Author: Serkadis

Newsweek even goes so far as to ask that loaded question: Is The Bachelorette rigged? One need only look at this spring’s Bachelor finale to see similar soap opera-ish antics: the show’s star dumped the winning girl for the runner-up.

Speculation like this is to be expected when real-life seems so much like drama. Perhaps that goes to show that people who watch soap operas aren’t missing as much real-life as we think. Nah, I don’t know anyplace where everyone has been married or involved with everyone else at one time, as in a soap.

Here’s how the Jillian Harris and Ed Swiderski moment unfolded: first, Jillian had to reject Kiptyn. Then Jillian had to reject Reid, in a surprise return. Then Ed came on for the ultimate question.

“I want to be with you forever. I want a family with you. I want you to give me a hard time when we’re 80-years-old. Jillian, will you marry me?”
Ed and Jillian
Jillian says they are a real-life couple, so if that’s true, that’s cool. Ed comes out and they smooch and it looks more real than a lot of couple reunions on this show. Ed says he’s extremely glad that he came back and he’s so happy. He says he knew he was going to propose in Spain. They talk about the proposal and smooch some more, but Jillian seems to be kissing him weirdly. Am I alone in this?

Chris asks them about the future and they say that Jillian is coming to Chicago for awhile and move in with Ed. They have family reunions and weddings to attend this summer and then she’s moving on September 1st. They say they will probably get married in the next 12 months. Wow, bold.

Audience question time. The first girl asks about the mankini shorts. Seriously, dude. It looked like he stole Jillian’s bikini bottoms. Second question is about bedroom problems and they say there are no more bedroom problems. Chris then gets the line of the night in, “A great country & western singer once said, ‘Love, it don’t come easy.’” Snerk. I heart Chris Harrison.

There is no announcement about the next Bachelor, which is interesting. I hope it’s Reid or Jake. You can vote at ABC.com. Thanks for reading, gang! See you back here in the fall!

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Apple is set to announce that it has acquired Quattro Wireless for $275 million, several sources confirmed.

The announcement might come as soon as tomorrow, upping the ante in the mobile advertising business significantly.

Google (GOOG) recently forked over an astonishing $750 million for AdMob, a Quattro competitor, which Apple (AAPL) had also made a bid to acquire.

Both start-ups are aimed squarely at the fast-growing market to advertise on smartphones, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices. In fact, Google will unveil the Nexus One tomorrow, a Android-powered mobile phone it designed and will sell on a Web site instead of via telecom companies.

Waltham, Mass.-based Quattro has raised close to $30 million from two main venture investors–Highland Capital Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. Founded several years ago, its clients include Ford (F), Disney (DIS) and the National Football League.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment to BoomTown and emails to Quattro have not yet been returned.

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Good news from Uganda: Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary has welcomed a third baby rhino!

2010 is off to a promising start at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, where a white rhino calf was born on January 2 – the third baby rhino following more than 25 years of regional extinction.

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Virtual goods are the online tchotchkes that Facebook users send to each other en masse. If you’ve received a plug for Nestlé Toll House cookies or Malibu Rum from a friend — or a friend of a friend — you’re one of the ten million giftings that word-of-mouth marketing network AdNectar counted for those two campaigns.

The company claims that through other channels, such as online community Meez, it has delivered two billion — yes, 2,000,000,000 — virtual goods items since the company began operations in 2008.

To send a virtual good from Facebook, a member usually begins by clicking an ad in the margins of the site’s pages that says, say, “Send this gift.” That leads the member to a page where they select an image and a recipient, plus any other information the ad maker hopes to collect. The recipient sees, for example, a postcard-like image from Malibu Rum with a photo of their friend expertly worked into its center to look like a professionally-made card. The immediate goal of these virtual goods isn’t to induce a purchase on the spot, but to raise what marketers call “purchase intent,” the likelihood that the recipient will seriously consider buying Malibu Rum next time he or she hits the liquor store.

