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Beware the black market rising for IP addresses (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - Organizations slow to adopt IPv6 take heed: Surging requests for IPv4 addresses are quickly drying up the available store, raising the specter of an IPv4 black market that could dramatically increase the cost of obtaining a presence on today's Internet.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 May 2010 | 4:00 am Dismayland: Disneyland in the favela Artist Jeff Gilette's "Dismayland" series of illustrations imagines the consumer-utopian symbolism of Disneyland amid the gritty reality of a Brazilian hillside favela. Dismayland - Entre Favelas et DisneyLand (via Geisha Asobi)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 3 May 2010 | 3:42 am 3G appeal pushes total iPad sales beyond one million - The Tech Herald
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 May 2010 | 3:38 am Aphid's Color Comes From a Fungus GeneIron Nose writes with an account from Byte Size Biology of horizontal gene transfer from a fungus to an insect. The author suspects that we will see lots more of this as we sequence more genomes. "The pea aphid is known for having two different colors: green and red, but until now it was not clear how the aphids got their color. Aphids feed on sap, and sap does not contain carotenoids: a common pigment synthesized by plants, fungi, and microbes, but not by animals. Carotenoids in the diet gives many animals, from insects to flamingos, their exterior color after they ingest it, but aphids do not seem to eat carotenoid-containing food. Nancy Moran and Tyler Jarvik from the University of Arizona looked at the recently sequenced genome of the pea aphid. They were surprised to find genes for synthesizing carotenoids: this is the first time carotenoid synthesizing genes have been found in animals. When the researchers looked for the most similar genes to the aphid carotenoid synthesizing genes, they found that they came from fungi, which means they somehow jumped between fungi and aphids, in a process known as horizontal gene transfer."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 3 May 2010 | 3:07 am Launch Weekend iPad 3G Sales Estimated at 300,000 [Digital Daily]
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimates that Apple (AAPL) sold about 300,000 iPad 3Gs between Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon, including 52 days of pre-orders. That’s approximately what the original iPad sold during its first day of availability, including 22 days of pre-orders. So while the 3G isn’t selling quite as briskly as its sibling, it’s selling well — so well, in fact, that by Sunday afternoon most of the Apple stores Munster surveyed were completely sold out of the device. Not bad considering prices for the iPad 3G start at $629, quite a bit more than the $499 entry-level price of Wi-Fi-only models. “As of 3:00PM ET on Sunday afternoon (5/2), 49 of 50 Apple stores we called were completely sold out of the iPad 3G (most were also sold out of wi-fi only models),” Munster wrote in a Sunday note to clients. “While it is difficult to gauge, we believe this is due to both stronger than expected demand and lower than intended supply on the part of Apple. Near-term, this may put downward pressure on launch day/weekend statistics, but long-term we see it as a positive, as consumers are definitely interested in the iPad as a new category.” Munster figures that by now Apple has sold more than a million total iPads (Wifi-only and 3G, both), enough to make him wonder whether his estimate of 1.3 million sold during the June quarter might be conservative. [Image credit: Gizmodo commenter rootyb] Source: All Things Digital | 3 May 2010 | 3:00 am Readings: Top Drugs, Peak Cheap Oil, Television, Deepwater, $46.5m Ranch, etc.Beware the Muni-Bond Bubble (Source) Rethinking global food supplies (Source) Transocean Deepwater Horizon Explosion-A Discussion of What Actually Happened? (Source) A special report on television:...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 2:59 am USB Microwave Concept Still Falls ShortBy Chris Scott Barr As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time at my desk. So much in fact, that there is a mini fridge withing rolling distance of my chair. It’s nice to be able to grab a drink without...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 2:49 am Palin E-Mail Snoop Found Guilty on Two Charges - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 May 2010 | 2:42 am Electronic medical orders may save livesNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Doctors at a California children's hospital have found the first evidence that using an electronic system to communicate their orders may save lives.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 May 2010 | 2:32 am Flower Power Fashiontography - 'In Bloom' in Test Magazine Pairs Pretty Prints With Floral Headwear (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Florals are everywhere this spring, and this editorial titled 'In Bloom' in TEST Magazine is no exception. But their hippie twist is quite delightful. The shoot is very ethereal, with...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 2:30 am Every Start-Up is a Soap Opera [Voices]By Jeffrey Bussgang, General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners When I was a kid, my older sisters would come home from school, turn on the TV, and watch soap operas until dinner. I sat on the floor organizing my baseball cards while they gasped their way through As the World Turns and General Hospital. Now that I’m a venture capitalist working with entrepreneurs, I sometimes feel déjà vu, like I’m watching the soaps all over again. New companies have plot twists that seem borrowed from The Young and the Restless and larger-than-life characters straight out of Dynasty. Genius entrepreneurs pursuing their impossible dreams against all odds. Shrewd venture capitalists seeking gold and glory. Mad scientists. Wily CEOs. Crafty competitors. Greedy bankers. Tens of millions of dollars at stake. Lives and careers on the line. Surprises at every turn. Virtually all entrepreneurs I know have told me they could write a book about the trials and travails of their start-ups. They usually think their story is unique. But although no two are exactly the same, they tend to have similar characters, dramatic tensions, and ups and downs in the action. The drama is usually the result of mistakes that entrepreneurs make, often as a result of misunderstanding the behavior pattern of start-ups and VCs. But as Mark Pincus of Zynga put it to me forcefully, “Don’t be a victim. It’s not the VC’s fault. Don’t look at [the drama and conflicts] personally, look at them structurally.” By learning from the mistakes of other entrepreneurs, you can avoid making their mistakes (and make your own new ones instead!) I’m being a little facetious with the TV analogy, but not completely. In fact, it’s quite useful to think of the start-up as a drama, and the members of the team as characters, so you can quickly recognize important turning points in the plot and, maybe, do something to avert an unhappy ending. So let me outline the three classic story lines that I’ve seen played out again and again in start-ups. Classic Plot 1: Fall from Grace. At the beginning of this show, the CEO—usually the founding entrepreneur—is seen by one and all as the hero of the company, the visionary leader who holds the future in his hands. The VC firm is delighted to be in business with this innovator and crows to its peers, limited partners, and anyone else who will listen to how brilliant the entrepreneur is and how big an impact the company will make. Then, little by little, things go wrong. The CEO fails to make good on a promise to the board. He misses numbers, reports unforeseen product delays, and has a hard time recruiting top talent. He makes claims that later turn out to be untrue. Makes a weird strategic move. Goes over budget. Provides unpleasant surprises at board meetings or in Friday afternoon emails (why do CEOs always send bad news on Friday afternoon?). Bit by bit, the board members lose trust and confidence in the CEO. They start to wonder if all the information he provides is accurate. They question him more closely and interrogate members of the executive team to gain additional insight. Ultimately, they attempt to put tighter controls on the CEO, spend time in meetings discussing the company’s strategy without him, and, suddenly, it feels like the board is trying to manage the company. At the same time, the CEO feels increasingly under fire. He can’t understand why the board, which had told him what a brilliant visionary he was during the honeymoon period, is constantly on his case. The CEO feels they simply don’t understand the difficult industry context and factors that are out of his hands. He begins to suspect that some of the board members have a hidden agenda. They want to rein him in, cut him out, or push him in a direction he doesn’t want to go. In a panic, he follows a familiar pattern of a CEO in trouble: First, he fires his vice president of sales. (“The guy just can’t make the numbers.”) Then he fires his vice president of engineering. (“She just couldn’t ship the software on time.”) Meanwhile, trust erodes on both sides and things begin to fall apart. The CEO and the board stop communicating. The organization becomes dysfunctional. Finally, the CEO is fired, a permanent replacement can’t be found quickly or easily, and the company has to be sold prematurely without realizing its full potential. Unfortunately, I have lived through that drama quite a few times. The drama is accentuated when the investors themselves have different levels of confidence in the management team. In one of my companies, the largest investor lost faith in the management team and wanted to sell the company. We and the management team wanted to continue to build the business and so undertook a ten-month effort to convince the largest investor to allow us to recapitalize the company and buy them out. The pain and distraction caused the company to miss its numbers for the year and impaired its potential for long-term success. In retrospect, it would have been better if the entrepreneur had never picked that VC as a co-investor or, alternatively, worked harder to ensure alignment of strategy and leadership. Classic Plot 2: High Noon Shoot-out. In this case, part of the original VC deal is that the company will be run by a professional CEO, approved by the board, and the founder will stay on as a key member of the management team. The founder agrees to this deal in order to secure funding, but never fully buys into the notion that he will need to “let go.” From the day the CEO first arrives at the company, it is obvious the two will never get along. The founder questions the CEO’s every decision. The CEO wants to change all of the founder’s original processes and blames the company’s poor performance on the founder’s original decisions. The two can’t agree on strategy, organization structure, client management, or whom to hire and fire. The founder thinks the CEO is out to wreck the company and will ruin the culture and “soul” he created. The CEO thinks the company can never grow with the founder on the scene looking over his shoulder, looking backward rather than forward. The board members realize they have to do something, but they’re not sure what. Should they fire the CEO? But then how could they ever hire a new CEO when the story of the founder’s undermining behavior gets out? Force out the founder? But the founder