Author: Serkadis

Filed under: Deals, iPhone

TUAW reader Conrad N. tipped us off to a nice 3G iPhone deal this morning. Buy.com is offering an 8GB 3G for just $430 with free shipping. While I wouldn’t classify this as a red hot deal (a 3GS would have qualified) it’s not bad for anyone who wants to pick up an inexpensive contract-free unit, for generous interpretations of the word “inexpensive”.

The 3G model works right out of the box with any AT&T SIM, although AT&T encourages you to sign up for an iPhone-specific plan. If you’re only interested in basic phone service without data, you can buy a $10 O2 SIM at Best Buy (it’s a re-branded AT&T SIM) good for 3 months of use, at 5 cents a text message and 17 cents per minute of airtime. That’s great for developers who want to add a telephony-ready unit into their testing arsenal without signing up for a full contract, who don’t want to use the phone except for testing and occasional use.

If you want to use data, however, your best economy bet probably lies in jailbreaking and unlocking (with a tool like blackra1n or pwnage) and using one of T-Mobile’s better-priced data plans. But be aware: because T-Mobile uses a different 3G frequency than AT&T, their data plans can only use EDGE service when accessed on the iPhone 3G. Want to use an existing AT&T data-plan enabled SIM? It should work out of the box but AT&T generally disapproves of that approach, and may (ahem) “encourage” you to upgrade to a (contract-enforced) official iPhone plan.

So is the 3G a good iPhone to buy for four-hundred-plus dollars? Recall that the 3G is just a 1st generation system (model 1,2 — i.e. 1st gen, 2nd iteration) with a few extra bells, whistles, and case design beyond the original model. The 3GS (model 2,1) is a far better system in terms of processor power and features, and we’re half a year out from what will likely be the next (model 3,1) iPhone, let alone any (possibly mythical) tablet. I’d call this a “warm deal” at best.

TUAWContract-free refurb 8GB 3G $430 with free shipping originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Rumors, Odds and ends, Apple

Apple is toying with us.

Remember the information a few weeks ago about the big event scheduled for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on January 26th? Of course, all of the Apple bloggers and pundits jumped all over this date as being the date for the announcement of something big like the tablet.

After thousands of posts have touted that date as the day that Steve Jobs will come down from the mountain carrying the 7″ tablet under one arm and the 10.1″ tablet under the other, the Wall Street Journal’s Digital Daily is reporting that the event is going to be held on Wednesday, January 27th.

According to Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, sources have told him that this event is planned to announce a “major new product.” We’re all assuming that this is going to be the most widely-hyped product since the iPhone, so wouldn’t it be hilarious if it was actually something completely different?

I, for one, am beginning to think that Apple is going to pull one of the biggest pranks ever on the world at large. How ’bout you? Leave your comments below for the world to see.

[Awesome graphic from MacDailyNews.com]

TUAWApple event scheduled for Wednesday, January 27th, NOT the 26th originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hype Machine, the smart, long-running MP3 blog aggregator, has posted its annual collection of the most-blogged-about albums, songs and musical artists of the year. Once again, the project is a pleasure to consume and will unfold throughout the month of January. Top albums 50 through 41, Mumford and Sons through Monsters of Folk, are available now in full for streaming.

The album collection combines weighted rankings – based on submitted top 10 lists from 550 MP3 blogs – with a widget from Grooveshark to listen to the album, and a Creative Commons photo of each band. It’s quite nice. The newest addition to the project is unusually low-tech; it’s artist renditions of the top 50 musical artists of the year.

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Last year’s Zeitgeist combined different technology to present the top albums and is still available as a list. It’s not as easy to listen to, though, perhaps because it was powered by Imeem, which MySpace bought and made a tragic mess of last month.

This year’s Hype Machine Zeitgeist is another example of the awesome potential of free online music combined with smart technology and excellent design. Check it out and be inspired. Is this era the end of the music industry? It sure doesn’t need to be.

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Startups in the Boston area considering applying for TechStars Boston 2010 should bite the bullet and fill out that application today in order to receive an invitation to tomorrow’s special meet and greet with TechStars mentors.