For every Internet eeyore who hates it that the Internet is now overrun by these brand campaigns, there seem to be many more who love them. AdNectar cites stats that say virtual-goods senders prefer branded gifts — that is, Nestlé’s cookies rather than just “chocolate chip cookies,” by a factor of ten to one. Overall, the company claims that branded-goods senders spend 20 percent more time on the sites that host them.

“They are interesting content for their users,” AdNectar’s vice president of marketing, Paul Martecchini, told me in an email. “Big brands have jumped on board, like Nestle, 3M, Pernod Ricard, Warner Bros, and Gillette.”

Moreover, he said, “Gifts sent between friends are endorsed and, therefore, trusted” compared to the impersonal — albeit highly targeted — walls of ads that pack the pages of increasingly desperate websites.

One reasons advertisers are willing to test the genre: The virtual goods market is far easier to measure than its real-world counterparts. It’s no work at all to report that, say, 4,301 Nestlé fans uploaded photos of themselves baking and/or sharing cookies, outrunning the 3,513 who posted shots of themselves relaxing on an imaginary Malibu Rum island. AdNectar counted 62 million unique visitors in its most recent monthly tally, of which the company is pretty sure about 40 million were Americans.

The results are measurable, too. Standard consumer surveys found that the Malibu Rum ad lifted purchase intent by nine percent. The Nestlé campaign boosted purchase intent an impressive 17 percent. From those statistics, brand managers can forecast future sales.

AdNectar was founded in Palo Alto, California in early 2008. The company has scrimped by on a seed round of angel funding. Industry watchers cite New York-based Appsavvy as a competitor, but the real threat is that with billions of virtual cookies flying around, Facebook and other large sites will try to muscle in on the action for themselves.

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RegaloCard is announcing today a $7 million round of funding for a free, instant way to send gift cards from the US to friends or family in Latin America.

The service works like this: You buy a RegaloCard gift card — redeemable at certain retailers and restaurants in Latin America — here in the US. You provide the recipient’s mobile phone number, and they immediately receive a text message with a PIN number that can be used to redeem the amount on the card.

Considering the number of Latin American immigrants in the US who want to send money to family at home, it sounds like a service that could have real appeal. Transferring money internationally through PayPal or Western Union entails fees, and the RegaloCard service is free and fast. Since it’s a free service, it also means small amounts of money can be sent, which is somewhat pointless with PayPal and the like thanks to convenience charges.

But the service as it currently stands is quite limited. You can’t use it to send cash, and the company has deals with just a few retailers. You can only buy a card for a specific brand, like Burger King or Universo Celular. Unlike PayPal, which lets you just transfer money for any use, RegaloCards are truly gift cards, restricted to a particular retailer or brand, of which there are only a few right now.

Furthermore, supporting retailers require a hardware component on their end to cash in the gift cards, something that could prove difficult to roll out over a broad geographical area. Finally, the cards aren’t currently available widely in stores in the US.

The Doral, FL-based company has plans to expand on both ends — to make the cards available across more US cities and to partner with retailers in more Latin American countries. But that sounds like quite a massive scaling effort, and I wonder why they don’t instead pursue a more streamlined program of partnering with several large Latin American chains who’ll convert the cards simply to plain old cash for a small fee. I’ve contacted the company to find out where the service is currently available (on both ends) and to ask about how they plan to scale, and I’ll update here when I hear back from them.

The announced funding comes from Dublin Ventures and Kinsail Corporation.

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When you think of a springform pan, you’re most likely imagining a cheesecake, but it has several other uses as well. You can use the pan to make a coffee cake, torte, special brownie dessert or flourless chocolate cake. You can also make a stuffed pizza in your springform pan!

Betty Crocker has a website section devoted to springform pan beauties like ham and cheddar torta or marbled yogurt dessert, along with more traditional favorites like New York cheesecake.

