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Peer Lending Site Lending Club Raises $24.5 Million Series C Round
This brings the total of capital injected into the company to $52.7 million. Lending Club says the additional funding will be used to further develop its platform, which brings together lenders and borrowers who want to cut out banks in the process of investing among peers. Lending Club says it will also use the extra money to launch new products, improve customer service and expand sales and marketing efforts. The company hasn’t had it easy over the past few years. In April 2008, it put a hold on lending activities because of regulatory issues, and ultimately filed for SEC registration during the summer of that year. Then, the economy collapsed and Lending Club along with other P2P lenders were heavily affected. One of its main rivals, Zopa, hightailed it out of the U.S. market not long after. According to a press release issued by the company earlier this morning, Lending Club has now managed to capture 79% of the US peer lending market in March 2010 with a whopping $8,664,750 (PDF) in monthly loan originations. Its biggest competitor is Prosper, which has also raised tens of millions of dollars. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Apr 2010 | 4:14 am InfoWorld review: BlackBerry Enterprise Server, express or deluxe? (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - For almost as long as BlackBerry smartphones have been the darlings of enterprise business users, RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) has been the preferred solution for managing these devices and for providing secure access to corporate email.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am Java developers OK with Oracle -- so far (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - In the two months since Oracle absorbed Java pioneer Sun Microsystems, Java developers are not losing sleep over how Oracle has been handling the Java technology franchise, although they have some concerns. Last week's resignation of Java creator James Gosling, and his comment that "just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good," resurfaced those fears.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am Rally adds Kanban tool to agile arsenal (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - Application lifecycle management software vendor Rally Software is announcing Wednesday that is has acquired AgileZen, which offers a visual project collaboration tool leveraging the "Lean" concept of Kanban.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am Joost Video Network Stuns With Big Reach: 67 Million Viewers Per Month
Straight out of left field, the Joost Video Network has assumed the number 2 spot in comScore’s Video Metrix “Top 100 Properties”, second only to Google. The Joost network, which is now operated by Adconion after the company’s acquisition of the ill-fated European startup’s assets back in November 2009, claims a reach of 67 million unique viewers per month. To put that in perspective: that’s approximately 38 percent of the total US Internet population who are consuming videos each month. According to Adconion’s press release, the Joost Video Network, which consists of hundreds of major video destination sites, showed an aggregate of over 100 million videos to consumers in February. Perusing through the current selection of channels on Joost.com, I’m fairly surprised that the network is drawing so many views, as it consists mainly of niche video destinations that I would estimate only a small number of people would be interested in. Apparently, at least according to comScore, the long tail in online video is really long.      
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Apr 2010 | 3:49 am Taxes and DeficitsUseful visualization from my busy friends at Tableau showing recent U.S. trends in tax rates, tax burdens and deficits. To crowd source this a little, if you could add to or enhance this visualization,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2010 | 3:22 am Tech Stocks Earnings Coming: Frothy Days Are Here Again? [BoomTown]
Earnings from a spate of top digital companies will be reported in the coming days, including for Google (April 15), Yahoo (April 20), Apple (April 20), eBay (April 21), Netflix (April 21), Amazon (April 22) and Microsoft (April 22). Most Wall Street analysts are expecting good news from the group as a whole, especially as the economy recovers. Bright points include the e-commerce and advertising markets, both of which have been rebounding. In addition, extensive cost cuts over the last year and easy year-over-year comparisons for most companies will also brighten the financial picture. That’s the hope at least, especially since tech stocks have been performing less robustly than the S&P of late. Of all the tech companies, analysts are most worried about Google (GOOG) over a variety of issues, which has been pushing its share price down. There are good reasons for long-term concern, despite expected strength in its core search business when the search giant reports tomorrow. But, from its battle with China to possible regulatory scrutiny from the federal government to its escalating fight with Apple (AAPL), Google is an ongoing digital soap opera. And while its Android mobile operating system is growing, there are still questions of when and if Google can make bank from the business. Yahoo (YHOO), the perennial weakling in recent quarters, is getting much better reviews, especially as the display ad market improves. Also a plus: Cost savings from its online ad and search partnership deal with Microsoft (MSFT). Yahoo’s stock has been rising of late, above its consistent $15 range, to above $18 yesterday. Crossing to a $20 a share price would be a significant Rubicon for Yahoo. Apple, though, seems to have remained an investor darling and it is expected to turn in another stellar quarter. Investors will be looking to hear if Apple will release actual iPad sales results, which some think the secretive company is lowballing. Also of interest will be sales of its powerhouse iPhone, as well as any more news on the new operating system for it. For eBay (EBAY), improvements in its main marketplace business, as well as continued strength in its PayPal division, will also be closely watched by investors. But continued pressure from a range of new and old competitors and eBay’s ability to respond and grow remain a worry. Netflix (NFLX), though, is only hindered by the bullishness around the stock already. Wall Street is expecting strong results from the online video rental company, especially as it continues to add subscribers and innovate its intense customer service focus. For Amazon (AMZN), the impact of the Apple iPad and e-book prices will likely get a lot of attention, even though it has a much larger business beyond its Kindle e-reader. The improvement in the e-commerce arena is likely to be a boon to Amazon. Last of all to report will be Microsoft, who earnings are more complex, given its many businesses. While the focus will be on sales of Windows 7, in the digital arena, analysts will likely be interested in the status of its Yahoo partnership, the gains in search share for Bing and what plans the software giant has related to the cloud-computing arena. Source: All Things Digital | 14 Apr 2010 | 3:21 am Robot From NASA and GM Heading to Space Station - New York Times (blog)
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 14 Apr 2010 | 3:02 am The Pirate Party of Canada Is Officialwasme writes "The Pirate Party of Canada has become the first Pirate Party outside of Europe to become an official political party. Elections Canada confirmed with the party that the PPCA has gained 'eligible for registration' status, and can run in elections starting June 14. From the PPCA's official announcement: 'We are pleased to announce that as of April 12, 2010, the Pirate Party of Canada is officially eligible for Party Status. After 10 months of dedication and hard work, we have reached eligible status, which only leaves a 60-day "purgatory" period. After that, we will field candidates in subsequent federal elections, and begin the real work of a political party.'"
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Source: Slashdot | 14 Apr 2010 | 2:53 am White House Moves to Placate Critics of its NASA Plan - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 14 Apr 2010 | 2:52 am 10 Smart Clothes You'll Be Wearing SoonIn the emerging Internet of Things, everyday objects are becoming networked. Clothing is no exception. It's still early days for Web-enabled clothes - the best example so far is the Nike+ running shoe,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2010 | 2:14 am Military asserts right to return cyber attacks (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Apr 2010 | 1:40 am Gears of War 3 Officially Confirmed For April 2011A few days after an untimely leak on Xbox Live, Epic Games has now officially announced Gears of War 3 for next April. Details are scant (though Edge speculates on possible new gameplay features), but it will contain 4-player co-op and be an Xbox 360 exclusive. A trailer was released for the game, and designer Cliff Bleszinski had this to say: "When we released Gears of War more than three years ago, we set out to tell the world an unforgettable story of bravery and sacrifice in the face of insurmountable odds, and a year from now, players will get the chance to experience the final chapter in the story of Marcus Fenix and his companions in Delta Squad. This is definitely the biggest and most dramatic chapter yet in the Gears of War saga, and we can't wait to deliver it."
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Source: Slashdot | 14 Apr 2010 | 1:34 am The Future Of Content: Protection Is In The Business Model -- Not In Technology [Voices]By Gerd Leonhard, Contributor, Tech Dirt If I received a dollar every time I get a question along the lines of “how can the content industries compete with FREE?” — I would be traveling first class everywhere I go. Underneath this question I often find my favorite toxic assumption: “less control over distribution means less money.” This belief is as tired as it is poisonous: enforcing control (when trust is really what’s needed) will yield instant disengagement, which swiftly and surely will translate into dwindling revenues — as the music industry keeps proving again and again. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Apr 2010 | 1:05 am Why Dave McClure Is Wrong About LBS [Voices]By Lawrence Coburn, Blogger, TheNextWeb.com Over the weekend, Silicon Valley investor / advisor Dave McClure wrote a thought provoking post about why check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla are doomed to stay in the tech ghetto until they find a way to offer meaningful financial rewards in exchange for people sharing their location. As evidence, he points to Foursquare’s relatively anemic growth compared to homerun services like Facebook and Twitter. McClure goes on to say that in order to reach scale, LBS services are going to have to buy users – he estimates it will take $100M+ to do so. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Apr 2010 | 1:04 am Eric Schmidt Is the Nicest Guy In Tech [Voices]By Farhad Manjoo, Technology Columnist, Slate.com On the last Friday in March, a Gizmodo reader snapped a photo of Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs huddled around a small table outside a cafe in Palo Alto, Calif. This was a surprise: Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) had once been Silicon Valley’s best pals, but over the last year their relationship had soured very publicly. Now the two CEOs looked to be stuck in some kind of awkward—and maybe staged—attempt to patch things up. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Apr 2010 | 1:03 am Who Should Buy Palm? Intel, of Course. [Voices]By Jason Perlow, Blogger, ZDnet, Tech Boiler My Editor-in-Chief and colleague Larry Dignan wrote a great synopsis this morning of the possible and most likely Palm buy-out suitors that could show their hands over the next few weeks and months. He cites a purchase of Palm (PALM) by HTC, RIM, Dell (DELL), Lenovo and the Chinese “Black Hole” as the most likely scenarios for the beleaguered and once great smartphone manufacturer. However, I’m going to add another possibility which seems to me not necessarily the most likely scenario but probably the “Best” one: Intel. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Apr 2010 | 1:02 am Do the Economics of Real-Time Search Ads Work Out? [Voices]By Kim-Mai Cutler, Reporter, Venture Beat Now that Twitter has revealed that its advertising strategy largely hinges on search, will its approach prove to be as much of a blockbuster as Google’s (GOOG) AdWords? The company, which long evaded questions about monetization, is pitching marketers with a variation on search ads. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Apr 2010 | 1:01 am Intel Numbers Raise A Question About the Netbook [Voices]By Don Clark, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Buried inside Intel’s (INTC) blowout numbers for the first quarter was a statistic that raised a question about one of the most talked-about tech products of the last three years. Could the netbook be running out of steam? The answer may not be simple. While Intel argues that netbooks are doing just fine, it’s possible that they could make even more money if they are wrong. To understand that paradox, recall a few attributes about this new computer category. These are small notebooks, typically priced at $350 or less, which are typically powered by a low-end Intel chip called Atom. Heavily promoted by PC makers like Asustek and Acer–and egged on by Intel–netbooks were a hot item even as the recession was at its peak. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am Datameer Raises $2.5 Million For Apache Hadoop-Based Analytics Platform Datameer, a startup that offers a big data analytics solution built on Apache Hadoop, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Redpoint Ventures. John Walecka, a partner of Redpoint Ventures, has joined Datameer’s Board of Directors.
Datameer is also publicly launching its Analytics Solution, which integrated the data mining power of Hadoop with a spreadsheet interface, enabling business users to run analytics against very large data sets, with no programming required. The product is designed to help users with little to computer engineering experience handle massive amounts of data. 
