There’s been some minor speculation that the Apple Tablet will be one of the greenest devices on the market. Why? Because after a patent surfaced describing an iPod with a solar panel on the front, there were some rumors suggesting that this patent would become active in the tablet, perhaps in the form of a solar panel behind the glass screen.
Sorry, ecology majors, but that was all hot air. We have confirmation that it won’t have solar panels. It may sound silly, but this could have been a big differentiator for the device. Sorry that we’re chasing these rumors, but every little bit that comes in you’ll know about.
In the latest in our series exploring the integration of mobile phones with Internet of Things, we look at what kinds of things you can do using your phone as a proximity sensor. Right now most of the use cases are social – for example, your phone lets you see who else is in the same location as you. But what will emerge when we add data from sensors to the mix? It becomes much more than a social platform then, because it adds billions of ‘things’ to the equation.
Sponsor
RWW’s Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things Series:
As Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote earlier, “where you are” has became a platform to build added value on top of – just as “who you know” has on Facebook and "what you’re doing" on Twitter. Marshall outlined some current use cases for location data – showing nearby restaurants and ratings, advertising, local news, events, Wikipedia data about local buildings.
All of that functionality can be achieved right now using geo-location data from your iPhone or Android device, data from local places (e.g. address data), metadata from businesses (e.g. pricing from local shops) and people data (e.g. user check-ins from Foursquare or Brightkite).
As impressive as that is, it’s really just the beginning. Imagine the possibilities when you add data from sensors.
DecaWave’s ScenSor uses wireless radio chips to enable "precision RTLS (Real Time Location Systems) applications."
In the concept video, distance measurements are used to determine proximity and do things such as enable/disable a laptop, find a lost teddy bear, enable access in a hospital room for a doctor, identify nearby patient info and then download the correct records to the doctor, and advise of approaching friends. Other concepts shown in the video include an in-store location application guide for shoppers, proximity of tagged clothing, and information transfer capability with patient data.
The functionality shown by DecWave is still emerging. Probably the most likely place we’ll see sensor data make an impact in the short-term is on our roads. Using your mobile phone, you could get a real-time update of traffic conditions via sensors embedded in the road. This possibility excites even those who don’t currently use the Mobile Internet. In a recent report on mobile internet usage, checking real time travel updates was listed by 33% of respondents as "the most interesting to those that don’t currently use mobile internet."
Over the next few years, expect to see sensor-driven data add to the functionality and breadth of mobile phone location platforms. Let us know your thoughts.
Aloqa, a mobile application that serves up local information to users based on their location, has released version 2.0 of its offering. The new version brings more local knowledge and social information to its nearly 300,000 users.
Aloqa, available for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, is all about helping you discover the world around you—no matter where you are. Aloqa can find nearby stores, hospitals, movie showtimes and more, wherever you are. You can also see if any of your Facebook friends are nearby.
The app is always updating, so as you move around, you’re constantly kept updated with what’s going on around you, instead of having to search for what’s nearby.
With this new release, Aloqa adds three great new features. First, wherever you are in the US, you can look up the 25 closest houses and apartments for sale, and even make an appointment with a realtor. Aloqa will also show you major restaurant chains nearby offering take-out, which is great if you’re on a business trip looking for a quick pit stop. Lastly, there’s the “Hot” section, which will show you what people usually like or do when they’re in your location — whether it’s a great restaurant, or a cool store people love to check out.
Aloqa is also making these features available to more users, now supporting use in five countries: the US, UK, Germany, Canada and Austria. There’s also lots of new content, places to go and things to do, most coming through Aloqa’s developer API and its partnerships with other companies.
One thing Aloqa has going for it is that it’s not totally reliant on its own users to publish content, which is an Achilles heel for a lot of location-based companies. By leveraging established tools like Yelp, Eventful, Facebook and others, Aloqa already has a ton of information it can tap, meaning it doesn’t have to get to a critical mass of users before it really becomes useful.
Though not without its fair share of competitors – Geodelic, Dopplr and Where are all making waves in the location-based information game – Aloqa is quickly making a name for itself. It was one of T-Mobile’s top picks for the Android Market and is currently a finalist for the Mobile Premier Awards. Of course, it was also the people’s choice winner at MobileBeat in July.
Aloqa has offices in Munich, Germany and Palo Alto, Calif. and in July raised $1.5 million in funding from Wellington Partners.
Today Brightcove announced the next logical step in its video publishing platform — and quite likely the next stage in online video in general — the TV Everywhere Solution Pack (TVE-SP). It’s a combination of the current Brightcove 4 platform, along with other tools and services, that allows TV programmers to bring their goods to subscribers online.
Basically, if you subscribe to networks like Syfy or Showtime via your cable, satellite, or telecom provider, you’ll have access to that content online at the network’s site after a simple authentication procedure. Brightcove has teamed up with Ping Identity to bring their PingFederate software to TVE-SP — vastly simplifying the normal headache of user authentication.
Now you might ask, what makes this so special — given that cable providers like Time Warner and Comcast are already implementing their own solutions to bring TV programming to subscribers online? The biggest benefit I can see is that it gives TV programmers the power to make content available online without being beholden to cable providers. Programmers would have complete control of advertising as well as the distribution of the content.
VentureBeat spoke to Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire back in October of last year about the future of online video. Given today’s announcement, that interview has gained another layer of meaning entirely. Particularly, when he’s asked about his biggest questions regarding online video. He told us:
There’s a big question as to whether meaningful, over-the-top distribution opportunities in video will emerge. What I mean by that is people are getting access to live, high quality, on-demand video without being dependent on traditional cable, satellite or telecom companies. There’s also convergence. There’s a sufficient volume of premium content coming online and speeds are high enough for HD streaming video. Media buyers are changing their behavior.
Given what TVE-SP enables networks to do, it seems that Allaire is spearheading a world where video content producers don’t have to be as reliant on traditional methods of distribution. This could be the first step towards a content utopia where we could just subscribe to Showtime’s website and view it on our televisions via something like the Boxee Box.
