Liberty Newspost Mar-16-10 Edition

E-reader News Edition

15/03/10 - 16/03/10

http://www.LibertyNewspost.com

Armey says “unreliable” Republicans are Tea Partiers’ only hope David Morgan (Front Row Washington)

he’s talking about. His nonprofit group, FreedomWorks, has been busy organizing, training and Submitted at 3/15/2010 2:23:37 PM facilitating Tea Party rallies Dick Armey says the Tea Party since the movement surfaced movement is willing to back early last year.

Republicans for office, but only Some suspect FreedomWorks if they agree to reform their of trying to co-opt Tea Partiers sinful ways when it comes to for Republicans. But Armey fiscal dangers like the budget insists his only objective is to deficit and the federal debt. push a conservative agenda In fact, he predicts that Tea aimed at maximizing liberty and Partiers and their conservative minimizing government control. allies will be around for a long “I call it small government, time to make sure Republicans grass-roots activism. The Tea who get into office avoid the Party activists are a part of it, perils of backsliding on the road FreedomWorks is is part of it. to fiscal purity.

FreedomWorks is the longest “If we’ve got any hope at all, we s t a n d i n g m o s t a c t i v e must put it, as unreliable as they o r g a n i z a t i o n w i t h i n t h i s are, with the Republicans and movement,” he said. “Make no try to rehabilitate them, reform mistake about it. These are not them … and manage their ‘kookie’ birds. Right now the behavior,” the former House greatest player, the big tent on Republican majority leader told the political scene in America, is a National Press Club luncheon. called the Tea Party movement.”

Armey is likely to know what But Tea Partiers realize that

America’s two-party system has a natural immunity against third parties, Armey said. So they must choose the lesser of two evils.

The Democrats? “The Democratic Party has pretty

Video: Toyota casts doubt on runaway Prius incident (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

Toyota says its own tests found the car's accelerator pedal and

backup safety system were working correctly

much abandoned all the things that they cherish,” Army said in remarks that sometimes made him sound like the Tea Party’s national spokesman.

Republicans have been pretty bad of late themselves in terms of fiscal austerity. The budget deficit ballooned under George W. Bush. Then they bailed out Wall Street.

As a result, Republicans cannot credibly offer voters a second Contract with America, Armey said, referring to the conservative manifesto that helped the party capture Congress in 1994. So the Tea Partiers and other conservative grass-roots activists will offer both Republicans and Democrats the chance to sign onto a Contract from America, to be unveiled on tax day, April 15.

“We think they’ve got the ability to stand on their legs and

accept the contract, while they don’t have the ability to stand on legs and offer a contract,” Armey said.

And if Republicans manage to win back control of the House, or even the Senate, in November? Will Tea Partiers thank their stars and go home?

No way, says Armey.

“This wave is not likely to ebb.” he said. “Now they have the Internet with which to stay in touch with one another and do what I think of as something akin to the National Guard.

They will have their activism at the ready.”

Click here for more political coverage from Reuters Photo credits: Reuters/Larry Downing (Dick Armey); Reuters/Joshua Lott (Tea Party protesters)

2

Top News/ Popular News/ Business/

E-reader News Edition

Rielle’s reality on the Johnny affair Tabassum Zakaria (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 3/15/2010 12:21:32 PM

Her belly button is showing.

And that’s not all that’s revealed

by Rielle Hunter in a GQ interview.

She’s the other woman who had the child that former presidential candidate John Edwards admitted fathering. That was of course after his former aide, Andrew Young, claimed to be the father to protect Edwards and then wrote a tell-all book about the cover-up. Edwards and his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, have since separated.

The April issue of GQ points out that all those players in the Edwards soap opera have had their public say except for the woman at the center of the storm… until now.

One rumor denied: “I am not engaged.”

Reaction to John and Elizabeth separating: “Shocking.”

She calls Edwards “Johnny” throughout the lengthy piece and declares: “I love Johnny and

I love my daughter more than anything in the world.”

One of the photos decorating the GQ spread is of Hunter in a men’s-style shirt bare-legged on a bed. CNN has raw video of the photo shoot, courtesy of the magazine.

The Daily Beast describes a sex video allegedly of the couple based on accounts from multiple people who have viewed it.

For those who wonder how politician after politician ends up in a sex scandal (do they learn nothing from their predecessors?) it’s apparently not because they’re clueless.

The GQ interview shows that Edwards was actually completely aware that an affair could hurt his chances for the White House.

On their first “extraordinary night” together Hunter says that Edwards told her: “Falling in love with you could really f–k up my plans for becoming President.”

But he did it anyway.

Hunter says she’s living in a rental and Edwards is not the

landlord. But John and Elizabeth Edwards bought a house in Charlotte that they apparently thought would be a good place for Hunter’s daughter, Quinn, to live in, she says. “They wanted to rent it to us, and I couldn’t afford it. We do not live in the house, nor do we have any plans to move into it.”

And the trials and tribulations of being a mistress are unveiled. “Being a mistress was not easy for me. It was a huge learning experience,” Hunter

says, insisting that she did not target Edwards.

“If Johnny was working at a gas station, I would still be in love with him,” she says.

“My stint as a mistress ended July 2008. And then our relationship evolved into something different,” Hunter says referring to when the National Enquirer got wind of Edwards visiting her and their child at a hotel.

When John and Elizabeth Edwards renewed their wedding vows, John knew Hunter was pregnant, she says.

And if anyone has ever wondered why the other woman would believe a man that has lied to his wife, here’s a clue: Hunter insists that despite Johnny lying to his wife, family and country, “He doesn’t lie to me. He discloses everything to me.”

Photo credit: Reuters/Lee Celano (Edwards withdrawing from the presidential race Jan. 30, 2008)

20 beautiful minimalist WordPress themes (Holy Kaw!)

simple, stupid)! WordPress is the perfect platform for creating a simple look without getting For a crisp, modern, and bogged down in the details. sophisticated website design, Here are twenty beautiful illustrate that point. See a few it’s best to K.I.S.S. (keep it minimalist WordPress themes to Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:58:07 AM

below: See all twenty at Six Revisions.

More on web design.

Permalink| Leave a comment »

Options Update: Alcoa Volatility Near 22-Month Lows Paul Foster (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/16/2010 8:30:00 AM

Filed under: Caterpillar (CAT), Citigroup Inc. (C), Alcoa Inc (AA), Boston Scientific (BSX), Options Alcoa ( AA) closed at $13.51.

AA is expected to report Q1 EPS in early April. April put option implied volatility is at 42, July is at 41, and October is at 43; below its 26-week average 46, according to Track Data, suggesting decreasing price movement.

Citigroup ( C) closed at $3.89.

C overall option implied volatility of 46 is below its 26week average of 53, according to Track Data, suggesting decreasing price movement.

Three stocks with IV rise on March 15; Boston Scientific ( BSX) +18%, Bidu ( BIDU) +4%, Caterpillar ( CAT) +2% according to IVolatility.

Options Update is by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

Options Update: Alcoa Volatility Near 22-Month Lows originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink| Email this| Comments

World/

E-reader News Edition

3

Utah bill reduces women to incubators | Melissa McEwan Melissa McEwan (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:35:48 AM

It's already hard to get an abortion in Utah. Now a new bill opens the door to prosecuting women who 'intentionally' miscarry Last week, Utah governor Gary Herbert signed into law Utah HB 462, known ignominiously as "the miscarriage bill". It was a reworked version of the original bill, introduced by Republican State Representative Carl D Wimmer, adjusted to address criticisms that the initial language "could have got women sent away for lifelong prison terms for falling down stairs or staying in an abusive relationship". The revised version "designates the 'intentional or knowing' miscarriage as criminal homicide" and "stipulates that a woman can be charged with homicide for 'the death of her unborn child', unless the death qualifies as legal abortion".

Thus are the women of Utah left with a new law that criminalises illegal abortion in a state that increasingly discourages legal abortions.

Utah already requires parental notification and consent for minors seeking abortions, mandates a 24-hour waiting period to terminate a pregnancy,

subjects women seeking abortions to state-directed counselling which overtly discourages abortion, and allows public funding for terminations only in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality, or threat to the women's life or physical health. (Don't think you can get away with claiming your psychological health is at risk, ladies! Everyone knows that women would just lie about that to get an abortion because there's nothing conceivably traumatising about being forced to carry a pregnancy you don't want to term.)

As of 2005, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 93% of Utah counties had no abortion provider, leaving 25% of women in the state to travel at least 50 miles, and 8% to travel more than 100 miles, to get an abortion. There were six abortion providers in the whole of the state in 2005, and currently the state has only one licensed abortion clinic.

Utah has become, like many other states, a frontline in the war against legal abortion. Yes, Roe is still in place, but antiabortion activists are battling to render it an impotent and largely symbolic statute, hollowed out by state legislation that chips away at abortion rights with "partial-birth abortion bans" and "parental consent laws" and

mandatory (ostensible) disincentives like "look at your foetus on an ultrasound".

The Democrats, and the leftwing activists who try to use the spectre of a world without Roe to coerce progressive feminists into line during every election, tend to regard legal abortion like an on-off switch, but it doesn't work that way.

Legal abortion is only worth as much as the number of women who have reasonable and affordable and unencumbered access to it, and that number is dwindling: the National Abortion Federation reports that 88% of counties in the US have no identifiable abortion provider – a figure that rises to 97% in non-metropolitan areas.

That's not merely an inconvenience – between travel expenses and time off work, especially when a 24-hour waiting period necessitates at least two days of one's time, the cost of securing an abortion can become an undue burden. It can put legal abortion out of a woman's reach.

That's what state legislatures like Utah's are hoping. And because even the most publicly mendacious anti-choice activists know that even criminalising abortion doesn't stop women from getting them, they know that merely restricting access to legal abortion isn't enough – a

woman who doesn't want to be pregnant will find a way to not be pregnant.

Thus is their current strategy is to make legal abortion as inaccessible as possible and criminalise everything else. An abortion performed by someone other than a doctor is ergo illegal. An abortion performed on a minor without parental consent, or on an adult without state-mandated counselling and a 24-hour waiting period, is ergo illegal. An abortion late in the pregnancy is ergo illegal.

Inducing a miscarriage is ergo illegal. Terminating a pregnancy by any other method than the one which has been most ruthlessly restricted – via piecemeal legislation and the defunding of clinics and the unfettered terrorising of abortion providers– is illegal.

In Utah, women still have a technical legal right to abortion, but very little means to exercise that right.

And now, in pursuit of ensuring that women's right to abortion is as limited as possible, the state has opened the door to prosecuting women who miscarry after having a drink of caffeinated coffee or a beer or a cigarette, or take a vigorous walk, or miss a prenatal care appointment, or shoot up heroin, or go to spinning class, or any one of a number of things that

pregnant women do every day, good and bad, during pregnancies that come to term, if there's someone who will testify she did it to miscarry; she was trying to miscarry; she told me.

In pursuit of ensuring that women's right to abortion is as limited, the state has conferred personhood on foetuses, and reduced women to incubators.

And watch out if the machinery breaks.

The architects of this legislation insist it was not designed to punish women, but to protect the unborn. Somehow I don't find that comforting, coming from the same lot who won't properly fund childhood education or support universal healthcare. Or any other legislation that would make a material difference in the lives of the born.

• Abortion • Women • United States Melissa McEwan guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

4

World/ Tech/ Popular News/

E-reader News Edition

Elderly 'will hoard cash' if cheques are abolished (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

capable of managing their own affairs to be dependent on others."

Ms Vass said the charity accepted the need to manage the Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:42:28 AM Published: 1:42PM GMT 16 decline of cheques, but said Mar 2010 they had asked for alternatives Comments 1| Comment on this to be introduced before a target article date for the end of the cheque Consumer groups urged banks was set. to ensure there are workable She said: "But so far we haven't alternatives in place before yet seen specific, clear, fleshed cheques were phased out. out alternatives we can test Charities warned that older with older people to see if they people would be h i t are workable." She added that particularly hard by the Payment the charity was concerned the Council's plans to end the use of a l t e r n a t i v e s w o u l d h a v e cheques by 2018. "minimal functionality" and Appearing before the Treasury be run with "minimal cost to the Select Committee, Jane Vass, of banks".

Age Concern and Help the "We are concerned that a lot of Aged, warned that the move the problems are being drawn c o u l d m a k e o l d e r p e o p l e underground," she said. vulnerable as they may resort Teresa Perchard, policy director to keeping large amounts of of Citizens Advice, said older cash in their home or giving people were not the only their debit card and pin to group that relied on cheques, someone they did not know that saying they were also used by well. people who needed to make She said: "Older people are the s m a l l p a y m e n t s f o r t h e i r h i g h e s t u s e r s o f c h e q u e s . children, such as for Brownies Twenty-one per cent of people or school trips. She added that say moving away from cheques there were between one million will be a major problem for and two million people who them."

She added: "It will did not have bank accounts that force older people who are had transactional facilities.

Ms Perchard also challenged the idea that cheques could be completely phased out, pointing out that despite efforts by the Government to have all benefits paid electronically, 340,000 people still receive their money by cheque each week.

She said: "That is why the idea that cheques are in terminal decline needs to be looked at as a question. There are still going to be people who need some kind of paper model to make and receive payments that is more secure than cash."

The committee also heard from Louise Richards, of the Institute of Fund-raising, who said small charities and hospices received more than 70pc of their donations through cheques.

Geoff Holland, chief executive of the British Cheque and Credit Association, added that cheques were still "by far the most convenient and cost effective way of paying bills" for small businesses. He added that the alternatives were often more expensive for small firms, even though they cost the banks less.

John McFall, the chairman of the committee, said it was "beyond belief" that cheques

were in terminal decline, adding that it was really a "fudged, managed decline" on the part of the Payments Council and the industry.

He said cheques were used to make payments worth £1.4 trillion in 2008, and were still the second largest payment type behind automated credits.

He also accused the Payments Council of failing to correctly carry out its cost analysis of phasing out cheques, which showed the move would save businesses £750 million and banks £200 million, as it had looked only at the benefits and not at the costs to consumers.

But Paul Smee, chief executive of the Payments Council, defended the decision to phase out cheques, saying that, by setting a target date, the council was encouraging innovation.

He said: "We have said that alternatives to cheques must be available and actually being used before the end of the cheque."

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

10 impressive and creative resumes (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:39:00 AM

These individuals certainly

know how to set themselves apart from the competition!

Here are ten incredibly creative resumes. See a few below:

See all ten at Oddee.

Looking for a job? We can help.

Permalink| Leave a comment »

Tech finds its place at SXSWi (roundup) (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:00:00 AM

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

Select type of offense: Offensive: Sexually explicit or offensive language Spam: Advertisements or commercial links Disruptive posting: Flaming or offending other users Illegal activities: Promote cracked software, or other illegal content Comments(optional): Report Cancel Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

World/ Tech/

E-reader News Edition

Private school parents 'made to feel guilty' (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

stereotypical views of feepaying schools were created by media images of "posh" young pupils in top hats, even though hundreds of schools Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:17:42 AM

By Graeme Paton, Education charge only a few thousand Editor pounds a year.

Published: 1:17PM GMT 16 Heads suggested that many Mar 2010 parents objected to paying for Many mothers and fathers are private education, despite put under “moral pressure” to spending money to buy good snub fee-paying schools by houses in the catchment areas of wealthy neighbours who choose top state comprehensives. local comprehensives despite Mr Grant, head of St Albans driving BMWs and living in £3 School, Hertfordshire, said: “It million homes, it was claimed. irritates me that there are Andrew Grant, chairman of the people living in my own city in Headmasters’ a n d £3m houses, driving BMW 7Headmistresses’ Conference, series, taking three or four w h i c h r e p r e s e n t s 2 5 0 t o p holidays a year and sending schools, accused some affluent their children to the local families of taking the “moral comprehensive, which is really, high ground” when it came to really good because it draws on independent education. that particular catchment The comments come amid [area], and feeling that they claims of widespread bias have the moral high ground. against private schools.

“Why aren’t they living in a Speaking at the Independent council flat and driving a S c h o o l s C o u n c i l a n n u a l Trabant or whatever is the conference, heads said the latest equivalent? Why do they Government was fuelling fears feel guilty? b y p r o m o t i n g p o s i t i v e “Why is there is a moral discrimination in university p r e s s u r e n o t t o u s e y o u r admissions. disposable income for the And it was claimed that education of their children but to

use it quite happily in other ways?

“Why is independent education singled out for this kind of treatment?”

Speaking at the conference in central London, Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas, ISC chairman, insisted that independent schools educated a broad range of children and handed out a large number of free places.

“We have an incredibly diverse range of schools in the independent sector, and what we are saying is it's wrong to characterise us as some sort of posh elite, that's just not born out by the facts," she said.

John Tranmer, chairman of the Independent Association of Prep Schools, and head of the Froebelian School in Leeds, said: “My own school charges fees of less than £6,000-ayear.

“Some of us get tired every time there's an article about private schools, particularly one that seems to be alleging some sort of privilege or advance from that, photographs of boys in curious 19th century attire and schools which look like Oxbridge colleges appear.

“They are not typical. They are not typical of the independent sector.”

The comments came as the ISC unveiled a new "manifesto" for the sector ahead of the general election.

The document – setting out 10 key demands – accuses the Government of undermining the independence of private schools and failing to tackle many of the problems present in the education system in 1997.

It called for a shake-up of rules governing university admissions amid fears that institutions are being encouraged to favour working-class students from poor-performing state schools.

The ISC said the Government should “cease pursuing policies that treat attendance at independent schools as a proxy for undeserved educational or social privilege that requires positive discrimination”.

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

Body surfing (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:15:00 AM

Twitter launches @Anywhere platform, PayPal lets you send

mobile payments by bumping 3 minutes 3 seconds Term Extraction. your phone with someone else's, March 16, 2010 7:15 AM PDT and your arm can transmit Five Filters featured article: broadband data at some pretty Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: impressive speeds.

PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS,

5

UK Lords Pass Digital Economy Bill, Now Look To Rush It Through Commons Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 3/16/2010 3:45:08 AM

As was widely predicted, it looks like the UK Lords have passed the controversial Digital Economy Bill, a piece of legislation written by the entertainment industry against consumer interests, to try to prop up an obsolete business model. Now they're planning to rush it through the Commons with little debate or chance to stop an incredibly dangerous bill -- unless people start making some noise about how this bill is being rushed through, and the lack of any real public consultation or debate.

Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Twitter CEO unveils '@Anywhere' platform Caroline McCarthy (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 12:41:00 PM

The company's big announcement at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival was its new way to integrate Twitter data into partner sites.

Originally posted at The Social

6

World/ Tech/ Politics/

E-reader News Edition

Police reveal Britain's new 'Most Wanted' criminals (Top stories from Times Online)

manslaughter. Bradshaw, who has tattoos of "Charlie" and "love" on his arms, disappeared Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:57:31 AM while on a work project. He is Police have released the also known as Laurence Loft, identities of six new 'Most George Welch, David Flett and Wanted' British criminals who Charlie Harrison. are believed to be hiding in the :: Brian Waite, 39, of Leeds, Dutch city of Amsterdam. who took part in a £25,000 cash T h e m e n a r e w a n t e d i n van robbery and was jailed for c o n n e c t i o n w i t h c r i m e s 11 years for robbery, arson and committed in Britain including handling stolen goods. He is 5ft d r u g s m u g g l i n g , s e l l i n g 11in robber and of medium weapons, robbery, manslaughter build with green eyes and has and rape. been on the run since 2006. He Crimestoppers are working is also known as Michael Birch with the Serious Organised and Anthony Waite. He escaped Crime Agency (SOCA) and from prison :: Dion Lee, 33, of Netherlands Law Enforcement Preston, is wanted by police in on ‘Operation Return’ in the Lancashire over claims that he belief that Amsterdam has smuggled class A drugs, guns become a favourite hiding place and ammunition. He is Afrofor British criminals.

Caribbean, 5ft 10in, with a 1in The new campaign follows scar in his right eyebrow.

‘Operation Captura’ which :: Edward Morton, 36, of Leeds, targeted criminals hiding on the is suspected of being a key "Costa del Crime" of southern member of an organised crime Spain and resulted in 20 arrests. gang which smuggles cocaine The wanted men are: and amphetamines into Britain. :: Brian Bradshaw, 67, of He is 5ft 9in and of medium Surrey, who absconded from build with a scar on his chin. prison while serving an eight- :: James Muldoon, 30, of and-a-half-year jail term for Liverpool, was convicted of

stealing goods worth £41,000 from two lorries at a Grantham depot in which a security guard was attacked. He was jailed for 12 months in his absence in 2007. :: Iraqi Rezgar Zengana, 27, was convicted at the High Court in Glasgow in 2008 of raping a 25 -year-old woman. He posed as a taxi driver and attacked her at a house in December 2006 after picking her up from a Christmas party. He failed to appear at his sentencing.

Lord Ashcroft, KCMG, Chair of Crimestoppers, said: "These criminals think they’re safe hiding in the Netherlands, but it takes only one call to Crimestoppers to bring them back to the UK to face justice.

"We need the public's help to catch these fugitives so please contact Crimestoppers anonymously if you know anything by telephoning 0800 7000 in the Netherlands or 0800 555 111 in the UK. Alternatively people can visit our website to pass on information."

Dave Cording, Crimestoppers’

Is Google Wave getting Buzzed?

Tom Krazit (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:00:00 AM

In 2009, Google Wave was

Google's vision of the future of Originally posted at Relevant communication. With the debut Results of Google Buzz in February, that vision has competition.

Director of Operations, added: "We are hoping that the public respond as well to this appeal as they have done for our campaign in Spain, which has resulted in a high number of arrests.

"This success has proved that there is no safe hiding place from the eyes of the law and with the public's help we can flush out these dangerous criminals from wherever they are hiding." Liesbeth Huyzer, Police Commissioner for Amsterdam-Amstelland, said 23 wanted Britons have been arrested in the area over the past 18 months.

She said: "We don’t want these criminals to hide out in our region and that’s why we are asking the help of the public to get information to arrest more of these fugitives."

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

Chrome to ditch unique ID, sort of Seth Rosenblatt (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:01:00 PM

It's mostly sizzle and not a lot of steak, but Google plans to remove the unique ID that had been annoying data privacy advocates after the first update check.

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Is Twitter aiming at Facebook Connect?

Caroline McCarthy (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:59:00 PM

With its @Anywhere technology launched as part of SXSWi, Twitter is trying to make its presence spread even further across the Web. Originally posted at The Social

Monday Afternoon Music: Gorillaz, 'Stylo' (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/15/2010 12:18:24 PM

[Video]

World/ Popular News/ Tech/ Politics/

E-reader News Edition

7

Senator Chris Dodd releases plan to reform US financial industry

Opera Mini 5, Opera Mobile 10 graduate to stable

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

Jessica Dolcourt (Webware.com)

much Republican support the proposals will garner. The plans would represent the largest overhaul of the industry since Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:46:12 AM • Long-awaited proposals seek the 1930s. to rein in banks and hedge funds "The failures that led to this • Senator Dodd attacks the crisis require bold action," the 'convoluted system of bank summary of the legislation regulators' states. "We must restore The top Democrat on the US responsibility and accountability Senate banking committee, in our financial system to give Senator Chris Dodd, yesterday Americans confidence that there proposed to rein in the US is a system in place that works financial industry with a set of for and protects them." reforms aimed at averting future Senator Dodd of Connecticut economic crises. proposed creating a consumer The long-awaited proposal protection agency housed within came more than a year after the Federal Reserve and charged President Barack Obama took w i t h g u a r d i n g A m e r i c a n o f f i c e o n e o f t h e w o r s t consumer banking customers economic slumps in decades. from unfair and deceptive Obama and congressional f i n a n c i a l p r o d u c t s a n d Democrats pledged to toughen misleading mortgage, loan and oversight of the banks and credit card practices. Led by a hedge funds widely blamed for White House appointee, the the financial crisis. The financial bureau would have authority to services industry has lobbied write consumer protection rules v i g o r o u s l y a g a i n s t m a j o r governing banks with more than reform, and it is unclear how $ 1 0 b n ( £ 6 . 6 b n ) i n a s s e t s ,

mortgage brokers, payday lenders and other firms that offer financial services and products.

Among other measures, the legislation would establish a panel to identify systemic risks posed by large Wall Street firms and set up measures to mitigate them. It would enact rules aimed at averting future "too-big-tofail bailouts" by discouraging firms from growing too large and complex to manage, and would bar Wall Street firms from proprietary trading and from investing in hedge funds.

With a two-thirds vote, the panel could force large Wall Street firms to divest some holdings if they posed a "grave threat" to US financial stability.

Dodd proposed streamlining the "convoluted system of bank regulators", allowing existing financial market watchdogs to regulate derivative trading, and requiring hedge funds that manage more than $100m in

assets to register with the securities and exchange commission and disclose certain financial data. The legislation would require publicly traded companies to set up mechanisms to take back executive compensation gained through inaccurate financial statements.

"Wall Street has developed an out-of-control system of out-ofthis-world bonuses that reward short-term profits over the longterm health and security of their firms," the summary said.

• Banking • Regulators • US Congress • Democrats • United States • Financial crisis

children that enjoy snoozing a bit longer than allowed, here are a few creative, yet annoying alarm clocks: • SnuzNLuz, pictured above, has your programmed bank account information that will to charity each time you hit the automatically make a donation

snooze button.

• Stand Up, to Wake Up is an alarm clock, built into a floor mat that will only turn off after standing on it.

• Laser Target requires aiming a laser directly at the target on the alarm clock to turn it off.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:00:00 PM

Operas mobile Web browsers shed their beta status and stand in as the new stable versions.

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Onion: Kentucky Violated NCAA Rules (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:13:51 PM

[Video]

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

20 annoying alarm clocks (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/16/2010 2:22:32 AM

As a parent, my alarm clock is my 5-year-old son that wakes up everyday, including the weekends before 6 a.m. For those who are fortunate to have

What do you use as an alarm clock?

Full story at Bored Panda.

More about GTD. Permalink| Leave a comment »

8

World/ Tech/ Politics/

E-reader News Edition

Thailand: protesters throw own blood over government buildings (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:59:51 AM

By Ian MacKinnon in Bangkok Published: 1:59PM GMT 16 Mar 2010 The bizarre protest was aimed at Abhisit Vejjajiva, whom the protesters loyal to ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra believe grabbed power illegitimately.

But after five days of mass demonstrations which brought as many as 100, 000 rural poor to the Thai capital to drive out the government, the protests again passed with no sign Mr Abhisit was willing to accede to their demands.

From early morning thousands of protesters in trademark red shirts gathered in a Bangkok park queued to donate a small amount to their blood with their leaders' aim to collect 1,000 pints to smear around

Government House.

"I did this to show the spirit of Thai people fighting injustice," s a i d C h u l e e p o r n Ruangsinprasert, 52, a university worker. "This is special, it is coming from my heart. I want to give my blood for society so we are no longer controlled by the 'elites' who have all the power."

The "red shirt" leaders explained that her donation and that of others was a powerful example of the dedication of the masses to pressure the government into calling fresh elections 20 months before the end of its term.

"The blood of the common people is mixing together to fight for democracy," Nattawut Saikua, one of the protest leaders told cheering supporters.

"When Abhisit works in his office, he will be reminded that he is sitting on the people's blood."

The prime minister has not

been to his offices at Government House since last Friday. He is in Bangkok but a government spokesman refused to reveal his location for security reasons.

A sea of "red shirt" protesters massed in the broad avenue leading to Government House during the day, but their path was blocked by police in riot gear manning barricades that fronted the walls topped with razor wire.

The protesters were noisy and boisterous but the atmosphere remained calm and jovial despite the show of strength by the security forces.

After negotiations between "red shirt" leaders and police a small number of the protesters' leaders brandishing plastic containers of the blood were allowed through the uniformed lines to symbolically splash small amounts at each entrance and offer prayers for the government's downfall.

Later a large yellow water truck was seen entering the grounds to wash away the blood. The "red shirt" leaders said they had held some in reserve to daub the headquarters of Mr Abhisit's Democrat party and his official residence.

"If they want to throw it and have a photo op, and have us clean it up later, I think it's fine," said government spokesman Panitan Watanayagorn, reflecting the administration's conciliatory, softly-softly approach as long at the protests remain peaceful.

Last night the protesters dispersed quietly to their camping ground in a park nearby, while the riot police also moved back inside Government House and to barracks nearby.

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

Video: Flogging the Scientists (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:42:22 PM

Environmentalist Peter Sinclair fires off some pretty good snark at the climate change denial community in his new video, “ Flogging the Scientists.” The title comes from denial mob leader Marc Morano, who said about climate scientists, “They deserve to be publicly flogged.”

(Morano’s extreme punishment fantasy sounds oddly similar to what shrieking harpy Pamela Geller said last year about yours truly. What is it with wingnuts and sadistic fantasies?)

It’s not all snark, though.

Sinclair also points out some especially outrageous cases of the distortions and lies for which deniers are infamous. And it’s in 720p too.[Video]

Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10 Shed Beta Tag Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

brought many improvements (tabs and speed dial probably being the most important) that If you’re a user of Opera Mini, made its predecessor pale in chances are you’ve already comparison. switched from Opera Mini 4.2 Same goes for Opera Mobile to Opera Mini 5, beta tag be 1 0 , a n d s i n c e b o t h t h e s e damned. The new version browsers have been available as Submitted at 3/16/2010 2:57:37 AM

it’s no surprise that Opera decided to promote them to stable versions.

Compared to the betas, Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10 don’t bring new features, only betas for several months now, minor bug fixes. You can download them both here.

Check out a video introducing Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10 below.

Tags: mobile browsers, opera mini, opera mobile, web browsers

World/ Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

Blessing, Returned LWI Editor (LWI News Center)

worked. His physical condition was sickening—he was filthy and had trouble using the PERU – Santa Eliza, Shipibo bathroom. Without disclosing GPS: 08 34.247 S, 074 14.503 some of the more candid details, W just know that there are no Santa Eliza is a Shipibo village nursing homes in Peru, much stretched out along the Tipishca less in isolated native villages.

River. 300 people call Santa Perhaps this seems like a very Eliza home; our team was ready sad picture, but José was not to go in and bless them all by sad! In fact, he always had a providing a cup of clean water smile on his old wrinkled face. in Jesus’ name. After all, that’s His house was on the way to the what we do—we reach people job site and he always thanked with the good news of the and encouraged the team as they g o s p e l t h r o u g h o u r w a t e r were coming and going. Not projects. only that—he also had a gift for However, we were the ones the team each day. It might have who were blessed this time. A been fruit, an egg, or some man named José lived in the vegetables, but he always had v i l l a g e . H e w a s 7 3 y e a r s something to bless us with. old—or so he thought. No one W h a t s e e m s e v e n m o r e was really sure of his actual age, extraordinary is that José will but since the average life span likely never get water from the of a native is under 50 he was well we drilled. It is a long way indeed one of the older natives from his house and he could our team has ever encountered. only move by dragging himself.

José lived alone. His wife and Even though he knew he would all of his children were dead. probably never get the water J o s é w a s a l s o p a r t i a l l y from the well, it didn’t matter to paralyzed; only half of his body him. See, José is a Christian, Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:30:32 AM

and we could literally see the spirit of God in him. He talked to the team and told them his joy and hope came from the Lord.

He said he was just waiting for the Lord to take him home, but he was also happy to live and to serve with whatever resources he had. Each day, we could always see whatever José had, spread out on the floor of his house. If he had fruit, he would pick out the best-looking piece of fruit and give it away—all with a smile on his face.

Of course, my team said they never saw José without a smile on his face.

Usually, these field reports share how we ministered to others, but José was the one who did the ministering this time.

Whatever blessing we were able to give was returned to us through José, only magnified.

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

Prison Mobile Phone Debate Jammed Up in the System Ryan Singel (Wired Top Stories)

they are using to run gangs, call friends, and intimidate witnesses. It's technically Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:00:00 PM possible to jam the phones, but On paper, it's a no-brainer: the 1930s law setting up the Prisoners have mobile phones nation's telecommunications

bureaucracy makes this illegal -and a bill that would allow it is in legislative limbo.

9

Civil rights photographer Charles Moore dies Dugald Baird (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

or, famously, being tear-gassed by state troopers in Selma in 1965.

When published in Life – his Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:03:16 AM US photojournalist Charles shots of the 1963 Birmingham Moore, whose work chronicled riots took up 11 pages – Moore's the civil rights era of the 1960s, photographs brought worldwide has died aged 79. attention to the civil rights Born in Hackleburg, Alabama struggle. According to former in the heart of the segregated US senator Jacob K Javits, South, Moore served three years Moore's pictures "helped to spur in the marines and then attended passage of the Civil Rights Act t h e B r o o k s I n s t i t u t e o f of 1964". Moore later went on Photography in Santa Barbara, to photograph the civil war in California. Returning to his t h e D o m i n i c a n R e p u b l i c , home state, he found work as a political violence in Haiti and p h o t o g r a p h e r f o r t h e t h e Venezuela, and the Vietnam Montgomery Advertiser and the conflict.

Montgomery Journal, and was Kodak and the BBC have an later employed on contract for excellent galleries of Moore's Life magazine. He was one of photographs. If you want to the first photographers to know more about his life and document the rise of Martin work, the book Powerful Days Luther King as a civil rights is well worth reading. leader, and had the only camera • US press and publishing at the scene when King was • Magazines a r r e s t e d f o r l o i t e r i n g i n • Newspapers & magazines Montgomery in 1958. One of • Photography his shots (below) shows two • United States white police officers manhandling King, whose right Dugald Baird arm is wrenched behind his guardian.co.uk© Guardian back.

News & Media Limited 2010 | H i s p h o t o g r a p h s s h o w a Use of this content is subject to willingness to get into the heart our Terms & Conditions| More of the action by using a short Feeds lens – whether it is protesters being attacked by police dogs

10

World/ Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

'Sorry' Kraft promises two-year job cuts freeze (Top stories from Times Online)

any programmes that I mentioned that have already been negotiated and announced, Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:05:38 AM there will be no further A Kraft executive apologised compulsory redundancies of today for reneging on the manufacturing employees in the company's promise to keep United Kingdom.

