Cleopatra and Rome is essentially a “life and times” of the last Ptolemid ruler of Egypt, inter-woven with an exploration of her long-term influence on the art, politics, and culture of her times and the ages that followed, with a look at the Cleopatra of tradition, legend, and literature.
The author, a professor of Classics at Yale, argues that the Egyptian queen’s conqueror, Octavian, and the Romans of his times consciously copied many political, cultural, and social practices that had characterized her reign, putting an “indelible mark” on imperial Rome.
Thanks as usual to Jane Akshar for providing us with her notes from the most recent Mummification Museum on her blog.
Forensic Egyptology – Janet Davey
Although in English this week, this lecture was one of those that was difficult to take notes from as it was very visual but I will do my best.
Firstly a plug for my course Certificate in Continuing Education in Egyptology at Manchester University. This is a totally online course and Janet was one of the early tutors on the course now we have Joyce Tyldesley and the course director is Rosalie David. I am in my second year now and not only is the course great but being friends with the many people that have been involved as students or as tutors is a privilege.
Janet talked about her ongoing project, child mummies. She is based in a working forensic laboratory and they did in fact do a mock inquest on one of the mummies. She is using modern medical techniques such as forensic odontology, entomology and sculpture to investigate the past. She is focussing on 2 methods Microscopy and Radiology.
Mummy research is very much a worldwide group activity
The age of a child can be estimated by the eruption of the teeth HOWEVER the comparison is done against tables that have been drawn up using modern children so you must always be aware there may be inaccuracies.
On the scalp investigations under an electron microscope show a thread of linen and one of cotton. IF this is ancient cotton and not contamination then this indicates a much earlier use of cotton.
Yahoo (YHOO) may be losing search market share and blowing money on a terrible ad campaign (It’s why-loo!?!), but there’s still plenty of reason to be optimistic about big purple’s chances in 2010.
That is, if you’re keen to follow cheerful JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan’s advice.
In his 2010 Internet Sector Outlook, Imran set a $21/share price target for Yahoo — up from today’s $17 price.
Here are his bulletpoints:
Contrary to many investors’ beliefs, Yahoo! top properties are outgrowing the industry growth
Overall macro growth in Display Advertising should help Yahoo!
Search revenue share losses are less pronounced that market share declines
Margin improvement should drive EPS growth
We estimate that the value of the public Asian assets and cash balance is approximately $8 per share. (This does not include the value of Taobaoor Alipay)
A group of men branded soldiers at a homecoming parade murderers and baby killers, a court has heard.
Slogans were chanted as the Second Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment, marched through Luton, Bedfordshire.
People supporting troops in March last year were visibly upset by the protest, Luton Magistrates’ Court was told.
The seven men, from Luton, have denied using threatening, abusive or insulting words and behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm and distress.
Those accused are Jalal Ahmed, 21, Yousaf Bashir, 29, Ibrahim Anderson, 32, Jubair Ahmed, 19, Ziaur Rahman, 32, Shajjadar Choudhury, 31, and Munim Abdul, 29.
Refused to stand
Prosecutor Avirup Chaudhuri said: "The procession took place to celebrate the return of the local army regiment from duties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"As they marched towards Upper George Street a group of protestors at an unofficial demonstration started to shout and chant."
Mr Chaudhuri said: "A number of spectators were clearly upset."
He added the case was brought against the men on the basis of what was said rather than on the words on placards they carried.
The offending words spoken by the seven men included: "British soldiers, murderers", "British solders, baby killers", "British solders go to hell" and "British solders, you will pay".
"It is contended all those slogans go beyond legitimate protests," the prosecutor said.
As copyright-watchers are well aware, recently there was an important case that went through the US court system over whether or not cable company Cablevision could provide a remote DVR service. Effectively, Cablevision was setting up a bank of TiVo-like devices at its own datacenter, and allowing users to record and playback shows as if they were recording them on a DVR settop box sitting under their television. The only real difference is where the box is (or, you might say, how long the wire is between the TV and the DVR). Since it’s already well established that time-shifting is perfectly legal it was difficult to see how anyone could make the argument that Cablevision’s setup was infringing. The only difference was the length of the wire. But, of course, the TV guys objected strenuously with bizarre analogies that didn’t make much sense.
The appeals court sided with Cablevision, saying that such a service doesn’t infringe, and the Supreme Court chose not to hear the appeal, so this ruling stands, at least in the Second Circuit, for the time being. But what was most telling about the actual appeals court ruling was how the judges had to contort themselves into all sorts of odd ways to make such a ruling make sense under the law. The conclusion clearly made sense. Copyright law wouldn’t make any sense at all if the length of a wire could change something from infringing to non-infringing. And yet, there were ways to read copyright law that would have found in favor of the networks. The issue is really twofold. First, technology advances faster than copyright law, and the conditions that were in place when the law was written aren’t the same as what happens later. Second, to deal with this our esteemed elected officials simply apply duct tape-like patches to copyright law, adding new definitions and categories, that didn’t exist before. But, then when new technologies come along, the question is what categories do the resulting outputs fall into, and the arguments are often about who gets to categorize the output to their benefit.
