 5 seen on the streets

Section: Computers, Mobile Computers

Out in Davos, Switzerland, snow floats from the sky like every other day. But this particular day, someone special is treading through that snow; this day, CrunchGear managed to get a one-on-one with Dell’s CEO, Michael Dell, outside of the World Economic Forum. And what else would the CEO of Dell have in his hands but the new Dell Streak. Or is it the Mini 5? He gave them a run-through of the menus and a quick flash of the back of the device, but avoided all of their questions about the price.

Though he did confirm a few things that had only been rumored before, possibly unintentionally. First thing, previously known as Dell Streak, Mr. Dell calls it the Mini 5. And he does it with plenty of confidence in the name too. So it is safe to say that this will be the Dell Mini 5. On top of that he also states, quite a few times, that this thing will be out in a couple months.

Wow. Going from concept last month, to “hey here it comes” the next. I’m excited.

Read [CrunchGear] Image [PC Online]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Jan 2010 | 9:40 am

Derailing the Airlines: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Air travel nowadays is all about the delay. From two conversations yesterday, tales of miserable delay. A family visiting a friend stretched a two hour flight into twelve, getting home at two a.m. And then, from a road warrior the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Jan 2010 | 9:05 am

Animetrics Launches FaceR Celebrity in Apple App Store

Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Jan 2010 | 8:49 am

Italy halts bluefin fishing for a year: EU

Italy is to stop fishing for bluefin tuna, the lucrative but over-exploited species beloved of Japanese sushi fans, for 12 months, the European Union said on Saturday. The move, enabled...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Jan 2010 | 8:32 am

Amazon sellling Japanese Classic Controller Pros at premium prices

FROM GAMERTELL - Amazon is now stocking and carrying the Japanese version of the Wii Classic Controller Pro controller. Each one costs $34.99, $15 more than the US versions will cost when they’re released in a few months.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Jan 2010 | 8:31 am

Scalzi and MacMillan v. Amazon

John Scalzi says smart things about the Macmillan/Amazon spat: "If Amazon is willing to play chicken with my economic well-being -- and the economic well-being of many of my friends -- to lock up its little corner of the ebook field, well, that's its call to make. But, you know what, I remember people who are happy to trample my ass into the dirt as they're rushing to grab at cash."


Source: Boing Boing | 30 Jan 2010 | 8:16 am

Connecting Your iPhone or iPad with Your Business (PC World)

PC World - Despite its reputation as a consumer device, the presence of the iPhone, and soon the iPad, in the business environment cannot be ignored. IT Administrators at businesses of all sizes must address the challenge of integrating the devices and providing access to network resources.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Jan 2010 | 8:14 am

Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Beating Metal Heart

A simple experiment makes a drop of mercury beat like a nervous, little mouse heart.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user SharkeyinColo via CC

Source: Boing Boing | 30 Jan 2010 | 8:11 am

Will China Eat America’s Lunch in Cleantech?

In the State of the Union Address last Wednesday, President Obama said “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy and America must be that nation.”  At the same time, on the other coast, 75 clean energy investors, entrepreneurs, and researchers were debating whether the U.S. can gain this leadership position.  They agreed that even though Silicon Valley leads the world in technology, it is not clear if it will ever lead in Cleantech. The Valley may develop some breakthrough technologies, but without government help these are unlikely to translate into global leadership. The technology world is rightfully allergic to government assistance and intervention. Cleantech is different, however, and we aren’t dealing with a level global playing field.

The Knowledge Economy Institute Leadership Summit, which I attended, was held at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), in Emeryville, California. The question posed: what will it take for the U.S. to achieve global leadership in the clean-energy economy? The group concluded that the U.S., by far, has the strongest innovation platform in the world. But other countries may well reap the benefits of its research efforts. China, in particular, is making massive investments and has a huge advantage from focused policy and large markets.  Even though China is not likely to produce its own innovation, it will continue to appropriate U.S. technology and gain a major advantage by combining this with its manufacturing prowess.  American firms which are increasingly choosing to build design and manufacturing operations in China will provide it with additional advantage.

What will it take for America to lead? Despite decades of dominance in technology innovation, America has a dilemma in the clean-energy economy. Most entrepreneurs aren’t getting the support needed, and we are unable to translate research discoveries in our universities into profitable businesses that attract high levels of investment, make lots of money through manufacturing, and create jobs.

There are two problems with university research – the system for commercializing discoveries doesn’t work well, and there is no clear path-to-market for new technologies which do make it out the door. I’ve written about these problems and I prescribed some workarounds. JBEI is a bold experiment to fix some of these problems the right way. It brings together researchers from different disciplines with business. And it has a practical focus on solving real-world problems.

Centers like JBEI may produce major breakthroughs in technology. But that is when the next set of problems kick in both for university research and for entrepreneurs – clean energy is different than other technologies.  Startups typically need hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and scale up technologies.  Investors don’t see steady, strong and growing markets. So, few are taking the risks and making the big investments.

U.S. policy is not as aggressive as other countries in creating sustainable markets, investing in commercialization, or promoting manufacturing.  Take, for example, Japan’s Sunshine Project and related initiatives that have consistently driven that country’s clean-energy policy since 1974.  Japan has succeeded in building infrastructure, markets, and technology companies that help meet national energy security goals for the long-term.  The U.S. has not.

Contrast this with how U.S. government responded to challenges to its semiconductor industry by rallying behind it and keeping a significant value piece here.  How do we keep our innovative clean-energy companies and their design and manufacturing operations in America?

We need to learn from other countries.  In industries like Cleantech, success depends upon consistent and reliable government policy that links market supply and demand over the long-term.  U.S. policy has been cyclical, unilaterally focused on petroleum, and unrealistic about the value of short-term subsidies and support.  American startups suffer from inconsistent pricing-signals that make investors wary.  As investment cycles wax and wane, small companies lose top talent and are unable to recruit it back when funding begins to flow with the next cycle upturn.

