Author: Serkadis

Sheriff’s deputies are still trying to piece together why a Palmdale man took his own life after killing his sister and his ex-wife.

Lt. Patrick Nelson of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said Phillip Adams, 31, called his father at work about 7 a.m. Monday to say he had killed his sister and was planning to take his own life. The father, whose name was not released, rushed to the family’s Palmdale home in the 38700 block of 31st Street East, where he found his daughter, Crystal Adams, 34, dead.

Her white Mustang was gone, and deputies said there were no gunshot wounds on her body or other apparent physical trauma. They said an autopsy would have to be completed to determine how she died.

While Adams’ father called police, his son was walking up to the home of Jennifer Darling-Wade, Phillip Adams’ ex-wife, in the 45300 block of Beech Avenue in Lancaster, Nelson said. Darling-Wade, 33, spoke with him briefly when she opened the door, Nelson said. Then Adams shot her several times in front of their 9-year-old daughter.

Darling-Wade’s current husband, who was in another room, called police, who found her dead at the scene.

Adams then fled in his sister’s Mustang, driving along a rural road north of Lancaster until he reached the area of Avenue E at Sierra Highway, where he pulled over to the side of the road.

Sheriff’s deputies found him soon afterward, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Nelson said he did not know why Adams shot either of the women, but noted that Adams and Darling-Wade had ongoing custody issues over their daughter.

The girl was traumatized, Nelson said.

“She’s basically just lost both parents,” he said.

— Amina Khan

 In the Trees, Honey Bees written by Lori Mortensen and illustrated by Cris Arbo is an amazingly illustrated story about the jobs of honey bees and their interaction with the surrounding environment.  In the Trees, Honey Bees offers explanations of the different roles of honey bees such as worker, drone and queen.  One of the best aspects of this book are the illustrations, they are detailed and offer the reader a glimpse inside the hives of honey bees.  The last two pages of the book present a more elaborate account of the honey bee both inside the hive, and out.

Curriculum Connections

 There are numerous different lessons for which In the Trees, Honey Bees can be used.  It can be used for instruction on habitat, animal life cycles and behavioral adaptations to environment.  This book is appropriate for many different grade levels.  It provides students with an example of how animals rely on their environment to survive. It would be perfect for a lesson on conserving resources and our own relationship with the environment. (SOL 1.5a, 2.4a, 3.4a)

Additional Resources

• Tales from the Hive, this is a great PBS site about the anatomy of a honey bee hive and it also explains how bees dance.
• The National Honey Board, this website has some great free downloads and a teacher’s guide for sale at a discounted rate for educators.
• Honey Bee Lesson Plan, detailed lesson plan that discusses honey bee biology, pollination, pheromones and the “waggle” dance.

Book: In the Trees, Honey Bees
Author: Lori Mortensen
Illustrator: Cris Arbo
Publisher: Dawn Publications
Publication Date: 2009
Pages: 29
Grade Range: 1-3
ISBN: 978-1-58469-114-3

Here’s a fun one for you lawyers out there. Richard points us to a story about a movie made entirely by chimpanzees who were given cameras, which is now being broadcast on the BBC. However, Richard raises a good question: who owns the copyright on the film. Generally speaking (and, yes, there are some exceptions), whoever creates the actual work gets the copyright, and it seems clear that the chimps specifically learned to pay attention to the viewfinder on the camera. Of course, with films and such, there may be more contractual issues set up, but I doubt the chimps signed anything. Perhaps it’s a work-for-hire situation, even if the chimps weren’t paid? Though, according to some, if the chimps aren’t paid, they won’t have incentive to make any new movies…

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Are you addicted to Merscom’s Create a Mall? Do you find yourself enjoying this building simulator hours on end at your Mac or Windows computer? Well, now you can take it everywhere you go! Merscom and 99 games, have released this popular Mac and Windows title for the iPhone and iPod platform.

Create a Mall is a building simulator where you assume the role as Kelly, a rising star in a mall company. As Kelly, players are challenged to become world-class mall developers by filling their venues with enticing stores for customers in six different cities throughout the world. The game allows you to use the money you have earned to buy jewelry, clothing, or office decorations.

Does this sound like you kind of game? Create a Mall is now available in the App Store for $3.99. 

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Could it be that The White House didn’t realize the intense blowback it would receive in liberal circles after leaking* news of a spending freeze?

In a post over a HuffPo, Jared Bernstein, the chief economist for VP Joe Biden uses a lot of words to promise that they’re not taking the pedal off the floor at all, and that the President has all kinds of job-creation goodies in the works.