is the one with the original vision and strategy in which they invested, and often holds critical technical knowledge while the product is still in a very early stage of development. Should they bring in another executive from the outside to mediate—perhaps a part-time chairman? Take a more active role in the day-to-day management themselves? At last, they decide to seek counsel from other members of the management team. At a secret meeting, they call in three of the most senior executives, one by one, and ask for their opinions about what to do. One argues for the CEO. One defends the founder. The third thinks that both should be fired and she should take over. After much agonizing, the board finally decides that the founder has to go and gives the CEO full authority over the company. Six months later, the CEO abruptly quits. Why? He had lost faith in the board and the mutual trust that existed has eroded. If they agonized so long in their decision to back him this time, what will happen when the next major conflict arises? I lived through a version of this case, too. Believe me, it was no fun. Worst of all, the drama distracted the senior executive team because they felt compelled to watch the palace intrigue rather than execute the business plan. Classic Plot 3: VC Mutiny. In this scenario, one or two of the venture capitalists that sit on the board become irritated when the company consistently fails to achieve its performance goals. After being disappointed three quarters in a row, they announce they’re going to abandon their investment and leave the board. This forces the other VCs to scramble to find new investors for future rounds of financing in place of the mutineers. The management team has a mild freak-out. Then, just before the mutinous VCs walk out the door, business picks up. The company exceeds its growth and profit targets for the quarter. The mutineers change their minds. Not only do they stay in, they become much more active and vocal in decision making than they ever had been before. This confuses and disturbs the management team still further. They become resentful and think the board, and this particular VC firm, are unstable and mercurial. Two key executives decide the company is doomed because the board and its relationship with management are tremendously dysfunctional. Those executives leave after getting recruited away to more promising start-ups. Without them, business drops off again. The vocal VCs give up, resurrect their mutiny, write off their investment, and move on to other, more promising start-ups. You can imagine how distracting these dramas can be in a small, young company. Overcoming technical hurdles, competition, and market uncertainties at start-ups is hard enough. If you have self-inflicted wounds similar to any of these three dramatic plotlines, you are doomed. Source: All Things Digital | 3 May 2010 | 2:10 am Hi, Seattle
The last five years have been the best of times, and the worst of times. Mostly it’s been a wonderful experience to watch companies grow from nothing but an idea scratched on a cocktail napkin to something more substantial. And in a very few cases, something that has changed our culture permanently. Entrepreneurs are such interesting animals. Very early on TechCrunch expanded beyond Silicon Valley. Today we have properties in Europe and Asia, content is published in three languages (plus lots more via spam blogs), and we have writers all over the world – including Silicon Valley, New York, London, Brussels, Paris, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and, absurdly, Chicago. Roving editor Sarah Lacy fills in the gaps by constantly traveling to any place that has even a hint of entrepreneurism. Ten million people a month visit our properties from around the world. And now we have someone in Seattle. Me. This last weekend I moved my primary residence from Silicon Valley to Seattle. My plan is to roughly split my time between Seattle and Silicon Valley, and spend a lot more time on the road meeting entrepreneurs around the world. Why Seattle? I’ve written before that the best of the best come to Silicon Valley to compete. Seattle is sort of like the minor leagues of the startup world, I’ve argued from the safety of Silicon Valley. A few stars here and there, but the vast majority of the winners come from northern California, where fierce competition quickly separates the winners from the losers, and the losers can try something new. But that doesn’t mean Seattle isn’t a hotbed of entrepreneurism. There are scores and scores of startups here that are doing innovative and disruptive things, and I want to get right in the middle of things. Be an insider instead of just an occasional visitor. But to be honest the biggest reason I’ve moved is to simply mix things up in my life. Like many people I tend to get bored if I stay in one place too long – five years is the longest I’ve lived anywhere since high school. It was time for a change. And yes, the easy access to awesome skiing wasn’t a factor I ignored, either. My friends (and sources) in Silicon Valley will hardly notice the difference – I travel so often that I’ve only been there about half the time anyway. But startups in Seattle will start seeing a lot more of me starting right now. I look forward to seeing what they are up to. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 3 May 2010 | 2:06 am Bookmark Bracelets - The Apple iRead Concept by Alvar Sans is Ideal for MacBookworms (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The Apple iRead concept by Alvar Sans is a bracelet bookmark that can save your page while you're typing away on your laptop (which I'll presume is a MacBook, for the sake of consistent...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 2:05 am Facebook's "Evil Interfaces" [Voices]By Tim Jones, Activism & Technology Manager, Electronic Frontier Foundation Social networking companies don’t have it easy. Advertisers covet their users’ data, and in a niche that often seems to lack a clear business model, selling (or otherwise leveraging) that data is a tremendously tempting opportunity. But most users simply don’t want to share as much information with marketers or other “partners” as corporations would like them to. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 3 May 2010 | 1:56 am How Wired.com Tracked the iPhone Finder [Voices]By Brian X. Chen, Writer, Wired.com In response to Wired.com’s scoop identifying the finder of the lost iPhone prototype, many have asked me how we did it. The process of uncovering digital footprints to identify Brian Hogan was indeed challenging and enlightening, so I thought I’d tell the story here. Heck, it might even teach police officers a thing or two so they don’t have to kick down doors. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 3 May 2010 | 1:53 am How Wired.com Tracked the iPhone FinderA fascinating post from Wired Technology reporter Brian X. Chen on how he and Wired's Kevin Poulsen, uncovered the identify of the iPhone finder Brian Hogan. In response to Wired.coms scoop identifying...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 1:51 am The Effort to Save Duke University's Usenet Server [Voices]By Thomas Mennecke, Contributor, Slyck News The story of the newsgroups began in 1979 at Duke University. There, students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis brought to life one of the most enduring aspects of the Internet – Usenet, or the newsgroups. Usenet was the first public social gathering places, where people could find common topics to discuss a wide variety of subjects; for example, the newsgroup talk.politics.misc would focus its subject matter on political discussion. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 3 May 2010 | 1:46 am Microsoft fires back at critics of its HTML5 strategy - ZDNet (blog)
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 May 2010 | 1:30 am Scalloped Bodysuits - Sweet Sci-Fi Fashions by Lilla Csefalvay Designs (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) I can't resist sci-fi fashion, so the modern couture appeal of these pieces by Lilla Csefalvay Designs appealed to me from first glance. Model Lisa rocks a futuristic beehive courtesy...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 1:30 am Love Affair Pictorials - 'Inamorata' by James Stringer Captures a Secret Tryst (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) 'Inamorata' by James Stringer is one of my favorite recent photo shoots for several reasons. For one, I adore a good love story, and models Kendell Tobin and Elliot Hall do an excellent...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 1:05 am Memory Startup Gets Vote of Confidence from IBM [Voices]By Don Clark, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal A shift from disk drives to chips to store computer data has been going on for several years. SandForce, a Silicon Valley startup that has been aiding that evolution, has been put to the test by International Business Machines (IBM) and seems to have passed. SandForce was founded to help address a limitation with the underlying chip technology, flash memory. Such chips, a mainstay of products like iPods and digital cameras, have big advantages over disk drives. Most obviously, there are no spinning disks or other moving parts to break down, a major cause of computer crashes. Data can also be retrieved much more quickly from flash memory than from disk drives. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 3 May 2010 | 1:00 am LBi Software Releases New Time and Attendance Tracking Application: At-Trac 3.0Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 May 2010 | 1:00 am Transforming Kitchen Utensils - Click 'N Cook Modular Spatula System Has Interchangeable Heads (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The quirks at Quirky have crowdsourced the design for a modular spatula system that they call the Click 'N Cook. Included in the set is a stainless steel storage block in which to park...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 12:40 am How Funny Are You? Microsoft Explains 4 Levels Of Humor Proficiency
“Military Intelligence” is certainly a funny shortest joke, but “French Resistance” is just so much more complicated and nuanced. And therefore funnier. But it turns out that “French Resistance” probably isn’t that funny. When I look at Microsoft’s description of the four proficiency levels of humor, jokes about the French military are clearly a problem. My joke uses humor to “criticize others and veil an attack,” “delivers sarcasm or cynicism” and “may be perceived as immature or lacking in appropriate seriousness.” In fact, “French Resistance” pretty much violates all the “overdoing humor” guidelines. Which sucks. But what is undeniably fucking hilarious is Microsoft trying to break down humor into a handy table with four levels of proficiency so that people can learn to be funny and use that skill in the workplace.
I found all of this pretty entertaining. And, yes, humorous.
And if you read the humor page first, it kind of puts the rest of the competencies into perspective. What is it exactly? It’s a competency skills list for schools, based on Microsoft’s actual management techniques. Most of this stuff can’t be taught or learned, but it is the kind of thing that big companies spend endless amounts of time teaching to mid level managers. If you want to be a mid level manager, try your best to get to a level four competency in at least half of these. That should keep you occupied and docile while your “ready, fire, aim” colleagues shoot up the corporate ladder. This is the stuff of Dilbert.      
