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Monday, November 9, 2009
About Xbox Games: DJ Hero Review (X360)
About Spas: Doing What Oprah Did At Miraval!
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About Web Humor: Cute Animal Alert! Snow Leopard Playing with Jack O'Lantern
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About Country Music: Dolly, Charlie Daniels among New Inductees to Music City Walk of Fame
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VentureBeat
VentureBeat |
- Advanced Power enters week-long rebranding cocoon
- Applied Materials grows solar business, buys Advent Solar
- McLaren F1 designer goes green with T.27
- Google to buy mobile advertising network AdMob for $750 million
- Cartilix, maker of tissue repair treatments, sells to Biomet
- Founder Collective fund rounds up Flickr, LiveOps co-founders and $40 million
- Semiconductor developer MaxLinear files for $100M IPO
- RPO lands $19.3 for optical touch tech
- Sunlink raises $1.8 to hook solar into large buildings
- Penguin Computing snaps up $1.5M for Linux cluster virtualization
- Unique search engine Kosmix raises $238K
- Trinity Biosystems raises $7.5M bridge to treat endocrine disorders
- Tethys picks up $25M for diabetes diagnostic
- Metabolex takes $8.6M to treat diabetes
- Shazam, the song-recognition app, launches $4.99 version with more features
| Advanced Power enters week-long rebranding cocoon Posted: 09 Nov 2009 11:08 AM PST
Based in Fremont, Calif., the company offers a wide array of equipment and services. For instance, it installs steam-injection systems in existing plants to increase capacity and reduce heat rates by 25 percent; it helps lower-emission gas-fired power plants with site selection, permitting, sales and engineering; it acquires underperforming gas-fired plants and retrofits them; and it manages construction. On the equipment supply side of the business, it offers products to integrate gas-fired efficiency with wind, solar, biomass and geothermal plants. It makes its gas turbines more efficient by recycling waste heat. But apparently the company’s shareholders didn’t like the direction it was headed, its CEO, Tom Mason, told VentureWire. With the price of natural gas coming down, there wasn’t enough revenue to depend solely on that business channel. To recruit new backers and secure a slot on the green energy bandwagon, Advanced Power will relaunch next week with a new strategy, including greater focus on solar, and other renewable sources of energy. A little over a year old, the company had raised $13 million in a first round of funding from Bay Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Chesapeake Energy co-founder Aubrey McClendon. Things aren’t looking good for Advanced’s rebirth. The remainder of its capital raised will be distributed to its investors. Where the money will come from for the new launch is uncertain. The company’s CEO, Mason, says he is confident it can land some contracts, which will give it enough of a boost to raise more venture funding. It has also sent several grant proposals to the U.S. Department of Energy. The one thing that it does have going for it is its licensed technology — the core of its heat-recycling process. Whether this will be enough to found a new enterprise, or if it will eventually be sold off for the money, remains to be seen. A one-week time horizon between closure and relaunch is pretty ambitious. We’re waiting to hear back from Bay Partners’ Atul Kapadia about what went wrong and what went right.
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| Applied Materials grows solar business, buys Advent Solar Posted: 09 Nov 2009 10:42 AM PST
The Sunnyvale, Calif. chip equipment maker has seen a lot of solar action recently. At the end of October, it opened its $250 million Solar Technology Center in China, home to more than 400,000 square-feet of laboratories, thin-film solar assembly space and the pilot plant for making crystalline silicon solar modules — not to mention its 56-kilowatt solar array in the parking lots. It is reportedly the largest non-government advanced solar research and development facility in the world. Applied Materials has a major advantage in the solar space right now, with many smaller players struggling to stay afloat in an environment of low prices, tight discretionary spending, and limited capital. Some companies that had ambitions to build large solar arrays and plants have had to downsize their plans, turning instead to solar equipment sales. But Applied Materials, buoyed by its revenue stream from other areas of its business, can pour millions into solar innovation and installation without blinking an eye. That said, solar may be the giant company’s salvation in the end. As the chip business remains on unsteady ground (the downturn really hit it where it hurts), it will be looking to solar to pull its weight and supplement revenue in a major way by next year. Advent’s manufacturing technology should help it reduce costs and jumpstart productivity within its solar arm to reach these goals. Once fully integrated, it could cut eventually costs of solar panel production by as much as $1 per watt — though that milestone may be three years away. Based in New Mexico, Advent Solar had raised an unreleased amount of angel funding from Angels with Attitude, LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and Spring Ventures founder Sunil Paul.
