Liberty Newsprint Jan-07-10 by Liberty Newspost

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Republicans savoring election prospects after Democrats drop out By Tabassum Zakaria (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 1/6/2010 3:27:58 PM

Let the countdown begin. The 2010 election year has officially started and Republicans can barely contain their glee after two senior Senate Democrats announced they would not run again and a House Democrat switched to the Republican Party. Right out of the New Year’s gate, Senate Democrats Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said they would not seek re-election in November. Democrats control the Senate 60 -40 which is just enough to overcome procedural hurdles and pass legislation without a single Republican vote. Republicans are expected to pick up seats, but not enough to win back control. In December, Democrat Congressman Parker Griffith switched to the

Republican Party. That defection brought the Democrat control of the House of Representatives to 257-178 and they are expected to lose more seats this year. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele sought to tie it all to President Barack Obama’s policies and capped it with a zinger at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

“Whether these Democrats want to admit it or not, President Obama’s government-run liberal agenda and their foolish decision to wholeheartedly embrace it has increased Republicans chances of regaining the majority and we are working hard to ensure this happens,” Steele said in a statement. “The real question is whether

Harry Reid, now the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrat, will follow Chris Dodd’s lead and step aside,” Steele said. (Gauntlet thrown down) We asked Reid’s office for a response. “The fact that the head of the Republican Party wants Reid to step aside is a clear admission that he knows Republicans won’t win this race,” Jon Summers, Reid’s Nevada spokesman, responded. (Verbal jousting has only just begun…) For more Reuters political news, click here Photo credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid (Steele in July 2009), Reuters/Jim Young (Reid in December 2009) Democrats control the Senate 60 -40 which is just enough to overcome procedural hurdles and pass legislation without a single Republican vote. Republicans are expected to pick up seats, but not enough to win back control.

ADVERTISEMENT: (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:00:00 PM

Philips Eco LED TVs Stream Netflix While Saving the Earth [TVs] By Dan Nosowitz (Gizmodo) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:42:32 PM

Philips just announced three new eco-friendly TVs, called the 4000, 5000 and 7000 Eco TV. The "green" part comes with the 40% energy reduction thanks to the LEDs, as well as some safer hardware materials (lead-free, mercury-free, that kind of thing). Oddly enough, none of the materials are recycled, which is kind of the standard for "green" stuff here at CES, but I guess power reduction is always a good thing. The TVs are also packing Netflix, Blockbuster On Demand, and some kind of internet radio. We don't have pricing details or availability, but you can expect to see release this year. [ Engadget]

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Democrats may face a new challenge: rising conservatism By David Morgan (Front Row Washington)

Jeff Rubin's Oil Rally Predictor Jumps to $100 per Barrel This Year By Connie Madon (BloggingStocks)

Submitted at 1/7/2010 6:36:44 AM

The Democratic Party’s hopes of retaining control of Congress in November are already reeling from a spate of Senate retirements and the political flap surrounding last month’s failed bomb attack on a Detroit-bound airliner. Now comes a potential new hurdle: growing conservatism among the American public. Gallup polling data show that conservatives became the biggest potential voting bloc in 2009. Forty percent of Americans called themselves ‘conservative’ last year, compared with 36 percent who said they were ‘moderate’ and 21 percent who described themselves as ‘liberal.’ The findings, which have an error margin of 1 percentage point, come from an aggregate of 21 separate Gallup and USA Today/Gallup surveys, spanning nearly 22,000 interviews. Gallup polling data also show that the number of Americans

Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:20:00 PM

calling themselves moderate has fallen over the past decade, while conservatives and liberals have gained ground. “Since 1992, there have been only two other years — 2003 and 2004 — in which the average percentage of conservatives nationwide outnumbered moderates, and in both cases, it was by two percentage points (in contrast to the current four points),” the Gallup Organization says. Political pundits have noted the

growing prominence of the grass -roots conservative tea party movement named for the famous Boston Tea Party, suggesting it could some day become a major political force opposed to President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies. Photo credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott (Tea Party demonstrators in Flagstaff, Arizona) Click here for more political coverage from Reuters

Filed under: International markets, Forecasts, Economic data, Commodities, Oil Jeff Rubin accurately predicted the oil rally to to $100.00 per barrel in 2007. Now he has peered into his crystal ball (oil rally predictor) again and sees $100 per barrel this year. Oil rose to $83.52 a barrel yesterday, so Rubin may be right on target. He predicts $90.00 per barrel oil by the end of March. The cold snap in the norther-n hemisphere is driving oil prices higher, first by punching through $70.00 and now piercing the $80.00 mark.

Continue reading Jeff Rubin's Oil Rally Predictor Jumps to $100 per Barrel This Year Jeff Rubin's Oil Rally Predictor Jumps to $100 per Barrel This Year originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Totten Interviews Hitchens (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:52:36 AM

interviews Christopher Hitchens, Part One.

A must-read: Michael J. Totten

Apple Target Gets Raised to $260 By Brian White (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:30:00 PM

Filed under: Analyst upgrades and downgrades, Apple Inc

(AAPL) Barclay analyst Ben Reitzes has raised his price target on Apple ( AAPL) to $260 from the previous $235. Indeed, AAPL shares recently hit an alltime high, giving the company a bigger market capitalization than

Dell ( DELL) and HewlettPackard ( HPQ) combined. Think about that. Continue reading Apple Target Gets Raised to $260 Apple Target Gets Raised to

$260 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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The proliferation of nuclear panic is politics at its most ghoulish | Simon Jenkins By Simon Jenkins (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:00:00 PM

The risk from radiation is exaggerated. Worst-case scenario fantasies are used to justify wars that cause many more deaths Some books are written to be read, others to be put in a cannon and blasted at the seat of power. Two such blasts have just crossed my desk, from academics on either side of the Atlantic. Both are on the same subject, the consequence of the irrational fear of radiation. The first book, Radiation and Reason, is by an Oxford professor of physics, Wade Allison. It narrates the history and nature of nuclear radiation, culminating in an attack on the obsessive safety levels governing nuclear energy. These overstate the true risk, in Allison's view, by up to 500 times, thus rendering nuclear prohibitively expensive and endangering the combat of global warming. The second is Atomic Obsession by John Mueller, professor of political science at Ohio State University. Mueller describes the toxic fear associated with radiation from nuclear weapons. It distorts the balance of international relations and senselessly makes enemies of friends. The books jointly

undermine conventional wisdom on the two greatest political challenges of the day, in the fields of energy and defence. As such, they are sensational. Radiation, says Allison, is nothing like as dangerous as the anti-nuclear lobby and its paranoid regulators claim. The permitted radiation level in the waste storage hall at Sellafield is so low (1 mSv per hour) as to be negligible, a figure achieved at vast cost in construction and inspection. This compares with the 100 mSv threshold for even remote cancer risk and 5,500 for radiation sickness. According to Allison, someone would have to live for a million hours in Sellafield to absorb the same radiation as is administered in a hospital radiotherapy suite. Higher doses are permitted in food processing and even in medicinal resorts, with supposed beneficial or at least harmless effects. Only yesterday research suggested that mobile phone radiation may relieve Alzheimer's. Allison analyses successive studies into the only serious nuclear accident since Hiroshima, the Chernobyl fire, which killed no more than 60 people, all in close contact with the fire. Other than some thyroid cancers caused chiefly by a failure to distribute iodine tablets, long-term cancers in

survivors were below the regional average. The truth is that low-dose radiation effects wear off quickly. In some parts of India and Brazil people live happily with ambient radiation of 200-300 mSv. Yet the mere word, Chernobyl, induces such terror in regulators as to lead to the unnecessary sterilisation of thousands of acres (with now thriving wildlife) and the continued slaughter of Cumbrian sheep, despite the risk to lamb-eaters being negligible. The trouble is that nobody makes money by downplaying risk. Nuclear inspectors need work, and contractors can claim astronomical safety costs, assuming that governments will pay. The losers are the public and life on earth. Meanwhile, over in Ohio, Mueller describes the same terror infecting reaction to nuclear weapons. He points out that nuclear bombs are extremely hard to make, let alone deploy, and their destructive power and radiological aftermath are grossly overstated. The devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was largely the result of the buildings bombed being made of wood. Numbers killed were similar to those dying in conventional bomb attacks at the time. Yet we memorialise Hiroshima but not Tokyo, where 100,000 were killed in March

1945. Subsequent diseases from exposure to low-level radiation were harder to detect. Modern nuclear weapons are obviously more powerful, but again their blast areas would remain limited and their likely contamination, says Mueller, much exaggerated. I used to believe that, for all their horror, atom bombs brought an end to the war in Japan – which other bombs had failed to do. After that war, they stabilised the nervous confrontation between east and west, deterring Soviets and Americans from going jointly berserk at such flashpoints as Berlin, Hungary or Cuba. Deterrence sort of worked. History may be moot on those points, but what is surely clear is that nuclear weapons are now virtually useless. Like Allison, Mueller goes beyond the two iconic incidents of Hiroshima and Chernobyl to show how special interests have hijacked the nuclear mystique to exploit public fear. The risk of anyone exploding a nuclear weapon, even in politically charged regions such as the Middle East, is infinitesimally small. Whoever did so would be too mad to be deterred by an enemy possessing nuclear weapons, any more than Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam, Argentina's Galtieri or Iraq's Saddam Hussein were deterred by America and Britain. Nor,

says Mueller, would the consequence of even a serious bomb attack be as horrible as is claimed. Cities recover with remarkable alacrity, as even Hiroshima did from contamination. The second world war and many American bombing campaigns since have shown that human settlements are resilient to aerial bombardment. As for the much-vaunted risk of a terrorist getting a nuclear weapon – the "1% chance" that kept poor Dick Cheney awake at night – Mueller points out that the chance must be not one in a hundred but one in millions. Cheney would have done better worrying about the proliferation of AK47s. Even were a "dirty" bomb somehow to be assembled and deployed, its radiological contamination is exaggerated by defence contractors and lobbyists frantic for contracts. The billions of dollars being devoted to countering "cataclysmic" terrorism, in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Yemen, and to confronting such protonuclear states as Iran or North Korea, is not just disproportionate to the risk. The money would be better spent on other ways of reducing terrorism. In a futile pursuit of nuclear nonproliferation, America and PROLIFERATION page 10

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Airline bombing plot: Barack Obama rules out sackings over security failures By Ewen MacAskill, Ian Black, Richard Norton-Taylor (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:41:12 PM

• President takes blame, but other states pass buck • MI5 denies Abdulmutallab recruited by al-Qaida in UK Barack Obama ruled out any sackings over the failed Christmas Day plot today despite a catalogue of intelligence failures that could have prevented the alleged al-Qaida bomber from boarding the plane. As the row gathered momentum, a White House official said the president would resist pressure to dismiss people and would take personal responsibility, arguing that as commander-in-chief the buck stopped with him. The official spoke ahead of the release of an unclassified White House report that detailed the series of mistakes by the CIA, the state department, the national counter-terrorism centre and a host of other agencies which failed to spot the potential threat. Yemen, Britain and Nigeria were meanwhile engaged in a furious bout of buck-passing over their roles in the bomb plot. Yemen's deputy prime minster and security supremo, Rashad alAlimi, sought to deflect criticism by insisting that the accused man, Umar Farouk

Abdulmutallab, was recruited and radicalised in London – an assessment flatly rejected by the British security service MI5. Alimi also claimed that Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian student who flew from Ghana to Nigeria and then on to the Netherlands and the US, had obtained the explosives in Nigeria, not Yemen. Abdulmutallab spent months in Yemen where US officials say he met al-Qaida operatives. He is due to appear in court in Detroit for the first time on charges of attempting to bomb a US plane. Obama's decision not to make scapegoats of one or two heads of the dozen US agencies involved is partly politicallydriven. Giving into Republican or media pressure by making sackings would add to the sense of political crisis. The White House national security adviser, James Jones, told USA Today that Americans would feel "a certain shock" about the missed clues that could have prevented Abdulmutallab from boarding the plane in Amsterdam. He said Obama was alarmed by the findings. "That's two strikes," Jones said, referring to the plane bomb plot and the shooting at Fort Hood late last year. Obama "certainly doesn't want that third strike". Abdulmutallab's father in Nigeria alerted the CIA to

concerns about his son, and there were other warnings that were not acted on. Officials from the department of homeland security admitted yesterday that they also became concerned about Abdulmutallab, but only when he was already in the air en route to Detroit. The Yemen move to shift blame elsewhere comes after reports that the US planned to seek retribution in the country for the failed bomb attempt. But Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, ruled this out, saying there would be no direct military intervention. The US claims its involvement is confined to indirect aid to Yemen's armed forces in the fight against al-Qaida and other groups regarded as extremist. Yemen insisted yesterday that the fight against al-Qaida must be conducted by its own forces, and that it would not accept foreign troops on its soil. Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, its foreign minister, said Yemen wanted only training and equipment to combat terrorism, and called for this month's international conference in London to refrain from interfering in the country's internal affairs. The conference was originally intended to concentrate solely on Afghanistan, but prime minister Gordon Brown, in the wake of the Christmas Day plot,

hurriedly tacked on Yemen too. Qirbi dismissed as "rumours" and "misinformation" reports that foreign forces were already operating in Yemen – a reference to reliable accounts of US involvement in providing intelligence and mounting air strikes against al-Qaida. Anti-government Houthi rebels in the north of the country have also alleged that US planes flew recent bombing missions in support of the Yemeni army. "The Yemen government has repeatedly affirmed … that they do not accept the presence of foreign troops on its territory except for the purposes of cooperation in the training of the Yemeni military," Qirbi told the website of the Yemeni newspaper26 September.. Alimi told a press conference that Abdulmutallab had joined al -Qaida in London and that he met Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim preacher, during his time in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was an English-speaking cleric linked to the army officer who ran amok at a US army base in Texas in November, shooting dead 13 people. Senior British counter-terrorism officials dismissed the claim that Abdulmutallab was recruited in London. They described his radicalisation as a long journey which began at school in Togo and culminated in a decisive six-

month period in Yemen before he tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day. He came to MI5's attention during the three years he studied mechanical engineering at University College London, because of his internet activity and contacts with extremist websites, security sources said. That information was passed to US intelligence agencies, but there was nothing to suggest that Abdulmutallab was a terrorist threat, they added. "As far as we can see while in the UK he expressed an interest in radical Islamism and reaching out [to it]‚" said a well-placed security source. However, MI5 did not consider him to be a threat to national security by the time he left Britain. • Obama administration • United States • Global terrorism • Yemen • Nigeria • MI5 Ewen MacAskill Ian Black Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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Airline bombing plot: Al-Qaida supporting cleric may face arrest By Hugh Macleod (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

Peninsular (AQAP), the group Barack Obama blames for the airliner incident, that the attack was in direct response to US Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:20:40 PM military support for Yemen's allAn influential Yemeni cleric, o u t o f f e n s i v e a g a i n s t t h e once thought untouchable by the militants, which began on authorities despite his preaching December 17. in support of al-Qaida, including The deputy minister confirmed to several of the 9/11 hijackers, t h a t d u r i n g h i s 1 1 - w e e k tonight appeared to be a target disappearance Abdulmutallab for arrest after a senior minister m e t a l - Q a i d a l e a d e r s a t a suggested the US-born cleric had farmhouse in Rafad, in Yemen's met the man accused of the remote eastern province of attempted Christmas Day airliner Shabwa. The farmhouse was bombing. bombed on 24 December, a day Rashad al-Alimi, Yemen's before the attempted Detroit d e p u t y p r i m e m i n i s t e r f o r attack, in air strikes that Yemeni defence and security, told security sources initially said journalists in Sana'a today that killed Awlaki. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the However, a journalist and 23-year-old Nigerian who tried family friend of Awlaki told the to detonate explosives aboard an Guardian last week that he had airliner over Detroit, had gone to spoken to the cleric, who lives Anwar al-Awlaki's home during near the farmhouse and he was a trip to Yemen late last year. "alive and well". Several of Abdulmutallab arrived in Awlaki's relatives who had Yemen in late August on a attended the meeting were killed student visa and was last seen on in the attack, but AQAP's senior 21 September, according to leadership escaped, said local f r i e n d s a n d t e a c h e r s . H e sources, having left the farm just reappeared on 5 December, hours before. friends said, and left Yemen two Awlaki's contacts with Nidal d a y s l a t e r , t h e a u t h o r i t i e s Hassan, the US army psychiatrist confirmed. who killed 13 American soldiers The date of Abdulmutallab's at Fort Hood in November, have departure calls into question the raised further serious doubts over claim by al-Qaida in the Arabian t h e e f f e c t i v e n e s s o f U S

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intelligence gathering. Last month it emerged that Hassan's first email to Awlaki asked whether the cleric could justify, under Islamic law, the killing of American soldiers on US soil. The email was sent on 17 December 2008 and was intercepted by the FBI, who failed to stop Hassan before the killings 11 months later. The confirmation of Awlaki's contacts with Abdulmutallab will put Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, under serious pressure as his American allies demand to know why the cleric was allowed to continue to operate for months, even after the revelation of his contacts with the Fort Hood killer. Authorities said in November they sought the arrest of Awlaki, but local journalists said the cleric continued to live at home untroubled. The authorities' reluctance to move against radical Islamists in Yemen underscores the deep conflicts over political Islam which lie at the heart of Yemen's ruling elite. While the government runs a programme to re-educate Islamist militants away from violence, it lost the support of US officials after graduates of the scheme were captured in Iraq fighting US-led forces.

The re-education programme, involving talks between jailed militants and a senior Yemeni cleric, aims to persuade jihadists that Islam does not condone the kind of violent terrorism practised by groups such as alQaida. "Yemen has created a new way to fight terrorism. We proved to the world that the tongue and pen are more powerful than weapons," Judge Hamoud Hitar, the Islamic scholar who leads the programme, told the Guardian. The programme also aims to integrate former militants into society, providing them with training, jobs and a home. Hitar said that up until 2006, of the 420 prisoners holding extremist militant Islamic views whom he talked to, none had committed armed violence against the state. But the judge said he was unable to argue against militants fighting in Muslim countries under occupation. Hitar said: "As long as the US army and British army are conquering them, Muslims have the right to fight and defend their lands and themselves. The jihad is a part of our religion." Obama said this week he would suspend repatriation of any Yemeni prisoners held at Guantánamo bay, which he has

pledged to close. Nearly half the remaining 198 inmates are from Yemen. Alimi denied accusations that another prominent Yemeni cleric and leader of the Islamist opposition, Abdul Majeed Zindani, had played a role in radicalising Abdulmutallab. A Sunday Times report said the Nigerian had attended lectures by Awlaki at Zindani's Iman University. Alimi said Abdulmutallab had not done a formal course at Iman. When asked why the authorities had not arrested Zindani, labelled by the US a "specially designated global terrorist" for ties to Osama Bin Laden, the minister said there was no legal basis for doing so. • Global terrorism • Al-Qaida • United States • Yemen Hugh Macleod guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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British troops tried to rescue hostages at Iran border By Richard Norton-Taylor, Julian Borger (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

As the abortive rescue attempt was being launched, the five British hostages were being driven from Baghdad to the border by their kidnappers, the Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:41:34 PM day after their abduction in the Exclusive: UK forces sent to centre of the Iraqi capital. A year intercept hostages, including -long investigation by Guardian recently freed Peter Moore, as F i l m s f o u n d t h a t I r a q i they were taken from Iraq intelligence trailed the abductors British troops in southern Iraq – who included members of the were scrambled to the Iranian special Quds force of Iran's border after the abduction of five Revolutionary Guard – and their British hostages in May 2007, in victims to a brickworks across a failed attempt to stop them the border from the Iranian town being taken into Iran, the of Mehran, which the Quds force Guardian has learned. used as a base for its operations The troops were sent to the in Iraq. The hostages were seen border area north of Basra to being transferred from one set of intercept the kidnappers after vehicles to another at the receiving intelligence that they brickworks and then driven off. were heading to the frontier from The Foreign Office has Baghdad, but failed to find them. m a i n t a i n e d t h a t i t h a s n o It is unclear whether the British e v i d e n c e t h a t t h e B r i t i s h unit arrived too late or went to a hostages were taken across the different crossing point along the border but the head of US central 1,500km border. command, General David British officials today refused to Petraeus has confirmed that the give details of the attempted Britons – Peter Moore, Jason rescue operation, describing the Swindlehurst, Jason Creswell, issue as "extremely sensitive", Alec Maclachlan and Alan but a British journalist visiting McMenemy – spent some of the Iraq-Iran border a few their subsequent captivity inside months after the abduction was Iran. briefed on the operation by The abductions of the five men British officers who had taken came at a time when many part. British officers in Basra believed

they were being sucked into a proxy war with Iran. Their troops were locked in intense urban conflict with Shia militias, believed to have been trained in Iran, armed by Iran, and even supported by Iranian forces. Farsi communications were intercepted between mortar teams targeting British positions in central Basra. The kidnapping team who seized the five Britons at Iraq's finance ministry in May 2007 were also overheard speaking what some thought was Farsi. By the summer of 2007, intelligence officials in the USled multinational coalition in Iraq estimated that Iranianbacked insurgents were responsible for roughly half of the attacks on their forces. So concerned were British military commanders in Basra about the support, notably arms and roadside bomb technology, that Iran was giving Shia militia elements in the southern Iraqi city that they set up a separate battle group on the border specifically to try to stop the supplies. Furthermore, British units in the region were told to expect abduction attempts by Iranian-backed groups and rehearsed counter-measures

against such a threat. In June 2007, less than a month after the abduction of the five British hostages in Baghdad, the Ministry of Defence said an Iranian-backed plot to kidnap British troops in Basra had been foiled. A Shia Iranian-backed "special group" – elements of the Jayish al-Mahdi, Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi army – had planned to wear stolen British army uniforms and target a small military liaison team based at the provincial joint operations centre in Basra where British soldiers were mentoring Iraqi forces. The plot was thwarted when the liaison team was tipped off by a loyal Iraqi policeman. A military spokesman in Basra said at the time: "We have procedures to combat this particular threat and they are effective." Robert Baer, a former CIA agent and author of The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower, said: "Hostage-taking for the Iranians has been a tool of their foreign policy. It's been completely ingrained into their mind that when faced with a threat, they take hostages. Hostages are a deterrent for Iran and it's a very successful deterrent so that we see in Iraq, we've seen in

We’ll be live with Palm in about 5 minutes By Dave Freeman (CrunchGear)

John is down at the Palm press conference, and we’ll be going live in just a few minutes. Keep

they might have up their collective sleeves. your eyes open, we’ll see what

Lebanon, we've seen in the American embassy takeover, hostage-taking is a tool of Iranian foreign policy which has worked these last 30 years." Only one of the five hostages survived their abduction in May 2007 – Peter Moore, an IT consultant from Lincoln, who was freed on 30 December. The bodies of three of his guards, Swindlehurst, Creswell and Maclachlan, were handed over to British officials in Baghdad last year. They had all been shot dead several months earlier. The fourth, Alan McMenemy, is believed to have been killed too, but his remains have yet to be returned. • British hostages in Iraq • Iran • Iraq • Military • Foreign policy Richard Norton-Taylor Julian Borger guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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Scotland Yard admits race discrimination in deal to end boycott By Vikram Dodd (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:58:13 AM

Black Police Association ends recruitment protest as Metropolitan police deputy commissioner pledges reform Scotland Yard bosses have admitted discrimination still exists among its officers as part of a deal to end a race row that plagued Britain's biggest force for 16 months, the Guardian has learned. A boycott of the force by the Black Police Association, which began in October 2008, will be ended tomorrow. It follows months of secret talks and as part of the settlement Scotland Yard deputy commissioner Tim Godwin has vowed to "address issues of race and discrimination in the organisation" and in how London is policed, according to a letter seen by the Guardian. Scotland Yard has also privately accepted that discrimination is part of the reason ethnic minority officers are less likely to get promoted and more likely to be disciplined. Last February Sir Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, publicly

declared that the force was no longer "institutionally racist". The Metropolitan police section of the BPA began its boycott after a vicious race row at the top of Scotland Yard that rocked the force for months. In September 2008 Tarique Ghaffur, third in charge of the Met and Britain's most senior officer from an ethnic minority, was suspended after calling his boss, Sir Ian Blair, a racist and suing the force for discrimination. He later left the Met. One of Ghaffur's closest advisers, Commander Ali Dizaei, was suspended after misconduct allegations and was later charged with misconduct in public office and intending to pervert the course of justice. He goes on trial next week. The BPA responded by urging ethnic minority Britons not to join the force. Community groups said the boycott was effective and had damaged the Met's efforts to recruit ethnic minority officers. In his letter to the Met BPA, Godwin said: "I am writing to set out how I see the Met BPA working with other … colleagues to address issues of race and discrimination in the organisation and in the delivery

of policing services to the people of London. "In particular I want to ensure that the concerns you have raised about disproportionality in our discipline processes and in the progression of staff through the organisation are effectively addressed." The deputy commissioner's letter continues: "It is accepted that we have more to do if we are to be confident that these processes give everyone the same opportunities and it is important that the Met BPA is fully involved in that work. We do of course want to see the same outcome – the very best quality of policing for all the communities of London." As part of the deal the Met has set up reviews headed by senior officers into why ethnic minority officers find it harder than white ones to gain promotion and why they are more likely to face disciplinary action. The deputy commissioner will take personal charge of driving out discrimination from the ranks, with senior Met bosses placed in charge of overseeing the work. According to a source with close knowledge of Scotland Yard's thinking: "We wanted to get rid of the sense that we and the BPA

were at loggerheads. "They will keep an eye on us – if nothing comes of this, we will end up in an unproductive relationship." The senior source added the force would not make any highprofile public apology: "There is no intention to stand in front of the television cameras and say 'Woe is us'." The deal was only finalised in the week before Christmas after negotiations beginning last summer. Ever since the 1999 Macpherson inquiry report found the Met institutionally racist after the bungled Stephen Lawrence murder investigation, Scotland Yard has struggled to convince its own ethnic minority officers that it is taking eradicating its own discrimination seriously. • Police • Race issues • Sir Paul Stephenson • Stephen Lawrence Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Trade Update: GameStop -- An Absolute Nightmare By Steven Mallas (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:15:00 PM

Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Nintendo (NTDOY) Have you ever had one of those days? Yeah, you've had 'em. I'm having one right now. I cannot believe how wrong my thesis on GameStop ( GME) turned out to be. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I honestly thought things were going to be different today. The video-game retailer would report its holiday sales and I would see a pop in my shares. I would have the opportunity to sell out at a nice price above my cost basis. A cost basis, by the way, that had been severely challenged soon after I opened the position. Continue reading Trade Update: GameStop -- An Absolute Nightmare Trade Update: GameStop -- An Absolute Nightmare originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Trafigura returns to court in attempt to suppress lawsuit documents By David Leigh (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

super-injunction that it claimed banned parliamentary reporting, which was subsequently criticised by the lord chief Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:31:10 PM justice, Lord Judge. Oil trader wants to prevent Kieran Looney, an Irish public and media from reading management consultant, is suing allegations made in £6m lawsuit Trafigura for £6m in a separate brought by consultant dispute over fees for a Trafigura, the offshore oil trader consultancy project. Trafigura that became notorious for legal denies the claim and is defending attempts to suppress reporting of the case. parliament, is going back to Looney's claim, set out in a Britain's judges tomorrow. public document drawn up by The privately owned oil giant Matthew Collings QC and filed wants high court records to be a t t h e h i g h c o u r t o n 1 7 sealed to prevent the public and December, says Trafigura's rapid t h e m e d i a f r o m r e a d i n g recent worldwide expansion led allegations made in a separate to fears the firm was becoming lawsuit. too bureaucratic and inflexible. The move marks a new frontier The claim says Looney was in Trafigura's use of UK media hired to rectify management l a w s t o a v o i d u n w e l c o m e problems and mistakes at a fee of publicity. Last year, the firm £3m a year for three years. It deployed an array of libel goes on to detail meetings with p r o c e e d i n g s , c o n f i d e n c e senior executives in London and i n j u n c t i o n s a n d t h r e a t s o f Geneva, and internal Trafigura contempt of court to try to avert emails. criticism over its toxic waste, The Guardian understands that dumped cheaply in west Africa, back-office functions studied by where it made thousands ill. Looney included a "special Trafigura's moves led to uproar project" to open 200 petrol when it obtained a so-called stations in Angola in a joint deal

with the state oil company, Sonangol, and global tax schemes organised from the Netherlands, where Trafigura registers its holding company. The question of whether it pays its fair share of tax is a particularly sensitive issue for an offshore multinational such as Trafigura. Separate internal Trafigura documents seen by the Guardian say that the company normally succeeds in paying a total of less than 15% tax on its worldwide profits. This is half the official headline rate of corporation tax in the UK and US, and much less than the 25% Dutch rate. Trafigura's global profits were $478m in its last year of published accounts. The firm runs many worldwide operations from a London headquarters in Oxford Street, but says it generates only a fraction – about 8% – of its profits in the UK, on which it paid UK tax of less than $12m (£7.5m) last year. Trafigura's parent company Farringford NV is based in the Caribbean tax haven of Curaçao. Many operations are registered

Boxee beta now open to all By Seth Rosenblatt (Webware.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:24:00 PM

Boxee.tv throws open the doors

to its much-discussed beta software. The cross-platform program allows users to access local and streaming media using their TV and its remote control.

