Liberty Newsprint Jan-20-10 by Liberty Newspost

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19/01/10 - 20/01/10

Mindboggling in Massachusetts By Tabassum Zakaria (Front Row Washington)

Coach sells off on a decent quarter By Steven Mallas (BloggingStocks)

Submitted at 1/19/2010 8:18:49 PM

The Republicans are coming, the Republicans are coming… to Massachusetts. The Senate seat comfortably held by Edward Kennedy for nearly half a century has gone to Republican Scott Brown. We can only imagine what the late “Liberal Lion” of the Senate would have thought if he were still alive. D e m o c r a t s politely congratulated Brown, who defeated Democrat Martha Coakley, knowing full well that the dynamics have changed. Democrats no longer have a 60-vote filibuster-proof Senate — and that can affect their plans for healthcare reform. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made clear he wanted to make sure procedure was followed to seat Brown. “We welcome Scott Brown to the Senate and will move to seat him as soon as the proper paperwork has been received.” (We’re not implying anything

http://www.LibertyNewsprint.com

Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:40:00 PM

but anyone who has worked in Washington knows that paperwork can mysteriously arrive or not as convenient). Brown made clear he is in a rush to take his place among the 100 senators in Washington. “I’m ready to go to Washington without delay,” he said in his victory speech. Can the Democrats somehow ram healthcare legislation through Congress and to President Barack Obama to sign into law before Mr. Brown goes to Washington?

Filed under: Earnings reports, Coach Inc (COH) Coach ( COH) is a mystery to me today. I thought the numbers from its latest quarter were pretty good. And yet, the stock sells off. That alone is not so mysterious; heck, it happens all the time. What makes it so strange for me is I've covered so many other retailers that post awful numbers and then go on to see a big bid. Hey, that's the market, right? Anyway, Coach said total sales increased 11% in the second quarter. North American samestore sales advanced over 3%. Earnings came in at 75 cents per share, 8 cents better than last

If they can’t, Brown has made clear that he won’t be helping the Democrats in their quest for healthcare reform: ”It will raise taxes, it will hurt Medicare, it will destroy jobs and run our nation deeper into debt,” the newest Senator (to be) said. Why do you think Massachusetts chose Republican in this election? For more Reuters political news, ADVERTISEMENT: click here Photo credit: Reuters/Brian (BloggingStocks) Snyder (Brown at victory rally) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:00:00 PM

year's income stat. Earnings.com says Wall Street was looking for 72 cents per share. Continue reading Coach sells off on a decent quarter Coach sells off on a decent quarter originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Could a 'Virtual Surge' of Geeks Fix Afghanistan? (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 1/20/2010 7:21:00 AM

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ACLU gives Obama mixed first year Obama bills under threat rights grade after Massachusetts loss By Michelle Nichols (Front Row Washington)

By Ewen MacAskill (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

protest against what is seen as too much federal spending already. Submitted at 1/19/2010 3:34:18 PM Another bill planned for this Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:35:20 AM U.S. President Barack Obama year would see reform of Wall has taken some bold steps on End of Democrats' super- Street, in what Obama described civil rights during his first year majority in Senate means more as "the most ambitious overhaul in office, such as ordering an end than just proposed healthcare of the financial system since the to torture and the closure of the reform might not make it into Great Depression". That would Guantanamo Bay military prison, law be a populist measure and but his overall record is mixed, The end of the Democrats' Republicans may support some the American Civil Liberties Senate super-majority poses parts. Union said on Tuesday. major problems for Barack The president last year promised The civil rights group said Obama in the year ahead. Obama he would start work this year on Obama had acted on more than a had hoped that once healthcare immigration reform, a campaign third of 145 recommendations it was out of the way, he could promise, which would open the made to him when he was administration has fallen short by the ACLU said Obama had not p u r s u e o t h e r p a r t s o f a n way to citizenship for the elected. The recommendations allowing some of the (George a c t e d on any o f ambitious domestic agenda. That estimated 12 million to 20 focused on steps the president W.) Bush administration’s most i t s r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s . now looks unlikely. million illegal immigrants living could take on his own without a t r o u b l e s o m e p r a c t i c e s t o For more Reuters political One of the first casualties will in the US. That now looks dead. vote by Congress. be a climate change bill, one the • Barack Obama continue and by failing to take coverage, click here “The Obama administration has steps that would restore some Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Senate had been sceptical about • Obama administration made some significant strides very fundamental rights and Lamarque (Obama addresses e v e n b e f o r e t h e l o s s o f • Democrats toward restoring civil liberties values to American life,” he said. closing session of the Jobs and Massachusetts. The Democratic • Republicans and the rule of law,” said ACLU On issues such as spying on Economic Growth Forum at the leadership in the House said • United States Executive Director Anthony A m e r i c a n s , m o n i t o r i n g o f White House December 3, 2009) today it did not accept the bill • US politics Romero in a statement. was dead but some parts might activists and terrorism watchlists, “But in other areas, the have to be discarded. Ewen MacAskill Obama also hoped that, with US guardian.co.uk© Guardian unemployment at 10%, he could News & Media Limited 2010 | introduce another economic Use of this content is subject to stimulus package. But the our Terms & Conditions| More Massachusetts vote was in part a Feeds

An Epic 22-Minute Behind-the-Scenes of Avatar [Movies] By Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 1/20/2010 1:20:00 PM

We've all heard allusions to Cameron's massive sets, motion

cap system and 3D/virtual cameras used to create Avatar, but this 22-minute clip actually shows us these techniques. (So don't watch this video if you don't want the magic spoiled):

Hit up about 16 minutes in to see CGI characters layered into live action scenes in real time—which is essentially augmented reality making its

way into filmmaking. [ Sci Fi Wire]

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Hillary Clinton to take on world's internet censors By Tania Branigan, Mark Tran (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:35:14 AM

Secretary of state's speech comes in light of Google's response to Chinese cyber attack Hillary Clinton will challenge the world's internet censors tomorrow in a speech -delivered barely a week after Google's announcement that it is no longer willing to censor results on its Chinese service. Speaking in Washington, the US -secretary of state will announce a policy to increase access to an uncensored internet for people in other countries, her innovation adviser said. "She will lay out policy to ensure that our centuries-long traditions are -preserved in the 21st century," Alec Ross said during an online discussion today. "Internet freedom is not just about freedom of expression, but about what kind of world we live in. Is it about one knowledge [in common] or about access to information based on where you live?" Ross said the speech was not about China as such but was a broader exploration of internet freedom, said to be based on discussions under way before Google's decision emerged. But it will inevitably be seen in the light of last week's statement

by the internet giant and the swift support it received from the US government. Google said it reached its -decision -following a Chineseoriginated -cyber attack which targeted human rights -activists' email accounts as well as intellectual property. The US will issue a formal request for China to respond to Google's claims. But Ross said: "The state department is not the foreign policy arm of Google." China has said it "resolutely opposes" hacking and has itself suffered. Today, Ma Zhaoxu, a foreign ministry spokesman, said foreign companies should abide by the country's laws, adding: "Google is no exception." Last week, Ross told Reuters -that censorship existed "from the Caucasus to China to Iran to Cuba and elsewhere" and that Clinton's speech would set out plans to increase access for those affected. Some of those who have discussed the issue with officials hope the speech could contain support for circumvention technologies and discussion of how ethical standards for companies could be established. During his visit to China in November, Barack Obama described himself as "a big supporter of non-censorship" in a meeting with students. Clinton is expected to go further

in her speech, not only because it is delivered on home turf. Sam duPont of Washingtonbased NDN, which has published papers by Ross, said officials were concerned about a growing global trend of internet control. "I think increasingly we can see internet freedom and access to the internet as a basic right on a par with freedom of speech and assembly," he said. "I think the state department is coming around to that view, and I think that's what we will hear." DuPont, a policy analyst for the global mobile technology programme, added: "In the past year, the state department has broken a lot of new ground in integrating technology with everything they do, from diplomacy to economic development." But on circumvention technologies, he said he thought the state department "will tread lightly when it comes to helping foreign people defy their governments". Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch in New York, urged Clinton to take a "tough, unambiguous position on censorship in China", saying Google had made it easy for the administration. "If the administration fails to seize that opportunity, it will be a gaffe on a par with Clinton's comments that human rights

should not interfere with other issues [in relations with China]," she added. But Rebecca Mackinnon, a fellow with the Open Society Institute, who is currently writing a book on the internet and censorship said: "The wrong message ... would be something to the effect of: 'Never fear, netizens of China, America is here to free you!'" In a blog posting, she called for an acknowledgement of the challenge which "all governments and most companies" face in deciding how to handle the net. "Right now, the world's democracies are arguing fiercely within and -sometimes amongst themselves about where the right balance point should be in the internet age," she said. "Wouldn't it be just so wonderful if the United States could take the lead in being honest rather than acting like the Lone Ranger on a white horse?" • Hillary Clinton • Internet • Google • China • Freedom of Speech Tania Branigan Mark Tran guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Caterpillar Is Undervalued By Joseph Lazzaro (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:00:00 PM

Filed under: Caterpillar (CAT), Stocks to Buy The U.S. and global economies are starting to recover, and that's good news for Caterpillar ( CAT), hence I'm reiterating my buy rating for the company's shares, first recommended on April 13, 2009 at a price of $33.02. If you bought CAT in April 2009, you're up a smart 75%. Look for the rebound in construction and agriculture equipment to continue in the year ahead as the economy strengthens and as fiscal stimulus -related infrastructure spending around the world continues. Caterpillar's solid cost controls add to the positive mix. Continue reading Caterpillar Is Undervalued Caterpillar Is Undervalued originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Goldman likely to pay out $20bn in salary and bonuses By Jill Treanor, Andrew Clark (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:30:37 AM

• Remuneration for Wall Street bankers set to exceed $65bn • Morgan Stanley sets aside $14.4bn pot for staff • Bank of America makes $2.2bn loss US investment bank Goldman Sachs is expected to reveal a pay and bonus pot of $20bn (£12.3bn) for 2009 tomorrow, reigniting the row over City pay and taking the total amount being paid out by Wall Street financiers to more than $65bn. Goldman has made sure to report after its rivals in an attempt to deflect public attention from its profits and bonuses, which are forecast to top more than $600,000 per person on average. The Wall Street firm's 32,000 staff are also being forced to wait until next week to discover the size of their individual payouts– in contrast to rivals at JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, who began learning the size and structure of their bonuses today. Employees at Morgan Stanley, which revealed today it had set aside $14.4bn for pay and bonuses in 2009 despite showing a net loss, were told they would be paid in a variety of ways,

including "three-year performance stock units for senior executives, equity subject to market risk that vests over three years, and deferred awards subject to clawback". Morgan Stanley's new chief executive, James Gorman, will receive his bonus in deferred compensation rather than cash while members of the operating committee will receive about 75% of their year-end pay via deferred methods. Figures reported so far by Wall Street's -biggest players – JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America – show they are ready to hand out salaries and bonuses of more than $45bn for 2009. That rises to $65bn on the assumption that Goldman's compensation costs are $20bn. If payments to all staff working in bank branches and other businesses are included, the total tops $100bn. The chancellor's 50% tax on bonuses of more than £25,000 has had an influence on many of the banks. Morgan Stanley said the cost of the tax would be "shared significantly" among its staff and not be borne entirely by its 7,000 employees in the City. Morgan Stanley used 62% of its revenues to pay employees in 2009, the highest ratio in more than a decade, and the $14.4bn set aside for pay was a 31% rise in on last year because of the

recruitment of extra staff. The ratio drops to 50% if certain charges incurred by the bank are excluded. Morgan Stanley reported a net loss for the year, although this becomes a profit of $1.15bn for 2009 on a continued--operations basis, compared to an $807m loss for 2008, as its traders, clients and investors capitalised on a revival in equity and debt markets. Bank of America, which fell into the red with an annual loss of $2.2bn despite a recovery in the fortunes of its Wall Street brokerage Merrill Lynch, incurred a total bonus and salary bill of $31bn. It does not split this figure up into subtotals for each of its divisions, but its investment banking arm has enjoyed a dramatic improvement -following the near-meltdown in the financial system last year. Bank of America's global markets division, which includes Merrill Lynch, which it acquired just over a year ago, swung from a $4.9bn loss to a $7.2bn surplus, aided by a rapid, aggressive recovery in shares and debt markets. But other of its businesses fared less well. In a sign of ongoing recession-related stress among its customers, Bank of America revealed a $5.6bn loss at its global credit cards division as bankruptcies soared and

cardholders struggled to find the money for repayments. Bank of America's newly appointed chief executive Brian Moynihan, who took over from widely criticised Ken Lewis at the beginning of the month, said there were positive indications on the horizon: "As we look at 2010, we are encouraged by signs the economy is improving, as we have seen in the stabilisation of our credit costs, particularly in the consumer businesses." But he added: "That said, economic conditions remain fragile and we expect high unemployment levels to continue, creating an ongoing drag on consumer spending and growth." • Goldman Sachs • Morgan Stanley • Bank of America • Citigroup • JP Morgan • Executive pay and bonuses • Banking • Financial crisis • United States Jill Treanor Andrew Clark guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Timken Co. (TKR): An old-fashioned American industrial By Steven Halpern (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:20:00 PM

Filed under: Newsletters, Stocks to Buy "Old-fashioned American industrial companies that are poised to benefit from growing international markets will be good investments in 2010," explains Daniel Frishberg, The host of Bizradio and editor of The MoneyMan Report adds, "Our latest buy recommendation is Timken Company ( TKR), which fits perfectly into this model." Continue reading Timken Co. (TKR): An old-fashioned American industrial Timken Co. (TKR): An oldfashioned American industrial originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Democrats may be in despair at Scott Brown's victory but it's not the end By Michael Tomasky (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:03:07 AM

Barack Obama can still keep his legislative programme on track remember Bill Clinton Is it all finished? The great new golden age of American -liberalism, ushered in by the most inspiring politician millions of Americans had seen since who knew when – kaput, just like that, snuffed out after a mere single year? One certainly is hearing a lot of this in Washington. Republican Scott Brown's stunning victory in the Massachusetts Senate race has hit liberals like an arctic wind that augurs darkness and -desolation. Is all hope lost, as Elvis -Costello once asked us? It is for now. But it isn't for good. The pessimistic way – which is to say, the way that comes most naturally to American liberals and Democrats – is that everything is in tatters. Here's the case. Because of a complex procedural rule, bills must have the support of a super-majority of 60 (out of 100) to get through the Senate. The Democrats had 60. The day when Scott Brown is sworn in, they will not.

The Republicans have shown no signs of giving Barack Obama a single vote on any matter of prominence. Brown's -victory will most assuredly not make the Republicans more likely to seek compromise with the White House. Ergo, the Democratic agenda is jammed in the Senate. No second stimulus bill, which many have been hoping for, to inject more money into the economy. No "cap-and-trade" legislation to address climate change. No -immigration reform, which some in the administration have unfathomably been talking up lately, which would help with Latino voters but would really incite the angry white right. Nothing big. Then there's the House of -Representatives – a smaller problem, but a problem still. The Democrats hold a 78-seat advantage in the lower house. But 49 Democrats represent districts which John McCain carried last year, and another eight or 10 live in fear of a GOP tsunami. They were already afraid of voting for a "liberal agenda". Tuesday's result did not decrease their anxiety. The stakes are not merely legislative, but, for liberals, psychological. People weren't thinking much about things such

as Senate procedural rules a year ago. They have found the brutish reality monstrously depressing. If they in some sense give up on politics, Obama may well be doomed. But there is a more optimistic -scenario. First, healthcare still passes in some shape or form. It is possible, and Democratic leaders are furiously taking the temperatures of jittery legislators this week. Then, once that's out of the way, Obama and the congressional Democrats need to focus solely on the economy. This need not take the form of moving either to the left or to the centre, which is the form this recriminatory debate usually takes after a Democratic loss. It can encompass both. For moderates and independents, Obama should make gestures toward reducing the deficit and cutting spending. And yet, he should "go populist" on some matters as well. His proposed Wall Street tax is the best example of the kind of thing on which the White House has to put itself on the side of Main Street frustration and let the Republicans put themselves on the side of the big banks if they want to. He can do both if he picks his fights intelligently. And

as the economic clouds lift, he will benefit. Forlorn Democrats should take heart that we can rarely predict how these things will play out. In April 1995, in the wake of an immeasurably worse -drubbing than Obama absorbed -Tuesday, Bill Clinton had to assert at a press conference that he was still -relevant. By the following spring, of his re-election year, the economy was humming, the Republicans had committed hubris and it was clear he'd win. For those who think the dream is over, the proper response is: politics is not a dream to begin with. It's hard work. And it rarely goes the way one expects it to go. Tuesday was proof enough of that. • Democrats • Republicans • Massachusetts • Barack Obama • US politics • United States Michael Tomasky guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Infographic: Which Communities Are Slipping the Economic Hardship Chokehold? By Maccabee Montandon (Fast Company) Submitted at 1/20/2010 12:44:03 PM

To your growing list of indices, please add one more: The Economic Hardship Index. The above caption gives you the nuts and bolts on how the Index is measured and what it means for the likes of you, me, baby boomers, the nation's farmers, Mormons, the young and educated, and just about everybody else. In short, the EHI tracks changes in the economy that actually mean something to most people's everyday lives. If your interest is piqued and you'd like to dig a little deeper into the numbers, we recommend you head here to do just that. Infographic: Rob Vargas

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Yemeni troops target al-Qaida after pressure from US By Ian Black (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

Anwar al-Awlaqi, the USYemeni cleric suspected of links with the alleged Detroit bomber, the Nigerian student Umar Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:49:46 AM Farouk Abdulmutallab, has said Yemeni government forces kept meanwhile that he has no up military pressure on al-Qaida intention of surrendering to the today, bombing the home and government. farm of one of the group's Abdulilah Sheaya, a Yemeni l e a d e r s h o u r s a f t e r t h e journalist and expert on al-Qaida, organisation's Arabian peninsula said Awlaqi had not held any branch was formally subjected to talks with the authorities or tribal US and UN sanctions. intermediaries as had been Officials in Sana'a confirmed claimed. "He denied that there that air raids had targeted Ayad are any negotiations and insists al-Shabwani, one of six fighters he will not surrender," Sheaya the government first claimed to told the Guardian. have killed last week. Reports US officials have accused from Marib province tonight said Awlaqi of having links with there had been four attacks and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, q u o t e d t r i b a l s o u r c e s a s suspected of shooting dead 13 confirming Shabwani's death. people at a Texas military base Offensive actions against al- in November. Awlaqi is in Qaida in the Arabian peninsula hiding. (Aqap) have intensified under Aqap and its two senior leaders US pressure since the Christmas were added to the UN list of Day attempt to bomb an airliner terrorist organisations one day over Detroit. Western diplomats after the US state department say Yemeni authorities are now took the same step. The move showing more resolve to combat was necessary because Aqap was terrorism. Troop reinforcements created least year by a merger of have been sent to three provinces the groups that had previously where the group is said to be operated separately in Saudi operating. Arabia and Yemen. It would

allow US prosecution of those associated with it, or who provide assistance to it. Western concerns about Yemen were again underlined today with news of the suspension of Yemenia flights between Sana'a and London pending changes to security arrangements. Tim Torlot, Britain's ambassador to Yemen, described al-Qaida as posing "a severe threat". But there had been excellent cooperation with the Yemeni authorities, he said. The Yemen situation will be discussed at a conference convened by the UK in London next week. It will examine the country's chronic economic problems and seek ways to improve relations between international donors and the Sana'a government. "The solutions to Yemen's problems go far beyond the security arena," Torlot said. The meeting, set to last for just two hours, would be "short and strategic". President Barack Obama has insisted he will not send troops to Yemen for fear of provoking a backlash, while the Yemeni government insists it can defeat

al-Qaida alone, with US financial help and intelligence support. The administration is considering giving the Pentagon expanded powers to train and equip Yemeni forces including special counter-terrorism units controlled by the interior ministry. "We do not have [military] boots on the ground [in Yemen] and we have no intention … of having boots on the ground," an official told the Washington Post. "But we want to make sure that we have the expertise and capabilities that can work with the Yemenis to provide them with the wherewithal and the capacity that they need." • Yemen • Al-Qaida • United States • Global terrorism • UK security and terrorism Ian Black guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Linja Zax 2.0 brings 3D scrolling to your pocket By Josh Lowensohn (Webware.com)

The gesture-based tech that aims to replace multitouch has a new trick up its sleeve that could

make maps, photos, and Web pages easier to view on small screens.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

Wi-Fire long-range WiFi adapter gets updated Mac software By Donald Melanson (Engadget) Submitted at 1/20/2010 12:48:00 PM

We didn't run into too many problems with the existing Mac software for the Wi-Fire WiFi range extender in our brief time with the device, but it looks like hField Technologies has decided to make Mac users' lives a bit easier nonetheless, with it now releasing an updated version for OS X. Among other things, version 2.0 now finally includes an icon that sits in the menu bar for easy access, and fully revamped connection manager that sports a decidedly more Apple-like appearance. Unfortunately, you'll still have to wait a bit for an 802.11n upgrade, but the software update is at least free, and available to download right now. Wi-Fire long-range WiFi adapter gets updated Mac software originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink 9 to 5 Mac| hField Technologies| Email this| Comments

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iPhone 4.0 Rumor Round-Up By Kit Eaton (Fast Company) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:08:56 PM

Among the blizzard of rumors about the Apple tablet, one fact stood out for iPhone fans: Apple is rumored to be revealing the new software next week too, and it might hint at the hardware. We've rounded up the iPhone 4.0 rumors for you. The biggest and juiciest rumors came yesterday courtesy of BoyGeniusReport, who'd learned a number of alleged "facts" about the iPhone 4.0 code from one of their "trusty Apple contacts." Whether or not this contact is as trustworthy as BGR claims is a mystery, of course, but the most headline-inspiring rumors says the iPhone 4.0 firmware will be bringing multitasking to Apple's prize smartphone for the first time. This is a bit of creative thinking based on the Apple contact's statement that there'll be "a few new ways" to run tasks in the background, but it certainly seems to point at multitasking powers. Of course Apple has always maintained that multitasking is irrelevant, and it eats both CPU resources and battery life, but that hasn't stopped a vocal element in the iPhone's geeky audience from clamoring for it. It's certainly possible that Apple has now optimized the iPhone OS to the point it could consider enabling some form of multitasking-under very strict conditions so

that it doesn't degrade the user experience. If, as other rumors are suggesting, iPhone OS 4.0 is also the backbone of the Apple tablet, then multitasking powers would seem pretty likely (since it's extremely possible the tablet will run a more capable processor, and will have significantly bigger battery capacity.) BGR's source also hinted that multitouch gestures will be implemented across the entire OS (again chiming nicely with tablet rumors) and that there are "many" changes to the UI and device navigation. That's

interesting, since Apple's been incrementally working on this issue, recently adding a management tool to iTunes and adding the spotlight function to make finding apps easier. But now that apps are so popular, Apple needs a paradigm shift. Remembering that Apple's also recently filed patents for dynamic home screen icons, this rumor gets even more appealing. BGR's rumors conclude with the enigmatic suggestion that Apple employees are "excited" by the new OS which makes the iPhone more like a computer and less like a phone.

But what of the hardware? If some of these rumors are true, it seems likely that the new OS will only run on the iPhone 3G and 3G S and the upcoming iPhone 2010 version--largely because the original iPhone's processor won't be able to cope, whereas the 2010 version certainly will. Apart from this deduction, there's precious few rumors about the iPhone 2010 itself though, except for a single suggestion from analyst Peter Misek that Apple's got much further with a CDMA Verizon compatible iPhone than had been thought. Mizek is suggesting that

Apple may even announce that a Verizon version is due in June at next week's event--and it certainly would be a headlinestealer. Oh, and then there's this bizarre leaked image, which purports to be the glass faceplate for the Apple tablet, snapped by an insider at its manufacturer's site. Looking at it, I suggest it's highly unlikely it's for the tablet: Those corners have too severe a radius, and the button and earphone slit look incredibly similar to the existing iPhone's. I IPHONE page 8

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Ben & Jerry's Board Member Terry Mollner on the Sweetness of a Values-Led Business By Pierre Ferrari (Fast Company) Submitted at 1/20/2010 12:41:56 PM

This blog is part of our Inspired Ethonomics series. Pierre is an Investor, Director, and VP of Marketing for Guayaki Yerba Mate and will be profiling businesses with a triple-bottom line agenda. As we continue to explore the socially responsible business space by meeting and talking with some of the leading thinkers, we will see how certain themes keep surfacing. One obstacle to the development of large values led business is the issue of growth capital. Over the past 2-3 decades, few investors have been willing to apparently lower their expected financial returns for the perceived risk of investing in triple bottom line (that's people, planet, profit) companies. The number of investors willing to be "patient" with their investees is growing but remains very small relative the broader community. My estimate is less than a $1 billion over the past 10 years has been deployed toward triple-bottom-line businesses. This has had two obvious effects. The virtuous companies have

been starved of capital, which has limited their growth and impact. This has pushed many of them, including Ben and Jerry's, to sell to larger companies-Unilever, in the case of Ben and Jerry's. An interesting Harvard working paper on all this is titled "Can the virtuous mouse and the wealthy elephant live happily ever after?" (No. 09-047, James E. Austin and Herman B. Leonard). Terry Mollner, chair of the board Calvert Foundation, has been involved in developing capital sources that are indeed in harmony with values led businesses and recognize that the highest priority for those businesses is the good of all. I talked with him about this perplexing issue and he discusses an organization that is at the

leading edge of this issue. What do you think? What else could we develop? How do we make sure our newest ethical enterprises find a way to become global players with their values and practices intact. How else can we change the world for the better? (Image: Annualized Total Returns After Fees via HIP Investor) Pierre Ferrari is an investor, director and VP of Marketing for GuayakĂ Yerba Mate, a company that combines scaled reforestation in South America, the reparation of many small communities and the marketing of GuayakĂ Yerba Mate. From 1995 on, Pierre focused his energies on a variety of social issues ranging from International Relief and Development,

Conscientious Commerce, and Emerging Markets. He is president of "Hot Fudge" social venture capital fund, a community development venture capital fund whose purpose is to use venture capital to create jobs, entrepreneurial capacity and wealth that advance the livelihoods and wealth opportunities of low-income people and the economies of distressed communities. Pierre holds a Masters degree in Economics from The University of Cambridge and a MBA from Harvard Business School. He has two sons, married to Kimberly, in awe of two stepdaughters, reads voraciously, and enjoys golf.

IPHONE continued from page 7

think this may be an iPhone 2010 front glass, and the fact that the earphone slit and button are pushed slightly toward the edge of the device implies a bigger screen, which is almost certainly something we'll see this year. As for that tiny pinhole, dare we ponder on a front-facing Webcam? [Via BGR, Barrons, TheMacObserver; Concept image via MobileWhack]

Sneak peek at tasty new Zagat for iPhone 3.0 By Jessica Dolcourt (Webware.com) Submitted at 1/19/2010 5:07:00 PM

We got a sneak peek at Zagat 3.0 for iPhone, which will have augmented reality, an offline mode, and the capability to write reviews. Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

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Boxee Joins the Big League: Announces Paid Content Net TV Plans By Kit Eaton (Fast Company) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:07:53 PM

Boxee is clearly on a charge at the moment: After announcing an amazingly-designed set-top box last month, it's just revealed plans to launch a paid TV service that'll arrive in the Summer. In its blog posting on the matter Boxee makes it totally clear why it's proceeding with this plan: "Users want to see more content" and simultaneously "content owners want to be paid for what they produce." If Boxee is to expand its broadcasting repertoire, it obviously has to cast its net wider--and Boxee sees no conflict between offering more TV shows and movies and paying the providers for the privilege. It signifies that the

upstart, disruptive broadcasting system has truly grown up. To that end, the Boxee Payment Platform, which will offer onetouch show purchasing, will arrive in the Summer. And to ally any fears among its fans that Boxee will be joining the same

per-view, this should translate to lower prices to the consumer-unless they are determined to scrape as much cash up as they can. But some words further down in the blog posting are even more intriguing: Boxee notes "It's our belief that the Internet is ready to become the 4th method of distribution for broadcast & premium content." That means the company is strongly positioning itself on the same level of importance as cable, sort of overcharging game as the s a t e l l i t e , a n d I P T V - - a n d traditional media channels, potentially in a stronger position Boxee is promising its revenue as it's leveraging Net technology, sharing scheme will be "lower which is possibly more futurethan the 30% charged by many proof. app stores." Though it's up to the [Via Boxee] providers how much they charge, including subscription and pay-

US Steel Rockets Higher By Joseph Lazzaro (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 1/20/2010 3:00:00 PM

Filed under: Stocks to Buy As expected, US Steel ( X) has surged with news of the global economic recovery, and I'm obviously reiterating my buy rating for the company's shares, first recommended on April 15, 2009 at a price of $27.61. If you bought US Steel in April

2009, you're up an eye-opening 125%. If you didn't catch the April 2009 entry point, don't fret: there's more upside ahead with

X. Continue reading US Steel Rockets Higher US Steel Rockets Higher originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

Microsoft, Citigroup back finance app Bundle By Caroline McCarthy (Webware.com) Submitted at 1/19/2010 9:01:00 PM

Like pretty visualizations? This new start-up pulls spending data into Flash animations so that you can see who's spending what where. Originally posted at The Social

Star Wars Death Star Fathead coming in February for $100 By Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:30:00 AM

There you go, right on the living room wall. A big, fat Death Star. I’d personally cut off all the fluff at the bottom there. It’s the Death Star. Not the Death Star, sponsored by Star Wars and a couple Fathead logos. It’s not some stadium with naming rights and all that. The dimensions of the “highgrade vinyl” decal are a whopping 42W x 42H. And if your living room looks like that – nice furniture, etc. – and you actually stick this thing up on the wall in there then you, my friend, are someone I’d park myself next to at a dinner party. And if you’re married, well, hold on to that spouse of yours as if you’re waterskiing barefoot. Death Star Fathead Wall Graphic[StarWarsShop.com via OhGizmo!]

