Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Edition
Wal-Mart Worried Obama Will Win
By David Knowles (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/1/2008 1:16:00 AM
Filed under: Barack Obama, Featured
Stories, Economy, Healthcare Via The
Wall Street Journal we learn that Wal-
Mart, the nation's largest private employer,
is feeling anxious. It seems that the
company is afraid that Barack Obama is
likely to be elected the next president. In
fact, it's so spooked about the prospect that
it's been summoning store managers to
meetings in an attempt to scare them about
the ramifications of a Democratic
administration. The terrifying
consequence? If Obama (who supports the
Employee Free Choice Act) wins, Wal-
Mart employees might unionize.
The Wal-Mart human-resources
managers who run the meetings don't
specifically tell attendees who to vote for
in November, but make it clear that voting
for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen.
Barack Obama would be tantamount to
inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart
employees who attended gatherings in
Maryland, Missouri and other states.
Wal-Mart's antipathy toward unions is
legendary. Over the course of its 48-year
history, the company has successfully
barred countless attempts by employees to
organize for better pay and increased
benefits. In fact, the company's aggressive
tactics to thwart its employees from
receiving better compensation have caught
the attention of organizations such as
Human Rights Watch, which, in an
exhaustive study titled Wal-Mart Is a
Poster Child For What Is Wrong With
Labor Laws, declared:
Our message is that when the world's
largest economy has labor laws that are so
weak that it is unable to prevent the
world's largest corporation from violating
workers' rights to organize, it is troubling.
Indeed, the company is right to feel leery
about Obama, who has made his views on
Wal-Mart's anti-union stance known in this
campaign.
Here's the Illinois senator this past
November:
"This is a much broader issue that Wal-
Mart, but I think the battle to engage Wal-
Mart and for them to examine their own
corporate values and what their policies
and approaches are to their workers and
how they are going to be good corporate
citizens, I think, is absolutely vital."
Obama went on to compare Wal-Mart to
another mega-chain:
Obama said Costco, a membership
warehouse store similar to Wal-Mart's
Sam's Club chain, pays its workers more
and provides health insurance for more of
its workforce than Wal-Mart does.
24/07/08 - 01/08/08
"If Costco can do that, it means Wal-Mart
can do it. And if Wal-Mart does it, then
what we're going to see is other companies
recognizing that they have some
obligations not only to their shareholders
but also to their stakeholders, and that's
workers and communities in which they're
located."
Wal-Mart, whose first quarter profits in
2008 rose 6.9% to a total of $3.02 billion,
has not exactly shown the greatest of
concern for its employees' well-being. A
veritable blizzard of lawsuits have been
filed against the company regarding labor
relations.
So, will Wal-Mart's management be
successful in this bid to keep the
company's employees from voting for
Obama? Here's how one Wal-Mart
employee described the not-so-covert
LibertyNewsprint.com U.S.
attempt to influence her decision:
"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling
you how to vote, but if the Democrats win,
this bill will pass and you won't have a
vote on whether you want a union,'" said a
Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor
from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person.
They were telling me how to vote," she
said.
It's also an ingenious strategy. If Obama
is elected, Wal-Mart employees won't be
able to vote on whether or not they should
get a union. Maybe so. Better still, they
finally might get one.
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The Price Point
for Drilling
By Dave (Political Machine)
Submitted at 8/1/2008 1:14:00 AM
Filed under: Republicans, 2008 Senate,
Viral Video, Energy
Sorry about being a sort of one trick
pony with my last few posts about drilling,
but it is the salient political issue of the
summer and it is generating a lot of good
political theater. This one is from Mitch
McConnell, who ran this little maneuver
yesterday:
Obviously this is political theater, Ken
Salazar was certainly not going to agree on
behalf of the entire Democratic party to
drill at a set price. In fact his only role here
is to represent his party to stop anything
real from happening. But Mitch
McConnell takes the opportunity to point
out that the current Democratic position is
that we will not touch offshore oil and oil
in ANWR at any price, which is insane.
And he does it in a nice quick sound-bite.
Hat tip to Redstate, who points out that
the Democrats want Mitch McConnell
gone.
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Remembrance of Things Past
By David Knowles (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 9:06:00 AM
Filed under: Ads, John McCain Kind of
speaks for itself, no?
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2 Politico*
Obama Plays Chicken With Big Oil
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/1/2008 5:06:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
Featured Stories, Economy, 2008
President, Energy In response to the
newest jobs report, which shows another
51,000 jobs lost in July, Senator Barack
Obama issued a statement, along with an
Emergency Economic Plan. Here are
excerpts: (via email) The first part of my
plan is a $1,000 emergency energy rebate
that could go out to families as soon as this
fall...As we provide relief, we must also be
mindful of the swelling budget deficit.
That is why I am proposing that we pay for
this rebate by taxing the windfall profits of
oil companies so we can use some of their
record profits to help families pay record
prices."
"The second part of my plan is a $50
billion stimulus... Half...will go to state
governments that are facing big budget
shortfalls. The other half...will be used to
invest in our national infrastructure,
replenish the Highway Trust Fund, rebuild
our crumbling roads and bridges, and
repair our crumbling schools." My first
thought about the windfall profits tax was,
"Didn't Obama oppose that when Hillary
Clinton wanted to use it to pay for the gas
Judge Rules WH Aides Must Testify
By Mark Impomeni (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 3:00:00 PM
Filed under: President Bush, Bush
Administration, House, Breaking News,
Investigations A federal district court
judge ruled today in the case of White
House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and
former White House Counsel Harriet
Miers, saying that the two must appear in
response to Congressional subpoenas.
Judge John Bates rejected the Bush
Administration's claim of Executive
privilege for current and former advisers to
the president. "The executive's current
claim of absolute immunity from
compelled Congressional process for
senior presidential aides is without any
support in the case law," he wrote.
tax holiday, because the oil companies
would just add it into the price?"
The answer is yes, he did. There are
some key differences here, though, which
I'll get to in a minute. This is masterful
politics on Obama's part. McCain has been
trying to engineer a knife fight over
drilling. Obama just showed up to it in a
tank.
I'll go into more detail later about the
folly and deception in McCain's drumbeat.
Democrats on the House Judiciary
committee issued subpoenas to Bolten and
Miers seeking to compel their testimony in
an investigation into the firings of eight
United States Attorneys. Democrats
believe that the firings were politically
motivated and were carried out with the
knowledge and planning of senior officials
in the White House. The Administration
has steadfastly maintained that the firings
were entirely proper personnel decision by
the president in exercise of his authority to
direct the executive branch of government.
There is no evidence that anyone in the
Administration did anything wrong in the
firings of the U.S. Attorneys, who are all
political appointees that serve at the
pleasure of the president, and the firings
were not without precedent. Former
President Bill Clinton fired all 93 U.S.
Obviously, it is resonating with some
Americans, depending on how you ask
them the question. The appeal is mainly as
a "short-term" balm, nothing more. Even
optimistic estimates are that it might shave
a nickel off of the price of a gallon of gas
starting in 2013 or so.
This $1000.00 rebate is Barack Obama's
answer to that. I like his chances. The
beauty of it is, all of the Republicans in
Congress will have to come to the aid of
Attorneys at the same time in 1993,
prompting no calls for investigation. The
White House refused to allow Bolten and
Miers to appear before the committee,
calling the investigation a partisan political
witch hunt. That lead to the House of
Representatives voting contempt of
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Big Oil, or they'll have to pass the bill.
Here's why the oil companies can't just
pass the tax along to you. The gas tax
holiday would have accounted for about
$70.00 per person over the course of the
summer. They wouldn't have had to add
anything to their prices to absorb it, just
keep them the same.
This, however, comes out of money
they've already made, and it would be
much tougher to hide a $1000.00 per
person price increase than a $70.00 per
person price not-decrease. Add to that that
the oil companies have already pushed
consumers too far, and you can see that
Obama is daring them to do it.
The oil companies are killing their
golden goose. They continue to book
record profits, and in the process, have
trained their customers to avoid their
product. Gas costs so much now, people
have changed their behavior, and will
continue to do so. They're driving less,
carpooling, going on TV promoting wind
power.
We've also had to tighten our belts, so I
think Obama will get a lot of support for
telling the oil companies to tighten up, too.
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Congress citations against the two earlier
this year. The House filed suit in federal
district court in an attempt to enforce its
subpoenas.
The White House had no immediate
comment on the ruling, but it is a near
certainty that the decision will be appealed.
With less than six months to go in the
Bush Administration's tenure, a decision
on appeal could come after President Bush
leaves office. The Bush Administration's
goal at this late date is simply to run out
the clock on Democrats' attempts to score
political points against it.
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Veep Short
List Gets
Longer
By Jay Allbritton (Political Machine)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 7:01:00 AM
Filed under: Barack Obama, 2008
President Chris Cilizza of The Fix reports
that a source close to Barack Obama's Vice
Presidential vetting team tells him the
process has entered a new phase that will
result in "a deeper dig into the
background" of a larger group of
candidates than just the three possibilities
mentioned in a variety of earlier reports.
Over the last couple of days the media
buzzed with reports that Obama reduced
his short list to Delaware Senator Joe
Biden, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh and
Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, with Kaine
the projected favorite. Along with Biden,
Bayh and Kaine, Cilizza mentions
Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, former
Georgia Senator Sam Nunn and Kansas
Governor Kathleen Sebelius among those
still in the process.
One name consistently being left out of
the mix is Senator Hillary Clinton. A
website called Vote Both, which was
dedicated to promoting Clinton as the vice
presidential nominee, has shut down. Vote
Both's Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Arora
sent out an email to supporters that said,
"Because it seems that Senator Obama has
made his decision to offer the slot on the
ticket to another candidate, we believe that
continuing to ask him to pick Hillary is no
longer helpful to our party's chances of
winning in November."
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Devil in the Details
By David Knowles (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/1/2008 3:53:00 AM
Filed under: Barack Obama, John
McCain, Economy
Here's a quick poll to start off the post:
View Poll
Hop to the next page for the answer.
If you said "Barack Obama" give
yourself a lollipop. This finding comes to
us from Politico and The Concord
Coalition, a bi-partisan group that focuses
on how to balance the federal budet. At a
time when the next president will be forced
to clean up yet another Republican budget
deficit, the details of exactly how each
candidate would run the government are
especially important. To that end, John
McCain has been sorely lacking:
...McCain trails Obama in spelling out the
nitty-gritty.
"The Obama people are much more
detailed," said Robert Bixby, executive
director of the Concord Coalition.
adding,
"There's a lot more happening in the
Obama budget. There's a lot of moving
parts, and I think that probably calls for
more specificity, Bixby said. "It's a much
more ambitious agenda than McCain's."
While all campaigns are powered by
vague slogans and tried-and-true stump
speeches, there comes a time when the
public deserves to know exactly how the
candidates plan to make this a more perfect
union. True, most Americans aren't going
to be combing through each policy paper
with a fine-toothed-comb, but fleshing out
details is vital so that experts have a
chance to weigh in on who has the more
credible plan, and, therefore, whose
judgment is more sound.
To that end, the Tax Policy Center senses
a disconnect between what McCain says
on the stump in relation to the scant details
he has released. More from Politico:
"Sen. McCain's proposals on the stump
are often far more sweeping than the more
measured options outlined by his
campaign"--and would in fact double the
tax impact of his formal proposals, while
Obama's off-the-cuff additions would
reduce the impact of his plan by about one-
sixth.
In effect, sound-bites may work on the
stump, but they're no way to run a
government.
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Obama Says Don't Drill,
Inflate!
By Dave (Political Machine)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 4:35:00 PM
Filed under: Barack Obama, 2008
President, Energy This has been popular in
the right side of the blogosphere today:
It's a good line of attack as it goes for a
nice two-fer. Painting Obama as clueless to
the fuel woes of ordinary Americans while
focusing attention to the Democrats
stonewall on Domestic drilling. And on the
math he is wrong, as Powerline points out:
Just for fun, I did the math. Properly
inflating your tires can improve gas
mileage by 3%. Of course, many people
already keep their tires properly inflated,
and many more are at least close to being
properly inflated. Let's be generous and
assume that one-half of the total possible
savings would be realized if we all inflated
our tires properly; that's a net gain of 1.5%
fuel efficiency.
Americans drive approximately 2,880
billion miles per year. If we average 24
mpg, we use around 120 billion gallons of
gasoline in our vehicles. If, through perfect
tire inflation, we improved our collective
Dan Quayle on 'Dancing With the Stars'?
By Denise Williams (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 11:25:00 AM
Filed under: Humor, Media
Former Vice President under George
H.W. Bush and 2-time presidential
wannabe, Dan Quayle, is on the short list
for a coveted spot on "Dancing with the
Stars"!
If selected, Vice President Quayle will
join such luminaries as MSNBC's former
talk show host and Ron Paul emcee Tucker
NASA says Phoenix lander is sampling water on Mars
By Nilay Patel (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 11:39:00 AM
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Yep, just like we'd heard, the Phoenix
lander has identified water in a soil sample
it collected in Mars earlier, and NASA's
extended the mission for another 90 days
fuel efficiency by 1.5%, that would be 1.8
billion gallons. A barrel of oil produces
around 20 gallons of gasoline, so the total
savings available through tire inflation is
approximately 90,000,000 barrels of oil
annually.
...
ANWR: 10 billion barrels Outer
Continental Shelf: 18 billion barrels
(estimated; the actual total is undoubtedly
much higher, since exploration has been
banned) Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels
Who's willing to bet that the guy who
wrote this howler is going to be quietly
tossed under the bus along with latest
inductee Ludacris? Also, it illustrates just
how far up a creek Democrats are on this
issue. They are literally caught between
their fervent base (no drilling!) and
ordinary working Americans (screw the
Caribou! I'm paying $50 bucks a fillup!).
Telling ordinary Americans to inflate their
tires and suck it up? Probably not a
winning argument.
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Carlson, Marie Osmond(who's gone on to
lose tons of weight and get a NutriSystem
commercial), Wayne Newton, and
to go look for more. There's no analysis of
the ice yet, but it doesn't look like there's
Politico* Gadgets* 3
Leave Obama
Alone!
By Greg McNeilly (Political Machine)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 6:53:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
2008 President, Viral Video Christopher
Beam over at Salon makes the point about
Barack Obama's whiny campaign much
more artfully than my attempt, previously.
(Note, the video parody below is not safe
for viewing at work.)
It's really difficult to add to the
commentary of the video. Other than,
everyone stop whining!
If you have some ideas - and can
articulate them - put up your dukes and
fight for them. Otherwise, go play kissy-
face with foreign leaders and lead the fight
for America's future to those that can
handle the debate.
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NKOTB heartthrob Joey McIntyre(I hear
NKOTB is getting back together!) and so
many more that in my excitement over D-
list stars , I can't remember them all!
Quayle, who was unfairly mocked in
1992 for telling a cheeky, disrespectful 12-
year old that he spelled 'Potatoe" wrong
and wronged by the fictional single mother
Murphy Brown, has been trying to remake
his image into elder statesman.
This appearance should do it.
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any organic materials in the sample, and
it'll take another three to four weeks before
there's any more data to reveal. Hopefully
that means we'll be packing up our silver
go-go boots and taking off for our fabulous
future lives on Mars in a month, but we'll
see how things go. Read| Permalink| Email
this| Comments
4 Business* Tech Tips*
Xinhua 25 (FXI): The Dow Worst 10-year performers:
Jones of China Shifting telecom landscape
crippled Tellabs
By Steven Halpern (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 6:15:00 AM
Filed under: International markets, China,
Newsletters, Mutual funds, Stocks to Buy
"When you own iShares FTSE/Xinhua
China 25 Index(NYSE: FXI), you own the
'best-of-the-best' blue chip stocks traded in
the Chinese market," explains Doug
Fabian in his The ETF Trader.
"I had been waiting for what I thought
would be the inevitable turnaround in
Chinese stocks. Much to my dismay, that
turnaround hadn't really materialized --
that is, until now.
"For the past couple of months, the value
of the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25
Index (NYSE: FXI) has undergone a
prolonged move to the downside.
"However, the recent strengthening in
price has led me to believe that a short-
term bottom may be in place for Chinese
stocks. I now am recommending that you
Why Cables Are Cheaper When You Buy Online
[Shopping]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:45:00 AM
CNET blogger Gordon Haff found that
purchasing electronics cables online is
consistently and significantly cheaper than
at brick retail stores, and speculates all the
Google plans venture arm -- conflict of interest?
By Douglas McIntyre
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 5:47:00 AM
Filed under: Deals, Competitive strategy,
Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC)
Back in the day when internet companies
ruled the rolls of the Nasdaq, a number of
online and tech companies had venture
capital arms. Intel(NASDAQ: INTC) has
kept its to this day. The tech collapse of
add the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25
Index to your portfolio.
"I like to say FXI is the Dow Industrials
of China. This investment seeks results
that correspond generally to the price and
yield performance, before fees and
expenses, of the FTSE/Xinhua China 25
index.
"As FXI has just started to turn off of its
lows, I think it has a strong possibility of
moving up another 5%-to-10% from here.
Make the move into FXI and jump on that
fast train to China. We also note that the
iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index just
underwent a 3-for-1 share split."
Each day, Steven Halpern's
TheStockAdvisors.com offers the latest
market commentary and favorite
investment ideas from the nation's leading
financial newsletter advisors. Permalink|
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possible reasons why—like the fact that
consumers are less likely to comparison
shop when they're dying to hook up the
shiny new Thingamabob 5000 they just
bought.
2000 and 2001 eliminated most of those
funds.
Now Google(NASDAQ: GOOG) has
decided to revive the tradition of big tech
companies spreading money around.
According to The Wall Street Journal,
"The group will be lead by David
Drummond, Google's senior vice president
of corporate development and chief legal
officer."
The move is a bad idea because it could
By Elizabeth Harrow
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:20:00 AM
Filed under: Major movement, Bad news,
S and P 500, Technology
In this series, we take a look at the 25
stocks on the S&P 500 Index (SPX) that
have turned in the worst performance
during the past decade -- what went wrong,
and what happens next.
Add Tellabs, Inc.(NASDAQ: TLAB) to
the list of casualties from the Great
Telecom Bust of the new millennium. It
was a bloody massacre that highlighted the
difficulties of forecasting; and, in
particular, the danger of forecasting
through the distorted lens of the dot-com
bubble. When Internet traffic stopped
multiplying at its previously exponential
rate, the market was faced with a glut of
supply and waning demand. Only the
strong survived, but even they couldn't
manage to thrive.
What went wrong? At No. 5 on our list
of SPX underperformers, TLAB lost 87%
of its value during the decade that ended
June 30, 2008. The stock peaked at $77.25
in November 1999 before its momentum
shifted.
In 1999, Tellabs was on an acquisition
binge. A planned buyout of Ciena
Corporation(NASDAQ: CIEN) had hit the
alienate current and future Google
partners. There is still an abundance of
venture capital, so it is not as if the search
company is filling a hole in the market.
The trouble is that Google could put
money into a wireless broadband company
only to find down the road it wants to form
a partnership with one of that company's
competitors. Should a firm risk doing
business with Google when the giant
internet company owns a piece of its
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skids, and the company made up for the
loss by absorbing a series of smaller
players -- within months, Tellabs told
investors it would buy Alcatel's DSC
Communications unit, Netcore Systems,
and Salix Technologies.
Continue reading Worst 10-year
performers: Shifting telecom landscape
crippled Tellabs Permalink| Email this|
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nemesis?
Google may like the idea of supporting
startups that are aligned with its goals. But
it is cutting off the option of doing
business with companies that don't have
Google backing but do have services
Google wants.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7
Wall St. Read| Permalink| Email this|
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A Steve Jobs cancer
scare still dogging
Apple stock?
By Tobias Buckell (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:42:00 AM
Filed under: Apple Inc (AAPL) After a
strong quarterly report, Apple,
Inc.(NASDAQ: AAPL) took a dive into
the low $150s, much to the surprise of
many. It was largely attributed to the worry
investors paying close attention to the
quarterly call had about the health of
Apple's CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs had been
treated for a form of cancer in 2004, which
he only updated the world about after he'd
been successfully treated. This secrecy
forced many to wonder if his recent change
in physical appearance was related to a
recurrence of the cancer. With posts and
news stories wondering the same thing out
loud, the solid quarterly report played
second fiddle to people's fears about an
Apple without it's iconic leader.
Although the company and man are
intertwined, if Steve is really telling the
truth, then Apple has a lot of positive news
on the books. One great fear about Apple's
profits is that the iPhone would cannibalize
iPod sales in a large manner. This quarterly
report showed iPod sales were up 12%!
Another reason for the drop in the price
is that Apple has announced it will be
throwing lots of developmental money at a
new project of some sort. While that may
depress the price, it does hint that Apple
might well have another edgy new product
being developed. Between the investment
in research and Steve's health scare
depressing the price, Apple investors may
have a solid entry point for a long term
investment play in the stock, and it stands
a good chance of beginning a recovery as
business as usual continues on. Permalink|
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Worst 10-year performers:
National City mauled by
mortgage meltdown
By Elizabeth Harrow
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 6:30:00 AM
Filed under: Major movement, Bad news,
S and P 500, Housing
In t his series, we take a look at the 25
stocks on the S&P 500 Index (SPX) that
have turned in the worst performance
during the past decade -- what went wrong,
and what happens next.
The suspense is over -- National City
Corporation(NYSE: NCC) is the fourth
and final Ohio-based regional bank to
appear on our list of laggards. Based out of
Cleveland, National City appeared to be
faring well in the late 1990s. The bank had
just completed some key acquisitions, and
the stock was locked in a long-term
uptrend. However, the next decade would
prove considerably more challenging.
What went wrong? At number 6 on our
list of SPX underdogs, NCC gave up 87%
of its value from June 30, 1998 through
June 30, 2008. The stock peaked at $40 in
November 2005, and then edged sideways
... until it ran headlong into the subprime
tsunami.
The first warning from NCC came in
March 2007, when the bank said it would
retain $1.6 billion previously set aside for
non-conforming loans. In a filing with the
Photoshop Express Becoming Better Web-Based
Image Editor [Photoshop]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 4:30:00 AM
Previously mentioned Photoshop Express
offers more web-based image management
and editing features, like drag and drop
Band Leaks Own Tracks To BitTorrent, Pretends To Be Pissed Off
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:38:05 AM
Yes, part of the business model for using
free music to your advantage is
Securities and Exchange Commission,
NCC said it had recorded $11 million in
write-downs through the first two months
of the year, and suggested that a further
write-down was "likely" before the loans
were transferred.
Continue reading Worst 10-year
performers: National City mauled by
mortgage meltdown Permalink| Email this|
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upload (via an Adobe AIR app), tags to
organize your photos, and slideshows put
to music (in addition to Flickr integration).
[ via]
recognizing how that free music acts as a
promotional good for you, but the band
BuckCherry seems to have taken that a bit
too far. It definitely seemed quite
suspicious when the band, signed to a
Still fight left In Akamai
By Todd Harrison (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:02:00 AM
Filed under: Technical Analysis, Akamai
Technologies (AKAM), Bargain stocks,
Technology, NASDAQ
Minyanville Professor Sean Udall dares
to share the kind of keen insight and
actionable information you won't find in
any prospectus. For more original thought,
visit www.minyanville.com.
While Akamai Technologies, Inc.(
NASDAQ: AKAM) is starting to get
compellingly cheap on a valuation basis.
It's also supposed to be one of those names
that beats numbers like clockwork.