Cadbury's Somerdale factory “These are statements I believe open and pledged that there are helpful in removing a cloud would be no more compulsory of uncertainty and creating an redundancies or factory closures atmosphere where we truly do, in the UK for at least two years. as Kraft, want to regain the Marc Firestone, the executive trust of our colleagues, of the vice-president of corporate and Government, of the public.” legal affairs of Kraft, told a Mr Firestone also said Kraft hearing of MPs investigating the was "terribly sorry" for going US food giant's controversial back on its promise to keep £ 1 0 . 5 b i l l i o n t a k e o v e r o f Somerdale open.

Cadbury that, having listened to During the takeover battle, unions, MPs and the press, it Kraft had pledged to keep the was “clear that our reputation factory near Bristol open, requires action more than despite Cadbury's plans to close words”. it with the loss of 400 jobs. But He said: “First, I will say that once it completed the takeover it we can commit that, for a period changed its mind. of at least two years, there will Mr Firestone said it was only be no further closures of when the US company found manufacturing facilities in the out later that Cadbury had United Kingdom. already spent tens of millions of “I can also commit that, beyond pounds kitting out its factory in

Motor: Where Are Your Favorite Movie Cars Now? Anna Goldwater Alexander (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:00 PM

Wired checks in with favorite

'80s movie stars -- not the whiny dweeb protagonists, but the wheels, like the BMX in ET and Back to the Future's DeLorean.

Poland, that Kraft decided that it had no choice but to renege on its commitment to Somerdale.

He said there was no way that Kraft could have known about Cadbury's investment in Poland, as the information was not in the public domain and the two companies were not talking with each other during the hostile bid.

He said that Kraft was "terribly disappointed" that it could not keep the plant open.

The MPs on the select committee said they found it difficult to accept that Kraft could not have known the full extent of Cadbury's investment in its new Polish factory.

Lembit Opik, Liberal Democrat, said he found it hard to believe that no one had been dismissed over the pledge.

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

Duchess of Cornwall soldiers on in Poland despite 'annoying' back problem (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

hope I haven’t put you to too much trouble,” before being given a tour of the newlyopened building and enjoying a cup of tea with staff in the Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:33:13 AM

By Gordon Rayner, Chief canteen.

Reporter, in Warsaw The Duchess, who is 62, has Published: 1:33PM GMT 16 had recurring back trouble for Mar 2010 several years, and last week The Duchess had been due to had to cancel a trip to the fly by helicopter to eastern Birmingham Royal Ballet. She Poland with the Prince of is being treated by the Prince Wales to visit a national park of Wales’s physician, who a n d a m o s q u e , b u t a f t e r travels with the Royal couple suffering back pain on on foreign tours.

M o n d a y e v e n i n g s h e w a s She later paid a visit to the a d v i s e d t h e f l i g h t s a n d a Chopin Museum in Warsaw, connecting car journey on ahead of a Chopin concert bumpy roads were too risky. tonight which will celebrate the Instead the Duchess met staff at 2 0 0 t h a n n i v e r s a r y o f t h e the British Embassy in Warsaw c o m p o s e r ’ s birth. on Tuesday before visiting a The Prince, meanwhile, carried museum about the life of the on alone with the trip to a Polish-born composer Chopin. national park on the Polish As she arrived at the embassy, border with Belarus and to a the Duchess was asked by small mosque used by Tartars. reporters about her back The Royal couple are on the injury, and said: “I’ve just got second day of an eight-day trip this trapped nerve and I can’t to eastern Europe, which will shift it. It’s very annoying. also include visits to Hungary You just want someone to pull and the Czech Republic. it.

Five Filters featured article: “The doctor said bumping Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: around in a car wouldn’t have PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, been a good idea. It’s such a Term Extraction. pain.”

The Duchess apologised to embassy officials, saying: “I

World/ Tech/

E-reader News Edition

MPs call for review of Omagh investigation (Top stories from Times Online)

Last year four men were found liable for the bombing in a landmark civil case taken by the Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:40:49 AM victims' families.

MPs have demanded an The only man jailed in investigation into whether vital connection with the bombing, intelligence was withheld from Colm Murphy, 57, from County d e t e c t i v e s h u n t i n g t h e Louth, was cleared last month p e r p e t r a t o r s o f t h e w o r s t after a retrial in Dublin. terrorist atrocity of the Troubles The committee undertook an in Northern Ireland. inquiry into the security The Northern Ireland Affairs services' role following claims Committee said that too many i n a B B C P a n o r a m a questions remained unanswered d o c u m e n t a r y t h a t t h e over how much the security Government's listening station s e r v i c e s k n e w a b o u t t h e GCHQ had monitored suspects' movements of the Omagh mobile phone calls as they drove bombers at the time of the Real to Omagh from the Republic of IRA attack in August 1998 and Ireland on the day of the atrocity w h e t h e r i n f o r m a t i o n w a s in August 1998. It issued its withheld from police officers. report on the inquiry today.

Twenty-nine people, including Panorama claimed that the a mother pregnant with twins, information was never given to were killed when the Real IRA the Royal Ulster Constabulary. car bomb exploded in the Co A review by Sir Peter Gibson, Tyrone market town on a busy t h e I n t e l l i g e n c e S e r v i c e s Saturday afternoon.

Commissioner, rejected many Twelve years on nobody has of the programme's claims, but been convicted of the murders. the committee said that the

bereaved still needed answers.

"Far too many questions remain unanswered," Sir Patrick Cormack, the committe chairman, said. "The criminal justice system has failed to bring to justice those responsible for the Omagh bombing.

"The least that those who were bereaved or injured have the right to expect are answers to those questions."

Sir Patrick also criticised the Government for refusing to let the committee see Sir Peter's full report, which has been classified for security reasons.

After reviewing the edited summary, committee members agreed with Sir Peter's assertion that information obtained by GCHQ was not monitored in "real time" and therefore could not have prevented the bombing.

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

11

Alternative healthcare bills | Richard Adams's blog Richard Adams (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:19:21 AM

'All uninsured Americans would be guaranteed medical care, all of it provided by Dr Tom Janicak of Houston' On the grounds that there haven't been a whole lot of laughs out of the whole healthcare reform thing, here's The Onion: In response to President Obama's call for compromise, several lawmakers have concocted their own health care reform bills. Here are some provisions of the top contenders: • Griffith-Cantor Bill: Lowincome families would be

allowed to huddle outside hospital windows in the cold and look at wealthier families receiving care • Grayson Bill: Rep Alan Grayson will personally punch in the face any insurance executive who turns down a valid claim • US healthcare • United States Richard Adams guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Aperture SlideShow Support Update 1.1 released Michael Grothaus (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:30:00 AM

Filed under: Software Update Apple has released its third fix for Aperture 3 since launching a little over four weeks ago. The

update addresses an issue affecting the playback of HD video clips used in Aperture 3 slideshows on Snow Leopard.

Audio and video tracks now remain properly synced in video 3.29MB and is recommended clips that have been trimmed.

The update weighs in at for all Aperture 3 users. Mac OS

X 10.6.2 is required.

TUAW Aperture SlideShow Support Update 1.1 released originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

12

World/ Business/ Consumer Reports/

E-reader News Edition

Kidnappers freed British boy Sahil Saeed 'after ransom payment' (Top stories from Times Online)

more worried about when he was going to be reunited with his favourite Sportacus toy.

Submitted at 3/16/2010 5:36:27 AM "He was going on and on about A young British boy seized at his toys and his sisters," she g u n p o i n t d u r i n g a f a m i l y said. "Just a normal little boy." holiday in Pakistan was freed Aslam Tareen, the regional this morning after the reported police chief, said that family payment of a ransom to his members had received a call kidnappers. early this morning to say where Sahil Saeed, 5, from Oldham in the boy had been dropped off Greater Manchester, was picked and police officers recovered up in a field 20 miles from the him soon after.

Punjabi town of Jhelum, where "He is in good health. He is now he was abducted from his playing at the police station grandmother's house on March 4 where he is being kept," he b y a n a r m e d g a n g w h o said. demanded £100,000 for his The boy's release sparked release. celebrations in Jhelum and back Sahil had had his hair cropped home in Oldham, but left many short and his shoes were missing questions unanswered. but he was said to be in good Sahil's father, Raja Naqqash health and spirits.

Saeed, had been on holiday with His mother, Akila Naqqash, his son at the time of the spoke to him from the family abduction and unexpectedly home in Oldham shortly after returned to the UK late last his release and said that he was week.

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

of temporary hiring(NPR) “If consumption continues to grow, you need more There were suggestions today employees,” Wesbury says.

Submitted at 3/16/2010 5:51:46 AM that he returned home to raise Good morning. Where were “And I think that’s where we the ransom money, apparently regulators while Lehman was are. Consumption is growing confirmed when the Punjab state doing its accounting tricks? and therefore we’re going to law minister, Rana Sanaullah, They were staring right at it. need more employees in the told Sky News today that Mr Plus, economists debate the months ahead.”

Saeed had personally handed impact of temporary hiring: But other economists have over the cash.

Regulators were watching dissenting opinions.

Assistant Chief Constable Dave Lehman the whole time(New “The general forecast is for a lot T h o m p s o n o f G r e a t e r York Times) of pain in the future,” says M a n c h e s t e r P o l i c e t o l d And where was the government Lawrence Mishel, president of reporters in Oldham that he while all this “materially the Economic Policy Institute, a could not confirm the payment misleading” accounting was think tank in Washington, D.C. of a ransom because such issues going on? In the vernacular of Readers don’t want to pay for r e l a t e d t o c o n f i d e n t i a l teenage instant messaging, let’s news online(AP) operational matters. just say they had a vantage point Getting people to pay for news But he added: "The reason for as good as POS (parent over online at this point would be the father's return was very shoulder). “like trying to force butterflies much about ensuring that the The new mystery is why it took back into their cocoons,” a new release of his child could be this long for anyone to raise a consumer survey suggests. secured." red flag. “Even though Lehman That was one of several bleak Five Filters featured article: dressed up its accounts for the headlines in the Project for Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: great unwashed public, it did not Excellence in Journalism’s PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, try to fool the authorities,” Yves annual assessment of the state of Term Extraction.

Smith, the author of “ECONned: the news industry…

H o w U n e n l i g h t e n e d S e l f Obama and FCC betting on Interest Undermined Democracy broadband as stimulus(PBS and Corrupted Capitalism,” NewsHour) wrote on her blog last week. “Its game-playing was in full view.”

Economists debate the impact

Carpet Cleaners - from Consumer Reports Press Room (Consumer Reports) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:59 PM

Carpet Cleaners - from Consumer Reports Nothing

beats the ease and performance of a carpet-cleaning service professional. But, some of the nine carpet-cleaning machines Consumer Reports tested for the March '10 issue came pretty

close for less money. Podcast Carpet 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

Business/

E-reader News Edition

13

5 Ways Netflix Could Have Avoided an Ugly User Backlash Cliff Kuang (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:22:53 AM

Netflix offers a case study in how not to implement a major redesign. Here's what you can learn from their mistakes.

A couple weeks ago, Netflix quietly rolled out a redesign of its website that included some much-needed improvements in the user interface, such as streamlined movie listings and easier-to-browse categories. But it wasn't long before things got very, very ugly. In the post announcing the changes, 567 subscribers weighed in, calling the company everything from stupid to deceptive. One person even compared Netflix to a creepy uncle.

What on earth went wrong here?!

For anyone who doesn't use Netflix, the changes seem innocuous. And most are. But one in particular sparked the ire of Netflix junkies: Previously, for any movie listing, users could see how friends in their Netflix network rated a movie.

After the redesign, friends' ratings--and the Top 10 lists they created--got relegated to a friends page, linked way at the bottom of the site.

Reached for comment, Netflix's VP of coporate communications, Steve Swasey, pointed out that the features are, fundamentally, still there. And the streamlining was necessary:

"These are small features used by some folks. But we have 12.3 million members, and everyone is important. We looked at the vast majority of people and how they're using the site. For them, it's about convenience and selection."

Which makes a certain sense.

But it doesn't actually address the complaints of the commenters. Where previously, a movie choice might have been all about the opinions of friends, you can no longer immediately see their ratings when you look a movie listing. As one

commenter said: My friends could easily leave me notes about movies they knew I'd like, and I would do the same.

Before deciding to queue a movie, I could see if my friends had seen it and this would help influence my decision. I have always been a HUGE proponent of Netflix and have brought a few customers onto the service. One of the reasons I NEVER considered switching to a different service (until now!) was because of all my Netflix friends. Now there's nothing holding me back

from going somewhere else.

Ouch. It didn't help that the first 150 comments on the blog post announcing Netflix's redesign had their comments deleted.

Netflix blamed this on a technical glitch--but the commenters quickly smelled a conspiracy, designed to silence the site's most fervent users.

Based on a history of slowly curbing the prominence of social networking on the site, many assume that the move is part of an eventual plan to phase these features out altogether.

Netflix made the wrong moves

in several areas--and other webbased business would do well to pay attention, and learn from these mistakes. Here's what to keep in mind the next time you undertake a redesign: 1. Design can solve more problems than you realize More functionality, rather than less, creates a more active user base. Netflix's design streamlining assumed that providing more detail and providing a streamlined UI were mutually exclusive. But good WAYS page 17

14

Business/ Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

Finally, a bill nospam@example.org (Scott Jagow) (Marketplace Scratch Pad)

protect the economy and American consumers, investors and businesses.

Advanced Warning System: Submitted at 3/15/2010 12:53:49 PM It took a long while, but Creates a council to identify and Congress has a completed address systemic risks posed by financial regulation bill on the large, complex companies, table. It falls short of a few of products, and activities before the original proposals, but at they threaten the stability of the least there’s some there there. economy.

Some highlights from the fact Transparency & Accountability sheet provided by the Senate f o r E x o t i c I n s t r u m e n t s : Banking Committee: Eliminates loopholes that allow Ends Too Big to Fail: Ends the risky and abusive practices to go possibility that taxpayers will be on unnoticed and unregulated asked to write a check to bail including loopholes for over-the out financial firms that threaten -counter derivatives, assetthe economy by: creating a safe backed securities, hedge funds, way to liquidate failed financial mortgage brokers and payday firms; imposing tough new lenders. c a p i t a l a n d l e v e r a g e It’s likely that other loopholes requirements that make it will be form, an inherent aspect undesirable to get too big; o f r e g u l a t i o n . T h e m o s t updating the Fed’s authority to important thing will be the allow system-wide support but regulators themselves — will no longer prop up individual they be vigilant? firms; and establishing rigorous It also still remains to be seen standards and supervision to whether this bill gets through

Congress without getting shredded. From the New York Times: The major flashpoints will include, among other things, the scope of authority for a new Consumer Financial Protection Bill to be established within the Fed; the scope of exemptions under new rules governing the trade of derivatives; and the mechanism by which the government could seize and dismantle a large company on the verge of failure.

Another provision is one intended to curb Wall Street’s influence over the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Its president would be appointed by the president of the United States, not by a board that includes representatives of member banks.

Mr. Dodd estimated that there was substantial bipartisan agreement on 9 of the bill’s 11 titles, the exceptions being

consumer protection and corporate governance.

The CFPA would exist within the confines of the Fed, but would have an independent director appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. It would also have an independent budget and an autonomous ability to write consumer protection rules.

Here was Elizabeth Warren’s comment: “Despite the banks’ ferocious lobbying for business as usual, Chairman Dodd took an important step today by advancing new laws to prevent the next crisis. We’re now heading toward a series of votes in which the choice will be clear: families or banks.”

Hear more on the bill tonight on Marketplace.

“I work 800 miles from spouse.”

“Contract job, no frills life, health care albatross.”

“Box hair dye works just fine.”

If you want to give it a shot, post your memoir on Twitter using the hash tag #EconomyStory and add it to the comments section here. I’d love to read them.

And while we’re on the subject of public media collaborations, I thought you might like to know about NPR’s Economic Training Project. A group of local public radio reporters from around the country recently visited NPR West and Marketplace here in LA for a training session on covering the economy. A lot of

Send to Google Docs Uploads Files and Web Screenshots to GDocs [Downloads] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/16/2010 5:30:00 AM

Chrome: Google Docs' open 1 GB storage space can be a handy, centralized space for stuff you find on the web. The Send to Google Docs Chrome extension makes web capturing very fast with instant page-toPDF and file uploading. More »

Your economy, in brief nospam@example.org (Scott Jagow) (Marketplace Scratch Pad) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:39:25 AM

Can you sum up your experience with the recession in about 10 words or less? Give it a try. It’s a good mental exercise.

The public media collaboration

EconomyStory is asking people to send in their economic memoirs via Twitter. Whether you’re a Twitter person or not, it’s a pretty good exercise in boiling down our recent experiences. Some submissions so far: “Unemployed twice; hired myself; loving life.”

good stories should result from the project.

The project’s supervising editor, NPR’s Jason DeRose, explains how it works with comments from a few of the reporters:

Business/

E-reader News Edition

15

Facebook More Popular Than Google? Let the Ad Wars Begin Kit Eaton (Fast Company)

0.04% separation it currently has above Google's 7.03% share of average weekly market share.

According to the latest Hitwise Over at Inside Facebook they're analysis, Google's lost its crown pondering if the early-February as the most-visited Web site in revamp of Facebook's user the U.S. last week. The new l a n d i n g p a g e i s p a r t l y king of web site traffic is, of responsible, since it emphasizes course, Facebook. In the future, Top Stories over a real-time technohistorians may marvel at stream--which is something this event. users may prefer. But if you During the Winter holidays peep at Facebook's market share there were a few momentary curve, it's not a smooth linear spikes in traffic which placed c l i m b , a n d t h e g e n t l e Facebook on the top, but if you oscillations in increasing market check out the graph of the long s h a r e a r e m o r e p r o b a b l y term trend shown above, you representative of slight changes can see Facebook's meteoric rise in Facebook's popularity or is now on target to meet or beat appearance in broadcast media.

Google. And if that curve Besides, it seems that Facebook continues on its trajectory, c o n t i n u e s t o a t t r a c t m o r e which it may well do for a while m e m b e r s , a n d s e e s t h o s e (its market share is 185% up members interacting more with over the same week in 2009, for the site, pretty much no matter e x a m p l e , ) F a c e b o o k w i l l what it does to redesign its become number one by a huge services. margin, versus the tiddly little What can we learn from the fact Submitted at 3/16/2010 8:50:00 AM

of user numbers whereby if you want to contact almost anyone, odds are that they have a Facebook account.

This doesn't mean that there aren't serious implications though. Facebook is now in a position to leverage those user visits to seize control of the online ad-placement business from Google--advertisers will begin to do the math and work out which site will get their ads in front of more eyeballs. And while Web 2.0 has been with us for a while, the fact that more people are visiting Facebook than Google indicates that this interactive revolution has really that people are visiting facebook a search ability inside the site, changed U.S. Netizen's online more than Google, though--is but what's really driving users to habits.

Google's core business as a Facebook in droves is that it's a To learn more news like this search engine at risk? No. genuine phenomenon. Social follow me, Kit Eaton, on the Google search is a tool, and one networking is still riding that o t h e r b i g s o c i a l n e t w o r k , that's getting smarter day by day "oh you should try this, it's new T w i t t e r .

- - i t s f u t u r e b u s i n e s s i s and cool" wave and the site guaranteed. Facebook does have itself has reached a critical mass

Boston Scientific to Pull Defibrillators Mark Fightmaster (BloggingStocks)

notify regulators of manufacturing changes. The company stated that the safety Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:00:00 AM of patients was never in question Filed under: Analyst Reports, and it doesn't believe that A n a l y s t U p g r a d e s a n d doctors need to remove the Downgrades, Boston Scientific defibrillators from patients.

(BSX) Boston Scientific ( BSX) The manufacturing changes are announced Monday it is b e i n g d e s c r i b e d a s a with the Food and Drug recalling of all of its implantable "documentation problem," and Administration to get the heart defibrillators as it didn't the company said it is working problem fixed. Following the

news, the stock fell 12.6% to close at $6.80. According to the report, defibrillators made up 15% of BSX's U.S. revenue a year ago. Furthermore, the company stated that this news could have a "material impact" on 2010 earnings.

Continue reading Boston Scientific to Pull Defibrillators Boston Scientific to Pull

Defibrillators originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

16

Business/

E-reader News Edition

LA's Funnest Funicular (!) Railway Is Back in Adorable Business Dan Nosowitz (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:10:48 AM

Angels Flight, a Los Angeles landmark and tourist destination, is back in business after a horrible accident forced the halting of service back in 2001. It's still quaint, but under the classic design is some serious modern security.

Angels Flight is a funicular railway, which is a cabled railway consisting of two cars that move simultaneously in opposite directions, counterbalancing each other, usually up a steep hill--so while one is at the top of the slope, the other is at the bottom, and they pass in the middle. Funicular railways are usually tourist attractions of some sort, found all over the world in hilly places. As your semi-useless fact of the day, the steepest

funicular railway is the Johnstown Inclined Plane in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, at an incline of 70.9%. The more you know!

Unfortunately, in 2001, the funicular nightmare happened to Angels Flight: the cable snapped, and the car at the top of the slope rolled uncontrolled

down and smashed into the lower car, killing one passenger and injuring seven. The railway was swiftly shut down, but thanks to some advanced braking security, they opened it back up today, nine years later.

The cars may still be classic wood, but underneath, they're equipped with state-of-the-art

braking systems and a collision avoidance system that should make a repeat of the 2001 accident impossible.

The redesigned mechanism is much like the original, with both cars counterbalancing each other at opposite ends of the same cable. Each car now has a second safety cable, and there

are four types of brake systems and collision avoidance technology similar to positive train control. The system relies on sensors on the track to determine the cars' location and when they are allowed to safely move.

Other updates include entrance gates that automatically open and close.

"It's highly sophisticated technology on the inside, but we try to keep it funky and old fashion-looking on the outside," said John Welborne, president of the foundation.

And if you're still scared, you can take the 153-stair trek instead...oh, who are we kidding. The toll, as always, is 25 cents--and avoiding 153 stairs is worth significantly more to me than a quarter and possibly my life (kidding!).

[Via Breitbart]

Shareholders of Yum! Brands Receive Good News This Month Steven Mallas (BloggingStocks)

operating in the same space as McDonald's ( MCD) and Burger King ( BKC), didn't post the Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:00:00 AM most exciting earnings report Filed under: Analyst Upgrades last month, but it might not and Downgrades, McDonald's m a t t e r . J u s t r e c e n t l y , (MCD), Yum Brands (YUM), shareholders received a couple Burger King Hldgs (BKC) pieces of good news.

Yum! Brands ( YUM), a First, UBS offered inspiring and the stock last week. Shares collection of restaurant chains comments about the company were upgraded to buy status,

rising from neutral. A higher price target of $44 was issued.

The catalyst basically centers on things getting better on a fundamental basis for the restaurant brands; also, China's sales appear to have stabilized.

Continue reading Shareholders of Yum! Brands Receive Good News This Month

Shareholders of Yum! Brands Receive Good News This Month originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Business/

E-reader News Edition

17

WAYS continued from page 13

web designers know that's not the case--it's relatively straightforward to create a good design that offers infinite amounts of data at a single click.

Moreover, you can programmatically provide users with customized pages showing what they actually want.

Streamlining is nice for your new customers, but it's not a mandatory tradeoff.

2. Your most fervent visitors control your brand perception more than your average users The redesign was geared to neophytes visiting the site, but these aren't the subscriber that Netflix built is business on--and they aren't the users actively evangelizing for the brand. Why couldn't a newer design place these people front and center, and make more use of their contributions?

3. Think about where your service fits in with the lifestyle

of your visitors The curbing of the socialnetworking features on Netflix created a huge gap for many users. There wasn't a place for them to get the same functionality after Netflix changed. One solution would have been to think more broadly about integrating the service with other services that users use? For example, shift the friends' movie recommendation engine into a Facebook or mobile phone app.

4. When you redesign, communicate the intent and scope clearly The original redesign announcement was excedingly vague, and didn't even mention the changes to the friends recommendation feature. To date, Netflix still hasn't given the hundreds of commenters a full accounting of what motivated the changes, and how

their concerns are being met.

Which only allowed the fire to grow more out of control.

5. If you've got a hyperactive user base, figure out how to grow their impact, not shrink it Maybe the biggest shame is that Netflix seems to have viewed their hardcore, legacy users as an unruly minority rather than a base they could build upon by thinking more creatively about their platform.

All of this basically boils down to some basic tenants of "useroriented design" that firms such as frog design and IDEO specialize in. If you want an example of design-thinking that was simply too short-sighted in its aims, Netflix offers a cautionary tale.

What Happens When Your iPad Battery Dies Renee Oricchio (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:18:00 PM

The iPad won't be available for a few more weeks (April 3rd to be exact).

However, Apple has already posted a FAQ on what happens if the battery dies; as in, really dies. Kaput! Finished! Lifeless as a lugnut dead.

Answer: you get to buy a replacement iPad (which may or may not be someone else's mostly-dead iPad that has been refurbished) for $99 + shipping and handling.

Hmmm...

This just doesn't sit right with me: - On the one hand, would it be such a scandal if Apple sold replacement batteries for a

hundred bucks? Answer: not really. I think that's steep. But, it's par for the course. A replacement battery for my Roomba is about $70, by comparison.

- Going with that line of logic, a whole new iPad sounds like a sweet deal. Right? Answer: not really.

1. Why not just fix your iPad and return it, instead of fixing someone else's iPad and returning it to you?

2. So, Apple just resells an iPad and makes money on it all over again?

3. So instead of taking responsibility for a failed unit, Apple turns it into a secondary revenue stream?

Starbucks Receives an Upgrade Mark Fightmaster (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:30:00 AM

Filed under: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades, Starbucks (SBUX), McDonald's (MCD) Starbucks ( SBUX) is set to have a good morning, as the company received an upgrade

from UBS to buy from neutral.

The brokerage also upped its earnings forecast for Starbucks to $1.14 per share in fiscal 2010, up from $1.09 per share. For 2011, UBS expects Starbucks to pull in $1.34 per share, seven cents better than the brokerage's earlier forecast. UBS believes ongoing productivity programs that benign costs and Starbucks' are key to the company's

success. That said, UBS feels that McDonald's ( MCD) foray into the world of frappes and smoothies could "cannibalize frappuccino consumers from Starbucks." Such a move could hurt Starbucks' bottom line.

Continue reading Starbucks Receives an Upgrade Starbucks Receives an Upgrade

originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink| Email this| Comments

18

Business/ Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

Housing Starts Fell 5.9% in February Connie Madon (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:30:00 AM

Filed under: Economic Data, Housing, Federal Reserve The Commerce Department reported that housing starts fell 5.9% in February to 575,000.

Building permits also fell in February. Economists surveyed

by Bloomberg news had print a 12-page newspaper in forecast starts to fall to between either B&W or full color, 510,000 to 610,000. although they also offer a Much of the weakness can be bespoke service. You can print blamed on the weather. You anything from five to 5,000-plus don't start new construction in copies (a print run of 5,000 full the midst of snowstorms and color will cost you 45¢ a copy.) blizzards. Also, with a backlog The team is at the SxSW of unsold existing homes, it conference this week, hoping to becomes more difficult start roll out the service in the US. new constructions. Builders Here they are at the Design Awards (their segment starts at the five-minute mark, but it's Ron Cowen (Wired Top worth watching the whole clip Stories) to see the other products that Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:12:00 AM made the shortlist.) [youtube orQkg2fG6-g] The Mars Express Orbiter has [ Newspaper Club Via BBC News]

Print Your Blog on a Broadsheet with The Newspaper Club Addy Dugdale (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/16/2010 8:22:56 AM

Tonight sees the grand winner of the Brit Insurance Design Awards 2010 announced (it's one of the most prestigious in the industry). And for all the usual hi-tech trickery--foldable plugs and the like--there was one cute little invention that is a bit of a throwback to Ye Olde Dayes Of Media. The Newspaper Club"democratizes the production of newspapers," in the judges' words, and it ran off with the the honors in the Graphics section. Laugh all you like, but some of us out here

actually like print media. [youtube mFFGW8DLBrw] It all began back in 2008, when a group of people decided to print a newspaper consisting of their friends' best blog posts and photos. They approached the large printing plants used by newspaper groups and, discovering that the presses stood idle for most of the day, commissioned a small print run.

The price, they were surprised to discover, was not as prohibitive as they had expected.

So they developed a simple software tool called ARTHR, which enables people to layout pictures and text, preview and

remain cautious of moving forward too rapidly.

Here is a breakdown of the stats: Continue reading Housing Starts Fell 5.9% in February Housing Starts Fell 5.9% in February originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Closest Ever Look at Martian Moon taken its closest ever images of the Martian moon, Phobos. The views show possible future landing spots.

Create Polished Mind Maps at Bubbl.us [Mind Mapping] Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:30:00 AM

Mind mapping is a fantastic way to sketch out ideas and do some really productive

b r a i n s t o r m i n g . D o n ' t l e t Bubbl.us is free, web-based, and resistance to learning new simple to learn. More Âť software stop you from doing it,

Business/ Popular News/

E-reader News Edition

19

Widespread spring flooding forecast (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

exacerbate the flooding of the flat terrain and feed rising rivers and streams," Lubchenco said.

W A S H I N G T O N – W i t h In particular, she said, flooding truckloads of sandbags rolling is expected along the Raccoon, into cities like Fargo, N.D. and Des Moines, James and Red M o o r h e a d , M i n n . , t h e rivers of the North. government confirmed residents' Fargo set a record last year and fears Tuesday, forecasting major "we'll likely see similar but f l o o d i n g i n t h e M i d w e s t more widespread flooding" this following a wetter than normal year, said National Weather winter.

Service Director Jack Hayes.

North Dakota, Minnesota, The current snowpack is among South Dakota and Iowa were the top 10 since World War II listed as the greatest flood with much of it remaining on threat, and the National Oceanic the ground because of the cold and A t m o s p h e r i c weather, Hayes said, so rivers in Administration said parts of the the Midwest are likely to remain South and East are also more above flood stage for weeks or susceptible than usual to high more. water. " In the South and East, where A winter influenced by the El an El Nino-driven winter was Nino phenomenon left large very wet and white, spring areas soggier than usual, NOAA flooding is more of a possibility said. than a certainty and will largely This year's snowpack tops last be dependent upon the severity year's in many areas with as and duration of additional much as 10 inches of water precipitation and how fast resulting in some regions. existing snow cover melts," "We are looking at potentially Hayes added. historic flooding," NOAA El Nino, a periodic warming of Administrator Jane Lubchenco the tropical Pacific Ocean can said at a briefing. affect weather worldwide. It is "It's a terrible case of deja vu, expected to continue at least but this time the flooding will through spring. likely be more widespread. As Five Filters featured article: the spring thaw melts the Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: snowpack, saturated and frozen PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, ground in the Midwest will Term Extraction.

Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:25:33 AM

Cash Is So Twentieth Century: Bump iPhones to Exchange Money Instead Dan Nosowitz (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:59:05 AM

While Paypal has been less and less relevant, thanks to competitors like Google Checkout and Amazon, they may just stage a comeback with an idea that's cute and useful at the same time: a bump-triggered iPhone app.

Bump Technologies, the company that makes the Bump iPhone app, provided the underlying tech for Paypal's

newly announced app. But instead of exchanging contact information, now you can exchange money. The app also includes a tax, tip, and check calculating feature, so you can figure out who owes what at a table, then simply bump phones to get all the money to one person, who can then pay a single bill for the entire table, saving the waitstaff at the restaurant the headache of running twelve different credit cards through.

The app could, at some point,

also be used for very small businesses in place of expensive credit card readers--especially independent sellers like those at a farmers market, craft fair, or adorable lemonade stand. Of course, as not everyone has either an iPhone or a Paypal account, let alone both, this isn't going to replace credit cards, but could definitely be useful in certain circumstances. The app is available now, for free, in the App Store.

[Via New York Times]

20

Popular News/ Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

US plans high-speed net for all (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

global competitiveness and a better way of life.

"It is changing how we educate Submitted at 3/16/2010 2:36:21 AM children, deliver healthcare, US regulators have unveiled the manage energy, ensure public nation's first plan to give every safety, engage government, and American super-fast broadband access, organise and disseminate by 2020. knowledge".

The Federal Communications For industry analyst Erik Commission (FCC), which will Sherman of business and news n o w s u b m i t t h e p l a n t o site BNet.com, all the talk Congress, said broadband was "sounds like an overstatement". the "greatest infrastructure "The plan cannot be a silver challenge". bullet for all these issues and It estimates that one-third of problems which exist for a Americans, about 100 million number of different reasons and people, are without broadband at not just because of a lack of home. broadband.

The FCC's goal is to provide "The plan is very big in scope speeds of 100 megabits per and if you look at the rationale, second (Mbps), compared to an the FCC is basically saying we average 4Mbps now. need more money for more "Broadband for every American internet. I am not saying we is not too ambitious a plan and it don't need a broadband plan but is absolutely necessary," former we have to be realistic about FCC chairman Reed Hundt told what it can and cannot do," Mr BBC News.

Sherman told BBC News.

"The consequences of not 'Fairy wings and wishes' succeeding are heartbreaking. Months of hype and speculation Every nation needs a common has preceded the presentation of medium to gather around and to t h e c o u n t r y ' s f i r s t have the internet as a common c o m p r e h e n s i v e b r o a d b a n d medium where a third are left roadmap. The FCC has also held out is unacceptable." a series of briefings previewing 'Silver bullet' its goals.

In an executive summary "It's an action plan, and action is r e l e a s e d a h e a d o f t h e necessary to meet the challenges presentation to Congress on 16 of global competitiveness, and M a r c h , t h e F C C s a i d : harness the power of broadband "Broadband is a foundation for to help address so many vital economic growth, job creation, national issues," said FCC

chairman Julius Genachowski.

The executive summary revealed that access to highspeed internet services had grown dramatically from eight million Americans 20 years ago to nearly 200 million today.

Estimates to implement the plan have been put at $350bn (ﾂ｣233bn). How that bill will be split between private investment and tax dollars is not known.

"Who pays and how much is the big fight ahead," said technology industry analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.

"The devil is in the detail and right now it's all fairy wings and wishes. The Republicans are going to fight anything that is excessively expensive while the Democrats have to be wary of looking like they are cutting cheques at a time when the government is for the most part broke."

