Author: Serkadis

Jay-Z sat down with Interview Magazine and talked about the Kanye vs. Taylor drama that happened last September during the MTV Video Music Awards.

JAY-Z: I just think the timing of what he did was wrong, and that, of course, overshadowed everything. He believed that “Single Ladies” was a better video. I believed that. I think a lot of people believed that. You can’t give someone Video of the Year if they don’t win Best Female Video. I thought Best Female Video was something you won on the way to Video of the Year. But, hey, I guess it wasn’t—and that’s a whole other conversation about awards shows and artists.

You seem to stay away from that awards show stuff for the most part.

JAY-Z: Yeah, because it ain’t about nothing. It’s cool. It’s acknowledgment. The fans get to see you, and you can do great by your record if you have a great performance or a great night there. That’s all part of the business. But at their core, awards shows are not really a sincere thing. You know, for a lot of years, the artists had to pay to play their own set.

Click here to read the complete interview!

Filed under: Etc., GM, Nissan

Both General Motors and Nissan North America have announced they will be donating over $100,000 each to aid the earthquake relief effort in Haiti. If you haven’t seen the news lately, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January 12 near Port-au-Pince, killing tens of thousands of people (maybe over 100,000) and destroying the country’s infrastructure. Governments and companies from all over the world have pledged aid for the victims and this broken nation, but so far GM and Nissan’s American arm are the lone representatives of the U.S. auto industry.

GM pledged $100,000 straight up to the American Red Cross relief fund through its General Motors Foundation and has also added a direct link on employees’ computer desktops to the Red Cross disaster fund. Nissan is giving a $25,000 cash donation, another $5,000 from Nissan Canada, matching employee contributions up to $25,000 for another $50,000 and giving $52,000 to Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild 13 homes in Haiti.

Just as some cynics did when automakers pledged money and supplies after Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami, one could argue there’s an ulterior motive to these gifts of charity, but we’re quite sure the Haitians could care less and just appreciate the life-changing money. If you’d like to donate to the American Red Cross, click here.

[Sources: General Motors, Nissan | Image: Angel Valentin/Getty]

GM and Nissan each donate $100k+ to Haiti relief effort originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Classics, Convertible, Coupe, Auctions, Ferrari

Crockett and Tubbs sure looked pimpin’ cruising the streets of Miami in their Ferrari Daytona Spyder. Thing is, as big a Ferrari nut as producer Michael Mann is, he wasn’t man enough to get hold of a real drop-top Daytona: the one featured in Miami Vice was a replica. But Mann wasn’t the only American executive trying to get his hands on one. Though his great grandfather may have lost the opportunity to buy Enzo Ferrari’s outfit outright, Edsel Ford II managed to acquire this very rare and highly sought-after Daytona Spyder on his own.

Only 121 examples were officially produced by Maranello – supplemented by a wealth of chop-jobs perpetrated on the more common Daytona coupe – and this one was once owned, among its three pink-slip holders – by Edsel Ford II. One of only 22 made in yellow, this example has recently undergone a full restoration and comes certified by the rigorous Ferrari Classiche program. It’s anticipated to fetch upwards of $1 million when it crosses RM’s auction block on Amelia Island in March.

The Daytona isn’t the only rare, million-dollar Ferrari classic among the early consignments lined up for Amelia Island, though. The RM Auction event will also feature a rare four-cam, alloy-bodied 275 GTB/4. The car was acquired by Luigi Chinetti, the official importer of Ferraris to the United States, and displayed at the 1967 New York Auto Show. The fully restored show car, in a rather striking copper paint scheme, is estimated to fetch between $1,350,000 and $1,750,000. The auction is stillstill several months away, so stay tuned for more key consignments as they’re announced. In the meantime, you can check out these particularly stunning stallions in the galleries below.

[Source: RM Auctions]

Edsel’s Ferrari Daytona Spyder, Chinetti’s 275 up for auction at RM Amelia Island originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jessica Simpson’s return to the world of reality is set to premiere this spring.

Jessica Simpson’s The Price of Beauty will premiere March 15 @ 10 PM on VH1, the cable network announced on Friday.