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Apr 2010 | 12:56 am The 8 best iPad apps -- so far - BusinessWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 14 Apr 2010 | 12:44 am Tuesday Machinima: Space Commando Coolness in Trailer for Arbit Delacroix's "Cargo" (Updated With Directors' Notes)Billed as the short trailer to a larger project called "Cargo", Arbit Delacroix's intriguing Second Life machinima features a man, a woman, and lots of bots looking Heavy Metal sexy in zero-G. Love the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2010 | 12:23 am Kevin Rose Says Digg Is Going To Launch Some “Crazy Sh*t.” We’re Not So Sure
So far Digg founder Kevin Rose has been pretty quiet about his new role as CEO of Digg. But he and cohost Alex Albrecht opened up a little on the most recent Diggnation podcast. iPads in hand, Kevin and Alex thanked outgoing CEO Jay Adelson for all his hard work, and then Rose said he’s “excited to make sure Digg will kick some ass” going forward. “There’s going to be some crazy shit to announce” over the next six months, he says, although the only product changes he talked about specifically were the killing off of the Diggbar, and he says he wants a Digg iPad application. Not exactly earth shattering stuff. He didn’t talk much about the new version of Digg, now massively behind schedule and getting more so every day. Please, Kevin, accept my invitation to sit down with us on video to talk about the future of Digg. It was just about a year ago that we talked about Digg’s serious plans to get back in the game. iPad apps are great, but there has to be more to the plan than that.      
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Apr 2010 | 12:18 am Speed Flying: Screaming Fast, Heart-Thumping, Deadly.Blend extreme skiing with skydiving, and what do you get? One of the craziest, most dangerous sports on the planet.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:50 pm Betaworks Really Is “Filling Holes”
OATV partner Bryce Roberts took the picture this morning while he was at Betaworks for a Bit.ly board meeting, and tweeted about it. “Yeah, I took that while I was in their office this morning for our bitly board meeting. Don’t make me regret posting it!” he said in an email. Too late for that. Funny enough, Bit.ly is one of the hole fillers that Wilson pointed out – a URL shortener. As are many other Betaworks investments like Tweetdeck and, probably, Tweetup. I say keep filling those holes, Betaworks. Your Summize hole-filler brought in a ton of Twitter stock, we heard. Maybe some of your newer investments will, too.      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:47 pm New Russian Science City Modeled On Silicon ValleyHugh Pickens writes "Russia's rich scientific traditions and poor record of converting ideas into marketable products are both undisputed, cited as causes for the Soviet collapse and crippling dependence on mining and petroleum. Now the NY Times reports that the Russian government, hoping to diversify its economy away from oil, is building the first new scientific city since the collapse of the Soviet Union modeled, improbably, on Silicon Valley and jokingly referred to as Cupertino-2. 'The whole country needs some sort of breakthrough,' says Viktor F. Vekselberg, the Russian business oligarch appointed co-director of the project. 'The founding of the innovation city, in form and substance, could be a launching pad for the country as a whole.' The new town is intended to advance five scientific priorities — communications, biomedicine, space, nuclear power, and energy conservation — and to encourage cross-fertilization among disciplines. Property will not be owned, but rented, and the government will offer grants for scientists who struggle to find private financing. Once developed, the city is intended to incubate scientific ideas using generous tax holidays and government grants until the start-ups can become profitable companies. Its backers in government and the private sector describe it as an effort to blend the Soviet tradition of forming scientific towns with Western models of encouraging technology ventures around universities. 'In California, the climate is beautiful and they don't have the ridiculous problems of Russia,' says Andrey Shtorkh, publicist for the new venture, adding that to compete, Russia will form a place apart for scientists. 'They should be isolated from our reality.'"
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Source: Slashdot | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:43 pm Darth Vader Japanese Desk Clock With What Has To Be The Smallest LCD Clock Ever CreatedBy Andrew Liszewski If someone had a gun pointed at my head, demanding to know the time, and the only methods I had at my disposal were reading it off this Darth Vader Japanese Desk Clock, or somehow gauging...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:02 pm Clever eCommerce Take TellApart Raises $4.75MThere is still a ton of innovation and dollars to be made in eCommerce. Given the opportunity there, we are often surprised to see so many startups focused on media, communications and advertising. Perhaps...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:01 pm Berkeley Varitronics Systems Bloodhound Cell Phone Detector 'Sniffs Out' Contraband Cell Phones in Maryland PrisonMETUCHEN, N.J., and LONDON, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Berkeley Varitronics Systems, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:00 pm Berkeley Varitronics Systems Bloodhound Cell Phone Detector 'Sniffs Out' Contraband Cell Phones in Maryland PrisonSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:00 pm Q1'10 Macronix Earnings ReleaseTAIPEI, Taiwan, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Macronix International Co., Ltd. (TSEC: 2337.TT), an independent designer, producer and provider of non-volatile memory and system logic solution, will hold its quarterly conference call to discuss the first-quarter financial results on Apr.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:50 pm Google in Unique Position to Deliver "iPad Killer" - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:23 pm Google in Unique Position to Deliver "iPad Killer" (PC World)PC World - Rumors are flying and speculation is intensifying that Google will join the tablet fray with some sort of Android or Chrome OS-based tablet device to compete with Apple's iPad. The rumors have existed since the official unveiling of the iPad, however the actual launch of the iPad has started them swirling again.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:22 pm Politics as UsualSource: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:16 pm Surprise in Intel 1Q: Corporate PC spending up (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:12 pm Jive Announces the Next Generation of Jive Market EngagementSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Park Place Technologies Appoints Judy Collister Vice President of Human ResourcesCLEVELAND, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Park Place Technologies, North America's premier provider of data center hardware maintenance, is pleased to announce the appointment of Judy Collister as its Vice President of Human Resources.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Jive Announces the Next Generation of Jive Market EngagementPORTLAND, Ore., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Company News Jive, the Social Business Software leader, today announced the next generation of the Jive Market Engagement solution.Jive Market Engagement now includes:Complete integration of Filtrbox technology, the powerful social media monitoring software Jive acquired earlier this year.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Park Place Technologies Appoints Judy Collister Vice President of Human ResourcesSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Twitter's One Real Problem. No Not Developers!In a few hours, Twitter will host its first developer conference, Chirp in San Francisco. There are many questions surrounding the company's attitudes towards its third party developers and who it might...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Alice on the iPad: Is This the Future of Books?The Alice in Wonderland app for the iPad, from iPhone developer Atomic Antelope, brings a whole new range of interactivity to the classic children's book. Readers can turn and move the iPad to help Alice...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Alice on the iPad: Is This the Future of Books?The Alice in Wonderland app for the iPad, from iPhone developer Atomic Antelope, brings a whole new range of interactivity to the classic children's book. Readers can turn and move the iPad to help Alice...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Top 10 YouTube Videos About TwitterOur choices for the 10 best Twitter Videos focus on not just number of views, but on videos that help explain how Twitter has changed our culture. From the most popular video about why a group of Teenage...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm April 14, 1996: JenniCam Starts LifecastingA college student starts webcasting her personal life, as viewed from a webcam in her dorm room. It's a sensation.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Is Twitter’s Ad Platform TweetUp’s Early Death Knell Or Starter’s Pistol?
For those that missed the news, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets allow advertisers to display tweets they’ve written in a more prominent position than they would normally receive. For starters, Twitter is showing them at the top of results pages for its real-time search engine, but in the future it intends to roll out Promoted Tweets to third-party Twitter clients and users’ Twitter streams. These Promoted Tweets look a lot like regular tweets, and users can engage with them as if they were ‘normal’. TweetUp has some major similarities — it also shows sponsored tweets based on search keywords. But Gross contends that there are some key differences. The Differences The biggest difference, Gross says, lies in the search results themselves. For a long time, Twitter’s search engine would only show results in reverse chronological order, with new tweets flowing in in the order they were created. This is great for keeping tabs on breaking news, but it also has a relevance problem — the best tweets get lost in the noise. Twitter recently made a major improvement by pinning up to three of the most popular tweets matching a given query to the top of results pages, with the real-time stream filling in below them. That’s a big step, but the focus is still largely on the most recent tweets as opposed to the most interesting ones. TweetUp, on the other hand, puts less focus on the most recent tweets and instead reorders the entire page of results based on relevance, using metrics like retweet frequency, popularity, and how popular links in each tweet are. The site also has an authority ranking for each user on each topic — if you’ve previously tweeted a lot about the iPad over an extended period of time, you’ll probably have a higher authority than someone who is mentioning it for the first time. Another difference Gross points out lies in how the sponsored tweets themselves are displayed: on Twitter, they’re at the top of the page (for now). On TweetUp, bidding on a sponsored tweet doesn’t guarantee that it will be the top result on a given page. Bidding does boost your authority on that topic and makes it much more likely that your tweet will appear in results, but if a well established expert in the field is tweeting about the same topic, their tweets might appear above your sponsored tweet. This is meant to help the results feel more organic, so that tweets don’t feel “forced” into your feed. Twitter’s official ad platform uses a metric called resonance to get rid of bad ads, but it doesn’t have an impact on the ad’s position onscreen (it’s either at the top of the page or it isn’t).
What Will Actually Matter Ultimately, I don’t think many of these differences will last for long if they are proven to be advantages for TweetUp. Twitter is almost certainly working to further improve its search results using relevance algorithms. Likewise, if Twitter sees that TweetUp’s self-service model is working well for a long tail of local businesses looking to run their own ads, then I can’t see a reason why it wouldn’t launch one itself. What will matter is how much distribution TweetUp can get in the next few months. Remember, Twitter is only offering its Promoted Tweets on its own site for now, which means that third-party Twitter clients (which many people use exclusively) are left to their own devices to integrate ads themselves. And TweetUp is making a very tempting proposition: it’s giving developers who integrate the service 50% of the ad revenue. Likewise, publishers can integrate a TweetUp widget that uses AdSense-like technology to display sponsored tweets relevant to the content on their site. TweetUp is also paying some developers up front to integrate the service. Its roster of partners already include Seesmic, Twitdroid (a popular Android client), twitterfeed and Answers.com. And, in a much-needed nugget of good news for TweetUp, Twitter COO Dick Costolo said earlier today that Twitter would not require developers to exclusively offer its Promoted Tweets, so TweetUp and Twitter’s own ads could potentially co-exist in third-party clients. That said, once this window of opportunity ends and Twitter does open Promoted Tweets to third parties, there won’t be much reason for a Twitter client to include both TweetUp and the official Twitter search unless TweetUp brings something extra to the table. Which means TweetUp will need to keep its own search engine significantly ahead of Twitter’s, and/or continue to tempt developers with revenue sharing agreements that are better than what Twitter offers. I still think the odds are stacked against TweetUp. But Gross is an industry veteran — he’s responsible for the search advertising model that turned Google into a giant (his own company, Overture, went public and was acquired by Yahoo for $1.6 billion). So while it’s never surprising when a startup executive claims that their company will survive apparently insurmountable odds, Gross may have what it takes to pull this off.      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:51 pm CBC totally fails to explain why it expects Canadians to get permission to use public media
This week's Search Engine podcast from TVOntario's Jesse Brown features an interview with the head spokesman for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, brought on to explain why the publicly funded broadcaster has signed on with iCopyright, an American licensing agency that aims to collect a monthly fee from any Canadian business that excerpts CBC media on its blog. Additionally, the CBC says that it requires anyone who wants to noncommercially excerpt the nation's public media for discussion, archiving, criticism, etc, must first get written permission from the Corporation (and be prepared to have permission rescinded at any time).