The event, dubbed TechStars For A Day, will be held in Cambridge, Mass. and will provide startups with the opportunity to find out more about the TechStars program while getting some early networking under their belts.

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While it isn’t possible to make a definitive correlation between TechStars’ events and nation’s VC funding climate, the cities TechStars is based in – Boston, Boulder and Seattle – is were the money is flowing. In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that six out of the eight venture-backed companies that went public in 2009 were from outside of the Valley – two of which were from Massachusetts, one of which was from Seattle.

In attendance will be Shawn Broderick, the executive director of TechStars Boston and founder/CEO of TrustPlus, TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen, as well as many other Boston mentors.

The deadline for startups to apply for TechStars Boston 2010 is midnight, Jan. 11.

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Dan Zarrella has long impressed us with his discourses on the science of retweets as well as his psychoanalytic apps that scan and parse Twitter streams, one for general analysis and one for dreams.

His latest project, TweetPsych for lists, is an enlightening and often amusing look at what your lists are talking about, how they view the world, what turns them on (or off) and more. Depending on how you group your Twitter friends, you can make interesting generalizations or conjectures about society as a whole. What do the denizens of L.A. or San Francisco tweet about most? What about women – what’s got them buzzing? Read on for graphs on precisely that cross-section of the Twittersphere.

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My “I Heart L.A.” list, a curation of tweets from the L.A. tech scene, shows a hilarious preoccupation with sex and a lack of tweeting about work, for example.

And my lengthy list of San Francisco/Bay Area people on Twitter gave evidence of a complete lack of interest in celebrities and a preoccupation with self, the future and control.

But when I looked at my “Southern Comfort” list of geeks south of the Mason-Dixon line, I got a very different picture. These folks are using the social web to tweet about their emotions, the passage of time, themselves and dreams of unconscious thoughts, while they tweet less than others about celebrities, sex and money.

When I looked at results for the list of women I follow, I saw they tweet a lot about sex, themselves, the past, anxiety and negative emotions, in that order. It was like watching an episode of Sex & the City flash before my eyes. They tweeted very little about money, learning, control (including self-control) and constructive behavior. Keep in mind, this isn’t a generalization about the state of womanhood on the Internet; I follow a very limited and eclectic group of ladies, all of whom I find very charming in their own fashion.

Of course, I had to check out the stats on the ReadWriteWeb crew. We seem to tweet a lot about leisure and activities other than work. Uh, don’t tell the boss? However, tweets about work finished a close third, right behind tweets about ourselves. As a group, we don’t tend to tweet about personal things, such as money, sex or emotions.

Other interesting hypotheses can be drawn when examining “social media” and “technology” lists. Many geek-centric lists I examined were shockingly devoid of tweets about leisure, positive or other emotions or physical sensations and dominated by tweets about learning, the self and control. Perhaps this is due to our realization that the personal and professional are quickly merging and our perceived need to present a reasonably consistent face and least objectionable programming-type content.

At any rate, Zarrella’s given us another insightful peek into how Twitter reveals interesting snippets of information about various demographics and sociological segments.

Give the new lists function a spin, and let us know your findings in the comments!

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AirStash expands your iPhone’s storage, wirelessly originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lenovo ThinkPad X100e hands-on impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Katy Perry isn’t the only celebrity kicking off the New Year with new ink. In other tattoo news, former American Idol contestant Danny Gokey is remembering his late wife with a new arm tattoo.

“Here’s the tattoo! It doesnt show the color very well because its swollen. Big thanks to Marcello at sacred skin!” he Tweeted over the weekend.

The country singer lost his young wife Sophia to a heart condition in 2008. He’s launced the Sophia’s Heart Charity Foundation in her honor last year. Be on the lookout for Danny’s debut album, My Best Days, debuting this spring.

Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa has offered to take Hutchison Telecommunications International private as the group’s largest shareholder. The move was expected given that the telecom company that has sold or spun off its most profitable operations in recent years.