Source: TechCrunch | 3 May 2010 | 12:38 am Elbit Systems and Ness Technologies Joint Venture, NessBit, to Supply the Israeli Ministry of Defense with Intelligence System Valued at $25 MillionSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 May 2010 | 12:30 am Limited Edition Dyson DC25 Blueprint VacuumBy Andrew Liszewski As if we weren’t already enamored enough with Dyson’s high-tech looking vacuums that still outperform the competition, the company has gone and created a limited edition...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 12:23 am Spiked Police Caps - Leonardoaguirre Fall 2010 Shoot by Tony Duran Blends Casuals & Military Chic (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) These shots by Tony Duran feature the Leonardoaguirre Fall 2010 collection as modeled by Jordan Coulter. Oversized knit hooded cardigans, white long johns and tailored trousers all...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 May 2010 | 12:05 am Cimatron Expands Its Network in Singapore, Malaysia and ThailandSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 May 2010 | 12:00 am Ness Technologies and Elbit Systems Joint Venture, NessBit, to Supply the Israeli Ministry of Defense with Intelligence System Valued at $25 MillionSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 May 2010 | 12:00 am Chains of RFCs and Chains of Laws?AlexNicoll writes "I recently completed a DNSSEC library for the .NET platform (thanks to Wouter @ NLNetLabs for his help!). While writing the library, I encountered the extremely entertaining concept of following the long chain of DNS-related RFCs on the IETF website. Some RFCs were obsoleted, some were updated, some updates were obsoleted by others, and some were never really formally related or linked — so even finding them was a challenge in search-fu. Finally, I think I got the whole picture, but I'm not sure. Then I got to thinking: searching for the relevant RFCs in IETF RFC chains was a lot like trying to figure out how (in the US) local, regional, state, and federal laws interact with themselves and each other. Since I just recently moved, I thought I ought to know the rules of the place I live in. It turns out to be just as non-trivial, if not more so, than parsing RFC chains. So here's the question: given that the processes are somewhat similar, does anyone know of a project that has tried to consolidate all the information in one place, so that it's in one comprehensive and up-to-date document, for either laws or RFCs?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 11:59 pm A Security Check At Square Ahead Of This Week’s Launch
Emails were sent out suggesting that users had changed their bank account information, and Square was emailing to let them know that the new account was verified. The only problem? These users didn’t actually change a thing. Obviously, this caused some concern, as did the note at the bottom of the email, “If you have not requested this change, please contact support@squareup.com.” After Square started receiving emails wondering what was going on, they sent out a second email letting users know that nothing was wrong, they were just tweaking the backend of the system, and forgot to turn off email notifications for current testers. “Your bank account has not been affected. Square, and your data, have not be compromised in any way,” the email read. I spoke to co-founder Jack Dorsey tonight about the mix-up, and he assures me that this was in no way a breach of security. Obviously, people are on high-alert for these types of things given the news last week that some credit card information ended up on Google compliments of the startup Blippy. But today’s Square incident was just a poorly-timed email, nothing more. Still, with Dorsey on the phone, and given the Blippy incident, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little bit security at Square. After all, the service is launching this week, Dorsey confirms. I asked what information Square stores in its system. “The only numbers we store are bank account numbers, and those are never shown once you input them into our system,” Dorsey says. He goes on to note that these numbers are encrypted, and the only way to decrypt them (manually) is by way of a key they keep in a safety deposit box. Credit card information is never stored, Dorsey says. It’s not stored on the mobile device or on Square’s system, it’s simply passed through, he says. Dorsey also notes that Square is PCI Level 1 compliant (PCI is a data security standard), and that the company must go through an audit with an independent auditor ever six months to ensure its security is perfect. All companies that handle credit card processing must do this, Dorsey says — and obviously, Square is no different. These audits not only check your system, but look at past transaction data to ensure that everything is in order. In other words, Square has to have a level of security higher than most start-ups. Though, competitor VeriFone, of course, would still say that they’re more secure thanks to their merchant account system. The reason Square accidentally sent out these emails today is because they are tweaking the backend of their system as they near the general public launch this week. Dorsey wasn’t sure exactly what day it would be, as it depends on when Apple approves the app in the App Store. There is already a version of Square live that works on the iPad, but this new version will be Universal — meaning it will work on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. These last two are the keys for the service. Square is all about empowering anyone to be able to take credit cards as a method of payment using only their mobile device. This works by way of a tiny card reader that plugs into the headphone jack on the device. These readers readers are now white, I’m told (the tester version we’ve been using at some TechCrunch events has been black), and they have a new spring that makes card readings much easier (you used to have to swipe a few times with the old black reader). These readers will begin shipping out this week when the app is live in the App Store. Square is sending them out for free to anyone who signs up for an account — you’ll be prompted to visit Square’s site to do this once you download the app. Look for Square in the App Store later this week. It will be a free download.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 11:44 pm Village of the Dam
The thought dawned on me as I was reading a poster in Portuguese warning me against mosquitoes carrying the disease, complete with blown-up pictures of them as if they were tiny wanted felons. I looked at my arm full of bites and asked the foreman, “Do people really get malaria here?” He replied: “Oh yeah, one guy had it three times. I told him he should get some kind of award for that. Dengue too. Dengue really bums people out.” Let’s see: Fever, rashes, vomiting and convulsions? Yes, a “bummer” to say the least. And I thought construction workers in America were tough. I’ve done about a dozen trips to emerging markets and met with about fifty companies per trip, and BS Construtora–the company that can build a house in one day– is one of the coolest I’ve met anywhere in the world. As I mentioned during my last trip to Brazil, the company comes as close to having the whole package as a risky startup can. It sells an innovative solution that solves a huge need both in Brazil and around the world. Started by a humble bricklayer and his wife, it has a great back-story. It has even hired a Stanford-trained CEO. And, oh yeah, it also has upwards of $100 million in annual revenues. Last time, I just met with the CEO, Marcelo Miranda, in a conference room in Sao Paulo. This time I wanted to see what the company actually does. Fast-forward a few weeks, and I’m in the Amazon basin worrying about mosquitoes and gawking at the 1,600-house village BS Construtora is building, complete with schools, a hotel, a city hall, a fire station, a mall, a cemetery and a golf course—and of course all the infrastructure a city that size requires like water and electricity. This is part of a multi-billion-dollar project to build a hydroelectric dam, and BS Construtora is building the place where the workers will live, along with the people who are being displaced by the flooding. It’s a dicey job from a human and environmental perspective, and it’s being closely scrutinized by several watch-groups and the government. The village—which has about 500 completed houses now—is one of the most surreal places I’ve ever been. It’s as if the opening of Edward Scissorhands was dropped into the middle of the jungle. Recently, I saw the location the TV show “Lost” used for “The Others’ Village” in Hawaii and I assure you, this place looked more Others’ Village than the actual Others’ Village. But, going inside the houses, I was struck by how nice they are. A lot of engineering has gone into keeping air flowing inside, tempering the area’s intense heat. The layout, standard stucco walls and linoleum flooring actually reminded me of my first apartment. BS Construtora has built a manufacturing facility on-site to cut down on transportation costs, and a lab tests every batch of cement to make sure the houses will come out of the room-by-room molds in one piece. The facility can produce ten houses a day. Anyone who has traveled in the emerging world can see the immediate promise of something like this. Moving people from their homes in the name of progress is a harsh reality with which most emerging markets are grappling. But at least it’s being done with dignity in this case. Jungle inhabitants are essentially leapfrogging straight to modernization with plumbing, sewer systems, air conditioning and yes, Internet access. It’s one of the most staggering examples of the benefits of a – literal— greenfield opportunity I’ve seen on the road. Here are some photos that barely capture it. (The last is of the mall under construction.)
     
Source: TechCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 11:36 pm James Cameron at Caltech: The Science of PandoraLast week, Oscar-winning director James Cameron visited Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., to discuss the science behind his hit movie "Avatar" and Jennifer Ouellette was there to listen into the fascinating discussion.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 2 May 2010 | 11:11 pm French and Benelux stocks - Factors to watch on May 3PARIS, May 3 (Reuters) - Below are company-related news and leading stories from French and Benelux media which could have an impact on the region's markets or individual stocks.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 2 May 2010 | 10:58 pm First Update to Droid Incredible Arrives via Over-The-Air Voodoo
The ability to offer fixes and updates to devices has changed the product lifecycle (no longer do manufacturers have to bug-test as thoroughly or fully complete the software before selling hardware and recouping development costs), and many products have received new and unexpected features through upgrades (even if others have been impaired by an “update”). Today is such a day. The still factory-fresh Droid Incredible has had its first update. Like a baby’s first steps, there will be more in the future, but unlike a baby’s first steps, this update isn’t very memorable. The purpose of the update isn’t yet clear, but it seems like it could have something to do with the erratic signal bar behaviour that users have been reporting. Phandroid broke the news, and have also reached out to Verizon and HTC for more info, so if you want to know more, be sure ‘n check ‘em out.
Source: MobileCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 10:58 pm Cloud Sherpas Raises $1 Million To Help Migrate Companies To Google Apps Cloud Sherpas, a Google Apps reseller that also helps enterprises migrate to and manage the productivity suite, has raised $1 million in funding from Hallett Capital and other investors. The startup has also brought on a new CEO, Jon Hallet (who was the lead investor in the round) to lead the company. Cloud Sherpas' founder, Michael Cohn, will become Vice President of Marketing and Product Management.
Cloud Sherpas not only helps companies migrate and transition over to Google Apps but also provides additional tools to make the productivity suite more useful. Currently, over 1,800 organizations use Cloud Sherpas’ products and services. 
Source: TechCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 10:55 pm Rumoured Microsoft Kin Release Date: May 13th
Microsoft mentioned during the Kin announcement last month that the phones would launch on Verizon in May, so the news today isn’t shocking, but it’s nice to have a firmer release date to put in the calendar. Just not your Kin Calendar, coz, you know, that doesn’t exist. [via Slash Phone]
Source: MobileCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 10:10 pm Summary Box: Unvarnished lets unnamed peers judgeSTILL DEVELOPING: The site, http://www.getunvarnished.com, is in a private "beta" test. It's not yet clear when it will be widely rolled out. WHAT IT MEANS: Right now, to write or see...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 2 May 2010 | 10:10 pm Unvarnished lets unnamed peers judge you on WebIt used to be that a potential employer would call your references to see whether you'd be a good fit. But what if you showed up for an interview and the employer already knew you blew an...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 2 May 2010 | 10:10 pm China Agbank to apply for $30 bln IPO this week -sourcesHONG KONG, May 3 (Reuters) - Agricultural Bank of China, one of the country's Big Four lenders, plans to file applications this week for its dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 2 May 2010 | 10:09 pm Complex Bike Power Meter Spews Data Like a GeyserIf you're a gram-counting roadie, CycleOps' new Joule 2.0 will become as indispensable as leg razors and Spandex.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 May 2010 | 10:00 pm How to Report Scams on Craigslist, eBayYou've been scammed on eBay, so what's next? Here's our guide to reporting financial fraud on commerce websites.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 May 2010 | 10:00 pm Scott Brown on How Twitter + Dopamine = Better HumansTragedies like the quake in Haiti trigger an immediate altruistic response in us that's strong yet fleeting. Luckily, says Wired's Scott Brown, we now have the technology to keep up with our benevolence.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 May 2010 | 10:00 pm May 3, 1815: Blown Away by Horn With ValvesBefore the invention of the valve, brass instruments were boring.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 May 2010 | 10:00 pm The Day BMW Became 'The Ultimate Driving Machine'Seventy years later, BMW's dominance of the 1940 Mille Miglia remains its single greatest auto-racing accomplishment.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 May 2010 | 10:00 pm Complex Bike Power Meter Spews Data Like a GeyserIf you're a gram-counting roadie, CycleOps' new Joule 2.0 will become as indispensable as leg razors and Spandex.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 2 May 2010 | 10:00 pm Organizing Armageddon: What We Learned From the Haiti EarthquakeNatural disasters strike more and more people each year -- pushing global relief agencies to the limit. It's more important now than ever to understand the science of coming to the rescue.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 May 2010 | 10:00 pm Verizon Drops Palm Pre Plus Down to $29.99 On Contract
That price includes the free mobile hotspot, too! This could be in response to Verizon’s excessive inventory, or the HP buyout, or even just to gain some attention after the Droid Incredible launch, but no matter how you cut it, if you’re in the market for a $30 phone, there is none better than the Pre Plus. It is worth noting that the new price is exactly the same as the Pixi Plus… which is a little odd, so, who knows, maybe another Pixi Plus price drop will be announced soon? [via PreCentral]
Source: MobileCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 9:24 pm Fishing ban imposed in oil-affected Gulf of MexicoLouisiana's 2.4-billion-dollar a year commercial and recreational fishing industry was dealt its first major blow from the oil spill Sunday, as the US government banned activities for 10...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 2 May 2010 | 9:12 pm Microsoft Courier: Not The Right Time - InformationWeek (blog)
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 May 2010 | 8:58 pm Zen CodingDownload Squad has a quick review, with video, of Zen Coding (Google Code project page here), an extremely well thought-out accelerator for anyone who codes HTML. Its syntax is CSS-like. Zen Coding has been around for a while — here's its author Sergey Chikuyonok's introduction in Smashing Magazine from last November — and it has now picked up support for more than a dozen editing environments including Notepad++ and TextMate.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 8:50 pm LG Display says no action on AU case yet; shares dip - Reuters
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 May 2010 | 8:48 pm Erasing Your Digital Tracks on the Web (PC World)PC World - The Internet never forgets. Search engines crawl and index every last byte of information available on the Web; and once a piece of information goes online, some digital echo of it is virtually guaranteed to persist on a server somewhere.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 May 2010 | 7:15 pm Choose Privacy: video from the American Library AssocChoose Privacy Week Video from 20K Films on Vimeo. The American Library Association's "Choose Privacy" week kicks off with a ~20 minute video featuring writers and thinkers talking about the value of privacy in simple, accessible, thought-provoking terms. Included are me, Neil Gaiman, and many others. Produced by Laura Zinger and 20K films, it's a really fine little introduction to subject from the towering heroes of the information revolution: the librarians.