It appears that the US is not the only country going through this sort of debate. I’ve been alerted to a recent ruling in Singapore that actually comes to a different conclusion and finds infringing behavior on the part of the service provider. The story here is slightly different. In this case, the company is RecordTV — a separate service, rather than provided by the cable company itself. Also, it’s a web-based service, rather than a TV-based one. Users log in and can designate which shows (only from Singaporean channels that broadcast over-the-air) they want to record, and the service will record those shows and make them accessible to that user only for a limited amount of time. There is one
other complicating factor, in that the way RecordTV works has shifted over time. Initially it would record a show once and allow anyone who requested that recording to access the single file. But later it switched to keeping a separate recording of each show that someone requested, which seems massively inefficient in terms of storage.
What’s stunning again, however, as you read through the ruling is how conflicted the judge appears to be. There’s a ridiculous amount of “on the one hand, on the other hand, but on the other other hand”-type reasoning found throughout the ruling, which you can see below:
It’s also interesting to see that, despite this ruling being in Singapore, under Singaporean rule, the discussion spends a lot of time looking at the Cablevision case in the US (and some other US and UK cases as well).
So, why does the judge come to a different conclusion? Well, it almost feels like it depended on which eventual flip of the coin came up which way. The judge agrees with the basic ruling in Cablevision that it is not the service provider who is liable for direct infringement. As in the Cablevision case, it’s the end users who “pushes the button” and thus is actually responsible for the action. All good. But, the lawsuit also focused on a secondary level of infringement, and here the court found that RecordTV, while not liable for the actual recording, could be found liable of secondary infringement in the later transmission of the content.
This seems like a total headscratcher. So a user is responsible for recording the file, but not responsible for then accessing it (recognize that the user accessing the file is the same as the service provider transmitting it)? How does that make sense?
There is a second issue also, which is that the court had trouble with the fact that RecordTV meant to be a commercial enterprise in which it would make money by having ads. It used this issue as one of a few factors that removed a “fair dealing/fair use” defense by the company. Again, though, there’s a lot of “on the one hand, on the other hand” type debates in the ruling until the judge basically says that under the law, as it stands, the site is guilty of infringement. But even it seems really troubled by what this means from a practical perspective:
I leave open the possibility that such a DVR or VCR product or service, operating remotely or locally, digitally or via analog means, could amount to fair dealing under our Copyright Act only for the non-commercial facilitation of end-users’ time shifting. As we have seen earlier… it is inconsistent that the VCR is permitted to be sold at a price (in stores) but the [remote] DVR (through advertising revenue) is not, but until the occasion requires, I shall not make any pronouncements on this anomaly.
And there you are. Even the judge seems to recognize that it’s silly to find one service infringing and the other not, but basically says that with the way copyright law is set up, that’s the ruling that makes sense.
Finally, this should be worrisome on all sorts of levels for a variety of online services that seek to replicate perfectly legal analog equivalents. The fact that where a storage device is stored or how long a wire is could totally change the legality of a product should suggest that something is seriously wrong with copyright law.
Of course, as you can see from the Asus dual screen eReader pictured here, the concept of a dual screen eReader is nothing new. But I have to wonder how devices like this will compete or blend with more functional tablet computers. As for the 3D laptop, there isn’t any further detail. Hopefully we will learn more when CES kicks off. [Digitimes]
A few months ago, I walked into a Paradise Bakery & Café in Phoenix — a place known for its excellent food and free Wi-Fi. Like a lot of places with free Internet access, there were plenty of laptop users. What stood out to me was that all but one of the computers was either a MacBook or MacBook Pro.
It’s not just me looking through at the world with an Apple-tinged bias. The more places I go, the more I see people using Macs, or at least considering them. The Apple stores in Phoenix are still nearly elbow to elbow with people every time I visit, however the lone Microsoft store in Scottsdale was pretty empty the one time I visited.
There’s now data to back up these observations. Macsimum News reports that iMacs were the top-selling desktop for the month of October 2009 according to the NPD Group. After the proverbial jaw-dropping moment, there was quickly speculation as to why Macs finally outpaced PCs when it came to desktops. According to The Daily Gleaner, the NPD Group stated that PC sales were down as a result of the impending launch of Windows 7.
Or, it could also be indicative that Windows users are finally getting fed up.
“If Microsoft Windows is seen as a buggier, less-secure product that is slower, harder to use and ultimately raises costs for everybody, that opens up the market for Apple to gain that high-end segment. . . ,” Harvard Business School’s David Yoffie said in The Daily Gleaner. “If Windows 7 is not seen as more of an improvement (over Vista) then I think you’ll see more erosion at the high end.”
ComScore, a leading Web statistics provider, has joined with Flurry Analytics to provide a more complete picture on the who, what, when, where and how of our use of mobile media. Founded just over a year ago, Flurry has grown immensely and this move will only serve to boost its popularity.
Flurry announced the partnership on the heels of its merger with Pinch Media last month. The service boasts a nearly ubiquitous presence in the mobile market and will add a host of real-time data to comScore’s reports.
