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Obama Tech Guru to Be Named FCC
Chief
By Liza Porteus Viana (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 2:51:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Republicans,
Barack Obama, Obama Administration
Barack Obama is set to name one of his
tech gurus, Julius Genachowski, as
chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission. Broadcasting & Cable says
the announcement may come today.
I've e-mailed Julius but, knowing how
the Obama team likes to keep a tight lid on
things, am not expecting a response.
From The Washington Post:
"Genachowski, 46, is a veteran of
technology policy having served as chief
counsel for former FCC Chairman Reed
Hundt. He also has business experience as
an executive at Internet firms
IAC/InterActive and currently as a venture
capitalist in Washington. Obama's pick for
the nation's head telecommunications
regulator has served as the president-elect's
chief technology counsel and was
classmates with Obama at Harvard Law
School. Genachowski is credited for
spearheading Obama's online campaign
strategy, which used social networking and
other tools to spread Obama's campaign
message and raise record campaign
contributions."
Genachowski would have to be
confirmed by the Senate. Current FCC
chief, Republican Kevin Martin, can stay
on as an FCC commission member, since
his term doesn't expire until 2011. But he
hasn't yet said what he's going to do.So far,
the reaction seems to be good from groups
like The American Cable Association and
The Progress and Freedom Foundation.
"All I've heard is good things about him,"
one cable lobbyist told Broadcasting &
Cable. The Free Press says he has an
"impressive business resume," and that his
"high-tech background, progressive
platform and experience as senior legal
council at the FCC under President Clinton
make it likely that he will be a strong
advocate for the public interest on myriad
crucial issues."
Gigi Sohn, president of Public
Knowledge who has known Genachowski
for 15 years, called him an "outstanding
choice."
"It is clear that he understands the
- 13/01/09
importance of open networks and a
regulatory environment that promotes
innovation and competition to a robust
democracy and a health economy," she
said. "I believe that in his new role, Julius
will work to ensure that the FCC meets its
legal obligation to protect the 'public
interest, convenience and necessity' and
will develop a principled, strategic policy
agenda that promotes openness, free
speech, competition, innovation, access,
economic growth and consumer welfare.
...I am certain that he will seek to restore
public confidence in an agency that has
had a long history of opaqueness, industry
capture, and a lack of data-driven
policymaking. His collegial management
style will also help rebuild morale at the
agency."
Genachowski will have to oversee a host
of issues, including the transition to digital
TV, Internet neutrality, expanding
Americans' access to high-speed Internet,
and possible re-auction of public safety
airwaves.
Prior to joining the FCC, Genachowski
served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme
Court Justice David H. Souter and, before
that, to retired Justice William J. Brennan,
Jr. and to Chief Judge Abner J. Mikva of
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit. He has served as an aide to U.S.
Sen. Chuck. Schumer and to the Iran-
Contra Committee, and has been on the
Board of Directors of Expedia, Inc.,
Hotels.com, and Ticketmaster.
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LibertyNewsprint.com U.S.
Barack Obama to 'Rebrand'
Financial Bailout Program
By Mark Impomeni (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:15:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
Obama Administration President-elect
Barack Obama officially requested that
Congress release the second half of the
controversial Wall Street bailout program.
The request was made by President Bush,
after Obama asked him to do so in order
that Congress might approve the funds by
the time Obama is sworn in next week.
The TARP funds, or Troubled Assests
Relief Program, as the program is known, TARP, and now they are backing away
has come under fire by Congressional from their votes of last September.
Democrats who say that the first half of the There is little danger, however, that
program's funds, $350 billion, did not go to Congress will not approve President-elect
help struggling homeowners. They want Obama's request. Democrats rarely object
the incoming Obama Administration to to spending large sums of federal money.
agree to certain restrictions on the use of But the program will be overhauled to
further funds from the program. Obama make it more palatable to Democrat
has signaled that be will comply. constituency groups. Instead of funding
When the bailout was passed, it was what some would call irresponsible
envisioned as a fund to prop up the big lenders, the fund will now support
investment houses on Wall Street, to irresponsible borrowers. But the effect of
prevent a wholesale collapse of the nation's the funds in the short term will likely be
financial system. That is partly what made the same, minimal. Democrats and Obama
the program so controversial. The Bush may feel better about where the money is
Administration has for the most part done going, but until the underlying crisis of
what Congressional Democrats asked for confidence in the U.S. economy is settled,
with the first $350 billion of the program, no amount of government spending will
using it to shore up AIG, Citigroup, and right the ship.
other large financial firms. But the recent Permalink| Email this| Linking Blogs|
bad economic news has caused Democrats Comments
to second guess their support for the
Prado and Google launch new collaboration
(World news | guardian.co.uk) Prado and Google launch new
collaboration
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:29:00 AM
2 Politics Tech* World*
Joe the Plumber Attempts to Nail Israeli
Reporter
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 11:52:00 AM
Filed under: Republicans, John McCain,
Humor I think Joe must be watching too
much "Colbert Report." He got all
confrontationiacal today with an Israeli
reporter, and continued to barf out his
Journalism School of the Absurd. From
HuffPo: It's not clear how this philosophy
jibes with this exchange, transcribed by
Firedoglake, where Joe tries to force an
Israeli reporter to judge whether or not the
country is "bad." JOE: The story here is
people are being killed and the media's
slanting it and trying to make it Hamas is,
uh, as far as, that Israel's being bad. Do
you believe Israel is bad?
REPORTER: Do I believe it?
JOE: Yeah, do you?!
REPORTER: I'm Israeli, so...
JOE: So answer the question!
REPORTER: No, I don't think Israel is
bad.
JOE: Do you think Israel has every right
to protect itself?
REPORTER: Yeah.
[pause]
JOE: You do?!
REPORTER: Yeah.
JOE: Have you said that on air?
REPORTER: I'm just a reporter."Does
LIVE VIDEO: Hillary
Clinton Confirmation
Hearing
By David Knowles (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:15:00 AM
Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Democrats,
Obama Administration
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News,
World News, and News about the
Economy
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Hamas deserve a time-out? Answer the
f**king question!!!"
Oh, but it gets better. Joe's got some
bang-up ideas on journalism, apparently
including using word dice to compose his
sentences during press conferences:
Talking to reporters in Israel, Joe went
even further, suggesting that journalists
shouldn't be allowed anywhere near war
zones:
"I don't think journalists should be
anywhere allowed war (sic). I mean, you
guys report where our troops are at. You
report what's happening day to day. You
make a big deal out of it. I think it's
asinine. You know, I liked back in World
War I and World War II when you'd go to
the theater and you'd see your troops on,
you know, the screen and everyone would
be real excited and happy for them. Now
everyone's got an opinion and wants to
Texting Making Today's Youth
All Thumbs
By Carlo Longino (Techdirt)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 6:49:18 AM
There's been a lot of talk about how the
rise of text messaging is affecting people
and how they communicate. We've seen
reports about texting's impact on
families(verdict: not clear), on the English
language(verdict: it's safe), and on
students' grammar(it's okay too). But one
more area texting is having an impact:
young people aren't using their index
fingers as much. Apparently because
younger people are using their thumbs to
text all the time, it's become the digit of
downer-and down soldiers. You know,
American soldiers or Israeli soldiers."
Maybe we should just get a bunch of
people into costumes, film them, and
report on that. In fact, maybe Joe ought to
try and line up an exclusive interview with
Cobra Commander!
Also, I hope Joe decides to take on the
traitors who anywhere allowed all of those
evil correspondents war. That should be
really entertaining.
Do you think John McCain still
considers Joe a role model?
I almost feel a little sorry for Joe. Even a
third-rate publicist would have gotten him
a better gig than this, and a bunch of
handlers to shut him the hell up. His new
employers must be loving the publicity,
but I can't see Joe broadening his fan base
here.
Of course, I don't feel sorry for Joe, the
whiny, hypocritical, mean-spirited whiner,
because he's a whiny, hypocritical, mean-
spirited whiner. What I will do is hope for
his safety, hope that PajamasTV's attempt
to cash in on Joe's thick-headedness costs
him no more than his dignity.
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choice for activities like ringing doorbells.
So will index fingers go the way of the
appendix and become some extraneous
appendage unneeded by modern man? I
just tried typing this post with only my
thumbs, and based on that, I think they,
and their six other friends, are safe for
some time yet.
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight
Community. To get insight and analysis
from Carlo Longino and other experts on
challenges your company faces, click here.
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Mary Taylor for OH Senate
... (The Next Palin?)
By Matt Lewis (Political Machine)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:40:00 AM
Filed under: Republicans, Sarah Palin
While most establishment Republicans are
rallying around the idea of a Rob Portman
candidacy to replace the retiring Senator
Voinovich, some Ohio conservatives are
quietly clamoring for an attractive
conservative outside-the-box candidate to
emerge. That candidate may just be Ohio
Auditor Mary Taylor.
Like Sarah Palin, Taylor is thought of as
both a conservative, and as a maverick
who stood-up to the Republican "good old
boys" machine in Ohio. A CPA by trade,
she has also proven she can win in a
difficult environment. In fact, she was the
only Ohio Republican to win statewide in
2006.
Taylor was even reportedly kicked off of
a committee in the House for voting
against the largest tax hike in Ohio's
history, the Gov. Taft/ Larry Householder also be push for her to stay put because of
tax increases. Former Secretary of State the apportionment board. As a columnist
Ken Blackwell led a ballot initiative for the Cleveland Plain Dealer writes:
against those same hikes, and supporters of Taylor is one of the state GOP's few stars
that initiative could form a base to rally of the future and might even be more
behind Taylor. electable than the far more experienced
Some have gone so far as to speculate Portman or Kasich. But Republican
that Mary Taylor might be the fulfillment leadership would exert enormous pressure
of Sarah Palin's potential. As one blogger on her to seek re-election as auditor
put it: instead.
She was at McCain's rollout of Sarah Taylor does not appear to be angling for
Palin in Dayton last week. Mary sees that
Sarah Palin is 270 Electoral College votes
and a heartbeat away from being President.
this seat, but who knows ... perhaps a
"Draft Taylor" site / movement will
emerge???
Mary is smarter than Palin, has more
experience, is not only not from a pretend
But Ohio's conservatives should still
look long and hard at this rising star before
state but an actual swing state, and is more anointing Portman -- a former Bush
attractive. If Mary plays her cards right, Administration official ... and a trade
official no less --- as the chosen successor
she's thinking, she could be VP soon. But
she has to become Governor first. ...
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To be sure, Taylor is not known as a
prolific fundraiser, and she likes being Comments
auditor from what I have heard. There will
Al Franken asks Minnesota governor to declare him winner of
US Senate race
By McClatchy newspapers (World Former comedian also asks Minnesota
news | guardian.co.uk) district court that it should not interfere in
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:21:22 AM
the Senate race
Daily Digital Newspaper Politics Tech* U.S. Sport* 3

Picture John McCain or Sarah Palin on

the Cover of Ms. Magazine
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 5:10:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
John McCain, Media, Sarah Palin Ms.
Magazine has created quite a stir with its
special Inaugural Edition cover image of
Barack Obama. The cover depicts PEBO
(I've been dying to use that; I love it and
hate it at the same time) in a Superman
pose, revealing an undershirt that says
"This is what a feminist looks like."
The cover is a takeoff on Ms.' first cover
ever, depicting Wonder Woman. I'm sure
there can be honest quibbles about the
symbolism, but I don't think they're trying
to say that women need a Superman. If
anything, it's more about the "hidden
powers" that men who support women's
rights have, an acknowledgement of our
part in the fight, and an expression of hope
that we live up to our end of the deal.
Much, if not all, of the outrage has come
from that particular quarter populated by
Women Who Hate Barack Obama For
Committing the Unpardonable Sin of
Defeating Hillary Clinton, or PUMA.
These are people who are convinced that
Barack Obama is somehow sexist, and that
he marshalled the forces of misogyny to
defeat Hillary Clinton. My friend (last time
I checked) Amy Siskind is among those
voices, although she's not a PUMA, per se.
Here's a little of what she had to say:( from
The Daily Beast) The current women's
rights movement is hardly recognizable to
those of us who are truly trying to advance
the discourse on gender. Exhibit A, the
planned " special Inaugural edition" cover
of Ms. magazine. I will readily admit,
when this visual first hit my inbox, my first
thought was that it was a hoax or a joke.
But it is not, and this is hardly a laughing
matter. The current vision of "feminism" is
a man striking a Superman pose. Now,
everyone is entitled to their opinion, but on
this issue, Amy and the PUMA sphere
have something in common that makes me
care little about what they have to say:
They supported John McCain and Sarah
Palin.
My question stands: Can you imagine
either of them on the cover of Ms.
magazine, except maybe as a bonus
dartboard? The same people who want to
take umbrage at the Obama cover are the
same ones who wanted to elect the most
woman-hostile ticket in modern history.
Not only that, they were blissfully
unconcerned with the GOP ticket's assault
on gay rights. That doesn't sound like any
feminists I've ever heard of.
Obama, on the other hand, is a guy who
not only supports women's rights issues,
they're one of the few things he's gone out
on a limb on. One of his great political
skills is his ability to craft positions that
don't look risky, that are tough to assail.
But in Illinois, he opposed legislation that
was a trojan horse attack on Roe v Wade,
at great political risk. It was this opposition
that gave rise to all of that nonsensical
"infanticide" talk.
Does that make him Superman? No, but
it makes him someone who supports
women more than you might realize at first
glance. Either way, neither he nor Ms.
Magazine should have to take shit from
people who were ready to elect
McCain/Palin. Tommy on: BlogTalkRadio
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John Kerry's Consolation Prize?
By David Knowles (Political leaving Kerry, one of Obama's most vocal
Machine) campaigners, out in the cold.
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:42:00 AM
Well, here's the payoff. Kerry will now

China Finally Issues 3G Licenses Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Democrats,

By Carlo Longino (Techdirt)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:37:42 AM
Chinese authorities have apparently
finally issued licenses for mobile operators
there to operate 3G networks, following
years of delays. The country had been
talking about getting 3G going since 2003
or so, but its tech protectionist bent saw it
forced to take delay after delay until it
could finally get its homegrown TD-
SCDMA standard into acceptable working
A New Chapter in a Bitter Rivalry
By ChrisJBurke08 (AOL News)
condition, while 3G networks built on
existing, widely accepted industry
standards flowered elsewhere in the world.
It's great that China's offered up an
alternative to the WCDMA and
CDMA2000 standards, and one that might
not carry some of the same intellectual
property burdens as those two, translating
into lower costs. But by this point, any
such benefit the standard might offer has
been rendered fairly meaningless by the
long delay in getting it to market --
x
meaning China's protectionism will
probably have done more to hurt the
country's position in technology than to
help it.
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Community. To get insight and analysis
from Carlo Longino and other experts on
challenges your company faces, click here.
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Obama Administration In the days and
weeks following Barack Obama's victory
in the general election, the president-elect
set about assembling his cabinet, filling it
with ardent supporters, political rivals, and
even members of the Republican party.
Through it all, many wondered when John
Kerry's name would be called. Early
speculation had it that Kerry would be
named Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton
took that spot. Then came less obvious fits:
Education, Commerce, and Energy. In
each case, another person was picked,
chair the powerful Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. His first gig as
chairman? You can watch it live here.
Now Mr. Kerry's first hearing as
chairman on Tuesday will be to consider
the nomination of Mrs. Clinton, the woman
he did not endorse for president, to the
premier cabinet position in the
administration of the man he did back. It
cannot be the outcome he had in mind.
Ouch.
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4 Politics Tech* U.S. Sport*
Meghan McCain Won't Comment on
Sarah Palin
By David Knowles (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:58:00 AM
Filed under: Republicans, John McCain,
Featured Stories, Sarah Palin Monday
Morning Clacker has an interview with
would-have-been first daughter Meghan
McCain, the young woman who, like the
Romney 5 before her, merged personal
revelations with campaign messaging in a
way not previously seen in America. While
the interview shows Ms. McCain to be a
likable, somewhat idiosyncratic person
(most notably for her love of Wonderbra
creator and Marylin Manson ex, Dita von
Tesse), the real news generated from this
interview resulted in the one subject on
which she refused to offer up an honest
opinion: Sarah Palin. Here's the exchange:
So, no comment on the selection of
Governor Sarah Palin as Senator McCain's
running mate?
"Sarah Palin is the only part of the
campaign that I won't comment on
publicly."
Indaba: A Music Collaboration Hub That Can Build
Your Band For You
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 6:30:43 AM
Music collaboration service Indaba has
just introduced a number of new features
to its site, including a new Facebook-like
chat system, enhanced commenting, and a
recommendation engine that helps
compatible artists find each other,
effectively enabling it to automatically
pick out potential bandmates. The site has
passed under our radar since launching in
2007, but has grown to over 125,000
thousand musicians.
Indaba is a music community for
musicians looking to remotely collaborate
with each other, and to share the music
they’ve composed. However, while the site
does make it easy to listen to what other
members have created (songs can be
played using an intuitive player than sits at
Hmm. Rather odd that the single most
talked about aspect of her father's
campaign should be off limits, but there
you go. What other highlights does
Meghan's chat offer?
On the subject of high heels: "The only
the bottom of the screen), Indaba isn’t
geared towards promoting your band and
gaining fans (at least not yet).
To actually create music, users typically
record their tracks using programs like
GarageBand, and then upload their tracks
to an online session. In these sessions,
multiple users can use an integrated chat
box to talk about tracks, and can also use a
Flash-based mixer to rearrange pieces from
each musician. At this point the exporting
functionality of the service could use some
work (you can only export as regular audio
tracks, not as GarageBand or ProTools,
though this is because of proprietary file
format issues).
The site also allows users to set up
payment agreements, which means you can
essentially work as a studio musician from
the comfort of your own home. Users can
also use the site to specify the rights
time you won't find me in heels is when
I'm swimming!" Given that the picture that
runs with the article shows her barefoot,
we can safely assume she was heading into
the pool.
On the media: Pretty clear they loved
Obama and hated her dad.
On blogging: Old people just don't get it.
And when you start talking about yourself
all the time, people tend to criticize you
(ain't that the truth).
On Outlaw Bikers: "I've been learning
how to ride a motorcycle. I was inspired by
Bikers For McCain and want to go back to
Sturgis next year and do bike week right."
Woohoo! To catch up on the latest from
Meghan--see family vacation photos in
Fiji, listen to playlists of her favorite songs
(everything from Led Zeppelin to Mos
Def) and much, much more--have a gander
at her site, McCainBloggette.com. Who
knows, maybe someday, she'll get around
to telling us what she really thinks about
Palin.
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associated with each song.
Among the new features being launched
today are in-song comments, while allow
users to leave a comment with a visual
indicator specifying where in the track they
are referring to (for example, I could leave
a note saying that I liked a certain guitar
solo or drum beat). Musicians can also
leave notes for their audiences that will
appear when the track has reached the
relevant point (I could leave a note saying,
“I’m still working on this part”).
Another new feature is an enhanced site-
wide chat that is similar to Facebook Chat.
Using the new system, users can monitor
when their friends are online, and can talk
Lesson From Jailed South
Korean Blogger: Don't Be Too
Good With Your Predictions
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 4:48:33 AM
There's been a fascinating story coming
out of Korea over the past few months,
concerning the (formerly) anonymous
online commentator who went by the name
Minerva. He accurately forecasted some of
the early days of the financial collapse last
fall, and suddenly the press talked him up
and everyone wanted to know who he was.
Then he claimed that the Korean
government had told companies to stop
buying US dollars -- forcing the
government to put out a statement denying
this was true. Then, following a few weeks
of searching, he was arrested for spreading
false information and (a week later) his
identity was revealed (along with a
background that shows he wasn't
particularly well connected or
knowledgeable -- he likely made some
lucky guesses).
regardless of where they’re browsing on
Indaba.
Finally, the site is using technology from
EchoNest(an audio company out of MIT
Media Labs) to generate musician
recommendations. Unlike most music
recommendation engines, which pair users
up with songs they might like, the
EchoNest system is meant to pair
musicians who might work well together.
The system takes both the songs you’ve
previously recorded on Indaba as well as
interests you’ve specified in your user
profile into account.
Indaba competitors include Minimum
Noise(covered here), WeMix, and
Indomite.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free
database of technology companies, people,
and investors
Daily Digital Newspaper
But, it does raise questions about the fine
line between making predictions and
spreading false information. Because he
had been so accurate with his earlier
predictions, many started to assume that he
was well-connected, and any future
predictions he made would also be equally
accurate. It seems that, once again, the old
saw that "past results is no guarantee of
future performance" was ignored. Now,
there may be a difference in terms of how
the information was presented -- in terms
of whether he specifically claimed to know
for certain that the Korean government had
done what he said, as opposed to just
predicting that it was about to happen --
but it seems like the line between a
prediction and "spreading false
information" gets pretty thin once
everyone thinks you know what's going on
better than anyone else.
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70,000% Increase In Stress-
Testing For Upcoming
Microsoft Exchange
Release
By Jeff Widman (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 2:29:25 AM
A little over three years ago, Ray Ozzie
wrote his famous memo re-focusing
Microsoft from software to services. We
started seeing results of that memo last
October, when Microsoft announced
Windows Azure. The SaaS emphasis is
also hitting mainstream products like
Microsoft Exchange. This morning Steve
Gillmor and I talked with Rajesh Jha, the
VP of Development overseeing Microsoft
Exchange, about the upcoming release of
Exchange 14.
Cut From a Different Cloth
By ChrisJBurke08 (AOL News)
x
Daily Digital Newspaper
Mobile Payments Getting Traction On Even Restaurant Critics Are
Social Networks, But Fees Are Sky High Recognizing How
By Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 2:46:17 AM Trademark Is Being Abused
Users are increasingly choosing dead
simple SMS mobile payments for micro-
transactions on social network applications
and gaming sites (it fills the void while
they wait for more direct options), but
super-high transaction fees are limiting
growth.
The problem is that legacy transactions -
specifically scams that give users a “free”
ring tone with the fine print mentioning a
monthly charge as high as $20 - have
brought in so much cash to the carriers that
they’ve gotten used to taking 50% or more
of the total payment in fees. For the market
to grow to encompass legitimate
transactions, those fees have to drop
dramatically. For that to happen, the social
networks need to get involved directly in
carrier negotiations.
Two companies, both headquartered in
Europe, are already targeting mobile
payments for apps - Mobillcash(UK) and
Zong(Switzerland).
When you buy a virtual shotgun on
Mobwars, for example (and they are
selling a lot of them, up to$1 million per
month) you have to pay real cash. You can
choose to pay via a number of services
(Facebook doesn’t offer a direct payment
solution yet), including either Mobillcash
or Zong.
If you choose Zong, you enter your
phone number on the site, get a text
message with a four digit code, enter the
code on the site and you’re done. It’s by
far the easiest way to charge a transaction
online outside of Amazon one-click.
'The Video Game Made Me Kill My Parents' Defense Rejected
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:15:00 AM
All too often these days, we've seen
murderers try to pass off the blame for
their crimes by blaming video games. This
comes after years of techno panic around
weak and often misinterpreted studies
concerning links between video games and
violence. Despite the fact that there's been
Zong’s fees aren’t transparent, but
Mobillcash’s are. Mobillcash has a
clunkier interface (you have to choose your
carrier and go through extra steps), but
they show what their fees are because to
get, say, $1 into the Facebook app you
have to pay $1.50 on most carriers. That
implies a 33% transaction cost, almost all
of which goes to the carrier. Many of
Mobillcash’s payments are way beyond
33%. Zong says they pay an average of a
40% transaction fee to U.S. carriers.
Those transaction fees are severely
limiting the size of the market. Lots of
merchants and application developers
would love to take mobile payments, but
paying 40% or more of the transaction to
the carriers is a non-starter.
Zong argues that the fees are actually
much lower than they seem because
conversion rates (when chance that money
will change hands once a payment button
no actual evidence that video games lead
to increased violence (and the fact that
youth violence has continually dropped as
video games became more popular should
be quite telling), it makes for a great news
story -- and, thus, a great excuse for
murderers. Luckily, no one's buying it.
In the latest such case, where teen-aged
Daniel Petric shot both his parents, killing
his mother and wounding his father, after
is pressed) are more than 50%. If that
seems low, compare it to PayPal
conversion rates that are reported to be a
fraction of that.
Regardless, though, any merchant selling
an item with actual marginal cost (virtual
items are by definition free to produce, so
higher payment fees can be tolerated)
aren’t going to allow mobile payments via
SMS. If the carriers were to lower those
fees (or if they were forced to by market
forces or the government), a very rich
ecosystem could blossom, and the carriers
would get the majority of the value
created.
What Happens If Carriers Ignore the
Opportunity
Chances are the carriers won’t lower
their exorbitant payment fees anytime
soon. What I’m guessing will happen is
that services like Zong and MobillCash, as
they add valuable users who like to pay via
SMS, will simply offer to move those users
to credit card payments. Users still pay by
just entering in their phone number and
then typing in a 4 digit code they receive
via SMS, but the charge would go to their
credit card instead of their phone. The
difference in fees is so large that customers
can be offered a very large incentive to
simply store their credit card and use that
instead of having the charge go to their
phone bill. And checking out is still much,
much simpler than typing in your name,
address and credit card details.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because
it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
they took away his copy of Halo 3, a judge
has rejected Petric's claim that it was his
video game addiction that inspired the
murder(and subsequent attempt to frame
his father). It probably didn't help the
teen's case at all that there was evidence he
had planned the murder for weeks, rather
than spontaneously acting following the
video game confiscation. The judge still
does, unfortunately, suggest that the video
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 10:22:00 PM
Reader Glenn points us to a blog post by
NY Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni,
where he points out just how ridiculous it
is that a restaurant in NY is being forced to
change its name over a trademark dispute.
The restaurant was originally called Forge,
shortened from owner Marc Forgione's last
name. However, a restaurant in Miami
called The Forge sued Forge claiming a
trademark violation, saying: "You can't
open a restaurant on somebody's coattails.
It's just not legal."
Well, first of all, it's actually perfectly
legal to open a restaurant on somebody's
coattails. See all those different pizza
places or fast food joints? They all started
somewhere, and others copied the idea --
and we all think that's a good thing,
because it's called competition. But, more
importantly, there's no indication
whatsoever that Forge was even remotely
riding on The Forge's coattails, or that any
diner in New York would somehow be
confused that Forge was somehow
connected to the (very different style)
Alaska sex offender wins lottery sponsored by abuse victims
advocacy group
By McClatchy newspapers (World
news | guardian.co.uk)
game warped Petric's mind, despite little
proof that was true. However, the judge
notes that even if he was under the
influence of the video game, that's no
defense for what he did.
In the meantime, of course, politicians
are still overreacting to the still unproven
idea that video games lead to violence -- to
the point that Rep. Joe Baca has introduced
a law that would require health warnings
Tech* World* 5
Miami restaurant. As Bruni writes: How
likely is it, really, that a patron of the
Miami Beach restaurant The Forge is
going to be looking for an offshoot of it in
New York, when the Miami Beach
restaurant hasn't advertised or promoted
such an offshoot?
How likely is it that, among the gazillion
restaurants in New York, this patron will
find his or her way to Mr. Forgione's Forge
and, after looking at its rustic, brick-walled
setting, mistake it as a sibling to a place in
Miami Beach whose waiters apparently
wear bow ties?
How many diners are really going to be
lining Mr. Forgione's pockets with money
that rightfully belongs near the Everglades,
or making assumptions about The Forge in
Miami Beach based on meals at Forge in
TriBeCa? Especially in an Internet era
when diners are better informed than ever?
When trademark disputes are even getting
angry rants from food critics, you have to
think something is seriously wrong with
the way trademark law is working these
days.
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Alec Ahsoak, 53, has mentioned giving
some of the winnings to the charity
on video games, similar to cigarette
warnings, saying that: "WARNING:
Excessive exposure to violent video games
and other violent media has been linked to
aggressive behavior." So, it certainly looks
like politicians and the media will continue
overreacting when it comes to video games
and violence.
Permalink| Comments| Email This Story
6 Tech* International* U.S. Sport*
New York Court Dismisses Amazon’s
Objections To Paying State Taxes
By Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:23:02 AM
Remember the Amazon Tax? Back in
April, the New York State legislature
passed a bill requiring Amazon to collect
taxes from New York State residents even
though it doesn’t have a physical presence
in the state (the normal requirement for
retailers). The state got around the physical
presence requirement by counting affiliates
as part of Amazon. Amazon (and
Overstock) filed lawsuits seeking summary
judgment against the State of the New
York. Yesterday, a New York State judge
dismissed those lawsuits, potentially
throwing the case into the Court of
Appeals.
The question, though, is not whether
Amazon should collect New York State
taxes. It would be trivial for Amazon to do
so during the checkout process for
residents of New York. The real issue is
the way the law gets Amazon to do so by
dragging its affiliates into it. As I wrote
before, this sets a bad precedent:
The law, as written, is just a bad law.
And it would set a dangerous precedent.
Not because New York State shouldn’t try
to collect the $50 million in estimated
uncollected sales taxes owed to it. But
because the law is tortuous in the way it
attempts to do that.
Review Community Site RateItAll Gets A Revamp, Releases API
By Robin Wauters (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:56:27 AM
RateItAll, the consumer rating and review
network that dubs itself the “distributed
Yelp for everything”, is getting a make-
over and a bunch of new social features
today, including review feeds and product
compatibility quizzes.
RateItAll, initially launched way back in
1999, shut down in 2001 after the dotcom
bust, and subsequently relaunched in 2007.
Steve Bell: Demands grow for Gaza war crimes investigation
By Steve Bell (News: Main section |
guardian.co.uk)
A marketing affiliate is not part of
Amazon. If I put some Amazon book
recommendations on the side of
TechCrunch , set up an affiliate account,
and readers click through and buy those
books, that does not make TechCrunch
part of Amazon. It is a marketing
arrangement. Just like someone who sets
up an AdSense account does not work for
Google.
You can expect more states to try similar
ways to tax online retailers as their overall
budgets shrink. And you can also expect
It allows users to rate topics that range
anywhere from music to travel to food.
The site currently boasts 350,000+
members, and both Quantcast and
Compete show a nice growth pattern in
traffic (the company self-reports 1.3
million visits last month, growth of 44%
since June 2008 and a total number of 11.3
million unique visitors overall last year).
The new look and fresh features have
been in the works for the past 5 months,
and development started after the San
Israel is facing growing demands from
senior UN officials and human rights
groups for an international war crimes
affiliate marketing programs that have
served to grease the wheels of e-commerce
become more restrictive. For instance, one
solution for Amazon would simply be to
cut off affiliate partners just before they hit
$10,000 in sales, the minimum threshold
stipulated in the New York law. But you
see where this will lead—to less overall e-
commerce sales and a drop in the massive
New York State budget.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over
the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Francisco-based company raised an initial
round of funding of up to $1.4 million in
September last year. You can now create a
review stream which is very similar to
investigation in Gaza
Ocean Tomo Patents Being Used
To Shake Down Companies That
Have Online Recommendations
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 2:48:12 AM
Ocean Tomo is a company that's been
around for a few years, trying to establish
itself as the auction house for patents. I've
already made clear how troubling I believe
its business model to be, but the company
always tries to put a friendly face on it,
claiming that it's not about aiding so-called
"patent trolls" but actually reducing the
problem of patent trolling. However, that
(of course) isn't what's actually happening.
A patent on personal recommendation
systems("if you bought x, you'll like y")
was bought via Ocean Tomo by what
seems likely to be a bunch of lawyers
under the company name Quito (though,
it's not entirely clear who's involved) and is
now being used in a lawsuit against
thirteen big internet companies that
employ any type of rating system. The
companies being sued are: Netflix,
Amazon, Yahoo, RealNetworks, last.fm,
Pandora Media, Slacker Inc., Veoh, Hulu,
NBC Universal, CBS, News Corp., and
Strands.
Facebook’s news feed but for reviews by
category / keyword or by personal
network. The service also added a social
compatibility layer dubbed ‘Quizzes’
which lets you compare your ratings and
review with those from your friends or
other members of the RateItAll
community.
The most welcome additions to the
service are the read/write API(the
company also features RSS feeds and
widgets for social networks and blogs) and
Collins to Titans: I Start or I Leave
By starkey00 (AOL News)
Daily Digital Newspaper
As you look through that list, you'll
recognize that some have done
significantly innovative work in taking the
concept of an online recommendation
system and actually making it useful. The
simple idea of doing recommendations is
pretty straightforward. Making it work
well? Not so much. Hell, that's why Netflix
is offering $1 million to anyone who can
improve their recommendation engine by
just 10%. The basic ideas expressed in the
patent are not where the value in these
recommendation systems lies. It's in the
actual effort of figuring out how to make
them work better. This patent has nothing
to do with the actual success of a
recommendation system, but the holders of
it may now get a pay day just for holding
the patent, thanks to Ocean Tomo's
auctions. And, of course, this means that
all of those companies that were actually
innovating will, at the very least, now need
to spend legal dollars defending against
this massive innovation blocker.
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the ‘global add’ feature that lets users put
up any product, business, brand, person
and/or place to the RateItAll database for
discussion by its user base.
RateItAll pays reviewers 50% as part of
a revenue-sharing program based on
Google AdSense.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile
Gadgets and Applications, Delivered
Daily.
x
Daily Digital Newspaper
Group Wants A National
Ban On Yakking While
Driving
By Carlo Longino (Techdirt)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:31:00 AM
As the nation gears up for the
inauguration of a new President and
Congress and state and local governments
laying out their legislative priorities for the
coming year, one group says that in
addition to pressing issues like the
economy, legislators should take up a
nationwide ban on cell phone use while
driving. They've trotted out the usual
rhetoric, equating yakking while driving to
drunk driving in an attempt to evoke an
emotional response, but ignoring some
salient facts. First, while it's hard to argue
that driving while talking is completely
safe, it may not be as big a risk as some of
these groups would lead us to believe.
No More Free Jott For You
By Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:55:56 AM
In August voice-to-text service Jott
moved out of beta and added a premium
feature for $4/month. Since then, the
company says, about 30% of Jott’s active
users have opted for the premium, no-ads
version of the service.
People use it to send voice-to-text emails
and sms messages, send Twitter messages,
add calendar items, etc. Voice messages
are transcribed into text via software with
humans to clean things up.
The free version of Jott is going to end
on February 2, CEO John Pollard told me
today. The terrible advertising market, he
says, means every customer has to pay
their own way from now on. Customers
will need to pay $4/month to continue the
service, the current price for a premium
account. This includes users of the Jott
iPhone application.
Baby News for 'Ugly Betty' Actor
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 1:48:00 PM
Second, the laws are very hard to enforce
and don't automatically decrease the
number of accidents. Instead of adding
another law narrowly focused on one
particular behavior, why not more
stringently enforce existing traffic laws
dealing with dangerous driving? Laws
already exist covering all manner of unsafe
driving; perhaps a good way to make the
roads safer would be to increase
enforcement of them and work to clamp
down on all types of unsafe driving, rather
than single out particular ones.
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight
Community. To get insight and analysis
from Carlo Longino and other experts on
challenges your company faces, click here.
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New Voicemail To Text Service
Jott is also preparing to roll out a new
service, voicemail-to-text. Like
competitors Spinvox, PhoneTag, GotVoice
and others, voicemails will be converted
into text messages and sent to you within a
couple of minutes. The application is
priced at the same level as competitors,
$10/month for up to 40 messages. The
product launches today.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free
database of technology companies, people,
and investors
Reports are surfacing that actor
Christopher Gorham of "Ugly Betty" and
his wife Anel welcomed their third child!
Boombox Brings Blip.fm’s
Streaming Music Catalog To
The iPhone
By Robin Wauters (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:05:33 AM
While we await an official iPhone app for
the awesomeness that is Blip.fm(they’re
working on it), iPhone development house
Gorloch Interactive has created a music
discovery application called Boombox that
utilizes the Blip.fm API that lets you
stream its vast catalog of music tracks
from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
The company says it’s working closely
with Cupertino see if they’ll approve the
release of a network-accessible version,
which would enable users to purchase
music on iTunes while connected to a
network.
Boombox sports a design reminiscent of
the classic 80s boomboxes(check out those
Gorham's new little girl, Alondra Cecilia
Lopez, was born Saturday morning, People
magazine reports.
Tech* Movies* International*
equalizers) and lets you search and play
millions of songs coming from the Blip.fm
catalog, and also enables you to create a
playlist from your device. There’s a direct
link to the iTune store for purchasing
tracks, but the only catch is that the app
only functions over WiFi (Apple would not
allow it to work over 2G/3G).
The app is completely free and can be
downloaded from this iTunes download
link. This is Gorloch’s second iPhone
application after Campaign, which we
reviewed here.
CrunchBase Information Blip.fm iPhone
App Store Information provided by
CrunchBase
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over
the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
"She's perfect," the actor says. This is the
first girl for the couple which have two
sons, Lucas and Ethan.
7
You Can't Jam The
Terrorist's Phones Without
Jamming Everybody Else's
By Carlo Longino (Techdirt)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 8:20:00 PM
Police officials in New York City are
investigating how to jam terrorists' cell
phones during attacks, following the
Mumbai attacks a few months ago when
terrorists coordinated their activities via
phone. While disrupting criminals' and
terrorists' communications could be a
useful tool in security forces' arsenal, it's
also worth mentioning that technologies
like phone jammers can't really work
selectively; that is, they can't pick out
particular devices, they simply jam
everything in a particular area. While this
would crudely accomplish the goal of
jamming terrorists' phone calls, it would
also preclude any other calls, including
those of civilians and authorities.
Fortunately, this concept isn't lost on NYC
police, who say that not blocking calls, and
being able to monitor them instead, could
be more useful. But even then, it's not clear
how authorities could pinpoint terrorists'
phones to monitor their conversations
without trolling through all the calls being
made in an area. At this point, blocking all
cell calls during a terrorist attack or large-
scale emergency seems like overkill that
could be more harmful than helpful.
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight
Community. To get insight and analysis
from Carlo Longino and other experts on
challenges your company faces, click here.
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Sudoku 1,146 medium
(From the Guardian: G2 |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:41:19 AM
Fill the grid so that every row, every
column and every 3x3 box contains the
numbers 1 to 9
8 Tech* Gadgets* Biz Buzz* Web Apps* Special*
WSJ: Carol Bartz To Be Named
New Yahoo CEO. Is That A Good
Thing?
By Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:19:26 AM
Following up on an earlier report
speculating that former Autodesk CEO
Carol Bartz has been selected to become
Yahoo’s new CEO, the Wall Street Journal
is now saying that she has accepted the
offer. We have emails out to Yahoo asking
for confirmation. The 60-year-old Bartz
would bring a steady, seasoned hand to
Yahoo’s leadership, but it is not clear in
what direction she would take the
company.
Bartz is a capable manager. Autodesk,
however, is an old-school software
company. It is not exactly a great training
ground for running an online advertising
business attached to the most popular
destinations on the Web. And as far as
applications go, Yahoo gives its apps away
for free. They are all Web apps, of course.