AKAM's forward numbers are still
sporting plenty of growth, but they have
been lowered. Now many analysts will
also lower numbers.
Unfortunately, we're not in a market that
As gas jumps above $4,
Americans jump in golf carts
By Joseph Lazzaro
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 7:20:00 AM
Filed under: Consumer experience, Oil
You knew it had to happen at some point:
the neighborhood street becoming dotted
with whizzing golf carts.
With monthly gasoline bills exceeding
car payments in some areas of the country,
Americans have started to substitute tiny
electric cars -- including golf carts and
smaller electric vehicles -- for their local
transportation needs, The Wall Street
Journal( subscription required) reported
Thursday.
People are using them for local errands,
to visit friends, even for trips to work if the
destination is short, The Journal reported.
And the habit may turn into a trend if cart
use in challenging regions is any indicator:
major label, put out a press release about
how angry they were that their latest music
was leaked online. So, the good folks over
at TorrentFreak did a little investigating,
and tracked down the fact that whoever
Business* Tech* Tech Tips*
is looking forward. It's discounting
companies that "could" have a re-
acceleration of growth when the economy
materially picks up steam again, or when
the world realizes that we're not in
recession/depression. The market we're in
still overly punishes stocks that "feel" like
they might have the bad news mostly (or
fully) priced in. AKAM around $30 was
feeling like a miss that was priced in.
However, after hours the stock traded
down a quick $5-6 and from this current
level the near term direction will likely be
determined by how much love is still left
in the analyst community. If the analysts
defend the name we could see a quick
snapback.
Continue reading Still fight left In
Akamai Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
people in the nation of Texas are using
them, as well!
Sees robust cart sales
Economist Glen Langan told
BloggingStocks Thursday he's not
surprised. "The previous rises in gasoline
prices this decade, one [Hurricane] Katrina
-related, one refinery-related, were viewed
by the public as temporary. Not this time,"
Langan said. "Americans are convinced
that four buck [$4] gas is here to stay, and
oil use patterns around the world suggest
they're not deluded in that assumption.
Golf cart and mini-cart sales should
increase at double-digit rates through the
end of this decade, and most likely,
longer."
Continue reading As gas jumps above
$4, Americans jump in golf carts
Permalink| Email this| Comments
leaked the album just so happened to use
the same exact IP address as the band's
manager. Oops.
So, let's try this again. Using free music
as a promotional tool can work wonders,
5
Closing bell: Bears
win, non-recession
GDP fails to impress
By Jon Ogg (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 9:02:00 AM
Filed under: Motorola (MOT), Exxon
Mobil (XOM), Akamai Technologies
(AKAM) You could have tossed a coin
today and come up with the same
predictions for if the market was going to
close up or down. The 1.9% GDP report
was lighter than the 2.2% estimates, but
despite feeling like a recession, it isn't
formally a recession. Equities headed south
as did oil prices by more than $2.00 per
barrel. Investors chose to focus on the bad
data today and take profits. The bears came
roaring back by the close.
Here are today's unofficial closing bell
levels:
DJIA 11373.38 (-212.91)
S&P500 1266.96 (-17.30)
NASDAQ 2325.55 (-4.17)
10YR T-NOTE 3.979% (-0.069%)
KEY ANALYST DOWNGRADES
Akamai Technologies Inc.(NASDAQ:
AKAM) was today's big loser in tech,
media, telecom. The company beat
estimates last night but guidance was a few
percentage points light and the investment
community still demands growth here.
Shares were down by 26% to a new 52-
week low at $23.10 in the final minutes.
Continue reading Closing bell: Bears
win, non-recession GDP fails to impress
Permalink| Email this| Comments
but part of that is in publicly embracing the
fact that your fans want to share your
music. Not creating mock outrage about it.
Permalink| Comments| Email This Story
6 Business* Biz Buzz Tech Tips*
After 34% drop in Value Trust, A Quant's Quest
Bill Miller needs to go
By Peter Cohan (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 6:55:00 AM
Bill Miller, Legg Mason Value Trust's
manager, used to be a good investor but
he's outlived his usefulness in that role.
Legg Mason(NYSE: LM) has kept him on
for too long and if it doesn't give him the
hook fast, he will sink the company. The
problem? Miller's success has gone to his
head and he can't adapt.
This phenomenon is quite common. It's
called confirmation bias-- the tendency of
decision-makers to seek out information
that reinforces their views of the world and
to reject information that challenges those
views. This is particularly common among
those who have been successful. They
American Express: Don't leave home
without ... Concur
By Tom Taulli (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 7:45:00 AM
Filed under: Earnings reports, Deals,
American Express (AXP) Back in 2001,
Concur Technologies, Inc.,(NASDAQ:
CNQR) hit a low of 31 cents per share. At
that time, investors had lost all confidence
in the Internet. What's more, Concur was
in an un-sexy space; that is, a provider of
software to help companies with travel
expenses.
But the company's CEO, Steve Singh,
was still a believer and thought the market
The Animated Eisner
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/29/2008 5:00:00 AM
Michael Eisner, the longtime boss at
Disney, always said he was a creative guy.
It was just hard to tell in the midst of the
constant state of battle in which he seemed
to be, especially during his final years
running the House of Mouse.
But now, Eisner's second act is in full
think that they have figured out a winning
formula and when it stops working, they
blame everyone but themselves.
This came to mind as I read a
CNNMoney story on how Miller's fund
has lost 34% of its value since last July.
Miller had been famous for beating the
S&P 500 every year between 1990 and
2005. But his methods have failed him
since. And investors have yanked $2.4
billion from Legg Mason which
CNNMoney notes, reported a second
quarter loss last week.
Continue reading After 34% drop in
Value Trust, Bill Miller needs to go
Permalink| Email this| Comments
opportunity was huge.
Well, as of now, things are starting to
pay off. In fact, this week, Concur
announced that it received a $251 million
strategic investment from American
Express(NYSE: AXP) at $39.25 per share.
There is also a warrant to purchase an
additional 1.28 million share (see more of
today's earnings news).
Continue reading American Express:
Don't leave home without ... Concur
Permalink| Email this| Comments
bloom. His Tornante Company today said
it has sold its first animated series, Glenn
Martin D.D.S., to Viacom's Nickelodeon.
Maybe much like his new lead
character—a dentist who leaves his
practice behind and takes his family on a
cross-country road trip in a van with a
toothbrush on top—Eisner was truly
looking for something different.
The program is expected to debut next
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/29/2008 9:00:00 PM
S ecretive and publicity shy, David E.
Shaw made billions of dollars using
fantastically complex computer algorithms
to trade on Wall Street.
Now this former computer scientist at
Columbia University turned tycoon is
about to finish the most powerful
supercomputer in history. Not to make a
killing on the stock market, but to solve
some of the trickiest problems in biology:
How the molecules that comprise "life"
function and interact at the most basic
level.
It may seem like a James Bond movie:
mysterious billionaire-genius designs
megacomputer to probe life's secrets. Will
he perhaps tinker with them, too, in a
nefarious scheme to dominate the world by
creating enhanced life forms or bio-silicon
superbeings?
There's no sign that Shaw is going super-
villain. Nor does he need to, considering
the practical and potentially profitable uses
for his megacomputer.
Knowing more about the complex
interactions inside us could lead to better
and more efficacious drugs, and to develop
computer models that can simulate what
happens even at the atomic level of life. It
could lead to new ideas for developing
computers and other machines based on
cells and molecules.
Shaw's device, which he's named
"Anton" in homage to pioneering
microbiologist Anton van Leeuwenhoek,
might also take humans several steps
closer to having a schematic of how life
works at its most elemental levels.
Several years ago, Shaw stepped down
from the day-to-day management of his
summer, and Nickelodeon has ordered 20
episodes.
Now, other than worrying whether
Sumner Redstone will keep his nose out of
Glenn Martin's character development, it
seems clear that Eisner is content with his
new career. He doesn't seem to be itching
to run a major media company and relishes
the smaller, maybe more interesting,
spotlight he's now in.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
derivatives firm, D.E. Shaw and
Company—which in June 2008 was
managing upwards of $39 billion in
investments.
He became chief scientist of his own
computer laboratory, D.E. Shaw Research,
home of the team making Anton.
Characteristically, Shaw has been mostly
mum about Anton, referring the inquisitive
to a technical paper on the project in the
journal Communications of the
Association for Computing Machinery.
His computer uses the massively parallel
computing technology that Shaw helped
develop at Columbia in the 1980s. Anton
simultaneously runs 512 specialized
processors called "application-specific
integrated circuits."
Unlike other supercomputers that have
more general-use applications, including
weather forecasting, these processors are
specifically designed to calculate the three-
dimensional characteristics of molecules.
Shaw's team could use Anton to solve
one of the most perplexing mysteries of
molecular life: how proteins, the building
blocks of life, each acquire a distinctive
three-dimensional shape that allows them
to perform millions of functions in a living
organism.
Proteins, which include enzymes,
hormones, and the collagen in bones and
skin, are made in cells according to
instructions from DNA. They're strands of
amino acids bunched up like wads of string
into distinctive shapes and held together by
subtle physical forces that are still poorly
understood.
Current supercomputers, including IBM's
BlueGene/L and Stanford University's
Folding@home(which uses legions of idle
laptops to increase computing power), can
take thousands of hours to simulate the
He's bought baseball-card giant Topps,
produced some webcast video series, and
now he has a buddy, Glenn Martin, D.D.S.,
to keep exploring what's next.
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folding of a single protein. Even then,
these computers can create simulations of
functions in molecules that last only a
billionth or a millionth of a second.
Scientists must then validate the findings.
Anton could run simulations going up to
1,000 times longer, allowing scientists to
get much closer to what really happens
when, say, a protein folds. "If you can do
1,000 times longer, real proteins come into
play," Shaw reportedly said in a lecture at
Stanford in 2006.
The more that scientists know about
proteins and other critical molecules in the
human body, the more precise they can be
when developing drugs.
"He's making a big step forward with
this," Benoit Roux, a biophysicist at the
University of Chicago, told the New York
Times.
Roger Brent, director of the Molecular
Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California,
suggested in the Times article that
scientists may not know what such a
powerful computer is capable of until they
use it.
He pointed out that the original
Anton—Van Leeuwenhoek, who perfected
the microscope in Holland in the 17th
century—didn't know that protozoa and
other single-cell organisms existed in pond
water until he trained his newfangled
lenses on a sample.
Shaw also is a major investor in
Schrödinger, a chemical and bio-physical
simulation software business that could
benefit from Anton's new
technology.Related Links
Gene-Sequencing Warrior
Sequencing at the Speed of Lightning
The T-Rex Inside Me
Delicious Bookmark Site
Overhauled and Renamed
[Del.icio.us]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 6:20:02 AM
Popular social bookmarking site
del.icio.us is now Delicious.com and it's
sporting a brand new look and a speedier
backend. No more URL confusion! Watch
a quick video of the transformation.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Putting a Price on Innovation
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 12:00:00 PM
Founded 30 years ago at the dawn of
biotech, Genentech is a legend in an
industry where companies yearn to do
what it does: make billions of dollars from
novel drugs while remaining true to
innovation and science.
Unfortunately, it's also a legend being
positioned for a fall.
That's because the Swiss drug giant
Roche, which has owned a majority of
Genentech shares since 1990, wants to buy
the 44 percent of shares in the company
that it does not already hold. Late
Thursday, Genentech said it had formed a
special committee to evaluate the $89-per-
share offer, which many analysts and
shareholders believe is too low.
At any price, this whopper of a deal
could mean an end to Genentech's
distinctive culture of innovation, despite
promises from Roche not to meddle.
It would also provide more evidence that
the days of "Big Biotech"—a relatively
small subset of successful companies in an
industry that takes years to develop
products and to become profitable—are
over. Big Biotech is being swallowed by
Big Pharma.
Facing slender pipelines for new drugs
and expiring patents for blockbusters, big
pharmaceuticals are snapping up medium
and large biotechs with abandon. Biotech's
bestselling product line this year will not
be new meds for cancer or Alzheimer's,
360? Maybe Not.
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 4:00:00 AM
Live Nation may have signed huge deals
with Madonna, Shakira, and Jay-Z, but the
upstart music company is looking to the
major labels to distribute its tunes.
According to a report in the New York
Post this morning, Live Nation has been in
talks with the likes of Warner Music
Group and the other big music companies
to get the music out to customers.
Google Now Shows How It Customizes Search Results [Google]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
but deals.
Roche's initial Genentech offer is $43.7
billion, equal to over half of all of biotech's
revenues last year. The offer was 9 percent
over premium last Friday, but the share
price has quickly risen to $95, signaling
that shareholders want more. Analysts
expect Roche to pay $100 a share if they
are serious about the purchase.
"The special committee intends to
proceed in a timely manner to review the
Roche proposal, which was both
unsolicited and unexpected," said
committee chairman Charles Sanders in a
statement. "The outcome of this process
has not been predetermined, and there can
be no assurance that the special committee
will approve any transaction with Roche."
In the past, pharma companies have been
content to support certain biotechs like
farm teams in baseball through licensing
and milestone deals, worried that engulfing
them might destroy the innovation.
No more. In April, Japanese pharma
giant Takeda bought Millennium
Pharmaceuticals for $8.8 billion, and last
year biotech biggies such as MedImmune
were sold for billions of dollars. And
remember Chiron? Another biotech
pioneer for the San Francisco Bay Area,
Chiron was purchased by Novartis in 2005,
and now seems to have vanished.
Nobody seems as intent on buying new
companies as Roche. Already this week it
has bought Canada's Arius Research for
$189 million, and Mirus Bio of Madison,
Wisconsin, for $125 million, on top of the
Live Nation has made a splash in the
business, signing so-called "360 deals" to
handle everything from recording music to
concert tours to merchandising for music
acts. C.E.O. Michael Rapino has signed
Madonna, Jay-Z, Nickelback, and Shakira
to the deal but doesn't have a new album
from any of them due out for at least 18
months, the Post said.
Last week, Live Nation dumped three
industry veterans originally signed to build
a label within the company.
Google announces you might start seeing
a new message the top of web searches,
Genentech offer late last week.
Apparently, new Roche C.E.O. Severin
Schwan likes to shop.
Roche argues that duplications in the two
companies are costing hundreds of
millions of dollars a year, and efforts to
keep the two companies separate keep
operations from being as smooth as they
might be.
But critics of the deal insist that this is
really about Roche taking advantage of a
weak dollar and a declining stock market.
One thing is likely: There may not be
another Genentech for a long time. Any
company with the potential will be
snatched before it has a chance.
This may not be healthy for the larger
pharma industry, which not only needs
more novel drugs, but it also desperately
needs new business strategies and new
cultures that are able to keep the
innovations coming even in a huge
company.
Genentech was the most important player
in this experiment to find a new way to
incorporate both.
If the deal gets done, the ball will be in
Roche's court to see if its buying sprees
will help it become more like Genentech,
or will turn Genentech into another
disappearing act like Chiron.
Related Links
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The paper also posited the company
could explore exclusive deals with major
retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target.
Any deal with a major music company
could be awkward: for instance,
distributing a new Madonna album with
Warner Music, her former label.
Related Links
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Live Nation Plays On
which tell you how your location (based on
IP address), recent searches, and web
No Time for Mouse-ka-
fears
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 4:30:00 PM
It was a friendly afternoon for Disney
boss Bob Iger and his moneyman, C.F.O.
Tom Staggs—at least in the sense that not
one analyst on its earnings conference call
asked whether tween queen Miley Cyrus
will be defecting from the House of
Mouse.
So despite weakness in key businesses,
the third quarter conference call was pretty
much bereft of drama surrounding the
headlines involving a flap over the future
of the valuable Hannah Montana television
series that came when megastar Cyrus
indicated this week that the third season,
set to start production Monday, might be
her last.
Instead, the only truly awkward moment
of the call came when a Lehman Brothers
analyst suggested that Apple chief Steve
Jobs, the giant’s largest shareholder, and
Iger had differing opinions on the merits of
distributing the company’s content–say,
for free over the Internet—without regard
for monetizing it.
“Disney’s decisions are made just by the
management of the Walt Disney company,
and are not determined or influenced by
outside entities, including Steve,” snapped
Iger. “I happen to believe that in a world
where more and more people are migrating
online to access information and
entertainment, the Walt Disney Company
would be served well by having a very
strong presence in that environment.”
That was the backdrop to a third quarter
during which Disney reported third quarter
earnings per share of 66 cents, up nine
cents over the same period last year.
Disney execs were more than happy to
discuss its theme park business, which
constituted 30 percent of the company’s
revenue in the first nine months of this
fiscal year, and was the subject of over half
the analyst questions, most of them
deferential and complimentary as the parks
have performed surprisingly well in a
history adjust the results you get. Creepy
or helpful? Both, kinda.
Biz Buzz Tech Tips* 7
difficult economic climate.
Sample question? Why is business at the
parks—where revenue for the quarter is up
5 percent to $3 billion and operating
income up 3 percent to $641
million—holding up so well in a difficult
travel environment, with flat hotel
bookings and high fuel costs?
Turns out, international parks like
Disneyland Paris benefited from the
strength of the euro and higher guest
spending and attendance, while domestic
resorts including Walt Disney World and
Disneyland suffered decreased attendance,
a factor nevertheless offset by higher guest
spending.
Advantage Iger.
The parks certainly emerged looking
better than Disney’s movie business, where
revenue fell to $1.4 billion from $1.8
billion, and operating income was down as
well. You can blame this quarter’s The
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian for
that: the flick bombed in theaters,
especially compared to last year’s Disney
blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: At
World’s End.
Disney’s television unit was also battered
by bad news, mainly on the broadcast side.
ABC, the company’s beleaguered
network, has suffered low prime-time
ratings and the broadcast unit overall
ended the quarter down 11 percent in
operating income. Cable networks fared
better, with particular growth at ESPN.
Finally, revenue and operating income
from consumer products and merchandise
sales were both up, thanks to the
acquisition of Disney Stores in North
America—although that unit accounts for
just 7 percent of the company’s revenue.
Forget Hannah Montana, political
infighting, and ABC. Perhaps what Iger
should really do is open more theme parks.
Related Links
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8 Biz Buzz Tech*
AMC's Mad Progress
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/29/2008 9:30:00 AM
Sunday night's season premiere of Mad
Men, AMC's breakout show about a
buttoned-down 1960s-era advertising firm,
scored a record number of viewers—over 2
million—for the series.
That total was more than 400,000 higher
than Mad Men's season one premiere,
which generated 1.6 million viewers last
July, and more than double the first
season's average number of viewers per
episode, just 925,000.
Despite that impressive growth, Mad
Men was kind of slapped around by
Lifetime's Army Wives and USA's In Plain
Sight—both of which easily more than
doubled Mad Men's viewers.
Still, the show is providing an important
edge for AMC, a cable channel whose
programming includes 12-hour Chuck
Norris marathons anchored by the Missing
In Action trilogy. It gives the Rainbow
Media-owned station the kind of strong
foothold in original programming that The
Closer gave TNT and is now table stakes
in the cable business.
Black and Brew
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 4:00:00 PM
When Howard Schultz returned to
Starbucks promising headline-grabbing
changes, posting the company's first-ever
quarterly loss was probably not the type of
transformation he had in mind.
But on Wednesday, for the first time in
the Seattle-based coffee chain's 16-year
history, it announced a loss of 1 cent per
share. Although that number includes 17
cents per share in write downs related to
restructuring, even excluding those items,
the company still fell short of the 18 cents
analysts were expecting.
Plagued by overexpansion followed by
sluggish consumer spending and rising
commodities costs, Starbucks has spent the
first part of 2008 pitching an uphill battle
to regain its footing.
Compared to last season, Sunday's
numbers lay a strong foundation. Last
summer, only four episodes out of 13 aired
with over 1 million viewers.
Call it the Emmy effect.
"I'm not surprised at all," says Brad
Adgate, senior vice president at media
planning and buying agency Horizon
Media. "I think getting 16 Emmy
nominations right before the premiere of a
show is going to give anybody a shot in the
arm."
What's more, Adgate doesn't expect the
Emmy pop to be a one-time boost to Mad
Men's viewership. Instead, he predicts that
the numbers could prove sustainable for
the network now that the show has
achieved mainstream recognition via its
multiple Emmy nominations and heaps of
critical acclaim.
There's potential upside. The Closer
averages 5 million to 7 million viewers per
episode, numbers that are propelling
cable's most popular scripted series into
territory formerly the sole province of the
network channels.
For instance, Sunday stalwart Army
Wives recruited 3.6 million and In Plain
On an earnings call Wednesday evening,
Schultz described his "unwavering
confidence" in Starbucks' strength and
resilience, describing the chain as "battling
a perfect storm" in the economy.
"We're playing both offense and defense
in our approach to the current business,"
said Schulz.
He couldn't be more right.
Schulz started off 2008 trying to score
touchdowns. He instituted better employee
training and unveiled state of the art coffee
machines. He gave Starbucks a loyalty
program. Most visibly, Schultz launched
shiny new products such as the Pike Place
Roast coffee blend and Vivanno
smoothies, and introduced a frozen drink
called the Sorbetto to the L.A. market.
Since he reclaimed the reigns as C.E.O.
in January, Schultz has been preaching
plans of "re-aligning the Starbucks
Sight snagged 4.2 million pairs of eyeballs,
making it the most-watched scripted cable
show in Sunday's 10 p.m. time slot for
which Nielsen has numbers (Showtime,
whose Weeds and Secret Diary of a Call
Girl had reruns during this time slot, has an
agreement with Nielsen not to release
ratings).
Winning the ratings race in Sunday's 10
p.m. time slot overall was Dateline' s
second hour on NBC, with 7.6 million
viewers and a household rating of 5.2
percent, compared to Mad Men's 1.4
percent. On ABC, a rerun of Desperate
Housewives ensnared 3 million viewers,
and a new episode of CBS's Flashpoint
scored almost 4 million.
Still, that's old-school network TV. In the
world of cable comers, we're betting there
won't be anything "mad" this week about
the men and women working in AMC's
New York headquarters.
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Unreal
organization and streamlining the
management" - a euphemism that hints that
the corporate turnaround won't be all
sunshine and banana chocolate smoothies.
If the first sixth months of this year were
all about offense, as if on cue, on July 1
Schultz waved the defense onto the field.
On that day Starbucks announced 600
U.S. stores would be on the chopping
block. Yesterday, the company followed
that by saying that 1,000 management
positions would be eliminated, and 61
Australian stores (70 percent of its
presence) are set to close. Schultz has also
moved operations expert Martin Coles
back into his role as the company's
President.
Wednesday's results make it clear that
there's a long road ahead for Starbucks.
The company was $6.7 million in the red
for its third quarter, compared with $158.3
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Garfield Minus Garfield
Gets Its Own Book... And
No Lawsuits, Either!
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 4:42:00 AM
Back in June, we noted how sad it was
that we were all so happy that Garfield
creator Jim Davis didn't freak out about the
derivative comic strip "Garfield Minus
Garfield." In this day and age, we're so
used to creators sending out cease and
desist letters and claiming "ownership" that
it was refreshing to see a content creator
actually happy about someone building (or,
in this case, subtracting) off his work. This
should be the norm -- but instead it's a
unique thing. Witness the silly spat over
who "owns" Flat Stanley, for example.
However, the Jim Davis/Garfield thing is
getting even better. It appears that Davis'
publisher, Ballantine Books, has worked
out an agreement with the creator of
million profit a year earlier; for the third
straight quarter U.S. same store sales have
declined.
