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LVMH Buys E-commerce Site Sack’s To Expand Sephora Into Brazil
Luxury products giant LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) has reached an agreement to acquire a 70%, controlling stake in Sack’s, a Brazilian online retailer of fragrances, cosmetics and toiletries. With the acquisition, LVMH aims to expand its Sephora subsidiary into the Brazilian perfumes and cosmetics market, reportedly one of the largest and fastest-growing beauty markets worldwide. Initially online only, but also in physical stores over time, according to the press release. Founded in 2000, Sack’s carries over 270 brands, which it is able to sell to a client base that spans more than 830,000 customers. Sack’s is one of the top-three most frequently accessed pure-play e-commerce sites in Brazil, with 4 million unique visitors each month. Carlos André Montenegro, co-founder and CEO of Sack’s, and his partners, Albatroz Participações and Marcelo Franco, will continue to hold a 30% stake in Sack’s. The current management team, led by Mr. Montenegro, will remain in place and Sack’s will continue to be based in Rio de Janeiro. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 2 Jul 2010 | 3:59 am Developer Adds Pressure-Sensitive Drawing to iPadWhen they’re not rolling sheets of metal into tubes and stuffing them with conductive foam to make iPhone styluses, the smart engineers at Ten One design are hacking away at the iPad. And quite miraculously, they have managed to turn the iPad’s screen into a pressure sensitive drawing tablet. Proper graphics tablets like those from Wacom have pens which detect thousands of levels of pressure, but the iPad offers just two levels: one and zero. To get around this, the Ten One people, makers of the Pogo stylus, have hacked Apple’s private UIKit frameworks to enable the screen to detect pressure. The video above shows the test software in action (the delay in drawing is due to “an issue with [the] demo application code.” Does this mean that the iPad’s screen is somehow able to know how hard you are pressing? Maybe not. Although the Ten One blog post doesn’t mention just how this information is gotten from the iPad, my guess would be that the size of the tip is being measured by the standard multi-touch detection. As you press on the foam, the tip grows. This also explains how the test software is able to ignore the side of the hand while still reacting to the pen. Ten One plans to release its hack to the world for free inclusion in any software. This rests on Apple opening up the private software framework, which is a notoriously slow process. Still, it would be pretty awesome, and would add a lot of finesse to drawing and painting apps like the excellent Brushes. Pressure-Sensitive Drawing on iPad [Ten One designers blog] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Jul 2010 | 3:53 am In UK, Computer Science Graduates the Least EmployableRogerborg writes "The BBC reports that in the UK, computer science graduates are now the least employable of students leaving with a degree, 17% of them being unable to find a job within six months of graduation. Unsurprisingly, medics, educators and lawyers do better, but even much mocked communications and creative arts graduates are finding work more easily."
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Source: Slashdot | 2 Jul 2010 | 3:38 am Gothic Digital Illustrations - Sara Blake Blurs the Line Between Digital & Hand-Drawn Techniques (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Sara Blake, also known as ZSO, is a New York-based illustrator, designer and art director. To create her illustrations, Blake uses both her hand-drawn skills and her digital expertise...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 3:10 am Facebook & The Semantic WebThis week we've been exploring the emergence of the Semantic Web among companies like Best Buy and Google. It's all thanks to RDFa, code that is inserted into the HTML of web pages to add extra meaning...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 3:10 am Google Adds Real-Time Stats To Blogger – To Google Analytics Next?
Blogger, Google’s blog publishing platform, has just been given a useful new feature many a Blogger user will appreciate: near real-time statistics (via Louis Gray). Dubbed Blogger Stats, the feature is available for all non-private Blogger blogs. The only catch is you’ll only see the new ‘Stats’ tab when you go to draft.blogger.com. On the new Stats page, you’ll see a tab that says ‘Now’, which gives Blogger users an almost real-time overview of which articles are most popular right now, and where those visitors are coming from (both in terms of source and geographical location). The elephant in the room is of course that Google offers free, robust Web analytics software with Google Analytics that doesn’t boast real-time statistics as it only updates them every few hours. Perhaps this is a first sign of imminent changes on that front? We love real-time stats around here (we use Chartbeat, but there’s also Clicky, Woopra and many more – and of course Twitter just acquired Web analytics startup Smallthought), so we’re wondering out loud why Google Analytics doesn’t have this feature. Obviously, there’s no technical limitation, and from what I can gather from issues raised in forums and the Google Analytics Help Center, the company believes most users are simply not interested in seeing real-time stats rather than a good overview of 24-hour traffic and longer periods of time. Which begs the question: if that’s really the case, why add real-time stats to Blogger?      
Source: TechCrunch | 2 Jul 2010 | 3:06 am Pictogram Bangles - Konstantin Datz's 'Wristband for Deaf People' Translates Sound into Images (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Konstantin Datz's aptly-named 'Wristband for Deaf People' could help make the world a safer place for the hearing-impaired. This wristband, along with a belt-attached device, translates...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 2:50 am Victoria Beckham joins in reveal of posh Range Rover Evoque - USA Today
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 Jul 2010 | 2:38 am Breakfast on a Stick - Wafflesticks Make Breakfast Transportable and Easy to Eat (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Now this is a smart idea for households with small children and commuters: Wafflesticks are waffles attached to sticks! The triangular Wafflesticks make breakfast easy to eat without...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 2:20 am Jobs Dismisses iPhone Complaints, Angers Users - InformationWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 Jul 2010 | 2:16 am 'Flintstones' Print Fashions - The Uffie for Blackbook Magazine Spread is Utterly Cute (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The Uffie for Blackbook Magazine spread takes fashion to a cute level. This fun spread was styled by Brett Baily and shot by photographer Zoey Grossman. This shoot will no doubt make...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 2:00 am Scientology Spoof Films - The Comedic 'Knowledgy' Film Stars Leo Fitzpatrick (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Scientology has been mocked in the popular media ever since Tom Cruise publicly expressed his love for it, and now, with the film 'Knowledgy,' we have an opinion on the other side of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:30 am Japanese not keen to go four-eyed for 3D TV: surveyTOKYO (Reuters) - Television manufacturers might be waging a 3D battle but Japanese consumers are not entering the affray with almost 70 percent saying they have no plans to buy a 3D TV forSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:26 am Farmers defend way of life with Facebook, Twitter (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:20 am Viral Video: "Paranormal Activity 2″ Looks Sccaarry [BoomTown]
The indie movie that turned into a hit, “Paranormal Activity,” is back again with a sequel. The small film, about a demon-plagued couple with an infrared-equipped videocamera, was acquired by Viacom (VIA) studio Paramount Pictures as a remake and then performed spectacularly well. Thus, here comes another one to freak you out–the trailer for the October movie has been playing before this week’s “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” juggernaut: Source: All Things Digital | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:10 am Dietary Patches - Food Allergy Patches Tell the World Your Culinary Restrictions (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) These food allergy patches are a passive-aggressive way to tell restaurants what you can't eat. The cutesy patches have sayings like "Dairy free," No Peanuts Please," "Gluten Free,"...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:10 am Kin: More Proof That Warring Fiefdoms Rule at Microsoft [Voices]By Mary-Jo Foley, Blogger, All About Microsoft We Microsoft watchers are all armchair quarterbacking today, the day after Microsoft basically pulled the plug on its short-lived Kin phones for the teen/twenty-something market. The pricey Verizon data plan killed it, some say. Microsoft’s decision to redo the Java-centric Danger OS and turn it into a Windows Embedded Compact one marked the beginning of the end, say others. A lack of downloadable apps, weird ad campaigns, phones that attempted to straddle the feature-phone/smartphone market all are cited as the Kin’s undoing. But I haven’t seen many folks look closely at the Kin development timeline. Read the rest of this post on the original site » Source: All Things Digital | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:04 am iPhone 4 issues, Browser Battles and Fourth of July Fireworks Photo Tips on PCWorld Podcast #83: R.I.P. Kin (PC World)PC World - Join PCWorld editors Tim Moynihan, Mark Sullivan, Nick Mediati and Melissa Peterson as they discuss living in a post-iPhone 4 world before diving into the hottest news of the week.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:04 am The State of iPad Satisfaction [Voices]By Harry McCracken, Founder and Editor, Technologizer Long before anyone knew much of anything about the iPad, people were expressing strong opinions about it. But the opinions that matter most didn’t begin to get formed until April 3rd, the day Apple’s tablet finally went on sale. That’s when teeming masses of consumers spent their own money on iPads, took them home, and put them to an array of utterly real-world tests. We gave those folks a few weeks to explore their new gadgets. And then we fielded a survey earlier this month to gauge the satisfaction level of some of the first iPad owners. More than six thousand people responded, the largest response to a Technologizer survey to date. Executive summary in case you don’t feel like reading the rest of this article: They like it. A lot. Read the rest of this post on the original site » Source: All Things Digital | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:03 am HP closes Palm deal, confirms WebOS tablet - BusinessWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:03 am Hash [Voices]By Susan Orlean, Staff Writer, The New Yorker The semiology and phenomenology of hashtaggery intrigues me. From what I understand, it all began very simply: on Twitter, hashtags–those little checkerboard marks that look like this #–were used to mark phrases or names, in order to make it easier to search for them among the zillions and zillions of tweets. For instance, if you wanted to make a comment about Sarah Palin, you could include her name in the tweet, or you could make the comment and follow it with her name marked by hashtag. Hashtags have also undergone mission creep, and now do all sorts of interesting things. Read the rest of this post on the original site » Source: All Things Digital | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:02 am Okay, Kids, Play on My Lawn [Voices]By Roger Ebert, Film Critic, Chicago Sun Times I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn’t seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself. At this moment, 4,547 comments have rained down upon me for that blog entry. I’m informed by Wayne Hepner, who turned them into a text file: “It’s more than ‘Anna Karenina,’ ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘The Brothers Karamazov.’” I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread. Still, they were a good set of comments for the most part. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition. They are mostly intelligent, well-written, and right about one thing in particular: I should not have written that entry without being more familiar with the actual experience of video games.
Source: All Things Digital | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:01 am Eating (Synthetic) Animals [Voices]By James McWilliams, Associate Professor of History, Texas State University, San Marcos Recent history has witnessed the exciting politicization of meat. Scores of recent books and articles (not to mention lively exchanges on the Atlantic Food Channel) have raised the profile of meat production to a mainstream environmental cause, illuminating the hazards that industrial meat–which is 99 percent of the meat we eat–poses to our soil, air, and water. The ethical dimensions of eating meat have also started to make meaningful inroads into public consciousness. But one issue to which concerned consumers have generally turned a tin ear is “in-vitro meat.” Although the cost is currently prohibitive, the technology is widely available to produce meat from the cultured cells of animals rather than the animals themselves. Also called “cultured meat” or “synthetic meat,” this product, which supporters promise will have comparable taste to conventional meat, has enormous potential to confront the environmental and ethical concerns that so many agnostic carnivores find troubling. Read the rest of this post on the original site » Source: All Things Digital | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:01 am Skype Expands Platform Ambitions with Bigger Silicon Valley PresenceSkype has ambitions that go beyond simply offering cheap voice. It wants to be a communication platform that is embedded in various computer applications, consumer electronics and mobile devices. In order...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 1:00 am Stony Stereos - The Rocky Sound System Literally Rocks Your Living Room (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Say goodbye to your boring stereo and hello to the Rocky Sound System. This sound system, designed by Paul Custodio, is pretty enough to be a piece of art and hits hard enough to rock...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 12:50 am Consumer Guide To Stem Cell ClinicsPenguinsh- writes "Patients seeking stem cell treatments now have a guide to the various clinics purporting to offer such treatments. Not exactly a Zagat or Michelin, but much more objective information from qualified experts than was available before in one place. Created by the International Society for Stem Cell Research, the guide was the brainchild of a task force convened by former ISSCR President Irving Weissman of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 2 Jul 2010 | 12:43 am Urban Couture Shoots - The Tati Cotliar Ten Magazine Summer 2010 Spread (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The Tati Cotliar Ten Magazine Summer 2010 spread is absolutely mind-blowing in beauty. This alluring fashion model looks stunning in neutral tones, and photographer Andrea Spotorno...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 2 Jul 2010 | 12:20 am Guys: American Apparel t-shirt perfect for Casual Friday Gentlemen, may I suggest that you wear this American Apparel t-shirt on busy urban streets, paired with a nice, snug speedo? Also, it is available in only one color: see-thru "poopies" brown. Please discuss. (via Steven Leckart) Louis Vuitton bugged by locust sculptures in Japan
Nine locust sculptures crafted by artist Mitsuhiro Okamoto from knockoff designer bags were removed from the Kobe Fashion Museum after luxury fashion maker Louis Vuitton complained the art violated its trademark:
The exhibit opened on April 15, and included a number of iconic brand logos, not just LVMH. The locusts were yanked within the first 30 days.
More on Pink Tentacle, and the earlier report in Japanese at Asahi. The artist's website has a section about the Batta Mon sculptures here. (thanks, Antinous!). Study Suggests More Fish Than Thought May Thrive In The Ocean's DepthsNew observations indicate that liparids dominate the deepA study of the occurrence of fishes in the ocean's deepest reaches—the hadal zone, below 6000 meters—has provided evidence that some species of fishes are more numerous at such depths than experts had thought. The authors of the study, which is published in the July/August issue of BioScience, observed 10 to 20 snailfish congregating at a depth of 7703 meters around a baited video lander in the Japan Trench. The observation period lasted only five hours, so the occurrence of so many snailfish, which were of the species Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, was a surprise. Together with a critical review of past records of fishes found at great depths, the observations suggest, however, that few species of fishes survive in the darkness of the hadal zone.Observations at such extreme depths—five times farther down than the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from the Deepwater Horizon rig—are technically demanding and consequently rare. The researchers who conducted the new study, Toyonobu Fujii of the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom, and four of his colleagues, used a free-fall lander that made video recordings of an illuminated patch of the sea floor for one minute every five minutes. This enabled the scientists to distinguish at least 10 individual fish and record their behavior, which was similar to the behavior of fishes observed in 1965 from a bathyscaphe at a depth of 7300 meters in the west Atlantic. The fishes observed by Fujii and colleagues fed on crustaceans that were attracted to the mackerel bait.How deep fish can live has long been a controversial question. Previous records of fish supposedly captured at great depth are rare and mostly based on trawls, a technique that is subject to uncertainty about exactly when a fish entered the trawl net. Fujii and colleagues remark that "current understanding of the hadal environment is inadequate." They nonetheless suggest that fish may routinely occur far deeper than previously thought in ocean trenches, and that "liparids do appear to dominate and characterize hadal fish fauna." More research is necessary, the authors say, to learn how these fish populations interact with those in shallower water.---On the Net:American Institute of Biological SciencesSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:41 pm S.Korean jailed for killing mother over gaming addiction (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:28 pm Awesome Twilight homage YouTube game shut down over copyright infringement claim (UPDATED)
Update, 10pm PT, July 1: It's back! The YouTube game's creators tell us: "Maker Studios got in touch with the digital department at Summit, got everything cleared up, and the game is back in action. Thanks for your support and help with this. Good that this situation went well- and good to see a digital department at a traditional company being helpful."
Ben & Raf, the "Fine Brother" guys who created the wonderful "Twighlight" homage interactive game on YouTube I blogged less than 24 hours ago, write:
 Source: Boing Boing | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:17 pm DEALTALK-Australia mining tax deal seen unlocking M&A pipelineSYDNEY, July 2 (Reuters) - The Australian government's compromise mining tax deal is expected to unlock a stalled pipeline of mergers and acquisitions in the booming resources sector, although some political...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:14 pm How Game Gimmicks Break ImmersionThe Moving Pixels blog has brief discussion of how gimmicky game mechanics often break a player's sense of immersion, making it painfully obvious that he's simply jumping through carefully planned hoops set up by the developers. The author takes an example from Singularity, which has a weapon that can time-shift objects between a pristine, functional state and a broken, decayed state. Quoting: "The core issue with this time control device is that it's just not grand and sweeping enough. It doesn't feel like it's part of a world gone mad. Instead it's just a gameplay tool. You can only use it on certain things in certain places. You can 'un-decay' this chalkboard but not that desk. You can dissolve that piece of cover but not most of the walls in the game. The ultimate failure of such cheap tricks is that they make the game world less immersive rather than more compelling. The world gets divided into those few things that I can time shift, that different set of things I can levitate, and that majority of things that I can't interact with at all. ... I'm painfully aware that all that I'm really doing is pushing the right button at the right place and time. Sure, that's what many games are when you get down to it, but part of the artistry of game design comes from trying to hide this fact."