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| McLaren F1 designer goes green with T.27 Posted: 09 Nov 2009 10:02 AM PST
Shockingly homely, the prototype for the T.27 has more in common with a Studebaker armored car or a Soviet light tank than the sleek beauties Murray has created before. But it does promise to be substantially greener than any electric vehicle in development. This isn’t the first time Murray has gone green. In July 2008, VentureBeat reported on his T.25 model — an all-gas car efficient enough to travel 70 miles per gallon. While the T.25 is still looking for a home with a manufacturer, Murray is hard at work on the next gas-free iteration. The key to the T.27’s smaller carbon footprint is its manufacturing process — how Murray actually designed it to be made. Instead of traditional sequences assembling the chassis, body and components, he designed everything to be installed on as bare a chassis as possible, even having pre-painted body parts bolted to the finished product (which streamlines the whole process and protects the paint). This lowers carbon emissions at the point of manufacturing, where current hybrids and plug-in vehicles are reportedly 20 percent dirtier than their internal-combustion cousins. “The iStream manufacturing process behind the T.25 and T.27 is all about sustainable, low energy process by design,” Murray has said. “An opportunity to start from a clean sheet of paper, combined with our disruptive manufacturing technology, will result in a product which truly pushes the boundaries of urban vehicle design.” Despite the reference to a clean sheet of paper, the T.27 will be very similar in size and layout to the T.25. A staggering $15 million (£9 million) will be spent to build four prototypes by 2011. Half of these funds have already been provided by the British government. It will be interesting to see if this will open the government up to the same criticism the U.S. Department of Energy has received for funding luxury cars made by Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive. Murray Designs isn’t the only firm working on the T.27. It has partnered with Zytek, the British company working on the Smart EV and Mercedes F1 KERS. It could be very helpful in supplying the electric components needed to make the vehicle a reality. The McLaren F1, Murray’s most famous brainchild, was all hellfire and tire smoke with a BMW-sourced V12 engine, going from zero to 60 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds, 100 miles per hour in 6.3 seconds, and topping out at over 240 miles per hour. It was built in the mid-1990s and is still the fastest naturally-aspirated car ever made. The T.27, on the other hand, is designed to have a top speed of 60 miles per hour with acceleration times measurable by a sundial and range of 100 miles — it is certainly made for short-distance, urban driving. On the upside, you could fit three of them in a nose-in parking space. It would also slash carbon emissions, even when compared to the Prius, all along its supply chain. Every generation needs its own McLaren. Looks like the green movement just got its.
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| Google to buy mobile advertising network AdMob for $750 million Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:43 AM PST
San Mateo-based AdMob (see our profile) is the biggest player in the mobile market, a market that has become particularly sexy now that smartphones such as the iPhone and other mobile-browser friendly devices are driving an explosion in mobile ads. Admob served at least 1o.2 billion ad impressions per month, up from 5.1 billion a year ago, and only 1.6 million two years ago. Accel Partners’ Richard Wong, who led Accel’s investment into Admob three years ago, said there had been multiple suitors of Admob, making the negotiations exhausting.
