Author: Serkadis

Article Tags: Ian Plimer, Johnny Ball, Lord Monckton, UK Independence party (UKIP), Video Link

World leading climate change sceptic Professor Ian Plimer states the truth about global warming in this presentation hosted by UKIP’s Godfrey Bloom in London recently.

Click source link and see several Video links from UKIP

Source: ukip.org

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Orli Yakuel noticed that Google has quietly added a new icon in the ‘Compose Mail’ window of its free webmail service Gmail, enabling users to run search queries from within the interface and insert results and URLs straight into drafted e-mails or open chat conversations.

This is an expansion of a Google Labs feature, simply dubbed ‘Google Search’, that was introduced back in April 2009 as an optional setting in Gmail.

The first iteration of the labs feature added a ‘Web Search’ box next to the main column (left side on the screenshot) that provides much of the same functionality, only you needed to remember to go to the side column to run a search. Now, enabling the feature also adds an icon to the top toolbar in the ‘Compose Mail’ window, where you can also customize colors and fonts for your message, add links and emoticons and more.

It’s unclear when the icon was added, but we can’t retrieve any mention about this on the Gmail blog and today marks the first time we’ve seen it.

The icon opens up a search box at the bottom of your screen and lets you run a search like you would using the regular Google search interface. A small arrow opens up a limited menu where you can paste results, paste URL and send by e-mail (which is kind of redundant in this case, since you’re already in a new e-mail). If you have a chat conversation open in Gmail, you’ll also get an extra option to send search results to your contact.

Obviously, this isn’t a ground-breaking feature, but if you’re a Gmail user you might want to (re-)enable the Labs feature in Settings. Guaranteed to save you quite some time.

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It used to be that Twitter followers were worth something, or at least people thought they were worth something, which is the same thing. It was only about a year ago when Jason Calacanis was offering $250,000 to buy a spot on Twitter’s Suggested User List, which would have guaranteed him perhaps a million followers before Twitter ended up revamping the SUL to be less monolithic. He never got on the list, but if his offer would have come to roughly $0.25 per follower.

Today, you can “buy” followers on eBay for less than a penny each. Some of the Buy-It-Now listings include 5,000 followers for $20 (which comes to 0.4 penny/follower), $5,500 for $40 (0.7 penny/follower), $1,100 for $10 (0.9 penny/follower). You are not actually buying followers outright (Twitter doesn’t allow people to transfer their followers), but rather services which “guarantee” getting your account up to the promised number of followers through “proven and safe methods.” Some even only count reciprocal followers (followers who follow back).

How do they do this? Well, there are automated bots, of course. But another method we’ve heard about anecdotally uses cheap labor in China to create Twitter Follower farms (similar to the gold farms that grew around online games like World of Warcraft). Online laborers in China essentially create thousands of Twitter accounts which can then follow other accounts. Yes, people are actually paying for this worthless service. The sellers on eBay may very well use different methods. But the fact that these types of followers are worthless shows in the plummeting rate for Twitter followers from a quarter each a year ago to less than a penny now.

So are Twitter followers simply worthless as many people have suspected all along? I think you have to distinguish between real followers and fake followers (maybe Twitter could start a Verified Follower service), and how engaged those followers are. Do they retweet a lot and engage in conversation, or never tune in at all? Follower counts don’t tell you that. Just as all Website visitors are not worth the same, neither are all Twitter followers. But you can’t buy real followers. They come to you.

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Not sure if you’ve heard, but PMA is just around the corner. You know — that camera show? At any rate, Photo Rumors has a trio of new leaks to swoon over this fine evening, starting with black and white (saywha?) shots of Olympus‘ supposedly forthcoming SP800 (or SP-800UZ, if we’re talking specifics). The megazoom shooter is said to boast a 30x optical zoom, 14 megapixel sensor and image stabilization, though no further details have been let loose just let. Moving on, Fujifilm seems to have a whole gaggle of new cams planned for release this week, including a megazoom of its own and a whole host of point-and-shoot offerings. Finally, Hasselblad is expected to one-up the H3D by introducing the H4D, which we fully suspect will have a 489 megapixel sensor and a price tag that far exceeds 93 percent of salaries here in America. Hit the links below for the goods, and hang tight — PMA kicks off in earnest in just a few weeks.

PMA leak roundup: Olympus, Fujifilm and Hasselblad plan new shooters originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vancouver, Canada | Strange Statues

On the banks of Copenhagen sits the famous “Little Mermaid” sculpture, a nude woman based on a local ballerina – at least in the face, the body was based on the sculptors wife. The sculpture was made in 1913 and has since suffered numerous indignities – it has been painted numerous times, been decapitated twice, had its arm sawed off, and blown up. Despite this is hasn’t stopped other sculptors from wanting to copy the famous mermaid.