“Jessica has been followed, studied and scrutinized since she released her first hit single at the age og 19. Now, Jessica turns the tables on our culture and cultures all over the world,” VH1 said of the series produced by the group behind Wife Swap and Secret Millionaire – in a press release.

The series will see Jessica traveling the world and visiting countries including Japan, Thailand, France, Brazil, Uganda, Morocco and India to find out what “constitutes beauty” in foreign cultures. Fans may log on to VH1.com for a sneak peek of the first episode March 8.

Today was a rough day for everyone, but no doubt financials got hit the hardest. Shares of banks plummeted after JP Morgan’s (JPM) earnings report.

In the end, the Dow shed 100 points, the S&P 12, and the NASDAQ Composite 28.

Commodities also took a beating, with oil ending at $78 a barrel, down $1.39.

Gold shaved off 1% to close at 1131.60/ounce and even silver dropped 1% to 18.46/ounce.

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See Also:

• Retail Sales Unexpectedly Tank In December
• New York Manufacturing Tanks In December After Four Months Of Recovery
• Fed Governor: Commercial Real Estate Is On The Precipice Of A Meltdown

Filed under: Etc., GM, Nissan

Both General Motors and Nissan North America have announced they will be donating over $100,000 each to aid the earthquake relief effort in Haiti. If you haven’t seen the news lately, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January 12 near Port-au-Pince, killing tens of thousands of people (maybe over 100,000) and destroying the country’s infrastructure. Governments and companies from all over the world have pledged aid for the victims and this broken nation, but so far GM and Nissan’s American arm are the lone representatives of the U.S. auto industry.

GM pledged $100,000 straight up to the American Red Cross relief fund through its General Motors Foundation and has also added a direct link on employees’ computer desktops to the Red Cross disaster fund. Nissan is giving a $25,000 cash donation, another $5,000 from Nissan Canada, matching employee contributions up to $25,000 for another $50,000 and giving $52,000 to Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild 13 homes in Haiti.

Just as some cynics did when automakers pledged money and supplies after Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami, one could argue there’s an ulterior motive to these gifts of charity, but we’re quite sure the Haitians could care less and just appreciate the life-changing money. If you’d like to donate to the American Red Cross, click here.

*UPDATE – Toyota announced just today that its companies operating in the Americas will donate a total of $500,000 to be divided among the American Red Cross, Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders.

[Sources: General Motors, Nissan | Image: Angel Valentin/Getty]

GM and Nissan each donate $100k+ to Haiti relief effort *UPDATE originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Article Tags: Book, ClimateGate

Well, Steve Mosher and I have written a book and it’s now for sale at the Amazon affiliate, CreateSpace.com, Click here to go get your copy.

Here’s an excerpt talking about Michael Mann’s work on the famed Hockey Stick paper, MBH 98:

Many scientists they worked with had doubts about the material to be presented. One of the key figures in Climategate, Keith Briffa, goes so far as to say he believes something different than what their figures show: “I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.”

Malcolm Hughes writes, “I tried to imply in my e-mail, but will now say it directly, that although a direct carbon dioxide effect is still the best candidate to explain this effect, it is far from proven. In any case, the relevant point is that there is no meaningful correlation with local temperature.”

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Source: examiner.com

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Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read are co-authors of Total Engagement:  Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Business Compete, published by Harvard Business Press in 2009.  They wrote this piece about extending our previous VentureBeat stories on funware (the use of game-like ideas in non-game applications) even further into the enterprise.

If you take a close look at what’s going on in multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft — as we have — you will find that people are carrying out tasks that look very much like the kinds of problem solving, classification, collaboration, leadership and followership that are the meat and potatoes of today’s everyday work.  Tens of millions of people pay companies like Blizzard Entertainment for the privilege of doing sophisticated work on computers.  Our tongue-in-cheek title isn’t meant to imply that people shouldn’t be paid for their time and talent, but to raise the question about why work is so poorly constructed today and what can be done about making it more fun.

It has to do with the context in which we ask people to be productive and the rewards and incentives scattered around these tasks.  Most work is not “designed,” but takes place in settings and flows that have evolved haphazardly as our economy has evolved from mostly jobs handling physical materials to mostly people using all kinds of tacit knowledge in information work.  What would happen if jobs and career paths were as carefully thought out as the level design and reward systems in a truly good video game?