Minor outage at Facebook Monday
By Rafe Needleman
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 2:50:00 PM
Users were reporting performance and
availability issues with Facebook Monday.
Some complained on Twitter of slowness
and pages that didn't load. Others said that
third-party desktop apps that connect to
Facebook (such as Digsby) lost their
access to the service.
Gateway's LT1004U netbook lands domestically, at Office Depot of all places
By Tim Stevens (Engadget)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:48:00 AM
We can't get up for a nice cuppa these
days without tripping over some new
netbook, but still every now and again one
offers styling that catches our eye. Such
was the case with Packard Bell's " dot," an
Aspire One rebadge with a striking red
Bartz is most definitely an ally of
founder and outgoing CEO Jerry Yang.
They both sit on Cisco’s board.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free
database of technology companies, people,
and investors
The outage did not appear to be
widespread. A spokesperson for Facebook
said in an e-mail to CNET:
As a result of a network device failure, a
very small percentage of users lost access
to Facebook for a short period of time
earlier today. The site has now been
restored and we apologize for any
inconvenience this may have caused.
metallic hinge but otherwise familiar
internals. It later appeared as a Gateway in
Singapore, and reader APowe emailed to
say he'd seen one prowling the aisles at a
local Office Depot. We were incredulous,
but he drove back to get proof and was
kind enough to pass the resulting pics
along. Gateway is calling this the
LT1004U domestically; it has the standard
Sony's NWZ-1000 Walkman
PMP handled on video
By Joshua Topolsky (Engadget)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:24:00 AM
It looks like if you want to get a hands-on
with Sony's latest Walkman, the
touchscreen NWZ-X1000, you've got to do
two things: travel to Japan, and seriously
glad-hand the product. Despite our efforts
in Vegas, the Sony crew wouldn't let us
snag the player from under its glass
housing, but the Stuff team gets to toy with
the OLED-faced PMP in this video. From
the looks of things, Sony is at pains to
recreate something akin to Cover Flow, but
the rest of the UI looks sadly like a whole
bunch of Windows CE-based devices we
see coming out of Asia on a daily basis. Of
course, this might be an early iteration of
the interface, so we'll hold our final
netbook specs you've come to love (9-inch
judgments till we get a thorough hands-on
with the PMP. The player is set to come in
16GB and 32GB iterations, and will launch
sometime this Summer. For now, enjoy the
video after the break.
Update: Sony's people tell us that you're
looking at $299 for the 16GB and $399 for
32 -- right in line with the iPod touch.
[Via anythingbutipod]
Continue reading Sony's NWZ-1000
Walkman PMP handled on video
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable
Video
Sony's NWZ-1000 Walkman PMP
handled on video originally appeared on
Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:24:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
screen, Atom 270, 160GB drive, 1GB
RAM, Win XP) and is selling for a quite
competitive $379. This particular one was
spotted in Redmond, WA, but maybe
you'll be lucky enough to find one near
you.
[Thanks, APowe]
Continue reading Gateway's LT1004U
netbook lands domestically, at Office
Daily Digital Newspaper
Obama's pick to lead
SEC is sued for
misleading statements
By Zac Bissonnette
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 4:45:00 AM
Filed under: Law, Scandals President-
elect Barack Obama's choice to head the
SEC is already generating controversy.
Mary L. Schapiro is being sued for making
misleading statements to hasten the
consummation of a merger of regulatory
organizations: She took home a 57% raise
as part of the merger. The merger between
the regulatory arms of the NYSE and the
NASD led to the creation of FINRA,
where Ms. Schapiro served as CEO.
You can read more about the lawsuit in
The New York TImes, and it seems
possible that "No Drama Obama" will set
her aside and look for someone who lacks
any whiff of scandal.
But the truth is that even before this
latest lawsuit, there were tons of reasons
that Schapiro was an appalingly bad pick.
Gary Weiss called her pick "an appalling
endorsement of the status quo. That does
not bode well for future SEC
appointments."
Her confirmation hearings are scheduled
for this week. She seems likely to sail in
with little trouble, but that might not be
good news for investors.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Linking
Blogs| Comments
Elmer Fudd goes on a Westful
We Tweet
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 1/11/2009 9:04:37 PM
Depot of all places
Filed under: Laptops
Gateway's LT1004U netbook lands
domestically, at Office Depot of all places
originally appeared on Engadget on Tue,
13 Jan 2009 09:48:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email
this| Comments
Daily Digital Newspaper
Microsoft builds pretend retail
store, wants to play house later
By Paul Miller (Engadget)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:19:00 PM
Microsoft's new Retail Experience Center
is a new showcase of Microsoft's products
and solutions for retailers -- including back
-end stuff and point of sale. It's all pretty
boring and corporate, but it could also be
construed as a look at what a Microsoft
take on an "Apple Store-style" experience
might be. Result? It kinda looks like
Circuit City plus a few Surface displays,
Microsoft Tags and magical screen-
equipped shopping carts (pictured above).
Oh, and before you gather up your Zune
pals for a road trip: the Experience Center
is real, but the customers are fake -- the
William Peterson to Leave 'CSI' on Top
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 3:50:00 PM
William Peterson shares his feelings
about leaving the hugely popular "CSI:
store isn't open to the public. Video is after
the break.
[Via istartedsomething]
Gallery: Microsoft builds pretend retail
store
Continue reading Microsoft builds
pretend retail store, wants to play house
later
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Microsoft builds pretend retail store,
wants to play house later originally
appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009
12:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
Crime Scene Investigation" after nine
years.
Peterson talks about what he thinks are
the key ingredients for the worldwide
success of the "CSI" franchise. He said
Next-gen Prius now official,
uses solar panels to keep car
cool
By Ross Miller (Engadget)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 11:23:00 AM
The very shoe-like 2010 Toyota Prius has
made its official debut at this week's
Detroit Auto Show. The company
estimates it'll have a 50 MPG rating -- up
from 46 MPG in the previous model -- and
there's a bigger, 1.8-liter four-cylinder
engine for improved highway mileage. In
addition to Power and Eco driving modes,
EV Drive will let you run on battery alone
for about a mile, which if nothing else
should provide a little extra push for
getting to the gas station when you've held
off for too long. One of the coolest
(literally) new features is the optional solar
these include "fabulous puzzles," "great
chemistry," "courageous writing" and solid
acting performed in a style slightly
different from what people are used to on
television.
panels in the moonroof that will generate
power for circulating air and keeping the
interior temperature from going too high.
If that's not enough, there's a remote-
controlled A/C system that can run on
battery alone and lets you set the
temperature before you get in. Check out
the read link for more specs and the full
press release.
Filed under: Transportation
Next-gen Prius now official, uses solar
panels to keep car cool originally appeared
on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:23:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The actor says it's difficult to perform his
last scenes knowing that it will be the last
time he'll be appearing on a certain set or
together with a particular actor. He says
one advantage to this situation is that he is
Gadgets* Movies* 9
Video: Chris the Carpenter
shows off Walter the
Robot's servo-powered
head
By Tim Stevens (Engadget)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:06:00 AM
We love us a good robot, the more clearly
home-built the better, and it's hard to get
more DIY than a bot-to-be called Walter
from Chris the Carpenter at Let's Make
Robots. Right now Walter exists in halves:
a torso comprised of a custom chassis
powered by some DeWalt drill motors, and
a head with a small LCD display turned on
three axis by a collection of servos. As of
now everything is controlled by a remote,
but the ultimate plan is for Walter to be
able to locate a person, face them, and
display a list of functions. We're not sure
what Walter's purpose in life is to be in the
future, but based on the second video
below we're reasonably sure it won't be
serving as a shuttle for reluctant wives.
[Via Hacked Gadgets]
Continue reading Video: Chris the
Carpenter shows off Walter the Robot's
servo-powered head
Filed under: Robots
Video: Chris the Carpenter shows off
Walter the Robot's servo-powered head
originally appeared on Engadget on Tue,
13 Jan 2009 10:06:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink|
Email this| Comments
experiencing the same feelings as his
character, Gil Grissom, who is also making
a major life change.
10 Gadgets* Tech Tips* International*
Sony said to be sitting on $1.1
billion annual loss, first in 14
years
By Paul Miller (Engadget)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:47:00 AM
Belt tightening at Sony already underway
during Sir Howard Stringer's keynote.
There are plenty of directions to point
fingers: trying to be a premium brand in a
weak world economy, a strong Yen (harder
to export) or difficulties in making the
PlayStation 3 profitable, but whatever the
cause, it looks like Sony lost $1.1 billion
last year, the company's first practical loss
in 14 years. Of course, the report isn't
official just yet, earnings aren't due until
the 29th, and Sony has put out a statement
to that effect, with no further comment --
Recreate David Cameron's kitchen in your own home
(From the Guardian: G2 |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 3:35:51 AM
DRM-Free iTunes Tracks Still Have User IDs Embedded [ITunes]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 7:30:00 AM
but let's just say this is a pretty widely
bandied number at this point. This seems
to line up with rumors of additional cost
cutting, with 16,000 jobs already cut at
Sony thanks to the hard times. But don't
worry, the VAIO P with Windows 7 will
save us all.
[Via Electronista]
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Sony said to be sitting on $1.1 billion
annual loss, first in 14 years originally
appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009
10:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
How to get that minimilist, retro look the
Tory leader favours for his kitchen sink
dramas
Just because Apple and Big Music
dropped the DRM doesn't mean they want
you trading your iTunes purchases. CNET
Star Wars Force Trainer teaches
children to kill... with their minds
By Joseph L. Flatley (Engadget)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:26:00 AM
Toy maker Uncle Milton has introduced
Force Trainer, a game that utilizes
NeuroSky's brainwave-controlled gaming
technology. In a manner similar to the
Mind Flex we got our heads on at CES, the
young Jedi dons a wireless headset that
communicates with a simplified EEG. If
you focus well enough, the "training
sphere" rises in a 10-inch tube. Seems
pretty harmless, no? At least until your
humble child starts lifting rocks and
notes that buyers' registered email
choking people by simply furrowing their
brow and gesturing menacingly. If you
find this an acceptable risk (or you feel the
need to work on your own mental prowess)
the thing should be available this fall for
just under $100.
Filed under: Gaming
Star Wars Force Trainer teaches children
to kill... with their minds originally
appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009
10:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this|
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addresses are embedded in every file, and
so (somewhat) trace-able. [ via]
Daily Digital Newspaper
Mouse Computer's new
netbook sports DVD-
Rom, little else of note
By Joseph L. Flatley (Engadget)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 11:48:00 AM
We saw Mouse Computer switch gears
with their gaming notebook the other day,
and the company is back already with the
LB-F1500W. Their first netbook with an
optical DVD drive, this little terror
"boasts" a 10.2-inch display, 1.6GHz Atom
processor, 1GB memory, 160GB hard disk
storage, and Windows XP Home. These
are pretty run-of-the-mill specs, and for
¥64,800 (roughly $725) not really all that
awesome. Available in two colors -- gothic
-industrial black and a white as pure as the
new fallen snow -- the thing should hit the
streets on or around the last week of
January.
[Via Portable Monkey]
Filed under: Laptops
Mouse Computer's new netbook sports
DVD-Rom, little else of note originally
appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009
11:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
Daily Digital Newspaper
Holiday Hangover
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 1/9/2009 8:00:00 AM
W hen even Wal-Mart Stores Inc. falls
short of expectations, the depth of the
consumer slowdown can no longer be
denied.
Such was the case in December, a month
in which same-store sales came in for
retailers just as advertised, a dispiriting
coda for the toughest holiday season in
more than a generation. While every sector
tracked by WWD declined, department
stores were hit particularly hard, and high-
end stores such as Neiman Marcus and
Saks hardest of all.
And although revenue results and month-
end inventory levels were in some cases a
bit better than anticipated, these sources of
solace came at the expense of margins,
auguring ominously for fourth-quarter and
year-end earnings that will be reported
beginning next month.
The one surprise was that Wall Street
took the retail beatings relatively in stride,
with the Standard & Poor’s Retail Index
rising for the day even as the Dow Jones
Industrial Average fell.
Wal-Mart, until now one of the few
beneficiaries of consumers’ recent aversion
to shopping and acquisition in general, not
only fell short of comparable-store sales
expectations, posting a 1.7 percent advance
in its U.S. stores, excluding fuel, versus
analysts’ estimates of a 2.8 percent pickup.
But also, concern about the performance of
its Sam’s Club stores and international
operations, coupled with the recent
settlement of 63 class action wage and
hour lawsuits, led it to reduce its fourth-
quarter earnings guidance for continuing
operations to a range of 91 cents to 94
cents a share, down from its earlier
projection of $1.03 to $1.07.
Apparel and jewelry were cited as
particular soft spots for the world’s largest
retailer.
Lowered earnings guidance went hand-in
-hand with cuts in store counts and jobs for
many stores. Macy’s Inc., which recorded
a 4 percent dip in comps, said it would
close 11 underperforming department
stores. Discounter Stein Mart Inc., with
December comps down 8.5 percent, said it
would eliminate over 200 jobs and reduce
salaries of remaining managers by 5
percent. New York & Company Inc.,
which doesn’t report monthly comps, said
it would eliminate between 40 and 50 of its
600 stores.
Terry Lundgren, chairman, president and
chief executive officer of Macy’s, said,
“With our business coming in at minus
four, we would never feel good about
negative results, but it looks like we are
taking market share from our competitors.
It’s obviously a very challenging time. We
expect it to be challenging going forward.
But we have done a terrific job of getting
inventories in line with lower than
expected sales,” 7.5 percent lower than last
year at this time. The company is also
forecasting over $1 billion in cash on its
balance sheet at the end of the year, versus
$583 million at the end of fiscal 2008.
“We’ve had too much supply, too much
inventory, too many stores,” Lundgren
continued. “We are very focused on
getting supply and demand back in line
again.…We will get our inventories down
very tight and in fact it will be the opposite
of what we had in the last six months.
We’ve all been scrambling to reduce
orders. We will get to the point where we
will be scrambling to increase orders.
Inventories will be lean and that’s a good
way to make money, a good way to raise
margins, and a good way to improve sell-
throughs.”
Regarding markdowns, Lundgren said
prices will continue to be sharp.
“Consumers will benefit, but I think
retailers like ourselves will do a better job
of planning for it now as opposed to just
reacting,” he said.
Last year, he noted, customer demand
fell off faster than anybody anticipated,
leaving stores stuck with overinventories.
“That’s going to change in the first half in
2009. Inventories are much more in line,
so there’s less of a need to mark the
inventory down, just to get them down.”
Markdowns will become “more strategic,
rather than rampant to reduce inventories.
There will be less of a panic and more of
an orderly process.”
Lundgren described the 11 store closures
as part of a “regular pruning process.” He
noted that last year eight units were closed.
About half of the closings are in older
malls and not far from newer malls where
there are also Macy’s stores, which should
gain some business from the closings.
The 11 Macy’s stores to be closed range
in size from a 3,000-square-foot shop in
the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel in Hawaii to the
210,000-square-foot unit in the Bellevue
Center in Nashville. Two stores in
Colorado and Pennsylvania and single
units in California, Florida, Indiana,
Minnesota and Missouri are also affected.
A total of 960 jobs will be lost. Macy’s
expects costs for the closures to total $65
million, about $12 million of that sum in
cash, and the majority of these to be
accounted for during the current fourth
quarter.
But the closings added to the concern
about escalating job losses. In a statement
endorsing both a new stimulus plan from
Washington and Congressional approval of
the Employee Free Choice Act, Stuart
Appelbaum, president of the Retail,
Wholesale and Department Store Union,
commented, “In the wake of the worst
holiday shopping season since the Great
Depression, Macy’s Inc.’s decision to
close 11 stores — at a cost of almost 1,000
workers’ jobs — is only a harbinger of
what’s to come. But now it’s no secret that
what’s happening in the retail industry is
far different from the cyclical downturn
retailers have seen in the past. Against the
backdrop of the collapsing housing and
credit markets, even unprecedented
holiday discounts failed to revive what
were already sagging sales. In 2008,
roughly 148,000 stores closed their doors
before the holiday shopping season even
began. In November alone, 91,300 retail
jobs were lost.”
Across-the-board promotions that began
as early as October couldn’t save
Christmas for most retailers this year, as
consumers pinched pennies and curtailed
holiday shopping in the face of frightening
financial and job data.
“Even with all the discounting, retailers
didn’t see that pop because everyone was
doing it,” said Stephen Hoch, Wharton
School marketing professor and director of
the Baker Retailing Initiative, explaining
why even mass merchants like Wal-Mart
were seeing a comp slowdown. “The
discounting all canceled itself out.”
The mantra for today’s retailer is “gotta
cut, gotta cut, gotta make sure I don’t hit a
main artery,” said Hoch, who added that
the companies emerging from the current
economic slowdown will do so with their
brands intact, even if their scope is smaller.
This will entail closer management of
promotional activity, which was
“widespread” during the holiday, he said.
With discounts deeper and time to shop
for the holidays running out, December did
represent a slight improvement over
November’s dismal results, said Frank
Badillo, senior economist at TNS Retail
Forward. “It’s encouraging that most
retailers saw some improvement in their
numbers compared with November,” he
said. “These results provide signs that
retail weakness may be bottoming out.”
That provided little consolation for better
stores. Neiman Marcus Inc. had the worst
results of all the retailers tracked by
WWD, with comps down 27.5 percent
during the month. Saks Inc. and Nordstrom
Inc. declined 19.8 and 10.6, respectively.
“We are disappointed in our results and
making every attempt to improve sales,”
said Burt Tansky, C.E.O. of Neiman
Marcus. “It was the most difficult
Christmas season we have been through.”
However, “Our inventories are coming
down and moving closer to demand and
new spring deliveries have been arriving
for the past six weeks.”
At Saks, Stephen I. Sadove, chairman
and C.E.O., commented, “It’s a difficult
Business* 11
environment and the luxury consumer is
holding back on their spending.” He also
noted that comparisons are difficult, too,
considering that, a year ago, Saks posted
double-digit growth. “The consumer is
reflecting how they feel about net worth,
the stock market, purchasing and holding
back.”
On the positive side, he said Saks cleared
out a lot of excess inventory and that
people responded to more aggressive
promotions: “Spring product is on the
floor. We are well positioned. We have far
less clearance on the floor than a year
ago.”
While clearly not happy with the selling
environment, Sadove did point out, “We
feel very good where we are, relative to the
capacity we have on our revolver [credit
facility], the expense actions that we are
taking and our ability to weather the
storm.”
Saks has a $500 million revolving credit
facility that’s only been modestly tapped
and has a New York flagship that’s
unencumbered. There are no short-term
maturities of senior debt.
Still, it’s been a sobering end of the year
for anyone dependent on upscale
consumption.
“The consumer is trading down, away
from luxury,” said Matthew Katz,
managing director at Alix Partners
L.L.C.“The top tier had further to fall
because they had such high gains in
previous years.”
Carla Casella, managing director of high
yield research at J.P. Morgan, agreed,
pointing to Neiman’s “miss” as “driven by
slightly less promotional activity.” She
added the retailer is “less of a holiday
destination than its lower-end peers,” but
said its liquidity is “solid” and expects the
company to build on its cash during the
quarter.
On Wall Street on Thursday, luxe names
were hit the hardest among broadline
retailers, with Saks’ stock down 5.2
percent to $4.19 and Nordstrom Inc. off
2.4 percent to $14.53. Gainers in the
broadline realm included Dillard’s Inc., up
4.5 percent to $4.86; Kohl’s Corp., 4.2
percent to $39.33, and Target Corp., 1.4
percent to $37.52.
Investors were taken by surprise by both
HOLIDAY page 12
12 Biz Buzz* Web Apps* World Sport*
HOLIDAY
continued from page 11
Wal-Mart’s profit warning and a more
positive outlook from Sears Holdings
Corp., calling for adjusted fourth-quarter
earnings of $300 million to $380 million.
Wal-Mart’s stock sank 7.5 percent to
51.38, while Sears’ was up 23.3 percent to
49.98.
Overall, the Standard & Poor’s Retail
Index rose 0.8 percent, or 2.42 points, to
295.21, as the Dow Jones Industrial
Average retreated 0.3 percent, or 27.24
points, to 8,742.46.
The strongest performer among the
department stores was Kohl’s, which
posted a 1.4 percent same-store sales dip, a
by-product of last-minute pre-Christmas
shopping and purchases made after the
holiday, according to Kevin Mansell,
president and ceo. Stage Stores Inc. said it
had a 4.9 percent dip in comps, better than
the 7.1 percent decline in December 2007,
while its larger regional rival Dillard’s
reported a 5 percent dip versus a flat
December last year. The Bon-Ton Stores
Inc. improved upon its 11.3 percent comp
drop last year, putting up a 5.8 percent
decline for the month.
Mall-based Buckle Inc., Aéropostale
Inc., Hot Topic Inc. and American Apparel
Inc. were the sole gainers among the
apparel specialty stores, posting comp
increases of 13.5, 12, 4.3 and 3 percent,
respectively.
Even companies that don’t report comps
on a monthly basis chimed in with
downward revisions and words of caution.
J. Crew Group lowered fourth-quarter
guidance to a range of a loss of between 24
cents and 29 cents a share from its earlier
expectations of a profit of between 5 cents
and 10 cents.
“I’m not going to say we’re not
disappointed,” said Millard “Mickey”
The FTC wants to bring back Wild Oats
By Douglas McIntyre
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 3:55:00 AM
Filed under: Deals, Law, Whole Foods
Market (WFMI)
How do you de-merge two companies?
The FTC thinks that the marriage of Wild
Oats and Whole Foods(NASDAQ: WFMI)
was anti-competitive. Too much
Drexler, chairman and C.E.O. of J. Crew
Group. “This has been an incredibly tough
time for us, for retail and in general for
most businesses in America. As difficult
and challenging as business is, we have to
keep this all in perspective. Business
turned really difficult starting in the fall,
and I don’t think anyone can say when it
will get less so. We are shopkeepers who
have to make certain we have, day-in and
day-out, the right goods in the stores,
online and in the catalogues, and that we
are taking care of every single customer in
the best way possible. We’re not sure when
things will turn around. But I feel very
good about our positioning in the
marketplace when it in fact does turn.”
Late Thursday, Coach Inc. lowered its
second-quarter earnings expectations to 67
cents a year, 10 cents below its previous
guidance of 77 cents and 2 cents below its
year-ago EPS.
Zale Corp. said that its comps dropped
13 percent in November and 22 percent in
December.
Urban Outfitters Inc. reported that its
corporate same-store sales were down 1
percent for the November-December
period, with Urban’s 3 percent increase
offset by declines of 6 percent at
Anthropologie and 13 percent at Free
People.
“While we are never happy to report
negative comps, we believe our brands
performed well given the extreme
marketplace conditions,’’ said ceo Glen
Senk. “The highly promotional selling
environment forced us to take higher
markdowns versus the comparable period
last year, but we finished the holiday
season with clean and lean inventories
which are well-positioned for the spring
selling season.”
concentration in the high-end organic food
retail business.
The FTC brought charges against Whole
Foods to stop the deal, but the agency did
not get its bite at the apple until after the
merger had closed. Now it wants to take
apart what it sees as a firm created against
the better interests of consumers.
According to The Wall Street Journal,
the FTC wants all the stores that carried
American Eagle Outfitters Inc. posted a
17 percent decline, while rival
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. posted a 24
percent dive in comps.
“Abercrombie’s management needs to be
a bit more reactive in this environment,”
said D.A. Davidson & Co. retail analyst
Crystal Kallik. “We are in uncharted
waters here.”
Kallik said the teen retailer’s inventory
was up a “pretty significant amount,” a
situation she deemed “dangerous.” Even
though Abercrombie cleared out
merchandise during the holiday season
with promotions, the company is receiving
new deliveries and has even begun
marking up some new items, she noted.
Kallik said retailers that haven’t been
able to clear through their merchandise in
December are going to have a difficult
time clearing it in the months ahead. She
pointed to the numerous markdowns by
West Coast-inspired Pacific Sunwear of
California Inc., which posted a 10 percent
drop in comps on Thursday and now
expects to report a fourth-quarter loss of 38
to 43 cents a diluted share, including an
estimated gain of about 10 cents a share
from the sale of its Anaheim distribution
center. The company said 19 cents of the
loss was attributable to “markdown
reserves.”
Gap Inc. registered a 14 percent comp
decline, while Gap North America, Banana
Republic, Old Navy and its international
stores reported declines of 12, 15, 16 and 5
percent, respectively. However, unlike its
cohorts, the retailer has been benefiting
from leaner inventories and cost-cutting
initiatives, said Barclay’s Capital retail
analyst Jeff Black.
“Gap is just caught in place that top-line
growth is going to matter more,” he said,
the Wild Oats name to take down their
Whole Foods signs and put the old name
back up. "The FTC also said it has asked
Whole Foods to voluntarily halt further
integration of the two companies while the
FTC continues its legal challenge to the
merger."
Killing a merger that is already done has
to be fairly hard. If the FTC prevails, what
does Whole Foods do? Does it hire a new
explaining that, with already lean
inventory, the focus is on revenue.
Missy apparel retailers Destination
Maternity Corp (formerly Mothers Work
Inc.), Caché Inc. and Cato Inc. reported
comp declines of 6.9, 19 and 2 percent,
respectively. Chico’s FAS Inc. finished
December with a 12.4 percent comp
contraction and also with a new ceo,
former Tommy Hilfiger ceo David Dyer.
Among the specialty stores whose shares
lost ground Thursday were J. Crew, down
9.2 percent to $10.61; Pacific Sunwear, 7.9
percent to $1.63; Zale, 7.6 percent to
$3.75; Bebe Stores Inc., 6.8 percent to
$6.18; Limited Brands Inc., 6.5 percent to
$10, and Gap, 4.7 percent to $12.92. Those
on the upswing included New York & Co.,
11.7 percent to $2.49; Urban Outfitters,
10.4 percent to $15.46; The Men’s
Wearhouse Inc., 5.8 percent to $14.16, and
Charlotte Russe Holding Corp., 5.1 percent
to $6.56.
As has been the case through the current
recession, mass merchants and off-pricers
performed best last month. BJ’s Wholesale
Club Inc. excelled with a 5.9 percent surge
in comps, versus a 3 percent increase a
year ago, while Costco Wholesale Corp.’s
comps slid 4 percent. Both Ross Stores
Inc. and The TJX Cos. Inc. recorded flat
comps, and Target Corp. said its same-
store sales fell 4.1 percent.
“I think what we saw today gave us no
insight,” said Black, commenting on when
financials will improve for retailers.
“Hopefully, the sky will be blue again. But
I think the cat’s out of the bag on the
fourth quarter.” Related Links
Shopping Takes a Holiday
Retail's Class Divide
Consumers Balk; Retailers Slump
management team and spin Wild Oats out
into a new public company? Does it restate
all of its recent financials to back out Wild
Oats results?
From a legal standpoint, the FTC may be
right, but rebuilding Wild Oats could kill
the company, especially during a
recession. The costs of turning it into a
standalone operation could be so great that
the financial burden would be more than
Daily Digital Newspaper
Delicious founder
joins former rival
Google
By Stephen Shankland
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 7:53:00 PM
Joshua Schachter, the founder of Yahoo's
Delicious social-bookmarking service who
left the company last June, has taken a new
job at Google.
In an e-mail interview, Schachter said
he's started work at the rival Internet
company but doesn't yet know what he'll
be working on. He's a a member of
Google's technical staff, according to his
LinkedIn profile.
TechCrunch reported the new hire
Monday after First Round Capital
Managing Director Josh Kopelman
mentioned the job in a Twitter posting.
Schacter created Delicious to help
manage bookmarks he posted at an earlier
site, the once entertaining but now dormant
collection of links at Memepool, and
continued to work on the project after
Yahoo acquired it, so he's got plenty of
experience with the concept of bookmarks.
Perhaps he's just the fellow to help spruce
up Google Bookmarks--or perhaps he'd
rather try something new for a change.
Sbragia in hunt for defender –
English experience essential
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:50:24 AM
The Sunderland manager is looking for a
defender who has proved himself in the
Premier League
the retailer could bear. Wild Oats might
become independent again only to go
bankrupt.
The government may be right, but it is
not practical.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7
Wall St.
Permalink| Email this| Linking Blogs|
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Daily Digital Newspaper
Slippery Soaps
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 1/8/2009 9:00:00 PM
L ater this month, Brad Carlton, a
onetime pool boy who married the boss's
daughter to become chief executive of a
major cosmetics company, will apparently
take a bullet and die for a cause.
That cause will not be the woman of his
dreams (his former sister-in-law and the
estranged wife of his sworn enemy), but
daytime soap operas.
For all but one of the last 24 years,
Carlton—a onetime Navy Seal and a secret
Nazi hunter—has been a character on The
Young & The Restless, the daytime ratings
champ for the last two decades.
But Carlton, played by Don Diamont,
and three other prominent characters on the
CBS show have been axed as part of the
severe retrenchment seizing daytime
soaps—one of TV's oldest formats, its
quintessential advertising vehicle, and the
birthplace of product placement.
The financial crisis is hurting daytime
soaps more than other shows, and may
well doom them. Not so long ago, there
were 16 soaps. Today, there are
eight—with more cancellations seemingly
imminent in the face of TiVo, D.V.R.'s,
decreased market share, declining ratings,
and the loss of financially pressed auto
dealers as local advertisers.
"I see this moment as the turning point
for soaps," a top CBS executive told me.
"No format has been hit harder than
daytime serials."
The executive says that within the next
two months the network plans to
dramatically slash the licensing fees it pays
to the independent production companies
that make its soaps. NBC recently did the
same to the fees paid for its lone entry,
Days of Our Lives—which have recently
run about $1.8 million a week.
Two longtime (and expensive) Days cast
members (Deidre Hall and Drake
Hogestyn) have been dumped in order to
keep the show on NBC for another 18
months. To trim costs, NBC wants
producers to reduce actor salaries by as
much as 40 percent.
In September 2007, NBC moved another
soap, Passions, to DirecTV before shutting
down the program altogether. Insiders at
Days, a daytime staple since 1965, say
they won't be surprised if the sands in their
show's hourglass run out too.
A similar fate awaits CBS' Guiding
Light, which debuted on radio in 1937
before becoming the longest-running
drama in TV history. "That show isn't even
treading water," says a network exec. "It's
sunk below the waves."
An even more ominous sign for the
industry: For the first time, the Daytime
Emmys—designed specifically to promote
daytime soaps—won't even be broadcast.
Major networks deemed the fees too
excessive for a show that draws abysmal
ratings. Even the cable channel Soapnet
isn't airing it.
It used to be that the networks needed the
daytime profits to finance the more
expensively produced (and unprofitable)
prime-time programs. By blending
message and melodrama—ads were
cunningly buried in the plot—"sudsers"
became the perfect subliminal salesmen.
The soap format peaked at the 1981
wedding of Luke and Laura on General
Hospital, with an estimated 30 million
viewers tuning in. The show's popularity
inspired a Top 30 song called General
Hospi-tale. ("I just can't cope/Without my
soap") and the movies Tootsie and Soap
Dish.
In recent years, market leader Y&R has
seen its audience shrink precipitously, to
an average of 5 million total viewers in
2008. In the old days, soaps were
generational—your grandmother got your
mother hooked, and she, in turn, got you
hooked.
Today the median age of viewers is
rising, but older viewers are dying off
(literally) and are not being replaced by
younger ones. (The median age for Y&R is
nearly 60.) If interested, younger viewers
can watch soaps in less time on the official
network websites and, commercial-free, on
YouTube.
"There are as many theories about lost
viewership as there are cheating spouses in
daytime serials," says the blogger Toni
Pimentel, who added that her Y&R spoiler
Web site (young-restless.com) averages 2
million hits a month.
"Most obviously, more women work
outside the home—or are otherwise
occupied," Pimentel says. "And for those
who are at home, and in front of a TV,
there are more viewing options—hundreds
of cable and 'speciality' channels—and
don't forget the increasing popularity of
talk shows."
The ratings of ABC's The View rose 16
percent in 2008. More than 4 million
viewers now watch the gabfest, a
comparative bargain.
When the cuts come, producers of the
three CBS soaps turning a "marginal"
profit may have little choice but to
drastically chop production costs, lop off
beloved characters, and renegotiate the
salaries of those who are left.
Unfortunately for the networks, viewers
say they tune in to see the old standbys.
Unfortunately for advertisers, network-
commissioned surveys have found that a
large segment of the soap audience is poor,
middle-aged African-American women.
"That's definitely not the demo sponsors
are targeting," says a network exec.
The world will continue to turn, but
soaps may not be slippery enough to
escape the current crunch.Related Links
News-division Layoffs at NBC, CBS
Staying the Course
Summertime Slump
Tomorrow's TVs Today
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 7:00:00 AM
I f everything that was shown at the
Consumer Electronics Show last week
comes together, in five years or so we'll be
watching 3-D YouTube videos on paper-
thin screens controlled by waving our
hands in mid-air.
Unfortunately, no one yet is actually
putting all those pieces together. But I
could see how future TVs might turn out as
I trekked around the show floor. Here's
what I ran into:
Razor thin and razor sharp I've rarely
been awestruck by any TV technology. But
organic light-emitting diode (O.L.E.D.)
TVs are different. The first stunner is that
the TVs are about the width of a Pop-
Tart—significantly thinner than any flat-
screen TV today. But then the picture is
mind-blowing—like a moving high-
resolution photo. You really have to see it
to believe it. LG, Sony, and others are
developing O.L.E.D. TVs. Today, even a
seven-inch screen costs $1,000 or more,
but the technology will come down in
price over the coming years.
Wii-like controls Ever since Nintendo's
Wii took off, companies have been
pushing toward making TV controllers that
work using hand motions or that act like a
wireless computer mouse. Some of the
more radical versions try to get rid of a
remote device completely. Hitachi showed
a TV connected to a Canesta camera that
can sense how a hand moves through
space. This lets you change a channel with
a gesture. I'm wondering if you can
program it to use whatever gesture you
want. Could make watching TV with your
friends interesting.
3-D vision The race is on to create viable
3-D home television. Sony, LG, and
Panasonic are all giving it a go. It really
works, but still faces major hurdles. Like,
you have to wear these plastic glasses that
make the 3-D pop but distort other objects
Business* 13
you look at. That might be a problem if
you're multitasking while watching TV and
wind up diapering the dog instead of the
baby.
Net TV Every major electronics maker
showed some way to bring at least some
internet-based content into the television
set. LG has a flat-screen TV that can
directly download Netflix movies without
a separate box. Kodak showed me a box
that lets your TV pull in YouTube videos,
or home videos stored on a laptop
somewhere else in the house. Microsoft
continues to push its vision of a seamless
connection between TVs, PCs, and cell
phones, so video can be found, shared, and
viewed on any of them. The convergence
of the Net and TV is arriving right about
now.
TVs everywhere Toward the end of the
show, I wandered through a remote part of
the floor, where dozens of little-known
Chinese manufacturers set up tiny booths.
Many of them showed cheap, flat-screen
TVs the size of a picture frame. These
things are going to become commodities,
so people could have small video screens
just about everywhere, all fed by a home's
wireless network. That could change TV
viewing from something everyone in the
house does in the family room, to
something each person does alone
wherever they happen to be.
Oh, for what it's worth, no one I ran into
at C.E.S. was the least bit excited about
Blu-ray disks. The technology for
delivering movies will most likely leap
directly from DVDs to high-def downloads
over Internet or cable systems. Blu-ray
doesn't seem like part of the future—more
like a soon-to-be historical
footnote.Related Links
DVR Commercial Skipping: Like Rocks
On a Pond?
Five Gadgets That Were Killed by the
Cellphone
NoPod
14 Business* Biz Buzz* Movies* International*
Five Things Google Could Do For Newspapers
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 1/11/2009 9:00:00 PM
While the New York Times was given an
early death sentence this week by The
Atlantic, Google C.E.O. Eric Schmidt was
asked by Fortune magazine what Google
should do to save the ailing newspaper
industry. He reiterated his previous “ moral
imperative” sentiment to do something, but
failed to come up with any concrete
solutions.
The internet behemoth thrives on
curating the flow of information from
media outlets, so it has a stake in the future
of newspapers. But should Google
necessarily intervene? Some think not.
“[The news] has changed permanently,
Google is part of that change, Craigslist is
part of that change, Facebook is part if that
change,” said Jeff Jarvis, media blogger
and author of the new book What Would
Google Do. “That doesn’t mean they’re
responsible for those who don’t adapt to
that change. They’re not.”
Here are five things Google could do for
newspapers, however, if it decided to
implement its own bailout of print media.
1. Buy Them.
One solution the interviewer suggested
was acquiring newspapers and bringing
them under Google’s corporate umbrella.
Schmidt shot that one down.. at least for
now.
“The good news is we could purchase
them. We have the cash. But I don't think
our purchasing a newspaper would solve
the business problems,” said Schmidt.
“I think the solution is tighter integration.
In other words, we can do this without
making an acquisition. The term I've been
Top Stock Picks '09: Standard Chartered (SCBFF)
By Steven Halpern (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 4:30:00 AM
Filed under: China, Stocks to Buy
This post is part of a special annual
report -- Top Stock Picks '09-- in which
TheStockAdvisors.com asked 75 leading
newsletter advisors to select their favorite
investment for the new year.
A leading expert on Asia, Yiannis
Mostrous looks to international bank,
Standard Chartered(OTC: SCBFF) as his
using is 'merge without merging.'”
Google doesn’t want to put money into a
company lacking a strategy for success.
N.Y.U. journalism professor Jay Rosen
tweets: “Eric Schmidt is saying: Charity
we can always do. But it's like giving up
on the patient.”
2. Do More Do Goodism.
Schmidt makes it clear that Google is in
the advertising business, and philanthropy
should remain separate from the business
side. But if it chooses to throw some of its
extra cash at the media, there are a number
of possibilities.
Dan Froomkin lists a few suggestions at
Harvard University’s NeimenWatchdog,
including contributing to non-profit
projects like ProPublica (which Schmidt
also mentions), adopting papers to help
improve their technology, and creating its
own non-profit news organization.
Then there’s always Spot.us, the crowd-
funded journalism project run by Knight
Foundation grant winner (and wired.com
alum) David Cohn. Funding grassroots
journalism to bring some organization to
that particular open-source movement may
be the Next Big Thing in news. What
better place to make that twain meet than
at established news organizations?
3. Inform the Masses.
Google hosts outreach programs for the
top pick for 2009. Here's the latest from
The Silk Road Investor.
"Standard Chartered has been doing
business in Asia, Africa, and the Middle
East for more than 100 years.
"It's an international bank focused on
retail and corporate banking and treasury
activities. Although domiciled in the UK,
its biggest single concentration of
customers and profits is in Hong Kong.