Brightcove’s VP of TV Solutions, Eric Alia, had this to say when asked about TV Everywhere’s potential to reduce cable/satellite/telco control of content:
There will be more choice and control here for both programmers and viewers, not less. The opportunity to go direct to the audience has been there for years now. iTunes, Netflix and Hulu are just three well known outlets. But they’ve been limited. Go try to find Dexter Season 4 on any of those services. The cable finale was almost two months ago. TV Everywhere has the chance to open the floodgates to content that today is stale by the time it gets to those services, if it ever gets there. I’m impressed by how quickly the industry seems to be moving. Programmers see this as a chance to make their viewers happy and to do it without undermining their existing business. As one programming exec put it to me, “we want to demonstrate a better business model than unintentionally downsizing the entire industry.”
Coraid amassed 1,100 customers before it raised any venture capital. It managed to do so because it had a disruptive storage solution that fit well with the corporate computing trends toward virtualization and cloud-based storage.
Today, the Redwood City, Calif.-based company announced it has raised $10 million in its first institutional round of funding from Allegis Capital and Azure Capital Partners. The company has hired a number of new executives, including chief executive Kevin Brown, chairman Audrey MacLean, and a couple of other executives.
Coraid makes software that virtualizes storage equipment, meaning it pools together a bunch of commodity hard drives and allows a bunch of computers to tap into them. As storage needs ebb and flow, the storage can be reconfigured as needed to handle the needs of the moment. Storage, says Brown, has reached an inflection point where expensive big boxes are being replaced by clusters of commodity hardware tied together with virtualization software.
The company competes with big companies such as EMC and NetApp that create huge storage arrays for corporations using older iSCSI and Fibre Channel solutions. But Coraid can undercut them on price because it relies on virtualilzation, effectively doing the same thing with cheaper storage linked together via Ethernet connections.
These commodity drives were once used only for backup, but their performance has improved so much in recent years that they are now used for primary storage. Coraid began selling its storage equipment in 2005 and built up to a huge client base because the solution has proved to be disruptive.
Brown (right) refers to the technology as “scale-out” architecture, meaning it can take cheap hardware and replicate it to handle the storage needs of a large corporation. Brown contends that this technology has five times to eight times better performance for a given price compared to Fibre Channel and iSCSI solutions. It also eliminates the more complex storage environments.
The federal National Institutes of Health has adopted Coraid’s products for the National Human Genome Research project in Rockville, Md. The institute has deployed more than 400 terabytes of Coraid storage equipment. Storage installations range in cost from $10,000 to $50,000.
The company was founded by Brantley Coile, chief technology officer of Coraid. Brown is the former chief executive of virtualization software vendor Kidaro, which Microsoft bought in 2008. MacLean was the founder of Network Equipment Technologies, which went public in 1987. Mark Leslie, the founder of Veritas Software, and Charles Giancarlo, managing director at Silver Lake Partners, have been named advisors to the company. The company has 25 employees.
Reelsurfer, which lets you search and extract relevant clips from long-form video, has just closed a deal with EduStream, the San Bernardino Community College District’s video portal, to make lectures and other video materials fully searchable by students and faculty.
EduStream is sponsored by the 110 California Community Colleges and their Chancellor’s office. They are working on deploying this fully across 170 institutions across 10 states included in Edustream and plan to launch fully in the coming weeks.
“Faculty and students will be able to search and share segments inside videos using custom playlists and social network integration,” said Dr. Glen Kuck, EduStream’s Project Director.
Announcement of the partnership comes while Menlo Park, Calif.-based Reelsurfer is in the midst of discussions to obtain video content from the major film studios. The company has also been working with the USC Film School since October of 2008.
Reelsurfer’s technology encodes videos (converting it into the right format), indexes video files, and provides a search API. Users can create playlists of their selected content and download the clips as well as clip the content further to highlight an area of interest. The company is focusing on three market segments: content creators who want to enable raw footage searching, content owners who want to distribute content, and educational providers who want to give students access to content.
Co-founders Neil Joglekar and Christian Yang came up with the idea while looking for their favorite one-liners from the TV series Entourage. They went to YouTube first, but it wasn’t easy to find the exact clips they wanted, and clips were often tagged incorrectly. They created of a patent-pending technology that processes video and makes it searchable for 30 seconds of dialogue. They founded Reelsurfer in March 2008. The product uses a complex algorithm to figure out the most relevant clips for a particular search and ranks them based on factors such as synonyms and word proximity.
Because of video licensing and rights issues, the duo decided that a white label service made the most sense. “We are different from most video solutions in that ReelSurfer sits on top of whatever technology framework exists and allows video to be served without leaving a content owner’s protective walls,” said Joglekar.
The company, which works on a software-to-service annual licensing, is cash flow positive and has not received any outside funding. It just completed its first semester working with Brave New Films. Visual Effects Society is another customer. Independent film producer Anand Chandrasekaran sits on Reelsurfer’s board of directors, and company advisors include Bill Fay (executive producer of Independence Day, The Hangover, and 300 and president of production at Legendary Pictures) and Carl Rosendahl (founder of PDI Animation, which was sold to DreamWorks).
Competitors include YouTube, Ramp (formerly EveryZing), which allows for searching of audio, video, and text and has a partnership with NBC Universal across all of its online properties, and AnyClip, which is focused on movie content and uses publicly available information and human tagging, as well as a number of university-based media centers. Joglekar said the combination of Reelsurfer’s technology and how it is deployed differentiates it from these other companies.
Of all the rumors swirling around the Apple Tablet expected to be announced on Wednesday, the one most everyone can agree on is that it will be used as a full color electronic reader which will put Amazon’s Kindle to shame. Over the past few weeks, Apple has been negotiating a flurry of last-minute deals directly with book publishers such as HarperCollins and McGraw-Hill. Magazine and newspaper publishers are salivating to get on the device. But one unanswered question so far is whether Apple will add books and magazines to iTunes or create an entirely new e-book store from scratch.
We believe there is a good chance there will be a Barnes & Noble bookstore built into the Apple Tablet, either as one of the showcase apps which launches with the device, powering a new book section in iTunes, or integrated directly into the Tablet’s e-reader. The two companies are thought to be working closely together, increasing the likelihood that Barnes & Noble will be part of the announcement on Wednesday. While Apple can run around cutting deals with the larger publishers, a built-in Barnes & Noble bookstore could include up to a million titles in one fell swoop, just like on B&N’s own Nook reader. Barnes & Noble already offers an eReader app for the iPhone (iTunes link) which lets you download and read electronic books on the smaller device. That app could be paving the way for an eReader or book store on the Tablet.