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TruTouch 2000 promises to detect intoxication with a finger scan By Donald Melanson (Engadget) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:16:00 PM

TruTouch Technologies has been working on various noninvasive means to detect intoxication for quite a while now (like the rather elaborate TruTouch Guardian pictured at right), but it looks like it's set to simplify things even further with its new TruTouch 2000 device, which has apparently passed though clinical tests with flying colors. Like the Guardian, the TruTouch 2000 uses near infrared light to detect possible By Ben Paynter (Fast The sales pioneers are online become increasingly important intoxication, but it's apparently Company) deal makers like Woot, Groupon, for wallet-watchers already able to do that by simply and Overstock.com. (Overstock obsessed with tracking the scanning your finger instead of Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:43:41 AM already tried to get on this Joneses of their peers on Bundle. your entire forearm. Quite the Blippy's $1.6 million grab for bandwagon back when Facebook It used to be that companies leap, to be sure, but TruTouch new venture capital that we mis-launched their own creepy would tell you they'd beat any says that the device is able to covered last week appears to be opt-out chart spending service, deal you could find. That 'produce accurate results in less p a y i n g o f f . T h e c o m p a n y B e a c o n , i n 2 0 0 8 . ) T h e s e actually means something now than 15 seconds," and that it biometric announced three new deals with companies will likely have to that you can analyze the entire packs a built-in o n l i n e r e t a i l e r s y e s t e r d a y , give up any hidden price fixes-- market and their price point with identification system to ensure making it clear that while buyers the ability to charge customers a mouse click. might want to crowdsource their different things for the same [Via TechCrunch] spending habits to find great service based on shifting time or I m a g e : deals, retailers see any potential inventory demands. So what do http://www.flickr.com/photos/cut drip drops as less important than they gain? How about consumer ey5// CC BY-SA 2.0 By Jessica Dolcourt the inevitable boom that comes trust that they will probably be (Webware.com) with being first in on the next offering equal deals to everyone. social media hotness. Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:00:00 AM That level playing field will

As More Use "Twitter for Credit Cards" Service, Retailers Getting Blippy With It

the test results are legit. No timeline for an actual deployment of the device just yet, but it looks like TruTouch has its eye on applications far beyond the expected law enforcement uses -- including even vehicle safety systems, and "Alcohol Point-Of-Sale Liability Reduction Systems." TruTouch 2000 promises to detect intoxication with a finger scan originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Business Wire| Email this| Comments

Skyfire shoots off Symbian browser update The latest Skyfire mobile

browser gets a new look and smooth scrolling. Originally posted at The Download Blog

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BumpTop 3D Physics-Based Desktop Now Available on Mac, With Multitouch [Software]

BumpTop brings 3D, physics to Mac desktop

By John Herrman (Gizmodo)

By Rafe Needleman (Webware.com)

Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:19:14 PM

BumpTop's been bumping kicking around for a few months on Windows, and even made a cameo in HP's newest touch tablets. Today, it arrives on what feels like its natural home: OS X. The BumpTop concept is the same as it is in Windows, which is to say it's a 3D sandbox of a regular desktop. Icons can be placed on the floor—the main desktop surface—or any one of its four walls, which can be viewed from the top down, or head on. Icons can be stacked, literally, into piles which can then be previewed in a variety of ways, and interact with one

another as solid objects would. If you throw one, it has momentum. If you throw one into another one, they collide. Execution on Mac feels a bit smoother than on PC, mainly because the multitouch gestures,

first seen in the Windows 7 version, work so well with MacBooks' glass trackpads. The metaphor is fun, if not immediately practical, and the performance penalty is minimal—my install idles at

around 1% CPU use and 90MB of RAM after a few minutes of use. You can try BumpTop for free, while a $30 Pro version adds multitouch support, instant search and a few extra gestures. As an interesting tech demo it's definitely worth a download, and for what it's worth it blends into my computer habits pretty well, to the point that I forget about it until I run into my desktop (which to be honest, doesn't happen a whole lot), only to be pleasantly, if slightly, surprised. But $30? That feels little steep for what amounts to giving a single folder in your OS a makeover. [ BumpTop]

Submitted at 1/20/2010 5:00:00 AM

Is this the desktop of the future, or just a toy? Originally posted at Rafe's Radar

Eureka's EMP cannon destined for the Marines? (video) By Joseph L. Flatley (Engadget)

mounted on aircraft or a squad car) is nowhere near ready for prime time -- but when has that Submitted at 1/20/2010 1:34:00 PM stopped the Pentagon from Marines serving overseas have a sinking tons of money into low-tech, time-tested way of something? And the USAF isn't s t o p p i n g c a r s t h a t i g n o r e the only organization getting checkpoints -- namely, a .50- i n v o l v e d : a c c o r d i n g t o caliber slug to the engine block. Flightglobal, the Marine Corps is Still, that hasn't prevented getting its own demo of the 55lb companies like Boeing and device (which can disable cars Eureka Aerospace from pouring up to 200 meters away) next t o n s o f m o n e y i n t o E M P month at Dahlgren naval warfare research. The cannon (whether center. Vintage autos (really

anything manufactured before the mid-1970s) won't be harmed by the weapon, meaning that there still may be a place for lead

slugs in modern peacekeeping missions after all. Video after the break. Continue reading Eureka's EMP

cannon destined for the Marines? (video) Eureka's EMP cannon destined for the Marines? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink The Register| Eureka Aerospace| Email this| Comments

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CrunchDeals: Buy two, Video: HP has itself a get one free Xbox 360 Wall of Touch Platinum Hits at Best Buy By Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear)

By Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:30:00 AM

Fresh off the Twitter… um… trolley. Sphere? Obelisk? River? Whatever it is that carries twats around. Best Buy is running a buy two, get one free deal on Xbox 360 Platinum Hits games. Included: • Resident Evil 5 • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 • Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe • Grand Theft Auto IV • Fallout 3 • Dead Rising • Army of Two • Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 • Star Wars: The Force Unleashed • Battlefield: Bad Company • Halo 3 • Fable II • Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection • Assassin’s Creed

• Street Fighter IV • Forza Motorsport 2 • Gears of War Two-Disc Edition • Midnight Club: Lost Angeles Complete Edition • The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion • Halo Wars • BioShock • Rockstar Table Tennis

displays, stitched them together, then overlaid a “touch” technology, um, overlay. It Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:00:44 AM works using cameras, sorta like What to make of HP’s “Wall of Microsoft’s Project Natal. Touch”? The Wall Street Journal Don’t expect to see one of these has a nifty little write-up of the in your living room any time technology, and comes away like soon. For now, HP is aiming the it just shook hands with Brock wall at places of business, like Lesnar’s doctors. “Thank you so airports, where they could use a much, doctor!” The fact is, big, hulking touch display. despite the fact that you don’t Here’s a thought: which actually touch the Wall of technology will Hollywood Touch, the idea of touchscreen embrace more, 3D or touch? interfaces is no longer foreign Imagine being able to “touch” and exotic. We’re several years the fabric of a character’s jacket a f t e r J e f f H a n ’ s b i g and have them react, etc. No, I demonstration, plus there was can’t imagine, stop trying to that iPhone thing. make me. The video explains what’s going on here. HP took a series of

By John Herrman (Gizmodo) Days away from the supposed launch of the Apple tablet, we While we can't say for sure know almost nothing about it.

How Big Is the Apple Tablet? [Sizemodo] By Jesus Diaz (Gizmodo) Submitted at 1/20/2010 1:40:00 PM

If the most popular rumor is true, and the Apple Tablet finally

has a 10.1-inch display, here's how it will compare with the iPhone and the Newton MessagePad 2000. Clearly, it won't fit in your pocket. Not

(Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 1/19/2010 6:43:17 PM

Republican Scott Brown has defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, running on a platform driven by populist resentment, with a main plank of “killing” health insurance reform.

History's Five Dumbest Apple Tablet Rumors [Apple] Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:20:00 PM

Enjoy, please. [via Major Nelson on Twitter]

Scott Brown Wins in Massachusetts

even Phil's pocket. Click the

image above to see the high definition version. Oh Phil. [ Gizmodo's Tablet Coverage]

which rumors are true, we can definitely say which, over the past decade, were just plain dumb. If you think galleries are dumb, too, click here for a single page.

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Electric Ferry Requires a Boatload of Batteries [Boats] By Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:05:00 PM

Thanko’s Micro Sport Motorola launching 20MP3 Player weighs just 30 Android phones in 2010 8g (video) By Serkan Toto (CrunchGear) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:01:44 AM

Thanko, the Tokyo-based maker of all things USB, sometimes produces gadgets that aren’t silly. Today, the company announced the Micro Sport MP3 Player[JP] that’s supposed to be especially suitable for people who want to listen to music while doing sports. The only drawback is that the thing doesn’t look to be designed for this purpose at all (but maybe that’s just me). Integrating one earbud into the main unit might lead to problems. The device features 4GB of

memory, weighs just 8g and supports MP3 and WMA files. Charge the battery (which takes an hour) and you can listen to music for four hours continuously. You can connect the Micro Sport player to your Windows PC or Mac via USB 2.0. Thanko says the player is one of the smallest and lightest of its kind. Thanko already started selling the player in Japan. If you are interested in getting the device, head over to Geek Stuff 4 U where you can get it for$87.78. This is Thanko’s (Japanese) promo video for the player:

By Nilay Patel (Engadget)

already pretty close: off the tops of our heads we've heard of the Shadow, the Devour, the Some interesting tidbits came Backflip, the Ruth, and several out of Motorola's DEXT launch others destined for China-- rather in Singapore today -- CNET impressive for a company that Asia had a chance to sit down was on the brink of collapse just with Moto's Asia Pacific VP a short while ago. No wonder it's Spiro Nikolakopoulos, who said reconsidering that spinoff, eh? that the company would launch [Thanks, Hiro] between 20 to 30 Android Motorola launching 20-30 phones globally in 2010. Spiro A n d r o i d p h o n e s i n 2 0 1 0 also said that not every phone originally appeared on Engadget would make it to every market, on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:11:00 so we're guessing the true EST. Please see our terms for number will be more like 10 if use of feeds. Permalink| CNET you count regional variants like Asia| Email this| Comments the CLIQ and the DEXT as one model. Just by our count, Moto's Submitted at 1/20/2010 1:11:00 PM

The Zero Emission Electric Propulsion Ship is a 100-foot, 800-person ferry that sucks no diesel. Instead, the boat operates from a huge bay of lithium ion batteries, all while looking vaguely like it's going to kill you and your family. Just how many batteries are we talking about? Between 200 and 300 times the amount you'd find in an electric car—all for a fuel capacity of only about 50 miles. For now, what you see here is just a prototype. Manufacturers at IHI Marine United hope to commercialize the machine by 2015 with the hopes that battery prices will be more economical. [ Fareastgizmos via technabob]

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HTC Bravo gettin' overexposed in the wild? By Chris Ziegler (Engadget) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:39:00 PM

As breathtakingly bad as the picture is, what we're looking at here could very well be the first shot of HTC's upcoming Bravo in the wild -- the industrial design lines up nicely with what we've seen in the company's leaked roadmap, anyway, and that funky little optical pad in the center perfectly matches the component that you can clearly see on the Legend render. It's said to be "near identical" to the Nexus One-- which makes sense

considering that we thought the Nexus One was the Bravo for a while -- so the big draws here would have to be the removal of the trackball (we're not

complaining) and the Sense UI covering up Android 2.1's default look. If 3 Sweden knew what it was talking about, this thing could be on shelves this quarter... so watch your back, MOTOROI. HTC Bravo gettin' overexposed in the wild? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Android Community| Omio| Email this| Comments

Toyota Sees Robotic Nurses in Your Lonely Final Years By Daniel Bartz (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 1/20/2010 5:00:00 AM

Before Toyota made cars, it made robots. It’s making them again, and wants to use them in a most unusual place. Looking ahead at the second half of this century, Toyota sees a mounting

health care crisis and aging population coming to Japan. It sees a future where manufacturing robotic workers is the hot new industry and “autonomation” takes on a whole new meaning. And the first place we might see these robots is in hospitals.

Google Releases New Hi-Res Satellite Images of Haiti By Betsy Mason (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:00:00 AM

Google has released new highresolution satellite images of Haiti to aid relief organizations.

Sony Ericsson Kurara accidentally announced early, now known as “Vivaz” By Greg Kumparak (CrunchGear) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:17:24 AM

Don't you just hate it when some big dumb press release company

spills the beans on your top secret product long before you intended? Wait, you've never experienced that? Well, neither have we. We were just trying to, readers or something. Sony you know, connect with our

Massachusetts Open (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 1/19/2010 1:39:11 PM

The Massachusetts election is going down to the wire. Here’s a

thread to discuss it. (I’m typing this on my iPhone in an airport, so excuse the terseness.)

Ericsson, on the other hand, has felt that burn. Just today, in fact! We'd already heard rumors and tales of an 8 megapixel Symbian phone called the Sony Ericsson Kurara; thanks to some mis-

Obama Supports $675K File Sharing Verdict By David Kravets (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:22:00 AM

The Obama administration is supporting $675,000 in damages a jury levied against a Boston student in a lawsuit brought by

the Recording Industry Association of America. In July, a jury dinged Joel Tenenbaum for file sharing 30 songs, and he is now challenging that award as unlawfully excessive.

scheduling, it's now about as official as things get.

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Chuck vs. Sanctuary smackdown: Which product tie in wins? By Erica Sadun (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 1/20/2010 1:30:00 PM

Filed under: App Review Two shows. Two iPhone tie ins. One TUAW fighting ring. Two will enter; one will leave. Whose cuisine will reign supreme? No wait, that's Iron Chef. Anyway, which show's tie in will take the crown and walk away with the "Worth Downloading" title? Let's have a quick look. In the left corner, wearing the black and white NerdHerdcolored shorts is Chuck. The well-loved (yet criminally underwatched) NBC show Chuck is now entering its third season. Its ongoing story is about a friendly IT guy who has been sucked into the world of international intrigue. Chuck a character-driven comedy/action show that should be on everyone's must-watch list. Its hero, Chuck Bartowski, works "undercover" (so to speak) at a BuyMore store, a large box chain modeled on Best Buy. Torn between his public and secret life, the show somehow manages to balance Chuck's emotional growth with the kind of spy-centered action you'd expect from a high concept series like this. If you're not watching this, start. Really. No, I mean it. Go set your TiVo now. The "Chuck Me Out" iPhone app [ iTunes link] is available for free on App Store. It provides a

simple photo overlay game. You select an existing photo or snap a new one the built-in iPhone camera. You then select a showthemed overlay, and mail, tweet, or plant a facebook with the result. With "Chuck Me Out", you can create NerdHerd (think "Geek Squad") ID tags, backstage all-access passes for the fictional rock group Jeffster, or you can just substitute faces into cast-member poses. Overall fun factor? Kind of meh, except for the super fanatical Chuckaholic who might get more than a single chuckle. (See what I did there? Yes, that pun was totally intended.) The interface gets a solid Randy -from-Idol "it's awright." For example, the icon choice for "insert a picture" is a camera, making you wonder how to use a picture from your current photo album. (Answer? A pop-up menu appears after tapping the camera. You then choose the source for your image.) Minor fail that could easily be improved in a future update. The sliding row of photo templates is, on the other hand, a nice touch. The overall functionality is pretty limited and the product branding is, as you can see from the screen shot here, extreme. If you want to stick your face (or your loved ones' faces) into NBC advertisements, well, there's now an app for that. But realistically, I'm not sure why this app would remain on anyone's phone for more than a day or two. TUAW

gives "Chuck Me Out" two NSA Agent John Casey grunts out of ten. In the right corner, wearing the fur-covered monster-style shorts is Sanctuary. Sanctuary airs on

goddess Kali. Later, he performed a Bollywood dance number for said ancient giant undersea spider to prove his love and affection, while Dr. Beckett from Stargate turned into a fish. Seriously, folks, I cannot make this up. More of a hit-or-miss proposition than Chuck, Sanctuary offers some great character actors (in the form of Bigfoot, Jack the Ripper, Nicola Tesla, and the local werewolf) and a production staff ripped from the greater Stargate franchise. It's about a group of people who instead of protecting the world from monsters, protect the monsters from the world. Its best moments occur when the show steps away from its formulaic monster-of-the-week scenario (sometimes it's the humans that are the monsters, sometimes it's the monsters that are the monsters, and it's just a given that all persons, regardless of species, are monsters if they hold administrative positions) and focuses on the growth of the main characters. (Meh, who am I kidding? Sanctuary folk, would you please just give us more Tesla/Druitt/Henry/Bigfoot? Thankyouverymuch.) The show's uneven but it's made its way onto my DVR season pass. It's been SyFy. It just had its second renewed for a 20 episode season season finale last weekend, next year, along with the other where we got to see a guy strip SyFy Stargate franchise: Stargate naked in order to jump into a jacuzzi with an ancient giant CHUCK page 21 undersea spider posing as the

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NYTimes.com readers ponder how much they'll pay (CNET News.com)

Web." For anyone who's been following the dwindling fortunes So, what we all knew was of the Times over the last few coming has now finally been years, this decision shouldn't announced, and no, I'm not come as a big surprise. The paper talking about a tablet from has built one of the largest and Apple. most impressive online I'm talking about the New York operations in the business, yet Times and the paper of record's hasn't been able to make it work announcement Wednesday that it financially. We've been told, in h a s d e c i d e d t o b e g i n fact, that the Times is losing implementing some form of fee money by the truck load, and for frequent online readers next that the future of its print edition year. is by no means guaranteed. As my colleague Larry Dignan So, it seemed inevitable that the over at ZDNet wrote earlier Times would resort to, once today, NYTimes.com users will again, charging for some form of be able to read a small number of access to its content. It has tried articles for free each month, but that before, but eventually will have to pony up if they decided to go all free. The exceed that cap. problem now, of course, is that The Times, itself, puts it this readers who have gotten used to w a y , " T h e n e w a p p r o a c h , free access may reject having to referred to as the metered model, pay. It's all about expectations. will offer users free access to a The Wall Street Journal has set number of articles per month famously not had too much and then charge users once they trouble charging for its content exceed that number. This will online, but only because it began enable NYTimes.com to create a doing so from the get-go. second revenue stream and However, as my colleague Rafe preserve its robust advertising Needleman wrote recently, being business. It will also provide the asked to pay for the same content necessary flexibility to keep an twice is not likely to engender appropriate ratio between free much pleasure on the part of the and paid content and stay Journal's readers. As he reported, connected to a search-driven the paper decided to charge even Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:42:00 AM

subscribers for access to its content via an iPhone app. Needleman rejected this notion, properly, given that he already pays for a Journal subscription. Charge me once, fine. Charge me twice, shame on you. Back to the Times, however, it seemed like the Bill Kellers and Arthur Sulzbergers of the world probably didn't have a lot of choice in changing their model. They needed to do something, though it's been clear that even inside their shiny new headquarters at Times Square in Manhattan, there was little agreement on what course to chart. And so, finally, they settled on this metered model. Fine. The truth is, in spite of my general desire not to pay for online news, I would probably be willing to fork over a few dollars each month for unlimited access to NYTimes.com, and I suspect many others will, too. Certainly not everyone will, and there's no doubt that the site will lose a great deal of its 20 million -plus unique users when the charges take effect next year. But a lot of people will decide it's worth it to pay something in order to keep on reading as much as they want on the site,

especially if they know that their dollars are supporting the actual journalism they're reading. The counter-argument, on the other hand, is that by implementing charges, the Times will kill itself, and we'll all lose. That would be a tragedy, and one that, when we're honest with ourselves, has a not-soinsignificant chance of coming true. But let's say the metered model is the way to go. The question is, how much will people be willing to pay? It's clear from the Times' announcement that even internally, they have no real idea what the answer is. Officially, all they're saying is that more details will be available soon, but that sounds like press release-speak for "We have no clue." For me, NYTimes.com access is important. I check the site daily, usually multiple times. In addition to a small number of other sites, it is an essential part of my daily reading. And for that, I'd be willing to pay $5 a month, easily. I suppose I'd also be willing to hand over $10 a month, though I'd not be as happy about it. More than that, and I'd have to reconsider whether it was worth it. What's most important is that

Man Buried in Haiti Rubble Uses iPhone to Treat Wounds, Survive By Brian X. Chen (Wired Top Stories)

A U.S. filmmaker, who nearly died in a Haiti earthquake, used a first-aid iPhone app to help him

survive.

the Times gets it right. Executives alluded to fluidity in their pricing model, and that, "they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand." This is worrisome. As a consumer, what you want is some sort of certainty. Sure, prices change over time, but do you really want to buy a product when you're not even sure how much of it you're going to get for your money next week? So, here's hoping that the Times' executives do a great job of crunching their numbers and figure out precisely what the right model is. In the meantime, my question to you is: How much would you pay for this? Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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The Similarity Between ACTA And Chinese Internet Censorship By Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:46:00 AM

To be fair, it may have been Bono who first made the connection explicit, but others are beginning to notice that there are some worrisome parallels between what is being pushed via ACTA and other methods and ongoing internet censorship in China. The latest, as pointed out by the EFF, is writer Rebecca MacKinnon, who walks you through the way in which Chinese censorship is based on the same faulty principle as ACTA's push for secondary liability for ISPs. Let's take a step back to explain this. We've discussed, in the past, that the way China operates its "Great Firewall" is not by explicitly banning anything. Instead, it simply puts liability on third parties such as ISPs and says they'll take the blame and face the consequences for any "bad stuff" that is allowed through to Chinese users. As MacKinnon notes, this is really "intermediary liability," or (obviously enough) putting the liability for actions on an intermediary to force them to try to curb the behavior of end users. In this way, the Chinese government can claim that it doesn't censor the internet and

there's no such thing as a "Great Firewall," because it doesn't exist as a single thing. It's just that the government will punish ISPs who don't block "bad stuff." But this "intermediary liability" is a big deal, because under any common sense approach to things, you should never blame an third party/intermediary for the actions of end users. And yet, that's exactly what the entertainment industry has been pushing. One of the key components being pushed for the internet section of ACTA is the idea of expanding "secondary liability" or "contributory copyright infringement" or whatever they want to call it. In reality, it's the same intermediary liability that China uses to have ISPs censor content. The idea is that if you put the liability for file sharing on ISPs, then they will be forced to figure out ways to stop it -- just like ISPs in China are forced to create their own censorship campaigns. And, of course, this isn't even hypothetical. We've got some real world examples. That's because much of the early

language in ACTA was modeled on the"free trade" agreement that the US pressured South Korea into signing. That included such intermediary liability for ISPs when it came to copyright infringement, and guess what happened? First, the country felt it needed to start kicking people off the internet based on a "three strikes" plan, just to satisfy the treaty. Then service providers quickly started banning all sorts of activities, including any music uploads and many video uploads. After all, it's not worth it for the service providers to be liable, so they block the ability to upload all sorts of content. And, of course, with such liability there, others went even further, with some service providers even banning advertisements for any kind of website that could allow copyright infringement, because of the fear that, via such intermediary liability, they may get blamed just for allowing an advertisement that pointed to a site that could be used for copyright infringement. When you look at the details, it's incredibly similar to the way in

which China crafted its Great Firewall. Impose such secondary liability that puts the responsibility on a third party, and and watch those third parties basically lock down all sorts of additional things, just to be safe. Of course, the old school entertainment industry doesn't mind, because preventing you from communicating isn't their problem. They don't see the internet as a communications platform anyway. They're hoping it's the next broadcast medium, and clearing the decks via a Great Firewall an intermediary liability system works right into those plans. The more you look at the details, the more it looks like the entertainment industry is doing everything possible to encircle the internet to make it appear more like a broadcast entertainment medium, rather than a communications medium. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

China Plans To Scan Text Messages For Unhealthy Content... Five Years After Announcing The Same Thing By Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:40:00 AM

Apparently, it's time for reruns. The NY Times is reporting that China is now planning to start scanning text messages for "unhealthy content," which is defined as including any of various (secret) keywords supplied by the police. Now, given the recent ramp up in attention paid to China's censorship efforts, this might be interesting... if it hadn't been announced five years ago. This is what the NY Times wants us to pay for? I guess if they block off their content behind a paywall, no one would be able to search the archives of the NY Times to find out that that great paper had covered the story five years ago itself (though, a couple months after we wrote about it). Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

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E-reader News Edition

Amazon ups author royalty for Kindle, matching Apple

Craig Ferguson has the outtakes from Morgan Freeman and The CBS Evening News

(CNET News.com)

By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)

Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:57:00 AM

In what may be a preemptive strike against the strong possibility that Apple will reveal a slate-style device on January 27, Amazon has said it will up the royalty for authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to 70 percent of the list price of their e-books. That's a big jump from its current 35 percent royalty rate and not coincidentally, the same number Apple doles out to developers who sell their apps in Apple's App Store. Starting on June 30, Amazon says that for each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who select the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of the list price, minus delivery costs. This new option will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option, which is set at a 65-35 split, with 65 percent

going to Amazon. Amazon didn't have any comment about whether the new pricing was a response to Apple's royalty program for its App Store, which offers thousands of e-books as self-contained apps along with e-reader apps from Amazon (Kindle Reader, Stanza), Barnes & Noble, and other e-book stores. But it did say that delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be 15 cents per megabyte. "At today's median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold," the news release notes. "This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option." The announcement also sets some parameters around the 70 percent royalty option. To qualify, books must satisfy the following set of requirements:

• The author or publishersupplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99. • This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book. • The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights. • The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-tospeech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store. • Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with the competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price. • The 70 percent royalty option

is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (aka public-domain books). At launch, the 70 percent royalty option will only be available for books sold in the United States. It's worth highlighting Amazon's comment that the "list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store." We have no idea what those features will be--nor would Amazon comment on them--but one could speculate on the possibility of additional interactive features that might come into play on more powerful, feature-rich e-readers such as a PC, iPhone/iPod Touch, the aforementioned Apple slate, or even a new Kindle. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Submitted at 1/20/2010 3:02:00 PM

If you haven't heard (a lot of people don't watch the network newscasts, after all), Morgan Freeman has replaced Walter Cronkite as the voice of The CBS Evening News. Last night, Craig Ferguson played the outtakes from Freeman's intro to the show. It could be an impersonator, but it sounds like Freeman. [via TV Newser] Filed under: Late Night, News, Video, Watercooler Talk, Celebrities, Talk Show, RealityFree Permalink| Email this| | Comments

And now, another exciting episode of Martha Stewart: Pole Dancer By Bob Sassone (TV Squad) Submitted at 1/20/2010 1:00:00 PM

All of you people searching for "Martha Stewart" and "pole

dancing" on Google finally have the video you've been looking for. She took to the pole (a sentence I hope I never have to type again) on her syndicated

show. And yes, that's L.A. Law's Sheila Kelley with Martha. She instructs people on how to do this exercise (and she's married to The West Wing's Richard

Schiff). Comments Filed under: Food/Home/DIY, Daytime, Video, Celebrities, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| |

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E-reader News Edition

Thwapr Brings Mobile-to-Mobile Video-Sharing to Any Phone By Christina Warren (Mashable!)

which makes it hard for us to share photos. Even among smartphones, the Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:36:43 AM different video standards can Thwapr, a mobile-to-mobile create a problem for users. Sure, video-sharing program that YouTube is supported on more launches its public beta today, is and more mobile devices, but it’s focused on creating an easy-to- not universal. Thwapr’s Solution use cross-platform solution for Thwapr is a free service that sharing photos and videos with addresses these issues. Utilizing other people, regardless of what SMS messaging and e-mail, you type of phone they use. can send video and photos to The Problem With Current almost anyone with a cell phone. Options Thwapr supports more than 170 The problem with current different devices on carriers in mobile-to-mobile video- or t h e U . S . a n d C a n a d a photo-sharing options is that they (international countries are d o n ’ t w o r k r e l i a b l y w i t h coming soon). different platforms. Sure, I can Here’s how it works: A friend s e n d a n M M S m e s s a g e t o can send you a picture or a video practically anyone, but that photo using Thwapr. You get notified is often tied directly to my by an SMS message that gives phone. If I switch devices or lose you a link. That link will take my phone, my photos are gone you to a site that has been tested too. across mobile browsers and then The other big problem is that it will display the photo or although services like TwitPic encode the video (on the fly) in a exist, they focus mostly on format optimized for your smartphones. My mom still has mobile device. an old Motorola Razr. She can You can then respond to that actually record and view video, message, or “thwap” by either but obviously she can’t get a entering a comment or sending TwitPic-compatible application, your own photo or video back to

Thwapr is opening up its public beta today, but the company already has some big plans. Not only is Thwapr deep in development on an iPhone app, but it is also looking at ways that people can respond directly to thwaps by placing orders. Think about the possibilities of the person. You can upload using marrying something like a e-mail, and on devices that lack e Thwapr video of what’s going on -mail support, MMS. I did a with Haiti with the ability to number of real-time demos with donate by responding to a Thwapr’s CTO yesterday and I Thwap. was impressed with the speed Thwapr is also looking at geowith which I could both send and location so that advertisers can r e c e i v e v i d e o o r p h o t o s . do sponsored thwaps to local Simplicity and Cross-platform Is users, which opens up all kind of Key cool possibilities. A movie The key to Thwapr is that it theater could send thwaps to works with so many different subscribed users with a new platforms. You can use it on a movie trailer and you could preBlackBerry, an iPhone, an order tickets in response. Android device, and the new Sharing video via mobile Nokia N900 and Palm devices devices is only going to get (from the old Palm OS and bigger, but cross-compatibility is webOS). You’re notified that key. This is why Thwapr is so your upload is complete via SMS exciting. or e-mail (you can choose how Tags: mobile video, thwapr you want to be notified) and you can add users to your friends list to easily send stuff their way. Future Plans

Twit Pic: Kendra Wilkinson's Baby Hank (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:20:00 AM

Cute kid alert! Reality star Kendra Wilkinson took to her

Twitter account to post a pic of her baby boy. Dressed from head-to-toe in Nike attire, Kendra's infant son, Hank Baskett, Jr., slept like a

baby while his adoring mom took a twit pic of him. Little Hank has grown since the last picture his mom posted of him back in December. Kendra's

baby son was born on December 11, weighing in at 9 lbs. 5 oz. This is the first baby for the reality star and her hubby, NFL player Hank Baskett.

'The View''s Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Swapping Jobs with Husband (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:06:00 AM

Elisabeth Hasselbeck proves it's not a man's world after all. "The View" co-host traded places with her husband Tim for a day at the ESPN offices, where she sat behind the desk on "NFL Live" and joined Jay Harris on "SportsCenter," the network reports. She told ESPN: "It was nice to ... walk in his shoes for the day. It's something I watch all the time and to see the behind-thescenes and how everything operates, it's eye-opening. When you are in your own comfort zone, you get used to the flow of the day. Here the learning curve is really, really steep, but it's been a lot of fun and everyone has been great to me. I definitely underestimated all that Tim has to know and get out in a short period of time on-air, and I give him a lot of credit."

Tech/ Entertainment/

Microsoft and Intuit partner up in the cloud (CNET News.com)

customers want to interact with Azure and there are natural fits-such as this relationship with Intuit IPP + Windows Intuit that have immediate Azure(Credit: Intuit) benefits for customers. There Intuit and Microsoft announced will be more efforts on these Wednesday that the two natural-fit scenarios. companies plan to integrate the This announcement does make capabilities of their cloud me wonder at what point services platforms, the Intuit Microsoft will consider internal Partner Platform(IPP) and or enterprise cloud deployments, Windows Azure platform, to which seem like a very obvious build solutions for small way to not only utilize the Azure businesses. Azure will become a technology but to provide a new "preferred platform" for smalldeployment option that isn't tied business application to specific servers, but rather to a development as part of the pool of resources (which relationship. ultimately can be internal or According to Kim Akers, looking to build new and more applications in the ecosystem. external). general manager of Partner compelling applications and Microsoft has some serious For well over a year I've been Evangelism at Microsoft, there channels to sell your products. m o t i v a t i o n t o g e t m o r e suggesting that Microsoft needs are three constituencies that With this integration developers d e v e l o p e r s o n t h e A z u r e to take advantage of it's massive benefit from this partnership: can build richer applications platform and Intuit's products are developer base to make any real â&#x20AC;˘ Developers working on Azure much faster. Functions like a logical step to more adoption. progress with Azure. While this apps can take advantage of the billing and the marketplace It seems likely that Microsoft deal with Intuit is still a bit of a IPP--gaining access to the function also help to make will continue to take these types baby step, there are many other features and promotion in the developers' lives easier with of smaller steps into the cloud-- applications, both online and off, features like single sign-on." m o r e p a r t n e r i n g w i t h that could use Azure for a variety marketplace. According to Alex Chriss, independent software vendors of purposes. This bodes well not â&#x20AC;˘ Channel partners have a way to offer broader applications to director of IPP, the technology that have developer communities just for Microsoft but for the their small-business customers. took just a few months to build --rather than jumping whole-hog cloud in general. â&#x20AC;˘ End customers have better because the strategy was already into an Amazon EC2 approach. Five Filters featured article: access to best-of-breed and aligned. The integration is based This approach ensures that Azure Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: on a common data model that is receives enough testing and that PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, customized applications. an extension of Quickbooks data. a developer community gets built Term Extraction. Akers suggests that developers The data model lives in the cloud without Microsoft having to fund have a lot to gain from this and developers are able to use the whole exercise. integration. "From the developer the SDK to integrate between the Akers told me that Microsoft perspective you are always d e s k t o p , c l o u d , a n d o t h e r now better understands how Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:35:00 AM

E-reader News Edition

'Real Housewife of New York' to Pose for Playboy (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:30:00 AM

The ladies of "The Real Housewives of New York" are sure to have a tell-all season when they return to TV, but one cast mate is already planning to bare it all for the cover of Playboy. Former model and 41-year-old mother of two Kelly Bensimon is gearing up to strip down for the March issue of the magazine with a six-page nude pictorial on the inside. Kelly's ex-husband, renowned photographer Gilles Bensimon, will be doing the shoot. Kelly isn't the first New York housewife to pose nude. Her cast mate Bethenny Frankel bared it all for PETA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ad campaign.