Once you decide what you want to cook, choose the best pan for your recipe. I like having a traditional 9 inch pan on hand. Most recipes are designed for that size, and I just don’t have the patience for those cute, but tiny individual springform pans. If you’re cooking for a big group, try out a larger size like an 11 inch pan and adjust the recipe.

Some springform pans are advertised as leak-proof, but I haven’t tried them. I’ve used a Pampered Chef springform pan for years, and it’s not leak-proof. I need to update. When baking a cheesecake, I usually put a baking sheet underneath the pan to catch what I think is butter leaking from the graham cracker crust. Some chefs opt to avoid the possibility of leaks by using cake pans lined with greased parchment paper for easy removal.

While leak-proof springform pans are ideal, nonstick pans probably aren’t necessary. I’ve baked dozens of cheesecakes in regular metal pans with no problems when I release the sides. A disadvantage of a nonstick surface is that it may become scratched, especially if you leave the cake on the bottom part of the pan to cut.

After washing your springform pan by hand, dry it completely to avoid rust. Some springform pans aren’t dishwasher safe. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions. If rust does occur, make a paste of lemon juice and cream of tartar. Scrub the paste into the wet springform pan with a dish brush, rinse and dry.

Have you used your springform pan lately?

(Image via flickr/L.Marie)

Post from: Blisstree

Springform Pan Tips

Jake’s cousin, Jessie Pavelka, also happens to be unmarried and has TV experience. The 27-year-old fitness model and personal trainer hosts the Lifetime series “Diet Tribe” and appeared in the network’s original holiday movie “12 Men of Christmas,” alongside Kristin Chenoweth and Josh Hopkins.
Jake Pavelka: I didn’t go in pushing. The show does have a bit of a rough history, with people breaking up or changing their minds, and that’s OK. I tried to be very honest no matter how painful it was and I just remained open-minded.
Jake Pavelka: My answer to that is I’m going to go on there to be myself. A lot of the dates and different activities we got to do on The Bachelor were geared around what I would do in my normal life – what dates scream Jake.

[THG NOTE: Does that include girl-on-girl action?]

TV Guide: Last season, some of your fellow contestants (and Jillian Harris herself) thought you were a bit too perfect. How do you respond to that?

Jake Pavelka: I don’t know what it is that make Ed and Jillian say that I was too perfect. Something that I see in the dating world these days is a bit of a lack of chivalry. It’s gotten so bad that women almost don’t expect it anymore.

TV Guide: Do you have dating rules you to like to follow?

Jake Pavelka: After an unbelievable date, if I want to call her the next morning, I’m just going to call. If that turns her off, “he’s smothering me, it’s too much too quick,” then that’s OK; we’re probably on two different pages.

TV Guide: We have to ask: Have you joined the mile-high club?

Jake Pavelka: [Laughs] I am not a member of the mile-high club, but I’ll leave you with this: I aspire to be … no I don’t aspire to be, I will be.

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Mobile social content aggregator ShoZu has been acquired by mobile software firm Critical Path. Financial terms were not disclosed.

London-based ShoZu was backed by over $36 million in funding from SEB Venture Capital and Atlas Ventures, among others; its most recent round was worth $12 million in early 2008. Dublin-based Critical Path is a private company backed by General Atlantic Partners and Cheung Kong Group.

ShoZu chairman and CEO Chris Wade (pictured) will stay on post-acquisition in an advisory role for a short time, per TechCrunch; the rest of the company’s staff will join Critical Path full time. The company says it will continue to operate ShoZu’s apps for the foreseeable future, though the content-sharing technology will likely be added to Critical Path’s enterprise-facing products in the future. Release (via Mobile Industry Review).

