Liberty Newspost Mar-12-10

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Massa waning as news fodder but may rise again to plague Democrats David Morgan (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:21:43 AM

Eric Massa may soon vanish from the 24-7 news cycle. But t h e m a r t y r e d Democrat, who says he fell from grace beneath the naked power of Satan’s spawn, could reappear some day soon as a burr under the saddles of his former congressional colleagues.

Republicans would like Massa to do for them what Mark Foley did for Democrats four years ago: provide a scourge with which to flail the other guy in a mid-term election year.

Foley, a Republican, resigned from Congress in September 2006 amid allegations that he

sent sexually explicit emails and instant messages to male congressional pages. As such, he was among the denizens of that swamp of Republican corruption that Nancy Pelosi vowed to drain just before Democrats took control of Congress and gave her the speaker’s gavel.

Massa groped young men. Or didn’t, depending on which talk show footage you watch. Yet he says he was really forced out of office — not by the prospect of ethics charges — but by a White House infuriated by his unwillingness to back President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan.

Republicans tried to make hay of Massa’s conspiracy claims at first. But now House GOP

last October and did nothing until last month. Aides say the earlier complaints weren’t of a sexual nature and nobody mentioned them to the speaker herself.

But a Republican-sponsored measure demanding a further Massa investigation by the House ethics panel passed the chamber 402-1.

A final report is due at the end leaders including John Boehner of June, just as the temperature want to hear about what top of this year’s congressional Democrats didn’t do to Massa, election campaign heats up. particularly that swamp drainer Photo Credits: Reuters/Molly from San Francisco who’s busy Riley (Pelosi); Reuters/Official t r y i n g t o m a k e Handout (Massa); Reuters/Yuri Obama’s healthcare reform a Gripas (Foley); Reuters/Jason reality.

Reed (Boehner) Indications are that Pelosi’s Click here for more political o f f i c e f i r s t l e a r n e d a b o u t coverage form Reuters problems with Massa as early as

Video: Tomasky talk: Time for Democrats to start leading on health Andy Gallagher, Michael Tomasky, Rebecca Lovell (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

Video: Michael Tomasky calls on elected Democrats to put constituents aside and take a lead on healthcare reform Andy

Gallagher Michael Tomasky Rebecca Lovell

Haiti Earthquake Pictures: Your Images of the Aftermath (National Geographic News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:56:36 AM

San Cristóbal Smile Photograph by Your Shot user Glenn Batchelo After the January 12 Haiti earthquake, many victims were airlifted to San Cristóbal in the neighboring Dominican Republic. National Geographic Your Shot user Glenn Batchelo photographed this boy, who had lost a leg, in a local hospital.

"When I asked him what he wanted, he said a cell to call his father and a handheld game," said Batchelo, a San Cristóbal resident. "Needless to say, I broke down and bought him everything—hence the smile."

(Also see:"Haiti Earthquake, Deforestation Heighten Landslide Risk.")

Published March 12, 2010 Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Is Holbrooke’s “bulldozer” style working?

Sue Pleming (Front Row Washington)

Pashtun family in the south has family or friends who are involved with the Taliban – it’s Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:25:09 PM in the fabric of society,” said Dubbed the “bulldozer” for his Holbrooke in remarks released tough guy tactics in Balkan by his office. negotiations, U.S. Ambassador Almost immediately, that Richard Holbrooke has been c o m m e n t w e n t v i r a l i n making waves in South Asia Afghanistan and was seen by recently. many as a slight to President U.S. embassies in New Delhi H a m i d K a r z a i , h i m s e l f a and Kabul have been scrambling P a s h t u n . over the past week to deal with The issue came up at a news local fallout from statements conference this week between made by Washington’s special K a r z a i a n d v i s i t i n g U . S . representative for Afghanistan Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Pakistan. who told a reporter that while he Statements that often go by h a d a l o t o f r e s p e c t f o r unnoticed in Washington are Holbrooke “that doesn’t mean parsed word for word in a that I agree with everything he region where there are deeply- says, including that.” held suspicions over U.S. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul put intentions. out a statement from Holbrooke O n e s u c h e x a m p l e almost immediately afterwards, is Holbrooke’s comments at a saying he was merely reflecting forum at Harvard last week Karzai’s own comments this where he was asked about re- year when he said “those integration efforts with the Taliban who were not part of Taliban in Afghanistan. terrorist networks or al Qaeda Holbrooke made clear — as he are sons of the Afghan soil.” has many times before — that “I was not suggesting that all the United States was not in Pashtuns are part of the Taliban talks with the Taliban but or all Taliban are Pashtuns,” offered up that almost every said Holbrooke. family of the southern Pashtun Holbrooke has a testy tribes had someone involved relationship with Karzai and had with the Taliban. several heated exchanges with “There are plenty of indirect him last summer after a fraudcontacts between Pashtun on laced election. Those tensions both sides – almost every have eased in recent months, but

diplomats say the two are not the best of friends.

The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi has also tried to dampen an outcry that flared after Holbrooke told a news conference in Washington last week he did not believe recent attacks on guesthouses in Kabul were aimed at Indians.

“I don’t accept the fact that this

“I regret any misunderstanding caused by my comments,” Holbrooke said. “I did not say Indians were not the target, but that initially it looked like the target was not an official Indian facility.”

Obama has called Holbrooke “one of the most talented diplomats of his generation,” but some are questioning whether his tough style works in South Asia.

“I think quiet diplomacy is the order of the day. This is not a Bosnia-type thing,” said a senior former diplomat, who declined to be named as his comments were critical of Holbrooke.

“Karzai just really does not like him. I hear the Pakistanis don’t like him either. They have acute sensitivities about being bullied

by Americans,” added the diplomat.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley defended Holbrooke. “He remains the was an attack on an Indian right person for the job,” said facility like the embassy. There Crowley. “It’s a far-reaching were foreigners, non-Indian and very complex challenge and foreigners hurt,” Holbrooke said Richard is managing it very in the news conference at the skillfully.”

Photo credit: REUTERS/Nikola State Department.

The statement caused a ruckus Solic (Special Representative on the blogosphere and the U.S. for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Embassy in New Delhi issued a Richard Holbrooke talking by “clarification” of Holbrooke’s phone at a meeting of foreign ministers in Trieste) remarks on its website.

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Social Media Trends Among IT Workers Curt Finch (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:42:00 AM

Gibbs sports Canadian hockey jersey for briefing Caren Bohan (Front Row Washington)

spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, had a wager on the men’s hockey Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:32:35 PM final, which Canada won 3-2 in Joking that a new “casual overtime.

Friday” dress code had been His jersey had a number 39 on instituted in the West Wing, it in honor of U.S. goalie Ryan White House press secretary Miller. He had promised to wear Robert Gibbs showed at the it for 15 minutes but took it off p o d i u m F r i d a y w e a r i n g a after about five to uncover the Canadian hockey jersey to make Team U.S.A. Hockey jersey good on a bet he had made with underneath. his counterpart in Canada.

President Barack Obama had to Gibbs and Dimitri Soudas, pay up too after betting Harper a

case of beer over the March 1 game in Vancouver.

“We’ve instructed the embassy, our embassy and our ambassador to make arrangements to deliver one case of Molson Canadian and one case of Yuengling lager from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, America’s oldest brewery, to the Prime Minister’s office today,” Gibbs said. “I’m sure Dimitri will take most of that home and consume it.

Soudas couldn’t resist the urge to gloat a little bit.

“Good friends can make a bet for beers, or to wear each other’s jerseys,” he said in a statement issued in English and French. “That said, it’s always a smart idea to bet on Canada.”

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Gibbs in Canadian hockey jersey)

A survey of over 3,000 IT professionals recently showed that they consume more social media content than other types (editorial, vendor) and that they consider this to be a good method not only for staying informed, but for networking with peers as well. According to the study, IT professionals at all levels spend an average of 4.59 hours a week on social media sites, and they report that it has helped to increase their level of expertise in their field.

Aside from LinkedIn, some IT workers use Slashdot.org for upto-date “news for nerds” or IT Toolbox to keep in touch with other professionals.

I just spoke Monday at the Atlanta PMI about Web2.0 and how it affects project managers, the summary of which is that it raises expectations on UI, adds stakeholders, and steals control from IT (part of a continuing trend).

Curt Finch is the founder & CEO of a resource management software company.

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Lonely death of Juanita Goggins, trailblazer of US civil rights Chris McGreal (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:08:26 PM

Neighbours were oblivious that recluse who froze to death in her home was first black woman on South Carolina legislature The neighbours knew Juanita Goggins only as an elderly recluse with no friends and a family that was rarely seen.

Goggins was so private that she instructed a neighbour who delivered groceries to leave them at the door, ring the bell and go away before she emerged. She spurned offers of home help from the local authorities even though she was evidently finding it increasingly difficult to look after herself.

So the residents of her South Carolina community were saddened, if not entirely shocked, to hear that the 75-year -old woman had frozen to death in her own home and that her body went undiscovered for nearly a fortnight.

But in the days before her funeral today, they were surprised to learn that at one time Goggins had been a trailblazing politician and civil rights activist who shook up South Carolina's exclusive politics as the first black woman elected to the southern state's legislature.

That same legislature last year honoured Goggins, who was also the first black woman to

serve on the government's civil rights commission and who was twice invited to the White House by President Jimmy Carter, by naming a highway after her. But that didn't catch the eye of the people who lived around her. It was Goggins's neighbour of 16 years, Erskine Hunter, who dropped off the groceries and left before she answered the door.

He also tended her lawn but was invited in only once, to fix a water heater. He knew nothing of her past. "I miss her," he told the Associated Press. "I don't know why I didn't go over there and hammer on the door."

The first that Linda Marshall knew about the woman whose rent she collected each month was reading an obituary. "She needed someone to assist her, but anyone who tried to get close, she'd block them off," she said. "She was very fragile. This was something I always dreaded."

Goggins was the youngest of 10 children and the only one to make it to college and earn a degree at what was then the allblack South Carolina state college. She went on to become a teacher in the segregated school system.

She had experienced discrimination but working in the education system she saw how even after segregation was formally abolished it lived on through bureaucratic practice,

funding priorities and racial attitudes. She was determined to change that, so she entered politics and in 1972 became the first black woman to represent South Carolina at the Democratic party's national convention. Shortly after, she was the first black woman appointed to the US government's civil rights commission.

Then in 1974, Goggins beat a white man to win a seat in the South Carolina legislature in Columbia.

"I am going to Columbia to be a legislator, not just a black spot in the House chambers," she said at the time.

Goggins said that voters "were weary of poor representation".

"They were ready to accept a person who was sincere and concerned about things. Those feelings go beyond colour," she said.

She made her way on to the powerful committee drawing up budgets, and used her position to win funding for sickle-cell anaemia, a blood disorder that disproportionately affects the African American community.

She pushed through important reforms to education affecting school funding and class sizes.

"She was truly a mover and a shaker, so well-liked and so well -loved by so many," said John King, who now holds Goggins' former seat.

Goggins' last surviving sibling,

Ilese Dixon, 88, wasn't surprised that her sister achieved so much as a politician.

"She was not bashful or anything. She liked to talk. I used to say she could sell an Eskimo ice. She was just lively and smart. She thought she could fix the world," she told the Associated Press.

After Goggins retired from politics, she worked for the state's health and environment department. But she became increasingly withdrawn after moving to a quiet neighbourhood in Columbia in the early nineties.

Goggins had distanced herself from her family, who suspected she was suffering from dementia. Her former husband, Horace, said that she "divorced herself from family and friends".

"I tried to communicate with her and went down there to Columbia many times," he told South Carolina's Herald newspaper. "She wouldn't accept contact from anybody."

Goggins became even further withdrawn after she was mugged near her home. She put new locks on the doors and rarely left the house.

She died of hypothermia after snow hit South Carolina last month. It was nearly two weeks later, when one of her neighbours noticed that he had not seen her lights go on for some time, that concerns were

raised and the landlord called the police. They found Goggins wrapped up in several layers of clothes. The electricity had been cut off after she failed to pay the bill but the police found hundreds of dollars in cash in the house.

Goggins' only son, also called Horace, said that despite the sad circumstances of his mother's death, it is an opportunity to remind people of the trailblazer she once was. "I want her to be remembered as a positive role model, not only for AfricanAmerican girls, but also any young girl who has a want and a desire to make a change and do something positive," he said.

Life of Juanita Goggins 1935 Born to sharecroppers in South Carolina 1972 First black woman to represent South Carolina at the Democratic party's national convention.

1974 First black woman appointed to the US civil rights commission.

1974 First black woman elected to South Carolina legislature.

Served three terms.

1976-80 Twice invited to the White House by President Jimmy Carter.

1977 Instrumental in passing a law that remains the basis for education funding in South Carolina, helping to reduce class sizes.

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Nato ‘covered up’ botched night raid in Afghanistan that killed five (Top stories from Times Online) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:01:00 PM

A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.

The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched predawn assault on a policeman’s home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan.

In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.

A Times investigation suggests that Nato’s claims are either wilfully false or, at best, misleading. More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan gunmen. The identity and status of the soldiers is unknown.

The raid came more than a fortnight after the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan issued new

guidelines designed to limit the use of night raids. Special forces and Western intelligence agencies that run covert operations in Afghanistan have been criticised for night raids based on dubious or false intelligence leading to civilian casualties.

The first person to die in the assault was Commander Dawood, 43, a long-serving, popular and highly-trained policeman who had recently been promoted to head of intelligence in one of Paktia’s most volatile districts. His brother, Saranwal Zahir, was a prosecutor in Ahmadabad district. He was killed while he stood in a doorway trying to protest their innocence.

Three women crouching in a hallway behind him were hit by the same volley of fire. Bibi Shirin, 22, had four children under the age of 5. Bibi Saleha, 37, had 11 children. Both of them, according to their relatives, were pregnant. They were killed instantly.

The men’s mother, Bibi Sabsparie, said that Shirin was four months pregnant and Saleha was five months. The other victim, Gulalai, 18, was engaged. She was wounded and later died. “We had already bought everything for the wedding,” her soon-to-be father-

in-law, Sayed Mohammed Mal, the Vice-Chancellor of Gardez University, said.

On the night of the attack about 25 male friends and relatives had gathered at Commander Dawood’s compound in Khataba, a small village, to celebrate the naming of a newborn boy. Sitting together along the walls of a guest room, the men had taken turns dancing while musicians played.

Mohammed Sediq Mahmoudi, 24, the singer, said that at some time after 3am one of the musicians, Dur Mohammed, went outside to go to the toilet.

“Someone shone a light on his face and he ran back inside and said the Taleban were outside,” Mr Sediq said.

Lieutenant-Colonel Zamarud Zazai, the Gardez head of police intelligence, said: “Both sides thought the other group was Taleban.” Commander Dawood ran towards the family quarters with his son Sediqullah, 15.

Halfway across the courtyard they were shot by a gunman on the roof. Commander Dawood was killed. Sediqullah, his uncles said, was hit twice but survived.

The shooting stopped and the soldiers shouted in Pashto for everyone to come outside.

Waheedullah, an ambulance driver, said that their accents

sounded Kandahari.

Nato said that the troops were part of a joint “Afghaninternational” force but, despite new rules requiring them to leave leaflets identifying their unit, the family said they left nothing. US troops denied any involvement.

In the hallway on the other side of the compound, women poured in to tend to the casualties. Commander Dawood’s mother said: “Zahir shouted, ‘don’t fire, we work for the Government’. But while he was talking they fired again. I saw him fall down. I turned around and saw my daughter-inlaw and the other women were dead.”

Mohammed Sabir, 26, the youngest brother of Commander Dawood and Zahir, was one of eight men arrested and flown to a base in neighbouring Paktika province. They were held for four days and interrogated by an American in civilian clothes who showed them pictures of their suspect. “I said, ‘Yes, it’s Shamsuddin. He was at the party. Why didn’t you arrest him?’ ” Sabir said. After they were released without charge Shamsuddin — who had spent five months fixing generators at the local American base — turned himself in for questioning. He, too, was

released without charge.

Nato’s original statement said: “Several insurgents engaged the joint force in a firefight and were killed.” The family maintain that no one threw so much as a stone. Rear Admiral Greg Smith, Nato’s director of communications in Kabul, denied that there had been any attempt at a cover-up.

He said that both the men who were killed were armed and showing “hostile intent” but admitted “they were not the targets of this particular raid”.

“I don’t know if they fired any rounds,” he said. “If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don’t have to be fired upon to fire back.”

He admitted that the original statement had been “poorly worded” but said “to people who see a lot of dead bodies” the women had appeared at the time to have been dead for several hours.

The family were offered, through local elders, American compensation — $2,000 (£1,300) for each of the victims.

“There’s no value on human life,” Bibi Sabsparie said. “They killed our family, then they NATO page 9

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Headless Man's Tomb Found Under Maya Torture Mural (National Geographic News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:07:33 PM

The tomb of a headless man adorned with jade has been discovered beneath an ancient Mexican chamber famously painted with scenes of torture.

Found under the Temple of Murals at the Maya site of Bonampak, the man was either a captive warrior who was sacrificed—perhaps one of the victims in the mural—or a relative of the city's ruler, scientists speculate ( interactive map of the Maya Empire).

Whoever he was, "the place of the burial tells us that the person buried there was special," said anthropologist Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta via e-mail.

At the time of the murals' creation, about A.D. 790, Bonampak was a city of thousands. Today its most prominent vestige is a longovergrown, partially excavated acropolis in the middle of a vast tropical rain forest in the southern state of Chiapas (map). ( Pictures: what the Maya Empire looked like.)

Perched midway up the stepped acropolis, the Temple of Murals holds three elaborately painted rooms.

Room One depicts the presentation of a young heir.

Room Two, above the newfound tomb, is ringed with scenes of

the torture of captive warriors—broken fingers, tornout fingernails, heads without bodies. Room Three includes paintings of an elite bloodletting ritual.

(Read about Maya rituals of sacrifice and worship.)

Discovered by the outside world in 1946, the Bonampak murals eviscerated scholars' long-held belief in an ancient Maya Empire ruled by kindly astronomer-priests. The new tomb find may only add to the aura of violence.

(See"Maya Murals May Depict Murder of Royal Scribes.")

Radar Revealed Surprise Burial After a series of earthquakes from 2005 through 2007, archaeologists began a restoration and conservation project at Bonampak. During a radar survey they detected a cavity beneath the torture mural.

Burials under Maya temples and pyramids are commonplace, said Gallaga, director of the Chiapas campus of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, which announced the discovery on January 8.

"Here the question would be, What type of context will we find? What offerings will be there? Or who may be buried there?"

(Related:"Mass Graves Reveal Massacre of Maya Royalty.")

Riddle of the Missing Maya Skull The tomb itself is "simple"—just large enough to hold a body and covered with a slab of plain, white plaster, Gallaga said.

Preliminary analysis of the skeleton indicates it belonged to a 35- to 42-year-old man with a type of arthritis. His skull, though not his lower jaw, is missing.

The victim may have been beheaded—a common practice in ancient Maya warfare—Gallaga said. But "our money goes to disintegration by humidity and natural erosion," he said, noting that "head bones are relatively less hard than the rest."

Also, jade earrings were on the ground, positioned as if they'd fallen from long-gone ears—another clue the skull may have disintegrated in place.

Gallaga rules out the idea that tomb raiders might have stolen the skull.

For one thing, the valuable jade earrings, along with a jade necklace and bracelets, remain in place. The deceased also wore a pendant made from the shell of a Spondylus, or spiny oyster—"a highly appreciated shell among the high-class during pre-Hispanic times for its orange-purple color," Gallaga said.

Another reason to rule out tomb raiding: "The evidence shows that the burial was a single event." Bonampak's rulers sealed the tomb and placed the whole building on top, "so we do not think anybody opened the tomb in pre-Hispanic times."

Two multicolored ceramic plates, an alabaster vase with a hole in the base, and a stone knife also accompanied the body. The perforated vase and knife are indicative of Maya sacrifice, though not necessarily beheading, the team noted. ( Take a Maya quiz.)

Was Mystery Maya Family or Foe? Scientists are currently carbondating a sample of the man's remains to verify when he lived, and a DNA test should help clarify the man's relationship to the Bonampak community, Gallaga said.

For now, though, the tomb artifacts suggest he's an elite—but who's side was he on?

"The paraphernalia found in this burial could lead us to think that [he] is a high-class warrior" from an opposing group who was sacrificed at a ceremony dedicating the temple, Gallaga said.

"The only thing is that this skeleton does not have the hand tied on the back like those found at the Quetzalcóatl temple in Teotihuacán," an ancient Maya

metropolis in what is now Mexico City. The Quetzalcóatl corpses are considered to be sacrificed war captives.

Alternatively, the man could be a relative of Chaan Muan II, who ruled Bonampak at the time the murals were painted.

The skeleton's jade and Spondylus- shell jewelry, for example, matches that of the Bonampak nobles depicted in Room One of the Temple of Murals.

Even if the man is found to have been a Bonampak insider, it won't rule out the possibility he was sacrificed to the gods, though he could also have been "killed in a battle or died of natural causes," Gallaga said.

"Further analysis will tell us which is the correct" cause-ofdeath theory.

Whichever hypothesis is right, Gallaga noted, "the tomb could be material evidence of the images portrayed on the murals."

(For the story of the Maya Empire, read the National Geograhpic magazine article"The Maya: Glory and Ruin.")

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The war on terror: taking Jihad Jane | Marina Hyde Marina Hyde (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

forewent the usual cliches about her having "kept herself to herself", declaring instead that she talked to cats a lot. Mm. As Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:46:32 PM A civilised justice system might our leaders are given to telling have seen Colleen LaRose's u s , t a p p i n g t h e i r n o s e i n eccentricities as requiring help. reference to their security Instead, she may face life in clearance: if you saw what I prison saw, it would curdle your blood.

Without wishing to undermine Even Lars Vilks – the Swedish her twin commitments to holy artist whose sensationally witty war and talking to cats, the self- cartoon of Muhammad's head on styled Jihad Jane might be the a dog sparked the alleged plot war on terror's least effective with which LaRose is accused bogeywoman. In fact, let's not of being associated – appears be gender specific. She might dismissively amused, pitching well be its least effective the affair as a caper movie, bogeyperson, making "shoe "with this fantastic name Jihad bomber" Richard Reid, as we Jane". Vilks described his refer to that chap who couldn't alleged nemeses as not exactly even set a match to his own professionals and "rather lowtrainers, look like the KGB's tech", hitting a note of ironic deadliest agent. understatement indiscernible in Jihad Jane's real name is what we know of his work.

Colleen LaRose, and in between The movie Colleen was caring for her partner's sick presumably thinking about as f a t h e r , t h i s s u b u r b a n she settled on her nickname was Pennsylvanian is alleged to have GI Jane, in which a super-buff put postings on YouTube in Demi Moore trains as a Navy w h i c h s h e m a d e h e r s e l f Seal and has to retrieve some available for any fundamentalist weapons-grade plutonium from situations vacant. Last year she the Libyans. As a 4ft 11 travelled to Ireland, where she Christine Hamilton lookalike so met some people allegedly luminously inept she'd already plotting to kill a cartoonist, been warned once by the FBI before flying home and being before she was finally arrested, arrested on her return. She has you have to marvel at Colleen's been in custody since, according self-delusion. However, I'd to federal documents unsealed prefer for the authorities to this week – and when the news conjure up footage of her at one broke, LaRose's neighbours of those terrorist training camps

in the Hindu Kush, where disaffected westerners have to scramble under rope nets and suchlike, even though their missions are only ever going to consist of doing something antisocial in an aisle seat. As a rare woman at boot camp, Colleen would be a shoo-in for Jihad Benjamin, a winsome modern reboot of the Private Benjamin franchise.

The trailer line for the Goldie Hawn original was "The army was no laughing matter till Judy Benjamin joined it", and you might agree that the forces of evil ranked against us were similarly mirthless until a pintsized cat-lady brought the funny. Yet according to the US justice department, the fact that "a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face". Does it? I yield to no one in my admiration for the calibre of evildoers paraded before us in the cause of justifying ever higher antiterrorism spending and the systematic erosion of individual liberties, but the LaRose business appears yet another instance of a sledgehammer being used to crack a nut.

Just as in the case of Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon, and on a much smaller level in that of

Jack Straw heckler Walter Wolfgang, one has to question the moral wisdom (and the PR nous) of deploying the full force of anti-terror laws against the demonstrably weak or eccentric.

A truly strong society would have the sense merely to leave oddballs out there – partly because the world is full of them, and partly to undermine the myth of a crack network of brilliant extremists who walk among us.

Jurists have long been fascinated by the so-called doctrine of impossible attempt, the question of whether someone can really be punished for attempted crimes that have infinitesimal or no chance of succeeding. Classic examples are trying to pick an empty pocket, or an attempt to murder a man by voodoo. It remains to be seen precisely how cackhanded were LaRose's bunglings in what she imagined to be the world of international terrorism, but it doesn't exactly have the flavour of the Mossad's recent trip to Dubai.

What has come to light since the news broke, however, are police records of LaRose's 2005 suicide attempt, reports of alcohol problems, and friends' accounts of the depression caused by the death of her father. Presumably all of this was picked up by the FBI during

their lengthy surveillance of her, and in a more civilised and intelligent justice system LaRose might have been identified as a person with a case of something or other, who could be reasonably handled by a couple of hours a week with a mental health professional. Yet she now faces life in prison if convicted.

Having said all that, I see I've made the textbook error of ignoring the fabled deterrent argument that governments like to advance. Do forgive me. If there are any troubled catwomen out there thinking of auditioning for Ocean's Jihad, this case will no doubt give them pause.

• Global terrorism • Terrorism policy • Sweden • United States • US national security • Gary McKinnon • Ireland • al-Qaida • US domestic policy Marina Hyde guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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Samantha Cameron: 'My love for Dave' (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

talks about meeting Mr Cameron, who was the older brother of her school friend, during a family holiday in Calabria in 1992. At the time Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:10:12 AM

By Andrew Porter, Political Mr Cameron worked as an Editor adviser for Norman Lamont, the Published: 12:01AM GMT 13 Conservative Chancellor.

Mar 2010 She told ITV’s Trevor She also discloses her McDonald meets David husband’s irritating habits which Cameron: “I was 21 and an art include not clearing up after student in Bristol and he was 25 cooking, flicking between TV and worked for the Government. channels and constantly fiddling And it was a sort of holiday with his BlackBerry. romance.

The Conservative leader’s wife “He was quite different from said “Dave” was “different” any of my friends and anyone from her other friends at the who I’d sort of met before. time they met because he held And I found him really an important Government job. fascinating, he had a very Her remarks come in a serious job, but he was television interview to be incredibly funny and really broadcast tomorrow. It is part interesting and clever, and you of a special programme on Mr know we just got on really, Cameron which is seen as his really well from day one.” response to Gordon Brown’s Samantha added: “I was very much-talked about appearance young when we got engaged. I with Piers Morgan last month. was only 23.

Mrs Cameron has never given “ B u t I t h i n k I f e l t f a i r l y an interview, but her entry into confident that Dave was the one the political f r a y w a s for me for, for lots of reasons. confirmed this week when her He’s a very strong kind of husband revealed she would reliable person.” have a prominent role in the From that first meeting, general election campaign. He however, it was clear that has said she will be his “secret politics would play a key part weapon”. in their lives.

In tomorrow’s programme she She said: “I think that ever

since the day I met Dave he has obviously taken his job very seriously and he loves politics and I think so much of the Dave that I first met and fell and love with is Dave the politician.”

Mrs Cameron, 38, who is the creative director of luxury stationers Smythson, acknowledges that her life would change significantly if her husband won the election.

She said: “If he did become Prime Minister I would be incredibly proud of him. And, and our life would change, you know and that is daunting and I’m sure we would have to make sacrifices.

“But for me personally it would be a huge honour to do everything that I possibly could to support him and make sure that he could do the job to the very best of his abilities.”

Unlike Mr Brown, Mr Cameron has not been reluctant to expose his family to the media regularly inviting television cameras into his home. But it is the first time the Tory leader’s wife has agreed to put herself in the public spotlight.

Mr Cameron has often talked about his wife and his admiration for her, but now tomorrow she reveals more about the man who is still on

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course to become Prime Minister.

She told the programme, which was filmed at the family’s west London home: “He’s definitely not perfect and like any husband he has lots of very irritating habits.

"I’d say one of the brilliant things about him is he loves cooking. But he, you know he makes a terrible mess.

“He is not very good at clearing up as he goes along. He is not very good at picking up his clothes. He’s a terrible channel flicker.

"I have to be quite firm about him not fiddling with his phone and his BlackBerry too much, because it can be you know quite annoying.”

She reveals that she encouraged him to, against the odds, run for the party leadership in the wake of yet another humiliating Conservative election loss.

“I was very encouraging. It’s a big commitment. But I really felt he was right for the job. I thought he had the right views, he had the passion and the drive.”

A year ago the couple suffered the loss of the severely disabled son Ivan. They have a son and daughter.

Samantha added: “We’ve been [ fivefilters.org: unable to retrieve full-text content]

together 18 years now and we’ve been through some you know fairly tough times and I can honestly say that I don’t think in all that time he’s ever let me down. And he’s always been incredibly strong, and kind and supportive.

“He’s a fantastic Dad. [The children], they really make him laugh. They’ve got a fantastic sense of humour.

"And I think their weird and wonderful sort of take on life, he finds very relaxing. It’s a real kind of antidote to the kind of challenges in the office.”

Mr Cameron told Sir Trevor McDonald“I think you’re about to see, in the election... probably a lot more of Samantha as the, as the trail gets hotter."

He added that she was "one of those secret weapons" that will "have a pretty clear view of how she wants to be deployed.”

Trevor McDonald meets David Cameron on ITV1, Sunday 14 March.

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Porn career? It won’t worry my colleagues, says Anna Arrowsmith (Top stories from Times Online)

before heading over to the conference hall. As the hotel guests mill around us, Ms Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:01:00 PM Arrowsmith recalls what made I have interviewed countless her reputation as a campaigner. politicians over the years, of Last year she won a battle with many a persuasion. Never the British Board of Film before has one seen fit, while Classification to be allowed to outlining her electoral show a scene of female credentials, to dwell on the e j a c u l a t i o n . pornographic films she has That campaign was “idealistic. made in her lounge.

It was about saying to the Anna Arrowsmith, also known censors that you can’t tell the as Anna Span, is the new women of this country what Liberal Democrat candidate for their bodies can or cannot do.”

Gravesham in Kent. She is also This singular project is not the the auteur of hundreds of only evidence the Liberal “female-friendly” porn films. Democrat hierarchy has of the Her neighbours in Tunbridge p o r n e n t r e p r e n e u r ’ s Wells may or may not be determination. At last year’s disgusted to learn that some of conference she won a ruling that these, including Be My Toyboy, those who had been members of were shot in the front room. the party for just eight months There are unlikely to be many could stand for Parliament. She others “who can claim that”, had earlier raised the topic with says the managing director of Nick Clegg at a public meeting.

Easy on the Eye Productions as Ms Arrowsmith was then able she surveys her party colleagues to seek a candidature, and after gathering for their conference in failing to win the nomination in a Birmingham hotel. Dressed in a couple of other seats she was black jeans, cardigan and shirt recommended by the party buttoned to the neck, she could leadership in the South East as a be any Liberal Democrat activist last-minute replacement in discussing the issues of the day Gravesham for a candidate who

stepped down. Local activists accepted her this week and have been “very supportive”.

How seriously will the voters take Ms Arrowsmith, 38, on the election trail? She wants to be respected for her business and campaigning record but knows that her career will present a problem for some. “There will be some people who will never like porn,” she says. “People approach sex in different ways.

For some people it is only an emotional act. For others it is a variety of different acts. Some people will never accept that.

They are probably the same people who never had a onenight stand. There will be some people who are conservative and very anti-porn. I think on the whole these days people are far more liberal.”

What about the Liberals?

Aren’t some of them going to be affronted by a pornographer in their midst? “I don’t think so.

On the whole they are a sexually liberated bunch.”

Ms Arrowsmith has been preoccupied by politics even longer than by pornography, admiring Margaret Thatcher

NATO continued from page 5

came and brought us money. Five Filters featured article: Term Extraction.

Money won’t bring our family Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: back.”

PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS,

when she was a child. At St Martin’s School of Art her dissertation was called Towards a New Pornography. She then worked on Television X, an “adult” channel. Fed up with seeing porn films that focused on women pleasuring men she has carved a niche making films in which a third of shots show the woman, a third the man and a third the couple together. She says that the films she makes are humorous and that there is no airbrushing.

Nearly half her customers are women, she says: “Women definitely need this.” She laughs at the idea that for all her talk of being a feminist she is really in pornography for the money. For years she made very little. Now, “I do OK — nice house in Tunbridge Wells. No way am I the millionaire I thought I would be.”

In her Tory-Labour marginal a Lib Dem victory is a long shot, but she is determined to become an MP eventually. She became motivated by the expenses scandal and notes the irony that it began with the receipt for the porn viewing of an MP’s

husband.

As an MP she would bring expertise from business and campaigning, she says, and would want to tackle problems that already concern her party, such as the sexualistion of children. She also says that her industry would like internet paywalls used to prevent under16s from seeing pornography.

The experience of being followed by cameras, as she was yesterday, is new to her. Ms Arrowsmith has never appeared in one of her films. “I did think about it, but you’ve got to be a certain type of person. They are natural exhibitionists.” She has written a book on how to make your own porn home movie.

Ms Arrowsmith has been married for two years to Tim, who has his own engineering company and has no objection to her career choice. He is apparently not bothered about the porn either.

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Children under 12 ‘can’t be criminals’ (Top stories from Times Online) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:01:21 PM

The killers of James Bulger should not have been prosecuted for his murder, the new Children’s Commissioner says today in a call for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 12 years old.

In an exclusive interview with The Times, Maggie Atkinson argues that children under the age of 12 should not be prosecuted for any crime.

Dr Atkinson, who was appointed by the Government last autumn, said that a civilised society should recognise that children who commit offences should be treated differently from adult criminals.

She makes her call for a change in the law in her interview, her first since taking on the role.

Coming at such a sensitive time, it is likely to reignite the debate on the age of criminal responsibility and anger the relatives of victims who believe that young children know the difference between right and wrong.

"The age of criminal responsibility in this country is ten — that’s too low, it should certainly be moved up to 12; in

some European countries it is 14. Even the most hardened of youngsters who have committed some very difficult crimes are not beyond being frightened," Dr Atkinson said.

"In terms of knowing what the full consequences of your actions are, you are into older childhood or adolescence."

Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger, met Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, this week.

But Dr Atkinson warned politicians not to be so influenced by the views of victims’ relatives.

"The ‘we are too worried about the parents issue’ is something that runs like a thread through a number of cases. My constant song is ‘listen to the children and young people’," she said.

The age of criminal responsibility in England was in effect reduced from 14 to 10 by Jack Straw in 1998 when he ended the presumption that children under 14 did not know the difference between right and wrong.

In other parts of Europe the age ranges from 14 to 18. In Scotland it is eight years old, but legislation is going through Parliament to raise it to 12. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has said

that the age at which people should be held responsible for crimes should be between 14 and 16.

Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, said that politicians may, at least, be forced to have a debate. "The general assumption is that change is not on the table," he said. "But because of what has happened in Scotland people ask whether it is now possible to change things in England and Wales."

The age of criminal responsibility is the subject of the latest inquiry led by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader who advises David Cameron on his "broken Britain" strategy. He said that far too many young children were being locked up and that use of custody for ten to 14-year -olds had risen fivefold since 1996.

Dr Atkinson said: "In most Western European nations they have a completely different way of intervening with youngsters who have committed crime.

Most of their approaches are much more therapeutic, much more family and community based, much more about reparation than simply locking

continued from page 4

somebody up," she said.

"The James Bulger murder was a dreadful thing and those two youngsters needed to be in a contained environment like a youth justice facility and to be given whatever programmes would help them turn their lives around. What lies at the core of a civilised youth justice system is that they may be offenders but many of them are also children."

The fact that Jon Venables, one of the boys who killed James Bulger, was recalled to custody after breaking the terms of his "life licence" should actually help to force a rethink of the current system, she says.

Robert Thompson and Venables "were 10 at the commission of the offence.

Youngsters are usually tried in a youth court, they were tried in an adult court. What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something the nation can easily forget. But they shouldn’t have been tried in an adult court because they were still children".

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Google tweaking Buzz to declutter Gmail in-box Stephen Shankland (Webware.com)

Don't like Buzz spamming your Gmail in-box? Google is adding

some knobs to let users dial down the notifications.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

1980s Leaves legislature to become a social worker.

Increasingly reclusive and estranged from her family who fear she is suffering from mental illness.

2009 Part of Highway 5 in Rock Hill, South Carolina, named after Goggins.

• United States • US politics • Race issues Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Onion: Tragic Death Could Not Have Been Averted (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:49:51 PM

[Video]

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Israel and America: Foolish tricks | Editorial (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

That counts as an in-your-face insult to a US administration that has demanded Israel freeze Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:11:57 PM all settlement activity in the By its continued settlement territories conquered in 1967, expansion, Israel makes the two- which include East Jerusalem. state solution ever harder to Little wonder that President realise Obama was said to be Politics is ultimately about "incandescent with anger", interests. Morals and highfalutin spending 90 minutes on the principles have their place, but a phone to his deputy drafting a more reliable truth is that statement of condemnation rare governments and countries for its ferocity. usually act in their own self- The Israeli press has been full interest. Usually. The way Israel of conflicting explanations for greeted the visiting US vice- this extraordinary behaviour. president, Joe Biden, this week S o m e s u g g e s t B i n y a m i n offers an intriguing exception to Netanyahu, the prime minister, the rule, a rare instance of a was a fool, haplessly unaware state acting in a way that brings that a lower-level planning itself almost no benefit and committee was about to make delivers a huge amount of self- the move. Others wonder if Mr inflicted harm.

Netanyahu was a knave, seeing Instead of embracing Mr Biden, s o m e p e r v e r s e v a l u e i n Israel showed him the finger, advertising Israel's defiance, choosing the very day of his demonstrating to the world that v i s i t t o a n n o u n c e t h e it can, in the words of one senior construction of 1,600 new European official, "put sticks in housing units in East Jerusalem. the Americans' eyes" and get

11

VoxOx now translates as you type

away with it. As one Israeli commentator has put it, neither of these possible explanations are very attractive: they are like choosing between plague and cholera.

The harm done to Israel's own interests is huge. It is bad enough to insult your most loyal ally, especially when that ally happens to be the sole superpower, with unique influence over the region. But it is positively reckless to insult the figure widely acknowledged to be Israel's greatest friend within the entire US administration, a man who proudly calls himself a Zionist.

Above all, Israel's move came just as the US was set to announce a new round of proximity talks with the Palestinians. Predictably, those have now been jeopardised. And yet what is the ultimate aim of those talks and the entire Middle East peace process? It is the establishment of a viable

Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. That scenario is the preferred outcome of a vast international consensus, but it is also, as most Israelis now recognise, in the best interests of Israel itself. By its continued settlement expansion, and its cack-handed treatment of its friends, Israel makes the twostate solution ever harder to realise. That is not just bad news for the Palestinians; it is bad for Israel.

• Israel • Palestinian territories • Joe Biden • Barack Obama • Obama administration • United States guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

(Scripting News)

temperatures forecast for the coming days would be slightly above average for this time of year, with a good deal of dry weather across the country next week.

"The start of spring is known for being the time of year that is nearly impossible to define," she said.

"I don't know how most people would define it, but this settled and warm weather is going to continue and temperatures are going to be higher than they have been.

"Our forecasts give predictions for the next 30 days and, although there will be times when the temperatures drop a

little, it is not going to be really cold again.

"Maybe that's how you should define spring."

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Seth Rosenblatt (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:27:00 PM

VoxOx's claim on a robust feature set makes it a powerful, if slightly unstable, multiprotocol chat and VoIP client-now with free universal translation for all IMs and tweets.

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OPML Editor universal app testing Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:44:49 PM

See this announcement on the Frontier News blog.

Spring is in the air (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news) Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:16:45 PM

By Daily Telegraph Reporter Published: 11:16PM GMT 12 Mar 2010 It forecast a peak temperature of 53F (12C) tomorrow, with

the relatively warm weather continuing into next week.

Although there may be slightly colder temperatures in coming weeks, there will be no return to the freezing weather which led to the coldest winter for 31 years.

Helen Chivers, a Met Office spokesman, said the

12

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Superfast Stars Have Five-Minute Orbits (National Geographic News)

"This is the most extreme example of one of these double white dwarf systems we have so Two extremely dense stars in far," said study co-author Danny an intimate dance are spinning Steeghs of the University of around each other in just 5.4 Warwick in the U.K. minutes—making them the Binary Stars' Tell-tale fastest known stellar partners in " W o b b l e " the galaxy, astronomers have Study leader Gijs Roelofs, of confirmed. the Harvard-Smithsonian Center To have such a speedy orbit, for Astrophysics, was part of the the stars must be moving at team that first detected periodic a b o u t 3 1 0 m i l e s ( 5 0 0 x-ray emissions from HM kilometers) a second, the team Cancri in 1999. calculates.