The coffee chain also revised its 2008
earnings outlook to the "mid-seventy-cent
range" on revenue growth of about 11
percent. Earlier this year, Starbucks
projected 2008 per-share earnings
"somewhat lower" than 87 cents, on
revenue up 13 percent to 14 percent.
On the bright side, once the 600 stores
close, same store sales are almost certain to
point upward.
Related Links
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Starbucks Cools Off
Decoded: Starbucks Goes Back to Basics
Garfield Minus Garfield to publish a book
of those strips as well, and they're doing it
in conjunction with a 30th anniversary
Garfield book. And, once again, Jim Davis
seems thrilled about the whole thing:"I
think it's an inspired thing to do. I want to
thank Dan for enabling me to see another
side of Garfield. Some of the strips he
chose were slappers: 'Oh, I could have left
that out.' It would have been funnier." I
look forward to a day when the idea that
someone being thrilled that they inspired
someone else's creative works as a
derivative of their own isn't newsworthy.
In the meantime, kudos to Jim Davis,
Ballantine... and, most importantly, Dan
Walsh for his creativity in coming up with
Garfield Minus Garfield in the first place.
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Tech Company That
Junked Unopened Rebate
Claims Pays $10k In Fines
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 12:21:00 AM
It's no secret that most people hate rebate
programs. They're a pain to deal with, so
many people don't even send in the rebate
forms -- and then, the various companies
that receive them often go out of their way
to find reasons to reject them. However, a
tech company in San Jose named Vastech
went a bit further than that. Rather than
coming up with ways to void the rebates, it
was caught having thrown over a thousand
unopened rebate claims into the garbage.
The company has now paid up on all the
rebates that it had junked and has agreed to
pay a $10,000 fine on top of that. To be
honest, that seems rather low for deceiving
the public.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
China Muzzles its Money Managers
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 8:30:00 AM
If you don't have something nice to say,
don't say anything at all.
That's a fine motto to live by socially,
but it takes on a whole new meaning when
it's directed at money managers by China's
securities regulators.
The China Securities Regulatory
Commission, which is that country's
version of the Securities and Exchange
Commission, recently ordered domestic
fund managers to avoid saying anything
negative about Chinese stocks. The
missive is part of a broad effort by the
Chinese government to maintain stability
in its financial markets ahead of the
Olympics.
"We want to remind all the fund
companies to strengthen your management
of external comments to produce and
maintain the good image of the fund
industry," the C.S.R.C. statement read.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite
Index has lost half its value since the start
Finally, Time to Start Over
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/29/2008 6:00:00 AM
Will John Thain have a spring in his step
today? The Merrill Lynch C.E.O. must be
feeling like he just completed a weeklong
cleansing diet—lighter, healthier, happier.
It was a painful process, but purging is
sometimes the only way to start over.
And what other bloated, overweight bank
C.E.O.'s will follow the trend? Deutsche
Bank's equity analyst Mike Mayo thinks
Citigroup will be next, and he's probably
right. Mayo predicts that Citi will take
another $8 billion hit on its big, messy pile
of stinking collateralized debt obligation
rot.
The time has come to completely start
over. Sell the crap for whatever you can
get and start to move on with business.
Penning a would-be letter to banks from
the Federal Reserve's Tim Geithner,
BreakingViews Hugo Dixon implores
other banking chiefs to join Thain in his
feast on humble pie: "When Bear Stearns
of this year.
This isn't the first time the government
has muzzled the naysayers. In May it
ordered money managers to avoid
unloading stocks after the devastating
earthquake.
But Chinese investors aren't so easily
fooled by the sudden absence of any
negative commentary. The benchmark
index has fallen slightly since the order
was issued.
Earlier this month, the regulator asked
some senior fund managers to avoid
overseas travel before and during the
Olympic games and to be sure the
C.S.R.C. can reach them at all times,
according to a report by Dow Jones.
How do these money managers feel
about being told to keep quiet? Some of
them spoke anonymously with the South
China Morning Post about their frustration.
"The regulator has been harping about
discipline for ages," said one fund
manager, who noted that the wording of
the statement revealed the regulator's
nervousness. "Somehow, we have to shut
nearly went under, I had to absorb its $30
billion 'bad bank' onto my balance sheet to
persuade J.P. Morgan to buy the rest. I
don't want to end up with another bad bank
myself. Much better that you hive off your
bad banks yourself while you can."
Thain rightfully deserves the criticism
he's getting this morning for the countless
broken promises he's made, the way he
misled investors, and the absurd
overpricing of these assets less than one
month ago.
But he deserves some credit for being the
first to throw it all out for practically
nothing and start over. (But, as Felix
Salmon reminds us, just because this latest
write-down was large, doesn't mean it's the
last.)
What changed his mind? Even during the
quarterly call earlier this month, he seemed
averse to the idea when Oppenheimer
analyst Meredith Whitney suggested
purging C.D.O. assets even when there
wasn't a market for them:
Whitney: Could you set a market by
up to avoid unnecessary trouble due to the
warning."
According to the paper, the securities
regulator also required four financial
newspapers to publish upbeat reports about
the market. Already, the Xinhua news
agency obeyed orders. "If prices fall to a
certain level, stocks must be undervalued
and a rally will follow," it wrote.
So what will Chinese stocks really end
up doing this year? Roth Capital Partners'
Donald Straszheim thinks they won't move
much for a while. "The widespread view
that Chinese equities will fall after the
Olympics is likely to keep investors
cautious until there is greater clarity on
China's economy, on the U.S.-Europe-
Japan economies and markets, and on the
credit-market problems and on oil and
energy," he wrote in a report yesterday.
Related Links
China IPO Datapoint of the Day
Shanghai Sell-Off
Investor Beware
hitting whatever cash bid there is out there
and just get it over with?
Thain: No. I don't think we want to do
dumb things, and so we've been, I think,
pretty balanced in terms of what we sold
and at what prices we sold them. And so
we have not simply liquidated stuff at any
price we could get. At some point, some of
the return profiles that people want, you
probably wouldn't want us to sell the
assets. So I think we will continue to sell
assets, but in a way that makes sense from
generating returns to our shareholders.
What looked dumb in June somehow
seemed smart to Thain in July. It's amazing
what a diet can do to a person.
Related Links
The Man Who Saved (or Got Suckered
by) Wall Street
Geithner Explains the Bear Stearns
Rescue
Bear Funds Being Liquidated: Who
Wants to Buy?
A Suckers' Rally?
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 7/28/2008 10:30:00 AM
Hedge funds can't seem to catch a break
these days.
They are being targeted by a broad
S.E.C. sweep for information tracing back
to the origin of rumors that swirled around
trading in Bear Stearns and Lehman
Brothers stocks. They now can't short
some financial stocks in the way they used
to, and the short-selling restrictions could
become even tighter.
And now, rising financial stocks and
falling oil are helping to make July one of
the worst months in years for some hedge
fund returns. Hedge Fund Research's
global hedge fund index is down 3.16
percent so far this month. July could end
up being the worst month since the index
was created five years ago, according to
Bloomberg.
Plenty of hedge funds with short
positions in financial stocks took a hit
when the government stepped in to bail out
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the
S.E.C. made it harder to short stocks in
that sector.
The restrictions appeared to have helped
traditional shareholders—shares in Fannie
and Freddie have surged in the past two
weeks. Even shares of Lehman Brothers,
which continues to be plagued by
Clickable Raises $14.5 Million
More For Online Ad Management
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 5:00:04 AM
Clickable, the web advertising
management company that launched at
TechCrunch40, has closed a $14.5 Million
Series B round led by Founders Fund,
Union Square Ventures, and FirstMark
Capital. The round brings Clickable’s total
funding to $22.5 million, and comes only
eight months after the company completed
its $6 million two-part Series A round.
Clickable offers users a web-based
dashboard that allows them to manage
their advertising campaigns across a
number of websites. The site also offers a
tutorial section called “Clickable
University” where users can see how to
Biz Buzz Tech* 9
speculation about its future, remain well
above their lows reached before the
restrictions went into place.
The price of oil also fell dramatically in
the last two weeks, down more than $20
per barrel from peaking earlier this month
at $145.
But there's no evidence this rally will
last.
"Everything that went up was the most
shorted," Christopher Watling, head of the
research firm Longview Economics, told
Bloomberg. "It was a classic short squeeze,
a race to cover shorts, not buying because
fundamentals had changed. It was a true
suckers' rally."
Indeed, it's hard to muster the sympathy
for some suffering funds, since stocks on
the rise and oil on the decline are heading
in precisely the right direction for the
larger investing population.
It's also perhaps too early to conclude
that this ugly July will be a sign of things
to come for the rest of the year. After all,
the Dow is down nearly 200 points today,
led by a decline in financials. And oil? It's
up 33 cents.
Related Links
Let the Hedge Fund Lawsuits Begin
Credit Losses: The Good News
Hedge Fund Managers Not Earning
Their Keep
more effective use and analyze their ads.
The large sums of money will be used to
“accelerate Clickable’s momentum”, likely
by attempting to increase exposure with a
marketing push and adding to the
company’s workforce.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile
Gadgets and Applications, Delivered
Daily.
10 Tech*
AutoAdmit Lawsuit Leads To Suggestion The Hidden Costs Of
For Dreadful DMCA-Style Takedowns Micropayments Go Beyond
Of Defamation The Penny Gap
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 3:29:00 AM
For a while now, we've been covering the
lawsuits surrounding "AutoAdmit." If you
haven't been paying attention, AutoAdmit
is a message board system used by law
school students, many of whom apparently
used it to be what, at best, might be called
juvenile jerks. For example, there were
certain threads insulting various female
law students (in incredibly crude terms),
which those students insisted cost them
jobs. This point is rather difficult to prove -
- because there are many reasons why the
women might not have been able to get
jobs, and any firm that won't hire someone
because of juvenile messages on a message
board probably isn't worth working for
(also, a few months back, someone sent us
some evidence that one of the women
actually had gotten a job at a law firm,
despite her complaints of not being able
to).
However, since we're dealing with a
bunch of law students and lawyers, it
wasn't long before the lawsuits began
flying. First, the women filed lawsuits
against the message board, various
New York Politicians Think About
Repealing Amazon Tax, But Let It Drop
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 11:42:03 AM
Back in April, we noted that some NY
state politicians were trying to put in place
a rather sneaky legal change that
effectively would force Amazon to collect
sales tax in New York, despite not having
a physical presence there. The "trick" was
to claim that if you had any affiliates in the
state, you had a local presence. Affiliates,
of course, can be nothing more than an
advertiser. So, based on this change of law,
effectively anyone who has an advertiser in
anonymous posters and an administrator of
the message board. Of course, the
administrator pointed out (correctly) that
he's clearly protected, and eventually he
was dropped from the lawsuit -- but not
before he lost his job. So, of course, he
sued back for the wrongfully targeted
lawsuit against him. Quite a mess.
Wired News is running an update on the
case, where it reveals that one of the
anonymous law students who made the
juvenile comments has now been identified
to the women filing the lawsuit, meaning
that he won't be anonymous much longer.
This is a bit surprising, since we've seen a
series of lawsuits lately that US courts
believe it's important to protect anonymity,
even in cases where the content in question
is"unquestionably offensive and
demeaning."
However, what's more interesting, is the
rest of the article from Wired, where it
explores the "Pandora's Box" this case has
opened up concerning a bunch of issues
involving free speech, anonymity and the
limits of both. And, of course, since we
have a bunch of lawyers involved, there's
one downright scary suggestion: create a
DMCA-like law that allows someone to
NY is considered to have a local presence
there and must collect sales tax. Both
Amazon.com and Overstock have sued
over this law, and Overstock has even gone
so far as to cut off all NY affiliates in
response (showing how the law probably
hurts NYers a lot more than it helps them).
Saul Hansell, over at the NY Times,
picked up on an odd fact, however. Just
weeks after this passed, a separate bill was
introduced to repeal it. Yet, that bill
appeared to have no sponsor, but the state
Senate actually voted and approved it.
After some digging, Hansell got an
demand a takedown of content they find
defamatory. If you thought false DMCA
takedowns were a bit much, can you
imagine how many such defamation
takedown's would be sent on a regular
basis? As we've seen time and time again,
many people (falsely) assume that any
content they don't like is defamatory, and
already send cease-and-desist letters at the
drop of a hat. If you added a notice-and-
takedown provision, this would be abused
to no end.
But, in the end, as the article notes, it's
unclear what good any of this has done.
The lawsuit is wasting a lot of people's
times, and is doing a lot more to harm
various reputations than the original thread
ever really did. Yes, it was offensive,
demeaning, juvenile and idiotic to some
extent. But, opting to file a lawsuit almost
seems guaranteed to make the situation a
lot worse -- and, frankly, seems to do a lot
more damage to the law students suing,
than any random obviously childish thread
on an open message board would ever do.
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explanation: saying that the original bill
was part of a larger bill that was approved,
but many felt that they wanted to address
just this specific issue. Of course, it
appears that the state senators' interest is
not matched by the corresponding state
assembly (who would also need to pass
such a bill). Over there, they'd just as soon
leave the matter as is, and let the courts
(and taxpayers) sort it out.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 7:12:05 AM
For as far back as I can remember, there
have always been folks who insist that
micropayments are the solution to the
"free" content question. That is, they
believe that the solution to "free" content is
to set up a system where content can be
accessed for such a low price that it's
"close enough" to free and people don't
mind. However, as Clay Shirky pointed out
many years ago, it's not that easy at all. As
soon as you add in some cost, even a small
one, it creates mental transaction costs that
go beyond the payment itself. Basically,
just the fact that you need to think about
whether or not it's worth it, creates a
disincentive to consume that content. And,
indeed, most micropayment schemes
haven't gone very far. Last year, VC Josh
Koppelman named this phenomenon"the
penny gap" to explain how the "gap" in
getting someone to go from $0 to $0.01 is
much bigger than the gap from getting
someone to go from $0.01 to $0.02 (in
some ways, it's the same as the difference
from going from 0 mph to 1 mph -- inertia
is a powerful force).
However, Andrew Parker is questioning
whether the real problem isn't an
economics issue, but a usability issue. That
is, if it were really easy to pay that $0.01,
people wouldn't mind so much. In other
words, a big part of that "mental
transaction cost" that Shirky talks about is
(according to Parker) the effort needed to
establish that payment (a login, supplying
payment info, etc.). As proof that this may
be the case, Parker points to the early
distribution numbers for the iPhone App
Store which show more $0.99 apps sold
than free apps downloaded. His point:
since the iPhone makes it so easy to get an
app and pay for it, the "penny gap" or the
mental transaction costs really aren't that
high.
This is a really good point -- and it is a
testament to what a good job Apple did
with the App Store to make it so seamless
to the user. You absolutely can reduce the
mental transaction costs, and that shrinks
the penny gap significantly. However, I
wouldn't be so quick to jump to the
conclusion that micropayment solutions
will become that big a deal. First off, these
are only the initial results from App Store
sales, when you're dealing with early
adopters. I'll be interested to see if the
results remain this way over a longer
period of time.
Even more importantly, though, there
may be other hidden costs that should deter
certain publishers from focusing on
micropayments. Mainly, you are driving
away the ability of your users to share and
promote your content for you. In other
words, you're shutting off one of the best
tools to get your app more widely used and
recognized. So, even removing the
transaction costs from the equation, going
to a micropayment solution over a free one
doesn't always make the most sense.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Goober Takes Shotgun Approach With
IM Client
By Mark Hendrickson (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 7:00:26 AM
Goober is an instant messenger developed
by a team of Germans now officially based
in Delaware that’s going up against the big
guys (Skype, MSN, ICQ, etc.) with a
desktop client that overflows with features
- some useful, some more superfluous.
The cross-protocol Goober client
(available for Windows and soon Mac and
Linux as well) can be used to instant
message with both peers on the Goober
network and those using ICQ, MSN, or
Jabber. Its built-in VoIP capabilities can
also be used to place calls, although video
chat is still under development. We’re told
that the company is intent on keeping its
client software up-to-date on all platforms,
including Java for the mobile, so that users
enjoy the same experience regardless of
device.
So far, so good - although nothing
terribly special. Goober differentiates itself
primarily by providing a suite of widgets
that can be used to solicit communications
through the client. An email widget can be
placed in the signature of messages and a
so-called “portal” widget can be placed on
social network profiles and other
webpages. Both present buttons for one-
click instant messaging, VoIP calling, and
file transferring with the user who
distributes them. An additional
“classifieds” widget assists those trying to
conduct business online who want to be
reached through more synchronous means
Labmeeting: A Social Network For Scientists
By Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 9:47:37 AM
Scientists are not the most social people
on the planet. Many of them would rather
be holed up in their labs trying to make the
next big discovery than hanging out on
Facebook throwing virtual pies at each
other (although there are exceptions). But
what if they could organize their all their
scientific papers online and share them
easily with other members of their lab?
Mark Kaganovich figures that will get
than email.
Goober has also integrated entertainment
features into the client. The company
draws upon free video channels and radio
stations found on the internet and allows
for the playback of them at the bottom of
the client. The quality of this content isn’t
superb and I’m not sure why you’d want to
use your IM client for media consumption,
them online. After graduating from
Harvard with undergraduate degrees in
biochemistry and computer science two
years ago, he set out to create Labmeeting.
In May, 2008 he closed a $500,000 seed
round from Peter Thiel, Kinsey Hills, and
other angel investors. And since last week,
Labmeeting has been open to anyone with
a college e-mail account.
Typically, scientists have stacks of
papers, protocols, and notes in their offices
that they pass around as PDFs. Labmeeting
is designed first and foremost as a
but there it is anyway.
Among Goober’s various other bells and
whistles is a micropayments system that
can be used to pay either Goober for VoIP
services or whoever has white labeled
Goober for its own business (perhaps a
media company that wants to deliver its
video through the client for a fee). A Jajah-
like feature connects two landlines via
VoIP to cut down on the cost of long
distance calls. And users can send SMSs,
MP3s and screenshots to each other from
within the client.
Overall, Goober is a respectable IM
client, although I find little that would
actually entice me to switch over from
Skype and AIM. The entertainment
features don’t do anything for me, and the
widgets are only moderately useful. The
user interface could also use some cleaning
up, as it confuses and doesn’t look the
most professional. However, those who
regularly communicate across several
protocols should check it out, especially
once Goober adds AIM and Gtalk support
(both planned).
A special beta access page has been set
up here- the first 5000 TechCrunch readers
to download the client through there will
receive a $5 voucher that can be used to try
out the client’s VoIP capabilities.
Also see the recent upgrades to Skype’s
IM client, which has moved further in the
video chat direction.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over
the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
document management site that allows
scientists and students to easily upload all
of those PDFs, organize them, search
them, and share them. Scientsist can create
groups, and invite other members of their
labs to create a common repository of
papers that can be accessed from
anywhere. The PDFs appear inside an
What If You Owned Your
Own Fiber Connection?
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 2:10:05 PM
Almost five years ago, we wrote about a
project in Burlington, Vermont to bring
fiber optics to residents there. The idea was
that, rather than a traditional "municipally-
owned" network, this would actually be
owned by the residents themselves. The
article focused on the work of economist
Alan McAdams, who (it needs to be
admitted) was the guy who not only sent
me down the path of better understanding
the economics of information over a dozen
years ago, but also convinced me to start
Techdirt in the first place. McAdams has
been pushing for the idea that if the end
users actually owned the network itself,
you would end up with much greater
broadband, in part because you might still
end up with a single fiber network, but
there would be significant competition of
service providers on that network. And,
indeed, it appears that's where the
Burlington fiber project has gone. A more
recent case study on the project suggests
that, with a slow and deliberate pace,
thousands of residents in Burlington now
have access to the fiber network, and can
choose their own ISP, if they want.
Tim Lee has now written about another
example as well, where there's an effort
underway in Ottawa (which is only about
170 miles from Burlington), to string up
400 homes with fiber, but where the
individual home owners will pay for and
own the "last mile" connection to their
embedded Scribd window (Kinsey Hills is
also an investor in Scribd).
Says Kaganovich:
What we are trying to do is change the
way information in biomedical research
and the medical community is distributed
and retrieved.
Scientists can recommend papers to
colleagues, mark them up, create
collections, and follow what other
scientists are collecting. Each scientist gets
a profile page. By interacting through their
research, they are more likely to interact
Tech* 11
homes. This is definitely a test on a small
scale, but it's a similar situation to what
McAdams has been pushing for all along.
Let the customer own the connection itself,
and then get to choose the service provider.
In the Ottawa case, once again, service
providers would no longer have to worry
about wiring up your home (the most
expensive part), but just need to offer
service at various peering points, and each
individual could choose who to get service
from.
In this manner, you still get real
competition, which is sorely lacking in the
telco arena, and you get the benefits of
higher speed networks. It's not as crazy as
it might sound, either. As Lee points out,
the telephone company used to own not
just the wiring in your house, but the actual
telephone as well. Over the years, that's
been pushed back. Now you own your own
phone -- and the wiring inside your house.
So is it so crazy to think that you should
own the wires outside of your house out to
the main network as well? There are still
plenty of practical issues that need to be
resolved -- and the initial economics may
be a bit daunting for many (the idea of
paying, say, $3,000, to own your own fiber
drop may freak some people out). But, it's
experiments like these that are a real step
in the right direction towards adding real
competition, rather than the faux duopoly
we all deal with today.
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with each other. Labmeeting could also
form of basis a community ranking system
for scientific papers, based on who is
reading, writing, and sharing them.
Labmeeting is free for individual
scientists and students. Eventually,
Kaganovich plans to charge subscription
fees to corporate users such as drug and
biotech companies.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over
the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
12 Tech*
Create Your Own Free
SMS Campaign With
Tagga
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 12:50:37 PM
As one of the most popular forms of
communication in the world, SMS has
become a favorite channel for advertisers
to reach out to their audience. Everywhere
we go, billboards and TV shows try to
convince us that we should “Text MAGIC
to 9340, with promises of goodies like free
ringtones and coupon codes.
Now Tagga, a Canadian startup
launching today, is looking to help you
create your own SMS campaign. The
service is currently live in Canada, but is
still smoothing some things out with
American carriers so it may not work quite
yet on your phone (the company says any
issues should be resolved over the next few
weeks).
To create a campaign, users first
designate what keyword they’d like to use.
For example, we might choose to use the
word “Tech”. From then on, any user to
text “Tech” to 82442 (it spells TAGGA)
would receive whatever content we’d
decided to distribute. The company says
that users won’t be allowed to namesquat
the keywords, as it will delete any accounts
that are inactive for too long.
For most people, Tagga offers two
pricing plans. The first option allows users
to create free campaigns, but 80 of the 160
characters on each text messages are
reserved for ads from sponsors. The site
also offers a paid premium account at 20
Ray Beckerman Picks Apart RIAA Lawsuits For Judges' Benefit
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 10:01:03 AM
Ray Beckerman, as you may already
know, is a lawyer in New York who not
only has defended numerous people
against RIAA lawsuits, but also runs the
Recording Industry vs. The People blog,
where he chronicles what's going on in
these cases. While I believe he sometimes
pushes the envelope too far in his claims
cents per message delivered which
eliminates the ads.
Tagga also has a plan in place for
“publishers”, who can use the service to
offer their readers a sort of short form
RSS. Publishers can choose to include ads
as part of their message campaigns, but
unlike the standard program, they receive a
revenue share from each ad. To participate,
members have to prove that they are
actually generating unique content, as
opposed to spamming someone else’s blog
material.