The FCC will auction off some 500 megahertz of spectrum to pay for some of the expense.

More than $7bn will come from President Obama's 2009 stimulus package, which targeted broadband-related initiatives.

'Digital exclusion' For years the technology industry has pushed for the US government to create a national broadband plan.

A season of reports from 8-19 March 2010 exploring the

extraordinary power of the internet, including: Ahead of today's meeting with Congress, a number of hi-tech companies wrote to Mr Genachowski to praise the plan.

"Broadband is critical to America's long-term economic and social well-being. As society increasingly moves online, the costs of digital exclusion grow as well," said the signatories of the letter, which included Cisco, Sony, Salesforce, Microsoft, Facebook and Intel.

One possible battleground is expected to be over the sale of spectrum that is mostly in the hands of television broadcasters.

Mobile carriers like AT&T and Verizon have said they will need more spectrum in future to provide superfast reliable internet connections to every customer.

"The problem is most of the spectrum is occupied by somebody else. They are going to want a lot of money for this," said Adam Thierer, president of the free-market leaning Progress & Freedom Foundation.

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

Tumblr Now Allows Instant 100MB Video Uploads [Tumblr] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:30:00 AM

Tumblr, the fast and sleek way to start and maintain a no-stress blog, just added a direct video upload option, giving users 100 MB of space per clip to post to their tumblogs. That's not new or stunning, but once your ( H.264, MP4, or AAC) video has been uploaded, it's instantly ready to play窶馬o waiting for transcoding or approval. That's a pretty nice thing for on-the-fly blogging, and for those who can't keep their computer on overnight waiting for a YouTube upload to finish. [ Tumblr Staff via Digital Inspiration] More ﾂｻ

E-reader News Edition

Popular News/

21

US envoy postpones Israel visit (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

Palestinians had been arrested.

A number of protesters were injured, Palestinian medical Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:39:17 AM sources said.

US envoy George Mitchell has The reopening of the twicepostponed a visit to Israel amid destroyed Hurva synagogue, in a continuing row over Israel's the Jewish Quarter of the Old decision to build more Jewish City, which Palestinians seek as homes in Arab East Jerusalem. part of a future capital, triggered Mr Mitchell had been due to a backlash. meet President Shimon Peres on Hatem Abdel Qader, Jerusalem Tuesday but the trip has now affairs spokesman for the Fatah been put off. movement of Palestinian The building announcement Authority President Mahmoud made as US Vice-President Joe Abbas, said: "This synagogue Biden visited last week to try to will be a prelude to violence and kick-start stalled peace talks religious fanaticism and angered Washington. extremism."

Tension remains high in Militant group Hamas had Jerusalem, with a number of declared Tuesday a "day of clashes on Tuesday. rage" against the move.

'No curbs' rescheduled for an as yet Jerusalem on Tuesday between the US and Israel were Thousands of people turned out Mr Mitchell had been due in undetermined time, US and "The building of those Jewish at their lowest point since 1975. in Gaza on Tuesday to protest Israel to try to set up the Israeli officials indicated. against the rededication of the neighbourhoods in no way hurt 'Day of rage' resumption of indirect peace The US says it is still awaiting the Arabs of East Jerusalem and Tensions in East Jerusalem synagogue, not far from the altalks between Israel and the a "formal" response from Israel did not come at their expense," have risen in recent days with Aqsa mosque, Islam's thirdPalestinians. to the settlement row and has he said. the settlements issue and the holiest site, AFP news agency The renewal of talks had been urged Israel to show it is Foreign Minister Avigdor rededication of a synagogue in reports. agreed before Mr Biden's visit, committed to Middle East peace Lieberman told Israel Radio that Jerusalem's Old City, which The BBC's Middle East but Israel's announcement that it efforts. calls to halt Israeli settlement Palestinians have condemned as correspondent, Paul Wood, says planned to build 1,600 new Although he has apologised for building were "unreasonable". provocative. the call by some Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem left it the timing of the settlement The BBC's Paul Wood in Palestinian protesters burned officials for people to defend the in tatters. announcement, Israeli Prime Jerusalem says there seems to be tyres and threw rocks, while Haram al-Sharif or Temple The office of the Israeli Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an impasse - if Mr Netanyahu police fired stun grenades and Mount, site of the al-Aqsa president confirmed that it had has stood by Israel's policy, caves in and cancels the new tear gas, as rioting broke out in a mosque, comes amid rumours of been notified that Mr Mitchell telling parliament on Monday settlements, the stability of his number of areas, including the plans by Jewish extremists to would not arrive in Israel on there can be "no curbs" on government may be in doubt; if Shu'fat refugee camp, al- take control of the area.

Tuesday and "thus the planned Jewish building in Jerusalem. he does not, it is hard to see how Eisaweyah and the Qalandia He says that although the meeting today at 5.30 pm Please turn on JavaScript. the peace talks can take place. checkpoint between Israel and clashes so far are small-scale, no between President Peres and Media requires JavaScript to -one has forgotten how the last O n M o n d a y , I s r a e l ' s the West Bank.

Special Envoy Mitchell will not play. ambassador to the US, Michael Israeli police said they had Palestinian intifada - or uprising occur".

S e c u r i t y f o r c e s b a t t l e d Oren, was quoted by Israeli deployed 3,000 officers across ENVOY page 22 Mr Mitchell's visit will be protesters in several areas of media as saying that ties t h e c i t y a n d a b o u t 1 5

22

Popular News/ Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

Magnitude-4.4 earthquake shakes Southern Calif.

(AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

reopened an hour later. Work on a permanent fix begins Tuesday night.

L O S A N G E L E S – A n "The earthquake probably did earthquake east of downtown contribute to it, a little bit, but ...

Los Angeles rippled across it's normal wear and tear," Southern California before dawn Asleson said.

Tuesday, jolting millions of The magnitude-4.4 quake, people awake and putting first- centered about 10 miles east of responders on alert. downtown Los Angeles, struck There are no reports of damage, shortly after 4 a.m., according to injuries or power outages linked the U.S. Geological Survey. to the temblor.

"It was a shake, but not bad. Our "All is calm in the city of Los inmates slept through it and we Angeles," Los Angeles Fire had a few calls, but not as many Department Capt. Steve Ruda as you would think," Pico said.

Rivera sheriff's station Sgt. Nearly an hour after the quake, Jacqueline Sanchez said. the California Highway Patrol Deputies were immediately got reports of a buckled 10-foot dispatched to make "critical stretch of concrete in a center facility checks — bridges and lane of southbound Interstate 5 dams, stuff like that," the south of downtown in the sergeant said.

Downey area.

Though the quake was CHP Officer Daniel Asleson considered small in size, it was said later the quake probably felt over a large swath of didn't cause the buckling. Southern California.

Damage was reported a day People from San Bernardino earlier in the lane, which is County to the east and Santa heavily used by big-rigs.

Monica to the west reported California Department of feeling the quake.

T r a n s p o r t a t i o n c r e w s "The building started shaking. temporarily patched the area That's it. I'm used to it," again early Tuesday and the lane downtown security guard Ruben Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:25:10 AM

Solis, 25, said from his booth in the high-rise district. Solis said he checked his monitors and no alarms were triggered. "I got up and went on patrol."

But fellow security guard Nonie Bailey, 55, was on the fourth floor and headed quickly for the ground level.

"It shook real hard. I thought the building was coming down. I was on the fourth floor and I got down to the ground," Bailey said.

Los Angeles County Fire Department supervising dispatcher Andre Gougis said there are no reports of damage or injury and the department is at normal operations.

"All our battalions reported a Level 1, meaning they felt it but there was no damage," Gougis said. He said the quake was felt at his east Los Angeles headquarters.

"There was an initial jolt, then mild shaking after that," he said.

The quake hit not far from the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, a magnitude 5.9 quake that killed eight people and caused more than $350 million in damage.

The latest jolt is too small to inflict the same damage.

"I'm sure people would have felt it, but this is not an earthquake that will be damaging," said USGS geophysicist Amy Vaughan.

Tuesday's early morning jolt was probably not related to the Whittier Narrows quake because too much time has elapsed, said California Institute of Technology seismologist Kate Hutton.

Scientists have not yet determined which fault was responsible for the latest quake.

Hutton said there's a small chance that Tuesday's temblor is a precursor to a larger event, but the likelihood diminishes over time. ___ On the Net: Caltech shake movie: http://shakemovie.caltech.edu Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

ENVOY continued from page 21

- began over the holy sites in Jerusalem.

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

How to Nail a Free Throw Cameron Bird (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:00 PM

There's a method to the March madness. Two engineers from North Carolina State have a strategy for scoring like a champ at the free throw line.

Roast Coffee With A Drill and A Soup Can [DIY Creations] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:00:00 AM

When you're looking to roast your own coffee, a popcorn popper or heat gun can be called

up for the job. Then again, as

one intrepid DIY-er shows us, a drill, a soup can, and ingenuity can sub in just fine. More »

Popular News/ Tech News/ Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

Sandbags Delivered Ahead of Fargo Flood Fight (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 3/16/2010 2:08:54 AM

FARGO, N.D. Marc Shannon says the prospect of using a sandbag wall to protect his Fargo home from the rising Red River doesn't seem so alarming.

Not after last year, when the city dealt with record flooding and Shannon had to maneuver around a 10-foot-high clay dike that cut his house off from the outside world.

"We're all feeling pretty calm compared to last year," Shannon said Monday, while preparing to melt ice in his backyard to make room for a sandbag dike.

"Without that clay dike in the streets this year, this is going to be a walk in the park."

Police escorted convoys of flatbed trucks carrying piles of sandbags into neighborhoods Monday as the cities of Fargo in eastern North Dakota and neighboring Moorhead, Minn., went into flood-fighting mode.

The Red River is expected to crest Saturday about 20 feet

above the flood stage, meaning the rising waters flowing over the river's banks could threaten nearby houses, roads and parks.

Last year, about 100 homes in the area were damaged and thousands of people were evacuated after the Red River rose above the flood stage for a record 61 days and crested twice. Officials say they are better prepared this year for flooding thanks to early stockpiling of sandbags and the building of stronger levees across the region.

"This year, the dike we'll have to build will be 3 feet less than last year," Shannon said. "It's manageable."

Miles of clay levees, more than 1 million sandbags and portable wall systems will be used to help protect an area of about 200,000 people in Cass County, N.D., and Clay County, Minn.

Clay County Sheriff Bill Bergquist said a handful of residents outside the city left their houses mainly because they don't want to be stranded

by overland flooding.

"Everybody has to understand that this is for real," Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said after a briefing with city and county officials.

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty declared a state of emergency Monday in 28 counties affected by potential flooding across western, southern, central and eastern parts of the state. The order activated the National Guard to help with flood preparations and provide emergency relief.

Fargo resident Karry Hoganson was chopping down an evergreen tree in his neighbor's backyard to help make room for a sandbag dike. When he bought his house in 2002, Hoganson said historical figures showed he would be sandbagging once every 10 years. But it's been more like every other year, he said.

"I chose to live on the river. I'm not looking for sympathy," he said. "I bought it for the view. I love it here."

Palates of sandbags lined streets and cul-de-sacs in several neighborhoods of higher-end homes along the river in south Fargo. Dan Sholy, who was hired to help unload the trucks, said some people have been clearing out their backyards to make room for the sandbags, which weigh about 20 pounds each.

Over the next few days, residents will stack the sandbags -- in Hoganson's neighborhood the dike will be 9 feet wide and 3 feet high -- in an attempt to keep the river's waters away from their homes.

"Right now they're are getting everything all flagged and marked for the dikes," Sholy said. "We'll have volunteers coming in tomorrow so there's going to be lot of action here."

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

March 16, 1802: Army Engineers Get New Foundation Randy Alfred (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:00 PM

An act of Congress established the corps, and one of its first tasks was establishing the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

First Windows Phone 7 Code Dump Might Reveal Some Secrets [Windows Phone 7] matt buchanan (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:15:21 AM

Windows Phone 7 OS code, pulled from the emulator image—build 7.0.0.6077 to be precise—has been dumped on xda developers, meaning it's being torn apart as we speak. It's not a full ROM, so it won't run on anything yet, but it might reveal something. [ xda developers via Know Your Cell, Thanks Randall!] More »

CyanogenMod Available for Motorola Droid [Rooting] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

tethered, and generally awesome -d experience that G1, myTouch, and Nexus One users Rocking a Motorola/Verizon have seen? There's now a stable Droid and want to get in on the CyanogenMod build for the h a r d w a r e a n d s o f t w a r e same kind of unlocked, rooted, Droid that adds tethering, improvements, a huge selection Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:00:00 AM

23

of ringtones and audio schemes, More » and much more. If you've installed and tried it out, tell us what's great, and what's tricky, in the comments. Photo by F. Montino.[Link via Phandroid]

24

Popular News/ Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

Mom, Son Missing After Van Found on Wash.

Beach (FOXNews.com)

the beach on Monday while bloodhounds on loan to the sheriff's office scoured the OLYMPIA, Wash. A woman nearby roadside. heading to her stepfather's house Detectives have traced Smiley's was "beyond lost" when she and p a t h f r o m h e r h o m e i n her 8-year-old son took one Silverdale to the far reaches of wrong turn after another through Thurston County, more than 50 the backroads of Washington miles north of her stepfather's state and onto a private Puget house in Castle Rock in Cowlitz Sound beach, authorities said County and far from any road Monday. that would have led her there.

The minivan driven by Shantina Mealy said Smiley had called Smiley was found partially her fiance Saturday night in submerged Sunday with its Olympia to update him on her doors open. A wallet containing location because she had left her the 29-year-old's driver's cell phone at home. An license, some cash and credit employee at an Olympia diner cards was found in the van, but where she bought a corn dog neither she nor her son was told investigators she left anywhere in sight. without her purchase and then "Apparently she got stuck and tripped and fell walking back to abandoned the car," said Lt. her van, but Mealy said the fall Chris Mealy of the Thurston was not serious.

County Sheriff's Office. There The elderly couple who lived was no indication that a crime nearby said they let Smiley use took place inside the 2005 t h e i r p h o n e t o c a l l h e r Dodge Caravan, he added. grandfather, gave her son a Divers searched the water off piece of pizza, and then directed Submitted at 3/16/2010 1:13:41 AM

her back to the freeway. She wasn't heard from again.

"The homeowners said she acted nervous because she was lost," Mealy said. She was not injured but spoke of an accident, which investigators believe may have been a reference to falling down at the diner.

Mealy said that as she left the home, Smiley made another series of driving errors that eventually led her to a hard-tofind dirt path and driving onto the beach.

"It gets dark up there. It gets really, really dark," Mealy said.

"I was there Sunday afternoon. I had trouble finding that trail in the daylight."

Friends and family described Smiley as a responsible, mature, rational woman. She has no history of substance abuse, Mealy said.

Her fiance, Robb Simmons, and Smiley's stepfather began searching for Smiley and her son, Azriel Carver, after she

didn't arrive at their planned meeting spot Saturday. Azriel is a second-grader at Vinland Elementary in the North Kitsap School District, according to school principal Charley McCabe.

"I have no idea of why she would have ended up down that road," Simmons wrote on his Web site.

Mealy said Smiley has "no friends or relatives or lovers or boyfriends in Olympia or Thurston County."

"Somebody somewhere knows something," Mealy said. "She could be missing voluntarily.

Something untoward could have happened to her. She could have done something untoward to her son. We have no clue."

More from Seattle's Q13Fox.com Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Walking in Salman Rushdie's Digital Footsteps [Memoryforever] matt buchanan (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:48:59 AM

The Salman Rushdie archive on display at Emory, with its handwritten journals and 18GB scattered across four Apple computers, is unlike any other—you can log in to a computer, search his folders, scan his Stickies, run his apps.

More »

SHOCK: Samsung is prepping a ’slate’ PC Matt Burns (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:45:35 AM

Are you sitting down? Don’t read this standing up. You need to be sitting down. It’s a real shocker. You’re not going to

believe it. Ready? Samsung is going to release a so-called ’slate’ PC. That means it’s just basically a screen! Can you imagine? How novel!

A random national product and marketing manager for Samsung

Australia’s IT division told APC

that Samsung was planning to release a slate in the second half of the year. Not much is known about the capabilities, specs, pricing, or target market right now. So yeah, we don’t know jack besides that Samsung,

along with every other hardware company, is working on a tablet computer for a 2010 release. At least that’s what a mid-level Samsung manager says.

Popular News/

E-reader News Edition

25

Volunteers along Red River in flood- Plane Hits, Kills Man on fighting mode (AP) South Carolina Beach (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:01:45 AM

FARGO, N.D. – Volunteers in North Dakota were in floodfighting mode again Tuesday filling sandbags and the National Guard prepared to build clay dikes to help protect nearby homes from the fastrising Red River.

Though officials don't expect the waters to be as high as last year's record flood, the river near Fargo and neighboring Moorhead, Minn. is forecast to crest Saturday about 20 feet above the flood stage. The waters flowing over the river's banks could threaten nearby houses, roads and parks.

Still, residents are fairly optimistic.

"We're all feeling pretty calm compared to last year," Marc Shannon said Monday, while getting ready to build a sandbag dike in his backyard.

Last year, about 100 homes in the area were damaged and thousands of people were evacuated after the Red River rose above the flood stage for a record 61 days and crested twice. Officials say they are

better prepared this year for flooding thanks to early stockpiling of sandbags and the building of stronger levees across the region.

Miles of clay levees, more than 1 million sandbags and portable wall systems will be used to help protect an area of about 200,000 people in Cass County, N.D., and Clay County, Minn.

Clay County Sheriff Bill Bergquist said a handful of residents outside the city left their houses mainly because they don't want to be stranded by overland flooding.

"Everybody has to understand that this is for real," Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said.

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty declared a state of emergency Monday in 28 counties affected by potential flooding across western, southern, central and eastern parts of the state.

Fargo resident Karry Hoganson was chopping down an evergreen tree in his neighbor's backyard to help make room for a sandbag dike. When he bought his house in 2002, Hoganson said historical figures showed he would be sandbagging once

every 10 years. But it's been more like every other year, he said.

"I chose to live on the river. I'm not looking for sympathy," he said. "I bought it for the view. I love it here."

Palates of sandbags lined streets and cul-de-sacs in several neighborhoods of higher-end homes along the river in south Fargo. Dan Sholy, who was hired to help unload the trucks, said some people have been clearing out their backyards to make room for the sandbags, which weigh about 20 pounds each.

Over the next few days, residents will stack the sandbags — in Hoganson's neighborhood the dike will be 9 feet wide and 3 feet high — in an attempt to keep the river's waters away from their homes.

"Right now they're are getting everything all flagged and marked for the dikes," Sholy said.

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

(FOXNews.com) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:09:02 AM

HILTON HEAD, S.C. A 38year-old father of two was jogging and listening to his iPod when he was hit from behind and killed by a small plane making an emergency landing on the beach, officials said Tuesday.

Robert Gary Jones of Woodstock, Ga., was killed instantly on Hilton Head Island on Monday evening, said Beaufort County Coroner Ed Allen.

The single-engine plane had lost its propeller and the pilot's vision was blocked by oil on the windshield, Allen said.

Jones was married and had two children, the coroner said.

"Apparently he did not see nor hear the plane," Allen said. "The plane was basically gliding."

Hilton Head fire and rescue spokeswoman Joheida Fister said the identities of the pilot and a passenger on the Experimental Lancair IV-P plane were not released. The two were not injured.

The plane started leaking oil at about 13,000 feet and tried originally to make it to Hilton Head Airport, Fister said.

The oil on the windshield

blocked the pilot's vision and he told authorities the propeller came off the plane. When he tried to land on the beach near the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa, the plane hit the jogger and came to rest a little farther down the beach, she said.

"I would have to say it's pretty unusual," Fister said.

FAA records show the aircraft was registered to Edward I. Smith of Chesapeake, Va., with a certificate issued in 2004.

Nobody answered early Tuesday at a phone number listed for Smith and a message was not immediately answered.

The plane left Orlando at 4:45 p.m. and was headed for Virginia, Fister said. The fourseater plane has a turbine engine, can be built from a kit and can fly up to 370 mph, according to the Lancair Web site. The IV-P model has a pressurized cabin.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating, Fister said.

An FAA spokeswoman referred inquiries to the NTSB. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

26

Popular News/ Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

FBI to investigate Mexico deaths (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

she added.

Flashpoint city On Saturday, Lesley Enrique - a Submitted at 3/16/2010 1:00:43 AM US citizen working at the Juarez American FBI agents have been c o n s u l a t e - h e r A m e r i c a n sent to the Mexican border city husband, Arthur Redelf, and of Ciudad Juarez to investigate Jorge Alberto Sarcido - the the deaths of three US citizens. Mexican husband of another Three people connected to the consular employee - were shot consulate were killed in drive- dead in two separate incidents. by shootings on Saturday in two Both couples had just left a separate incidents. social event in the city when The US state department said they were killed. the killings underscored the Enriquez, 35, and her 34-year"severe and significant danger" old husband were killed in a hail drug gangs represented to of bullets as they drove their car Mexico and the US. towards the US side of the Mexico has blamed the killings border. Their one-year-old baby on a gang linked to a drugs was found unharmed in the back cartel. seat.

But investigators have said it is In the second attack, gunmen too early to tell if those killed opened fire on the car belonging were deliberately targeted. to Jorge Alberto Sarcido, killing "It could be a mistaken identity, him and wounding his two it could be that they were children. targeted; we don't know at this The state department said the point," special agent Andrea killings were a "tragedy".

Simmons, a spokesman for the "We all share the determination FBI's El Paso, Texas, office told that, ultimately, through a Agence France-Presse. variety of means, we will take Some eight FBI agents will be b a c k t h e s e s t r e e t s o n e working alongside Mexican community at a time," state authorities in the investigation, spokesman PJ Crowley told a

news briefing.

"The tragedy of this weekend just underscores how severe and significant a danger this represents to Mexico, to the United States, to the hemisphere."

His comments come a day ahead of a visit to the city by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who will make his third tour this year of the country's most violent city to discuss the government's efforts to tackle organised crime.

Mexico is battling a drug war that has killed some 18,000 people since 2006.

Ciudad Juarez is a major flashpoint in the battle between Mexican drug gangs over trafficking routes to the US. More than 2,600 people were murdered there in drug-related violence last year alone.

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

Over half your news is spin (Holy Kaw!)

the way resources have drifted from journalism to public Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:13:23 AM relations over the past 30 years, A f t e r a s i x - m o n t h - l o n g to break away as much as you i n v e s t i g a t i o n , C r i k e y h a s really want to … I guess I’m announced that public relations implying, the number of people play a larger role in journalism who go to communications content than previously thought. school and go into PR over the Actually, their findings suggest years has increased and the that nearly fifty-five percent of number in journalism has all news stories are derived from shrunk even more dramatically.” some sort of press release or This is a must-read article for press contact. When confronted anyone remotely interested in w i t h t h e n u m b e r s , m o s t the ethics of journalism and how journalists were defensive. they’re becoming an endangered H o w e v e r , a f e w c a n d i d species. editors—like Chris Mitchell, Full story at Crikey. e d i t o r i n c h i e f o f T h e More on journalism.

Australian—were a bit more Photo credit: Fotolia honest: Permalink| Leave a comment » “It’s very difficult I think, given

Jesus Christ Is the King of the App Store [Chart] Jesus Diaz (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:00:00 AM

We know that ebooks represent

the most numerous application type in the Apple Store, even topping videogames. The reason: There are lots of

and one Very Big Book is King of the Dupes. More » duplicate apps of the same book,

Popular News/ Tech/ Tech Blog/

E-reader News Edition

Magnitude-4.4 Earthquake Hits Southern California (FOXNews.com)

and dams, he said.

Los Angeles County Fire Department supervising LOS ANGELES A n dispatcher Andre Gougis said earthquake east of downtown there were no injury reports and Los Angeles rippled across the department was at normal Southern California before dawn operations.

Tuesday, jolting millions of Gougis said the quake was felt people awake and putting first- a s h i s e a s t L o s A n g e l e s responders on alert but causing h e a d q u a r t e r s . no damage, injuries or power "There was an initial jolt, then outages. mild shaking after that," he said.

The magnitude-4.4 quake, Though the quake was centered about 10 miles east of considered small in size, it was downtown Los Angeles, struck felt over a large swath of shortly after 4 a.m., according to Southern California. People the U.S. Geological Survey. from San Bernardino County to The California Highway Patrol the east and Santa Monica, reported a buckled 10-foot about 25 miles to the west, stretch of concrete on Interstate reported feeling it.

5 south of downtown, but it was "The building started shaking. unclear if the broken concrete That's it. I'm used to it," said was caused by the quake.

Ruben Solis, a 25-year-old "It was a shake, but not bad. Our security guard who works inmates slept through it and we d o w n t o w n . S o l i s s a i d h e had a few calls, but not as many checked his monitors and no as you would think," Pico alarms were triggered. "I got up Rivera sheriff's station Sgt. and went on patrol," he said.

J a c q u e l i n e S a n c h e z s a i d . The quake hit not far from the Deputies were immediately 1 9 8 7 W h i t t i e r N a r r o w s dispatched to check on bridges earthquake, a magnitude 5.9 Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:11:04 AM

quake that killed eight people and caused more than $350 million in damage.

The latest jolt was not likely to inflict the same damage.

"I'm sure people would have felt it, but this is not an earthquake that will be damaging," said USGS geophysicist Amy Vaughan.

Tuesday's early morning jolt was probably not related to the Whittier Narrows quake because too much time has elapsed, said California Institute of Technology seismologist Kate Hutton.

Scientists have not yet determined which fault was responsible for the latest quake.

Hutton said there's a small chance that Tuesday's temblor is a precursor to a larger event, but the likelihood diminishes over time.

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

27

E-Commerce Sites Realizing They're Media Properties Too Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

So perhaps it shouldn't be all that surprising to see traditional e-commerce players beginning We've talked a lot about the to realize this themselves from fact that adveritisng is content the other direction. That is, and content is advertising. But, many large online retailers are it seems worth mixing a bit of e- suddenly recognizing that they commerce into that story as get a lot of traffic and they can well. As we've been noting s e l l t h a t t r a f f i c t o (separately), many of the advertisers(including advertisers business models that work today from their own competitors) at a h a v e a s t r o n g d i r e c t - t o - nice premium. Of course, I'm consumer component -- giving not convinced that traditional them a "reason to buy." And, in banner/text advertising will fact, here at Techdirt, we've really be all that lucrative in the begun to blur those lines long term, but it would be o u r s e l v e s - - w i t h v a r i o u s interesting to see online retailers community offerings, including work harder at giving people u n i q u e o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r additional reasons to visit their companies to participate and/or sites beyond just the products sponsor online conversations, a l o n e . W e ' v e s e e n s o m e but also with our own CwF+RtB glimpses of this, such as when offering, which is really an e- Amazon tried to do an online commerce setup. talk show, but I'd bet that we're In the long run, business going to start seeing some much models are going to combine all more creative online retail these different elements. As efforts that introduce "content" we've noted, one of the key into the mix more effectively to scarcities out there is attention -- create other types of scarcities. and that's been the arena that the Permalink| Comments| Email media business has always been This Story in.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:10:00 PM

Today's Rebooting The News podcast (Scripting News) Submitted at 3/15/2010 12:42:19 PM

Another "keeper" -- this week Jay is on the phone from SXSW and I'm in the studio at NYU.

http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.c om/reboot10Mar15.mp3

Topics include: Jake Tapper, pre-orders an iPad, Jessica Roy, problems with WordPress, general mayhem.

Thursday evening meetup, Dave

28

Popular News/ Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

Doubts cast on US 'runaway Prius' (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:58:12 PM

Please turn on JavaScript.

Media requires JavaScript to play.

Mike Michels cites 'significant inconsistencies' in Mr Sikes's account Toyota Motor Corp says it has found no evidence to support a driver's account of a widelypublicised "runaway" Prius incident in California last week.

James Sikes said his Prius sped out of control, but Toyota said its own tests could not replicate the event.

Millions of Toyota models have been recalled after several complaints about the braking and accelerator systems.

Toyota insists that it has found no problems with its electronics, and that its mechanical fixes are sufficient.

Last week's incident raised new questions over Toyota's flagship model, the hybrid Prius.

Differing accounts Mr Sikes, 61, claimed his car suddenly accelerated on a San Diego freeway and that he could not stop it for some 20 minutes until a highway patrol officer helped him slow the vehicle down.

At a news conference in

Astro A30 Headset Works on PCs, Consoles and Phones [Headphones] Adam Frucci (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:40:00 AM

California, a company spokesman said the technical findings differed significantly from the account given by the driver.

Toyota said an examination of Mr Sikes's Prius showed that he repeatedly applied the brakes some 250 times, but only lightly.

That account appears to contradict Mr Sikes's statement backed by the California Highway Patrol - that he was frantically slamming on the brakes.

"While our analysis is not

finalized, Toyota believes there are significant inconsistencies between the account of the event of 8 March and the findings of this investigation," Mike Michels told reporters.

"We're not calling him a liar and we're not judging what he did or did not do," Mr Michels was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

Earlier in the day, federal safety regulators said their analysis of the vehicle had failed to find "anything to explain the incident that Mr Sikes reported".

"We would caution people that

our work continues and that we may never know exactly what happened with this car," the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) added in the statement.

Toyota already faces dozens of lawsuits that could cost it billions of dollars.

Federal authorities are examining if there are grounds for criminal charges.

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

The Astro A40 headset is an expensive set of cans designed for professional gamers. It's not really for you and me. The A30 takes what made pro nerds love it and brings it down to our level. More Âť

Popular News/ Tech/ Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

Plane kills jogger in SC beach emergency landing (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

Hilton Head fire and rescue spokeswoman Joheida Fister said the identities of the pilot HILTON HEAD ISLAND, a n d a p a s s e n g e r o n t h e S.C. – A 38-year-old father of Experimental Lancair IV-P two was jogging and listening to plane were not released. The his iPod when he was hit from two were not injured. behind and killed by a small The plane started leaking oil at plane making an emergency about 13,000 feet and tried landing on the beach, officials originally to make it to Hilton said Tuesday.

Head Airport, Fister said.

Robert Gary Jones of The oil on the windshield Woodstock, Ga., was killed blocked the pilot's vision and he instantly on Hilton Head Island told authorities the propeller o n M o n d a y e v e n i n g , s a i d came off the plane. When he Beaufort County Coroner Ed tried to land on the beach near Allen. the Hilton Head Marriott Resort The single-engine plane had and Spa, the plane hit the jogger lost its propeller and the pilot's and came to rest a little farther vision was blocked by oil on the down the beach, she said. windshield, Allen said.

"I would have to say it's pretty Jones was married and had two unusual," Fister said. children, the coroner said.

FAA records show the aircraft "Apparently he did not see nor was registered to Edward I. hear the plane," Allen said. "The Smith of Chesapeake, Va., with plane was basically gliding." a certificate issued in 2004.

Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:26:04 AM

EcoModo - The Best of TreeHugger [Roundups] Jaymi Heimbuch (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:59:00 AM

This week on TreeHugger, could zeppelins take over the skies from airplanes? How come batteries thanks to lithiumwe don't have "NoMix" toilets sulfur? And more! More » in the US? More energy-dense

Smith has a private pilot's license, according to FAA records. Nobody answered early Tuesday at a phone number listed for Smith and a message was not immediately answered.

The plane left Orlando at 4:45 p.m. and was headed for Virginia, Fister said. The fourseater plane has a turbine engine, can be built from a kit and can fly up to 370 mph, according to the Lancair Web site. The IV-P model has a pressurized cabin.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating, Fister said.

An FAA spokeswoman referred inquiries to the NTSB. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

29

Pete Cashmore Talks Twitter, Location and Mashable on Time.com [VIDEO] Brenna Ehrlich (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/15/2010 7:27:20 PM

It seems that the question on everyone’s mind over at SXSW this year is: What will be the next Twitter? Well, as our own Pete Cashmore said the other day during an interview with Bloomberg, and during a recent interview with Time.com’s Dan Fletcher: It’s all about location.

Twitter still remains a SXSW legend, even though some point to stats demonstrating that Twitter’s web traffic has been leveling off as of late. Still, the microblogging site asserts that it’s going as strong as ever, arguing that the true rubric for success is the number of tweets being sent out as opposed to the number of people logging on to Twitter via a web browser.

Now, location-sharing services like Foursquare seem to be creating a ton of buzz down South. Foursquare was first introduced a year ago at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX, and has only become more popular in the ensuing months — just the other day it garnered 347,000 checkins in a single day

(mostly due to folks checking in in Austin). Other services like Gowalla have also joined the fray, as well as Facebook and Twitter, who have adopted or plan to adopt location features.

Check out the video below to see Pete chatting with Time at SXSW about Twitter and Foursquare, as well as how Mashable was born, the evolution of social networking, and what trends Pete sees dominating in 2010.

What do you think of the future of Twitter and the advent of location-sharing services? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Mashable, Twitter Tags: facebook, foursquare, gowalla, mashable, pete cashmore, sxsw-2010, twitter

30

Popular News/ Tech/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

Photos from Alltop-Kirsty SXSW Party (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/16/2010 8:15:00 AM

These are pictures from the annual Alltop/Kirtsy GirlGuy SXSW party.

We hold it at Allens Boots because, well, no one else would throw a party at a boot store.

And no other party at SXSW has a real chuckwagon.

This is Amber and Maggie.

They’re the two gals who basically made the whole party work.

You don’t see shoes like this at the Stanford Nordstrom.

The owner of Allens Boots and his son.

You don’t get this at Nordstrom either.

This is 2/3 of the Kirtsy founders: Laurie Smithwick and Laura Mayes. Kirtsy, if you

didn’t know, is “Digg for chicks,” so check it out.

Left: John Fisher of Stickergiant. Right: Peter Shankman of HARO(Help A Reporter Out).

This is Aaron Mentele of Electric Pulp, the company that

That’s@MayhemStudio, my Asian twin, in the middle.

Alltop sponsor Starbucks was there in force providing samples of VIA, the new instant coffee.

Cirque du Soleil provided blinking clown noses though this Canuck (Danny Robinson) used them in a slightly unintended way.

The amazing Kris Krug, the official photographer of the party. Follow him on Twitter at@KK This is how a party in Texas developed Alltop. I’m trying to ends: putting away the hay. get him to add some new Yeah, and some end like this too. features to the site.