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 2 May 2010 | 6:46 pm MATLAB Can't Manipulate 64-Bit IntegersAn anonymous reader writes "MATLAB, an important package of mathematical software heavily used in industry and academia, has had support for 64-bit machines for several years now. However, the MATLAB developers still haven't gotten around to implementing even basic arithmetic operations for 64-bit integers. Attempting to add, divide, subtract, or multiply two 64-bit integers will result in an error message saying that the corresponding method does not exist. As one commentator put it, 'What is the point of having numerical data types that can't be manipulated?'" The post notes that the free MATLAB clone GNU Octave deals with 64-bit integers just fine.
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Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 6:38 pm A Lost iPhone Shows Apple's Churlish Side - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 May 2010 | 6:35 pm Top 10 Gamertell posts for the week of April 25, 2010FROM GAMERTELL - Haven’t caught all of the Gamertell news this week? Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles… Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 2 May 2010 | 6:30 pm NSFW: #Ebony and #Ivory – The Brave New World of Online Self-Segregation
In fact, the whole hotel was a mess. Carpets un-vacuumed, brassware unpolished, rooms unserviced, newspapers undelivered. It was a story writ large across the whole city – leaves piled up knee-deep on the sidewalk, restaurant tables uncleared and water glasses un-refilled. It was as if every essential – but mundane – service had ground to a halt, instantly and without warning. Only when I reached the Civic Center did I realise what was going on: all the Mexicans were gathered there, protesting Arizona’s new senate bill, SB1070. “Stop!” I cried, “stop this nonsense! Put down your bi-lingual protest signs and your American flags and get back to work!” My hotel room was not going to clean itself, and I was hungry for enchiladas. But the Mexicans ignored me – perhaps because I don’t speak a word of Spanish or perhaps because they couldn’t hear me over the chanting; but probably because I’m white. Racists. Indeed, this week, the subject of racism is on everyone’s lips. First Arizona turned the concept of innocent until proven guilty on its head, passing a law that forces people who look Mexican to carry documentation that proves they’re not in the US illegally or face six months in prison. (British readers may be forgiven for feeling a sense of deja vu.) Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, we Brits were having our own race-related scandal, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught on a live microphone calling 66-year old voter, Gillian Duffy, “bigoted” after she harangued him over the number of Polish immigrants “flocking” to the UK. To his eternal shame, Mr Brown apologised profusely for his comments the next day, claiming he had misunderstood Mrs Duffy’s words despite the fact that, like many older white voters, her blaming polish immigrants for many of the UK’s problems plainly is a form of bigotry (Poles are Britain’s equivalent of Mexicans in the US, except Poles are allowed to immigrate to the UK freely and without a visa). I’d like to say that I’m shocked at Arizona’s new law, or at an old white lady living in the north of England being fearful of foreigners – but of course I’m not. Arizona is a state with an increasingly large population of white people above retirement age and study after study has shown this group to be the most likely to hold anti-immigrant, or even out-and-out racist views. But equally, I’m heartened – and I mean this in no way callously – that these people are literally a dying demographic. Growing up in their place is a generation which, thanks to the Internet, is exposed daily to people of different races, colours and creeds. Thanks to the proliferation of social networks, which recognise no national or social boundaries, it’s now just as easy to make friends with someone in Africa as it is to connect with someone in Arkansas. At Munich’s DLD conference two years ago, Randi Zuckerberg spoke inspiringly about how Facebook was bringing together young people from both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict through their shared membership of Facebook groups. Just last week, Slate cited a paper from the University of Chicago which showed that people who get their news from online sources are more likely to have a balanced news diet (ideologically speaking) than those who get their news offline. As an avid Internet user, so the study claims, I’m likely to visit both the new York Times and Fox News in order to get a balanced picture of events than someone who relies on a single newspaper. The trend, according to champions of Internet diversity, is clear: the Internet makes us less fearful of people with different ideologies, backgrounds or skin colours to our own. And this, of course, is A Good Thing. In just a generation, laws like that passed in Arizona or opinions like that expressed to Prime Minister Brown in Rochdale will be a thing of the past and, thanks to social media, we’ll all live together in perfect harmony. Ebony and Ivory, etc etc etc. In fact, as far as I can tell, there’s just one problem with that vision of Christmas yet to come… It’s total horseshit. Let’s start with the Chicago study. Certainly the results paint a positive picture of online diversity: the numbers clearly indicate that online news ‘consumers’ visit a ideologically-balanced range of sources every day, especially compared to their offline counterparts. But what the study doesn’t, and can’t, show is why they visit those sources. A quick look at my browser history shows that in the past 24 hours I’ve visited BBC News Online, the New York Times and the Guardian. Liberal news organisations all. But in that same time period, I’ve also checked in to the Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper, the Drudge Report and even Fox News (several times). According to the study, then, I’m an open minded person with a balanced news diet. But of course I’m nothing of the sort. In reality, my reasons for visiting FoxNews.com are the same as those of most of my cheese-eating, US-hating, Osama-hugging, socialist liberal friends – I’m checking in on the enemy, hoping to find something outrageous to back up my pre-existing biases against the American right. And before any Proud Hannity-waving Patriots reading this get too outraged by that confession, admit it: you visit the Guardian and the New York Times for precisely the same, if polar opposite, reasons. The truth is, if we’re not careful, the Internet is going to make us more, not less, distant from people who don’t share our views or heritage. In the real world – in the workplace, in bars or just walking down the street – it’s almost impossible to avoid interacting with people who are different from ourselves. Of course some people still try to avoid that inevitability – think apartheid in South Africa, or the more recent story of a British holidaymaker who demanded that a hotel in Florida keep all “people of color” (or those with “foreign accents”) away from him and his family. But thankfully in 2010, the majority of people consider such examples to be (in the former case) grounds for regime change or (as with the latter), bizarre front page news. And yet in the online world such filtering and sorting happens every day without being in the least bit remarkable. Just consider the news that – according to a study by Edison Research (reported by Business Insider) – “black people represent 25% of Twitter users, roughly twice their share of the population in general”. As a white person this number surprised me somewhat – and if you’re white, I’ll bet it surprised you too. Twitter feels like one of the whitest sites in the world to me: full as it is with self-important middle-class hipster kids retweeting New York Times stories and the fact that they’re having sushi for lunch. On Facebook or other social networks that better reflect my real-world relationships, I see a far more representative number of non-white faces in my friend lists and on the pages of friends-of-friends, while Twitter – by contrast – is hideously white. In fact, the only time I see a high concentration of faces that are different to my own is when I venture into the curious world of trending topics, and specifically hashtag memes. There I can guarantee that at least one of the daily trending memes will have been started by (vast majority) African American teenagers, exchanging #jokes on subjects like #funeralrules and #iWantMyMoneyBack (both grabbed from Twitter’s front page just now). Like the confused 30-year-old white person I am, I spend a couple of minutes browsing the jokes, get confused and scamper back to the safety of my own feed and its talk of trendy Japanese food and how terribly racist Arizona is. Without really meaning to, I’ve created my own little Twitter bubble of People Like Me: racially, politically, linguistically and socially. And every day across the Internet a new tool or service is launched that makes it easier for people to do exactly the same: to filter the vast amounts of information available online, according to their personal beliefs or interests. Hashtags, follower lists, RSS feeds, personalised news sites – all the better to surround ourselves with people and views like ourselves and our own. There are two basic types of dystopian future: the 1984 future and the Brave New World future. In the 1984 future, the government forces us to think and act in a certain way, driving undesirables into ghettos and threatening with physical harm those who think or act differently. In the Brave New World future (or possibly the Neil Postman future), the government doesn’t have to do anything to force our behaviour. Instead we’re given the tools to do whatever we want, creating an illusion of total freedom which no-one fights or questions until its too late and we realise we’ve lost the capacity for critical thought. If apartheid or the new laws in Arizona represent the 1984 future, then there’s a real possibility that the Internet – and social media specifically – will eventually lead us into an even more terrifying Brave New World future. A future where the tools that once promised to help us meet people with different backgrounds and ideologies from our own actually end up being used, quite unintentionally, to segregate us from those same people. And given the increasing influence that online behaviour has on how we act in the real world, perhaps a generation from now – rather than laughing at Arizona’s long-overturned SB1070 and the years-dead concept of racial or ideological segregation – we’ll find ourselves sitting in our electronically filtered and hashtag-segregated ghettos, looking back at the good old days. The days, way back in 2010, when it was only the very old or the very stupid who thought that finding ways to filter and separate ourselves from those who are different was a good idea.      
