Author: Serkadis

The Google/China story has enough legs to qualify as a “centipede” at this point. After saying that it would no longer censor Chinese search results and that it was ready to pull out of China, Google also admitted to being the victim of a sophisticated cyberattack that went after more than 30 companies.

The immediate aftermath of the announcement was a media feeding frenzy—and that was before the Chinese government’s various departments even began reacting to the news. Now that they have, it’s clear that Google and China are on a collision course, and that the US government is ready to get involved on Google’s side.

If you’ve had difficulty keeping up with the story, have no fear: here’s a roundup of the news you need to know.

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Yet another sign that the housing recovery won’t be V-shaped (and might even be double-dipping) comes to us courtesy of the National Association of Home Builders.

The reading of 15 in January is below the 16 in December and 17 in November. This isn’t particularly surprising. Considering the monster housing hangover, it stands to reason that even if things come back a bit, it will be a long, long time before it trickles into steady business for the homebuilders.

The following chart comes from Calculated Risk, which notes:

The housing market index (HMI) was at 15 in January. This is a decrease from 16 in December and 17 in November

The record low was 8 set in January. This is still very low – and this is what I’ve expected – a long period of builder depression. The HMI has been in the 15 to 19 range since May.

Note: any number under 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as poor than good.

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See Also:

• The Evidence Piles Up That Housing Is Double Dipping
• Zillow Still Attracts Advertisers Despite The Tough Housing Market
• David Rosenberg: "Uh-Oh" It’s A Double Dip In Housing

Filed under: Etc., Europe, Marketing/Advertising, Videos, Work

Sweden’s Flygbussarna Airport Coaches asked Acne Advertising to make the case for travelers to take a coach to the airport instead of a car. Instead of leading with price, comfort, or ease, Acne went for hot air and green – as in CO2 and the environment.

To vividly illustrate that one Flyggbussarna coach can hold about 50 people – as opposed to the typical Swedish passenger car, which averages 1.2 occupants – while emitting the pollution of just four passenger cars, Acne built a coach out of fifty crushed cars – primarily expired Volvos and Saabs.

The installation was placed next to the road to Sweden’s largest airport, and what ensued was lots of public awareness. And traffic jams. Which would have increased CO2, ironically. Follow the jump for a video on the campaign. Even if the resultant congestion made the earth a bit warmer, it’s still very cool.

[Source: Acne Advertising]

Continue reading Video: Sweden’s Acme Advertising creates arresting green motorcoach marketing

Video: Sweden’s Acme Advertising creates arresting green motorcoach marketing originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

San Diego’s Michael Robertson, who founded several startups since he sold MP3.com in 1997, offered some observations about online music providers and other aspects of the digital music business when we talked in late November. Today he offers more insights in a post for TechCrunch that explains why Lala, the Palo Alto, CA, digital music startup acquired by Apple last month, is crucial to Steve Jobs’s emerging music-in-the cloud strategy.

Robertson told me he’s pessimistic about streaming music providers like Pandora and Slacker, saying their likelihood for survival is inversely related to how much venture funding they have raised. He said that’s because “selling music is like selling gravel; it’s a commodity” and they have no way of making money. (Slacker, based in San Diego, has raised close to $70 million.)

Michael Robertson

Robertson, who founded San Diego-based MP3tunes in 2005 to enable users to store their digital music collections in the cloud, views cloud-based storage as a much more viable business model.

And, as Greg reported earlier this month, Apple’s recent Lala acquisition raises fresh challenges for competitors like Seattle-based Melodeo, a cloud-based music startup. Now Melodeo is rushing to provide the next iteration of its own technology (which it announced last week) that will let people put their iTunes collection into their own “private cloud” that can be accessed from their smartphone or Web-connected device.

None of Apple’s cloud-based music plan comes as a surprise to competitors like Melodeo. Reached by e-mail this morning, Melodeo’s vice president of business development, Dave Dederer, said, “This is the product we already have working in private beta and are prepping for commercial launch this quarter… Ours has the advantage of breaking Apple’s product vertical/ stranglehold. We can build ours to work with Apple devices but we’ll be focusing on Android and the rest of the market first.”