Initial observations had The whirling duo, known as suggested a 5.4-minute orbit, HM Cancri, also has the tightest but the researchers weren't sure orbit of any known "binary" star if the pulses of light were system. (Related:"First Proof coming from two circling stars 'Tight' Double Suns Can Have o r o n e s u p e r f a s t s p i n n e r .

Planets.")

(Related:"Yearlong Star Eclipse Both stars are white May Help Solve Space dwarfs—the dense, white-hot M y s t e r y . " ) remnants left behind when To confirm the stars' dizzying sunlike stars die. The stellar tango, Roelofs and colleagues corpses are separated by no turned to the world's second more than three times the width largest optical telescope, at the of Earth.

W. M. Keck Observatory in In such tight quarters, hot gases Hawaii, where they measured flow between the two stars, "wobbles" in the system's releasing huge amounts of brightness. energy.

(See pictures of the world's Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:24:14 PM

largest telescope, the Gran Telescopio Canarias, unveiled last August.)

"The amplitude of the wobble gives you an idea of the orbit period and the masses" of the stars, co-author Steeghs said.

What's more, light emissions from the stars were found to be moving in opposite directions, as such emissions would for two orbiting bodies, cinching the case for a binary system.

HM Cancri's record-breaking orbit couldn't get much quicker, Steeghs added, since the stars would merge if they got any closer, triggering a massive explosion known as a type Ia supernova. (Related:"New Type of Supernova Discovered.")

Overall, he said, three minutes would be the fastest a binary white dwarf system could get.

The findings appear in the March 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

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Sam Cam tells how she fell for 'Dave the politician' (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news) Submitted at 3/12/2010 10:27:12 AM

By Andrew Porter, Political Editor Published: 12:01AM GMT 13 Mar 2010 In the latest round of political chat show exposure the Conservative leader’s wife said it would be “daunting” if she and her family moved into Number 10, and sacrifices would have to be made. But she said it would be “a huge honour.”

Mrs Cameron, 38, says: “I think that ever since the day I met Dave he has obviously taken his job very seriously and he loves politics and I think so much of the Dave that I first met and fell in love with is Dave the

30 awesome photos of Darth Vader (Holy Kaw!)

but you’ve never seen him quite like this. Here are thirty Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:41:30 PM awesome images of Darth You’ve seen him in George Vader. See a few below: Lucas’ epic series, Star Wars, See all thirty at Blog of

Get your force on with more Star Wars coverage.

Permalink| Leave a comment » Francesco Mugnai.

politician.”

Unlike Sarah Brown, who has in recent years taken a high profile role alongside the Prime Minister, Mrs Cameron has until now preferred to concentrate on her successful business career.

But her appearance on Trevor McDonald meets David Cameron on ITV1 marks the start of her new role as a campaigner for her husband and the Conservative cause. Mr Cameron plans to deploy what he calls “his secret weapon” twice a week during what will be a gruelling election campaign.

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Lords place themselves beyond reach of the law (Top stories from Times Online)

“You could not have a looser definition. It would be nigh on impossible to find a neighbour Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:01:07 PM who could act as a witness and Peers who have claimed who could say that a peer had h u n d r e d s o f t h o u s a n d s o f not once stayed at a house — pounds for homes they rarely short of mounting 24-hour visit will escape prosecution surveillance.” through a House of Lords The Labour peer and donor loophole.

Lord Paul revealed this week Keir Starmer, the Director of that he would not be prosecuted Public Prosecutions, denounced either. He was investigated by the change, which was made police after he admitted that he last month. It allows peers to never slept in the property designate as their main home a outside London he called his property they visit no more than main home. once a month — a ruling Mr Baroness Uddin and Lord Paul Starmer said caused him “very will now be investigated by an real difficulty”. internal Lords committee. The The Crown Prosecution Service expenses of up to 20 peers have announced yesterday that it been investigated internally in could not bring criminal the past 18 months. charges against Baroness Uddin, There were calls last night for a Labour peer who received the House of Lords to end selfm o r e t h a n £ 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 i n regulation, following the lead allowances by claiming that her set by MPs. Peers resisted main residence was outside attempts to impose external London. Her family home is in r e g u l a t i o n b y t h e n e w Wapping, East London, where Independent Parliamentary she has lived for more than a Standards Authority. decade.

Peers whose “main homes” are Mr Starmer told The Times: outside the M25 are entitled to

claim a daily rate of £174 to help them with accommodation in London while they are attending the House of Lords.

But a ruling last November by Michael Pownall, the Clerk of Parliaments, found: “Ultimately it is up to Members to designate an address as their main residence as they see fit.”

Last month he added that the Lords’ House Committee believed a “main residence” might only need to be visited by a peer once a month.

Three Labour MPs and a Tory peer appeared in court on Thursday to face charges of false accounting.

Lady Uddin said: “I am relieved that this ordeal has finally come to an end. I only wish now to say thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout this very difficult time.”

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Come see Paris--in 26 gigapixels Don Reisinger (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:40:05 PM

Site,

which

offers

a

breathtaking view of Paris, Originally posted at The Digital enables you to pan around, see Home monuments, and get a high-def feel for what the City of Light is all about.

Only 10 Tickets Left to Innovation Uncensored!

Noah Robischon (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:32:03 PM

No joke: this is your last chance to get a ticket to attend Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored conference on April 21.

Who will be there? Along with the editors and writers from this magazine (which is being honored as a finalist for ASME's Magazine of the Year), you'll get direct access to people from the inspired companies that you read about in Fast Company and FastCompany.com every day. Here's the lineup: Mark Parker, CEO, NIKE Susan M. Lyne, CEO, GILT GROUPE Sean Maloney EVP/GM, INTEL ARCHITECTURE GROUP Dave Stewart, SINGER, SONGWRITER, COFOUNDER, EURYTHMICS Tero Ojanperä, EVP, NOKIA

McG, FOUNDER, WONDERLAND SOUND AND VISION (and director of Terminator: Salvation) Alex Bogusky, CHIEF CREATIVE INSURGENT, MDC Ashton Kutcher, Actor and Co-Founder, Katalyst Matt Kistler, SVP of Sustainability, Walmart Anne Globe, Head of Worldwide Marketing and Consumer Products, DreamWorks Noreena Hertz, Professor, Cambridge University The conference is going to be intimate enough to give you access to the business visionaries in attendance, so that provocative thinking and collaboration can take place.

Innovation Uncensored takes place on Wednesday, April 21, at the Edison Ballroom on West 47th Street in New York City.

You can buy tickets right here.

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David Cameron: I'd sack George Osborne if I had to (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

dissuaded Labour from calling an early election in 2007.

But he has also faced criticism from some Tory MPs and business leaders. A poll of Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:20:38 AM

By James Kirkup, Political C i t y b a n k e r s t h i s w e e k Correspondent suggested Kenneth Clarke, the Published: 12:01AM GMT 13 shadow business secretary, Mar 2010 would be a more popular The Conservative leader also chancellor. said he had talked to Mr In the interview, Mr Cameron Osborne about moving him to was asked if he would ever be another job in the shadow able to sack his friend. cabinet.

He replied: “Yes.” Mr Cameron’s remarks, in an He added: “He is a good friend, interview with ITV tomorrow, but we’ve has that conversation may encourage Labour to a number of times over the question the position of the past four years. shadow chancellor.

"To be fair to George he said ‘If Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne ever you want to move me to are close friends who rose up another job, it is your decision t h e C o n s e r v a t i v e r a n k s and it is your right’.” together. When Mr Cameron Some of Mr Cameron’s became leader in 2005, he told Conservative critics say that as a Mr Osborne he could have any leader, he relies too much on a frontbench job he chose. small group of friends and As shadow chancellor, Mr allies.

Osborne has overseen some of Mr Cameron insisted he would M r C a m e r o n ’ s g r e a t e s t not let such friendships cloud political successes, including the his political judgements. inheritance tax pledge that He said: "I have friendships in

politics of course, but that will never stop me from making the right decisions. Organising people and jobs is one of the most difficult jobs in opposition and government.”

Labour strategists believe that Mr Osborne, who is also the Tory general election coordinator, is an electoral liability for his party and plan to target him during the campaign.

Some observers have seen Mr Clarke’s return to front-bench politics as a blow to Mr Osborne.

But Mr Cameron insisted the move had been driven by the shadow chancellor.

He said: “George is a big man.

He understands politics is about big decisions and he wanted to bring Ken back, the last chancellor to bring us out of a recession and I thought ‘Great’.”

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Pink Floyd Sends EMI to the Dark Side of the Moon Gary E. Sattler (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:00:00 PM

Filed under: Products and Services, Law, Internet, Citigroup Inc. (C), Headline News Record label EMI, which was purchased by Terra Firma Capital Corporation ( TII) in 2007, was dealt a serious blow yesterday by the band Pink Floyd. The band filed a lawsuit against EMI because the record company started selling individual music tracks from Pink Floyd's two block buster albums, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall online. The selling of individual music tracks is expressly forbid by the band's contract with the record label. Yesterday a judge affirmed that contract condition.

This turn of events comes not only as a serious blow to EMI, but as a gut wrenching twist in

Terra Firma's continuing downward spiral. Terra Firma is currently engaged in a legal battle with Citigroup, Inc. ( C) regarding its purchase of EMI at auction. Terra Firma has accused Citi of the use of "fraudulent measures" in completing that sale.

Continue reading Pink Floyd Sends EMI to the Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd Sends EMI to the Dark Side of the Moon originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

The 19 most complicated and dangerous roads in the world (Holy Kaw!)

nineteen most confusing and dangerous roads on the face of the earth. See a few of them Before you complain again below: a b o u t y o u r ' u n b e a r a b l e ' The North Yungas Road (also commute to work, check out the known as ‘Road of Death’) in Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:56:26 PM

Bolivia The Guoliang Tunnel Road in

China The Lena Highway (also known as ‘Highway from Hell) in Russia See all nineteen at Waze.

Planning a trip?

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Tiger Woods' wife was barred from ambulance, highway patrol files show

Is China About to Let the Yuan Rise Versus the Dollar?

Ed Pilkington (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

Joseph Lazzaro (BloggingStocks)

In the few public statements Woods has made about events on the night of 27 November, he has consistently denied that he Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:36:10 PM R e c o r d s c o m p i l e d f r o m was attacked by his wife. When investigations after golfer's car he delivered a public apology crash raise fresh questions about last month for the multiple his account to journalists affairs that emerged following Fresh questions have been the crash, he said: "Some people raised about Tiger Woods' have speculated that Elin account of the car crash outside somehow hurt or attacked me on h i s h o m e t h a t l e d t o t h e Thanksgiving Night. It angers unravelling of his private and me that people would fabricate a sporting life, after revelations story like that. She never hit me that the ambulance crew refused that night or any other night. t o a l l o w h i s w i f e , E l i n There has never been an episode Nordegren, into the ambulance of domestic violence in our because they thought it was a marriage. Ever." case of domestic violence.

The highway patrol documents R e c o r d s c o m p i l e d f r o m confirm Woods was found lying investigations by the Florida beside his SUV car outside his highway patrol, released last Florida home, having hit a tree n i g h t , s h o w t h a t w h e n and fire hydrant. The rear paramedics collected Woods window of the car was smashed "one of the crew stated that [his] – apparently by a golf club, and wife could not go in ambulance he was seen by a neighbour because this was a domestic". lying on the ground and snoring.

The documents show police retrieved two small bottles of Vicodin, a moderate painkiller, from the house. Nordegren said Woods had taken some medication earlier in the evening, though not Vicodin.

A police officer at the scene, Jason Sipos, is recorded in the documents saying he never heard Woods or his wife make any reference to domestic violence. Woods has not played professional golf since.

• Tiger Woods • Golf • United States Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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vulnerable economy, and that the world benefits from cheaper goods.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:40:00 PM However, two forces -- rising Filed under: International protectionist sentiment in the Markets, China Put this in the U.S. and rising inflation in category of 'we'll believe it, China -- may push China in a when we see it.' There was more direction that Beijing has not speculation in the financial wanted to go: toward a stronger markets Friday regarding a yuan. possible move by China to let its Continue reading Is China currency, the yuan, appreciate About to Let the Yuan Rise slightly versus the dollar in the Versus the Dollar? weeks ahead.

Is China About to Let the Yuan China keeps the yuan pegged at R i s e V e r s u s t h e D o l l a r ? roughly 6.82 yuan to the dollar. o r i g i n a l l y a p p e a r e d o n U.S. manufacturers charge that BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Mar the peg artificially undervalues 2010 16:40:00 EST. Please see China's exports, giving China's our terms for use of feeds. companies an unnatural Permalink| Email this| competitive advantage. China C o m m e n t s counters that the fixed yuan is necessary for its embryonic,

Va. Man Waits 5 Months, Collects $200M Lottery Jackpot (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:23:25 AM

HARRISONBURG, Va. For five months, Virginia carpenter Steve Williams lived with a $200 million-dollar secret.

Williams won a Mega Millions

lottery jackpot on Oct. 16 but only came forward Friday after consulting with legal and financial advisers. Williams, from Shenandoah in northern Virginia, says he is going to invest the money.

Williams opted to take the cash

option of $125 million, rather than receive the full amount over 26 years. After taxes, Williams gets about $88.9 million.

He let the computer select his winning numbers when he purchased the ticket at the gas

station Valley's in Shenandoah. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Williams is a regular at the PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, store, and even makes the Term Extraction. morning coffee there.

Lottery officials say his jackpot was the second-highest paid out to a Virginia resident.

Five Filters featured article:

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Tips On Streamlining Accounts Payable Christine Lagorio (Inc.com)

motivation to upgrade your system, just take a look at the numbers. Companies with If you're feeling bogged down streamlined accounts payable by the busywork of tracking systems are efficient in terms of bills and payments, or if you've time and staffing, according to a found yourself being a less-than study by the American Institute -ideal client to your providers, of CPAs. The average billionthen there's a good chance your d o l l a r c o m p a n y p r o c e s s e s accounts payable system isn't up 12,500 invoices per employee to snuff. For businesses in their dedicated to accounts payable. early years, often a trusty Excel That's about $3.55 per invoice. file and a business check- By contrast, the companies with writing system are enough to the best accounting departments keep accounts payable adequate. process invoice at a cost of $.35 But if your business has grown each – and that can save and you're now spending more $40,000 a year. Even if you're than a few minutes a day (or an not a billion-dollar company, the hour a week) on managing s a v i n g s – a n d h e a d a c h e s payments, experts say you avoided – can resonate. Dig should look to tweak a few D e e p e r : M o r e A d v i c e o n things. And doing so will not Accounts Payable Streamlining only save you time in the long- Accounts Payable: Reevaluate run, but increase the accuracy of the Basic StructureIf you are your balance sheets. Prompt receiving more than a bill or two payment of bills will also make a day, you should be using an you seem more credible in the accounting program, such as eyes of your vendors service QuickBooks. If you like the providers."If you’ve taken the s t y l e o f o n l i n e m o n e y leap of faith to go into business management programs such as for yourself, driven by the Mint, you might work well with passion for what you do, you an online system such as want to spend less time fretting Outright or FreshBooks. If those over the books and a lot more programs aren't natural for you time doing what you’re great at to use, you can take a class or (so you can get paid for it)," hire a coach to get you started. says Mitch Solway, a small- What's not an option is letting business finance expert who is someone else do it all for you. If the vice president of sales and your business has several marketing for online expense- employees, it's just fine to have tracking software FreshBooks. an administrator involved in "But it’s still a critical piece of entering data into the accounts your business."If you need payable, but you should plan to Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:42:00 AM

keep final tabs of it always, advises San Francisco-based financial advisor Kathryn Amenta."I would recommend a business owner understand their finances fully before they turn it over to someone else to handle," she says. "It's super important as an owner to have a finger on the financial pulse. That's the bottom line – that's why you're in business."Of course, there are exceptions. If your business is large enough to have or hire an accounts payable professional, that's a step to consider. But in general every CEO should have her eyes on and fingers in the books every day.Some basics you should already be doing:• Every incoming bill should be entered into your accounts payable file daily, with date of arrival, date due, relevant account information and comments. • Business creditcard items should ideally be filed on the same day they are expensed.• Employees should be comfortable and trained in filing expense reports. If evaluations show you that it's a drag for them, consider implementing a piece of software that will help, such as Expensify. Also, segmenting all employee expenses onto individual business credit cards can both eliminate false reporting and ease uploading expenses. • For classic paper bills, retain the stub and envelope for records as well.•

Bills should be paid promptly, but en masse. Set a time at least once a week for yourself or your accounts payable staffer (or assistant) to do this. If it's someone other than you managing payments, be sure to review approve the list before sending out checks. Dig Deeper: One CEO's Effective Accounts Payable System Streamlining Accounts Payable: Enlist an AdvisorIf you're still spending too much time paying money rather than making money doing what you're good at as a CEO, you might feel it's natural to delegate some of your bookkeeping responsibility to an assistant. You may also consider a certified public accountant or even a part-time CFO. Kathryn Amenta, a San Francisco-based financial advisor, suggests that an accountant with a regular monthly relationship with your company can help streamline the process by advising you on time-saving methods – and they can catch costly errors.

Moreover, they'll have your future financial health in mind.

"That person can also help craft a plan for going forward, say, a two-year plan," Amenta says.

"It's really important to look at: What is this business paying too much for? Is this business venture supporting itself?"

A part-time CFO can step in if your needs are more strategic in nature, or if you are setting up

the business to scale. "They are people who have reputable business and finance training and now make business their livelihood," Amenta says. "They have a number of clients, and can come in once a month to oversee what's going on financially." Dig Deeper: Renting a CFO Streamlining Accounts Payable: Avoid FraudIf you've never paid a double check, a fraudulent bill, or experienced some level of employee embezzlement, consider yourself lucky.

Accounts payable is a flashpoint for fraud in many companies, large and small. To avoid fraud, you can institute a variety of checks and balances. One simple method is to separate duties. A junior employee can process and print a check, but a senior one – maybe even you – should be required to review and sign it. This dual duty can be incorporated into most basic business accounting software, so employees can only access and perform assigned functions. For checks that exceed a predetermined amount, requiring a second signature – either from you or your CFO – is a best practice. Separating the process of adding a new supplier to your system from the ability to issue payment is also advised.

If your company incorporates employee expenses into your TIPS page 24

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Behind the Music: Devendra Banhart's Visual Art Takes Center Stage Alissa Walker (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:22:48 PM

The Us Weekly readers who know freak-folk musician Devendra Banhart as the hippiehaired beardo on the arm of Natalie Portman probably won't recognize him now. The Portman thing ended a while ago, for one. Plus he's wearing glasses these days, prescribed to him when he started getting headaches from poring over his miniscule drawings for a recent art exhibition, he explains in a call from his home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. Also, he'll begin a tour next week to support his latest album, What Will We Be, with a scandalously short-cropped do. "It's like a lesbian librarian," he jokes.

Along with the new bookish look, he's coming out as an accomplished visual artist--his second career that technically came first. His first album The Charles C. Leary, came out in 2002; he's been quietly exhibiting paintings since 1998.

He's designed the covers of all but one of his eight albums, too, but people still ask him who's the artist behind them. "I am very grateful that anyone other than my mom is taking an interest in what I do, but it's very funny that people don't

even know," he says, joking that it must be because of his teensy signatures. "I do have very small handwriting."

Banhart runs in a circle full of friends he met in the late '90s

San Francisco art scene--people such as Tauba Auerbach, Christopher Garrett, and Barry McGee or collaborators such as Adam Tullie, who runs the fashion line Cavern. Many, like

him, are both underground or indie musicians and even lesserknown visual artists, such as Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons, members of Gang Gang Dance, and Fabrizio

Moretti, the Strokes' drummer.

"His stuff is incredible," Banhart says. "He's like Chuck Close!"

The rock-star-slashpainter/illustrator/sculptor is all too common (everyone from Bob Dylan, Sir Paul McCartney, and David Bowie to Iggy Pop, Marilyn Manson, and David Byrne), but Banhart has the experience to back it up. He first attended the San Francisco Art Institute in 1998, where his work made its way into local group shows in places like the influential Luggage Store. As his music career blossomed, so did his art, with solo shows at Andrew Roth Gallery in New York and Galerie Mazzoli in Modena in 2006.

For his latest show, created during rare few weeks at home, Banhart made 25 new drawings for ARCOmadrid, Spain's contemporary art fair. The work features watercolor lines wandering throughout an array of creatures and characters, each rendered in earth-toned ink and floating on tiny paper canvasses.

The aged sheets, he's ashamed to say, used to be the blank pages torn out of the front of old books. Now reformed, he still looks for vintage materials that come with a bit of history. "It never felt right on a white piece BEHIND page 22

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Do Sharks Need Protection From Us? Lydia Dishman (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:07:40 PM

Used in everything from soup to nutritional supplements and skincare products, sharks are a multi-billion dollar, global, mostly unregulated industry.

Now conservationists want to declare eight species endangered.

With a powerful torpedoshaped body almost the size of a bus, the ability to sniff out one drop of blood in 25 gallons of water--or up to three miles away --and fearsome toothy jaws, it's no wonder the very thought of sharks can send shivers up the spine. (Cue the theme music from Jaws).

But these deep-sea predators have much more to fear from humans than the other way around. Used in everything from soup to nutritional supplements and skincare products, sharks represent a multi-billion dollar global industry and the growing demand is pushing them towards extinction. Alas, even these eating machines have champions. And if they have their day during the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Conference of Parties, which starts Saturday, eight shark species will be protected to ensure the sustainable trade of their products--oceanic whitetips, scalloped, smooth and

great hammerheads, sandbar sharks, porbeagle sharks, and spiny dogfish (a type of shark).

It's not going to be easy. The shark trade--especially in fins-is a predatory business. Think: shark cartel overlords, gangs, and smugglers(PDF file) who routinely take part in a lucrative, yet grisly, dealings estimated to

bring in over a billion dollars annually.

Add in the fact that shark fin soup--once a luxe Chinese delicacy reserved for special occasions--is now available to the rising middle class whose demand is not only growing, its spreading west.

Then there's the well-meaning

American Cancer Society touting the benefits of shark liver oil as a complementary or alternative form of treatment for cancer and other diseases.

Sprinkle in a few general misconceptions such as sharks deliberately targeting human prey and you have the makings of a morass the size of a gaggle

of great whites.

Here's what we do know: Sharks have been around in some form for about 400 million years. Just because they've toughed it out for so long doesn't mean they're invincible.

Sharks are slow growers. They SHARKS page 21

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19

A New Way to Advertise Jason Del Rey (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:40:00 AM

iPhone apps that will help you get through conference season.

For the small business owner or entrepreneur, springtime often equates to conference season.

From booking flights and accommodations, to finding out what's going on in the local area, there are plenty of apps that will ease your stress, Mashable reports. For the procrastinating businessperson, Priceline's Hotel Negotiator app is free, and will allow you to find last-minute hotel deals within a radius of your current location. Also free of cost, the Free Wi-Fi Finder app will use your location to find local spots that offer free Wi-Fi access, with the ability to filter results by types of location, such as cafes and hotels. Another great freebie app is beamME pro, which allows you to e-mail, text or tweet all of your contact information instantly - perfect for staying connected with fellow conference-goers, especially if you neglected to bring enough business cards.

Online ads that adjust to you.

We've written before about the slightly creepy but cool trend in

it has been experiencing wild growth for the occasion. The site surpassed its own record of 275,000 check-ins in a day.

TechCrunch contextualizes this milestone, explaining that the company had 1.2 million checkins in a week just a month ago o n l i n e a d v e r t i s i n g t h a t i s AppNexus's automated system-- i m p o r t a n t t o m a k e and half as many a month before behavioral targeting, which only bids on the ones it thinks environmentally claims legally. that. Both Foursquare and it's allows websites to display ads to are worthwhile."

The Federal Trade Commission top competitor, Gowalla, are customers who, for instance, Did Mark Zuckerberg commit a has already gone after Kmart, gearing up for SXSW and abandon their shopping carts. felony? Last week, Business Tender Corp., and Dyna-E TechCrunch writes that "both Now, Stephanie Clifford of the I n s i d e r broke t h e international for making false are absolutely on fire right now New York Times looks at story(supported by more than a claims of "biodegradability." and could go nuclear this something new: a start-up that dozen sources) that early in There have also been class- w e e k e n d . " S o s t o p allows companies to buy and F a c e b o o k ' s h i s t o r y , M a r k a c t i o n l a w s u i t e s a g a i n s t procrastinating and get your customize online advertisements Zuckerberg, then a 19-year-old companies like S.C. Johnson & business on Foursquare. in a matter of milliseconds. The Harvard student, used Facebook Son, which added its own Homes of the next big things. company, AppNexus, uses members's information to break "Greenlist" seal to its Windex Earlier this week, The Wall information collected about a i n t o t h e i r p r i v a t e e - m a i l products that misled consumers S t r e e t J o u r n a l a n d given web user's purchasing and accounts, hack a competitor's into believing that a third party VentureSource teamed up to search history to make real-time site, and alter users profiles. h a d c e r t i f i e d t h e p r o d u c t identify the top 50 venturedecisions about which ads will N o w , B I h a s i n t e r v i e w e d independently. The FTC has a backed companies with the best perform best. Clifford reports privacy lawyers who say those g u i d e f o r t h e u s e o f chance to become"the next big that eBay is trying the system actions from 2004 could be e n v i r o n m e n t a l m a r k e t i n g thing"--a list that included out, and that it's returning three considered felonies under state claims. An updated version is HomeAway, Fusion-io, and times as much money as it costs. and Federal law. It's a troubling expected later this year, but in Etsy. This morning, The Journal "Previously eBay had to buy a development for a company that the meantime smart marketers took a look at where these block of ads from a network or has access to the private data of should follow these tips from companies are located. Not exchange, and when someone it some 400 million people.

Advertising Age to avoid surprisingly, just about half call Silicon Valley home. But New recognized showed up, they H o w t o a d v e r t i s e g r e e n dishonest labeling. could partially customize the products legally. It's no secret Foursquare grows by leaps and York City was well-represented, a d , " s h e w r i t e s . " N o w , that making your product a little bounds. Foursquare, the location too. customers are offered one by more green can also add some -based social network/game just o n e , a n d e B a y - - u s i n g green to your profits. But it's celebrated it's first birthday and

Consensus emerges for key Web app standard Stephen Shankland (Webware.com)

Indexed DB isn't a sure thing, become an enabler of the cloudbut it's got most of the right computing vision. allies in the browser world to Originally posted at Deep Tech

20

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Why You Should Make Privacy a Priority Courtney Rubin (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:41:00 AM

How you are seen to protect your customers' personal information can have a huge effect on your brand – and your bottom line, according to a new report.

Security researcher Ponemon Institute released its list of the "Top 20 Most Trusted Companies for Privacy", based on a survey of 6,627 US adults.

Some 38,000 individual companies got mentioned, 229 of which were ranked more than 20 times. American Express was top of the list, followed by IBM, Johnson & Johnson, HP, and eBay. No small businesses actually made the Top 20 – could it be because 56 percent of small businesses don't even have a privacy policy on their Web sites? – but the Ponemon results still provide a useful lesson.

Facebook, for example, made the list last year but not the current one – which comes as no surprise, as 2009 saw the site face serious security breaches as

well as a very public debate about their privacy policies.

Said Larry Ponemon, the Michigan-based institute's chairman and founder, in the report: "Facebook draws a great deal of attention because they have chosen to innovate on the issue of privacy in a highly visible manner, and while they were rewarded for their efforts last year, consumer were less kind to them this year, showing just how important privacy protection is as a brand asset."

Mike Spinney, a Ponemon senior privacy analyst, thinks Facebook may return to this list.

On his blog he praised the company's "transparent approach to privacy" and "typical responsiveness to public comment," saying he believed it would serve the company well in the long run.

(What other movement was there in the Top 20? Besides Facebook, AOL and eLoan dropped off the list. Four not listed the previous year who made the cut this year: Google, Weight Watchers, Walmart and AT&T.

The study also found that consumers' feeling of control of their personal information is dropping steadily: 41 percent in 2010, down from 45 percent in 2009, which was down from 56 percent in 2006, the first year the study was conducted.

A top area of concern for those surveyed: Identity theft. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed rated the subject a major factor in how much they trust a brand.

Other threats to brand trust: Abuse of civil liberties and annoying "background chatter" in public venues. Translation: Lay off the unnecessary Twitter and Facebook updates.

How can you help encourage trust? Sixty percent of those surveyed said "substantial" security protections were a huge plus, while 53 percent gave great weight to accurate data collection and use. Ponemon cautions that the latter also includes marketing. You should gather all the information you can from customers, but be careful what you do with it.

"Any time customers receive marketing that's irrelevant or

annoying, it's a privacy issue to them," Ponemon said.

Not surprisingly, Fran Maier, CEO of TrustE, which monitors online privacy practices, advocates a sturdy privacy policy – a survey done for the company last year revealed that of the less than half of small businesses who actually had a policy, a third had just cut and pasted it from elsewhere.

(Looking for some help crafting yours? Click here.)

Niceties that may be overlooked – such as privacy – she says "are the very elements that give small businesses an edge over their competitors.

Especially in times of economic downturn, a good brand reputation is something small businesses should not jeopardize."

What do you think? Does your business have a written privacy policy? And do you think Facebook's new policies are cause for alarm?

27 amazing digital photography tutorials (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:08:00 PM

A great way to take your photography to the next level is by mastering the art of Photoshop. Here are twentyseven helpful, fun, and efficient digital photography tutorials.

From learning to colourize a black and white photo to creating professional looking HDR images to stiching photos—you’re bound to learn something new and improve your work.

Check them out at Pelfusion.

Calling all shutterbugs! More photography tips and tricks.

Permalink| Leave a comment »

Hard facts about African travel (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:32:16 PM

You got vaccinated to protect yourself from Malaria, you packed sunscreen to shield yourself from the hot sun’s

harmful rays, but there was no way one unlucky traveller could prepare for this.

When you camp in North America, you run the risk of attracting the company of a you better assume the same bear. When you camp in Africa,

about elephants. Like bears, the giant creatures get excited about the availability of food (fruits and veggies in particular), but unlike bears—tying your eats up in a tree won’t really do you any good here.

See more photos at WhyGo Africa.

Learn more about Africa.

Permalink| Leave a comment »

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SHARKS continued from page 18

mature late, have a small number of offspring, and are slow to recover their population if it is depleted.

Oceana's marine scientist Kerri Lynn Miller points out that because sharks are at the top of the marine food chain they are invaluable to maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems. "No one knows exactly what the oceans will look like without sharks, but some possibilities include economically important fisheries shut down; coral reefs shift to algae dominated systems; seagrass beds decline; and species diversity and abundance decline with the loss of habitats."

Any of these scenarios could have a huge environmental and economic impact. Unfortunately the bad PR surrounding shark attacks continues to make it difficult for people to get warm and fuzzy about predators. Even though shark attacks have declined sharply in the U.S. in recent years, most notably to only 28 in 2009, according to a study by the University of

Florida who also have proven you are statistically more likely to be struck and killed by lightning than you are by the teeth of a shark.

But Miller underscores one of the more cruel aspects of shark harvesting. "Shark fins are the most lucrative portion of the shark, so it is more advantageous for the fishermen to cut off the fins and through the remaining body over board."

In the United States and other countries, fishermen are required to land sharks with their fins in a 5% fin-to-body ratio (meaning they must keep the bodies on board the boat) adds Miller. However, according to the World Wildlife Foundation, 50% of all shark fins sold in the world come through a market in Hong Kong where trade is largely unregulated.

Steven Weathers, producer and host of Foreigner Perspective who resides in Shanghai says shark fin soup is often served in China at formal banquets, particularly at weddings or large

celebrations where the host wants to treat his guests to the most expensive delicacies. "I've seen some restaurants serve small bowls of the soup for about 100 USD." Weathers notes that much of the shark fin served in China is rumored to be fake now. "Mashed up bones and cartilage of other fish are reshaped as shark fin," he says.

It would be difficult to tell because shark fin doesn't have a taste on its own, it draws flavor from the broth which is--you guessed it--chicken.

Stateside, plenty of Chinese restaurants continue to serve the controversial dish that was deemed so fine as to be on Alice Waters' plate should she be able to choose her last meal on earth.

The queen of all things organic and sustainable later recanted this wish, but a recent call to the Wynn's Las Vegas restaurant, Wing Lei, confirmed that while shark fin soup is not listed on the menu, it is available--and served daily. (Calls to confirm the origin of the fins or the price of the dish were met with a

request to call back later, and then a period on hold that became far too long to endure.)

In any case, Miller says there are measures being taken to preserve the species in the U.S. The House passed the Shark Conservation Act of 2009 and it's now in the Senate's hands to determine whether sharks should be landed whole with their fins naturally attached.

"This would ban shark finning within U.S. waters," she says.

For now, the global future of the species rests, at least in part, in the convention proceedings.

A CITES Appendix II listing would limit trade to sustainable levels by requiring export permits. By limiting trade to sustainable levels Miller says, "It would put a threshold on the number of sharks that are being caught and would help to quantify how many sharks are being killed."

21

Tech finds its place at SXSWi (roundup) (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:49:00 PM

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

Are most emergency room visits really unnecessary?

(Holy Kaw!)

emergency room visits (and how much they cost taxpayers).

Reform opposers say too many The answer is: not really. people flood ERs for minor Among the many issues circling conditions like a feverish baby the U.S. healthcare reform or a stubbed toe, which are less debate, perhaps the most heated costly to treat in a doctor’s issue is that of unnecessary office or at home.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:22:00 PM

However, there are a quite a

few facts these opposers should accute patients in the ER is check out before making their lower than paying off-hours judgements. See a few below: primary care doctors.

• ER care is only three percent of the healthcare pie.

Get the full story at Slate.

• Only twelve percent of ER More on healthcare. visits are deemed ‘unnecessary’. Photo credit: Fotolia • The cost of treating less Permalink| Leave a comment »

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BEHIND continued from page 17

of paper," he says.

The other reason for the small format is, of course, Banhart's own peripatetic life--touring rarely affords a breezy, lightfilled space fit for large canvases--but also his penchant for cozier quarters. "I've always lived in small places," he says, like a cabin in nearby Topanga Canyon that was his most recent residence.

As for inspirations, Banhart cites favorite artists that range from Cy Twombly to John Cage, but his actual heroes are more literary than visual. He's likely to get charged up by the words of Kurt Vonnegut and Neil Gaiman or short Japanese poetry. But that's because his visual art comes from the words of his own songs--his most recent drawings, for example, took shape in the early stages of his songwriting.

At first, when it was only Banhart and his guitar, he would work through the kinks in his

songs by creating art on the reverse pages of his music notebooks. "I have a book where I'm revising lyrics and have sketches," he says. "When I'm done with everything then I use that as a reference point."

Turning this visual art into album artwork becomes a secondary process of completing the album, something too personal to farm out to other artists, he says. For example, the cover art for What We Will Be (at top) began as two profiles that became two people looking at each other, and when the album was finished, they were united into a singular face.

He sees the imminent extinction of the CD, leaving only MP3s and vinyl, and he welcomes the revolution. Even his art catalogues have begun to take the form of hybrid box set: A limited-editon catalogue from a gallery show at Galerie Mazzoli in Modena comes with MP3s and a tiny zine.

Though he takes his album artwork very seriously, he has a fairly flip approach to the business of music. "With music there's so many limbs and facets," he says. "Video and touring and merchandise and all those little things require attention. They're artist things but I tend to joke around too much with those things." For example? "My videos are shit and my t-shirts have the Chicago Bulls logo on it. But I think it's funny." It's not as if the music is his bread and butter. "I make very little money doing both things," he says of his songwriting and visual art, "but I make more money doing visual art."

When this latest tour wraps, Banhart plans to move back into artist mode, curating a show in New York, participating in some group shows, and participating in an upcoming exhibition at a gallery in Spain, which will feature his drawings alongside

the photography of musician Beck Hansen (simply "Beck" to most).

But it's the next potential collaboration that might finally change the way people know him best. "I've been talking with Jeffrey Deitch about doing a show," he says of L.A.'s newest and most infamous museum director, who will close his gallery and move here in June.

Banhart has long aspired to a big solo show with Deitch. "For three years I've been putting it off," he says. Suddenly, it seems the critically-acclaimed musician with almost a decade's worth of touring and recording is on the verge of a big break--in the art world.

Banhart photo by Lauren Dukoff

Outrageous Outrage of the Week (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:24:45 PM

Here’s a perfect example of why I simply ignore most of the “outrageous outrages of the day” that pour out of the wingnut blogs and media like clowns out of a circus Volkswagen: the incredibly stupid claim that President Obama was going to ban sport fishing.

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh jumped all over this crappie story, of course.

MM Video MM Video

Ann Taylor Goes from Loss to Profit in Q4 Steven Mallas (BloggingStocks)

articles I've written on the retailer ( here's one from November 2009; here's another Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:20:00 PM from August 2009), you'll notice Filed under: Earnings Reports, that I didn't have a great handle Wal-Mart (WMT), Target Corp. on where the stock was heading.

(TGT) It's tough sometimes to figure Ann Taylor ( ANN). Now out how the market will judge there's a stock that drives me the fundamentals of a situation, especially clear. crazy. If you check out previous even if the fundamentals seem Anyway, the company reported

fourth-quarter numbers earlier today. On an adjusted basis, profit came to 5 cents per share.

A year ago, investors had to deal with a loss of $1.03 per share.

Analysts thought a loss of a penny per share was in the cards. That's got to be worth a bid, right?

Continue reading Ann Taylor

Goes from Loss to Profit in Q4 Ann Taylor Goes from Loss to Profit in Q4 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Debt destruction nospam@example.org (Scott Jagow) (Marketplace Scratch Pad)

robust growth.

People are defaulting their way out of debt, not climbing out of it. A similar thing is happening Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:47:59 AM A new Federal Reserve report with credit cards. Odysseas says total US household debt Papadimitriou, the CEO and fell in 2009, the first drop since f o u n d e r o f C a r d H u b . c o m , records began in 1945. But c o n c l u d e s t h a t m o s t d e b t before anybody gets too excited, reduction consists of “chargewe have to consider how this offs” by credit card companies, debt is being destroyed. rather than people actually From the Wall Street Journal: paying it off. Wallet Pop gives The drop reflects the extent to three reasons for his skepticism. which job losses and a moribund • Credit card issuers raised rates housing market are forcing “extremely,” meaning that more people to default on mortgages and more of a consumer’s and other obligations, a painful payment would go toward process that has slammed paying interest rather than millions of families and hit paying down debt. b a n k s a n d i n v e s t o r s w i t h • Record unemployment rates, hundreds of billions of dollars in which means fewer consumers losses. can afford to pay down debt.

At the same time, the defaults • Record bank losses. are leaving many people with more cash to spend and save, “From my experience, when jump-starting the financial consumers pay more, their rehabilitation, o r finances are healthy,” “deleveraging,” that economists Papadimitriou said. He also see as a crucial prerequisite to added that we were seeing

“record losses from the banks.

That doesn’t go hand-in-hand with credit card payoff.”

Whatever the means to lower household debt, the end should be more flexibility. Debt reduction should pave the way for a more robust economy. But we’re at a crucial stage here.

It’s dangerous when people have their debts eased or wiped away without serious consequences. But it’s good to see signals that some people have learned from their experience. The Journal talked to a family who did a short-sale to get out from under a mortgage and is now paying down their credit card debt: With a pretax monthly income of about $6,000, the Browns can allow themselves some luxuries.

But Mr. Brown said they are using nearly a third of their income to pay down about $38,000 in credit-card debt they had built up doing things like taking their grandchildren on

trips to Disneyland. After that, Mr. Brown hopes to save enough to purchase another house.

“On one hand it’s a relief” to have less debt, he said. “On the other it’s sad that we let ourselves get into this situation, individually and as a society.”

Speaking of that, the government’s debt picture looks much different than household debt. From the Atlantic: State and local governments borrowed a fresh $109 billion during 2009. The federal government borrowed $1.4 trillion. That’s more than the $1.2 trillion borrowed in 2008, and nearly seven times the borrowing of 2007. That’s also a full trillion-plus more dollars of borrowing than in any year other than 2008.

The federal government better start getting its house in order, too.

23

Video: The Creationist in Charge of Education in Texas (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/12/2010 10:55:38 AM

Here’s a picture of willful ignorance and appalling stupidity, as ABC News Nightline interviews young earth creationist Don McLeroy — the head of the Texas State Board of Education. Nightline correctly points out that the fundamentalist right wing agenda of Neanderthals like McLeroy is influencing education in the entire country; a wake-up call for anyone who still believes in the separation of church and state.[Video]

Quest Diagnostics: Success Through Tests Joseph Lazzaro (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:40:00 PM

Filed under: Stocks to Buy Quest Diagnostics' stock ( DGX), which I first wrote about on June 25, 2009 at a price of $55.89, has risen and fallen in

roller-coaster fashion lately, with technical indicator violations, but the business model still looks attractive.

Here's why.