Source: TechCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 5:57 pm Education Author and Thinker Ian Jukes Keynotes National Network of Digital Schools Client ConferenceFARMINGTON, Pa., May 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Author and thinker Ian Jukes told educators at a National Network of Digital Schools conference they and their schools are at risk if they hold onto outdated ideas and methods of teaching when knowledge technology is changing at an exponential rate. Jukes keynoted the first-ever nationwide conference of the National Network of Digital Schools (NNDS), an educational management foundation and provider of premier online curricula.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 2 May 2010 | 5:09 pm Virginia AG Probing Michael Mann For Fraudeldavojohn writes "Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has requested receipts and research documents relating to nearly half a million dollars in state taxpayer money used to conduct climate change research at the University of Virginia while under direction of Michael Mann. Originator of the famous 2001 IPCC Hockey Stick graph depicting rapid climate change, Mann appears to be a prime target for Cuccinelli — who has also requested hearings with EPA to contest the grounds of their carbon dioxide studies. Mann's expenditures of taxpayer money may become problematic if Cuccinelli finds violations of Virginia's Fraud Against Taxpayers Act. Cuccinelli has been active in pushing conservative views in the past, including an effort to remove the titillating mammary from the beloved Great Seal of Virginia. No end in sight for the politicizing of the science and research surrounding climate change."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 4:34 pm Open Source Developer Knightedunixfan writes "Georg Greve, developer of odf and active FOSS developer has received a knighthood in Germany for his work. From the article: 'Some weeks ago I received news that the embassy in Berne had unsuccessfully been trying to contact me under FSFE’s old office address in Zurich. This was a bit odd and unexpected. So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18. December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon (“Verdienstkreuz am Bande”) by the Federal Republic of Germany. As you might expect, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I was, in fact, rather shaken. You could also say shocked. Quick Wikipedia research revealed this to be part of the orders of knighthood, making this a Knight’s Cross.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 4:02 pm Appletell reviews EyeFi Pro X2 wireless SD cardFROM APPLETELL - The Eye-Fi Pro X2 wireless memory card comes with 8GB of storage, Class 6 read/write speeds, RAW support, “endless memory” and wireless N support. Can they call it “Pro” now? Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 2 May 2010 | 4:00 pm Starting an International Cybersecurity Conversationcrimeandpunishment writes "Every government in the world is dealing with cybercrime, but they're all doing it on their own. In the context of 'cyberwar' saber-rattling on all sides, getting governments to share information is a challenge. But an international security conference this week in Dallas is aimed at doing just that — even if only on an informal basis."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 3:24 pm Best iPad Apps of April (Appolicious)Appolicious - In just a month, my iPad has become an intrinsic part of my daily routine. And though the device itself has proven to be somewhat magical in its ease of use, it’s the apps that make it extraordinary.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 May 2010 | 3:09 pm Google acquires 3D desktop BumpTop - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 May 2010 | 2:51 pm Inside Brazil’s Advertising Startup Boom
Most big advertising companies have a creative bureau in Brazil for a reason: Brazilians are just good at advertising. They are creative: I went on a graffiti tour of Sao Paulo and saw some of the most amazing, detailed, expressive, wacky stuff I’ve ever seen, building-sized and most of it will be painted over and replaced by my next trip. (Photo above one of hundreds snapped on that tour.) They are emotional: One entrepreneur told me when he went to soccer games, he didn’t care if his team won or lost, he just wanted the emotional release either way. They are expressive: Have you seen footage from Carnival? Brazilians spend a year erecting massive floats that are used once, then destroyed. As the younger generation of Brazilians are increasingly enthralled with starting companies, some of that talent is peeling off and starting new advertising businesses. Some of these are aimed at technology and tools, some have more of an agency or services model that may not scale. But the interesting thing is the companies are being started from the point of view of advertising professionals, not technologists or content creators like you see in much of the rest of the start-up world. That sentence is likely to make any Web 2.0 companies reading this groan. Over the last few years, as Web 2.0 companies have gotten to critical mass and shifted an eye towards making money, the Valley and Madison Avenue have been trapped in a monetization dance where the “25-year-old-media-buyer” is public enemy number one. He’s the bottleneck between big clients who want to expand their reach with novel campaigns and the sites that have the eyeballs. Might this new startup generation of advertising kids in Brazil find an answer? Way too early to tell. But two things are certain. First, we’re trapped between an advertising world that tech has wrecked and a yet-unrealized world where tech offers the new advertising answer. (Paid search alone isn’t it.) And second, there’s a bunch of raw talent in Brazil and that talent is starting advertising companies that are good at exploiting holes in the market. Even a few modest exits could ignite an explosion of advertising innovation. I met about a dozen companies that fit this trend, but here are two that are worth watching, one on the non-Web front and the other following the more traditional Web 2.0 ad network path. Plenty more are bubbling up where these two came from. Biruta: Sheer Creative Crazy. I did not expect to like this company. But when I showed up to the three-story, house-like office building in the hills of Rio and most of the company was practicing a flash mob out by the pool, it felt very Silicon Valley 2007. You remember: That period when offices did group lip-dubs and everyone was excited and hopeful, creating new stuff. Not that Biruta hasn’t created a real company—it gets paid by agencies to produce what they call “crackpot marketing” campaigns for a lot of big companies like Claro, Nike and Petrobras. Things like organizing huge singles marches through major cities and projecting videos on water. When Sao Paulo banned outdoor media, Biruta cleverly got around it by projecting billboards on walls, growing its business while an overall market shrank. They remind me of an Ideo for marketing: It’s not just on one odd-ball campaign, they have a track-record and system for coming up with these things over-and-over again. And with the World Cup and the Olympics both coming to Rio, these guys will have a lot of opportunity to market domestic and international brands to tourists in creative ways. The company was started by Alan James, who grew up in one of the poorest areas of Rio and dropped out of high school working odd jobs to survive. He started his advertising career in 1997 by stringing banners to the back of a plane. How’s that for old school banner ads? He grabbed attention by creating more outrageous banners like three-dimensional Coke cans that would inflate as he flew. James moved the company into a Shell-sponsored incubator started to help develop entrepreneurship in poorer areas of Rio, but because the rooms were all taken he started it in a bathroom. (They’ve since taken over the building and formally turned that bathroom into more office space.) There is something about James and about this company. Despite a preference for product companies, Biruta was overwhelmingly approved at Endeavor’s International Selection Panel in Rio last week. In a sign of good marketing, the founders—who only speak Portuguese—wowed the international group of judges with a video about their history and work. “This isn’t a services company, this is an innovation company,” declared one judge, Diego Piacentini of Amazon. (Watch the video below.) Boo-box: Brazil’s Web 2.0 Ad Network. When Boo-box was first covered on TechCrunch it was called easy acquisition fodder for its novel ecommerce ad unit that allowed you to easily buy, say, shoes mentioned in a blog post. That acquisition didn’t happen, but the company did raise funding after that post and has continued to grow since. Boo-box’s founder Marco Gomes lead the interactive team at AgenciaClick before starting the company in 2007. His simple belief is that everyone producing content online should be able to make money from it. Boo-box still sells that original ecommerce ad unit, traditional IAB ad units and experiments with other social media ad units too. A lot of them—like advertising to your Twitter followers— aren’t particularly unique from US companies, but Boo-box focuses on treating its publishers better than other ad networks, as such it has a network of hundreds of sites and 500 million page views a month in a huge country most ad networks have ignored. And the 20-something Gomes—who also came from a slum— has emerged as sort of a role-model for Web kids in Brazil. Boo-box is it’s one of those rare companies in an emerging market that seems to have a lot of the right elements in place: The timing is right with an established global market and no local player. They’ve got funding from the guy many call the best local Web investor Eric Acher of Monashees Capital. Gomes is the visionary techy and his partner, Marcos Tanaka, is a bare-bones, get-things-done execution guy who previously worked for big consulting firms organizing Brazilian campaigns for huge multinationals like Coca Cola. Maybe the company is still just acquisition fodder, but it’s more than just an innovative ad unit now.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 2:41 pm HP drops Windows 7 from 'Slate' tablet, will use WebOS variant - Afterdawn.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 May 2010 | 2:21 pm The Far-Reaching Effects of Comcast v FCCeldavojohn writes "We've had a lot of discussion about what the overturning of FCC v Comcast means for net neutrality, but CommLawBlog argues that net-neut is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the effects of this ruling. In the National Broadband Plan, Local TV broadcasters might be forced to give up their spectrum 'voluntarily' to be repurposed for broadband; this decision diminishes the FCC's authority to cut such deals. Another issue at stake is how this will affect the FCC's approval of Comcast's acquisition of NBC."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 2:11 pm Hot gaming news for the week of 4-25-2010Section:  No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 2 May 2010 | 1:30 pm OpenDLP Aims To Stem Data Lossrollcall writes "A new free and open source tool, OpenDLP, has been released that will help organizations fight data loss caused by stolen laptops, missing HDDs, or compromised systems. OpenDLP is managed from a centralized Web application and it can simultaneously send and control thousands non-intrusive agents to Microsoft Windows systems over NetBIOS that look for user-defined regular expressions in data at rest. When sensitive data is found, the agents 'phone home' to the Web app with their results. While organizations have continued to lose sensitive data even though many commercial products are available to help prevent this, perhaps the introduction of a free alternative will finally spur organizations to locate their sensitive data proactively before it is lost."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 1:05 pm Computer-security event seeks to spur int'l talks (AP)AP - As governments around the world amass armies of hackers to protect their countries' computer networks and possibly attack others, the idea of getting officials together to discuss shared threats such as cybercrime is challenging.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 May 2010 | 12:09 pm Meet the Men Who Deploy AirstrikesLanxon writes "Wired followed US Army Staff Sergeant Kevin Rosner into Afghanistan to see first-hand the tools, tactics and pressures involved in coordinating military airstrikes. This lengthy piece explores the people and technology involved in high-risk airborne warfare, from their perspective. From the article: 'Strapped to his chest, Rosner carries a handheld video player called a "Rover," built by L3 Communications, a New York-based defense contractor. The device, the size and shape of a PSP game console and costing tens of thousands of dollars, reads signals transmitted by the camera pods strapped to the underside of all NATO fighter aircraft. With his Rover, Rosner can see everything a pilot sees, from the pilot's perspective. On his back he carries a radio programmed with secure frequencies that tie him directly to the pilots overhead and to his unit's headquarters, several miles away. At the headquarters, another JTAC monitors a bigger, more sophisticated video terminal that displays the same video Rosner sees, plus other data.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 May 2010 | 11:50 am Something Is Brewing At BumpTop, Possible Google Acquisition (Update: Confirmed)