These pages have featured several good discussions of funware:  games with purposes beyond entertainment.  Several have highlighted ways consumer product companies are experimenting with social game mechanics to get people to spend more time exposed to their “brand promise.”  At a recent conference, Mark Pincus of Zynga forecasted an avalanche of such games instantiating “the next business plan of the internet.”

The early players are making news.  We like Booyah’s delightful idea of using social game mechanics to reward personal achievement in life. Lithium Technologies has a leaderboard that recognizes levels of achievement among customers who post responses to on community websites. Bunchball allows websites to overlay group challenges, point systems, synthetic currency exchanges that all increase site stickiness.  And in the Fortune 500, IBM is experiencing widely with serious games, including simulations like Innov8 that allows IT professionals to compete on a global scoreboard to solve productivity problems.  Business Week has just profiled McKinsey’s use of video games to test recruits for leadership potential and to assess team-building styles, and Philips’ and Johnson & Johnson’s use multiplayer games to improve collaboration between far-flung groups.  At Microsoft, Ross Smith has been using games to promote above-and-beyond collaboration for years and the most recent project uses leaderboards and feedback in a game context where hundreds of multilingual colleagues volunteered – in a game – to help improve the pages of Windows 7 documentation seen around the globe.  And there is a lot to learn from Target’s game-like point of sale scoring for checkers.

We are especially interested in how the software used in enterprises will increasingly define and support new kinds of jobs in workplaces where “play” is not a dirty word.  We go out on a limb and argue that games and game-like features are the future of work, or at least information work wherever mediated by computers, and we forecast dramatic upsides and downsides of these developments in our new book, just out from Harvard Business Press.

A couple of years ago, HBR published our findings on leadership in multiplayer online games.  That is just the tip of the iceberg when you consider the many ideas from great games that can help reshape the world of work.  During epic raids on computer-generated monsters and continuously in between, exquisitely orchestrated collaboration is taking place in MMOs across time zones and cultures.  This “work” is mediated by affordances that are much cheaper than high-resolution video conferencing and often more engaging.  Great games also offer a wealth of ideas for promoting autonomy, enabling mastery and delivering a compelling sense of purpose –  three of the core intrinsic motivators described in Dan Pink’s popular TED talk.

While people sometimes tell us that their boss wouldn’t approve of fun in the workplace, such latter-day Puritanism is directly contradicted by a huge body of literature arguing that the serious and the playful are hopelessly intertwined in human performance.  Play is capable of energizing behavior of all sorts.  Play is a substantial force in how people think, feel and learn, and in how groups collaborate, share identity and produce culture.  New research shows that being engaged and emotionally involved can positively influence productivity at work.  Positive emotions facilitate creativity and the likelihood that people will help each other.  Emotionally involved workers are more likely to be evaluated positively by bosses as well as co-workers.  All of this is closely related to the concept of “flow,” the idea that our best moments – those we say we enjoy the most – occur when we’re voluntarily trying to accomplish something difficult.  This level of engagement describes a state in which nothing else matters, and experience is so pleasurable that people participate at great cost and for the mere sake of enjoyment.  This helps explain how games sustain motivation, and how enjoyment should be understood as a precursor to involvement at work.

We think it’s inevitable that serious play will invade the workplace because it is so powerful and that organizations that are early adopters will outcompete others.  What we have seen is that the places where this is happening the fastest are where gamers come out of the closet and start talking to colleagues about connecting the dots between play and work.

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The Situation, Snooki, and Pauly D. say buh-bye to Seaside Heights and head for the bright lights of Hollywood! Did you catch the Jersey Shore castmates appearance on Thursday’s Chelsea Lately?

Host Chelsea Handler pried until she found out that The Princess of Poughkeepsie and The Sit have developed their own intimate situation since wrapping their MTV series.

According to Snooki, their sexy time together is no big deal.

“It’s not awkward at all,” “Snooki” said. “If I wanna make out with him right now, I can. It’s not weird.”

The Situation added, “On the show, it’s just a kiss, but sometimes, on the road, it’s a little more than that. We save the special stuff for on the road.”