Without question, Quest would benefit from health care reform at the federal level, if it occurs. poised on Friday, March 12 to Congressional Democrats were begin the reconciliation process

for a bill that could produce health care reform... or nothing, after 15 months of debate: the bill's fate remains undermined.

Continue reading Quest Diagnostics: Success Through Tests Quest Diagnostics: Success Through Tests originally

appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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TIPS continued from page 16

accounts payable system, you might insist that employees use a business credit card – one per employee – for paying and filing expenses. "Fraudulent cash purchases are fairly rampant in companies of any size," says David Barrett, CEO of Expensify. "With software that uploads data directly from your card account, you can't report the same expense twice." Dig Deeper: Catching Costly Errors Streamlining Accounts Payable: Assess Your WeaknessesOnce you're accustomed to your accounts payable system, you'll naturally start to see trends.

Notice when the most spending occurs for your business. What categories of spending vary from month to month? When do you rely most heavily on suppliers' credit? For retail companies, the holidays are a time of tremendous inequity of accounts payable and accounts receivable. The goal is to be financially prepared for times of big spending that come in advance of payments received, but when that doesn't happen,

there are a couple of simple things you can do to maintain your relationships that might come under stress.Amenta advises clients to be proactive.

Be honest with your suppliers about when, if not within the payment window, they can expect to receive a payment. "I believe they should act quickly.

Pick up the phone, call creditors and let them know what's going on," she says. "Be clear. Say 'I'm going to pay this much this month, and this much next month, even if it's just a token amount so they know you are on it."Second, thank your suppliers for their flexibility and remind them about your prompt previous payments. If they become hostile about not being paid, offer references to your long-term financial stability, or even last year's balance sheets to prove you've got the means on the way. Dig Deeper: Keeping Track of Crunch Times Streamlining Accounts Payable: Simplify AuditingIf you're transitioning to a new accounting software,

accountant, or part-time CFO, tax-time can be tough. That's because auditors focus on invoices, expense reports, and your own payable list to record annually your expenses. It's best to make a transition to a more streamlined accounts payable system at the start of your fiscal year. If that's not going to be the case, ask your accountant to help you ease the transition from the start, by inputting the rest of the year's previous data into your new system. Working with the same accountant throughout the year and through reporting your taxes is the best way to streamline the process. If that's not possible, you'll want to make sure you have documentation to support your own accounting of payments, including transaction confirmation from your suppliers. Dig Deeper: Best Practices for Accounts Payable

Google Apps Marketplace Opens; Another Bow Shot Across Microsoft's Headquarters Brian White (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:00:00 PM

Filed under: Products and Services, Launches, Google (GOOG) Google, Inc. ( GOOG) has been referenced by more than a handful of journalists in recent years as the company most closely competing with Microsoft Corporation ( MSFT).

In reality, that's not very true: Google derives almost all of its revenue from internet advertising while Microsoft gets its cash buckets from operating system and productivity software. The lines are blurring, but even in 2010 there are way more closer competitors to Microsoft than Google.

Continue reading Google Apps Marketplace Opens; Another

Bow Shot Across Microsoft's Headquarters Google Apps Marketplace Opens; Another Bow Shot Across Microsoft's Headquarters originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Pa. GOP Picks Burns As Nominee for Murtha's Seat (Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 3/11/2010 10:58:55 PM

Republicans in Pennsylvania have nominated a political newcomer to fill the congressional seat of the late Rep. John Murtha.

Tim Burns is a 41-year-old millionaire businessman and a native of Murtha's hometown of Johnstown. Burns now lives in the town of Eighty Four, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh.

Burns beat out retired Army officer Bill Russell, who

mounted a strong challenge against Murtha in 2008. Burns bested Russell by 85 votes to 46 at a GOP meeting Thursday at St. Vincent College.

Burns will face Democrat Mark Critz in the May 18 special election to fill the remaining

eight months of Murtha's term.

Critz was Murtha's former district director.

Murtha died Feb. 8 following complications from gallbladder surgery. He was 77. © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights

reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Morning Reading nospam@example.org (Scott Jagow) (Marketplace Scratch Pad) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:58:36 AM

Happy Friday. This morning, go inside the purchase of a toxic asset, why Wall Street hates Elizabeth Warren and a coroner’s report on Lehman Brothers: We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die(NPR) We spend two days with Solberg looking for the right toxic asset. One, full of what appear to be California McMansions, seems promising.

Solberg prints out a 604-page prospectus that reads like a historical record of the entire financial crisis. It’s all in there — vaporized companies, people struggling to pay their mortgages, and some horribly complicated logic describing which bond holders get paid, in which order, under which conditions. But that bond falls through, too.

Finally, we find a beautiful, totally toxic asset at what Solberg thinks is a good price:

$36,000. Back in the bubble, somebody paid $2.7 million for this thing. We buy a piece from Solberg for $1,000. It’s going to be our encyclopedia of the financial crisis.

Why Wall Street hates Elizabeth Warren(Newsweek) Obama was standing in a glassenclosed room with the afternoon sun glowing from behind, silhouetting him: “He was backlit!” As she walked down toward him he turned, stuck out his hand, and said, “Predatory lending! We have to do something about predatory lending!” He raved on as she stood and stared at him, dumbstruck. When he paused, she smiled and said, “You had me at predatory lending.”

Report details how Lehman Brothers hid its woes(New York Times) The 158-year-old company, it concluded, died from multiple causes. Among them were bad mortgage holdings and, less directly, demands by rivals like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, that the foundering bank post

collateral against loans it desperately needed.

But the examiner, Anton R. Valukas, also for the first time, laid out what the report characterized as “materially misleading” accounting gimmicks that Lehman used to mask the perilous state of its finances.

The Hollywood Stock Exchange will be a casino(Washington Post) If nothing else, the movie exchange is an obvious invitation to trading with insider information, allowing those who are actually producing a movie to bet on its outcome against outsiders who have never read the script, reviewed the dailies or seen the marketing budget.

And surely it won’t be long before theater owners and moviegoers begin checking prices on the exchange before deciding which films to show and attend, thereby altering the very outcomes that the exchange is meant to forecast.

White Dog (Art Becomes Reality) (Little Green Footballs)

Did you know there’s a whole genre of YouTube videos dedicated to showing dogs who Wow, the things you learn by hate President Obama? looking at #tcot ( T op C Dog hates Obama. onservatives O n T witter). Check out the related videos.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:47:19 PM

Apparently, this kind of thing is highly amusing to the modern conservative.

And this racist insanity is not new.[Video]

25

Pa. man charged with badly beating woman at NY bar (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:45:39 PM

NEW YORK – A construction worker from Pennsylvania was charged Friday with brutally beating and attempting to rape a woman in a restroom at a New York City bar after she rejected his advances.

The man, identified as 30-yearold Mbarek Lafrem, of Norwood, Pa., was charged with assault and attempted rape, chief police spokesman Paul Browne said. Lafrem made statements implicating himself in the beating, Browne said.

Lafrem had been working at a midtown construction site and was staying at a hotel near Social, a three-story bar and lounge on Eighth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. Coworkers called police after seeing Lafrem in a video walking down the sidewalk after the attack, Browne said.

Police picked up Lafrem on Friday at the construction site. A phone number listed for him in Norwood was disconnected Friday.

The attack occurred at around 2 a.m. Thursday at Social, where the 29-year-old victim, a nurse, had gone with a friend,

authorities said.

The woman told police that she had rebuffed attempts by the man to dance with her. When she went to the women's restroom on the second floor, the man followed her and burst into a stall, she told police The man beat the victim until she was unconscious. Her friend later found her in the stall and called 911, believing she might have fallen.

The woman was hospitalized with a broken eye socket, broken jaw and other injuries.

When she regained consciousness, she told hospital workers she had been attacked.

Investigators believe Lafrem also tried to sexually assault the victim, Browne said. The Associated Press generally doesn't name potential victims of sexual assault.

A phone message left at the bar was not immediately returned.

Calls to the Manhattan's District Attorney's office to find out whether Lafrem has an attorney were not immediately returned.

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A whole new can of worms nospam@example.org (Scott Jagow) (Marketplace Scratch Pad)

troubled firm, but also creditors, counterparties, and regulators and other government employees. This is something Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:36:12 PM The financial world is abuzz Congress and the Treasury over the new 2,200-page report should build into their financialon the collapse of Lehman sector overhaul legislation.

Brothers. It is a searingly Indeed, such probes could help thorough investigation, the kind drive bad behavior out of the that can have a profound impact wider system. For instance, Mr. on the way Wall Street does Valukas’s report describes debt business. Maybe. transactions possibly aimed at Read more about the report making Lehman’s balance sheet here. In brief, it details look stronger than it was. Other accounting tricks Lehman used banks, which may have engaged to cover up the bad investments i n o r c o n s i d e r e d s i m i l a r that led to its collapse. activities, will now be less likely Unfortunately, the investigation to do such things. was done only because Lehman However, as Congress went bankrupt. The Wall Street c o n s i d e r s n e w f i n a n c i a l Journal argues such thorough regulations, there’s another investigations should not be lesson here. The stuff that limited to bankruptcies but happened at Lehman should’ve extended to bailouts as well: been caught. Sarbannes-Oxley?

From now on, any large bailout Not only that, but the report should be accompanied by an suggests regulators knew how exhaustive examination that not bad Lehman’s condition was only has the legal power to and did nothing about it until it question employees of the was too late. Seeking Alpha

asks, where were the cops?

This report sets out a damning case against the pseudogovernment and government actors, who it is alleged were well-aware of critical weaknesses in Lehman’s risk controls and liquidity months before it collapsed, yet none of them did a damn thing about it until days before the bankruptcy filing.

Why should any of the clowncar riders who clearly knew that this situation existed for literal months before it blew up, yet did nothing, still retain their jobs and, in Geithner’s case, obtain a promotion? These people are unqualified for supervisory positions involving anything more complicated than handing out towels in the men’s room.

Senator Dodd and his colleagues in Congress have a lot of reading and thinking to do before finalizing any financial regulatory (so-called) reform.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:00:00 PM

Chrome is a terrific browser on its own, but FastestChrome makes it even better. It adds

extra search options to the Omnibar, creates "endless

(BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

"There were wolf tracks all around the body, and drag marks associated with those Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:56:28 PM tracks."

Wolves in Alaska are suspected "From the number of prints at of killing a teacher in an isolated the scene, we're thinking there village while she was out probably were, possibly, two, jogging. three, maybe four [wolves]," he An autopsy has revealed that added.

Candice Berner, 32, died of Ms Berner - who had been injuries sustained in an animal training for long-distance attack, officials said. running - moved to Alaska from Her body was dragged off a Pennsylvania in August. rural road, leaving a bloody She was working as a special track, into the nearby bush and needs teacher in Chignik Lake. was surrounded by wolf tracks. The community had recently Police said wolves in the area been on alert for wolves on the had been aggressive recently. If prowl nearby, said Johnny Lind, confirmed, it is believed to be president of the village council. the first fatal wolf attack in the In the last week, school US in 50 years. children were being The Alaska State Medical accompanied to school and Examiner said Ms Berner's armed snowmobile patrols had cause of death was "multiple been on the lookout for the injuries due to animal mauling". animals, he said.

H e r b o d y w a s f o u n d o n "It's obvious. Goodness. It's M o n d a y e v e n i n g b y obvious," said Mr Lind, snowmobilers after she was last referring to suspicion of wolves' seen that afternoon at her school involvement in Ms Berner's in Chignik Lake, a community death. of about 100 people 474 miles Print Sponsor (760km) south of Anchorage.

Five Filters featured article: Col Audie Holloway, of the Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: scrolling" for multi-page articles, fixes text-only URLs, Alaska State Troopers, said: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, and tunes up other Chrome "There's no other carnivores in Term Extraction. that area that are out and active. features. More »

FastestChrome Soups Up Search, Auto-Loads Pages [Downloads] Lisa Hoover (Lifehacker)

Alaska wolves 'killed' US teacher

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27

Infographic: Tracking a Toxic Asset Cliff Kuang (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:44:28 PM

NPR's Planet Money produces an astounding infographic that shows just how bad a bet the banks made when they went crazy for bundles of subprime mortgages.

Toxic assets brought our economy to its knees. You remember those, right? They were bundles of sub-prime mortgages, which were sold to banks like bonds. As the bundled mortgages were paid off each month, they promised a steady portion of the cash.

For the banks that bought these assets, the problems began when people couldn't pay the mortgages.

NPR's Planet Money--which brought you the Giant Pool of Money story that explained the entire mess--wanted to get a more concrete picture of the

been sold off for a loss-meaning there's no more mortgage to pay off Planet Money.

Now, there's one thing to note: As the $1,000 price (and the $74,000 discount) indicates, Planet Money bought a particularly troubled bunch of mortgages. The results of their experiment are probably far more extreme than you'd see buying assets that sold for less of a discount. Their security includes some of the worst mortgages around. But these are foreclosure crisis gripping the The chart includes a map of paid off the investment quite very bad indeed.

If you don't listen to the Planet country. So the bought a single w h e r e a l l t h e t r o u b l e d handily: Money podcast, you should: toxic asset, formerly worth mortgages in the asset are But now, a large share of those Published twice a week, there's $75,000, for a mere $1,000. And coming from, and a pie chart mortgages are in trouble. Only they've tracked its progress in a and bar chart showing the 2/3 are either paid off or current; absolutely no better resource out superb infographic, detailing composition of the asset. the rest are in foreclosure or there, for anyone looking for explanations about the state our that assets performance from So how's it faring? Not so well. liquidation.

December 2006 to the present When first bought, the asset was As you can see in the bar charts world economy. d a y . ( G r a p h i c a b o v e , a bunch of good mortgages, above, almost all of the houses [Via GOOD] explanatory video below.) which could potentially have represented in the asset have

Hunch gets $10 million from Khosla Ventures, others (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:40:13 PM

Hunch, a buzzy start-up that answers questions using c r o w d s o u r c e d recommendations, has resolved one query of its own: who's going to fund our B round?

Sources tell me that Khosla Ventures is leading a new round that will add another $10 million

to $12 million to the start-up's bank account. General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ron Conway, who put $2 million into the company a year ago, are reinvesting.

I'm told that Gideon Yu, the former chief financial officer of both Facebook and YouTube, is steering the investment for Khosla.

Hunch was co-founded by

Caterina Fake, who founded Flickr and sold it to Yahoo in 2005, and Chris Dixon, who built SiteAdvisor and sold it to McAfee in 2006.

Hunch is still a modest-sized site--its internal numbers put it at 1.2 million unique visitors-but Fake and Dixon are well-

regarded entrepreneurs. And while they don't like to be compared with Aardvark, which has a vaguely similar concept, the linkage does have some upside: last month, Google bought that site for$50 million.

I asked Fake, Dixon, and Yu for comment. Until I hear from them, you can read up on Hunch in Kara Swisher's story from last month. Or you can watch this

interview.

Story Copyright (c) 2010 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

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Great Moments in Photoshop History: Happy 20th Anniversary!

William Bostwick (Fast Company)

All the memes are here, from the Montauk Monster to Nicolas Cage. Cory Arcangel's gradients Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:02:12 PM make an appearance. So does Complex Magazine rounds up Coudal Partners' Layer Tennis. their 50 favorite Photoshop On a more serious note, they moments in honor of the i n c l u d e B r i a n W a l s k i ' s s o f t w a r e ' s 2 0 t h b i r t h d a y . infamously manipulated Iraq Photoshop turns 20 this year, war photo for the L.A. Times and in honor of 20 years of and Iran's faked missile launch. making the impossible possible- But it's Complex, after all, so -or at least easier-- Complex the most screen time goes to Magazine has teamed up with awesomely bad mixtape album Brooklyn design studio Chips to c o v e r s , m o s t b y t h e m a d gather their 50 favorite moments geniuses of Pen and Pixel in Photoshop history. They're Graphics, who rose to fame on hilarious, and hilariously true. the '90s Houston rap scene. It

only speaks to the program's power that it enables designers (and everyone else) to make everything from this to this.

For a little nostalgia, check out

this anniversary video from Adobe. It opens with bolo-tied Photoshop founder Russell Brown demonstrating Photoshop's "most unethical"

uses on an ancient Mac and naysaying Fred Ritchin warning that Photoshop will make the public "disbelieve photographs generally" and that photographs "won't be as effective and powerful a document of social communication as it has been for the last 150 years." How naive. Jump to 2010, Russell (bolo intact) sits with John Knoll, Thomas Knoll, and Steve Guttman to discuss the impact of their 20-year-old idea.

[Via Design Observer]

Chile puts quake damage at $30bn (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

people, with hundreds others missing and 1.5m homes damaged.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:46:20 PM A 6.9-magnitude aftershock C h i l e ' s n e w P r e s i d e n t , rattled the country as Mr Sebastian Pinera, has said it will Pinera's inauguration was being cost at least $30bn (ÂŁ20bn) to held. r e b u i l d t h e c o u n t r y a f t e r The businessman is the first January's earthquake. centre-right politician to come Speaking on his first full day in to power in Chile since the end o f f i c e , h e s a i d l o a n s a n d of military rule in 1990. budgetary savings would be Copper income used to rebuild infrastructure, Mr Pinera told Friday's news homes and industry. conference that a special fund Other nations would be asked would be set up to rebuild to help, Mr Pinera told reporters around 300,000 houses plus in Santiago. hospitals, schools and roads.

The 8.8 magnitude quake on 27 He acknowledged that he would February killed nearly 500 have to re-allocate funds from

other projects to pay for the reconstruction, and that the process would take years, not months.

Some of the work would be paid for with income from exports of copper, of which Chile is the world's biggest producer.

"Fortunately we have had a strong, stable price for copper," he said.

As well as budget trimmings, the country would raise money through debt issues and would dip into savings from past copper income saved in investments abroad.

Finance Minister Felipe Larrain

earlier said that the government had not yet determined how much debt the government would issue.

Chile, a model of economic stability in Latin America, can raise money relatively cheaply on international markets because it has an investment grade rating and is considered low-risk, Reuters news agency notes.

But $30bn represents nearly 20% of Chilean GDP and would make a significant dent in the state coffers, the BBC's Gideon Long reports from Santiago.

Shortly after he was sworn in on Thursday, Mr Pinera flew to some of the areas worst affected

by the original quake.

In the city of Rancagua, he urged residents to remain calm as the government continued its efforts to reach all those in need.

"I want to tell all Chileans that the government will always respond in an effective and timely manner in catastrophes such as the one we have witnessed in order to save all the lives that we can and so that we can quickly reach those people needing help," he said.

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Runaway Prius case presents nagging questions (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:27:05 PM

SAN DIEGO – Investigators are confronted with a series of nagging questions as they try to unravel the case of a California real estate agent who said his Toyota Prius turned into a runaway death trap after the gas pedal became stuck.

Why didn't the driver simply throw the transmission into neutral as officers urged him to do? Why didn't a safety mechanism activate that was supposed to cut power to the engine in such situations? And could he have made the story up in pursuit of fame and money?

Each question is getting scrutiny from the Internetconsuming public as they question the motives of the driver, a 61-year-old real estate agent named James Sikes. Some skeptics have even invoked the infamous "balloon boy hoax" in expressing doubts about the story.

No evidence has emerged to suggest that Sikes was dishonest when he called 911 on Monday to report that the accelerator of his 2008 Prius was jammed during a trip home from his lawyer's office.

Sikes and his car emerged unscathed, but the incident has been another major headache for the Japanese automaker amid questions over the safety and reliability of its vehicles.

The California Highway Patrol has repeatedly said it has no reason to suspect a hoax. It does not plan to investigate the incident or perform a mechanical inspection because there were no injuries or property damage. Investigators from Toyota and the federal government are also looking into the incident.

"There is no factual information that I'm aware of, or the highway patrol is aware of, that would discredit his story," agency spokesman Brian Pennings said Friday.

Sikes spoke to throngs of reporters twice this week about his ordeal, but he has not sought out attention or talk show interviews like others have done during their 15 minutes of fame.

Pennings said he urged Sikes to speak with reporters the first time, on Monday, after the white -knuckled journey down Interstate 8 to avoid getting besieged later by the media.

And a law firm representing Sikes during the investigation said its client does not intend to take legal action against the automaker.

Doubters have asked why Sikes didn't put the car in neutral as a California Highway Patrol dispatcher and an officer repeatedly urged him to do.

Sikes said he considered going into neutral but worried he might go into reverse or flip.

"I had never played with this

kind of transmission, especially when you're driving, and I was actually afraid to do that," he said Tuesday. "I was afraid to do anything out of the normal."

Toyota has said all Priuses are equipped with a computer system that cuts power to the wheels if the brake and gas pedals are depressed at the same time, as Sikes was doing.

"It's tough for us to say if we're skeptical. I'm mystified in how it could happen with the brake override system," Don Esmond, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota Motor Sales, said Thursday.

Raj Rajkumar, an electrical and computer-engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who studies auto electronics, said the Prius could still have acceleration malfunctions even with the failsafe system.

Toyota says the fail-safe and the engine are controlled by a central computer that contains two independent microprocessors that communicate and must agree with each other. If there's a disagreement, power would be cut to the wheels.

But Rajkumar said the two engine control unit microprocessors could still receive common erroneous signals from sensors or experience software errors that could cause the throttle and the

fail-safe mechanism to malfunction.

Sikes came to a stop after a Highway Patrol officer blared instructions from a loudspeaker, telling him to push the brake pedal to the floor while applying the emergency brake. Sikes apparently did this, allowing him to slow the car to 50 mph and shut off the engine.

At one point during the 911 call, the dispatcher asks if he can press the ignition button for five seconds and she gets no response. Sikes said later that he struggled to hold the phone and keep his hands on the wheel.

Todd Neibert, the officer who gave instructions to Sikes over a loudspeaker, said he smelled burning brakes when he caught up with the Prius. He examined the car when it came to a stop.

"The brakes were definitely down to hardly any material," he told reporters. "There was a bunch of brake material on the ground and inside the wheels."

Sikes said afterward that he was "embarrassed" by the incident, suggesting that he wished he would have handled it differently. "I'm just embarrassed about that," he said. "You have to be there.

That's all I can say."

Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Friday that investigators are best positioned to determine if there was a hoax, but no evidence has emerged.

A representative of Issa's office was at a California Toyota dealership when investigators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota examined Sikes' blue Prius on Wednesday and Thursday.

"Where are these suggestions coming from?" he said. "It would be irresponsible to assert it's a hoax without having facts."

Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA administrator, said Sikes' refusal to shift to neutral, is understandable.

"It's such a horrifying experience to be completely out of control," she said. "It's the kind of thing you dream about when you're really upset and you wake up in sweats."

The same firm handling Sikes' case also represents the family of California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor, which sued Toyota last week in San Diego Superior Court.

Saylor was killed in August along with his wife, her brother and the couple's daughter after their Lexus accelerator became trapped by a wrong-size floor mat on a freeway in La Mesa, near San Diego. Their loaner car hit a sport utility vehicle and burst into flames.

Representatives of the firm did not respond to phone messages seeking additional comment Friday.

RUNAWAY page 31

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Al-Qaida suspect from NJ worked at 6 nuke plants (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:26:57 PM

HADDONFIELD, N.J. – An American seized in Yemen in a sweep of suspected al-Qaida members had been a laborer at six U.S. nuclear power plants, and authorities are investigating whether he had access to sensitive information or materials that would be useful to terrorists.

Sharif Mobley, 26, worked for contractors at plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland from 2002 to 2008, mostly hauling materials and setting up scaffolding, plant officials said.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said Friday that investigations are under way into which areas Mobley entered. But he noted that areas containing nuclear fuel are tightly controlled, and that a laborer typically would not have access to security information or other sensitive matters.

The plants are also checking areas where Mobley worked to ensure everything is in order, said NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci.

Mobley, a U.S. citizen of Somali descent, has not been

linked to any wrongdoing at any of the plants. And officials said nothing he did when he worked there aroused any suspicion.

Officials said Mobley passed the necessary screenings, which include criminal background checks, drug testing, psychological assessments and identity verification.

Nevertheless, Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an industry watchdog, said the case raises questions about security at the nation's nuclear plants.

"The real question is: Was there information that the NRC or utilities could have seen that would have led to his disqualification?" Lyman said.

Mobley, a Muslim who grew up in Buena, N.J., was among 11 al -Qaida suspects rounded up earlier this month in Yemen. He was taken to a hospital there over the weekend after he complained of feeling ill.

Yemeni officials said he snatched a gun and shot a security guard to death in an attempt to escape from the hospital.

He has not been accused by authorities in the U.S. or Yemen of attempting to make a bomb or attack a nuclear plant.

His parents have said he is not a

terrorist, though former friend Roman Castro said Mobley was becoming increasingly radical in his Muslim beliefs before he moved to Yemen about two years ago.

Mobley worked for contractors at the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear plants in New Jersey from 2002 to 2008; the Peach Bottom, Limerick and Three Mile Island plants in Pennsylvania from 2003 to 2007; and Calvert Cliffs in Maryland for two weeks in 2006, operators said.

Company officials said most of his work came during periodic refueling outages, when hundreds of contract employees descend on the plants. The workers do a variety of jobs, but "nothing technical," said Curt Jenkins, business manager at Mobley's union, Local 222 of the New Jersey Laborers Council.

Mobley had "vital access" that allowed him into any area of the plants where he worked in New Jersey, Jenkins said. But guards were posted in the most sensitive places, and "anywhere that you might be able to do anything, they pretty well got that pretty secure."

Every worker entering a plant has to clear security, explosives

Big Earthquakes Cause Premature Births Alexis Madrigal (Wired Top Stories)

Large earthquakes can shorten pregnant women's gestation

period by small but significant amounts, a new study finds.

and radiation checkpoints, and that information is recorded, the NRC's Sheehan said. The plants also teach employees to recognize and report suspicious behavior.

Jenkins said that he never saw any sign of trouble from Mobley and that he was a union member in good standing. "He always treated us with respect," he said.

"Very well-mannered."

Mobley's work came during a period in which nuclear plant security was increased in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the industry group the Nuclear Energy Institute, said that before regulations changed in 2003, workers could gain temporary access to plants before their screening was complete. It was not immediately clear whether Mobley had access before he was completely cleared.

"To the best of our knowledge, with the regard to this individual, there was nothing to suggest any kind of problem with him," Kerekes said. "We have a personnel database that's in place that lets all our companies across the industry know instantaneously if someone is for some reason denied access or flagged for

some other kind of reason related to their behavior."

However, the information shared between nuclear power companies is sometimes incomplete, said Lyman, of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

A law enforcement official says Mobley traveled to Yemen with the goal of joining a terrorist group. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still going on.

A second official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, says the U.S. government was aware of Mobley's potential extremist ties long before his arrest. The official did not say how long the government had been paying attention to him. ___ Contributing to this report were AP Business Writer Sandy Shore in Denver and Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Devlin Barrett in Washington, Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., and Ben Nuckols in Baltimore.

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Man at Wheel of 'Out-of-Control' Prius Has Troubled Past (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:51:07 AM

The man who became the face of the Toyota gas pedal scandal this week has a troubled financial past that is leading some to question whether he was wholly truthful in his story.

On Monday, James Sikes called 911 to report that he was behind the wheel of an out-of-control Toyota Prius going 94 mph on a freeway near San Diego.

Twenty-three minutes later, a California Highway Patrol officer helped guide him to a stop, a rescue that was captured on videotape.

Since then, it's been learned that: — Sikes filed for bankruptcy in San Diego in 2008. According to documents, he was more than $700,000 in debt and owed roughly $19,000 on his Prius; — In 2001, Sikes filed a police report with the Merced County Sheriff's Department for $58,000 in stolen property, including jewelry, a digital video camera and equipment and $24,000 in cash;

— Sikes has hired a law firm, though it has indicated he has no plans to sue Toyota; — Sikes won $55,000 on television's "The Big Spin" in 2006, Fox40.com reports, and the real estate agent has boasted of celebrity clients such as Constance Ramos of "Extreme Home Makeover."

While authorities say they don't doubt Sikes' account, several bloggers and a man who bought a home from Sikes in 2007 question whether the 61-yearold entrepreneur may have concocted the incident for publicity or for monetary gain.

A man who bought a house in the San Diego area from Sikes in 2007 told FoxNews.com he immediately questioned the circumstances surrounding Monday's incident.

"Immediately I thought this guy has an angle here," the man said on Friday. "But I don't know what the angle is here."

The man, who asked not to be identified, said the home he purchased from Sikes had undisclosed problems that eventually cost him $20,000. He

tried to sue in civil court, but Sikes had filed for bankruptcy during the process.

"It got to the point where it wasn't worth me paying legal fees to go after a guy who was broke," he said. "I ate the 20,000 bucks."

The man said Sikes came off as a dishonest businessman who was difficult to work with during the transaction.

"It didn't surprise me," he said of Sikes' recent troubles with his Prius. "I thought this guy is trying to pull a scam here."

Toyota executives, who have talked extensively with Sikes, have said they're "mystified" by Sikes' account.

"It's tough for us to say if we're skeptical," Don Esmond, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota Motor Sales, said Thursday. "I'm mystified in how it could happen with the brake override system."

Esmond said all Priuses are equipped with a computer system that cuts power to the wheels if the brake and gas pedals are depressed at the same

been the answer that not just Toyota, but the entire industry, has had," she said. "Blaming the driver is old hat." ___ AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher in

Troy, Mich., contributed to this report.

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RUNAWAY continued from page 29

Claybrook, the former federal administrator, noted that drivers often come under heavy scrutiny for reporting unintended acceleration.

"Attacking the driver has long

time — something Sikes was doing.

Sikes' reputation apparently precedes him in Northern California, as well.

"I've been warned that he used to do business here," Jim Pernetti of AAA California Document Services told Fox40.com, "and that I should be very wary of anything with him."

Sikes called 911 on Monday to report that his gas pedal was stuck and his blue 2008 Prius was speeding at 94 mph down a freeway near San Diego. A CHP officer helped bring the car to a stop, but not before two calls to police dispatchers that spanned 23 minutes.

Asked why he didn't simply put his car in neutral, Sikes said: "You had to be there. I might go into reverse. I didn't know if the care would flip. I had no idea how it would react."

Sikes, who did not return several calls and e-mail messages, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the incident was no hoax.

"I've had things happen in my

life, but I'm not making up this story," he told the newspaper.

Roughly 8.5 million vehicles worldwide have been recalled

by Toyota, including more than 6 million in the United States, due to acceleration and braking problems in several models.

Regulators have linked at least 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by accelerator problems.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sent experts to a New York City suburb where a 56-year-old woman said her 2005 Prius sped up on its own as she was leaving a driveway.

FoxNews.com's Joshua Rhett Miller, Jana Winter and The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said Sikes was behind on payments on for his Prius at the time of his bankruptcy filing.

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Al Qaeda Suspect Worked at 5 U.S. Nuclear Plants (FOXNews.com)

information that the NRC or utilities could have seen that would have led to his HADDONFIELD, New Jersey disqualification?" Lyman asked.

Before he was rounded up in a Meanwhile, a law enforcement sweep of suspected Al Qaeda official said Friday that the U.S. terrorists in Yemen, Sharif government was aware of Mobley was a laborer at five Mobley's potential extremist ties nuclear plant complexes in before Yemeni officials arrested Maryland, New Jersey and him, but did not provide a time Pennsylvania. frame or details about what Authorities are investigating exactly was known about him. whether he might have had any The official spoke on condition access to sensitive information of anonymity to discuss an that would have been useful to ongoing investigation. terrorists.

The Nuclear Regulatory Edwin Lyman, a senior staff Commission said Friday that scientist with the Union of Mobley worked between 2002 C o n c e r n e d S c i e n t i s t s , a and 2008 for contractors who watchdog of the nuclear power did work at the Salem and Hope industry, said the case raises Creek plants in New Jersey; the questions about security at the Peach Bottom, Limerick and nation's nuclear power plants — Three Mile Island facilities in even though Mobley has not Pennsylvania; and Calvert Cliffs been linked to any wrongdoing in Maryland. at any of them.

Officials at PSEG Nuclear, Some of the information used which runs the complex in New to give temporary workers like Jersey, say he carried supplies Mobley clearance comes from a n d w o r k e d o n r o u t i n e other nuclear power companies maintenance mostly during and is sometimes incomplete, periodic refueling outages, when Lyman said. hundreds of contracted "The real question is: Was there employees descend upon the

plants.

The NRC says a laborer typically would not have access to security-related or sensitive information.

Officials also say he passed screenings before he could work at the plants. The NRC says the screenings include criminal history checks, drug testing, psychological assessments and identity verification. The background checks are to be performed by either the nuclear plant operators or their contracting companies.

The plants also run behavior observation programs in which employees are taught to recognize and report suspicious activities.

Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the industry trade group the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the industry has to share information about problem workers.

"To the best of our knowledge, with the regard to this individual, there was nothing to suggest any kind of problem with him," Kerekes said. "Had there been, under the system

FBI Hoaxes Boost Online Fraud

Research Reveals Early Signs of Autism in Some Kids

Submitted at 3/12/2010 12:14:06 AM

David Kravets (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:38:00 PM

An FBI report says the amount of reported damages stemming from online fraud has more than

doubled to $560 million. And the No. 1 consumer online complaint concerned e-mail scammers posing as the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bruce Bower, Science News (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:45:00 PM

What if you could reliably diagnose autism at age 14

that we have, we have a personnel database that's in place that lets all our companies across the industry know instantaneously if someone is for some reason denied access or flagged for some other kind of reason related to their behavior."

Kerekes also said that before regulations changed in early 2003, workers could gain temporary access to plants before their screening was complete. It's not clear whether Mobley had access before he was completely cleared.

Mike Drewniak, a spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said Mobley was never reported to be acting improperly and was not believed to have been involved in any breaches at the New Jersey plants.

Mobley is a 26-year-old natural -born U.S. citizen who grew up in Buena, New Jersey, and later lived in Philadelphia and Newark, Delaware. A former neighbor said he moved to Yemen about two years ago, supposedly to learn Arabic and study Islam.

months? Findings in a new study could lead to better outcomes for autistic kids because of early intervention.

He was among 11 Al Qaeda suspects detained this month in a security sweep in Yemen's capital of San'a this month. He was taken to the hospital over the weekend after he complained of feeling ill.

Yemeni officials said he snatched a gun from a security guard and fatally shot one guard and wounded another before being captured.

His parents have said he is not a terrorist.

A former friend said he believed Mobley was becoming radical before he moved to Yemen about two years ago.

Roman Castro, an Army veteran who did a tour in Iraq after he and Mobley graduated from high school together in 2002, said Mobley had only these words for him in a chance meeting four years ago: "Get the hell away from me, you Muslim killer!"

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Authorities: Haim's name on illegal prescription (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:52:17 PM

LOS ANGELES – The name of the late actor Corey Haim was found on a fraudulent prescription for a powerful painkiller that authorities said Friday was obtained through a major drug ring.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown's office said records of the prescription in the name of the former teen heartthrob were found during an investigation of the ring that illegally obtained prescription pads and used the stolen identities of doctors to fill them out.

"Corey Haim's death is yet another tragedy linked to the growing problem of prescription drug abuse," Brown said in a written statement. "This problem is increasingly linked to criminal organizations, like the illegal and massive prescription drug ring under investigation."

Los Angeles County coroner's officials, however, said they have not yet determined what killed the 38-year-old Haim on Wednesday.

State law enforcement authorities said they were investigating the drug ring and how the name of Haim, who

battled addiction for years, appeared on the prescription.

Javier Salaiz, an investigator with the state attorney general's office, said authorities have not yet confirmed that Haim actually filled the prescription or if someone was using his name to acquire the prescription.

However, a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing said Haim may have been doctor shopping.

Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said four prescription drug bottles bearing the actor's name were found in the apartment where he collapsed, but all those drugs had been provided by a doctor who had been treating the actor.

The coroner's office has declined to state what medications were discovered, but said no illegal drugs were found.

Winter said no determination had been made about Haim's cause of death, and toxicology tests would not be available for at least a month.

He said he had not been contacted by the attorney general's office.

"It surprises me that Jerry Brown would come out and give a cause of death," he said.

Brown said later in an interview that he didn't know what killed Haim.

The illegal prescription was for the powerful painkiller OxyContin, he said.

"This is a growing and dangerous problem," Brown said.

Christine Gasparac, a spokeswoman for Brown, said the prescription was found through the state's computer database that tracks prescriptions that are filled.

Investigators believe the ring either sells the pads on the street to addicts or to people who then fill out the forms and obtain the drugs for illegal distribution.

Doctors whose names are on the form usually aren't aware that their identity is being used illegally.

So far, authorities have uncovered up to 5,000 fraudulent prescriptions linked to the fraud ring in Southern California.

Haim's agent, Mark Heaslip, said his client's medications were prescribed by an addiction specialist who was working with the actor. He said he thinks, based on what Haim's mother has told him, the actor may have had an adverse reaction to the medication because he was ill.

"I don't think Corey overdosed,

not at all," Heaslip said.

Authorities have said Haim was suffering from flulike symptoms in the days before his death.

Seattle-based Heaslip has served as Haim's agent for 18 months but first met the actor, best known for his roles in the 1980s flicks " The Lost Boys" and "Lucas," in November. He said Haim was poised for a comeback and showed no signs of addiction.

"He's never given me a sign of that," Heaslip said.

Plans are being completed for a public memorial for Haim in Los Angeles. The actor is expected to be buried at a private funeral in his native Canada, Heaslip said.

Brown's office has made prescription drug abuse a priority. It worked with the Los Angeles County district attorney's office to bring drug conspiracy charges against two doctors and the lawyerboyfriend of Anna Nicole Smith.

Brown also has launched a probe of doctors whose names have come up during the investigation into the death of Michael Jackson.

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Newsom Declares Candidacy for Calif. Lt. Governor (Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:46:56 AM

After dropping out of the gubernatorial race last year, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is now running for lieutenant governor.

Newsom's announcement Friday morning on KPIX-TV is not a surprise. He filed papers on Feb. 17 with the secretary of state's office, the first steps to becoming a statewide candidate again.

The 42-year-old mayor is best known for his approval of samesex marriages at San Francisco's City Hall in 2004. He dropped his gubernatorial campaign in October after being unable to find the same popularity throughout California that he enjoys in his famously liberal hometown.

Newsom will compete against state Sen. Dean Florez and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn for the Democratic nomination. Š Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Apollo men decry Obama Moon plans (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

happen again.

'Moral leadership' The astronauts spoke to the Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:38:02 PM BBC at a private event at the Former Nasa astronauts who Royal Society in London on went to the Moon have told the F r i d a y o r g a n i s e d b y t h e B B C o f t h e i r d i s m a y a t Foundation for Science and President Barack Obama's Technology. decision to push back further They were joined there by the Moon missions. first man on the Moon, Neil Jim Lovell, commander of the Armstrong. ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said As the last astronaut to return to Mr Obama's decision would the Apollo 17 lunar module in have " c a t a s t r o p h i c 1972, Cernan was the last man consequences" for US space to set foot on the Moon. exploration.

"I'm quite disappointed that I'm The last man on the Moon, still the last man on the Moon," Eugene Cernan, said it was he said. "I thought we'd have "disappointing". gone back long before now."

Last month Mr Obama So why does he believe cancelled Nasa's Constellation Americans should go back to the Moon landings programme, Moon? approved by ex-President "I think America has a George W Bush. responsibility to maintain its N a s a s t i l l a i m s t o s e n d leadership in technology and its astronauts back to the Moon, but m o r a l l e a d e r s h i p t o s e e k it is likely to take decades and knowledge. That's the essence some believe that it will never of human existence."

It is a view shared by fellow Apollo Astronaut Jim Lovell, the heroic commander of Apollo 13.

"Personally I think it will have catastrophic consequences in our ability to explore space and the spin-offs we get from space technology," he said.

"They haven't thought through the consequences."

Lunar dream alive Although Cernan and Lovell expressed their dismay with President Obama's decision, Mr Armstrong tactfully avoided the subject.

When he set foot on the Moon in July 1969, it seemed as if humanity would soon colonise other worlds.

By 1994, when I interviewed him for the first time, he said: "The reality may have faded.

But the dream is still there and it will come back in time."

But with the cancellation of Nasa's Constellation programme

to return Americans to the moon by 2020, who is to inspire the next generation?

Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, using Nasa to provide incentives and oversight to the private sector for launch services.

It is likely to take some time, however.

Until then we will have the epic tales of Armstrong, Lovell, Cernan and the rest of the Apollo astronaut corps to remind us that all things are possible - and despite the current pause in human spaceflight to other worlds, the dream is still there.

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Fix Uneven Skin Tones in Photoshop [Photoshop] Whitson Gordon (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:00:00 PM

Adjusting skin tones in photos can often be harder than adjusting for other colors, but Photoshop guru Helen Bradley has some quick tips for smoothing skin tones as effectively as possible. More Âť

"Overwhelming" demand limiting iPad in-store pickup Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

ordered iPads this morning, opting for at-home delivery. For whatever reason, they later Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:00:00 PM changed their minds and opted Filed under: Retail, Apple, iPad for in-store pickup. That's when According to MacDailyNews, things got tricky. shoppers who placed iPad pre- When requesting the switch, orders this morning are being those customers are being told told by Apple Store employees that their existing orders will that demand could affect their have to be cancelled and new inplans for in-store pickup. store orders placed. However, It seems that several customers the employees warn, demand for

the iPad has been so "overwhelming" today that they can no longer guarantee that an in-store pickup order will be

available on April 3rd if placed at this late hour.

