Liberty Newspost Feb-05-10

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04/02/10 - 05/02/10

Unemployment falls, what’s the proper political response?

by Tabassum Zakaria (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:53:43 AM

The unemployment rate fell in January to 9.7 percent, the lowest in five months and below that dreaded 10 percent in December.

It also foiled analyst expectations for an increase to 10.1 percent.

So a jump-for-joy event in Washington right?

Well, not quite.

The White House publicly decided on a cool, measured response.

(We have to believe someone over there must have let out a cheer, or maybe even clapped, at 8:30 a.m.)

The official response from White House economic adviser Christina Romer was a caution that there would likely be “bumps in the road ahead” and that it was important not to read

too much into one monthly report.

(Probably a wise path since those who are unemployed are likely not feeling heartened by a government statistics report) Republicans, who have been hammering on President Barack Obama about the economy and everything else, also weren’t showing any sighs of relief over

the latest jobs report.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele decided there was no silver lining to this cloud.

“The resiliency of the American economy given its current challenges is incredible but later today President Obama plans to travel to Maryland to tout his binge spending agenda that will kill, not create, jobs,” Steele said in a statement.

Even some positive news on unemployment is not enough to bridge the partisan divide that is likely to widen as the November election closes in.

For more Reuters political news, click here Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (snow covers White House grounds Feb. 3), Reuters/Robert Galbraith (jobs center in San Francisco)

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Interactive: development calendar for upcoming events in 2010

by Liz Ford, Lisa Villani (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:19:02 AM

Use our interactive calendar to find out which events, lectures and summits that focus on aid and development are being held each month Liz Ford Lisa Villani

Speed up your Nook with firmware v1.2 right now

by Matt Burns (CrunchGear) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:45:58 AM

ADVERTISEMENT: (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:00:00 PM

B&N has started rolling out firmware v1.2 for the Nook.

Early reports indicate that pages load noticeably faster and the touchscreen screen interface is a bit more responsive.

Unfortunately there isn’t a way to force the update. You just going to have to wait until your Nook says there’s an update available.

Obama Budget Rigs Health Care Numbers (AEI.Org: Articles) Submitted at 2/4/2010 3:00:00 PM

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full -text RSS service so we can

continue developing it. Sorry, Five Filters featured article: Term Extraction. readability was unable to parse Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: this page for content.

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Media naysayers troubling Obama again

by David Alexander (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 2/4/2010 10:30:33 PM

Those media naysayers are troubling President Obama again.

The U.S. leader, who hasn’t had a prime-time news conference in six months, made clear his aggravation with the scribblers in remarks Thursday to a Democratic fundraiser at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

As the tony crowd, who were asked to pay $30,400 per couple, dined on beet salad, beef and Brussels sprouts, the president laid out his case against the unruly nabobs of negativism.

They were the ones who declared his presidential campaign dead about a dozen times.

The ones who wrote him off after Hillary Clinton pulled out a surprise upset in New Hampshire a couple of years ago.

The ones who clucked about his

naivete, said he was doing too much and thought Obama couldn’t bring change to Washington.

“Nobody gave us a chance. This campaign was declared dead, what, 10 times,” Obama told the 140 guests at the Democratic National Committee dinner.

“You know, the same folks who are now writing about ‘What next?’ and ‘What’s happened to the Obama agenda?’ these are the same folks who were writing about how ‘He doesn’t stand a

chance,’ how after New Hampshire, that was it,” Obama said.

“They were saying, you know, your faith was misplaced and you set your sights too high and hope is naive and Washington won’t change,” he said.

With the Democratic agenda in jeopardy after they lost their supermajority in the Senate last month, the naysayers are crowing.

“Now, all of them are feeling like: ‘See? We told you

Washington doesn’t change,’ and they’re feeling kind of selfsatisfied about the fact that we haven’t yet got healthcare done,” Obama said.

Having identified the enemy, the president rallied his troops.

“Let me tell you something. You didn’t listen to those voices then. … You proved that nothing can stop the power of millions of people who want to see an America that is living up to its MEDIA page 3

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MEDIA continued from page 2

values and its ideals,” Obama said.

“That’s what you did. And that’s what I’m asking you to do again,” he said. “We don’t quit, and I don’t quit. And we are going to bring about the changes that you believe in and I believe in.”

And as the guests finished up with raspberry Napoleon against a backdrop of mellow jazz, the media trailing the president got

their just desserts.

No dessert. No food. Just ice water with cubes.

Cold.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Obama at a fundraiser Thursday evening)

by Mark Wilson (Gizmodo)

3D HDMI 1.4 Spec Available for Public Download [Home Theater] Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:39:59 AM

You don't need to be a big shot licensee to develop an HDMI 1.4

compatible 3D product anymore. going nuts at the moment. [ The powers that be have released HDMI via Engadget] the spec for public download, which I assume means that Chinese OEMs everywhere are

JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon gets $17m pay

by Andrew Clark (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

JP Morgan's annual meeting.

Revealed in a regulatory filing, the payout is likely to be carefully scrutinised by JP Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:31:29 AM Morgan's rivals, including Package for JP Morgan boss Goldman Sachs and Morgan 'reflects some restraint' after Stanley, which are due to reveal steering his bank through the compensation imminently for financial crisis their top executives. Investors, The chief executive of JP pundits and politicians are Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, particularly keenly awaiting the has been granted a pay packet of pay package of Goldman's boss, $17m (£11m) after steering his Lloyd Blankfein, who earned a bank through the financial crisis record-breaking $67.9m in 2007. in relatively robust health and JP Morgan has been roundly rescuing several failed rivals hailed as a winner from the from oblivion. credit crunch. Under Dimon's Dimon, 53, received about $8m leadership, the bank remained in stock and 563,562 share profitable throughout the crisis options expiring in 2020 which and, with backing from the US carry an estimated value of a government, it bought the further $8m, plus a salary of remnants of two collapsing rivals $1m. In a change from previous — the Wall Street brokerage policy, he will not receive any of Bear Stearns and the Seattlehis bonus in cash and based high street bank shareholders will get a Washington Mutual. consultative "say on pay" vote at An outspoken figure, Dimon has

been a staunch defender of his industry and has criticised aspects of the Obama administration's approach to Wall Street – he complained last month about a special government levy on banks, protesting that Wall Street was being required to pay for bailouts of car companies and insurance firms.

In evidence last month to the US financial crisis inquiry commission, Dimon accepted that there were ‚"quite legitimate" concerns over pay on Wall Street but added: "I believe our compensation policies have been and remain appropriate."

JP Morgan made a profit in 2009 of $11.6bn, more than double its profit of $5.6bn in 2008. Dimon's payout was revealed just two days after he acquired $10m in JP Morgan stock by exercising options already in his portfolio.

Alan Johnson, a Wall Street compensation consultant, said Dimon's bonus was about half the amount he received at the height of the boom.

"It reflects the returns of the bank and it does reflect some restraint," said Johnson. "People are looking at this very carefully.

He's a guy who's an absolutely crucial data point for the rest of the industry."

• Executive pay and bonuses • JP Morgan • Goldman Sachs • Credit crunch • Financial crisis • United States Andrew Clark guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Wind-Powered Highway Lights Disconnect From the Grid [Concepts]

by Adam Frucci (Gizmodo) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:20:00 AM

As far as practical renewable energy concepts go, these windpowered highway lights are pretty elegant. And from my layman's perspective, they seem to be practical and realistic. I like 'em! [ Turbine Light via Inhabitat]

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Whitewashing Zimbabwe's history | Blessing-Miles Tendi

by Blessing-Miles Tendi (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

explained.

But it is precisely Bailey's belief that "you do not have to understand Africa", from which the documentary's main Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:30:01 AM shortcomings emanate.

The film Mugabe and the White Zimbabwe is not Africa, and African puts a heroic gloss on Africa is not Zimbabwe. The the colonial attitudes that endure documentary lacks historical and in independent Zimbabwe political context. Land and race The documentary Mugabe and are important themes, but not the White African, directed by once is the Lancaster House L u c y B a i l e y a n d A n d r e w independence agreement of Thompson, received a four-star 1979, which perpetuated racially review in the Guardian. It is an biased land distribution in account of Michael Campbell, i n d e p e n d e n t Z i m b a b w e , one of the few white farmers left mentioned. We are exposed to i n Z i m b a b w e a f t e r R o b e r t the emotional anguish of Ben's Mugabe and Zanu-PF began a British parents in Kent as they violent land seizure programme agonise over their son's safety – in 2000. It portrays the 75-year- but Britain's role in Zimbabwe's old Campbell's struggle to resist land problem is never mentioned. the unlawful seizure of his Mt The documentary shows us that C a r m e l F a r m b y N a t h a n Mugabe implemented a racist Shamuyarira, a senior Zanu-PF land reform programme in 2000, politician. but we are not told why, and how In 2008 Campbell, assisted by he gradually became racist. The his son-in-law Ben Freeth, documentary should have at least successfully challenged Mugabe mentioned the challenging nature b e f o r e t h e S o u t h A f r i c a n of racial reconciliation since D e v e l o p m e n t C o m m u n i t y independence – because it is the international court, charging his unravelling of reconciliation that government with human rights informs the anti-white behaviour v i o l a t i o n s a n d r a c i a l it depicts. discrimination. The documentary Bailey and Thompson go out of is an emotionally charged their way to demonise Mugabe. depiction of the court case, and When the documentary's title does not spare the viewer bloody first appears on screen it is all in f o o t a g e a n d v i o l e n c e . " I t white. Then the word Mugabe resonates internationally because begins to drip with what appears it is about big issues of human to be blood and slowly turns red, rights. It is about humanity and in the style of a horror movie. you do not have to understand Mugabe's statement that if Africa to get it", Bailey has redistributing land from whites

to blacks makes him a Hitler in western eyes then let it be – often quoted out of context – follows soon afterwards. We are even shown a newspaper headline that reads "we are like Jews in Nazi Germany" – words presumably uttered by a besieged white farmer. Mugabe and Zanu-PF are guilty of horrendous human rights violations, but they are not Hitlers, and nor is Zimbabwe remotely like Nazi Germany.

The voice of someone spewing anti-white rhetoric reverberates in the background at opportune moments. The voice is unmistakably Mugabe's. In contrast, the Campbell and Freeth families are presented as God-fearing, forgiving and compassionate. Mugabe is a failed leader, guilty of misgovernance; but crude juxtapositions with the "good" white farmer inhibit nuanced popular debate.

Black farm workers are constantly in the background.

When they do come to the fore they are mute. "If I lose (the farm) we all suffer. We are in this together", Ben remarks to a black farm worker who mostly nods his head and smiles. "Pray for me. I will bring you blankets", Ben tells a group of black farm workers before he leaves for the SADC court in Namibia. Again the black farm workers do not speak. They smile, nod their heads and walk away under the rising Zimbabwean sun. Whenever

black farm workers and white landowners are filmed together in moments of compassion there is a palpable unease between them, a contrived empathy, and the fact that power relations are skewed in favour of whites is apparent.

Mugabe and the White African Male would be a more appropriate title for this documentary, because the voices of women are secondary. They have no agency. This is a documentary about white male courage in the face of Zanu-PF's violent black males. For instance, there is little on the contributions of Angela, wife to Michael, and her daughter Laura, wife to Ben, to the resistance.

And yet women are heroines too because when the brave men are away in Namibia fighting court battles with Mugabe's lawyers, Laura and Angela courageously hold the fort against Shamuyarira's pugnacious and ever-lurking farm invaders. As for black female farm workers, these do not even nod their heads and smile – they are simply invisible.

In the documentary Ben asks why, if you can be white and American or white and Australian, you cannot be white and African? Part of establishing white American and white Australian identities in America and Australia involved nearly exterminating the non-white Native Americans and Aborigines respectively; it meant

claiming indigenous peoples' land and forging white identity over many generations by subjugating and writing nonwhites out of the history of those countries. America and Australia are the worst examples Ben could have cited.

Becoming "African" is not about economic integration alone – something many white Zimbabweans never grasped. It is also about social, residential and political integration, and about learning local languages.

In the documentary the Freeth and Campbell families are distinctly white Europeans in Africa who claim to be white Africans based on their right to own land. Never are they shown speaking any of the local languages. They speak English only – even to the black farm workers. We are not shown intergroup marriages by their family members or by the neighbouring white farmers who appear in the documentary.

In a separate documentary by Hopewell Chinono called A Violent Response, which is about violence in Zimbabwe's 2008 elections, Michael Campbell comments on the Mt Carmel Farm violence: "My faith in the African as a ruler in Africa has been shaken. I do not believe that any of them are capable of ruling themselves. Democracy is a joke". Angela nods her head as WHITEWASHING page 5

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Snowboarders' double cork flip becomes hot issue for Olympics

by Owen Gibson, Chris Moran (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

been seriously injured; one suffered brain damage.

"It's a difficult move to explain," said Ben Kilner, who makes his Olympic debut at the games, in Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:23:10 AM the snowboard halfpipe. "It's Ban on Shaun White's halfpipe k i n d o f a t w i s t i n g d o u b l e could follow if attempts to copy backflip where you have to spin it at the Vancouver games lead to around at least three times." more injuries The 21-year-old Scot added: It has an innocuous enough "There's no exit point when name, but for competitors and you're learning the double cork. millions of viewers it could just You have to commit fully prove to be one of talking points because once you've completed of the Winter Olympics, which the first flip, you're going upside start next week. down again no matter what."

The "double cork" is a sports White invented the double cork manoeuvre that is dividing on a private 167-metre (550ft) snowboarders who are now long -halfpipe (a structure like an preparing for the games in inverted tunnel with facing Vancouver. So difficult and concave ramps), built by his d a n g e r o u s i s t h e m i d - a i r -sponsor, Red Bull, at Silverton movement, that some have called m o u n t a i n i n s o u t h - w e s t for it to be banned.

Colorado, for an -estimated cost It was first performed by Shaun of $500,000. -Accessible only by White, who became an overnight helicopter, and with a soft, foam sensation in the US following his pit built into one wall, the gold medal at the 2006 Turin -structure allowed White to try games. White became an instant tricks he had -"contemplated for celebrity, and high-profile years" without risk of injury. sponsorship deals were secured. "When he unveiled the trick at A Rolling Stone magazine cover the first competition of the shot was published with the season, riders rushed to copy it," tagline, "Is This America's said Lesley McKenna, who, as a Coolest Teenager?" three-time Winter Olympian and Yet many competitors who have former world cup winner, is the tried to emulate his feat have best known British snowboarder.

Sunset Palm (Little Green Footballs)

"And if they didn't have access to foam pit that wasn't going to stop them."

Attempting a double cork while -training in the halfpipe on 31 December Kevin Pearce, an -American boarder, hit his head and suffered a severe brain injury. He is now recovering in a -rehabilitation hospital in Denver.

Halfpipe falls are nothing new but such a high-profile injury by one of the few to have beaten White in recent -competition has led to some people calling for a ban on the move.

Christine Brennan, a columnist with USA Today, has suggested the International Olympic Committee steps in. "The fact that you get more points the higher you go is asking these young, fearless, athletes to do things that are probably not best for them," she said.

But others have leapt to the defence of both White, and the sport. "When one person is pushing the limits, that creates a pathway for others to follow and keep pushing," said Torah Bright, the Australian halfpipe rider.

Snowboarding has become an -increasingly visible component of the Winter Olympics since

being introduced in 1998. The skill and ingenuity of the riders as they compete to perform ever more difficult and outlandish tricks is seen as a key part of its appeal. With the International Olympic Commission keen to make both the summer and winter Olympics more appealing to the younger generation and boost TV ratings, snowboarding has an obvious allure.

The IOC has prohibited manoeuvres before, most notably in 1976 when backflips were banned in figure skating. But few believe that the double cork will be outlawed in Vancouver.

"Can you imagine telling 30 of the best snowboarders in the world that the trick they've been practising and risking life and limb for is banned?" said -McKenna. "They would laugh and do it anyway."

• Winter Olympics 2010 • Snowboarding • Extreme sports Owen Gibson Chris Moran guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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WHITEWASHING continued from page 4

he opines. Did Bailey and Thompson fall for Michael's "I am a white African" pretensions, or did they choose to omit the unpalatable reality that colonial attitudes endured in independent Zimbabwe? What makes Mugabe and the White African dangerous is not so much its content, but Bailey and Thompson's belief that they are actually "helping" the people of Zimbabwe by having made the documentary.

• Zimbabwe • Robert Mugabe • Human rights • Race issues Blessing-Miles Tendi guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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Spain's MPs still on Christmas break

by Jeremy Lennard (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:30:55 AM

Spanish parliamentarians 48-day seasonal break ranks as one of the longest in Europe With around 20% of the workforce unemployed and the bottom falling out the stock market one would expect to see Spain's parliamentarians hard at work finding a fix for their country's ills.

Yet faced with the daily doses of doom and gloomthe country´s 350 MPsare still enjoying their Christmas holidays.

By the time they come back to work next week, they will have been been free of their parliamentary tasks for 48 days more than the 45 that they will sit between now and the end of the next session in June.

The MPs have other responsibilities outside the plenary sessions of parliament, in committee, constituency and on various regional bodies, but their

recesses still rank as some of the longest in Europe.

In France, for example, members of the National Assembly had just 18 days off over Christmas, as did their colleagues in the Italy´s Chamber of Deputies.

English MPs had 20 days off, and while the House of Commons also goes into recess for a further 12 days over February half term, that still leaves them well short of the Spanish counterparts.

On the street Spaniards reacted with a mixture of resignation and indignation to their MPs' working conditions. "Aren´t they ashamed?" asked mother-of-two Mary Mateus. "And while they tell us we all need to tighten our belts for the good of the country.

It´s disgraceful."

The country´s MPs agreed late last year to forego their annual pay increase while the economy is still in recession.

But their monthly wage of just over €3,000 (£2,600) is almost double the national average wage

, not taking into account expenses and increments for additional reponsibilities.

The leader of the lower house can expect to pull in well over €13,000 (£11,300) a month.

At the social security office, Alfonso Salgado was waiting to sign on."Thanks to those sons of bitches now I'm 'on holiday' too," he said. "When the IMF says we should cut salaries in Spain, they should look to parliament and not to the factories and offices."

Last year the official spokeswoman for the opposition Popular Party tabled a motion to shorten MPs´ holiday time, but her proposal - perhaps unsurprisingly - is still under consideration.

• Spain Jeremy Lennard guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Analyst Upgrades, Downgrades and Initiations: BBY, EXC, GPS, H, LEAP, MA, MOT, TAP ...

by Eric Buscemi (BloggingStocks)

company's sales results. The firm raised its price target for the stock to $24 from $23.

Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:40:00 AM • Starwood Hotels ( HOT) was Filed under: Analyst Reports, u p g r a d e d t o n e u t r a l f r o m A n a l y s t U p g r a d e s a n d underperform at Baird.

Downgrades, Analyst Initiations • Murphy Oil ( MUR) was Analyst Upgrades upgraded to hold from sell at • W e l l s F a r g o u p g r a d e d Collins Stewart.

MasterCard ( MA) to outperform • M o t o r o l a ( M O T ) w a s f r o m m a r k e t p e r f o r m o n upgraded to overweight from valuation as it views the sell-off equal weight at Barclays. in shares following the company's Q4 results as Continue reading Analyst unwarranted.

Upgrades, Downgrades and • Janney Montgomery upgraded Initiations: BBY, EXC, GPS, H, Best Buy ( BBY) to buy from LEAP, MA, MOT, TAP ... neutral on valuation as it believes Analyst Upgrades, Downgrades sentiment has gotten overly and Initiations: BBY, EXC, negative on the stock. The firm GPS, H, LEAP, MA, MOT, TAP raised its target on shares to $44 . . . o r i g i n a l l y a p p e a r e d o n from $42.

BloggingStocks on Fri, 05 Feb • Citigroup upgraded Gap ( 2010 11:40:00 EST. Please see GPS) to buy from hold on our terms for use of feeds. valuation following the recent P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | pullback in shares and the C o m m e n t s

NetSuite Continues to Grind Away

by Tom Taulli (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:20:00 PM

Filed under: Earnings Reports The enterprise resource planning (ERP) software industry is mostly dominated by major

players, such as Microsoft ( MSFT) and SAP ( SAP).

However, because of the expense and complexity of the offerings, the recession has been tough. It's easy for companies to put off spending on ERP. space that continues to grow: But there is one player in the

NetSuite ( N). In the latest quarter, the company posted revenues of$42.96 million, up from $41.40 million in the same period a year ago.

Continue reading NetSuite Continues to Grind Away NetSuite Continues to Grind

Away originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With this Ring…We Rebuild.

by LWI Editor (LWI News Center) Submitted at 2/4/2010 12:18:27 PM

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full -text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

Getting married? What if your engagement ring could be more than a symbol of your love?

What if it could also provide a life-saving symbol of God’s love for 500 Haitians in desperate need of clean drinking water?

Can you think of a better way to begin your marriage?

With This Ring(WTR), a ministry that encourages radical giving, has brought clean drinking water to some 20,000 Africans through Living Water International. To help them do this, couples from around the country have donated their wedding and engagement rings to WTR to convert into fresh water wells for people who have never known clean water.

destroyed by the earthquake in Haiti. Just $3000.00 will help us partner with Living Water International to rebuild a well in a community that is in great need.”

People are encouraged to share their own story of making grand gestures on the With This Ring blog and also to consider purchasing a ring as an act of radical generosity for their loved This year, With This Ring is one and for the people of Haiti. holding a Valentine’s Day Ring “We need to respond radically to Auction wherein rings donated this tragedy by loving strangers. by couples will be sold to those Buying a ring at this auction is a seeking to participate in the wonderful way for people to cause by purchasing them. The make a grand gesture of love to auction will be open until p e o p l e w h o h a v e l o s t February 9 and can be accessed everything—including clean water,” said Eastburn. here.

According to Ali Eastburn, For more information about founder of With This Ring, With This Ring, please go to “Each person who gave their www.withthisring.org. treasured ring and each person Five Filters featured article: w h o h o n o r s t h a t g i f t b y Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: purchasing one can be confident PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, that their radical gifts will be put Term Extraction. to good use rebuilding wells

7

JockStocks: Super Bowl Commercials, a Preview

by Mark Fightmaster (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:00:00 PM

Filed under: Consumer Experience, PepsiCo (PEP), General Motors (GM), Marketing and Advertising, CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), Business of Sports Who's ready for some football?

The Super Bowl is this weekend, and you know what that means -commercials that we will all be talking about on Monday morning. In fact, we all know someone who says they watch the game for the commercials.

CBS announced earlier this week that it sold out all the ingame spots, but a few pre- and post-game spots remained. How much money did this make for CBS ( CBS)? Roughly $200 million, and that is a low-end estimate. We all know why advertisers flock to the Super Bowl, as more than 98.7 million

viewers tuned in last year. No matter who is in the Super Bowl, people watch the game and the commercials -- and eventually they may buy the products from the ads.

Continue reading JockStocks: Super Bowl Commercials, a Preview JockStocks: Super Bowl Commercials, a Preview originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sling says it didn't change iPhone SlingPlayer for AT&T

by Nilay Patel (Engadget) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:11:00 AM

AT&T certainly made a few of us happy yesterday when it announced that the iPhone SlingPlayer app would now be allowed to run over its 3G network, but the carrier

apparently embellished the facts a little when it said Sling had optimized the app to be "more bandwidth sensitive" -- Sling's John Santoro told Ars Technica that it "didn't change anything," and that "AT&T never discussed specific requirements with us."

So much for that happy narrative

-- we thought AT&T's line

sounded odd, given that SlingPlayer has always run just fine on AT&T Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and S60 devices. It's cool, though, Sling isn't sweating it: "Whatever the reason, we're just glad AT&T has approved it."

Now it's just up to Apple to let it through the App Store -- any day

now, guys.

Sling says it didn't change iPhone SlingPlayer for AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Ars Technica| Email this| Comments

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Recreate 'The Abyss' and 'Dambusters' With Google Earth

by Kit Eaton (Fast Company) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:25:58 AM

Google Earth is always a bit of a curio--appealing to the voyeur inside all of us a little, as well as tapping into some vague educational vein. It's just got a whole lot more curious though, with under-sea and WWII layers that'll really appeal to academics.

Predictably Google's touting the new oceanic layers with the line "anyone can be a desktop Cousteau" but that doesn't detract from how interesting the new material actually is.

Essentially Ocean Showcase is a part curated tour of the World's ocean floors, courtesy of National Geographic, and with videos by NG's Sylvia Earle.

There's data from NOAA, information about fishes, whales and more sporty info on dive sites and surfing from suppliers like wannadive and wannasurf, and even data on World War 2 wrecks on the sea floors.

It's a multi-featured new option in Earth and it's got undeniable educational value. But perhaps not quite so much as the other new layer Google's just unveiled for Earth: World War II historical imagery. This new layer exploits many surveillance photos that were taken of key

CrunchDeals: $78 Magnavox Blu-ray player

by Matt Burns (CrunchGear) Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:30:00 AM

locations around Europe by different national air forces. It's most interesting, of course, to look at locations like cities, to see how bombing from opposing forces affected the landscape-Google's highlighting how Stuttgart, as an example, was subjected to more than 50 disastrous air raids, and you can compare its wartime photos to the present-day ones to see how the city was damaged, and then renewed (see one image below.)

The clever bit is that Google's got several different pieces of

data for many of these sites, so you can compare, say, Warsaw in 1935, 1945 and today. It's fascinating, and as Google notes it's a powerful way to "remind us all of the devastating impact of war" on the people of these places.

What's all this new data really for though? Google's not exactly making serious money out of Google Earth, as it's not much of an advertising-rich zone. We're guessing the company's trying to position itself as an important educational resource, with a

slightly altruistic bent to these two new enterprises. Or Google's just trying to attract some public attention in a week when most eyes are looking at its new archrival Apple. On the other hand, as a user it's also perfect fantasy material to let you recreate moments from The Abyss, Austin Powers (sharks with lasers!) or Dambusters. And I bet you're whistling that theme tune now in your mind.

[Via GoogleLatLong, ReadWriteWeb]

Most Blu-ray players are resting comfortably well north of the $100 mark, but not this Magnavox. It’s only $78 and it really does play Blu-ray movies.

However, there’s a bunch that it can’t do, because, well, it’s only $78.

We’ve featured this player before, but it’s probably best to run through it’s limitations again.

• No BD Live • No Profile 2.0 • No Ethernet port • No HD Audio modes However, it does have an HDMI port, digital audio port, and an SD card slot. It’s really not a bad player for someone who that just wants to enjoy Blu-ray movies on their HDTV and couldn’t care less about surround sound or interactivity. [ Walmart]

Business/

E-reader News Edition

9

Meet Siri: A Virtual Personal Assistant That Actually Works, Deciphers Drunken Slur

by Dan Macsai (Fast Company)

free iPhone app, is a virtual personal assistant that amazingly resembles...an actual personal Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:24:00 AM assistant. It understands plain For decades, companies have English commands, which can tried to create the real-life be spoken or typed (e.g., "Get equivalent of Rosie the Robot- me tickets to that Matt Damon Maid, an electronic personal movie"). It remembers personal assistant that actually works, and details, so you never have to tell is actually personal. It's a task it more than once where, for easier said than done: Just ask example, "my office," "my Apple, whose "handwriting apartment," and "my girlfriend's recognition" Newton handhelds house" are. And once you've were discontinued in the '90s, or s t o r e d y o u r c r e d i t c a r d Chandler, whose note-to-self information, it can transact on Web organizer has been in your behalf--with your expressed development since 2001, and consent, of course. Here's a now seems outdated. But with demo: mobile Internet use at an all- As you can see, using Siri is a time high--and smartphone tech lot like talking to a really, really smarter than ever--the market is w e l l - i n f o r m e d f r i e n d . B y ripe for a legitimate successor. plugging into APIs from more And it's name is Siri. than 30 different partners, Siri, which launches today as a including Yelp, Eventful, and

Fandango, the app can discern great date spots, tell you what's going on in your neighborhood, and even call you a cab if you spout something nonsensical, like "take me drunk I'm home." It also remembers your specific

account credentials, so you can get your OpenTable points or use your MovieWatcher card.

Oh, and if Siri doesn't understand your request? It'll either ask you to edit the text (perhaps you were mumbling?)

or provide relevant search results from Bing. A free human assistant, by contrast, would probably just stare blankly and say "Huh?" To be fair, there's a lot Siri still can't do: buy plane tickets, work on Blackberries/Android phones, properly respond to the phrase "What up?" (No, Siri, I wasn't talking about the Pixar movie!)

But it's off to a pretty good start.

And in the coming months, it will tweak its interface, release new smartphone apps, and announce more partnerships that should fix most, if not all, of those problems.

Bottom line: Give Siri a shot. At worst, it's a cool toy. At best, it's a massive time-saver.

[Via Siri]

Is the Job Market Improving?

by Maccabee Montandon (Fast Company) Submitted at 2/5/2010 10:17:40 AM

You want the good news or the bad news first? Hey, it's Friday and this is The Upswing so let's go with good news first! The national unemployment rate dropped to a five-month low of 9.7% in January, suggesting perhaps that the labor market will soon take a turn for the

better. And yesterday, you'll recall, we pointed you to the places with the best ratios of applicants per job opening.

Now the less spectacularly wonderful news: The Labor Department revised layoff figures from recent months, nudging December's job losses from the previously reported 85,000 to 150,000 and November from 4,000 to 64,000.

The $64,000 question on

everyone's mind at this point is, which way are things going to go? Will the unemployment rate rise back up, to as high as 11%,

as some are predicting? Or is January's good news--a relatively modest 20,000 jobs disappeared last month--a harbinger of a

happier time?

That $30 billion the White House is hoping to pump into small businesses should help guide us toward the latter. But it will take more hard work and ingenuity than that to keep the good times rolling.

I m a g e : http://www.flickr.com/photos/cla nlife// CC BY 2.0

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Business/ Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

Fujitsu's Lifebook MH380 hits retail for $449

by Laura June (Engadget) Submitted at 2/5/2010 10:26:00 AM

Fujitsu's stylish little Lifebook MH380's just popped up over on the company's site for sale. The 10.1-inch, Pine Trail Atom N450 -boasting netbook's specs include 2GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD, built-in Bluetooth, six-cell battery and a 1366x768 resolution screen. It also seems to be available in brown, white, black, and red -- though the only one that seems to be available to virus and quit with Sumedicina. during his tenure at Sumedicina: buy on Fujitsu's site as of now is John escapes and is pursued by And a chart of his mental state, the Glossy Red model. Let us t h e S e c r e t S e r v i c e o f after he decides to flee the know when that cute little brown number's up for grabs and we'll Sumedicina. He plans to go into company: hiding in Europe. On the airplane You can check out the entire probably be back. he meets the German lawyer story on Jana's website, or view Fujitsu's Lifebook MH380 hits Peter M端ller and entrusts him his the sldies sequentially on Flickr. r e t a i l f o r $ 4 4 9 o r i g i n a l l y story. John disappears without a For more Infographics of the appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:26:00 EST. Please trace on the plane. Peter M端ller Day, click here. see our terms for use of feeds. publishes the data.

[Via DataVisualization] Permalink| Fujitsu| Email this| Here's a couple of sample charts Comments from the story. John's increasing drug use to cope with stress,

Infographic of the Day: An Apocalyptic Short Story, Told in Charts

by Cliff Kuang (Fast Company) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:50:44 AM

Sumedicina is an experimental work of fiction that scraps words, and replaces them with infographics.

Our Infographics of the Day are all about how data and charts reveal stories in the broader world. So it's only natural that charts could be used for fictional

stories as well, and that's the conceit of Sumedicina, a piece of experimental short fiction created by Jana Lange and Kim Asendorf.

The plot involves John, a scientist working for a nefarious biomedical company called Sumedicina. After developing a pandemic virus--as well as the cure, so the company can profit-his conscience overcomes him:[John] decides to destroy the

Business/ Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

11

Alien Chestburster Finds Loving Host in PS3 [Mods]

by Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:20:00 PM

Say whatever bad things you will about the PS3, but have you ever seen an alien bust out of an Xbox 360's torso? I didn't think so.

Just in time for cyborg surrealist million in carbon allowances-- in the U.S to point out flaws in Hans Rudi Giger's birthday(he's and it will have to pay the cash the E.U.'s already-established attributed with creating the off if the criminals aren't found. Emission Trading System. But trademark Alien look), a longOverall, the hackers managed to maybe that's the wrong way to time Alien PS3 modder has tamper with nine different look at this--where there is c o m p l e t e d h i s l a t e s t accounts. The entire emissions s u c c e s s , h a n g e r s - o n a n d c r e a t i o n — t h i s f a r f r o m trading economy will be shut c r i m i n a l s u s u a l l y f o l l o w . understated chestburster PS3.

Now if only Sony were ballsy down for at least a week while [Via Popular Science] e nough to actually mass European authorities deal with manufacture one of these mods, I the fallout. just may be tacky enough to buy Undoubtedly, the attack will be it. [ Llamma's Forums via used by cap-and-trade opponents technabob]

Green Thieves Launch Cap and Trade Scam

by Ariel Schwartz (Fast Company)

Zealand, Europe, and Japan claiming that the users had to reenter their information into the Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:21:51 AM agency's website to keep hackers Cap-and-trade systems aren't out. just a burgeoning part of the new The phishing scam worked, and energy economy. They're a the hackers quickly started burgeoning chunk of thief bait. t r a d i n g c a r b o n e m i s s i o n Last week, Hackers sent fake allowances to different accounts e m a i l s f r o m t h e G e r m a n and selling them off. It was so Emissions Trading Authority successful, in fact, that one (DEHSt) to companies in New German company has lost $2.1

12

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E-reader News Edition

Surprise Drop in the Unemployment Rate Is Samsung brings a third eReader into No Reason to Celebrate the mix – the E61 QWERTY eBook Reader

by Mark Fightmaster (BloggingStocks)

by Tablet (BestTabletReview.com)

Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:20:00 AM

Filed under: Economic Data Well, this was a nice surprise ... the unemployment rate fell to 9.7% in January from 10% in December, according to the Labor Department. This is good news, as expectations were for the unemployment rate to hold at 10% -- so some people are finding some jobs somewhere.

That said, the number of nonfarm payrolls dropped by 20,000 while expectations called for a gain of 25,000. With stock futures limiting some of their early morning losses, it looks as if investors and analysts are holding on to the unemployment rate news rather than the news

Submitted at 2/4/2010 3:32:09 PM

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full -text RSS service so we can continue developing it. that more jobs were lost than A side-by-side of the Samsung expected.

E61 and Kindle 2 Samsung had Continue reading Surprise Drop two touchscreen eReaders that in the Unemployment Rate Is No they premiered at CES. The Reason to Celebrate Samsung E6 was a 6-inch eBook Surprise Drop in the reader that is selling for a Unemployment Rate Is No whopping $399 and the Samsung Reason to Celebrate originally E101 is a 10-inch (9.60-inch to appeared on BloggingStocks on be specific) eBook reader for Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:20:00 EST. $699. Now Samsung is Please see our terms for use of introducing a third version into feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

the mix.

The Samsung E61 is basically the E6 with a physical QWERTY keyboard. It has the same 6-inch, 600×800 resolution resistive touchscreen, 2GB of flash memory, an expandable microSD slot and WiFi. The form factor of the E61 begs to be compared to the Kindle 2, as it mimics the same hard QWERTY keyboard, screen size and page selector as the Amazon offering.

The Samsung E61 does have a smaller footprint, is slightly lighter and of course has a resistive touchscreen that you can use a stylus on, but the touchscreen also means the

screen clarity probably won’t be as good as the Kindle’s.

The main question is how much will the E61 cost? After seeing Samsung’s pricing on their other two eReader models, we’re guessing this will still be in the high $300’s — far, far away from mid-$200’s price of the Kindle 2.

