Author: Serkadis

So you need a portable desk for your laptop or maybe that snazzy new iPad…. a mouse and maybe even that cup of coffee. But wait! You also need it to cool down your notebook as well because it tends to get too hot. Well the E Stand Portable Laptop Table Desk may not be the most attractive looking thing but it gets the job done.  It comes with built-in USB connectors so you can connect your laptop to the cooling fans and it has legs that flip down to hold your laptop securely. It also has an integrated mousepad, cup holder, and pencil holder. When closed its about the size of a laptop and can easily be taken with you wherever you go. The E Stand Portable Laptop Desk retails for $39.99 at Amazon.

Thus rather than look to recent U.S. recessions as guide for how things might turn out, we need to examine other post-housing-bust recoveries instead according to Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs in a new global economics report.

Specifically, he looks at 24 housing busts around the world that have happened since 1970.

His first take away is that double-dip recessions are very, very rare. In fact, they only happened after 3 out of the 24 housing busts examined.

Jim O'Neill: Despite the understandable concern about the fragility of recovery, the average experience is one of sustained and continued recovery in growth albeit slowly once the worst point is passed. Indeed, there are remarkably few double dips in the housing bust history.

Yet the second major take away is that strong V-shaped recoveries shouldn't be expected either. While economies usually hit a trough then recover in a roughly straight path after nasty housing busts (ie. without double dips), their recovery is usually a sluggish one:

A defining feature of those episodes elsewhere is that recoveries from post-bust recessions tend to be more sluggish than normal and substantial excess capacity generally remains for some time. ...this very gradual recovery occurs even though, in general, the recessions that housing busts precipitate are deep and rapid. So the commonly heard notion that a sharper downturn leads to a sharper recovery true in the US recessions between 1945 and 1985 emphatically does not hold here.

Still, stocks tend to rise after housing busts nonetheless:

Looking at the experience in other housing busts, equities trough on average in the same quarter as the trough in GDP growth occurs. At least as important, given the current stage of recovery, is that the recovery in stocks typically continues albeit moderately despite the sluggish nature of the recovery and continued excess capacity. Without wanting to lean too heavily on the evidence, the average recovery path also typically suggests relatively rapid gains in stocks in the first year of recovery, followed by a period of nearly a year of flatter equities and a further recovery beyond.

Add my twitter for a cut of just analysis-only like this: @vincefernando

(Via Goldman Sachs, Lessons For A Post-Bust Recovery, Jim O'Neill, 27 January 2010)

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Really glad Chris Matthews could forget Obama is black for an hour. Somehow, I remain unable to forget that Matthews is a horse’s ass…..

President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address has been marred by controversy after noted MSNBC correspondent Chris Matthews remarked that he “forgot Obama was black” during his post-speech commentary with pundit Keith Olbermann.

“You know, I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It’s interesting: he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and past so much history, in just a year or two,” the Hardball host reflected as video of the President’s motorcade leaving the US Capitol played on a split screen beside him.

“I mean, it’s something we don’t even think about. I was watching, I said, wait a minute, he’s an African American guy in front of a bunch of other white people,” Chris continued. “And here he is president of the United States and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight — completely forgotten it. I think it was in the scope of his discussion. It was so broad-ranging, so in tune with so many problems, of aspects, and aspects of American life that you don’t think in terms of the old tribalism, the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard. A very subtle fact. It’s so hard to talk about. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about it, but I am. I thought it was profound that way.”

While there’s been no apology — or even acknowledgment — by MSNBC, Matthews’ racially-insensitive comments have opened the floodgates of Hell on Twitter, with numerous Tweeters spreading the news and voicing their outrage via a series of angry Tweets.

Apple didn’t give us a great amount of time with its newly unveiled iPad today, and as you’ve likely seen, we spent the bulk of our allotment touching the unit itself. Lost in the proverbial shuffle were a number of the unit’s launch accessories, including the admittedly intriguing keyboard dock ($69), case ($39), iPad Dock Connector to VGA adapter ($29) and camera connection kit ($29). Each of these doodads seem to look and feel exactly as you’d expect ‘em to, though we’re still baffled by Apple’s decision to make you pay extra for access to the world’s most widely accepted connector. We’re also somewhat appalled (but not surprised) by the $39 price tag purportedly attached to the stripped-down case, and while the $69 MSRP on the keyboard dock is apt to cause some grumbling, at least there are a few iPad-specific keys on there to make it (marginally) worth your while. Dig in below for more on each.