Policy makers need to look at things that affect pricing. Energy is a commodity and it is all about cost.  The energy sector is undifferentiated.  Startups compete with large incumbent firms.  Moreover, clean-energy technology often has a deceptive fit with current industry and markets.  Take biofuels, for example. The high ratio of bulk-to-fuel, distributed biomass sources, and inherent chemical variation dictate smaller-scale and more regional patterns of development and deployment than for petroleum.

Consumers are key.   Consumer perceptions of energy prices have potent effects on the market.   China figured this out.  In addition to subsidizing manufacturing, it is training thirty thousand salespeople to sell new clean technologies to consumers. In the U.S. energy is just too cheap, so consumers don’t see the benefits of Cleantech. Rebates and short-term subsidies just aren’t creating long-term demand. As a result, entrepreneurs trying to build companies on energy efficiency are finding it hard to stay afloat.  The demand and growing markets are just not there.

Will America meet President Obama’s call for global leadership in the clean energy economy?  Not likely if Congress and state governments don’t make it a lot easier for startups to attract investment and a lot more attractive to manufacture here.  Governments need to coordinate comprehensive, long term energy policy – now.

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.

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Jan 2010 | 8:01 am

Guest Post: The Yo-Yo Life of a Tech Entrepreneur

This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He started his first company in 1999 and was headquartered in London, leaving in 2005 and selling to a publicly traded French services company. He founded his second company in Palo Alto in 2005 and sold this company to Salesforce.com, becoming VP Product Management. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner focusing on early-stage technology companies.

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world.

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Jan 2010 | 8:00 am

Terry Bisson's "Catch 'Em in the Act" -- Vonnegut-esque absurdist sf podcast

This week on the excellent Tor.com short fiction podcast: Terry Bisson's absurdist social commentary "Catch 'Em in the Act." This is vintage Bisson, a simple-seeming tale told with the sneaky light touch of Kurt Vonnegut. As a bonus, Terry himself reads for the podcast, which is a goddamned treat, because I could listen to that dry, wry southern lilt all day long.

In "Catch 'Em in the Act," Lou is a loner and a loser who orders a "Crimestoppers" camcorder from eBay, and discovers that whenever he points it at someone, they commit crimes. All Lou wants is to find friendship, and maybe a girlfriend, but getting people to commit crimes is a tricky method for accomplishing this.

Lou was almost thirty. He had a job and an apartment, but he was lonely. He didn't have any friends. He didn't know why; he just didn't.

So he did what everyone who is lonely does: YouTube and eBay. One day it was eBay.

"Say, look at this!" he murmured. Lou often murmured to himself.

CRIMESTOPPERS™ VIDEO CAMERA
Catch 'em in the Act!
BUY IT NOW: $19.95
Brand New in Box.
Batteries Included.
One to a Customer.
Shipping, $4.99

That didn't seem like all that much. The shipping wasn't bad either. That's usually where they get you. So Lou did what every lonely person with PayPal does. He clicked on BUY.

Four days later, it came. It was about the size of a cell phone, with a little viewscreen that folded out to one side.

It only had two buttons: SHOOT and PLAY. Not a lot of features. But the price was right.

Catch 'Em in the Act (audio)

Catch 'Em in the Act (text)

MP3 link

Podcast feed

Source: Boing Boing | 30 Jan 2010 | 7:55 am

The peculiar challenges of Chinese Braille

The Braille system, in which the characters of a language are represented via the position of dots in a six-dot cell, is called "the world's first binary encoding scheme" for the characters of a language. Though text-to-speech technology enables many blind people to read via computer, Braille is still considered an integral part of literacy for blind people. Most languages use one cell to represent one language phoneme. All Braille encodings employ the left-to-right evenly spaced cell patterns. Japanese Braille, Korean Braille, and Tibetan Braille (developed in 1992) have reassigned all the Braille blocks to sounds in their own languages. Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese Braille, based on pin-yin, use three characters per syllable: onset, rime and tone. The tone characters are frequently disregarded, creating ambiguity and problems for Chinese Braille students. See also: Chinese-designed super cool Braille embossing printer/labeler, DotlessBraille for info on open source LaTeX and XML to Braille translation software and a terrific Braille FAQ, Moon Code and an early Braille book burning. [photo of performance art exhibit via impact lab]


Source: Boing Boing | 30 Jan 2010 | 7:53 am

Belgian Band Gets Creative With Video Annotations On YouTube

YouTube has long introduced ways for users to annotate their videos and add links to external websites, other videos on the site, and more. But I haven’t seen that many people or companies make use of video annotations in creative ways – I don’t spend that much time on YouTube to be honest, so maybe it’s just me.

Belgian electro band The Subs got in touch with us to let us know how they use video annotations to spice up their The Famous Videocast project, and the result is pretty neat if you ask me.

In the videocast, the band members point to other videos which you can easily watch without having to jump to another tab or webpage (that is, if you’re on YouTube and not watching it here or anywhere else where it gets embedded).

If you don’t click, the videocast just keeps rolling, but if you do you can watch other videos and return to where you left off in the videocast with a single click.

Simple, but nice.

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Jan 2010 | 7:15 am

Brazil's Braskem may buy Sunoco assets-report

SAO PAULO, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Braskem , Latin America's largest petrochemical company, may unveil as soon as Monday the purchase of U.S.-based Sunoco Inc.'s petrochemical assets for about $400 million,...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Jan 2010 | 6:56 am