Tech/ Entertainment/

E-reader News Edition

CHUCK continued from page 15

Universe. (That's the one with Hamish McBegbie as the lead psychotic scientist.) Sanctuary's App Store entrant is "Sanctuary and Beyond" [ iTunes link]. Unlike the Chuck app, it will set you back $0.99. Rated 12+, S&B offers "exclusive video clips", which are basically exactly the same extras you'll find on the Sanctuary Season 1 DVD. I'm afraid I'm going to be a little harsh here, but this app is a serious contender for worst App Store app ever made. It's got a horrible interface, bad design values, and from the bottom up (looking at the app bundle on a jailbroken system), it's just been thrown together. Badly. The name of the app that underlies "Sanctuary and Beyond"? It's "Metranome.app". Presumably it was put together by the Canadian-based Metranome company, who didn't bother naming the application to match the branding for its client. The application works like this. You press a download arrow. And then you wait. Without any status indicators at all. Until videos fully download.

You just sit there with the app sitting on your iPhone, and the iPhone sitting on a desk. You leave it open. And wait. And wait. And wait. Until the videos download. While you do that, there are any number of utterly and completely useless buttons that make no sense and don't help you do anything. For example, there's a search button. That lets you search through, well, nothing. There's an options button that offers less than useful settings. There's a help button that...well, you get the idea. If you do actually finish sitting around and waiting, eventually, a number of videos will download to your iPhone. And then you can watch them. On a teeny tiny screen. Without the ability to use Apple's video out capabilities. Because you cannot then save or move them to your built-in albums. Whatever. So here's what I recommend. Go ahead and jailbreak your system and install ssh. (Dont' forget to change your password from "alpine"). SFTP into the mobile user folder and locate the application folder that holds the

Metranome.app, and from there into Documents/media. Just ftp the mp4 videos to your PC or Mac and watch them there. It will be far more satisfying and may even justify the buck you spent to buy the app. Alternatively, just buy the DVDs (or get them from your local library) and watch them in high def on your big screen TV. TUAW gives "Beyond Sanctuary" its first ever score of Negative Five Werewolf IT techs. We simply cannot recommend this app for purchase. And, oh yeah, Chuck wins. TUAW Chuck vs. Sanctuary smackdown: Which product tie in wins? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

NY Times Takes Up The Case Of Sherlock Holmes And The Lost Public Domain... But Gets It Wrong By Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

properties involving the detective "definitely should" be licensed Submitted at 1/20/2010 8:10:00 AM by the Conan Doyle estate. You may recall that last month Lellenberg would say that, we had an interesting discussion because Lellenberg is the literary h e r e o v e r w h e t h e r o r n o t agent for the Arthur Conan Sherlock Holmes was in the Doyle estate, and wants you to public domain. The answer was b e l i e v e t h a t . B u t , a s w e not entirely clear, because you discussed last time, it's not true. get different answers from All of the Sherlock Holmes different people. However, it books except one have now looks like the NY Times is on entered the public domain. And, the case, and has a an article yes, this creates quite a mess. looking into the ownership of Sir But, in theory, anyone who Arthur Conan Doyle's creation. created a work based solely on Unfortunately, I believe the NY the public domain works, and Times gets it wrong. which is not based on or derived While the article does detail the from that last work, should, in amazingly convoluted history fact, be legit without a license. over who owned the copyrights T h a t d o e s n ' t m e a n t h a t ( a n d t h e v a r i o u s d i s p u t e s Lellenberg (or some of the others associated with those rights), it who claim rights over Holmes) gets a bunch of things wrong and wouldn't sue, but it's not correct (oddly) never seems to talk to to claim that Holmes is still any copyright lawyers. While c o m p l e t e l y c o v e r e d b y the article does note that Holmes copyright. The fact that the vast is public domain in the UK, it majority of his books are very makes a blanket statement that much in the public domain is a Holmes is still covered by rather important fact -- and c o p y r i g h t i n t h e U S : M r . totally ignored by the NY Times Lellenberg said that Sherlock article. Holmes remains under copyright Permalink| Comments| Email protection in the United States This Story through 2023, and that any new

Rare Tiger Spotted at Sex Rehab [Photo Evidence] By Richard Lawson (Gawker) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:16:00 PM

Benoit was right! Pictures have

emerged of golfing great Tiger Woods at Gentle Path, a Hattiesburg, Mississippi rehabilitation facility, where he's

supposedly seeking treatment for

a sex addiction. Hattiesburg is a profoundly unsexy place, so seems like a good choice.

Tech/ Sports/

E-reader News Edition

Facebook App Notifications Moving to Your E-mail Inbox By Jennifer Van Grove (Mashable!)

push by Facebook is huge in terms of connecting directly with their application users, Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:56:20 AM something that most have only Starting today Facebook been able to do indirectly up developers can opt to until now. Essentially Facebook communicate with users directly will no longer serve as the via e-mail, replacing the need for middleman between you and application-to-user notifications, your users. which the social networks plans authorization. For sites that leverage Facebook Here’s how it looks if the Connect as an alternative login, to eliminate. T h e n e w i n i t i a t i v e w a s developer chooses to make e- i t ’ s a l s o a n i m p o r t a n t announced this morning and will mail sharing optional: development that will help you go live today. Developers can And if the application requires s t o r e n e w m e m b e r e - m a i l n o w r e q u e s t u s e r e - m a i l your e-mail address: addresses, or the proxied addresses during the initial Given that Facebook wants to Facebook e-mail address, for authorization process (which m a k e f u l l t r a n s i t i o n f r o m future contact. they can make optional or application-to-user notifications As for Facebook application r e q u i r e d ) , F a c e b o o k w i l l t o d i r e c t - t o - u s e r e - m a i l users, some of you might not extensively promote the feature communication, it plans to relish the idea of sharing your eon every application page users promote the change extensively. mail address, but Facebook has visit, and users can either share As an application user, you’ll built-in a number of safe guards their actual e-mail address or a start to see dialog boxes at the should you not only wish to Facebook proxied e-mail address top of every application canvas reject sharing your e-mail or do page you visit. You’ll see these so anonymously. They’re also for anonymity. How it Works On the surface, user e-mail for the next three months or holding developers to the CANsharing is just another extended t h r o u g h t h r e e i n d e p e n d e n t SPAM Act and requiring that permission that application users s e s s i o n s w i t h a s i n g l e they pledge not to sell your info will be able to allow (or not) a p p l i c a t i o n . to third-parties. during the authorization process. You’ll probably get pretty Tags: facebook, facebook For the user, this means that the familiar with dialogs that look a p p l i c a t i o n , f a c e b o o k process will flow similar to other similar to this: notifications, social media application requests that they can What It Means a c c e p t o r r e j e c t d u r i n g For developers, the big e-mail

When Declining To Enforce Your Intellectual Property Rights Strengthens Your Market Position By Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

conspicuously refrained from attacking rivals on copyright or Submitted at 1/20/2010 6:57:00 AM patent infringement issues in Over the years we've shown b o t h t h e i P o d a n d i P h o n e many examples of times when it markets, outside of defensive makes much more business sense measures it has taken against not to enforce your intellectual patent challenges from Creative property rights, but reader Jerry a n d m o r e r e c e n t l y N o k i a . L e i c h t e r s e n d s i n a n o t h e r Competing in the market has example. It discusses how Apple historically worked out much is benefiting from not going after more successfully for Apple than those who copy its iPhone UI, trying to compete in court. I s u g g e s t i n g t h a t A p p l e ' s think it's a good point -- and aggressiveness in such lawsuits accurate that Apple is better off with PCs helped Microsoft win not enforcing its IP, and that the personal computer war in the Microsoft was helped by Apple's 80s and 90s: The more different mistake last time around, but I competitors Apple faces in doubt that's why Apple isn't smartphones, the better it fares. doing it this time around. My One major reason why Apple guess is that the reason it didn't lost its pioneering position in bother this time was because it g r a p h i c a l d e s k t o p P C s t o lost so badly when it tried to go Microsoft in the 90s was related after Microsoft for copying the to the company's efforts to stamp "Windows" look and feel. Still, out rivals in "look and feel" it is a good example where lawsuits during the late 80s that sometimes it really does help to shut down windowing products have more people recognize your from HP and GEM, leaving u s e r i n t e r f a c e - - e v e n i f Microsoft free rein to consolidate sometimes they're using it from a competitive-free monopoly someone else. juggernaut around its own Permalink| Comments| Email Windows product. This Story In this decade, Apple has

Brock Lesnar: Recovery 'a Miracle,' Ready for Mir-Carwin Winner By Michael David Smith (Fanhouse Main) Submitted at 1/20/2010 3:22:00 AM

Filed under: UFC, News UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar said Wednesday that he has had a miraculous

and that he will face the winner Lesnar's Health Issue, Recovery of the upcoming Frank Mir vs. Shane Carwin fight this summer. recovery from a serious illness, More: Timeline of Brock

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E-reader News Edition

Microsoft to release patch for IE hole Linja Zax 2.0 brings 3D on Thursday scrolling to your pocket (CNET News.com)

"It addresses the vulnerability related to recent attacks against Google and a small subset of Microsoft said on Wednesday corporations, as well as several that it will release on Thursday a other vulnerabilities. Once patch to fix the latest hole in applied, customers are protected Internet Explorer which was against the known attacks that used in the China-based attack have been widely publicized," on Google. Bryant said. "We recommend The company plans to release that customers install the update the patch as close to 10 a.m. PST as soon as it is available. For on Thursday as possible and host customers using automatic a public Webcast at 1 p.m. PST, u p d a t e s , t h i s u p d a t e w i l l a c c o r d i n g t o t h e s e c u r i t y automatically be applied once it advisory. is released." Microsoft continues to see Vulnerable software is IE 6 on limited attacks and has only seen Microsoft Windows 2000 and IE evidence of successful attacks 6, 7, and 8 on supported editions against Internet Explorer 6, of Windows XP, Windows according to Jerry Bryant, senior Server 2003, Windows Vista, security program manager at Windows Server 2008, Windows Microsoft. 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2, "This is a standard cumulative Microsoft said. update, accelerated from our Microsoft also updated its regularly scheduled February s e c u r i t y a d v i s o r y o n t h e release, for Internet Explorer vulnerability to include technical with an aggregate severity rating details to address additional o f C r i t i c a l , " h e s a i d i n a products that may be affected by statement. this vulnerability and to provide Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:21:00 AM

guidance related to reports of proof of concept code that bypasses the Data Encryption Protection that can mitigate against attacks. For an attack to be accomplished, an attacker would have to lure an IE user to a Web site hosting malware that was written to exploit the hole in the browser. This could be done by using social engineering and including a link to the malicious site in an e-mail that looks like it is coming from someone familiar or contains important information. Microsoft had announced on Tuesday that it would release the out-of-band patch before the next Patch Tuesday in February. Updated 11:46 a.m. PST with background on how an attack could be accomplished. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

(CNET News.com) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:41:00 AM

Remember Linja Zax? Probably not, but the technology, which emerged around this time last year as a gesture-based alternative to multitouch can now be found on Nokia's N900 browser. It can also be found within the specifications of Mozilla's mobile Fennec browser, although it has not yet been implemented. Linja Zax's latest trick is to reimagine how users scroll around a page. Where most touch-based browsers simply move the Web page, map tile, or image around as if it were a piece of paper on a table, Linja Zax now gives your screen a 3D tilt. This ever so slight change in perspective gives users a much farther field of view to see both how much more room there is to go in any one direction, as well as a broader view on a small screen. Linja Design, the makers of Linja Zax promise that it's 50 percent better than viewing the content with the current standard.

Here's what it looks like: The idea of tilting or pitching content within a display is by no means new. On the desktop it's been available in a number of applications and browser addons. But in recent years, it's begun to make a lot more sense on mobile devices where there is less screen real estate to go around. This can be seen most recently within Google's Android 2.1 software, which has a gallery app that uses technology from Cooliris. However, unlike what Linja Designs has shown off, it's based less on finger interaction as much as the way you're holding the phone. Linja Zax 2.0 remains a concept, whereas version 1.0 can be installed as an add-on to Firefox browsers. As mentioned before, its circular finger zooming gestures can also be found on the embedded browser that ships on the Nokia N900. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

'Lost' Star Josh Holloway Endorses the Power of Cool (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:54:00 AM

The shirtless and sexy "Lost" star Josh Holloway is back on the island!

Holloway, who plays Sawyer on the hit ABC show, made a splash on the shores of Hawaii as he posed for Cool Water's new men's fragrance Davidoff. "What makes a Cool Water man cool is

mainly confidence and a willingness to be a part of the elements that surround us on this planet," Holloway says of the brand. "I'm really proud to be representing Cool Water and of

the image that we've come up February 2. with. ... The power of cool is back!" Holloway and the cast of "Lost" return to TV for the final season of the show on Tuesday,

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E-reader News Edition

Did The Automobile Dehumanize Walking? No? Then Does Google Dehumanize Intelligence? By Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

But not to Nick Carr, apparently. To him, this means Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:29:00 AM that people are becoming Kevin sent over one of Nick "intellectually dehumanized." Carr's latest ramblings, attacking And this is a bad, bad thing: Google and its VP Marissa Truth is self-created through Mayer for saying: "It's not what l a b o r , t h r o u g h t h e h a r d , you know, it's what you can find inefficient, unscripted work of out." That statement is a little the mind, through the indirection too bland to actually catch on, of dream and reverie. What but is hardly a new idea. In fact, matters is what cannot be we've argued that this is the case rendered as code. Google can for many years. If you have g i v e y o u e v e r y t h i n g b u t regular access to a vast computer meaning. But this presupposes network that lets you find stuff, all sorts of incorrect things -you can actually have your such as the idea that what biological brain focus on more information you don't store in important things, rather than your brain can't be used for cramming it with things you can sussing out meaning. It reminds easily find out. In fact, with me of the people who insisted, various studies suggesting the years ago, that calculators would real key to intelligence is better destroy everyone's ability to do forgetting rather than better basic math, and that this would remembering, you could argue inevitably lead to the downfall of that not having to remember society. Sure, I may not totally certain things can be of great remember my times tables, but benefit. being able to quickly use a

calculator to figure out something isn't really a problem at all. And, much more importantly, it means that I can do much more complex mathematical calculations as well. The same is true of Google. Sure, we may not remember little bits of information here or there, but we can more easily bring together a much, much, much larger corpus of information, and synthesize that in a useful way in our brains. There is no rule that you should only use what's stored directly in your mind to think about things. The calculator didn't dehumanize math. The automobile didn't dehumanize walking. And Google, most certainly, has not dehumanized intelligence. It's only enabled it to do much, much more. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Earthquake survivor says iPhone helped save his life By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 1/20/2010 12:30:00 PM

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone Here's a remarkable story coming out of the horrendous tragedy in Haiti. Colorado Springs resident Dan Woolley was at a Port-au-Prince hotel when that tremendous earthquake struck, trapping him with a compound fracture in his leg and a laceration on his head. Fortunately for Dan, he had his iPhone and a medical app with him (plus a lot of luck), which he used to successfully diagnose and treat his injuries. Using the light from his iPhone's screen, Dan examined his wounds and identified the extent of the damage using the unnamed app. From there, he looked up the appropriate first aid techniques and applied them with pieces of his own clothing. Later, as he waited to be rescued, he diagnosed shock, again using that medical app. First aid apps are well represented on the App Store, and might prove crucial in an emergency. The US Army First Aid Manual [$1.99, iTunes link] and Survival Guide [$1.99, iTunes link] may be suitable for

you; if you want more clinical information and CPR help, the free WebMD Mobile [ iTunes link] or CPR Hero [ iTunes link] may deserve a spot on your phone. There's also a podcast to help you learn the techniques of CPR for child and adult rescue. It's an amazing story of survival, and we wish Dan and everyone affected the best. If you're looking for a way to support the relief efforts, you can do your part -- and get some great software to boot -- today at Indie Relief or Mac Bundle Box. [Via MacDailyNews] TUAW Earthquake survivor says iPhone helped save his life originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Chinese counterfeit iPhone workshop iPhone Sega Genesis raided Emulator Is Totally Official By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:30:00 AM

Filed under: Hardware, iPhone It's well known that China has a significant black market problem, especially when it comes to electronics, including the iPhone. Earlier this week, Chinese officials reported raiding a factory in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen in Southern China, where they seized 1,000 counterfeit iPhones and arrested 28 workers, according to Shenzhen Daily.* The factory was allegedly operated under the name Chuanglida Communication Tech Co. The cost of a counterfeit iPhone isn't clear, but estimates put them at 500 yuan (approximately

US$74 as of this writing). Legit iPhones sell for 5,000 yuan. The report notes that Apple is sending staff to Shenzhen to learn more about the case. Last month, Apple gained control of the "i-phone" trademark in China after a long dispute with manufacturer Hanwang Technology who held the trademark for a device they briefly sold in 2003. Official iPhone sales in China have been disappointing, with China Unicom (the country's 2nd

largest provider) announcing 100,000 units sold between the October, 2009 launch and December, 2009. China Unicom represents some 144 million users. [Via iPhone Savior] * Note: The Shenzhen Daily site is down as of this writing. The link included above is the Google Cache version whereas the source link below links to the original site. TUAW Chinese counterfeit iPhone workshop raided originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Canucks Take Their Act on the Road ... for 14 Straight Games

China tells banks to halt lending

By Christopher Botta (Fanhouse Main)

(Financial Times - US homepage)

Submitted at 1/20/2010 5:00:00 AM

Filed under: Canucks Between Jan. 28 and March 10, Canucks and Team Sweden forwards Daniel and Henrik Sedin will road trip in NHL history, divided s l e e p a t t h e i r r e s p e c t i v e by the Winter Olympics. Vancouver homes for two nights. This is a result of the longest

Submitted at 1/20/2010 3:04:11 AM

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing and Sundeep Tucker in Hong Kong Published: January 20 2010 05:43 | Last updated: January 20 2010 11:04 Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

By Samuel Axon (Mashable!) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:20:59 AM

A completely legit Sega Genesis emulator for the iPhone and iPod touch will hit the Apple App Store this February, according to Gizmodo. It will be free with one game ( Space Harrier II), but you’ll be able to buy more games within the app for $5.99 and under. Sonic the Hedgehog, Shining Force, Golden Axe and Ecco the Dolphin will be among the first games available. Sonic the Hedgehog and other Sega games have been available as independent downloads in the App Store for months. The idea here is to bring it all together into one app, making things easier to manage. The app will also give Sega the chance to tempt you into buying more games every time you load up Space Harrier II. Game emulators allow you to use software intended for another device on your phone. They’ve been popular on personal computers for a very long time, but the questionable legality of

the unofficial copies of the games has given Apple pause about allowing these things into the App Store in the past. This Genesis emulator (called Ultimate Genesis) was built by Sega itself, and it will play only games Sega makes available in its store. Sorry, but you won’t be able to import those 1,000 Genesis ROMs you downloaded on your PC or Mac. Unofficial emulators that can play those ROMs are still out there, but you’ll have to jailbreak your phone to use them because they’re not available through the App Store. Ultimate Genesis isn’t the first game emulator for the iPhone; a Commodore 64 app hit the virtual shelves last year. Tags: apple, apple app store, emulator, iphone, sega, sega genesis, sega ultimate genesis, video games

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Beta beat: Backup your Blu-ray discs It's Wednesday, time for with MakeMKV another TUAW TV Live broadcast at 5 PM ET By Aron Trimble (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:30:00 PM

Filed under: Software, Video, Beta Beat You know that it's possible to backup your CDs with iTunes and your DVDs with Handbrake, but what about that new Blu-ray disc (BD) you just received during the holidays? Macworld has a good write-up of a beta utility called MakeMKV that will rip both DVDs and BDs to perfect quality MKV format. Bare in mind that this will require having a connected or internal Blu-ray drive that can read said discs. This is currently a bit of a novelty in most Macs being that Steve Jobs considers the whole thing a " bag of hurt." However, if your system meets the hardware requirements,

you're ready to go off on your first Blu-ray ripping journey without the typical mess involved. Macworld's test resulted in a file nearly 32 GB in size as compared to the original 35 GB on the physical BD. While this is useful for those of you with a farm of terabyte-sized drives at your disposal, for others, a lower quality backup is acceptable. If

Backchecking with ... Ryan Malone By Christopher Botta (Fanhouse Main) Submitted at 1/20/2010 6:15:00 AM

Filed under: Lightning We get to know NHL players with some quick questions. Today we meet Tampa Bay's 6-4 power forward

Ryan Malone.

space is a concern, or you want to put a copy on your Apple TV, it's possible to use previouslymentioned Handbrake or Video Monkey to transcode into a lower quality (but still excellent) file. MakeMKV is available now for free while in beta. The Blu-ray ripping functionality is only free while the software is in beta so grab it while you can. Once the beta period ends, only the DVDripping will be free. [via Macworld] TUAW Beta beat: Backup your Blu-ray discs with MakeMKV originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

By Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:30:00 AM

Filed under: Video, Podcasting Not only is it Wednesday, but it's just one week -- seven short days -- until Apple announces something. We don't know what the announcement is all about, but we know where and when it will happen. So, while we bounce off the walls in fanboy anticipation, you can burn off some of that excess energy by joining your host Steve Sande for what is becoming a Wednesday tradition: TUAW TV Live. It's free, it's fun, and it's live! All you need to do is come back here to TUAW at about 5 PM ET (2 PM PT) and there will be a special post with information about watching or participating in the show. We use Ustream to do our live broadcast, and you can watch existing episodes of t h e s h o w a t http://ustream.tv/TUAW/. Some of today's scheduled topics: • When an app shouldn't be an app

• Original Mac marketing videos • A quick app review or two • Michael Grothaus' second article on what you want in iPhone OS 4.0 • Upcoming announcements on Monday (financial) and Wednesday And of course, any topic you bring up in the live chat is fair game as well. See you this afternoon! TUAW It's Wednesday, time for another TUAW TV Live broadcast at 5 PM ET originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Haiti Earthquake Survivor: “My iPhone Saved My Life”

Sign of the End Times: Pants on the Ground TShirts Hit eBay

By Barb Dybwad (Mashable!)

By Brenna Ehrlich (Mashable!)

Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:55:25 AM

Apple’s iconic smartphone has been known to win hearts and minds, but can it also save lives? Apparently it can, according to this story from NBC Miami. American Dan Woolley of Colorado Springs was caught in the collapse of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince after the Haiti earthquake struck last week. He used a medical application he had downloaded and the light from his iPhone to diagnose and treat injuries to his foot and head, and to help prevent going into shock. He also used the phone’s camera to map his surroundings and identify a safer location to await rescue, which followed 65 hours

The 100 cheesiest movie quotes of all-time (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:29:00 AM

Nothing spoils a perfectly mediocre movie like a huge Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:49:27 AM helping of cheese. Nope, not a plate full of gouda—a script line It has come to this:“Pants on the delivered with such a thick Ground” merch. When, oh when, coating of Velveeta, an audience will this meme leave us in can't help but to chuckle. peace? Prepare for a giggle and a General Larry Platt’s rendition grimace with the 100 cheesiest after the earthquake. Woolley is of original jam “Pants on the wide selection of “Pants on the now recovering at Jackson G r o u n d ” ( s u n g d u r i n g t h e Ground” Ts. Andrea Reiher over movie quotes ever uttered on the Memorial Hospital in Miami. requisite audition episode of at Zap2it wonders if Platt is big screen: It’s an amazing story that American Idol) has officially s e e i n g a n y d o u g h i n t h e Grab the popcorn and indulge in underscores both Woolley’s become the first viral hit of 2010, aftermath of his performance, tons of movie news. r e s o u r c e f u l n e s s a n d t h e with shout-outs from the late- and I have to reiterate her Permalink| Leave a comment » transformative power of those night circuit to the locker room. question. Come on people, if handheld computers in our But, as we all know, there’s you’re going to beat this meme pockets — which can perhaps really no way to capitalize on a into bloody oblivion, at least use even have the power to save a meme unless you 1). Get a book its visibility to help Platt, who life. could certainly use the cash. deal, 2). Sell T-shirts. [via TUAW] And that’s just what a cadre of Tags: american idol, business, Tags: haiti, iphone, iphone apps, enterprising folks are doing on humor, larry platt, money, pants medical eBay, where you can now find a of the ground, web video

And Now, the Blame Game (Little Green Footballs)

Two rival camps quickly emerged: Coakley’s campaign (and consultant — in particular Chris Cillizza has a piece on the pollster Celinda Lake) versus Democratic blame game in full national Democrats. From a force in Massachusetts. Coakley campaign adviser came Less than 24 hours removed a s t r o n g l y w o r d e d m e m o , from state Attorney General arguing that she had consistently Martha Coakley’s (D) stunning raised concern about voter loss in the Massachusetts Senate apathy in advance of the special race, Democrats were at daggers- e l e c t i o n a n d a s k e d f o r drawn over whose fault it was. fundraising help that she never Submitted at 1/20/2010 8:04:44 AM

received from national Democrats. One senior party official dismissed the memo as a “pack of lies” and — in a memo rebutting the Coakley memo — made several points including: 1) National Democrats had contacted the campaign on Jan. 2 asking what could be done to help and didn’t hear back for four days. 2) The money problems were Coakley’s and

hers alone; “If the Coakley campaign did have money troubles perhaps it was because the candidate and campaign went on hiatus/vacation for the last 10 days of December,” read the memo. 3) “Remember — the most notable events of the last week had nothing to do with the national Democratic Party — it was: Schilling is a Yankee, telling voters she didn’t need to

shake their hands, a Disastrous trip to Washington DC and a terrible debate performance,” read the memo. The simple fact — as we noted last night — is that everyone from the White House to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to the Coakley campaign deserves their share of blame.

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Ghost Story By Thomas B. Edsall (The New Republic - All Feed)

circumstances), his push for health care reform stands above the rest. He simply failed to Submitted at 1/19/2010 10:49:53 PM anticipate the animosity that his The victory of Scott Brown in proposal to cover the uninsured the fight for Ted Kennedy’s and to subsidize health care for Senate seat shines a light on a the poor would generate. trend in American politics that The harsh reality is many voters o u g h t t o d e e p l y t r o u b l e consider the health care bill a progressives. multibillion-dollar transfer of When Barack Obama ran for taxpayer money to the uninsured, president in 2008, he decisively a p o p u l a t i o n demonstrated that he was not disproportionately, although by bound by Democratic orthodoxy. no means exclusively, made up H e c a l l e d f o r m e r i t p a y , of the poor, African Americans, expanding charter schools, and Latinos, single parents, and the firing incompetent teachers. He l o n g - t e r m u n e m p l o y e d . supported President Bush’s faith- Providing medical care to this based initiatives providing population is an explicit goal of federal money to religious the legislation, and a worthy charities. He endorsed the goal, but political suicide in the S u p r e m e C o u r t ' s d e c i s i o n current environment. overturning a handgun ban in the As everyone knows, the United nation’s capital, while faulting States is undergoing a profound the Court’s opposition to the demographic transformation. d e a t h p e n a l t y f o r c h i l d Non-Hispanic whites are likely rape.(Click here to read Jonathan to become a minority by the year Cohn's open letter to nervous and 2042. This shift underlies the frustrated House Democrats.) theory of a Democratic Once in office, however, Obama realignment: Pro-Democratic failed to sustain his carefully groups are growing while the pro calibrated positioning. And then -Republican white population is he compounded this failing. declining. White, middle-class voters There is evidence, however, that ceased to think of him as a trends that have recently boosted protector of their interests. There Democratic prospects may also was the bank bailout and his be a key factor in undermining concessions to Wall Street on the capacity of the population for financial reform. While empathy, and, thus, its expanding his political capital on receptivity to programs like health care reform, he failed to health care reform. make a dent in unemployment. Robert Putnam, a Harvard But of all these political sociologist and author of the miscalculations (and unfortunate influential 2000 book, Bowling

Alone, offers an interpretation of what is going on. In 2007, Putnam published “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century,” a study that reaches conclusions painful to those committed to diversity and equality: “New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to 'hunker down.' Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.” He continues: “[I]nhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television. Note that this pattern encompasses attitudes and behavior, bridging and bonding social capital, public and private connections. Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us.” Putnam’s findings offer critical insight into the explosive growth of the Tea Party movement and the strikingly sudden collapse of support for the Democratic Party.