Of course, Amazon also has a Kindle app for the iPhone which allows people to buy electronic books from its store. We don’t know whether Apple is also working with Amazon for Wednesday’s launch, although given the recent moves by Amazon to shore up the Kindle in anticipation of Apple’s technicolor onslaught seeing them on stage would be really surprising. Allowing Amazon to create a Kindle app for the Tablet, though, seems more reasonable. After all, Apple wants to sell Tablets. If it doesn’t have to get into the bookstore business to do that, why should it?
For Barnes & Noble, however, if it can manage to become the default bookstore on the Tablet, or simply squeeze its app into a preferred slot, it could make real inroads against the Kindle. An Apple Tablet tied to a Barnes & Noble digital bookstore must be Jeff Bezos’ worst nightmare.
I have finally decided to dive into eReader world and see if this kind of reading is for me. I have been following Sony Reader evolution since Librie was introduced in Japan, however back then I did not feel like messing with Japanese menus and flashing the firmware for English language use. Sony tends to release some products way ahead of its time of public acceptance or market readiness and I believe Librie among other similar products (VAIO Pentablet PCV-LX900, etc) suffered and did not have much success because of that. However Sony decided to re-launch eReader development and as most of you know introduced a number of readers with each generation getting better and better. Becoming open to ePub and other widely acceptable formats make Sony eReader competitive among the sea of readers flooding consumers left and right. There are a number of readers out there from other manufacturers, each offering some unique features and it is important for Sony to stay on top of this business and continue to innovate.
Strategically latest Reader from Sony PRS900 model pretty much has it all:
Awesome build
Japanese quality in manufacturing
Free 3G wireless access to the online library (introduced though a little bit late in the game)
Nice 7″ eInk screen
Touch screen
Better levels (16) of gray scale
The Library books initiative is in conjunction with OverDrive
Landscape Mode
I can also see a few negative sides: it’s price is definitely challenging, missing WiFi option is something that can be dealt with, however people living in areas with no AT&T coverage would have benefited having 802.11 b/g option and being able to access the content at numerous hot spots. I would love to see a future Reader offer an OLED color screen (color to be used for textbooks), and be essentially a tablet with options to access not only Reader Library but other Sony Network Services, sort of a multi-functional computing device (here I said it).
Anyways, these are just my initial comments in regards to this product, as I just started messing with it. If Sony misses this opportunity in this market (and depending on tomorrow’s Apple’s announcement, there maybe a slight chance of it, as their iDevice is targeting eReader market big time and if so it maybe just another revolution), like they did in music with its Walkman, I’d be pretty disappointed… Hint for Sony: hit hard the edu sector with your Readers, work with publishers, and students as well as professors would be your biggest clientele and profitability will speak for itself (meanwhile students would be very thankful for lighter bag packs); make your devices to be easy note takers, and I could go on and on. It is all going to come down to GUI and content providers and if Sony’s future readers will have intuitively innovative user interface backed up by great content (including newspapers and magazines), volumes of sales will speak for themselves.
For those of you who like to view the process of unboxing, check out pics below and feel free to post your comments!
Harold Ford’s “I can’t believe it’s not a campaign!” campaign is rapidly becoming a caricature of itself:
During the roughly half-hour interview, Ford turned on the full Southern charm, repeatedly referring to the Post’s Fred Dicker as “Mr. Dicker” despite repeated requests that he drop the formality.
The two bantered about the difference between New York and Tennessee, with Dicker poking fun at Ford for pronouncing “smear” (as in: “I’ve been the victim of a smear campaign on my position on choice”) as “schmear”, prompting this exchange:
Dicker: “I think schmear is something you put on a bagel.”
Ford: “I’m a little country. I apologize…It’s “smear”, s-m-e-a-r. Y’all talk funny.”
Well-played, Harold! It’s not every ophidian, carpetbagging politician who can apologize to a group of potential constituents by insulting them. Besides, I’m sure some of your best friends are Jews bankers New Yorkers.
In the short time since Ford decided to take a territorial piss on this political tree (as a proxy for his BFFs on Wall Street), we New Yorkers have come to delight in the special kind of tone deaf gaffe-a-liciousness from the Joe Lieberman wannabe from Tennessee.
Take Ford’s latest moronic op-ed in the overly accommodating New York Times, in which he performs the most credible impression of an Underpants Gnome this side of Ben Bernanke. At first blush, you’d swear you were reading The Onion:
First, cut taxes for businesses — big and small — and find innovative ways to get Americans back to work. We can start by giving any companies that are less than five years old an exemption from payroll taxes for six months; extending the current capital gains and dividend tax rates through 2012; giving permanent tax credits for businesses that invest in research and development; and reducing the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent.
…
Finally, we need to address budget deficits now rather than waiting for some ideal future economic situation. It’s a good sign that the Obama administration is following the advice of Senators Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Evan Bayh of Indiana and other Democratic fiscal pragmatists who embrace the idea of a bipartisan commission to recommend spending cuts to rein in deficit growth. But we must be sure that the administration and Congress heed the commission’s advice.
Rainbow-colored unicorns and leftover Hanukkah gelt for everyone! Remind me again what this meshuggenah (accent is on the second syllable, Harold) is doing to earn a million dollars a year at Merrill LynchBoA? Cutting deficit spending and taxes equals job growth? I may be easily confused by sudoku puzzles, but even I can see that Ford’s math and logic skills are nothing more than nareshkeit (I’ll let you fend for yourself on that one, buddy). As Yglesias puts it: “To make the deficit smaller, you can’t also make revenues smaller.”
Come on, Harold, we all know that the New York Times is providing you a megaphone with which to whistle to the dogs of Wall Street. What do you take us for — shnooks?
Harold Ford is “a little country”. And Goldmine Sacks’ Lloyd Blankfein, that gonif, is running a credit union.