Angry Flies Could Explain Human Aggression

Caltech biologist David Anderson and his colleagues identify a brain chemical involved in promoting aggression in fliesRecently, biologist David Anderson set out to learn whether flies, like bees, can get angry--part of a broader effort to study how animal behavior relates to genetics."Every time you swat a fly away from your hamburger, it seems to come back to the food more aggressively or persistently," Anderson said. "People might wonder about whether there's such a thing as an 'angry' fly, but no one would challenge the idea of an angry bee--especially someone who's been stung by one."To test his hypothesis, Anderson--who currently has two projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator at Caltech--created an experiment modeled after the traditional "bees-at-the-picnic-table" scenario using Drosophila, the common fruit fly (or more accurately, the vinegar fly)."We developed the 'puff-o-mat' apparatus, with the idea of putting some fly food at one end, and then blowing the flies away from the food with a gentle puff of air every time they got close to it," he said. "Then we measured whether the flies became more agitated and approached the food more aggressively after experiencing this frustrating experience several times."As it turned out, they didn't even need the food."To our surprise," Anderson said, "simply blowing the flies off their feet several times in a row was sufficient to get them riled up. So we decided to focus on that--the agitation response--because it was much simpler to set up without the food, and without starving the flies. The part with the food never made it into the final paper,"  he added, referring to a study published in the journal Nature in early December, 2009.The flies showed a primitive emotion-like behavior. Prompted by a series of brisk air puffs delivered in rapid succession, the flies ran around their test chambers in a frantic manner, and kept it up for several minutes. Even after the flies had calmed down, they remained hypersensitive to a single air puff.The research showed that Drosophila produces a pheromone--a chemical messenger--that promotes aggression, and directly linked it to specific neurons in the fly's antenna. Anderson and his colleagues believe that the findings ultimately may be relevant to the relationship between the neurotransmitter dopamine and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.The brain of Drosophila contains about 20,000 neurons, and has long been considered a valuable system with which to study the genetic basis of learning, courtship, memory and circadian rhythms.In recent years, Drosophila research has also been a powerful tool with which to study emotions. Most of the genes in the fruit fly are also in humans, including neurons that produce brain chemicals associated with several psychiatric disorders.For example, in an earlier study, the researchers demonstrated how Drosophila hunkers down and stops moving in response to a steady wind--a sensory tool that could improve how the insects navigate during flight, and could help scientists learn more about the nervous system.Anderson came to this field of research after amassing an impressive record studying the developmental biology of neural stem cells in mice. He decided he wanted to try something new. Switching scientific directions mid-career is always risky, it takes courage and a willingness to fail, but Anderson was game."The change in field happened slowly, in two stages," he said. "First, we began studying neural circuits underlying emotional behavior in mice, because that's the organism we had used for our developmental studies. It started with a focus on fear. But I'd been talking to Seymour Benzer--my colleague at Caltech and the father of Drosophila behavioral genetics--for years about whether one could study fear in flies, and he had always encouraged me to look for it."When it became clear that the mouse studies were going to take longer than he had expected--the tools he needed were not yet well-developed--Anderson decided to turn his attention to the flies."In addition, I'd had this idea that you could screen large numbers of flies to find neurons involved in specific behaviors, just like people had been screening flies to find genes involved in specific behaviors, and wanted to give the approach a try," he said. "At the time, it was a relatively novel idea. Now, seven years later, everybody is doing it."The work started in earnest around 2002, when Greg Suh, a postdoctoral fellow with a strong background in fly genetics, joined Anderson's lab. Soon after Suh's arrival, he, Anderson, and Anderson's colleague, Seymour Benzer, began working together on the study of the Drosophila nervous system. The productive collaboration continued until 2007."Surprisingly, it seemed relatively easy to start working on flies after having overcome the activation energy barrier to switch from development to behavior," he said. By contrast, when I was working on development, I was always thinking about switching to flies, but too intimidated by the change to take the risk. I guess when you set yourself up for a big risk--changing fields--smaller risks, like changing to a new model organism, seem less intimidating."Anderson, 53, was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in northern New Jersey with a father who was a physicist and a mother who had taught Spanish and Portuguese. He became interested in science as a result of spending his childhood and adolescent summers at Woods Hole, Mass., where his father had been working since the early 1950s at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and where his parents had built a small house."In Woods Hole, they had science school for little kids, ages six to 14,'' he said. "You took classes like 'ichthyology' or 'seashore life,' and went on a lot of field trips collecting animals from the seashore and bringing them back to put them in aquaria and watch them. So that was fun."His playmates were the children of biologists working at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), another oceanographic institute, and his next-door neighbor, Philip Grant ,was a well-known developmental biologist, who encouraged Anderson's interest in science. "I consider him sort of my 'biology father,' as opposed to my 'biological father,'" Anderson said.Once he became too old for the science school, Grant and another scientist helped Anderson get a job washing test tubes at MBL. "Even though it was scut-work, that job really made me feel like I got my foot in the door," he said. From the outside, the MBL seemed very closed and nepotistic: the only other kids who had summer jobs in the labs were the children of biologists who worked there. So for me, the son of a physicist who had nothing to do with the MBL, to get a job there was a big deal.""In some ways, I always felt like a bit of an outsider in the Woods Hole summer community because my family wasn't an 'MBL' family," he adds. "Maybe that was one of the things that motivated me to succeed in biology. I thought, 'I'll go out and show them that I can become just as good a biologist as they are.' So I did. Here's the irony: virtually none of the kids I knew in Woods Hole whose parents were biologists went into science, or if they did, they didn't stay in science."Anderson went on to earn his bachelor's degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard and his doctorate in cell biology from Rockefeller University, and he has been at Caltech since 1989, now happily married and the proud "surrogate" father of two cats.He first became interested in how animals use chemical signals to communicate while an undergraduate, but was sidetracked by a course in cell biology during his freshman year, and so impressed with the professor that he asked for a lab job.Yet, it was his postdoctoral advisor and career mentor, Richard Axel (winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), who shaped his scientific approach. While a fellow in Axel's Columbia University lab nearly 30 years ago, Anderson began studying the developing nervous system and its relationship to molecular biology."I justified it to myself by saying that if I was interested in chemical communication between animals, I needed to learn about the receptors for the signals that they use to communicate," he said. "But it was just a contrived rationale."The reality? Anderson was waylaid by a different type of science that he found more interesting at the time. "Somehow this keeps on happening to me," he says.By Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation---Image Caption: Image of lunge and wing-threat behavior between a pair of male fruit flies. Both lunges and wing threats are characteristic aggressive behavior. Credit: Eric Hoopfer, Caltech
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Jan 2010 | 6:29 am

ANF To Host Annual Budget Request Rollout Feb. 1

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will hold a budget request briefing from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET on February 1, 2010, at its headquarters at 4201 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, Va.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Jan 2010 | 6:22 am

Obama Orders Greenhouse Gas Reduction By 2020

President Barack Obama on Friday ordered the federal government to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2020.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Jan 2010 | 5:50 am

Patent Troll Sues Apple Over Wireless Messaging Technology

Intellect Wireless, a tiny company based in Reston, VA has filed suit against Apple over mobile picture/video messaging technology it claims to have successfully patented years ago.

