Liberty Newspost Mar-15-10

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14/03/10 - 15/03/10

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Company dispenses with lobbyists and launches bid for Congressional seat David Morgan (Front Row Washington)

including President Barack Obama by treating corporations as human beings when it comes Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:53:43 AM to the constitutional guarantee Murray Hill is running for of free speech. Critics claim the Congress to rid Washington decision will unleash a new of lobbyists and weak-kneed flood of corporate money into politicians once and for all. And U . S . e l e c t i o n c a m p a i g n s , t h e r e m a y b e n o b e t t e r including money from foreign candidate, for Murray Hill is not companies. a frail human being but a But Murray Hill Inc., whose company. clients include labor unions and “Until now, corporate interests environmental groups, praises h a d t o r e l y o n c a m p a i g n the Supreme Court for creating a contributions and influence n e w “ g r o w t h m a r k e t ” i n peddling to achieve their goals American politics and vows to in Washington. But thanks to an make a top-dollar investment enlightened Supreme Court, toward becoming the first now we can eliminate the “corporate person” in Congress. middle-man and run for office It’s launched a campaign Web o u r s e l v e s , ” t h e p u b l i c site, a YouTube ad that relations firm from Silver has drawn over 172,000 hits and Spring, Maryland, says in a a Facebook page with more than statement.

2,600 fans. It even has a It’s referring to the Supreme “designated human” to warm its Court ruling in Citizens United seat in Congress and mind its v. Federal Election Commission, legislative interests between which has drawn a torrent of board meetings. c r i t i c i s m f r o m o f f i c i a l s “Corporations now have all the

rights the Founding Fathers meant for us,” the YouTube ad says. “It’s our democracy. We bought it, we paid for it and we’re going to keep it.”

Murray Hill Inc. is seeking to enter the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, currently represented

by Democrat Chris Van Hollen.

Van Hollen is this year’s chairman of the Democratic

Congressional Campaign Committee and a leading critic of the Supreme Court ruling.

But for all it’s determination to use the latest tools of political ascendancy — automated robocalls, “Astroturf” lobbying and computer-generated avatars to get out the vote — Murray Hill Inc.’s candidacy may prove to be little more than a clever publicity stunt to satirize

the court’s decision and promote its own business.

Election officials in Maryland have rejected the company’s voter registration application, saying it fails to meet minimum standards that require the applicant to be at least 18 years of age and a U.S. citizen.

The company was founded in 2005.

Murray Hill Inc.’s president and designated human, Eric Hensal, suggests the age requirement should not apply to companies, telling The Washington Post: “It’s not as if, when a corporation turns 21, it can buy beer.”

Photo Credits: Reuters/Jim Young (U.S. supreme Court justices); Reuters/ Larry Downing (U.S. Capitol Dome) Click here for more political coverage from Reuters

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Brown: I will stay on even after poll defeat

Video: Peter Graves dies at age 83

(Top stories from Times Online)

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

Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:41:41 AM

Gordon Brown intends to stay on as Labour leader even if he is beaten at the general election, he revealed today.

It had been widely assumed in Westminster that Mr Brown would step down if he failed to secure a majority at an election expected to be held on May 6, triggering a contest to succeed him among a younger generation of Labour MPs. But in an interview this morning on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, the Prime Minister confirmed a report in The Times that he is planning to stay in his post even if he loses on polling day.

Asked directly whether he would resign if he did not get a majority in the election, Mr Brown replied: “I’ll keep going.

I’ll keep going because I want a majority. I’ll keep going.”

The Times report quoted an unidentified senior minister who said that Mr Brown would hope to remain leader even after a defeat at the polls. “Don’t underestimate Gordon. Unless the rejection at the polls is large and personal, there is no reason

for him to go quickly,” the minister said.

Asked on Woman’s Hour whether he would not owe it to Labour to stand down if he failed to secure a “decent majority”, Mr Brown replied: “I owe it to people to continue and complete the work that we have started of taking this country out of the most difficult financial recession.

“To be honest, going round the country, I feel there is more to do to improve the health service, more to do to give people better opportunities, more to do for women on maternity pay and equal pay, more to do on the discriminations that still exist.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Brown was asked about his behaviour in No 10 and again rejected recent allegations of bullying.

“I don’t think you can be in the job I’m in without being determined, strong-willed and demanding,” he said, “I know I’m strong-willed, and I know I’m determined, and I know I’m very resilient and I will fight back if I’m in difficulty.”

The Prime Minister was also asked why he had decided to give a highly personal TV

interview with Piers Morgan that included questions about the death of his baby daughter, Jennifer, in 2002.

He said that he did it because sections of the press had a “onedimensional” image of him that did not reflect the truth. “I felt that how people understood me was being mediated by a number of newspapers,” he said.

“They were presenting me in a way that was just not me. I felt that I should be prepared to – like any other person who is in politics – do interviews, open myself to any questions that people had, be prepared to answer any questions, take on the difficult issues and show that nobody can be as onedimensional as the newspapers were presenting me.

“I decided that was the best thing to do and Sarah agreed with me. It wasn’t her decision.”

Mr Brown insisted that he was not planning to make David Cameron’s background as an Old Etonian an election issue: “I’m not interested in where people went to school, I’m interested in what people’s values are and what they believe in and what they offer.

“I put forward my views and my

policies and I show you what I am trying to do on health and education. I’m an open book.

The problem with the Conservatives is we don’t know what their policies are.”

Mr Brown was also quizzed about public spending ahead of next week's Budget, but admitted that uncertainty about unemployment was muddying the picture.

“We have announced cuts and there will be more information in the Budget,” he said.

“At the moment we are not absolutely sure what’s happening to employment and unemployment. We don’t know yet what savings we can get from cutting or keeping unemployment down, but that runs into billions of pounds.

“If we have these savings, we can use them to fund departments. If we don’t have these savings, it makes it more difficult. So there is a degree of uncertainty at the moment about what we can do in the future.”

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Freebord version of the classic video game.

Learn more about Freebording

at their site.

All the fun you can handle.

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Cool live-action Tetris game (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:47:24 AM

Want to step up your Tetris experience by a few notches?

Why not try this really cool

Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:04:57 AM

Actor Peter Graves, star of the 1960s TV show "Mission: Impossible" and the "Airplane!" movies, died in Los Angeles on Sunday at age 83

ADVERTISEMENT: (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:20:00 AM

U.S. broadband plan (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:44:33 AM

The FCC is set to propose a new U.S. broadband plan, our online news habits are not as diverse as you might think, and the Internet could win this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

4 minutes 43 seconds March 15, 2010 7:44 AM PDT Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Toyota Prius's 90mph runaway ride 'not feasible', says leaked government memo Graeme Wearden (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:24:02 AM

Prius's uncontrollable acceleration not replicated in official tests, but driver's lawyers insist claim is genuine The case of a runaway Toyota Prius that took its driver on a 30 -minute terror ride has been plunged into controversy after an official inquiry failed to find any problem with its accelerator.

The credibility of James Sikes's report is now being questioned, following a leaked memo that found that government investigators could not replicate the problem of the vehicle's uncontrollable acceleration.

Sikes hit the news worldwide last week, after his Prius reached speeds of more than 90mph along a motorway outside San Diego. Sikes called the emergency services, saying that he could not stop the car, despite "standing" on the brakes.

Eventually a Californian highway patrol officer had to drive alongside the Prius and tell Sikes to engage the foot brake and handbrake at the same time.

The incident came as Toyota was already reeling from several

safety recalls, government investigations into its conduct, and several class-action lawsuits.

Last night, though, a six-page memo was published that casts doubt on Sikes's story. It follows a two-day investigation into the Prius by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Investigators took the car on a two-hour test drive, during which they could not get it to keep accelerating when they pressed both the accelerator and brake pedals at the same time – as Sikes said he had done.

Toyota engineers also attended the investigation, and argued that the car's engine has a safety system that automatically cuts the engine power if both pedals are depressed at once.

"It does not appear to be feasibly possible, both electronically and mechanically, that his gas pedal was stuck to the floor and he was slamming on the brake at the same time," said the memo, which was published by the motoring blog Jalopnik.

The memo had been sent to the US congressional committee on oversight and government reform, which recently took

Gallery: 10 Damn-Near Perfect Cars Chuck Squatriglia (Wired Top Stories)

Autopia selects 10 car designs that have stood the test of time.

evidence from Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, as part of its inquiry into the company.

The investigation did note, though, that one side of the Prius's front brake pads had been completely worn away, while seven-eighths of the rear brakes had been worn off.

According to the memo, "a handful of brake dust fell out" when the car's tires were removed.

Sikes's lawyers insist that his ordeal was genuine. His attorney, John Gomez, said the investigation does not undermine his client's story.

"It's not surprising they couldn't replicate it. They have never been able to replicate an incident of sudden acceleration.

Mr Sikes never had a problem in the three years he owned this vehicle," Gomez told reporters.

His practice, the Gomez law firm, specialises in personal injury cases.

Sikes's wife, Patty, has also defended her husband, and asked people to leave the couple alone. She told the Huffington Post: "There's no intent at all to sue Toyota. If any good can come out of this, maybe they can find out what happened so

other people don't get killed."

Other reports from the US have shown that the Sikeses filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008, after their property business was hit by the slump in the US housing market.

Toyota, which has recalled about 8.1m vehicles to fix problems with their brakes or accelerators, has said it was confused by Sikes's tale. "I'm mystified in how it could happen with the brake override system," said Don Esmond, senior vice-president of automotive operations for Toyota Motor Sales.

During his drive, Sikes was told by the emergency services to put the car into neutral, but declined, saying later that he was afraid this would cause it to "flip".

• Toyota • Automotive industry • United States Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Ad Dollars Go Digital Maccabee Montandon (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:39:55 AM

Remember that time you were all like, "Sure the Internet's cool, but no one's making money?"

Psyche!

Spending for online advertising (up 18%) will outpace print ad spending for the first time ever, Outsell Inc. reports. While movies, TV, and radio spending dropped almost four percent, search engine pages were the biggest winners here, with a 39% increase in ad revenue.

Google, in other words, is hiring.

Infographic: Rob Vargas

4

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Secondary school pupils 'should have fitness tests - and the results sent to their parents' (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

guidelines on weight and height, despite weighing just 3 stone 9lbs and standing 3ft 9 ins tall.

Sir Liam wants to expand the scheme to also give parents a Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:19:57 AM

By Kate Devlin, Medical picture of their child’s fitness, Correspondent which he said was often not Published: 3:19PM GMT 15 a c c u r a t e l y r e p r e s e n t e d b y Mar 2010 measuring their weight.

Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Fitness levels among children Medical Officer, said that in England are falling rapidly – monitoring children’s fitness declining by around nine per levels would dramatically c e n t a d e c a d e , t w i c e t h e improve the health of the nation international average, studies and could cut deaths from show. heart disease, cancer and other More than two thirds of undermajor killers.

16s do not do the recommended Patients already receive a minimum levels of an hour of yearly letter from schools telling moderate physical activity, such them how much their child as walking, a day. weighs and if they are Increasing activity levels o v e r w e i g h t , u n d e r a among children and adults could controversial scheme which cut deaths from diseases has provoked claims of a nanny including heart disease, stroke, state. diabetes and even reduce up to Last month there was outcry 3,000 cases of cancer per year, when the tests branded a slim, Sir Liam said as he published healthy five-year-old was his annual report into the “fat”. nation’s health.

Lucy Davies, from Poole in He added that if there were a Dorset, was judged to be outside drug which offered the health the recommended national benefits of regular exercise it

would be hailed as a “medical miracle”.

His report recommends trialling a form of fitness test called a ‘beep test’ in secondary schools.

This involves running a distance of 20 metres before a beep, which gets increasingly faster as the test goes on, sounds.

Some schools already give the tests to children, but there is no national programme.

Sir Liam: "We might get a few shocks in some parts of the country but I think it's well worth doing."

It was important to give the results to parents, who could help their child become more active, he added.

"I was very keen that as part of this it should not just be used for national statistical planning purposes, but there should be a personalised letter going to every parent," he said.

Parents "tend to like personalised information to see where they stand as a family" to enable them to tackle

problems, he added, and called for a series of pilots to assess the benefits of the tests.

But Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, warned that they would only work alongside other measures to make it easier for children to be active and play sport at school.

Critics accuse Labour of presiding over the decline of school sports as around 2,000 school playing fields have also been sold off since the party came to power.

Mr Fry said: “A one-off test is all very well but what the Government really has to do is increase the amount of activity children have as part of their school day.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that ministers would consider all the recommendations in the report carefully.

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19 amazing photorealistic paintings (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:39:00 AM

Upon first glance, these nineteen images appear to be

photographs. But in reality, these extremely talented artists have actually painted these mind -blowing, hyper-realistic pieces.

Get a taste below:

Met. More on art.

Permalink| Leave a comment » See all nineteen at My Modern

Medical Marijuana User Sues After Being Fired (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:02:39 AM

GREAT FALLS, Mont. A Great Falls man who says he was wrongly fired from his job for using medical marijuana has filed a $500,000 lawsuit against his former employer.

Mike Babbitt in a complaint filed earlier this month against Loaf-n-Jug says he was discriminated against, lost wages and suffered other monetary damages.

The company declined to comment.

Babbitt says he is HIV-positive and is qualified to received medical marijuana.

He says he told the company he received a medical marijuana card and the company told him it wasn't a problem.

But Babbitt says he was fired in November after a drug test from the previous month showed the presence of marijuana.

Babbitt's attorney says marijuana use falls under the company's definition of legal medication.

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1.7 million watch David Cameron open heart in ITV interview (Top stories from Times Online)

seven million. Mr Cameron’s programme, by contrast, followed the news.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:50:56 AM In his interview with Sir David Cameron failed to prove Trevor, the Tory leader spoke of as big a draw as Gordon Brown how he considered quitting to ITV viewers after an average politics after the death of Ivan, of 1.7 million watched an his severely disabled son, last interview with the Conservative year. He also said he would sack leader last night, compared to George Osborne, his Shadow 3.8 million who tuned in to see Chancellor and “good friend” if the Prime Minister last month. he had to.

A peak audience of 2.7 million Mrs Cameron praised her v i e w e r s s a w S i r T r e v o r husband but said he had “lots of M c D o n a l d i n t e r v i e w M r very irritating habits” such as Cameron in the programme, being messy around the house. which aired at 10.15pm and also She also described how the featured contributions from his couple first met on a family wife Samantha. holiday in Italy 18 years ago.

That compares to the peak She was a 21-year-old art figure of 4.3 million who tuned student and a close friend of his in to see Mr Brown well up sister Clare, while he was 25 with emotion as he discussed the and a special adviser to Norman death of his daughter, Jennifer, Lamont at the Treasury. with Piers Morgan.

“I was very young when we got The Prime Minister’s interview, engaged — I was only 23,” she however, was aired immediately said. “But I think I felt fairly after Dancing On Ice, ITV’s confident that you know Dave S u n d a y n i g h t r a t i n g s was the one for me for lots of blockbuster, and benefited from reasons. He’s a very strong kind an inherited audience of some of reliable person.”

Mrs Cameron went on: “We’ve been together 18 years now and we’ve been through some fairly tough times, and I can honestly say that I don’t think in all that time he’s ever let me down.”

The retail and fashion executive said that the couple enjoyed a “very equal relationship”, and having different jobs meant there was always plenty to talk about.

Mr Cameron said the tragedy of Ivan’s death, aged just six, had made him re-evaluate his career. “After Ivan died, I did stop and think, you know, ‘is this what I want to do, is this life?’ And I took some time off, maybe I probably should have taken a bit more off.

“It’s an enormous shock, I came through clearer, thinking, ‘This is what I want to do, this is what I am about, these are the things I care about’.”

Speaking about his background, Mr Cameron said his father Ian, who was born disabled with no heels, was a “huge hero figure” and an “amazingly brave man”.

5

UK Commission Suggests Taxing Google To Prop Up Newspapers Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

“I hope I have got my sense of optimism from him,” he added.

Asked whether his privileged upbringing was a “liability”, the Tory leader replied: “Well for a long time, you know, your full name is the old Etonian David Cameron.

“And I’m not complaining about that but I’ve never tried to hide anything about who I am or my background or where I come from. I’ve been really lucky.

“I totally accept that in the eyes of many people that is, you know, that is very posh, very privileged upbringing. I totally accept that and as I said I never try and hide it.

“Look, if the next election is about, you know, ‘Let’s not have a posh Prime Minister’, I’m not gonna win it.”

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Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:15:00 AM

how without it, we may never know true bliss.

Full story at The Financial Times.

Save time scouring the web by creating a personalized

MyAlltop page.

Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink| Leave a comment »

Earlier this year, we noted that France was considering a plan to tax Google to pay record labels.

It looks like the UK has come up with a similarly bad plan for the newspaper industry, with a commission suggesting a tax on Google and other news aggregators, to help prop up newspapers. There doesn't seem to be much greater rationale, other than that old news publications are struggling and Google seems to be doing great, so why not tax them? The argument, of course, makes little sense. It's basically saying let's put a tax on the successful and give that money to the companies squandering it. Talk about a way to give the exact wrong message to companies, while making the economy that much more inefficient.

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Does silence really exist?

(Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:28:13 AM

If you feel uneasy during prolonged silences and feel the need to continue talking even if

you have nothing to say—it’s normal. Over time, we have developed into a society or culture that fears silence. In this insightful article, author Harry Eyres explores the idea of

silence, why it is so elusive, and

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Israel claims Jerusalem settlement plan would not harm Palestinians Matthew Weaver, Daniel Nasaw (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

after they were described by one of Barack Obama's closest aides as an"affront" to the US that could undermine peace efforts Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:50:45 AM Netanyahu makes comments in the Middle East. after ambassador to Washington Earlier, Netanyahu apologised says ties with US in 'crisis of for announcing the plans during historic proportions' a visit last week to Israel by the The Israeli prime minister, US vice-president, Joe Biden. "I Binyamin Netanyahu, stepped recommend not to get carried u p t h e r o w o v e r J e w i s h away and to calm down," he s e t t l e m e n t p l a n s i n E a s t said yesterday.

Jerusalem today, saying they But he refused to cancel the w o u l d n o t h u r t t h e c i t y ' s programme and his attempt to Palestinian residents. downplay the dispute was Speaking to Israel's parliament, exposed today when Israel's Netanyahu said the construction ambassador to the US, Michael of homes for Jews in the city's Oren, admitted that relations eastern sector "in no way" hurts between the two countries had Palestinians. His comments reached a historic crisis. came after an admission by the "Israel's ties with the United I s r a e l i a m b a s s a d o r t o States are in their worst crisis W a s h i n g t o n t h a t I s r a e l ' s since 1975 … a crisis of historic relations with the US are at their proportions," Oren was quoted worst for 35 years. as saying in the Israeli media.

US officials are reported to Unnamed Israeli officials have have urged Israel to reconsider told Associated Press that the sudden plans to build 1,600 US is pressing Israel to scrap the homes in the occupied area, building project. Israel's foreign

ministry has refused to comment on either report.

Senior figures in the Obama administration have been unusually forthright in expressing frustration at the plans. On Friday Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, said the announcement was "insulting", and yesterday David Axelrod, one of the architects of Obama's election victory, said the timing was "very destructive".

Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, he said: "This was an affront, it was an insult but most importantly it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region."

The announcement last Tuesday that thousands of new homes were planned in Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem came on the eve of Biden's arrival in the region for discussions to restart "proximity talks" between Israel and Palestinians, with the US

mediating. Almost immediately, the news prompted Palestinian leaders to pull out of the new round of talks.

Israel has agreed to slow construction of settlements in the West Bank but has refused to halt building in East Jerusalem. Israel considers East Jerusalem, which it captured in the 1967 war, its sovereign territory and Netanyahu has spoken frequently in defence of settlements there.

• Israel • United States • Palestinian territories • Middle East • Binyamin Netanyahu • Barack Obama • Joe Biden Matthew Weaver Daniel Nasaw guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Going beyond Flash, Adobe shows off Web tech Stephen Shankland (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:23:00 AM

DreamWeaver demos reveal newer HTML and CSS technologies in action at Adobe.

The company is showing more interest in Open Web technologies.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Google Says China Talks Continue, But Pullout Signs Grow Reuters (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:46:00 AM

SHANGHAI/BEIJING Google says it remains in talks with Beijing about censorship of its Chinese-language search portal but is adamantly opposed to the practice amid mounting signs the company could soon shut the site.

7 ways to be nice on Twitter (Holy Kaw!)

situation, it’s crucial to be nice.

Here are seven ways to ensure you do just that. See a few Twitter is one of the most below: convenient, accessible, lively, • Acknowledge info. Don’t take and exciting places to share credit for other people’s finds. information and communicate Use the ReTweet function or where credit is due. with others. But like any social other methods of giving credit • Return favours without being Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:55:12 AM

asked. If a few people ReTweet your content on a regular basis, it’d be polite for you to throw them an RT bone.

• Tag correctly. If something isn’t safe for work. Be sure to mention “NSFW” in your tweet.

See all seven at Shakthisoft.

More Twitter tips and tricks.

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Credit card reforms: 0pc credit cards could be scrapped

Best-Buy Vacuum Cleaners - from Consumer Reports

(Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

Press Room (Consumer Reports)

Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:27:38 AM

By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor Published: 3:27PM GMT 15 Mar 2010 The 0 per cent balance transfer card allowed millions of consumers to switch their debts from one card to another for a small fee, and pay no interest on the debt for about six months or even longer.

The card company would make money by encouraging consumers to use their plastic to buy things, or take money out of an cash machine. These activities would incur interest rates, often of about 18 per cent or more.

However, the Department of Business, in a move that has been widely welcomed, has stopped the "swizz" of credit card companies insisting that

any money paid off was used to repay the cheapest debt first, trapping the expensive debt on the card for as long as possible.

Kevin Brennan, the Consumer Affairs Minister, said: "Our consumer research showed that most consumers didn't know this was happening and they felt this practise was a bit of a swizz."

Banks have now agreed, as part of a voluntary deal, to pay off the most expensive debts of a credit card off first. The Department for Business has calculated this move will save consumers £296 million, equating to £7 for each adult in a year.

Some experts have warned, however, it could punish socalled "rate tarts", savvy consumers who move their debts around from one zero per cent card to another.

Richard Thompson, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accountancy firm, said: "This

will make 0 per cent balance transfer offers a less effective means of customer acquisition and will prompt the industry to innovate to attract new customers."

Peter Harrison, credit cards e x p e r t a t moneysupermarket.com, said: “Our own research shows that almost two-thirds of consumers don’t realise that the cheapest debt is paid off first on the majority of credit cards. This lack of understanding of the current repayment hierarchy system means many end up paying a huge amount of interest and the debt sentence can last for years.

“However, cardholders should be aware that this change in payment order may have some unintended consequences, for example a reduction of zero per cent balance transfer deals."

Mr Brennan said if zero per cent balance transfer deals occurred, it was a price worthy

paying to improve the fairness of credit cards. "This is a big win; it is a total reversal of an industry practice," he said.

Credit card companies will also have to inform customers when they intend to put up rates, making clear to consumers they have the right to cancel the card.

Some campaigners said they were disappointed that the Government had not gone further and legislated to stop card companies increasing credit limits without asking.

Linda Weatherhead of the watchdog Consumer Focus, said: "The Government has missed a major opportunity to help consumers, in particular to address the industry practice of unsolicited and irresponsible credit limit increases."

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Submitted at 3/14/2010 9:00:59 PM

Best-Buy Vacuum Cleaners from Consumer Reports Consumer Reports tested almost seventy vacuums for the March '10 issue -- fifteen are recommended ... six are CR Best Buys. Podcast - Best-Buy Vacuum Cleaners Subscribe now!

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

Song Downloads Coming to Next Version of Rhapsody Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:19:46 AM

Real Networks’ Rhapsody To Go subscription includes a mobile app that lets you stream music(it has some nine million tracks in its library) directly

from your iPhone, for a $14.99 monthly fee.

It was once thought that Apple would never allow such an app, but now Rhapsody prepares to take it one step further, announcing song downloads for offline listening for the next version of Rhapsody for iPhone.

The app is still pending approval from Apple, but according to Rhapsody it should be available in a couple of days.

Furthermore, an Android version of Rhapsody is coming out of beta and into the Android Market soon.

Check out a video preview of the new offline listening feature from Rhapsody below.

Reviews: Android, Android Market, Rhapsody Tags: apple, iphone, music downloads, music streaming, rhapsody

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Jihad Jamie: Racial profiling under scrutiny after second white Islamist arrested Daniel Nasaw, Henry McDonald (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

portrayal of the prophet Muhammad as a dog.

Paulin-Ramirez, described by her mother as a lonely woman who had "got sucked in" to Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:33:26 AM US citizen Jamie Paulin- extremism, was released this Ramirez detained in connection w e e k e n d w i t h o u t c h a r g e . with alleged conspiracy to kill LaRose has been in custody in Swedish cartoonist the US since October.

The use of racial profiling as a The two women join a young counterterrorism tool has been Nigerian, a fair-haired North fatally undermined after a Carolina man and his sons, a US second white American woman army psychiatrist of Palestinian was arrested over an alleged descent, and others who have Islamist murder plot, critics of been accused in the past year of the policy said today. perpetrating or plotting Islamist Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, a violence. nursing student from Colorado, And this year, American-born, was detained in Ireland in non-Muslim anti-government connection with an alleged protesters flew a plane into a conspiracy to kill a Swedish government building in Texas, cartoonist. News of her arrest killing a worker, and shot at the c a m e d a y s a f t e r C o l l e e n Pentagon, wounding two police L a R o s e , 4 6 , o f s u b u r b a n officers.

Philadelphia, was named in a Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman federal indictment for her for the Council on Americanalleged role in the plot against Islamic Relations, said: "It Lars Vilks, who had offended shows that racial profiling is m a n y M u s l i m s w i t h h i s ineffective, as we've always

said."

In the years since the 9/11 attacks, US conservatives have encouraged racial profiling as a counterterrorism tool.

The Republican senator James Inhofe said in January: "If you're looking at people getting on an airplane and you have X amount of resources to get into it, you need to get at targets, not my wife."

As a white woman of European descent, the senator's wife, Kay Inhofe, has a racial profile exactly matching those of Paulin -Ramirez and LaRose, who converted to Islam and allegedly posted comments on the web under the alias "Jihad Jane".

Paulin-Ramirez, dubbed "Jihad Jamie" in the US media, converted to Islam last year and became estranged from her family.

This week, the liberal chatshow host Rachel Maddow poked fun at racial profiling. "We are now looking for anyone who is a

man, a woman, an American, an African, a Middle Easterner, an eastern European, a western European, a blond, a brunette or between the ages of 20 and 49, which by my calculation leaves only one being on planet Earth above reproach and that is Alf", referring to a TV show alien.

• This article was amended on 15 March 2010. It stated Lars Vilks was a Danish cartoonist.

He is Swedish. This has been corrected.

• Global terrorism • Ireland • Islam • United States Daniel Nasaw Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

What the Gmail Team Is Working On [Feature] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:35:00 AM

Developers and product managers from the Gmail team hosted a jam-packed panel at SXSW Interactive yesterday, and talked in a refreshingly honest manner about what they've done and what's coming next—including speed improvements, new features, Buzz, better Contacts, and more.

More »

Clarence Thomas' Wife a Tea Party Activist (Newsmax - Politics)

action.

"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may Virginia Thomas, wife of U.S. have the chance to preserve Supreme Court Justice Clarence liberty along with you and other Thomas, says her involvement people like you," she said to a in the "tea party" movement is r e c e n t t e a p a r t y m e e t i n g , the story of an average citizen in according to a latimes.com Submitted at 3/15/2010 2:21:28 AM

report.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.

"I adore all the new citizen

patriots who are rising up across this country," Thomas, said at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. "I have felt called to the front lines with you, with my fellow citizens, to preserve what made America great."

© All Rights Reserved.

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Gordon Brown - BA strike 'deplorable' and should be called off (Top stories from Times Online)

in the company’s interest, it is not in the workers’ interest and it is certainly not in the national Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:51:00 AM interest.

Gordon Brown today demanded “I hope that this strike will be that the Unite union call off its called off.” He said that he planned British Airways cabin hoped a breakthrough could be crew strike, a dispute which the achieved later today.

Prime Minister said was His comments followed a “unjustified” and “deplorable”. similar denunciation by Lord The intervention puts Mr A d o n i s , t h e T r a n s p o r t Brown on a collision course Secretary, at the weekend. with one of his party’s biggest He called on both sides to use financial backers just weeks the next few days to find a before a general election is negotiated settlement to the expected to be called. “totally unjustified” strike.

Later today, BA hopes to Mr Brown spoke with the publish a revised schedule for union’s joint general secretary, the planned strike dates. Cabin Tony Woodley, last week. crew members are due to walk “Brown has been looking for out for three days on Saturday conversations and briefings on and for a further four days from both sides,” a union source March 27. said. “I do not think he was The loss-making airline expects hassling us. He was good cop, I to cancel one in three flights if think Adonis was bad cop. [His] the strike goes ahead as w a s a r e a l l y u n h e l p f u l planned. intervention, really badly A strike jeopardises the travel briefed. There is a sense that the plans of hundreds of thousands Prime Minister is much better of passengers and would cost briefed than his Minister.”

BA tens of millions of pounds in The union insists that BA lost revenue. thwarted hopes of peace when it “It is the wrong time, it is withdrew a last-minute deal on unjustified, it is deplorable, we Friday, after Unite named strike shouldn’t have a strike,” Mr dates.

Brown told the BBC. “It is not Derek Simpson, the joint leader

of Unite, said that the talks could only resume if the deal was put back on the table. “The negotiations that Lord Adonis mentions we should get back to have been scuppered by management withdrawing their offer,” Mr Simpson said. Unless the deal, which the union had planned to put to a vote of its cabin crew members, was restored, “we have nothing to discuss”, he added.

Both sides say that they are still open for negotiations, but neither seems willing to back down over a fundamental cause of the dispute: the withdrawal of one cabin crew member from all BA flights in November. BA says it is vital in securing annual cost savings of £60 million from its cabin crew budget. The union says the changes imposed by BA must be repealed and savings made elsewhere. BA faces record losses this year and expects revenue to fall by as much as £1 billion.

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Vicar apologises after trees chopped down without warning (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

emerged that the PCC had not been told about the felling in advance.

Mrs Allard said: “The parish council were amazed the trees Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:12:40 AM

By Chris Irvine had been cut down.

At that Published: 3:12PM GMT 15 time, we didn’t know why they Mar 2010 had been cut down and hadn’t The Rev Barbara Stanton, been consulted.” rector of St Mary Magdalene The Rev Stanton has however church in Bildeston, near apologised, explaining that the Ipswich, Suffolk, admitted she trees were rotten and posed a made a mistake after four trees danger to the public. planted by the community Writing in the local newsletter, around 20 years ago as part of a she acknowledged her “mistake” tree-planting scheme were and said a meeting had been chopped down. arranged with the parish council David Halls, 70, who has lived to arrange for the replacement in the village all his life, said of the trees. people were “disgusted” by “I am personally very sorry the fact nobody was asked about about the loss of those trees and the decision. for any upset I may have “If you look at the tree and inadvertently caused anyone,” remember your mother or father she said. or somebody close and “On reflection, I realise that the somebody chops them down m a t t e r s h o u l d h a v e b e e n without asking, it upsets a lot of discussed by both the PCC people,” he said. and the parish council before “It was a community effort to any decision was taken. Please plant those trees - that’s what’s accept my apologies for any upset people.” oversight.”

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Accounting for Lehman, or Enron Pt 2 | Dan Roberts Dan Roberts (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:39:08 AM

Lucy Prebble has brilliantly dramatised Enron's accounting scams, but it seems Lehman Brothers perfected the dark art No one who has seen Lucy Prebble's play about the collapse of Enron can forget the velociraptors. These menacing, red-eyed dinosaurs are used to represent the company's unique contribution to the financial hall of shame: accounting monsters created to gobble up debt and hide it from shareholders with a brazenness they could never imagine.

But the so-called "special purpose entities" (named Raptors 1 to 4 by Enron finance director Andrew Fastow) were perhaps not so unusual, after all.

When the time comes to stage our most recent financial drama, theatre directors might want to take a closer look at the beasts that Lehman Brothers kept chained in the shadows.

A 2,200-page legal report into the bank's demise revealed last week a similar addiction to accounting hallucinogens. Until now, the big mystery was how

the Wall Street giant could have been reporting healthy profits right up until the moment it keeled over and died – bringing most of the west's economies down with it. But the latest investigation reveals financial transactions known as Repo 105 and Repo 108, used to temporarily remove tens of billions of dollars of debt from the bank's balance sheet at the end of every accounting period.

As the banking crisis grew, so did Lehman's addiction to such trickery and the harder it became to come clean.

Executives even referred to Repo 105 as "another drug we're on" in emails uncovered by the report.

Rather than Fastow, it is Lehman's telegenic young finance director and front woman Erin Callan who is likely to end up in the starring role in any theatrical battle of the Repos. Callan is already subject of a forthcoming book on Lehman called The Devil's Casino, by Vanity Fair journalist Vicky Ward, which also highlights the bizarre rituals forced upon wives of Lehman bankers.

The capacity for Lehman to

continue to shock after a year of books and revelations is itself a shock. But the greatest surprise is how little has changed since Enron and the scams of the last financial bubble.

Regulators like to caution against simply addressing the specific causes of past scandals when trying to prevent future ones, but it is as if all the Wall Street rules introduced to clean up accounting have only encouraged finance directors to study the history books more closely for inspiration.

Perhaps when Prebble's play moves to Broadway next month, she can simply swap Lehman for Enron.

• Lehman Brothers • Enron • Financial crisis • Credit crunch • US economy • United States Dan Roberts guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Analyst Calls: AKAM, HAS, ICE, KIRK, LM, PEET, RSH, WMT ...

Eric Buscemi (BloggingStocks)

KeyBanc as the company believes that railcar fundamentals have improved.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:40:00 AM • Citigroup upgraded WM Filed under: Analyst Reports, Morrison ( MRWSY) to buy A n a l y s t U p g r a d e s a n d from sell.

Downgrades, Wal-Mart (WMT), • HSBC raised Millicom ( Hasbro Inc (HAS), RadioShack MICC) to overweight from Corp (RSH), Analyst Initiations neutral.

Analyst Upgrades • HealthSouth ( HLS) was • FBR Capital upgraded Legg raised to outperform from Mason ( LM) to market perform market perform by Raymond from underperform, citing James. stabilizing outflows and an improved liquidity position. Continue reading Analyst Calls: • W a l m a r t ( W M T ) w a s AKAM, HAS, ICE, KIRK, LM, upgraded to buy from hold by PEET, RSH, WMT ...

Citigroup on expectations the Analyst Calls: AKAM, HAS, company will regain market ICE, KIRK, LM, PEET, RSH, share from aggressive price cuts. WMT ... originally appeared on • Piper Jaffray upgraded BloggingStocks on Mon, 15 K i r k l a n d ' s ( K I R K ) t o Mar 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please o v e r w e i g h t f r o m n e u t r a l see our terms for use of feeds. following the company's Q4 P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | results.

Comments • Greenbrier ( GBX) was upgraded to buy from hold by

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David Beckham determined to make Facebook Growing, Not 'swift and full recovery' Killing, Foursquare (Top stories from Times Online) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:06:24 AM

David Beckham says he is determined to make a "swift and full recovery" from the ruptured Achilles tendon that has left his dream of playing in a record fourth World Cup finals for England in tatters.

The 34-year-old midfielder flew to Finland this morning to visit Dr Sakari Orava, professor of orthopaedics and traumatology at the Mehilainen Clinic in Turku, who is expected to perform surgery on the player’s left tendon this afternoon.

Dr Orava confirmed it would take a minimum of four months for Beckham to fully recover from the injury, prompting some to predict the setback could even curtail his illustrious 18-year playing career.

Yet Beckham has already set his sights on a return to the game. "I am on my way to Finland to see a specialist and have a scan on the injury," Beckham said in a statement released on his website earlier

today.

"I am upset but want to thank everyone for their messages of support. I hope to make a swift and full recovery."

The injury occurred when Beckham pulled up under no pressure from an opposing player in the final minutes of AC Milan's 1-0 victory over Chievo at San Siro last night.

The former England captain hopped from the pitch in obvious pain and collapsed on the sidelines. He was treated for about five minutes on the touchline before eventually being carried from the arena face down on a stretcher in tears, mouthing "it's broken, it's broken" to those on the home bench, while members of Milan's backroom staff tried to comfort him.

“David’s injury makes us sick,” Leonardo, the Milan coach, said.

“When I think of his personal history, everything I know about him, how hard he works, I feel so bad for him. “Tonight was a very important win for us, but David’s news definitely puts a downer on the evening. David knew he was injured

immediately.”

Fabio Capello, the England manager, telephoned Beckham last night to offer his best wishes for a full recovery, but he must now write the 34-yearold out of his plans.

Beckham is England’s mostcapped outfield player with 115 caps. He rejoined Milan in January for his second spell on loan at the club from the Los Angeles Galaxy, during their offseason from Major League Soccer, to safeguard his place in the England squad place.

However, he has not been an automatic first choice for Milan and began the Champions League round-of-16, second-leg match away to Manchester United, his former club, last week on the substitutes’ bench.

Now, bearing in mind that he will be 35 in May, he has almost certainly played his last game for England.

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Tom Johansmeyer (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:20:00 AM

Filed under: Google (GOOG), New York Times'A' (NYT) When Facebook announced its new location-based capabilities after Twitter has already enabled it, the future looked pretty grim for Foursquare.

Though wildly popular with the nerd crowd (of which I'm a member ... the nerd world, not Foursquare), could a year-old location-based game go head-tohead with the 400 million-userstrong behemoth of the social media industry? In a strange twist, Facebook is actually breathing life into the killer app many expected it to kill.

Thirty-three percent of Foursquare's traffic comes from Facebook, according to data from Hitwise ( EXPN), followed

by Google ( GOOG) at 22% and Twitter at 8%. The remaining one third of traffic, from everyone else, is fed in part by partnership with major brands such as the New York Times ( NYT), Bravo and Zagat.

Continue reading Facebook Growing, Not Killing, Foursquare Facebook Growing, Not Killing, Foursquare originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Trim and Prepare an Artichoke Properly [Food] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:20:00 AM

Artichokes are, like mangoes, pineapples, and avocados, not inherently easy to cut up and

prepare for eating. Serious Eats then digging in to pull out every suggests getting some lemons, single edible piece. More » water, and a sharp knife ready,

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ANC youth leader guilty of hate over Contrary Call on Toyota Jacob Zuma rape comment (TM) (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

Collis said, according to the Sapa news agency.

Malema was taken to a South African equality court by the Sonke Gender Justice group, Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:34:05 AM Published: 3:34PM GMT 15 which advocates against genderMar 2010 based violence.

According to court papers, Collis ordered Malema to make Julius Malema told university an unconditional public apology students in Cape Town last year within two weeks and pay an that: "When a woman didn't amount of 50,000 rand (ÂŁ4,490) enjoy it, she leaves early in the to a centre for abused women morning. Those who had a nice within one month. time will wait until the sun Malema's lawyer Tumi comes out, request breakfast and Mokwena said he would lodge ask for taxi money." an appeal.

Malema, known for his fiery "We took a decision to lodge an rhetoric, was speaking about the appeal. I'm going to start woman who accused Zuma of working on the paper tonight so rape in 2006, a charge on which the appeal will be lodged very he was acquitted. soon," he said.

"This court is satisfied that the Collis concluded her judgment utterances by the respondent ... with a word of wisdom to amounted to hate speech. The Malema. u t t e r e d w o r d s c o n s t i t u t e "Malema, being a man of vast harassment," magistrate Colleen political influence, be wary of

turning into a man that often speaks but never talks," she said.

Malema, 29, regularly sparks controversy with his remarks. In 2008, he declared that he was "ready to kill" for President Jacob Zuma.

Recently he was accused of singing an anti-apartheid song that calls for "killing the Boers", or the white descendants of the first European settlers in South Africa.

Malema is currently embroiled in a scandal over allegations that he used his political influence to benefit his companies, providing regular fodder for South Africa's front pages.

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Steven Halpern (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:00:00 AM

Filed under: International Markets, Toyota Motor Corp.