This week’s BusinessWeek cover story is about the increasingly competitive relationship between once-cozy Apple and Google. It contains a bold forecast by Jonathan Yarmis, a research fellow at consulting firm Ovum:

Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. [Apple CEO] Jobs might cut a deal with—gasp!—Microsoft to make Bing Apple’s engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, Yarmis says. “I fully expect [Apple] to do something in search,” he adds. “If there’s all these advertising dollars to be won, why would it want Google on its iPhones?”

Well, Apple would want Google on its iPhones because it sells phones. Hands up, who wants a Google-less iPhone?

But there’s a nagging truth here: Search engines on mobile devices haven’t been figured out yet. Typing text into a little box is aggravating. Voice-powered search tools have a high goof rate.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have spent millions on R&D, but it feels like mobile search needs a breakthrough app — the sort of thing Apple loves to do.

Yarmis agrees. “[Google chief executive] Eric Schmidt has said that the search problem is 99% solved, but, boy, is that self-serving,” he told BusinessWeek. “The fact that I have to go to a search bar at all is a sign of failure.” Fix that, and you could sell a lot of phones.

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FIC’s just launched its new Pinetrail netbook, the FIC SVE600. This little guy (which measures 10.1-inches) isn’t exactly ground-breaking, but that Atom N450 is still new enough to spark a little interest, right? The SVE600 boasts the aforementioned 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a choice of an either up to 500GB HDD or an up to 32GB SSD, plus WiFi, BGN, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth WiMax, and HSDPA. You’ll also get your choice of either Windows 7 or Linux OSs. There’s no word on pricing yet, but we’ll let you know when we do. There’s another beauty shot after the break.

Continue reading FIC outs Pineview-boasting SVE00 netbook

FIC outs Pineview-boasting SVE00 netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ZAGG has been dropping a few hints about its ZAGGbox media center for a little while now, but it’s so far been keeping a relatively low profile — it even managed to slip under our radar at CES. It was at the show, however, and its now finally announced that the ZAGGbox is available to pre-order for $799. Not exactly the cheapest set-top box around, to be sure, but that price will get you a few fairly unique features, not the least of which is simultaneous transcoding of captured video for easy viewing on both your TV and the mobile device of your choice (it also comes with its own iPhone app). Otherwise, you’ll get an ample 1TB of storage, a full range of A/V inputs and outputs, built-in 802.11n WiFi, and some Slingbox-like streaming to any device, anywhere you like. Unfortunately, ZAGG still isn’t making any firm promises about a release date, although it will supposedly be out sometime in the second quarter of this year.

ZAGGbox media center / streamer now available for pre-order originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Article Tags: Marc Sheppard

On Monday, scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute reported that they’d measured sea temperatures beneath an East Antarctic ice shelf and found no signs of warming whatsoever. And while the discovery’s corollaries remain mostly blurred by the few rogue mainstream media outlets actually reporting it, the findings are in fact yet another serious blow to the sky-is-falling-because-oceans-are-rising prophecies of the climate alarm crowd.

For years now, alarmists have insisted that Antarctica is thawing thanks to man-made global warming. They warn that such melting of a frozen continent containing 90 percent of all the ice on the planet would inevitably lead to a cataclysmic sea level rise (SLR). Scary stuff, indeed.

However, there are several problems with their assertions, not the least of which is that all evidence of melting selectively focuses on the only area of the continent satellite evidence confirms is warming — the western region in general, and the Antarctic Peninsula in particular.

But as ICECAP’s Joe D’Aleo observed in 2008 [PDF], the relatively small area of the peninsula offers an extremely poor representative sample, as it juts out well north of the mainland into an area of the South Atlantic well known for its “surface and subsurface active volcanic activity.” And in the greater scheme, adds D’Aleo, “the vast continent has actually cooled since 1979.

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Source: americanthinker.com

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On the  eve of the meeting of Development Ministers on Monday in Brussels, European Commission Vice President and EU High  Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton (pictured at right) underlined the EU’s  determination to help Haiti in overcoming the consequences  of the devastating earthquake.

Ministers will discuss the EU’s contribution to the short-term relief operation, but also in the forthcoming reconstruction efforts in the disaster area.

On Wednesday next week, VP/HR Ashton will travel  to the United States for meetings at the UN headquarters in New York and  with the U.S. Administration in Washington, DC.