Originally posted at The Download Blog

in low-tax cantons of Switzerland. Trafigura documents detail the firm's discussions about whether to "migrate" to Switzerland for tax purposes its interests in a Peruvian mine currently held by Iberian, a Canadian company. Internal estimates show this could save $3m tax in a single year. A high court hearing is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon in the Looney case before a preliminary judge, Master Moncaster. An application is expected to seal the court papers, although they have previously been publicly available. Current UK law allows a judge to order suppression without giving reasons. Trafigura did not wish to comment today. • Trafigura • Law David Leigh guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

CDC Wants All of Chordiant By Tom Taulli (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:00:00 PM

Filed under: Oracle Corp (ORCL), United Parcel'B' (UPS) CDC Software Corporation ( CDCS), which is an enterprise software provider, hit the public markets last year. Other than raising some capital, another goal of the offering was to pull off some M&A deals. And, this week CDC made a move: a $105.1 million offer for Chordiant Software ( CHRD). So far in today's trading, the shares of the company are up 12% to $3.75. Continue reading CDC Wants All of Chordiant CDC Wants All of Chordiant originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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PROLIFERATION continued from page 4

Britain are combing the world accusing states of threatening somehow to destroy their civilisations when the risk of this happening is near meaningless. As Mueller notes, it is not only ghoulish science and ghoulish journalism that sells, ghoulish politics does too. He has nothing against negotiating nuclear nonproliferation, but pleads "to avoid policies that can lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people under the obsessive sway of worst-case scenario fantasies", as is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is these fantasies that line the streets of Wootton Bassett each week. It is a monumental irony that rightwing politicians who rearm against the tiny risk to humanity from nuclear weapons are often the same as deny the risk to humanity from global warming. Both are risks. Both may be

improbable, but the risk from radiation is minimal and containable, while the worst-case scenario from global warming is truly cataclysmic. Nor is such hypocrisy confined to the right. Many of those who claim global warming as the "greatest threat to the planet" tend also to be those who oppose nuclear energy as "too risky", or even too expensive. This is all a massive failure of science to pierce the carapace of public ignorance. As Allison and Mueller argue, nothing is as potent as the politics of fear, and there is no fear as blind as that which comes from a bomb and a death ray. So what is science doing? The world is in the grip of a prejudice from which nothing seems able to free it. At least these books try. • Nuclear power • Nuclear weapons

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Controversies in science United States Global terrorism Renewable energy Terrorism policy US foreign policy Foreign policy Food safety Agriculture Energy Climate change Climate change

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

Today's stories: France could tax Google to subsidize music Ford CEO Alan Mullaly Google sweetens On2 delivered the CES keynote a c q u i s i t i o n o f f e r Thursday morning, and CNET Facebook fixes bug that crashed News reporter Martin LaMonica some iPhone apps was there. He dials in from Las Pingdom: Facebook is killing it Vegas to talk about how Ford is on page views making the move to get more Auto industry focused on h i g h - t e c h . L i s t e n n o w : hybrids, survey says D o w n l o a d t o d a y ' s p o d c a s t Tesla, Panasonic collaborate on Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:34:00 PM

By Jimin Brelsford (CrunchGear)

availability has only been said to be “the first half of 2010.” You can find the full press release Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:02:15 PM here. Not to be left out of the deluge Now laptop time. We’ll start of new releases at CES, Dell is with the Alienware M11x, aptly giving us a sneak peak at their named for the 11 inch screen new 5-inch tablet concept and size. The primary selling point Android-smartphone for AT&T. seems to be that it is a gaming There’s also some new laptops laptop, smaller than 12 in. No and things, you know, if you’re word on any concrete specs, but into that. who would want to be playing Unfortunately, these pictures are games on such a small formabout all we have on the tablet factor? Not me. I take my Diablo EV batteries CES: Ford radically reinterprets c o n c e p t s o f a r . T h e 5 . 0 3 Fallout 3 straight, thank you megapixel camera is visible on very much. The photo gallery cabin tech interface CES: Ford brings smartphone t h e b a c k , a n d I f e e l s a f e seems to show a FireWire 400 assuming multi-touch support. port, card reader, eSATA, HDMI Web apps to cars Five Filters featured article: The Mini 3 smartphone is going out, ethernet, and wait a minute, Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: to be one of AT&T’s first a VGA port? Really? No word PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Android-based devices. No word on a street date, but its supposed yet on specifications, and to be less than a thousand bucks. Term Extraction.

CNET News Daily Podcast: Ford cars become mobile gadgets (CNET News.com)

New things from Dell: Tablets, phones, laptops

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Adidas miCoach Pacer Review: Interactive Fitness for Casual Marathoners (Fast Company) Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:18:13 PM

For the past three weeks I've been testing out Adidas' miCoach Pacer, the newest entrant in the increasingly crowded field of interactive activity monitors. Personal training gadgets have been around for years, but the category has become better defined to appeal to different kinds of people in recent months. On one end of the spectrum are the simple calorie-counters, like Philips DirectLife and fitbit. On the other end are the geektriathlete devices, such as the GPS-enabled Garmin Forerunner which straps onto your wrist like a small computer. In the middle are devices for casual marathoners: the Nike+ iPod system, and now Adidas' latest-which is the most full-featured of the mid-range systems that I've used. The $140 miCoach Pacer combines a pedometer, heart rate monitor, calorie counter, and real-time coaching into a device that easily connects to your iPod (or another audio player). Equally important are the online coaching tools that you sync the device with to keep track of your workouts and advance you along a fitness regime that can range from learning to run to improving your marathon time.

The Pacer is actually three separate pieces of gear that work together: a stride sensor that attaches to your shoelaces, a heart rate monitor that straps around your chest, and the main control unit that collects the data and clips onto your workout armband or shirt. After a 12minute assessment run to calibrate the three devices, the Pacer begins collecting data as you walk, jog or run. I found the stride sensor (which is basically a pedometer with a triaxial accelerometer inside) to be

accurate compared with Google's running distance mapping programs, and my own calculations during a drive along the same route. Readings from the heart rate monitor were also in line with the data I've collected from other heart monitors that strap around the chest. The chest monitors are more accurate than wrist-strap heart rate measuring devices, but not everyone likes working out with a piece of gear stretching around their solar plexus. That said, Adidas'

stretchy chest strap was of higher quality than others I've used in the past, and was never uncomfortable. The brains of the Pacer are housed in a black pill-shaped unit designed by the Adidas Innovation Team that is about the diameter of a large wristwatch and made of rubberized plastic. By plugging one end of the unit into and audio player and your headphones into the other side of the Pacer you can listen to music and also get instructions

from miCoach as it guides you through different workouts. (Adidas is also introducing a line of headphones today at CES 2010 in a partnership with Sennheisser.) There are two options available via a switch at the top of the Pacer: Free mode, where the device will simply gather data; and miCoach mode, in which the virtual coach will supply audible feedback through the headphones. Another 'fastforward' button on the top can be ADIDAS page 13

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9 Businesses You Can Start In Your Pajamas in 2010 (Inc.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:33:54 AM

So you've got a ton of friends on Facebook and a loyal Twitter following. Why not profit off them? Jason Sadler has found a way to capitalize on all the hype surrounding social media marketing. Three-hundred sixtyfive days a year, Sadler serves as a live billboard for companies and charities on all the major social media sites. Sadler, who launched IWearYourShirt.com at the end of 2008, wears a shirt a day, and sells each calendar day according to its numerical value. On February 10, for example, a company would pay Sadler $10 to wear its shirt. He works from his home in Jacksonville, Florida, and leverages his social media following by blogging, tweeting, filming a live video show, and updating his Facebook photo, all while wearing the designated T-shirt of the day. And, yes, he will still wear your shirt to a wedding, or even if he's sick in bed. Now that the idea has taken off, Sadler has hired a West Coast counterpart -- with a whole new following -- to expand the company's marketing reach. Franchises are becoming an increasingly popular and easy way for anyone to start their own business from home, thanks to entrepreneurs like David and Stuart Pikoff. The brothers left their corporate jobs with the intent to get into the franchise

space, but after researching different options, none appealed to their offbeat personalities. So they ventured out on their own. In October 2007, they launched Games2U -- a mobile entertainment center complete with video gaming stations and big screen TVs -- after concluding that there wasn't much new in the kids entertainment space. The brothers sell the completely selfcontained vehicles to franchisees, who then rent them out for birthday parties, community events, and the like. Games2U, which began franchising in early 2008, now has 97 franchises in 23 states, and Joel Kocher, a former president at Dell, has signed on to help the Pikoffs with their 2010 high-growth expansion plan. In the past decade, the Web has become the go-to place for consumers to seek out advice and scope out the newest trends and deals. Sites like DailyCandy and Thrillist have been successful at monetizing this online community by publishing daily e -mail newsletters packed with exclusive information for subscribers. After operating Soapbxx, a Web consultancy, for 10 years (the past four of which have been home-based), Amanda Steinberg launched a second business from home last January to provide personal financial advice to women. Building off of the DailyCandy model,

Steinberg's DailyWorth publishes daily e-mail newsletters with tips and advice from financial experts, including MP Dunleavey, a former finance columnist for The New York Times. With 5,000 subscribers and counting, Steinberg simultaneously runs her start-up and Soapbxx from her home in Mount Airy, Pennsylvania, while playing mom to two young kids. Insurance may not be the most exciting field, but opportunities abound for businesses owners willing to break away from the traditional corporate model and add their own spin. That's exactly what Chris Jordan did last March when he left his corporate insurance sales job and founded Atlanta Insurance Live, a home-based sole proprietorship that is built on the premise of interacting with clients virtually. Jordan maintains a video blog about insurance issues and chats live with customers through his website. He employs a casual style and remains transparent about his home-based status -- as a new way to market his business and dispel the stigma of stuffy insurance agents in suits and ties, in order to attract a younger demographic. So far, it seems to be working, with a steadily growing customer base. As a personal trainer who held private sessions in people's homes for many years, Franklin Antoian discovered a growing trend of people who didn't want to trek to the gym. In 2006, he

launched IBodyFit.com, a site that allows anyone to get the complete personal training experience online. Through the website, members get individualized attention from a personal trainer and have the ability to access online fitness classes and exercise videos. Trainers create customized workouts for clients and are fully available to them via phone, email, and IM. Members can work out on their own time at home, or download their custom workouts to their iPod at a cost much lower than the average gym membership, which is an increasingly expendable luxury in a down economy. In 2009 alone, Antonian, who is based in Del Rey Beach, Florida, signed up 2,000 new members. There are always good deals to be had in the travel industry, if you know where to look. After spending several years working for travel companies putting together itineraries for group tours, Deborah Mayer had an idea to structure a tour around outlet shopping in Italy. She had been watching the outlet scene grow there, and since many of the stores were off the beaten track, she knew it was the type of tour that would need a guide. In the spring of 2001, Mayer launched Shop Around Tours from her Manhattan apartment. Within the first few weeks of putting up her website, the first tour was sold out. Mayer now runs three to four shopping tours

around Italy per year and continues to grow her business primarily through word of mouth. Her business grew dramatically after a mention in O, The Oprah Magazine in 2006, and with a niche focused on discount shopping, she's managed to fill all her tours, even during the recession. Just because you work from home doesn't mean you can't sell to the world's biggest customer -Uncle Sam. Jim Anderson has digitally mapped over 100 countries from his home office nestled in the hills of Anchorage, Alaska, which he describes as the crossroads of the grizzly and black bear populations. Founded in 2000, Anderson's company, LeadDog Consulting, has carved a niche in the mapping industry by documenting roads and major points of interest in developing countries, where major infrastructure knowledge is lacking. The company got attention for its extensive mapping efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, making it one of the only providers of those materials to the U.S. government and military. After the start of the Iraq war, NBC News commissioned LeadDog to produce a map of Basra that the network could display as part of their broadcasts. In addition to the government, LeadDog works with GPS tracking companies to BUSINESSES page 17

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ADIDAS continued from page 11

used to select different workouts in the miCoach mode, such as a recovery run or intervals speed training. There are competing devices on the market that include a built-in MP3 player, such as the Philips Activa. But I think Adidas made the right decision here--let Apple handle my audio needs, since they do it so well already. Sure, it would be nice to automatically sync my playlist with the miCoach software (more on that in a moment), or play a motivating song with a touch of of a single button, but it's not essential. And my iPod's audio quality did not deteriorate in any noticeable way from linking the Pacer between my iPod and headphones. The virtual coach doesn't interrupt the workout often. She's there to tell you the time, distance, pace and raise a flag when you're out of the prescribed heart rate zone (I chose the soothingly robotic British female voice, but there is also a male coach available). Adidas chose a minimalist approach here, but pushing a button on the front of the Pacer gives you an instant update on your current stats when needed. The heart rate measurements were an issue for me. There are

three zones, blue, green, and yellow being the highest. A comfortable pace for me put me just on the top end of the blue zone, and this resulted in repeated alerts that I needed to slow down--even though it felt like I was going at a comfortable pace. This problem is not unique to Adidas' gear, as aerobic training parameters have always seemed like an imperfect science to me. Still, it would be nice to have a way to adjust the settings of the device to avoid this problem--it's a minor quibble, but one that becomes an annoyance during longer workouts. After the run, the Pacer connects via USB to a Mac or PC and uploads your data (you'll need to plug it in before your first run and install a small software program to enable synchronization, as well as register with the miCoach Web site). The Web interface coupled with these devices is often where they trip over their laces, but not in this instance. The miCoach site is easy to navigate, and includes just about everything you need in order to track and improve your running. The dashboard shows your latest workout time, calories burned, distance, pace, heart rate, and

stride rate along with a preview of the next workout and overall achievements (such as mileage) to date. With a few clicks the data becomes much more granular, showing heart rate over the course of the specific workout for example. You can also map each of your routes, and save them in a series, all through a Google map interface that's been embedded within the program. There is a field for jotting notes about each run, as well as a box to enter the music you listened to during the run. The miCoach software recommends a schedule for you, which is accessible from a simple calendar interface that can be adjusted easily by dragging and dropping the workouts into different days. The Web site, which was created by Adidas along with Molecular, does not miss a step--it's intuitive, fun to use, and keeps pace with almost everything a runner needs. Some geek-athletes might complain that the Pacer is lacking a GPS for tracking the exact route of each run. But given the integration with Google maps for entering your route within the interface, I don't see the need for a more exact and automated tracking system. And

how often do you get lost and need directions home while jogging? The glaring feature missing from the miCoach Web site is social connectivity. Adidas neglects to supply a way to compete against other runners using the site, or find a running partner nearby. I'm not arguing that runners should be able to facebook or tweet their every workout from the interface (please, never automate that feature), but running is a solitary enough sport without the help of a robotic coach. This is a huge lost opportunity for Adidas. And given the popularity of social networks today, it's surprising that was left out of the software so completely. Despite that missing link, the Adidas miCoach Pacer is the most full-featured and enjoyable personal training device on the market. While it might be overkill for someone who is just starting to get their running legs, anyone who wants to train and stay fit while also satisfying a hunger for personal metrics will be well-served by miCoach. miCoach Pacer Size: 56mm x 41mm x 16.75mmWeight: 22.9g Attachment Method: Clips to workout apparel or MP3 holder via clip on back of unitAudio

CES: Google adorns home page with Nexus One ad By Chris Matyszczyk (Webware.com)

Having begun to advertise - o n f o r i t s n e w A n d r o i d Chrome on its home page, s m a r t p h o n e t h e r e t o o . Google places a suggestive come Originally posted at Technically

Incorrect

Interface: 1/8" stereo headphone jacks (TRS connector)Power: Rechargeable 125mAh lithium polymer batteryBattery Life: 10 HoursWorkout Time: 10 Hours Charge Time via USB: 3 Hours Sensor Communication Link: ANT+™ protocol to Heart Rate Monitor and Stride Sensor RF Frequency: 2.4 GHz Sensor Communication Range: Heart Rate Monitor Ref Size: 63mm x 38mm x 10.5mm Weight: 19.5g (no strap) Power: user-replaceable CR2032 lithium batteryBattery Life: > 1000 hours active life (2.8 years @ 1 hr/day usage at 20°C) Communication Link: ANT+™ protocol Operating Temp: 0 to +40°C RF Frequency: 2.4 GHz Communication Range: Stride Sensor Ref In-Shoe Size: 34mm x 23mm x 8mm Total InShoe Weight: 5 months (at 20°C), extreme cold can affect battery lifeOperating Temp: 0° to +40°CCommunication Link: ANT+™ protocolRF Frequency: 2.4 GHzCommunication Range:

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Essential Tools for Every Home Office (Inc.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 8:25:10 AM

HP 8500 A909G Multi-function Printer At $229, this ink-jet printer is a bargain, and it uses high-capacity cartridges, which reduce ink costs. Just be aware of your office's needs, because although it prints 19 pages per minute -- both for color and black and white -- and the recommended monthly print load tops out at 1,250 pages, it does not offer wireless connectivity or double-sided printing. Seagate Replica Hard Drive If you are searching for a hard drive with a complete backup system, the Seagate Replica may be the storage system for you. This 5.6-inch device is an ideal data-disaster-prevention tool. Just plug it in and hit OK, and it will continuously back up everything, including your operating system, programs, and settings. Plus, you can choose your storage option and price point -- from $130 for up to 250 GB for a single PC, to $180 for up to 500 GB for multiple PCs. FonGenie Phone Answering System Think of FonGenie as a more sophisticated version of Google Voice. Working as an automated service that lets you manage your company's phoneanswering system online, FonGenie enables users to customize phone menu options, and analyze phone traffic. Plus, you can choose between two text

-to-speech voices to create messages that provide general business information, answer frequently asked questions, and advertise promotions. After a 60day free trial, the service costs $30 for 300 minutes, or $150 per month for an unlimited plan. IdeaPaint The next time you host a brainstorming session, take notes on the wall. IdeaPaint can transform any wall into a dry -erase board. Start with a coat of primer, then apply a layer of IdeaPaint. A $200 kit, available at IdeaPaint.com, contains a roller and enough paint to cover 50 square feet, for a cost of $4 per square foot. (By contrast, whiteboards usually cost $8 to $20 per square foot.) The Get The customizable Get chair by Harter is a good choice for the style-conscious, and it has ergonomic features, such as an adjustable back. Armrests are optional, the back comes in three styles, and the seat can be vinyl, fabric, or leather. The warranty lasts up to three years for the upholstery, and five and up for the parts. Chairs run between $409 and $590. Flip Mino For small businesses that want to use websites like YouTube for promotion, the pocket-size Flip Mino is an easily accessible camcorder that can record an hour of video. A panel on the back controls the camera's barebones functions -- record, zoom, pause, and a few others -- and a

tiny 1.5-inch color monitor handles video playback. The device, which lasts four hours on a charge, has an attached USB connector, making it easy to load videos to either Macs or PCs, and its software also handles rudimentary editing. At around $150, it won't break the bank. HD versions are available for $200 and $230, depending on memory capacity. XShot Camera Extender With the XShot Camera Extender, you can be your own cameraman. The extender has a no-slip grip, can extend to 37 inches, and

phone plans, mobile broadband services tend to offer simplified billing, and most carriers will provide connectivity from $80 to $100 per month. Virgin Mobile and others now offer pay-as-yougo plans as well. Targus Universal Laptop Docking Station The Universal Laptop Docking System from Targus, which starts at $149.99, is perfect for connecting your laptop to a monitor, printer, or other device. This new product is the first USB-based docking station with true video output capabilities, and its "One Touch" interface allows users to quickly and easily connect to external hardware. Plus, a button on the back of the device allows two of the four USB ports to always have power regardless of whether your computer is off or in sleep mode. Mac users are out shrinks to a pocket-friendly nine of luck for now, however. inches when closed. Plus, it fits Dell Latitude Z Laptop At just all compact cameras, and simply over an inch thin, and weighing a screws into a camera's tripod mere 4.5 pounds, Dell is calling mount. The lightweight device its brand new Latitude Z model runs $29.95, and will allow you the "world's thinnest and lightest the freedom of taking photos or 16-inch laptop." With a base cost videos anywhere, without asking of $1,799, the Z600 includes intuitive touch controls complete a stranger for help. Mobile Broadband Wireless with customizable application Card Sometimes you just need shortcuts. Plus, the device has a to flee the house, but a Mobile Webcam option, which enables Broadband Wireless Card can you to quickly scan business keep you connected to the Web. cards or copy documents using AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T- Dell Capture technology, and Mobile, and Sprint all offer automatically lock out other different versions. Unlike cell users using the Dell FaceAware tool for personalized security.

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Plastic Logic's Que Business e-Reader: Clever, but $800 By Kit Eaton (Fast Company) Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:19:01 PM

We've been following the Plastic Logic e-reader since the flexi-screened machine was just a sweetly designed e-ink showoff device. It's been revealed in full today, and it's transformed into a hard working business machine. The device is so specialized for business uses that Plastic Logic is calling it the "World's first proReader." It's being presented as "more than an eReader," and there's merit to that since it's specifically designed for providing full-on business document workflow and organizational functionality--the sort of things a mere e-book reader like the Kindle can't do. During the CES 2010 launch presentation that just finished, the Plastic Logic team showed off how the Que works, and it's unquestionably living up to some of those promises. That's evident from Que's home page: No simple logo or list of e-books loaded onto the machine, it's more of a desk manager-diaryemail summary. Lots of attention was lavished on the calendar functionality, with its wireless Microsoft Exchange hook-ups that mean you can embed files directly into meeting data and emails. And instead of simply reading the attached e-texts, such as you would with a Kindle, you can actually edit them--Word files,

PDFs, and so on--to a limited extent as if you were still using a traditional PC. And that includes scribbling notes on the capacitive touchscreen (which can be embedded into the document back on a computer), adding annotations, and imprinting them with pre-shaped "stamps." Its also got built-in BlackBerry interactivity so that you can grab documents off the tiny RIM screen and use them more easily on the big 10.7-inch e-ink screen --and a tie-in with RIM underlines that business

functionality Plastic Logic is promoting. There's even a neat "print to Que" function, which could reduce the laser-printing burden for some business users. Plastic Logic's partnership with Barnes and Noble was also described. This was a confusing alliance at first, given the bookstore's own entry into the ereader space with the nook ereader. But it makes more sense now: B&N are providing some of the ecosystem of the Que Store--which is mainly aimed at accessing pre-printed business

content like magazines (including Fast Company) and books, though there's also access to the larger B&N bookstore (which supports the nook too). And all of that sounds great--it makes the Que sound very much like a real-world, businessc e n t r i c d i g i t a l tablet/slate/clipboard somewhat like those gizmos used techies wandering the bridge of the starship Enterprise in Star Trek. But there are two problems. The first is Web browsing. During the Q&A the Que team revealed

that there was a browsing capability built into the Que firmware, but it's not accessible to the user because the slow browsing experience on an e-ink machine isn't up to the level that users are used to on laptops. It's smart that they've disabled this, since the "experimental" browser on the Kindle is more of an embarrassment than a feature. But it's also functionally limiting the Que. And then there's the biggest PLASTIC page 16

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New E-Commerce Report: Get Happy By Maccabee Montandon (Fast Company) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:00:05 PM

Let's talk about happiness. (We'll save sex for another day-again!) When folks are happy they tend to be more confident, right? Or is it the other way around? In any case, plenty of people were both happy and confident enough about the economy this past holiday shopping season to ... sit around, clicking buttons! Hurray! At least that's what our good friends over at comScore are telling us. Yesterday they put out a report on 2009 e-retailing during November and December and total spending hit $29.1 billion. That's a 4% increase over the 2008 e-shopping numbers. Of course the 2008 holiday season was all about re-gifting that leftover tuna sandwich you couldn't finish, but let's not think about that for a minute. Instead, let's think about happiness. Other happy stats: on

part was that Louisiana, for all its hardship, ranked first in bliss, while New York state was dead last. California is near the bottom, too. Perhaps accounting for this apparent surprise, one of the study's authors suggests that because both New York and California are perceived as highly desirable places to live, lots of people move there, causing congestion, longer commutes, higher rents, and other happiness-sucking qualities. So we are reminded that sometimes perception can shape reality. Take the free market, for example, where Thanksgiving Day, 2009, we watches and electronics were the economically. On the other hand: confidence is so key. As long as spent $318 million on Internet- b i g w i n n e r s , n a b b i n g a we'll totally take any positive the right numbers head in the right direction--like a 4% found gifts, 10% more than in cumulative 35% slice of that numbers we can! 2008. So-called Black Friday last delicious shopping pie. Next I'd love to see a breakdown increase in e-retailing--our year saw an 11% leap in cash On the one hand, these gains of this e-spending by state to see confidence can't help but edge outlay from 2008, to nearly $600 seems slightly modest when you how or how not it jibes with a up. And that should make more million, and Cyber Monday consider that more Americans new study on happiness. That people happy. I m a g e : spending totaled $887 million, a than ever are online and online study, which appeared recently 5% bump from the previous with faster Internet connections, in the journal Science, correlated http://www.flickr.com/photos/tu year. The retail sectors that and also just how terrible the Fall happiness, not surprisingly, with dor// CC BY-SA 2.0 scored the most were jewelry, a n d W i n t e r o f 2 0 0 8 w e r e quality of life. The surprising

PLASTIC continued from page 15

issue: The Que is only available in the U.S. at first, and it's expensive. There's a 4GB model that fits in 35,000 documents, has Wi-fi, Bluetooth and USB connectivity, and an 8GB one that'll squeeze in 70,000 documents and also has 3G connectivity via AT&T. The

4GB device will cost $650 and the fully-connected 8GB one will be $800. The Que is an innovative new category of machine, but Plastic Logic has almost priced themselves out of the market. Which market am I talking about? The slate PC one,

mentioned by Microsoft yesterday, and which we're expecting Apple to dominate with a full multifunction slate PC, which will cost somewhere near $1,000 if rumors prove true. Wouldn't you spend $200 more on an iSlate so you could watch movies on the flight to your

business meeting, browse your email and the Web, and then use the thing to give your presentation too? [ PlasticLogic]

GM Fires Up Its Chevrolet Volt Battery Factory By Chuck Squatriglia (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:28:00 AM

General Motors becomes the first automaker to build lithiumion packs in the United States.

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Rafael Vi単oly's Designer Rx for Hospitals By Cliff Kuang (Fast Company)

interview with Vi単oly, about his health-care expertise, and it highlights some interesting challenges: So how do you find out how these facilities actually work? We start by setting up an office in the hospital, and our team develops a day-to-day relationship with the people who

building is modular: a clover of four pods, that could be the beginning of the growth of other functions. It embraces a collaborative, random type of experience rather than a clear distinction between school and hospital. Architects usually begin projects with "research" phases that mostly involve armchair chinscratching. But setting up an office on-site? Sounds trivial, but it's vital given how badly most work there. You need to be paper. But once you put shovel hospitals are designed. (How c o n s t a n t l y a d d r e s s i n g t h i s to dirt, what can you do to keep many times have you gotten lost question of how you make a the building up-to-date with all on your way to a procedure or g r o u p u n d e r s t a n d t h e i r t h e c h a n g e s t h e f i e l d i s appointment?) relationship with the other undergoing? You need to be able For more of our coverage of groups in the overall fabric--and to deal with the changing nature health-care architecture, click how their field is changing. of the architectural envelope. here and here and here. Research is not something that With the new Stanford Hospital ends when you put pencil to [set to open in 2015], the

Nicole Kidman shopped. The owner was putting together swag for new moms at the Golden Globes, and asked Tunno Buelow if she would like to donate one of her products. Once the brand name was out there and attracted a celebrity following, Tunno Buelow started receiving calls from major retailers like Gap and Nordstrom. Today, the Bella Tunno brand is sold in over 4,000 stores worldwide and includes practical yet trendy "necessories" such as

laminated bibs and smocks. Tunno Buelow, who founded the company in her late brother's memory, also donates a portion of every sale to drug- and alcohol-related charities. With so much content consumed on the Web these days, the door has opened for entrepreneurs who have found ways to not only catalogue some it, but to make it easier for users to consume the information. While plenty of sites existed for streaming TV shows, Michael Sitarzewski

Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:24:13 PM

How do you design a building hosting so many social interactions and so much technological change? Rafael Vi単oly has sometimes been called a starchitect. But truth be told, he's plowed a far different road than his more fashionable peers, specializing in institutional architecture that requires deeply thought-out solutions. And one particular focus for his firm is hospital design: They've got six hospital projects completed or underway, the most ambitious perhaps being the Stanford Hospital, slated for completion in 2015 (pictured above). Metropolis has just published an

BUSINESSES continued from page 12

develop maps, as well as private companies on projects like location scouting. After having her first baby in 2004, Michelle Tunno Buelow started making clothing and other baby items that fit her funky style. Friends started taking notice, and before long, she was selling her customdesigned line called Bella Tunno in local markets in Charlotte, N.C. Soon after, she received an order from a store in Beverly Hills where celebrity moms like

realized that there wasn't anything comparable for listening to podcasts. So in 2008, at a podcaster conference, he pitched his idea for a site that would stream podcasts and organize all the content by channels, giving visitors a place to consume podcasts all in one place. Immediately, he had interest from developers, and within months, Callisto.fm was launched. The site now has 4,500 shows listed and operates primarily through ad revenue.

Sitarzewski, who works from home and in places all over his hometown of Boulder, also runs Hypersites, another company he founded in 2001 that serves as a website development application for designers.

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Cloud Sourcing: National Weather Service Finds a Thousand Sam Champions on Twitter By Ben Paynter (Fast Company)

park and take a pic!" Typos and grammar aside, what the avid letter writer and the Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:57:30 AM eager friend fail to report is, Search Twitter for the topic well, just about anything. For an "snow new york" and all sorts of a p p l i c a t i o n w i t h m o b i l e uslessness might pop up. capabilities, Twitter is still For instance: "dear sky. please woefully lame at telling up the let it snow or freeze bad so no where, why, and how much school but get better for the 14th mother nature is dumping. so mom can go to new york and Until now. A new Twitter App get me presents.k thanks." tied to with the National Weather Or how about: "how is your day Service hopes to change all that of aight seeing on new York, by allowing people to use their sweetie?? are u ok in the cold? u mobile phones to self-report and need to make a snow angel in a GPS-stamp exactly where and

how badly storms are raging. The idea came about to cover the blind spots between the country's 120 forecasting outposts and a loose network of volunteer

weather spotters. It is sort of a blunt summary approach to another NWS brainchild, harnessing increasingly smart cars to relay all that information

remotely, which is currently being piloted in Detroit, Discovery News reports. The real impact of this, of course, is that you will no longer be able to blame the weatherman for forgetting your umbrella. [Via DiscoveryNews] I m a g e : http://www.flickr.com/photos/wk eown// CC BY 2.0

Targus dishes 'fingerprint-resistant' screen protectors, diminutive chargers By Darren Murph (Engadget) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:23:00 PM

It's a battle we've all fought for years. Touchscreen-based phones and PMPs look just delightful on the shelf, but they get downright ugly once your greasy paws start mucking things up. Targus is hoping to remedy said quandary here at CES, with the company introducing a new line of patentpending screen protectors that are supposedly "fingerprinter resistant." We're told that this

Clear View technology will allow clear protectors to safeguard PMPs, smartphones, ereaders and laptops, all while shunning those unsightly smudges and smears from fingers. The model for phones should be making its way out to retail here soon for $9.99, with most of the popular models (iPhone 3GS, BlackBerry Storm / Curve / Bold / Pearl, T-Mobile G1, etc.) covered, though we're guessing it'll be awhile for those other devices to get treated. In

related news, the firm also announced its smallest and lightest laptop (AC and DC) chargers, though they'll happily

Gallery: Targus dishes 'fingerprint-resistant' screen protectors, diminutive chargers Continue reading Targus dishes 'fingerprint-resistant' screen protectors, diminutive chargers Targus dishes 'fingerprintresistant' screen protectors, diminutive chargers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, charge other devices thanks to 07 Jan 2010 15:23:00 EST. the interchangeable tip system. Please see our terms for use of Hop on past the break for all the feeds. Permalink| | Email this| Comments details on models and prices.

New Series Thrusts 'Daily Show' Wit John Oliver Into Comedy Spotlight By Scott Thill (Wired Top Stories)

The British funnyman hosts bigname comics and up-and-comers

in John Oliverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s New York Stand-Up Show, premiering

Friday on Comedy Central.