Suffice it to say, the CBC's spokesman does not cover himself in glory. He alternately claims that he must deny permission to Canadian bloggers because the CBC doesn't want to be inconsistent, then, in the next breath, says that the Corporation gives its media for free to YouTube even though it's not consistent, because they're still "feeling their way." And he doesn't even know that the CBC's partner is offering a $1,000,000 bounty for Canadians who rat each other out for using public media without permission. If I'd been in Jesse's shoes, I would have asked this: The CBC wants to act like a business instead of a public service entity, right? Well, in that case, why don't you act like a business: we, the taxpaying public, were the angel investors for the CBC for a century or so. If you want to bring in another investor at this stage -- a commercial partner to sell licenses for the media we financed -- why the hell should we accept having our equity diluted down to zero? Shouldn't we continue to get our annuity -- in the form of free access and use of the media we paid for -- before you start to deliver value to these late-stage investors? Podcast #36: The CBC's Antisocial Media Source: Boing Boing | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:47 pm John Scalzi is a FuzzyJohn Scalzi is a giant fan of H Beam Piper's classic science fiction novel Little Fuzzy (as am I -- it's the first sf novel I bought for myself, from the used shelf at Bakka Books in Toronto, on recommendation from the writer Tanya Huff, who was working behind the counter then!). Such a huge fan that he's written a novel in the Fuzzy universe. He could do this because Little Fuzzy is in the public domain, so he doesn't need to clear copyrights. But having written the book -- which is a loving tribute to Piper -- he decided to have his agent show it to the Piper family, who gave it their official blessing, making it part of the Fuzzy canon forever.Color me impressed. And jealous. But mostly impressed. Go, John, go! The Super Secret Thing That I Cannot Tell You About, Revealed: Introducing Fuzzy Nation
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:46 pm Hundreds Dead in China QuakeA magnitude 6.9 earthquake in northwestern China has left at least 300 people dead.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:46 pm Cat plays with iPad. That is all.
[via Doobybrain]
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:38 pm Power Beaming For UAVs and Space ElevatorsAn anonymous reader writes "The idea of power beaming — using lasers or microwaves to transmit usable energy over great distances — has been around for decades. But recent advances in cheaper, more energy-efficient diode lasers have made power beaming commercially viable. LaserMotive, based in Kent, WA, is best known for winning the Level 1 prize of the NASA Power Beaming Challenge at the Space Elevator Games last November. In a new interview with Xconomy, LaserMotive co-founder Tom Nugent, who previously worked on the 'photonic fence' mosquito-zapping project at Intellectual Ventures, talks about gearing up for Level 2 of the NASA competition, slated for later this year. What's more, LaserMotive is trying to build a real business around beaming power to unmanned aerial vehicles, remote sensors and military bases, and other locations where it's impractical to run a wire, change batteries, or truck in fuel. The ultimate goal is to beam large amounts of solar power to Earth."
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Source: Slashdot | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:32 pm HOWTO Dumpster-diveThinking about going digging for gold in the dumpsters around your town? Start with the FAQ at Dumpsterworld, the online community for skip-spelunkers:Welcome to DumpsterWorld. (via Beyond the Beyond!)
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Source: Boing Boing | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:28 pm Horrifying stationery Jacques Pense designed this award-winning stationery for 13th Street, the German horror network. It has given me a scorching case of stationery envy. If I got a letter on this stuff, I'd frame it and save it for my entire life. 13th Street "Stationery of Horror" (Design) on the Behance Network (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:22 pm Android 2.1 at Fault for Nexus One Screen Issues? Droid Owners Beware!
No doubt by now you’ve heard that the screen on Google’s Nexus One is apparently worse than the screen on Motorola’s Droid.
Source: MobileCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:22 pm Former Googlers Launch TellApart, Raise $4.75 Million From Greylock
Here’s how it works – ecommerce services share deep user data with TellApart, which then targets those consumers with advertising and other mechanism to get them to return to the site and buy more stuff. This includes targeting ads at those buyers when they are out surfing the web, identifying them via the cookie from the original ecommerce site. The company has been in trials with at least three ecommerce sites – Hay Needle, Ebags, Diapers.com – since late last year. They charge the sites only for a percentage of increased sales (basically an affiliate fee), and they say that the value a user brings to an ecommerce site through them is roughly 2x the original value of the customer. Revenue run rate is “in the seven figures” already, Greylock tells us. I sat down with the founders and Slavet earlier today to talk about the service and the funding. The video is below.      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:13 pm Svankmajer, Surrealism, and the Sex Pistols: John Cusack
Take his 1988 live-action/stop-motion animation retelling of Lewis Carrol's Alice, for instance. At the time of its release, the New York Times said his version "unearths the fears that animate dreams and nightmares." There's the crying scene: Alice's desperate clawing, her tears filling up the room, the mouse-man parting her long blonde hair to construct a little camp and a cooking fire right there on her scalp, a hearth on which to heat up his dinner.
ALICE (Neco z Alenky, 1988)
Source: Boing Boing | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:08 pm Box Harvests Water in the Driest PlacesBlood from a stone? Try growing crops in water-poor areas where unpredictable weather can wreak havoc. Happily for cash-strapped farmers, a prototype device is managing to coax agricultural miracles out of the desert. Ever since our elementary school class watched ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:05 pm D2S and JEOL Partner to Reduce Write Times for Advanced Photomask ProductionSAN JOSE, Calif., April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- D2S(TM), an emerging design and software company, today announced a partnership with fellow eBeam Initiative member JEOL Ltd.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:30 pm D2S and JEOL Partner to Reduce Write Times for Advanced Photomask ProductionSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:30 pm eBeam Initiative Members Publish Collaborative Results at Photomask Japan 2010Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:30 pm eBeam Initiative Members Publish Collaborative Results at Photomask Japan 2010SAN JOSE, Calif., April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The eBeam Initiative, a forum dedicated to the education and promotion of a new design-to-manufacturing approach known as design for e-beam (DFEB), today announced that several of its members will jointly present the latest breakthroughs in design-for-e-beam (DFEB) mask technology at Photomask Japan 2010--one of the world's premier symposia for advanced lithography mask technology.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:30 pm Australia's Wesfarmers says agrees coal pricesMELBOURNE, April 14 (Reuters) - Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers Ltd said on Wednesday it has agreed to new quarterly coal price contracts, including a 70 percent increase for most of its Curragh coking...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:27 pm NASA begins science flights with robotic jetOne of NASA's newest research jets soared high over the Pacific Ocean Tuesday on a 24-hour mission to study Earth's atmosphere. Its pilot remained seated in an office chair in a...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:19 pm Would a Lava Lamp work on Jupiter?Interesting question no? Would something so simple like a lava lamp work at the higher gravity found on Jupiter? The easy solution would have been to just do the research, crunch the numbers, and get an answer. This clever YouTube jockey decided to do it the hard way: he built his own centrifuge out of an Erector set (called Meccano in the the rest of the world). He even used an Android phone to calculate the amount of G force created by the machine. Plus, he used science!
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:00 pm Twitter unveils advertising modelSection: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking
So far Best Buy, Starbucks, and Virgin America are among the companies that have signed up for the program. It remains to be seen how users will react to seeing ads in their newsfeeds. If you use Twitter tell us how you feel about this new program! Read [NY Times] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:48 pm DIY headphone amp (only for accomplished hardware guys)
If you’re paranoid about having an exposed vacuum tube, see what you can find out about hacking some of the newer digital amps out there — I hear some are quite good and you could certainly cut and paste a few pieces and make one more portable and appropriate for headphone use. I mean, you could. I probably couldn’t. [via Make]
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:30 pm 3DS not just an updated DS or DSiFROM GAMERTELL - Nintendo has confirmed the 3DS is a whole new handheld, not just an updated DS or DSi. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:29 pm Obama Backtracks on NASA CapsuleAmid growing concern for the future of NASA's human spaceflight plans, the White House has announced a possible reprieve for the Constellation's Orion capsule.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:23 pm Something For (Almost) Every DeveloperFirst up, reader martinjlogan sends along a tutorial for setting up a workable Erlang/OTP development environment on a Mac. Next, reader acid06 notes news of Perl 5.12, including what may be the first delivered fix for the Y2K38 bug. (Hit the Read More link below for some details on Perl's new release strategy.) "After two years of development, the new major version of Perl is now available. Notable new features are: better Unicode support, proper support for time after the Y2038 barrier, new APIs to allow developers to extend Perl with 'pluggable' keywords and syntax, warnings for deprecated features and more. From the linked post: You can get it from the CPAN right now or wait for a platform-specific release (such as Strawberry Perl for Windows)." Finally, from reader snydeq: "InfoWorld's Martin Heller provides an in-depth review of Visual Studio 2010 and finds Microsoft taking several large steps away from its legacy IDE code. 'Visual Studio 2010 is a major upgrade in functionality and capability from its predecessor. Developers, architects, and testers will all find areas where the new version makes their jobs easier. Despite the higher pricing for this version, most serious Microsoft-oriented shops will upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 and never look back,' Heller writes. Chief among the improvements are Microsoft's revamping the core editing and designer views to use WPF, its overhaul of IntelliSense and support for test-driven development, and its intelligent support for multiple versions of the .Net Framework."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:22 pm To Steve Or Not To Steve?
The Steve Jobs school of management is back in vogue. According to the most recent surveys, the business person young people most admire is the 55 year-old Jobs, not the 25 year-old CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. The management advice venture capitalists are now offering entrepreneurs is to be like Steve. It hasn’t always been this way. When I was 26, the company I co-founded hired a very wise and gifted CEO, John Kunze, who cited the founder of Apple and NeXT in explaining how to become a better manager. “Steve Jobs,” John said, “insisted on picking the hardwood floors at NeXT headquarters.” I paused. “Was that good or bad?” “It was bad, Glenn,” John said. “How do you think that made NeXT’s floor-picker feel?” This was in 1998, when Jobs was a cautionary tale of an exiled founder. Since then, I’ve always viewed Jobs’s comeback through the floor-picker’s eyes.
Even as Apple has grown into a $200-billion-market-cap colossus and Jobs has delegated more responsibility, the company has in many ways become more narrowly defined by Jobs’s personality. There were 2,500 self-help books on entrepreneurialism published last year, but few account for the role of Jobsian mania in building a company. Business schools and conferences have institutionalized entrepreneurialism as an avocation like law or medicine when it is more often a streak of temperament, luck and inspiration. Far from a program taught by somebody else, entrepreneurialism has always been for me my only shot at being myself. Personality as Pressure But what if, as John rightly noted, being yourself means disregarding everybody else? Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin personally approved most of Google’s 20,000 hires, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg special-ordered insulting business cards, and Tesla’s Elon Musk announced his intentions to out-breed an entire planet of lesser beings. We treat this outrageousness as an idiosyncrasy or a side-effect when it actually feels to me like a company’s driving force. Nothing less can make the work of so many feel individual and authentic. At the company I now lead, Redfin, I drive myself nuts evaluating perfectly well-done projects wondering why each isn’t more Redfin, more wonderful. But what if my taste in wonderful isn’t actually wonderful? And is it even fair to ask for wonderful? What are the words you use to ask? One of my first bosses, the brilliant Kirill Sheynkman, knew how to ask. Whenever I tried to show him my work he’d hold up a hand and say: “WAIT… Is it sweet?” I still remember running out of time on a design, and just sending him what I had. When I walked into his office, he’d printed out the design and left it lying on an ominously clear desk. He sat at the desk, hands folded together. How long had he been there? His posture was magnificent.