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Source: Slashdot | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:09 pm Disney Buys 'Tap Tap Revenge' Developer, Tapulous - PC Magazine
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:00 pm Nina Paley and EFF: Sita Sings the Blues benefit in San Francisco, July 20 "Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cartoon Art Museum for a special evening with Nina Paley as we screen her award-winning animated feature film "Sita Sings the Blues," described by the creator as "the greatest breakup story ever told." Paley animated and produced the film single-handedly over the course of five years on a home computer, and will be on hand to take filmgoers behind the scenes. "The benefit screening will take place at the Delancey Street Foundation Screening Room at 600 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94107 on Tuesday, July 20, 2010. Doors open at 6:30 PM. Film begins at 7 PM. Advance tickets may be purchased online for $25 at http://action.eff.org/ninapaley, or for $30 at the door the night of the screening." Sita Sings The Blues: A Benefit Screening Hosted by Nina Paley on July 20, 2010 (Thanks, Hugh!) Source: Boing Boing | 1 Jul 2010 | 10:57 pm Futures for SF writers that aren't the SingularityRudy Rucker's tired of the Singularity (Vernor Vinge's conceit of a future in which people cease to have recognizably human motivations after they marry their minds with ever-accelerating computers). So he's come up with some other veins for SF writers to mine. Here's a couple (click through for the whole lot):Fresh SF Futures (via Futurismic) (Image: Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from markhillary's photostream) Source: Boing Boing | 1 Jul 2010 | 10:54 pm Does Apple have a CDMA iPhone under wraps?Section: Business News, Apple, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones  Bloomberg’s report about Verizon launching the iPhone in January gave the optimistic crowd something to believe in and the pessimistic crowd newfound skepticism. The report may not exactly pan out in terms of timing, but Jim Dalrymple of, LoopInSight, believes there is some credibility to Bloomberg’s assertion as Apple has already created a CDMA version of the iPhone. As soon as Apple can strike a deal with Big Red they can start mass producing the already manufactured CDMA iPhone. This is important because it means the hardware is already in place. Dalrymple puts it well:
All that is preventing Verizon from launching the iPhone is a simple agreement between the two giant companies. Dalrymple believes Verizon and Apple have not agreed to anything yet, but are still in tense negotiations and leaking information to Bloomberg might have been a negotiating tactic. It will be interesting to see what new information and rumors about Verizon launching the iPhone come out in the upcoming weeks and months. Via [LoopInSight] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 10:49 pm Toshiba to develop batteries for electric vehiclesJapanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. said Friday it's jumping into the battery business for electric vehicles in a development deal with Mitsubishi Motors Corp. It's the first EV...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 10:34 pm July 4, 1776: Preserving the DeclarationIt's one thing to declare independence, but quite another to preserve the aging document from the ravages of time.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 10:00 pm Qualcomm Makes Open-Source 3D Snapdragon DriverAn anonymous reader writes "Qualcomm today posted the source code to a Linux kernel driver for 2D/3D support on its OpenGL ES Core found on Snapdragon-based phones like the Nexus One. The company is trying to get this driver into the mainline Linux kernel, but it turns out that the user-space driver is still not open source, which has resulted in some problems already. The ongoing discussion can be found on FreeDesktop.org."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Jul 2010 | 9:47 pm UPDATE 1-Lions Gate adopts shareholder rights planJuly 2 (Reuters) - Lions Gate Entertainment Corp said late on Thursday that it has adopted a shareholder rights plan, in a move to deter billionaire Carl Icahn's hostile attempt to buy the independent...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 9:44 pm The price of Amazon's Graphite Kindle DX reader fell to $379 from $489. - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 1 Jul 2010 | 9:39 pm T-Mobile officially ends sale of the SideKick as of July 2Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers  Yesterday we witnessed Microsoft announce the Kin would not be released in European markets as the phone simply did not cut it. The SideKick has been around for the past six years and the last model was released in 2009. To put it bluntly, the SideKick LX and SideKick 2008 could not compete as well in a mobile world dominated by smartphones backed with actual OS’s. As of tomorrow, July 2, T-Mobile will be ending all sales of the two SideKick models including sales from retail stores, online, and telesales. The official word from T-Mobile can be read below:
Fortunately for SideKick owners and fans, T-Mobile will continue to provide support to their users, and for the fans, it seems T-Mobile has plans for a “new and fresh experience” with the SideKick. Maybe we will see a similar model running Android. Interestingly enough, the SideKick phones were designed by Danger, who was bought out by Microsoft and helped design the Kin phones. Via [PhoneScoop] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 9:33 pm PRESS DIGEST - British Business Press - July 2KNOC, South Korea's national oil company, has approached explorer Dana Petroleum with a 1.7 billion pound takeover offer. Dana's shares jumped four percent to 11.77 pounds after the group confirmed a...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:51 pm Leading Human Rights Groups to Protest at Craigslist's HQ on 7/08/10SAN FRANCISCO, July 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On July 8, 2010 at noon the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), Prostitution Research and Education (PRE) and our over 75 Co-Sponsors will protest Craigslist's facilitation of sex trafficking at Craigslist's office, 1381 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94122. A large portion of Craigslist's profits come from the sale of commercial sexual exploitation, much of it trafficked, all of it prostituted. Craigslist normalizes and facilitates online pimping - providing an outlet and incentive for sex traffickers to reach buyers of human beings. "By providing traffickers and johns with a virtual red light district, Craigslist is aiding, abetting and enormously profiting from sex trafficking," says Norma Ramos, Executive Director of CATW. Our protest is co-sponsored by 75 leading human rights and anti-trafficking organizations and prominent individuals including Equality Now, End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT-USA), Center for World Indigenous Studies, Soroptimists International of the Americas, Nevada Coalition Against Sexual Violence, Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, Asian Americans for Community Involvement, and Gloria Steinem, author Victor Malarek, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Congresswoman Jackie Speier. Sex trafficking is fueled by the demand for prostitution along with impunity for its buyers. According to Melissa Farley, author of 20 research articles on trafficking for prostitution, "Today, a majority of men buy sex online from women or children, many of whom are trafficked or controlled by third parties. Craigslist mainstreams prostitution as 'Adult Services'. This protest exposes these ads for what they really are: the sale of sexual exploitation, paid rape, child abuse, and trafficking." Craigslist has defied and defeated the efforts of Attorneys General, a high profile lawsuit and members of Congress who have tried to put an end to their facilitation of sex trafficking. Despite evidence of criminal activity associated with its website, Craigslist remains above the law. "We are sending a message to Craigslist from the human rights community that by hosting these ads they are partially responsible for much of the rank exploitation that is human trafficking," says Ms. Ramos. We are calling upon Craigslist to close the euphemistically named "Adult Services" section of their website and set a sex industry-free standard which would help to eliminate human trafficking on the internet. Speakers include: Joy Friedman, Breaking Free; Glenda Hope, Executive Director, SafeHouse San Francisco for Homeless Women Escaping Prostitution; Victor Malarek, Author/Activist; Aaron Cohen, Author/Activist; Terria Joseph, Actor. For a complete list of the 75 Co-Sponsors who have joined CATW and PRE visit our websites at www.catwinternational.org and www.prostitutionresearch.com. SOURCE The Coalition Against Trafficking in WomenSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:43 pm Leading Human Rights Groups to Protest at Craigslist's HQ on 7/08/10Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:43 pm Yahoo! Mail and top Android apps of the week (Appolicious)Appolicious - Several big names launched Android apps this week, showing a strong end to June and a big start for July. Amazon released Kindle with Whispersync for Android, while Yahoo! finally got around to making a few apps for the Android Market.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:41 pm Nasa Extends Its Shuttle Countdown - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:38 pm New Olympus voice recorders: same old, same old
People do, in fact, still use these; not everyone can get by with a 99¢ iPhone app for recording important meetings and lectures. Here are the key features of the new models, from left to right: WS-600S: $80. Bargain bin version. 2GB inside. They should be available in… September? Man, why didn’t they just wait and tell us then?
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:31 pm Microsoft introduces InstaLoad Battery Technology, changes how you insert batteriesSection: Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous  Microsoft announced an interesting piece of technology that will change the way you insert batteries. The InstaLoad Battery Technology doesn’t take into consideration positive or negative polarity, allowing you to simply insert a battery however you wish. I don’t know about you, but I have to find another flashlight to see the tiny polarity sign in the flashlight whose batteries need replacing. With InstaLoad, I don’t have to worry about polarity, which is a pretty crazy concept but the science and physics behind it seems to work. Already, there are companies such as Duracell and AE lining up to use this patented technology in their products. Use of this technology includes products that require constant battery changes (Nintendo Wiimotes come to mind), military devices used in unfavorable environmental conditions, and products that use many batteries at once. Microsoft highlights products used in law enforcement, outdoor camping and sports, and construction. Interestingly enough, the patent will not require any additional power usage, nor expensive electronic circuitry. It is set to work with common batteries such as AA, AAA, C, D, and CR123. Microsoft is even offering royalty-free licensing to manufacturers of accessibility devices, which is certainly a nice gesture to people who would use these products on a daily basis. No word on when companies will start integrating this technology into their products, but hopefully it will be soon because it is a great idea and should be very helpful. Read [Microsoft] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:22 pm Hourtime: The Passing of an Horological Genius
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:19 pm TechCrunch TV: Speaking Of… Hustling
I’m extremely excited to bring the TechCrunch community a new show that features the human side of business. Speaking Of… explores the side of entrepreneurs you’ve never seen before. It’s an organic show that will grow from episode to episode and build on concepts throughout the year: one guest will inspire the invitation of another guest and theme, which will in turn inspire the next… and so on. The first episode of Speaking Of… was shot at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York and features the disruptive jazz musician, Eric Lewis (aka ELEW). Eric’s an amazing musician: he’s played at TED, won the Thelonious Monk competition, toured with Wynton Marsalis and played at the Whitehouse for the First Lady and President Obama. He tells us the story behind how chess hustling helped him become a better business person in the music world. In the spirit of building on each episode, ELEW has created the ongoing theme music for this show and you’ll see it in future episodes during the pre- and post- credits. The first episode is embedded below, and future episodes will be posted every Thursday over at http://www.techcrunch.tv      
Source: TechCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:09 pm UPDATE 1-KNOC approached Britain's Dana for takeover-source* KNOC aims to ink a deal by end-2010, delayed from H1-sourceSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:56 pm Firefox Crosses 2 Billion Add-On Downloads
One of the greatest things about the Firefox browser is that any developer can expand its features and capabilities with a simple add-on. There are add-ons for everything—Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Digg, feed readers, price comparison, photos, music, and more. Today, every browser supports plug-ins and extensions. Yesterday, cumulative add-on downloads passed the 2 billion mark. It passed the first billion downloads back in November, 2008. The first billion took three and a half years. The second billion took about 20 months. Many of those are never used again, but a full 150 million add-ons are used every single day at least once. To celebrate the milestone, Mozilla has put together a collection of the 25 best add-ons. They include StumbleUpon, Glue, Cooliris, Xmarks, Kidzui, Firebug, GreaseMonkey, Adblock Plus, and Destroy the Web (it turns any Web page into a video game). Inexplicably, the list is missing Feedly, the best feed reader of all time. What else should be on that list? Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:36 pm T-Mobile to Stop Selling Current Sidekicks (PC World)PC World - T-Mobile USA will stop selling its current Sidekick mobile phones effective Friday, though it will keep the Sidekick brand alive.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:20 pm More Death and Controversy at SeaWorldTwo new deaths and a legal controversy plague SeaWorld Orlando, less than 6 months after trainer Dawn Brancheau was fatally injured by a 6-ton killer whale.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:16 pm Rumor: Motorola Charm and Samsung Supersonic pricingSection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones  According to a screenshot which shows the internal pricing of various T-Mobile phones, the Motorola Charm (also known as the Motorola Basil) will cost $149.99, but $74.99 after a $75 MIR. In addition, the same screenshot shows the pricing for a mysterious phone known as the Samsung Supersonic. Apparently the Samsung Supersonic will cost $249.99, but $199.99 after a $50 MIR. The Samsung Supersonic pricing lines up with the Samsung Vibrant pricing, so it is quite possible that the Samsung Supersonic is simply the internal codename for the Samsung Vibrant. Of course, there is the possibility that the Samsung Supersonic is a different phone entirely. Keep in mind the above pricing is for a two year contract only. In case you want to pick up the Motorola Charm without a contract, the price is $269.99. The off contract pricing for the Samsung Supersonic is $499.99. Hopefully T-Mobile will confirm either the Motorola Charm pricing or what exactly the Supersonic is shortly. Via [TmoNews]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:16 pm Woman Jailed 2 Days for Filming Movie Screen Sues TheaterA Chicago woman who spent two days in jail claims a local cinema had her arrested for video-recording three minutes' worth of a movie, so the manager could receive a reward from MPAA.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:00 pm Disney acquires iPhone game maker Tapulous (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:59 pm Exclusive Video Of Unreleased Google Voice Desktop AppWhen Google acquired Skype competitor Gizmo5 in November 2009 it wasn’t much of a stretch to anticipate a soft phone application for Google Voice to be coming soon. A few months later we heard that Google was dogfooding Google Voice Desktop internally. But then last month we learned that Google was delaying any launch of the product, and may be scrapping it entirely, because Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin don’t want Google to be in the business of creating software outside of the browser. We’ve asked our sources for screen shots of what Google Voice Desktop looks like. We didn’t get those, but we did get something better – the actual application. We’ve taken a video (above) showing what the application looks like, showing both outbound and inbound calls. This is mostly still branded Gizmo5, although the sign up screen says “Gizmo5 by Google,” and it is fully integrated with the Google Voice service, address book, etc. The Desktop application was also automatically added as one of my phones in the Google Voice for the browser. We don’t know if this is the current internal release or something more dated. The test calls in the video above were done without a headset, I just used the internal microphone and speakers. I also left in the random Skype call I received in the middle of the video that I thought was Google Voice just because I was thoroughly confused for a minute. We continue to urge Google to release this software. It gives people an extra way to use Google Voice and is particularly useful when traveling overseas, where Google Voice doesn’t yet work. You can use Skype and buy a Skype-In number for €50/year to duplicate much of this functionality, but that’s just a ridiculous price to pay for a soft phone in our opinion. My first request to Google is not to block me from using the application. My second request is to reconsider their decision to delay or scrap the project and give the people what they want – Google Voice Desktop.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:44 pm RIAA Calls YouTube-Viacom Decision Bad Public Policyadeelarshad82 writes "The Recording Industry Association of America voiced its opposition to the recent decision in the YouTube-Viacom copyright infringement case, stating that 'the district court's dangerously expansive reading of the liability immunity provisions of the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] upsets the careful balance struck within the law and is bad public policy.' Cary Sherman, RIAA president, also wrote in a blog post, 'It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:44 pm Four supervisors charged in 2006 Massey mine fireNEW YORK, July 1 (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors charged four mine supervisors on Thursday in a case stemming from a 2006 fire at a coal mine run by a unit of Massey Energy , the owner of a West Virginia...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:16 pm Google plans to buy travel software co ITA for $700 million (Reuters)Reuters - Google Inc plans to buy one of the Web's key providers of airline travel software for $700 million, potentially raising new antitrust concerns for the world's largest Internet search engine.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:12 pm Giveaway: Marvin M107 or M103 Automatic Chronograph Watch
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:11 pm Logitech announces the H530 and H555 headsetsSection: Audio, Accessories, Headphones, Portable Audio, Computers
Today, Logitech announced two new headsets for use on a PC and for use on a laptop. The USB Headset H530 by Logitech has been improved from its predecessor to include laser-tuned drivers that provide better audio quality. It comes with on-ear audio controls to increase or decrease volume and access to other controls. It features a padded foam headband and cushioned ear cups for added comfortability. The main difference between this model and the H555 is comfort versus portability. The Laptop Headset H555 (pictured below) is lightweight and folds into a tiny size that fits conveniently in a carrying case. The headset fits behind-the-ears and has a sleek look to it. Both headsets are designed for listening to music, playing video games, and video chatting. Both models come with noise cancelling microphones to remove ambient noise, but the microphones only come into play when ambient noise is detected. No word on pricing or availability just yet. Via [Logitech]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:09 pm Sanofi-Aventis eyeing US deal of $20 bln-reportNEW YORK, July 1 (Reuters) - French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA is preparing an acquisition in the United States that may be worth $20 billion or more, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:05 pm Sanofi-Aventis eyeing US deal of $20 bln-reportNEW YORK, July 1 (Reuters) - French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA is preparing an acquisition in the United States that may be worth $20 billion or more, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:05 pm Report: Latest Jobs iPhone 4 Email Exchange Is Fake
After the initial flurry of resulting blog posts, BGR amended their report to say that the last “Retire, relax” email message didn’t come from Jobs, but was actually sent by the upset iPhone customer who was apparently mocking Jobs’ tone (oops). Now Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog is reporting that Apple PR says that the entire exchange is a fake, and that Jobs didn’t send any of the messages. To make matters even more interesting (and bizarre) AppleInsider reports that someone was actually shopping this email exchange around before it appeared on BGR. Of course, Jobs frequently does engage in email exchanges with customers, and he has said some pretty condescending things about the iPhone 4′s reception issues — last week he told one upset customer to “Just avoid holding it that way“.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:04 pm iBUYPOWER turns any game into multi touchiBUYPOWER just announced their MAGIC software, a new interface that’s designed to let you play any game using multi touch gestures, not just games that were specifically designed that way. Think about that for a moment, a game like Supreme Commander 2 could be played using multi touch, instead of just being limited to using the keyboard and mouse. The MAGIC (multi-touch advanced gaming interface & control) software is available starting today. The software is free for owners of iBUYPOWER’s latest multi-touch gaming notebook, the Battalion Touch CZ-11. Unfortunately, you’ll need a system that supports the MAGIC software in order to use it. From the press release:
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm Gallery: Awesome Cockpits, From Spy Plane to Monster TruckJoysticks, screens, gauges, sensors and logs cram the cockpits of these land, sea, and air machines.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm TRX's Latest CORREX Version Expands Flexibility and Processing EfficiencyATLANTA, July 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TRX, Inc. (www.trx.com) (Other OTC: TRXI), a world-leading provider of travel technology, process automation, consulting and data services, today announced the latest release of TRX's reservations processing solution, CORREX v6.6. CORREX is the world's leading reservation processing platform enabling efficient, automated quality control, file finishing, and ticketing of travel reservations. CORREX processes approximately 100 million traveler reservations from over 40 countries around the globe each year and leverages in excess of 50,000 rules and queries designed to improve efficiency and reservation quality. The platform allows agents to consolidate pre-travel and reservation reporting across multiple Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), third-party and corporation-specific databases and other sources of traveler-specific information. The latest version provides enhanced flexibility during interactions with Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), databases, or other applications along with updates to further streamline processing functions within the application. These enhancements decrease the transaction processing time and provide administrators with improved email itinerary delivery options for emails delivered to travelers and tools to better manage business logic within the solution. Upgrades include using new GDS features to improve the PNR finishing functionality for both pre-ticketing and post-ticketing operations as well as the ability to deal with non-GDS data used during PNR processing operations. "This CORREX release expands the application's flexibility and processing efficiency," said Shane Hammond, President and CEO, TRX. "Continuous innovation helps our clients receive the highest possible return on their investment." Earlier this year, TRX opened access to CORREX's new self-service functionality via a safe and secure browser-based interface and gave clients the same level of control and functionality utilized by TRX personnel for over a decade. "We continue to invest in the development of our world-class reservation processing platform, making it more efficient and robust," said David Jackson, Vice President, Product Development. "These investments in our new self-service offering provide our clients with a distinct competitive advantage in terms of speed to market, ability to improve quality, and reduce operational costs." About TRX TRX is a world-leading travel technology and data services provider, offering more than 20 software-as-a-service utilities for online booking, reservation processing, data intelligence, and process automation. We deliver our technology applications in an on-demand environment to travel agencies, corporations, travel suppliers, government agencies, credit card associations, credit card issuing banks, and third-party administrators. We provide patented savings maximization solutions via our travel analytics consulting practice, extending spend management services to travel buyers all over the world. We complement all of these offerings with a global workforce focused on travel process automation and reengineering. For more information about TRX or to contact a TRX sales office, phone 404.929.6100 or visit the company's Web site at www.trx.com. SOURCE TRX, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm Alt Text: Porn Deserves Special Handling in Entirely New DomainsWith the internet getting its own .xxx red-light district, it's time to cordon off other public arenas for extra-special treatment.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:00 pm Verizon LTE + iPhone = iPhone 4G? - NetworkWorld.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 1 Jul 2010 | 5:49 pm Dodge Roadside Bombs With ... a Flying CarWhat do you do when you spot a roadside bomb in Afghanistan? Hit a button on the back of a steering wheel and vertically lift your vehicle off the road ... into the sky. Obviously.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 5:35 pm Google books $700M buyout of travel software maker (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Jul 2010 | 5:31 pm Foursquare Goes iOS 4 Native: Brings A New Map View, But No Background Location
The new map view allows you to see avatar representations of your Foursquare friends overlaid on a Google Map. You can also hit the locator button to show off where you are and see which friends are actually closest to you. Clicking on their images brings a pop-up that shows their current location (which you can click on to go to that location’s page in the app). This view is a welcome addition as it’s a better way to see who is actually near you. The traditional list view doesn’t really mean a lot unless you know an area really well. Rival Gowalla offers a similar map view on its iPad app. Other rivals like Loopt and Latitude have had this map view for a while. This new version of Foursquare also feels significantly faster than previous versions of the app. As I said, one thing not included in this version is background location. That’s a new feature of iOS 4 that other apps, like Loopt, are already taking advantage of. Foursquare has said they’re waiting to see how users approach this new functionality, as it will open a whole other door beyond check-ins. I do know that they’re working on version 2.0 of the app — which will undoubtedly be a pretty significant upgrade. They have to do something with all that money, after all. You can find the latest version of Foursquare here in the App Store. It’s a free download.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 5:30 pm Review: Optoma PK201 and PK301 pico projectors
Pros:
Cons:
Full review: I’m reviewing these together because the two projectors have almost the same specifications, inputs, outputs, and so on. I’ll just start by explaining the main differences: The PK301 is newer and larger. Its primary advantage over the PK201 is a shorter throw distance and it promises a significantly brighter image. It also costs $100 more. The differences pretty much end there. Performance To get an idea of the size and throw distance of these things, check out the following video, in which I compare the Optomas to the 3M MPro150: As you can see, there is no clear winner. One thing that surprised me, however, was how similar the images were between the two Optomas. The 201 is supposed to have 20 lumens, and the 301 50 lumens. I didn’t see that difference at all. As in, there was almost no difference at all in brightness or quality. You can verify it for yourself in the above video, which was set at the same exposure settings for the entire sequence, and both projectors were set to maximum brightness. Why should this be? I really cannot explain it, but it certainly strikes off one of the 301’s big advantages.