Update: BumpTop now confirms it was acquired by Google, terms were not disclosed. Rumors are swirling that 3D desktop interface Canadian startup BumpTop has been acquired by Google. We started getting tips yesterday pointing to a now-deleted Tweet from a Canadian VC saying Google had acquired them. When I called CEO Anand Agarawala on Friday to ask if BumpTop was acquired, he responded, “Not that I know of.” But today, there is a notice on BumpTop’s homepage saying that it will discontinue its current products and has a big announcement coming:
Also, there is now a post by Canadian venture debt firm Wellington Financial speculating that Google did indeed buy them. When I reached out again to Agarawala today, asking whether or not Google acquired his company, his response changed from his previous outright denial to, “Sorry man, no comment.” Something is definitely up. BumpTop has a 3D desktop interface, and recently added multi-touch capabilities (see video demo below). It would look great on a future Android or Chrome OS tablet, just sayin’. I’ve reached out to Google for confirmation. Update 2: Google also confirms.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 11:42 am Pimping the EnlightenmentMiles Klee analyses the use of Joseph Ducreux's 1793-era self-portrait as an image macro: "An immediate pleasure here is the tension of anachronistic pop sentiment couched in a vernacular that struggles with those meanings and destroys the stylized phrasing of the original text. ... Ducreux's foppish accoutrements today reek of pimpage, of course, but the painting communicates with our moment on weirder wavelengths than that." [The Awl]Source: Boing Boing | 2 May 2010 | 11:08 am BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 4-25-2010Section:  We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 2 May 2010 | 11:00 am A TC Teardown: What Makes Groupon Tick
Editor’s note: Group buying sites are growing like mushrooms. In this teardown, guest author Steven Carpenter goes through a detailed teardown of the largest social commerce site, Groupon, and its competitors to see what exactly is going on here. Carpenter was the founder and CEO of Cake Financial, a TechCrunch40 Finalist that developed a service for mainstream investors to manage their investments, which was sold to E*Trade earlier this year. Before Cake, Steve worked in digital music managing strategy and the day-to-day operations for Rhapsody. He was also the director of business development at financial services startup myCFO, founded by Jim Clark and backed by Kleiner Perkins, and online photo site, Snapfish. Much has been written about the rapid growth and success of Chicago-based local daily deal company, Groupon. And it is for good reason. No other startup has gone more quickly from launch to $1 billion+ in valuation except YouTube (12 months), which Groupon achieved in 16 months with its latest $135 million infusion two weeks ago. Just as unprecedented, the popularizer of the “group coupon” increased its valuation 4X in the span of just 3 months. What is going on here? Is Groupon yet another example of frothy venture capital valuations or is the company one of the next, enduring consumer Internet brands? The Teardown To find out, I did a teardown of Groupon’s business with data available on its website over the most recent quarter, compared my findings to what I calculated for the final three months of 2009, and then looked at how all of this compares to the top competitors. I conducted two analyses: 1) I looked at every deal across the Groupon network for a single day last November and a day this past April to see how revenue is scaling and how the company is benefiting from rapidly opening support for new cities. I then analyzed every deal listed on the Groupon website across 5 cities (San Francisco, Boston, St. Louis, San Diego, and Denver ) for all of Q4 2009 and Q1 2010 to determine how the company is growing once it enters a market and to see how the product mix is changing. The key finding is that Groupon is achieving considerable revenue growth across all measures: more customers, higher deal prices, and rapidly expanding markets. How Groupon Makes Money Groupon takes the old Entertainment Coupon Books that your mom used to buy and brings it to the social web. Groupon sells a “Deal of the Day” in each of it’s now 52 supported cities offering significant savings for local restaurants, service providers, activities and memberships, and takes a commission. The trick is that the deal is only “triggered” once enough people buy in. This creates the incentive to share the deal with friends and family, until “the deal is on.” It’s great for local businesses because they can set the parameters for the offer and they know a minimum for how many offers they will have sold in advance. By combining the social web and virality with hard-to-replicate deals, Groupon has created a network-effects business for commerce that makes its model highly attractive (hence, every week seems to bring new copycats). Traffic
Groupon had nearly 3 million unique visitors in March, up from 900,000 in September. It is now bigger than Woot, in terms of traffic, and quickly approaching Zappos (5 million). According to Compete, Groupon gets more of its traffic from Facebook than any other site, including Google, and when people are searching they are typing “groupon”- meaning it is already enjoying the benefits of its brand equity as the company becomes synonymous with the category. As a result, Groupon is spending very little money on search engine marketing (as opposed to say Netflix or Amazon), which is a significant cost advantage. Leading direct competitor, LivingSocial, by contrast, flattened out at 900,000 but now appears to be ramping up again. What Are People Buying? Coupons for restaurants, massages, discounted memberships to fitness clubs and museums, local activities, tourist attractions, and merchandise continue to make up the bulk of what is being sold. You can tell a lot about a city by what is being bought on Groupon. To wit:
If you look at the top 10 deals by number of purchases, local merchants appear to be getting more comfortable with the Groupon marketing channel. Restaurant coupons will also be popular but offers like discounted clothing, flowers, house cleaning, and local events like boat shows are increasingly appearing on the site. As you can see below, between the fourth quarter of 2009 to first quarter of 2010, “Activities” replaced “Dining” as the #1 category and “Merchandise” took a big jump. My guess is that this will become more prevalent as Groupon increases its salesforce and these more local merchants begin to experiment with unique offers. Consumers will benefit as they have the opportunity to grab more of their favorite things at deep discounts.
How Big Is Groupon’s Business and How Fast Is It Growing? On April 16, 2010, Groupon had 31 deals, 45,910 paying customers and sold nearly $1.3 million worth of coupons. This was a significant increase from the 17 deals, 10,018 customers and $240,000 in gross sales it had on November 6, 2009. Along every measurement I looked at—the number of deals /day, average customers/deal, average deal price, average gross revenue/deal—Groupon is seeing tremendous growth. Of particular importance is that its average deal price is increasing (from $24.65 to $44.94) and it is rapidly opening up new markets. All of this is what is causing Groupon’s revenues to scale quickly. Assuming a 30% revenue share, Groupon netted $72,000, last November for a monthly run rate of close to $1.5 million, assuming 20 deal days each month. In April this had jumped 5X to $380,000, implying a monthly run rate of $7.6 million. As you can see from the chart below, not only is the number of deals increasing, but the number of customers per deal more than doubled and Groupon was able to elevate the price per deal. That formula of (more deals + more customers) X (higher ticket items) seems to be working. Based on these numbers and the company’s growth rate, Groupon should easily surpass $150 million in revenues in 2010. And as revenue ramps, most of this will be pure profit since the company does not hold any physical inventory and its customer acquisition costs are so low.
How Is Groupon Doing Once It Gets Into A Market?
While there were nearly the identical number of deals during the two time periods (106 vs. 107), Groupon more than doubled its average gross revenues per sale from $23,000 to $47,000. The company doubled the average number of customers per deal from 874 to over 1,800 and increased the deal price from an overage of $27.20 in Q4 to $38.36 in Q1. I also thought it was interesting that the most purchased deal in Q1 was 7,119 (for a $16 ticket to ride the Tall Ships in Chicago), more than double the most popular sale in Q4 (2,918 for a $15 Vegetarian Dinner in Denver). How Is The Rampant Competition Affecting Groupon? Obviously I am not the only one running these numbers. Because of this dramatic growth and the wild profit potential of the emerging daily deals category, a number of companies are trying to become fast followers. You can see a comparison below of Groupon with its two most well-funded followers, LivingSocial and BuyWithMe (which recently brought on an experienced CEO in Cheryl Rosner, formerly CEO of TicketsNow and Hotels.com). Groupon has raised a total of $171 million to-date, employs more than 200 people, and serves 52 markets. Its next biggest competitor, LivingSocial, has raised $49 million, employs about 50 people, and serves 14 markets.
Of the companies the press likes to mention as competitors, the reality is that only LivingSocial has established enough traction to provide sufficient data to draw a comparison. LivingSocial is now in 14 markets compared to Groupon’s 52. I compared the daily deals for Groupon and LivingSocial for the same day as above, April 16. As you can see below, LivingSocial looks a lot like Groupon did 6 months ago. LivingSocial had 10 deals compared to Groupon’s 31. On every measurement, total customers (45,910 vs. 5,976), average customers/deal (1,481 vs. 598), average deal price ($44.94 vs. $29.00), and average gross revenue per deal ($40,753 vs. $18,276), Groupon is far ahead. The data suggests that Groupon is not yet feeling the impact of all the new entrants.