“What is this?” he asked. “You mean it’s a little late?” “I mean what THE **** is this?” “And it’s kind of half-done?” “I mean WHAT?” Kirill said, with real emotion. It’s so hard to know which surrender to mediocrity will be your last. “And even if it was totally done it would just be really, really lame?” “I mean… YEAH,” Kirill said. The Company is the Ultimate Work of Art, Not the Product Kirill made me feel how he felt: that a startup can be almost as individual and coherent as a work of art, not simply in what it makes but in and of itself, how it runs, who it is. Take Zappos, one of 2009’s hottest companies. What sets Zappos apart isn’t its technology or business model—shoe e-commerce—but its culture. When I toured Zappos, it was like visiting a new planet: the visitor beside me was asked to ring a bell and share his most embarrassing memory; employees cheered as we walked by; I got photographed wearing a Burger-King-style crown. A company’s personality is the most profound innovation of a founder and her team, as ubiquitous, unnoticed and essential as air. It becomes a source of meaning for employees and consumers, and then it becomes a source of revenue. People don’t pay more for an iPhone based on features and facts. We pay for its strong opinions—about the primacy of beauty and simplicity—which connect with what we like best about ourselves. What this whole Astroturf-covered, media-drenched world is starved for is a little personality. This personality is so deeply embedded in a great company’s DNA that it can be found in its smallest fingernail clipping: Richard Branson’s bull-and-matador Virgin Air videos, the Flickr cofounders’ cheery “Mabuhay” greeting (“Now you know how to say hello in Tagalog”) or, more seriously, Google’s decision to abandon the world’s largest market—which could never have happened at a company not driven by its founders. We all applaud Google’s decision. But how many objections from reasonable people did Larry and Sergey squash to get their way? What most of us lack isn’t our own idea of right and wrong, but the conviction to see it through.
Glenn Kelman is the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate broker trying to change the real estate game in consumer’s favor. Previously, he, Kirill Sheynkman and Joe McVeigh co-founded Plumtree Software, which went public in 2002 and was later bought by Oracle. Elsewhere for TechCrunch, Glenn has written about second-time entrepreneurs, surviving a recession, what you learn raising money and how to divvy up stock. Photo credits: Steve Jobs by macevangelist on Flickr; Kirill Sheynkman by Kirill S. on Flickr Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:17 pm Family of grumpy girl claims store clerk injured her by scanning her headA store clerk is on trial right now for pointing a price scanner to a grumpy 12-year old girl's forehead. The girl's family claims the scan burned her, causing PTSD and Tourette's Syndrome.Source: Boing Boing | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:16 pm ClearOne Manufacturer Representative Firms Provided With NetStreams Commercial Product LineSALT LAKE CITY, April 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ClearOne (http://www.clearone.com) (Nasdaq: CLRO), the leading global provider of high performance audio conferencing solutions, announced their pro AV Manufacturer Reps will now add the NetStreams product portfolio to their line card.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:14 pm ClearOne Manufacturer Representative Firms Provided With NetStreams Commercial Product LineSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:14 pm Am I wicked because I don't go to church?I went to church with a friend this past Sunday. I'm not religious, but I find it enjoyable to occasionally sit in on religious rituals to learn about different people and cultures. This particular service consisted of lots of joyful singing and a teaching from the Bible. The pastor who led the teaching read the following passage from Psalm 1 and broke down its meaning:Blessed is the manIt means, he said, that if you want to be happy, you should surround yourself with people who are not wicked, sinners, or mockers. The company you keep is a direct reflection of what kind of life you will live. I thought it was a really nice message. He gave a few anecdotes to illustrate this idea. Then came the kicker: the wicked, he said, are those who don't believe in God, who don't come to church regularly, and who don't believe in God's word.
Is that really what this passage means? I would have interpreted it differently, but then again, maybe I just don't want to admit that I'm wicked. RPT-UPDATE 4-China to up fuel prices 4 pct, 1st hike since Nov* Rise to prompt refiners to continue high processing rateSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:01 pm Alex eReader shipping tomorrow
The Alex supports EPUB, PDF, HTML, and TXT, and is connected directly to Google’s ebook library. Retail is $399, and while the current version supports WiFi, a 3G and EVDO/CDMA version is expected later this year. From the press release:
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:00 pm iPad + Skype + retro handset = ridiculously fun mobile phone
My new mobile phone: iPad + Skype + Moshi Moshi 01H handset.
US WCoast Products-Region feels tighter supplyHOUSTON, April 13 (Reuters) - West Coast gasoline values rose on Tuesday with the Pacific Northwest market continuing to lead the region because of expectations of tighter supply, traders said.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:41 pm Sprint bungles site update and angers customersSection: Communications, Cellular Providers, Mobile
Customers attempting to access the site are greeted with a bright yellow hardhat and the words: Whoops. The site is down. To add insult to injury, the Facebook and iGoogle apps the company says customers can use to pay their bills and check their usage don’t work either. The botched site update is a black eye Sprint really doesn’t need right now. Read [Sprint.com on Twitter] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:31 pm Your next Chrysler may have some NASA DNA
These kind of crossover efforts usually are good, since you get a real mix of minds. At the risk of sounding corporate, it’s important to introduce diversity into your idea pool. At if you’ve all been working on the same stuff for 10 years with the same people, some stagnation might be expected. Hopefully, the 3-year agreement will be fruitful. I think I’ll put off buying Chryslers till it’s over, though. Who wouldn’t want shuttle tech in their car?
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:30 pm Kin sometimes out of the loop - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:30 pm Mathematician makes Mishima-inspired erotic filmBerkeley math professor Edward Frenkel collaborated with a French filmmaker to create an erotic short film called Rites d'Amour et de Maths; in it, a doomed mathematician discovers the formula for love and tattoos it on his lover's belly. It's an homage to Japanese writer Yukio Mishima's movie Yukoku and his subsequent seppuku suicide.Source: Boing Boing | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:26 pm Nintendo announces Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story DSi bundleFROM GAMERTELL - Nintendo’s announced a white DSi Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story bundle for Spring 2010. It’ll be in stores April 25, 2010 and cost $169.99. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:18 pm Seeing in a New Light (and Searching for Extraterrestrials) with LOFARA new radio telescope is under construction, consisting of 44 stations spread across Europe. Not only will LOFAR peer deep into the cosmos with unprecedented detail, it will also listen out for ET's transmissions.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:16 pm Companies Spar on What FCC Should Do Next on Net Neutrality [Voices]By Amy Schatz, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal High-tech companies and Internet providers launched a new round of rhetorical volleys Tuesday in the escalating battle over net neutrality, as both sides wait anxiously for a signal from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski about what he plans to do now. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled the agency overstepped while trying to enforce net-neutrality principles. The FCC chairman hasn’t said much yet about what he thinks the agency should do now, although his chief of staff, Edward Lazarus, told telecommunications lawyers at a luncheon last week that a decision would be reached shortly. Mr. Genachowski could have more to say on the issue Wednesday afternoon, when he’s scheduled to testify at a Senate hearing on the National Broadband Plan. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:10 pm Echofon is the Latest Twitter Application Developer to Join the 140 Proof Advertising NetworkSAN FRANCISCO, April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Echofon released version 1.0 of their Twitter app for the Mac today, which can be purchased for $20 or is available for free with ads by 140 Proof.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:00 pm Print: E.O. Wilson Takes Evolutionary Approach to the NovelThe naturalist, whose 22nd book — Anthill — is his first novel, talks to Wired about ants, evolution and the creative aspects of the scientific process.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:00 pm Twitter Ads Test Billion-Dollar ValuationTwitter launches its first ad campaign, which will test whether the site is actually worth the billions investors are betting it is -- or whether it's just another web publishing platform.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:00 pm Video Gallery: Stop-Motion Gems Amaze and DelightWe've gathered some excellent examples of stop-motion videos from bands, design students and toy enthusiasts. Let us know about your favorites.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:00 pm Arts: Self-Promote by Promoting Self-PromotersArtist Nic Rad created portraits of 99 bloggers and media personalities whose ideas were passed on to him for free. He's paying it forward, giving the portraits away for free at the end of his NY show.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:00 pm /C O R R E C T I O N -- Akamai Technologies, Inc./In the news release, Akamai HD Network Ecosystem Eases Complexity of Delivering High Quality Online Video, issued 12-Apr-2010 by Akamai Technologies, Inc. over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that "Inlet Technologies" has been added to the third paragraph.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:23 pm OffiSync Now Lets You Co-Author Files With Most Versions Of Microsoft Office (And Google Docs)
That’s a big deal, because Microsoft has been heavily promoting real-time collaboration as one of the key features of Office 2010. With OffiSync, you wouldn’t necessarily need 2010 — you’d be able to coauthor a document using Microsoft 2003 and 2007 as well, and you won’t need SharePoint, either. The application allows you to do Office-to-Office collaboration, and you can also have users editing the same document from Google Docs’ online interface. Changes aren’t synced as you type in each character, but rather each time you hit the ’save’ button. The new version of OffiSync adds support for the ‘any file upload‘ feature that Google Docs added in January. It also has better integration with Google Sites (it will automatically pull in your Google Sites file hierarchy within Office, and allows you to create a file on Sites from Office as well). While OffiSync offers a free version of its product, most of these new upgrades (including coauthoring) are for premium users only. Premium seats cost $12 a year, or there’s an option for a $30 one-time fee. And, sorry Mac users — OffiSync is still only available for Windows. OffiSync has been doing quite well lately — it’s currently the top rated app on the recently-launched Google Apps Marketplace, and has the third most installs on the Marketplace overall. CEO Oudi Antebi says that OffiSync now has over 300,000 users The company hasn’t disclosed its funding, but says that it closed a Series A round of over $1 million.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:17 pm DDO's Turbine Partners With Notorious SuperRewardsZarrot writes "In the next step for their Free 2 Play model, Turbine Entertainment, publisher of Dungeon and Dragons: Online, Lord of the Rings: Online and Asheron's Call, has partnered with notorious 'lead generation company' SuperRewards. Initial testing by forum users shows that just accessing the page without clicking on any offers sends the user's email and game login in clear text to SuperRewards. Reports of new spam and fresh malware infections on test systems are already being reported on the company's forums. Is the Zynga business model the future of internet gaming?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:16 pm Agilis International Receives Verizon Supplier Excellence AwardROCKVILLE, Md., April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Agilis International, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:16 pm Boom! The Sun Unleashes a Huge CMEThe sun erupted today, blasting a huge coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. This is the largest event of its kind since the sun's extended solar minimum.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:13 pm Apple updates the MacBook ProFROM APPLETELL - The online Apple Store has once again returned to its normal state, but with the addition of an updated range of MacBook Pro computers. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:07 pm Original "Alice" manuscript - none compares!