(TM), Newsletters, Japan, Stocks to Buy"Everyone likes to find a bargain, and those of us that invest in stocks are no different; I am always on the lookout for great a company trading at a healthy discount," says Ian Wyatt.

In his Top Stock Insights, he explains, "If we have learned anything from the past few years it's that good companies can have bad quarters and see their stock price fall.

"When I'm bargain hunting I will always keep in mind two things. First, why is the stock trading at a discount? Second,

can the company recover? If the company can recover from the problem quickly, then I will buy that stock. Such is the case with Toyota Motor Company ( TM).

Continue reading Contrary Call on Toyota (TM) Contrary Call on Toyota (TM) originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pepsi to Drink Up $15 Billion in Stock Buybacks Tom Taulli (BloggingStocks)

bottlers in the U.S. so as to improve cost efficiencies, as Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:40:00 AM well as to broaden the product Filed under: Good news, mix. In fact, Coca-Cola ( KO) PepsiCo (PEP) also realized the logic of this Over the past year, PepsiCo ( strategy and is doing the same PEP) has been making the right thing. moves. Perhaps one of the And keeping up the biggest was to buy up its key m o m e n t u m , P e p s i C o d i d

something else to make

shareholders happy. Monday, the company announced it has approved a 7% increase in its dividend and there a whopping $15 billion authorization to repurchase up to $15 billion in shares of the company.

Continue reading Pepsi to Drink Up $15 Billion in Stock

Buybacks Pepsi to Drink Up $15 Billion in Stock Buybacks originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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13

Why You Should Start a Company in... Philadelphia Laura Rich (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:40:54 AM

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startup aspirants options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick. Here, part nine in our series.

When you look around the country, you see that secondgeneration entrepreneurs play a big role in thriving communities. They serve as mentors, cheerleaders and early capital sources. Philadelphia is an exception to the rule.

Because despite a Web 1.0 legacy of hits like CDNow (acquired by Bertelsmann in 2000 for $117 million), Half.com (acquired by eBay in 2000), e-commerce company GSI ($1.55 billion market cap) and VerticalNet (valued at $12 billion in 1999), the city is mainly driven by firstgeneration entrepreneurs and few of them have hit a serious scale or impact yet.But what Philadelphia’s current startup scene lacks in experience it makes up for in enthusiasm.

Blake Jenelle, a self-appointed leader of the community, founder of Philly Startup Leaders and a serial entrepreneur (Anthillz,

TicketLeap), calls it a "self-help ethos." That sounds about right for a place known as the City of Brotherly Love.Josh Kopelman, managing partner at First Round Capital, spoke with Fastcompany.com about what makes Philadelphia’s startup scene unique. What makes Philadelphia a great place for new businesses? You know, it’s called the City of Brotherly Love and I actually think they mean it when it comes to startups. Philly is small enough

and intimate enough that most of the entrepreneurs actually know each other. There’s an unbelievable sense of community.Launching a startup is really hard and emotionally trying and there are a bunch of great networks and communities that build a really tight net and support groups. Philly Startup Leaders has hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs actively helping each other. It’s a really interesting community in that way. Are there particular

lifestyle here are really great.

Comcast is nearby. Is that a factor in the startup scene, in terms of funding or a client?

You know, Comcast now is the sort of largest broadband portal, one of the largest players in media and entertainment.

They’ve actually started a venture fund, but also now a seed stage fund, where we’ve invested with them in three companies and it’s great because they are now really playing an active role in the startup ecosystem. Does Philadelphia breed or attract entrepreneurs? In the last big boom, Philly had more than a fair share of representation from VerticalNet, to Safeguard Scientifics, the Intent Capital Group to Half.com, to CDNow, to GSI--those are all Phillybased companies.But in general, I’d say that it currently sort of breeds most of its entrepreneurs.

And the real hook--I think the types of startups that do better in universities will be an attraction Philadelphia than others? It’s magnet. There are 80-plus both the pharma or life sciences universities in the area, from kind of startups just because you Villanova, Penn, Saint Joseph’s, have all the big companies here, Drexel, Temple to Bryn Mawr. whether it’s GlaxoSmithKline or There are just so many schools others. And also, some of the in the area that I think the b u s i n e s s e s t h a t c a n b e universities are going to be a bootstrapped.One of the neat strong sort of attracting ground parts about Philadelphia is its for raw talent rather than [for] geography. It’s affordable, it’s relocating entrepreneurs in their livable, there are 80-plus 30s. What kind of talent comes universities and it’s really an out of those universities for hour away from New York, but WHY page 14 the cost of living here and the

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WHY

Morning Reading nospam@example.org (Scott Jagow) (Marketplace Scratch Pad)

Most of the world’s large economies are stuck in a liquidity trap — deeply depressed, but unable to Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:52:35 AM Good morning. Hope you had generate a recovery by cutting a good weekend. To start the interest rates because the week, an interview with Michael relevant rates are already near Lewis about his fascinating new zero. China, by engineering an book. Might AIG actually pay unwarranted trade surplus, is in us back? And a scary number: effect imposing an anti-stimulus Goldman Sachs derivative on these economies, which they l i a b i l i t y = 3 3 , 8 2 3 % o f can’t offset. assets(The Bankwatch) So how should we respond?

The part that awed me, is that First of all, the U.S. Treasury BofA and Citi now have more Department must stop fudging derivative exposure than they and obfuscating. did in 2007! Huh! What is AIG might actually pay us Timothy Geithner being paid back(Slate) for? I have to admit after TARP …it turns out that the efforts to and the apparent hands on prop up AIG are also working approach I like most assumed out much better than expected. things were being fixed, but AIG still owes the Fed and the apparently not.

Treasury a combined $127 This simply adds to the point billion. But—surprise!—AIG is that despite all the histrionics paying a lot of its debts back. and efforts in Washington, And there’s a not too far-fetched nothing has been learned and the scenario in which we come American Banking system is c l o s e t o b r e a k i n g o n o u r now at least at as much risk now reluctant investment in the as in 2007, pre crash. company.

It’s time to take on China(Paul Will the national broadband Krugman/NYT) plan come up short?(NPR) It’s

continued from page 13

being unveiled tomorrow…

When it comes to speed and price of Internet connections, Benkler found that American cities trail far behind their counterparts in South Korea, Sweden — even eastern Slovakia. The big reason, Benkler says, is competition.

You need lots of different companies competing for your Internet business, hustling to provide better service at a lower cost than their rivals. The way other countries do this is by essentially forcing the big companies to share their wires with the smaller ones. Benkler admits that won’t be an easy sell in the U.S. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine(CBS) Fascinating 60 Minutes interview with Michael Lewis about his new book on those who bet against the subprime market: Watch CBS News Videos Online

Cash for Geeks: Kickstarter Connects Projects With Patrons John Pavlus (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/14/2010 9:00:00 PM

If dipping into your life savings

to develop that great idea or project isn't an option (as in, you don't have savings), the crowdsourced fundraising service called Kickstarter just

might be your only financial hope.

startups--business or tech talent?

Well, I mean there are both, right? You know, University of Pennsylvania is an engineering school, but they have Wharton on the business side. And this year is the first year that, this past week, Wharton held a preview for this--the students are going to be coming next year, and they held a lot of breakout groups. And from what I’ve heard, this year was the first year in a long time that there were more people interested in learning about the entrepreneurship track than the investment-banking track. What is happening that’s going to make the ecosystem sustainable going forward? I think you’re seeing the emergence of programs, like Boulder has TechStars and San Francisco has Y Combinator. Philly now has DreamIt, which is a strong program. Many of these companies that have participated have received venture financing or additional financing beyond that.Pennsylvania also has an interesting program called the Ben Franklin Technology Partnership, where the government is actually writing seed stage checks and they are actually among the most active venture investors in the country.

So I think whether it’s the sort of grassroots community, like Philadelphia Startup Leaders, it’s incubators like DreamIt or it’s government, I think

everyone together is sort of playing their role. Is there a particular profile of a Philadelphia entrepreneur that’s unique from other cities’ entrepreneurs? You know, my sense is they tend to be scrappier, just by necessity.

Philadelphia doesn’t have the same funding ecosystem yet that other cities have. But we’ve seen an influx of even seed stage capital. Next Stage Capital raised a fund, MentorTech Capital raised a fund, ETF Ventures raised a funds, FirstRound Capital is headquartered here. So, you know, we’re beginning to see an influx of venture players. What kind of exits do you see in Philadelphia? I think that the last time the exit market came around, Philadelphia did very well with multiple IPOs, with billions of dollars. Even today, GSI is a strong billion-dollarplus market cap. That said, I’d say that the current crop of Philadelphia area companies are on the earlier side of the cycle, but the fact that they’re early doesn’t mean that the exits won’t be there--it might mean they’re a little bit farther away.

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15

New Appointments at Google, Apple, Show Depth of Enmity Between the Two Addy Dugdale (Fast Company)

new place of work will be Apple, although there's no word on what exactly he will be Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:26:59 AM doing. Moving on after three Tim Bray, legendary software years at Google was hard, he developer and programmer, is acknowledged in an email. "I off to Google. He announced his learned so much about the decision this morning, three world, our users, and most of weeks on from his resignation all... me. I left with a very heavy from Sun Microsystems, which heart yesterday." The nocame with a searing critique of poaching agreement between the Apple. Meanwhile, a key player two companies is, one assumes, on the Mountain View campus, over.

RJ Pittman, worked his final day to move was a five-word Steve Jobs, according to a l a s t w e e k a n d i s o f f t o sentence. "I'll enjoy competing searing feature in the New York Cupertino. Confused? So are we with Apple." Bray elucidated his Times, is convinced that Google --but mostly over how Apple reasons in the next para. "The is trying to wipe out the iPhoneand Google, former BFFs, have iPhone vision of the mobile -hence the lawsuit. Although fallen out.

I n t e r n e t ' s f u t u r e o m i t s directed at HTC, make no Bray, who was developer of controversy, sex and freedom, mistake that Jobs' real target is Web Technologies at Sun, but includes strict limits on who Google. A decade on from the covered the reasons for his can know what and who can say two companies hook up, in an move on his blog. It was, he what. It's a sterile Disney-fied attempt to loosen Microsoft's said, mainly about Android. The walled garden surrounded by s t r a n g l e h o l d o n p e r s o n a l Google OS was open-source, sharp-toothed lawyers. The computing, the cracks are developer friendly, and mobile people who create the apps apparent as both firms start to Internet is, as he sees it, the serve at the landlord's pleasure step on each others' toes in the future. Google was, he said "too and fear his anger. I hate it." hardware, software and mobile big to be purely good or in fact One person who's not au fait advertising arenas. purely anything," but he was with Bray's attitude is RJ [Via ongoing by Tim Bray and d o w n w i t h t h e c o m p a n y Pittman. As of Friday he was TechCrunch and NYT] philosophy.

Product Manager at Google. His At the end of his list of reasons

Waiting for the Paris Metro? You Might Be in an Ikea Ad William Bostwick (Fast Company)

waiting benches with comfy and pristine (for now) Ektorp and Kalstad couches and Brasa floor Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:32:59 AM lamps. Posters on the walls Ikea takes over Paris subway continue the vibe with trompe stations with life-sized living l'oeil cabinets and bookshelves. rooms.

Ikea pulled a similar trick last Ride the Metro this week in January, when the company set Paris and you might get off the up a fake Oval Office in train to an odd sight: No, it's not Washington DC's Union Station. the ol' dorm-room-recreated-on- Though it might not make Paris the-lawn college prank, it's an s t r a p h a n g e r s t h i n k a b o u t ad. Ikea set up their furniture redecorating (more likely to collections in a few busy remind them what a pain it is to stations (St. Lazare, Champs schlep furniture on the subway), Elysées Clémenceau, Concorde, it's sure to confuse some blearyand Opéra), supplementing e y e d m o r n i n g c o m m u t e r s . those rock-hard, gum-stained " W a i t , w h e r e a m I ? "

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Analysis: When Working Day's Done, iPhones, and Soon iPads, Light Up Kit Eaton (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:26:56 AM

Analysis of iPhone user trends show the devices get most play at evening time and also on the weekends, when they generate 7% more traffic than weekdays.

Besides being useful for PR purposes, this shows business iPhone use still lags.

The data comes from a study by Localytics, who have been looking at app use on Apple's smartphone, and their figures are pretty clear: During the weekday iPhone users tend not to mess around with apps until much later in the day, but on the weekends app usage ramps up much more quickly. Weekend app use also results in 7% more data traffic to iPhones compared to weekday traffic. The working day also strongly shapes the app use profile: By 9 p.m. EST the

app usage is at its peak, corresponding to East Coasters playing with their phones after work and the evening meal, and just as West Coast folk are heading home from work, and turning to their iPhones.

These figures are simple yet powerful, and they'll be very interesting to advertisers and

possibly app developers--such a detailed peek into how U.S. iPhoners interact with their devices could easily play into decisions on what types of adverts to roll in embedded ad placements inside apps. But they also show that during working hours, iPhone owners usually don't play with apps. This could

be for a number of reasons-chief of which being user attention is directed to work tasks. And while there are a large number of business-centric and productivity apps in the App Store, iPhone users are more likely to be using a laptop or desktop PC for these purposes.

Apple's execs may pay some

attention to this study for precisely this reason, thinking about the upcoming iPad. The bigger screen and more powerful processor offered by the new tablet really does make it more useful for business purposes, and as I've pointed out there'll likely be some neat productivity apps on the way that could even steal the thunder from Microsoft's Courier project before it launches. So far we haven't really seen the iPad being promoted as a business tool--but I suspect you'll see Apple pursue this idea with enthusiasm pretty soon. [via GigaOM] To hear more news like this, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

5 myths about renewable energy (Holy Kaw!)

renewable energy persist.

In this article, HowStuffWorks.com forgoes We're currently suspended the loonier notions out there between two ages: a time concerning new world orders dependent on fossil fuels and a and Area 51 battery packs. future dominated by renewable Instead, they'll look at five of e n e r g y s o u r c e s . Y e t n o t the bigger renewable energy everyone is sold on this vision, myths currently making the so a number of myths about rounds.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:38:19 AM

• Clean Coal Is the Answer: As it turns out, coal is exceedingly dirty. A great deal of clean coal technology centers around capturing and storing pollutants that would otherwise be released in the burning process. Plus, environmentalists also point out that coal mining still entails a great deal of geologic upheaval.

• Wind Turbines Are Noisy, of wind through the blades.

Costly Bird Killers: To be fair, wind turbines do kill birds -- but F u l l l i s t a t so do vehicles, skyscrapers, H o w S t u f f W o r k s . c o m . pollution and the introduction of Total aggregation of invasive species into their H o w S t u f f W o r k s . c o m . habitats. Also, modern turbine Photo credit: Fotolia t e c h n o l o g y r e n d e r s t h e m Permalink| Leave a comment » relatively silent -- essentially no more than the soft, steady whine

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Gay seniors come out late, start second lifetime (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:19:21 AM

MIAMI – On his 75th birthday, Bill Farthing decided to be reborn. In the six years since he'd buried his wife of 45 years, he'd felt as he did long before: Lonesome, different, outcast. He wondered if he was going crazy; he contemplated suicide.

Looking back, the clues leading to this day had been scattered throughout his life, but only made sense just now.

So Farthing dressed in the most basic of blue wool skirt suits he could find on the Internet, with a white blouse and low-heeled, open-toed white shoes, and went shopping. Arms loaded with skirts and blouses from the clearance rack, Farthing approached the checkout.

"Did you find everything you wanted, ma'am?" the cashier asked.

Farthing looked over his shoulder, then realized she was talking to him. He had pulled it off.

He had become a she. ___ Increased awareness and acceptance of varied sexualities and gender identities has led Americans to come out far younger, as early as middle school. A less noticed but parallel shift is happening at the other end of the age spectrum, with people in their 60s, 70s and 80s coming to terms with the

truth that they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

While no one tracks the numbers of the elderly who come out, those who work with older adults say the trend is undeniable, and a resulting network of support groups and services has cropped up.

The decision can fracture lifelong relationships. Or it can bring the long-sought relief of an unloaded secret.

"For the first time in my life, I'm not putting on a show," said Farthing, who eventually had sexual reassignment surgery and changed her first name to Chrissie. "It seems like I've been out on a cloud all my life and now I'm not. I'm me."

Outing yourself late in life can be complicated after having lived through times when being openly gay could get you arrested, put in an institution and given shock treatments. It's snarled in a lifetime of trudging along through society's view of normalcy and the resulting fear of being ostracized by children and grandchildren. And it's marked by a nagging doubt that all the heartache, all the potential for it to go wrong, may not be worth it with one's years numbered.

"When somebody comes out at the age of 20, they have their whole life ahead of them," said Karen Taylor, the director of training and advocacy for SAGE, a national group that

works with LGBT seniors.

"There's a real sense of regret and loss for somebody who comes out later in life, even when talking to them and they say the decision was the right one."

Still, many seniors have felt empowered by the growing presence of gays and lesbians in pop culture and some highprofile, late-in-life outings.

Among the most notable, " Family Ties" star Meredith Baxter came out in December at 62; Richard Chamberlain, long the target of rumors, came out in 2003 at 69, decades after the height of his career as a TV heartthrob.

Those who've mustered the gumption to out themselves say they feel as if they've been given a second chance.

Carl Martin, 83, of Falls Church, Va., came out as gay not long after his wife died in 1997. He says he was happy in his marriage but had known of his feelings for men since he was in high school and revealed an unrequited crush to a friend.

Coming out, he says, has changed him from a withdrawn, tense, reticent bystander to a vibrant social butterfly who even talks to strangers in the supermarket.

"I would describe these as the happiest years of my life," he said. "I'm free to be who I am. I was not free to be who I was before."

The realization often doesn't come easily. Sue Pratt, 74, of Kirkwood, Mo., remembers having feelings for her high school English teacher, but she wasn't sure what to do with them when she always dreamed of getting married and having a husband. She got her wish, but even when her husband left her, she still couldn't come to terms with the truth.

"You would think I would say, 'I'm free now,'" she said. "But that thought never occurred to me. I was so deep in denial."

Eventually, in her 60s, she answered a personal ad and slowly began coming out to her loved ones as a lesbian. Not everyone has taken it well, as she feared would be the case, but she has no regrets.

"I didn't want to have a secret," she said. "It doesn't matter if I lose every friend that I have, this is what I have to do."

Dr. Loren Olson, a psychiatrist in Des Moines, Iowa, who has studied late-in-life outings, said for most such seniors, there are losses, though they are typically less than they fear, and often vary greatly by socioeconomics.

Olson himself was 40 before he came out. While it may seem incomprehensible to some, he said it makes sense that many can't face the truth for so long, even if some around them have surmised it.

"We don't like disharmony in our thinking so sometimes we

block out things that really are in opposition to really what we believe is true," he said. "It's like a child believing in Santa Claus: You just hang on to that as long as you can." ___ Farthing's life was sprinkled with hints.

As a boy, his mother asked one day how he liked school. "It was OK," Farthing said. "But it would be better if I was a girl."

He didn't want to do the things other boys did. Girls didn't want him around. He fought every haircut.

"We've got a homo on our hands," he overheard his father say.

But with no sense what to do with his feelings of being different, life wore on. He served in the Air Force. He lived overseas. And then there was that girl he found at a pub in England.

She felt different, too, always attracted more to women than men. But they got along so well.

And they fell in love.

Sex was never a big part of their relationship, but a daughter was born. The marriage, Farthing says, was happy. Both of them thought they would die with their soul mate by their side.

She did. He wasn't so lucky.

Afterward, he tried anything to keep busy. He got his pilot's GAY page 24

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Mission: Impossible actor dies (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

as a child along with my parents. It was one of the few modern series that my parents Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:54:04 AM watched, other than the cowboy Peter Graves - star of the classic western series, which is why I TV series Mission: Impossible remember it so well. Mr Graves and disaster spoof movie was indeed statesman-like as his Airplane! - has died in the US daughter has said, and he will be city of Los Angeles. He was 83. missed. May his family take The actor had a suspected heart some measure of comfort in attack outside his home after a knowing their man was well meal with his family, about a thought of by so many. week before his 84th birthday, John M. Slusser II, Nantwich, said publicist Sandy Brokaw.

UK Graves was perhaps best known I met Peter at a Collectormania for his role as special agent Jim event a few years ago. He was a Phelps in the popular TV series charming, genuine and warm Mission: Impossible. chap and I enjoyed the chat I He also played bungling pilot had with him. Lovely bloke, rest Clarence Oveur in the 1980 film in peace Peter.

Airplane!.

Steve, Swansea, UK The actor initially turned down home.

Graves and Leslie Nielson The actor said the writing was Stalag 17. the role but was talked round by Awards behind the show's long-running In recent years, he hosted the helped set the tone in Airplane, the film-makers, who told him Arguably his most famous role success.

A&E Network's long-running the Movie! by virtue of these his dry, deadpan humour made was in the long-running TV "It made you think a little bit historical series, Biography. two actors using their dramatic him perfect for the spoof show Mission: Impossible, in and kept you on the edge of It won him an Emmy for acting experience to great comic disaster movie. which Graves led a squad of your seat because you never outstanding informational series effect in this movie. Graves' role He had just returned from lunch American government special knew what was going to happen in 1997. in Mission: Impossible also led on Sunday with his wife and agents battling evil conspirators. next," he once said.

We asked BBC news website his character to be spoofed in children when he collapsed Every show began with Graves, He won a Golden Globe in readers for their memories of Team America - World Police. before making it into the house, as Agent Phelps, listening to 1971 for his part in the series. Peter Graves. Please find a Great actor, unforgettable voice his publicist said. instructions detailing his team's Graves appeared in about 130 selection of your comments and look.

One of his daughters tried in latest mission on a tape, which film and TV shows during his below.

Paul, Kyiv, Ukraine vain to revive him.

I am 27 and Mission: self-destructed within seconds career.

While filming Mission: "He had this statesman-like of being played.

His first television series was Impossible in 1990, Peter Impossible was a big part of my quality," publicist Brokaw told The show ran on CBS from the 1950s children's Saturday Graves and his wife stayed for teens. My mother introduced me AP news agency. "People were 1967 to 1973 and was revived morning show Fury, about an several months in the hotel to the show and I grew to love always encouraging him to run on ABC from 1988 to 1990. orphan and an untamed black where I worked. They were a it. Mr Graves was the support for office. But he said: 'I like Please turn on JavaScript. stallion. lovely couple and always very you could count on if a plan acting. I like being around Media requires JavaScript to Early in his career, he also nice to everyone. failed or an unexpected situation actors."' play. t u r n e d i n a m e m o r a b l e Jordan Tuxworth, Melbourne, occurred. He was a grown up The police said the star had Graves played a bumbling pilot performance as a Nazi spy in the Australia MISSION: page 22 died of "natural causes" at his in the spoof movie Airplane 1953 prisoner-of-war drama I watched Mission: Impossible

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ACORN branches rename, rebrand after video scandal (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:55:20 AM

CHICAGO – Affiliates of the once mighty liberal activist group ACORN are remaking themselves in a desperate bid to ditch the tarnished name of their parent organization and restore federal grants and other revenue streams that ran dry in the wake of a video scandal.

The letters A, C, O, R and N are coming off office doors from New York to California.

Business cards are being reprinted. New signs with new names are popping up in front of offices.

The breakaways are trying to shed the scandal that emerged six months ago when videos showed some ACORN workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute. But while their names are different, most groups have kept the same offices and staff.

That, critics say, means the groups really haven't started anew and severed all ties to ACORN, which faced accusations of mismanagement and rampant voter registration fraud well before the video brouhaha sent even longtime Democratic backers scattering.

Even the national office of ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, doesn't blame affiliates for bolting from under its umbrella — conceding its

entire 40-state network has been devastated by what backers characterize as right-wing attacks.

"It is true that these range of attacks do damage to your brand and your good name," said Kevin Whelan, ACORN's communication's director. "The other reality is that we are starting to win some vindication on the facts. But vindication doesn't necessarily pay the rent."

ACORN's financial situation and reputation went into free fall within days of the videos' release in September. Congress reacted by yanking ACORN's federal funding, private donors held back cash and scores of ACORN offices closed.

On Wednesday, a U.S. judge reiterated an earlier ruling that the federal law blacklisting ACORN and groups allied with it was unconstitutional because it singled them out. That doesn't mean any money will automatically be restored, however.

For years, ACORN could draw on 400,000 members to lobby for liberal causes, such as raising the minimum wage or adopting universal health care.

Locally, its activists pushed city officials to fix broken street lights and it pressured banks to offer more favorable loans to low-income Americans.

ACORN was arguably most successful at registering hundreds of thousands of low-

income voters, though that mission was dogged by fraud allegations, including that some workers submitted forms signed by ' Mickey Mouse' or other cartoon characters.

There's a chance the national group could disband, and it, too, may consider changing its name.

"The sorts of attacks ACORN has faced as an organization are unprecedented since the McCarthyism in the '50s, and it remains an open question whether an organization can survive that," Whelan said.

"Time will tell."

One of the latest groups to adopt a new name is ACORN Housing, long one of the bestfunded affiliates. Now, the group is calling itself the Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Others changing their names include what were among the largest affiliates: California ACORN is now Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. More are expected to follow suit.

The housing affiliate has lost more than most. The federal cutoff slashed its budget 75 percent, from $24 million in 2009 to $6 million in 2010. It's closed half of its 33 offices, cut half its 250 staff and reduced numbers of low-income families it gives financial advice to from 20,000 to 10,000.

An unadorned paper sign with the new name was taped at the entrance of the group's Chicago headquarters on a recent afternoon. But much else is unchanged: The new group is in the same offices; and the head of the old group, Mike Shea, is the head of the new one.

Still, insisted Shea, "We really have no relationship with ACORN whatsoever."

Many opponents don't buy it. A distinguishing feature of ACORN for years has been its complex web of affiliates, some of which shared money and manpower without ever assuming ACORN's name, said Frederick Hill, spokesman for Republicans on the U.S. House oversight and government reform committee.

"The idea that some ACORN organizations are trying to obscure who they really are should be troubling to Americans," he said.

A recent report on ACORN compiled by the House Republicans whom Hill represents describes ACORN as a "shell game" with a structure "designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators."

To credibly claim a clean break, argued Hill, the new groups should at least have hired directors from outside ACORN. "But I can't tell you of a single

example our committee has seen where we say, 'Geez, it really looks like they're purging all the individuals who are with national ACORN,'" he said.

The breakaways insist they have changed in more than just name, pointing to tougher ethics rules and better management.

Shea said his Chicago-based housing group brought in independent auditors to pour through its books; all, he says, gave them high marks.

"We can prove to our stakeholders that we've put reforms in place and what you saw on the video can never happen again," he said.

In the end, all the confidencebuilding measures may do little good when it comes to divisive, politically active groups like ACORN. Foes like Hill and a vast range of longtime detractors are sure to harken back to the old ACORN names at every opportunity.

"If a company changes its name, the hubbub eventually dies down," said Bill Lozito, head of Minneapolis-based branding firm, Strategic Name Development. "Changing a name associated with politics is a lot tougher. People won't let go of the original name and won't forget." ___ On the Net: ACORN: http://www.acorn.org ACORN page 23

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Israel-US ties at 'historic low' (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:11:57 AM

Israel's ambassador to the US has said that relations between the two countries face their worst crisis for 35 years, Israeli media have reported.

Last week Israeli officials announced the building of 1,600 new homes in occupied East Jerusalem while US VicePresident Joe Biden was visiting.

The move was seen as an insult to the US and Palestinian leaders say indirect talks with Israel are now "doubtful".

But Israel's PM said Jewish settlements did "not hurt" Arabs in East Jerusalem.

Addressing Israel's parliament, the Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he wanted peace negotiations and hoped the Palestinians would not present "new preconditions" for talks.

"No government in the past 40 years has limited construction in neighbourhoods of Jerusalem," he said.

"Building these Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem does not hurt the Arabs of East Jerusalem or come at their expense."

Meanwhile, EU foreign policy head Baroness Ashton, on a Middle East tour, said Israel's decision had put the prospect of indirect talks with the

Palestinians in jeopardy.

'Difficult period' Previously the Israeli government had played down the strain in relations with the US. But the Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, told a conference call with Israeli consuls general in the US that "the crisis was very serious and we are facing a very difficult period in relations", the Israeli media reported on Monday.

On Friday, Mr Oren was summoned to the State Department and was reprimanded about the affair, the Israeli Ynet News website reported.

Ynet quoted the ambassador as saying "Israel's ties with the US

are in the most serious crisis since 1975".

In 1975, US-Israeli relations were strained by a demand from then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin partially withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula, where they had been since the 1967 Six-Day War. The Haaretz newspaper said the ambassador's quote had been reported to it by four of the Israeli consuls general following the conference call on Saturday.

Mr Oren had appeared "tense and pessimistic", the consuls general told the newspaper.

They were instructed to lobby members of congress and Jewish community leaders and

tell them Israel had not intended to cause offence.

"These instructions come from the highest level in Jerusalem," Haaretz quoted Mr Oren as saying.

The Israeli embassy in Washington has not yet commented publicly on the story.

The EU, as part of the Middle East Quartet, has already condemned Israel's decision to build new homes in East Jerusalem.

Speaking to members of the Arab League in Cairo on Monday, Lady Ashton said the move had "endangered and undermined the tentative agreement to begin proximity talks".

She added: "The EU position on settlements is clear.

Settlements are illegal, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two state -solution impossible."

'Insult' On Sunday, a top aide to US President Barack Obama said Israel's announcement of plans to build 1,600 homes for Jews in East Jerusalem was "destructive" to peace efforts.

Please turn on JavaScript.

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David Axelrod says Israel's move 'calculated' - courtesy ABC news/This Week David Axelrod said the move, which overshadowed Mr Biden's visit to Israel, was also an "insult" to the United States.

Just hours before the announcement Mr Biden had emphasised how close relations were, saying there was "no space" between Israel and the US. Mr Netanyahu has tried to play down the unusually bitter diplomatic row between the two allies.

He said the announcement was a "bureaucratic mix-up" and that he "deeply regretted" its timing.

Under the Israeli plans, the new homes will be built in Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians are threatening to boycott newly agreed, ISRAEL-US page 22

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Edwards mistress: 'We love each other very much' (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:10:41 AM

RALEIGH, N.C. – John Edwards' mistress Rielle Hunter said in an interview released Monday they are still in love, even if their relationship turned into something "different" around the time he acknowledged the affair in 2008.

Hunter told GQ magazine that the two immediately had a connection when they met at a New York City hotel in 2006.

She didn't describe the details of their relationship but said he is a great father who wants to be there full-time for their daughter, now 2.

"We love each other very much.

And that hasn't changed, and I believe that will be till death do us part," she said. She added that "our connection is profound."

Hunter recalled the first night she met Edwards in New York, saying she knew that she was a special person to him.

"He in fact did say to me the first night, 'Falling in love with you could really (expletive) up my plans for becoming

President,'" she said.

Hunter said she told him he shouldn't run for the White House and suggested he at least wait until April 2007 because her intuition and astrology suggested he would have a difficult first three months of the year. Elizabeth Edwards' cancer returned in March of that year.

Hunter said John Edwards wanted to exit the race but that Elizabeth Edwards wanted him to stay in.

"And my surprise was that they stayed in the race," Hunter said.

"I was shocked. I really viewed it as reckless."

John and Elizabeth Edwards are now separated. Hunter said the affair ended in July 2008 and that the relationship is now something "different."

Edwards hired Hunter to work as a campaign videographer in 2006 as he plotted his second run for president. The former North Carolina senator's political action committee paid her video production firm more than $100,000.

Federal investigators have been looking into Edwards' campaign finances, with former aide Andrew Young saying a grand

jury questioned him for hours about the large sums of money that changed hands during the period that he helped cover up the affair.

Hunter said they questioned her about Young and about her relationship with Edwards, who she refers to as "Johnny."

"They asked a lot of questions about the sex tape," she said.

Hunter has sued Young for invasion of privacy, seeking the return of a videotape that he describes as Edwards and Hunter in a sexual encounter.

Young said in a statement that he has a lot of empathy for what Hunter is going through.

"I hope she and Johnny and Elizabeth and their families can find happiness so that we all can move on with our lives," he said.

An attorney for Hunter and a spokeswoman for John Edwards declined to comment. An attorney for Elizabeth Edwards did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

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

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No word from woman freed in alleged plot, mom says (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

Leadville, her mother said. She told her family last year that she had converted to Islam and that LEADVILLE, Colo. – A they'd go to hell if they didn't do Colorado woman who says she the same, Mott said. is the mother of an American Paulin-Ramirez left Leadville held and later released in Ireland with her son on Sept. 11, later over an alleged plot to kill a telling her family that she went Swedish cartoonist said Sunday to Ireland and married an she does not know where her Algerian whom she met online, daughter or grandson may be. Mott said.

Christine Mott, of Leadville, Mott said she talked to her said she learned from federal grandson March 8. She said she law-enforcement agencies that has considered trying to gain her 31-year-old daughter, Jamie custody of her grandson but Paulin-Ramirez, had been doesn't know where to start. arrested. Irish police said " W e ' r e o n d i s a b i l i t y . W e Saturday that they had released struggle from day to day to get an American woman and three by on Social Security. We don't others arrested over the alleged have any money to get an plot to kill Vilks, who depicted attorney," Mott said. the Prophet Muhammad in a She said she hasn't been able to 2007 sketch with the body of a reach her daughter by phone this dog. Police wouldn't confirm weekend. whether those released included "I can't stop her, but this little Paulin-Ramirez. boy has not had any choices Mott said Sunday she had not about what has happened to heard from federal authorities, him," she said. "That little boy Paulin-Ramirez or her 6-year- is caught in the middle of old grandson, Christian. something that he didn't ask "The only thing I care about is for." getting that little boy back in the Five Filters featured article: United States where he is safe," Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: she said.

PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Paulin-Ramirez lived in Blue Term Extraction.

Springs, Mo., before moving to Submitted at 3/14/2010 12:12:21 PM

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MISSION: continued from page 18

boy scout with a pinch of danger added. Airplane! was such a wonderful spoof of his former roles that you couldn't help but love him for it. He will be missed.

Aldar-Riplie Sugden, Monmouth, Oregon, USA I met Peter once back in the 80s. He was taking part in an all star tennis match. He was very charming, friendly and distinguished. I was glad to have met him.

Anon RIP, Peter Graves. My condolences to his family and friends. Airplane!/Flying High is one of my all time favourite comedy films and Mission: Impossible is probably my favourite television show. Great actor and an equally brilliant family man.

Adam, Australia In later years he was a highly respected TV biographer on the A&E channel. I remember his very good biography of the Queen Mother on her 100th birthday.

Dual Citizen, Portland, Oregon, USA

Mother of 'Jihad Jamie' Describes Woman as Lonely, Insecure

I am deeply touched following the death of this actor - he was my role model. May he rest in peace.

Maurice Ochieng Ojengo, Ugunja, Kenya I remember him best for his role in Stalag 17, arguably his best known critical movie role.

My parents are both actors and musicians and we all studied drama and music at school and I remember watching the film aged seven and being captivated by it in black and white and convinced he was a slime ball spy ...what more can I say?

R.I.P. and condolences to family and close friends.

Dave Ledbetter, Cape Town, South Africa I really liked Peter Graves as an actor. He will always be remembered for his role in Mission: Impossible and Airplane!, but there is also a little talked about series which he made in the 1950s and 1960s called Fury, in which he played rancher Jim Newton who adopted a street wise boy called Joey, played by Bobby Diamond. The show revolved

around a black stallion called Fury who was wild and who only Joey could ride in the beginning. As the show progressed, Fury became a firm member of Jim's family and was able to be ridden by Jim as well.

The show ran for eleven years from 1955 to 1966 and also starred William Fawcett as Pete Wilkie, Jim's foreman.

Amanda Heggs, Melbourne, Australia Peter Graves was one of the most outstanding actors I ever watched and I definitely believe most of us will miss him.

Although I never had a chance to meet him personally, may God bless his soul.

John Osoro Oroni, Ghanzi, Botswana Print Sponsor Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under

international law, although Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Israel disputes this.

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and wanted to get someone to love her."

"Jamie is not an evil person," The mother of a Colorado Mott said in an interview nursing student who fled to Monday with Fox News. "She Europe to join a terrorist murder was sucked into something that cell described her daughter as an she had no idea what she was "insecure" person who "had no getting herself into." idea what she was getting Mott blamed her daughter's herself into."

Algerian husband for her Christine Mott said Monday alleged involvement in the plot, that her 31-year-old daughter, s a y i n g t h e m a n e m b r a c e d Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, adopted radical views that did not radical Islamic views before represent Islam. leaving her home in Leadville, She also said her six-year-old Colo., last September for grandson, whom she nicknamed Ireland, where she allegedly "Baby Huey," was brainwashed joined a small group of radical b y t h e m a n a n d t h a t h e r Islamists planning to assassinate daughter "must have gone along a Swedish cartoonist. with it."

Paulom-Ramirez was arrested "He told me he hated christians last week in a series of raids in and that all christians needed to Ireland for allegedly plotting be punished," Mott said of her with the group to claim a six-year-old grandson. $100,000 Al Qaeda bounty by The New York Post contributed killing the Swedish cartoonist to this story. w h o d r e w t h e p r o p h e t Five Filters featured article: M o h a m m e d a s a d o g . Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Mott said her Paulin-Ramirez, PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, who fled the country with her Term Extraction. six-year-old son, was "lonely Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:51:06 AM

ISRAEL-US continued from page 20

indirect talks unless the Ramat Shlomo project is cancelled.

Close to 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built

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ACORN

Power cut plunges Chile into dark

continued from page 19

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee R e p u b l i c a n s : http://republicans.oversight.hous e.gov Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

(BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 3/15/2010 4:37:26 AM

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A fundraising concert was in full swing when the outage happened A massive power failure has plunged quake-hit Chile into darkness, stretching 2,000km (1,250 miles) and affecting up to 90% of the population.

In Santiago thousands were evacuated from the Metro and the failure affected a benefit concert for quake victims.

Power went out at 2050 (2350 GMT) on Sunday, when a key transformer failed, and began to return after an hour.

Chile's infrastructure was devastated by the quake on 27 February that killed about 500 and cost up to $30bn (ÂŁ20bn).

The power cut is another reminder of the immense tasks facing President Sebastian Pinera, who was inaugurated last week.

Floodlight failure The BBC's Gideon Long in Santiago says the power cut stretched from Taltal in the north to the island of Chiloe in the south, the equivalent of London to Athens.

The entire area hit by the earthquake, including the badly

affected second city of Concepcion, was plunged into darkness.

As well as halting the benefit concert, the big Sunday night football match in Santiago was abandoned after the floodlights failed.

The operators of the electricity grid said the blackout was caused by the failure of a highvoltage transformer about 700km south of the capital.

Officials said the blackout was not directly related to the earthquake.

However, Energy Minister Ricardo Rainieri said Chile's power grid remained fragile and he called on people to restrict

their energy consumption.

Electricity to about 90% of the country had been restored soon after midnight.

One nanny in Santiago, Claudia Morales, told Reuters news agency: "Everyone started to say aloud maybe there had been another quake. Everyone was really panicked."

After taking office last week, Mr Pinera said it would cost at least $30bn to rebuild the country, nearly 20% of Chilean GDP. He said loans and budgetary savings would be used to rebuild infrastructure, homes and industry.

Are you in Chile? Have you

23

been affected by the power cut?

What are you doing for lighting and heating? How badly is your area affected? Send us your comments and experiences.

The BBC may edit your comments and not all emails will be published. Your comments may be published on any BBC media worldwide.

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Flixtime Makes Slideshow Creation Simple [Slideshow] Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:30:00 AM

If you want to make a slideshow of photos and music but you don't have the knowhow or time to use an advanced video editor, Flixtime is a webbased solution that will have you cranking out slideshows in minutes. More Âť

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GAY continued from page 17

license back. He bought a small plane; he built a hangar.

One day, he needed a brass, elbow-shaped piece for his plane's fuel line. They call them male-to-female fittings, and he typed some such phrase into his computer. One of the search results that popped up was titled "The Male Lesbian Complex."

"That's stupid," he thought, moving along to find the part.

But later, something drove him back. The description of the "complex" sounded just like him. Was he always meant to be a woman? Was he too old to accept this?

"I read it and it was so close to me that it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck," Farthing said.

The transformation that followed has not sat well with all, of course.