However those wanting to copy the statue face a serious problem which is that the statue is still under copyright and Copenhagen vigorously enforces it. (Curiously the one in Copenhagen is itself a copy as the sculptor wanted to keep the original for himself, which today is kept by his heirs in an undisclosed location.) When Greenville, Michigan created a half size copy for their towns Danish Heritage celebration, Copenhagen’s “Artists Rights Society” sued them for back taxes.

Vancouver decided to get around this problem in a curious way. By “updating” the mermaid with a snazzy new wetsuit complete with snorkel mask and fins, they avoided the copyright issue while making the uniquely Vancouver “Girl in a Wetsuit” in 1972. While not as revealing as the one in Copenhagen this girl is far more ready for the water than is Copenhagen’s “mermaid.”

Filed under: Government/Legal, Japan, Recalls, Toyota

With Toyota’s woes seemingly multiplying by the day, you knew it was just a matter of time before the lawyers arrived on scene. Cue two law firms, Parker Waichman Alonso and the Becnel Law Firm, that are joining forces in a bid to sue Toyota’s pants off.

The suit hopes to attain class action status and is “intended to benefit all residents of the United States who purchased a Toyota vehicle of model years 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and/or 2010 that is subject to the recalls.” How many cars is that? We don’t have a total off the top of our head, but considering the Camry has been the best selling car in the U.S. for all six of those years, and the Corolla has been number three or four over the course of that same time frame, we’ll go ahead and say the answer is a staggeringly large number.

But hang on one minute: Since all the affected cars have been recalled by Toyota and will (eventually) be repaired, what could the two law firms possibly be suing ToMoCo for? Away we go:

[Parker Waichman Alonso] and the [Becnel Law Firm allege] that, as a result of these recalls, Toyota owners lost the use of their vehicles, and sustained, among things, economic losses and severe emotional distress. The complaint charges Toyota with breach of implied warranty and negligence, and seeks compensatory, punitive and exemplary damages for the Class, as well as equitable and declaratory relief. It also asks the Court to enjoin Toyota from implementing any fixes in the accelerator pedals of the subject vehicles without approval from the NHTSA.

There you have it. And yes, they really did mention emotional distress.

[Source: The Auto Channel | Image: Corbis]

ThrottleGate: First class-action lawsuit filed against Toyota over pedal recall originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A great BitTorrent client is all well and good, but you need a great tracker to get the actual torrent files and stoke the bandwidth burning fire in your client of choice. Here’s a rundown of five of the most popular options.

A bit of clarification is in order before we share the list of the top five contenders with you. In our call for contenders we asked for you to share your favorite BitTorrent trackers, but we didn’t explain the difference between a BitTorrent tracker and a BitTorrent indexer. The difference isn’t immediately clear to the end user—nor does the difference even matter to many end users—and because we didn’t make the difference crystal clear the votes were a mix of both sites that tracked and indexed and just indexed torrent files.

Since the purpose of the Hive Five is to help readers find tools and the ability to find torrents is more important to the majority of users than whether or not the place they find the torrents is also acting as the tracker for those torrents, we’ve opted to overlook the confusion in an effort to share a list of where Lifehacker readers go to search and download torrent files. The following list contains both true trackers and indexers. If you’re curious about the technical details between a tracker and an indexer you can read up on them here and here.

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is no longer the full-service tracker it once thanks to some rough battles with the law, but it remains in service as an indexer. The Pirate Bay has been and remains one of the most publicly recognizable faces of the torrent phenomenon and is still a popular destination for torrent seekers. It no longer indexes its own tracker but instead organizes torrents indexed to other trackers. The Pirate Bay is known for having, even now, a wide selecttion and a well-organized, easy-to-browse site.

BTJunkie

BTJunkie is one of the largest torrent indexers on the web with over four million torrents and several thousand added daily. BTJunkie amasses such a high number of torrents by employing crawlers that dig through web sites looking for torrent files to index. The quality of torrents is ranked both by an algorithm and by user input which helps filter out low quality or malicious torrents.

isoHunt

Another enormous indexer, isoHunt has nearly two million torrents and a huge user base. In addition to being able to search torrents and sort them by age, number of peers, and other common search factors isoHunt has an additional variable, appropriately called isoHunt Rank, that is a compilation of all the other factors like age, number of comments, user feedback, and more. Sorting by isoHunt Rank allows you to see which torrents are best overall instead of just best in some subcategory like number of seeders or age.

Demonoid

Demonoid is a semi-public tracker. Registration is traditionally closed—it opens a few times a year to let new users in, or you can be invited by an existing member—but the site is still quite functional even without registration. Registration gives you access to the deep archives of Demonoid, but even without it you have access to over a quarter million torrents—the most recently added ones—available for download. Demonoid has built a name for itself by having a low number of bogus torrents and a high level of user participation.