He then offers up a lesson in “Freeze-ology”, explaining that there are really two kinds of freezes:

(1) an across-the-board freeze on every program outside of national security; and (2) a surgical approach where overall totals are frozen but some individual programs go up and others go down. In short, a hatchet versus a scalpel.

So, okay, Obama’s going to use a scalpel, not a hatchet (which is how Bernstein justifies Obama’s criticism of McCains’ freeze proposal during the 2008 election.

Now, here how he explains that a freeze can actually equal a spending hike!

Take, for example, the policies we announced yesterday — a significant expansion (a 20% increase) in a program that provides services for seniors, like respite care and in-home services; a program to limit student loan repayments to 10 percent of income (after living expenses); an expansion of two tax credits, one for child care and another for retirement savings.

How can we expand these programs in the context of a freeze? By making sure that the freeze either holds steady or increases those parts of the discretionary budget that support jobs and income security for folks who need them, while whacking the wasteful subsidies that support lobbyists and special interests.

So basically, they’re going to spend money better, which almost everyone agrees is probably a good idea.

The real point though is that it’s pathetic that before the State of the Union, they’re already getting wildly wishy-washy about what they’re doing, which just looks like bad politics.

*According to Marc Ambinder, the news leaked before they’d intended it to. Still.

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See Also:

• The Democrats’ Circular Firing Squad Set To Go Into Hyper-Mode After News Of Obama’s Spending Freeze
• The Spending Freeze: Appalling On Every Level
• Barack "Hoover" Obama

It’s rumored by some that Apple will announce that the iPhone is becoming available from carriers other than AT&T on Wednesday. That would mean you could leave AT&T while staying with Apple, among other interesting things.

Price War
If you want an iPhone in the US, you’re stuck with AT&T. If the iPhone becomes available on more carriers, people have a choice. And if the phones are equal across the carriers, people will be choosing based on rate plans and coverage instead of whichever carrier has the phone they want.

This would hopefully lead to lower prices, especially for services like text messages, data and voice. There’s already a mini-price war going on between Verizon and AT&T, who have both dropped their unlimited calling plans to $70. If they’re both fighting for iPhone customers, one expects this to only continue.

Tethering
AT&T still doesn’t offer tethering for the iPhone, while Verizon is offering it on phones such as the Palm Pre Plus. If Verizon has tethering, how fast do you think AT&T would scramble to get it? Assuming it’s a choice by AT&T, and not some other weird technical issue, we think it would happen pretty fast. These are the benefits of competition.

Coverage and Reception
AT&T’s network might not be terrible, depending where you live, but one thing is for sure: it’s stuck providing coverage for the biggest wireless data hog ever made. Verizon has a great network that really hasn’t been challenged. On the one hand, Verizon might handle the iPhone with aplomb. On the other, AT&T aced our 3G test and still sucks when the iPhone is on it. Is it the network, or is it the phone?

As for the assumption that Verizon getting the iPhone would lighten the load on AT&T, well, it would be nice if half of the AT&T users just went over to VZ, but that’s definitely not how networks—or businesses—work.

3G vs. 4G Wireless Data
If we don’t get a Verizon iPhone this year, the general expectation is that we’ll see an LTE iPhone on Verizon in 2011. (LTE is the 4G wireless protocol that both VZ and AT&T are supporting.)

But if Verizon gets it sooner, it might not have Apple breathing down its neck for a sturdy LTE network by next summer. That could be bad news for not just iPhone users, but anyone looking to get an LTE phone. Remember: 3G was available when the original iPhone was released, Apple was just too cautious to hop on board before it was ready.

GSM vs. CDMA
Verizon runs a CDMA network, which would require a CDMA iPhone. CDMA phones are more difficult to hack than GSM phones, which would be a hit for the thriving homebrew and jailbreaking scene that currently exists. Not that Verizon—or Apple—would care.

Furthermore, a CDMA iPhone wouldn’t be able to travel outside of the US without a GSM radio, as most international carriers use GSM, just like AT&T. Many of Verizon’s BlackBerry’s offer CDMA phones with GSM radios for international roaming, so it’s possible the iPhone could get it too.

Actress Michelle Trachtenberg is celebrating the launch of her handbag collaboration with Botkier with a sexy spread and intimate chat with the Feb/March issue of Complex – on newsstands Feb. 8. The actress –who also appeared on the NBC medical drama Mercy — created a special bag for Shopbop.com, whose proceeds benefit Oxfam International. Michelle’s looking pretty good in that mask — but she always has had a thing for accessories. Just last fall, Trachtenberg was tapped to design jewelry for Coach’s Poppy Collection.