Google says AdMob patches up holes in its mobile advertising offerings: Google specializes in search ads, and only recently started building out its display network aggressively, with things like mobile adsense, which allows advertisers to place ads by relevant content just as they do for laptops and desktops. AdMob brings mobile display ads to the table in a very big way. It has, in contrast to Google, built a network that began by serving lower-end phones but then more recently started targeting the iPhone. Google hadn’t focused much on the iPhone, in part because it had built a competing mobile phone system to the iPhone, called the Android operating system, which is now the basis of dozens of smartphones. With AdMob’s exclusive focus on mobile, and in particular the iPhone and its exploding application ecosystem, its biggest treasure for Google is its key people and know-how in terms of dealing with app publishers and advertisers. Admob employs 140 people. Its business is “exploding 200 to 300 percent a year,” Wong said. It is serving ads in 160 countries, and on 15,000 mobile web sites and iPhone and Android applications. Recently, Admob acquired AdWhirl, another company that had tried to build a mobile ad network that aggregated other networks. Google had remained remarkably quiet in this sector, and rumors began to build that it would either launch a major effort in this area, or acquire a player like Admob. AdMob was backed by Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s Growth Fund and Northzone, with more than $47 million in funding, so $750 million represents a nice exit for AdMob’s investors. It’s a particularly lucrative day for Accel, which also saw another company it had backed, Playfish, sold for as much as $400 million to Electronic Arts. A year ago, VentureBeat wrote a story about how AdMob was poised to “mint money,” and outlined the promise of the budding companies business, and some critics weighed in, and suggested AdMob’s business wasn’t as solid as we’d suggested. Turns out, even despite the recession, Admob came out ahead.
Founder Omar Hamoui struggled for a breakthrough in mobile advertising for several years, which was difficult until the iPhone came along. Even then, the result is remarkable considering the company was founded in 2006. He wrote today:
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| Cartilix, maker of tissue repair treatments, sells to Biomet Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:32 AM PST Cartilix, a Foster City, Calif.-based biotech firm that makes substances capable of repairing human tissues in joints, has sold to Biomet, an Indiana-based seller of tools and products used to help surgeons, according to PE Hub. Neither company disclosed financial terms. Cartilix had previously received $6.5 million in first-round venture funding from De Novo Ventures.
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| Founder Collective fund rounds up Flickr, LiveOps co-founders and $40 million Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:29 AM PST It’s become a cliche: Internet start-ups are inexpensive to launch, and you don’t need multi-million dollars from venture capitalists to back you anymore. As a result, more successful startup founders are adding a new hat, and becoming investors. Founder Collective, the New York City-based fund started by Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon, along with Eric Paley and Dave Frankel has rounded up a number of high-profile serial entrepreneurs including Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein and LiveOps co-founder Bill Trenchard. The $40 million fund will also include Mark Gerson, who started Gerson Lehrman Group and Micah Rosenbloom, who started Brontes.
The fund will focus on seed investments, and won’t take options on future financing rounds. Partners in the fund are generally entrepreneurs as well and Founder Collective will focus on companies in New York and Boston. Dixon said the new fund was not just a group of angel investors — the partners share in the profits and take leads in investments.
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| Semiconductor developer MaxLinear files for $100M IPO Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:27 AM PST MaxLinear, a company that makes high-performance, low-power chips for broadband communication applications, has filed for a $100 million IPO, according to the SEC. Based in Carlsbad, Calif., the company took about $35 million in venture funding from U.S. Venture Partners (21.6 percent stake), Battery Ventures (13.75 percent), Mission Ventures (13.03 percent), UMC Capital (7.09 percent).
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| RPO lands $19.3 for optical touch tech Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:20 AM PST RPO, maker of optical touch technology used to track finger movements for computing applications, has raised $19.3 million in a third round of funding. Based in San Jose, Calif., the company is backed by Jolimont Capital, Allen & Buckeridge and Neo Technology Ventures.
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| Sunlink raises $1.8 to hook solar into large buildings Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:13 AM PST Sunlink, maker of rooftop solar panel mounting systems that help integrate solar power into large building grids, has brought in $1.8 million in equity and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Rafael, Calif., the company is backed by Clean Pacific Ventures and the Angeleno Group. In July, it raised $1.1 of an anticipated $1.5 million round of debt.
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| Penguin Computing snaps up $1.5M for Linux cluster virtualization Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:04 AM PST Penguin Computing, a San Francisco-based provider of Linux cluster virtualization, has just raised $1.5 million of an expected $2 million round of convertible promissory notes and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. It is backed by San Francisco Equity Partners, Convergence Partners, vSpring Capital and Weber Capital.