As of this writing, the online Apple Store notes that Wi-Fi iPads ordered today will be able for pickup at Apple Retail Store "...between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on April 3."

In other words: Selling like hotcakes.

TUAW"Overwhelming" demand limiting iPad in-store

pickup originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clinton rebukes Israel over homes (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

United States considered the announcement to be a deeply negative signal about Israel's Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:10:30 PM approach to the bilateral US Secretary of State Hillary relationship and contrary to the Clinton has sharply rebuked spirit of the vice-president's Israel over its recent decision to trip". build new settlements in East "The secretary said she could Jerusalem. not understand how this She told Israeli PM Benjamin happened, particularly in light of Netanyahu by telephone that the the United States's strong move was "deeply negative" for c o m m i t m e n t t o I s r a e l ' s US-Israeli relations. security," he added.

T h e B B C ' s W a s h i n g t o n "She made clear that the Israeli correspondent, Kim Ghattas, g o v e r n m e n t n e e d e d t o says it was a rare and sharp demonstrate not just through rebuke from Washington. words but through specific I s r a e l ' s a n n o u n c e m e n t actions that they are committed overshadowed a visit by US to this relationship and to the Vice-President Joe Biden aimed peace process." at restarting peace talks.

The Quartet of Middle East Since then the Palestinians have peace mediators - the US, indicated they will not return to Russia, the EU and the UN the negotiating table unless the also condemned the Israeli Israeli decision is revoked. housing announcement and said Apology it would review the situation at America's top diplomat its ministerial meeting delivered her rebuke during a 43 scheduled for 19 March in -minute telephone conversation Moscow. with Mr Netanyahu, the US Mr Netanyahu earlier state department said. apologised for the timing of the US state department spokesman settlement announcement, which PJ Crowley said Mrs Clinton was made as Mr Biden was called "to make clear that the holding a day of talks in

Jerusalem.

He said he had summoned Interior Minister Eli Yishai to reprimand him.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders had agreed to hold indirect, "proximity talks" in a bid to restart the peace process, which has been stalled for more than a year.

But after the announcement, the Palestinian Authority said talks would be "very difficult" if the plans for the homes were not rescinded.

Close to 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

The latest announcement by the Jerusalem municipality approves 1,600 new housing units in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo.

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First Responders Believed Woods' Crash was Domestic Violence (FOXNews.com)

him lying in the street. The SUV had a broken window and the couple told investigators Elin ORLANDO, Fla. T h e Woods had broken it with a golf ambulance crew that responded club so she could unlock a door a f t e r g o l f e r T i g e r W o o d s and pull him out. crashed his SUV would not Tiger Woods has strenuously allow his wife to ride with him denied his wife ever hit him. to the hospital because they The crash led to disclosures that t h o u g h t i t w a s a c a s e o f he had affairs with several domestic violence, documents women. released Friday by the Florida The documents released Friday Highway Patrol show. also show police tried to get a But a police officer who subpoena for any blood samples responded said he didn't know that might have been taken at w h e r e t h e c r e w g o t t h a t the hospital, but the prosecutor's information because he never office denied the request. heard it from anyone at the Woods was charged with scene. careless driving and fined $164.

The reports also show Woods' He has not played competitive wife, Elin, turned over two golf since. He made a televised bottles of pain pills to troopers apology to his wife, family and after the Nov. 27 crash outside fans last month. the couple's suburban Orlando Five Filters featured article: home.

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From the Tips Box: Defrosting Meat, Packing Materials, and Remembering Secret Numbers [From The Tips Box] Whitson Gordon (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:00:00 PM

Readers offer their best tips for defrosting meat in the microwave, shipping items with

just a paper bag, and

35

remembering sensitive numbers like Social Security or bank PINs. More Âť

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Why Sex-Ed Remains a Challenge for Social Media Geoff Livingston (Mashable!)

women in dating situations. Sex Really takes the initiative on pointing out tough topics and Geoff Livingston co-founded assumes conversation will occur Zoetica to focus on cause- offline, though some folks do related work, and released an choose to interact with the Sex award-winning book on new Really team online. The effort media Now is Gone in 2007. uses a variety of media from its Addressing the very private own site, as well as a Twitter nature of intimacy remains the account. most difficult aspect of sex-ed The site takes a rightful strong on the social web. While stances against violence towards “Public Health 2.0 is a top w o m e n , y e t t h e p u b l i c priority for related causes and conversational results vary. That organizations, it can be difficult doesn’t mean the effort isn’t to approach from a social media successful in educating readers. standpoint. Because it’s the “This campaign has made most private and sensitive of effective use of social content, i s s u e s , m a n y p e o p l e a r e messaging related to social embarrassed or offended by behavior change, and content conversations about sex. aggregation,” said Beth Kanter, However, many organizations, author of the popular Beth’s from mass media outlets to Blog. “It’s hard to tell why cause-specific efforts, are still there isn’t more conversation on attempting to use social tools to the site from the target group address reproductive health (e.g. comments on the podcast issues. The difficulty in running posts) — they do have an active a successful effort lies in Twitter stream. They also have navigating the troubled waters a link to [Planned Parenthood] between an individual’s right to where [users] can get private privacy and the public need for information or connect with a sex education online. Finding health counselor for advice.” the Balance Between Public Another example of an open Education and Privacy site that gets some decent A very provocative effort may participation (but still less than raise some eyebrows, but at the similar non sex-ed campaigns) same time fail to generate is MTV’s GYT (Get Yourself conversation. The issue may be Tested). Because the effort is too sensitive for most — except tied into the popular TV show for a minority of outgoing, 16 and Pregnant, there are a lot extroverted online citizens. of eyeballs landing there.

For example, Sex Really Integrating traditional media discusses violence towards into a social web campaign is Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:00:12 PM

one way to incite conversations about getting tested for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

While educating themselves, participants not only sound off, but in some cases could win an opportunity to appear on the cable network — a great motivator to get people talking.

There’s a GYT Facebook Group with 2,500 fans (which is comparatively low, considering other teen-oriented Pages get tens of thousands), and some decent online conversation.

Clearly, though, openness can actually act as a barrier to communication for such a sensitive issue.

Full disclosure: Beth is a business partner of mine.

Privacy Protections Can Drive More Participation One organization committed to the sex ed space is ISIS, Inc., a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA. They have had two very successful efforts: The Say What Contest and the inSpot notification service. ISIS efforts use technology to provide privacy guarantees first, then encourage the social conversation. By putting

privacy at the forefront of what they do, ISIS is able to boost participation.

The Say What Contest uses incentives to get youth and young adults to talk.

Specifically, the contest asked teens and twenty-somethings what the worst advice they got from their parents was. The goal was to highlight misnomers passed on from generation to generation. User stories are posted in podcast format.

“Youth used their own cell phones or landlines to call a private digital phone number and tell their stories,” said Deb Levine, Executive Director and Founder of ISIS. “Entrants’ phone numbers were stored in a data file that was passwordprotected and only available to contest sponsors in order to contact contest winners. We used a moderation feature for the widget such that we only included entrants who did not state their full name or location.

No phone numbers were associated publicly with entries selected to be included in the widget.”

“The Say What campaign was a compelling contest that focused on the gold mine of good and bad sex advice teens have heard,” said Scotty Hendo, principal at CauseShift. “I liked how they used the telephone to capture stories directly from the teens. Plus, creating a widget helped spread the word and

offer more people the chance to listen and rank contestants …

[T]he campaign was a creative way to get teens to critically question what they’ve been told by their peers and adults.”

ISIS’s other project deals with an even greater social taboo.

Many people experience great shame in finding out they have contracted an STD, and don’t want to admit it to their past and present partners. In an effort to stop the spread of STDs, the inSPOT network allows users to sign on to a private local community and send an anonymous e-Card to partners from a “concerned friend.”

“80% of senders choose to send their e-mails anonymously, and 80% of senders also choose to include a personal message,” said Levine. “The site has no backend database to collect information on sender e-mail addresses, recipient e-mail addresses, or personal messages.

Currently, most users of inSPOT are using dynamic IP addresses which cannot be traced back to their computers or computer networks. We also use CAPTCHA to discourage spammers and bots from sending out multiple cards.” The “Share it if You Like it” Approach Making traditional media sharable on the web is another approach. While this strategy WHY page 45

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Truncated RSS Is A Bad Business Decision Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:00:30 PM

A few years back, I wrote about why we had found full text RSS feeds to be much more powerful and useful than truncated RSS feeds. The reason that many sites push truncated feeds is the belief that it will force people to click through, and the ads on the webpage are worth a lot more than the ads found in RSS feeds.

But it's a short-sighted view.

Because what it's really doing is trying to push readers to do something that they don't want to do. Many of them use RSS readers because it's a more convenient way to organize and read the news they want. And, we found that by making life easier for our readers, we were able to get a lot more readers, and then that allowed us to put in place a better business model that didn't rely on trying to trick or force them to click through.

This is the same debate as the debate over ad blockers. It's a question of whether or not you respect your community and want to add value for them, or if you just view them as dollar signs and feel you need to force or guilt them into doing stuff they don't want.

The full text vs. partial text debate is flaring up again as Gawker Media has just shifted all its blogs to partial feed blogs.

From my standpoint, this makes it significantly less likely that I'll link to them, because I'm less likely to actually read through their posts to see if they're worthwhile. I'll stay subscribed, but whereas in the past I might read through an entire post before deciding it was worth writing about, now I'll only have a snippet to make that decision - and that makes it that much less likely that I'll find their posts worth linking to. And that seems like a mistake.

Matt McAllister from The Guardian responded to Felix Salmon's blog post (the one linked above), and noted that when The Guardian moved to full text RSS feeds they saw their web traffic go up significantly. Admittedly, there may be other factors involved here, but it's yet another data point in favor of being open and making it easier for your audience and your community to engage.

What I think both this and the whole ad blocking discussion come down to is a question of how different sites look at and treat their audiences. If they feel they need to take a shortterm view and "monetize" every interaction with them, or if they realize that there's a long-term value in building up a strong and loyal relationship. It's also quite similar to the constant

debates over the music industry -- where the music industry feels that it wants to get paid pennies every time you hear a song.

That's the short-term "we have to monetize every use" view, compared to the longer term view, which recognizes that free songs and building up a relationship between the fans and the musicians can lead to something much more lucrative that benefits everyone.

But the key point is made by Salmon in his blog post about this. Others like to accuse Salmon and myself of supporting things like full text RSS feeds, letting people use ad blockers and being against paywalls as "a sense of entitlement." Of course, since I'm on the publishing side of things, I don't see how that actually applies to me since I'm defending the rights of the community of readers over short -sited publisher decisions. But the real reason why we think these (well, for RSS and paywalls -- I don't know Salmon's view on ad blocking) things are important to understand is that taking the simplistic view of trying to maximize short-term monetization is a bad business decision in the long term: At heart, my argument for full RSS feeds is similar to my argument against a NYT paywall, and

neither argument has anything to do with a sense of entitlement on my part. Instead, both are simply bad business decisions.

If you truncate your RSS feeds, you'll get less traffic than you had with full feeds, and you'll alienate an important minority of your audience. And if you implement a paywall, the increase in subscription revenues will fail to offset the decrease in ad revenues, even as you'll alienate lots of your audience. So neither makes commercial sense. Exactly. All of these are decisions that don't take into account the bigger picture or understand the overall dynamic of a community. They assume that each transaction is a single impact: if this user doesn't "pay" a site now, it's "lost revenue." But it doesn't take into account that that user might "pay" in other means -via a comment or by passing it along to others. And what if that individual is influential and passes it on to a lot of people?

It blocking off that possibility because that individual doesn't "pay" by ad or paywall seems incredibly short sighted and quite disrespectful of a community.

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Have You Done your Taxes Yet? [Reader Poll] Lisa Hoover (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:00:00 PM

It's a little over a month until the taxman cometh. That's still plenty of time to do your taxes if you haven't yet, but we're curious: Have you filed your tax returns already? More Âť

E-Readers Will Survive the Onslaught of Tablets Priya Ganapati (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:50:00 PM

A slew of new tablets are set to hit the market but they won't kill e-readers. Tablets and E Inkbased reading devices are likely to co-exist, targeting different groups of consumers.

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iPad 101: iPad AppleCare pros & cons Erica Sadun (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:30:00 PM

Filed under: Apple, iPad Considering AppleCare for your iPad? I know that I am. For $99, AppleCare extends your iPad warranty coverage to two years from the date of purchase.

Although AppleCare tends to be expensive, for certain purchases it can really save you, especially for devices which run a higher risk of component failure over a lifetime of hard use -- such as laptops and other mobile tech.

Many Apple aficionados tend to avoid buying AppleCare for robust devices like the Mac mini series. Those units tend either to die right away or last forever.

They are highly self-serviceable for anyone who has a reasonable degree of comfort with a screwdriver.

The iPad and the iPhone, on the other hand, can feel like accidents waiting to happen.

Without a simple avenue for owner-repair, they are more of a black box purchase. And their components can and do die much more unexpectedly. In my history of purchasing iPhones and iPod touches, I have personally encountered video driver death and massive touchscreen failure.

To be fair, both of these incidents happened within a month or so of purchase, so keep that in mind as well. For

many devices, component failures tend to show themselves fairly soon. With a standard iPad purchase, you are covered for 90 days of phone support and a 1 year hardware warranty without any need for a further AppleCare payment, according to the Apple representative I talked to this morning.

What's more, if you want to wait, you can. Purchasing AppleCare extends standard iPad coverage to 2 years each of phone support and hardware

warranty. You can buy AppleCare up until the last day of your 1 year complimentary coverage, so there's not really a rush unless you need phone support during that time.

I know I'm completely out in speculation territory, but I kind of think that the component failure rate for these devices tends to be a bit higher than for desktop systems. I base this on several years of hanging around with other iPhone and iPod touch users and listening to their

TUAW colleague Mike Rose suggests AppleCare on any mobile device where paying the repair or replacement cost out of your own pocket would be more painful than you'd like. TUAW commenters also point out that buying your iPad with American Express automatically doubles your warranty coverage so you won't need to buy AppleCare at all ( or gives you 4 years of coverage with Applecare-TUAW reader TJ contacted Amex and a service rep stated that they only double original mfgrs warranty, not extended care.)

Apple tends to be one of the least obnoxious companies around when it comes to actually following-through on their extended warranties.

Anyone who has visited a genius bar with a sick Apple product will recognize that having a diagnostic and repair service in-store helps create an stories rather than on any atmosphere of getting devices consistent study. So I tend to err fixed without an argument. And on the "I know I'm kind of that's a very nice thing, indeed. getting ripped off buying this Admittedly, Apple has been a e x t e n d e d w a r r a n t y f r o m little rotten about it's various AppleCare but that's okay for moisture sensors (especially the ones near the microphone for my piece of mind" side.

AppleCare may be a big t h e i P h o n e - - w h e r e y o u additional price to grapple with naturally blow hot moist air when you're already coughing while talking) but you can up $499 or more for the device, always insist that repair persons but consider that this object is open devices to check the going to bounce around with interior moisture sensors as you most of the places you go, IPAD page 39 and take abuse accordingly.

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Use DynDNS for better success with Back To My Mac TJ Luoma (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

scads of DynDNS domain names available, but for the purposes of this example, let's Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:00:00 PM assume that your domain name Filed under: MobileMe is imac.homeip.net.

Many folks were excited when After you've signed up for your Apple announced Back to My free account and chosen a Mac as part of MobileMe. Being hostname, download and install able to remotely access your the DynDNS Updater for Mac Mac from anywhere sounded and install it on the machine you like magic. We're used to want to access via Back to My products from Apple that "just Mac. (If you want to do this for work" but for most people most more than one computer, you of the time, Back to My Mac will need a different DynDNS "just doesn't." hostname for each computer.

To maximize your chances, You can get up to five at no y o u ' r e s u p p o s e d t o u s e a cost.) supported router, but even that's Once you have it running, make no guarantee. At home I have an sure that it has updated, and then Airport Extreme Base Station switch to your other Mac. You (Wireless-N), and at the office I c o u l d l a u n c h S c r e e n have an Airport Extreme Dual- Sharing.app directly from Band model. I don't think it's /System/Library/CoreServices, p o s s i b l e t o g e t a " m o r e but a much better suggestion is compliant" setup, yet I still can't t o i n s t a l l t h e f r e e get it to work most of the time.

ScreenSharingMenulet which Under the adage "nothing will sit in your menu bar. ventured, nothing gained," I ScreenSharingMenulet will took a chance and signed up for remember hosts that you have a free account with DynDNS. p r e v i o u s l y c o n n e c t e d t o , DynDNS gives you a free meaning that you don't have to hostname which will go to your re-type the hostnames. Click on computer even when your IP the menu bar icon, select "New address changes. There are Connection..." and then enter

your DynDNS hostname (i.e. imac.homeip.net) and check the "Add to My Computers" box so it will appear in the My Computers sub-menu in the future. Click "Connect" and cross your fingers.

If it still doesn't work, I have a few more suggestions, but I warn you, we're going to get a little technical here. First, you're going to want to setup a DHCP Reservation for the computer you are trying to connect to. The process isn't very difficult.

Essentially what you are doing is telling the router to always assign the same IP address to the computer you are trying to access. After you have done that, tell the router to send all traffic directly to that computer.

On the Airport Express this is called the "Default Host" and is found on the Internet Tab under "NAT" but other routers have different names for it (I believe Linksys routers refer to this as the "DMZ" host. Check your router's documentation if you're not sure.)

Warning: once you do this you are bypassing your router's firewall. Mac OS X has a

firewall, but it is not enabled by default. Launch System Preferences and click on the Security panel followed by Firewall tab. If it doesn't say "Firewall: On" be sure to enable it.

If all else fails, you might want to try another direction: Back to My Mac through iChat. I haven't actually tried that, but it's another option.

I can't explain why using a DynDNS domain name works more reliably than the built-in Bonjour sharing/connecting method, but after days of unsuccessfully trying to connect to my work computer, I have been able to connect via DynDNS without fail. As my Dad taught me long ago, "A good strategy is that which works."

TUAW Use DynDNS for better success with Back To My Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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McLaren Cribs From Planes, Flutes to Build Faster F1 Cars Jason Paur (Wired Top Stories)

The MP4-25 offers an innovative solution to the ageold problem of maximizing

downforce in the curves and minimizing drag on the straights.

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IPAD continued from page 38

well.

Another thing about AppleCare is that it does make your earlyadopter iPad a lot more resellable via eBay. As TUAW commenters have pointed out, being able to state that your device has an extended warranty in place can help it stand out among other auctions and offer extra end-purchaser confidence.

So, bottom line? You will have a year or so to decide about AppleCare after purchasing your new iPad, but sometimes it's simply nice to know that a problem will be taken care of.

TUAW iPad 101: iPad AppleCare pros & cons originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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@ScrewYouSXSW vents at absent husband (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:40:00 PM

A hilarious Twitter feed purporting to be by a woman whose husband left her behind on their anniversary weekend as he went to SXSW is getting laughs all around Austin this week.(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET) AUSTIN, Texas--What's the phrase? "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?" Well, now there's a Twitter feed for finding out just what that woman's thinking.

During the day Friday at the South by Southwest (SXSWi) festival here, the word started spreading across Twitter about@ScrewYouSXSW, a feed that purports to be written by a wife left alone on a particularly special weekend by a husband seemingly more interested in the goings-on at this geek-heavy confab.

Identifying herself as a Californian who is "One pissedoff wife," her bio says it all: "My husband f***ed off to Austin on our anniversary weekend for South by Southwest. A**hole. Follow me to see what happens in his absence."

Indeed. Of course, as is often the case with oddball Twitter feeds like this, there's no way to know if the person writing it is actually for real. It could be someone at SXSW who thought

it would be funny to pretend to be the abandoned wife. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that this is for real.

It's hard, then, not to both feel sorry for our lonely lady and to laugh out loud at some of the things she's saying about her man.

For example, as you may have heard, a fire alarm went off at the Austin Convention Center a little after 5 p.m. CST (local) Friday, interrupting dozens of panels and talks and forcing everyone out of the building and onto the streets. On @ScrewYouSXSW, we have this ascerbic take: "New text from hubby: 'why aren't you answering my calls; alarm went off, we ditched for beers and dinner' Classy."

Or maybe this one: "New text from hubby: 'How much did the plumber cost? How much $?'

Yeah, I'm doing great. Thanks for asking d-bag." And the gems continue, one after another: "Has anyone seen an uneasy looking 36 yr old male in the 'Is technology weakening interpersonal relationships' panel?" Or, "My 500th follower can kick my husband in the Hurt Locker with my permission."

By now, that 500th follower is well in the past. As of this writing, @ScrewYouSXSW has 899 followers, a number that's sure to be well over 900 by the time this story goes live. Not bad for an account that was started just yesterday.

Indeed, in its general tone and sense of unironic humor, it

reminds me a lot of@s***tmydadsays, a Twitter feed that purports to be the oddball sayings of one gentleman's 74-year-old father and that currently has 1.22 million followers and development deal for a TV show.

And maybe that's just what the m i n d b e h i n d @ScrewYouSXSW is going for.

A friend, upon reading the feed, told me he quickly became convinced it was a clever fake, in part because of a little too much specificity in relation to events at home like plumbing emergencies, text messages about friends, and the like.

Either way, it's funny stuff. I want to believe it's true because I like the fact that there's a guy

dumb enough to fly off to Austin during his anniversary without his wife, and that he is getting properly and publicly excoriated for it.

Except, oh dear. I just remembered that in 2007, I hopped a 737 to Austin by myself to cover the behind-thescenes goings-on at the firstever Maker Faire here...on my five-year anniversary. Now I have to go and look back and see what was going on on Twitter that week.

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

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Williams Sonoma Nastygrams Blogger Who Helps People Build Their Own Furniture Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

trademark claims are ridiculous.

They say that by mentioning specific product names, she's B r a d H u b b a r d w r i t e s " I implying that "the website is r e g u l a r l y r e a d a b l o g somehow affiliated" with WSI. called"Knock Off Wood"-- a But, of course, any moron in a site where a woman teaches hurry knows that's not true. The readers how to build various whole site clearly states it's designer-looking pieces of a b o u t m a k i n g k n o c k - o f f furniture at home for a lot less. furniture. No one is going to go It's the best kind of "maker" site to this site and think it's actually - someone who is passionate affiliated with WSI, or any of about crafting, freely sharing the other brand name furniture their passion with a community companies. of readers and everyone learns a The copyright claim is equally little something. So when questionable. At issue is that Williams Sonoma, Inc (owner of she's using the copyrighted Pottery Barn and West Elm images of WSI's furniture as among others) sent them a legal part of the blog posts about how nastygram, the owner of the site to make that type of furniture. was entertained more than But that seems like it should be anything." a clear cut case of fair use. If The company is alleging both you run through the four factors t r a d e m a r k a n d c o p y r i g h t of fair use, it's hard to see how violations -- though it's difficult this is infringement: to see either one holding up. • the purpose and character of Unfortunately the woman who your use The question here is if runs the site decided it was t h e u s e i s s o m e h o w easier to just cave in, but that's transformative or being used to unfortunate.

D o i n g s o build something new. But one encourages more bullying. The of the questions usually asked in Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:59:00 PM

judging this factor is: "Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings?" It seems like an entire blog post around how to build that kind of furniture certainly qualifies. This one is in favor of fair use.

• the nature of the copyrighted work Well, they're photographs, but they were used in catalogs and such, not for sale. So that would seem to, again, lend to a fair use ruling. The orignal purpose of the photos was that they were to be seen widely.

• the amount and substantiality of the portion taken Indeed, it sounds like the "entire" photo was used, so you might be able to weigh this factor against fair use, but not necessarily. As we've seen in multiple lawsuits, even if you're using the entirety of the work, it can be considered fair use if the purpose is so completely different from the original -- which, in this case, is definitely true.

• the effect of the use upon the

potential market. Now, some might argue that the use here might harm the market for WSI furniture since it's teaching people how to build their own, but that shouldn't apply here.

The test is for the potential market of the copyrighted work.

That is, this factor should not take into account the impact on the market for the furniture itself, but just on the market for the photographs. And it's difficult to see any harm done here at all.

So going through all of that, it's difficult to see how this isn't a clear cut fair use case.

Unfortunately, as mentioned, the woman didn't want to fight the legal battle and agreed to just take down the images and mentions of WSI. However, she is amused that a housewife in Alaska has brought out the legal attack dogs of a giant retailer.

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This Week's Most Popular Posts [Highlights] Adam Pash (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:00:00 PM

This week we took a look at the best jobs in America, made the most from our point-and-shoot cameras, improvised an impressive laptop bag from a hoodie, and more. More »

Video: The craziest simulator in the world Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:00:06 PM

It’s Friday, and that means only one thing: stupid videos, and lots of them. So, allow me to oblige. This here is a video found on a Brazilian Web site showing “the craziest simulator in the world.” Quite.

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Checking in from Samana Bay, Dominican Republic, aboard the M/S Regatta Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

pop in at 9:30 AM local time and make my order... no, wait a second. At 8:30 AM, I was Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:00:00 PM going to be taking a ship's Filed under: iPad It seems that a tender over to shore. Dang. lot of Apple-related events We were scheduled for the happen while I'm on cruise proverbial "three hour tour" in s h i p s . B a c k i n 1 9 9 8 , f o r this beautiful tropical location, example, I was aboard a cruise so I decided to be patient and ship when I read the headline wait until I got back to the ship that Apple had decided to drop at about 11:30 AM local time. the Newton MessagePad. Before Of course, when we were on the we went on this trip, I knew that other side of the Samana Apple would start taking iPad peninsula at 12 PM local time pre-orders and reservations on and still hadn't left, I realized March 12, so I expected that I'd that I was going to really have to just be able to pull up the Apple put the order on hold for a website early in the morning, while. pop in my reservation, and then The weather started getting go on with my vacation. Little rough, the tiny ship was tossed... did I know that it was going to well, at least the tender going take me until 4 PM local time (3 back to the ship was getting PM ET) on March 12th to get bounced around pretty good. We my reservation into the system. finally headed back towards the Just before I went to sleep the ship when they announced that evening of March 11th, I saw a w e ' d h a v e t o g o t o C a y o p o s t h e r e o n T U A W t h a t Levantado, a small resort island outlined when the Apple Online in the midst of the bay, to Store would open for pre-orders transfer to a larger tender before and reservations. Doing a quick returning to the ship. time calculation in my head, I Eventually, at about 2 PM, we determined that I'd be able to were back aboard the ship and I

time.

How expensive? Can you say US$0.60 per minute? Of course you can! How slow? I think the 300-baud modem that I had with my original Commodore VIC20 was faster! The total reservation process, which would probably take about 5 w a s r e a d y t o r u n t o o u r minutes on my office Internet stateroom, fire up the MacBook connection, took about 45 A i r , a n d m a k e m y o r d e r . minutes to complete. Thank God However, "she who must be we had a bottle of wine to open obeyed" was starving (as was I), and drink while waiting....

Well, all is done and I've so we stopped at the ship's reserved a 64GB iPad for pickup poolside grill for a quick bite to on April 3rd. I'll also have some eat. Everyone else who had been great and funny memories of on a shore excursion was this day every time I turn on that thinking the same thing, so the iPad. line for a quick bite was moving TUAW Checking in from slowly.

S amana Bay, Dominican Finally, after talking with some Republic, aboard the M/S fellow passengers, having a Regatta originally appeared on beer, and finishing our lunch, The Unofficial Apple Weblog we made our way down to the (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 stateroom where I fired up the 19:00:00 EST. Please see our computer, hooked into the terms for use of feeds. horribly expensive and ridiculously slow shipboard Wi- Read| Permalink| Email this| Fi, and started the reservation Comments process at about 3:15 PM local

Hands-on with the Entourage eDGe dualbook Scott Merrill (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:00:51 PM

I received the Entourage eDGe review unit the other day, and

have been playing with it quite a bit. A full review is coming soon, but suffice to say that I like what I’ve seen so far. Here are a handful of photos to whet

your appetite for my forthcoming review!

Black Ninja Monday is When the Commenter Trolls Get Their Due [] Brian Lam (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:25:12 PM

Several star commenter have noted recently that the troll factor is rising again. This post is reminder that all comments wasting words and the comment moderator's time wondering about such issues as "why does gizmodo love/hate/get paid by company XYZ?" may result in zero warnings and then a ban.

And whatever happens to your comment account, remember: it's not my fault if you lose your account because you said something stupid. Black Ninja Monday is when the action goes down, so you've got two days to turn things around. The obvious choices: You can have fun in troll hell, or join the ranks of the thoughtful, starred, proud and clever commenters everyone appreciates. Again, Monday: that's when there'll be internet blood everywhere. But it won't be mine. More Âť

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Viral Video Producers Want To Charge You To Embed Their Videos Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

new licensing scheme for embedding its videos on websites, and the fees get pretty You may have seen some of the high pretty quickly. Digital r a t h e r p o p u l a r v i d e o s b y Inspiration notes that embedding Common Craft, which has built one of those videos on a popular a rather large following based website or blog could cost o n t h e s e v i d e o s a b o u t thousands, since the prices are technology and social media based on views. Lee LeFever, u s i n g p a p e r d i a g r a m s o n of Common Craft, responded in whiteboards. What the videos the comments that this was are really good at is simplifying targeted at companies, rather things in a way that's easy for than "bloggers." However, it's people to understand. For not clear if this means the example, the video, Twitter in videos will remain on YouTube Plain English has received -- in which case, companies can nearly 1.7 million views and is just embed them automatically often sent around to people who - or if they'll keep them off of are trying to understand Twitter. YouTube.

Like most viral video efforts, Either way, it's difficult to see t h e v i d e o s a r e h o s t e d o n this working out. I'm sure some YouTube, which makes them companies will pay, but on the easy to embed and share. whole, it seems to break the Except, apparently, that's not value chain here. Common working within Common Craft's Craft could, instead, offer up the business model. An anonymous ability to make custom videos reader sent over a story about for companies, but on its how the company has set up a website, it says that they'd rather Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:48:46 PM

just focus on their own videos -and points anyone who wants custom videos to a series of other video producers. The thing is, if you want your video to be viral, you can't also charge for it. There are three options that I can see, and none of them seem that good: • They leave the videos on YouTube as embeddable, and just hope that companies will pay them anyway. In this case, many companies would likely embed the videos anyway, not even realizing that CC wanted them to pay up. That leads to confusion and no legal basis for CC's request. After all, it put the video on a video sharing site and allowed embedding. That seems like a pretty clear authorization to embed the video.

• They leave the videos on YouTube, but not as embeddable, and make companies pay to embed As we

saw with the band Ok Go, when EMI disabled embedding for the band's videos, traffic plummeted 90%. You don't go viral if you don't allow embeds.

• They stop using YouTube altogether, and don't release the videos publicly themselves It's hard to be viral when the videos aren't anywhere online.

So with all of that, I'm still confused as to how this offering works. It seems like an attempt at the honor system to pretend that an abundant resource isn't abundant. Instead of doing that, why not focus on the scarcities - such as creating custom videos (as mentioned), consulting (scarce knowledge) or advertising/sponsorship (selling the scarcity of attention). It just seems like other models would make a lot more business sense.

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Turner's buzzer-beater lifts Buckeyes to win Associated Press (ESPN.com)

Top Performers Michigan: M. Harris 26 Pts, 6 Reb, 4 Ast, 1 Stl, 1 Blk

Ohio State: E. Turner 18 Pts, 3 Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Reb, 8 Ast, 1 Stl, 2 Blk PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Five Filters featured article: Term Extraction.

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Friday Night Funnies: 8 Images to Close Out the Week [Tgif] Lunchbreath (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:40:00 PM

It's been a long week and we could use a laugh. We've already started worrying about taxes and pre-ordering iPads, among other stresses. To sum it all up, here are some illustrations from a cartoon maestro called Lunchbreath.

More »

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Tech/ Sports/

E-reader News Edition

Possibly as many as 50,000 iPads pre Irony Alert: Hollywood Howard Berman To Introduce -ordered in first two hours 'Internet Freedom' Bill Chris Rawson (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:30:00 PM

Filed under: Retail, Apple Financial, iPad The early adopters are out in force today.

Based on analysis from Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog & the investors of the AAPL board on Investor Village, it seems that as many as 50,000 iPads were preordered in its first two hours of availability this morning. That's pretty staggering demand, especially considering that on a typical day Apple only receives an average of 15,000 online orders for all products combined.

Naturally, we have no way of knowing if these numbers are exact as of yet. The numbers reflect over 50,000 orders placed in two hours, and the percentage of those that are iPad orders isn't clear. Considering that the iPad was just made available for pre-order today, however, and the 15K daily average noted above, it's likely

the majority of orders placed this morning were indeed for the iPad. Additionally, the numbers only reflect the number of orders placed, not the number of units ordered; taken with the 2pad maximum for today's preorders, the data does suggest that somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 iPad pre-orders were placed within two hours of its availability.

This suggests a huge demand for the device, at least among early adopters. It will be very

interesting to see if this trend is repeated once the iPad is actually available in stores.

One interesting note: even if all 50,000 of those iPads were the $499 version (which is very unlikely), based on iSuppli's analysis of that unit's build cost, it means Apple gained nearly $13.5 million in revenue profit from the iPad alone in a mere two hours -- and that's the bare minimum. Once you factor in all the other models and their higher prices, the numbers climb by several million dollars. Even for a company with a market cap in excess of $205 billion, that's still pretty amazing performance. [h/t MacRumors] TUAW Possibly as many as 50,000 iPads pre-ordered in first two hours originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Video: Skiing Blind at the Olympics (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 3/12/2010 10:22:14 AM

Canada’s Brian McKeever was

the first winter athlete to qualify for both Olympics and Paralympics teams. WSJ’s Phred Dvorak caught up with

the cross-country skier during the Games in Vancouver.

Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

famously proposed letting companies hack into file sharing networks to break them a few Earlier this year we noted this years back. He's also been a was likely, but now it appears major proponent of turning ISPs that Rep. Howard Berman is into copyright cops, and (of getting ready to introduce an course) was actively involved in "Internet Freedom Bill," that the initial planning for ACTA. would limit how US companies He's also sought to limit the could operate in "internet- ability for people to access restricting countries." Now, p u b l i c l y f u n d e d r e s e a r c h , we've already pointed out that claiming that he didn't want the it's odd to see politicians "N" in NIH to "stand for pushing such bills when the US Napster." itself is pushing to restrict the Perhaps before passing internet in similar ways -- but legislation to try to punish other it's particularly ironic with countries for their internet Berman. In supporting this new restrictions, Berman should take legislation, Berman notes: He's a long hard look in the mirror, at trying to figure out "what's the his own long and detailed most effective thing we can do history of supporting internet to help people in countries restrictions in the US. where the government is" Separately, with the news seeking to restrict Internet coming out that New Zealand freedom. But, here's the thing. has just started rolling out its Howard Berman, who literally is own internet censoring system, the Representative for (part of) it will be interesting to see if Hollywood, has been a very, Berman's legislation includes very, very strong proponent of "friendly" countries like New restricting internet freedoms any Zealand and Australia that push chance he gets -- as long as internet censorship. those restrictions are part of Permalink| Comments| Email Hollywood's plan to prop up its This Story business model. Berman Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:28:00 PM

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WHY continued from page 36

doesn’t break much ground in terms of social media, it hinges on creating content compelling enough that people will want to share it on their own networks using a service like AddThis or ShareThis.

Consider the original and critically acclaimed PBS TV program The Education of Shelby Knox, which discusses abstinence versus sex education in the deep South. The website assumes you will want to sound off about the show positively or negatively (and thus sex education) on your own social networks using the ShareThis service, or even go so far as to plan an event in your neighborhood.

“In terms of using a video with

someone like Shelby, I do think it makes it much easier for people to discuss the issues because it’s not about ‘their kid’ — because no parent wants to believe their kid would be the one having sex in the school bathroom or whatever,” said Kivi Leroux Miller, president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com. “Making the conversation about Shelby and her friends allows people to share their opinions, fears, etc., while giving them some cover, since it’s not about them personally.”

Whether or not that cover translates into real social media discussion of sex education is another story. However, the site is still getting comments years

after the show’s original air date. More social media resources from Mashable: - 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology - How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement - HOW TO: Prepare for Disasters Using Social Media - How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data - The Science of Building Trust With Social Media Image courtesy of iStockphoto, LaurenSimmons Tags: education, facebook, List, Lists, non-profit, sex, sex ed, social good, teens, twitter

45

This Power Strip Has an Entire Miniature City On It [Art] Rosa Golijan (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/12/2010 10:00:00 PM

As part of a graduate show at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, students built miniature cities out of common household objects—including this power strip. They're just missing minipeople. [ Spoon Tamago via

Crib Candy via Boing Boing] More »

Privacy Concerns Put the Kibosh on the Netflix Prize Christina Warren (Mashable!)

users.

When the results were first Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:32:01 PM announced last summer, Netflix Amid class-action lawsuits over followed them up with an privacy and subsequent FTC announcement that a second inquiries, Netflix announced contest would take place. today that it will not be pursuing Unfortunately, the next iteration the next Netflix Prize. is not to be. A class action For more than three years, privacy lawsuit arose when a individuals competed to win the customer claimed that the rental $1 million Netflix Prize, in the information that Netflix makes p r o c e s s i m p r o v i n g t h e available for use in the contest c o m p a n y ’ s a l g o r i t h m f o r wasn’t anonymous enough and recommending movies to its could theoretically be linked to

history, something that does present certain privacy risks.

Netflix has settled the class action suit and the FTC inquiry, but the Netflix Prize is no more.

While we understand the potential privacy concerns and why this could be an issue, we’re sad to see the Netflix her and reveal her sexuality.

Prize go.

A s A r s T e c h n i c a n o t e s , Netflix said that it intends to researchers have often said that continue to look at how it can the external data source could be collaborate with the community linked to an individuals renting w h e n d e v e l o p i n g i t s

recommendation engine. Here’s an idea: Ask people if they are willing to opt into public research. Frankly, I’d be more than willing to do that in exchange for better and more a c c u r a t e m o v i e recommendations.

What do you think about the end of the Netflix Prize? Let us know!

Tags: netflix, netflix prize, privacy, recommendation engine

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The Rise of Foursquare in Numbers [STATS] Ben Parr (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:14:54 PM

Yesterday, Foursquare turned one. You read that right: The mobile social network that made its splash at SXSW 2009 and has tremendous buzz is just 366 days old.

Despite that short amount of time, Foursquare has more than half a million users, 1.4 million venues and 15.5 million checkins, and it’s still growing.

Experian Hitwise decided to use this milestone to analyze Foursquare’s growth.

As you might imagine, not only have Foursquare’s mobile apps seen growth, but so has

Foursquare.com. What did strike us as surprising is that the site’s number-one referrer is Facebook, which accounted for a whopping 33% of upstream visits last week. That’s even bigger than Google (22%) and Twitter(8%) combined. It’s yet another indicator of how much traffic the world’s largest social network can drive.

Searches for Foursquare have also been sharply rising, accounting for around 0.00032% of all U.S. searches.

Its most recent peak was February 20, about the time Please Rob Me was gaining the press’ attention.

With more than 15.5 million checkins and nearly 300,000 yesterday (many due to SXSW), Foursquare seems to have a bright future. However, competition from Gowalla, Yelp and Facebook in the local space could give the startup a run for its money this year.

Tags: foursquare, Mobile 2.0

Google, Facebook Sued Because Without Some Random Patent No One Would Ever Access A Social Network From A Mobile Phone Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

patent, no one would have ever figured out how to let people access a social network via a Wireless Ink was a company mobile phone? The patent itself that I remember getting some ( 7,599,983) was filed in 2004, buzz back in the 2005/2006 but was granted at the end of timeframe... and then they last year. Wireless Ink (also dropped completely off my known as Wink) is claiming that radar. Honestly, I had thought since the patent was filed in they had gone out of business. 2004, both companies must have So I was a bit surprised to see known about it, which seems them suddenly pop back up with l i k e a n o d d a r g u m e n t a patent (of course) and a considering how many patents lawsuit against both Google and were filed since 2004. Once F a c e b o o k , c l a i m i n g again, it's hard to see this infringement because both lawsuit as anything other than companies allow users to access an attempt to shakedown more social networking tools via a successful companies. mobile phone. Seriously. Does Permalink| Comments| Email anyone honestly (honestly, This Story really) think that without this Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:11:00 PM

Flickr Co-founder’s Startup Hunch Raises $10 Million

Lehman Brothers, the Next Enron?

Ben Parr (Mashable!)

Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture)

Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:23:55 PM

Hunch, a New York City-based startup founded by Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake and SiteAdvisor founder/angel investor Chris Dixon, has raised $10 million in funding for its questions and recommendations site.