Tagga has a huge market to try to
capitalize on: there were an estimated 1.9
trillion text messages sent in 2007 alone.
But the company will face steep
competition from a number of more mature
services that do nearly the same thing, like
Mozes, which recently closed an $11.5
million round of funding. To help
differentiate itself, Tagga is offering
keywords for free (Mozes charges $5 per
month), but this plan may backfire if
Tagga is unable to handle the rush of name
squatters.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile
Gadgets and Applications, Delivered
Daily.
about what the RIAA is doing, there's no
denying that he's been a tremendous force
in shining some much needed light on
some of the RIAA's more questionable
activities, while also helping those who are
severely outgunned in various lawsuits.
As numerous folks have sent in,
Beckerman has now also written up
something of a primer for judges in The
Judge's Journal, a publication of the
American Bar Association targeted at
Zorap Launches Drag-and-
Drop Media Sharing,
Conferencing
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 3:04:38 PM
It may have an awful logo, but Zorap, a
video conference and media sharing
startup, has developed a browser plugin
that makes sharing movies and pictures
both simple and surprisingly fun. The
Windows-only plugin is currently working
on Ning and MySpace, with support for
more social networks (and Macs) coming
soon. If you’d like to try it out, head over
to this Ning page.
Zorap is basically an elaborate video chat
for multiple users that integrates media
sharing options. Users can drag and drop
images, movies, and audio files into a
group chat window. Each file is then
streamed live from your hard drive, so
everyone can watch or listen to the same
thing simultaneously (you can also
simultaneously watched streamed
YouTube videos).
The technology is impressive: sharing
pictures, dragging each video chat window
around, and streaming movies in real time
all seem to work seamlessly.
Unfortunately, the majority of these
functions require a plugin (or Firefox
extension), which could well be the
service’s undoing. Zorap is quick to point
out that some other communication
services, like Skype, have done
extraordinarily well despite requiring
separate software. But these companies
have succeed in spite of, not because of,
judges. It basically explains the many
problems with the way the RIAA conducts
its lawsuits, noting how it often uses
questionable means, weak evidence and
general bullying tactics in filing its cases.
It also relies on the fact that it comes off as
more credible than an individual (often
defending themselves -- sometimes in
jurisdictions far from home). Beckerman
highlights all of the problems with the way
the RIAA runs its cases, and makes a
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
their required downloads.
Besides the plugin issue, Zorap’s
integration into social networks may have
a hard time catching on. Unlike a chat
service like Skype or AIM, Zorap has
people meeting up in rooms that are linked
from their social network profiles. If you
have a lot of people constantly checking
your profile then this might lead to some
impromptu meetings, but it seems like the
buddy-list model is better suited for
conferencing than social network apps.
Once you’ve got the plugin installed and
friends in your meeting, Zorap works well
and is a lot of fun to use. But the company
still has a long way to go - finding your
friends can be tricky, and the company’s
website is pretty amateurish. Zorap will
also see competition with a number of
other services that allow you to
simultaneously enjoy media with your
friends using Flash, which most people
already have.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over
the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
series of quite reasonable suggestions for
judges in how to handle such cases should
they show up in court. It's a good guide,
that also highlights many of the
underhanded tactics that the RIAA uses in
filing its cases. It's well worth a read if you
haven't seen it elsewhere.
If I have one complaint, it's the same one
I leveled against John Duffy recently.
While the article does mention
Beckerman's website, it does not mention
Call your Twitter
pals with Phweet
By Mike Butcher (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 3:05:15 PM
Would you like to talk to your Twitter
friends or set up a spontaneous conference
call? Normally you’d have to agree to
hook up over Skype or something else. But
soon you could be making calls via
Twitter.
Phweet is a new service which does just
this (thanks to Pat Phelan of MaxRoam
and Twitterfone for the tip-off). After
signing in with your Twitter name and
password you select how the call will be
carried, either via browser, SIP ID or
number/Mobile Phone. You then plug in
your friend’s Twitter name and generate a
“Phweet” which is a unique shortURL for
sharing the call with one or more people.
Read the rest of this entry on
TechCrunch UK
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile
Gadgets and Applications, Delivered
Daily.
that he represents many clients against the
RIAA (including in ongoing trials). That
would appear to be something of a conflict
of interest, in that he's making a bunch of
suggestions for how judges should
basically side with his arguments in those
cases. I guess I'm learning that such
"disclosures" are generally not considered
necessary in the legal community.
Permalink| Comments| Email This Story
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Amazon Rents Out Its
Checkout Cart
By Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 8:28:17 AM
Amazon is outsourcing more of its Web-
scale software. Yesterday, it beefed up its
payment services with the launch of
Checkout by Amazon and Amazon Simple
Pay. Other e-commerce sites can basically
insert an Amazon Checkout cart on their
sites and Amazon’s software will handle
one-click ordering for anyone with an
existing amazon account, order
management, shipping and sales tax
calculations, and other features. Or with
Amazon Simple Pay, customers can just
remotely sign into their Amazon accounts
and Amazon will handle the payment
process itself.
For both services, Amazon charges a
transaction fee that starts at 2.9 percent of
the order amount, plus 30 cents per order
(it goes down to 1.9 percent for sites doing
more than $100,000 a month in sales). And
for transactions less than $10, Amazon
charges 5 percent plus 5 cents.
Amazon already offers an array of
payment services for both consumers and
businesses, including a Flexible Payments
Congress Moves Forward With Plan To Make
Universities Copyright Cops
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 5:55:00 AM
For a little over a year, there have been
stories about how the entertainment
industry has been pressuring Congress to
make universities responsible for stopping
copyright infringement on their network.
This got a lot of attention late last year
when Congress tried to tie such a mandate
to a provision granting financial aid to
students. In other words, the threat was
that if universities didn't act to stop file
sharing, their students wouldn't be eligible
Web service for developers to build their
own checkout experiences for themselves.
Hints of these latest additions came out in
June. Checkout and Simple Pay are aimed
squarely at businesses who may not have
the resources or time to build their own
payment service using Amazon’s Flexible
Payment Services API. Amazon is going
after PayPal and Google Checkout by
leveraging its own payment software (and
the millions of existing accounts tied to its
system) and making it available to others.
Amazon is making big strides towards
building cloud computing services, from
payments to storage to compute cycles. If
it can succeed in creating meaningful
revenues from these services, they should
be higher-margin businesses than shipping
books and CDs. (In a related move today,
Amazon is simplifying its Mechanical
Turk Web service so that non-coders (i.e.,
business managers) can set up tasks they
want to automatically farm out to digital
workers across the world.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile
Gadgets and Applications, Delivered
Daily.
for financial aid. This got plenty of
attention, and the bill never passed. The
most interesting part of it, though, was that
much of the reasoning for the bill was
driven by MPAA claims that 44% of all
illegal file sharing took place on college
campuses.
There was just one problem with that: the
number was completely wrong. Earlier this
year, the MPAA admitted that it had made
a small mistake, and the number was
actually something like 15% (and even that
could be argued).
You might think that would allow our
UK Politicians Demand
YouTube Vet Content To
'Protect The Children'
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 1:58:00 AM
Various safe harbors for service providers
that protect them from the actions of their
users make a lot of common sense. It's
simply wrong to blame a service provider
for the actions of its users. We don't blame
the telephone company when someone
commits a crime using the phone. And we
don't blame the car company for providing
the getaway car. Nor do we ask those
companies to do anything to block those
actions. That's because we all realize how
silly that is -- to blame a tool provider for
the actions of its users. Yet, for some
reason, when we move online, that concept
gets confused. While most of the focus has
been on safe harbors concerning copyright
or defamation, when you toss in a bit of
"but think of the children!" it gets even
more ridiculous.
We've already seen this with US
politicians bullying ISPs into blocking
"objectionable" content, even though they
have no legal basis for this (and, in fact,
such blocking will only make it more
difficult to track down those actually
Congressional representatives to focus
their attention on something a bit more
important -- but with super low approval
ratings, the people they actually represent
matter a lot less than their biggest
campaign donors. So, of course, the bill to
turn universities into copyright cops is
back once again. It is somewhat toned
down, but will still require universities to
basically be the mouthpieces of the
entertainment industry, repeating their
propaganda and ignoring that the problem
is the industry's obsolete business models
rather than any legal issue.
responsible). And, now we see it in the
UK. UK MPs are claiming that Google
needs to vet all of the content uploaded to
YouTube"to protect children from harmful
content." Seriously.
I guess it's only in the techie community
that we recognize that the phrase "to
protect the children" is almost always
followed by a plan that does the opposite.
The politicians seem concerned that
occasionally, questionable content is found
on YouTube, and it might take them
(gasp!) 24 hours to take it down.
Apparently it has not occurred to those
behind this demand that perhaps they
should be focused on using the content
being uploaded to track down those
actually responsible for the objectionable
(illegal?) content, rather than demanding
that Google proactively hide the evidence.
Next up, we'll be expecting the report
where politicians demand that telephone
companies "proactively" review all
telephone calls to make sure there is no
objectionable content "to protect children."
Permalink| Comments| Email This Story
However, as you read William Patry's
post on this above, you see that the MPAA
is also positioning the legislative history on
the law so that next year or so, they'll be
able to come back and insist on mandatory
filters at universities. Basically, it looks
like the MPAA tried to bite off too big of a
chunk when it pushed for this law last
year, so this year, it's taking half a bite, but
getting everything ready to get the rest of
what it wants next year.
Permalink| Comments| Email This Story
Tech* 13
Yahoo Exec Makes
Yuil: Looks Like Cuil,
With Better Results
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 3:24:36 PM
It was only a matter of time. Cuil, the
“massive” new search engine that was
supposed to be able to keep up with
Google, has just gotten its first knockoff.
It’s Yuil, a Yahoo-powered mashup that
looks almost exactly like Cuil. And, oddly
enough, Yuil might actually work better
than its much-hyped predecessor.
In a surprising (and hilarious) twist, Yuil
is actually the product of Yahoo VP of
Platforms, Sam Pullara, who is using the
site to show off Yahoo’s recently-released
BOSS API. BOSS is unique among search
engine APIs, giving developers an
unprecedented level of control over results
generated by Yahoo’s search engine. And
while Yuil isn’t really doing anything new
with its search results, they’re more
relevant than the occasionally bizarre ones
we’ve been getting from Cuil.
Developers are only just starting to tap
into the power afforded by the BOSS API -
we’ll probably see dozens of similar search
engines like this pop up over the next few
months. The difference between these, and
the generic API-based engines we’ve seen
before, is that developers will be able to
manipulate and reorder the results to make
them more meaningful - something that
APIs from most other search engines
prohibit.
Update: Looks like someone in the
Yahoo or Cuil camp doesn’t have a sense
of humor. Pullara has just updated his blog
to say he’s taken Yuil down:
“Yuil is dead. However, you can always
get the same great search results here.”
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because
it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
14 Tech* Gadgets*
Nokia Plunks Another $150 Google Acquires Omnisio To
Million Into Venture Fund Spice Up YouTube
By Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 9:27:56 PM
Nokia doesn’t want to miss the next wave
of mobile technologies so it is doubling
down on its venture investment activities.
The cell phone giant is putting another
$150 million to work in Nokia Growth
Partners, a fund in which it is the only
limited partner. This brings the total capital
in the fund to $250 million (Nokia initiated
the fund with $100 million in 2004). That
is in addition to a $100 million fund of
funds also run by Nokia Growth Partners
on behalf of Nokia, which is used to
sprinkle cash around to other VC firms.
So far the fund has done best investing in
mobile chip companies, some of which
have been acquired by ATI (BitBoys for
$44 million), Broadcom (Global Locate for
$143 million), and Dolby (Coding
Technologies for$250 million). But it is
Ask Engadget: Best digiframe /
alarm clock combo?
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 3:30:00 PM
Filed under: Ask Engadget, Digital
Cameras, Displays, Misc. Gadgets
Frightening though it may be, the fall
semester is just around the corner. You
know what that means? You'll actually
have to get up at -- wait for it -- an
appointed time. Carissa, being the
proactive student she is, posed this
question:
"Going to school in the fall, I'm looking
for the ideal alarm clock to beat the late
nights and what not and noticed a few
digital photo frames / alarm clocks. I want
a decent alarm clock that has battery
also an investor in mobile video service
Kyte. Generally, it is a alter-stage growth
fund that looks for companies with a
product ready to ramp up.
The new cash comes at a time when the
mobile Web is generating excitement again
in Silicon Valley. Most of that excitement
right now surrounds the iPhone. Throwing
around a little cash to encourage startups to
develop cutting-edge apps for Nokia
phones is not a bad strategy. The fund will
also invest more heavily in China and
India, where mobile growth far outstrips
the U.S.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because
it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
backup and good resolution on the screen
for viewing photos. An auxiliary audio
jack would be a major plus. Which one do
you guys recommend that falls under the
200 dollar mark? Thanks a million!"
Look at that -- you all even received a
thank you in advance! For those who've
mastered the art of waking up on time and
pretending to be a real live adult, which
alarm clock / digiframe hybrid have you
found to be supreme? Oh, and you know
that question you've been hitting the
snooze on? Yeah, send it on over to ask at
engadget dawt com. Permalink| Email this|
Comments
By Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/30/2008 1:22:53 PM
Google has acquired Atherton, CA based
startup Omnisio, the companies are
announcing this afternoon. Omnisio, which
is a Y Combinator company, first demo’d
to us in early March 2008, and it launched
later that month. The price is not being
disclosed, but we hear the deal is all cash
and is in the $15 million range.
The company was founded by three
Australians ( Ryan Junee, Julian Frumar
and Simon Ratner). The service lets users
annotate videos, mash various clips up, and
synchronize Slideshare presentations to
videos (great for conference presentations).
Omnisio users can extract sections of clips
they find on the web (currently only those
on YouTube, Google Video, or Blip.tv).
They can then take those clips and stitch
them together to form new, embeddable
compilations.
This is yet another liquidity event for Y
Figuring out which NVIDIA
GPUs are defective -- it's a lot
By Nilay Patel (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 11:13:00 AM
Filed under: Laptops So now that HP's
joined Dell in releasing information on
which laptops have those defective
NVIDIA GPUs, we can sort of piece
together which chips are faulty -- and just
as had been rumored, it looks like basically
every Geforce 8600M and 8400M chip is
affected. That's not good news for
NVIDIA, which has been saying that only
"previous-generation" chips were
problematic -- unless the chipmaker is
planning on updating the hugely popular
8x00 series sometime, say, now, that's not
exactly true, now is it? Other affected
chips appear to be in the GeForce Go 7000
and 6000 lines, as well as the Quadro NVS
135M and the Quadro FX 360M, but that's
just looking at model numbers, and we
can't be exactly sure. We'd say that if
you've got a machine with any one of these
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Combinator, which invests small amounts
of capital in very early stage companies,
usually at the idea stage. Reddit was
acquired in late 2006, TextPayMe was
bought by Amazon in 2007, and
Auctomatic and Anywhere.FM were
snapped up earlier this year.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over
the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
GPUs, it might be wise to call in and see
what your laptop maker is going to do --
and it would be smart for NVIDIA to come
right out and say exactly how big and how
bad this problem really is.
Read- Dell list of machines and patch
Read- HP list of machines, extended
warranty info Permalink| Email this|
Comments
Tether your
iPhone, wirelessly.
Maybe.
By Nilay Patel (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 2:02:00 PM
Filed under: Cellphones
We're not sure how this one got past
Apple's App Store censors, but the clever
kids at Nullriver have released what
appears to be the first tethering solution for
the iPhone. The $10 NetShare app is just a
SOCKS proxy that links an ad-hoc WiFi
network to the iPhone's 3G or EDGE
connection -- and if we could get it to
work, we'd probably think it was a fine, if
hacky, solution to a major limitation of
Steve's baby. As it stands, though, the
instructions are pretty sparse, and while we
can get the app to recognize a connection,
we're not able to actually load anything.
We're not sure how long this one's going to
last -- anyone else willing to give it a shot
before it gets yanked?
[Thanks, Zoli; Warning, link opens
iTunes]
Update: Aaaaand it's offline. Shocking.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Leaf rolls out wide frame AFi 10
camera system
By Donald Melanson (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 5:02:00 PM
Filed under: Digital Cameras
It looks like those that found Phase One's
60-megapixel P65+ camera a bit too much
for them but Hasselblad's 50-megapixel
H3DII-50 somehow lacking may now
finally have the answer they've been
looking for, as Leaf has just introduced its
new 56-megapixel AFi 10 camera system.
This one's main selling point is its 56mm
true wide frame sensor that Leaf designed
Salmon Provencal
By Elise
Submitted at 7/30/2008 4:01:50 AM
From the recipe archive.
with DALSA, which promises to "take you
to the edge of the medium-format frame."
Apart from that, you can expect a one
frame per second capture time, exposure
times up to a minute, light sensitivity from
ISO 50 to 800 and, of course, some
171MB file sizes to impress your friends
with. No word on a price and, quite
frankly, we're a little hesitant to ask.
[Via 1001 Noisy Cameras]
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Here's a salmon dish made for summer.
Fresh tomatoes, fresh chopped herbs, a few
shallots, lemon juice, balsamic and olive
oil make a perfect sauce to accompany
Casio gets fancy with LED-infused
Tough Movement
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 9:16:00 AM
Filed under: Wearables
Automatic movement? Sweeping hands?
Pish posh. Casio's looking to impress a few
watch aficionados itself with the all new
Tough Movement. Designed to slip inside
its Oceanus and G-Shock series of
timepieces, the new movement "features a
high shock resistance and a hand position
correction function using LED." During
the 55th minute of each hour, the
baked salmon fillets.
movement receives time calibration signals
from six bases located throughout the
world; if the hands are off at all, it
automatically corrects things to ensure that
you're never a moment off. Reportedly, the
first wristwatch to utilize the technology
will be the GS-1200, which is currently
slated to hit Japan this September for a stiff
¥42,000 ($390).
[Via OhGizmo] Read| Permalink| Email
this| Comments
Continue reading "Salmon Provencal" »
Gadgets* Food* 15
Dell Vostro 2510
now configurable
online
By Donald Melanson (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 10:34:00 AM
Filed under: Laptops
It looks like those already sold on Dell's
slightly less business-like Vostro 2510
laptop don't have to wait too long to get
their hands on one, as the just-leaked
laptop is now configurable on Dell's
website with an estimated ship time of 3 to
5 days. As we had heard, the base price
starts at a reasonable $899, which includes
a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T5670 processor,
2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a
better than usual 256MB NVIDIA
GeForce 8400M GS graphics card. If that's
not enough, you can push things up past
the $2,000 mark pretty easily with a faster
processor, a max 4GB of RAM, an Blu-ray
drive, and other premium add-ons. Hit up
the link below to get started.
[Via Electronista] Read| Permalink| Email
this| Comments
Team overclocks Core 2
Quad to 5.1GHz, claims
world record -- too bad it's
not
By Nilay Patel (Engadget)
Filed under: Desktops
Submitted at 7/31/2008 10:02:00 AM
So we hate to breakpage
TEAM it to the
16 good guys at
16 Gadgets* Web 2.0 TV*
Logitech to produce "premium" Guitar
Hero: World Tour instruments
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 12:36:00 PM
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals If you
didn't think every single third-party
peripheral provider would try to snag a
piece of the band game pie, we guess you
thought wrong, huh? With outfits like Mad
Catz and Ion already jumping in, it was
only a matter of time before Logitech
threw on its tightest jeans, blacked out its
blond hair and threw up some horns.
Details are admittedly scarce, but the
company has promised to provide
"premium instruments" for Guitar Hero:
World Tour on PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and
the Wii. Rockers can expect the new gear
AOKI's deodorizing suits keep you so fresh, so clean (clean)
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:43:00 AM
Filed under: Wearables
We're not even going to front -- some
seriously bizarre air conditioning-related
gizmos have emerged from the great nation
of Japan. The latest concoction to deal with
heat wave side effects actually has nothing
to do with keeping folks cool; rather,
TEAM
continued from page 15
Tom's Hardware, but while we're
impressed that they managed to overclock
a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 to
5.1GHz using a cryogenic cooling system,
it's not nearly close to the world record
they're claiming -- we've seen P4's at up to
8.18GHz, and just a couple months ago
someone jacked a Core 2 Extreme QX9775
on a Skulltrail board to 6GHz. Still, it's
always fun to watch people pour liquid
Big Brother 10: Live feeds report - July 31
By Jackie Schnoop (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 10:44:00 AM
Filed under: OpEd, Big Brother (US)
Pssst ... want to know a secret? Someone
to start shipping "later this year," though
prices, designs and pretty much anything
else of importance remains a mystery.
[Via NintendoWiiFanboy] Read|
Permalink| Email this| Comments
AOKI's deodorant suits are designed to
keep businessmen suffering from
Hyperhidrosis adequately fresh. Most of
nitrogen over a mobo -- video after the
break.
[Via PC World]
Continue reading Team overclocks Core
2 Quad to 5.1GHz, claims world record --
too bad it's not Read| Permalink| Email
this| Comments
will be evicted tonight on Big Brother 10. I
can tell right here on the main page of TV
Squad that it's not going to be April. Oh, I
know ... that's not very spoiler-ish of me, is
it? But I can't post spoilers right here
Old Media
Deathrace
5000
By Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
(Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 1:36:37 AM
I know there’s a good portion of you that
the details are lost in (machine) translation,
but all you need to know is that these
outfits "suck out the smell of sweat using a
silver ion." Yeah, that's totally worth the
¥61,950 ($575) asking price.
[Via CrunchGear, image courtesy of
ListVerse] Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
OLD
continued from page 16
are going to instantly groan at the headline,
either because it’s a territory that’s been
hashed out a number of times from a
number of different angles or because
you’re one of those folks who simply
doesn’t believe there are such thing as
“killer” technology (I’ve had that
conversation with a few folks recently).
But Duncan Riley put out an interesting,
if not provocative, editorial this evening
entitled “Television will be the first
traditional media medium to fall.”
Personally, I have always felt that radio
OLD page 17
smack in your face, you know. People
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Firefox Plugin socialbrowse
Expands Commenting
Features (400 Invites)
By Kristen Nicole (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 8:01:37 AM
socialbrowse, the Firefox plugin that lets
you surf the Web in a link-sharing social
manner, has just re-released its service
with a couple of major new features. The
Y Combinator-backed startup as been in
private beta for some time, and will remain
in private beta for a little while longer, but
those users testing the service will be able
to access and utilize its new features (get
your invite below).
The new features revolve around the
social sharing capabilities that
socialbrowse has already laid out. The first
new feature supports in-page commenting,
which allows you to leave comments on a
link you’re visiting without having to leave
the page. Submitting a comment, just as
with a shared link, will broadcast your
content across the Web in real time.
Comment icons will also appear on pages
you visit so you and your friends will
immediately be able to see the connection
between your own activity and that of your
friends.
An interesting visual tool accompanies
the socialbrowse sidebar, offering a very
direct and internally circular view of the
Web as well as your own browsing
behavior. This of course can be turned into
immediate recommendations as well as
useful information regarding a particular
site that may be more difficult or time-
consuming to find otherwise via
standalone bookmarking sites. This
capability also ties in closely with
socialbrowse’s second major new upgrade,
the embedded icon expansion option.
Icons that display on pages as you surf
the Web, indicating comments and shared
links, can now be expanded when you
would be irate! They'd revolt! More
importantly, they'd be mean to me. At least
no one would call me a womanizer.