They suggest that the populace, especially the white populace, is on a psychic hair trigger. The demographic transformation of the country and the birth of multicultural America have made this group extremely status anxious—an anxiety that the recession obviously heightens. They are in a mood, to borrow Putnam’s phrase, to “hunker down.” And it is precisely this anxiety that is such an impediment to empathy. They view themselves as only marginally better off than those they perceive as the recipients of new government benefits. They look at health care reform and worry that they have little or nothing to gain and much to lose. In the end, Democrats failed to tailor their salesmanship of health care reform to allay the qualms of these voters, of the white working class. What this suggests is that many analyses of the elections of 2006 and 2008 only saw part of the picture. To many Democrats (and even some Republicans), the country appeared to be on the verge of a realignment driven by demography. This view was most persuasively articulated by Ruy Teixeira last March in a report for the Center for American Progress. From 1988 to 2008, Teixeira wrote, the importance of moderate and low-income white voters had steadily diminished: “The minority share of voters in presidential elections has risen

by 11 percentage points, while the share of increasingly progressive white college graduate voters has risen by four points. But the share of whiteworking class voters, who have remained conservative in their orientation, has plummeted by 15 points.” It was the dawn of an enlightened political era, he explained: “A new progressive America is on the rise.” Since those heady days, however, the Democratic realignment has stalled. By every polling measure the party is losing ground. Obama’s favorability ratings continue a steady downward trend. These movements are not the result of restored public esteem for the Republican Party. The stature of the GOP remains low, with its favorability ratings still 11 points behind those of the Democratic Party. In practice, the decline of Democratic fortunes coincides with the growing perception that Obama’s three primary legislative initiatives--health care reform, cap-and-trade, and increased regulation of the financial sector--have failed to improve the daily lives of most voters, voters who are impacted by the worst economy in 70 years. At a time when many voters are frightened by unprecedented deficits, the threat of escalating health care costs GHOST page 29

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Does He Feel Your Pain? By John B. Judis (The New Republic - All Feed) Submitted at 1/19/2010 11:08:39 PM

Bill Clinton didn’t know he was in big trouble until the very eve of the November 1994 election. Barack Obama knows now, barely a year into his presidency. While the party loyalists can blame Martha Coakley’s defeat on her ignorance of Red Sox baseball, it was clearly a message to the president and his party. Yes, a less inept candidate might have beaten Scott Brown, but if Obama and his program had been more popular in Massachusetts, even Coakley could have won--and by ten points or more. There were no network exits polls, only a limited sample by Rasmussen, but some of the polls taken beforehand bear out Obama’s role in Coakley’s defeat. In the final January 17 poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning North

Carolina outfit that picked up Brown’s surge early in the month, 20 percent of the respondents who voted for Obama in 2008 said they’d vote for Brown. Among those voters, only 22 percent approved of Obama’s presidency, and only 13 percent backed his health care plan.(Click here to read Thomas B. Edsall: "Why Health Care is the Graveyard of Democratic Dreams.") In fact, the percent of 2008 Obama voters who were backing Brown almost perfectly matched the percentage who were dissatisfied with Obama’s health care plan, which Brown himself singled out for criticism in his campaign. According to the Rasmussen exit sample, 52 percent of Brown voters rated health care as their top issue--a clear indication that they were viewing the election in national and not merely state terms. The most important question raised by Coakley’s loss is not

what she could have done better-the answer to that can fill pages of unhappy anecdotes about campaign mishaps--but why Obama’s popularity is so low that a Democrat could lose Massachusetts. A conservative Republican Senate candidate winning Massachusetts, which Obama carried by 62 percent to 36 percent in 2008, is comparable to a liberal Democrat carrying Utah. If you believe some of the blogs, the Democrats lost Massachusetts, and Obama’s approval is plummeting nationwide, because he alienated his left-wing base. Perhaps that does account for an absence of turnout among young voters in the Virginia gubernatorial or Massachusetts Senate races, but the polls have not shown growing dissatisfaction among young, minority, or liberal voters --the three voting blocs that accounted for Obama’s strongest support in 2008. Where he has

lost ground--and where the Democrats have lost ground--is primarily among white working and middle-class voters and senior citizens. The Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts, which like the PPP poll, was pretty much on target in the final result, singled out two white working-class towns, Gardner and Fitchburg, as bellwethers. Obama won Gardner, where Democrats hold a three-to-one registrations edge, by 59 percent to 31 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 56 percent to 42 percent. Obama won Fitchburg, with a similar Democratic edge, by 60 percent to 38 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 59 percent to 40 percent. That suggests a fairly dramatic shift among white working class voters. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

moderates grew by 9 points, from 34 percent to 43 percent, while the percentage saying he listens more to the moderate wing fell by 13 points, from 44 percent to 31 percent. And, so now a Democratic Party that seemed poised for electoral greatness has reverted back to the debilitating political condition that ailed it during the

1970s and 1980s. It is increasingly perceived as too liberal. It must convince the white working class that it will protect its interests—not just those of the very rich and very poor. Electoral success blinded the party to these nagging problems. Festering old perceptions have come back with a fury. That’s why Scott Brown

and his pickup truck managed to PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, drive such a large hole through Term Extraction. the very center of the president’s agenda. Thomas B. Edsall is the political editor of the Huffington Post. For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools:

The food court dilemma: How to choose where to eat [Flowchart] (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 1/19/2010 9:20:29 PM

Overwhelmed by food court choices? Looks like help has arrived in the form of a flowchart. This graphic impressively sums up the choices at any given food court. Topcultured has the epic full version—printed out, it’s perfect for any indecision attack. Tons more articles on food! Permalink| Leave a comment »

GHOST continued from page 28

and the likelihood of tax increases to pay for all this-Obama is being perceived as governing like a “tax and spend liberal.” The Pew Center has been tracking key public attitudes toward Obama and found that over the year the percentage of voters saying he listens to liberals in his party more than

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'Tea Party Leader': The GOP Never Calls Me Back (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 1/19/2010 2:56:26 PM

Dale Robertson is in the Washington Times again, described as a “leading figure” in the tea party movement:‘Tea party’ activists feel slighted by GOP. Leading figures in the burgeoning “tea party” movement complain they are being ignored by the Republican National Committee, despite having already shown their clout in taking down moderate Republicans in a New York special House race and the Florida Republican Party hierarchy. “I have called into the RNC many times, and they still haven’t called me back,” said Dale Robertson, head of TeaParty.org, which he claims has upwards of 7 million members. “I’ve called them, lots of times. I called them this morning. I called them yesterday. It’s like they ignore you as they try to figure out a strategy on how to defeat you.” Here’s Robertson at the February 27, 2009 Houston Tea Party. Now why in the world

GoogleSharing Anonymizes Your Google Experience [Downloads] By Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker)

would the GOP fail to return his calls? It’s a real head-scratcher. The last time I posted a link to a Washington Times article about Robertson, I got several insultlaced emails outraged that I described him as a “tea party leader,” saying that he had nothing to do with the Houston tea party groups, and demanding that I post a correction. And now here he is again in the far right Washington Times, touted as one of the main leaders of the

GoogleSharing doesn't work for services you're logged into—it would have no effect on your teabaggers, and boasting that his Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:00:00 AM GMail session since you've group has 7 million members. Firefox: Google offers a host of willingly identified yourself to Don’t bother emailing again, folks; if you can’t control your really awesome services, but Google. For using Google own message, to the point where more than a few people are services that don't require a login t h e W a s h i n g t o n T i m e s i s freaked out by how much h o w e v e r i t p e r f o r m s a s promoting this idiot as your information Google can gather. promised. GoogleSharing can leader, I’m not going to accept GoogleSharing anonymizes your a l s o f u n c t i o n a s a p r o x y Google activities and keeps the manager, allowing you to add any of the blame for it. additional non-GoogleSharing This kind of thing is why the tea big G out of your business. GoogleSharing is a Firefox proxies to use during your party “movement” is such a bad extension that routes all your b r o w s i n g session. joke. Google interactions through G o o g l e S h a r i n g i s a f r e e proxy that taps into a swarm of extension and works wherever Google identities—each query Firefox does. you perform through the main Have your own tips or tricks for search engine, Google Books, or a n o n y m i z i n g y o u r w e b other Google services is sent browsing? Let's hear about it in through one of the random t h e c o m m e n t s . identities. GoogleSharing[via The Register] As you would expect,

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Get to Know the Lay of the Land for a Better Chance of Success at Your Job [Career] By Lisa Hoover (Lifehacker) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:00:00 AM

Everyone wants to make a good impression on their first day at a new job. Career blog Work Awesome suggests learning the landscape of your workplace like the back of your hand for better chances of success, new job or not. Image by peretzpup. Blogger Bob Bessette says it's best to listen more than you talk, especially during those first crucial few days. You can learn a lot more about the climate and culture of the company that way than you can from any employee handbook or orientation. Naturally, you also want to make it a point to learn your coworkers' names, but Bessette says you should take that a step farther and also get acquainted with the company's organization chart and where everyone—especially you—fits into it.

Airline Fees Chart Highlights Charges for Checked Bags, Meals, and Other Airline Amenities [Travel] By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)

breaking down the extra prices for checking your first bag and second bag, for grabbing a snack E v e n i f y o u s e c u r e a n or meal on your flight, and inexpensive plane ticket these f i n a l l y f o r a n y a d d i t i o n a l days, you've still got plenty of c h a r g e a b l e s e r v i c e s o r pricey checked-bag and other a e x c e p t i o n s . la carte fees to worry about. The chart covers all the major Travel site Orbitz offers a U.S. airlines along with several comprehensive chart rounding international, so it's certainly up these fees for 25+ airlines. worth a bookmark until the next Photo by lrargerich. time you're pricing tickets. Got Next time you're considering your own strategies for keeping prices for a ticket, fire up this it cheap when you fly? (Carry-on handy chart to keep an eye on the only!) Let's hear them in the Markets Commentator Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: hidden charges that may be comments. Will I be charged a Published: January 20 2010 PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, tacked on for the airlines you're f e e f o r c h e c k e d b a g s a n d looking at. The exhaustive chart m e a l s ? [ O r b i t z v i a E r i n 08:28 | Last updated: January 20 Term Extraction. at Orbitz makes it easy to see P e t t i g r e w ] 2010 19:50 what fees you can expect, Five Filters featured article: Learn the Landscape. First of all, you should get a copy of the org chart from Human Resources and make it a point to learn it. Knowing who reports to whom, will help you become familiar with all of the players in the organization. Knowing where to go to get help will be essential, not only to a new employee, but to a seasoned one. Bessette's got a few other good

tips in the post, so you'll want to head over there to check them out—definitely some great reminders for first-time job seekers or anyone dealing with new-job jitters. What memorable first-day-of-work experiences have you had? Share them in the comments. 5 Tips for the Brand New Employee[Work Awesome]

China and eurozone fears hit risk appetite (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:50:19 AM

By Jamie Chisholm, Global

Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:30:00 AM

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Circle Dock Arranges Your Shortcuts in a MouseCentered Application Dock [Downloads]

Persona 3 Portable coming to North America on July 6

By Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker)

By Andrew Yoon (Joystiq)

Submitted at 1/20/2010 12:00:00 PM

Windows: Sure you could use the start menu or even install an application launcher like Launchy but you'd be missing out on the rotating eye candy and application management of Circle Dock. We first covered Circle Dock when it appeared out of of a Donation Coder contest two years ago. Since then it has undergone quite a few revisions and is more polished than ever. One of the initial complaints about Circle Dock was the lack

rotation speed, and transparency of the circle as well as what hot keys and mouse combos will summon it and interact with it. You can reorder icons, swap them out—don't think the default icon for an app is sexy enough for your new circle launcher? You can grab a new one and replace it—and rearrange them by drag and drop. Circle Dock is freeware, Windows only. Have a novel application launcher? Let's hear about it in the comments. Circle Dock

Atlus is bringing an Englishlanguage version of Persona 3 Portable to the US. The PSP version of Persona 3 isn't a direct port of the original PS2 RPG. Instead, it streamlines the experience for handheld play and adds a new playable female character, with her own "Social Links, special events, and unique o f c o m p r e h e n s i v e h e l p immediately after the installation romantic opportunities." In file—even in the beginning the s o y o u c a n d i g r i g h t i n t o addition, P3P adds a few cameos application did a lot but it wasn't tweaking settings. You can from Persona 4, and introduces always clear on how you could tweak just about everything in five difficulty settings, ranging g e t i t t o d o w h a t y o u Circle Dock short of tweaking from "beginner" to "maniac." wanted—the new release has a into being Square Dock. The battle system has also huge help file that launches You can alter the size, shape, drastically changed, with players able to directly control teammates. The UMD version will be available at retail on July 6th, with a PSN version expected Oh yeah, and it's not exactly soon after. Check out the box art cheap, at $125. If you're cool after the break. with the size, weight, and price, Gallery: Persona 3 Portable however, the wallet-as-multi-tool Continue reading Persona 3 idea is functional and fun. Our P o r t a b l e c o m i n g t o N o r t h suggestion: Figure out a way to A m e r i c a o n J u l y 6 DIY your own multi-tool franken Persona 3 Portable coming to -wallet for more comfort and N o r t h A m e r i c a o n J u l y 6 without the giant price tag. Ideas originally appeared on Joystiq on comes with a lot of drawbacks. x 3.6" x 4" (I've seen plenty just in the comments! TMT Tactical Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. It's a hard-shell wallet, which a s b a d i f n o t w o r s e ) , b u t Wallet[via Gizmodo] Please see our terms for use of may be a dealbreaker for some. considering our love for the slim feeds. The size isn't terrible by some wallet, it's not all that backPermalink| Email this| wallet standards, at roughly 1.1" pocket friendly. Comments

The Tactical Wallet Is a Wallet and Swiss Army Knife Rolled into One [Stuff We Like] By Adam Pash (Lifehacker) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:30:00 AM

Sure the Tactical Wallet holds your credit cards, license, cash, and other wallet-y items. It also packs a built-in compass, tweezers, toothpick, pen, glass breaker, and two hidden compartments. It's like if MacGyver made a wallet. Unfortunately MacGyver's not the most ergonomic designer. For many, the Tactical wallet

Submitted at 1/20/2010 1:30:00 PM

Tech News/ Fashion/

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Israel's Venture Funding Falls Off A Cliff In 2009 By Chris Cameron (ReadWriteWeb)

venture firms tend to favor midstage funding over seed funding by a great margin. In the fourth Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:40:00 AM quarter of 2009, mid-stage American startups are not alone companies accounted for over when it comes to the well of half of the funding, while seed venture funding drying up. A companies gained just 4% of the recent report by the Israel fourth quarter of 2009, the total. Venture Capital Research Center average financing round was just We recently reported that the has found that funding in Israel $2.2 million, down from $3.61 fourth quarter showed hope for fell drastically to $1.12 billion in million during the same period in American startups, both in 2009, nearly half the amount 2008. mergers and acquisitions and from the previous year. The 46% Sponsor venture funding. For decrease marks the lowest By sector, life sciences saw the comparison, the United States funding numbers since 2003 and most growth took the lion's share saw over $20 billion in venture ends Israel's streak of three of the money up from 15% in funding for 2461 deals in 2009, c o n s e c u t i v e y e a r s w i t h 2 0 0 8 t o 2 4 % i n 2 0 0 9 . an average of nearly $8.5 million increasing number of companies S e m i c o n d u c t o r s i n I s r a e l per deal. and funding dollars. continued a downward trend, With venture funding seemingly The numbers are a sign of the falling from 15% of the funding drying up in Israel, the United worldwide economic stress that in 2008 to just 8% in 2009, its States could see an influx of is affecting countries large and lowest share since 2001. The foreign entrepreneurs coming to small across the globe. While internet and communications American for venture funds. Of funding plummeted between sectors held steady at 13% and course, this could be expedited 2008 and 2009, the number of 20% respectively, but they are by the creation of a startup visa companies funded only fell nowhere near their numbers from program, a topic we wrote about roughly 7% from 483 to 447, 2000 when they combined for earlier this month. which means less money is being almost 70% of the total funding. Photo by Flickr user. Discuss given to each company. In the As reflected in the report, Israeli

Amazon Prepares for the Arrival of the Apple Tablet: Gives Authors and Publishers a Bigger Royalty Cut for E-Books By Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb)

become available for U.S. publishers on January 27. This is an interesting move by Amazon just announced that it is Amazon. A 70% royalty has now offering publishers and become the standard among authors a new 70% royalty numerous industries, including option. Publishers and authors Apple's App Store. Of course, who choose this option will Apple is rumored to open up its receive 70% of the list price own e-book store when (if?) it from sales their e-books in the l a u n c h e s t h e A p p l e Kindle store. In order to qualify tablet/iPad/iSlate. According to for this option, publishers have the latest rumors, Apple is to turn on the text-to-speech currently talking to a number of feature and make the e-book U.S. publishers in order to bring available in all geographies for these publisher's e-books into the which the author or publisher has iTunes store or into a new Apple rights. In addition, publishers e-book store. also have to sell the e-book for at Publishers have long been least 20% below the price of the unhappy with Amazon's decision physical book and can't charge to keep e-book prices low by more than $9.99 for the Kindle s u b s i d i z i n g t h e m . G i v i n g edition. publishers a higher cut of the Sponsor royalties as long as they fulfill As Amazon notes in today's Amazon's requirements looks press release, publishers and like a concession to these authors who choose the standard publishers. If Amazon expects to royalty option would only make see competition from Apple in about $3.15 from every sale of the near future, then this move an e-book that sells for $8.99. would make even more sense. Now, with the 70% option, these Discuss publishers would make $6.25. The 70% royalty option will Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:22:51 AM

Street Chic: New York By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 1/20/2010 4:00:00 AM

Voluminous separates make a

big statement. Photo: Stylesight Think you are Street Chic? Email us your photo and you could appear in ELLE.com's

Follow ELLE on Twitter. Become our Facebook fan! Street Chic Daily.

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Everybody Wants a Piece of the Mobile Advertising Market - Opera Acquires AdMarvel

Newsgator Acquires Tomoye - Deepening Sharepoint Ties

By Frederic Lardinois (ReadWriteWeb)

By Alex Williams (ReadWriteWeb)

market through the AdMob acquisition. The company's own AdSense/AdWords program Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:50:08 AM offers mobile solutions, but the It seems like everybody is popularity of AdSense and scrambling to secure a piece of AdMarvel CEO described the AdWords hasn't really translated the mobile advertising market i P h o n e a s " a n a m a z i n g l y into success in the mobile space these days. Google is still sorting innovative platform." Opera yet. Apple's acquisition of out the details of its AdMob hasn't announced any plans to Quattro is a curious move, as acquisition, but barring any bring its browser to the iPhone. advertising isn't exactly one of regulatory snafus, the acquisition When we talked to Opera's Apple's core competencies. should go through in the next former CEO Jon von Tetzchner For Opera this move makes few months. Apple acquired the in December, he noted that the sense, though. Just like Apple relatively unknown mobile c o m p a n y w a s n ' t a v e r s e t o hopes to profit directly from the advertising network Quattro launching a browser on the iPhone apps and mobile sites that earlier this month. Today, Opera iPhone, but Apple's App Store use Quattro, Opera will be able announced that it has acquired approval process was holding the to profit from sites that use AdMarvel, a San Mateo-based company back from even trying AdMarvel. Neither Apple nor to get an app into the store for Opera are traditional advertising mobile advertising company. the time being. It is worth noting, companies, but both clearly Sponsor According to Opera's new CEO though, that Opera does offer an b e l i e v e t h a t t h e m o b i l e Lars Boilesen, about 50 million A n d r o i d a p p . A u g m e n t i n g advertising market is poised for people access the web through R e v e n u e S t r e a m s T h r o u g h g r o w t h a n d t h a t t h e y c a n Opera on their mobile browsers. M o b i l e A d v e r t i s i n g augment their current revenue AdMarvel, Opera and the iPhone There can be little doubt that streams by dipping their toes into It's interesting to note that mobile advertising is one of the this business. Discuss AdMarvel also offers an iPhone fastest growing markets in the SDK for developers. At the time mobile ecosystem. Google of the launch of the iPhone SDK, obviously wants a piece of this

Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:32:21 AM

Newsgator has acquired Tomoye, a social networking platform for Sharepoint. The acqusition makes Newagator one of the largest enterprise collaboration companies in the Enterprise 2.0 space and positions it as a vendor with the deepest ties to the Sharepoint environment. Details of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition buoys Newsgator's reputation as an enterprise collaboration provider, almost exclusively for the Sharepoint platform. Sponsor Newsgator says it now has 2.1 million paying users, which it claims makes its the largest social computing vendor. It's a claim we are a bit skeptical about as there are so many possible ways to define exactly what it means to be a social computing vendor. Newsgator has always had deep ties with Microsoft. it began as a news aggregator that embedded

into Outlook. In recent years, Newsgator has transformed into a collaboration provider. its focus is on Sharepoint. Microsoft seems to look kindly on Newsgator as a partner. In contrast, companies like Jive, that integrate with Sharepoint, are seen more as competitors. The acquisition appears to give Newsgator deeper social networking capabilities but perhaps more so gives it a position in the Governmnet 2.0 world. Tomoye was founded in 2000. Its most significant installation is with the U.S. Army, where it has 150,000 users. Customers include the Federal Reserve Bank, The United States Air Force and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Discuss

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Tech News/ TV/ Popular News/ Apple/

You've Got Fresh Milk! Facebook Apps Can Now Email You

Report: TX judge won't lose job for closing court (AP)

By Mike Melanson (ReadWriteWeb)

(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

email. While this move is surely going to bring about calls of Facebook Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:55:00 AM invading people's privacy, we Just in case you were thinking think that as long as no Mafia Wars or Farmville weren't new feature, Facebook is careful information is shared by default, a big enough part of your daily to note that its users will retain everything should be okay. Then life, Facebook has announced control over who can contact again, it seems that Facebook has that it will now offer email them by email. moved in the direction of sharing notifications from applications. Sponsor things by default, doesn't it? Before you go diving off the According to Inside Facebook, What we really nope now, deep end worrying about an our favorite social network will though, is that some of our i n b o x f u l l o f e v e n m o r e go one step further, offering f r i e n d s d o n ' t p e r m a n e n t l y Facebook notifications, take a users the ability to use a proxy disappear into the Farmville deep breath and remember that email address, so they don't have abyss as they are constantly 80s DARE campaign slogan and to divulge their email address to reminded that the cows are let it become your mantra - "Just external entities but can still coming home. Discuss Say NO." receive the notifications by In its blog post announcing the

Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:22:21 AM

Wayne buzzed up: Obama to Dems: Don't jam through health care bill 12 seconds ago 2010-0120T11:55:03-08:00 Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Battle of the Vaporware Tablets By Charles Jade (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 1/19/2010 3:10:29 PM

BATTLE page 36

What's On Tonight: Gary Unmarried, Cougar Town, Nip/Tuck, Real World By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)

• At 9, ABC has a new Modern Family, then new episodes of Cougar Town and Ugly Betty. • TBS has four new episodes of • At 8, CBS has a new Old Tyler Perry's Meet The Browns Christine, followed by new starting at 9. episodes of Gary Unmarried, • DirecTV 101 has a new Friday Criminal Minds, and CSI: NY. Night Lights at 9. • NBC has a new Mercy at 8. • Discovery has a new Man vs. • FOX has a new American Idol Wild at 9. at 8, then a new Human Target. • Food Network has a new • PBS has a new episode of The Throw Down with Bobby Flay at Human Spark at 8, followed by a 9. • Syfy has a new Ghost Hunters new Great Performances at the • There's a new MonsterQuest International at 9. Met. on History Channel at 9. Submitted at 1/20/2010 12:23:00 PM

• Showtime has a new Inside the NFL at 9. • At 10, NBC has a new Jay Leno Show. • TNT has a new Leverage at 10. • FX has a new Nip/Tuck at 10. • Bravo has a new Launch My Line at 10. • TV Land has a new High School Reunion at 10. • Also at 10: MTV has a new Real World. Check your local TV listings for

more. After the jump, the late night talk shows. Continue reading What's On Tonight: Gary Unmarried, Cougar Town, Nip/Tuck, Real World Filed under: Late Night, Programming, Celebrities, Talk Show, What To Watch Tonight, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

E-reader News Edition

BATTLE continued from page 35

Do you know what tablet computers and jetpacks have in common? It’s not a keroseneburning jet engine strapped to your back, though Adobe Flash on a MacBook can feel like your pants are on fire. The shared problem is that the present reality of future technologies always seems to disappoint, often resulting in products never coming to market. It’s called vaporware, and that would include the long-rumored Apple tablet. That tablet, like other Apple products that actually exist, has been getting all the attention as of late, and that’s a shame. There are a number of other existentiallychallenged tablets not out there right now. Here are my top five, ranked by the likelihood they will remain in the ether for all time.#5 CrunchPad/JooJoo Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad was supposed to be “a dead simple tablet for $200,” but has ended up as a combo $500 webpad and Silicon Valley legal drama. Arrington’s partners, FusionGarage, dumped him and claimed ownership of the renamed JooJoo, which means “magical device” in “African.” Note to FusionGarage: “African” is not a language. Overhyped by Popular Mechanics as one of the “most brilliant” products of 2009,

there’s really nothing magical about JooJoo’s specs: 2.4 pounds, 12” display, 4GB SSD, Wi-Fi, camera, up to five hours of battery life. The OS runs a customized Ubuntu and WebKit browser. It’s the ‘browser as the OS’ concept, similar to what Google’s doing with Chromium/Chrome, but without the backing of a company worth $200 billion. Despite perpetually shipping in “8 to 10 weeks” since early December, and the uncertainty of litigation, JooJoo probably will ship in early 2010. That earns it fifth place among vaporware tablets today.#4 Freescale Smartbook Nothing says vaporware like “ reference design,” and that’s the Freescale Smartbook. The former Mac PowerPC fabricator showed off a tablet prototype—another vaporware synonym—at CES. Freescale claimed the tablet could be made for $200 and reach market by summer, easy to say when you’re not doing the making. The Smartbook is built around a 7” display and weighs less than a pound. Internal specifications include a 1 GHz ARM CPU, 512MB RAM, 4 to 64GB storage, microSD slot, Wi-Fi, 3G modem option, and camera. Allday battery life is promised. There’s also an optional

keyboard and docking station that when combined with the giant bezel makes the screen look minuscule. The operating system demonstrated at CES is custom Linux, but doesn’t appear much customized for touch. Unlike the CrunchPad, the Smartbook probably won’t even make it to the perpetually shipping phase of the vaporware life cycle, but at least one has been built.#3 OLPC XO-3 The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization has provided the world’s poorest children more than a million computers and counting, and the XO-3 will never be one of them, but then it doesn’t have to. “We don’t necessarily need to build it,” OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte told Forbes. “We just need to threaten to build it.” With a design goal like that, how can you fail? Hypothetically available in 2012 for $75, the XO-3 “will feature a new design using a single sheet of flexible plastic and will be unbreakable and without holes in it.” The page-sized display, 8.5 by 11 inches, will have “both reflective and LCD capabilities,” making it viewable in the sun and as an e-reader. Internally, the XO-3 supposedly will have an ARM CPU running at 8 GHz, though Negroponte admits that’s

a “provocative” target. You think? People in the Star Trek reboot don’t have kit like this, so yeah, provocative works as well as vaporware.#2 Microsoft Courier In 2001, Bill Gates introduced the Tablet PC to the world, and nearly a decade later Steve Ballmer did it again, but not with this device. Instead, a wildly gesticulating Ballmer claimed the “Slate PC” moniker at CES, showing off a nameless, nothingnew tablet from HP that will be available sometime this year, not that anyone cared. People wanted Courier. That’s the name of this device, as first reported by Gizmodo in September. The booklet—so much for Slate PC—has two 7” displays connected by a hinge, multi-touch and stylus input, camera on back, maybe inductive charging for power. The OS appears to be designed for the device, so it’s not a Windows 7 tablet, and there are plenty of applications designed for it, so it’s not Windows 7 tablet. No word on battery life, price, or availability, except that it’s supposed to be in the “late prototype” stage of development, which makes one wonder why Courier wasn’t at CES. Just watching the concept video for Courier, how could one not declare Microsoft the winner in

the Battle of the Vaporware Tablets? Because once again Apple has been there and done that.#1 Apple Knowledge Navigator Even twenty years later, the Apple Knowledge Navigator concept reigns supreme among vaporware tablets. Opening the booklet reveals a pair of magical panels that appear to merge into a single display, that display having speakers on the sides, web camera and data card slot on the top. Nice touch how it tilts upward for typing, but touch is almost an afterthought. Most of the machine-human interaction is done via a bow-tie wearing “agent,” or AI, through voice. This is vaporware at its finest, not just a demo, but like living in alternate reality, just like Apple in the late ‘80s under John Sculley. We will see whether Apple under Steve Jobs, who killed Apple’s first tablet, the Newton, can do better. Don’t expect talking heads in mockturtlenecks, but it would be unwise to bet against the real Apple tablet in 2010. Related GigaOM Pro Research: Is The Age of the Web Tablet Finally Upon Us?

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7 for 7: To Keyboard or Not to Keyboard, That is the Question By Patrick Hunt (TheAppleBlog)

typist on the iPhone is to suspend your disbelief that you’ll make mistakes, and just keep typing. Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:00:24 AM The same keyboard on a larger This is the first in a series of 7 screen, whether still small or posts in the 7 days prior to scaled up, wouldn’t work nearly Apple’s January 27 media event as well. The biggest problem in which I explore various would be holding the tablet and possibilities for an Apple Tablet typing at the same time. If the a n d o t h e r p o t e n t i a l form factor is anything like most announcements. suspect it will be, the weight and The world is expecting Apple to balance of the tablet would make announce a new tablet, or slate, such input impossible, requiring style computer on January 27. users to instead hold it with one Most predictions peg the device hand and hunt-and-peck to type as essentially an iPod touch with with the other. Current Lines of a 10 screen. But simply scaling Thought Mac OS X Mobile to a larger Perhaps the most obvious screen size isn’t likely, as the solution would be to split the operating system that currently onscreen keyboard and push it to powers iPhone and iPod touch the edges, allowing users to hold models is optimized for their the device and type with their specific screens. The question thumbs. A similar approach was arises, then, as to how users will used with a number of ultrainput text into the Apple tablet. mobile PCs (UMPCs), such as The iPhone keyboard works the Samsung Q1. This doesn’t well for several reasons. The strike me as particularly elegant device is small enough that you or particularly Apple, but it can type with just one hand could work, and might be the while holding the phone with the easiest solution technically. s a m e h a n d . T h e k e y s a r e Another option is an altogether surprisingly large, even in different keyboard interface p o r t r a i t m o d e , a n d A p p l e purposefully designed for fivetechnology makes keys invisibly finger typing with one hand. larger based on likely letter Users could hold the device in combinations. Auto-correction one hand, and quickly type with works well enough that the a l l f i n g e r s o f t h e o t h e r . easiest way to become a fast Combined with advanced multi-

touch gestures for text input and overall control, this method is reminiscent of Microsoft Surface and Minority Report. Unlike the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple could also allow the tablet to work with hardware keyboards, either via Bluetooth or USB connections. The current Apple wireless keyboard would make a perfect companion for times when touch input isn’t sufficient, with the touchscreen display eliminating the need to also have a mouse. Using a traditional keyboard also strikes me as very inelegant and unApple, but may be needed to

drive mass adoption. A Hardware Solution However, a hardware keyboard designed specifically for the tablet and doubles as a dock might fit the bill. Given Apple’s apparent cloud ambitions (building a data center in North Carolina, purchasing LaLa, etc.) and cost concerns, the tablet is likely to have a small amount of onboard storage compared to laptops. Chances are that Apple will view the tablet as a cloud computing device, or one of several satellites orbiting around a full Mac serving as the digital media hub. Like the iPhone or

iPod touch, the tablet may only hold a portion of your songs, movies, pictures and other media, meaning it will need to connect for syncing. A dock for syncing that doubles as a keyboard, with Jon Ives’ design panache, would be an excellent way to meet core needs while also extending the functionality of the device. Given all of these options, I’m expecting three things: a variant of the software user interface that further limits users need to input text even more than the iPhone already does; an advanced multitouch user interface that is optimized for five-finger input; and the option to use a keyboard–possibly a new keyboard that doubles as a dock–when necessary. The nextgeneration multi-touch capabilities that Apple has patented and developed are likely too advanced for many of today’s computer users. I expect the tablet multi-touch user interface to follow a similar path of increasing complexity and capability over several years as the trackpad and Magic Mouse have. Related GigaOM Pro Research: Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore

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Bing On the iPhone? BusinessWeek Thinks So: Report By Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog)

platform access is the smart move for Apple from a business perspective. But what about us Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:40:58 AM lowly end users? What effect Maybe I am too set in my ways, would the dissolution of the but I never even really tried Google/Apple relationship have using Bing all that much when it on consumers? was released. I also found it too First of all, don’t worry. Apple busy. Sure, I’m all for beautiful won’t pull the plug on anything sweeping nature photography, until it’s confident there won’t be it the force to be reckoned with any adverse effects on the user but not on my search page. So I result of these talks. stuck with Google, without even It’s a move that makes sense for in mobile advertising. Seems experience side of things. If the really looking into the real both Apple and Microsoft. Once Google took it right out from Bing default switch is coming, working differences between the bitter rivals, the two are now under Apple, too. Finally, it it’ll be an opening salvo, a way both facing a major threat from partnered with HTC to create the to taste consumer tolerance for two. According to a new report by Google in the lucrative growing Nexus One, and set up its own change, not the first step in an BusinessWeek, though, I might m o b i l e s p a c e . M i c r o s o f t mobile store that could change inevitable overhaul. have another chance to become basically looks dead in the water the way cell phones are bought If small changes don’t generate more familiar with Microsoft’s thanks to the incredibly stale the world over, if things progress the kind of waves that turn over search engine offering thanks to Windows Mobile 6.5 and always according to plan. boats, then we could see other, a deal between the Windows- just-over-the-horizon Windows When Apple first created the more drastic shifts. The next maker and Apple. The two Mobile 7, and while Apple is iPhone, a partnership with most obvious place to make a companies are said to be in still a leader in the mobile Google made sense. Both were change will be with the built-in negotiations to arrange the industry, and doesn’t show any c h a l l e n g i n g t h e m i g h t o f Maps app. We’ve seen rumors replacement of Google with Bing signs of slowing in the near established players in the field, that Apple is working on its own as the default search engine on future, Google has begun to take like Microsoft, which at that time in-house solution, and that could the iPhone platform. The New steps that could lead to mobile h a d n ’ t d e s c e n d e d i n t o well take over duties. If Apple market domination. Google’s irrelevance, and BlackBerry, does go this way, expect to see Mobile Landscape which continues to be a force to them up the game by rolling Discussions are said to have Rise been going on for weeks now, First, Google created Android, be reckoned with, although it things like point-of-interest and though BusinessWeek’s sources an iPhone OS competitor that’s does seem to be falling off, navigation into the app itself, so remain anonymous because the completely open and quickly especially with its nascent efforts that it comes off as improvement discussions have yet to be made gaining ground due to favorable at the consumer market. What instead of just a business-based public. They also maintain that licensing deals. And handset Comes Next replacement decision. talks could break down at any makers can spin their own UI, so Times have changed. Google time, and there is no timeline for that it still looks and feels like a now gets far more out of its a decision, so it could be a while branded, proprietary OS. Then, it partnership with Apple than does before we see any action as a bought up AdMob, which makes t h e M a c - m a k e r . R e v o k i n g

Shop Rue La La's Joe Zee-Curated Make Better Boutique By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 1/20/2010 5:30:00 AM

Instead of a full-closet makeover for 2010, ELLE’s Creative Director suggests revamping (not re-doing). To that end, Joe Zee has curated an exclusive sale for Rue La La called the"Make Better Boutique", f illed with unbasic basics, bold pops of color, and statement accessories. Expect to find everything from a boy-meets-girl Theory blazer to a neon ruffled Catherine Malandrino mini (shown below). Starting today at 11:00am, shop Joe’s chic wardrobe essentials. Your closet will thank you. —Violet Moon Gayn or Follow ELLE on Twitter. Become our Facebook fan!