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Gadget Deals of the Day [Dealzmodo] By David Chaid (Gizmodo) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:30:00 PM

We are in a posting frenzy so peep these deals before they're run off the page. There's a huge price drop for the HP Envy Core i5, a Mel Brooks classic, and an app that lets you be the Gunman. Top Deals: • 15.6" HP ENVY Core i5 Laptop for $1,299 with free shipping(normally $1,799). • Spaceballs (Blu-ray) for $8.99(normally $18.50). • Gunman (iPhone) for $0. Computing and Peripherals: • Dell Vostro 220 Desktop + 22" LCD for $399 plus free shipping(normally $661). • 17" Dell Vostro 1720 T6670 2.1GHz Laptop $599(normally $933). • 15.6" HP Pavilion DV61361SB 2.53GHz NoteBook for $800 plus free shipping(normally $1000). • 15.6" Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop for $499.99 plus $9.95 shipping(normally $620). • 15.6" HP ENVY Core i5 Laptop for $1,299 with free shipping(normally $1,799.99). • 14" Lenovo ThinkPad T410 Core i5 Laptop for $999 plus free shipping(normally $1,345). • 14" ASUS K40IN-C2 Laptop for $648 plus free shipping(normally $752 - use this form). • 13.3" Toshiba Satellite T135 Laptop for $524.30 plus free shipping(normally $749). • 10" MSI Wind U100-013US

Netbook for $249.99 plus free shipping(normally $280 - use coupon code SHINE1030). • 10.1" Toshiba Mini NB205N311/W Netbook for $299.99 plus free shipping(normally $350). • 10.1" Lenovo 2957L3U Netbook for $269.99 plus free shipping(normally $317 - use coupon code SHINE0930). • 10.1"Samsung N135 Intel A t o m N e t b o o k $282.99(normally $329 – use coupon code: SHINE0830). • Cisco WRV210 802.11b/g router for $67 plus free shipping(normally $90 - use c o u p o n c o d e : C I S C O U P G R A D E ) . • Corsair Voyager Mini 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive for $24.99 plus free shipping(normally $39 use this form). • Hitachi 2TB 3.5" SATA HDD for $149.99 plus free shipping(normally $179). • 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green HDD for $80.32 plus free shipping(normally $95 - use coupon code FRESH15- use this

form). • 7 Piece Electronics/Computer Tool Kit for $2.49 plus free shipping(normally $5). • 16GB SuperTalent Pico-C STU16GPCS Flash Drive for $28.04(normally $41 - use coupon code FRESH15). • Canon PIXMA iP2600SE Photo Inkjet Printer for $24.99 plus free shipping(normally $40 - use coupon code EMCLMLV42). • Swann Communications SW231SCK Wireless Safety CCTV Camera Kit for $59.99(normally $79). • Canon Selphy ES30 Compact Photo Printer for $59.95 plus free shipping(normally $74.30). • Opteka OPT15 15-Inch Digital Picture Frame with 1GB Built-In Memory for $149.54 plus free shipping(normally $179.95). Gaming: • Xbox 360 Arcade for $174 plus free shipping(normally $199). • Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board + DreamGear 5-in-1 Fitness Bundle for $119 plus free shipping(normally $135).

• Batman: Arkham Asylum Collector's Edition (360) for $59.99 plus free shipping(normally $88). • Assassins Creed II (360/PS3) for $44.99 plus free shipping(normally $50). • Animal Crossing w/Wii Speak Bundle (Wii) for $39.99 plus free shipping(normally $66). • Game Party Wii for $9.99 plus free shipping(normally $17). • Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition (Xbox 360) for $99.99 plus free shipping(normally $122). • EA Sports Active (Wii) for $39.77 plus free shipping(normally $53). • Resident Evil 5 (PS3) for $24.99 plus free shipping(normally $37). • UFC Undisputed (360) for $34.99 plus free shipping(normally $48.99). • The Sims 3 Collector's Edition (PC) for $39.99 plus free shipping(normally $49.96). • Xbox 360 Controller & Charger GameStop Exclusive for $59.99 plus free

shipping(normally $70). • Stormrise (PC download) for $14.98(normally $20). • Divinity II: Ego Draconis (PC download) for $44.99(normally $51). • The Sherlock Holmes Collection (PC download) for $43.99(normally $55). • Rogue Warrior (PS3) for $33.90 plus free shipping(normally $55). • TimeShift (360) for $8.90(normally $17). • DJ Hero Renegade Edition Featuring JAYZ & Eminem (Wii) for $150.90(normally $174). • Prey (PC) for $4.90(normally $9.79). Home Entertainment: • 55" LG 55LH85 1080p Wireless HDMI HDTV Plus $500 Gift Card for $2,299.99 plus free shipping(normally $2600). • 52" Samsung LN52B750 1080p LCD HDTV for $1699 plus free shipping(normally $1849). • 32" JVC LT32J300 1080P LCD TV for $399 plus free shipping(normally $440). • Sony BDP-BX2 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player for $110 plus free shipping(normally $180). • Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection (14 films) DVD for $88.37 plus free shipping(normally $106). • Fit Ball Workouts Bundle (3 GADGET page 23

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Ooma launches Telo Pure Voice VoIP system By John Biggs (CrunchGear) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:22:06 AM

The best kept secret in VoIP with overseas relatives and friends is Ooma. For about $200 you can set your overseas loved ones up with some hot VoIP action, giving them a local telephone number they can use to call you and you can use to call them. If you travel then its great. That said, Ooma has just released the Telo system, an improvement to its current firmware that includes iPhone/Touch support, Bluetooth support, Google Voice connectivity and voice transcription. Not an upgrade per se but an improvement. Pure Voice improves the call audio and the additional features – Bluetooth, for example – allows you to connect to cellphones. Here’s the Google Voice juice: Google Voice Extensions Ooma simplifies the Google Voice user experience, enabling consumers to take advantage of the complementary capabilities found in both offerings, for a truly integrated and seamless phone experience. Google Voice users can integrate the Call Presentation, Listen In, and caller-ID features with their Ooma system as well as access Google Voice voicemail at a touch of a button. Voicemail Transcription Ooma customers can have inbound voicemail transcribed

into text and sent as an email or text message. Users can now enjoy the convenience of reading their voicemail quickly and silently whether they are at home or on the road. Ooma voicemail transcription is human-aided to ensure the delivery of accurate and reliable messages. Ooma Announces New Features That Connect Consumer’s

Mobile Lifestyle, Provide Enhanced Voice Quality, Convenience, and Savings at International CES 2010 LAS VEGAS, January 7, 2010 – Ooma, Inc. today unveiled several new features and enhanced services for its awardwinning Ooma Telo system that extend the functionality and ease of use for consumers wanting a

superior home phone telephony experience. New additions to the product and services lineup include Ooma Pure Voice™, High Definition Voice, mobile phone calling with the iPhone or iPod touch, Bluetooth support, Google Voice Extensions and voicemail transcription. All new features will be demonstrated today through January 10 at the

International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas at Ooma’s booth, Grand Lobby GL-7. With today’s new enhancements, Ooma offers the most complete home phone solution that further expands its renowned voice quality, cost OOMA page 21

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OOMA continued from page 20

savings and ease of use beyond the home and into the mobile and business calling landscape. “Consumers should expect the same innovation in their home phones as they experience in their mobile phones,” said Rich Buchanan, chief marketing officer at Ooma. “Consumers today are in calling purgatory – forced to find a compromise between shoddy cell phone reception in their homes and a featureless landline phone experience that hasn’t innovated since the 1970’s. Today’s announcement extends the features and functionality of our leading VoIP phone system to connect the gap that currently exists between advanced smart phone functionalities and the inherent limitations of the home phone. Ooma Telo is the smart phone designed for your home, not your pocket.” The following new features and services for Ooma Telo are now being demonstrated at CES 2010. Ooma Pure Voice™ Ooma raises the bar on voice quality again with the introduction of Ooma Pure Voice. Ooma now brings to the home the data redundancy sophistication normally found in industrial-grade Internet telephony products. With the explosion of bandwidth usage in

the home for video streaming, photo uploads and real-time gaming, Ooma Pure Voice ensures crystal clear conversations over congested networks while maintaining lowbandwidth requirements. High Definition Voice (HD Voice) Ooma is the first residential phone service to support highdefinition voice technology. Compared to conventional telephones, Ooma HD Voice doubles the audio frequencies transmitted to deliver richer, more natural sounding conversation to calls between Ooma customers. Compatible corded telephone or Ooma Telo Handset is required to support Ooma HD Voice. iPhone and iPod Touch Calling Application Ooma customers will be able to download an Ooma iPhone or iPod Touch application to make phone calls over any Wi-Fi network using an iPhone or iPod touch. Ooma’s app allows customers to take their Ooma service on the road with them to make or receive calls from around the world at Ooma’s lowcost international rates. Bluetooth Support The addition of Bluetooth support on the Ooma Telo allows users to integrate their mobile phone with their home phone

systems, delivering superior flexibility and convenience. Bluetooth support on the Ooma Telo allows customers to pair compatible, Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones enabling inbound calls from the mobile phone to be answered on any home phone connected to the Ooma Telo. Users may also pair compatible Bluetooth headsets to the Ooma Telo to enable hands-free talking from anywhere in the home. Additionally, Bluetooth support will allow users to download their phone book from their mobile devices for use on the Ooma Telo Handset and online at My Ooma. Google Voice Extensions Ooma simplifies the Google Voice user experience, enabling consumers to take advantage of the complementary capabilities found in both offerings, for a truly integrated and seamless phone experience. Google Voice users can integrate the Call Presentation, Listen In, and caller-ID features with their Ooma system as well as access Google Voice voicemail at a touch of a button. Voicemail Transcription Ooma customers can have inbound voicemail transcribed into text and sent as an email or text message. Users can now enjoy the convenience of reading their voicemail quickly and

silently whether they are at home or on the road. Ooma voicemail transcription is human-aided to ensure the delivery of accurate and reliable messages. Availability The Ooma Telo and Ooma Telo Handset are available at Ooma authorized resellers including: Best Buy, Datavision, Fry’s Electronics, J&R, Micro Center, and leading online destinations including Amazon, BestBuy.com, Buy.com, Costco.com, Dell.com, JandR.com, NewEgg.com, OfficeDepot.com, PC Mall, Provantage, Shop Harmony, Staples.com, Sears.com, KMart.com, Tiger Direct, RCS, Nebraska Furniture Mart, B&H Photo and Walmart.com. All features will be available to Ooma Telo customers in the first half of 2010. Pricing Ooma Telo retails for $249.99. Ooma Telo Handset retails for $49.99. Ooma Premier, an optional bundle of enhanced calling features costs $9.99/month. Sign up for oneyear of Ooma Premier and receive a free Ooma Telo Handset or a free number transfer (a $39.99 value).

Live From Palm’s CES 2010 Press Event By Greg Kumparak (CrunchGear) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:37:42 AM

We’re live from Palm’s CES 2010 Press Event, where they’re expected to announce … something. Will they tell us which two phones AT&T will be carrying? Will they finally confirm that they’ve got handsets heading to Verizon? We’ll keep the live blog goin’ as long as the mighty mobile broadband overlords allow – follow along after the jump. Read the liveblog over at MobileCrunch >>

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Greenpeace Ranks Apple Highest Among Tech Companies: Whaaaaa? [Apple] By Sean Fallon (Gizmodo) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:22:00 PM

Given their long and storied feud, you would think Captain Ahab would have a better chance than Apple of being accepted by Greenpeace. Believe it or not, the impossible has actually happened. Indeed, Greenpeace has ranked Apple highest on the list of ecoconscious tech companies. In fact, they got a perfect score thanks to their commitment to eliminate all toxic PVC and BFRs from their product line. Has Apple finally got the Greenpeace endangered speciesprotected monkey off its back? January 7, 2010 Greenpeace's Electronics Guide cuts through the greenwash at CES Apple, Sony Ericsson and Nokia products free of worst hazardous substances – Samsung, Dell, Lenovo and LGE disappoint LAS VEGAS - As technology companies jostle for attention at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) , Greenpeace's newest edition of the Guide to Greener Electronics, released at CES, cuts through the greenwash. Apple, Sony Ericsson, and Nokia lead the way for introducing products free of the worst hazardous substances with HP following just behind.

Samsung, Dell, Lenovo, and LGE pick up penalty points in the Guide (1) for failing to follow through on a promised phase-out of toxic chemicals in their products. The majority of the companies in the Guide had pledged to remove toxic PVC vinyl plastic and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) (2) from their product range by the end of 2009, which would have meant a greater show of greener, toxicfree products for visitors to preview at the CES. But, for now, it's a no show for these companies, who have delayed their phase-out to 2011 or beyond. "It's time for a little less conversation and a lot more action on removing toxic chemicals," said Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International Electronics campaigner. "Apple is leading and HP is playing catch up, but the lack of action from other companies is ensuring that customers and the environment are still losing out." Several companies see their scores reduced in this edition of the Guide, with the bar being raised on hazardous substances. Having endorsed the precautionary principle, companies now need to actively support bans on PVC, BFRs and chlorinated flame retardants (CFRs) during the revision of the

European Union‘s Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electronics Directive. "Companies need to support legislative bans to ensure a consistent phase out of PVC and BFRs across all electronic products," said Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner. "Sony Ericsson and Apple are already calling on EU institutions to support such a

ban. Other big players, such as HP and Dell – who have so far been silent - and Acer, need to ensure the ban is passed in the European Union parliament." Nokia leads the ranking with a score of 7.3. Sony Ericsson follows closely, and is the only company to score full marks on all the toxic chemicals criteria. In third place is Toshiba, but it risks losing points if it fails to meet its

commitment to market new models of all its consumer electronics products that are free of PVC and BFRs by April 1, 2010. Philips comes in fourth place, while Apple rises from ninth place to fifth. Samsung drops dramatically from second place to a tied seventh place for failing to eliminate BFRs in all its products by January 2010. With only its latest models of mobile phones free of toxic substances, it has set January 2011 as the deadline for eliminating them from new models of its notebooks and still has no definitive timeline for removing them from its TVs and household appliances. Nintendo continues to languish at the bottom of the ranking. "In 2010, we should see significant developments, with products free of PVC and BFRs in the PC and TV markets," continued Harrell. "Any company failing to achieve this goal is taking a big gamble with its green reputation. More positively, it's good to see nonranked companies beyond the PC and TV sectors, like Cisco (3), committing to eliminate these harmful substances." [ Greenpeace]

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GADGET continued from page 19

DVDs) for $21.49(normally $44.97). • Spaceballs (Blu-ray) for $8.99(normally $18.50). • Harry Potter Years 1-5 (Blu Ray) for $53.49 plus free shipping(normally $83.79). Personal Portables and Peripherals: • Flip Video Mino F360B 1.5" LCD 2GB Camcorder for $90 Shipped(normally $150). • Canon EOS Rebel XS SLR Digital Camera w/ 18-55mm Lens + 75-300mm Lens for $509.90 plus free shipping(normally $769). • Canon PowerShot A480 Digital Camera for $89 plus free shipping(normally $110). • FUJIFILM A235 Silver Digital Camera + Free 2GB SD card for $80 w/ Free Shipping(normally $110). • Sony Bluetooth Wireless Speaker for PMPs for $29.00 plus free shipping(normally $57). • ATC2K Waterproof Action Cam for $49.99 plus free

shipping(normally $80.82). • DROID Phone from Motorola for $119 plus free shipping(No activation fee) • Zune HD 16 GB Video MP3 Player for $189.99 plus free shipping(normally $209.99). • Curtis iMode iPod Video Docking Station for $39.99 plus free shipping(normally $68). • TomTom GO 630 4.3" GPS w/ Text-to-Speech & Bluetooth for $134.70 plus free shipping(normally $168). • GE Cell Fusion 2-Handset DECT 6.0 Telephone w/ Bluetooth for Cell Phone Linking for $39.99(normally $59). • Creative Zen MX 16GB MP3 Player for $89.99 plus free shipping(normally $129). Hobomodo: • Love In Stereo (Remix) by Liquid Soul (MP3) for $0(download here). • Yaki Frog (iPhone) for $0(normally $1.99). • Six eBooks for B&N eReader (iPhone) for $0.

CES: Apple's iTunes Web preview pages get audio clips By Josh Lowensohn (Webware.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:00:00 AM

Apple has quietly pushed out music previews to its iTunes

• Lexar Image Rescue 3 for $0(use this form). • Gunman (iPhone) for $0. • The Biggest Loser and SUBWAY Workout Mix – 12 songs (MP3) for $0. • Breakfast at IKEA January 910 for $0. •"I Love the 80s" (1880s) Mp3 Album, 26 songs for $0(use this form). • Nicoderm CQ sample & $7 Coupon for $0(use this form). • Finger Physics (iPhone) Game for $0(normally $0.99). • Get Caught Up on Lost for $0. If a deal looks too good to be true, investigate the store and see if it's a good, reputable place to buy. Safe shopping! [ Thanks TechDealDigger, Dealzon, Logic Buy, GamerHotline, Cheap College By Joseph L. Flatley Gamers, CheapStingyBargains (Engadget) and TechBargains.] Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:31:00

Audi teams up with Nvidia for nextgen MMI replete with Google Earth, Vibrante entertainment system

First-Ever Video of Sumatran Tigress and Cubs in the Wild By Alexis Madrigal (Wired Top Stories)

preview pages, letting users Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:23:00 AM listen to tracks without having the jukebox software installed. A "camera trap" placed in the Originally posted at Web Sumatran jungle has captured the first-ever video of a Sumatran Crawler tigress with her cubs. And it's ridiculously cute.

(funny, mums the word on handwriting recognition). This bad boy starts shipping with the PM Audi A8 in 2011, and moves on As if Nvidia hasn't been busy to all of the manufacturer's cars enough this year, what with its in the model year 2012. PR after next generation Tegra chips and the break. all, looks like the kids have inked Continue reading Audi teams up a deal with Audi to supply the with Nvidia for next-gen MMI G P U f o r i t s n e w i n - d a s h replete with Google Earth, navigation and entertainment Vibrante entertainment system system. The 3G MMI system Audi teams up with Nvidia for sports something called the next-gen MMI replete with Vibrante engine for dual zone G o o g l e E a r t h , V i b r a n t e entertainment (allowing different entertainment system originally media on dash and backseat appeared on Engadget on Thu, monitors), as well as Google 07 Jan 2010 15:31:00 EST. Earth, 3D topography, real-time Please see our terms for use of traffic reporting and navigation, feeds. Permalink| | Email this| iPod, SD card, USB memory Comments stick support, and online video via the optional EDGE modem

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Polaroid announces new OneStep film and instant digital cameras, some branded LCD TVs By Joseph L. Flatley (Engadget) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:11:00 PM

Knowing the drive and tenacity of Lady Gaga, we expect that any day now we'll she'll be the president of PLR IP Holdings within the week. Until that fateful day when Polaroid becomes the Haus of Gaga, it looks like the company will be keeping busy by continuing to slap its name on consumer electronics. Probably the coolest of the lot is the PIC 1000, the future-retro Polaroid OneStep film camera developed in part at the urging of The Impossible

its name to a handful of LCD TVs from 42 to 65 inches in size. You're psyched, right? Hit the PR after the break for all the shocking details. Continue reading Polaroid announces new OneStep film and instant digital cameras, some branded LCD TVs Polaroid announces new OneStep film and instant digital cameras, some branded LCD Project. Just like its namesake, The company's newest Zink- TVs originally appeared on this guy uses Polaroid Color 600 enabled camera, the obviously Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 Instant Film. This bad boy will named Instant Digital Camera, 15:11:00 EST. Please see our be available at national retailers boasts 12 megapixels and 3 x 4- t e r m s f o r u s e o f f e e d s . | Email this| in 2010. If digital instant inch prints. And rounding things Permalink| shooters are more your speed, out, the company has a slapped Comments

CES: Thumbplay music app coming to desktops and smartphones By Jessica Dolcourt (Webware.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:41:00 AM

Song and ringtone e-store, Thumbplay, announces a new music app for Windows and Mac, and apps for BlackBerry. iPhone and Android apps are coming soon. Originally posted at 2010 CES

Palm Pre Plus First Hands-On: Super-Fast, Button Removal Is No Problem [Phones] By Kat Hannaford (Gizmodo) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:28:08 PM

Jon Rubinstein dropped the news only minutes ago that the new Palm devices—the slightlyupgraded Pre Plus and Pixi Plus—would be arriving on Verizon later this month. I got some hands-on time with them, and while the Pre Plus has had the navigational button removed, little else has been touched aesthetically. The

inductive TouchStone back comes as standard now—but looks just like it always did. Still feels rubbery, which I like. Makes you feel like you're holding a proper gadget. The removal of the button isn't big news, I don't think it'll hamper use of the Pre, with the touch input being reliable most of the time anyway. Otherwise, everything else is exactly the same. The keys are still gummy pegs that are too

small for your fingers, and the bottom edge of the slide-out QWERTY can still cut cheese, it's that sharp. Shame they didn't

improve upon that aspect. Or make it even SHARPER to do the "Plus" name justice. I want to cut a steak.

It's speedier, thanks to the double RAM that's been added, and noticeably easier flipping between apps and programs. The screen is responsive, but no more responsive than it was before. All in all, it's the same Pre experience you've had before, just faster. Oh, and guess you'll have to fork out for a TouchStone now.

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Google Explains Why Ad Blockers Aren't A Problem By Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:56:33 AM

Reader jorshw was the first of a few who sent in this recent NY Times article questioning how Google would deal with the fact that people are now creating ad blocking extensions for Google's Chrome browser. What's really telling is the comment from a Google engineering director, Linus Upson, about why this is no big deal:"It's unlikely ad blockers are going to get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising should get less annoying. So I think the market will sort this out." This is the exact right response to this kind of question. It's a user-centric response that doesn't now a Verizon branded (and revamping the action of the keys, soon) and gallery below for the immediately rush to the "simple" bound) phone, which should making them far clickier (and full story. answer that ad blocking bump the status of the device in maybe a bit more raised). The Gallery: Palm Pre Plus and Pixi somehow "takes money" away, many people's minds. The feel is closer to the Pixi, and Plus hands-on but realizes that if people are so company has also improved the that's a really good thing. Of Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus first intent on blocking ads -- then the action of the slider mechanism, c o u r s e , t h e y ' v e a d d e d a n hands-on! originally appeared on problem isn't with the people which is now way, way snappier, additional 8GB of storage, Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 blocking the ads, but with the and clicks into and out of place making the internal capacity 15:28:00 EST. Please see our advertising itself. w i t h a c o n f i d e n c e - s t o k i n g 16GB, and Palm is going full t e r m s f o r u s e o f f e e d s . Permalink| Comments| Email solidness. Palm has also changed steam ahead with gaming on the Permalink| | Email this| This Story the keyboard a bit, getting rid of device thanks to its PDK. Check Comments t h e o r a n g e c o l o r i n g , a n d the video (which will be up

Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus first hands-on! By Joshua Topolsky (Engadget) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:28:00 PM

We just had a chance to play around with the new Palm Pre Plus(and Palm Pixi Plus), and we must say -- they've made some solid improvements to these devices. We're going to focus on the Pre, since it's really had the bulk of the changes. Firstly, it's

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Dell Has a Tablet-Like Prototype, Too

Hands On: MSI's Dual- HP's Touch Tablet Could Screen Tablet [Tablets] Come In an Android Flavor, Too [Android]

By Christina Warren (Mashable!) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:02:25 PM

Not wanting to be the only kid on the block without a fauxtablet in the works (or fauxblet, By Dan Nosowitz (Gizmodo) real product I'd probably criticize as I’m going to call it for now), it more. On a basic level, you can Dell has announced that they, Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:16:00 PM tell this is a mere proof of By John Herrman (Gizmodo) the one they use in their AIO too, working on a slate-style PC. So MSI apparently has no plans concept—they just slapped two Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:27:36 PM d e s k t o p s a n d t o u c h Dell’s concept is a 5-inch touchto actually release this dual- screens together, with no thought laptops—which has the potential screen device running Google’s screen, Windows 7 tablet, but I as to what benefits that setup Sources tell TechCrunch that to be equally terrible. Android operating system. The stopped by the booth to play might give. HP's new tablet—seen here in Windows 7 is designed for big pull seems to be that the around with it anyway. It's pretty The hardware, on the other the proud grasp of one Steve m i c e , k e y b o a r d a n d t h e d e v i c e s c a n b e c o n n e c t e d impractical, but hey! Two hand, is surprisingly nice—it's Ballmer, with Windows—could occasional finger—Android is an together to play games across screens! Video after the jump. super thin and light, the two 10- come with Android, too. Is it OS designed for touchscreens, machines. It's clearly not meant for actual inch screens definitely keep it wrong that I'm way, way more and the HP tablet is basically a Like the other fauxblets release—the touchscreen was netbook-sized, and the brushed excited about that version? No. g i a n t t o u c h s c r e e n p h o n e . unveiled at CES thus far, specific very temperamental, the device metal finish is really nice. But No it's not. Ballmer's mention aside, the details about the device’s specs as a whole was super slow and i t ' s a l l k i n d o f a m o o t And HP tablet with Windows Android version of this tablet— or a projected release date were t h e y h a d n ' t m a d e e n o u g h point—MSI's got no plans to seven will probably be one of which is "almost identical in not revealed. changes to Windows 7 to make bring this to market. Still, cool two things: a raw Windows 7 every respect to the one he What would make up your t h a t d u a l - s c r e e n s e t u p idea, even if it's pointless so far. machine with Microsoft's limited showed off except for the OS," dream tablet or fauxblet device? w o r t h w h i l e . T h e s t a n d a r d [ MSI] touch-friendly optimizations, according to TC's source—could Let us know! Windows 7 soft keyboard is which would be terrible; or be the tablet that really matters Tags: CES 2010, dell, Slate, pretty mediocre, and if this was a Windows 7 with some version of here. [ TechCrunch] Tablet HP's TouchSmart interface—like

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XpanD announces "world's first" Bluetooth 3D glasses, will bundle them with VIZIO XVT Pro By Vladislav Savov (Engadget) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:05:00 PM

You know what's been missing form our craniums lately? A little bit of the old Bluetooth-enabled headset stuff. Never mind the fact 3D glasses don't really need Bluetooth -- after all, it's pretty hard to find a scenario where you'd utilize 3D glasses while breaking line of sight with the source device. Then again if we only ever designed and bought stuff we needed, things like CES wouldn't exist. To be bundled with VIZIO's new 3D LCD TVs, XpanD's active-shutter glasses feature "the highest-speed LCD lenses, lowest crosstalk and the highest viewing angle" and strategic partnerships (read: bundle deals) with other major manufacturers are being developed as we speak... type,

whatever. XpanD announces "world's first" Bluetooth 3D glasses, will bundle them with VIZIO XVT Pro originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| XpanD| Email this| Comments

Google real-time search: 6 min. to spot quake By Stephen Shankland (Webware.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:12:00 AM

A minor Silicon Valley earthquake sets Twitter abuzz. A

few minutes later, Google surfaces the event in its search results. Originally posted at Deep Tech

Kensington’s new universal laptop charger, she is wonderfully tiny By Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:50:00 AM

Just met with Kensington here at CES and they’ve got a universal notebook charger coming out next month that uses 30% less energy than conventional adapters and is, perhaps more importantly, very nicely sized at 4.5" x 2.2" x 0.8" – the photos don’t quite do it justice. I

thought it was a larger external backup battery for a cell phone at first. The adapter features tips for most major laptop brands (except for Apple, of course, as Apple doesn’t license its MagSafe technology out to anyone) and there’s a built-in USB charging port and retractable USB cable for good measure. Two kits will be available – a standard charging kit for $100

and a kit with an additional airplane plug for $120. They’ll be out in early February but can be pre-ordered now at Kensington’s site. Wall Ultra Compact Notebook Power Adapter[Kensington] Wall-Air Ultra Compact N o t e b o o k P o w e r Adapter[Kensington]

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Hands-on video: Lenovo’s Beware of U1 hybrid tablet-netbook Science (video fixed) Fiction! By Devin Coldewey (CrunchGear)

(Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 1/6/2010 8:12:06 PM

Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:30:01 PM

Haier's wireless HDTV lacks wires, svelte profile (video) By Jacob Schulman (Engadget)

They had this thing on display at Unveiled, but there was only one and nobody was really allowed to touch it. But Lenovo was nice enough to let me check this one out at their party last night in the Venetian. I’ve got to start running down to this meeting at a whole other location down the street, so I can’t write a blow by blow, but the video is pretty selfexplanatory. The exhibitor is pretty much on autopilot, showing off the different modes, so you’ll get the full show. My impressions were: pretty cool. The tablet portion is obviously at the very edge of its power, so I think they might

even though you might be avoiding that mess of tangled cables, don't think you're getting Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:16:00 PM off that easy. Video of the wireIf you're at CES and just can't free panel is after the break. stand wires, be sure to drop by Gallery: Haier completely the Haier booth where the wireless HDTV hands-on company is showing off its Continue reading Haier's completely wireless HDTV. wireless HDTV lacks wires, E m p l o y i n g b o t h W i r e l e s s svelte profile (video) Electricity technology developed Haier's wireless HDTV lacks at MIT, as well as Wireless wires, svelte profile (video) Home Digital Interface (WHDI) originally appeared on Engadget this tube can supposedly stream on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:16:00 By Victoria Ho video over 100 feet, but there's EST. Please see our terms for (Webware.com) no telling if that WiTricity signal use of feeds. Permalink| | Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:37:11 AM will be as far reaching. All this Email this| Comments technology does add a good bit Enterprise adoption of Netbooks of heft to the panel's profile, so running Google's OS will follow the path of its hosted apps, in which small businesses were the initial adopters, an exec says.

have overdone it there, and a lot will depend on how well the little widgets work, but all in all it’s an elegant little interface. At $1000 it’s too expensive for anyone but zealous early adopters, though. At any rate, it’s a cool idea, and the hardware is really nice.

CES: Chrome OS to follow Google Apps adoption

5 Essential Online Resources for the NFL This ESSENTIAL postPlayoffs is part ofpage Mashable’s 29 Fab Five series with Jalen Rose,

You have got to be kidding. Tonight we learn that the religious right isn’t just antiscience — they’re anti-science fiction too: Beware of Science Fiction. Science fiction takes the reader into a strange world without God. Oh, there might be “a god,” a “force,” but it is definitely not the God of the Bible, and the prominent names in this field are atheists. … Science fiction is intimately associated with Darwinian evolution. Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists. Sci-fi arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator. In fact, evolution IS the preeminent science fiction. Beware! May I have another ibuprofen, please? (Hat tip: PZ Myers.)