Source: PC Professionale via Engadget Leave a Reply Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Nokia's mid-tier 'Mystic' to be dubbed C6, will hit stores in May or June?

by Paul Miller (Engadget) Submitted at 2/5/2010 10:47:00 AM

We can't say we were overwhelmed by the first leaked photos of what we've come to know as the Nokia Mystic, but there's something about this QWERTY candybar form factor

that Nokia just does so well that we have to hang onto the benefit of the doubt. The latest news on this front is that the handset will be dubbed the Nokia C6, which makes a lot of sense as a counterpart to the the numeric keypad-equipped but similarly styled Nokia C5 that was

recently leaked. Word is that the C6 should retail for around 200

Euro (about $274 US), and that it should be released in May or June. It seems logical that we'll see both of these S60 3rd edition phones at MWC this month, but there's nothing solid on that front just yet.

Nokia's mid-tier 'Mystic' to be dubbed C6, will hit stores in

May or June? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink| All About Phones| Email this| Comments

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13

Obama Cancels Kennedy's Dream [Rant]

by Jesus Diaz (Gizmodo) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:40:00 AM

Once upon a time, a President thought that taking humans"to the Moon and the planets beyond" was not only good for the economy of the country, but also would push US technology decades beyond everybody's else. He was right.

That President was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Of course, he also wanted to go to the Moon to beat the Soviet Union and win a political war, but there were a thousand more reasons to make that trip. All of them were good.

As a result of his political will, the Apollo program became the most complex, most advanced, most successful, most beneficial technology endeavor ever taken by the United States of America.

It put the country decades ahead in every aspect of technology, and its effects, the technologies that came directly out of it, are now an indispensable part of our world: From the development of new metals and microprocessors, to clothing and medicine, the Apollo program touched every single aspect of our lives. Those developments are responsible for your smartphone, your desktop computer, your television set, and even your winter underpants.

But most importantly, the Apollo program inspired generations of kids to become scientists and engineers, indirectly pushing technology even further. Humans were

going to the fucking Moon! How cool is that? I can't think of a more inspiring challenge than to conquer the stars, and those kids thought the same. Inspiring a new generation That inspiration made American universities thrive with new talent eager to push technology forward. We—not only America, but the entire world—are still enjoying the benefits that those students and the ones who followed brought to all of us

decades after Apollo ended.

Those kids went to work at IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Boeing, Lockheed, and the thousands of high tech companies that bring us the amazing technology that we use on a daily basis.

So while some people may want to convince you that President Obama's decision to fundamentally kill NASA's manned space program is a great move for the future of space, I'm

here to tell you that all that is bullshit.

First, it's an excuse for a President who has failed to deliver on his promise of a better space program. His proposal is not better than what we had before. Actually, it's only good for the private space sector which, incidentally, for the most part is just reinventing the wheel that NASA and the Soviet Union space organization invented decades ago.

Even if you agree that the Constellation program wasn't going anywhere—many people disagree, like those who created the video above—you can't have the US manned spaceflight program disappear in favor of private space cabs to Earth's orbit. Even Burt Rutan—the poster child of private spaceflight, creator of Spaceshipone and Spaceshiptwo—agrees that this is an incredibly bad idea: That is not a "NASA plan"; it is the proposed budget from the White House. It will likely be revised by the Congress. I am for NASA doing either true Research, or doing forefront Exploration, with taxpayer dollars.

Ares/Orion is more of a Development program than a Research program, so I am not depressed to see it disappear. I am concerned to see NASA manned spaceflight disappear, since they provided world leadership in the 60s and part of the 70s. The result was America's universities being the leader in cience/Engineering PhDs. Many American kids will be depressed by the thought that our accomplishments will not be continued and thus America will fall deeper away from our previous leadership in Engineering/Science/Math. I OBAMA page 16

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Reebok’s ZigTech likened to ‘an energy drink for your feet’

by Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:00:25 AM

Oh-kaaay. So Reebok has developed something called ZigTech – basically a zig-zag type foam for running shoes that’s supposed to ease the load on your leg muscles. And one of the first snippets from the press release is, “ZigTech allows your key leg muscles to do less, so you can do more. Simply put, it’s like an energy drink for your feet.”

And the title of the press release is “Reebok Debuts ZigTech – An Energy Drink for Your Feet…”

The shoes will be available for $100 on March 11th and “The launch will be supported by a major marketing campaign including TV, print and online advertising.”

I’m curious to see if Reebok sticks with the “energy drink for your feet” angle for this upcoming marketing blitz since it’s so bat-shit crazy it might work.

As for the actual technology: “Everything about Reebok’s ZigTech footwear is designed to conserve and return energy to the athlete for a soft and springy ride. The one-of-a-kind ZigTech bottom unit features an innovative, lightweight foam that is engineered into a dramatic, geometric, zig-zag shape. This unique zig-shaped sole absorbs the impact of heel strike and sends a wave of energy along the

length of the shoe to help propel the athlete forward with each step.”

There are apparently “hundreds” of athletes who train in the ZigTech shoes, including Peyton Manning, Chad Ochocinco, Santonio Holmes, David Ortiz, Allen Iverson, and more.

Full press release: Reebok Debuts ZigTech – An Energy

Drink for Your Feet…

CANTON, Mass.–( BUSINESS WIRE)–What would you do if you had more energy? Run faster? Train longer? On March 11 th, Reebok allows athletes to find out with the highly anticipated launch of ZigTech, the brand’s most technically advanced running and training shoe. ZigTech allows your key

leg muscles to do less, so you can do more. Simply put, it’s like an energy drink for your feet.

Everything about Reebok’s ZigTech footwear is designed to conserve and return energy to the athlete for a soft and springy ride. The one-of-a-kind ZigTech bottom unit features an innovative, lightweight foam that is engineered into a dramatic,

geometric, zig-zag shape. This unique zig-shaped sole absorbs the impact of heel strike and sends a wave of energy along the length of the shoe to help propel the athlete forward with each step.

“Traditional energy return is focused only on the vertical impact of the heel strike,” said Reebok’s Head of Advanced Innovation, Bill McInnis. “In contrast, ZigTech is designed to transfer energy horizontally along the zigs so the athlete gets that energy back in the forefoot.”

The lightweight, flexible bottom unit, minimalist upper, and whisper-quiet ground contact also contribute to making ZigTech a new standard in running and training footwear. In fact, by wearing Reebok’s ZigTech footwear, training longer just got easier. The technology causes up to 20% less wear and tear on key leg muscles, especially the shins and hamstrings.

“Shin splints are extremely common for pro athletes like me,” said NFL superstar Peyton Manning. “Wearing ZigTechs give players a bounce, an energy that lets us train longer with less strain on key leg muscles, like shins. This ultimately enables athletes to stay healthier during the season.”

Reebok’s ZigTech footwear collection is available for men REEBOK’S page 16

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15

Fans to choose next Madden Curse victim

by Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:30:28 AM

If I were Jared Allen, Drew Brees, or Reggie Wayne, I’d run screaming from Doritos and EA Sports. Whether you believe in the Madden Curse or not, the fact remains that just about every player that’s appeared on the cover of one of EA Sports’ Madden games has suffered a serious injury or seen his oncedominant playing ability severely decline.

So for Madden NFL 11, Doritos and EA have teamed up to let football fans “log on to www.doritoschangethegame.com to vote daily for one of three nominees for the Madden NFL 11 cover.” The nominees, of course, being Jared Allen, Drew Brees, and Reggie Wayne.

Here’s a brief rundown of past victims of the Madden Curse.

Madden titles are a year ahead, so Madden NFL 10, for instance, came out right before the 2009 NFL season started.

Madden NFL 10: Troy Polamalu and Larry Fitzgerald.

This marked the first time two athletes had appeared on the cover together. Polamalu sprained his MCL in the first game of the season, missed four games, returned for three more, and then injured his PCL to knock him out for the rest of the season. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, had a pretty good year. So maybe the only way to break the

curse is to have two people on the cover. Even then, though, there’s still a 50-50 chance of being cursed.

Madden NFL 09: Brett Favre.

Seeing as though Favre is the Chuck Norris of professional football, it looked like the curse had finally been broken.

However, Favre fell apart in the second half of the season after suffering an injury to his throwing arm.

Madden NFL 08: Vince Young.

Pretty good 2007 season, but injured his knee in the first game of the 2008 season. Then he ran away from home. As a grownup. Then he didn’t play again

until mid-way through the 2009 season.

Madden NFL 07: Shaun Alexander. Missed much of the 2006 season after breaking his foot, then broke his wrist during the first game of the 2007 season, sprained his knee and ankle in Week 9, was cut from the Seahawks in April 2008.

Remained unsigned until October 2008, was picked up by the Redskins, who cut him a month later. He hasn’t played since.

Madden NFL 06: Donovan McNabb. Knocked out halfway through the season with a herniated disc in his back, the

Eagles finish in last place and miss the playoffs for the first time in years.

Madden NFL 2005: Ray Lewis.

Also like the Chuck Norris of football, Lewis did an admirable job of keeping the Madden Curse at bay. He had a relatively uninspiring 2004 season, but that’s about it. No major injuries or anything like that.

Madden NFL 2004: Michael Vick. Broke his leg, missed the first 3/4 of the season. Then all that dog-related stuff happened.

Not that the dogs had anything to do with Madden.

Madden NFL 2003: Marshall Faulk. Recorded his worst

season since 1996.

Madden NFL 2002: Daunte Culpepper. Minnesota finishes 511, Culpepper misses four games, worst Vikings record since 1984.

Madden NFL 2001: Eddie George. No injuries and a pretty good 2000 season. In 2001, though, Tennessee finished 7-9 and George didn’t break 1000 yards rushing.

Madden NFL 2000: Barry Sanders. Only kinda, sorta appeared on the cover. Whatever the case, he unexpectedly retired before the season even started.

FANS page 16

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OBAMA

REEBOK’S

continued from page 13

believe our future success depends on our ability to motivate our youth.

I would support a restructuring of goals and funding so NASA can be allowed to perform like the 60s on space Research and on Exploration. There is not a shred of evidence that the President sees any value in those goals.

Rutan made those comments yesterday, and I can't agree more with him. It's good to see him—of all people—saying this out loud, especially while the rest of space private companies are gloating about how Obama's "think small" plan will increase their benefits in a big way. The greater good In a world of fast forward, short attention spans, and materialism above all things, we need humans in space. Not just tweeting from orbit. But out there, on the Moon and Mars.

And if the United States can't do this on its own, that's OK. In fact, that would be perfect: NASA should work together with the European Space Agency, the Russian Federal Space Agency, JAXA, and anyone who wants to achieve the greater good and really push humanity forward.

continued from page 14

And yes, we need the satellites and the probes and the telescopes, absolutely, but you can't replace humans with probes. Not because humans would do a better job, but because robots photographing things is not the same as being there. Being there like everyone on Earth arrived to the Moon when Neil Armstrong put his foot on it.

From a bean counter point of view, if you do it right, the economical and technological benefits will be as great as those brought by Apollo, now and in the future. From the point of view of anyone who thinks that the world is about more than counting beans, the benefits are even more obvious than that. The fact is that photographs taken by robots neither push technology forward nor inspire entire generations or bring economical and technological benefits that reverberate through decades to come. That's what the humans in Apollo did.

Maybe Obama needs to watch the entire JFK's We Need to Go to the Moon speech, at the Rice Stadium in Houston, TX in the fall of 1962, and remember that the reason the United States chose to go to the moon:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Kennedy ended that speech with this: Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

I can't add anything else to that.

and women in an array of bold, bright colors that will truly stand out in the gym. Edgy, trend setting athletes like football phenom Chad Ochocinco are big fans of the aggressive design. “I had my ZigTechs in the locker room and all my teammates were trying to check them out,” said Ochocinco. “ZigTechs stand apart from any training shoe out there. They are bold and confident, perfect for an athlete like me.”

Manning and Ochocinco are joined by last year’s Super Bowl MVP, Santonio Holmes, 2008 Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, World Series star pitcher Andy Pettitte, Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum, Stanley Cup winner Sidney Crosby, NHL All-Star Alexander

FANS continued from page 15

Madden NFL 99: Garrison Hearst. Only appeared on certain covers, broke his ankle in a playoff game so severely that he missed two seasons.

So looking back on the 10+ years of Madden cover athletes, it seems that a few have dodged major bullets but most have experienced a mysterious dark cloud overhead. And judging by the three finalists for this Doritos thing, I’d venture a guess that Drew Brees may get the nod,

Thursday Afternoon Music: Tommy Emmanuel, 'Tall Fiddler' (Little Green Footballs)

This performance of “Tall Fiddler” by Tommy Emmanuel

is completely ridiculous. And by ridiculous, I mean mind-

Ovechkin, boxing great “ Sugar” Shane Mosley, basketball icon Allen Iverson, home run king David Ortiz, soccer standouts Thierry Henry and Ryan Giggs, and hundreds more athletes who run and train in Reebok’s ZigTech footwear.

ZigTech debuts at major retailers including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, Finish Line and on Reebok.com on March 11, 2010 for a suggested price of $100. The launch will be supported by a major marketing campaign including TV, print and online advertising. To learn more, visit Reebok.com/zigtech.

boggling. The fastest wrist in the west.[Video]

especially if his team wins the Super Bowl on Sunday.

At any rate, I’d politely decline if I were Allen, Brees, or Wayne.

And if that didn’t work, I’d decline with shouting and arm flailing. Voting ends March 15th.

Doritos Presents: Change the Game[Voting Site]

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Darpa's Latest Project: Synthetic Creatures That Can Never Die [Science]

by Adam Frucci (Gizmodo) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:37:41 AM

Darpa, the Pentagon's crazypants research arm, is taking shit to a whole new level: they're pumping money into developing synthetic organisms immune to death. Oh, except for the built-in genetic kill switch.

Yikes.

Danger Room reports that Darpa is investing $6 million into the project, called "BioDesign."

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating "the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement." The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with

living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to "produce the intended biological effect." Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can "ultimately be

programmed to live indefinitely."

Of course, Darpa's got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work - so they'll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create "tamper proof" cells. Plus,

the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, "similar to a serial number on a handgun."

And if that doesn't work, don't worry. In case Darpa's plan somehow goes horribly awry, they're also tossing in a lastresort, genetically-coded kill switch.

Of course, this is no small task.

Not only do you have the laws of nature to contend with, but you'll have an angry God tossing lightning bolts down upon you for trying to do his job for him.

But really, this is some crazy ambitious science we're talking here. Be sure to read the full piece at Danger Room for the entire story. [ Danger Room]

17

Apple extends iTunes Web previews to apps

by Josh Lowensohn (Webware.com) Submitted at 2/4/2010 9:54:00 AM

Company now offering users a preview of what they can find in the App Store, but in their browser. The change comes just a few months after Apple first introduced the program for music albums.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

New lithium-ion battery could last 20 years, long after you've broken the devices they once powered

by Joseph L. Flatley (Engadget) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:34:00 AM

Modern gadgetry (you know, as opposed to "ancient gadgetry," such as the abacus and the hour glass) lives and dies by its batteries, so it's no surprise that lots of time and effort is spent researching both wacky

alternatives to the tried and true power cell, as well as ways to make existing cells better.

Among the latter, Nikkei is reporting that Eamex in Osaka, Japan, has developed a lithiumion battery that will last some twenty years of regular use -that's 10,000 charges! The secret to the long-lasting lithium-ion? used for the battery's negative In current designs, the tin that's electrode weakens through

continual charging and recharging. The new design, however, calls for tin-coated resin that stabilizes the electrode and prevents deterioration. Why didn't we think of that? Look forward to seeing these exciting, new batteries debut in electric scooters sometime this year.

[Warning: Source link requires subscription]

New lithium-ion battery could last 20 years, long after you've broken the devices they once powered originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Electronista| Nikkei| Email this| Comments

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AAXA intros L1 laser pico projector / media player

by Donald Melanson (Engadget)

with the usual USB port, memory card slot, and composite and VGA inputs to actually Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:14:00 PM pump media through the device.

It's claim on the title of "world's Just don't expect the same low, first laser pico projector" might low price seen on some other be a tad dubious, but AAXA pico projectors lately, as this Technologies' new L1 projector one's set to run a hefty $599. may just be the first to hit the AAXA intros L1 laser pico market, with it set to start p r o j e c t o r / m e d i a p l a y e r shipping on February 12th. Like originally appeared on Engadget other laser-based models, this on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:14:00 one promises to always stay in EST. Please see our terms for focus, and even project images u s e o f f e e d s . P e r m a l i n k (800 x 600, up to 50-inches) on PicoProjector-Info| AAXA| curved surfaces with ease. Email this| Comments Somewhat uniquely, you'll also get a built-in media player, along

Separate Keitai: Meet Japan’s sexiest new handset (videos)

by Serkan Toto (CrunchGear) Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:00:37 AM

For years, Japan was the innovation leader in the cell phone industry, until South Korea and the US started catching up rapidly. If you look back at what Nippon's mighty carriers have released in the past

few months, you mainly see super-powerful handsets with large OLED screens, 12MP cameras, Blu-ray recorder connectivity, double digital TV tuners, etc. But the form factor never really changes, as the majority of Japanese consumers still demands clamshell phones with jog dials enabling them to

conveniently thumb-text emails.

But if a country churns out 100 different handsets per year, there have to be some exceptions. And the most notable exception (that now has been priced and dated) is Fujitsu's F-04B featuring the world's first separable twomodule body.

Tech/

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19

The Future Journalist: Thoughts from Two Generations

by Sree Sreenivasan (Mashable!)

Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:47:01 AM

Sree Sreenivasan is a professor and Dean of Student Affairs at Columbia Journalism School and contributing editor at DNAinfo.com.

Ask a journalist about the state of the media and the answer you get may range from dire predictions about journalism’s imminent demise to cautious optimism. The doomsayers point to falling newspaper circulation, fragmenting TV audiences and the 18,000+ jobs lost in 2009.

Sites like PaperCuts, which painstakingly tracked those job losses (and has already noted 815 losses for January of 2010), and Twitter feeds like TheMediaIsDying, help reinforce the notion that the American media is, well, dying.

For the optimists, this is an exciting time of great opportunities, with more media being created and consumed than ever before. Here’s part of what Joshua Micah Marshall, creator of Talking Points Memo, told the graduating class at Columbia Journalism School last year: It’s the people who are entering the profession right now that are going to create the editorial models, the publishing models, the business models, that define journalism in the 21st century.

And that is something that’s exciting, it’s a challenge, which, in my mind, totally outweighs

the bumps in the road, the instabilities, and the lack of security that journalists face today that maybe they didn’t 20 years ago.

Of course, no one knows for sure exactly where we are headed, but this seems like a time when preparing to deal with the changes ahead would be a good idea.

And that’s what Mashable did earlier this week with its fourth Mashable NextUp NYC, as part of Social Media Week. Held at the 92YTribeca— the hip, downtown version of the venerable 92nd Street Y of the Upper East Side (“free Wi-Fi” announces a chalkboard at the door) — the event attempted to look at the changing media landscape and the evolving role of journalists in it. When Mashable’s Adam Hirsch asked former contributor (and my student at Columbia J-school) Vadim Lavrusik to do a public conversation with me on the topic, we decided to bill it as “The Future Journalist: Thoughts from Two Generations.” The Tra-digital Journalist Once upon a time, I used to be a young, fresh-faced journalist of the future, so it horrifies me that I’ve turned into the voice of an older generation. But Vadim is an example of what it will take to succeed in the future: a balance between the traditional values and skills of journalism, and the digital skills and mindset that are so critical these days. My

oriented skills and traits a future journalist would need. These include being: • a multimedia storyteller: using the right digital skills and tools for the right story at the right time.

• a community builder: facilitating conversation among c o l l e a g u e , S i g G i s s l e r , various audiences, being a administrator of the Pulitzer community manager.

Prizes, coined the term “tra- • a trusted pointer: finding and d i g i t a l j o u r n a l i s t ” a n d i t sharing great content, within a describes Vadim and so many beat(s) or topic area(s); being other young journalists today (be trusted by others to filter out the sure to read his Mashable post on noise.

8 M u s t - H a v e T r a i t s f o r • a blogger and curator: has a Tomorrow’s Journalist, which personal voice, is curator of served as a backbone for our q u a l i t y w e b c o n t e n t a n d discussion). participant in the link economy.

The concept of the tra-digital • able to work collaboratively: journalist is among the many knowing how to harness the ideas we discussed and we’ve work of a range of people put together our slides below and around him/her — colleagues in also have a Twitcam live- the newsroom; experts in the s t r e a m e d v i d e o o f t h e field; trusted citizen journalists; conversation. segments of the audience, and Here are some of the other key more. concepts that we discussed: The Fundamentals Are Critical Business Items Despite the importance of We discussed some business-ish technology, it’s the fundamentals skills and traits that are going to of journalism that are still be useful. critical. The fundamentals • an entrepreneurial spirit: include: great reporting and having an experimental openwriting, journalistic ethics, mindedness, being an innovator. specialization by topic or beat, • being entrepreneurial within an i n v e s t i g a t i v e s k i l l s , n e w s existing company: you don’t judgment. Also invaluable, have to be at a startup to be critical thinking and critical entrepreneurial; there might be a reading — too many journalists lot you can do within some large don’t pay attention to either. The corporations.

Future Journalist Is… • business savvy: understands We identified specific digitally- the business of his/her industry;

understand value of content; understand new media business models • knows & embraces metrics: understands the value and danger of metrics; studies today’s major metrics tools, Google Analytics, Omniture, Nielsen, Bit.ly, etc • thinks “Career Management,” Not “Next Job”: understands value of thinking long-term; thinks strategically about career choices; keeps re-tooling Be a Permanent Learner Most journalists don’t appreciate how much better they’d be at their jobs if they were constantly learning new ideas and skills. Such a learner’s media diet may include: • Mashable • PaidContent.org • ReadWriteWeb • Lifehacker • Poynter, Mediabistro blogs, Mediaite, CJR, etc • [what would you add?]

Being on deadline or in crisis mode is not the time to try and figure out new technology.

When the plane lands in the Hudson, it’s too late to figure out Twitter. When your company starts layoffs, it’s too late to figure out LinkedIn. Start carving out time to learn new concepts and tools. Social Media Wouldn’t be Mashable if we didn’t talk about social media.

FUTURE page 23

20

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App Store devsugar: Browser-based previews and URL tricks

by Erica Sadun (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 2/5/2010 10:00:00 AM

Filed under: iTS, Software, iTunes, Apple, App Store TUAW reader Gabby tipped us off this morning that Apple has expanded its new browser-based iTunes previews to include App Store offerings. Sure enough, I pasted a standard App Store URL for Apple's Remote application into Safari and was treated to the preview shown just above.

This new preview option is just one of many App Store URL tricks you may want to take advantage of. You can find some of the most useful tricks right after the break on this post. Got another URL trick for App Store? Let us know in the comments.

Direct App Links (and creating them proactively). Right-clicking (or Control-clicking) the application icon in an iTunes App Store listing allows you to copy a URL that provides direct access to your App Store listing.

A typical link looks like this:

Knowing this number allows you to construct a valid iTunes URL, even before your application goes live. Of course, the URL will not work until Apple green lights your application, but being able to build it proactively lets you create and distribute an http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/re i T u n e s U R L s a f e i n t h e mote/id284417350?mt=8 Notice knowledge that the URL will the "id" portion of the URL. That work on product launch. id represents a unique iTunes To find your application's product number. Also notice the product number, log into iTunes "us" part. That refers to the store Connect and open Manage Your that this was linked from.

Applications. Select any The application id represents the application and locate the Apple same product number that ID. It's found between the appears in iTunes Connect. Version number and the Date

Submitted. Prefix that number with id and substitute it into this U R L s c h e m e : http://itunes.apple.com/app/id YourApplicationIDHere. Notice that the application name, the store country, and the mt-8 parts are not required in the URL. This, for example, is a fully w o r k i n g U R L : http://itunes.apple.com/app/id 284417350"Artist" links. You can provide a direct link to a list of all your for-sale apps by using what iTunes calls Artist links. To retrieve yours, load any one of your applications. At the top of the iTunes page, you'll see a

category hierarchy along the lines of App Store > [Category, like Games] > Your Company Name. Right-click and copy that link. This URL brings up an artist overview, showing all the apps you currently have in App Store. Mine looks like this:

Named i T unes.com links.

When your application has a fairly unique name, you can use Apple's itunes.com address scheme to offer natural-language -like access to software. For e x a m p l e , http://itunes.com/apps/AdHocHe lper provides direct access to my http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/e Ad Hoc Helper application. This rica-sadun/id282772077 and does not, however, work for my again, you can omit the country super common app names. A for a more universal URL like l i n k t o t h i s : http://itunes.com/apps/Poker http://itunes.apple.com/artist/eric brings up a search page using a-sadun/id282772077 It's a useful link to keep on-hand and APP page 24 use in your marketing materials.

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21

NBC Universal Boss Jeff Zucker Lies To Congress About Boxee

PictureFox puts a little cover flow in your Amazon

by Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

by Josh Lowensohn (Webware.com)

just another browser. It was quite clear that Hulu didn't want to do the block, but had no NBC Universal management choice due to pressure from the gets more and more ridiculous likes of partial owner NBC: Our every time we come across content providers requested that anything they do. While they've we turn off access to our content left most of the more ridiculous via the Boxee product, and we statements to their chief lawyer, are respecting their wishes....

Rick Cotton (who is worried The maddening part of writing about the poor corn farmers this blog entry is that we realize harmed by movie file sharing), that there is no immediate win CEO Jeff Zucker has made his here for users. Please know that fair share of whoppers. While he we take very seriously our role got a lot of attention last month of representing users such that for his cowardly handling of the we are able to provide more and whole Leno/Conan mess, his more content in more and more latest move is to flat out lie to ways over time. We embrace this Congress. In a hearing in front activity in ways that respect of Congress as a part of NBC's content owners' -- and even the effort to merge with Comcast, entire industry's -- challenges to Rep. Rick Boucher asked Zucker create great content that users about Hulu being forced to block love. Yes, it's a complex matter.

Boxee(a battle that's gone back A tough mission, and a neverand forth a few times). When ending one, but one we are the whole thing started, Hulu passionately committed to. management was very upfront For those Boxee users reading about how they were pressured this post, we understand and by their content partners like appreciate that you're likely to NBC to block Boxee, which is tell us that we're nuts. Please Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:58:00 AM

know that we do share the same interests and won't stop innovating in support of the bigger mission. So how did Zucker respond when asked about it by Congressman Rick Boucher? He blamed Hulu for making the decision, and falsely claimed that Boxee illegally access Hulu content: Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA): What about Boxee? Mr. Zucker you probably are in a better position to answer that. Did Hulu block the Boxee users from access to the Hulu programs?

Zucker (NBC): This was a decision made by the Hulu management to, uh, what Boxee was doing was illegally taking the content that was on Hulu without any business deal. And, you know, all, all the, we have several distributors, actually many distributors of the Hulu content that we have legal distribution deals with so we don't preclude distribution deals.

What we preclude are those who illegally take that content. Of

course, that's a flat out wrong, as Boxee was not illegally "taking" the content at all. Boxee is a browser, like Firefox. If what Boxee does is illegal so is accessing Hulu with Firefox or IE. But it's even worse than that, because last year, in a different situation, Zucker admitted that he had been a part of the decision makers to have Hulu block Boxee, telling Kara Swisher that "our vision" was to block Boxee in an effort to keep "Hulu being an online experience" rather than one you could access via a TV. So why would Zucker flat out lie during a Congressional hearing, and throw Hulu under the bus while doing so? Does he not understand how Boxee works? Did he forget his own dealings with Hulu? Or is he just making stuff up in a Congressional hearing?

Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Submitted at 2/4/2010 1:36:00 PM

Tired of Amazon's clunky product image viewer? Check out PictureFox, a free Firefox add-on that turns Amazon product shots into a gorgeous, full-screen gallery.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

Will you, like Sun's CEO, become a Twitter quitter?

by Chris Matyszczyk (Webware.com) Submitted at 2/4/2010 3:01:00 PM

CEO Jonathan Schwartz thought it best to announce his departure publicly via microblog. Was it offensive? Or might this be the start of a new trend?

Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

IBM hits graphene transistor breakthrough (CNET News.com) Submitted at 2/5/2010 6:19:29 AM

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offensive content: If you believe this comment is offensive or violates the CNET's Site Terms of Use, you can report it below (this will not automatically remove the comment). Once reported, our

staff will be notified and the comment will be reviewed.

Select type of offense: Offensive: Sexually explicit or offensive language Spam: Advertisements or commercial links

Disruptive posting: Flaming or offending other users Illegal activities: Promote cracked software, or other illegal content Comments(optional): Report Cancel

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From Alfresco to Canonical (CNET News.com) Submitted at 2/5/2010 6:00:00 AM

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After more than four years at Alfresco, I have joined Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, as its chief operating officer.

You can read Canonical's announcement of my appointment here, as well Alfresco's here.

I am excited, humbled, and, candidly, torn by this opportunity.

In late 2005, John Powell and John Newton, the co-founders of Alfresco, took a chance on me, an open-source evangelist at Novell. I was the 13th employee and the company's first U.S. employee. My prior history had been with embedded Linux ( L i n e o ) a n d semiconductors/silicon (Mitsui),

but they gave me the chance to grow as general manager of the Americas and later as vice president of business development.

These have been the best years of my career, working with wonderful people who have pushed me to work harder, become smarter, and do better.

I've been fortunate to help the company to 18 straight growth quarters, with Alfresco's most recent quarter (ending February 28) the company's biggest ever-and by a significant margin. The problem, for me, is that Alfresco runs so well now that I have been having a hard time finding meaningful ways to continue to contribute.

When my friend Mark Shuttleworth texted me over the Christmas holiday about the opening of the COO role, it interested me greatly. It is an opportunity to expand my experience and to work on some really hard and varied problems,

including cloud computing, consumer Linux adoption, and community development. It's also the opportunity to work with some fantastic people (over 320 of them scattered across 29 different countries).

I spent a few days in London, meeting with several of the people with whom I'll have daily interaction (including Jane Silber, Chris Kenyon, Mark Shuttleworth, Neil Levine, Suzanne Rozier, Matt Zimmerman), and, as I have at Alfresco, I felt at home. These are bright, driven people. It made the challenges of Canonical feel less daunting.

As COO, I am tasked with aligning the company's strategic goals and operational activities, the optimization of day-to-day operations, and leadership of Canonical marketing and backoffice functions. Some of these things are very familiar to me; others aren't. That's precisely the challenge I feel I need.

I will remain living in Utah but will commute regularly to London, where most of the Canonical executives are based.

(I will be starting my days at 4 a.m. Mountain Time to try to overlap as much as possible with U.K. working hours. Ouch.)

Despite this change, I want to stress that this blog remains a CNET open-source blog, not a Canonical blog (just as it hasn't been an Alfresco blog). I'm sure that there will be more Linuxrelated stories, but to my friends at Red Hat and other open-source companies, please--as always-let me know if you think a post in The Open Road has been unfair to your company.

And to my friends at proprietary software companies, well, I won't think less of you for surrendering early. :-) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Slacker Radio: Pandora's Palm WebOS rival

by Jessica Dolcourt (Webware.com) Submitted at 2/4/2010 4:15:00 PM

Streaming radio app Slacker Radio breaks into Palm's App Catalog for WebOS, creating rivalry for Pandora Radio.

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Leaves Show Looped Networks May Be Better Than Branched

by Laura Sanders (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:20:00 AM

Leaf veins show that looped networks may be better at overcoming obstacles than branched networks.

What to expect from open-source Symbian (Q&A) (CNET News.com) Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:48:00 AM

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On Thursday, the Symbian Foundation announced that it had

completed the open-sourcing of its mobile operating system--the largest such migration in software history.

ZDNet UK spoke to Lee Williams, chief executive of the Symbian Foundation, to learn more about the implications of the open-sourcing process for the

venerable OS and find out what people can expect from upcoming versions--and when they might expect to see a Symbian-based tablet or Netbook.

There was a lot of third-party code in Symbian -- how much of that had to be stripped from the

OS, and how much did the third parties agree to open source?

Williams: We took the Symbian OS code, which is approximately a third of the main branch of the code line, then we took the Series 60 code from Nokia, which is easily a third or more, then the code from the former

UIQ. Read more of " Symbian tablets 'very likely', says Foundation chief" at ZDNet UK. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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FUTURE continued from page 19

Using the syllabus of my Social Media Skills for Journalists course (developed with adjunct professor Adam Glenn), we outlined what social media can do for journalists: • find new story ideas, trends and sources • connect with audience(s) • bring attention and traffic • help them create, craft and enhance their personal brands — this point is absolutely essential for journalists to grasp. Once upon a time your work spoke for itself. Nowadays, there’s too much competing for everyone’s attention and you have to make sure you get your work out there and get it noticed.

have important conversations. I saw up close for the first time Mashable’s in-person convening power, having experienced its online convening power for a long time now. Attendees included a cross-section of folks doing some of the most interesting work in media today.

And, as you will hear in the video, many people in the room knew more about the topic that I did, including Edelman’s Steve Rubel and members of the Mashable editorial team (who, in some ways, are living prototypes of tomorrow’s journalists). The Folly of Predicting the Future As we say in the slides, the social media scene today is where radio was in 1912, where Smart journalists understand TV was in 1950, where the web that social media is for listening, was in 1996. A lot of wonderful not just broadcasting or sharing o p p o r t u n i t i e s a n d t e r r i b l e w h a t ’ s o n y o u r m i n d . mistakes lie ahead of us.

Mashable’s Convening Power P r e d i c t i n g t h e f u t u r e o f As with most events these days, journalism at any of those points I l e a r n e d m u c h f r o m t h e would have resulted in a lot of audience Q & A a n d t h e wrong predictions back then. networking sessions before and While we are sure many of our after the talk. My boss, Nicholas predictions are going to be Lemann, Columbia J-school wrong in specifics, we have the D e a n a n d N e w Y o r k e r chutzpah to presume they are contributor, often talks about the right directionally. We welcome convening power of a place like your feedback and input. our school: the ability to bring Connect with Vadim Lavrusik together influential people to on Twitter (@ lavrusik) and via

his blog, Lavrusik.com and his new project covering startups in New York City, NYC3.0.

Connect with Sree Sreenivasan on Twitter (@sreenet) and via his Facebook tech tips page, Facebook.com/SreeTips. His columns about the media and technology run in DNAinfo.com, a Manhattan news site he helped put together with Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts (whose family just bought the Cubs and Wrigley Field). The syllabus and notes for his Social Media Skills for Journalists course is at bit.ly/socmediaskills and his workshops collection is at bit.ly/workshops. On Friday, Feb. 5, 2010, he is hosting two free webcasts, Basic Twitter for Journalists and Advanced Twitter for Journalists, one of them featuring Mashable founder Peter Cashmore. Details and archive at bit.ly/columbiajtw2.

Image courtesy of 92YTribeca in New York City Tags: journalism, Journalist, media, nextup-nyc, social media week

Feb. 5, 1940: It's Surreal Thing — H.R. Giger Born

by Scott Thill (Wired Top Stories)

Surrealist sci-fi artist H.R. Giger turns 70 today. William Gibson calls his stuff "My kind of

Disney!"