The $1 Billion Question: Is This a Winner-Take All Market? I think the potential for these kinds of offers on the web is a $5B+ opportunity. There is no reason to believe that this concept couldn’t be extended to virtually any category or service provider. But I do not think this is a winner-take-all market like auctions were when eBay took that market. There are no real technology advantages, there is nothing preventing a local vendor from using multiple platforms, and buyers don’t care where they buy so long as the deals are good. That said, my take is that this is a winner-take-most market and looks more like search, where the bulk of the revenues will fall to the leader. There are definitely network effects in play and they appear to be stronger than I initially assumed. When Groupon enters a new market it is starting from scratch but it can leverage its significant investment in its platform. This is the reason it has raised so much capital and it is racing to get into new cities before the competition. The question remains whether fast followers like LivingSocial and BuyWithMe will be able to grow into mini-Groupons with Groupon already firmly entrenched in a city. Bugatti teardown photo credit: Flickr/David Villarreal Fernández      
Source: TechCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 10:54 am Linux users may now tidy their desksMinimal Linux is a blog for people who like simplicity and freedom: "This site focuses on ways to streamline your Linux-powered life, making it lighter, faster, and easier. More of what you need, less of what you don't." [via Minimal Mac]Source: Boing Boing | 2 May 2010 | 10:46 am Let's Hope Bungie's Activision Deal Helps Them Outgrow Halo - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 May 2010 | 9:53 am Let's Hope Bungie's Activision Deal Helps Them Outgrow Halo (PC World)PC World - I've always felt a shade conflicted about Bungie's Halo games.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 May 2010 | 9:53 am Does Online Banking Need its Own iPad App? (PC World)PC World - First Apple came out with the iPhone and it changed the landscape for mobile devices. People began to see the power of TIME (technology, information, media, and entertainment) converging in a device that could fit in their pocket.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 May 2010 | 8:27 am Star Wars Loteria tribute Artist Chepo Peña created a wonderful Star Wars-based tribute to the cards from the Mexican Loteria card-game. Star Wars Loteria (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 2 May 2010 | 8:25 am New Underwater Technique Disperses Oil at the SourceWhen oil spills threaten ocean and coastal environments, several techniques are employed to mitigate the damage. One of them is a chemical dispersant, a liquid typically dropped by a plane flying over the slick's surface. The chemical breaks down oil ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 2 May 2010 | 8:12 am Rapportive Makes Gmail Better, Integrates CrunchBase And Other “Raplets”
I promised myself to check out their product extensively over the weekend, and now that I did I’m seriously glad to have discovered them as their free software has already made my Gmail experience much better. Rapportive is like Xobni for Gmail. It is a browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox that automatically adds a dynamic widget in the form a sidebar to incoming Gmail messages. Thanks to the extension, you’ll get a much better overview of who’s sending you emails, as the name and email address of the people who do will be automatically cross-checked for publicly available social network presences, pictures and more on the Web, all of which get displayed alongside messages. The sidebar replaces Google’s contextual ads, so that’s a double win, unless you can’t live without advertisements in your Gmail – or if you’re Google. As you can see in the screenshot below, Vohra recently got an email from Spark Capital’s Bijan Sabet and can immediately see what the man looks like in real life, in combination with links to his Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and other social network profiles. At the bottom, he can add a note about Sabet, turning the extension into a basic CRM tool as he’ll see those private notes every time he gets an email from him in the future. Last week, the startup opened up to developers who would like to enhance the sidebar even more. Dubbed Raplets, these extra extensions effectively turn Gmail into a platform, enabling third parties to plug in free or paid CRM tools, social media monitoring applications, accounting software programs and more. One integration that is already in place is with our own CrunchBase, making it easier and faster to look up information about people and companies who can be found in the online database, which is growing quickly. The startup promises to expand its service to other email platforms in the near future. Even if it’s only half as good as the plugin for Gmail, you’ll want to install it straight away. Definitely a keeper. For alternatives, check out Etacts and the more business-focused Appirio.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 2 May 2010 | 8:10 am Looking Beyond Diamonds For Quantum ComputingA team of scientists at UC Santa Barbara that helped pioneer research into the quantum properties of a small defect found in diamonds has now used cutting-edge computational techniques to produce a road map for studying defects in alternative materials.Their new research is published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and will soon be published in the print edition of the journal.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 2 May 2010 | 7:57 am New Research Could Help Develop Gamma Ray Lasers And Produce Fusion PowerResearchers isolate collection of “pure” or spin polarized positronium atoms for the first timePositronium is a short-lived system in which an electron and its anti-particle are bound together. In 2007, physicists at the University of California, Riverside created molecular positronium, a brand-new substance, in the laboratory. Now they have succeeded in isolating for the first time a sample of spin polarized positronium atoms.Study results appear this week in the journal Physical Review Letters.Spin is a fundamental and intrinsic property of an electron, and refers to the electron's angular momentum. Spin polarized atoms are atoms that are all in the same spin state. A collection of spin polarized positronium atoms is needed to make a special form of matter, called the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The BEC, predicted in 1924 and created in 1995, allows scientists to study atoms in a unique manner."We achieved our result by increasing the density of the positronium atoms in our lab experiment," said David Cassidy, the lead author of the research paper and an assistant researcher working in the laboratory of Allen Mills, a professor of physics. "At such a high density, positronium atoms get annihilated simply by interacting with each other. But it turns out that not all the positronium atoms get annihilated under these conditions."Cassidy explained that positronium atoms come in two types – say, an up type and a down type. The positronium atoms are only annihilated when an up type meets a down type. Two atoms of the same type do not affect each other."So if you have 50 percent ups and 50 percent downs and you squeeze them all together they will totally annihilate and turn into gamma rays," he said. "But if you have, for example, about 66 percent ups and 33 percent downs, then only half of the ups will be destroyed. You will get a load of gamma rays – but in the end you will be left with only one type of atom – in this case, up atoms."This is an important development for making the BEC," Cassidy said, "because you have effectively purified your sample of positronium. And you need a pure collection of spin aligned atoms to make the BEC."When atoms are in the BEC state, they are essentially stopped (or they move extremely slowly), facilitating their study. Non-BEC atoms on the other hand whiz around at very high speeds, making them harder to study."There are fundamental processes that can be looked at in new ways when you have matter in the BEC state," Mills said. "Having Bose-condensed atoms makes it easier to probe the way they interact under certain conditions. Moreover, to have motionless positronium atoms is an important aspect for making something called a gamma ray laser, which could have military and numerous scientific applications."According to Mills and Cassidy, the new research could lead also to the production of fusion power, which is power generated by nuclear fusion reactions."The eventual production of a positronium condensate could help us understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter or just pure energy," Cassidy said. "It could also one day help us measure the gravitational interaction of antimatter with matter. At present, nobody knows for sure if antimatter falls up or down."The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Air Force supported the research.Cassidy and Mills were joined in the study by Vincent Meligne, a graduate student in Mills's lab.---Image Caption: Image shows the ultra-high vacuum target chamber used in the experiment. Credit: David Cassidy, UC Riverside.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 2 May 2010 | 7:33 am Spill Central at University of MiamiUniversity of Miami's CSTARS shares global satellite images of Gulf of MexicoAs Florida Governor Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency in parts of the Panhandle today, scientists at the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) at the University of Miami continue to actively collaborate with several international satellite data providers to acquire critical environmental imagery for the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon oil platform caught fire after an explosion on April 20 at approximately 22:00 EDT, resulting in the release of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel and oil into the Gulf. On April 22, the oil platform sank and oil has continued to leak into the environment.Scientists at CSTARS immediately began processing and analyzing valuable images to identify the extent of the spill and to support recovery efforts. Images collected at the state-of-the-art facility located in South Dade County, Florida are being displayed and updated daily at www.cstars.rsmas.miami.edu."Like in the recent Haiti disaster, we are collecting sophisticated satellite images from several global providers that we can provide to government entities that are directly involved in disaster relief efforts," said Dr. Hans Graber, executive director of CSTARS, and chair and professor of Applied Marine Physics at the University of Miami. "We are fortunate to have a strong infrastructure whereby we can help organizations like NOAA, FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Southern Command and others who are involved in these massive emergency response efforts."---Image Caption: This is a satellite image of the Louisiana Delta and the oil spill captured on April 30, using COSMO-SkyMed. Credit: COSMO-SkyMed @ ASI processed and distributed by e-GEOS. Processed at CSTARSSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 2 May 2010 | 7:21 am Glaciation Snowballed Into Giant Change In Carbon CycleImage 1: A Princeton-led team of geologists analyzed samples of inorganic and organic carbon from the hills of the Trezona Formation in South Australia to document one of the largest perturbations to the carbon cycle in all of Earth history. Photo: Adam MaloofImage 2: Princeton graduate students Catherine Rose and Nicholas Swanson-Hysell stand at the boundary of the Cryogenian and Ediacaran periods, distinguishable by the different colors of the glacial rocks below and the carbonate rock above. Photo: Adam MaloofImage 3: These layered structures called stromatolites from the Cryogenian Trezona Formation were created by biofilms of microbes that formed in a shallow-water tropical environment in South Australia's Adelaide Rift Complex about 650 million years ago. Photo: Nicholas Swanson-HysellSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 2 May 2010 | 7:15 am Apple's iPad 3G Dropping Quality on Media Streams (PC Magazine)PC Magazine - A number of common applications on the Apple iPad 3G, including its YouTube viewer, Netflix, and ABC's TV viewer, are running at downsampled resolutions over the device's 3G connection--or not at all.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 May 2010 | 7:11 am Going it Alone, Part III: Injection Molding
The first half of Going it Alone, Part III: Inside the Factory Walls appeared on CrunchGear yesterday. We pick up our survey of how consumer electronics are made with … Injection Molding “One Word: Plastics”. Injection molding is the process by which hot, liquefied plastic is injected into steel (or sometimes other materials) cavities called moulds, under high-pressure. There is a real art to injection molding that includes proper design of the parts themselves, the moulds that form the parts and the various parameters that can be tweaked during the injection process itself. For now, suffice to say that all of the plastic components of your product are made – one at a time – using this process. In the photo at the very top of this post, this would include the white housing components, black belt clip and battery door, translucent LCD cover, rubber buttons and even that tiny, little white spec which is the “Set” button from the rear of the unit. One or two workers typically operate the station. A first worker runs the injection molder, removing each newly molded part by hand. A second worker removes flash – excess unwanted plastic – from the finished part using a knife. The final parts are carefully stacked in bins for transport to the assembly area mentioned above or, if injection is an outside process, for shipment to the main factory.