Amy Crehore points to the original Alice story. What could be more beautiful than the original manuscript? This is the original version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, the pen-name of Charles Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician. It is called "Alice's Adventures Underground" and it is a treasure of the British Library. The book is in their online gallery and you can look at each hand-written, hand-drawn page (all 91 pages).Original "Alice" Manuscript - None Compares! Source: Boing Boing | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:04 pm Last-minute tax preparation help (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - Havenât filed your taxes yet? You can still make the April 15 deadline with the help of any one of these programs. So gather your W-2s, receipts, and beverage of choice. There's no more denying that tax time has arrived.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:02 pm Retrode easily turns your SNES, Sega Genesis cartridges into ROMs
Let me set the scene; it’s very interesting. I’m sitting here listening to one of my many soccer podcasts (World Football Daily, for the curious), browsing YouTube like a complete dweeb. A couple of keystrokes later and I’m watching this video, wherein a fine upstanding gentleman by the nom de plume of Review Tech USA talks about the Retrode, a USB device that automatically turns your old SNES and Sega Genesis cartridges and turns them into emulator-friendly ROMs. Now, I don’t know where you come from, but in my neck of the woods, that’s a fine piece of kit. The device is dead simple: you plug your cartridge into the appropriate slot, then connect the device via USB to your PC or Mac. That’s it! Your operating system will treat the Retrode as a plain ol’ mass storage device, and then you can either directly play the ROM from the device, or drag the ROM to your big ROM folder. The device only works with SNES and Genesis cartridges, but it does look like work is being done on an N64 version—very handy for Dolphin, no? All the ROMs you want, none of the icky piracy feeling required. Lord knows I have boxes filled with old cartridges. And if you think I’m too cool to sit here all day and create ROMs out of my old cartridges, well, clearly you’re not a regular reader. Oh, price: the online ship Stone Age Gamer sells the Retrode here in the U.S., and it goes for $96.99. Seriously one of the neatest things I’ve seen in a long while. No, it’s not exactly “brand new,” but I’ve never seen it before, so hopefully it’s new to a few of you, too. How far we’ve come from the days of the Doctor V64 and Z64…
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:00 pm You want movies with that hard drive? (Christopher Null)Christopher Null - The days of buying a pristeen new hard drive with nothing but free space may be coming to an end. Seagate today has announced a plan to bundle motion pictures on new hard drives. "Some" of its 500GB FreeAgent hard drives will come preloaded with 20 recent films from Paramount. To watch them, the user will have to pay $9.99 each for the appropriate unlock code (though as part of the offering, the recent "Star Trek" feature will be unlockable for free).Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:57 pm Facebook tries to be proactive with new Safety Center - Ars Technica
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:47 pm Lost 1913 Lincoln Film Surfaces in BarnThe lone copy of a 30-minute silent film about the 16th president has surfaced in the unlikeliest of places.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:45 pm Twitter Grows Up, Adds "Promoted Tweets"CWmike writes "Twitter is finally taking off the training wheels and moving into the world where real businesses tread with the launch on Tuesday of its first advertising model, dubbed 'Promoted Tweets.' The microblogging phenom has long avoided coming up with a business plan or even talking about one. But the time has come for Twitter to figure out how to make money over the long haul. Analyst Dan Old isn't so sure that Twitter users will welcome the change. 'There will be a vocal minority of users who will hate any advertising at all,' Olds said. '[Many] users understand that it's necessary and will accept it as long as it doesn't interfere with their usage. But if the ads look like regular tweets, that could cause some serious outrage from users who feel that Twitter is attempting to deceive them.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:32 pm UK ISPs prepare for Digital Economy P2P fallout
The Digital Economy Act passed in the UK, as you know, and it’s pretty terrible. One of the more spicy sections of the law involved peer-to-peer use, and how it basically makes ISPs responsible for what their customers download. So if HBO finds that you’ve been download “The Pacific,” (really good show, by the way, much to my surprise) it can contact your ISP, who’s then responsible for telling you to knock if off. If not, you face a truly horrible punishment: you’re sent to Stoke! (That’s a joke, people!) Even though we’re a hot eight months away before the ISPs have to be ready, they’re all getting ready right now. The situation will work like this: 1. You download “The Pacific” That’s the gist of it. So there’s that, and the impending death of Usenet, and your days of downloading TV shows and movies illegally are coming to an end.
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:30 pm Scientists: Jealousy Can Truly Blind a PersonNEWARK, DEL. – Jealousy really is "blinding," according to a new study by two University of Delaware psychology professors. They found that women who were made to feel jealous were so distracted by unpleasant emotional images they became unable to spot targets they were trying to find.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:29 pm A Victory for the Sea Shepherd, and Whales?Japanese whalers are blaming activists for a paltry catch this year. Is the crew of the Sea Shepherd right to crow about their victory?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:23 pm Missing Genes Found With High-performance ComputersScientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) and the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech have used high-performance computing to locate small genes that have been missed by scientists in their quest to define the microbial DNA sequences of life.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:16 pm Twitter to Rival Ad Players: Tread Carefully [MediaMemo]
Twitter has started showing ads to its users. But Twitter is not the only one doing this–there’s a host of start-ups trying to insert ads into the Twitter stream, and more on the way. So here’s a question: Will Twitter force publishers and app developers to use its ad platform exclusively? No, says COO Dick Costolo. In theory, he says, it would be possible for someone like TweetDeck or Seesmic to use Twitter’s “sponsored tweets” offering along with something like 140 Proof, which also places ads, in the form of tweets, into users’ streams. After all, conventional Web publishers can use Google’s (GOOG) AdSense products and competing ad networks. Why shouldn’t the same thing work for Twitter? But Costolo also has a warning for anyone who does sell ads in the streams: Tread very, very carefully. Here’s an excerpt from an interview I conducted with him this afternoon.
That “user confusion” theme is a favorite at Twitter. It’s the same argument CEO Ev Williams used to explain the company’s thinking behind its purchase of Tweetie last week. Still, the Twitter ad platforms I’m familiar with–Ad.ly, 140 Proof, TweetUp, etc.–seem to comply with Costolo’s restrictions: All of them turn tweets into ads, but the tweet still functions as a tweet. The Twitter COO seems to have something or someone on his mind here, though. And when he goes on to explain what he doesn’t have a problem with–ad platforms that don’t sell in the stream at all–he seems to be sending a message: If you don’t want to worry about platform conflict, the best way to do that is to avoid doing what we do.
So make of this what you will. You can see our entire conversation below. Costolo also makes a brief version of the pitch he’s going to deliver to developers tomorrow at Twitter’s Chirp conference, and he and I go back and forth about Twitter’s intention to show ads outside of search results. [ See post to watch video ] Source: All Things Digital | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:12 pm Will Twitter Ads Tweak Tweeters? (PC World)PC World - Now that Twitter has begun to display ads--pardon me, Promoted Tweets--in users' search results, the big question is how millions of loyal Twitter fans will respond. Reaction on the micro-blogging site has been muted thus far--more questions than commentary, actually--and it's apparent that most users haven't seen the new ads yet.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:11 pm Nearly 800,000 U.S. TV households 'cut the cord,' report says (Ben Patterson)Ben Patterson - Make no mistake: The big cable, satellite, and telco carriers are still sitting pretty with more than 100 million TV subscribers. Nevertheless, a new report claims that more and more viewers are "cutting the cord" in favor of watching their favorite shows via over-the-air antennas (remember those?), Netflix, or the Web.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:07 pm Apple re-affirms its longstanding commitment to not being a gaming platform
Needless to say, Apple didn’t actually say any of that. I really just saw this article and thought, did anyone ever think Apple laptops, if any laptops at all, were competent gaming machines? No. I was hoping for a big boost, but my guess is that Apple is stalling out with the space and heat restrictions they’ve set for themselves with the unibody MacBook Pros. I mean, I have one and it’s great — for blogging. With Steam coming out for Mac, I was looking forward to doing a little gaming on a new machine next year… but no. Ah well.
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm Cyberwar Doomsayer Lands $34 Million in Cyberwar ContractsThe former Director of National Intelligence is gravely warning that the United States is losing a cyberwar. Oh, and his current company is landing the contracts to fight it.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm Antarctic Ice-Core Research Requires Logistical High-Wire ActThe infrastructure supporting science at the bottom of the world is no joke. Bad weather, tiny planes, hastily built geodesic domes and a hearty helping of fingers-crossed drama are all involved.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm Online Apple Store is down - new MacBook Pros?FROM APPLETELL - It’s a Tuesday morning and the online Apple Store is once again down. Last time this happened, it was nothing more than maintenance, but this time it looks to be updates to the MacBook Pro range. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:57 pm Spotlight on the MacBook Pro's Improved Graphics - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:54 pm Apple Lets Opera Browser Use Own Software on iPhone - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:49 pm First Pulitzer Awarded To an Online News SiteHugh Pickens writes "The Columbia Spectator reports that ProPublica, an independent, non-profit online newsroom, is the first online organization to win a Pulitzer Prize. Propublica reporter Sheri Fink won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for her story about the deadly choices faced at one New Orleans hospital in the days after Hurricane Katrina. The winning article was published in the New York Times Magazine and on ProPublica.org. Pulitzer Prize administrator Sig Gissler says that ProPublica's model represents a mode of journalism that will become increasingly influential, as fewer resources for investigative journalism remain available at the disposal of news outlets. In addition to ProPublica, another online entry won for the first time in the category of cartooning — Mark Fiore was awarded a Pulitzer for his self-syndicated animated cartoons, which appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle website."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:47 pm Scientists Identify New Cancer GenesAUSTIN, Texas -- From deep within the genomes of organisms as diverse as plants, worms and yeast, scientists have uncovered new genes responsible for causing human diseases such as cancer and deafness.The University of Texas at Austin scientists exploited the fact that all life on Earth shares common ancestry, and therefore shares sets of genes.They found genes in yeast, for example, that humans use to make veins and arteries, even though yeasts have no blood vessels at all.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:45 pm Chrysler and NASA Team Up to Share R&DThe partnership between auto maker and space agency bodes well for developing both better road cars and superior rocketships.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:45 pm Can A Child Be A Sociopath?We're hearing a lot about a Tennessee family who sent their troubled 7-year-old son, adopted from Russia, alone on a plane back to his home country with a note saying they no longer wanted to parent the child. Their reasons ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:37 pm Study: Air in Oil Sands Regions is SafeWarren Kindzierski, University of Alberta researcher in the School of Public Health, says people living in the communities of Fort McMurray, Fort Mckay and Fort Chipewyan should feel confident that the air they are breathing is safe.Kindzierski's research has found that, despite ongoing development, it's apparent that there is little or no pattern to the changes in concentrations of various air pollutants across the oil sands region over the past 10 years.This study came about when Kindzierski was asked by the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association to test how and if air quality is being affected in the three communities that are the closest to oil sands activity: Fort McMurray, Fort Mckay and Fort Chipewyan.Kindzierski investigated outdoor air quality between 1998 and 2007.