The super diverse Hutchinson Wampoa, which owns property, ports, retail and telecom holdings, is owned by Li Ka-shing, one of Asia’s richest men. The WSJ reports that the move makes sense given that recently the telecom group has disposed of mobile-phone assets in India and Israel, and also spun off its profitable Hong Kong and Macau business. Hutchinson Whampoa runs and operates the “3” brand in several markets, including Hong Kong where it has one of the largest in terms of customer base. Hutchison Telecom is a different entity, in which 60.4 percent is owned by Hutchison Whampoa. It is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchanges, and has unprofitable operations left in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Most of the rest of the company is owned by Scailex Corp., which bought a stake in Hutchinson’s Israeli unit, Partner Communications, for $1.38 billion in cash and debt.

It’s not often you hear of researchers telling anyone to eat bacon or eggs. But a new study from the University of North Carolina reveals that choline — found in chicken eggs, pork and other meats — has a big role in helping a fetus to develop regions of the brain associated with memory. That means that pregnant women could have a great excuse to eat bacon and eggs. The research is featured in the January print issue of the FASEB Journal.

According to the senior scientist in the study, Steven Zeisel, the new research conducted with mice shows that a pregnant mother’s diet can change the epigenetic switches controlling the brain development of the fetus, especially when choline is included in the diet.

Zeisel said that gaining a better understanding of how diet modifies our genes may be important for optimal fetal development. Choline’s link to memory development was discovered when researchers fed two groups of pregnant mice different diets during the window when a fetal development of the hippocampus is taking place. The hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for memory.

“We may never be able to call bacon a health food with a straight face, but the emerging field of epigenetics is already making us rethink those things that we consider healthful and unhealthful,” said Gerald Weissmann, MD, Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal.

You may learn more about coline in different foods from the database at the Agricultural Research Service. The database allows you to estimate daily choline intake from more than 400 foods. The biggest sources of choline include meat, nuts and eggs.

(Image via flickr.www.bluewaikiki.com)

Post from: Blisstree

Bacon, Eggs for Pregnant Women

Just when it looked like healthcare reform was a sure thing without anything standing in its way… Suddenly the special election in Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy is drawing interest among Republicans.

There’s no facts to suggest that the race is close, but the GOP is definitely motivated, and now David Weigel confirms that Rasmussen will conduct its first poll to see whether challenger Scott Brown can beat Attorney General Martha Coakley.

If it’s close and it looks like Brown can win it means the 60th vote is in jeopardy, meaning both the GOP and the Democrats will pull out all the stops on this one.

Stay tuned.

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See Also:

• The One Chart That Says Everything* About Our Healthcare Problem
• By The Numbers: Ben Nelson’s Stunning Political Suicide
• Left-Wing Frustration Over Healthcare, Wall Street, And Afghanistan Leads To Shocking Internal Anger At Obama

Gov. Pat Quinn today announced the appointment of Manuel Flores as Chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC).

Flores, a Chicago alderman, brings to his new position a deep understanding of public service, a record for advancing pro-environmental initiatives, and a commitment to expanding broadband Internet access throughout Illinois.

“Manny Flores is an experienced and highly-regarded public servant who will provide a fresh viewpoint at this very important Commission,” said Gov. Quinn.

“He excelled in the Chicago City Council and will do so at the helm of the ICC.”

Upon Senate confirmation, Flores will be the first Latino Chairman of the ICC. A prominent member of the Chicago City Council, he was elected as 1st Ward Alderman in 2003.

He has served in numerous capacities including on the Capital and Technology Development committee and the Energy, Environmental Protection, and Public Utilities committee.

He also serves on the Illinois Broadband Deployment Council and the Board of Community Health. (Background Information)

Flores has been a tireless advocate for building Chicago’s green economy by pushing for LEED certification in new developments, launching GreenEconomyChicago.com, an online social networking platform to develop policy to promote a green marketplace, and spearheading the Chicago’s Green Exchange development, a green business mall that will be a premier destination for clean technology and energy companies.

“I want to thank Governor Quinn for the appointment and I’m proud to serve the state of Illinois as the Chairman of Illinois Commerce Commission,” said Flores.

A graduate of Dominican University and George Washington University Law School, Flores served as a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. He began his career in public service as an aide to Congressman Luis Guiterrez.

The Illinois Commerce Commission’s acts as a bridge between consumers and Illinois’ utility companies, seeking an appropriate balance between the interests of consumers and service providers in order to ensure adequate, efficient, reliable, safe and least-cost public utility services for all citizens of Illinois.