A neighbor runs indoors now when Farthing comes outside of her Oakville, Mo., home. A brother-in-law and other relatives have cut her out of their lives. And her volunteer work at a nursing home had to end when her secret became known.

But those who are closest have accepted her. And now, in life's

twilight, she says she finally feels whole, finally feels normal.

"For the first time ever my life feels like it's in the right place," she said. "I'm going to check out of this world the way I was meant to come into it."

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Calvin Klein owner buys Hilfiger (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

"I look forward to remaining actively involved in the business," said the company's Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:41:18 AM eponymous founder and Clothing and design group principal designer, Mr Tommy Tommy Hilfiger is being bought Hilfiger. by the owner of Calvin Klein, "This is the next phase in the Philips-Van Heusen. global evolution and expansion The 2.2bn euros (ÂŁ2bn;$3bn) of the Tommy Hilfiger brand." deal will create one of the The deal is made up of 1.9bn w o r l d ' s l a r g e s t c l o t h i n g euros in cash and 276m euros of companies with $4.6bn revenue. Philips-Van Heusen stock, so Tommy Hilfiger is being sold Apax partners will remain a by private equity firm Apax shareholder in the business. partners who bought it for Philips-Van Heusen's clothing $1.6bn in 2006. lines include Calvin Klein, Van

Heusen, Arrow, IZOD and Bass.

Chief executive and chairman Emanuel Chirico hopes buying Tommy Hilfiger will help them launch some of their brands internationally, "leveraging a combined global platform".

Philips-Van Heusen also expects to save $40m of cost synergies through the deal.

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Apple: Free iPad With Every Replacement Battery Charlie Sorrel (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:33:00 AM

In a support document, Apple tells us that when you eventually send your iPad in to have its battery replaced, Apple will just

send you a new iPad instead.

The Battery Replacement Service will cost $100.

Record Labels Put Out Report Insisting That Record Labels Do, In Fact, Invest In Musicians Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:43:17 AM

With the debates ongoing over where the music industry is heading, it's been amusing to watch the major record labels try to remain relevant. One talking point they've hit on lately is this idea that record labels are the only ones who invest in artists. So, for example, when we point out that multiple studies have shown that more money is being spent on music today -- just that it's going to other providers, rather than the record labels -- we've heard people come back by saying "but only the record labels invest in artists." Perhaps sensing a valuable talking point (and getting sick of claims from many in the industry that the labels have seriously cut back on investing in new artists), the IFPI has put out a report that basically is the major record labels screaming"hey, look, we do invest in new music!"

But, of course, no one really doubted that the major labels still invested in music, but lots of people are questioning how that money is being spent and what sorts of results they're getting from it. But where it

gets funny is that the IFPI tries to use this to prove that labels still have a place, because, apparently, no one else could p o s s i b l y f u n d musicians:"Investing in music is the core mission of record companies," says [IFPI] boss John Kennedy. "No other party can lay claim to a comparable role in the music sector. No other party comes close to the levels of investment committed by record companies to developing, nurturing and promoting talent." To which we would just add a rather important: yet. The labels still seem to think they have some divine right (or, perhaps it's just a gov't granted monopoly -- the two are so easy to confuse) to be at the center of the music industry.

And, of course, the amount invested, by itself, is not nearly as important as the return on investment. It's easy to throw lots of money away (and having been to more than a few big record label events, I can attest to their ability to throw away vast quantities of money in no time flat). But what most folks are focused on is the actual ROI. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

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GDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:00 AM

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Internet, Developer, iPhone Booyah is an App Store company with quite a few lessons in its past already. The founders are former developers at Blizzard (they worked on both Diablo and World of Warcraft before setting off on their own), and after their first app, Booyah Society, didn't exactly strike gold on the App Store, they went back to the drawing board on their idea of "real life achievements," and have done much better with their latest app, MyTown-- it's one of the top grossing apps around, with more users and higher engagement than the popular Foursquare.

We got to sit down with CEO Keith Lee for an interview at GDC, and he told us about what they learned from Booyah Society, why Booyah is convinced that real-life social gaming is where it's at, and what they think of the iPad(and what Blizzard thinks of the iPhone).

Read on for more.

So you guys left Blizzard and formed your own company.

How long ago was that? And let us know why as well.

So after announcing Diablo III in Paris, my two co-founders, Brian [Morrisroe] and Sam [Christiansen], we left Blizzard

because we were just inspired by the idea of doing something that was based on the real world.

And we thought that the advent of smartphones and cameras, as well as GPS would give us an interesting opportunity to expose a lot of the game mechanics that we learned working at Blizzard doing everything from World of Warcraft to Diablo, but to apply it to a big audience. So that's what excited us, not just drive people to play hundreds of hours to get an epic sword on a PC, but to drive them to actually spend hundreds of hours to level up in the real world, and that can be as simple as leveling up by going to a fitness place, or by leveling up in music by doing stuff at a concert with your friends. So that's what really excited us. The mission for our company is to create new experiences for the masses by intersecting the real world and the virtual world. We launched a year and a half ago, and we're based in San Francisco, and

we've launched our most recent app, called MyTown. MyTown now is the most popular location -based mobile game.

It is. I'm an MMO player for a long time, and when iPhone first came out, one of the things I thought of was, this is a device that knows where it is, can see where it is, has all of this information on it...a locationbased MMO is kind of like the big thing to do. Was there anything else going on or did you have anything you took influence from at the time?

Our original idea was to make a social game called Booyah Society based around your Facebook and Twitter games, and then to fill the pause with communication. We realized though that we just tried to do too much at one time, especially for something that's more concise like the iPhone.

Understanding that form factor, we took a step back, and we actually learned to simplify our app. So Booyah Society was last year, and we decided let's just

focus on GPS. Let's build a game just around that -- what could be the most compelling idea around it? And then we came out with the idea of MyTown, which is essentially, a game based around real world property ownership.

I played Booyah Society, and I wrote about it, and the problem with it was that while it was cool to give yourself achievements or rewards for doing certain things, there was no check on it.

No validation, right. That's one of the biggest challenges when you start to intersect the real world and the virtual worlds.

Now you have to spend 90% of your time thinking about proper validation. Because if someone really loves your games, he's going to get hacked and cheated.

When you can validate activities through your backend servers like in a "pure MMO," it's a lot easier than, "Did you really go to the sports place or work out today?"

Yeah in Booyah when I played

it, you could basically type in, "I flew on a unicorn today," and there was nothing there to check it.

Absolutely. So we took that step back and said well what can we do to actually incent [sic] people to be excited about an activity? And we said hey, property ownership is perfect, people don't want to lie about it, because they actually do care about the places they frequent.

If I really like my local yogurt store, I want to buy it. That's a form of self-expression, they have an emotional tie to that location. And so once we realized that ownership was this incentiveidea, we wrapped the whole game around that, and generally the validation problem was solved. And the great thing too is that if you're checking in to the different locations in our game -- like right now, I can't check in to a place in Palo Alto or New York, I can only check GDC page 26

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GDC continued from page 25

in here. So the accuracy can be higher than in the past when you said that you can fly a unicorn or something like that.

Right. Now whenever we talk about checking in, people think Foursquare. And this is a fact that I don't think a lot of people realize: MyTown is bigger than Foursquare in terms of your users, right?

Right now, MyTown has hit 1.3 to 1.4 million registered users, so yes, they're at about 350,000, so we're about five times larger.

But I think the biggest difference for us is that we have created a game that users engage throughout the day. The typical users for Foursquare and those social utility apps are about five to six minutes a day. We are now clocking in eighty minutes a day of usage for the average user, we have more users as well, and the cool thing is that we've created a complete virtual economy based on checking in, so I check into Moscone, I'm going to get more like virtual items that are different from going to an H&M. So for example, right now we're doing deals with H&M retail stores to award virtual items and goods based on proximity to their location. And it's really cool because, just this week, there are 40 million items being purchased and consumed. Every week now. And that's something that Foursquare has zero of.

For all of Foursquare's press

and all of the people using it, it's not a game, it's a network. And what you guys have done is turn checking in to a game -- you can build your own stores, and charge rent, and earn points, and so on. Do you think that's why you have more users, or does it limit the potential audience by ruling out people who "don't play games"?

I think we started off at the same place as Foursquare, as a social utility. But then realizing eventually that we're a game, we'll be starting to diverge dramatically. I think the big idea here is that we're going to sit on top of the location graph, and we're going to be using all of this new data, check-in data, from Facebook, Google, anyone else out there. We're going to be able to leverage the location graph with all of this new metadata. Just like what the social graph looked like four or five years ago when Zynga and all of these other social games sat on top of it. So the big difference here is that we'll be the frontrunner to creation location-based social games that no one's ever done before.

Foursquare and all of these other guys are actually creating the content that we'd love to use.

We're currently going to use Foursquare's API and Gowalla's API. They're there to win the social-based platform play, which Facebook will completely wipe them out in about 6-8

months.

Yeah, outside of the realm of the iPhone, that's interesting right there.

The thing is, what differentiates them when Facebook decides to add a check-in feature that's part of their status update across all their applications on every single platform? The biggest difference is that they have 450 million users, and with such a large user base, they could work any deals with any marketers that decide to do that. I know that's the direction that Foursquare and Gowalla want to go -- they want to be an advertising platform based on location.

You've got a head start on that.

You've got a deal with H&M already -That's right.

And I know back when you were working on Booyah Society, that's what you were talking about.

It's funny because we created the game wrapped around this real-world Monopoly idea, we started to garner 100,000 users a week, and now we can actually do some of the things we wanted to do with Booyah Society, the original vision. As we continue to partner with every venue in every location it becomes increasing more compelling for them to check-in and level up for working out, and we can have achievements based around that. And that's

one of the things that differentiates us from these other products. And I think we're still like at the top 40 on the App Store after two and a half months. Pretty crazy.

In terms of virtual items, I know when you check into the game, you can get virtual items that will power up the game. I haven't seen in the app myself, but are there in-app purchases in there, and how's that working?

Yeah we're actually doing inapp purchases, where you can buy virtual goods to help you get more slots, add power, level you up more quickly. We're actually one of the Top Grossing apps in the App Store as well.

We make money through in-app purchases, our second revenue stream is location-based ads, and then third of all, brand partnerships with all these different clients. So the great thing is that there's so many opportunities once you create a great game that people are spending an hour in, the value behind virtual goods that people want to spend and buy now, is worth a lot more the more time every day that people spend time in the app. They care about it, and actually, what's interesting too is that we're noticing that people do really spend a lot more on virtual goods and items because they're related to real locations. If it was just a random supermarket, that doesn't matter to me, but if it's

the one I go to every day, my favorite Whole Foods market, I actually want to level up and upgrade it, because you can never own that in the real world, so it's kind of a cool fantasy of being this virtual property tycoon. We're realizing that you can have a product marketed with a real world idea.

It's almost like a social connection with a building, which is a weird thing to say, but...

Yeah. We're going to be launching an update next week that's going to be focusing on social, so we're going to have all the features that Foursquare and Gowalla have -- you'll be able to view other people's profiles, see the towns that they've made, the things that they've done. And I think it'll be very interesting for me to look at my friends and see what places they own. Because we actually limit the number of stores that you can actually keep. You can only have a maximum of 25. So you'll have to see if people are getting it because they want money or because they love their favorite Apple Store next door to them.

It tells about their personality, and we'll have notifications where we can see what people are buying and selling. It's more interesting than just checking in, because I don't care if you went to Starbucks this morning, I GDC page 30

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Saving your surfing on the Mac Brett Terpstra (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:00:00 AM

Filed under: Features, Cool tools I'd wager that most of you spend as much of your time on the web as I do, and that it's one of the first places you look for answers to just about any question. As a web designer, I look there for inspiration, solutions and am constantly learning how to improve my design and my code with the help of the internet community.

It's become important, over time, for me to be able to relocate the answers I've found, and to archive things that have made a difference for me. I don't just want a folder full of bookmarks, I want to be able to search my local repository in a more abstract way. The tools for doing this are abundant, and many of them free. I thought I'd share part of my current system for saving my tracks across the 'net. First, I should note that, wherever possible, I use OpenMeta tags to classify the things I save. This isn't always an option, depending on my tool of choice, but it helps bring some coherence to the elements of my system and makes it easy to search across programs with Spotlight. You can search for tags in Spotlight using a "tag:" prefix, and applications like Evernote allow similar results

using a "keyword:" prefix. You can merge Evernote and OpenMeta tag searches using an "OR" statement. A spotlight search for tag:inspiration OR keyword:inspiration will get you items tagged "inspiration" in either Evernote or an OpenMeta program. These can be saved as Smart Folders, too, for common searches.

Saving solutions and ideas Evernote is a very good "surfing" repository for me. I clip the important sections of text using a custom clipper and create new notes from them. My custom clipper (an AppleScript/Javascript System Service) isn't terribly important, the default clippers will give much the same result (mine just handles code and images a little better). What you end up with is a taggable, full-text-searchable bookmark to the original web page. You can save entire PDF's, but I've found that keeping my Evernote notebooks trim and text-based works best in the long run.

As a side note, the previouslymentioned HistoryHound can make it very easy to search in retrospect for pages you might not have realized you wanted to save at the time, and Instapaper is excellent for gathering pages you want to read but don't have time at the moment. The combination keeps my notebooks and local searches from being cluttered with things

I haven't even read yet.

Collecting Inspiration If I need a full-page image of the site, I have a couple of options. If it's just an inspiring design I want to archive, I use LittleSnapper to snap, categorize, tag and annotate the page. If I want to be able to Spotlight search the full text of the page, though, I use the oftforgotten Paparazzi! to capture a vector PDF, and then tag it as I save it using Default Folder X(or soon after, using Tags).

The beta version of Paparazzi! has given me no trouble, despite a lack of updates, and has proven to be a valuable tool.

Bookmarking In cases where I just need a bookmark/description record of a page (and sometimes even if I've already archived it in another fashion), Delicious and

Pinboard are excellent tools for the job. I especially enjoy using them with Delibar, a great app for both storing and searching my bookmarks on either service.

The Tags application from Gravity can also directly tag web pages in Safari and Firefox, making it possible to include them in your Spotlight searches.

There are several applications available which can make your Delicious bookmarks show up in your Spotlight index as well.

In Safari, in case you don't know, you can access the first nine non-folder bookmarks with Command-[1-9]. I keep all of my bookmarklets and commonly used links in folders, so the only shortcut-accessible bookmarks in my toolbar are my surfing tools. I also prepend the bookmark name with a number, reminding me what Commandnumber combination will launch it: 1. Quix, 2. Delibar, 3. Read Later (Instapaper), etc..

Capturing Code When it comes to code snippets, I'm still looking for the perfect system. I really, really like Snippets, but I'm not completely sold on its integration with my workflow yet. I've found that Evernote -with my little custom clipper -works quite well. The basic trick is to strip out any line numbers in code blocks and maintain the pre/code formatting on import.

Evernote will then respect indentation, and applies a

monospaced font for readability.

The other option I've found to work well is to save snippets as plain text files in a "Snippets" folder, add a description in the comments (based on the language of the snippet) and tag them with Tags or Default Folder X. Taking notes For keeping notes that aren't directly related to a URL or general search, I keep VoodooPad open pretty much all of the time my computer is running. With some scripts borrowed from Ian Beck and slightly customized, I can grab notes and tag them on the fly. If, while I'm surfing and searching, I come up with an idea for a project or post, I just send it to my VoodooPad scratchpad. I use the tag "blogaboutit" to add it to my collection of post ideas, or "freetime" and "project" to add it to a list of project ideas I might get around to someday. I can include links, notes and attributions in VoodooPad, and can send it straight to my scratchpad from LaunchBar. Some other scripts in my arsenal also allow me to save complete batches of tabs as a markdown list to Evernote or VoodooPad to archive entire search/surfing sessions with a date, time and primary subject. Tagging When it comes to the tagging part, I generally tag based on the type of archive it is (snippet, SAVING page 34

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The Fully Sick Rapper: Viral Vids Are the Remedy [INTERVIEW] Brenna Ehrlich (Mashable!)

Mashable sat down for an interview (via Skype) with the 27-year-old Aussie, direct from What would you do if you his hospital room in Sydney. found out that you had an (We’ve embedded the video extremely contagious disease portion below for those who that required you to remain in aren’t fans of big blocks of text.) quarantine for the several Getting Down with the Sickness months? If you’re like most Up until December of this past people, you would probably cry year, Christiaan Van Vuuren and cry and cry… and then curl had a proper nine-to-five job in up in the corner and commence media sales that required him to eating your hair. pull a suit jacket over his But if you were Christiaan Van tattooed arms and have lunches Vuuren (a.k.a. The Fully Sick with clients and the like.

Rapper), you would make a During one of these lunches, series of kick-ass viral rap however, Van Vuuren started videos that would launch you coughing up blood. Soon after, into the firmament of Internet he found himself in the hospital, stardom. where the doctor told him that If you’re an avid fan of the viral he had a hole in his lung, which video space, you’ve probably V a n V u u r e n d e s c r i b e s a s seen Van Vuuren’s vids by now roughly the size of an Aussie 50 — among them a trio of parody cent coin. The diagnosis? rap songs that deal with being Tuberculosis — a disease he s t u c k i n q u a r a n t i n e a f t e r likely contracted four years ago c a t c h i n g a b a d c a s e o f during time spent in South Tuberculosis.

Africa. The affliction lay The concept might sound rather dormant until a recent trip to after-school-special-esque — or, South America. f r a n k l y , l a m e — t o t h e Van Vuuren was admitted to uninitiated, but Van Vuuren’s the hospital at the start of amateur videos are a hell of a lot December, and at the time he more entertaining than a lot of thought he would only be there the schlock that professional for roughly two weeks. Still, the comedians churn out. Why? seclusion took its toll. “I was Because they’re coming from a itching to get out, banging on very real place. the walls,” he says. “That was After seeing Van Vuuren’s raps when I made that first rap song, popping up all over the Internet, ‘ I’m Not Sick, But I’m Sick Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:41:28 AM

punk rocker (Van Vuuren has a musical background, but he admits that he hasn’t messed around with instruments in any real capacity for five years.)

He’d never even used Garage Band or iMovie before. “It’s unreal, it’s giving me something to do. I feel like I’ve got a nineSick.’” to-five job now,” he says.

He wrote the rap and recorded And that feeling of purpose had it using Garage Band. “At the been a boon to the media manstart, it was just to make mates turned-rapper. “I’ve taken my laugh,” he explains, but after focus off of when I’m going to friends convinced him to make a get out of here and when I’m video for the song and upload it g o i n g t o b e h e a l t h y , ” h e to YouTube, a local radio explains. “I try to apply [my station covered the story, as well energy] more to what I can do as Australian morning program while I’m in here to have not Today. At that point, the video wasted the time. I think the had around 10,000 hits. “I was a worst thing would be — and I bit embarrassed that that many think it’s made me feel the people had seen me without my worst when I’ve been in here — shirt on and in the shower,” Van is the whole world will keep on Vuuren says. Going Viral spinning out there and and I’m Van Vuuren was let out of the h e r e i n t h i s r o o m d o i n g hospital around the first of the n o t h i n g . ” year, but after his condition One look at Van Vuuren’s worsened, he found himself YouTube channel shows that back in quarantine, where he he’s done a lot more than made his second video, “ Life in wallow: there’s his parody raps Quarantine.” This time, the as well as a couple of other joke video spread to the States, songs about his ukulele and where it was picked up by sites hopeless crush on Today host like College Humor. Currently, Leila McKinnon, as well as his it has garnered more than a own take on MTV’s Cribs and a quarter of a million hits in less sketch about a hospital-bound than a month.

Storm Trooper. Van Vuuren The popularity of the video also plans to start making came as a shock to the former webisodes about his time in

quarantine. Getting Social In addition to being a videoediting virgin, Van Vuuren also says he’s “as green as they come” when it comes to social media. “In the industry that I work in, in media, I’ve gone to these courses before where they’re talking about the power of social media,” he recalls.

“And they’re like, ‘All right, let me demonstrate something: Who of you hasn’t got a Facebook?’ And I look around realize I’m the only person in the whole room of about 140 people who has their arm up.”

That all changed after coming down with TB. Now, Van Vuuren has a Facebook page with close to 6,000 fans, as well as a newly launched Twitter account with a burgeoning list of followers.

And, surprisingly, the trolls seem to be keeping their distance. “I don’t know whether everyone’s just like, ‘Oh, it’s so cute that he did that and he’s sick and he’s in a hospital, let’s watch that!’ And then as soon as I’m not sick anymore people are going to go, ‘Uhhh, you weren’t really that funny,’” Van Vuuren says with a laugh.

Either way, he thrives off of the support this community gives him, members of which send FULLY page 30

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GDC 2010: Hands on with Pocket Creatures Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

to make him sad, the rest of the game actually embodies a pretty complex ecosystem, of which Submitted at 3/14/2010 9:00:00 PM the creature and his emotions Filed under: Gaming, iPad and abilities are only a part.

One of the best things about Early on in the game, the going to a convention like GDC creature was hungry, so we is what we in the business call shook a tree growing elsewhere "doing research," which you on the touchscreen, and out might know as "playing games." dropped a banana. The creature We often get to check out the wouldn't eat it at first, so instead l a t e s t a n d g r e a t e s t t h a t we pulled a carrot out of the developers are working on, and ground and fed that to him. As so when Tactile Entertainment he interacted with the carrot, a offered us a chance to check out meter showed up on the bottom their upcoming Pocket Creatures of the screen, with the marker title, we gladly took it. The all the way to the green, positive company is founded by four side on the left -- the creature friends from Denmark, one of liked carrots. He didn't like w h o m u s e d t o b e t h e bananas, however, but with a Development Manager at Crytek little petting and reward added (makers of the PC graphics t o t h e b a n a n a o f f e r , h e engine and its flagship shooter eventually learned to like it and Crysis), and Pocket Creatures, ate it up. due out later this year, is their The peel was carried away by a first title. few ants who appeared on the The game's backstory tells of an scene, and this was where things island somewhere with an egg in got interesting. Almost anything an ancient temple, and in an on the island can be interacted intro movie, the egg hatches to with in some way, and often reveal the game's main creature even more than one way. We character. But the game isn't dragged an ant to a small nearby merely a virtual pet simulator. pond, where a set of eyes was While you can pet the little guy peeking out, and dropping it in to make him happy or slap him there brought out a platypus.

Grabbing the platypus and scratching him across the ground created a small hole in the dirt, and placing the halfeaten carrot there created a sproutling. Sproutlings need water to grow, of course, and while we were told that there were a few ways to get water to the hole, one seemed pretty sadistic -- we smacked the little creature around until he began to cry, and a small raincloud appeared above his head to show that he was sad. Dragging the raincloud over to the sproutling watered it, and we were off to the races.

The game is full of relationships like that -- feeding the creature certain things can activate certain powers as well, and those can be used on critters and items in the rest of the world for all different kinds of interactions. He can eat a lightning fruit, and gain the power to zap all sorts of things, changing them in some way. Or he can eat a love fruit, and gain the power to convert enemies into friends. Tactile made it clear that if you wanted to turn the island into your own personal garden of peace, that

was possible, but they want to make sure and "play in either direction" -- you can turn your creature and his surroundings into a mess, if that's what you'd rather do.

For each of your actions, you'll get rewarded with various achievements. Those achievements not only track everything you do in the game, but they also give you items that you can use to customize the creature's appearance -- earn the "Devil" achievement and you can get some horns to wear, or earn the "Angel" (whatever that is -- they haven't created all of the different criteria yet) achievement, and you can wear some wings. You can even earn both, and keep both items -however you want to play it is fine.

Tactile says they're planning to keep the content coming as well -- "we like the way Pocket God is doing it," they told us during the demo. They haven't settled on a price yet, but they do realize that the game has a lot of potential on the iPad. Even before the game was announced, they said, "the concept was already there for a touch tablet,"

IPad, SchmiPad: 10 E-Readers and Tablets You Can Get Right Now Dylan F. Tweney (Wired Top Stories)

The iPad may not be out for several weeks, but there are still some excellent choices if you're

looking for a tablet-like device for reading e-books. We compare 10 recent e-readers and

tablets.

even if it wasn't done by Apple.

But like all developers, they're unsure of making any plans before they actually see the product. "Our destiny is sealed by somebody behind a secret door somewhere."

If there's an issue with Pocket Creatures, it's that the game might be too open in this early stage -- there were so many things to do and so many relationships that not too many of them were clearly apparent in our short time with the game.

But we did get to see a feature that allowed them to place some tips in the landscape, and they're continuing to tune and work on development, so hopefully by release, even the most complicated of relationships will be accessible. We'll keep an eye out for it when it shows up on the App Store in a few months.

TUAW GDC 2010: Hands on with Pocket Creatures originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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only care if you check into a party or a club that I care about.

How interesting would it be if you ended up in Napa and you bought like a hot new winery?

I'd probably start a dialog or conversation if I saw that from a person on Facebook. Because it doesn't happen that often, when you buy and sell a property, but it tells you a lot about that person.

I did want to talk about the future -- you said there's a social patch coming?

Yeah, we're releasing another update next week focused on social. So friends lists, messaging, in-app messaging, gifting will be available there.

And we'll start to add some very interesting viral growth mechanics or loops that haven't worked out yet on iPhone but have been done on other platforms. And this is the best way to defeat the issues that people are having on the App Store in terms of promotion -- it costs a lot of money to advertise to be on the top 100 charts. I think that people haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how to create all of these interesting viral channels. Imagine I gifted you with a new slot for your property, or gave you a little Godzilla art pack, or I visited your place and I pranked you, kind of destroying your town for an hour. These are the sort of things that I think can create

continued from page 28

really cool social loops, loops that haven't been done before, and the great thing is that people can send it around to their friends, and you don't have to advertise at all. Your cost of acquisition is a lot lower.

Is the company working on anything else or is MyTown your focus right now?

Right now, MyTown is definitely our number one focus, but as I mentioned before, we've started to understand now that we're there to create real experiences on top of this location graph, and now that we've spent a lot of time developing our location database, and as our guys are now veterans all at making iPhone apps, the time that it would take and the resources would be a fourth of the time we spent on MyTown, which already only took us two months to do. So we're very, very exciting about coming up with new ways to leverage what we've already built, and maybe a different theme or target market or something. So yes, we are working on a few other really exciting games, and that's an area we're very excited about as we grow.

Cool. Because you came from Blizzard, I want to ask: They've been poking around the iPhone, but what do you think of their strategy for it?

The relationship that we have

with Blizzard is loose in a sense that they knew that we were going to be working on products that were going to be highly differentiated from a big MMO. Rob Pardo is one of our advisors, so he also has to really think about the implications of what we're doing in the real world. He's a great person, he has such a strong user experience design sense that we get a lot of really great feedback. I can't speak for the strategy of what Blizzard is doing in the next few years, but I think their products like WoW are so highly engaging right now that it makes sense to find ways to get their users or new users exposed to World of Warcraft. And it makes sense to me that building products on the iPhone or other platforms is a really great way to introduce it to more users or casual users. I know we've all heard of it, but there's still people out there in the iPhone/iPod touch base that might want to have a taste of something new branded with World of Warcraft. I can totally imagine them making a game based on the Murloc or something else. I think that could be really interesting to introduce it to a new audience.

And one last thing, with April 3rd coming up very quickly, MyTown doesn't really seem like an app that would work well on the iPad, but are you all

interested in iPad? We're extremely excited and we have been looking at the APIs a lot and kind of just trying to get as much information as we can to make a better deicision. Our strategy right now is to create some of the best experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch. That said, our product would probably work a bit better if there was a more refined GPS system on the iPad. Is it a challenge then, or are you fine with just being on the iPhone?

We are currently investigating being on the iPad. We're all very bullish on that. That said, I think that if we were going to do something specific to the iPad, we would want to create an experience that's real world and that leverages something that's unique on the iPad itself.

Great. Thanks!

TUAW GDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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photoshopped images of the viral star in various exotic locals and photos of themselves replicating moments from his videos. Van Vuuren also gets more than his share of marriage proposals from fawning female fans.

“I’m sure that’s what God helped us make the Internet for or why the Internet is here,” Van Vuuren says (referring to his supporting fans, not the marriage proposals — per se).

“It’s for things like that.

Because when you’re so lonely and in such a place on your own, you can be around so many people or be supported by so many people.” The Fully Sick Rapper Tags: Christiaan Van Vuuren, facebook, music, social media, the fully sick rapper, twitter, viral video

GDC 2010: Hands -on with Sketch Nation Shooter Mike (The31Unofficial FiledSchramm under: Software, GDCGaming, page Apple (TUAW)) Apple,Weblog Developer When I was

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GDC continued from page 30

reminded of its name at GDC, I couldn't recall hearing much about Engineous Games. It's the development studio founded by Nitzan Wilnai, a former software developer at EA and Yahoo who's gone to work making iPhone games for himself. But I did recall Engenious' first title, Tatomic, which I wrote about a while ago -- it was a great puzzler that put a new spin on Tetris' falling block gameplay.

Unfortunately, despite my purchase, Tatomic didn't sell as well as Wilnai would have liked, so he's decided to "create a game that would sell itself."

It's called Sketch Nation Shooter, and he sat down to show it to me last week in San Francisco. He started off the demo by promising that he would make a game for me in two minutes, and sure enough, 98 seconds later, he had a custom spaceship shooter game up and running, as you can see in the photo above.

So how did he do it? Sketch Nation Shooter is really a whole genre of games -- it allows you to create your own shooter game using your own art, rules, and designs. Whenever you head in to create, you can choose Basic

or Advance, and Wilnai first showed me basic -- it asks you to take a picture of a drawing (it should be surrounded by white, in relatively good light and so on), and then it analyzes that drawing and turns it into a graphic for your shooter's player character. You can do the same with enemies, and the game adds their pictures as well. Then hit play, and within just a few minutes, you've got a Gradiusstyle shooter -- your ship just kicks out a continuous stream of fire, and you control it by moving your finger around the screen as the ship stays in view right on front of it.

But what's really cool is what happens after the shooter is made. Wilnai has set up a few servers to run the game, and so players can upload and share their creations with everyone playing Sketch Nation Shooter.

Not only can you make and share games with your friends (the game uses your Facebook login to sign in), but you can access anyone's games, and games are even rated (so you can just dive in and play the top 10 rated games any time you want). Every game has its own leaderboard as well, both globally and among your

friends, so not only can you play whatever games are invented, but you can compete on each for the best score.

The Advanced editor really takes things over the top -- you can add multiple enemies and define their weapons and behaviors (create kamakazi enemies, have them run patterns, or just have them hover at the top of the screen), and you can even create levels just by drawing and taking pictures of those, and define boss creatures and set their hit points, attack types, and so on. The game is very customizable, and even if you're not artistically inclined, there are included art packs to chose from, featuring themed art that you can use in the games however you like.

And if nothing else, it'll be interesting to see what people come up with -- I got to play an Under-the-Sea inspired shooter

by Wilnai's wife, a World War II shooter, and even a game called "Traffic" that took shooting out of the equation entirely and just had you maneuvering a car through a crowded highway. And that's just what Wilnai and his beta testers thought of -- you can pretty easily imagine a Little

Big Planet-style community popping up around this one as designers get more and more creative with the options. That's what Wilnai meant as "a game that sells itself" -- he's hoping people will make games and get their friends to download the app just to try them out.

He's not sure about a price yet, but he did promise that since your friends may be entreating you to buy it to play their shooters, it'll be "cheap enough to check it out." And the app is due out on the store sometime in early April -- if you've wanted to create an iPhone game for yourself without actually downloading the SDK, you might want to give this one a look.

TUAW GDC 2010: Hands-on with Sketch Nation Shooter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Instapaper Adds Email Functionality for Easy Article Saving [Updates] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:05:00 AM

Instapaper does a bang-up job of saving, organizing, and stripping down articles for your reading pleasure through its web bookmarklet and its iPhone app.

If you're on another platform and want to stash some reading away for later, you can now send it to a personalized email address, listed near the bottom of the "Extras" link when you're signed into Instapaper's webapp.

It's a great feature for non-Apple smartphones and for those whome email is closer at hand than bookmarklets. [via Steve Rubel's Lifestream] More Âť

Overclock Your Palm Pre to a Fiery 800MHz [Hacks] Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:59:00 AM

The stock Palm Pre has an adequate but ho-hum 500MHz processor inside with 256MB or

RAM. And even the Palm Pre much faster processor? Now we Plus simply doubles the RAM. know. More Âť So how would the Pre run with a

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Going beyond Flash, Adobe shows off Web tech (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:23:00 AM

Sure, Adobe Systems spends a lot of effort developing and promoting its Flash technology.

And sure, a lot of the new "Open Web" technologies are a competitive threat to Flash.

But that doesn't mean Adobe isn't interested in HTML5 and CSS3--the updates to Hypertext Markup Language for describing Web pages and to Cascading Style Sheets for Web page formatting--that are two of the most important parts of that Open Web work. After all, Adobe does have its DreamWeaver product for Web site development.

Adobe demonstrated CSS3 feature in Dreamweaver that lets a Web page's format change according to what size screen is being used to view it.(Credit: Adobe Systems) But there's a new sign that Adobe is taking more interest in Open Web work. Last week, it launched its Design and Web blog, written by Paul Gubbay, senior director of engineering, and Lea Hickman, senior director of product management for the Creative Suite design and Web tools, suites, and services.

So far the pair have hinted that Adobe is working on some more powerful tools for HTML5 and

of which Adobe is a member-has in recent years returned to HTML development after a years-long hiatus focused on XHTML 2.0 technology that didn't catch on.

And Microsoft, which also showed little interest in HTML for years, made an effort to make its current Internet Explorer 8 browser conform to Web standards, and it's begun active participation in some of those efforts. That effort is expected to increase with IE 9, the subject of a talk this week at Microsoft's Mix conference in Las Vegas.

A new version of Adobe's Creative Suite products is due to arrive soon, but these demonstrations won't be showing up in the software, the two said.

C S S 3 , w i t h i n t e r n a l the new functionality in HTML entering the era in which "We'd like to share some of demonstrations of what can be 5, and we wanted to share a browsers are in widespread use these with you to get your done, though no promises of couple of early ideas with you," on mobile phones, e-book f e e d b a c k a n d s e e w h a t shipping anything anytime soon. t h e y s a i d , o f f e r i n g a readers, TVs, and Apple's iPad, r e s o n a t e s , " G u b b a y a n d " R e c e n t l y , w e a t t e n d e d demonstration of the Canvas which notably doesn't include Hickman said. "To be clear, we are giving you a very early technology demos across our technology for 2D graphics Flash support. design and web products. We through HTML5 in one post. " T h e r e h a s b e e n m u c h view. It won't be in the next saw a range of prototypes, many In another, they describe discussion around whether or version of CS." of which were focused on new A d o b e ' s a p p r o a c h t o not HTML5 and CSS3 will Five Filters featured article: services, multiscreen authoring "multiscreen" authoring with make it easier for designers to Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: leveraging HTML5 and CSS3. CSS3--in other words, coding a reach new devices," the two PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

We have been spending a lot of Web site so that it displays wrote. "We think it will." time internally thinking about c o r r e c t l y o n a v a r i e t y o f Web standards are experiencing how our tools can best support different devices with different something of a renaissance. The and take advantage of some of screens. We are, after all, World Wide Web Consortium--

Tech/ Economy/

E-reader News Edition

Toyota, Nissan to standardize electric car rechargers (CNET News.com)

Heavy, the maker of Subarubrand cars, are the world's only mass-volume automakers now Top Japanese carmakers Toyota compared with conventional producing battery-run electric and Nissan helped set up a cars, as well as the lack of cars, with sales so far limited to group to standardize fast-charge infrastructure to recharge when corporate and government fleets stations for electric cars on away from home. in Japan.

Monday in a bid to promote the Forming a common "language" "There are 1,000 electric cars spread of the zero-emission for fast-charging electric cars and 150 fast-charge stations in across various brands would Japan already," Tokyo Electric vehicles.

The group, led by Japan's save development costs for Power Executive Vice President biggest utility, Tokyo Electric c a r m a k e r s a n d a n c i l l a r y Hiroyuki Ino told a news Power, Toyota Motor, Nissan industries, said the group, called conference in Tokyo. "Our aim Motor, Mitsubishi Motors, and C h a d e m o . ( E d i t o r s ' n o t e : is to form a standard in Japan Fuji Heavy Industries, will set a According to Toyota's press and make use of that in the standard for Japan and later aim release, "'CHAdeMO' is an world." abbreviation of 'CHArge de He said the group would lobby for an international standard.

Some 158 companies and MOve', equivalent to 'charge for international bodies such as the government bodies are expected moving', and is a pun for 'O cha S o c i e t y o f A u t o m o t i v e to join, including 20 non- demo ikaga desuka' in Japanese, Engineers and the International Japanese firms such as PG&E, meaning 'Let's have a tea while Transport Forum to promote its Enel, Endesa, and PSA Peugeot charging' in English.") technology.

"We will compete when it Citroen.

Story Copyright (c) 2010 A p l u g f o r p l u g - i n comes to vehicle performance, Reuters Limited. All rights power.(Credit: Toyota Motor) but we should cooperate on reserved.

Electric vehicles are seen as areas such as infrastructure," Five Filters featured article: one solution to meeting stricter said Nissan Chief Operating Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: e n v i r o n m e n t a l r e g u l a t i o n s Officer Toshiyuki Shiga. Japan's PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, because they have no tailpipe No. 3 automaker will begin Term Extraction. emissions. But they face hurdles selling its first electric car later such as costly batteries and a this year. l i m i t e d d r i v i n g d i s t a n c e Mitsubishi Motors and Fuji Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:56:00 AM

Dodd set for finance reform bill push (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/14/2010 1:08:36 PM

Chris Dodd, chairman of the

Senate banking committee, on Sunday called on Republicans not to block financial regulatory reform as he prepared to push forward with new legislation.

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Judges Interpreting Emoticons? :-( Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:33:00 AM

While we'd already written about the judge's ruling in the Lenz vs. Universal lawsuit concerning a bogus DMCA takedown and whether or not damages could be awarded, there was one bit of the ruling which Eugene Volokh recently highlighted, which seems worth mentioning, if only for the amusement factor. Apparently, part of determining whether or not there was actual harm done to Lenz was looking at some email communications, including one where a friend used an emoticon: Universal ... argues [as a defense to Lenz's lawsuit] that there are triable issues of fact as to whether Lenz has "prosecuted in good faith the assertion that she has been damaged" by Universal's alleged violation of [the DMCA]. This argument is based on four separate contentions.... [The fourth is] that an email exchange Five Filters featured article: between Lenz and one of her Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: friends shows that Lenz does not PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, believe that she was injured substantially and irreparably by Term Extraction.

the takedown notice. In the exchange, Lenz responds to her friend's comment that the friend "love[s] how [Lenz has] been injured 'substantially and irreparably' ;-)" by writing "I have ;-)." The (";-)") symbol, according to Lenz, is a "winky" emoticon which signifies something along the lines of "just kidding."

At her deposition, Lenz testified that she believed her friend's use of the emoticon "was kind of a reference back to [the] lawyerese" of the "substantially and irreparbly harmed" language and that her use of the emoticon was "a reply to the wink that [her friend] used." Lenz maintains that the fact that she "believes that lawyers sometimes use stilted language is not evidence of bad faith." ... While it's fascinating to see Universal using a friend's use of an emoticon to try to prove its point, it does seem like things could get a bit dicey when we have judges trying to interpret things like emoticons.

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TomTom for U.S. and Canada updated with real time traffic and more Mel Martin (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

from TomTom can add up.

All the navigation app developers are loading up their Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:00:00 AM products with more and more Filed under: Software, Odds features, and iPhone owners are and ends, iPhone, iPod touch lucky to have the chance to We told you it was coming, and agonize a bit over which app to now it has arrived. The popular get. There are worse problems US$59.95 TomTom app is ready to have. to hit the road with real time The TomTom nav app works traffic available as an additional on an iPhone or an iPod touch in-app purchase. but requires a car kit. Including Included with the 1.3 update at Canada and the U.S., the app no additional charge is Google costs $69.95. local search, revised map data, [Thanks Jared for the tip] music fading, automatic day and TUAW TomTom for U.S. and night mode based on your Canada updated with real time location, and the ability to add traffic and more originally l o c a t i o n s f r o m o t h e r you back $19.95 for 12 months appeared on The Unofficial of information. By contrast, Apple Weblog (TUAW) on applications.