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ESSENTIAL continued from page 28

which highlights trends in the social media space. Jalen Rose is a former 13-year NBA star and current ESPN basketball analyst but may be best known for being a member of the famous University of Michigan Fab Five. The stage is nearly set for Super Bowl XLIV — the game will be held on February 7 in South Florida, but which teams will share the spotlight? Although I played professional basketball, football is definitely one of my favorite sports, which is why I love this time of the year. I follow the NFL all season, and even publish weekly predictions on who I think will win. To stay updated on the latest NFL news, I search the web. Here are my five favorite online resources for the NFL Playoffs. 1. The NFL’s Online Presence The NFL’s family of sites provide total league coverage — they don’t focus on just one team or player but give you in-depth coverage of all 32 teams (in this instance, all 12 teams in the playoffs). An abundance of information is just a click away on these sites: rosters, schedules, injury updates and more. Through the NFL’s social media accounts ( Twitter and Facebook), you can catch bitesized updates, often times with links to NFL.com stories, videos and photos. On their Facebook Page, fans have the chance to interact with the NFL’s updates and each other. It should be fun

to watch the smack talk as the playoffs move forward. You can also subscribe to the NFL’s Game Rewind service to get archived video of any game you miss during the playoffs or to the site’s Field Pass service to listen to live audio of every playoff matchup. 2. ESPN.com ESPN’s site is the place to go for breaking news and up-to-theminute updates. They are also killing the fantasy football game (did I mention I manage eight teams?). The site offers a recently redesigned home page with a cleaner feel, richer video experience, and enhanced Scoreboards. You can watch instant video analysis by everyone in the know, from analysts to players to coaches to management. Usage rose 12 percent in 2009, helping ESPN prove their motto, that they are indeed the Worldwide Leader in Sports. Full Disclosure: Jalen Rose works as an on-air sports analyst for ESPN television. 3. RealGM.com Hands down, this is one of my favorite sites on the web. RealGM.com is a top spot for sports fans, with hundreds of thousands of unique visitors every month. The site covers all sports and is especially helpful during the NFL playoffs. It provides a direct way to gauge the local pulse on every team in the league, and lets you find out the inside scoop on what players, fans and others are thinking,

often before it hits the newsstand. 4. Nick Barnett on Twitter Nick, an inside linebacker for the green Bay Packers, is one of the most active NFLers on Twitter, and his team is on a hot streak going into the playoffs. He provides a player’s perspective with messages often coming from the locker room. He also provides his 300K+ followers with words of wisdom and encouragement, and most importantly, he interacts with them on a daily basis. Green Bay should do well in the playoffs, and I’m sure Nick will continue to tweet as they go down that path. Other players to follow on Twitter whose teams are playoff bound include Chad Ochocinco, WR, Cincinnati Bengals; Shaun Phillips, OLB, San Diego Chargers; Larry Fitzgerald, WR, Arizona Cardinals; Darrelle Revis, CB, New York Jets; Pierre Garcon, WR, Indianapolis Colts; and Martellus Bennett, TE, Dallas Cowboys. 5. San Diego Chargers on Facebook The San Diego Chargers, AFC West Champions for the fourth year in a row and the fifth time in the last six seasons, is arguably the hottest team in the NFL right now and my pick for Super Bowl champs. They are bolting into the playoffs riding an 11-game win streak. Follow them on their Facebook Fan Page as they try to claim the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy.

The team will likely provide behind-the-scenes photos and videos of their journey throughout the playoffs. Almost every team in the playoffs has some sort of social media presence. Here’s where you can find your favorite team: AFC Colts: Facebook| No Twitter Chargers: Facebook| Twitter Patriots: Facebook| Twitter Bengals: Facebook| Twitter Jets: Facebook| Twitter Ravens: Facebook| Twitter NFC Saints: No accounts Vikings: Facebook| Twitter Cowboys: No Facebook | Twitter Cardinals: Facebook| No Twitter Packers: Facebook| Twitter Eagles: Facebook| No Twitter Where else do you get your NFL news and updates around the web? Let us know in the comments. More sports resources from Mashable: - 5 Predictions for Athletes on Social Media in 2010 - 5 Most Memorable Sports Tweets of 2009 - 5 Best YouTube Sports Moments of 2009 - 5 Social Media Athletes to be Thankful For - 5 Athletes Who Would Have Been Social Media Mavens Tags: fab five, football, jalen rose, List, Lists, nfl, social media, sports

Eight Million And Counting (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 1/6/2010 9:40:18 PM

A few minutes ago, Little Green Footballs recorded its … eight millionth comment. Woo hoo! Woot! Ow ow ow! Yowza! Give it up! Make some noise! Eight million! Yeah! And believe it or not, the person who posted the eight millionth comment was … yours truly. Here it is, comment #8,000,000. I wish it could have been an earth-shaking revelation, perhaps a solution for peace in the Middle East, but instead it was: Whoa, here it comes now… Actually, in a funny Zen kinda way, that is an earth-shaking revelation. OK, maybe just a table-shaking revelation.

Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users By Priya Ganapati (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:11:00 AM

The big, versatile touchscreen ereader from Plastic Logic can handle digital books, magazines, personal documents and even email. The design of the Que is stunning, but at $650 and up, the price is a bit steep.

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Supreme Court Considers Case Over Using Copyright Law To Block Import Of Gray Market Goods By Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 1/7/2010 5:37:02 AM

It's really stunning how frequently we see companies (and individuals) twisting and abusing copyright law to do things way beyond the obvious intentions of the law itself. I had been unaware of this particular case, but Michael Scott alerts us to a legal dispute between Omega (the watch makers) and Costco that the Supreme Court is considering taking, which could have massive implications for whether or not you could legally buy products in the US that were released in other countries. The link above to IP Watch does a really fantastic job explaining all the details clearly, so if you want to dig in, go there, but I'll try to give a quick summary. Basically, lots of companies try to restrict distribution of their goods, even after they're sold -often with things like authorized distributors and such. Many have tried to use trademark law to claim that others cannot sell

their goods, but as the law has evolved, a pretty robust first sale right has been established in many places that effectively says that the manufacturer has no right to control what's done with a product after they've sold it to someone else. Thus, they cannot restrict later resales. One of the ways companies try to get around this is to claim that the products are "different," since first sale rights only apply to products that are the same. But how can a product be different? Well, for example, some companies claim that when they sell through authorized channels, it includes a warranty -- but the unauthorized channels do not include the manufacturer's warranty (even if they include a different warranty) and thus they are "different." Sometimes (bizarrely) this argument works, though other times it does not. In this case, though, Omega tried a different strategy altogether. Rather than claiming it's a trademark issue, it's using copyright law. Copyright law

also has a well-established first sale right, but here's where Omega gets tricky. As Steven Seidenberg at IP Watch explains: There is, however, one significant difference between the first sale doctrines in US copyright and trademark law. Copyright law has an added qualification. Its first sale doctrine, Section 109(a), applies only to copies "lawfully made under this title." Omega argued that because the copies of its watch design were made outside the US, they were not made under US copyright law and were thus not covered by the first sale doctrine. Costco argued that because the copies were made by the US copyright owner, they should be considered "lawfully made" under US copyright law. Of course, being astute readers, you should be asking a very important question: what copyright is there in a watch? Ah, again, Omega gets sneaky: The watchmaker inscribed a tiny, 0.5 cm globe design on the

McCain Drinks the Tea (Little Green Footballs)

2008, and pretty obviously making an appeal to the tea party crowd. In his new radio ads for the US “President Obama is leading an Senate campaign in Arizona, extreme left-wing crusade to John McCain is using the kind of bankrupt America. I stand in his language he spoke out against in way every day. If I get a bruise Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:33:18 PM

or two knocking some heads in Washington — so be it. I’ll keep fighting for jobs and economic growth in Arizona as long as I’m in the Senate.”

underside of its watches. This design is invisible when the watches are worn, so individuals are unlikely to purchase Omega’s high end watches in order to obtain copies of this inconspicuous design. Because this design is copyrighted, however, it may enable Omega to stop the import of grey market watches into the US. Yes, it put a tiny, barely noticeable engraving on the watch, claimed copyright over that design and is using that copyright claim to try to keep certain watches from being resold in the US. In this specific case, it was a set of Omega watches that were legally sold in Europe (where Omega sells its watches at a much lower price than in the US). The buyer then sold that shipment of watches to Costco in the US, who offered them for retail sale. Hence the lawsuit. This appears to be a dual abuse of copyright law -- first using copyright law to try to apply to an entire watch, when its really just a minuscule design that most

people probably don't notice, and second in trying to route around copyright's well-established first sale doctrine with this convoluted argument that goods made in Europe aren't covered by the first sale right. The really scary part? The 9th Circuit Appeals Court (known for some wacky rulings) overturned a district court ruling that had sided with Costco, and said that Omega's arguments made sense(pdf). If the Supreme Court does not overturn this ruling, it will likely mean that plenty of companies will use similar tactics to bar the sale of products originally sold outside the US from being resold in the US. This clearly is at odds with the very basis of copyright law and the concept of first sale rights. Hopefully, the Supreme Court recognizes this, though it doesn't have a very good track record on copyright cases. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Google Chrome for Mac Now Supports Extensions By Scott Gilbertson (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:00:00 AM

The Mac version of Google's Chrome browser now has

experimental support for extensions like ad blockers and password managers. It's available only to early adopters running the developers' release.

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Yahoo Further Bridges the Gap Between Internet and TV By Christina Warren (Mashable!)

working with companies like Sigma Designs and MIPS to bring TV Widgets and Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:09:01 AM Connected TV options to T o d a y a t C E S , Y a h o o i s embedded devices or chip expanding its partnerships and architectures that are used making the TV Widget throughout the consumer Developer Kit publicly available. e l e c t r o n i c s i n d u s t r y . In 2009, Yahoo! launched a Having a device that supports pretty cool product known as TV Widgets really doesn’t mean Connected TV, which is built on anything unless those widgets the venerable Konfabulator can provide cool content. TV widget platform. Basically it Widgets are already available for allows users with compatible services like Amazon Video On TVs to access Internet-enabled Demand, Pandora and CBS, plus widgets for stuff like stock social sites like Facebook and updates, weather tracking and T w i t t e r . Y a h o o i s a l s o even Twitter. Now, you can get announcing recently signed y o u r h a n d s o n e v e n m o r e partnerships with a ton of bigcompelling technology. name content providers For a primer on what Connected i n c l u d i n g : TV and Yahoo TV widgets do, CNBC: The CNBC TV Widget check out this video: enables viewers to interact with More Hardware Partnerships CNBC’s real-time stock quotes and TV Widget Providers direct from the NYSE and Y a h o o h a s a l r e a d y h a d NASDAQ, with real-time watch partnerships in place with lists to track favorite stocks and c o m p a n i e s l i k e L G , S o n y , other key analytics, all while still Samsung and VIZIO to bring TV watching TV. Widgets to their InternetNBC.com: Users can view connected televisions, and they NBC’s show schedule and fullare expanding that relationship to screen photo galleries, and catch include more VIZIO products up on favorite shows with up-to(including the next wave of XVT date recaps, cast bios and more. Series models) as well as Napster: Subscribers can ViewSonic. Yahoo will also be browse, search, preview and

listen to Napster’s entire catalog of music on-demand, as well as enjoy custom radio stations, playlists and Billboard charts. RadioTime: Create your personal selection of music from up to 100,000 radio stations. Sky News TV: Delivers breaking news by text and images to users’ TV sets. It includes seven categories of news: top stories, UK news, sports, business, world news, showbiz and politics. Dailymotion: Access one of largest web video sites in the world through your TV. The Weather Channel: Enables consumers to stay up to date with the current conditions, the fiveday forecast and access regional radar, all accessible in a simple interface with the ability to look up and save multiple locations. Betfair: The world’s biggest betting community provides sports enthusiasts with an online

entertainment experience to enhance their sports television watching in the UK. My-Cast Weather: Provides animated Nexrad radar, hourly to seven-day forecasts, StormWatch, cloud information and more across the United States. Widget Development Kit Finally Gets a Public Release The Yahoo Widget Development Kit(WDK) has finally been fully released to the public. This means that individual developers or larger content providers can offer their own content through the TV Widget platform. While the big names are great to have, if TV Widgets and Connected TV in general is going to be anything more than just an unused option that comes with your shiny new TV, it needs to have compelling third-party content. Yahoo has a history of strong developer relationships, so hopefully they’ll foster the WDK platform to encourage innovation and adoption. What do you think of Connected TV and IPTV in general? Tags: CES, CES 2010, television, tv widget, widget developer kit

Backchecking with ... Steven Stamkos By Christopher Botta (Fanhouse Main)

Filed under: Lightning We get to know NHL players with some quick questions. Today, we meet

Tampa Bay sophomore sensation Steven Stamkos.

Boxee Beta Officially Available for All Platforms [Downloads] By Adam Pash (Lifehacker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:45:00 AM

Windows/Mac/Linux/Apple TV: Boxee—the XBMC media center spin-off that took web video by storm—has just released its first public beta into the wild. The new release comes with a new look, improved features, and a few new tricks up its sleeve. For example, Boxee's just pushed out a very cool Boxee bookmarklet that lets you add any web video to your Boxee queue for easy access next time you're at your media center (for those times you want to watch that video on the big screen). Stick around for a full screenshot tour of the latest and greatest Boxee release (it'll be up soon); in the meantime, Boxee enthusiasts can run over to the new and improved Boxee web site to get their download on. Boxee is a free download, works with Windows, Mac, Linux, and the Apple TV. Boxee[via Boxee Blog]

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Starry, starry 'first light' from NASA's WISE mission (CNET News.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:31:00 AM

This very first image from the WISE space telescope shows 3,000 stars, more or less, in the constellation Carina.(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA ) Just about everybody gets excited about the first picture from a new camera, and NASA is no exception to the rule. In this case, the "first light" image came from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, aka WISE, which NASA sent into space last month. Just last week, the agency popped off the space telescope's "lens cap," a cover that shielded the optical gear from the travails of lift-off and from the spacecraft's own heat. WISE does like things chilly, says NASA--really, really chilly: To sense the infrared glow of stars and galaxies, the WISE spacecraft cannot give off any detectable infrared light of its own. This is accomplished by chilling the telescope and detectors to ultra-cold temperatures. The coldest of

WISE's detectors will operate at less than 8 Kelvin, or minus 445 degrees Fahrenheit. Brr. But the images that come from the 9-foot-tall, 1,400-pound WISE spacecraft will no doubt warm the hearts of NASA's mission planners and legions of astronomers as the telescope scans the firmament for hidden objects, ranging from asteroids to galaxies. In orbit around Earth, WISE will take motioncorrected infrared images every 11 seconds, a rate that the space agency says will result in millions of images of the sky. On Wednesday, NASA released the very first image, taken shortly after the cover was jettisoned and WISE got its initial glimpse of the heavens--in this case, staring at a fixed portion of the sky as NASA engineers calibrated the spacecraft's pointing system. The image shows a section of the constellation Carina, near the Milky Way, that includes some 3,000 stars, give or take a few. It's a patch of the sky about three times bigger than a full moon,

NASA says. The 8-second exposure shows infrared light from three of WISE's four wavelength bands-blue, green and red, which, according to NASA, correspond to 3.4, 4.6, and 12 microns, respectively. Over time, data from WISE will

be used in the creation of navigation charts for other missions, including those of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Alas, WISE's moment of glory won't last long-the frozen hydrogen that keeps the instruments at those necessary ultra-cold

temperatures is expected to evaporate by about October. The first survey of the sky by WISE will take about six months, followed by a second scan, of just half the sky, over three months. NASA will be releasing selected images to the public starting in February. It expects to release preliminary survey images in April 2011, and to have a final atlas and catalog ready by March 2012. And those images should be dandies. WISE has a resolution of 4 million pixels, spread about equally over the system's four detectors. The last time an infrared survey of the sky took place, in 1983, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) taking the pictures could muster only 62 pixels, period. See also: Photos: Hubble's newest visions of space Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Windows 7 the "Fastest Selling Operating System in History" [Operating Systems] By Adam Pash (Lifehacker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:30:00 AM

According to Microsoft's director of marketing Craig Beilinson, "Windows 7 is by far

the fastest selling Operating System in history." And while Beilinson doesn't offer specific numbers, we're not terribly surprised by the claim. Consider that after only having been out

for a few weeks, 41% of

Lifehacker readers were using blowing adoption rate. [ Fast Windows 7 as their main OSâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a Company via Download Squad] number that's likely only grown. We realize the folks who read Lifehacker are often early adopters, but it's still a mind-

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Ray Kurzweil tries to build a better e-reader (CNET News.com)

audiobooks. Kurzweil said that kind of reading experience just isn't LAS VEGAS--Ray Kurzweil possible on current e-readers like knows a little something about e- the Kindle. Plus, he said, most readers. people don't want to carry a The computing pioneer, who separate device just for reading. among other things helped "People want to do everything-develop modern text recognition they want to watch their movies, software, has been working to t h e y w a n t t o d o a l l t h e i r u s e d i g i t a l t e c h n o l o g y t o computing, their e-mail on one improve reading for the past 30 p l a t f o r m , " h e s a i d i n a n years. After years of work on interview. "They don't want to how computers can help those take another device." w i t h l e a r n i n g d i s a b i l i t i e s , Initially, the software will run Kurzweil is now taking aim at on Windows PCs, Apple's the masses. iPhone, and its iPod Touch, His latest project, Blio, is an though Kurzweil wants to make effort to improve the emerging it available on other devices as electronic book field with well. Blio made a brief cameo software that turns e-books into W e d n e s d a y a s p a r t o f t h e more than just a digital copy of keynote speech by Microsoft the print edition. Blio, which is CEO Steve Ballmer. due out next month, is software The Blio software allows for a that combines a full-color digital n u m b e r o f i n t e r e s t i n g book with the ability to add Web enhancements over standard ec o n t e n t , v i d e o , a n d books. In one example, Kurzweil p r o f e s s i o n a l l y n a r r a t e d shows a children's picture book Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:00:00 PM

of the "Three Little Pigs" with the book synchronized to the human-narrated audiobook. As the audio goes on, the word being read can be highlighted. That, Kurzweil says, allows children to improve their reading more quickly. Another type of enhanced book could benefit older students. Kurzweil showed an anatomy textbook with Web content, such as quizzes, built right into the book. Kurzweil said he doesn't see a big market for dedicated ereaders with limited capabilities. All of these enhanced books require work from the publishers, though Blio can handle the task of syncing an audiobook by scanning the text and audio. In that case, it's more a matter of acquiring the rights to both text and audio, though Kurzweil notes that it opens up an opportunity for publishers to sell a premium version of their

books. Under the hood, Blio uses a number of Microsoft technologies, including Windows Presentation Foundation and the XML Paper Specification (XPS). Kurzweil said his company is also working on a Silverlight version of its software that will provide for Mac support. Users will be able to register up to five different devices on which they can read their content, although some textbooks will be limited to just three devices to limit piracy. "They are a little worried about some of your generation," Kurzweil said. For more on Blio, check out my video interview with Kurzweil, embedded above. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Take a Double Exposure Photograph By How-To Wiki (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:40:00 AM

It's one of the oldest tricks in the photo book. But while a double exposure shot is easy to produce on almost any analog camera, doing the trick with digital camera requires some software skills.

Mac OS 10.6.3 to bring many fixes By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

update focuses on stability and core components like AppKit, CoreMedia, Desktop Services, Submitted at 1/7/2010 1:00:00 PM FileSync, Fonts, HIToolbox and Filed under: OS, Software, more. The current build is Snow Leopard The release of 665.7MB in size. Mac OS 10.6.3 moves closer as Reports indicate that nearly 60 Apple has begun widespread crash-happy bugs have been t e s t i n g o f b u i l d 1 0 D 5 2 2 . squashed across more than 90 like printing issues with iCal, According to AppleInsider, this components with this update, M a i l a n d P h o t o B o o t h

(fortunately I haven't experienced those). Additionally, 10.6.3 includes native support for the Magic Mouse. Apple began limited testing in December, and has released several builds since. Now that testing has become more widespread and the fixes increase, we move closer to

release. TUAW Mac OS 10.6.3 to bring many fixes originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Boxee beta now open to all (CNET News.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:24:00 PM

Boxee.tv upgrades its muchdiscussed software to public beta, and can be downloaded now for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The Boxee software, which requires a physical cable connection from your computer to your television, allows users to access local and streaming media using their TV and its remote control. Boxee uses a combination of apps, RSS feeds, and an inprogram browser to make most-but not all--streaming media available to its users. In addition, the program supports content that you've stored on your hard drive, including photos, music, and videos. Boxee works with most major file formats, including OGG and MKV. There's a socializing aspect, so

that you can comment on and share what you're watching with your friends, and it hooks into your Facebook and Twitter feeds, too. The new public beta of Boxee doesn't offer much that's different from the private beta, besides now being open to all. It's not clear that many bugs

were fixed in the month since the private beta was announced in December 2009, although in a blog post Boxee states that "hundreds of bugs have been opened". The company also states that it plans to announce the full stable version at CES 2011. There's now a Boxee

bookmarklet, which allows you to mark specific videos to watch later via Boxee. It's currently limited to a handful of sites, including Vimeo, Blip.tv, YouTube, Break, Metacafe, Viddler, The Onion, CollegeHumor, DailyMotion, HowCast, MTV, FunnyorDie, and Gametrailers. To place it on

your toolbar, drag this link there. New Boxee home screen(Credit: Boxee) Another change is that Boxee will now work on 64-bit Ubuntu, in addition to x86 versions. Boxee will work on 32-bit Windows XP, both x86 and x64 versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, and Intel-based Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and higher. There's no official support for Apple TV yet, although it is planned. For now, there's a work -around hack. Disclosure: Boxee uses some show and community information from TV.com, a CBS Interactive property. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

France's Latest Plan: Tax Google, Microsoft And Yahoo To Fund Record Labels By Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:06:14 PM

If you thought France had already gone off the deep end with its plan to kick file sharers off the internet, now comes the news of a government report that suggests a new plan: tax successful big internet companies, like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and use that

money to fund the "music and publishing" sectors (which basically means the record labels). We've been pointing out how all of these attempts to bolster copyright laws have really been about propping up businesses that haven't been able to adapt, but is there any more blatant example of this than taxing the companies that have figured out how to use the

internet to fund those that haven't?? This is entitlement culture in the extreme. Apparently Nicolas Sarkozy will get "the last word" on whether or not to adopt this policy, which means that it's pretty likely. Sarkozy -- who has a long history of copyright infringement by his own party -- seems to believe that stronger copyright means defending French culture,

when it really just means handouts to a few failing businesses who haven't wanted to adapt. Update: Really good point made by Andrew F in the comments: The Zelnick Report says the tax would kick in anytime an online ad or sponsored link is clicked in France. One of the most controversial items in the report is that it calls for a company to

be taxed regardless of where it is based. If that's legal, it's rather frightening. Nearly any website with ads could be taxed if visited by the French. Just wait for sites to start setting up IP filtering that blocks all French users. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

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Copyright Monopolies In The Middle Of Health Care Reform Debate As Well By Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:39:00 AM

An anonymous reader sent over yet another example of copyright being abused for monopolist reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with "promoting the progress," and actually represent a serious healthcare issue. I had no idea, but apparently the various "codes" used by doctors to classify every visit are actually covered by a copyright held by the American Medical Association, which refuses to allow any free or open distribution of the codes (known as Current Procedural Terminology (CPT)). That's because the AMA makes about $70 million per year "licensing" the codes. I'm having serious trouble figuring out what about the codes could actually be covered

Submitted at 1/7/2010 8:33:00 AM

Johnson & Johnson heiress Casey Johnson's funeral has been scheduled.

Warner Bros. Gets Netflix To Delay Movies; You Don't Save Your Business By Pissing Off Your Customers By Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

and how far out of touch with their customers they must be to think this makes any sense from by copyright, however. They're things effectively the same. While not a huge surprise, it's a business standpoint. What they numbers corresponding to a So why is this bad for pretty worth discussing just how bad an are saying is that they are not particular medical service. As much everyone outside of the idea it was for Warner Bros. going to give in to customer the post above notes, it's things AMA? It makes it that much Studios to get Netflix to delay demand and offer them what l i k e " 9 0 8 0 1 P s y c h i a t r i c more difficult to comparison renting DVDs of its movies for they want, but actually make it Diagnostic Interview." It's shop between doctor's services, 28 days in order to offer up more more difficult, more annoying difficult to see what the creative since publishing such info can streaming content. To recap, the and more confusing for them to component of such a listing is run afoul of the copyrights. One very, very, very confused movie get what they want -- and (at the that would allow it to be granted of the biggest problems in studios seem to think that the same time!) screwing up basic any sort of copyright protection. healthcare today is the fact that way to deal with increasing marketing plans as well. Now, A simple database of codes by the true costs of pretty much competition is to just add more when movies are released on itself shouldn't really qualify, everything are hidden from the windows to releases -- and one DVD and the large group of should it? However, the real consumer through a convoluted way to do that is to delay when people who prefers renting to issue seems to be that Medicare insurance system. The end result you can rent a movie. In the buying goes online to their and Medicaid have required the of any economic situation where studios' incredibly short-sighted Netflix account to do so, they use of these codes, meaning that the true costs are hidden from the thinking, they believe this will won't be able to. Four weeks pretty much everyone needs to buyers is that the market is make more people buy DVDs -- later, they'll be looking for use them... and then has to pay woefully inefficient. But, so the one area of the movie something else. And, for those up for them. While a court did long as that inefficiency lets the business that has been on the who simply want to see it right find that this arrangement clearly AMA collect $70 million per decline of late. At the same away, they're now more likely to involved the AMA misusing its year (double what the AMA time, the studios have been get it in an unauthorized manner. copyright and noted that "the makes from membership dues), pissed off at Netflix for routing Under what set of logic would it adverse effects of the licensing it doesn't seem to care. around them and getting rights to ever make sense to give the agreement are apparent," the Permalink| Comments| Email stream movies from Starz, and as customer less of what they want AMA did some legal tap dancing This Story such, have been denying requests i n a n e r a w h e n i n c r e a s e d to get around the issue and keep to stream more movies. competition from other sources So, the compromise is getting is causing them to already Netflix to delay the rentals in wonder if they should buy your exchange for more streaming product? content. Permalink| Comments| Email It's hard to express just how bad This Story an idea this is for Warner Bros., An ET source says that the support during this trying time. funeral will be held in New York Your thoughts and prayers are on Saturday, January 9. deeply appreciated," family "The Johnson family wishes to spokesman Jesse Derris said t h a n k e v e r y o n e w h o h a s earlier this week. expressed condolences and

Source: Date Set for Casey Johnson's Funeral (ETonline - Breaking News)

Submitted at 1/7/2010 8:23:00 AM

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Tablet OS "has a good bit of new sexy to it" By Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:30:00 PM

Filed under: OS, Rumors, Odds and ends Dan Frommer over at The Business Insider had a nice, juicy tidbit to send out to anyone who is interested in Apple tablet rumors: he's apparently heard from someone who has seen the tablet's operating system, but not By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial reported that LaLa executives window. You'll get a file with a the actual device. Apple Weblog (TUAW)) have been given key roles at name similar to: There were three little quotes Apple, and that members of the "/mzm.ekrigiqi.aac.p.m4a" Now, from the mysterious source in Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:00:00 PM existing iTunes team will report r e p l a c e " . a a c . p . m 4 a " w i t h Frommer's nugget of tablet gold: Filed under: iTS, Internet, to them. While playing with the ".m4r," drop it into iTunes and • It's "pretty" -- obviously. Internet Tools, iTunes Last n e w p r e v i e w s t o d a y , w e sync. You've got a new ringtone! • "The UI has a good bit of new November, Apple launched explored the page's source for Of course, you can't choose the sexy to it." browser-based iTunes previews, any hints of Lala, but found 30 seconds you hear, and that • "It's a big iPhone, but it's not w h i c h g a v e c u s t o m e r s nothing. However, we did come use probably isn't intended by just a big iPhone." information on a song or artist across something interesting. Apple. But if the preview before pushing them out to the Turns out you can easily turn any happens to be what you want, Frommer goes on to mention iTunes Store. It's a handy, 30-second preview into an there you go. recent reports that speculate that welcome change. And now this iPhone-compatible ringtone, and [Via Mac Rumors] the user interface could have a week, they've added 30-second y o u d o n ' t e v e n n e e d TUAW Apple adds 30-second "steep learning curve." However, song samples to those preview G a r a g e B a n d . samples to browser-based iTunes he also brings up the very valid pages ( check it out). Just as you First, find a snippet you're previews originally appeared on point that Steve Jobs would do in the store, you can hear any interested in. Then view the The Unofficial Apple Weblog never let a product out the doors track's sample by clicking the page's source. Scroll down until (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 of Apple if it was difficult to use small "Play" button that appears you see something that starts: 14:00:00 EST. Please see our or required a lot of learning. when you mouse over its name. a u d i o - p r e v i e w - terms for use of feeds. What's "difficult to use?" The There has been speculation url="http://a1.phobos.apple.com/ Read| Permalink| Email this| o r i g i n a l C u l t O f M a c p o s t about the future of a streaming- us/r1000/016/Music/3a/7b/83/mz Comments Frommer alluded to was based version of iTunes since m.ekrigiqi.aac.p.m4a" Copy the concerned about text entry, and Apple bought Lala in November. URL (minus the quotes) and cited Palm's old Graffiti method The Wall Street Journal recently paste it into Safari's Downloads

Apple adds 30-second samples to browser-based iTunes previews

as something that people had problems with. Even Apple's own Newton MessagePad lost market credibility after its handwriting recognition was widely lampooned by the press. As for the rest of the user interface, it is impossible to imagine that Apple will introduce something that is harder to use than a Mac or iPhone. The "new sexy" could be the key Apple design touch that makes the UI something attractive, functional, and desirable. Twenty more days... and I'm sure we'll hear at least twenty more rumors. TUAW Tablet OS "has a good bit of new sexy to it" originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Apple’s New Touchscreen Tech Revealed in Patent Application [PICS] By Ben Parr (Mashable!) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:15:52 PM

A new patent published this morning by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reveals that Apple has some big plans for its already-innovative touchscreen technology. The filing, first uncovered by Patently Apple, goes into detail about not only brighter, crisper displays, but also technology that recognizes when you touch the sides of the device. If you want the deep analysis, we highly suggest reading Jack Purcher’s great post (warning: This isn’t simple stuff). However, the patent boils down to the following: 1. The touch screen can detect if you’re touching the sides on top of the screen. The touch screen would include metal traces in the

borders, which could theoretically be used to create actions based on your hand movements on the side of the device. Imagine your phone unlocking when you just grab it out of your pocket. That’s what this could do. 2. Smarter and easier-to-view screens. One of the things this patent addresses is in-plane switching (IPS), which was developed in the ’90s by Hitachi to fix the problem of not being able to see a screen when it’s not

at an ideal angle. This patent essentially makes it easier to see the screen. 3. Thinner screens. As the NYT Bits Blog discusses in a piece, the patent is also looking to merge LDC and touch panel screens for one seamless device. We’ll be honest — some of this technology is beyond us (something Venturebeat and other publications also admit), so we’ll leave you to look through the patent applications and discuss them in the comments. We’d love to drill down into this patent and figure out what Apple has up its sleeves, so comment if you have any insights for us. Patent Images All images courtesy of Patently Apple: Tags: apple, patent, tech

Philip K. Dick Estate Sends Google Cease And Desist Over Nexus One Name By Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

business, it likely wouldn't violate the trademark that the Dick Estate couldn't get anyway. Last month, we noted that Philip So how does Dick's daughter K. Dick's daughter was quite respond?"People don't get it," Isa upset about the fact (at the time, Dick Hackett said. "It's the unconfirmed) that Google was principle of it." I'm trying to going to call its new phone, the figure out just what "principle" Nexus One -- insisting that this that might be, because there was a ripoff of the Nexus-6 doesn't seem to be any legal robots from Dick's Do Androids principle. It's hard to argue that Dream of Electric Sheep. It's there's any moral principle difficult to see any legal basis either, since "nexus" is a word whatsoever for the claim, but we that's been around since well wondered if Google might just before Philip K. Dick used it. In choose a different name anyway. fact, the only matter of principle Instead, it launched with the I can think of is the one where Nexus One name, and it took someone demands money for little time for the Dick Estate's something where they clearly lawyers to send a cease & desist, have no right to it and have done claiming that it will sue Google nothing to deserve it. Like for "trademark infringement." demanding a big company pay There are a few problems with up because it has a product that, of course. The Dick Estate named sorta similar to something does not have a trademark on your dad wrote decades ago. Nexus anything. Nor could it get Permalink| Comments| Email one since it does not use the term This Story in commerce. Oh, and since the phone is in a totally different Submitted at 1/7/2010 7:10:00 AM

Stop what you're doing and watch this guy with the Golden Girls painted on his face By Bob Sassone (TV Squad) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:29:00 PM

This is the weirdest thing you'll

see all day. A guy painted the women of The Golden Girls on his face, and in this video he...moves his face around while

the show's theme song plays in the background. You will not forget this anytime soon.