The patent infringement suit was filed on 28 January in Illinois Northern District Court.

The complaint states that Apple infringed on the company’s patents when it provided wireless portable communication devices (you know, like the iPhone) that “receive and display caller ID information, non-facsimile pictures, video messages and/or Multimedia Messaging Services.”

It was easy to retrieve court documents showing Intellect Wireless is seeking about $10 million in damages from Apple for allegedly infringing on its patent, but it sure was a whole lot harder to track down what this company has effectively produced with the technology it claims to have enriched the planet with. In other words: it’s a non-practicing entity, aka patent troll, hard at work in this case.

And judging from this article on the General Patent Corporation blog, Intellect Wireless is a feisty one at that.

To learn more about the technology Wireless Intellect has invented, try making sense of this magnificent slide deck from self-proclaimed inventor Daniel A. Henderson, the man behind the company.

This isn’t exactly the first time Intellect Wireless has turned to courts over alleged patent infringement: the company sued T-Mobile USA, Virgin Mobile USA, Helio and U.S. Cellular Corp back in February 2008, Motorola, LG Electronics and Sanyo Electric in March 2008, Samsung Electronics in October 2008 and HTC in May 2009.

Ugh.

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Jan 2010 | 5:48 am

Cell Phone Laws Have No Impact On Accidents

As state legislators across the United States enact laws banning cellphone use while driving, a new Highway Loss Data Institute study finds no reductions in crashes after hand-held phone bans take effect.Released on Friday, the study reviewed insurance claims from crashes before and after these bans took effect in California, New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.The study concluded that accident rates did not drop after the laws were set in motion.Adrian Lund wrote, "The laws aren't reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced hand-held phone use, and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk.""If crash risk increases with phone use and fewer drivers use phones where it's illegal to do so, we would expect to see a decrease in crashes.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 30 Jan 2010 | 5:15 am

Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts by guest writer Ashkan Karbasfrooshan. Previously, he wrote about the State of Online Video, and 12 Surprising Things Holding Back Online Video Advertising.  In part 3 today, he examines how videos are found and consumed online. Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo , a producer of premium, informative and entertaining video content. The company’s catalog of 5,000 videos has generated over 110 million streams since 2006.

To try to understand—let alone guess—the future of video advertising, one needs to start by looking at the biggest trend in media over the past few decades.  In November 2006, Bear Stearns Cable and Satellite analyst Spencer Wang published a study called “Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment”.  While Bear Stearns has since been acquired by JP Morgan and is now a mere footnote in business books, the study’s findings are more relevant than ever.  Let’s examine 8 key factors behind online video consumption

Factor 1: Media is Fragmenting

According to a recent NY Times article, in the 1952-53 season, more than 30% of American households watched NBC during prime time, according to Nielsen.  In fact, up until twenty years ago, you could buy a 30-second spot on CBS, NBC or ABC and reach “everyone.”  Today, NBC’s prime time reach is 5%.  Sure, NBC is lagging CBS and ABC, but neither the Tiffany network nor Disney’s counterpart is faring much better.  The secret’s out: fewer people watch TV and teenagers spend every waking minute connected to the Internet, increasingly through the mobile web.

Factor 2: Deportalization is Here to Stay

As the media world becomes fragmented and consumers move online, the Web is following a similar path, known as deportalization: the move away from the dominant portals of old, as social networks gain huge followings and vertical niche sites gain smaller, but more loyal, followings.

Ten years ago, you could buy a banner on MSN, AOL or Yahoo and reach “everyone” on the Web.  Five years ago, you could get the same result by buying a text link through AdWords and reach consumers who were either searching directly on Google.com, or surfing on the countless number of websites that were part of Google’s publisher network through AdSense.

Suffice to say, times have changed.  In fact, less and less often do consumers even seek out content  by actually going to a given site.  To paraphrase Jeff Jarvis, if something is important, it will find me, be it via newsletter, Facebook, Twitter or a shared link in an email.  In fact, Facebook might very well be the last giant Web property and when it launched Facebook Connect, it too began to extend its tentacles across the Web.  Twitter’s growth has maintained thanks to its off-site (API) growth, while YouTube exploded due to its open embeddable nature from the get-go.

However, after YouTube sold to Google for $1.65 billion and the site’s aggregate traffic soared, some video producers tried to find a way to generate an audience—and revenues—outside of YouTube in order to build a legitimate business.  In other words, media is becoming fragmented, the Web is becoming deportalized, and the front line of it all is online video.

Factor 3: Content is Not a Zero-Sum Game

If we return for a second to television, it’s worth noting that with the advent of cable television, as the number of channels rose, so did overall content consumption.

Analogously, as the number of content producers and distribution points increases online, consumption increases exponentially.  For proof, look no further than the recent comScore figures touting over 31 billion videos were viewed in November 2009.

Factor 4: Content is King?

Indeed, to paraphrase Viacom’s Chairman Sumner Redstone: content becomes more important than distribution mechanisms; as new channels of distribution creep up, it is the content that is always going to be necessary, hence the adage “content is king”.  If you fast forward to 2010, it’s true that with all of these social media aggregation and distribution tools, you are seeing media rise to the surface.  No one, after all, cares about the pipes; it’s what flows through the pipes that matters.  The context—Facebook, Twitter, email—in which people are introduced to media and consume it is becoming more important than the content itself.  Content is no longer king, context is.

Factor 5: Demand for Content is Elastic, Supply of Funds is Not

The problem, as you can imagine, is that while it’s perfectly plausible for global advertising to grow, it will not grow fast enough to feed all of the mouths at the creative table.  As “consumer touch points” increase, the number of people that each piece of content reaches becomes smaller at the time of publishing/broadcast but can grow over time.  That’s the theory, anyway.