23

ADM Says Video Mocking Them Is Copyright Infringement; Abuses Copyright Law To Stifle Free Speech

by Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

Crichton, about a company that is clearly supposed to be ADM. Friedman points out how this is So we just had that post about a clear abuse of copyright law how a TV station in Boston was and a violation of free speech: abusing copyright law to take This is outright copyright abuse. down slightly embarrassing Criticism is fair use. When v i d e o o f a w e a t h e r m a n i t anyone asks whether in fact fair employs. In the post, I noted u s e i s g r o u n d e d i n t h e that while this was just over a Constitution's guarantee of free potentially off-color joke, there speech, all you need is to think were important free speech of a situation like this -- one can implications to it. Law professor appropriate copyrighted works to Peter Friedman quickly points us c r i t i c i z e a n d p a r o d y t h e to a more serious case of a giant copyright holder. And to use the company stifling criticism copyright laws to silence that t h r o u g h D M C A t a k e d o w n . critique has nothing to do with Apparently, food conglomerate, protecting intellectual property A r c h e r s D a n i e l M i d l a n d and the rights of a creator to (famous, among other things, for profit from his, her, or its getting caught in a massive creation: it's unconstitutional blatant price-fixing scheme that censorship! The courts have tried made pretty much all of your to reconcile the question of how food a lot more expensive than it copyright law can possibly needed to be), doesn't believe survive a First Amendment criticism of its CEO should be challenge (after all, the First allowed. Friedman had posted a Amendment says Congress shall link to a video that took a bland, make no law that interferes with boring video of ADM's CEO freedom of speech... and yet droning on about "agriculture's that's exactly what copyright role in the growing economy," does) by saying that a robust fair and edited it to "make it appear use exception is the key to as if she were speaking openly making it okay. But when fair on behalf of an evil multinational use is trampled on repeatedly, it bent on the gross and horrific makes you wonder how anyone exploitation of the world and can still claim that copyright isn't especially of multinational food a massive abuse of the First markets." Honestly, the original Amendment. v i d e o l o o k s j u s t l i k e t h e Permalink| Comments| Email ridiculous corporate video that is This Story made in the movie Michael Submitted at 2/5/2010 3:12:44 AM

24

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MashBash SXSWi 2010: 2,000+ RSVPs & Last Chance to Win a Free Conference Badge!

by Adam Hirsch (Mashable!)

Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:12:00 AM

More than 2,000 people have RSVPed for MashBash SXSWi 2010, our second annual official SXSWi event, taking place on Sunday, March 14, at Buffalo Billiards in Austin, Texas.

If you don’t have your SXSWi ticket yet, this is your last chance to enter our giveaway to win two full SXSWi conference badges and access to the MashBash VIP List via a sweepstakes on Facebook! Check out the contest here and enter to win before tonight at 11:59 p.m. ET. Join Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, Adam Ostrow, Josh Catone, Barb Dybwad, Brett Petersel and myself, along with our sponsors Cliqset and Sony Electronics and 1,600+ SXSWi attendees for a night of music and networking.

In addition, there will be a threehour open bar, strong Wi-Fi, a game room and plenty of surprises!

Don’t forget to RSVP to let us and the other attendees know you are coming at our Eventbrite page. Starting next week we will be selecting winners at random from the Eventbrite RSVP list to get special VIP Access to the event.

More MashBash SXSWi news,

updates and excitement to come!

The Contest Apply: Facebook Contest powered by WildFire Prizes: Two winners will each receive one SXSWi Conference Badge and VIP Admission to the MashBash SXSWi 2010 event Rules: 18+, U.S. Only(see application for full rules) Thanks to: Special thanks to SXSW team for the 2 SXSWi Conference Badges Details Date: Sunday, March 14, 2010 Time: 10:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m.

Location: Buffalo Billiards, 201 6th Street, Austin, TX Admission: Open to SXSWi attendees RSVP for Chance to Win VIP Access to MashBash SXSWi 2010: sxswi.eventbrite.com Socialize: Facebook Many thanks to our sponsors: “Sony Electronics has created high-quality, innovative and stylish products for over 40 years. Thanks to Mashable, Sony’s new MP4 bloggie™

camera will make its SXSWi debut. Capturing everyday moments in 1080p HD MP4 video and 5-megapixel photos, the compact device has advanced features like Face Detection and SteadyShot™, a large LCD screen, a built-in USB for uploading and charging, integrated software for easy Web sharing, and allows for expandable storage with Memory Stick PRO Duo™ or SD media cards. The bloggie camera is one of many products just launched under Sony’s new global brand message – make.believe. Believe that anything you can imagine, you can make real. For more information go to www.sony.com/bloggie.”

“Cliqset makes it easy for people to share, discover, and discuss content from everywhere on the Web. Cliqset helps you filter through the activity, like status updates, reviews, blog posts, videos, articles, music and pretty much everything that’s online, and consume the social stream the way you want to. To connect with Cliqset, visit us at www.cliqset.com.”

Tags: contest, MashBash, sweepstakes, sxsw, sxswi

APP continued from page 20

"Poker" as a application name search.

A similar natural-named URL service is available from http://linktoapp.com/. You provide an application name or a set of names separated by "+" characters. The site returns a natural-language style search link. As link-to-app is a third party service, your comfort levels may vary in using it.

Links to your review page. At times you may want to link directly to an application's review page, whether from the application itself or from your website, in order to encourage positive reviews. Apple's built-in "rate on delete" policy tends to skew reviews towards unhappy customers. Providing an in-app link for users who have launched your app for, say, the third or tenth time, can help counterbalance that trend.

A review page URL looks like this, consisting of an app id, a page number for the reviews to start from, and a sort ordering.

Valid orderings are 0 or 1: Most Helpful, 2: Most Favorable, 3: Most Critical, and 4: Most Recent. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObje cts/MZStore.woa/wa/viewConte ntsUserReviews?id= 284417350&pageNumber=0&so rtOrdering=1&type=Purple+Soft ware&mt=8 Just substitute your

id in in place of 284417350.

Notice that this does not use an id prefix before that number the way the direct app links do. To link from your application use a standard openURL: call, e.g. [ [ U I A p p l i c a t i o n sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:yourApplication ReviewURL]] Using iTunes affiliate links from applications. If you need to use affiliate links when connecting to iTunes or App Store from an application, Apple has you covered. Apple's Technical QA1629 shows you how to create an NSURLConnection that handles the affiliate redirection to create a affiliateready URL without using intermediate applications. That's really handy for anyone who needs to monetize their apps through commissions.

Thanks Raingrove TUAW App Store devsugar: Browser-based previews and URL tricks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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25

Facebook revamps home page (CNET News.com) Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:36:20 AM

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Facebook has gotten another face-lift.

The popular social-networking site has tweaked its home page yet again. This time around, the redesign puts more of Facebook's core features and settings right on the home page. The goal is to spare users from having to jump from one page to another to access their favorite features.

The redesign was rolled out to the first group of users on Thursday, Facebook's 6th birthday. As of Thursday evening, 80 million out of Facebook's 400 million customers should have received the new home page, according to Inside Facebook.

A guide to Facebook's new home page(Credit: Facebook) The top menu of the Facebook home page now displays icons for requests, messages, and other notifications. The icons turn into

red bubbles when you've got new requests waiting for your attention. Just click on one of the icons, and a drop-down menu appears showing you all the items in that list.

The right side of the top menu now displays links that take you home or to your profile page. A new account menu lets you quickly access your account settings, help center, and related

displaying your news feed, though you can now bounce between top news and most recent news.

But a home page redesign isn't the only thing on Facebook's mind. The company is reportedly also ready to jettison its internal e-mail program and replace it with a full-featured Web mail application, according to TechCrunch.

Known internally as Project Titan, the new e-mail effort could please many Facebook users who have complained about the limitations and clumsiness of the current e-mail feature. TechCrunch says the new e-mail system will support both POP and IMAP, so you can pages. devoted to that cause.

In the middle of the top menu is The left side of the new home use it outside of Facebook. a new search field, through page offers links to your news You'll also be able to set up your which you can find names, feed, messages, friends, and own Facebook vanity URL as subjects, and other items of photos. But there's a twist here as your address, for example, interest. Type the name of a well. Click on the Friends link, joe.smith@facebook.com. friend, for example, and you'll and the Friends page pops up in No word yet on when the Titan find recent posts, photos, and the center. Click on the Photos will be launched to the public. other content for that person. link, and your own photo albums Five Filters featured article: Type the name of a subject, such and those of your friends appear. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: as Haiti earthquake, and you'll The center of the home page PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, also find groups and pages essentially stays the same by Term Extraction.

Boehner: GOP and Tea Partiers Believe the Same Things (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 2/4/2010 10:53:19 AM

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today that there is no difference in beliefs

between the GOP and tea partiers.

“There really is no difference between what Republicans believe in and what the tea party activists believe in,” Boehner

said during an appearance on the

conservative Mike Gallagher’s radio show.

Boehner said his advice to Republican lawmakers going into this fall’s elections has been to “prove it to the tea party

activists that we really are who we say we are.”

If you take Boehner at his word, then, here are some of the things Republicans believe in.

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Tech/ Politics/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

Microsoft Exec Calls For 'Driver's License For The Internet'

by Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

sophisticated," the Microsoft executive said.

Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:09:00 AM "We need a kind of World It's been nearly ten years since Health Organization for the we first heard the idea that there Internet," he said. should be some sort of driver's "When there is a pandemic, it license for the internet, and it's organizes the quarantine of no less ridiculous a concept now cases. We are not allowed to than it was then. However, it's o r g a n i z e t h e s y s t e m a t i c still brought up every now and quarantine of machines that are then. The latest, as sent in by compromised."

Marcus Carab is that Microsoft's He also called for a "driver's chief research and strategy license" for internet users. o f f i c e r , C r a i g M u n d i e , i s "If you want to drive a car you suggesting an internet driver's have to have a license to say that license and a special WHO for you are capable of driving a car, the internet, as a method of the car has to pass a test to say it fighting back against bad actors is fit to drive and you have to online: Mundie and other experts have insurance." These are the have said there is a growing need kind of ideas people have when t o p o l i c e t h e i n t e r n e t t o they haven't bothered to think clampdown on fraud, espionage through the consequences of and the spread of viruses. what they're saying. It's unlikely "People don't understand the any kind of WHO would be scale of criminal activity on the particularly effective. We internet. Whether criminal, already have various security individual or nation states, the companies that have a strong community is growing more profit motive to do the same

Video: Political Sheep from Hell (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 2/4/2010 11:22:31 AM

Carly Fiorina’s attack video on California Senate primary opponent Tom Campbell is simply the greatest political advertisement ever made.

Definitely makes me want to vote for her, because anyone willing to get this weird deserves my unstinting support.[Video] I think Fiorina’s video even tops Dr. Gravel’s Presidential Performance Art.

thing, and they're failing (miserably). Setting up some sort of government agency to do the same thing? That sounds like a bureaucratic mess.

And an internet driver's license is even more ridiculous. Unlike a car, the internet is something that people have to use all the time. No driver's license is going to stop people from getting suckered by scammers. Sure, more education could be helpful, but any sort of requirement that they need to pass a test won't stop people from getting on the internet and doing something stupid. If anything, it will give people a false sense of security online. Yes, there are issues with scammers online, but we're not going to fix them with some bureaucracy and forcing people to take a proficiency test.

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Is Spotify Looking To Enable CwF+RtB For Musicians?

by Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

like the CwF+RtB business model we talk about here:"We want a platform where we can There's been plenty of buzz [ a l l o w ] l o t s a n d l o t s o f around Spotify, the online music experimentation. We don't know service that is available in what will work for an individual Europe, but not in the US. artist. Some will benefit from Having played with the product, scarcity. Some will benefit from it's really nicely done, but there's it being widely available, even always been a huge concern over free. They might make their whether or not there's a real money by giving away all their business model there. The music for free ... In the best of r e c o r d l a b e l s h a v e b e e n world, Spotify will become the notorious for burdening any platform where you manage your useful startup with ridiculous music and because you do that, licensing terms that make it close we will figure out what kinds of to impossible for any such offerings you're interested in. For business to survive (let alone certain types of artists, you might profit). Spotify had said it was be interested in something going to launch in the US, but unique. You might do a meethasn't been able to, and while the and-greet. It might be that you company keeps saying it's close, want it on vinyl because it feels other reports suggest that the better. Or just go and see the Today in major labels still haven't reached show. Or have the merchandise."

Unprecedented agreements with the company.

Who knows if Spotify can pull it However, what's much more Obstructionism [Sigh] interesting is this interview with off (and if it will build this itself, or partner to do so), but this is a

by Pareene (Gawker) Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, where much more ambitious play than he suggests the company wants what's been talked about in the Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:27:37 AM to branch out well beyond the past, and while it's risky, seems Senator Richard Shelby will subscription/ad-based business like a much better long-term bet. block all of Barack Obama's m o d e l s a n d s t a r t e n a b l i n g Permalink| Comments| Email nominees until he gets his pork. musicians to offer other business This Story models that sound an awful lot Submitted at 2/5/2010 5:13:22 AM

Tech/ Politics/ Consumer Reports/

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Vanity Fair releases Oscar predictions app

Clash of the Titans: Palin Says Limbaugh's Comments Were 'Crude and Demeaning'

by Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

(Little Green Footballs)

the show itself from within the app and watch trailers of the nominated films. I'm not an Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:00:00 PM Oscars fan, but I often fire up Filed under: Software, iPhone, Twitter when watching my App Store beloved Red Sox because the Film fans everywhere will be accompanying chat makes the sitting before their TVs on experience more fun.

March 7th to catch the Academy For more iPhone fun on Oscar Awards. Now, as with so many night, check out these apps: other things, there's an app for that.

• The Envelope(Free) Try and Vanity Fair Magazine has predict the winners and share produced the free Oscars app results with your friends. called Vanity Fair Hollywood. • Awards: Oscar Edition($0.99) U s e r s c a n s u b m i t t h e i r Search for winners and nominees predictions for winners, browse in all categories quickly, search photo galleries, share comments award histories and get up-toa n d p r e d i c t i o n r e s u l t s v i a date information and results.

Facebook and more. Of course, • T h e A d a d e m y A w a r d s you can chat in real time during B i b l e ( $ 2 . 9 9 ) l i s t s a l l 8 5 0

Academy Award winners, organized by name, title, category, etc. It's quite the mobile tome for Oscar bufffs.

• Oscar Pool 2010($0.99) Invite your friends to bet on who will win. Create a profile, add photos and more.

[Via TechCrunch] TUAW Vanity Fair releases Oscar predictions app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Submitted at 2/4/2010 7:53:41 PM

We have a new entry in the “Is American politics weird enough yet?” sweepstakes: Sarah Palin bashes Rush Limbaugh.

“Governor Palin believes crude and demeaning name calling at the expense of others is disrespectful.”

27

Lusher Lashes from Consumer Reports

by Press Room (Consumer Reports) Submitted at 2/4/2010 9:00:59 PM

Lusher Lashes - from Consumer Reports Latisse promises to grow you longer, fuller, eyelashes.

But there's a lot more to the story than what you see in TV ads.

From Consumer Reports February issue. CR Podcast Subscribe now!

S u b s c r i b e t o ConsumerReports.org for expert Ratings, buying advice and reliability on hundreds of products. Update your feed preferences

Copyright Industry Responds To iiNet Ruling By Asking For Gov't Bailout; Aussie Gov't 'Studying' It

by Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 2/5/2010 6:45:00 AM

So, the Australian court ruling in favor of iiNet was quite brilliant, not just in getting the technology and the law (and common sense) right, but also in explaining why it wouldn't make much sense to change the law either. But, of course, that's not the way the big industries that

rely on copyright as crutch operate. If they don't get their way, they go crying to the gov't to have their business models propped up and thrust into the law. So, of course, the "antipiracy" (i.e., the "we can't adapt so let's drag the whole world backwards") group AFACT has already jumped out and demanded that the Australian government change the law in

response to the ruling. And, of course, the Australian government says it's"examining" the issue.

Of course, this just shows how far gone AFACT and its members (Hollywood studios mainly) are out of touch with what this ruling is saying. The ruling points out, quite clearly, that the problem isn't with the law and it's not with the

technology. Changing the law doesn't fix things. The problem is with how the big movie studios have failed to adapt, and are now blaming totally blameless parties for their own failures. The proper response is: "Okay, it's time to come up with better business models." It's not to ask the government to artificially blame a third party that had nothing to do with the

infringement. It's really a rather stunning statement of incompetence that any industry thinks the cure to their own business model failures is to legally make an innocent third party responsible.

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Hachette Joins Macmillan in E-Book Smartphones Are War Against Amazon Selling Like Crazy

by Samuel Axon (Mashable!)

Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:12:38 AM

The Wall Street Journal reports that French publisher Hachette Book Group has sent letters to book agents letting them know that it is going the way of Macmillan and defying Amazon’s pricing scheme for ebooks on the Kindle reader.

Amazon has tried to keep new digital books at $9.99 or less, but publishers are concerned that the price will undercut hardcover sales. Major hardcover releases often go for as much as three or four times that much.

Publisher Macmillan previously announced that it wanted to bump prices of its digital books closer to $15, and Amazon responded by pulling the

store at Amazon’s preferred prices, and Amazon hasn’t responded publicly to Hachette’s newly stated intentions. We don’t expect that there will be a sales freeze in this case, though.

News Corp. bigwig Rupert Murdoch has said that his publisher HarperCollins — which News Corp. owns — is publisher’s books off its online also dissatisfied with Amazon’s s t o r e s h e l v e s . A m a z o n restrictions on pricing, and that eventually agreed to capitulate, its newly struck deal with Apple though; it will offer Macmillan for the iPad allows greater books at higher prices. Still, this flexibility. It looks like the agreement has yet to come to iPad’s entry to the market could force Amazon to budge more fruition.

Hachette books — which than Macmillan already has; include The Lovely Bones and we’ll probably all be paying titles by authors like Stephen more for our e-books soon.

Colbert and Emily Dickinson — Tags: amazon, apple, hachette, are still available in the Kindle ipad, Kindle, Macmillan

by Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Submitted at 2/5/2010 5:46:12 AM

According to market research firm IDC, vendors shipped 54.5 million smartphone devices in the fourth quarter of 2009, an increase of 39% compared to the same period in 2008.

A lot of this growth can be attributed to Apple and its iPhone, which has grown from 9.1% market share in 2008 to 14.4% in 2009, shipping 8.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2009. Although some reports claim Apple’s smartphone market share has dropped compared to the third quarter of 2009, Apple can still be satisfied with its impressive overall growth.

BlackBerry manufacturer RIM lately hasn’t been getting as much press as some other manufacturers, but it’s also doing very well, with its market share rising from 15.6% to

19.8% in 2009. Besides RIM, Apple and Nokia (which still holds the first spot in the smartphone market, slightly dropping from 40.0% in 2008 to 38.9% in 2009), the other two names in the top five list are HTC and Samsung with 4.6% and 3.3% market share, respectively. However, this list might get rearranged soon, as Motorola has had significant success with its Droid, shipping 2.5 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to just 1.6 million in the same period in 2008. [img credit: IDC] Tags: idc, Mobile 2.0, smartphones

Athletes Confused by Olympic Social Media Rules

Pentagon's New Bag: 'Synthetic Organisms' With Self-Destruct

by Mark McClusky (Wired Top Stories)

by Katie Drummond (Wired Top Stories)

2010 Winter Olympics, told her nearly 35,000 Twitter followers she would not be Tweeting until Submitted at 2/5/2010 6:02:00 AM after the Games because, she American skier Lindsey Vonn, said, it was against the rules. It one of the potential stars of the isn't. But the rules do forbid

athletes from saying certain things, and the confusion might cause more problems than an outright ban.

Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:16:00 AM

The Pentagon's mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is

looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military's advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

Tech/

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29

AppFund offers VC money for iPad apps

by Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:00:00 AM

Filed under: Software, Developer, SDK A group of investors has teamed up to form AppFund, a company solely focused on raising money for and incubating apps for the iPad. You'll remember the somewhat similar iFund, which even got a mention in an Apple keynote a while back, and eventually offered up millions of dollars to emerging iPhone app companies like ngmoco and others.

AppFund is trying to do the same S t o r e l o g o e v e n t u a l l y . I n w e l l , a s t h e s e s i m u l a t o r thing, though they're starting out addition, various graphics were screenshots on Gadget Lab a bit smaller, promising $5000 to found on the official site that hint show, so it's very possible that $ 5 0 0 , 0 0 0 t o f o l k s w i t h at an iPhone release as well. The one of the launch games for interesting iPad ideas and the game, which you can see in the Apple's tablet could be a sweet, means to get them up and trailer linked above, is a colorful high-resolution old school Sonic running. return to the series' 2D roots, but sequel. We'll keep you updated -- They're soliciting ideas right even the updated 3D graphics are just watch out for the drool. now, so if you saw the iPad on probably enough for the latest TUAW Sonic 4 coming to the stage and came up with a versions of the iPhone to handle. iPhone/iPad? originally appeared brilliant way to use it, you can And of course there's the iPad -- on The Unofficial Apple Weblog send them a report and see if considering that the game is (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 they bite. You'll probably need a c a l l e d " E p i s o d e 1 " ( s o 08:00:00 EST. Please see our solid business plan and/or a presumably Sega is going to be terms for use of feeds. releasing a few of these), Sega Read| Permalink| Email this| will probably want as big an Comments install base as possible. Just widening the display of an iPhone app might not work so

Sonic 4 coming to the iPhone/iPad?

by Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:00:00 AM

Filed under: Gaming, Hardware, Rumors, Software, Apple Sega surprised everyone last night with the reveal of Sonic the Hedgehog 4-- apparently the newest game in the series will be a download-only episodic title coming to the Xbox and PS3 later this year. And the iPhone, too? The very end of the trailer, as you can see above, has a blank rectangle after the XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare logos, which some presume is a space for the App

prototype as well, since they probably won't give you $500,000 to develop an iPad whoopie cushion that you can sneak onto a chair and make someone sit on. Or will they?

Excuse me, I have go to compose an email...

TUAW AppFund offers VC money for iPad apps originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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30

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Siri Is a Personal Assistant that Fits in Your Pocket [Downloads]

by Adam Pash (Lifehacker)

Apple hires two more for mobile ad sales

by Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:00:00 AM

Filed under: Portables, Software, Freeware, Apple In addition to their Quattro Wireless buy last month, Apple has picked up two more new employees that seems like additions to an incoming mobile advertising business. Theo Theodorou was picked up from Microsoft's mobile advertising sales department and will head sales in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. And Todd Tran, from mobile ad agency Joule, will serve as general manager in Europe.

Apple hasn't announced exact details of what they plan to do

Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:30:00 AM

iPhone: We can't think of a person who couldn't use a little help with everyday planning, with all of this mobile research, and chores, but advertising, but they did say in unfortunately we can't all afford the conference call last week that a personal assistant. Siri is a they plan to use their Quattro smart voice-recognition virtual Wireless acquisition to help app assistant for your iPhone. developers make money, Give the video above a look for especially on free apps. We don't an idea of how Siri works. yet know the exact specifics of Essentially, you speak your that plan ("iAds," coming soon bidding, it interprets what you to an App Store near you?), but it by Stan Schroeder U p d a t e : T w i t t e r u s e r say, and it goes hunting for what looks like Apple is making a (Mashable!)

ScepticGeek points out that this it is that you want. Ask it to look significant investment in putting problem has been going on for up movie showtimes, make Submitted at 2/5/2010 3:12:17 AM mobile ads on their devices. quite some time now, as can be reservations, get a taxi, fetch TUAW Apple hires two more T w i t t e r s e e m s t o b e seen from this bug request on flight info, set up reminders, or for mobile ad sales originally experiencing some problems Twitter support forums. Don’t just get the weather forecast. appeared on The Unofficial again, as some users report their expect it to be fixed very soon, Granted, you can find plenty of Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, number of tweets is off the though. As Twitter puts it, “this t o o l s t o d o t h e s e t h i n g s 05 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST. charts, usually up to tens of bug is a low priority issue separately, but Siri culls all these Please see our terms for use of thousands, although the real because it does not prevent users tasks into one smart, voicefeeds. number is much lower. from fully using Twitter. We do activated app.

Read| Permalink| Email this| We’ve e-mailed Twitter and not expect to have this issue Siri is a free download from the Comments asked them what’s happening. It fixed in the immediate future for iTunes App Store, so if you're interested, there's no harm in seems that besides the unusually this reason.” high number of tweets for certain Tags: social media, tweets, trying it out. Thanks Bryce! Siri users, everything else is normal, twitter so there’s no reason to panic just yet.

Number of Tweets Gone Wild for Some Users

Justice Dept to Google Books: Close, But No Cigar

by Eliot Van Buskirk (Wired Top Stories)

Google’s plan to digitize the world’s books into a combination research library and

bookstore has hit another snag: progress made, issues remain' which would let the project The U.S. Justice Department with the proposed settlement proceed. says that 'despite substantial agreement of the class-action suit

Politics/

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31

Freedom Agenda

by William Galston (The New Republic - All Feed)

Harvey Mansfield, the wellknown conservative professor of political philosophy (and—full Submitted at 2/4/2010 2:35:46 PM disclosure—a longtime friend) Message from fivefilters.org: If has penned a serious and civil you can, please donate to the full critique of what he takes to be -text RSS service so we can the animating impulse of the continue developing it.

Obama administration. The nub Our political debates, our public of his argument is that Obama is discourse—on current economic a “progressive” whose purported and domestic issues—too often non- (or post-) partisanship is bear little or no relation to the designed to put certain issues actual problems the United “beyond political dispute” so that States faces. arguments are about means, not What is at stake in our economic ends. And once the argument is decisions today is not some about means, the door is opened grand warfare of rival ideologies wide to “rational administration” which will sweep the country and the rule of experts. with passion, but the practical Take health care. Mansfield m a n a g e m e n t o f a m o d e r n interprets Obama’s statement economy. What we need is not that "I am not the first president labels and clichés but more basic to take up this cause, but I am discussion of the sophisticated determined to be the last" as an and technical questions involved effort to take the issue out of in keeping a great economic politics once and for all—to machinery moving ahead. decide, by side-stepping, the The national interest lies in high fundamental issue of principle. e m p l o y m e n t a n d s t e a d y In his view, that issue is: expansion of output, in stable “Should the government take prices and a strong dollar. The over health care or should it be declaration of such an objective left to the private sphere?” The is easy; their attainment in an question precedes, and trumps, intricate and interdependent the myriad technical issues that economy and world is a little transform the reform impulse more difficult. To attain them, i n t o i m p e n e t r a b l e , t r u s t we require not some automatic destroying 2,000-page bills. By response but hard thought. pursuing reform without - - J o h n F . K e n n e d y , dwelling on that question, he Commencement Address at Yale writes, Obama's worldview University, June 11, 1962 “wants to put an end to politics.

We deliberate, not about ends, It considers its measures to be but about means. progressive, and progress to be --Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics irreversible.” The problem with III. iii progress, so understood, is that it

is at war with political liberty, rightly understood. One cannot seek to place matters of principle beyond politics without wanting “an imposed political solution.”

Some human beings—and by implication, political parties—love progress more than they love liberty; others reverse the hierarchy. Mansfield stands with the party of liberty, the republican principle, against the party of progress, the party of rational administration, which is “more suited to monarchy than to republics.”

Where to begin? Mansfield offers an elaborate argument in defense of the proposition that Obamacare represents a government takeover. I disagree and could offer an equally elaborate rebuttal. I could argue, as well, that Obama’s appeal to transcend the division between red and blue America reflects not a desire to end partisan argument, but rather most Americans’ disgust with the contemporary hyper-partisanship that thwarts effective governance and allows problems to fester indefinitely. These are hardly trivial matters. But because they would divert us from the questions Mansfield raises, I shall pursue them no farther.

As Mansfield knows very well, he does Democrats no favor by framing current disputes as conflicts between progress and liberty. In American politics, the defenders of liberty always occupy the rhetorical high

ground. If there really were a contradiction between progress and liberty, progress would surely lose—and so would the party of progress. So there are two questions. First, is there such a contradiction? And second, if there isn’t—if what we really have is a dispute between two competing understandings of liberty—which should we prefer?

I can dispose of the first question quickly: There is no inherent contradiction between progress and liberty. Simply put, removing issues from the political agenda—placing them beyond dispute—often promotes liberty. After political contestation and a bloody war, we decided that slavery was impermissible, and we reordered our laws and institutions accordingly. A century later, we made a parallel decision about racial discrimination, with similar consequences.

I suppose we could view these questions as permanently open to debate. But we don’t, and rightly so. In that sense, there is a “progressive” component to our political history: While some questions remain open, others don’t. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Settling questions neither ends politics nor denies liberty.

Mansfield might reply that, while some disputes raise such fundamental issues, most don’t, and it disserves political liberty to place the latter beyond the

bounds of ordinary political contestation. Fair enough. So what is Obama actually saying—about health care, for example?

As I understand the president’s argument, it goes something like this: Our current health care system’s costs are rising at an unsustainable rate, threatening businesses, households, and our public finances. At the same time, nearly 50 million people go without health insurance—some by choice, to be sure, but most out of necessity. The only way to deal with all these problems effectively is to get nearly everyone into the insurance system, with a mix of subsidies and mandates, while creating a more competitive market among insurance plans. He may be right about this, or he may be wrong.

But the key point for my purposes is that he is putting forth his plan as the means to an ensemble of ends—universal insurance coverage in a system that reduces the rate of cost increases—that he takes to be both desirable and essential to the long-term common good.

This is a political argument, pure and simple. The president never intended to side-step politics, and he certainly did not succeed in doing so. He hoped that his articulation of the good to be achieved through his plan would outweigh the FREEDOM page 32

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FREEDOM continued from page 31

objections—such as cost and complexity—that he knew would be arrayed against it.

There are several ways to disagree with the president’s proposal. One is to say that while his ends are defensible, his means are defective. This is the line that Representative Paul Ryan takes, as the president has acknowledged. But note that this debate lies squarely within the arena of deliberation as Aristotle defines it. Nothing apolitical or liberty-denying about that-unless deliberation itself suffers from these defects, which would be an odd contention.

Another way of disagreeing with the president is to say that his ends are less important than he thinks—otherwise put, that we can better serve the public interest by giving priority to competing ends. In this vein, many Republicans contend that because even people without insurance get care when they need it, through emergency rooms or charitable organizations, it is unnecessary to use either legal coercion or public funds to universalize insurance coverage. And many fiscal hawks argue that the mechanisms the president uses to fund his proposal—tax increases and Medicare cuts—should be used instead to reduce the longterm federal budget deficit, which is projected to soar unsustainably. Again, a classic political debate, of the sort Aristotle analyzed in the

Rhetoric, and the president has done nothing to short-circuit it.

Mansfield gives short shrift to both these sorts of disagreements, focusing instead on a third, which is (to repeat) whether government or the private sphere should take the lead. He describes this as a question of “principle.” Is it? No doubt this question frames a major disagreement between the two political parties, and among Americans. And, as I’ve argued repeatedly, public mistrust of government has done more than anything else to weaken the president’s health reform effort.

The deeper question concerns not public sentiment, but, rather, the basis on which government may legitimately act under the Constitution. In 1933, FDR argued that that only the powers of government could be adequate to the exigencies of the moment.

If so, he said, it could not be the case that our Constitution had disabled us from meeting a grave threat to the general welfare, and potentially to constitutional government itself. He won that argument: We live today in the legacy of his victory, and (I say this at the risk of sounding “progressive”), we’re not going back.

The alternative formulation of the dispute--Mansfield’s, I think-is that the issue isn’t the relation of means and ends, but rather the right of government to act in certain ways. If government doesn’t have the right, then

considerations of efficacy are irrelevant. Even if government could bring about a good result by acting ultra vires, doing so would be an invasion of liberty, which is the most fundamental good. Rather than invade liberty, we should be prepared to live with the consequences of government forbearance. (I note for the record that if Abraham Lincoln had accepted this view, we’d probably be presenting passports at the Virginia/Maryland border.)

This brings me to the second question: If the issue is liberty, what is the nature of liberty, rightly understood? And does the Obama health care plan invade liberty, so understood?

To begin, experience gives us no reason to conclude that government is the only, or always the gravest, threat to freedom; clerical institutions and concentrations of unchecked economic power have often vied for that dubious honor. The unchecked market, moreover, regularly produces social outcomes at odds with the moral conditions of a free society.

Capitalism does not reliably produce, or reward, the good character a free society needs: Perceptive observers from Charles Dickens to Tom Wolfe have given us ample evidence to the contrary. And, while it may be that long-term dependence on government saps the spirit of self -reliance that liberty requires, there are other forms of

dependence---economic, social, and even familial---that often damage character in much the same way.

At the heart of the conservative misunderstanding of liberty is the presumption that government and individual freedom are fundamentally at odds. At the heart of any liberal understanding of freedom is the proposition that public power can advance freedom as well as undermine it.

In the real world, there is no such thing as freedom in the abstract. There are only specific freedoms, which differ in their conditions and consequences.

FDR famously enumerated four such freedoms, dividing them into two pairs: freedom of speech and worship; freedom from want and fear. The first pair had long been recognized and enshrined in the Constitution. The second were a new formulation, and Roosevelt made them concrete when he signed Social Security into law, justifying it as a way of promoting freedom from want: "We have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family ... against poverty-ridden old age." Three years later, he declared that Social Security payments will "furnish that minimum necessary to keep a foothold; and that is the kind of protection Americans want."

The conservatives of his day dismissed the second pair as

"New Deal freedoms" rather than "American freedoms." But those who have experienced the freedoms made possible by the New Deal are not so dismissive.

It is often observed, rightly, that Social Security has virtually eliminated poverty among the elderly. But this noble achievement has an equally profound flip side. Throughout human history, those who reached the age where they could no longer work have typically depended on their children or on charity for their basic subsistence. Social Security broke this age-old dependency by giving the elderly a minimum degree of economic selfsufficiency, expanding their range of effective control over the conditions of their postretirement years.

"Freedom of" and "freedom from" have distinctly different structures and implications.

"Freedom of" points toward spheres of action in which individuals make choices--for example, which faith to embrace, or whether to endorse any faith at all. The task of government is in part to secure those spheres against interference by individuals, groups, or government itself.

It is also to police the boundary between actions that principally affect individual agents and actions that impose costs and restrict the liberties of others.

FREEDOM page 36

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Oscar Grouching

by Christopher Orr (The New Republic - All Feed) Submitted at 2/4/2010 8:50:00 PM

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The Oscar nominations rolled on out this week, but with a difference: In a rather explicit admission that it does not trust its own judgment, the Academy has upped the number of Best Picture nominees from the usual five to ten. Let’s begin there.

Best Picture Last year, there was widespread disgruntlement that critical and popular hits Wall-E and The Dark Knight missed the cut for this award. So the Academy decided, in essence, to protect itself from its own ineptitude by nominating more pictures. On the surface, it worked, with the extra nominees offering a little added variety to the presumed field-of-five nominees ( Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, Inglourious Basterds, and Precious). This year’s Pixar gem, Up, got a nod that would have been unlikely otherwise, as did the closest thing last year saw to The Dark Knight, Neill Blomkamp’s District 9. An Education was a good movie, though among the more overpraised of the year (I’d have preferred that Bright Star sneak in here); A Serious Man displayed the Coens’ serious talents (even if I wished they’d

been directed toward different ends); and there have probably been worse nominees than The Blind Side, though its beating out Invictus for what Vulture called the “drama in which racism is fixed by sports” slot was a surprise, and clear evidence that the Academy, for good or ill, has fallen out of love with Clint Eastwood.

There were, of course, plenty of films that I think were more worthy than many of those nominated, including Where the Wild Things Are, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Funny People, The Informant!, Sin Nombre, and In the Loop. But none ever really came close to gathering the critical or financial momentum it would have needed to get a nod, and it seems ungenerous to fault the Academy for overlooking films that were overlooked so widely. So, in all, an acceptable list, if not a particularly good one.

I do have two complaints about the new ten-nominee format, however, one global and one circumstantial. The first is that, in expanding the field of nominees, the Academy let itself off too easily. If the problem was that it nominated the wrong films, the solution is not to expand the number of films so that it can’t help but nominate some of the right ones, too. (By that logic they should nominate every film released each year: Perfection, every time!) The solution is to nominate better

films. It is a notable irony of awards season that the Oscars, though by far the most prestigious honors bestowed, are also among the most unreliable-the most complacent and haphazard, the most easily swayed by momentum or politics or behind-the-scenes lobbying. I don’t know whether the Academy could be improved by expansion or contraction or some more fundamental reorganization. But if it doesn’t find a way to have more confidence in its own judgment, eventually we’ll be treated to 20 nominees in every category and the ceremony itself will last into April.