Read – iPad keyboard dock hands-on
Read – iPad case hands-on
Read – iPad Dock Connector to VGA adapter hands-on
Read – iPad camera connection kit hands-on

Apple’s iPad keyboard dock, case and other accessories get the hands-on treatment originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lessmann GmbH is a leading company in producing technical brushes. Among them are wheel brushes, roller brushes, hand brushes and others. Depending on the application and the customers’ requests different wires, abrasive nylon or diamond filament is used.

For the treatment of weld seams in the tube and pipeline industry special knotted wheel brushes were developed. They are ideal for the treatment of U- and V- weld seams.
Due to the narrow construction with a brush width of 5-6 mm also low lying weld seams in U- and V- welds can be reached. Cinder, scales and other contaminations are removed fast and efficient. Especially after multi layered welding processes and to recognise asperities on the seam the cleaning is necessary.

High tensile wires in combination with different construction characteristics used by Lessmann guarantee a long product life. The spreading of the filling material in the brush is 100% steady-going what causes a quiet product run and an unproblematic permanent operation.

Depending on the field of application brushes with high tensile steel wires or high tensile stainless steel wires in different wire sizes are deliverable. The types with stainless steel wire have green side plates.
Different standard bores or threads adapted to the national and international technical requirements are deliverable ex stock. The standard brushes are available in the diameters 100 mm, 115 mm, 125 mm, 150 mm und 178mm.
Custom-made products are available on demand.

Using Lessmann brushes is very effective and time saving. The brushes have a high durability due to the high quality of the wire and they cause an eminent brushing result.

The new mobile phone PEGASUS for use in hazardous areas has been especially designed for the use in rough industrial environments. The high protection type IP 65 and the use at ambient temperatures between -20°C and 60°C enables the user to work even under extreme ambient conditions.

The keyboard has been designed so that it can easily be used even with gloves. All keys as well as the alphanumerical keys have a tactile feedback. The OLED full colour display can easily be read even under poor light conditions. A highly efficient rechargeable Li-polymer battery (3.7V/2650mAh) makes sure there is enough capacity.

The integrated loudspeaker offers the user a comfortable hands-free speaking function during activities where both hands are needed. Besides, PEGASUS has a vibration function so that no call is missed even in noisy environments. In addition to the phone function, text messages (SMS) can be sent and received.

PEGASUS is equipped with a quadband GSM module (850/900/1800/1900 MHz). The use all over the world and particularly on the American continent is ensured by it. As PEGASUS has been developed from scratch by BARTEC and therefore is not based on an existing mobile phone, all measures required for explosion protection were already realized during the development phase.

PEGASUS is available in different models and is the optimal mobile phone for every region and every field of application.

Besides, PEGASUS has an optional “man down sensor“ as in some fields of activity an increased occupational safety of employees has to be guaranteed. The integrated sensor (motion-detection) reacts to immobility. At the end of a definable time span, an online alarm is triggered. To avoid a transmission via SMS, which might take too long, the alarm can be transmitted immediately to a server via GPRS or TCP/IP. In addition, the mobile phone is located via GPS. With a scaleable map, the last recorded location can be graphically displayed. The alarm including the GPS position data can also be transmitted as SMS message or as a spoken phone message.

Due to the integrated GPS receiver and the sophisticated software, PEGASUS can optionally be used for professional online tracking.

Simon Monjack, widower of late actress Brittany Murphy, blames Warner Brothers Studios for the star’s sudden death last month and the grief-stricken hubby plans to make the film company pay. Brittany died of an apparent cardiac arrest after collapsing in her Los Angeles mansion only days before Christmas. She was 32.

In a lengthy interview with The Daily Beast Wednesday, the British producer claims that the devastation Brittany felt over losing a role in the forthcoming sequel to Happy Feet — the 2006 animated adventure in which she starred — caused the actress to suffer a heart attack.

Monjack said Warner dropped Murphy from the project because of false reports of drug use and erratic behavior on the Puerto Rican set of the box office thriller The Caller. Simon claims Brittany withdrew from the film after she was forced to work an exhausting 12 hour schedule. Tabloid reports, on the other hand, claim Monjack turned up drunk on set and caused a scene.

A fuming Simon told the site: “The reports about the Puerto Rican set are fantasy. I was never, ever drunk there. What I did do was demand they follow union rules and after she had worked 12 hour days, six days a week, that she get the breaks she was entitled to. I was ‘difficult’ because I was the enforcer to protect Brittany. She was far too nice to stand up to directors and producers who wanted her to work to exhaustion. Warner Brothers relied on conjecture and hearsay about the Puerto Rico film for why they cancelled Brittany’s role in Happy Feet. You’re disposable as an actress or actor.”