I found the PK201 to have the best color of the three. Why it demonstrated such superior color output with the inputs I gave it is a mystery, but it did. Movies, videos, and games all looked more naturally saturated to me. The PK301, on the other hand, has better definition, though it’s a close call. I found that fine lines and details were less visible on the 201, with which they were present, but noticeably not as sharp. This likely is the result of the larger and higher-quality lens found on the 301. When it came to focus, I found that neither was very forgiving. Something about the DLP engine makes the focal plane very slim, and consequently if the projector is not exactly on a level with the center of the display surface (or very close), you will not be able to get the entire thing in focus. This was much more of a problem with the 201, in my experience. Both projectors have the same pleasant-looking on-device navigation interface. It’s much better than the MPro150’s, but still isn’t a joy to navigate. Projector makers have a lot to learn about user interface design. You’ve got your on-device media (under which category Settings is inexplicably grouped), card slot, USB media, and a “search for input” option that goes through the various inputs automatically if for some reason you don’t feel like pressing the input switch button. Speaking of inputs, the Optomas excel there. Each of them has mini HDMI, Composite/AV, USB, and a universal I/O with attachments for other outputs (like VGA from your laptop). One of the Optomas’ key features is the MicroSD card slot. This is handy for showing small- to medium-sized files like Powerpoint presentations and vacation pictures. I found both the PK201 and PK301 very capable devices for showing off photos or slides. They were both quick to navigate within the viewers, and allowing for the lowered resolution, my large photos looked quite good, though the 16:9 AR leads to portrait-oriented pictures to be rather small. Battery life is… not good. An hour is the quoted limit for both devices, and that’s about it. I get twice that out of the 3M Mpro150. You can of course plug the thing in, but I feel it really hamstrings a portable device to have to be tethered to the wall. Sound is tinny and relatively quiet. Both projectors have 3.5mm outs, though, so you can use headphones or portable speakers. The sound is just fine for watching short videos or playing a non-cinematic game, as long as you’re not too far from the device. To expect good sound from a pico projector is pretty unreasonable, so everyone gets a pass here. Hardware
The PK201 is, let us just admit right off, ugly. I appreciate that it is compact, but the styling leaves much to be desired. You can’t tell which end is the front and there are inputs willy-nilly. If you need to look cool while using your pocket projector, this isn’t the device for you.
Comparatively, the PK301 is understated and classic. It looks like… a tiny projector. All the inputs are neatly laid out on the back, the MicroSD slot is tastefully concealed beneath a rubber flap, and the control cluster is dead center. Everything’s black, and it looks great. I think I still prefer the UFO-lozenge of the MPro150 (or its predecessor, even), but as far as devices like this go, the 301 is very attractive. I also got a feeling that the 301 is better-built. My main evidence for this, aside from the fact that it’s obviously better-built, is the focus dial. It’s a mess on the 201: fiddly, unpredictable, unresponsive, or both at the same time, I found it extremely frustrating getting the right focus. With the 301 it’s a snap: a little nubbin on a smooth-turning lens, right where you think it should be.
The controls are slightly awkward on both devices, however. The buttons are strangely shaped and difficult to hit, requiring quite a lot of force. If you have the projector on a tripod, it will be totally messed up after you adjust the volume. And speaking of tripods, the tripod screw is frustratingly far off-center on both devices, though it’s worse on the 301. They had to make room for the battery cover, it seems. The result is that either device is easily knocked over or out of place when on their spindly little tripod. This can be corrected for by simply getting a better tripod. Conclusion Although both projectors have their strengths and are clearly competitive with what’s out there, I hesitate to recommend them to just anybody. For versatility, they aren’t short throw enough to make a large image in a small room, though they are noticeably brighter than the short-throwing MPro150. Having a few of these around a school or office could be a lifesaver — they are remarkably simple to operate, and setup is non-existent. But for an individual, I don’t see you saving a lot of money or trouble by getting a pico projector at this stage of the game. 3M, Optoma, Microvision, and everyone else are improving these things at a pretty good rate, and the prices are bound to come down soon as well. I’d recommend the PK301, but at $400 it really is quite expensive for what it’s providing — not to mention the fact that I didn’t find it to be much brighter than the PK201. Add to this their short battery life and it seems to me that you’ve got a great product… in about a year. Product page: Optoma PK301 and PK201
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 5:30 pm Remains of the Day: Up, up, and away! (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - Despite its reception issues, the iPhone 4 is still flying highâin some cases, literally. Also, Steve Jobs is never too busy to e-mail a concerned user, and it looks like heâd rather be doing that than rubbing elbows with media moguls. Read on for the remainders for July 1, 2010.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Jul 2010 | 5:30 pm The Ignominious Fall of Dellsnydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bill Snyder discusses the ignominious decline of Dell, one akin to that of Computer Associates, leaving the company forever tainted by scandal and a 'shocking breach of faith with customers.' Dell's pioneering business model and supply chain helped make desktop computing ubiquitous, affordable, and secure. But years of awful quality control and customer service have finally caught up to the company in a very public way that will do irreparable damage to the company for years to come. 'What we've learned about Dell recently doesn't qualify as an understandable mistake. Only a rotten company sells defective computers and lies about it.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Jul 2010 | 5:27 pm HP announces complete acquisition of Palm, what’s next for HP?Section: Business News, Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Computers, Netbooks, Peripherals, Printers / Scanners
With everything in order from an investor standpoint, the acquisition of Palm by HP has completed with a transaction price of $1.2 billion. The announcement of HP acquiring Palm first occurred a couple of months ago and that is when speculation of what the two companies could create started. The future of HP and Palm together will be driven largely by Palm’s webOS and HP’s strong market share of all things computers. As of now, Palm is being tight lipped about the future, but it is clear they want developers to stay on and keep developing apps for webOS as they have been waiving the developer fee. From the HP standpoint, HP simply wants Palm to focus on webOS development and integration into smartphones, slate PCs, and netbooks. Let’s face it, webOS is a great concept, but just needs to be executed a little better. Slate PCs and netbooks sounds great, but will we ever see the interesting webOS printer? It should be an interesting summer to see what HP and Palm announce together. Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:52 pm My Houdini ChickensHoudini Chickens from Alan Graham on Vimeo. Chicken Run is just a movie...or is it?This is a surveillance video I made to try and figure out how our chickens kept getting out of their coop during the night. I also discovered why the cat had been so manic every morning...they had been eating his food while he slept. Turns out they learned that the chicken wire on the side of the coop bends one way (for exiting) and bends another way on top of the coop (for entering). Song: Carnage By: The White Buffalo (Available on iTunes, Thanks for the use of the song!) Source: Boing Boing | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:46 pm Butler Robot Can Fetch Drinks, Snacks
Meet HERB, a robot from Intel’s research labs that can fetch drinks, get a pack of chips and sort dishes. HERB or the Home Exploring Robotic Butler is a project from Intel’s personal robotics group. The robot sits on a tricked-out Segway base and has arms that are driven by cables to allow it to be extremely dexterous. A spinning laser on the top of the robot help generates 3-D data so robot can identify objects. There’s also a camera to help it “see.” “It (the robot) looks big but it will fit through most doorways,” says Siddhartha Srinivasa, an Intel researcher who is working on the project. “It’s about a foot longer than the human wingspan.” Users can tell HERB what they need using an iPhone interface that the team built. There’s also a voice recognition program in the works so you can just tell the robot loud what you want it to do. The HERB project has been in the works for nearly four years. Intel showed the robot’s latest features at its annual research day fest on Wednesday. HERB is just one of the many robotics project that is trying to teach machines how to do everyday tasks. Willow Garage, a Palo Alto, California based startup has a robot called PR2 that is being trained to sort laundry and fold towels. The idea is to teach robots to go beyond carefully structured and repetitive tasks so they can move beyond factories. Check out the video of HERB at work. HERB doesn’t move fast but if you could just sit on the couch and have it bring a bottle of beer every time, a few seconds delay shouldn’t bother you that much.
See Also:
Photo: HERB/ Priya Ganapati 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:44 pm Google Dings Bing With $700M Travel CompanyGoogle is spending $700 million to purchase a travel-search software company that powers most online travel-search sites, including the one at Microsoft Bing. The stated motive: to get closer to the data to outdo all current travel sites.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:40 pm Stop the Math Press's Presses — Knuth Announces iTexAfter Donald Knuth's anticipated "earthshaking announcement," it's safe to say that the world is still here. yowlanku writes "Christoper Adams tweeted live from TUG 2010 Conference that 'Donald Knuth's TeX successor will be named iTeX.' " Knuth "also stated that this successor of TeX will have features like 3-D printing, animation, stereographic sound."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:40 pm Dell Gains Virtualization Muscle With Scalent Buy (PC World)PC World - Dell is purchasing Scalent, a provider of server-virtualization management software, Dell announced on Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:30 pm How not to make a 3D movie
1. Don’t do a 2D to 3D conversion As far as I’m concerned, any producer greenlighting a 3D conversion should be fired. It’s expensive, labor-intensive, and more importantly ineffective. Even at its best, converting a 2D movie to 3D is a shadow of true 3D. At its worst, it can be more painful to watch, or simply unconvincing. Conversions are the most transparent rain dance a producer can do in order to spice up a feature. I could tell from the preview before Toy Story 3 that this was a conversion because I spotted errors baked right in — the way you can tell something has been shot on a green screen. 2. Don’t do a 2D to 3D conversion Just so we’re really goddamn clear on this. 3. Don’t shoot it dark
One of the problems 3D has yet to master is brightness. Most 3D technologies end up reducing the amount of light reaching each eye by half, and if your movie is a dark one, it’s going to get a lot darker. Toy Story 3 and much of Avatar were bright and colorful; even the night scenes in Avatar were enlivened by luminescent flora. 4. Don’t be careless with CG/human interaction When you add depth information, the audience is harder to trick. In a regular film, you can get away with a lot because there are ways of creating foreshortening, manipulating distance, and so on. It’s much more difficult to create these space effects in 3D because the mind wants it to look real. Be especially careful in a 2D/3D movie, where the 3D elements have smooth and generative 3D paths, but characters and backgrounds have their depth painted on. 5. Don’t overdo the depth of field
When you can’t add real depth, photographic techniques like background blur are useful for isolating image elements. Unfortunately, background blur doesn’t transfer well to 3D, technically or psychologically. The savvy 3D films are eschewing depth of field for adding lots of interesting and real depth cues in the background. Floating islands, small things moving around, giving your brain the information it wants about what’s back there. Your eyes don’t like blur in 3D because think about it, if it’s out of focus in real life, you’re usually not looking at it. 6. Don’t throw things in the audience’s face
This lamentable habit of action films has its roots, like more respectable techniques, in the inability to actually make things fly out of the screen. Now that we can do that, there’s no need to put it right in people’s faces. Carefully choose your camera angles and depth levels so that you can “threaten” the audience without resorting to cheap tricks. Reportedly, the bad 3D effects are the least of The Last Airbender’s worries, but I don’t have time to write any tips on “How not to make a terrible movie.” These will have to suffice for now.
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:29 pm Microsoft Positive New Tech Will Simplify Battery Installation [Voices]By John Murrell You would have to go a long way down the big list of life’s problems before you got to “Geez, what a pain it is to install batteries in the right direction,” but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from applying its vast R&D resources to the issue. The Redmond behemoth is now licensing a new technology for devices called InstaLoad that allows batteries to be inserted facing either direction, regardless of polarity. Battery maker Duracell and flashlight manufacturer AE Light are among the first to sign on. Source: All Things Digital | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:27 pm From the NASA Archive: Astronauts Inspect Their Butt MoldsThe Mercury 7 astronauts are seen examining the molds made of their backsides to design form-fitting spaceship seats.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:25 pm Intel Researchers Turn Counter Tops Into TouchscreensResearchers from Intel can turn any surface -- including kitchen counter tops and coffee tables -- into a touchscreen display.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:05 pm Intel Researchers Turn Counter Tops Into TouchscreensResearchers from Intel can turn any surface -- including kitchen counter tops and coffee tables -- into a touchscreen display.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:05 pm Do Scientists Understand the Public?Mab_Mass writes "The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has an interesting article on the relationship between scientists and the public. [Here's the paper itself, as a PDF.] Rather than point the finger at an 'ignorant' public, this article chastises the scientists for a poor understanding of how to communicate with non-technical people. With a look at the issues of climate change, nuclear waste disposal, genetics, and the future of the Internet, the article provides examples of how the experts in these fields are failing to present their message in a way that encourages public discussion and support."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:56 pm The Sidekick, she is dead
Friends, I freaking loved the Sidekick. Seriously. I would have married it. I carried it from about 2004 until 2007, almost all versions. It was literally the best messaging phone I ever used. Well, all that’s gone, my friends, because as of July, T-Mo is pulling the plug on the device. They write:
Goodbye, my friend. Goodbye.
Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:52 pm How I save $67.50 a month by making my own yogurtOver at credit.com, I wrote about how I save almost $70 a month making my own yogurt with the Waring Pro YM350 yogurt maker (if you have an oven with a pilot light, you don't need the maker).