Keep your eyes peeled for the actress’ return to Gossip Girl, where she is reprising her role as backstabbing baddie Georgina Sparks.

Developer Introversion revealed a release date this morning for their first-ever console game, Darwinia+. The Xbox Live Arcade version of the indie-developed, PC strategy game will hit the Live Marketplace on Wednesday, February 10.

Darwinia+ takes everything that made the original PC game so popular and adds new tutorials, control options, a retooled user interface, and Xbox 360-specific features like Avatar Awards. The developers have gone as far as to label this their “Director’s Cut” of Darwinia — “the best possible version” of the game, according to Introversion.

Look for Darwinia+ on February 10 for 1200 Microsoft points, or about $15.

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Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety, Ford

Back in October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration announced a Ford F-150 airbag investigation. There were 530,000 2005 model year F-150s involved in the investigation before Halloween, but now the number has swelled to 1.56 million trucks spanning the 2004-2006 model years. The government agency has also upgraded the investigation to an engineering analysis – one step closer to a recall.

The F-150 airbags are being investigated because the administration has reportedly received some 300 complaints of airbags that deployed without an accident. An earlier report revealed that the majority of the premature airbag deployments happened at ignition or directly after ignition – a really lousy wake up call first thing in the morning. Of the 300 complaints, there were 60 injuries, including cuts and bruises and two people reported being knocked unconscious as a result of the airbag deployment.

Ford, which is reportedly cooperating with the federal government in the investigation, predictably doesn’t want to speculate as to whether the investigation will lead to a full-blown recall.

[Source: Reuters]

Fed reportedly expanding investigation into Ford F-150 airbags originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Podcasts, Hybrid, Government/Legal, Plants/Manufacturing, Audi, BMW, Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Saab, Toyota, Spyker, Rumormill

Episode #163 of the Autoblog Podcast is here and Chris Paukert once again adds his insight as he’s fast becoming the fourth regular member of the crew. First up we peek into the Autoblog Garage, occupied this week by a Nissan Versa, Audi S4, and a Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid. Topics follow, with our first drive of the 2011 BMW 5 Series starting us off before we move on to Ed Whitacre’s new status as official General Motors CEO and get all misty about the uncertain fortunes of Saab (glad that’s been cleared up.) Toyota’s most recent recall for its throttle issue, the 2011 BMW 335is, and rumors of a 50th anniversary edition Ford Mustang with independent rear suspension finish us off before we take some questions and call it a night.

Until next week, hit up Joystiq and Engadget – there’s going to be big Apple Tablet news soon! Let us know what you think of our podcast by dropping us an email at Podcast at Autoblog dot com, reviewing the show in iTunes, filling out our survey, or even leaving us a voicemail on our Google Voice line 734-288-8POD (734-288-8763). Thanks for listening!

Continue reading Autoblog Podcast #163 – Paukert Re-Redux

Autoblog Podcast #163 – Paukert Re-Redux originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ah, finally Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway gets some recognition.

Just kidding. But the company will replace Burlington Northern (BNI) in teh S&P 500 after its acquisition closes.

Congratulations!

The stock is soaring 8% after hours.

(Dicslosure: the authors owns a Berkshire b-share)

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See Also:

• Turns Out Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Are A Bunch Of Rude Un-Folksy Jerks
• What’s Going To Happen To Berkshire Hathaway When Warren Buffett Departs
• S&P: Berkshire Could Lose Coveted AAA Rating Due to Burlington Buy

Filed under: Spy Photos, Coupe, Performance, Porsche

No other automaker subscribes to the “evolution, not revolution” idiom more than Porsche, and the next generation 911 will benefit from yet another styling refresh later this year in the form of some subtly tweaked sheetmetal and a new set of LED indicators that join the current model’s daytime running lights.

Although the front-mounted LEDs are the most glaring addition, these newest spy shots hint at slightly reworked front and rear fascias, Panamera-inspired mirrors and the possible addition of a retractable rear spoiler. If we had to guess, we’d expect the newest 911 to debut either at the Geneva Motor Show in March or the Paris show this October, with a few minor mechanical updates and the usual assortment of interior upgrades.

Spy Shots: Next-gen Porsche 911 gets LED indicators originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: China, Europe, Volvo, Rumormill, Geely

With all the Saab hullabaloo clogging up the virtual pipes as of late seems that folks have been neglecting the fate of the other fancy Swedish brand purchased by a pipe-dreamin’, pie in the sky American car maker whose coffers were overflowing with SUV money. That’s right, Ford purchased Volvo in 1999 for $6.45 billion dollars. Many scratched their heads at the time, as Mercury and/or Lincoln certainly could have used a $6 billion infusion. Also, both Mercury and Lincoln compete with Volvo, on paper at least. But, just like General Motors purchased Saab, Ford had their Swedish brand.