My second, more particular, gripe is this: Pretty much any chance that another movie would steal the prize away from Avatar has been erased by the tennominee format. With five contenders, it might have been possible for The Hurt Locker, or even Up in the Air, to stage an upset. But with the anti- Avatar vote stretched so thin, James Cameron’s interstellar opus should win easily. (At another time, I’ll weigh in on why this will be among the Worst Things Ever.)

Best Actor No real surprises here, and a solid bunch of nominees, though I think Matt Damon should have gotten a nod for conversing with himself in The Informant! and, in a better world, Michael Sheen would also have been rewarded

for his brilliant turn in The Damned United. Jeff Bridges is the apparent frontrunner for Crazy Heart, though he shouldn’t be: This is the kind of performance that demands less of an actor than it appears to. A Single Man’s Colin Firth would be my choice here, followed by The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner, but the betting money says it will be Bridges or George Clooney for Up in the Air. Best Actress Just as I would have chosen Bright Star over An Education for Best Picture, I’d have nominated the former’s star, Abbie Cornish, over the latter’s, Carey Mulligan. But then, I’d have nominated Cornish over any of the other nominees but Meryl Streep, who gave the wittiest, most charming performance of her storied career in Julie & Julia. There was some early momentum for Mulligan and Precious’s Gaboury Sidibe, but it seems to have abated, and it now looks like a race between Streep and The Blind Side’s Sandra Bullock--or, put another way, between hope and despair.

Let us pray the Academy remembers that Streep last won an Oscar 28 years (and a dozen nominations) ago, or, at least, that it recognizes the televisual self-interest of having her receive the award at a ceremony co-hosted by her It’s Complicated paramours Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

Best Supporting Actor

As we have known with reasonable certainty for six months now, Inglourious Basterds’Christoph Waltz will win this award; the greater suspense is in which language he will choose to receive it. I’m sorry that Alfred Molina has never been nominated for an Oscar, but I’m glad he wasn’t nominated for his turn in An Education, one of the flabbier performances of his exceptional career. Woody Harrelson’s nomination for The Messenger was well-deserved, and Matt Damon’s for Invictus, though a little odd, is admirable as well.

Christopher Plummer didn’t really merit a nod for his scenechewing in The Last Station(neither did Helen Mirren), but given that the Academy stiffed him altogether for his magnificent supporting turn as Mike Wallace in The Insider way back when, it’s fine with me if they continue making it up to him for the rest of his life. A final word: Anyone-anyone--who believes that Stanley Tucci delivered a better performance in The Lovely Bones than in Julie & Julia should be forced to watch both films back to back, over and over, until he sees the error of his ways. It’s as if the same form of mass insanity that led the Academy to reward Kate Winslet for The Reader rather than OSCAR page 39

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AEI People and Programs, February 5, 2010 (AEI.Org: Articles)

suggest that doing so in this case may undermine the effectiveness of its armed forces and the Message from fivefilters.org: If security of the country. Current you can, please donate to the full defense spending can be seen to -text RSS service so we can fall in two broad buckets: continue developing it. Long- funding for the war effort, and Term Defense Strategy Focuses funding to improve defense on Dollars, Not Sense capabilities and recapitalize and AEI's Center for Defense modernize defense programs-Studies(CDS) scholars say the known as the baseline budget.

Department of Defense's 2010 While the former is crucial as the Quadrennial Defense Review United States continues to fight (QDR), released Monday to on two fronts, neglecting the c o i n c i d e w i t h t h e O b a m a latter may leave the country administration's budget, proposes w i t h o u t s u f f i c i e n t d e f e n s e strategy based on predetermined capabilities to protect the United budget limits instead of first States. i d e n t i f y i n g U . S . s t r a t e g i c With good reason, the QDR o b j e c t i v e s t h e n a l l o c a t i n g focuses on how to prevail in the resources accordingly. "It's like current wars. But it also freezes looking through the wrong end the size of U.S. land forces and of a telescope," AEI's Tim does not address necessary Sullivan said of the review modernization efforts, Donnelly p r o c e s s . T h e Q D R i s a wrote on the CDS blog. In legislatively mandated review testimony to the House Armed conducted once every four years Services Committee last fall, to identify long-term defense Donnelly noted, "The disparity strategy and priorities. between what we ask of those in "Despite the legal requirement to uniform and the resources they define strategic needs first and have to fulfill their many then derive force size, structure, missions is disturbing." While programs, and lastly, budgets, the Air Force fleet is declining the Obama administration last a n d a g i n g , t h e A r m y i s year imposed defense budget m o b i l i z i n g r e s e r v i s t s a n d l i m i t s t h a t h a v e , b y t h e members of the National Guard, Pentagon's own admission, and the Navy fleet continues to constrained the review," AEI's s h r i n k , " t h e g a p b e t w e e n Thomas Donnelly wrote on the American strategic ends and CDS blog. military means grows and While it may seem refreshing to grows," Donnelly wrote on the hear of a government agency C D S b l o g . R e p r e s e n t a t i v e s e e k i n g t o w o r k w i t h i n a Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Rproposed budget, CDS scholars Calif.), ranking minority member Submitted at 2/4/2010 3:00:00 PM

of the House Armed Services Committee, also recognizes this shortcoming in the QDR. Maintaining the status quo and outlining a force structure built to win today's wars "misses the real purpose of the QDR: to outline and prepare our nation to defeat the threats of the future," McKeon said in a statement he released Monday.

On the CDS blog and in a narrated presentation prepared by the CDS, Donnelly pointed out that the level of defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product in the 2010 budget proposal remains at post-World War II lows; while money allocated for national defense totals approximately 4.9 percent of GDP according to Office of Management and Budget materials, spending on entitlements and servicing the national debt accounts for 15.4 percent of GDP. In the face of incredible budget challenges, keeping the defense budget small may be seen as a way to alleviate financial pressures. But is this stopgap one we will come to regret? Taking shortcuts on defense to pay for entitlements seems unwise, especially in light of the many threats to U.S. safety and security, and to life in free societies around the world.

A narrated presentation prepared by the Center for Defense Studies assesses the QDR and the Obama administration's budget. It is available here.

People and Programs

Google Abandons China: What Are the Implications? On Voice of America's On the Line, AEI's Nick Schulz discusses Google's recent decision to pull out of China. While China may think its choice to repress and censor its citizens will not be problematic, Schulz notes that a great deal of China's growth presently is because the country is still trying to catch up with developed countries, and its decision not to support information technology and other innovative advancements will likely limit China's growth capacity. Google's decision to pull out of China may also reflect "the thinking of a lot of American and European firms who have had troubles doing business there even beyond the information technology sector," Schulz said. Not only this, but, Schulz argued, Google's decision to leave China will likely have implications for U.S.-China relations. This is "one of a suite of issues that [the two countries] have to deal with," he said. "But these are fundamental, universal values and rights that people have . . . and the United States is going to stand for them. So, I expect it will be a sticking point."

Enabling Breakthrough Leadership in Schools. In his most recent Education Outlook, " Cages of Their Own Design," AEI's Frederick M. Hess presents five strategies to help reform-minded educators change

schools today. While many educators feel immobilized by collective bargaining agreements, state and federal regulations, and budget concerns, Hess demonstrates that those who choose to can break free of these restraints. Real reform can happen now if education leaders make better use of their existing authority.

Click here to read this Education Outlook.

AEI Press to Release Guide to Medicaid. Medicaid Everyone Can Count On: Public Choices for Equity and Efficiency, the newest book from the AEI Press, will be released next week.

Authors Thomas W. Grannemann and AEI's Mark V. Pauly provide a comprehensive guide to the Medicaid program that offers unique insights into the complex interactions among stakeholders in America's statebased public health care programs. The authors examine key facets of the program and offer suggestions for implementing health reforms that would extend eligibility, control costs, and provide better value both to program recipients and to taxpayers. Click here to order a copy of Medicaid Everyone Can Count On. Hot Off the Enterprise Blog "Evaluation of the administration's policies must be based on facts, not fabrications AEI page 35

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Senate Likely to Be Less Diverse After Elections (Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 2/4/2010 11:30:04 PM

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That historically all-white club known as the U.S. Senate is likely to lose what little diversity it has after November's elections.

Two white men will be competing for President Barack Obama's former seat in Illinois, now held by Roland Burris, the chamber's lone AfricanAmerican. Appointed by the scandal-tainted former governor, Burris won't be seeking a full term.

In contests in Florida, Texas and North Carolina, black candidates face daunting challenges to joining the august body, from difficulty raising cash to lack of name recognition to formidable rivals.

Blacks comprise 12.2 percent of the nation's population, but you wouldn't know it in the 100member Senate. Come next year, the total number could add up to zero.

"It certainly is not a desirable state of affairs," said David Bositis, a senior political analyst with the Joint Center for Political

and Economic Studies.

Bositis noted that blacks don't make up the majority population in any state and in states where there are large numbers of blacks, as in the South, there are racial divisions that make getting elected difficult.

Florida is more likely to produce the next Hispanic senator than it is the next black senator.

Former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is locked in a close race with Gov. Charlie Crist for the Republican Senate nomination and the chance to succeed GOP Sen. Mel Martinez, who left before his term ended.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who was elected in 2006, is the Senate's only Hispanic member and is one of only six Hispanics elected since the 1920s.

Rep. Kendrick Meek, one of 41 African-Americans in the House, is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in Florida, but polls show him trailing both Rubio and Crist.

In Texas, Republican Michael Williams is looking at running for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's seat. Hutchison is challenging Republican Gov. Rick Perry.

Williams is a commissioner on the Railroad Commission of

Texas, which regulates the oil and gas industries in the state.

In North Carolina, Chapel Hill attorney Kenneth Lewis, a former state fundraiser for Obama, is one of three leading Democrats seeking to challenge GOP Sen. Richard Burr. Another black Democrat, Nathaniel Cooper, has raised just $1,600 to compete in the May 4 Democratic primary.

In Georgia, former Rockdale County chief of staff R.J. Hadley, a first-time candidate, hopes to take on Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson but has not yet raised the minimum $5,000 filing fee.

Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt University political science and law professor, said that party leaders need to be committed to a diversified legislative body and that qualified black candidates with money must step up to try to get elected.

"One of the reasons why it's difficult for minorities, especially blacks, to win statewide is the cost of campaigns," she said. "It takes millions of dollars to run a Senate campaign."

On Tuesday, neither of the two black challengers in the Illinois' primary — Chicago Urban

League President Cheryle Jackson, a Democrat, and littleknown former suburban Chicago alderman John Arrington, a Republican — could compete against the better-funded and better-known candidates who captured the major party nominations.

Five-term Rep. Mark Kirk won the GOP nomination and Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias walked away with the Democratic nod. Both are white.

Illinois has a history of sending black senators to Washington, with three of the nation's four black senators in modern times coming from the state.

The first black senator in the 20th century was Edward W. Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican who served from 1967 until 1979. The first to hold the Illinois seat was Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat who won it in 1992. She lost six years later to Republican Peter Fitzgerald, who is white and didn't seek a second term.

Obama captured the seat in 2004 by trouncing another black candidate, conservative Republican Alan Keyes. Obama relinquished the seat when he was elected president, and it was filled by Burris.

rates, threatening the long-run growth that sustains the wellbeing of Americans in all income groups." [ Read the full post]

-- ALAN D. VIARD Term Extraction.

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AEI continued from page 34

and false rumors. The Obama budget wouldn't raise income taxes on the middle class. But it would increase marginal tax

Burris was appointed by thenGov. Rod Blagojevich after Blagojevich was arrested for allegedly trying to sell Obama's seat.

Obama's former seat is now a prime takeover target for Republicans. The attention on it has intensified since the GOP's upset win in Massachusetts last month claimed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat.

For some in Illinois, the bigger embarrassment would be for Obama's old seat to fall to the GOP. "It needs to be a Democrat," Chicago teacher Tina FakhridDeen said.

For his part, Kirk borrows a line from Massachusetts's new U.S. senator: "I think that this seat is not owned by any one particular group or politician. It's owned by the people of Illinois." © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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FREEDOM continued from page 32

Suppose a healthy young man making a good living chooses to go without health insurance and then, while speeding helmetless on his motorcycle, incurs a severe injury that is treated at vast public expense. Because his choice imposes costs on others and restricts their liberty to use their resources as they choose, government has the right—and in some circumstances the duty—to intervene.

So when the Tea Partiers complain that a government health insurance mandate invades their liberty, they reveal a defective understanding of the logic of liberty in a modern society. Individuals who choose to go without health insurance could try to resolve the contradiction by signing a document foreswearing all reliance on health care they didn’t pay for themselves. But, because our medical norms don’t permit us to leave injured accident victims at the side of the road, such a document couldn’t be enforced. To be a citizen of the United States today is to live in a community where individual health care choices can have social consequences, a fact to which government can legitimately respond.

The other face of freedom-"freedom from"--points toward circumstances that (it is presumed) we all wish to avoid.

In such instances, the task of government is, so far as possible,

to immunize individuals against undesired circumstances. Here, government acts to protect not individual agency and choice, but rather an individual's life circumstances against outcomes that no one would choose, or willingly endure.

It follows that the "right to choose" is but a part of freedom in the fuller sense. As a motorist, I am rightly free to choose my own route and destination. But government correctly infers that I also wish to be protected from smashing into other cars, and so restricts which side of the road I and others can drive on. My desire to avoid an accident is no less real than my desire to drive where I please. Similarly, the desire to avoid want and fear is no less real than the desire to speak and worship without interference. The point is that any society that takes freedom from want and fear seriously has made collective decisions: Certain conditions are objectively bad; its citizens should not have to endure them if the means of their abatement are in hand; and individual choice is not a necessary component of, and may be a hindrance to attaining, these freedoms. The current debate over health care only underscores these truths.

None of this is to deny that government can, and often does, overstep its bounds. And when it does, the friends of liberty must

resist. Nor is it to deny that the progressive impulse Mansfield criticizes can go too far. In his June 11 commencement speech at Yale, JFK was surely wrong to claim that government’s role in a modern economy reduces to “management” based on “technical” issues. It is that, but it is more than that. No wonder that the end of ideology Kennedy reflected and celebrated quickly gave way to a rebirth of deeper disagreement. To the extent that the managerial ethos evades or suppresses these disagreements, it does a disservice to politics in a free country.

Still, when Kennedy declared in 1962 that “the national interest lies in high employment and steady expansion of output, in stable prices and a strong dollar,” he elicited little disagreement.

Nor would anyone making that statement today. Modern politics is in part technical, a matter of fitting means to undisputed ends.

When Democrats assert, and Republicans deny, that last year’s stimulus package is boosting output and employment, they are not arguing about goals. They are arguing about means and about facts. And, more than that, they are arguing about competing understandings of how the world works. Liberals are more apt to focus on the good government can do and to fasten on the inadequacies of markets. For Republicans, it is just the

reverse.

The debate over health care reform reflects this competition.

How could it not? But to say, as Mansfield does, that the president’s belief in the ability of government to improve our health care system reflects a preference for progress over liberty only obscures what is really at stake. The president’s stance threatens neither political liberty nor individual liberty. His argument does not remove—and was not intended to remove—the issue of health policy beyond the bounds of political argument. It seeks, rather, to ground his proposals in considerations that most citizens would regard as weighty if not dispositive. And his proposals reflect an understanding of individual liberty in the modern state that has far more to commend it than does the understanding to which Mansfield appeals.

William Galston is a former policy advisor to Bill Clinton and current senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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Google Voice Quick Reference Cheatsheet v2.0 Speeds Through Phone Menus [Cheatsheets]

by Adam Pash (Lifehacker) Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:00:00 PM

A while back we highlighted a Google Voice Quick Reference cheatsheet you can keep near your phone that lays out Google Voice's voicemail menu tree so you can quickly skip to whatever action you want. The cheatsheet (above) just updated with a few more details here and there, so if you're a Voice user, it's worth grabbing. [ Cool Geex]

Whimsical Literary Journal Mourns Tragic Namesake [And Now He's Dead]

by Pareene (Gawker) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:49:38 AM

The "real Timothy McSweeeny" has died.

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Brown's Independence Could Face Senate Test (Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 2/4/2010 11:20:03 PM

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Scott Brown says he's a different kind of Republican, a centrist willing to work with Senate Democrats to fix health care and the ailing economy.

But his independent bent is likely to be sorely tested in a bitterly divided Senate where party loyalty is often at a premium.

As it is, Brown was sworn in Thursday a week earlier than he had planned. He spent his earliest minutes as a senator facing questions on whether he will stick with the GOP in the partisan fight over President Barack Obama's choice of a union attorney, Craig Becker, for a top labor job.

Brown tried to maintain a middle-of-the-road posture. "I'm going to look at everybody's qualifications and make my own decision," he said.

Brown can expect more tough balancing acts like that as he seeks to put his own stamp on a Senate seat held for nearly a half -century by the late liberal lion Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. For New England Republicans in Congress, whose

ranks have thinned in recent years, it is the only way to survive.

Just ask Maine Republican Sens.

Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Their independent ways and support for measures such as Obama's economic stimulus have stoked sharp criticism from some conservatives.

"He's clearly independentminded and I cannot wait to get him here," Collins said. "I think this is going to be a terrific development for our party."

Or ask Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent and former Democrat whose strong support for Republican John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign had Democrats fuming. It nearly cost Lieberman a key committee chairmanship.

"It won't always be easy because sometimes when you're independent, you make people on all sides unhappy," Lieberman said.

Republicans are aglow over the fact that Brown, a 50-year-old, little-known state senator, captured Kennedy's old seat last month in a stunning upset over Democrat Martha Coakley that ended the Democrats' supermajority and gave Republicans the 41 votes they could use to block Obama's agenda. Brown won with a "big tent" coalition of supporters,

including backers of the Tea Party protest movement.

Party leaders have greeted Brown with open arms. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, praised Brown for backing lower taxes, smaller government and strong national security. The party's conservative base, however, has clashed with GOP leaders over party litmus tests and whether there's room for moderates, who often are mocked by conservative bloggers as RINOs — Republicans in Name Only.

"The problem for (Brown) is the Republican Party that will welcome him in Washington is the Republican Party that will prevent him from getting reelected in Massachusetts in a couple of years," said Wendy Schiller, a Brown University political science professor. "If he goes into that party and he toes the line with that party, he can't get re-elected."

On the way to his win, Brown was careful not to refer to himself as a Republican too often in Massachusetts, where more than half the voters are not connected to a party. Since winning his seat, Brown has struck a more conciliatory tone on Obama's health care overhaul, too.

Snowe and Collins have turned their moderate brand of politics into popularity in Maine, where pragmatism often takes a back seat to partisanship with voters.

Snowe was an important player last year as the health care bill was crafted, working with Democrats. Collins played a prominent role helping Democrats pass the economic stimulus, but only after working to scale back costs.

"If he wants to have a future in Massachusetts politics, Brown has to live up to being a New England Republican — fiscally conservative, socially moderate, independent-minded," said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political science professor.

"Is Obama going to try to craft some room for himself in the center?" Scala said. "If so, Brown might be something of an ally." © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Call for iPhone & Mac Developers/Writers

by Josh Pigford (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 2/4/2010 12:53:55 PM

TheAppleBlog is looking for a few iPhone and Mac developers who are also writers to help us out. So, if you are a solid iPhone and/or Mac developer and like to write how-to’s, tutorials, etc., I’d love to chat with you.

Please note, this is not a call for writers in general, it’s only for iPhone/Mac developers.

So, if you’re interested, just fill out this form with some examples of your developerbased how-to’s/tutorials and we’ll go from there.

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N. Dakota GOP Wants 'Tea Party' Energy (Newsmax - Politics)

'Take Back Washington' event is designed to have the Republican Party leadership and elected Message from fivefilters.org: If officials listen to activists within you can, please donate to the full this movement."

-text RSS service so we can Word of the event comes as a continue developing it. separate gathering billed as the Republicans in North Dakota are first national "convention" of the planning one of the party's first tea party movement kicks off this organized efforts to capture some weekend in Nashville, Tenn. of the energy and enthusiasm of Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin the "tea party" movement, an will be the featured speaker, but experiment that nervous party M r s . B a c h m a n n a n d o t h e r officials around the country will prominent conservatives have b e w a t c h i n g w i t h h o p e f u l pulled out, citing the for-profit anticipation. status of the organizers and the North Dakota Republican hefty fee being charged to Chairman Gary Emineth is one attendees. of the organizers of what is being Mrs. Bachmann will not be paid b i l l e d a s a " T a k e B a c k for her remarks at the North Washington" rally and town hall Dakota event. meeting on Feb. 12 in Bismarck, The tea party movement's N.D., with Minnesota Rep. growing clout was on display in M i c h e l e B a c h m a n n , a n Honolulu last week when outspoken conservative, as the m o v e m e n t o r g a n i z e r a n d keynote speaker.

Freedom Works President Dick "The role the tea party could play Armey was invited to the winter in the future of the Republican gathering of the Republican Party is significant and critical," National Committee, meeting Mr. Emineth said. "It is how we first with the RNC's conservative speak and reach out to the tea caucus and then attending a party activists that speaks reception with RNC National volumes to the movement. The Chairman Michael S. Steele.

Submitted at 2/5/2010 1:05:55 AM

Mr. Steele has billed himself as a tea partier, but many in the anti -government movement say they are wary of both parties and fear too close an identification with Republicans.

"The balancing act we must play as a party is not to alienate our party base, while bringing in new constituents who are with us on the majority of the issues," Mr. Emineth told The Washington Times. "Our event could potentially be a format to begin to bridge the groups."

North Dakota's Democrats are also taking the tea party movement seriously - both as a threat at the ballot box and as a means to scare party donors into contributing more cash.

North Dakota Democratic Party Chairman Mark Schneider, in a recent fund-raising letter, warned of "out-of-state big insurance and big business interests" coming into the state to "try to tell us how to run" things and helping to "spur the tea party movement."

Mr. Schneider says the "Take Back Washington" event featuring Mrs. Bachmann "takes the cake," because the North

Dakota GOP "is falling for her right-wing bent and selfpromoting agenda, but we see right through it."

Lacking a central organization, a single platform or even a membership list, it's not always easy to identify the priorities of the tea party partisans, but North Dakota lawyer Robert Harms insisted that "absolutely, they are a movement."

Mr. Harms, who has served as general counsel to two of the state's Republican governors, said that about half the 10,000 or so North Dakotans that he estimates are tea party activists regard themselves as neither Republicans nor Democrats, with the rest evenly split in identifying themselves as belonging to one or the other party. © Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Car Belonging to Charlie Sheen Crashes Off Mulholland Drive (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 2/5/2010 6:30:00 AM

A vehicle belonging to Charlie Sheen was found crashed off the side of Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles early Friday morning, according to ABC7.

According to reports, the car was found this morning about 100 feet below Mulholland Drive. Police are currently searching the hillside for potential crash victims in the darkness of the early morning.

Recent tire tracks were visible but no one had been found as dawn approached, LAFD Capt.

John Sullivan told the City News Service. Authorities were alerted when a call came into CHP that a black vehicle, possibly a BMW, went over the side, added California Highway Patrol Officer Patrick Kimball.

Conrad Murray's Lawyer Responds to New Report (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 2/5/2010 3:54:00 AM

A spokesperson for Dr. Conrad Murray's lawyer Ed Chernoff is responding to a new report that

says Michael Jackson's former doctor will not surrender himself on Friday.

Law enforcement sources tell CNN that plans for Murray to turn himself in on Friday have

been nixed, but ET reached out to the doctor's legal team, and a rep for Murray's lawyer had this to say: "We had an agreement with Deputy District Attorney David Walgren and we will

adhere to it. We are planning to surrender Murray tomorrow and attend the 1:30 arraignment. If they changed their minds, that’s on them."

Earlier Thursday, Chernoff told

ET that his client had agreed to turn himself in, but the particulars of Murray's surrender hadn’t yet been arranged.

Politics/ Sports/

E-reader News Edition

Embattled Dem Ill. Candidate Won't Step Down (Newsmax - Politics)

after she failed to appear in court.

Police records show the woman Message from fivefilters.org: If h a d b e e n a r r e s t e d f o r you can, please donate to the full prostitution, the Chicago Tribune -text RSS service so we can reported. Cohen said he did not continue developing it. know that at the time. He told A political newcomer who won WTTW-TV that he met her at a the Democratic nomination for "massage therapy place" and Illinois lieutenant governor said believed she was a masseuse. he has no intention of leaving the Cohen denied hitting her and race after details emerged about said their relationship was his arrest for allegedly holding a "tumultuous." knife to his former girlfriend's Cohen said he has asked her and throat. his ex-wife, Debbie Cohen York, Scott Lee Cohen struck a defiant to clear the air. York sought an tone even after running mate order of protection against Gov. Pat Quinn predicted he Cohen in 2005 as she filed for would have to leave the race. divorce. She said his violence Cohen said people should wait was fueled by anabolic steroids. for all facts to become known. Cohen acknowledged his past "There are questions, and I will steroid use but denied abusing provide all answers honestly and York. openly," he said in a statement "I never touched her, I never Thursday. He did not return touched any woman," he told messages from The Associated WLS-TV late Thursday. "That's Press. not my style, that's not me."

Cohen was arrested on domestic York stood by her allegations battery charges in 2005, accused but said Cohen had changed. of pushing his then-girlfriend's "At the time, he was going head against a wall and of the through a different phase," she knife incident. The police report said. "He was a different person noted abrasions on her neck and than he is now." hand, but charges were dropped Cohen, a pawnbroker and owner Submitted at 2/5/2010 2:06:26 AM

of a cleaning supplies company, shocked the political establishment by beating four state lawmakers to nab the Democratic nomination with 26 percent of the vote. He gained strong name recognition with advertising that featured people who said they found jobs at employment fairs he organized.

Cohen stressed that he disclosed his arrest before he announced his candidacy. He said no one paid attention because he wasn't expected to win.

Illinois voters choose the nominees for governor and lieutenant governor separately, though he and Quinn now make up the Democratic ticket. Quinn said he first heard of the abuse allegations after Tuesday's election. © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

OSCAR continued from page 33

Revolutionary Road has struck again--and this time it can’t even be blamed on the Invisible Hand of Weinstein.

Best Supporting Actress As with Waltz, so with Precious’s Mo’Nique, though in this case the suspense is whether the famously cranky nominee will bother to show up to receive her inevitable award. I’m pleased

by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s nomination--I found her performance subtler than Bridge’s in Crazy Heart--though I’m sorry that neither of the martyr-heroines of Inglourious Basterds(Melanie Laurent and Diane Kruger) could displace a not-particularly-deserving Anna Kendrick from Up in the Air. And anyone who believes that Penelope Cruz was better than Marion Cotillard in Nine evidently saw a different movie than I did.

Adapted Screenplay The Academy’s utter snub of Where the Wild Things Are is most egregious here. I mean seriously, guys. That’s the kind of imaginative adaptation this award should be for, the opening of a beloved classic into the possibilities of a new medium.

Kovalchuk Gets 'Emotional' Sendoff By Thrashers

by A.J. Perez (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 2/4/2010 2:50:00 PM

Filed under: Devils, Thrashers WASHINGTON -- While his bags and sticks lay in the back of a black SUV here in front of the

wasn't quite ready to go with them to New Jersey.

Ritz Carlton, Ilya Kovalchuk

39

Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Informant! could’ve used a little love here as well, but at least the caustic wit of In the Loop was rewarded.

Original Screenplay A very solid list-- The Hurt Locker, Up, Inglourious Basterds, The Messenger, A Serious Man--but by far its greatest boast is that Avatar isn’t on it.

Best Director Please, ye gods, let The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow steal this away from ex-hubby (and Avatar impresario) James Cameron. Even amid cosmic injustice we must be afforded glimmers of hope.

Christopher Orr is a senior editor of The New Republic.

For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

40

Consumer Reports/ Sports/

E-reader News Edition

Daily electronics deals

by Nicholas Kolman-Mandle (Consumer Reports)

• Sears: Sony HDR-HC5 MiniDV HD Handycam Camcorder for $200 + $6 s&h Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:26:07 AM • Newegg: Acer P235Hbmid 23Daily electronics deals inch Multi-Input LCD Flat Panel Today's electronics deals, Monitor $180 Shipped courtesy of The Consumerist: • Logitech: Logitech Roundup: • HP Home & Home Office Logitech G9 Laser Mouse for Store: HP G62t 15.6-inch Core $40 + $6 s&h, more i5 Laptop $704.99+ $29.00 • Buy.com: PlayStation 3 shipping Infinite Play Wireless Controller • Dell Home: Dell Inspiron Mini for $17.99 + $4.68 Shipping 10v 10-inch Laptop $249 + free • Newegg: Star Trek Online PC shipping Game + Bonus Star Trek T-Shirt • Staples: Acer Laptop Dual- for $44.99 w/ Free Shipping Core 1.6Ghz w/ 3GB Memory + • Walmart: Madden NFL 11 320GB Drive for $379.98 w/ Game (Xbox 360, PS3) + $20 Free Shipping Walmart Gift Card $59.96 (Wii • B u y D i g . c o m : S a m s u n g $49.96) LN32B460 32-inch 720p LCD HDTV $429 + free shipping • Dell: Sharp 52" LCD 1080p H D T V f o r $ 9 9 9 w / F r e e Related: TV Ratings and buying Shipping tips; Computer Ratings and • Buy.com: ViewSonic VFD810 buying tips; DVD & Blu-ray -50 8in LED-Backlit Digital player Ratings and buying tips; Photo Frame (800x600) $39.99 Video game console buying tips • Tiger Direct: HP BD-2000 and video: "Choosing a video 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player $118 g a m e s y s t e m " ; C a m c o r d e r • Walmart: Magnavox Blu-ray Ratings and buying tips; Digital Player $68 picture frame Ratings and buying tips.

Neither Consumer Reports nor

Video: The Super Bowl of Shilling (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 2/4/2010 2:44:26 PM

Radio DJs and journalists tell

Reed Albergotti how NFLers shamelessly tout their wares during Super Bowl week.

The Consumerist receive anything in exchange for featuring these deals; the posts are intended to be purely informational. These deals are often fleeting, with prices changing or products becoming unavailable as the day progresses.

These posts are not an endorsement of the featured products or the Web sites that sell them—though some of the sites may be included, and recommended, in our Ratings of retailers for computers and other major electronics(both available to subscribers). Price shouldn't be your only criterion. Be wary of lower-priced deals that seem too good to be true, and check return policies for restocking fees and other gotchas.

For general buying advice for many of the products on sale above, check out our free Buying Guides. Subscribe now!

S u b s c r i b e t o ConsumerReports.org for expert Ratings, buying advice and reliability on hundreds of products. Update your feed preferences

What's on sale in February? Fitness equipment and more...

by Consumer Reports Shopping Blog (Consumer Reports) Submitted at 2/5/2010 3:59:59 AM

What's on sale in February?

Fitness equipment and more...

If you’re wondering where you can score some great après holiday deals, wonder no more.

We’ve compiled a list of goods that typically go on sale in February. A couple of these items can help you recover from your holiday “dang, those pies were good” splurges: Treadmills and elliptical machines. If you’re in the market for one of these fat melters, our treadmill and elliptical buying guides will show you what features to look for. Consumer Reports.org subscribers should also check out our latest Ratings of treadmills and ellipticals, where you’ll also get the lowdown on some clunkers we don’t recommend—hey, you don’t want an exercise machine that poops out before you do.

Also on sale: humidifiers to combat winter’s dry air and indoor furniture.

But before you investigate the sales on these or other items, read our tips on haggling, which will help you score an even better deal.

Two final items that tend to have extra low price tags in February: houses and condos. Of course, you have to sell the one you live in now first. And get a loan. Want to find out what items will go on sale in the following months? Check out our complete sales calendar.—Mandy Walker Subscribe now!

S u b s c r i b e t o ConsumerReports.org for expert Ratings, buying advice and reliability on hundreds of products. Update your feed preferences

Consumer Reports/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

41

First impressions: Interead Cooler and iRiver Story e-book readers

by Paul Reynolds (Consumer Reports)

interesting vision of having the device become a platform for social networking, with e-book Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:24:32 AM bookworms sharing insights First impressions: Interead about their reading via their Cooler and iRiver Story e-book Storys. But that's seemingly only readers iRiver Story a vision for now, a possibility for Source: iRiver the 2.0 version of the device.

Among the e-book readers The Cooler and Story share one scheduled to hit the market soon key disadvantage. Both must be in the US are at least two–the connected to a computer to get Interead Cooler, $249, and the content; there's no 3G connection iRiver Story, $279–that cost for content–as with the Kindle, about the same as the Nook, Sony Daily Reader, and Kindle(which costs $259), and other devices–though versions of sport a screen of the same size (6 both that have at least Wi-Fi inches) and technology (E Ink). capability are promised.

But based on trying out these We expect to have further two devices at the recent coverage of e-book readers, that's all about mobility. At about Where most e-book readers comes in eight different colors, Consumer Electronics Show, likely including these models, as 6.3 ounces, it's about 40 percent require several button presses to including two shades of pink. only the Cooler offers a they hit the market over the lighter than the Kindle and make type bigger or smaller, the To me, the iRiver device lacked compelling reason to consider it months to come. nearly half the weight of the Cooler allows it in one push of a any such elan. And its pageover Amazon's dominant reader, B a r n e s a n d N o b l e N o o k . small rocker control on its side; t u r n i n g p e r f o r m a n c e w a s – Paul Reynolds Subscribe now! or possibly over other upcoming S u b s c r i b e t o Interead Cooler the control resembles the volume unimpressive, proving to be e-book readers, including ConsumerReports.org for expert Source: Interead control on an iPhone. Another slower than the Kindle and some upcoming multipurpose tablets I wasn't able to reliably judge nice, quirky touch: The Cooler other competitors I saw at CES. Ratings, buying advice and such as the Apple iPad. the speed of its page turns or its comes preloaded with Sudoku Reps for iRiver, a company r e l i a b i l i t y o n h u n d r e d s o f That distinction: The Cooler is ergonomics. But I did like its games. And where almost all known primarily for its MP3 products. Update your feed very light, an enormous unique control for font size. readers are white or black, it p l a y e r s , t a l k e d a b o u t a n preferences advantage for a product category

Charlie Sheen Exclusive Interview (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:01:00 AM

Charlie Sheen went on the record exclusively with "The Insider"’s Chris Jacobs this morning about his car that was

found crashed off a Mulholland Drive cliff in Los Angeles in the early morning hours.

“It was nice to have police come to my house and for once and I didn’t have to leave with them,” the star of “Two and a Half

Men” joked.

He told "The Insider" that he arrived home last night around 8 p.m.after working on this hit CBS sitcom and was preparing for tonight’s taping. He went to bed at approximately 10:30 p.m.

and was awakened at 3:45 a.m. by a phone call from OnStar informing him his car was in an accident.

42

Consumer Reports/ Tech News/ Entertainment/

Q&A: How does fiber help protect against colon cancer? by rss@consumerreports.org (Consumer Reports)

soft, bulky stools that speed the excretion of potentially cancercausing wastes.

Submitted at 2/5/2010 2:59:59 AM Take a look at these 6 ways to Q&A: How does fiber help get more fiber and see our protect against colon cancer?

Ratings for tasty high-fiber You've previously said fiber cereals(subscribers only). If slows the digestion of food. But I you're concerned about colon thought fiber helped to protect cancer, weigh your risk and find against colon cancer by speeding blood-sugar levels from spiking, out what happens during a colon up digestion. Which is true? — w h i c h m a y h e l p l o w e r cancer screening. Subscribe cardiovascular risk in susceptible now!