How I save $67.50 a month by making my own yogurt EASEUS Partition Master 6.0.1 - Newly Upgraded Hard Disk Management Solution ReleasedNEW YORK, July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- EASEUS Partition Master 6.0.1, the all-in-one hard disk management solution is enhanced by the ability to support GPT disks, with features such as initialize hard disk as GPT disk, manage/resize/move GPT partition, copy GPT partition, wipe and recover GPT disk data, etc., released by EASEUS Software. The ability to manage/resize/copy GPT disk partition is a must-have function as the GPT disk format is growing fast in popularity. The new version 6.0.1 of EASEUS Partition Master is following this trend to fulfill its name as the best all-around hard disk manager to support not only MBR disk, but also GPT disk management. Besides new manage/resize/copy GPT partition features, EASEUS Partition Master's ability to support a dynamic disk is also booted up: it can now convert a dynamic disk with EXT2, EXT3 and SWAP partitions to a basic disk under Windows environments in addition to converting dynamic disks with FAT and NTFS partitions. Manage/resize/copy GPT partition is a function which was requested by users, according to the company, and they also said that it implemented their thoughts of providing the best options for users since managing GPT partitions is a "most wanted function" as per a poll. While it is already the 3rd upgrade in 2010, EASEUS is very confident that they're keeping up with the customers' requirements as a leading hard disk management solution provider. Apart from adding the functions to manage, resize and copy GPT partitions and the small updates mentioned above, EASEUS Partition Master Version 6.0.1 keeps its original modules of Partition Manager, Disk & Partition Copy and Partition Recovery. While EASEUS Partition Master 6.0.1 has all these functions and supports the mainstream Windows operating systems like Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 and Windows 7, it remains no more than 40 MB in size and the price will stay the same. Pricing & Availability: Web Special $159 (original price $199) for Windows Server users is available from the EASEUS Website at http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager-server/ EASEUS Partition Master Professional Edition is available for $39.95 from EASEUS' Website at http://www.partition-tool.com/professional.htm About CHENGDU YIWO Tech Development Co., Ltd. The company specializes in data recovery, partition management and backup software for Windows OS. Its major products are Data Recovery Wizard, Partition Table Doctor, EASEUS Partition Master and Todo Backup. For more information, please visit http://www.easeus.com. *(LOGO 72dpi: send2press.com/mediaboom/10-0510-easeus_72dpi.jpg) This release was issued on behalf of the above organization by Send2Press(R), a unit of Neotrope(R). http://www.Send2Press.com SOURCE EASEUSSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:49 pm 5 Lessons Microsoft Learned From Kin - ChannelWeb
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:48 pm Machine teaches men what it feels like to menstruate
And here you thought men would never know what it would feel like to get their periods. A new gadget featured at the Royal College of Art's summer grad show called the menstruation machine attaches at the hip and slowly drips blood from a reservoir. Coming soon: a gadget that will show men how to give birth to babies. [via Wired UK via Gizmodo] Benchtop Biofuels: Fine-Tuning Growth Conditions Helps Cyanobacteria FlourishCyanobacteria are among the oldest living forms in nature, responsible for generating the atmospheric oxygen we breathe today. Now Hyun Woo Kim and Raveender Vannela, researchers at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University are perfecting the means to culture these microbes—a potentially rich source of biofuels and biomaterials—in significantly greater abundance. The work provides a vital foundation for optimizing a device known as a photobioreactor (PBR), in which these energy-packed photosynthetic organisms proliferate.While a variety of candidates have been called into service for producing clean forms of energy to replace harmful fossil fuels—from corn ethanol to switch grass or various forms of algae—cyanobacteria offer a particularly attractive option. As Kim explains, “cyanobacteria are much easier to re-engineer because we have a lot of knowledge about them. We can control their growth so that we can produce large amounts of biofuel or biomaterial.” (The team works at Biodesign’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology, under director Bruce Rittmann.)The new research indicates that the optimization of cyanobacterial growth requires a delicate interplay of CO2, phosphorus and sufficient light irradiation, within the PBR vessel containing the microbial crop. The group’s foundational study provides quantitative tools for evaluating factors limiting production of cyanobacteria within PBRs—a critical step along the path to large scale biofuel production. Results appeared recently in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering.Photosynthetic cyanobacteria are able to produce roughly 100 times the amount of clean fuel per acre compared with other biofuel crops, and because their survival needs are simple—sunlight, water, CO2 and a few nutrients—they do not require arable land to be taken out of food production. Rather, cyanobacteria can be grown in rooftop PBRs or wherever sufficient quantities of sunlight and CO2 can be provided.As Vannela notes, “the PBR uses solar photons as an energy source to convert CO2 to reduced forms such as biomass, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates. It's a biological reactor, fixing solar energy into very useful forms of energy for human society.”Cyanobacteria reproduce prolifically, achieving a high biomass yield and they are tolerant of a wide range of temperatures, salinities and pH conditions. In addition to biofuels, which are extracted from fat-containing lipids in the cyanobacteria, the microbes can also produce many chemically based materials useful for industrial applications, like biopolymers or isoprenes. Photosynthetic microbes are also valuable for the growing field of neutraceuticals, permitting the manufacture of anti-cancer agents from fatty acids or antioxidants like beta carotene.For the current study, the group used wild type Synechocystis PC6803, cultured in a benchtop PBR, and supplied with the customary growth medium, known as BG-11. A series of semi-continuous experiments were conducted, in which three principle variables were manipulated and the resulting growth of cyanobacteria, observed. These were C02, light irradiance and phosphorus.“In this study,” Kim notes, “we found that phosphorus is really important.” Indeed, the cyanobacteria were unable to make efficient use of carbon dioxide in their growth cycle until the BG-11 medium was supplemented with phosphorus. Augmenting the medium with additional phosphorus allowed higher biomass productivity in the bioreactor. Once the phosphorus limitation was overcome, light irradiance and CO2 became the limiting factors for growth.While phosphorus content had been studied in the past with respect to the problem of eutrophication in lakes and other inland waters, its significance for controlled growth of phototrophs like cyanobacteria within a PBR had not been examined in detail. In a series of experiments, the team simulated the natural pattern of light irradiance produced by sunlight, while carefully controlling the levels of CO2 (applied at 2.5, 5.0 and 7.5 percent) and phosphorus.Results showed that when all essential nutrients are supplied, light irradiance becomes the limiting factor, as the crowding of biomass within the containment vessel increasingly blocks available light to the cyanobacteria. This condition is overcome through periodic harvesting of biomass from the reactor. The advance of the team’s research was in quantifying these factors, in order to obtain optimal values for nutrients, CO2 and light irradiance.Vannela and Kim stress that while they supplied CO2 and nutrients including phosphorus to the PBR’s cyanobacteria in their experimental design, ultimately, the nutrient source could come from waste streams or be recycled from the harvested biomass, while the excess CO2 produced by power plants could fulfill the microbe’s respiratory requirements. Thus, a closed loop could be formed, generating useful energy from water contaminants and the CO2 currently contributing to greenhouse warming.The work performed by the group is one component in a large, multidisciplinary effort to make eventual commercial-scale production of biofuels and biomaterials a reality. Such research seeks to address one of the most significant societal challenges—finding a carbon-neutral replacement for destructive (and dwindling) fossil fuels.---On the Net:ASU Biodesign InstituteSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:42 pm Texting while driving in Michigan will now earn you a $100 fine Michigan has joined 14 other states including the District of Columbia in making texting and emailing while driving illegal. The new ordinance goes into effect statewide today, July 1, 2010. First time offenders will be subject to a $100 fine and getting caught a second time worthy of a $200 ticket.
Under the new law, it doesn't matter if you're texting while at a stop light or cruising down the I-75, both will get you a ticket. However, dialing and talking on the phone (without a headset) is still legal in Michigan. Apparently police are trained to tell the difference between dialing and texting.
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:41 pm You’re 2 clicks from free WiFi at StarbucksSection: Computers, Networking, Wireless, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle
The WiFi access is both free and unlimited. The company has previously stated applications like Skype and even Apple’s own FaceTime will not be restricted. The store could become a road warriors favorite climb as they connect back with the office or family while picking up some hot java. Thanks to Starbucks junkie Dave Zatz, here’s a picture of the log in screen: Read:[Starbucks]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:41 pm Texting while driving in Michigan will now earn you a $100 fine
Under the new law, it doesn’t matter if you’re texting while at a stop light or cruising down the I-75, both will get you a ticket. However, dialing and talking on the phone (without a headset) is still legal in Michigan. Apparently police are trained to tell the difference between dialing and texting. If pulled over, drivers may be asked by the officer to see their phone, but because texting while driving is just a civil infraction and not a crime, they cannot confiscate it. Let this be a warning to everyone including those in states without this type of law, texting while driving is dangerous anyway. We might all do it, but that doesn’t make it right. Now Michigan drivers need to decide if that text message or email is worth a $100.
Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:40 pm Graphene 2.0: A New Approach To Making A Unique MaterialSince its discovery, graphene—an unusual and versatile substance composed of a single-layer crystal lattice of carbon atoms—has caused much excitement in the scientific community. Now, Nongjian (NJ) Tao, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University has hit on a new way of making graphene, maximizing the material’s enormous potential, particularly for use in high-speed electronic devices.Along with collaborators from Germany’s Max Planck Institute, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Utah, and Tsinghua University, Beijing, Tao created a graphene transistor composed of 13 benzene rings.The molecule, known as a coronene, shows an improved electronic band gap, a property which may help to overcome one of the central obstacles to applying graphene technology for electronics. Tao is the director of the Biodesign Institute's Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors and electrical engineering professor in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. The group’s work appears in the June 29 advanced online issue of Nature Communications.Eventually, graphene components may find their way into a broad array of products, from lasers to ultra-fast computer chips; ultracapacitors with unprecedented storage capabilities; tools for microbial detection and diagnosis; photovoltaic cells; quantum computing applications and many others.As the name suggests, graphene is closely related to graphite. Each time a pencil is drawn across a page, tiny fragments of graphene are shed. When properly magnified, the substance resembles an atomic-scale chicken wire. Sheets of the material possess exceptional electronic and optical properties, making it highly attractive for varied applications.“Graphene is an amazing material, made of carbon atoms connected in a honeycomb structure,” Tao says, pointing to graphene’s huge electrical mobility—the ease with which electrons can flow through the material. Such high mobility is a critical parameter in determining the speed of components like transistors.Producing usable amounts of graphene however, can be tricky. Until now, two methods have been favored, one in which single layer graphene is peeled from a multilayer sheet of graphite, using adhesive tape and the other, in which crystals of graphene are grown on a substrate, such as silicon carbide.In each case, an intrinsic property of graphene must be overcome for the material to be suitable for a transistor. As Tao explains, “a transistor is basically a switch—you turn it on or off. A graphene transistor is very fast but the on/off ratio is very tiny. ” This is due to the fact that the space between the valence and conduction bands of the material—or band gap as it is known—is zero for graphene.In order to enlarge the band gap and improve the on/off ratio of the material, larger sheets of graphene may be cut down to nanoscale sizes. This has the effect of opening the gap between valence and conductance bands and improving the on/off ratio, though such size reduction comes at a cost. The process is laborious and tends to introduce irregularities in shape and impurities in chemical composition, which somewhat degrade the electrical properties of the graphene. “This may not really be a viable solution for mass production,” Tao observes.Rather than a top down approach in which sheets of graphene are reduced to a suitable size to act as transistors, Tao’s approach is bottom up—building up the graphene, molecular piece by piece. To do this, Tao relies on the chemical synthesis of benzene rings, hexagonal structures, each formed from 6 carbon atoms. “Benzene is usually an insulating material, ” Tao says. But as more such rings are joined together, the material’s behavior becomes more like a semiconductor.Using this process, the group was able to synthesize a coronene molecule, consisting of 13 benzene rings arranged in a well defined shape. The molecule was then fitted on either side with linker groups—chemical binders that allow the molecule to be attached to electrodes, forming a nanoscale circuit. An electrical potential was then passed through the molecule and the behavior, observed. The new structure displayed transistor properties, showing reversible on and off switches.Tao points out that the process of chemical synthesis permits the fine-tuning of structures in terms of ideal size, shape and geometric structure, making it advantageous for commercial mass production. Graphene can also be made free of defects and impurities, thereby reducing electrical scattering and providing material with maximum mobility and carrier velocity, ideal for high-speed electronics.In conventional devices, resistance is proportional to temperature, but in the graphene transistors by Tao et al., electron mobility is due to quantum tunneling, and remains temperature independent—a signature of coherent process.The group believes they will be able to enlarge the graphene structures through chemical synthesis to perhaps hundreds of rings, while still maintaining a sufficient band gap to enable switching behavior. The research opens many possibilities for the future commercialization of this uncommon material, and its use in a new generation of ultra high-speed electronics.---On the Net:ASU Biodesign InstituteNature CommunicationsSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:40 pm J.P. Morgan Raises the Bar for Apple Bulls [Digital Daily]
Seemingly insatiable demand for the iPhone 4 coupled with “iPad mania” and increasing Mac sales overseas will converge in the months ahead to send Apple (AAPL) shares through the roof and beyond, said Moskowitz, whose previous target price was $316 (the stock closed today at $248.48). “The rapid growth phenomena of both the iPhone 4 and iPad stand to intensify in coming quarters,” Moskowitz wrote. “Plus, we believe major upside potential still exists in what we refer to as the Target Zone of the midrange PC market internationally for Apple. These dynamics should overcome the iPod’s fading importance to the story. Overall, our estimate revisions point to top and bottom-line growth far exceeding 20 percent the next two years.”