Related

• Interview: Chris Wade, CEO, Shozu: VCs Won’t Pay For Free Apps Forever
• Mobile Imager ShoZu Raises $12 Million Third Round

The “Couples Retreat” star, who used to date Jennifer Aniston, told People in September that he’d reached “the first time that I really want to have kids.
Vincent Anthony “Vince” Vaughn (born March 28, 1970) is an American film actor and comedian. He began acting in the late 1980s, appearing in minor television roles before experiencing wider recognition with the 1996 movie, Swingers. He has since appeared in a number of films, mostly comedies.
Vince Vaughn is now a husband after marrying real estate agent Kyla Weber on Saturday. (Insert your own Wedding Crashers joke here).

People reports that the two had a smell (typo and it stays) ceremony outside of Vince’s hometown of Chicago. Vince and Kyla got engaged last year.

If you’re a proud gold digger, raise a glass of Strawberry Hill to Kyla for completing her mission! Don’t give me that look. Of course Kyla is hitting that shit for profit! I mean, IN THIS ECONOMY, it’s a genius business move. And I’m really sure Kyla’s heart orgasms every time Vince’s nose hairs tickle her upper lip when she has to kiss him. Not to mention him farting on her forehead when they 69.

On that note, congrats to Vince and Kyla!

And don’t worry, your grocer’s ice cream section won’t be ransacked by Jennifer Aniston tonight since I’m sure she threw away her Vince Vaughn real doll with accompanying dream wedding book a long time ago.
Vince Vaughn has been known to be a playboy for years, but one woman has finally caught his attention. Vaughn who is currently engaged to Canadian real estate agent Kyla Weber reveals that the most important thing in a relationship is friendship and a sense of humor.

He tells Parade.com: “Friendship is the biggest thing for me, and also a sense of humour. I like someone that can make me laugh. I like to laugh at stuff, especially myself.

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The “Couples Retreat” star, who used to date Jennifer Aniston, told People in September that he’d reached “the first time that I really want to have kids.
Vincent Anthony “Vince” Vaughn (born March 28, 1970) is an American film actor and comedian. He began acting in the late 1980s, appearing in minor television roles before experiencing wider recognition with the 1996 movie, Swingers. He has since appeared in a number of films, mostly comedies.
Vince Vaughn has been known to be a playboy for years, but one woman has finally caught his attention. Vaughn who is currently engaged to Canadian real estate agent Kyla Weber reveals that the most important thing in a relationship is friendship and a sense of humor.

He tells Parade.com: “Friendship is the biggest thing for me, and also a sense of humour. I like someone that can make me laugh. I like to laugh at stuff, especially myself.

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Here’s an easy one: 1+2-(3-4-5)*6*7*8-9

How about 1*(2+(3-4*(5/6-7))*8)*9

Or maybe 1+2345*6/7+8-9

Or (1-(23+4)*5)*(6/(7-8)-9

Maybe .1+23*(45+6*7)+8+.9

Even 1-(.2+(3+.4)*(5+67))*(.8-9)

If you love numbers and are excited about 2010, you’ll get a kick out of the cool 2010 page by Nadav Samet (surprise – he works for Google.)  (Thanks SMoody!)

The iPhone continues to lead in user interest surveys, but Android is closing in fast. New data from research firm ChangeWave shows that users are definitely interested in Google’s mobile OS, with a massive jump in the number of potential buyers eyeing Android-capable phones in its latest survey.

ChangeWave queried 4,068 current and potential smartphone consumers last month and noted that a full 21 percent said that they would prefer Android on their next smartphones—a jump of 15 percentage points from the year before. Comparatively, 28 percent of respondents said they would prefer iPhone OS; this makes the iPhone the leader in this category, though this number dropped four percentage points year over year. BlackBerry/RIM OS went up by one point to 18 percent, and those interested in Windows Mobile dropped from nine to a mere six percent. The only mobile OS sadder than WinMo appears to be Palm/Web OS, which dropped from six to three percent.

When it comes to user satisfaction, Apple and Google are neck-and-neck. Seventy-seven percent of iPhone users reported being “very satisfied” with their devices, compared to 72 percent of Android users, 41 percent of BlackBerry users, 33 percent of Palm users, and 25 percent of Windows Mobile users. (ChangeWave points out that for the Palm Pre specifically, the number was 58 percent.)