News Anchor: Welcome back, everybody. The White House expressing confidence about Ben Bernanke’s confirmation. But it is clear that Bernanke continues to face some opposition to his nomination to his second term. For more on this and the other many controversial topics that are being debated in Washington, we’re joined right by Congressman Ron Paul. Also, our guest co-host for the next hour and a half is Congressman Paul Kanjorski. He’s the chairman of the capital market sub-committee. And gentlemen, good morning to both of you and thank you for being here.
Paul Kanjorski: Good morning, Becky.
Ron Paul: Good to be with you.
News Anchor: Congressman Paul, why don’t we start off talking a little bit about Bernanke. The White House is, at this point, expressing confidence that he will be re-nominated. Obviously, that vote goes through the Senate, but the House will have something to say too, in terms of the regulations that they have put forward. What do you think about his nomination process? You think it will go through the Senate?
Ron Paul: Oh, probably. But it might be just wishful thinking. You know, they have to sort of put a spin on there and try to build up some momentum. But I don’t think they know for certain. But it looks like he may well be appointed.
But, you know, I don’t know whether that’s the whole issue, because I think it’s been tremendous that we in this country and in the Congress now have addressed the Federal Reserve for the first time in many, many years and say, “What responsibility does the Federal Reserve have in the creation of this bubble and the crisis that we have?”.
And Bernanke is symbolic of, of course, the Fed. So I think this is great stuff. And, besides, it puts more emphasis on us having more transparency of the Fed because, you know, the reason we’re going to have a filibuster or a potential filibuster in the Senate is because we’re going to hold until they have a vote.
I mean, the people are only asking for a vote. We had the vote in the House, and it’s been passed. We have 317 co-sponsors. In the Senate, the people who support this position, both left and right, are saying, “Why can’t we have a vote?” because they know it’s going to pass. Because the American people want to know who the close friends are of the Federal Reserve, who they bail out, and what is going on. So, I think this is tremendous and I don’t think Bernanke should be reappointed. But even if he is, he is wounded, the attention is on the Fed, the economy is going down, the bubble has not been … the correction has not occurred. So, the American people will pay a lot more attention to the Federal Reserve now than ever before. And I consider that very, very beneficial to all of us.
News Anchor: Congressman Kanjorski, what do think the odds are that Ben Bernanke gets re-appointed? And talk a little bit about this legislation; what it might mean for the Fed?
Paul Kanjorski: Well, I sure do hope that they re-appoint Mr. Bernanke. I had the occasion to work with him through the rescue period, and I found he was incredible. Now that’s not to say that everything he’s done during his tenure at the Federal Reserve, both as chairman or as governor, was what we would have liked. But we never get a 100% performance from anyone. I just think that he’s extremely able. I think he’s got an ability to take the crisis and manage it well at critical times.
And I think the Fed has done a magnificent job. I would have lot of respect for Ron Paul, but his legislation, I voted against it. I would have continued to oppose it because I think it compromises the whole idea of a central independent banker. And we’ve seen a history of a 175 years when there didn’t happen to be a central banker and the constant crisis that we had. At least now we haven’t had a crisis for 75 years and we’re managing it and we need a good management.
The chairman of the Federal Reserve stepped forward and did a lot of the important things, that without that the rescue would not have been accomplished.
You know, I just heard a little glee in Ron Paul’s Voice that he was almost happy that we haven’t fully recovered. Don’t be happy. This is the American economy, it is our economy, it doesn’t belong to any one party. If it belongs to any party, it belongs to the Republican Party; Mr. Bernanke was a Republican appointee. The crisis came out of a Republican administration.
But I would hope we’d leave all that aside, and recognize that we are in a recovery position now. Let’s concentrate on getting that done, let’s not rock the ship. If we do, we could cause untold difficulty for the American people, including the markets and for the American economy. Let’s go easy and gingerly on this.
News Anchor: Congressman Paul, was there a glee in your voice?
Ron Paul: Well, I think he is over reacting. I think he’s trying to play a little game there. But, I do want to challenge one thing Paul did say, and that was we haven’t had a crisis since 1913. I mean, we’ve lost 98% of our value of our dollar against gold since 1913. We had the inflation through World War I, we had a depression in 1921, we had the inflation of the 1920s, we had a crash in 1929. I guess that wasn’t a crisis. We had a 15 year depression due to the Federal Reserve. Then we had guns and butter in the 1960s and we financed that through the Federal Reserve. And then look at the 1970s. If the 1970s wasn’t a crisis, what was it?
Paul Kanjorski: Ron Paul, we had 4, 5 major wars too.
Ron Paul: Why should you use the Fed to finance the wars? You don’t have a right to debase the currency just to fight a war, undeclared wars too.
Paul Kanjorski: Don’t you think your constituents are living a little better in Texas in 2010 than they were in 1932, 1950, 1975? Isn’t the American economy feeling the need for increasing the middle class?
Ron Paul: Now wait a minute. What makes you think that had anything to do with the Fed? Maybe it was in spite of the Fed. Maybe there wouldn’t be 17% unemployment right now if we don’t have the Fed. And we wouldn’t have 27% unemployment in Michigan. So this whole idea that we’re doing better…
Paul Kanjorski: 17% and 27% – those are really inflated; those are really inflated maximum approaches.
Ron Paul: No, Paul. You’re not quoting the right figures. The treasury says it’s 10%, but if you count everybody who quits looking for work, it’s 17%. And free market economists, who are more reliable than the government economists, say it’s 22%. To downplay the unemployment rate and say there is not a crisis and it is unrelated to the bubble that the Fed creates…
The problem is, is we’re always looking that what caused the crash. Even this new commission is looking for what caused the crash. And they never ask, “What caused the bubble?” The bubble causes the crash. But nobody asks, “Where do the bubbles come from?”
Paul Kanjorski: I think we had a couple of bubbles, didn’t we, Ron?
Ron Paul: The Federal Reserve creating too much money and interest rates of 0% and there’s nowhere for them to go today, because right now interest rates are 0% and if you have another down turn, what are they going to do? Make the interest rates -3%?
Paul Kanjorski: Well, I have this idea that rather than go back to the gold standard, I’d like to go back to the diamond standard.
Ron Paul: Well, I’m glad you brought that up, because I want to go forward to a gold standard. I want to just prevent the Federal Reserve from stealing from people and taxing people by doubling the money supply. It is cruel and unusual punishment to the economy to allow a secret organization like the Federal Reserve inflate the currency, deliberately destroy values, destroy the people who save.