Moskowitz predicts Apple will be selling 10 million iPhones and 4.4 million iPads a quarter by September 2010 (click chart below to enlarge). And for fiscal 2011, he figures the company will sell almost 44 million iPhones and more than 21 million iPads. At that point, says Moskowitz, Apple’s shares will be trading at $390. “Apple stands to be the high-growth, technology leader having no rival for some time, in our view…. Buckle up.” Source: All Things Digital | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:39 pm Solar-Powered Flight Grounded By Equipment Bugcrimeandpunishment writes "If your plane is powered by the sun, it's tough to fly if your crew is in the dark. A 24-hour test flight for the world's first solar-powered round-the-world flight had to be postponed Thursday due to an equipment problem that would have left mission control out of touch with the technology on the experimental aircraft. When they're able to make this test flight, they hope by flying all day they'll be able to fully charge the batteries, then use the stored energy to power the plane all night."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:34 pm CTIA-The Wireless Association® Statement on the Introduction of H.R. 5649 - the Digital Goods and Services Tax Fairness Act of 2010WASHINGTON, July 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Upon introduction of legislation by Reps. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Lamar Smith (R-TX) to provide a national framework for the taxation of digital goods and services, CTIA-The Wireless Association® President and CEO Steve Largent released the following statement: (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100629/DC28223LOGO-a) (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100629/DC28223LOGO-a) "CTIA is pleased Congressmen Boucher and Smith recognize the importance of establishing a national framework to prevent multiple and discriminatory taxation of digital goods and services. Enacting a federal tax framework makes sense, although we hope that any taxation of digital goods and services be implemented in a manner that is minimal. "This bi-partisan legislation will provide tax administrators and consumers alike a better understanding of how digital commerce should be taxed. That will enable digital commerce to continue to flourish in a way that will both assist in the nation's economic recovery and enhance American economic competitiveness. "We look forward to working with the sponsors and Congress to enact the legislation as quickly as possible." CTIA-The Wireless Association® (www.ctia.org) is an international organization representing the wireless communications industry. Membership in the association includes wireless carriers and their suppliers, as well as providers and manufacturers of wireless data services and products. CTIA advocates on behalf of its members at all levels of government. The association also coordinates the industry's voluntary best practices and initiatives, and sponsors the industry's leading wireless tradeshows. CTIA was founded in 1984 and is based in Washington, DC. SOURCE CTIA-The Wireless AssociationSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:34 pm Man-Made Global Warming Started With Ancient HuntersEven before the dawn of agriculture, people may have caused the planet to warm up, a new study suggests.Mammoths used to roam modern-day Russia and North America, but are now extinct—and there's evidence that around 15,000 years ago, early hunters had a hand in wiping them out. A new study, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), argues that this die-off had the side effect of heating up the planet.“A lot of people still think that people are unable to affect the climate even now, even when there are more than 6 billion people,” says the lead author of the study, Chris Doughty of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. The new results, however, “show that even when we had populations orders of magnitude smaller than we do now, we still had a big impact.”In the new study, Doughty, Adam Wolf, and Chris Field—all at Carnegie Institution for Science—propose a scenario to explain how hunters could have triggered global warming.First, mammoth populations began to drop—both because of natural climate change as the planet emerged from the last ice age, and because of human hunting. Normally, mammoths would have grazed down any birch that grew, so the area stayed a grassland. But if the mammoths vanished, the birch could spread. In the cold of the far north, these trees would be dwarfs, only about 2 meters (6 feet) tall. Nonetheless, they would dominate the grasses.The trees would change the color of the landscape, making it much darker so it would absorb more of the Sun's heat, in turn heating up the air. This process would have added to natural climate change, making it harder for mammoths to cope, and helping the birch spread further.To test how big of an effect this would have on climate, Field's team looked at ancient records of pollen, preserved in lake sediments from Alaska, Siberia, and the Yukon Territory, built up over thousands of years. They looked at pollen from birch trees (the genus Betula), since this is “a pioneer species that can rapidly colonize open ground following disturbance,” the study says. The researchers found that around 15,000 years ago—the same time that mammoth populations dropped, and that hunters arrived in the area—the amount of birch pollen started to rise quickly.To estimate how much additional area the birch might have covered, they started with the way modern-day elephants affect their environment by eating plants and uprooting trees. If mammoths had effects on vegetation similar to those of modern elephants , then the fall of mammoths would have allowed birch trees to spread over several centuries, expanding from very few trees to covering about one-quarter of Siberia and Beringia—the land bridge between Asia and Alaska. In those places where there was dense vegetation to start with and where mammoths had lived, the main reason for the spread of birch trees was the demise of mammoths, the model suggests.Another study, published last year, shows that “the mammoths went extinct, and that was followed by a drastic change in the vegetation,” rather than the other way around, Doughty says. “With the extinction of this keystone species, it would have some impact on the ecology and vegetation—and vegetation has a large impact on climate.”Doughty and colleagues then used a climate simulation to estimate that this spread of birch trees would have warmed the whole planet more than 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) over the course of several centuries. (In comparison, the planet has warmed about six times more during the past 150 years, largely because of people's greenhouse gas emissions.)Only some portion—about one-quarter—of the spread of the birch trees would have been due to the mammoth extinctions, the researchers estimate. Natural climate change would have been responsible for the rest of the expansion of birch trees. Nonetheless, this suggests that when hunters helped finish off the mammoth, they could have caused some global warming.In Siberia, Doughty says, “about 0.2 degrees C (0.36 degrees F) of regional warming is the part that is likely due to humans.”Earlier research indicated that prehistoric farmers changed the climate by slashing and burning forests starting about 8,000 years ago, and when they introduced rice paddy farming about 5,000 years ago. This would suggest that the start of the so-called “Anthropocene”—a term used by some scientists to refer to the geological age when mankind began shaping the entire planet—should be dated to several thousand years ago.However, Field and colleagues argue, the evidence of an even earlier man-made global climate impact suggests the Anthropocene could have started much earlier. Their results, they write, “suggest the human influence on climate began even earlier than previously believed, and that the onset of the Anthropocene should be extended back many thousands of years.”This work was funded by the Carnegie Institution for Science and NASA.---On the Net:AGUGeophysical Research LettersSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:33 pm Finding soccer stats with the Google Search ApplianceFor the past few weeks, many football fans have been living and breathing just one thing: the World Cup. When they’re not watching on the matches, many people have flocked to FIFA.com, the source for the latest info on players, standings and scores.With all these people looking for the latest and greatest on their favorite sport, we’re pleased that FIFA has chosen the Google Search Appliance to power search on their website. With the GSA, FIFA.com can provide universal search across all types of content. Try searching for “Messi” from FIFA.com’s search box, and you’ll see all kinds of data: statistics, news results, images and videos—all pertaining to Messi. For more on the Google Search Appliance and how FIFA is putting it to work, check out our post on the Enterprise blog. Posted by Vijay Koduri, Product Marketing Manager, Enterprise Search    
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:30 pm Savvis Commences Tender Offer for Its 3% Convertible Senior Notes Due 2012ST. LOUIS, July 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Savvis, Inc. (Nasdaq: SVVS), a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises, today announced that it has commenced a tender offer for all of its outstanding 3% Convertible Senior Notes due May 2012. The principal amount outstanding on the notes is $345 million. The tender offer will expire at midnight EDT on July 29, 2010, unless extended or terminated by Savvis. Holders of notes who validly tender their notes on or prior to the expiration date, and do not validly withdraw, will receive $990 for each $1,000 principal amount of convertible notes purchased in the tender offer, plus accrued and unpaid interest to, but not including, the settlement date. Notes that have been tendered may be withdrawn at any time on or prior to the expiration date. Savvis expects to fund the purchase of notes tendered in the tender offer, refinance certain of its existing indebtedness, and pay the related fees and expenses from borrowings under new senior secured credit facilities, which Savvis expects to complete prior to the end of the tender offer period. Full details of the terms and conditions of the tender offer are included in Savvis' offer to purchase and tender offer statement, which are being sent to holders of notes and filed on Schedule TO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Holders are encouraged to read these documents, as they contain important information regarding the tender offer. Savvis has retained BofA Merrill Lynch; Morgan Stanley & Company Incorporated; Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC; and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Incorporated to act as the dealer managers for the tender offer. Global Bondholder Services Corporation is the information agent and depositary for the tender offer. Questions regarding the tender offer should be directed to the dealer managers listed in the offer to purchase. Requests for the offer to purchase and other documents relating to the tender offer may be directed to Global Bondholder Services Corporation, at 212-430-3774 (for banks and brokers only) or 1-866-470-3900 (U.S. toll free). None of Savvis, any member of its board of directors, any dealer manager, the information agent, the depositary or the trustee is making any recommendation to holders of notes as to whether to tender or refrain from tendering their notes pursuant to the tender offer. Holders of notes must decide whether they will tender pursuant to the offer and, if so, how many notes they will tender. This release is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to purchase nor a solicitation of an offer to sell the notes. The tender offer is only being made pursuant to the tender offer documents, including the Offer to Purchase and the related Letter of Transmittal. The tender offer is not being made to holders of notes in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities, blue sky or other laws of such jurisdiction. About Savvis Savvis, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVVS) is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises. More than 2,500 unique clients, including 30 of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500, use Savvis to reduce capital expense, improve service levels and harness the latest advances in cloud computing. For more information, please visit savvis.net. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT ON FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains or incorporates by reference documents containing certain statements that are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, our forward-looking statements. Words such as "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates" and other similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would" and "could" are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Readers should not rely solely on the forward-looking statements and should consider all uncertainties and risks. The statements are representative only as of the date they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. All forward-looking statements, by their nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Our actual future results may differ materially from those set forth in our forward-looking statements. We face risks that are inherent in the businesses and the market places in which we operate. While management believes these forward-looking statements are accurate and reasonable, uncertainties, risks and factors, including those described below, could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. Factors that may cause actual outcome and results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward looking statements include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following: (i) generally adverse economic and industry conditions, including a decline in demand for our products; (ii) the ability to maintain sufficient liquidity to realize current operating plans; (iii) the effect of receiving a going concern statement in our auditor's report on our fiscal year 2009 audited financial statements; (iv) reevaluation of the fair value of our reporting segments and potential write downs of long-lived assets resulting from adverse economic conditions; (v) the cost and availability of raw materials; (vi) changes in our competitive environment; (vii) economic, political, or regulatory changes in the countries in which we operate; (viii) the ability to successfully integrate the operations of acquired businesses; (ix) the ability to attract, train and retain effective employees and management; (x) the ability to develop innovative products to maintain customer relationships; (xi) the impact of environmental issues, laws and regulations that apply to our business, including those related to environmental matters; (xii) our ability to finance and achieve the expected benefits of our manufacturing relocation plan or other restructuring plans; (xiii) volatility of financial and credit markets which would affect our access to capital; (xiv) increased difficulty or expense in accessing capital because of the delisting of our common stock from NASDAQ; (xv) exposure to foreign exchange gains and losses; (xvi) need to reduce costs to offset downward price trends; and (xvii) potential limitation on use of net operating losses to offset possible future taxable income. SOURCE Savvis, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:20 pm Intel Researchers Turn Counter Tops Into Touchscreens
A research project from Intel can turn any surface into a touchscreen. Instead of propping up a tablet or putting a touchscreen computer in your kitchen, picture yourself tapping on the counter top to pull menus, look up recipes and add items to a shopping list. “There’s nothing absolutely special about the surface, and it doesn’t matter if your hands are dirty,” says Beverly Harrison, a senior research scientist at Intel. “Our algorithm and a camera set-up can create virtual islands everywhere” Intel demoed the project during the company’s annual research-day fest Wednesday to show touchscreens can go beyond computing and become a part of everyday life. The project uses real-time 3-D object recognition to build a model of almost anything that’s placed on the counter and offer a a virtual, touchscreen-based menu. For instance, when you put a slab of meat on the counter or a green pepper, they are identified, and a virtual menu that includes recipes for both are shown. “The computer in real time builds a model of the color, shape, texture of the objects and runs it against a database to identify it,” says Harrison. “And it requires nothing special to be attached on the steak or the pepper.” Smartphones have turned touch into a popular user interface. Many consumers are happy to give the BlackBerry thumb a pass and instead swipe and flick their finger to scroll. New tablets are also likely to make users want to move beyond a physical keyboard and mouse. But so far, touchscreens have been limited to carefully calibrated pieces of glass encased in the shell of a phone or computer. Intel researchers say that won’t be the case in the future. An ordinary coffee table in the living room could morph into a touchscreen when you put a finger on it, and show a menu of music, video to choose from. Or a vanity table in the bathroom could recognize a bottle of pills placed on it and let you manage your medications from there. Some companies are trying to expand the use of touchscreens. For instance, Displax, based in Portugal, can turn any surface — flat or curved — into a touch-sensitive display by sticking a thinner-than-paper polymer film on that surface to make it interactive. Intel research labs try to do away with the extra layer. Instead, researchers there have created a rig with two cameras, one to capture the image of the objects and the other to capture depth. The depth cameras help recognize the objects and the difference between the hand touching the table or hovering over it. A pico-projector helps beam the virtual menus. The cameras and the pico-projector can be combined into devices just a little bigger than your cellphone, says Harrison. Sprinkle a few of these in different rooms and point them on tables, and the system is ready to go. At that point, the software program that Harrison and her team have written kicks in. The program, which can run on any computer anywhere in the house, helps identify objects accurately and create the virtual menus. Just make a wide sweeping gesture to push the menu off the counter and it disappears. There’s even a virtual drawer that users can pull up to store images and notes. Harrison says all this will work on almost any surface, including glass, granite and wood. “The key here is the idea requires no special instrumentation,” she says. Still it may be too early to make plans to remodel the kitchen to include this new system. The idea is still in the research phase, says Harrison, and it may be years before it makes it to the real world. Photo: A counter top acts as a touchscreen display. See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:19 pm Zoho Don't Need No Stinking Ph.D. Programmerstheodp writes "When it comes to tech academic credentials, Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu has The Right Stuff: a Ph.D. in EE from Princeton. But Vembu has eschewed Google's Army-of-Ph.D.s approach to software development in favor of tapping into the ranks of high school grads who would not normally go to college for Zoho. Seeing his youngest brother succeed at programming without a college degree convinced Vembu that others could follow that example with the proper training and guidance. And studying the best employees in his own company led to another epiphany: 'What if the college degree itself is not really that useful?' thought Vembu. 'What if we took kids after high school, train them ourselves?'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:11 pm GES Begins Contract Manufacturing Services in Viet NamSAN JOSE, Calif. and HO CHI MINH CITY, Viet Nam, July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Equipment Services, Inc. (GES) announces that first customer shipments have been completed from their Manufacturing, Service and Training Center located in Saigon High Tech Park in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. Opened in May 2009, the new 100,000 s.f. center contains modern manufacturing operations, a customer training center, design engineering and field service offices. "This represents a major milestone for GES and for our customers who want to explore outsourcing options in Asia besides China. We have a proven product transfer process from pilot production in the U.S. and a well trained staff in Viet Nam. In the next few months, we will be transferring several additional programs to Viet Nam for volume production," said John Villadsen, GES Vice President of Operations. About GES: GES allows OEMs and end users in the Semiconductor, Solar, FPD and related industries to expand their capabilities, increase profitability and improve customer satisfaction through a unique outsourcing model. GES provides high-quality, low-cost design engineering, contract manufacturing and field engineering services to customers worldwide. Founded in 2006 in San Jose, CA, GES has operations in Viet Nam, Japan, Taiwan, China, and India. www.geservs.com GES Contact: Chuck Noe +1 408-441-0682 chucknoe@geservs.com SOURCE GESSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:06 pm Dartmouth Researchers Contribute To Solving A Quantum PuzzleBridging the classical/quantum divideDartmouth researchers have discovered a potentially important piece of the quantum/classical puzzle – learning how the rules of physics in the quantum world (think smaller than microscopic) change when applied to the classical world (think every day items, like cars and trees).In a study published in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Alex Rimberg and his colleagues describe one example of the microscopic quantum world influencing, even dominating they say, the behavior of something in the macroscopic classical world. They used tiny semiconducting crystals that contain two separate reservoirs of electrons to explore the different influences of both classical and quantum physics."We found that the motion of the crystals is not dominated by something classical like thermal motion, but instead by random quantum fluctuations in the number of electrons tunneling through the barrier; the fluctuations were the size of about 10,000 electrons," says Rimberg. "But the macroscopic world in this study also influences the quantum world, in that the vibrations of the crystal caused the electrons to tunnel in big bunches, more or less in sync with the vibrations of the crystal."One major question in quantum physics deals with the connection between the microscopic and macroscopic worlds. Rimberg explains that scientists know that microscopic objects such as electrons obey the laws of quantum mechanics, while macroscopic objects obey Newton's laws. Researchers are still learning exactly how classical behavior emerges from quantum behavior as systems become larger and larger.Rimberg says that the difference in size between the classical and quantum parts of thesystem described in this paper is really extreme. "To give a sense of perspective, we could imagine that the 10,000 electrons correspond to something small like a flea. To complete the analogy, the crystal would have to be the size of Mt. Everest. If we imagine the flea jumping on Mt. Everest to make it move, then the resulting vibrations would be on the order of meters."Rimberg's future work will use nonlinear superconducting systems, different from using the semiconducting crystals in this experiment, to make very strongly quantum mechanical systems. Nonlinear classical systems can show unpredictable, chaotic behavior; the behavior of the corresponding quantum systems is not well understood. This effort will be a prelude to studying the quantum properties of mechanical resonators that are smaller than the crystals in this experiment, but definitely not microscopic either; they are the things in the murky borderland between quantum and classical regimes. ---On the Net:Dartmouth CollegeNatureSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:02 pm Buy a real Tron light cycle on eBayFROM GAMERTELL - Buy a real Tron “life cycle” on eBay for $35,000. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:01 pm FGM Positioned for Double Digit Growth with Senior Management RealignmentRESTON, Va., July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- FGM announced today new changes to their Senior Management Corporate structure. Joe Gawlik has joined the FGM team as their newly appointed Senior Vice President for Business Development while his predecessor, Mike Morehouse, will be leading up a new position at FGM as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. Mike Morehouse will be exploring and leading FGM's corporate development efforts and will be teaming up with Joe Gawlik to continue establishing FGM's growing presence across National Security, C4ISR and the Cyber market areas. Mr. Gawlik will be leading FGM's business development efforts throughout the company while supporting FGM's regional offices in the endeavor to strengthen relationships with established customers as well as procure new lines of business. Joe Gawlik has had a distinctive 20-year career in Naval Intelligence and another 20 years in Industry and comes to FGM from Northrop Grumman. He has both a Management and Business Development background beginning with MRJ Technology Solutions, which was acquired by Veridian, and then acquired by General Dynamics. He also led Business Development for SiloSmashers before being recruited back to General Dynamics. His last position as Senior Vice President for Business Development for 3001, The Geospatial Company, was precipitated by the company's acquisition to Northrop Grumman. CEO Scott Gessay commented: "We are excited to add to our team someone with Joe Gawlik's stature and expertise with growing companies. Joe (Gawlik) brings extensive talent, experience, and energy that we need right now as FGM postures more aggressively for growth in the future." Founded in 1987, FGM is an innovative technology company specializing in software and systems development and integration, including data infrastructure development. FGM is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, with offices in Suffolk, Virginia; Columbia, Maryland; San Antonio, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; Honolulu, Hawaii; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and San Diego, California. Their systems development and integration experience includes Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environments, database systems and data infrastructure, systems engineering and system integration, Internet- and Web-based information management systems, geo-visualization and mapping systems, information operations, combat support systems, C4ISR systems, and trade control systems. FGM technical staff provides system architecture design, analysis, and engineering expertise and is Software Process Improvement driven, emphasizing industry best practices. For more information, visit the FGM web site at www.fgm.com. SOURCE FGM, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:00 pm Scientists Cite Fastest Case of Human Evolution - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:59 pm Nitrogen Pollution Alters Global Change Scenarios From The Ground UpScientists find excess nitrogen favors plants that respond poorly to rising CO2As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, so does the pressure on the plant kingdom. The hope among policymakers, scientists and concerned citizens is that plants will absorb some of the extra CO2 and mitigate the impacts of climate change. For a few decades now, researchers have hypothesized about one major roadblock: nitrogen.Plants build their tissue primarily with the CO2 they take up from the atmosphere. The more they get, the faster they tend to grow—a phenomenon known as the "CO2 fertilization effect." However, plants that photosynthesize greater amounts of CO2 will also need higher doses of other key building blocks, especially nitrogen. The general consensus has been that if plants get more nitrogen, there will be a larger CO2 fertilization effect. Not necessarily so, says a new paper published in the July 1 issue of Nature.Adam Langley and Pat Megonigal, two ecologists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, conducted a four-year study on plants growing in a brackish Chesapeake Bay marsh. In 2006 they began feeding sedge-dominated plots a diet rich in CO2 and nitrogen. Just as atmospheric CO2 levels are rising, so is nitrogen pollution in estuaries due farming, wastewater treatment and other activities. Because the sedge has previously shown a large CO2 fertilization effect, Langley and Megonigal expected that adding nitrogen could only enhance it.The sedge, Schoenoplectus americanus, initially reacted as expected. However, after the first year something unanticipated happened. Two grass species that had been relatively rare in the plots, Spartina patens and Distichlis spicata, began to respond vigorously to the excess nitrogen. Eventually the grasses became much more abundant. Unlike sedges, grasses respond weakly to extra CO2 and do not grow faster. Thus, the nitrogen ultimately changed the composition of the ecosystem as well as its capacity to store carbon.The experiment unfolded on the Smithsonian Global Change Research Wetland, located on the Chesapeake's western shore in Maryland. The Smithsonian site has a history of climate change research that dates back to the 1980s. For this study, Megonigal and Langley placed 20 open-top chambers over random plots of plants. The chambers were 6 feet in diameter and had 5-foot-tall transparent plastic walls.The large, plastic pods allowed the scientists to manipulate CO2 concentrations in the air and nitrogen levels in the soil. Half of the plots grew with normal, background CO2 levels; the other half were raised in an environment with CO2 concentrations roughly double that amount. Similarly, half of the chambers were fertilized with nitrogen and the other half were untreated.Langley and Megonigal began and ended each growing season with a census of the plants in each chamber. They noted the individual plant species, measured the above-ground biomass and the root growth. In the chambers that received the high-nitrogen diet, the plant composition changed dramatically; it went from 95 percent sedge in 2005 to roughly half grass in 2009. "It's a fact that not all plants will be able to respond optimally to all changes," said Megonigal. "The things they do respond to reflects their strategy for making a living in the environment.""The study underscores the importance of considering the mix of species when you're trying to predict how terrestrial ecosystems will react to global climate change factors," said Langley. Rising CO2 levels will favor some plants and excess nitrogen will favor others. This lesson will be important to understand as scientists consider additional global change factors such as precipitation, temperature and, in tidal wetlands, sea-level rise. The plant species that gain a competitive edge under these evolving conditions will determine how ecosystems respond to global change. ---On the Net:SmithsonianNatureSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:58 pm Do not mess with a baby deer