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:35 pm A Leash on Mobile Devices That Wander [The Mossberg Solution]When I leave the house in the morning, I run through a mental checklist to be sure I’m not forgetting my phones (check), wallet (check), subway pass (check) and keys (check). But this routine falls by the wayside if I’m anywhere else at any other time of day, leaving me longing for some guarantee that I’m not forgetting anything—especially my phones. This week, I tested two keychain gadgets that aim to help by working as wireless leashes for Bluetooth-connected phones: the $80 ZOMM (zomm.com) and the $60 Phone Halo (phonehalo.com). If, for example, you finish dinner in a restaurant, leave and forget your cellphone at the table, a small ZOMM device attached to your keychain would vibrate, light up and beep to let you know you walked more than 30 feet away from your phone. Likewise, the Phone Halo beeps, but its connected phone also plays “Always Something There to Remind Me,” the ’80s tune by Naked Eyes, if one device is far enough away from the other (you set the range between five and 35 feet).  The $80 ZOMM alert you if you’re leaving a phone behind. I preferred using the ZOMM because it works with any Bluetooth-enabled phone, while Phone Halo corresponds with software that currently only installs on BlackBerry and Android devices. (A representative for Phone Halo says it will work with the next iPhone software release planned for this summer.) The ZOMM also doubles as a speakerphone, so that when the phone rings, you can answer it using the ZOMM on your keychain rather than digging through your bag to find the phone. People who already pre-ordered ZOMMs will receive them in early May; everyone else will be able to buy them in early June. Phone Halo can be purchased through its Web site. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t always keep your keys and cellphone in the same place throughout the day, you may grow tired of this alarm. Simply turning off the ZOMM or Phone Halo solves the problem, but you would have to remember to turn them back on before leaving a location. Phone forgetfulness has spawned its own industry, as is evidenced by the hundreds of applications made specifically for locating and remotely clearing lost devices that run on BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Palm (PALM) and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone operating systems. Phone companies like Verizon (VZ), Sprint (S) and AT&T (T) sell family locator programs that can alert a system when one person’s GPS-enabled phone is in a certain location, and this could also be used to generally locate a phone. One of the features included with Apple’s (AAPL) $99-a-year MobileMe service is Find My Phone, which locates the iPhone on a map, sends a message to it or plays an audio alert on the device; this feature has been extended to the iPad. The ZOMM, which stands for “Zachry, Olivia and Madison’s Mom,” looks like a keychain-size discus. The device was created by a mom, Laurie Penix, to solve common cellphone problems: Besides being a wireless leash to a phone, it’s a speakerphone so the phone can be answered without digging through a bag and it’s a panic button that calls local emergency services and tells help to come to the phone’s location via an automatic message.  The $60 Phone Halo I had good luck using the ZOMM as a speakerphone. Once this device was connected via Bluetooth to my cellphone, I answered incoming calls by pressing once on the ZOMM’s center button. Built-in noise-cancellation technology tricked my friends into not knowing I was using speakerphone for calls, including one person who loathes when people answer his calls using speakerphone. While chatting through the ZOMM’s speakerphone, I tapped again on the device’s center button and sent the call to my cellphone to continue the conversation. A double tap on the center button will ignore an incoming call. I tested holding down the device’s center button for a long time, which set off the a loud panic alarm. The company advises not doing this unless there’s a real emergency, but the alarm wasn’t as loud as I expected. A ZOMM representative says the device sold in June will have a volume measuring four decibels louder. According to the company, its rechargeable battery lasts over three days on standby and over two hours of straight talk time. The Phone Halo is a small, black rectangular gadget that also hangs on a keychain, but the company suggests attaching it to other things you don’t want to lose, like a digital camera or even a kid’s backpack. Unlike the ZOMM, the Phone Halo lacks a speakerphone. Its free, corresponding app isn’t yet available in the BlackBerry App World or Android Market stores, so users must follow in-box instructions to download it from a URL using a mobile browser. I did this without trouble, but the process isn’t as simple as it should be and could intimidate some people. Settings within the Phone Halo software allow for a phone to be locked as soon as it’s out of range, and will record the GPS coordinates of the lost item from the place it was last connected to Phone Halo. The phone’s alert can be changed from “Always Something There to Remind Me,” though I thought this song was clever enough to want to keep. Its rechargeable battery is estimated to last about one week, but this varies depending on how often Phone Halo is used. The Phone Halo was developed on the belief that if you lost your phone, you’d want your friends and social-network contacts to know so they could help you find it. The app let me select people from my BlackBerry Contacts to determine who would be contacted via email should I lose my phone, and I also opted to allow the device to notify my Twitter followers if my BlackBerry was lost. This was useful when I left a cellphone at a party and didn’t know it; a friend saw the tweet and found the phone. In reality, the buzzing wireless leash alert—along with the email and tweet notifications—went off more than desired whenever I moved the phone away from the Phone Halo or if my phone’s Bluetooth turned off. Tweets and emails included specific details including the exact date and time my phone was “misplaced.” If you don’t want to lose your phone in the first place, consider a wireless leash like the ZOMM for its multifunctionality. If all else fails and you really need to find your phone, this additional ultra high-tech method usually works: Grab someone else’s phone and call it. Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com Source: All Things Digital | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:30 pm RAM hits a new low, Newegg selling 1GB for $1.99 (after MIR)
The RAM itself isn’t that impressive with only a 1GB capacity, but who cares when it’s so cheap. It might breath new life into an older notebook laying around. You better jump on this now, though. The deal ends on 4/16, which is only three days away.
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:30 pm Rampaging Hot Jupiters May Keep Earthlike Planets Out of Their SystemsThe wild orbits of some Jupiter-like exoplanets could preclude the formation of smaller Earths in their solar systems.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:06 pm How To Exploit NULL PointersAn anonymous reader writes "Ever wondered what was so bad about NULL pointer exceptions? An MIT Linux kernel programmer explains how to turn any NULL pointer into a root exploit on Linux. (There was also a previous installment about virtual memory and how to make NULL pointers benign.)"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:03 pm FLO TV adds On-demand, time shifting
Some of the new features are great, some not so much. Specifically, you’ll be able to pre-record your favorite shows (and take them with you wherever), and buy pay-per-day passes that will allow you to use your device as needed, rather than paying that pesky monthly fee. They are also adding interactive capabilities that will allow you to get more information about a show or advertised product. The update was announced today, however don’t expect to see it on your devices until the “second half of 2010″. From the press release:
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm Bit.ly Links Get Clicked 3.4 Billion Times A Month, New Features Coming
The default link shortener on Twitter, bit.ly, just keeps getting bigger. In March, 3.4 billion bit.ly-shortened links were clicked on, up from 2.7 billion in February and only 87 million a year ago. Yesterday was a record day for bit.ly, with 147 million clicks (see chart). Even though Twitter still dominates, more than half of all bit.ly links are encoded somewhere besides Twitter.com. Of the 40-50% created within the Twitter ecosystem, a large chunk occurs via Twitter clients and services. But other services such as Facebook are growing as well. About 100 million clicks last month went to Facebook. The diversification will only matter if Twitter ever decides to replace bit.ly as the default shortener with something like twee.tt, which Twitter owns. But there is no indication any change is imminent. The Promoted Tweets which Twitter is about to roll out as its first advertising effort, for instance, use bit.ly links. The service is about to get an update with a host of new features coming soon. For example, on the site when you paste a URL to be shortened, it will just shorten it automatically without the need to click a button. Managing your shortened links will also become easier. A new search functionality will index the underlying pages of the links you’ve shortened and let you find those links by typing in search terms that match any words on those pages. Also, all the links you share publicly via bit.ly will appear in your own public timeline of shared links. Finally, bit.ly Pro will also add premium features for which bit.ly will begin to charge companies to access. Since the launch of the beta, 6,000 organizations have signed up for the free version of bit.ly Pro, which provides custom short URLs for nyti.ms, tcrn.ch, 4sq.com, pep.si, and n.pr. The enterprise version, which will cost $995 a month, adds a management dashboard showing all traffic to the custom domain, a realtime feed for click data, and automatically shortens all links from the publisher’s site to their custom short link on bit.ly or any app that uses the bit.ly API.      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 2:45 pm Archos army to take on iPad this summer: 6 new Android tablets marching inSection: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Computers, Mobile Computers, Netbooks, Wireless
The breakdown is as follows:
We’re left to our own devices (yuck,yuck) to figure out the logic behind this. It’s possible the two versions are for 3G connectivity, camera options or for upgrades from resistive (as Archos has used in the past) to capacative (ala quality touchscreens of the day). Without an official release, we’re left to guess at it. Multi-touch, OpenGL, up to 1GHz ARM Cortex processors are all listed as highlights of the bunch, thought not assigned to specific models. No word where in the world we’ll see these, which (if any) will reach US shores. Read: [ArchosFans]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 2:44 pm BofA Worker's Malware Targeted 100 ATMsA Bank of America worker pleads guilty to installing his malware on more than 100 of his company's ATMs and siphoning $304,000 in cash before he was caught.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 2:40 pm NSA Develops USB Storage Device DetectorHugh Pickens writes "Bob Brewin writes on NextGov that the National Security Agency has developed a software tool that detects thumb drives or other flash media connected to a network. The NSA says the tool, called the USBDetect 3.0 Computer Network Defense Tool, provides 'network administrators and system security officials with an automated capability to detect the introduction of USB storage devices into their networks. This tool closes potential security vulnerabilities; a definite success story in the pursuit of the [Defense Department] and NSA protect information technology system strategic goals.' The tool gathers data from the registry on Microsoft Windows machines (PDF) and reports whether storage devices, such as portable music or video players, external hard drives, flash drives, jump drives, or thumb drives have been connected to the USB port. 'I have a hunch that a bunch of other agencies use the detection software,' writes Brewin."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Apr 2010 | 2:20 pm Researchers Find Electrical Current Stemming From PlantsIn an electrifying first, Stanford scientists have plugged in to algae cells and harnessed a tiny electric current. They found it at the very source of energy production – photosynthesis, a plant's method of converting sunlight to chemical energy.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 2:05 pm Genetically Engineered Crops Benefit Many FarmersTechnology Needs Proper Management to Remain EffectiveMany U.S. farmers who grow genetically engineered (GE) crops are realizing substantial economic and environmental benefits -- such as lower production costs, fewer pest problems, reduced use of pesticides, and better yields -- compared with conventional crops, says a new report from the National Research Council. However, GE crops resistant to the herbicide glyphosate -- a main component in Roundup and other commercial weed killers -- could develop more weed problems as weeds evolve their own resistance to glyphosate. GE crops could lose their effectiveness unless farmers also use other proven weed and insect management practices.The report provides the first comprehensive assessment of how GE crops are affecting all U.S. farmers, including those who grow conventional or organic crops. The new report follows several previous Research Council reports that examined the potential human health and environmental effects of GE crops."Many American farmers are enjoying higher profits due to the widespread use of certain genetically engineered crops and are reducing environmental impacts on and off the farm," said David Ervin, professor of environmental management and economics, Portland State University, Portland, Ore., and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "However, these benefits are not universal for all farmers. And as more GE traits are developed and incorporated into a larger variety of crops, it's increasingly essential that we gain a better understanding of how genetic engineering technology will affect U.S. agriculture and the environment now and in the future. Such gaps in our knowledge are preventing a full assessment of the environmental, economic, and other impacts of GE crops on farm sustainability."First introduced in 1996, genetically engineered crops now constitute more than 80 percent of soybeans, corn, and cotton grown in the United States. GE soybeans, corn, and cotton are designed to be resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, which has fewer adverse environmental effects compared with most other herbicides used to control weeds. In addition