M.S., Los Angeles Fiber does slow digestion; people. Fiber can also discourage S u b s c r i b e t o however, it fights colon cancer overeating by making you feel ConsumerReports.org for expert by hastening the elimination of fuller.

Ratings, buying advice and waste products. Some of the In contrast, the colon, or large r e l i a b i l i t y o n h u n d r e d s o f fiber you consume dissolves into intestine, plays only a limited products. Update your feed a gel that slows the absorption of role in the digestion of food but a preferences nutrients from the stomach and major role in excretion. Fiber small intestine. That helps keep entering the colon helps create

E-reader News Edition

'Percy Jackson' Electrifies the Big Apple (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 2/5/2010 3:40:00 AM

ET joined Pierce Brosnan and more stars from 'Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief' as they premiered their dazzling new fantasy flick in NYC on Thursday night.

Pierce tells ET his kids were instrumental in convincing him

to join 'Percy Jackson': "They said, 'Dad, you gotta do it, you gotta do it!'"

The star says that when he screened the film for his whole family a couple of weeks ago, they loved it. "My eight-year-old said, 'It's the best film you've made, Dad.' … That was like getting an Oscar."

Top 10 Web Widgets

by Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 2/5/2010 5:00:00 AM

Widgets are mini web applications that you can insert into your website and/or social networks. They're a popular way to add interesting third party content to your web presence. In this post we look at the top web widgets from Yola and Widgetbox. It's clear from our analysis that widgets are well past the early adopter stage and are now very mainstream.

Yola, the website building service formerly known as

SynthaSite, sent us a list of the top 10 widgets for its 3 million plus community - many of whom are small business owners. We compare that list below with the most popular widgets from more consumer-focused Widgetbox.

Sponsor Yola's top 10 list tells us that Google widgets proliferate (4 of them are in the top 10), media widgets are popular (numbers 1, 4, 8) and communication widgets are well used (2, 5, 7).

• YouTube • Blog Page Widget • Google Ad Sense • Flickr Lightbox

• • • • • •

Meebo Chat Room Google Maps Skype Me! Google Video Wufoo Form Collect Donation Widget

It's a little surprising that there's no mention of Facebook or Twitter widgets, but perhaps in a few more months they will be in

Yola's top 10.

For a more consumer-focused look at the most popular widgets, we checked out Widgetbox's alltime Most Popular List.

Widgetbox provides widgets for social sites - including MySpace, Blogger, Facebook, WordPress, TypePad and iGoogle. Their top 10 shows that gaming, fun and pregnancy tickers (!) are most popular.

• Super Mario Game • Baby Ticker - The Baby Countdown Pregnancy Ticker • cyber-pet • Mario Time Trial • Maukie - the virtual cat

• Bubbles • Baby & Pregnancy Countdown Ticker • MP3 Player • Swidget 1.0 • Super Mario Bros (with Luigi) Neither list is especially surprising, but it's good to see that widgets are being well utilized by mainstream people.

Let us know if you have a favorite web widget and if so, where do you host it? Discuss

Tech News/ Entertainment/ Fashion/

E-reader News Edition

Convert Visitors to Users With A Unique Sign Up Button

Melissa Rycroft Visits Valerie Bertinelli & Betty White on the Set of 'Hot in Cleveland'

by Chris Cameron (ReadWriteWeb)

(ETonline - Breaking News)

description of the main features of the site or product. There's nothing worse than visiting a site Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:10:00 AM you find intriguing only to waste In any relationship, business or precious time searching high and personal, first impressions are low for a poorly placed "register critical to getting off on the right here" button. Don't get caught up foot. For startups, if a user gets a by placing too much information bad first impression of your on your site's landing page. website, that same sentiment will Sometimes less is more. carry through to their opinion of Secondly, an appealing your service. A few weeks ago registration button can go we told you about some pointers beyond being near the main t o m a k e s u r e y o u r s i t e ' s features of the site by actually registration process isn't scaring including those features in the away users. A recent post on button itself. By this, Jana means web development blog Six that buttons which say "Try now Revisions focuses in on this with a $2.00 credit" or "Buy i s s u e b y p r o v i d i n g s o m e Your Tickets Today" (examples techniques and best practices for Jana provides from InstantLoop creating and designing the and Vegas Uncork'd) speak perfect registration button. louder than a simple "Sign Up" Sponsor or "Register Here" button. You're Besides being aesthetically trying to convince visitors to pleasing, the design of the your site that your product is registration button can benefit u n i q u e , s o t r y f o r s o m e f r o m t h e f o l l o w i n g t h r e e originality in your registration suggestions, according to Six copy.

Revisions' Dibakar Jana. First, Finally, aside from telling the registration button needs to visitors what all the great be above the fold and preferably features of your site are, show i n c l o s e p r o x i m i t y t o a them why they should sign up.

an equally oversized registration form. The form, which sits beneath a cleverly placed "See 24 reasons why you'll love Tumblr" link, asks for just an email address, a password and a personal Tumblr URL choice all displayed in an absurdly yet amusingly large font size.

Finally, the site invites registrants to "Sign up and start posting!"

Do registered users stand to Whichever route you chose, just benefit from your site's services be original. Avoid using boring more than casual browsers? and simple "Join" buttons, or Baramail beckons users to "Sign worse, a registration form which up now for a free account" while e n d s w i t h t h e c o l d a n d others like Myzeo offer "one thoughtless "Submit" button. year of FREE Coaching" in their People don't want to feel like sign up buttons. The more a user they are "submitting" their knows about what they're getting information to you, help them into, and why registering for feel welcomed in a warmer, your site is a good idea, the more more personal way. If you need inspiration, be sure to check out likely the are to follow through.

Take Tumblr's registration Jana's post on Six Revisions for process as a shining example of dozens of examples, then pass originality and excellent copy your friendly suggestions along and design. A visit to the site's t o y o u r w e b d e s i g n e r . homepage reveals their motto, Remember, you only get one "The easiest way to blog," set in c h a n c e t o m a k e a f i r s t a large font size directly above i m p r e s s i o n . D i s c u s s

Street Chic: New York

by ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 2/5/2010 4:00:00 AM

We're green with envy over her fur-trimmed topper.

Photo: Kelly Stuart Think you are Street Chic? E-

could appear in ELLE.com's Street Chic Daily.

Follow ELLE on Twitter. mail us your photo and you

43

Submitted at 2/5/2010 3:50:00 AM

Valerie Bertinelli, Wendie Mallick and Jane Leeves discover life can be pretty "Hot in Cleveland," and ET's special correspondent Melissa Rycroft gets the ladies to tell her why. "'Hot in Cleveland' is about three women of a certain age who decide to take a trip to Paris together. One is going through a divorce. My character is the eyebrow queen of Beverly Hills, and Wendie's character is the soap queen. Anyway, by a series of unfortunate events we have to make an emergency landing in Cleveland, much to our chagrin.

But when we start hanging out in Cleveland, we find out men our own age think we are hot, hence the title 'Hot in Cleveland,'" Jane tells Melissa.

Valerie adds, "[My character] wrote a book, 200 Things You Want to do Before You Die. One was to fly to Paris with your best friends. So we're on our way and we end up crash landing in Cleveland. My ex-husband is on the plane with his fiancĂŠe. So, I see him and realize I have nothing there, so we walk into this bar, in Cleveland...."

44

Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

Take Advantage of the Recession to Hone Your Haggling Skills [Haggling]

by Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:30:00 AM

If you've been resistant to adopting the habit of haggling on prices, there's never been a better time than now to start practicing.

The economic slow-down and the desire of retailers to keep moving products makes for fertile practice.

Photo by GianCayetano.

For the last few decades with consumerism in full-tilt overdrive and showing little signs of slowing down, bartering and haggling fell out of the national vocabulary of Americans—and many citizens in prosperous Western nations.

The recent economic down-turn, however, has unleashed the inner haggler in many people and made it a great time for you to start if you'd been resistant to becoming a haggler or thought it awkward or socially unacceptable. Over at the Washinton Post they highlight the shift in American spending: A recent Consumer Reports study found that 66 percent of American consumers had haggled at least once in the

preceding six months, with an 88 percent ka-ching rate on gadgets, clothes, furniture and steak.

"People like this," Koehn said.

"They are not going to go back to giving their money away.

Why would they?"

The recession merely popped the lid off a retailing shift that has been brewing for a decade.

EBay gave millions of consumers dealmaking training wheels (top bid for a "Goonies"

asking for a discount to always asking for a discount. The end result of his week-long experiment in haggling was that he saved a total of $730 on goods and services just by asking.

If you're unsure where to start when it comes to haggling, we'd suggest reading over our guide: Reduce Your Bills by Just Asking. The tips in the guide apply to everything, not just to lowering your bills. Using them will make your first negotioation experience fell less confrontational and more like you're engaging in a mutually beneficial exchange with the company you're dealing with.

After all, a product sold for 20% DVD: $3.50). The Internet offers the world to haggle and see how off to a willing customer is often instant pricing data (do a Google he fares. Their reporter used a a bigger win for all parties search on "Lucky jeans and deal variety of techniques ranging involved than a product not sold and DC"). And don't forget f r o m s i m p l y a s k i n g f o r a to anyone at full price.

Have your own stories of Priceline, which lets consumers discount, noting that a product negotiation and haggling? Tips name their price for flights, was not as fresh as it was and and tricks you want to share? hotels and rental cars (thank you, should have a discount, using his L e t ' s h e a r a b o ut it in the William Shatner). phone to show the price offered comments.

In Tough Economic Not only do they delve into the by a competitor to get a discount, history and psychology of the a n d o t h e r m e t h o d s . T h e Times, Shoppers Take Haggling shift in American spending and techniques that he used aren't as t o N e w H e i g h t s [ v i a haggling patterns, but they also important as the fact that he G e t R i c h S l o w l y ] send one of their reporters out in shifted his mindset from never

Tech News/ Apple/

E-reader News Edition

45

Feedtrace: Personalized Link Aggregation for Twitter

by Mike Melanson (ReadWriteWeb)

navigate the links from this sidebar, Feedtrace steps out of the way and minimizes to the Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:54:00 AM side of the window. It's a Every day, hundreds of tweets b r o w s i n g c o m p a n i o n f o r fly past our eyes with links to navigating what people are important articles, meaningless linking to on Twitter. drivel and the occasional self- Personalization In Aggregation promotion. There's little, if any, Not only does Feedtrace collect way to tell what's important and t w e e t e d l i n k s b y o v e r a l l what's not. Feedtrace has stepped popularity, like Tweetmeme, but in to try to fill this void and let it customizes what links it shows you know what people are you by comparing to ones that linking to that you might care you yourself have tweeted. It about. uses a ranking system, ranking For ways to harness the beast each link according to how that is our Twitter stream, recently it was posted, the Feedtrace may have just stepped " c r e d i b i l i t y " o f t h e u s e r in as an addition to the daily a c c o r d i n g to their toolbox. following/follower ratio, and the Sponsor number of tweets and retweets.

How It Works Feedtrace works In addition to aggregating the as a Twitter overlay, of sorts. most popular links Twitter-wide, You don't look at your Twitter you can also choose to login to stream, but instead at the the service with your Twitter Feedtrace sidebar where you find account and have it examine only your list of ranked links. As you those links added by people you

follow. We think this might be a real, distinguishing feature.

There are a thousand ways to find out what everyone else is talking about. This lets you find out what the people you are following are talking about.

You can also restrict Feedtrace

to look just at a single website, to see what people are talking about the most. This can be a great tool, not only to quickly skim for what people really like right now on a website, but if you have a website yourself, it's another way of measuring your own success.

What's The Buzz? The final feature we want to note is that the you can also take a look at who is saying what about the current link you've chosen to visit. By clicking the "buzz" tab on Feedtrace, you can see all of the tweets related to the current page. Feedtrace also lets you interact with those users, allowing you to retweet, favorite and reply from directly within the sidebar.

The program was just launched last week and is still officially in beta, but from what we've seen we're excited to see more.

According to its blog, a new version "will incorporate new personalization options and improved navigation" and should be released before the end of February. Discuss

Atimi — Raising the Standard for iPhone Development

by Edit Staff (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 2/5/2010 5:00:13 AM

Atimi Software Inc. is a leading iPhone and cross-platform development company with a core strength in developing for the Mac platform and the new generation of smartphones. As a dedicated software services company, Atimi provides

advisory and development services and has completed iPhone and software development projects for many of the leading brands in North America, including the New York Times and HBO. By the end of 2009, Atimi had completed more than 25 iPhone applications for its clients, 65% of which received some degree

processes, and its Orchard rapid development framework for of Apple promotion including mobile helps clients to reach via iTunes, TV, print and in- their target launch dates reliably and efficiently, allowing them to store placement.

Atimi provides confidential, focus on building strong, lasting effective, and timely production relationships with their own of smartphone and desktop customers. software. Atimi’s broad range of expertise, proven development

Baking Powder Makes for Better Oven-Baked Wings [Super Bowl]

by Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 2/5/2010 10:00:00 AM

BAKING page 46

46

TV/ Sports/

E-reader News Edition

BAKING continued from page 45

Wings are a near-mandatory menu item for Super Bowl gatherings, but they're finicky—never quite right from the oven, but getting soggy on the drive from the pizza joint.

One methodical foodie has the home-cooked solution: an overnight baking powder bath.

Food writer and chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who you might remember from his magnum opus on making your own Shake Shack burgers, went on a search for a homemade wing that delivered the same kind of taste experience as the deep-fried wings and drumettes from a favorite corner bar or pizza stop.

The key, he writes, is "wellrendered, blistered, bubbly, crackly skin," which sauce can cling to and prevents the whole affair from becoming soggy. A

standard oven-baked wing is more slick, doesn't hold as much sauce, and loses its crisp quickly.

After trying a few methods, including a failed tip from food hacker Alton Brown, the wing hunter tried a trick gleaned from lazy Sunday mornings: For instance, adding a bit of extra baking soda to pancake batter-thereby making the batter more alkaline-improves its browning capabilities. Would the same trick work on my chicken wings? I baked five batches of wings on a rack set in a rimmed baking sheet.

Lopez-Alt eventually settled on baking powder, because baking soda gave the wings an off taste.

Be sure to read the full post for the full how-to, because there's more to it than just tossing your wings in a tablespoon of pH-

fixing powder. Overnight openair refrigeration is required, and the whole process requires dayahead planning. Still, from what the author tells us, it's worth the effort, and you and your guests may not have to surrender quite so much cash, or ingest quite so much oil, to get a great wing.

While you're boning up (see what I did there?) on game-day preparations, check out a video guide to eating a wing with less mess, and dig into Lifehacker readers' best Super Bowl snacks.

The Food Lab: In Search of the Best Oven-Fried Buffalo Wings[Serious Eats]

13-Year-Old David Sills Commits to USC

by Tom Herrera (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 2/4/2010 11:20:00 PM

Filed under: USC, General CFB Insanity David Sills, all of 13 years old, has verbally committed to USC. Sills is a quarterback out of Bear, Del., who has drawn raves for his talent at such a young age.

"His skill set is off the chart," his personal coach Steve Clarkson told ESPN. "I've never seen anyone at his age do what he's been able to do." Clarkson has mentored other top quarterbacks in the past, including current

USC starter Matt Barkley.

According to the ESPN, new USC coach Lane Kiffin received a verbal commitment from Sills on Thursday evening. "He's already six feet as a 13-yearold," Clarkson said. "And he's breaking down NFL footage."

If Sills has indeed verbally committed to USC, it would be an unprecedented moment for college football, and raises all sorts of questions about recruitment. Forget 2012, we're talking about the class of 2015 here.

What's On Tonight: 'Smallville,' 'Caprica,' 'Medium,' '20/20'

by Bob Sassone (TV Squad)

hour'Smallville' at 8.

• PBS has new episodes Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:25:00 PM of'Washington Week,' NOW,' and'Bill Moyers Journal.'

• A t 8 , A B C h a s a • MTV and VH-1 have'SOS new'Supernanny,' followed by Helping Ourselves: Help For new episodes of'Shark Tank' Haiti' at 8. and'20/20.'

• At 9, NBC has a new'Dateline,' • C B S h a s a n e w ' G h o s t followed by a new'Jay Leno Whisperer' at 8, then new Show.' e p i s o d e s o f ' M e d i u m ' • FOX has a new'Kitchen and'Numb3rs.'

Nightmares' at 9.

• The CW has a new, two- • There's a new'Caprica' on Syfy

• At 10, Food Network has a new'The Best Thing I Ever Ate.' • E! has a new episode of'The Soup' at 10.

• BBC America has a new'Friday Night with Jonathan Ross' at 10. at 9.

• Also at 9: Cartoon Network has a new episode of'The Clone Wars.'

Check your local TV listings for more.

After the jump, the late night talk shows.

Continue reading What's On

Tonight: 'Smallville,' 'Caprica,' 'Medium,' '20/20' Filed under: Late Night, Programming, Celebrities, Talk Show, What To Watch Tonight, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Tech News/ Popular News/

E-reader News Edition

Number of Location-Aware Apps Keeps Growing Rapidly - But Very Few are Cross-Platform

by Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:10:49 AM

We are still in the early days of location-based apps, but according to new data from Skyhook, there are now over 6,000 location-based iPhone apps, 900 Android apps and 300 BlackBerry apps. Skyhook, the company that allows non-GPS enabled devices to triangulate locations by using nearby WiFi signals, also found that only a small number of these locationbased apps are currently available across the three major app stores. There are currently only 43 cross-platform location apps.

Sponsor Social networking and lifestyle apps make up the majority of these cross-platform apps,

platform, half of the apps are paid apps while less than 20% of the location apps on Android are paid apps.

It's interesting to see that such a small number of apps are though in general, most location- currently available across the based apps are travel apps, major platforms. Chances are, followed by social networking though, that a lot of these apps services and sports and fitness come from smaller development shops that simply don't have the apps.

Skyhook's report also highlights resources to port their apps to all the differences in how app the major platforms. As the developers price their apps in market for location-aware apps different stores. Wikango, for matures, we will surely see that a example, is free for iPhone users, lot of the more successful players w h i l e t h e A n d r o i d a p p will offer cross-platforms apps. costs$14.73 and the BlackBerry Until then, the iPhone is the app is$19.99. Even though the natural proving ground for these iPhone platform has a reputation apps, especially given that it has for driving the price of apps the largest developer community down, about 75% of all location- at this point. Discuss aware apps in the App Store are paid apps. On the BlackBerry

(Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:32:27 AM

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full -text RSS service so we can

continue developing it.

TheaS buzzed up: Few remain as 1962 Pa. coal town fire still burns (AP) 6 seconds ago 2010-0205T09:37:27-08:00

Google Rolls Out Ocean Showcase: It's a Multimedia, Underwater Street View

by Jolie O'Dell (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 2/4/2010 10:35:17 PM

Ah, the sea. The big blue. From sharks to shipwrecks, from the perfectly formed pipes of Hawaii's waves to the dark and chilly depths of the deepest sea trenches, it's one of Earth's most fascinating habitats - one that people love watching and exploring.

Tonight, Google is bringing Internet-bound ocean lovers a new portal to the amazing biological and topographical diversity that lies beneath the waves. If you're into underwater environments and you're down with Google Earth, we highly recommend checking out Ocean Showcase, Google's latest product release.

Sponsor "Anyone can be a desktop Cousteau," writes Googler Jenifer Austin Foulkes. The Google Earth browser plugin allows users to browse through a selection of highlighted tours.

Users of Google Earth 5 can go Five Filters featured article: on to explore more, downloading Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: tours and viewing photos and PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, videos by checking the Ocean Term Extraction. folder in the left-hand layers panel.

National Geographic ocean explorer Sylvia Earle narrates the

Judge says ex-Edwards aide in contempt, wants tape (AP)

47

highlights tour. The smattering of categories in the pluginenabled tours include research discoveries, shipwrecks, dive spots, surf spots, underwater terrain and the Great Lakes. The tours are dotted with YouTube videos and more information from carefully curated websites.

Google's put together some entertaining and high-quality content that integrates different technologies, including Google Earth and YouTube. We also think that Ocean Showcase is going to be a huge hit in the classrooms, as it gives brief and educational content snippets in a visual, interactive context that kids can appreciate and learn from.

Let us know what you think of this product in the comments, and check out ReadWriteWeb's archive of Google Earth-related products and news. Discuss

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Tech News/ TV/

E-reader News Edition

If 'Idol' Producers Get Their Way, Howard Stern Could Replace Cowell

by Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:02:00 AM

The question of who will replace Simon Cowell as an 'American Idol' judge began in earnest today with Page Six claiming that Howard Stern is the 'Idol' producers' top choice to take Simon Cowell's throne.

Stunt casting? Attentiongrabbing? Total bull? You can take your pick because this smacks of a PR turn if ever there was one.

For a moment, though, let's consider the possibility.

Howard's contract with Sirius XM Radio wraps next January.

That contract was in the $100 million neighborhood. costs $38 for a full version, Could'American Idol' fork over a which isn't cheap for software pay-out equal to that? Umm, yes. you'll probably only use every so They make enough. Will they? often. It does, however, offer a Hard to imagine. The figure 10-day free trial that only nags you upon launching the app.

That's perfect for giving it a go at an upcoming shindig, and it makes a nice complement to other photo projects to document your party.

Party Booth runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux under Adobe AIR. Party Booth - Photo Booth Kiosk Webcam Software[via Download Squad]

Party Booth is a Great Excuse to Bust Out the Webcam [Friday Fun]

by Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

visible those photos might be—it's a very simple app to use, which might be perfect for, well, Windows/Mac/Linux (AIR): It's later in the night. Simply hit the always fun to throw a party and space bar, and a timer ticks off let your guests get goofy with a until Party Booth captures four camera. Free photo app Party frames of your guests. You can Booth creates photo-booth-style set up the photos for old-time, picture strips from a webcam, vertical four-strips, two-by-two and can automatically upload grids, any many other options, them to Facebook, Twitter, or including the addition of custom other services. backgrounds.

After setting up your camera Don't like the idea of automatic and connecting Party Booth to uploads? Set Party Booth to just whatever social/photo service save to your disk, and your job is you'd like—and, most definitely, safe on Monday. making sure you know just how It must be said that Party Booth Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:00:00 AM

mentioned in the report was $50 million a year, which is what Simon will earn this season, but that's based on the fact that Simon has a track record with 'Idol.'

Continue reading If 'Idol' Producers Get Their Way, Howard Stern Could Replace Cowell Filed under: OpEd, American Idol, Celebrities, Judges, News and Gossip, Casting Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Apple/

E-reader News Edition

49

Antivirus Software On Your Mac: Yes or No?

by Dave Greenbaum (TheAppleBlog)

of “viruses.” Here are the common responses given and my take on them. Macs Aren’t Submitted at 2/4/2010 3:00:53 PM Popular Just over a year ago, Mac users Why do people rob banks? b e g a n t o f e e l a b i t m o r e That’s where the money is!

Windows-like after a major Mac ( S u t t o n ’ s L a w ) . B e c a u s e trojan horse was discovered in W i n d o w s - b a s e d c o m p u t e r s the wild. Of course, you’d get it represent around 90 percent of only if you obtained copies of the market, virus writers get pirated software. While there more bang for their buck. Not had been a few scattered OS X only does a Windows virus virus reports, this trojan had the spread farther and faster due to most destructive potential to its numbers, but the people date. writing viruses are more likely to Since that rumble last year, the have Windows machines upon Mac security front has been which to code. And the banks relatively quiet. This begs the are running Windows as well, so question that has been on many Windows is where the money is. people’s minds and one I get Of course, when Apple asked on a daily basis: “Why i n t r o d u c e d I n t e l - b a s e d don’t Macs get viruses?” computers, some were concerned O f c o u r s e , w e k n o w t h e that Macs would get PC viruses question isn’t valid. Macs can be because they were running the attacked as evidenced earlier. same chips. The chip switch was Even Apple suggests running a legitimate concern, but for a some kind of antivirus software different reason. If cheap PCs on your Mac and included one could be turned into Macs, the w i t h a . M a c s u b s c r i p t i o n . enemy could use that to their Additionally, numerous security a d v a n t a g e a n d b e g i n flaws are found and Apple diversifying. Hacking the Mac releases regular security updates OS to run on a PC would provide to patch them up. So, a better an easy way for malware writers question might be “Why don’t to explore the MacOS. Mac users have to worry about However, as the Mac’s malware like Windows users popularity has increased, we do?” I suspect a relatively small haven’t seen a rise in viruses for number of readers have active the Mac. Popularity is a weak antivirus software running on r a t i o n a l e . M a c s D o n ’ t their Mac, despite Apple’s M a i n t a i n B a c k w a r d recommendation. For purposes C o m p a t i b i l i t y of simplicity, we’ll lump viruses, Since 1984, Apple has made worms, spyware, malware, and multiple shifts in its operating trojans under the common term system strategy. First there was

and less viruses worked until finally OS X rewrote the OS book. Which leads to the final reason for the dearth of Mac nasties. Macs Were Designed with Security in Mind Since Apple knew about Mac viruses, it was able to redesign the operating system with safeguards in place to prevent malware outbreaks. The proper use of the Administrator account the shift from 68K processors to and password was the most PowerPC, and then the shift from important key in preventing the Classic to OS X, and then finally spread of any Mac viruses. For the shift from PowerPC to Intel those unfamiliar, on a Windows based processors. That old copy XP PC, programs can install of MacWrite or NetTrek won’t a u t o m a t i c a l l y w i t h o u t a n run on your new MacBook a d m i n i s t r a t o r n a m e a n d without major emulation and password. While Vista and other chicanery. On the other Windows 7 ask permission hand, WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS sometimes, you can still easily runs great on a Windows 7 PC install programs (and therefore viruses) without intervention with just a minor tweak.

Microsoft, in order to maintain from a user. c o m p a t i b i l i t y w i t h o l d e r Alternatively, Mac programs products, has never fully excised r e q u i r e s s o m e o n e w i t h o l d c o d e a n d f l a w s i n i t s Administrator privileges in order operating system. Apple has to install most software. In my been willing on at least three day job as a computer repair occasions to completely abandon tech, countless Mac clients can’t old software and start from e v e n r e m e m b e r t h e i r o w n scratch. Because Apple controls password, so they are extremely the hardware and the software unlikely to accidentally install and has a much smaller installed some software. Windows PCs base, it is better positioned to are usually infected by clicking on some kind of link followed by make these drastic moves.

Ironically, Macs used to get tons W i n d o w s a u t o m a t i c a l l y of viruses in the System 7 days. i n s t a l l i n g a v i r u s i n t h e I fondly r e m e m b e r background without user consent “Disinfectant,” and countless or intervention. This idea is as viruses spread via floppy disk. foreign to Mac users as a .dll file.

As the Classic OS evolved, less Because Apple has a quicker schedule in updating and

patching its operating system, any flaw that is found and acknowledged by Apple can easily be patched via an update or the next operating system.

Getting Apple to acknowledge some of these flaws is a different story, though Snow Leopard provided protection against the trojans discovered last year.

View This Poll survey Should You Run Mac Antivirus Software?

Good question. Apple said at one time it recommended antivirus software (though later it recanted), yet most Mac users don’t. The risks of a virus on your Mac are slim and protection software is perceived as slowing down computers and being generally buggy. Unlike most other software, virus protection requires a yearly fee to keep protection active. If you stay away from the red light district on the Internet, you are much less likely to get a virus. Make sure your system password is a good one and hard to guess. Be wary of any software you download and check the source.

That’s why you get the warning now whenever you download a program from the Internet.

Common sense is your first line of defense.

Personally, at home, I have ClamXav installed. It’s a free program that will scan your Mac to determine if you have a virus, ANTIVIRUS page 51

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E-reader News Edition

Another Publisher Uses iPad as Leverage for Price Hike

by Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:30:38 AM

Despite Amazon’s knee-jerk banishment and reinstatement of its books following a price increase of its books, publisher Macmillan isn’t the only one looking to introduce a new, more lucrative pricing structure.

HarperCollins is also eager for renegotiation, and now, Hachette Book Group has also joined the growing contingent of those looking to charge more for their electronic wares.

This is what’s called the new “agency model” of pricing, which allows the company serving the content to take a cut.

Apple’s own system calls for a 30 percent take of the revenue on all apps (and now books) sold through its online store. Amazon recently introduced a similar pricing structure for certain books and apps. It looks like major publishers are unwilling to absorb the cost of the seller’s cut, preferring instead to pass it along to consumers.

Hachette CEO David Young, however, in a letter sent out detailing the new pricing plans, claims that book publishers will not make more money using the agency model, claiming the

opposite, in fact: [W]e make less on each e-book sale under the new model; the author will continue to be fairly compensated and our e-book agents will make money on every digital sale. We’re willing to accept lower return for e-book sales as we control the value of our product–books, and content in general. We’re taking the long view on e-book pricing, and this new model helps protect the long term viability of the book marketplace.

Call me skeptical, but I can’t help but feel that these publishers are acting more out of selfinterest than anything else. It may be true that they actually make less on every book sold using the agency model for electronic distribution, but it’s probably also true that the books cost much less for them to create than print versions, too. I’d be willing to bet that they end up profiting more on a per copy sold basis in the end. Hachette makes other claims in his letter about how the deal is actually beneficial to consumers, despite the upfront price hike: There are many advantages to the agency model, for our authors, retailers, consumers, and publishers. It allows Hachette to make pricing decisions that are

over to its side, but the cost of that bargain is unfortunately one we as the buying public will be paying for.

At least in the short term. A longer view reveals a different picture. Apple needed to gain access to the ebook market, and so was willing to make concessions regarding price.

Publishers jumped at the chance to get out from under the tyranny of what amounted to Amazon’s ability to set prices unilaterally.

But is it a case of “out of the frying pay, into the fire?”

If Apple’s power play succeeds, Amazon could conceivably be forced to close up shop (though I still don’t think I’ll ever stop reading on my Kindle in favor of the iPad). If and when that happens, Apple will occupy the spot that Amazon once did, and will be able to dictate prices to rational and reflect the value of It’s good spin, but it’s spin publishers, much like they did our authors’ works. In the long nonetheless. The bottom line, no and still continue to do with run this will enable Hachette to matter how Hachette, Macmillan, record labels. It’s a rare case continue to invest in and nurture or HarperCollins try to spin it, is where a monopoly could actually authors’ careers–from major that rather than introducing benefit the buying public, but blockbusters to new voices. competition that will result in only if you’re willing to pay Without this investment in our lower prices for book-buying more than paperback prices in authors, the diversity of books customers, Apple’s iPad has in the meantime. I’m not sure I’m available to consumers will fact spelled the end of the $9.99 willing to do that. contract, as will the diversity of bestseller, for both Kindle and retailers, and our literary culture iPad users. Apple had to offer will suffer. publishers an incentive to come

Apple/

E-reader News Edition

51

iTunes Web Previews Now Live for Apps, Too

by Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:39:52 AM

Apple’s .itms links are either the scourge of the universe, or a very handy little shortcut to getting at iTunes content, depending on who you ask and what mood they happen to be in. My personal policy is always to give people fair warning (warning: this Pastebot link opens iTunes) when I’m linking to the iTunes store, to prevent unexpected program launches when they might not be most convenient.

Recently, Apple introduced preview launch pages for its iTunes musical content. The new pages, which replace the boring “iTunes is launching, please wait” dialog that used to appear, provide basically a snapshot of what you’ll find when that iTunes icon eventually stops bouncing and you’re taken to the relevant page on the iTunes store. And now iPhone apps have received the same treatment.

rid of the annoyance that some feel when inadvertently clicking .itms links. I’m talking about just using iTunes Previews, without the simultaneous opening of iTunes itself. This is one of the few times I will actually advise the implementation of a user interface element that actually adds a step instead of taking one away, but in this case it just makes sense.

The launch pad tells you everything you need to know, since it literally contains all the information available on the item’s iTunes store page. Let us as customers pause there, reflect, perhaps preview songs, etc. and click through to other app previews, and then provide a link to open iTunes. I suspect even just the sense of agency this will allow consumers will help boost actual purchase numbers. And Apple still gets the chance to up sell using the navigation bar.

Everybody wins.

The launch page you now receive when you click App Store links looks pretty much exactly like what you’ll see in iTunes itself. Product description, recommended apps, screenshots and user reviews — it’s all there. Apple also benefits by providing you with the Apple web site’s top navigation bar, so that customers clicking through

are now also potentially rerouted towards the company’s other products and offerings.

Is the web preview a good idea?

I guess so, especially for Apple’s new customers, who might be confused or put off by links that just open an application on their computer with little or no explanation. And it’s good for Apple, as I’ve just mentioned,

since it acts as a kind of light upselling tool. But as an experienced user who doesn’t appreciate being sold to when I’m already trying to buy something, I see little point in the entire iTunes Preview concept.

Not that it’s completely without merit. In fact, there’s a very simple way to make the whole thing extremely useful and get

performance of my Mac mini.

Because I work with a large number of clients, I can’t always guarantee that they haven’t downloaded an Internet Nasty and I don’t want to catch what they have on their computer.

The choice is yours whether to run antivirus software. The reasons why Macs don’t get

many viruses are as much based on luck and market conditions, as they are on inherent security.

At the very least, besides a good administrative password, a Mac on the Internet should have a copy of ClamXAV on it that can be run at the first sign of trouble and updated after a suspected outbreak. Furthermore,

r e m e m b e r t h a t “ s o c i a l information. engineering” threats, like phishing emails that attempt to steal your passwords can affect Mac and Windows users equally.

Stay on your toes and never respond to unexpected emails that try to scare you into visiting a website that requires your password or other personal

ANTIVIRUS continued from page 49

but won’t pre-emptively protect you from getting one. It’s an “on -demand” versus an active scanner. I update and run it every so often after I hear of some new threat.

For my work computer, I have Intego VirusBarrier installed.

The program is unobtrusive and has little or no impact on the

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E-reader News Edition

NBC Cafeteria Celebrates Black History Month in a Strange Way

by Joel Keller (TV Squad) Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:36:00 AM

The other day Questlove, drummer of The Roots, was taking a break from the grueling day of being the house band at'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.' He goes to the commissary at NBC's 30 Rock headquarters and notices that they have a special menu that celebrates Black History Month.

Great, right? Well, judging by the menu above, it wasn't all that great. Questlove snapped that

picture and posted it to Twitter with the caption, "Hmm HR?" What's funny is that how, in this ultra-connected society, this has become a real story, and not just

a strange, not-meant-to-beoffensive-but-is-anyway occurrence. According to Mediaite, not only did the NBC corporate folks respond with a

tweet(under a little-used @NBCU account) that the sign was taken down, but NBC's own African-American issues web site The Grio interviewed the cook who made up the menu.

That interview is after the jump.

Continue reading NBC Cafeteria Celebrates Black History Month in a Strange Way Filed under: Late Night, Industry, Talk Show, RealityFree Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Facebook Group Wants Betty White Foursquare traffic triples in two months to Host 'SNL'

by Bob Sassone (TV Squad) Submitted at 2/5/2010 10:31:00 AM

Now here's a Facebook group I can get behind. Close to 10,000 people have joined the Betty White To Host 'SNL' (please?) group at the networking site.

There's been no talks with NBC about White hosting the show, this is just something that fans cooked up and want to happen.

This is one of those things where you say to yourself, "hey, why not?" White is a TV icon, and even though she's 88 years old she's still spry, and I bet she

could handle an hour or so of sketches. Besides, if the show can have people like Charles Barkley, Ryan Reynolds, Anna

Faris, and Ellen Page host, why not White? She's been around for several decades, is one of those TV stars who is known to both people in their 50s (if they even watch'SNL') and also people in their 20s ('The Golden Girls' is actually quite popular on college campuses). She was even on'30 Rock' this season.

Lorne Michaels, your move.

Filed under: TV Royalty, Saturday Night Live, Web, Celebrities, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

(Holy Kaw!)

Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:03:00 AM

Where you at? More folks have started answering that question with the help of location sharing social network Foursquare as the site has enjoyed a big traffic jump since November. New numbers from traffic analyst firm Hitwise reveal that visits to the company’s website have tripled in the past two months.

Hitwise estimates that 24 percent of Foursquare’s traffic came via Google, but it’s mostly

navigational and not SEO (take that, SEO “gurus”!). Social networking sites also helped the traffic bump with 21 percent coming from Twitter and 19 percent coming via Facebook.

Do you Foursquare?

Full story at ReadWriteWeb. Tons of social media news that will have you talking.

Permalink| Leave a comment »

TV/ Entertainment/

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53

Charlie Sheen to be HBO Launches The Nikki Finke Charged With a Felony Show [Ripped From The Headlines]

by Bob Sassone (TV Squad)

by John Cook (Gawker)

Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:59:00 AM

Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:43:42 AM

Remember that little incident involving Charlie Sheen and his wife Brooke that happened in Aspen over Christmas? At first it looked like it might be one of those Hollywood stories that would go away after a while (community service, a fine, whatever celebrities get in situations like this). But now it looks like it's going to be a major case.

TMZ is reporting that the'Two and a Half Men' star is going to be charged with a felony.

"Felony menacing," to be precise. He is also going to be charged with misdemeanor assault. Sheen is going to be arraigned in court this Monday.

Not sure on how all of this will affect the taping of the CBS sitcom. The show has been going through a lot of odd incidents lately.

HBO is developing a comedy about "a powerful female online showbiz journalist with a noholds-barred style." We called our pal Nikki to ask if it's about her. It was, as always, a delightful conversation.

"Why are you so fucking fascinated with me?" Finke said.

"Get a life." Our conversation with Finke was a rare on the record one, at our insistence. So we were delighted when she acknowledged, fully aware that she would be quoted, that in our last off the record conversation she threatened to sue your blogger personally and Gawker corporately for "unfair business practices" related to our coverage of her. When we explained that the lawsuit threat was the reason we refused to speak off the record, she said, "How do you know I won't? I'd love to own your house and your kids."

The show, from director Bill Condon and Tell Me You Love Me creator Cynthia Mort, will be a half-hour sitcom called Tilda.

There's only one powerful online showbiz journalist with a noholds-barred style that we can think of, and it's Nikki. Did she have anything to do with this show? Life rights? Consulting?

This isn't the only bit of bad news for Sheen: his Mercedes was stolen earlier today and ended up in a ravine.

Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Celebrities, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Finke said she'll be posting to Deadline.com shortly explaining what relationship, if any, she has to the show. We'd be surprised if she didn't at least have some foreknowledge of it, since she reported yesterday that Condon has " some series business with HBO." In the meantime, let's get to work on casting, shall we? We're thinking Gena Rowlands, or maybe Kathleen Turner, in the title role. Add your suggestions to comments. As for the rest of the cast—what cast? They just need a cat, a computer, and some voice actors to represent the outside world with which Finke is said to interact almost

exclusively be telephone and email. We've heard rumors that she's never actually met Jay Penske, the minimogul who is paying her$15 million some mythically large sum of money to terrorize Hollywood. When we asked Finke she'd ever been in the same room with Penske, this is what she had to say: "I'm not going to talk about my boss.

You've got to be kidding me."

IndieWire's Anne Thompson claims Finke hasn't met Michael Fleming, the Variety reporter she recently hired to be her New York bureau, but Finke says that's not true.

Oh, Nikki. What a charmer.

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E-reader News Edition

We Have a Winner: Someone Watched 74 Minutes of Susan Orlean and Kurt Andersen [Contests]

by Gabriel Snyder (Gawker) Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:35:08 PM

The winning entry in our little contest to find someone who'd watched the full 74 minutes of Susan Orlean and Kurt Andersen chatting about a life of letters in the digital age arrived at 3am.

Let's meet the winner.

Yesterday, Bloggingheads posted a 74-minute web chat of the two authors outfitted like Youtube vloggers discussing Twitter and e-readers and how it's affected their writing and careers. We didn't have the time to watch the whole thing and wondered if anyone does. So we posted four quotes picked at random and offered a New Yorker Desk Diary for anyone who could give us the correct timestamps for when they were said. The winning answers are: • A: Orlean (67:07) "I end up chewing it off in little bits."

• B: Orelan (34:13) "I think I never looked back when I started working on a computer."

• C: Andersen (07:53) "We were grandfathered in in a way."

• D: Andersen (49:10) "As a writer, I don't know how you feel, though I suspect I do."

Studio 360 when he commutes home, making him a master, as he says, of "the art of not allowing Kurt Andersen put me to sleep." He also suffers from"a pathological obsession with entering contests online."

The main thing we were wondering when we launched the contest was whether anyone has the attention span anymore to And the person who watched the sit still and watch over an hour whole thing is Keith Malloy, 36, of this kind of literary elite resident of the second smallest dinner party conversation. We town in Connecticut. He usually intentionally picked the New listens to Andersen's radio show

I probably wouldn't have heard about it. It's exactly the kind of NPR voice piece I might put on if I was looking for something to fall asleep to, though.

What did you think of their discussion? Learn anything?

Would you recommend it to a friend?

I was surprised at how quickly it went by honestly. I thought it would drag a lot more and was pleasantly surprised. I do enjoy hearing about the writer's process. They talked about lowly people with real jobs that write in the hopes of doing something better with their lives, which kind of spoke to me. If I wasn't an unmotivated lummox (except when contests come around, apparently) that could definitely be me, with the wacky hotel anecdotes I have been party to over the years. I would probably Yorker Desk Diary (currently on enjoyed The Orchid Thief well be more likely to quote the piece sale for $22.95) thinking it enough. I wouldn't take a night or send someone to one of the wasn't a prize that would make off of work to go to a book thematic links on the page then someone watch the interview — signing by either of them though. the whole thing. how hard could it be to simply Is this the first time you watched And lastly, should I feel bad for pay someone to do that? — but one of these Bloggingheads keeping you up until 3am?

Nah, I'm a night owl. You would elicit a response from discussions? someone who already planned to I've gone to some of the New should feel bad for sending me give it a view. So we asked Yorker text based online chats, interview questions before I Malloy about why he entered. but this is the first video woke up and watched The View.

Other than being a loyal Studio discussion of its sort I have Thanks for staying up late for us, Keith. And congratulations 360 listener, do you count watched. yourself as a fan of Orlean and Do you think you would have on winning the prize. Your New Andersen? watched Orlean and Andersen if York Desk Diary is on its way.

I loved Spy magazine, and it weren't for our little contest?

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Tech Journalism Wunderkind in Bribery Scandal [Poor Dumb Kids]

by Pareene (Gawker)

discreet about it! And Daniel, on at least one other occasion, apparently did get a computer in Remember Daniel Brusilovsky, exchange for a post. the 16-year-old startup CEO and TechCrunch founder Michael TechCrunch contributor with Arrington says he fired 120,000 Twitter followers? The Brusilovsky, whom he also poor kid just threw it all away keeps calling an "intern." He for a MacBook Air. might've just been part-time (and Apparently, Daniel asked for the unpaid?), but he did used to have useless-but-skinny statusa much more prestigiouscomputer in exchange for writing sounding title! a TechCrunch post about an Brusilovsky has admitted to unnamed startup. Now, before wrongdoing (using the passive we all castigate a 16-year-old, construction "a line was let's note that "asking for shit in you how far "asking for a crossed," of course—they learn exchange for publicity" is MacBook Air" can take you. so young!) and apologized. incredibly common on the Most flacks know that bloggers TechCrunch has scrubbed all internet. No less an internet a r e b a s i c a l l y f i n e w i t h mention of him from the site. legend than Julia Allison will tell bribery—you just have to be Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:24:19 PM

55

How immutable are the immutable laws of marketing?

(Holy Kaw!)

• Is it still better to be first than better?

Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:38:58 AM • If you can’t be first, should Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote a you create a new category? classic marketing book called • Is it better to be first in the The 22 Immutable Laws of m i n d t h a n f i r s t i n t h e Marketing. Dr. Augustine Fou, m a r k e t p l a c e ? group chief digital officer of O m n i c o n ’ s h e a l t h c a r e Full story at ClickZ. consultancy group (that’s a Total coverage of marketing mouthful), has analyzed whether news. these “laws” are still immutable. Photo credit: Fotolia For example, he addresses these Permalink| Leave a comment » issues:

New York Jets coach Rex Ryan was heckled, spit at, columnist Jay Glazer says

by ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:10:47 AM

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full -text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Jets Fine Ryan, NFL Won't Punish Him Jets Fine Ryan, NFL Won't Punish Him VIDEO PLAYLIST • Jets Fine Ryan, NFL Won't Punish Him Jets Fine Ryan, NFL Won't Punish Him • Mike And Mike: Obscene

G e s t u r e M i k e A n d M i k e : WFAN. Obscene Gesture Glazer said he saw the incident that occurred Saturday night at a The obscene gesture for which mixed martial arts event in South Jets coach Rex Ryan was fined Florida. $50,000 came in reaction to a Ryan was caught in a widely fan's heckling that included circulated cell-phone photograph s p i t t i n g , a c c o r d i n g t o extending his middle finger, FoxSports.com's Jay Glazer. presumably at the heckling fan.

Ryan, who this season led the AFC East blog Jets to the AFC Championship ESPN.com's Tim Graham writes Game in his first year as an NFL about all things AFC East in his head coach, "showed the greatest division blog. restraint," Glazer said Thursday • Blog network: NFL Nation on New York radio station It wasn't clear why Glazer

waited until late this week to reveal the details. The Jets issued the $50,000 fine Tuesday; the NFL on Wednesday announced Ryan would not be subject to any discipline from the league, which had investigated the incident.

"This was a guy who was going out of his way to incite a fight, to incite some sort of violence to get the head coach of the Jets to ruin his job and to really put Rex in a place he didn't need to be," Glazer said in the radio interview.

Glazer said he and Ryan were with 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis and Eagles defensive end Trent Cole.

"I mean it was unbelievable, and he just kept going on and on," Glazer said of the heckler. "Then he said, 'I hate you. I hope you die, you fat piece of crap,' and then spit at him."

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Danica Patrick’s Life in Nascar Begins (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:33:33 AM

After shining the spotlight on the Saints on Wednesday and the Colts on Thursday, the Fix follows its annual tradition with its pre-Super Bowl stand against hype, Football-Free Friday.

We’ll return to said hype Saturday and Sunday mornings with a pair of bonus Fixes, plus double live blogs of both the game and the commercials Sunday night. Anyone jonesing for NFL coverage can find great stuff from the Journal here, here and here and much more at WSJ.com/sports. Associated Press Danica Patrick races cars when not starring in sexist, gaybaiting Super Bowl ads.

Danica Patrick’s personality, looks and, yes, driving skills made her a star in the world of open-wheel racing, despite just one victory in 81 IndyCar starts.

Patrick will certainly bring her celebrity status with her to Nascar, where her career begins Saturday at Daytona’s International Speedway. But she hopes to leave with a few more wins to her name. The ARCA Series race in which Patrick will make her debut is the equivalent of a minor-league baseball game, but the results will surely be observed more closely than the average South Atlantic League box score, as Patrick’s fans and Nascar observers alike await her eventual ascent to Nascar’s Sprint Cup Series.

While all eyes will be on Patrick, Yahoo’s Jay Hart argues that the struggles of open-wheel racers who previously have attempted to move to Nascar will take the pressure off her somewhat. “Today, having witnessed the struggles of three Indy 500 winners, expectations for those making the move from IRL to NASCAR are tempered,” Hart writes. “Whereas failure was once measured by wins and losses, that’s no longer the case.

Now, failure is determined by not trying at all.”

At Sports Illustrated, Bruce Martin runs down the lessons learned from Patrick’s first Daytona practice, on Thursday.

At Thatsracin.com, Brant James writes that Patrick seems to be assimilating well to Nascar thus far.* * * It’s not hard to figure out the Atlanta Thrashers’ thought process in trading Ilya Kovalchuk, despite the sniper’s position atop the NHL pointsscored ranking since 2001. With the Thrashers struggling to draw fans and Kovalchuk demanding a $100-million-plus deal, the three -player haul and first-round draft pick Atlanta received from the New Jersey Devils for Kovalchuk may actually turn out to be respectable.

In the Calgary Herald, Dave Gross argues that it also looks a lot like a white flag. In the Globe and Mail, Eric Duhatschek thinks the deal is reminiscent of the superstar-rental the Devils

also has been on shaky financial footing more or less since it opened, and has suffered from a decline in donations and visitors of late. In a story for the Associated Press, Doug Tucker reported a possible $250,000 loss for the museum in 2009 and a executed back in 2000, when a sense of organizational drift after just-passing-through Alexander the death of Buck O’Neil, the Mogilny helped Jersey to a Negro League legend, Kansas City icon and patron saint for the Stanley Cup.* * * College-basketball fans are museum.

At Yahoo, Kevin Kaduk renowned for their rowdiness a n d e n e r g y , w i t h D u k e ’ s proposes moving the struggling C a m e r o n C r a z i e s a n d museum’s collection of Wisconsin’s Grateful Red, memorabilia to Cooperstown. among others, earning mass- “The museum is struggling to nickname status due to their draw visitors in a town that’s not game-changing noise levels. All exactly a magnet for tourists,” of which might’ve sent the Kaduk writes. “So why not move wrong message to the fans at it to the one place where W e s t V i r g i n i a U n i v e r s i t y . everyone arrives with baseball I n s t e a d o f a n a f f e c t i o n a t e on the brain? Wouldn’t that be nickname, those fans’ nasty, the best way to present the profane, throwing-stuff-on-the- memories that O’Neil worked so court-and-at-opposing-coaches hard to preserve?” behavior has elicited media Tim Marchman endorses the c e n s u r e a n d , d u r i n g Cooperstown move, but is tired W e d n e s d a y ’ s p a r t i c u l a r l y of the ultra-solemn tone that has anarchic Mountaineers win over defined the discussion of the Pittsburgh, an in-game “Chill the museum’s possible demise. “The hell out” lecture from WVU Negro Leagues have been dead longer than they were alive and coach Bob Huggins.

At CBS Sports, Gary Parrish while all right-thinking people bemoans how the supreme disapprove of the American loutishness of WVU’s fans has t e n d e n c y t o w a r d c u l t u r a l overshadowed the sixth-ranked amnesia, it actually cheers me up Mountaineers’ excellent play.* * to think that people prefer things that are vibrant and alive to those * By most accounts, the Negro that passed long ago,” Marchman Leagues Baseball Museum in blogs. “What’s at stake isn’t the Kansas City is wonderful. But it l e g a c y a n d h i s t o r y o f independent black baseball, but

the future of an institution that was probably sited in the wrong city and whose time may just have passed.”* * * Mike Dunleavy was at the helm for the one good season the Los Angeles Clippers have had since Bill Clinton was in the White House, back in 2005-06, and parlayed the goodwill from that season into an eventual dual position as the team’s coach and general manager. It was a sweet gig for numerous reasons, chief among them being that the person who’d eventually have to do the dirty work of firing Coach Mike Dunleavy should things go south was GM Mike Dunleavy.

After back-to-back terrible seasons and a disappointing start to 09-10, GM Mike Dunleavy did just that on Thursday, stepping down as coach and handing the reins to longtime assistant Kim Hughes.

“Why now?” Yahoo’s Kelly Dwyer asks. “Why lose the monetary convenience of a double-duty guy at this point?

Why would [legendarily cheap Clips owner Donald] Sterling force himself into paying more money to a full-time head coach this summer? Because the Clippers are terrible.”* * * The teams are set, and the Winter Olympics will be starting soon enough. All of which is good news for Winter Games fans, but maybe not the best DANICA page 59

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Los Angeles Clippers to remove Mike Dunleavy as coach

by Marc Stein and J.A. Adande (ESPN.com) Submitted at 2/4/2010 9:34:19 PM

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full -text RSS service so we can continue developing it. JA Adande: Dunleavy Out In L.A. JA Adande: Dunleavy Out In L.A. The Los Angeles Clippers have made a coaching change with just 32 games left in the season, naming Kim Hughes as their interim coach on Thursday night after Mike Dunleavy relinquished his bench duties.

Dunleavy will retain the title of Clippers general manager in what the team has described as a decision that was "reached mutually" earlier Thursday during a meeting attended by club president Andy Roeser, Dunleavy and assistant general manager Neil Olshey.

Although Dunleavy has been under pressure at various points during the past few months despite the season-long absence of No. 1 overall pick Blake Griffin(ESPN.com reported in November that Clippers owner Donald Sterling contemplated making a change after an 0-4 start), one source close to the situation insisted that it was Dunleavy's "decision to step down."

TrueHoop: Money Talks The only argument to explain Dunleavy's continued employment as head coach and

general manager of the Clippers while the team kept retreating from the playoffs was money, ESPN.com's J.A. Adande notes.

Blog Said Dunleavy in a team statement: "I've had several conversations with our owner [Sterling] concerning what we think is best for the team overall.

We have discussed the possibility of my concentrating only on basketball operations.

That option has always been available to me.

"I've come to the conclusion that this is the ideal time for me to direct my efforts toward the many personnel opportunities that lie before us, such as the trade market, the draft and the free-agent process. We fully expect to be active and productive on all those fronts."

It has been widely assumed in NBA coaching circles that Dunleavy, given Sterling's famed aversion to paying coaches who no longer work for the Clippers, was insulated from being fired because his contract has one more season to go after this season at $5 million.

But even an unexpected victory Tuesday over Chicago could not prevent the Clippers from a 2-6 record on the season's longest road trip, dropping them to 12th in the Western Conference and seven games out of a playoff spot. The trip included a loss in New Jersey, the fourth win all season for the Nets as they careen toward the league's all-

time worst single-season record of 9-73 established by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 197273 campaign.

Three sources close to the situation told ESPN.com that the recent double-digit road losses to New Jersey and Minnesota and the fade from playoff contention again had Sterling and Roeser contemplating a coaching change before Dunleavy voluntarily removed himself from the bench.

"We fully agree with Mike that this is the right time to make this change," Roeser said in a statement. "It just seems clear that the team needs a fresh voice and we hope that our players will respond in a positive way.

"As we approach the trade deadline, the NBA draft and the upcoming free-agent period, our team is very well positioned from a salary-cap standpoint.

Mike's experienced input will be vitally important as we continue to develop our young talented nucleus and shape our team's future."

You win some...

Before stepping down as coach of the Clippers, Mike Dunleavy was one of the NBA's active coaches leading their current franchise in wins.

Dunleavy's next chore is deciding whether to trade or keep the in-demand Marcus Camby before the league's Feb. 18 deadline. Dunleavy's record on personnel matters has been strong in L.A., and the Clippers are positioned to have a

significant amount of salary-cap space this summer bacause of the trade that sent Zach Randolph to Memphis. The cap flexibility they've maintained to this point has also enabled the Clippers to acquire two quality players -Camby and swingman Rasual Butler-- from teams plagued by luxury-tax issues (Denver and New Orleans, respectively).

"Mike was a good coach. He's been around the game for like 30 years. It was unfortunate how things turned out. I think he just got caught up in a lot of difficult circumstances," Camby said upon hearing the news.

As the winningest and highestpaid coach in Clippers history, Dunleavy has survived nearly seven seasons working for the volatile Sterling. His record in L.A. is 215-325, but Dunleavy also took the franchise that has suffered so long in the Lakers' shadow to within one win of the Western Conference finals in 2006.

The Clippers had two options when choosing an interim successor before settling on Hughes. The other was John Lucas, who's in his first season as an assistant coach with the Clippers after previous coaching stints in San Antonio, Philadelphia and Cleveland.

Hughes is in his seventh season as a Clippers assistant after 12 seasons as a coach and scout with Denver and Milwaukee.

This is the third coaching change in the NBA this season.

New Orleans (Jeff Bower replacing Byron Scott) and New Jersey (Kiki Vandeweghe replacing Lawrence Frank) are the other teams to make changes this season.

"This is something we've been contemplating for some time," Dunleavy's longtime agent Warren LeGarie said. "There's a shelf life to coaching sometimes.

So you constantly have to keep measuring whether [the team's inconsistency] is because of injuries, because of you, or something else.

"And at some point you have to make a judgement call about what's best for the team, and that's what Mike did."

Dunleavy has a career record of 613-716 as a head coach with the Lakers, Milwaukee, Portland and the Clippers. He reached the NBA Finals in his first season of coaching in 1990-91 and came within one game of the 2000 Finals with the Trail Blazers before a fourth-quarter collapse in Game 7 propelled Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant to their first of three championships together with the Lakers.

After the trip to the playoffs with the Clippers in 2006, with Dunleavy and point guard Sam Cassell forming a successful bond, L.A. has been consistently hampered by injuries. The Clippers were also dealt a blow in free agency in 2008 when LOS page 59

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Report: Michael Irvin accused of rape in civil rape suit filed by Florida woman

by ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com)

show has not performed," ESPN said in a statement released Friday. "We had previously Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:11:01 AM decided to cancel the show and Message from fivefilters.org: If determined this morning to make you can, please donate to the full it effective today. The permanent -text RSS service so we can replacement begins at 11 a.m. continue developing it.

CT today -- Ben Rogers and Jeff Michael Irvin has been accused "Skin" Wade ("Ben and Skin")." of rape in a civil suit filed Irvin's lawyer, Larry Friedman, Thursday in Broward Circuit called the rape accusations C o u r t , t h e M i a m i H e r a l d "totally untrue," according to the reported.

Herald. Friedman, asked by the The suit, filed by a woman paper to describe the woman's identified as "Jane Doe," accused c o n t a c t w i t h I r v i n , s a i d : I r v i n , t h e f o r m e r D a l l a s "Beyond, perhaps, meeting her, Cowboys wide receiver and Pro there was nothing."

Football Hall of Fame member, According to the suit, the of raping her at the Seminole w o m a n c l a i m s t h e a t t a c k Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in happened late on July 4 or early H o l l y w o o d , F l a . , i n 2 0 0 7 , on July 5, 2007. It claims a Irvin according to the report. bought the woman alcohol and No criminal charges have been took her to his hotel room, where f i l e d . T h e B r o w a r d S t a t e Irvin raped her and another man Attorney's Office has been forced her to perform oral sex. investigating the case and a The other man is unidentified spokesman told the Herald he b e c a u s e , a c c o r d i n g t o t h e expects a conclusion next week. woman's lawyer, David Lister, Irvin, currently in South Florida she doesn't know who he is. for the Super Bowl, had hosted a The suit claims Irvin's brother, talk show on ESPN Radio 103.3 Derrick Irvin, "assisted in i n D a l l a s a n d w o r k s a s a covering the sexual assault and television analyst for the NFL rape up," according to the Network. lawsuit.

"His contract was up and the Seminole police were informed

of the alleged incident on July 20, 2007, Seminole Tribe spokesman Gary Bitner told the Herald.

"They investigated it thoroughly," Bitner said.

"Although by that time there was no longer any forensic evidence or surveillance video." The paper said the woman signed a "waiver of prosecution," in what Bitner descibed as "her desire to essentially put it behind her and not have it be splashed all over the newspapers."

Both attorneys said settlement talks had taken place, but broke down. Friedman told the Herald the woman first asked for $1 million, then $800,000. Lister told the Herald that Irvin's lawyers asked for a settlement figure.

"This complaint is tantamount to criminal extortion," Friedman told the Herald. "There is no merit to the complaint."

Lister said the woman had passed a polygraph test and told the Herald: "There were discussions back and forth between the parties. Nothing came of it."

Irvin has been in the headlines several times during his career

with the Cowboys and in retirement.

Irvin pleaded no contest to a cocaine charge in 1996. The same year, he and Cowboys teammate Erik Williams were accused of assaulting a Dallasarea dancer. The allegation turned out to be false and the woman paid a fine and spent three months in jail.

Irvin was arrested on drug possession charges in August 2000. He and a woman were charged, but the case was dropped after the district attorney determined that a police officer conducted an improper search.

In 2005, Irvin was pulled over for speeding in Plano, Texas and, after a search, police said they found a marijuana pipe and plastic bags with marijuana residue. Irvin was arrested on an outstanding warrant for an unpaid speeding ticket in Irving, Texas, and also was charged with misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. Two days later, Irvin stated on ESPN's "Sunday Night Countdown" that he had taken the pipe away from a longtime friend who was battling drug addiction and that he forgotten to throw it out and

had left it in his car.

And in Jan. 2009, Irvin claimed he was the victim of a carjacking attempt, but that the two men who drove up alongside his car and flashed a gun drove away when they recognized who Irvin was. Dallas police suspended the investigation 17 days later, stating they couldn't proceed without more information and that Irvin had not cooperated with police.

He also competed on Dancing with The Stars in 2009. He was voted off the reality show as it trimmed to its final five contestants.

He was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007 .

He played 12 seasons in the NFL, all with the Cowboys, catching 750 passes for 11,904 yards and 65 touchdowns. He won three Super Bowls in his career and was selected to the Pro Bowl five times.

He played collegiately at the University of Miami.

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The Count: Brees, Manning Could Come Back to Haunt Each Other

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LOS continued from page 57

guard Baron Davis reached an agreement to leave the Golden State Warriors to play in his (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) all time, and this Super Bowl took the lead in the third quarter hometown, believing that he'd be might be remembered as the o v e r t h e N e w Y o r k J e t s . playing alongside longtime Submitted at 2/4/2010 12:03:30 PM premier QB matchup.

However, the game was an Clippers forward Elton Brand.

The Super Bowl’s quarterback In the clutch, Manning and important addition to his record But Brand elected to sign with matchup is truly a marquee one. Brees have been among the 10 because he played so well — 26 P h i l a d e l p h i a . D a v i s a n d As two recent studies confirm, best quarterbacks of the past 12 of 39 for 377 yards, three Dunleavy then struggled to Peyton Manning and Drew Brees years, according to a new study touchdowns and no interceptions coexist until the arrival of Lucas, are two of the best QBs of the by Nicholas Higgins published at — against the Jets’ top-rated who has served as an effective past decade — throughout the Football Outsiders. Higgins 79% better than expected on p a s s i n g d e f e n s e , l e d b y go-between this season. g a m e , a n d i n t h e c l u t c h . examined QB performance in the comeback drives, and Manning cornerback Darrelle Revis. ESPNLosAngeles.com reporter Associated Press Drew Brees fourth quarter on potential game- was 167% better. No wonder Bill Football analyst KC Joyner and a n d c o l u m n i s t R a m o n a and Peyton Manning have been tying or game-winning drives in Belichick didn’t want to punt on g a m e c h a r t e r s a t F o o t b a l l Shelburne contributed to this a m o n g t h e N F L ’ s b e s t t h e r e g u l a r s e a s o n a n d fourth down. “A close Super Outsiders agree that Revis report. quarterbacks this past decade — postseason, comparing how Bowl could come down to yielded the fewest yards per pass Five Filters featured article: in and out of clutch situations. successful they were to how whichever team has the ball attempt of any cornerback in the Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: At Advanced NFL Stats, Brian successful the average offense last,” Higgins wrote. league this year. Joyner has PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Burke tallied the number of wins would have been in the same I checked with Scott Kacsmar, Revis with the fewest yards per Term Extraction. and points five QBs have added situation. Manning ranked third author of a series of blog posts at a t t e m p t o f a n y s t a r t i n g to their teams over the past 10 and Brees 10th, each respectable Pro Football Reference about QB cornerback in the last seven NFL regular seasons. His group and each at least 31% more comebacks(and advisor to a years. of five included Manning and s u c c e s s f u l i n s u c h c l u t c h recent post here about Favre’s This agreement about Revis’s four quarterbacks knocked out moments than could be expected. poor late-game track record), greatness is notable because DANICA earlier in the playoffs: Brett Neither, however, has been the about the Football Outsiders g a m e c h a r t e r s m u s t t r a c k continued from page 56 Favre, Tom Brady, Donovan most successful. The rankings methodology, and he called it a cornerbacks without much help McNabb and Kurt Warner. The are topped by the winners of the “nice effort.” He did, however, from TV broadcasters, as Doug news for residents of Vancouver, analysis showed that Manning last two Super Bowls: Ben add that it could be improved by Farrar of Football Outsiders who will soon see their fair city’s has contributed by far the most Roethlisberger at No. 2, and including drives that start in the noted on Slate. And Manning’s already serious traffic issues to his team’s success in the past Peyton’s younger brother, Eli, at third quarter but extend into the achievements against the Jets are a s c e n d t o a n e w l e v e l o f decade, followed by Brady and No. 1. The younger Manning has fourth, and by judging QBs on a a l l t h e m o r e i m p r e s s i v e snarlage. “You might think then, much further down, the been 55% better in clutch per-game basis rather than per- considering he was facing not hockey is the star of that big other three. I asked Burke to also situations than one would expect, drive, so as not to overweight only Revis but also two other sporting show just around the study Brees, and he found that given his starting field position games against particularly tough cornerbacks who ranked in the corner,” the Vancouver Sun’s the Saints QB, despite not having and score. top seven in Football Outsiders’ Shelley Fralic writes, “but if defenses. you’re a Metro Vancouver played the whole decade, has Peyton Manning and Brees, Peyton Manning’s performance rankings. commuter you’ll be just as glued numbers that compare favorably though, had career years in the in the AFC championship game to that other major 2010 to Brady’s. By the time Brees’s clutch, which helps explain why won’t boost his comeback rating Olympic Games event: Getting career is through, he could rank they finished first and second in either way, because the Colts in and out of town.” among the best quarterbacks of league MVP voting. Brees was As urban-planning issues go, DANICA page 60

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DANICA continued from page 59

though, Vancouver’s jammed-up highways pale in comparison to the disaster area that is the city’s Downtown East neighborhood, a sprawling skid row just five blocks from the site of the Games’ opening ceremony that is the poorest postal code in Canada. In the New York Times, Greg Bishop discusses the ultrablighted neighborhood and Vancouver’s attempt, in anticipation of the Olympic spotlight, to revitalize (and spin) the shadow city in its midst.* * * Religion and sports are not exactly a new combination, but there’s something notably novelseeming about Nashville’s Xtreme Ministries, an evangelical church that marries mixed martial arts and oldschool Christianity. In the New York Times, R.M. Schneiderman reports on the seemingly disjunctive combination of turning the other cheek and delivering knees to the head.

“Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in,” Schneiderman writes. “Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events. The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing.”* * * A great many American baseball players have gone to ply their trade in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league over the last several decades, but very few of them have returned to the U.S. as highly sought-after free agents. Former first-round pick Colby Lewis might have seemed to fit the present-day fringe-player-seeking-paycheck

MLB-to-NPB prototype when he first headed over to Japan. But the righty returned after a pair of lights-out seasons to some surprising hype. After a low-key bidding war between a reported dozen teams, Lewis wound up inking a two-year deal with the Texas Rangers, the team that drafted him in 1999. At ESPN, Tim Kurkjian writes about how Lewis turned his career around with the Hiroshima Carp after bombing with the Rangers and Oakland Athletics.

Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself — write to us at dailyfix@wsj.com and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email David at droth11@gmail.com.

2 Bodies Discovered in Wooded Lot in New York (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:23:21 AM

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CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. Homicide detectives are

investigating the discovery of two bodies in a wooded lot on Long Island.

Suffolk County Police were releasing few details about the investigation. They say the bodies were found by a passerby who was walking to work at about 7 a.m. Friday.

The wooded lot is near an industrial area of Central Islip.

Click here for more on this story from MyFoxNY.com.

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The Who’s Super Bowl Set List (In a Perfect World) (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 2/4/2010 2:28:48 PM

Legendary guitarist Pete Townshend talked to Billboard the other day and revealed The Who’s set list for its Super Bowl halftime spectacular. Getty Images“Baba O’Riley.” Surprise, surprise, surprise.

“We’re kinda doing a mashup of stuff,” he said. “A bit of ‘Baba O’Riley,’ a bit of ‘Pinball Wizard,’ a bit of the close of ‘Tommy,’ a bit of ‘Who Are You,’ and a bit of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’ It works — it’s quite a saga. A lot of the stuff that we do has that kind of celebratory vibe about it — we’ve always tried to make music that allows the audience to go a bit wild if they want to.

Hopefully it will hit the spot.”

This is to be expected, and surely CBS will be happy, since its “CSI” franchise loves to crank The Who like a 1976 Camaro on a hot summer night. But will Who-heads be happy? We turned to our favorite Who-ologist, Andy Greene at Rolling Stone, and asked him: If The Who played a Super Bowl halftime show only for Who fans, what

would they want to hear? Here’s Andy’s set list. Enjoy, Who nuts: “A Legal Matter” “A Quick One While He’s Away” “I’m A Boy” “Sunrise” “Sea And Sand” “Slip Kid” Update: Apparently Townshend, Roger Daltrey and Co. look to the Journal when booking up on American football. Daltrey quipped that The Who is playing for 12 minutes at halftime, while the game itself features only 11 1/2 minutes of actual action. The Journal’s David Biderman figured that number out in this January story. The NFL Network quoted Townshend following that up by joking, “ Were working for longer than the players. We should redo our deal with Universal.”

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61

Super Bowl: Tony Dungy says Indianapolis Colts will turn back New Orleans Saints emphatically

by ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com)

good game, they won by two scores, the Colts won their second championship,' " Dungy Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:38:14 AM said of Manning on Thursday.

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Dungy, who led Indianapolis to Tony Dungy stands a year a Super Bowl XLI victory in removed from retiring after 2007, said the Saints' difficulty seven seasons as coach of Peyton in closing out the Minnesota Manning and the Indianapolis Vikings in the NFC title game Colts. was evidence the Colts will have In 12 months -- during which a convincing upper hand come he's served as an NFL analyst for Sunday.

NBC and a mentor for Eagles Pardon the Interruption quarterback Michael Vick, Tony Kornheiser and Michael among other roles -- his Wilbon spend Five Good a l l e g i a n c e h a s n ' t b u d g e d . Minutes with the NFL Network's Dungy, speaking to The New Deion Sanders. Plus, more on York Times in Miami, said the Tony Dungy's comments and the Saints won't be able to do Lakers. enough to force the Colts into More Podcasts Âť needing a final, last-minute drive "Minnesota is playing in New to win the Super Bowl.

Orleans, they turn the ball over "I think they're going to be so far five times, have two or three ahead that people are going to stupid penalties and still lose in say, 'Oh, ho-hum, he played a overtime," Dungy told The

Times. "I don't see how it's going to be close. The Colts aren't going to turn it over seven times."

Dungy also weighed in on whether Manning was a better clutch quarterback than the Patriots' Tom Brady.

"Your coach wouldn't punt the ball to Peyton," Dungy said in referring to Patriots coach Bill Belichick's decision to go for it on fourth-and-2 deep in his own territory rather than give the ball back to Manning late in the Colts' 35-34 victory in Week 10.

"I would punt the ball to Tom Brady with one minute left," Dungy said. "Your coach is the best coach in the world and wouldn't punt it to [Manning].

What does that say?"

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By Michael Peel in London and Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington Published: February 5 2010

by Nancy Gay (FanHouse Main)

never about the accolades for me. I played the game of football with a lot of intensity and a lot of Submitted at 2/4/2010 5:00:00 PM passion. And I never got Filed under: NFL Hall of Fame, c o m p l a c e n t . I w a s a l w a y s S u p e r B o w l , F a n H o u s e hungry, always hungry. It's like, Exclusive if I had year with over 1,800 In this FanHouse exclusive yards and 20 touchdowns, I interview, senior NFL writer wanted to come back the next Nancy Gay sits down with year, and I was more hungry legendary wide receiver Jerry than ever to have a better year.

Rice to discuss the Super Bowl, And, with the supporting cast I his career and his pending Hall had with the players that we had, o f F a m e c a n d i d a c y . T h e it was amazing. following is part two of the two- We came to work every day. part series. Read Part I here.