In an interview on NBC’s The TODAY Show last week, urged actor Brad Pitt and Matt Damon — who have been linked to the Happy Feet sequel — to boycott the feature.

Whatever happened between Google and Yelp is now officially kaput. Instead of selling the entire company to the search giant, Yelp’s owners will be taking up to $100 million in funding from private equity shop Elevation Partners.

I still don’t know how close Google and Yelp came to actually consummating a transaction, but Elevation’s involvement does clear one thing up. As I noted in December when news of the would-be Google deal broke, Yelp had already been exploring a large funding round. And now sources tell me that Elevation had been in the mix for months.

Elevation, whose most prominent portfolio company to date has been Palm (PALM), will put $25 million into the local reviews site for expansion, and has earmarked up to $75 million more to buy shares from employees. That structure is similar to the deals Russian investors Digital Sky Technologies have done with Facebook and Zynga — and as in those deals, the Elevation bet means any public offering has likely been pushed back by a year or more.

BusinessWeek pegs the value of the round at $475 million. TechCrunch first reported Elevation’s involvement earlier this month.

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Lucy Liu makes her debut on the New York stageMarch 2 in the theatrical drama God of Carnage. The Broadway debut will be a bit of a homecoming for Lucy, who is a native of Queens.

We’ve already described how ridiculously hypocritical it is for various newspapers to block UK aggregator service NewsNow from linking to their articles in its paid subscription service, but apparently it’s a difficult concept for some to grasp. The UK’s Daily Mirror has now started blocking access to NewsNow’s crawlers, claiming that its only problem is the fact that NewsNow makes money off subscriptions. If it wasn’t making any money, the paper wouldn’t have a problem.

Ok, quick question time. Does the Daily Mirror make money off of subscriptions? Oh, they do? And do they pay their sources on which they build their articles? No? Then doesn’t that make the Daily Mirror a huge hypocrite? Why, yes, it does.

NewsNow makes money selling a subscription service, absolutely. But it’s not doing it by misusing anyone’s content. It’s pointing subscribers to where they can go directly to the source. It’s providing a service to give The Daily Mirror more relevant traffic. At no cost to The Daily Mirror. And they want to block that? Meanwhile, The Daily Mirror makes its money by writing about individuals and companies and the news they create. And it doesn’t pay them anything either. In fact, many companies are happy to be written up (it’s called PR). In the case of NewsNow, it’s effectively providing PR for The Daily Mirror, and The Daily Mirror’s management appears too incompetent to realize this.

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Disgraced former presidential hopeful John Edwards and his wife of more than 30 years, Elizabeth, have separated.

A spokesperson for Elizabeth — who is battling terminal breast cancer — says the mother of four is “moving on with her life and wants to put this difficult chapter behind her.”

“She’s doing as well as you could expect,” Elizabeth’s sister, Nancy Anania, remarked to The Associated Press this afternoon. “I’m really proud of her that, somehow, she’s got strength that you rarely see in a person.”

The former North Carolina senator says he is “extraordinarily saddened” over the split.

“It is an extraordinarily sad moment, but I love my children more than anything and still care deeply about Elizabeth,” Edwards told The AP Wednesday.

The couple’s separation comes less than a week after John Edwards confirmed he was the father of his former mistress’ 2-year-old daughter.

In Elizabeth’s memoir Resilience, she revealed that her husband first told her about his affair with presidential campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter, in 2006.

John and Elizabeth have four children together — their olddest son Wade died in a car accident in 1996.

This DuraCoat Glock Gun Lady Swat Digital is a dangerous example of products that should remain in its natural state and don’t necessarily need a new paint job like those gadgets that get the Colorware treatment do. Jim’s Gun Supply is no stranger to controversy, and yet they still continue to pump out designs on guns that in the end, make them look like toys instead of dangerous weapons. Obviously with this design they are reaching out to not only women but geeks as well. Of course no one is forcing anyone to send in their guns to them to get a face-lift, but just the fact that it’s an option seems wrong; especially since it has the potential to get into the wrong hands, and by the wrong hands, we mean kids might accidentally think this is a toy. This is one item pixels don’t belong on… and don’t you love the Breast Cancer ribbon on it  too??