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E-reader News Edition

Apple’s Tablet is Good News for the e-Reader Market, Even if it Isn’t Real By Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog)

Why would I think that? Let’s look at the numbers. Up until now, Amazon’s profit sharing Submitted at 1/20/2010 12:04:38 PM model has been, shall we say, The effect of Apple’s still less than kind to the people who s p e c u l a t i v e t a b l e t o n t h e provide its digital books. The electronics industry continues to n e w m o d e l g i v e s c o n t e n t amaze me. Not only has it providers 70 percent of the total prompted countless computer revenue derived from sales, makers to join the fray and while Amazon would keep only release their own slate devices, 30 percent. Sound familiar? but now it’s affecting e-book That’s exactly Apple’s formula pricing policies over at the for App Store revenue sharing. biggest player in that fledgling U n d e r A m a z o n ’ s p r e v i o u s market. model, providers received just Amazon announced today that it about half the cut they’ll now be will now be offering a much getting. Pretty aggressive, if you more financially attractive deal ask me. for publishers providing content The deal isn’t automatic for for its Kindle platform. Maybe it e v e r y b o o k s o l d t h r o u g h has just reached a profitability Amazon’s Kindle store, though. milestone in terms of the cost of There are a few criteria providers Kindle unit construction that have to meet. Here’s how it allows it to shift the burden away breaks down, according to from content providers, but I’d AppleInsider: hazard a guess the move has • The author or publisherm o r e t o d o w i t h A p p l e ’ s supplied list price must be impending announcement next between $2.99 and $9.99 week. • This list price must be at least

functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store. • Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book • The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights • The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-tospeech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more

Whether or not a war really is coming, Amazon clearly doesn’t want to be left behind. And the bottom line is that’s great news for us consumers. Amazon’s revenue sharing model has been one of the major barriers in getting more content available for the platform, and now that they’re feeling the heat from Apple, be it real or imagined, the floodgates are open. Related GigaOM Pro Research: Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore

SimplyHired makes job search social (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 1/19/2010 9:43:00 PM

SimplyHired is making job search social with the redesign of its web site. As an example, this is the result for social media jobs in California. (Disclosure: Garage Technology Ventures is an investor in SimplyHired.) More career tips. Permalink| Leave a comment »

Adam Lambert Reaches Out to the People of Haiti (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:15:00 AM

In the wake of the devastating earthquake last week that left Haiti in ruins, ET and The Red Cross are teaming up with the Hollywood community to lend support to the major crisis in

Haiti and now best-selling singer Adam Lambert has come exclusively to the ET stage to help in the effort. "The people of Haiti need your help," Lambert says. "The images are heartbreaking, the loss of life devastating, but tonight you can help the people

of Haiti. Give whatever you can. Your contributions can help end the unimaginable suffering. Do something that will change a life, do something that will make a difference. Don't just let the images on television fade to black." How you can help: Financial

donations can be made at www.redcross.org, 1-800REDCROSS or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish) or mail your donation to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013 or to your local American Red Cross chapter. The public can also help by texting "Haiti"

to 90999 to send a $10 donation to the Red Cross, through an effort backed by the U.S. State Department. Funds will go to support American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

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Math and the new journalism (Scripting News)

figure out what the first instance of Journalism 0.0 looks like. Let's start with something we Last week I wrote a piece called know to be true. Year Zero for Journalism. 1. There are fewer paid reporters Doc Searls, ever the phrasein Journalism 0.0 than there were turner, called it Journalism 0.0. in the past. Jay and I call our podcast I think any reporter who has Rebooting The News. been laid off in the last couple of Year Zero. 0.0. Rebooting. years, and there are a lot of them, Thinking of the new in terms of many of whom are very smart the old is not productive. people, can see that, pretty Wondering how we will clearly. Today there are a lot continue to do what-we-alwaysfewer people working in have-done is not going to get us newsrooms than there were in closer to the future way of the past. journalism. Now does that mean there will So.. What does this new be fewer people doing journalism look like? journalism? Let's figure it out! I hope not! I was a math major, so I spent a Why? Because we have an everfew years in my early adulthood increasing appetite for new learning how to find true things information, i.e. news. about conceptual spaces. As you Do you think that appetite will advance through math the world go un-filled? (I don't.) your thoughts occupy gets moment of truth was during an So if Postulate #1 is true, and stranger and more and more exam when I had to prove a there will be fewer paid reporters unlike the space our bodies theorem and I had no idea how in the new journalism, where occupy. Turns out that was good to do it. So I just started out with will the new reporters come training for a mind that has to something I thought was true, from? grasp things like journalism with that seemed to be on the path, That's the question that's been a completely different set of and proved that. Then I proved on my mind for the last decade, another thing, and another, and since I wrote How To Make rules. I remember taking a class in finally I could see how the pieces Money On The Internet. That summer school in a subject fit together and was able to prove was almost exactly ten years ago. called Real Analysis, that's on the theorem. It was a shining Where will they come from? the road to Topology. It was one moment for me, because I was Where? of the hardest classes I took, and the only student in the class who Stay tuned for the next I got a good grade, at least for solved the problem. So of course i n s t a l l m e n t . me (I was far from one of the I never forgot how I did it. best students in my class). The So let's try the same approach to Submitted at 1/19/2010 12:15:35 PM

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WGA to honor Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David By Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:00:00 PM

If you're one of the millions, nay billions, who's laughed at the antics of Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer or if you can't pick up an order of kung pao shrimp without wondering if they shorted you on the number of shrimp, then you -- my friend -are a Larry David fan. The brain behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, David has a unique comic view of the world and on February 20, the Writers Guild of America is giving Larry David a Lifetime Achievement Award. The actual award is called the Paddy Chayevsky Laurel award for television, and Larry has most definitely earned the recognition. Seinfeld remains a masterpiece of character and comedy with or without a plot. The very nothingness of Seinfeld made it historic television. It was a show that NBC nearly canceled because the suits didn't get it (what a shock!), then went on to become America's favorite half-

hour. Twenty years later, Seinfeld is embedded in the psyche of pop culture. Not bad for a nothing kind of show. Continue reading WGA to honor Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, TV Royalty, OpEd, Video, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Awards, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

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Push to become a television series

Sources: Oakland Raiders reached out to Stanford's Jim Harbaugh

By Brad Trechak (TV Squad)

By Adam Schefter (ESPN.com)

there's an opening. I never have. I'm in the same fraternity," Fassel, who is the head coach of Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:35:14 AM Remember the movie Push? the Las Vegas Locomotives of The Oakland Raiders have the UFL, said. Don't feel bad. Nobody else does spoken to Stanford head coach Tom Cable's status as Oakland's either. However, that hasn't Jim Harbaugh about becoming coach remains uncertain at best. stopped Summit Entertainment their head coach, sources inside He was scheduled to meet with from revamping the movie into a and outside the organization said, owner Al Davis last week, but television series. but Harbaugh did not express the meeting did not take place. David Hayter, the scriptwriter interest in the job. behind the Watchmen movie and The future of Cable and his staff The Raiders also have spoken remains up in the air until that two of the X-Men films, will be w i t h f o r m e r o f f e n s i v e meeting occurs. writing the pilot episode. The movie starred Chris Evans and Friday nights with the U.S. coordinator Marc Trestman, who Meanwhile, the Raiders are Dakota Fanning and was about a v e r s i o n o f T o r c h w o o d , now coaches in the CFL. hosting a visit Wednesday with g r o u p o f s u p e r - p o w e r e d guaranteeing the destruction of AFC West blog Baltimore Ravens quarterbacks ESPN.com's Bill Williamson coach Hue Jackson, who is individuals who banned together both series. to fight a corrupt government. Admittedly, my curiosity is now writes about all things AFC West interviewing for their offensive Kind of like X-Men. Or Heroes. somewhat piqued. I may go rent in his division blog. coordinator job, according to a Or Misfits of Science. Or any the movie. Anybody see it? How • Blog network: NFL Nation team source. A source said Jim Fassel also Mike & Mike in the Morning o n e o f a h u n d r e d s i m i l a r was it? properties. F i l e d u n d e r : I n d u s t r y , talked to Oakland about the job ESPN senior NFL analyst Chris No network has been attached to Programming, OpEd, Pickups but the former NFL coach, in an Mortensen talks about Chan interview with Sirius/XM Mad Gailey's press conference in the series yet. Hopefully it will and Renewals, Reality-Free get on Fox so it can be canceled P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | | Dog Radio on Wednesday, Buffalo, explains why he isn't denied speaking to the Raiders. surprised by what Al Davis is within twelve episodes. Even C o m m e n t s "I'm not lobbying for the Raider doing in Oakland and shares worse, Fox might pair it on job. I have never in my life what he thinks about Brett rooted for a coach to be let go so Favre's legacy. Submitted at 1/20/2010 12:00:00 PM

More Podcasts » Oakland has been seeking someone who could work with and develop former No. 1 overall pick JaMarcus Russell. Cable's job security is in question after he went 5-11 in his first full season as coach and failed to develop Russell into a legitimate NFL quarterback. Cable is 9-19 since replacing Lane Kiffin early in the 2008 season, leading the Raiders to their NFL-worst seventh straight season with at least 11 losses. Cable has pointed to the team's improvement after Russell's midseason benching as proof that he deserves another year. Adam Schefter is ESPN's NFL Insider. 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.

First Look: The Freebie By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 1/20/2010 7:58:22 AM

I loved Mark Duplass in indie bromance Humpday( check out my Q&A with director Lynn

Shelton). So I’m pleased to report that The Freebie, which features Duplass and wife Katie Aselton as executive producers (Aselton is also its writer and director), will premiere at Sundance next week. Here, get a

first look at the poster for the

film, which stars Aselton and Dax Shepard as a sexually frustrated couple who attempts to sustain their relationship by giving each other “one night off.” And be sure to pick up the February issue of ELLE for an

interview with Duplass and Aselton in our ode to modern romance. —Erin Clements Follow ELLE on Twitter. Become our Facebook fan!

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Documents: Wyclef Jean Launched His Personal Charity with Other People's Money [Philanthropy] By John Cook (Gawker) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:45:19 PM

Wyclef Jean has defended the financial irregularities of his foundation Yele Haiti by arguing he started it with his own money. However internal documents obtained by Gawker reveal that the former Fugee made no contribution during its first year. In defending his foundation at a press conference earlier this week against accusations that it has a history of mismanaging funds, Jean said, "I started the charity with my own funds." Earlier, in a YouTube video, Jean claimed, "I myself have put $1 million inside my own foundation." Jean has aggressively raised funds for Yele Haiti since the earthquake last week, urging people to give to the organization through a texting campaign in t e l e v i s i o n appearances—including a visit to Oprah today. Yele is one of five nonprofits that will split the proceeds of a telethon organized by George Clooney to be broadcast on Friday. While Yele hasn't released its fundraising totals since the earthquake, its president has stated a target of $1 million a day from texts. Together with the proceeds of the telethon, it stands to potentially raise tens of millions of dollars.

The documents, which include internal emails and detailed financial statements for 2005 — the year Yele was founded — show the internal chaos that has afflicted the organization since its founding. Its first executive director, Sanjay Rawal, resigned in October 2005 because, his resignation letter stated, "the sense of entitlement" and "lack of financial commitment from the board"—which consisted at

the time of Jean, his cousin Jerry Duplessis, and SAC Capital Advisers trader Seth Kanegis—were "suffocating" Yele Haiti. Another e-mail obtained by Gawker, written by Yele's current executive director Hugh Locke in 2007, announced that both Locke and his deputy were resigning due to a ethical and business concerns that had caused a "crisis" at Yele Haiti. We asked Locke last night in an

interview if he could provide details on precisely when, and in what increments, Jean made his $1 million in donations. He replied, "I honestly don't know how to break that out, and I'm not interested in doing so." But Locke insisted that Yele was founded with Jean's money, and that Jean has indeed put more than $1 million in Yele's operations broadly speaking, even if the donations aren't

channeled officially through the charity—"sometimes he'll buy a kid in the slums a scooter, and that's a Yele contribution," Lock said. But according to Rawal's resignation e-mail and the detailed financial statements, Jean made no contribution whatsoever to Yele Haiti from its founding in January 2005 through November of that year. The financial statements show that Yele received a total of $680,409.24 to its U.S. bank account from December 2004 to November 2005. Among the donations are $10,000 from Russell Simmons, $2,000 from Ed Bradley, and $1,000 from Paul Simon. But while the records show that Duplessis made one $2,000 donation and Kanegis loaned Yele $26,000, they don't show a single contribution from Jean. They do, however, show payments totaling $18,696 to Refugee Camp Entertainment, a record label co-owned by Jean, for "band salary and expenses" related to performances at two fundraisers. They also show a payment of $22,750 to Jean's production company, Platinum Sounds, as reimbursement for fees Platinum fronted for a fundraiser. In his October 2005 resignation DOCUMENTS: page 43

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letter, Rawal, who had cofounded Yele with Jean, was painfully blunt in accusing Jean and his fellow board members of failing to contribute to the charity while using it to pay their own expenses, benefiting from the PR Yele Haiti generated for them, and directing "hundreds of thousands of dollars to business needs" at the expense of the foundation: The board has never invested into Yele. True, the board has given to Haiti, but why continue giving to Haiti in such a haphazard manner when one's own foundation is suffering from lack of funds? [snip] With three wealthy directors, Yéle's entire operating expenses could be funded by a one time annual commitment from each Director. With that $150,000, the entire amount raised from outside sources could have been funneled to projects. Again, donations are TAX DEDUCTIBLE!!!!! Does anyone realize that if the Board had invested into Yele we never would have had to do any fundraisers? We could have, but only to raise funds for projects. Staff would have been paid AND the music studio would have been built for the children! [snip] Some board members may consider their business contributions to Haiti as part of their giving, which is fine. This only hurt me personally as I saw

hundreds of thousands of dollars going to business needs and nothing going to the charity, when it seemed that part of Wyclef's new PR strategy focuses on his charitable endeavors. I felt Yéle was being suffocated. [snip] I feel it is an excellent time for the board members of Yele to shed their sense of entitlement. Stop thinking that Yele will pay you back for the money you put into Haiti. You must ask yourself why you are doing all of this. To be paid back? I do not think that is why you are doing any of this. In addition to decrying Jean, Duplessis, and Kanegis' failure to pony up for Yele Haiti, Rawal took them to task for drawing away much-needed funds by billing their expenses to the charity: When a person runs a foundation, people need to leave their sense of entitlement at the door. When Bill Gates goes to a charity event, he does not bill his hotel to his charity. Having the charity pick up the tab for a wife being picked up at the airport is appalling. And Rawal noted that Yele Haiti's successful PR campaign had been a boon to Jean's career and commercial enterprises: It has also been clear that the foundation is very valuable to Wyclef's image and hence if leveraged very profitable to his career. Through the foundation's activities, he has received

coverage in publications from which he has been absent for years, including People Magazine, US Weekly, InTouch, Celebrity Living and Star. True, he is in urban gossip rags but his last mention in People was from early 2004. We called Rawal to ask him if he was specifically addressing Jean in his letter, which you can read in full here. "I was the executive director, and I was talking about the leadership of Yele," he said. "It's implied that I was talking about the board, and Jean is on the board. Wyclef has a big heart, and he regularly gave money to Haitians that he met, to pay for things like funeral expenses or what have you. But at that early stage, Yele hadn't become the conduit for his personal giving. It wasn't the case when I was there." Yele Haiti has two branches—an American charity and a Haitian arm. The American operation, which must make its tax returns publicly available, exists largely to raise funds and send them to the Haitian arm, about which no financial information has been made public. Multiple sources familiar with Yele's operations say that while Jean, as Rawal stated in his letter, did spend money directly in Haiti on Yele's programs, it was haphazard and didn't constitute Yele's start-up capital. That came in the form of an $800,000 donation in 2005, sources say, from Comcel, a

Haitian cell phone company. The Comcel donation, earmarked for primary school scholarships, went directly to Yele's Haitian operation, bypassing the American charity altogether. That fact is confirmed by the detailed financial statements, which show no expenditures whatsoever on programs. In other words, while Yele Haiti's Haitian branch was operational and spent money in Haiti in 2005, it was funded directly by Comcel, and none of the $680,000 Yele Haiti's American operation received in 2005 went to Haiti. In fact, the statements show that a total of $108,168 was wired on three separate occasions that year from Yele Haiti's Haitian operation to the American charity's account. The Haitian charity was subsidizing the American one. But Yele Haiti's 2005 American tax return tells drastically different story: It claims more than $320,000 spent on "Program Service Expenses" in Haiti, including food distribution, trash clean-up, and scholarships. Rawal, who was Yele's executive director during that time, says the 2005 return—which was filed last August, four years late—appears to be in error. "I'm not an accountant," he says, "but those funds didn't come out of New York. To my recollection, all of the money for those programs came from Haiti and was kept in Haiti." Asked directly if Yele

Haiti's American operation sent $320,000 to Haiti in 2005 for trash clean-up, scholarships, and food distribution as the return claims, Rawal said, "No." The apparent chaos at Yele Haiti didn't end in 2005. According to a March 2007 e-mail written by Hugh Locke, the foundation's current executive director, Yele was in a "crisis" in 2007 that caused Locke and his deputy Cinthia Thebaud to resign on the same day (Locke has obviously since returned to the organization). According to the e -mail, which is marked "CONFIDENTIAL" and can be read in full here, Thebaud resigned because of unspecified ethical concerns about Yele's Haitian operation: Cinthia stated that her reason for resigning as deputy executive director (but not her Board position) was that in "trying to structure Yele Haiti's administration in Haiti I had to face internal barriers which go against my professional ethics." Locke resigned, the letter says, because he had "reached the limits of the personal, financial and business sacrifices that both I and my wife April are able to make on behalf of Yele Haiti — all of which were brought into sharp relief by Cinthia's resignation." The letter, which was e-mailed to a group of Yele Haiti staffers, announced an emergency meeting in New York DOCUMENTS: page 47

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Obama Turns Ordinary Man into Celebrity Magnet [Press Release Of The Day] By Hamilton Nolan (Gawker) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:28:08 PM

Tom was just like you: an ordinary schmoe from Jersey, with a kid and a job in banking and a pronounced inability to attract celebrities into his general vicinity. Until one day when he met Barack Obama, became magnetized, and proceeded to attract celebrities, in much the same way a magnet attracts metal. Moments ago, Tom sent out this lengthy press release, informing the world of his strange and wondrous saga of celebrity attraction. We want you to read it all. It is just that important. N.J. Banker becoming a star after meeting President Obama Meeting President Obama has brought good fortune to a N.J. father and daughter. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Press Release) – Januuary 20th, 2010 – A N.J. banker by day and a celebrity magnet by night, Tom Murro is rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous after just one lucky meeting with President Barack Obama on Martha's Vineyard one summer day last year. Call it luck or just being at the right place at the right time. Murro has curiously received more than his share of 15 minutes of fame. In the span of four months since his random

meeting of the president, Murro, has a list of roughly 40 celebrities he has met, crediting it to his meeting with Obama. "It's really opened doors," said Murro. "I mean, I'm just a regular Bergen County guy and then all of a sudden I'm meeting all these stars and my daughter got to go behind the scenes on Sesame Street to meet the puppeteers, which is unheard of." He was recently spotted earlier last month on the red carpet at the Gotham International Film Awards in New York City interviewing some of the A-list celebs, all thanks to that one photo he took with the president. "I don't really know how it all happened," explained Murro. "It's so weird, but when I asked if I could attend they said, 'sure' and actually gave me a spot on the red carpet after seeing my photo with Obama." He was even luckier when they allowed him free access to the celebrities in front of the velvet rope, while the other reporters

us and stayed around for a while to talk and take photos. Grateful for giving him the opportunity to meet the president, Murro is sending Lee a signed copy of the photo of Jackie Robinson stealing home and winning the 1955 World Series by Yogi Berra himself, as we know Jackie was called safe that day but Yogi has had a were behind and away from Murro's mini-celebrity status difference of opinion. Lee is a them. started at Farm Neck Golf Club die-hard New York Yankees fan. Starting to build a reputation, on the Vineyard, where Obama After speaking to Berra's son Murro interviewed a slew of was vacationing last August. about his whole story with the stars as "the celebrity magnet" Murro, who used to live year president and Lee, Berra signed a reporter, which has inspired him round on the island, was also on copy of the photo for Lee and to create his own Web site - vacation but this time around it one for the president too! – Yogi www.celebritymagnet.com. changed his life. shared his feelings of that day, "The really cool thing was, I He and his daughter Lauren, 11, both of which said the same lucked out again – I've had like bumped into Spike Lee – who thing, "He was out.!! four months of this crazy luck," was sitting on a bench waiting Maybe someone from the said Murro. "I was in front of the for Obama – and started a Whitehouse can help Tom and rope but all the other seasoned conversation with the film his daughter get this delivered! reporters were behind the rope. I director. Though Murro has met some of had full access to every celebrity The Secret Service eventually the high-profile stars he has that went out. It was an amazing came over to clear the area as the always dreamed of and some experience and I had tons of fun president approached the hole. where more notable than others, doing it." Lee invited Murro and his like when Daniel Craig offered Looks Tom has started an daughter to his place nearby, Tom his Rolex after his recent unlikely career as a celebrity where he was going to watch the Broadway play. – "only because correspondent for his newly president finish his game. Murro I'm a guy and I love James f o r m e d w e b s i t e described the next series of Bond," ''What a thrill! explained C e l e b r i t y m a g n e t . c o m . events as an "intense and Murro – but he still can't shake S o m e o f h i s m e m o r a b l e amazing moment." that moment of meeting with moments were with Natalie "Instead of passing us, the Obama. Portman, who he described as president pulled up [on his golf " T h e p r e s i d e n t w a s s o "beautiful" and "every man's c a r t ] a n d a p p r o a c h e d u s , " c h a r i s m a t i c a n d r e a l l y dream," as well as hilarious exclaimed Murro. "I had to personable," remembered Murro. c o m e d i a n C h r i s R o c k a n d control my organs and try not to OBAMA page 46 personable Rosie Perez. pass out! The president greeted

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Happy Birthday, Barack Obama Administration! [A Look Back] By Pareene (Gawker) Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:31:21 PM

Barack Obama was sworn in as our first foreign-born Muslim President one year ago today. He gave a pretty nice speech that everyone has already forgotten. It is too bad he was already a huge failure, one week in! Before he was inaugurated he said a lot of things about bipartisanship and "changing the tone" in Washington that no one really believed and some stuff like "closing Guantanamo" and "ending Don't Ask Don't Tell" that, weirdly, people did believe. (And, to be fair, he attempted to do one of those things but was stymied by the Republican Superminority. The other thing he still promises to do. Eventually. Arguably he could've "sold" the first thing better but people who constantly make that argument about how a thing should've been "sold" after the fact should always be considered suspect.) His "Bush Tax Cut" (which was passed through this crazy thing called reconciliation, where you only need 51 votes) was the stimulus, which was not as sexy as a tax cut. (His 9/11 was apparently a guy who failed to detonate some explosives in his underpants who was then promptly caught and arrested and is awaiting trial.) But the

stimulus was another thing, too: a legislative victory that led to the very first examples of concern trolls bemoaning how Liberal and Bad this president was! On January 20 of 2009, Peggy Noonan thought Barack Obama was very nice. His speech was "serious and solid" and

"moderate" and "sober." A week later Peggy was upset that the stimulus passed without any Republican votes, and she said, "most everyone knows it isn't a good bill." In reality, a slim majority of Americans supported the bill. And it "wasn't a good bill" because it was watered down to attract Republican

support. But Republican support never materialized because it is makes no political sense for them to support anything Barack Obama does. Also this was the blueprint for the entire first year basically, wasn't it? Now, one year later, Peggy wrote essentially the exact same column as that January 2009 one.

This time it is not about "stimulus." It is about health care. Once again, a moderate bill full of compromises to positions formerly held by Republicans has been tarred as a far-left boondoggle and the GOP opposition to the bill is sort of acknowledged to be inevitable political grandstanding but generally explained as if it was a matter of principle. And, last Friday, Peggy wrote a column about how Obama is "disconnected" from the American people, because he focuses on health care while people are worried a) about jobs and b) about government spending. The president is no longer as sober and serious and moderate as he was a year ago. How sad. Shortly before Barack Obama's inauguration, David Brooks was blessing the incoming president as the end of identity politics and claiming he would attempt to fundamentally restore balance to the American government. A week later he was complaining about the stimulus. Today he says it is time to abandon health care altogether. Obama is too pragmatic! Attempting to do things about the things that are wrong with the nation? Ugh! No one wants that! The David Brooks who, a year ago, said the HAPPY page 47

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To Know the Jersey Shore Kids Is to Hate the Show [Shore Thing] By Brian Moylan (Gawker)

same as they did in the most important sociological experiment of our time is only Now that Snooki, The Situation, going to make their reputation and crew have leaped off the stronger. After all, if it wasn't for screen and into our real lives the drunken punches and messy with public and club hookups, ShamWOWW would appearances, are reports of their just be another trashy girl with wanton ways going to screw up fake titties and bad extensions. MTV's newest hit? Maybe. The thing they should really be Just about daily we're hearing worried about is overexposure. about cast members behaving With the season finale tomorrow badly in clubs, being obnoxious (complete with a reunion special on planes, and cancelling and prequel with footage from scheduled appearances. It's one audition tapes) if Jersey Shore thing to watch them fist pump, wants to stay as strong in season get drunk, and brawl on the two, it's time for everyone to stay television, but what happens quiet for a little while. After when that translates into real we've all had a chance to touch life? Snooki's poof at a local nightclub Like any emerging pseudoand have The Situation try to get media trained well enough to thing to watch a skirmish at reported, everyone is shocked celebrities, they are now in the our phone number in the VIP really change their behavior. Bamboo on MTV, but it's and outraged and the backlash "discovery" phase with these lounge, the mystique will be That, combined with the ego another thing altogether to have against their newly minted seven youngsters. We're still gone and we'll be ready to trap inflation of sudden flame, is a to sit next to the screaming crew reality creations starts fast and learning about all these boys and some new animals in our reality deadly cocktail that will lead o n a c r o s s - c o u n t r y , e a r l y furious. girls, and we're excited about television zoo. these already trouble-prone morning flight. That does not But are the Jersey Shore kids every little bit of information we As for getting attitude from DJ creatures into the realm of sound like fun at all. After all, immune to this kind of backlash? can glean about them. This is Paulie Diss in public (and you shockingly bad behavior, all of most people still think they're After all, they've only ever tried usually the best phase for the can in New York this weekend) which will be shoved down our better than the Jersey Shore kids, to sell themselves as cheap, tabloids. Every little move they that makes a much better story drooling gobs. so to be publicly maligned by drunken whores who like to make is news and people are than getting the clap from him. Their misadventures are going them is a special type of slight. party and brawl. Reading about starting to notice the guidos out After all, what more would you to get tired very quickly. It's one Usually when these things get them behaving in real life the in public, but they haven't been expect? Submitted at 1/20/2010 3:03:13 PM

OBAMA continued from page 44

"He treated us as equals and that made me feel really comfortable. He was really cool." Though the Banking business has been slow due to the

economy, Murro said he's glad he has some off time to spend with his family plus mix and mingle with the A-listers, but is still baffled about his amazing

string of luck. "I don't know if it will run out soon," said Murro about his long -running luck. "But each week, something new happens."

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nation needed responsible, serious decisions and a renewed commitment to making tough sacrifices and blah blah reasonable Republican blah, this David Brooks now says that Obama should not have done anything about "finance, health, energy, automobiles and transportation, housing, and education" because sometimes his actions poll poorly. (Maureen Dowd's column today is about Gavin Newsom, for some reason?) Anyway! Here is Obama's first year Report Card, from us: on every major issue he should've started from a position further to "the left" (or "the way people who pay attention to policy instead of politics agree would be the better, more effective way to do things") so that the

eventual caving to "political realities" would've been slightly less painful, and we would've ended up with marginally better bills and probably the exact same complaints of over-reach and "socialism" (and probably the same complaints of being a spineless sell-out from The Left). Also he should fire Geithner but he can't do that because he would never be able to get Geithner's replacement confirmed, no matter who the replacement is. Also Max Baucus basically destroyed Obama's first year single-handedly, we hope that dude is proud of himself and his boyfriend Chuck Grassley.

to resolve the crisisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to which Jean had offered to fly all the participants on a private jetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and urged the staffers to keep up appearances: There are certain things that need to proceed on an interem basis in Haiti without signalling to those beyond those receiving this e-mail that we are in this situation. Multiple sources familiar with Yele's operations have told Gawker that Locke has repeatedly fronted expenses for Yele fundraising events and concerts and was at one point owed $120,000, which likely explains the "personal, financial and business sacrifices" that caused him to resign. In an

For Prime Out Loud! By Bethlehem Shoals (Fanhouse Main)

contract, and whether or not the Wizards would have their lawyers on speed-dial if this Submitted at 1/20/2010 3:34:00 AM huge deal weren't attached to a Filed under: Mavericks, Suns, chronic injury risk. The question Wizards Amidst all the cries of is, at age 28, how much value is sin, sinner, and "like the trailer left in Gilbert Arenas? Injuries f o r L e g i o n , " t h e r e ' s b e e n aside, the Wizards just might p r e c i o u s l i t t l e t a l k o f t h e have invested too much, for too basketball side of the Gilbert long, in a player who even under Arenas situation. I refer not to the healthiest circumstances the brewing snooze-fest over would be declining soon. what will happen with Gil's Last week, Kevin Pelton of

Basketball Prospectus performed a thorough investigation of these

interview last night, conducted before we obtained Locke's email, we asked Locke about those debts and whether he'd ever resigned over them. "I don't know," he said. "I'd have to look it up. I've fronted a lot of money for a lot of things, and been repaid for every expense. I've never threatened to quit." We contacted Yele Haiti's publicist for detailed comment, and haven't received a reponse. Reached on his cell phone, Locke said, "I'm happy to chat, but only if you go through our publicist."