This is a double-whammy trend.  It is negative because the audience for something (and corresponding revenue) will be less than what the most popular event on television will be, which partially explains the cachet television still has over its online brethren.

But it is also a positive trend in that as a content owner you will be able to derive more revenue over the course of the content’s shelf life.  Don’t get me wrong, syndication on television is an enormous revenue stream, but that is not an option for all programming, whereas online, technically, anything has both a shot at building an audience and having some kind of residual revenue stream.  The problem is that there is no vetting process per se online so the lowest common denominator can be zero.

Factor 6: Chasing Hits Has Proven Futile

Ultimately, overall consumption of media will increase but hits become less frequent and each hit will become more niche.  The stats support this hypothesis, despite YouTube’s aggregate size and macro-level success, each clip’s average viewership shows that regardless of whether the video is user-generated, premium or super-premium (for a definition of the differences click here), on average:

• It will garner 500 views over time
• 25% of those views will come in the first four days and
• by and large, only the first 30 to 60 seconds will be watched.

How can you build a business on that?

Factor 7: Discovery vs. Recovery

Exasperating matters is how content is actually unearthed.  To borrow from John Battelle’s breakdown of search: videos are found via recovery and discovery.

Statistics show that:

• 45% of views come from direct navigation where a user goes to YouTube and searches to “recover” something they have already seen or are actively looking for.  Of course, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and most of those searches are now conducted on YouTube.com, which reinforces the argument that YouTube is now the best Internet M&A of all time.
• The other 55% of the time, users stumble upon a video and “discover” it.  That is right, over half of the time, users land on something randomly.

In other words, while traditional media views the web as a place where pirates turn to to rip off their copyright, the truth is, only half of all of the content consumed is actually searched for, the other half is stumbled upon, meaning you actually have to distribute it widely enough to increase the likelihood that people even notice it, let alone give a damn!

This is why you need both lots of content and a diversity of it.  Indeed, Time.com former Managing Editor Josh Tyrangiel admitted that “long form journalism, a staple of magazines like Time, is not working” online.  The same applies to long form video online, and by extension, on mobile.

Factor 8: Size Matters

So what works?  To gain more insight into that (and to avoid an overly biased outlook), I reached out to Dina Kaplan, who is the COO of blip.tv.  (We use blip.tv’s video player on our web property).  According to Kaplan, a Pyramid of Content is emerging on the Web.

I tend to agree.  Back in February 2007, I wrote an article called “The Commoditization of Distribution and the Scalability of Content”.  In it, I alluded to a rudimentary pyramid with super premium on top, premium in the middle and UGC at the bottom:

It’s certainly not rocket science, and Kaplan and I are not alone in having that view.  She continues: “Hulu is the best-known platform sitting at the top of the pyramid, in terms of hosting and distributing network content.  YouTube, which has long been known for hosting great viral and one-off videos, has owned the bottom of the pyramid.”

The question remains: who will own the middle.  A couple of years ago, YouTube made a move towards “torso content”.  Kaplan’s blip.tv is obviously making a play for the middle, “blip.tv [wants to own] the middle of the content pyramid: the best original shows produced for the Web.  These shows are produced by talented individuals and production companies who are building up loyal audiences for their shows, just as the producers of a traditional TV show would.”

With things like Apple launching the iPad and IPTV gathering steam, Kaplan is confident that “shows will move around from screen to screen and you’ll choose to watch content on whatever screen is most convenient for you at that moment.”

Of course, with Boxee’s struggles to get traditional media on-board, one wonders if new media producers have a golden opportunity to win traditional ad dollars, which dwarf new media dollars by a wide margin.  For all the talk and excitement about online advertising and online video advertising, TV advertising in the US remains a $75 billion industry.

When you realize the dichotomy between the existing business that is Television and the potential that might be Online Video, you realize why the stakes are so high.  Come back next week when we update our Pyramid of Content to reflect the reality of 2010 and look at how videos will be monetized online.  Also read:

Part 1: State of Online Video

Part 2: 12 Surprising Things Holding Back Online Video Advertising

Next Week – Part 4: How Will Videos Be Monetized

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Jan 2010 | 5:00 am

Experts Hope Project Will Identify Mona Lisa

Italian scientists are seeking permission from French authorities to exhume the body of Leonardo da Vinci in order to conduct carbon and DNA testing they hope will solve many of the mysteries about the famous artist, the Associated Press reported Friday.Should da Vinci’s skull be found intact, the scientists believe they can answer a question that has long fascinated scholars and the public alike: the identity of the "Mona Lisa”, and whether or not it was a self-portrait in disguise.The researchers aim to recreate a virtual and then physical version of Leonardo's face, and compare it with the face in the painting, said those involved in the project."We don't know what we'll find if the tomb is opened, we could even just find grains and dust," said Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist who is participating in the project, during an interview with the AP."But if the remains are well kept, they are a biological archive that registers events in a person's life, and sometimes in their death."Silvano Vinceti, the project’s leader, told the AP that he plans to push the matter next week with French officials in charge of the purported burial site at Amboise Castle.But any optimism about the prospects of French approval may be premature.Exhumation is a lengthy legal procedure in France, and would likely take even longer when it involves someone such as Leonardo.Jean-Louis Sureau, director of the castle located in France's Loire Valley, said that a commission of experts is established upon receiving a formal request.  The matter would then be reviewed with the French Ministry of Culture, he told the AP.Leonardo moved to France at the behest of King Francis I, who dubbed him "first painter to the king."  He spent the final three years of his life there, before dying in Cloux in 1519 at the age of 67.Leonardo was originally buried at the palace church of Saint Florentine, which was later destroyed during the French Revolution.   Some believe his remains were ultimately reburied in the Saint-Hubert Chapel, where a tombstone reading "Leonardo da Vinci" is accompanied by a notice informing visitors they are viewing the presumed remains of the artist."The Amboise tomb is a symbolic tomb; it's a big question mark," Alessandro Vezzosi, director of a museum dedicated to Leonardo in Vinci, told the AP.Vezzosi, who is not involved in the current project, said examining the tomb could also help identify the artist's bones with certainty, and answer other questions such as the cause of his death.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Jan 2010 | 4:50 am

Weekend Update 01.30.10–The Padophile Edition [Digital Daily]

Okay, so maybe that headline was a bad joke, but plenty have been made at the expense of the name of Apple’s newest wunder-device. Maybe people are jealous. Maybe it’s too sexy. Maybe it’s too useful. And maybe they needed more women on the branding team.