“While we  are making sure that Haiti receives the immediate and urgent support it needs,  we also have to get ready for the very important next step in helping Haiti to  rebuild the country,” said Vice President and High Representative Ashton.

“I am  in close contact with our partners in Europe and beyond to coordinate these efforts. Together with the Spanish Presidency and  [Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner] Karel de Gucht we have organized a meeting of development ministers which I will chair.

I am absolutely committed  to helping the people in Haiti. That is what the people of  Haiti expect and they can count on us. Rebuilding Haiti is now a priority for the EU.”

The European Commission has swiftly responded to the crisis by providing immediate assistance through its humanitarian aid department (ECHO), and the Monitoring  and Information Centre for Civil Protection.

The EU Member States are providing  additional significant support. The Vice President/ High Representative continues to coordinate the different activities of the European Union with the EU Member States and the international community.

The  immediate priority of these operations has been to deliver equipment to remove  the debris, to dispatch search and rescue teams and to provide emergency health, water, field hospitals, tents, telecommunication and food supply.

The EU has also indicated that it stands ready to provide other support for other areas.

The extraordinary meeting of Development Ministers will discuss the next steps of  the EU activities in providing and funding additional post-emergency and  reconstruction actions in Haiti.

The  meeting will take place in Brussels from 10:00 am to 12:30 pm and a press  conference will follow.

German supermodel Claudia Schiffer is expecting her third child in May, Grazia Daily reported Friday. The former Chanel muse and her husband, film producer Matthew Vaughn, are already the parents of Caspar, 6, and Clementine, 5. The couple married in 2002.

Article Tags: Tim Ball

There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.—Goethe

Extreme cold weather across the Northern Hemisphere drew attention away from the leaked files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that showed how the entire work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was falsified. The cold simply isn’t supposed to happen. As Kevin Trenberth of the CRU gang said on 12 October 2009, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” It’s true only because they can’t hide the reality.

The cold triggered questions, cartoons and jokes about global warming. It also forced more denial. Those who claim the cold weather alters nothing provided the real laugh. Most ridiculous of these came from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO). They were involved in the skullduggery at the CRU through the Hadley Centre. UKMO is a major promoter of the IPCC and their former Director Sir John Houghton left to become a prime mover in the early formation of the IPCC.

UKMO is among the most useless weather bureaus in the world because of totally failed forecasts and blind adherence to false science. This was supposed to be a mild winter. Last summer was supposed to be a “barbecue summer”, and in the previous summer they were equally 100% wrong.

Source: canadafreepress.com

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It’s no secret that a lot of the network neutrality debate has been positioned as pitting online companies — such as Google — against infrastructure companies — such as the telcos. That’s a bit of an unfair characterization, because there are lots of issues at play when it comes to network neutrality, but it’s getting a lot of attention that Google and Verizon filed a joint statement to the FCC about net neutrality. Of course, despite the PR value of this, I wouldn’t read too much into it. The letter itself (pdf) lays out their “common ground” in incredibly broad and vague language that is borderline meaningless at times. And, of course, at the same time both companies filed their own separate statements in which they disagree heavily (Verizon even calls out Google by name). By way of comparison:

• Joint Submission by Google and Verizon: 9 pages
• Google’s submission: 98 pages
• Verizon’s submission: 139 pages

There’s obviously still a lot that they don’t agree on at all. Still, it is nice that they at least tried to come together a bit to find some common ground. That is pretty rare in a political culture often driven by extremes on each end playing tug o’ war and hoping that the end result is somewhere in the middle. It would certainly be nice if this sort of thing became a little more common — with more folks trying to find what the points of agreement are, separate from the points of disagreement.

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Alyssa Milano, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, donated $50,000 to the charity’s Haiti earthquake relief efforts of Friday, and the former Charmed star is making a “Tweet Challenge” imploring corporations to match her donation.

“I challenge any corporation to match my $50,000 donation to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. 100% of every dollar will go directly to supplies that include tarpaulins, water-purification tablets, oral rehydration salts, family water kits, medical supplies, medical kits, food, shelter, and protection,” the actress wrote in a statement on The Huffington Post Friday.