Follow everything that is The gang from Stutta, the contest platform company, happening at SXSW. plus@AdventureGirl on top. Permalink| Leave a comment » No other party had a pink girls outhouse either.

Erin Andrews: I Had a Meltdown Last Night (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:20:00 AM

On the night of her stalker's conviction, Erin Andrews says she had tears in her eyes.

The ESPN reporter and newest "Dancing with the Stars" contestant told "Good Morning America"'s Robin Roberts that she "had a meltdown last night."

After an emotional day, she says, "I get tears in my eyes ...

When this all came down, there were a lot of people who questioned whether I had anything to do with it ... I did nothing wrong…I still had to say that to people [yesterday]."

GigaPan panorama robot now for SLRs, too (CNET News.com)

The new GigaPan Epic Pro will accommodate larger SLR cameras, the company said GigaPan's new Epic Pro robotic Monday. It's due to ship in April panorama c a m e r a for $895. apparatus(Credit: GigaPan) GigaPan's devices are GigaPan Systems will release a motorized camera mounts that robotic camera accessory that's a u t o m a t e t h e p r o c e s s o f best aligned with its market of precisely orientating the camera panorama enthusiasts: those across an array of positions so who use digital SLRs. the resulting photos can be The earlier GigaPan products, stitched together into a single, of Paris, one of a new breed of the $350 Epic and $450 Epic very large shot. A good example immersive views of the world.

100, were for compact cameras. of the idea is 26-gigapixel view Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:23:00 AM

Compact cameras are fine for a lot of uses, but the kind of people who have the patience and interest in stitching dozens of images together often already have higher-end SLR cameras, which produce higher-quality and often higher-resolution photos.

The Epic Pro has a number of features designed to ease the panorama chore. Up to 20 shots at each position can be taken for purposes of bracketing

exposures or coping with transient subjects in the photo frame. It's got a rechargeable battery back. It has a built-in bubble level. And it includes stitching software to link images into a single panorama.

GigaPan's full line of panorama robots(Credit: GigaPan) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Tech/

E-reader News Edition

31

SXSW 2D bar code badge system confuses many (CNET News.com)

In a bid to make the exchanging of contact information more automatic at SXSW this year, AUSTIN, Texas--Networking the organizers have printed a is a very big part of why personalized QR code on each thousands of people have come attendee's conference badge. A to the South by Southwest QR code is a two-dimensional Interactive (SXSWi) festival bar code that can contain all from near and far for five days kinds of data and transmit it of one of the most popular when scanned by a specialized confabs in the country. reader.

But as anyone knows who's The idea was that after been to packed conferences, downloading one of many especially ones with long days available free readers onto their of sessions, meetings, and smartphones, attendees would evening socializing, it can be be able to quickly scan others' cumbersome to keep track of all QR codes and quickly be able to the business cards that pile over have that person's profile the course of the event. Even if transferred to the scanner's you don't lose some of them, my.sxsw account, which is each you might have trouble days or participant's repository of their weeks later putting faces to schedule, their own profile and names. communications with other Each SXSW 2010 attendee had attendees they are following. a QR code embedded in their SXSW promoted the QR code conference badge. Seen here, system in registration e-mails, the 2D bar code in the middle of early in the full program guides the badge was intended to be and on the inside back cover of scanned so that attendees could the pocket guides. easily exchange profile However, while a terrific information. However, many concept in principle and clearly attendees had trouble with the m e a n t w i t h t h e b e s t o f s y s t e m . ( C r e d i t : D a n i e l intentions, it seems that many Terdiman/CNET) people either aren't using the That's why the folks running Q R c o d e s y s t e m , d o n ' t SXSW have turned to understand it, or have technology to try to find a new abandoned it after an initial way to help attendees get more attempt, often because they are lasting value out of all that first taken to a mobile URL networking, even the part of it asking for their my.sxsw login that happens late at night in dark information, a stumbling block clubs over beer that has long that for those who made it past since gotten warm. this step is not repeated on Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:00:00 AM

subsequent uses.

"It's a good idea, but it's not a very good user experience if the very fist thing you see is [asking for your] user name and password," said Andrew Lih, a

SXSWi attendee and the author of "The Wikipedia Revolution."

"There's nothing to entice you...I wouldn't be surprised if most people see that and say, 'eh, it's not even worth it.'"

Other attendees interviewed for this article reported skepticism with the effort based on a sense of it requiring too many steps, the downloading of an application, or taking too long.

And while it's clear that there were some people effectively employing the QR codes while in town, I didn't identify any, despite talking to a number of conference attendees.

In an interview Monday, SXSW Chief Technical Officer Scott Wilcox said that through the first three days of the event-which included both the SXSW interactive and film festivals-there had been about 10,000 scans of SXSW badge QR codes. And while he didn't yet have any more depth on that data, he said that he's "happy with the usage so far."

According to SXSW Technical Coordinator Russell Phillips, it would count as a scan if a user got as far as the sign-in screen.

"We were looking for new ways to help networking at the event," Wilcox said, "just to complement what already goes on face to face, offering up something to be tested, reacted to and [to] get feedback from all the smart people who come here."

Since SXSW is a mecca for those working on the newest and hottest interactive technologies, it makes sense that the event SXSW page 35

32

Tech/

E-reader News Edition

GDC 2010: Interview with Faraway's Steph Thirion Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:30:00 AM

Filed under: Gaming Steph Thirion is a game designer who's been releasing some of the most inventive games I've seen on the iPhone. He started out with Eliss a little while back, and he recently announced Faraway, which I got to play at GDC. The night after I played the game (it was at a party called Gamma IV), I sat down with him to chat about developing for the iPhone, why Eliss wasn't bigger, and his biggest inspiration for the more casual gameplay of Faraway.

Read on for the full interview.

Eliss was your first title on the iPhone. How do you think that it did?

Well, I think it did well. I'm really happy with the result. I'm really proud of it and really happy that it got such a good reaction from all the fans.

What did you learn from your experience of releasing a game like that?

That leads to the second part of my answer, which is that I didn't playtest the game enough. Eliss is very, very hard. That's the number one complaint. I was aiming for a casual game, and I ended up making a hardcore game. I talked to a lot of people that actually appreciate that, and they've been playing for like the full year. But what I intended to

do was make a game that you could beat in an hour and a half.

And that's absolutely not the case because I didn't playtest it.

So you say the mistake was to not make the game you wanted rather than... some developers say that the iPhone is only a store for casual and easy games.

Do you think there is a space for harder games like Eliss on the iPhone?

There is -- I think it's definitely a smaller space. I will leave Eliss the way it is, I don't want to patch it. I might release a new game related to Eliss that is more casual than Eliss was. But

yeah it's definitely not a hardcore market.

As you told me last night, you're working on new games all the time. But this is the second one you've decided to bring out, called Faraway. For people who haven't seen it, which is most everybody, how would you describe this new game?

This game is about traveling in an infinite space. You're a comet, and you gravitate around stars to get where you want to go. And then you get inside of clusters, inside those clusters, you draw constellations, and the

better constellations you draw, the more time you get to play and stay in the game. It's a casual, endless game, and it's a one-button game.

Right. That's interesting -- Eliss uses the touchscreen well, and it's complicated, but this is much more simple, and at the show here, you've got it running on the Mac, so it's possible to even play it on a screen that's not a touchscreen. Was that a choice you made or did it just sort of come up as you were making it?

No, it was a specific choice. A key point was playing Canabalt.

And I was like wow, the iPhone

works really well as a onebutton device. I was really surprised, and I was like I want to try that, I want to try that simplicity, which is like the opposite of Eliss' controls. So yeah, that was one of my intentions, going realistic, going one-button.

It's interesting you brought up Canabalt -- just like that game, it's easy to pick up, and then by the time you start to get better at it, there's a little more depth that reveals itself.

Right, exactly. Like Canabalt, GDC page 34

Tech/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

5 apps for tracking a package Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/16/2010 8:30:00 AM

Filed under: App Store A few of you recently ordered an iPad. Now, the obsessive calendarwatching begins. How can April 3rd seem so far away? Satisfy your need for up-to-the-second notification of your iPad's whereabouts with one of these package tracking apps for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Delivery Status Touch(US$2.99) is my personal choice. It supports more than 25 delivery services, like FedEx, UPS, DHL, and the good old USPS. Additionally, there's built -in tracking for packages coming from Amazon, Adobe and, of course, Apple.

You can track several packages at once, and the main screen lists each at launch, sorted by color-coded listings. Shipments are accompanied by a big countdown to the delivery date.

Once your goodie gets close, you can bring up a map and watch it approach. Finally, push notifications will satisfy even

the least patient among us.

USPS Mobile(Free) lets you track a package sent through the USA's postal system. To get started, replace a shipment's tracking number with a nickname (might we suggest "precious?") and watch as the progress bar slides along, representing its progress.

USPS Mobile also lets you find a nearby post office or collection box, look up ZIP codes, and more. However, for the purposes of this post, we're only interested in package tracking.

UPS Mobile(Free) is for those who prefer to let Brown deliver their iPads. This full-featured app lets you replace a tracking number with a nickname and watch a progress bar move with your package's progress, much like the USPS app does. In addition, you can find UPS locations, create shipping labels, and save your shipping preferences. There's no push notification with this one, so the overly-eager will just have to sit tight.

Track My Shipments+(Free)

offers in-app purchases, like the aforementioned push notifications, unlimited simultaneous package tracking, and associate email, which allows you to send messages from multiple accounts.

TrackThis Package Tracking ($0.99) is a great-looking app that supports 13 carriers, including UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, TNT, Canadian Post UK does feature push notifications, City Link, and more. TrackThis unlike UPS Mobile. In fact, also features push notifications, whenever your package's status but the nice thing is that you can changes, you'll get a message. determine what events deserve An in-app map shows not only notification, like "on truck for where your package is, but also delivery" or "delivered." That the direction that it's traveling way, you won't be disturbed by every link in the chain. in.

The neat thing about Track My There are five apps to feed your Shipments+ is that it is part of obsession for the next 2-3 an online service that tracks w e e k s . E n j o y y o u r shipments for you. Just forward p e r s e v e r a t i o n ! a confirmation email from any TUAW 5 apps for tracking a of six major carriers to a special package originally appeared on email address, login with the The Unofficial Apple Weblog app, and your shipment is in (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 place. There's no need to type a 08:30:00 EST. Please see our lengthy shipping number into terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| the iPhone.

Track My Shipments+ also Comments

33

Amanda Seyfried is a Temptress in 'Chloe' (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/16/2010 3:05:00 AM

Amanda Seyfried sparkled bright on the Oscar red carpet and got all dolled up again for the premiere of 'Chloe.' Also at the New York debut was co-star Julianne Moore and director Atom Egoyan.

"It is the most complex character that has come along to someone my age. It's hard to find pieces like that," Amanda told ET. "The script was really twisted and really sexual and beautifully realistic at times."

Atom praised the actresses for their portrayal of the steamy love scenes. "They are professional," he said. "They are used to using their bodies to convey emotion and that means in all types of scenes including sexual, erotic scenes as well."

Betty White Returns to Sitcom TV (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:50:00 AM

"Golden" screen gem Betty White is returning to the land of sitcomdom in "Hot in

Cleveland," according to The Associated Press.

The TV Land show has asked the hilarious actress to co-star in its 10-episode inaugural season.

According to the AP, the

television veteran was originally cast for the pilot to play a witty, lively caretaker of a Cleveland home shared by three L.A. transplants. The former west coasters will be played by

Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves, May 8 and will appear in the and Wendie Malick. season finale of ABC's "The Betty will be plenty busy Middle." leading up to the June launch of the show. She was confirmed to host"Saturday Night Live" on

34

Tech/ Sports/

E-reader News Edition

Open Sourcing A Disease Diagnosis Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

post of his own clarifying the situation, noting that they no Submitted at 3/16/2010 5:11:00 AM longer needed help with the If you follow Larry Lessig on diagnosis, and everything Twitter, you noticed that all day s o u n d s f i n e ( w h a t t h e y M o n d a y h e w a s p u t t i n g diagnosed sounds treatable). He messages on Twitter about how especially wanted to downplay "JZ" was sick and was trying to the situation, and not create too "open source" his diagnosis. much concern for his well-being This pointed to a blog that only or the need for any immediate referred to "JZ" as "Z" and had help. The original blog where s o m e b a s i c i n f o o n t h e the details were being shared symptoms of "the patient." was taken down, and it now just There were a series of blog p o i n t s t o Z i t t r a i n ' s o w n posts, detailing some of the e x p l a n a t i o n . details of the sickness, tests that It's great to hear that this had been done, and some of the worked out, and so rather than general questions that the worrying about Jonathan, I doctors were trying to zone in thought it was interesting to on. It even included a list of think about this aspect of "open possible diagnoses, crossing out s o u r c i n g " a d i a g n o s i s . the ones that had been ruled out. Obviously, when it comes to Relatively quickly, two separate medical info, there are always readers came up with an obscure serious privacy concerns, but medical journal article from this definitely does seem like a South Korea from 1994 "about c a s e w h e r e w h e n t h e r e ' s heptatic mega-hemagionas and confusion, more eyes and more FUOs," which apparently quite brains can help. I'm reminded a c c u r a t e l y d e s c r i b e d t h e of the silly complaint often situation. lodged against Wikipedia, that It didn't take long for people to people wouldn't want brain realize that the JZ was Harvard surgery done by "a crowd," but professor Jonathan Zittrain, and by an expert. But, as has been once revealed, he put up a blog noted over and over again, that

presumes the crowd includes no experts, and that the real experts won't quickly establish themselves as such. On top of that, it ignores that once you have many different people -some experts, some not -- you may get obscure or different perspectives that help lead to the important nugget of info you were seeking out, such as a medical journal article from Korea in 1994.

All this has me wondering if there's an opportunity out there for the medical profession to make more use of something like this, with patient consent, obviously. I know doctors converse informally all the time, but opening up some aspects of the diagnosis could be interesting. Of course, I also don't know how often situations like this occur, where the diagnosis is obscure enought that additional help might be useful, but it seems like an area that has possibilities.

Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

GDC continued from page 32

it's a casual endless game, so you want to get better and better and better, and I'm very happy that there's actually evidence of this -- since yesterday at the party, I've been watching people play, and they've been getting better and better, which is a good sign. I've also seen people sucking, but they go to the back of the line to play again. So it's working already.

I think for an iPhone game, that's a good sign to have. In terms of a release, I think you said you're aiming for a little while longer yet, right?

Yeah, I don't have a date yet.

Eliss you told me a while ago that you were kind of torn on pricing and how to release it and how to bring it out, do you have a better plan on Faraway?

I think again Canabalt set a very good example, where they surprised everybody by releasing at $3 and it went great.

They went against the $1 market, which is like destroying the iPhone market. It won't be less then $3. It might be more than that, I don't know yet.

As with everybody else we're talking to, we have to ask you about the iPad. What do you think of the device, have you messed around with the SDK at all? Does it strike you as a

Lakers run streak against Warriors to 9 games Associated Press (ESPN.com)

Top Performers Los Angeles: P. Gasol 26 Pts, 9 Reb, 4 Ast, 1 Stl, 1 Blk

Golden State: S. Curry 29 Pts, 5 Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Reb, 9 Ast, 1 Stl PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Five Filters featured article: Term Extraction.

gaming device?

Oh yeah, I'm so excited about the iPad, I think it's going to be really big. I haven't played with the SDK because I don't want to play with the SDK before I have the device in my hands, and I can start playing then. Because it doesn't make sense if I don't have the device in my hands. I couldn't get my hands on a device.

No one could -- we couldn't either, so you're fine there. Do you think it's the same experience, or would you build a completely different game on the two devices?

In terms of Faraway, I think it's pretty much the same experience -- it's a one-button game. In the case of Eliss, it gets very interesting. There's a whole new world of possibilities.

All right, thanks very much.

TUAW GDC 2010: Interview with Faraway's Steph Thirion originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Tech/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

SXSW continued from page 31

would want to try to incorporate something like QR codes, which are picking up steam around the world as a lightweight way to transmit data. Even beyond their use on the SXSW badges, QR codes are all the rage at the event this year, being utilized in things like a scavenger hunt around Austin and as an automatic way to check in to Foursquare. And other bar code scanning systems, such as Stickybits, were also in evidence here this week.

Wilcox said he and his team had no specific expectations of how many people would scan badge QR codes, or what they would try to get out of it. And it's clear that Wilcox and his team were on to something good with the QR code effort, and that this year's attempt to incorporate it into the SXSW badge system was but a first step.

"We didn't quite know what to expect," Wilcox said. "We're extremely happy with the fact

that people have been using it, and we're excited for their feedback."

What I appreciated after talking with Wilcox and Phillips was the sense that they appear committed to the QR code concept and are open to ideas of how to improve it for next year and beyond.

One attendee I spoke with asked why the codes didn't offer the ability for both parties in a scan to follow each other on Twitter, and when presented with that idea, Wilcox agreed that that would be a valuable extension in the future. Both he and Phillips acknowledged that they had encountered limitations of the iPhone and the ability to tie mobile applications back to the main SXSW Web site.

So, hopefully, this year's QR code gambit will be just a jumping off point for SXSW. If one thing is clear about the thousands of people who come to the event, at least among those here for the interactive

festival, it's that new ways to efficiently communicate with each other, and build new relationships are very high on people's wish lists. And while SXSW's attempts to meet that desire may not always work the first time, one has to applaud their wish to help make for a better experience.

"With anything we do at SXSW, we have to go through the year to know if it works, [and] to know what we could do better," said Wilcox. "As with everything we do with the event, we put it out there and then try to make it better...If we can make it even more transparent in the future, even more people would use it."

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

Watch: An 'American Idol' Makeover (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/16/2010 5:22:00 AM

It's a new look for the Top 12 "American Idol" finalists!

ET goes behind the scenes of the Top 12 photo shoot as the

boys reveal their new style!

While they admit to some nerves on stage, the guys are getting used to the star treatment -- photos, free lunches, new haircuts and a stylish wardrobe at their disposal.

Meanwhile, the girls discuss how they're branching out and trying new things with their style, including bright-blue leggings, white pumps and bold accessories!

35

Twitter Will Be Available in China…Someday Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/16/2010 1:38:10 AM

While most of the world happily enjoys the Internet’s free services such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Google, in China these are either inaccessible or might become so in the following months.

And, as shown by Google’s recent squabble with the Chinese government, it can be very hard to operate in the world’s most populous country.

But Twitter’s Jack Dorsey has faith that Twitter will be able to operate in China, although it’s currently blocked by the government.

At a New York panel discussion on social media and digital activism, Chinese activist Ai Weiwei asked Dorsey whether he can promise availability of Twitter in China.

Dorsey said: “I would say yes.

It’s just a matter of time.”

Weiwei called this answer “very philosophical”; knowing that a

giant like Google has trouble securing its presence in China, a cautious answer like this by a much smaller Twitter instills little confidence.

Weiwei also pointed out a very interesting fact that westerners probably don’t think about: Twitter is a very different tool in Chinese and in English. “At 140 words, in Chinese, you can really write a novel. You can discuss most profound ideas really to democracy, freedom, poetry,” he said. Unfortunately, it seems that this fact didn’t escape Chinese censors, which have been blocking Twitter for nearly a year now.

Tags: china, social media, twitter

36

Tech/

The US Postal Service's Business Model Is Outdated. Is It Time To Wind It Down Or Privatize It?

E-reader News Edition

Downloads aren't gone from Apple.com, just less visible TJ Luoma (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/16/2010 12:00:00 AM

Filed under: Apple We've had a few concerned readers contact us, worried that Dennis Yang (Techdirt) for the newspaper industry, b i l l i o n s h o r t f a l l f o r t h e Apple has deleted or otherwise delivering a daily, physical upcoming decade. So, since it's discontinued the "Downloads" Submitted at 3/16/2010 1:06:00 AM newspaper to households may not a private business, the best section of its Web site.

Just recently, we discussed actually be an endangered solution for the USPS may be to Fear not, gentle reader, they are whether or not ceasing Saturday business, the business itself of simply accept its diminishing still available in the same place delivery was a good idea or not delivering physical items to role in the daily lives of a s a l w a y s : for the USPS. John Potter, the households is still very much in A m e r i c a n s , a n d f o c u s o n http://www.apple.com/downloa US Postmaster General, recently demand. After all, with so continuing to run as efficiently ds/. said that the postal service's much shopping happening as possible for as long as it What caused the confusion was business model is as outdated as online nowadays, someone still remains useful. That said, the the redesign of Apple.com that the newspaper industry's. Potter has to deliver the goods (until other solution may be to remove took effect at the end of last said:"Twenty years ago we replicators, a la Star Trek, are t h e g o v e r n m e n t - m a n d a t e d week. In order to make room for would laugh at the notion that a perfected). In fact, for over a monopoly and privatize the an iPad tab in the navigation bar newspaper would ever embrace decade now, we've been talking USPS, and then let that private at the top of Apple's Web site, the idea that maybe the channel a b o u t t h i s o p p o r t u n i t y t o entity decide whether or not to something had to go. of the future is electronic and optimize the "last mile," and as invest in the business. Either Fortunately you can easily that you may have to change of yet, nobody has really even way, it seems silly to ask locate the downloads section your business model," Sure, come close to solving this taxpayers to invest anything simply by typing the word s i m i l a r i t i e s b e t w e e n t h e problem. further in the USPS since so "downloads" into the search industries definitely exist. That said, the USPS is a many alternatives exist already. box.

Craigslist is a much cheaper and government institution, and We should definitely all be Below the links to Apple more efficient marketplace for even though it does not take any appreciative of the part that the products, the iTunes store and local goods than the classifieds tax funding to run, an attempt to Postal Service has played in the the Apple store, the bottom link section in the newspaper ever attack this opportunity may best foundation of our country, but will bring you to Apple's was, and email is a much be mounted by the private sector what else can be done? downloads page, which has a cheaper and more efficient ( l i k e U P S a n d F e d E x ) , Permalink| Comments| Email wide variety of applications means of communication than especially when you consider This Story available, both from Apple and snail mail. That said, whereas the USPS's projected $238 from various third-party developers.

You can also click the Support tab if you're looking for Apple

Support Downloads, where you can find downloads for security updates and "point-releases" of software that you might otherwise update via Software Update.

TUAW Downloads aren't gone from Apple.com, just less visible originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Tech/ Sports/

E-reader News Edition

Want To Know How Meaningless The FCC's Broadband Plan Is? No One Is Upset By It

iPad keyboard dock, power adapter delayed until May

Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:32:00 AM

37

Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:30:00 AM

There was lots of press coverage about the FCC's broadband plan on Monday, as the commission released an exec summary of its nearly 400-page plan for broadband in the US. If you want to wade through the details, it's all there online for you. But, if you want a basic summary, it appears that, like pretty much everything this FCC is doing, it's a lot of talk and little of consequence. So far, I've seen statements from lobbyists on pretty much all sides of the issues "commending" or "applauding" or "supporting" the FCC. And that's because there's basically nothing controversial and nothing big at all in the plan. It appears to try to thread the needle and keep everyone happy -- and in doing so, it appears to punt on the all-important questions. If it was really about making the necessary changes, key players would be up in arms. But they're not.

The report pays lip service to greater competition and talks about getting better data and about making better use of wireless spectrum. Well, duh.

But it takes no bold steps -- does nothing to really take control out of the hands of the incumbent telco providers -- just as we originally expected, even if really disruptive, but necessary, ideas were considered, they don't appear in the final plan.

In the end, it's the kind of plan you put forward if you're being political and don't want to make waves. It's not the plan you put forward if you're making a bold leadership statement about how to really expand broadband in this country. Too bad.

Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Filed under: iPad Earlier today, Apple pushed back the availability of some iPad accessories, per Electronista; namely, the iPad Keyboard Dock and the 10W USB Power Adapter. Additionally, the Apple-branded iPad case won't ship until mid-April.

Which Apple accessories will be available when the Wi-Fi iPad ships? The non-keyboard dock and the Dock Connector To VGA Adapter. There's still no word on the muchanticipated camera connection kit.

As with the iPhone and the iPod before it, a cottage industry of accessories is rapidly growing around the iPad. We saw some cool cases at Macworld Expo, another that looks an awful lot

Rockets rally to end Nuggets' 6-game win streak Associated Press (ESPN.com)

Top Performers Denver: C. Anthony 45 Pts, 10 Reb, 3 Ast, 1 Blk

Houston: A. Brooks 31 Pts, 1 Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Reb, 9 Ast PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Five Filters featured article: Term Extraction.

like a plastic bag, a vest with a huge pocket, several bags and a scarf. Notable accessory manufacturers Griffin and Belkin have also announced their initial offerings.

They're mostly cases for now, but it won't be long before we see something like this.

TUAW iPad keyboard dock, power adapter delayed until May originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

38

Tech/ Politics/ TV/

E-reader News Edition

Project Natal Sacks PlayStation Move in Reader Vote Ben Parr (Mashable!)

Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:02:38 AM

Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:37:00 PM

Last week, Sony announced the PlayStation Move, a new motion -based controller to compete with both the Wii and, more importantly, Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal fullbody motion controller.

That’s why we made the topic of the latest edition of our Web Faceoff about Sony and Microsoft’s upcoming nextgeneration gaming controllers.

We asked you to tell us which excited you more: Microsoft’s Natal or Sony’s Move. After more than 2,000 votes… … Project Natal emerged victorious. With 56% of the vote (1,268 votes), Natal was more than a match for the PlayStation

The Making Of Heineken’s Amazing Soccer Swindle [VIDEO]

If you’re a soccer fan, you’ll understand. If you’re not, well, suffice it to say that Europeans (Italians, especially) are (in general) crazy about soccer.

So when Heineken staged a Move, which mustered 30% of fake classical music concert at the ballots (668 votes). One the same time as a crucial Real hundred and seventy of you Madrid vs. AC Milan game on voted that you didn’t care for October 21, there was no chance m o t i o n c o n t r o l l e r s , w h i l e that any real soccer fan would another 150 preferred the Wii. b e t h e r e … e x c e p t i f t h e i r Tune in tomorrow for the next girlfriends, professors and edition of our Web Faceoff bosses convinced them (by any means necessary) to attend. series!

Tags: microsoft, Nintendo, What happens next is sheer playstation move, poll, project hilarity, and a nice example of a natal, PS3, sony, web faceoff, high-budget guerrilla marketing campaign from Heineken.

Wii, xbox, Xbox 360 Suffice to say that more than

1,100 soccer fans got swindled, 1.5 million people saw their reactions on live TV, and Heineken received five million visitors to the site devoted to the event — and a great deal of news coverage for their troubles.

As far as what happens in the video itself, we won’t spoil it for you; see it below and enjoy.

Tags: Heineken, trending, viral video, web marketing

Dioguardia, Idol Dad, Runs for N.Y. Senate (Newsmax - Politics)

morning show at 8:20 a.m. before heading to Grand Central Submitted at 3/16/2010 2:08:39 AM Station for an official press Tuesday morning, former New conference.

York Congressman Joe A fiscal conservative who D i o G u a r d i i s e x p e c t e d t o foresaw the national debt crisis, announce his bid for the U.S. D i o G u a r d i w a s t h e f i r s t Senate seat held by Kirsten practicing CPA elected to Gillibrand.

Congress during the 1980s, DioGuardi is scheduled to when he represented the suburbs appear on Fox & Friends north of New York City for two

terms.

In recent weeks, DioGuardi’s speeches have urged Americans to take action on improving fiscal responsibility, reforming federal budgeting and accounting, and reducing the national debt.

His celebrity daughter, American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi recently told the

New York Post that she supported her father and added, "he has more energy than anyone I know. When he is working, he is Superman." © All Rights Reserved.

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

'House' 'Black Hole' Recap Danny Gallagher (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/16/2010 5:22:00 AM

(S06E15) I couldn't find a really good quote to transcribe or even characterize this week's episode, because the whole turn of events are a jumbled lump of clay in my head.

Normally, a show that goes by so fast that I need a drag chute just to figure out what's going on would turn me away from it, but the dramatic tension that'House' creates kept me velcroed in front of it all the way to the end.

Sure my head still hurts from trying to understand the science of it all, but the dramatic and even comedic angles makes for some fine-tasting Advil.

Continue reading'House' 'Black Hole' Recap Filed under: House, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Politics/

E-reader News Edition

39

Citizens Unite Lawrence Lessig (The New Republic - All Feed)

regulation, and not the speaker that matters, then the Chinese are no different from the Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:00 PM Chamber of Commerce. So how There has been a growing fury can the Court honestly uphold about the Supreme Court’s the inevitable law limiting the decision in the Citizens United Chinese from campaigning, case, but much of that fury when they’ve just told us that hangs upon an odd reading of identity doesn’t matter? the Court’s opinion. The Court, One need not be xenophobic to it is said, has given corporations be troubled by the idea of all the rights of “persons.” It has foreign influence in American elevated these artificial beings elections. Certainly the Framers into entities “endowed by their were. The point is not that Creator” (us) “with certain foreigners are evil. It is rather unalienable rights,” including that elections are private. It is the right to free speech. we—citizens—who are to select No doubt the Court has a long who is to govern us. And it is history of recognizing the completely appropriate for us to “person” in “Inc.” But this protect the debate we have about current wave of criticism is hard that selection by limiting to understand, because the disproportionate spending by Court’s entire Citizens United non-citizens. opinion hung upon the fact that This insight gives a clue to the First Amendment says perhaps the most sensible nothing about who or what is to constitutional response to the get the benefit of its protection. Supreme Court’s decision. Not, It simply bans certain kinds of as an angry gaggle of activists regulation. As Justice Scalia put have proposed, through an it in his concurrence: “The amendment aimed at denying Amendment is written in terms what Citizens United never of ‘speech,’ not speakers.” Thus, asserted—that corporations are the government is blocked by persons. But instead, through an the First Amendment from amendment that recognizes what constraining the free speech of no one has ever asserted—that any entity, whether that entity is whether or not they are persons, a corporation or a dolphin. corporations are not United This interpretation of the First States citizens. And if there is Amendment is going to create s o m e t h i n g a p p r o p r i a t e t o real trouble for the Court when keeping the conversation about Congress gets around to closing who is to govern us to us the gap that the Court’s opinion citizens, there may well be seems to create. If it is the s o m e t h i n g a p p r o p r i a t e i n

protecting elections against undue influence by non-citizens.

A simple amendment would give Congress precisely this power: Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to restrict the power to limit, though not to ban, campaign expenditures of non-citizens of the United States during the last 60 days before an election.

This amendment would not require that Congress enact any speech-limiting legislation. My own view is that we should encourage the broadest range of free speech, including speech by corporations, Canadians, and curious dolphins (at least when we learn to understand what they’re saying). To the extent members of Congress are, and seem to be, independent of these expenditures, there is no good reason for the state to limit them. But the amendment would give Congress a power to limit campaign expenditures by noncitizens, at least during a narrow window when America is focused upon the question of whom they should elect to represent them.

That power would not be absolute. Before the 60-day window, anyone or anything could say anything they like.

And during the 60-day window, Congress could only limit campaign expenditures, not noncitizen political speech generally. And within that

narrow class, it could not even ban campaign expenditures completely. Any citizen so moved, of course, would be free to then amplify those expenditures with his or her own funds. For instance, if George Soros agrees with an argument made by an Hungarian, he’d be free to spend his own money supporting it, since he, unlike the Hungarian, is a citizen, and his speech, unlike the speech of non-citizens, remains constitutionally protected.

Likewise, if Rex Tillerson agrees with an argument made

by Exxon, he’d be free to spend his own money supporting it, since Tillerson is a citizen, and Exxon is not. No argument or idea would be silenced by this amendment. And any argument that resonates could be amplified by citizens as loudly as they wish.

Or consider this: Just as the Supreme Court allows essentially anyone to file a “friend of the Court” brief for it to consider when deciding a case, and any party in a case is free to amplify or adopt any of the arguments in those briefs, the Court still strictly limits those who are permitted to argue before it, and strictly balances the quantity of argument that each side gets to make. Does the Court’s heavy-handed restriction on how much each side gets to say and who gets to say it violate any free speech

principle? Does the First Amendment require that the Petitioner be free to sell part of its argument time to the Respondent? Not, in my view, if sanity and reason is to be a part of the market for free speech.

The justification for the power to limit non-citizen campaign expenditures goes back to the core justification for democracy.

The Framers wanted to build a government “dependent upon the People” by limiting the risk that the government might become dependent upon anything else. The Constitution explicitly bans “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” because the Framers wanted our officers focused upon the people, not upon foreign powers. Likewise, giving Congress the power to limit campaign expenditures of anyone save citizens would help avoid a dependency, either real or perceived, upon non-citizens.

But why not just allow anyone to speak, and measure a candidate by the company he keeps? If Exxon is spending $10,000,000 to support a candidate, won’t the voters of the district recognize that (for the Court upheld disclosure requirements), and vote against the candidate because of that fact alone?

CITIZENS page 43

40

Politics/

E-reader News Edition

What Failure Would Cost the Democrats Norman Ornstein, Thomas Mann (The New Republic - All Feed)

Republicans to use the same technique to repeal health plan when they recapture the majority.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:54:23 AM Disgruntled (if not former) We fundamentally disagree; the Democrats Pat Caddell and surest path to political debacle Doug Schoen are the latest to for Democrats is to fail to enact join in offering advice to health reform, and the best way P r e s i d e n t O b a m a a n d to avoid a rout in November is Congressional Democrats to to show that the party in charge abandon their health reform c a n a c t u a l l y g o v e r n . T h e q u e s t b e f o r e i t c a u s e s reconciliation process is entirely catastrophic damage to the appropriate for amending the party. Caddell and Schoen close Senate-passed bill; in any case, their Washington Post article t h e p u b l i c w i l l j u d g e t h e with the following warning: Democrats on the basis of the “ U n l e s s t h e D e m o c r a t s results, not the inside-baseball fundamentally change their process. In fact, the Democrats approach, they will produce not most reluctant to support health just a march of folly but also run r e f o r m - - t h o s e f r o m m o r e the risk of unmitigated disaster c o n s e r v a t i v e , R e p u b l i c a n in November.” leaning districts and states--are The case Caddell and Schoen the ones most likely to lose in make parallels the one made the November if health reform is previous day by Karl Rove in defeated. the Wall Street Journal, and that The obvious first antecedent to is made daily by a parade of examine is 1994. Democrats R e p u b l i c a n p o l l s t e r s a n d went into the midterm elections lawmakers: The Democrats’ after a presidential contest in health reform plan is wildly and which they grasped the full reins deeply unpopular, mirroring the of power in Washington for the unpopularity of Washington and first time in a dozen years. Early big government. If it passes, it momentum disappeared when will result in a huge political first President Bill Clinton’s b a c k l a s h , e s p e c i a l l y i f modest stimulus proposal went Democrats use reconciliation, down in the Senate and then his which Caddell and Schoen call d e f i c i t - r e d u c t i o n p a c k a g e manipulation and liken to the staggered to the finish line after “nuclear option” that Senate eight long months and without a Republicans threatened during single Republican vote in either the Bush administration. For house. It looked more like a Rove, the use of reconciliation setback than a victory. This was w i l l o p e n t h e w a y f o r followed the next year by a

lengthy struggle to enact sweeping health care reform that ended in a complete collapse, without even a vote on the Clinton plan. A shocking loss in the House on a crime bill, though ultimately reversed, reinforced the image of a president and party that could not govern competently.