Read on past the jump for spoilers from
the 24/7 live feeds!
hover over them, so you can get an at-a-
glance view of the details behind each
icon; who submitted the link, and what
friends have contributed to the comments
thread. Similar to the concept now being
employed by JS-Kit, the act of turning
comments into a more visual and social
component of Web surfing is a budding
function that can be leveraged for all sorts
of things.
While socialbrowse uses these comments
on a more internal basis and JS-Kit acts as
a centralizing factor for comments you
leave across the Web, they both result in a
useful capacity for direct and indirect
marketing and recommendations. JS-Kit
has already begun to expound upon its
features for the use of third-party sites like
evite, and Socialbrowse being the existing
community that it is can begin to leverage
its capabilities in different ways, which
will be interesting to observe as
Socialbrowse continues beta testing and
moves into a more public space.
socialbrowse is offering Mashable
readers 400 invites. Click here to get
yours.
---
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New RealPlayer Now Available for
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Continue reading Big Brother 10: Live
feeds report - July 31
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
OLD
continued from page 16
would be the first to falter, though in a
neck-and-neck race with newsprint, but
Duncan Riley puts some new stats to work
in support the prediction today:
The television switch off is real. In the
United States, 2.5 million viewers
switched off in the spring on 2008
compared to the same time in 2006.
Statistically this is only a small percentage
of the overall viewing audience, but among
those still watching television, the amount
of television they watch each day is
declining.
The decline in television viewing is
stronger among younger statistical groups.
In Europe, a 2005 study from the European
Interactive Advertising Association found
almost half of 15- to 24-year-olds are
watching less TV in favor of browsing the
web. A study reported in The Guardian in
2007 headlined with “Young networkers
turn off TV and log on to the web.” The
television switch off in the United States
among younger people has seen the
average age of a TV viewer increase to 50.
The stats are compelling, and certainly
point to an uncertain future for Old Media
television, particularly in the face of the
ever increasing volume of studies showing
that pretty soon we’ll be watching video
online more than we’ll be sleeping.
Duncan goes on to say that while
newsprint and radio have some harrowing
times ahead of them, they’ll survive. At
least, for now.
I’m not sure that I agree that TV is the
first to go, though. Certainly Duncan
makes a compelling case, and I’m not one
of those folks who thinks new technology
incapable of killing old technology (you
certainly don’t see a lot of eight-tracks for
sale these days, and photograph developing
is quickly becoming a thing of the past).
But we’re seeing a lot more rapid
detioration taking place in the music and
radio business than we’re seeing even in
newspaper and television. It’s an
interesting deathrace between the
industries, and it’s difficult to call a
‘winner’ to the finish line.
Newspaper death watch.
For instance, newspaper decline is
largely financial in nature. Certainly,
when you’re talking about business, that’s
the most important factor to measure a
media type’s life span. Is that what we’re
really talking about here, though? The
death of the media type or the changing of
the guard in terms of the dominant
companies behind them. In either event,
newsprint and text delivery of news is
increasingly being dominated by online
blogs and news portals. Circulation may be
technically up, but revenues for the
companies that resist the transition to
online delivery are most decidedly down.
Wise newspaper publications are
managing some sort of a transition to an
online revenue, but most companies that
have their base in serialized news in the
printed form still have problems adjusting
to the new formats that we in the blogging
business take for granted.
Duncan is very positive that newspapers
will always go the distance because of the
need for quality journalism. Unfortunately
(at least for the newspaper industry) I don’t
see this as a particularly convincing
argument. Quality journalism can and
does take place outside of newsprint, and
for a much greater profit. Some traditional
text journalism outfits may realize this and
make the transition. Most won’t.
Disclosure: I may be particularly
negative towards newspaper futures due to
the fact that in a previous life I consulted
for several newspapers in their New Media
efforts. In my experience they’re generally
not a very forward thinking bunch.
TV death and destruction.
As I said, Duncan makes a compelling
point for the impending doom of
television, and I’d go even further than he
in my prognostications of doom for the
media type. Again, like I said regarding the
newspaper business, when you’re talking
about the death of a media, you’re
potentially talking about two things: either
the media type itself or the industries
behind that media production.
In this situation I think it’s silly to say
we’ll stop watching video in our
livingrooms on television sets. Where the
video that plays on those sets comes from
is very likely to change very soon. Just
yesterday I talked about a very clear path
for Netflix and Roku to make a play for the
livingroom very soon, but they’re
obviously not the only ones competing for
eyeballs. TiVo, Apple, and a cadre of
other set-top device manufacturers are
working on taking real-estate in your
entertainment center.
Traditional television has something that
no set-top box solution has tackled or
mastered yet (aside from coverage of live
sporting events), and I’ve talked about it in
the past here in my editorials on the
subject: the “ veg-factor.”
To illustrate the veg-factor, think about
the type of media consumption you do in
the morning, while you’re getting the kids
ready for school, or fixing breakfast in the
morning while you’re getting ready for
work. Morning show format news-ish
programs are designed for this low-
engagement, veg-factor consumption.
They’re, in large part, designed to be
background noise that delivers some
entertainment and utility to your morning.
Likewise, in the evening, you come
home from work, you switch on the TV
and catch the local news or a Seinfeld re-
run, and leave the TV on through Wheel of
Fortune or whatever reality program du
jour is on this season. Most people won’t
even touch the remote until prime-time
starts. That’s the veg-factor in action.
Very simply, no one is doing this for the
set-top box experience. Until there is a one
-to-one equivalent for this, you won’t see a
complete replacement for television.
Radio apocalypse.
The radio business has been even more
dominated in recent years by mega-
conglomorates and mergers. With this has
come the ‘Clearchannel approach,’ that has
driven almost all radio towards a formula
for profit. Anecdotally, this was hashed out
recently in the comments of an editorial I
recently wrote about the impending doom
for radio at the hands of the iPhone’s on
demand music applications. Sean and I
talked about this the other day, and the
argument is compelling that radio is doing
a decent job of killing itself, and requires
no new technology to hasten its death.
But the fact remains that new
technologies like smartphones and other
pocket devices coupled with the impending
ubiquity of wireless Internet access makes
things look pretty bleak.
I say that, and I can almost hear Steven
Hodson’s voice cracking as he crankily
reminds me that impending ubiquity of
access is anything but certain (most likely
because he reminds me once a week on
Elite Tech News). He makes a compelling
case for it, but recent news like the coming
embedded “Internet Chips” from Intel as
VentureBeat reported on the other day
makes me think otherwise.
Here’s the thing that really makes radio’s
future look particularly bad compared to
the rest - the record labels. Talk radio is
very ably making the transition to
podcasting and other forms of online audio
entertainment media types, but the record
labels have very famously dug in their
heels and made it next to impossible for
broadcasters to adapt their business models
for the online environment using popular
music.
Given that, it isn’t surprising to see radio
clinging the hardest to their dying business
models. I predicted back in December that
we’d see an end to at least one major
record label this year, and I stick by that
assessment. Given that the mainstream
record labels are so integral to traditional
radio’s survival (and their demise is key to
online radio’s ascendence), I think it’s now
more than ever we should be looking to
traditional radio as the first to die off.
---
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HubLove Contest: Your Clue Inside
Web 2.0 17
So, That’s Why Google
Bought Russian Ad
Company Begun
By Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 5:50:42 AM
The 140 million dollars that Google
dished out for Russian contextual ad
company Begun now seems rather cheap,
given their fantastic financial results for
the first half of 2008.
As reported by Profy, Begun has had
25% higher profits in the first two quarters
of 2008 than in the entire 2007. Add to that
the 173.000 publishers (an increase of
30.000 over last year) in Begun’s roster
and it’s obvious that this company is on
track to completely corner the huge
Russian contextual advertising market.
In other words, Begun was ripe for
acquisition; it probably needed funds to be
able to sustain its quick growth, and on the
other hand it showed huge potential. The
question is, how do Microsoft, AOL and
others always manage to miss chances like
this one, while Google always seems to
snag them at the exactly right time?
Check out the press release (in Russian)
here.
---
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Google Announces Financial Results;
Revenue Up 57 Percent
The Daily Poll: What’s Wrong at
Google?
Ien Cheng Switches FT With Google
18 Web 2.0
Why I Love Corporate Blogs (And You
Should Too)
By Don Reisinger (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 8:50:56 AM
It seems that everywhere I look, there’s
someone telling us why corporate blogs are
not only a waste of time if you’re looking
for something to read, but they offer no
value and should be taken down as soon as
possible.
The detractors claim corporate blogs lack
transparency, fail to adapt to the changing
times, and generally play the PR game
without ever admitting issues or entering
into a discussion with the reader.
I think that’s pure rubbish.
Sure, most of these corporate blogs play
the PR game and would rather tell you how
wonderful they are than how awful they’ve
performed over time, but who cares? Do
you really go to a corporate blog looking
for the company to bash itself? I seriously
doubt the shareholders would be too happy
with that.
Instead, corporate blogs provide me with
some insider knowledge into what’s really
going on behind the scenes at some of
these companies. And while some make
the complaint that transparency is an issue
and corporate blogs keep things guarded,
most corporate blog posts are actually
quite transparent if you read between the
lines.
Is the company trying to hide something
when it uses some clever language and
side steps some major issues? Is the
company saying something different than
it’s writing by including some innuendos?
These are the questions you need to ask
when you read a corporate blog and
generally, the answer is yes.
That said, not all corporate blogs are
created equal. Zillow has a great blog and
Garmin has done a fantastic job of adding
some personality to an otherwise vanilla
landscape. Twitter has a nicely informative
blog now that it’s trying to have a dialogue
with its users and explain its issues and
Google is easily one of the most
entertaining companies in the corporate
blogging space.
These blogs, much like countless others
from companies across vastly different
industries, may not offer something
compelling with each post and sometimes
they’re nothing more than an extension of
the PR team, but even the most self-
adulating blogs tend to offer some
entertaining and extremely informative
posts that not only act as the backbone for
news stories, but for shareholder
consumption as well.
Who can forget Palm CEO Ed Colligan’s
response to Engadget’s open letter? Who
else finds value in Garmin’s answers to
reader questions? How about Zillow’s
celebrity listings that show you how much
some of your favorite celebrities’ homes
are worth?
See, it’s not that I love corporate blogs
because they only talk about a company,
but I love corporate blogs because they
give a company some personality and they
offer you some insight (no matter how
guarded) into the people behind an
organization that seems so cold and
calculating.
Lest we forget, tech companies are
moneymaking machines. Sure, some may
not turn the kind of profit Microsoft does
and others don’t seem to have their finger
on the pulse of consumers like Apple, but
each is managed by individuals with
unique identities and something interesting
to say – if we’ll listen.
I don’t love corporate blogs because they
spread propaganda – that’s a guarantee that
you should be aware of before you head to
the site – or because they tend to gloss
over some of the less glowing facts. I love
corporate blogs because at the very least,
they provide a human element to
something that is devoid of emotion,
understanding, and personality.
On top of that, I love corporate blogs
because they’re the easiest way to file a
complaint and tell more than a recording or
a customer service agent that something is
wrong. In a matter of seconds, you can file
a complaint in the comments and if people
agree, they’ll jump on the bandwagon and
in one fell swoop, your singular issue
becomes a major problem and someone
will be forced to listen.
I understand that most people look at
corporate blogs as nothing more than
another propaganda machine, but I don’t.
Sure, they’re inundated with useless crap
from time to time, but I see them as more
than a place for a company to write things
about itself. Corporate blogs give you
clues about the organization’s culture, its
people, and why (right or wrong) most of
its employees believe in what they’re
doing.
And if you ask me, there’s nothing
wrong with that.
[Image credit: Wyetha Lipford(
attribution)]
---
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Blogging’s 10th Birthday: Your 10
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Streamfile Simplifies On-
Demand File Sharing (The
Startup Review)
By Paul Glazowski (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 10:10:48 AM
Editor’s Note: This post is part of an
ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup
Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems
Startup Essentials. If you would like to
have your startup considered for inclusion,
please see the details here.
STARTUP DETAILS:
Company Name: Streamfile
20-word Description: Streamfile is an
emerging startup with revolutionary
technology in the file transfer space.
CEO’s Pitch: Streamfile.com allows
anyone to “stream” files that are too big to
email without any additional need of
installed software other than a browser.
Streamfile is a hosted FTP replacement
solution that allows streaming
functionality. By streaming, we mean that
when an uploader sends a file,
downloaders are able to start the download
process immediately. This single
functionality enhancement actually allows
time savings of up to 90% (compared to a
traditional FTP server-to-client transfer).
It’s like P2P, but with a 24h answering
service. All of the file transfers have the
option to be encrypted with high-grade
AES 256-bit SSL encryption.
Mashable’s Take: Streamfile is
intriguing not only for its ability to rather
quickly broadcast files of up to 2GB in size
to specified email addresses, but its simple
construction as well. Everything is done
via the browser within an elegant and
sparse input menu. There is absolutely no
need to operate proprietary software. Just
browse for a file, provide one or more
email addresses (you can also specify
whom the package is from), and begin
“streaming.”
At the backend, Streamfile operates as a
replacement to your traditional FTP
transfer service. As with some other
modern transmission options of today,
Streamfile allows for files to be
downloaded almost immediately after an
upload is begun. A similar option is
offered by Pando, yet that service requires
the use of proprietary software at either
end of an established link to function
properly. Streamfile can go without. And
the fact that it is able to maintain 256-bit
encryption if requested will please some
privacy seekers.
As it explains within its site copy,
Streamfile hosts data for a total of 24
hours. Which might irk some users,
particularly if a situation isn’t time-
sensitive and could ideally do with, say, a
week’s worth of server/network access.
The reason provided for this limit is quite
logical for a startup of its type to cite: “By
storing data for shorter time periods than
our competitors… we can maximize
performance and bandwidth to guarantee
superior door-to-door delivery speeds.”
For the time being, Streamfile, based in
Stockholm, Sweden, comes free of charge
for users. (Period ends August 31.) Its
stated profit model is business-to-business
file transfers (integration with corporate
websites is said to be possible). Such
subscriptions run 49€/month or more.
Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Thanks to This Week’s Sponsors
By Tamar Weinberg (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 3:06:35 AM
Thanks to this week’s advertisers and
partners for helping us grow to be the #1
social news blog in the world. Advertise
with us and get noticed.
Help us to help you. Mashable is seeking
out site sponsors for our large diverse
audience — social media users, venture
capitalists, PR people, developers,
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hundreds of thousands of views a day in
addition to weekly recognition to thank
you as our premium sponsors. Are you
interested? Contact us for more
information and to receive our brand new
media kit and rate card.
This week, our valued sponsors are
DEMOfall08, EdgeCast, IDrive, Clickatell,
and Userplane.
On September 7 through 9th, 2008, be
the first to see the most innovative,
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unveiled for the very first time. Attend
DEMOfall 08 on September 7-9, 2008 in
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EdgeCast Networks offers a superior,
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Social Networks and Applications are the
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Clickatell believes that using SMS to bind
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method available. With Clickatell’s truly
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IDrive is a leading Consumer and Small
Business focused Online Backup service.
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features include automated critical data
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Userplane is the premier communication
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a must-have for thriving sites worldwide -
supporting millions of daily users.
Additionally, thanks to the following
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We can get your name out there.
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---
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Twitter’s Communication
Classification (video)
By Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
(Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/24/2008 7:42:19 PM
Last Friday, our resident cranky fart
Steven Hodson posited that Twitter wasn’t,
in fact, a status micro-blogging utility but
in fact a communictations tool most
closely resembling instant messaging.
Certainly when I’m attempting to explain
Twitter to newbies, that is the easiest way
to explain it, but quite a few of you
Mashable readers took exception to the
characterization. As of the time of this
writing, the debate still rages on with the
comment count in the triple digit range.
From Steven’s editorial:
It amazes me how anyone in all
seriousness can even consider the inane
twaddle that permeates the Internet from
services like Twitter as even coming close
to blogging or micro-blogging. Has anyone
really paid attention to what is being said
on Twitter these days – that is if you can
make it through the growing amount of
spam that is occurring. Sure micro-
blogging is a valid term when used to
describe things like tumblr or posterous but
not when used to describe Twitter.
On Mashable Conversations today, Sean
and I try to make sense of the debate and
put together what our take is on it. Sean
came into the discussion pretty squarely on
Steven’s side, but I was a bit unconvinced.
I’m one of those guys that views the act
of blogging, for almost all purposes, as a
form of conversation (even if it is
occasionally a conversation with yourself).
Thus conversation being a form of
communication, it isn’t a leap to classify
Twitter in the realm of conversational tool
(though I’ve always tended to view it more
Web 2.0 19
as a lifestreaming tool).
Also on today’s program is another
exciting episode from the SummerMash
tour, this from the San Francisco tour stop
with a conversation with the FiltrBox
folks(who we had on Mashable
Conversations recently ourselves).
You can check it all out by downloading
the MP4, subscribing to our feed, or
watching the embed below.
Never Miss an Episode!
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast
here(video feed).
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast
here(audio feed).
---
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20 Web 2.0 TV* Movies*
And This is Why China is Four More SummerMashes,
Every Internet Company’s Eight More Chances to Win
Tickets to SXSWi in 2009!
Wet Dream
By Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 1:38:14 AM
According to the latest government data,
China now has 253 million Internet users,
due to recent sharp growth - 56 percent
from last year. The inevitable has
happened: China now has more Internet
users than the USA, which is at 223.1
million with 71% online penetration. The
fact that the Chinese government is
exercising very strict control and
censorship over internet use has
immensely slowed down the growth of
Internet use in this country, but when
you’ve got a population of over 1.3 billion,
even a relatively small fraction of it is
enough to become a global leader.
Yes, the really amazing thing is the fact
that the online penetration is China is mere
19.1 percent, way, way lower than the
USA and most European countries.
Financial facts are even more revealing:
total revenues for all of China’s internet
companies was $5.9 billion in 2007 while
in the U.S. online advertising revenues
alone in that same year were $21.2 billion.
For companies such as Google, Microsoft,
Yahoo and other giants, this means two
words: untapped potential.
Research firm BDA China Ltd. estimates
that China’s online population will keep
growing by 18 percent annually - a modest
estimation, considering that this growth
was 56% this year - and reach 490 million
by 2012. The US online market suddenly
seems small in comparison. Due to strict
Chinese government regulation of the
Big Brother 10: Live feeds special report - HOH endurance comp
By Jackie Schnoop (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 6:21:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, Big Brother (US) The
live eviction went down on schedule on
Big Brother 10, but we were literally left
Internet, financially the Chinese market
will not catch up as fast as it could, but
with a little (inevitable) westernization and
a little globalization it’ll get there, and
every online firm will want a slice of the
pie. This one growing market might be
more important than most other world’s
markets put together.
---
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China Becomes Largest Web Surfing
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Yahoo China Launches a MySpace
Clone
hanging. A true cliffhanger indeed! As the
show closed, the houseguests were all on a
ledge attached to a building facade. They
only have a bar to hang onto as BB shakes,
rattles, rolls, tilts, throws water on them,
makes gusty winds blow. It's "Living on
By Tamar Weinberg (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 7:25:08 AM
Mashable is headed on its second leg of
the Summer Tour, beginning with Austin,
followed by Miami, Boston, and ending at
New York City. During each of these
SummerMashes, attendees have a chance
to score some sweet tickets to Austin’s
hottest interactive festival. That’s right, the
nice folks behind South by Southwest are
giving away two tickets per city to SXSWi
2009, which will be held from March 13-
17 next year.
Be sure to sign up for the events now if
you haven’t, because prices will go up (and
not down) for each individual
SummerMash. You could win tickets to
one of the best tech events of the year!
---
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StubHub Ordered to Give User Info to
Mashable Rocks: Get Your Mac OS X Dashboard Widget
By Tamar Weinberg (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/24/2008 6:35:31 PM
You know you want Mashable on your
desktop’s Dashboard — that way you can
ensure you never miss a post and see
articles real time as we post them!
Interested? Check out Mashable’s brand
new Mac OS X Dashboard widget made
by one of our dedicated readers, Joel Then.
Enjoy reading Mashable whenever you
pull up your Dashboard, and thank you to
Joel for the awesome unexpected
the Edge." And, the results won't be aired
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
New England Patriots
Future of Web Apps Miami - Vote for 4
People to Win Tickets
Future of Web Apps Miami Mini-
Contest Winners
MySites Offers Free Tickets to
SummerMash Events
NFL and Ticketmaster to Take On
StubHub Next Season
Mashable treat!
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The
until Sunday.
You could know who the new Head of
Household is right now. Well, that is, if
you read beyond the jump. Beware --
extreme show spoilers ahead!
Continue reading Big Brother 10: Live
'Nick and Norah's
Infinite' Trailer
By William Goss (Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 11:02:00 AM
Filed under: Comedy, Romance, Sony,
Toronto International Film Festival,
Trailers and Clips
Courtesy of MySpace, we bring you the
trailer for Nick and Norah's Infinite
Playlist. While it looks to be a little more
of one of those one-crazy-night comedies
than I presumed it would be, there seems
to be a sizeable chunk of hipster-teens-
meet-cute hanging in there to keep things
getting too wacky for its own good. After
all, going off Eugene's From Page to
Screen assessment, I still doubt this is as
much in the same ball park as Superbad, or
After Hours, or even Sex Drive-- and with
any luck, that's for the best.
Playlist will premiere at Toronto this
September before playing everywhere on
October 3rd.
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Social Networking Blog:
WidSets Officially Launches Completely
Revamped Site
Kuler Could Be Adobe’s First Apollo
Release
Universal Widget API Debuts
ReverbNation Widget Available in
Freewebs
Poptopus Pays When Your Song Gets
Played
Placely’s Public Beta Launches with
New Features
MuseStorm Launches Widget Tracking
feeds special report - HOH endurance
comp
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
What's On Tonight: Modern
Marvels, Hopkins, Burn Notice
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 9:04:00 AM
Filed under: Programming, What To
Watch Tonight, Reality-Free
• TV Land has an Andy Griffith Show
marathon tonight while CMT has a Scott
Baio Is 46...And Pregnant marathon.
• At 8, CBS has a new Big Brother.
• NBC has a new, two hour Last Comic
Standing at 8, followed by a new Fear
Itself.
• FOX has new episodes of Don't Forget
The Lyrics and So You Think You Can
Dance.
• At 8:30, HGTV has a new Myles of
Style, followed by new episodes of Rate
My Space, Extreme Living, and House
Hunters.
• At 9, History Channel has a new
Modern Marvels, then a new episode of
The Works.
• At 10, ABC has a the season finale of
Hopkins.
• CBS has a new Flashpoint at 10.
• There's a new Burn Notice on USA at
10.
• Food Network has a new Ace of Cakes
at 10.
How would you like a ride on the S.S.
Minnow?
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:20:00 AM
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows,
Reality-Free I'm surprised that someone
hasn't thought of this before.
The owners of the Quality Foods
supermarkets are now the owners of the
boat used on Gilligan's Island. The
company plans to send the boat on a
promotional tour for Quality Foods, and
might even get Dawn Wells (Mary Ann on
the show) and Russell Johnson (The
Wax Beans with Mint
By Elise
Submitted at 7/30/2008 3:28:08 AM
From the recipe archive.
• Bravo has a new Kathy Griffin: My Life
on the D-List at 10.
• Showtime has a new Penn & Teller's
Bullshit at 10.
• Also at 10: Comedy Central has a new
Gong Show, then a new Reality Bites
Back.
Check your local TV listings for more.
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Professor) to take part in the event.