Runaway Christian Convert to Remain Free of Parents (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 1/20/2010 4:20:08 AM

COLUMBUS, Ohio A runaway teenage girl from Ohio who converted from Islam to Christianity has reached a court settlement that allows her to remain free of her Muslim parents. The agreement Tuesday says that 17-year-old Rifqa Bary will stay in a foster home under state custody in Columbus until she turns 18 in August. After that, she'll be an adult and free to live where she chooses. Bary's attorney read a statement in Franklin County Juvenile Court, saying that the girl and her parents love and respect each other and will try to resolve their differences through counseling. SLIDESHOW: Christian concerns. His articles should be C o n v e r t F e a r s F a m i l y digested in full. But the upshot is Bary ran away to Florida last that scoring guards of Gil's ilk summer, saying she feared her peak soon and decline rapidly. father would harm or kill her for Combined with Dave Berri's leaving Islam. recent proclamation that NBA Her father denied the claim, and prime, lone believed to strike a law enforcement investigation around 27, in fact arrives at 24 found no credible threats to the and then drops off from there. girl. Open up the skies, we've got an Five Filters featured article: issue to address: Exactly what is Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: prime, and how did it get so PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. reified?

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UConn Considers New Home, Perhaps Without Calhoun (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)

Tritto details the potential financial boon to Missouri that would come with a move from There’s no such thing as “too the Big 12 to the Big Ten. big to fail” in college sports, In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which explains why athletic Bill Livingston argues that conferences appear likely to a d d i n g t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f continue their growth trend. In a Connecticut to the conference decade, it wouldn’t be surprising would bring with it some great to see a hypertrophic Big East benefits of its own. “Luring featuring Gonzaga and New UConn from the Big East would Mexico State, for instance, or a give the Big Ten a very big Conference USA featuring a footprint in the television market couple of Canadian universities. bonanza of the Northeast,” But there is something especially L i v i n g s t o n writes. jarring about the much-discussed “Competitively, adding UConn p r o s p e c t o f t h e B i g T e n would have the approximate expanding. The addition of a effect in basketball of adding 12th school — Missouri and North Carolina. It would be Connecticut are among the greater, if you factor in UConn’s names that have been mentioned dominant women’s team.” — would allow the conference UConn basketball, of course, is that already has outgrown its more or less synonymous with name to add a championship coach Jim Calhoun, who has game in football and balance its coached more games than any member schools’ schedules other active Division I coach. somewhat. But it’s hard not to But Calhoun won’t be on the wonder what that addition would sidelines over the next 10 days: subtract from one of the most He’s taking a leave of absence iconic organizations in college from the team, reportedly for sports. Associated Press If stress-related reasons. In the UConn makes a big move, Jim Hartford Courant, Jeff Jacobs Calhoun might not come along. ponders the 67-year-old’s reason The Big Ten hasn’t expanded for taking his brief leave. “We since it added Penn State back in have always known Calhoun 1990, but nothing is permanent would go all 15 rounds, but what in college sports. While Notre we never knew was when fate Dame makes the most sense would ring the bell on the 15th,” geographically, school officials Jacobs writes. “Is this it? Or will turned down the Big Ten’s his love of coaching supersede invitation in 1999 and have everything?” preemptively asked not to be re- At the blog Storming the Floor, i n v i t e d t h i s r o u n d . I n t h e Jacob E. Osterhout offers a Sporting News, Christopher warily affectionate take on the Submitted at 1/20/2010 8:57:17 AM

surpassingly intense coach.* * * Baseball was awash in re-signed players on Tuesday, as teams sought to avoid salary arbitration with as many arbitration-eligible players as possible. But with all due respect to Reggie Willits’s raise from the Angels, the news that Seattle Mariners mega-ace Felix Hernandez re-upped with the M’s for five years and roughly $80 million stole the show. Seattle is now guaranteed five more seasons from one of the best 23-year-old pitchers in recent memory, and the legend of new Seattle GM Jack Zduriencik continues to grow. Zduriencik is in his second season as Seattle’s GM, but has yet to make a deal that didn’t earn an instant A-plus from the baseball cognoscenti. “In 2008, the Mariners paid about $51m for Richie Sexson, Jose Vidro, Carlos Silva, Jarrod Washburn, and Miguel Batista,” Lookout Landing’s Jeff Sullivan reminds Mariners fans. “Now our longterm contracts belong to Felix Hernandez, Franklin Gutierrez, Ichiro, Milton Bradley, Chone Figgins, Jack Wilson, and Dustin Ackley. I think that means we’re doing better.”

At ESPN, Jerry Crasnick profiles Zduriencik. “Time will tell whether Zduriencik’s offseason is the precursor to a 2010 executive of the year award,” Crasnick writes. “But he’s definitely made life interesting in Seattle.”* * * College basketball is a cyclical thing, and it’s also — as anything powered by 19-yearolds should be — wildly unpredictable. But even given the normal season-to-season fluctuations, the spectacular wall -to-wall lameness of the Pac-10’s men’s hoops teams this season is pretty stunning. Again, it happens, but as the Journal’s Darren Everson writes, “no major conference has gone through what the Pac-10 is enduring right now.” “Since 1985, none of the current major conferences — the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten and SEC being the others — has failed to have at least two teams participate in the NCAA men’s tournament,” Everson writes. “In each of the past three seasons, the Pac-10 has landed six tournament spots. But as of now, the Pac-10 is in such poor shape that there’s a chance only the conference champion will go — a fate that ordinarily befalls conferences like the Southland and Ohio Valley.”* * * Quick, who wrote these words? “If the number of players arrested each year on a team exceeds the team GPA, that program needs a house-cleaning.

Yet, instead of being sanctioned or suspended, rogue coaches are landing lucrative coaching positions at new institutions — while the schools and players left behind suffer sanctions and loss of postseason opportunities.” Give up? Your aggrieved sports pundit is U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a column on the sadly compromised state of college football and basketball at The Huffington Post. Once you get past the stumbling block that this is a column about big-time college sports and the NBA’s “one-and-done” policy, it’s a very interesting read, with some novel ideas, notably on the aforementioned one-and-done policy. Can’t wait to see what FCC chairman Julius Genachowski has to say about the NFL’s instant-replay rule.* * * An All-American at Clemson University and a disappointment during his first three years in the NFL, defensive end Gaines Adams was still seen as something of a work in progress as a pass rusher. Few doubted his talent for the game and teammates spoke highly of him as a person, but Adams just didn’t produce as expected during his two years in Tampa Bay nor, in 2009, his first season in Chicago. Adams died on Sunday of cardiac arrest (which UCONN page 52

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Australian Open: Justine Henin, Kim Clijsters, Svetlana Kuznetsova advance to third round By ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com)

- only three tournaments back from two years in retirement, during which she married and Submitted at 1/20/2010 8:17:50 AM had a child -- that inspired Del Potro Wins Marathon, Henin, her fellow Belgian, to Henin Advances Del Potro Wins return to the tour. Marathon, Henin Advances Against Dementieva, Henin had MELBOURNE, Australia -- a match point at 5-4 and 40-30 Justine Henin, granted a wild- b u t n e t t e d a f o r e h a n d . card spot at the Australian Open, D e m e n t i e v a p r o d u c e d advanced in her Grand Slam consecutive backhand winners to comeback with a 7-5, 7-6 (6) win even the second set. over reigning Olympic champion Henin again had a chance to Elena Dementieva. serve for the match but was Henin, a seven-time Grand Slam broken, with Dementieva forcing singles champion, produced the a tiebreaker and then leading 3-1. biggest win of her return after 20 The Russian also had a set point months in retirement with a 7-5, in the tiebreaker before Henin 7-6 (6) defeat of fifth-seeded won three straight points to Dementieva in the night match finish it off in 2 hours, 50 on Rod Laver Arena, the center minutes. court. Henin said the appreciative "It was very emotional for me on crowd and the scope of her win the court at the end because there made her happy she returned to was so much intensity," Henin the sport. said. "It's magical to win this "The crowd gave me so much, so kind of match in this kind of respectful at the end. That's why atmosphere." I probably came back on the Henin's win was another step tour, was to live this kind of closer to a possible quarterfinal match," Henin said. m a t c h a g a i n s t U . S . O p e n Clijsters and Henin met in the champion Kim Clijsters, who Brisbane International final scored a 6-3, 6-3 win over nearly two weeks ago, with T a m a r i n e T a n a s u g a r n o f Clijsters winning a close threeThailand. set match in Henin's first official It was Clijsters' U.S. Open title - tournament in her comeback.

Complete results Need the scores from any match played in today's Australian Open? Results "My attitude doesn't change because now I'm seen as one of the favorites," said Clijsters, who is 20-3 in her comeback. "To me, that doesn't mean anything." Her next opponent will be No. 19 Nadia Petrova, one of the Russian women already into the third round. Petrova is joined by French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, last year's Australian Open runner-up Dinara Safina and Maria Kirilenko. Third-ranked Kuznetsova was first into the third round when she beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-2, 6-2. Kuznetsova broke Pavlyuchenkova's serve twice to start and got on top of most rallies with a strong forehand and had 27 winners; Pavlyuchenkova had only seven. Kuznetsova, who has two Grand Slam singles championships -adding the French last year to her win at the 2004 U.S. Open -- has a chance to reach the No. 1 ranking for the first time if she takes the Australian Open title. "Yes, definitely, I know all the

way how to go -- I've done it twice," Kuznetsova said of her chances of winning a major. She's never gone past the quarterfinals in Melbourne. No. 2 Safina had a 6-3, 6-4 win over Barbora Zahlavova Strycova -- saving four break points in the last game before serving it out. Safina has held the No. 1 ranking but never won a major. She next plays Britain's Elena Baltacha, who has already equaled her best run at the season's first major by reaching the third round with a 6-2, 7-5 win over No. 30 Kateryna Bondarenko. No. 16 Yanina Wickmayer, a Belgian who didn't get a seeding here because her suspension for a World Anti-Doping Agency "whereabouts rule" violation hadn't been overturned before entries closed, reached the thirdround with a 7-6 (2), 6-1 win over No. 12 Flavia Pennetta of Italy. No. 11 Marion Bartoli advanced with a 6-4, 6-4 victory against Sandra Zahlavova of the Czech Republic. China's Zheng Jie won 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 over No. 24 Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez of Spain.

No. 4 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, who lost the U.S. Open final to Clijsters, had a 6-4, 6-2 first-round win over Canada's Aleksandra Wozniak. In other first-round matches carried over to Wednesday from the rain-interrupted opening days, No. 7 Victoria Azarenka of Belarus beat French wild card Stephanie Cohen-Aloro 6-2, 6-0; No. 9 Vera Zvonareva beat Kristina Kucova of Slovakia 6-2, 6-0; and No. 16 Li Na of China, a quarterfinalist at the U.S. Open, beat New Zealander Marina Erakovic 6-2, 6-0. No. 22 Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia and No. 29 Shahar Peer of Israel also advanced. Serena and Venus Williams won in doubles, starting the defense of their Australian title with a 61, 6-1 win. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Judge allows Mike Leach's lawsuit against Texas Tech Red Raiders to move forward

Another Arrest in Homecoming Dance Gang Rape

By Associated Press (ESPN.com)

(FOXNews.com)

Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:47:02 AM

LUBBOCK, Texas -- A judge ruled Wednesday that fired Texas Tech coach Mike Leach's lawsuit against the university can go forward, but not as quickly as his attorneys wanted. State District Judge William Sowder denied a motion by Leach's attorneys to speed up taking depositions from school administrators and obtaining documents relevant to the case. "I see no reason to give Mr. Leach any special treatment in this case," the judge told the court. "So this case will take an ordinary course of action." Leach's attorneys said Sowder's denial doesn't jeopardize their case. Big 12 blog ESPN.com's Tim Griffin writes about all things Big 12 in his conference blog. â&#x20AC;˘ Blog network: College Football Nation "We're pleased with the court's decision today," attorney Ted Liggett said after the hearing. The university fired Leach on Dec. 30, two days after it suspended him amid allegations he mistreated a player with a concussion. His suit includes allegations of libel and slander, breach of contract and violation of Texas' Whistleblower Act.

Leach has denied he mistreated the player, sophomore receiver Adam James. The player said his coach twice ordered him to stand for hours while confined in a dark place during practice. Sowder also ruled that the state's motion to dismiss the case on grounds of sovereign immunity - which means a state agency or entity cannot be sued without permission from the Texas legislature or without a waiver based on a defendant's conduct -will be taken up at a later date. Daniel Perkins, a lawyer with the state attorney general's office, which is representing the university, declined to comment after the hearing and deferred comment to his office. Leach attorney Paul Dobrowski told the judge that the coach "cannot get a job" due to the actions of the university. The attorney general's office, in an e-mail from spokesman Jerry Strickland, said because of the pending litigation it had no comment "other than what was addressed in court." Sowder ordered the university to retain or preserve all documents and e-mails related to Leach's firing. Perkins told Sowder he believed the seven claims in Leach's suit were an attempt "to pile on" accusations against the school and that the judge could rule on their motion to dismiss the case.

"Based on their own arguments you have everything you need" to take up the school's motion to dismiss on sovereign immunity grounds, he said. Leach attorney Paul Dobrowski told the judge Wednesday that the coach "cannot get a job" due to the actions of the university. "They don't want any discovery whatsoever," Dobrowski told Sowder. With allegations of player mistreatment hanging over his head, Leach has been left out of discussions for openings at USC, Tennessee, East Carolina and South Florida, Dobrowski has said. Leach's agent attempted to set up interviews at the schools, he has said. Dobrowski said that it was "not asking for the moon" to allow speedy depositions of university and athletic department administrators; James; his father, Craig James, an ESPN analyst and former NFL player; and a school attorney involved in investigating the mistreatment allegation. "We're simply asking for what they have in their possession. ... and certainly do not constitute a fishing expedition," Dobrowski told the judge. He also said the university wanted to "twist" the facts in their favor, and "that's not right." In announcing his rulings, Sowder told Leach's attorneys

that he had "real issues" with six of the seven claims in Leach's suit. "I think we all know what we're dealing with is a waiver of conduct on the breach of contract" claim, Sowder said The school began an investigation Dec. 20 and suspended Leach eight days later. On Dec. 29 Leach's attorney filed for a temporary restraining order to allow Leach to coach in the Alamo Bowl on Jan. 2, and a judge set a hearing for Dec. 30. Before the two sides made it into the courtroom to argue the restraining order the university fired Leach with cause, meaning the university believes it does not owe any of the money left on Leach's five-year, $12.7 million contract. Liggett said after the hearing that he wasn't prepared to comment on whether the school has made overtures toward settlement talks. "We're not prepared to make a statement on that," he said. "We're always ready to listen." Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:56:07 AM

RICHMOND, Calif. Authorities have arrested a seventh suspect in the gang rape of a teenage girl outside a high school homecoming dance in Northern California. Richmond police Sgt. Bisa French said 43-year-old John Crane Jr. walked into the police station and turned himself in without incident Tuesday evening. French said Crane was being held on $100,000 bail on suspicion of felony sexual assault. Investigators identified Crane last week as a suspect in the Oct. 24 sexual assault of a 16-yearold girl outside Richmond High School. Police describe him as an ex-con with a history of violent crime. Six other males ages 15 to 21 have pleaded not guilty in connection with the rape and related charges. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Geoff Ogilvy: Tiger Woods should talk before playing golf By ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:34:24 AM

Reports: Woods At Sex Rehab Clinic Reports: Woods At Sex Rehab Clinic ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates -- Tiger Woods should come out and answer his critics in public before making his return to tournament golf, Australian Geoff Ogilvy said on Wednesday. Woods, who is taking an indefinite break from playing, has been in hiding since admitting last month he had cheated on his wife. "Tiger should actually come out in public before, and not at a golf tournament," Ogilvy told reporters on the eve of the Abu Dhabi Championship. "One, out of respect for all the other golfers, and two, to diffuse the circus part of it before he actually gets to a golf tournament. I don't believe a lot of tournaments want all the tabloid media floating around. "It would be nice if he came out away from a golf tournament.

When he does come back to golf it would still be a bit crazy but that tabloid edge might be gone." Woods is receiving treatment at a sex rehabilitation clinic in Mississippi, Benoit DenizetLewis, author of a book titled "America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life" and himself a recovering sex addict, wrote on his personal blog Monday, citing an unnamed source. Last week, Radar Online and Jackson, Miss., television stations WJTV and WLBT reported through sources that Woods was at the Hattiesburg clinic. Officials at the clinic have not confirmed that Woods is there, and ESPN independently has not been able to confirm that Woods is at the clinic. Ogilvy said Woods may opt to choose the media-controlled atmosphere of the Masters in April for his comeback. "The least amount of circus he could face would be if he went to Augusta first, as that would be the most controlled environment he could be in," Ogilvy said.

"But then if he truly wants to win at Augusta he's going to want to play before then. Whenever he returns, it's going to be a big day. “ Tiger should actually come out in public before, and not at a golf tournament. One, out of respect for all the other golfers, and two, to diffuse the circus part of it before he actually gets to a golf tournament. I don't believe a lot of tournaments want all the tabloid media floating around.”-Geoff Ogilvy "The first press conference he does is going to be a crazy one. A lot of people who have been afraid to ask questions for 10 or 12 years won't be quite as hesitant to ask questions as they used to be and Tiger is going to have to answer questions." Ogilvy, a former U.S. Open champion, said the other competitors would probably want to avoid playing alongside Woods on his return because of the massive amount of attention it would create. "At a golf tournament it's going to be crazy whatever happens and there's going to be a lot of

stuff going on inside the ropes when he comes back," he said. "It would probably not be ideal to have to play with him." When Woods does return to the PGA Tour, Ogilvy said the American will get back to his best. "Tiger has always impressed when he had had lots going on around him with expectation, pressure and crazy stuff," said Ogilvy, who won the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. As for his own game, Ogilvy said he was brimming with confidence after retaining his SBS Championship title in Hawaii two weeks ago. "Winning early in a new season ... is pretty high on your priority list," he said."It's a big boost." Information from Reuters and The Associated Press was used in this report. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

The best and worst places to get dumped (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:37:00 AM

Getting the old heave-ho from your significant other can sting a little more this time of year with Valentine’s Day right around the corner and at least two more months of cold weather. But, if you land on the lonely side of a breakup, try to strategically decide where the dumping with go down. Pulling from plenty of dumper and dumpee relationship situations, Heartless Doll has complied a list of the 10 best and worst places to get dumped. The best place to say adios? Chili’s because who wouldn’t want to drown their woes in boneless buffalo wings and watered down margaritas? Can you guess the worse? Grab a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and swing over to Heartless Doll for the full list. By Zack Sheppard (Flickr Bert K, FriskoDude, katiealley, PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Before the break up, try some Blog) shihlun, renquedochan, Term Extraction. relationship tidbits. rackyross, delviking, and Photo credit: Fotolia Submitted at 1/19/2010 3:37:05 PM bluehour. Permalink| Leave a comment » Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Photos from dorkasaurus_rex, Five Filters featured article:

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Carlton Fisk rips Mark McGwire, calls his defense of his home run totals 'a crock' By ESPNBoston.com (ESPN.com) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:42:50 AM

Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk became the latest former player to level criticism at admitted steroids user Mark McGwire. And in the same interview with the Chicago Tribune, Fisk also had strong words for Roger Clemens. “ Try having your knees operated on and catching for 30 years. Do you think you feel good when you go out there? [McGwire] had to stand around and play first base. So excuuuuuse me.”-- Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk Fisk, who caught 2,226 games spanning 24 seasons for the Boston Red Sox and then the Chicago White Sox, said McGwire's insistence that steroids did not help him total 583 career home runs is "a crock." "[McGwire] says, 'Well, it doesn't help eye-and-hand

coordination.' Well, of course it does," Fisk told the Tribune for Wednesday's editions. "It allows you more acuity physically and mentally and optically. You are going to be stronger and you are going to be better. "Some of these numbers that are out there are really warped. Should they be considered? You saw how McGwire was viewed in the Hall of Fame voting. If you take the length of time that [steroid users] use that stuff and subtract 15 or 20 home runs a year for those guys, where are their numbers then?" As part of his admission to using steroids throughout the 1990s, McGwire said last week he believes steroids did not inflate his home run totals and that he took them to heal faster from injuries, which allowed him to remain in the lineup. "That's a crock," Fisk told the Tribune. "There's a reason they call it performance-enhancing drugs. That's what it does -performance enhancement. You

can be good, but it's going to make you better. You can be average, but it is going to make you good. If you are below average, it is going to make you average. Some guys who went that route got their five-year, $35 million contracts and now are off into the sunset somewhere. Because once they can't use [steroids] anymore, they can't play anymore." "Try having your knees operated on and catching for 30 years," Fisk added. "Do you think you feel good when you go out there? [McGwire] had to stand around and play first base. So excuuuuuse me." Fisk's outrage wasn't aimed solely at McGwire. He also was critical of seven-time Cy Young winner Clemens, who has been accused of using PEDs. The former trainer of the 353-game winner has said he injected Clemens with steroids and HGH over a period of several years, a claim Clemens has vehemently denied.

"The reason he got let go from the Red Sox [after the 1996 season] was because he was starting to break down," Fisk told the Tribune. "His last couple of years in Boston just weren't very productive, a la 'The Rocket.' Then all of a sudden he goes to Toronto and he wants to show somebody something. Then he gets two consecutive Cy Young Awards [in '97 and '98]. Come on, give me a bucket. "It's obvious to players. You notice that stuff. You know how hard it is to play the game. You know how hard it is to be productive at any age, but especially at an older age. You see guys who are as productive later on as they were early [in their careers]. It offends guys that stayed clean." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:28:55 AM

Who hasn’t experienced that moment of sheer horror as you watch, seemingly in slow

motion, your delicious chocolate chip cookie plummet to the floor? Then, it’s crucial decision time—to eat or not to eat? Luckily, the clever foodies over at SF Weekly have created a

dropped food flowchart that will

(Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:22:55 AM

The Obama administration on Wednesday promised to press ahead with healthcare reform in spite of an electoral setback in Massachusetts partly driven by anger over the Democratic agenda. Republican Scott Brown’s victory over Democrat Martha Coakley in the race to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy in a Democratic stronghold, sent a chilling message to the president a year after his inauguration: that voters blame him for economic woes and link him with discredited Wall Street. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

UCONN continued from page 48

Do I eat it? Dropped food flowchart (Holy Kaw!)

Obama affirms healthcare plans

help you make a sound decision as you hold that cat hair-covered cookie in your hand. All the tastiest foodie news. Permalink| Leave a comment »

probably owed something to an enlarged heart), stopping a career and a life that was just getting started. “At 26, this is what Gaines Adams was left with: warm words from people who knew him, countered by cold numbers on an NFL stat sheet,” ESPN’s Melissa Isaacson writes. “I’ll take the warm words.”* * * UCONN page 53

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UCONN continued from page 52

Bobby Valentine was, in many ways, the ideal manager for the New York Mets. During his sixplus seasons with the team, Valentine won a pennant and posted a .534 winning percentage, but just as importantly he managed to keep things entertaining regardless of the teams he sent out onto the field. Valentine’s flair for the dramatic and deep-seated irreverence wouldn’t necessarily be the first attributes one would look for in hiring an American manager for Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, but

Valentine won a Japan Series with the formerly moribund Chiba Lotte Marines in 2005, his first season as the team’s manager, and quickly became an iconic figure in Japanese baseball. Then, seemingly without warning, Valentine was a lame duck, and a persona non grata in the organization that he’d turned around. In the Japan Times, the very awesome Robert Whiting offers the first of a four-part series on the rapid rise and fall of Bobby V. in Japan. If you’ve read Whiting’s canonic “ You Gotta

Have Wa“, which still stands as the book on Japanese baseball, you already know that this will be a fun read. – Tip of the Fix cap to reader Karen Okupniak. Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself — write to us at dailyfix@wsj.com and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email David at droth11@gmail.com.

Johnny Damon Has Pondered Retiring By Tom Fornelli (Fanhouse Main) Submitted at 1/20/2010 4:14:00 AM

Filed under: Yankees, MLB Rumors, MLB Free Agency It seems that reality is finally starting to set in for Johnny Damon. The Yankees won the World Series over two months ago, and we're a month away from the beginning of spring training, and Johnny is still sitting at home waiting for somebody to offer him a contract. He had told Yankees general manager Brian Cashman

that unless he was prepared to make Damon a $13 million offer for 2010, don't even bother making the call. Well, it seems that other general

Pair of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker bundles coming to Japan By David Hinkle (Joystiq)

36,980 yen ($405). You'll be able to grab either (or both, if managers got the message too, you're Richie Rich), when the and none of them are picking up Konami is looking to release a game releases on March 18. the phone. pair of new Metal Gear Solid: There hasn't been mention of So Damon's options are limited, Peace Walker bundles in Japan. any kind of custom bundle for and when the Giants announced There will be two options: an the U.S., but considering past they had signed Bengie Molina expensive bundle featuring a bundles, we'd say it's a safe bet on Monday, it took away one of custom PSP-3000 emblazoned to go ahead and assume one is them. That leaves the Braves and with skulls, a copy of the game, coming our way. Commence Yankees as Damon's most likely a carrying case and a cleaning Operation Finger Cross ... now! landing places, provided he eases cloth -- all together costing Source- 1UP up on his salary demand. His 26,980 yen ($296). Then there's Source- Image of cheaper only other option is retirement, an even more expensive bundle bundle at Kotaku and apparently he's kicked that that features everything in the Pair of Metal Gear Solid: Peace idea around in his head. first bundle, but also tosses in a Walker bundles coming to Japan custom strap, an original PSP originally appeared on Joystiq on stand, some dog tags, and a few Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST. other unrevealed items. The Please see our terms for use of latter package (only 1,974 of feeds. which are being produced) will Permalink| Email this| be available exclusively through C o m m e n t s the KonamiStyle website for Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:30:00 PM

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Spencer: Project Natal launch 'fraught with risk' for Microsoft By JC Fletcher (Joystiq)

with risk." Much as he did in our interview, Submitted at 1/20/2010 1:15:00 PM Spencer equated Natal S p e a k i n g t o E u r o g a m e r , integration with Live integration, Microsoft Game Studios head suggesting that it will eventually Phil Spencer responded to be ubiquitous. "At the beginning criticism that Microsoft takes of Live it was all about sports, fewer risks than Sony in first- racing and shooting games," p a r t y d e v e l o p m e n t b y Spencer said. "Now if you found referencing Project Natal-- "if a game that didn't have some there isn't risk in Natal then I kind of Live functionality it don't know what's keeping me up would seem like it wasn't a at night." complete game. I think Natal is "We're trying to build a set of likely to get there as well." That new games, new experiences that is somewhat at odds with Aaron will have the same quality Greenberg's statement that Natal metrics of our past games," he games would be almost entirely said, "but really entice both "completely unique, brand-new existing 360 customers and new experiences." people. It's a huge challenge, a And, as a bonus, he also found huge investment and it's fraught t i m e t o m a k e o n e w a c k y

statement about Peter Molyneux. "Haha! Working with Peter is amazing, he's a very creative, inspirational person. Sometimes it's like riding a bull with no saddle, and sometimes it's like reading a great novel, but it's a fun experience." Look for Peter Molyneux's Literodeo among the Project Natal launch lineup. Spencer: Project Natal launch 'fraught with risk' for Microsoft originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

NPD: Wii Play is best selling 'game' of all time in the US By David Hinkle (Joystiq)

has invaded. Taking second place is Guitar Hero III, the first Submitted at 1/20/2010 2:00:00 PM game to earn$1 billion in If there's a statistic measuring revenue, followed by Grand how well a game sold, you're Theft Auto: San Andreas. The likely to find Wii Play lingering others in the top ten are generally in it somewhere. It's not only expected, including Activision's been the best-selling game of other$1 billion earner, Modern 2009, but also just recently made Warfare 2(notable because, itself known as the top seller for damn, that was fast!), along with the last decade. Now, according a pair of other Call of Duty to NPD data (via GameSpot), the games. Head over to GameSpot software-hardware hybrid has for the full list. claimed another throne: top- NPD: Wii Play is best selling selling non-PC US game ever. 'game' of all time in the US It's a pretty prestigious list and originally appeared on Joystiq on while no exact figures are listed Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. (save for the bundle's October Please see our terms for use of performance, selling a whopping feeds. 11.1 million units in that month Read| Permalink| Email this| alone), the other games listed Comments should give you an indication of just how many homes Wii Play

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Designer Playlist: Pamela Love By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog)

US banks see recession easing (Financial Times - US homepage)

Submitted at 1/20/2010 7:15:05 AM

Here's what Pamela Love is listening to now: The War on Drugs, "Taking the Farm" Tom Waits, "Ice Cream Man" Love as Laughter, "Crosseyed Beautiful Youngunz" Hallelujah, "Honest" Devendra Banhart, "A Sight to Behold" Townes Van Zandt, "Nothin'" Ali Farka Touré, "Timbindy" Paul Simon, "The Obvious By Ludwig Kietzmann zones, namely Heretic, Citadel Child" (Joystiq) and Longshore. And if winning Jay Reatard, "It Ain't Gonna on any of them seems like a long Save Me" Submitted at 1/20/2010 3:00:00 PM shot, why not practice online Hallelujah, "Brightside" Do you love Halo enough to today and Thursday in benefit of Dinosaur Jr., "The Lung" purchase new multiplayer maps, Haiti relief efforts? Link Wray, "Fire and but not enough to buy new Halo Gallery: Halo 3 Multiplayer: B r i m s t o n e " games? If that's the case, you'll Citadel, Heretic, Longshore Neutral Milk Hotel, "My be pleased to learn that the Halo 3: Mythic 2 Map Pack Dreamgirl Don't Exist" Mythic 2 Map Pack, which was c o m i n g t o X b o x L i v e The Wild Yaks, "Damn the previously available with 2009's Marketplace on Feb. 2 originally Gun" Halo 3: ODST, will be sold appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 20 Bruce Springsteen, "Wrecking separately as Halo 3(sans overly Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please Ball" descriptive subtitle treatment) see our terms for use of feeds. content on the Xbox Live Read| Permalink| Email this| Marketplace starting February 2. Comments (Financial Times - US For 800 MS Points ($10) you'll homepage) gain access to three distinct kill

Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:19:00 AM

Halo 3: Mythic 2 Map Pack coming to Xbox Live Marketplace on Feb. 2

Warpaint, "Elephants" Avett Brothers, "Colorshow" Dead Meadow, "Everything's Going On" Jeff Mangum, "Oh Sister" Neil Young, "Time Fades Away" —Erin Clements Photo: Jordan Sullivan

Leading banks on Wednesday provided evidence that the US consumer recession is abating, reporting that losses on credit cards, mortgages and other loans are starting to moderate. A raft of lenders including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and US Bancorp reported first-quarter results that revealed they were seeing signs of a turn in the credit cycle thanks to an economic recovery fuelled by huge government stimulus. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Buffett hits at Kraft’s ‘bad’ Cadbury deal Submitted at 1/20/2010 7:56:06 AM

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who is the largest shareholder in Kraft, on Wednesday criticised the US

food group’s£11.6bn agreement to buy Cadbury as “a bad deal”. Mr Buffett told CNBC, the US business television network, that he had “a lot of doubts” over the Cadbury purchase and would have voted against it had Kraft sought shareholder approval for

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

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The Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:54:33 AM

In Geneva today is the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, or SIHH, where 16 of the world's most exclusive watch brands gather to show their collections to buyers and customers alike. I walked off the plane and was promptly blasted by the frigid Swiss cold, but eventually arrived to the warmth and luxury of the invitation-only conference. The SIHH has turned a hollow convention space near the airport

into a five-star locale where food, drinks and snacks are all free of charge to conferencegoers. The highlight of today's visit: the Jaeger LeCoultre watch and

safe set. This may be the only time you'll see this, as this is a product saved for only the top watch aficionados. The safe weighs in at over 1000 kgs, is finished in suede and leather, and

is the accompaniment to three of the brand's top watches. It holds the three watches and has space for about eight other watches and an abundance of drawers for all sorts of other jewelry. The price tag? About $1.8 million just for the watches and a little over 2 million if you also want the safe. And there are 30 sets already pre-ordered by customers. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Rebecca Suhrawardi Austin Follow ELLE on Twitter. Become our Facebook fan!