Whenever we had a practice, it Nancy Gay: Jerry, we've always was like a game situation. That 15:55 | Last updated: February 5 t a l k e d a b o u t t h e m a n y was all week long. And when we 2010 17:16 Five Filters featured article: achievements you made on the went out there on that Sunday, it Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: football field. And we've looked was already instilled in us, what PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, ahead to the Hall of Fame and w a s e x p e c t e d . W i t h t h a t how important that is. Is it supporting cast, the numbers just Term Extraction. starting to sink in now? kept coming.

Jerry Rice: You know, it was

BAE to pay $400m to end corruption case (Financial Times - US homepage)

One-on-One With Jerry Rice, Part II

62

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WVU Should Ban Fans New Orleans Is Quiet ... for Now That Can't Behave

by Tom Mantzouranis (FanHouse Main)

by Kevin Blackistone (FanHouse Main)

Filed under: NCAA Basketball When the once dynastic Italian soccer club Juventus lost for the ninth time in 12 games late last month, falling 2-1 to Inter Milan in the Italian Cup quarterfinals, it did so without any of its followers in attendance. The fans were banned because they refused to behave themselves. At a previous match against Inter Milan, they spat racial slurs at Inter Milan's star of Ghanaian descent, Mario Balotelli.

That wasn't the first time a European soccer league imposed a ban on some club's intransigent fanatics. It won't be the last time either. The people who police European soccer are more fearful of not doing anything and chancing a tragedy, than doing something as harsh as kicking out fans and losing ticket and concession revenues. A Euro 2008 qualifier between Turkey and Norway in Frankfurt, Germany, was played in a nearly

Bayonetta moves 1.1m units in Sega fiscal Q3 2010 results

Submitted at 2/4/2010 2:25:00 PM

Submitted at 2/4/2010 3:10:00 PM

empty stadium. Turkish fans were barred as punishment for fighting at the end of a World Cup qualifier for their team against Switzerland a few years earlier. They were ordered to play their next three home games away from home, and behind closed doors.

It is too bad those who run sports on this side of the pond are so reluctant to act as boldly when it comes to abject boorish fan behavior.

Filed under: Saints, Super Bowl NEW ORLEANS -- Much has been made of Drew Brees' pregame, team-motivating chant this season, which has at times culminated with a 300-esque declaration: "This ... is ... New Orleans!"

Wait ... this is New Orleans?

The city that I've heard loves their Saints like no other city has loved anything ever before? The city that is willing to throw a lavish parade whenever someone so much as sneezes? The city that has waited 43 years for their beloved football team to reach a Super Bowl?

Hmm, maybe my flight got re-

by Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 2/5/2010 10:40:00 AM

After surviving harrowing losses of ¥22.8 billion (nearly $254.8 million) during its fiscal year routed somewhere. Or maybe, 2009, Sega Sammy Holdings like a summer blockbuster film, (parent company to Sega, which t h e h y p e h a s b u i l t m y you've probably sussed out) has expectations to unattainable managed to revive its faltering l e v e l s . B e c a u s e m y f i r s t bottom line. According to the impression of New Orleans on company's latest financial report, Super Bowl weekend has been Sega Sammy brought in a net underwhelming, although I've heard I shouldn't get used to it.

BAYONETTA page 64

Brain functions that improve with age (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 2/5/2010 9:02:22 AM

I’m fifty-five and not a day goes by where I don’t think that I’m losing my mind: remembering names of people, remembering what companies do, and remembering where I put my glasses/keys/phone. According to Barbara Strauch, however, brain science suggests that I might be growing smarter in some areas:

• Getting the “gist” of stuff • Determing who I can trust • Knowing what to ignore and when to shut up

This is good to know! Now you know that if I quickly understand what you do, figure out that I can’t trust you, ignore you, AND can’t remember your name, it’s just a part of growing old.

Full story at Harvard Business Review.

More on neuropsychology.

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63

Dream-Build-Play puzzler Rotor'scope now on Xbox Live Indie Games

by Griffin McElroy (Joystiq)

mechanics in action and to get a sense of the title's overarching story. With create-a-level modes, W e g o t t o c h e c k o u t hand-drawn graphics and even Rotor'scope: The Secret of the some Facebook integration, it Endless Energy at PAX last year, looks like you'll be getting a lot and it nearly broke our minds. Of of bang for your buck. Or five course, our minds were quite bucks, as the case may be. fragile at that point, weakened by Shortcut: Add Rotor'scope(trial / long nights of tireless writing full game) to your Xbox 360 and frequent coffee binges -- download queue[via Xbox.com] still, the fact remains that Continue reading Dream-BuildRotor'scope was one of the most Play puzzler Rotor'scope now on original concepts for a puzzle Xbox Live Indie Games game we'd played in a good long Dream-Build-Play puzzler time. Fortunately, we now have Rotor'scope now on Xbox Live the chance to give the game Indie Games originally appeared another go -- it was recently on Joystiq on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 added to the Xbox Live Indie 12:20:00 EST. Please see our Games platform for 400($5). terms for use of feeds.

Check out the Rotor'scope Read| Permalink| Email this| trailer after the jump to see the Comments game's cog-flipping puzzle Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:20:00 PM

BioWare: No fix for Mass Effect 2 SDTV 'tiny text' issue

by Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq)

take it into consideration for "future games in the Mass Effect franchise." Um, how about all Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:06:00 AM future BioWare games? SDTVs [ ChrisJohnBeckett] BioWare a r e a p p a r e n t l y s t i l l q u i t e has stated that it can do nothing p r e v a l e n t . to alleviate Mass Effect 2's"tiny Two famous case studies in t e x t " i s s u e , w h i c h a f f e c t s "tiny text" syndrome are Dead standard-definition television Rising and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts users. The company claims on its a n d B o l t s , w i t h t w o v e r y forums that after "investigating different outcomes. Capcom potential solutions," it has u s e d t h e s a m e e x c u s e a s determined that it is unable to fix BioWare, while Rare actually the text size with a patch. fixed the problem.

BioWare has taken note of the Additionally, some Mass Effect complaint, however, and will 2 players are complaining that

they're having difficulty reading the text on their 52-inch HDTVs. No, but really, it's time to see an optometrist.

[Via Eurogamer] BioWare: No fix for Mass Effect 2 SDTV 'tiny text' issue originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BAYONETTA continued from page 62

Dragon Quest VI remake approaches 1m Japanese sales in first week

by JC Fletcher (Joystiq)

units sold (the Xbox version charted respectably at #8, selling Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:31:00 AM 27,048 units) and Ar Tonelico 3 The debut of the Dragon Quest hit #4 with 81,633 copies sold.

VI remake for DS proves that a Even the Japanese release of Dragon Quest game doesn't have MAG managed to make it into to be entirely new to sell like the top ten! crazy in Japan -- just new See the complete weekly top ten enough. In its first week at retail, sales list after the break.

January 25-31, the new version Continue reading Dragon Quest of the classic Super Famicom VI remake approaches 1m R P G s o l d 9 0 6 , 4 5 8 c o p i e s , Japanese sales in first week according to Media Create, Dragon Quest VI remake making it by far the top-selling approaches 1m Japanese sales in game of the week. first week originally appeared on A pair of other newly-released Joystiq on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 RPGs also did quite well: the 11:31:00 EST. Please see our PS3 version of tri-Ace's shooty- terms for use of feeds.

RPG End of Eternity(we call it " Read| Permalink| Email this| Resonance of Fate") landed in Comments second place on the weekly software chart with 118,088

income of 짜16.9 billion ($189.5 million) during the first nine months of its fiscal 2010 (AprilDecember 2009).

This income came in spite of the fact that Sega's total game sales had dropped 13 percent from the same 9-month period the previous fiscal year -- however, thanks to the company's massive restructuring last February, operating income skyrocketed to 짜28.8 billion (about $323 million), which more than softened the blow. The company's highest-selling title was, alarmingly, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, with 5.6 million units sold (and probably counting).

Bayonetta, which was only

available in Japan (released October 29) during the period covered by the report, came in a distant second with 1.1 million units sold.

It looks like the company's managed to recover from an L.A. Noire no longer extremely painful fiscal 2009 -- PS3 exclusive, also on at a cost.

Xbox 360, Game Bayonetta moves 1.1m units in Sega fiscal Q3 2010 results Informer says originally appeared on Joystiq on by Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:40:00 EST. Submitted at 2/5/2010 11:45:00 AM Please see our terms for use of feeds.

At long last, the never-ending Read| Permalink| Email this| mystery of whether Rockstar's Comments "gritty detective tale," L.A. Noire, will be a multiplatform L.A. page 65

NYC Student, 12, Arrested for Doodling on Desk (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:49:18 AM

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NEW YORK A New York City middle school student has been arrested for doodling on her desk with a marker.

Twelve-year-old Alexa Gonzalez scribbled "Lex was here 2/1/10" on her desk Monday. She also wrote "I love

my friends Abby and Faith." The girl says the doodles could have been erased, according to the Daily News.

Moraima Tamacho says her daughter was released several hours after she was taken in handcuffs to a police station.

Education department spokesman David Cantor said the incident shouldn't have happened, and that common sense should prevail.

Last month, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit

alleging more than 20 instances of wrongful arrests and assaults by school safety officers.

Gonzalez has been assigned eight hours of community service, a book report and an essay on what she's learned from the experience.

Click her for more from the NYDailyNews.com.

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release has ... well, ended. And in a pretty unspectacular way, to boot -- in the comments section of a Game Informer post teasing the magazine's in-depth print preview of L.A. Noire, editor Matthew Kato explained, "It's not a PS3-exclusive," later adding, "it was at one point, but it's coming out for the PS3 and 360." (We've contacted Rockstar to verify this apparent reveal.)

Now, we won't know whether this news is worth getting excited about until Game Informer's preview hits newsstands. We're getting tentatively pumped,

though -- but that's only because of our pure, unswerving love of fedoras. Seriously, we can't get enough of 'em.

L.A. Noire no longer PS3 exclusive, also on Xbox 360, Game Informer says originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Top 10 mistakes managers still make with email (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:14:00 AM

By now you’d think that most managers would have mastered email. It’s just not so. Tim Flood has compiled a list of the top ten mistakes that managers are still making with email. Here are three: • Vague subject lines • Burying the news • Hiding behind the “BCC” field Full story at the Wall Street

Journal.

More ways to get things done.

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65

Woods linked with February return (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

logistics of playing at the WGC event at Dove Mountain in Arizona.

Submitted at 2/5/2010 4:37:42 AM But Carter said: "It remains hard Message from fivefilters.org: If to believe that Woods, who has you can, please donate to the full not appeared in public since -text RSS service so we can crashing his car outside his continue developing it. home, would choose to return at Tiger Woods is reportedly the Match Play. targeting a return to golf at the "He admitted infidelity and WGC Match Play Championship apologised to his family for in Arizona on 17 February. 'transgressions' and has been in World number one Woods, 34, hiding ever since." who has won 14 majors, has not The top 64 players automatically appeared in public since crashing qualify for the Match Play event his car last November and later and competitors have until 12 admitting to "infidelity".

February to notify organisers of "Rumours of his return surfaced any withdrawal. in Australia and were initially But any comeback by Woods greeted with scepticism, but would need extra planning p e r s i s t , " s a i d B B C g o l f because of the intense media c o r r e s p o n d e n t I a i n C a r t e r . interest in him.

"It would be a surprise but a "Although he has been on reliable source says he will play 'indefinite leave' from the game in Arizona." he has only missed one Woods, announced on 12 t o u r n a m e n t t h a t h e w o u l d December 2009 that he was routinely play, last week's PGA taking an indefinite break from Tour stop in San Diego," added playing golf to tackle problems Carter. in his private life.

"The Matchplay is sponsored by His last tournament was the Accenture, one of the companies A u s t r a l i a n M a s t e r s i n that ended sponsorship deals Melbourne, which he won on 15 with Woods in the wake of his November. The crash happened fall from grace.

12 days later.

"It would be unlike Woods to The Melbourne Herald Sun play in a tournament backed by a newspaper reports that his sponsor that had embarrassingly m a n a g e m e n t t e a m h a s ditched him. approached organisers about the "But, given this background, to

return in Arizona could send a powerful message that he intends to be a changed man.

"The tournament is unique on the golfing calendar because it is a knockout event culminating in a 36-hole final. Woods made his return from knee surgery there last year and has won it three times."

On Thursday, six-time major winner Sir Nick Faldo told the BBC that returning to tournament golf would prove Woods' "saviour".

"I'd have thought he'd be dying to get back, I don't believe he'll give up the opportunity to play in the majors," he said.

Meanwhile, world number two Phil Mickelson urged Woods to come back to the PGA Tour, saying "the game of golf needs him".

US golf legend Jack Nicklaus said Woods would find it harder to break his record of 18 majors if he does not compete this year.

And on Wednesday five-time Open champion Tom Watson urged Woods to "show some humility" when he does finally choose to return.

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Few remain as 1962 Pa. coal town fire still burns (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

But dozens of holdouts, Lokitis included, refused to go — even after their houses were seized Message from fivefilters.org: If through eminent domain in the you can, please donate to the full early 1990s. They said the fire -text RSS service so we can posed little danger to their part of continue developing it. town, accused government CENTRALIA, Pa. – Standing officials and mining companies before the wreckage of his of a plot to grab the mineral bulldozed home, John Lokitis Jr. rights and vowed to stay put. felt sick to his stomach, certain State and local officials had little that a terrible mistake had been stomach to oust the diehards, made. who squatted tax- and rent-free He'd fought for years to stay in in houses they no longer owned. the house. It was one of the few Steve Fishman, attorney for the left standing in the moonscape of state Department of Community Centralia, a once-proud coal and Economic Development, town whose population fled an said "benign neglect" on the part underground mine fire that began of state and local officials in 1962 and continues to burn. allowed the residents to stay for But the state had ordered Lokitis so long. to vacate, leaving the fourth- No more. generation Centralian little Fishman told The Associated choice but to say goodbye — to Press that the state is moving as the house, and to what's left of quickly as possible to take the town he loved. possession of the remaining "I never had any desire to move," homes and get them knocked said Lokitis, 39. "It was my down. home."

"Everyone agreed that we needed After years of delay, state to move this along," he said. officials are now trying to In 2006, there were 16 complete the demolition of properties left standing. A year Centralia, a borough in the ago, the town was down to 11. m o u n t a i n s o f n o r t h e a s t e r n Now there are five houses Pennsylvania that all but ceased occupied with fewer than a to exist in the 1980s after the dozen holdouts. mine fire spread beneath homes Centralia appears to be entering and businesses, threatening its final days. residents with poisonous gases The remaining holdouts, weary and dangerous sinkholes. after decades of media scrutiny, More than 1,000 people moved rarely give interviews. But the out, and 500 structures were town's 86-year-old mayor, Carl razed under a $42 million federal Womer, said he doubts he'll have relocation program. to go. Indeed, Lokitis and others Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:40:15 AM

believe that elderly residents will be allowed to live out their final years in Centralia— even after a Columbia County judge decides next month how much they should be paid for their homes.

"Nothing's happened. We're still here," said Womer, whose wife, Helen, who died in 2001, was an implacable foe of relocation. "No one's told us to move."

Like Womer, resident John Lokitis Sr., 68, father of Lokitis Jr., was polite but short. "Why worry about it? When it comes, it comes. I don't give a rat's ass," he said, shutting the door.

Those who remain in Centralia like to keep up appearances. In mid-January, Christmas decorations still adorned the street lamps, a large manger scene occupied a corner of the main intersection and a 2010 calendar hung in the empty borough building. But the holdouts are fighting a losing battle. The building's wooden facade is in dire need of a paint job; in the Odd Fellows Cemetery, vandals recently knocked over dozens of tombstones. Nature has reclaimed parts of the town.

In reality, Centralia is already a memory — an intact street grid with hardly anything on it. All the familiar places that define a town — churches, businesses, schools, homes — are long gone.

A hand-lettered sign tacked to a tree near Womer's home directs tourists to a rocky outcropping off the main street where opaque

clouds of steam rise from the ground.

"It was a real community, and people loved the place," said author and journalist Dave DeKok, who has been writing about Centralia for 30 years and recently published " Fire Underground," an updated version of his 1986 book on the town. "People lived their entire lives in that town and would have been quite happy to get rid of the mine fire and keep on living there."

With swifter action, DeKok said, that might have been Centralia's destiny.

The fire began at the town dump and ignited an exposed coal vein.

It could have been extinguished for thousands of dollars then, but a series of bureaucratic halfmeasures and a lack of funding allowed the fire to grow into a voracious monster — feeding on millions of tons of slow-burning anthracite coal in the abandoned network of mines beneath the town.

At first, most Centralians ignored the fire. Some denied its existence, choosing to disregard the threat.

That changed in the 1970s, when carbon monoxide began entering homes and sickening people. The beginning of the end came in 1981, when a cave-in sucked a 12-year-old boy into a hot, gaseous void, nearly killing him. The town divided into two warring camps, one in favor of relocation and one opposed.

Finally, in 1983, the federal government appropriated $42 million to acquire and demolish every building in Centralia.

Nearly everyone participated in the voluntary buyouts; by 1990, Census figures showed only 63 people remaining.

Two years later, Gov. Robert Casey decided to shut the town, saying the fire had become too dangerous. The holdouts fought condemnation, blocking appraisers from entering their homes. The legal process eventually ground to a halt.

Until recently, Lokitis Jr., who works a civilian job with the state police in Harrisburg, had been one of Centralia's most vocal defenders — star of a 2007 documentary on Centralia. He expressed hope that it could stage a comeback, claiming the fire had gone out or moved away.

State officials say the fire continues to burn uncontrolled and could for hundreds of years, until it runs out of fuel. One of their biggest concerns is the danger to tourists who often cluster around steam vents on unstable ground.

While Lokitis felt he was in no danger, he had little recourse than to move from his late grandfather's two-story row home on West Park Street when an order to vacate arrived, one of two such notices sent last year.

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Snow storm has Mid-Atlantic scrambling for staples (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Some flights at Reagan National Airport were delayed Friday Message from fivefilters.org: If morning. At least 18 afternoon you can, please donate to the full flights were canceled, including -text RSS service so we can those run by Delta and US continue developing it.

Airways.

WASHINGTON – Shoppers John Dean, 43, of Broken Bow, jammed aisles and emptied Okla., was hoping his scheduled stores of milk, bread and shovels 3 p.m. flight to Dallas would not ahead of a monster snow storm be canceled because his wife has bearing down Friday on the Mid- to go on a trip on Sunday. "I Atlantic, with 30 inches or more gotta get back and take care of forecast for the nation's capital. the kids, so she's been greatly The federal government sent concerned" about the weather, he workers home early and subways said. ran light as people stayed home.

Residents in the Washington The region's second snow storm area scrambled for food and in less than two months could be supplies, but many found they "extremely dangerous," the were too late.

National Weather Service said. Colleen Sport, who just moved Heavy, wet snow and strong to the area from Atlanta, was at w i n d s w o u l d m a k e t r a v e l the Home Depot in Falls Church, hazardous as the storm gains Va. strength into Friday night.

"I was looking for salt and Two highways deaths were shovels and of course they're blamed on snow as the storm out," said Sport, 42. "Now I'm started in Virginia. Light flakes just hoping to get shelving and started falling around noon in work inside." downtown D.C. as forecasters In Alexandria, Va., James Ivery, warned 30 inches or more of 60, and his wife had already heavy, wet snow, accompanied bought supplies but were back at by powerful winds, could fall a Harris Teeter supermarket through Saturday in Washington, Friday morning to get out of the Baltimore and surroundings. It house one last time before the could be the heaviest snowfall storm. Many shelves and bins since January 1922 in the w e r e e m p t i e d o f m i l k , nation's capital. vegetables, eggs and cold cuts.

Airlines canceled flights across "It just seems like people are the region and school districts panicking. I don't think it's going closed for the day ahead of the to be too bad," Ivery said. "As winter storm forecast from long as I got power and satellite Virginia and West Virginia service, I'll be fine." across Maryland into southern The federal government, the Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:25:56 AM

region's largest employer, told workers they could take Friday off as unplanned leave and prepared to shut offices four hours early.

Metro, the Washington-area rail system, said ridership Friday morning was about 23 percent less than on the same day last week, a sign people were heeding official warnings to stay home. Metro warned it would likely have to close all but the underground portions of the system during the storm. Trains cannot operate outside when snow accumulations reach 8 inches because the snow cuts off access to the electrified third rail that powers the trains.

Virginia State Police say a father and son died after being hit by a tractor-trailer while trying to help a driver who had wrecked in snow on Interstate 81. Police say 25-year-old William Edward Smith Jr. of Morresburg, Tenn., and 54-yearold William Edward Smith Sr. of Sylva., N.C., both died at the scene.

Across the region, state officials were deploying thousands of trucks and employees and had hundreds of thousands of tons of salt at the ready.

"This is not a good mix," said Joan Morris, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Transportation. "Heavy, wet snow with gusting winds is going to make it a very tough storm for us. I expect visibility will be very poor in spots, and

we'll have to deal with drifting snow."

Blizzard warnings were in effect in much of Delaware and southern New Jersey from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, with strong winds and blowing, drifting snow.

Philadelphia could get about a foot of snow and 12 to 20 inches are expected in the Pittsburgh area.

The combination of wet snow and strong winds could make conditions even more treacherous than a Dec. 19 storm that dumped more than 16 inches of snow on Washington.

Snowfalls of this magnitude — let alone two in one season — are rare in the area. According to the National Weather Service, Washington has gotten more than a foot of snow only 13 times since 1870. The heaviest on record was 28 inches in January 1922. But the biggest snowfall is believed to have occurred in 1772, before official records were kept, when as much as 3 feet fell in the WashingtonBaltimore area. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson mentioned the event in their diaries, according to the weather service.

Virginia's General Assembly canceled Friday's floor sessions and committee meetings, the first time anyone could remember that the threat of snow had sent the whole legislature home.

Southwest Airlines canceled Friday afternoon flights at

Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington airports. Amtrak canceled most trains heading south from Washington, D.C. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who has been in office less than a month, declared his second snow emergency, authorizing state agencies to assist local governments. The assistance includes deploying National Guard soldiers and emergency response teams.

Between the December storm and several smaller snowfalls, the region's road crews have had plenty of practice in the past two months.

Maryland highway officials said they have spent about $50 million so far clearing and treating roads this winter. That's almost twice the $26 million that had been budgeted.

The Virginia Department of Transportation said it already spent the $79 million budgeted for statewide snow removal and was tapping into emergency maintenance funds. Once that $25 million reserve is exhausted, the department said it will have to dip into other programs to cover its costs. ___ Associated Press writers Kathleen Miller in Falls Church, Va and Steve Szkotak in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

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Haiti warns US case 'distracting' (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 2/5/2010 2:36:34 AM

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The US missionaries escorted by police in Port-au-Prince The Haitian prime minister has warned that the case of 10 US missionaries charged with child abduction is a "distraction" from earthquake recovery.

Jean-Max Bellerive said more than 200,000 people had died in the quake and one million still needed help.

The missionaries have been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy.

They deny allegations they tried to smuggle 33 children across the border to the Dominican Republic.

When stopped on the border last Friday, the group said they were taking the children to an orphanage. But it has since emerged some of the youngsters' parents were still alive.

'In good faith' Mr Bellerive said the case of the missionaries risked diverting international attention from the plight of Haitians who had lost their homes and livelihoods.

"I believe it's a distraction for the Haitian people because they are talking more now about 10 people than they are about one

million people suffering in the streets," he said.

The missionaries' lawyer, Edwin Coq, said his clients were "naive" but not malicious in their actions.

"They had no idea they were violating the law. They were acting in good faith and they just wanted to help," he said.

But he reiterated the group's leader, Laura Silsby, knew that documentation would be needed to remove the children from Haiti.

"I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine [other missionaries] out. They were naive.

"They had no idea what was going on, and they did not know that they needed official papers

to cross the border. But Silsby did," Mr Coq said, according to Associated Press.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the two governments were discussing the diplomatically sensitive case.

"It was unfortunate, whatever their motivation, that this group of Americans took matters into their own hands," Mrs Clinton added.

Haitian officials have said that the cases of the 10 US citizens will now be sent to an investigating judge who will decide how to proceed.

If convicted they face lengthy jail terms, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Haiti's capital, Port-au -Prince.

'Kidnappers'

the court.

"I feel good," Ms Silsby told reporters. "I trust in God." The five men and five women, most of them from Idaho, were due to have a hearing earlier in the week.

The case was postponed because of a lack of interpreters.

US media reported that Ms Silsby also faces court cases in Boise, Idaho, relating to unpaid wages and legal bills.

Former employees from her shopping website business filed 14 claims for unpaid wages in the past two years.

Some have been resolved, but Ms Silsby is due on court next week for one case, and another is set to begin in March, the Idaho Statesman newspaper reported.

After Thursday's hearing the 10 Mr Bellerive has labelled the missionaries were taken back to Americans "kidnappers". the jail where they have been Justice Minister Paul Denis has kept since last Friday. said that the missionaries should The issues surrounding this be tried in Haiti, despite the story are important - natural damage to the country's judicial disasters in the past have seen infrastructure and casualties cases of child trafficking. A among judges and court staff. warning by Unicef saw the There had been suggestions that increased security by the Haitian the 10 could be tried in the US. authorities that led to the arrest.

But Mr Denis told the AFP With the US spearheading the news agency: "It is Haitian law relief mission and with the that has been violated, it is up to American public donating so the Haitian authorities to hear much to the survivors of the and judge the case. disaster, the expectation of many "I don't see any reason why they was that they would be released, should be tried in the United that they would turn up at court States." and, a short time later, be The US ambassador to Haiti, whisked out of the country.

Amid chaotic scenes, the group HAITI page 71 was bundled into a van outside

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(BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

Amber Alert Issued for Missing Mo. 8Month-Old Boy

Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:16:14 AM

(FOXNews.com)

BAE to pay $400m fine to US Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full -text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

BAE Systems is to pay a fine of $400m (£250m) after pleading guilty to a charge of conspiring to make false statements to the US government.

The UK's largest defence group has also reached agreement with the UK Serious Fraud Office to plead guilty to breach of duty to keep accounting records.

That case is in relation to payments to a former marketing adviser in Tanzania.

In relation to the UK offence, it will pay a penalty of £30m, some of which will be a fine, some a charity payment.

The charity payment will go to Tanzania.

The last of the offences was committed in 2002. BAE has since reformed the way it conducts business.

However, BBC business editor Robert Peston said that pleading guilty to criminal charges in Britain and America was "a serious embarrassment to BAE".

Saudi deal The US fine, agreed with the Department of Justice, relates to

Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:35:16 AM

undertakings it gave to the US government in 2000 and 2002 in relation to the probity of the way it conducts business.

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BBC business editor Robert Peston: "This is a very serious embarrassment" It is understood that the Department of Justice concluded that BAE breached these undertakings in relation to payments and support services provided to an unnamed Saudi official, as part of the £40bn alYamamah contract to supply

SNOW continued from page 67

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military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

There was also an infringement of restrictions on the supply of sensitive US technology in deals to supply aircraft in Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Although the UK penalty is far less than Britain's Serious Fraud Office was seeking, it is thought to be a record for a criminal offence by a company in the UK. The British charge stems from an $39.5m contract signed in 1999 to supply a radar system to Tanzania.

"Although the fines will be seen

by some as damaging to one of the UK's most significant companies, BAE's directors are relieved at what they see as a final settlement of a controversy that has dogged the company for years," added our business editor.

BAE has been advised by its lawyers that the fines are fair.

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CARTHAGE, Mo. Carthage, Mo., police are looking for an 8month-old boy taken from his home by two masked men.

Authorities issued an Amber Alert for Eddie Salazar after he was taken Thursday night. He is about 20 pounds, with dark hair and brown eyes.

Carthage police say two men wearing all black and ski masks broke into the family's home while the father was sleeping on the couch. The father was beaten unconscious and the house was ransacked before the boy was taken.

Carthage police chief Greg Dagnan tells KSHB-TV in Kansas City that early information indicates the abduction was random. He says early information on the suspects is so vague officers aren't sure where they might be headed.

Anyone with information is asked to call 417-237-7200 or 911.

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Shark attack victim died from massive blood loss (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:39:11 AM

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STUART, Fla. – A shark bite victim pulled from the ocean off South Florida died from massive blood loss and was likely bitten by just one shark, authorities said Friday.

Stephen Schafer, 38, was kiteboarding about a quarter-mile offshore in Stuart, 100 miles north of Miami, when he went into the water and was surrounded by at least three sharks, according to the lifeguard who pulled him from the ocean.

Schafer died a short time later at a hospital.

Dr. Linda O'Neil, an associate medical examiner in Martin

County, said Friday he died from blood loss.

She said he suffered two shark bites, most likely from the same animal. It was not clear exactly what type of shark bit him.

O'Neil said Schafer was bitten on the buttocks and on the right thigh. His right hand was also wounded, but that apparently happened when the shark bit his thigh.

"It looks like the shark hit his leg and he put his hand down there and that became part of the same bite," O'Neil said.

The thigh wound, which severed branches of the femoral artery, was fatal.

"That was the more significant wound and would have caused death even without that bite to the buttocks," O'Neil said.

It was the first deadly shark attack in Florida in five years.

FEW continued from page 66

Now living a few miles away, he tacked a sign on the front porch of the old homestead.

"REQUIESCAT IN PACE" — rest in peace, it said. "SORRY POP." He couldn't bear to watch the home get knocked down a few weeks before Christmas. But he couldn't stay away, either, going back after the wrecking crew had

finished its work.

"It was part of my life for all 39 years, that house," he said. "It was difficult to leave it and difficult to see it demolished."

Difficult, too, to give up his dream of Centralia's rebirth.

"I'd always hoped the town would come back and be rebuilt," Lokitis said, "but I guess that's never going to

The last was in 2005 off the Panhandle, where a 14-year-old Louisiana girl was attacked while swimming about 100 yards off shore.

The International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida's Museum of Natural History lists 1,032 documented shark attacks in the U.S. since 1690. Fifty were fatal. Florida leads the world in the number of shark attacks annually. ___ On The Net: International Shark Attack File: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sh arks/ISAF/ISAF.htm Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Fla. Shark Attack Victim Died From Massive Blood Loss (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 2/5/2010 8:48:06 AM

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STUART, Fla. A shark bite victim pulled from the ocean off South Florida died from massive blood loss and was likely bitten by just one shark, authorities said Friday.

Stephen Schafer, 38, was kiteboarding about a quarter-mile offshore in Stuart, 100 miles north of Miami, when he went into the water and was surrounded by at least three sharks, according to the lifeguard who pulled him from the ocean.

Schafer died a short time later at a hospital.

Dr. Linda O'Neil, an associate medical examiner in Martin happen."

County, said Friday he died from Five Filters featured article: blood loss.

Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: She said he suffered two shark PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, bites, most likely from the same Term Extraction. animal. It was not clear exactly what type of shark bit him.

O'Neil said Schafer was bitten on the buttocks and on the right thigh. His right hand was also

wounded, but that apparently happened when the shark bit his thigh.

"It looks like the shark hit his leg and he put his hand down there and that became part of the same bite," O'Neil said.

The thigh wound, which severed branches of the femoral artery, was fatal.

"That was the more significant wound and would have caused death even without that bite to the buttocks," O'Neil said.

It was the first deadly shark attack in Florida in five years.

The last was in 2005 off the Panhandle, where a 14-year-old Louisiana girl was attacked while swimming about 100 yards off shore.

The International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida's Museum of Natural History lists 1,032 documented shark attacks in the U.S. since 1690. Fifty were fatal. Florida leads the world in the number of shark attacks annually.

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Pneumonia caused Murphy death (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:46:53 AM

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US actress Brittany Murphy died of pneumonia, but could have survived if she had seen a doctor in time, a Los Angeles coroner has ruled.

Coroner's spokesman Craig Harvey added that irondeficiency anaemia and "multiple drug intoxication" were secondary factors in her death.

The drugs were all prescription medicines. More details are due

in two weeks when a complete report is ready.

The Clueless actress died in December, aged 32.

She collapsed at her Los Angeles home and was pronounced dead in hospital.

The coroner ruled the death was accidental and there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

Iron deficiency anaemia is the most common type of anaemia, and can occur when a person's diet contains an insufficient amount of iron.

Murphy's husband, Simon Monjack and mother, Sharon Murphy, said the actress had been experiencing flu-like symptoms in the days before she died.

Monjack told The Associated Press last month that his wife had several prescriptions, including one for an anti-seizure drug, but did not abuse her medication.

He added she had also been taking over-the-counter remedies for her ailments.

Murphy was best known for her roles in Clueless, Sin City and 8 Mile and also provided the voice of Luanne Platter in more than 200 episodes of the animated US sitcom King Of The Hill.

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HAITI

(Holy Kaw!)

continued from page 68

Kenneth Merten, said that the US would do all it could to ensure the missionaries were treated fairly and in accordance with Haitian law.

Single village The children, who are from aged from two to 12, are now in the care of the Austrian-run SOS Children's Village in Port-auPrince.

Twenty-one of the children were from a single village outside the capital and were handed over willingly by their parents, our correspondent says.

Residents in the village of Callebas told an Associated Press news agency reporter that they had handed their children

Clever Twitter backgrounds

over through a local orphanage worker who said he was acting on the Americans' behalf.

The worker is said to have promised the families that the missionaries would educate their children in neighbouring Dominican Republic.

A number of parents in the badly-damaged village said they would find it difficult to provide for their children if they came back.

Ms Silsby has said her group had met a Haitian pastor by chance when it arrived last week, and that he had helped them gather the children. She also admitted that the missionaries did not have the proper

paperwork.

"Our intent was to help only those children that needed us most, that had lost either both their mother and father, or had lost one of their parents and the other had abandoned them," she said from her jail cell on Wednesday.

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Submitted at 2/5/2010 12:01:43 AM

What do you get when you mix design pros with their Twitter profiles? Probably something like these 35 creative profiles which will stretch how you think

about using your page. Here are a few: Read the full article at Six Revisions.

More on design.

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Tech.view: Patent nonsense (The Economist: Daily columns)

marketing experts a decade or more, and tens of millions of dollars, to transfer to the Submitted at 2/5/2010 3:46:37 AM marketplace. And for every Message from fivefilters.org: If bright idea that goes on to you can, please donate to the full become a commercial winner, -text RSS service so we can literally thousands fall by the continue developing it. wayside.

Tech.view An end to frivolous Most economists would argue patents may finally be in sight that, without a patent system, Feb 5th 2010 | From The even fewer inventions would Economist online lead to successful innovations, DO PATENTS help or hinder and those that did would be kept innovation? Instinctively, they secret for far longer in order to w o u l d s e e m a b l e s s i n g , maximise returns. But what if e s p e c i a l l y f o r b a c k r o o m patents actually discourage the tinkerers. Patenting an idea gives combining and recombining of its inventor a 20-year monopoly inventions to yield new products to exploit the fruit of his labour and processes—as has happened in the marketplace, in exchange in biotechnology, genetics and for publishing a full account of other disciplines? how the new product, process or Or what about those ludicrous material works for all and sundry business-process patents, like to see. For the inventor, that may Amazon.com’s “one-click” be a reasonable trade-off. For patent or the “name-your-price” society, however, the loss of auction patent assigned to competition through the granting P r i c e l i n e . c o m ? I n s t e a d o f sole rights to an individual or stimulating innovation, such organisation is justified only if it p a t e n t s s e e m m o r e a b o u t stimulates the economy and extracting “rents” from innocent delivers goods that change bystanders going about their people’s lives for the better. business. One thing has become Invention, though, is not clear since business-process innovation. It may take a couple patents took off in America of enthusiasts working evenings during the 1990s: the quality of and weekends for a year or p a t e n t s h a s d e t e r i o r a t e d two—not to mention tens of markedly. And with sloppier thousands of dollars of their patenting standards, litigation savings—to get a pet idea to the has increased. The result is patenting stage. But that is just higher transaction costs all the beginning. Innovations based round. o n p a t e n t e d i n v e n t i o n s o r It is not simply a failure of the discoveries can take teams of U n i t e d S t a t e s P a t e n t a n d researchers, engineers and Trademark Office(USPTO) to

scrutinise applications more rigorously. The Federal Circuit(America’s centralised court of appeal, established in 1982 to hear, among numerous other things, patent disputes) has been responsible for a number of bizarre rulings. Because of its diverse responsibilities, the Federal Circuit—unlike its counterparts in Europe and Japan—has never really acquired adequate expertise in patent jurisprudence.