[via Kate Aurthur] Permalink| Email this| | Filed under: Other Comedy C o m m e n t s Shows, Video, Celebrities, Reality-Free

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Ford SYNC Will Soon Stream Pandora Radio By Jennifer Van Grove (Mashable!) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:25:56 AM

2010 is shaping up to be the year Ford SYNC forever alters how we experience digital content in our vehicles. Today, the automotive company is breaking even more ground with the news that the next evolution of SYNC will support third-party mobile applications. Get ready to stream Pandora and tweet handsfree in your Ford. Ford is essentially paving the way for running SYNCsupported mobile applications in your car, courtesy of the Ford SYNC API. It will start with support for Pandora for streaming online music, Stitcher

for listening to podcasts in your car, and OpenBeak for safe and hands-free tweeting while driving. The bottom line is that you’ll be able to wirelessly control your smartphone applications in your car via the SYNC system with voice commands and steering wheel buttons. The remarkable development — scheduled for release in 2010 — is ground-breaking when it

comes to technology made available in cars, and certainly outshines the$1,200 Pioneer device with Pandora support. It’s all made possible thanks to Ford’s SYNC API, which will spawn support for the apps mentioned above and also eventually create a much larger application ecosystem. The development also marks the sophistication and evolution of mobile applications. It seems like a dream to envision all our favorite apps functioning in our cars, and yet it’s a reality that Ford is bringing courtesy of its SYNC system. Tags: CES, CES 2010, ford, ford sync, music, pandora, trending

Leno canceled! Leno not canceled! One of them is true! By Bob Sassone (TV Squad) Submitted at 1/7/2010 1:30:00 PM

The industry web site FTVLive.com reported earlier today that NBC was canceling The Jay Leno Show. I'm not a member of that site so I can't read the article, but it looks like it doesn't matter anyway. NBC now says that the story is false and that Leno is staying exactly where he is. Well, that's sort of what they're saying. NBC says that Leno is "performing exactly as anticipated."* The network also says that "both Jay and the show are committed to working

closely with [the affiliates] to improve the performance." Though I think most of the affiliates are probably saying "please get rid of the show." * Really? Filed under: Programming, Celebrities, Reality-Free, Jay Leno Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Sprint exec. on 3G/4G hot spots (podcast) (CNET News.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:34:03 PM

Steve Elfman(Credit: Sprint) LAS VEGAS--On the eve of CES, Sprint announced its Overdrive 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot, a 4.5-ounce device measuring 3.15 by 3.14 inches by .61 inch that creates its own Wi-Fi hot spot. The Overdrive can serve up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices with

a range of about 150 feet. I'm using it now with my laptop, an iPhone, and the new HTC Nexus One smartphone, which runs Google's Android operating system and supports Wi-Fi connectivity. The device, which is manufactured in an unlocked state, can support Sprint's 3G and 4G networks. 3G connectivity, which supports speeds up to 3 in most parts of the United megabits per second, is available States. Typically, 3G runs

between .5Mbps and 1.5Mbps. Sprint's 4G network, which, in theory, can operate at up to 10Mbps, is currently available in 27 markets, including here, but it is slated to be rolled out nationwide this year. By the end of 2010, Sprint says its 4G network will reach as many as 120 million people in the country. At CES, I spoke with Steve Elfman, Sprint's president of

network operations and wholesale, who described the device and how the company plans to roll it out in 2010. Listen now: Download today's podcast Subscribe now: iTunes (audio)| RSS (audio) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Samsung to Launch App Store For HDTVs By Brenna Ehrlich (Mashable!) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:47:36 AM

The experience of watching television is getting revolutionized at CES this year. Samsung has just added to this trend by announcing that it will launch an app store for HDTVs in July 2010. With products like the Boxee Box and the Popbox, as well as services such as DivX TV and Yahoo Connected TV coming on the scene, it’s clear that interactive TV is where it’s at this year. Come this July, Samsung fans will be able to purchase and download applications in the

realms of video, information, lifestyle, games and sports for use on 2010 Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray Players and Home Theater systems. Content partners will include: Accedo Broadband, AccuWeather.com, The Associated Press, Blockbuster, Fashion TV, Netflix, Picasa, Pandora, Rovi, Travel Channel, Twitter, USA TODAY and Vudu.

Samsung already has a mobile app store, which has now been launched in England, France, Italy and Korea (the company plans to expand to 50 countries this year), and the addition of a store for HDTVs will only increase the company’s reach. The question becomes, however: In a market that is becoming more and more saturated with interactive TV technology, how will all the players seek to differentiate themselves from the pack? [via Web Pro News] Tags: App, CES, CES 2010, Gadget, samsung, television

Nexus One tips for iPhone users By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

not the case here. Mr. Knaster obviously loves his iPhone, and offers practical tips for users Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:05:00 AM looking to switch, like: F i l e d u n d e r : H a r d w a r e , • You can simply move the SIM Portables, iPhone Here's an from iPhone to the N1. However, interesting post from Scott you won't get 3G on AT&T, only Knaster, a happy iPhone user and Edge. This hasn't been a big deal Google employee who made a for me. And my iPhone data plan cold-turkey switch to the Nexus seems to work fine for the N1. One for three months (yes, some • I miss the iPhone's silence/ring employees can get their hands on switch, but you can silence the things early). phone by swiping the volume You might expect a Nexus One control on the lock screen. If the (silently) silence. v. iPhone post from a Google phone is already on, hold down employee to be slanted, but that's the Volume Down button to There's a lot more, so read the

CBS Mid Season: Accidentally on Purpose moves to Weds; Miami Medical To Air Fridays at 10p By Robert Seidman (TVbytheNumbers) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:03:06 PM

[ fivefilters.org: unable to retrieve full-text content] CBS released its mid-season update plans today. Miami Medical will take Numb3rs slot beginning

April 2, and Accidentally on Purpose will move to Wednesday at 8:30pm on March 31, to make room for Rules of Engagement which will take the Monday slot.

'Balloon Boy''s Dad Richard Heene Talks to Larry King (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:33:00 AM

Richard Heene, who is also known as the 'balloon boy''s dad, talks to Larry King in his first interview since he was sentenced to jail. ET has a sneak peek as Heene claims it wasn't a hoax. whole thing. He also talks about "We had searched the house high the Dolphin browser with its and low," Heene, who gets support for touch, pinch and emotional and has to stop talking gestures. I haven't used it but for a moment, tells Larry. Then must admit that gestures screen he continues, " Bradford told me seems like a holdover from [that Falcon] went inside [the Graffiti, and not in a good way. craft]. At first, I didn't believe Bradford." [Via Guy Kawasaki] TUAW Nexus One tips for Heene goes on to say that he iPhone users originally appeared eventually came to believe on The Unofficial Apple Weblog Bradford and that he had it in his (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 mind that his six-year-old son 11:05:00 EST. Please see our was in the air. terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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TUAW TV Live: Join us at 5 PM ET today By Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:00:00 PM

We're dreaming of a TUAW tablet... By Erica Sadun (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

write, May your devices be merry and bright... And may your tablet be Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:00:00 PM beautiful and light Filed under: Cult of Mac, Odds Thanks to reader Juan Secin, and ends who imagined and designed this We're dreaming of a TUAW conceptual mock-up tablet TUAW We're dreaming of a Just like the Newton we used to T U A W t a b l e t . . . o r i g i n a l l y own... appeared on The Unofficial Where the touch pad glistens, Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, And the sensors listen 07 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. To hear accelerometer events, Please see our terms for use of and so... feeds. We're dreaming of a TUAW Read| Permalink| Email this| tablet Comments With every blog post that we

Filed under: Video, Podcasting No, we're not trying to throw off your internal calendar even more than the start of 2010 may have. The TUAW TV Live show has been moved from the usual day of Wednesday to today since event. your host, Steve Sande, was If you want to hear a bit 'o news mentally out to lunch yesterday about Apple-related products at and double-booked himself at the C E S , P r o j e c t 3 6 5 , S t e v e ' s normal time for the Ustream

favorite iPhone camera app, and any other topic we can squeeze into one hour, be sure to drop by at about 5 PM ET (2 PM PT) and join in on the fun. TUAW TUAW TV Live: Join us at 5 PM ET today originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

TXT.IO Takes Minimalist Microblogging to the Extreme By Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb)

What TXT.io does offer, however, are RSS feeds and a mobile version of the site. Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:35:14 AM TXT.io is an experiment in O n c e u p o n a t i m e , Sponsor minimalism and won't appeal to microblogging was all about For users who want to do a bit everybody. Indeed, "elitist simplicity. Today, even services more with their text (link, microblogging" is the service's like Posterous that started out as underline, italicize, HTML tagline. Sometimes, though, very simple and easy-to-use tools headers, etc.), TXT.io offers simple tools like this are exactly have begun to add more and support for the Textile markup what it takes to bring us back to more features. Microblogging, l a n g u a g e . F e a t u r e s ? W h a t the basics. Minimalist text however, can't get much simpler F e a t u r e s ? editors like Ommwriter or than TXT.io. The service offers Besides this, though, TXT.io WriteRoom, for example, are nothing more than a simple text offers almost no other features. popular because they only focus interface. No more, no less. You The service, for example, doesn't on one thing and do it extremely log in with a Google account, allow you to add images to a well. Discuss type your message and hit post and developers won't find "post." an API to add to their tools.

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The Fiskie Award for 2009 Goes To: A Raving Freakazoid Nut Sandwich (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:50:14 AM

He spreads End Times craziness and has guests who suggest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the Antichrist. He constantly predicts that the end of America is imminent. He asserts that President Obama is a “racist with a deep-seated hatred of white culture.” He says President Obama is part of a decades long communist plot to destroy the country. He thinks the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan

is a hotbed of commie propaganda. He promotes a book by W. Cleon Skousen, a crazed work of conspiracy theories that served as an inspiration for the John Birch Society. He interviewed a spokesman for the Birch Society, and said their ideas are “starting to make more and more sense.” He spread a conspiracy theory that the Cash for Clunkers website was part of a plot to take over your computer and confiscate everything you own. He compares Fox News to Jews during the Holocaust. He

rants about the government over a backdrop of Nazi demonstrations.

And that’s just the short list. He’s a creationist, a climate change denier, a conspiracy theorist, a demagogue — and he weeps frequently on the air, sometimes after hearing the songs of Paul Anka. So now, without further ado, we present the winner of the coveted Idiotarian Award for 2009 — who else? — Glenn “ Raving Freakazoid Nut Sandwich” Beck. (Illustration by Lizard Army operative Jaunte.)

Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:00:00 PM

Cord free might be a tiny exaggeration, but today's featured workspace has cords that are so well managed they might as well not even be there. Lifehacker reader R1P5AW has a simple but tidy workspace. You'll be hard pressed to see so much as a single cord on his triple Dell monitors. He used black foam pipe-insulation to

keep the cords tightly managed and out of sight behind the monitors. Complimenting the "Where are the cords?" motif of his workspace, his keyboard and

mouse are wireless, resting on a spacious XTRAC XXL mouse pad. Check out the pictures below to see how he keeps the cords out of sight:

By Whitson Gordon (Lifehacker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:55:00 AM

Back in November, Apple introduced the ability to see what songs were available in the iTunes store through your web browser, but it looks like they've finally added the piece de résistance (or rather, the thing that really makes this useful)—30-second song previews. Before you click through on a link that'll open up If you have a workspace of your iTunes, you can hover your own to show off, throw the cursor over the title of the song pictures on your Flickr account in a browser preview to bring up and add it to the Lifehacker a play button, allowing you to Workspace Show and Tell Pool. confirm that the song in question Include some details about your is really what you think it is. If it setup and why it works for you, is, you can hit the link to view it and you just might see it featured in the iTunes store and buy it. If on the front page of Lifehacker. you don't keep iTunes open all T r i p l e S c r e e n s a n d C o r d the time, but if you want to Free[Lifehacker Workspace check whether something's Show and Tell Pool] available, it's likely a quicker solution than opening up iTunes just to preview a song. iTunes Charts[via 9to5Mac]

Triple Screens and Cord Free [Featured Workspace] By Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker)

iTunes Browser-Based Link Previews Include 30-Second Song Previews [Music]

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Gadget and Gear Deals of the Day [Dealhacker] By Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:00:00 AM

We've got a roundup of the usual suspects today: deeply discounted HDTVs, laptops, and computer gear as well as free music, iPhone apps, and every episode of LOST free-for-thewatching on Hulu. Computer Gear! • Dell Vostro 220 Slim Desktop + 21.5" 1080p LCD for $399 + $35 shipping(Regular Price: $661) • 15.6" Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop for $499.99 + $9.95 shipping(Regular Price: $620) • 14" Lenovo ThinkPad T410 Core i5 Laptop for $999 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $1,345) • 14" ASUS K40IN-C2 Laptop for $648 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $752 use this form) • 13.3" Toshiba Satellite T135 Laptop for $524.30 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $749) • 10" MSI Wind U100 Netbook for $249.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $280 use coupon code SHINE1030) • Dell Vostro 220 Dual Core Desktop Plus 22" LCD Display for $399 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $661) • 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS 64MB Hard Drive for $80.32 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $95 use coupon code FRESH15- use this form) • 7 Piece Electronics / Computer

Tool Kit for $2.49 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $5) • 16GB SuperTalent Pico-C STU16GPCS Flash Drive for $28.04(Regular Price: $41 - use coupon code FRESH15) • Canon PIXMA iP2600SE Photo Inkjet Printer for $24.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $40 - use coupon code EMCLMLV42) • Dell Studio Desktop 2.5GHz and 22" Monitor for $650 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $1047) • 18.4" Acer Aspire AS8735G6502 2.2GHz Laptop for $799 with free shipping(Regular Price: $848.95) • 17.3" MSI CX700 Laptop for $579.99 plus $2.79 shipping(Regular Price: $665) • 16" Toshiba Satellite A505S6993 Laptop for $1049.25 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $1399) • 15.6" Acer Aspire AS5739G6959 Notebook for $650 with free shipping(Regular Price: $800) • 15.6" Lenovo G550 Dual Core Laptop for $449 + Free

Shipping(Regular Price: $549) • 15.6" Lenovo IdeaPad G550 Intel Dual-Core T4300 2.1GHz Laptop for $449.00 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $499) • 15.6" Dell Inspiron 15z Laptop for $650 plus shipping(Regular Price: $899) • 15.5" Sony VAIO NW Laptop for $649.95 plus $14.99 shipping(Regular Price: $680) • 14" ASUS N81Vp-D2 Laptop for $749.95 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $1032 use this form) • 14" ThinkPad T400 Laptop for $ 6 2 8 . 1 5 + F r e e Shipping(Regular Price: $1,205 use coupon code USPTHINKPAD) • 13.3" Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 1.3GHz Laptop for $799 with free shipping(Regular Price: $1,059) • 10.1" Dell Mini 10 Netbook for $329.00(Regular Price: $354) • 10.1" Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t Multi-touch Netbook Tablet for $549 with free shipping(Regular Price: $599) • 10.1" Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3

1.66GHz Netbook for $369 with free shipping(Regular Price: $429) • 10" Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 Netbook for $369 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $429) • 26" Samsung T260HD ToC 1080p LCD for $319.95 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $329.99) • 24" Samsung 2494SW 1080p LCD + Keyboard/Mouse for $ 1 8 9 . 9 9 + F r e e Shipping(Regular Price: $244 use coupon code R7TKTQQ489DLF$) • 22" LG W2253TQ-PF 1080P Widescreen LCD for $159.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $189) • 22" Samsung SyncMaster T220HD Widescreen LCD for $ 2 0 9 . 9 9 + F r e e Shipping(Regular Price: $249.49) • 21.5" Dell S2209W HD for $119 with free shipping(Regular Price: $199) • 19" Auria LCD for $150 with free shipping(Regular Price: $250)

• Windows 7 for $95 with free shipping(Regular Price: $110) • 64GB Super Talent UltraDrive ME SSD for $184.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $252 use coupon code LION0430) • Intel X25-V 40GB 2.5in Internal SSD for $129.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $149) • 14" ASUS K40IN-C2 2.2GHz 4GB RAM 500GB HDD Laptop for $648 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $775.99 - use this form). • Canon Selphy ES30 Compact Photo Printer for $59.95 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $74.30). • Logitech QuickCall USB Speakerphone for $8.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $21) • Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless headset for $44.99(Regular Price: $69.95 use coupon code logi_pcchat_1510) • RAZER Mako 300W RMS 2.1 Speaker System for $179.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $255.88 - use coupon code EMCLMLS47) • Logitech MX1100 Cordless Laser Mouse for $33.99(Regular Price: $59.95 - use coupon code logi_mx1100_1510) • Logitech MX 1100 Cordless Laser Mouse for $33.99(Regular Price: $59.95 - use coupon code logi_mx1100_1510) • Logitech Alto Express Notebook Stand for $4.99(Regular Price: $28) GADGET page 43

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• D-Link DUB-H7 USB 2.0 7Port Hub for $13.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $24 use this form)

$799 + Free Shipping(Regular Price: $875) • 42" Panasonic VIERA TCP42S1 Plasma HDTV for $ 7 2 9 . 9 9 + F r e e Home Entertainment Gear! Shipping(Regular Price: $797) • 52" Samsung LN52B630 • 40" Samsung LN40B650 LCD 1080p LCD HDTV w/ Red ToC HDTV for $999 with free f o r $ 1 , 2 8 9 + F r e e shipping(Regular Price: $1,099 Shipping(Regular Price: $1,389) use coupon code: Samsung200) • 60" 50PS60 Plasma HDTV for • NETGEAR Digital Entertainer $968.18 with f r e e Live for $86.97 + Free shipping(Regular Price: $1,087 - S h i p p i n g ( R e g u l a r P r i c e : use coupon c o d e $109.99). LOGICBUY20) • 52" Samsung LN52B750 • 55" Samsung UN55B8000 1080p 240 Hz LCD HDTV for LED TV for $2,399.99 + Free $1699 + Free Shipping(Regular Shipping(Regular Price: $2519) Price: $1849). • 5 2 " S h a r p A Q U O S • 32" Hitachi Alpha L32A403 LC52D85U LCD HDTV for 720p LCD HDTV for $349.99 $1,179 with f r e e with free shipping(Regular Price: shipping(Regular Price: $1445) $399.99) • 50" Panasonic TC-P50S1 • O n k y o H T - R C 1 8 0 7 . 2 Plasma HDTV f o r Channel Home Theater Receiver $899.99(Regular Price: $1099) f o r $ 5 9 1 . 2 6 + F r e e • 47" Sharp LC47SB57UT LCD Shipping(Regular Price: $650 HDTV for $799.00 + Free use coupon code BONUSBUY) Shipping(Regular Price: $899) • Philips HTS8100/37 • 4 6 " T o s h i b a R E G Z A AmbiSound Home Theater 4 6 X V 6 4 5 U L C D T V f o r Sound Bar w/Integrated 1080p$ 8 9 9 . 9 9 + F r e e Upscaling DVD/MP3 Player for Shipping(Regular Price: $997) $ 2 9 7 . 0 0 + F r e e • 55" LG 55LH85 1080p 120Hz S h i p p i n g ( R e g u l a r P r i c e : Wireless HDMI LCD TV, Plus $ 3 3 2 . 9 9 ) $500 Gift Card for $2,299.99 + • Polk Audio Monitor 40 2-Way Free Shipping(Regular Price: Bookshelf Speakers (Pair) for $2600) $ 1 1 4 . 9 9 + F r e e • 4 2 " T o s h i b a R E G Z A Shipping(Regular Price: $213 42ZV650U LCD HDTV for use coupon code EMCLMLS75)

• Winegard HD-1080 VHF/UHF/FM Antenna for $31 with free shipping(Regular Price: $70) • 3 Port HDMI 1.3 Mini Switch with Auto Switching for $10.99(Regular Price: $23)

• BOSE Around Ear Triport Headphones for $125.95 with free shipping(Regular Price: $139.99) • BOSE On-Ear Headphones for $161.95 with free shipping(Regular Price: $179.95) • Ultimate Ears TripleFi 10 Portable Gear! Noise-Isolating Earphones for • TomTom GO 630 4.3" WS $ 1 9 9 . 9 9 + F r e e GPS w/ Text-to-Speech & Shipping(Regular Price: $299.97 Bluetooth for $134.70 + Free - u s e c o u p o n c o d e Shipping(Regular Price: $168) l o g i _ 3 f i 1 0 _ 1 1 1 0 ) • Flip Mino Camcorder 60min • Ectaco 5" High Resolution eB l a c k f o r $ 9 9 . 9 9 + F r e e Book Reader for $119.99 + Free Shipping(Regular Price:$125) S h i p p i n g ( R e g u l a r P r i c e : • Creative Zen X-Fi 16 GB $ 1 7 9 . 9 9 ) Video MP3 Player w/WiFi & • Logitech ClearChat Wireless Built-In Speaker for $129.99 + USB Headset for $44.99 with Free Shipping(Regular Price: free shipping(Regular Price: $167.52) $70.95 - use coupon code • GE Universal Remote with logi_pcchat_1510) Find–It Feature for $14 with free • Casio Exilim EX-S12 12MP shipping(Regular Price: $32) Digital Camera for $169 + Free • S a m s u n g H M X - H 1 0 0 Shipping(Regular Price: $185) Compact Full High Definition • MINOX DCC Leica M3 5MP Camcorder Bundle for $299 plus Digital Camera for $123.95 + shipping(Regular Price: $449) Free Shipping(Regular Price: • Magellan Roadmate 1220 GPS $159) for $90 with f r e e • Clarion VZ309 3.5-Inch Single shipping(Regular Price: $117) -DIN Multimedia Station with • Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere 2 USB Port for $139.99 + Free Compact Speakers for iPod and Shipping(Regular Price: $202) iPhone for $99.99 + Free S h i p p i n g ( R e g u l a r P r i c e : Free Stuff! $144.99) • "I Love the 80s" (1880s • B O S E I n - E a r / S E C Classical) Mp3 Album, 26 songs Headphones for $89.99 with free for $0(use this form) shipping(Regular Price: $99.99) • Nicoderm CQ sample & $7

Coupon for $0(use this form) • Gamefly 10-day Video Games rental for $0 • Lost: Seasons 1 thru 5 Available for Free(Regular Price: $) • Finger Physics (iPhone/iPod Touch) Game for $0(Regular Price: $0.99) • Yaki Frog (iPhone/iPod Touch) for $0(Regular Price: $1.99). • Yachting Magazine(use this form) • Free MP3 Download from MTV (P.O.S., La Roux, The Temper Trap, and more)(use this form) • Love In Stereo (Jerome Isma Ae Remix) by Liquid Soul(download here) • Is There Nothing We Could Do ? by Badly Drawn Boy(download here) • Jungle Crash Land (iPhone) for $0(Regular Price: $.99). Thanks Dealzon, TechDealDigger, Slickdeals, Fatwallet, TechBargains, CheapStingyBargains, CheapCollegeGamers, and GamerHotline!

Magnitude-4.1 Quake Rocks San Francisco Bay Area (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 1/6/2010 10:28:38 PM

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

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Sleep Cycle Analyzes Your Sleep Patterns for a Better Wake-Up [Downloads] By Lisa Hoover (Lifehacker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:00:00 AM

iPhone only: Getting jolted awake by your alarm in the middle of a great dream is a drag. The Sleep Cycle app watches your slumbers and wakes you when you're lightly dozing, instead of right before you win the lottery. Sleep Cycle uses your iPhone's accelerometer to monitor your movements during the night and determine when you're most likely in and out a dream state. Before you go to bed, set the app's alarm clock, then place your iPhone on the corner of your bed (putting it under the fitted sheet will keep it from sliding around). If you're worried about accidentally dialing someone in the middle of the night, you can put your phone in Airplane Modeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;just don't lock it, or the app will turn off. As you move around during the night, Sleep Cycle records your activity and, over the course of two or three nights, gradually learns your sleep patterns. Beginning about 30 minutes before your alarm is set to go off, the app begins watching for the

lightest portions of your sleep cycle and gently prods you awake with your choice of soothing preset sounds. I've been using the Sleep Cycle for a few days and it's been pretty interesting to learn about when I'm most restless during the night. I already know I don't sleep well (or long enough), but the app is helping me figure out how to make the best of the sleep

morning, I have yet to be roused out of a dream by the app's alarm. Whether it's just a coincidence and I'm already coming out of a dream cycle when the alarm goes off, or that it does indeed sense when a good time to wake me is, I have no idea. I'm just glad to be able to avoid that dead-on-my-feet feeling that sticks with me all day when my REM cycle is interrupted. Sleep Cycle isn't meant to be a scientific tool for people with medical sleep issues, but rather an unobtrusive way to get a little insight into your sleep patterns. Plenty of variables factor into the results it gathers, including whether you're the only one in bed and how far away from your phone you squirm during the I d o g e t . W h e n I c h a n g e night, but for only 99 cents, variables like the time I go to Sleep Cycle seems worth picking bed, the temperature of the room, up if you're curious about what or the sounds I fall asleep to, you're doing deep into the night. Sleep Cycle is helping me What restful sleep tips do you pinpoint the best sleep strategies. have for getting through the day For instance, I learned that I toss without dragging? Talk about and turn far longer before them in the comments. Sleep sinking into a deep sleep if I read Cycle an ebook before bed instead of a dead tree version. As for waking up in the

NBC Denies Rumors Jay Leno Was Fired (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:05:00 AM

Is "The Jay Leno Show" getting the axe? Rumors are ripe today that the former late night king of talk will be losing his 10 p.m. berth on NBC. But an NBC spokesperson tells ET: "Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. As we have said all along, Jay's show has performed exactly as we anticipated on the network. It has, however, presented some issues for our affiliates. Both Jay and the show are committed to working closely with them to find ways to improve the performance." NBC executives will be addressing this issue in more detail on Saturday when they meet with reporters at the Television Critics Association. Check back for updates.

Celebs Dazzle on the People's Choice Awards Red Carpet (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:10:00 AM

Sandra Bullock, Carrie Underwood, Kate Walsh, Taraji P. Henson and others heated up

the red carpet at Wednesday night's People's Choice Awards 2010 in Los Angeles.

Click through ET's gallery to see the stars' sizzlin' styles from the big night!

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How The Web is Transforming Personal Finance By Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb)

If you are interested in sponsoring the rest of this Content Series on Personal Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:12:27 PM Finance, please contact our COO Not too long ago, personal Sean Ammirati. Mint: Leading finance tools like Quicken and the Charge Microsoft Money used to be Currently, the two most wellb o u n d t o t h e d e s k t o p . known online tools for personal Exchanging information with f i n a n c e m a n a g e m e n t a r e your banks used to be a hassle. arguably Mint and Intuit's Keeping track of credit card Quicken Online. purchases was often a question Mint stood out from the pack of waiting for statements to early on because the company arrive by mail and then entering made it extremely easy to keep data by hand. Today, free tools track of all your expenses. After like Mint, moneyStrands and giving Mint access to your bank Wesabe make it easy to track all and credit card account, the of this information. Thanks to service simply downloads your this, you can now get a better financial information at regular overview of your personal intervals and organizes it. Mint finances than ever before. can even track your 401(k) for Sponsor you. Editor's note: This story is part Mint launched in September of ReadWriteWeb's Personal 2007 and quickly became the Finance series, a weekly, three- darling of the Web 2.0 world. month-long look at how the Unlike most of its desktop-bound Internet has transformed personal competitors, Mint managed to finance. Up until April 15, which talk to virtually every bank and is the deadline for U.S. readers to credit card issuer from day one. file their taxes, we'll be looking In October 2008, Mint came out at how personal finance has of beta. Today, the company has evolved, analyzing top web tools more than 1.7 million registered a n d p o s t i n g v i d e o o f o u r users and sees roughly 700,000 conversations with the people active users every month. In who are shaping the online world October 2009, the company was of personal finance. signing up 30,000 new users per

A number of other tools are competing more directly with Mint. Wesabe, for example, also focuses on giving users an overview of how they spend their money. Sadly, Wesabe makes downloading your information from your checking and credit card accounts a bit week. M i n t ' s s u c c e s s d i d n ' t g o more difficult than Mint. Since acquiring Exepnsr, unnoticed by the incumbent m a r k e t l e a d e r s a n d I n t u i t Strands now also offers its own acquired Mint in October 2009. personal finance tool for setting I n N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 9 , I n t u i t up and tracking personal budgets announced that it would begin to and staying on top of your phase out Quicken Online in finances. Geezeo- which was f a v o r o f M i n t . M i c r o s o f t founded in 2006, and also looks suspended sales of Microsoft a lot like Mint, has a very strong Money on June 30, 2009 and focus on budgeting. doesn't plan to compete in the Most of these tools focus on the market anymore. Beyond Mint U.S. market, but more and more While Mint gets most of the of them are also now available mindshare on the web these outside of the United States. days, it's by no means the only Kublax, for example, offers a player in this market. Indeed, the Mint-like service in the U.K. success of Mint has given rise to Going Mobile a plethora of similar tools and Just like almost every other l e g i t i m i z e s t h e e f f o r t s o f category of online tools, personal companies that tried to enter this finance tools are also making the move to mobile. Mint and market before Mint. C l e a r C h e c k b o o k . c o m , f o r Wesabe, for example, offer both example, launched in May 2006. an iPhone app and mobileThe company focuses on optimized websites. Most bringing checkbook management importantly, all of these services are also able to send out alerts to online. your phone - either through push

alerts on the iPhone or as text messages. Whenever you run the risk of exceeding your credit card limit, for example, these services will send you an alert. Of course, a number of banks have also gotten into this game and now offer their own mobile apps. The Bank of America, Chase Mobile and Wells Fargo apps are currently among the top 10 most downloaded free finance iPhone apps, for example. When it comes to paying your bills, apps like BillMinder and BillTracker make it easy to never forget when a bill is due. What's Next? Over the last few years, the web has clearly transformed the way we use personal finance software. Over the next few months, we will have a closer look at the current generation of personal budgeting and finance tools on the web. We will also analyze the current trends around online finance software. This is the first post in our upcoming series about personal finance. If you are interested in sponsoring the rest of this Content Series on Personal Finance, please contact our COO Sean Ammirati. Discuss

Gary Coleman Released From Hospital (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:52:00 AM

Former child star Gary Coleman

has reportedly been released from a Los Angeles hospital after being admitted on Wednesday. The "Diff'rent Strokes" actor is

doing fine following a slight a hotel before he was taken to the s e i z u r e , a c c o r d i n g t o t h e hospital in an ambulance on Associated Press. Coleman, 41, Wednesday. was feeling faint and vomiting at The actor's agent tells AP that

Coleman returned to the hotel after his release and is planning to return home on Thursday.