What followed was a disastrous midterm for Democrats—losses of 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. Heading into that election season, House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, described the Democrats’ condition bluntly: “Imagine it’s October, and the Democrats are going to get up and make the following case: 'We’ve run the House for 40 years, we’ve run the Senate for eight years, we have the White House, and the Republicans are so much more clever than we are that they’ve obstructed us. We need you to elect more dumb Democrats so we can overcome those clever Republicans.'” Conservative Democratic Senator John Breaux, of Louisiana, echoed that point on health policy, saying, “We can blame the Republicans for filibustering, but we have the responsibility to govern.”

To be sure, there were many reasons for Democrats’ massive losses in 1994, including scandals and angry gun owners.

But the failure to fulfill their responsibility for governing

contributed mightily to the debacle. That was the conclusion of pollsters from both parties in the aftermath of the November contests. Two weeks after the election, Republican pollster Bill McInturff found that “one of the most important predicates for Republican success was not having health care pass.” He noted that the collapse of the plan reinforced voters’ belief that Washington was in a dysfunctional state of gridlock.

At the same time, Democratic pollster Mike Donilon, who worked on the losing campaign of Pennsylvania Senator Harris Wofford, said he believed that Wofford would have won had health reform passed.

It is undeniably true that a Washington plan to reform health care is not overwhelmingly popular. But that’s mostly because Washington is unpopular these days. When the component parts of the Democrats’ plan are parsed out, surveys show high approval for nearly all of them, including removing preexisting conditions, ending lifetime benefit caps, providing tax credits to small business to get them to cover employees, subsidizing low- and middleincome families to enable them to buy insurance, and creating a health-insurance exchange to shop for policies.

We also know that voters are

warming somewhat to the idea of a reform plan, in part because the president has ramped up his efforts on its behalf beginning with the State of the Union and the health-reform summit—letting voters know what is actually in the bills. The actions of insurance companies like Anthem and Wellpoint, raising premiums sharply before enactment of reform, has also contributed to a public receptiveness to change. And we know that there was a noticeable bump in public approval when bills passed the House and the Senate—voters like action, and like success. Even where we are skeptical about the benefits of government programs, we want government to work.

It is also true that the healthreform plan, contrary to conventional wisdom, will not simply frontload the costs and backload the benefits. The plan will move quickly to erase the unpopular “doughnut hole” that results in a costly jolt for many seniors buying prescription drugs, to end discrimination based on preexisting conditions for children, to ease the insurance burden on those losing or leaving their jobs, and to enable parents to carry children up to the age of 26 on their family policies.

Many House and Senate Democrats are understandably WHAT page 42

Politics/

E-reader News Edition

41

Against Beauty Adam Kirsch (The New Republic - All Feed) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:00 PM

O ne of the running jokes in On Beauty, Zadie Smith’s third novel, is that its main character is philosophically opposed to beauty. Howard Belsey is a professor of art history at Wellington College, and like all middle-aged professors in campus novels, he is a ludicrous figure--unfaithful to his wife, disrespected by his children, and, of course, unable to finish the book he has been talking about for years. In Howard’s case, the book is meant to be a demolition of Rembrandt, whose canvases he sees as key sites for the production of the Western ideology of beauty.

“What we’re trying to ... interrogate here,” Howard drones in a lecture on Rembrandt’s Seated Nude, “is the mytheme of artist as autonomous individual with privileged insight into the human.... What are we signing up for when we speak of the ‘beauty’ of this ‘light’?”

Throughout this rather stereotypical classroom vaudeville, Smith cements the reader’s antagonism to Howard and his cheap aesthetic nihilism by having us view it through the eyes of his most naïve student, Katie Armstrong, a sixteen-year -old from the Midwest who is uncomplicatedly in love with

art. “She used to dream about one day attending a college class about Rembrandt with other intelligent people who loved Rembrandt and weren’t ashamed to express this love,” Smith writes, and she makes us indignant at Howard on Katie’s behalf. Indignation turns to scorn when it turns out that Howard Belsey is just as enthralled by beauty as anyone-specifically, by the beauty of another young student, Victoria Kipps, with whom he has a disastrous affair.

Howard’s downfall--he loses his wife and his career--is the revenge of beauty, and in the novel’s last scene Smith forces Howard to admit defeat. He is standing before a distinguished audience, about to deliver the talk that will determine his academic future, when he realizes that he has left his speech in the car. He is left to cycle emptily through his slides, finally allowing Rembrandt’s pictures to speak for themselves, after all his attempts to deface them with words. And the sheer beauty of the images, in Smith’s last paragraphs, becomes a promise of redemption: in Rembrandt’s portrait of his wife Hendrickje, the imperfections of the skin, “chalky whites and lively pinks,” are redeemed by “the ever present human hint of yellow, intimation of what is to come.” In this scene, Smith delivers the traditional

affirmations we look to comedy to provide: beauty, love, and art triumph over malice and division.

Readers who remember Howard Belsey will surely be surprised to open Smith’s new collection of non-fiction, and find that it contains a frontal attack on the idea of beauty in fiction. This essay “Two Directions for the Novel” is one of the high points of Changing My Mind, which in addition to literary criticism includes Smith’s film and travel writing-proficient but unremarkable-and a fine memoir of her father.

First published in 2008, the essay is a manifesto in the form of a review of two novels, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland and Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, which offer Smith an eloquent contrast, not least in their worldly careers.

Netherland will be well known to anyone who reads fiction; it was one of the most acclaimed novels of 2008. (The paperback comes with a blurb from President Obama--a publicist’s dream.) Remainder, on the other hand, was at best a succès d’estime, which appeared in 2007 as a paperback original after taking, Smith tells us, “seven years to find a mainstream publisher.” This information comes in the very first paragraph of Smith’s essay, suggesting its importance to her.

Later we learn that McCarthy is

the founder of a prankish manifestoissuing group called the International Necronautical Society, and that he once expelled two writers from this society for “signing with corporate publishers,” thus becoming, in his words, “complicit with a publishing industry whereby the ‘writer’ becomes merely the executor of a brief dictated by corporate market research, reasserting the certainties of middle-brow aesthetics.”

It is clear that part of what draws Smith to McCarthy is this avant-garde puritanism, which seems so precious and anachronistic today. For Smith’s own first novel-- White Teeth, published in 2000, when she was twenty-four years old--met with what Philip Larkin (a frequent touchstone in her essays) once described as “success so huge and wholly farcical”; and ever since, she has been that rare and ambiguous thing, not just a good writer but a famous writer. There is a kind of penance in the homage that Smith pays to McCarthy’s seven years in the wilderness, and a kind of self-suspicion in her description of O’Neill’s book: “It’s as if, by an act of collective prayer, we have willed it into existence.”

Exactly the same thing might be said, with even more justice, of White Teeth, which was so eagerly welcomed in part

because it said things that Britons in particular wanted very much to hear. In that book, Smith takes some of the most envenomed and insoluble problems of contemporary life-immigration, racism, religious fundamentalism, terrorism--and turns them into premises for comedy. Any of the characters in White Teeth could be the protagonist in a novel of social protest: Samad Iqbal, the educated Bengali immigrant reduced to working as a waiter; Samad’s son Millat, a charismatic teenager driven by boredom and resentment to join an Islamic militant group; even the lovable sad sack Archie Jones, a native Englishman trapped at the bottom of an immutable class system.

Yet none of these figures seems threatening or truly pitiable, because they inhabit a comic universe in which conflict is inadmissible, even or especially when it is Smith’s explicit subject. Sometimes this is because Smith neuters her characters with jokes: the group that Millat joins is called Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, or KEVIN, which immediately prevents us from thinking of it as genuinely dangerous. Even the characters are in on the joke: “We are aware that we have an acronym problem,” one militant AGAINST page 42

42

Politics/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

AGAINST

Man of Letters Elizabeth D. Samet (The New Republic - All Feed)

locate on a map but the names of which give you a sense of the general atmosphere: “COP Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:00:00 PM Crazy,” “FOB Warhorse.”

This is the way it happens.

You do your best to respond to They sit in your class poring the mood they set, and you o v e r D a n t e ’ s I n f e r n o o r somehow grow closer at an grousing good-naturedly about impossible distance in what you the silent film you’ve insisted imagine must be a distinctly they admire. They graduate to wartime way. It isn’t the crawling through the mud at complicated intimacy of a Ranger School or learning how family member or a comrade-into fly a Chinook in Alabama. arms. Nor is it the fleeting, They write to let you know illusory intimacy contrived by about the milestones and about strangers on a plane. It survives the weirdness; they ask what’s its long silences and permits--on new on your end and tell you both sides--frankness and a lack not to work “too hard.” They of self-consciousness about stop by the office whenever exhilaration or despair. It is free they’re back in town for a of an impulse to censor or a classmate’s wedding or some need to protect the recipient. It other event. They become, for is occasionally urgent, often r e a s o n s y o u t h i n k y o u wry, and (whatever the register) u n d e r s t a n d , m o r e a c t i v e always authentic. Perhaps it is correspondents the farther away best described as the intimacy of they find themselves. Messages- having known how another’s -sometimes old-fashioned letters mind works and of having --roll in from Mosul or Herat, watched it grow in response to from places you can’t even unprecedented stimuli and

continued from page 41

responsibilities, to the confusion that attends even the most carefully orchestrated operation, to the challenges of improvisation.

In such correspondence, one finds, to paraphrase Wordsworth, the epic growth of the soldier’s mind when it is engaged in an unusual enterprise: teaching an Afghan unit to fire old Soviet artillery with a manual written in Russian, serving in the military police at a detention facility in the wake of Abu Ghraib, or leading a company of paratroopers on missions through Zabul Province.

Then one day, maybe, even though you have known from the start that this is one of the possible endings to the story, you find yourself unable to compute the fact that the last message you sent will go unanswered. Several days later you sit in a pew staring at a flagdraped coffin that holds the

WHAT continued from page 40

nervous about voting to enact health reform. We are convinced that the political damage will be far, far worse if they fail to do so.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the

Brookings Institution. They are Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: co-authors of The Broken PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Branch: How Congress is Term Extraction.

Failing America and How to Get It Back On Track.

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

Five Filters featured article:

remains of a man not yet 30. A coffin surrounded by a wife and a mother and a father and a sister, who also wears the uniform, and by a lot of other young men who aren’t yet 30.

Men who call him--repeatedly and forcefully--their best friend.

Men permitted to grieve unabashedly in this place as they struggle through their eulogies but who suffer invisibly terrible things elsewhere.

And you understand that distance is no insulation, that Zabul Province is unendurably close. You realize that your ritual of scanning the casualty notices on the DOD website and The Washington Post’s “Faces of the Fallen” hasn’t really conditioned you at all.

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

says.

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

Senseless Crimes Signal NYC Edginess Uptick [Trendwatch] Hamilton Nolan (Gawker) Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:42:01 AM

Edgy NYC is back! A five year -old child's Lamborghinibedecked birthday party in Queens was shot up yesterday.

A homeless guy punched a 91 year-old female Rite Aid cashier during a robbery. And a 99 yearold man was beaten with a steering wheel lock in an argument over a parking space.

Awesome! Now if we can just get some violent junkies back in Tompkins Square Park, we'll all be edgier by osmosis. More »

Politics/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

Sen. Kerry Moves to Protect Whales (Newsmax - Politics)

to protect them," said Kerry, the Democratic Party's unsuccessful Submitted at 3/16/2010 1:24:10 AM presidential candidate in 2004.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Negotiators are studying a J o h n K e r r y o n M o n d a y proposal ahead of a June IWC introduced a bill to protect meeting in Morocco that would whales, sending a message as let Japan, Norway and Iceland nations debate a compromise hunt whales openly despite the that critics say would end a moratorium but reduce the catch moratorium on commerical "significantly" over 10 years. whaling.

The compromise comes amid a Kerry's bill, which is similar to feud between Australia and a bill before the House of Japan, which kills hundreds of Representatives, would affirm whales in the Pacific and US support for a 1986 ban by Antarctic oceans yearly using an the International Whaling IWC loophole that allows C o m m i s s i o n ( I W C ) o n "lethal research" on the animals. commercial whaling.

President Barack Obama's It would also call for research administration has not decided on whale habitats and look for on the IWC proposal, saying it w a y s t o e n d h a r m a n d needs to see hard numbers harassment of the ocean giants. indicating that fewer whales "Thousands of whales die each would die. year from commercial whaling, But environmentalists have s h i p s t r i k e s , a n d h a b i t a t been sharply critical of the plan, disruption," said Kerry, who saying it demands little from h e a d s t h e S e n a t e F o r e i g n whaling nations and offers no Relations Committee and has path forward after the 10-year led legislation against global period. warming.

Patrick Ramage, the director of "We should be leading the effort the whale program at the

Things You Were Supposed to Take Seriously: 'Drinkability' [Failures] Hamilton Nolan (Gawker) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:13:28 AM

The most surprising revelation in Ad Age's story on Bud Light's failed "Drinkability" ad

campaign is that "Drinkability" was apparently supposed to be

CITIZENS continued from page 39

Yet it is here that the Court’s practical insight into the ways of politics is most strained. If Exxon wants candidate X to win, but recognizes that a $10,000,000 expenditure by it would be toxic for candidate X, then why wouldn’t they spend the $10,000,000 on candidate Y? They, like anyone, can measure the effect of their speech. Why wouldn’t they tailor their speech to achieve the desired effect?

More ominously still, as recent scholarship by Marcos Chamon and Ethan Kaplan demonstrates, it may well be that the mere threat of spending a large amount on one side of a campaign would be enough to buy the loyalty of an incumbent.

Like the Republicans with the filibuster, if Exxon can merely threaten to enter a race on the opponent’s side, that may be enough to induce the threatened candidate to behave. On this account, the expenditures we see would just be the tip of the influence iceberg. And influence flowing just underwater (call this the “iceberg effect”) would be invisible, and thus be embarrassing to no one.

“We the People” have a completely compelling reason to an actual thing—the "ideal assure that representatives rational benefit," the consultants remain dependent upon citizens, said. Haha. Really? Shut up. and not upon special interests.

Really? "Drinkability?" More » International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the compromise "would undermine three decades of hard-won conservation victories."

He said that whale protection enjoyed support from both major US parties, noting that former president Ronald Reagan helped initiate the 1986 moratorium.

The congressional bill "is a clear call for a course correction at the IWC where US leadership really began with the Reagan administration," Ramage said.

"You would be hard-pressed to find any issue on which there's as clear a consensus across the country and across the political spectrum as conservation of the great whales," he said.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

43

But the Supreme Court has made that practically impossible. The “iceberg effect” means we cannot even know what influence was exercised.

That uncertainly will only make suspicions grow.

Only an amendment can reverse this now. But that amendment should restrict freedom as little as possible. Giving Congress the power to limit non-citizen campaign expenditures is power enough to assure that Congress has but one dependency—upon the People. If exercised properly, it could help restore the people’s trust in this key institution of American democracy.

Lawrence Lessig is professor of law and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and the author most recently of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy(Penguin).

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

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

44

Politics/ Consumer Reports/

E-reader News Edition

J. D. Hayworth: I Am Schtoopid (Little Green Footballs)

‘the establishment of intimacy.’”

“Now how dangerous is that?”

May I be blunt? The idea that asked Hayworth, who is legalizing same sex marriage challenging Sen. John McCain will lead to bestiality is one of from the right in Arizona’s GOP the most stone-dumb reactionary Senate primary. talking points of the religious “I mean, I don’t mean to be right. Do these people really absurd about it, but I guess I can think the only reason humans make the point of absurdity with don’t “marry” animals is an absurd point,” he continued. because it’s against the law?

“I guess that would mean if you Good grief. really had affection for your Maybe this says more about Ariz.) said Sunday that the horse, I guess you could marry them than they’d like to admit. expansion of state laws allowing your horse.”

The latest Neanderthal to pull gay marriage could lead to The former Republican out this scaaary boogeybeast is people marrying horses. congressman then insisted that John McCain’s Republican Hayworth, during an interview the “only way” to prevent men opponent in Arizona, tea party with an Orlando, Fla., radio from marrying horses is to B i r t h e r c a n d i d a t e J . D . station explained: “You see, the c r e a t e a f e d e r a l m a r r i a g e Hayworth:‘You could marry Massachusetts Supreme Court, amendment. Hayworth noted your horse’. He might as well be when it started this move toward t h a t h e s u p p o r t s s u c h a n wearing a badge that says “I same-sex marriage, actually a m e n d m e n t .

AM SCHTOOPID.” defined marriage - now get this Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R- it defined marriage as simply, Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:33:08 AM

Fox News vs. Glenn Beck (Little Green Footballs)

occasionally at MSNBC. But Beck has caused such anguish at Fox that some of its journalists There is growing tension within celebrated the failure of last the ranks at Fox News over the week’s interview with embattled Glenn Beck Clown Show: ex-congressman Eric Massa, Howard Kurtz - The Beck which Beck pronounced a waste Factor at Fox: Staffers say of time. comments taint their work. (Ya Love him or hate him, Beck is a think?) talented, often funny Fox staffers note that veteran b r o a d c a s t e r , a r e c o v e r i n g producer Gresham Striegel left alcoholic with an unabashedly the network after clashing with emotional style. Yet even that Beck and say the host has has caused grousing. Some s u r r o u n d e d h i m s e l f w i t h staffers say they have watched loyalists from Mercury, some of rehearsals, on internal monitors, w h o m r e m a i n o n t h a t in which Beck has teared up or company’s payroll. (Striegel did paused at the same moments as not respond to a request for he later did during the show. comment.) When Fox covers A s k e d a b o u t t h i s , B a l f e breaking news during Beck’s responded sharply: “Glenn hour, some journalists say, they reacts the same way to issues are flooded with angry e-mail whether he knows people are f r o m v i e w e r s a b o u t t h e watching or not, and is proud to preemption. show his emotions, unlike the Friction between opinionated cowardly, two-faced critics who c a b l e p e r s o n a l i t i e s a n d hide behind anonymity.” journalists has also flared Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:18:28 AM

Average gas prices--March 15, 2010 Consumer Reports Shopping Blog (Consumer Reports)

gasoline average is $.88 above the price this time last year.

Diesel fuel is $.91 above this Submitted at 3/15/2010 4:44:54 PM time last year. National regular Average gas prices--March 15, gasoline prices Price Change 2010 from last week Regular Gasoline prices continue to gasoline/gallon$2.79.04 Diesel climb higher compared to the fuel/gallon$2.92.02 Regional week before. The national regular gasoline prices East

Coast$2.78.04—New England$2.78.03—Central Atlantic$2.78.03—Lower A t l a n t i c $ 2 . 7 7 . 0 5 Midwest$2.74.04 Gulf Coast$2.69.04 Rocky Mountain$2.73.05 West Coast$3.06.02—California$3.05 .05

Source: Energy Information Administration, 3/15/10. Figures rounded to the nearest cent.

For more information on saving fuel see our reports on how to get the best gas mileage and where to find the cheapest gas.

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

E-reader News Edition

Consumer Reports/

45

LIfeLock agrees to pay $12 million total in settlement Consumer Reports Shopping Blog (Consumer Reports)

actually provided left enough holes that you could drive a truck through it,” said Leibowitz Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:46:35 PM in a press release. But Mike LIfeLock agrees to pay $12 P r u s i n s k i , a L i f e L o c k million total in settlement spokesman, sought to clarify LifeLock, the company that their take-home message. “The created a goldmine by agreement examines old purportedly getting more than practices and old products, and million customers to pay $10 a establishes federal and state month primarily to file fraud regulatory guidance for our alerts that they could have industry going forward,” he told otherwise filed themselves for Consumer Reports in an e-mail free, has agreed to pay $11 response. million to the Federal Trade In fact, the misleading practices Commission and $1 million to are still fresh. LifeLock was 35 state attorneys general to forced to stop selling its fraud settle charges that the company alert service only seven months used false claims to promote its ago in August, 2009, according i d e n t i t y - t h e f t p r o t e c t i o n to Prusinski. That was after services.

Experian, the credit reporting LifeLock has been widely agency, won a court ruling to promoted in television and radio stop LifeLock from making ads and has been personally mass filings on behalf of its endorsed by talk radio giant c u s t o m e r s . E v e r c l e v e r , Rush Limbaugh and other LifeLock turned the Experian broadcast personalities. lemon into lemonade. It’s now D e s p i t e t h e a g r e e m e n t , touting “a new and innovative LifeLock and the FTC seem at identity protection system--one odds over its significance. The which does not involve setting FTC calls it “one of the largest c r e d i t f r a u d a l e r t s — t h a t F T C - s t a t e c o o r d i n a t e d provides even better and broader settlements on record.” And protection,” said Prusinski.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz “Many parts of the FTC action p u l l e d n o p u n c h e s i n no longer reflect our current d e n o u n c i n g L i f e L o c k ’ s practices, largely because our practices. services have evolved over time “While LifeLock promised to benefit the consumer. In consumers complete protection addition, Chairman Leibowitz’s against all types of identity c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n o f o u r theft, in truth, the protection it a d v e r t i s i n g c l a i m s i s

that the fraud alerts that LifeLock placed on customers’ credit files didn’t protect against identity theft involving the significantly at odds with our misuse of existing accounts. understanding of our customers’ New account fraud, the type of actual expectations—as several identity theft for which fraud of our own customer surveys a l e r t s a r e m o s t e f f e c t i v e , comprised only 17 percent of show,” said Prusinski.

A key deception alleged by the i d e n t i t y t h e f t i n c i d e n t s , FTC boiled down to LifeLock’s according to an FTC survey claim that it provided a “proven released in 2007. solution that prevents your The FTC also confirmed what identity from being stolen we found two years ago: Fraud before it happens.” According to alerts are no guarantee against the FTC, the service also ID theft, since some businesses involved retrieving customers’ don’t always obey them and already legally free annual subsequently allow crooks to c r e d i t r e p o r t s , s u b m i t t i n g open accounts in other people’s customers’ otherwise legally names anyway.

And the FTC alleged that free requests to opt-out of preLifeLock’s fraud alerts provided screened credit card offers, and no protection against the misuse offering a $1 million guarantee of existing credit accounts—the if LifeLock’s system failed to most common type of identity prevent ID theft.

“In fact, the ID theft prevention t h e f t — o r a g a i n s t m e d i c a l service did not prevent identity identity theft or employmentrelated identity theft, in which theft and did not provide many of the protections thieves use personal information claimed by Defendants,” the to get medical care or apply for jobs.

FTC complaint says.

T o d d D a v i s , L i f e L o c k ’ s The inherent flaws in fraud founder and CEO admitted as a l e r t s p r o m p t e d a n o t h e r much to us, when Consumer company, Debix, to create a Reports Money Adviser first more effective type of alert broke this story two years ago: worth considering.

“We know this isn’t 100-percent As we’ve seen before in other bulletproof. You can still be a settlements involving the FTC, the defendants admitted no victim,” said Davis.

The FTC complaint charged wrongdoing or liability in what they were alleged to have done,

while being barred from making any deceptive claims. They also were required to take more stringent measures to safeguard customer information.

“This agreement effectively prevents LifeLock from misrepresenting that its services offer absolute prevention against identity theft because there is unfortunately no foolproof way to avoid ID theft,” says Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Look for our upcoming report on living with identity theft, including an assessment of the various products and services that claim to provide protection, in Consumer Reports Money Adviser newsletter.

A spokesperson for Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, declined to comment about his promotion of LifeLock’s claims. But Prusinski says LifeLock still advertises on the Limbaugh program and El Rushbo, as he sometimes refers to himself, still enthusiastically endorses LifeLock.—Jeff Blyskal 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

46

Consumer Reports/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

How to provide life support for a child

Q&A: Is snoring a sign of something serious?

Artemis Dibenedetto (Consumer Reports)

rss@consumerreports.org (Consumer Reports)

compression.• Give two more breaths. If you are alone, do this whole cycle three times, before stopping to call 911. If someone else is calling 911, try to continue until help arrives or the child begins to move.• If there are two of you giving life support, you can do cycles of 15 chest compressions followed by two breaths, instead of 30 compressions.

Submitted at 3/16/2010 1:59:59 AM

How to provide life support for a child If a child stops breathing, and their heart stops beating, you need to act fast. Every cell in the body needs oxygen to survive, and if the blood stops bringing fresh oxygen, the cells begin to die. That can quickly lead to brain damage and death.

Chest compressions and rescue breaths can make the difference between life and death for a child who has stopped breathing. So every parent should know how to provide life support for a child, until the emergency medical services arrive.

This is what the American Heart Association’s guidelines recommend: • Check the child for movement and response to your voice.• If the child isn’t moving or

Submitted at 3/16/2010 2:59:59 AM

Q&A: Is snoring a sign of something serious?

Snoring is common, especially as we age. But snoring on a regular basis might make you responding, call for help and sleepy during the day and more start life support. If possible, get susceptible to heart disease and someone else to call 911.• type 2 diabetes, according to Ensure the child is lying face up growing evidence. on a hard surface. Check their Loud snoring could be a sign of mouth and throat are not sleep apnea, a serious condition blocked. Tilt their head in which breathing can stop backward slightly and lift their during sleep for as long as a chin.• Cover the child’s mouth minute. Untreated, sleep apnea with your mouth, pinch their can lead to high blood pressure nostrils closed, and breathe into See the full Health blog post. a n d o t h e r c a r d i o v a s c u l a r their mouth, enough to make the Subscribe now! disease, headaches, impotence, chest rise. Give two rescue S u b s c r i b e t o memory problems, and weight breaths like this, then start chest ConsumerReports.org for expert gain. compressions.• Give 30 chest Ratings, buying advice and compressions, pressing quite reliability on hundreds of hard and fast on the lower part products. Update your feed of the breast-bone (the sternum). preferences Allow the chest to spring back before starting each

Twilight Increases Its Oscar Chances [Trade Roundup] Richard Lawson (Gawker) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:17:27 AM

By trying to bring in some top-

notch directing talent! Also today: a new movie about butter finds its cast, more new shows from the Syfy channel, Paula

receiving care, and Muppets.

More » Abdul has been located and is

Find out how to alleviate mild sleep apnea, take a look at some other signs that you may have the condition, and see our Treatment Ratings(subscribers only). 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

Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

47

Digital Activism in China: A Discussion Between Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey and Richard MacManus Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/15/2010 6:43:21 PM

Earlier tonight, the Paley Center hosted a discussion about social media and digital activism with celebrated artist, architectural designer, activist and blogger Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and ReadWriteWeb's editor and founder Richard MacManus.

The discussion touched upon a large variety of topics related to social media and digital activism in China, including translating Twitter into Chinese and Google's exit from the Chinese market.

Sponsor Jack Dorsey joined the conversation via satellite from San Francisco. The conversation was moderated by Emily Parker, the Arthur Ross Fellow at the Asia Society's Center on U.S.China Relations, who is currently working on a book about China and the Internet.

To start out the discussion, MacManus pointed out that it was the read/write aspect of the Internet that spawned the growth of social networks like Facebook and Twitter over the last few years. In the Western world, this development allowed users to connect and express their thoughts freely. In China,

however, even though the same tools are available as in the West, a lot of them are currently blocked and censored. In addition to this, Ai Weiwei noted that sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, as well as TV channels like CNN, are currently blocked in China.

Even though there are a number of Facebook and Twitter clones in China, Ai Weiwei argued that those companies work within the framework that the Chinese government has set for them with regards to what users can say on these services. Ai Weiwei's name, for example, can never be used on these sites without getting censored.

Indeed, said Ai Weiwei, using Twitter in China is "very physical and dangerous."

Translating Twitter Asked about the reason for Twitter's popularity among netizens, Ai Weiwei noted that services like Twitter and blogs are easy to use, but once he got too popular, his blog was quickly shut down. Even though Twitter has a 140-character limit, Twitter's users in China can easily express in-depth thoughts because the Chinese language allows Twitter users to express 140 words on Twitter and not just 140 characters.

With regards to how Twitter is being used in China, Ai Weiwei

noted that the most active Twitter users in China often use the service for political and philosophical discussions.

Jack Dorsey, after recapping the basic history of Twitter and his fascination with maps, and open, public databases, noted that messages on Twitter, even though they are often trivial, do show that "we are human" and remind us that we are all the same. Twitter, which he called a utility, was extended by the user and the developer ecosystem that grew up around it. Internet users across the world can now use it to communicate, talk to their governments, build a business and create political movements.

Ai Weiwei told Dorsey that the "Chinese people think you are some kind of God" because Twitter allows people to express themselves without worrying about censorship.

A lot of the discussion with

Jack Dorsey focused on had to do with what Twitter can do to to help its users in China. Ai Weiwei directly asked Dorsey why Twitter doesn't provide its users a Chinese-language version of Twitter. According to Dorsey, it is just a question of time and mostly a technological issue. Given Twitter's problems with scaling the service, making it work for every character set creates some issues for Twitter because of the legacy framework that Twitter established in its early days.

Currently, the company doesn't really have the resources to devote to this. Doresey did, however, argue that users already know how the service is meant to work and understand the setup of the Twitter page.

Dorsey also noted that Twitter isn't sure that it really wants to move into the Chinese market, but would like to offer a Chinese translation of its service at some point. Indeed, Dorsey noted that he wasn't even aware that Twitter was blocked in China until just a few weeks ago. Censorship and Twitter MacManus then asked Ai Weiwei if the Chinese government couldn't just censor Twitter or force Twitter to censor its service. Ai Weiwei, however, pointed out that Twitter could easily translate

Twitter's registration page to help Chinese users. He noted that he isn't asking Twitter to set up an operation in China - he just wants Twitter to make the service easier to use for Chinese users and to translate large parts of the service. The Internet companies in China, as MacManus noted, tend to "selfdiscipline" themselves and censor their own content.

MacManus wondered what would happen to a Chinese language version of Twitter, and if it wouldn't just get blocked and censored just like other international services.

Ai Weiwei noted that a lot of international companies that would like to enter the Chinese market have a responsibility to not give up on basic human rights. While the discussion didn't go into depth with regards to the issues surrounding Google's exit from China, MacManus noted that Google was one of the few Western services that entered the Chinese market, even though it faced a strong Chinese competitor.

According to MacManus, leaving the Chinese market was a "brave move" by Google that sends a strong message that these companies are willing to stand up to the Chinese DIGITAL page 50

48

Tech News/

E-reader News Edition

LadyGaga as a Service: Bringing Apple and Google to Commerce 2.0 Mike Kirkwood (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/16/2010 12:00:00 AM

Lady Gaga, along with her record company, is evolving the album in the form of software as a service. Considering the content of her hit new video, Telephone, it is fitting that she would use software to tackle the hard problem of getting paid by amazing fans.

On her path to global dominance, the site, LadyGaga.com has innovated the next generation of brand management for artists. To do this, she creates a join between Google's YouTube, Apple's iTunes, Twitter, and Facebook.

Way beyond having a an Twitter account, LadyGaga is hosting an interface party, and you're invited. She's a performer who is inventing ways to create the value of using multiple platforms to juice the network effects.

Sponsor Commerce 2.0 Like it a lot?

Take a souvenir home from the party for the low introductory price of $1.99 in your iTunes.

Today, we noticed another cultural icon, VC Fred Wilson

posted this question on his blog as to what will emerge as Commerce 2.0.

"So the question is who will the YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter of commerce be? Maybe they exist today and will emerge as large scale web services soon.

Or maybe they are still ideas in the minds of entrepreneurs and will be hatched in the coming years.

It's an area I am excited about and will be on the lookout for.

Clearly I'm not the only one."

This is where we think LadyGaga.com's promotion for Telephone stands out as an example of the new world economy. This world is connected by the best ad engines of Google. And it is directly connected to Apple's amazing commerce engine. Apple, in the context of digital goods is showing how extremely well it is positioned to be the industry payment engine. Embedding YouTube: Get it Now, Anywhere We witnessed YouTube transition from the Wild West to a control point for record labels.

Now, a lot of the newest official artist videos flow straight to Vevo, the branded label friendly

site that runs ads and controls the experience of the brand.

YouTube is taking advantage of its place as a channeling service for video. In this case, the top, most requested inventory pays for the rest of the service. The higher the demand, the more attention it gets.

LadyGaga.com, like many sites, uses embeddable YouTube. In addition to pointing to commerce services like iTunes, the video embeds curated links into other properties at Vevo.

This provides the site custom promotion experience while leveraging the YouTube and Vevo distribution channel. iTunes is prominently offered for both buying the video

(which is also free on the same page) and also the album. So, there is a bet here that people want to own it, or place value in their iTunes library to offer this connected service.

This brings the user to a onemoment to buy scenario.

Shown here, there is the familiar transition to iTunes from the LadyGaga site.

And, the authorization to 'Buy Now'.

In default mode, iTunes is set to require a validation step (a second click) to buy the media.

The user can can be set easily to bypass this step and enable the user one-click to buy from the web in the future.