State Department Allows Muslim Scholars to Return to U.S. (FOXNews.com)

Holladay said. Clinton "has chosen to exercise her exemption authority for the N E W Y O R K T h e S t a t e benefit of Tariq Ramadan and Department has cleared the way Adam Habib," Holladay said. for the return to the United States "We'll let that action speak for o f t w o p r o m i n e n t M u s l i m itself." scholars once accused of having In a prepared statement, ties to terrorism, a spokesman Holladay noted the change in said Wednesday. U.S. posture since both Secretary of State Hillary professors, who are frequently Rodham Clinton has signed invited to the United States to orders enabling the re-entry of lecture, were denied admittance professors Tariq Ramadan of after making statements counter Oxford University in England to U.S. foreign policy. a n d A d a m H a b i b o f t h e "Both the president and the University of Johannesburg in secretary of state have made it South Africa once they obtain clear that the U.S. government is required admittance documents, pursuing a new relationship with department spokesman Darby Muslim communities based on Submitted at 1/19/2010 10:59:07 PM

mutual interest and mutual respect," Holladay said. The American Civil Liberties Union sued in recent years to challenge the exclusion of the professors. It said the State Department's action means the scholars will now get visas within weeks of requesting them. Habib, a well-known South African scholar who has been a critic of the war in Iraq, was denied a visa by the U.S. government in a letter saying he "engaged in a terrorist activity," an accusation Habib has vigorously denied. One of the groups that invited him to speak was the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights.

Ramadan had his U.S. visa revoked in 2004 as he was about to move to Indiana to take a tenured teaching job at the University of Notre Dame. Later, his visa applications were denied on the grounds that he had donated $1,336 to a charity that gave money to Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. In an ACLU statement, Habib called it a personal victory and also a victory "for democracy around the world." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

MediaDailyNews: Black Crow Media To Use Nielsen Radio Measurements (MediaPost | Media News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:17:20 AM

Black Crow Media will use Nielsen radio measurement in the Huntsville, Alabama, market. The privately held company owns 22 radio stations in five U.S. markets, including three in the Huntsville market. Nielsen offers radio measurement in 51 small and mid-size markets across the United States. Huntsville is one of two markets where Nielsen offers radio sweeps results in both the spring and the fall. Other clients subscribing to the service include Cumulus Radio, Clear Channel Radio, ESPN Radio, and Maverick Media. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Strong aftershock rattles Haiti (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 1/20/2010 5:14:07 AM

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Rescuers applaud as the children are pulled alive from the ruins A strong aftershock has rocked Haiti, sending screaming people running into the streets, eight days after another quake devastated the country. The extent of the damage is not yet known. The magnitude 6.1 tremor struck west of Port-auPrince at 0603 local time (1103 GMT). An estimated 200,000 people died in last Tuesday's quake and another 1.5 million were made homeless. Despite an international aid operation, supplies are slow to reach survivors. However, international teams are still rescuing people alive from the rubble, including a 69year-old woman pulled from the ruins of a church in the capital. The US military has defended its handling of the rescue operation, as aid groups complained of long delays in getting vital supplies of food, water and medicine. Haitian President Rene Preval said aid delivery was the main problem now. Help came "very fast," Mr Preval told a French radio station. "When it arrives, the question is: where are the trucks to transport it, where are the

depots?" Fresh panic The US Geological Survey said Wednesday's tremor was centred 35 miles (56km) north-west of the capital. It struck at a depth of 6.2 miles (9.9km), but was too far inland to generate any tsunamis in the Caribbean. Some buildings already weakened by last week's quake collapsed and wails of terror filled the air as frightened survivors poured out of unstable buildings, a BBC correspondent in the region said. Although some aid has started to reach desperate survivors, hundreds of thousands are still without food or water, a full week after the disaster. Medicins Sans Frontieres

(Doctors Without Borders) said its cargo plane with 12 tonnes of medical supplies had been turned away from the congested Port-au -Prince airport three times since Sunday. It said five patients died from lack of the supplies it carried. "We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations," the group's Loris de Filippi told the Reuters news agency in Cite Soleil. But the US military has defended its efforts in the face of vast logistical challenges. "We're doing everything in our power to speed aid to Haiti as fast as humanly possible," said Gen Douglas Fraser, head of US Southern Command. He said they plan to start using

teams from Turkey and France. Television pictures showed her smiling and singing as she was carried to safety. The United Nations said early on Wednesday that 121 people had been rescued by international teams since the 12 January earthquake - an extra 31 people on Tuesday. Aid challenges In a bid to speed up the delivery of aid and stem looting and violence, US troops have stepped up their presence in the quakeravaged country. Haiti was extremely poor even before the earthquake, and this disaster has now broken all the basic services, like phones and electricity. But Haitians are resilient. two other airports, at Jacmel in Everywhere there are volunteers Haiti and San Isidro in the filling some of the gaps created neighbouring Dominican by the slow arrival of Republic, in the coming days. international aid. Amazing rescues A company which sells drinking One full week after the water is distributing it free to magnitude seven quake people living in a school devastated the country, searchcompound. and-rescue teams were emerging A Haitian Jesuit priest has from the ruins with unbelievable mobilised local relief workers success stories. and international doctors to work Ena Zizi, 69, was rescued from together in a rural region just the wreckage of the residence of outside the capital. Haiti's Roman Catholic In a slum area, a volunteer firstarchbishop on Monday, a day aider dressed the wounds of a before crews recovered the body girl who had been trapped in of the archbishop himself, rubble. Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot. These largely unsung heroes Another survivor, 25-year-old know they can't replace the big Lozama Hotteline, was rescued from beneath a collapsed STRONG page 65 supermarket with the help of

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Brown: Mass. victory sends 'very powerful message' (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

prospects in midterm elections this year. Even when the economy is not bad, the party BOSTON – Republican Scott h o l d i n g t h e W h i t e H o u s e Brown, fresh from a stunning h i s t o r i c a l l y l o s e s s e a t s i n Massachusetts Senate victory m i d t e r m s . that shook the power balance on "If there's anybody in this C a p i t o l H i l l , d e c l a r e d building that doesn't tell you they Wednesday that his election had are more worried about elections sent a "very powerful message" today, you should absolutely slap t h a t v o t e r s a r e w e a r y o f them," Democratic Sen. Claire backroom deals and Washington McCaskill of Missouri told business-as-usual. reporters at the Capitol. "Of Democrats scrambled to explain c o u r s e e v e r y b o d y i s m o r e t h e l o s s , w h i c h i m p e r i l s worried about elections. Are you P r e s i d e n t B a r a c k O b a m a ' s kidding? It's what this place agenda for health care and other thrives on." hard-fought domestic issues. Brown, in his first meeting with Republicans greeted their victory reporters after the special with clear glee. election, portrayed his victory as "The president ought to take this less a referendum on Obama or as a message to recalibrate how the president's health care he wants to govern, and if he proposal and more of a sign that wants to govern from the middle people are tired of Washington we'll meet him there," said politics and dealmaking. Senate Republican leader Mitch He said his victory sends "a very McConnell of Kentucky. powerful message that businessObama said the Massachusetts as-usual is just not going to be vote reflected the mood around the way we do it." the country. "People are angry, "I think it's important that we hit and they're frustrated," he said in the ground running," Brown said. an interview with ABC News. He said he would pay a courtesy D e m o c r a t s s t i l l e x e r c i s e call to the nation's capital on majority control over both the Thursday. House and Senate. But Tuesday's "Game's over. Let's get to work," GOP upset to win the seat long he added. It was not clear how held by the late Sen. Edward quickly he would be sworn in, K e n n e d y — f o l l o w i n g but Democratic Sen. Jim Webb Republican victories in Virginia of Virginia said the Senate and New Jersey last fall for should not hold any further votes gubernatorial seats that had been on health care until Brown is held by Democrats — signals seated. That, said McConnell, challenges for Democratic probably means there will be no Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:45:38 AM

further Senate action until then. Obama said he agreed. " The Senate certainly shouldn't try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated. People in Massachusetts spoke. He's got to be part of the process," the president told ABC. The president suggested the same forces that elected Brown "swept me into office" in 2008. People are frustrated "not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years." White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters at his daily briefing, "That anger is now pointed at us because we're in charge. And rightly so." Gibbs said Obama would address the Massachusetts results "and what they mean" in his State of the Union address next Wednesday. Brown's victory gives Republicans 41 votes in the 100member Senate, upending the Democrats' ability to stop filibusters and other delaying tactics. Brown said that, while he planned to caucus with Republicans, "I'm not beholden to anybody." Democrats were licking their wounds and demonstrating that they got the message from voters and were willing to reach out. White House tourists even got a surprise Wednesday when first lady Michelle Obama showed up

as their greeter to mark the end of Obama's first year as president. She brought the family dog, Bo, to the Blue Room. She chatted with guests and hugged many of them as they filed in. Obama himself grimly faced a need to regroup in a White House shaken by the realization of what a difference a year made. In addition to searching for ways to salvage the health care overhaul, the Democratic Party also faced a need to determine how to assuage an angry electorate, and particularly attract independent voters who have fled to the GOP after a year of Wall Street bailouts, economic stimulus spending and enormous budget deficits. There was a sense that if Republicans could win in one of the country's most traditionally liberal states, Massachusetts, they could probably win anywhere. "I think every state is now in play, absolutely," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley, the attorney general who had been considered a surefire winner until just days ago. Her loss signaled big political problems for Obama and the Democratic Party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide. As if in a nod to voter disgust with Washington, Obama signed

a directive Wednesday aimed at stopping government contracts from going to tax-delinquent companies. "We need to insist on the same sense of responsibility in Washington that so many of you strive to uphold in your own lives, in your own families and in your own businesses," Obama said. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's Republican presidential rival in 2008, likened Brown's win to the Revolutionary War's "shot heard 'round the world" in Concord, Mass., in April 1775. McCain said the message was clear: "No more business as usual in Washington. Stop this unsavory sausage-making process." Brown, 50, will finish Kennedy's unexpired term, facing re-election in 2012. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pledged to seat Brown immediately, a hasty retreat from pre-election Democratic threats to delay his swearing-in until after the health bill passed. ___ Sidoti reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Tom Raum, Beth Fouhy, Suzanne Gamboa, Mark Smith and Steve LeBlanc contributed to this report. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Obama warns Senate on healthcare (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:23:28 AM

US President Barack Obama has warned Democrats not to "jam" healthcare reforms through the Senate after a Republican won a seat in Massachusetts. Mr Obama told ABC News any vote should wait until Scott Brown had taken up his seat, and lawmakers should seek to "coalesce" around parts they agreed on. Mr Brown will be Massachusetts' first Republican senator since 1972. His victory means the Republicans now have enough votes in the Senate to block the Democrats' healthcare plans. Earlier, the president's senior adviser, David Axelrod, said he would take the defeat into account, but would stick to his agenda. "We'll have to think through this next year from the standpoint of tactics but in substance the mission can't change," he said. The BBC's Paul Adams, in Boston, says it is a humiliating defeat for the Democrats, robbing them of their filibusterproof 60-seat majority, and a deeply unwelcome anniversary present for President Obama exactly one year after his inauguration. Our correspondent adds that it is one of the biggest political upsets in years - in a seat held for almost half a century by Edward

Kennedy, a Democratic Party colossus, who died last year. The Democrats' leader in the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer, said party leaders were trying to determine which parts of the healthcare bill could still be passed in the Senate, Reuters news agency said. He added that another key piece of legislation, the cap-and-trade bill, was not dead, but parts aimed at increasing energy independence were more likely to pass than those aimed at reducing carbon emissions. 'Voter disenchantment' Senator-elect Brown told journalists his victory sent the message that "people are tired of business as usual in Washington politics", and vowed to get to

swept me into office." "People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because what has happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years." Mr Obama said he wanted to make clear that any plans by Democrats for a Senate vote on the reform plan before Mr Scott took up his seat were "off the table". "The Senate certainly shouldn't try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated," he added. "The people of Massachusetts spoke. He has got to be part of that process." The president said it was important for Americans to understand that core elements of work as soon as possible. "I just focused on what I did, the bill such as cost containment Please turn on JavaScript. Media which is to talk about the issues and insurance reform were vital. requires JavaScript to play. terror, taxes and the healthcare "I would advise that we try to Scott Brown: "The main thing plan," he told NBC. move quickly to coalesce around they want is good government "We already have 98% of our those elements of the package back" people insured here already in that people agree on," he said. H e s a i d h e w o u l d g o t o Massachusetts, so we do not However, the Republican party Washington on Thursday with need the plan that's being pushed chairman, Michael Steele, said the hope of taking up his seat. upon us," he added. Americans were breathing a "The campaign is over now, and But he denied he was intent on "sigh of relief" over healthcare. we have to focus on solving derailing the reforms. "People across the country are problems," he said. "I never said I was going to do saying: 'Slow it down,'" he said, Earlier Mr Brown, 50, told e v e r y t h i n g I c a n t o s t o p quoted by the Associated Press. NBC's Today show he did not h e a l t h c a r e , " h e s a i d . Sen Robert Menendez, head of think the vote was a referendum "I believe everybody should have the Senate Democrats' campaign on President Obama's first year healthcare, it's just a question of committee, said he had "no in power. how we do it." interest in sugar-coating" the He said voters had "enjoyed the Asked for his assessment of the result. message" he pushed while Republican victory a year after "There is a lot of anxiety in the campaigning, including his taking office, President Obama c r i t i c i s m o f M r O b a m a ' s told ABC: "The same thing that OBAMA page 66 healthcare plans. swept Scott Brown into office

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Motive a mystery in Va. shootings that killed 8 (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

Appomattox Regional Jail and had not been charged. Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:36:03 AM Police did not identify the dead, APPOMATTOX, Va. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; A man but rumors flew around the suspected of shooting eight county, which has about 14,500 people to death surrendered residents. Appomattox County Wednesday after spending the Schools Superintendent Dorinda night in dense woods, but Grasty said she did not have the authorities did not reveal what list of confirmed victims but prompted the killings. expects the school system will be Christopher Bryan Speight, 39, affected. Schools had planned to was wearing a bulletproof vest stay closed for the day before the but had no weapons when he gunman surrendered, but the flag turned himself in to police was at half-staff in front of around 7:10 a.m., Sheriff O. A p p o m a t t o x C o u n t y H i g h Wilson Staples said. Authorities School and Grasty said crisis say he fired at a state police teams will be available when helicopter, rupturing its gas tank students return Thursday. and forcing it to land, but no one Staples said bomb technicians on board was hurt. and bomb-sniffing dogs were Staples said Wednesday that sent to the house because Speight lived in the home where authorities believed explosive three bodies were found inside devices may have been planted and four outside. The eighth in and around it. victim, who was found barely The drama that started around alive on the road just outside the noon Tuesday paralyzed the rural house, died at the hospital. area about 100 miles southwest Authorities have not said how of Richmond that is best known Speight was related to the as the place where Confederate victims. Police spokeswoman Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered Corrine Geller also would not to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant say what Speight said when he to end the Civil War. Police with turned himself in. dogs and heat-sensing equipment He was wearing camouflage swarmed the woods and warned pants and a black sweat shirt residents to stay indoors with when officers put him in a doors locked. sheriff's car at state police "This is a horrific tragedy," headquarters later Wednesday. Geller said at a news conference H e w a s b e i n g t a k e n t o Wednesday. "It's definitely one

of the worst mass killings in Virginia, probably since the Virginia Tech tragedy in April of 2007." Appomattox County court records show a concealed weapons permit was issued to a Christopher Bryan Speight three times between 1999 and last year. The issue dates match the five-year renewal period for concealed handgun permits under Virginia law. Authorities earlier said Speight had a high-powered rifle and Staples said investigators believe he had weapons training based on the weapons found in his home, though they have no information to indicate he was in the military. Speight's uncle, Jack Giglio of Tampa, Fla., said his nephew was a deer hunter, though as far as he knew Speight did not have any specialized weapons training. "We're shocked, of course," Giglio said. "I'm not aware of any problems with him. It's kind of out of the blue. We're still trying to pick up facts too." Giglio said he hadn't seen Speight since 2006, when they both attended the funeral for Speight's mother, who died of brain cancer. State police backed by other agencies spent Wednesday night

enforcing a perimeter around a swath of woods that was 2 miles long and 1,000 yards wide. The house where most of the bodies were found is located on a gravel road, with woods and farm fields surrounding it. On Wednesday morning, police had the road blocked about 100 yards from the house. The drama began around noon Tuesday when deputies responded to an emergency call about an injured man along the side of a narrow country road. A deputy who answered the emergency call heard more gunshots and soon the area, about 3 miles from the state police district headquarters, was filled with law enforcement from all over, with more than 100 responding. ___ Associated Press Writer Larry O'Dell in Appomattox and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report. (This version CORRECTS day that students will return to school to Thursday, sted Wednesday.) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Evacuations before 3rd Calif storm in a row (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:05:54 AM

LOS ANGELES â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Hundreds of people living below fire-stripped mountains were under orders to leave their homes Wednesday as another Pacific storm churned toward Southern California on the heels of powerful systems that have flooded coastal communities, spawned a tornado and killed two people. Los Angeles County and city authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders in advance, saying residents of more than 600 homes would have to be out by 9 a.m., just ahead of the storm's expected midday arrival. The homes are in communities in the foothills and canyons below the rugged San Gabriel Mountains, where more than 250 square miles of forest burned away last summer, and public safety officials warned that basins designed to capture debris -laden runoff were full after two days of storms. Slippery slopes weren't confined to the burn areas. Early Wednesday, a car-size boulder fell onto an offramp of U.S. 101 near Hollywood. The National Weather Service said the new storm would pack 60 mph gusts along the Southern California coast and valleys, and EVACUATIONS page 64

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Ice storm snarls traffic in nation's midsection (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

with "crash after crash," even though road crews were out sanding streets. South Dakota DES MOINES, Iowa – A storm authorities were advising against brought freezing rain and ice to driving along interstates 29 and the nation's midsection on 90. Wednesday, causing widespread A 23-year-old man, Bradley power outages and forcing Deutsch of Luverne, Minn., was school closures in several states, killed after his vehicle rolled in a and contributing to at least one ditch off Interstate 90 near traffic fatality in South Dakota. Brandon, along the state's border Ice up to a 1/2-inch thick coated with Minnesota, the Minnehaha parts of western and northern County sheriff's office said. I o w a , t u r n i n g s t r e e t s a n d Iowa's two largest utilities said sidewalks into near skating rinks. thousands of customers were Dave Nerad, a store manager at without power Wednesday the Active Endeavors in Iowa morning as temperatures hovered C i t y , s a i d h e h a d s e v e r a l just below the freezing mark. customers waiting at the door MidAmerican Energy had about when he opened at 10 a.m. 16,000 customers without power, "They came in looking for Yak with most in Des Moines, Fort Trax, stabilizers, anything that's Dodge and in western Iowa from going to keep them upright on Sioux City to Council Bluffs. the ice," Nerad said, referring to Alliant Energy reported outages t h e s t e e l - b o t t o m e d s h o e in northwest Iowa, central and attachments. southern Iowa. Todd Heitkamp, a National In southwest Iowa, most of Weather Service meteorologist in A t l a n t i c , w h i c h h a s 7 , 2 0 0 Sioux Falls, S.D., said driving residents, was without power. conditions were treacherous in The main problem was downed parts of Iowa, Nebraska and power lines, said Cass County South Dakota. Authorities were Deputy John Westering. also warning drivers about icy "We have 70-80 percent of the conditions in parts of Minnesota town without power. We're on a and Illinois. generator here at the courthouse Sioux Falls police Sgt. David right now," he said. Erickson said they were dealing Westering said traveling wasn't Submitted at 1/20/2010 11:41:34 AM

much of a problem in Cass County, but drivers had to proceed slowly — if they could even get into their ice-coated cars. "You can't hardly get your car doors open, I know that." he said. Several northeast Nebraska school districts canceled classes or started them late on Wednesday, but police said the state had avoided the traffic accidents being reported elsewhere. Dixon County Sheriff Dean Chase said people in his county either stayed home or slowed down for safety, so he didn't have any serious accidents to investigate Wednesday. Nebraska State Patrol spokeswoman Deb Collins said she was unaware of any fatal accidents. In Illinois, dozens of accidents were reported on icy roads in the central part of the state on Wednesday, and several western districts canceled classes for the day. The utility Ameren reported fewer than 2,000 customers without power. The National Weather Service said the freezing rain was to continue in Iowa into early Thursday, and an ice storm

warning remained in effect for the state into Thursday morning. Iowa had already endured three major snow storms this winter, and there was still more than 2 feet of snow on the ground in some areas. "We've had our share of winter, that's for sure. I think everybody is ready for springtime" said meteorologist Kenny Podrazik of the weather service in Johnston. Temperatures were expected to remain below freezing into Friday and to warm up over the weekend. Temperatures on Saturday were forecast to be in the lower 40s — with more rain, which could potentially cause flooding as the snow melts. ___ Associated Press writers Nelson Lampe in Omaha, Neb., and Patrick Condon in Minneapolis contributed to this report. (This version CORRECTS that Luverne is in Minnesota, not South Dakota.) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Evacuations Begin in Los Angeles Ahead of 3rd Storm (FOXNews.com) Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:35:42 AM

LOS ANGELES Hundreds of people living below fire-stripped mountains were under orders to leave their homes Wednesday as another Pacific storm churned toward Southern California on the heels of powerful systems that have flooded coastal communities, spawned a tornado and killed one person. Los Angeles County and city authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders in advance, saying residents of more than 600 homes would have to be out by 9 a.m., just ahead of the storm's expected midday arrival. The homes are in communities in the foothills and canyons below the rugged San Gabriel Mountains, where more than 250 square miles of forest burned away last summer, and public safety officials warned that basins designed to capture debris -laden runoff were full after two days of storms. The National Weather Service said the new storm would pack 60 mph gusts along the Southern California coast and valleys and up to 80 mph at higher elevations, while dropping rain at up to 1 1/2 inches per hour. Up to 5 inches of rain was forecast through the day for EVACUATIONS page 64

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Virginia shootings man surrenders (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

Police are searching the area where he was hiding overnight for a high-powered rifle they Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:17:15 AM believe he used to shoot at a A man suspected of shooting helicopter which had been called dead eight people in rural to the scene. Virginia has given himself up The helicopter's fuel tanks were after a manhunt in which a US hit by four bullets, forcing it to police helicopter was fired on. land. Bomb teams are searching the A sheriff said he believed that area for explosive devices which the suspect had had weapons may have been planted in the training, based on arms found in man's house and surrounding the house. woods. Mr Speight has been taken to Police said medical examiners A p p o m a t t o x r e g i o n a l j a i l , would try to identify the victims p e n d i n g c h a r g e s . once the area has been secured. A spokesman for Virginia's The suspect is reported to have governor said the suspect was been personally acquainted with being debriefed and was being the victims. very co-operative, although a The man, named as Christopher motive for the shooting was still Speight, 39, turned himself in at being investigated. about 0710 (1210 GMT) after an Manhunt all-night stand-off with police, News of the shootings broke on who had surrounded woodland Tuesday afternoon and everyday j u s t o u t s i d e t h e t o w n o f life in the area was paralysed, Appomattox. with local schools closing down The local sheriff said Mr as police hunted for the gunman. Speight was wearing a bullet- The authorities were first alerted proof vest when he surrendered, when they received a call about but was not armed and did not an injured person lying in the need any medical attention. middle of a road.

When a deputy arrived at the scene, he heard gunfire and called for back-up. The injured man was taken to hospital where he died of his wounds. Police from across the state were brought into the densely wooded area, which is about 100 miles (160km) south-west of Virginia's capital, Richmond. Police dogs and a National Guard helicopter with thermal imaging equipment were used to search the woods. Mr Speight is the co-owner of the house in Snapps Mill Road, where the first reported victim was found. He also owns a large tract of land next to the house. The Washington Post quoted local officials as saying two of the dead were believed to be his wife and son. Police found three bodies inside the house and another four outside. The eighth victim was the man found injured in the street. County Administrator Aileen Ferguson said it was one of the

worst mass killings in Virginia's history, "probably the worst since the Virginia Tech killings in 2007", when a student shot 32 people . Are you in Virginia? Have you been affected by the incidents today? Send us your comments, pictures and video. Send your pictures and video to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to +44 7725 100 100. If you have a large file you can upload here. At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws. Read the terms and conditions The BBC may edit your comments and not all emails will be published. Your comments may be published on any BBC media worldwide. Print Sponsor Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Police Nab Suspect in Deadly Virginia Shooting Spree (FOXNews.com)

"There is a probability such devices do exist," Staples said, adding that Speight lived at the The man who police say shot home where the murders took and killed eight people in a rural place. Virginia home is in police State police spokeswoman c u s t o d y , s t a t e o f f i c i a l s Corinne Geller said Speight was announced Wednesday. "acquainted" with the victims, C h r i s t o p h e r S p e i g h t , 3 9 , but did not release their names or surrendered to authorities at t h e s u s p e c t ' s p o s s i b l e approximately 7:10 a.m. r e l a t i o n s h i p t o t h e m . Wednesday, Appamattox County "The next step is to confirm the Sheriff O. Wilson Staples told identity of the victims," she said. reporters. Speight, who was wearing a Police say Speight fatally shot b u l l e t - p r o o f v e s t w h e n h e eight people at a house in surrendered to authorities, was Appomattox County, Va., on transported to Appomattox Tuesday and forced down a County Jail, Geller added. He police helicopter after shooting was not carrying any weapons its fuel tank. when taken into custody Police found three bodies inside W e d n e s d a y . the home and four other victims Investigators used dogs and heat outside. Another man found -sensing equipment to search injured along a nearby roadway overnight for Speight in a later died. wooded area in the rural region Staples said bomb technicians about 100 miles southwest of and police dogs have been Richmond. s c o u r i n g t h e c r i m e s c e n e Local officials agreed to close Wednesday to ensure there are four schools that serve about no explosives on the premises. 2,000 students as a precaution. Submitted at 1/20/2010 8:20:30 AM

Geller called Tuesday's massacre "one of the worst mass killings" in the state since 2007 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; when 32 people were killed during a shooting rampage on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. The drama unfolded around noon on Tuesday when a victim was spotted barely alive along the side of a narrow, undivided country road. A deputy who answered the emergency call heard gunshots and soon the area about 3 miles from the state police district headquarters was filled with law enforcement from nearby municipalities, with more than 100 responding. The injured man died on the way to the hospital, said state police Sgt. Thomas Molnar. Earlier, as teams tried to catch the gunman, he fired at the helicopter trying to flush him out, police said. One or more rounds struck the helicopter, forcing it down, but no police were injured.

Police refused to speculate on a motive. Molnar gave no background on the suspect, saying not much was known about him. Speight was not listed as an offender on the Virginia Department of Corrections Web site and a search for his name on the Appomattox County courts site came up with no matches. The county contains about 15,000 residents and is best known as the place where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to end the Civil War. Click for coverage from MyFoxDC.com The Associated Press contributed to this report. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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continued from page 60

up to 80 mph at higher elevations, while dropping rain at up to 1 1/2 inches per hour. Up to 5 inches of rain was forecast through the day for some mountain areas, forecasters said. Warnings for coastal flooding, gales, snow and high surf were posted up and down the state, but the concern was extreme in Southern California, where vast areas scorched by wildfires in the past two years have left landscapes denuded of vegetation that would normally capture or slow runoff. The foothills northeast of Los Angeles already have received almost 5 inches of rain since Sunday, Department of Public Works Director Gail Farber said. County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman begged residents to heed their evacuation orders. He said public safety officials are racing against Mother Nature. "And if she wins the race there's

continued from page 61

no way we can assure that firefighters, as well-equipped and as trained as they are, will be able to get into your neighborhood and make rescues," Freeman said. Residents were told to be prepared to be away from their homes for as many as five days. In the foothills of La Canada Flintridge, just northeast of Los Angeles, County Public Works crews used bulldozers and shovels to move mud out of culde-sacs. The storm left fist-sized rocks strewn across a winding, canyon road. One resident, Gary Stibal, had lined his backyard with sandbags a couple of feet high to divert the floodwater. His hard work kept out the rocks and debris on Tuesday, but Stibal, whose home was threatened by one of last year's wildfires, said he was worried that water from the third storm would reach his home. "The ground is really saturated

right now from the two storms we had come through yesterday and today, so I'm really concerned," he said as he surveyed his work. The storm did serious damage Tuesday, crushing a woman to death under a fallen tree, flooding coastal neighborhoods and leaving thousands without power as lightning and tornados surged ashore with fierce winds in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles County beach towns and areas of Orange and San Diego counties. San Diego sheriff's Lt. Mike Munsey said a woman was killed when a eucalyptus tree with a 10 -foot diameter trunk crushed her trailer and a neighbor's in a mobile home park near El Cajon. On Monday, a man was killed in southern Kern County when a tree fell on his home near Frazier Park. In San Pedro, a working class neighborhood near the Port of Los Angeles, several blocks were

flooded with about six feet of water when storm drains clogged with debris. Police said 16 people were displaced from flooded homes. Jerry Bazan spent the afternoon sweeping several inches of water out of his living room, where toys, sodden clothing and furniture were strewn about and a thick layer of mud coated the floor. The water rose quickly in his apartment and some of it was contaminated with sewage. "It was a heavy downpour, and the drainage system was clogged," he said. "There was nowhere for the water to go, and it just rose up." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

some mountain areas, forecasters said. Warnings for coastal flooding, gales, snow and high surf were posted up and down the state, but the concern was extreme in Southern California, where vast areas scorched by wildfires in the past two years have left landscapes denuded of vegetation that would normally capture or slow runoff. The foothills northeast of Los Angeles already have received almost 5 inches of rain since Sunday, Department of Public Works Director Gail Farber said. County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman begged residents to heed their evacuation orders. He said public safety officials are racing against Mother Nature. "And if she wins the race there's no way we can assure that firefighters, as well-equipped and as trained as they are, will be EVACUATIONS page 65

cartels in recent months. The drugs trade in the region is controlled by the Sinaloa cartel, reportedly led by Mexico's mostwanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. At least 19 inmates died in another prison brawl in Durango in August 2009, which officials said had been sparked by gang rivalries. President Felipe Calderon has

declared war on the illegal narcotic organisations in Mexico, deploying 40,000 troops to fight the cartels. Print Sponsor Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Mexico jail 'gang fight' kills 23 (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

Puente was quoted by the Associated Press as saying she did not know the cause of the Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:38:20 AM fighting. At least 23 inmates have been Thousands of people have been killed after a fight at a jail in killed in drug-related violence in Durango, northern Mexico, Mexico over the past few years. officials say. "There are 23 dead, all inmates," Police believe the inmates were Durango army head General members of rival drugs gangs, M o i s e s M e l o G a r c i a t o l d Reuters news agency reported. R e u t e r s . But prison spokeswoman Carla He said the situation in the

prison was "now back under control". Ms Puente said some people had also been injured in the brawl, which was ended by prison guards and armed soldiers. The prison was reported to house more than 2,000 inmates. War declared The state of Durango has been the scene of clashes between the rival Gulf and Sinaloa drug

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EVACUATIONS

STRONG

continued from page 64

able to get into your neighborhood and make rescues," Freeman said. Residents were told to be prepared to be away from their homes for as many as five days. In the foothills of La Canada Flintridge, just northeast of Los Angeles, County Public Works crews used bulldozers and shovels to move mud out of culde-sacs. The storm left fist-sized rocks strewn across a winding, canyon road. One resident, Gary Stibal, had lined his backyard with sandbags a couple of feet high to divert the floodwater. His hard work kept out the rocks and debris on Tuesday, but Stibal, whose home was threatened by one of last year's wildfires, said he was worried that water from the third storm would reach his home. "The ground is really saturated right now from the two storms we had come through yesterday

continued from page 57

and today, so I'm really concerned," he said as he surveyed his work. The storm did serious damage Tuesday, crushing a woman to death with a fallen tree, flooding coastal neighborhoods and leaving thousands without power as lightning and tornados surged ashore with fierce winds in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles County beach towns and areas of Orange and San Diego counties. San Diego sheriff's Lt. Mike Munsey said a woman was killed when a eucalyptus tree with a 10 -foot diameter trunk crushed her trailer and a neighbor's in a mobile home park near El Cajon. On Monday, a man was killed near Bakersfield when a tree fell on his home. In San Pedro, a working class neighborhood near the Port of Los Angeles, several blocks were flooded with about six feet of water when storm drains clogged

with debris. Police said 16 people were displaced from flooded homes. Jerry Bazan spent the afternoon sweeping several inches of water out of his living room, where toys, sodden clothing and furniture were strewn about and a thick layer of mud coated the floor. The water rose quickly in his apartment and some of it was contaminated with sewage. "It was a heavy downpour, and the drainage system was clogged," he said. "There was nowhere for the water to go, and it just rose up." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

New York Times website to charge (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 1/20/2010 8:24:43 AM

The New York Times has announced that it is to charge for full access to its website from 2011, the latest newspaper to move in that direction. It said it will introduce a metered system, allowing readers free access to a limited number of articles, before charging for additional content.