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| Unique search engine Kosmix raises $238K Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:01 AM PST Kosmix, a search startup that builds comprehensive pages of information to answer your search queries, has brought in $238,000 in new equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the company is backed by Accel Partners, DAG Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Time Warner. It raised $20 million in funding last December.
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| Trinity Biosystems raises $7.5M bridge to treat endocrine disorders Posted: 09 Nov 2009 08:56 AM PST Trinity Biosystems, maker of a drug that can treat certain endocrine disorders, has brought in $7.5 million in bridge funding from Amgen Ventures, Life Science Partners, Lilly Ventures, Sanderling Ventures and SR One, according to Dow Jones VentureWire. Based in Menlo Park, Calif., has raised about $33.75 million since its first round of financing in 2004.
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| Tethys picks up $25M for diabetes diagnostic Posted: 09 Nov 2009 08:53 AM PST Tethys Bioscience, maker of a diagnostic test that indicates which patients are at the highest risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, has raised $25 million in a fourth round of funding. Based in Emeryville, Calif., the company is backed by Aeris Capital, Wasatch Advisors, Intel Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mohr Davidow Ventures. It has raised about $80 million to date.
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| Metabolex takes $8.6M to treat diabetes Posted: 09 Nov 2009 08:49 AM PST Metabolex, maker of treatments for Type 2 diabetes, has raised $8.6 million in a fifth round of funding to fund trials on its newest product. Based in Hayward, Calif., the company is backed by Alta Partners, Bay City Capital, Birchmere Ventures, Charter Ventures, Merlin Biomed, Novo Ventures, Next Chapter Holdings, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Venrock and Versant Ventures.
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| Shazam, the song-recognition app, launches $4.99 version with more features Posted: 09 Nov 2009 08:14 AM PST
The move is part of the company’s efforts to make serious dough, now that it has a massive base of 50 million users — but it is also part of the company’s efforts to make its offerings fairer to users across multiple phones. (Shazam and the phone carriers it partnered with used to charge for its service on many phones, but Shazam decided to move to free when it launched on the iPhone. This meant that some users of other phones on the AT&T network were paying $2.99 a month, while iPhone users were getting it for free. Just not fair. Thus the scramble to realign offerings.) It also is an attempt to expands upon Shazam’s profitable business model. Unlike many music companies, it isn’t losing money, and now that it has taken on serious backers, it wants to make a whole lot more. Called Shazam Encore, the new Shazam iphone app costs $4.99 in the U.S., and offers the following:
The free app, which limits new users to five tags per month (existing users can tag without limits), will remain, but it also gets some more features:
The company is seeing tremendous traction, saying it has 10 million users on the iPhone and the rest distributed across other phones such as Blackberries, Nokias and Androids. Notably, the only platform Shazam hasn’t built an application for is the Palm. The Palm users just aren’t there yet, chief executive Andrew Fisher told us. The existing free version of Shazam seeks to make money off of ads, and things like affiliate fees from sales of iTunes. I wrote more about the company’s background here.
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Advanced Power Projects
VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at 
Applied Materials
VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at 
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About TV / Video: California Delays Vote On Energy-Hogging TVs
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About Portable Electronics: Online Auction Tips and a $280 USB Stick
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About Wii Games: A Week of Game Reviews
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About Digital Cameras: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T90 Review Posted
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About Today: How to Write a Resume
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Young Single Adult Gems
Young Single Adult Gems |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2009 11:00 PM PST "The marvelous and wonderful thing is that any individual who desires to know the truth may receive that conviction. The Lord Himself gave the formula when He said, 'If any man will do [the will of the Father], he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself' (John 7:17)." Gordon B. Hinckley, "Faith: The Essence of True Religion," Ensign, Oct. 1995, 5 |
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About Cell Phones: Glossary: What is SMS vs. MMS vs. T9 vs. QWERTY?
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[NuclearCalendar] Nuclear Calendar
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CrunchGear
CrunchGear |  |
- Epson develops world’s first 4K-compatible HTPS TFT LCD panel for 3LCD projectors
- USB-powered gloves that keep your fingers warm (but why?)