Tech News/

Web Apps Meet Consumer Electronics at CES By Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb)

innovation for Internet technology for a few years now. At CES Samsung has Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:00:00 AM announced its new LED 9000 The 2010 edition of the model TV, using Samsung's Consumer Electronics Show ( Internet@TV technology. This CES) gets into full swing today television is connected to the and already we're seeing a big internet via Wi-Fi and is able to trend emerging: web applications hold up to 100 apps. Consumers b e i n g p o r t e d t o c o n s u m e r third LCD screen is added if the will receive a handful of free electronics, from the technology system is upgraded to 'MyFord web apps when they buy the TV inside cars to Web-enabled TVs. Touch'. Check out the Motor set. Other apps will be released Yesterday we noted that online Trend website for more detailed by vendors and may cost money. music service Pandora will be information. An early example is one Napster made available in cars, courtesy The online music integration in announced at CES - a free of a new Pioneer device that will MyFord is one example of the N a p s t e r T V w i d g e t w h i c h begin selling in March. The s l i c k s m a r t p h o n e - l i k e provides access to the Napster pricey $1,200 device detects functionality becoming available subscription music service. users' Pandora settings via their in cars. MyFord will include HD We know that more and more iPhones. Other evidence of this radio with song tagging, which real world objects are being trend can be found in Ford's lets users find more information connected to the Internet - a announcement of a new in-car about an artist or song on the trend that we track closely called MyFord also has a Internet of Things. But this is system and Samsung's latest Web. unified music library, which lets slightly different. Internet-connected TV. users browse music from a What we're seeing at CES this Sponsor variety of onboard audio sources. y e a r i s m o r e a n d m o r e Web Apps in Your Car This morning Ford CEO Alan In December Ford announced mainstream consumer items, Mulally delivered an opening that its SYNC-enabled vehicles such as cars and TVs, having k e y n o t e a d d r e s s a t C E S , w i l l b e c o m e r o l l i n g W i F i web applications integrated. unveiling Ford's latest car hotspots- enabling passengers to These are apps that we've technologies. One of the things connect to the Internet when a become familiar with in the Web he announced is MyFord, an cellular modem is plugged into 2.0 world - Pandora, Napster, Internet-enabled "cabin tech" the car's USB slot. At CES, Ford iTunes and others. Music and system. As reported by CNET, announced it will include a Web entertainment especially is MyFord will include two 4.2- browser that displays on the making inroads, but we're sure to inch color LCDs: one for vehicle MyFord Touch 8-inch LCD. see web apps from other sectors information such as engine Web Apps on Your TV integrated into consumer speed, temperature, and trip data; The car is just one of many e l e c t r o n i c s t o o . D i s c u s s and the other for audio, phone, consumer products being Weband navigation information. A ized. The TV has been a focus of

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Notify Your Neighbors: EveryBlock Launches UserContributed Announcements By Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb) in the near future. MSNBC acquired EveryBlock in August Until now, all the news on the 2009. hyperlocal news site EveryBlock Creating a 21st Century was compiled by the site's Community Message Board editors and algorithms. Today, As EveryBlock's founder Adrian EveryBlock launched a nifty new Holovaty noted in today's feature that allows its users to announcement, the new feature is post stories to the site and notify "intentionally open-ended." their neighbors about interesting EveryBlock wants to give its events in their neighborhoods. users the ability to send out The new feature allows users to a n n o u n c e m e n t s f o r " e v e r y post anything from news alerts to i m a g i n a b l e p u r p o s e " a n d questions and classified ads on describes this new feature as a the site. These alerts will also " 2 1 s t c e n t u r y c o m m u n i t y now appear in EveryBlock's message board." To enhance this newly enhanced iPhone app ( interaction between users, every iTunes link). place page on EveryBlock now Sponsor also features a discussion board. These announcements will be Overall, this is an important clearly labeled as thus and move for EveryBlock. The site is messages will also be published now more interactive than ever to nearby neighborhoods, ZIP before. Thanks to these new user and block pages so that other contributions, the information on users in the immediate vicinity the site will also now become can also see them. even more timely and relevant, Currently, EveryBlock is only too. Discuss available in a select number of cities in the U.S., though the service plans to expand its reach Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:32:06 AM

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crowdSPRING: Creative Solutions Platform or 'Spec Work' Enabler? By Chris Cameron (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:02:00 AM

It's too often that we read about a startup with an intriguing idea only to be completely turned off by the bland-looking design of their website. Granted, we don't all have the Jedi-like abilities it takes to create a snazzy logo or website, so when we need something designed, we outsource it to a graphic designer - and there are tons to choose from. In most cases, the company in need will look over a selection of designers, review portfolios, and pick one to come up with a design. But why only choose to employ the abilities of one designer when you can crowdsource the project and pick from an unlimited number of submissions from a vast community of designers? The controversial but still successful crowdSPRING does just that. Sponsor Founded in 2008, the Chicagobased company is an online

marketplace for creative services that connects small business in need of graphic design with freelance designers. The business creates a project, outlines the details and requirements of the design, sets a deadline and places a cash reward for the potential winner. Then designers submit their entries and once the deadline is reached, the company picks a winning design. CrowdSPRING has recently been at the center of heated debates in the design community as some denounce the site for promoting "spec work" - a term used to describe work done without any guarantee of compensation. Sites like Spec Watch and NO!SPEC are attempting to raise awareness about spec work, pinpointing sites like crowdSPRING as unethical businesses. "There is a certain irony in spec work," writes Elisabetta Bruno on NO!SPEC. "A prospect

requesting it is ultimately saying, 'My project isn't important enough to hire a professional who will take the time to understand my situation and goals and invest the time needed to create a suitable solution'." For providing their platform, crowdSPRING takes a 15% cut on all deals made through the site, but offers a money-back guarantee if a project receives less than 25 entires. If your project passes this number, you better be satisfied with the designs because you're then "promising to pick a winner," the site says. Regardless of these criticisms, crowdSPRING has continued to grow, claiming that over 47,000 designers use the site in over 150 countries, and that more than 6,000 contests have been completed. The company has even attracted large brands like Italian pasta company Barilla, which has created a contest calling for a unique new pasta shape with three $1,000 payouts. Discuss

Heroes will be back next season (says Greg Grunberg) By Bob Sassone (TV Squad) Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:34:00 PM

This isn't an official announcement at all, but Heroes star Greg Grunberg says that Heroes will be back next season (and he can read minds, so he should know). Grunberg tells Michael Ausiello that the show just finished filming the season finale, and that even though the episode is "cliffhanger-y and exciting," it would not serve as a series finale for the show. There are too many plot points still up in the air. He's sure the show will be back. While I wouldn't be surprised at all if a TV network cancelled a show before giving it a "proper" ending, I think Grunberg is probably right about this. The show does good enough, it's strong in time-shifted viewing,

Cop Trip Canceled [Nypd] By Pareene (Gawker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:51:29 AM

Though the plan has been

scuttled, Mayor Bloomberg was (BTW, his weekend home is his apparently going to send some mansion in Bermuda.) detectives from the NYPD Gang Unit down to his weekend home, to help the local police out.

and the DVD sales are good. Like Grunberg, I think NBC will announce that next season is going to be the last, and that way the writers will know the show is ending and will be able to give it the ending that fans deserve. Filed under: Heroes, RealityFree Permalink| Email this| | Comments

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Yahoo! Brings the Web to Blu-Ray By Mike Melanson (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:05:50 AM

Yahoo! announced plans today at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to spread its tentacles deeper into the Internet-connected TV market, inking new deals with TV, media player and processor manufacturers, as well as releasing its widget development kit and signing on with new content partners. When we looked at the rebirth of the Web TV last year, we had one major reservation - would people really buy a new TV just for the widgets? "Probably not," we said. This year, Yahoo! is bringing the Internet into our other devices, so we don't have to. Sponsor Yahoo! is stepping it up in the Internet-connected TV game, which is an area we saw boom at last year's CES. This year we're

seeing much of the same. Skype announced its entrance into the Internet-connected TV market on Tuesday, while Samsung announced today that it will offer the Napster widget on its TVs. According to the press release, new deals with MIPS, Sigma Designs and ViewSonic will enable Yahoo! Widgets to be embedded not only in Internetconnected TVs, but in a number of other devices, such as media players, "Blu-ray players, network players, AV receivers, and cable/IPTV set-top boxes." This is a big move because, while we may not want to replace our widescreen TV, we might be in the market for a Bluray player. Today's announcement also highlighted deals with a number of new content providers, including Showtime, CNBC,

Napster, The Weather Channel and more. But do we really need The Weather Channel widget when we can have just The Weather Channel, itself? Maybe. Maybe not. But the company's release of its widget development kit to the general public might open the doors to some interesting new widgets. Cory Pforzheimer, a spokesperson for Yahoo!, told us earlier today that keeping the WDK private was an issue of working together with TV manufacturers and software developers. "TV manufacturers weren't really used to updating after they sent out their units. There's no such thing as a beta on a TV," he said. "The last thing Samsung wants is calls when someone's Facebook widget doesn't work." The combination of affordability and potential for innovation here could be just enough to bring the Web back to the TV through the side door. Discuss

Lots of changes coming to CNN (and they don't involve Kathy Griffin) By Bob Sassone (TV Squad) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:01:00 PM

It's a new year and CNN has decided to shake up it's daytime lineup. Here's what's going to happen later this month. • Heidi Collins is leaving the network. Her last day is January 15. • Ali Velshi is taking over the 1pm to 3pm slot. • Kyra Phillps moves to the 9am to 11am slot. • Rick Sanchez keeps his 3pm to 5pm slot but his show gets a new name, Two Hours of Annoying Talk and Viewer Comments with Rick Sanchez. Actually, it's called Rick's List, which is an even worse title.

• Wolf Blitzer's show will be cut by an hour. I like watching Phillips in the afternoon (I don't usually watch any of the cable news channels in the morning) so I'll miss her, but Velshi is a good choice. [via TV Newser] Filed under: News, Programming, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Chuck season three -- An early look By Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 1/7/2010 1:02:00 PM

This Sunday night, Chuck returns to NBC for a special twoepisode, two hour jump start into season three. Expect to be dazzled. NBC was good enough

to send an impressive press kit for Chuck's new season, including five episodes. For those of you who were concerned about how the show would handle the many changes promulgated by the end of last season, you can relax. While it's now has the fully integrated no spoiler to reveal that Chuck Intersect 2.0 inside his head,

complete with martial arts skills and other talents (Flamenco guitar?) it's also not a surprise that having all that in his brain doesn't mean that life is any easier for a simple, Burbank IT guy. Continue reading Chuck season three -- An early look

Filed under: Programming, Ratings, Early Looks, Chuck, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

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Former Apple Marketing Chief Confirms: Tablet Info Leaks Are Intentional By Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog)

stock market to avoid accusations of stock manipulation. Submitted at 1/7/2010 7:38:41 AM Maybe most interesting about This shouldn’t be a surprise to Martellaro’s inside look at anyone, but a former senior Apple’s marketing machine is marketing manager at Apple his list of reasons for fabricating posted an article today a leak like this one: “confirming” that the company Controlled leaks are almost does indeed purposely leak always the solution to a problem. information in order to amplify In this case, it could have been the buzz surrounding an that Apple needed to release the upcoming product, or for any high: tablet information early because number of other reasons. The ex- The way it works is that a senior it wanted: Apple employee in question, exec will come in and say, “We • to light a fire under a John Martellaro, wrote about the need to release this specific recalcitrant partner process in an article on The Mac information. John, do you have a • to float the idea of the $1,000 Observer. trusted friend at a major outlet? price point and gauge reaction Citing specifically a piece that If so, call him/her and have a • to panic/confuse a potential r a n M o n d a y ( s u b s c r i p t i o n conversation. Idly mention this competitor about whom Apple required) in the Wall Street information and suggest that if it had some knowledge Journal, which claimed to were published, that would be • to whet analyst and observer confirm that the Apple tablet nice. No e-mails!” expectations to make sure the existed and would be announced T h e k e y t o a s u c c e s s f u l right kind and number of people in January and released in intentional leak is to ensure that show up at the (presumed) Jan. March, Martellaro talks about deniability exists on all sides. 26 event. Apple hates empty Apple’s use of “controlled Often, information floated in seats and demands SRO at these leaks,” a process by which it is leaks isn’t final, and something events. able to release information about the product will change without hurting its reputation for before production actually Suspicions are one thing, but never discussing pre-release occurs, and if there’s no trail and confirmation is another entirely. products. Martellaro is in a very no evidence to point to, both This look inside the extremely good position to know about Apple and the news outlet are successful Apple information what goes on, because he was protected against claims of control mechanism is very himself told to do the same thing h a v i n g d i s s e m i n a t e d f a l s e helpful when it comes to sorting on multiple occasions. information. Official leaks are fact from fiction in the rumor Here’s how Martellaro describes published after the close of the mill. the order coming down from on

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Larry King Unclear on Difference Between Roman Polanski and Charles Manson [Media Crack] By Hamilton Nolan (Gawker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:32:13 AM

In your thawing Thursday media column: Further evidence that Larry King is losing it (more so), Ted Koppel's still got that pizzazz, troubles at Print magazine, and everything remotely associated with the Redskins is corrupt. Last night Larry King accidentally accused Roman Polanski of a brutal murder. But hey, the real amazing thing is how Larry can talk to anyone about anything! Whattaya know, good old Ted Koppel is bringing his fine self back to the small screen, of news! ABC is reportedly trying to get Ted to come back and host "This Week" after what's his name, the young fella, golden boy, left. " Friends say Koppel would most like to be secretary of state, but that this perch might be a satisfactory alternative." Uhh. Take what you can get,

Ted. Print magazine has reportedly canned respected editor Emily Gordon in what some fear is a prelude to the canning of Print magazine as a whole. Recently deceased DC sportscaster George Michael was the undisputed king of DC TV sports guys, and also his station was totally paying off the Redskins in exchange for access. Fuck the racist-ass "Redskins," btw.

Your Best Shot 2009: Abandoned By Kevin Collins (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:02:24 PM

• 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.

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Large Hadron Collider Powered By…Apple? By Olly Farshi (TheAppleBlog)

called the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment. While it’s not clear if this is an officially If you check out the webcams at sanctioned MacBook, using the European Organization for Apple gear for scientific research N u c l e a r R e s e a r c h ’ s C M S is nothing new. project, you may just observe Drew McCormack is Chief something rather unexpected. Developer over at The Mental Although the picture below is Faculty. Alongside creating apps from CERN, it’s much more akin for Mac and iPhone to aid to a boring office space than a learning, he’s also a board scientific laboratory. However, member of MacResearch.org, an look a little closer and you might independent community of notice something out of the scientists using Apple software ordinary. It seems that some of and hardware for their research. the research at CERN may be Drew took a moment to explain powered by Apple. why Apple is on the rise in the The scientists over at CERN are scientific community, “There has doing some serious research, been a trend over the last few using data from the Large years in US Universities for Hadron Collider for something students to buy a MacBook or Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:00:53 AM

MacBook Pro. This has given Apple a leg up in higher education.” Mac’s aren’t just for science students though, as Drew explains, “The rise in student

uptake of Macs is gradually leading to more and more interest in Macs as scientific workstations. A Mac can be used to answer email, surf the web, and write scientific articles, but it

can equally run highperformance calculations. This is due to the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X, and more recently to Apple’s emphasis on performance in Snow Leopard. Technologies like OpenCL and Grand Central are very attractive to scientists who need to crunch numbers.” Over the coming years, perhaps we’ll see a few scientific breakthroughs made possible by Apple devices, that is if the LHC doesn’t trigger the end of the universe and ultimate destruction of humankind first.

Facebook iPhone App Update Brings Push Notifications, Contact Sync By Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 1/6/2010 2:44:46 PM

It seems like forever ago that Facebook promised push notification support in version 3.1 of its incredibly popular iPhone app(iTunes link). Now it has arrived, just in time to usher in 2010. 3.1 brings the promised push notifications, and also the ability to sync your Facebook contacts with your iPhone’s Address Book for a more seamless communication experience.

Right away upon opening the app, you’ll be asked if you want to enable push notifications, and you’ll also encounter a dialog box asking you about contact syncing. Turning syncing on will automatically add links to the Facebook profiles of all the people it finds in your address book, and you can also choose to replace the photos for those contacts with their Facebook profile pictures. As for the push notifications, they apply whenever someone sends you a new message, or whenever you receive a new wall

post, friend request, friend confirmation, photo tag, event invitations and updates, and comments. If that seems like a lot, you can go ahead and

selectively disable any options you don’t want to receive a push notification about. I’m actually very happy with the implementation. It means I can disable email updates for most of those things. Here’s what it looks like when you receive a message. Not too much info, but it gets the job done. Contact syncing seems to be a little hiccupy at the moment, but that might only be because I’m also using MobileMe to sync my address book across all computers. It does appear to be working very slowly despite

some error messages, though, but I find that the “fb://” format links don’t open anything on the Mac. Probably because the Facebook app developers didn’t count on people who have a desktop syncing system implemented. They automatically launch the FB app on the iPhone, though. What do you think? Well done, or were you looking for more from Facebook push?

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TV Ratings: Ugly Betty Wednesday Debut Weak; People’s Choice Leads CBS; Middle, SVU Season Highs By Robert Seidman (TVbytheNumbers)

minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent. Share (of Audience): The Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:29:56 AM percent of households (or Ugly Betty’s move to persons) using television who are Wednesday night produced just a tuned to a specific program, 1.6 adults 18-49 rating station or network in a specific (compared to its Friday average area at a specific time. (See also, of 1.23). That’s less than what Rating, which represents tuning Eastwick(1.7 rating) averaged in or viewing as a percent of the the timeslot and will not save the entire population being show from cancellation. measured.) CBS’ reality special I Get That Time Shifted Viewing– Program A Lot scored a 2.9 adults 18-49 ratings for national sources are rating. Nice for a reality special, produced in three streams of data but down 15% from its first – Live, Live+Same airing on 4/1/09. The People Day(Live+SD) and Live+7 Day. Choice Awards were chosen by Time shifted figures account for more adults 18-49 this year, and incremental viewing that takes the most since 2006, rising 13% place with DVRs which are to a 3.4 rating from last season’s currently in approximately 3.0 rating. 24.4% of all U.S. TV A special The Middle at 8pm competition, Law & Order: SVU approximately 11 AM (ET) the significantly from the final h o u s e h o l d s . L i v e + S a m e scored just a 2.2 adults 18-49 jumped 39% to a 3.2 rating day after telecast, and are results, because the data reflect Day(Live+SD) include viewing rating, but in its regular 8:30 compared to its last original r e l e a s e d t o s u b s c r i b i n g normal broadcast feed patterns. during the same broadcast day as timeslot the show earned a 2.7 telecast, hitting a season high. customers daily. These data, For example, with a World the original telecast, with a cutrating, up 13% from its last The Jay Leno Show nearly tied from the National People Meter Series game, Fast Affiliate off of 3:00AM local time when original regular timeslot episode Ugly Betty with a 1.5 rating, sample, are strictly time-period Ratings would include whatever meters transmit daily viewing to and a new season high if it holds which was in line with its information, based on the normal aired from 8-11PM on affiliates Nielsen for processing. Live+7 broadcast network feed, and in the Pacific Time Zone, up in the finals. Either way, a Wednesday average. Day ratings include incremental include all programming on the following the live football game, good omen for renewal. Modern viewing that takes place during Family was up 5% from its last Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 The affiliated stations, sometimes but not game coverage that the 7 days following a telecast. original episode to a 4.1 rating. Nielsen Company. All Rights including network programming, begins at 5PM PT. The same For more information see sometimes not. The figures may would be true of Presidential Cougar Town was way up (18%) Reserved. Numbers 101. from its last original telecast to a You can see TV ratings from include stations that did not air debates as well as live award Five Filters featured article: other recent Overnight ratings the entire network feed, as well s h o w s a n d b r e a k i n g n e w s 3.3 rating. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: as local news breaks or cutaways r e p o r t s . NBC’s Mercy sank to a 1.7 reports here. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, for local coverage or other Rating: Estimated percentage of rating, down 6% from its last Definitions: Term Extraction. regular telecast and tieing its Fast Affiliate Ratings: These programming. Fast Affiliate the universe of TV households lowest rated telecast ever. Free first national ratings, including ratings are not as useful for live (or other specified group) tuned f r o m C r i m i n a l M i n d s demographics, are available at programs and are likely to differ to a program in the average

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Up 13% Over the Year-ago Night Opposite Increased Competition, ABC’s 2-Hour 8-10pm Comedy Block Ranks No. 1 in Adults 18-49 By Robert Seidman (TVbytheNumbers) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:02:10 AM

via press release: Up 13% Over the Year-ago Night Opposite Increased Competition, ABC’s 2-Hour 8-10pm Comedy Block Ranks No. 1 in Adults 1849 ABC’s “The Middle” Hits a Series High Among Adults 1849 Retuning to Original for the 1st Time in 4 Weeks, “Modern Family” Stands As Wednesday’s No. 1 TV Show in Adults 18-49 with BestSince-Debut Results “Cougar Town” Generates its Strongest Numbers Since MidOctober In its 10pm Premiere, “Ugly Betty” Marks Season Highs and Produces ABC’s Best Numbers with Regular Programming in the Hour in 10 Weeks Wednesday Night (8:00-11:00 p.m.) Opposite stiff competition from CBS’ special lineup(“I Get That a Lot”/”People’s Choice Awards”), ABC took second place on Wednesday night

among Adults 18-49, while ranking No. 1 with its 2-hour comedy block from 8:00-10:00 p.m.(3.1/8-tie). On its first original airing in 4 weeks, ABC’s “Modern Family” emerged as Wednesday’s No. 1 TV show in the key young adult sales demo.

biggest overall audience(8.2 million) since its series debut telecast– since 9/30/09.

“Modern Family” (9:00-9:30 p.m.) The No. 1 TV show of the night in Adults 18-49, ABC’s Modern Family won the 9:00 p.m. halfhour by 28% over its nearest • Despite the heightened year-to competition(4.1/11 vs. 3.2/8 – -year competition from the C B S ’ “ P e o p l e ’ s C h o i c e “People’s Choice Awards,” ABC A w a r d s ” ) . was up over the year-ago night • In Total Viewers(10.2 million) against the awards show by and Adults 18-49(4.1/11), “ 13%(2.6/7 vs. 2.3/6 on 1/7/09). Modern Family” achieved bestsince-debut results. The show “The Middle” (8:00-9:00 p.m.) hit series-high ratings with key On its first original telecasts in a Men(M18-49/M25-54). month, opposite CBS’ 1-hour special“I Get That a Lot,” back- “Cougar Town” (9:30-10:00 t o - b a c k e p i s o d e s o f A B C p.m.) freshman comedy “The Middle” At 9:30 p.m., ABC’s “Cougar finished as the Top 2 regular Town” finished in a near tie for programs in the hour among first place among Adults 18Adults 18-49, beating NBC’s 49(3.3/8), while winning its halforiginal Mercy by 41% on hour across each of the Men average in the key young adult demos(M18-34/M18-49/M25sales demo (2.4/7 vs. 1.7/5). 54). In fact “Cougar Town” • In its regular 8:30 p.m. finished as the No. 2 TV show of slot,“The Middle” tallied series- the night in all key Men, behind high numbers with Adults 18-49, only “Modern Family.” Adults 25-54, Men 18-49 and all Five Filters featured article: k e y W o m e n d e m o s ( W 1 8 - Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: 3 4 / W 1 8 - 4 9 / W 2 5 - 5 4 ) . T h e PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, comedy also generated its Term Extraction.

Everybody Just Cool Out, NBC Isn't Canceling Leno [Dead Peacocks] By Richard Lawson (Gawker)

the tone of the memo wasn't exactly sunny ("we're working to improve the show," essentially). The rumors of Jay Leno's And that big, bad (coughing, c a n c e l l a t i o n a r e g r e a t l y dying) NBC bothered to even exaggerated, NBC said in a respond to some random internet statement today. Everything's rumor at all confirms what we've fine, his talk show gets exactly long known: the show was dead the ratings they'd expected, etc. on arrival and NBC knows it and Though, doesn't their need to it's all a big mess and oh why issue a statement imply just the can't it be the '90s again? The opposite? '90s were perfect! As The Daily Beast points out, Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:10:19 PM

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The CW Offers Facebook Fans a Special 10 Minute Preview of “Life Unexpected” By Robert Seidman (TVbytheNumbers) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:58:17 AM

via press release: THE CW OFFERS FACEBOOK FANS A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF FIRST TEN MINUTES OF NEW DRAMA “LIFE UNEXPECTED” PRIOR TO SERIES ON-AIR DEBUT Through Partnership with Ustream, Critically Hailed Drama Gets Sneak Peek Across All CW Facebook Pages to More Than 5.4million Registered CW Fans Beginning January 11 January 7, 2010 (Burbank, CA) ? In an innovative digital promotional push, The CW Network announced today it will present a special sneak peek of the first ten minutes of its critically acclaimed new series Life Unexpected for the network’s Facebook fans beginning Monday, January 11, 2010, a week prior to making its on-air debut Monday, January 18 (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET). To power

this unique event, The CW partnered with Ustream, the leader in live video on the internet. By utilizing the Ustream on Facebook video application, this special screening of Life Unexpected will be offered across all of The CW’s Facebook fan pages, including the main CW page and all CW series pages, totaling more than 5.4 million fans and marking the first

time a screening has taken place across multiple Facebook pages. Fans who catch the Life Unexpected preview during the first 24 hours will be able to provide comments live as they watch the video. After the first 24-hour window, viewers will still be able to watch the sneak preview and read the commentary posted by those first day fans. The CW’s online portal (

from one foster family to another, has decided it’s time to become an emancipated minor. Her journey through the legal maze leads Lux to her biological parents, Nate “Baze” Bazile (Kristoffer Polaha, “Mad Men”) and Cate Cassidy (Shiri Appleby, “E.R.”). When a judge unexpectedly grants temporary joint custody to Baze and Cate, they agree to make a belated attempt to give Lux the family she deserves. Life Unexpected is produced by CBS Television Studios and Warner Bros. Television in association with Mojo Films with executive producers Liz Tigelaar (“Brothers and Sisters,” “What www.cwtv.com) will embark on About Brian”), Janet Leahy a h e a v y d i g i t a l c a m p a i g n (“Boston Legal,” “Gilmore promoting the Facebook Girls”) and Gary Fleder screening and encouraging ( “ O c t o b e r R o a d ” ) . viewers to sign up as fans of the Five Filters featured article: Life Unexpected Facebook page. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: The site will also host a wide PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, variety of behind-the-scenes Term Extraction. clips and cast interviews. Life Unexpected is the story of 15-year-old Lux (Britt Robertson, “Swingtown”), who, after spending her life bouncing

FKIA’s Daily Double: Grrr Power! By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 1/6/2010 1:10:29 PM

What could Tiger and I have in

common? A lot more than Lasik and baseball caps... — Anne Slowey Let me know what you love—and if you have any

questions, e-mail me at

AnneSloweyFashionKnowItAll @elle.com. Follow ELLE on Twitter. Become our Facebook fan!

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Updated: Is The Jay Leno Show Really Canceled? (answer: No)

Chace Crawford and AList Actresses Added to List of Golden Globe Presenters

By Bill Gorman (TVbytheNumbers)

(ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:39:00 AM

Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:12:29 AM

Reports have appeared this morning that The Jay Leno Show will be pulled by NBC after the Winter Olympics. Other reports contradict that. I remain very skeptical of these “reports”, but if Jay really is off NBC’s schedule before the end of this season, I will be enjoying an entree of the finest crow! Updated from Robert, NBC has released the following statement: “Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. As we have said all along, Jay’s show has performed exactly as we anticipated on the network. It has, however, presented some issues for our affiliates. Both Jay and the show are committed to working closely with them to find ways to improve the performance.” While that doesn’t block the door from possibly canceling the show in the future, and wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement,

and is (another) public admission of issues it presents for the local affiliates, it’s not the same thing as “pulling the plug.” Hibberd posts: But note that while the report uses the headline that NBC is “pulling the plug” on Leno’s show, but in his radio interview the author outlines two possibilities — saying some at NBC want to pull Leno after the Olympics, while others want to

wait until NBC’s large crop of pilots come in and then examine whether they’re suitable replacements. That sounds more like some of our commenters than an official report! While i have no doubt there are some at NBC who aren’t happy with the Leno show, it seems very unlikely they’d do anything as soon as after the Olympics, but either way, that will be here soon

enough and we’ll know for sure. For now, it just sounds like an unhappy affiliate caught someone (besides NBC’s) attention and if that affiliate couldn’t get the show pulled, it could at least make a hectic morning for NBC PR. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

The Golden Globes are almost here and the list of A-list presenters is getting longer with Cameron Diaz and Jodie Foster joining the list of presenters at the awards ceremony. In addition, "Gossip Girl" star Chace Crawford will take the stage. These celebs will join the likes of Halle Berry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson, Gerard Butler and Robert De Niro. The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards, hosted by comedian Ricky Gervais, will air live January 17 on NBC.

Bush Admin Lawyer Charged with Attempted Wife-Murder [Ugh] By Pareene (Gawker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:12:02 AM

Former Deputy White House

Counsel J. Michael Farren has been arrested and charged with attempting to kill his wife. He reportedly beat her with a

flashlight, and she is "lapsing in and out of consciousness" in a hospital. George W. Bush brought in Farren in 2007, when

his administration faced a whole B u s h a n d i n R e a g a n ' s lot of investigations and Department of Commerce. subpoenas. Farren previously had worked for George H. W.