A similar online payment model has been introduced by the UK's Financial Times. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has also said it plans to start charging for access to its online newspapers. News Corporation's titles include the Sun and Times in the UK, as well as the New York Post in the US. Risk to advertising The New York Times has yet to say how many stories will be

available free and what it will charge to read more. It previously charged for access to its website back in 1996, but abandoned it after failing to build up sufficient subscription numbers. Media analysts say this is the fundamental problem for newspapers thinking of charging for their online content - and that advertising revenues could fall as NEW page 66

foreign aid agencies, but they're doing what they can to fill the gaps. US Black Hawk helicopters swooped down on the grounds of Haiti's wrecked presidential palace on Tuesday, dropping scores of US troops who moved to secure a nearby hospital and set up aid distribution points. US Army Maj Gen Daniel Allyn, the deputy commander for relief operations in Haiti, said the military had delivered 400,000 bottles of water and 300,000 food rations since last Tuesday's earthquake. He said the number of US troops would grow to 10,000 in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council voted to temporarily boost its peacekeeping forces by 3,500 personnel. UN officials said they would accompany US troops as they delivered supplies. While military escorts are still needed to deliver relief supplies, the United Nations said fears of violence and looting had eased. Improved security "The overall security situation in Port-au-Prince remains stable, with limited, localised violence and looting occurring," the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. So far, feared infectious diseases

have not shown up, although many injured faced the immediate threats of tetanus and gangrene, and hospitals are overwhelmed. The Pentagon said a navy hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, had received its first Haitian patients, even as it was still heading towards Haiti. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the military is sending additional ships to help with earthquake recovery in Haiti, including one that could remove debris blocking the main port. The World Food Programme said it was planning to bring in 10,000 gallons (40,000 litres) of diesel a day from the neighbouring Dominican Republic as Haitian fuel supplies dried up. Haitian officials say the death toll from the quake was likely to be between 100,000 and 200,000, and that 75,000 bodies had already been buried in mass graves. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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OBAMA continued from page 59

country right now," he added. "Americans are understandably impatient." 'Senator Beefcake' The Republican beat Democratic rival and Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley by 52% to 47%. Dubbed Senator Beefcake in the US media, Mr Brown is a lawyer and former model who posed almost naked for Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1980s while in law school. President Obama had campaigned personally on behalf of Ms Coakley. Analysts say the race should

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a result. The New York Times is already struggling to make a profit. Its parent group, the New York Times Company, made a loss of $35.6m (ÂŁ22m) between July and September of last year. This came as advertising revenue across its newspaper portfolio fell 30% from a year earlier.

have been an easy win for her, but a lacklustre campaign allowed Mr Brown to seize on voter discontent and overtake her in the final stretch. Correspondents say the vote does not bode well for the Democrats ahead of November's congressional elections, and that if they cannot hang on to a party stronghold such as Massachusetts they could be vulnerable almost anywhere. The result comes amid opinion polls showing nearly half of Americans think President Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises.

MediaDailyNews: Nielsen: Super Bowl Ads Drive Web Traffic

It was the third major loss for Democrats in state-wide elections since he became president: Republicans won governors' seats in Virginia and New Jersey in November. (MediaPost | Media News) Print Sponsor Five Filters featured article: Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:55:23 AM Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, As Super Bowl advertisers look for spots to reverberate beyond Term Extraction. the game, the freebie strategy employed by Denny's appears to be a grand slam. But many marketers have more pedestrian goals: Driving viewers to their Web sites. And a new Nielsen report shows some had notable success last year, with significant lifts in traffic the day after the Feb. 1 game. Print Sponsor One finding bears little need for Five Filters featured article: exhaustive research: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: GoDaddy.com saw a 112% lift in PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Web traffic (unique visitors) Term Extraction. during those 24 hours, more than any other advertiser. The company's two provocative Super Bowl spots, featuring race car driver Danica Patrick, directed viewers to GoDaddy.com to view the spots' culminations. Unique visitors were an estimated 1.2 million for the day. Job search sites Monster (70%) and CareerBuilder (61%) also saw big jumps, just trailing GoDaddy. Again, profound

analysis may not be needed: The spots came during the depth of the recession. CareerBuilder dayafter traffic was 2 million, Monster at 831,000. Hulu saw a 59% jump in traffic with its Alec Baldwin-starring spot. That lift may have been a function of simple awareness building, with the message that episodes of TV shows are available free and on-demand with a few clicks of a mouse. Traffic was 1.8 million the day after the game. Overall, Nielsen said the average leap in Web traffic for Super Bowl advertisers on Feb. 2, the day after game, was up an average of 63%. Denny's, of course, used its spot not to drive Web hits, but store traffic. Its ad told people a free Grand Slam breakfast would be available to all visitors two days after the game. There was hardly a need for Web activity -- all the info was right on screen. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Art.view: Masters and mistresses (The Economist: Daily columns) Submitted at 1/20/2010 3:21:13 AM

Art.view The first major test of the art market in 2010 Jan 20th 2010 From Economist.com DEALERS in European pictures by artists long dead are accustomed to being eclipsed by sales of young contemporary upstarts. They take their revenge during economic recessions; Old Masters hold up better in times of crisis and uncertainty, and especially during periods of inflation. In 2008 the two main auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, sold just under $700m worth of Old Master paintings. Last year, with the art market in freefall, sales totalled $468.8m. Sotheby’s, which has the larger share of the Old Master market, saw a bigger year-on-year fall: 36%. It would have been helpful to have been able to analyse the sector over a longer period, but both auction houses have been shaking up what they call Old Masters. In 2008 this category started including early British paintings, 19th-century European pictures and even some antiquities. Most analysts feel, though, that the contraction in the Old Master market in 2009 was smaller than expected, particularly when compared to what happened in the contemporary sector.

Old Master sales are driven far more by supply than by demand. Artists who lived centuries ago are not going to produce any more work. Museums rarely sell their holdings and almost never let go of top-quality pieces. So the Old Master market is fed largely by private collectors. When markets are riding high, some can be persuaded to sell. But when times are rough, why not sit and wait? After all, Old Masters tend to be long-term holdings, handed down from generation to generation—what difference can it make to wait another year? Prices might go up. In January 2008 Sotheby’s offered 345 pictures in its Important Old Master sale in New York. The following year, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and in the midst of the bank bail-out, the same sale had shrunk to 223 paintings. But the second half of 2009 saw stability return to the art market. Rising prices renewed confidence for sellers and buyers. So what will the first big sale of 2010—Sotheby's Old Master auctions, from January 27th to 29th in New York—tell us about the market today? At first glance, it doesn’t look too good: the number of paintings on offer at the main sale has fallen again, to a tight 202 lots. But the figures are worth taking apart. In 2008 just under 60% of the 345 pictures on offer found a

buyer. In 2009 the sale was smaller and only half the paintings sold, but the average price achieved per lot was far higher: $546,000 per picture in 2009 compared with $373,000 a year earlier. Regardless of the slump, there is still plenty of money about. Buyers have become more choosy, but they are prepared to pay top dollar for the best because the supply of rare, topquality work is very limited. Sotheby’s charm offensive on sellers this year has yielded good results. The main sale on January 28th includes some lovely pictures, and many of the estimates are far from outrageous. The pre-sale press reports have been dominated by two works, both of them expensive. One is a portrait of a woman that was once believed to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Called “La Belle Ferronnière”, it was the subject of an acrimonious lawsuit in 1920 between a newly married couple from Kansas City, who had been given the picture as a wedding present and were hoping to cash in on the da Vinci attribution, and the pre-eminent dealer of the time, Sir Joseph Duveen, who pronounced it a fake without ever having seen it. Chemical analysis now shows Duveen was right. The picture was probably painted in France in the early 18th century, about 200 hundred

years after Leonardo died. It is not an attractive painting, and its early notoriety does nothing to improve it. Quite why anyone would pay $300,000-500,000, the estimate Sotheby’s has put on the picture, is a mystery. The second painting to be in the news is a massive work by a Dutch artist, Hendrick Goltzius, called “Jupiter and Antiope” (pictured above). It was bought by Hitler’s right-hand man, Marshall Hermann Göring, from its Jewish owner in a distressed sale in the middle of the second world war, and is being sold by the heirs of the original Jewish owner, Abraham Adelsberger, after a long but successful restitution claim. Goltzius is an important painter and the work is huge. But the imagery is unfashionable and the picture less than beautiful, which makes the $8m-12m estimate Sotheby’s has placed on it seem rather ambitious. By contrast, many of the other pictures on offer would be well worth a second look. A newly rediscovered early work by a French master, Jean Honoré Fragonard, of a toddler holding out its arms, is a jewel. At $250,000-350,000, the price is high when measured per square inch (it is a tiny painting on copper), but the pleasure it affords is unending. Another child, this one a boy not much older, in a smart green coat with raspberry velvet collar, painted

by Francis Cotes, a British 18thcentury academician, has a poignancy that pulls you back to it time after time. At $80,000120,000, it would be a bargain. A mysterious and beguiling depiction of Saint Dorothy, a virgin martyr, by an earlier Spanish painter, Francisco de Zurbarán, is the image Sotheby’s has chosen for the cover of the catalogue. The drapery of her red dress and green shawl are sumptuous, and the subject, with her head tilted and her lips slightly parted, has a trace of sauciness that makes her especially attractive. The picture belonged to a great private Spanish collection until the mid1920s, when it was sent to New York. It has been consigned by Mrs Wendell Cherry, the widow of the founder of Humana, a health-care company, who bought it in 1998. Few of Zurbarán’s glorious portraits of female saints remain in private hands. The $3m-4m is quite ambitious; chances are it could be had for less. But with inflation on the rise, collectors may convince themselves that it is a worthy investment. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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American banks: Good news, bad news (The Economist: News analysis) Submitted at 1/20/2010 5:15:19 AM

American banks American banks declare their latest, mixed, results Jan 20th 2010 | NEW YORK From The Economist print edition POLITICIANS tend to tar all bankers with the same brush. The results unveiled this week by America’s financial giants were, however, far from uniform. Citigroup and Bank of America (BofA) posted thumping quarterly losses. Morgan Stanley eked out a modest gain. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase made healthy profits. Goldman Sachs is expected to report a glittering set of numbers later this week. The differences were partly down to one-off hits. Citi, for instance, had to swallow $6.2 billion in after-tax charges related to repayment of its federal bail-out funds. Behind the noise, however, some trends are emerging. Loan losses appear to be stabilising. For some, the worst may even be over. At BofA, America’s biggest lender, net write-offs fell by 13% in the fourth quarter, the first decrease in nearly four years. Across the industry credit-card delinquencies are flattening out. Nevertheless, the mood is

cautious. In a call with analysts, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s boss, hinted at the possibility of a double-dip recession. Even if the recovery continues, loan losses could remain high for some time. They lingered at peak rates for six quarters in the 199192 downturn, says Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. One uncertainty is mortgage modification: banks may yet be forced to reduce the principal owed on some loans. The outlook is cloudy in investment banking, too. Merger advice is picking up smartly, but capital-markets revenues fell in the fourth quarter, thanks to a big drop in fees from fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC), previously the heart of the rebound. This decline was partly seasonal. After a great year, many investors reduced activity in the fourth quarter to preserve profits. But it may presage a longer slowdown. The bid-offer spreads that banks earn on trades are falling from artificially high levels. Analysts at Citigroup expect FICC revenues, an estimated $190 billion in 2009, to be 15-20% lower this year. A further 15% of the pie could be lost if most over-the-counter derivatives migrate to exchanges. In absolute terms, any shrinkage is likely to hit hardest at Goldman, the market leader in

FICC, unless it can continue to grow its share beyond the current 14% level. Banks face other headwinds. The lacklustre economic recovery will keep loan demand weak. Tougher rules on capital will hurt banks’ return on equity, as will restrictions on credit-card practices. JPMorgan Chase expects America’s new card act to cost it $500m in annual profit—though it may be cheered that plans for a new financial consumer-protection agency seem to be in disarray. Banks must also swallow painful accounting adjustments. Bringing securitised assets back on its balance-sheet will erode Citi’s core capital by 1.4 percentage points. Punitive taxes will bite, too. Writing in the Financial Times, Mohamed El-Erian, head of Pimco, a fund manager, suggested that Barack Obama’s plan to recover bail-out costs through an annual levy on large financial firms “marks the beginning of the era of banks being targeted for selective incremental taxation in advanced economies.” Congress may yet raise the tax above the 0.15% of liabilities proposed, he added. The chances of further taxes will rise if bonuses continue to inflame tempers. Banks have made what they consider to be big changes to their pay

structures. JPMorgan will hand its investment bankers just 11% of the revenue they generated in the last three months of 2009, a quarter of the norm; Citi has capped cash bonuses at $100,000. But this is unlikely to calm public fury, which could flare up again when Goldman announces its bonus pool. On top of all this, banks face the gradual withdrawal of extraordinary government support. The industry’s attention is turning to interest-rate risk. Rate cuts in 2007-08 greatly steepened the yield curve, handing banks a huge profit boost. As and when short-term rates start to rise again, banks’ net interest margins (the difference between their interest income and funding costs) will come under pressure. These are already being squeezed as some firms restructure their balancesheets: Citi’s margin tumbled from 2.95% to 2.65% in the fourth quarter. Over the past three years, America’s banks have gone from feast to famine and (for some) back again. The future lies somewhere in between. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

The Massachusetts Senate race: Mass appeal (The Economist: News analysis) Submitted at 1/19/2010 6:18:17 PM

The Massachusetts Senate race A stunning Republican victory in a Senate race in Massachusetts deals a blow to Barack Obama Jan 20th 2010 | NEW YORK From Economist.com IT WAS a sign of how bad Democratic expectations were for the Senate race in Massachusetts that the knives were out even before the polls had closed. The election, in a state where Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans (and independents account for around half of the electorate), was held to replace Ted Kennedy, a Democratic stalwart who died last year. Mr Kennedy's last legislative priority had been to push for a health-care bill. Now Scott Brown, a Republican former model, will replace him, having won by a five-point margin. This gives the Republicans 41 seats in the Senate, enough for a filibuster to block legislation. Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate, was uninspired and dull. Mr Brown’s surge in the polls came when she was on holiday, believing there was little chance she could lose. She made several gaffes on the campaign, MASSACHUSETTS page 69

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at one point implying that she had better things to do than meeting voters in the cold, later failing to recognise a legendary pitcher for the local Boston Red Sox baseball team. Her lacklustre style, against an energetic Mr Brown, failed to impress a grumpy electorate in an antiincumbent mood. The election is an extremely serious blow to the agenda of Barack Obama. He made a late swing through Massachusetts to stump for Ms Coakley, but failed to help. His ability to pull Democrats out of the fires of voter anger is now in question. The White House blames Ms Coakley. Mr Obama’s most senior political adviser, David Axelrod, said even before election day had ended, somewhat testily, that the White House had done everything that the Coakley campaign had asked. Now the fate of the health-care bill is in doubt. Mr Brown opposes the federal bill, although he supported a similar one in Massachusetts, a law now in effect that (like the federal bill) requires individuals to buy insurance. Mr Brown says that different conditions apply in

different states and the federal bill will cost too much. As the other Republicans are united in opposition to the bill, they would have enough votes to block it. That is, however, only if it returns to the chamber. The Senate has already passed one version of the bill. The House of Representatives has passed another one with a more leftwing bent, including a publicinsurance programme. Democrats are now hoping to press the House merely to pass the Senate’s version of the legislation. This would go down badly with many of the House’s more left-wing Democrats. But the alternative, it seems, is no bill or a far weaker one. If health-care reform still has a chance of passing in some form, two other big domestic measures seem in greater doubt. One version of a cap-and-trade bill for limiting emissions of greenhouse gases passed the House last year and another is making its way through the Senate. But it is unpopular among voters, especially in the downturn. A mooted immigration reform that would regularise the status of millions

who are in America illegally has even less chance of passage in a country feeling grouchy and vulnerable. Days before the election some Democrats were saying that their party needed a slap to get its fighting spirit up. Republicans may not cruise to big victories in November’s mid-term elections simply by filibustering everything the president sends to the Senate in the next ten months, but the win in Massachusetts is a big boost for the party. Mr Obama remains reasonably well liked—his jobapproval ratings hover at around 50%. But many Obama supporters voted for Mr Brown, which bodes ill for the Democrats in November. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

MediaDailyNews: Market Efficiency: Political Pubs Form Opinion Leader Network (MediaPost | Media News)

generate more than 26.8 million monthly page views. Elliott says the mission is to Three respected publications, u n d e r s c o r e m o r e t h a n representing various political c i r c u l a t i o n . I t s g o a l i s t o views, have formed the Opinion emphasize that the combined L e a d e r N e t w o r k t o h e l p group targets a diverse audience advertisers reach their readership that "ranks either No. 1 or 2 in with great efficiency. reaching key influencers in The Nation, National Review important policy categories." and The Christian Science The Nation, which aims at M o n i t o r , w h i c h t a r g e t t h e liberal, progressive readers, was political left, right and center founded in 1865. The Christian audiences, respectively, have Science Monitor boasts a 100joined forces to build revenues year history; it has won seven during economically pressed P u l i t z e r P r i z e s a n d m a n y times. overseas awards. By contrast, The Opinion Leader Network T h e N a t i o n a l R e v i e w , t h e allows marketers the opportunity youngest of the three, was t o p u r c h a s e p r i n t , o n l i n e founded in 1955 by author advertising with one media buy. William F. Buckley Jr., and According to Jim Elliott, t a r g e t s a R e p u b l i c a n , president of the James G. Elliott c o n s e r v a t i v e r e a d e r s h i p . C o m p a n y , w h i c h h a n d l e s Five Filters featured article: advertising sales and marketing Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: for the OLN, the three pubs have PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, a c o m b i n e d c i r c u l a t i o n o f Term Extraction. 420,000 and their web sites Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:00:03 AM

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Share with FlickrTab on Facebook By Cris Stoddard (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 1/20/2010 8:58:51 AM

Lots of members ask, “How do I share my Flickr photos on Facebook?” The solution is growing taller than a redwood tree in the App Garden. Developer Hoss Etemad created FlickrTab, a Facebook application that lets you display your Flickr photostream as a tab on your profile, including your sets or collections. The app selects only your public photos in your Flickr account, too, so that private photos stay private for viewing on Flickr only. Not only does FlickrTab display your photostream, sets, or collections on your profile, it

also enables your Facebook friends to comment on your photos on Facebook. Of course, your photos link back to their Flickr photo pages, so that people can leave comments on Flickr or add them to their Flickr

favorites or galleries – it’s a whole new level of sharing, and as easy as visiting the Facebook app page and authenticating with your Flickr account. You choose the layout and the magic of the Flickr API does the rest!

But wait! There’s more! This versatile app can also automagically post your latest uploads to your wall, so that they appear on your friends’ news feeds. Woo hoo! Of course, there’s the official Flickr-Facebook integration in your Flickr account settings, if you simply want your recent uploads to appear on your wall. Plenty more Facebook apps are growing in the App Garden, too, so get your gloves on and harvest a few apps. Application by solomodels. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Amazon to pay authors higher royalties from ereaders (Toronto Sun) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers)

per book, Amazon said authors will be able to earn US$6.25 per copy on a book that sells for Submitted at 1/20/2010 8:42:59 AM $8.99, rather than the old rate of SEATTLE — Amazon.com Inc. $3.15. said Wednesday it will begin To qualify for the new rate, offering authors and publishers a authors and publishers must meet bigger cut of book sales on its several criteria. Kindle e-reader — but with The book’s list price must fall strings attached aimed at keeping between $2.99 and $9.99 and be prices that consumers pay down. at least 20% below the lowest The Seattle company said that price of the physical edition of starting in June, it will offer the book. It also has to sell for royalties on book sales of 70% the same price, or less, as it does after delivery costs. With those with competing book sellers. costs equalling less than six cents Finally, it has to be available

everywhere the author or publisher has intellectual property rights. Amazon said the new structure will not apply to books published before 1923 and will only be available for books sold in the U.S., initially. Amazon has plenty of reason for wanting to keep a lid on e-book prices as it faces multiplying competition in the e-book market. Barnes&Noble Inc. is looking for a slice of e-book sales with its Nook device and Sony Corp. has several readers

of its own. A host of companies came to this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show with new devices — and ways of delivering content to them. And unlike existing Kindle models, some of the new gadgets slated for release this year promise features such as colour screens and touch navigation. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

TV Board: Media Insights QandA With Mike Pardee (MediaPost | Media News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 9:45:09 AM

Every time I ask today's research leaders how they decided on research as a career, I am struck by the range of answers. But none was as fascinating as Mike Pardee's, senior vice president of research for Scripps Networks Interactive. His research moment started on a tramp freighter headed to Sri Lanka. While there, he formed an interest in anthropology, and now he is one of the leading thinkers in the research community today. His current responsibilities span all areas of research. Below is a short excerpt from my interview with Mike. Direct links to the four interview videos can be found at http://weislermedia.blogspot.com /2010/01/q-interview-with-mikepardee-svp.html Charlene Weisler: If you had to list the top issues that you are facing at this moment, what would they be? Mike Pardee: I think one that is on the top of my list is the concept of viewer engagement and how that translates into advertising impact. We have been going down this path at least since the C3 issue raised its head. In the last two or three BOARD: page 71

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years, it seems to have become less of a topic of conversation. And yet I was at a conference recently and the words "engagement" and "engagement with consumers" came up inevitably in every second speech. But there really doesn't seem to be a lot of research in this area, and I think it has a lot of application, particularly for our type of network that is very directed and focused. CW: So in terms of engagement research, what have you been doing to prove the value of your networks' engagement index among consumers? MP: Well we've been working with the Simmons MME: that's the primary way we have been doing it. Also online there are a number of measures -- not just page views, but time spent and visits, so forth. So we have been looking at least at both behavioral and attitudinal engagement. CW: Have you been finding that agencies are responsive to this type of research?

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MP: I think in a general sense they are. Each upfront we go out with an engagement story and it seems to get a good reception. But, it's sort of a play on words and I don't find them getting as engaged with engagement as they did maybe three or four years ago. CW: Do you think maybe it's still engagement, but it is called something else. Like ROI? MP: I think you probably put your finger on it. I think that there is so much focus on the return on investment. We have done several projects recently where we've looked to see if the needle has moved at all in terms of product purchase. That is a really hard thing to do. It takes massive sales and ad budgets to move the needle, and you have to place it pretty much on one network or on one Web site to really isolate it. But there is a lot of interest in that. We've done some clever projects with clients on that. Another thing that has turned out to be kind of interesting is

looking at search and using search as an indirect measure of impact to see whether a campaign generates spikes in search. We've also been doing that. CW: In talking about set-topbox data, Scripps was one of the networks early on to start to look into it. What do you see as the future of set-top-box data? MP: It's really hard to know what is going to happen with settop-box data right now. Obviously the access to the data needs to open up. There are a number of vendors who seem capable of processing it and putting out decent reports. We've looked at a couple of them and subscribe to one of them right now. But it's going to take a lot more if it's going to become a mainstream currency. We find it very useful, particularly for looking at the ad breaks and what happens during the ad breaks -- but we've turned some of our attention elsewhere, because we could only take it so far without having a larger

universe of information. CW: What are the challenges that set-top-box data needs to overcome in order for you to feel that it is on the road to becoming a standardized metric? MP: Well, there is the quantity issue. Early on it became clear to us that there needs to be several millions of set top boxes for it to have the kind of statistical stability for second-by-second analysis. And I think the issue of not having demographics is a serious one. Some sort of integration of set tops with panel data probably is essential if it is going to become currency. Right now that mechanism doesn't exist. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

telecasts we analyzed, proving that the Live stream is no longer the closest substitute for C3. Using a comprehensive data set provided by Nielsen, Magna has gauged the level of potential ratings overstatement caused by the switch. The analysis consists of program and commercial ratings for both data streams in 21 LPM markets, 10 demographics and 138 primetime programs for a total of 115,920 data points. Our analysis shows that while certain programs may see a bump, the relationship between program and commercial viewing would barely change. The differences would be so small, in fact, that it would be nearly impossible to tell if the cause is the new data stream or simple statistical bounce. Even if we assume there will be across-the-board ratings increases, there are too many variables in the buying process to project a universal price MEDIADAILYNEWS: page 72

MediaDailyNews: The Local Currency Debate (MediaPost | Media News) Submitted at 1/20/2010 10:30:09 AM

Despite some agency claims to the contrary, Nielsen's decision to replace the local Live program data stream with Live + Same Day ratings is a major step forward for local audience measurement and should be

welcomed by the advertising community. Assertions that L+SD ratings will overstate program ratings while driving up costs are based on erroneous assumptions that do not hold up under scrutiny. Consider this: according to our calculations, including same-day DVR playback could potentially

overstate commercial viewing by about 4%. Meanwhile, the standard error on the same data is 36%. That means that any possible change caused by DVRs is far below the swings that naturally occur in Nielsen's audience projections. Well aware that viewing behavior shifts over time, Magna

plans to perform this analysis on an on-going basis to identify any changes in DVR playback patterns. We have also heard assertions that Live Program ratings should remain the local currency because at the national level, it is the closest available proxy to Average Commercial Minute

(C3) ratings. While that may have been true two years ago, increased DVR penetration has changed the landscape. Additionally, Live + Same Day Program ratings were closer to C3 than Live Program Ratings were in more than half of the MEDIADAILYNEWS: page 71

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increase. Let's not forget the role of negotiation. Put simply, the way people view television has changed, and a ratings stream with DVR playback included is much more representative of today's audience. Rejecting the Live + Same Day program data stream because it might marginally overstate commercial viewing is a head-in-the-sand approach,

especially given the variability that already exists in the numbers. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Amazon gives publishers a bigger royalty cut for Kindle; Apple Tablet defense? (ZDNet) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers) Submitted at 1/20/2010 4:33:45 AM

Latest Post| Last 10 Posts| Archives Previous Post: eBay: Does it have any answers for Amazon? Next Post: Should IT let users bring their own laptops and smartphones? [podcast] Amazon gives publishers a bigger royalty cut for Kindle; Apple Tablet defense? Posted in: • Amazon • Apple • Ebook • General Amazon on Wednesday outlined a new royalty option for its Kindle platform where authors and publishers can get 70 percent of list price net of delivery costs. There are a few catches in the royalty package, but Amazon appears to be throwing authors and publishers and e-book bone in an effort to keep prices down. The goal: Amazon is getting a jump on any looming Kindle threat from Apple and a bevy of other companies entering the ereader race. The company said that the 70 percent royalty option is in addition to the existing program for the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP). The latest royalty option will be available

June 30. For Amazon the royalty could solve a few issues. First, it can placate publishers and authors who are worried about their revenue stream in the age of e-books. There's a worry that Amazon could get too much

clout and dictate pricing to publishers. In addition, it's hard not to notice the timing here. Amazon is rolling out a new royalty program exactly a week before Apple is set to unveil its expected tablet effort. Whether

Apple's gadget is called the Apple Tablet, iTablet, iSlate or whatever it's going to be a threat to Amazon's Kindle. Simply put, it makes a lot of sense for Amazon to throw

authors and publishers a bone while the likes of Harper Collin s, which the Wall Street Journal reported is talking to Apple, and others hang out with Steve Jobs AMAZON page 74

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& Co. Also: All Apple Tablet coverage Amazon outlined its latest deal for publishers this way: Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15/MB. At today's median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option. According to Amazon, authors get 7 percent to 15 percent of the list price for physical books and 25 percent of net for digital books. Obviously, the 70 percent royalty looks like a good deal, but there are a few catches.

Needless to say, Apple may dangle its own royalty plan next week and rest assured its tablet gizmo will bring out a few new features.

Add it up and Amazon's royalty program is a mix of offense and defense. The Kindle has a huge bullseye on its back. At CES, there were a bevy of e-readers launched---perhaps too many--but Apple's tablet could be the big worry. Also see: CES 2010: Top 10 new e-book readers· CES 2010: Top 10 new e-book readers In a research note, Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Marianne Wolk wrote: At CES 2010 we met with more than a dozen eBook retailers and OEMs. The market is expected to explode this year, with an estimated 10 million eReaders The biggest issue is the author shipping in 2010 compared to or publisher list price has to be posted by Larry Dignan between $2.99 to $9.99 and be January 20, 2010 @ 4:13 am 20 percent below the lowest Previous Post: eBay: Does it physical book price. Meanwhile, have any answers for Amazon? the title needs to have the broad Next Post: Should IT let users set of Kindle features such as bring their own laptops and text-to-speech. In a nutshell, smartphones? [podcast] Last 10 Amazon is dangling this royalty posts: carrot to keep e-book prices • Microsoft and Intuit become down and make sure it can offer cloud partners(01-20) more features. • Bing on the iPhone: Could be risky, lucrative(01-20)

• New York Times goes metered online: Will you pay up?(01-20) • Bandwagon filling up for Microsoft's 'Pink' phone(01-20) • Vivu releases Skype plug-in for multi-person video conferences(01-20) • Should IT let users bring their own laptops and smartphones? [podcast](01-20) • Amazon gives publishers a bigger royalty cut for Kindle; Apple Tablet defense? (01-20) • eBay: Does it have any answers for Amazon?(01-20) • Smart Planet: The food carbon calculator: How does the food you eat affect global warming?(01-20) • News to know: Apple Tablet; IBM; IE6; Microsoft-HP; Google-China(01-20) more Posts (Archives) WordPress Mobile Edition available at alexking.org. powered by WordPress. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.