"More than 40% of its retail income is
generated by deposits and related fees. Its
media to teach journalists about the tools
available for them to use. While many
newspapers already utilize Google’s
products using search optimization,
Google maps and AdSense, it couldn’t hurt
to amp up the efforts and campaign to
inform the out-of-touch. Frankly, we aren't
overwhelmed with Google's efforts to
promote this initiative and wonder how
many people actually know they even
exist.
4. Improve News Search.
While some folks in Belgium are of a
different mindset, Google News is great at
consolidating stories from across the web.
But the search could use a bit of an
upgrade to help give more exposure to
smaller papers and maybe even prevent
incidents like the UAL-Tribune debacle.
“It’s tuned for relevancy over currency,”
says Jarvis, who has spoken with several
industry execs who share the same
opinion.
5. Bring Classifieds Back From the
Dead.
Craigslist has been accused of single-
handedly killing the newspaper industry by
conditioning people to pay as little as zero
for classified ads. Craig Newmark
famously knows he is leaving perhaps 10s
of millions of dollars on the table, and
famously could not care less. Meanwhile,
income streams are highly diversified, with
no consumer or wholesale geography
contributing more than 9% of revenues,
and its loan/deposit ratio is 85%.
"The bank offers pure exposure to some
of the most dynamic areas in the emerging
market world and is run in a prudent
manner, especially compared to most of its
competition.
"Furthermore, the Asian consumer is
clearly in less trouble than his UK or U.S.
counterpart, and, given the longer-term
the traditional lifeblood for newspapers for
your used car is being drained dry by this
international classified ad network and by
slightly-more-expensive-and-more-
complicated auction services like eBay.
You can’t blame Craiglist for
innovating—despite their business model,
they clean up, thank you very much—just
like you can’t blame Google. You’d have
to blame the entire internet.
Craigslist did donate $1.6 million to UC
Berkeley's 'New Media' program, so it’s
not exactly the bad guy. Scott Outing from
Reinventing Classifieds wrote an open
letter to Craig and Jim Buckmaster last
summer with some suggestions on an
intervention, and later posted one to
Google which readers could help write
(though few did).
Maybe now's the time to make that effort
again. Google could pick up a few tips and
possibly work with newspapers to build a
new network of classifieds. They might
start with 2005's "Craigslist Killer" Google
Base.
Related Links
Google Goes Big; Specifics Be Damned
Earnings: Is Google Feeling Lucky?
Why Increase in Online Ad Spending
Hurts Print Publishers
growth potential, it seems to me that this is
the kind of exposure we should be looking
for at these levels.
"That said, the global recession will hurt
the company's business as economic
activity slows down in Asia and the rest of
the emerging universe. The company's
well diversified loan book and its limited
exposure to toxic paper should provide
some cushion. (We note that the stock also
trades on the London exchange with the
symbol STAN.)"
Daily Digital Newspaper
'Mall Cop'
Mania!
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 2:51:00 PM
Look out world, here comes 'Paul Blart:
Mall Cop'! Funnyman Kevin James
premiered his hilarious new comedy over
the weekend -- and ET was there!
"I wanted to do a big action comedy for
everybody," says Kevin, who adds that his
Segway skills (the self-balancing, two-
wheeled motorized vehicle) came quick: "I
was there for about 20 minutes struggling
with it and very nervous about it until I got
very confident, then I got overconfident
and ate it in a scene. But you back up, just
like in life, you know?"
In theaters Friday, 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop'
finds the former "King of Queens" star as a
single dad trying to make ends meet as a
mall cop in New Jersey. Although he takes
his job seriously, nobody take him
seriously until he's faced with some
insidious Santa's Helpers who take over
the mall and hold some shoppers hostage --
including Paul's daughter and sweetheart.
Can Paul hold down the fort until help
arrives?
Steve Bell's If ... flashback: Let
me get this straight - you are the
President's pecker?
By Steve Bell (From the Guardian:
G2 | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 3:01:03 AM
Steve Bell's If ... flashback
Steven Halpern's TheStockAdvisors.com
offers a daily look at the latest market
commentary and favorite stock picks and
investment ideas from the nation's leading
financial newsletter advisors.
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Daily Digital Newspaper
One-Stop Shopping Calamity
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 10:00:00 AM
T he news that Citigroup is considering
selling half its Smith Barney brokerage
unit to Morgan Stanley is seen as evidence
that Sandy Weill's plan for a one-stop
financial shop is officially dead.
But the financial supermarket is the bad
idea that just won't die.
It certainly makes sound sense on paper:
let customers get all their banking needs
from one financial institution. Credit cards,
checking accounts, mortgages, brokerage
services, insurance — keep it all under one
roof. Cross-sell to your heart's content. Sell
mortgages to your brokerage customers
and offer to underwrite deals for your
corporate bank customers.
During the 1990s, Weill commandeered
his own financial merger frenzy,
combining his Shearson Lehman brokerage
with Travelers Group, Aetna Life &
Casualty, and Salomon Brothers before
eventually merging it all in a megadeal
with Citicorp in 1998.
But Citigroup was never able to get the
Detroit's 'green' plans may be dead on arrival
By Douglas McIntyre
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 3:15:00 AM
Filed under: Consumer experience,
Competitive strategy
A great deal of the new technology that
U.S. car companies are showing at the big
auto show in Detroit is based on the U.S.
car industry's plans to "go green." Some of
those programs are based on electric cars.
Others are based on ethanol hybrids.
According to Reuters, "the stars of the
show were a slew of new or improved fuel-
efficient and eco-friendly 'green' cars like
the Toyota Prius and Chevrolet Volt."
Some analysts think The Big Three are
one-stop shopping to work. The firm,
bloated by its consolidated income
statement, has never been able to
overcome its unwieldy size, despite its
numerous attempts to start over. Weill was
replaced as Citigroup C.E.O. in 2003 by
Chuck Prince, who was ousted more than a
year ago and replaced by Vikram Pandit.
Now, as rumors swirl that Citigroup might
finally break itself up, Pandit is desperately
clinging to the job as the head of the bank
that seemingly can do no right.
But even as Wall Street witnesses the
collapse of the financial supermarket at
Citigroup, other bank executives seem all
too eager to attempt it themselves.
Bank of America has laid the
groundwork to become the Wal-Mart of
financial supermarkets. It's in the process
of integrating Merrill Lynch's thundering
herd with its massive retail bank, which is
also still absorbing the embattled mortgage
lender Countrywide. Wells Fargo
expanded its retail banking presence with
its Wachovia acquisition, but it also got a
full-scale investment bank and the
brokerage unit A.G. Edwards with its
too late to the table with "green" cars and
that Japan has too big a lead. That may not
be the problem at all.
Often cars powered with alternative fuels
purchase.
Cross-selling, it seems, has never been so
promising.
But, why? There is little evidence it
works, as Bloomberg reported last week in
a story about the bitter divide between
Bank of America bankers and Merrill
Lynch brokers. “On paper, cross-selling
makes a lot of sense, but in reality, I’ve
never seen it work,” Friedman Billings
banking analyst Paul Miller said.
And after the sting of Madoff, the
hangover from the mortgage crisis, and the
lingering foul taste of Lehman and Bear
Stearns, why might customers be more
inclined to trust one financial institution
for all their needs?
The fact is they won't. But if a Smith
Barney-Morgan Stanley deal does spark a
new wave of financial mergers as some
predict, they won't have much choice in
the matter.
Related Links
Wall Street Huddles for Safety
Saving Citi
Saving Wall Street From Itself
are more expensive than gas-driven cars.
All that modern technology costs
something. Consumers are looking at gas
in the $1.70 range and oil prices moving
toward $30 a barrel. Car buyers are often
short-sighted. Why buy a hybrid when a
gas car is inexpensive to operate? Oil
prices may not go back up for two or three
years. Maybe.
"Green" may not sell because the price of
filling up an "old style" car has become
remarkably cheap again.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at
247wallst.com.
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Business* Biz Buzz* World Sport*
Pavement Pounding Big in
'09
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 1/8/2009 7:30:00 AM
Planning to look for a new job this year?
You’re not alone.
Despite the economic downturn and
predictions of slower hiring, 19 percent of
workers say they plan to look for a new job
in 2009.
The same percentage say they actually
plan to leave their current position,
according to a survey by
CareerBuilder.com.
The 2009 Job Forecast, which was
conducted between Nov. 12 and Dec. 1,
also found that six out of 10 workers said
the economy and the tightening job market
are not causing them to hold off on plans
to change jobs.
Why leave?
• Forty-nine percent reported better pay
and/or career advancement opportunities
were the primary reasons they plan to
leave their current positions.
• Fourteen percent are looking for an
environment where they feel more
appreciated.
• Ten percent want to work for a
company that is making a difference.
• Seven percent want to change careers
entirely.
• And 3 percent say they are leaving their
jobs because they want more flexibility or
plan to go back to school.
Among other key findings:
• Twenty-five percent are dissatisfied or
very dissatisfied with their pay. Thirty-five
percent of workers did not receive a raise
Sport: Chelsea's set-piece failings
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:23:06 AM
Scott Minto looks at how an inability to
15
in 2008. Of those who did receive one, 25
percent were given an increase of 2 percent
or less. Sixty-three percent of workers did
not receive a bonus.
• Twenty-six percent of workers are
dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the
career advancement opportunities provided
by their current employers. Eighty percent
did not ask for or receive a promotion in
2008, and 20 percent felt they were
overlooked.
• Eighteen percent of workers are
dissatisfied with work/life balance, and 54
percent report their workloads have
increased over the last six months.
• Twenty-three percent of workers are
dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with
training and learning opportunities
provided by their current employers.
"Although seven in 10 workers say they
are satisfied with their jobs, some are
always on the lookout for a greener
pastures,” Rosemary Haefner, vice
president of human resources at
CareerBuilder.com, said. “In fact, 82
percent of workers said while they are not
actively looking for a new position, they
would be open to one if they came across
the right opportunity."
The survey was conducted online among
3,259 hiring managers and human resource
professionals and 8,038 U.S. employees.
Related Links
Home Sweet Office
End Run
Stuck in the Middle
defend corners, free-kicks and throw-ins
has cost Luiz Felipe Scolari's Chelsea dear
in recent weeks
16 Business* Biz Buzz* Movies* World Sport*
The Clock is Ticking
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 1/8/2009 9:00:00 AM
Hey Congress, act boldly and act now!
That pretty much sums up President-elect
Barack Obama's speech Thursday on the
need for a stimulus package to reverse the
economy's downward spiral.
The speech, which was an unprecedented
public policy effort for an elected president
to make before his inauguration, was
delivered at George Mason University in
Virginia but its intended audience is sitting
on Capitol Hill. Obama repeatedly spoke
to members of Congress, imploring them
to avoid their usual legislative process
which can include weeks of debate and
countless earmarks for pet projects.
Instead, Obama asks them to overcome
partisanship and act immediately. While he
acknowledges the pressure his plan will
put on the budget deficit, which the
Congressional Budget Office estimates
will hit $1.2 trillion this year before this
stimulus package, Obama emphasized the
potentially greater costs of doing nothing.
"For every day we wait or point fingers or
drag our feet, more Americans will lose
their jobs. More families will lose their
savings. More dreams will be deferred and
denied. And our nation will sink deeper
into a crisis that, at some point, we may
not be able to reverse." Today's speech was
Gems of wisdom from the Secretary: Paulson's parting words
By Connie Madon (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 5:00:00 AM
Filed under: Management, Personal
finance, Housing, Financial Crisis
The main focus of Treasury Secretary
Paulson's speech to the Economic Club of
Washington was what to do with Fannie
Mae(NYSE: FNM) and Freddie
Mac(NYSE: FRE). He suggested three
possible scenarios for the two troubled
companies. First, it should be noted that
short on details and long on urgent
rhetoric. The Obama transition team
estimates that the stimulus package will
cost at least $775 billion, but that figure
could climb as high as $1.3 billion by
some estimates. This will include tax cuts
for working families and relief for states
burdened by overstretched budgets. It will
encompass public works projects as well as
private sector growth in energy and health
care sectors.
Obama estimates the plan will create or
save three million jobs over the next few
years.
The speech also included a shout-out to
the many Wall Street firms that have
received TARP money, suggesting the
days of loose accountability for how the
funds are spent are over. Obama's package
will include further efforts to save
embattled banks from bankruptcy, "but
only with maximum protections for
taxpayers and a clear understanding that
government support for any company is an
extraordinary action that must come with
significant restrictions on the firms that
receive support."
Related Links
Finally, Drama! A Geithner vs. Bair
Clash?
Obama's Real Economic Team
Obama's Economic Team
Feddie and Fannie were taken over by the
government under a legal process called
conservatorship and that together both
companies guarantee nearly half of
residential mortgages outstanding.
The Secretary said that both companies
have a dual role to serve the public interest
and to provide a rate of return to
shareholders. To satisfy both of these ends
he suggested that one or two new
companies could be set up that would
guarantee a set return to shareholders but
Time Worser
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 1/7/2009 7:00:00 PM
T ime Warner's new-year surprise $25
billion writedown today was bad enough,
because it suggests that the media giant's
advertising-supported cable, publishing,
and internet businesses are worth less and
less with each passing quarter.
Worse is its warning of a probable loss
for all of 2008, because it would be the
first loss in six years and comes less than
two months after it had forecast earnings
of more than $1 a share. (Though it's
unlikely to come close to the $98.7 billion
loss posted in the year after the disastrous
merger of AOL and the original Time
Warner.)
But worst of all is what Time Warner's
profit warning suggests for the rest of the
industry, particularly newspapers,
magazines, and all of the other old-media
companies struggling to transform
themselves into Web-based information
businesses.
J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan took
Time Warner's announcement and backed
out some online advertising numbers.
What he found confirmed his suspicions
about Web-ad spending trends.
In a note to investors, Khan concluded
that Time Warner's profit warning
suggested an 18 percent year-over-year
would function differently than they do at
present. The companies could purchase
decline in online advertising revenue at the
company's AOL unit. He reckoned that the
change could have translated into a $64
million drop in revenue in those three
months alone.
Where did the money go? Certainly not
to Time Warner's cable or magazine
publishing businesses: They, too, were
reporting declines.
Some of the decline may well have been
attributable to a general retreat in ad
spending during a particularly nasty
economic slump. But Khan said it also
illustrates a shift away from online
"display" ads—the banners across the top
of web pages or the boxes filled with
animation and music—and toward search-
based ads. Those are the dull, but
particularly effective plain-text ads that
pop up on search engines or are added to
web pages by brokers like Google.
"The implied weakness is consistent with
our thesis that online advertising budgets
are being reallocated to search," Khan
wrote. "Although AOL historically
underperformed the market, we think the
broader implication here is that demand
continues to soften."Related Links
Online Ad Revenue Up
Yahoo Earnings: Just How Bad?
Search Advertising's Scalability
Problems
and bundle mortgages with a federal
guarantee but would not hold a large
number of mortgages.
A second alternative would be to
nationalize Freddie and Fannie and
perhaps place them under the umbrella of
the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
which already insures mortgages against
defaults. This would eliminate the private
sector's role in evaluating mortgage risk.
A third alternative would be to cut
Fannie and Freddie loose from their links
Daily Digital Newspaper
Travoltas Thank Locals for
Support During
‘Impossibly Painful’ Ordeal
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 11:41:00 AM
John Travolta has thanked the Florida
community where his family has a home
for its support following the tragic death of
his 16-year-old son Jett.
John, his wife Kelly Preston and their
daughter Ella sent a letter through their
attorney to the local newspaper in Ocala,
FL. "The enormous amount of love,
support and condolence we have received
from this community has been most
humbling. Comforting words, thoughts and
prayers of Ocala's citizens have made an
impossibly painful situation, a little less
painful," says the letter in the Ocala Star-
Banner.
"The actions of Ocala's community
leaders, its law enforcement professionals,
our neighbors at Jumbolair and its
surrounding communities have offered us
the dignity to grieve the loss of our son and
Ella's brother in peace. For this we will
always be grateful,” the letter says.
Sport: Chelsea's set-piece
failings
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:23:06 AM
Scott Minto looks at how an inability to
defend corners, free-kicks and throw-ins
has cost Luiz Felipe Scolari's Chelsea dear
in recent weeks
to the government and turn them into
purely private entities.
Freddie and Fannie are expected to
extend a moratorium on foreclosure sales
and evictions for some borrowers.
What are your thoughts on these
proposals?
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Daily Digital Newspaper
Traders with higher in-
womb testosterone make
six times more money
By Peter Cohan (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 3:35:00 AM
Filed under: Competitive strategy, Define
investing
Is this science or science fiction? That
thought came to mind when I read that
traders who were exposed to more
testosterone in the womb made six times
more money than their low-testosterone-
level peers on very volatile trading days.
So if you want to breed a trader, expose
him to lots of testosterone in the womb.
How do you do that? Beats me.
To determine the traders' prenatal
testosterone exposure, University of
Minnesota researchers measured their
"2D:4D ratio" which is the relative lengths
of the index and ring fingers on the right
hand. Those exposed to higher levels of
testosterone in the womb tend to have
relatively longer ring fingers.
Based on the 2D:4D measure,
researchers who studied the traders' profits
over a 20-month period between 2004 and
2007, found that those with the highest in-
womb testosterone exposure in the womb
earned six times more than those exposed
to the least. They also tended to have the
longest careers, surviving about three years
longer on average. High testosterone
traders make more money on the days
when the amount of the hormone in the
blood was highest, indicating their
profitability was driven by their sensitivity
to the hormone as well as the amount of it.
Globes Stars Flock to Stars for a Cause!
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 3:18:00 PM
From Jon Hamm and the cast of "Mad
Men" signing a limited edition GG poster
and a giant bottle of Moet champagne to
Tina Fey and Laura Dern choosing unique
Robyn Rhodes jewelry -- all to be
auctioned off for a great cause -- the stars
flocked to the Stars for a Cause suite at the
66th Annual Golden Globes!
And those traders tend to make the most
money on highly volatile days because the
testosterone boosts confidence, increases
appetite for risk, and gives more sheer
mental ability.
This helps the traders particularly in high
volume, volatile trading, which requires
intensely scanning economic data to make
very fast trades involving large amounts of
money.
The researchers did not say how to
increase a baby's exposure to testosterone
in the womb. But the study suggests that if
you want to hire money-making traders;
you should take the trader's 2D:4D
measure during the interview process.
Peter Cohan is president of Peter S.
Cohan & Associates. He also teaches
management at Babson College and edits
The Cohan Letter.
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Blogs| Comments
Plus, see the incredible Auri Footwear
shoe designs by William Shatner, Chris
"Ludacris" Bridges and Jesse McCartney
to be auctioned off!
In ET's One-on-One room for exclusive
Golden Globe winners, the night's biggest
stars also signed a bottle of Moet, along
with our own Mary Hart, to be auctioned
off for a Stars for a Cause charity.
Seagate replaces current
CEO with a previous CEO
By Brian White (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 2:58:00 AM
Filed under: Management, Insiders
Seagate Technology(NYSE: STX) has told
CEO William Watkins to hit the road, and
has brought in Chairman and former CEO
Stephen Luczo to replace him. Watkins,
one of the funniest and most candid CEOs
on the planet, has been the operational
wizard behind Seagate's manufacturing
turnaround in the last five years while he
also cut Seagate's global workforce by half
as the company became leaner and more
aggressive. It also swallowed competitor
Maxtor a few years ago, but has never
been able to squash competitor Western
Digital Corp.(NYSE: WDC), which
continues to eat its lunch at every
opportunity.
Still, Seagate's quarterly results on
January 21st may show that the world's
largest disk drive maker has fallen hard on
Sharp drop for corn and soybeans as
production increases
By Connie Madon (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 4:15:00 AM
Filed under: Forecasts, Commodities,
Agriculture
Commodity markets react violently at
times. Yesterday was one of them: The
USDA (United States Department of
Agriculture) reported on Monday that the
U.S. increased production for both corn
and soybeans.
When it comes to the grain markets,
USDA reports are viewed as the "bible."
Farmers, grain merchants and exporters
follow these predictions and plan their
business decisions on these government
reports.
For this crop year ending August 31st,
the USDA predicted an increase in corn
Football: Robin van Persie has said that Arsenal can win trophies this year with current squad
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:02:13 AM
Biz Buzz* Movies* World Sport*
the back of consumer spending slowdowns
and reduced orders from its largest OEM
and distribution partners. Seagate President
and COO David Wickersham also abruptly
resigned yesterday, which makes us all
wonder just what kind of internal turmoil
there was at the top of Seagate's
management ranks.
Luczo, the banker who took Seagate
private in 2000 with a group of investors
only to take it public again a few years
later with a fat check in his pocket, isn't a
technologist. He's not an operational guy,
nor a manufacturing guy. He is a finance
guy who will no doubt have to turn
Seagate's fortunes around once again to
prop up its flagging stock price, which has
plummeted from over $28 just over year
ago to less than $5 today.
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Blogs| Comments
production of 21.4% to 1,790 million
bushels and an increase in soybeans of
9.8% to 225 million bushels.
Before the market opened Monday,
traders had expected just the opposite, that
The Arsenal striker has maintained that
Arsène Wenger can guide the current
squad to success in the coming year
17
Taylor Swift's New
TV Role
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 7:27:00 PM
Teen music sensation Taylor Swift is
burning up the charts with her second
studio album, Fearless, and now she's set
to guest star on a top CBS TV drama!
ET confirms that the 19-year-old country
music star will guest star in an upcoming
episode of "CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation." In the episode, Taylor will
play Haley Jones, a teen whose family runs
a seedy Vegas motel. Over the course of a
year, Haley goes through a series of
changes that have tragic consequences.
The platinum-selling Swift sold more
albums in 2008 than any other recording
artist in any genre of music, and she
currently holds the Billboard all-genre
record for most Top 20 debuts in a
calendar year.
corn and soybean production would drop
because of the late harvest. By the time the
market closed, March corn futures were
down 30 cents or $1500.00 and March
soybean futures fell 83.50 cents or
$4175.00 (each 1 cent equals $50.00).
Soybeans may recover a bit quicker than
corn because the U.S. is a net exporter of
soybeans to China.
If there is one lesson for the trader it is
this: "don't take a position going into a
major crop report." Surprises can be very
painful and costly, especially if a trader
long these markets Monday.
I wonder now, should food prices drop?
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18 Web Apps*
Tech layoffs: The scorecard
By Rafe Needleman
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 5:09:00 PM
With the overall economy slumping, the
tech industry is taking its fair share of hits.
We'll keep updating the chart below as
news of company changes comes in. See
our complete coverage of how the tech
sector is faring here: Tracking the tech
downturn.
Know of a layoff not listed here? Let us
know on this form or e-mail us.
See also: The spreadsheet of sunshine:
Who's hiring.
Company Date How many Further
reading Seagate 01/12/2009 800 (10
percent) Seagate replaces CEO, plans to
cut 800 workers Dell 01/08/2009 1,900
Dell's Ireland plant to shed 1,900 jobs
Lenovo 01/08/2009 2,500 (11 percent)
Lenovo to cut 2,500 jobs amid
restructuring One Laptop Per Child
01/07/2009 32 (50 percent) OLPC slashes
workforce in half, cuts salaries Motion
Computing 01/07/2009 30 (25 percent)
Motion Computing cuts about 30 workers
EMC 01/07/2009 2,400 (7 percent) EMC
to cut 2,400 from workforce Turning
Technologies 01/07/2009 31 Vindy.com:
Turning Tech layoff hits 31 Borland
Software 01/06/2009 130 (15 percent)
VMware hires away Borland CEO
HelioVolt 01/06/2009 15 Two Austin
employers announce job cuts LiveJournal
01/06/2009 About 12 LiveJournal deletes
'about a dozen' jobs Logitech 01/06/2009
15% of salaried staff worldwide Logitech
to slash 15 percent of workforce Lenovo
01/05/2009 200 staff in Beijing offices
Lenovo rumored readying layoffs
Microsoft 01/01/2009 Unknown Microsoft
planning big layoffs for January? AMD
12/28/2008 100 additional, making 600
total since November AMD cites $70
million in fourth-quarter costs Unisys
12/22/2008 1,300; 4% Reuters: Unisys
slashes 1,300 jobs Electronic Arts
12/19/2008 10 percent EA boosts layoffs
to 10 percent of workforce Western Digital
12/17/2008 2,500; 5% Reuters: Western
Digital warns on revenue, will cut jobs
Midway Games 12/16/2008 180; 25%
Reuters: Midway Games to cut jobs, take
charge Laird 12/16/2008 5,000; nearly
50% Reuters: Laird announces 5,000 job
losses as sales slump WebMD 12/16/2008
4% to 5% PaidContent: WebMD to cut up
to 5% of staff Gaia Interactive 12/15/2008
13% VentureWire: Gaia lays off staff
Alcatel-Lucent 12/12/2008 1,000
managers, 5,000 contractors Big revamp
for Alcatel-Lucent, with Web 2.0 spin CBS
Interactive 12/11/2008 Undisclosed All
Things D: CBS Interactive/CNET Re-Org:
The Complete Memo SGI 12/11/2008 225;
15% Silicon Graphics adjusts business
plan Yahoo 12/10/2008 1,520 Yahoo pink
slips issued, recruiters circling above Sony
12/09/2008 16,000 total Sony to lay off
8,000 full-timers, 8,000 others Netflix
12/08/2008 50 people Neflix cuts 50 tech
jobs; streaming issues linger Level 3
Communications 12/08/2008 450; 8%
Denver Business Journal: Level 3 cutting
450 jobs BMC Software 12/05/2008 350;
6% AP: BMC Software to cut 350 jobs,
6% of workforce RealNetworks
12/04/2008 130; 7% Sources: Layoffs hit
RealNetworks Viacom 12/04/2008 850;
7% Viacom lays off 7 percent of
workforce AT&T 12/04/2008 12,000; 4%
AT&T lays off 12,000 Adobe 12/03/2008
600 Adobe warns of shortfall, job cuts
Carlyle Group 12/03/2008 about 100, 10%
Bloomberg: Carlyle Cuts 10% of Workers,
Including U.S. LBO Jobs Analog Devices
12/03/2008 about 20 EE Times: Analog
Devices shutters DSP design center Sage
North America 12/03/2008 150 Sage North
America Reports 2008 Results Gawker
Media 12/02/2008"a few" Gawker Media's
rolling layoffs continue Intrinsyc
12/01/2008 95; 30% 680 News: Intrinsyc
cuts global workforce 30 percent Fring
11/27/2008 10; 20% Fring cuts staff by 20
percent Technorati 11/25/2008 6; 12%
Technorati trims workforce, cuts pay TiVo
11/25/2008 7% TiVo profits from
EchoStar litigation Palm 11/21/2008 up to
10% of 1,050 Palm orders layoffs as Apple
and RIM take toll Buzznet 11/21/2008 10;
11% Valleywag: Music community
Buzznet lays off 10 LodgeNet 11/21/2008
170 Argus Leader: LodgeNet cutting jobs
Lam Research 11/20/2008 600; 15%
Reuters: Chipmaker Lam Research cuts
600 jobs Akamai 11/20/2008 7% Akamai
to cut 7 percent of workforce Lawson
Software 11/19/2008 200; 5% AP: Lawson
Software shares tumble after job cuts Pillar
Data Systems 11/18/2008 150; 30% SJ
Mercury News: Pillar Data Systems lays
off 30% of staff KLA-Tencor 11/18/2008
900; 15% SF Business Times: KLA-
Tencor to cut 15% of people Sun
Microsystems 11/14/2008 6,000; 15% to
18% Sun restructures, lays off up to 6,000
Rearden Commerce 11/14/2008 10%
Valleywag: Rearden Commerce cuts 50
people Applied Materials 11/12/2008
1,800; 12% Applied Materials cutting 12
percent of workforce National Semi
11/12/2008 330 Reuters: Nat Semi cuts
revenue view, plans job cuts Wired.com
11/11/2008 3 of 28 Wired.com trims
editorial staff by 10 percent Current Media
11/11/2008 20% Layoffs hit Al Gore's
Current Media Six Apart 11/11/2008 8%
Six Apart: Changes at Six Apart Tucows
11/11/2008 15% Restructuring at Tucows
Circuit City 11/10/2008 20% Circuit City
files for bankruptcy BitTorrent 11/10/2008
50% After a tough year, BitTorrent
replaces CEO again Insight 11/10/2008
240; 4% East Valley Tribune: Insight
Enterprises lays off 240 Honeywell
11/07/2008 700 Phoenix Business Journal:
Honeywell moving 700 jobs out of
Phoenix Zappos 11/06/2008 8% Letter to
Zappos employees Veoh 11/05/2008 20;
20% Veoh lays off 20 percent of
workforce LinkedIn 11/05/2008 36; 10%
LinkedIn slashes 10 percent of its
workforce Cadence 11/05/2008 625; 12%
Cadence Design cuts 625 jobs Anadigics
11/05/2008 100; 15% Anadigics cuts 15
percent of workforce AMD 11/05/2008
500; 3% AMD slashes 500 more jobs
Nokia 11/04/2008 600 Hundreds of Nokia
jobs under threat THQ 11/03/2008 4 to 5
studios Kotaku: THQ Shuttering Four to
Five Studios? Tektronix 11/03/2008 150
Tektronix announces fresh layoffs Spot
Runner 11/03/2008 115; about 30%
TechCrunch: 115 people lose their jobs at
Spot Runner Nortel Networks 11/03/2008
1,300; 5% Nortel earnings tank YouSendIt
10/31/2008 20% VentureBeat: YouSendIt
trims 20 percent of staff Aliph 10/31/2008
25 people Layoffs hit Bluetooth headset
maker Aliph Motorola 10/30/2008 3,000
Motorola's struggle for survival Electronic
Arts 10/30/2008 600 Kotaku: Electronic
Arts Lays Off Six Hundred Freescale
10/30/2008 2,400; 10% Freescale dragged
to loss; will lay off 10% Symantec
10/29/2008 4.5% cost savings Symantec
layoffs coming Avalanche Studios
10/28/2008 77 of 160 Avalanche Studios
lays off nearly half of staff Revision3
10/27/2008 9 people, 5 shows Video start-
up Revision3 joins the layoff club Helium
10/27/2008 30% of 110 F***dStartups:
Helium.com huge layoff BroadSoft
10/24/2008 about 12 GigaOM: BroadSoft
cuts jobs as sales slow Comcast Spotlight
10/24/2008 300+ of 3,500 Broadcasting &
Cable: Comcast Spotlight cuts positions
ADC Telecoms 10/23/2008 300-350 AP:
ADC expects fiscal 2008 loss, plans job
cuts Xerox 10/23/2008 3,000 Xerox to cut
3,000 jobs Avid Technology 10/23/2008
500 Form 8-K: Results of Operations and
Financial Condition... Nokia 11/04/2008
600 Hundreds of Nokia jobs under threat
Tektronix 11/03/2008 150 Tektronix
announces fresh layoffs Spot Runner
11/03/2008 115; about 30% TechCrunch:
115 people lose their jobs at Spot Ru
Circuit City 11/03/2008 17% Circuit City
to close 155 stores THQ 11/03/2008 4-5
studios Kotaku: THQ Shuttering Four to
Five Studios? Break.com 10/23/2008 11 of
80 Break.com lays off 11 Eons 10/23/2008
8 of about 33 The Boston Globe: Eons
eliminates eight jobs Dell 10/22/2008
8,900 The Register: Dell: 'We will out-
pace the rest of the industry' SanDisk
10/22/2008 TBA SanDisk layoffs in the
works ManiaTV 10/22/2008 20 of 70
NewTeeVee: ManiaTV lays off 20, to
reduce orig iMeem 10/22/2008 25% of 80
Imeem jumping on the layoff bandwagon
Mahalo 10/22/2008 10% Calacanis.com:
Tough times, hard decisions HP
10/22/2008 24,600 over three years HP to
slash 24,600 jobs following EDS buy
Ticketmaster 10/21/2008 35%
F***edStartups: TicketMaster.com laying
off 35% Comcast 10/21/2008 300 AP:
Comcast to cut up to 300 jobs in eastern di
Manhattan Associates 10/21/2008 6.5%
Reuters: Manhattan Associates hit by
slump Softchoice 10/20/2008 6.5% of 958
Toronto Star: Softchoice cuts staff by 6.5
percent Veoh 10/20/2008 0 UPDATE:
Layoffs at Veoh, or not? Wikia 10/20/2008
3 UPDATE based on personal interview
with Jimmy Wales Autotrader 10/20/2008
Daily Digital Newspaper
69 Orlando Business Times: Autotrader to
close c Texas Instruments 10/20/2008
possibly 300 TXCN: Hundreds face pink
slips at TI Sony Ericsson 10/17/2008 2,000
globally Bloomberg: Sony Ericsson
Reports Smaller Loss Than Anticipated
Sprint 10/17/2008 ongoing KMBC-TV:
Sprint plans 'gradual layoffs' Jaxtr
10/17/2008 13 13 employees laid off at
VoIP start-up Jaxtr Zivity 10/17/2008 33%
Zivity lays off a third of staff Zillow
10/17/2008 25% Zillow lays off 25 percent
of staff SearchMe 10/17/2008 20% Search
engine startup SearchMe cuts 20 perce
Heavy 10/17/2008 14% Downturn strikes
again: Heavy lays off 14% Lenovo
10/17/2008 50 in Morrisville, N.C.
WRAL: Lenovo to lay off 50 workers at
Morrisville headq MPC Computers
10/17/2008 200 Idaho Business Review:
Details released on MP Hi5 10/16/2008
10% to 15% No Hi5's today Sirius XM
10/16/2008 50 Sirius XM makes cuts to
XM in D.C. Pandora 10/16/2008 20
Pandora cuts 20 employees Adbrite
10/16/2008 40%'Layoffs are not a
statement about performance' Actel
10/16/2008 10% EE Times: Actel cuts
10% of workforce Tesla Motors
10/15/2008 Detroit office Automaker lays
off Detroit office with blog post SkyRider
10/15/2008 All P2P start-up SkyRider has
shut down Appcelerator 10/15/2008 6
Tough times, tough decisions Jive
Software 10/14/2008 33% Jive Software
lays off 1/3 of staff Redfin 10/14/2008
20% Redfin blames economy in layoffs
Qimonda 10/13/2008 3,000 Qimonda:
Qimonda announces global restructuring
program... Seesmic 10/10/2008 7 Tough
times. Tough decisions Lulu 10/09/2008
24 Lulu cuts jobs as revenues slow Micron
10/09/2008 15% Micron to cut workforce
by 15 percent, slash flash output eBay
10/06/2008 1,000 eBay buys Bill Me
Later, lays off 1,000 Gawker Media
10/03/2008 14% Gawker Media to lay off
14 percent of editorial Entellium
10/03/2008 95% Workers get ax at
software maker Entellium
If you want a real-time view into the
world of layoffs, use this Twitter search.
But we recommend having a stiff drink
first.
Daily Digital Newspaper
A new 'Glow' for AOL's blogs? Good
luck
By Caroline McCarthy
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 1:53:00 PM
By now you've probably heard about it:
AOL has formed yet another business unit
conspicuously devoid of "AOL" branding,
and this one's about the blogs.
Called MediaGlow, the just-announced
division encompasses AOL's digital
content assets from gossip hub TMZ to
tech heavyweight Engadget. It's the first
time that AOL has formally pulled together
the titles it acquired with blog network
Weblogs Inc. in 2005, blogs launched
since the Weblogs acquisition, and the
vestiges of the old AOL portal like AOL
News and AOL Sports.
It's about time, though I expect there will
be plenty of "lipstick on a pig" comments.
But the real news is the expansion that
AOL plans for MediaGlow, under the
leadership of programming chief Bill
Wilson: in 2009, it plans to launch about
30 new editorial sites (read: blogs). AOL
also plans to open "MediaGlow Studios" in
both New York and Los Angeles that will
focus on video production, as well as work
acquisitions Relegence and Sphere into "an
unprecedented effort to build thousands of
medium and long-tail focused automated
sites." We'll have to hit up AOL soon to
find out exactly what that means.
The new MediaGlow unit complements
AOL's two other "core businesses": social-
networking division People Networks,
which was put together after AOL's $850
million acquisition of Bebo last year; and
Platform-A, its conglomeration of
advertising products both built in-house
and acquired.
It's no secret that parent company Time
Warner has been preening at least part of
the company for a sale, with CEO Jeffrey
Bewkes making it clear that its flagging
dial-up access business is on the blocks.
Date Night at the 'Defiance' Premiere
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 7:15:00 PM
Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and the cast
of 'Defiance' defied the cold in New York
Executives haven't confirmed widespread
rumors that the rest of AOL could be up
for sale as well, but this sort of neat
packaging into "core businesses" could be
an indicator in either direction.
If you look on the sunny side, the timing
is opportune: Print publishing is gasping
for breath, and due to repeated old-media
missteps there still isn't yet a digital
publishing power on a truly big-media
level. Blog networks like Gawker Media
have stayed small- to medium-sized and
have certainly not been exempt from
recessionary woes. IAC/InterActiveCorp,
which owns properties like The Daily
Beast and CollegeHumor, hasn't pulled
them together in the same way.
(Disclosure: CBS Interactive, which
publishes CNET News, is unquestionably a
player in this game as well.)
On the traffic front, AOL has reason to
push forward with MediaGlow. The
company says that page views are up 40
City for a special screening of their WWII
action biopic Monday night, and both stars
made it a date night with their significant
others!
New parents for the second time Liev
percent year-over-year and that "vertical
content advertising revenue" was up 20
percent year-over-year in the third quarter
of 2008. Ad revenue as a whole,
unfortunately, has slid in sync with the
media recession. And with so many
pundits talking about the impending burst
of the blogging bubble, it's worth
questioning whether launching 30 new
titles will be intrepid or just foolish.
So here's my verdict: This is something
that AOL needs to do, and probably
should've done much sooner after its
Weblogs Inc. acquisition. Unfortunately,
given the way things are these days, even a
valiant effort at expansion can flop.
P.S.: AOL, you might want to look into
buying the domain Mediaglow.com.
Registered in Wellington, New Zealand,
the site appears to be a placeholder. Go get
it!
and Naomi Watts definitely had their baby
son Samuel(born December 13) on their
minds, while Daniel arrived with girlfriend
Satsuki Mitchell on his arm.
On the red carpet, Daniel took time to
Web Apps* Movies* World Sport*
Daily Tidbits: Troll
Wedding Crashers raid in-
game wedding
By Don Reisinger (Webware.com)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 9:52:00 AM
Longtime gamers "Bello" and "Merca"
were married this past December in Artix
Entertainment's massively multiplayer
online role-playing game AdventureQuest
Worlds, the company reported Monday.
The bride and groom have been avid
MMORPG gamers for three years and met
each other while playing the game. The
wedding was held in a private, in-game
room and 11,000 avatars were on hand to
witness the exchange of vows.
Unfortunately, the wedding was raided
by Troll Wedding Crashers, a clan within
the game that "camped out on the dance
floor of the reception area."