For more information on the ICC, please visit: icc.illinois.gov.

By Crystal Yednak

Richard Oberbruner is accustomed to tough crowds. A career coach who also studied at Second City, he once used improv techniques in classes with inmates at the DuPage County Jail.

So a roomful of people searching for work as the national unemployment rate hovers around 10%? No problem.

“They’re trying to keep their best face, trying to stay confident, but they really are depressed and anxious. Improv is a safe setting to vent their frustrations and get a laugh,” says Mr. Oberbruner, who recently led a humorous presentation titled “Lighten Up — It’s Only Unemployment” for Harper College’s job search support group, Career Stimulus.

“We wanted to take a moment to let the load up just a little bit,” says Nancy Wajler, who coordinates adult learning programs at Harper College in Palatine.

Other networking groups have offered similar light fare to gear clients up for a new year of job searching. At the Career Transitions Center of Chicago, members of a networking group did a book exchange as a distraction from the enthusiasm-pummeling job market.

Making people smile can even help with the job search, says Anita Jenke, director of the center. “People don’t want to be around mopey people,” she says. “Employers want to hire people who are passionate about what they do.”

Brad Mahan, 47, who has been looking for work as a customer-service representative, attended the Career Stimulus program at Harper.

The job search “has been difficult because of the economy,” says Mr. Mahan, of north suburban Island Lake. But the humor-filled event “got everybody motivated to keep going out there and applying.”

»  China Mobile says it has no plans to buy instant messenger QQ creator TenCent. [WSJ]

»  Can Google (NSDQ: GOOG) leverage its brand power to sell the Nexus One? [Ad Age]

»  Android’s popularity is rising, with big jumps in the number of people who currently own a phone running Google’s mobile OS or who plan to buy one soon. [Cellular News]

»  Why apps are a threat to search engines’ dominance over queries. [GigaOm]

»  Vonage believes mobile Internet calling will help it become profitable. [Forbes]

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Videos, Lexus, Luxury

If you haven’t downloaded last night’s Top Gear through some nefarious means, you missed one of the few palatable car reviews the trio has done this season. In addition to taking the BMW X6 globe-trotting and putting the all-new, 325-hp Vauxhall Insignia VXR though its paces, Hammond track tested the Lexus LFA in a segment that brought out our inner nine-year-old.

Get past the flashy graphics and obligatory power slides, and the TG grew came away with a similar stance on Lexus’ first foray in the world of supercars as us – impressed and perplexed. With more power and just as much tech as a Nissan GT-R and 0-60 time and a raison d’être on par with the Ferrari 599 GTB, it’s the price (and a lack of heritage) that leaves Clarkson and Hammond reeling. Make the jump for both the review and the damp Power Lap, and as always, you can get the full episode in high-def glory over at FinalGear.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading Video: Top Gear takes on the Lexus LFA

Video: Top Gear takes on the Lexus LFA originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While some are saying that France’s “three strikes” law has been delayed until April due to data protection issues, others are reporting that the law is in effect as of January 1st, and people should start getting “warning” messages soon. That same article quotes a French senator who believes that 95% of people will “finish with that bad usage” after the second warning message they receive, but others figure what’s more likely is that people will just move on to other ways of accessing files — ways that can’t easily be tracked. My guess is that like when Napster was shut down or with Sweden’s IPRED law, there may be a temporary bounceback in sales, but as more people learn of ways to go back to accessing music for free in ways that are less likely to be caught, they will do so. Quickly. As much as the entertainment industry and some politicians have trouble comprehending this, you can’t stop what technology allows.

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Copper prices are soaring after strikes in one of the largest copper producing nations in the world, Chile, threaten to scuttle output.

AFP: Workers at two mines owned by Chile’s Codelco company, the world’s biggest copper mining company, went on strike on Monday demanding higher pay and better benefits.

Miners at the Chuquicamata and Mina Sur mines, which together account for four percent of the world’s copper production, are calling for a 7.5 percent pay hike as copper prices soar.