Paul Kanjorski: So your theory is to have the Congress authorize the auditing of the Federal Reserve so the politicians in Congress can influence and effect and help decide what the Federal Reserve.
Ron Paul: No, you’re misinterpreting the bill. You should read it, because the bill says that the Congress has nothing to say about it for 6 months…
Paul Kanjorski: Now you know Ron…
Ron Paul: … wait a min, wait a minute, let me finish … then they can look at it. But what you’re arguing is the case for say this SEC finds out something about a bad company and then they say, “Well, let’s cover it up because it might hurt that company”. When the Fed knows something about a bank, you want secrecy because you say, “Well, it might hurt the company or the bank if people know it’s in trouble”. So you want the Federal Reserve to cover up so that we don’t know they can spend money, hurt the taxpayer, destroy our currency and give us a depression. And we’re not allowed to know about it. There no place in the Constitution that authorizes that kind of power.
Paul Kanjorski: Ron, I’ve been in congress long enough, and so have you. And we’ve used the General Accounting Office to put pressure on federal agencies, both independent agencies and non-independent agencies.
Ron Paul: That’s good.
Paul Kanjorski: When we call for audit of an agency, that sends a message that here comes the Congress; we’re going to take actions to curtail what you’re doing. That’s what we all worry about.
Ron Paul: No, that’s where you’re reading more into it, because I wrote a prohibition into the bill for that. But besides, I mean, morally speaking, don’t the people have a right to know what the Fed is doing? What kind of deals they make with foreign governments, foreign central banks, international financial organizations, private banks?
We have a right to know, we have an obligation, we have a moral obligation. And besides, we’re in this horrendous mess. It was the fault of the Federal Reserve and to say, “Oh, the Fed is wonderful, let them go, let them create all the money. Put Bernanke back in, he had nothing to do with it.” I mean, the American people are way ahead of you on this. And the American people have awakened. I’ll tell you that.
Paul Kanjorski: I was in a hearing the other day when your side proposed it wasn’t the Federal Reserve, it was GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises) that caused this. You got to take a decision. Do you know which one caused it? I don’t. That’s why I voted for the commission to do the study.
Ron Paul: The Federal Reserve causes the bubble. But you put kerosene on the fire by allocating credit and say you have to put money into a certain group. If the Fed creates money, we don’t know where it’s going to go. But because we say, “Put it into housing”, the housing bubble occurred. “Put it into medicine”, medical prices go up. “Put it into education”, education prices go up.
News Anchor: Wait a second, you think the Fed is responsible for the high education cost, and the higher cost for healthcare?
Ron Paul: Yes. Because the value of the dollar goes down and you don’t know where the money is going to go. But if you have a free market in distributing cellphones and computers, the market overwhelms the inflation. Prices actually go down. But the money is out there, it has to be put into something. Quality does not go up, and this is why the cost of medicine goes up without the quality going up. Education: everybody gets a college education, but the quality of education goes down. And it’s a fact that when you allocate credit, and if you do it in housing, it just puts fuel on the fire of the bubble. But you cannot have a bubble without easy money and easy credit. And if 0% interest rates isn’t easy money, then what is?
Paul Kanjorski: You know Ron, I just want to point out and just say stop. And I’m not going to argue that there aren’t causes and effects out there that we should be studying and looking at and taking sometimes corrective action. And that’s what we’re attempting to do now as we do regulatory reform. As you well know, we spent the last year intensely studying what could be done to try and prevent and project what may happen in the future and what actions could be taken to prevent those actions to stop these crises. But let me say it isn’t all bad. We had the creation of the SEC and the strong regulatory acts of the 1930s and we prevented a financial crisis in this country for 75 years. Even though every 25 years…
Ron Paul: Are you saying there was no crisis in the 1970s?
Paul Kanjorski: What crisis?
Ron Paul: Ask Paul Volcker if we had a crisis in the 1970s.
Paul Kanjorski: No, we had inflation and we were able to bring Volcker in and his policies and correct that inflation, and that’s what the system should do.
Ron Paul: So what do you call that, a minor correction but not a crisis?
Paul Kanjorski: Well, yeah. We didn’t have a total collapse this time. Maybe what we should have done is let that happen. And then all of you in the free market system would have been perfect, we would have been wiped out for decades and everybody would have been in a collapsed situation. Then you’d be happy. What Volcker did was act with responsible leadership with the security of treasury and the president, your president, your security of treasury, a Republican, not a Democrat, and they did a pretty good job of rescue. But all of fellows want to label this as a failure because you really don’t want to see it succeed. I think it you have a negative attitude towards the American economy.
Ron Paul: If regulations are so good, and I know we’re piling on the market for regulations. The SEC would have prevented this crisis, the SEC would have prevented the ENRON scandal. Sarbanes Oxley could have.. every time you put on regulations you chase our businesses overseas. That’s why the businessmen are leaving. And you’re going to do a lot more of that because the burden will be so great. And that’s why we’re not having a good recovery. We need to see taxes coming down and regulations coming down..
Paul Kanjorski: According to your theory, Ron, we should allow business to go uninterrupted, do anything at any time with anything, because they can’t possibly make mistakes.
Ron Paul: No, come on Paul. No, you allow them to go bankrupt, you don’t bail them out. Yes, we wouldn’t allow General Motors to do what they want. When they screw up and go bankrupt. Let them go bankrupt. You don’t take good people’s money and bail them out.
Paul Kanjorski: Do you accept the proposition that if we hadn’t gone into the rescue program a year ago, almost every large bank in the United States and in the world would have collapsed within 72 hours?
Ron Paul: No, some would. But we would be over it by now. In 1921, Paul, that’s exactly what we did; we still didn’t accept all your Keynesian economics. In 1921 the recession/depression was severe after the inflation of World War I. They had hands off, and it was over in a year. That’s what always happened before when they inflated, they caused the bubble, there was a correction. But in the 1930s, Hoover was the culprit and Roosevelt followed up, and they prolonged the agony for 15 years. That depression didn’t end until after World War II, believe me. People weren’t doing well until after then. So yes, you want hands off, but you want to enforce the laws against fraud and enforce the law of bankruptcy; that’s a federal regulation. But what we do is we don’t allow the bankruptcy, we take the good people’s money and bail out the bad investments, prop up all the mistakes and that is what you’re doing. You’re just pouring out the money hoping to patch up the hole in the bubble. And it’s not going to work, believe me. I’m not happy about it no matter what you say.