The real time traffic option has when I reviewed the live traffic Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:00:00 some nice features. Updates are option on the Navigon app in EST. Please see our terms for received every 3 minutes. If a November, it was a one time use of feeds. delay along your route is found, price of $19.95. The Navigon Permalink| Email this| you will get notification from app itself is 10 bucks more C o m m e n t s the app and automatically be re- expensive than the TomTom routed. The not-so-great feature app that includes the U.S. and is that the traffic info will set Canada, but those yearly fees

The making of 'IMAX: Hubble 3D' (photos) (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:00:00 AM

In the new film "IMAX: Hubble 3D," viewers are brought inside the story of NASA's attempt to do lastchance repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope. After being initially launched into space in 1990, it was discovered that the telescope's mirror had a 1/50th of an inch-size flaw that compromised its focus and ultimately resulted in a 1993 repair mission.

Over the years, there have been four service missions, and those have allowed Hubble to look deeper and deeper into space.

In 2006, the launch of STS-125, the Space Shuttle mission to do final repairs on Hubble, was nearly canceled due to safety concerns stemming from the

SAVING continued from page 27

Create an Event Card to Make Conference Networking More Productive [Social Networking] Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:30:00 AM

You need a plan of attack if you

want to make your social networking experience productive. Create an event card to help you navigate your next

come out with fruitful new contacts. More Âť networking engagement and

2003 explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia. But when the concept was proposed of sending the Space Shuttle Atlantis into space with a second shuttle on stand-by, NASA gave the go-ahead.

On May 19, 2009, after finishing the final round of repairs on the Hubble, a remote manipulator system arm on Atlantis hoists the telescope from the shuttle's cargo bay.

Astronauts aboard Atlantis operated the IMAX 3D camera that was mounted in the shuttle's cargo bay after extensive training back home on Earth.

Photo by Warner Bros.

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

inspiration, reference, etc.), any tags that would help me find that specific archive again, and then some special tags. For example, I use the tag "problemsolved" in combination with a tag specific to the search I made to find this answer. That makes it easy, next time I run into the same problem, to locate the answer using the same query SAVING page 36

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More Myth Debunking: Facebook To Open First File Sharing Is A Offices in Asia Gateway Crime Christina Warren (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:03:13 AM

Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

in his talk: In the Napster era, some attributed the ascent of pirated digital music to a There's been plenty of coverage supposedly criminal-minded of Clay Shirky's recent talk at nature among American youth.

SXSW where, among other The argument didn't work. "It things, he discussed the impact coincided with the largest fall in of Napster on our culture. As the rate of crime in recorded per usual with Shirky, he made a history," Shirky said. People bunch of fantastic points, often aren't file sharing because they presenting a perspective that is don't respect the rule of law. unique and makes you think. I They're file sharing because that just wanted to pick up on one particular law doesn't make any point, however, because I've sense to them. The idea that been hearing the following people jumping on the file argument a lot lately: file sharing bandwagon will start sharing needs to be "stopped" breaking other laws appears to b e c a u s e t h i s w i d e s p r e a d have no empirical backing "illegality" is teaching kids to whatsoever. not have respect for the rule of Permalink| Comments| Email law. Even Larry Lessig has This Story been known to make this point.

Yet, Shirky quickly debunks it Submitted at 3/15/2010 2:04:33 AM

Over at the official Facebook Blog, the company has announced that it will open new offices in Hyderabad, India.

This announcement comes just days after Facebook confirmed that it will also be setting up shop in Austin, Texas. Both the India and Austin offices will be hiring online sales and operations staff.

With more than 400 million users, Facebook has experienced serious growth over the last few years. Having more offices will mean that the company can better support its customers.

The Hyderabad office — Facebook’s first in Asia — is an important development. The company blog states that 70% of the people using Facebook come from outside the U.S. Having an

international presence and support system is therefore crucial in continuing to expand and connect.

The new offices join Facebook’s main headquarters in Palo Alto, as well as the office in Dublin, Ireland. The social networking site also has offices in Atlanta; Birmingham, Michigan; Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; New York; Venice Beach, Calif.; Washington, DC, as well as in Milan; Paris; Stockholm; Sydney and Toronto.

Tags: austin, facebook, india

Battery Life Could Increase By Four Times With Lithium-Sulphur Batteries [Batteries] Kat Hannaford (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:54:39 AM

Lithium-ion batteries are already close to the 20-hour life promised back in 2007 for laptops, but Lithium-sulphur batteries being worked on at Stanford University may improve battery life by 300 per cent. More »

First Dot-com Celebrates 25th Birthday Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

early ’90s, it’s quite decent, although a bit short on content.

However, its content and even Exactly 25 years ago, computer the (now defunct) company that manufacturer Symbolics, Inc, r e g i s t e r e d i t a r e f a r l e s s registered the first .com web important than the boom it domain ever: symbolics.com. ignited: In 1997, one million By today’s design standards, . c o m w e b d o m a i n s w e r e and considering how websites registered, and in 2000 the.com inevitable meltdown.

And while the .com crash looked back in the late ’80s and bubble peaked, resulting in an Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:01:48 AM

proved that a well-chosen name isn’t enough for a successful company, .coms still play a very important part of our online lives. Despite many other toplevel domains available, .com is still the most coveted TLD — the one that many people still associate with the world wide web in general. Right now,

about 668,000 .com sites are registered every month; quite a jump from the six web domains registered in 1985, don’t you think?

Tags: dotcom, internet, trending, web

36

Tech/ Gadgets/ PopSci/

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SAVING continued from page 34

Venezuela Next Up To Try To Censor The Internet Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

that led me to it originally. This trick can be used on Delicious, in Evernote, on plain text files, and even on PDF's with annotations and tags. By the way, I use Skim for PDF annotations and notes because it makes much easier-to-Spotlight notes than Preview or Acrobat (among a host of other great features).

Admittedly, this is too many tools to keep track of, which is why Spotlight and custom scripts (to automate everything) are so important to me.

Spotlight allows me to use the best tool for each situation, and

then bring them all together in a seamless search. That's the gist of my toolbox, though, and hopefully it will give you some ideas for expanding your own.

TUAW Saving your surfing on the Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

calling for a coup d'etat. That cannot be permitted," Notice the Submitted at 3/15/2010 4:13:00 AM problem here. Chavez's real Having just criminalized video c o m p l a i n t i s w i t h a n games the government doesn't organization calling for a coup like, it looks like Hugo Chavez - but his response is to suggest is looking to have Venezuela be that special laws need to be the next country to massively p l a c e d o n a l l i n t e r n e t censor the internet."The Internet communications. There's a cannot be something open disconnect there which doesn't where anything is said and done. make much sense. If you want No, every country has to apply to make it illegal to support the its own rules and norms," Of overthrow of the government, course, it seems that the "rules that's one thing -- but that's and norms" that Chavez wants different than focusing on laws Stan Schroeder (Mashable!) are "no criticizing me.""We about the internet. The internet Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:49:57 AM have to act. We are going to ask i s j u s t a c o m m u n i c a t i o n If the choice between a 3G vs. the attorney general for help, m e c h a n i s m . because this is a crime. I have Permalink| Comments| Email Wi-Fi-only iPad has been keeping you up at night, how information that this page This Story about a third solution that makes periodically publishes stories the price difference pale in comparison: a diamondencrusted iPad. According to the company that sells it, Mervis, the “diamond- color and VS2/SI1 in clarity.” studded iPad features 11.43 Let’s just sum it up with the matt buchanan (Gizmodo) carats of diamonds, hand-set in word “expensive.” a micro-pave styling. The Honestly, we have no idea how Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:41:41 AM diamonds are graded G/H in Supposedly spotted in an AT&T store, and presented Blakeley] More » without comment. [ Reddit via The Daily What via Richard

We're Tweeting From South By Southwest John Mahoney (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/14/2010 10:22:25 AM

We're here at SXSW Interactive in Austin, where tech entrepreneurs and Internet mavens gather every year to talk up the future of the Web, show off their projects and, of course, eat barbecue. Follow along with@popsci.

Diamonds Are Forever, and So Are Diamond iPads

A Homophone, By AT&T [Image Cache]

well these things are selling, but every time a new gadget appears, a gold/diamond version pops up somewhere really soon, so there’s obviously a market for it. If you’re interested, you probably don’t have to ask about the price, but here it is just for completeness’ sake: $19,999.

Yes, you can buy 40 Wi-Fi iPads for that money. So what’s it gonna be: one diamond iPad or a wall of iPads in your room?

Tags: diamonds, ipad

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37

Pass or Fail Diane Ravitch (The New Republic - All Feed) Submitted at 3/14/2010 9:00:00 PM

In my new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, I argue that the current movement to fix schools will not improve American education. In fact, it may very well harm it.

Today’s reformers--few of whom are educators--say that changes in incentives and sanctions and in the governance of schooling will lead to improved achievement. They believe that a stronger emphasis on testing and accountability and an expansion of privately managed charter schools will raise student performance.

Because I had endorsed many of these ideas in the past, I had to admit upfront in the book that I was persuaded by accumulating evidence that these strategies are wrong, that I was wrong, and that American education is not likely to be improved by more testing, more accountability, and more choice. I have become fond of quoting John Maynard Keynes, who is said to have told a critic, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

As I assayed the evidence about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I concluded that it has failed.

The testing regime that NCLB installed in every public school has not improved American

education. By mandating that scores in reading and math must constantly rise, the federal law has removed any incentive to teach the arts, science, history, literature, foreign languages, geography, civics, or any other non-tested subject.

NCLB requires that all students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014. When the legislation was signed in 2002, this goal was wildly unrealistic-and now, it is merely laughable.

The target date is only four years away, but no state is remotely close to 100 percent proficiency. Indeed, in 2008, 35,000 of the nation’s schools bore the stigma of "failing" because they weren't making sufficient progress toward that utopian target.

What NCLB has done with its proficiency deadline is set a timetable for the demolition of American public education. In an effort to meet NCLB’s unattainable goal and avoid the "failing" label, most states have dumbed down their standardized tests or their definitions of proficiency. Many states claim that large majorities of their students are “proficient” in reading or math, but their claims are refuted by federal assessments (called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP) that are given to all students in fourth and eighth grades every other year. For example, Texas

reported that 85 percent of its students in those grades were proficient readers based on yearend state testing, but, on the NAEP, only 29 percent were.

Nationwide, NAEP scores have gone up in math since 2003, but the rate of improvement has been less than before the passage of NCLB. In eighthgrade reading, there was no improvement at all from 1998 to 2007.

Accountability pressures have also led to widespread gaming of the system. Every so often, a cheating scandal is uncovered, but such scandals are minor compared to the ways in which states have manipulated the scoring of tests to produce inflated results. New York state education officials, for instance, made it easier to rate students as “proficient” by lowering the number of points that a student needed to earn on the state tests.

In 2006, a seventh grader needed to get 59.6 percent on the state math test to be rated proficient, but, by 2009, a student needed to earn only 44 percent. Although most people would consider this a failing grade, the lowering of the “cut point” produced the desired results: In 2006, 55.6 percent of seventh graders were rated proficient, but, by 2009, that proportion had soared to 87.3 percent.

I am not opposed to testing.

Test scores should be used to

diagnose problems or to provide information about student progress or a program's effectiveness. They should be used to help students improve their learning and to help teachers become better at their jobs.

Test scores are misused, however, when they become blunt instruments to punish teachers or schools. States' standardized tests are not the equivalent of yardsticks or barometers. They have margins of error. If Johnny takes a test on a Monday, he could take the same test a week later and get a higher or lower score depending on any number of things, including Johnny’s mood, his health, the weather, the testing conditions in the room, or just random variation. The tests also sometimes contain errors or ambiguities. These are weak reeds on which to hang the fate and future of students, teachers, and schools.

In my book, I attempt to assemble evidence to show that teacher quality cannot be judged solely by student test scores.

The scores depend to a large degree on which students are in a teacher’s class, and a teacher may have a highly motivated group of students one year that gets wonderful scores, but an unmotivated group the next year that gets average or poor scores.

What's more, although it has become fashionable recently to

discount the influence of poverty on student achievement, decades of social science research have demonstrated that test scores are highly correlated with income and social status.

Just as teachers can't control which students they have in class each year, they can't control where those students come from.

The Obama administration's current drive to tie teachers’ evaluations to students’ test scores will only intensify NCLB's pernicious “teach to the test” mentality. Teachers will have even less incentive to teach non-tested subjects than before.

As cognitive scientist Dan Willingham of the University of Virginia wrote recently in The Boston Globe, “If you thought No Child Left Behind led to an overemphasis on testing, wait for the test-prep frenzy that follows linking salaries to test scores.”

If we are serious about improving our schools, we must abandon the punitive rhetoric that threatens to drive away many good teachers. Of course, there should be better teacher evaluations, and bad teachers should be removed if they fail to improve with extra support. But evaluations should be thoughtful and must involve human judgment, not just rely on test scores. We can’t fire our way to PASS page 40

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Clinton Myth Spins Obama toward Midterm Massacre (AEI.Org: Articles)

Five days after his inauguration, Bill Clinton appointed his wife to head a task It is looking more and more like force on health-care reform. the Democratic Party's idea of Hillary Clinton spent months health-care reform will be devising the plan presented to enacted, notwithstanding the Congress in September 1993. election of Scott Brown in E f f e c t i v e t e l e v i s i o n a d s , M a s s a c h u s e t t s a n d t h e including the memorable "Harry opposition of the American and Louise" spots funded by the people.

Health Insurance Association of If the legislation does survive America, turned the American the gathering political storm, public strongly against the then it will present historians Clinton plan. with a fascinating puzzle. In the The Voters Speak 1990s, President Bill Clinton The legislation failed to win tried to enact universal health a p p r o v a l i n a C o n g r e s s care, and his failure wiped out controlled by Democrats. A few the Democratic Party in the next w e e k s a f t e r t h e n - S e n a t e election. In 2010, history may M a j o r i t y L e a d e r G e o r g e show, President Barack Obama Mitchell declared the bill dead, won passage of health-care Republicans seized control of legislation, and his success the legislative branch by gaining wiped out the Democratic Party seven Senate seats and 52 House in the next election, if not seats in the 1994 midterm beyond. elections.

How can opposite results have What went wrong with the same political outcome? The Hillarycare? If you believed the b e s t e x p l a n a t i o n i s t h a t Clinton administration, the D e m o c r a t i c p o l i t i c i a n s problem was the politics, not the swallowed Clinton's spin about s u b s t a n c e . P a u l S t a r r , a his first major defeat--it was a Princeton University professor failure of process, not ideas-- who advised Clinton on health while voters didn't. The fallacy care, explained it this way: "The of the Clinton spin is so striking lesson for next time in health in retrospect, such a gross reform is faster, smaller. We misreading of what actually made the error of trying to do h a p p e n e d , t h a t t h e m o v i e too much at once, took too long, version of Obama's first year in a n d e n d e d u p a c h i e v i n g office should be titled "Revenge n o t h i n g . " of the Clintons."

Sara Rosenbaum, one of the Think back to the debacle that p r i m a r y d r a f t e r s o f t h e was Hillarycare. legislation, said the biggest Submitted at 3/14/2010 4:00:00 PM

problem was the lack of congressional involvement.

Wrong Branch "It was a terrible error to have the president doing what Congress was supposed to do," she later said. "It was a misuse of the relationship between the legislative branch and the executive branch. The executive branch is supposed to generate action, and the committees are supposed to actually take the action. By sending a 1,300-page bill, you're writing a detailed blueprint for the policy rather than using the congressional process to create a consensus."

This is, in liberal circles, the accepted wisdom regarding the Hillary health-care plan: Americans would have loved the policy if only they had had a chance to get to know it.

Politically motivated sniping distracted Americans from the true substance, which got lost in the weeds. If the bill had passed, Americans would have seen how much it improved their lives, and the Democrats would have been heroes.

Obama, who is surrounded by many of the same economic advisers who served Clinton, clearly developed his strategy with an eye toward this explanation for the Clinton failure. Most importantly, he refrained from sending Congress a 1,300-page plan. Instead, he let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid manage the gory details.

Legislative Abominations Strictly speaking, Obama's calculation may have been correct. Allowing Congress to craft such abominations as the so- called Louisiana Purchase and Cornhusker Kickback made legislative success--defined as enough "yes" votes in both chambers--more likely.

But the fundamental politics are the same. An ABC News poll in March 1994 found that 48 percent of Americans disapproved of Clinton's healthcare plan. ABC News reported last month that 49 percent of Americans opposed Obama's plan.

If 48 percent disapproval can lead to a political earthquake, so can 49 percent. Ask Senator Brown of Massachusetts.

Why is opposition almost identical in 1994 and now? The easiest explanation is that Americans oppose the substance of both bills. They like the health care they have and do not want government bureaucrats to insert themselves into that very important corner of their lives.

They are compassionate and want to provide health care to those lacking it but do not want to pay for it with a radical restructuring of their own care.

Right Move Like Clinton, Obama continues to be personally popular.

Clinton recovered from the rout in 1994 to win reelection two years later because, despite his

rhetoric, he appeared to have learned from the health-care debacle. He recognized that Americans wanted less socialism, not more. Soon, he gave them welfare reform.

The Republican Congress allowed him to do something that a Democratic Congress would not--govern as the reasonable moderate that he promised to be in his first presidential campaign. Clinton's comeback seems easy in retrospect. He had genuine bipartisan accomplishment to point to precisely because he veered to the right.

Sadly for Obama and the Democrats, Clinton's later successes didn't fully drown out his delusional early spin on health-care failure.

Obamacare has replaced Hillarycare, and the details and circumstances are eerily similar.

When Democrats are sent packing in November by voters, they can thank Clinton for their political defeat.

Kevin A. Hassett is a senior fellow and the director of economic policy studies at AEI. Photo Credit: Flickr user marcn/Creative Commons Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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39

How to Stop the Bleeding John B. Judis (The New Republic - All Feed)

8.6 to 10.4 percent. On election eve, unemployment was higher than it had been since the Great Submitted at 3/14/2010 9:00:00 PM Depression, and many voters I have argued that rising e x p e c t e d t h e e c o n o m y t o u n e m p l o y m e n t i n e v i t a b l y continue to decline. No party imperils the political prospects had faced a similar kind of of a president and his party. So e c o n o m i c d o w n f a l l s i n c e I’m not surprised that President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, and B a r a c k O b a m a ’ s a p p r o v a l in that midterm election, the ratings have steadily fallen over Democrats had lost 72 House the last year, or that Democrats seats and seven Senate seats. have fared poorly in recent Using economic models, some elections. And it’s fair to say political scientists predicted that that if unemployment continues Democrats would pick up as to rise, or stays at the same many as 50 House seats. The elevated level, the Democrats Democrats also hoped to win will have trouble in the midterm back the Senate, which they had elections this November. lost in 1980. But when the votes Still, this is not an iron law. were tallied, the Republicans Sometimes other factors have lost 26 House seats and kept o v e r s h a d o w e d r i s i n g their 54 seats in the Senate. How unemployment or falling wages. did Reagan and the Republicans In 2002, Republicans were able manage to contain their losses in to parlay the public’s trust in this midterm election? That’s a George W. Bush’s war on terror question not simply of historical into election victories. And a interest, but of direct relevance president’s political acumen--his to Obama and the Democrats ability to put the best light on who are likely to face a similar, h i s a n d h i s p a r t y ’ s although perhaps not as severe, accomplishments--can mitigate economic situation in November t h e e f f e c t s o f r i s i n g 2010. unemployment. That’s what Unlike George W. Bush and the R o n a l d R e a g a n a n d t h e Republicans in 2002, Reagan Republicans achieved in the d i d n o t t r y t o d i v e r t t h e 1982 midterm elections. electorate’s attention away from F r o m J a n u a r y 1 9 8 2 t o the economy. Foreign policy N o v e m b e r 1 9 8 2 , t h e and national security played unemployment rate rose from almost no role in the election.

Nor did abortion or school prayer. The election was very much a referendum on Reagan and his economic policies.

Many Republican candidates wanted to run on local issues, but Reagan knew that he and his economic policies were going to be more important--in the final tally 70 percent of the voters told pollsters that they were voting “for or against Ronald Reagan”--and he wanted to confront his critics.

Early in the year, Reagan’s chief of staff James Baker assembled a strategy group that included Lee Atwater and Ed Rollins. Baker and Atwater were the premier campaign strategists of their time, as they would demonstrate again in the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections.

They devised a strategy for Reagan around the theme of “staying the course.” Reagan would urge voters to have patience with his economic policies and to “vote your hopes, not your fears.”

Reagan blamed the Democrats for leaving him with “the worst economic mess in half a century.” ''Slowly, but surely, we are lifting the economy out of the mess created over the past several decades,'' he said. ''We are on the road back.'' The Democrats, he charged, had

caused the recession through profligate spending, which had caused inflation, which had caused unemployment. By cutting spending and taxes, Reagan claimed that he was showing the way toward a recovery. “If we stick to our plan, if we keep the Congress from going back to its runaway spending, the recovery will take hold, strengthen and endure," he said.

Reagan stated this theme not once, but hundreds of times and in virtually the same words, and it was featured in national Republican ads. When the Democrats charged that his policies had created the recession, he accused them of playing “the blame game,” all the while blaming them for the recession. Wrote New York Times columnist James Reston, “He deplores ‘The Blame Game' but he plays it more convincingly and effectively than anybody else in Washington.”

Of course, much of what Reagan claimed during the campaign was nonsense. He said he was for cutting taxes, but in August he had agreed to tax increases needed to reduce the deficit. While he said he was against spending and deficits, the deficit had ballooned under

him. While there had been a downturn from 1979 to 1980, unemployment had started to fall. It began rising again in April 1981, three months after Reagan had been sworn in.

Many voters did see through Reagan’s claims, but enough did not to minimize the losses that the Republicans suffered in November.

According to the NBC/Associated Press exit polls, when voters were asked whether Reagan’s economic program would eventually help or hurt the economy, 46 percent said it would help and 45 percent said it would hurt. Forty -four percent of voters blamed the Democrats for the country’s economic ills and only 41 percent blamed Reagan. A mere six percent of voters saw Reagan’s program as a “success,” while 36 percent thought it was a failure. But 49 percent thought that “Reagan needs time for his economic program to succeed.” That was, public opinion analyst William Schneider concluded, “precisely the president’s argument in his ‘stay the course’ campaign.”

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PASS

Labour Manual E.J. Dionne Jr. (The New Republic - All Feed)

The leader of the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, has been coy as to whom his party would back for Submitted at 3/14/2010 9:00:00 PM prime minister, and for good LONDON -- Could Prime r e a s o n : T o g e t i n t o t h e Minister Gordon Brown become kingmaker role, his party needs the Harry Truman of British to beat the Conservatives in politics? some parliamentary contests and For many long months, Brown Labor in others. While an and his Labor Party were written alliance with Labor would seem off as sure losers in this year's more natural, Clegg cannot election, likely to be called for afford to alienate potential allies May 6. David Cameron, the on the near right, so he keeps his young, energetic and empathetic options open.

Conservative Party leader, was How has Brown engineered his all but handed Brown's job by comeback? For starters, it's been the chattering classes, so hard for the 43-year-old consistent and formidable had Cameron to maintain his spiffy been his lead in the polls. image as the next new thing, But suddenly, Cameron doesn't given that he has now been the seem quite so inevitable. One Conservative Party leader since recent poll showed Brown's December 2005. "Imagine party within two points of campaigning the way you would Cameron's. While other surveys in the United States for four show a larger Conservative lead, years," said James Purnell, a it is no longer an absurd idea retiring Labor member of that Brown could push his way Parliament who has been an into an unexpected new term in internal critic of Brown's. office. Truman won the world's Cameron has also had to most famous upset over Tom engage in an intricate balancing Dewey in 1948. A Brown act on policy, and he has lately triumph this year would be of a wobbled on the high wire. comparable magnitude.

Cameron has tried to emphasize Just to complicate matters that his new Conservatives are f u r t h e r , t h e r e i s a n o t h e r not hostile to public services, possibility: that neither major that they are now a tolerant and party would win an outright compassionate party. By voting majority. This would create a for the Tories, the country could hung Parliament in which the give itself new leadership Liberal Democrats, a middle-of- without taking a big risk. "Vote the-road progressive party, f o r C h a n g e " i s t h e would hold the balance of Conservatives' all-encompassing power. slogan.

continued from page 37

Yet in light of large government deficits, his party has also said that substantial cuts in public expenditure will indeed be necessary. Brown pounced on this, and Cameron has been trying to clean up the inconsistency between his party's promise of an easy, sunny future and its dour pronouncements on spending.

Purnell, who despite his dissidence is supporting Brown, said in an interview that the Conservatives are suffering from "not having worked out their policy," partly because Cameron's emphasis has been more on improving "communications" than on working out an alternative approach to governing.

Brown, in the meantime, has finally found a role he seems to enjoy: that of the seasoned fighter coming from behind.

Voters may not be wild about him, Brown tacitly admits, but "with me, what you see is what you get." With Cameron, his argument goes, they can't be sure what they'll be buying.

The prime minister -- take note, Barack Obama -- is also casting himself as a leader who got Britain through a very dangerous economic time.

Character, he said in a speech last week, is about "the courage to take the tough decisions and stick to them without being blown off course."

He's also carefully picking out

groups who might put his party over the top. Brown's latest targets (remember America's "soccer mom" craze of the 1990s?) are "middle-class mainstream mums," whom he says would be hurt by Conservative spending cuts.

One other potential Brown advantage: Because Cameron will rack up huge majorities in core Conservative districts, his party could emerge with a plurality of the popular vote and still not win a majority in Parliament.

Britain's bookies, often better electoral prognosticators than the pollsters, are not yet convinced by the Brown comeback story and they still give decent odds to Cameron.

For his part, the Conservative leader has reason to count on public exhaustion with Brown, and also with a Labor Party that has held power for 13 years.

So, yes, an outright win by Brown still seems a long shot.

But then Harry Truman was supposed to lose, too.

E.J. Dionne's e-mail address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.(c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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better education. And we won’t attract better teachers by demonizing and scapegoating them whenever students fail to get higher scores.

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It's Time For One Data Plan to Rule All Our Gadgets [All Giz Wants] John Herrman (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:00:00 AM

If you buy a 3G iPad, you'll be able to purchase data, month by month, from AT&T. Neat! But you already pay for unlimited data access on your iPhone, also from AT&T. So why not have one plan, for everything? More Âť

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41

Dodd Seeks Difficult Consensus On Financial Rules (Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 3/14/2010 11:51:31 PM

Combining Obama administration and Republican priorities, the leading Senate author of a sweeping rewrite of the nation's financial regulations is looking for consensus with a proposal that neither side of the political spectrum is ready to embrace.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, plans to unveil a proposal Monday that expands the powers of the Federal Reserve but creates a consumer protection entity with less authority than President Barack Obama once demanded.

His draft legislation aims to avoid a recurrence of the financial crisis that brought Wall Street to the verge of collapse 18 months ago. It would restrict the size and interconnections of large financial institutions once deemed "too big to fail," tame previously unregulated shadow markets with new restrictions and create a dismantling mechanism for failing financial

giants without a bail out from taxpayers.

While navigating in the middle of the road, Dodd hasn't won the support of Republicans. And Democrats inside and outside his committee, as well as consumer advocates are eager to change his consumer proposals.

"Members have to make up their minds," Dodd said Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press. "While they may not like everything here, I'm not going to give them much room to say we shouldn't do anything."

In looking for common ground, Dodd significantly shifted from financial regulations he proposed four months ago, when he called for a single powerful regulator to oversee all of the nation's banks and for a stand-alone consumer financial protections agency.

Instead, as preferred by the Obama administration, the Federal Reserve would gain oversight of all financial firms — banks and nonbanks — that are considered the biggest and most interconnected. For the Fed, the price of such power is losing supervision over smaller

bank holding companies with less than $50 billion in assets.

Moreover, to the dismay of liberals and consumer advocates, the Fed would also house a consumer protection entity. That agency would be headed by a presidential appointee and would have an independent source of funds not subject to congressional appropriations. But its power to write regulations would be subject to review by a council of regulators that could veto consumer rules by a two-thirds vote.

John Taylor, head of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a consumer advocacy group, said Dodd was "capitulating to the industry's interests."

"He's offering a faux consumer protection agency that holds little promise to be effective in the long run," Taylor said.

In a nod to the White House, however, Dodd is expected to propose that states have enhanced ability to enforce consumer rules. State attorneys general and the Obama administration have called for

such authority. Financial regulations approved by the House in December gave states more leeway to write and police their own consumer laws.

That consumer provision veered from the agreement Dodd and Republican Sen. Bob Corker had tentatively reached last week before Dodd decided it was time to stop negotiating and write a bill.

Corker, in an interview Sunday, said Dodd's bill would be a vast improvement over what Dodd had first recommended late last year. But Corker said he didn't expect to support it.

"I'm sure he has moved the bill to the left of where we were Thursday in order to ensure that he has all the Democratic members with him," Corker said. Still, Corker said he believed that through amendments in committee, the bill could win bipartisan support.

Corker and his nine Republican colleagues on the Banking Committee urged Dodd on Friday to slow down and not schedule committee action on the bill before the Easter recess,

which begins March 27.

Among other likely provisions in Dodd's proposal: — Institutions that are bank holding companies, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, cannot alter their status to avoid Fed oversight. The measure is being called the "Hotel California provision" because firms can enter Fed supervision but can never leave.

— Unlike the House bill, which imposes new requirements on broker-dealers and investment advisers, Dodd's is expected to adopt a proposal from Sen. Tim Johnson to conduct a study of potential investor protections before writing any regulations. © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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

lots of padding, this cute creation was made to decorate Joby’s PMA booth. It’s made of the same stuff used to make Joby’s Gorilla gear. The beads, obviously, will fold over and

bend into odd positions, wich makes riding this bike that much harder.

PhotographyBay has more info on Joby’s PMA offerings

including some Gorillapods for DSLRs. via Wired

The Joby Gorillabike John Biggs (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:30:47 AM

While we wouldn’t recommend hopping on this bike without

42

Politics/ Gadgets/ Fashion/

E-reader News Edition

The Final Countdown (AEI.Org: Articles)

Earth," Gallup asked people about the project. Sixty-five percent approved of the goal of On March 7 the White House sending a man to the moon, with a n n o u n c e d t h a t P r e s i d e n t 20% saying they did not.

Obama will host a conference A 2009 Pew Research Center on space policy next month to poll found that Americans discuss a "new vision for considered the moon landing America's future in space" and and the space program as t h e " n e w c o u r s e t h e America's greatest achievement administration is charting for over the past 50 years, followed NASA and the future of U.S. closely by electing a black leadership in human space president. In a Gallup poll flight." conducted last summer on the News reports suggest that the eve of the 40th anniversary of president, who hasn't had much the moon landing, 58% said the to say about the space program, space program had produced is getting significant pushback enough benefits to justify its from legislators and others on costs, up from 41% in 1980, t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n ' s " n e w 47% in 1995 and 55% in 1998. course," particularly its plan to Fifty-four percent of those who kill NASA's Constellation were at least 10 years old (they program. Constellation aimed to are now over age 50) when the put astronauts back on the moon 1969 moon landing occurred in 2020. In addition, America's said the program had justified its last shuttle mission is scheduled costs, but even more of those for September. who were under age 50 did How do Americans feel about (63%). the space program? In a poll Support for the space program conducted in 1961, before John survived the explosion of the Kennedy called on the nation to Space Shuttle Challenger in commit itself to "achieving the 1 9 8 6 a n d t h e l o s s o f t h e goal, before this decade is out, Columbia shuttle in 2003. After of landing a man on the moon both disasters, around eight in and returning him safely to 10 Americans said they wanted Submitted at 3/14/2010 4:00:00 PM

the program to continue. But in a 2006 Gallup question people split evenly, 48% to 48%, on whether the shuttle program was worth the cost or whether the money could have been spent in better ways. Gallup has asked about NASA since 1991, and the space agency gets good marks. In Gallup's last question, asked in 2009, 58% said the agency was doing an excellent or good job.

Exploring space has always been more popular than spending on the space program.

Since 1972, first on a yearly and then a biennial basis, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago has asked people this question about the nation's spending priorities: "We are faced with many problems in this country, none of which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I'm going to name some problems, and for each one, I'd like you to tell me whether you think we're spending too much money on it, too little money, or about the right amount." In 1973 8% said we were spending too little on space, 31% about the right

amount and 61% too much.

In two slightly different versions of the question in NORC's latest survey, from 2008, more people gave the "about right" response than gave the other two responses. Tom Smith, who directs the survey, noted in that of the 21 areas NORC now inquires about, "space has always finished close to the bottom," in terms of spending priorities, far behind areas such as health and education and close to the everunpopular spending on foreign aid.

But while public ambivalence about the space program may make the president's job in Florida easier next month, passing over what Americans see as the country's greatest accomplishment has to be done with care.

Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at AEI. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Joby GorillaBike Looks Seriously Unsafe [GorillaPad] Adam Frucci (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:20:00 AM

I like those GorillaPod bendy tripods as much as the next guy, but this seems like a pretty bad idea. [ Photography Bay via Gadget Lab] More »

Rockport's Adorable Rain Boots ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:58:26 AM

With all the rain we’ve had

lately in New York City, I’m pining for a pair of these adorable Rockport rain boots.

The wedge will give me a little b i t o f h e i g h t , a n d — o f

course—I’ll take the black!

—Ellyn Chestnutt, Accessories Director '

Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Become our Facebook fan!

Politics/ Entertainment/

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Sunday Night Music: Steely Dan, 'Gaslighting Abbie'

Has Education Reform Gone Too Far?

(Little Green Footballs)

Diane Ravitch, Ben Wildavsky, Richard Rothstein (The New Republic - All Feed)

Submitted at 3/14/2010 9:45:39 PM

I like this version of Steely Dan’s “Gaslighting Abbie” even better than the one on Two Against Nature. Ricky Lawson is an ultrafunky metronome in this one, Walter Becker squeezes out some nicely twisted licks, and the arrangement is more fully developed.[Video] One plush summer you come to me ripe and ready And bad through and through With that deep mystical soul synergy pumping steady Between me and you Lovin all the beautiful work weve done, cara mia And its barely july If we keep on boppin until labor day Lil miz abbie - bye bye

What will it be - some soothing herb tea?

That might be just the thing Lets say we spike it with deludin Or else - maybe tonight a hand of solitaire Chorus: Flame is the game The game we call gaslighting abbie Its a luscious invention for three One summer by the sea With the long weekend thats comin up fast Lets get busy Theres just too much to do That black mini looks just like the one shes been missin Feels good on you Theres a few items we need in town - allez-vous girl Theres no time to waste Such as fresh cable and fifteen

watt bulbs Couple dozen - its a big old place Lets keep it light - well do a fright night With blood and everything Some punky laughter from the kitchen And then - a nice relaxing hand of solitaire Chorus You can choose the music Ill set up my gear Later on well chill and watch the fireworks from here How can you knock this mighty spitelock Check out the work itself A mix of elegance and function Thats right - a tweak or two and then shes out of here Chorus

Today's birthdays, marriages, divorces and deaths [Milestones] Stephanie Miles (Gawker) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:55:00 AM

BIRTHDAYS • Eva Longoria Parker, 35 • will.i.am, 35 • Fabio, 50 • Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 77

• • • • • • • •

Judd Hirsch, 75 Bret Michaels, 47 Mark McGrath, 42 Sly Stone, 67 Eva Amurri, 25 Kim Raver, 41 Kellan Lutz, 25 Jimmy Swaggart, 75

• • • •

Ry Cooder, 63 David Cronenberg, 67 Jennifer 8. Lee, 34 Mark Green, 65

More »

43

flaws. Below, you’ll find responses from both Ben Wildavsky, senior fellow in research and policy at the Submitted at 3/14/2010 9:00:00 PM Has education reform failed Kauffman Foundation and guest America's children? According s c h o l a r a t t h e B r o o k i n g s to outspoken education historian Institute, and Richard Rothstein, Diane Ravitch, the answer is a research associate at the yes. In her new book, The Death Economic Policy Institute and and Life of the Great American former education columnist for School System: How Testing The New York Times. But, first, and Choice Are Undermining Ms. Ravitch herself.

Education, the one-time

By Diane Ravitch: The supporter of No Child Left country's love affair with Behind explains why she thinks standardized testing and charter the biggest attempt to overhaul schools is ruining American U . S . e d u c a t i o n i n r e c e n t education. memory has floundered. She By Ben Wildavsky: Why Diane also castigates today's reform Ravitch's populist rage against m o v e m e n t - - w h i c h c o u n t s business-minded school reform President Obama and Secretary doesn't make sense. of Education Arne Duncan

By Richard Rothstein: a m o n g i t s f o l l o w e r s - - f o r Ravitch’s recent ‘conversion’ is focusing too heavily on test- actually a return to her core based accountability and charter values. schools, at the expense of For more TNR, become a fan helping children really learn. on Facebook and follow us on But is she right? In this TNR Twitter. symposium, which starts today Five Filters featured article: and will continue for the next Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: week or so, some of the most PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, i m p o r t a n t t h i n k e r s i n t h e Term Extraction. education world respond to Ravitch, pointing out the merits of her argument, as well as the

44

Consumer Reports/ Entertainment/

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Despite dangers, drivers continue to text and talk on cell phones Consumer Reports Shopping Blog (Consumer Reports)

However, IIHS researchers note that in self reporting of negative behaviors, drivers will tend to Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:59:59 AM underestimate. Another disparity D e s p i t e d a n g e r s , d r i v e r s is that the government data was continue to text and talk on cell compiled from observing drivers phones at intersections during daytime The issue of distracted driving hours, and the IIHS study is a complicated topic with estimates phone use in all various studies indicated real driving scenarios and times. r i s k s , t h o u g h c o n f l i c t i n g Another interesting finding is conclusions. No one can dispute t h a t d r i v e r s t e n d t o o b e y the fact that cell phone use-- handheld phone bans, but not either talking or texting--is texting bans. Forty-four percent dangerous. But there isn’t any of drivers in states with bans say clear evidence that bans are they do not talk and drive working and drivers are still compared to 30 percent in states phoning and texting even at the without those laws. Thirty-four riskiest times. percent of drivers in states with A r e c e n t s u r v e y b y t h e hand-held bans continue to use Insurance Institute for Highway them compared to 57 percent in Safety (IIHS) of 1,219 drivers states without the ban. over 18 years old in the last two Thirteen percent of drivers months of 2009 found that 40 report texting while driving, percent of drivers report talking with the highest rate being on phones at least a few times a among 18-24-year-old motorists week, 19 percent talk daily, and at 45 percent in states with bans 35 percent say they never use and 48 percent in states without the phone while driving. bans. Overall, 12 percent report On average drivers spend four texting in states with bans minutes out of each hour they compared to 14 percent in states spend in the car on the phone, with no ban. which comes to about 7 percent The study also noted that in of the time. This is lower than stop-and-go traffic, where t h e f e d e r a l g o v e r n m e n t ’ s fender-benders frequently occur, e s t i m a t e o f 1 1 p e r c e n t . drivers will continue to use

As discussed in the Department of Transportation distracted driving summit last fall, a mix of education and awareness coupled with stronger enforcement and technology could help reduce this risky practice. The safest way to reduce the risk is to not use a phones. Forty-two percent of cell phone in the car--hand-held drivers said they used phones in or hands-free -- and don’t text. this risky situation compared to If you need to use your phone, 45 percent who use them in free pull over to a safe place.

-flowing traffic.

It may not be convenient, but Currently, seven states plus the all the studies agree that this is District of Columbia have safest for you, your passengers, handheld cell phone bans and 20 and other motorists. states and DC ban texting while — Liza Barth driving. The survey found that Also read: many drivers didn’t know the Hands-free cell phone laws: laws in their state, especially Are they effective? texting bans, and didn’t think Should cell phone use by the law was strongly enforced drivers be illegal? by police.

Distracted Driving Summit: While it is clear that there is a The hands-free debate behavior change in states with Cell phone use and driving laws handheld laws compared with Government study exposes cell those states that do not have cell phone driving dangers Subscribe phone laws, one expected result now! would be for crashes to decline, S u b s c r i b e t o but that is not the case. (See “ ConsumerReports.org for expert Are hand-held cell phone laws Ratings, buying advice and reducing crash risks”) reliability on hundreds of All this data leads to the fact products. Update your feed t h a t b a n s a l o n e a r e n o t preferences effectively solving the problem.