(Xconomy Seattle Editor Greg Huang contributed to this post.)

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Is it ironic that this $10,000 computer only sold 10,000 units? Released on January 19, 1983, LISA (Local Integrated Software Architecture) was a gigantic flop, but paved the way for the success of the Apple Macintosh, which paved the way for the success of the MacBook, which paved the way for the success of the iPhone, which paved the way for the success of the Apple Tablet!

Thanks Wired, for the reminder!

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In the intricacies of high-level European diplomacy, there’s two things Paris and Berlin can agree on: Conan is better, and you’d better not be using Internet Explorer. A French government agency is now advising citizens of the French Republic not to use Internet Explorer because of security concerns. It’s 2010, and we’re still writing “IE isn’t secure!” stories. Amazing.

The French agency, Certa, has warned against using all versions of Internet Explorer, noting that, even if you activate the highest level of security in the latest version of IE, you’re still at risk from some of the Web’s nastier elements.

Both Certa and Germany’s Federal Office of Information Security didn’t say what other browsers to use in lieu of IE, but you can safely assume they mean the usual suspects: Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. (See, Opera fans, we mentioned your favorite browser!)

But for all the security precautions you could take, the best safeguard against contracting an Internet disease is common sense. Don’t download shady files from 0daycoolwarez.tk, don’t click ads that say “HOT GURLZ IN [TOWN NEARBY] 4 U~!”

Seriously, common sense is worth its weight in gold, which clocked in at $1,647 per ounce yesterday.

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I could really write this post in all of about eleven words, and it would still have the same effect. It’d go something like this “Apple, leak, new iPhone OS, screenshots, multitasking, banshees, multi-touch gestures”. However, I’m from the Internet, and we’re paid by the word* around these parts.

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It’s no secret that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is interested in scooping up more startups in order to bring their talent on board. From Firefox creator Blake Ross’s Parakey (acquired in 2007) through Gmail creator Paul Buchheit’s FriendFeed (acquired in 2009), Facebook has made some very high-profile talent acquisitions already.

This Fall, Zuckerberg got early access to his old friend Adam D’Angelo’s new question and answer site Quora and used it to ask: “What startups would be good talent acquisitions for Facebook?”

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Other users of the site offered suggestions and people voted on those submitted company names. Quora is a tiny new site chock-full of Silicon Valley stars – guess which company was voted the best acquisition target?

The winner? Apture.com, the provider of rich multi-media embedded pop-up windows for newspapers and blogs. Founder Tristan Harris is a former Apple engineer who built the first ad server for Wikia, the for-profit arm of Wikipedia, before launching Apture 3 years ago. We’ve given the product a positive review.

The next most popular suggestion? Austin, Texas location based social networking service Gowalla. Gowalla is run by CEO Josh Williams, who previously built and sold small business invoicing service Blinksale.

Those sound like good suggestions and both got votes from other Facebook team members on Quora. Remember, this isn’t about what technologies should be integrated directly into Facebook – FriendFeed has become little more than an occasional test bed for Facebook feed developments. The question is about scooping up teams of red-hot developers.

Other suggestions offered include Dodgeball co-founder Dennis Crowley’s new location based social network Foursquare (it’s only a matter of time until Facebook starts doing location check-ins, right?) and social question answering service Hunch, built by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and engineering whiz Chris Dixon.

Who do you think would make a good talent acquisition for Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg wants to know.

Discuss

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Filed under: Other Events, Apple Financial, One More Thing

The news that Apple is going to announce something on January 27th has the stock market in a tizzy. At one point this morning, Apple shares were up to $214.16, up $8.23 or about 4.0%.

Apple set a 52-week high with a share price of $215.59 on January 5, 2010, up 275.6% over the 52-week low set on January 20, 2009.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, by comparison, was up only .95% shortly after 1 PM ET today, and the NASDAQ index was up about 1.17%.

It should be noted that Apple share prices traditionally fall after an announcement, but it will be fascinating to see if AAPL is able to hit a new high prior to the January 27th event.