Continue reading How would you like a
ride on the S.S. Minnow?
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Every weekend during the summer, if we
are lucky, there will be a good supply of
wax beans at the farmers market. These
golden yellow (and sometimes purple)
My post-Comic-Con report, part
three
By Keith McDuffee (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:05:00 AM
Filed under: Reality-Free, Comic-Con
(Check out part two of this four-part
report)
Saturday
This should have felt like the home
stretch. I should have felt like the end of it
all was near. But a glance at the day's
schedule reminded me I was going to be
running around like a madman all day,
trying to make some of the most popular
panels of the weekend.
Saturday was a schedule that Rich and I
had been contemplating since the schedule
was released. The problem: With only two
versions of green beans are harvested
people, how would we get me from the
extremely popular Lost panel in Hall H, all
the way over to the other extremely
popular Dollhouse panel, while Rich
covered The Office? It simply wasn't
possible. So, we made the decision that
Rich would sit in Ballroom 20 after
covering Futurama and The Simpsons,
right through the oddly-placed Dean
Koontz panel, and save my seat for
Dollhouse. The Office would have to
suffer.
Continue reading My post-Comic-Con
report, part three
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
young, and are sweet and tender. Here is a
simple way to prepare them, with the
subtle flavor of a mint infusion.
Continue reading "Wax Beans with
TV* Food* 21
Where are the experts
on Millionaire's "TV
Week?"
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 7:26:00 AM
Filed under: OpEd, Game Show, Reality-
Free I don't usually watch Who Wants To
Be A Millionaire after my local news in
the afternoon. After the news is over I
usually switch to another channel, but this
week they're having a "TV Week," (though
it could be a repeat week since it's summer,
not sure) so I've been watching every day.
And I have to tell you, these contestants
don't know much about television.
I don't say this as a guy who writes about
television for a living, I'm talking about as
a television fan. The questions have been
remarkably easy, especially in the early
rounds, even up to $25,000, and the
players are just failing miserably. Even
with the lifelines the show offers! That's
inexcusable. Of course, the audience hasn't
always been a help either. They screwed
over one contestant by saying that Eliza
Dushku's show was called Tru Colors and
not Tru Calling.
Continue reading Where are the experts
on Millionaire's "TV Week?"
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Mint" »
22 TV* Movies*
TNT okays single-mom/nurse
drama
By Allison Waldman (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 10:23:00 AM
Filed under: Pickups and Renewals,
Reality-Free If you like strong women on
TV, the kind you've been seeing on TNT in
The Closer and Saving Grace, you'll be
happy to hear that the network has more
formidible females on tap. TNT has given
the greenlight to a new drama called Time
Heals. And with the kind of top notch
talent behind the scenes, I can't imagine
this drama not making it to air.
The guy who is creating the show, John
Masius, is an Emmy-winning writer,
having grabbed two Emmys when he
worked on St. Elsewhere. So, yeah, this is
sounding better and better because Masius
knows about medical drama and Time
Heals is the story of Nancy Hawthorne, a
single mother who is the head of nursing at
Mercy Hospital in Charlotte, North
Big Brother 10: Eviction #3 and HOH #4
By Jackie Schnoop (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 5:46:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, Big Brother (US),
Episode Reviews, Episode Recaps
(S10E09)"I'm not just a ditzy blond. They
know they have to be a little more fearful."
- Keesha
But ... what if the entire Big Brother 10
Big Brother After Dark (July 31st)
By Kristin Sample (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 6:01:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, Big Brother (US) The
eviction ceremony just aired over here in
California. We left the houseguests as they
stood on the edge of a big fake wall as if
they were about to jump to their deaths off
Carolina. She's the type of woman who
really cares about her patients and becomes
emotionally involved in her job.
Continue reading TNT okays single-
mom/nurse drama
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house is ditzy? Perhaps it's a new breed of
houseguest. And, can one be fearfully
the ledge of a building.
And of course, obsessive as I am, I tuned
Talk Talk: Brian Williams, Barbara
Walters, Buzz Aldrin
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 10:02:00 AM
Filed under: Late Night, TV Royalty,
Programming, Celebrities, Talk Show,
Reality-Free
Here's who's on the late night shows
tonight.
• Charlie Rose: Barbara Walters
• The Daily Show: Brian Williams
• The Colbert Report: Buzz Aldrin
• The Late Show with David Letterman:
Luke Wilson, Mindy Kaling, and Michael
Lauziere
• Jay Leno: Rosie Perez and Robin
ditzy? There are times I'm sure that
something is awry with this entire group of
hamsters. Tonight's eviction may just be
the proof I need. Read on past the jump for
my full review of the show.
Continue reading Big Brother 10:
Eviction #3 and HOH #4
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
in to ShoToo for Big Brother After Dark
directly after the show. I have spoilers to
share.
Continue reading Big Brother After Dark
(July 31st)
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Thicke
• Jimmy Kimmel Live: Mariah Carey and
Dan Abrams
• Tavis Smiley: David Mamet and
Andrew Bridge (repeat)
• Late Night with Conan O'Brien: Nathan
Lane, Dylan Ratigan, and Missy Higgins
• The Late, Late Show with Craig
Ferguson: Will Ferrell and Jean-Michael
Cousteau
• Last Call with Carson Daly: Summer
Glau and Sean Kingston (repeat)
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Watch This: More
Hysterical 'Tropic
Thunder' Viral Action
By Erik Davis (Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 10:02:00 AM
Filed under: Comedy, Fandom, Movie
Marketing, Trailers and Clips
Warning: The above clip includes foul
language.
Though you probably don't know his
name yet, trust me when I say that within a
month from now everyone will be talking
about Danny McBride. He's already
popped up in a few flicks ( Hot Rod, Foot
Fist Way, Drillbit Taylor), but it's his role
as Red in Pineapple Express that
absolutely, positively steals the show. Not
to mention you'll also be seeing him play a
special effects wizard in Tropic Thunder
one week later. Oh, and though he's not
credited on IMDB (yet), dude also shows
up in Fanboys.
That said, as part of the very funny viral
marketing behind Tropic Thunder, the
above video (featuring the amazing Special
Effects / Stunt Coordinator, Cody Keith
Underwood, aka Danny McBride) comes
to us from the Rain of Madness site,
which, in case you didn't know (see our
original post here), is the name of the
fictional Tropic Thunder behind-the-scenes
documentary. Keep in mind, this is a
documentary about the movie being shot
within the movie Tropic Thunder, and not
a documentary about the movie you'll
actually be going to see on August 13.
Confused much? Good. The more
confused you are, the easier it will be to
trick you into reading more Cinematical.
And more Cinematical. And more
Cinematical. Hear that (does a little Jedi
mind stuff) ... you will read Cinematical.
Oh yes, you will.
And go see Tropic Thunder on August
13 -- word on the street is it's an absolute
riot.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Godiva Releases 'Twilight'
Chocolate Bar
By Christopher Campbell
(Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 10:32:00 AM
Filed under: Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy,
Fandom, George Lucas, Harry Potter As
both a cinephile and a candy freak, I get
excited anytime there's a new movie-
themed confection (as you can see from
this Cinematical Seven from last
Halloween). While some tie-ins are less
tasty than others -- it's no wonder that the
movie theater I worked at had trouble
pushing Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans
at the concession stand -- everything is
worth sampling. And from time to time,
some candies, such as the Star Wars
prequel-inspired dark chocolate M&Ms
and this summer's Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull-themed
Snickers Adventures Bar, end up being far
better than the movie they're helping to
market.
Being apparently one of the few people
who has no interest in Twilight
whatsoever, I'm sure to feel the same way
about a new tie-in from Godiva, which
MTV Movies Blog excitedly spotlighted
this morning. It's actually more related to
the books, as its packaging features the
cover of the first book in Stephanie
Meyers' popular series. And Barnes and
Noble will begin selling them tomorrow in
connection with this weekend's release of
the fourth book of the Twilight Saga,
"Breaking Dawn." However, you could
certainly stock up now (they're probably a
limited edition item), so that you can sneak
DIY Wireless Network Printer [DIY]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:00:00 AM
Handy do-it-yourselfer computerguru365
turned a network-capable laser printer into
a wireless printer by mounting a small Wi-
Fi router inside its case. This is a really
cool mod: After installing a network card,
he found space inside the printer to mount
a small router (running the DD-WRT
router firmware, no less), wired up and
mounted LED lights, and tucked both the
one into the cinema each of those hundreds
of times you'll be sitting through Twilight
the movie this December. Or maybe a
smart theater chain will sell them at their
concession stand, to avoid having fans
smuggle in contraband candy (if you know
me well, you know I don't like to
encourage sneaking snacks). Keep in mind,
though, that there's nothing entirely special
about this bar, except that it has a special
Twilight-themed sleeve. Otherwise it's just
simply Godiva's boring (yet delicious) old
milk chocolate bar.
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power and Ethernet cable hook-ups inside.
This project's not for the timid, and not
really necessary, as you can just set the
router on top or near the printer—but the
result looks really good. (Of course you'll
get better bandwidth by keeping the
antenna outside the printer.)
DIY computers and electronics: DIY
Wireless Network Printer[DIY computers
and electronics via]
Elisabeth's Favorite
Moments of SDCC 08
By Elisabeth Rappe (Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 2:03:00 PM
Filed under: Festival Reports, Fandom,
ComicCon
How fast time flies! A week ago today,
we were all hitting the convention floor,
and having to battle for seats to the
Masters of Web panel. I can't believe it's
all over -- and I can't believe I haven't
recovered. The bright-eyed Lara Croft you
saw only days ago is barely recognizable
in the physical wreck that I am now.
Despite the toll it takes every year, I'm
always sorry when it ends. I miss San
Diego, the ocean, the fabulous tacos at the
Tin Fish, and the surprises around every
corner. But most of all, I miss meeting up
with my friends after a long day of panels,
enjoying my well-earned dinner, and
showing off my swag. While I'm happy to
be home in my own bed, and snuggling
with my pug, I can't help but miss the
thrills of con. So, it's my turn to recap my
favorite moments of the con, and hope that
those of you who were there have
recovered enough to share yours, too.
-- The Watchmen panel. Maybe the Q&A
wasn't all that great (no fault of those
onstage), but the footage was just so cool.
There is a lot of film footage trotted out at
SDCC, and while much of it is cool, very
little is jaw-dropping. 300 was probably
the last time I was truly impressed with
what I saw in Hall H, Watchmen may have
topped it. (It's even convinced my mom to
read the graphic novel! Let's all cheer!)
-- The Owl Ship. The floor displays this
year were pretty tame, but this would take
the cake in any given year. Whenever I
doubt that anyone at SDCC has read a
comic book, something like the Owl Ship
lands and sends everyone into a nerdy
tizzy. At any given time, you could find a
crowd exclaiming over it, not because it
was from a movie, but because it was from
a comic book. Amazing.
Continue reading Elisabeth's Favorite
Moments of SDCC 08
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Movies* Tech Tips* 23
Save Time and Typing
with Outlook 2007's Quick
Parts [Step By Step]
By The How-To Geek (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 6:09:04 AM
Outlook users, if you find yourself
entering the same things into email
messages, you should take a look at the
Quick Parts feature, which saves snippets
of both text and images for easy reuse.
While Gina briefly mentioned this feature
in her guide to Tweaking Outlook to empty
your inbox faster, let's take a closer look at
how to use it.
Open up a new email and create the
"Quick Part" that you want to save for later
re-use, then find Quick Parts in the Text
section, and choose "Save Selection to
Quick Part Gallery".
Give it a name and a brief description so
you can easily find it later.
Now, any time you want to enter that
snippet of text, you can simply pick it from
the drop-down button menu. Hovering
your mouse over it will show you the
description that you entered above.
If you want to edit your Quick Parts, you
can right-click on any one of them, and
choose "Organize and Delete" from the
menu.
This will bring up the Building Blocks
Organizer window, where you can
preview, delete, insert, or get back to the
Edit Properties dialog that you were shown
when first saving it. Unfortunately you
can't actually edit them from within this
dialog.
If you want to edit from Outlook, you'll
have to insert it, make your changes, and
then save it with the same name, and you'll
be prompted to "redefine" the building
block. Why they couldn't just say "replace"
I don't know.
For even quicker access, I'd recommend
adding Quick Parts to your Quick Access
Toolbar, which is very easy to do from the
right-click menu we used above.
If you are more of a keyboard junkie you
may already be using Lifehacker's own
Texter, but for the mouse-oriented, this
feature can be a time saver. What would
you use it for?
24 Movies* Tech Tips*
Trudie Styler Picks Up
'American Reaper'
By Jessica Barnes (Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 1:32:00 PM
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals,
Comic/Superhero/Geek Now that comic
book flicks are bringing in the big bucks
(yes, really!), it seems like every title you
could think of will be headed for the big
screen sooner or later. The latest will be a
feature film adaption of Repeat Offenders'
upcoming graphic novel, American Reaper
by Pat Mills and Clint Langley. The
Hollywood Reporter announced today that
the film rights were purchased by Xingu
Films, which is Trudie Styler's (better
known as Mrs. Gordon Sumner) shingle.
According to THR, "the story is set in a
future where identity theft leads to victims
having their minds erased and replaced by
those of the elderly rich seeking a second
youth or by criminals and terrorists with
more sinister motives. A team of special
agents, known as Reapers, are formed to
track down and terminate those
responsible." Mills will be adapting the
story for the screen, and Xingu has already
projected a budget of $50 million for the
flick.
Styler will share producer credit with
Alex Francis and Repeat Offender's
Jeremy Davis will serve as executive
producer. No cast has been attached, and
Styler told THR, "It's rare for us to sign up
SSH-Agent Saves Time During Remote
Logins [Command Line]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 5:00:00 AM
If you're constantly logging into a remote
server using SSH and you're sick of typing
your password every time, tech site
Webmonkey details how to save time
without sacrificing security. Using SSH-
Agent, a utility that acts as a broker
between your local machine and remote
machine, you can log in without typing
to a project based on just a proposal, but
the opportunity to work with proven talent
like Pat and Clint from such an early stage,
on a project with so much potential, was
just too good to pass up." -- I'm sure the
profit potential for comic book films had a
little something to do with her enthusiasm
for the project.
Now that studios are snapping up comic
book projects at a furious pace, the
important question still remains: How long
will it take before audiences begin to suffer
from comic book fatigue at the box office?
Sound off below...
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your password every time (but also
securing your private key from attackers).
Hit up Webmonkey to get the rundown on
using SSH-Agent on Linux, Mac, and
Windows. This one could have done well
on yesterday's list of top 10 command line
tools.
Automate a Remote Login Using
SSH[Webmonkey]
Review: The Mummy:
Tomb of the Dragon
Emperor
By Jette Kernion (Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 3:02:00 PM
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy,
New Releases, Universal, Theatrical
Reviews
I haven't seen the previous two movies in
the Mummy series, although people have
recommended them to me as rollicking old
-fashioned action-adventure movies, from
the same Saturday-afternoon-matinee roots
as the Indiana Jones series -- not exactly
brain teasers, but good silly fun. The good
news is that if you too haven't seen the
preceding movies, you can watch The
Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
without fear of getting confused or lost or
not understanding the recurring characters.
The bad news is that regardless of whether
you've watched the other films, the third
Mummy entry is a headache-inducing
mess that piles on unimpressive special
effects to stretch a slight and often
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
incomprehensible storyline.
The movie begins with an extended
backstory: the history of the Dragon
Emperor from thousands of years ago, in
which a ruthless tyrant ( Jet Li) bargained
with an infamous witch ( Michelle Yeoh)
in his ambitious drive to seek immortality.
The backstory, narrated in a manner
befitting the History Channel, goes on for
far longer than necessary. ( Hellboy II did
this so much better and faster, and with
cool puppetry too.) It's a full 10 minutes
before the story begins and we encounter
the leads from the previous Mummy films,
Rick O'Connell ( Brendan Fraser) and his
wife Evelyn ( Maria Bello this go-round),
who have retired from the action business
and are trying to lead humdrum lives in the
English countryside.
Continue reading Review: The Mummy:
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
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VMware Fusion 2.0
Beta 2 Now
Available [Beta Beat]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 4:00:00 AM
Mac OS X only: VMware releases a new
beta of Fusion 2.0, the virtual machine
software for Mac. We were impressed with
our test drive of beta 1, and beta 2 adds a
few more promising features, like:
automatic virtual machine snapshots (for
easy rollback in case something goes
wrong), mirroring folders (like your Mac's
Documents folder to Windows' My
Documents folder), better keyboard and
mouse mapping, and improved 3D
graphics (happy news for gamers). The
folder mirroring is a welcome addition to
my virtual XP installation—no more
constant browsing to a shared Mac folder.
Take a look at how it works.
Screencast courtesy of VMware:
The Fusion 2.0 beta 2 has all-around
improved Unity and its ability to use apps
from either operating system in any
context. For example, you can set
Windows apps as the default file handler
for documents on your Mac (and vice
versa). (Adam showed you how to do this
to some extent in Parallels last July.)
Here's another upbeat screencast from
VMware demonstrating:
Right now beta 2 is a free download for
testers; Fusion 2.0 will be a free upgrade
for 1.0 users with a ($79.99) license.
Fusion 2.0 Beta 2[VMware via
TechBlog]
New Set Photos From
'Street Fighter: The
Filed under: Action, 20th Century Fox,
Legend of page
Movie Marketing,
NEW
By Jessica Barnes
Chun-Li'
Games
25 and Game
Movies, Images
You would think that if Legend Films
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
NEW
continued from page 24
was looking to improve the general
opinion of their big-screen reboot of Street
Fighter, they would have picked some
more exciting photos to tease us with.
Legend is now hosting a new gallery of
behind-the-scenes photos for the video
game flick, and, well, they're a little
underwhelming. The shots are mostly
comprised of the sets and a few extras, but
there are a couple of recognizable faces
(including Robin Shou and Kristen Kreuk)
in the bunch. However, on the upside, we
do get a glimpse of action to tide us over.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
centers on everyone's favorite "Hyakuretsu
Kyaku" expert and Interpol Agent (as
played by Kreuk). When her mentor and
Tai Chi Master (played by Shou) is
murdered by criminals, she goes on a quest
for revenge. Justin Marks' script takes the
Casting Bites: Bennett, Scott,
and Fassbender
By Monika Bartyzel (Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 1:02:00 PM
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Casting
News bites for the last day of July,
courtesy of Variety:
Now that he's faced Mean Girls and
gotten brainwashed back into a rich jerk
(after trying to reform into a hippy
commune dude) on Veronica Mars,
Jonathan Bennett has scored himself some
new work. He's going to star in... Van
Wilder 3! Okay, it's not the sort of gig to
elicit jittery anticipation, but it is following
his stint with sequels -- The Dukes of
Hazzard: The Beginning and Cheaper by
the Dozen 2.
Meanwhile, Lorna Scott, who just played
Janice in Wanted, is getting a starring gig...
of the telepic variety. She is joining Dyan
Cannon on Kiss at Midnight. I'm sure we
can imagine what that'll be like. We can
also look for her in The Great Buck
Howard, which should hit theaters in 2009.
Last, but not least, we've got Michael
Fassbender, who you might remember
from his time as Stelios in 300. He has
scored a role in Andrea Arnold's second
character in a more realistic direction and
even throws in some gangsters to go along
with SF's usual baddies; Bison ( Neal
McDonough), Vega (Black Eyed Peas
singer Taboo), and Balrog ( Michael
Clarke Duncan).
So even though I have yet to see
anything that makes me think the film
could work, I'll have to reserve judgment
until I see something a little more final
than a few on-set photos and the
occasional blog entry. After all, isn't that
what trailers are for?
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is
scheduled for release February 27,
2009.[Thanks: Coming Soon]
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feature (after the excellent Red Road),
called Fish Tank. Although it has already
headed into production, not much is being
said about it. However, my last search on
the film yielded talk of girls and street
dancing -- certainly a change from his 300
work.
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Vulture Declares August a Cursed Movie
Month
By Eric Kohn (Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 11:32:00 AM
Filed under: Casting, New Releases, Box
Office, Newsstand Beginning with the
summer of Surf Ninjas and concluding
with last year's Underdog, Vulture has
compiled a list arguing that August movies
generally blow. Sifting through the titles
from the past fifteen years, it's hard to
ignore their point. If Bushwhacked, Spawn
and The Thirteenth Warrior don't convince
you, how about Hollow Man? The
Adventures of Pluto Nash? Anacondas?
August usually means a lot to America.
It's big for vacationers. The sun comes out
and everyone gets one last hurrah before
The Long-Awaited TV Spot
for 'Disaster Movie'!
By Monika Bartyzel (Cinematical)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 12:02:00 PM
Filed under: Comedy, Movie Marketing,
Trailers and Clips I know, you were just
dying to see more nibblets from the
upcoming Disaster Movie. Right? No?
Come on! What's not to like about a bunch
of really crappy jokes and a slew of movie
spoofs that are lacking even the slightest
shimmer of cleverness?
After serving us the main trailer, Coming
Soon has now thrown up the new TV spot
for the film. There's a few repeats in there,
like Sex and the City meets Juno meets
You Don't Mess with the Zohan, as well as
a bunch of new footage ranging from
Batman to Amy Winehouse to bullet
bending and Wanted. I'm sure that at some
point, or somewhere in the film, there'll be
an Al Gore look-alike warning about the
devastation that could come, but really,
most of the spoofs shown don't have much
to do with the disaster theme.
Still, the film is supposed to follow a
natural disaster meets Cloverfield-- a
group of ridiculously attractive twenty-
the summer recedes for the year. So why
would studios dump their worst movies at
this time? Maybe it's just a coincidence,
but either way, it's hard to say whether or
not this August will break the trend. Swing
somethings during one fateful night as they
try to make their way to safety while every
known natural disaster and catastrophic
event -- asteroids, twisters, earthquakes,
the works -- hits the city and their path as
they try to solve a series of mysteries to
end the rampant destruction."
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Movies* Food* 25
Vote seems to confirm Vulture's dire
prediction, but Vicky Cristina Barcelona,
Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder
will surely find some appreciative
audiences. And we all know The Dark
Knight will continue to make bank.
However, before you start thinking that a
turnaround is on the way, consider the
third Mummy movie -- and, once again,
Vulture might have something here:
Variety has called it"cheeseball stuff."
Could that be the codeword for "typical
August movie"? It would seem so.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Potato Salad with
Apples and Bacon
By Elise
Submitted at 8/1/2008 3:40:36 AM
Summer is the season for cookouts and
potato salad, isn't it? Our standard usually
includes pickle juice and hard boiled eggs.
Here's a completely different take on a
summer potato salad, seasoned with
mustard, bacon, and the taste that makes
you smile with surprise when you bite into
it, chunks of apple. My friend Heidi H
made this potato salad for a group of us
this week; it's based on a recipe she found
recently in the Boston Globe. Everyone
who ate it loved the apple, bacon, mustard,
potato combo.