News Anchor: Congressman Paul, we want to thank you very much for your time. We appreciate you joining us today.
As one of those happy-to-look-forward-to yearly traditions (see also the 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005 versions), infographic designer Nicholas Felton has again released a sophisticated infographic report [feltron.com] detailing almost all his past everyday and special activities and visited events during the timespan of last year.
The data he tracks each single day (each single minute?) seems to be more and more detailed each single year, and now include a wide variety of topics such as: encounters (average encounters per day: 4.8), relationships (shortest relationship: 5 minutes), location and methods of transportation (number of different methods: 23), mood (types of negative mood: 80), food consumption (New York restaurants visited: 111), drink consumption (most “reported” beverage: beer) and little things (unfortunate incidents: 4).
Ruggedized computers are typically pretty ugly, and the Juniper Systems handheld is no exception. Designed to withstand extreme temperatures, and drops onto concrete from a height of up to 5ft without damage, it’d be the ideal thing for the construction site or roadworks project.
That’s not to say that this particular handheld is not without it’s own special charm. Built on a WinMo platform, think of this as a PDA that has grown into a monster. Available with GSM, and with multiple hardware configurations, it’s the type of thing you expect the utility guy to be carrying when he comes to read the meter. No word on exactly when it’ll be available or how much it will cost, but here’s some spec’s from the Juniper’s website:
* GSM cellular data modem expansion pack, optional (in North America)
* Magnesium enclosure – Survives multiple 5 foot drops to concrete
* Robust alphanumeric keyboard for high production data entry
* Outdoor readable color display
* Supports two batteries offering up to 32 hours runtime
* Two RS-232 serial ports, host and client USB ports
* Windows Mobile 6.1 with integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
Muchos de los usuarios de Gnu/Linux que comienzan a meter mano en su distribución se dan cuenta que estas traen muy poco software y una configuración que no se ajusta mucho a sus necesidades.
Gracias a que el Sistema operativo Gnu/Linux es de libre modificación podemos hacer y deshacer una distribución Linux como nos plazca y luego guardarla en un iso para así, poder distribuirla e instalarla en donde queramos tal y como la teníamos en nuestra PC.
Estas son algunas de las aplicaciones o medios que nos permiten tener nuestra distribución Gnu/Linux a medida:
Remastersys
Esta herramienta tiene una interfaz gráfica de usuario bastante simple y funciona tanto en Ubuntu, Debian como cualquiera de sus derivados.
Remastersys obras de la transferencia de la distribución se está ejecutando en una imagen ISO. Usted puede optar por incluir la configuración y los datos personales también, que la hace ideal para copias de seguridad.
UCK es una herramienta que te ayuda a personalizar Live CDs oficiales de Ubuntu (incluyendo Kubuntu, Xubuntu y Edubuntu) y ajustarlos a tus necesidades. Puede añadir cualquier paquete al sistema «live» como, por ejemplo, paquetes de idiomas, aplicaciones, etc.
Algunas Características:
* Crea live CDs autoarrancables con idiomas predefinidos basados en un live CD de Ubuntu o Kubuntu usando un asistente gráfico.
* Crea live CDs con características especiales usando scripts. Es posible personalizar el sistema de archivos raíz (por ejemplo, instalar o quitar paquetes), el contenido de la ISO (añadir y quitar documentos, cambiar nombres) y el initrd (añadir módulos en el arranque, cambiar la secuencia de arranque).
Como su nombre lo indica, esta herramienta es una suite completa para crear tus propias distribuciones personalizadas de Ubuntu y Debian desde una imagen ISO existente. Les da la posibilidad de ajustar el fondo de pantalla, temas, iconos, aplicaciones y mucho más.
Herramienta que se ejecuta desde el navegador y requiere instalación, pero requiere de una pequeña cuota para poder utilizar todas sus características.
A diferencia de las tres herramientas de arriba, esta aplicación es para una distribución basada en paquetes RPM, Fedora. Revisor tiene tanto una interfaz gráfica de usuario y una interfaz de línea de comandos, y puede crear los medios de comunicación USB Live, así como CDs y DVDs instalables.
En lugar de utilizar las imágenes ISO, Revisor va descargando los paquetes de Internet, por lo que puede tardar algún tiempo en función de tu velocidad de conexión y la selección de paquetes.
SUSE Studio de Novell te permite seleccionar los paquetes, establecer diversas configuraciones (incluyendo la detección de la red, la configuración del firewall, etc) y seleccionar un logotipo, fondo y más.
Se accede desde dentro de un navegador y desde ahí la descargas a la imagen ISO para compartirla con el mundo.
La herramienta crea versiones personalizadas de la distribución basada en Slackware-Slax, pero a diferencia de las otras herramientas que hablamos aquí, MySlax trabaja desde dentro de Windows!
Funciona con imágenes de Slax y te permite añadir datos propios.
LFS es una colección de documentos que nos indican los pasos para compilar una distribución Linux desde cero. El proyecto se diferencia de otras distribuciones en que no consta de paquetes y scripts preensamblados para una instalación automática del sistema, sino que sus usuarios son provistos simplemente con paquetes de código fuente y un manual de instrucciones para el armado de un sistema GNU/Linux propio.
Debido al inmenso trabajo que demanda la instalación de este sistema en comparación a otras distribuciones, los usuarios que deciden hacer uso de LFS son principalmente aficionados que desean aprender sobre el funcionamiento interno de un sistema GNU/Linux y ensamblar un sistema a su medida. Linux From Scratch es también utilizado como base de varias distribuciones, usualmente alejadas de su espíritu original de “metadistribución”.
Over the weekend at the MidemNet music event in Cannes, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta took the stage to talk about the current status of the struggling company. During his keynote interview with Billboard editorial director Bill Werde, Van Natta stated that MySpace was showing an increase in unique visitors for the first time since the middle of last year. In fact, Van Natta said that according to comScore data, MySpace visitors grew by 7 percent between November and December. That may sound like great news for the site, but it may be misleading: many of these new users may have simply been redirected users of Imeem.