[via MacDailyNews]

TUAWApple shares jump on news of Jan. 27 event originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few years back, we found out that the FBI regularly violated the Patriot Act, issuing “National Security Letters” to access information that they had no right to access. So it should come as no surprise that during that same period, the FBI was also regularly violating the law to get phone call records without following the proper procedures, even beyond the problem with the NSLs. In fact, it appears the FBI may have violated the law in about half of all of these cases. Basically, it sounds like the FBI just went to phone companies, said the magic word (“terrorism!!”) and the phone companies just handed over records — even without using NSLs, but instead using an “exigent circumstances letter,” which could be used even more easily than an NSL, but which required an NSL to follow it up eventually. The FBI is now basically admitting to screwing up and that using these “ECLs” without followup NSLs almost certainly violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The FBI’s excuse? They’re claiming that the process was “good-hearted but not well-thought-out.” Doesn’t that make you feel better?

The story heads into Keystone Kops territory, as some in the FBI pushed for actually following up the ECLs with real NSLs, but the FBI was pretty slow. Eventually, someone signed a “blanket NSL” supposedly to cover all of the previous ECLs that never had a followup NSL — except the guy who signed the blanket NSL later claimed that he couldn’t recall ever signing anything, and insisted that NSLs should be for specific cases only. Oops.

Of course, lost in all of the attention over the FBI’s process is the rather serious unanswered question of why the telcos didn’t seem to push back when handed a bogus demand to hand over records that did not match the official process and violated the law. Shouldn’t the telcos have some responsibility for actually making sure that a random FBI agent yelling “terrorism” has some sort of official basis to get information out of the them?

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On Tuesday, Iconix Brand Group, Inc. announced that it has renewed its exclusive partnership with pop tart Britney Spears as the face of its Candie’s brand, which is available only at Kohl’s Department Stores and Kohls.com. Spears will appear in the Candie’s only at Kohl’s ad campaigns throughout 2010.

“I had a great experience working with Candie’s and Kohl’s last year and I am thrilled to be asked to sign on again for a second year,” Britney said in a statement. “We’re planning some very cool photo shoots and I can’t wait for my fans to see them.”

Photos of Brit’s Spring/Summer Candie’s campaign are expected in the coming months.

“We had such a successful year with Britney in 2009 that we wanted to keep the momentum going and offer our Candie’s customers new, exciting campaigns with Britney in 2010,” Dari Marder, Iconix chief marketing officer, said in a statement Tuesday. “Britney has been a great partner, truly embracing the brand, and we know her fans worldwide will love what we have coming next.”

At the time of publish, Sony’s (SNE) stock on the New York Stock Exchange is at its highest level since late September, 2008 – at 34 points. Many of us remember when the stock dipped (along with many stocks in the market) to abysmal levels when it crashed down more than 15 points in month and hit an all time low in Feburary 2009. The stock has grown in value ever since that time, remaining stable throughout most of 2009 at 20-30. However, since CES 2010, Sony’s stock has been on a rise to levels that haven’t been seen since the downturn in the US economy. This is powerful for Sony, as it signals investors are much more confident in the tech sector, but also positive about Sony’s strategy this year.

Investors and analysts have good reason to be upbeat – Sony’s product line for 2010 is probably its most cohesive in known memory, and they also had strong sales during the 2009 holidays. Sony is preparing to flood the market with an aggressive range of TV’s in many price ranges (and have set hard goals to raise their ranking in the top TV seller spot). Sony is also a big player in ushering in the 3D TV era, and have defined new plans to integrate an entirely new networked content strategy. We also commend them for making some smart plays in their other product offerings. Did we also mention that the PlayStation brand looks much better than ever with its recently released PS3 slim and upcoming firmware update to make it one of the first Blu-ray 3D players and 3D gaming devices?