Continue reading "Potato Salad with
Apples and Bacon" »
26 Tech Tips* Food*
Five Best Note-Taking Tools [Hive Five] Export iPhone Text
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 2:00:00 AM
Despite the wealth of information a
Messages to a Spreadsheet
of the best ways to build a personal
[Iphone 2.0]
Google search box puts at our fingertips,
good old-fashioned note-taking is still one
knowledge database. The only sensible
solution used to be pen and paper, but
computers have introduced a handful of
excellent alternatives for capturing notes in
computer-friendly digital form. On
Tuesday you shared your favorite note-
taking tools, and today we're back with the
five most popular answers. Keep reading
for a look at the five best note-taking tools,
then cast a ballot for the note-taking tool
you prefer. Photo by Dvortygirl. Evernote
(Windows/Mac, Free) Evernote is a free,
cross-platform universal capture
application. With support for text, images,
audio, tagging, and syncing between its
web interface and all of your desktop
installations, Evernote offers seamless
capturing of information no matter where
you are. Images you add to Evernote are
searchable by text, and Evernote even
supports several mobile
devices—including the iPhone and
Windows Mobile phones. If you can't
install Evernote on a computer, you can
also use Evernote's web interface and
clipping bookmarklet to pull anything into
your notebook. Evernote is free to use,
provides 40MB per month of upload space;
for $5 per month or $45 per year, you get
500MB.
Ginger Chicken with Almonds
By Elise
Submitted at 7/25/2008 8:14:53 PM
From the recipe archive.
My friend Steve-Anna recently sent me
this wonderful recipe for ginger chicken
and claimed that it was one of her all time
favorites. My father doesn't eat ginger if he
can avoid it, so when I made it I just
warned dad ahead of time that he might
have to settle for yesterday's leftovers if he
couldn't bring himself to touch it. Well,
Pen(cil) and Paper
Despite a multitude of high-tech note-
taking tools, the classic pen and paper still
holds a special place in many a note-taker's
heart. The low-tech gadgets readers prefer
for pen-and-paper notes vary greatly. From
classics like the Moleskine or simple
notebook to the Hipster PDA or Post-It
notes, the dead-tree route is still the place
many prefer to take their notes. If paper is
your preference, check out how to
customize your notebook to take great
notes.
Microsoft OneNote (Windows,
Shareware)
Whether you're a fan of Microsoft
products or not, Microsoft OneNote is a
killer note-taking app that integrates with
every corner of your Windows PC. In fact,
some readers even admit to running
Windows in virtual machines on their
Macs solely for the note-taking goodies
available in OneNote. OneNote 2007 syncs
with the web and other computers,
provides two-way sync with Windows
Mobile phones, boasts quick searching of
all your notes, and much more. Finally, if
you miss putting pen to paper with digital
note-taking apps, OneNote's marquee
feature is support for handwriting
recognition on tablet PCs (you can even
search your handwriting without
converting it to text). OneNote is
shareware, costs $100. Photo by
DannoHung.
Google Notebook (Web-based, Free)
Google Notebook is a web-based note-
everyone loved it, even dad. Strips of
boneless, skinless chicken breasts are
briefly marinated in ground coriander,
taking application that brings Google's
familiar interface and excellent search
capabilities to your notes. The application
includes a rich-text editor, labeling
(Google's version of tagging), and the
recent integration with Google Bookmarks.
The Google Notebook add-on for Firefox
and Internet Explorer makes adding notes
and clips to Google Notebook a breeze.
With the right setup, Google Notebook
also makes for one helluva GTD
application.
Personal Wiki
Whether you've installed your personal
MediaWiki(the software that runs
Wikipedia) or you're getting things done
with GTDTiddlyWiki on a thumb drive,
wikis are excellent tools for note-taking.
You can easily link pages together,
collaborate with others, or just use it as a
simple notebook you can access from
anywhere. Since the primary point of entry
for a wiki is your web browser, you can
access your wiki from any computer with a
browser—whether it's web-based or
running locally.
Now that you've seen the favorites, it's
time to vote for the tool you like best.
Which Is the Best Note-Taking Tool?
( polls)
This week's honorable mentions go to
DevonThink(Mac), OmniOutliner(Mac),
and voice-to-text service Jott(web-based).
Whether it made the list or not, let's hear
more about your note-taking app of choice
in the comments.
ground ginger, vinegar and oil, then they
are stir-fried with scallions and julienned
ginger. They are mixed with a little mango
chutney and sprinkled with toasted
almonds before serving.
The whole dish can be made in half an
hour, especially if you do a lot of the prep
while the chicken is marinating.
Continue reading "Ginger Chicken with
Almonds" »
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 9:00:00 AM
iPhone 2.0 only: Want to save that string
of flirty text messages for posterity (or
evidence)? While there's no super-easy
way to get your SMS history off your
iPhone, with some elbow grease it's
possible. While this method is a bit
complicated and more proof of concept
than anything else, let's take a look at how
you can FTP into your iPhone, transfer
your text message database to your
computer, and open it up in a spreadsheet
application like Excel.
Nerd alert! This method requires a
jailbroken iPhone and some FTP and DB
skills. The end result does give you a
spreadsheet-friendly file that includes your
entire history of text messages in it, but no
names of the people who sent the message
(only the phone number). File this post
under "proof of concept" instead of "must
actually do."
As per a helpful tipster, I tested Syphone,
but try as I might, it would not see my
iPhone (and, it's Mac-only). If anyone
knows of an iPhone application that saves
text messages to your computer without
going through this rigmarole, post it up in
the comments and I'll add it here.
Here's one messy way to do it:
• Jailbreak. First, you'll need to jailbreak
your iPhone using these instructions(here's
the Windows user version). Make sure you
install OpenSSH ( here's how) to make
your iPhone accessible via SFTP.
• SFTP into the phone. Go to the phone's
network settings, and view the details of
the active connection. Write down the
device's IP address. Using your favorite
FTP client, SFTP into that IP address using
the username root and password alpine.
• Download sms.db. Your text message
d a t a b a s e i s l o c a t e d
in/var/mobile/Library/SMS/sms.db on your
iPhone. Download that file to your
computer.
• Open the SQLite database. That sms.db
file is a SQLite database, which you can
edit and view using free tools. Download
one of those tools—the SQLite Database
Browser—and install it on your computer.
Open up the sms.db file, and click on the
Browse Data tab. Choose the message
table and you'll see your SMS history, and
it'll look like this:
• Export to CSV. From the SQLite
Database Browser's File menu, choose
Export > Table to CSV file. Save the
resulting comma-delimited file, and open it
using your spreadsheet of choice (whether
it's Excel or OpenOffice.org).
Now, the big problem with the resulting
file is that while it includes the messages
themselves, the name of each person who
sent each message is not there.(If any
database wizards more hip to Apple's DB
structure know how to get that info there
based on ID's, I'm all ears.) Like I
said—proof of concept. On closer
inspection, it turns out that the "address"
field displays the phone number of the
message sender. Given that, you can easily
grok who's who (and add names based on
that number into your spreadsheet).
You can also jailbreak your phone and
download your voicemail messages this
way. Is this living to geek instead of
geeking to live? Yes it is. But I don't judge
how people get their kicks, so you
shouldn't either.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Laying hands on a controversial topic
By Mollie
Submitted at 7/30/2008 3:58:52 PM
Lura Groen is a graduate of one of the
seminaries that trains pastors for service in
the Evangelical Lutheran Church of
America. But because she refuses to
adhere to a chastity requirement, she is not
on the approved roster of the ELCA. But a
Houston congregation called Groen, a
lesbian who is bisexual, to be their pastor
anyway.
Now if something similar to this were
happening in the Episcopal Church, we’d
probably have wall-to-wall coverage. In
this case, we have very few mentions —
even in the Houston press.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America has ordained gay clergy for years.
Since it formed out of a merger of three
Lutheran church bodies in 1988, it has
defrocked three clergy for violating the
church body’s requirement that gay clergy
abstain from sexual relationships. At the
group’s national assembly last year in
Chicago, a vote to permit homosexual
clergy to engage in sexual relationships
failed but another vote requesting that the
church body avoid disciplining gay clergy
who violate the sexuality policy was
passed.
I’ve complained before that many
reporters fail to distinguish between the
ELCA and the other Lutheran bodies that
don’t share the same doctrinal perspective.
For instance, my Lutheran church body
doesn’t even ordain women. I cringed
while watching KHCW’s broadcasts about
the ordination service. The anchor kept
referring to “the Lutheran Church’s”
teachings on gay clergy. The reporter also
referred to the “guidelines of the Lutheran
Church.” Thankfully one of the
parishioners interviewed in one report
mentioned that the church was affiliated
with the ELCA. (Interestingly, a write-up
of the broadcast misquoted what he
Chicken Pozole
By Elise
Submitted at 7/26/2008 5:38:26 PM
I've been begging my friend Arturo to
teach me how to make pozole for months
now. The problem is that it is sort of like
asking someone to make you "taco night".
actually said.) And This report from
KTRK did specify the denomination in
question. All three of these television
reports were incredibly one-sided, of
course. They kept referring to a vow of
celibacy — even though the ELCA
requirements don’t mention that word.
Single people are required to abstain from
sexual relationships and married people are
required to be faithful. People who identify
as homosexual are required to abstain from
“homosexual sexual relationships.”
But the best coverage was definitely
found in OutSmart, “Houston’s gay,
lesbian, bi and trans magazine.” While the
perspective of the publication is apparent,
the piece is packed with information about
Groen, the congregation she has been
called to serve and the ELCA. The article
begins with a very lively lede and has
some great quotes, but I was impressed
with how concisely and readable the
sections on the normally snooze-inducing
church politics were:
Grace Lutheran Church is a congregation
of the ELCA and has a long history in
Houston’s Montrose neighborhood. Since
its organization in 1922, Grace has seen
many changes, the most significant to
current events being the 1995 decision to
become a “Reconciling” congregation,
which means they made an official
statement of welcome to GLBT folk.
Grace has been without a pastor since
2003, and when they felt ready to start
interviewing candidates, they informed the
bishop’s office that they would be
considering not only approved candidates
from the ELCA, but also from the roster of
Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM).
ELM officially came into being in 2007,
but traces its history back to 1990. That
was the year when two San Francisco
Lutheran congregations called to service
three openly gay pastors—Ruth Frost, Jeff
Johnson, and Phyllis Zillhart. The eventual
result of the extra ordinem ordination of
Pozole is a big production, not in the
making of it, but in all of the wonderful
garnishes you can add to it. Pozole is a
traditional soup or stew of Mexico, from
pre-Columbian days. The name is derived
from the Nahuatl "potzolli" and the stew is
made with hominy and pork or chicken.
these three was that the ELCA expelled the
congregations who called them. In the
ensuing years, ELM took form from the
various networks of Lutheran pastors and
churches who wished to fully include
GLBT folk in all aspects of the church’s
life. Today, they evaluate candidates for
ministry and maintain a roster, separate
from the ELCA’s, of people they have
judged suitable for ordained ministry.
Grace is the first congregation in Texas to
call an ELM candidate.
All of these histories confront one
another with Groen’s ordination. In calling
This particular version of Arturo's is made
her to be their pastor, Grace risks being
removed from the ELCA, depending upon
actions taken by the Churchwide Assembly
in 2009. Bishop Michael Rinehart of the
Texas-Lousiana Gulf Coast Synod says he
will take advantage of the 2007 call for
restraint until then, but has been in touch
with Grace and Groen, outlining what he
can and cannot do for them at this time.
For one, Grace will continue to be
officially listed as being without a pastor,
so Groen will not be able to attend larger
church gatherings as a pastor (although she
will be eligible to attend as a voting lay
with chicken, and is called "pozole blanco"
in his native state of Guerrero, Mexico,
where pozole is practically the state dish.
While in New Mexico posole is
traditionally served on Christmas eve, in
Guerrero it is served every Thursday and
Saturday, all year long. Light and
Religion* Food* 27
member so long as Grace remains in the
ELCA). Groen is not eligible for the ELCA
insurance or retirement plans.
Author Neil Ellis Orts clearly researched
the story and it shows. It’s really
interesting and informative to see the
tension between many of the people in the
national pews and the decisions of the
local bishop. It’s not the first time that the
best and most in-depth coverage on gay
clergy in the ELCA has been out of the gay
press.
Other noteworthy coverage included a
brief item in the alternative Houston Press:
Asked why she didn’t join a
denominations that allows opening [sic]
gay clergy, Groen says, “I thought about it,
but the core of my theology is the very
Lutheran idea of grace, the idea that it’s
God’s saving action through Jesus is far
more important than anything that we do.
I’m a Lutheran. This is the church that I
grew up in and the church that I love. This
the church that I want to be a part of.”
For a very brief item, it’s not a bad
question to ask and have answered.
It is interesting that this story didn’t get
more coverage. Other than the local
television news shows noted above, the
only mainstream mention was a Dallas
Morning News religion blog link to the
OutSmart piece. Incidentally, the
deliciously gossipy and delightfully named
LutheranConfessions.com reported that
Houston Controller Annise Parker and City
Council member Sue Lovell hosted a post-
ordination gala at Houston’s Briar Club.
And Houston mayor Bill White proclaimed
July 26, 2008 to be Pastor Lura Groen Day
in Houston. Where was the Houston
Chronicle on this story?
Bookmark to:
healthful, pozole is also a common
Mexican cure for a hangover, ironic in that
it is also traditionally enjoyed with mezcal.
Continue reading "Chicken Pozole" »
28 Religion* Food*
This is tmatt, falling out of his chair
By tmatt
Submitted at 7/31/2008 1:26:39 AM
I don’t know if there is a publication in
Russia that is similar to The Onion, but
GetReligion reader Lars Doucet sent me a
story the other day that had me going,
thinking that it was some kind of cruel
satire or parody. But this story wasn’t from
a Russian publication, it was from The
Telegraph.
Here’s the set-up for the unbelievable
finish, in this short news report from
Moscow about a contest called “ Name of
Russia.” This contest is based on a BBC
project called “ Great Britons.”
The goal, obviously, is to pick the
ultimate, the archetypal, Russian leader.
To cut to the chase, the infamous Joseph
Stalin is currently in second place and, it
seems, on the rise — with the fervent
backing of the Communist Party of St.
Petersburg. At the moment, the last czar —
Nicholas II — is in first place.
Now Joseph Stalin is, of course, best
known for his bloody purges and other
policies that led directly to the deaths of
about 20,000,000 to 45,000,000 people,
depending on how you calculate the
starvation and bloodshed. The Telegraph
used a 15,000,000 figure, which is lower
than the usual estimates found in textbooks
and various websites. Suffice it to say, that
millions of those who died were Orthodox
bishops, priests and believers who died
rather than submit to the authority of
Stalin’s corrupt, crushed version of their
faith.
Thus, it’s stunning to read the following
near the end of this report (although the
newspaper focused on this angle in the
headline). The Communists want to have
Stalin declared an Orthodox Christian
saint. Honest.
“Stalin is the most popular name in
Russia,” said Sergei Malinkovich, the
Communist party leader who is driving the
Stalin canonisation campaign. “The people
have forgiven him for the repressions, the
collectivization, the elimination of cadres
of the Red Army and other inevitable
errors and tragedies of those cruel military
and revolutionary times.
“Stalin has become the true national
leader of Russia. He turned a backward
country into an industrial giant.”
Yet the idea of tuning Uncle Joe into
Saint Joe has so far won little official
backing from the Orthodox Church, which
was one of Stalin’s chief victims. Seeking
to establish atheism as the Soviet Union’s
official creed, Stalin destroyed thousands
of churches and sent tens of thousands of
priests to the gulags and their deaths.
Despite the church’s reluctance, St
Petersburg’s Communists are convinced
their vision will come to pass. They have
already commissioned religious icons
depicting Stalin with a halo round his head
that have reportedly sold very well around
the city.
“By the end of the 21st century, icons of
St Josef Stalin will be in every Orthodox
Church,” Mr Malinkovich said.
I know it is wrong to keep knocking
mainstream news reports by saying that
they are incomplete. But, oh my God, there
really should be at least a paragraph here
that explains the very organic, ground-up
way that women and men are hailed as
saints in the Orthodox tradition. It is much
less formal than the Roman Catholic
system.
But the key is that believers in ordinary
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
churches and monasteries begin hailing
people as saints because of their holy lives
and, after several generations, one of the
national churches of Orthodoxy makes the
verdict office. Click here to read about one
example — St. Raphael of Brooklyn —
here in America.
Now, it is true that the Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad made the decision to
canonize Nicholas II and the other
members of his family who were killed by
the early Communists. I wrote about that
issue a decade ago and the issue of the
family’s remains was recently back in the
news. Here’s a piece of my column on the
las czar:
In his lifetime, Nicholas II was cursed as
a bloody tyrant, while others said he was
too weak. Today, many say he was merely
inept or trapped in a tragic role — an
articulate, gentle man better suited to be a
symbolic leader than an absolute monarch.
But for some Russians, these temporal
disputes have little or nothing to do with an
larger, eternal question: Should the
Romanovs be venerated as saints?
“Yes, Nicholas II was the czar. That’s
important and that made his death highly
symbolic,” said Father Alexander Lebedeff
of Los Angeles, a Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad historian. “But it really
doesn’t matter if he was a great czar. The
important question is whether he died as a
martyr for the faith. We believe that the
Romanov family became an extraordinary
example of piety and submission to the
will of God. They died praying for Russia
and for their persecutors.”
So why Nicholas II and not Stalin? Well,
Nicholas and his wife and children died as
martyrs, in the eyes of many Orthodox
Christians. For many, that is a very big
step toward sainthood.
Stalin, on the other hand, created
millions of martyrs. There’s a difference.
What a strange, strange and radically
incomplete story.
Bookmark to:
Baked
Stuffed
Clams
By Elise
Submitted at 7/28/2008 2:42:14 PM
For most California girls, the idea of
"digging for clams" isn't really part of our
cultural makeup. But out in Rhode Island,
and the beaches south of Cape Cod,
digging in the sand for your dinner is
apparently a regular summertime activity.
My friend Alden (age 8) and her sister
Piper (my goddaughter, age 5) took me
clam digging this weekend. It wasn't
exactly what I expected. Although we went
out in low tide, we still had to get chest
deep in the water to find a sandy spot to
scrape the bottom of with our toes. We
found about 6 empty shells or rocks for
every intact clam. We were out for more
than an hour, shoulders sunburned and toes
scraped, nearly stung by red jelly fish, and
managed to get a grand total of 9 clams (3
clams each). I know there are more
efficient ways to do this (as I'm sure some
of you will tell me), but at the end of the
day, it didn't matter. Hunting for clams was
just a great excuse to play in the warm sea
water on a beautiful sunny day.
Here's the recipe for stuffed clams (also
called "stuffies") that Alden and Piper's
mom Heidi made with our hard-earned
catch. Do you have a favorite recipe for
stuffed clams? Please let us know about it
in the comments. I've heard that they are
especially good with a little Portuguese
sausage mixed in the stuffing.
Continue reading "Baked Stuffed Clams"
»
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Texas high court tosses exorcism lawsuit
By dpulliam
Submitted at 7/31/2008 1:23:42 PM
The newspaper coverage of the Texas
Supreme Court’s ruling that tossed out a
lawsuit against a Pentecostal church over
an incident that resulted in a 17-year-old
girl being held down on the floor of the
church has been more than solid. The two
articles from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
have been a model in careful use of
religious language and balance.
Max Baker is conscientious in his use of
religious terminology, presents both sides
of the story, explains the narrow nature of
ruling effectively and gives readers a sense
of what is or is not likely to happen in this
12-year legal battle. Baker’s article on the
ruling appropriately lays out the court’s
ruling in detail and then gives legal experts
on both sides of the debate room to let it
out:
Texas Supreme Court Justice David
Medina, writing for the majority, said the
case presents an ecclesiastical dispute over
religious conduct that would unnecessarily
entangle the court in church doctrine.
Medina said that while Schubert’s
argument regarding physical injuries might
be tried without mentioning religion, her
case was mostly about her emotional or
psychological injuries from a sanctioned
religious activity.
For the court to impose any legal liability
for engaging in a religious activity would
have an unconstitutional “chilling effect”
by compelling the church to abandon core
principles of its religious beliefs, Medina
wrote.
But the justice added that the court does
not mean to imply that anyone may
commit an intentional wrong, such as
sexual assault, and get away with it.
One must remember that this is Texas,
the same state that is struggling with what
to do over the legal mess they are in with
the FLDS sect. To say that the majority’s
opinion was aware that people would look
to this opinion to see how it could reflect
Shrimp Ceviche
By Elise
Submitted at 7/24/2008 4:21:14 PM
From the recipe archive for the hot days
of summer.
on that case would be an understatement.
The key to the 20-page opinion in my
humble opinion is that Laura Schubert’s
case (who now goes by Laura Schubert
Pearson) was based on the assertion that
the events at the church caused her
physical and emotion damage. However,
there was no evidence of physical injuries
to take to the jury, and her testimony at
trial dealt only with her emotional and
psychological injuries stemming from the
incident that involved religious activity.
The state’s highest court does not want
people to be able to sue and get damages
for emotional injuries coming out of
religious events.
With the warm days of summer upon us,
a great way to cool off is with ceviche.
Ceviche is typically made with red snapper
that is "cooked" by the acidity of lime and
lemon juice (see this ceviche recipe.) This
The “expert debate” following the
explanation of the court’s opinion gives
both sides of the issue in reasonable, if not
predictable, detail.
Next to the story on the legal issues
coming out of the decision is a rather
lengthy article on the history of the case.
Overall the article deals with the religious
issues in a fairly informative and balanced
way. Partly because the church stopped
apparently cooperating with the media,
Shubert’s side of the story is featured
prominently:
Laura Schubert Pearson was an
impressionable 17-year-old when friends
in her church youth group thought demons
version is prepared with shrimp, which is
possessed her.
Repeatedly, over two days, the youth
pastor, his wife and others held the girl
down on the floor of the Pleasant Glade
Assembly of God Church in Colleyville,
even as Pearson screamed, fought and
begged to be released.
They cast it as wrestling with the devil.
But she said it was “like being pummeled
by this very large group. These were our
friends, people we hung out with.”
The article does not use the church’s
refusal to comment as an excuse to not
include their side of the story. Baker drew
on material from the church’s attorneys
during the legal proceedings to show that
the church viewed Schubert “as an out-of-
control, attention-seeking teenager who he
once said ‘breathes in attention the same
way we breathe in air.’”
As for Schubert’s father, who was an
Assemblies of God minister and
missionary at the time of the incident, he
has resigned and become an agnostic. I’m
sure you could write an entire separate
article on that part of the story.
My last observation is that I hope the
Star-Telegram follows up on this matter
and not only from a legal perspective.
From a religious perspective, the
Assemblies of God, is the world’s largest
Pentecostal denomination with about 57
million adherents. Overall, Pentecostalism
crosses over into several Christian
denominations and is not easily defined.
Why are people attracted to
Pentecostalism? From what religious
traditions do new adherents come? How do
the children of Pentecostal believers
respond to the faith? The trickiest question
evolves around the incident in the lawsuit:
what is the church’s doctrine and core
religious beliefs? These are all complicated
questions that don’t have easy answers.
Saint Francis exorcising demons in
Arezzo, fresco of Giotto used under a
Wikimedia Commons license.
Bookmark to:
first lightly cooked, and then marinated in
the citrus juice. My father, who generally
doesn't really like shrimp that much, loved
this ceviche. (Gotta love it when they eat it
up and ask for more.)
Religion* Food* 29
Zucchini Bread
By Elise
Submitted at 7/31/2008 12:44:23 AM
Updated.
I still remember the first time I
encountered zucchini bread as a teenager. I
had a hard time getting my mind around
the concept. At the time, zucchini was
something my mom made me eat, and not
anything you would bake into something
sweet. Fortunately, the pathway into my
naturally resistant-to-new-foods teenage
mind had already been cut with carrot
cake. Heck, if you could get something
that good out of carrots, why not zucchini?