Both mines belong to the state-owned Chilean group Codelco, the National Copper Corporation of Chile, which produces around 1.6 million tonnes of copper per year and employs around 5,600 workers.

About a third of the unionised miners failed to show up when their shifts began at 5 am Monday.

It’s good news for copper prices, but could eventually be bad news for Chile given that copper accounts for 25% of the nation’s GDP. Yet the Chilean IPSA index appears to so far be doing just fine. Perhaps it’s because copper producer stocks rallied on the supply threat.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Chinese Demand Will Keep The Boom Going For Copper And Fertilizer In 2010
• Australia: Copper Production To Slow Next Year, Global Shortage Coming
• Crowded Trade: Copper Theft Is Back

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow will be dying.

Damnit all to hell, Bobby Herrick, you sure write purdy. As I sit in my room after watching the most recent episode of “Jersey Shore” (best show…ever?) with my sister, a mere eight hours away from my drive up to the Farm, I find myself looking back on what has been, and eyeing the now fast-developing year.

The entire concept of new year’s resolutions, of squaring upon a single windmill or two to fruitlessly charge, much less toss aside by second week of February, is simply a waste of time. But what the annual playing of “Auld Lang Syne” (amazing lyrics, by the way–Robert Burns was down to rage) does instigate it a much-needed period of contemplation and reflection, which we as insanely busy characters never spare enough time to do well.

Predicted by some to begin with global mayhem, the 2000s wrapped up for me in a Sooners-filled Howard Johnson motel room in El Paso, Texas, literally a mile and half away from scenic Juarez, Mexico, and right across the street from the classiest of establishments, the Prince Machiavelli Lounge. An unexpected, but nonetheless fitting (question mark???) end to a long, strange trip of a decade.

Like many of you, the ‘00s encapsulated my adolescence and over half of my eventual (knock on wood) undergraduate career, among so many other strange and wonderful and painful events that no college paper column could ever do even a shred of justice.

But there is absolutely no need to devote yet another column to looking back at what transpired in 2009, because “The Dude Abides” has been for 10 months now just that, a semi-coherent record of bygone insanity. Rather, even in spite of my history major obsession with the past, I find the focus being directed toward 2010 and beyond.

As a junior, there are casts of thousands of my classmates and friends returning from all corners of the globe after spending the fall immersed in either a Bing Overseas Drinking…er, Studies campus or some other study abroad program. There exists within the ranks of my esteemed class a creeping realization of the transiency that marks our time at the Stan. The graduation of many dear friends in 2009 proved to me what many of my friends who were formerly abroad are now experiencing: the Farm goes on without you, and almost as if you never were here at all.

This will be my last hurrah on the Farm for this school year. I am getting a chance to hightail to D.C. for the Stanford in Washington program during spring, which I am all a-titter about. But as of March 19, what stands between me and the Real World are only three debauched quarters of frolicking among the palm fronds in this sandstone-lined Xanadu (the Samuel Coleridge one, not the house. I have already come clean about my love of the Upper Row). I am neither regretful of my past quarters nor fearful of the future, but this ever-narrowing window of time does force me to pause a bit.

The fact that a winter-quarter junior is getting antsy in the pantsy by the prospect of his final departure from the House That Leland Built is of absolutely no consequence or relevance, much less a new development in the greater history of Stanford students clinging dearly to the University. Not to worry–I got the memo. However, when mulling the undoubted absurdity that will consume my 2010, wherever I may be, the importance of time stands out starkly.

The clock is quite clearly ticking away on my Stanford experience, and having largely found a wonderful little realm (a Warmdom, perhaps?) within the Farm after two-plus years of searching and stumbling, I intend to do everything in my power to see that my remaining days and months are filled with what I actually want to be doing.

All of us at Stanford have our lives to some degree punctuated with inane crap, some of it necessary, but most of it not. We take classes for the simple sake we see others doing the same. We tepidly continue in student groups that have burned us out. Too frequently, we live by standards and ideals laid down by forces other than ourselves.

Fuck ‘em, I say. If it’s starting a student group, pursuing an internship/cute internist, or just planning a gnarly wine social, for god’s sake, do it. Our time is too precious here to be wasted on trifling nonsense. Like this column, for instance. Happy 2010, folks.