Low-cost pocket video camcorders have
enjoyed a resurgence in sales, thanks to
Web 2.0, reveals a report from research
firm Futuresource. According to the
findings, pocket video camcorders
represented less than 5 percent of total
camcorder sales in the U.S. and Western
Europe in 2006, but that number could
swell to 40 percent by 2010, thanks to sites
like YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, and others
that make it easy for consumers to upload
captured video online.
Online research firm eMarketer released
a study Monday claiming small businesses
plan to increase ad spending on social-
network marketing during 2009.
According to the study, 25 percent of all
the small businesses surveyed claim they
will increase social network ad efforts
reflect on the sudden passing of John
Travolta and Kelly Preston's 16-year-old
son, Jett, saying, "Condolences, obviously,
but it's an impossible situation to imagine."
19
throughout the year. Twenty-two percent
of companies said they plan to increase e-
mail ad spending during 2009, while 13
percent of respondents claim they will
increase spending on e-commerce sites.
The full report can be viewed on
eMarketer's site.
An online retailer that allows users to sell
goods by providing a 240-character
description of the product, has decided to
rename its service from Twee Bay to
Tweba. According to the company's site,
which is basically a Twitter for e-
commerce, "some people" asked the
service to rename the site and, to no one's
surprise, it did just that. The company's
founder won't say who asked for the name
change, but you can bet they probably
worked for a company that has a name that
rhymes with Twee Bay.
Balderton Capital, a U.K.-based venture
capitalist, announced Monday that it has
launched a new fund worth $430 million to
invest in new technology and media start-
ups. That said, the company told
TechCrunch UK in an interview that it
would "invest mainly in early stage" firms,
but it might "also look at later stage
companies."
Football: Madrid fail to
register Lassana Diarra and
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar for
Champions League
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:14:51 AM
Uefa rules Real Madrid must pick either
Lassana Diarra or Klaas-Jan Huntelaar for
Champions League squad but not both
20 Web Apps* Movies* Tech Tips* World Sport* International*
Google offers help
transplanting your blog
By Stephen Shankland
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 9:22:52 AM
Google on Friday released an open-
source project, Google Blog Converters,
intended to help people move their blogs
from one service to another.
There are a number of popular
publishing systems for housing blogs,
some of them services and some of them
software people can run on their own
servers. But if you want to change
infrastructure, it's rough going.
Information isn't necessarily locked up and
inaccessible, but the practical barriers of
moving it to a new publishing system are
high.
Google, which actually has a "data
liberation team," announced the Blog
Converters project to deal with the
situation. It released a collection of
libraries and scripts, written in the Python
language, that converts between the export
formats of LiveJournal, MovableType,
WordPress, and Google's own Blogger
service, said J.J. Lueck of the team in a
blog posting about the Blog Converters
project.
$10 million to Yodle about
By Caroline McCarthy
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 5:15:00 AM
Yodle, a New York-based company that
helps small businesses generate leads and
power local advertisements, on Monday
announced that it has raised a $10 million
Series C funding round.
Led by Jafco Ventures, the round was
completed with contributions from the
Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, and
previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson
and Bessemer Venture Partners.
The reason for raising the money?
Football: Madrid fail to register Lassana Diarra and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar for Champions League
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
That means that a person could convert
an exported file into a format another blog
system comprehends, permitting the data
to be imported into the new system. That
could make it easier for a person to move
to Google's own service--but also to move
off it.
Of course, you'll have to be proficient in
running Python scripts to use the
technology. But it could get easier soon:
Google said the scripts can be hosted on
Google App Engine, its service for running
Web-based applications written in Python,
so perhaps somebody will set up some
tools to make blog migration easier for the
non-programmers out there.
Future versions of the technology will
support the BlogML data format and a
mechanism to synchronize blogs with
services that have an API (application
programming interface) for accessing data
but not import-export abilities.
Google added an import-export feature to
Blogger in December. The company's
"don't be evil" slogan got its start in a
discussion about the company's
commitment not to lock up people's data
such as e-mail archives.
According to a release, it's because Yodle
is growing fast and plans to expand further.
At the end of 2008, the company had 250
employees and 5,000 customers, and
reported 700 percent revenue growth from
2007.
"It's been a watershed year for Yodle, and
Uefa rules Real Madrid must pick either
Lassana Diarra or Klaas-Jan Huntelaar for
Vringo adds video ringtone
creator
By Rafe Needleman
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 12:06:00 PM
Video ringtone company Vringo has
launched Vringo Studio, which gives user
the capability to create their own video
calling cards. Previously, users could only
select from a pre-built library of videos on
the site. With the new Vringo Studio, users
can search for any video on YouTube,
select a portion of it up to 30 seconds long,
and send it to their phone, where it can
become their outbound ringtone for other
Vringo users.
The Vringo.com main site also supports
the creation of custom video ringtones, and
from sources other than YouTube,
including videos on a user's computer. But
it's very picky on what it will work with
(video files have to be under 2MB, for
example), and it has no clip editor.
Vringo Studio lets you create your own
outbound video ringtones from YouTube
clips.
As far as I can tell, Vringo Studio, which
is in beta, is not linked to from the main
Vringo site. That's just as well; I found the
current version of the online app buggy.
Vringo's video support has always been
cool, and the capability you now have to
thanks to our incredible team working hard
to deliver for our customers, we expect that
growth to continue in 2009," CEO Court
Cunningham said in the release. "While
our competitors retrench in the face of
financial adversity, we are stepping up
investment in our customers' success. This
new funding round will accelerate product
and technology development to provide
increased online exposure and even
stronger results for our local business
owner clients."
Champions League squad but not both
make your own videos rounds out the
service. But it's the outbound ringtone
capability that sets Vringo apart. Vringo
lets you decide what your ringtone looks
and sounds like to people receiving your
call; most ringtone selectors just let you
define what the ring is when people call
you.
In order for Vringo to work, both caller
and callee need the Vringo app on their
phones (it's available for a lot of phone
platforms--but not the iPhone). It can be a
lot of fun, and it's a very viral app. If you
want to join in so you can see how your
friends' video ringtones when you call, you
need the app. Vringo is forming deals with
carriers to help with distribution ( it
recently got on the Turkish carrier Avea).
The service is free at first, but there's a
subscription fee after the trial.
Previously: Vringo. Video ringtones. Get
it?
Introducing Guest Editor The How-To Geek
[Announcements]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:45:00 AM
Let's give a big old welcome for our
newest guest editor, the How-To Geek.
The Geek is coming to us straight from one
of our favorite sources, his weblog of the
same name, where he covers the how-to
Windows beat with a sharp eye for a great
guide. He's an avid Lifehacker commenter
and nine-time contributor to the site, so he
should feel write at home (har har) on our
Daily Digital Newspaper
Stars Celebrate The
Art of Elysium
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 9:51:00 PM
ET is with Eva Mendes, Elijiah Wood,
Melissa Joan Hart, Courtney Cox Arquette,
Rosanna Arquette, and Patricia Arquette
on the red carpet of The Art of Elysium
charity event!
The Art of Elysium 2nd Annual Black
Tie charity gala titled Heaven brought
together fashion, design, music, art and the
voices of the children that the charity
serves.
Eva Mendes tells ET why she finds
working with children so rewarding.
Jumbo trunk route
trouble
By Adrienne Keith Cohen (News:
Main section | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:37:39 AM
From the archive, 13 January 1970: It was
nearly the flight that never was. With 225
press representatives and airline executives
fastened into their seatbelts for an hour's
"courtesy flight" over London the first Pan
American Boeing 747 jumbo taxied out for
takeoff yesterday afternoon, revved up -
and stopped
front page. Welcome to the fold, How-To
Geek!
Daily Digital Newspaper
Take the Fear Out of
Talking to Strangers
[Conversation]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:15:00 AM
Being randomly friendly and striking up a
talk with someone you don't know is, as
wikiHow puts it, the "social equivalent of
skydiving." And probably not as hard as
you might think.
The group-editing advice site offers
mostly motivational, thought-provoking
ideas on how to train at getting
comfortable starting a conversation with
no pretext or third-party introduction.
Some might make you roll your eyes with
thoughts of past incidents, but others are
worth considering, especially if your career
could benefit from a bit of networking
savvy:
Keep your conversations fairly organic.
Don't come in with “canned material”,
“nuclear attraction” routines, or other
social robotics ... What you say isn’t nearly
as important as how you say it. Socializing
is about exchanging energy, not being a
wordsmith. When in doubt, just say “Hi”.
If you’ve never done this before, you may
get brushed off several, even dozens of
times until you get really comfortable
being yourself in front of other people.
As someone who used to try and get
MultiPhotoQuotes Plasters Your Multi-Monitor Setup with
Wit and Photos [Featured Windows Download]
By Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 6:30:00 AM
Windows only: MultiPhotoQuotes is a
feature packed replacement for the basic
My Pictures Slideshow screensaver
included with Windows.
If you're running a multi-monitor setup,
your favorite feature in MultiPhotoQuotes
will definitely be the support for your extra
screen space. The basic My Pictures
screensaver will only put one picture on a
different strangers to start talking for my
every-day job, I found that experience,
practice, and, yeah, a bit of a cynical shell
against the typical brush-off were the best
predictors of how things would go. But pre
-supposing that someone was going to
clam up or walk off never helped at
all—and it's worth remembering that, even
in hard times or tough situations, some
people are secretly eager to tell a story or
just share a moment.
What's your best advice for someone
who wants to talk with more, and different,
people every day? Photo by dreamsjung.
How to Talk to Strangers[wikiHow]
single screen at any given time which even
on a small multi-monitor setup leaves a lot
of empty space. MultiPhotoQuotes fill the
entire available screen space with a grid of
photos. If it interests you, you can keep the
quotes feature on which will sprinkle
quotes from the included quote books
randomly through the grid of images.
Several large quote books are included but
the software has support for standard quote
and fortune file formats and for polling
online quote databases for new material.
Jott to Drop All Free Services,
Launches Voicemail
Transcription Today [Jott]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 7:00:00 AM
Bad news/Good news from Jott: The
voice-to-text service (one of David Allen's
favorites, we just learned) will drop all free
services on Feb. 2. Today, however,
they're launching a new voicemail
transcription service.
Jott had already scaled back its free
offerings when it jumped out of beta in
August 2008. Jott's CEO John Pollard told
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington that the
downward spiral of advertising markets led
to the decision to drop even limited free
services. That means everyone, including
users of Jott's free iPhone app, will require
a minimum $4/month plan to continue
using Jott's transcriptions to email, SMS,
webapps and task management tools.
One thing Jott is offering free is a week's
trial of its new voicemail transcription
service, which is $9.95 per month for 40
transcribed messages after that. Like
Should Hatton accept Pacquiao’s terms?
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:04:27 AM
Are the British boxer and his camp in the
You can specify which directories images
are pulled from and even use exclusion
strings so that your pictures from Vegas
Tech Tips* World Sport*
competitors YouMail, CallWave and
MessageSling, Jott can text or email you
when a message arrives you didn't pick up
on, or let you visually manage them at its
website. One unique feature seems to be a
link in the email message to set a call-back
reminder, so voicemail alerts don't end up
lost in the shuffle of all your other
messages.
Are you a paying Jott user who's happy
with the service and offerings? Are you
intrigued by any of the growing number of
transcribed voicemail services? Tell us
your take in the comments. No More Free
Jott For You[TechCrunch]
wrong when they object to a 60-40 split in
favour of the WBC lightweight champion?
aren't shuffled in with pictures from your
niece's batmitsfah. Even minor aspects of
the screensaver like the spacing between
the pictures and whether or not the
computer will pre-catch the entire next
transition before loading it can be tweak
from within the preferences panel.
MultiPhotoQuotes is freeware, Windows
only. MultiPhotoQuotes[via gHacks]
21
Fireclip Brings Mac-Like
Web Clipping to Firefox
[Featured Firefox
Extension]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 5:30:00 AM
Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Fireclip,
a free plug-in that monitors specific
sections of web pages, puts the at-a-glance
convenience of the OS X widget screen in
a Firefox tab.
Using Fireclip is darned easy. Activate
with a shortcut (Alt+Q) or from the Tools
menu, and its sidebar pops out. Hit "Select
Clip," and you can mouse around to see the
pre-defined sections of the page. Click
once, and you'll be asked to re-size your
selection with the familiar two-directional
arrows at the edges of your area. Double-
click inside the area, and it's locked in:
You don't have to be precise at all with
your selections, so leave any dead space or
visual cues you want around the edges.
Opening Fireclip's page with the same
shortcut gives you a space you can re-
arrange however you'd like with your
clips:
So, okay, Fireclip actually works and all,
but what use would it be to the average
surfer? Amit Agarwal's screencast of
Fireclip might explain it better than my
words:
Fireclip is a free download, works
wherever Firefox does. I encountered a
recurring pop-up ad while launching the
clips page, but wasn't sure whether it was
Fireclip itself or one of my clips.
Fireclip[Mozilla Add-Ons via Digital
Inspiration]
22 Tech Tips* Web Tech* International* World Sport*
Remove the Send Feedback
Link from Windows 7's
Title Bar [How To]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 6:00:00 AM
Microsoft offers Windows 7 as a free beta
to get feedback on what needs fixing. Still,
if you're endlessly annoyed with the "Send
Feedback" link in every single title bar,
there's a way to remove it. Hit the Tech-
Recipes blog for a simple registry tweak
that should take less than two minutes to
pull off, removing the "Send Feedback"
link for good.
Should Hatton accept
Pacquiao’s terms?
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:04:27 AM
Are the British boxer and his camp in the
wrong when they object to a 60-40 split in
favour of the WBC lightweight champion?
Radio pick of the day
By Phil Daoust (From the Guardian:
G2 | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:11:05 PM
Before Stuart Jeffries was netted by a
raiding party and shackled to a computer at
the Guardian, he lived in one of the most
sought-after spots in the West Midlands.
Solihull still has a grip on his imagination.
"It isn't so much a town," he says, "as a
kind of dream for thousands of people
from Birmingham and the Black Country.
It's the sort of place where, if you work
hard and get lucky, or rob a bank and don't
get caught, you too might live."
Some old-timers will tell you it has also
become rather vulgar. What with all the
flash cars, heated pools and surround-
Sbragia in hunt for defender – English experience essential
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:50:24 AM
The Sunderland manager is looking for a
Speedier Ext4
Filesystem Available in
Ubuntu 9.04 [Linux]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 7:45:00 AM
Ext4, the next-generation filesystem for
Linux storage, is rolled into the latest
(alpha) Ubuntu 9.04 daily builds.
Considering it nearly laps its counterparts
in benchmark tests by Phoronix, that could
mean some nice speed-ups in handling
larger files (and maybe boot-ups?) [ via;
graph by Phoronix]
sound home-entertainment systems,
eightysomething Betty can barely
recognise the "nice, quiet, friendly" place
she knew as a girl. "There is not the quality
within Solihull now that there was," she
claims. "Not the quality of people, not the
quality of taste, and not the quality of
upbringing."
Is that really fair? Jeffries visits some of
the incomers in Money Can't Buy You
Class(11am, Radio 4), starting with
magazine publisher Nigel, who admits: "I
can be a little flamboyant ..."
• Radio
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
Feeds
defender who has proved himself in the
Premier League
R.I.P. Enterprise RSS
By Marshall Kirkpatrick
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 3:28:35 PM
It's with a heavy heart and a sense of
bewilderment that we conclude that the
market for enterprise-specific RSS readers
appears to be dead. Two years ago there
were three major players offering software
that delivered information to the computers
of business users via RSS. Today it looks
to us like the demand simply never arose
and that market is over.
A smattering of employees in big
companies are using the free consumer app
Google Reader, a paltry substitute for a
business class RSS reader, and the rest of
the business world is apparently satisfied
to get information whenever they happen
to stumble over it. It's insane - a solid RSS
strategy can be a huge competitive
advantage in any field. We have no idea
why so relatively few people see that.
Sponsor
We love RSS and this makes us really
sad. If much of the rest of the world wants
to ignore this technology, though, it's their
loss. It's our bread and butter. Neglecting
RSS at work seems to us like pure insanity.
Update: Some readers have said that
"RSS" is too technical and won't be
adopted by people until we call it
something else. As a person with no
technical background, I don't buy that.
Here's my comment in response to that
discussion.
Update 2: Newsgator investor Brad Feld
is one of the most respected VCs among
data driven startups and says I'm totally
wrong about the state of the company. I'm
going to look into it more and will update
this post if my thoughts on the topic
change. The Market Doesn't Look Good
Newsgator, one of those three
companies, announced today that it has
closed another round of funding,
unbelievably it's the 6th time the company
has required an infusion of cash. Years
after Newsgator launched, it appears to us
that the funding is a life-support line for a
company that has largely left enterprise
RSS behind and has been humbled into
selling advertising widgets. After acquiring
Mac and Windows RSS readers that are
still the best products in their class,
NetNewsWire and FeedDemon, and after
launching the best mobile RSS reader on
the market - Newsgator almost never talks
about its RSS products anymore.
KnowNow, the second of the three
companies that used to be discussed in this
market, remade itself as an enterprise RSS
vendor, talked up a big customer list and
then quietly ceased to exist last year. Even
that company's website doesn't exist
anymore.
Attensa, the third of the three, offers a
sophisticated "attention data" based option,
but has been dealing with strange investor
and executive issues for some time. We
hear about a handful of people in the
business world using Attensa's powerful
Outlook plug-in, but not very many. We
hear about next to no one using the
company's feed server product. These
vendors frequently say their customer lists
can't be disclosed, but we don't hear people
talking about using Attensa, either. What
Are People Using?
Almost everyone we talked to said they
are using Google Reader to read their feeds
for work. Using Google Reader at work is
not a serious use of RSS. The program
doesn't support password protected feeds,
something any company using RSS
internally would require, and feeds with
very few subscribers are checked for
updates very infrequently. The mobile
version of Google Reader is suitable for
hobbyists, not enterprise users.
Update: Several readers have objected to
this section and asked "what makes an RSS
reader a business class product? To that I
answered elsewhere and will repost here:
A solid enterprise RSS strategy is
subscribing to key news sources in your
field, your competitors' blogs and search
results, keyword searches, thought leaders
and in the enterprise, internal company
announcements, requests for assistance,
financial, inventory or other information.
Features that make a reader business
class = support for authenticated (pw
protected) feeds, a good mobile version,
local/offline caching, displaying diffs
when items in feed have been changed,
administrative control over dynamic
OPML files, etc. being able to manage the
subscriptions given to new members of a
team.
Daily Digital Newspaper
Other users are reading feeds inside their
email programs. Maybe that works well.
We suspect that many people who combine
email and RSS don't know how to use
either, but we are totally open to being
convinced otherwise. It seems to us that in
order to effectively manage feeds they
should live outside of email, as the two
mediums are very different. What Does it
Mean?
A market without enterprise use of
business class RSS readers is like a flock
of sitting ducks. Any company that steps
up to make serious strategic use of such
software should be at an immediate
advantage in terms of early and efficient
access to information.
These three vendors all served the US
market primarily, the situation may be
different in other parts of the world. If
international competitors start to know
more, faster, than your company and
running circles around you - they may be
using syndication technology that you're
not. Feeling comfortable in a competitive
economy without being skilled in the use
of pull-type information gathering strikes
us as really decadent.
Forrester researcher Oliver Young came
to a similar conclusion when he admitted
that his prediction that 2008 would be a
huge year for enterprise RSS was
completely wrong.
But frankly I'm concerned there is
something more fundamental going wrong
here. At the end of the day enterprise RSS
is predicated on the notion that shoving all
communications through email is too
inefficient and must be augmented with
other communications channels. Is it
possible that people simply don't feel that
pain strongly enough to invest the time and
effort to learn to use RSS?
We are amazed that this software hasn't
caught on, but we presume it's attributable
to the radically new paradigm RSS
represents, poor engineering on the part of
the software makers, customer apathy and
fear of acronyms (like R.S.S.).
We're shaking our heads, but maybe
there's more and better enterprise RSS use
going on than we see. What's it like where
you work?
Discuss
Daily Digital Newspaper
The Rebirth of "Web TV"
By Sarah Perez (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 7:53:11 AM
One of the most apparent trends from this
month's Consumer Electronics Show
(CES), was the proliferation of flat panel,
internet-connected TVs. Nearly every
major television manufacturer was
demonstrating some sort of web-to-TV
integration, including sets that offered
Yahoo widgets, MySpace social
networking, and Netflix built directly into
the TV sets themselves. This isn't the
"Web TV" of days past, but a whole new
way to internet-enable the living room.
This is the year of the "connected TV."
Sponsor
This Isn't Your Parents' Web TV
Remember Web TV? It's still around,
believe it or not, now rebranded as MSN
TV. With a set-top box and keyboard, you
can browse the web from the comfort of
your couch. For whatever reason, it didn't
take off. From personal experience at, after
some initial oohs and aahs, our household
quickly grew bored with our Web TV box.
If you used the service, too, you probably
felt the same.
Why didn't it work? Perhaps people
didn't really want to use a keyboard in their
living room. Or perhaps it just launched
too soon. Its heyday was in the 1990's, a
time when there wasn't as much
compelling content to view. This was long
before the launch of sites like YouTube
and Hulu. Because of this and more, Web
TV never became the revolution that it
intended to be.
But today we're seeing a new attempt to
revive the the goal of bringing the "internet
to your living room." Instead of Web TV,
what we're seeing instead are televisions
being dubbed "connected TVs." The New
Connected TV
Sans set-top box, these new "connected"
TVs have all the web-enabling components
built right in. This apparently is what will
be the reason for their success this time
around...if you believe the hype.
One of the better integrations involves
Netflix's deal with Korea's LG Electronics,
Inc.Their partnership which will deliver a
new line of high-def TVs with the Netflix
service built directly into the set itself.
With 12,000 titles to choose from at
launch, this connected TV is one that's sure
to become quite popular if the company
can get the pricing right.
Other TV manufacturers including
Samsung, Sony, LG, and VIZIO
introduced sets with Yahoo widget
technology integrated into their products.
These widgets don't just provide Yahoo
content like Sports and News, but rather
deliver a platform on which widgets can be
built. Says Yahoo, their platform allows
developers to extend their "brand, services,
and content" to new users by creating TV
widgets using Yahoo's Widget Engine.
Yahoo Widget Engine, Now for the TV
The Yahoo Widget Engine evolved from
the Konfabulator platform, a product that
delivered some of the very first web-
enabled apps that floated on your
computer's desktop. These widgets give
you quick access to information and news
which you can see without having to keep
a browser window open.
Now those same web-enabled widgets
can be ported over to digital TVs. The
Widget Engine provides an entry-level
framework and Widget Development Kit
(WDK) which allows developers to code
for the constrained hardware capabilities of
these new connected TVs. In addition,
Yahoo's Widget Channel API will provide
access to internet technologies including
Konfabulator's JavaScript and XML as
well as HTML.
There are already a few Yahoo! TV
widgets available now and several more
have been announced as coming soon. In
the upcoming section, widgets from
Showtime, Netflix, Blockbuster on
Demand, CinemaNow, The New York
Times, USA Today Sports, CBS Fantasy
Football, Rallypoint Fantasy Sports, Acedo
Funspot Games, Flickr, and, of course,
Yahoo(News, Weather, Finance, and
Video), have been announced. Twitter
from Your TV
Lest we forgot: there will also be a
Twitter widget available. That widget
alone could usher in a whole new area of
interactive television. As we've already
seen on channels like CNN, some reporters
are currently using Twitter to gather real-
time information about events from TV
viewers. Imagine how many more people
could participate if Twitter was enabled on
the television itself. Outside of news, other
shows could potentially use Twitter for
entertainment purposes, enabling a live
back channel where you could Twitter
your thoughts or questions about the
content you were viewing. MySpace
Brings Social Networking to the TV
Among the widgets available today,
Yahoo has announced an eBay widget, a
CBS Entertainment widget, and a
MySpace widget. It's the MySpace one
that's garnered the most press so far as it
will enable two-way interaction with the
social network and your friends while
watching TV.
MySpace widget users will be able to
receive dynamic updates from friends, read
and respond to messages, browse friends'
profiles, photos, and requests, and see
status and mood updates. It takes the
solitary act of watching TV and turns it
into what could be a more social
experience. It's easy to imagine groups of
friends watching shows together,
messaging each other throughout the
viewing.
The MySpace widget, like several others,
will be ad-supported. That raises the
question if these new widgets could
become a source of advertising revenue for
content producers. As more people time
shift TV shows for later viewing, skipping
through the commercials with their remote,
TV shows' advertising revenues have been
affected. Now, TV networks could easily
create and deliver widgets for their most
popular shows, letting fans interact with
each other whenever they watched, as they
do on the numerous forum-like TV
message boards found across the internet
today.
Of course, we could be getting ahead of
ourselves here with that last idea - nothing
of the sort has been announced. Still, we
Web Tech* Apple* 23
think it would be a great idea.(Who
wouldn't want to join a live backchannel of
ABC's "Lost", for example? What is that
smoke monster?)
Will Connected TVs Succeed?
Will the new internet-connected TVs
work where Web TV failed? It's possible.
For one thing, this time we're not just
transplanting the internet in its entirety to
the living room, where many people
already stash their netbooks and notebooks
for the quick Google search or email check
MacMods of the
during their TV viewing.
Instead, the TV experience is simply
being enhanced by the web-enabled
Year for 2008
technologies - which you can choose to use
or not use as you wish. If you're just announced
relaxing, you may want to just enjoy the By Mike Schramm (The Unofficial
normal passive TV experience. But for
certain events - favorite shows, sports, Apple Weblog (TUAW))
breaking news - you may choose to Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:00:00 AM
interact with others via the widgets over
Filed under: Desktops, Hardware,
social media like MySpace and Twitter. Software, Hacks, Cult of Mac,
Other widgets like News and
PowerBook, PowerMac G5, Mods,
Entertainment listings will also be Leopard
convenient ways to get bite-sized
MacMod.com has announced their
information without having to pull out the honorees for the best mods on Macs that
computer.
they saw last year, and you can see all of
The key point here with these new the hacks and mods over at their site right
connected TVs is that the widgets don't
now. Most of the mods are case
interrupt what people think of as the "TV modifications, like the very slick iPhone
experience." Explains Genevieve Bell, an
custom, and the "Xbox G4," as seen above,
anthropologist and director of the user which is a Powerbook G4 modded into the
experience group in Intel's digital-home
case of an Xbox 360(with working ring of
group, people have extremely strong bonds light!).
to their TV sets. "Any effort to add internet
I find it interesting that despite all of the
content needs to be just as simple and not slick case designs and gadget melds, the
interfere with the experiences and behavior
winner ends up being a software hack
patterns the users enjoy." What that means, (well, it's actually more than a software
she says, is that the interaction needs to
hack, but still, you won't find any neon
take place using a conventional remote tubing in this mod, just a beige case):
control - not a computer keyboard or on-
Leopard running on a PowerMac 8500.
screen web browser. The mod itself ends up being a fine trip
The only question that remains is
over the history of Apple's current
whether people will buy a new TV just for software, its past machines, and all of the
the widgets? Probably not. This is a fun
gooey chips and hardware inside. Very
addition, but not a major technology cool. Kudos to all the modders for their
breakthrough like HDTV. Still, if you're
work -- we can't wait to see what 2009
out shopping for a new TV anyway, a brings to the mod community.
connected TV may certainly make your list
TUAW MacMods of the Year for 2008
as one of the sets to consider. Discuss announced originally appeared on The
Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see
our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
24 Web Tech* Apple* World Sport*
What Do You Think? Userfly: Get Usability
RateItAll Rolls Out Insights with One Line of
Additional Social Features Code
By Rick Turoczy (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:00:03 AM
When we last spent time with RateItAll-
roughly 18 months ago - the service had
just released a Flash-based widget
designed to help extend its reach to blogs.
Today, we're checking back in with the
company as it rolls out a new look-and-
feel, accompanied by a number of new
features designed to facilitate
recommendations on practically any topic
imaginable - while increasing the social
aspects of the site for its growing user
base.
Sponsor
As any aficionado of the social Web
knows, one of the biggest benefits of social
networking is the opportunity to access
hundreds - if not thousands - of opinions
with a couple of keystrokes.
Any number of sites have made a
business of focusing on a singular topic -
like movies, music, or restaurants - and
helping users manage social
recommendations within that niche. Some
sites, like Yelp, have chosen to cover a
broader range of topics, like retail outlets
that cover anything from restaurants to
shopping. But few have taken social
recommendations to the extent of
RateItAll, a site that eschews the niche
focus in favor of giving its users the option
of rating anything and everything.
Now, RateItAll has released a number of
new features to increase the social
interaction among its users, including a
new feed format which allows users to
follow streams of reviews based on
FA Cup: Bristol City v Portsmouth - live!
By Barney Ronay (Sport |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:41:09 AM
Barney will be here from 7.15pm.
• FA Cup
• Bristol City
keywords and compatibility quizzes -
similar to the ever-prevalent Facebook
quizzes - which allow RateItAll users to
meet other users with similar interests. In
short, the latest version of RateItAll is
designed to help people find their peers -
and to share their reviews with people who
share similar interests.
Founded in 1999, RateItAll claims to
have "one of the largest collections of
consumer-generated content in the world."
Lately, it has seen growth in its user base
and dataset, a 44% increase since midyear
2008. But, even with its breadth of content,
RateItAll hasn't seen the exponential
growth of some of its younger - and more
focused - competition.
Managed by a small team, the site has
already managed to deliver a nice set of
features and some compelling content
areas. Now, all it needs is the increased
user base to take advantage of the
offerings. It will be interesting to see if
these new social features - plus access to a
new API which has the potential to deliver
more content to the site - spark some of
that exponential growth for RateItAll.
To register for the service, share your
opinions, and try the new features, visit
RateItAll. Discuss
• Portsmouth
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
Feeds
By Rick Turoczy (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:00:11 AM
When it comes to Web design and
development, one thing trumps the latest
technology and cool features: usability.
Why? Because all of the features and
functions in the world are completely
worthless if a human user is unable to
figure out how to use them. But testing
against human factors, creating use cases,
and observing focus groups can prove to
be a costly endeavor for even the largest of
companies.
Now, there's a cost-effective means of
seeing how usable your pages are: Userfly,
a simple way to test your site's usability for
free - with one line of code.
Sponsor
Simply add the Userfly code to your site,
and you'll soon be a fly-on-the-wall as
users walk through your pages. That one
line of code allows Userfly to record a
screencast of your users' behavior,
providing some very interesting feedback
on how they are interacting with your site,
from simple mouse tracking to complex
interactions with AJAX elements.
userfly.com from Chris Estreich on
Vimeo.
The user behavior is recorded for the
entire site visit, following the user from
page to page. Once the user leaves the site,
the capture ends.
Reviewing the walkthroughs is just as
easy. Userfly provides information on the
user's browser, each page visited, and time
spent on each page. Clicking on a
FA Cup: Bristol City v Portsmouth - live!
By Barney Ronay (Sport |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:41:09 AM
Barney will be here from 7.15pm.
• FA Cup
• Bristol City
particular page plays back the interaction,
showing where the user moved his or her
mouse and where he or she clicked. Once
you're finished watching, you're prompted
to rate the usefulness of the capture. Then,
you can decide to keep it or discard it.
Even during a short test, I found Userfly
incredibly helpful - given that a number of
users stopped by as I was testing the app.
In fact, the only complaint I had was that
the walkthrough fails to automatically pan
as the user scrolls. Meaning? Meaning you
have to manually scroll to keep up with the
mouse movements - which I found to be
nearly impossible on lengthy posts.
When the user didn't scroll, however, I
found myself replaying the walkthroughs
over and over. It was invaluable to see how
other users see and use the pages that I find
so familiar. Suffice it to say, I immediately
noticed areas for improvement.
Userfly will allow you to record 10 users
per hour, monitoring basic events for free.
Those who are interested in more users per
hour and more advanced events can
contact Userfly for a quote.
How are people using your site?
Wouldn't you like to know? Grab the code
at Userfly and take a look at your site
through someone else's eyes. Discuss
• Portsmouth
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
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Daily Digital Newspaper
iPhone dev asks
cracker to stop,
cracker says to sit on it
By Aron Trimble (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:00:00 PM
Filed under: Apple, App Store,
Jailbreak/pwnage Let's say you are a
developer and want to have a go at this
whole "iPhone" platform. Let's also say
that you lay out the money to register with
Apple, spend about 250 hours to develop
an addictive and entertaining game, and
manage to get it approved for sale in the
App Store.
If you have made it this far, as James and
Constance Bossert of Fairlady Media have,
then you probably would be excited to see
a sudden spike in application usage... but
according to a post at TorrentFreak, that
was only the beginning of the Bosserts'
problems. When usage shot up for their
app " Whack 'em all" (iTunes link) without
a corresponding increase in revenue, James
went to work figuring out why. The bad
news: his app had been cracked and was
being distributed, for free, for use on
jailbroken devices.
Continue reading iPhone dev asks
cracker to stop, cracker says to sit on it
TUAW iPhone dev asks cracker to stop,
cracker says to sit on it originally appeared
on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Daily Digital Newspaper
Adobe's LiveCycle
Powered by Amazon
By Bernard Lunn (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:30:00 PM
When we put Amazon Web Services
(AWS) in our list of top 10 enterprise
products of 2008, a few readers were
skeptical that AWS was enterprise ready.
This is a perception issue that Amazon
faces. Amazon needs more partners that
build apps for the enterprise. Adobe,
meanwhile, wants to convince the kind of
developers who love AWS that they should
develop more business apps using its
LiveCycle platform. This is the context for
Adobe's announcement today that
LiveCycle will be powered by AWS.
Sponsor
J2EE Stack On AWS
Basically, what Adobe has done is put a
Red Hat JBoss J2EE stack on AWS and
deployed LiveCycle on the stack. This will
make the prototyping, developing, and
testing cycle a lot easier and should bring a
lot more developers to the Adobe
LiveCycle platform.
The type of applications that are
typically developed on LiveCycle are write
-intensive and transactional; in other
words, not the type that AWS is best suited
for. When I asked the Adobe team about
this, they said that the announcement was
about using AWS as a development and
testing platform, not necesarily as a
deployment platform.
So Adobe is taking this step by step,
Championship: Reading's
Leroy Lita turns down move
to Sheffield United
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:58:08 AM
Reading striker Leroy Lita has turned
down the chance to replace James Beattie
at Sheffield United
usually a wise move in the enterprise
space. Why LiveCycle?
For those who don't know LiveCycle,
here are my Cliffs Notes:
• It has been around for 5 years (so you
really should know about it by now!). We
looked at it in detail when Update 1 was
announced back in June of last year.
• It performs Business Process
Management (BPM): you know, all those
sign-offs that have to happen before
someone gets paid.
• It leverages AIR and Flex to give you
rich Internet and mobile features. Adobe
shows this to some effect with a demo
featuring an insurance claims process for a
car accident; the kind with those diagrams
of where on the road the accident
happened and gory pictures of a banged-up
Prius.
Our Take
Dynamic BPM, in which processes need
to adapt quickly to the real world, is a big
deal. Adobe sure understands documents,
and BPM, in the end, is all about
documents. Putting LiveCycle on AWS
will make the prototyping, development,
and testing cycle quicker and enable more
developers to quickly start working with
the platform and making money.
What do you think? Do you use
LiveCycle? Will you look at it now that it
is on AWS? Discuss
Football: Robin van Persie has said that Arsenal can win
trophies this year with current squad
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:02:13 AM
The Arsenal striker has maintained that
Championship: Reading's Leroy Lita turns down move to Sheffield United
(Sport | guardian.co.uk)
The YouTube Government:
Why Is YouTube Getting
Preferential Treatment?
By Frederic Lardinois
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 6:30:04 PM
Lately, there has been a trend for
government agencies and elected officials
to put their videos up on YouTube. While
we commend them for doing so, we can't
help but wonder if this is, in the end, a
positive trend. After all, while YouTube is
definitely the most popular video sharing
site, it is definitely not the only one. Yet,
as we reported this morning, Congress is
putting its videos on the site now, and
President-elect Barack Obama is also
making regular appearances on Google's
popular video sharing service.
Sponsor
In Obama's defense, we have to say,
though, that his team put his weekly "
YouTube addresses" up on Yahoo and
AOL as well, but the default still seems to
be YouTube. Why Shouldn't They Use
YouTube?
YouTube is not a public service but a
commercial enterprise. Google might, one
day, decided to just shut it down, and take
its archive with it. One might argue that
this is unlikely, but it could happen.
A stronger argument against favoring
YouTube, however, is that it does look like
preferential treatment of a service that is
already close to being a monopoly. Given
that services like TubeMogul make it
incredibly easy to post videos to a large
variety of online video services, there is
really no excuse for government officials
to only post videos to YouTube except for
being ignorant about the alternatives.
Arsène Wenger can guide the current
squad to success in the coming year
Reading striker Leroy Lita has turned
down the chance to replace James Beattie
Web Tech* Apple* World Sport*
As for the new Congress sites, even
though this is a bipartisan effort, it would
still be in the government's best interest to
avoid any appearance of a conflict of
interest. Google after all is a major donor
to the Obama campaign. No Ads - But
Lots of Status
Also, while Google doesn't directly profit
from these government videos (at least we
haven't seen any ads on these videos yet),
it does turn YouTube into even more of a
household name and extends its status as
the de-facto video sharing site. Host
Videos In-House?
Congress and the White House probably
have enough in-house technical know-how
to host their own videos or put their videos
on a white-label site. While we commend
the members of Congress who put their
own videos on YouTube, we would also
like to see them use Vimeo, Viddler,
blip.tv, and others.
On the other hand, though, YouTube is
where the audience is, so putting videos on
there makes perfect sense, but we would
argue that it shouldn't be the only place to
find videos of our elected officials. Discuss
at Sheffield United
25
Sling getting
serious about
the iPhone
By Mel Martin (The Unofficial Apple
Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:00:00 AM
Filed under: Multimedia, Software,
iPhone, App Store Sling Media now has a
web page up on their site with a nice demo
of Slingplayer Mobile for the iPhone, due
to hit the app store sometime later this
year.
It's been a long time coming, as people
were breathlessly looking for this
functionality when the iPhone first came
out. 3G capability made us even surer that
it would arrive, but a lot of time went by
and SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone was
nowhere to be seen.
Now that it's been demonstrated at
Macworld, it seems a lot more real, and
Sling Media says they are submitting it to
the app store in this quarter. They are also
providing a form so you can send in your
email address and be notified when the
happy day arrives.
Hopefully Apple and AT&T will bless
the app and iPhone users can move on and
get their hopes up for that next big thing.
TUAW Sling getting serious about the
iPhone originally appeared on The
Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see
our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
26 Web Tech* Apple* U.S. Sport*
Firefox to Adopt Chrome's If at First You Don't Succeed:
Tab Ordering Feature Mozilla Releases New Version
By Sarah Perez (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 5:56:33 AM
One of the best features in Google's
Chrome browser is the way it handles tabs.