- Monsieur’s Oreo is ready, monsieur
- SNEGENES “portable” console plays SNES, Genesis, and NES games
- 8-bit CPU with 4KB of RAM apes iPhone interface
- CrunchGear Week in Review: Imported Treats Edition
| Epson develops world’s first 4K-compatible HTPS TFT LCD panel for 3LCD projectors Posted: 09 Nov 2009 03:22 AM PST
In June, Epson said it has begun mass-production of the world's first HTPS-TFT panel boasting WUXGA resolution (1,920 x 1,200 pixels). And today, five months later, the same company announced [press release in English] what it claims is the world’s first 4K-compatible HTPS (high-temperature polysilicon) TFT LCD panel for 3LCD projectors. The new panel is sized at 1.64 inches diagonally and boasts a resolution of 4,096×2,160, which is nothing less than four times the resolution of a full HD screen. The simple diagram below visualizes the difference between 4K and full HD resolutions.
What this means is that we get high-performance panels for 3LCD projectors, which use chips in every projector. Every one of these three chips produces images (here is a demo movie), that are said to be very bright and richer in color. The general public will get a chance to view Epson’s new projector at the Inter BEE exhibition that starts next week in Tokyo.
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| USB-powered gloves that keep your fingers warm (but why?) Posted: 09 Nov 2009 12:42 AM PST
My first reaction – when I saw today on Thanko’s web site that the notoriously silly gadget maker from Tokyo is selling USB-powered gloves with built-in heaters [JP] – was: Who actually buys this kind of stuff? I mean Thanko is a real company, they have brick-and-mortar stores in Tokyo (two of them), they have employees etc. But they have been surviving for years now, even though they closed their English online store last month. You can connect the gloves (black is for men, white is for women) to your computer’s USB port and expect them to keep your fingers warm while you type. Again: Who in god’s name would do that? And it’s not even Thanko’s only USB gloves, they have models that are shaped like teddy bears, too.
People living outside Japan can order the new USB gloves for $27.75 per pair plus shipping over at Geek Stuff 4 U.
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| Monsieur’s Oreo is ready, monsieur Posted: 08 Nov 2009 03:00 PM PST
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| SNEGENES “portable” console plays SNES, Genesis, and NES games Posted: 08 Nov 2009 02:00 PM PST
Note that in the video above, everything is flipped left-right. While this would make for an interesting twist on some of your old favorites (imagine running left in Sonic), it is in fact just a video issue (shot in Photo Booth, I believe). Now, as we’ve seen with the handheld Genesis I reviewed just a few weeks ago, you an easily put a Genesis and some games on a chip and it’ll work great. But if I’m not mistaken, the actual hardware and PCBs of all three systems (clones, but still) are integrated into the construction of this grotesque gaming Cerberus. Again, this somewhat affects its portability. Yet, that said… why do I want one so bad?
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| 8-bit CPU with 4KB of RAM apes iPhone interface Posted: 08 Nov 2009 01:14 PM PST
The touchscreen is salvaged from an off-brand PMP, and the CPU is a 12Mhz Atmega644 — not something I’m familiar with, but I trust the author when he says it’s about 3% of the speed of an iPhone. And it’ll render a polyhedron (though I doubt it can texture it). The question this brings up for me is why aren’t all interfaces so snappy at this point? I understand there’s more going on under the hood in a smartphone than in a demo application like this thing, but seriously, I’m going to have lag when I hit the home button on a CPU faster than the one I had in my PC a few years ago? Make it better. [via MAKE]
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| CrunchGear Week in Review: Imported Treats Edition Posted: 08 Nov 2009 11:52 AM PST |
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The Latest from Boing Boing
The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Peter & Max: the Fables comics jump to novel
- 3D printer jargon in action
- Color film of 1927 London
- Slow News: designing reflection and contemplation into the news-cycle
- Replacing $100K diagnostic chip fab with Shrinky-Dinks and a laser-printer
- Rupert Murdoch vows to take all of Newscorp's websites out of Google, abolish fair use, tear heads off of adorable baby animals
- How the ambient sound at Walt Disney World works
- Man walks into own funeral
- Sleep: more important than you think (Psychology Today)
- Hitler: football coach?