After one bite, I was sold forever. Grated
zucchini, mixed into the batter, brings
moisture and tender texture to what is
essentially a spice cake.
Here are two favorite, tried-and-true
zucchini bread recipes. The first couldn't
be easier; you don't need a mixer and can
make the whole thing in one bowl. It's
basically our zucchini muffin recipe in a
bread form. The second recipe is adapted
from one in an old issue of Sunset
Magazine(September 1974) and is the
recipe I used to follow as a teenager to
make zucchini bread. The pineapple,
walnuts, and raisins (my substitute, the
original recipe called for currants) make
the bread even more interesting.
Continue reading "Zucchini Bread" »
Continue reading "Shrimp Ceviche" »
30 Religion*
“Mr. Novak . . . eternity is forever”
By tmatt
Submitted at 7/29/2008 10:33:46 PM
Once again, one of the Beltway’s best-
known journalists who is an active
Catholic is facing a life-and-death crisis.
First NBC’s Tim Russert. Then White
House spokesman and former Fox
commentator Tony Snow.
Now, columnist Robert D. Novak is in
Boston, where he will receive treatment for
a brain tumor.
Wait, you didn’t know that the celebrated
“ Prince of Darkness” is a convert to the
Church of Rome?
Actually, it’s pretty hard to find that out
right now, even as the nation’s newspapers
dedicate a fair amount of ink to this
controversial man and why he does what
he does. Of course, here in Beltway Land,
if a piece of information isn’t in the
coverage by Howard “Howie” Kurtz, then
we do not know about it. Thus, politicos in
this town are in the dark today about
Novak’s very interesting conversion.
Kurtz’s Washington Post article is
actually quite good and yields some
interesting insights into Novak and his
career as one of this city’s most colorful
and divisive characters. I am not saying
that his faith had to be included in the
story. But when you look at some of the
interesting ethical and personal angles in
his story, it certainly would have been a
good piece of the puzzle to include.
Faith may have come up in this context:
Although Novak is a pugnacious figure
who revels in his “Prince of Darkness”
nickname, friends and colleagues describe
him differently. “He’s a lot nicer than he
ever comes across on the screen,” said Jack
Germond, a retired liberal columnist and
frequent sparring partner.
“I came to really respect and admire the
guy — not easy,” said MSNBC
commentator Tucker Carlson. “He’s the
toughest human being I’ve ever met in my
life. Nothing bothers him.” Carlson
recalled seeing Novak deck a protester
who had called him a traitor and shoved
him in New Hampshire four years ago.
“He just kept walking and didn’t look
back,” Carlson said.
A quick reference to faith would have
certainly fit in before or after this passage
at the end of the piece:
In an interview last summer with
London’s Guardian, Novak said: “I’m 76
years old, and I don’t have that much time
on this earth. There’s very little people can
do to hurt me, and so I say what I want to
say.”
The much shorter Los Angeles Times
daily story on Novak’s brain-cancer crisis
— which followed the recent incident in
which his car hit a homeless man, without
Novak seeming to know that it happened
— was also faith free. To my surprise, the
Washington Times did not include a word
or two about this detail in his story, either.
I ran a Google News search for “Novak,
brain, prince” and then included the word
“Catholic.” If you do that you head straight
into the world of Catholic media. Broaden
that search over to the wider Web and you
can find this poignant account of how this
very hard-shelled man began to open up to
a new faith. To me, this anecdote— often
told, as Novak promoted his memoirs—
would have fit quite well with Kurtz’s final
telling quote.
Novak was born Jewish and attended
Christian services sporadically until the
mid-1960s, after which he stopped going
to religious services for nearly 30 years.
But Novak said the Holy Spirit began to
intervene in his life.. . .
The turning point, as he recounts in his
book, happened when he went to Syracuse
University in New York to give a lecture.
Before he spoke, he was seated at a dinner
table near a young woman who was
wearing a necklace with a cross. Novak
asked her if she was Catholic, and she
posed the same question to him.
Novak replied that he had been going to
Mass each Sunday for the last four years,
but that he had not converted.
Her response — “Mr. Novak, life is
short, but eternity is forever” — motivated
him to start the process of becoming a
Catholic through the Rite of Christian
Initiation of Adults. He was baptized at St.
Patrick’s Church in 1998.
In this case, I think the fact that Novak is
such a controversial figure, with such a
complex life story packed with ethical
twists and turns, is what makes this
reference to his late-in-life conversion such
an important detail in the story.
Bookmark to:
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Messianic Lutherans attack
By Mollie
Submitted at 7/30/2008 5:20:30 PM
I love reading Marc Ambinder and the
rest of the folks over at the Atlantic, but
one of his latest posts is just unbelievably
wrong. I’ll go ahead and post the whole
thing:
RNC Accidentally Mocks Messianic
Lutherans
SPRINGFIELD, MO — The RNC has
modified a page from their “ Barack Book”
mock social networking site because the
church they associated Obama with — the
Messiah Lutheran Church — turned out to
be a real denomination affiliated with the
Missouri Synod.
The site, styled after Facebook, included
a link to a real Facebook page, and next to
an entry for “employer,” the RNC wrote in
“Messiah Lutheran Church.”
No subtlety there.
But there really are Messianic Lutherans.
Most of them live in Missouri. The church
has branches in California and Nebraska.
Since disaffiliating from the Trinity
United Church of Christ in Chicago,
McCain Obama has not formally affiliated
with any other denomination.
This is a small point and a small mistake,
but it’s something that will make some
McCain allies cringe. Here in Missouri, the
political climate is poor for Republicans
and McCain can’t afford to alienate any
evangelical group. His campaign can’t
afford the perception that they use
evangelicals to mock Obama.
Being a member of a Missouri Synod
Lutheran congregation, I was surprised to
find out we were in fellowship with a
group I’d never heard of — Messianic
Lutherans. So I went to that link that
Ambinder provides for Messianic
Lutherans and realized he’d done a Google
link to congregations named Messiah
Lutheran Church. One of my good friends
is a pastor of a Messiah Lutheran Church
in Wisconsin.
Naming your church Messiah Lutheran,
or Immanuel Lutheran, or St. John’s
Lutheran, or Martini Lutheran doesn’t
make you part of a denomination called
Messianic Lutherans, Immanuelite
Lutherans, Juanite Lutherans or Martini
Lutherans! It just means you’ve named
your congregation. All of these
congregations are Missouri Synod
Lutheran congregations. Just like every
other Christian church in the world, they
have their own name.
Oy vey!
So just to recap, there is no “real
denomination” of Messianic Lutherans
associated with the Missouri Synod. It
doesn’t have branches in California and
Nebraska. Most of them aren’t in Missouri.
And we tend to self-identify as
confessional Lutherans rather than as
evangelical Christians.
Bookmark to:
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper Religion* Food* 31

Abstaining from abstinence coverage

By Mollie
Submitted at 7/29/2008 1:44:42 PM
So we all know the accepted consensus
on abstinence programs: They don’t work.
Right? A few months ago, the CDC issued
a really shoddy survey claiming that one in
four teenage girls had a sexually
transmitted disease. The relative standard
error was so high (greater than 30 percent)
as to render the survey useless.
But that didn’t keep reporters from
running with the story and using it to argue
that it proved abstinence programs didn’t
work. The study didn’t measure anything
at all to do with sex education, much less
abstinence-specific programs. The media
circus that surrounded the survey was
advocacy at the expense of the truth. Even
after the study was discredited, major
papers kept running with the statistic and
what it supposedly meant about sex
education. The “consensus” that abstinence
programs don’t work is firmly entrenched,
it seems.
So along comes a survey that actually
does measure the effectiveness of an
abstinence program and where is the
mainstream media coverage? Almost non-
existent. I would have completely missed
the story unless a reader had sent in a brief
blog item that ran on a New Jersey Star-
Ledger site:
“Virginity pledges” in which adolescents
swear to abstain from sex until marriage,
do seem to work, for a while anyway,
according to a new study by the RAND
Corp.
The study interviewed nearly 1,500
teenagers who said they were virgins in
2001, 2002 and 2004. The teenagers shared
similar backgrounds with regard to
religion, parenting and friendships; about
one-fourth of the group reported they had
made a virginity pledge.
At the end of the three years, 42 percent
of the teens who didn’t make the pledges
said they were sexually active. Only one-
third of teens who made pledges said
they’d had intercourse, according to the
study, published by the Journal of
Adolescent Health.
The study’s lead author, psychologist
Steven Marino, said the pledges should not
be a substitute for comprehensive sexual
education. But they did delay the onset of
sexual activity in some teens.
People who delay sex until they are older
are less likely to have unwanted
pregnancies and sexually transmitted
diseases, the researchers said.
That’s the whole blog post and I actually
think it’s pretty good. It gets all the key
details and explains them in a very
straightforward manner. Good work. The
key here is that RAND Corp. — which is
one of the best research outfits around, in
my opinion — controlled the study for
various sociological factors. They didn’t
compare homeschooled religious children
with unchurched teen mothers or
something like that. They compared the
effect of virginity pledges by looking at
teens with similar backgrounds.
Anyway, so unlike that silly CDC report,
here we have a legitimate study that shows
that abstinence pledges “work” and where
is the mainstream coverage? All I could
find was that blog post and a sidebar
mention accompanying an uncritical story
in The Columbian(Wash.) about the purity
movement:
Did you know? Define
* Teens who make a pledge to not have
sexual intercourse before marriage are
more likely to postpone sexual activities
“Christian
than their peers who do not make the
pledge, according to a Rand Corp. survey. lifestyle choices”
In comparing those who made pledges By dpulliam
with those who didn’t, researchers found
that during a three-year period, 42 percent Submitted at 7/29/2008 4:19:48 PM
of nonpledgers had begun having sexual Generally the newspaper coverage of the
intercourse compared with 34 percent of Justice Department report on illegal hiring
those who had made the pledge. practices has been really good. There is
* Teens who make a purity pledge are not one glaring exception though: the lead in
more likely to engage in nonintercourse The Washington Post’s A1 story. You
activities such as oral sex, compared to have to wonder where the phrase
those who didn’t make the pledge, the “Christian lifestyle choices” came from.
survey found. Here it is along with the second
It really doesn’t make sense how little paragraph:
coverage this study received. Purity events
For nearly two years, a young political
are all the rage right now. Teen sex stories aide sought to cultivate a “farm system”
are always bound to sell papers. What
for Republicans at the Justice Department,
gives? hiring scores of prosecutors and
If you want to read the study that the
immigration judges who espoused
mainstream media deemed less important conservative priorities and Christian
than that shoddy CDC concoction from a
lifestyle choices.
few months ago, here’s a link. And here’s That aide, Monica M. Goodling,
the RAND press release from last month. exercised what amounted to veto power
Bookmark to:

Blueberry Peach Fruit Salad with Thyme

By Garrett McCord
Submitted at 7/25/2008 12:52:01 PM
Please welcome Garrett McCord of
Vanilla Garlic who shares this delicious
cancer-fighting fruit salad with us. ~Elise
Recently my mom, Suzanne McCord,
was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was
surprised when I heard the news, my
mother is in her early sixties, but is
insanely active and healthy. The woman
recently participated the AIDS lifecycle
event; a 6 day, 550 mile bike ride. A few
days after, she was off to Egypt and
Russia. I get tired biking to work, and my
last big trip was Napa which is only an
hour away. In fact, her main concern after
being diagnosed was that the surgery
would get in the way of her bike riding.
After hearing about mom, I went to work
doing some research about ways I could
help using what I know best - food. I
wanted to put together something that was
easy to prepare, full of flavor, and packed
with cancer fighting vitamins and
antioxidants. After a bit of research into
cancer smart foods and what seemed to
work well, I developed this recipe.
This simple fruit salad works at the start
of the meal or as a dessert. The fruit is
lightly glazed with either a simple syrup or
agave syrup. Ginger, a bit of lemon, and
some savory thyme which pairs amazingly
with summer fruits accents the tartness of
the berries and the sweetness of the stone
fruit. In recognition of my awesome,
kicking cancer-butt mom, Ive nicknamed
this a Suzanne Salad.
Continue reading "Blueberry Peach Fruit
Salad with Thyme" »
32 Religion*
DEFINE
continued from page 31
over a wide range of critical jobs, asking
candidates for their views on abortion and
same-sex marriage and maneuvering
around senior officials who outranked her,
including the department’s second-in-
command.
I wish I could have been in the
newsroom when the Post put that lead
together. I really hope they did not put too
much thought into the phrase “Christian
lifestyle choices” because what in the
world does that really mean?
Giving the Post the benefit of the doubt,
the “Christian lifestyle choices” language
may have come from Goodling herself. If
so, that choice of words should have been
attributed to her as a quotation. Otherwise,
the language must have been chosen, in the
newsroom, in an attempt to reflect how
Goodling was portraying these issues in
interviews, memos, etc.
In essence, the phrase attempts to
indicate that supporting the Bush
Administration’s views on two critical
legal issues — abortion and same-sex
marriage — means that the person in
question is practicing a “Christian
lifestyle.” Is the opposite position a secular
lifestyle? I would imagine liberal Baptists
in the Clinton Administration would have a
thing or two to say about that.
I’ve always been a fan of avoiding labels
in news reports. The better way to go is
just to describe in as much detail as
possible what actually happened. Here is
The New York Times in the third
paragraph of their article on the subject:
Another prosecutor was rejected for a job
in part because she was thought to be a
lesbian. And a Republican lawyer received
high marks at his job interview because he
was found to be sufficiently conservative
on the core issues of “god, guns + gays.”
There is no religious or sectarian
terminology in that paragraph. That
doesn’t mean religion is not part of this
story. Rather, the political decisions were
not necessarily made using religion as the
basis.
More of course could be said on this
subject and there will be more to come
from us on this fairly significant story
involving evangelical influence in the
Bush Administration.
Tmatt, who is swamped in meetings all
day, noted in a quick email to the
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
GetReligionistas that there are plenty of
other ways to get to conservative stands on
these significant legal issues. What is
making some news reports phrase the
screening process in religious terms?
Also, are readers to believe that the
Clinton White House did not have ways of
screening applicants for stances on these
hot button issues? They just did not do so
in sectarian terms. The choice of words —
“Christian lifestyle choices” — could
mistakenly indicate that the opposing
positions on gay marriage and abortion are
non-Christian lifestyle choices. I do not
think that is what the Post intends to say.
I don’t doubt it is possible that Bush
Administration officials and decision
makers in the Justice Department view the
conservative position on abortion and gay
marriage as the lifestyle of choice for
Christians. If that was what Goodling told
the investigators who wrote this report then
so be it. News stories should report that.
That doesn’t make it the final word on the
matter for the purposes of a news story
though.
Bookmark to:

Define “evangelical” (again and again)

By tmatt
Submitted at 7/31/2008 3:37:18 PM
Most of this week, I am swamped with
classroom work for the Oxford Centre for
Religion & Public Life, which is holding a
seminar in Washington, D.C.. So I have
had very little time for reading newspapers
and blogging.
However, a reader did send in an
interesting item from Jon Ward’s POTUS
Notes weblog at the Washington Times.
Let me pass it along.
As regular GetReligion readers know,
folks are here are interested in finding out
what the word “evangelical” means in
journalism today. It’s vague fog in the
dark, to say the least. This has major
implications for the White House race
because many Democrats are convinced
that Barack Obama can carve off a nice
slice of the young, emerging, “freestyle”
segment of the evangelical world. As the
Divine Ms. MZ has noted, this may or may
not be true.
So what do the young evangelicals
believe? What is happening over there?
Ward’s blog item contains some
interesting material about the Rev. Rick “
Purpose Driven” Warren’s visit to
Washington for the ceremony in which
President Bush signed the five-year
funding renewal bill for the prevention and
treatment of HIV/AIDS in Africa. The
president went out of his way to shake
hands with Warren.
Here’s the key question: What does
Warren think is happening among young
evangelicals, since he is so frequently cited
as an example of the “broader” brand of
“evangelical” who might swing to Obama?
Mr. Warren’s influence as an evangelical
leader has grown to the point where on
Aug. 16, he will host a two-hour
“compassion and leadership” forum at
Saddleback (Church) with the two
presumptive presidential candidates,
DemocraticSen. Barack Obama and
Republican Sen. John McCain. The two
politicians will not appear on the stage
together, but the event is important
because of Mr. Warren’s status as an
evangelical leader who, though he is not
without many detractors, has credibility
across great swaths of the global Protestant
community.
Mr. Warren told me in an interview that
he is not sure who young evangelical
voters will support in the fall election.
There has been much speculation that one
of the GOP’s most loyal voting blocs could
be slipping away from
the Republican party.
“Nobody can really tell what direction
they’re going to go, the young
evangelicals,” Mr. Warren said. “They’re
more pro-life than their parents but they’re
anti-religious right.”
Mr. Warren said he and others like him
have moved past simply being pro-life and
anti-abortion, calling himself “whole life.”
That’s a great sound bite, but also
accurate in terms of the emerging poll data.
By the way, it also rings true for me as a
professor who works with, primarily,
young evangelical Protestants. So mark
that down. What ever is happening with
the young evangelicals, they are “more pro
-life than their parents but they’re anti-
religious right.” There’s a lot of content in
that punchy phrase.
Bookmark to:
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Define evangelical leader, give an
example
By Mark Stricherz
Submitted at 7/30/2008 12:34:01 AM
Ralph Z. Hallow of The Washington
Times wrote an intriguing story about elite
evangelical opposition to Mitt Romney, a
prospective GOP vice-presidential running
mate:
Prominent evangelical leaders are
warning Sen. John McCain against picking
former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney
as his running mate, saying their troops
will abandon the Republican ticket on
Election Day if that happens.
They say Mr. Romney lacks trust on
issues such as outlawing abortion and
opposing same-sex marriage and because
he is a Mormon. Opposition is particularly
powerful among those who supported
former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in
the Republican presidential primaries
earlier this year.
“McCain and Romney would be like oil
and water,” said evangelical novelist Tim
LaHaye, who supported Mr. Huckabee.
“We aren’t against Mormonism, but
Romney is not a thoroughgoing
evangelical and his flip-flopping on issues
is understandable in a liberal state like
Massachusetts, but our people won’t
understand that.”
The Rev. Rob McCoy, pastor of Calvary
Chapel in Thousand Oaks, Calif., who
speaks at evangelical events across the
country, told The Washington Times, “I
will vote for McCain unless he does one
thing. You know what that is? If he puts
Romney on the ticket as veep.
“It will alienate the entire evangelical
community - 62 million self-professing
evangelicals in this country, half of them
registered to vote, are going to be deeply
saddened,” Mr. McCoy added.
Only LaHaye and McCoy are quoted
directly saying that McCain would lose
evangelical support if he chooses Romney
as his running mate. Other evangelicals
give ambiguous remarks about whether
they would vote for a McCain-Romney
ticket.
Here’s my main problem with Hallow’s
story: It failed to define the term
evangelical leader. I mean, is Tim LaHaye
really a leader? A well-known novelist and
supporter of Mike Huckabee— he is, yes;
but someone whose views affect others —
I don’t know. With the possible exception
of Upton Sinclair, novelists are not
conventional political leaders.
That’s OK. Maybe LaHaye is breaking
the mold and plans to call evangelical
pastors to not vote for the Republican
ticket. But Hallow needed to give at least
one example of LaHaye’s efforts.
Perhaps McCoy, too, is a leader. But
Hallow does not cite any ways in which he
is.
The term evangelical leader, as I noted
months ago, has been used far too loosely
this presidential campaign season. Sure,
some evangelicals clearly are leaders. But
for evangelicals whose political credentials
are questionable, a little definition would
go a long way.
Bookmark to:
Vacation
By Elise
Submitted at 7/28/2008 5:02:09 AM
Vacation. I don't take those very often, do
you? Here is the view from the beach in
South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where I
am encamped for the next two weeks. 3000
miles away from hot, dry, and smokey
California (if anyone is wondering,
Sacramento is not the place to visit during
July), I'm determined to relax, play with
my goddaughter and her sisters, and
accomplish as little as possible.
So far I've managed to get sunburned,
and learn two useful treatments for it (in
addition to aloe vera) - a clerk at the local
CVS told me the Russian remedy to put
cold sour cream on the sunburn
(surprisingly helpful actually) and Susan
the Food Blogga's dermatologist husband
recommends Advil among other things, to
reduce the inflammation. I've taught the
girls to count to 4 as well as sing
Beethoven's Ode to Joy, which we have
sung all over town, repeatedly, to the
annoyance of all who aren't singing with
us.
So, what does this mean for those of you
Religion* Food* 33
who come here hoping and expecting to
find new recipes to try? Good news, the
girls love to cook, so I'm sure some of that
is on their agenda. But it might not exactly
be grown-up food. I've been adding recipes
to Simply Recipes for more than 5 years
now, so I may bring up a few of the
summertime recipes that we've done in the
past. I do have a couple of recipes waiting
in the wings, but just a couple. What I
would like to point your attention to is a
new feature linked to in the left side bar,
latest updates from favorite food blogs.
Here you'll find links to the most recent
articles and recipes from the food blogs
that I read almost every day. A good
source of inspiration is Food Blog Search.
Just type in the ingredients you want to
work with, and the customized search
engine will search for recipes in over 2000
hand-picked food blogs. Another source of
recipes are my recipe bookmarks on the
del.icio.us site. Here's where I bookmark
interesting recipes I find around the web.
Look down the tag list on the right if you
want to search this list by ingredient.
34 Religion* Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper

Showing sins against secularism

By Mark Stricherz
Submitted at 7/31/2008 7:54:08 PM

I know Turkey is a secular state. As a

reader of books about the Middle East
(such as this fine one) and as someone who
got a degree in political science, I have
heard all about Kemal Ataturk and the
secular founding of the country. But I had
never appreciated how secular Turkey was
until I read reporter Laura King’s story in
The Los Angeles Times.
King wrote about whether the country’s
ruling party would be shut down by its
highest court because of alleged anti-
secular activity. (The party ended up being
fined.) King wasted no time in showing
readers the importance of the nation’s
secular constitution. Her introductory
paragraphs began this way:
In an overwhelmingly Muslim but
avowedly secular state, the legal
confrontation illuminates the deep divide
between the devout and those who are
determined to keep displays of piety from However, it caused an uproar this year a more moderate offshoot of an Islamist
public life. when it attempted to toss out a ban on head party that was outlawed in the 1990s.
In the most drastic outcome, the scarves at public universities. That set the The story was not perfect. Perhaps King
Constitutional Court could outlaw the current case in motion, with the party could have cited the secular constitutional
ruling Justice and Development Party, standing accused by prosecutors of laws in question. Perhaps she could have
known by its Turkish initials AKP, for anti harboring an Islamist agenda that runs mentioned whether the anti-secular laws
-secular activity. It could also ban dozens counter to Turkey’s secular constitution. are unpopular or not. But of course, as
of senior party leaders, including Prime Then, King gave readers the context Tmatt implied, perhaps newspapers could
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from necessary to understand the highest court’s stop reducing the length of their news
participating in politics for five years. impending decision: stories.
Later, King showed the nature of the Turkish courts and officials have banned Yet this story got religion. Or rather it
ruling party’s offense: It tried — tried — political parties in the past, about 20 times showed what happens to a state where
to overturn a certain type of ban: in all. But banned parties have often public displays of religion are banned
The AKP overwhelmingly won last simply reconstituted themselves under completely.
summer’s elections, running mainly on a another name, and the AKP would Bookmark to:
platform of economic development. probably do the same. The current party is