To be eligible for a patent, an invention must not just be novel, but also useful and non-obvious.

Anything that relies on natural phenomena, abstract ideas or the laws of nature does not qualify.

The USPTO has taken to requiring a working prototype of anything that purportedly breaches the laws of physics. So, no more perpetual-motion machines, please.

If truth be told, few inventions are really worth patenting. Time and again, surveys show that in both America and Europe companies rate superior sales and service, lead time and secrecy as far more important than patents when it comes to profiting from innovation. And, although applying for patents is relatively cheap, the cost of maintaining them can be horrendous. If the idea behind a patent has any commercial merit, it will attract imitators—and the inventor must be prepared to defend it in the courts. In a majority of cases, the cost of

litigation will far exceed any revenue the inventor may subsequently earn from royalties or licensing.

By and large, the inventions and discoveries worth patenting are those in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields, where the pay-off for blockbuster drugs can amount to billions of dollars a year. Also, because the vast majority of inventions in such areas depend on unique molecular architectures, patents for new products are easier to defend in the courts. A me-too drug that is believed to violate a firm’s patent is either based on the same molecule or not.

Another field where patenting is pursued aggressively is semiconductors. But it is done there not so much to make money, nor even to bar others from using the acquired knowhow. Its main purpose is for negotiating cross-licensing deals with competitors. Of necessity, inventions in chipmaking rely on lots of existing technology, which is itself covered by hundreds of patents held by numerous other firms. Without a large portfolio of patents to trade beforehand, semiconductor firms developing incrementally improved products (nextgeneration microprocessors and memory chips, for instance) would run into litigation and injunctions at every turn.

Pursuing patents aggressively for cross-licensing agreements has little to do with encouraging

innovation, though. Indeed, by increasing transaction costs, such deals are in effect a tax on innovation. By the same token, how much of a contribution have the 12,000 or so business processes patented annually in America (but few places elsewhere) made to innovation?

Precious little, by all accounts. It is hard enough to find evidence (outside the pharmaceutical and biotech industries) showing that the patent system generally spurs innovation. It is harder still to find justification for businessprocess patents.

What is clear is that the “nonobviousness” part of the test for patentability has not been applied anywhere near rigorously enough to internet and businessprocess patents. Because they lack a history of “prior art” to refer to, examiners and judges have granted a lot of shoddy patents for software and business processes.

Mercifully, that is beginning to change. America’s Supreme Court is about to issue a ruling which, by all accounts, will make it difficult, if not impossible, to get a patent for a business process. And because most business processes are, at bottom, computer algorithms, the Supreme Court’s judgment could also bar all sorts of software patents in the process. As a result, a lot of patents for online TECH.VIEW: page 74

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This week's top stories [05 February 2010] (The Economist: News analysis)

the public let slip its attention on overspending. Two wars, two popular tax cuts, economic ups Submitted at 2/5/2010 6:00:35 AM and downs, and an expensive Message from fivefilters.org: If drug benefit for Medicare (the you can, please donate to the full health system for the elderly) -text RSS service so we can that was supported by both continue developing it. parties, pushed public finances The US budget Barack Obama deep into the red. is caught between a rising As hard as Mr Obama and his deficit, stubborn unemployment advisers have tried to remind and political paralysis voters of the fiscal situation that Feb 1st 2010 | NEW YORK | he inherited, the president is now From The Economist online seen to “own” the economy and A MEETING between Barack the tide of red ink that America Obama and Republican members faces. So as he proposes his first of the House of Representatives full-year budget on Monday last week proved to be an February 1st, he is stressing not unusually frank, if polite, affair. the goodies the budget will dole The president sought to put the out but the programmes he is members of the minority party c u t t i n g a n d c o n s o l i d a t i n g . on the spot before the television According to the White House, cameras, allowing them to voice t h e n e w b u d g e t c u t s 1 2 0 their concerns but also asking p r o g r a m m e s , w i t h s a v i n g s them to offer proposals. Both expected to total $20 billion. sides were pleased with having a These include combining 38 chance to make their rivals education programmes into 11, squirm. The deficit was an area and cutting money for parks, of particular focus. brownfield development and The Republicans, as well as the other areas. amorphous but vigorous “tea Whereas the deficit has become party” movement, have managed more prominent the White House to put deficit spending on the has its eyes on another concern: national agenda like at no time jobs. In the early 1980s under since the early 1990s when Bill Ronald Reagan, and then in the Clinton came to office on a wave late 1990s under Mr Clinton, the of anxiety about the economy. u n e m p l o y m e n t r a t e a n d During Mr Clinton’s terms the p r e s i d e n t i a l p o p u l a r i t y economy boomed and deficits corresponded eerily closely. Late became surpluses. During those last week GDP figures for the of his successor, George Bush, fourth quarter of 2009 showed

the strongest quarterly economic growth since 2003. But the president and his supporters have reacted cautiously, as economic analysts warn that the recovery remains fragile and as job figures and (closely related) consumption numbers remain weak.

Can the president get Americans back to work? On Friday he proposed a package of tax incentives for job creation: small businesses would get a $5,000 tax credit for every worker hired.

In addition, those who raise pay above inflation for existing workers will get a credit on their Social Security taxes, a payroll tax that adds a good deal to the cost of every worker.

Republicans dismiss this as small beer and remind the president that not just Reagan but John Kennedy pushed through economy-wide, broad-based tax cuts to stimulate the economy in a recession.

Neither party talks comfortably about the real tax-and-spend issue, entitlements. Last week the Congressional Budget Office said that the national debt is on course to triple in ten years. The three-year discretionaryspending freeze Mr Obama backed at his state-of-the-union address last week would reap only small savings next to the rising costs of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, the

health-insurance programme for the poor. Mr Obama wants a commission to propose a deficitreduction plan that would have to pass Congress without amendment. This could be one way to tackle entitlements.

But Mr Obama could not get the creation of such a commission through the Senate (and thus has talked of creating one by executive order). Many Republicans want such a commission to focus only on spending cuts and not tax increases, and some Democrats fear entitlement cuts. The Republican refusal to countenance tax increases could make them look irresponsible.

But they may gamble that with control of Congress and the presidency, any political pain for deficits, joblessness and the rest will only be felt by the Democrats. The most shameless partisans on both sides glory in trying to make the other look like it will throw the elderly out in the cold if Medicare and Social Security are reformed. Making hard choices is all but impossible when political gamesmanship is at the fore. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

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US sheds 20,000 workers in January (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:47:55 AM

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The US continued to shed workers in January, although the unemployment rate edged lower as the labour market struggles to recover, official figures showed on Friday.

The US economy shed 20,000 jobs last month, labour department figures showed on Friday, disappointing economists’ expectations that payrolls would rise. However, the unemployment rate fell back to 9.7 per cent from 10 per cent, as the labour department’s household survey showed a decline in the number of unemployed people.

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TECH.VIEW: continued from page 72

shopping, medical-diagnostic tests and procedures for executing trades on Wall Street could be invalidated.

The roots of the dispute go back more than a decade to two inventors, Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw, who sought to patent a method of hedging weather-related risks in energy prices. The USPTO concluded that the process was too abstract and denied the application. On appeal, the Federal Circuit actually upheld the patent office’s decision—and said, crucially, that the process would be eligible for a patent only if it was “tied to a particular machine or apparatus” or if it “transformed a particular article into a different state or thing”.

Failing on both counts, the inventors took their case to the Supreme Court, which has been pondering for the past few months whether the “machine-or -transformation” test is an appropriate standard. It is hard to conclude it is not.

An end to frivolous patents for business processes will be a blessing to online commerce.

Meanwhile, the loss of patent protection for software could make programmers realise at last that they have more in common with authors, artists, publishers and musicians than they ever had with molecular architects and chip designers. In short, they produce expressions of ideas that are eminently copyrightable.

That could be good news for

innovation. After all, who in his right mind would seek a lousy old patent offering a mere 20 years of protection when copyright can provide monopoly rights for up to 70 years after the author’s death? That one fact alone could spur more innovation than all the tinkering attempted so far. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

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Toyota president apologises for recall (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 2/5/2010 6:23:33 AM

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Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor, apologised on Friday for defects that have resulted in the Japanese carmaker’s recall of more than 8m of its cars, saying he would

create a “global quality task force” to improve standards at the group.

“I personally regret that we have caused worry for so many people,” he said at a news conference in Nagoya, near the company’s headquarters, adding: “I apologise from my heart.”

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Markets trim losses after US Around the Net In Media: Strata jobs report Introduces Volos Digital Advertising (Financial Times - US of a small increase. homepage) However, markets focused on Tool the headline unemployment rate Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:34:49 AM

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15.10 GMT: Keenly awaited US jobs data brought some much needed calm to markets as figures released on Friday by the US Labor Department showed a loss of 20,000 jobs for January against consensus expectations

which fell to 9.7 per cent - a five month low - as some previous numbers were revised with November non-farm payrolls increased to show a rise of 64,000 from a previously reported rise of 4,000.

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(MediaPost | Media News) Submitted at 2/4/2010 9:19:04 PM

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full -text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Strata has introduced Volos, a new product that allows media sales organizations to manage their multimedia advertising platforms

(spot, interactive television, video-on-demand, Internet, microsites and more). Comcast, Cablevision and Dish Network are signed on to use Volos in their advertising planning and reporting.

Volos is handles the ad sales from pre-buy and scheduling to placement and tracking -- all within a single sales tool. It can

also manage additional new media platforms or enhancements as they are added to the sales arsenal. Strata has over 12,000 media users Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Online Media Daily: Smile, You're On An NEC Candid Camera (MediaPost | Media News)

program tracks a person's age and gender and throws out the footage, keeping only the macro Message from fivefilters.org: If data, he told the Journal, adding you can, please donate to the full that no individuals are singled -text RSS service so we can out. continue developing it.

And I believe this just like I While certain legislators and so- believe that when Marisa Miller called privacy wonks tie up the steps toward one of those new F T C w i t h w o r r y a b o u t full-body airport scanners, there anonymous browsing behaviors won't be a stampede of security collected by cookies and ad tags, guys into the screening room.

NEC Electronics Corp. reveals to How can a picture of your face the WSJ that they plan to deploy be "anonymous?" Especially if cameras to photo the faces of you are picking your nose or pedestrians who walk by their have your eyes trained on a network of place-based digital ad passing set of bodacious ta' ta's? numbers in the more rural displays in order to deduce the You know somewhere there are a festivals, formed into squads age, gender and aggregate couple of 20-year-old Japanese guys passing a joint and laughing who march through the town or audience number. village in a variety of themed The company embeds a camera their asses off: "Look at that guy, into their monitors, allowing what happened, did he lose his costumes. ~ Wikipedia It looks like the Vikings weren’t them to constantly film people dental plan?" "Oh man, lookit walking by. NEC takes that that one -- what is she doing with the only invaders.

Photos and video from Stealth footage and applies a program that old fart? Looking like a Robin, BURLINGTONBREW, that can automatically scan each nooner to me ... pass the Oreos, C a p t a i n O a t e s , i o n a y a r r o w , person's face, calculating the bro."

Richard Parker, acidust, and individual's rough age and And 10 years can be an eternity gender. While not accurate to the in terms of marketing targets.

Helen F H. Five Filters featured article: year, the program is fairly good Does a sneeze bounce you into Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: at placing a person within a 10- another age category? Does the recent application of free PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, year range.

Incredibly, an NEC official c o s m e t i c s s a m p l e s a t Term Extraction. contends "that the system is Bloomingdales drop you into the designed to be anonymous." The t e e n y e a r s ? H o w a b o u t a Submitted at 2/5/2010 4:00:10 AM

Up Helly Aa 2010

by Zack Sheppard (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 2/4/2010 5:06:19 PM

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Up Helly Aa refers to any of a variety of fire festivals held in Shetland, in Scotland, annually in the middle of winter to mark the end of the yule season. The festival involves a procession of up to a thousand guizers in Lerwick and considerably lower

midwinter Jamaican tan? Just how close will my close up be, Mr. DeMille? Should I worry about my hangover? How about Kaposi's sarcoma spots? Or that I am wanted in seven states for bank heists? Can I send you headshots from my portfolio so that you see my best side? Is my only opt out to wear a ski mask in August? Do I count if I walk by, but not looking at the NEC hidden cams?

I don't blame the place-based industry for wanting to provide a little more accountability to its advertisers. In one way or another, we are all working toward providing a more accurate profile of our actual audiences based on something less intrusive and more reliable than mall intercepts and diaries.

But this is not an anything-goes race to the bottom.

Put a disclosure sign on each display that a camera is taking your picture right now, and NEC will have the world's finest collection of middle fingers.

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76

Media/

E-reader News Edition

TV Watch: Congress Wonders If Comcast/NBC Merger Will Make Consumers Happy

Research Brief: Top Information Technology Predictions

(MediaPost | Media News)

(MediaPost | Media News)

once again.

7. Comcast's profitability will improve.

Message from fivefilters.org: If 8. And, finally, we'll all be you can, please donate to the full better entertained.

-text RSS service so we can I'd sign on to that. continue developing it.

NBC/Comcast honchos can How can we tell if the Comcast- promise the world, much as NBC merger will be a good politicians do. The problem is, thing? we can't vote them out of office.

H e r e a r e s o m e p o s s i b l e We can't filibuster their proposed consequences if all goes well "bills" -- actions concerning (among them made by NBC monthly cable rate hikes, show Universal president/CEO Jeff cancellations, or cast changes.

Z u c k e r a n d C o m c a s t Selling media consolidation has chairman/CEO Brian Roberts in been, and will always be, a tough recent Senate hearings): job. You can't please everyone, 1. The new company will shareholders included. create more jobs, and not lay off If the merger doesn't go their anyone. way, average consumers will 2.

P r i c e s f o r c a b l e shrug shoulders and flip the programming packages for channel button on the remote to consumers will go down. another number -- 57 or 363 or 3. There will be more room for 467 or 678. Or, if all this independent producers to get becomes too expensive, they'll access to NBC time slots in go to the Internet. Or, if that is primet ime, daytime, early too expensive, they'll gaze into morning and late night. space and just imagine TV 4. A stronger broadcast shows, compelling characters network means more choice for and story arcs.

TV advertisers.

Zucker told a Senate hearing the 5.

N B C ' s r a t i n g s a n d merger will create more jobs --advertising revenue will rise. that is, if Federal regulators don't 6. NBC's stations will thrive put too many restrictions on the Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:45:51 AM

new company's growth activities.

Will cable rates stay the same?

Cable system operators have always said cable networks spend a lot on programming, which means they need to raise monthly cable fees.

Letting more outside or independent producers in the door? Traditionally these have only been the likes of just a handful of non-big broadcast network players, mostly Warner Bros., occasionally Sony. More recently reality TV producers are getting in, at, no doubt, lower program license fees.

Will the merger really work? Go to your media therapist, and ask the key question: Do you love your broadcast network, or do you have issues.

As with any relationship, Congress increasingly wants to find out if media companies can meet consumers' deepest needs.

If not, more psychoanalysis could be the result.

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Connect and similar mechanisms.

The interoperability will be critical to Message from fivefilters.org: If s u r v i v a l o f o t h e r s o c i a l you can, please donate to the full n e t w o r k s .

-text RSS service so we can • Other social networks continue developing it. Gartner (including Twitter) will continue continues to investigate the t o d e v e l o p w i t h f o c u s o n changing balance of power from g r e a t e r a d o p t i o n a n d across its research areas, and specialization. However, they selects Internet Technologies as w i l l a l l r e v o l v e a r o u n d the focus of this year's crystal F a c e b o o k . ball gazing.

• By 2014, building on server Here's our future according to vitalization and desktop power Gartner: management as savings in • By 2012, 20% percent of energy costs, more organizations b u s i n e s s e s w i l l h a v e n o will be driven by the need to o w n e r s h i p o f I T a s s e t s . be responsible for carbon dioxide F u e l e d b y t e c h n o l o g i c a l emissions and will include developments in 2009, such as carbon costs in business v i r t u a l i z a t i o n a n d c l o u d cases. Vendors will have to computing, there's a movement p r o v i d e c a r b o n l i f e c y c l e toward decreased IT hardware statistics for their products. assets and more ownership of • In 2012, 60% of a new PCs hardware by third parties. total life greenhouse gas • By 2012, India-based IT emissions will have occurred companies will represent 20% of before the user first turns it on. cloud service providers in the In its lifetime, a typical PC market. Gartner attributes this to consumes 10 times its own companies leveraging their weight in fossil fuels, but around market positions and R&D 80% of a PC's total energy efforts in cloud computing, usage occurs during production resulting in cloud-enabled and transportation. Buyers outsourcing options. will be paying more attention to • By 2012, Facebook will eco labels. lead the pack in developing the • Online marketing by 2015 distributed, interoperable RESEARCH page 77 social Web through Facebook Submitted at 2/5/2010 5:15:23 AM

E-reader News/

E-reader News Edition

77

RESEARCH continued from page 76

will control more than US$ 250 billion in Internet marketing spending worldwide.

• By 2014, mobile and Internet technology will help over 3 billion of the world's adults to electronically transact.

Emerging economies will see increase in mobile and Internet adoption through 2014.

Worldwide mobile penetration rate will get to 90%.

• By 2013, mobile phones will replace PCs as the most common device for Web access.

You may access the full report"Gartner's Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2010 and Beyond: A New Balance" here.

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Research and Markets: Future Development of Tablet Products Following the Emergence of E-Readers like Kindle (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers)

companies around the world eagerly entered the e-reader market in 2009. At the end of Submitted at 2/5/2010 7:41:00 AM 2009, Barnes & Noble became Message from fivefilters.org: If the first company to roll out a you can, please donate to the full dual-screen product, -text RSS service so we can featuring EPD and TFT-LCD continue developing it. display technologies. With eDUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)- reader functions becoming - R e s e a r c h a n d M a r k e t s ( more diverse, e-readers in the http://www.researchandmarkets. future will no longer be com/research/08c8be/future_dev solely used for reading. This elopment) has announced report analyzes the future the addition of the " Future development of tablet Development of Tablet Products p r o d u c t s f o l l o w i n g t h e Following the Emergence of E- emergence of e-reader products.

Readers" report to their The report examines current offering. and future trends in e-readers, After Amazon launched the tablet PCs, and MIDs, and Kindle e-reader in 2008, many provides a worldwide e-reader

market scale forecast for the period 2010-2012.

Key Topics Covered: 1. Worldwide E-Reader Market Forecast 2. E-Reader Product Development 2.1 16-Level Gray Scale Mainstream; In the Future Development towards Color 2.2 6"" and 9.x"" (10"") Mainstream Sizes 2.3 Dualscreen Products Aim for Product Differentiation 3. Tablet Product Development 3.1 Tablet PC Product Specifications 3.2 Future Development of Tablet PC Products 3.3 MID Product Specifications 3.4 Future Development of MID Products

4. Conclusion 4.1 Tablet Products Could Take Off in 2010 4.2 Competition between Intel and ARM Becoming Clearer Appendix Companies Mentioned:

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • • • • • • •

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets. com/research/08c8be/future_dev elopment Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Amazon Apple Archos Asus Barnes & Noble BenQ Dell Fujitsu Gigabyte Google Hanlin Hanwang

Intel iRex Microsoft Nokia nVidia Plastic Logic Sony

78

E-reader News/

E-reader News Edition

Qualcomm Aims to Bring Color, Video to E-Readers (Wired News) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers) Submitted at 2/4/2010 3:44:54 PM

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E-book readers with black-andwhite screens look like they’re stuck in a time warp, now that Apple’s full-color iPad is on its way.

But not for long. A new generation of displays are waiting to bring full color and video to low-power displays, while maintaining readability in different environments. That’s something that Apple’s LCDbased “Moses tablet” — and E Ink’s low-power, monochrome screens — can’t do.

One of the e-reader hopefuls is Qualcomm, whose latest technology, named Mirasol, promises to combine color, speedy refresh rates and low power consumption in a single display. Qualcomm hopes to have the first color screens available in e-readers by fall this year.

“For e-readers users coming from a black-and-white world, this is going to be like ‘Oh, my prayers have been answered’,” says Cheryl Goodman, director of marketing for Qualcomm.

With an estimated 5 million sold last year, e-readers have become

one QUALCOMM of the fastest-growing page 81

E-reader News Edition

E-reader News/

79

Qualcomm Aims to Bring Color, Video to E-Readers (MalaysiaNews.net) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers) Submitted at 2/4/2010 8:43:02 PM

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E-book readers with black-andwhite screens look like they’re stuck in a time warp, now that Apple’s full-color iPad is on its way.

But not for long. A new generation of displays are waiting to bring full color and video to low-power displays, while maintaining readability in different environments. That’s something that Apple’s LCDbased “Moses tablet” — and E Ink’s low-power, monochrome screens — can’t do.

One of the e-reader hopefuls is Qualcomm, whose latest technology, named Mirasol, promises to combine color, speedy refresh rates and low power consumption in a single display. Qualcomm hopes to have the first color screens available in e-readers by fall this year.

“For e-readers users coming from a black-and-white world, this is going to be like ‘Oh, my prayers have been answered’,” says Cheryl Goodman, director of marketing for Qualcomm.

With an estimated 5 million sold last year, e-readers have become

one QUALCOMM of the fastest-growing page 80

80

E-reader News Edition

QUALCOMM continued from page 79

consumer electronics categories.

And while screen sizes and functionality may be different, they all have one thing in common: Almost all of them use a black-and-white display from E Ink, the company that pioneered the low-power technology. The reason that e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader and the Barnes & Noble Nook can go days or even weeks without a recharge is that they use power only when the screen changes. In between, while you’re reading the page, the screen draws no power because its pixels are “bistable” — they have two stable states, dark and light, and can remain in either state without drawing power.

But the iPad’s debut and its focus on e-reading has raised the stakes for Amazon and other entrants. Amazon has reportedly acquired Touchco, a company that could provide it with the technology to add a touchscreen to the Kindle. A push for a color display would likely come with any new product that would use the Touchco tech.

Qualcomm’s Mirasol could be one of the contenders. Mirasol displays work by modulating an optical cavity to reflect the desired wavelength of light. The reflected wavelength is proportional to the cavity’s depth.

And if you are wondering what a color low-power Mirasol screen looks like, think a glossy scientific textbook rather than an

LCD screen. It’s subdued, somewhat low-contrast, but crystal clear. Its reflective surface means that it doesn’t have (or need) a backlight. Its pixels, like E Ink’s, are bistable, so it will draw power only when refreshing the screen. And it can play video.

“It’s a very good display for what it does, which is an extremely low-power color screen,” says Vinita Jakhanwal, an analyst with research firm iSuppli.

Color screens for e-readers are more than a question of aesthetics. Many genres of books, including textbooks, cookbooks and comics, require color illustrations to make them come alive. Magazines and even newspapers are rendered almost unrecognizable without color.

Low-power color displays could change that. They could also help convince reluctant consumers to get a gadget designed for reading, without giving up gains in battery life.

A 5.7-inch Mirasol screen, not much bigger than an index card, with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, can offer at least five times the battery life of a 6-inch Kindle black-and-white Kindle display, says Goodman. The 5.7inch screen is the size that Qualcomm is planning to debut its color displays in, though it says it can do larger screen sizes based on demand.

Mirasol displays are built on glass substrates. Thin films

deposited on the substrate form one wall of the cavity, while the other wall is a highly reflective flexible membrane. An electric force applied across the cavity causes the membrane to collapse against the thin films. The cavity then becomes very thin, and the wavelength that is reflected moves into the ultraviolet spectrum.

For the viewer, this element, which is one pixel, is seen as black. Varying the depth of the cavity results in changes in the wavelengths reflected, which yields different colors.

“Because you use the lighting around to generate the image and color, it makes the display extremely low power,” says Jim Cathey, vice president of business development for Qualcomm.

And like the E Ink display, it is visible even in bright sunlight.

“Mirasol does color well but it has difficulty in reproducing gray scales,” says Jakhanwal.

“When it comes to black-andwhite, it is not as high contrast as an E Ink screen, but the advantage Qualcomm has is that it can offer color now.”

The 5.7-inch color Mirasol screen is bigger than the iPhone's, but not by much.

A Nascar race on the Mirasol display may not be pleasant, but the screen’s refresh rate of up to 24 frames per second is good enough for almost every other kind of video. In a demo at Wired.com, the screen showed a

decent, sub-second refresh rate that was noticeably slower than 24 fps, but fast enough to show slow-motion moving images of butterflies.

Mirasol’s response time is also better than E Ink — in microseconds, compared to E Ink’s 200 or so milliseconds.

Still, many customers could find the videos on a Mirasol display unappealing, says Jakhanwal.

“Videos look much better in Mirasol than they do in E Ink,” she says. “But when you are watching video you want full color saturation and a washedout picture is not that attractive,” she says.

Convincing e-reader manufacturers to bet on Mirasol won’t be easy. Qualcomm will have to compete against Pixel Qi, a scrappy California-based startup whose displays combine a full color LCD screen with a low-power black-and-white display. And then there’s E Ink, the current market leader that promises to come out with color displays by the end of the year.

Mirasol’s success will also depend on Qualcomm’s ability to prove that it can manufacture millions of displays that its customers will need. After all, Qualcomm is a chip company that’s known for creating processors that power smartphones, not displays. The Mirasol technology comes to the company through its acquisition of Iridigm Display five years ago.

Qualcomm says it’s serious about creating a place for itself in the display business. The company has set up a fabrication plant in Taiwan dedicated to producing Mirasol displays.

“Taking it from the lab to the fab is the tough part,” says Goodman. “But we have launched Mirasol on a few phones.” In 2008, one of the first handsets, the HiSense C108, featuring a black-and-white Mirasol display, debuted in China.

For the color screens, though, Qualcomm is betting on ereaders.

“The challenge in the e-reader market is that there are a lot of substitutes — the iPhone, laptop or the iPad,” says Qualcomm’s Cathey. “But we think consumers want color content and long usage between charges in a variety of environments.”

See Also: • Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users • Roundup: E-Reader Gift Guide • Why E-Books Are Stuck in a Black-and-White World • Why E-Books Look So Ugly Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

E-reader News Edition

81

QUALCOMM continued from page 78

consumer electronics categories.

And while screen sizes and functionality may be different, they all have one thing in common: Almost all of them use a black-and-white display from E Ink, the company that pioneered the low-power technology. The reason that e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader and the Barnes & Noble Nook can go days or even weeks without a recharge is that they use power only when the screen changes. In between, while you’re reading the page, the screen draws no power because its pixels are “bistable” — they have two stable states, dark and light, and can remain in either state without drawing power.

But the iPad’s debut and its focus on e-reading has raised the stakes for Amazon and other entrants. Amazon has reportedly acquired Touchco, a company that could provide it with the technology to add a touchscreen to the Kindle. A push for a color display would likely come with any new product that would use the Touchco tech.

Qualcomm’s Mirasol could be one of the contenders. Mirasol displays work by modulating an optical cavity to reflect the desired wavelength of light. The reflected wavelength is proportional to the cavity’s depth.

And if you are wondering what a color low-power Mirasol screen looks like, think a glossy scientific textbook rather than an

LCD screen. It’s subdued, somewhat low-contrast, but crystal clear. Its reflective surface means that it doesn’t have (or need) a backlight. Its pixels, like E Ink’s, are bistable, so it will draw power only when refreshing the screen. And it can play video.

“It’s a very good display for what it does, which is an extremely low-power color screen,” says Vinita Jakhanwal, an analyst with research firm iSuppli.

Color screens for e-readers are more than a question of aesthetics. Many genres of books, including textbooks, cookbooks and comics, require color illustrations to make them come alive. Magazines and even newspapers are rendered almost unrecognizable without color.

Low-power color displays could change that. They could also help convince reluctant consumers to get a gadget designed for reading, without giving up gains in battery life.

A 5.7-inch Mirasol screen, not much bigger than an index card, with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, can offer at least five times the battery life of a 6-inch Kindle black-and-white Kindle display, says Goodman. The 5.7inch screen is the size that Qualcomm is planning to debut its color displays in, though it says it can do larger screen sizes based on demand.

Mirasol displays are built on glass substrates. Thin films

deposited on the substrate form one wall of the cavity, while the other wall is a highly reflective flexible membrane. An electric force applied across the cavity causes the membrane to collapse against the thin films. The cavity then becomes very thin, and the wavelength that is reflected moves into the ultraviolet spectrum.

For the viewer, this element, which is one pixel, is seen as black. Varying the depth of the cavity results in changes in the wavelengths reflected, which yields different colors.

“Because you use the lighting around to generate the image and color, it makes the display extremely low power,” says Jim Cathey, vice president of business development for Qualcomm.

And like the E Ink display, it is visible even in bright sunlight.

“Mirasol does color well but it has difficulty in reproducing gray scales,” says Jakhanwal.

“When it comes to black-andwhite, it is not as high contrast as an E Ink screen, but the advantage Qualcomm has is that it can offer color now.”

The 5.7-inch color Mirasol screen is bigger than the iPhone's, but not by much.

A Nascar race on the Mirasol display may not be pleasant, but the screen’s refresh rate of up to 24 frames per second is good enough for almost every other kind of video. In a demo at Wired.com, the screen showed a

decent, sub-second refresh rate that was noticeably slower than 24 fps, but fast enough to show slow-motion moving images of butterflies.

Mirasol’s response time is also better than E Ink — in microseconds, compared to E Ink’s 200 or so milliseconds.

Still, many customers could find the videos on a Mirasol display unappealing, says Jakhanwal.

“Videos look much better in Mirasol than they do in E Ink,” she says. “But when you are watching video you want full color saturation and a washedout picture is not that attractive,” she says.

Convincing e-reader manufacturers to bet on Mirasol won’t be easy. Qualcomm will have to compete against Pixel Qi, a scrappy California-based startup whose displays combine a full color LCD screen with a low-power black-and-white display. And then there’s E Ink, the current market leader that promises to come out with color displays by the end of the year.

Mirasol’s success will also depend on Qualcomm’s ability to prove that it can manufacture millions of displays that its customers will need. After all, Qualcomm is a chip company that’s known for creating processors that power smartphones, not displays. The Mirasol technology comes to the company through its acquisition of Iridigm Display five years ago.

Qualcomm says it’s serious about creating a place for itself in the display business. The company has set up a fabrication plant in Taiwan dedicated to producing Mirasol displays.

“Taking it from the lab to the fab is the tough part,” says Goodman. “But we have launched Mirasol on a few phones.” In 2008, one of the first handsets, the HiSense C108, featuring a black-and-white Mirasol display, debuted in China.

For the color screens, though, Qualcomm is betting on ereaders.

“The challenge in the e-reader market is that there are a lot of substitutes — the iPhone, laptop or the iPad,” says Qualcomm’s Cathey. “But we think consumers want color content and long usage between charges in a variety of environments.”

See Also: • Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users • Roundup: E-Reader Gift Guide • Why E-Books Are Stuck in a Black-and-White World • Why E-Books Look So Ugly Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

82

Gallup Poll/

E-reader News Edition

Obama Approval: Among States, Hawaii Warmest to Obama (All Gallup Headlines) Submitted at 2/4/2010 8:00:00 PM

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PRINCETON, NJ -- Of the 50 states, Hawaii gave its native son, President Barack Obama, the highest approval ratings in 2009, with an average of nearly 71% approving of his overall job performance from January through December. Only the District of Columbia delivered a higher average approval rating for Obama, at 90.2%.

Neighboring Maryland also ranks high among state approval ratings for the president, with an average of 68.5%.

Obama's home state -- Illinois -was among the most favorable to him last year, with 65.2% approving. Aside from California and New York, the remaining states in Obama's top 10 are all in New England (Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island).

Hawaii also delivered the highest share of the vote for Obama in the 2008 presidential election of any state (though D.C. was higher). However, all top 10 Obama approval states voted for him in that election, and all are solidly blue in the party identification of their residents.

Obama's overall average approval rating in 2009 was 57.6% (slightly different from

the 57% Gallup calculated for his first year, spanning Inauguration Day through Jan. 19, 2010), and he averaged better than 50% approval in 41 states, including Washington, D.C. The states where no more than half approved also represent the bottom 10 states for him. Among these, Wyoming gave Obama his lowest average approval, 41.6%, followed by Idaho with 43.3%.

Many of the other leastapproving states were in the South (Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama) or West (Montana, Utah, Alaska). Oklahoma is the lone Midwestern state in this category, and West Virginia the lone Eastern state. All of these states voted for John McCain in 2008.

A separate breakdown of the states into three categories finds 21 states giving Obama an approval rating within three percentage points of his national average for all of 2009 (between 54.6% and 60.6%). Thirteen states had an average approval rating of Obama above that range and 17 states fell below it.

The 2009 state-level approval figures are based on combined data for Gallup Daily tracking from Jan. 21 (the day after Obama was sworn in) through Dec. 31, 2009. The presidential approval question is asked of a random half-sample of approximately 500 national adults each night, resulting in more than 170,000 interviews for the entire year. The state sample

(including independents who lean Democratic). However, his average approval rating was significantly more than 10 points ahead of Democratic Party ID in several states, and significantly less than 10 points ahead of it in others.

More specifically, Obama's average approval rating was more than 16 points greater than Democratic Party identification in Utah and Hawaii, and about 14 points greater in North Dakota and Connecticut.

By contrast, his approval rating was less than 7 points ahead of Democratic Party ID in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oregon, and Colorado. And in West Virginia, Obama's approval rating was nearly 7 points lower than the percentage of Democrats statewide, the only state showing this pattern.

Bottom Line How the residents of each state view Obama continues to be sizes range from 301 in the Democrats tend to be more strongly related to 2008 voting District of Columbia and 422 in supportive of Obama than those patterns. Approval toward him W y o m i n g t o 1 7 , 8 8 7 i n w i t h l o w e r p r o p o r t i o n s o f was particularly high in the states California. Forty-one states had Democrats; however, there is not that gave him the most support in more than 1,000 respondents. a 1-to-1 correspondence between the 2008 election -- led by (See full table at end of this the two figures.

Hawaii and Washington, D.C. report.)

Because a certain proportion of His lowest support as president Extent to Which Approval n o n - D e m o c r a t s ( t h a t i s , came from states that voted Exceeds Democratic Party ID Republicans and independents) strongly for John McCain -Varies approve of the president's job particularly Wyoming and a Obama's average state-level performance, Obama's approval number of other Western as well approval ratings are related to rating in each state in 2009 was, as Southern states. each state's partisan makeup, as on average, about 10 points would be expected. States with a higher than the percentage OBAMA page 83 high proportion of self-identified calling themselves Democrats

E-reader News Edition

83

OBAMA continued from page 82

Gallup's "State of the States" series reveals state-by-state differences on political, economic, and well-being measures Gallup tracks each day.

New stories will be released throughout the month of February.

Survey Methods Results are based on telephone interviews with 170,370 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 21-Dec. 31, 2009, as part of Gallup Daily tracking.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage points.

The margin of error for most states is ±3 percentage points,

but is as high as ±7 percentage points for the District of Columbia. For the most populous states, the margin of error is ±1 percentage point.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones and cellular phones.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

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