Nearly a year ago, Ms. Fake revealed her new startup to the world. Her goal: to create a

service that would help people make decisions via crowdsourced questions and advice from its users. Hunch launched last June and has been growing steadily ever since (it peaked at nearly half a million U.S. visitors last month).

According to MediaMemo, the startup has raised $10-$12 million from Khosla Ventures and previous investors General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and original

and later Facebook.

It’s tough to bet against Hunch and its stellar leadership team.

Our tests of the service have always been a positive experience, although it’s tough to say just how much of a market exists for their service.

Hunch also has some valuable angel investor Ron Conway (an data that could be an asset into early investor in Google and the future.

PayPal). The lead investor Tags: business, funding, hunch, seems to have been Gideon Yu, venture capital the former CFO of YouTube

Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:34:45 PM

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47

Keyboard Cat: The Next Wheelie robot brings Generation [VIDEO] dinner on the double Brenna Ehrlich (Mashable!)

(CNET News.com)

Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:26:35 PM

Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:53:09 PM

For years now we have all found solace and joy in Charlie Schmidt’s “Keyboard Cat,” a musically inclined feline with Beethoven-sick skills and a mischievous mien. Now, a new kitty is on the scene: Bento. And believe you me, this Cat’s got synth-drenched magic coming out of his claws.

By now we all know the story of Keyboard Cat — a video born 30 years ago when an unemployed performance artist named Charlie Schmidt turned camera and creative eye to his cat, Fatso.

Years later, Schmidt uploaded the vid to the Internets and, lo and behold, people liked it.

Because, well, people enjoy cats — especially when they’re acting like people.

Now, with little fanfare, a new

video has been uploaded to Schmidt’s YouTube channel, the description of which reads: “REJOICE!!! The waiting is over. As predicted by Keyboard Cat Church…He is back!!!

Fatso is reincarnated as ‘Bento.’

He comes with Fatso’s approval, support, talent and spirit. It is truly time to celebrate!”

Check it out below. Minds will be blown. (And before you ask, commenters: Yes, it is a slow news day, but that doesn’t make this video any less awesome.) [via Peggy Wang at Buzzfeed] Tags: humor, keyboard-cat, music, viral video, youtube

stability while Wheelie is in standby mode.

Its purpose seems to be to help Visitors to the Toshiba Science out around the home by carrying Museum in Kawasaki, Japan, objects to and fro. Looks like it got a treat the other day when would make a good mobile beer the electronics giant showed off coaster, too. a new two-wheeled robot that Toshiba has produced a number can balance a plate of food on of household robots, including its head.

ApriPoko, ApriAlpha, and The bot seems to be called ApriAttenda, but unfortunately W h e e l i e , a n d i t ' s s t i l l has yet to commercialize them. I experimental. hope Wheelie isn't another Toshiba hasn't released any info tease. on it yet, but judging from the (Via Plastic Pals) video, it can self-balance like a Five Filters featured article: S e g w a y , t a c k l e a g e n t l e Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: gradient, and avoid obstacles. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, It can also squeeze into tight Term Extraction. spots. Two small retractable wheels pop out for added

By Your Accelerometers Combined, I Am Quake Catcher! [Earthquakes] Rosa Golijan (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:20:00 PM

What if computers could be turned into a worldwide earthquake detecting network?

With the Quake Catcher software and your laptop's builtin accelerometer, that might just be possible. More »

Nokia C6 is actually a 5230-ish landscape slider?

Chris Ziegler (Engadget) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:38:00 PM

We hate to turn your entire world -- nay, your very belief system-- on its end, but it's at least conceivable here that the so-called Nokia Mystic with the portrait QWERTY keyboard may not be the upcoming C6

after all. Instead, Tom's Guide is submitting this bright white exhibit as the device lucky enough to wear the C6 name, a phone that looks a whole hell of a lot like a 5230 with a QWERTY slider tacked on for good measure. That would make sense considering Nokia's goal C s e r i e s i n t o a m i d r a n g e , of turning the freshly-introduced consumer-friendly brand; this

phone could easily slot in below the N97 Mini, for example, particularly in light of rumors that the phone will lack the N97's beefy internal storage.

Word is the C6 is pegged for a European release by Summer, so start cleaning off those 5800s and 5230s for eBay right now, why don't you?

Nokia C6 is actually a 5230-ish landscape slider? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toward a New Alexandria Lisbet Rausing (The New Republic - All Feed)

80 percent turn first to Google.

It is clear that if a new Alexandria is to be built, it Submitted at 3/11/2010 9:00:00 PM needs to be built for the long Imagine a new Library of term, with an unwavering Alexandria. Imagine an archive c o m m i t m e n t t o a r c h i v a l that contains all the natural and preservation and the public social sciences of the West—our good. A true public good itself, source-critical, referenced, peer- it probably needs to be largely reviewed data—as well as the governmentally funded. And, cultural and literary heritage of while a global and cooperative the world's civilizations, and venture, it needs to be hosted by many of the world’s most o n e o r g a n i s a t i o n t h a t i s significant archives and reputable, long-standing, specialist collections. Imagine nonprofit, and exists in a stable that this library is electronic and jurisdiction. The Library of in the public domain: Congress, the flagship sustainable, stable, linked, and institution of the world’s only searchable through universal s u r v i v i n g E n l i g h t e n m e n t semantic catalogue standards. republic, comes to mind. There Imagine that it has open source- might be other possibilities, ware, allowing legacy digital such as the New York Public resources and new digital Library, or the British Library, knowledge to be integrated in or a consortium of the world’s real time. Imagine that its l e a d i n g university S e c o n d W e b c a p a b i l i t i e s libraries—UCLA, Harvard, allowed universal researches of Cambridge University, and so the bibliome. on.

Well, why not imagine this In other words, the question for library? Realizing such a dream scholars and gatekeepers is not is no longer a question of whether change is coming. It is t e c h n o l o g y . R e m a r k a b l e whether they will be among the electronic libraries are already change-makers. And if not being assembled. Google Books them, then who? Who else will aims to catalogue about 16 ensure long-term conservation million books. The nonprofit and search abilities that are Internet Archive already has compatible across the bibliome some 1 million volumes. Public and over time? Who else will expectations run ahead even of ensure equality of access? these efforts. To do research, U l t i m a t e l y , t h i s i s n o t a only one in a hundred American c h a l l e n g e o f t e c h n o l o g y , college students turn first to finances, or ultimately even their university catalogue. Over laws, difficult though they are. It

is a challenge of will and imagination.

Answering that challenge will require some soul-searching: Do we have the generosity to collaborate? Can we build legal, organizational, and financial structures that will preserve and order—but also share and disseminate the learning of the world? Scholars have traditionally gated and protected knowledge, yet also shared and distributed it in libraries, schools, and universities. We have stood for a republic of learning that is wider than the ivory tower, and now is the time to do so again. We must stand up, as the Swedes say, for folkbildningsidealet, that profoundly democratic vision of universal learning and education.

We must first understand that the nature of the library is changing. Traditionally, libraries have been conceived as protective vessels in a world where information is scarce. Our iconic library stories are romances of destruction, decay, and amnesia. We tell tales of time, fire, and barbarians, and of heroic rescues of fragments of lost and esoteric knowledges.

We still mourn Alexandria. We revere St. Catherine’s Monastery, the Vatican archives, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. We grieve over the Christians closing the academy of Athens, and we listen in

horror to the tales of the fall of Constantinople, where in desperation the last Grecian scholars lit the cannons with their manuscripts. Who among us has not lamented, with Aeneas Silvius (Pius II), that Homer and Plato have now “died a second death”?

Boethius, the monks of Iona, the fleeing Byzantine humanists-these are our heroes and role models.

In other words, throughout history, libraries have depended on destruction. And today, in an era of electronic abundance, they still operate within an increasingly imaginary economy of scarcity—fragments, incunabula, manuscripts, rare books. They act as storehouses of pricey collectors’ items, painstakingly recorded sets of symbols, crafted sometimes by hand, sometimes in block print, and sometimes in movable type.

Only very recently (remember the last printers’ strike in Britain) were any of these conjured up from the bowels of computers. Once, books were chained to the wall. Today, print is an afterthought: “Do you want a receipt with that?”

In today’s era of electronic abundance, how can libraries archive the dreams and experiences of humankind?

What do we discard? And if a library can no longer be understood as a warehouse of treasures, a primitively

accumulated Schatzkammer, what is it?

One way to understand this dilemma is to consider the choices faced by organizations such as the Harvard Library, the world’s largest university library, as it digitizes its material. Its some 16 million volumes rival those planned for Google Books. One took nearly 400 years to achieve. The other, less than a decade. Harvard's institutional culture dates back to 1638, and as late as the midnineteenth century, it was a stated duty of its Overseers to count its volumes. In those days, Harvard’s books were threatened by fire and water (as London’s booksellers’ wares crossed the Atlantic on clippers and schooners). Yet today, our sailing--or counting--skills mean little.

Like all good research libraries, Harvard's is hierarchically organized. The core / reference section, with bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, library catalogues, and so on, is rapidly dematerializing, as it moves into “the cloud.” So is much of the record of scholarship, especially in the natural sciences, and at least some of the record of the human experience.

But what about gray data, such as laboratory notebooks, lectures, conference TOWARD page 50

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49

Nuclear Standoff Andrew Rice (The New Republic - All Feed)

midst of building or planning hundreds of plants. All of them needed uranium. Berman was Submitted at 3/11/2010 9:00:00 PM working for a company called As is often the case with tales Marline Uranium and a boss of great discovery, the details of named Al Swanson, who was how buried treasure came to be h i m s e l f s o m e t h i n g o f a found beneath the rolling prospecting legend. Swanson countryside of Pittsylvania had discovered a rich uranium County, Virginia, have grown a strike in his home country of little gauzy over the last 30 Canada, and he thought he saw years. But here is the story as some geological similarities to the prospectors tell it. One day, that deposit along America’s in March 1979, a man named eastern seaboard. Specifically, Byrd Berman, a geologist by he was intrigued by a vast training, was driving down a network of depressions known road through cattle pastures a s t h e T r i a s s i c B a s i n s , when the scintillometer sitting formations created around 200 on the dashboard of his Hertz million years ago by the tectonic rental car began to beep. The processes that split North device, similar to a Geiger America from Africa, opening counter, was designed to detect up the Atlantic Ocean. Swanson the gamma radiation naturally dispatched men to canvass the emitted by uranium. As he basins from North Carolina to watched the needle on the New Jersey, but, for a long time, scintillometer dance, Berman nothing panned out--until Byrd was certain he’d hit something Berman happened to drive past huge, fissile, and extraordinarily the right farm. valuable.

Returning to the company’s Uranium, as everyone knows, is office, Berman knew he’d hit a used to make the fuel for memorable strike. “I came in nuclear reactors, and, at the and I said there was no question time, it was in huge demand. in my mind that we had fifty Nuclear power was considered m i l l i o n p o u n d s , ” B e r m a n to be the energy source of the recalled recently. “I was kind of future, and America was in the conservative.” The next day, he

returned to the same place with another Marline geologist, Henry Singletary. When they got to the right spot, the prospectors pulled over. “Him being senior man on the thing, it was me that had to get down in the muddy ditch and dig the sample,” Singletary says. He took a hammer and knocked loose a few pieces of rock, which gave an off-the-charts reading for radioactivity. Later, the samples were found to contain four to five times as much uranium as is typically found in commercial mines.

And it was right there at the surface, meaning the ore would be fairly simple to extract.

“I said, ‘Well, here’s the biggest find in a long time of uranium,’” Berman recalls. That night, he went back to his hotel room savoring his luck. “I turned on the television and what were they talking about? They were talking about a strange place called Three Mile Island.” That very day, as Berman remembers it, there had been an accident at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

(The coincidental timing may sound like a tall tale, but Singletary’s memory was similar: He thinks their

discovery occurred the same week as Three Mile Island, though maybe not the same day.) While there were no deaths as a result of the partial meltdown, a significant amount of radioactive gas escaped into the atmosphere. The accident-combined with the release of a reactor disaster movie, The China Syndrome, around the same time--would transform the way Americans regarded nuclear power. “So I was elated in the morning,” Berman says, “and, by night, it fell apart.”

What Berman and Singletary had found is today thought to be one of the ten richest uranium deposits in the world-containing up to 120 million pounds. But, while Marline did a lot of exploratory drilling in the area, the company never got to dig it up. Amid the antinuclear backlash that followed Three Mile Island, Virginians rose up in protest against Marline’s mining plans. Actress Sissy Spacek, recently transplanted to a farm outside Charlottesville, visited the state capitol to tell starstruck legislators about alleged connections between uranium and cancer, and Governor

The Week We Meat-Gazed [Week In Review] Pareene (Gawker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:35:00 PM

We began the week with Oscar fever, and we ended it in a big ol' tickle fight with salty sailors

babies. More » and substance-abusing slut

Charles Robb signed a moratorium on mining uranium, which was meant to give the state government time to impose regulations. Instead, while a task force deliberated, market forces finished the work environmentalists had begun.

U.S. utilities pulled the plug on roughly 100 planned nuclear plants, partly due to safety issues, but also because reactors already under construction were going way over budget. In 1984, the state uranium task force issued a qualified endorsement of mining, concluding it could be done with stringent safeguards. But Marline had run into financing problems and abandoned the project. The moratorium stayed in place.

Meanwhile, the nuclear power industry went into a long period of somnolence, and nearly all of America’s uranium mines closed down. Berman and Singletary’s discovery was left in the ground--though it was never quite forgotten.

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A Closer Look at the 'Climategate' Computer Code (Little Green Footballs)

“not being honest with the reader” and even invoked a comparison to falsified An excellent post at Deep experimental medical research.

Climate looks into the S t e p h e n M c I n t y r e o f exaggerated and false claims ClimateAudit recently claimed being made about the computer that the “artificial correction” code released along with those seemed “to have entered the stolen “Climategate” emails: CRU toolkit” (in his submission McClimategate continues: Yet to the U.K. parliamentary another false accusation from c o m m i t t e e e x a m i n i n g McIntyre and McKitrick. allegations arising from stolen How do they get away with it? CRU emails, no less).

That’s the inevitable question as Yet a close examination of the I examine one of the most computer code and ensuing specious – and despicable – research bears out the key “climategate” allegations from contention of the firm rebuttals contrarians, namely the oft- from East Anglia University, as repeated claim that climate well as CRU scientist Tim s c i e n t i s t s a t E a s t A n g l i a Osborn, namely that the specific University’s Climate Research adjustments in question were for Unit inappropriately adjusted private exploration only and certain tree-ring temperature never incorporated into CRU proxy data to provide a better scientists’ subsequent published m a t c h w i t h i n s t r u m e n t a l temperature reconstructions. So, temperature record. once again, McIntyre and In an extraordinary interview McKitrick have made odious with FoxNews in December of and unfounded accusations, last year, economist Ross based on non-existent evidence.

McKitrick alleged that scientists They should withdraw these were “faking the match” s p e c i o u s a l l e g a t i o n s between proxy and temperature immediately. [Don’t hold your data. McKitrick averred this was breath. --ed.]

Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:37:04 PM

And here’s a quote from the submission to the UK Parliament by CRU paleoclimatologist Tim Osborn, that makes the deceptive nature of the claims about the computer code even clearer: 8. CRU’s Computer Code is Fit For Purpose and Does Not Reveal Secret Manipulation of Data A small sample of my computer programming code was included in the disclosed files. It has been argued that comments within the code such as “Fudge factor” and “shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures” demonstrate that data have been manipulated in an inappropriate and undisclosed manner. My programs that were highlighted on BBC Newsnight that contained comments such as these were not the basis for any published article or dataset, and thus are not a valid indication of inappropriate data manipulation.

If we do need to make adjustments to data that are scientifically justified, then we

state clearly both the justification and the adjustment when we publish the article or dataset. In relation to the second of the two highlighted comments, it was simply a note that should have read “…because these will have been artificially adjusted…” to remind myself that I had applied an adjustment to this particular set of data (for the purposes of exploring the consequences of recent trends for the calibration of tree-ring temperature proxies) and that if I did plot them it would give a false impression of the agreement between treerings and temperature because of the adjustment. Thus, rather than indicating that an undisclosed adjustment would be made, it was a warning to avoid using adjusted data without realising it. To reiterate: I have made no adjustments to data except those that are scientifically justified and stated in published papers.[Emphasis added].

R/C Helicopters + Petri Dish + Flying Whale Snot = Science [Machines Vs Nature] Brian Lam (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:39:57 PM

Instead of harpooning a whale for samples, wouldn't it be easier to just collect their snot using an R/C helicopter? More »

TOWARD continued from page 48

proceedings, dissertations, data sets, courseworks? Is it not the task of libraries to preserve the processes as much as the products of knowledge? How else can we test it? Or indeed comprehend it historically? The papers of Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Bohr can be (and indeed are being) produced in toto. But what about “big TOWARD page 51

Street Chic: Paris Fashion Week ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:00:00 PM

Metallic ankle boots and a luxe

fur add a double dose of style to winter knits.

Photo: Anne Ziegler Click here for our complete fall

2010 Fashion Week coverage

Think you are Street Chic? Email us your photo and you could appear in ELLE.com's Street Chic Daily.

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Politics/ TV/

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science”? The ATLAS detector of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN--that 27-kilometer underground circular tunnel used to search for the Higgs boson--takes 90 million measurements 600 million times a second, and these are analyzed by some 6,000 high energy physicists. Worldwide, stored scientific data is approaching a petabyte and doubles every year.

Even artisanal lab skills, once handed down by lore and practice, are now recorded on wikis. What is to be preserved?

By whom? For how long? How do we process, calibrate, reorganize, analyze, and store our data? What do we do when our software, let alone our brains, cannot keep up? What do we do when bits degrade,

software and hardware go extinct, and cyberspace turns out to be a decaying maze?

Scholars rightly argue that we cannot meaningfully analyze our peer-reviewed knowledge without also archiving its primary sources. But today’s knowledge quest is universal: Our primary sources encompass all the knowledge, hopes, and dreams of humanity. Our Alexandria was not burnt, our Byzantium still stands, and our Athenian academies are blossoming. And in addition to the near-infinitude of our scholarly endeavours and their materials, we want to preserve that which we have not yet incorporated into our learned canons: the near-extinct and the barely remembered, the oral

traditions and the dying languages, the esoteric and the sacred—the reviled, even—and the persecuted. We want the Nazi state papers and the Lodz ghetto archives, the Soviet encyclopedias and the samizdat literature, the Maimonides commentaries and the Genizah fragments, the Ethiopians' church songs and their memories of the recent famines.

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

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Listen All of Y'all, This is 'Battlestar Galactica' Danny Gallagher (TV Squad)

Some crazed genius media nut out there has combined the shoot-em-up goodness M a s h - u p s a r e a l w a y s a n of'Battlestar Galactica' with the invitation to a good time, but shoot-em-up goodness of the this one is particular fun because Beastie Boys' "Sabotage." i t a c t u a l l y m a t c h e s i t s [via Neatorama] counterpart particularly well.

Filed under: Battlestar They either have a surgically Galactica, Video, Reality-Free implanted eagle's eyes or more Permalink| Email this| | time on their hands than Father C o m m e n t s Time.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:02:00 PM

Poll: 29 Percent of Likely GOP Primary Voters Favor Crist (Newsmax - Politics)

them disapproving of him. He’s still decently popular with party moderates at a 46/41approval Raleigh, N.C. – Republican s p r e a d , b u t w i t h t h e voters have really soured on conservatives who make up Charlie Crist, and it appears he most of its voters he’s at a will have an exceptionally negative 20/64. difficult time getting elected to Crist now trails Marco Rubio the US Senate this year, 60-28. Rubio is viewed according to the latest poll by favorably by 49% of primary Public Policy Polling. voters and negatively by 23%.

Crist’s approval rating with He trails Crist 49-36 with likely Republican primary moderates but has a staggering voters is only 29%, with 56% of 71-17 lead with conservatives.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:54:01 AM

It appears to be too late for Crist to change his mind about the Senate and just run for reelection either. 49% of voters say they would choose Bill McCollum in the primary if Crist decided to make another Gubernatorial race compared to only 35% who say they’d support the incumbent.

56% of GOP voters say they would like to see Crist out of public office a year from now, compared to 19% who would

like to see him still as Governor and 14% who want him to be elected to the Senate.

“It’s been an amazing fall for Charlie Crist,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “At this point it doesn’t look like he could win a Republican primary for Dog Catcher.”

PPP surveyed 492 likely Republican primary voters from March 5th to 8th. The survey’s margin of error is +/-4.4%.

Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify. © All Rights Reserved.

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

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Tech News/

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What Google Will Do in China (SXSW Presentation) Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb)

loss than having censored results.

At first Google had a notice on Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:55:55 PM their search results stating that Kaiser Kuo presented today at they were censored. Kuo also SXSW about Google in China. pointed out that Google only He spoke about how the Google omitted results that users situation will impact Chinese wouldn't have been able to view Internet users, other companies a n y w a y h a d t h e y c l i c k e d and the Chinese government. through (because the pages or In the presentation, Kuo (who sites were blocked). At that also spoke to ReadWriteWeb a point, Google didn't host Gmail, w e e k a g o ) c l a r i f i e d h o w personal search history, Blogger censorship in China works. or other services that had Contrary to popular belief, it is personal information. Google in not the Great Firewall that has China also protected their the most impact in China - but employees, Kuo noted. something China calls "self- Google never had an easy time discipline." Kuo also discussed of it in China. For example, what the next moves will be many Chinese users couldn't from Google, since he believes s p e l l t h e w o r d " G o o g l e . " that the ball is in Google's court Regulators made it difficult for and Beijing won't push the them, as did their Chinese situation. competitors. Google did manage Sponsor to make good revenues and History of Google in China market share, but never "moved Before getting down to the nitty the needle" against its Chinese gritty of the current Google- search competitor Baidu. Kuo China standoff, Kaiser Kuo gave remarked that Google was not s o m e v a l u a b l e c o n t e x t t o singled out for any special Google in China. treatment by the Chinese In 2005 Google started to hire g o v e r n m e n t . aggressively in China, he said. In 2009 Google got into trouble Google's decision to enter China due to pornography in its search w i t h a c e n s o r e d p r o d u c t results, and it went dark for a immediately brought grief to short time as a result.

Google, with some pundits There has been a massive describing it as a "black day for growth in Internet users in Internet freedom." Google China in the four years since defended its actions at that point Google entered that market. by saying that not providing There were 2-3 million Internet search to a fifth of the world's users in China when Google population would be a greater began operations there; now

blocked any further Google services since January.

Currently Google is still hiring in China and is in the midst of negotiations with the Chinese government. Kuo believes there is deliberate confusion right now."It's impossible to grasp there are 384 million Internet what Google is up against users in China. Google has without having a better grasp of around 35% market share in h o w c e n s o r s h i p i n C h i n a China, which has not been works." The Great Firewall matched by any other Western There are two main types of company. Its annual revenues in Internet censorship in China, China is around $300-400 said Kuo. million in revenue, which is The first is The Great Firewall nothing to sneeze at. of China, which has been nickIn mid-December 2009 there named "Iron Curtain 2.0." It's a was a hacker attack on Google, system of filters at domain name which in January Google o r p a g e l e v e l . T w i t t e r , claimed on its blog came from Facebook, YouTube, Blogger China. At that time Google also and other western sites have a n n o u n c e d i t w o u l d s t o p been blocked at this level. Kuo censoring search results on said that it's fairly simple for google.cn. Kuo doesn't believe Chinese Internet users to "hop t h i s a n n o u n c e m e n t w a s a the firewall " using proxy cynical retreat from China due services, free VPNs. to its being defeated by Chinese So The Great Firewall is more c o m p e t i t o r s , w h i c h m a n y of an inconvenience. Kuo pays pundits suggested at the time. for a VPN that allows him to Kuo said that the challenge to access Western websites. SelfGoogle's business model is Discipline around trust, for personal data in The second form of censorship the cloud. So Google's blog post i s " m o r e p e r n i c i o u s a n d in China was appropriate, Kuo effective," according to Kuo. It believes. is carried out by Internet Some people have suggested companies, on instructions from that the Chinese government C h i n e s e g o v e r n m e n t . A l l used the strategy known in Internet sites in China have to China as "Using Quiescience to practice what is termed "selfcontrol action." The government discipline." has however unblocked Google Failing to adhere to this form of Docs and Groups, and has not censorship means having your

website or service shut down.

There are some 30,000 "Internet police." Two cartoon avatars are wont to show up if a Chinese user visits pages with content offensive to the Chinese government.

Most Internet users in China don't come across the Great Firewall, because most Chinese Internet users don't use Western services like Twitter and Facebook. But, Kuo said, "Google is different." It has become "a real part of the Internet culture in China."

Kuo then talked about how Chinese censorship nowadays is almost all social media sites, such as social networks and microblogging sites. How Chinese Netizens Use The Internet Kuo mentioned that the Chinese Internet is more "entertainment superhighway" than "information superhighway."

Online gaming is big in China.

Most Chinese Internet users, Kuo said, enjoy the Internet that they have - rather than worry about the one that Western pundits think they should have.

The Internet has also emerged as a de-facto public sphere in China. As long as you don't overstep certain boundaries (political activism and so forth), then the "will of the masses" is often expressed on the Internet through the likes of bulletin WHAT page 56

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53

Will Google's Cloud be a Cozy Nest for Aviary?

Mike Kirkwood (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:20:00 PM

Aviary, the online creative platform is a visionary tool.

When it launched a few years back, the irony of a Flash based Photoshop competitor was, well, ironic.

With the launch of Aviary in Google's App Marketplace, we can say that the company is close to making lightening strike twice, this time around creating a home for the creative professional and their most important assets.

We want this to work - so we ran it through the paces. Here we got a front-line view on where cloud app meets cloud.

We looked forward to counting the pixels that get wasted in the process.

Sponsor Aviary and Google will disrupt Microsoft (the default filesystem for the world), and along side it Apple and Abobe, with this simple joining of services that allows users to create, share, publish and present with a simple Web based client and "always available" files.

It feels like the tide has changed and soon it will be hard to imagine an app not defaulting to file storage in the cloud. In a world of cloud-hosted apps, writing to a PC filesystem just seems wrong and goes against the grain of a mobile workforce.

The creative professional's cloud is going to be in vivid color and available from the local coffee shop.

As a clear sign of preparation for these applications, Google Docs recently started accepting files of any type.

If you're a user, you'll likely see this headline at the top of your account, like we do.

Google Supports a Virtual File System for Business Documents For images, this is useful for people who use Google's presentation software. Today, all of your other files are online.

Now you can have your images close at hand, so it's easy to use all files whene you need them, as shown here in this piece by Aviary and Google.

In this Google Docs upload feature demonstration, we see that Google interprets certain filetypes and offers a way to convert into a native Google file format upon uploading. When this happens with an Officebased document, for example an .docx file, Google will process it as needed to be usable in the Google Docs document editor.

Aviary is part of Google Apps Marketplace and part of the Google Docs application.

Coming from the Aviary side of the world, we see this as a natural extension to the work the company has done in joining accounts with Flickr, Facebook, and others.

Images need editing. And to be shared many

times over. Aviary makes it easy to get started with Google using a third-party login capability to join accounts with Google.

When this sharing hits productivity apps like presentations., that's where we start to see an interesting landscape emerging. Google is playing the role as a peer (e.g. share images with multiple editors) and also is moving towards the "cloud of choice" for consumer document management.

Below is a Google Appspowered Google Docs listing after Aviary has been installed.

Aviary is now available as an editor, a library has been created for Aviary documents, and when saving a document in a properly configured Aviary-Google account, a list of Aviary docs will show up in the main listing.

A page opens with a view of the image and the option open the image in Aviary.

Our ninja file is edited and saved...

Mime Type 2.0 In practice, all of this marketplace integration is harder than it might first look.

This is a a few of the features and or landscape issues that

make this experience "not quite" the same as saving a file from Photoshop to Windows.

• Multiple entry points can be confusing to newcomers. We found that by going to Aviary.com and launching versus launching from Google docs that there were subtle features and connections that worked differently (in my account, it offered different views of the total image library).

Also, which repository was setup as the default. In a way, both models need to be supported, but even subtle differences can make the overall solution more error-prone.

• What are the the default for saving new file>. We notice this especially when moving files from Google and expecting to see them in Aviary. Like setting up a specific application to open for certain files, in the case that there are dual masters (or apps), this becomes much more difficult to edit on. We would like (at least) Google to recognize more about the file post-Aviary and launch it when I bring in new images (or at least offer to). This begs the interesting question of whether a person's files should have a default home.

• On the reverse side, "Save As" to your Google Docs from Aviary may need fine tuning.

This is a software and workflow challenge that didn't exist when there was an implied "master" of

all the files. We see this challenge existing also with the desktop experiences and how the apps react to changes from these repositories. In a way, if Google Apps was master for all the docs, it would move the experience forward. But, Windows, Photoshop, and even Aviary, may feel different.

• Does the likelihood of failure increase due to interdependencies as well as other factors that make the services less predictable? After a brief error or two in getting Aviary to Save to Google rather than Save to Aviary, a few things of note. 1: Helping the user know what is happening is going to be important, especially if two (or more) ways are supported. 2: This needs to be as easy as finding "My Documents" on the PC, or adoption will suffer.

This is Aviary in "Google mode" and trying to save the document to Google Docs account, but not completing the job. ( We're not saying it doesn't work, just that it doesn't work sometimes.)

Creative professionals may not use Aviary as their default tool... yet. And Google Docs may not be as fast or be as reliable as a PC. But for those of us who do light image edits and are Google Doc users, this is a major leap WILL page 54

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WILL

Chevrolet Blends Mobile and Desktop Augmented Reality at SXSW

continued from page 53

forward.

We see this as an unlocking of the desktop (both machine and software) and love the promise Chris Cameron Using AR to promote vehicles automotive industry.

(ReadWriteWeb) with 3D models is nothing new, "Imagine using Quick Response of creating anywhere, storing but this is one of the first Codes to download the price and anywhere, getting paid.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:00:00 PM versions to reach consumers on options for a vehicle on a dealer As this starts to work, it's clear Everyone has been talking their phones. The automotive lot right to your cell phone. Or, that Google, Aviary, and cloud about how this year's SXSW industry has been one of the imagine using augmented reality applications will continue to will be the "year of location" as leading areas pushing desktop to virtually preview different encroach in the workflow of Foursquare and Austin-based webcam-based AR experiences colors of the Camaro in your things to come.

Gowalla go head-to-head in a that have allowed users to own driveway," Barger says. Where's your limit to what you location-based battle royale. interact with 3D models of cars "We are just scratching the do with Aviary and Google Location, however, is not the from their homes. This new AR advertisements. surface of what's possible with Apps in a Google Cloud? only emerging technology that promotion from Chevy is unique Augmented reality isn't the only mobile technologies and social Discuss will be on display in Austin; in that it allows customers to emerging technology Chevrolet media applications."

American auto maker Chevrolet have the same experience on is experimenting with at SXSW; Chevrolet is also teaming up announced it will be debuting their iPhones. quick response (QR) codes, w i t h G o w a l l a t o p r o v i d e n e w a u g m e n t e d r e a l i t y According to the App Store, which are like a technological location-based advertisements to promotions at SXSW this year. A R i P h o n e a p p l i c a t i o n cousin of AR, are a large part of people checking in at SXSW. Sponsor d e v e l o p e r a c r o s s a i r h a s the company's promotions as One promotion they are offering F e s t i v a l a t t e n d e e s c a n produced the application for w e l l . W h e n i n v e s t i g a t i n g is a shuttle ride from the airport download the Chevy iReveal Chevrolet. The interesting thing Chevrolet's latest cars, users can in one of their new cars to select application on the iPhone which about this experience is the way photograph QR codes placed users that check in at the airport, will allow them to participate in it blends the dichotomous strategically on the cars to learn so don't forget to fire up a scavenger hunt-like game that features of mobile and webcam- more about specific parts of the Gowalla when you land in blends augmented reality with based AR. The 3D model car. A QR code placed on the Austin. For more information location-based functions. A map manipulation we are used to hood, for example, will launch about mobile and desktop AR in the application shows the seeing on the desktop is wisely information about the car's advertising, be sure to check out location of Chevy vehicle mixed with the location-based engine. Christopher Barger, our report on the subject coming promotions around Austin map info seen in most mobile D i r e c t o r o f G l o b a l soon! Discuss where users can "unlock" the AR applications. By taking the C o m m u n i c a t i o n s a n d ability to view 360-degree 3D best of both worlds, acrossair Technology for General Motors, models of the cars in an AR and Chevrolet have opened the is excited about the future of QR view using the phone's camera. door to a new breed of mobile c o d e s a n d A R f o r t h e

Former John Edwards Aide Not Going to Jail for Contempt (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:51:00 PM

A judge ruled Friday that John Edwards' former aide, Andrew

Young, was not in contempt of court for his explanation of how he'd handled certain items -including an alleged Edwards sex tape -- sought by the ex-

senator’s former mistress Rielle Hunter, says the Associated Press.

On Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Abraham Penn Jones had

expressed interest in jailing Young and his wife Cheri for up to 75 days by holding them in contempt.

Hunter has sued Young for

invasion of privacy, says the AP.

Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

OneLogin: Enterprise-Class Security Services and OpenID For The Small and Medium Sized Business Alex Williams (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:53:27 PM

We're seeing a lot more discussion on the topic of single -sign on for SaaS environments.

The issue is becoming more important as security emerges as a top concern for companies considering making the move to cloud-based environments.

OneLogin is a new company that offers single sign-on, cloudbased service that allows for small and mid-sized companies to enjoy the same level of security as large enterprise companies.

Sponsor Most small companies do not deploy security methods that employ SAML, (Security Assertion Markup Language) an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. It's expensive to deploy. Open-source tools do exist but require someone to understand how it works and

deployed in a work environment.

OneLogin configures a browser to give the experience of a single sign in. It bypasses the traditional user name/password system, which often has gaping security holes.

To us, this is a big reason why the new breed of SaaS services are not taken seriously by security conscious enterprise customers. The security can not be trusted.

With OneLogin, a person would be directed to a login page that would automatically fill-in the information for the person. The person is provided their own OpenID account.

OneLogin knows the person's session so no second authentication is required.

OneLogin's infrastructure sits in the cloud, which means that a customer does not have to maintain dedicated servers and people to keep the system working.

There is no install. Rackspace hosts the web server and the database.

Two-factor authentication is available. People may use a Yubi key, which used a USB port to plug in and activate a random number authorization.

People may also soon be able to use Verisign's VIP service that gives a mobile device the capability to generate a new password every 30 sec. You then input the number within 30 seconds to receive permission.

The OneLogin service works on most SaaS services, including Google Apps. There is a free service. For SAML capabilities, the cost is $8 per user per month. Discuss

55

Smartphone Users Want Mobile Coupons, Barcode Scanners & Location-Aware Ads Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:13:11 PM

Once upon a time, smartphones were mostly about connecting busy professionals with their email accounts while on the go.

Now that smartphones have reached the mainstream consumer market, however, people are looking for more than just email access - and a surprisingly large number of smartphones hardly ever leave their owners' homes.

According to a new study from Web analytics firm Compete, 74% of smartphone owners now primarily use their devices for personal reasons, and they often spent the most amount of time with the device at home.

Sponsor As we noted last October, when they leave their homes, a lot of consumers with iPhones and phones that use Google's Android operating system are now also using their devices to compare prices and look up reviews while they are out shopping. Compete looked a bit further into this market and found that more than 35% of consumers with smartphones would be interested in receiving coupons on their devices.

Another 29% would like to be able to scan barcodes with their phones and get more information about the product as well as access to coupons and other promotions.

Location-Aware Coupons While it doesn't come as a surprise that a lot of consumers would like to receive coupons, one surprising result from Competes report is that 21% of respondents would like to get SMS alerts with promotions when they walk by a store.

Another 15% also would like to receive ads via SMS. Chances are that a lot of marketers would like to offer these kinds of location-aware ads and coupons that catch a consumer while they are already out shopping and close to a retailer. At the same time, though, most modern smartphones don't allow developers to create these kind of applications. The iPhone, for example, doesn't (yet) allow developers to run application in the background, which would be necessary if a developer wanted to create a service that could send out ads via SMS based on your location. Discuss

56

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E-reader News Edition

WHAT continued from page 52

boards or social networks.

Regularly, Chinese netizens are exposing public officials.

However Kuo warns that there are "very very serious limits" to what is emerging in the public sphere. For example, anonymity leads to a lot of trolling. It's adhoc, reactive and informal however it is a "squeaky wheel that is regularly getting grease."

Also, a minority are prodemocracy - most of the netizens in the public sphere are pro-Chinese government. Next Moves from Beijing and Google Kuo said that the Chinese government will wait for Google to make the next move.

It realises it has nothing to gain

by pushing Google or being openly hostile. The ball is in Google's court and it will probably keep to its word that it will stop censorship in China. It may still shut down operations in China, which in practice means closing google.cn. But this has a lot of problematic scenarios - including the difficulty of having translations done for Google.com and staffing issues of closing down.

The pros of pulling out of China include saving face and appeasing western users. But the cons are significant. They include a backlash from techsavvy, urban Google users, a setback to scientific research, a

global black eye for their image, and ceding the virtual monopoly in search in China to Baidu.

The moderate scenario is that Google.cn is shut down, but continues to work with its mobile partners in China, R&D and sales continue to operate in China, and Google services will be unblocked.

The best case scenario, Kuo believes, would be if Google stopped censoring google.cn but the service stays online.

Discuss

If you’re lucky enough to be Irish, then you’re lucky enough Cris Stoddard (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:00:28 AM

• About Flickr Flickr is a revolution in photo storage, sharing and organization, making photo management an easy, natural and collaborative process. Get comments, notes, and tags on your photos, post to any blog, share and more!

Danny Gallagher (TV Squad) Five Filters featured article: Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:05:00 PM Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, You would think that a show Term Extraction. with 100 plus episodes that's reaching into its fourteenth season would have more cutting -room floor clutter than a director's cut of 'Road House'.

But believe it or not, the thirteenth season of the long running'South Park' saw its first ever deleted scene.

The Onda VX550 features a 5The video, embedded at inch 800 x 480 resolution Comedy Central's blog, takes touchscreen with support for place during the hilarious 1080p HD and has USB OTG "Pinewood Derby" episode and and HDMI ports. Supported naturally features Randy Marsh formats include H.24 MKV, cursing up a perfect storm.

RM, RMVB, AVI, FLV, MOV, Naturally this clip is NSFW, so MPG, DAT, VOB and TS. No if you're at work and you're w o r d o n f i n a l p r i c e o r looking for a way to get fired, availability. be sure to turn up the speakers Source: Cloned in China to their maximum volume so Five Filters featured article: everyone can enjoy it.

Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Filed under: South Park, PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Reality-Free Term Extraction.

Permalink| Email this| | Comments

PMP Brief: ICOO R8, HOTT HD390, Onda VX550 Tablet (BestTabletReview.com)

under $60).

Source: Akihabara News The HOTT HD390 HOTT Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:21:35 AM HD390 ICOO R8 The HOTT HD390 has a 4.3ICOO R8 PMP inch 480 x 272 resolution ICOO has introduced a new touchscreen with HD video PMP — the R8 — which has a streaming through its HDMI. It 4.3-inch touchscreen and 4GB supports H.264, AVI, RM, of storage features support for RMVB, MKV, DAT, FLV, 1280p HD (y’know, for when VOB, MPG, WMV, MMP4 and they actually make that). The M4V videos and WMA, WAV, PMP was announced a few MP3, APE, FLAC and OGG weeks ago, but now we know audio formats. Certainly not as the price and storage capacity. i m p r e s s i v e a s t h e n e w l y The R8 will cost 399 yuan (just a n n o u n c e d H O T T M D 5 0 0

Android tablet— which will sell for under $100. No word on how much the HD390 will go for or when it will be available for sale.

Source: Cloned in China Onda VX550 PMP Onda VX550

'South Park' Premieres Its First Ever Deleted Scene

Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

57

E-book readers: will secondary features win consumers’ hearts or leave them cold?

Devin Coldewey (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:45:15 PM

How many e-book readers do you think are out there right now for you to choose from? If you did a little digging, I bet you’d find 50 or so. Maybe 10 really worth checking out. But right now is a bit of a weird period in e-reader history. The Kindle cemented e-readers in the consumer headspace, catapulting them from weirdo alternative technology to mainstream gadget. That’s what the iPad threatens to do with tablets — we’ll see about that.

But the Kindle and the iPad are two important forces in the current e-reader wars; the question, upon the answer of which depends the success of many a device, is whether “bonus” features like second screens and weird form factors in e-readers will be enough to differentiate them from the high -profile devices pressing them on both flanks?

Take a second to imagine it as a battle between three armies. On one side of the field is the steadfast Kindle Corps, seasoned and numerous. On the other is the glorious Apple Brigade, untried in e-reader combat but veteran of other battles. In between them is a

menagerie of Sony, Asus, and miscellaneous independent mercenaries, bristling with foreign and barbaric weapons, gathering together only because they don’t stand a chance by themselves. In real life, they are not gathered at all, but that

doesn’t work with the metaphor.