In Chrome, when you click a link, the tab
that opens appears to the immediate right
of the current tab. It may seem like a small
thing, but when you have so many tabs
open in Firefox that they spill off the sides
of the screen, having to scroll to the end to
see the new web page is annoying and
inefficient.
Sponsor
According to Mike Beltzner, Director of
Firefox at Mozilla, the Firefox web
browser will soon be changing the way in
which new tabs are opened. Like in
Chrome, new tabs in Firefox will open to
the immediate right of the tab you are on.
If multiple tabs are opened in the
background from links clicked, they will
open sequentially to the right of each other.
New tabs created by the "New Tab" button
or the keyboard shortcut will still open at
the end of the tab strip, as they do now.
Says Beltzner, the goal is to have tabs
that are related grouped together. The
change will be landing on the trunk shortly
and then they will decide whether or not to
take it to Firefox 3.1.(Please do!)
Tabs, tabs, everywhere
The tab ordering feature is one of the
little things that doesn't get a lot of
attention when people talk about Google
Chrome. Instead, the focus is on the
WebKit engine, the lightweight feel, the
speed, and, of course, the lack of RSS (the
Ballmer hearts iPhone, at least a little bit
By Aron Trimble (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 1/13/2009 11:00:00 AM
Filed under: iPhone Our friend & former
colleague David Chartier has a piece up
over at Ars Technica with the sordid
details of one Steve Ballmer's new-found
love affair (well, more of a like affair) with
Apple's iPhone. Prior to the iPhone's
horror!). However, if you often switch
between Chrome and Firefox, you're
probably frustrated when you start opening
tabs in Firefox and they end up at the end
of a long list of your open sites, forcing to
you to scroll to see them.
Getting tab ordering right is not as minor
as it seems. When it's right, it "just works"
and you don't even really have to think
about it. Minor features like this are the
sort of things that you can't quite put your
finger on when people ask you why you
prefer your Chrome browser - you just
know that you like it better. It just seems
easier to use in some way.
Chrome showed us how tab ordering
should work and we can't wait to see
Firefox adopt this useful feature.
Image credit: tabs by Inju Discuss
triumphant launch, his Steve-ness
(Ballmer, that is) proclaimed the iPhone
had "no chance" at success in the
marketplace.
According to Ars, in a recent interview,
Ballmer was quoted saying the iPhone has
"clear market momentum." Now if that
isn't the definition of understatement, then
I don't know what is. With the recent
release of multiple apps for the iPhone, it
of Snowl Messaging Plugin
By Frederic Lardinois
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:30:15 AM
Snowl is Mozilla's experimental attempt
at creating a unified messaging client for
Firefox. When we first reviewed Mozilla's
Snowl, it looked like a promising project,
but ultimately didn't live up to its promise.
The new version, which was released
yesterday, is vastly superior to the first, but
still has a lot of usability issues. It does,
however, also clearly show that the project
still holds a lot of promise.
Sponsor
A Prettier River of News
One major advantage of this new version
is the improved 'River of News,' which is
now beautifully presented. Also, you can
now send Twitter messages right from the
Snowl toolbar, which is nice, but we would
still like to see the promised integration
with other messaging services like
Facebook, AIM, or Google Talk. It would
also be nice if Snowl integrated Twitter
replies right from the interface, but as of
now, that isn't possible.
While these new features are nice, Snowl
is also still very rough around its edges. It
is relatively hard to actually subscribe to a
feed in Snowl, for example. Also, you can't
set how often your RSS feeds and Twitter
subscriptions are refreshed. Sources and
Authors
One 'feature' we didn't like in the first
version of Snowl has thankfully been
fixed: When you display your
subscriptions, Snowl's last version insisted
is clear that Microsoft is willing to
acknowledge, and promote, iPhone's
on showing every single one of your
Twitter contacts as a separate entity, right
there with your regular RSS subscriptions.
Now, you can go from this 'flat' model to a
more traditional hierarchical model that
separates sources like RSS feeds and your
Twitter stream), from authors. The
Philosophy Behind Snowl
While we have been critical of the
implementation, we do like the philosophy
behind Snowl and think that it is a
worthwhile experiment. We do like the
idea of conversations and people being
treated as first-class objects, for example,
though the current implementation of this
still feels a bit clumsy. Discuss
presence in the mobile space.
While we at TUAW may not be the
biggest supporters of Microsoft[except for
the MacBU, love you, don't change --Ed.]
it is definitely nice to hear a bit of praise
from another mobile platform vendor.
What say you, dear commenters, is
Microsoft really drinking the Apple Kool-
Aid, or are they merely biding their time
until the release of their own Zune-phone
Daily Digital Newspaper
Rickey, Rice Take
Place in History
By jonasvoss (AOL News)
You may notice that we've discussed Bert
Blyleven and Mark McGwire and Tim
Raines this afternoon at FanHouse (with
Jim Rice coming soon), but no one's said
much about Rickey Henderson -- the guy
that pulled almost 95 percent of the vote.
This isn't meant as a slight to Rickey, but
rather it's a form of compliment. What can
we possibly add to the conversation about
a guy that had a career .401 OBP, stole
1,406 bases, and is well-documented as
one of the greatest characters in the history
of baseball?
The Wrath of Big Blue
By starkey00 (AOL News)
Some Giants fans weren't too happy after
their team got bounced from the playoffs
by the Eagles, and took out their
frustrations on a Porsche and a Toyota in
the parking lot. AOL's Shane Bacon has
the video that could land them in hot
water.
of sorts, with the next-est-gen version of
Windows Mobile?
TUAW Ballmer hearts iPhone, at least a
little bit originally appeared on The
Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see
our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Daily Digital Newspaper
Michelle Goldberg: The American media Economic rescue package
gets tough on Israel may not be enough, Ben
By Michelle Goldberg (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:00:02 AM
Bernanke tells Obama
It's a common, almost clichéd observation
that the American media is less critical of
Israeli policy than the Israeli media. In
mainstream American depictions of the
ceaseless misery of the Middle East, Israeli
righteousness and Arab violence are
routinely emphasised. The reality of Israeli
settlements and Palestinian suffering have
been, at best, a footnote.
Conservatives often complain that the
news isn't even more biased toward the
Jewish state – or the most hawkish
elements within it – but such carping both
obscures and reinforces the real distortion
in American Middle East coverage, serving
as a pre-emptive warning to any outlet that
might show too much sympathy for the
Palestinians. (The crudeness of Israel's
most vociferous detractors on the far left
doesn't help, since it further marginalises
criticism of Israel as the preserve of cranks
who can't see a difference between Dachau
and Jenin.)
Slowly, though, something is changing.
As Israel pulverises Gaza, questions and
doubts about Israeli policy are becoming
more prominent in the American media.
The failure of the war in Iraq and the
attendant discrediting of neoconservatism
has opened up new space in the American
conversation. With the American right
dejected and weakened, there's less
pressure on the press to display the kind of
boorish one-sidedness that self-
congratulatory conservatives like to call "
moral clarity". Israel's disproportionate
retaliation in Gaza is increasingly
recognised as both brutal and, in all
likelihood, ultimately futile. In destroying
Gaza, Israel is also destroying the
American taboo that has ensured the
country such unstintingly favourable media
coverage.
On December 31, CNN took on the
contentious question of whether Israel or
Hamas broke the ceasefire, precipitating
the current fighting. First, the network
aired a clip of the liberal Palestinian
legislator Mustafa Barghouti saying: "The
world press community or media
community is overwhelmed with the
Israeli narrative, which is incorrect. The
Israeli spokespersons have been spreading
lies all over. The reality and the truth is
that the side that broke this truce and this
ceasefire was Israel. Two months before it
ended, Israel started attacking Rafah,
started attacking Hamas and never lifted
the blockade on Gaza." Ordinarily, TV
journalists would follow such a clip – if
they even aired it in the first place – with
one of Israel making its case, and would
stop at that, leaving an audience already
predisposed against the Palestinians to sort
out the truth. Instead, anchor Rick Sanchez
did something that should be
commonplace, but sadly is not: he
endeavoured to find out who was right.
"And you know what we did? I've
checked with some of the folks here at our
international desk, and I went to them and
asked: 'What was he talking about, and do
we have any information on that?'" said
Sanchez. And he reported that his sources
confirmed that Barghouti was right.
Since then, questioning and outright
condemning Israeli actions have become
increasingly common in the establishment
press. On January 8, the op-ed page of the
New York Times ran three opinion pieces
critical of Israel. "When it is shelled by its
neighbour, Israel has to do something,"
wrote columnist Nick Kristof. "But Israel's
right to do something doesn't mean it has
the right to do anything." Last week, a new
issue of Time magazine appeared, its cover
showing a star of David behind rows of
barbed wire and the headline"Why Israel
can't win". The extremely conservative
Wall Street Journal opinion page ran a
piece by George Bisharat with the
headline"Israel is committing war crimes".
"Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip
cannot be justified by self-defence," it
began. "Rather, it involves serious
violations of international law, including
war crimes. … Hamas fighters have also
violated the laws of warfare, but their
misdeeds do not justify Israel's acts."
No doubt, some of Israel's most
aggressive partisans are going to be
alarmed by this sudden shift in the
American discourse. They're used to
dismissing the world's criticism of Israel as
the mutterings of antisemites and bien-
pensant third-worldists. The US has been a
cocoon that protects Israel and its
advocates from facing harsh judgments.
But Israel has been ill served by America's
endless indulgence. What is happening in
Gaza endangers, first and foremost, the
benighted people who live there and who
are dying by the hundreds. It also
endangers Israel itself, pushing already
elusive prospects for peace ever more out
of reach.
An American media that turned a blind
eye to Israeli expansionism and human
rights abuses ultimately made the Jewish
state less, not more, secure. Without the
US putting pressure on Israel to dismantle
the settlements and loosen the blockade in
Gaza, leaders there had neither the
incentive nor the political cover to do so.
Now that the American press is displaying
a bit of courage in facing an unfolding
catastrophe abetted by American
leadership, perhaps our politicians will
have room to do the same.
• United States
• Israel and the Palestinian territories
• Gaza
• Middle East
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
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By Heather Stewart (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 7:29:40 AM
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US
Federal Reserve, has warned Barack
Obama to be ready to take fresh action to
bail out America's banks if the world
economy is to recover.
Speaking at the London School of
Economics this lunchtime, Bernanke said
the fiscal package planned by the incoming
president would provide a "significant
boost" to the US economy but the
government would need to do more to
stabilise the financial system.
"In my view, fiscal actions are unlikely to
promote a lasting recovery unless they are
accompanied by strong measures to further
stabilise and strengthen the financial
system," he said.
With the price of many assets still
plunging, he said the $250bn programme
for recapitalising America's banks might
not be enough, and "more capital injections
and guarantees may become necessary to
ensure stability and the normalisation of
credit markets". Options included the
Treasury buying toxic assets, or separating
them off into a so-called "bad bank".
Bernanke outlined the "toolkit" the Fed
has used to unblock the flow of credit to
the US economy, but denied that the
measures it had taken so far amounted to
SF-bound with wifi
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:00:00 AM
I just got on the inbound BART from the
Berkeley station, and I have wifi through
the Cradlepoint but I don't have a net
connection because we're underground.
However, in a few minutes, between
Ashby and MacArthur, we will emerge and
my router should be able to establish a
World* Special* 27
"quantitative easing", the radical approach
taken by the Japanese authorities to pull
the economy out of its "lost decade" in the
1990s.
Instead, the chairman coined the term
"credit easing" for his approach, which is
targeted at specific areas of the economy
where funding is short.
Asked when he expected to see an end to
the rapid pace of job losses in the US,
where more than 500,000 workers were
laid off in December, Bernanke said he
hoped that by the second half of this year it
would be possible to "stop the bleeding",
so long as the problems in the credit
markets had been resolved.
He promised that even with interest rates
now at zero to 0.25%, the Fed still had
plenty of ammunition available and would
act "aggressively" to promote a global
economic recovery.
• US economy
• Global economy
• Global recession
• US economic growth and recession
• Credit crunch
• Banking
• Barack Obama
• United States
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
Feeds
connection. This probably will happen a
lot faster than if I had used the software on
my laptop to connect cause it's pretty
clunky and slow and sometimes takes two
or three times to connect. The Cradlepoint
seems to do this much better.
And you'll know it's working because
you're reading this.
28 World*
Keith Kahn-Harris: British Jews and
Israel: a new relationship?
By Keith Kahn-Harris (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:00:03 AM
It didn't look like a revolutionary
declaration – a small group of leading
Jewish communal figures calling for an
Israeli ceasefire in Gaza in a letter to last
Sunday's Observer– but it has the potential
to herald a new era in the British Jewish
community's relationship with Israel. The
letter, signed by the heads of the Liberal
and Reform Judaism as well as a number
of other well-respected rabbis, academics
and communal leaders, was explicit in
affirming the signatories' concerns for
Israel's security but asserted that the
deadliness of Israel's assault on Hamas
would "strengthen extremism, destabilise
the region, and exacerbate tensions inside
Israel".
This call for a ceasefire is hardly radical.
Fears that the suffering caused by the war
will only make peace harder by sending
Palestinians further into the arms of the
extremists is widely shared in the west,
even among those who usually support
Israel. In Israel, while a large majority of
the population favour the war, there is little
optimism as to its ultimate effectiveness.
Even many of those who are supportive of
the attempt to crush Hamas are upset by
the high numbers of civilian casualties –
the attempt to reclassify civilians as "
human shields" speaks volumes about this
discomfort. What is significant and novel
about the letter to the Observer is not its
argument, but the willingness of
mainstream Jewish communal leaders to
criticise Israel, albeit mildly, during one its
military campaigns.
British Jews have never been united
about Israel. In recent years, there have
been repeated occasions when groups of
Jews have collectively criticised Israel,
most recently in the formation of the group
Independent Jewish Voices in 2007 which
asserted its right to depart from the
unswerving support for Israel shown by
representative Jewish bodies. Most of these
attempts at dissent were relatively small-
scale, dominated (although by no means
exclusively) by secular Jews who were
marginalised by the mainstream Jewish
community. Since Zionism became a
communal orthodoxy in the post-second
world war period, and certainly since 1967,
the vast majority of British Jewish
communal bodies have stressed the need
for communal unity in demonstrating
solidarity with Israel.
British Jews who have felt discomfort
with Israeli actions have generally been
faced with a bleak choice: to express this
discomfort privately and quietly or be
marginalised and perhaps even ostracised.
This choice is even more difficult given
the apparently cavalier attitude of many
pro-Palestinian activists to Jewish concerns
at the antisemitism of sections of those
who attend Palestinian solidarity marches.
Yet in the wake of the war in Gaza a
third option might be starting to open up.
The Observer letter crystallises the views
of the many people who have been
appalled by Hamas's bombardment of
southern Israel, who define themselves as
proud Zionists, yet who are horrified by
the suffering caused to the residents of
Gaza and feel that it will be counter-
productive to the stated aims of improving
Israel's security. The letter catches a mood:
since the war started I have been struck by
the many conversations I have had with
Jews that are involved with the British
Jewish community but who are finding the
conflict excruciating and feel desperately
torn, yet are deeply suspicious of the
extremist rhetoric of some pro-Palestinian
campaigners such as George Galloway.
Jewish communal leaders have
frequently argued that their unwavering
support for Israel reflects the views of the
majority of British Jews and they have
generally been right, at least with respect
to those Jews who are affiliated in some
way with the organised community. But it
is becoming clear, certainly in the case of
the Gaza conflict, that the Jewish
community is not unified and that Jewish
representative organisations are going to
have to respond to this fact. Last Sunday's
rally in support of Israel in Trafalgar
Square superficially looked like a mass
demonstration of "Israel right or wrong".
But if you look closely it is clear that the
organisers of the rally needed to make
some gestures to keep those discomforted
by the war on board: the rhetoric was
overwhelmingly one of peace and a
collection was taken in aid of hospitals in
Israel and Gaza. Gesture politics maybe,
but gestures that reflect efforts to keep a
diverse range of institutions and
individuals on board. For all this effort,
attendance was relatively low compared to
similar such rallies in the past, although the
suggestion to not bring children and fears
of antisemitic attacks may also have played
a role here.
Over recent decades, Jewish
representative institutions and cross-
communal bodies have come gradually to
reflect the religious diversity of the
community. The community now needs to
move towards recognising the diversity of
British Jews' views on Israel. The war in
Gaza represents the first signs that this is
starting to happen.
• Judaism
• Israel and the Palestinian territories
• Gaza
• Middle East
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
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Israel and US offer differing
reports on ceasefire
resolution abstention
By Ewen MacAskill (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:45:53 AM
The US and Israel offered conflicting
accounts today over alleged Israeli
intervention to prevent the US voting for a
United Nations ceasefire resolution last
week, a move that apparently left the US
secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice,
humiliated.
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert,
speaking at a meeting in Ashkelon in
southern Israel last night, claimed that he
had been forced to call George Bush, the
US president, to override Rice. According
to Olmert, Rice had been planning to vote
with the other members of the security
council for the resolution.
But the resolution was passed with 14
votes for, and one abstention.
Olmert, in a speech in Hebrew, is
reported to have said: "When we saw that
the secretary of state, for reasons we did
not really understand, wanted to vote in
favour of the UN resolution ... I looked for
President Bush and they told me he was in
Philadelphia making a speech.
"I said, 'I don't care. I have to talk to him
now'. They got him off the podium,
brought him to another room and I spoke
Daily Digital Newspaper
to him. I told him, 'You can't vote in favour
of this resolution.' He said, 'Listen, I don't
know about it, I didn't see it, I'm not
familiar with the phrasing.'"
Olmert said: "He gave an order to the
secretary of state and she did not vote in
favour of it - a resolution she cooked up,
phrased, organised and manoeuvred for.
She was left pretty shamed and abstained
on a resolution she arranged."
Gordon Johndroe, a White House
spokesman, said today: "I've seen these
press reports. They are inaccurate."
Olmert's version coincides with the one
offered up by other members of the
security council the day after the vote.
It is also known that Rice had been
planning a press conference before the vote
but abruptly cancelled it to take a call from
Bush.
• Israel and the Palestinian territories
• George Bush
• United Nations
• Gaza
• United States
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
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Daily Digital Newspaper World* Apple* Entertainment* 29

Former Guantánamo guard reunited with Safari RSS vulnerability

British detainees might reveal your personal
By Duncan Campbell (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:37:27 AM
data
A former Guantánamo Bay guard has
joined forces with released detainees in
Britain to expose the torture inflicted by
interrogators at the camp.
The former soldier has kicked off a tour
of Britain this week to talk about the
techniques used by US interrogators and
express his regret over the handling of
inmates at the controversial detention
camp, which Barack Obama has promised
to close on taking office.
Chris Arendt, from Michigan, joined the
army shortly after September 11, aged 17,
and was sent to work as a guard in
Guantánamo two years later, in 2003. After
becoming disillusioned with what he saw
there, he left the army and joined the
campaign group Iraq Veterans Against the
War. "It was like sitting down with a
bunch of brothers," said Arendt about
meeting a dozen former inmates in London
yesterday. "It was really natural, a really
organic fit." He said he was held in
immigration for seven hours before being
allowed to enter Britain as officials were
suspicious that he might try to settle in the
UK.
As a guest of the human rights group
Cageprisoners, Arendt is to address 21
public meetings, including events in
Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow and
Liverpool, alongside former detainees.
Although a lawyer warned Arendt that he
could be charged with treason, the former
guard said he did not believe the US
government would pursue him through the
courts because Guantánamo had become
so discredited.
"I've stayed off the grid since I started
speaking out," he said. "I'm constantly
changing my cell phone number."
Arendt said he felt compelled to speak
out about the treatment of prisoners at the
camp. Among techniques used to
disorientate prisoners were "frequent flyer"
programmes, whereby detainees would be
moved from their cell every hour, night
and day. The process was a lengthy one, he
said, because of the "three-piece suits" the
prisoners wore: three sets of shackles
around their hands, waist and ankles.
Although he described some of his
fellow guards as "psychotic", he added: "A
lot of guys are not bad people; just regular
guys – working class – doing their job, but
what was definitely a minority saw it as a
chance to go free-range and hog-wild
about their fantasy of killing a 'raghead'. A
lot of them wanted combat and were
frustrated that they weren't in Iraq, so they
made the environment as violent as they
could."
Prisoners were shackled to the floors of
their cells while loud music was blasted at
them for hours, he added. "All I knew
about Guantánamo Bay when I first went
there was that there were iguanas and
banana rats – they're gigantic – and there
would be jet-skiing and scuba diving."
Arendt said he began to talk to inmates
to learn about their lives. This was
regarded as "fraternising with the enemy"
and he was moved to different duties.
One former detainee, Tarek, with whom
he has been reunited in England, he
remembered instantly. "I'm never going to
forget his face, I probably could have
drawn it," Arendt said.
He recalled they had an argument over
the number of sheets of toilet paper
inmates were permitted.
The two have since got to know each
other, Arendt said, adding: "It's been really
cool having this dialogue." He said talking
now about what had happened in the camp
was hard: "I've had to admit a lot about my
behaviour and I'm sick of hearing my own
voice."
Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo
detainee who is travelling with Arendt,
said the experience of being reunited with
a former guard had been "truly unique ...
We embraced like brothers, like we knew
one another." He said that while the public
had become familiar with the experiences
of detainees, the guards' stories were
barely known.
The issue now, said Begg, was what was
happening to the 250 or so remaining
Guantánamo inmates. About 50 of them
have been cleared by US authorities but
there are no countries willing to take them.
Begg said of all the European nations
asked to accept former inmates, only
Albania, which has so far allowed five to
enter, had opened its doors. "The other
countries need to put their money where
their mouth is," he added.
• Guantánamo Bay
• Global terrorism
• Torture
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
Feeds
By Michael Rose (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:30:00 AM
Filed under: Security When reports of
security issues in Apple's Safari browser
come over the transom, they get our
attention. When they're exploitable in both
the Mac and Windows versions of Safari,
they get our full and undivided attention.
When the person reporting them is Brian
Mastenbrook(credited with discovering
multiple previous vulnerabilities in Mac
OS X)... well, someone shut off that damn
klaxon and let us get back to work. In this
case, the issue is that a hole in Safari's
handling of RSS feeds could allow an
attacker (via a malicious web page) to
capture a user's personal information,
cookies or even passwords. commenters) are free for the downloading,
While Brian has not posted more details as is the Reader Notifier helper app that
of the vulnerability publicly, he has interacts with Google Reader-- for the
acknowledgment from Apple that the issue purposes of getting around the
exists; hopefully we will see an update vulnerability, it doesn't matter which
soon that closes this hole. In the meantime, application you choose as long as you don't
although Windows Safari users are advised leave it set to the default of having Safari
to use a different browser to avoid the do its own RSS chores. Note that the
vulnerability, Mac users can simply set an vulnerability apparently does not require
alternative RSS feed handler to work you to open a feed in Safari to be affected -
around the issue. - a specially-constructed webpage is
To change your feed handler, go to capable of triggering it.
Safari's Preferences and click the RSS Thanks to Brian for the heads up &
button. If you have any other capable feed everyone who sent this in.
reader on your machine, you can select it TUAW Safari RSS vulnerability might
from the list (if your menu looks like mine reveal your personal data originally
does in the screenshot, you have a serious appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog
problem with RSS reader addiction and (TUAW) on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:30:00
you need immediate help). Don't have EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
another feed reader available? Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
NetNewsWire and NewsFire(and the open-
source Vienna, cited repeatedly by our

TV Guide drops The CW from their grid

By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 8:03:00 AM
Filed under: Industry, OpEd, Reality-Free
I don't watch anything on The CW, but I
know that there are a lot of people who do.
Gossip Girl, Supernatural, Smallville,
90210, One Tree Hill, Privileged. It's
always the last channel in the ratings of the
big five networks (including ABC, CBS,
FOX, and NBC), but these shows have
their fans. So it's a little odd that TV Guide
would drop the network from its grid(scroll
down).
Yup, the long-running magazine says
that there just isn't enough room to list all
of the channels now, so they've gotten rid
of The CW and other channels recently,
including MTV and their own TV Guide
Network (though that was just sold to
Lionsgate).
Continue reading TV Guide drops The
CW from their grid
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30 Apple* Religion*
Slide to Play plays games
at Macworld, because I
didn't
By Mike Schramm (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:00:00 AM
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming,
Humor, Software, Odds and ends, Apple,
iPhone, App Store
Felt a little bit of acid in my posts lately?
Getting an icy vibe off of my writing for
the past week? There's no hard feelings to
Rose, Christina, or any of the other
TUAWers at Macworld (they did an
awesome job covering everything), but
yes, I was a little bummed that I didn't get
to go. This was probably the best show for
iPhone games ever, and (like many of you,
I suppose) as I watched all of the meetup
and demo tweets go by, yes, I steamed a
little bit.
But it's OK, because Slide to Play ended
up doing exactly what I would have done
at Macworld: meet game developers and
challenge random people to iPhone games,
and they've put it all in video format so I
and you other gamers can live vicariously
through them. On the way, their host gets
beaten by a little kid (which never would
have happened if it was me), and they do
get in good chats with the guys from
Freeverse and Iconfactory about their
current (and future) gaming plans.
It's fine. I didn't need to go to Macworld
anyway. I had a perfectly fun time sitting
here in Chicago, getting buried in snow
and playing Samurai Puzzle Battle Arcade
all by my lonely self. Who needs
Macworld, right? Sigh.
Video in the continuation of the post.
Thanks Steve!
Continue reading Slide to Play plays
games at Macworld, because I didn't
TUAW Slide to Play plays games at
Macworld, because I didn't originally
appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog
(TUAW) on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:00:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
iPhone nano rumors piling
up
By Robert Palmer (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:00:00 PM
Filed under: Rumors, iPhone
Rumor sites are abuzz this morning with
news from the Far East noting that two
Taiwanese chip manufacturers will likely
receive orders for a new "iPhone nano."
Taiwan's Economic Daily News ran a
story suggesting that Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
and United Microelectronics Corporation
will win contracts for iPhone nano
components.
MacRumors suggests that the device
might not be headed for the United States,
either: this device could be released first in
China. American Technology Research
analyst Brian Marshall says that the device
is not being tested by AT&T. In
September, rumors suggested that China
Mobile asked Apple for a limited version
of the iPhone, omitting Wi-Fi and 3G
networking.
This comes on the heels of a screenshot
sent in by tipster John, which shows a
device labeled "iPhone nano" appearing in
the iTunes Connect service used by App
Store developers. Earlier, drawings of
Macworld 2009: Interview with VMware's Peter
Kazanjy
By Chris Ullrich (The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW))
Submitted at 1/12/2009 5:00:00 PM
Filed under: Macworld, Enterprise,
Software, Video In the world of desktop
and enterprise virtualization for the Mac,
two companies, VMWare and Parallels,
top the list. Each offers a suite of products
designed to meet the needs of
virtualization aficionados -- whether they
need to run a rack full of servers or just use
Outlook to check email.
At last week's Macworld Expo, TUAW's
protective cases surfaced inside China's
manufacturing community.
Shaking the magic eight-ball, all signs
point to yes. While clearly not ready for
Macworld last week, the same Economic
Daily News report notes that a new iPhone
device might be slated for a June release at
the earliest.
TUAW iPhone nano rumors piling up
originally appeared on The Unofficial
Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 13 Jan
2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Michael Rose visited the VMWare booth
and spoke with the company's Peter
Kazanjy to get all the latest info on their
VMWare Fusion product for the Mac and
Daily Digital Newspaper
Got news?
Kristof reports
hard truth
By dpulliam
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:05:05 AM
As part of our new effort to highlight
opinion columnist and their work that
could have and should have been covered
as straight news, I wanted to highlight a
pair of articles by Nicholas Kristof of The
New York Times. The first, which dates
just before Christmas, highlights some
interesting statistics purporting to show
that “[w]e liberals are personally stingy.”
Kristof places himself willingly in the
category of being a liberal and goes on to
criticize everyone from Democrats to
residents of “Northeastern states” for not
living up, in their personal lives, to their
political proclamations of helping those
who are less-well-off than themselves.
Sounds like an excellent topic for a news
story, but Kristof’s column provides an
excellent substitute.
I was pleasantly surprised that Kristof
some news that will be of particular
interest to those of you wanting to play
some cool Windows-only games.
Click through to check it out.
Continue reading Macworld 2009:
Interview with VMware's Peter Kazanjy
TUAW Macworld 2009: Interview with
VMware's Peter Kazanjy originally
appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog
(TUAW) on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:00:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Daily Digital Newspaper
GOT
continued from page 30
spent a good portion of this column
dealing with the claim that conservatives
are merely giving their money to their
churches:
When liberals see the data on giving,
they tend to protest that conservatives look
good only because they shower dollars on
churches — that a fair amount of that
money isn’t helping the poor, but simply
constructing lavish spires.
It’s true that religion is the essential
reason conservatives give more, and
religious liberals are as generous as
religious conservatives. Among the
stingiest of the stingy are secular
conservatives.
According to Google’s figures, if
donations to all religious organizations are
excluded, liberals give slightly more to
charity than conservatives do. But Mr.
Brooks says that if measuring by the
percentage of income given, conservatives
are more generous than liberals even to
secular causes.
In any case, if conservative donations
often end up building extravagant
churches, liberal donations frequently
sustain art museums, symphonies, schools
and universities that cater to the well-off.
(It’s great to support the arts and
education, but they’re not the same as
charity for the needy. And some research
suggests that donations to education
actually increase inequality because they
go mostly to elite institutions attended by
the wealthy.)
Now Kristof’s apparent suggestion that
churches don’t even help the poor would
hopefully never make it into a news story
because many I am aware of do help the
poor and needy. Nevertheless, Kristof’s
article is a good example of an issue that
could easily have been turned into a news
story.
An important angle he overlooked would
be the fact that charities funded by private
New York City dubs Australian anti-smoking ad; makes it sound stupid
By Joel Keller (TV Squad)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:03:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, Commercials, Reality
-Free Since Michael Bloomberg became
mayor of New York, the city has been
notorious for its mommy-state health
initiatives. Part of that has been a series of
individuals are often more effective than
government funded charities. Private
charities are capable of trying new things
— see Bill and Melinda Gates and their
foundation — while government charities
are often directed more towards assisting
groups and causes that help the politicians
get re-elected. Obviously this is not always
the case, but the economic efficiency of
private charity should not be overlooked.
Also important to look at, and Kristof
hinted at this, is the fact that some private
charity is not that effective and is more
about promoting the individuals doing the
giving. Both sides of the issue must be
covered.
The second, and far more heart
wrenching of Kristof’s columns, was his
up-close look at the sickening world we
live in when it comes to sex trafficking and
the consequences in one girl’s life.
While the story of the girl’s experience
in the brothel is extremely disturbing, the
fact that Kristof had to spend a rather
significant portion of his column disputing
whether sex slavery exists today presents a
situation that is nearly as upsetting:
After my last column, I heard from
skeptical readers doubting that conditions
are truly so abusive. It’s true that
prostitutes work voluntarily in many
brothels in Cambodia and elsewhere. But
there are also many brothels where teenage
girls are slave laborers.
Young girls and foreigners without legal
papers are particularly vulnerable. In
Thailand’s brothels, for example, Thai
girls usually work voluntarily, while
Burmese and Cambodian girls are
regularly imprisoned. The career trajectory
is often for a girl in her early teens to be
trafficked into prostitution by force, but
eventually to resign herself and stay in the
brothel even when she is given the
freedom to leave. In my blog,
www.nytimes.com/ontheground, I respond
harsh ads featuring folks like"tracheotomy
guy" Rolando Martinez and ads featuring a
smoker who has to get his gangrenous foot
amputated.
The latest set of ads, which air three
times an hour in New York, depict a sick
woman getting a bronchoscopy. During
this, we hear the whistling noise of air
to the skeptics and offer some ideas for
readers who want to help.
Pross herself was never paid, and she had
no right to insist on condoms (she has not
yet been tested for HIV, because the results
might be too much for her fragile
emotional state). Twice she became
pregnant and was subjected to crude
abortions.
The second abortion left Pross in great
pain, and she pleaded with her owner for
time to recuperate. “I was begging,
hanging on to her feet, and asking for rest,”
Pross remembered. “She got mad.”
That’s when the woman gouged out
Pross’s right eye with a piece of metal.
Sex slavery’s existence in today’s world
is a story in and of itself. Often when the
story gets reported, as it was about a week
ago in the Times on prostitution in South
Korea, it is mostly a matter of politics.
Another take on the story could be the
fact that sex slavery doesn’t receive the
kind of attention it should. When was the
last time Hollywood looked at the issue in
a way that portrayed the industry for its
disgusting evilness? Kristof has been
writing on this subject for a number of
years now and its too bad he is still
struggling to get people to recognize the
evil of this trade.
This Kristof column does not deal
specifically with religion, but religion
relates in the sense that many of the non-
governmental groups fighting sex
trafficking in the world today have faith-
based backgrounds.
Kudos to Kristof for this pair of excellent
columns. He remains one of my favorite
opinion columnists and that’s probably
because instead of merely spouting off his
opinions or what his friends or saying, he
actually goes out there and reports news.
whipping around the tumor in the lung, and
Religion* Entertainment*
Faith-free Tebow? II
By dpulliam
Submitted at 1/10/2009 11:28:34 PM
Since so many of you liked talking about
Florida Gator two-time champion
quarterback Tim Tebow, I thought I would
drop this quick follow-up on last night’s
national championship BCS championship
game. I managed to avoid most of the
game until the final quarter, but I happened
to stay awake for Tebow’s (short) post-
game interview that included a shout out to
his Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
Some of you thought the networks did an
adequate job of talking about Tebow’s
faith while others felt the subject was
avoided by the interviewers and the
cameras. Since I can’t say much along that
front, I’ll just mention a couple of news
articles that could have mentioned the
elements of Tebow’s faith that stood out
last night. (And yes, the altar call I
mentioned Thursday was a joke.)
Most prominently was this column in
The Los Angeles Times where one of the
most obvious faith elements in last night’s
broadcast went completely ignored:
Finish with the face. Thick cheeks
decorated in eye black, framed by a crew
cut, above a tight expression that sweated
with intensity, a face of a fighter.
This is Tim Tebow. For a couple of
wonderfully antique hours Thursday, this
is the perfect player who made us forget
college football’s imperfect system.
Thanks to Christianity Today’s Ted
Olsen, we know that Tebow’s face was not
the only thing that stood out to fans last
night. It was what was written on Tebow’s
face, but for one reason or another, the
Times decided to ignore that:
Last night it was John 3:16: “For God so
loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in
him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.”
the doctor explains that at that point, it's
"too late to operate."
The first few times I saw the ad, though,
something struck me as odd: it was the
doctor's voice. It sounded very dubbed and
announcer-y, as if some Shakespearean
actor was reading from a script. Upon
further review, it looked like it was indeed
31
The Florida quarterback accomplished
more than one goal last night: Google
Trends says John 3:16 is currently the
hottest search term.
People had to look up John 3:16? Maybe
someone should bring back the Rainbow
Man.
A column on The Sports Network Web
site was more direct about covering the
faith element in last night’s game. I don’t
think every column or news report on last
night’s game had to go this far with the
faith element, but maybe this is what you
have to do to create some balance:
Yet, he never flaunts his success or
boasts about his enormous talents, but
rather deflects praise to his biggest fan at
every turn.
God.
The most famous biblical verse, John
3:16, was expressed in eye black on the
night he cemented his collegiate legacy.
His famous “I promise” speech after
Florida’s only loss this season on
September 27th to Ole Miss concluded
with two simple and telling words.
“God Bless.”
On second thought, from a straight news
perspective, faith and God’s impact on
Tebow’s life was one of the major
elements of the game, so maybe this is
what reporters should be telling their
readers.
For those of you who like faith-free
sports coverage, here is The New York
Times coverage.
Another perspective that seems to get
ignored is that some don’t like personal
messages such as these and hope to see
them banned. If that were to happen, one
would imagine that the faith elements in
sports would ironically receive more
coverage.
a dubbing job, and not a very good one at
that.
Continue reading New York City dubs
Australian anti-smoking ad; makes it
sound stupid
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32 Religion* International*
Sex, lies and schnitzel
By Mollie
Submitted at 1/13/2009 2:16:11 AM
One of the journalism terms we use on
this site is the “hook.” Like it sounds, it’s
that thing in the lede of a story that snags
reader/viewer/listener attention. There is so
much news and information competing for
attention that news consumers need a
reason to stop and read or watch or listen
to your story.
If you want to catch their attention, a
hook — some new angle, fresh piece of
information or area of common ground —
is the way to go.
This story — about how confession
varies among major religions— has no
hook. I have no idea why it ran now and
not, well, 400 years ago. Here’s the lede:
“Confession is good for the soul,” says a
Scottish proverb from the mid-1600s. Most
religions would agree. Verses from the
Torah, the Bible and the Quran speak of
the importance of confessing our sins and
receiving forgiveness from a God who is
merciful.
With all of the many sin, confession and
forgiveness angles in the news each and
every day, it’s a shame a story about a very
interesting topic couldn’t have a fresher
lede.
But sometimes you have a hook — a
really, really good hook for discussing hot-
button issues — and no story. And yet
that’s exactly what happened this past
week with the revelation that one of the
inventors of the pill denounced his own
invention. It’s been all over the
blogosphere and I have yet to find much of
any mainstream media attention to this
story. Here’s a bit from the Guardian,
which covered the story and its reaction in
the Vatican:
Roman Catholic leaders have pounced on
Camilla Redmond's radio review
By Camilla Redmond (From the
Guardian: G2 | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:14:42 PM
The first day of Nicky Campbell's new
phone-in hour (Five Live) got off to a flier
yesterday, taking Prince Harry's use of
racist language as its topic. Campbell's an
outstanding agent provocateur but his
a “confession” by one of the inventors of
the birth control pill who has said the
contraceptive he helped create was
responsible for a “demographic
catastrophe”… .
The assault began with a personal
commentary in the Austrian newspaper
Der Standard by 85-year-old Carl Djerassi.
The Austrian chemist was one of three
whose formulation of the synthetic
progestogen Norethisterone marked a key
step towards the earliest oral contraceptive
pill.
Djerassi outlined the “horror scenario”
that occurred because of the population
imbalance, for which his invention was
partly to blame. He said that in most of
listeners needed little prompting on this
score - calls poured in from all over
Britain.
This really seems to be a subject that has
divided the country, and not always along
predictable lines - a woman whose parents
are Indian said she didn't find Harry's
words offensive as he was talking to
friends. A Yorkshireman announced
Europe there was now “no connection at
all between sexuality and reproduction”.
He said: “This divide in Catholic Austria, a
country which has on average 1.4 children
per family, is now complete.”
He described families who had decided
against reproduction as “wanting to enjoy
their schnitzels while leaving the rest of
the world to get on with it”.
The fall in the birth rate, he said, was an
“epidemic” far worse - but given less
attention - than obesity… .