This feature is available to any Apple affiliate, but we find it particularly effective coming from the artist embedded with the video and other endorsements. Tweeting, End to End, Facebook, FTW We noticed that with a simple interaction, we can logon to Facebook and Twitter from LadyGaga.com and drop a status post, or "tweet" into Facebook or Twitter. Incredibly, inside iTunes, both services are available as well. The real story is that social networks, and

commerce networks work together, end-to-end, and, forthe-win.

In a twist of fate, in this version of digital music future the record labels win big. They do it by being close to both eyeballs (Google) and library (Apple), and bringing out the thing they know, the pop.

LadyGaga is on a roll With the help of Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Apple she will connect to more platforms than ever before, with fewer clicks and passwords.

We wonder how this evolve further into other platforms.

Will LadyGaga's services continue to find new ways to leverage real-time services?

We're starting to envision personal mobile and location aware fan applications.

Will the forces of cloud computing and commerce force Apple and Google be bestfriends-forever in music?

And, will we ever build a phone that doesn't disrupt us while on the dance floor?

And, for god's sake, damn, Beyonce' has her back.

Discuss

Tech News/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

49

Historic Conversation With Ai Weiwei Streamed Live Mike Melanson (ReadWriteWeb)

and Orville Schell.

Ai Weiwei is undoubtedly the star attraction. He is China's Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:19:00 PM leading digital activist and a ReadWriteWeb is pleased to be pioneer in the use of blogging h o s t i n g a l i v e - s t r e a m f o r and Twitter in China. He's also a tonight's Ai Weiwei event at the renown international artist and Paley Center in New York City. architect. In the early 2000s, he You can watch it live on our c o l l a b o r a t e d w i t h S w i s s s i t e , w h e r e w e w i l l b e architects Herzog and de discussing social media and Meuron on the famous "Bird's digital activism. Ai Weiwei will Nest" design of the National be joined by Twitter co-founder S t a d i u m f o r t h e B e i j i n g Jack Dorsey, our own Richard Olympics. Ai Weiwei later MacManus, and moderator renounced that design as a Emily Parker. Make sure to tune " p r e t e n d s m i l e " f r o m t h e in tonight at 6:30 pm Eastern.

Chinese government. Details Special thanks to Conjunctured About the Participants Coworking in Austin for hosting This information comes from the RWW team during the the Paley Center website: event. To take part in the Ai Weiwei is a conceptual conversation on Twitter use the artist, curator, architect, social hashtag#aiweiwei. commentator, and activist. He Sponsor was born in 1957 into the A i W e i w e i a n d D i g i t a l domestic political exile of his Activism in China father, the noted modernist poet R e a d W r i t e W e b h a s b e e n Ai Qing. Ai Weiwei's birthright actively covering events in was simultaneously one of a China this year, in particular cultural insider and a political Google's struggle to effect o u t s i d e r , a n d h e q u i c k l y change regarding censorship in perceived the contradictions of China. So I'm personally thrilled his condition. to join the conversation with Ai Weiwei's art has been shown these three smart and influential in museums and galleries people: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey internationally. As a curator, he

a movement to oppose the nationwide installation of Internet filtering software in new computers. He is critical of one-party rule and government corruption, as well as the nationalist tendencies of China's citizenry, which allow state power to go unchecked. As a result his blogs are shut down, his home studio is under surveillance, and he's had to is known for cutting-edge have cranial surgery for injuries exhibitions. In the early 2000s, s u s t a i n e d d u r i n g a r e c e n t h e c o l l a b o r a t e d w i t h t h e altercation with local police in acclaimed Swiss architects Sichuan.

Herzog & de Meuron on the Jack Dorsey is the creator, winning design for the National cofounder, and chairman of Stadium project for the Beijing Twitter, Inc. Originally from St. Olympics, popularly known as Louis, Jack's early fascination the "Bird's Nest," which he later for mass-transit and how cities renounced as a "pretend smile." function led him to Manhattan Ai Weiwei has never sought and programming real-time f o r e i g n c i t i z e n s h i p a n d messaging systems for couriers, maintains his credibility among taxis, and emergency vehicles. a devoted Chinese following as Throughout this work Jack a highly active blogger, with his witnessed thousands of workers finger on the pulse of modern in the field constantly updating China. Unafraid to spotlight where they were and what they injustices, he has documented w e r e d o i n g ; T w i t t e r i s a the arbitrary conviction and constrained simplification swift execution of alleged cop- designed for general usage and killer Yang Jia in Shanghai, extended by the millions of investigated shoddy school people who make it their own construction in Sichuan, and led every day. Jack is dedicated to

creating public goods which foster approachability, immediacy, and transparency, and is starting a second company named Square focused on bringing these concepts to commerce.

Richard MacManus is the founder and editor in chief of ReadWriteWeb, one of the most popular and influential technology blogs in the world.

New Zealander MacManus founded ReadWriteWeb in 2003 and grew his blog about the evolving Internet into an international team of journalists.

ReadWriteWeb is read by millions of thought leaders and consumers, and is syndicated daily by the New York Times.

From the early days of blogging, social networks and YouTube to the future of machine learning, aggregate data analysis and other metatrends, MacManus is widely recognized as a leader in articulating what's next in technology and what it means for society at large. Discuss

"You There, Young Man. Do You Have a Home to Live In? Would You Like One?" [Open Caption] Richard Lawson (Gawker)

[ Angelina Jolie in Venice while filming "The Tourist"; image

via Splash] More Âť

50

Tech News/ Entertainment/

POLL: What's the Best Way to Support Startups, Services or Cash?

E-reader News Edition

DIGITAL continued from page 47

government. Twitter's Moral Responsibility Twitter and other technology Jolie O'Dell (ReadWriteWeb) -on-the-table amounts of cash) companies have, said Dorsey, a t o e a r l y - s t a g e s t a r t u p s i n responsibility to follow basic Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:03:12 AM exchange for equity. They moral guidelines, and in his After wrapping up a panel with provide development, marketing v i e w , m a n y t e c h n o l o g y a gamut of pro- and anti-VC and other services that most tech companies have helped to push types at SXSW, I'm left startups need without delving t h e m e s s a g e s o f t h e U . S . wondering why there aren't into the complicated issues of g o v e r n m e n t ( a n d o t h e r more services-oriented startup valuation and funding rounds. governments) forward with firms.

These guys are focused on the r e g a r d s t o a c k n o w l e d g i n g Let me explain: Most of the a b s o l u t e b o t t o m l i n e o f human rights violations in time, when a startup goes after technology, which has nothing China. venture capital, they're still in to do with money: Making a Asked specifically if companies success for resources you need the process of building a product great product and finding people do have a moral responsibility, Dorsey said that Twitter - as a and bringing it to market. They in the short term. to use it. n e e d t h i n g s l i k e s e r v e r s , We are all familiar with the So, we're interested to know c o m p a n y - i s f o c u s e d o n developers, marketing tools and idea of trading equity for funds from our friends in startups who o p e n i n g i n f o r m a t i o n a s sometimes office space. Do they through angel financing and aren't taking the bootstrapping completely as possible and need money per se? Or is capital venture capital; we're also route, given the choice between wants to ensure that everybody an increasingly arbitrary and familiar with the TechStars and pure capital or business-building c a n p a r t i c i p a t e i n t h e unnecessary step in building a Y Combinator programs that services, which would you conversations on the service. help to incubate and accelerate choose? Take the poll, and let us Twitter, which according to tech startup? startups through minuscule know the reason behind your Dorsey was founded around the Sponsor The fact is, almost every startup a m o u n t s o f c a p i t a l a n d decision in the comments. We'll needs a little help. Maybe you s i g n i f i c a n t a m o u n t s o f be following up soon based on get that help from the bank of m e n t o r s h i p . the results.

Mom and Dad; maybe you get But most of us are less familiar What would you rather have for that help from your good friends with models such as Mike your startup: Services or cash? at Mastercard. Often, you get Trotzke's SproutBox or Marcus polls that help from folks who want Whitney's Remarkable Wit. Discuss equity; you end up trading part These firms provide services of your assumed long-term (and sometimes keeping-Ramen

principles of immediacy and transparency, allows users to create a shared experience among users around the world and create more empathy.

Towards the end of the discussion, Dorsey said that Twitter is just a tool and that it can't change any governments itself, but that it is the users who can use it to change governments.

As MacManus noted during the discussion, it is people like Ai Weiwei that are using these tools effectively. One day, Ai Weiwei noted towards the end of the discussion, we won't need tools like Twitter to change our governments anymore. Discuss

Which Actress Stole Her Big Break from Her Sister? [Blind Items] Brian Moylan (Gawker) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:09:29 AM

She's a thief, and now she's a star. This druggie actor is more of an angel, as in angel dust. One of the Celebrity Apprentice

contestants wants to be a brawler. The blind items are always about identity. More Âť

Tech News/ Gadgets/ Fashion/

E-reader News Edition

51

Weekly Poll: What Companies Will Be at the Top of the Cloud in the Next 5 Years Alex Williams (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/16/2010 12:30:44 AM

We take a look at the future of cloud computing services this week. We want to know: What companies do you think will be at the top of the cloud world in five years?

This past week, we had 93 people respond to the question: 'Is There A Place For OpenSource in the Data Center?" The respondents were pretty much in full support of the open approach. Of the 93 people who responded, 83 said, yes, there is a place for open-source. But we wonder what it will take to get such a movement to a pace of note. We do have faith in the open-source way but how will this effort transfer to the data center?

Sponsor The organizers have the right idea.

Michael Manos of Loose Bolts writes: "If you think of the Linux movement, and all of those who actively participate in

in more energy efficiency, greater densities, differences in approach to economization (air or water), use of containers or non use of containers, its easy to see the potential for this component based design."

Let's move on to this week's question. It's certainly true that cloud computing is one of the most category filled markets you can find. Platform-as-aService, Software-as-a-Service the list goes on.

What companies do you think will be at the top of the cloud s u b m i t t i n g e n h a n c e m e n t s , world in five years? opinion features, even pulling together We do see the same big name specific build packages for companies making their stake in distribution, one could even see the market, no matter what their such things emerging in the data category. It's evident that there center engineering realm. In will likely be a handful standing f a c t w i t h t h e m y r i a d o f over the next several years. Who emerging technologies assisting will they be? Discuss

New Online Destination Offers News, Style, and Social Networking ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/15/2010 12:53:39 PM

ELLE.com welcomes a new goto style destination, Styleite.com, to the online fashion world. Get your fix of trend-setters like Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell (Styleite’s Power Grid ranks the industries top 2,000 models, designers, style bloggers, and more), media news, and social networking.

Click here to start exploring.

—Violet Moon Gayn or Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Become our Facebook fan!

Maingear stuffs an Intel Core i7 980X into the SHIFT and still calls it an everyday super computer Matt Burns (CrunchGear)

computer platform meant for those looking to have their own super computer. And that super The Maingear Shift line is c o m p u t e r g o a l i s e v e n designed for serious computing more achievable now that the on a budget. You won’t find Intel Core i7 980X is one of the silly automatic airvents or fancy CPU options.

-pants hard drive trays here. Of course the fast system will Nope, it’s just a good, solid be even quicker with the 6 core Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:17:27 AM

option and updated the SATA to the 6G flavor, which allows for the optional Crucial RealSSD C300 to reach 335 MB/s read speeds.

The Core i7-980X option alone costs an additional $991 on top 3.33GHz CPU at the core. of the$2,299 starting price, but Maingear added a USB 3.0 if you through in six 512GB

SSDs along with every other option, you can easily build a Shift that costs north of $25,000.

And they call it the everyday super computer.

52

Gadgets/ Fashion/

E-reader News Edition

This is not my beautiful 3D television: How gaming will change the 3D equation John Biggs (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:35:25 AM

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit in the past few weeks and Adam Frucci wrote something that caught my attention, concentrating my thoughts the way a seed crystal builds boules of material in the Czochralski process.

Gaming will make or break 3D. I don’t care if James Cameron sends miniature 3D cameras into Leonardo DiCaprio’s urethra during his “king of the world” scene in the new 3D version of Titanic: there will be no compelling reason to upgrade your entire TV set-up to watch 3D movies. Why will you buy a 3D set-up? For gaming and you’ll probably buy a 3Dcapable PC before you buy a 3D -capable TV. Consider the price differential: a 3D PC kit costs about $598 without graphics card. A compatible card costs a few hundred – up to $400 for the highest-end card you can get.

That’s about $1000 if you already have a nice PC and if

you’re a gamer you’re probably already running a nice GeForce card.

Want to get a 3D TV? Why not pick up a Samsung 62-inch plasma for $3,400? Oh, and you’ll need a new Samsung (or Sony, if that’s the family you want to join) Blu-Ray player.

Want to play a 3D console game? Don’t look to your XBox. You’d better get yourself

a PS3 and then find some content.

But, if you have a PC, almost every game made in the past few years is 3D compatible.

Talking Heads – Once In A Lifetime Uploaded by hushhush112. – Explore more music videos.

3D games are great. I’ve been playing Burnout Paradise for the past month and messed around a

burden. The current generation – folks 25 and above – still see 3D as a gimmick. Kids will see 3D as an extension of the immersive experience gaming has offered them their entire lives.

Mark my words: the vast majority of TV viewers will never have a 3D TV in their home. Maybe some die-hards will buy a few pairs of glasses to watch the Super Bowl in 2015 but you and yours will probably never find any good reason to go 3D. However, if you’re a gamer you owe it to yourself to try a 3D set-up and perhaps upgrade. It’s a lot of fun.

So sorry, everyone. The 3D TV party is over. 3D TV is, in short, little with Batman: Arkham the Laserdisc of this era and Aslyum and Call of Duty: w h a t c o m e s n e x t – t h e Modern Warfare 2. Best of all, perfection glasses-free 3D Civilization IV is also 3D television displays. The current compatible so you can see your crop of 3D TV is an interstitial little settlers and warriors in full technology aimed at grabbing a 3D. Even for a crotchety old few upgrade dollars. If TV man like me it’s quite a bit of manufacturers really cared about selling a whole new crop of fun.

3D gaming is cheap and will TVs, they’d try much harder to encourage a new generation to convince the world that it needs accept 3D as a benefit, not a what they’re selling.

Street Chic: New York ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:00:00 AM

A multicolored scarf brightens

up a gray day.

Photo: Kelly Stuart Click here for our complete fall 2010 Fashion Week coverage

Think you are Street Chic? E-

mail us your photo and you could appear in ELLE.com's Street Chic Daily.

Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Become our Facebook fan!

Gadgets/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

53

The Sony VAIO M N450 proves Sony finally understands netbooks

'City Island' Makes Bronxites Out of Julianna Margulies and Andy Garcia

Matt Burns (CrunchGear)

(ETonline - Breaking News)

Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:00:05 AM

Submitted at 3/16/2010 3:10:00 AM

Sony’s first attempts at a netbook were disastrously bad, but Sony has seemingly gotten its act together. The Sony VAIO M N450 is a true netbook. Too bad it’s now 2010 and no one cares about netbooks anymore.

We knew this model was coming and the release confirms everything leaked a few weeks back: Atom N450, 250GB hard drive, 1GB of memory, and an Intel GMA 3150 GPU. Standard stuff, eh? The release didn’t mention a price, however, where the leak indicated that the model will sell for£299 in Euroland.

That translates to $450 USD, but that’s not neccessarly the price. Once we hear the official price, along with the March release date, we’ll let you know.

Promise.

Light, convenient, ‘anytime’ computing made easy: Fullyfeatured VAIO M Series mini notebook 16 March 2010 · Mini notebook for your casual computing needs · Intel® Atom™ Processor N450 · Widescreen 25.5cm (10.1”) LED backlit display · 250GB HDD

· Available in black or white Light, easy to carry and simple to use, the new VAIO M Series mini notebook from Sony is a great value way to experience the world of VAIO. Available in black or white colour finishes, this fullyfeatured mini notebook is an ideal go-anywhere companion for web browsing, chatting with friends online or checking emails over a coffee.

VAIO M Series offers everything you need for day-today computing. With a 6-cell

To commit to their characters in'City Island,' Julianna Margulies cruised around town and Dominik Garcia-Lorido channeled her inner ballerina.

Along with their cast mates, they premiered the film Monday night in Los Angeles.

Julianna plays Joyce, the wife of Andy Garcia's character Vince Rizzo. She peoplewatched around the Bronx and observed that the borough's women wear a lot of eyeliner. A wig was even tailored to fit the part.

"The Good Wife" star has maintained a lasting career in the entertainment business by battery that fits nicely within the Bluetooth on board plus three staying "true" to herself. Her chassis and weighing just 1.4kg, USB ports, there’s no shortage first gig was as in a McDonald's it’s an ideal travel partner – or a o f c o n n e c t i v i t y o p t i o n s , commercial and ironically handy second PC to share w h a t e v e r y o u ’ r e d o i n g . enough, “the director who hired around the house.

VAIO M Series comes supplied m e f o r m y v e r y f i r s t The widescreen 25.5cm (10.1”) with Genuine Windows® 7 commercial, that McDonald's LED backlit display offers a Starter Edition. A generous suite commercial,...is now directing crisp, clear view of web pages, of installed software makes it our show and he directed 'ER.'" photos and documents. There’s easy to manage your digital also a Motion Eye® camera media collection, copy files embedded in the screen bezel from another PC, keep your for video chatting.

VAIO running smoothly and get There’s plenty of space in the technical help when you need it.

250GB hard drive to store your The new VAIO M Series mini documents, digital photos and notebook computer is available video clips. With Wi-Fi and from the end of March 2010.

54

Gadgets/ Fashion/ Economy/

E-reader News Edition

Samsung is working on their own slate tablet, not One Day at a Time just another “glorified MID” Tablet (BestTabletReview.com)

makes a tablet capable of running programs like Office, Adobe Creative Suite and other Submitted at 3/15/2010 12:27:51 PM professional software while Samsung's previous UMPC -featuring a touch-optimized UI the Q1 for under $800 is going to win.

According to APC Magazine, Even though Samsung seems to Samsung is working on a slate be on that track, talking about it tablet for release later this year and executing it are two vastly and promises that it will be different things. more than just another MID Tablets don’t have a future in device. According to being mere internet and media Emmanuele Silanesu, marketing consumption devices. manager for Samsung’s Eventually they should become Australian division, the tablet your one computing device. will focus on becoming “a Something you take to work primary device in terms of its Z550 2GHz instead of an ARM- your primary device – one you with you, dock, work on all day, processing power and IO.” based processor like that found could take to university and do a undock and take home with you in the iPad. More importantly, PowerPoint presentation on it, to use leisurely in your off time.

That’s music to our ears.

It seems that Samsung is very the focus of Samsung will be to for example, or a device that Something that will satiate all keen on the flaws of Apple’s give consumers a tablet they can could be taken home or to the needs — both professional and i P a d — a d e v i c e a n o t h e r work on including using a o f f i c e a n d d o c k e d , ” s a y s personal. Let’s hope that’s what Samsung rep accurately called docking station for work and S i l a n e s u .

Samsung has in mind. “a glorified MID” — and are desk use while retaining all of All of this syncs nicely with our Source: APC Magazine via looking to turn their tablet into a the mobile media inherent in the personal views of the tablet’s CNET future and it’s exciting to hear a Five Filters featured article: fast, capable computing device. tablet form.

The current talk is that Samsung “That’s where I think we could company as large as Samsung Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: will look to use a faster Atom- get critical mass in having a actually gets it. Out opinion is PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, based processor like the Atom product which could become that the first company that Term Extraction.

Valentino Helps Haiti ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/15/2010 2:07:58 PM

Help Haiti with this exclusive Valentino T-shirt, designed by creative directors Maria Grazia

Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli.

All proceeds will be donated to the Francesca Rava Foundation to lend medical support to those in the devastated Caribbean cotton top with lace sleeves country. At $395, the white

(available starting today on valentino.com) is a definitive must.

—Whitney Vargas

Peter Boockvar (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:59:30 AM

One Day at a Time, no not the sitcom staring Valerie Bertinelli that many of us grew up watching but the new drama that is now the FOMC where the flip side of their extraordinary accommodation, that of exit, becomes the main focus where they will be literally analyzing the process one day at a time.

There is big focus today on whether the Fed will alter the wording on keeping the fed funds rate “substantially low” for an “extended period” but I think the Fed will keep that unchanged as they want to first wait to see the markets reaction to the end of QE by months end.

If all signs are then clear, the Apr meeting will see a change in the wording I believe.

German investor confidence fell but was 1 pt above estimates and EU officials made progress on Greek bailout plans. China stocks rose off its 4 1/2 week low and commodity prices are following. Their action is the missing link in the run to Jan highs.

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

Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

55

2K Games explains why you have to pay for BioShock 2 DLC already in your possession Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear)

player base.”

The rage I felt yesterday re: BioShock 2 DLC has tempered Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:30:07 AM a bit, if only because I saw We’re just trying to create a Food, Inc. last night—my rage balanced world for you, dear. is now directed at the likes of Now hand over the money!

Monsanto and ConAgra. (I will “The way our engine and game now be sued by Monsanto under structure works is that people the veggie libel laws.) need to have the exact same But yeah, that’s 2K Games’ content for people to play explanation as to why they together. One of the challenges needed to include the DLC on with post-launch content for MP the disc. I do wonder if there’s is that it can split the player more DLC sitting on the disc, base, and we want to avoid that and if not, then what does that whenever possible.” Yes, s a y a b o u t t h e c u r r e n t because increasing the level cap explanation? “Well, in March for some players, as well as w e w e r e c o n c e r n e d a b o u t giving them new characters and splitting the player base, but it’s new weapons, won’t “split the August now and we really don’t

buying, and now that I certainly won’t be buying, isn’t worth the time of day.

If only we had a representative government, that way I could ask my representative, “Is this practice [keeping content on a disc you've already purchased behind a pay-wall, without telling consumers ahead of the time what the deal is] even legal? If not, what are my options? I think it’s only reasonable to know exactly what give a toss.” content or not, you can still play I’m purchasing when I purchase 2K added, “For this content, with your friends.” something, right? Or should I creating the DLC package the I’m well within my right to say, just do what I’m told?” way we did allowed for us to not “I don’t believe you,” while split the player base – so simultaneously acknowledging whether you purchase the new that DLC I had no intention of

Spring Design Alex eReader goes on pre-order today for $399 Tablet (BestTabletReview.com) Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:25:37 AM

The Alex hits the market After a long development and sorted drama with Barnes & Noble, Spring Design is ready to release their much anticipated dual-screened eReader in midApril. Later today they will open the Alex to pre-orders for $399.

The Spring Design Alex seems

to have experienced a $40 price bump since we last reported on it which places it squarely in competition with the Sony Daily Edition Reader and iRex DR800SG. It has had some glowing hands-on impressions and offers something the other two eReaders don’t — and Android platform and color touchscreen. Still, with the Nook stealing most of Alex’s thunder already, will consumers buy the much more expensive

Alex over the better distributed Nook? The Alex certainly looks to be the faster, better and more

capable of the two (minus the 3G) and will even have retail locations later in the year with Borders and Books-A-Million.

Then there’s the question of the Alex competing with lower priced tablets like the iPad, MSI Harmony and Notion Ink Adam (which will all have models in the $500 range). Spring Design certainly innovated with their Alex eReader and it should appeal to a fair amount of people who just want a quality

eBook reader. With all these devices competing for the same price ranges and offering more or less features, it will be interesting to see how consumers are going to react.

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

56

Gadgets/

E-reader News Edition

Sanyo surrounds Tokyo with Eneloop charging stations and bikes to match Tim Stevens (Engadget)

Mac virtualization face-off: VMware Fusion 3 vs. Parallels Desktop 5 (video)

Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:33:00 AM

Renting a bike in most urban areas of the US is a difficult proposition. In Japan not only can you easily rent a bike, you can now rent an electric bike -- a solar powered electric bike to Tim Stevens (Engadget) how does VMware's Fusion 3 the other end of that source link. b o o t . S a n y o h a s d r o p p e d stack up for gaming? Not too C o n t i n u e r e a d i n g M a c Eneloop stations on three Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:11:00 AM well, as it turns out. MacTech virtualization face-off: VMware locations around the Setagaya With Steam officially hitting sat the two down together on Fusion 3 vs. Parallels Desktop 5 ward of Tokyo, each having 100 of the company's electric rides Mac in just a few weeks many matching Mac hardware and ran (video) Apple gamers have suddenly them through a number of Mac virtualization face-off: on offer for passers by to lost their need to emulate. But, benchmarks, including 3DMark. VMware Fusion 3 vs. Parallels borrow (for a sadly undisclosed for those who are hoping to get The results of that test fall Desktop 5 (video) originally fee). When the bikes aren't busy in a little Command & heavily in the favor of Parallels, appeared on Engadget on Tue, being pedaled around town Conquer 4 under Snow Leopard offering better framerates and 16 Mar 2010 09:11:00 EST. they'll sit in the station, being this week -- or any of the other far more consistent visuals, Please see our terms for use of recharged by 46 square meters myriad of PC-only gaming which you can see for yourself feeds. Permalink The Unofficial of solar panels that not only options -- virtualization is the in a video below. Most of the Apple Weblog| MacTech| Email only way to go -- short of many, many other tests run this| Comments rebooting into Boot Camp, of favor that option as well, but we course. Parallels is the most won't spoil all eight pages worth commonly used solution, but of results just waiting for you on

juice up batteries but also provide LED lighting for the station itself. While Sanyo does offer some solar stations for Eneloop owners, these look to be for renters only, meaning those who've bought their own will have to take themselves and their little baskets somewhere else.

Sanyo surrounds Tokyo with Eneloop charging stations and bikes to match originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Akihabara News| Sanyo| Email this| Comments

Gadgets/ Economy/

E-reader News Edition

Brown intervenes in hedge fund talks

Rumor mill says Nintendo DS2 might be headed for E3 unveiling

(Financial Times - US homepage)

Laura June (Engadget)

Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:42:52 AM

Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:41:00 AM

Hot on the heels of the recent DSi XL appearance, rumors are swirling that Nintendo is preparing to announce a second version of the DS -- the DS2, if you will -- at E3 in June. Over on RPad they're spilling the beans about the supposed device, including the fact that it'll boast two larger, higher resolutions screens, an accelerometer, and it will also supposedly run on an NVIDIA Tegra chip. Finally, RPad is also reporting that they spoke with developers who say their games will be finished by the end of the year... leading us all to speculate the the unannounced successor could, possibly, be announced at E3, then available by the end of the year. Of course, this info's all 100 percent unofficial, so take

everything with a grain of salt, relax, and we'll let you know as soon as we hear something more solid.

Rumor mill says Nintendo DS2 might be headed for E3 unveiling originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Tech Radar| Game Informer, RPad| Email this| Comments

Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:39:36 AM

By Jamie Chisholm, Global Markets Commentator Published: March 16 2010

AirStash brings the WiFi, neglects the storage, for a cent under $100 Vladislav Savov (Engadget)

European Union finance ministers on Tuesday abandoned efforts to get a compromise deal over the EU’s controversial proposals to reform hedge funds and private equity after a lastminute intervention by Gordon Brown, the British prime minister.

The proposed Alternative Investment Fund Manager directive, the first effort at drawing up EU-wide rules for the industry, has faced sharp criticism from both private equity and hedge funds.

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

within it. The UI is built around HTML5 and recharging is done via a USB connection, which When we last saw the AirStash, also turns the AirStash into a it was keeping its mystique simple SDHC card adapter about it and refusing to disclose when plugged in. Check out our any salient details beyond the hands-on with it from CES over fact that it'll function as a here and look for a full review wireless SD/SDHC card reader. coming up shortly. We do care Today, the fog of war is lifted so very deeply our portable with the news that the AirStash storage. is now officially on sale for AirStash brings the WiFi, $99.99, and will come with a neglects the storage, for a cent battery good for five hours of under $100 originally appeared continuous data streaming. on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar Marketed primarily at iPhone 2010 10:19:00 EST. Please see OS devices, it creates a wireless our terms for use of feeds.

08:55 | Last updated: March 16 network that allows any WiFi Permalink| dpreview| Email this| and browser-equipped computer Comments 2010 14:39 World's first portable Five Filters featured article: to access the storage cards Sega Saturn has a face Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: only a gamer could love PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

We'll start by saying that this Tim Stevens (Engadget) WORLD'S page 58 perhaps the most aesthetically

Traders cautious ahead of Fed decision (Financial Times - US homepage)

57

Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:19:00 AM

58

Apple/ Economy/

E-reader News Edition

WORLD'S continued from page 57

challenged portable console we've ever seen, and while it is a bit more slim than that"portable" GameCube we spied a few years back, it too is hardly pocketable. So why cover it? Because it's the first and only legitimate way to get your Fighters Megamix fix while on the go. (No, the Game.com version does not count). It was created by a modder who goes by the handle Evil Nod over at the benheck.com forums and contains what looks to be a fullsized console re-skinned and surrounded by a one of the system's optional analog

controllers split in two. There's a 7-inch screen front and center and a nine volt battery 'round he back. The result ain't pretty, but we'd let it spin our Panzer Dragoon collection anytime.

[Thanks, ttsgeb] World's first portable Sega Saturn has a face only a gamer could love originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink| benheck.com Forums| Email this| Comments

China pushes back at currency criticism (Financial Times - US homepage)

rate can resolve and politicising exchange-rate issues is counterproductive to global Submitted at 3/16/2010 1:17:57 AM efforts in tackling the financial China pushed back on Tuesday c r i s i s , ” s a i d Y a o J i a n , against mounting US criticism spokesman for the Chinese of its currency policy, saying commerce ministry at a briefing. that the country’s trade surplus Five Filters featured article: w a s n o t t h e r e s u l t o f i t s Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: exchange rate and warning the PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, US not to “politicise” the issue. Term Extraction.

“The trade imbalance is not something that the exchange

Google/Apple Feud Gets More Impassioned, Personal Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:23:06 AM

A Google employee expressed his distaste for the way Apple does business in no uncertain terms in a recent blog post. Tim Bray, a co-inventor of XML and a well-known blogger in his own right, is also a Google employee on the Android team, having recently joined following his time at Sun Microsystems.

The blog post at issue, which appeared on his personal blog, details his reasons behind joining Google, which include a passion for the rapid pace of development on the platform and the fact that it’s an open source system. Another reason is that he “hates” the iPhone. Or at least the context in which the iPhone operates.

Bray doesn’t shy away from sharing his opinion of what Apple’s done wrong with the iPhone, in no uncertain terms: The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by

Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other.

I think they’re wrong and see this job as a chance to help prove it.

Even though I wasn’t sad to see Apple nix a whole host of “sexy” apps recently, I can’t sharp-toothed lawyers. The help but agree with where Tim people who create the apps Bray is coming from. Apple is serve at the landlord’s pleasure effectively packaging and selling back to us a polished and and fear his anger. pristine version of what we used I hate it.

I hate it even though the iPhone to have only free and unfettered hardware and software are great, access to. Giving them too much because freedom’s not just control might start to inhibit our another word for anything, nor ability to continue to have that free access. is it an optional ingredient.

The big thing about the Web I’m not sure handing the reins isn’t the technology, it’s that it’s to Google won’t have the exact the first-ever platform without a same effect in the long run, but vendor (credit for first pointing that isn’t what will happen if this out goes to Dave Winer). some people side with them in From that follows almost this developing conflict. everything that matters, and it Luckily, unlike in professional matters a lot now, to a huge sports, there doesn’t have to be a number of people. It’s the only winner in clashes between kind of platform I want to help m o b i l e d e v i c e m a k e r s . A healthy balance should keep the build.

Apple apparently thinks you power of both in check. can have the benefits of the

Apple/

E-reader News Edition

59

How-To: Stop iTunes Web Links From Opening iTunes Weldon Dodd (TheAppleBlog)

for iTunes links. Safari Safari uses the helper applications as defined in the A piece I wrote last week on “Get Info” dialog box for each the impact of iTunes web file type. In Snow Leopard, Mac preview pages on App Store OS X relies solely on the file’s SEO brought up a little side extension to determine the conversation about how many default application. This may people found it annoying that behave differently in 10.5, t h e l i n k s l a u n c h i T u n e s which still respects the creator automatically. Sometimes you code attribute. don’t even have any warning Create a simple text file on your that the link is going to launch desktop. The content of the file i T u n e s i f y o u c l i c k o n a does not matter. Rename that shortened link. There are a few file to “ test.itms” and confirm simple steps that you can take to that you do want to change the stop this behavior and suppress extension. Now select that file iTunes in its eagerness to run and pull up the “Get Info” and take you to the page for that dialog box (Command-I, rightapp (or other iTunes content). click, or File » Get Info).

Below, I have outlined the steps The “Open with:” section for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. s h o u l d s h o w “ i T u n e s . a p p The Basic Concept (default)” at first. Click on the The iTunes preview pages run a pull down menu there, select JavaScript function that attempts “Other” and then pick Safari. to load iTunes by opening an You will have to enable “All ITMS file. This file will launch A p p l i c a t i o n s ” i n t h e f i l e iTunes and direct the application selection dialog box. Clicking to open the iTunes Store to the “Add” will return you to the specified content. I did not want “Get Info” window. Be sure to to recommend just disabling click “Change All…” to have JavaScript because that would that behavior work for any interfere with a lot of websites ITMS file, including ones you that rely on the interactivity that may download from iTunes web is possible with JavaScript. We links in the future. w i l l p r e v e n t i T u n e s f r o m You must log out and back in opening by changing the way for these changes to take effect. that these browsers handle the Restarting the computer would ITMS file. This approach will accomplish the same result. allow you to manually launch You can still launch iTunes by iTunes when you desire. In the c l i c k i n g o n t h e “ V i e w i n c a s e o f C h r o m e , w e c a n iTunes” button on the preview selectively disable JavaScript page.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:30:45 PM

To reverse the setting, go back to the ITMS file (or create a new one) and change the “Open With” entry to iTunes.app and then click “Change All…” to make sure it will be used in all cases. Firefox Firefox uses a different method to define the helper app. Open a new browser window or tab and type “ about:config” into the address bar. After dismissing the warning, you will be presented with a long list of options.

Fortunately, we can use the search box at the top of this window to filter the results down to just the option we need.

Type “ itms” in the filter box and you will see an entry for “ network.protocol-handler.warnexternal.itms” as the only result (if you don’t get any results, keep reading for a solution).

Double-click on the “ false” entry below the “Value” column and change it to “ true” and then close the window or tab. Restart Firefox to make sure the change is saved and used the next time you launch Firefox.