Whats not to love? By weight the iPad should be exactly five times as awesome as the iPhone.

What Weekend Update is certain about, though, is that the most amazing feature of the new iPad has not even been covered by the media. Based on careful study, Weekend Update’s scientists have concluded that the iPad has nearly infinite “media mass.” When tech journalists and bloggers reached the Apple (AAPL) “event horizon,” which was mysteriously located at the doors of Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, their blogs and media outlets were unable to escape the iPad’s gravity, and the Internet seemed doomed to receive post after post from inside the Apple singularity forever. I mean, this post is no exception. So today’s Weekend Update will be filed from inside the Apple black hole. It’s soft, dark and welcoming here—like living inside a fresh new turtleneck. At least we’ve got Wi-Fi.

Kara was the woman to watch at the iPadapalooza this week, as she was testing the waters at her first Apple unveiling. Oh, and one more thing…she brought the Flip cam. Kara conveniently cut together all the highlights of the exchange between Steve Jobs and our very own magical Mr. Mossberg. prior to releasing the full, “just hot enough for BoomTown” version of her video, she filed a post warning Dell (DELL), HP (HP) and Lenovo that at $499, the iPad is coming for them. Kara also used her awesome editor power to issue a cautionary memo to Apple execs by dispatching yours truly, the trusty AllThingsD intern, to take the pulse of the academic heart of Silicon Valley–Stanford U. You get to watch me bounce from disappointment to existential dilemma to ultimate triumph when we finally locate some future iPad owners. There’s a moral in there for Mr. Jobs, though. See if you can tease it out.

Walt was in his element, and took his position as high priest of the geek-hood at the iPad launch. Always fastidious, Walt uncrated a Mossblog post so all could download his first impressions. While Walt was generally upbeat on the sleek new device, he drove home an important point: Jobs is out on a limb here. For the first time, he is trying to find success in popularizing a totally new type of device, not just raising the bar on an existing one. Walt’s question will definitely be one that the media discussion forward.

Every team needs a clutch player, the go-to guy when news is happening fast and it all has to get out there. John was our man, and he brought his A-game to the Apple event, dutifully liveblogging while our mediamaster, Adam, beamed back live pictures. From there, John wrote special posts about how Apple stuck with AT&T (T) as its carrier of choice, and how the company upped the ante on gestures for the multitouch interface. John rounded out his furious week of posts with a showcase slideshow of AllThingsD’s very own event photos. You’ll see Jobs, the iPad and even some exclusive shots from inside the experience area, where the media minds got to fondle the iPad first-hand.

Peter made the trip out west too, and his perspective couldn’t have been more important. If there was a takeaway from the event, it was that this device is all about the content that will run on it…even if all of that hasn’t been ironed out yet. Peter was the voice of reason, or rather, channeled the voice of Wall Street, which seemed to reserve judgment on the device until we all know more, like what it can actually do. Peter rounded out his iPad coverage with an interesting little nugget about AT&T’s win-win-win situation. The oft-scorned wireless carrier already provides the data connections for Sony (SNE) and Amazon’s (AMZN) e-readers, so win or lose for Apple, good ’ol AT&T is sitting pretty.

This whole iPad thing is a new phenomenon to physics, so there’s really no telling if we will ever get out of the iPad media black hole. Weekend Update is hoping that if all the techie journalists band together, we will find our way back into the light. Who knows? Maybe if we wait long enough, there will be an app for that too.

Source: All Things Digital | 30 Jan 2010 | 3:58 am

Owen Van Natta Talks About His First 8 Months Running MySpace (video)

I sat down with MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this week to talk about his first eight months on the job. This is one of Owen’s first video interviews since taking the job last April.

We talk about Van Natta’s vision for the once-mighty MySpace. The site was at one time the worlds largest social network and had more page views than any other U.S. website. But in the last couple of years it has been eclipsed by Facebook’s stunning growth.

Still, Van Natta and team have a plan. The MySpace of the future will be all about the social experience around content, and the company’s strong offerings in music and music videos through MySpace Music will be the cornerstone of that effort. From the interview:

I think we have a unique value proposition for consumers that is about being the place where people socialize around content, and by socialize, I mean the tag line of, you know, discover and share and showcase content. It’s where you learn about content both through your friends and, you know, sometimes it’s more important that the people that you don’t have any connections to in the real world. And one of the big differentiators for MySpace is the fact that we have an open social graph. People expect to connect to people they don’t have connection to in the real world but has similar interests with. And so, it’s a great way to do discovery. It’s a lot of the way discovery happens in the real world. And now the social web is just simply enabling that to happen more increasingly online.

Van Natta has made two acquisitions since joining, iLike and iMeem, both in the music space. And that iLike deal got MySpace Music onto Google search, driving a lot of traffic and attention to the service.

We discuss both acquisitions in the interview.

Van Natta also talks about MySpace revenue, particularly the soon to terminate Google search deal.

The full transcript is below (thanks to PhoneTag for the transcription). You can also watch Van Natta’s presentation at the event here.

Michael Arrington: I’m here with Owen Van Natta, the CEO of MySpace. Owen, you’ve been CEO for eight months now?.

Mr. OWEN VAN NATTA (CEO, MySpace): Eight months. About eight months now.

Michael Arrington: We’re sitting down at the luxurious Club Hotel in Davos, Switzerland. You’re at the World Economic Forum. This has become a bit of a tradition for me to interview CEOs here. This is the internet ghetto. This is where they put all the internet CEOs. It’s not like the best hotel in the world. As you found out, there’s no shampoo.

Mr. VAN NATTA: (laughs) No shampoo. And they’ve got beds in the closets.

Michael Arrington: Murphy beds. Yes.

Mr. VAN NATTA: But they also have a great sound track here, so you could hear it matches the decor. It’s very ’70s, very (unintelligible).