The head of Austria’s Catholics,
Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, told an
interviewer that the Vatican had forecast
40 years ago that the pill would lead to a
dramatic fall in the birth rate in the west.
proudly that he calls his neighbour a
"Paki", "and he calls me a honky and we
get along great". It was effervescent radio,
but could have done with more airtime.
Poor Victoria Derbyshire, following on at
10am, was left to debate how snooker
might be revitalised.
Over on Radio 4, Book of the Week was
beginning its adaptation of Alex Ross's
“Somebody above suspicion like Carl
Djerassi … is saying that each family has
to produce three children to maintain
population levels, but we’re far away from
that.”
Schonborn told Austrian TV that when
he first read Pope Paul VI’s 1968
encyclical condemning artificial
contraception he viewed it negatively as a
“cold shower”. But he said he had altered
his views as, over time, it had proved
“prophetic”.
So the story goes out of its way to avoid
neutral language in describing Djerassi’s
views. But at least they printed them!
That’s more than can be said of any
American media outlet, near as I can tell.
The Rest Is Noise. The choice of reader for
this slot is key: an inspired match of book
and voice draws the listener in, whatever
the subject matter.
Ross's material isn't easy - it's a
passionate, learned exploration of 20th-
century classical music - but with Julian
Rhind-Tutt sounding engagingly rough
around the edges, this promises to be a
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Djerassi is a professor at Stanford and
longtime resident of the United States. He
was awarded the National Medal of
Science by President Nixon for his work
on The Pill. U.S. media tend to be a bit
American-centric (just check out the
Religious Newswriters Association list of
top 10 stories of 2008) — but just because
this story broke in Austria is no reason to
ignore it here. And no matter where
Djerassi dropped his bombshell allegation
or where he lives, how many millions of
women here in the United States have used
oral contraceptives and might be interested
in something their creator has to say about
its unintended consequences?
There’s just no news justification for
obscuring this story.
Remember a few months back when the
media highlighted every story of every
conservative or even right-leaning person
who had decided to support then-
Presidential nominee Barack Obama?
Well, they did that because it makes for a
great story. In the same way, when one of
the inventors of oral contraception
denounces its effects, that’s what we call
news. What should have happened is for
journalists to run stories with just the news,
then to run stories that use that hook to
explore more substantive issues.
Demographic issues in Europe and the rest
of the world, the change in the relationship
between sex and procreation, the
unintended consequences of inventions,
etc.
There are many interesting places to go
with this story. But it’s kind of hard to go
anywhere when we don’t even get the
initial news.
pleasure.
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Coping with complex sex talk
By tmatt
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:02:57 AM
Trust me. There are times when your
GetReligionistas get tired of writing posts
that criticize the same publications for
making the same errors, time after time.
Meanwhile, we know that readers may also
tire of hearing us praise some of the same
skilled, talented professionals who know
what they are doing on the religion beat.
So, with that later truth in mind, let us
turn to yet another story by Eric Gorski,
who basically is charged with covering
religion on most of the planet earth for the
Associated Press. And what a tough story
he had to handle, this time around.
But before we did into the latest chapter
in the complex life of former and, perhaps,
future evangelical superstar Ted Haggard,
let’s read a very famous passage in a
controversial volume on sexuality:
“Males do not represent two discrete
populations, heterosexual and homosexual.
The world is not to be divided into sheep
and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy
that nature rarely deals with discrete
categories… The living world is a
continuum in each and every one of its
aspects. While emphasizing the continuity
of the gradations between exclusively
heterosexual and exclusively homosexual
histories, it has seemed desirable to
develop some sort of classification which
could be based on the relative amounts of
heterosexual and homosexual experience
or response in each history. … An
individual may be assigned a position on
this scale, for each period in his life…. A
seven-point scale comes nearer to showing
the many gradations that actually exist.”
— Alfred Kinsey, et al. (1948)
What does this have to do with Haggard?
Here’s the opening of Gorski’s recent AP
report on a very hot, complex topic:
Speaking out two years after being
embroiled in a gay sex scandal, former
evangelical pastor Ted Haggard said
Friday his sexual identity is complex and
can’t be put into “stereotypical boxes,” but
that his relationship with his wife is
stronger than ever.
In an interview with The Associated
Press, Haggard did not rule out a return to
public life or the pulpit. He spoke before
he appeared before TV critics in Los
Angeles to promote “The Trials of Ted
Haggard,” an HBO documentary on
Haggard’s exile after his confession to
“sexual immorality” and fall as a top
evangelical leader.
“I am guilty. I am responsible,” Haggard,
52, said Friday in a phone interview. “I got
off track, and I am deeply sorry and I
repent … I’m moving along in a positive
direction.”
You remember, of course, the fall of the
former president of the National
Association of Evangelicals, the leader of
the giant New Life Church in Colorado
Springs, Colo. A male prostitute said he
paid for sex and there were drug
allegations in there, too.
Now, Haggard is trying to tell his story
or, perhaps, the Hollywood term “back
story” is more accurate.
But here is the big idea: Haggard
believes that his sexuality is messed up,
due to experiences in his past, and that he
has been struggling in a gray area, an
embattled zone, between his heterosexual
feelings and his homosexual temptations.
In Kinsey terms, he believes that he was
caught in the middle of the scale. Now, he
Religion* International*
is saying that he is going in the right
direction again.
During a guest sermon last November at
a friend’s church in Illinois, Haggard said a
co-worker of his father molested him when
he was 7, an experience that “started to
produce fruit” later. Clarifying that Friday,
Haggard said: “I’m certainly not saying
that because of that, I did this. I did what I
did by my choice, and I’m responsible for
it.”
Haggard said he isn’t qualified to judge
what factors into one’s sexuality, but still
believes it’s “God’s perfect plan” for
marriage to be between a man and woman.
“I think sexuality is confusing and
complex,” Haggard said. “I am totally
completely satisfied with the relationship
with my wife now, but I went through a
wandering in the wilderness time, and I
just thank God I’m on the other side of
that.”
Asked whether he could define his
sexual identity, Haggard said: “The
stereotypical boxes don’t work for me. My
story’s got some gray areas in it. And, of
course, I’m sad about that but it’s the
reality.”
Gorski offers up more solid questions
and more details, including testimony from
both sides of the tensions between the
former pastor and his former megachurch.
You will also not be surprised to learn that
Mike Jones — the man making the sexual
accusations — isn’t buying Haggard’s
story.
No surprises there. The key, however, is
that Gorski allowed Haggard to tell his
story in his own words. Now, people on
both sides of this issue get to throw stones
and hard questions. This is, you see, a
complex story and this veteran reporter
reserves praise for giving his readers the
straight story, so to speak.
One more thing: Please stick to the
journalism issues, folks.
33
Guantánamo
closure
hopes rise
By Suzanne Goldenberg (News:
Main section | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 5:44:54 PM
Barack Obama could order the shutdown
of Guantánamo on his first day as
president, aides said yesterday, in a move
to reassure human rights organisations.
Aides told the Associated Press an
executive order directing the closure of the
camp that has become a symbol of the
Bush administration's excesses in the war
on terror was expected in Obama's first
week as president - and possibly on 20
January itself.
However, it is highly unlikely that the
camp, where there are now fewer than 240
inmates, will be disbanded for several
more months.
The announcement came amid rising
concern from human rights organisations
that Obama would not move fast enough
on his campaign promise to close
Guantánamo.
The president-elect told ABC television
on Sunday that he was unlikely to close the
camp within his first 100 days in power.
The admission that closing Guantánamo
would be "more difficult than many people
realise" brought immediate protests from
detainee lawyers, because of its echoes of
Bush's statements on the camp over the last
few years.
"This raises concerns that what we are
talking about is not change but the same
old Bush administration policies, but with
some human-rights window dressing," said
Vincent Warren, executive director of the
Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has
represented about 600 of the Guantánamo
detainees.
• Guantánamo Bay
• Obama White House
• Barack Obama
• Human rights
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34 Religion* International*
Is only free speech sacred?
By Douglas LeBlanc
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:51:28 PM
Christopher Hitchens is most engaging
when he’s showing indignation, but he’s
most endearing when paying tribute to a
courageous friend. His portrait of novelist
Salman Rushdie, appearing in the February
issue of Vanity Fair, opens with some of
the warmest and most affectionate words
I’ve seen from Hitchens in quite a while.
Indignation is never far away for
Hitchens, however, and he opens up on
both the late Ayatollah Khomeini (for
issuing the infamous fatwa against
Rushdie) and on many figures of
journalism and literature for becoming self
-censoring in the shadow of that fatwa:
Some of this was a hasty bribe paid to
the crude enforcer of fear: if Susan Sontag
had not been the president of PEN in 1989,
there might have been many who joined
Arthur Miller in his initial panicky refusal
to sign a protest against the ayatollah’s
invocation of Murder Incorporated. “I’m
Jewish,” said the author of The
Crucible.“I’d only help them change the
subject.” But Susan would have none of
that, and shamed many more pants wetters
whose names I still cannot reveal.
… I brushed up against the
unacknowledged censor myself when I
went on CNN to defend the Danish
cartoons and found that, though the
network would show the relevant page of
the newspaper, it had pixelated the
cartoons themselves. And this in an age
when the image is everything. The lady
anchor did not blush to tell me that the
network was obliterating its very stock-in-
trade (newsworthy pictures) out of sheer
fear.
Hitchens is especially good in countering
the claim that self-censorship is an act of
multicultural sensitivity:
To indulge the idea of religious
censorship by the threat of violence is to
insult and undermine precisely those in the
Muslim world who are its intellectual
cream, and who want to testify for their
own liberty — and for ours. It is also to
make the patronizing assumption that the
leaders of mobs and the inciters of goons
are the authentic representatives of Muslim
opinion. What could be more “offensive”
than that?
I take issue with Hitchens’ belief —
entirely understandable, given his
muscular atheism — that nothing is sacred,
and further that nothing ought to be
considered sacred:
In the hot days immediately after the
fatwa, with Salman himself on the run and
the TV screens filled with images of
burning books and writhing mustaches, I
was stopped by a female Muslim
interviewer and her camera crew and asked
an ancient question: “Is nothing sacred?” I
can’t remember quite what I answered
then, but I know what I would say now.
“No, nothing is sacred. And even if there
were to be something called sacred, we
mere primates wouldn’t be able to decide
which book or which idol or which city
was the truly holy one. Thus, the only
thing that should be upheld at all costs and
without qualification is the right of free
expression, because if that goes, then so do
all other claims of right as well.”
I find this a truncated understanding of
sacredness. For a religion writer — for that
matter, for any reporter who tries to
prevent personal assumptions from
interfering with journalistic duty — the
issue is not “which book or which idol or
which city was the truly holy one.” Rather,
a reporter writing about believers does well
to recognize that certain books or cities or
people are holy to those believers.
Such a recognition need not lead to self-
censorship or cowering dread of violence.
Ideally, it helps a journalist depict people
so accurately that they recognize
themselves in the report.
I am thankful for the courage Hitchens
has shown these many years in defending
and sheltering his friend, and in alerting
the West to genuine threats against free
speech. He is, of course, correct to say that
no sense of the sacred ought to imperil the
lives of anyone who exercises free-speech
rights.
I don’t expect Hitchens to refrain from
his war against the idea of sacredness for
the sake of his own safety. His refusal to
do so merely for his own safety is when of
his most admirable traits. I wish only that
Hitchens’ style of atheism did not drive
him toward a campaign against sacredness
as a category. Such a campaign only
confirms the worst suspicions held by
believers of various faiths, and it limits
Hitchens’ ability to understand the daily
reality of billions of people.
It’s entirely possible to believe in
sacredness and to believe that people must
be free to express themselves, even if their
expression denigrates what one holds to be
sacred. Pope Benedict XVI is a model of
this. So are Douglas Wilson and Dinesh
D’Souza ( Google Video), who have both
debated Hitchens in recent times.
In the cause for free speech, Hitchens has
more allies than he seems able to
recognize.
Daily Digital Newspaper
Film picks: St
Trinian's, Memento,
The Grudge
By Paul Howlett (From the
Guardian: G2 | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 7:24:47 PM
St Trinian's
10pm, Sky Movies Premiere
(Oliver Parker, Barnaby Thompson,
2007) Yikes! In this misguided, unfunny
revival of the much-loved Launder/Gilliat
series, Rupert Everett essays the Alastair
Sim role as headmistress Miss Fritton,
Russell Brand replaces George Cole as
Flash Harry and Colin Firth plays a put-
upon education minister. But the only actor
likely to remember it with any affection is
Gemma Arterton, who launched a screen
career that soon progressed to Quantum Of
Solace.
Memento
10.45pm, Film4
(Christopher Nolan, 2000) Nolan's
stunning thriller plays so astutely and
originally with genre conventions that it
leaves you dizzy. It starts with a climactic
murder, then moves back through time
while Guy Pearce's haunted Shelby, his
short-term memory shot to bits, hunts
down the man who raped and murdered his
wife, trying to make sense of his fractured
memories.
The Grudge
11.50pm, ITV2
(Takashi Shimizu, 2003) Shimizu's
efficiently chilly tale, since remade for
Hollywood, is based on The Shining-type
premise that a building can absorb a spirit
of evil when terrible acts are committed in
it. Megumi Okina is the hapless
careworker who arrives at the seemingly
ordinary building and sees a ghostly
youngster - the harbinger of a series of
well orchestrated, jittery horror scenes.
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Who shepherds the shepherd?
By E.E. Evans
Submitted at 1/11/2009 6:59:50 PM
We hear about the instances when well-
known clergy crash and burn, like that of
former Colorado mega-church minister
Ted Haggard.
What doesn’t often make the press is the
many, less public ways in which clergy of
less notoriety sometimes fail to take care
of their own health — resulting in physical
ailments or problems with pornography,
alcoholism, or other addictions.
A wellness project for United Methodist
clergy is the topic of a recent piece by in
the New York Times by Samuel
Freedman.
The article begins with this dramatic
anecdote:
One day in 1993, the Rev. Steve Hickle
picked up his phone and received news of
a death. Even for a minister who deals with
funerals and burials at least once a month,
this particular demise was especially
troubling. The victim was just 48 years
old, a father of five and, like Mr. Hickle, a
Methodist pastor in the Piedmont foothills.
Until recently, Mr. Hickle had thought of
his colleague’s death as an object lesson in
the capricious impermanence of life.
Several months ago, though, as he attended
a discussion on the subject of health in the
clergy convened by the Divinity School at
Duke University here, he began to wonder
if there was more involved in a middle-age
man’s fatal heart attack than the mystery of
the divine plan.
That discussion was one of the first
stages of an ambitious effort by Duke to
assess and improve the health of ministers,
specifically the 1,800 United Methodist
pastors in North Carolina because the
Divinity School serves as a seminary for
the denomination. What underlies the
study — and what Mr. Hickle, among
others, has experienced firsthand — is a
concern that in serving the Lord, ministers
neglect themselves.
This is not a news flash, by the way. A
few years ago, my own denomination
presented the results of a ten-year study on
clergy wellness.
And the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America has also done work in this area. I
gather that the American Baptists have,
also.
I’m guessing that the Roman Catholic
church has also done some wellness
programs in the wake of the clergy sex
abuse scandal — if someone knows about
them, it would be interesting to hear.
Freedman chooses to focus on one
program, the recent one started by the
Methodists. But his article would have
been strengthened by reference to some of
the other, pioneering work.
This paragraph suggests a whole host of
other relevant questions.
While medical studies in various
denominations indicate that clergy
members live longer than comparable
civilians, an emerging body of evidence
over the last two decades has shown that
ministers are more vulnerable to diabetes,
depression, hypertension, gastrointestinal
distress and heart problems.
What is a “comparable civilian?”
Including references for the “emerging
body of evidence” would be useful for
readers who wanted to know more.
And I wonder what’s going on outside
the mainline denominations — what
happens when clergy in a
nondenominational church, or in a
Southern Baptist congregation, suffer
physical ailments or mental problems?
Undoubtedly, some churches also find
other avenues for support, including prayer
and counseling, that doesn’t go outside the
bounds of the local parish.
Traditionally, clergy were thought to be
less vulnerable to illness and stress—being
closer to God, as we are, you know.
Obviously, that isn’t the case. And
although there’s really nothing surprising
in this article, it bears repeating.
It’s surprising to me that these issues
aren’t always covered when prominent
clergy go off the rails—often the focus is
on the bad behavior, and not on what
might have caused it.
Perhaps it’s more concise to say that it’s
not surprising, but it is unfortunate, that
readers get only half the story.
So the next time you see your minister
looking a little tired or stressed—hand him
or her a pair of Adidas, boot them out
those red doors for some fresh air, and
perhaps even a little self-care.
Picture of shepherd taken from
Wikimedia Commons under a Creative
Commons licence.
Religion* Special* 35
I am not an
economist
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 1/11/2009 3:52:56 PM
Even though I'm not an economist, I'm
pretty sure that the US government can
print money.
So if we have a $1 trillion deficit this
year, that does not imply that someone has
to lend us $1 trillion and it does not imply
therefore that someone will have to pay
someone back that money at some date in
the future. If there's an economist listening
who thinks this is not true, please say so
and everyone else ignore what I'm about to
say.
So then why does the discussion on Meet
The Press and This Week revolve around
how much better the private sector could
spend the money or how we're passing on
the problem to future generations. That
seems like hooey. They have these
discussions based on a make-believe
premise that there are only two ways for
the US government to pay for something --
taxation or borrowing. There is a third
way, the one they're taking -- they just
invent the money.
Now, in normal times you pay for this
invention with inflation, but inflation isn't
a problem -- quite the opposite, the world
economy is having a massive going out of
business sale. Prices are going down.
Think they're low this week? Wait till next
week, they'll be even lower. And wait is
what people do, and that drives the prices
lower. It's like inflation in reverse.
Worrying about inflation now is like a
starving man worrying about getting fat if
he eats too much. You'll take your calories
any way you can get them. Anything that
makes people want to buy things now is a
good thing for the economy. One way to
do that is to give them money by hiring
them.
So forgive me for thinking the analysts
on TV are either corrupt or idiots, or
whatever.
And of course please forgive me if I'm
wrong and the government isn't going to
print money to get out of this hole.
36 Religion* Special* International*
“Go back to the oven!”
By tmatt
Submitted at 1/12/2009 2:36:24 AM
People in angry crowds shout all kinds of
things, as anyone who has ever covered a
protest rally can tell you.
What do you quote? What do you elect
not to quote? Do you quote the sane
people, to make the protesters look better,
more sympathetic? Do you focus on the
hotheads, so that the public will know the
true range of emotions and opinions
present in this event and in its cause?
Recently, there was a sobering test case
of this puzzle, an anti-Israel protest in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla., that produced one of
those hot — literally — quotes that
rocketed across the Web or, at least, parts
of the Web. Here’s the piece of Joseph
Abram’s report for Fox News that was at
the heart of the firestorm:
… (Some) protesters at this rally in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla., took their rhetoric a step
further, calling for the extermination of
Israel — and of Jews.
Separated by battle lines and a stream of
rush-hour traffic outside a federal
Got news? Catholics are smart and …
By tmatt
Submitted at 1/12/2009 2:09:29 AM
We’re going to be seeing lots and lots of
commentary about the death of Father
Richard John Neuhaus and the end of an
era, especially if you combine his passing
with that of another important Catholic
activist on the right, Deacon Paul Weyrich.
Over at the God & Country blog at U.S.
News & World Report, Dan Gilgoff has
some rather blunt things to say about the
role that Neuhaus and other traditional
Catholics played in the politics of the past
decade or two.
I think what he says is pretty accurate.
But, here again, we have a strong
statement of opinion that could have been
the basis of a very strong, very important
piece of news writing. Thus, I am posting
this as another example of the “Got news?”
syndrome that your GetReligionistas are
starting to spotlight.
The headline: “Richard Neuhaus’s Death
courthouse last week, at least 200 pro-
Palestinian demonstrators faced off against
a smaller crowd of Israel supporters. Most
of the chants were run-of-the-mill; men
and women waving Palestinian flags called
Israel’s invasion of Gaza a “crime,” while
the pro-Israel group carried signs calling
the Hamas-run territory a “terror state.”
But as the protest continued and crowds
grew, one woman in a hijab began to shout
curses and slurs that shocked Jewish
activists in the city, which has a sizable
Jewish population.
“Go back to the oven,” she shouted,
calling for the counter-protesters to die in
the manner that the Nazis used to
exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.
“You need a big oven, that’s what you
need,” she yelled.
After that kind of language, the rest of
the report is pretty predictable.
However, if you lived in South Florida
and happened to read about this protest in
the local Sun-Sentinel, this is what you
learned about that same event and the
and the Catholic-Evangelical Tension in
Politics.” And here is the crucial passage in
this mini-essay:
… Neuhaus’s death … reminds us that
Catholics remain the brains of a
conservative movement built on
evangelical brawn. This played out during
the Bush years in Supreme Court
nominations. John Roberts, Bush’s first
Supreme Court appointment, was
embraced by conservative evangelicals,
largely because his Catholicism assured
them that he was a pro-lifer at heart,
despite his thin judicial record.
Bush’s second nomination, Harriet
Miers, was initially backed by evangelicals
because of her evangelical Christian faith,
but nearly every other constituency on the
right, including many conservative
Catholics, rejected her as an intellectual
lightweight. Many conservative Catholics
were appalled at the way conservative
evangelical leaders like Focus on the
Family’s James Dobson appeared to rely
rhetoric of the protesters. First we read
this:
Protesters waving Palestinian flags and
shouting “Free Palestine” squared off
against supporters of Israel outside Fort
Lauderdale’s courthouse … over four days
of warfare in the Gaza Strip.
And later there is this:
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators called on
the United States to stop aid to Israel.
Ahmad Suid of Naples brought his 8-year-
old son and 9- and 10-year-old daughters
to the rally holding signs saying “Stop the
Genocide” and “I’m not a terrorist.”
“This is absolutely inhumane,” Suid said.
“This is a modern-day holocaust.”
Now, there is a chance — of course —
that one reporter heard the “Go back to the
oven” quote and the other did not.
Still, I will raise the obvious question:
Was this Holocaust reference something
that worthy of news print? How about that
second holocaust — small “h” — quote? Is
there anyone else out there who thinks that
journalists covering this event needed to
use BOTH?
on her faith background as the sole basis
for their support. The moment threw a light
on the split between the social conservative
movement’s Catholic head and evangelical
heart.
friendsOfDave on Twitter
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 7:42:01 AM
friendsOfDave is list of blogs, like an old-
style blogroll, but with a difference. Every
time one of the blogs in my list updates, an
app on my server sends a link to Twitter,
identi.ca and FriendFeed.
http://twitter.com/friendsOfDave
http://identi.ca/friendsOfDave
http://friendfeed.com/friendsofdave
This makes it easy for me to keep up
with the blog posts, which come much
more slowly than tweets, of people I think
of as friends -- in the blogging sense --
people who I want to keep current with.
Here's a list of the people:.
This neatly solved the problem outlined
in The First Church of Scoble, where I said
I wanted to hear about Scoble, but not the
full blast of his Twitter stream. To some
extent this isn't even about Scoble the
person, because people talking about
Scoble (something he actively encourages
of course) is all part of the Church effect.
So, basically, Catholics are smart and
evangelicals are, well, not as smart. Is that
the point?
I think it is possible to say that Catholic
intellectuals have played a major role in
the era. That’s obvious. But there has been
another trend, which is linked to Reformed
Protestants playing a larger role and many
evangelicals — whatever that word means
— spending more time learning about their
ancient roots in natural theology and, well,
Catholic thought.
You would be amazed how many
conservative Protestants know quite a bit
about the life and works of John Paul II
and Benedict SVI. So I think Gilgoff has
HALF of an important equation. But, most
of all, I would love to see his magazine
report this story, rather than just proclaim
it.
Got news? Yes, there is news here. Hard
news.
Photo: Bronze bust of Pope John Paul II.
Daily Digital Newspaper
Unless he turns his blog into a firehose, we
can have just-enough Scoble, along with
some Doc, Jen, Betsy, Fred, Jay, Scott,
Om, Lance, Rebecca, Gartenberg, et al.
I've had a few days of F-O-D, and I like.
It went quiet over the weekend, but now
it's Monday morning and things are
picking up. Last week was CES so there
was a lot of tech stuff, and I was worried
there might be too much, but things are
more balanced this week. I still need some
more political blogs to add to flow, but I
want to do that slowly too.
And part of the way I measure success is
that the people in the group seem to be
following the group. I think this is
important. Maybe it will evolve into some
kind of meta-publication. Or a conference?
I have no idea. I do know they're all
creative interesting people who are likely
to have some cool ideas if there are any to
be had.
Everyone can follow... The more the
merrier, as usual.
11th-hour cabinet resistance
may delay Heathrow
expansion announcement
By Nicholas Watt, Dan Milmo
(News: Main section |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:29:13 PM
An eleventh hour push to wring
environmental guarantees from Gordon
Brown over a third runway at Heathrow
airport has been launched by a series of
cabinet ministers who have grave concerns
about the scheme.
The prime minister is planning to set out
the case for having the runway at today's
cabinet meeting, prompting speculation
that Geoff Hoon, the transport secretary,
will make a formal announcement
approving the runway on Thursday.
But there were signs last night that this
could be put off, possibly until later this
month, as concerned cabinet ministers
demand greater assurances on air quality,
noise pollution, and what was described as
the overall "environmental story".
Whitehall sources last night said that
ministerial discussions were "ongoing",
11TH-HOUR page 37
Daily Digital Newspaper
Baby born two days after mother died
By David Pallister (News: Main
section | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 6:08:25 PM
A former British champion ice skater who
collapsed and died from a brain
haemorrhage gave birth to a baby girl two
days later. Jayne Soliman, 41, was
declared brain-dead at Oxford's John
Radcliffe hospital but doctors managed to
keep her heart beating long enough to
deliver Aya Jayne by caesarean section.
Ms Soliman was 25 weeks' pregnant
when she collapsed in her bedroom last
Wednesday after suffering a headache. She
was airlifted to the hospital but was
pronounced dead at 8pm.
Doctors said she had suffered a brain
haemorrhage caused by an aggressive
tumour which had struck a major blood
vessel. She was given large doses of
steroids to help the child's lungs develop
and within 48 hours gave birth to the baby,
who weighed 0.95kg (2lb 1.5oz). Her
husband, Mahmoud, was with her when
the child was born.
He said they had been overjoyed when
his wife became pregnant after suffering an
earlier miscarriage. "I can remember the
first scan," he told the Daily Mail. "We just
hugged each other and kept crying when
we saw the heartbeat. It was this tiny speck
11TH-HOUR
continued from page 36
and no final decision had been made on the
timing of any announcement.
It is possible the prime minister could
push for a quick announcement in an
attempt to establish clear dividing lines
with the Tories, who are opposed to the
runway. Today the Tories receive a boost
in a Times/Populus poll which puts them
up four points on 43%; Labour dropped
two points to 33%, while the Liberal
Democrats are down two points at 15%.
Brown faced tough questions on the
runway issue, and a challenge from a
ministerial aide, at a meeting last night of
the parliamentary Labour party.
Concerns are voiced in private by Hilary
Benn, environment secretary, and Ed
Miliband, climate change secretary, who
beating."
He recalled his wife's last hours: "The
doctors told me there was nothing they
could do for Jayne but they needed her to
stay strong for 48 hours to help our unborn
child."
In 1989, Ms Soliman was British
champion and No 7 in the world for
professional free skating. She also spent
some time in Dubai, where she taught
figure skating and met Mahmoud. On
returning to England two years ago, the
newly married couple set up home in
Bracknell and Jayne began working for the
Bracknell Ice Skating Club.
David Phillips, a friend and fellow
skater, said Ms Soliman had shown no
signs that anything was wrong earlier in
the day and did not know she had a
tumour. "Jayne and I had both been at the
ice rink in Bracknell that day and she was
absolutely fine; nothing seemed wrong.
She was as happy as she could be because
she was pregnant - it was her dream."
Phillips said her husband "has had the
best and the worst day of his life within
such a short space of time - turning off
your wife's life support machine and then
going to see your newborn daughter".
Phillips' wife, Lucine, 38, who was
present at the birth of Aya, described the
mixture of joy and sadness at seeing the
lead the push for greater assurances that a
runway would not undermine Britain's
commitments on global warming. They are
supported by Harriet Harman, the deputy
leader, and John Denham, the skills
secretary.
And Andy Slaughter, MP for Ealing,
Acton and Shepherd's Bush, the
parliamentary private secretary to the
Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-
Brown, challenged Brown at last night's
meeting.
Campaigners believe air pollution levels
would soar, were the runway built,
undermining a 2015 emission target set by
the European commission.
Brown acknowledged the widespread
concerns at last night's meeting, saying it
birth. "A midwife picked tiny Aya up and
put her little face up to Jayne's - if Jayne
had been awake she would have had eye
contact with her daughter. It was just like
welcoming any new baby into the world
and everyone in the room was so elated, it
was a celebratory feeling. But we also had
to say goodbye to Jayne; Mahmoud said
goodbye on his own because he wanted to
be the last person to see her.
"He sat with her for a while and then he
was told he could go and see his daughter.
Mahmoud couldn't hold Aya straight away
because she was taken into intensive care.
He was given a photo of her and I could
just tell from his face that he was
overcome with emotion, it was just welling
up inside him. He took one look at his
daughter and was overjoyed to see her. He
said, 'That's my Jayney'."
More than 300 mourners attended Ms
Soliman's funeral last weekend, which was
held at the Jamia mosque in Reading.
• Health
• Premature birth
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was important to balance the economic
case for an expanded Heathrow with
environmental considerations. He agreed
to hold a further meeting with Labour
backbenchers opposed to the third runway.
A Whitehall source said: "There are
ministers who feel very strongly about the
environment. Assurances on noise and air
pollution will have to be part of the
package."
Another source said: "We need to make
the right decision for the economy, the
environment and for the government as a
whole. We need to be clear about the
environmental story about Heathrow - we
need to show how we are addressing the
climate change dimension. The fact that
we are still talking is an indication of the
Lucy Mangan: Cable girl
By Lucy Mangan (From the
Guardian: G2 | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:26:10 PM
"We have the best technicians in the
industry. They will do whatever it takes to
get the job done. If it flies, crawls or
creeps, we'll kill it. We're taking pest
management to a new level." That's what I
love about America. Even their rat-killers
are better than ours.
The rodenticians - their word, not mine,
although I heartily approve of anyone who
takes their job seriously enough to invent a
new linguistic term for it - are from Los
Angeles pest control firm ISOTECH. In
the first episode of Verminators(oh, that's
even better) on Virgin 1, their "most
seasoned rodent-hunters" Santos and Sam
have to clear a 350-acre racecourse of its
biblically-proportioned plague of rats.
"Rattus rattus," as their ID card flashing up
on the screen to suitably pounding music
tells us. "Carnivore scavenger." Holy crap.
While his team assesses the racecourse
problem, boss Mike sets out to find the
source of a landlady's cockroach problem.
This turns out to be one of her tenants'
ability to live with billions of the scuttly
little horrors without notifying anyone.
"You can't live like this and it be new,"
seriousness of sorting this out."
Hoon, a strong supporter of the third
runway, has the backing of the business
secretary, Lord Mandelson. Hoon was
forced to postpone a decision last month
after strong pressure from Benn, who told
the Sunday Times that Britain must meet
tough EU targets for cutting emissions of
nitrogen dioxide and harmful particulates.
Brown faced pressure from four Labour
MPs at last night's PLP meeting -
Slaughter, Martin Salter, Martin Linton
and Paul Flynn. Salter, MP for Reading
West, said after the meeting: "There were
no voices raised in favour of the third
runway. It was made clear that Labour's
environmental credentials are on the line
on this."
International* 37
says Mike, staring at the moving wallpaper
in shock. "You gotta have accepted this as
your lifestyle." LA pest-controllers - they
fumigate and they judge you. That's what I
call a five-star service.
Meanwhile, other colleagues are hunting
down the rat nest in a family home. They
lay glue and snap traps everywhere ("Seal
the perimeter!") and return a week later to
retrieve the limp, hellish handfuls of fur
therein. It's like Homicide: Life in the
Crawlspace.
Around the racecourse, Sam and Santos
have done their work well. The team
wanders round filling buckets with rattus
rattus corpses. "There isn't a place you
could give us we can't take care of,"
proclaims Mike. "Because without pest
control, nobody's life is safe." I hear you,
Ratman. And I'm off to have a four-day
shower and then lock myself in a lead-
lined bunker until you get over here and
seal Britain's perimeter. For you guys, a
three-day job, max. Come quickly. Please.
• Television
• Television
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He said Brown's agreement to meet the
group again showed the cabinet's
environmental lobby was making a strong
case.
• Transport policy
• Travel and transport
• Transport
• Heathrow
• Business travel
• London
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38 International* Special*
Financial Times seeks 80 job cuts in
'crucial year for news media'
By Stephen Brook (News: Main
section | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:32:15 PM
The Financial Times group is planning to
make up to 80 staff redundant across its
global operations, telling journalists
yesterday that 2009 will be a "crucial year
for news media".
The FT chief executive, John Ridding,
told staff the company had started
negotiations with 80 employees about
possible redundancy as part of
restructuring plans. All those who may
face redundancy will have been contacted
by today, he said.
The managing editor, Dan Bogler, told
staff that 20 editorial positions were
affected - and less than half would be
compulsory redundancies. Bogler said he
was still looking for candidates for
voluntary redundancies.
The National Union of Journalists' FT
branch understands that six of the positions
will be in London and has called an
emergency meeting today to oppose the
threat of compulsory redundancies.
Watch this: CSI | The High Life | Derren Brown: Evening of Wonders
| Judy, Frank & Dean: Once in a Lifetime
By Gareth McLean (From the
Guardian: G2 | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:23:29 PM
CSI
9pm, Five
Walking the line between sombre and
plain dull, as well as that betwixt moving
and schmaltzy, this double-bill season nine
opener lacks a sure footing. A creepy
hypnotist uses her powers for malevolent
ends - making a man eat an onion as if it
were an apple is the least of it - while the
increasingly world-weary Grissom and
Willows, who has seemingly gifted her
During its last round of job cuts, the
company warned that it would seek
compulsory redundancies unless there
were sufficient voluntary departures.
Ridding also revealed that the FT will
increase digital and print integration, and
merge some of its recent acquisitions with
existing operations.
He added that FT.com would reach 1
million registered users this month.
The FT, which is owned by Pearson, will
this year launch a China business report
and a digital edition of its profitable How
To Spend It magazine. The paper also
plans to expand its Middle East edition and
its Chinese-language operations.
Ridding told staff in an email yesterday
that the company had to focus on "our
efficiency and productivity".
"Sustaining our financial strength is
essential to maintaining the quality of our
journals and the dynamism of our
organisation. We understand that change
isn't easy, especially when it affects
colleagues and friends who we've worked
with closely. But these measures are
necessary to build on our success."
furrows to her colleague, try to find the
killer of poor Warrick. Time, perhaps, for a
mercy killing.
The High Life
9pm, BBC4
Alan Cumming has now flown off to
bluer skies in Hollywood, but back in 1994
he played sarcastic, narciss-istic air
steward Sebastian Flight in this Scottish
sitcom that travels from strange to surreal
with stopovers in camp nonsense, mild
amusement and downright hilarity. Set on
Air Scotia, flying out of the less-than-
salubrious Prestwick, it relies on the genre
staple of protagonists with ideas above
He also made reference to "outsourcing
non-core processes", understood to be a
reference to operations in Manila, which
may be expanded. Ridding and the FT
editor, Lionel Barber, will meet staff
tomorrow to outline their plans for the
year.
In December, Ridding told staff the FT
would offer to reduce their working week
to three days. The company also
announced it would freeze pay at 2008
levels for staff earning more than £30,000.
• This article was amended on Tuesday
13 January 2009. When we said the
Financial Times Group told journalists
yesterday that 2009 will be a "crucial year
for news media", we meant to say today.
This has been corrected.
• Financial Times
• Newspapers & magazines
• Media business
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their stations and is delightful for it. It's
also the origin of the inimit-able line:
"How's your arse for love bites, Miss
Spurtle?"
Derren Brown: Evening of Wonders
10pm, Channel 4
There's no mesmerised onion-eating at
the behest of magician and mentalist
Brown; rather he displays stunning powers
of suggestion as he
convinces/enchants/cold-reads audience
members into behaving exactly as he wants
them to. Making me wonder how friends
of the brilliant Brown can't be sure he's not
playing with their minds, it's also proof,
Prior art search: How to
display a tweet?
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:08:21 AM
You know what a tweet is and how
they're displayed in Twitter.
Pretend you're a time traveler from 2003
and someone told you that a primary
software interface was going to include
bare naked urls, would you have believed
it? I wouldn't. I still don't accept that it's
the best way to display a tweet.
These days lots of software displays
them, not just Twitter. And they all have
the same problem -- how to display the
urls. I haven't seen a lot of approaches. I'd
like to generate some, to gather different
non-raw-url approaches. Here's an
example:
Where are the Users at the User
Generated Content Expo?
We don't shorten urls just to conserve
space within the 140-character limit,
should you need it, that we're all open to
persuasion and no man looks good in a
headscarf.
Judy, Frank & Dean: Once in a Lifetime
11.20pm, BBC4
In these on-demand days when
appointments-to-view are, in the strictly
scheduled sense, few and far between, rare
is the show that you can't watch whenever
you want. This special Judy Garland Show
from 1962 is one. Unavailable on iPlayer
(presumably due to rights restrictions),
rejoice at this repeat in which Judy is
joined by Sinatra and Martin for a stylish
show that today still cuts the mustard - and
Daily Digital Newspaper
shortening urls also makes our writing
more legible. For that application we could
go the full distance and collapse the url
down to an 11-by-11 icon. If so, what
should the icon be? Here are some
examples of vast collections of free mini
icons.
I'm assuming the best approach is to
shrink the url to an icon and store it to the
right of the text but if you knew the big
ugly url was going to shrink to an icon,
you might start putting the urls in the
middle of sentences in ur tweets.
Maybe a mini-icon isn't the best way to
go, maybe there's another way altogether
to neaten up tweets and make them more
readable? (And yes, I know some people
will say the way Twitter does it now is the
best possible way, please assume we're all
considering that possibility as well).
I'm interested to know what people think.
any other condiment you fancy. Directed
by Norman Jewison, it features a cracking
version of The Man Who Got Away and
all three legends singing You're Nobody
'Til Some-body Loves You.
• Television
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Daily Digital Newspaper
Classical review: Cameron would cut MP
LPO/Elder, Wigmore Hall, numbers
London
By Andrew Clements (News: Main
section | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 4:16:51 PM
Das Lied von der Erde is one Mahler's
most forward-looking works, so it's not
surprising that Schoenberg was keen to
include it in the concerts he organised in
Vienna for his Society for Private Musical
Performances. In 1921 he started a
chamber-scale reduction of the
orchestration, but abandoned it when the
society collapsed. It wasn't until the 1980s
that musicologist Rainer Riehn was able to
disentangle Schoenberg's sketches and
publish a completion. It was this version
that Mark Elder brought to the Wigmore
Hall, with soloists Paul Nilon and Alice
Coote and members of the London
Philharmonic supplying the 14-piece
ensemble.