to glyphosate resistance, GE corn and cotton plants also are designed to produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a bacterium that is deadly when ingested by susceptible insect pests.Farmers need to adopt better management practices to ensure that beneficial environmental effects of GE crops continue, the report says. In particular, farmers who grow GE herbicide-resistant crops should not rely exclusively on glyphosate and need to incorporate a range of weed management practices, including using other herbicide mixes. To date, at least nine species of weeds in the United States have evolved resistance to glyphosate since GE crops were introduced, largely because of repeated exposure. Federal and state government agencies, technology developers, universities, and other stakeholders should collaborate to document weed resistance problems and develop cost-effective ways to control weeds in current GE crops and new types of GE herbicide-resistant plants now under development.Environmental BenefitsImprovements in water quality could prove to be the largest single benefit of GE crops, the report says. Insecticide use has declined since GE crops were introduced, and farmers who grow GE crops use fewer insecticides and herbicides that linger in soil and waterways. In addition, farmers who grow herbicide-resistant crops till less often to control weeds and are more likely to practice conservation tillage, which improves soil quality and water filtration and reduces erosion.However, no infrastructure exists to track and analyze the effects that GE crops may have on water quality. The U.S. Geological Survey, along with other federal and state environmental agencies, should be provided with financial resources to document effects of GE crops on U.S. watersheds. The report notes that although two types of insects have developed resistance to Bt, there have been few economic or agronomic consequences from resistance. Practices to prevent insects from developing resistance should continue, such as an EPA-mandated strategy that requires farmers to plant a certain amount of conventional plants alongside Bt plants in "refuge" areas.Economic and Social EffectsSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 1:56 pm Is there a Fake Steve Jobs doing tech support for Apple?Section: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
I wonder. I wonder how Apple’s impressive marketing team feels about Steve Jobs responding to consumer inquiries. The marketing teams obviously works awfully hard to maintain the Apple brand image, so what does Mr. Jobs terse responses add to the mix? I can’t believe the marketing team is thrilled about it. Every so often we get wind of an emailed question to Mr. Jobs returned with a reply. The latest one was a question about future support for the first generation iPhone (2G). Job’s response: “Sorry, no ” Presumably Jobs like to read consumer comments to “stay connected” to the populous. Perhaps Mr. Jobs hasn’t got the time to add the perfunctory, “thank you for your question, Apple appreciates your interest in our products…”; Job’s cuts right to chase. Why so short? Is he crunched for time? Has he not quite figured out touchscreen typing? Is he just being secretive and doesn’t want to give anything away? Or are we being punked? Is this, in fact, the Apple Marketing team at work? Surely they know how tickled pink loyal Apple-ites are to receive a note from the high holy man himself. Is there a Fake Steve Jobs inside Apple as well? If you had a mythical Unicorn running your company, you’d want to get it outdoors every now and then, right? Perhaps these terse emails are just that: letting the unicorn out to play.” What’s your take? Is this really Jobs caring about the little man? Does marketing cringe every time one of these emails pop up? Or are they in control of the whole thing? This is Apple you know, and they’ve got a thing for control. Read: [MacStories]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 1:28 pm Calculating Agriculture's Phosphorus FootprintBalancing phosphorus levels in crop lands is a key factor that is often overlooked in discussions of global food security, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology.Current global issues include carbon footprints, water resources and climate change.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 1:28 pm Flip SlideHD now officially availableSection: Imaging, Camcorders  We have seen the leaks and early sales, and now the Flip SlideHD pocket camcorder is official, and available to be purchased. That is, as long as you have the $279.99. Feature wise, the Flip SlideHD comes touting the ability to record up to 4 hours of HD quality video, and can store up to 12 hours of regular videos and/or images which is done so by the 16GB of internal storage. As for that video quality, the SlideHD can shoot at up to 1280 x 720 at 30 frames per second. Other features include an HDMI output, flip out USB 2.0 port, 2x digital zoom and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The SlideHD is also touting a 3 inch display that is revealed when the camcorder is opened up. Otherwise, its a Flip and therefor it should be easy to use. Best of all is that if you want one you can grab one now. As for where you can make your purchase, well, the Flip SlideHD is available at Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart as well as direct with Flip (link below). Product [Flip Video] Via [Engadget] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 1:20 pm OU Geophysics Group Teams With China On Seismic ProjectsUnderstanding earthquakes minimizes loss of life and propertyUniversity of Oklahoma researchers are working with Chinese colleagues to better understand intraplate earthquakes—those occurring far from a tectonic plate boundary—in an effort to minimize the loss of life and property in both China and Oklahoma.China holds the record for the deadliest earthquake with 830,000 casualties, even though the event occurred far from a tectonic plate boundary.In recent months, a U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 1:12 pm Energy Wasted Grinding Switchgrass Smaller To Improve FlowabilityBiofuels processors who mill switchgrass into fine bits to help its flowability should be able to save time, energy and money by not doing so, a Purdue University study shows.Switchgrass can be used in a number of biofuel applications, but moving it - especially feeding it into boilers - can be problematic, said Klein Ileleji, an assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 12:47 pm Long-distance Larvae Race To New Undersea Vent HomesImage 1: "Pioneer" vent species travel hundreds of kilometers to settle new deep-ocean territories. Credit: Nicole Rager-Fuller, National Science FoundationImage 2: Pictured: larvae of deep-sea hydrothermal vent species that travel unprecedented distances. Credit: S. Beaulieu; S. Mills; D. AdamsImage 3: Larva of the gastropod Ctenopelta porifera make their way across vast ocean realms. Credit: LADDER Project/WHOI Alvin GroupSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Apr 2010 | 12:35 pm Make your own Search Story video in minutesDuring the Super Bowl, we ran a 60 second ad made simply with a few Google searches and a little music. We were humbled by how much some people liked it. And we've even seen a few parodies that have left us in stitches. Making videos out of Google searches isn't exactly elaborate Hollywood film-making, but to help everyone get in on the fun, we've made a really simple video creation tool, which you can try today.All you need to do is type in your Google searches, pick some music and — presto! — you've got your very own Search Story to share with your friends or showcase on our YouTube channel. And who knows, if people really like your Search Story, it may end up in a place you never dreamed. Posted by Robert Wong, Google Creative Lab   
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 13 Apr 2010 | 12:30 pm Apple finally granted patent for iPhone’s hardware likeness
What does this mean for you? Well, the chances of having your phone switched out for a fake by some sleight of hand at a bar is greatly reduced. Also, you’ll need to shut down that Apple knock-off sweatshop you’ve been running in the sub-basement of your office building. Yeah, you’ll just have to find some way to make do without it, I’m afraid. [via MacStories]
Source: MobileCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 12:26 pm North Pole finally checked in at through FoursquareSection: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Websites  While you were checking into your coffee shops or Wal-Mart, fifteen year old Parker Liautaud was trekking across the frozen tundra on a race to become the first Foursquare user to check in at the North Pole. This achievement also earned him the Last Degree Badge on Foursquare. And I thought I was an achievement-whore on my Xbox…
Instead of enjoying his break off from school, young Liautaud spent his spring break skiing towards the North Pole. Though Liautaud had to finish the expedition on a helicopter instead of on skis as he had originally desired as stated through various Twitter updates. I admit, I’m not too rehearsed on how Foursquare knows where you are. But I assume it uses GPS, which than would mean this probably won’t work, but I would be ecstatic to see someone check in at the Moon. What interesting places have you seen, or would like to see someone check into at? Read [Mashable]
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Apr 2010 | 12:19 pm Backwards alien planets challenge theories - msnbc.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Apr 2010 | 12:17 pm 'Touch Floor': An iPad for Your FeetiPad? So yesterday. Why waste your time with a laptop-sized touch-screen when you can make the entire floor of a room in your house one giant iPad?! At least, that's what one tech company is hoping for. Patrick Baudisch and ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Apr 2010 | 12:14 pm T-Mobile myTouch Slide to come in three colors?
Man, I can’t remember any phone in recent history for which details and pics have leaked as frequently as they have for the myTouch Slide. This thing’s not even official yet, but we know more about it than a celebrity stalker knows about their stalkee’s underwear drawer. The latest bit of knowledge, added just today: color variations. The lads over at CellPhoneSignal dug up the shots above, claiming that they’ll be some of T-Mobile’s own official product shots. Unless there’s some sort of Photoshop trickery going on here (and we’ve got no reason to believe there is), it looks like the myTouch slide will be offered up in hues of Red/Black, All Black, and White.
Source: MobileCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:54 am Google Buzz buttons(Cross-posted from the Official Gmail Blog) Starting today, you'll see these buttons around the web on participating sites including: The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Glamour, YouTube, Blogger, MySpace, GigaOM, PBS Parents, PBS NewsHour, The Next Web, TweetDeck, SocialWok, Disqus, Vinehub, and Buzzzy. Mashable and TechCrunch have updated their sites to use these new buttons too.  A number of sharing platforms, including ShareThis (pictured below), Meebo, Shareholic, AddThis and AddtoAny have also incorporated the Google Buzz button into their sharing functionality, so you'll see Buzz listed as a choice when you go to share something on many other sites around the web as well.  If you want to add Google Buzz buttons to your site, just go to buzz.google.com/stuff, configure your buttons with a couple clicks and copy a few lines of JavaScript. Paste this code where you'd like the Buzz buttons to appear and you're all set.  And if you'd like to promote your own Google Buzz account, we have a button for you, which allows people to follow you on Buzz right from your blog or website. Here's an example using the Google Buzz team's own Buzz account (clicking it will take you to the Buzz team's profile page and from there you can easily follow our team's posts): Follow on Buzz You can grab that button code from buzz.google.com/stuff as well. Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager  
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 13 Apr 2010 | 11:05 am Android Coming Soon to an x86-based Phone Near You
While not the first to do it (that title goes to Acer), Intel has now ported Android to the x86 architecture. While the obvious application for this is tablets and netbooks, Intel has said that they have it running on smartphones based on their Atom line of processors. Most smartphone processors are based on the ARM architecture, while Intel’s processors on the other hand are typically x86 based. By porting Android to the x86 architecture, Intel are clearly trying to make a name for themselves in the smartphone market. The original article at Yahoo! News says that “certain customers” are interested in using the port, but also, interestingly, Android isn’t the only phone OS that Intel has an interest in, quoting the general manager of Intel’s software and services group, Renee James, as saying “Intel is enabling all OSes for Atom phones”. As the functionality of computers and smartphones continues to converge, it seems your next smartphone could be even more like a PC than previously thought.
Source: MobileCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:29 am Reports of AT&T Outage in Seattle Area [Update: All fixed]
How’s it going for you? If you lost service service today, let us know in the comments what area you are in and if it’s been restored yet. Update: AT&T just reached out to let us know that the issue should be all patched up in Seattle. Let us know if things are still shaky, won’t you? [via TechFlash]
Source: MobileCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 9:08 am Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus Coming to O2 and Vodafone Germany Word on the German street (or Straße) is that both the Palm Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus are coming to O2 and Vodafone on April 28. These are the same phones that Americans have come to know and love, but with GSM radios and a European-friendly QWERTZ keyboard. You know the drill: the Pre Plus is their flagship device with 16GB storage, while the Pixi Plus is for those just dipping their toes in with only 8GB storage and a little less oomph. Both feature Web OS, which includes multitasking, Palm’s Synergy contact system, system-wide notifications, the ability to act as a WiFi access point, and access to the Palm App Catalog. Keep your eyes on www.palm.com/de for availability and accessories.