KickAssTorrents

KickAssTorrents is a new kid on the torrent indexing block, but it has quickly built a name for itself by offering a user friendly experience. KickAssTorrents is the only torrent search engine that offers correction of spelling mistakes—search for Unutu for instance and it will ask “Did you mean Ubuntu?”—which is a small thing but highlights the level of detail put into the construction of their search engine. In addition to indexing regular torrents KickAssTorrents also indexes httpTorrents, which allow users who cannot access the BitTorrent cloud due to their location or firewall restrictions to access torrents.

Now that you’ve had a chance to look over the best places to find new torrents it’s time to cast your vote in the poll below:

Which BitTorrent Indexer is Best?(answers)

Have a favorite torrent hangout that didn’t make the list? Have a BitTorrent-related tip or trick? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

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At a time when many hedge fund managers are warning their investors of anemic economic growth, Steve Mandel has a decidedly optimistic view on the future of the stock market and the broader economy.

In Lone Pine’s 4th quarter letter to investors, which Business Insider obtained a copy of, the hedge fund manager says of the current economic climate:

“Global demand is recovering, government actions have stabilized the financial system and market indicators of risk have returned to normal levels. Indeed, most recent economic data point to a synchronized global economy.”

“Hard as it may be to believe, it is game on in the equity market.”

What a refreshing attitude.

Mandel also says the bears are wrong when they say that equity bubbles have formed as a result of the recovery.

(Joseph Stiglitz’s, for example, says there is an equity bubble in emerging markets.)

“Unlike in 2000-2002 (internet, telecom) and 2007-2008 (mortgage-related), we see no major bubbles in the world’s equity markets,” Mandel writes.

Finally, someone who isn’t a buzzkill.

But he is staying short in some equities, like those that have been hurt by “technological obsolescence,” and industries with chronic global overcapacity. Lone Pine lost money on their short positions when the market rallied this past year, but Mandel is still “skeptical of a sustained snapback in demand.”

“The developed world consumer, particularly in the US, will likely suffer an extended hangover from years of credit fueled overconsumption,” he says. “It is hard to envision strong economic growth in the US beyond an inventory rebuild for a few quarters.”

Many hedge fund managers (like Whitney Tilson of T2) and economists (like Dr. Doom, Nouriel Roubini) predict it will take a few years for the US to return to strong growth, while Mandel apparently thinks we’re going to have a strong economy immediately, followed by a a slowdown after that.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Whitney Tilson: I’m Shorting The Hell Out Of Homebuilders Because America Won’t Need Any Homes For Years
• Here’s The Secret Of How One Hedge Fund Trader Spotted The Housing Bust And Made A Fortune
• Marc Faber Joins Hedge Fund Of Fellow Doomsayer Eric Sprott

We haven’t confirmed this yet, but one of our connects just let us know that the BlackBerry Curve 8900 might be seeing a status change pretty soon.

So, if our tipster is to be believed, the BlackBerry Curve 8900 on T-Mobile might be going on an end-of-life plan. What better device to replace the BlackBerry 8900 than the BlackBerry 8910? RIM sure knows how to slip in those minor refreshes…

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We are once again on the MSMobiles podcast, and as ours is on hiatus at present, we are making this one available for streaming here.

The podcast stream is now over, and can be listened to here.

Can she exceed herself tonight?

Disagreements about the lack of certain features aside, Apple clearly had casual computer users in mind when building the iPad. Still, that doesn’t mean Apple will ignore enterprise users, which have been adopting the iPhone in growing numbers.

iWork is a nod to users who need to get work done using an iPad. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote cover word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tasks. The iPad can also be attached to a projector to give a presentation directly from the device. You can still import and export files compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, just like you can with the desktop versions.

If for some reason iWork won’t serve your productivity needs, at the very least it serves as a proof of concept. Microsoft could develop iPad versions of Office apps if it determines that the demand was there. And, while Office is pervasive in the corporate world, the potential for productivity apps from other vendors is there as well—Omni is already talking about porting OmniGraffle to the iPad, for instance.

The iPad still retains the enterprise features of iPhone OS, including Exchange ActiveSync support for e-mail, contacts, and calendars. But according to AppleInsider’s sources, Apple has some enterprise-friendly features planned for the iPad that haven’t yet been publicly announced. One feature is a planned ability to access standard file servers on a local network. The other is the ability to print to networked printers. Combined with Office-compatible iWork apps, an iPad could be useful for many routine business tasks.

These features won’t make the iPad appealing for every business. Especially in larger corporate environments, admins still need better management tools than Apple currently offers for its mobile devices. And security must remain a priority, since many corporations have legal responsibilities to protect certain kinds of data.