Now you should get a dialog box asking you what you want to do about this content type when you go to page. Click “Cancel” to prevent iTunes from opening or click “OK” to launch iTunes into the iTunes Store. Do NOT check the “Remember my choice for itms links” box or iTunes will automatically launch in the future. Unfortunately, I did not see this dialog box come up consistently, but here is what it should look like.

What if I don’t have an an “itms” entry in about:config?

If you do not have an entry for “network.protocol-handler.warn -external.itms” in the “about:config” page, do not panic. You can add a new entry by right-clicking on the page and selecting “New: Boolean” from the pop-up menu.

Type “network.protocolhandler.warn-external.itms” into the preference name field and click “OK” to create the entry.

The next step is to make sure the boolean value itself is set to “true” so that Firefox will ask what you want to do with iTunes links.

Additional Measures If iTunes still launches automatically, check the settings in the applications tab of the Firefox preferences window and search for “itunes” in the filter box. If any content types are set to open with iTunes, change those settings to “Always Ask” and this should stop iTunes from

opening. To double-check, do another search on “itms” and make sure it is set to “Always Ask” here as well.

To reverse the setting, return to the “about:config” page and double-click on the “true” entry for “network.protocolhandler.warn-external.itms” to change it back to “false” and disable the dialog box asking you what to do. Chrome Chrome has not implemented the “about:config” settings in Chrome for Mac, but it does have a nifty feature to disable javascript on specific sites.

Open Chrome’s preferences and click on the “Under the Hood” tab.

Click on “Content Settings…” and then select the “JavaScript” tab.

Click on “Exceptions” and then use the “+” button to add “ itunes.apple.com” and make sure this site is set to block JavaScript. Now when you load an iTunes web link, the site will report that iTunes cannot be found because the JavaScript function that is looking for it has failed to run and return a result.

While this solution works to shut down iTunes, it also means that you cannot click on the “View on iTunes” button on the page to launch iTunes manually.

If you really want to get to the iTunes Store, copy the URL from the address bar and open HOW-TO: page 60

60

Tech Blog/ Economy/

HOW-TO: continued from page 59

the same page in Safari, or simply launch iTunes manually and search in the store.

To reverse the setting, return to the list of exceptions and delete the entry for “ itunes.apple.com” by clicking on the “-” button.

No More Autolaunching!

Automatically launching applications and slowing down my computer is almost as annoying as websites that start playing background music when

you visit or DVD’s that play ads for soft drinks that cannot be stopped when all you want to do is watch a movie. Well, not nearly as bad as the stupid discs that will not let you skip to the movie, but still annoying. The steps above will help you take back control.

E-reader News Edition

CFTC chief questions ‘naked’ short selling ban (Financial Times - US homepage)

Tuesday he did not believe that a ban on “ naked” short selling of credit default swaps would be Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:57:49 AM effective.

Gary Gensler, head of the US In the face of repeated agency that regulates a large questions from MEPs, with a part of the derivatives market, clear appetite for regulatory told the European parliament on action in the wake of the Greek

crisis, Mr Gensler said: “I’m not sure I know how an outright ban would work technically.”

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

Twitter as a force for good?

(Scripting News)

obvious good things, but places where his money is no better than anyone else's. Had he If Twitter wants to be a force chosen perhaps to make a little for good they should stick to less money 20 years ago the small things they have high world would have been a better leverage over, not fancy "big place today, not some day in the picture" things that any other future. rich person could do.

For Twitter, doing good would Bill Gates made this mistake. mean decentralizing, not making Instead of cutting off the air every tweet flow through their supply of his competitors and servers. This makes the network landing his company in antitrust weak, slow and fragile. To add hell, he could have been a Force bells and whistles to an alreadyFor Good by welcoming f l a w e d a r c h i t e c t u r e i s competition as a way to keep his irresponsible and definintely not company tough and on their toes something a Force For Good and responsive to customers. It would do. would have been good for People wonder if they'd still be business and made him a force a force if they decentralize. Of for good. course they would. They'd be Instead, he's giving money for even bigger than before. On the education and health care, web, people return to places that Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:00:04 PM

the same way, in a decentralized loosely-coupled space, most people would use Twitter, as long as it remains reliable. And they would have an incentive to be the most reliable. Today we have no choice.

If they're worried about Google eating their lunch, or Microsoft, send them away. We could trust them because we'd have a forget it. Look at the Buzz choice. People don't trust rollout for a clue. Google is too entities that force themselves on messed up by strategy taxes to y o u . L o o k a t h o w h a t e d be an effective competitor.

Microsoft became and how Facebook might be a problem, Google is going the same way. but Twitter decentralizing would Twitter's future is in their hands. apply pressure for Facebook to They could either trust us to decentralize. Look at all the come back or force the issue. If upside there. Not just for they use force, eventually Twitter shareholders, but for the web.

Twitter will break.

I use twitter.com when I could Try really being good, not just use any of dozens of clients. In saying you're going to be good.

Finally a comment on the little

popup cards. They break Twitter, as far as I'm concerned.

Because of the 140-character limit, I have to be able to easily see the last few tweets for anyone I'm reading. And they need to read my tweet stream too. Try to get there (using Firefox/Mac at least). It requires a bunch of clicks to get the attention of the software. To replicate this paradigm on other sites makes me wonder if they're doing any real user testing at Twitter, Inc. PS: Please get rid of URLshorteners. They make the web more fragile.

TV/ Economy/

E-reader News Edition

Syfy picks up 'Three Inches' pilot Brad Trechak (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:31:00 AM

SyFy has picked up a new pilot called 'Three Inches,' according to The Hollywood Reporter. The premise is that the central character can move anything with his mind, but only for a distance of three inches. This character recruits a team of similarly underachieving mutants. It sounds a bit like a knock-off of The Inferior Five.

The article also mentions the network's plan to expand it's'Battlestar Galactica' empire with a strong possibility for a second season of'Caprica' as well as another spin-off series of the franchise. Another spin-off series? Honestly, where else can the show go? They covered the war with the robots and they're now covering the origin of the robots. Are they going back to the original planet of the Five ... a prequel of the prequel?

South Park Season Thirteen on DVD, and a New Microsite Nick Zaino (TV Squad)

61

New York Hedge Fund Roundtable Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:45:30 AM

Submitted at 3/16/2010 8:44:00 AM

Today is the day you can finally own epic episodes of'South Park' like "Fishsticks," in which decimates Kanye West and Carlos Mencia (actually decapitates Mencia), "The Coon," which is Cartman's Okay, there are probably a ton superhero identity, and "Whale of other concepts and topics to Whores," which shows the cover in the 'BSG' universe, but 'Whale Wars' crew as selfish SyFy should be wary. An asses. Yes, season thirteen is out overabundance of spin-offs is on DVD and Bluray today, a what killed the'Star Trek' day before season fourteen franchise until the recent movie debuts on Comedy Central.

The rollout for these feels a bit reboot. like an old infomercial. But Filed under: Other SciF i / S u p e r n a t u r a l S h o w s , wait! That's not all! In addition Programming, OpEd, Pickups to the DVD, which features some deleted scenes and a short and Renewals, Reality-Free P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | | feature touring the South Park Studios, you also get a microsite Comments dedicated to season thirteen.

There, you can get a bunch of 'South Park' goodies like wallpaper and ringtones (including West's "Gay Fish Song").

Continue reading South Park Season Thirteen on DVD, and a New Microsite Filed under: TV on DVD, South Park, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Posting will be light this morn, as I am presenting at the NYHFRT today.

The topic: The housing boom and bust, the credit bubble, as well as the stock market crash — where do we go from here and how to repair the financial markets.

Looks like a good crowd of fund managers — I’ll be back before noon.

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

'Gossip Girl' - 'The Lady Vanished' Recap Isabelle Carreau (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/16/2010 1:05:00 AM

(S03E14) "Whatever she has to say, it's better than not knowing." - Serena about Elizabeth Chuck's quest to learn more about Elizabeth continued with

the help of Blair, Nate and Serena. The latter took Chuck's quest to heart, as it was similar to her trying to find her father and get to know him. Without Serena, we wouldn't have discovered the truth about Elizabeth (more on that after the jump).

The episode also featured Jenny's downfall, Lily making a

discovery about Rufus, and Continue reading'Gossip Girl' Vanessa and Dan making a 'The Lady Vanished' Recap decision about their relationship. Filed under: Episode Reviews, G o o d t h i n g t h e E l i z a b e t h Reality-Free, Gossip Girl storyline was intriguing, Permalink| Email this| | because the Vanessa and Dan C o m m e n t s scenes were just awful and I have only one word to sum up my feelings about them: belch!

62

TV/ Sports/ Picture/

Paula Abdul in Talks With ABC for 'Star Search' Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:16:00 AM

Hmm ... this is an interesting development. For weeks, it seemed that Simon Cowell was all set to snag his old'American Idol' foil, Paula Abdul, for 'The X Factor.' That's the new talent competition show Simon is launching on Fox in 2011.

Reportedly, Simon wanted Paula as an 'X Factor' judge.

Simon now has competition for Paula. ABC has offered Paula Abdul a spot on 'Star Search.'

According to the Hollywood Reporter, following another report in Entertainment Weekly, the latest incarnation of'Star Search' will be a singing competition and Paula could be a host and a judge. That's twice as much as she did on 'American Idol.'

More importantly, it's on ABC.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 11:06:09 AM

• About Flickr Flickr is a revolution in photo storage, sharing and organization, making photo management an easy, natural

Ovechkin Hurts Hockey With Goon Act Jay Mariotti (FanHouse Main)

and left him sprawled on the ice for several minutes. Campbell might be out for the rest of the Filed under: NHL What a season with a broken clavicle damned, stinking shame that the and at least one broken rib, a world's greatest hockey player tough blow for a Blackhawks also is a goon. The NHL needs team that has legitimate hopes Alex Ovechkin to be a postof winning its first Olympic ambassador, a championship in 49 years. seductive highlight reel, a daily "A dangerous hit,'' Chicago reason for SportsCenter to coach Joel Quenneville said. feature his goal explosions and "There's so much of that stuff transcendent dazzle and flair. going on now, it's pretty Every time he takes a shift for that border on dirty and threaten frustrating the players don't take the Washington Capitals, he to sabotage his team's Stanley a stand against something like should respect the soil on which Cup chances. His latest foolish that and say, 'You know what, he makes his living, remember a c t , S u n d a y a f t e r n o o n i n we have to respect ourselves a how many Americans viewed Chicago, landed him a two- little bit more, and know it's not the gold-medal game on TV -- game suspension from a league all about the flashy hit,' '' said Continue reading Paula Abdul 34.8 million at the peak hour, or office finally cracking down on Blackhawks captain Jonathan in Talks With ABC for 'Star almost nine percent of the thuggery after years of using Toews, who plays the game the Search' national population -- and try to violence as a marketing tool. right way. "You have to know Filed under: OpEd, American keep selling what's most alluring Clearly, Ovechkin was taking w h e n t h e r e ' s a d a n g e r o u s g r a t u i t o u s a i m a t B r i a n situation and you can really hurt I d o l , M u s i c a n d V a r i e t y , about the sport.

C e l e b r i t i e s , J u d g e s , H o s t , Instead, he's turning into some Campbell when he charged up somebody and be smarter about Reality-Free sort of crazed, Rock 'Em Sock ice and, from the blindside, it."

P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | | 'Em loon, too eager to crush h a m m e r e d t h e v e t e r a n Comments opponents with hunt-down hits defenseman into the end boards

Monochrome reflection Zack Sheppard (Flickr Blog)

E-reader News Edition

and collaborative process. Get comments, notes, and tags on your photos, post to any blog, share and more!

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

Submitted at 3/15/2010 4:08:00 PM

Sleepy kitten Tuesday Zack Sheppard (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 3/16/2010 12:00:22 AM

• About Flickr Flickr is a revolution in photo storage, sharing and organization, making photo management an easy, natural

and collaborative process. Get comments, notes, and tags on your photos, post to any blog, share and more!

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

Sports/

E-reader News Edition

63

Picking NCAA Brackets: A 2010 Case Study (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:55:44 AM

Getty Images Will everyone in your office pool be putting the chalk back in “Rock Chalk Jayhawk?” Of course.

(Looking for today’s Fix? It’s right here.)

I have a confession to make: Last year, my NCAA tournament bracket finished in the 12th percentile, the worst performance of my life, by a couple orders of magnitude. If I had followed President Obama’s picks, I would have finished near the 80th percentile. And if I had simply turned over my picks to “the crowd” and followed what the majority of fans picked, I would have finished near the 90th.

I was humbled. I was ashamed.

I was scarred.

The good news: I have learned from my mistakes! This year, I will not ignore the obvious — that, like North Carolina a year ago, the great teams are exceptional … and not to be doubted.

At least as far as the Final Four is concerned, there is no secret gem to be unearthed, no conventional wisdom to be arbitraged.

There is No. 1 Kansas. There is Kentucky, the second-best team in the country. And the two will meet for the national title, with Kansas affirming its place as the best team in the country this

season by winning the championship.

I cannot — will not — deny it.

Things are that simple.

That begs this question: If everyone in your pool is taking Kansas over Kentucky in the title game, your pool will be won or lost by the picks you

make leading up to that. But let me reiterate, from bitter personal experience: If you deviate too far from results that seem obvious, your bracket will implode.

As we have gone through the past two years, I have a tidy process that I go through. I

acknowledge my pre-existing biases; I go with my gut; I second-guess myself and am wracked with self-doubt; finally, I resign myself.

What has changed this year?

After my debacle in 2009, my biases and gut have been indelibly altered — it’s like I

had gastric-bypass surgery for bracket-picking. Now I practice portion control. No more cutesy picks trying to show how clever I am. If it feels like a favorite will win, pick the favorite.

Before the bracket was even PICKING page 64

64

E-reader News Edition

PICKING continued from page 63

revealed, I knew a few things — my pre-existing conditions, so to speak: *Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse: Straight to the Final Four.

Period. Don’t care who they’re playing. And, again, I won’t be put off by the chalk — picking higher seeds, especially deeper into the tournament. *Anyone but Duke: At least as far as placement in the Final Four goes. In fact, figuring out exactly at which stage Duke will fail has become my favorite part of the bracket-picking process. *Purdue will be overseeded: And I can’t get rid of them fast enough. They lost their best player to injury a few weeks ago, and they simply aren’t the same team. (Top 4 seed? That’s at least one Sweet 16 spot not going chalk.) *Some things don’t change: I remain in the tank for a few teams, particularly Georgetown and Xavier. That’s not to say I will take them to the Final Four, but I will inevitably take them further than their seed would project.

Let’s dive into the bracket. My newly reconstructed gut reactions are ready: MIDWEST *In the first round, I walk with the chalk in every game but one: 11-seed San Diego State over 6seed Tennessee. Despite the fact that I think UT’s Bruce Pearl is a great tournament coach, I have watched enough of the Vols not

to trust them against a talented SDSU team that just won a very tough Mountain West Conference tournament championship. *From there, I stick with Kansas, Ohio State and Georgetown into the Sweet 16, along with 5-seed Michigan State over 4-seed Maryland.

After last year, I cannot doubt Tom Izzo as a master of March, certainly in the first weekend. *In the Sweet 16, my bias kicks in: Georgetown over Ohio State and the Buckeyes’ national player of the year, Evan Turner.

The Hoyas have been knocked as inconsistent, yet I can’t help remembering the version that throttled Duke and Syracuse earlier this season. *In the end, it doesn’t really matter who wins the Georgetown-Ohio State game, because Kansas will bury either one. (Wow, did that feel good to have such clarity and confidence. I like this new me!)

WEST * Chalk all the way in the first round. There is a lot of Cinderella sentiment for UTEP — and everyone knows that 12seeds are the standard bracket Upset Special. It is odd to see Butler, a team regularly cast in the role of tournament insurgent, knocked as the favorite. I ignore the tug of the upset and stick with Butler. *Things get a little more interesting in the second round:

I will double-down with Butler topping 4-seed Vanderbilt— aside from Kentucky, it has been a down year in the SEC — and focus on the best game of the region: 3-seed Pitt vs. 6-seed Xavier. *As I mentioned, I am in the tank for Xavier (as is anyone who has rode the X-men to office-pool glory in previous years). I think Xavier not only tops Pitt, but then two days later knocks off 2-seed Kansas State— largely tournament neophytes — to advance to the regional final. But again: For a regional champ, I’m not going against the 1-seed, Syracuse.

EAST Getty Images Even though it’s young, Kentucky’s NBA-bound roster ought to be enough to reach the finals. *Despite my best intentions, after working my way through half the bracket with only one (hardly) unconventional pick to show for it, I am jonesing for some upsets. I find some in this region: *Because I am confident in taking top-seeded Kentucky to win the region(and 2-seed West Virginia, a team arguably worth its own 1-seed, as the region runner-up), I can take some chances early: I will take that 5/12 special with Cornell knocking off Temple; 10-seed Missouri over 7-seed Clemson; and 11-seed Washington over 6seed Marquette. *This last one makes me a little

nervous: The Pac-10 has been dreadful this year and the Big East has been terrific. But I am intrigued by the location of the game: San Jose, a favorable placement for the Huskies — favorable enough that I have UW scooting past 3-seed New Mexico before the first weekend is over. UNM is my annual pick for the team with the gaudy record and high seed that proves to be flimsy come tournament time. *They will be an instant national darling, but Cornell’s run ends when the Big Red faces the Wisconsin grinder. Then watch the Badgers give Kentucky all it can handle in the Sweet 16.

Still: Kentucky wins the region over West Virginia, thanks to a combination of the sublime point guard John Wall and the inside combination of DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson, two future high NBA draft picks.

SOUTH *Ah, Duke! On the surface the Blue Devils have the easiest road of any regional top seed.

Then again, this is Duke — their premature tournament ouster is a question of “when,” not “if.” I would love to see Duke lose to Louisville in the second round, but this year’s top-seeded edition of Duke will maximize its schadenfreude potential: *Let’s send Duke out in the regional final in a loss to Villanova. If that sounds

familiar, that’s because Nova ran Duke off the court in the regional semifinal a year ago.

Even if this year’s version of Nova isn’t nearly as rugged as last year’s Final Four team, they are still better than Duke.

(There are plenty of potential pitfalls along the way for Villanova: Intriguing Richmond in the second round, then Baylor (which will get past Sam Houston State and Notre Dame) in the Sweet 16. I may be a year too late on the Cats.) *I love the South region for one particular detail: The quirky Spokane sub-regional. I had mentioned my problems with Purdue. As a 4-seed, the Boilermakers are ripe for an upset by 13-seed Siena, a team with great tournament experience. And in the 5/12 Upset Special, I like Utah State over Texas A&M, with the Cinderella-friendly Spokane crowd turning things into a virtual Utah State home game. *That sets up a terrific 12-seed vs. 13-seed match-up for a spot in the Sweet 16 — even if it means a beat-down from Duke a few days later. I will stick with Utah State as the worst-seeded team to crash the Sweet 16, riding the sub-regional sympathy in Spokane and joining chalky Duke, Villanova and Baylor in the regional.

Second-Guessing: PICKING page 67

Sports/

E-reader News Edition

65

David Beckham has surgery on Achilles tendon ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:17:17 AM

TURKU, Finland -- David Beckham's left Achilles tendon was totally torn, and the doctor who performed the surgery said the England midfielder is expected to be out of action for about six months.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Sakari Orava said the 34-year-old Beckham was in "some pain" after Monday's surgery but was doing well and would start walking with his crutches on Tuesday.

"These walking exercises are the first day's program after surgery," Orava said. "After that he will get a detailed program for further rehabilitation, and then, [Wednesday] probably, he flies to London, and then to the U.S." Beckham's spokesman, Simon Oliveira, said the tendon was completely repaired, and he expected Beckham to play again.

"David is expected to make a full recovery," Oliveira said.

He also told the AP that Beckham's wife, Victoria Beckham, was expected later Tuesday in Turku.

"Of course she is coming," Oliveira said. "She is his wife and wants to be there."

The former England captain was injured in the closing minutes of AC Milan's 1-0 win

over Chievo Verona on Sunday.

He was on his second loan to the Italian club from Major League Soccer's Lox Angeles Galaxy.

Orava said Beckham planned to spend the night at the clinic and likely will leave Finland on Tuesday.

World Cup Run In Jeopardy David Beckham, who tore his left Achilles tendon Sunday and will likely miss the 2010 World Cup, was vying to be the first English player to participate in four World Cups. David Beckham, World Cup Career British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent a get-well message to Beckham and praised his role as an ambassador for his sport.

"He emphasized what a tremendous ambassador Mr. Beckham is for English soccer and wishes him well in his recovery, as I think the whole nation does," Brown's spokesman, Simon Lewis, said.

Using crutches, Beckham hobbled out of a private jet at Turku airport in southwestern Finland and left in a Mercedes.

Just minutes later, he arrived at the clinic surrounded by security guards amid cheers from hundreds of fans who had gathered outside the entrance.

"I am upset but [want] to thank everyone for their messages of support," Beckham said in a statement posted on his personal Web site before his arrival. "I hope to make a swift and full recovery."

The injury shattered Beckham's hopes of becoming the first English player to appear in four World Cups and put his future on the national team in doubt.

He will miss most of the MLS season.

"Injuries are an unfortunate part of our game and they are even more disappointing when they happen to a player who was so close to realizing his dream of representing his nation at this summer's World Cup," Galaxy coach Bruce Arena said Monday. "David remains an important player for the Galaxy and we look forward to welcoming him back to the club and assisting him in his recovery."

The projected timetable has Beckham returning to play after Los Angeles' Sept. 11 home game against Columbus, in time for the Sept. 18 home match against D.C. United.

The Galaxy host New York on Sept. 24, are the road team against local rival Chivas USA on Oct. 3, then play four days later at expansion Philadelphia.

The Galaxy close at home against Colorado on Oct. 16 and Dallas on Oct. 24.

Beckham had two goals and three assists in 11 regularseason matches with the Galaxy last year, his third season with the team. Los Angeles advanced to the MLS final before losing to Salt Lake on penalty kicks.

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.

Orava told the AP the tendon "was totally torn," not just a small rupture.

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 Milan's medical staff consulted with the Galaxy's medical team, and Milan organizing director Umberto Gandini spoke with Tim Leiweke, president of Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns the Galaxy.

"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."

While Beckham has not been a starter for England in recent matches, he was likely to make the World Cup squad. Beckham was still prized for his free kicks and crosses, especially when England needed second-half goals.

And for many, he is the bestknown soccer player in the DAVID page 67

66

Sports/

E-reader News Edition

Washington Capitals' Alexander Ovechkin suspended two games for hit ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/15/2010 10:04:54 PM

• Email • Print • Comments '); document.write(''); } else if ( show_gigya ) { document.write('• '); document.write(' '); function showShareUI(){ var H = {APIKey:"2_B48MVBl19K9C Qj72UVrAqLh7VSAyZDfMkcl kt8foSSRaAbdWu36H_N3Ky_ ERWhDG", enabledProviders: "facebook,twitter", cid:"ESPN.Story"}; var I = n e w gigya.services.socialize.UserAct ion(); var A = {}; I.setUserMessage(""); if (jQuery(":header:first").length > 0 ) { I.setTitle(jQuery(".article").find( ":header:first").text()); } else { I.setTitle(decodeURIComponent ("Capitals\'%20Ovechkin%20su spended%20two%20games%20 for%20hit")); }

I.setLinkBack("http://sports.esp n.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=49 97843"); 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/nhl/ne ws/story?id=4997843' }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } ESPN.com news services The NHL has suspended twotime MVP Alex Ovechkin two games on Monday for his boarding hit on Blackhawks defenseman Brian Campbell.

It is the second suspension of the season for the two-time defending Hart Trophy winner.

Burnside: No Rhyme, Reason to 'Discipline' Alex Ovechkin's latest

suspension proves there is no rhyme or reason anymore behind the NHL's supplemental discipline, Scott Burnside writes. Story Ovechkin, who was suspended for two games on Nov. 30, 2009, now is considered a repeat offender under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Accordingly, he forfeits $232,645.40 in salary, based on the number of games in the season (82). The money goes to the Players' Emergency Assistance Fund.

Ovechkin will miss Washington's next two games -March 16 at Florida and March 18 at Carolina. He will be eligible to return March 20 at Tampa Bay. "We have no problem with the way Alex tried to finish his check. Unfortunately, an injury resulted. We are disappointed with the suspension but do not want to comment further," Capitals vice president and general manager George McPhee said in a statement.

The Capitals said Ovechkin missed practice Monday because he had to be on the

phone with Colin Campbell, the NHL's director of hockey operations, to discuss the hit.

"If this was Sidney Crosby doing this, everybody outside of Pittsburgh would have cried foul: 'Suspend him for the year,'" Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau said in an interview with the team's Web site. "I don't think it does the game any good to have Alex suspended."

Ovechkin was ejected from the nationally televised game for pushing Campbell from behind into the boards in the first period and received a major penalty and a game misconduct.

Campbell, according to league sources, suffered a broken clavicle and at least one broken rib, and it's questionable whether he'll return this season.

The team is calling it an upperbody injury and said Campbell will miss the Blackhawks' threegame road trip this week out West that starts Wednesday night in Anaheim, Calif.

"Brian Campbell is one of the best skaters in the National Hockey League," Boudreau said. "If he thought danger was coming, and he saw Alex right

behind him, he would have moved. I think he was trying to spin away and the spin didn't work, and he got caught in the ice and he fell into the boards.

"That's me, and a lot of people are going to bash that thought.

But that's my opinion."

The Capitals came back from a 3-0 deficit to win 4-3 in overtime.

Campbell consulted with team physicians on Monday, and the team is expected to issue a statement on Tuesday.

Campbell has seven goals and 31 assists on the season. He is a key defenseman for the Blackhawks, who are second overall in the Western Conference two points behind San Jose.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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

E-reader News Edition

67

PICKING

DAVID

continued from page 64

Let’s review: Rather than my usual rash of too-clever-by-half picks, I have only six of 32 1stround games as upsets. In the Sweet 16, I have only two double-digit-seeded teams crashing the group, with 6-seed Xavier hardly an unsafe pick.

My Elite Eight includes all four top seeds, two 2s, a very worthy Georgetown and Xavier. My Final Four includes three obvious 1-seeds and the most conventional alternative to Duke in the South region. My title game is the country’s top team beating the second-best team. I am safe. (Too safe?) When you are coming off my record from a year ago, there is no such thing.

As I go back over my picks, I feel something that I haven’t in years: Serenity. I feel good about my choices. Yes, I’m nervous about taking an inconsistent Georgetown to string together three straight wins. Yes, I appreciate that UTEP is a popular upset choice but feel good that I’ve hedged with a pick for Syracuse to go long.

I don’t feel weird about Xavier.

I wonder how anyone can look at Xavier’s recent tournament success rate and NOT pick them.

I cannot feel worried about

continued from page 65

Duke winning its region. I was never going to pick them.

Frankly, I am much more nervous about Villanova getting past Richmond than beating Duke.

Self-Doubt: Am I nervous about taking three top seeds to the Final Four? Virtually everyone is taking Kansas to the Final Four (if not all the way). If they go down, a lot more brackets than mine will be busted. It sure beats being the only person last year to pick UNC to lose before the Final Four.

I am nervous about Syracuse, because its burly center Arinze Onuaku was last seen limping off the court with a leg injury in a Syracuse loss in the Big East Tournament.

And Kentucky, while talented, is inexperienced enough for me to get very nervous about the Wildcats handling a savvy, brutish team like Wisconsin. But I have seen enough of Kentucky this year to know that they have the most talented player in the country who doubles as the best point guard in college basketball in a generation — plus two NBA players in the post. That is a potent combination for a deep tournament run.

Okay, okay: Want real self-

doubt? I keep staring at the way I have put Washington into my Sweet 16 and picture even the staunchest Pac-10 fan laughing at me as they leave Washington behind as a first-round exit.

Things get even less comfortable when I wonder if I am misreading New Mexico, a team I have never seen play beyond game highlights. And since when is West Virginia’s Bob Huggins a coach with a reliable record of taking his teams deep into the tournament?

That entire half of the East bracket could be my downfall.

Meanwhile, I chuckle at my Spokane-South quartet, which turns into nervous laughter when I glance a little further down and recognize that I have put a big bet on a Villanova team that faded at the end of the season. Despite my new attitude, I selectively remain a sucker for “previous Final Four experience.” (Readers last year might remember the way I picked UCLA — coming off three straight Final Fours — over Final Four-bound Villanova in last year’s 2nd round, which perfectly captured my horrible performance.)

But again: I have substantially less self-doubt than before. Is it particularly fun to take so many

favorites so deep into the tournament, this many top seeds into the Final Four? No, but it is a lot more fun than bold calls before the tournament that turn into an imploded bracket in the weeks to come.

Resignation … or something else?

This year, I do not feel a sense of resignation that my bracket will fail. As someone rebounding from the 12th (gack) percentile, the one upside is that I feel a sense of giddiness that — with the help of confidently cherry-picking the favorites — I can finish in the entirely adequate top quarter (and maybe even beat out President Obama).

Commensurate with this year’s more modest yet promising economic climate, I don’t need to win — I just need to do better than last year.

Dan Shanoff blogs daily at danshanoff.com and every weekday morning for SportingNews.com. Email him at shanofftsn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/danshanoff.

world, a fashion icon with a celebrity wife who is a former Spice Girl.

The former Manchester United and Real Madrid star has scored 17 goals for England and made 115 appearances, second in England history behind only goalkeeper Peter Shilton's 125 from 1970-90.

Beckham was England's captain from November 2000 through the 2006 World Cup. It was also a blow for MLS, already facing the threat of a players' strike ahead of the season opener on March 25.

Beckham is the league's highestpaid player with a $32.5 million, five-year contract -- and its biggest draw.

Information from The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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

68

Sports/

E-reader News Edition

Sacramento: Stanford's Been Here Before Michelle Smith (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/15/2010 4:35:00 PM

Filed under: Women's Basketball Stanford won't have to go farther than a two-hour bus ride to pave a path back to its third straight Final Four. But the roadblocks are plentiful.

The Cardinal (31-1) are the No. 2 overall seed in the tournament by virtue of Sunday's Pac-10 tournament championship in Los Angeles. Stanford is scheduled to play at home for the first two rounds, opening Saturday with No. 16 seed UC Riverside, and is the only team in its bracket with a host bid.

Should the Cardinal advance as expected, they will head to Sacramento.

Unlike Connecticut, the team that Stanford has been looking up at all year, the Cardinal have

had their health issues. Jayne Appel(pictured right) has battled knee, foot and ankle injuries this season. Experienced guards JJ Hones and Mel Murphy have experienced limited playing time with persistent knee swelling. Starting point guard Jeanette Pohlen had an ankle injury.

Stanford is a No. 1 seed for the

first time since 1998, when it made history by becoming the first No. 1 seed ever to lose to a No. 16 seed when Harvard pulled off the now infamous upset at Maples Pavilion.

Texas A&M (25-7) lurks on the other end of the bracket. The Aggies won the Big 12 tournament for the second time in three years last weekend in Kansas City, in the process handing Nebraska its first loss of the season.

Bracket Analysis: Memphis| Kansas City| Sacramento| Dayton Maryland, USC, Syracuse Among Those On Outside Looking in A&M has won nine of 10 games, the only loss in that span a two-point loss against Baylor in College Station.

Maryland, USC, Syracuse Among Those On Outside Looking in Milton Kent (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:45:00 PM

Filed under: Women's Basketball In the end, coach Brenda Frese had no excuses and didn't offer any for her Maryland team, which, one season removed from a top seed and an Elite Eight appearance, failed to get an NCAA tournament bid when the draw was announced Monday.

Granted, the Terps (19-12) lost 4,000 points of offense, when Kristi Toliver and Marissa Coleman graduated from last year's team, but Maryland did itself no favors by finishing ninth in the Atlantic Coast Conference with a 5-9 league mark.

"From our end the only ones to blame is us in terms of not being able to see things through," said Frese last night. "At the same point, with this young team, to be able to grow and develop like they did and win 19 games and still have an opportunity to play in postseason in the WNIT is a chance for us to continue to practice and develop."

The 10-member NCAA women's basketball committee

made interesting choices across the nation in distributing 33 atlarge bids.

The panel extended two of the last bids to Green Bay(27-4) of the Horizon League and to Arkansas-Little Rock(26-6) of the Sun Belt, while leaving out such notable teams as Southern California (19-12), Syracuse(2210), Boston College(17-15) and Wake Forest(18-13).

Jane Meyer, the senior women's administrator and chair of the women's basketball committee, said Green Bay and ArkansasLittle Rock, which received its first ever bid, were singled out for their willingness to schedule tough teams and their success against those schedules.

Sports/ Game/

E-reader News Edition

69

Dayton: UConn Casts Mighty Shadow Milton Kent (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/15/2010 3:00:00 PM

Filed under: Women's Basketball Say you're Ohio State coach Jim Foster and you've coached your Buckeye team to a 30-4 mark, capturing the regular season and tournament champions.

Or perhaps you're Sue Semrau, the Florida State coach, whose Seminoles shared the regular season Atlantic Coast Conference regular season title with Duke.

You'd think either coach would feel reasonably comfortable with their chances to reach the Final Four in San Antonio, given they received the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds, respectively in

the Dayton regional.

That is, until they looked at the top of the bracket and saw who the No. 1 seed was, namely Connecticut. The Huskies' 72game winning streak -- two of them against Florida State --

appear as daunting a challenge as any contender has faced since the 1999 tournament, when three-time defending champion Tennessee, fresh off an unbeaten 1998 season, entered the field as prohibitive favorites.

Bracket Analysis: Memphis| Kansas City| Sacramento| Dayton Maryland, USC, Syracuse Among Those On Outside Looking in The Lady Vols were knocked out that year in the regional final

by Duke, and Ohio State and Florida State, not to mention Iowa State, the region's fourth seed, will need something miraculous to happen to take out Connecticut.

Hands-on: Risk Factions (XBLA) Andrew Yoon (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:00:00 AM

I have an admission to make: I haven't played the original Risk board game. For hardcore fans of the game, that fact alone may discredit my opinion. However,

after playing the upcoming XBLA adaptation, I wish I had discovered the board game sooner.