Though one occasionally missed the
plushness of a full string section, Mahler's
soundworld is often pared down in this
hybrid of song cycle and symphony, and
the reduction preserves the colours of his
orchestration, with a piano and a
harmonium added to flesh out its
harmonies. The thinner textures ought to
make things easier for the singers,
A consumer complaint about Consumer Reports
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 5:57:29 AM
This story just drips with irony!
2.5 years ago I had just signed the papers
to buy a house in Berkeley, and based on
past experience as a home owner, it was
time to become a member of the Consumer
Reports website. I figured if I'm going to
be spending thousands of dollars on this
house, it would make sense to go for the
premium service, so I could access all the
information on the site. Doing my part to
support a non-profit that does good work. I
even checked the box that said they should
especially the tenor, who is set almost
insuperable challenges in the full
orchestral version. Yet for all the warmth
the Wigmore Hall lends voices and solo
instruments, the acoustic has its pitfalls.
Overprominent woodwind had been a
problem in the unconducted performance
of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in the first half
of the concert, and though Nilon's singing
was wonderfully characterised, he
struggled to get his words across in the
opening song of Das Lied almost as much
as he would have done in front of a full
orchestra.
In terms of balance, the mezzo generally
has an easier time of it, and Coote's
shaping of the phrases and her ability to
dramatise the text in an unselfconscious
way were mesmerising. She didn't wring
maximum pathos from the final,
heartbreaking Abschied, but kept the lines
poised and pure. You could have heard a
pin drop as Elder laid the music to rest in
the final, lingering bars.
• Classical music and opera
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automatically renew me every year without
requiring confirmation, that's how sure I
was this organization, above all others,
could be trusted.
No fault of theirs, my credit card number
got out to some bad guys in Malta or
Africa, and the credit card company
detected it, contacted me as I was checking
into a hotel in NY (by declining the
charge, thank you very much) and after
talking them into approving the charge
(while dripping wet from a NY rainstorm)
we agreed they should cancel the card and
issue a new number.
So, when Consumer Reports tried to
By Nicholas Watt (News: Main
section | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 5:54:24 PM
David Cameron would remove more than
60 MPs as part of a Tory plan to make
parliament work more efficiently.
Drawing on plans drawn up by Kenneth
Clarke, the former chancellor, the Tory
leader today pledges to introduce
legislation in his first term as prime
minister to cut the size of the Commons by
10%. There are currently 646 MPs, a
figure that is due to increase to 650 at the
next election.
Cameron tells today's Financial Times: "I
think the House of Commons could do the
job that it does with 10% fewer MPs
without any trouble at all."... I believe in
having seats that are the same size all
across the country."
The Tories say their plans are designed
to improve efficiency and remove an
anomaly which means that parliamentary
constituencies can be of dramatically
varying sizes. The Isle of Wight, Britain's
biggest constituency, had an electorate of
108,253 in 2004, 50% bigger than the
charge my annual fee, it was declined.
They sent an email, I went to the website,
entered the new number, clicked Submit. I
then got an email thanking me for
subscribing to the print magazine! Which
is something I totally did not do, mean to
do, want to do, under any circumstance. I
am always trying to reduce clutter, and I
hate getting magazines I never asked for in
the mail, and I certainly don't want to pay
for magazine clutter in my mailbox.
So I called their 800 number (hard to
find on the website) and asked nicely but
firmly that they cancel this subscription
that I did not want. I just want the website,
International* Special* Entertainment*
English average of 70,026. Na h-Eileanan
an Iar, formerly known as the Western
Isles, is the smallest constituency in Britain
with an electorate of 21,884.
The Tories would not change the number
of Scottish constituencies, which were cut
at the behest of English cabinet ministers,
such as Jack Straw, as the price of their
support for a Scottish parliament. But
Cameron would reduce the number of
Welsh seats from 40 to around 30 and
would cut small inner-city constituencies.
These changes would benefit the Tories.
The Tory leader uses today's interview to
support Alan Duncan, the shadow business
secretary, who has faced a whispering
campaign amid speculation that he could
be replaced by Clarke. "I don't think it's
fair to criticise him - he works extremely
hard," Cameron said of Duncan.
• David Cameron
• Constitutional reform
• Conservatives
• House of Commons
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thank you. The operator assured me it had
been done, when I asked her to confirm
what I had asked her to do.
All was good until the latest issue of
Consumer Reports magazine arrived in the
mail last week. I expect no matter what I
do I will continue to receive the magazine,
which I have been charged for and no
doubt will not be refunded. I could make a
case out of it, but it's just $26 and that
values my time pretty cheaply. I know
there's a recession, but I will have to settle
for airing my issue publicly in this blog
post.
39
The Big Bang
Theory: The Killer
Robot Instability
By Kona Gallagher (TV Squad)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 12:02:00 AM
Filed under: OpEd, Episode Reviews,
Reality-Free, The Big Bang
Theory(S02E12) You guys, this episode
made me really uncomfortable. I was still
riding high on the glow of the last episode,
which was probably the best episode of the
BBT ever, so I expected this one to be
great. It... wasn't.
It started out promising enough, what
with the killer robot and all. I mean, who
wouldn't love a killer robot? The whole
gang was hanging out in the apartment,
doing what they do best: engaging in
complicated geek pastimes. They killed a
toaster oven with a robot! That's some
good stuff right there.
Unfortunately, as soon as we're done
with the opening credits, the episode really
starts to go downhill for me. Penny starts
out by being really mean to Wolowitz, and
while she does have a point, it was really
uncomfortable to watch. Yes, Wolowitz is
creepy, but all of the guys are socially
awkward. She wouldn't yell at Raj for not
being able to talk to her, why yell at
Wolowitz for talking to her the only way
he knows how?
Continue reading The Big Bang Theory:
The Killer Robot Instability
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40 World Sport* Entertainment*
Rugby union: Guinness Premiership club owners
will meet on Thursday to discuss measures for
weathering the economic downturn
By Paul Rees (Sport |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:27:22 AM
The Guinness Premiership club owners
will on Thursday discuss a range of
measures designed to minimise the impact
of the economic downturn, starting with a
reduction in the size of the salary cap and
taking in squad sizes and the number of
sides in the top flight.
The Northampton owner, Keith Barwell,
and his Worcester counterpart, Cecil
Duckworth, will argue for an increase in
the number of teams in the Premiership
from 12 to 14. While that would mean an
average reduction in central funds, the
move would lead to relegation being
suspended, saving £3m a year in the
parachute payment given to the demoted
club.
"Each team would have two extra home
fixtures and I think 14 is a better way to go
than 10, which some have proposed," said
Duckworth. "A reduction would create the
need for a new competition to generate
income and I am not sure where that would
fit in."
Leicester and Northampton have argued
that the salary cap should be abolished, to
allow sides to compete with the free-
spending French, but there will be more
support for the suggestion that the cap be
reduced from a basic £4m to £3.5m with
sides concerned that otherwise wages will
be in danger of rising to some 70% of
turnover.
"Consistency and common sense must be
24: 11:00AM - 12:00PM
By Jonathan Toomey (TV Squad)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 10:02:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, 24, Episode Reviews,
Reality-Free
( S07E04)"I'm not with anyone until
someone starts answering some questions."
- Jack
As great as it is getting early screeners
for a show, believe it or not, there's
applied to some of the changes being
considered by Premier Rugby over the cap,
squad sizes, wage cuts and format option,"
said the Bath chief executive, Bob Calleja.
"Each club should be allowed to manage
its affairs within an agreed and regulated
structure. By all means set the salary cap,
which is a very sensible controlling
measure, but allow each club sufficient
flexibility to operate as it wants within that
figure.
"We cut our cloth based on what we can
afford within a business budget and, if
there is an economic downturn, we
respond accordingly. I have just been
through a very painful cost-cutting process
of staff redundancies and cost-cutting
measures to keep the club on an even
keel."
The issue of squad sizes is concerning
the Professional Rugby Players'
Association. A reduction to between 35
and 40 players would lead to a loss of jobs
but existing contracts mean that any move
could not be implemented for a couple of
years.
"You can't ask the players to take the rap
by themselves," said the PRPA chief
executive, Damian Hopley. "A number of
contracts are already locked in and it is
very hard for players, with families to feed
and mortgages to support, to be told that
they might have to re-negotiate. Some
clubs are not happy with the proposals,
either. They have made agreements with
their players in good faith and want to
honour them."
The Premier Rugby chief executive,
actually one caveat - especially when
you're writing reviews. It forces you to
choose your words ever so carefully,
respecting the fact that not everyone has
seen what you have. When it comes to 24,
that's no easy task. Trust me - it wasn't
easy knowing the whole truth about Tony
while writing about the first hour of this
season. One can only drop little hints like
"humongous twist" and "there's more to
Daily Digital Newspaper
Mark McCafferty, said firm decisions were
unlikely to be made . "We will probably
need a follow-up meeting because of the
detail involved," McCafferty said. "We
will be looking at a range of options but
we also have to keep banging the drum that
the club game continues to offer very good
value for money."
Meanwhile the Wales centre Gavin
Henson is available for the Ospreys, who
travel to Perpignan in the Heineken Cup
this weekend, after his partner, Charlotte
Church, gave birth to their second child.
The New Zealand outside-half, Daniel
Carter, will miss the game for the home
side after being told to rest an injured
achilles tendon for a week.
The Ospreys coach, Sean Holley,
admitted the region had held talks with the
Wasps and England flanker, James
American Idol's new judge, Kara
Haskell, who is out of contract at the end
of the season. "He has been to the Liberty
Stadium to look at the facilities and I am
DioGuardi, loves everyone
sure he would fit well into our squad," said By Kona Gallagher (TV Squad) new season and ostensibly to answer some
Holley. "It is down to the hierarchy here Submitted at 1/13/2009 10:14:00 AM
of these questions, FOX set up a
and I am sure negotiations will be conference call with Kara. Unsurprisingly,
ongoing." Filed under: American Idol, Watercooler she stayed as far away from minefields as
• Guinness Premiership Talk, Interviews, Judges humanly possible, instead gushing about
• Northampton Saints The premiere of American Idol's new how wonderful everyone on the show is
• Worcester season is tonight; can you stand it? Last and how well they all get along, and blah
• Leicester Tigers year brought us a format change with the blah blah, puppies and rainbows. Luckily,
• Ospreys addition of instruments; this year, we have she also chatted about what she thinks of
• Rugby union a new judge. Controversy has been the newest crop of contestants as well as
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & following Kara DioGuardi since she was past Idols.
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is named AI's fourth judge. Is she taking Continue reading American Idol's new
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Paula's place? Are there catfights? Will she judge, Kara DioGuardi, loves everyone
Feeds screw up the balance of the show? Permalink| Email this| | Comments
To help drum up enthusiasm about the
That being said, I can breathe a sigh of
relief now because I'm caught up with the
rest of the world and the truth - the whole
humongous twist truth - is finally out.
Continue reading 24: 11:00AM -
12:00PM
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
this" so many times before you start to
sound like a know-it-all jerk.
Daily Digital Newspaper
Rugby union: Guinness Premiership club owners President Bush wants fifteen more
will meet on Thursday to discuss measures for minutes
weathering the economic downturn
By Paul Rees (Sport |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:27:22 AM
The Guinness Premiership club owners
will on Thursday discuss a range of
measures designed to minimise the impact
of the economic downturn, starting with a
reduction in the size of the salary cap and
taking in squad sizes and the number of
sides in the top flight.
The Northampton owner, Keith Barwell,
and his Worcester counterpart, Cecil
Duckworth, will argue for an increase in
the number of teams in the Premiership
from 12 to 14. While that would mean an
average reduction in central funds, the
move would lead to relegation being
suspended, saving £3m a year in the
parachute payment given to the demoted
club.
"Each team would have two extra home
fixtures and I think 14 is a better way to go
than 10, which some have proposed," said
Duckworth. "A reduction would create the
need for a new competition to generate
income and I am not sure where that would
fit in."
Leicester and Northampton have argued
that the salary cap should be abolished, to
allow sides to compete with the free-
spending French, but there will be more
support for the suggestion that the cap be
reduced from a basic £4m to £3.5m with
sides concerned that otherwise wages will
be in danger of rising to some 70% of
turnover.
"Consistency and common sense must be
A thank you to my cable provider (no, I'm serious!) -- VIDEO
By Richard Keller (TV Squad)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:08:00 AM
Filed under: Programming, Video,
Animation, Children, Retro Squad, Reality
-Free
Everyone, I need your attention! I am
about to do something that rarely pops up
in my life and, I'm guessing, in yours as
well. It might be a little shocking, so I
applied to some of the changes being
considered by Premier Rugby over the cap,
squad sizes, wage cuts and format option,"
said the Bath chief executive, Bob Calleja.
"Each club should be allowed to manage
its affairs within an agreed and regulated
structure. By all means set the salary cap,
which is a very sensible controlling
measure, but allow each club sufficient
flexibility to operate as it wants within that
figure.
"We cut our cloth based on what we can
afford within a business budget and, if
there is an economic downturn, we
respond accordingly. I have just been
through a very painful cost-cutting process
of staff redundancies and cost-cutting
measures to keep the club on an even
keel."
The issue of squad sizes is concerning
the Professional Rugby Players'
Association. A reduction to between 35
and 40 players would lead to a loss of jobs
but existing contracts mean that any move
could not be implemented for a couple of
years.
"You can't ask the players to take the rap
by themselves," said the PRPA chief
executive, Damian Hopley. "A number of
contracts are already locked in and it is
very hard for players, with families to feed
and mortgages to support, to be told that
they might have to re-negotiate. Some
clubs are not happy with the proposals,
either. They have made agreements with
their players in good faith and want to
honour them."
The Premier Rugby chief executive,
want to make sure that you're near a chair.
Deep breath, here it goes...
I want to thank my cable provider. I'll
wait until you can sit down. Need a drink
of water? Breath of fresh air?
I'm being serious here! I know that it's
rare that someone publicly thanks the
utility that sucks their money away and
provides little if any variety, but I think
this time it's merited. You see, for years
World Sport* Entertainment* 41
By Brad Trechak (TV Squad)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 11:11:00 AM
Mark McCafferty, said firm decisions were Filed under: Reality-Free President Bush
unlikely to be made . "We will probably has asked the networks to give him fifteen
need a follow-up meeting because of the minutes of prime-time air on Thursday
detail involved," McCafferty said. "We night to give a farewell address to the
will be looking at a range of options but nation. The networks were non-committal
we also have to keep banging the drum that at first, but the odds are in favor them
the club game continues to offer very good granting the request. As a warning, this
value for money." will likely delay the start of all your
Meanwhile the Wales centre Gavin favorite Thursday shows.
Henson is available for the Ospreys, who Great, now among his other failings
travel to Perpignan in the Heineken Cup Bush has to preempt the first Smallville
this weekend, after his partner, Charlotte since November. The series was finally the office does deserve respect. I admit
Church, gave birth to their second child. getting interesting again with the departure some curiosity about what he'll say on
The New Zealand outside-half, Daniel of Lana as a steady character and now the Thursday. Perhaps he'll declare martial law
Carter, will miss the game for the home President is delaying the very special or start a coup d'état. Or perhaps it's all a
side after being told to rest an injured Legion of Super Heroes episode written by big promotional scheme by Will Ferrell.
achilles tendon for a week. Geoff Johns. How dare he! Permalink| Email this| | Comments
The Ospreys coach, Sean Holley, Seriously, he is the President and even
admitted the region had held talks with the with only days left in his administration,
Wasps and England flanker, James
Haskell, who is out of contract at the end
of the season. "He has been to the Liberty
Stadium to look at the facilities and I am
sure he would fit well into our squad," said
Holley. "It is down to the hierarchy here
and I am sure negotiations will be
ongoing."
• Guinness Premiership
• Northampton Saints
• Worcester
• Leicester Tigers
• Ospreys
• Rugby union
guardian.co.uk© Guardian News &
Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is
subject to our Terms & Conditions| More
Feeds
youth. I speak about Looney Tunes
cartoons.
Continue reading A thank you to my
cable provider (no, I'm serious!) -- VIDEO
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
now the networks have been lacking a very
important series of programs that are
important to the proper education of our
42 Special* Entertainment* Copy Right*
How investigative research happens in
the blogosphere
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 1/11/2009 9:49:28 AM
One of the common complaints from
people in journalism about bloggers is that
we just comment on reports in the news,
we don't do original reporting. It's so often
repeated it's become a cliche, but it's
simply not true and I can prove it.
Draw a continuum of different kinds of
news, at the left edge put a dot and label it
"Event." At the extreme right edge put
"Commentary." On the line between those
two extremes, somewhere put a circle and
label it "Reporting."
No one questions that bloggers produce
writing that belongs at the right edge of the
continuum, but then so do pros. That's
editorial and op-ed pages. People like
Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, David
Broder, Krugman -- in days gone by James
Reston, Russell Baker (my childhood role
model). Think of it as shared territory
between pros and amateurs.
At the left edge, bloggers win hands-
down. We have far more original sources
blogging than the pros have writing in their
pages. Over time, as the thirst for news
goes up and the volume provided by the
pros goes down, expect to see more. The
thirst to be heard has always been high,
and this is fueling the explosion of
blogging at this edge.
Now, if you're a regular reader of
Scripting News, you see us do
investigative reporting all the time. And
I'm not using the plural in a regal sense, I
very much do mean "us" -- as in me and
you and a whole lot of other people. For
example, in December, after seeing
Tweetree, and having put a lot of work into
systematizing thumbnail generation (with
the ongoing help of a reader, who lives in
Turkey), I wanted to connect the two. So I
proposed a way to do that. Immediately a
flood of comments probing my decision,
and a number of suggestions that I look at
work done by others that I hadn't found
when I looked. Now this process is not
trivial, it's the equivalent of a reporter
making dozens of phone calls to experts.
Sure, I'm not probing their ethics, looking
for malfeasance, whether or not they're
bugging Watergate, or stealing funds from
taxpayers or widows, instead -- they're
doing that to me. Which I've learned to live
with, and see as a good thing. I know my
heart is pure, but they don't, at least not at
first. They are right to be suspicious of a
fellow technologist. Many are corrupt. I've
writen about that here. (Part of the reason
there's so much corruption, btw, is that the
professional press including some of the
pubs we all revere, have been playing
footsy with the industry for a long time.
But that's another story, one often told
here, btw, which has gotten me a rep with
the press for being an "irascible gadfly.")
Anyway, a comment left here by a reader
in December bothered me, so I looked into
it and found he had something, so I revised
my approach, and published the revision
here, on Friday. Then another reader
suggested I use a format that Digg had
proposed, and I agreed, so -- another
revision. Now here's a key point, in all the
reporting I had done up till this point, I had
never stumbled across this. It hadn't been
reported on by pros as far as I could tell,
and up till that point, none of my readers
knew about it either. Is this an
investigative process? Absolutely. Is it
journalism? I don't see how it's any
different from the best journalism done by
the pros, except 1. it's done out in the open,
that's an essential element, and 2. it's being
done by people who do it for reasons other
than being paid, directly, for it. To
trivialize those reasons is to ignore why
people want knowledge, to ignore the
motivations of the sources and the readers,
both of whom are essential to the news
processs (though the journos are often
loathe to acknowledge this), and neither of
whom are paid for their efforts.
But even then the story is not over.
Another reader says there's a mistake, the
format wasn't authored by Digg, it was
actually authored by Facebook! I did a bit
of investigation and couldn't find a claim
that they authored it, or a news report, but I
did determine that they supported it, by
doing a test, that worked. We saw a
citation on the Digg site that said that
Facebook was the source, so that was good
enough for me, and I revised my piece
accordingly. (I allow myself that until the
day closes, then if I want to revise I have
to write another piece, like the one I'm
doing now, that's why serious stories on
Scripting News tend to come in a series.)
Finally I published a "cap" to the series,
and reported on the significance of all this
work. A full week of work, with lots of
human contact, research, sourcing, fact
checking. I'm sure there will be some who
say this doesn't belong in the circle in the
middle of the continuum above, and I'm
sure we'll get ample opportunity to discuss
that, and learn from each other.
Daily Digital Newspaper
How I Met Your Mother: Benefits
By Joel Keller (TV Squad)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 11:33:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your
Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-
Free(S04E12) When I saw the promos for
this episode, my heart sank. I really
thought that this was going to be the
standard sitcom "exes have a relapse and
have to deal with it" trope that we've seen
since at least Cheers. But I have to give
Bays and Thomas credit; they put enough broke all those TVs.
of a twist on the old game to make it Continue reading How I Met Your
entertaining. And they added a B-story that Mother: Benefits
was light, but funny and relatable. More on Permalink| Email this| | Comments
that in a sec.
Back to the A-story. For the twist, we
can thank Barney. And not just because he
Copyright 2.0 Show - Episode
93
By Jonathan Bailey copyright world including our “Weird
(PlagiarismToday) Story of the Week”.
This week’s stories include:
Submitted at 1/12/2009 10:30:19 AM
• ITunes Now DRM-Free
It is Monday again and that means that it • FTC Schedules DRM Hearing
is time for another episode of the • Bratz May Continue to Be Sold
Copyright 2.0 Show. • Veoh Wins Another Round
It was a problem-plagued show this week • Pirate Prisons Project Aims to Build
for us. We had technical difficulties getting Prisons for Billions
the show off the ground and, even after we • And Many more…
finally were able to record, the audio You can download the MP3 file
quality was not what it should have been. here(direct download). Those interested in
There is a noticeable amount of static on subscribing to the show can do so via this
my end of the call. feed.
That being said, it is still a very Show Notes
important episode, with some critical Need a Copyright or Plagiarism
updates and easily the biggest DRM story Consultant? I am Here to Help.
of this, admittedly young, year. jonb1324cdr
All in all, there were thirteen stories this
week including news from all over the
Daily Digital Newspaper
The Holy Church of Checklists
(Scripting News)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 5:21:40 PM
Yesterday's piece on investigative
research in the blogosphere was one of the
most polarizing pieces I've ever written,
going all the way back to the first email
essays I wrote in 1994. Those really upset
a lot of people, because I saw where my
industry, which now is pretty much gone,
was getting swallowed up in the open
formats and protocols, both technologic
and human, of the Internet. Now, 15 years
later, I stand by any of those pieces. I've
become a better writer, for sure, I'm better
able to anticipate people's objections, I
have a better sense of what people are
ready to hear, but every once in a while I
just ignore all that, and write what I really
think.
I had a good but brief talk with Howard
Weaver, who proudly told me he had two
Pulitzer Prizes, and who recently retired
from McClatchy. We found we had a lot to
talk about, and we're quite close in age,
and I think for two aging guys we've still
got some flexibility in our thinking. He
lives in Sacramento, just a couple of hours
away by car. I'm sure we'll get together,
and when we do, I don't doubt it will be
interesting and productive.
That said, a fair number of other people
expressed anger at me and my piece, but
always with remarkably honest words like
"You seem to be saying" or "I suspect you
believe" or somesuch. Those are big red
flashing warning signs, your inner-editor
Copyright News Links - 01-10-09
By Jonathan Bailey
(PlagiarismToday)
Submitted at 1/10/2009 10:15:50 AM
It has been a very a very active week for
copyright news with lots of new cases and
updates to old ones.
First, we have one of the biggest DRM
stories in history, a lawsuit and makeup
between Power.com and Facebook, an
update to the Bratz case and a humorous
project to build “Pirate Prisons” and much
should stop and ask for a rewrite, because
you're using whoever you're writing to as a
foil, somehow you want to express
something, to be heard, and you need this
crutch -- this symbol to be angry with. I
wish somehow I could make people filter
these things for themselves. We all want to
be appreciated for our individuality, no one
wants to be treated as a symbol.
Or I could just write a followup, like this
one.
I also wrote a piece about economics, but
if you take it at face value you'll see it's
another media story. I had just listened to
1/2 of yesterday's Meet The Press, and was
disgusted that the reporters on the
roundtable were basing their analysis on a
lie. Then later that day Jay Rosen, who is a
great teacher of things I am very interested
in, provided a framework for all this. The
media and the people they interview have
an agreed upon set of assumptions, Jay
calls this the sphere of consensus, and it
doesn't matter if they're true or not, and
many of them are not. They have a finite
set of them, so any reporter only has to
master the list, and then each politico he or
she interviews is asked to recite his or her
poetry about each item on the list. They
judge the quality of the pol by the quality
of their prose and how ruffled they get.
The more ruffled, the more points for the
journo, the less ruffled, the more for the
politico. It's a game.
There are some people who are regulars
on the shows who clearly don't buy into
this nonsense. Krugman for one. I was also
more.
Remember, as usual, this week’s linkroll
is a “raw” link list. Some stories are
duplicated, some do not point to their
struck by a Fresh Air interview with Chuck
Todd last week where he explained how he
was learning the ropes as a member of the
elite priests of the Holy Church of
Checklists. But I think of Todd as one of
the few who think independently, and
forms his own theses and tests them
scientifically. This is my kind of journo. I
also like Brook Gladstone and Bob
Garfield, because they sometimes break
out of this straight jacket themselves.
Ladies and gentlemen, whether you're a
pro or an amateur, I think the real
difference between the men and the boys,
the women and the girls, is this. In these
challenging times do we have the guts to
admit that the government prints money,
and accept the complexities that come with
that, and ask our politicos what happens
when they've exhausted that option,
instead of asking them nonsense questions
about cutting expenses or raising debt, and
watching the politico just sidestep it and
answer the question they really want to.
In other words, I think the reporters who
get so angry with me are doing so because
I don't buy into the Sphere of Consensus
Jay talks about. Instead I buy into the
Sphere of Don's Amazing Puzzle. I know
that my eyes deceive me every day, they
see only what they expect to see, and
unless I develop methods to check my
vision, I will keep believing in systems that
don't work.
original sources and some may not be
accurate. A great deal of refining goes into
producing the show notes for the
Copyright 2.0 Show.
Your RSS reader/browser does not
support JavaScript, please click through for
the full article.
Need a Copyright or Plagiarism
Consultant? I am Here to Help.
jonb1324cdr
Two New Places to Find
Me
By Jonathan Bailey
(PlagiarismToday)
Submitted at 1/8/2009 10:15:51 AM
I’ve been very busy since the beginning
of the year and am now proud to announce
two new places that you can receive
information and help from myself
including both a new blog to find my
writing on and a new place to obtain my
consulting services, but at a bundled rate.
bLogics
First, I am proud to announce a new
partnership with bLogics, a consulting
service aimed at bloggers to help them
build their sites and grow online. Owned
by SplashPress Media, which also owns
The Blog Herald and Perofmancing(two
other sites I currently contribute to),
bLogics assists bloggers in a variety of
areas including hosting, design, content
generation and social media.
At bLogics, I will be bringing my
expertise to their new Copyright
Managements services, which specifically
have two functions.
• Content Tracking: First I’m providing a
service where I search the Web for your
site’s content, locate the highest-ranking
sites using your content and then providing
a report that breaks down the kinds of sites
they are, what format the use takes
(attributed, partial, etc.) and what the
recommended course of action is. This is
not an all-inclusive report, but rather, a
highlight reel of the most important cases
to examine. It is designed to maximize the
effectiveness of any enforcement you wish
to take while minimizing the time spent.
• Cessation: Second, I am offering
assistance in stopping infringers, namely
by using takedown requests to remove
unwanted copies. This includes tracking,
locating the correct information, sending
the notice and follow up. This service can
be used in conjunction with the first
service, but both can be used separately.
These services are identical to ones I’ve
offered on my Consulting Services page
for years (the first being a part of the
“Content Strategy Development”) but with
bLogics the advantage is that they can be
bundled with other, related services that
are beyond my scope.
Special* Copy Right* 43
It is worth noting that the content
tracking services are NOT designed to
replace automatic plagiarism detection
tools, but rather, provide a layer of human
analysis over them. For those that wish to
know about every copy and stop every
case, these services are likely not a good fit
and I will gladly recommend a variety of
tools that can give you full control. It is
more aimed at those that want to reduce
the time they spend on such issues while
still obtaining the maximum benefit or
simply want a second opinion to add to
their own information. Blogging Tips
Today also marks the day I begin a new
weekly column at Blogging Tips. The
column, which will appear on Thursdays,
is going to focus on WordPress and
blogging-related tips for protecting,
licensing and tracking your content, though
it may also delve into other tips I’ve
learned over the years.
These columns will focus less on legal
issues and more on technology and tools
that can assist in handling content-related
issues in a bid to be more practical and
“ground level” than some of the
discussions on this site.
The first column, scheduled to be posted
later today, deals with Google Alerts and
how to use it to track your feed.
Conclusions
It is always exciting for me when I get to
reach new audiences and help new people
so today is a great day for me.
I want to say thank you to all of my
clients, both current and past, that have
helped make it so that I have been able to
work on Plagiarism Today full time for the
past year and a half without including any
advertising on the site. I feel very fortunate
to have had this opportunity and, because
of it, I’ve been able to help many people at
no cost.
Also, thank you all dear readers for your
support, without you this site would not be
possible.
I’m looking forward to a very exciting
2009.
44 Copy Right*
Stupid Plagiarist Tricks
By Jonathan Bailey
(PlagiarismToday)
Submitted at 1/7/2009 10:32:00 AM
photo credit: joelogon
Plagiarists are not typically known for
being the brightest nor the hardest-working
people on the planet. If they were, they
wouldn’t be plagiarizing. But for every
reasonably intelligent person that makes a
mistake and gets caught up in a plagiarism
tiff, there are dozens, if not hundreds of
morons blundering their way through copy
and paste 101.
But while I don’t assume I’m dealing
with Mensa candidates when I’m handling
plagiarism cases, there have been a few
that really raised the bar on stupidity.
So here are three of my “favorite”
plagiarism cases from the 700 plus I’ve
handled involving my own work. I’m
obviously not going to mention any sites or
names, but all of the stories are accurate
retellings (memory and evidence allowing)
of actual idiot plagiarists. The 10-Year-Old
Poet
The second case of plagiarism I dealt
with introduced me to just how asinine
some plagiarists could be and almost put
me off to dealing with plagiarists directly
at all.
I had noticed that some of my poems
were on a journal hosted a LiveJournal-like
site. I attempted to contact the admins
since the individual had no email address
on his journal but apparently something
went amiss. After waiting a few days, I left
a comment on one of the posts and then
watched as all Hell broke loose.
He claimed not just to have written the
items be posted, but every single one of the
works on my site, over 100 of them. I then
confronted him with the fact that my site,
at that time, had been up for well over six
years, something easily proved in the Web
Archive, including many of the poems he
had copied. He didn’t deny the time frame
and continue to claim he had written the
works, even though his profile said he was
about to turn seventeen. This meant that he
would have been only ten years old at the
time the first poems went up.
The logic train pulled further away from
the station as he later began to make claims
of somehow telepathically delivering the
works to me and began to pen vulgar
fantasies about how he would beat me in
court by being too “sexy” to prosecute.
After a brief mention on my site, it
quickly erupted into a flame war with my
readers inundating his comments.
However, even that was for naught. Even
after being called out and facing
overwhelming evidence, he actually
increased his posting pace, adding two or
three of my poems every day.
Eventually the admins did step in, after I
sent a second email, and the journal was
suspended. The case was resolved but I’ve
never been able to forget that someone
actually claimed to be a 10-year-old poet
with magical telepathic powers to get out
of a plagiarism accusation.
Mitigating Circumstances: If I were to
defend this individual I would plead
insanity. I often wonder if this person had
mental problems far beyond his love for
copying mediocre poetry. A Friend’s
Betrayal
In 2004/2005 I had an online friend that
was helping me settle into New Orleans a
bit. She was right across the border in
Mississippi and new the city’s literary
scene pretty well. Having just moved into
town a bit over a year prior, I was still
getting my feet wet some and needed the
help.
She knew well my battles with
plagiarists, by that point I had written
about them many times before on my site,
and I even demonstrated the power of my
detection tools to her, showing her
plagiarist links that had only gone up the
day before.
So I was incredibly surprised when one
of the Google Alerts I received pointed me
to a site run by a woman who was eerily
familiar. She was from the same town as
my friend, roughly the same age and had a
very similar screen name. Despite that, I
didn’t put the pieces together right away,
but when I clicked a link to her Myspace
profile, it all fit.
To make matters worse, this woman had
included all of her personal information in
an informal resume, including real name,
address and phone number (all of which I
had previously) and had even linked to my
site from her Myspace page. Yet, on this
personal Web page, there were 12 of my
works, all under her name.
I tried to call but got no answer. I then
sent a hostile email about the matter and
consulted with my attorney about what to
do. He advised me to sue and I hurriedly
registered my work with the Copyright
Office in preparation. Eventually, I heard
back from her,after several weeks of
waiting, and she flatly denied being the
one who posted the works.
The only problem, other than the
mountain of personal information that I
could easily verify, was that the week
before she had emailed me asking if I had
removed three works. I hadn’t, they had
just changed categories, and I directed her
to the correct place. Those three works
were the most recently plagiarized.
In the end, Hurricane Katrina put an end
to the lawsuit preparations. When it hit and
both of our cities were severely damaged,
everyone involved felt there were more
pressing issues. Furthermore, it was
unlikely she remained in the same location,
making it very difficult to file the suit.
The site, however, was quickly shut
down.
Still, I find it stunning not only that
someone who I considered a friend could
betray me knowing full and well what I
could do in this area, but that her best
defense was “Not me” despite her literally
telling everyone it was.
Mitigating Circumstances: Looking back
on this individual, I see that almost
everything about her was a lie. Though she
had good information, everything about
her was either a lie or an exaggeration. I
usually pride myself on being a good judge
of character, but this time I got fooled. I
have come to believe this person was a
compulsive liar, just not a very smart one.
I, as with the first one, wonder if this is due
to some kind of serious mental issue. No
Plagiarism: That’s the Policy
I am often alerted to plagiarism issues
not by Google Alerts, but via concerned
readers and fans. One such case involved a
stranger who asked me to confirm if I had
written everything on my site. When I
replied in the affirmative, he informed me
that he had seen almost a dozen works on a
forum he visits.
When I checked it out, I was surprised to
find that this was no ordinary forum
plagiarist. It was the administrator of the
community, which in turn was part of a
larger community/social networking site.
To make matters worse, I was literally
stepping into the matter mid-fray. The
plagiarist was already being bombarded
with hostile questions and a forum topic
about the posts had already received many
dozens of replies. Even the plagiarists
girlfriend, who was apparently a part of the
Daily Digital Newspaper
forum, was part of the discussion
(especially interesting since had claimed to
write one for her).
To make matters worse for him, he had
apparently made all of his posts “sticky”
putting them at the top of the forum. That
made it very easy for me to locate.
However, as I began to look up
information on how to contact the higher
ups at the site, the admin-turned-plagiarist
started lashing back, locking the thread in
question and removing the sticky from the
posts. This, in turn, buried them under
dozens of pages of other people’s writing.
Fortunately, that was nothing that a
“site:” search in Google couldn’t resolve
(still no idea why I did not get a Google
Alert for these items) and I was able to get
the site admins to remove all of the posts.
As I left the plagiarist to patch up things
with his community and his girlfriend, I
noticed he had posted a terms of service
for people posting his site, I took a quick
peek and found that the second item began
with the words “NO PLAGIARISM” (caps
his).
I was tempted to enter the fray on this
one, but thought better of it. Leaving this
one behind.
Mitigating Circumstances: I’ve got
nothing. Hypocrite and jerk are not
mitigating circumstances. Your Turn
Have you had any dealing with stupid
plagiarists? If so I’d love to hear your
thoughts, leave a comment below and
share your stories.
I look forward to hearing your stories!
Note: The guy in the image is not a
plagiarist, just someone I imagine
expressing a natural reaction when
confronted with high levels of human
stupidity.
Need a Copyright or Plagiarism
Consultant? I am Here to Help.
jonb1324cdr
Daily Digital Newspaper
Three Online Watermarking Tools
By Jonathan Bailey
(PlagiarismToday)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 9:38:41 AM
Professional photographers and artists
have a wide variety of applications to
apply watermarks on their images, most of
which all them to batch process dozens or
hundreds of images at once. These
applications allow them to add logos and
text to an image, while controlling
location, transparency and color, all with a
click.
However, more amateur photographers
and artists often times don’t have access to
such tools. Though many are free, some
feel that it is not worth the time and energy
to learn a new application just to
watermark the occasional image.
Still, if you upload photos to the Web
and worry about how others might use it,
watermarking them can go a long way to
help protect them. If done right, it provides
the only truly secure means of preventing
others from plagiarizing your photos or
using them commercially.
Fortunately, there are several online tools
that can be used for very quick
watermarking jobs, Today, we’re going to
take a look at three of them and how well
they perform. Watermarktool
Watermarktool has gained a fair amount
of attention in recent weeks. It provides a
simple, yet robust interface for applying
watermarks to an image.
On the positive side, the tool allows you
to add a watermark to multiple images at
the same time. This can save time and
reduce mistakes when trying to do a series
of uploads since you only have to set your
options once.
Watermark tool offers a great deal of
Comments on Comments
By noreply@blogger.com (A
Soldier's Mother) (A Soldier's
Mother)
Submitted at 1/8/2009 9:06:00 PM
This is not the post I plan to write,
thanking those of you who are praying for
Elie and taking so much time to write to
me and give me support. The mothers of
American soldiers in Iraq whose sons are
there are writing to me and I am humbled.
flexibility with the watmermark you add.
You can select the text you wish to
display, including size font and color, the
background box and the transparency for
each item. You can also create a
“repeating” watermark, which writes the
words over the text in a loop, similar to
what some stock photography agencies do.
The main drawback of this tool is that it
has a 100kb per file size limit. Though that
sounds like a lot, most of the images that I
have from my cell phone and camera are
many times that size and I had to find one
that was pre-reduced to in order to test it.
However, once I did find an image that
was the right size, the process worked
well. Though I had some issues
downloading the image as my browser
kept wanting to save it as an “HTML” file
and not a jpg (This is likely due to the non-
standard extensions the site uses when
displaying produced images). Still, the end
result looks good and serves its purpose.
It’s a solid choice over all in this field.
Sample (w/ Default Settings)
BiggerBids Image Watermarking Tool
On the surface, the BiggerBids
Watermarking Tool is more robust than
Watermarktool. It provides a slew of
interesting features including the ability to
set an image as the watermark, thus letting
you add your logo to an image, you’re
given more robust handling of the
watermark, including the ability to set
margins and alignment, and you can even
resize the image.
However, the tool is filled with bugs. I
tested this site in several different browsers
but was unable to complete a single
watermark all the way. Instead, I was
forced to restart the process repeatedly to
just go through motions a single time.