In retrospect, probably not the best idea ever hatched.

Proof? Rumor has it that Ford is inking in the details of a sale of Volvo to China’s Geely Holding Group Co. for $1.8 billion by February 8. That’s a nearly $4.7 billion bath on Ford’s part in just eleven years. But here’s the thing: according to the same rumor, Ford might let Volvo go to Geely for as little as $1.6 billion. There’s a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo still to be worked out (this agreement runs out after one year, that regulatory board must approve X in a timely fashion) but it’s looking more and more that Volvo is about to become a Chinese company. We’ll keep you posted.

[Source: Trading Markets]

Rumormill: Ford to sell Volvo to Geely for 1.8 billion on Feb. 8 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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McGraw-Hill. Ever heard of them? If you’ve picked up any textbook written in the last hundred years or so, chances are they published it. Well, its CEO just spilled the beans on Apple’s not-so-secret surprise on live TV.

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Square, the startup that is making mobile payments for the iPhone, just announced it’s full list of angel investors. Kevin Rose announced his involvement in a video demo (embedded below) he did a few days ago, but until now it wasn’t known who else was involved.

The full list includes: Marissa Mayer from Google, Dennis Crowley from Foursquare, Kevin Rose from Digg, Ron Conway, Biz Stone of Twitter, Joshua Schachter, Shawn Fanning (who’s starting a new venture with Dave Morin), Zachary Bogue, Andrew Rasiej, Greg Yaitanes, Jean-David Blanc, David Lee, Esther Dyson, Robin Chan, First Round Capital and Fritz Lanman. Basically, it’s an extremely impressive list.

Most notable are Marissa Mayer and Dennis Crowley, making their first investments, and it seems like a great investment to get into.

Square has gotten off to a fast start these last few months. When it raised $10 million, it was rumored that the company was valued at $40 million. For a company whose product isn’t even available to the public, that’s not bad. Our own MG got a demo of Square, and saw its potential to democratize mobile payments.

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Way to friggin’ go, Carol! Yahoo’s fourth quarter revenues were lower than a year ago, but they beat the high bound of the company’s outlook forecast range, leading to a $119 million profit as opposed to last year’s $278 million loss.

Display ads were up 26%, the biggest gain since 2006. Search ads went up 8%, primarily because of improved targeting algorithms, the company claimed. But Bartz reminded listeners that Yahoo’s real competition is TV, where brand advertisers still do their biggest spending. Yahoo’s answer to this isn’t to run TV-like ads, it’s to create original video content with advertisers.

Employee headcount grew by about 300, marking an end for now to repeated rounds of layoffs.

And remember, the advertising deal with Microsoft has yet to result in either side paying the other yet. Things won’t kick into gear until next year.

Here are the relevant stats from the earnings report:

Revenues were $1,732 million for the fourth quarter of 2009, which exceeded the top end of the Company’s business outlook range.

Revenues decreased 4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008 and increased 10 percent from the third quarter of 2009.

Revenues were $6,460 million for 2009, a decrease of 10 percent compared to 2008. Excluding the impact of currency rate fluctuations and divested business lines, revenues for 2009 would have declined 6 percent compared to 2008.

Income from operations for the fourth quarter of 2009 was $119 million, compared to a loss of $278 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Net income per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2009 was $0.11, including charges of $0.04 per share related to the Microsoft search agreement and restructuring charges. For fourth quarter of 2008, net loss per diluted share was $0.22, including a charge of $0.39 per share primarily related to a goodwill impairment.

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The Brits invaded Plug and Play’s Sunnyvale campus Monday night to introduce a group of promising European tech startups to Silicon Valley. Six young companies showed themselves off to an audience of potential partners.

The event was part of a tour for the winners of Seedcamp Week 2009, a London-based competition for European tech startups that drew more 800 applicants this year. Seedcamp is a private-company incubator, much like YCombinator or the Founder’s Institute here in the States. The organization works closely with the British government to foster entrepreneurship throughout Europe. The 2009 competition winners were selected back in September.

Seedcamp’s Community and Events Manager Alasdair Bell said that Eastern Europe in particular has plenty of pent up tech talent ripe for entrepreneurial startups. He said they just need a little business acumen, connections and investment from the UK and US.

Here are the companies that presented:

Codility
Codility lets any recruiter, including those without IT skills, to quickly verify the skills of a programmer. Coders looking for work are required to write a snippet of source code, which is then automatically tested for correctness and performance. The result is a kind of Crowdflower for programmers.