Michael Arrington: So, I have a few minutes with you. What I want to start with is, tell me what MySpace is today.

Mr. VAN NATTA: MySpace is a place to share and it’s a place to discover, share and showcase content. That’s what people are doing on MySpace today and that’s what we’re focused on, continuing to provide to people.

Michael Arrington: So, over the last eight months, what have you fixed, what have you pushed forward on, what have you cut? What is your job there?

Mr. VAN NATTA: Well, we’ve – I’m very focused on being a user center’s company. And that means starting with the product, making sure that we have a product plan that matches the mission statement of discover, share and showcase content. We’re focused on the music category. We’re focused on film and television. We’re focused on games. That’s what people are engaged with today on the site. Once we – you start a product strategy, you need to make sure you have the right team. We’ve built a entirely new management team of MySpace. I’m really excited about some of the talent that we’ve brought on board. Now, it’s all starting to be built throughout the entire company, and obviously, you have to have a great technical platform in order to be able to compete in the internet space. And we’ve been doing a lot of work to position ourselves to deliver on the promise of our type of platform. You know, we’re doing a lot of things to improve the experience like decrease page download times and we’re starting to realize some of those games already. I’m excited about our progress so far.

Michael Arrington: Your engineers are mostly in L.A. and San Francisco, right? Or entirely in L.A. and San Francisco?

Mr. VAN NATTA: We actually have a large engineering group in – well, reasonably large engineering group in Seattle.

Michael Arrington: OK. And have you hired a lot of engineers since you’ve come on board? Or has it been mostly keeping the ones that you like or how – what has that been like?

Mr. VAN NATTA: No, we’re constantly bringing new engineering talent at all levels of the organization. We have a new CTO, got an Alex Maghen who has a great background dealing with large scale systems. And I think we have a lot of great news to come in terms of tech (unintelligible) coming in. It’s a big area of focus for us.

Michael Arrington: Before you came on board – in fact, I talked to DeWolfe, your predecessor, here a year ago, and there was a lot of focus on the past before you and your team joined about competition, and particularly Facebook, and how you stacked up against Facebook at different times. I haven’t heard a lot of that from the team, not a lot of focus on the competition, more about what you are and what you’re doing to push forward. In fact, you’ve integrated with, I think, Twitter in some ways, right?

Mr. VAN NATTA: Yes.

Michael Arrington: You’ve done a small integration with Facebook Connect. Are we going to see more of that? How can you use some of the companies out there to make your product better?

Mr. VAN NATTA: Well, a big part of our strategy is to be – is to really embrace openness and let people engage with content where it is that they want to engage with it. So, you know, one of the things that we did early on was we acquired a company called I Like That. I know you’re aware of. It has a…

Michael Arrington: Yeah, just a month before they were integrated with Google Search.

Mr. VAN NATTA: That’s right.

Michael Arrington: Did you know about that when you bought them? Did you know that that deal is going to happen?

Mr. VAN NATTA: You know, those things are always in the works but it wasn’t a done deal. But you know…

Michael Arrington: The timing sort of worked out well, looked like you got a really good deal on that company as well.

Mr. VAN NATTA: Well, I think, you know, the timing of the Google partnership is one that we’re excited about. You know, we’ve even extended, so since then, we announced that we’re going to be part of their real time search initiative and, you know, we’re excited to see what type of collaboration that brings as well.

Michael Arrington: Well, since we’re on the topic of Google, I’ll jump ahead. You have a search deal with them that signed a couple of years ago before you joined, and in, I think, June of next year – middle of next year, the end of your fiscal year next year, it ends, at least the last for a public statement on that. Are you renegotiating that or you think you’re working with another partner? It’s nearly $900 million deal over three years. It’s a substantial amount of revenue. Where do you stand with that?
Mr. VAN NATTA: All those types of partnerships always need to evolve. You know, we’ve continued to evolve the business and building that in a way where we just – we don’t have any dependency on – we don’t have dependency on any one revenue stream. We’re always open to new partnership. We’ll continue to extend our partnership with Google in the areas of music search as well as real time search(ph). So, you know, that continues to be a great relationship that we’re excited about. And we’re going to be looking at lots of different options as we go forward. We’re really pushing on innovation. You know, we’re really in the midst of remaking MySpace into the place where you discover, share and showcase content and partnerships are going to be a big part of that.

Michael Arrington: If you talk about content, and this has been something you and your team is – have talked about almost since day one. Obviously, you have the music property with is great. It’s been around since over a year now. You guys do a lot with trailers. I see trailers all the time. You have lots of video content on the site. Is that what we should be thinking of? Or you’re thinking of more of like a Hulu type of thing or are you actually pulling an actual TV content, like what do you mean by content? And there are games as well. Are these games that you’ll publish? Will you acquire companies? Will you pull in more third party Flash games? Is there a way we should – as a press, should be thinking about what you mean by content?

Mr. VAN NATTA: On the Music Space, having the relationships that we do and the joint venture we do with the major record labels, the publisher, all the independent record labels, give us the ability to have a music experience that really is unparalleled.

Michael Arrington: Music videos, music streaming…

Mr. VAN NATTA: All of it in one location and very, very social which we think is really the foundation for discovering (unintelligible).

Michael Arrington: What about mobile? We see a mobile music initiative at some point?

Mr. VAN NATTA: We continue to look at mobile. It’s a big part of the way that people are interacting with the site today. We got a tonic(ph) growth in mobile, and it’s a big area of focus for us, and I’m really hopeful that we’re going to continue to evolve and innovate and that’s (unintelligible)…

Michael Arrington: And maybe see streaming music and that kind of thing in the future.

Mr. VAN NATTA: I think all those things are the things that users are increasingly wanting and we want to serve those user needs, especially as it relates to discovery around music because that’s one of the underserved areas in the market that we’re uniquely positioned to deliver for consumers.

Michael Arrington: What about TV and films? I mean, actual films and things like that. Is that something that you think YouTube and Hulu will dominate or is that a place that you’ll play or do you know yet?