My son is at war now for a week, yours
have been there for months. I complain
because I haven't talked to him for a few
days, how often do you get to hear your
son's voice? The former soldiers (is there
such a thing?) from the American army
and from the Israeli army, you are proof
that soldiers go to war...and come
home...and you write to tell me to trust in
Elie's training, to believe, and have faith.
No, I can't write to thank you now
Uploading images is a gamble as
sometimes the uploader seems to hang, the
preview feature does not work well, the
default font caused characters to disappear,
the CAPTCHA only works half of the time
and the two times I got an actual image,
the first the zip file produced a “file not
found” error.
I’ve included a sample below but, as you
can see, it isn’t pretty due to errors caused
by the default font.
All in all, this is a tool to stay away from
until these bugs are fixed. If they’re able to
correct these problems, then it might be a
worthwhile service.
Sample (w/ Default Settings)
PicMarkr
PicMarkr is a lesser-known online
watermarking app on the broader Web that
has gained at least some traction among
the Flickr crowd.
When visiting the site, it is easy to see
why. The tool looks and feels like a Flickr
app, down to the colors and minimalist
design scheme. However, the simple
layout belies a very powerful
watermarking tool.
PicMarkr can watermark multiple images
at once (up to a 25 mb limit total), grab
images from Flickr or from your hard
drive, add a text, image or tiled watermark
and even resize the image.
The drawback is that you do not get a
great deal of control over how the
watermark looks. There is only a limited
set of options for the watermark itself. All
text watermarks are black and white, there
are only two opacities to choose from and
because I have to wait till this is over and
Elie is home safe. If I start to tell you what
your words mean to me, I'll crumble. So,
this is a comment on the comments that I
receive that I don't publish. Many are
hateful and filled with lies. The evidence is
there - in black and white video showing
them firing from the school. The formal
complaint filed by the United Nations
several months ago is a fact and can be
checked.
Copy Right* Special Feature
exact placement is impossible. Similar
restrictions exist for image and tiled
watermarks.
Still, the watermarks are attractive and
fairly effective. They fit well with the
theme of the site and the relaxed upload
restrictions make it easy to do a series of
watermarks quickly on this site. If you can
deal with the limited control over the look
and feel, it is a great choice.
Sample (w/ Default Settings)
Conclusions
Of these three tools, PicMarkr is the one
that stands out. Though Watermarktool
provides more flexibility with the mark
itself, it’s restrictive upload policy and lack
of Flickr integration puts it behind
PicMarkr. For Flickr users, there is no
contest and for the rest of us, PickMarkr
still comes out slightly ahead.
That being said, none of these tools are
anywhere near as powerful as basic, freely-
available offline apps. Though I can see
artists using these when they are stuck
without their favorite tools, such as being
on a netbook while traveling, even those
who only watermark images once in a
while would probably be better off with an
offline app.
Fortunately, PicMarkr does offer a pro
version of its service for download and, as
I said earlier, there are a slew of other
image editors that can provide the same
functionality.
A review of some of those will likely be
forthcoming…
Need a Copyright or Plagiarism
Consultant? I am Here to Help.
jonb1324cdr
What is interesting is how many people
don't bother writing their names -
Anonymous makes things so easy to say
hurtful things and watch from the sidelines
hoping your little bomb of hatred finds its
target.
Anonymous wrote: There were no
mortars fired from the school. The UN and
other independent organizations all agree
on this. Please stop spreading lies just to
ease your conscience. Any sentence that
45
COMMENTS
continued from page 45
Palestinians refuses to allow any access to
our prisoner of war, Gilad Shalit, for
almost three years now? And where was
the United Nations when Palestinians fired
mortars from that school. As for easing my
conscience, if I don't sleep at night, it is
because I am worried about my son, all my
sons, and now my nephew too. They are
down there, along with one million
Israelis, and unlike our army, the
Palestinians make no effort to avoid
civilian targets - quite the opposite. No
leaflets warning Sderot are released; no
statement at all.
Anonymous (or another) was at it again,
this time getting personal. This is very
common and my greatest consolation is
that when I read these to Elie, he's going to
laugh. For that alone, I thank the creative
writers who think they can solve the
Middle East conflict by insulting my son.
Anonymous wrote: Your son is a faggot
a** ***** a** f*****g murderer,
f******g greedy a** jew
Anonymous (same or another) wrote:
Shut up jew Well...hmmm.....sorry for all
the "asterisks" but, I, at least, am trying not
to be offensive. Let's see. No, my son is
not a murderer. As time goes by and his
artillery unit continues to fire on command
(and no, I am not shifting this to those who
give the command. If Elie were ordered to
fire on a crowd of civilians, he would
refuse, but then again, he’d never be given
that order in the first place), the chance
that Elie's shells have not killed anyone
gets smaller and smaller. This is war and
the enemy is firing at us. That the enemy
"only" has weapons that by and large
miss...isn't true. They have other, more
advanced weapons they have yet to use, as
begins with "The UN and other
independent organizations all agree" has to
be given the value it deserves - none. The
United Nations is anything but
independent. Where was the United
Nations for the last 8 years when rockets
were falling? Where has the United
Nations been while Hamas, the supposedly
legitimate, duly-elected government of the
COMMENTS page 45
46 Special Feature
A "Journalist" Undercover...or a Liar Exposed?
By noreply@blogger.com (A
Soldier's Mother) (A Soldier's
Mother)
Submitted at 1/12/2009 7:18:00 AM
I'll let you choose.
In the last two weeks or so, I have been
approached by several journalists (and
those claiming to be journalists), who want
to hear about Elie, an Israeli soldier
involved in this war, and his mother, who
is writing about it, often in "real-time."
I've considered which ones to answer
because really, my focus isn't on
convincing the journalists of the world.
They are, all too often, more interested in
their personal agenda than in reality. They
want "the" story; "the" picture and they'll
step on or over anything and anyone to get
it.
There are great pictures in Gaza for
journalists. All that rubble; all that blood.
That the blood comes from a terrorist who
has just fired a rocket towards one million
people is not their concern. Now, if the
rocket were to actually HIT a good portion
of those one million, we'd have more blood
on our side, and so the journalists would,
for the most part, leave the man lying in a
pool of his blood and run to our side of the
fence to take pictures.
A woman huddled in a bomb shelter with
her arms carefully, desperately holding her
children to her as she waits those horribly
long seconds to see if she can hear the
explosion doesn't rate, even if it has
happened thousands of times in the last
few years. So, knowing this as I do, I
listen, I read, I research, before I answer a
journalist's questions.
About a week ago, Faisal Assegaf
contacted me. His email subject said,
"friendship greeting from JAKARTA" and
told me he was a journalist. You ever have
this feeling that something is rotten in the
state of Denmark, fishy near the coast of
Finland, or implausible in Indonesia?
So, I decided to play it safe and asked
Faisal to send me his questions in an email
- we'd conduct the interview in writing...or
not. Faisal was quick to respond with some
interesting questions and after reading
them, I was left with one question...
How stupid, Mr. Faisal Assegaf, author
of a blog called HamasLovers, do you
think I am?
The danger and the wonder of the
Internet is that you cannot hide nearly as
easily as you think. It wasn't hard, once I'd
discovered Faisal's blog, to understand that
his questions were certainly not innocent.
Here are his questions...and the answers I
would have offered him, had I thought he
was worth the effort. The colors below are
mine (red to indicate his questions, black
to indicate my responses. The spelling
mistakes and incorrect grammar...those are
all Faisal's.
1 Can u tell me wahat is the full name of
Elie, how old is he, and since when he took
military service?
I would prefer that you refer to Elie only
by his first name. This is a common
practice in Israel and especially wise given
the internationally recognized problems of
sharing too much identification
information on the web. Since this was
accepted by the New York Times and
other journalists who have shown an
interest in my blog, I assume this is
acceptable. Furthermore, as it is likely you
are considering Elie typical of most
soldiers, nothing else is needed.
2 In what unit Elie has been deploying?
and since when?
Hmmm....now why would a journalist
need this information? (a.k.a. - there you
go thinking we are stupid again)
Elie is 21 years old (read the blog). He
entered the army when he was 19 years old
(read the blog). As mentioned in the blog,
Elie is in artillery.
More than that would probably not be
smart to divulge and more importantly,
Elie's story is really the story of every
Israeli soldier. His exact unit or task is not
nearly as important as the fact that he has a
mother who adores him, sisters and
brothers who are worried about him, and a
father who prays for his son's return as
quickly as possible.
3 When did u know Elie will be
deployed in war zone? How was ur
reaction?
Elie called me last Thursday night to tell
me that his unit had taken up positions
within the "war zone." It's a silly thing to
call it because really, over 1 million
Israelis live in this "war zone" and have
had to deal with daily rocket fire, but that's
where Elie is now as well.
My reaction when he told me he was
there was predictable. I told him that I
loved him, told him to be careful. I said
goodbye, closed the phone, and then
started to cry.
4 Before leaving to war zone, did u make
farewell party for him? Did u spent all the
night before he went?
A farewell party? What kind of a society
do you come from?
There is no celebration for Israel in going
to war. We've never handed out candies
when our enemies die - as the Palestinians
did on 9/11 and as they do regularly when
there is a suicide bomb attack, so no, I
never considered celebrating the fact that
my son was going off to war. Elie was on
another base before he was moved to the
war zone and so we did not spend the
evening together. The weekend before, we
had all been together and, as always
happens when Elie is home, I just relax
and enjoy having him home. On Friday
night, after lighting the Sabbath candles, I
watched my husband bless his children.
The last part of the blessing asks God to
grant the child "peace." It's an especially
important prayer you offer a son who is a
soldier and I always feel very touched to
watch my husband bless his son this way.
5 What kind of Elie's personal thing that
he brought to the war zone?
I have no idea what Elie brought with
him to the war zone. I'm sure he brought
his prayer book and his
tefillin(phylacteries that are used to pray
every morning). Beyond that, I don't know
what he took.
6 Can u tell me where and what Elie's
duty in the war?
Maybe you want me to ask the Chief of
Staff to send you the war plans? Sheesh...
No, I can't tell you where Elie is now.
First, because I don't know, I didn't ask
him and second, it would not be at all
smart to release such details.
Same answer regarding what task he
does. Again, the specifics are not really
what is important. What I would say is that
Elie does what every Israeli soldier does -
he defends his country.
7 Can u tell me, what Elie did in his
relaxed time during the war? How often he
call u? And what usually he asked from u?
From what I can tell, Elie has had no
time to relax during this war. He keeps his
phone closed to save the battery. He asks
nothing, sends his love to his family, and
does what he can to fulfill our goal of
ending the rocket fire on our civilian
population.
8 Did Elie say u have to be ready for
getting bad news about him? What u and
ur family do for Elie's safety during the
war?
Why would Elie suggest that we would
hear bad news about him? What a strange
thing to ask a mother. Hmmmmm.......
Elie didn't really have time to tell me too
much and again, I didn't ask. While the
Israeli army isn't happy to go to war, much
of Israel is just hoping that after eight years
and 10,000 rockets and mortars, we can
finally achieve quiet for our people. The
only thing we can do for Elie during this
war is pray and try to help others
understand. This is not a war of our
Daily Digital Newspaper
choosing. The Palestinians chose to fire on
our civilian populations. They have been
firing rockets and mortars for months and
years. No country in the world would have
accepted what we have for so long.
9 Has Elie got married?
No, Elie is not married. (read the blog)
Don,t forget to send me Elie's picture in
military uniform. By the way, how old r u
Mrs Paula. I would like to thank so much
for ur complete answers. Please give me
too Elie's mobile number.
I don't take many pictures of Elie in his
uniform and our western cultures allow
women to withhold their age. He's my son
and when he comes home from the army,
the first thing he does is take off his
uniform.
I can't give you Elie's phone number
(duh...) for several reasons:
1. I wouldn't want anyone to be able to
trace his location.
2. His phone is off now and will stay off
as much as he needs so that he can
conserve the battery.
3. It isn't his place to speak to the media.
He is, after all, a young man in the middle
of war for the first time in his life. He's
dealing with enough. In the end, I decided
not to write to Faisal - at least not directly.
Someone who sends you friendly greetings
from Jakarta and wishes you well...while
writing a blog filled with lies and hatred
towards your country is not worth the
effort.
I did look at his site. It is with great
pleasure that I tell you it is in Indonesian -
thus most of the world will find it as
inaccessible as it is irrelevant. I had
sections translated - they are as filled with
hatred as I would expect a site proclaiming
its love of Hamas to be.
Daily Digital Newspaper
COMMENTS
continued from page 45
they themselves have warned us many
times. Missiles that can hit Tel Aviv, a
huge metropolis where hundreds of
thousands of people live.
For now, their main goal is to terrorize,
to interrupt life here and yes, if they can
kill a few people, all the better. In Israel, it
is often said, to be a realist, you must
believe in miracles. Yesterday, a rocket
fired from Lebanon landed on the roof of
an old age home. Three people were lightly
wounded. A few weeks ago, a young
Israeli girl in the south woke up and found
a hole in her bedroom ceiling, and a rocket
on her floor. These are the miracles God
grants to Israel almost daily.
My son is not greedy - sure, he might
have hogged his toys when he was a child,
but he's really gotten so much better. He
lets his younger brother play with his PSP
when he comes home and he is often the
first to get up and help me around the
house. Rather than greedy, I'd like to say
he is careful with his things. Can we agree
on this?
And, the clincher, you called my son a
"jew" - though as a writer, I have to tell
you that you are supposed to capitalize
proper nouns and so you should have
called him a Jew. Yes, guilty as charged
and very proud of it. And, therein lies
much of the truth of this war and the hatred
I see in some of the comments. My son is a
Jew, and even worse, by the standards
Anonymous lives by, my son is a proud
and strong Jew. Three times a day, he
thanks God for all of life's wonders and
asks for blessings for himself, his family,
his friends and his country.
The rest of the day, while following laws
we received thousands of years ago,
including the one that says, "Thou shalt not
murder," he defends his land. The
commandment does not say, "Thou shalt
not kill." Killing is bad and tragic, but
sometimes it is commanded. We are
commanded to kill those who seek to kill
us, and we were commanded to kill
Amalek, a bitter enemy who attacked the
weak and the young amongst our people as
we were taken out of Egypt. As a nation,
we failed. We didn't kill Amalek because
we showed compassion, and our
punishment through the centuries has been
that God has presented Amalek to us again
and again. Hitler was a modern-day
Amalek; and in many ways, so was Yasir
Arafat. Today’s Amaleks fire into our
cities and try to blow themselves up in our
cafes and buses and malls.
Sometimes, Anonymous (the same or
another) attacked me and not my son. I'd
like to tell you know that I prefer this. Oh,
no, I mean, I don't like it, but at least be
man (or woman) enough to know that
these words are mine. So I’ll respond to
the same or another anonymous who told
me to shut up. (Shut up, jew). That, I
cannot do, nor will I. As for being a "jew"
– again, with great pride, I agree.
Anonymous wrote: F*** off hook nosed
***** Look, we all are what we are and
this one hurts. My nose is not hook-nosed.
It could be smaller, but I can’t change what
I was born with and I sort of need my nose.
If it is any consolation, with a bit of
makeup, especially if I put on eye makeup,
my nose seems more proportional to my
face and really, what does that have to do
with my being a soldier's mother?
There were two other kinds of posts.
There are those who question what Israel
has done and try to reason with me, as a
mother. They assume the media is correct
and question Israel's actions. Some
comments are so incredibly wrong that
with even a bit of reason, you can see they
are nonsense. Here are a few:
Actually, Israel knew there were
civilians in the building because the UN
gave them the coordinates so Israel would
not attack it.
Israel has some of the most sophisticated
equipment in the world. Why would we
need the UN to give us coordinates ... and
since we complained about the school
being used as a launching ground in the
past, why would we now need the UN to
tell us it was there?
The area that your army is attacking is a
civilian area. There are no bases in Gaza.
Palestinian defenders are abviously not
going to stand in the open and allow your
airforce to bomb them.
No, our army has attacked numerous
military targets - training bases,
operational headquarters and dozens and
dozens of arsenals. Even at the school,
there were secondary explosions -- there,
where the UN agreed to give sanctuary to
hundreds of people -- proving, again, that
Hamas was storing arms in that school.
There is an incredible amount of
information the UN seems not to know, all
of a sudden. It didn't know about the
explosives inside its own building? It
didn't know about the mortars being
launched from the front yard? Sorry, but
this bends credibility to the point that it
breaks.
There most definitely are military bases
in Gaza - Hamas bases and those of several
other Palestinian terrorist groups. There are
also vast open areas of territory where
these bases could have and should have
been located.
Palestinians love to say they are the most
densely, packed in population in the world
- another lie. There vast areas of open land
that could be used for training and storing
weapons. I know because I have been in
Gaza, I have taken pictures.
But the last sentence was perhaps the
most interesting,"Palestinian defenders are
abviously [sic] not going to stand in the
open" because it made me think of my son.
My son is out in the open. There are no
buildings where he is; he showers, when he
can, with water brought to them in a truck.
They are open, exposed, to rockets that are
fired no less so than the Palestinian
gunmen and yet my son’s unit is
positioned away from major population
centers lest they draw fire and innocents
get injured.
Then, there were those who tried to be
neutral ... well, not exactly, like this one:
I hope we get rid of you both Israel and
Palestine. Believe me, friends - you can't
make this stuff up.
Oh, and this one -
If the state of israel did not exist, nothing
would have ever happened there in the 1st
place (no mass destruction, deaths, tight
security, ........)! Stupid Belfore pact!
Beyond the mistakes (Israel with a capital
"I" and Balfour Declaration, not Belfore
pact), it seems that, once again, Israel is to
blame for it all. No mass destruction (what
mass destruction?), deaths...oh, and tight
security. There you go, those of you who
live in America. Next time you go through
tight security at an airport, you are
apparently supposed to blame us, not the
Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who blew
up the World Trade Center, attacked the
Pentagon, the London subways, the
Madrid trains, the Mumbai hotels, the Bali
resort, American embassies in Kenya and
Sudan, the U.S.S. Cole (and I'm running
out of space or I would continue).
And finally, as this post is getting rather
long and I still have so much to do
today...there was one more that, all kidding
aside, no mother should have to read. It is
a message of such intense hatred; and, yet,
it is important because it is a reflection of
all that we fight against. This one,
however, did not hide behind
"Anonymous." With pride, I'm sure, he put
his name on his obscene message - Musa
Islam Abu Ayyoub.
I hope your worthless, bastard, whore of
a son gets shot in the f****** face. I hope
he dies slowly. I hope that you cry for him
to live but he dies in front of your eyes like
the coward that he is. I hope you cry for
him, I hope the taste of his death sits on
your tongue for the rest of your life. You
horrible, horrible person. I wish nothing
but pain and misery on you, your worthless
country and your worthless family. There
are so many comments I could make on
this, but I won't. I could tell you that this is
my greatest nightmare. I can't think of
anything worse in life than what Musa
describes. And, unlike Musa, I would not
wish this even on my worst enemy. No, I
won't defend myself, my son, my family,
or my country to you. It would be a waste
of time (mine, yours, and his).
Musa felt it was his right to have his
comment known, associated proudly with
his name. For those not familiar with the
way in which Arab culture uses names,
when God blesses a man with a child (I
believe only the first son, actually, not a
daughter), the man is forever changed and
becomes known by the name "Abu..." or
"Father of " and then the son's name. So
Musa is very proud to tell us that he is the
father of Ayyoub.
And the saddest message I can give you
today, is that I have no doubt that Musa is
raising Ayyoub to be just like him.
Special Feature 47
Today We
Mourn
By noreply@blogger.com (A
Soldier's Mother) (A Soldier's
Mother)
Submitted at 1/8/2009 1:19:00 PM
Today we lost two soldiers, two good
men who fought for their country because
that is what they were taught to do, that is
what they believed in, that is what they
knew was right. Tomorrow, the papers will
write about them. Today, only a few
details of their deaths and even less about
their lives is known. I would wait until
tomorrow to write about them, but
somehow I feel the need to write about
them now, on the day they died. I've only
found one picture of each - they look so
serious. I would rather have seen them
smile.
I've had so many comments today - a few
linger in my mind for their foul language
or nasty tones but so many more linger
because they offer support and kind words.
I thank you all for your many kindnesses
and assure you that Israel is strong, I am
strong. I am taking this one day at a time
and when that becomes too much, I take it
one hour at a time. Today was a good day
for me, perhaps because I was busy;
perhaps because yesterday I got to talk to
Elie and though he sounded bad, at least he
was OK. Today was better because I spoke
to him twice; and both times he was, above
all else, Elie.
A few comments linger in my mind for
their nasty tones and some for their
ignorance. Some people are trying to be
fair, but they are relying on media reports
that come out of Gaza. The problem is that
most media (BBC, Reuters, etc.) use
Palestinians to report from Gaza. A few
months ago, one "slipped" and said, "We."
All too often, Palestinian reports have
proven to be pure fiction.
This was true of the staged funeral years
ago - where Israeli satellite caught the sad
procession walking through the streets,
somber and slow. Until the clumsy
pallbearers dropped the boy. Have no fear,
the kind Palestinian body quickly stood up,
climbed back on the stretcher, covered
himself, and was once again whisked off -
TODAY page 49
48 Special Feature
And today he sounded....
By noreply@blogger.com (A
Soldier's Mother) (A Soldier's
Mother)
Submitted at 1/8/2009 1:38:00 PM
Good. Really, really good. I spoke to him
twice. The first time for only a few
minutes before he was called away, telling
me he'd call me back. If I had no other
conversation with him today, it would have
been enough. He sounded strong, alert, just
fine. So different than yesterday - amazing
what sleep can do. My heart settled after
that first call. I hoped he would call me
back, but I knew that even if he didn't, I'd
gotten enough contact to handle another
day, maybe even two.
A while later, he called back. I told him
he sounded better, that I'd been worried.
They have worked out a schedule that
allows them more rest - ready for a longer
battle, if need be. The first days were the
hardest because they had so much to learn,
so much to do.
As I often do, I had just tried his number
on a whim, hoping against hope that he'd
answer. After the second ring, I thought -
wait, it's not supposed to ring. It should
have gone straight to his voice mail as it
usually does. He answered after the third
ring.
He told me about taking showers
outdoors (quickly), and sleeping with his
coat on. He's a lucky one, he said - he still
has clean socks left. Most of the other boys
don't. "Worst comes to worse," he told me,
"I'll just wash some."
"Are you warm? Do you need anything?"
I asked him.
"Some of the guys really need socks.
Bank HaPoalim came and donated a pair
of socks and scarves for everyone." But
there was more, "four guys came down
with a car full of mamtakim"[sweets -
potato chips and peanut snacks and wafers
and everything imaginable].
"We need socks...and maybe thermal
pants. The army arranged for us to get
mail. I'll SMS you with the information."
"Will I be able to send you brownies?" I
asked. Yes, I can send him whatever I want
(though it sounds like they have tons of
snacks).
I told him that I was saving pictures
people had sent me or that I'd found on the
Internet for him to see. And then he told
me, "one of the guys got an amazing
picture. He's going to give it to all of us."
We didn't talk about the soldiers who
were killed today. We didn't talk about the
mortar that landed in Israel and wounded
several soldiers. We did talk about the
humanitarian ceasefire that Israel again
called today for three hours so that
Palestinians could again go out and
purchase food and supplies. And while we
ceased firing, the Palestinians did not.
Several rockets landed in Israel, injuring
and damaging.
"We're doing it to show the world," Elie
explained, "so they see that we aren't
fighting the people."
We talked about the rising number of
civilian casualties in Gaza, and about the
UN school that was hit, "what did they
want us to do? They were firing mortars
from there? Why didn't the UN stop
them?"
Well, I can't explain that to my son
because I don't have any answers myself.
Tomorrow is Friday. I didn't ask Elie if
he will be coming home for the Sabbath.
His younger sister suddenly cried out
yesterday, "I want to talk to Elie." I didn't
know what to tell her. I tried explaining
that he probably couldn't answer, that we
could try. This is the third week that Elie
isn't home, longer than almost any other
time he's been away but by far, the worst
part is not knowing when he will be home.
And so we ignore that issue and focus on
the smaller goals - a conversation is a gift,
enough contact to hold me for another day,
perhaps even two.
"Try to call me before Shabbat," I said,
knowing that it probably wouldn't be in his
control and it probably wasn't fair to put
this on him. So, I'll focus on today, on
now. He sounded so good, strong, morale
is high despite the field conditions.
"Breakfast is a bag of chocolate milk and
a roll," he told me. That's breakfast?
"For lunch, we get catering." Note that I
wrote "catering" in italics? That's because
it isn't an English word; it's Hebrew. Sure,
it seems to be English...but trust me, it's
Hebrew. It means...a hot meal brought to
the field that's a world above field rations.
"Dinner is those sandwiches wrapped in
plastic bags, you know which ones I
mean?" Elie said. Yeah, I know...that's
dinner?
But what comes out of today's
conversation is so much more than I
expected. I finally remembered to ask him
questions. He's showing outside - trying to
do it during the day so that they can get
dressed fast and not be too cold; they are
eating food, and even not bad food; he's
warm.
We talked about the pressure coming to
bear on Israel to agree to a ceasefire.
Today, apparently a new draft was offered
to Israel - this one actually required the
Palestinians to stop firing too. The first
one, saying we had to agree to stop firing
but the Palestinians didn't have to stop,
apparently wasn't well received by our
government (and for that great move, I
wish to withdraw one of the few thousand
times I called the government stupid).
There were so many more things I
wanted to tell him, so much more we could
have discussed but time was short and so I
left him with the most important message
of all - that we love him and that he should
be safe.
After I closed the phone, I sat in the car
for a few minutes. Beyond all the details
he told me, the two simplest ones, the two
most important ones were that he's getting
rest and that he sounded...he sounded
good.
An Obligatory War
By noreply@blogger.com (A
Soldier's Mother) (A Soldier's
Mother)
Submitted at 1/11/2009 12:07:00 PM
There is a concept, in Judaism, of an
"obligatory war" (known as melchemet
mitzvah, in Hebrew). It means a war that
must be fought, one where there is no
choice. In Biblical times, the term was
used most often in connection with
defensive wars, when vital interests were
at risk. Some incorrectly refer to this as a
"religious war" with undertones of Jihad,
but that isn't what the term means at all.
There is no glory in death, no martyrdom.
Rather, it refers to a war that we are
obligated to fight and as such, no one is
exempt from it. Why do I mention this
(when in truth, until tonight I'm not sure I
ever even heard of the concept)?
I was sitting have dinner with my two
youngest children, exhausted from another
day of teaching and wondering where Elie
was, what he was doing. Listening to news
of more and more rockets hitting
Ashkelon, Sderot, Ofakim, Ashdod and
finally coming home to deal with dinner,
questions, a stack of laundry that has to be
folded and plans for tomorrow that need to
be made.
It was easier to let them talk and remind
them, no and again, to finish eating or pass
me the ketchup or tell them no, you can't
have soda today, but there's apple juice.
My daughter finished another book. It's
amazing how fast she reads. She told me
the story, the whole story, of a mother who
walked for hours and hours to get her son
medicine. She warned me that it started off
bad, even "very bad," but then ended
"good."
She was getting ready to tell me another
story when my youngest son interrupted.
"Will Elie make it to my bar mitzvah?" he
asked me. It's funny how he chose today to
ask that question. Just this morning, an
army officer said that it is very possible the
war would last through to the end of the
month and his bar mitzvah is before that.
For the first time, earlier today, I began to
contemplate a bar mitzvah without Elie
there. No, I can't call it off. Yes, it will take
place whether Elie is there or not and yes,
the idea is killing me deep inside.
I looked at my son. Truth. I have to be
Daily Digital Newspaper
honest. "I don't know," I said. "They said
this morning that the war may not end in
time. I just don't know."
My daughter was very upset, "that's not
fair. He has to come home. Tell them it's
for the bar mitzvah." Truth might work
with a 12-year-old on the brink of
maturity, but it has no place in the heart of
an almost 9-year-old who misses her
brother terribly.
Before I could say a word, my son turned
to my daughter and answered, "It's a
melchemet mitzvah," and then went on to
explain, "even a chatan[a groom] under the
chupah[wedding canopy] has to go if it's a
melchemet mitzvah."
According to the Talmud, “For a war of
mitzvah, everyone has to join, even a
bridegroom from his bridal suite and a
bride from under the wedding canopy.” It
was amazing on several fronts. First, that
my son could so easily quote this
information; so easily associate it to this
situation, and most important, find comfort
in the fact that though his brother may not
attend his bar mitzvah, what he will be
doing is of great importance.
While I struggled inside myself to find a
way to comfort each child, in the end, my
son comforted my daughter and, to some
extent, comforted me. I'm still not sure
how I will cope with celebrating this huge
moment in our family's life without Elie
and so I will play the ostrich just a bit
longer and hope he'll make it home for this
day.
Beyond this, there is an important
concept to consider - an obligatory war. A
war we did not choose to wage, but one
that we are now commanded to fight.
I want to pray that God brings Elie home
in time for his brother's bar mitzvah, but I
won't do that because what Elie does there
is very important and he'll come home,
God willing, when it's done. It is our
obligation to protect our people, our land,
our nation, our civilians, our children. This
is what Elie is doing - a melchemet
mitzvah.
May God grant us victory in this war -
victory such that our towns and cities will
no longer be bombed, that our sons no
longer have to go to war, that our
daughters no longer miss their brothers.
Daily Digital Newspaper
TODAY
continued from page 47
somber and slow, to his funeral.
There there was the terrible massacre in
Jenin. Palestinians screamed that
hundreds...no, a thousand...no, wait,
thousands...had died in Jenin years ago and
the world quickly picked up the battle cry.
A massacre. A holocaust. When the dust
settled then - there were, according to the
United Nations 52 dead, and at least 38 of
those were armed. It came down to,
perhaps, 11 civilians.
Already, several Arab leaders have
quickly used words such as "massacre" and
"holocaust" - then as now, we stand on a
pile of lies and only when the dust settles
will we, perhaps, learn the truth. One
woman commented on the blog today
saying, "So far, only 6 [Israelis were]
killed by Hamas and 4 by their own Israeli
army. Over 700 Palestinians killed, a large
proportion women and children."
There was more to the comment, but this
is enough. My first thought is that we in
Israel would never think to say " only 6
killed" - not about them, or about us. Our
tradition teaches us that a single life is as
the whole world. There is nothing "only"
about anyone's life. The second interesting
comment is the part "a large proportion
women and children." Actually, this isn't
true. There are no accurate, unbiased
casualty reports that suggest anything of
the sort. One United Nations report
mentions 25% - meaning that 75% were
non-civilian, non-innocents.
There is no question that women and
children have died - on both sides of this
conflict. I personally don't like the number
games any more than I like the picture spin
games. In any case, I made a promise to
myself that I would try to give each
soldier, each person who lost his life, a
Hamas...in their own words
By noreply@blogger.com (A
Soldier's Mother) (A Soldier's
Mother)
Submitted at 1/10/2009 10:32:00 PM
There are those who have accused me of
twisting the hatred that comes towards us.
Those who justify this hatred. The people
of Gaza, these people would have you
believe, are being occupied and so what
more can we expect. The truth is that
whatever occupation there might have
place of remembrance. I sincerely hope
there is someone on the Palestinian side
taking the time to do the same and if there
are more bodies there, more lost souls -
perhaps you could take the time to write to
your government, your democratically
elected government, and explain that when
you shoot rockets and missiles and mortars
at a foreign country, there is a really good
chance they won't take it forever. This
conflict began because Hamas wanted it.
Hamas started the shooting...and it won't
stop until Hamas stops shooting...or we
stop Hamas.
But all this is politics and I don't want to
continue. I don't want to look to tomorrow
and more fighting. But if I have to, first I
want to look and remember. I want to
honor the two soldiers we lost today. There
is an important point to make, as well,
before I mention these soldiers.
One was a Commander, and one was a
Major. It is not by accident that a large
number of our casualties are officers and
commanders. Our military leaders do not
lead from the back, as is the case in many
armies; they lead from the front. They
stand with their men, discuss the mission
they are about to undertake, and then they
say, "follow me," and head into battle.
Today, two men told their units to follow
them, and they led them forwards. In the
end, their men brought them home and
today, I mourn them. I wish their families
comfort and hope they can find consolation
in knowing that their sons' sacrifice will
long be remembered.
Captain Omer Rabinovitch, 23 from
Arad, was killed this afternoon in Gaza. He
was a Golani commander, a unit known for
its bravery and honor. Omer was killed
during a joint operation carried out by
been, ended in August 2005 when Israel
removed all Israelis (and Israeli property)
from the area.
We destroyed the lives of 9,000 people,
making them, to this day, temporary
residents in communities not their own.
We took their livelihoods away when we
forced them to abandon amazing
greenhouses that grew some of the best
organic vegetables in the world (these were
turned over to the Palestinians as another
absurd gesture of good will, and as thanks,
infantry, Armored and Engineering Corps
forces. During the activity snipers opened
fire at the soldiers, killing Omer and lightly
injuring another soldier, who was
evacuated to Beersheba's Soroka
University Medial Center for treatment.
Omer belonged to the Armored Corps 71st
battalion, the same battalion to which
kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit
belonged. The battalion's forces have been
operating in the Strip since the ground
incursion began on Saturday.
Major Roee Rosner, 27, from Holon, is
the IDF officer who was killed in Gaza
Thursday morning.
Rosner was a company commander with
the Kfir Brigade. Roee was married just 10
months ago, and a few days before he was
killed the newlyweds received the key to
their new apartment in Holon. He also left
behind his parents and a younger brother,
who has been drafted for reserve service as
well.
Roee's uncle, Yitzik Kirschner, Rosner's
uncle, said Roee had been an excellent
athlete. "He was a happy guy. A
mischievous kid. When he was a boy you
couldn't get him to sit still. In all sports he
wanted to be first, he didn't like to lose and
would always get upset if he did. He was
great at running and liked soccer and
tennis," Kirschner said. Rosner had also
had plans of studying for a master's degree.
May their memories be blessed and may
their families be comforted among the
mourners of Zion and Jerusalem and may
they know no more sorrow.
Palestinian mobs attacked and burned the
greenhouses). We abandoned it all - Gaza
is not occupied. Except by Hamas, the duly
elected government of the Palestinians,
who this morning announced that they
didn't want a cease-fire, and promptly shot
more rockets into Beersheva, a city of
more than 150,000 people.
Lest I be accused of twising Hamas'
words, I found this video on YouTube.
Since this is the first time I've tried to
embed a video, I hope you'll bear with me.
The Sabbath Comes...
By noreply@blogger.com (A
Soldier's Mother) (A Soldier's
Mother)
Submitted at 1/9/2009 5:32:00 AM
the thing about Shabbat...is that it is not
fixed to how busy you are, what you have
to do, what you want to do. It comes with
the setting of the sun Friday night, and
other than when Joshua stopped the sun
over Jericho thousands of years ago, we
are dependent on it to tell us as the Sabbath
approaches. For me, I can look out my
living room window and watch as it sinks
in the sky. At the point that it just touches
the horizon...which for me is the beautiful
hill starting Jerusalem, I will light the
candles.
I asked Elie to please try to call me
before the Sabbath. He said he would try.
Shabbat begins in just over 30 minutes and
he still hasn't called. I know I should try to
call him but I had an idea. I took my phone
and gave it to each person in the house and
asked them to send Elie a message. I don't
know when he'll open his phone next, but
when he does, he will be flooded with 7
messages wishing him, in English or
Hebrew, in short sentences or long, a
peaceful Sabbath.
"from your cute brother, Davidi," my
If this works, I present to you Hamas - in
their own words. They have been
translated, but you are welcome to verify
this translation if you have any questions
or doubts.
For those who do not want the truth, for
those who cannot stand to see the full
nature of evil and hatred, I apologize and
suggest you skip the video. For the rest, for
those who want to understand the hatred
that drives Palestinians to commit suicidal
attacks and fire rockets at one million
Special Feature 49
youngest son wrote.
" Shabbat Shalom from Shmulik," my
middle son wrote.
" Shabbat shalom and come home
safely," my son-in-law wrote.
My older daughter is busy typing him a
message now; next my younger daughter
will send one as well. My husband is
sending it from his phone and then I'll send
one.
Shabbat shalom, by beautiful soldier. I
am so proud of you. You are doing what is
right and honorable and people all over the
world are praying for you. There are those
who send words filled with hatred and
anger. They are nothing against us because
we know a simple truth. If Hamas didn't
fire rockets into Israel, we would not now
be attacking Gaza.
No, I won't write all this. These are
words Elie knows, just as he knows that
we love him so much. I never imagined
how hard this kind of week would be and I
feel like such a fraud because my son is
not IN Gaza. He is not one of the soldiers
going house by house trying to find rockets
and armed terrorists.
There isn't time to write more about why
we do this - the sun is sinking lower and
Elie still hasn't called. So I'll sign off -
wish you all a safe and peaceful Shabbat.
Israelis, including my Elie, please see this
video.
If you are unable to see it here, the link
is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i08L09
V0_sg
50 Special Feature Daily Digital Newspaper

HamasLovers...Copyright Infringement
By noreply@blogger.com (A
Soldier's Mother) (A Soldier's
Mother)
Submitted at 1/13/2009 1:46:00 AM

Here's a riddle: When is a journalist not a

journalist?
Answer: When he lies to get a
story...and...when he commits copyright
infringement. And so it is with Faisal
Assegaf. His current posting looks like
this:
Note the gorgeous guy in the middle?
Well, that's my son - and this is proof that
Faisal pilfered the picture illegally (thanks
to the person who wrote and alerted me to
this illegal action). I immediately wrote to
WordPress demanding action against this
copyright infringement and wrote to Faisal
telling him that he did not have permission
and better remove Elie's picture
immediately. I gave him 24 hours...it took
him 5 minutes. generations? • Do you typically teach your children to
And he added a comment: • What are your connections to Hamas, kill innocent people by using firebombs,
So, would u like to give me permission how much money have you given them, rockets, mortars, or missiles?
to put on ur son on my blog Mrs Paula? will give them, etc. and what bank number • What is your bank name and account
So, here's my answer, thanks to the kind and account did you use to transfer this number, VISA card number and expiration
suggestion of Jameel over at the Muqata: money? date?
Mr. Faisal, you have, if you answer the • How do you communicate with Hamas - If anyone has any other questions for
following questions, permission, if you what's your personal cellphone number and Faisal, please feel free to post - I'm sure
answer the following questions, to use, if that of your handler? he'll be happy to answer here (or on his
you answer the following questions, my • Did you celebrate on 9/11 when the website about HamasLovers...of course,
precious son's picture - if you answer the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were you'd have to understand Indonesian to
following questions: hit by one of the worst (perhaps the worst) read it).
• What Indonesian army unit are you in, terrorist attack ever?
including name, rank, serial number, unit • Before your children go to school, do
name, commander's name, and your entire they ask you what you'll do if they get hit
family tree (with pictures) going back 3 by a car?