The state parole board this evening rejected a bid for release by Gregory Powell, who was convicted in the 1963 slaying of Los Angeles Police Officer Ian Campbell near Bakersfield. The crime and its aftermath were the subject of Joseph Wambaugh’s book "The Onion Field."



Powell, 75, had sought release 11 times since 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty and his sentence was commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole. On Wednesday, parole officials decided Powell should remain behind bars. He will be eligible for another parole review in three years.



As part of the four-hour hearing, officials read a letter from Valerie Campbell Moniz, who was 3 when her father and his partner were kidnapped off a street in Hollywood and driven to a field south of Bakersfield. Moniz said Powell shot her father "with a cold and callous heart."



"I would like the members of this board to imagine being kidnapped and driving the route with the muzzle of a gun pressed up against your ribs," Moniz said. "At the conclusion of this two-hour horror ride, you are then forced out of the car and then coldly, calmly and willfully shot in the face just above the upper lip and below the nose."



Last week, the union representing Los Angeles police officers sent a letter to the board urging members to deny parole for Powell, saying he had "not yet paid his debt to society."



Campbell and his partner, Karl Hettinger, had stopped a car carrying Powell and accomplice Jimmy Lee Smith. Powell pulled a gun and disarmed Campbell, then forced Hettinger to give up his weapon too. The officers were forced into the car and driven off.



They were ordered out of the car and into the field near Bakersfield, where Campbell was shot. Hettinger began running through the field, escaped and summoned help.



Powell was captured a short time later driving back to Los Angeles. Smith was arrested the next day in a Bakersfield rooming house. Smith, who was convicted along with Powell, died in prison in 2007.

Moniz said the passage of time had not healed her wounds.



"There has not been one day that has passed that I have not thought about and dreamed about my dad," she said. "Growing up without him has been devastating, but what torments me is the manner in which my father died."



— Andrew Blankstein

Photo: Gregory Powell. Credit: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Mobile augmented reality (AR) was a favorite of the tech press in 2009, a year that saw the unveiling of mobile AR browsers from Wikitude, Layar and Metaio. Now that the dust has settled, let’s take a look at the current state of the technology and where it will go from here.

Mobile AR browsers currently work by using a combination of the mobile phone’s camera, compass and GPS data to identify the user’s location and field of view, retrieve data based on the geographical coordinates, and overlay that data over the camera view. This first generation of mobile AR technology had a number of drawbacks which the AR companies are currently tackling.

Accuracy problems

The GPS on a mobile phone normally only gives a position within around 20 meters, while the iPhone’s compass orientation is only accurate to around 20 degrees. This can lead to problems in determining exactly what’s within the camera’s view. Real and augmented objects may also be poorly aligned with each other, so the virtual AR objects end up “floating” in the view rather than being solidly anchored to real objects. This becomes a big problem if, for example, two restaurants with different review ratings sit beside each other. AR company Metaio uses optical tracking mechanisms to stabilize the relative accuracy of the viewpoint and reduce the “floating” effect.

In the longer term, the company is working on markerless tracking to improve accuracy in identifying objects. This works by creating a “signature” from a photograph of a building or other landscape object in various lighting and weather conditions and mapping the signature to the object’s geographical coordinates. The object can then be identified up to an order of magnitude more accurately than when using GPS and compass data alone.

Metaio is partnering with Earthmine, which provides street-level images in which each pixel is mapped to the corresponding 3D coordinate — latitude, longitude and elevation. Metaio’s markerless tracking implementaion is currently in the prototype phase but should be available in products by the end of 2010.

Line of sight

The next problem is line of sight. The GPS position doesn’t tell the AR system where nearby objects are in relation to each other. You may see augmented reality information about a building that is close to your position but obscured by another building. Both Layar and Metaio have been working on this problem. Layar did a demonstration at last year’s PICNIC conference that used “invisible walls” to simulate a real-life object in the line of sight and blank out augmented objects behind it. Metaio is also working on the related problems of scale and depth perception. Virtual objects that are far away should be smaller than those closer to the user, just like in the real world.

As more information becomes available, the AR view can quickly become cluttered. Metaio is working on techniques like clustering objects so that individual objects are only visible when a user moves closer to them. However, Mobile AR products do not yet use any standard data formats for representing points of interest and other AR data, so different browsers will organize data in different ways. AR products are also “walled gardens”; unlike the online world, where different browsers will show you the same web page, you can’t by default view the same information with a Layar, Wikitude or Metaio browser. For mobile AR to really go mainstream, standard data formats and interoperability will have to be established.