'Trauma' Pumps up the Drama with Make -ups and Break-ups (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/15/2010 12:50:00 AM

"Trauma" premiered last fall with helicopter crashes and multiple-car pile ups on the San Francisco Bay Bridge. After a hiatus, the show is now back on NBC, and the second half of the season will cut back on the special effects and focus more on getting up-close and personal with its cast of characters.

"At the beginning, these were larger-than-life characters, super heroes," Aimee Garcia, who plays helicopter pilot Marisa Benez, tells ET. "Rabbit [a daredevil flight medic played by Cliff Curtis] shows up with sunglasses; Marisa is chomping on her gum and flying her helicopter. There is that superhero complex these people have.

You do have to be confident in your abilities so you can calm the victim and the victim's family. But there is much more to what these people do after work."

So with the new episodes, we will see the more human side of Rabbit, Marisa and the rest of the medics and EMTs on the show, but their essential character traits will stay the same.

Consumer Reports/ Entertainment/ Economy/

E-reader News Edition

Daily electronics deals Nicholas Kolman-Mandle (Consumer Reports)

w/ Free Shipping • Office Max: Acer 15.6" Laptop Dual Core 2.13GHz w/ Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:57:19 AM 320GB Drive + 4GB DDR3 Daily electronics deals RAM for $499.99 w/ Free Shipping Today's electronics deals, • Amazon: Xbox 360 Wireless courtesy of the Consumerist: Controller for $28.54 w/ Free • J&R: Archos 9 PC tablet $538 Shipping • Walmart: X Box Elite with two bonus games and a $50 gift Related: TV Ratings and card for $299 buying tips; Computer Ratings • Amazon: Samsung Digital and buying tips; DVD & BluCamcorder w/ 2.7” LCD Screen ray player Ratings and buying for $99 w/ Free Shipping tips Video game console buying • Newegg: Kodak Wireless HD tips video: "Choosing a video Player for $89.99 w/ Free game system".

Shipping Neither Consumer Reports nor • Dell: Mitsubishi 73" LCD T h e C o n s u m e r i s t r e c e i v e 1080p HDTV for $1379 w/ Free a n y t h i n g i n e x c h a n g e f o r Shipping featuring these deals; the posts • Amazon: Sylvania Blu-Ray are intended to be purely Disc Player for $79.99 w/ Free informational. These deals are Shipping often fleeting, with prices • Buy.com: Seagate 1.5TB changing or products becoming External Hard Drive for $115.99 u n a v a i l a b l e a s t h e d a y

progresses.

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

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

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

Medical Doctors Try to Uncover the Biological Mysteries of the Jersey Shore Cast [Gossip Roundup] Brian Moylan (Gawker)

45

Q&A: Does peanut butter contain trans fat? rss@consumerreports.org (Consumer Reports) Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:29:59 AM

Q&A: Does peanut butter contain trans fat?

I’ve noticed that the peanut butter I buy contains partially and fully hydrogenated oil.

Does that mean it contains trans fat? — R.B., Brooklyn, N.Y. Yes, but in amounts so small they’re insignificant. It’s true that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil—which manufacturers add to many peanut butters to keep them from separating—supplies trans fat, an especially unhealthy form of fat that may harm the heart, among other things, by raising bad (LDL) cholesterol and lowering good (HDL) cholesterol. (Fully hydrogenated oil, added for the same reason, does not contain trans fat.) But a U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis of 13 brands of peanut butter found that the amount of partially hydrogenated oil was so small that trans-fat levels

weren’t even detectable. And there’s good reason to keep some peanut butter in your diet: About 80 percent of its fat is the healthful, mono- and polyunsaturated kind.

If you're trying to lower your cholesterol, take a look at our guide to fats in foods, find out which treatments are proven to work bes t(subscribers only), and read our free Best Buy Drugs report on cholesterollowering drugs. Subscribe now!

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

Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:32:20 AM

MTV is having all their top moneymakers examined. Kate Gosselin hates the dancing stars in her galaxy. Corey Feldman is banned from Corey Haim's funeral. Martha Stewart can't get

PVH acquires Tommy Hilfiger for $3bn laid. Monday's gossip got up an hour late. More »

(Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:34:31 AM

Phillips Van Heusen, the apparel company, agreed on Monday to acquire Tommy

Hilfiger in a $3bn deal that will combine two of the world’s biggest clothing retailers.

Tommy Hilfiger was acquired in 2005 by Apax, a private equity group, for $1.6bn.

Through the cash and stock

deal, PVH will also assume about $137m in liabilities Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

46

Consumer Reports/ Gadgets/

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Mazda MX-5 Miata - If only there was room for some lumber

CNN will finally go full HD this spring. Maybe we’ll see Rick Sanchez vs. East Side Dave in 720p?

Consumer Reports Shopping Blog (Consumer Reports)

Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear)

it out to see who gets the maximum decibel prize.

Not much has changed to the Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:30:14 AM basic Miata concept over the Mazda MX-5 Miata - If only course of two decades. It has there was room for some lumber grown up slightly, with a If I could afford five new cars, smidgen more room here, a little one of them would definitely be more power there, and--dare I a Mazda MX-5 Miata. Maybe say it--a bit more refinement. even if I could only afford four having - or accuse you of anti- But only a bit. And staying true social behavior. Where so many to its roots remains a core part cars.

As has been reported here and of today’s cars isolate drivers of the Miata’s charm. Still, there elsewhere many times, the from their surroundings, you are those pets, kids, and the Miata’s small size, nimble feel the road in the Miata, you occasional need for a stack of handling, quick, direct steering hear it, and you can even smell 2X4s to consider. That’s why and what may be the best it if you put the top down. All I’d have to have enough cash for manual shifter in the business all this, and 28 mpg overall. Not four or five other vehicles combine to make it simply a too shabby. before I could justify one.

But almost everything has a Ok. Maybe three other vehicles. kick to drive.

And the best part is, it’s a ball downside, and the Miata’s case Possibly two.— Jim Travers at perfectly legal speeds. You that means a sports car ride, Subscribe now! can be running it up through the little storage space, and a S u b s c r i b e t o gears, shooting apexes without cramped interior. And, it’s ConsumerReports.org for expert leaving your lane, blasting from noisy. Even with the folding Ratings, buying advice and stoplight to stoplight without hard top on our test car, the reliability on hundreds of exceeding 45 mph, and your Miata’s interior is a din of noise products. Update your feed fellow citizens may not even at highway speeds, with the preferences notice how much fun you’re tires, wind, and engine slugging

Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:30:26 AM

Exciting news, people who watch TV! CNN will finally go fully HD sometime this spring!

This is a great day for news junkies and people who constantly need to be reading a ticker.

The network first launched its HD channel two years ago, but only programming emanating from its New York studios were done in HD; Atlanta- and D.C.based programming was still in boring ol’ SD. But no more!

Starting this spring, it’s HD 24 hours a day~!

Among the shows that will gain several lines of resolution: Rick’s List with Rick “from the barrio” Sanchez. Sanchez, you’ll recall, challenged East Side

Dave(again, whom I interviewed), from Ron and Fez, to a fight in light of the Shorty Awards Twitter controversy.

Dave accepted his challenge, but Mr. Sanchez has been awfully quiet since then. What’s the matter, dogsie, afraid the Davepound knows how to scrap?!

Do I have to mention that I wrote two articles for CNN.com, one about the iPad and one about Ubisoft’s DRM? Well I just did, so there.

The MAG iMito tablet MID enters the fray Tablet (BestTabletReview.com)

touchscreen MID will have a WinCE OS and an ARM 11 800Mhz processor. Also Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:37:33 AM included is 256MB of DDR2 The MAG iMito MID RAM, 4GB flash drive, Chinese manufacturer MAG microSD card expansion up to released some details on their 32GB, USB OT 2.0 and 1080p upcoming iMito tablet MID. HD support and streaming via The 7-inch 800 x 480 resolution HDMI.

The MAG iMito’s other

features include a 3MP webcam, microphone, GPS navigation, WiFi, accelerometer and 1400mAh battery. There’s also support for an external 3G dongle. That’s all the information we have on it at this time, but typically products like this are released about 2-3

months after these types of specs are released. We can’t speculate on exact price, but it should be reasonable.

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

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47

Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source Mike Melanson (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:10:00 AM

Most any journalism professor, upon mention of Wikipedia, will immediately launch into a rant about how the massively collaborative online encyclopedia can't be trusted. It can, you see, be edited and altered by absolutely anyone at any moment.

But how much less trustworthy is the site for breaking news than the plethora of blogs and other online news sources?

Sponsor Even Moka Pantages, the communications officer for the WikiMedia Foundation, said she agreed with this sentiment when she spoke this morning at the South By South West festival in Austin, at a panel entitled " Process Journalism: Getting It First, While Getting It Right".

Here's the thing - we have to say that everything she said before answering this question seems to say otherwise. Tackling RealTime Content The panel featured journalists from the New York Times, SeattlePI.com, Journerdism.com and Gizmodo and a common theme was that user-created content - whether tweets, YouTube videos, or otherwise could and should be used in

breaking news coverage. The panelists all agreed that this content should be verified in some way and should be presented to the audience with a high degree of transparency.

Each panelist spoke about a specific case study - the New York Times' coverage of last summer's protests in Iran, for example - and discussed how they gathered crowd-sourced information and attempted to verify its authenticity. Robert Mackey, the reporter for the New York Times, gave examples of translating chants heard in YouTube videos and matching up street signs that flashed on screen with Google Maps. Once he was sure of its validity, he said, he would add it to the coverage.

"When you're sitting in an office in New York and you're trying to confirm that something was shot in Tehran that day was actually shot in Tehran that day, you're not going to be able to verify that," he said. "The idea is that it's a conversation on the web about this event." The Newsroom Moves Online Monica Guzman, a reporter for SeattlePI.com, spoke similarly about her website's breaking coverage of a shooting and the subsequent day-long man hunt.

SeattlePI, formerly a print publication, has existed solely

online for nearly a year now.

Most of the breaking information that day, she said, came from Twitter.

"The media collaborated with itself and it was one big swirling newsroom on Twitter," said Guzman. "We ended up using tweets as starting points. And Twitter did end up breaking a bunch of stuff."

While SeattlePI was able to send reporters out and verify some of the information in person, how was the rest of it verified? "Common sense," she answered.

The Seattle Times, she said, had more than 500 people collaborating on Google Wave to gather information on the same story. Wikipedia Takes On The Mumbai Terror Attacks Then came Pantages' turn to discuss how the Wikipedia community addressed the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

While it is said, as we started out with, that Wikipedia just

shouldn't be trusted, the case we heard for its coverage of a breaking news situation far surpassed what you might often see on your average blog or even traditional newspaper.

One particular user, Kensplanets, was a driving force behind the coverage, using breaking news from IBN.com as a source. In cases such as this one, the crowdsourcing aspect not only allows multiple points of view, but also allows aggregation from multiple points in a number of different languages and locations.

"It's not just U.S.-centric information," Pantages explained, "You have the New York Times, Reuters, Times of India - they're all there."

According to Pantages, by the end of the first day of the Wikipedia article's life, it had been edited more than 360 times, by 70 different editors referring to 28 separate sources from news outlets around the web. While this could seem like a situation rife for misdirection and misinformation, the constant discussion swirling around the creation of an article, Pantages explained, is "really similar to what you would think should be in a newsroom."

Nonetheless, we still disparage Wikipedia as an untrusted source of news. Wikipedia As

News Aggregator Just like other news aggregation services, Wikipedia takes many sources and puts them in to a central location, but with the added benefit of human curation instead of algorithmic collection.

"There's no real-time reporting going on in Wikipedia, it's realtime aggregation," Pantages said.

So the very first level of information vetting, which happens at the reporting level, has already taken place by the time it reaches the site. Then the hundreds or thousands of editors continue to scrutinize the information, discussing edits and potential changes in the back channels. The news we read in our daily newspapers, on the other hand, is curated by only a small number of people.

Surely, there is the question of qualification, but many of Wikipedia's contributors and editors are, themselves, professionals.

In contrast, we often accept news from other blogs as immediately trustworthy, while a Wikipedia article such as this one, which is transparent in its creation, its sourcing and its transmutation over time, we dismiss as flawed from WHY page 51

48

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Never Mind the Valley: Here's Boulder, Part 2 Elyssa Pallai (ReadWriteWeb)

affecting change politically and economically in the United States. Lunching with four Nestled in the foothills of the startups that Micah Baldwin Rocky Mountains and fueled by organized was like lunching leaders and social hubs such as with a family. The group we Micah Baldwin, Tech Stars talked with share office space, mentor, #followfriday creator mentor each other and talk and now chief community proudly of each others ideas and caretaker at Graphic.ly of a c c o m p l i s h m e n t s . T h e Digital X, and Robert Reich, the U n d e r g r o u n d R a i l R o a d founder of Boulder/Denver Tech Attracting talent is foundational Meet-up, Boulder's startup to any startup environment. community is pumping, even in Eric Marcoullier, co-founder of the midst of recession.

Gnip described the Boulder is the home of Blue "underground railroad" of Mountain cards, one of the first transients that have made their successful online greeting cards way from Silicon Valley to websites. In the 1990s, Fortune Boulder. "Weekly I would get 1,000 tech companies popped up emails asking about what all over the Western prairie Boulder was like. Eventually I between Boulder and Denver. just started telling people to Since then, Boulder's creative, come here, visit and ask the crunchy, beautiful mountain locals themselves," he said. environment has nurtured a self- Venture capitalists have also s u p p o r t i n g s t a r t u p t e c h made their way from busy ecosystem.

Silicon Valley to the Boulder Sponsor Valley. Affecting Change - The W e a l r e a d y w r o t e a b o u t Startup Visa Act Boulder in our Never Mind the Once you have the foundation Valley series, and recently had o f t a l e n t e d m o t i v a t e d the chance to visit the city and individuals, ideas flow. Brad lunch with four of the region's Feld of TechStars took the idea startups. Here is what we for a national startup visa bill found. Community Support and made it a reality. TechStars RWW's Never Mind the Valley receives proposals from all over series: the world. Startups based in T h e B o u l d e r s t a r t u p foreign countries come on community, continues to be a tourist visas with great ideas s u p p o r t i v e , p a s s i o n a t e and potential jobs are being sent c o m m u n i t y w i t h t a l e n t e d home with them. The startup individuals, inspired ideas that is bill seeks to change this. The Submitted at 3/14/2010 8:00:00 PM

bill will enable companies that do not have U.S. citizen or resident status, but who have blessed by at least $100,000 in VC investment, to start their companies in the United States.

Measuring Outcomes The four thought-provoking, pioneering startups we met with had had nothing but positive things to say about TechStars and starting a business in Boulder. Each had a unique story; two of them were locals and all of them men. Gnip Eric Marcoullier, co-founder of Gnip, launched two years ago with the unique idea of providing data collection and analysis of social signals across multiple social websites to help companies improve their product and service experience.

The Gnip platform and service bridges the gap between the data APIs between large companies and multiple social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Post Rank. ReadWriteWeb has covered Gnip extensively.

Since its launch, Gnip has changed its technology strategy and will be re-launching soon.

Everlater Natty Zola and Nate Abbott spent one year sleeping on couches as they traveled across five continents before they came up with the concept for Everlater. Everlater allows travelers to easily record and share their travel experiences through Twitter and Facebook.

The platform allows users to use data from across multiple photo sharing sites. People can also publish their travel "scrapbooks". An algorithm lays out the book automatically so you don't have to. For hopeless photo organizers like me, this is a godsend! Next Big Sound Alex White, co-founder Next Big Sound, provides cultural analytics specifically to music companies. Music professionals can track how fans interact with their music, or music from many musicians across sites such as MySpace and LastFM. It is currently developing a premium service. Graphic.ly Micah Baldwin is not only social hub-connector extraordinaire, but also works for the uniquely cool comic book community Graphic.ly.

Graphic.ly, which is currently in private beta, hopes to open opportunities for comic book creators, publishers and enthusiasts that are currently

suffering under a one distributor model - as well as reawaken America's and the world's love for online comics. Members can both purchase and discuss comic books on Graphic.ly. Ties to the Universities Startup's ties with Colorado universities are immature, but starting to materialize. The morning of our lunch someone from the Colorado startup community (who we promised not to name) had met with the University of Colorado. As the individual put it, "Universities are turning out graduates prepped for a traditional computer science career at the likes of Lockheed Martin. We don't need MBAs - we need coders." The local Universities are overlooking careers in startups that are based - literally - around the corner or down from "The Hill" as a viable career option. An exception, University of Colorado Law School is has been offering startups free legal advice in exchange for student experience.

Judging from the close-knit group of entrepreneurs we saw, Boulder has matured significantly since the dot-com boom and bust. The only thing lacking at lunch was more estrogen. Discuss

Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

49

Battery Breakthrough Could Revolutionize Mobile Computing Sarah Perez (ReadWriteWeb)

have Wi-Fi hotspots, 3G and 4G networks for Internet everywhere and a host of mobile R e s e a r c h e r s a t S t a n f o r d gadgets from netbooks to iPads University have just made a and mobile phones to notebook major breakthrough that may computers. But what we haven't impact the technology industry had yet is a way to keep our for years to come: they've built a gadgets powered up for more better battery. The project, an than a day or so without a attempt to use lithium-sulfur in charge. That may be soon about p l a c e o f t h e l i t h i u m - i o n to change. An Always-On technology that is used in Mobile Web batteries today, has been in With these sorts of d e v e l o p m e n t s i n c e 2 0 0 7 . improvements, lithium-sulfur Recently, the scientists' efforts batteries could lead the way in were rewarded when they the next phase of the mobile created a battery that lasts four revolution. They could allow us times as long as its lithium-ion to fully enjoy the web from counterparts while also having anywhere in the world, without t h e b e n e f i t o f b e i n g having to worry about dying "significantly safer" than today's batteries, access to power outlets batteries which occasionally or having to carry around explode after short-circuiting. battery replacements when Although still a ways off from planning long-lasting mobile commercial viability (and computing sessions. availability), the lithium-sulfur Far more than just a batteries promise advances like convenience, better battery 80% more capacity, 10 times the technology would impact how power density and, theoretically, our mobile devices are designed the ability to last four times as and how they behave. For long as modern batteries. example, Apple currently Sponsor imposes numerous restrictions The new battery technology on members of their mobile represents the final step in our device lineup for the sake of quest for always-on connectivity battery performance. On Apple to the mobile web. We already iPhones, iPod Touches and the Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:17:47 AM

forthcoming iPad, applications aren't permitted to run in the background and Adobe Flash technology has been banned altogether, supposedly for its CPU usage which rapidly drains battery juice. Other mobile smartphone makers, while not necessarily as restrictive as Apple, still have to weigh the benefits of providing these same types of features with the performance hit their gadgets will take if they do so. And as anyone who regularly fires up their smartphone web browser knows, too much Internet surfing during the day means a phone that dies out before nightfall.

Another example of the technology's potential impact: eReaders. Today, if you want to pack your Kindle or Nook device to take with you on vacation, you still have to go

through the thought process: how long will I be gone? Will my battery last? Should I pack the cord? Now imagine that you could just throw your e-Reader into your bag without a second thought, just as if you were packing the paperback novel or newspaper these sorts of gadgets aim to replace. Would that encourage more people to make the switch from the analog formats to digital? The Impacts of Better Batteries What if, in the future, concerns like these were no longer a worry? What if phones, netbooks, e-Readers and other mobile devices could be used for days on end without the need for a charge? That would radically impact the way we think about and use our mobile devices.

There are a million other use cases that could benefit from this technology change, too, including sensor networks, computing from remote areas, faster news dissemination from areas impacted by disasters (either natural or man-made) where power outages have occurred, gadgets for hikers, campers and other explorers who spend weeks away from

civilization and, therefore, away from electricity, mobile location -based services that run in the background on smartphones and other personal mobile gadgets and - OK, we'll admit it- the ability to Twitter all day long without a recharge.

For the nitty gritty technical details about this new battery technology, MIT's Technology Review explains everything from the cathodes to the conductivity as well as the challenges still ahead for this breakthrough technology. Most notably, the scientists still need to figure out how to maintain capacity. After five discharge/recharge cycles, the batteries lost one-third of their initial storage capacity and after 40 to 50 cycles, they ceased to function altogether. However, if the researchers can overcome that final hurdle and a few others, the new technology could one day become commercially viable. It's too soon to know if that will actually occur, but as gadget lovers ourselves, we're hopeful.

Discuss

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Sponsor Post: The Greatest Camera of Our Time?

It's in Your Phone

John Edwards' Former Mistress Rielle Hunter Reveals Relationship Details for First Time

RWW Sponsor (ReadWriteWeb)

(ETonline - Breaking News)

blossomed in the past few years with almost every cellphone worth its merit having a camera Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:00:00 AM built into it. We now have Editor's note: We offer our long cellphone camera capturing with -term sponsors the opportunity up to 12.0 megapixels. We have to write posts and tell their citizen journalists providing story. These posts are clearly breaking news of the Indian marked as written by sponsors, Ocean earthquake through but we also want them to be phone footage. useful and interesting to our Let's step back a little. There readers. We hope you like the a r e 1 1 0 o r m o r e m i l l i o n posts and we encourage you to cellphones with camera on support our sponsors by trying them. Add the dimension of out their products. them connecting to social We were walking the streets of networking sites, and that really San Francisco and happened to makes things interesting. witness a street band in the But there is a raging debate as process of setting up shop. On to whether the cell phone the cue, almost all the observers camera can really be called a around the band fished out their "camera". Maybe it depends on cellphones and started snapping individual choices. However, pictures and video. Which lead from personal experience we us to ask this question: Which is have observed that people are the greatest camera? passionate about photography Sponsor from whichever source it comes A renowned photographer from. p o i n t e d o u t t o u s d u r i n g The sheer volume of photos Macworld Expo that the greatest taken using cellphone cameras camera is not the one that gives makes mobile photography a you the best quality picture or serious affair. (For instance, our the best resolution. The greatest iPhone app Camera Plus has camera is the camera in your been downloaded 5 million hand. Going by that, I guess it t i m e s . ) C o n s e q u e n t l y , t h e makes the mobile camera the e c o s y s t e m a r o u n d m o b i l e greatest camera of our time. photography is also blossoming.

Mobile photography has really The range of photography

applications in the iPhone App Store is the testimony to how serious mobile photography is.

The apps have covered all aspects of photography from the actual capture of the picture to editing, managing and sharing them all within the phone itself.

No Limits for Mobile Surprisingly, the limitation of the phone hardware here is not stopping the application developers to dream any less than the digital camera manufacturers. If anything, they're dreaming bigger. You can use multi-shot to snap photos, adjust anything from brightness, sharpness of a photo, and add funny effects to them.

With most of the cameras having GPS, users can also geotag their photos with just a click. It does not stop here. You

can also instantly share your photos on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and other social media platforms all from the phone itself!

And things have also started moving on the video side. Did you know you can not only capture video using a mobile but also add effects like black and white, sepia from within the phone itself? And of course, you can share your videos on YouTube.

Now just step back and wonder whether you can do all the above from within a digital camera, and you realize that mobile photography might not be that primitive at all. To put things in another perspective, you can liken the use of a cellphone camera to the use of a Swiss army knife. This was the theme around which we built our photography application Camera Plus Pro. Both Mobile Geeks and Kodak have some tips on learning how to use all the tools in the knife.

With all the mobiles around, we can now reduce the disappointment of the sentence "I wish I had a camera right now." Discuss

Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:55:00 AM

For the first time in several years, the former mistress of John Edwards and mother to his child, Rielle Hunter, is offering up her side of the story, calling her love for the ex-senator "unconditional."

Edwards hid his affair with Hunter for years, evening denying that he was the father of her child. He since has come clean about their relationship and Hunter says she still has love for him. "I know he loves me. I have never had any doubt at all about that. We love each other very much. And that hasn't changed, and I believe that will be till death do us part," she shares with GQ magazine writer Lisa DePaulo. "The love doesn't go away. It's unconditional. It's unconditional on my part, but our connection is profound."

In the interview, Hunter refers to Edwards as a man with a big heart and huge humanitarian.

"He is very kindhearted and sweet. He's very honest and truthful. And all of that was hidden," she told the publication.

Tech News/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

Prepare for an iPad App Explosion: Developer Activity Up 185%

51

WHY continued from page 47

conception. Today, the 2008 Mumbai Attacks article sits at more nearly 43,000 words with Sarah Perez (ReadWriteWeb) development kit) to modify their over 150 different sources cited apps in order to release custom and 1,245 unique editors.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:24:28 AM iPad-only versions. Now it While Pantages argues that Recent data from mobile appears that those who chose to "Wikipedia should not be a analytics firm Flurry shows do so will be rewarded for their source, it should be a starting off iPhone OS developer activity efforts by having their apps point," we would have to argue has increased by 185% since made more visible via this new the same for news media in Apple announced their section of the iTunes Store. general. In this crowd-sourced upcoming slate computing Considering that the number of n e w s e n v i r o n m e n t w e ' v e device known as the iPad earlier iPhone apps now in existence is entered, blindly consuming this year. By measuring new somewhere near 140,000, being news and content, from any application starts within the able to achieve this increased source, is an ill-advised path to Flurry community, the firm was visibility will allow developers follow. able to determine significant "the opportunity to establish an With that said, if we are willing increases in developer activity, early presence on this new to take crowd-sourced content including the largest spike ever d e v i c e a n d d r i v e m o r e whether tweets, Facebook in their recorded history during applications would soon have d o w n l o a d s , " s a y s F l u r r y . u p d a t e s , b l o g s , v i d e o s o r the month of January after the their own dedicated section Last week, we took a look at whatever else - as valid sources announcement occurred. The within the iTunes App Store. some of the iPad applications for information about our world, growth continued in February The website text reads: we're looking forward to, then a collection of these same and now the company reports Browse a section of the store including things like comic that a large proportion of the that features apps designed books, magazines and games, new applications they are seeing specifically for iPad. You'll find but there's clearly a lot of others are custom version of existing hundreds that make the most of we haven't even anticipated yet. applications tailored specifically its large display, responsive We're only days away from performance, and Multi-Touch for use on the iPad. knowing what those will be: interface.

Sponsor Apple's iPad will be available Although current iPhone When Apple began taking prefor sale starting April 3rd, and Brian Moylan (Gawker) orders for the iPad on Friday, applications will work on the along with its launch, the new March 12th, the Apple.com new Apple device without iPad App Store will go live as Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:23:56 AM website was updated with new modifications, developers who well. Discuss This A-lister is into S/M, information about the device. want to take advantage of the another star must leave his larger screen could use the One of the most significant sunglasses on in bed, and an r e v e a l s w a s t h a t i P a d updated iPhone SDK (software actress likes to bed down with

media as carefully poured over and curated as found in a Wikipedia article should be even more trusted, not less, than those bits on their own.

Traditional media get bits of breaking news wrong all the time, but we accept that as part of the game. To vilify Wikipedia for the same errors sets unequal standards and besides, you'll likely never see the same level of transparency in traditional media about where it went wrong. With Wikipedia, it's all laid bare for the world to see. Discuss

Which Famous Actor Likes to Get Spanked—Hard?

[Blind Items]

her brother and his wife. Next to them, a cheating actor looks

normal. Today's safe word is "gossip." More Âť

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Gadgets/

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The Lab vs. The Real World: product testing is hard Scott Merrill (CrunchGear)

want to know that the problem has been identified and fixed.

When I provide technical Unless you’ve been living support to people, I don’t go under a rock for the last couple into the specifics of memory months, you know that Toyota registers, or heap and stack has had problems with sudden overflows, or any of the other acceleration of some of its things that happen to cause vehicles. Apparently, the root problems. I tell people that cause of the problem is still something went wrong in very unknown, which is a little simple terms. They trust me to troubling to the average know what I’m doing, else they consumer. Toyota claims to be wouldn’t have asked me to help doing everything they can to them to begin with. They don’t investigate, but that doesn’t want to get into the nitty gritty, seem to be enough. Now else they’d pursue a job in everyone and their brother are technology on their own. I think suddenly product design Mr. Cummins needs to engineers and have the gall to remember that not every Toyota tell Toyota what to do and how owner, and certainly not every to do it. member of the U.S. Congress, is Witness this opinion piece in an engineer, or has an the LA Times by David M. engineer’s mentality.

Cummings entitled “ Haven’t Mr. Cummins final remarks are found that software glitch, based on laboratory testing.” I the execution of that code are bugs! very sound, though: “this should What really sticks in my craw serve as a wake-up call to all Toyota? Keep trying“. Mr. admit I haven’t been following even more complex.

Cummings worked on the Mars the Toyota situation very As Mr. Cummins observes at about Mr. Cummins complaint, industries that increasingly rely Pathfinder project for NASA, so closely, but I’d be floored if the beginning of his rant, though, is that he doesn’t appear on software for safety.” I agree he has some credibility to his anyone at Toyota has gone on “ T o y o t a ’ s c h i e f e n g i n e e r to appreciate the audience that whole-heartedly. The world is name when it comes to software record to say that the millions of testified to Congress that the Toyota is addressing. Sure, only going to continue to get design and product testing. But lines of embedded software used company has done extensive some of the people following more complex. We need to build his opinion piece seems to in Toyota vehicles is “bug free”. testing on its cars’ electronics this situation are engineers, and safety and reliability testing into completely miss the point of the I ’ d b e s u r p r i s e d i f a n y and believes they are not the they may well be interested in every facet of product design, PR nightmare that Toyota is professional software developer c a u s e o f t h e s u d d e n t h e d e t a i l s o f t h e t e s t i n g and not trust the tool chains we anywhere would have the gall to acceleration.” To claim that the methodologies, or specifics of use to build software. dealing with.

Mr. Cummings says “I’m still claim any code bug free. Code is software is not the cause of the lab results; but most people are s k e p t i c a l w h e n I h e a r a n complex. The systems on which sudden acceleration is not the average consumers with no engineer declare a complex the code runs are complex. The same thing as claiming that the interest whatsoever in the software system to be bug-free number of variables affecting software is completely free of science of this issue. They just Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:00:17 AM

Gadgets/

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53

NVIDIA's 3DTV Play finally solves the HDMI 1.4 gap for 3D Vision Paul Miller (Engadget)

DisplayPort or dual DVI plugs, while the official spec for 3D TVs is an HDMI 1.4 plug that In case you hadn't noticed, accepts data from both frames at there was some trouble brewing once. We were in doubt there in the NVIDIA camp. After ages for a moment, but it turns out of reigning atop the land of NVIDIA's cards upgrade to 1.4 stereoscopic 3D playback on the just fine, and all 3D Vision PC, NVIDIA is finally being customers will be getting this as confronted with a real, bona fide a free upgrade later this spring. standard for 3D, with zero NVIDIA will also be offering GPUs capable of meeting it. The this 3DTV Play software in a current NVIDIA 3D Vision- standalone version for $40 to compatible cards pump out the folks who don't want to bother n e c e s s a r y p i x e l s o v e r with NVIDIA's 3D Vision stuff Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:40:00 AM

at all (with HDMI 1.4 you can just use the stereoscopic glasses that come with your fancy new 3D TV, no need for NVIDIA's

setup). NVIDIA is naturally hitting all the high points of the 1.4 spec, with 1080p24, 720p60 (the official gaming spec), and

720p50. The cards will also support 3D Blu-ray. So, just about time to splurge big on that home theater PC? We don't know... is it just us, or does that guy and his couch look a little lonely?

NVIDIA's 3DTV Play finally solves the HDMI 1.4 gap for 3D Vision originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Crapgadget: 'Just because you can doesn't mean you should' edition Vladislav Savov (Engadget)

hub and a heart-shaped Bluetooth dongle -- but also some new recruits from way out To be quite frank, CES this of left field. We've got those year was so tame that we kinda crazy awesome finger lights thought our beloved Crapgadget above and a starfish-shaped series would have to go on q u a d - b a n d c e l l p h o n e t h a t hiatus. We needn't have worried. apparently manages to fit in a T h i s l a t e s t b a t c h o f camera and space for dual SIMs, technological breakthroughs but the true winner has to be the includes the regular team camera-shaped spy camera. this pinhole camera is embedded starters we know and love -- a Working off the classic spy trick inside what looks like a poor mangled animal-emulating USB of double- and triple-bluffing, Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:23:00 AM

(really poor) man's point and shoot compact camera, which we suppose is the last place anyone would look for a spy cam. Hey, maybe there's something to this idea after all.

Anyhow, get clicking then come back here and vote, won't ya?

Read- Party rats finger lights Read- Heart-shaped USB Bluetooth dongle Read- Doggie 4-port USB hub Read- Starfish GSM cellphone

Read- Camera-shaped spy camera View Poll Crapgadget: 'Just because you can doesn't mean you should' edition originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink| | Email this| Comments

54

Gadgets/ Tech Blog/ TV/

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Turn your tablet into a Cintiq on the I got my firewire cable cheap with EZ Cintiq (Scripting News)

Submitted at 3/14/2010 11:25:58 AM

Tablet (BestTabletReview.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:53:43 AM

An unfinished EZ Cintiq showing LCD and Intuos4 tablet Say you, like 98% of the other graphic artists out there, heavily desire a Cintiq tablet but haven’t exactly pulled in the cabbage lately to justify the $1k-$2k purchase. If you’re the enterprising and resourceful type you can now build your own with the help of EZ Cintiq from TabletMod.com.

What this site sells is laser-cut acrylic enclosures for your graphics tablet and LCD monitor. It will take quite a bit of elbow grease (make sure you watch the“how to” videos before diving in), but the good news is that it keeps your Wacom tablet intact and bars any warranty voiding measures.

The idea is that by using your existing graphics tablet and a

LCD screen you can have a capable version of a Cintiq for a few hundred dollars. After totaling it up, you’d probably be paying around $765 for a 15.4inch EZ Cintiq based off the Intuos4. That’s$450 for the Intuos4 Large, $221.55 for the enclosure kit and $90 for the 15.4-inch LCD screen. Compare that to a 12-inch Cintiq for $960 and you’d be saving about $200

plus have a larger screen.

For now the enclosures are sold for the Wacom Intuos4 Large ($221.55 plus shipping) and Intuos3 A4 ($238.56 plus shipping).

Source: Hack a Day via Slashgear Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

So now I'm following Lee Joramo's instructions for installing Snow Leopard on the Mac Mini, in target mode. So far I've got the Mini showing up as an external hard drive on the MacBook.

Update: It worked. I got a clean installation of Snow Leopard on the Mac Mini, using the method outlined by Lee. Unfortunately it didn't get the scanner working.

I give up on that. I'll try getting another scanner. Canon LiDE 700F is a bad deal. I hear the hardware works, but the drivers are a nightmare. I concur with the drivers part, never got to use the hardware.

Update #2: Netbook haters are going to scream when they hear

this. The Canon scanner works great on Windows XP on my little Asus netbook. The cool thing is that Windows has this built-in function that gets the drivers for you. I have no idea where they go or how it works, but -- it worked. I was able to scan all my tax forms, about 100 pages, in about an hour. I did it using the built-in Windows scanning software. No I did not do this just to irritate Mac zealots, but I'm kind of pleased that it probably will.

The Seinfelds vs. The Cookbook Author, Round Two Bob Sassone (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:01:00 AM

Well, you have to give her points for persistence.

Missy Chase Lapine, author of the cookbook 'The Sneaky Chef,' is suing Jerry Seinfeld for remarks he made about her on

'The Late Show with David Letterman' a couple of years ago. I watched that episode, as Seinfeld made a few jokes about her, including calling her a 'wacko' and hinting that she might be a stalker and crazy because she goes by three names. As I mentioned a while

back, it was obvious that was

going to cause some trouble.

Lapine already sued the Seinfelds and their publishing company for supposedly stealing ideas from her book for Jessica Seinfeld's book 'Deceptively Delicious' (both books had similar angles to them). That suit was dismissed.

I'm sure Seinfeld would like any promotion for'The Marriage Ref,' but I'm equally sure he just wants this to go away as quickly as possible.

Filed under: Celebrities, Reality -Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

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UHF station available on eBay Dan Brooks (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:35:01 AM

Did you ever wish that your uncle could win the deed to a UHF television station, hand ownership over to you, and then you could fill it with (awesome) programming like “Stanley Spadowski’s Clubhouse,” “Wheel of Fish,” and “Bowling for Burgers”? Well, maybe you don’t have an uncle who can just give you one, but if you’ve got $550,000 lying around, you can buy your own.

That’s right — an entire UHF station is up on ebay. Here’re some of the details.

throughout the city.

The station broadcasts to Muskegon County, Oceana County, Ottawa County and parts of Kent County.

It has been on the air since 1990.”

This is quite possible the best thing for sale on eBay since Martin Short’s suit from the movie“Clifford” popped up last year. Either way, if you have the It has the license and the cash for this and decide to take property. It is operating on the plunge, please be sure to c h a n n e l 3 8 i n M u s k e g o n , sign up “Spatula City” as a Michigan. It also is on the area sponsor. They’re awesome.

Comcast Cable system and (Special thanks to Mike Civins s e v e r a l s m a l l e r c a b l e s for the UHF link!)

55

Corey Feldman Not Attending Corey Haim's Funeral (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:19:00 AM

ET has the latest...

The late Corey Haim's funeral is set to take place in Toronto on Tuesday and now his longtime friend Corey Feldman tells ET he will not be attending the service.

"In the days following my best “This is a full Television Station friend Corey Haim's death, I for sale.This broadcast from a have spent much time with his 200 ft tower not shown. The 200 mother Judy, who has always ft tower does not go with the been like a mother to me," sale but the antenna and all Feldman says. "I would love equipment does. nothing more than to be by her side at Corey's funeral, however due to their strong religious beliefs, and need for privacy, the family has decided to make Corey's funeral on Tuesday a small private affair.

Thomas Ricker (Engadget) original iPhone 74 days to hit 1 "Understanding the recent million.

Quite a n media attention and to be Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:17:00 AM a c c o m p l i s h m e n t i f t h e s e respectful of the family's wishes Let's get this out of the way numbers pan out (and that's a I have decided not to attend. right up front: the estimated big if!) considering that only 3 Instead I will remain in Los number of iPads sold in the first to 4 million tablets are sold Angeles quietly mourning and 72 hours is nowhere near globally each year. planning his memorial. As a official. And if the numbers iPad pre-orders estimated at sign of respect I am asking the hadn't been scraped together by over 150,000 -- possibly ahead media to honor Corey Haim by a well known amateur Apple o f i P h o n e r a t e o r i g i n a l l y making the same choice. analyst who regularly trumps appeared on Engadget on Mon, the pros then we'd be skipping 15 Mar 2010 10:17:00 EST. with a 120,000 total for first day tentative given the early stage the fruits of his black magic Please see our terms for use of iPad sales that slowed to and few data we have so far, algorithms altogether. feeds. Permalink Brainstorm 152,000 after 72 hours (not would be that they hit the 1 Nevertheless, Daniel Tello (aka, Tech| Deagol| Email this| including iPads reserved for million unit milestone by the Deagol), has applied his proven Comments pick-up). Tello told Fortune, second week after it ships." For approach of extrapolating Apple "My best guess, although very those keeping track, it took the web order numbers to come up

iPad pre-orders estimated at over 150,000 -possibly ahead of iPhone rate

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Sad clown: Some dude in Venezuela Miley Cyrus and Boyfriend Dish About Their 'Last estimates that iPad orders dropped Song' Kissing Scene sharply this weekend John Biggs (CrunchGear)

carpetbaggers hoping for a quick eBay fix as well as to Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:30:06 AM frothy fanbois, but I assure you, After pre-selling 120,000 iPads Mr. Tello, that Apple is crying last week, an Venezuelan all the way to the bank with analyst named Daniel Tello their pre-order cash. estimated that Apple iPad preWhile I agree that this thing sales fell to 1,000 per hour on could end up being another Sunday. Tello believes that the MacBook Air, for some reason I first boost was all about “pure have a good feeling about this overexcited fanboism” and the device. People have been demand will fall over the next looking for it, whether they week. knew it or not. In fact, they’ve To put this into perspective, d e v i c e s o l d o n l y i n t h e been looking for it since about however, I doubt any one Nokia American market. Obviously a 2001 when the first tablets hit phone sells 1,000 units an hour, lot of these sales can most the street and disappointed us. let alone an untested, unseen d e f i n i t e l y a t t r i b u t e d t o via Fortune

(ETonline - Breaking News)

headphones on…She should have been directing the film.