In this video we see a protective mother deer beat up a dog and scare the hell out of a relentlessly curious and foolhardy cat. It's pretty disturbing, but I am glad I watched it. Deer often come into our back yard, and if my kids saw a fawn, they'd probably run over and try to cuddle with it. I think I'll show them this video to let them see what could happen. (The dog is reported to be OK.) Genetic Basis Of Alopecia Areata Established For First Time By Columbia Research TeamAmong the most common forms of hair loss, and perhaps the most common autoimmune disease, alopecia areata affects 5.3 million in USA team of investigators led by Columbia University Medical Center has uncovered eight genes that underpin alopecia areata, one of the most common causes of hair loss, as reported in a paper in the July 1, 2010 issue of Nature. Since many of the genes are also implicated in other autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes – and treatments have already been developed that target these genes – this discovery may soon lead to new treatments for the 5.3 million Americans suffering from hair loss caused by alopecia areata.According to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, alopecia areata is a common autoimmune skin disease resulting in the loss of hair on the scalp and elsewhere. It affects approximately two percent of the population overall. While it affects both men and women equally, it is diagnosed more often in women, since they are more likely to seek treatment.Among the eight genes, one stands out for its potential role in the onset of alopecia areata. The gene, called ULBP3, is known to act as a homing beacon for cytotoxic cells that can invade and quickly destroy an organ. Normally, ULBP3 is not present in hair follicles, but the ULBP3 proteins are abundant in hair follicles affected by alopecia areata. The proteins attract cells marked by a killer cell receptor, known as NKG2D. In addition to ULBP3, two other genes are expressed in the hair follicle, while the five remaining genes are involved in the immune response."Finding the initial genes underlying alopecia areata is a big step forward, but the nature of the genes is even more exciting," said Angela M. Christiano, Ph.D., professor of dermatology and genetics & development at Columbia University Medical Center, and lead author of the study. "There seems to be a shared mechanism among organs that express NKG2D danger signals as part of the initiating process. And since drugs are already in development that target these pathways – because they are being tested to treat rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and other diseases where the NKG2D receptor is involved – we may soon be able to test these drugs in clinical trials for alopecia areata. Finally, we have the possibility of developing drugs that specifically target the mechanism behind the disease."For years, alopecia areata was thought to be related to psoriasis because both are inflammatory diseases where T cells attack the skin. For this reason, psoriasis drugs have been tested in clinical trials for alopecia areata, but without much success. In this research, Dr. Christiano and her team found few genes in common to both diseases. Rather, they showed that alopecia areata genes have more in common with those implicated in rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, and type 1 diabetes."This research is very exciting as alopecia areata affects a huge number of people worldwide, and there are very few treatments for it – resulting in an enormous unmet medical need," said Vicki Kalabokes, president and CEO of the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, which funded Dr. Christiano's early pilot studies on the genetic basis of alopecia areata. "Hair loss is life-altering – sufferers, especially children, experience social stigma. It affects their quality of life and can lead to long-term psychosocial impact."A huge source of frustration for patients is not being able to predict the progression of disease, which is highly unpredictable. Alopecia areata usually starts with one or more small, round patches on the scalp and may progress to total scalp hair loss (alopecia totalis) or complete body hair loss (alopecia universalis). Hair may grow back in or fall out again at any time, and the disease course is different for each person. Treatments often involve steroid injections into the scalp or other affected site of hair loss, topical foams, irritant factors, and rarely, systemic steroids.To address this problem of not being able to predict disease progression, Dr. Christiano and her team looked for a correlation between how many genes (each gene comes in two pairs) people with different severities of alopecia areata carried, and found that people who carried 13-14 genes had disease that did not progress, while those with 16 or more most often progressed to alopecia universalis (total baldness).With this new data, she is developing a genetic test that, with reasonable certainty, can predict the severity of disease.This research was conducted using more than 1,000 samples from the National Alopecia Areata Registry, a patient registry for alopecia areata funded by the National Institute for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Columbia University Medical Center is one of five collection sites nationwide."The advantage of this large sample size is that we can be sure that this group of genes was identified with a high statistical significance and did not happen by chance," said Dr. Christiano. "The next step is to replicate this study in future research."---On the Net:Columbia University Medical CenterSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:56 pm Scientists Find Direct Line From Development To GrowthIt may seem intuitive that growth and development somehow go together so that plants and animals end up with the right number of cells in all the right places. But it is only now that scientists at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy have gotten some of the first insights into how this critical coordination actually works in a plant.The answer is surprisingly simple.A well-known developmental protein called Short-root has been found to directly control the activity, in both time and space, of other well-known genes involved in cell division."It's a remarkably straightforward answer," said Philip Benfey, director of the IGSP's Center for Systems Biology. "Considering the level of complexity that is so often found in biology, this is simplicity itself."The researchers report their findings on July 1 in the journal Nature.Benfey's group and others have studied the molecular-level events that determine what particular cells in Arabidopsis plants will become in considerable detail. Those events involve genetic partners Short-root and Scarecrow along with a couple of microRNAs (see http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/04/short-root._print.ht and http://genome.duke.edu/press/news/04-21-2010/index.php).Researchers also have a pretty good understanding of the intrinsic factors that allow cells to go through their cycle and divide into two daughter cells. "What was missing was a connection between the two," said Rosangela Sozzani, a postdoctoral researcher in Benfey's lab and first author of the new study.To shed light on that connection, Sozzani and her collaborators combined a number of experimental techniques and technologies to produce a dynamic, genome-wide view of the genetic events that Short-root and its partner Scarecrow set into motion within a single type of cell. At the very same time that cells divide, Short-root and Scarecrow switch on the gene cyclin D6, they report. Cyclin D6 is one of a family of genes that govern cell growth and division.Benfey says the discovery in plants has immediate practical relevance given the central role of plants to human life, in the form of "food, feed, fuel and fiber." It's also likely that the "logic" behind plants' growth and development will carry over to other species, perhaps even our own. In fact, he and Sozzani note, animals including humans have cyclin D6 too."It's not just molecules," Benfey said. "There are evolutionary relationships. Once these fundamental processes got worked out, they are likely to have been kept around."---On the Net:Duke UniversityNatureSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:48 pm Is This 'The Last Airbender'? M. Night Shyamalan Prays It Won't BeWith his ambitious but flawed adaptation of animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender, the hit-and-miss director strives to bring a deeper realism to a sprawling tale of warring nations and supernatural arts.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:47 pm Researchers Show That Organic Farming Enhances Biodiversity And Natural Pest ControlA team of researchers from Washington State University and the University of Georgia have found that organic farming increases biodiversity among beneficial, pest-killing predators and pathogens. In potato crops, this led to fewer insect pests and larger potato plants."It's always been a mystery how organic farmers get high yields without using synthetic insecticides," says co-author Bill Snyder, associate professor of entomology at Washington State University. "Our study suggests that biodiversity conservation may be a key to their success."Ecosystems with more total species, and more beneficial species that are relatively evenly distributed, are thought to be healthiest. The use of insecticides harms biodiversity by reducing the number of species and by making some species (often pests) much more common than others. The study, which was funded by USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and published in the July 1 edition of the journal Nature, shows that organic farming practices lead to many equally-common beneficial species, and that this reduces pest problems.In potato fields that used conventional control practices (e.g., applications of broad-acting insecticides), usually just one species of beneficial predatory insect or pest-killing pathogen was common. In contrast, in organic fields several beneficial species were about equally common. Experiments showed that groups of evenly-abundant beneficial species, typical of organic farms, were far more effective at killing potato beetle pests. Because natural enemies are usually more even in organic crops of many different kinds, not just potato, these benefits could be widespread. ---On the Net:United States Department of Agriculture-Research, Education, and EconomicsSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:43 pm Glenn R. James Appointed Renaissance Learning Chief Executive OfficerWISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wis., July 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Renaissance Learning(TM), Inc. (Nasdaq: RLRN), a leading provider of technology to support personalized practice, differentiated instruction, and progress monitoring in reading, math, and writing for pre-K-12 schools and districts, today announced that Glenn R. James has been appointed to the position of Chief Executive Officer effective July 6, 2010. Mr. James, who was also appointed as a member of the Board of Directors, succeeds Terrance D. Paul, who will assume the position of Chairman of the Board. Judith A. Paul, current Chairman of the Board, will assume the position of Vice-Chairman of the Board. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20001108/RENAISSANCELOGO) (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20001108/RENAISSANCELOGO) Mr. James, 51, has over 25 years of business consulting and executive level management experience in the software and information technology industries. Mr. James' broad background includes 20 years with Deloitte Consulting, 11 of which were as a partner. While at Deloitte, he helped found Deloitte's K-12 Education consulting practice. Mr. James also spent four years as President of a several hundred million dollar division of Unisys Corporation and most recently served as a principal in Technology Consulting Corporation. Mr. James has a BA degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. "After conducting an extensive search, we are pleased to have found an individual of Glenn's caliber," stated Terrance D. Paul, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Company. "Judi and I, along with the Board of Directors, believe that Glenn has the ideal mix of experience, business acumen, personal integrity, and leadership skills to take the company to the next level." "I am very excited to have the opportunity to take on the role of CEO of Renaissance Learning," commented Glenn R. James. "Terry, Judi and the management team have built a truly great company. Renaissance Learning has outstanding, dedicated employees, is financially strong, and has a great reputation and a great educational mission. My job is to further that mission by working with the management and employee team to put in place the strategies that will greatly accelerate the company's growth. It is an exciting challenge; one that I welcome." Renaissance Learning, Inc. Renaissance Learning, Inc. is the world's leading provider of computer-based assessment technology for pre-K-12 schools. Adopted by more than 72,000 schools, Renaissance Learning's tools provide daily formative assessment and periodic progress-monitoring technology to enhance core curriculum, support differentiated instruction, and personalize practice in reading, writing and math. Renaissance Learning products help educators make the practice component of their existing curriculum more effective by providing tools to personalize practice and easily manage the daily activities for students of all levels. As a result, teachers using Renaissance Learning products accelerate learning, get more satisfaction from teaching, and help students achieve higher test scores on state and national tests. Renaissance Learning has seven U.S. locations and subsidiaries in Canada and the United Kingdom. This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and various assumptions which management believes are reasonable. However, these statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results encompassed within the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include risks described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's 2009 Annual Report on Form 10-K and later filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K, which factors are incorporated herein by reference. The Company expressly disclaims a duty to provide updates to forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or other occurrences. SOURCE Renaissance Learning, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:41 pm Extreme Networks Adopts Tax Benefit Preservation Amendment to Rights PlanSANTA CLARA, Calif., July 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Extreme Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: EXTR) today announced that its Board has adopted an amendment to the Company's Rights Plan designed to preserve net operating losses for future use. Extreme Networks can utilize its net operating losses in certain circumstances to offset taxable income and reduce its federal income tax liability. The company currently has approximately $259.2M of net operating losses. "We believe preserving the full value of this asset is important to the company and our stockholders," said Bob Corey, Acting Chief Executive Officer. "The action the Board took is relatively short-term since the Plan expires on April 27, 2011." The Company's ability to use these tax attributes would be substantially limited if there were an "ownership change" as defined under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code. In general, an ownership change would occur if "5% shareholders," as defined under Section 382, collectively increase their ownership in Extreme Networks by more than 50 percentage points over a rolling three-year period. As a result of this amendment, the Company's Rights Plan is now similar to tax benefit preservation plans adopted by many other public companies with significant net operating losses. Under the amendment, a person would become an "Acquiring Person" as defined in the plan if such person acquires 4.95% of the then outstanding common stock. The amendment grandfathers any person who currently owns greater than 4.95% of outstanding common stock, but such persons would become an Acquiring Person if they acquire 0.5% more common stock. If a person becomes an Acquiring Person, such person may experience substantial dilution to his holdings through the exercise of Rights by the holders of Rights or the exchange, if determined by the Board, of Rights for common stock. The Board will evaluate at a later date whether it is in stockholders' interests to adopt a tax preservation plan with a longer term, based upon various facts, including the Company's tax situation at the time. Additional information regarding the amendment to Rights Plan will be contained in a Form 8-K that Extreme Networks is filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Extreme Networks, Inc. Extreme Networks provides converged Ethernet network infrastructure that support data, voice and video for enterprises and service providers. Extreme Networks' network solutions feature high performance, high availability and scalable switching solutions that enable organizations to address real-world communications challenges and opportunities. Operating in more than 50 countries, Extreme Networks provides wired and wireless secure LANs, data center infrastructure and Service Provider Ethernet transport solutions that are complemented by global, 24x7 service and support. For more information, visit: http://www.extremenetworks.com. Extreme Networks is either a registered trademark or trademark of Extreme Networks, Inc. within the United States and other countries. Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, including without limitation statements regarding Extreme Networks' expectations regarding financial performance are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date. Because such statements deal with future events, they are subject to risks and uncertainties, including network design and actual results of use of the product in different environments. We undertake no obligation to update the forward-looking information in this release. Other important factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are contained in Extreme Networks' 10-Qs and 10-Ks which are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. http://www.sec.gov SOURCE Extreme Networks, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:35 pm New apps for Android: Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger; iPhone update as wellSection: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Web Apps
Yahoo! Mail features include the aforementioned push notifications and powerful search, the ability to address emails to contacts in your local folder or in the Yahoo! address book, easy management of folders. The Messenger app features status updates and the ability to view friends status updates, send IMs via SMS, background push notifications so users stay in the loop, full use of emoticons (yay!) and easy access to camera and photos. It appears Yahoo! covered the bases on what good apps should do. iOS users have a bonus too, Yahoo! has updated it’s mail and news pages to HTML 5 so users can get a “faster and more sophisticated” experience. From the web, Yahoo! Mail users can manage folders, compose rich text emails, even access folders when offline. Read: [BusinessWire] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:34 pm Campus Management Provides Customers with Online TrainingBOCA RATON, Fla., July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Campus Management Corp. announced today the release of 13 new courses, featuring 50 hours of self-paced instruction for users of its student administrative software. Customers can receive unlimited access to the catalog at no additional cost, and the courses are available 24/7 on the company's online customer community, www.mycampusinsight.com. "The Campus Management Learning Center is offering these training courses to ensure that each user gains the depth and breadth of knowledge to take advantage of the full potential of each product," said Viki Hucke-McCright, senior vice president of the Learning Center. "The Learning Center covers the spectrum of modules, and Campus Management is the first student information systems provider to offer this depth of training at no additional cost to its customers." The online courses provide users of the CampusVue Student solution with overviews of the award-winning product's vast functionality across financial aid, admissions, academic records, and career services. Several other courses round out the catalog, covering administrative and regulatory fundamentals in Higher Education, intended to help institutions better orient incoming staff who may be new to postsecondary education. Each course includes an end-of-course assessment to measure the learner's understanding, and results are automatically emailed once the course is completed. "Both the product-related courses and industry overview courses are outstanding," said Amir Moghadam, Ph.D., president and CEO of MaxKnowledge, Inc., a leader in employee training to postsecondary educational institutions. "The product courses provide an effective introduction the specific operational areas in educational institutions and clearly show how the software modules in CampusVue Student support those operations. The other courses provide an excellent overview of higher education and are especially valuable to those who may be new to our sector. The content, instructional design and delivery format of these courses are a precious resource for Campus Management's customers." About Campus Management Corp. More than 1,700 colleges, universities, foundations, and other companies 17 countries rely upon Campus Management Corp® enterprise software products and services. Campus Management's CampusVue® Ecosystem is a fully integrated, centralized administrative and e-learning platform that unifies services, academic delivery, administrative management and reporting for a full range of public, private and proprietary postsecondary institutions. Campus Management's systems can be delivered on-premise, as hosted solution, or on demand as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Campus Management's award-winning student information system is used by more than 75 percent of the largest US-based proprietary career and online colleges. Additional offerings include fundraising software, financial and HR software, and Talisma® CRM, a leading Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) solution for Higher Education. Campus Management employs associates worldwide, providing clients with a full range of consulting, implementation, support, training and integration services. For more information, visit www.campusmanagement.com. About MaxKnowledge, Inc. MaxKnowledge is the leading employee training provider for private sector colleges and universities. MaxKnowledge has partnered with the Career College Association (CCA), the Imagine America Foundation (IAF), and the major state associations in the country to provide a wide range of online professional development and continuing education opportunities for career college and university personnel. The company's mission is to maximize the performance of educational operations through effective employee training and development. For more information, visit: www.maxknowledge.com. SOURCE Campus Management Corp.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:34 pm Best Buy Trying To Fire Employee Over Those Hilarious EVO Versus iPhone Videos
The video in question was made by Brian Maupin, a 25-year-old based in Kansas City, Missouri. For the past three and a half years he’s been working at Best Buy selling mobile phones. He’s probably not going to be doing that anymore as Best Buy has suspended him indefinitely and is currently taking the steps to terminate him, Maupin tells us. The reason? The video. The video became so popular (it currently has nearly 1.3 million views on YouTube) that someone at Best Buy corporate saw it. They then put two-and-two together that it was an employee at one of their stores that made it, and the hammer came down. “They felt it disparaged a brand they carried (iPhone/Apple) as well as the store itself and were fearful of stockholders & customers being turned off to Best Buy Mobile,” Maupin says. What’s ridiculous is that nowhere in the video does Maupin have anything indicating the fictitious store the iPhone buyer is walking into is a Best Buy. At the beginning, the cartoon employee identifies the store as “Phone Mart.” The character isn’t even wearing the signature Best Buy blue polo shirt — and they’re standing in an outdoor field with a pink tree. In other words, nothing about this video seems to imply Best Buy in anyway. In fact, the only reason it will be tied to Best Buy now is thanks to this story. Maupin says he was asked to quit, which he declined to do, and so they suspended him this morning telling him that he would most likely be terminated after they review it with HR. He expects the decision in the next day or two. “I issued a statement to them explaining that the video was intended to be comedic and hence, not taken seriously by them or all these stockholders & customers they are worried about [being] turned off to buying from them due to the video,” Maupin says in his defense. Maupin isn’t sure how exactly Best Buy corporate knew to tie the video to him, but believes they did so because a couple other videos under his Tiny Watch Productions (a little indie film group he made with his friends) YouTube account featured videos referencing him and Best Buy. Maupin says he removed those videos at Best Buy’s request, but refuses to take down the EVO vs. iPhone videos because, again, they in no way reference Best Buy. Regardless of whether he keeps his job or not (which he doesn’t expect to), Maupin is optimistic. “I see it all as a blessing in disguise. I’ve wanted to start my career in graphic design/animation for so long, I see this as my kick in the pants to go get it,” he says. And now, for an encore:
     
Source: TechCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:33 pm iDAPT i4 charges multiple devices at once
The iDAPT i4 has 3 charging ports and on additional USB port built in, and uses an interchangeable tip system to ensure compatibility will all of your gadgets. The iDAPT even features an LED display light system to tell you if your devices are done charging, or if you need to leave your gadget plugged in a bit longer. The iDAPT i4 is available for $59.99 from the company website, and comes with 6 of the most common adapter tips; microUSB, miniUSB, iPod/iPhone, Samsung, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson. You can also purchase additional tips as needed from the company website. Here’s the official press release with all the details:
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:30 pm Google Lands Flight Information Provider ITA for $700 Million [Voices]By John Murrell With the aim of becoming a go-to destination for travelers who want to compare flights and airfares, Google is buying ITA Software, a Cambridge, Mass., flight information software company, for $700 million. The search giant will use the technology to serve as a middleman, “creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket,” according to VP Marissa Mayer. Source: All Things Digital | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:29 pm An Intimate Moment on the Beach There is homosexuality in Pakistan, like there is in Iran and the rest of the world. It's just this moment isn't one of them. And though these two men are holding each other in a way that made me raise an eyebrow, they probably didn't think twice when posing. But what do you all think? Is it possible that two heterosexual men in the States could hold each other like this and no one would question their sexual orientation? Is there even a social threshold for "acceptable" hetero same-sex intimacy?