Maybe they have a nonaggression pact or something, I don’t know. Regardless, the battle is about to begin.

See, the vast majority of ereaders were designed as a response to the Kindle, not to

tablet computers, which may or may not obsolete e-readers altogether. It’s a bad situation: the whole time you’re improving your competitor’s product, someone else is skipping your entire device class on the grounds that it will be

made ridiculous by their awesome gadget. Some of the special features developed to combat the Kindle will stay, and some won’t live to see their own first birthday.

E-BOOK page 58

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E-BOOK continued from page 57

Personally, I think e-readers will stick around next to tablet computers, since it’s just as much of a problem for a device to do too much as it is for it to do too little. You may not want your e-mail and browsing device to be the same as your reading device. And of course the Kindle isn’t the end of all readers: the generation currently being released has among its members a few interesting features… and a few duds. Let’s take a look.

The nook is what people think of when this type of e-reader is brought up, and for good reason.

It’s a sexy little bugger. Now, compare it to its rivals: the upcoming Spring Design Alex and the Entourage Edge. What do you see? A larger secondary screen. Better, right?

Unfortunately, the secondary screen does two things that pretty much sabotage the idea.

First, it takes away from the readable area (the main screen); 90% of the time you are using an e-reader, you are reading.

That is the device’s stated purpose. When you put in a secondary screen, you are subtracting from the functional part of your device. I think it’s an unstated but obvious goal of design that your device should primarily do what it does.

Second, it implies uselessness on the part of the e-ink screen for UI stuff, and suggests to the consumer “If you want to do

stuff other than read e-books, you’re better off with a device that’s all secondary screen.” It’s like admitting a strike against your product before the consumer even sees it. Bad idea.

Not to mention having a color LCD screen raises the cost of the device considerably. It is for these reasons that I think the secondary screen is a onegeneration fluke, not likely to be seen again after 2010.

There actually aren’t many that fall under this category, but they are on their way, and I believe this is something that will stick around. Depending on the technology used ( Mirasol, pigment pores), there may be no downside to having a color screen other than cost. That is to say that reflectivity, weight, responsiveness, contrast, and resolution will remain the same, except now you have color (however washed out in these first devices).

As I said, there are practically none of these devices on the market right now. Asus has an OLED-based one it wants to push, but at six inches it’s not very tempting, and of course it’ll be expensive. And it’s more of a tablet anyway, so it gets ignored. But you can bet that Amazon, Sony, and every other company is pushing display R&D like none other trying to get color e-ink to work for a decent price. We’ll probably have a few announcements this

year, but no products until next CES. On the other hand, we already have Pixel Qi, which may beg the question of color e-ink before the latter is even viable.

On that front, we have the popular Notion Ink Adam, demoed here, which is one of the few devices which genuinely falls under both the e-reader and tablet categories. Personally I’m bullish about it, though I’m afraid it may crumple under the combined pressure of Amazon and Apple, both of which will be gunning for it.

At any rate, color is here to stay. Whether it’s an unexploited e-ink technology or a hybrid like Pixel Qi, you better believe that color will huge in the next year. Not only does it open up capability for running some applications, but it also lets the device and creator tap into the huge academic book market, which needs color.

Believe me, I wouldn’t have passed my Neuroanatomy classes with a black and white textbook.

Are you kidding me? Almost every interactive device in the world is going to be touchable by the end of 2010. Any ereaders that don’t have this feature by the holidays are going to be laughed at long and hard.

Touchscreens you can write on are going to be key as well; if your e-reader can replace the “back of the napkin” sketches,

diagrams, and calculations you do already, then hell, why not?

The Entourage Edge needs another mention here, since it has that book-like format, but as I noted before, that actually ends up being a weakness. You’re splitting your functionality and essentially the user can only use half the device at any given time, and is all the while thinking “Man, I wish the other half of this thing didn’t exist right now.” The Courier, which obviously is not e-reader but tablet, solves this by having both sides active at all times.

Not possible for the Edge.

Here’s a tough one: the Samsung E6. Its slider form factor reminds one of their slider phones — this thing in particular. But there are plenty of objections here. You see it and immediately think, “an ereader with moving parts? No thanks.” I mean really, simplicity is key with a device that’s meant to replace a paperback. And anyone will be able to tell you’re doing something wrong when you need a whole huge sliding mechanism just to reveal a Dpad and a couple buttons that could easily have been put where the Samsung logo is. And the speakers are on it too! What the hell, guys? Well, we can all agree that the E6 is going to sell about three units. I think sliders are out.

But what about a sliding

QWERTY keyboard? I haven’t seen one of those yet, but I’m afraid it might have the same issues as the E6. Besides, better displays means better on-screen keyboards. These things aren’t meant for typing anyway. Leave it to tablet computers to figure this out.

What about ultra-slim? Hey, why not? My favorite e-book reader out there is the Plastic Logic Que, for no other reason than that it’s slim and handsome, just like me.

Seriously though, a touchscreen (however primitive) and a thin, refined design will sell against the most robust competitors, and the Que is refined as all hell (though sadly, delayed). If someone really and truly just wants to read books and magazines on an e-ink screen, they don’t want or need anything else, but they do care whether it looks like they’re reading a gigantic BlackBerry or not. Slim, buttonless designs will stay. You can be sure the next Kindle will have one (though will likely keep its signature side buttons).

Flexibility? The Skiff is working at this, and it’s something e-ink and (kind of) OLEDs are uniquely capable of at the moment, but I get the feeling it’s going to end up on the low-end devices. See, as long as a consumer is paying E-BOOK page 60

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Review: Mission Workshop Vandal weather-proof backpack Devin Coldewey (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:15:04 PM

Short version: Versatile but not particularly compact, the Vandal is a good choice for the hardcore urban biker/family man who needs to fit everything in his backpack, rain or shine.

Features: • Three weather-sealed cargo compartments • One expandable huuuge compartment • Lifetime warranty • MSRP: $229 Pros: • Hugely expandable • Weather sealing works just fine • Laptop fits fine in middle compartment Cons: • No logical place for fragile items like cameras • Could use a little strap management • Expandable portion not weather-proof Full review: The right bag can make all the difference, and there are a hell of a lot to choose from, as we saw during Bag Week. For the gadgeteer, I found the Mamba Shift was great — for a laptop jockey, the Buran is a dream.

But if I was travelling or shopping, I wouldn’t choose

either if I had the option of the Mission Workshop Vandal. As long as you’re not carrying around a lot of little gadgets, this is a great choice for an allpurpose backpack.

Keep in mind during this review that the Vandal has a younger sibling, the Rambler, which is slightly smaller and

costs $30 less, so if things seem a little big, there’s always that option.

So the general idea is that this is a relatively normal-sized backpack, weather-sealed of course, until you need it to carry a ton of junk, in which case you can unzip the sides and it accordions open, revealing a big

much stuff comes out of the bag, but trust me, it was packed. So that probably expresses more or less what I really need to say here.

Also: I’m very bad at taking pictures of backpacks and bags for some reason, which is why I’m using Mission Workshop’s official shots, except for this one: Since it was nice out whenever I happened to take this bag with me, I didn’t really get to test out its weather sealing. So into the shower it went! I was happy to see that the water beaded up and flowed right off, as planned.

Furthermore, there didn’t appear to be many catch points where the rivulets would collect, which points to good design on their part. It should be noted that the expandable portion of the backpack is not weather-sealed.

I imagine this was necessary to let it compact well, but it’s a bummer nonetheless. That said, it’s not like it’s made of cheesecloth. You just can’t wear it in the shower. Also worth nothing: the padding that your back rests on is absorbent as -ass 800 cubic-inch space. In well. there goes your laundry, your Another minor issue was that groceries, your clothes for a trip, the straps have no elastic bands etc etc. I finally got a chance to or obvious places to stow them. put this to the test on a beautiful If you’re riding your bike, this day in Seattle. I’d just had a leads to them whipping around long ride, which is why I’m and hitting your ears and back. winded in this video: A problem present on many You know, in the video it REVIEW: page 60 doesn’t really look like that

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E-BOOK continued from page 58

$400 or so for a device like this, I think that for the time being, they are going to want build quality that suggests that. They want glass, metal, rigidity, sturdiness, all that. Until you can actually roll or fold up your e-reader, I don’t see this being a big selling point. But don’t count it out completely; this feature isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping.

Another tough one. I don’t have a problem with Android on ereaders — it adds a little credibility somehow, and I’m sure there are going to be a few apps (if there aren’t already) that are meant to run only on ereaders, for customizing this or that, or finding free books. If Android is to be the de facto OS of e-readers, so be it. I feel that Chrome OS will be too much for an e-reader, so it doesn’t pose a threat, nor any of the other mobile or free OSes. They could just as easily run a different Linux-based OS, but

Android has name recognition and probably some handy 3G and mobile wi-fi stacks.

There is the issue, however, that in some devices Android does more to show what the device is not capable of that what it is. Look at this little thing from Gigabyte. The OS looks completely out of place there, and is a mess to navigate.

As for Apps in general, well, I think we’ll see a basic stable of apps develop — things that are applicable to e-ink screens, probably features that the creators should have included.

Most e-readers don’t have the kind of displays or usage patterns as other Android devices, so lots of the Marketplace will be pointless.

And as for other apps, I guarantee anything worth getting will be integrated into the second generation of the reader as a native function.

Color screens and better responsiveness might change

this (as would a Pixel Qi rout) but for now I’m saying Apps aren’t going to win any battles.

Besides, Apple’s got them licked there.

It should be noted that there are plenty of perfectly nice-looking e-book readers out there that are not “special” in any way. Look at this Asus one. Doesn’t it look nice? Yes. But the competition will bury it unless it’s stupid cheap. The Kindle clones will disappear because the vanilla Kindle form factor and feature set will start to show its age to casual consumers this year, especially as alternative and open book stores begin to proliferate (options!) and alternative e-readers penetrate the collective attention bubble.

And of course you can expect a totally new device from Amazon this year as well, though they got a bit of a late start.

And what will be the effect of the iPad on all this? I don’t want

to say much on this, because there’s still a lot to be learned about that device. I said earlier that e-readers will exist alongside tablets for some time, and I stand by that. If people really like to read books on a device of this form factor, I doubt the iPad (or similar devices) will be their only device.

Personally, I’m sticking with books, and looking forward to tablets as a way to read newspapers and magazines, which obviously require color and a net connection, neither of which is a guarantee with the current or impending generation of e-readers. I’ll be interested to see how my predictions fare against reality, but I think I’m on solid ground with most of them.

to put something like a camera and lens — to be fair, this is a problem shared by the Buran and many other backpacks, even the gadget-oriented Mamba Shift. But with so much cargo space, I’m disappointed there wasn’t a “safe area” for stuff like that.

Conclusion: At $229 (or $199 for the

slightly smaller Rambler), the Vandal is an expensive backpack. But that’s because it’s a durable, versatile, weatherproof backpack, not some $30 piece of garbage with a zipper that’ll break off after three months. I wish the Vandal had more padding and more ready access pockets, but that’s not really the kind of pack it is. I’d

take this thing on a trip around the world in a second — wish I’d had it in Luxembourg when I stashed my regular-style pack under a bush and it started pouring like crazy. If all you need is something to pop your laptop and a book or two in, you’d be better off with a smaller, more tech-friendly bag.

But if you’re the kind of person

Paramedics Suspected Domestic Violence After Tiger Woods' Car Crash (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:41:00 PM

According to a new report by the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP), police said paramedics stated that they wouldn't allow Tiger Woods' wife Elin Nordegren into the ambulance with Woods following his onecar crash last November because they suspected domestic violence. The report follows: An officer on the scene said he didn't know where the paramedics had gotten their information from. The officer said he didn't hear anyone at the crash site make any mention of a domestic incident.

A second officer reported that he didn't hear Nordegren say anything about domestic violence, nor did he hear Woods speak at all, since the golf great was apparently fast asleep (and snoring) on the ground.

REVIEW: continued from page 59

backpacks to be sure, but it would have been nice to be able to lock those down.

I also felt there could have been more padding between the sections. The middle weatherproofed section is the logical one to put a laptop in, but there’s really nothing protecting it from shocks on either side.

Likewise, there isn’t anywhere

who really uses a pack like this, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Product page: Mission Workshop Vandal

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Fantasy gadgets: in-line A/V switch Devin Coldewey (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:45:07 PM

Question: why doesn’t this thing exist? I’m reviewing projectors the size of decks of cards, and my phone has turn-by -turn GPS navigation, but I still need to use a full-size AV receiver when I need to plug my SNES into my home stereo? I was wondering about this, and just doodled up this little thing here. It seems like for less than $100, a little gadget like this, probably about the size of a paperback, should be able to instantly convert any input stream to another. Why do I need a separate adapter for every single kind of connection?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but nothing really exists out there for this purpose except for: • Individual adapters (HDMI –> DVI, RCA –> 3.5mm) • Full-size AV receivers (fine but wall-bound) Sure, the first doesn’t require power and the second is an integral part of any home AV system, but… really, there’s nothing in between?

In a day and age where all our devices have different inputs and outputs, we don’t have a universal, battery-or-USB powered gizmo that just takes whatever you put into it, detects what you’ve plugged in the other end, and outputs in that format. There might be a little

upscaling if you’re going from RCA to HDMI, but a little dedicated graphics chip would make short work of that, and really, nobody cares about quality with an old-school

power processor in there, it runs a simple BIOS that simply hears the input and puts out the output. The components have to be cheap enough that it’d be peanuts to build, and a 3000mAh battery should make it last at least four or five hours — enough to watch a movie or power a party where the speakers need a digital input or something.

I mean, I’ll totally take it back if there’s something practical out there for this purpose, but to analog input like that. You my meager knowledge there could have a couple models with isn’t. Maybe every store sells a variety of inputs and outputs. ‘em and I just don’t know it.

A n a l o g t o d i g i t a l , s t u d i o Don’t you guys think this would specialty, that kind of thing. be useful to have around?

Seriously, you put a little low-

Zoom G2Nu and G2.1Nu guitar effects pedals offer direct USB recording Darren Murph (Engadget) Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:11:00 PM

Zoom is kind of like Mitsubishi -- it sort of does it all. Months after shipping one of the greatest pocket audio recorders every known to man, the company is now hitting back with none other than a pair of guitar effects pedals. The G2Nu and G2.1Nu boards both feature 100 preset guitar sounds, 20 of which have purportedly been given the

almighty thumbs-up from Steve Vai. If you're curious about differences, the latter adds a built-in expression pedal for additional control, but frankly, the expected capabilities aren't what we're interested in. Both devices sport integrated USB ports that enable them to operate as audio interfaces; in other words, axe slingers can record directly to their computer through this box, and the 1.9inch display helps you keep

G2.1Nu guitar effects pedals Continue reading Zoom G2Nu and G2.1Nu guitar effects pedals offer direct USB recording Zoom G2Nu and G2.1Nu guitar effects pedals offer direct USB recording originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:11:00 EST. Please see our track of what's going on. suspect it'll be hitting Sam Ash, t e r m s f o r u s e o f f e e d s .

R e g r e t t a b l y , p r i c i n g a n d Sweetwater and the rest of the Permalink| | Email this| availability details have been gang soonish.

Comments conveniently omitted, but we Gallery: Zoom G2Nu and

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Okoro Media Systems upgrades Plastic Logic delays the HTPC range with Core i3 / i5 CPUs, QUE proReader until bitstreaming and USB 3.0 this Summer Darren Murph (Engadget)

Tablet (BestTabletReview.com)

Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:01:00 PM

Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:03:51 AM

You picked up an Okoro media PC last month, didn't you? If you're nodding up and down in a worried fashion, you're probably better off ignoring everything else we'll say in this post. For the rest of you HTPC hounds, the boutique outfit has something that's very likely to pique your interest (and kick that upgrade itch into high gear).

Announced today, the company is adding Core i3 and Core i5 processors to its 2010 media center PC lineup, and as if the extra horsepower weren't enough, users will also find native bitstreaming of TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio on every system save for the Q100.

You'll also get a 64-bit copy of Windows 7, up to 8TB of internal storage space, optional

Delayed until this Summer Plastic Logic has been developing their eReader for well over four years now, so a two or three month delay shouldn’t bother most people.

However if you were one of the original pre-orderers for the QUE proReader that started on January 7th, this delay could cause you to be rethinking your B l u - r a y p l a y b a c k , q u a d CPUs, bitstreaming and USB purchase of the $649 to $799 CableCARD support and the 3.0 originally appeared on eReader. After all, January 7th new holy grail of transfers, USB Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 was a long time ago in the tech 3.0. You can hit up the outfit's 20:01:00 EST. Please see our world. Since then we’ve seen webstore now to configure your t e r m s f o r u s e o f f e e d s . m a n y t a b l e t a n d e R e a d e r dream machine, and if you so Permalink eCoustics| Okoro announcements — the most desire, you can check out its Media Systems| Email this| notable being the Apple iPad, MSI Harmony and the Spring dedicated trade-up program Comments Design Alex. that'll last through May 31st.

The delay, to “fine-tune the Okoro Media Systems upgrades features and enhance the overall HTPC range with Core i3 / i5 product experience,” has now pushed the original ship date of mid-April to the Summer.

Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta sent an email out to

Introducing the Mickey Kaus Oppo Research Project [Oppo Research] John Cook (Gawker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:23:44 PM

Slate blogger and union-buster Mickey Kaus is running for

Senate in California. It's kind of

a gag—he doesn't expect to win.

But we'd like to make it a realistic experience for Mickey, and we need your help. More »

all proReader pre-orders notifying them of the hickup. To help ease the delay, Plastic Logic is covering all shipping.

Also, they haven’t charged any credit cards yet (read: there’s still time to back out).

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

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CA Attorney General Investigating Prescription Drug Ring Linked to Corey Haim (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:43:00 PM

The California Attorney General’s office said Friday that it is investigating a prescription drug ring linked to late actor Corey Haim.

According to the Attorney General, an unauthorized prescription in Haim's name was contract from Amazon and just found during an investigation canceling after a year or so -into fraudulent prescription pads the ETF will have been prorated ordered by a San Diego vendor. to $120 by then, putting you Authorities have not released way ahead of Palm's $439 price when the prescription in Haim's tag. So much for that dream -- at name was found. least we still have our fantasy of The ring operated by ordering driving to Mexico for an illicit prescription drug pads from Joseph L. Flatley (Engadget) Telcel Pre smuggling run. processing. And the music he authorized sources, but using Palm offering discounted Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:41:00 PM makes from the two is pretty, s t o l e n d o c t o r i d e n t i t i e s , contract-free phones to pretty wild... see for yourself according to the Attorney developers -- too bad they're W e ' v e s e e n b l o w - h a r d after the break.

General's office. The pads were c a r r i e r l o c k e d o r i g i n a l l y electronic music makers in the Continue reading One man either sold to prescription drug appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 past (one particular didgeridoo band rocks the iPod touch, users, or to people who would Mar 2010 20:45:00 EST. Please hack comes to mind) but still, rescues the MIDI clarinet from then fill the prescription and sell see our terms for use of feeds. when one makes us take note we obscurity them on the underground Permalink| Palm| Email this| feel like we just have to pass it One man band rocks the iPod market, the Attorney General's Comments along. Onyx Ashanti is an touch, rescues the MIDI clarinet office claims, saying that the American living in Berlin and a f r o m o b s c u r i t y o r i g i n a l l y doctors whose identities are one-man band to boot. His appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 stolen are usually not aware of instrument of choice is a Mar 2010 21:41:00 EST. Please it.

Yamaha MIDI wind controller see our terms for use of feeds. for triggering audio and the P e r m a l i n k | C r e a t e D i g i t a l TouchOSC app for iPod touch Music| Email this| Comments for controlling PureData audio

Palm offering discounted contract -free phones to developers -- too bad they're carrier locked Nilay Patel (Engadget) Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:45:00 PM

Usually when we hear the phrase"contract-free developer phone" the words"unlocked" and "GSM" follow shortly thereafter, but apparently Palm didn't get the memo -- it just announced discounted hardware prices for its devices, but they're carrier-locked to Verizon and Sprint. Yeah, that's a big sad face out of us -- it's not like Verizon's going to give you a cheaper plan if you show up with a contract-free device. In fact, you might be better off picking up a $79 Pre on a Sprint

One man band rocks the iPod touch, rescues the MIDI clarinet from obscurity

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E-reader News Edition

New iPad Details Emerge as Pre-Ordering Commences Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog)

The iPad will let you know when you’ve got only 20 percent and 10 percent Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:19:22 AM remaining of your 250MB if People may be able to buy their that’s what you’re working with, iPads today, but they won’t and when you’re completely actually get their hands on the out. From there, you can top off much-anticipated devices until by adding more data, or even early next month, and later if upgrade to the full unlimited they opted for 3G connectivity. plan at $30 a month. Sure beats But Apple isn’t without a heart, sitting on hold waiting for an so the company revealed some AT&T representative. There’s new specific details about the also evidence that you’ll be able tablet on the iPad micro-site, to manage an international data according to MacWorld. plan from the screen in the Included in the informational f u t u r e , b u t A p p l e h a s n ’ t appetizer are details regarding revealed any details regarding the 3G data plans available for this yet. iBooks t h e d e v i c e , t h e i B o o k s The actual iBooks app won’t be application and how it will installed by default on shipping work, a small hardware change iPads, probably owing to the that should make a pretty big f a c t t h a t i t m i g h t n o t b e difference, and a couple other available at all on international eyebrow-raising late-game versions of the device, at least if additions. Data Control the lack of a mention of the app The iPad benefits from having on the iPad pages in other to deal with only two available countries indicates anything. data options at launch in the Instead, you’ll be able to U.S. Because it knows exactly download it from the App Store. how much data you should Good news for public domain have, it can provide much more fans: any free ePub format useful usage information. You books you download from get access to an iPad Cellular elsewhere can be synced to the Data Plan window on the 3G- iPad via iTunes and read on enabled devices, from which your device. And Kindle fans you can modify, sign up for, or will appreciate the ability to even cancel your AT&T data highlight and look-up any word plan. in any book, either on

Wikipedia, the dictionary, or via web search, just by touching and holding. Screen Orientation Lock I absolutely hate using the iPhone while lying in bed for a lot of things because many times, a screen lock is a software feature and isn’t necessarily available for all applications. That means that it’ll constantly switch to landscape mode, despite that not

only have hearing in one ear. iBooks are also apparently covered by VoiceOver, so that users can have them read to them by Apple’s emotionless robot drones. AVI Support Perhaps the biggest little detail added in the iPad’s specifications is support for AVI videos, using the MotionJPEG format. Resolution for the files supported is 1280×720, which is HD, and PCM stereo audio is also part of the deal. Best of all, the data rates supported run up to 35Mbps, which is well beyond even the Apple TV’s standards. Looks like Apple has really big video plans for this capable little device. Wonder if this has anything to do with all of its recent talks with TV studios?

So now you’re more informed being at all what I want it to do. about that pre-order you’ve The iPad solves that problem made or are thinking about via a hardware switch above the making. And now I only feel volume controls on the side of more keenly the still-distant t h e d e v i c e t h a t l o c k s t h e international ship date for the s c r e e n ’ s o r i e n t a t i o n i n t o device. Thanks a ton, Apple. whatever mode it’s in currently. Related GigaOM Pro Research: • 5 Tips for Developers Accessibility More accessibility options have T a r g e t i n g t h e i P a d been added, including the ability • Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s to switch audio to mono and iPad Hits Right Notes r o u t e i t t h r o u g h j u s t o n e • With The iPad, Apple Takes headphone for users who may Google To the Mat

Apple/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

Which iPad I’m Ordering and Why Patrick Hunt (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:45:50 AM

It’s a little after 6 a.m. Eastern on Friday, March 12 as I write this post. Some two hours from now, the Apple Store will officially take orders for all iPad models, apparently with the ability to specify pickup at a local store. The store is currently down, though it wasn’t the last time I checked about an hour ago. (Trust me, I’m not awake in anticipation of buying an iPad; my work has me on an early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule.)

Like I have with most watershed Apple products of the last decade or more, I’ll order an iPad on the day they become available. For me, this has included, but is probably not limited to, the original iMac, iBook, Airport (gray UFO!) and 5GB clickwheel iPod, and more recently the MacBook Pro, Time Capsule, MacBook Air, and of course, gen 1, 2, and 3 iPhones.

Yes, yes, I’m a fanboy, but this is also part of what I do for a living.

You know by now that there are six models of the iPad, three with Wi-Fi only, three with Wi-Fi and 3G data access with the same 16GB,

it off when you’re done. Sure you pay a hefty price for a day or even a week of usage, but if you don’t use it again for a few months, you don’t pay for it. No -contract unlimited 3G Internet is a killer feature.

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'American Idol' Castoffs On Not Making the Final 12 Cut (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:14:00 PM

Last night, Katelyn Epperly, Todrick Hall, Alex Lambert and Lilly Scott's dreams of "American Idol" glory were I expect to use my iPad snuffed out, but the latest four 3 2 G B , a n d 6 4 G B s t o r a g e iPad, and these files will eat up e x t e n s i v e l y f o r c l i e n t eliminated from the competition capacities in each model. For precious space on the device. I p r e s e n t a t i o n s . I u s e m y maintain their optimism and tell the sake of discussion, I’ll call use all three apps in the suite — MacBook Air today, and while ET that despite the them the iPad Wi-Fi and the Pages, Keynote and Numbers — effective for presenting to two to circumstances, they will prevail! iPad 3G, even though the 3G on a daily basis, and I can’t wait three people, I can imaging the "I think that getting kicked off model also has Wi-Fi. The iPad to try them out on the iPad. iPad as an easel position will be early kind of saved my street Wi-Fi will ship on April 3, with Phil’s demo looked great. I’m m u c h m o r e e l e g a n t a n d cred," says Lilly, "so I think that the 3G model due some 1-2 also doing a lot of work in effective. I also plan to use it for I have a good chance of making months later. The iPad 3G Internet video these days. note-taking when I conduct my mark in the industry. I'm carries a $130 premium over the Having video files on the hard usability tests. Using Numbers, definitely really thankful for iPad Wi-Fi across the lineup to drive that haven’t yet or won’t I’ll be able to create input everything and I'm stoked for account for costs related to the be encoded for Internet delivery screens ahead of time based on what's next. I'm not worried 3G access, such as a modem and will be very useful. the test plan, and quickly and about it at all." antenna. Other than providing • 3G: My second favorite easily capture data about each Katelyn admitted that she is "a an additional type of Internet feature of the iPad (behind the test and participant. The data little disappointed" in the fans access, there don’t appear to be keyboard dock) is the 3G data will already be compiled, for not voting to keep her on the any differences between the plans. At only $30 for an all-you collated and ready for analysis show, but says, "The experience iPad Wi-fi and the iPad 3G. -can-eat buffet of Internet as soon as test sessions are is like no other. You can't meet I’ll be ordering the top-of-the- bandwidth, the AT&T plan is a completed. the people and work with the line 64GB iPad 3G, the most great deal (note that I haven’t These are just a few of the uses types of people that we've been expensive of the six models, but had 3G call, connection and for the iPad I have in mind, but able to work with anywhere the one with the most storage speed issues like many have the possibilities are limitless. I’d else. I mean, top of the line." capacity and both ways to reported). But the fact that you rather have the most capable connect. Why get the most pay as you go and turn on and model so I’m prepared for e x p e n s i v e m o d e l w h e n a off the service from the device whatever opportunity arises. cheaper one could suffice? Here is killer. Say you don’t have it are my key reasons: turned on but find yourself in a • Storage Capacity: I’m really location without Wi-Fi; simply looking forward to iWork on the turn it on for a month, then turn

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iPad Now Available for Me and iPad: Not now Pre-order (Scripting News)

from a DVD. Or listen to a podcast I downloaded with nonApple software.

I was up this morning at I decided that no matter how 8:30AM Eastern and saw the important it is for my work to notes that the iPad was now understand what Apple's available for pre-order. So I product does, it can wait until I went through the process, find out what the product is. I updated my credit card on guess I no longer have the Apple's website, changed the Apple bug up my ass that says I address and phone number. The have to get one of everything total price was a bit of a shocker they make on the day it comes -- approx $650 including tax. out.

I hesitated. I was typing the So for now at least, the answer order on a $350 Asus Eee PC to the iPad is "no." that I had bought a long time I could fly roundtrip to San Update: People say here and on ago. It gets about 8 hours on the Francisco for that amount.

Twitter that you'll be able to battery. It has a 160GB hard I thought about which I would watch movies you rip from drive, three USB ports, Ethernet, bring with me on a trip to San DVD or listen to podcasts webcam builtin. Real keyboard. Francisco, an iPad or the Asus. downloaded with non-Apple No doubt, I'd bring the Asus. I software on an iPad. They No DRM. I went to Amazon to see what I have no idea what I can do with reason that since you can do it could get for $650. Lots of stuff the iPad, and most important, I on an iPod you will be able to I'm not buying that I'd like to have a pretty good idea that I do it on an iPad. h a v e . A n i c e P o l k A u d i o won't be able to run my software on it, or watch a movie I ripped soundbar is about $500.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 11:50:47 AM

Josh Pigford (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:29:56 AM

Apple’s much talked about iPad is now available for pre-order.

The Wi-Fi version of the iPad will deliver on April 3 or be available for in-store pickup then (if you chose that option).

The 3G version still has no official ship date, just an ominous “late April.”

I pre-ordered the 16GB Wi-Fi version first thing this morning and let’s just say all the little extras add up fast. The $499 iPad quickly turned in to the $730 iPad between AppleCare and a few accessories. Such is the life of an early adopter, I suppose.

So, will you be pre-ordering an iPad today? If so, which one?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: • 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad • Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes • With The iPad, Apple Takes Google To the Mat

Installing Snow Leopard on a headless Mac Mini (Scripting News)

because the device is powered through USB, and there isn't reliable power coming through I bought a Canon scanner to use USB so the scanner doesn't with my MacBook Pro 13-inch power up. laptop, but it just doesn't work. It first I thought I was out of Once in a while it produces a luck cause I don't have a scan, but most of the time, the desktop at the NY apartment, drivers say they can't find a but then I realized I do have a s c a n n e r a t t a c h e d t o t h e Mac Mini. So I tried installing computer. the drivers on that computer, but I've been advised this may be was told they require Snow Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:11:39 PM

Leopard. Okay but the Snow Leopard disk is back in Calif. So I spent $25 to get another copy of the OS, and tried to install it on the Mac Mini, but...

Well first, it's a headless Mac Mini. No monitor, no keyboard, no mouse. So when the computer rebooted it never showed up on the LAN. So I plugged in a keyboard and mouse and the disk starts whirring again, the installation continues, but eventually the disk stopped whirring and the computer still doesn't show up on the LAN.

After waiting an hour I recycled the power, but the computer still doesn't show up on the LAN. That's where I am now. Anyone with experience installing Snow Leopard on a headless Mac Mini? Help! If this works I'll put in an order for an iPad today.

TV/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

More 'Scooby-Doo' Coming from Cartoon Network

Turner Classic Movies to Honor Clint Eastwood

Bob Sassone (TV Squad)

Allison Waldman (TV Squad)

Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:05:00 PM

Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:28:00 PM

Do you know what the number one show in Cartoon Network history is? Nope! It was the 2009 movie 'Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins.' It grabbed 6.1 million viewers! So you know that the network wants to make a sequel, and make a sequel they are (if that sentence makes any sense). The new TV movie, which will air this fall, is called'Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster' and will feature the same cast, including the black-haired guy who plays the usually blonde-haired Fred. I wouldn't be surprised if they made this into a series.

By the way, can someone explain the theme song to me? I was just listening to it (after the jump) and the opening line is "Scooby-Doobie-Doo, where

There's a lot of things you can call Clint Eastwood. Actor, movie star, director, musician, Oscar-winner ... and on May 31, octogenarian. That's right, the seemingly ageless action star is turning 80 years old. Having seen him in last year's 'Gran Torino,' still growling like Harry are you?" What does that even Callahan on a good day, it's hard mean? His name is Scooby-Doo to believe that he's not as (sometimes just "Scoob"), so formidable a presence on screen why did the songwriter just as he's ever been. Calling Clint throw in that "Doobie" in the Eastwood a legend, frankly, middle? Maybe it was an sounds like an understatement. homage to Sinatra.

To honor the prolific career of Continue reading More 'Scooby Clint Eastwood,Turner Classic -Doo' Coming from Cartoon Movies will devote the day to Network him. On May 31, the network Filed under: Programming, will give us 24 hours of Video, Children, Reality-Free Eastwood, including 'The Permalink| Email this| | Comments

67

Comment of the Day: The Strange Tale of Crystal Bowersox [We Read You] Richard Lawson (Gawker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:47:18 PM

Eastwood Factor,' a documentary that has previously only been available as part of the boxed set 'Clint Eastwood: 35 Films.'

Continue reading Turner Classic Movies to Honor Clint Eastwood Filed under: Programming, OpEd, Celebrities, Awards, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Because it's a silly, chilly Friday, let's have a silly and slightly chilling CotD, shall we?

This one's from an American Idol recap, so many of you have probably not read it. But this comment needs to be read. More Âť

Kirstie Alley Makes Mark Weigh in!

(ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:01:00 PM

Kirstie Alley holds nothing back on her new A&E reality series "Kirstie Alley's Big Life," premiering March 21, talking

about her drug use to curb her diet -- and the Emmy winner is equally candid about weight with our own Mark Steines as he visits her Hollywood home.

"When you're irresponsible about eating, the biggest penalty

is that you get fat," says Kirstie.

In "Kirstie Alley's Big Life," the former "Cheers" star makes a stunning confession to a friend, saying, "I would curb my appetite by smoking. Then I would curb my appetite by

doing cocaine. I quit smoking and doing cocaine, but while I was quitting I was eating tons of food."

Court Rules Cable Owned Stations Have to Be Provided to Satellites Once again, Lady has COURT pageJustice 68 Danny aGallagher Squad) struck blow of (TV freedom and equality for TV watchers

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COURT

Evan Turner Beats Buzzer, Michigan

continued from page 67

everywhere, just the way our Founding Fathers intended (even though they never owned TVs).

A U.S. Appeals Court in D.C. refused to change laws that required cable companies to provide channels they own to satellite carriers on equal terms.

Comcast and Cablevision have been trying to overturn the law in open court.

That means that thanks to Comcast's ownership of NBCUniversal, people who watch TV on satellites will have to

endure marathons of 'To Catch a Predator' and Keith Olbermann's giant talking head like the rest of us.

Continue reading Court Rules Cable Owned Stations Have to Be Provided to Satellites Filed under: Industry, Cable/Satellite, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

FanHouse Newswire (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:40:00 AM

Robert Gibbs Refuses to Accede to Birthday Boy Jake Tapper's Wardrobe Demands [White House Press Corps] Pareene (Gawker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:30:38 PM

Today was ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper's birthday! He got a Dora the Explorer cake. And then he made mean jokes about Robert Gibbs, who was just trying to have some fun. More Âť

Rush Limbaugh: "I Love These Guys At Gawker!"

[Endorsements] Pareene (Gawker) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:49:38 PM

On his popular radio program today, the beloved entertainer Rush Limbaugh once again endorsed our little "leftist gay

gossip site." More Âť

Filed under: Michigan, Ohio State, Big Ten Tournament INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Evan Turner's accuracy was off, and the player widely regarded as one of the nation's best was becoming visibly frustrated in the final minutes.

When the game clock showed 2.2 seconds, those issues no longer mattered.

Turner took an inbounds pass, dribbled upcourt and drained a 37-footer at the buzzer to give No. 5 Ohio State a 69-68 win over Michigan on Friday in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals.

"You can't really practice for those moments, you just have to come out and come ready," he said.

The Big Ten player of the year left his arm in the air after the release, confident that the long shot would fall.

"I was just trying to get the ball up and get it in shooting range and keep my follow-through, and it went in," he said

modestly.

Turner finished with 18 points and eight assists for the Buckeyes (25-7), who advanced to play Illinois in the semifinals on Saturday. The Fighting Illini beat No. 13 Wisconsin 58-54 on Friday afternoon.

Turner's final attempt was so close to the buzzer that the play was reviewed. When the officials signaled the shot was good, the red-clad section of the crowd erupted.

Ohio State coach Thad Matta said he wasn't sure the Buckeyes deserved such good fortune.

Sports/

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69

From Double-Bye to Bye-Bye in the Big East (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)

tournament format.

Villanova’s 80-76 loss to Marquette was an unexpected It was supposed to be a gift, a result, but not as much of a bolt reward for a season well done. from the blue as it might’ve But while we all have the been, given the Wildcats’ lateexperience of being given s e a s o n s t r u g g l e s . I n t h e s o m e t h i n g t h o u g h t f u l w e Delaware County Times, Jack couldn’t necessarily use, it’s a M c C a f f e r y e x a m i n e s t h e lot tougher to place a double- suddenly adrift ‘Nova squad and bye in the Big East conference wonders what’s going on. tournament on a high shelf, or to Thursday’s results boosted the re-gift it subtly. The four teams chances of making the NCAA to receive double-byes in the tournament for a few teams Big East tournament almost trying to find their way off the certainly would be looking for bubble. In Sports Illustrated, the gift receipt today: Three of Luke Winn reports that the the four double-bye teams lost rejuvenated Marquette squad is their quarterfinals games on benefiting from a more Buddhist Thursday, and only a buzzer- a p p r o a c h t o b a s k e t b a l l . beating three pointer by West (Congratulations to the phrase Virginia’s Da’Sean Butler kept “more Buddhist approach to the Mountaineers from facing a basketball” for its Daily Fix sudden-death overtime period. debut.)

Associated Press‘Who called West Virginia’s Butler gave “bank”? This guy.’

Cincinnati a more Calvinist Better a loss this week than a lesson in suffering with his loss next week, though. The banked-in three-point gamethree big-ticket Big East teams winner on Thursday. At ESPN, t o g o d o w n i n d e f e a t o n Dana O’Neil reports the news Thursday are still locks for good that every ex-schoolyard baller seeds in the NCAA tournament. wanted to know. According to But Syracuse finds what looked C i n c i n n a t i g u a r d L a n c e like a surefire top seed in danger Stephenson, Butler did indeed a f t e r l o s i n g i t s g a m e t o call “bank” on the shot.

Georgetown and possibly losing There may not be a hotter team senior big man Arinze Onuaku left in the Big East tournament to a knee injury. In the New than Notre Dame, which took York Daily News, Dick Weiss out Pitt on Thursday to extend writes that the Orange’s loss its winning streak to six games, strengthens Syracuse coach Jim which almost certainly has Boeheim’s longstanding case moved the school into the field against the new Big East of 65. The 50-45 final score is a Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:30:15 AM

good indication of how the Irish have pulled their season back together. The team’s ultraslowed-down “Burn” offense — as in burn-the-clock, not burnup-the-nets — is responsible for the low scoring, but the team’s improved defense has been the real difference-maker. At Basketball Prospectus, John Gasaway writes that the Irish’s defense, with a little help from a misunderstood bit of collegehoops lore, has enabled the team to turn its season around.* * * If things had gone as planned, even that crazy day in Big East hoops would’ve been second to the deafening hype leading up to Saturday’s welterweight title bout between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Things didn’t work out that way, which means that there’s a notably less overwhelming degree of hype anticipating Saturday’s Pacquiao bout, which is now against Ghanaianborn contender Joshua Clottey.

It should still be an interesting fight, if only because of how dazzling Pacquiao is to watch and because of how tough Clottey is. It will not, however, be the epochal bout that

Pacquiao-Mayweather could have been — and may eventually be, someday. Reuters Imagine how popular boxing might be if it actually pitted Manny Pacquiao against the guy most fans want him to fight?

At the boxing blog Queensberry Rules, which you should really be reading if you’re interested in the sport, Tim Starks has been preparing for the fight all week.

“There’s an argument to be made that Mayweather’s boxing style produces bad fights and Pacquiao-Clottey will produce more fireworks than Mayweather-Pacquiao could have,” Starks wrote. “But sometimes it’s about more than whether a fight will be a good brawl. If good brawls were all that mattered, then the boxers I saw over the weekend at the Patriot Center would be multimillionaires.” Starks also offers his preview and prediction.

No points for guessing Starks’s predicted outcome. But while everyone seems pretty convinced that Pacquiao will win going away — including oddsmakers, who’ve made Manny as much as an 8-to-1 favorite — there’s more to this fight than that. At Yahoo, Kevin Iole applauds promoter Bob Arum’s decision to hold the bout at Cowboy Stadium in Dallas, thus bringing boxing back to the fans. “By taking the act on the road and putting on

cards in opulent new venues with prices that the 9-to-5er can afford without taking out a home equity loan, Arum is hoping to create a new generation of fans,” Iole writes.

Devon Alexander is a boxing champion, but his life is not much like Manny Pacquiao’s.