She knew more about it than Miley Cyrus shares the big- anyone.” He also admitted, screen with her boyfriend Liam "Intimacy's always tough. I feel Hemsworth in Disney's 'The like it's the hardest thing for me Last Song.' The young lovebirds as an actor." chirped about kissing in front of Miley blushed: "I don't know Miley's mom, Tish, who was the who had a bigger crush on him film's executive producer. at the beginning, my mom or Liam told ET's Kevin Frazier, me. I was like, 'No, maybe he's "Her mom was watching. Her just too pretty. I don't want to be grandma was also watching, with someone who's better which was really funny. She looking than me. That's like was on set everyday and she'd awkward.'" be right at the monitor with the Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:09:00 AM

Alienware sneaks Core i7-980X Extreme Edition into Area-51 ALX desktop Darren Murph (Engadget)

Hardware has received a shiny new Alienware Area-51 ALX, complete with twin ATI Radeon We heard at Intel's GDC press H D 5 9 7 0 G P U s , a s e l f event that Alienware would be contained LED system that stays o n e o f t h e f i r s t P C lit even when the rig is manufacturers to ship systems unplugged (could be a great or w i t h t h e n e w e s t s i x - c o r e awful thing, actually) and Intel's consumer processor, but neither Core i7-980X Extreme Edition c o m p a n y ' s r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s to boot. We're told that a full source link for a few more looks would confess to "when." Now, review is on the way, but in the at this here monster -- you know we've our answer... sort of. Hot meanwhile, you can hit the you'll be ordering one in a few Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:02:00 AM

days, anyway.

Alienware sneaks Core i7-980X Extreme Edition into Area-51 ALX desktop originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Hot Hardware| Email this| Comments

MSI announces GE700 gaming laptop for those who like to be entertained Tim Stevens (Engadget) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:56:00 AM

MSI page 57

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You can't go more than a few days without MSI dropping another new laptop, and today's is the GE700. It's not only 100 more than the GE600 from a few weeks ago, but a little bit bigger, sporting a 17.3-inch LCD with an unspecified resolution, up to a nine cell battery, and room for dual hard disks of up to 500GB apiece.

Graphics are again handled by an ATI Radeon HD5730, processing again done by an Intel Core i5 chip, and there's a 720p webcam for live-streaming your every blemish. No word on

price for this 3.2kg (7lb) machine, but MSI doesn't tend to waste much time in getting these things to retail.

MSI announces GE700 gaming laptop for those who like to be entertained originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink DigiTimes| MSI| Email this| Comments

Wonderland Will Always Be Better Than Iraq [Monday Box Office]

'The Pacific' 'Guadalcanal/Leckie' Recap (mini-series premiere) Jason Hughes (TV Squad)

against the Nazi forces of Germany is the military arrival on the beaches of Normandy; a (E01) Just as Steven Spielberg veritable trip into hell. and Tom Hanks collaborated In contrast, the 1st Marine with HBO in 2001 to bring us Regiment's arrival on the the European World War II beaches of Guadalcanal is a epic'Band of Brothers,' they've temporary reprieve from the hell joined forces again to take us to of the naval warfare going on the other side of the war just offshore. Everything about with'The Pacific.' Another ten- this first episode established the part series, like 'Brothers,' atmosphere, tension, anxiety, 'Pacific' is based on true military beauty and horrors of fighting in figures and events depicted with a tropical paradise. some dramatic license, but with Continue reading'The Pacific' attempts to be as accurate as 'Guadalcanal/Leckie' Recap possible. (mini-series premiere) One of the first things the Filed under: Other Drama production team did was S h o w s , O p E d , E p i s o d e establish just how different the R e v i e w s , R e a l i t y - F r e e Pacific front was from the Permalink| Email this| | European one. The image that C o m m e n t s dominates most dramatic presentations about the fight Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:00 AM

Finally: Gross Details About the John Edwards Sex Tape [Lawsuits] Pareene (Gawker) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:59:30 AM

" The Daily Beast can now describe" the John Edwards sex tape "in detail, based on accounts from multiple people who have watched it...." Good morning! More »

The Next Apple TV? Drawing Inspiration From the iPad Chris Ryan (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:23:26 AM

Steve Jobs calls the iPad Apple’s “most advanced technology in a magical and NEXT page 57

Richard Lawson (Gawker) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:20:32 AM

This weekend Alice beat Matt who beat Jay, but barely. Jay beat James but only because James is old. Marty and Leo keep beating each other. Yes, in that way. More »

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revolutionary device” and I’m certainly not one to disagree.

The iPad boasts significant advances over the iPhone in terms of hardware and software which makes me wonder, how much of that advanced technology could make it’s way into a future Apple TV? Hardware While the current Apple TV boasts an Intel Pentium M 1.0GHz processor, Apple’s advances in its own chip design could pave the way for a custom processor fine tuned for the device. Apple’s reason for NEXT page 59

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Was the iPad Launch a Success?

Charles Jade (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/14/2010 1:39:57 PM

Even though a single iPad hasn’t actually been shipped, that won’t stop the questions over the success of initial orders from being asked. Considering how Apple has positioned the iPad in the product lineup, on par with the Mac, iPod, and iPhone, Steve Jobs better have a press-release answer ready.

On Friday, Philip ElmerDeWitt at Apple 2.0 started following people following the numbers, though whether those numbers are real or imaginary is yet to be determined. The data thus far derived has come from InvestorVillage, an Internet forum for “self-directed investors.”

By using orders numbers from an admittedly small number of purchasers, and accounting for purchases of other products at the Apple Store, the initial estimate was 51,000 in the first two hours, 74,000 after four and a half hours, and 91,000 in six hours. According to Apple 2.0, by the end of Friday the estimated number of iPad preorders was approximately 120,000. That’s the good news, assuming it’s true.

Apple 2.0 also passed along metrics for 110 iPads that are what you’d expect, Wi-Fi over 3G by two to one, the cheapest iPad at $499 being very popular.

Somewhat surprisingly, the

most expensive model, 64GB/3G at $829, was also popular but, hey, these are selfdirected investors spending their hard-earned dividends that we’re talking about.

Of course, there’s another group of investors waiting for news on iPad orders. Investors in AAPL saw their fortunes rise on Friday with the stock price reaching a new high at $227, the company briefly overtaking Wal -Mart in valuation at $206 billion. Whether AAPL goes higher on Monday will likely

come down to how many iPad orders there were over the weekend, but how many equals success?

Looking back at iPhone launches, a million iPads ordered would definitely be a success, probably more than all the Slate PCs with Windows sold since 2002. Don’t expect that to happen. Both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS were immediately available in multiple countries. While the iPad will be available in other countries in late April, the first

weekend of the month will be U.S. only, so perhaps the original iPhone would be a better comparison. Certainly, if the iPad does outsell the original iPhone, that will be the spin, but what if it doesn’t?

Everyone who wanted to order an iPad could have ordered one Friday. There were no lines at the online Apple Store. Even assuming the number crunchers at InvestorVillage got it right on Friday, it seems unlikely to me anything like 120,000 orders will be placed on successive

days. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the number ordered is halved on successive days, 210,000 total over three days.

210,000 iPads doesn’t look very good compared to the iPhone launch, does it? The only thing worse would be if Apple doesn’t release any numbers.

In an interview with the New York Times last year, Jobs remarked on Amazon’s silence over Kindle sales, saying, “usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.” That’s exactly why we’ve never heard about Apple TV sales, and it’s what will be the real metric for whether iPad orders were a success over the weekend. If there is silence from Cupertino, expect investors to react with wailing and selling of AAPL. More importantly for consumers, there could be an immediate drop in the price for the iPad, similar to what happened with the original iPhone shortly after launch.

I think that’s the kind of failure we can all appreciate.

Related Research from GigaOM Pro: • Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits the Right Notes • How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic • 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad • With the iPad, Apple Take Google to the Mat

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custom chips in the mobile arena is to provide them with what they need while giving them more control over other aspects, such as battery life.

While this isn’t a concern with the Apple TV, certainly a more powerful chip while still being power efficient is desirable. A custom chip would give Apple more flexibility over performance as well. Consider the video formats the iPad can play. Many were shocked to see support for full 720p at 30 frames per second and support for .avi files up to 35Mbps. In terms of processing power, that’s more advanced than the Apple TV, and its a mobile device!

The iPad also brings support for an external keyboard through Bluetooth. That’s right. You can use your plain off the shelf Apple Wireless Keyboard with your iPad. Why not bring this same bluetooth functionality to the Apple TV? This could allow

support for a wireless keyboard or any host of other Bluetoothenabled devices. (What other devices might one use? Read on, my friend.) Software While the current Apple TV software runs on a modified version of the Mac operating system, there’s really no benefit provided from this approach versus an iPhone-like OS. Consider the similarities already between the two: only one “application” can run at a time and the official method of pushing content to both devices is either through the Internet or iTunes.

Another arena that Apple could pursue is to finally offer an App Store for the device. Now that the waters have been tested with the iPhone and iPod touch, an Apple TV App Store makes sense. Considering that the device has been hacked numerous times and there are many unsupported applications that can be run on the device, an

official App Store would give the device more expandability and return a portion of the profit back to Apple. Since the App Store model allows the developer to reap profits from the app too, perhaps this will finally pave the way to bring Hulu into the living room via the Apple TV. If Hulu and Netflix both offered apps for the Apple TV, imagine how many of these devices Apple could move off the shelves? Game developers could build their own applications and provide interaction using an iPhone or iPad as a controller (gaining accelerometer functionality) or through their own Bluetoothenabled peripherals.

The Apple TV is a product that has seen few updates and is referred to by Apple as a “hobby.” But what are hobbies really? It’s something done for pleasure and for leisure.

Something that you work on slowly over time, but stay the

course. Apple has reaffirmed their commitment to investing in the device but much like the iPhone and the iPad, it isn’t going to be a runaway success if its not the right product at the right time. The iPad will be wildly popular because of the success of the iPhone, which owes its own success to the accomplishments of the iPod. Apple has carefully built an entire ecosystem around iTunes and its devices. With the Apple TV, the best is yet to come.

Related Research from GigaOM Pro: • Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits the Right Notes • How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic • 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad • With the iPad, Apple Take Google to the Mat

'South Park' Will Skewer Tiger Woods Brad Trechak (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:30:00 AM

Wednesday will be bringing us the season premiere of'South Park,' and the topic of the episode has already been revealed. Trey Parker and Matt Stone will be raking Tiger Woods over the coals along with the concept of sex addiction in 'SOUTH page 60

'The Simpsons' - 'Postcards from the Wedge' Recap Jason Hughes (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:15:00 AM

(S21E14) I bet the newspaper industry was thrilled with this episode. While we're living in an era where the daily print newspaper is on the decline, we learned that in the future, people will get six daily editions of the newspaper -- and yet the

fashions of the 1950s and early 1960s will still be all the rage, including dutiful wives and chain-smoking.

The opening and closing segments of this episode, which only tangentially had anything to do with the real plot of the episode, reminded me a lot of the old Warner Bros. shorts into a speculative future based where they would take a look on 1940s ideals and values. This

interlude was every bit as fun as those, and I found myself disappointed when it ended as a video shown in Mrs. Krabappel's class that even she didn't understand.

Once we got into the meat of the episode, it actually touched on an issue that's pretty serious for most parents: what happens when the two of you disagree on

how to deal with a child disciplinary issue.

Continue reading'The Simpsons' - 'Postcards from the Wedge' Recap Filed under: OpEd, The Simpsons, Animation, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

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Ousted 'Idol' Singer Angles For Role on 'Glee' Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:00:00 AM

There's something annoying about a shameless selfpromoter. Granted, anybody who puts themselves in the circus that is 'American Idol' is a shameless self-promoter. Heck, if you're in show business at all, you probably qualify. But there are ways to push yourself forward without being smug or smarmy.

In USA Today, ousted 'American Idol' singer Todrick Hall wants to be on 'Glee.' He has made no secret of his desire, especially now that he's definitely not going to be the next 'American Idol.' With little humility, and less tact, Todrick turned his exit interviews from 'Idol' into a campaign to get on'Glee.' He probably figures

that they're both on Fox. They both feature singers and dancers.

Surely, the 'Glee' folks would snatch up a good-looking performer like him.

Continue reading Ousted 'Idol' Singer Angles For Role on 'Glee' Filed under: OpEd, American Idol, Judges, Contestants, Casting, Glee Permalink| Email this| | Comments

'SOUTH continued from page 59

America.

The season premieres of 'South Park' tend to be a little more thoughtful than the rest of the season, usually because Trey and Matt have had some break time to think about things. The last season premiere brought us the Jonas Brothers and "Mister Mouse," which was a highlight of the season along with'Margaritaville.'

On a related note, the show is only five episodes away from its 200th, which will be broadcast next month. Their 100th episode dealt with the mood of the

country after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq and ended with a sing-off between a rock singer (Stan's father) and a country singer. Hopefully, the 200th will be equally as entertaining and insightful. Set your schedule accordingly.

Filed under: Programming, OpEd, South Park, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

'Glee' Sings High Praises of Guest Stars (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/15/2010 4:28:00 AM

"Glee" sang and danced its way to popularity among thesp enthusiasts, but not without the help of some big name guest stars. Olivia Newton-John, Idina Menzel, and Kristin Chenoweth have already made cameos with Neil Patrick Harris and Molly Shannon on deck. The cast itself is going to guest star on a big stage--at the White House.

"That's a monumental type of thing. It will definitely be a milestone in my life," gloated Amber Riley at PaleyFest about her upcoming trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Her costar Chris Colfer joked, "I really hope we get a tour of the Oval Office. Really, that's what I'm aiming for. I might have to sneak in."

As a sentiment to President Barack Obama's upbringing, Matthew Morrison plans to

bring Hawaiian "flair" and go equipped with a ukulele in tow.

He also spilled some of the storyline of the "Glee" episode in which Neil Patrick Harris drops in on the fun. "He plays an old high school rival of mine and now he's on the school board, so he's trying to shut down the glee club and we do a couple of awesome duets. I can't tell you what they are."

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NCAA Tournament Selection Show Diary (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 3/14/2010 2:01:59 PM

Associated Press Kansas State players celebrate while watching the NCAA tournament selection show. The Wildcats, the second seed in the West region, face North Texas on Thursday in Oklahoma City.

The Journal provides minute-by -minute analysis of today’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament selection show.

Journal staffer Darren Everson and guest blogger Jonah Keri offer commentary on the selections and the CBS telecast.

5:01 pm | by Jonah Keri As we gear up for the NCAA Tournament Selection Show, here's what we're watching: Bubble Teams: The big game of the day was Kentucky vs.

Mississippi State for the SEC tournament championship. The Bulldogs had the Wildcats on the ropes, up three with five seconds left. But a made freethrow, a John Wall airball and a DeMarcus Cousins putback at the buzzer sent the game to overtime, and may have knocked Mississippi State out of the Big Dance. If the Bulldogs fall short, who gets in?

The other bubble teams we're watching include: Virginia Tech, Utah State, UTEP, Florida, California, Ill inois and Minnesota. The Golden Gophers couldn't punch their ticket in the Big Ten tournament title

game, but they too fell just short against an elite opponent (Ohio State).

Top Seeds: Kansas, Kentucky and Syracuse are locks for number-one seeds. I've been more impressed with West Virginia than Duke of late, especially after the Mountaineers' inspired play against some rugged opponents in the Big East tourney. But Duke will likely get the nod for the fourth number-one seed; West Virginia might join Duke in the West bracket as the number-two seed, setting up a potential matchup in the Elite Eight.

Mid-Majors To Watch: New Mexico hasn't had much television exposure this year, but this is a talented squad that

should nab a number-four seed, making them a legitimate threat for a deep run. Butler has a strong history of recent tournament success, and could go far if they land a five seed in the right bracket. Siena's tournament-tested and looks primed to get an 11 or 12 seed, traditionally bracket-busting spots. If you like a little academics sprinkled over your college hoops, Cornell's fielding its best team in ages, and is another darkhorse Sweet 16 possibility, depending on the draw.

5:46 pm | by Darren Everson Twenty minutes until the Selection Show. For now, the question of the hour: Should how you lose matter? If it comes down to Mississippi State and

Minnesota for an at-large bid, it's hard to believe the Golden Gophers are the better team, given the way Ohio State stomped them. But a loss is a loss is a loss.

5:50 pm | by Jonah Keri And here's my opening thought as we count down to 6 p.m.: Are you really going to bet against Ohio State to go to the Final Four? Evan Turner has proved again and again that he's the most valuable player in the nation, often flirting with tripledoubles and delivering a litany of big shots late in games.

Meanwhile, the Buckeyes trot out three other double-figure scorers in David Lighty, Jon Diebler and William Buford, who collectively make up a deep stable of transition scorers, as

well as the requisite inside toughness in Dallas Lauderdale.

I close my eyes with this Ohio State team and see the Dwyane Wade Marquette team that made its own Final Four run.

5:52 pm | by Darren Everson I hear you on Turner. Devin Ebanks of West Virginia gave him fits a couple of months back, but Turner probably won't see anyone that caliber until the Final Four.

5:55 pm | by Jonah Keri Do they always play last year's "One Shining Moment" before the Selection Show? And am I the only one cackling at UCLA nostalgia?

6:00 pm | by Jonah Keri ...North Carolina too, for that NCAA page 62

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matter. Also: No UConn, no Indiana, no Arizona. It'll be fun to see a bunch of new names this year.

6:00 pm | by Darren Everson Hey; What's your feeling about Cal? (California, not John Calipari.) Seth Davis of CBS said earlier he has the Golden Bears missing out. Now, I know the Pac-10 is way down, but ... really?

6:02 pm | by Darren Everson California, for those not aware, won the Pac-10 regular-season title and reached the tournament final.

6:02 pm | by Jonah Keri I think Cal's in. The Pac-10 still has name value, and you can't have one only representative from that conference. I like their perimeter play too, sneaky team if they make it.

6:02 pm | by Darren Everson Here come the 1 seeds--Kansas is No. 1 overall. Which was obvious.

6:03 pm | by Jonah Keri I'm rooting for my darkhorse pick for that fourth number-one spot. That darkhorse? You guessed it. Frank Stallone.

6:05 pm | by Jonah Keri I'll buy you a tasty beverage if Duke rides its number-one seed to the Final Four, Darren. Not happening. There are at least three or four teams I like more -if not for the seed, than at least in a head-to-head matchup.

6:06 pm | by Darren Everson Just so everyone knows, the

ones are Kansas (Midwest), Kentucky (East), Duke (South) and Syracuse (West).

Totally with you on that critique of the Blue Devils.

Look what happened when they saw Wisconsin and Georgetown in regular-season play.

6:06 pm | by Jonah Keri The pundits also disagree about Duke being the third numberone seed by the way. Syracuse has a better resume and more talent. They're overrating the results from the conference tournaments.

Of course this beats when that Gerry McNamara-led Syracuse team played its guts out to win the Big East tourney, got overseeded, and got bounced in the first round after being totally gassed.

6:07 pm | by Darren Everson Even though Duke is the third No. 1, you can pretty much book it that West Virginia or Ohio State will be on the opposite half of their bracket. I'd take either in that matchup.

Without hesitation.

6:09 pm | by Jonah Keri Same here.

By the way, early lead for best Twitter comment so far:@johnmtaylor: "Should we put the * next to Kentucky in the bracket now, or is it more polite to wait a few years?"

Oh Coach Cal, is there any program you can run without a stink surrounding you?

6:10 pm | by Darren Everson

A commenter just weighed in on our how-you-lose question in the affirmative, saying it should matter. I agree; we'll see if the committee does.

6:10 pm | by Jonah Keri You can see the look of terror in Kansas players' faces when they saw they'd be facing mighty Lehigh.

6:11 pm | by Darren Everson Some surprise in the office here about UNLV as an eight seed (in Kansas's bracket). What does that make San Diego State, the Mountain West tourney champ?

And New Mexico?

6:12 pm | by Jonah Keri Minor upset here. Joe Lunardi had Northern Iowa as a #7 seed in Bracketology. Instead they get a #9, tough first-round match-up vs. UNLV, and an untenable second-round potential tilt against Kansas.

Tough break for Missouri Valley's finest.

6:12 pm | by Jonah Keri Maryland vs. Houston...Greivis Vasquez vs. Division I leading scorer Aubrey Coleman. Major TiVo alert.

6:13 pm | by Darren Everson Whoa--so Ohio State is on the bottom end of Kansas's region!

That's rough. That's basically saying OSU is the worst 2 seed, despite the massive run they're on.

6:14 pm | by Jonah Keri No respect at all for the Big 10 with that OSU snub. Good reason on that front, but Ohio

State is a breed apart.

6:14 pm | by Darren Everson A Georgetown fan in the office is very pleased with the firstround matchup with Ohio.

Which is reasonable, given the MAC's difficulties in recent tournaments.

6:16 pm | by Jonah Keri Agreed, Georgetown looks good for that 3-14 match-up in the Midwest. Meanwhile Lunardi had Tennessee as a 4, they get a 6 instead, and a battle with a tricky San Diego State squad.

6:17 pm | by Jonah Keri Overall, stacked Midwest region. Ohio State and Georgetown are legitimate Final Four contenders, Tennessee is very good, even the double-digit seeds have upside here. Kansas is Kansas, but I'm not sure how the committee thinks they did the top overall seed any favors here.

6:19 pm | by Darren Everson What do you make of Kansas's potential Sweet 16 opposition -Michigan State or Maryland?

Sparty beat KU twice last season, including in the tournament. This is a different year, of course, and State has been mysteriously underwhelming, but they have all kinds of depth, athleticism and rebounding.

6:19 pm | by Jonah Keri Yeah something about Sparty that doesn't impress me this year, though points well taken.

Maryland-Houston could be a great game, and yet advanced stats (including by my favorite guru Ken Pomeroy) suggest Maryland is dangerous as a #4 too.

6:20 pm | by Darren Everson Syracuse-Vermont! A rematch of '05, when the Catamounts took 'em down in the first round.

6:20 pm | by Jonah Keri UTEP makes the dance in the West as a 12 seed. BAD news f o r t h e Minnesota/Illinois/Florida/Missi ssippi State cadre.

6:21 pm | by Darren Everson And just as you bring them up - the Gators get in! And get in easily, as a 10. Stunning.

6:21 pm | by Jonah Keri I've watched K-State a few times this year, maybe the most dynamic backcourt in the nation. But just looks weird ever seeing them as a #2 seed, doesn't it?

Pitt gets a #3. Who would have predicted THAT at the start of this year?

6:24 pm | by Jonah Keri Minnesota too! Ruh-roh Illinois.

That Butler-UTEP 5-12 game is going to be verrrrry interesting.

Butler is always great from the perimeter and takes care of the ball well. But UTEP is really tough up front. Contrasting styles.

I do like Xavier to hold serve as NCAA page 65

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No. 1 Kansas Jayhawks earn overall top seed for NCAA tournament Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:51:27 AM

• 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 ("No.%201%20Kansas%20earn s%20overall%20top%20seed%2 0for%20NCAAs")); } I.setLinkBack("http://sports.esp n.go.com/ncb/tournament/2010/ news/story?id=4995190"); 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/ncb/to urnament/2010/news/story?id=4 995190' }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } Associated Press An injury hurts as much as a loss in the days before the brackets are drawn up for March Madness. Syracuse endured both and will have to rack up some major frequent flier miles to make a run to the Final Four.

Kansas, Kentucky and Duke won their conference tournaments and the top seeding that goes with it when the selection committee rolled out its 65-team bracket Sunday.

More From ESPN.com Plenty of people have questions for the NCAA tournament selection committee. Selection chairman Dan Guerrero attempted to answer some of those queries Sunday night, writes Andy Katz. Story On the surface it looks like a

normal NCAA tournament bracket. If you dig a little deeper, though, there's always a little drama, intrigue and even some unintentional comedy, writes Dana O'Neil. Story The Orangemen, meanwhile, were ranked fourth of the four No. 1 seeds and sent West after losing early in the Big East tournament after center Arinze Onuaku injured his right quadriceps.

Onuaku, who averages 10 points, five rebounds and 1.1 blocks a game, isn't expected to play Friday when Syracuse opens against Vermont.

Syracuse's road to the Final Four, set for April 3-5 in Indianapolis, will have to go through Salt Lake City, a 2,100mile trek from home.

"We're proud to be a No. 1 seed," Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. "This team has worked extremely hard, been consistent all year. Obviously, the tournament is always going to be challenging. It'll be challenging right off the bat."

America's largest three-week office pool starts getting sorted out Tuesday with an openinground game between ArkansasPine Bluff and Winthrop. The tournament goes into full swing Thursday, with Kansas the No. 1 seed.

The Big East led the field with

eight teams, tying its own record and marking the third time the conference has put that many teams in the tournament.

But winning the toughest conference's regular-season title wasn't the accomplishment it might have been for Syracuse.

The Orangemen (28-4) lost to Georgetown in the Big East tournament quarterfinals. That pushed them down, below Duke, which was expected to vie with West Virginia for the final No. 1 spot.

Winning the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament helped Duke vault over Syracuse and the Mountaineers.

NCAA TOURNAMENT STREAKS With Arizona's exclusion from the NCAA tournament, the Wildcats' streak of 25 consecutive years in the field came to an end. Overall top seed Kansas now assumes the mantle, with its 21st straight appearance.

"Once again, we're talking about the entire season," selection chairman Dan Guerrero said.

"We place value on that.

Obviously, the big center for Syracuse got banged up. That's an issue to some degree."

Before the committee even met, there was no question that there will be a new national champion.

Defending titlist North Carolina

was on a long list of traditional powerhouses that didn't receive spots in this year's tournament.

That list also included UCLA, Indiana, Connecticut and Arizona, which saw its NCAAleading string of appearances snapped at 25 years.

It will mark the first time since 1966 that all five of those bigname schools failed to make the tournament.

"It is strange because obviously those are formidable teams with great traditions," Guerrero said.

"But I believe it's reflective of the culture of college basketball this year."

Now holding the longest current streak is Kansas (32-2), making its 21st straight appearance and coming into 2010 as the early 2-1 favorite in Vegas to win its second national title in three years.

Leading the Jayhawks in the Midwest Region are Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich, two key pieces in the team's 2008 title run. The Jayhawks earned the overall No. 1 seed based on an 18-1 record against Big 12 foes, which includes three wins over Kansas State, a team in the mix for a top seed until falling to KU in the conference final Saturday.

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Cleveland Browns trade Brady Quinn to Denver Broncos for Peyton Hillis, picks ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:41:43 AM

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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=4995081' }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } ESPN.com news services Quarterback Brady Quinn will get a chance to start over in Denver. Whether he'll get to start is up to the Broncos.

The Broncos acquired the former first-round draft pick from the Cleveland Browns for fullback Peyton Hillis, a 2011 sixth-round draft pick and a conditional pick in 2012.

The teams announced the trade Sunday and said the deal is pending physicals.

"Obviously there are things that are out of my control. It's a great opportunity for me to play under a great coach [Josh McDaniels]," Quinn told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "It will be a fresh start for me and great opportunity with a very talented team and it should be a lot of fun."

Ostensibly, Quinn will compete with Kyle Orton for the Broncos' starting job, although McDaniels was unavailable Sunday to comment on the trade, according to a team spokesman.

"At this point, I'm just looking to create a role for myself on the team," Quinn told the Plain Dealer. "Anytime you're in a situation like this, that's all you can really do is just go in there and learn the system, get to know your teammates and coaches, everyone else, and that's really my focus right now.

All of those things will take care of themself in the end."

Quinn's departure comes one day after the Browns agreed to terms with free agent Jake Delhomme on a two-year contract. Quinn went 3-9 in 12 starts for Cleveland, which drafted him with the 22nd pick in the first round in 2007 out of Notre Dame.

From Dublin, Ohio, he was embraced by Browns fans as the quarterback of the future. But the pairing never panned out for neither the franchise nor the player.

"I appreciate everything Brady did for us last year and in his three seasons with the Cleveland Browns," coach Eric Mangini said in a statement. "He is professional in the way he goes

about doing his job and worked extremely hard at every aspect of his game. I wish him the best of success in Denver."

Williamson: Trade Low Risk It's worth taking a chance on Brady Quinn. Denver did not give up much for the former No. 1 pick, swapping backup running back Peyton Hillis, a sixth-round pick in 2011 and a conditional 2012 pick for Quinn, writes Bill Williamson. Blog The Browns also traded Kamerion Wimbley to the Oakland Raiders on Sunday for a 2010 third round draft pick, a team source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter.

"This gives us a guy who has been a strong presence as a pass rusher," Oakland senior executive John Herrera said.

"He has been very productive."

The Browns' decision to deal Wimbley was a bit of a surprise.

Last season, he began to show flashes of being the kind of player he was when he recorded 11 sacks in his rookie year.

The 6-foot-3, 255-pounder was drafted in the first round out of Florida State in 2006. He had 6½ sacks and 48 tackles in 15 games last season and has 26.5 sacks in his career.

Quinn won Cleveland's starting job last season, but was benched after 2½ games for Derek Anderson. Quinn eventually got

his job back when Anderson struggled but he was hindered by inaccuracy.

He completed only 53 percent of his passes last season for 1,339 yards with eight touchdowns and seven interceptions. His rating was 67.3.

Quinn's days in Cleveland appeared numbered when new president Mike Holmgren failed to endorse him as the Browns' future starter. Last week, the Browns acquired backup Seneca Wallace in a trade with Seattle, released Anderson and hosted Delhomme, recently cut by Carolina.

"It's really hard to try to figure out what it is," Quinn told the Plain Dealer, referring to Cleveland's plans without him in the picture. "Coach Mike Holmgren has had a lot of success, and I'm sure the decisions he's making, he's got a lot of reasons for them and he's doing what he wants to with the team. It's not really for me to question."

The Broncos reportedly pursued Quinn last season when they were trying to replace Jay Cutler.

Instead, they dealt Cutler to Chicago for a bevy of draft picks and Orton, who beat out CLEVELAND page 70

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NCAA continued from page 62

the #6 against Minnesota at #11. Lots of good inside players in that game, though: Sampson, Iverson, Love, etc.

6:25 pm | by Darren Everson So we're clearly going to see four teams from the Mountain West -- and all four are going to be seeded above their firstround opponent. It's time the MWC does something in the tournament. Past time, really.

6:26 pm | by Darren Everson The thing about Minnesota is they have great pieces on offense, and they can block shots, but they occasionally get totally lost on defense. Michigan ran circles around them twice.

Will be interesting to see how that plays out.

6:26 pm | by Jonah Keri The Kentucky players just jumped all over each other for no good reason when their name came up.

6:28 pm | by Darren Everson Ha -- indeed. I preferred Kansas's totally ho-hum reaction. No need to celebrate for a few weeks yet.

6:28 pm | by Jonah Keri Texas #8 vs. Wake Forest #9?

Some firepower there. TexasKentucky in round two would be intriguing. Just a couple months ago Texas was considered Final Four-caliber.

6:28 pm | by Jonah Keri Bummer on Temple #5 vs.

Cornell #12. Agree with Seth Davis, these were two of my favorite mid-majors, both

probably a little underseeded.

6:29 pm | by Darren Everson Intriguing and entertaining. The way UT is going, it's hard to envision them doing anything.

6:30 pm | by Jonah Keri A THREE seed for New Mexico! Wow, you're right that the MWC is getting big respect, and that they need to deliver.

6:30 pm | by Darren Everson Wisconsin (4 seed in the East) is interesting to me. The Badgers are a tempo-free statistic darling -- No. 3 nationally in Pomeroy's rankings. But this is once again another Bo Ryan team without an elite playmaker. (Trevon Hughes is all right, but still...)

6:31 pm | by Jonah Keri There are about nine sleepers I like in this bracket. Marquette as a #6 seed could be really tough too. No easy road for Kentucky at all. Syracuse has a cakewalk by comparison.

6:34 pm | by Darren Everson Big fan of Marquette as well. A few different bounces of the ball and they're in the 3 seed orbit.

6:35 pm | by Jonah Keri Players mugging for the camera during selection show is my favorite thing ever.

Cal gets an 8! I'd say they're in!

6:35 pm | by Darren Everson And there's California, as an 8.

Not a bubble team at all.

6:37 pm | by Jonah Keri And Utah State is in too as a 12. Not looking good for Illinois and Miss St.

Good point by Greg Anthony about Purdue being shaky as a #4 without Robbie Hummel.

6:37 pm | by Darren Everson The answer to the Purdue mystery: 4 seed. Poor Purdue.

Watching what Minnesota and Michigan State did to them on the glass sans Robbie Hummel was painful.

6:37 pm | by Jonah Keri Wow, a 7 for Richmond. Did not expect that. Spiders could give Villanova fits in a potential second-round game.

6:38 pm | by Darren Everson It's getting late for the bubble crowd! Still waiting on Illinois and Mississippi State...

6:39 pm | by Jonah Keri Baylor's a 3! This is where the Carolina/UCLA/UConn seeds are going this year, to typical also-rans like K-State and Baylor. Amazing.

Notre Dame gets a 6?! Bizarre.

6:40 pm | by Darren Everson A six seed for a 48 RPI. Bizarre indeed.

And Duke's top competition in the top half of the South is Purdue -- the easiest road of all the top seeds to the Elite Eight.

Which, of course, makes zero sense.

6:40 pm | by Jonah Keri The committee apparently wagered heavily on Duke. South is weak, weak, weak.

How do Kansas and Kentucky get the two toughest roads to the Final Four, despite being clearly the two best teams?

6:41 pm | by Darren Everson At least the mid-major bids are up, as CBS is noting right now.

Not that the committee had any choice, what with the SEC so-so and the Pac-10 way down.

6:42 pm | by Jonah Keri Just a lousy job by the committee all around. The two best teams get the toughest roads. A bunch of overseeds -Notre Dame, etc. I am agog.

Meanwhile: Miss St., Illinois, Virginia Tech all out.

6:44 pm | by Darren Everson I'd concur with that assessment.

Villanova has been a mess of late, and yet not only are they a 2 -- they're opposite Duke. What a gift for the Blue Devils!

6:44 pm | by Jonah Keri Is this the year BYU finally wins a game? They have the edge over Florida in that 7-10 matchup, and their size could give K-State problems in a potential round-two game.

6:46 pm | by Jonah Keri Normally the best way to win your March Madness pools is to go by the book: take the top seeds, toss a couple of darts at upsets, and that's it. But this bracket looks positively wacky.

I could see 3 double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16.

6:48 pm | by Darren Everson Virginia Tech bites the dust again. They must feel like the goal line keeps moving in regard to them. VT missed out in '05 despite going .500 in the ACC; missed in '08 despite going 9-7,

and now despite going 10-6.

Of course, their nonconference schedule strength was a joke.

6:49 pm | by Jonah Keri ESPN's Chad Ford on Twitter notes that there are ZERO likely lottery picks in Duke's whole bracket. Amazing.

6:49 pm | by Jonah Keri The next time Seth Greenberg schedules some legitimate nonconference competition will be the first.

6:50 pm | by Darren Everson Sigh. We should point out that this isn't standard-issue Duke hatred. It's just unfair, given what they've accomplished this season, that they have such a friendly path.

6:50 pm | by Darren Everson Greg Anthony of CBS's Elite Eight: all 1 and 2 seeds. Take some chances, would you?!

6:51 pm | by Jonah Keri Absolutely Darren. I actually like watching Scheyer and Singler play, and I like the freshman Andre Dawkins.

I will say this, though: Villanova's lightning-quick again this year (Scottie Reynolds has been a Wildcat since 1998, I swear) and could be a bear of a match-up for Duke in the Elite 8. It would be wild if Nova made the Final Four with the squad they have, sans Dante Cunningham.

6:55 pm | by Darren Everson Dan Guerrero is explaining why NCAA page 70

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NCAA Tournament Seeding: Now Extra Nutty (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:10:02 AM

College basketball fans have been waiting for this week, working on theatrical little coughs and performing Method actor-y massages of their temples in preparation to catch “the thing that’s going around” in time for Thursday’s tip-off of the NCAA tournament’s first round. The first two rounds of the tournament remain one of the greatest and most sustained fan-rushes in sports. Until then, college hoops fans will have to satisfy themselves with another time-honored ritual criticizing the selection committee’s brackets. Associated Press These fans are right, Kansas is No. 1 this March - not that you’d know from looking at the NCAA’s bracket.

It’s not that so many people have a problem with number one seeds Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse and Duke though some see West Virginia as a more worthy top seed than the Blue Devils. And while, as Chris Dufresne reminds readers in the Los Angeles Times, some of the most revered programs in college hoops are NIT-bound this year, there are plenty of interesting teams in the field.

The issue is how many of those interesting teams are in the brackets headed by top overall seed Kansas (Midwest) and Kentucky (East).

“Its not the hugest deal, for the Jayhawks, that they were paired with one of the two best twoseeds (Ohio State), the best three-seed (Georgetown) and the strongest four-five combination (Maryland-Michigan State),” Sports Illustrated’s Luke Winn writes. “They can beat those teams. They will beat those teams. The problem is that by overloading Kansas region, the NCAA Selection Committee severely diluted the West and South, making for one of the most unbalanced brackets ever.”

Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel argues that the nutty seedings reflect what was most definitely a nutty regular season. “There are threeto-five teams that most impressed during the regular season and even those carry significant questions into the tournament. After that, its anyones guess,” Wetzel writes.

“The first four days of the tournament may produce more unexpected results than ever.

Get ready for the woman in accounting that bases her picks on state flowers to walk away with the money.”

That said, Doris the Peony Prognosticator might do just as well to follow the lead of every sport pundit out there and look to Kansas, the Sunflower State, for the national champion. In the Boston Globe, Bob Ryan makes his case for a Kansas-Kentucky final. In the St. Louis PostDispatch, Bryan Burwell goes a

Pacquiao dominated the bout from the glove touch, throwing 872 more punches than Clottey en route to a unanimous decision. The punch-fest was an impressive display of what makes Pacquiao Pacquiao, but it wasn’t exactly exciting. step further and picks Kansas as “If Clottey’s goal was to finish champs. on his feet and avoid the fate of In short, if the NCAA was Pacquiao’s last three opponents, looking for a year that would who were KO’d or stopped via justify the rumored expansion of TKO, then his strategy worked,” the NCAA tournament, this Tim Smith writes in the New might not necessarily be it. They York Daily News. “If he was would, at least, have Jason intent on winning, then it was Gay’s support. In the Journal, the absolute wrong tactic to take Gay proposes expanding the against the Filipino pound-fortournament field all the way to p o u n d k i n g . ” T i m S t a r k s The Magnificent 347. concurs at the boxing blog That would mean stockpiling a Queensberry Rules. lot more sick days, though the In the Los Angeles Times, Bill n a t i o n ’ s b a s k e t b a l l f a n s Dwyre describes the vibe at sold probably wouldn’t mind. But it -out Cowboys Stadium for this probably would take some of the anti-climactic fight. “The main fun out of the tournament for consolation for the fans was that super-underdogs like Morgan t h e y c o u l d t e l l t h e i r State. In the Baltimore Sun, Ken grandchildren someday that they Murray finds the Bears reveling spent an evening in a new in their 15 seed and date with palace of an arena, watching a West Virginia.* * * short, stumpy man trying to Joshua Clottey went into chop down a tree, which didn’t Saturday’s title bout against fall,” Dwyre writes.* * * Manny Pacquiao as an underdog The NFL free agent signing with a reputation for being able season has entered its baroque to take a punch. He left it with p e r i o d . B i g - n a m e p l a y e r his rep for taking a punch intact, movement has largely been but with his willingness to take s u p p l a n t e d b y r o c o c o so many a n d s e e m i n g rearrangements of depth charts unwillingness to throw any the and some personnel decisions subject of some debate. In some notably Cleveland’s choice to m e a s u r e b e c a u s e C l o t t e y clean house at quarterback in essentially opted not to attack, order to install, um, Jake

Delhomme that border on the avant-garde. One of the biggest names on the market found a new home on Sunday, though, as future Hall of Famer LaDainian Tomlinson inked a two-year pact with the New York Jets.