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Morgan Spurlock on the Simpsons 20th anniversary documentary

NJ airport video shows guard leaving post (AP)

By Joel Keller (TV Squad)

(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:02:00 PM

I've been holding this interview for almost six months, but I think it was worth it. When I was in Pasadena last summer for the TCA press tour (whose winter edition I'll be leaving for on Friday morning... eep!), I spoke to Morgan Spurlock about the 20th anniversary film he was making about The Simpsons. FOX has finally decided to air that film, entitled The Simpsons

20th Anniversary Special -- In 3D! On Ice!, on January 10, along with the venerable cartoon's 450th episode. Spurlock was just in the initial

some of the interesting things he learned about the show made for a fun interview. Since I didn't know how long the movie was going to be, I start the talk by expressing some surprise about its length. Continue reading Morgan Spurlock on the Simpsons 20th anniversary documentary s t a g e s o f f i l m i n g t h e Filed under: The Simpsons, documentary when I talked to Interviews, Documentary, TCA him, but his views on the show, Press Tour, Reality-Free how it and the perception of it Permalink| Email this| | has changed over the years, and C o m m e n t s

Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:34:00 PM

Stephen buzzed up: Midwest bracing for heavy snow, wind chills of -50 (AP) 29 seconds ago 2010-0107T12:34:45-08:00 Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Gwyneth Paltrow Will Never Answer for Her E-Crimes [Blogging For Dollars] By Ryan Tate (Gawker)

any "material connections" we have with the people and companies we blog about, Blogging her poops. Deflating celebrities are held to a different Scarlet Johansson. And now, standard. apparently, taking blog bribes You see, famous people are that are federal crimes for the already presumed to be amoral rest of us. These are but a few of schwag whores, unlike typical Gwyneth P a l t r o w ' s bloggers (?!?!). So celebs don't transgressions, and the FTC will have to explicitly disclose when continue to let them happen. they're being amoral schwag Paltrow, the FTC has hinted in whores. Paltrow has become an interview with Daily something of a test case: Finance's Jeff Bercovici, is not Bercovici caught her on her bound by the same blogging Goop.com touting a hotel that rules as ordinary everyday probably â&#x20AC;&#x201D; her reps won't say associate director Rich Cleland wouldn't comment on her p e o p l e . W h i l e w e , t y p i c a l â&#x20AC;&#x201D; comped her free lodging. Americans, must now disclose Federal Trade Commission specific case, but indicated that Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:40:04 AM

in situations like hers the FTC would probably consider "consumers' expectations" about her compensation: The average consumer, Cleland said, might well be aware that celebrities of Paltrow's stature often receive free clothing, trips and other swag. "It is one of the issues where celebrity endorsements are a little different than person-on-thestreet endorsements," he said. "Would consumers understand that celebrities are always getting free stuff? It's a factual question." So celebs are exempt from

disclosure rules because they are assumed to be untrustworthy, while newspapers and magazines are assumed to be exempt from the disclosure rules because they are assumed to be trustworthy. Non-celebrity bloggers, meanwhile, are a big unknown mysterious force, and thus subject to special federal regulations. At least until we elect Perez Hilton global blogger spokesman for life, making the state of our ethics crystal clear to everyone, and disclosures a thing of the past.

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It Would Be a Great Time to Rent an Apartment If You Had Any Money [Recessionomics] By Hamilton Nolan (Gawker) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:32:31 PM

The Way We Live Now: Rentin' like 47 apartments at the same time! And what is to stop us? It's a renter's paradise out there. As long as you're not jobless or getting robbed or naked and/ or freezing. US apartment vacancies are at a 30-year high. And you know what that means: Knock a couple hundred off the rent, dude, or kiss my sweet ass goodbye, because I know those new condos in Bed-Stuy are desperate enough to beat your offer.

Indeed, it's not uncommon these days for people to rent an apartment for a night, set it on fire, and rent another one, just to avoid the hassle of visiting Hotels.com. Renting is the

"thing" these days! If you are the type of fool who bought an apartment in the last couple years, we bet you really feel like a jerk, don't you? A foolish jerk, at that.

The only problems in this renter's fantasy land: Unemployment is rising, our engagement rings are getting stolen right off our fingers, stores would rather burn old clothes than let poors get their hands on them, and farmers are freezing their balls right off from here clear on down to Tampa. So it's a great time to rent except you're unemployed and broke with no prospects for the future. Marble countertops or better! [Pic via]

Your Best Shot 2009: The Eyes Have It By Kevin Collins (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 1/7/2010 7:57:01 AM

â&#x20AC;˘ 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.

Plaxico Burress' bid for work release denied By Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:25:55 AM

NEW YORK -- Plaxico Burress is not getting out of prison just yet. The work-release application for the former New York Giants star receiver was denied by the New York Department of Correctional Services because of the nature of his crime. Burress pleaded guilty in August to attempted criminal possession of a weapon for having a loaded handgun in a nightclub that went off and shot him in the leg.

"At no time did you report this incident to local law enforcement. As such, it is determined that you must serve a greater portion of your sentence prior to consideration for potential participation in the temporary release program," the ruling said. The program would have allowed him to spend some portion of his two-year sentence at home. The announcement was made Thursday. Burress applied for the furlough Nov. 25, about two months into his sentence. Though he had no prior record, the decision wasn't

a surprise; less than 5 percent of the more than 31,500 workrelease applications in 2008 were granted. Burress can appeal, and may also reapply for work release in six months. His attorney, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment. Burress, who was a member of the Giants at the time, was at the Latin Quarter nightclub in November 2008 with a .40caliber gun tucked into the waistband of his track pants. He later said he was concerned for his safety because a teammate had been held up at gunpoint

days before. The weapon slipped down Burress' leg and fired, injuring his right thigh. The gun wasn't licensed in New York or New Jersey, where Burress lived, and his Florida concealed-weapons permit had expired. He also failed to report the incident to authorities. Prosecutors argued the bullet narrowly missed a security guard. Manhattan Chief Assistant District Attorney Mark Dwyer said a quick furlough would send a bad message. The district attorney's office did not immediately comment Thursday

on the application denial. Burress is being held in protective custody at an upstate prison because of his notoriety. The Giants released him in April, but the 32-year-old said he hopes to resume his NFL career. Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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What Further Punishment Awaits Arenas? (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)

suspension, perhaps worse,’ it’s the ‘perhaps worse’ part that should wipe any smile off Bringing a gun to the locker Arenas’s face for awhile,” the room had probably already Washington Post’s Mike Wilbon earned Gilbert Arenas a long, in- w r i t e s . “ N o t o n l y i s t h e season furlough. Joking about remainder of his $111 million his behavior through Tweets and contract in jeopardy, so perhaps pretending to shoot teammates are his playing days in the during warmups before an NBA NBA.” game likely bought him an even At CBS Sports, Ken Berger says longer exile. Among the many the recent off-court nonsense is unanswered questions for the shifting the focus away from the Washington Wizards star is tremendous talent on the court. when that exile will end. NBA “And yet look at the headlines commissioner David Stern, that crossed Stern’s desk this calling Arenas “not currently fit week: Jayson Williams, awaiting to take the court,” suspended another trial on a reckless Arenas without pay indefinitely manslaughter charge in the Wednesday. Associated Press shooting death of a limousine Bang, bang, you’re suspended. driver, crashed his Mercedes A r e n a s , w h o o v e r c a m e SUV into a tree on Manhattan’s tremendous hardship growing up FDR Drive and faces a DWI to become a wealthy young man, charge,” Berger writes. “Right has built up plenty of good will on cue, Arenas decided this over the years. But he’s not would be a good time to make a finding many friends now. “Even pathetic joke out of his own though he grew up broke, even firearms incident, which is though he’s less than a decade before a District of Columbia removed from remembering grand jury that could indict him ‘what it was like,’ he’s still a on felony charges for carrying a professional athlete,” Yahoo’s pistol without a license.” Kelly Dwyer writes. “And ESPN’s J.A. Adande puts the professional athletes, as has been mess squarely on Arenas. “The proven time and again, year after reason Gilbert Arenas had to year, just have no idea how life leave now, the reason he has actually works. It’s not a g o n e f r o m f r i v o l o u s t o basketball thing, or an African- dangerous, is that he doesn’t American thing, or even an seem to grasp the concept of American thing.” consequences,” Adande writes. “If you read Stern’s statement on “When you meld that trait with a the matter, where he says, ‘The known penchant for harboring actions of Mr. Arenas will guns, you have a threat. That’s ultimately result in a substantial what Gilbert has to be considered Submitted at 1/7/2010 7:55:41 AM

now. At the very least, he’s a threat to this image-conscious league’s perception in the public eye.” The Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg lists his reasons why Arenas doesn’t deserve to play. At The Baseline, Bethlehem Shoals argues we shouldn’t confuse sports with morality.* * * The debate about a collegefootball playoff can wait for another day. Thursday night in Pasadena we’ll see a pair of high -quality undefeated teams clash when No. 1 Alabama faces No. 2 Texas in the BCS title game. Though the teams’ quality isn’t necessarily equal. Texas’s escape from the Big 12 championship last month with a 13-12 win over Nebraska prompted many people to expect the Crimson Tide to roll over the Longhorns. In the Los Angeles Daily News, Vincent Bonsignore predicts it will take a major upset for Texas to win the championship, its second in five years. The Austin AmericanStatesman’s Kirk Bohls thinks defenses will rule in a game that features two stellar quarterbacks: Texas’s Colt McCoy and Bama’s

Greg McElroy. The close-knit community of Tuscola, Texas, is solidly behind McCoy, who moved to the small town in seventh grade, Chris Dufresne writes in the Los Angeles Times. Texas has become a breeding ground for top quarterbacks, Austin Murphy wrote last month in Sports Illustrated. USA Today’s Kelly Whiteside chronicles the rise of the two quarterbacks at the tradition-rich programs. In the Dallas Morning News, Kevin Sherrington says he thinks McCoy will need a Vince Young -like performance for the Longhorns to prevail against the heavily favored Tide. A national championship for Bama running back and Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram will be bittersweet. His father won’t be at the Rose Bowl to celebrate. Instead, Mark Ingram Sr. is serving 92 months in jail over bank fraud and moneylaundering charges, Gary Shelton writes in the St. Petersburg Times. Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts checked in with the elder Roberts earlier this season. In the Birmingham News, Kevin Scarbinsky credits three men for the Tide’s decade-long climb to the top. The Journal’s Darren Everson says Thursday’s game will be hard pressed to be as entertaining as one of the best games in college-football history, the

Longhorns’ 41-38 win over USC in 2006. The Crimson Tide-Longhorns rivalry has been one-sided. The Tide is winless in eight tries against Texas, the Houston Chronicle’s David Barron writes— though none of today’s players were born the last time they met, in 1982. The Atlantic’s Gary Andrew Poole, saying money has corrupted college football, calls the BCS championship game a “ uniquely American absurdity.” Be sure to come back here this evening, as Darren Everson liveblogs the BCS championship game.* * * The Redskins have their coach, Mike Shanahan, who signed a five-year contract Wednesday. Now comes the hard part: building the Redskins into a winning team. In the Washington Post, Thomas Boswell cautions fans about getting too exuberant over a team that’s talent-thin and years removed from excellence. At Fox Sports, Alex Marvez wonders whether Shanahan will be the same mastermind he was when bringing two Super Bowl titles to Denver.* * * It took nine tries, but outfielder Andre Dawson is finally going to Cooperstown. Dawson, for years the face of the Montreal Expos before signing with the Chicago Cubs, was the only player to get the 75% support from baseball’s WHAT page 60

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The Count: Hall of Fame Voters Snub Stats (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 1/6/2010 1:36:34 PM

Voting for the baseball Hall of Fame has been announced, and the only candidate to be inducted is one who wasn’t a favorite of sabermetricians. Andre Dawson had a career on-base percentage of .323, yet received 420 votes, 15 more than the minimum necessary. Meanwhile, not one of the top candidates favored by those who look past wins and RBIs — Bert Blyleven, Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martinez, Barry Larkin, Tim Raines and Alan Trammell — made the cut. Still, there are signs those who prefer more sophisticated and reliable indicators of baseball excellence will eventually receive satisfaction. Blyleven, in his 13th year of eligibility, and ballot newbie Alomar each came close enough to induction to give hope for next year. Associated Press It was close but no cigar for Bert Blyleven in the last round of Hall of Fame balloting. So, for voters who might be feeling more charitable next year, below is a guide to other notable candidates and what the numbers say about their worthiness for enshrinement. Edgar Martinez:(36.2% of the vote) Lots of sabermetricians like him, and the Mariners lobbied for his enshrinement.

Sure, he was primarily a specialist — a designated hitter — but so were many of the relief pitchers who have been enshrined. Still, he has to demonstrate not that he was the best DH ever, but that he was as valuable as other Hall of Famers were in their careers. And he probably was. The New York Times adjusted Martinez’s stats for his position and found him still worthy of induction, though just barely. He was certainly a better hitter for more years than Don Mattingly was. His best playoff performance rivals that of Jack Morris, whose candidacy seems built on his own playoff excellence. Sports Illustrated’s Joe Posnanski says Martinez is the best hitter up for election. One of Martinez’s prominent detractors used the time-honored method of comparing him to the best players in Cooperstown rather than the worst. ESPN’s Rob Neyer sees the vote as a test of how much enlightened analysis has affected those who get to fill out ballots. Voters appeared beforehand, from publicly announced ballots, to be split roughly 50-50, but Martinez fell shy of that mark. Tim Raines:(30.4%) The speedster’s case is a slam dunk, Neyer wrote. Posnanski wrote much the same. Raines even reached base over 4,000 times, if

you count the errors. Bert Blyleven:(74.2%) The number-crunchers essentially are unanimous in their support. Count Blyleven himself among their number: he wrote a column for MSNBC touting his numbers, and questioning the importance of win totals. Other stats have been used against him even though the bulk of important numbers favor his candidacy. However, don’t use his 1979 season — with 20 no-decisions — as the bulwark of your case for his lack of run support, as he pitched poorly in many of those no-decisions. Jack Morris:(52.3%) Most of the number-minded observers vote no. There’s little evidence he racked up high ERAs by pitching to the score — giving up runs when the game was out of hand — as his backers claim. Mark McGwire:(23.7%) It’s a mixed bag, though many acknowledge he probably won’t get the vote because he admitted using a then-permitted performance-enhancing drug while playing, and has been

accused of using other PEDs, though he’s denied that. Neyer cautions against calling McGwire one-dimensional at the plate, though — Big Mac could get on base and hit for power, two fundamental skills. And whatever he did might be no worse than the misdeeds of the greats of the 1970s. Still, his overall value simply wasn’t that impressive to some analysts. Other candidates: Barry Larkin(51.6%) may have been the best of the newbies on the ballot. Jeff Sackmann makes the case for Alan Trammell (22.4%), while John Harris stumps for Trammell’s teammate, Lou Whitaker. Ron Santo won’t get another shot until 2011, but he might have been the NL’s best hitter over a five-year span in the 1960s, his peak value was in the Top 25 of all time and he compares favorably with Hall shoo-in Brooks Robinson. Keith Hernandez also meets several criteria for Hall candidates. Marvin Miller remains an inexplicable omission, while Dale Murphy(11.7%) is a tougher call. More Hall of Fame tidbits Interested in past Hall of Fame voting? Baseball Reference has thorough data. Cyril Morong did a good job of predicting votes for first-time candidates, though he underestimated support for

Larkin and Martinez. Larry Granillo says past votes demonstrate how mistakes are made in each year’s balloting. It also shows that the Hall has gotten more choosy — too choosy, Tim Marchman suggests. Fred McGriff is one recent candidate who might look better in a decade. Several writers looked at alternate Halls, real or imagined. Joe Posnanski compared the Hall of Fame to the Hall of Merit. Sky Andrecheck suggests an alternate Hall of Fame, which Tom Tango says is a lot like the Hall of Merit. Here’s a quick look at a surefire future Hall of Famer who announced his retirement. Randy Johnson was so good, he threw 26 games — including a perfect game — that were better than a no-hitter he threw. He’s ranked fourth on Baseball Reference’s list of players not yet eligible — and first among those who have neither admitted using steroids nor been tied to them by the Mitchell Report. Switching sports for a moment, Basketball Reference’s Neil Paine identifies the “inner circle” NBA Hall of Famers.

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Source: Eric Mangini to return as coach of Cleveland Browns By ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:31:41 PM

Eric Mangini will return for another season as head coach of the Cleveland Browns. Browns president Mike Holmgren informed the entire Browns coaching staff that they would return for the 2010 season after three days of meetings with Mangini, a team source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter. Mangini went 5-11 in his first season with the Browns, who finished with a four-game winning streak. On Tuesday, his first day running the Browns, Holmgren said Mangini had a legitimate shot of returning for a second season in Cleveland. Holmgren is also interviewing

general manager candidates this week. On Wednesday, Eagles GM Tom Heckert visited the Browns. Per league rules, Heckert could not be hired by Cleveland until Philadelphia completes its season. In addition, Will Lewis, the director of pro personnel for the Seattle Seahawks, will interview for the Cleveland Browns' general manager's job Friday, a source told ESPN.com. AFC North blog ESPN.com's James Walker writes about all things AFC North in his division blog. â&#x20AC;˘ Blog network: NFL Nation Holmgren served as both Seattle's coach and GM for four seasons, a span that didn't go as well as he hoped. Holmgren said he has learned not to take on more than he can handle. He also said any decisions on free agency

or drafts would be made by a consensus of voices -- not just his. "I could do it all if I wanted to," he said. "I don't want to. I am going to hire a general manager. Very few teams, none that I've been associated with, with highpowered personnel people or presidents or whatever you want to call them, does the guy come in, pound the desk and say, 'We are taking this guy and I don't care what anybody thinks.' "There's one team I can think of that does that, but no one else." 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.

Puck Talk: USA Hockey's Big Week By Bruce Ciskie (Fanhouse Main) Submitted at 1/7/2010 4:00:00 AM

Filed under: Capitals, Team USA, International Hockey, Olympic Hockey, Junior Hockey This was a huge week for USA Hockey. Two teams won gold m e d a l s i n i n t e r n a t i o n a l beating Canadian teams on competition (World Under 17 Canadian soil. Meanwhile, we Challenge and World Juniors) by found out what players will head

to Vancouver to represent this country in the Olympics. The newest member of the FanHouse team -- A.J. Perez -joins us this week to discuss the Olympic team and talk about the potential impact of the World Juniors win. We also discussed the ascension of superstar Alex Ovechkin to team captain in Washington.

Matt Stover to kick for Indianapolis Colts in playoffs; Adam Vinatieri on active roster By ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com)

Indianapolis Star. "Therefore my mindset since I was signed was to kick this team all the way to Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:18:34 PM and through the Super Bowl." Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Vinatieri, regarded as one of the Caldwell says Matt Stover will N F L ' s b e s t - e v e r c l u t c h be the kicker for the team's placekickers for a pair of Super postseason run, while Adam Bowl-winning kicks he made for Vinatieri, still recovering from the New England Patriots-- and knee surgery, will remain on the two more in the "Snow Bowl" sidelines. AFC playoff game against the AFC South blog Oakland Raiders-- will remain ESPN.com's Paul Kuharsky on the Colts' active roster. writes about all things AFC Vinatieri said he's not 100 South in his division blog. percent, and not happy to be on â&#x20AC;˘ Blog network: NFL Nation the sidelines, but will be ready if Vinatieri, who had offseason called. knee and hip surgery, missed "I don't necessarily care for the nine games this season after decision but obviously all of us undergoing surgery on his right want to be on the field as much knee on Oct. 14. He returned on as we can, but I understand their Dec. 27 against the New York concerns as well," he said, Jets and kicked a 22-yard field according to the report. "I'm goal, but was inactive again for going to keep preparing like I'm the regular-season finale at going to be the guy that goes out Buffalo Bills. on the field and if it happens that Stover, a 20-year NFL veteran, way, great, and if it doesn't I'll be was signed to fill in for Vinatieri a good cheerleader." and performed well, making 9 of Information from ESPN NFL 11 field goal attempts and all 33 Insider Adam Schefter was used point-after attempts. in this report. "I have always expected Adam Five Filters featured article: to possibly be back but I wasn't Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: s u r e i f t h a t w a s g o i n g t o PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, h a p p e n , " S t o v e r s a i d Term Extraction. Wednesday, according to The

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Dallas Stars' Mike Ribeiro is expected to miss four to six weeks with a throat contusion By Richard Durrett (ESPN.com)

the contusion, which included a tracheotomy. Ribeiro suffered the injury when Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:41:39 AM he was hit in the neck by the Ribeiro Hurt In Rangers' Win stick of New York Rangers' Ribeiro Hurt In Rangers' Win forward Christopher Higgins at FRISCO -- Stars center Mike 15:32 of the second period in Ribeiro's throat injury is more Wednesday's 5-2 loss at Madison serious than doctors first thought Square Garden. and he's going to be out four to Higgins was assessed a twos i x w e e k s w i t h a t h r o a t minute minor penalty on the contusion. play. He was placed on injured "It's tough," Stars general reserve Thursday. manager Joe Nieuwendyk said More on the Stars about the loss of Ribeiro. "Every Can't get enough hockey news team faces injuries, but this is and notes? ESPNDallas.com has one you don't always see. He's an all the latest from the Stars. important player for us. We're Blog. going to have to pull together in Ribeiro underwent a procedure his absence." late Wednesday night to repair Ribeiro is expected to remain at

St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Center in Manhattan for a few days while the swelling goes down. Stars associate athletic trainer Craig Lowry stayed with Ribeiro on Wednesday and Ribeiro's wife, Tamara, has joined him in New York. Ribeiro, 29, is fourth on the team in points with 33, including 10 goals, and had played in all 43 games. He was centering a line with Steve Ott and James Neal before the injury occurred. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

WHAT continued from page 57

writers that is needed to enter baseball’s Hall of Fame, with second baseman Roberto Alomar and pitcher Bert Blyleven falling agonizingly short. “In today’s parlance, Dawson was the total package, a formidable opponent who could hit his way on base, steal one or two when he got there, run down shots in the gap on Montreal’s capacious, rock-hard Olympic Stadium artificial turf, and throw out reckless baserunners,” the Edmonton Journal’s John MacKinnon writes. The Chicago Sun-Times’s Rick Morrissey welcomes into the Hall the likes of Dawson, with less than perfect numbers, only if it means “Sosa, McGwire, Barry Bonds and the rest of baseball’s blow-up dolls will never seen the light of day in Cooperstown.” The Globe and Mail’s Jeff Blair says voters blew it by electing to enshrine only one player. “In promising so much and delivering so little, Cooperstown showed once again that despite

the flaws inherent in depending on a roiling, unkempt, conflicted, hide-bound, overly-engaged and — in some cases — marginally engaged voting pool, it is the only Hall of Fame capable of getting a rise out of anybody,” Blair writes. The Toronto Star’s Dave Perkins is certain Alomar will be chosen in his second year of eligibility. At Real Clear Sports, Jeff Neuman says he thinks no one should have been elected this year. – Tip of the Fix cap to reader Don Hartline and fellow Fixer David Roth. Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself — write to us at dailyfix@wsj.com and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email Garey at ris84rap@gmail.com.

Thursday-and-Long: 'Technicians' Power Jets' Running Game By Dan Graziano (Fanhouse Main) Submitted at 1/7/2010 4:00:00 AM

Filed under: NFL Playoffs, NFL Predictions, NFL Analysis FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- They laugh about it sometimes. Right before a play, Jets running back Thomas Jones will count the

number of defenders pushed up in the box to stop the run. Eight, nine...sometimes 10. He'll catch the eye of fullback Tony Richardson, who's doing the same thing, thinking the same thing, and they'll share a knowing look. "It says a lot about our character And then they'll run for a first that we have the No. 1 rush down.

offense in the league, because teams are geared up to stop us on every play," Jones said last week. "Every play, they're stacking the box to play the run. And we still lead the league. It's a credit to our offensive coaching staff for sticking with the run game and also for listening to us. When you have a veteran

offensive line like that, and veteran backs like myself and TRich, you're in a situation where the players can almost kind of coach themselves."

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Hall Vote Shifts Too Far From Honorees By Matt Snyder (Fanhouse Main) Submitted at 1/7/2010 5:00:00 AM

Filed under: MLB Hall of Fame From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday. When I was an eight-year-old Little League baseball player, my coach (who also happened to be my father) asked me what number I wanted to wear for the season. I didn't even think twice. I took Andre Dawson's No. 8. It was an added bonus that we were the blue team in the league, so it felt like I was getting to play in my favorite player's jersey for the 1987 season. Fast forward 23 summers and the Hawk will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I

should be excited. While he isn't my favorite player of all-time (that "honor" belongs to Mark Grace), he was my childhood baseball hero. I worked on my throwing arm from right field to eliminate loops and make it a line drive like Dawson. I tried out a batting stance with the back foot lagged like Dawson. I despised every bone in Eric

Show's body the day that he beaned Hawk in the eye. Yet when I heard MLB Network announce that he was inducted to the Hall of Fame alone, my initial thought was not anything resembling happiness. With Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven not joining Dawson, I had one simple thought: "Here we go again." The election process isn't about the players anymore. Sure, their names are included in discussions, but the names are just words. It's a mathematical problem. It's a pissing contest. It's "I'm smarter than you because ... " It's "you are stupid if you don't agree with me, because I'm right and here's why."

Which hat fits? Hall of Fame undecided about cap on Andre Dawson's bronze plaque By Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:39:23 AM

NEW YORK -- The Hall of Fame has not decided which team's logo will go on Andre Dawson's bronze plaque. Hall president Jeff Idelson says that while the museum has final say, the Hall makes its decision with the player. Dawson arrived in New York too late after his election on Wednesday to begin discussions. Dawson played 10-plus seasons for the Expos, where he was NL Rookie of the Year in 1977. He

also was selected 1987 NL MVP in the first of six years with the Chicago Cubs. "The Hawk" had 225 of his 438 home runs and 838 of 1,591 RBIs with Montreal. He said Thursday he did not think about his cap during his nine-year wait for election. He will be inducted July 25 at Cooperstown. Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

The Struggles of Steve Mason: Part 2 By Adam Gretz (Fanhouse Main) Submitted at 1/7/2010 5:00:00 AM

Filed under: Blue Jackets Earlier this season we took a look at the struggles of secondyear goalie Steve Mason. Here we are nearly two months later, and the nightmare season continues for the reigning Calder

Trophy winner. He enters play on Thursday (Columbus is visiting Edmonton) with a 3.31 goals against average and a .890

save percentage. Both numbers place him in the bottom four of NHL goalies, while his play likely cost him a potential spot

on the Olympic roster for Team Canada. Let's take another look at Mason's season, and again try to determine how much of the blame falls on the 21-year-old goalie, and how much falls on a team that might not be playing as strong defensively.

New York Red Bulls Name Hans Backe Coach By Brian Strauspage (Fanhouse Filed under: MLS NEW 62The New Main) York Red Bulls have named 57-

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NEW continued from page 61

year-old Swede Hans Backe, who won a combined four Danish championships with FC Copenhagen and Aalborg, as the coach who will lead the floundering franchise into its new stadium this year. Considering the Norwegian heritage of new GM Erik Soler, who has no experience in American soccer, the choice of a Scandinavian coach is no

surprise. Perpetual assistant Richie Williams will remain part of the technical staff along with goalkeeper coach Des McAleenan, the club announced Thursday morning.

Japan’s new finance minister in U-turn (Financial Times - US homepage)

Thursday, with his call for a weaker yen provoking an immediate sell-off in global Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:32:28 PM markets. Naoto Kan, Japan’s newly Mr Kan used his first press appointed finance minister, conference to express his support a b r u p t l y r e v e r s e d h i s for a weaker yen and further predecessor’s currency strategy stimulus measures to revive immediately on taking office on Japan’s economic health in a

marked departure from Hirohisa Fujii, who stepped down this week. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Report: Darksiders to never see the light in the UAE, kept 'under the table' By Ben Gilbert (Joystiq) Submitted at 1/7/2010 1:04:00 PM

With little explanation offered (alright, so, basically no explanation whatsoever), the United Arab Emirate states have reportedly banned the distribution and sale of THQ and Vigil's Darksiders: Wrath of War. According to UAE-based GamesLatest, the game was

deemed to "contradict with the UAE's customs and traditions" -a standard phrase used to nearuniversally describe banned games in the Middle Eastern states. Unfortunately, that task of enforcing such a ban can be a mighty difficult one. Many retailers in the UAE simply order from wholesalers, bypassing importing laws altogether, and

the light in the UAE, kept 'under the table' originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments sell their games under the table(and untaxed, might we add). And then, of course, there's always the internet -- we hear

you can buy stuff through it. Gallery: Darksiders [Via GamePolitics] Report: Darksiders to never see

Mass Effect 2 figures feature Shepard, if not your Shepard By JC Fletcher (Joystiq) Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:30:00 PM

We already know what you're going to say. While DC's upcoming Mass Effect 2 figure series includes decent likenesses of Thane, Grunt and Tali, the company is way off on its

version of Shepard. In DC's defense, however, the company has no idea what your Shepard looks like, so it was stuck with a mold for Default Shepard instead of the real Shepard -- who everyone knows is vaguely Asian and female. According to the scans of DC's

solicitation book, posted by Gamervision, the figures are still

pending approval, but are due for release August 25 of this year. By then, you may be done with Mass Effect 2, so you can use these action figures to stage your own adventures on Planet Your Shelf. Mass Effect 2 figures feature Shepard, if not your Shepard

originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Dragon Age: Awakening expansion detailed By David Hinkle (Joystiq) Submitted at 1/7/2010 2:00:00 PM

This March, fans of Bioware's epic RPG, Dragon Age: Origins, will be able to extend the experience through ' Awakening,' the hefty retail expansion bearing an equally hefty $40 price tag. While the new trailer coinciding with the announcement was gripping in its own right, many gamers are likely wondering what is deserving of so much coin. Sure, we know it takes place after Origins, we know players will be fighting new Darkspawn baddies and we know there's new items and a raised level cap, but what else should gamers look forward to spending another gazillion hours on? Well, in a recent interview with IGN, Bioware's Fernando Melo put it all on the line. Basically, the Darkspawn haven't retreated underground after Origins' Blight -- as was the case following previous Blights -- and in the

Melo even detailed a bit of the "re-spec" ability you'll have in Awakening. You'll be able to force a reboot of your character's skill points through a tome, allowing you to retain whatever level your Origins character is at, but have a fresh start in terms of where you want to place your points. Obviously, if you choose not to import a character, this feature is moot because you'd be spending all of the points you'll get from starting at the high level Awakening begins. It's a lot to process and IGN's interview is three very lengthy pages, so if you want to read the l a n d o f A m a r a n t h i n e , o n e of Awakening's roster of bad will have a greater affect on rest, head on over and check it Darkspawn in particular has guys. imported characters, as Melo out. Just beware of spoilers. evolved to the point where it can Then there's the raised level cap. says a lot of the choices you've Gallery: Dragon Age: Origins talk and reason: the Architect. Melo couldn't confirm where it made in Origins carry over and, Awakening (Retail Expansion) Dragon Age: Awakening And if you haven't played would be when Awakening depending on what point you're expansion detailed originally through Origins at all and have releases in March, but said it will currently at in the main game, appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 no character to import, you'll "probably end up in the mid to characters will act accordingly. Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please have the option to create a new high 30s." Also, you'll gain And if you choose to play see our terms for use of feeds. one that will automatically be access to a bunch of new Awakening first, decisions there Read| Permalink| Email this| placed somewhere between level followers, complete with all-new will transfer back to Origins in Comments 17 and 20, around the toughness banter and micro-managing. This the same way.