- Ebook license "agreements" are a ripoff
- Carrier bags made from Indian newspapers and Bollywood posters
| Peter & Max: the Fables comics jump to novel Posted: 09 Nov 2009 04:17 AM PST  The Fables comics are an infinitely entertaining and moving series of comics about a world in which every fable, legend and belief of humanity has been chased from the worlds of fantasy to exile on Earth, hiding in a secret side-street in Manhattan. The chaser is The Adversary, an evil emperor, and his numberless goblin shock-troops. This is such rich material, as it allows for tellings and retellings of every beloved story of humanity. In Peter & Max: A Fables Novel, writer Bill Willingham tells a key piece of the story in prose form, and proves that he's every bit as wonderful a prose-writer as he is a comics-writer. Peter and Max is the story of two brothers, Peter (Piper, also Pumpkin Eater) and Max (the Pied Piper), who grow estranged from one another on the eve of the Adversary's invasion of their homeworld, and lose themselves in a blood-soaked Black Forest, where they are both fired by the crucible of war and magic into men whose innocence will never be recovered. Max is the villain here, jealous of Peter's inheritance of Frost, the magic flute of their father. Max acquires Fire, another powerful magic flute, from Frau Totenkinder, the evil witch of the Black Forest, and he and Fire warp each other into something monstrous. Peter, meanwhile, is orphaned in Hamelin, where he becomes an accomplished thief, escaping from the worst circumstances with the help of Frost, and forever pining for his lost love, Bo Peep, disappeared into the evil woods. The action moves from this mythic backstory to a contemporary tale in which Max has come at last to contemporary Fabletown, and Peter must hunt him, even though it means his certain doom. As with the Fables comics, Willingham manages to merge the gentle, meandering feel of fairy tales with a breakneck, contemporary pacing -- a very clever trick indeed. The characters and stories are very engaging, the tension real, the mythos powerful. There's everything to like about Peter & Max, even if you've never cracked a Fables comic (though you probably will, once you've finished reading the book). Previously:
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| Posted: 08 Nov 2009 10:21 PM PST This Shapeways tutorial on "Prepping Blender Files for 3D Printing" is not only useful for 3D printers, it is a treasure-trove of 3D printing jargon. If you have a model created from several objects or meshes, first make sure that each individual mesh is manifold (water-tight). You can tell this by going into edit mode, pressing A (once if any vertices are selected or twice otherwise) to select none, then hit ctrl-alt-shift-M (on a Mac it's ctrl-opt-shift-M).Prepping Blender Files for 3D Printing (via Beyond the Beyond) Previously: |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2009 10:19 PM PST This early (1927) color film shows 10 minutes of remarkable vintage London -- especially the Petticoat Lane market scenes around 6:00, which are a rare glimpse into the life of everyday people (it's even cooler if you were actually down on Petticoat Lane yesterday, as I was!). The Open Road London (1927) (via Making Light) Previously: |
| Slow News: designing reflection and contemplation into the news-cycle Posted: 08 Nov 2009 10:14 PM PST Dan Gillmor sez, "Slow food was a great idea. Maybe we need 'slow news' in an era of accelerating -- and wrong -- information." Like many other people who've been burned by believing too quickly, I've learned to put almost all of what journalists call "breaking news" into the categories of gossip or, in the words of a scientist friend, "interesting if true." That is, even though I gobble up "the latest" from a variety of sources, the closer the information is in time to the actual event, the more I assume it's unreliable if not false.Toward a Slow-News Movement (Thanks, Dan!) |
| Replacing $100K diagnostic chip fab with Shrinky-Dinks and a laser-printer Posted: 08 Nov 2009 10:11 PM PST CCrawford sez, "Michelle Khine couldn't afford the $100,000 fabrication gear to make micro-fluidic chips needed for chip-based diagnostic tests. She turned to Shrinky-Dinks and found a new way to solve the problem." A children's toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips (Thanks, CCrawford!) (Image: Dave Lauridsen) |