If you’re a Nexus One owner, you may be well aware of the 3G issue that the device has, where it won’t connect to (or stay connected to) 3G, constantly falling back to EDGE. We know not all have experienced this oddity, but it’s enough of a problem that we’ve been getting emails about it, asking if there was a fix. Luckily, Kevin Tofel over at jkOnTheRun seems to have figured out a fix, and it’s simple to do:

• Go into Settings
• Select “Wireless & Networks”
• Choose the “Mobile Networks” option near the bottom
• Go into the “Network Operators” section. The Nexus One will do a search for GSM networks around you.
• When the search is complete, tap the “Select Automatically” option. The phone should respond with “Registered on network.”

That should do it! According to Kevin, he hasn’t been able to get 3G access from his home in the 10 days that he’s had the device. After doing the above, he’s been speeding along on 3G non-stop, even after reboots. If you’re experiencing similar issues, give it a try, and let us know how it works for you!

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Oslo, Norway | Strange Science

In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl and a crew of five others sailed 4300 miles, from Peru to the Pacific islands, in a raft they had constructed from balsa wood. Many people thought it was a suicide mission, but on August 7, 1947 after 101 days in the open ocean the Kon-Tiki (the name given to the raft) crashed onto a reef on the Raroia island. The men had successfully rafted 8000 kms or 1/5th of the way around the earths circumference.

At the time of the expedition one of great unsolved ethnographic mysteries was how the original inhabitants of Polynesian islands were able to navigate the thousands of miles of open ocean and populate distant scattered islands with stone age technology. One of proposed theories was that the Polynesian people started their migration from South America in pre-Columbian times, and used prevailing westward winds to carry their rafts across the ocean. Heyerdahl intention was to prove this theory was valid by doing it himself.

Peru was chosen as a starting point of the expedition. The Kon-Tiki raft was constructed out of balsa wood, bamboo and ropes, using only technology available to people of pre-Columbian America. The crew quickly found that the ocean current pushed them at a steady pace of 1.5 knots and they were able to steer using a system of a lashed outrigger and sideboards that stuck into the water at varying depths.

The crew had little trouble with food and though they were provided with MRI’s, flying fish constantly flopped on-board (going so far as to occasionally provide a wet slap in the face to one of the crew as they sailed through the air) and these, along with shark, dolphin, squid and a soup made of plankton constituted their meals. All of which helped prove that there was no technical obstacle for ancient Peruvian people to explore the Pacific.

Unfortunately for Heyerdahl, subsequent linguistic and genetic research has proven that the origin of Polynesian peoples lies in Asia and that their migration had an eastward direction. Heyerdahl believed it impossible that the ancient explorers would set sail against the prevailing winds. In reality it was exactly the fact that they could rely on the westward wind to safely return them home in case of unsuccessful expedition, that encouraged these ancient navigators to sail ever more to the east.

Proceedings from the documentary movie and the book about his first expedition provided Heyerdahl with the money to fund several more trips including a 1955-1956 expedition to Rapa Nui, a 1969 and 1970 cross-Atlantic expeditions from Morocco to America in reed rafts Ra and Ra II, and a 1978 expedition in reed raft Tigris across Indian ocean.

The original Kon-Tiki raft is at the display in the museum. The museum also contains replicas of Ra, Ra II and Tigris rafts, as well as maps and additional material from the now legendary Heyerdahl expeditions.

The Rutgers-Newark School of Public Affairs and Administration has recently launched two new online resources for students and professionals who are interested in public service:

The Alliance for Public Service website contains up-to-date information on public service news, events, organizations, research, publications, and more. The website also contains career information such as professional development and internship opportunities. It is located at: http://publicservice.newark.rutgers.edu

Civic Engagement Magazine seeks to deepen the discourse about, and underscore our shared commitment to, public service. Civic Engagement features the exemplars of public service—people and projects—as well as publications, other resources for “doing” public service, and personal reflections. It is available on the Alliance website at: http://publicservice.newark.rutgers.edu/index.php/home/civic-engagement.html

Heidi “I’m Not A Plastic Surgery Addict” Montag-Pratt underwent surgery to enlarge her D-cup bust to a DDD just two months ago, but The Hills starlet is already thinking about what surgery she’d like to get next: An H-Cup Bust.

“I actually want H for Heidi,” she tells Extra.