The St. Louis-born super lightweight champ participates in the same sport, but Alexander’s is a very different world than that of the millionaire megastar who’ll answer the bell this weekend in Dallas. In Sports Illustrated, Peter Nelson explains how Alexander — alone among the group of 30 kids tutored in boxing by St. Louis police officer-turned-trainer Kevin Cunningham — survived one of America’s worst ghettos to become a champion. A complicated and sobering story told very well, Nelson’s piece is the ideal Friday afternoon read.* ** For casual hockey fans, the Atlanta Thrashers’ recent callup of Chris Chelios probably provoked a furious round of Google searching. This was Chris Chelios, Jr., right? It couldn’t be the same Chris Chelios we used in NHL video games during the early years of Bill Clinton’s first term, could it?

Not only could it be, it is. When FROM page 73

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University of Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli suspended for season after pleading guilty to burglary charge ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:17:13 PM

• Email • Print • Comments '); document.write(''); } else if ( show_gigya ) { document.write('• '); document.write(' '); function showShareUI(){ var H = {APIKey:"2_B48MVBl19K9C Qj72UVrAqLh7VSAyZDfMkcl kt8foSSRaAbdWu36H_N3Ky_ ERWhDG", enabledProviders: "facebook,twitter", cid:"ESPN.Story"}; var I = n e w gigya.services.socialize.UserAct ion(); var A = {}; I.setUserMessage(""); if (jQuery(":header:first").length > 0 ) { I.setTitle(jQuery(".article").find( ":header:first").text()); } else { I.setTitle(decodeURIComponent ("Oregon\'s%20Masoli%20plea ds%20guilty,%20banned%20for %20year")); } I.setLinkBack("http://sports.esp n.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=49

90555"); if (jQuery("#videoInfo").length > 0 ) { I.setDescription(jQuery(".article p:not(div.beta-opt p):first").text()); } else { I.setDescription(jQuery("p:first" ).text()); } if (jQuery(".article .image, .headshot").length > 0) { var theimage = (jQuery(".article . i m a g e , .headshot").find("img").attr("src ")); I.addMediaItem( { type: 'image', src: theimage, href: 'http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/ne ws/story?id=4990555' }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } ESPN.com news services Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli was suspended Friday for the upcoming season by coach Chip Kelly after pleading guilty to second-degree burglary in the theft of a pair of laptops and a guitar from a campus fraternity.

Masoli, who had been mentioned as a potential Heisman candidate, will remain on scholarship with the Ducks.

Pac-10 blog ESPN.com's Ted Miller writes about all things Pac-10 in his

conference blog.

• Blog network: College Football Nation "He does have a redshirt season available to him if he chooses to do that," Kelly said.

Kelly announced the suspension just hours after Masoli appeared in Lane County Circuit Court to answer to the burglary charge.

Kelly, who has come under fire for some of his disciplinary decisions, also meted out punishment for running back LaMichael James and placekicker Rob Beard.

"I am extremely disappointed anytime any of our players fall short of our expectations that have been clearly outlined for them in advance on numerous occasions, and this is especially true regarding their roles within the community," Kelly said.

"Their accountability for their actions is paramount and any tainting of the reputation of the University of Oregon and this football program will not be tolerated."

Masoli pleaded guilty as part of a deal that reduced his charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Former Ducks receiver Garrett Embry pleaded guilty to a

misdemeanor charge of seconddegree burglary as well.

Both were sentenced to 12 months of probation and 140 hours of community service.

Together they must also pay $5,000 restitution.

Masoli threw for 2,147 yards and 15 touchdowns last season.

He also rushed for 668 yards and 13 touchdowns, leading Oregon to the school's first Rose Bowl appearance since 1995.

Kelly's action was the latest twist to the Ducks' offseason of disarray.

Beard was placed on probation after entering his plea.

Linebacker Kiko Alonso pleaded not guilty to drunken driving charges in Eugene Municipal Court last week.

Kelly suspended Alonso for the 2010 season upon learning of the arrest.

Defensive end Matt Simms was dismissed by Kelly after he was cited on assault charges last month. Simms pleaded guilty to physical harassment for striking a man he thought had beaten Beard.

Receiver Jamere Holland was dismissed from the team after posting vulgar comments and criticizing Kelly on the

Facebook social networking site.

Kelly, who made his debut as a head coach last season, was questioned after he brought back running back LeGarrette Blount early from a season-long suspension.

Blount was suspended for punching a Boise State defensive end following the season-opening loss. He missed eight games before he was reinstated for meeting certain academic and behavioral criteria set down by Kelly.

University president Richard Lariviere issued a statement late Friday in support of Kelly's actions.

"I am confident that Coach Kelly has carefully and fairly considered the disciplinary actions he is imposing," Lariviere said. "I know that he understands the high expectations of Oregon's faculty, students and fans."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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LaDainian Tomlinson talking to New York Jets, day after Minnesota Vikings visit Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:49:14 PM

• Email • Print • Comments '); document.write(''); } else if ( show_gigya ) { document.write('• '); document.write(' '); function showShareUI(){ var H = {APIKey:"2_B48MVBl19K9C Qj72UVrAqLh7VSAyZDfMkcl kt8foSSRaAbdWu36H_N3Ky_ ERWhDG", enabledProviders: "facebook,twitter", cid:"ESPN.Story"}; var I = n e w gigya.services.socialize.UserAct ion(); var A = {}; I.setUserMessage(""); if (jQuery(":header:first").length > 0 ) { I.setTitle(jQuery(".article").find( ":header:first").text()); } else { I.setTitle(decodeURIComponent ("Tomlinson%20talking%20to% 20Jets,%20day%20after%20Vik ings%20visit")); } I.setLinkBack("http://sports.esp

n.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=498 9503"); if (jQuery("#videoInfo").length > 0 ) { I.setDescription(jQuery(".article p:not(div.beta-opt p):first").text()); } else { I.setDescription(jQuery("p:first" ).text()); } if (jQuery(".article .image, .headshot").length > 0) { var theimage = (jQuery(".article . i m a g e , .headshot").find("img").attr("src ")); I.addMediaItem( { type: 'image', src: theimage, href: 'http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/ne ws/story?id=4989503' }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } Associated Press NEW YORK -- LaDainian Tomlinson's visit with the New York Jets is going to overtime.

The free-agent running back met with team officials at the Jets' training facility in Florham Park, N.J., on Friday and had dinner with coach Rex Ryan, general manager Mike Tannenbaum and others in New Jersey. AFC East blog ESPN.com's Tim Graham writes about all things AFC East

in his division blog.

• Blog network: NFL Nation Tomlinson was scheduled to fly back home to San Diego but changed his flight after arriving so late Thursday night. Because of that, the Jets extended their visit with him Friday to include dinner. There were also no latenight flights to the West Coast available Friday night.

The running back's itinerary beyond Friday night had not yet been determined, Jets spokesman Bruce Speight said.

The extra face time with Tomlinson could work in the Jets' favor as they try to persuade him to join the offense that ranked No. 1 in rushing last season. The visit came a day after Tomlinson met with the Minnesota Vikings and left for the New York area without a deal.

Tomlinson, released by the Chargers last month, ranks eighth on the NFL's career rushing list with 12,490 yards. If he chooses to join the Jets, Tomlinson would serve as a backup to Shonn Greene, who emerged in his rookie season and made Thomas Jones expendable. Jones signed with

the Kansas City Chiefs earlier this week.

Tomlinson will turn 31 in June and is coming off the leastproductive season of his career, rushing for 730 yards on 223 carries for an average of 3.3 yards per carry, all career lows.

He scored 12 touchdowns, but his role was reduced in an offense that shifted its focus to Philip Rivers and the passing game.

He's still regarded as an excellent route runner and superb pass catcher, two qualities that make him attractive to both New York and Minnesota.

Tomlinson could be intrigued by the possibility of taking handoffs in Minnesota from Brett Favre, who's still mulling whether to return for a 20th NFL season.

Meanwhile, the Jets have Mark Sanchez returning for a second season along with a solid offensive line that helped pave the way for New York to average a league-leading 172.2 yards on the ground per game.

Whether he chooses the Jets or Vikings, Tomlinson would not be the focal point of the offense,

as he had been for so many years with the Chargers -- a role he has said he's OK with.

He was drafted with the fifth overall pick in 2001 out of TCU and immediately became a star as he helped the Chargers become a perennial playoff contender. His 138 career touchdowns rushing rank second, and his 153 total touchdowns rank third.

After a heavy workload and a few injuries made him less effective in recent seasons -- last season was the first in which he rushed for fewer than 1,000 yards -- Tomlinson's focus appears to be on winning a Super Bowl.

That's something both the Vikings and Jets might be able to offer because both were a win away from making it to the NFL's big game last season.

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Source: Tiger Woods' return tournament still up in air Bob Harig (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:59:13 PM

• Email • Print • Comments '); document.write(''); } else if ( show_gigya ) { document.write('• '); document.write(' '); function showShareUI(){ var H = {APIKey:"2_B48MVBl19K9C Qj72UVrAqLh7VSAyZDfMkcl kt8foSSRaAbdWu36H_N3Ky_ ERWhDG", enabledProviders: "facebook,twitter", cid:"ESPN.Story"}; var I = n e w gigya.services.socialize.UserAct ion(); var A = {}; I.setUserMessage(""); if (jQuery(":header:first").length > 0 ) { I.setTitle(jQuery(".article").find( ":header:first").text()); } else { I.setTitle(decodeURIComponent ("Source:%20Woods\'%20retur n%20tournament%20still%20up

%20in%20air")); } I.setLinkBack("http://sports.esp n.go.com/golf/news/story?id=49 90504"); if (jQuery("#videoInfo").length > 0 ) { I.setDescription(jQuery(".article p:not(div.beta-opt p):first").text()); } else { I.setDescription(jQuery("p:first" ).text()); } if (jQuery(".article .image, .headshot").length > 0) { var theimage = (jQuery(".article . i m a g e , .headshot").find("img").attr("src ")); I.addMediaItem( { type: 'image', src: theimage, href: 'http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/n ews/story?id=4990504' }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } By Bob Harig ESPN.com Archive A day after multiple reports had Tiger Woods returning to competitive golf at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in two weeks or the Masters next month, a source told ESPN.com

Friday that "no final decision has been made" with regards to his schedule.

Speculation has been furious since it was learned that Woods returned to Orlando, Fla., two weeks ago following a counseling stint and immediately began practicing.

Last weekend Woods' swing coach since 2004, Hank Haney, arrived to work with the world's No. 1 golfer at his home course, Isleworth, and theories about when Woods might play again have abounded.

Golf legend Jack Nicklaus last week said he "can't imagine in 100 years he is going to miss Augusta," and he figured Woods would play an event prior to the Masters.

The Arnold Palmer Invitational is viewed as a logical spot to return because of its proximity to his home and the fact that Woods is a two-time defending champion and has won six times professionally at the Bay Hill Club where the tournament is played. The tournament begins March 25.

If Woods skips Palmer's tournament and does decide to play the Masters, he would go to Augusta National -- where he has won four times but not since 2005 -- not having played an official tournament round since Nov. 15, the day he won the Australian Masters.

During his Feb. 19 public statement, Woods' only comments about getting back to playing golf were: "I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out that it will be this year."

There have been no public acknowledgements from Woods since, and none of his representatives has commented on the matter.

Bob Harig covers golf for ESPN.com. He can be reached at BobHarig@gmail.com.

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Street Chic: Paris Fashion Week ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/12/2010 9:00:00 AM

Polka dots add personality to solid-color separates (on Colette

owner Sarah Lerfel) .

Photo: Anne Ziegler Click here for our complete fall 2010 Fashion Week coverage Think you are Street Chic? E-

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More FIFA World Cup 2010 media than you can shake a red card at Ben Gilbert (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:30:00 PM

We know, we know -- we've been desperately waiting for more new media on April's South Africa-themed FIFA release as well, and today we've finally got some more. Arriving care of GDC 2010, EA Sports released the trailer you see above and the smattering of new screens seen below (for Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 as well as the Wii).

The trailer urges players to take their own country's team to the World Cup, though we should issue a word of warning to those of you in the contiguous United States who choose to bring our fine nation to the top: it's just a game. Okay, okay, sorry -- we were just joshin' ya! We suppose it's possible. Maybe after the robots take over.

Maybe.

Gallery: 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa (Wii) Gallery: 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa (PS3/Xbox 360) More FIFA World Cup 2010 media than you can shake a red card at originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FROM continued from page 69

the 48-year-old Chelios made his season debut in Atlanta’s 2-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets Thursday night, he became the second-oldest player in NHL history, after the legendary Gordie Howe. In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chris Vivlamore catches up with Atlanta’s ageless elder statesman.* * * Last week, in a marathon chat at ESPN.com, Bill Simmons made a very silly argument, stating that Tiger Woods will face more pressure and a more hostile environment when he returns to golf than Muhammad Ali did after his Vietnam-era suspension from boxing. Instead of backing down, Simmons doubled down, writing an evenmore-maligned column reiterating his argument.

It wasn’t the Sports Guy’s best hour. But it was nothing compared to the hilariously over -the-top slap fight that ensued between Simmons and Keith

Olbermann over their respective Twitter feeds and blogs. A battle of heavyweight egos for the ages, the Simmons/Olbermann set-to gets an amusing recap from Dan Levy at the Sporting News.* * * If you’re anything like your Fixer, you’ve probably noticed it without even noticing it. “It” being, in this case, the tendency for sportswriters to describe black competitors in typically “white” sports — fishing, swimming, fencing, whatever — as “The Tiger Woods” of fill-inthe-blank. In a wide-ranging and insightful essay for The Awl, Richard Morgan examines the roots and uses of this peculiar and peculiarly persistent sportswriting tic.* * * For a man whose Hall of Fame football accomplishments came as a member of the Los Angeles Rams’ Fearsome Foursome defensive line, Merlin Olsen always seemed like a pretty nice guy. Perhaps this is because

when your Fixer was growing up, Olsen was best known as a spokesman for 1-800-Flowers FTD and an actor on “Little House on the Prairie.” But Olsen’s balance of on-field ferocity and off-the-field pleasantness was no act. Olsen passed away at 69 on Thursday.

In the Los Angeles Times, Sam Farmer remembers the beloved former Rams star and his contrasts.

— Tip of the Fix cap to readers Fred Sternburg and Benjamin Tausig, and to fellow Fixer Garey Ris. 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.

Jets Putting Full-Court Press on L.T. Thomas George (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:45:00 AM

Filed under: Jets, NFL Free Agency, NFL Rumors Here is what the Jets have planned for LaDainian Tomlinson: -- He arrived from Minnesota here on Thursday night and the Jets welcomed him into his hotel room with a gift basket for his first child, expected this summer.

-- He had breakfast on Friday morning with a group of team executives that included general manager Mike Tannenbaum, head coach Rex Ryan and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer.

-- He was given a tour of the Jets facilities.

-- He met with coaches to talk about the Jets offense and the role he would play.

-- He was scheduled a tour of the Jets' new stadium Friday

Brink trailer showcases acrobatic, lanky dudes David Hinkle (Joystiq)

seen dudes stylishly dodge projectiles like that in a Hideo Kojima game. But, we digress.

Whomever compiled this Brink There are plenty of other trailer must have enjoyed noteworthy things, but if you're themself some Metal Gear looking for actual in-game S o l i d : T h e T w i n S n a k e s , footage, you won't find it because we swear we've only throughout the three minutes of Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:30:00 PM

video above. But, hey, if the CG is any indication, there will be lots of action to look forward to in Brink. That and curiously tall, acrobatic gentlemen wearing a variety of neat masks.

Brink trailer showcases acrobatic, lanky dudes originally

73

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afternoon, complete with a police escort to the facility.

-- He was expected to have dinner with Jets staff at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. At each step of the itinerary, the Jets are hoping to convince this future Hall of Fame back that they have the home he seeks, the place where he can finish his NFL career and the spot that gives him a solid chance to win his first Super Bowl ring.

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Lance Berkman to Have Surgery, Will Miss 2-4 Weeks Matt Snyder (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:52:00 AM

Marion Jones: I've Paid My Debt, Now It's Time to Move Forward Milton Kent (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:26:00 AM

Filed under: WNBA These days, Marion Jones says she is channeling the words of Satchel Paige and is not looking back.

Still, if you've lived the life Jones has lived and been the places she's been, including prison, you can't help but play the "what if" game, and wonder how life would have gone if not for a decision or two.

In the case of Jones, the opportunity to wonder what

might have been had she continued playing basketball rather than becoming the fastest woman on Earth.

"I always wonder where would you be now, but everybody does that," Jones told FanHouse Thursday night. "You always ask yourself, 'Where would I have been if I had made just a different choice.' I certainly wonder if I'd still be playing. I wonder a lot of things. 'Would I have my family?' It's interesting."

Now, the 5-10 Jones, who started at point guard as a

freshman on the North Carolina team that won the national championship in 1994, is attempting a comeback to the sport she says was always her first love as a member of the Tulsa Shock of the WNBA. And while she is trying to reconnect with the skills that brought her success on the basketball court, Jones is doing her best to put distance between herself and the steroid scandal that cost her five Olympic medals and six months of freedom.

Filed under: Astros, NL Central, MLB Injuries Houston Astros first baseman Lance Berkman has been dealing with knee issues throughout Spring Training, and now he's going to have to go under the knife to correct them. He had his left knee drained two times in the past week, but there's more swelling to be dealt with, so he will have arthroscopic surgery to remove"loose particles," according to MLB.com.

The Astros are saying Berkman will miss two to four weeks once the surgery is completed and won't commit to whether or not he'll be ready by Opening Day. Along with Carlos Lee, Berkman anchors the Houston offense from the middle. The five-time All-Star has hit no less

than 24 home runs for the past nine seasons and sports an outstanding .967 career OPS. When he stays healthy, he's pretty much always good for 100 RBI as well.

If Berkman is forced to miss any time, the Astros will likely have to use Geoff Blum at first.

Blum hit .247 with a .680 OPS last season. So it would be a pretty drastic downgrade -leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the lineup.

Sports/ Game/ Economy/

E-reader News Edition

Drama Builds in 'When Will Tiger Woods Return?' Soap Opera Mick Elliott (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:02:00 AM

Filed under: PGA, Masters DORAL, Fla. -- If you were not already suffering from Tiger Woods overload, worn out by excessive speculation supported by hardly a shred of fact, then the last 24 hours more than likely changed that.

The annoyance level reached new heights Friday with dueling news stories reporting Woods' plans for returning to golf, both quoting unnamed sources and each contradicting the other.

One report has the sex-scandal plagued golfer making his comeback at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, scheduled for March 25-28 at the Bay Hill Lodge and Club in Orlando, Fla. The other says Woods will return at Augusta National for the Masters, the year's first major championship, in early

April.

"Just wait and see," suggested Vijay Singh, playing at this week's CA Championship, a World Golf Championship with an elite international field that, it has been pointed out all week, is missing Tiger Woods.

Although logical, Singh's advice is destined to go unheeded.

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Yellen to be nominated as Fed vice-chair

WRUP: Gee-Dee-See you at PAX East edition

(Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/12/2010 10:29:14 AM

The Obama administration is set to nominate Janet Yellen, Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq) a n d l i v e J o y s t i q p o d c a s t president of the Federal Reserve recording. With half our staff Bank of San Francisco, as viceSubmitted at 3/12/2010 9:00:00 PM just "hanging out" for once, chairman of the central bank in March is packed! Great game we'll be looking for cool stuff to an appointment that would tip releases, with plenty of industry do just like everyone else. Be the Fed’s interest rate-setting announcements and kerfuffles sure to follow our Twitters committee in a more doveish going on. With that said, if you (noted after the break), we'll be direction. m i s s e d a n y o f o u r G a m e sure to note if cool stuff is going The dollar fell to its lowest level against the euro in more Developers Conference 2010 on. than four weeks after people coverage this week, be sure to What's everyone playing? check it out -- a lot happened. Continue reading WRUP: Gee- familiar with the selection We'll also be adding some more Dee-See you at PAX East process briefed that Ms Yellen was the top pick of Barack G D C c o v e r a g e o v e r t h e edition weekend. Once that's put to bed, WRUP: Gee-Dee-See you at Obama, president, to replace we have about two weeks and PAX East edition originally Don Kohn, the outgoing vicethen it's on to PAX East, the appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 chairman. i n a u g u r a l e d i t i o n o f t h e Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: consumer conference. see our terms for use of feeds.

We have plenty planned for P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

PAX East, including the Comments Blueberry Muffin Top breakfast

Lehman file rocks Wall Street (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/12/2010 4:21:07 PM

The fallout from the report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers

shook Wall Street and London on Friday as US officials grilled banks about off balance-sheet trades and questions were raised over the City’s role in the company’s attempts to cover up

its problems.

The 2,200-page report by Anton Valukas, appointed by a US court to probe the reasons for Lehman’s failure in September 2008, paints a

damning picture of the bank’s top management, including former chief executive Dick Fuld, three of its chief financial officers and auditors Ernst & Young.

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Metareview: Yakuza 3 JC Fletcher (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/12/2010 10:00:00 PM

Plenty of attention has been lavished on one nontraditional Japanese RPG this week -- but Sega sneaked out another one alongside Final Fantasy XIII. Luckily, enough reviewers remembered that Yakuza 3 exists to provide a decent swath of reviews.

While it's certain to be the best game this week about playing fictional arcade shooters, singing karaoke with dates from hostess clubs and hitting gangsters with street signs, how did Kazuma Kiryu's latest saga fare under more common rubrics?

• IGN( 8.5/10): "You're getting this intense story about Japan's seedy underbelly that's set in an open world where you can take all sorts of side quests, but as

you do so, random battles are popping up, you're earning experience points so you can level up your moves, and you can take stuff from your extensive inventory list and craft new weapons and armor. There are no cars or chocobos, but you see where I'm going with this -one minute you're slamming a

crowbar into a guy's face or tearing off a fingernail with pliers, and the next minute, you're taking photos to blog about or on a fetch quest to find a certain fish."

• GameSpot( 8/10): "While the pace and events of the story are enough to propel you towards its conclusion, the non-story

peripheral content gives Yakuza 3 a welcome sense of diversity.

There are more than a hundred side and hitman quests that allow you to do everything from carrying ice cream for a father who has overpurchased, to playing UFO Catcher claw machines in the arcade, to chasing down a bag snatcher, to

offering financial advice to a man deep in debt and precariously perched on the edge of a bridge."

• Eurogamer( 8/10): "From the publisher that brought us Streets of Rage, Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, Yakuza is essentially a mashup of all three, which is hardly surprising but does mean it's the stuff of Segaphile fantasies. Liberally sprinkled with their genius, it's the grateful beneficiary of some of their most satisfying elements, in a context which delivers a uniquely Japanese -- and uniquely Sega -- flavour."

Gallery: Yakuza 3 (PS3) Metareview: Yakuza 3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OTOY to launch in 'Q2 2010' through AMD partnership David Hinkle (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:58:00 PM

Y'know, OnLive and Gaikai aren't the only game-streaming services on the block. OTOY has been laying low for a minute, but the "other" game streaming service has finally made its big announcement: it's going to release in Q2 2010. In fact, OTOY isn't just a service

for streaming games; there are now claims of streaming movies, PC applications and "other graphically-intensive applications" to any mobile device with a web browser.

OTOY will employ AMD Fusion Render Cloud technology, a CPU/GPU server platform that will stream games straight into your see pee youz through the company's software

OTOY to launch in 'Q2 2010' through AMD partnership originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments suite. And if you have no idea what that means, check out a demo of the service right here, courtesy of TechCrunch --

basically, it's like playing games on your computer. What a novel idea!

[Via Big Download]

Fashion/

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Paris Fashion Week Fall 2010 Favorites ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog)

be Paris Fashion Week without a little leather from Mr. Lagerfeld. His skin of choice for The multi-city, month-long fall was of the patent variety marathon that was the fall 2010 (each model wore a black or collections ended Wednesday brown legging paired with a with a fabulous ‘50s-inspired coquettish headband). Ann collection by Marc Jacobs for Demeulemeester also offered a Louis Vuitton. The designer slew of fierce leather pieces embraced women and all their with pops of feather peeking bits and pieces by casting through. Sexed-up styles were curvier supermodels to strut also seen on the runway at their stuff on his runway. Dries B a l m a i n w h e r e d e s i g n e r Van Noten also embraced Christophe Decarnin showed the ladylike shapes, in addition to m i n i e s t o f m i n i d r e s s e s , some very chic menswear-style contrasted by floor-sweeping pieces (it’s easy to imagine gowns that showed just the right wearing the tailored jackets and a m o u n t o f s k i n . S t e l l a perfectly cut trousers at work, M c C a r t n e y a n d V a l e n t i n o p l a y , a n d e v e r y w h e r e i n designers Pier Paolo Piccioli between). Of course, it wouldn’t a n d M a r i a G r a z i a C h i u r i Submitted at 3/12/2010 3:18:00 PM

injected some much-needed femininity into the fall collections in the form of lace and chiffon dresses perfect for

evening. And, cool girl favorite Isabel Marant gave her loyal followers what they want—cigarette-leg pants, boyfriend jackets, and the best little day-to-night dresses.

What were your favorites from Paris Fashion Week?

—Violet Moon Gayn or Top row (L to R): Louis Vuitton, Valentino, Stella M c C a r t n e y , A n n D e m e u l e m e e s t e r Bottom row (L to R): Isabel Marant, Karl Lagerfeld, Balmain, Dries Van Noten Photos: Imaxtree Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Become our Facebook fan!

Lies Maculan’s Dream Shop Opens ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog)

Dream Shop,” her whimsical showcase of trompe l’oeil photos depicting wooden Organizing an exhibit around shelves filled with coveted people’s dreams might seem objects (other ideas explored nebulous; but Austrian artist i n c l u d e " s o c i a l c l i m b , " Lies Maculan’s pop-up art "uncomplicated girlfriend," and installation, which opened last " s t o r k d e l i v e r y " ) . A t t h e night in Chelsea, contains some opening, which was hosted by v e r y c o n c r e t e d e s i r e s . Erin Fetherston, Arden Wohl, “Unexpected inheritance,” “sex and Kipton Cronkite, and with the ex,” and “wrinkle free” featured delectable Solerno f r o m i n t e r v i e w s w i t h are just some of the 100-plus bellinis, Maculan told me others—though some dreams wishes represented in “The t h a t s h e d r e w i n s p i r a t i o n emerged from her own psyche.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:42:40 PM

“Invisibility was mine, but the mother-in-law’s gravestone was a friend's,” she revealed. “It’s actually a dream that a lot of people can relate to.”

"The Dream Shop" is on view by appointment through March 31. Visit www.liesmaculan for more information.

—Erin Clements Lies Maculan and Erin Fetherston

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Paris Fashion Week: Beauty Wrap-Up ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:46:56 AM

How do Paris designers’ fall 2010 runway hair and makeup compare to their spring 2010 looks? Check out the beauty face-offs below and cast your votes.

—Emily Hebert Louis Vuitton: Mile-High Frizz vs. Sleek Pony Sonia Rykiel: Frizzy Updo and Glitzy Cap vs. Low Pony and Spherical Headband Isabel Marant: Loose Hair and Minimal Makeup vs. PulledBack Strands and Winged Eyeliner Stella McCartney: Mussed Tresses with Middle Part vs.

Low-Pony with Side Part Karl Lagerfeld (shown in above photo): Textured Bun and Pastel Makeup vs. Skyscraping Bouffant and Red Lips Valentino: Heavy Eyeliner and Loose Locks vs. Bold Brows and Updo Balenciaga: Warrior Eyes vs.

Pastel Brows Giles: Colorful Hair Streaks vs.

Pumped-Up Pouf Photo: Imaxtree Follow ELLE on Twitter Become our Facebook fan

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Economy/

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Tech.view: Cutting the clutter (The Economist: Daily columns)

one hour a day will consume at least as much power on standby during the remaining 23 hours.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:45:49 AM In some cases, up to seven times T e c h . v i e w A w i r e l e s s as much juice is used during replacement for all those pesky s t a n d b y v e r s u s n o r m a l power cables operation, says Fulton Mar 12th 2010 | LOS Innovation, a Michigan A N G E L E S | F r o m T h e company that specialises in Economist online developing electrical BENEATH y o u r technology. correspondent’s desk is a cat’s Anyone doubting such a claim cradle of tangled cables linking should check with the adaptora pair of computers to numerous m a k e r t o s e e w h a t t h e peripherals and laptops around conversion efficiency is for a the office. On the credenza typical small transformer and opposite is another jumbled nest how much it consumes when on of wires for recharging mobile no-load compared with fullphones, cameras, netbooks, load. Your correspondent has MP3 players and other portable found many of these so-called gizmos. When everything is “wall warts” to have conversion humming, there are no fewer efficiencies of little more than than 15 transformers plugged 30%. In other words, two-thirds into various wall sockets and of the electricity they draw goes power strips, along with all the to waste. And there are an awful other electrical cables for lot of them around. Some 730m powering computers, monitors, such adaptors were shipped in printers and still hungrier office America during 2008, with more gear. than 370m finishing up as Lately, your correspondent has landfill. That is a profligacy the taken to unplugging the power world can manage without. adaptors—at least those he can The obvious answer is to cut lay his hands on—when they are the cables and go wireless. not being used to recharge their Today, we take for granted that tethered friends. As it is, his wired communication—whether office becomes a veritable voice, data or multimedia—has Christmas tree of fairy lights at largely gone wireless. But wired night with all the red, green and p o w e r , e v e n f o r p o r t a b l e amber standby diodes twinkling g i z m o s , r e m a i n s t h e r u l e . in the dark.

One of the few exceptions is the Running the numbers, he has rechargeable toothbrush. A coil found that a five-watt adaptor in the charging unit that is used to recharge a device for connected to the electricity

supply generates a magnetic field, which induces an electric current in a coil in the base of the toothbrush handle for replenishing the battery. A handful of electric razors are recharged in a similar fashion.

Your correspondent is not alone in wishing to see similar inductive couplings used to replace the various recharging units cluttering up his office.

The idea of transmitting power wirelessly has been around since the 1830s when Michael Faraday introduced his celebrated law of induction.

Loosely stated, this says that an electrical current in one conductor will induce a current in a second, wholly separate, conductor that shares the same magnetic field. The concept of transmitting power across an air gap between one coil of wire and another led to electrical transformers, generators and motors—and ushered in the era of electrical engineering.

By the 1890s, Nikola Tesla had demonstrated that not just magnetic fields but also electromagnetic waves themselves could transmit power—and over far greater distances. In one experiment, Tesla powered lights in his laboratory grounds remotely from a transmitter coil many metres away. More recently, a government laboratory in Canada built an unmanned aircraft to act as a

communications relay station circling 21km up in the sky for months on end. Power was supplied by a microwave transmitter on the ground. A large disc-shaped rectifying antenna attached to the fuselage harvested the microwave energy, turning it into direct current to power an electric motor attached to the plane’s propeller.

Some researchers have proposed using microwave beams to transmit electricity from solar-power stations in orbit, or even on the moon, to receivers on the surface of the Earth. Microwaves pass through the atmosphere with little absorption, and rectifying antennae are adept at converting microwave energy into electricity. But worries about the potential health hazards associated with a powerful microwave beam mean that such proposals have so far remained pie in the sky.

More down to Earth, several companies have started offering mats and work-surfaces capable of simultaneously recharging a number of portable devices. One of the simplest comes from a firm called WildCharge, based in Colorado. An adaptor is attached to each gadget (often as a specially designed replacement for its back cover) with three lugs on its back for making contact with the charging mat’s conductive

surface. Because of the way the mat is configured, at least one lug always makes contact with a positive region of the conductive surface and one with a negative part. Power is transferred to each device by direct contact rather than via a magnetic field and induction.

Though delightfully simple, the WildCharge approach is a proprietary one that requires each device to have its own controller for managing the transfer of electricity from the charger’s conductive surface to the appliance’s rechargeable battery. In an ideal world, the wireless recharging system would work, out of the box, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices—with any approved gadget and requiring no special adaptors.

The Wireless Power Consortium, a trade group with some three dozen members, is in the process of developing such an open standard. Though its recommendation has yet to be finalised, this global consortium of mobile-phone companies, chipmakers, battery manufacturers and electronics firms wants its interoperable standard, called Qi (pronounced “chee” in Chinese and “ki” in Japanese, and loosely meaning “vitality”), to do for wireless power what the USB connector did for the wired world.

TECH.VIEW: page 80

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This week's top stories [12 March 2010] (The Economist: News analysis)

the long day, Joe Barton, a House Republican from Texas, even declared that he had never Submitted at 3/12/2010 6:00:38 AM seen “so many members of the America's health reform Barack House and Senate behave so Obama’s bipartisan summit on well for so long before so many health policy accomplishes more television cameras.” than meets the eye From the Republican point of Feb 26th 2010 | NEW YORK | view, the event accomplished From The Economist online two important things. First, Mr IT IS tempting to dismiss the Obama was unable to outwit and bipartisan health-reform summit outcharm them on camera, as he convened by Barack Obama on had done brilliantly during a Thursday February 25th as a televised exchange with House colossal waste of time. After all, Republicans in late January. the gabfest involving senior Mitch McConnell and John Congressional leaders from both B o e h n e r , t h e i r s t r i d e n t l y parties lasted well over six partisan leaders in the Senate hours, with no tangible results. and the House, wisely allowed Neither side moved one jot on other Republicans —more any issue of substance and not charismatic and competent, it one vote is likely to have must be noted—to do most of changed on either side as a the talking. That allowed them result of the summit. to say no to Mr Obama’s plans And yet, the televised gathering without appearing, as is often was not pointless. For one thing, t h e a c c u s a t i o n w i t h the sight of America’s leading Republicans, merely the “Party politicians sitting together of No”. Mr McConnell even amiably for an entire day to admitted afterwards that “I d i s c u s s a m a t t e r a s would not call it a waste of inflammatory as health reform time.” (think “death panels”) was itself The event went less well for Mr heartening. Surprisingly, given O b a m a . A f t e r a y e a r o f the bitter partisan wrangling of dithering, he unveiled his own late, they did so in a manner that grand plan for reforming health w a s m o s t l y c i v i l a n d care on the eve of the summit. substantive. Towards the end of This scheme closely resembles a

health-reform bill passed by the Senate just before Christmas (the House passed a substantially different version earlier, and the two bills now need to be reconciled into a final health law). The big question before the summit was whether Mr Obama would really be open to modifying his plan to embrace Republican ideas, or whether the event was merely a sham.

In the event, Mr Obama appeared to make some progress on bipartisanship. He listened intently to Republican ideas—except the oft-repeated one to scrap Democratic efforts and just “start over”—and was often seen scribbling notes. At the end of the summit, he reviewed a number of areas where he believed the two parties had similar goals, and he asked the Republicans to think of ways to bridge the divide on them. Among those ripe for cooperation, he declared, were tort reform, inter-state competition in health insurance, the creation of insurance exchanges and tackling fraud in Medicare (a government health scheme for the elderly).

This is not likely to herald the start of a new, incremental and

heart-warmingly bipartisan approach to health reform, however. For one thing, Republicans made it clear that they are not willing to do anything to help Mr Obama pass health reform quickly. Mr Obama, for his part, made plain that he was willing to entertain Republican notions only as addons to his existing bill, not as an entirely new approach.

Rumours swirled during the summit that if Mr Obama’s big plan (which aims to extend health insurance to some 30m uninsured punters) fails to pass, he may then put forward a less ambitious scheme covering only half that number. But Kathleen Sebelius, the administration’s health secretary, denied this after the summit. Mr Obama himself rejected the incremental approach. He insisted, with some justification, that “baby steps” will not work because the pieces of the health-reform puzzle are tightly interlinked.

If so, that leaves Mr Obama with only one course of action: to push through some version of his health plan without Republican votes. It will be very difficult with only Democratic votes, given that moderates and progressives in his own caucus

have misgivings. Ramming a sweeping health law through Congress on a highly partisan basis using procedural wheezes, Republicans repeatedly warned, will prove unpopular. Despite those obstacles, though, Mr Obama now seems ready for battle.

That points to the biggest reason to think the summit was not a waste of time: it made clear that Mr Obama, after months of sitting on the sidelines, now has steel in his spine. If Republicans do not come up with a reasonable set of compromise measures over the next few weeks to add to his plan, he says that he intends to forge ahead anyway. The final verdict, he insisted, will come from the voters: “We’ve got to go ahead and make some decisions, and then that’s what elections are for.” Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

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Charlie Gasparino Owes David Einhorn (and me) an Apology Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/12/2010 10:30:59 AM

In the early days pre-meltdown, there were a handful of skeptics pointing to problems at firms like AIG, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns and most especially Lehman Brothers.

It was not the media or the analyst community that identified the frauds, but the short sellers. In this sad tale of criminality and corruption, the shorts were the heroes. They employed an army of traders, forensic accountants, and noncheer-leading analysts to kick the tires of the major firms where something smelled funny.

When it came to Lehman Brothers, foremost in the crowd of shorts was David Einhorn.

There were many others (me included), but it was Einhorn who most completely critiqued Lehmans balance sheet, and most vocally called out the shenanigans there. he is the hero in this tale.

At the time, the media gave

LEH the benefit of the doubt.

And for his troubles, Einhorn was often criticized — even trashed — by various people.

The most vocal criticism came from usually astute Charlie Gasparino (then at CNBC, now at Fox Business).

But when it came to Fuld, Gasparino was off his usual sharp game. Whether he was too close to Fuld personally, or it was simply another case of access journalism is unknown.

As I warned, and Charlie acknowledged on the air, Fuld was using him. (He disagreed).

But the bottom line is Charlie blew this one big time. And as the video ( after the jump) makes clear, he did so in way that made the character of the parties’ to the Lehman debate an issue. > “But you put up Dick Fuld versus Mr. Einhorn? Put up Dick Fuld versus Barry Ritholtz ...?

Its impossible to determine who is right and wrong . . . this is so muddy. But at some point, it

comes down to the people: Dick Fuld, Einhorn, Dick Fuld, Barry Ritholtz.

Who do you believe?” > Well, it turns out that we now know who was right and who was wrong. Thanks to the yeoman’s job done by Anton Valukas, the bankruptcy examiner in the Lehman Estate, we know Lehman management was a fraud, they hid losses and leverage and played their balance sheet like a fiddle.

Not only do we know who was right and wrong, we also know that relying on the sturdy character of Investment Bank CEOs — especially this one — was not the smartest way to make a bet.

And for that, you owe David Einhorn, myself and others an apology . . . > ~~~ Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Initially, the standard will apply only to low-power devices needing five watts or less—a range that covers most consumer gadgets, including mobile phones, iPods, cameras and even laptops. A glimpse of what the likely standard might look like was seen at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year. KI, a supplier of industrial furniture, demonstrated classroom desks and tables kitted out with smart recharging surfaces supplied by Leggett & Platt, an engineering company based in Missouri.

Leggett & Platt licensed the technology for its smart desktop from Fulton Innovation.

As one of the leading lights in wireless power, Fulton’s “eCoupled” approach is expected to influence the final Qi standard heavily. When phones and laptops are placed on an eCoupled surface, the power transmitter in the worksurface detects the resonant circuit in the device’s receiver, which then tells the transmitter how much power to send. The power transmitter adjusts its primary coil’s transmission frequency to match the receiver’s and the appropriate amount of charge is transmitted across the air gap. This

matching makes the process of transfer far less wasteful than it is with a traditional transformerbased adaptor. A modern inductive coupling like Fulton’s can have an efficiency of more than 98%.

With electric vehicles in mind, the consortium’s batterymakers, in particular, are keen to extend the Qi standard to much higher power levels. Meanwhile, computer-makers like Dell have started building eCoupled receivers into laptops in anticipation of the consortium’s pending standard. Peter Goerdt of KI expects desks and other work-surfaces incorporating the latest thinking in wireless recharging to start trickling into classrooms and offices over the next year or two. By then, your correspondent will be just about ready to junk his wire-strewn office for one with far, far fewer cables. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

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Solid economic data give Senator Kaufman: Reform That Will Prevent positive backdrop The Next Financial Crisis (Financial Times - US homepage)

Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:30:37 PM

Your weekend reading assignment is this terrific long form piece by Senator Ted Kaufman, titled Wall Street Reform That Will Prevent The Next Financial Crisis.

I do not know anything about him other than to say that he understands the recent crisis and is proposing reasonable fixes.

The Senator wants to restore Glass-Steagall, and repeal the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. He supports the Volcker rule and is against TBTF. He favors cutting the behemoth banks down to size, and wants to give a “too big to fail” resolution authority to a single entity.

That’s a good start as anything else floating around D.C. . . . > Source: Wall Street Reform That Will Prevent The Next Financial Crisis Senator Ted Kaufman March 11, 2010

Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:33:36 PM

http://kaufman.senate.gov/press/ floor_statements/statement/?id= aca5b91a-6e51-4d6b-a367414ad9641500 WALL STREET REFORM THAT WILL PREVENT THE NEXT FINANCIAL CRISIS ( PDF 163.7 KB) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Net shorts again a record in the euro

22:30 GMT: A record rise in eurozone industrial production and Wall Street’s move on Thursday to fresh 17-month highs made global investors sanguine about the present. But they continue to be unsure of where to turn next.