This photo was given to me by one of the subjects of our documentary. He wanted me to scan some photos he took while he was at the beach with his friends. He didn't think much into this photo, which makes me wonder, why does my mind go there and his doesn't? Source: Boing Boing | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:27 pm Google Pays $700 Million In Cash For Flight Info Provider ITA
Google is now in the flight information business. The search giant just announced it is paying $700 million in cash for ITA Software, an essential provider of flight information to airlines, travel agencies, and online reservation systems. ITA raised a massive $100 million series A back in 2006 from Sequoia, Battery Ventures, and General Catalyst. Travel is a huge segment of search and online commerce. Purchasing ITA signals Google’s intention to build out its travel search in a major way. A consortium of rivals including Microsoft, Kayak, Expedia, and Travelport tried to counter Google’s offer last Spring because they all rely on ITA’s data and wanted to keep the company out of Google’s hands. ITA was reportedly holding out for $1 billion, but Google got the deal at the original $700 million price it put on the table. If you search for flights on Google today, all you get is links to results from the big online travel sites. Bing, on the other hand, offers a much richer Travel experience, complete with comparison prices for the same flight from the different travel engines, as well as predictive charts and graphs from Farecast (which was acquired by Microsoft for $115 million in 2008). Bing also gets a lot of its flight and fare data from ITA. Google will use ITA’s data to create “new flight search tools” and promises to honor its existing agreements with partners. But can you imagine Bing paying Google for flight data? When that contract comes up for renewal, the negotiations will be anything but straightforward.      
Source: TechCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:25 pm comScore Acquires Products Division Of Mobile Network Data Company Nexius For $24 Million
comScore tells us they paid $24 million for the products division of Nexius, with $18.6 million paid in cash. comScore has high hopes for the acquisition, stating the the release that it anticipates that the acquisition will add $4 million to the company’s 2010 revenue. That’s actually a pretty significant amount for the company; for the entire (fiscal) year 2009, comScore reported revenues of $127.7 million, up from $117.4 million the year before, an 8.8% increase. comScore, which just went free for startups, has been growing both in revenue and acquisitions. The company acquired Latin American Web Measurement Company Certifica and advertising research agency ARSGroup earlier this year. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:21 pm Want to See What an iAd Looks Like? [MediaMemo]Apple’s (AAPL) first batch of iAds–marketing messages made specifically for the company’s mobile platform and its app ecosystem–launches today. So you may start seeing them on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. But if you can’t wait, here’s what they look like, via Chiat/Day, which made one for Nissan. Source: All Things Digital | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:16 pm Melanoma-Initiating Cell Identified By Stanford ScientistsScientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a cancer-initiating cell in human melanomas. The finding is significant because the existence of such a cell in the aggressive skin cancer has been a source of debate. It may also explain why current immunotherapies are largely unsuccessful in preventing disease recurrence in human patients."These cells lack the traditional melanoma cell surface markers targeted by these treatments," said post-doctoral fellow Alexander Boiko, PhD. "Without wiping out the cells at the root of the cancer, the treatment will fail."Boiko is the first author of the research, which will be published in the July 1 issue of Nature. He works in the laboratory of Irving Weissman, MD, the director of Stanford's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Weissman is the medical school's Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research and the senior author of the research. He is also a member of the Stanford Cancer Center.The cancer stem cell theory holds that, like queen bees in a hive, only a subset of cancer cells are at the root of the tumor's growth. These cells can both self-renew (that is, make more of themselves) and differentiate into other tumor cell types.Any therapy that doesn't wipe out these elite cancer stem, or initiating, cells has no chance of completely eradicating the disease even if it destroys nearly all other tumor cells. That's why, say proponents, it can be relatively easy to get a patient into remission, but extremely difficult to prevent the cancer stem cells from roaring back and causing a relapse months or years later.Cancer stem cells were first identified in blood cancers, but have since been identified in a number of solid tumors including bladder, brain, breast and colon cancers. Previous studies in the laboratory of assistant professor of radiation oncology Maximilian Diehn, MD, PhD, in collaboration with the laboratories of Weissman and Stanford colleague Michael Clarke, MD, have indicated that cancer stem cells may be more resistant than other cancer cells to many common treatments like radiation and some chemotherapies. Clarke is the Karel H. and Avice N. Beekhuis Professor in Cancer Biology at the medical school and both Diehn and Clarke are members of the Stanford Cancer Center.Although a growing body of evidence seems to support the cancer stem cell hypothesis, melanoma has remained a conundrum. A University of Michigan study in 2008 found that as many as one in four melanoma cells could cause cancers in immune compromised mice, suggesting that there may not be a particularly privileged subset of cancer stem cells in this tumor type. Boiko set out to solve the mystery."I didn't know if melanoma would in fact have the cancer-initiating cells," said Boiko. "I was completely unbiased, so I was actually sort of surprised to find such a clear-cut answer. It fits exactly what's been discovered in the studies of other solid tumors."To conduct the study, Boiko analyzed cell surface markers on primary melanoma tumor samples taken directly from patients at the Stanford Cancer Center. In this way, he avoided having to grow the cells for a long period of time in the lab. Continuous culturing, or passage, of cancer cells often gives the cells time to evolve and change in ways that might not accurately reflect their composition in melanoma patients.He found that one protein, called CD271, was always expressed on only a fraction of the cells in the human melanoma samples tested: The proportion of cells expressing CD271 varied in the samples from 2.5 to 41 percent of the total cell population; the marker appeared on a mean of 16.7 percent of cells in the samples.This was interesting because CD271 was previously identified as a marker that identifies a group of cells called the neural crest stem cells. These cells are unique in that they are a multipotent, migratory cell population that becomes many cell types during development including melanocytes (cells responsible for skin pigmentation), bone, smooth muscle, neurons, and cartilage in the head and face.When Boiko transplanted the melanoma cells from nine human samples into laboratory mice with severely compromised immune systems, he found that the cells expressing CD271 on their surface were much more likely to cause cancers in the recipients than those from the same tumor that didn't express the marker (70 percent versus 7 percent, respectively). And all but one of the newly induced tumors arising from the transplantation of the CD271-positive cells went on to develop a population of a mixture of CD271-expressing and non-expressing cells — indicating that the cells with the marker were both self-renewing and differentiating into other types of tumor cells.Boiko then collaborated with researchers in the medical school laboratories of professor of surgery Michael Longaker, MD, and assistant professor of surgery George Yang, MD, to further test the tumor initiating properties of the cells expressing CD271. They transplanted normal human skin on to the backs of the immunocompromised mice and injected the skin with the melanoma cells. Only cells expressing CD271 (isolated from melanomas from two patients) gave rise to tumors and lung metastasis in the mice.Finally, the researchers looked to see whether the cancer-initiating cells also expressed common cellular antigens currently used for melanoma therapy. They found that melanoma cells expressing CD271 either completely or partially lacked expression of three common therapeutic targets — TYR, MART and MAGE — in 86 percent, 69 percent and 68 percent of melanoma patients, respectively."This could be the reason why we often see melanoma patients relapsing and coming back to the clinic," said Boiko. "Our research indicates that it may be more appropriate to also target cells expressing CD271." Such a combination therapy might work to kill both types of cells in the tumor and, hopefully, prevent disease recurrence.So why do some melanoma tumors seem to have such a large proportion of cancer-initiating cells? Boiko and his colleagues speculate that the answer might lie in the rapidly evolving, aggressive nature of the disease. It's possible that a kind of natural selection among the dividing cancer cells occurs which, in extreme cases selects for one clone, or cell lineage, that for the most part fails to differentiate into non-tumor-initiating cells."Extreme care should be taken to identify the origin and the past laboratory history of the cells under study," said Boiko. "Our work was done on primary and minimally passaged patient samples. The variations that we saw in terms of CD271 prevalence in these samples could depend on the stage of the disease the patient was in, and the aggressiveness of that individual cancer."In addition to Boiko, Weissman, Longaker and Yang, other Stanford researchers involved in the work include post-doctoral fellows Olga Razorenova, PhD, and Daphne Ly, MD; professor of pathology Matt van de Rijn, MD; professor of dermatology Susan Swetter, PhD; associate professor of surgery Denise Johnson, MD; Paris Butler, MD; otolaryngologist Benzion Joshua, MD; and professor of otolaryngology and neurosurgery Michael Kaplan, MD. ---On the Net:Stanford University Medical CenterSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:12 pm Taking off with ITAToday, almost half of all airline tickets are sold online. But for many people, finding the right flight at the best price is a frustrating experience; pricing and availability change constantly, and even a simple two city itinerary involves literally thousands of different options. We’d like to make that search much easier, which is why I’m pleased to announce that today we have signed an agreement to acquire ITA, a Boston-based software company specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.While online flight search is rapidly evolving, we think there is room for more competition and greater innovation. Google has already come up with new ways to organize hard-to-find information like images, newspaper archives, scholarly papers, books and geographic data. Once we’ve completed our acquisition of ITA, we’ll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket. We’re confident that by combining ITA’s expertise as the leading developer of flight information software with Google’s technology we’ll be able to create great user innovations in flight search. ITA has built a very successful QPX business, and we're looking forward to working with their current and future customers. Google will honor all existing agreements, and we're also enthusiastic about adding new partners. You can read more about this deal here, and we’ll keep everybody up to date as we work to close this exciting acquisition. Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience   
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:05 pm Last Space Shuttle flight scheduled for February, 2011
The very last Space Shuttle flight will take place on February 26, 2011. After that, American astronauts will have to bum rides with the Russians if they want to visit the International Space Station. Shame. There’s two more missions aboard the Space Shuttle. There’s one on November 1, 2010 (Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-133) and the aforementioned February, 2011 one (Space Shuttle Endeavour, STS-134). Apparently Space Shuttle Atlantis may get one more flight, but Nasa will wait until next month before it decides one way or the other. Both flights will bring various pieces of equipment to the ISS, chief among them the ALPHA MAGNETIC SPECTROMETER~! which is a type of cosmic ray detector that Nasa hopes will be used to better understand the formation and structure of the universe. And yup, after this we’ll have no way of getting to the ISS without having to pay the Russians for a seat on one of their spacecraft—slightly embarrassing for a country as wealthy as the U.S. to not have an active space program, yes.
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 2:00 pm Follow the 2010 Tour de France OnlineThe biggest bike race in the world, the Tour de France, starts on Saturday in Rotterdam. Le Grand Boucle continues for the next three weeks, cutting through the mountains and valleys of France, Holland and Belgium. Don't miss a single stage by finding streaming video, real-time news tickers, Twitter updates and the latest headlines on the web.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 1:40 pm iTunes catches up with Zune
The truth is, of course, that Apple’s policy of leapfrogging existing ideas without actually changing much is a perfect foil for Microsoft, who tends to let their innovations stagnate. Even as a Zune fan, I have to say, it’s disappointing how little has been done with the project since I reviewed it. Where are all the cool apps and games? Why can’t I stream shows at Wi-Fi spots? Apple is taking the step that Microsoft has been unwilling or unable to. Good for Apple, but let’s be fair when we grade their accomplishment: as usual, they are standing on the shoulders of lazy giants.
Source: CrunchGear | 1 Jul 2010 | 1:34 pm Facebook forces apps to ask you for permissionSection: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking
To further their effort to keep your information private, Facebook is now requiring applications to request your permission to access anything that is not public. If the application wishes to access your birthday to send you are card, it must explicitly ask for that bit of private information. However, current applications users have running are grandfathered in and are exempt from this new rule.