The initial reaction fell somewhere between a shrug and a mumbled, “hmm.” Given that the Jets allowed still-productive back Thomas Jones to walk before signing the seemingly fading Tomlinson, The Record’s Ian O’Connor argues that the move makes the Jets weaker. At CBS Sports, Clark Judge seems confused by what the opportunity to play in Jersey offers Tomlinson. “I can’t understand why either of these parties found the other attractive,” Judge blogs.

In Sports Illustrated, Jim Trotter offers four reasons Tomlinson chose the Jets.* * * Soccer is known as The Beautiful Game, and anyone who has seen the sport played at its best understands exactly why. That said, in some ways soccer is a game like any other, from bloated contracts and pompous television broadcasts to some truly unfortunate uniforms. At ESPN Soccernet, Roger Bennett offers an illustrated list of the worst soccer uniforms in World Cup history, from Brazil’s Silly Putty NCAA page 71

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David Beckham heads to Finland for surgery on torn Achilles tendon; likely to miss World Cup Associated Press (ESPN.com)

spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:40:35 AM made. The person said it was TURKU, Finland -- David likely Beckham will play again.

Beckham arrived in Finland on A Finnish doctor set to operate Monday for surgery on his torn on Beckham said there's a left Achilles tendon, an injury " g l i m m e r o f h o p e " t h e that will keep him out of the midfielder will recover in time World Cup. for the World Cup, which Beckham left a private jet on begins in June. crutches at Turku and was With his hopes of becoming the whisked away in an SUV. first English player to appear in Surgery is set for later Monday four World Cups shattered and or Tuesday. his future in international soccer "I am upset but [want] to thank i n d o u b t , B e c k h a m w a s everyone for their messages of scheduled for surgery with support," Beckham said in a specialist surgeon Dr. Sakari statement posted on his personal Orava.

Web site before his arrival. "I "We have to wait for the results hope to make a swift and full of the scan, but it looks like he recovery." is out of the World Cup," World Cup Run In Jeopardy England coach Fabio Capello David Beckham, who tore his said Monday. "David is a great left Achilles tendon Sunday and professional and has worked will likely miss the 2010 World very hard to be ready for the Cup, was vying to be the first World Cup, so missing it will be English player to participate in a big blow." f o u r W o r l d C u p s . D a v i d Orava told Finnish broadcaster Beckham, World Cup Career YLE on Monday that, although T h e 3 4 - y e a r - o l d f o r m e r it's not realistic to expect England captain was injured in Beckham to be fit for the World the closing minutes of AC Cup just three months after Milan's 1-0 win Sunday. He said surgery, there remains "a on his Web site he hopes for a glimmer of hope" he could be "swift and full recovery." back for the June 11-July 11 A person familiar with the tournament in South Africa. injury has told The Associated Beckham, who has been staying Press he will miss the World at the Principe di Savoia hotel Cup "for sure." The person during his second loan stint with

Milan, left with a grimace on his face, getting into a car with his father for the trip to Finland.

Achilles Tendon Injury: An Explainer The Achilles tendon connects the calf muscle to the bone in the heel and is the most commonly torn tendon in the body. The tendon is usually torn when the leg is straight and the calf muscle contracts. It typically takes several months for athletes to fully recover.

Tearing the Achilles tendon can happen without major incident, particularly in athletes whose bodies are under the continual stress of training.

The injury is most common in tennis, soccer, basketball and running. A study published this year found that one third of NFL players who hurt their Achilles tendon never played professionally again.

People who tear their Achilles tendon have major swelling and are unable to put weight on their ankle or foot.

Certain medications increase the risk of tearing the Achilles tendon, like antibiotics or medicines to reduce inflammation like corticosteroids.

Doctors typically fix torn Achilles tendons with surgery.

After the operation, patients are outfitted with a cast or brace to

help the tendon heal, for about six to eight weeks.

-- The Associated Press Wearing jeans, a denim jacket and a black knit hat, Beckham got into the front seat with a bit of difficulty and his father got into the back seat.

Beckham did not respond to questions, never making eye contact with assembled media.

A cut was visible on his right cheek, a result of a collision in the first half of Sunday's game.

Beckham's international career for England appears all but over and it remains to be seen how much he'll have left for the Los Angeles Galaxy and Major League Soccer.

Capello and his England assistant, Franco Baldini, spoke with Beckham on the telephone to offer best wishes.

With only a few minutes remaining in the Chievo game and the score 0-0, Beckham was by himself in the center circle when he took a pass with his left foot, stepped back awkwardly, then stepped forward and started hopping on his right foot with an expression of pain on his face. He reached a hand down to his left heel, then stood up and gestured as if he was breaking a twig in half to show the AC Milan bench he knew the tendon was broken.

Visibly in pain and in tears,

Beckham went to the touchline for medical attention.

"He felt the muscle begin to come up, which is a typical symptom when you break an Achilles tendon," Milan coach Leonardo told Italy's Sky TV. "This is a real blow."

Milan's medical staff consulted with the Galaxy's medical team, and Milan organizing director Umberto Gandini spoke with Galaxy owner Timothy J. Leiweke, president and CEO of AEG, but it was Beckham who decided to go to Finland.

"It was the player's decision," Gandini told the AP on Monday.

"It's the player who decides for his own health, and the player's decision was to go to Finland where there is a surgeon who specializes in these injuries."

Gandini added that no postsurgery plans had been made, but that Beckham's career is not at risk.

"No, I don't think so. I'm not a physician but it's certainly not the first time a footballer has injured his Achilles tendon, and players have come back and played after those injuries," Gandini said.

While Beckham has not been a starter for England in recent matches, he was likely to make the World Cup squad. Beckham DAVID page 70

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ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas says the teams that were left out of the NCAA tournament need to schedule more games against good teams and win them in future years to get in.

Among Kansas' competition in the Midwest are Ohio State, Georgetown and last year's national runner-up, Michigan State.

"It will be a good recruiting mailout this week," coach Bill Self said of the No. 1 overall seed. "After you look at the bracket, you say, 'Well, I don't think we had a lot of favors done for us."

Kansas and Kansas State were two of seven Big 12 teams in the draw. Another so-called power conference, the Pac-10, struggled all year and got punished. Only two teams -tournament champion Washington and regular-season champion Cal-- made it. The Huskies got an 11th seed in the East.

Those two spots were only half of what the Mountain West Conference received, led by regular-season champion New Mexico, which was seeded third in the East and watched the selection show in front of a packed crowd at The Pit.

In all, eight at-large slots went to teams from smaller conferences. That was double the number of last year. Among those left out were Virginia Tech, Mississippi State-- a 7574 overtime loser to Kentucky in the SEC tournament final -and Illinois, which is 19-14 after a double-overtime loss to Ohio State in the Big Ten tournament semis.

"It's a close game, a call, a basket going in and out, and they don't get the opportunity to be part of a special thing," Illini coach Bruce Weber said. "I feel bad for them. I reminded them we let some things go early and that put us in a bind."

Weber refused, however, to play the expansion card: One of this season's biggest topics has been the potential expansion of the field to 96 teams, an idea supported by some coaches but not so much by pundits.

"This is the weakest at-large field in the history of the tournament," ESPN's Jay Bilas said, leading to the question of whether there were truly another 32 teams that were worthy.

Those at-large teams included Florida, a No. 10 seed in the West after missing the last two years following two straight titles.

"It was a stressful 48 hours not knowing if we were in or out," forward Chandler Parsons said.

Tubby Smith and Minnesota got in as a No. 11 seed, and UTEP made it as a 12th seed despite losing the Conference USA final to Houston, which stole a spot.

Another spoiler was New Mexico State, which defeated Utah State in the Western Athletic final. Utah State made it anyway, as a No. 12 seed that gets to play its first games in nearby Spokane, Wash. -- not a bad reward for one of the very last bubble teams.

Last week, Guerrero said the committee wouldn't weigh teams' performances in their last 12 games as heavily as in the past. How closely the committee toed that line, however, was still in question.

Not up for debate was the reality that key injuries at tournament time make a difference to the committee.

Onuaku hasn't practiced since he was hurt, and Boeheim didn't paint an optimistic picture for the first week.

"I'm looking at it positive, taking it day by day," Onuaku said. "It's getting better, so I'm hoping for the best."

Purdue, meanwhile, was 24-3

and in contention for a top seed as late as Feb. 24. Then, highscoring forward Robbie Hummel tore up his right knee, and the Boilermakers lost two of the last five, including a 27point loss to Minnesota. They dropped to the No. 4 seed in the South.

"To have integrity in the field, you've got to place them in a place that's appropriate without Robbie Hummel," Guerrero said. "Without Robbie Hummel in the lineup, they're a different team, no question about that."

Led by freshman John Wall, Kentucky (32-2) won its 26th SEC tournament and earned a top seed to try for its eighth national title.

In his first year with the Wildcats, John Calipari became the first coach to post five straight 30-win seasons, and he'll need six more to bring the first title back to the Bluegrass State since 1998.

That's a big task for a team that has three freshmen -- Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Eric Bledsoe-- among its top four scorers.

"We're one of the youngest teams. We do so many dumb things," Calipari said. "You're up 18, then you look up and you're up two. You have to keep

your emotions in check, stay together, understand teams are going to come at you and you have to play harder than they play."

Duke and coach Mike Krzyzewski are seeking their first trip to the Final Four since 2004 and first national title since 2001. Led by Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler, the Blue Devils (29-5) have won 12 of their last 13 and will open Friday against the winner of the opening-round game.

"Our committee felt there was some value in that kind of season," Guerrero said. "In the end, we just felt that kind of season Duke had, winning the conference, having some great wins and, of course, just winning the postseason tournament carried the day."

Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Gilbert Arenas of Washington Wizards, in interview: 'I deserve to be punished' Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:04:24 AM

• 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 ("Arenas,%20in%20interview: %20\'I%20deserve%20to%20be

%20punished\'")); } I.setLinkBack("http://sports.esp n.go.com/nba/news/story?id=49 96498"); 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/nba/n ews/story?id=4996498' }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } Associated Press WASHINGTON -- Gilbert Arenas says he deserves to be punished for bringing guns to the locker room.

The suspended Washington Wizards guard told Esquire magazine that he wasn't using "longevity thinking" when he took out four guns in what he

says was an attempt to play a prank on teammate Javaris Crittenton in December.

Arenas pleaded guilty to a felony gun charge in January and will be sentenced next week. He has been suspended until the end of the season by the NBA. “ I called Mrs. Pollin and said, 'If Abe was still with us, I would've had to talk to him, so I'm gonna give you the same respect. I want to say sorry to you. I deserve to be punished. I'll do everything it takes to get back your husband's respect.'”-Gilbert Arenas In the Esquire interview, which hits newsstands next week and was obtained by The Associated Press in advance, Arenas says he has "messed up" the legacy of Wizards owner Abe Pollin, who died in November.

"I have a painting of him in my garage. I just walk by it with my head down," Arenas said. "I called Mrs. Pollin and said, 'If Abe was still with us, I would've had to talk to him, so I'm gonna give you the same respect. I

want to say sorry to you. I deserve to be punished. I'll do everything it takes to get back your husband's respect."

Arenas has kept a low profile since his guilty plea. He told the AP this month that he would have "no problems" playing for the Wizards again and that he's not nervous about his sentencing date as long as the judge "goes off the actual real story" of what happened. Last week, he submitted paperwork to change his jersey from No. 0 to No. 6 next season.

Arenas told Esquire that he used to have as many as 500 firearms in his home, having bought many of them from an elderly man's World War I collection. He says he put all but four of them in storage when he started having children.

Arenas also said that he and Crittenton returned to good terms almost immediately after their confrontation, which stemmed from a card game on the team plane. Crittenton also displayed a gun during the spat and was sentenced to unsupervised probation for a

misdemeanor gun charge.

"He goes into the Jacuzzi," Arenas told the magazine. "You know what? I gotta warm my knee up anyway. I go in and sit with him. We're just sitting in there talking. We didn't have no problem. It was just some fun that got out of control."

Arenas also gave his perspective on another fallen star, Tiger Woods, separating the golfer's infidelity from the sport.

"Say it's all true," Arenas said.

"At the end of the day, that's not the reason I love Tiger. I got three Tiger Woods games for my Xbox just in case one gets scratched. On the cover, it doesn't have him walking next to his wife. It just has Tiger Woods, hitting shots."

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NCAA

continued from page 64

Chris Simms for the starting job in June.

The Broncos have insisted they're happy with Orton, a workmanlike leader who wasn't allowed to throw downfield much last season, when he led the Broncos to a 6-2 start before a 2-6 finish kept them out of the playoffs for a fourth straight season.

That's the longest drought in the 26 years Pat Bowlen has owned the team. Bowlen recently said he likes Orton as his quarterback but would like to see the Broncos draft a passer next month.

Those plans may now be on hold.

The Broncos lost confidence in Simms last season, so it would appear he's out of the picture with the acquisition of Quinn.

League sources told Schefter that Simms is not likely to return to the Broncos.

Last week, the Broncos offered

continued from page 65

Orton, a restricted free agent, a first-round tender offer that would pay him $2.261 million this season.

Like hundreds of other players caught up in the league's labor issues, however, Orton is expected to boycott his team's start of offseason training, which starts Monday for the Broncos.

With the league ripping up the labor deal in hopes of getting a more owner-friendly contract, dozens of players who were set to reach the riches of unrestricted free agency this month are instead bound by their teams, which are offering much less than the players could have made in an unfettered marketplace.

Hillis will also be getting a fresh start.

He went from starting tailback under coach Mike Shanahan in 2008 to forgotten fullback under McDaniels, who adamantly

refused to use him even though rookie running back Knowshon Moreno frequently came up short in short-yardage situations.

McDaniels insisted that the problems were on the line and not in the backfield and that he'd rather give the ball to his top draft pick. With Spencer Larsen banged up for much of the season, McDaniels said his hands were often tied because he didn't want to risk running Hillis, who was often his only available fullback.

Hillis had just 13 carries for 53 yards last season. He was inactive for two games, once to attend his grandmother's funeral in November. He also returned four kicks.

The 240-pound bone-rattler energized the Broncos in 2008 when he emerged during an injury epidemic among the team's tailbacks and ran for a team-high 343 yards and scored six touchdowns before tearing

his right hamstring against Kansas City in December.

The Browns seemed to have found their No. 1 tailback late last season in Jerome Harrison, who finished with a team-high 862 yards rushing. But veteran Jamal Lewis, second on the team in rushing, was released last month, which could provide an opening for Hillis to be the power complement to the small and quick Harrison.

So Hillis gets another chance in Cleveland while Quinn tries to jump-start his career in Denver.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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Duke is the third No. 1 above Syracuse. He keeps talking about Duke winning the ACC tournament. Shouldn't it matter how you did it? Sure, Duke had no control over who they faced, but all they did was beat Virginia, Miami and an OK Georgia Tech team. Syracuse's Big East tournament opponent (Georgetown) was better than all those opponents.

6:56 pm | by Jonah Keri More from Twitter, in this case SI's excellent college hoops writer @LukeWinn: " NCAA's message: Winning conf + conf tourney trumps everything else. Even if your only decent out-of-league win is Gonzaga."

Couldn't agree more. And that goes for every team from the double-digit seeds all the way up to Duke and their ACC tourney springboard.

NCAA page 71

from the Galaxy as he tried to boost his chances of making Capello's 23-man World Cup squad. He has scored 17 goals for England and made 115 appearances, second in England history behind only goalkeeper Peter Shilton's 125 from 197090.

Beckham was England's captain from November 2000 through the 2006 World Cup.

"He'll probably be out for five or six months," AC Milan vice president Adriano Galliani told Sky. "I saw him really suffering.

In the changing room I hugged him and told him that if he wants he can join us next year, too."

It was yet another blow for Major League Soccer, already facing the threat of a players' strike ahead of the season

opener on March 25. Beckham is the league's highest-paid player with a $32.5 million, five -year contract -- and its biggest draw.

"We just received the information about David's unfortunate injury," MLS commissioner Don Garber said.

"We wish him a speedy recovery."

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DAVID continued from page 67

was still prized for his free kicks and crosses, especially when England needed second-half goals.

And for many, he is the most well-known soccer player in the world, a fashion icon with a celebrity wife, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham.

The former Manchester United and Real Madrid star was on his second loan stint at AC Milan

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NCAA continued from page 66

-inspired print jobs from the 1994 Cup to France’s tight-nstripy 1978 ensemble, which looks like the work of Wes Anderson’s costume designer.

With the news that David Beckham ruptured his Achilles tendon while playing for AC Milan, it became a virtual certainty that one of soccer’s alltime fashion plates won’t be modeling England’s uniform in South Africa. While his doctor allowed for a “glimmer of hope” that Beckham could be ready in time for the World Cup, it’s more likely that his projected four months of recovery time will keep Beckham from playing in what would’ve been his fourth World Cup. In the Independent, Sam Wallace writes that Beckham’s injury is a bigger blow for Becks himself

than for the national team.

Of course, there’s bad news and there’s bad news. And by any measure, the process by which South Africa has spent $6 billion on its World Cup hosting efforts has had its ugly moments. That much of that ugliness has resulted in gleaming new stadiums is, sadly, nothing new and not terribly surprising to readers who follow this sort of thing.

But that weary familiarity regarding stories of corrupt pols ignoring social need while dispensing the rankest sort of ego-driven patronage does little to diminish the outrage factor in Barry Bearak’s story in the New York Times about the construction of a $137 million stadium in Nelspruit, South Africa.

“The people who live nearby, proud as they are to host soccers greatest event, also wonder: How could there be money for a 46,000-seat stadium while many of them still fetch water from dirty puddles and live without electricity or toilets?” Bearak writes.

— Tip of the Fix cap to reader Don Hartline and 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.

of Milwaukee and reaching the Sweet 16.

7:08 pm | by Darren Everson In the South, Purdue is such a big upset target, it practically wouldn't be an upset for them to go down. And in the Midwest and East, despite the fact that Kansas and Kentucky are clearly the top two teams in the country, I wouldn't be surprised if either failed to get to Indianapolis -- given who's on the opposite half of their

brackets (Ohio State and West Virginia, respectively).

7:09 pm | by Jonah Keri Yup, I'll take Xavier coming out of that pod.

Love Siena in the South as a 13 seed to make the Sweet 16 too: They get depleted Purdue in the first round, and I don't like the 5 seed (Texas A&M) or the 12 (Utah St.) all that much.

How about Old Dominion, also in the South, as an 11 over Notre Dame (big overseed, you

71

Crackdown 2 touches down July 6 JC Fletcher (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:57:00 AM

Microsoft has announced the date for your return trip to Pacific City ... when you'll tear it to shreds in the name of justice! Crackdown 2 will launch in North America on July 6, with Asia, Australia and New Zealand releases following on July 8, and Europe's on July 9 -narrowly missing the " first half of 2010" release estimate.

Producer James Cope previously said that a demo will be forthcoming before the

release of the game, so we'll be playing some small portion of Crackdown 2 sooner than July 6. We're going to start playing even sooner than that, actually -our dreams are littered with orbs.

[Update: New multiplayer ViDoc embedded above.]

Gallery: Crackdown 2 Crackdown 2 touches down July 6 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NCAA continued from page 70

6:59 pm | by Jonah Keri Closing thoughts, Darren? I'm just happy I'm not a Kentucky fan. Tough, tough road.

7:04 pm | by Darren Everson Let's take a quick look for some upsets, region by region.

What do you see in the West (Syracuse's region)? Pittsburgh, as you mentioned, was no one's idea of a 3 seed a few months ago. While it's great that they've gotten this far, you have to like Xavier's chances of getting out

mentioned their lousy RPI) and a talented but who-knows Baylor squad at #3.

(If those two paragraphs don't underscore Duke's easy road, nothing will.)

That Georgetown-Ohio State match-up in the Sweet 16 could Jay Mariotti (FanHouse Main) be the best game of the whole Submitted at 3/14/2010 3:35:00 PM tournament.

Filed under: NCAA Basketball With all due respect to everyone at CBS and ESPN who is huffing and puffing and raging and bloviating and trying MADNESS page 72

Madness Is Upon Us, Please Leave As Is

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VOTE: FanHouse's Best Defensive Defenseman of 2009-10

MADNESS continued from page 71

to turn the NCAA tournament into an Armageddon-meetsAvatar extravaganza, can we acknowledge the truth here, please? This hasn't been the most scintillating season for Christopher Botta (FanHouse choose from. college basketball. Billy Packer, Main) Let's be frank from the start: wherever he is, can rest assured Best Defensive Defenseman is he hasn't missed much so far.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:00:00 AM not a data-based honor. Sure, And there's no need for Dickie Filed under: NHL Awards plus/minus, time on ice and V to try on a pair of 3-D glasses, Together with Hockey Nation, b l o c k e d s h o t s s h o u l d b e knowing I might shoot myself if NHL FanHouse will present considered, but there's an he does. three end-of-season awards to excellent chance our first-ever Yes, we've seen the brilliance gentlemen who would most winner will not lead in any of of John Wall, the emergence of likely not be considered for those categories. He might not Evan Turner, the rise and honors elsewhere. This is a even finish in the top 10. potential fall of Syracuse, program we are very proud to We're also well aware how dominance from Kansas and a create and we are take seriously. dominant stars ranging from lot of nice stories, none a bigger Most of all, we hope you Chris Pronger and Nicklas relief than Rick Pitino getting participate and spread the word. Lidstrom to Zdeno Chara and Our three new awards will be Scott Niedermayer can be in i n t r o d u c e d o n s u c c e s s i v e their own end. You should be Mondays. aware a major star is not going Today we start the selection t o w i n F a n H o u s e ' s B e s t process for Best Defensive D e f e n s i v e D e f e n s e m a n .

Defenseman of 2009-10. There are so many worthy warriors to

through another year without a scene from an Italian restaurant.

But with each passing season comes a harsh reminder that the sport isn't as deep or compelling as it once was, before college hoops became a one-year feeder system for the NBA. March always will be fun because of fresh faces, fantastic finishes and the lure of the brackets, which still unite everyone from CEOs to secretaries who ask the mail-room guy about the glories of Wofford and Arkansas-Pine Bluff.

South: Could Duke Be Vulnerable?

Terrance Harris (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/14/2010 3:15:00 PM

SOUTH: page 73

Marco Andretti Uninjured After Scary Accident in Brazil FanHouse Newswire (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/14/2010 1:06:00 PM

Filed under: IRL SAO PAULO (AP) -- Marco Andretti escaped injury after being involved in a scary accident at the start of the Sao

Paulo Indy 300 on Sunday.

The car of Brazil's Mario Moraes span and crashed on the back of Andretti's slowing car as they approached the first chicane after the start.

Moraes' car finished on top of Andretti's and they slid tangled for several yards. The bottom of

Moraes' car appeared to be touching Andretti's helmet.

It took more than five minutes for officials to remove Moraes' car so the medical team could attend to Andretti, who eventually was able to walk away from the scene.

Andretti was briefly taken to

the medical center and then released.

The American driver said he slowed down because he could not see in front of him as other drivers made contact approaching the first turn and threw a lot of dust into the air.

"It's obviously dusty," he said.

"I think if you have any common sense, you're not going to stay flat out if you can't see the car ahead of you."

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SOUTH: continued from page 72

Filed under: Duke, March Madness, NCAA Tournament What would NCAA tournament Selection Sunday be without controversy?

Well, the debate in the South Region starts at the top where Duke received the third overall No.1 seed. Most didn't even have the Blue Devils as a surefire No.1 seed despite winning both the ACC regular season and conference tournament titles in what has not been a stellar year for the league.

Was Syracuse more deserving of the third overall No.1 seed or should West Virginia have been a No.1 seed ahead of Duke?

Those are interesting debates,

but the reality is Duke is the team to beat in the South and because of that, the South Regional may be the most wide open of the four regionals.

No. 2 Villanova, No. 3 Baylor and No. 5 Texas A&M have all built impressive resume's in the much higher thought of Big East and Big 12 conferences. Purdue would also be part of that conversations had the Boilermakers not lost star forward Robbie Hummel to a season-ending injury.

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Els Crafts 'Flawless' Vintage Win at Doral Mick Elliott (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/14/2010 2:20:00 PM

Filed under: PGA DORAL, Fla. -- As dusk overtook daylight in South Florida and shadows slowly stretched across Doral's Blue Monster Sunday evening, the reinvention of Ernie Els as a world-class golfer was announced loud and clear.

For the first time in more than two seasons, and only the second since 2004, Els won a PGA Tour golf tournament. And not just any PGA Tour event, the World Golf Championship's CA Championship featuring a select international field.

"This means so much," Els said.

"I didn't think it was ever going to happen again.

"But I felt all week the work that I did, that I finally had to

GDC Impressions: APB Randy Nelson (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:58:00 AM

trust it at some stage. I really just wanted to prove myself, and just play good golf."

Mission accomplished. The 40year-old South African crafted a bogey-free final-round 66 to finish 18-under and four shots in front of young countryman Charl Schwatzel. He did nothing wrong and a lot of things exceptionally well.

Last week, Realtime Worlds MMO APB featured prominently during an in-booth press conference held at GDC. The game was playable (though, sadly, not by me), and the audience was treated to a live demo lead by the developer's founder, ex-DMA and Grand GDC page 74

NintendoWare Weekly: Rage of the Gladiator, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood JC Fletcher (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:45:00 AM

Today's Wii downloadable releases look like they'll work nicely together. When Medusa heads have murdered you

enough times in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, you can switch over to Rage of the Gladiator and smash them in first person!

Gallery: Rage of the Gladiator (Nintendo Media Summit 2010) NintendoWare Weekly: Rage of Continue r e a d i n g the Gladiator, Castlevania:

Rondo of Blood Read| Permalink| Email this| NintendoWare Weekly: Rage Comments of the Gladiator, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GDC continued from page 73

Theft Auto co-creator, David Jones.

Using two separate PCs hooked up to their own projection setups, Jones and another Realtime Worlds staffer hopped onto one of the game's servers and began by giving a tour of one of three main areas, the Social District. As its name implies, this area -- which reminded me more than a little of PlayStation Home -- is where players can meet up, trade or sell their items, build custom music in the game's built-in sequencer and buy a new set of wheels (or upgrade their current

rides). When talking about the latter, Jones showed the vehicle customization tool, which featured not only cosmetic mods (custom designs can be sold to other players) but performance and aerodynamic tinkering, as well.

Before heading out onto the mean streets, Jones pointed out a couple other unique features of the Social District: Statues and display points. The former are generated by the game as effigies of its top players on an ongoing basis, while the latter are spots that can be "rented" in order to publicly display players'

cars that are up for sale or auction.

Gallery: APB Continue reading GDC Impressions: APB GDC Impressions: APB originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chinese tightening fears weigh on stocks (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:14:31 AM

14:00 GMT: China’s stock market fell back to five-week lows on Monday as the Shanghai Composite closed 1.2 per cent lower amid increased concerns that the central bank would take further steps to tighten monetary policy.

Expectations of further measures to restrict the money supply were raised following

comments by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao over the weekend which put tackling inflation at the top of the policy agenda.

Last week China released data which revealed inflation was higher-than-expected, which had added to fears that China’s central bank would tighten policy further.

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Final Fantasy XIII tops UK sales chart, Just Dance shows stamina Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:25:00 AM

In its first week at retail, Final Fantasy XIII charged up the UK sales charts like a Lightning bolt, becoming the "fastest selling" game of the year -- a record set by Bad Company 2 just last week. According to Chart-Track, the console sales split for the latest edition in Square Enix's flagship series

was fairly even, with a 54 to 46 percent split on PS3 and Xbox 360, respectively.

Bad Company 2's sales slipped 38 percent last week, bringing EA DICE's fantastic multiplayer title (wait, there's single player, too?) down to second place.

And, in third -- there it is: Just Dance. The game is unstoppable just keeps going and going. Enix [GFK Chart-Track] and has the stamina of a six-year We're just waiting to see when Source- Latest UK Software -old hyped up on Pixy Stix. Like this epic sugar rush wears off. Charts [GFK Chart-Track] we noted last week, Just Dance Source- Lucky XIII for Square Continue reading Final Fantasy

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75

NY mfr’g survey about in line but components strong Peter Boockvar (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:00:28 AM

The Mar NY mfr’g survey, the first Mar industrial # out, was a touch above expectations at 22.9 vs the forecast of 22 and down from 24.9 in Feb. The components though were strong as the headline is not a sum of its parts. New Orders rose to 25.6 from 15.1 and its the highest since Oct ‘09.

Employment rose to 12.4 from 5.6, the highest since Oct ‘07.

Backlogs rose to 4.9 from 2.8, JC Fletcher (Joystiq) warriors and archers putting the highest since June ‘06. holes in orc-looking things with Inventories went positive for the Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:27:00 AM first time since Aug ‘08. Prices sharp objects and magic.

Click to descend into the Lair Hunted: The Demon's Forge is Paid fell 2 pts but remains 6 pts of Screenshots in development for Xbox 360, above its 6 month average and If you and your friends are PS3 and Games for Windows Prices Received doubled to 8.6, eager to dive into a monster- ( P C ) . W e ' l l h a v e s o m e the highest since Oct ‘08 and is filled dungeon -- and who isn't - impressions of the game later a sign that businesses are having some success in passing on - then Bethesda has a thrilling today. announcement for you: The Gallery: Hunted: The Demon's some higher costs. The 6 month outlook rose 1.5 pts to 54.3 and publisher is handling a new co- Forge op fantasy action game, Hunted: Bethesda & InXile announce is in line with the 6 month The Demon's Forge, developed 'Hunted: The Demon's Forge,' a average. In a related question,

by Interplay founder Brian co-op 'roots' game originally 24% of firms surveyed, down Fargo's InXile Entertainment. appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 from 39%, saw more tightening Fargo describes Hunted as an Mar 2010 11:27:00 EST. Please in credit availability with 11% noting easing. Net-net, mfr’g "upcoming release that takes us see our terms for use of feeds. back to our roots," and the Read| Permalink| Email this| screenshots (in our gallery Comments below) paint a pretty clear picture of what that could mean:

Bethesda & InXile announce 'Hunted: The Demon's Forge,' a co-op 'roots' game

continues to be the focal point of recovery. ~~~ Jan TIC data below expectations but China still rules Jan long term net foreign purchases of US assets totaled $19.1b, below expectations of +$47.5b and down from $63.3b in Dec. Treasury purchases remained healthy at $61.4b but foreigners sold $5b of GSE paper and $24.6b of corporate bonds (selling now in 9 of last 10 months). Foreigners bought a net $4.3b of US stocks and have been a net buyer for 11 straight months now. US investors bought $17b worth of foreign bonds and stocks. China sold $5.8b of US Treasuries but some to all of that may have been the maturing of short term securities rather than outright selling of longer term maturities.

They remain well in the lead of largest holders still at $889b.

Japan, at #2 has $765.4b worth after selling a modest amount in Jan. ~~~ Feb IP a touch better but mfr’g falls Feb IP rose .1%, above

expectations of flat with Capacity Utilization at 72.7%, .2% higher than forecasts and is up from 72.5% in Jan. Utilization, while well below the long term average of 80%, and the basis behind the output gap worries of the Fed, is at the highest since Dec ‘07 but the gain was led by mining and utilities as manufacturing utilization was down slightly to 69%. The overall gain in IP was also led by mining and utilities as manufacturing IP fell .2% due to a 4.4% drop in motor vehicle production. With lean inventories as seen in last week’s data, producers just need some more confidence that end demand will see sustainable growth in order to further pick up production and get us to a self sustaining recovery. While there are some signs of it, the inconsistencies in them with still major debt overhangs apparent are combining to create the lumpiness in the recovery.

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Back off!

Demonstrations in Thailand: Red tide (The Economist: News analysis)

of Mr Thaksin’s fortune, which prompted his red-shirted supporters to call the present Submitted at 3/14/2010 6:03:16 PM round of protests. Even before Demonstrations in Thailand the court announced the seizure Protestors against the Thai in February the red shirts had government take to the streets spent months preparing this again massive operation in the rural Mar 15th 2010 | BANGKOK | north and north-east, where Mr From The Economist online Thaksin is still hailed as a hero.

FOUR years of upheaval have In his speech, he urged the army set a high bar for street protests not to harm the people and i n B a n g k o k . B u t t h e denied that he had been expelled demonstration that took place on from Dubai, his adopted home.

Sunday March 14th was among Bangkok’s febrile media, and the more impressive shows of some officials, had played up strength in Thailand. Some the risk of bloodshed at the 100,000 red-shirted protesters rally. A similar protest last April stood under a scorching sun to spiralled into chaos and saw hear speaker after speaker combat troops deployed to denounce the current prime restore order. The red shirts’ minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, and leaders say that they have the ruling elite that installed learned their lesson and prefer to him. They called for Mr Abhisit preach non-violent change. t o r e s i g n a n d h o l d f r e s h There was little sign of danger elections. On Monday Mr on the streets as protesters sang Abhisit rejected their calls from and danced, carrying flags, the army barracks where he was placards (“Dictators Go to holed up, fearful for his security. H e l l ! ” ) a n d p l a s t i c h a n d The main speech at the red-shirt clappers. In terms of numbers, it rally was delivered through a was a far cry from the “millionv i d e o l i n k b y T h a k s i n man march” promised by its Shinawatra, the twice-elected organisers, but nobody seemed and now fugitive former prime to mind. minister. His refusal to go But the festive spirit showed quietly since the army ousted signs of cracking on Monday. him in 2006 has helped to push The red shirts attempted to Thailand to the brink. The coup increase the pressure on Mr paved the way for the courts to Abhisit by spreading out across order the seizure of $1.4 billion the city. On Monday one large

group of marchers surrounded the army base that Mr Abhisit and his political aides had chosen as a base, after a series of embarrassing security breaches at the prime minister's home. His opponents saw his presence there as an illustration of their claim that he is beholden to the generals, who have no intention of loosening their grip on Thailand. Under a tough security law passed by its former junta, the army enjoys sweeping powers to break up the protests, should it see fit.

Mr Abhisit has said that he has no plan to resign and is not about to crack down on “peaceful and orderly” demonstrations. But the protest seemed to take a nastier turn on Monday with a grenade attack on another army barracks in Bangkok, though it is unclear who is responsible. But Mr Abhisit knows that in the calculus of Thailand’s political demonstrations, his government would be likely to take the rap for a bloody confrontation, were anyone to overreact. That is why he cancelled a weekend trip to Australia: to stay at home and keep watch on the rally.

In recent days, red shirts have been arriving in Bangkok by road convoys. A long line of pick-up trucks, buses and cars has streamed into the city,

passing police checkpoints that seemed too overwhelmed to search many of the vehicles. As the convoys neared the city centre, footbridges swelled with cheering sympathisers. Far from being an invading army, the red shirts looked more like liberators. Yet so far protestors seem to have failed to close down any more than small pockets of Thailand's capital.

Such scenes suggest that it would be facile to reduce Thailand’s politics to the ruralurban divide that Mr Thaksin exploited while in power, with his populist giveaways. The current divisions are also classbased, regional and, increasingly, ideological. It will be hard to find a compromise when so much is at stake. There are plenty of people in Bangkok who feel that Mr Thaksin got a raw deal—and think that they too have been hard done by.

How far they and the protesters are prepared to go to press the point will become clearer in the days ahead. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

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Peter Boockvar (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:00:05 AM

Chinese Premier Wen in no uncertain terms has told the US that they will not be pressured into revaluing the yuan and when the moment does come, it will be under China’s terms. He said “I do not think the renminbi is undervalued…We are opposed to countries pointing fingers at each other or taking strong measures to force other countries to appreciate their currencies.” The Shanghai index fell to a 4 1/2 week low in a response to more talk of policy tightening. In a ‘be careful of what you wish’ for moment, if China succumbs to the pressure of the US Congress and revalues before they are ready, they will acquire less reserves, less money will then be recycled into US Treasuries, and thus higher interest rates will follow as the largest holder buys less. A convertible yuan is inevitable at some point but political pressure won’t make it happen any faster.

EU finance ministers meet for 2 days but no bailout plan for Greece is imminent.

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Smackdown! Tavakoli Calls Lewis a Consumers (Modestly) GirlieMan Improving Balance Sheets Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture)

Lewis, according to Tavakoli is guilty of precisely the sort of groupthink he criticized in both Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:07:32 AM his book and on 60 Minutes.

I mentioned earlier how much I I’m a big fan of Lewis’s work liked the 60 Minutes piece with — I defended his book against Michael Lewis. some Amazon idiot reviewer Janet Tavakoli called foul this trashing it only because the morning on Lewis assertions, kindle version isn’t out yet — pointing to a Bloomberg column b u t b a c k i n 2 0 0 7 , h e g o t he wrote in 2007, titled “ Davos derivatives, Sarbox, and risk all Is for Wimps, Ninnies, Pointless wrong.

Skeptics.” Tavakoli specifically Score this one for Tavakoli . . . points to this paragraph: > “None of them seemed to Sources: understand that when you create Michael Lewis: Junior a derivative you don’t add to the S a l e s g i r l i e m a n sum of total risk in the financial Janet Tavakoli world; you merely create a Huff Po. March 15, 2010 06:26 means for redistributing that AM risk. They have no evidence that f i n a n c i a l r i s k i s b e i n g http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ redistributed in ways we should janet-tavakoli/michael-lewisall worry about.” junior-sale_b_498781.html That statement, as of 2007, was Davos Is for Wimps, Ninnies, simply wrong. Plenty of people Pointless Skeptics were warning about this, and as Michael Lewis his And, the column trashed Bloomberg, January 30, 2007 variant perspectives warning a b o u t d e r i v a t i v e s a n d a n http://www.bloomberg.com/app unhealthy credit market — s/news?pid=20601039&sid=aaa

gOLYMd4yg& Janet Tavakoli home page

http://www.tavakolistructuredfin ance.com/ Michael Lewis Bloomberg Columns http://www.bloomberg.com/new s/commentary/lewis.html Recent Books Lewis: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Tavakoli: Dear Mr. Buffett: What An Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Street Collateralized Debt Obligations and Structured Finance : New Developments in Cash and Synthetic Securitization Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:30:55 AM

On Friday, the Federal Reserve released their Z.1 Flow of Funds statement for Q4 2009.

FoF is essentially a snapshot of households, companies and governement’s balance sheet. It showed a very modest improvement in the aggregate debt levels.

Barron’s noted that consumers showed some signs of cleaning up their balance sheets ever so slightly: The Numbers

1.3%: gain in U.S. household net worth in the fourth quarter from the third $54.18 trillion: household net worth in the fourth quarter 1.7%: decline in U.S. household debt in 2009, the first annual drop since recordkeeping began in 1945 $13.5 trillion: total household debt in 2009 > Sources: Federal Reserve, Barron’s Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Consol Energy buys Dominion for $3.5bn (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:59:08 AM

Consol Energy, the US mining company, said on Monday that

it would buy Dominion Resources’ Appalachian exploration and production business in a $3.5bn deal to expand its footing in the shale industry.

The cash deal will bolster Consol’s natural gas reserves and production capacity. The move will nearly triple its presence in the attractive Marcellus Shale fairway in the

A p p a l a c h i a n b a s i n o f PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, P e n n s y l v a n i a a n d W e s t Term Extraction.

Virginia, adding 500,000 acres to its holdings.

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E-Readers Will Survive the Onslaught of Tablets (Wired News) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers) Submitted at 3/14/2010 5:14:06 PM

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 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, E-READERS page 80

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E-readers turn the page for bookworms (Business Standard India) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers) Submitted at 3/14/2010 11:44:16 AM

A low price tag always gets our attention. So, when Infibeam.com launched its ereader Pi at nearly half the price of Amazon’s Kindle, it not only made headlines but also drew our interest.

Infibeam Pi Price: Rs 9,999 Infibeam.com, an online retailer in India, has launched a cute little e-reader with a petite sixinch display (800×600 screen resolution), 512MB internal memory, SD card slot and a 3.5mm audio jack. Pi is extremely handy, weighing just 180 grams. And, being less than 10 mm thick, you can easily fit it in a folder.

Still, it will do you good to keep your expectations grounded with the Pi. The e-ink display is quite standard, with only eight greyscales displayable, as opposed to 16 in leading e-readers, and lacks touchscreen functionality. With just 512MB of memory, it is definitely on the sparse side, but you can expand it with a 4GB memory card.

When you turn the page, there is a slight delay and a little flash as the e-ink readjusts itself to the new content. This is an

inherent trait of the e-ink technology. Although it can be a bit disconcerting in the beginning, it is quite easy to get used to.