Peter Boockvar (The Big Picture)

by 60% to the most since Nov ‘07 and net longs in the Australian $ rose 26% to a 7 Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:35:43 PM week high. Net longs in gold According to the CFTC data for rose for a 4th week, up slightly. the week ended Tuesday, net Net longs in crude rose to a 7 shorts again went to a record week high. high in the euro after last week’s Five Filters featured article: modest drop. Net shorts in the Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: pound fell a touch from last PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, week’s record high. In contrast, Term Extraction. net longs in the Canadian $ rose

KKR files plans for $2.2bn float (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/12/2010 11:27:50 AM

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts is heading for a $2.2bn flotation in New York, taking advantage of the recovery in financial

The FTSE All-World index rose 0.5 per cent, the dollar slid and the Vix “fear” index fell back to two-year lows as hopes for global growth convinced E-Readers Will Survive traders to bolster some riskier the Onslaught of bets.

Five Filters featured article: Tablets (Wired News) Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: (Yahoo! News Search Results PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, for e-readers) Term Extraction.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:10:33 PM

markets to launch a share sale that is likely to make multibillion-dollar fortunes on paper for founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts.

After almost three years of frustrated attempts to go public, the private equity group filed

plans on Friday to list in the US. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

If you think the coming wave of tablets is about to make e-book readers obsolete, guess again.

Although dozens of tablets are scheduled to hit the market this year — from companies like Apple, HP and Dell, as well as upstarts like JooJoo — executives in the e-reader industry aren’t particularly worried.

Instead, they say, tablets and E Ink-based reading devices are likely to co-exist, targeting different groups of consumers based on their purchasing power, the extent of interactivity they need and their reading patterns.

“In the short term, every company is likely to have two lines of products,” says Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition, a design firm that worked with Barnes & Noble to design the Nook e-reader. “If you think of a paperback-like E-READERS page 82

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reader, E Ink does a fantastic job. But color will definitely happen and it is likely to be LCD or OLED. It seems logical.”

Think of this strategy as something similar to the one employed by the print publishing industry. There are more expensive, better-designed hardcovers for consumers who value presentation — while the same books are often available in cheaper, but still functional, paperback editions.

In the digital world, that’s likely to translate into two sets of products: Full-featured tablets with color displays and lots of features that cost $400 or more, and inexpensive black-andwhite E Ink-powered e-readers that will be available for $150 or less.

The launch of Amazon’s Kindle in 2007 kickstarted the market for electronic book readers. Last year, an estimated 5 million ereaders were sold and sales are expected to double this year.

Meanwhile, companies like Apple and HP are promoting their tablets as devices that can be used to read digital books — although, as mini computers, these tablets can also do a lot more. Apple has already planned an iTunes-like iPad book store, called iBooks, that will compete with Amazon in selling electronic books.

The resurgence of tablets has given rise to chatter that tablets

could mean the end of the road for e-readers. After all, who would want to buy a black-andwhite Kindle that is basically good only for reading, when for only slightly more money, they could get a slick iPad that also does e-mail, shows movies, displays your photos and lets you edit documents?

That line of reasoning is moot, say executives in the e-reader industry.

“If reading is your primary entertainment activity, you are more likely to buy an e-reader,” says Glen Burchers, director of marketing for Freescale. “So this is a person who will pick up a book when they have the spare time instead of turning on the TV or opening up the computer.” Freescale’s processors power nearly 90 percent of the e-readers available currently.

Recent research commissioned

by Freescale showed an e-reader buyer, on average, is 43 years old, earns $72,000 and buys two e-books a month.

Those who say they’re interested in buying a tablet tend to be much younger, Freescale’s research showed. Tablets will be more attractive to people who want to use them for reading but also for keeping up with their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.

An e-book designed for tablets could have interactive elements, color photos and video embeds,

making it perfect for textbooks or cookbooks. Narrative nonfiction or fiction books need that kind of multimedia enhancement less, so they are more likely to be targeted at black-and-white e-readers, says Brunner.

E Ink screens aren’t particularly good at anything other than books, leaving newspapers and magazines out in the cold. That’s where tablets could step in, says James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. Indeed, many magazines — including Wired— have already announced plans to develop electronic magazines that will work on tablets. But it will be a battle that could take a toll on epaper based displays, he says.

“For people who read more of those media than they do books, tablets will be an ideal device and can easily take some wind out of E Ink sales, once we get beyond the fourth of the population that really enjoys reading books,” says McQuivey.

Still, tablets won’t immediately supplant lower-priced electronic paper-based e-readers, he notes.

“The first thing you need to consider is whether tablets will actually be as good for book reading as the E Ink readers are,” says McQuivey. “Having a two-week battery life and a device that’s comfortable to stare at for hours at a stretch without strain (as with e-paper

based e-readers) is hard to beat.”

Another major factor is price.

Currently, most e-readers cost about $260, and the cheapest ereader currently available is a $200 Sony Reader. Driving the price down could help keep the category alive, especially if tablets cost $500 or more, as the iPad will.

Earlier this month, Freescale announced a new processor designed exclusively for ereaders that could bring down their cost to $150 and lower.

According to Freescale’s estimates, a $50 reduction in price potentially doubles the pool of consumers who say they will buy an e-reader.

“At this stage of the market, price is a very important factor for growth,” Freescale’s Burcher says.

So what’s a company like Amazon likely to do next?

Create a color Kindle or a color tablet for e-reading?

Brunner says a tablet that puts e -reading at the center is a more likely response to the iPad. “They don’t have a choice if they want to offer a richer, more in-depth experience,” he says.

At least in the next two years, electronic paper displays are unlikely to offer color and video on par with LCD screens. E Ink’s color screens are not expected to be widely available until next year and alternative low power technologies, such as Qualcomm’s Mirasol, aren’t

optimal for the large screens (greater than 6 inches) that are the hallmark of tablets. And even when these color, lowpower display technologies become widespread, they will still lack the speed and contrast people are used to with LCDs. Instead, say some industry executives, it is likely that Amazon could design a tablet with an LCD screen that puts digital books at the center of its user interface.

“Tablets currently focus on the web-surfing experience,” says Sri Peruvemba, vice-president of sales and marketing for E Ink. “But there’s room for a tablet that’s primarily targeted at students.”

Even if the e-readers market splits into two, it shouldn’t make a difference to publishers or readers, says Trip Adler, CEO of Scribd, a documentsharing social network.

Companies like Scribd and Lulu support multiple devices including PC, smartphones and e-readers and a wide variety of formats such as ePub and PDF. “People can upload a file in any format and we can convert it to all other formats,” says Scribd’s Adler. “We make the process simple.”

See Also: • Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users • Dual-Screen Device E-READERS page 83

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Combines E-Reader, Netbook Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com • Nook E-Reader Gets Hacked Five Filters featured article: to Run Apps, Browser Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: • 5 Things That Will Make E- PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Readers Better in 2010 Term Extraction.

• Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again …

Tiny Flaws Can Be Tracked to Make MassProduced RFID Tags Unique and Unclonable Jeremy Hsu (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:20:48 PM

Can't touch this Tiny manufacturing flaws on the atomic level might cause most companies to throw up their hands, but MIT-spinoff Verayo saw them as the key to creating the perfect anticounterfeiting tags for everything from Walmart DVD shipments to futuristic passports. The company's radio frequency identification (RFID) tags rely upon no two chip being exactly alike on the atomic level, Technology Review reports.

Miniscule flaws because of a slightly thicker or thinner wire can mean tiny variations in how fast a circuit works on a chip.

Srini Devadas, an electrical engineer at MIT and Verayo founder, saw that as as the key to creating physically unclonable devices.

Devadas realized that running a series of signals through the imperfect circuits can create a string of numbers unique to each circuit. The string of numbers became the basis for a whole series of mathematical equations that create many challenge and response pairs unique to the security of each chip.

That means a forger can't hope

to copy an RFID chip even if he or she intercepts the RFID signals being transmitted, because it's literally impossible to perfectly replicate each and every flaw.

Related Articles RFID Waves Visualized and Demystified Using a LED Wand DIY RFID Video: Tiny AMOLED Screens In Passports Make Your Head Spin Tags Technology, Jeremy Hsu, anti-counterfeit, counterfeit, manufacturing flaws, RFID, tags, unclonable, verayo Someone could still beat the system by getting their hands on the challenge-response pairs for RFID tags. But these imperfect circuits should form

just one part of a much larger defense against counterfeiting, experts say.

Verayo already has contracts for even more sophisticated systems with the U.S. Department of Defense, and other companies have begun developing physically unclonable security systems.

If you're not as worried about counterfeiters, and just want to keep track of all your personal gear, there are already DIY RFID kits that have you covered. [via Technology Review]

Taliban Increasingly Unpopular in Pakistan (All Gallup Headlines) Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:00:00 AM

This article is the first of a twopart series that looks at Pakistanis' and Afghans' views of the Taliban's influence and their respective countries' efforts to combat terrorism.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Taliban's presence on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is largely unwelcome, but increasingly so in Pakistan, where Gallup surveys show they have lost much of the little appeal they had. Four percent of Pakistanis in a NovemberDecember 2009 poll, conducted prior to Pakistan's current push to rout the Taliban within its borders, said the Taliban's presence in some areas of the country has a positive influence, down from 15% in June.

Gallup most recently polled Pakistanis in the particularly deadly period after the army's anti-Taliban operations in the South Waziristan tribal area TALIBAN page 84

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started in October. Retributive militant attacks across Pakistan reportedly have claimed more than 600 Pakistanis' lives since then, which the public's increasingly negative view of the Taliban may reflect.

The Taliban lost support in every region of Pakistan. But nowhere are they more unpopular than in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), ground zero for a fullscale military offensive against the Taliban last May. In November-December 2009, 1% of NWFP residents said the Taliban have a positive influence, down from 11% in June. The percentage saying the Taliban's influence is positive in Baluchistan, which abuts South Waziristan, dropped from 26% to 5%.

On the other side of the border, Afghans agree with Pakistanis that the Taliban have a negative influence. However, Afghans' views have remained relatively unchanged despite the Taliban's threats and violence before the presidential election in August.

In both surveys in 2009, roughly 8 in 10 Afghans said the Taliban has a negative influence.

Majorities of Afghans in every region of the country see the Taliban as a negative influence, with their opinions changing little throughout 2009. Residents in the South, which included people in Kandahar, where U.S. and coalition forces are

expected to challenge the Taliban this summer, continued to be more likely than others to say the Taliban have a positive influence. But even so, the majority said the Taliban have a negative influence.

Bottom Line Gallup's surveys show few Afghans and even fewer Pakistanis view the Taliban's presence as a positive influence, which suggests there may be popular support for government efforts to dislodge the Taliban.

Public support will be an important factor in the coming months if Pakistan continues its anti-Taliban operations and as the U.S. and coalition forces begin their offensive in Kandahar.

For complete data sets or custom research from the more than 150 countries Gallup continually surveys, please c o n t a c t worldpollpartners@gallup.com or call 202.715.3030.

Survey Methods Results are based on face-toface interviews in Pakistan with 1,147 adults, aged 15 and older, conducted in Nov. 14 to Dec. 7, 2009, and 1,133 adults, conducted May 1 to June 30, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3.7 percentage points.

FATA/FANA were excluded.

The excluded area represents less than 5% of the population.

Please note improved sample coverage and change in data collection agency beginning June 2009 measurement. The survey included Azad Jammu and Kashmir, but sample sizes were too small to report results.

Maximum margin of error by region in both survey waves ranged from ±6 percentage points in Punjab to ±11 percentage points in Baluchistan.

Results are based on face-toface interviews with 1,000 adults, aged 15 and older, conducted Sept. 20 to Oct. 12, 2009, and 1,000 adults in June 4 -16, 2009, in Afghanistan. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Seventeen provinces were randomly chosen from 34 provinces and the sample was adjusted to reflect the population in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity, and rural and urban population. Sample sizes and margins of error for each region were the same in both survey administrations.

North Afghanistan: Results based on interviews with 290 adults from the provinces of Balkh, Kunduz, Sar E Pol, Takhar, Badakhstan, and Samangan. The maximum margin of sampling error is ±7

percentage points.

Central Afghanistan: Results based on interviews with 250 adults from the provinces of Bamiyan, Kabul, Parwan. The maximum margin of sampling error is ±8 percentage points.

South Afghanistan: Results based on interviews with 230 adults from the provinces of Ghazni, Kandahar, Zabul, and Paktika. The maximum margin of sampling error is ±8 percentage points.

West Afghanistan: Results based on interviews with 130 adults from the provinces of Badghis and Herat. The maximum margin of sampling error is ±11 percentage points.

East Afghanistan: Results based on interviews with 100 adults from the provinces of Nurestan and Nangarhar. The maximum margin of sampling error is ±13 percentage points.

The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. 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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Americans Say Jobs Top Problem Now, Deficit in Future (All Gallup Headlines) Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:30:00 AM

PRINCETON, NJ -Unemployment now stands alone as the top issue in Gallup's latest update on the most important problem facing the country. Thirty-one percent of Americans mention jobs or unemployment, significantly more than say the economy in general (24%), healthcare (20%), or dissatisfaction with government (10%).

This month, unemployment overtook general mentions of the economy, as the percentage naming unemployment held steady at 31% while the mentions of the economy dipped from 31% to 24%.

Unemployment, the economy, and healthcare have been the top three cited problems each month since last May. The economy had ranked No. 1 in Gallup's monthly most important problem measure since February 2008, when it overtook the Iraq war. The war in Iraq had been the top issue (or tied for the top) each month AMERICANS page 85

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since April 2004. Thus, unemployment's position at the top of the list marks the first time in six years that something other than Iraq or the economy in general has led Americans' list of national concerns.

More broadly, the economy's struggles are apparent, as 66% of Americans mention some economic issue as the nation's most important problem. At least half of Americans have done so each month since March 2008.

The full results of the "most important problem" question can be found here.

In addition to asking about current problems facing the country, the March 4-7 poll also asked Americans to say what they think will be the most important problem facing the United States in 25 years.

The federal budget deficit is mentioned most often in this regard, by 14% of Americans,

slightly more than say the economy in general (11%) and the environment (11%).

This is the first time the federal budget deficit has topped the list of future problems, and indeed the first time it has exceeded 5% mentions. That likely reflects public concern over increased federal spending and expanding budget deficits.

Typically, the environment and the economy figure prominently when Americans predict what the nation's top problem will be 25 years from now. One of those two issues has been the most commonly mentioned in 7 of the 10 years Gallup has asked this question. Social Security topped the list in 2005 and 2006.

Bottom Line The job market has overtaken the economy as the nation's most pressing problem in Americans' minds. Americans last ranked unemployment as the most important problem

during the Reagan administration. Since many economists expect unemployment to remain high for much of this year, it would seem unlikely that the public's concern about the issue will diminish anytime soon.

President Obama has said a jobs bill is his top legislative priority -- and though the push for resolution on healthcare reform has slowed progress, the Senate this week passed such legislation, with a House bill in the works. The irony, however, is that in an attempt to address Americans' current most important problem, the legislation will add to the federal budget deficit -Americans' prediction of the top problem for the United States in 25 years.

Survey Methods Results are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,014 national adults,

aged 18 and older, conducted March 4-7, 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

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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'Quake Catcher' Software Converts Laptops Worldwide into Earthquake Sensor Network Jeremy Hsu (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/12/2010 11:47:22 AM

The nifty program takes advantage of accelerometers built into many newer laptops Here's one genius computer program you might consider pushing virally for science's sake. The "Quake Catchers" program aims to make 'QUAKE page 86

This Week in the Future, March 8-12, 2010 Paul Adams (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)

shirt, after the jump).

This week in the future on PopSci: • Super Mario Gets Real Submitted at 3/12/2010 2:46:20 PM Poor Mario has to contend with Pixelated in DIY Arduino 8x8 a genetically modified superfish Version and an army of parasite-infected • Transgenic Musclebound kitties! Fortunately, caffeine and Trout with Six-Pack Abs Could lightning are on his side. Arrive Soon on Your Dinner Welcome to the future.

Plate (Get the details, and win the T- • DARPA Plans Lightning-

• Gold Nanoparticles and Lasers Kill the Brain Parasite That Causes "Crazy Cat Lady" Syndrome • This Car Runs on Coffee, in the Name of Science

Based GPS for Underground Warfighters

Leave a comment (any comment) to put your name in the pile; we'll randomly choose and announce our winner right

here. And, if you just can't wait that long, you can buy the shirt for yourself here. Good luck!

Until next time, enjoy our past weekly illustrated roundups here.

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earthquake detection a lot easier and cheaper by taking advantage of accelerometers built into MacBooks and other newer laptops, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The accelerometers that are embedded in everything from iPhones to the Nintendo Wii aretiny devices that detect movement. Having software that takes advantage of the tiny devices on thousands of laptops could complement the current system of earthquake sensors installed along fault zones.

Elizabeth Cochran, an earth scientist at the University of California in Riverside, got the idea of harnessing accelerometers for an earthquake network by watching the "Seismac" program on a

friend's MacBook. But whereas Seismac allows you to shake the MacBook and get accelerometer readings for giggles, Cochran hopes "Quake Catchers" can help science and maybe save lives.

The "Quake Catcher" software is designed to record all vibrations on a computer, but only uploads the info if many computers in the same geographic area record "dramatic shaking."

If the idea catches on in schools, businesses and homes, it might even become part of an early-warning system that detects the outward ripple of an earthquake. Even laptops that don't have accelerometers can get a $50 sensor with a USB cable that acts similar to an

accelerometer.

About 1,000 people have already signed on as "Quake Catchers," and Cochran's group hopes to possibly blanket California and beyond. That doesn't mean we won't still need our quake-proof buildings, but the software represents readily adaptable technology that's available now. We'll just keep dreaming of our active cloaking that counters earthquakes.

Check out the Quake-Catcher Network here. [via Los Angeles Times]

Flexible Nanocrystal Fibers Can Harness Tidbits of Waste energy whenpage flexed FLEXIBLE 86 might Energy to Create create Hydrogen go beyond recharging Fuel our smart Piezoelectric materials that

Build Your Own Turbojet? Some People Do Vin Marshall (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/12/2010 1:58:52 PM

Earlier today, I came upon the site of a man who is building his own jet-powered motorcycle.

That's right. He's converting turbochargers into jet engines and building a motorcycle around them. But that's not all; there are apparently a lot of these crazies out there. Here's a look at some.

The main components in a turbojet are the compressor, the

combustion chamber, and the exhaust turbine. Although the physical configuration is different, turbochargers provide two of those three parts; namely

this, have gone a bit wild.

Sal Aiello's Jet Project website does a great job of describing how people are building DIY turbojet engines. It also shows his work in progress: The Jet Cycle. Have a look in the attached photo gallery and these videos for a sampling of some of the other DIY jet projects out there. the compressor and the turbine.

And, if you need a hilarious Adding a combustion chamber way to spend three more more or less completes the minutes, there's always these Jet package. Some bold DIY Trucks. adventurers, having realized

FLEXIBLE continued from page 86

phones and help make hydrogen fuel. Scientists have harnessed piezoelectric energy from nanocrystal fibers to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas.

"This is a new phenomenon, converting mechanical energy directly to chemical energy," said Huifang Xu, a geologist at the University of WisconsinMadison. He and his colleagues have dubbed it the piezoelectrochemical (PZEC) effect.

The usual brittle nature of crystals such as zinc oxide and FLEXIBLE page 87

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barium titanate gives way to more flexible fibers at tiny scales. The Wisconsin researchers found that the tiny nanocrystal fibers can scavenge energy based on small mechanical "noise" such as vibrations or flowing water.

The chemical energy of hydrogen fuel also represents a more stable method of storage than an electric charge, Xu explained.

This represents perhaps another small (hah!) step toward squeezing energy from many tiny sources. People have harnessed mechanical energy for centuries on the large scale by using waterwheels and dams, but even raindrops should theoretically work in this case.

Perhaps the bigger question mark still hangs over the viability of a hydrogen economy. Other research teams have investigated ways of producing hydrogen through artificial leaves, as well as storing hydrogen within new types of solids. But even with hydrogen fuel-cell cars hitting the road, the supporting hydrogen infrastructure such as refueling stations remains in its infancy. [via ScienceDaily]

Faucets, Gearboxes and Batteries: Inside One of Israel’s Most Prolific Investment Firms info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

focused on seed and early-stage start-ups, was Israel's most prolific deal maker.

Submitted at 3/12/2010 10:05:58 AM PhDs Astorre Modena (physics) Which Israeli venture capital and Harold Weiner (chemistry) f i r m m a d e t h e m o s t n e w are Terra's founding and general investments in 2009? The partners. answer may surprise you.

Q: In which sectors is Terra Israel's most active investor most interested? wasn't Pitango Venture Capital, A: "We are quite diversified in Carmel Ventures or Jerusalem terms of our interests and Venture Partners. According to portfolio. We are focused on the Israel Venture Capital energy, but are relatively Research Center, Terra Venture FAUCETS, page 88 Partners, a cleantech fund

87

Green Kingpins Part 5: Paul Holland and the VCs at Foundation Capital info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

Vassallo authored a "Smart Grid Manifesto" to "help drive a single point of view across our Submitted at 3/12/2010 7:14:27 AM four Smart Grid portfolio F o u n d a t i o n C a p i t a l i s a companies." According to the disciplined greentech venture author, "Smart Grid and smart investor. The VC firm has pricing together answer the attempted to stay away from riddle of how you get market billion-dollar solar factory forces to make a difference in a investments like Solyndra and monopoly environment."

Nanosolar or the materials Here's a video of Foundation research and fuel cell Partner Warren Weiss manufacturing done at Bloom discussing the smart grid.

Energy.

Holland spoke about the However, Foundation has coming evolution of the smart invested in some of the more grid. He said "We've invested capital-efficient solar firms such in the platform [of the smart as SunRun and Azure Power, as grid]. The second wave is well as a number of smart grid g o i n g t o b e e v e n m o r e investments such as eMeter, interesting. The platform pieces EnerNoc (now public) and are starting to coalesce and S i l v e r S p r i n g form, and soon we're going to N e t w o r k s ( a l t h o u g h S i l v e r see energy usage applications."

Spring might be hard to Holland commented about categorize as capital-efficient Foundation's other investments with more than $250 million and views: invested so far).

• SunRun: Solar as a Service -I interviewed investor, General offered by SunRun -- will drive Partner, and orienteer Paul adoption. Installing solar has to Holland of Foundation Capital be as easy as ordering a take-out about the firm's portfolio and meal. investment strategy.

• Serious Materials: Their "We've never been big believers E c o r o c k p r o d u c t i s b e i n g in the whole supply-side," demonstrated at Holland's according to Holland. Instead, LEED-certified home, although Foundation has focused on "the sales of the product have been demand-side problem." hindered by the lack of new In fact, Foundation's Steve h o m e b u i l d s . R e t r o f i t s ,

however, like that at New York's Empire State Building, are a great opportunity for Serious' window product.

Holland likened the window's thermal profile to that of a "visible wall."

• If a startup presents a business case that hinges on a particular carbon price, "we automatically reject it."

• Twelve out of twelve of their cleantech portfolio firms are run by by former IT guys.

Here's a video of Paul Holland introducing President Barack Obama at a nationally televised White House Cleantech event.

And here is Foundation's take on the smart grid: Green Kingpins Part 1: KR Sridhar of Bloom Energy Green Kingpins Part 2: Craig Venter of Synthetic Genomics Green Kingpins Part 3: John Doerr of KPCB Green Kingpins Part 4: Vinod Khosla Green Kingpins Part 5: Paul Holland and the VCs at Foundation Capital Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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flexible on the definition of cleantech and have in our portfolio two companies that are not classical cleantech. Our big focus is on good entrepreneurs.

We don't have to have a fivetime serial entrepreneur because there are almost none in the field, but we are very focused on people who listen and who we can work with. In terms of fields, we like energy efficiency, energy generation (but we are very, very selective in terms of solar, for example, because the level of crowdedness is outstanding and the target dollar per watt is continuously going down), and energy storage.

For example, we invested in a company, Lithium Force, that provides battery solutions to electric fleets. We are less focused on water, even if in Israel there is a lot of very good expertise in the field and a lot of innovation. In water, the cycles are usually very long and the level of intellectual property protection and differentiation is relatively low. I think water is a difficult field for venture capital."

Q: Tell me a little bit about the companies in which Terra has invested.

A: "We invested initially in two companies, IQWind and Phoebus Energy. IQWind is developing an innovative gearbox for wind turbines, allowing for increased efficiency and reduced costs

because the gearbox replaces several electronic components.

The company is progressing very nicely. They have been selected as a Guardian Global Cleantech 100 company and recently signed a production and distribution deal with Guascor, a Spanish vendor. They have a very strong and entrepreneurial team that is working with all the top players in the industry.

"Phoebus is developing a very efficient water heating system with a very short return on investment. Phoebus does retrofits for hotels, hospitals, etc. -- big installations where Phoebus puts its system in parallel to the current system.

Phoebus' system is much more efficient and can get up to a 6070 percent reduction in the cost of energy because the system decides at any time, what is the cheapest source of energy.

Phoebus already has 15 installations in Israel. The first one has already been operating for almost two years. Phoebus has a very good track record and is now expanding into Europe."

Q: You studied in London and worked in France. Why invest in Israel?

A: "I lived in Europe and there is no comparison between the level of entrepreneurship and innovation that you find in Israel and Europe. The closest you can get to Israel is Silicon Valley. Israelis are probably not as good managers and marketers

as are most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but in terms of entrepreneurial spirit and innovation, Israel might even be superior to Silicon Valley."

"We get almost two new deals a day. The level of deal flow is exciting. The quality of the opportunities is rising because a lot of smart entrepreneurs from the high-tech field are getting into cleantech and bringing their expertise and innovation and applying it to the energy field.

There are a lot of fields where Israel has been a pioneer for many, many years."

"Water is a matter of survival, but Israel is very advanced in energy as well. In solar thermal, Luz and BrightSource were the pioneers. In general, Israel has a lot of interesting progress in material science, electrochemistry, smart IT, and sensors. There is a bit less of the military effect in cleantech than there is in high-tech, because there is less spillover, but there is a bit more spillover from Russian immigrants."

Q: In the last few years, American venture capitalists have begun to understand the difference between IT and cleantech. What do you think the differences are? Why has Israel been successful in IT? Why do you think Israel can succeed in cleantech as well?

A: "I don't think all the cleantech fields will be successful in Israel. In general,

there are some sectors that are not ventureable and in Israel, even more so. What Israeli companies have been good at in the past 20 years has been being very capital-efficient compared to most U.S. companies. I don't believe that Israeli companies can get the same level of funding that U.S. companies can get and so they have to be more capital-efficient. That is why we pick sectors where cleantech -- and specifically Israeli cleantech -- can be capitalefficient and can lead to exits on a venture timeline."

"On the other hand, there are advantages to Israeli cleantech.

When you bring these people into a relatively conservative and not-so-innovative field like energy, loads of ideas come up.

Israelis are out-of-the-box thinkers. They are also very multidisciplinary compared to other countries and cleantech projects are often multidisciplinary. Israelis can start in a sector and then change sectors a few times in their careers and this is something which I think is unique to Israelis. If you look at the amount of the time that most Israelis work at a particular company, it is much, much shorter than in Europe and probably more similar to Silicon Valley. On top of that, in a small country with all the expertise that you need, there are tight networks and

companies can find the expertise they need quickly, which is very important in the process of building complex, multidisciplinary cleantech projects."

Q: In which sectors do you think Israeli will be most successful?

A: "If we take out the venture level, water will definitely be a sector where Israel will succeed.

I don't think it will succeed on the venture side, but the sector is definitely growing and is going to continue growing. Israel has so much expertise and innovation in the field, but really needs to monetize it. It is not monetizing it enough."

"In terms of the energy space, solar thermal is going to have some interesting outcomes. We invested, for example, in Linum Systems, which is developing a solar cooling system based on solar thermal applications. In terms of other fields, I see successes from the combination of energy and fields that are close to what Israel has historically been strong in, such as smart energy -- smart grid, power conditioning, sensors, IT, chip -- and then potentially in other fields were Israel has a lot of expertise such as semiconductors, materials, including batteries, and, if venture-suitable, in biotechnology and agricultural efficiency.

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T-RECs Invade California Energy Market info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

renewable score card looked like this: Southern California Edison: Submitted at 3/12/2010 8:19:23 AM 16.8% To meet their renewable Pacific Gas & Electric: 14.4% standards, California utilities are San Diego Gas & Electric: now able to look outside the 10.5% state. What happens next should New Rules to the Rescue be interesting.

To help utilities reach their C a l i f o r n i a ' s R e n e w a b l e 20% goal, the CPUC announced P o r t f o l i o S t a n d a r d ( R P S ) this week that the utilities can mandates minimum renewable n o w p u r c h a s e t r a d a b l e energy thresholds in a utility Renewable Energy Credits company's electricity mix. In (RECs) to meet their RPS California, that minimum is mandates. This represents a 20% by the end of 2010. significant departure from the Utilities can obtain a three-year previous CPUC position, which extension, and most will ask for required utilities to purchase the that, but 2010 is still the official electrons and the RECs together. deadline.

In other words, the utility was Why an RPS? required to buy "green power" A c c o r d i n g t o t h e P u b l i c from large solar and wind farms, Utilities Code, Section 399.11, and purchase both the electricity a n i n c r e a s e i n r e n e w a b l e and the green attributes of that resources "may promote stable e n e r g y generation electricity prices, protect public simultaneously. The new ruling health, improve environmental effectively allows for the quality, stimulate sustainable " u n b u n d l i n g " o f t h i s economic development, create transaction. It separates the new employment opportunities, "green" and the "power," such and reduce reliance on imported that utilities can purchase the fuels." green attributes of renewable However, these lofty goals generation, even if the actual o v e r l o o k e d o n e i m p o r t a n t electrons being generated are element: execution. Drafting a consumed elsewhere. law mandating a 20% renewable Benefits of Unbundling mix doesn't create an overnight The primary benefit of allowing solar farm. In fact, by the end of tradable RECs is the flexibility 2 0 0 9 , t h e i n v e s t o r - o w n e d it provides to the utility. By utilities were woefully behind allowing generation outside of schedule. According to the California (but within the California Public Utilities boundaries of the Western C o m m i s s i o n ( C P U C ) , t h e Electric Coordinating Council),

this ruling will likely lower the cost and ease the burden of RPS compliance.

According to the CPUC ruling, "REC-only transactions in which the RPS-eligible energy does not serve California load provides to California consumers the general benefits of increased use of renewable energy, such as reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases and downward pressure on natural gas prices."

In addition, the ruling mentions the "potential additional revenue streams to developers of renewable generation projects" made available through the use of T-RECs. A New T-REC Marketplace The CPUC ruling lays the groundwork for a robust T-REC marketplace. "Although the tradable REC market may be modest in the next two or three years, the market rules put in place in this decision will both allow this new market to develop and provide robust rules as the tradable REC market matures," said CPUC President Michael Peevey.

Given that most of the utilityscale renewable energy project pipeline in California is already contracted to utilities to meet the RPS requirements, this ruling creates some interesting opportunities to monetize the green attributes of renewable energy projects in ways not previously considered. In

particular, rooftop and distributed generation systems could qualify if they registered with the Western Renewable Energy Generation Information System (WREGIS).

T-RECs for Homeowners Rooftop solar projects deployed under the California Solar Initiative (CSI), the Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) and the New Solar Homes Partnership (NSHP) may be granted RPS-eligible status.

It is conceivable that RECs could be granted to home owners, commercial property owners or perhaps aggregated under a larger co-op model in order to provide a revenue stream to the owners of distributed generation assets.

In theory, fuel cell devices from companies such as ClearEdge Power or Bloom Energy may qualify for REC generation if their fuel supply comes from biogas or other renewable sources.

Arizona, which has talked about exporting power to the U.S. will love this. Some companies have even talked about bringing power from Mexico. Obviously, this doesn't help the "green jobs" element of California's energy program, but it will help the state meet its goals.

Baby Steps The CPUC ruling does include several safeguards to protect ratepayers. First, the ruling

establishes a cap of $50 per REC. In addition, RECs can only be used to meet 25% of a utility's RPS obligation. Both of these mechanisms, however, expire at the end of 2011.

The ruling "directs Energy Division staff to collect information about the TREC market and the use of TRECs for RPS compliance, and to provide a report with recommendations to the Commission within 16 months of the date of this decision."

Based on these recommendations, the safeguards may be extended, modified, or allowed to sunset.

Welcome News Word of the ruling travelled fast and was quickly embraced by several industry and advocacy groups, including the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS), a non-profit that promotes policies and consumer -protection mechanisms for renewable energy, greenhouse gas reduction and energy efficiency programs.

"This has been a long and contentious issue," said Arthur O'Donnell, the Executive Director for CRS. "But it's been clear for some time that California was unable to meet its short-term 20% [RPS] goals without employing T-RECs." While the debate over energy policy rages on in Congress, T-RECS page 91

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Q: What are the most significant challenges Israeli cleantech faces?

A: "First, the financial challenge is always the biggest.

At this stage in Israel, there is relatively very little money that is invested (or is investable) in cleantech. Many good companies are not being funded and those that are getting funded are spending lots of time fundraising, which distracts them from their actual business activities."

"Second, of course Israel is a very small market and start-ups always need to always work with global companies, but in cleantech this is more complicated. In cleantech, it is a global market, but it is also a local market. Most products involve significant and lengthy hardware-based pilots. It is not like selling software on the Internet and there is a challenge when the internal Israeli market is tiny. Also, in many cases, companies really need to be physically present or have a strong local partner in the market to sell their product."

"Third, a general issue compared to the high-tech market, cleantech is involved in many different sectors and

ecosystems. Most of the hightech players are not relevant, and for each sub-sector you need to have a full ecosystem of different players. We're used to selling companies to CISCO, IBM, Intel, etc."

Q: Do you think the Israeli government is doing enough to promote cleantech?

A: "Israeli government intervention in high-tech has been very strong. For a government effort, the Yozma project and the Office of the Chief Scientist work very efficiently. The government could do more help to start-ups rather than big companies and could make the terms of the Chief Scientist more investorfriendly and exit-friendly, but in general, they are doing a good job. On the cleantech side, the government is starting to take action but it is not yet doing enough compared to the high level of priority they claim to give the sector."

"There is a lot of work still to do on energy efficiency. A few months ago, the government reduced the price of electricity because Israel is moving to natural gas, which is cheaper. It should have used at least part of the savings to encourage energy

efficiency and green energy.

Reducing the price will lead Israelis to use more 'dirty' electricity."

Q: You mentioned being selective about solar. Why? A: "Solar has been overhyped.

We had extremely high valuations in 2007 and 2008. A lot of companies came into the market, not bringing a lot of innovation. A lot of 'me too' companies. A lot of CPV companies were funded. In the United States, a lot of thin film companies were funded. Now, due to the reduction of feed-in tariffs and the financial crisis, the demand has lowered while capacity has increased significantly, leading to a huge drop in PV prices so that many startups' PV price targets have become irrelevant."

"We have also invested in Linum and solar cooling, which is not a crowded sector. Solar cooling is a key way to reduce peak demand for utilities in California and many other states, as air-conditioning is one of the key components of peak use. In California, electricity is expensive, and there is a lot of sun and a great need for air conditioning. It is almost a nobrainer to use a good solar

cooling system with a good ROI." Q: Looking at Terra's portfolio, one of the companies that caught my interest is SmarTap. Can you talk a little bit about the company?

A: " SmarTap is an unusual company for a venture investment. It is a working on electronic cartridges for smart electronic taps, which is not a typical industry that venture deals go to. But it is interesting because there is a very strong trend among faucet manufacturers and designers to go electronic. However, the key challenges they face are the cost and that they don't have any real understanding of electronics."

"Specifically, what SmarTap produces is a very inexpensive electronic cartridge that is also very energy-efficient and saves water. It is basically a very precise measure of temperature and flow. For example, when a person fills a bathtub, this system allows them to indicate 150 liters, 100 degrees, press the button, and they get the specified quantity of water at the specified temperature.

Different users can set their own temperature, their own flow.

Another innovation that will

increase water efficiency is the information. Many people, when the SmarTap indicator tells them they are consuming 10 liters per minute, they will tend to use less water."

Q: Another company that caught my interest is WiCharge. How far along is the company?

A: " Wi-Charge is still in an early stage. The idea is to have wireless power charging at distances of up to 30 feet. The company is working on a system that will be able to charge mobile phones, laptops, LCDs, and speakers at the same time.

But Wi-Charge is at least oneand-a-half years to market."

Yoni Cohen is a JD-MBA student at the Yale Law School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He previously worked as a reporter for Fox Sports, among other jobs.

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Green Kingpins Part 4: VC Vinod Khosla info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

have any material impact.

So while he's investing in solar he has said that photovoltaics Submitted at 3/12/2010 5:14:25 AM are "not scalable and not Vinod Khosla and his Khosla sustainable without subsidies."

Ventures have a war chest of and“rich San Franciscans and more than $1 billion to put into Germans putting PV on their greentech startups. And they roofs only delays the problem are busy, having invested in and diverts money from where more than 40 new firms. it’s needed." Solar PV, wind Mr. Khosla is somewhat of a and biofuels are “little markets," contrarian and can always be according to Mr. Khosla’s counted on to say something audacious worldview. that doesn't agree with the While making investments in conventional wisdom. Actually wind, he has said that there’s sometimes he says things that little upside for innovation in don't agree with things he's said. wind, the Betz limit is being Last year Khosla said, “I do not approached, and the available believe carbon sequestration can good sites are declining. And work economically." This year without storage, they don’t he said "...clean coal will provide spinning reserve. become economic."

Prius hybrids driven by Bay And sometimes his investment Area liberal socialists? Not a portfolio does not always reflect solution to the climate or energy what he says. problem, according to Khosla.

For example, last week at the Better to take that money and Wall St. Journal's ECO:nomics paint your roof white to improve event, Khosla said, "Solar and the earth’s albedo. And they wind are not viable without certainly don’t meet the Chindia storage." Yet that hasn't stopped test. To meet the Chindia test him from investing in wind they have to compete with the company, Nordic Windpower $2,500 Tata Nano.“Hybrids are and solar company Stion. an inefficient carbon solution."

Mr. Khosla is seemingly able to T. Boone Pickens’ plan for compartmentalize Khosla the LNG and wind?“A dead-end investor from Khosla the solver street." of the "Chindia problem, a term New battery technology for coined by the VC that suggests EVs? It’s unlikely that Li-ion or energy solutions must work in Ni mH chemistries will yield China and India if they are to s i g n i f i c a n t b r e a k t h r o u g h s

according to The Vinod. That has not stopped him from investing in battery firms Sakti2 and Seeo.

Certainly, energy efficiency is a good thing? Sorry. According to Vinod “The Buzzkill" Khosla, “Too many people in the environmental movement think that efficiency is the answer.

Efficiency is valuable but not sufficient."

According to Khosla, we need “relevant scale" solutions attacking oil, coal, cement and steel.“500 million people on earth enjoy a lifestyle that 9 billion people will want in 2050."

Khosla is looking for “ black swan solutions" that cause “technology shock."

According to him, the new green is “Maintech" not “Cleantech" and we need to go after huge markets like engines, lighting, appliances, cement, water, glass and buildings and not fritter away our time and effort on PV and wind.

A few years ago during the "nanotech bubble" Mr. Khosla sounded the (sensible) alarm that nanotech wasn't a market and that the nanotech boom was an illusion. His concern in greentech is that "too many [non Khosla-backed?] companies have filed and we will get a nanotech moment." He's "much

more concerned about premature IPOs" and gives an example: Codexis recently filed their S-1 form in preparation for an IPO but according to Khosla, the company is "pretending to be a biofuels company when it is an R&D firm."

The areas that Khosla sees as promising are internal combustion engines, bioplastics and agriculture while he believes that LED lighting, biofuels and clean coal will soon become economic.

Fortunately for Khosla and his Limited Partners, he can afford to be wrong nine times out of ten -- as long as he's very right occasionally and finds that black swan.

Here's a graphic of the Khosla greentech portfolio: Green Kingpins Part 1: KR Sridhar of Bloom Energy Green Kingpins Part 2: Craig Venter of Synthetic Genomics Green Kingpins Part 3: John Doerr of KPCB Green Kingpins Part 4: Vinod Khosla Green Kingpins Part 5: Paul Holland and the VCs at Foundation Capital Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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California has taken a leading position in the clean energy race. With a T-REC pathway in place, utility companies will now have more options to meet RPS requirements. In addition, demand for T-RECs is expected to increase and provide a stimulus for the emerging REC marketplace.

Lee Barken, CPA, LEED-AP is the IT practice leader at Haskell & White, LLP and serves on the board of directors of CleanTECH San Diego and the US Green Building Council, San Diego chapter. Lee writes and speaks on the topics of carbon accounting, green building, IT audit compliance, enterprise security and wireless LAN technology. You can reach him at 858-350-4215 or lbarken@hwcpa.com.

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