The model requires some seriously impressive technology. Coders are notoriously smart people, and it can’t be easy to write a system for sizing them up. The founding team is from Poland, with headquarters in London. The executives hope to inspire more entrepreneurial risk-taking among Poland’s tech-savvy scholars. “We believe this might be the first global company of Polish origin in the tech community,” CEO Chris Kowalczyk said. “We want to show Polish programmers that you can conquer the world once you are really good technically and business-wise.” Kowalczyk said that while the University of Warsaw regularly produces some of the best programmers in the world, almost none of those students choose to join startups.

Codility has raised $50,000 from Seedcamp.

Joobili
Based in Budapest, Hungary, Joobili thinks that travel sites are wrong to ask users their preferred destination first. When going on vacation, the first bit of info users have is a time frame; picking the destination is the hard part. Seasonal events make different locations attractive at different times. Joobili asks users the time frame they plan to travel and then provides information on the most interesting things happening throughout Europe at that time. The company aggregates events from tourism offices — it currently counts 1/3 of all European national tourism offices as “pro members.” Tourism offices can list events for free, or they can pay $100-$1,000 for stronger promotion. Joobili has partnerships with a number of in-flight magazines and plans to build an API to boost distribution.

For frequent European vacationers who prefer cultural activities like jazz festivals and boat shows, the site could be very handy.

The company has angel funding from Esther Dyson among others.

Kukunu
Kukunu is another holiday planning tool and recommendation engine that suggests events, hotels, and restaurants to visit on your vacation. It integrates with Facebook and Twitter to facilitate friend-sourcing your vacation ideas.

Europeans seem to take their vacationing seriously. Not sure I’d need a tool to plan out a holiday, and I’m pretty sure I don’t need my friends’ help for ideas, so it’s hard to tell how useful this will be (the company is still in private beta). The recommendation engine that suggests the best places to visit in a given locale might be useful.

Kwaga
France-based Kwaga wants to make email more productive by prioritizing the Inbox. Your Kwaga dashboard tells you which emails are most important, reminds you to respond to ones you have “shelved,” and pushes you to follow up with people you haven’t yet heard back from. It works with Gmail, outlook, iPhone, and other major email services. The company plans to operate with a freemium model for two years and then sell to enterprises. It has raised $1 million and is currently looking for more funding.

The problem the company tackles here is real — email overload is a common complaint, and a service to help prioritize it is in order. The company’s semantic technology could help automate the prioritization process. That technology is the key, because relying on users to tag their emails appropriately is probably a dead-end.

WonderGraphs
WonderGraphs wants to make it easy to create, manipulate and share graphs. Users can tweak certain variables or parameters and get visual results in real time. New data sets can be quickly incorporated into old graphs. The company is targeting big enterprise customers.

There will be a lot of competition in collaborative, web-based data visualization, most notably from Microsoft and Google. Adoption hurdles could be formidable, especially if an entire company has to move all its data to the new application to see the benefits.

Fabricly
Fabricly is an online marketplace that connects fashion companies with manufacturers, textile suppliers, and other service providers. Since fashion styles change quickly, apparel companies need the ability to switch suppliers quickly. Any fashion company that is not vertically integrated often ends up scrambling for the right textile and other suppliers each time the season changes. Fabricly’s supplier network aims to take the risk out of finding new sourcing partners.

The company launched a supply-chain software six months ago and will be bringing the data and contacts from that into its marketplace.

If the company does well, it could fuel a long-tail apparel designer market. There are plenty of would-be fashion artists who have the creative talent without the supplier connections.

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Color us (not) surprised, but Apple is definitely launching a tablet tomorrow. At least, according to the CEO of one of the planet’s most noted book publishers. In a recent interview on CNBC, Terry McGraw (head honcho of McGraw-Hill, naturally), very openly admitted that books from his company would be coming to an Apple tablet “tomorrow,” and he also confirmed that his company has “worked with Apple for quite awhile.” As he dug the hole deeper, we also learned that the “tablet will be based on the iPhone operating system,” and he noted that said books would be “transferable.” We’re assuming an updated iPhone OS is also in the works, one that presumably supports textbooks in the way that the mythical tablet might. Obviously we’re not taking any of this as gospel until Stevie J confirms or denies it on stage tomorrow — for all we know, Mr. McGraw may have just seen something speculative — but it’s not too often you see a CEO blow this much pointed smoke. Peek the full quote after the break along with the interview clip.

Continue reading McGraw-Hill’s CEO confirms Apple tablet, debuting tomorrow

McGraw-Hill’s CEO confirms Apple tablet, debuting tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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