Mr. VAN NATTA: We consider YouTube and Hulu to be partners today and we have their content integrated all throughout the site. We have over 400 partnerships with different content producers and content creators. That’s going to continue to be an area of focus for us. We host our own music videos, that was something we launched, as you know, last year. So, those models will continue to evolve but it’s really going to be about partnership. We’re building a platform where we want users to come and engage with that content in a highly social environment and that’s going to continue to be our focus in terms of providing great user experience.

Michael Arrington: OK. Do you think – and I know this is a question you’ve been asked many times. But, do you think we’ll see a for Facebook Connect integration? Is it something you’re still considering, something you’re deciding on?

Mr. VAN NATTA: We did a very small Facebook Connect…

Michael Arrington: The European site.

Mr. VAN NATTA: Out of our UK office. Again, I think embracing openness means looking at it everywhere. And, you know, we’re certainly looking at different ways that users want to be able to engage with the content and we’re pretty much open to figuring out the right way to make that available for users, where it is that they want it. 7.45

Michael Arrington: OK. MySpace has always been a bit behind maybe on design and technology. And not your team’s fault, but what are your plans to remedy that? Or do you disagree with this statement?

Mr. VAN NATTA: You know, I think usability and user experience and design are critical areas if you’re going to be a player in the consumer web. One of the first hires that we made was someone that had a user experience for (unintelligible) extensive experience, building great user experiences from some of the top sites out there. It’s something that…

Michael Arrington: Who was that?

Mr. VAN NATTA: That really focused on – she’s a woman named Katie Geminder.

Michael Arrington: OK.

Mr. VAN NATTA: She’s got experience at Amazon and Apple and Facebook.

Michael Arrington: Does she report to Jason?

Mr. VAN NATTA: She does.

Michael Arrington: OK.

Mr. VAN NATTA: She – and so, it’s an area – it’s a big area focused for us. It’s something that we’ve actually been staffing up quite a bit. We’re starting to build a really solid team there. We need to have a technical platform that really enables us to have a great user experience and we’re focused on building that out too.

Michael Arrington: How far away are you from that do you think?

Mr. VAN NATTA: You know, it’s an interactive(ph) process. It’s not something that you can do a big atomic launch around. We have a very large site with a large number of users and we really want to bring them along and have them show us through exactly how it is that they’re responding, give us a feedback exactly what the best user experience is. So, you’re going to see that continue to evolve. We’ve done a number of things in that space already where we (unintelligible) set a number of categories and number of areas on the site that we just didn’t think we’re adding value for users, that usually we’re showing through their actions weren’t the things that they were coming to MySpace to do, things like weather and jobs and classifieds, horoscopes. I know you found out that horoscopes are gone.

Michael Arrington: I was – that was a sad day.

Mr. VAN NATTA: But, you know, that’s something that we’re continuing to focus on and we want to be excellent in usability and design. We were building a really strong competence(ph) there.

Michael Arrington: You know, Facebook talks a lot about how they’re the pipes around social. You guys talk a lot about you’re the content. It seems to be that the one word you use a lot is content and social experience around content. Is that the right way to think about MySpace?

Mr. VAN NATTA: I think we have a unique value proposition for consumers that is about being the place where people socialize around content, and by socialize, I mean the tag line of, you know, discover and share and showcase content. It’s where you learn about content both through your friends and, you know, sometimes it’s more important that the people that you don’t have any connections to in the real world. And one of the big differentiators for MySpace is the fact that we have an open social graph. People expect to connect to people they don’t have connection to in the real world but has similar interests with. And so, it’s a great way to do discovery. It’s a lot of the way discovery happens in the real world. And now the social web is just simply enabling that to happen more increasingly online.

Michael Arrington: So, you were always a startup guy. I mean, even in Amazon, you broke out and started a line for them. You were with Facebook when they were a very small playlist. You’re now at a big company within a big company. Looking back over the last eight months, is the job what you thought it would be when you took it? Was it different than you thought it would be?

Mr. VAN NATTA: I think this is a unique situation. I certainly came in expecting that this is going to be a lot of work but what I am excited about everyday and what gets me fired up and my team fired up everyday is that we have an incredible asset base and we have a really strong user value proposition. It’s something that users are telling us every single day with their time that they really value highly. And as we continue to make improvements, we’re seeing increased engagement around the areas that we are focused on, the content areas that we just talked about. So, you know, look, building these companies is a huge challenge, but I love building teams, I love being part of a team, and I’m really excited about what we have in front of us and really also pleased with the progress we’ve made so far.

Michael Arrington: All right. Thanks very much. Oh, one other thing. You just hired a new chief revenue officer.

Mr. VAN NATTA: We did. Nada Stirratt.

Michael Arrington: Any shifts on your revenue strategy now based on that?

Mr. VAN NATTA: Well, one of the things that we’re seeing in terms of the market is, you know, the economic downturn, as I’ve talked with a lot of CEOs and marketers, you know, brand managers, I think the economic downturn caused a lot of these companies to really reevaluate their advertising strategy and what you increasingly see is more people’s time spent online but fewer brand always being able to be spent online. And one of the areas where I think we’ve been super innovative and where I think we have a strong competency is in the integrated marketing area, some of the things that we do with movie studios or on movie launches or record releases. You know, we released over 200 records in the last 12 months for bands, and really to promote those heavily to millions and millions of people in a very integrated way is super unique. When we talk to users about it, we look at users’ behavior, what we’re finding is they really view that content as valuable as they would view professionally produced content or content that isn’t necessarily advertising content. And, you know, that is what we think is the big opportunity that could bring a lot more brand always on to the web and that’s what we’re working on with our advertising partners on today. So, I’m excited about that. I think it is new in that as more brand always go online, people are going to want those types of experiences and I think we’re really continuing to lead the market in terms of that type of integrated marketing.

Michael Arrington: OK. Thanks very much for your time.

Mr. VAN NATTA: Yeah. Thanks a lot.

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Jan 2010 | 3:24 am

iPad v. A Rock

This speaks for itself. Thanks to Phil Santoro for creating it and sending it us (a play on the iphone v. rock joke).

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Jan 2010 | 2:49 am