Rumor: Call of Duty 7 coming in November By Ben Gilbert (Joystiq) Submitted at 1/7/2010 1:30:00 PM

According to a "senior UK trade source" who allegedly spoke with CVG, the next Call of Duty game from Treyarch will be set in Vietnam and arrive at retailers this November. "It's going to be November again - just as with

World At War and Modern Warfare 2," the source was quoted as saying. We heard as much back in May of last year, when Treyarch was said to be looking for "Vietnam War era tunes." Add to that the fact that Activision's Noah Heller explicitly said Treyarch would no longer be working on WWII-

based Call of Duty games and We've asked Activision for you've got yourself a more comment and will keep you reasonable sounding rumor. updated as we hear more.

Rumor: Call of Duty 7 coming in November originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Urban Decay's Limited Edition Alice in Wonderland Palette By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 1/7/2010 9:36:10 AM

Whether you’re a longtime fan of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland tale (and its many cinematic incarnations)—or simply appreciate eclectic, welledited eye color palettes—chances are you’ll swoon over Urban Decay’s new limited edition Alice in Wonderland Book of Shadows celebrating Tim Burton’s highly anticipated movie. Click here for By Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Netherlands, Belgium, information on how you can be features four-player co-op-- a the first to snag the in-demand Switzerland, Austria, Australia By Andrew Yoon (Joystiq) Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:00:00 PM f i r s t f o r t h e f r a n c h i s e . product. and New Zealand. Submitted at 1/7/2010 3:30:00 PM Considering Slant Six's track As far as we know, the kind of Basically, if the Xbox Live P.S. Are you excited about laziness which prevents you Video Marketplace was playing Hopefully, the third time is the record, it'll either play like the seeing Johnny Depp as the Mad f r o m v i s i t i n g t h e n e a r e s t Risk, it'd have a kickass lock on charm for SOCOM Fireteam b r i l l i a n t S O C O M T a c t i c a l Hatter and Anne Hathaway as Bravo. After two delays, the S t r i k e . . . o r l i k e S O C O M the White Queen in Burton’s B l o c k b u s t e r V i d e o i s a the Eastern Hemisphere. w o r l d w i d e p h e n o m e n o n . Xbox Live Video Marketplace Slant Six-developed co-op C o n f r o n t a t i o n . adaptation? I am… I just hope SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3 it’s not as dark as that TV According to a press release(.doc coming to 10 more countries 'this shooter is finally making its way link) dropped just in time for fall' originally appeared on to PSP on February 16 on both deployed February 16 originally version that aired in 1985. When CES, Microsoft is catering to this Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 UMD and PlayStation Network. appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 I was a kid, that movie gave me global lethargy by opening up 15:00:00 EST. Please see our As per usual, online multiplayer Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please nightmares for months! is central to the upcoming see our terms for use of feeds. t h e X b o x L i v e V i d e o terms for use of feeds. —Emily Hebert P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | Photo: Courtesy of Urban Decay Marketplace to ten more P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | SOCOM sequel. Fireteam Bravo 3 will not only support sixteen C o m m e n t s countries this fall: Denmark, C o m m e n t s Follow ELLE on Twitter player Infrastructure play, it also Finland, Norway, Sweden,

Xbox Live Video SOCOM Fireteam Marketplace coming to 10 Bravo 3 deployed more countries 'this fall' February 16

Street Chic: Paris By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 1/7/2010 4:00:00 AM

Blue and cream offer an understated alternative to black and white. Photo: Stylesightings

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.

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By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog)

Ex-NBA Star Arraigned on Drunk Driving Charges

Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:29:44 AM

(FOXNews.com)

Etihad Airways, Amazing Service in the Sky While on the way to Dubai for the opening of the Burj, I took an airline I never have flown before: Etihad, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates. Pleasurable doesn't even begin to describe the business class experience with this carrier. For starters, the airline provides free chauffeur transfer to and from the airport if you fly business. Once you are at the airport lounge in Abu Dhabi, you are treated to complimentary spa services, should you need a bit of pre-flight relaxation. Slated in slots of 15 minutes each, you can get everything from a rejuvenating facial to a foot massage. I opted for the back realignment massage which incorporated massage with yoga stretches. The lounge itself was clean and contemporary, with a chic and generally healthy menu of foods and full bar service. Once aboard, I was greeted by an international staff of highly trained service professionals, who happen to be drop-dead gorgeous. Though it was

Submitted at 1/6/2010 10:53:11 PM

amazing to be surrounded by such beautiful faces, it can give a girl a complex when she is munching on hot, chocolatefilled doughnuts with crĂ¨me anglaise that were just served by someone who resembled Heidi Klum. The aircrafts themselves have been carefully planned for utmost comfort, like seats that have vibrating chair massage and move any which way to eventually fold out to flat position. Every shade of lighting was carefully chosen to provide

NEW YORK Prosecutors say former NBA star Jayson Williams told a New York City police officer he was "sorry for causing trouble" about an hour after he crashed his SUV into a tree. A tired-looking Williams was arraigned on drunken-driving charges Thursday via video link from Bellevue Hospital. He didn't enter a plea. Williams is being treated for a minor bone fracture in his neck and other injuries from the wreck the most comfortable and tasteful money pulled in from tickets early Tuesday. He was wearing a atmosphere. Food service was goes straight back to making the neck brace and a bandage above available any time with a big customer comfortable. Don't h i s r i g h t e y e d u r i n g h i s m e n u o f y u m m y , g o u r m e t you wish every airline could be a r r a i g n m e n t . His bail was set at $10,000. He delights, all served up on fine, that way? will have to wear an electronic contemporary bone china. Don't just take my word for it, In the car on the way home to Etihad is gaining accolades from monitoring bracelet if released. my flat in London, I asked the all over the airline industry Williams retired from the New driver, how could this be? How including the World's Best Jersey Nets in 2000. He is can an airline provide so many Airline award at the 2009 World awaiting retrial on a New Jersey freebies and services at such Travel Awards. Not bad for a manslaughter charge stemming competitive prices? Well, the company only seven years old. from a 2002 shooting at his house. A previous jury answer was simple. Abu Dhabi, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Rebecca Suhrawardi Austin deadlocked. being an oil-rich nation, provides Follow ELLE on Twitter. Click here for more on this story free fuel for the airline, so all the Become our Facebook fan! from MyFoxNY.com. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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1985-2010: Celebrating ELLE’s 25th Google Earth on the (January Edition) Nexus One By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog)

from that particular time 25 years ago—you know, to get you in Submitted at 1/6/2010 3:27:00 PM the look at far we’ve come This year marks American mood. First up is January 1985, ELLE’s quarter-century birthday. the month when Axel Foley and Though its first monthly issue gang sat atop the box office for didn’t hit newsstands until another four weeks, President September 1985, there were prior Reagan was sworn in for his t o t h a t f o u r b i - a n n u a l second term, “We Are the issues—beginning with the World” brought everyone from Fall/Winter ’83 special issue Willie Nelson to Dan Aykroyd to b o r n o u t o f a F r e n c h five of the Jackson siblings E L L E / B l o o m i n g d a l e ’ s together in famine-fighting song, collaboration—so I figured we and Amadeus and Romancing might as well start celebrating the Stone took top dramatic and now. After all, reaching a silver comedic honors, respectively, at anniversary these days is pretty the Golden Globe Awards. rare. Hair was huge, music was all Therefore, each month this year, synthesizer, and the fashion was I’ll assemble some nostalgic very, very ‘80s…minus the fashion and celebrity photos irony.

Enjoy. And Happy 25th, ELLE! Sorry GaGa, they were already walk, walk, fashion baby in’ it 25 years ago (clockwise from left): Karl Lagerfeld, a runway model in a FW85 Chanel design, Donna Karan, supermodel Jerry Hall and kids, Interview’s Andy Warhol, Halston flanked by his Halstonettes Famous faces as photographed in January ’85 (clockwise from top left): Brooke Shields, Jane Fonda, Princess Diana, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Christopher Reeve, Cyndi Lauper; Center: Knots Landing’s Lisa Hartman Black and Alec Baldwin Photos: Getty Images

(Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:39:39 AM

You’ve likely read all about the spec differences between the iPhone 3G and Google’s new Android-powered Nexus One, but if you’re interested at all in Geography—this comparison of each’s Google Earth usability might sway you either way. The Nexus One’s biggest advantage is voice command. You tell the app where you would like to go and it automatically flies you there. Goodbye endless finger swipes. Also, Nexus One’s screen is a tad bigger, and has a much higher resolution than that of the iPhone—resulting in a much

Jennette Williams Presents The Bathers By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog)

Club of New York. Her book features classically informed platinum prints of women Submitted at 1/6/2010 1:31:18 PM bathing at European and Turkish To coincide with her new book, bath houses. The photos are soft, The Bathers(published by Duke intimate, timeless— and quite University Press with a foreword stunning. A great addition to the b y M a r y E l l e n M a r k ) , ELLE photo department coffee photographer Jennette Williams table. Amphitheatre will be speaking at the School of Jennette Williams 209 East 23rd Street (between Visual Arts on January 21 in Thursday, January 21, 7pm association with the Camera The School of Visual Arts 2nd/ 3rd Aves), Third Floor

Free to CCNY members, SVA students, faculty, and staff General admission $10, $5 for students — Jackie Bates, Senior Photo Editor Follow ELLE on Twitter. Become our Facebook fan!

sharper view of the earth. It also posesses a faster processor than the 3G, making the app run more smoothly. Last but not least its version of Google Maps is also more slick than that of the 3G. The slated iPhone killer doesn’t completely trump the beloved device though, because of the iPhone’s multi-touch advantage. Instead of having to pull various sliders around on the screen, you can just use two fingers to zoom, pan, and tilt. (Excuse the terrible audio quality) What do you think, Google Earth lovers? More on geography. Permalink| Leave a comment »

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Frigid weather hits Midwest, -52 wind chill in ND (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

had dangerously cold wind chills, including negative 40 in parts of South Dakota and minus DES MOINES, Iowa – Snow 2 7 i n n o r t h e a s t N e b r a s k a , was piled so high in Iowa that a c c o r d i n g t o t h e N a t i o n a l drivers couldn't see across W e a t h e r S e r v i c e . E q u a l l y intersections and a North Dakota disturbing chills were expected snowblower repair shop was overnight Friday. overwhelmed with business as An additional 10 inches of snow heavy snow and wind chills as was expected in Iowa, already low as 52 below zero blasted buried by more than 2 feet of m u c h o f t h e M i d w e s t o n snow in December, while up to 9 Thursday. inches could fall in southeast Frigid weather also gripped the North Dakota that forecasters South, where a rare cold snap warned would create hazardous was expected to bring snow and z e r o - v i s i b i l i t y d r i v i n g ice Thursday to states from conditions. Wind gusts of 30 South Carolina to Louisiana. miles per hour were expected in Forecasters said wind chills Illinois— along with a foot of could drop to near zero at night snow — while large drifts were in some areas. anticipated in Nebraska and In Bowbells, in northwestern Iowa. North Dakota, the wind chill hit Joe Dietrich said he had to turn 5 2 - b e l o w z e r o T h u r s d a y away dozens of customers this morning. week from his snowblower "The air freezes your nostrils, repair shop in Bismarck, N.D. your eyes water and your chest "My building is only so big and I burns from breathing — and can only take so many," Dietrich that's just going from the house said. to your vehicle," said Jane The weather hasn't let up since Tetrault, the Burke County sweeping into the eastern U.S. deputy auditor. earlier this week. Five straight Her vehicle started, but the tires days of double-digit subzero low were frozen. temperatures, including negative "It was bump, bump, bump all 1 9 , w e r e r e c o r d e d b y t h e the way to work with the flat National Weather Service office spots on my tires," Tetrault said. in Chanhassen, Minn., a Twin "It was a pretty rough ride." Cities suburb. Other parts of the Midwest also "It's brutally cold, definitely Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:54:25 AM

brutal," meteorologist Tony Zaleski said. At least 15 deaths this year have been blamed on the cold and icy, snow-covered roads. An 88-yearold woman died of hypothermia in her unheated Chicago home, an Alzheimer's sufferer died after wandering into his yard in Nashville, Tenn., and a homeless man was found dead in a tent in South Carolina, authorities said. Kansas City police said a man involved in a multi-car pileup Wednesday died after jumping a barrier wall in the dark, apparently to avoid sliding cars, and falling about 80 feet. Slick roads were blamed for scores of accidents. In Indiana, a driver was reported killed in a crash with a school bus near Delphi on Thursday. In Iowa, a driver died Wednesday after slamming into the back of a semitrailer that had slowed for an accident near Des Moines. In preparation for worsening conditions, more than 500 flights were grounded at Chicago's airports. The Chicago Department of Aviation reported more than 400 canceled flights at O'Hare International Airport and more than 100 canceled flights at Midway International Airport. In Atlanta, Delta Air Lines canceled nearly 200 flights scheduled to leave after 5 p.m. Thursday in

anticipation of snow. Frost on planes' wings delayed seven early flights in Tampa, Fla. Just one day into the 2010 legislative session, the Missouri Senate canceled its Thursday session because of weather. The House planned only a technical session, which allows bills to be processed without the attention of most lawmakers. Freeze warnings covered nearly all of Florida with temperatures expected to drop into the 20s. Iguanas were seen falling out of trees; experts say the coldblooded reptiles become immobilized and lose their grip when the temperature falls into the 40s or below. Schools in parts of Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia canceled classes because of the weather. Major roads were closed in South Dakota, Minnesota, North Carolina and Virginia. Salt had no effect on the Twin Cities' ice-rutted streets, and deep snow left over from a Christmas storm had hardened into rock-solid blocks. The conditions helped business at Roger's Master Collision, an auto -body repair shop in Plymouth, Minn. "A lot of people sliding on the

ice, then hitting the snowbanks. They're frozen up pretty hard," said store manager Kirk Suchomel, estimating the shop is averaging 15 repair estimates a day. "I'm sure we're going to stay busy." In Iowa, officials in Des Moines warned that a $3 million annual snow removal budget would likely be exhausted with this week's storm. Public Works Director Bill Stowe said the city would tap a $6 million road maintenance fund to cover snow clearing for the rest of the season. Snow that had been plowed into tall piles at intersections was set to be dumped into a lake. "It can be a half-million dollar operation, depending on the amount of snow," Stowe said. ___ Associated Press writers Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis; James MacPherson in Bismarck, N.D; Nelson Lampe in Omaha, Neb.; and Erin Gartner in Chicago contributed to this report. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Dead Playboy Model's Text: 'He's Trying to Kill Me' (FOXNews.com)

Watkins said he last saw Sladewski when she visited her family in Michigan just after A Playboy model whose badly Christmas. He said she seemed burned body was found Sunday happy and like her usual self. in a Miami dumpster expressed Paula Sladewski — who fear of her current boyfriend — appeared in the video "Playboy: even text messaging a former The Ultimate Playmate Search" boyfriend, "he's trying to kill — was so severely burned that m e , " h e r s t e p f a t h e r t o l d officials had to use dental FoxNews.com. records to identify her. Paula Sladewski's stepfather "We were praying that it wasn't Richard Watkins, who lives in her,'' said Watkins, according to Michigan with Sladewski's the Miami Herald. "It's been real mother, told FoxNews.com that hard. I didn't know this many he wasn't surprised when he tears could fall." found out that Sladewski's The L.A.-based model had been boyfriend, Kevin Klym, 34, was visiting Florida during a holiday named a person of interest. with Klym, who reported her " T h e y h a d a h o r r i b l e missing. The couple splits time relationship," said Watkins. "I between Michigan and Rancho have told them from the start that Cucamonga, California, The they shouldn’t be together." Miami Herald reported. Watkins said the couple, who Watkins told FoxNews.com that had been together for two years, Sladewski had told him they argued often. He said a month were going to Las Vegas on ago, Klym broke Sladewski's vacation, so he was surprised to nose during an argument and learn they had instead gone to was arrested. Miami. Watkins, who has been talking On New Year’s Eve Sladewski on the phone to Sladewski's ex- went to a Lady Gaga concert in boyfriend in California since she Miami and spent the weekend disappeared, told FoxNews.com visiting nightclubs and bars, that Sladewski, 26, would text SkyNews.com reported. message her ex-boyfriend that Klym told police that he and she was afraid of Klym. Sladewski got into an argument "She would text him 'help me, at a nightclub and he was kicked I’m in trouble, he’s trying to kill out of the club in the early hours m e ' , " W a t k i n s t o l d of Sunday morning. That was the FoxNews.com. last time, Klym told police, that Submitted at 1/6/2010 10:53:59 PM

he saw Sladewski. After he was booted from the club, he said he took a taxi back to their Miami Beach hotel, the Miami Herald reported. The model's charred remains were discovered on Sunday night after a passer-by alerted the authorities to a trash bin on fire in a Miami street. "Her body was burned so bad that there wasn't even enough to send her home," said Watkins, according to MyFoxDetroit.com. "It's heartbreaking." Klym has been cooperating with police, said Lt. Neal Cuevas, a North Miami police spokesman, according to the Miami Herald. "[Klym's] considered a person of interest as would anyone who last saw her alive,'' said Cuevas, the paper reported. Watkins' wife, Patsy, received the telephone call from a concerned Klym on Monday saying that her daughter was missing. Monday happened to be Patsy's birthday, which Watkins said was "a birthday that she will never forget." He said his wife "can’t cope with this." He told FoxNews.com that he can't understand why Klym would leave her at the nightclub alone. "He left her alone in a bar full of predators and I blame him for doing that. How could he do that? How could he just leave her alone? I can’t wrap my mind

around why he would do that." Patsy Watkins asked Klym those very questions on the phone Monday, and Richard Watkins said Klym told her he didn't know why he left her. Klym has denied any involvement in Sladewski's disappearance. His lawyer, Marc Beginin, said Klym is "devastated and traumatized. He has no involvement whatsoever," said Beginin, the paper reported. Sladewski's older sister flew down to Miami to assist in the investigation. Watkins said she will fly back to Michigan with her sister's remains this week. The Miami North Police Department asks anyone with information to contact them at 305-471-8477. Click here for video of the family's comments about Sladewski at MyFoxDetroit.com. Click here for more from The Miami Herald. Click here for more from SkyNews.com. FoxNews.com's Ali Reed, Sky News, The Miami Herald and MyFoxDetroit.com contributed to this report. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Xbox Live Retro Game Room and Project Natal confirmed for 2010 (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:57:00 AM

At CES in Las Vegas, Microsoft has leaked confirmation that Project Natal will be released this year. The motion-sensing camera peripheral is a highlyanticipated extension of the gaming guru’s product line. The hands-free set up allows you to be the controller. Way cool. Microsoft also confirmed plans for introducing the Xbox Retro Game Room, where live users will be able to play all their favourite nostalgia-inducing games from vintage consoles like the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. Read on to learn more about what Microsoft has up its sleeve for CES. Grab your Mountain Dew and your Doritos, more gaming news this way. Permalink| Leave a comment »

Report: High rate of sex abuse at juvenile centers (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 1/7/2010 8:58:55 AM

WASHINGTON – A government study issued Thursday finds 13 juvenile detention facilities around the country have high rates of sex REPORT: page 69

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REPORT: continued from page 68

abuse and victimization, with nearly 1 out of every 3 inmates reporting some type of victimization. The Justice Department study found that nationwide, about 12 percent of youths held in staterun, privately run, or local facilities reported some type of sexual victimization — but those rates varied widely from place to place. Six sites had reported victimization rates of 30 percent or higher. "What those numbers say to me is that there are failures in hiring, training, supervision and response and accountability around this issue," said Linda McFarlane, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, which fights to end sexual abuse of those who are detained. About 10 percent of youths surveyed reported incidents involved facility staff people, and nearly all of those complaints were against female staffers. About 2 percent of the reported incidents involving other young inmates. McFarlane called the level of staff abuse shocking. "Many of these are already the most vulnerable and traumatized youth from all of our communities and they're placed

for custody because they're considered to be a danger," she said. "If sexually abused in those very institutions that are supposed to help them prepare for life in the community then it's just an incredible travesty." About 26,550 juveniles are held in such facilities around the country, and the survey — conducted for the government by Westat, a company based on Rockville, Md. — collected information from about 9,000 of them. The study identified six facilities where the survey found at least 3 out of every 10 inmates said they were sexually victimized while in custody: Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana; Corsicana Residential Treatment Center in Texas; Backbone Mountain Youth Center in Swanton, Md.; Samarkand Youth Development Center in Eagle Springs, N.C.; Cresson Secure Treatment Unit in Pennsylvania; and the Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center, Long Term, in Mitchells, Va. At Pendleton, the rate of incidents was double the national average for such facilities. Another seven sites reported nearly as high levels of sexual abuse or victimization: Victory Field Correctional Academy in

Vernon, Texas; Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility; Shawono Center in Grayling, Michigan; Woodland Hills Youth Development Center in Nashville, Tenn.; L.E. Rader Center in Sand Springs, Okla.; Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Virginia; New Jersey Training School in Monroe Township, N.J. At those 13 facilities, most reports of sexual victimization involved nonconsensual sex acts with another youth or serious sex acts with facility staff. Bruce Twyman, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice, said the agency was shocked that it had two facilities listed in the report. He said the department had stepped up its efforts to combat sexual abuse in the last year and a half with increased training for staff and upgraded video surveillance. "It's not something that we're proud of," he said. "We look at it from this standpoint: Any sexual victimization is one too many so we want to be very aggressive about rooting it out, there's no question about that." Twyman didn't immediately have details on disciplinary actions taken at the two Virginia facilities. "Every time that we have been

made aware of any victimization in our facilities we've investigated and taken appropriate steps," he said. Staff sexual misconduct was higher in state-run facilities than in privately or locally operated sites, the study found, and smaller facilities tended to have fewer incidents of sexual victimization. Nearly 80 percent of the victims said at least one incident took place in a common area, such as a classroom or office, while about half said at least one incident happened in the shower, and half of the victims said they had been victimized by staff in their room or sleeping areas. Most of the abuse took place in the evening, between 6 p.m. and midnight, the study found. ___ Associated Press Writer Dena Potter in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

How to shop for that special geek in your life (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:18:09 AM

No one said shopping for that special pen-protector-wearing someone is easy. No one wants to spend hours deciding if purchasing a season of Star Trek Voyager is more romantic than winning a bid on Ebay for a bit of rock from the set of The Lord of the Rings. Luckily, NerdBoyfriend is here to save the day. These good people provide you with daily updates of photos from movies or people associated with cult classic geekdom matched with a correlating list detailing where you can purchase the items (or ones similar to them) featured in the photos. Really neat idea, and much appreciated. More geeky goodness. Permalink| Leave a comment »

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At least 3 dead, 5 wounded in St. Louis shooting (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 1/7/2010 11:56:18 AM

ST. LOUIS – A disgruntled worker embroiled in a pension dispute with his company walked into the plant and opened fire Thursday, killing three people, wounding five and sending frightened co-workers scrambling into closets and to the snow-covered roof for safety. Police said the gunman, identified as 51-year-old Timothy Hendron of Webster Groves, a St. Louis suburb, showed up at Swiss-based ABB Group's sprawling plant around 6:30 a.m., armed with an assault rifle and a handgun. Multiple St. Louis-area media outlets were reporting that Hendron was believed to be among the dead, but police refused to confirm that. Several hours after the shooting, officers were still inside the plant, going room to room to make sure there were no more victims. The motive for the shooting wasn't immediately known. But in 2006, Hendron and other ABB workers sued the company over retirement losses. The federal lawsuit accused ABB and its pension-review committee of

causing their 401(k) accounts to include investment options with "unreasonable and excessive" — and undisclosed — fees and expenses. The suit went to trial Tuesday in Kansas City. The shooting began during a shift change at the plant, which employs about 270 people. Forty to 50 employees were likely in the building at the time, police Capt. Sam Dotson said. It wasn't clear how many shots were fired, but authorities said employees scurried to find refuge from the bullets. "Many of them sought safety on the roof, in boilers and broom closets," Dotson said. Names of the victims were not immediately released. Police said three of the injured were in critical condition and two were in fair condition. Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said firefighters and paramedics were standing by in case there were additional injuries, either from the shooting itself or from seeking refuge on the roof in bitter cold. The wind chill in St. Louis dipped below zero as gusting winds whipped around 4 inches of new snowfall. "It's cold, and shock sets in, hypothermia," Jenkerson said. "It doesn't sound good."

Dozens of emergency vehicles circled the sprawling plant. Interstate 70 was closed for about three miles in both directions for several hours while police searched for the gunman in and around the plant. ABB Group makes power transmission and industrial automation equipment. The company manufactures transformers at the St. Louis site. ABB has operations in roughly 100 countries, employing about 120,000 people. Last October, ABB reported third-quarter earnings of more than $ 1 billion. Thomas Schmidt, an ABB corporate spokesman in Zurich, Switzerland, said in statement that the company had received reports of the shooting. "This is obviously a very serious situation and we are working to gather more information as it becomes available," the statement said. "The welfare of our employees is of utmost importance to us." Word of Hendron's alleged involvement in the shooting stunned his neighbors in Webster Groves. Many neighbors described Hendron as an amicable family man who kept a well-manicured home for his wife and small boy.

"I couldn't ask for a better neighbor. We never had any problems with him," said Glennon Meyer, a 71-year-old retiree who credits Hendron with friendly gestures ranging from raking Meyer's leaves to bringing over a chocolate cake last Christmas. A few years ago, Meyer said, Hendron mentioned something in passing about having problems on the job. Hendron didn't elaborate. "Gee, I've talked to Tim many times, and he never exhibited any mental aberration," Meyer said. Ron Hawkins, who lives across the street from Hendron's splitlevel home, echoed that. "He seems like a really nice guy," said Hawkins, 72. "I know nothing negative about he and the family." ___ Associated Press writers Cheryl Wittenauer and Jim Suhr contributed to this report. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Bacon and eggs boost baby intelligence (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 1/7/2010 12:04:58 PM

Pregnant women who skip the Fruit Loops in favor of a heartier bacon and eggs breakfast could help boost the intelligence of their unborn child, according to a new study. Scientists at the University of North Carolina have discovered that a chemical found in pork products and eggs can help development in the part of the brain linked to memory and recall. If bacon and eggs make your pregnant belly a little queasy, scientists say the beneficial chemical can also be found in liver, milk, chicken and nuts. Oodles of resources for expectant mommies. Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink| Leave a comment »

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Obama to unveil 'bombing' report (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

Mr Awlaki has been linked to an attack by a US Army major on the Fort Hood base in Texas in Submitted at 1/7/2010 7:47:32 AM November, in which 13 people The White House is set to make died. public an unclassified account of UCL has said there is no the alleged attempted bombing e v i d e n c e t o s u g g e s t M r of a Detroit-bound airliner on Abdulmutallab was radicalised Christmas Day. while he was studying with President Barack Obama is then them. expected to address the nation Responding to Mr Alimi's a b o u t i t s f i n d i n g s a n d statement, UK officials have said recommendations. they still believed the National Security Adviser James recruitment of Mr Abdulmutallab Jones has said Americans who occurred in Yemen in the months read the report will feel "a before the attack. certain shock". 'In control' The alleged bomber is reported Mr Abdulmutallab - a 23-yearto have met a radical US Muslim old Nigerian - was arrested and cleric after being recruited by al- charged for allegedly attempting Qaeda in London. to set off explosives hidden in Yemen's Deputy Prime Minister his underpants on the Northwest R a s h a d a l - A l i m i s a i d o n Airlines flight, with 290 people T h u r s d a y U m a r F a r o u k on board. Abdulmutallab met Anwar al- Following the near-disaster, Awlaki in the cleric's ancestral President Obama ordered a home province of Shabwa, report into the security lapses having been recruited while a that allowed it to happen, and has student at the University College s i n c e m a d e f i v e p u b l i c London (UCL). statements.

James Jones warned, in an interview with USA Today, that people would feel "a certain shock" that clues about Mr Abdulmutallab's role were not acted on. "The man on the street... will be surprised that these correlations weren't made," he said. But he also suggested that the report will show the Obama administration is in control of the situation. "We know what happened, we know what didn't happen, and we know how to fix it," he said. "That should be an encouraging aspect. We don't have to reinvent anything to make sure it doesn't happen again." Following publication of the report, Mr Obama is expected to unveil new steps aimed at avoiding further attacks. Print Sponsor Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Civil Blackwater lawsuits settled (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

innocent civilians," one of the lawsuits said. Xe released a statement saying it Submitted at 1/7/2010 10:02:22 AM was pleased a settlement had Xe, the US security firm been reached: formerly known as Blackwater, " T h i s e n a b l e s X e ' s n e w has reached a settlement in a m a n a g e m e n t t o m o v e t h e number of lawsuits over the company forward free of the killings of Iraqi civilians. costs and distractions of ongoing T h e l a w s u i t s s o u g h t litigation, and provides some compensation for deaths and compensation to Iraqi families." i n j u r i e s i n c u r r e d i n s u c h On 31 December 2009, a US incidents as the killing of 17 federal judge dismissed all Iraqis in 2007. charges against five Blackwater The settlement comes a week guards who were accused of after a judge dismissed all opening fire on a crowd in criminal charges against five Baghdad's Nisoor Square, killing Blackwater employees. 17 civilians. The amount of the settlement District Judge Ricardo Urbina has not been disclosed. said the US justice department The civil lawsuits accused the had used inadmissible evidence. firm's founder, Erik Prince, of Print Sponsor c u l t i v a t i n g a c l i m a t e o f Five Filters featured article: recklessness. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: "Mr Prince personally directed PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, and permitted a heavily-armed Term Extraction. private army... to roam the streets of Baghdad killing

Boeing reports 61% fall in orders (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 1/7/2010 8:13:03 AM

Aircraft maker Boeing has reported a 61% drop in commercial aircraft orders for 2009. The US-based company said a total of 263 airplanes were

ordered last year, down from 662 in 2008. But the number of commercial aircraft it actually delivered last year rose 28% to 481. Boeing said the global recession and the resulting fall in demand for air travel was to blame for the decline in orders. Net orders - which take into

account cancellations - were down to 142 for the year. Boeing's chief executive Jim Albaugh said that 2009 had been "not without its challenges", but said that the future was brighter. "With signs of economic recovery emerging in 2010, we look forward to better days ahead," he said.

Unfulfilled orders stood at 3,375 Print Sponsor by the end of the year, with 851 Five Filters featured article: of those for the 787 Dreamliner. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: The Dreamliner, which saw its PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, first flight in 2009, is now slated Term Extraction. for first deliveries at the end of 2010 following numerous delays. Boeing's European competitor Airbus is due to report its order figures on 12 January.