This isn’t to say that the iPhone is going to fall prey to Android phones tomorrow—ChangeWave pointed out that customers who plan to buy in the next 90 days still overwhelmingly prefer the iPhone, and interest in the iPhone 3GS has not dropped off as quickly as it did for the iPhone 3G. However, it does show that Google has succeeded in turning the heat up on the smartphone competition, no doubt aided by the highly anticipated launch of the Nexus One.

What is a “Brief” post?”

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Wedding Crasher Vince Vaughn has tied the knot.

The big screen funny guy married Canadian real estate agent Kyla Weber near his hometown of Chicago last Saturday, a rep for the actor has confirmed.

Vince, 39, proposed to the 31-year-old Calgary native last Valentine’s Day. The actor — best known for his comedy features like Swingers and Couple’s Retreat – has kept his relationship with Kayla under the radar, following hishigh-profile romance with his The Break-Up co-star Jennifer Aniston.

The couple split in 2006.

Casey lost custody of little Ava because of her erratic behavior.

According to the New York Post, Johnson’s father, New York Jet owner Woody Johnson, had recently restricted Casey’s access to funds because she wouldn’t get her life together. She had been in rehab several times but was unable to clean up her act.

TMZ spoke to Tila Tequila who says that she had gotten into an argument with Casey last week and she left the house. She says that she tried contacting Casey on the 29th but her phone had been shut off since the 29th.

She last tweeted on December 29 at 1:13 AM.

Tila just updated her Twitter with the following message:

Everyone please pray 4 my Wifey Casey Johnson. She has passed away. Thank u for all ur love and support but I will be offline to be w family.
Socialite CASEY JOHNSON has died, aged 30.
The body of the heiress to the Johnson & Johnson empire was discovered on Monday morning (04Jan10) in Los Angeles.
The tragic news comes just weeks after Johnson was arrested for grand theft.
She hit the headlines in December (09) when bisexual reality TV star Tila Tequila announced she was engaged to Johnson.
Details about the heiress’ death were not available as WENN went to press.

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Filed under: Cult of Mac, Odds and ends, Apple, Apple History

Engadget’s Josh Topolsky got to chat with none other than Woz recently, and they’ve finally shared a great video of their meeting. Woz says a lot of interesting things in the video (he runs six navigation systems at a time in his car just for comparison’s sake, and carries two iPhones nowadays, just in case the battery life runs out), but the most intriguing thing about this video is just seeing the great Wozniak thinking machine race along at the speed of Woz.

For example, those two iPhones he carries are the two different colors available. Why? “White and black, black and white. Resistor color codes: zero and nine. Those are the digits they end in!” Gosh, we love Steve Wozniak. You can watch the whole video after clicking the link below.

TUAWEngadget meets Woz originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like some Asian website, as Photo Rumors puts it, made a boo-boo and published its Panasonic point-and-shoot a tad early. Specs for six (and press photos for four) Lumix cameras have come to light. Here’s what’s the gang reportedly found, in a nutshell: the very compact, 14.1-megapixel FP3 has a 3-inch touchscreen LCD, 4x zoom, shoots 720p 30 frames per second video, and comes in a variety of colors; the FP1 similar in stature but with 12.1 megapixels and a 2.7-inch non-touchscreen LCD instead. The Lumix F3 drops the “very compact” look of the FP1 but is also 12.1 megapixels / 3x zoom, 720p 30fps video, and 2.7-inch LCD. The FH20 has a 14.1 megapixel sensor, 8x zoom, 720p video, and a Venus Engine IV image processor, which is also reportedly claimed by the the FH1 (12 megapixels, 5x zoom) and FH3 (14.1 megapixels, 5x zoom). It’s just that time of the season, eh?

Panasonic’s CES Lumix sextet leaked: FP and FH models galore originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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