Risk Factions looks and feels like a Penny Arcade game: the HANDS-ON: page 70

NCAA 2010 Women's Basketball Tournament Selections and Pairings Matt Romanoski (FanHouse Main)

Stanford (30-1) and Tennessee (30-2) -- were awarded No. 1 seeds Monday night for the Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:01:00 PM 2010 NCAA women's Filed under: Women's basketball tournament.

Basketball UConn, winner of a record 72 F o u r t e a m s t h a t w e n t a straight games, will open combined 123-4 -- Connecticut d e f e n s e o f i t s n a t i o n a l Southern (23-8) in Norfolk, Va. ( 3 3 - 0 ) , N e b r a s k a ( 3 0 - 1 ) , championship March 21 against T h e H u s k i e s d e f e a t e d

Louisville, 76-54, in last year's title game.

The 2010 tournament opens at 16 sites March 20 and 21 and culminates with the national championship game April 6 in San Antonio.

Bracket Analysis: Memphis| Kansas City| Sacramento|

Dayton Maryland, USC, Syracuse Among Those On Outside Looking in

70

Game/

E-reader News Edition

HANDS-ON: continued from page 69

art style is similar, and the writing is just as irreverent. As evidenced by the shorts released

by EA so far, the world of Factions is animated (in more ways than one). The Colonel, who's fully aware that he's in a game, is one of the funniest characters I've seen in recent memory. Knowing his audience well, he promised that if I kept playing, I'd see tons of nudity in the game. (An EA representative hurriedly reminded me that it was just a joke, though.)

While Factions will allow players to play classic style Risk, newcomers will undoubtedly want to play through the main campaign first.

The campaign does a good job of easing players into the basic rules of the game, and offers shorter, focused, objective-

based challenges to conquer.

The level I played didn't take place all over the globe: instead, it was a rather small map comprised of about a dozen tiles. One tile offered occupation of a missile silo, allowing you to launch a devastating area-wide attack against enemies.

Gallery: Risk: Factions Continue reading Hands-on: Risk Factions (XBLA) Hands-on: Risk Factions (XBLA) originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink| Email this| JC Fletcher (Joystiq) Comments

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd coming to Japan in late 2010 Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:29:00 AM

Sega teases yet another Yakuza game Submitted at 3/16/2010 9:39:00 AM

[ Famitsu] Now that Yakuza 3 has been out in North America for a whole week and Yakuza 4 ia due to hit Japan in two days, it's definitely time for Sega to announce another one. At least, that's what Sega seems to think.

At a Yakuza 4 event in Tokyo, Sega showed a teaser trailer for a new game in the series, with concept art depicting the familiar Kamurocho district of the other games. As usual, the next iteration will be produced by series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi.

Codenamed "Project K," the new game appears to star a young man who "knew the graveness of the crimes he continued to commit," luckily,

When Capcom woke up this morning, it decided it would like to have roughly a bajillion more dollars by this time next year. It walked over to a secret panel in "fighting is his destiny," even if its foyer, slid it open and he "doesn't know the cruel fate pressed a button inside, labeled "New Monster Hunter." A press that awaits." Powerful stuff!

The teasers calls this new release was instantaneously project, "A new challenge for launched announcing Monster Ryu ga Gotoku[ Yakuza]," Hunter Portable 3rd, the next suggesting that the next game P S P - b a s e d e n t r y i n t h e could be different in some way. franchise, due out in Japan in P e r h a p s t h i s f o r t h c o m i n g late 2010.

Yakuza will leave the story of The announcement heralds new Kazuma Kiryu behind entirely monsters and areas to explore, in favor of a new character. Or an expanded "Felyne Comrade" perhaps it'll be made for a system (we're pretty sure that's platform other than PlayStation Russian for "cat friend") and improved co-op play. There's no 3.

Sega teases yet another Yakuza word on plans for localization, game originally appeared on but Capcom's been pretty Joystiq on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 diligent in unleashing the 09:39:00 EST. Please see our M o n s t e r H u n t e r s e r i e s worldwide. You can get your terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| first look at the outrageously large-sworded title in a trailer Comments posted after the jump.

MONSTER page 71

Game/ Fashion/

E-reader News Edition

71

MONSTER continued from page 70

[Thanks Krystian!]

Continue reading Monster Hunter Portable 3rd coming to Japan in late 2010 Monster Hunter Portable 3rd coming to Japan in late 2010 originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Go behind the tech of Rumor: Gears of War 3 PlayStation Move at the in April 2011 Engadget Show this Saturday David Hinkle (Joystiq) why we won't be seeing Gears Andrew Yoon (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/16/2010 8:30:00 AM

The Engadget Show is teaming up with Joystiq's very own Chris Grant this Saturday in a brand new episode that features the newly unveiled PlayStation Move motion controller. Sony's Richard Marks will take the stage, bringing some brand new tech demos that highlight what the controller is capable of. This will be the first time the general public will be able to get their hands on the device, with random members of the audience being able to play with the Move live on stage. And there's going to be a special surprise ...

If you're in the NYC area, go to Engadget to find out more details on how to score a ticket for the show. If you can't make it, don't worry! Both Joystiq and Engadget will have a live stream of the episode available for you to watch this Saturday, March 20th at 5PM EST. Hope to see you there!

Go behind the tech of PlayStation Move at the Engadget Show this Saturday originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Of War 3 until next year, but expect a major marketing push A few things in this life are ahead of its release." certain: Oprah will have a new Recently, Epic prez Mike book for you to read every Capps hinted at a major game month and you can bet there's a announcement to be made by new Gears of War in the works. t h e s t u d i o d u r i n g E 3 .

Edge says a source has put a pin Additionally, EA has teased a in April 2011 as the release "Shooter from Epic" due just window for the third entry in before April in Q1 2011.

Epic's series -- and we should Rumor: Gears of War 3 in April expect the first teaser trailer next 2011 originally appeared on month, on April 8, with a full-on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 reveal at E3 in June.

10:01:00 EST. Please see our "Microsoft's keen to avoid a terms for use of feeds. clash with Halo: Reach and Read| Permalink| Email this| wants Natal to own Christmas," Comments alleges Edge's source. "That's Submitted at 3/16/2010 10:01:00 AM

Diane von Furstenberg & Tina Brown’s Beast of a Weekend ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/15/2010 1:51:56 PM

DIANE page 72

72

Fashion/

E-reader News Edition

DIANE continued from page 71

“One thing I will be known for is turning the UN into a nightclub,” mused fashion designer and philanthropist Diane von Furstenberg as she thanked Daily Beast boss Tina Brown for her introduction at the first annual DvF Awards this past Saturday night. And though meant in jest, von Furstenberg’s statement was in fact true—the room felt, looked, and pulsed far more like a hip downtown dance space than a ballroom at the meeting place of the world’s most high-ranking diplomats. At least that was the case until we took our seats and recipients Sadiqa Basiri Saleem of Afghanistan, Danielle Saint-Lot of Haiti, Katherine Chon of the United States, and Ingrid Betancourt of Columbia took the stage, sharing with us the inspiring backstories that earned them the prestigious nod, along with how they each planned on using the award’s generous $50,000 grant to further their work.

For Saleem, who was introduced by CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, the money will go towards creating the first women’s college in Afghanistan. “Educated women

do not see themselves as victims anymore,” she says. “We need more educated women, and an investment like this is the most significant way to move our women forward.”

For Saint-Lot, introduced by U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer, the award will serve as seed money to help women artisans “get back on their feet” after the devastation of her country’s recent earthquake. In one of the most moving moments of the evening, Saint-Lot brought her young daughter (proudly wearing a cobalt DvF dress) onstage and told the crowd, “35 seconds can change a whole country. When the earthquake hit, all I could think about was finding my daughter. When I saw she was safe, nothing else mattered. I know now what it means to be blessed.”

For 30-year-old Katherine Chon (introduced by GMA coanchor Robin Roberts), cofounder of the anti-human trafficking NGO, The Polaris Project, her $50,000 will go toward improving her organization’s national hotline, which in its infancy has already led to the arrest of human

traffickers and rescue of those caught in its scarily pervasive wake. “Traffickers count on our ignorance, inaction, apathy, and desire to keep the problem at arm’s length,” Chon said. “This award will help those of us who fight for freedom to continue to do our work.”

And finally, actress Meryl Streep introduced former politician and FARC captive, Ingrid Betancourt, whose imprisonment in the Columbian jungle only came to an end in July 2008, close to seven years after she was taken by gunpoint.

Betancourt plans to use her award to help the families of those young guerrillas who, as she put it, “don’t really want to be doing what they’re doing.” “I want to use this second opportunity at life,” she says, “to push people forward to fight for that freedom inside of us that makes us better human beings.”

Significant as the DvF Awards were, it was only one of a dozen -plus celebrations of female empowerment that took place over the weekend as part of The Daily Beast’s first ‘Women in the World’ summit. From Friday night’s celeb-studded reading of the play, Seven(the introduction to which was given by Secretary

of State Hillary Clinton), to Saturday morning’s one-on-one with Barbara Walters and Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to any one of the panel discussions on pressing world issues involving women moderated by Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, Tom Friedman, or Brown herself, the summit couldn’t have been a bigger success, nor a more powerful tribute to brilliant, glass-ceilingbreaking women from all points on the professional and international spectrum.

—Johanna Cox On the left: Diane von Furstenberg, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and summit organizer Tina Brown walking the red carpet before Friday night’s reading of Seven; On the right (top): Brown giving her opening remarks; (bottom): presenters—and von Furstenberg—standing behind the recipients of the first ever DvF Awards Photos: Courtesy of Amanda Potters Communications, HL Group, and Getty

A Behanding in Spokane: Give Christopher Walken a Hand ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/15/2010 2:01:57 PM

If you aren't somewhat taken aback by the work of obscenely hilarious playwright Martin McDonagh, then you either have a defunct moral compass or McDonagh has not done his job.

Based on the gasps and guffaws from the audience during his latest work on Broadway, A Behanding in Spokane, he has done his fans proud. The story follows Carmichael (played with perfectly unsettling creepiness

by Christopher Walken), a man on an enduring search for his left hand, which leads him into a transaction gone awry with small-time dope dealers, Marilyn and Toby (Zoe Kazan BEHANDING page 73

Economy/

E-reader News Edition

BEHANDING continued from page 72

and Anthony Mackie), in a dungy hotel run by Mervyn (Sam Rockwell). The entire casting is dead-on, but if it weren't for Walken's star power, Rockwell would steal the show as the deeply affected hotel clerk.

As an aside, it's worth noting that McDonagh teamed up with blood-brother-in-comedy, director John Crowley for Behanding, his first play set stateside. But an Irish name and dark humor aren't the only things these two have in common—both chose kinsman and actor Colin Farrell to star in their respective films, Crowley's

Intermission(2003), and McDonagh's In Bruges(2008).

He gives such incredible performances in both that it will make you forgive him for Miami Vice.

To buy tickets, go to behandinginspokane.com or visit: Schoenfeld Theatre 236 West 45th Street New York, New York 10036 212-239-6200 —Maura Lynch, Associate Beauty and Fitness Editor

Housing Starts a touch better as crucial spring selling season just ahead Peter Boockvar (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/16/2010 5:52:34 AM

Weather impacted Feb Housing Starts totaled 575k annualized, 5k above estimates but down from 611k in Jan which was revised up by 20k. Permits totaled 612k, 11k above expectations but down from 622k in Jan. With both starts and permits, single family and multi family categories fell.

Single family construction fell in the Northeast and South but rose in the Midwest and West.

Weather notwithstanding, builders have been getting ready for the spring selling season and the last hope, for now, for

73

HIBERNATING continued from page 73

“In the past, at the start of these big secular bull markets, you have really cheap stocks … I’m not sure we ever got to that point,” he says. “Stocks became reasonable in March [2009] for people to take advantage of the a month. Now, there are plenty upcoming expiration of the of stocks that are expensive and home buying tax credit while there are plenty of indexes that m o r t g a g e r a t e s r e m a i n are pricey.” historically low. So, from an There is a lot more in the article inventory perspective on one . . . hand we want lower starts but > on the other, builders have > boosted GDP in the hopes that Source: the buyers come out for new The bear: Dead or just homes rather than existing ones. s l e e p i n g ?

The housing stimulus party is David Parkinson about to end so we’ll see what From Thursday’s Globe and gets squeezed in while it still Mail lasts and what kind of hangover Published on Thursday, Mar. we see after.

1 1 , 2 0 1 0 X X X Five Filters featured article: http://www.theglobeandmail.co Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: m/globe-investor/the-bearPDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

HIBERNATING page 74

The Hibernating Bear Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture)

more expensive to borrow, corporate profits slide – all the negative things that take place Submitted at 3/16/2010 6:30:43 AM that make the market less I have a few good quotes about appealing as an investment secular bear markets in The opportunity,” Mr. Ritholtz says.

Bear: Dead or Just Sleeping?: In fact, Mr. Ritholtz is one of “And, in fact, many in the bear several commentators who camp believe the market is believe this rally has merely destined to meet its maker as been a temporary cyclical swing soon as the Fed starts to raise in the midst of a longer-term interest rates – which could bear market – one that began happen late this year. roughly a decade ago and is far “When rates go up, it becomes from over. These long-term, or

“secular,” market trends tend to last 15 to 20 years.

“This does not have the characteristics of a secular bull market,” Mr. Ritholtz says. Not only would it be starting ahead of schedule, he argues, but even at the market lows of a year ago the stock valuations were never as low as they typically get at turning points in secular market trends.

HIBERNATING page 73

74

E-reader News/

HIBERNATING continued from page 73

E-reader News Edition

E-readers take off at IT Show (AsiaOne)

market-dead-or-justsleeping/article1497020/ Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: (Yahoo! News Search Results PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, for e-readers) Term Extraction.

Submitted at 3/15/2010 9:38:29 PM

By KENNY CHEE SALES of e-book readers, or ereaders - shown for the first time at the IT Show - took off at the four-day fair that ended 2010 yesterday at Suntec Singapore. continued from page 74 Exhibitors at the first major company's plans. consumer-electronics show of The executive said pricing was the year told my paper that they yet to be confirmed on the saw brisk business for the edevices, but the company was book readers and got many looking at a starting price of enquiries for the devices, which approximately $299 for the are used to read digital books. entry-level model. "We look Home-grown firm McCoy, forward to confirming more which sells digital lifestyle details later this year," he said. products, sold all its 100 units of Unlike Apple's iPad device, a $479 Cool-er e-reader in the Samsung's readers use first two hours of the fair, which electronic ink displays — a began last Thursday. format that is designed to be The firm sold all 70 units of easy on the eyes for long another e-reader, the $499 reading spells and without iRiver Story, by last Saturday. additional lighting. Rival It took many pre-orders for the readers like the Amazon Kindle e-readers after they were also use the E Ink format, but snapped up, said its sales the iPad, which is slated to hit executive, Mr Willie Chan.

Australia in late April, uses a "We didn't expect them to sell traditional LCD display. so fast. Singaporeans are The Samsung models range attracted to new tech gadgets, from a 5-inch screen up to a 10especially if they take off in inch, and have various levels of features in between. Unlike many e-readers, they utilise a stylus pen for interacting with the touchscreen.

2010 page 75

Western countries," he said, adding that the company intends to take more stocks of the ereaders to The PC Show in June.

Research firm Forrester Research estimated that 10 million e-readers could be sold in the United States this year, up from the three million sold last year.

Industry watchers have credited popular devices, such as American Web retailer Amazon's Kindle, for the ereader craze.

Exhibitor iKnow also said that the five e-reader brands it exhibited sold well.

For example, it had sold over 50 units each for the $299 Etaco jetBook, $299 Aiptek Story Book inColor and iRiver Story e -readers. iKnow expects to bring in new models of the devices that can also surf the Internet in June for The PC Show.

Entrepreneur Regen Lee, 28, bought a Cool-er e-reader at the fair, as he thought buying and storing hundreds of e-books on an e-reader was more costeffective than buying physical books.

"I don't have to carry so many books on the go since an ereader is lightweight," he said.

Tech firm BenQ is considering retailing its own e-readers here.

It showcased its 3-D projectors - which could play 3-D videos that "pop out" of screens with special glasses - for the first time at an IT fair here.

Other tech gadgets sold at the fair included high-definition pocket camcorders, such as Creative's Vado HD and Cisco Consumer Products' Flip MinoHD. The four-day event saw 807,000 visitors and raked in $67.5 million in sales, better than last year's 768,000 visitors and $58.5 million.

The show's organiser, Eastern Directories, attributed this to a recovering economy and to consumers' desire to upgrade their mobile devices. kennyc@sph.com.sg For more my paper stories click here.

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

2010 Aussie debut for Samsung e-readers (ZDNet Australia) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers) Submitted at 3/15/2010 4:48:34 PM

The Australian market for ebook readers continues to heat up, with giant Korean manufacturer Samsung confirming late yesterday that it was planning to bring its own range of the devices to Australia "in the second half of 2010".

Samsung's e-reader (Credit: Samsung) "We are eager to bring these new models to market here as soon as enough suitable content is available," confirmed Samsung Electronics Australia's national product & marketing manager — IT, Emmanuele Silanesu, after an initial report

by APC Magazine revealed the 2010 page 74

Energy/

E-reader News Edition

2010 continued from page 74

In the US, Samsung has announced that its e-readers will be able to access the ebook library belonging to bookseller Barnes & Noble. However, it remains unclear whether the Barnes & Noble content will be available in Australia — the retailer has not historically had a presence down under.

The Samsung news comes as the e-reader category is heating up dramatically in Australia, with major players such as the Amazon Kindle entering late last year and the iPad expected to cause a stir in late April.

Existing players such as Dymocks and BeBook have had local offerings for some time, and Sony may also be eyeing the Australian market, although the company has noted it wants to ensure there is enough content on its devices to keep readers satisfied.

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

75

A Truck Driver’s Lament: Firefly Energy Shuts Down info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

typically run their diesel rigs all night, mostly to keep the air conditioning or heating going in Submitted at 3/15/2010 5:08:19 PM their sleeping units. Want to Firefly Energy, a start-up that watch reruns of 'BJ and the hoped to breathe life into lead Bear'? Better keep the engine a c i d b a t t e r i e s , h a s b e e n going. In 2008, California squished. introduced regulations that only The company, which spun out allowed truckers to run their rigs of construction giant Caterpillar, in idle for five minutes every h a s f i l e d f o r C h a p t e r 7 hour. Firefly had hoped to sell bankruptcy, according to the its batteries to truckers to run Peoria Journal Star. The City of their cabins once all-night idling Peoria, Illinois may pursue went away. (Here's an early claims to get back $6 million in story on them.) loans.

Despite raising several rounds The company developed a way of funds, Firefly needed more to coat the battery membrane, a money and government loans. fan-like lead lattice, with Interestingly, it is the second graphite foam. The change c o m p a n y t o s p e c i a l i z e i n resulted, in theory, in a more b a t t e r i e s a n d b a t t e r y efficient battery that could components to go under. Last extract more electricity from the y e a r , I m a r a , w h i c h h a d electrolyte and release more developed a novel cathode for electricity per charge. Firefly lithium ion batteries, closed its also said its Oasis battery would doors. have a longer lifetime.

One complaint in the battery The battery was designed for community has been that the long-haul trucks. Truckers Department of Energy has given

the bulk of its grants to established companies, like Compact Power, a joint venture run by South Korea's LG Chem.

Start-ups like Imara, BostonPower and Firefly didn't get the requested grants and loans.

True, but A123 Systems, which was a struggling start-up just 18 months ago, has received DOE grants. And the battery industry tends to be dominated by large manufacturers. In January, the DOE issued big rig grants to giants like Cummins and Ford.

The DOE picks winners with its grants and loans, yes, but without the financial support all of these projects would be doomend.

Quallion, which makes a battery that provides a similar function to the ones created by Firefly, has been seeking milliions in DOE loans too.

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

76

Gallup Poll/

E-reader News Edition

In U.S., Many Environmental Issues at 20-Year-Low Concern (All Gallup Headlines) Submitted at 3/15/2010 8:00:00 PM

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans are less worried about each of eight specific environmental problems than they were a year ago, and on all but global warming and maintenance of the nation's fresh water supply, concern is the lowest Gallup has measured. Americans worry most about drinking-water pollution and least about global warming.

Over time, Americans' concerns about environmental problems have generally declined. After this year's drop, for six of the eight items, the percentage who worry "a great deal" is at the lowest point Gallup has measured, which in some cases dates to 1989. The two exceptions are global warming (low point was 24% in 1997) and maintenance of the nation's fresh water supply for household needs (35% in 2001).

One major reason Americans may be less worried about environmental problems is that they perceive environmental conditions in the United States to be improving.

The decline in worry over time has been rather dramatic for some of these threats. For example, in 1989, 72% of Americans said they worried a great deal about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.

Worry about this environmental

issue averaged 62% in the 1990s, 54% in the 2000s, and is 46% today.

Similarly, there has been a 25point drop since 1989 in the percentage worried a great deal about air pollution, and an equal drop in worry about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste.

Not all environmental problems show the same general downward trend over time. For example, concerns about global warming and loss of tropical rain forests were higher in 2000 than they had been prior to that.

Concerns about both issues subsequently eased, before rising again until 2007. Now concerns are declining once again, including a sharp ninepoint drop this year in concern about rain forests.

Gallup earlier reported declines in concern about global warming on several of its other long-term-trend questions.

Water Pollution Usually of Greatest Concern Typically, Americans express greater concern about threats to water safety and quality than about other environmental

issues. This year, the top four concerns all deal with water.

Pollution of drinking water again is the top concern, and has been each year it has been included in the list of environmental problems. The year it was not (1989), pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs was the top concern.

Bottom Line Americans are now less worried about a series of environmental problems than at any time in the past 20 years. That could be due in part to Americans' belief that environmental conditions in the

U.S. are improving. It also may reflect greater public concern about economic issues, which is usually associated with a drop in environmental concern. And greater action on environmental issues at the federal, state, and local levels may also contribute to a decline in Americans' environmental worry.

Survey Methods Results are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,014 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted U.S., page 77

Energy/

E-reader News Edition

U.S., continued from page 76

March 4-7, 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

In addition to sampling error,

77

Digital Lumens: A Network for Lights

question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines) opinion polls.

Five Filters featured article: Submitted at 3/16/2010 4:00:29 AM Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Lighting remains the lowTerm Extraction. hanging fruit in energy efficiency efforts.

Lighting consumes 25 percent of the energy in commercial buildings and 12 percent in

homes, according to the DOE's Buildings Energy Data Book for 2008. Seven percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and our businesses.

Here's a link to a DOE report on the potential of energy savings with solid state lighting(SSL). It's a great report

that covers markets, technology, and retrofits versus new builds and Color Rendering Index (CRI) issues.

Key findings from the report include: • The cumulative SSL potential energy savings for 2010 to 2030 DIGITAL page 78

Registration Open for The Networked Grid 2010 info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

take place on May 18th and 19th at the beautiful Hyatt Grand Champions Resort, Villas and Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:10:21 AM Spa in Palm Springs, CA. The electric power industry is Register HERE. rapidly moving beyond the Greentech Media has once smart meter to that of an again assembled the most information-rich networked relevant, influential and diverse grid. Between 2010 and 2020, set of speakers to date on the power grids around the globe topic of intelligently networking will be transformed through a the electric grid in support of series of stages driven by the future applications. All of our availability of infrastructure speakers are hand-selected and technology and application personally invited based on the market demand. Everything realities of the current market from improved power quality and where we see it moving and reduction in peak demand to forward from here. the integration of distributed Visionaries from organizations generation resources and EVs such as Aclara, Better Place, will influence the portfolio of California PUC, Cisco, Control technologies and applications to 4 , C P o w e r , D u k e E n e r g y , come. The Networked Grid EDSA, eMeter, EnergyHub, 2010 is Greentech Media's EnerNOC, EPRI, Foundation premier two-day summit event C a p i t a l , F u l l S p e c t r u m , covering next-generation smart GridPoint, Johnson Controls, grid infrastructure and North Highland, Oracle, applications. This event will Proximetry, Redwood Systems,

Revere Security, SAIC, SCE, SDG&E, S&C Electric, Schneider Electric, Silver Spring Networks, SmartSynch, and many more will be on hand.

Additional speakers and companies will be announced in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for announcements of many more major North American utilities.

Topics to be covered at The Networked Grid 2010 include: • North American Utility Executive Round Table Discussion • Networked Grid Communications Infrastructure: Scaling AMI and Beyond • The Soft Grid: Smart Grid's Killer Applications • Power Forward: Grid Optimization and Distribution Automation • Information is Power: Meter Data Management and Analytics • Winning the Home Network

Battle: PHYs, Protocols and Platforms • The Smart Home Customer Experience: Next-Generation Consumer Services and TOU Pricing • Securing the Networked Grid Infrastructure • Addressing Peak Demand: The Future of Demand Response and Smart Appliances • The Microgrid Emergence: Distributed, Intermittent Renewable Power & Storage • Utility Enterprise 2.0: Information Technology and Back-Office Systems Integration • The Networked EV: Smart Grids and Electric Vehicles • The Networked Building: Efficient, Automated "Energy LANs" In addition, The Networked Grid 2010 will feature two indepth workshops:

• Power Layer Infrastructure Technologies and Network Communications Layer Architectures • North American Utility Smart Grid Case Studies The full agenda for The Networked Grid 2010 can be found HERE. Please inquire to events@greentechmedia.com for information on non-profit, government and student discounts. Please inquire to sales@greentechmedia.com for information on sponsorship and exhibit opportunities.

We hope to see you there!

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

78

E-reader News Edition

DIGITAL continued from page 77

total approximately 1,488 terawatt-hours, representing $120 billion at today's energy prices. • These savings would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 246 million metric tons of carbon.

control of their lighting" to achieve that 90 percent reduction in energy.

The CEO also said that "the best thing about lighting is every niche is huge" in the $15 billion industrial lighting market.

They don't just build lighting fixtures, but rather, intelligent That's a lot of energy, money, l i g h t i n g s y s t e m s t h a t and carbon to be saved with communicate via a wireless SSL. mesh network. Each light has a SSL startup Digital Lumens is local sub-meter and sensors in using the superior directionality an attempt to replace fluorescent and controllability of Light and high intensity discharge Emitting Diodes (LEDs) to save (HID) lighting. big money for industrial lighting It's not a new idea. Variants on applications. The Boston-based lighting networks have already firm has raised over $11 million been introduced by Lumenergi, from Boston-based VCs Black Adura Technologies, HID Labs, Coral Capital, Flybridge Capital Juice Technology and Redwood Partners and Stata Venture Systems. But it's as nascent of a Partners, with a staff that market as you can get. Only includes members of recent SSL around 1 percent of lights in success and Philips acquisition, California commercial buildings Color Kinetics. are networked. Digital Lumens The firm is combining LED might be late but the race has f i x t u r e s , s o f t w a r e a n d barely begun. Researchers in networking technology to tackle Japan have experimented with large, high-intensity lighting in ways of using the LED light high-bay industrial applications: itself to carry signals in a sort of warehouses, Target, etc. lightbulb-meets-opticalI spoke with the CEO, Tom networking device for years.

Pincince, and he said, "We L u n e r a , m e a n w h i l e , h a s deliver 100 percent or more developed lamps that more light for 10% of the energy." efficiently direct light.

Pincince said that their According to DL, lighting intelligent lighting systems can typically costs $1 per square achieve "radical new levels of foot per year, and they can efficiency" and that for the "first reduce that to ten cents with the time, customers can have real extra element of control and

intelligence. There is room for on-board sensors, on-board computing and the ability to assimilate knowledge of human behaviors and occupancy.

The startup gets to market through energy-aware lighting retrofit specialists. With its emphasis on LEDs, Digital Lumens will likely concentrate on new construction and "heavy" retrofits. HID Labs, Lumerengi and Adura all focus on traditional lights and are moving into LEDs -- their solution can swap straight into existing buildings and light fixtures. Redwood and Juice are LED-only but provide novel functionality because they get rid of wires and connct lights through low-voltage computer cable.

Although the Digital Lumens system is twice as expensive out of the box as a fluorescent, it's twice as efficient and the energy savings results in a two-year payback. High upfront cost is an immense barrier in residential applications but if the payback is less than three years, industrial lighting customers seem willing to pay, according to the CEO. In a particular case study, DL dropped a customer's cold storage facility lighting bill 95 percent, from $225,000 to $10,000. The site was 268,000 square feet, used 24 hours a day,

7 days a week, 365 days a year with a 10 percent occupancy.

Digital Lumens' carefully designed fixture channels light in a highly precise fashion. The CEO said, "It's all about footcandles going exactly where they're needed" by "punching light into an aisle when and where it's needed."

"The first task is to reduce the load," said the CEO. Then, by pairing up lighting with renewable generation, they help pay for each other. As the solar installer starts to think more broadly, lighting could become part of his portfolio.

Other VC-funded startups going after the solid-state lighting illumination market include Bridgelux, Lemnis, Luminus, and Luxim. All of these companies make bulbs.

Rob Day of Black Coral Capital, an investor in the firm, is enthusiastic about Digital Lumens. He raved about his portfolio firm in an email to me: "We hear a lot about LEDs being the wave of the future, but it's tough to find cost-effective LED fixtures today -- it's all about promises for the future.

Digital Lumens is accomplishing 90% energy savings today, with customer payback periods that are nobrainers. Not projected savings -- actual proven savings.

They've taken a systems-based

perspective, using not only the LED chips but more importantly, intelligence in the fixture that allows them to use today's chips to accomplish tomorrow's economics."

Day continued, "chip-level improvements are important and valuable. But as an investor, rather than looking for manufacturers of the (temporarily) brightest chips, I'd been looking for the Dell of LED lighting. Combining the right components into a costeffective and compelling family of fixtures. At the end of the day, customers don't care about the technology their lights are based on. They care about getting the right amount and highest quality of light where they need it, at the lowest cost.

And that's the genius of the team at Digital Lumens."

Digital Lumens has their "first purchase order in hand" with "a pretty robust sales pipeline."

Michael Kanellos contributed to this story.

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

Energy/

E-reader News Edition

79

Grid Tuesday: Trilliant Casts a Wider Mesh and Grid Guru Carvallo Joins Grid Net info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

utilities based on mesh.

"You can pay for this in one to two years in avoided backhaul Submitted at 3/16/2010 7:00:18 AM charges," he said. Combining Why would a utility want to the two products also increases build its own network for smart security by reducing a hand-off grid applications and meter from one network to another. monitoring rather than use Communication can also be existing cellular networks? segmented and more easily Cost is one reason, says Eric controlled: a security breach at a Miller, senior vice president of home, for instance, can be solutions at Trilliant. Utilities i s o l a t e d f r o m t h e w i d e r might pay $50 per month per n e i g h b o r h o o d n e t w o r k . house to connect to smart meters "They (utilities) have never been via cellular. Smart meters only comfortable with using the deliver a little bit of information cellular networks. We can each time they communicate provide security and quality of with a utility, and not consume service," Miller added. the bandwidth a person might The protocol debate promises to use on a single phone call. But become one of the dominant m e t e r s p e r s i s t e n t l y issues in smart grid over the communicate with utilities so next several years. Various it's tough to get a discount on vendors have proposed wireless cellular charges, he said. mesh (Silver Spring Networks, To this end, Trilliant today T r i l l i a n t ) , p o w e r l i n e f o r m a l l y u n v e i l e d i t s networking (Echelon), WiMax SecureMesh Bridge products. and advanced broadband (Grid These product line combines Net) and cellular ( SmartSynch) Trilliant's neighborhood-area among other solutions for networking mesh equipment linking homes, substations, with the wide-area networking transformers and all of the other equipment it picked up when it machines out there that bring bought SkyPilot Networks last electricity to your house. Some year. By combining the two companies have also proposed p r o d u c t s , T r i l l i a n t c a n licensable proprietary standards effectively offer a complete that potentially could become de communications package to facto standards like the long-

range networking technology from On-Ramp Wireless. Some have even proposed employing fallow FM bandwidth for smart grid applications.

Utilities have responded by either adopting these technologies for commercial smart grid deployments or at least agreeing to test them in trials. Canada's Hydro One, for instance, has adopted Trilliant's technology while the Tennessee Valley Authority has adopted SmartSynch for its renewable energy programs and Pacific Gas & Electric has made Silver Spring a rising star.

Which ones will win? Right now, no one really knows.

These early trials will, potentially, help utilities determine which protocols and technologies work best or which work in particular geographic situations. Other utilities that haven't invested in smart grid trials yet will likely scrutinize what happened in these early projects, so the data and experience that comes out of the early deployments will likely plan an outsized role in the market's development.

The National Institute of Science and Technology has also said it will to solidify 77

networking standards over the next few years for the grid. A total of 16 are slated for this year with the first ones for home networking due soon. In other words, we're in the midst of a survival of the fittest contest among radios and the winner stands to reap billions in revenue. Stay tuned.

Speaking of Grid Net, Andres Carvallo has become the company's chief strategy officer.

Carvallo has been serving as the chief information officer at Austin Energy, one of the leading utilities in smart grid technologies. He's also one of the primary speakers on the smart grid circuit.

"When you coin the term that spawns an entire industry, as Andres did with “smart grid,� guess what? You automatically make GTM's Top 100 list.

When not thinking up catchy new nomenclature, Andres serves as Chief Information Officer at Austin Energy, where he is responsible for the technology vision, planning, development and operations for one of the most advanced grids in the nation," we wrote about him last month in our list of the 100 top movers and shakers in smart grid.

It's a definite victory for Grid Net, which specializes in broadband smart grid equipment. The company is based on the premise that utilities will invariably need lots of bandwidth to accommodate future applications like vehicleto-grid charging or dynamic demand response. Rather than put in mesh networks that provide moderate bandwidth that may need to get upgraded, utilities should install premier equipment now so they won't have to rip out equipment in ten years, Grid Net argues. Grid Net founder Ray Bell once worked at Silver Spring too, adding a touch personal animosity to the technology rivalry between the two companies.

Grid Net has signed a deal with a utility in Australia and is working on other contracts in that country. It h as not made the same sort of progress as mesh vendors have in the U.S. but it says that's because it started later.

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