This move was a long time coming after being announced last August. Facebook continues to work with the Privacy Commissioner in Canada in efforts to stem privacy-related lawsuits. Read [Facebook]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 1 Jul 2010 | 1:21 pm Brain Freezer Claims Secret of Eternal LifeFor a small fortune, a Russian cryonics firm says it can provide clients with a loophole out of death.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 12:55 pm Turn a rubber wristband into an iPhone 4 bumper - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 1 Jul 2010 | 12:45 pm Wired.com Explains: How Mobile Multitasking Works
The major new feature of Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 4, is multitasking. What took the company so long? Apple claims it was waiting to get multitasking just right before unleashing the feature for the iPhone. Meanwhile, the Android OS and Palm Web OS have supported multitasking just fine for over a year. However, each platform handles multitasking quite differently. Let’s take a closer look at how each mobile OS’s multitasking works. Apple iOS 4How you use it What’s going on Fast App Switching isn’t all iOS 4 multitasking does, as there are a few exceptions for specific types of apps. Apple allows apps that play audio, connect with voice-over-IP or use location detection to run quietly in the background while one thread is still active. So that’s why, for example, you can leave the Pandora app, and the music will still be playing in the background while you check your e-mail. Likewise, you can leave Skype while on a VoIP call, and you won’t hang up on your buddy while you’re browsing Safari, for example. Third, you can leave a mapping app or a fitness tracker like RunKepper and come back to it, and it’ll still have a lock on your location. It’s up to third-party app developers, of course, to tell their apps to behave this way with the new iOS 4 software development kit. Another sort of background activity iOS supports is push notifications, which keeps a specific internet port active while the iPhone is in hibernation, so you can receive e-mails, instant messages and alerts even when the screen is off. These alerts pop up on the screen in the same way as SMS on the iPhone. WIRED Fast App Switching is indeed fast and stylish, avoids draining battery. All apps are constantly running inertly, so you can quickly switch between them all. TIRED Only allows a single application thread to continue running; only certain kinds of activities are allowed to run in the background. Push notifications scream for your attention at the center of the screen. Android OSHow you use it What’s going on In Android, when a user switches to another application, the app you switched from doesn’t shut down: Its process is kept around in the background, allowing it to continue working (e.g., for downloading web pages in the background while doing something else), and come immediately to the foreground if the user returns to it. If the smartphone is running low on memory, Android starts killing off unnecessary processes to free up resources. If a user later returns to an application that’s been killed, Android re-launches it in the same state as it was last seen, by keeping track of the parts of the application the user is aware of, and restarting them in the last state they were seen in. This last state is generated each time the user rotates the screen or leaves the application. There are two basic components to control what apps can do in the background. Apps with “broadcast receivers” go into the background and wait to go off in an event, such as an alarm going off at a certain time, or if you receive a notification from Google’s server for getting a new message in Gmail. The other background component is called a “service,” which instructs an app to perform a task such as music playback or turn-by-turn navigation for a certain amount of time in the background. It’s up to the third-party app developers to embed these components in their apps so they behave these ways in the background. WIRED Apps can stay fully functional while running in the background. Notification tray makes it easy for apps to give you information without interrupting what you’re doing. Users don’t have to manually quit apps when memory is running low: Android does that for you. TIRED Getting multitasking to work just right in an app is a lot of work for developers. HP WebOSHow you use it What’s going on If an application that the user isn’t currently interacting with wants to get the user’s attention, the app can display information in the notification area at the bottom of the screen. The information sits in the dashboard until acted on or closed. (Therefore, you can do something in a foreground app while dealing with a notification, whereas on the iPhone a push notification shows up in the center of the screen interrupting your task until you close it or leave your current app.) Activities in the background do not have access to certain battery-intensive services. For example, apps cannot access accelerometer data and their frequency of network access is reduced. Third-party games are paused in place when moved to the background, reducing both their CPU load and memory consumption. WIRED The card interface is neat, and it feels very natural to switch between apps. Notifications appear at bottom of the screen, not interrupting your current task. TIRED After launching a specific number of apps that reach your memory limit, you can’t launch any more, and you have to manually quit an app before launching another. 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 12:05 pm Grandmother’s guide to video chat(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog) So when I saw that my grandma—who loves keeping in touch with family more than anyone—wasn’t set up to use video chat, I decided to help her get started. While doing so, it occurred to me how many people there must be out there in similar situations. If only there were a simple way that any grandmother could use to get started on her own... Introducing the Grandmother’s Guide to Video Chat: This video, along with a printable guide, can be accessed at google.com/chat/grandma. Feel free to share this link with your grandma—or grandpa—or, well, anyone who wants to video chat to help get them up and running. And after your grandma is all set up, take a screenshot of you video chatting with her and email it to grammy324@gmail.com to share it with us. The first 100 people to do so will get a t-shirt, printable guide and VHS of the video (because if your grandma’s like mine, she’s still a cassette kind of girl).  In a few weeks, we’ll feature the best photos submitted on the Gmail blog. Posted by Jason Toff, Grandson of Evelyn & Ida   
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 1 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm Wired.com Explains: How Mobile Multitasking WorksWired.com gives an overview comparison on how multitasking works on multiple mobile operating systems: Android OS, iOS 4 and WebOS.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 1 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm Long Life Is in the Genes, Study ShowsDiet and exercise can certainly help you to live a long, healthy life, but that might not be the whole story.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 12:00 pm Smartphones With Intel Chips to Debut Next Year
Intel’s attempt to get inside cellphones will take just a little bit longer.Though the company had hoped to get smartphones with Intel chips in the hands of consumers this year, it is likely that the first phones powered by Intel will debut early next year. Mobile handsets featuring Intel processors are likely to be shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in next January or at the Mobile World Congress conference in February. “That would clearly be the window of opportunity for us,” Intel CTO Justin Rattner told Wired.com. In May, Intel showed its new chip codenamed Moorestown for mobile devices. The company said the chip would be extremely power efficient, while offering enough processing power for features such as video conferencing and HD video. Though Intel’s chips power most desktops and notebooks, the company’s silicon is glaringly absent in the fast growing category of smartphones and tablets. Worldwide, companies shipped 54.7 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2010, up 56.7 percent from the same quarter a year ago, estimates IDC. Most talked about smartphones today from companies such as Motorola and HTC that are powered by chips based on Intel rival ARM’s architecture. Intel has tried its hand in the phone-chip business earlier, with little success. In 2006, the company sold its XScale ARM-based division to Marvell. More recently, it tried to pitch its current generation of Atom processors to smartphone makers but the chips were not accepted because they consumed too much power for phone use. Moorestown processors can beat the competition, says Intel. Rattner hopes the chips will also go beyond smartphones and into tablets. So far, Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads in just three months since the product’s launch. Apple uses its own chip for the iPad. Rattner says tablets using Intel chips are on their way and will be available to consumers by the end of the year. “Almost all the tablets at Computex (a trade show for PC makers held in Taiwan every year) were Intel-based devices,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of interest and activity in the tablet space.” Yet Rattner says he is “cautious” in his hopes for the tablet market. Rattner does not own an iPad, but has an iPhone 3G S. “A lot of people are saying that the tablet is the next netbook,” he says. “I am not so sure.” More than 85 million netbooks have been sold, since the devices became popular about three years ago. Netbooks appealed to consumers because of their price, portability and their ability to offer a computing experience comparable to a notebook, say Rattner. “With tablets, their utility remains to be seen,” he says. “The first generation of tablets including are missing some important things. The absence of a camera is especially baffling in the iPad.” The iPad may have its flaws but for consumers it’s the only choice for now — unless you count the very flawed JooJoo. Some tablet makers were waiting for Moorestown chips but Intel has already started production and handing it to manufacturers, says Rattner. “Apple’s gotten everyone’s attention and they have set that bar,” he says. “For others now coming to market, they have to have something substantially more capable than the iPad and it is going to take time to get there.” Photo: liewcf/Flickr
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:37 am Smartphones With Intel Chips to Debut Next YearThe smartphone market is critical to Intel's future as computing increasingly becomes mobile. But smartphones with Intel chips are likely to arrive early next year, says Intel CTO Justin Rattner.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:37 am ProOnGo adds QuickBooks Pro integration
Says Max Schmidt from ProOnGo:
If you’re using QuickBooks Pro already, this new feature should be a real benefit to you.
Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 11:30 am Synthetic Signals Could Foster Unprecedented Life FormsWhat could the future of this technology look like? Two words: living spaceships.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 10:30 am BP Burning Sea Turtles Alive?Animal welfare groups sued BP for burning endangered sea turtles during the oil giant's "controlled burns" on the Gulf of Mexico spill.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 10:25 am Video: This is what happens when you talk on your phone at the gameYankee Stadium and technology simply don’t mix well together. We already know that the stadium had banned the iPad as part of its “no laptops allowed” policy, and now we have a slightly more hilarious situation. Yes, this man was just smashed in the face by a baseball because he was too busy yapping away on his phone. There’s a lesson to be learnt here: if you’re at a game, whether at Yankee Stadium or Old Trafford, enjoy the action on the field and don’t feel the need to call all five of your friends telling them how “awesome” your seats are. Relax, and take in the sights. You can annoy your friends in the morning.
Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:30 am Celebrating Pride 2010Googlers came out en masse this year to celebrate Pride around the world, in cities ranging from Dublin to Pittsburgh. Pride celebrations are a time for family, friends and members of the LGBT* community to reiterate their commitment to equality and honor the trailblazers whose efforts made it possible for us to stand out and proud today.Nearly 300 Googlers marched with colorful balloons down Market Street for San Francisco's 40th annual Pride parade. We braved the rain in Boston, enjoyed the sun in New York, rode a trolley in Chicago and marched with the Israel Gay Youth Organization in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Googlers will be participating in EuroPride, held in Poland this year, as well as many other parades, including Tokyo for the first time. And we'll be celebrating Pride season in Singapore too. This year, we have another reason to celebrate. Google will be grossing-up imputed taxes on health insurance benefits for all same-sex domestic partners in the United States, retroactive to January 1, 2010. Starting July 1, we'll also be providing the equivalent of the Family and Medical Leave Act for all same-sex domestic partners. And we've worked with our carriers to update their definition of infertility—it's now defined as the inability to conceive a child with no stipulations on trying for one year. Google supports its LGBT employees in many ways: raising its voice in matters of policy, taking a moment to remember the plight of transgender people around the world and going the extra mile to ensure that its employees are treated fairly. There's a lot be proud of this year but we know the best is yet to come. We look forward to many more years of Pride celebrations. Take a glimpse at the global festivities below. * Posted by Cynthia Yeung, Strategic Partner Development Team   
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:25 am Final Nail in the iPhone 4's Coffin: CostApple's market share will fall precipitously as more users abandon the iPhone for the more economical Android.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 8:15 am Cannondale Concept Cross-Breeds Bike and Shopping-Cart
This is the Ville, yet another concept bike which tries to combine several functions into one flawed whole. This time the designer, Hyuk-Jae Chang, has decided to combine a folding bicycle with a shopping cart. Branded Cannondale (like so many concepts, oddly), the Ville is your usual small-wheeled commuter-folder with a literal twist: it folds twice, splitting the top-tube and “down”-tube in two places so it can double back on itself and set the two wheels parallel. From there, a third, smaller wheel flips down from the bottom-bracket and a push-along handle folds up from the top-tube. Then, the happy shopper is left with a top-heavy, unstable-looking trolley to push through the store. The most obvious flaw I see is the fork, which is angled rather steeply forward to try and lessen the gap between the wheels when folded. It looks like one good bump off the sidewalk would bend it double. Better, surely, would be a pair of baskets just like those you see in the picture. Walk around the store, fill them up and then just put them back on the bike when you get outside. How To Fold A Bike Into A Cart [Yanko] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:57 am Symbian-Guru.com turns its back on Nokia
Today, The Guru at Symbian Guru chucked in his Nokia-branded towel (and blog) and purchased a Nexus One. Think about it: a guy that loved Symbian so much that he started a website dedicated to it, has now given up on the OS entirely. So much so that he’s not even writing about it anymore. But I can’t say that I’m all that surprised. I mean, I was there a year ago. I bought my first Nokia in 1999, and proudly flaunted their brand until 2009 when I defected to Android. I remember, only 6 months before I bought my HTC Hero, I was excited about the N97. The specs were unbelievable, and my N95 was a great phone for its age. But that’s the big thing here: “for its age.” What was the N97 but a larger N95 with a terrible touchscreen? I couldn’t find one compelling difference between it and the two-year-old N95. And then I started looking at Android phones. Gone was the ugly font-rendering, the endless lists, the memory errors, the terrible browser. Here was the future. If I didn’t like an aspect of the phone, I could just replace that app with another one. The browser opened web pages in just a few seconds. There was an app store actually populated with apps — more so, apps that I would use! This wasn’t like a smartphone I’d used before, this seemed like a whole new device. A whole new instrument that I could use around the house for entertainment, information, home automation, and so many other things. This was almost a whole new paradigm. So, what I’m trying to say is that I’m unsurprised that The Guru has ordered a Nexus One. It’s got a bright future ahead of it: in 6 months the device will be running a whole new version of its OS, while the N8 will probably only be getting software patches. So, to The Guru, I raise my glass, and congratulate him in leaving (joining?) the dark side. You made the right choice: it’s nice here on the Greener side of the fence. Nokia, if you want to continue to compete in the smartphone market, you have to change now.
Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:51 am Hands-On With the Dicota PadCover Case
How do you carry your iPad? Do you have a big bag with a purpose-made pad-pocket? Do you go commando, tossing the iPad into your purse to fend for itself against the keys and cables therein? Or do you, like me until a couple days ago, use a padded envelope that came free with some other parcel in the mail? I use these Jiffy Bags for all my computer carrying needs, but for the iPad they don’t work well. First, the bubbles leave a honeycomb pattern on the screen, which combines with my left-over finger-grease to make a distracting design. Second, it offers no protection to the screen, and sliding in a piece of cardboard is less than ideal. So I bought a case. The €40 PadCover from Dicota, a German company that usually besmirches its bags with names like the “LadySuccess”. Seriously. The PadCover is a simple envelope-like sleeve, fashioned from a herringbone-patterned wool and acrylic mix. This somewhat conservative design is contrasted by a brightly colored pink or blue nylon lining. Running around and between is gray leather edging. Why is it better than a shipping envelope? First, one side is reinforced, making it stiff enough to protect the iPad’s screen from bumps and sharp knocks. The other side is thick, but soft, so it curves with the iPad’s aluminum back. Getting the iPad in and out is also easy, thanks to an ingenious tab. A thick strip (pink, in my case) is fixed to one interior wall and runs under the iPad, back up the other side and out through a leather-trimmed slot. Pulling on the exposed tab lifts the iPad up so the top third protrudes, ready to be yanked out of the rather tight-fitting case. Should you prefer to go old-school and tug it out manually, there is a triangular cutout in the leather strip on the top edge which will let you get a grip. It is on the screen-side, so it also exposes the home-button, which seems like a pretty bad idea. I carry a man-bag at all times, and the PadCover is slipped inside whenever I leave the house. I really like the pull-to-eject tab as it lets me pull the iPad out for use without removing the case first. This makes it a lot more likely I’ll grab the iPad to look something up quickly. It also makes it easy to slide back in. The obvious disadvantage is that the case is always open, will let in dust and won’t protect the end of the iPad. For that you’ll need a folio-style case, or something with a zipper or flap. The trade-off there is speed of access. Do I recommend it? Sure. It does one thing, and does it well. If you’re looking for a case that will tilt the iPad for typing, or double as a stand, or anything else, then look elsewhere. For a tough, stylish (if you like blue or pink) single-purpose case, at a not-too-expensive price, the PadCover does the job great. PadCover [Dicota] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:33 am 'Immigrants' Make Up Galaxy's Oldest StarsMany of the Milky Way's oldest stars are refugees from other older galaxies that were torn apart by collisions.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:25 am Wind Farms Float Away from NIMBYismCoastal residents protest that offshore wind farms foul up their beautiful views. Engineers have designed a floating ocean-based wind turbine to satisfy even the worst "Not In My Back Yard," whinging.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 7:09 am Best Buy turns off the music at the Droid X pre-order party
Yes, that’s right, just 5 days after Best Buy started taking pre-orders for the device, they’ve had to halt them after stock allocation ran dry. Is this a sign that the Droid X will be a runaway success? Or that stock shortages aren’t just limited to the Droid Incredible? Who knows? But either way, kiddo, you better get off the bus at the next stop and make your way back home. Today’s not your day. [via Phone Arena]
Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:47 am X Prize Foundation to Reward Spill SolutionsThe X Prize Foundation announced its intention to launch a competition that generates solutions for cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The winner will get a multi-million dollar cash prize.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:41 am Flying Car Gets FAA ApprovalThe Federal Aviation Administration has just removed a major hurdle from the path of a vehicle that may well be the first commercially viable flying car.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:26 am Pixel Qi Hybrid E-Ink LCD Screens for Your Own Netbook
Got a netbook? Specifically, got a Samsung N130 or a Lenovo S10-2? Even more specifically, do you use it in and outdoors, but find it hard to read in the sun? We have good news! The Maker Shed will sell you one of Pixel Qi’s dual-mode displays as a straight swap-in for your existing LCD-panel. The 10.1-inch screen runs in one of two modes. When indoors, or watching video, you use the regular LCD display, which will look pretty much the same as the one you already have. When you’re in to mood for some reading, or you are outside in bright sunlight, or you’re just running low on battery power, you can switch to the e-ink mode. This disables the backlight and shows you hi-res, grayscale pixels, much like you’d see on the screen of the Amazon Kindle. Because it only uses power when updating the screen, it sips power. There is also a hybrid mode, which lets the sun reflect off the back of the display assembly and back out through the color LCD. This both saves battery power and lets you view a normal color display outdoors. The panel will cost you $275, which puts it out of the “merely curious” bracket but is still cheap enough for people who do a lot of outdoor computing. The Maker Shed store page also says that the panel will likely work in any netbook: the Lenovo and the Samsung are just the only ones so far tested and guaranteed. And according to the Pixel Qi blog, which first described the plan to sell these panels separately from the company’s own notebooks, the swap-operation (swaperation?) is easy:
Available now. Pixel Qi display [Maker Shed] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 6:02 am Firmware Update Adds 3D Panoramas to Sony NEX Cameras
Sony’s panoramic sweep feature already works surprisingly well, giving you great panoramas just by hitting the shutter and swooshing the camera across the scene before you. Now, with a firmware update, the brand-new mirrorless NEX cameras will do the same, only in 3D. The firmware update is available for the NEX3 and NEX5 cameras, and also brings faster startup times in low light, a better 2D pano-sweep and “decreased power drain when the camera is switched off” (which I assume means that a Sony engineer looked up the word “off” in a dictionary). But the exciting bit is the 3D panorama function, which will let you view the photos in 3D on a 3D Bravia TV, or any other 3D-capable set. How does it work? Sony fails to enlighten us, but it’s pretty easy to work out. Normal stereoscopic photos are taken by combining two images, usually snapped by two lenses and viewed by separate eyes. Sony’s cameras have just one lens, so some digital trickery is required. When shooting 2D panoramas, the camera fires off a series of frames as you sweep the camera over the scene. To add another dimension, the camera most likely uses the camera’s accelerometer combined with image data taken from different angles (in the frames you have just shot) to work out what the eyes would see from different points. These can then generate a 3D image. We’ll be interested to see just how good the effect is, but if it is anything like as seamless as the 2D panoramas, then this could prove to be more than just a gimmick. It is also free, if you have the camera (and a 3DTV). Available now. Sony NEX 3D firmware update [Sony] 3D update for Sony’s NEX-5/NEX-3 cameras Free firmware adds 3D Sweep Panorama shooting [Sony] See Also:
Photo: piszkosfreddy/Flickr 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 4:35 am Fix iPhone 4 Reception Troubles for $1
With its weird reception troubles that seem to be triggered just by touching it, the iPhone 4 is like Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “It could get wrecked, stolen, scratched, breathed on wrong… a pigeon could shit on it! Who knows?” The best solution so far seems to be Apple’s Bumper case, a $30 strip of rubber that wraps around the steel antenna band and stops your clammy hands from sucking out the signal. But it’s $30. Because of this, Oliver Nelson decided to make his own Bumper from one of those cheap rubber bracelets found pretty much everywhere, or by donating to a charity. The case is as simple as it could be. Just find yourself a bracelet (look for one measuring “about 1.125-inches long and about 0.125-inches wide”) and stretch it around the outside of the phone. Oliver also made a few cut-outs so he could reach the headphone jack, the dock connector and the mute-button. Done, and you just saved yourself around $29. In fact, Oliver saved himself the full $30: his bracelet came free, bundled, somewhat ironically, with an iPad charger. Still, even if you pay full-price, its likely that the money will be going to a good cause, and not into Apple’s pockets. DIY: Ghetto iPhone 4 case from a 99c bracelet? [The iPhone Guru] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Jul 2010 | 3:08 am
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We have a follow up to this, as less than an hour ago, Twilight shut down our game claiming copyright infringement. This is very disappointing, as this truly is a fair use and parody case, and shows how content creators have no power online, and how they don't see or understand the value this type of content has for their brand. It's a very disappointing day for online media. 
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