| Posted: 09 Nov 2009 12:29 AM PST For months (years?) Rupert Murdoch has been waving his jowls around and shouting that Google is stealing from him by not paying to index his material. And all along, we've been saying, "Pffft, right. If you don't like it, just add a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index you. Until you do, stop whining and put it back in your pants." Now Rupert has promised to do exactly that. He claims that he's going to take all of News Corp's websites pay-only and have them removed from Google when he does. You know what? He's lying. But I think it'd be entertaining if every reporter who interviewed him, for the rest of his life, said, "Hey, Rupert, when are you going to take all your company's websites out of Google?" It'd also be hilarious to get the CEOs of the various pieces of Rupert's empire to comment on whether they want all their company's materials invisible to search engines. Rupert also thinks that fair use is illegal and that the right court case would result in it being "barred altogether." Again, another hilarious interview question for the rest of his career: "Hey, Rupert, when are you going to abolish fair use? How's that plan coming, pal?" Epic Win: News Corp Likely To Remove Content From Google (Thanks, Dustin!) Update: So here's what I think it going on. Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he's still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump). So what he's hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year's operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google. He may, in fact, get a taker. And it will be a disaster. A search engine whose sole competitive advantage is "We have Rupert Murdoch's pages!" will not attract any substantial traffic. The search engine will either go bust or fail to renew the deal. On this fair use question, my guess is that some evil Richilieu in the legal department has been passing torrid whispers to Rupert about how the Berne Convention's "Three Step Test" for exceptions to copyright is overstepped by US fair use and by many countries' fair dealing rules. So Rupert thinks that he can take a case to the WTO (membership in the WTO is contingent on compliance with the Berne Convention) and get all these rules struck down. Of course, Rupert's own media products make frequent and copious fair use of other copyrights -- you can't create without fair use. But the mustache-twirling lawyer at Newscorp probably didn't mention this to Rupert Palpatine (the lawyer probably thinks it'd be OK if every single one of those fair uses was replaced by a process in which lots of lawyers negotiated the terms of every use, probably all reporting to him). They're wrong, of course. The WTO's rules -- and Berne -- are necessarily subservient to realpolitik, viz., the US gets $1 trillion of economic activity out of fair use, and it's not going to get rid of it because it makes some UN agency sad (if the UN mattered to the US, the US'd be paying the billions in back-fees it owes). And if the WTO imposes trade sanctions on the US, they'll just be ignored, because the world's factory-states (China, with also-rans such as India and Vietnam) can't afford to stop sending shipping containers full of Happy Meal toys to America. And if the WTO tries to embargo China, it'll quickly discover that the rest of the world isn't prepared to live without plastic tchotchkes and junkware either. So good luck with that, Rupert. have a delightful, Howard-Hughesian dotage, acting out a crazed, Moby-Dick dumbshow against the Internet, hoping that the world's politics and economies will reform themselves to suit your fevered imaginings. This is how history will remember you. |
| How the ambient sound at Walt Disney World works Posted: 08 Nov 2009 09:52 PM PST Noah sez, "An interview with the man who designed the ambient sound at Disney World, ensuring a constant experience rather than one that ends with the end of the ride. It was initially a little uneven, with sound changing volumes depending on where you stood, so they used algorithms to position 15,000 speakers around the park so that the levels would never change." I like the way there's often running water or waterfalls between different soundscapes to act as a white-noise buffer. It's subtle but incredibly effective. You almost never hear two contrasting soundscapes at once. In the mid 1990's, the park started researching the problem. It would eventually find no existing solution, so the engineers had to design and construct, on their own, one of the most complex and advanced audio systems ever built. The work paid off: today, as you walk through Disney World, the volume of the ambient music does not change. Ever. More than 15,000 speakers have been positioned using complex algorithms to ensure that the sound plays within a range of just a couple decibels throughout the entire park. It is quite a technical feat acoustically, electrically, and mathematically.How Mr. Q Manufactured Emotion (Thanks, Noah!) |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2009 09:35 PM PST On the Day of the Dead (Dia de Finados) in Brazil, Ademir Jorge Goncalves walked into his own funeral. His family had thought he had died in a car wreck but Goncalves had actually been out drinking. According to CNN, "the sight of... Goncalves alive shocked relatives, some of whom tried to jump out of the windows of the funeral home in southern Brazil." |