According to Claire Boonstra, one of the co-founders of Layar, the next step for mobile AR is moving from “functional AR to experience AR”. Most current users are AR enthusiasts and other early adopters. The general public seems to regard AR with more trepidation. The mobile AR companies therefore need to convert the initial wow factor into an engaging user experience for a larger audience.

Metaio CTO Peter Meier agrees that the user experience needs to improve and more emphasis must be placed on design as well as technology. Layar is banking on features like POI to POI (linking points of interest together), which would allow multiple locations to be linked together in an experience like the Beatles AR discovery tour shown above. Metaio is putting a lot of work into into social features in an effort to create more engagement.

What’s next?

So what’s next for mobile AR? Both Layar and Metaio were reluctant to tell me what’s coming up in the next versions of their products but would talk about general trends. Peter Meier of Metaio said there has been increasing demand to do recognition tasks like those performed by Google Googles. Googles is an Android application that takes a photograph of an object like a book or landmark. It then uses image recognition to identify the object and returns information about it to the user. AR on mobile phones is mainly applied at street level right now, but it could be very interesting to also see AR data for smaller objects such as retail items. Systems using markers (a kind of printed tag) like Metaio’s Lego Box project have been around for a while, but Googles could replace markers with image recognition.

Claire Boonstra of Layar says that AR interfaces in glasses are the next frontier. Video eyewear company Vuzix is bringing out its Wrap 920AR glasses in Q2 of this year. As as well as allowing you to view video in the glasses like other products in the Vuzix range, the glasses have two embedded cameras, a 6-Degree of freedom tracker (which identifies the field of view), and a compass.

Combining an AR view from these glasses with a mobile phone to retrieve the data could be a dream scenario for mobile AR, but there is one technological barrier — mobile phone support for external displays. Apple iPhones and iPods, for example, block the mobile device from sending video display to an external monitor like the Vuzix Wrap eyewear. In order for developers to use an external display, they have to jail-break the iPhone, which is obviously not practical in a commercial product. Incidentally, Vuzix also recently started an AR training division, which services industries like aviation, medicine and the military.

Finally, Metaio’s plans for 2010 include creating the world’s first “AR city”. This is an attempt to move AR into the mainstream by blanketing a specific geographic location in the US with a high-density of AR data. Such an environment could be a giant test lab for the fledging AR industry. Watch this space.

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OLPC XO 1.5 gets the FCC’s seal of approval originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The CW has picked up a pilot order for a revamped version of the 1990 cult classic French film La Femme Nikita.

Terminator Salvation director McG has been tapped to executive produce the project, in cooperation with Warner Bros’ Peter Johnson and Wonderland Productions, The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Wednesday.

The original series was based on the 1990 French film Nikita, directed by Luc Besson. Bridgett Fonda starred in a 1993 American adaptation Point of No Return. With Peta Wilson in the signature role, the franchise first moved to TV in 1997 as a weekly drama on The USA Network before it was cancelled in 2001.

The CW’s Nikita will see the kick-ass secret agent going rogue and a new assassin being trained to replace her.

So the new Apple tablet has finally arrived and instead of talking about what it can and can’t do, lets talk about what’s most important! And that is the accessories that will be coming out for this baby – it’s dress-up time. The creative folks over at Etsy already have iPad Wings (hardy har har) because like the designer behind it says “Every woman knows that wings make pads”. These stick on decals won’t really protect or do anything remotely useful for the iPad, but it will probably make you the butt of many jokes. On a more serious note, Griffin has already released some cases: The Elan Sleeve, Flex Grip, and Jumper. All of them aim to protect your new baby, but are not really that fashionable or even that pretty. I suspect that will change in the near future with other upcoming iPad cases.

Also, over at Amazon many retailers are quickly updating their netbook case descriptions to imply that they are also compatible with the iPad. If you don’t mind the extra material, I guess that could work. Then finally back over at Etsy again some people have already taken a crack at making some homegrown cases and while some are indeed pretty, the iPad Case Envelope kind of reminds me of when that other slim jim laptop (the Air) made its entry into the world to a lot of pomp and circumstance.  Welcome iPad, you about to get your freak on….

File this one under “Annals of Passive-Agressiveness”: At today’s iPad event, Apple scratched McGraw-Hill from the presentation slide displaying the various educational partners for the iPad, after McGraw Hill CEO Joe Biden Harold McGraw III blabbed to MSNBC about the iPad the day before the event. WAY TO SHOW THEM, STEVE! [Venture Beat]