MySpace completed its acquisition of Imeem on December 8, and the music service was promptly shut down (Imeem was out of money and its music licenses were expiring). As soon as Imeem shut down, MySpace redirected all of its traffic to its own music site. Now, we can’t tell exactly how many users MySpace gained from these redirects, but according to comScore MySpace saw a jump in 4.7 million unique visitors in December, which is about the same as what comScore was measuring for Imeem in previous months (it had 4.6M in October and 4.4M in November). Again, we can’t definitively say how much of MySpace’s growth was due to Imeem, but it’s likely that it represented a substantial portion of it.
To be fair, Van Natta and MySpace aren’t exactly out boasting about their improved traffic stats — Van Natta’s comment was in response to a question that was posed to him on stage, and he followed it up by saying, “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here but it’s good that the numbers have stabilized and we hope this will continue”.
It’s worth pointing out that while MySpace’s uniques have stabilized after big drops last spring and summer, it’s unclear if the number of page views the site receives has stabilized (see the comScore graph below).
Once again, Steorn promises to finally prove that free, clean, and constant energy can be produced by its Orbo technology — principle of the conservation of energy be damned! — on a webcast this upcoming Saturday. Of course, they might have similarly proven their point during a previous web event… or maybe they haven’t. At this point, we’ve heard so many outlandish claims that we’re having a hard time keeping ‘em straight, but we’ve never been one to turn down a gratis comedy show after a hard day’s night. Tune in if you find yourself in the mood for a chuckle. Or don’t. Chances are you won’t miss muchanything.
American soccer star Clint Dempsey is injured, possibly through the World Cup. In our time of greatest need emerges: a crazy soccer ball-kicking machine from BP Castrol Japan.
The big guy will, it turns out, make an appearance in South Africa this summer, but only to show off its wares. But don’t worry, American soccer fans! We’ve got plenty of time before then to get it naturalized. In the meantime, just watch it work, and be thankful no part of your body is defending against it on a free kick. [MSNBC via CrunchGear]
Show: Larry King Live Channel: CNN Date: 1/25/2010
Transcript:
Larry King: Before we get into the stimulus project as promised, CNN’s Ann Andrews reports tonight that President Obama is set to announce a three year freeze on non-security discretionary spending. That move would freeze discretionary spending at $447 billion dollars.
Joining us now to talk about that and to debate the stimulus and whether it’s actually working, is Robert Reich. He was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, now he’s a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkely. His most recent book is “Super Capitalism” and is out in paperback. And Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. He’s also the author of “End the Fed”. We’ll start with you, Robert. What do you make of the freezing of the domestic programs for three years?
Robert Reich: I don’t think it makes much sense, Larry, and I’ll tell you why. The government, under the circumstances we now face, is the purchaser of last resort. Consumers are not buying. They’re still scared, for good reason. Businesses are not investing very much, they don’t want to invest if there are not enough consumers out there. So government has got to spend. This is something that a lot of people have difficulty understanding because you don’t want bigger deficits in the long term. But in the short term, government has got to spend more to get the economy moving, to get jobs so people can actually work and generate a larger economy, and therefore get the outside budget, the long term budget down. So having a freeze right now on discretionary spending and effectively saying to the world, to Wall Street, to the country, “We’re not going to do anymore deficit spending” makes absolutely no sense.
Larry King: Congressman Paul, your thoughts?
Ron Paul: Well, I don’t think Mr. Reich has too much to worry about that things are going to be frozen in Washington DC. Matter of fact, even what Obama is saying is not going to into effect for a year, and the Congress won’t let it happen. I think Mr. Reich’s sentiments are well represented in Washington […] because I actually want to see more money spent, not less. It’s just that who has the discretion to spend it; that’s the issue. When the government spends it they malinvest, they misdirect it. They can’t direct capital correctly. We don’t have our problem because there has not been enough consumption, enough spending. We had too much, we borrowed, we’re in debt. So that is not going to solve the problem. What we should have done is maybe suspend the income tax for 3 years. It would have cost us less than bailing out the big banks and all these special interests. I mean, with more money the people could make their decision on whether they should liquidate their debt or how they world investment it. And this could be a wiser choice.
Larry King: Quickly, Robert.
Robert Reich: I just want to agree with the Congressman on one point, and that is bailing out the big banks instead of helping Main Street was a version of trickledown economics, and it doesn’t work.
Larry King: Okay. We’re scheduled to discuss the stimulus, and we’ll begin by showing you an interview with Diane Sawyer that aired on ABC tonight; the president making his case for his handling of the economy. Let’s listen.
Barack Obama: We have stopped the economic contraction. The economy is growing again. And we did create or save several million jobs. That’s not my opinion, that’s the opinion of conservative economists, as well as liberal economists. But we still lost 7 million jobs, and so I understand why the American people, their attitude is not, “It could have been worse”, they’re attitude is, “how do we make sure how do we keep on getting better”. That’s what we’ll be talking about on Wednesday.
Larry King: Okay, simply put, Robert, is the stimulus working? Same question for both of you, starting with Robert.
Robert Reich: Well, I think the official unemployment rate, Larry, would be about 13% were it not for the stimulus, for all the reasons I just gave you. When everybody else has stopped spending, government is the spender of last resort. I don’t know, I can’t guarantee and nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen next year, but I think that we probably, given the fact that the states are, in effect, mounting an anti-stimulus package, because they are raising taxes and they are cutting jobs and cutting services, we’re probably going to have to rely on more from the federal government.
Ron Paul: Well, I think it’s real hard to measure the number of jobs saved or not. I think the stimulus obviously helped Wall Street. Wall Street is doing very, very well. But to say the stimulus was the answer so just do more of it, fails to recognize that when the government spends money, it actually does help the GDP. But there’s a big difference if people get money, save money and then invest it on building cars or something, verses when the government takes the money and spends it on a make-work job or spends money on a weapons system that gets blown up overseas, or bombs blown up overseas. That raises the GDP. But right now the happiest people are at Wall Street. The very people who got bailed out and Main Street and the employment numbers […] were very unhappy. But I do think it’s a stretch to that they know exactly the number of jobs that they saved. And like you pointed out, Larry, there actually a lot. I mean, the president pointed out there are a lot less jobs available.