Source: MobileCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:22 am Affix Hub Switches from Fixed to Free with a Twist
This fixed/single speed mountain-bike hub from Affix has a few things to dislike: the weird, oversized pie-plate-style ring for one, and the weight (570g or 1.3-pounds) for another. But if you can get over that it could be a rather useful, if niche, piece of bike gear. The hub’s purpose is to eliminate the need for a flip-flop hub. A flip-flop hub has threading on both sides so you can remove the wheel and quickly change gears on a single speed bike, either to use a slightly smaller or bigger fixed-gear cog, or to swap to a freewheel. The problem: it takes a minute or two, and you get dirty grease on your fingers. Affix’s solution is to have a convertible hub. You press and twist that big ring and the hub locks or unlocks, allowing you to coast or to skid-stop on the same side. This could be handy a few ways: for bike polo (I told you it was a niche product) you could ride around on a fixed but switch to single-speed on the court (many polo players use a rear brake). Or you could put it in the mountain bike for which it is designed and just choose depending on mood. The cog comes in 14 or 15-tooth sizes, and is splined for a slide-on fit (you still get a lock-ring, though). And here is probably the biggest practical objection: Many people choose a bigger cog on the freewheel side of a flip-flop to make hill-climbing easier. With the Affix hub, you are stuck with one gear ratio. The aluminum, 32-hole hub comes in 120, 130 and 135mm spacings to fit any frame, and costs a rather scary $270. MTB SS/Fixed Hub [Affix] Affix Free and Fix Hub store [Ben's Cycle] See Also: 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 13 Apr 2010 | 8:07 am New MacBook Pro: 10-Hour Battery, Hi-Res Screen, i7 CPUApple has, at last, updated its MacBook Pro Line with new CPUs and graphics. Overall it's a pretty solid update with one surprise: the 13-inch MacBook Pro doesn’t look so pro anymore, which is a pain to those that need the power but don’t want the big screen.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:47 am New MacBook Pro: 10-Hour Battery, Hi-Res Screen, i7 CPU
Apple has, at last, updated its MacBook Pro Line with new CPUs and graphics. The 15-inch can now be had with Intel’s Core i5 and i7 chips and the 17-inch gets the i5 as standard and the i7 as an option. This speeds things up, although the clock speeds actually drop, maxing out now at 2.66 GHz instead of the previous 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo (or 3.06 GHz special order). There is also a KITT-style “turbo boost” which will up the clock speeds of some chip cores when applications demand it. The graphics chip has been bumped to NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, with a choice of graphics memory options. This replaces the NVIDIA 9400M and 9600M GT cards of the previous generation. The biggest change here is that you can now switch between the low power and the high performance modes without rebooting or logging out: The MacBook switches for you. The 15-inch MacBook also gains the option of a higher resolution screen: 1680 x 1050 pixels against the standard 1440 x 900. This combines with the new NVIDIA chips to give proper HD video. The other big change is battery life. All models get a boost of a couple hours, pushing the 13-inch MacBook Pro up to 10 hours (although this is no iPad, so expect that to be lower in real life). The 15- and 17-inchers manage a respectable eight to nine hours. Nothing much else has changed. The 13-inch gets a speed bump for the Core 2 Duo CPU and a new NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics replaces the old GeForce 9400M. You can also spec a 512-GB solid state drive in any model (for an extra $1,300). A pretty solid update with one surprise: The 13-inch MacBook Pro doesn’t look so pro anymore, which is a pain to those that need the power but don’t want the big screen. Who says that size doesn’t matter? MacBook Pro [Apple] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:32 am HTC Incredible Full Spec Sheet Leaked
Jonesing for a bit more info on the hotter-than-hot HTC Incredible before its April 29 release? On top of the already-known Android 2.1 with HTC’s Sense UI, the Snapdragon processor, the 8MP camera with autofocus + flash, and the 3.7″ WVGA (800×480) AMOLED screen, there are a few nice surprises.
Of course, all the usual Android goodies are crammed in there, including Flash Lite 4.0 support, Google Maps with navigation, as well as the usual Google services including Voice Commands/Search, YouTube, Gmail, Calendar etc. There is no mention of an FM Transmitter in the spec sheet, so we’ll wait and see if it’s included or not.
Source: MobileCrunch | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:31 am Approved! Plucky Underdog Opera Now on iPhoneExactly three weeks after a very public submission to the App Store, Opera’s Mini web browser is approved by Apple and is available for download.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:26 am Hand-Made Leather Frame Bag Costs as Much as a Bike
Sure, you’ve seen bike frame bags before. But have you seen any this gorgeous? Moreover, have you ever seen one made in the USA by “Amish leather workers”? You have now. This is the Billykirk frame-pouch, a simple, one-chamber bag which straps to the top and seat tubes. It is hand-made in brown leather, and costs an astonishing $145. It will also look just dandy on your fancy fixed-gear or your stately Dutch city bike, should you decide that you can afford it. The Billykirk fixes in place with belt-style straps and closes with press-in fastenings. These kinds of fixtures will probably outlast your bike, but they’re also a pain to attach and remove, meaning you’re likely to leave your investment either on the bike while parked or at home in a closet. Leaving such a lavish bag out on view might be fine in a homely Pennsylvania village, but don’t try it in NYC. Do I want one? Of course. Will I buy it? Do the Amish drive cars? Billykirk frame-pouch [Blackbird via Uncrate] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 13 Apr 2010 | 6:04 am New HD Flip Camcorder Slides into View
Flip’s new pocket-camcorder is the Slide HD. It takes the familiar simple-to-use video-camera and combines it with a big screen for playing back your masterpieces to a (small) audience. Where does the “slide” part come from? The body splits in the middle and slides open to prop the screen at a laptop-like angle for viewing. It’s pretty neat. First, the camera. As you may have guessed from the name, it is a hi-def model, shooting 720p at 30fps in the the H.264 codec which is fast becoming the MP3 of video. 16GB of internal memory gives you four hours of shooting time, and you transfer to a Mac or PC for editing via the trademark flip-out USB plug. A lithium-ion rechargeable battery provides the juice, but only for two hours, so you needn’t worry about filling the camera in one go. The screen measures three-inches, has 400 x 240 pixels and takes up most of the back of the unit when shooting. When flipped (or slid, we guess) up into playback position the “slide-strip” is revealed, a touch-sensitive bar for scrubbing through your clips. Sound comes through a pair of stereo speakers. If you have shot some footage so amazing you must share it with more people than can crowd around the small screen, an HDMI-out will hook up to a TV. Should you choose to carry video specifically for watching, you can crunch the files down with included software and squeeze 12-hours worth onto the camera. If it wasn’t for the battery, this would be a great travel media-player. The Slide HD is available now and costs $280. Slide HD [Flip. Thanks, Jamie!] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:43 am Google ready to get down to business - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Apr 2010 | 5:03 am Approved! Plucky Underdog Opera Now on iPhone
Exactly three weeks after a very public submission to the App Store, Opera’s Mini web browser has been approved by Apple and is available for download. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, go download Opera Mini now (iTunes app link). It is free. I’ll wait. Back? You will notice how fast this Gadget Lab page loads up. That’s because Opera Mini isn’t loading the page. Instead, it is pulling down an optimized, compressed version from Opera’s servers, one which looks and feels just like the real thing, with clickable links and selectable text and zoomable images (but without video or Flash), but is encoded in a special markup language and compressed to as little as 10 percent of the original data footprint. Apple’s decision to admit Opera Mini to the App Store caught many people by surprise, because it’s a browser. Apple has tended to reject apps that replicate (or improve upon) the features of built-in apps, and Opera Mini is clearly a replacement for the version of Safari that comes with the iPhone. However, Apple softened its stance in early 2009 and started allowing browser apps, as long as they were based on WebKit, the HTML rendering engine used by the iPhone. Opera Mini’s not the only third-party browser in the App Store: You can also download iCab Mobile, a $2 browser that’s been available since April 2009, as well as a handful of specialized iPhone browsers. Other features of Opera Mini you may appreciate during your test drive: You might notice the “speed dial” page, like the tab-showcase page of Google’s Chrome or Safari for the Mac and PC. This is very handy for visiting oft-used pages quickly. You are also no doubt enjoying the fast back-and-forward navigation. Unlike Mobile Safari, Opera Mini caches pages and tabs in-session and even when you quit and relaunch the app. This means you don’t have to wait for pages to reload. It’s not all great, though. If you’re trying out Opera while you read this, you will likely be getting frustrated right about now because of the screwy zoom controls: You can double-tap to zero in on a column of text, just like Safari, but pinch to zoom is all over the place. It feels like Android. And while text is re-flowed, pictures are not re-sized to match. No, go ahead and copy this sentence to the clipboard. Weird, right? Still, you want to have this on your iPhone, especially if you are on EDGE, are roaming or just want to save on bandwidth while speeding up your browsing. You can’t make it your iPhone’s default browser, so clicking on links in e-mail messages, for instance, will still open pages in Safari. Opera Mini won’t work with every site — and it doesn’t support Adobe Flash — but for quick bursts of browsing, the kind often done on cellphones, it is ideal. Opera Mini [iTunes] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 13 Apr 2010 | 4:29 am Steve Jobs: Sorry, No OS 4 on Original iPhone
With the iPhone OS 4 update, Apple will quietly drop support for the first generation iPhone. This news comes, apparently, straight from the mouth (or keyboard) of Steve Jobs. Before you start getting angry that Apple is “screwing its customers”, consider this. The first iPhone has been around for three years. Anyone who owns one is already out of contract, and could upgrade with no penalty other than the price of a new handset. Does it seem to you that these iPhone customers are interested in upgrading to the latest of everything? The news comes by way of German Twitterer (and presumably iPhone 2G owner) ven000m aka Niko, the latest customer to receive and email reply from Jobs. Niko asked “Hey Steve! is Apple supporting/updating the iPhone 2G in the Future?” Despite the wonky capitalizations, Steve did reply, in characteristically brief fashion: “Sorry, no.” Dropping new OS releases for old hardware makes sense, especially with cellphones where the hardware upgrade cycle is so much shorter than that of a PC. People will always complain, but they are a vocal minority. It is likely impossible to run iPhone OS 4 on the first iPhone anyway. Even the iPhone 3G can only make use of some of the features due to having less RAM available to the OS than later models. One more thing, if you still don’t believe that iPhone 2G users are stuck in the past. Look at the screenshot above, posted by ven000m. What the hell is that? Windows 95? NO FUTURE SUPPORT FOR iPHONE 2G! [ven000m/Twitter via Mac Stories] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 13 Apr 2010 | 3:47 am
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A big round for a company that originally started out as a 
Twitter investor Fred Wilson’s 
Last night, Twitter finally unveiled the details of its long-awaited ad platform, 
Little Fuzzy itself is in the public domain, but its sequels are still under copyright. While it might have been technically possible to write Fuzzy Nation without the permission of the Piper estate, because of the status of the sequels there were enough (forgive the pun) fuzzy legal areas that I didn't want to have to deal with them. Beyond this, because Fuzzy Nation is in many ways meant to be a tribute to Little Fuzzy and to Piper himself, I wanted the blessing, so to speak, of the Piper estate.
Silicon Valley based 
I don't remember when I first experienced the work of Czech artist and animator 
Then there's 
Twitter has announced that it will unveil its new advertising model today. Called Promoted Tweets, the program will work by allowing advertisers to by keywords to link to their ads, which will show up when users search for those keywords and later in users newsfeeds. Twitter promises they will be targeted for relevancy. The ads will also be monitored for resonance, which is determined by 9 factors including the number of retweets. replies, and clicks on the links. Promoted Tweets with low resonance will be dropped.
We told you all the rumors, we told you 
Over the weekend Sprint made the brilliant decision to update their website. As a long time customer I can tell you there was really no need, but I digress. The site went down on Saturday and as of this writing, 60 hrs later, it’s still down. Sprint is blaming database glitches and unspecified “issues impacting site functionality” according to their Twitter page, and if their Facebook page is any indication they’ve managed to enrage many of their customers. The 2+ day outage means customers can’t access their accounts to pay their bills or check usage. Even though customers can still call Sprint’s CS for those tasks, given the company’s lackluster CS history, most are reluctant to do so.
When Qualcomm’s 
According to a slide from a presentation in China, Archos will launch 6 new tablets this summer ranging from 3” to 10” priced from $100-$350. Archos has quietly been putting out tablets now for some time and it seems they are ready to seize any momentum generated by Apple jumping in the market with the iPad. Really though, six new offerings?