Still, its good to see Apple is thinking about some of the business use cases for the iPad, since its size and weight will likely appeal to some enterprise users.

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Columnist’s Note: In a little under 24 hours, I have to submit the final manuscript of my next book. My original deadline – January 1st – sailed passed weeks ago, as did the one-week extension I awarded myself on the basis that no-one does any work in the first week of the year. This last deadline, though, is immovable: lawyers and editors and typesetters and proof-readers are standing by; the thing has to be printed at some point. I haven’t slept for days, my blood is an 80:20 Caffeine:Provigil blend and I can’t feel my fingers. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t have time to write this week’s column.

And yet, I still have a contract with TechCrunch – one that’s no less binding or legally enforceable than the one I have with my publisher. By hook or by crook, 1000 words have to appear in this space. I briefly considered outsourcing this week’s column to India – or maybe employing some Indians on H1Bs here; I gather that’s the future. But then I remembered that employing people costs money. Next I considered asking one of my journalist friends to take over for the week; but there’s always the danger that they’ll be better at the job than I am and I’ll find myself unemployed. Again. I needed a solution which a) fills space, b) is free and c) is unlikely to put me out of a job.

And that’s when it hit me – I should commission a Guest Post.

But I’m not going to give away my space on TechCrunch to just anyone: I need to make sure that they conform to the high standards demanded of a typical tech blog guest author. To that end, I’ve put together this useful list of hints for writing the perfect Guest Post…

• Tip One: Choose a topical issue
  This is vital. Without a topical issue to hang from, all Guest Posts would to forced to use honest titles like “My marketing director told me to write this because it’s the only way our bullshit product will get on TechCrunch” or “I only wrote this to warrant an entry on CrunchBase”. The obvious topical issue this week is the launch of the iPad. Like new spin-offs of CSI, the world will never tire of new opinions on the iPad, even if yours brings absolutely nothing fresh or new to the genre. If you’re feeling bold though, why not try to link your customised iPhone cover startup to the recent death of JD Salinger? (hint: bunchofphoneys.com is still available)

• Tip Two: Ask yourself “do I actually know anything about this subject?”
  If yes, go back to the drawing board. It is critical that you choose a subject that has absolutely no relation to your areas of expertise. For example: I am a former book publisher who now splits his time between writing books and blogging about technology. I also read maybe 75-100 books a year. Therefore, if I were to write a Guest Post comparing – say – the iPhone and the Kindle – readers would assume that I was allowing my prior knowledge to cloud my judgment on which device is better for enjoying books. They would smell bias. Much better that I opine on, say, the pet food industry or why Belgians make terrible lovers. I mean, they do, right? My wife/mother/kids told me.

• Tip Three: Work your issue into a snappy title
  Let’s say you’ve decided to write about the iPad – because, let’s face it, you have. Next comes the important task of picking a title. Remember, a good title serves two important functions: 1) to attract comment trolls, and 2) to amuse Gabe Rivera from Techmeme. One tried and tested format is the “Why X will be the Y killer” construction, or the even more popular “Five tips for…” meme. The latter is especially recommended for authors who are working against a tight deadline: readers will tolerate any shit as long as it’s in a numbered list (the so-called ‘Mashable Rule’). Note: there is no need for the title to actually relate to the body of your Guest Post: the two are quite separate entities.

• Tip Four: Write any old crap
  The trick here is to avoid looking or sounding like a real writer or a journalist. If your prose is too polished or your argument too well thought out, readers will assume you’re one of TC’s paid writers and will ignore your carefully written promotional bio. The trick is to make readers get one paragraph in and think “who the fuck is this idiot?” and then scroll down to find out. How can you telegraph your amateur status? I, personally, myself believe that the use of tautology is a good way to go. As is unnecessary repetition. Another approach is to completely ignore the most obvious flaw in your argument. For example, if you’re comparing the iPad unfavourably to the Kindle, it’s important to appear oblivious to the existence of e-ink. Instead point to the iPad’s superior video-handling abilities, or the fact that its name has a more balanced vowel-to-consonant ratio than the Kindle.

• Tip Five: End on a high-five, with a blatantly self-promotional bio
  After all, you didn’t spend hours waiting for your PR company to finish ghost-writing your Guest Post, only to throw away your big chance to stroke your ego and make a few dollars at the end. Am I right?

Ok, then get to it!

If you think you’re up to the challenge of writing a guest post, please summarise your pitch on the inside cover of a copy of Paul Carr’s multi-Steve-wynning book – Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore – and send to him via TechCrunch where, until this post goes live, he writes a weekly column.

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Beyonce attended a Grammy brunch yesterday hosted by none other then Jay-Z. Check out a picture below!

01.30 – Grammy brunch