Pi has eight buttons around the outer edge, all labelled with inarticulate icons, except for the obvious power button. There is no feedback when you press the buttons — a minor annoyance, as we prefer a satisfying click typical of most e-readers. The battery is good for about 8,000 page flips on one charge. One of the few unique features of the Pi is that it comes loaded with Sudoku games. Since it provides support for music, PDF, document and image files, you can also transfer personal data from desktop to the e-reader.

Pi owners have the choice of downloading over 100,000 digital books and content from Infibeam.com, priced at Rs 50 and above. If you’re looking for a cheap, pure-function e-reader, then look no further than Infibeam’s Pi. Pros • Good battery support • Cheaper when compared with other e-readers Cons • Poor display quality • Non-responsive physical buttons

Sony Reader PRS-505 Price: Rs 18,500 We stumbled upon the Sony PRS-505 on eBay and could not resist ordering this six-inch diagonal screen with 600x800 pixel display size, courtesy an acquaintance in Hong Kong. We got it for Rs 18,500 (including shipping). Measuring just 17.5 x 12.2 x 0.8 cm, the Sony Reader resembles a thin paperback book. Although at 250 grams, it’s much heavier.

The controls and menu systems are simple and intuitive (though the directional pad needed some pressure to click). There are various functions, like making bookmarks, picking up where you left off, fast forwarding and searching a collection by author, title, date, etc. To be fair, even the home-bred Pi had these functions.

The device has 256MB of memory (can store about 160 books) and can be expanded up to 8GB, if you use the Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo. And to make sure you get to enjoy as many books as possible, the PRS-505 comes with a lithiumion battery that can last up to 7,500 continuous pages (or up to three weeks of active reading) on a single charge of internal rechargeable battery. However, if you do not shut it down completely, the standby mode

can kill the battery. There is no speaker, so audio playback needs a set of earphones.

Unlike the Kindle, the only way to access content is through an internet hookup to a PC (the Sony Reader lacks wireless capability). We were disappointed with another fact — there was no support for importing RSS feeds. On its part, Sony Reader allows easy access to many open source or free ebooks. You can even go to sites that offer ebooks without any digital rights management.

Adding your favourite content to PRS-505 is as simple as a drag and drop, requiring no additional software. Sony has allied with content partners, including Random House, Simon & Schuster and Harper Collins, among others, to provide digital content.

It’s a good value for money, if you can’t get your hands on the Kindle.

Pros • Simple and sleek design • USB mass storage mode works with all operating systems Cons • Can’t control music while reading • PDF rendering is very small for larger pages

Kindle DX Price: Rs 39,000 Again sourced via eBay, Kindle DX can be shipped for about Rs 23,000. A 9.7-inch diagonal display on the Kindle DX makes it an instant hit with bookworms. It measures 26.4 x 18.3 x 0.96 cm and weighs about 530 grams. The Kindle DX is as thin as a pencil and lighter than an average paperback.

There is a five-way joysticklike controller, allowing you to easily select from menus. The screen automatically rotates from portrait to landscape when you turn the device — perfect for viewing maps, graphs, tables and web pages. Also unique to the new device is the full-zoom capability — essential for technical diagrams in PDFs. It also has an in-built PDF file reader that is perfect for reading personal and professional documents. There’s a Text-toSpeech feature in Kindle DX that works great as long as the author and publisher have approved the function. You can choose between a male and female voice and you can also slow down or speed up the speech.

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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 Combines E-Reader, Netbook • Nook E-Reader Gets Hacked to Run Apps, Browser • 5 Things That Will Make EReaders Better in 2010 • Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again …

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IPad, SchmiPad: 10 E-Readers and Tablets You Can Get Right Now (Wired News) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers)

(that part of it that's not dependent on Flash, anyway), check your e-mail, edit Submitted at 3/15/2010 2:42:21 AM documents, and watch movies.

IPad, SchmiPad: 10 E-Readers But reading e-books is one of and Tablets You Can Get Right the big things we expect the Now iPad will be good for, and with The iPad won't be out for a few its support for EPUB documents weeks, but that doesn't have to and access to Apple's new stop you from getting on the e- iBook store, it will indeed be a book train today. In fact, there competitive e-reader. So why do are a ton of e-book readers and you need to spend $500 or more proto-tablets that you can buy if all you want to do is read enow, and some of them are books? pretty good. Come to think of it, The gadgets in this roundup who even needs an iPad? have more modest ambitions: Yes, we know the iPad is a lot Most of them are really only more than an e-book reader: It good for reading. But they're also lets you browse the web arguably much better for long

bouts of reading, because their reflective, E Ink screens won't tire your eyes the way an LCD like the iPad's will. And, with one or two exceptions, these ereaders are all much less expensive than the iPad. Read on to find out how these e -readers and tablets stack up, from worst to best.

• Manufacturer: Roundup: • Price:$400

Americans More Upbeat About Environmental Quality

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content) can store nearly 3,500 books, although few people will have this many ebooks or PDFs. So, it’s likely that music or images take the left over space.

The Kindle DX can play MP3s through speakers or through the headset jack. You simply copy the MP3 files from your computer to Kindle. We do recommend readers take a look at other sources for ebooks, particularly for classics in the

public domain that are available for free.

A basic web browser (which no other e-reader except the Kindle 2 has) is quite handy (runs on Wi-Fi connections). Though best for simple, text-centric sites, the idea of being able to check email on the go, without having to lug around a laptop is definitely a big plus.

The Kindle DX has a fully functional QWERTY keyboard,

albeit a smaller one. Kindle directly links to over 390,000 books from Amazon’s own catalogue.

Pros • A large screen renders excellent text quality • Speakers and headphone jack for audio Cons • Very expensive

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PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans grew more content over the past year with the overall quality of the environment in the country.

Their "excellent" or "good" ratings now total 46%, up from 39% in March 2009. Despite these shifts, the majority (53%) continue to rate current environmental conditions as only fair or poor.

This trend comes from Gallup's annual Social Series Environment survey, with the AMERICANS page 82

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latest installment conducted March 4-7, 2010. The current ratings are the most positive Gallup has measured since 2002."Public optimism about the environmental outlook surged among independents and Democrats in surveys bracketing the shift in presidential administrations from George W. Bush's to Obama's."

By contrast, Gallup finds no meaningful change in Americans' responses to a separate question asking whether environmental conditions are getting better or getting worse. Forty-one percent believe conditions are improving, the same as last year.

Roughly half (48%) now say they are getting worse, similar to the 51% saying this a year ago.

The public's environmental outlook in the last two surveys - dating to March 2009, just after the inauguration of Barack Obama as president -- is far more optimistic than what Gallup found in the decade prior to his taking office.

Public optimism about the environmental outlook surged among independents and Democrats in surveys bracketing the shift in presidential administrations from George W.

Bush's to Obama's. Republicans' views did not change.

Positive ratings of the current quality of the environment have increased by five to eight points compared to a year ago among all three party groups.

Republicans' perceptions of environmental quality had declined between 2008 and 2009 before rising slightly this year. Democrats' views were flat between 2008 and 2009, while the views of independents have grown slightly more positive each year.

With Contentment Up, Worry Is Down With more Americans today than in 2008 believing the environment is in good shape and improving, it is not surprising to find a decline over the same period in the percentage highly worried about the environment.

Currently, Americans are split roughly into thirds, according to the degree to which they worry about environmental quality: 34% say they worry a great deal, 34% worry a fair amount, and 31% worry only a little or not at all. However, the highly worried group is down from 40% in 2008, and from a high of 43% in 2007.

Overall, Democrats worry most

about the environment, and Republicans least. Independents show the greatest decline in worry since 2008 (down nine points, from 41% to 32%). This compares with three- and fourpoint drops among Republicans and Democrats, respectively.

The percentage of Americans forecasting that the environment will be the most important problem facing the country in future decades has also dipped slightly this year -- from 14% in 2007 and 2008 to 11% today. It remains higher than in the several years prior to 2007. At no time in the past decade have more than a small percentage of Americans cited the environment as the most important problem facing the country today.

Bottom Line Americans are more upbeat about environmental conditions in the U.S. today than they were two years ago. This has happened in two stages. The first was seen a year ago, when increased percentages of Democrats and independents thought the environment was getting better. This year, Gallup finds gains in positive evaluations of current environmental conditions among all three party groups.

Perhaps as a result of both shifts, public worry about the environment is lower today than it was two years ago.

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 Âą4 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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Tested: A Reboot for the Immune System Catherine Price (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:46:53 AM

The ability to reprogram the immune system is one of the most sought-after goals in medicine. Now researchers are closer than ever to pulling it off in patients with Type 1 diabetes, one of whom happens to be our correspondent A sign rests on the windowsill in the office of Jeffrey Bluestone, director of the Immune Tolerance Network and the Diabetes Center at the University of California at San Francisco. Measuring nearly three feet across, it reads "Club Bluestone" in pink and blue neon. It's the sort of artifact you'd expect to find in a bar. But Bluestone is a world-renowned immunobiologist; his father-inlaw had the sign made for him in the late 1980s when TESTED: page 83

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Bluestone was working long hours in his lab at the University of Chicago. As the night wore on and their energy faded, he and his colleagues would turn out the lights, turn on the sign and, propelled by the power of Bruce Springsteen, push forward with their research. "It was our version of partying," he says.

Bluestone has worked in that lab and ones like it for almost 30 years, wrestling with one of the most vexing problems in medicine: how to keep the immune system from attacking the body itself. It's been a challenging three decades.

Immune researchers work on a biological defense system that's comparable to the world's greatest military. This military has millions of potential enemies but no clear leader; instead its members are on constant patrol, a hair trigger away from launching an attack.

It's a recipe for anarchy. Yet the majority of the time, the immune system knows when to hold back. Using processes we still don't fully understand, a healthy person's immune system is able to draw a clear line between the body's own tissues, which it leaves untouched, and invaders, which it identifies and destroys.

The immune system can also be devastatingly destructive. The body's tendency to reject organ transplants, attacking them as if

they were dangerous foreign invaders, is well known. But more prevalent are autoimmune diseases, in which your immune cells attack your own tissues and organs. Left unchecked, these malfunctions can result in one of more than 80 known conditions, including Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis.

According to the Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, conditions like these affect more than 50 million Americans.

Related Articles Insulin Can Now Be Made Cheaply from Flowers Synthetic Skin Delivers Gene Therapies Straight to Body, No Needles Necessary An Implantable Glucose Sensor Could Help Diabetics Stay Healthy Tags Science, Feature, CD3 receptors, diabetes, Frontiers of Medicine, heath, immune system, Jeff Bluestone, March 2010, medicine, T Cells The perfect immune-modulating drug would target only the part of the system causing the problem. As of now, however, most immunosuppressive drugs work by dampening the entire immune system, which leaves the patient susceptible to shortterm problems like infections and long-term afflictions as severe as cancer.

Bluestone, who is now 56, has devoted most of his career to improving on this crude, bruteforce approach. In the early days

of his "club," he spent many of those long nights tweaking an organ-transplant drug called OKT3, which he and other researchers thought might also be useful for autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and Type 1 diabetes. The problem was, the drug had severe side effects, including cases in which it sent recipients' immune systems into a kind of overdrive that could be fatal.

Eventually, though, working in mice, Bluestone and his colleagues succeeded in changing the drug's structure to eliminate these side effects.

Then he began investigating what else the drug could do.

In 1987 he joined forces with Kevan Herold, an endocrinologist and researcher who was then a colleague of Bluestone's at the University of Chicago, and the two began exploring the drug's effects in mice with Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease caused when a class of white blood cells called T cells mistakenly destroys the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. As their research progressed, they were thrilled to find that the drug halted the progression of Type 1 diabetes in the mice. Second, the new version appeared to act like a guided missile, targeting problematic cells in the immune system without handicapping the rest of it. Bluestone and Herold began to think it might

be possible to use it and other, similar drugs as short-term therapies to "reprogram" the immune system, permanently coaxing it back to its original, balanced state. In the world of immunology, this is referred to as immune tolerance. According to Herold, it is the field's most sought-after goal. And now, thanks to a number of breakthroughs in targeted immune therapy, that goal seems closer than it has ever been. Jordan Pober, the director of the Human and Translational Immunology program at Yale University, is openly enthusiastic about the state of the science: "We're in the midst of a revolution in our ability to manipulate the immune system."

By 1995, Bluestone and Herold were eager to move from mouse to man. They wanted to see if the drug could also have a positive effect on Type 1 diabetes in humans. It wouldn't be a total cure, but if the drug could stop the normal course of the disease-which usually gets progressively worse over the course of a person's life as the body finishes killing off the cells that produce insulin-it would be a major breakthrough.

So in 2000, they launched a trial of the modified drug.

That's where I came in.

Jeff Bluestone and Lab Members: Courtesy Jimmy Chen/UCSF Diabetes Center In the winter of 2001, my

senior year of college, strange things started to happen to me. I was insatiably hungry. I was so thirsty that I had dreams about Italian sodas and crept out of bed at night to slurp water from our bathroom faucet. Yet despite my near-constant eating and drinking, I lost 15 pounds. My eyesight became blurry; I was dizzy and tired. One afternoon in February, after eating a plateful of food, I began throwing up, and when I didn't feel better after a day in bed, my roommate insisted I go to the student health center. There, a doctor took one look at my list of symptoms and ordered a blood-glucose test. When my blood-sugar levels came back at more than 400 milligrams per deciliter (normal is between 80 and 100), the diagnosis was immediate: I had Type 1 diabetes.

No one fully understands what triggers Type 1 diabetes-maybe a virus, maybe an environmental toxin. Whatever the cause, the result is life-threatening. Insulin is a hormone that unlocks your cells so they can access the glucose in your blood, which provides them with fuel. Left untreated, you essentially starve, no matter how much you eat.

Until insulin was discovered in 1922, a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence.

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morning, and no diabetes educators were on duty at the student health center where I'd been admitted. So a friend bought me a stack of books on Type 1 diabetes, and I spent the weekend learning as much as I could. I was relieved to learn that Type 1 was no longer terminal but less excited to find out that, unless I rigorously controlled my blood sugars, the disease could destroy my kidneys, cause me to go blind, lead to heart disease and-in addition to a litany of even more complications, including foot amputation-reduce my life expectancy by seven to 10 years.

I also had to correct my own misunderstandings about diabetes. For example, I learned that Type 1, which may affect as many as three million Americans and can be controlled only by multiple daily injections of artificial insulin, differs from the much more prevalent Type 2, which can often be managed with a combination of diet, exercise and oral medications. And how Type 1 diabetes, which most people think is diagnosed just in children (thanks in part to its former name, juvenile-onset diabetes), can occur at any age.

Cell-Bound: In red, the channels along which T cells move in an animal lymph node.

C o u r t e s y M a r c BajĂŠnoff/Jackson Egen/Ronald

N. Germain/NIAID/NIH More challenging was learning to live with the disease. For although artificial insulin keeps me alive, it's not a cure.

Controlling Type 1 is a constant balancing act, requiring me to carefully measure food and insulin doses so that my bloodglucose levels don't go too high and trigger the long-term complications mentioned earlier, which occur when chronic high glucose levels damage blood vessels. Conversely, if my glucose levels fall too low, starving my brain of its only source of energy, it could cause seizures or a coma or even kill me. Making things trickier still, everything from stress to illness to time of day affects glucose levels. Managing diabetes is exhausting and constant, and as your immune system kills off your remaining insulinproducing cells, it becomes even more difficult to control.

I was desperate to go a different route. As soon as I was diagnosed, my mother, a registered nurse, began looking for possible clinical trials and stumbled upon a reference to Herold and Bluestone's work.

And so on a cold February afternoon a week after being diagnosed, my parents and I traveled to the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center to meet with Kevan Herold and learn more about his study. My

father was hesitant-the immune system is not something one usually wants to mess around with-and asked Herold whether he thought the potential benefits of the drug were great enough, compared with its possible side effects, that he'd give it to his own children if they had diabetes. "Yes," said Herold, who is the father of three girls and has Type 1 diabetes himself.

That was it. I signed the liability waivers, did a series of preliminary blood tests, and held my breath as Herold drew a slip of paper to determine whether I'd be in the drug group or the control. Much to my relief, the paper said "drug." (The trial wasn't blind.) Several days later, I began 12 days of daily injections of a mysterious, clear fluid so cold that I could feel it as it entered my veins. (The control group took diagnostic tests every six months, just like the drug group, but they didn't receive an actual placebo.) After the first dose, my blood pressure dropped briefly; soon the skin on my palms began to peel.

Other than that, I saw no external evidence of what the drug was doing. I didn't care.

For the first time since my diagnosis, I felt like I had an opportunity to take back control of my system.

Researchers are always careful not to assume that a drug will act the same in humans as it does in mice, but in this case, it

did. Even though I couldn't feel the drug working, profound changes soon began taking place inside my body's immune system, changes that researchers are still trying to understand. In short, my immune system stopped killing off the cells that make insulin.

Why this happens, Bluestone and Herold are not exactly sure.

The latest theory is that the drug has two important effects in Type 1 diabetes. First, it inhibits the malfunctioning T cells that attack the pancreas, preventing them from killing the rest of the insulin-producing cells. The drug also appears to increase the number of a different population of immune cells called regulatory T cells, which are thought to act like sentinels, patrolling the body and calming down their hyperactive cousins before anything gets out of hand. The theory is that after the drug regimen is finished and the problematic T cells start to recover, the newly beefed-up population of regulatory T cells is better able to hold them in check.

Micro-Machines: The insulinproducing cells that a Type 1 diabetic's immune system kills off. Astrid and Hanns-Frieder Michler/Photo Researchers As I later found out, Bluestone's drug is what is known as an anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody. By binding to CD3 receptors on the surface of the T cells, the drug

changes the way the cells function-and, in a convenient, unexpected twist, it seems to be more active against the T cells that are misbehaving.

I returned to the clinic every few months for follow-up testing, and whereas most people in the control group slowly lost their remaining ability to produce insulin, my level of production didn't just stay steady-it increased. This didn't mean I was cured; then, as now, I pay fastidious attention to my meals, activities and insulin doses. But the fact that I have any ability to make insulin means that my disease is probably easier for me to control than it would have been had I not participated in the trial. In 2002 Herold and Bluestone published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine announcing that one year out, insulin production had been preserved in nine out of the 12 drug recipients, compared with two out of 12 people in the control group. What's more, several other subjects were actually making more insulin than they were when they were diagnosed. The success of antiCD3 represented the first onetime treatment with minimal side effects that had been shown to stop the progression of Type 1 diabetes in humans.

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welcomed the news. "There was a lot of enthusiasm about the findings and their implications," says Teodora Staeva, the director of the Immune Therapies program at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International. Mario Ehlers, deputy director of the clinical-trials group at the Immune Tolerance Network, concurs. "People finally saw that it was actually possible to make a change to the course of the disease without having to use really toxic immunosuppression," he says.

"Sometimes you don't know whether something is going to work until you try it, and then when it finally does, you've got a road map that other people can also use."

Use it they did. In 2005 a different group of researchers, led by the French diabetes researcher Lucienne Chatenoud, published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrating the successful effects of a second modified anti -CD3 drug in a trial involving 80 people with recent-onset Type 1 diabetes. Meanwhile, Herold and Bluestone continued their research. Last summer Herold began a follow-up study including some of the participants in my trial group, and he's currently launching a study to see whether anti-CD3 can actually prevent diabetes in high-risk patients. There are

now two versions of anti-CD3 monoclonal antibodies in Phase III clinical trials (the second-tolast stage) racing toward FDA approval, helped in part by backing from the pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline, and another one in early development. If everything goes smoothly, an anti-CD3 drug could win FDA approval in as little as two years, making it the first approved treatment ever that targets the cause of Type 1 diabetes.

Malfunctioning Cells: Red blood cells and a type of white blood cell called a lymphocyte.

Ideally, lymphocytes attack infected cells, but when they malfunction they are a main component of autoimmune diseases. Eye of Science/Photo Researchers The advance of targeted immune therapies reaches far beyond the treatment of Type 1 diabetes. After all, anti-CD3 monoclonal antibodies might be more like guided missiles than c o n v e n t i o n a l immunosuppressive drugs, but they can still cause collateral damage. Because they target a receptor that's found on all T cells-not just the ones that are going after the pancreas-they can have unwanted side effects, such as reducing people's resistance to opportunistic infections. On the other hand, the fact that anti-CD3 isn't

totally precise means that it can be used for a variety of diseases other than diabetes. Versions of the drug are already being tested for psoriasis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, and they're thought to hold promise for rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis as well. "The number of diseases potentially affected is huge," Herold says.

The anti-CD3 monoclonal antibodies have useful relatives, too-different monoclonal antibodies, each of which binds to a different target and therefore can be used to treat a different disorder. Recently, plenty of excitement has focused on rituximab (the "mab" stands for monoclonal antibodies), a drug that affects the surface of a different class of immune cells-known as B cellsand was originally approved in 1997 for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Rituximab was first tested as a cancer drug, but it has since been approved for rheumatoid arthritis and has shown promise in other kinds of autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis. Moreover, in a study on treatments for a type of autoimmune vasculitis (a rare and serious disease in which the body attacks its own blood vessels), rituximab was shown to be just as good as, if not better than, the typical immunosuppressive drugs used to treat the disease. Like many of these precisely targeted

treatments, it too had far fewer toxic side effects.

Scientists have discovered immune-programming qualities in other drugs as well. For example, tumor necrosis factor antagonists, which act outside the cells to inhibit inflammation, have not only revolutionized the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis but have also been shown to be effective against a number of other diseases. They're currently in trials for conditions ranging from eye disease and organ transplantation to osteoarthritis and sepsis.

"The potential that really good drugs which have been developed for one disease might have such efficacy in other diseases is, I think, a very exciting thing," says Bluestone, who is known for being cautious with his optimism.

Several years after the trial ended, I was asked to share my experience with an audience of people with diabetes at an event sponsored by the University of California at San Francisco. I meant for my story to be inspiring-I'm still making insulin! Look at how great clinical research trials can be!but instead I ended up feeling like a jerk. Because the drug still hasn't been approved, I'm one of just a handful of people in the world who have had access to the treatment. And even if the drug were available, it would probably help only people who

had been recently diagnosed and still had some insulin-producing cells left, which disqualified most of my audience. It was as if I'd walked into a room full of people who had lost their life savings and bragged about how I'd won the lottery.

But although I'm fortunate to have gotten the drug, my diabetes has not been cured. For that to happen, I'd need replacements for the insulinproducing cells that my immune system knocked off. Since there aren't enough cadaver-donor pancreases available to cover the millions of Type 1 diabetes patients in America, these replacements would most likely come from stem cells, those malleable creatures that can morph into nearly any cell in the body. The volume of cells I'd need is quite small-a teaspoon's worth would do-and they could be transplanted via injection in a simple outpatient procedure.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy.

First, if you put new insulinproducing cells into my body, whether from a cadaver or stem cells, they would probably be destroyed by the same immune malfunction that caused me to develop diabetes in the first place. And even if you got past that roadblock, there's another problem, one that arises anytime you try to transplant foreign tissues or cells into the body: TESTED: page 86

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rejection. Unless the cells come from your own body or that of an identical twin, the immune system treats the replacement cells as foreign invaders and attacks them just as it would a donor kidney or liver. That means that any treatment derived from stem cells is likely to require some kind of immune -modulating drug to succeed.

This, not incidentally, is one of the problems Bluestone is trying to solve at the Immune Tolerance Network.

It's been nine years since I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

I've kept in touch with Herold, who is now director of the Autoimmunity Center of Excellence at Yale University, where he also runs the Yale branch of a network of diabetes researchers called TrialNet. When he received funding last summer to follow up with some of the original study participants to see how long the effects of the anti-CD3 drug might last, I eagerly enlisted. The protocol, known as a mixed-meal

tolerance test, was the same thing I'd gone through in the original study. After an overnight fast, I gulped down a glass of Boost nutritional drink, didn't take any insulin, and then lay in bed for four hours with an IV catheter in my arm so that the nurses could draw multiple blood samples to see how much insulin I was producing. The result? I'm still making a measurable amount, which in the normal course of the disease does not happen.

Unfortunately, my resistance is fading. At nine years out, my insulin levels are roughly half what they were two years after the treatment, and I worry that it's just a matter of time before my immune system finishes its misguided job of killing off my insulin-producing cells. My hope is that an anti-CD3 drug will gain FDA approval soon so that I can get a second round of treatment, potentially buying me time until researchers like Bluestone and Herold achieve the dream of every person with

diabetes: a cure.

Bluestone is just as impatient to see an anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody finally come to market.

And although he is reluctant to make assumptions-"Obviously it ain't over till it's over"-he's hopeful that anti-CD3 may soon go into much wider use. "If it does get approved in the next year or two, that would be exciting," he says. "I would finally feel that what we've done would be able to have a real impact on human health."

Catherine Price is a contributing editor at Popular Science who writes about diabetes for A Sweet Life. Her travel book, 101 Places Not To See Before You Die comes out in late June.

Astronomers Want You to Help Spot Dangerous Solar Storms Jeremy Hsu (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)

Related Articles Massive Solar Storms of the Future Could Reap Katrina-Scale Devastation Citizen Scientist May Be First to Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:42:08 AM Only you can tip off scientists Have Found First Interstellar about coronal mass ejections Dust NASA Crowdsources HiSolar storms could wreak havoc Res Mars Mapping as an Online on satellites and power grids, G a m e f o r K i d s T a g s and so scientists have humbly T e c h n o l o g y , J e r e m y H s u , turned to netizens across the coronal mass ejections, solar world to help watch our sun for flares, solar radiation, solar possible signs of such storms. storms, space, stars, sun Space Anyone who can spare some weather experts found that a t i m e f r o m Y o u T u b e a n d solar storm similar to the ones Facebook also gets to peer at that struck in 1921 and 1859 nifty 3-D images of the sun, could leave millions without according to BBC. electricity, running water or The plea for help comes from phone service, based on a t h e R o y a l O b s e r v a t o r y i n FEMA simulation conducted Greenwich, London, which has this past month. set up a Solar Stormwatch Another crowd-sourcing effort website for would-be Earth led to a Canadian citizen's saviors. The website contains possible discovery of the first imagery collected by two NASA interstellar dust grains. So even spacecraft that together create if you have just an hour or two, "stereo" 3-D images of the sun's try your hand at a bit of crowdcoronal mass ejections. sourcing in the name of Earth A quick tutorial teaches defense. The Solar Stormwatch netizens what to look in the site is here. image overload, so that they can [via BBC] tip off scientists about possible solar storms forming.

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Mercedes' Weatherized Convertible Outwits the Four Seasons Seth Fletcher (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:26:36 AM

The first all-weather convertible Unless you live in, oh, Palm Springs, convertibles are better in concept than reality. With the top on, a pleasure machine can become a cramped, compromised ride. And even when the weather is perfect, backseat passengers can expect a case of windburn. But with the 2011 E-class Cabriolet-the fourth and final member of the redesigned E line-Mercedes is betting that gadgetry can beat the elements. It's probably too much to claim, as the company does, that it's perfect for "four seasons, four people." But the convertible E should at least help you pretend that summer lasts a little longer.

Head and neck heaters

In the front seats, the optional Airscarf system blows warm air from a heating unit lower in the seat through adjustable vents in the head restraints.

Wind deflector At speeds of up to 100 mph, push a button on the car's center console, and the new Aircap wind deflector, which comes standard, rises as high as 2.5 inches above the top of the

windshield, pushing airflow high enough above the car that it leaves backseat passengers undisturbed.

Sound-dampened soft top The inch-thick roof is insulated with three layers of polyester weave, padding and mesh for sound dampening and warmth.

Press a concealed button on the center armrest at up to 25 mph, and the roof will open or close

in less than 20 seconds.

Powertrain The E350 Cabriolet is powered by a 268-horsepower V6, which is mated to a seven-speed automatic transmission; the pricier E550 Cabriolet gets a 382-horsepower V8. Both have a top speed of 130 mph, and the E550 gets there quicker, going from 0 to 60 in 5.1 seconds.

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Star Investor Vinod Khosla Responds info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University, estimates that to store a billion Submitted at 3/14/2010 11:01:30 PM tons of carbon underground I wrote a mildly antagonistic every year, the total inflow of profile of star investor Vinod CO2 [into the ground] would be Khosla last week as part of our roughly equal to the total "Green Kingpins" series. Mr. outflow of oil and gas today) Khosla responded with a well- H o w e v e r , C a l e r a i s n o t thought out and reasonable traditional CCS; rather it rebuttal, which we print here in c o n v e r t s C O 2 i n t o u s e f u l its entirety. byproducts (such as cement). In To review the issues you raised: fact, coal production coupled Mr. Khosla is somewhat of a with the Calera process will contrarian and can always be produce less carbon emissions counted on to say something (on a life-cycle basis) than solar that doesn't agree with the PV. So I am not inconsistent conventional wisdom. Actually with myself. sometimes he says things that For example, last week at the don't agree with things he's said. Wall St. Journal's ECO:nomics Absolutely - especially the event, Khosla said, "Solar and l a t t e r l i n e . I ' v e a l w a y s wind are not viable without maintained that all forecasts are storage." Yet that hasn't stopped wrong - including mine, as I him from investing in wind s t a t e d a t t h e A R P A - E company, Nordic Windpower conference last week. The and solar company Stion... ability to learn from mistakes is So while he's investing in solar an important one. That being he has said that photovoltaics said, I think the examples you are "not scalable and not cite do not meet the threshold of sustainable without subsidies." disagreeing with myself. and "rich San Franciscans and Last year Khosla said, "I do not Germans putting PV on their believe carbon sequestration can roofs only delays the problem work economically." This year and diverts money from where he said "...clean coal will it's needed." Solar PV, wind become economic." and biofuels are "little markets," I've repeatedly stated that according to Mr. Khosla's traditional CCS is not a viable audacious worldview. option (as currently imagined) While making investments in due to problems with scaling wind, he has said that there's and geology and I stand by that little upside for innovation in s t a t e m e n t ; ( L y n n O r r , a wind, the Betz limit is being petroleum engineer who directs approached, and the available

good sites are declining. And without storage, they don't provide spinning reserve.

Differentiating between climate change solutions and good investments is key, and I'd like to commend you for noting the difference; there are many, many solutions in the "green" space that will make a good return, but will not move the needle on carbon emissions. We don't reject the idea that a market exists for niche ideas but they are not "climate change solutions" (though they may be good investments). I believe that both PV and Wind can both scale to meet 5-10% of the world's energy needs; given the trillions of dollars likely to be invested in power capex over the next 30 years, this is a very substantial market, but in the scale of the power system, these are niches. However, without a significant decline in the cost of storage (and we have investments working on this!), the intermittency and unreliability of wind and PV prevents them from meeting the needs of base-load power generation. We view this "problem" as one of the larger "opportunities" in renewable power. And a solution will make solar and wind more pragmatic.

Prius hybrids driven by Bay Area liberal socialists? Not a solution to the climate or energy problem, according to Khosla. Better to take that

money and paint your roof white to improve the earth's albedo. And they certainly don't meet the Chindia test. To meet the Chindia test they have to compete with the $2,500 Tata Nano. "Hybrids are an inefficient carbon solution."

McKinsey conduced study ( Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost) on the cost of carbon reduction of a multitude of approaches; they determined that car hybridization was among the most-expensive way to carbon abatement.

T. Boone Pickens' plan for LNG and wind? "A dead-end street."

I said natural gas, not wind in cars is a "dead-end street."

Since then T Boone has changed to gas in fleet vehicles and trucks. That I think can work and is already working in New Delhi.

New battery technology for EVs? It's unlikely that Li-ion or Ni mH chemistries will yield significant breakthroughs according to The Vinod. That has not stopped him from investing in battery firms Sakti2 and Seeo.

Today's parallel hybrids are not a cost-effective solution towards climate change - that is a fairly indisputable point. There will be 700M - 1B cars sold over the next 15 years worldwide. Is the average Chinese or Indian consumer really going to pay

$25K for a Prius instead of $2,500 for a Tata Nano? With regards to battery storage, I think I've noted the limitations in traditional battery chemistries and manufacturing processes; our investments are either utilizing new higher-risk, higher reward approaches with both chemistries (Seeo) and manufacturing process/design (Sakti3). Storage is a key enabling technology for renewable power and grid regulation / stabilization in general, and ignoring it would be nonsensical. I do not think that traditional bulk, flammable lithium ion batteries will be economic. That's the problem Seeo and Sakti 3 are trying to solve. We're still out there looking for "Six Sigma" batteries with a 90% probability of failure.

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."

I hardly think that calling efficiency "valuable" is the same as equating it to a bad thing, as you suggest. Efficiency is absolutely a factor in combating climate change but it is not a singular solution. Given a 3.1% world GDP growth rate, STAR page 89

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McKinsey has estimated that the carbon efficiency of the world GDP needs to grow at about 5.6% per year to meet their recommended set of global carbon reduction targets; essentially a 10X improvement in carbon productivity.

Efficiency will contribute to this and we've backed this belief with investments in the area), but it will not do-so singlehandedly. The world, despite large efficiency improvements, will consume many times more energy by 2050.

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 a biotech R&D firm."

One of our biofuel companies rejected the deal Shell offered before they went to Codexis; it was a bad deal.

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.

I don't believe PV and wind are a waste of time; as explained earlier, I'm confident they will make good investments and have a part to play in combating climate change and building successful companies. Even with the successful solar and wind companies, the scale will not be a large enough dent in power generation carbon emissions to be material. At a high level, what I do believe is well summarized in this quote (from Gordon Haff) "It's not that incremental changes aren't

desirable. They are. Indeed, a lot of power efficiency work in a sort of whack-a-mole game of accumulating small wins.

However, from a macro and policy perspective, big wins don't come from the niches.

They come from making substantial impacts on substantial use cases." I believe they come from Black Swans.

Hence, my thesis around Black Swan solutions to the carbon problem. We're in a crisis, and there is an opportunity to reinvent our energy infrastructure; it would be a folly to waste it. *** Vinod Khosla Founder, Khosla Ventures An entrepreneur, investor, and tech visionary, Vinod Khosla is a pioneer of the venture capital industry and founder of Khosla Ventures. Mr Khosla was a cofounder of Daisy systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. During his tenure at Sun Microsystems, Vinod Khosla worked closely with board member John Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). After several years of closely working with the team, he switched sides and joined KPCB, where he continues to be a general partner of KPCB funds through KP X.

While at KPCB, he and other partners at the firm took over on the Intel's monopoly with Nexgen/AMD (the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel, sold to AMD for 28% of AMD).

Thereafter, Mr. Khosla helped incubate the idea and business plan for Juniper to successfully take on Cisco's dominance of the router market. In addition, while at KPCB, he was also involved in the formulation of the the very early advertising based search strategy for Excite, and from there also helped to transform the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7B), and many other ventures. During his years at KPCB, Mr. Khosla was a key team member in creating value, having fun, succeeding, and driving impact in partnerships with entrepreneurs and the partners at the firm.

In 2004, driven by the need for flexibility and a desire to be more experimental, to fund sometimes imprudent "science experiments", and to take on both "for profit" and for "social impact" ventures, he formed Khosla Ventures. Khosla Ventures focuses on both traditional venture capital technology investments and clean technology ventures.

Aside from spearheading Khosla Ventures, one of Mr.

Khosla's greatest passions is being a mentor to entrepreneurs, assisting entrepreneurs and helping them build technology based businesses. In addition, Mr. Khosla is a charter member of TiE, a not-for-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals founded in 1992 that now has more than forty chapters in nine countries. He is also a Founding Board member of the Indian School of Business. His current passion is Social Entrepreneurship with a special emphasis on Microfinance as a poverty alleviation tool. He is a supporter of many microfinance organizations in India and Africa. Mr. Khosla is also passionate about alternative energy, petroleum independence, and a pragmatic approach the environment.

Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, a Master's in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He can be r e a c h e d a t vk@khoslaventures.com.

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Why Applied Materials Should Curb its Solar Plans info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

technical woes that may not be easy to fix. (The crystalline amorphous debate will be one of Submitted at 3/15/2010 4:29:43 AM the topics at the Solar Summit In the past few weeks we've 2010 taking place later this heard speculation and rumors m o n t h a n d s p o n s o r e d b y that Applied Materials may try G r e e n t e c h M e d i a . ) to to scale back or even sell its Last year, prices for crystalline group that makes equipment for silicon solar panels plummeted amorphous silicon solar panels. and thin film king First Solar T o m L a c e y , t h e g e n e r a l continued to drop its costs. As a m a n a g e r o f t h e S u n F a b result, amorphous silicon amorphous equipment line, and became more expensive relative other SunFab execs have also to other solar panels. recently resigned from the "Few a-Si manufacturers are company. currently in a position to Applied declined to comment compete with the incumbent on the rumors, confirmed heavyweights," wrote GTM L a c e y ' s r e s i g n a t i o n , b u t Research analyst Shyam Mehta emphasized that the company e a r l i e r t h i s y e a r . W h i l e will invest more into the amorphous will likely become amorphous market. more competitive in two to three "We are fully committed," said years, it's in a dip now, he noted.

John Antone, corporate vice But even within the amorphous president of marketing in the w o r l d , A p p l i e d ' s S u n F a b energy and environmental equipment -- essentially a solutions group at Applied. "We factory in a box -- is somewhat believe that Applied's A-Si is costly, said sources in the solar world class." industry. Mehta estimated that There you have it: Applied says SunFab equipment can cost up it's in. But the debate raises an to 30 percent more than standard interesting question. equipment.

Why not get out?

Meanwhile, Applied has begun While Applied is currently to lag competitors like Oerlikon experiencing a growth spurt for in advancing its technology. its equipment for crystalline O e r l i k o n h a s b e e n m o r e s i l i c o n s o l a r p a n e l s , t h e aggressive in promoting higher company's amorphous business e f f i c i e n c y a m o r p h o u s suffers from economic and technologies like micromorph

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and tandem-junction technology. Making these panels involves adding an additional layer of silicon that boosts efficiency to 9 percent, and more advances are expected.

In the higher efficiency amorphous market, five of the top ten vendors are Oerlikon customers, said Mehta. Only one is an Applied customer. But in garden variety single-junction amorphous silicon, Applied lags, too. Oerlikon has four of the top ten vendors. Applied has two, and they rank seventh and ninth. Antone said that Applied expects its efficiency for tandem junction to rise to 9 or 10 percent and for single junction to rise to 7 to 8 percent, which could boost market share.

Amorphous has also gained something of an amorphous persona in the company. In February 2009, CEO Mike Splinter said that Applied did not expect new orders for solar equipment for a few quarters, maybe even until 2010. The company also imposed work shut-downs and furloughs.

Last April, an Applied customer cut an order for thin film equipment from $1.9 billion to $250 million.

This past November, Applied said it would cut about 10 to 12

percent of its workforce, or 1,300 to 1,500 positions, over the next 18 months. For the fiscal year 2009, which ended in October 2009, the Energy and Environmental Services group reported a $242 million operating loss. It was the only one of Applied's four groups to lose money. The year before, it lost $183 million and again was the only one in the red.

By contrast, Applied seems determined to increase its crystalline solar business. The company opened a solar technology center in China last year and moved company CTO Mark Pinto to China. In November 2009, it bought Advent Solar, which specializes in crystalline silicon equipment.

Interestingly, Applied raised its forecast for the current fiscal year in its financial release on February 17.

"We are raising our full-year revenue target to reflect higher anticipated demand in our semiconductor, LCD display and crystalline silicon solar businesses," Splinter said in a prepared statement.

Note the lack of comments on amorphous silicon in there.

Meanwhile, Applied Ventures and other groups within the company have begun to concentrate more on energy

storage and solid state lighting.

A retreat from amorphous would obviously be embarrassing for the company.

Applied got into solar in 2006 through amorphous silicon. It has also helped companies like Masdar PV and Signet Solar get into solar by providing them SunFab equipment and knowhow. Some on Wall Street would no doubt demand that Splinter endure a public shaming.

But realistically, the furor would die down soon enough.

Applied would likely find buyers. It could also retain parts and improve them. This wouldn't be the first time someone in semiconductor equipment backed away from a multimillion dollar bet. Anyone remember Intel's foray into Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography?

We asked a major solar executive at a company that makes both crystalline and amorphous solar panels if he had heard if Applied had any plans afoot to get out of amorphous. No, he said.

"But they should," he quickly added.

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