Tool & Die Making Closely related to injection molding is the tool shop. Again, not every factory has injection molding in-house and even those that do may outsource the creation of the steel tooling to an outside specialty house. Creation of the steel tooling is one of the longest stages of the product design process – typically taking 6-8 weeks from beginning to end. Steel blanks are machined using CNC (Computer Numerical Control) Machines or by another process called ECM (Electrochemical Machining). In another post perhaps I’ll talk a little about the design of plastic parts which, in addition to serving their intended purpose in your product, need to be designed in such a way that they can be easily injected. Smart design of your plastics will allow you to avoid features that are difficult to mold, resulting in mechanical apertures called “actions” which make your tools more complex and more expensive. A basic understanding of plastic part design is important for this reason. As someone new to this world, you may have a state-side company design a basic CAD database and they may not do it well. The Asian factories you ask to quote your part will typically not question your design and you may get back extremely expensive quotes (thereby deflating your entrepreneurial spirit) for a part which, if designed slightly differently may have resulted in tooling charges a fraction of the cost. Even slight knowledge – “talking points” type of knowledge – of every aspect of the design of your specific type of item will go a very long way. This is akin to the consumer who gets ripped off by the local garage because they don’t understand that cars no longer have carburetors, distributors or batteries that need refilling. A basic knowledge of your car may save you a lot of money at the repair shop. Painting & Deco “Deco” refers to lettering or other graphics which are applied to the product using processes known as pad-printing or silk-screening, to name two. I won’t get into the details of these processes but typically the results from silk-screening are better but the shape and size of your part may limit your ability to use this process in some cases. Pad printing is a more flexible alternative in that case. Quality Control (QC) What To Look For
The day of your visit has arrived! Above, I’ve outlined the major processes that go into the manufacture of your garden-variety consumer electronic product. So what does all this mean to you? How are you going to apply this knowledge when you walk into that Asian facility for the first time. The key is to think about the steps that I’ve outlined below. Think of assembly as the hub of the factory. How many assembly lines are there? More importantly, what percentage of them are actually in use during your visit. If there are a lot of idle lines that may be a red flag. Find out why. Ask the representative who is giving you the tour how many workers the factory has. They will give you a range. The reason for this has to do with the seasonality of the business and should not be cause for alarm. Dig deeper – ask how many of the total workers are on the line, in QC, in the engineering department, or in other disciplines. A mid-sized factory (say 400-700 total workers) is probably a good size for a first project – not too big and not too small. That said, there are large factories that are willing to invest in small, new companies and there are new, smaller factories that are destined for greatness. As the tour continues, make a note of which of the sub-disciplines mentioned above are present and which are not. Ask questions about this. If there is no injection moulding present, ask why. Ask who they work with (they may not tell you). Ask if they plan to bring it in-house in the near future. Ask for numbers. One easy way to compare factories (even without visiting) is to ask things like:
Believe it or not, the marketing managers are used to being asked these things and will typically have the answers to these questions at their fingertips. If examples of the factory’s items are not in the conference room where your visit will begin, be sure that you tour their showroom. Look at the items and the name brands (if they are visible – they often will be). Observe the complexity and quality of the items that are on display. Try to meet one or more of the product engineers, if the engineering offices are adjacent to the factory. See how well the engineers speak English, if at all. Try to get a sense of who you will be working with from day to day. One single face-to-face meeting goes such a long way in a relationship that will take place over e-mail for months to come. Finally, make sure you look around. How clean is the factory? How well organized is the layout? How happy do the line workers look? Observe how the director and the mid-level managers interact with the engineers and even the line workers. These sniff-tests will all serve to give you a sense of what the factory culture is like and whether or not this factory is a good fit for you and your project. The factory will take you out to lunch and pay for it. Try everything except for the chicken feet. They may kid you but the factory reps know that Americans don’t care for chicken feet and they’re ok with that – you will not offend anyone. I heard on the radio just this week that chicken feet go for 40 cents a pound in China and 2 cents a pound in the United States. Can you say arbitrage opportunity?! Now you know what to pack in the available corner of your suitcase, before you depart. Good luck! You’ll do great.
Source: CrunchGear | 2 May 2010 | 7:10 am Pollution Speeds Up Snow Melt In Europe, AsiaNSF-supported climate scientist Mark Flanner and colleagues find differences in the rates for spring warming and snow cover decline in Eurasia and North America, and are studying whether aerosols are a key factorOver the past 30 years, springtime snow melt and warming appear to be proceeding at a faster rate in Eurasia than in North America.Climate scientist Mark Flanner, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and a recent Advanced Study Program graduate at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), led a study that investigated these changes, ultimately finding that spring warming rates and snow cover decline in Eurasia may be twice what they are in North America.In the same study, Flanner and his colleagues also pointed out that only one of the climate scenarios generated by general circulation models in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report reflected this trend.In fact, most IPCC model scenarios show the regions having similar springtime temperatures and snow-melt rates. Flanner and his collaborators suspect aerosols--particularly black carbon and mineral dust--might be responsible for the difference in modeled versus observed climate.Eurasia produces high levels of both types of aerosols, which blow across the Eurasian land mass and affect the surface and nearby atmosphere in a variety of ways.Some aerosols reflect incoming solar energy, potentially cooling underlying surfaces, but black carbon and mineral dust tend to warm snow-covered surfaces by absorbing incoming solar energy. Particulates that fall to the surface also reduce snow's reflective qualities, causing even more radiation to be absorbed.In the Northern Hemisphere, springtime snow cover is unique because of its widespread distribution, and because intense incoming solar radiation during that season amplifies atmospheric aerosols' effects.Because higher concentrations of organic matter, black carbon and dust are typical in the atmosphere and on the snow-covered surfaces in Eurasia, Flanner and his colleagues hypothesize that those aerosols might account for regional snow-cover differences. By including these aerosols in climate models, the researchers hypothesized that the models might more effectively match springtime observations.To test their hypothesis, the team first ran a number of modeling scenarios to see if the inconsistency might relate to ocean-based effects. If oceans proved to have a leading role, the aerosol hypothesis would likely be incorrect. However, after constraining the oceans' effects, the models continued under-predicting land-surface temperature trends. The findings indicated that a land effect likely accounts for the discrepancy between observations and models showing warming and melting trends.Having eliminated ocean effects, the researchers enhanced the models with snow-darkening characteristics, mimicking the impact of dark materials deposited on top of pristine snow. With this adjustment, the models correctly indicated increased springtime warming in Eurasia.Next, the researchers incorporated human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) into the models. The scientists found that over North America, CO2 had more of an impact on springtime snow cover than black carbon and organic matter, but in Eurasia, as hypothesized, the particulates were far more influential, having nearly as much of an effect as CO2."While this research does not fully explain why springtime land temperatures and snow cover are changing so much faster over Eurasia than North America, it does suggest that snow darkening from black carbon, a process lacking in most climate models, is playing a role," Flanner said.Ultimately, Flanner continues, the magnitude of Earth's climate response to CO2 and other human-generated products depends on feedbacks. Changes in snow cover amplify initial climate changes and constitute one of the most powerful feedbacks. Because snow covers much of the Northern Hemisphere during spring, Flanner and his colleagues expect to see some of the strongest climate change signals in northerly regions during local spring.By Rachel Hauser, National Center for Atmospheric Research---Image 1: Primary sources of industrial pollution include emissions from power plants, smelters and refineries, which pour oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, and other gasses, into the atmosphere. There, the oxides and gasses react with moist air to become sulfuric and nitric acids, resulting in the formation of acid rain. In addition, in the presence of sunlight, nitrogen dioxide reacts with hydrocarbons (mostly gasoline vapors that escape burning in automobile engines) and other gases to form ozone, the primary ingredient of the photochemical fog that covers many large cities. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research are tracing the complex chain of events linking emissions and airborne pollutants. Credit: © University Corporation for Atmospheric ResearchImage 2: A heavy snowfall weighs down the branches of a lodgepole pine in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Credit: © University Corporation for Atmospheric ResearchImage 3: Aerosols are tiny particles, such as soot or dust, suspended in Earth's atmosphere. In addition to their air-quality impacts, aerosols can interfere with sunlight reaching the planet's surface. Scientists often talk about aerosols in terms of their optical depth, which indicates how much incoming sunlight aerosols prevent from reaching the Earth's surface. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites can detect aerosols, and this image shows the annual mean aerosol optical depth for 2006, based on daily measurements made by MODIS. White represents little or no aerosol interference with sunlight, and dark orange indicates considerable interference. Areas where data could not be collected appear in gray. Credit: NASA image by Reto Stockli, Earth Observatory; image interpretation by Lorraine RemerSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 2 May 2010 | 6:57 am Global Leaders Meeting To Discuss CybersecurityGovernment officials and business leaders around the globe are meeting in Texas this week to figure out a common and growing concern in cybersecurity. The EastWest Institute (EWI) is hosting the Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit, which opens in Dallas on Monday.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 2 May 2010 | 6:50 am Apple Releases 3G iPad VersionApple rolled out the 3G version of its iPad on Saturday, following the successful launch of the short-range Wi-Fi tablet earlier this month. Stores in big cities saw decent-sized crowds ahead of the 5 p.m. launch.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 2 May 2010 | 6:45 am China Internet User Population Still RisingState media reported Saturday that the number of Internet users in China has surpassed 400 million and accounts for about a third of the country's population.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 2 May 2010 | 5:50 am Weather Making Oil Spill Containment DifficultStrong winds and rough seas hampered efforts to contain a vast spreading oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 2 May 2010 | 5:30 am Apple vs. Adobe: Is Flash dying? - Fortune
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 May 2010 | 4:31 am
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