| Sleep: more important than you think (Psychology Today) Posted: 08 Nov 2009 04:24 PM PST "Getting enough sleep, on a regular cycle, may make us a better version of ourselves. And even though my greatest wish is usually more time in the day, I'd rather feel good and perform well than get to be a crankier, impulsive, sick version of myself for a few extra hours a day." |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2009 11:45 AM PST The Scottish veterans charity Erskine surveyed 2,000 young people between the ages of nine and 15 about World War I and II. Apparently, five percent thought that Hitler was a German football coach; sixteen percent believed that Auschwitz is a WWII theme park; five percent said the Holocaust was a bash to celebrate the war's end. (STV News) |
| Ebook license "agreements" are a ripoff Posted: 08 Nov 2009 07:29 AM PST In today's Observer Business column, John Naughton discusses what a ripoff it is for ebook vendors to "sell" you books with abusive, multi-thousand word "license agreements," pretending that because you bought your book over the network, it wasn't a sale, and so you don't get to own it. These "licenses" aren't about upholding copyright (if they were, you could replace thousands of words of lawyerese with four simple words: "Don't violate copyright law"). They're about overriding copyright -- which has all kinds of guarantees for the rights of book-owners -- with a private law that gives every advantage to the publisher or retailer, converting you from a noble reader to a wormy, contemptible licensor who doesn't deserve to own books. The Kindle EULA is a good example. Section 3, which deals with "Digital Content" (such as downloaded books), says that "Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content." In other words, you are forbidden to lend or sell the book you've just "bought". In real-world terms, you can't lend your copy of 1984 to a friend or donate it to the school jumble sale.Kindle readers beware - big Amazon is watching you read 1984 |
| Carrier bags made from Indian newspapers and Bollywood posters Posted: 08 Nov 2009 07:23 AM PST  These newspaper carrier bags are made in India by an NGO that provides education and shelter to street kids. The bags themselves are very sweet and good for several uses before they're ready for the recycling box, and make good use of the striking designs from the newspapers they're folded from (I like the Bollywood poster ones, too!). Newspaper Bags (Thanks, Alice!) |
To test her idea, she whipped up a channel design in AutoCAD, printed it out on Shrinky Dink material using a laser printer, and stuck the result in a toaster oven. As the plastic shrank, the ink particles on its surface clumped together, forming tiny ridges. That was exactly the effect Khine wanted. When she poured a flexible polymer known as PDMS onto the surface of the cooled Shrinky Dink, the ink ridges created tiny channels in the surface of the polymer as it hardened. She pulled the PDMS away from the Shrinky Dink mold, and voilà : a finished microfluidic device that cost less than a fast-food meal. | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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- Weekend Caption Contest™ Winners
- The Future of Islam
- "I love Osama more than I love myself"
- Lap Dog Blue Dogs who Voted for Pelosicare
| Weekend Caption Contest™ Winners Posted: 08 Nov 2009 10:56 PM PST This week's Weekend Caption Contest™ was another winner. The assignment this week was to caption the following picture: Here are the winning entries: 1) (Rodney Dill) - "Most... transparent... Government...... |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2009 03:17 PM PST Yesterday, I wrote an unpopular piece reminding readers that anger against Islam for the actions of a non-representative few is a dangerous thing, a vicious prejudice that is not only... |
| "I love Osama more than I love myself" Posted: 08 Nov 2009 02:33 PM PST From CNN... yes... CNN: Crossposted(*).... |
| Lap Dog Blue Dogs who Voted for Pelosicare Posted: 08 Nov 2009 09:47 AM PST Here is a list of so-called "blue dog democrats" from Jumping in Pools. It also provides district ratings. From Jumping in Pools: Congressman Arcuri - New York's 24th congressional district... |
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