Larry King: Okay, we’ll pick up on that in a moment. All week on CNN is breaking down how the 787 billion dollar stimulus money is being spent. We’re calling it “The Stimulus Project”. You can get more in-depth information on all this at www.Cnn.com/stimulus. More with Ron Paul and Robert Reich coming up.
We’re back, talking about whether President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus is a success or failure with Robert Reich and Ron Paul. Let’s take a call from Hobart, Indiana. Hello.
Caller: Hello, Larry.
Larry King: Yeah.
Caller: Yea, my question is for the senator.
Larry King: It’s the congressman, go ahead.
Caller: President Obama spent more in the first year of his presidency than Bush spent in the last term. And to put the spending freeze on now, is he trying to act like a populist now, or is he pivoting to the right.
Ron Paul: Hahaha. Well, I think that the fact that this isn’t going to go into effect until 2011, I would say there is a little bit of politicking going on. And I just don’t believe there will be a freeze. And if they did freeze it, that will be very bad. I’m not necessarily for freeze, I want to reduce spending, I want to save tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars overseas and bring that money back home so that more of this money can flow into education and medicine and different things. So I want a lot of cuts, but I want the people to spend money. But when the government spends money on a job, they may create a job, but what you don’t see is you might have taken a better, more productive longer lasting job away from the productive economy. So even if you can prove there has been a couple of extra jobs, it doesn’t really solve our problem.
Larry King: Robert, are you generally optimistic in this climate?
Robert: I wish I could be optimistic, Larry. I see the extent of joblessness, the extent of misery and homelessness, or people who are worried about losing their homes or their savings. And frankly, I worry. I looked at 2011 and I say to myself, “Once the stimulus ends, as it will, and if there is a spending freeze and if the Fed does what the Fed is likely to do, and that is tighten and raise interest rates, where is the motivation going to come from? Where is the energy and where is the demand going to come from into our economy?” Because again, consumers and businesses and exports just can’t lift the economy by themselves. I wish I could be as optimistic as Ron Paul about the capacity of the country to just pull money out of national defense and bring it home and give it to consumers as tax breaks. It all sounds good, but I’ll tell you, I don’t know too many Republicans who would want to take money out of the national defense.
Larry King: Constana Macy, California. Quickly.
Caller: Yes, is it possible change the economy ultimately without getting out of these trade deals that we have: WTO and all these trade deals we have with China and the rest of the world. Do we have to get out of those?
Larry King: Ron?
Ron Paul: Well, I don’t think you have to. Some of those things we would get out of. But I think the problem with what Mr. Reich says is that the country is bankrupt; is our problem. And if I am bankrupt or somebody else is bankrupt what they do is they have to pull back, they have to quit spending, they have to work harder, they have to pay off their debt. And we have dreamed up this concoction under Keynesian economics that you don’t have to do that. You just print more money, run up more deficits, and pass it out. And everybody is going to do the right thing. So it’s the opposite thing of what Austrian free market economics teaches. They say what you should do is liquidate debt, get rid of the malinvestment, start over again, get the prices of house down, don’t prop the prices up and stimulate housing. What I see is we’re doing exactly the opposite than what we should do.
Larry King: Robert, you got 30 seconds.
Robert Reich: Ron Paul sounds like awful lot like Herbert Hoover. In 1932, Herbert Hoover and the secretary of treasury, Millen, said liquidate everything and everything will be fine. It took Franklin D. Roosevelt, and ultimately the second World War, to show everybody that Keynesianism was right. You got to spend and if you got to go into debt to get people back to work, that’s better than not doing it.
Larry King: Alright, we will call on these gentlemen. We’re out of time, guys. Robert Price and Congressman Ron Paul, I’m as sorry about this as you are, but we are.
Stress… odors… foods… smoking… these are just a few things that can trigger headaches and make you feel lousy. If you’d rather not rely on painkillers for relief, Dr. Michael Cutler offers these home-spun remedies to ease the throbbing pain:
Use an ice pack on the painful area of your head
Take a warm bath or shower to help you relax
Have a back or neck rub—or even a full-body massage!
Use your thumbs to apply gentle but steady rotating pressure to the painful area; maintain the pressure for about 10-15 seconds then release
Rest in a low-lit room to relieve back, neck and shoulder tension.
For More health tips and natural healing solutions, visit www.drcutler.com.
Everyone (including myself) have been impressed with my ability to embrace a low gi lifestyle with little pain.
Since my pre-D diagnosis on 12/17 I’ve lost 20 lbs and consistently have morning a1C’s in the 80-90’s (although for some reason, I was 103 this am). I actually feel like I eat well and after getting over the worst of Met I feel good!
BUT COME ON….it’s simply asking to much of me to resist when in front of every coffee shop, restaurant even the gym… there are darling little girls scouts bearing COOKIES. My god…the thin mints are my all time favorite thing in the world.
I succumbed. Yes, after politltely say "no thank you" a dozen times in the last few days, yesterday, I caved. The next door neighbor (Mia) came over in her uniform and I just couldn’t say no.
I told myself that DH take them to work. Ahh, bsing myself has become a fine art form.
I ate to Peanut Butter ones tonight because I wanted too. And you know what? They didn’t even taste good to me. But, I WANTED THEM. Now, I feel stupid and weak.
Earlier today we noted that the era of 
Aloqa is also making these features available to more users, now supporting use in five countries: the US, UK, Germany, Canada and Austria. There’s also lots of new content, places to go and things to do, most coming through Aloqa’s developer API and its partnerships with other companies.
Today 
Coraid
Brown (right) refers to the technology as “scale-out” architecture, meaning it can take cheap hardware and replicate it to handle the storage needs of a large corporation. Brown contends that this technology has five times to eight times better performance for a given price compared to Fibre Channel and iSCSI solutions. It also eliminates the more complex storage environments.
Reelsurfer
Ruggedized computers are typically pretty ugly, and the Juniper Systems handheld is no exception. Designed to withstand extreme temperatures, and drops onto concrete from a height of up to 5ft without damage, it’d be the ideal thing for the construction site or roadworks project.