Sponsor
Flurry collects mobile application data from approximately two out of every three iPhone and Android devices. Each month, the company aggregates application usage data from over 1 billion end-user sessions across more than 50 million unique handsets from more than 200 countries. Over 10,000 developers have chosen to integrate Flurry Analytics within their applications.
That’s 9,700 developers more than the company started with just a year ago.
Using Flurry’s data, comScore will add “real-time consumption data, including frequency of use, length of use, user geographic location, new vs. repeat usage and Wi-Fi vs. carrier network usage” to its mobile application data.
Seesmic has acquired Ping.fm, a status update service that allows users to update posts on over 50 social networks through SMS, mobile apps, IM services and 3rd party apps that support the service. Seesmic plans to integrate Ping.fm into all of its applications in the near future. In addition, Seesmic’s users will be able to send updates to their favorite social networks through Ping.fm’s email, SMS and IM gateways. Ping.fm’s founders Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough will join Seesmic as full-time employees and continue to work on Ping.fm.
Sponsor
Neither Seesmic nor Ping.fm disclosed the terms of the acquisition. It’s worth noting, however, that both Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman invested in Ping.fm in December 2008.
Seesmic’s founder Loic Le Meur notes that he hopes that this acquisition will allow the company to speed up “its vision of becoming your default application to stay in touch with your friends and constantly managing your online social presence.” Through Ping.fm, Seesmic’s users will soon be able to easily update their status on a wide variety of social networks like Ning, Yahoo Meme, Yammer and Status.net. Seesmic already offered built-in support for Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace.
According to Le Meur, Ping.fm currently has over 500,000 registered users, though the number of active users is likely far smaller. In total, Ping.fm posts about 200,000 updates per day. Seesmic’s own Twhirl has offered support for Ping.fm since early 2009.
Seesmic Wants to be a Lot More Than Just a Twitter Client
Given Seesmic’s vision, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the company is interested in broadening its scope beyond Twitter. The acquisition of Ping.fm gives Seesmic all the necessary infrastructure like SMS and IM gateways to execute this vision. Ping.fm offers it’s own URL shortener and gives users access to detailed statistics about how these links were used.
One of the most interesting aspects of the company’s recently announced native Windows client, for example, is that it includes support for a plugin architecture. This will allow developers to integrate support for virtually any social network into Seesmic. In the near future, Seesmic plans to expand this feature to all of its clients.
Looks like Nokia is going all-out in it patent fight with Apple: in addition to the lawsuit it’s filed over GSM standards and last week’s International Trade Commission complaint, Espoo just filed a second complaint with the federal court, alleging that Apple’s infringing several “implementation patents” that cover everything from camera sensors to touchscreens. That’s three fronts in the same war, if you’re counting — the original regarding GSM patents, and these two latest over specific device technologies. The biggest bombshell so far is the ITC complaint, in which Nokia’s asking the commission to ban imports of basically every Apple mobile product from the MacBook to the iPhone for infringing its device patents — a strategy we’ve seen in other high-profile cases. Since the ITC has the ability to move quite quickly, we’d expect that case to be the primary battleground for the moment — but remember that Apple has plenty of its own incredibly broad patents of its own to fight back with here, so don’t expect a quick resolution. Looks like 2010 is going to be awfully good for these attorneys, don’t you think?
We don’t have too many details here, but we sure are itching to get to Vegas to see if MSI really does have a dual-screen, Tegra-powered e-reader up its sleeve. Let’s have it MSI: are you stealing another page from your Taiwanese arch-nemesis ASUS and its dual-screen Eee Reader? Regardless, Digitimes reports that not only will it show a dual-screen gadget of sorts, but also one with a slate form factor. More believable is the 3D laptop that the Taiwanese company is said to be prepping. Let’s just hope they have gone with NVIDIA’s 3D Vision technology there. It’s only a matter of hours now until we find out about it all.
Did your laptop maker not see fit to include any jazzy gesture support into your touchpad? Did you buy early and miss out on the multitouch revolution? Synaptics wants to fill the gap for those portables (and suitably-equipped desktops) with its Scrybe software. It augments Windows’ existing touch functionality to add context-specific gestures and motions, and while jog-dial control for media has us most excited, you’ll also be able to edit photos, look up word definitions, and plenty more — even if you don’t have a 10-finger capable device. The plan is for the company to make partnerships with various manufacturers so that this software becomes standard issue stuff, but you can get a taste of it today thanks to a roughly 10MB beta preview downloadable now at the read link. Do let us know what you think.
Even though you probably still can’t figure out what good the ability to connect your Bluetooth keyboard to your iPhone will do, the BTstack project is steaming ahead with this demo of a connected Magic Mouse twirling its pointer all over Apple’s handset. The driver code is still unreleased, but we get to see some nice lag-free interaction between the two devices, suggesting it shouldn’t be too far away from public consumption. As if to answer your earlier quandary, the video also features a Celluon CL800BT virtual keyboard, which projects onto and responds to your touch of any flat surface. A gimmick most likely, but a fun journey into the dream of nomadic computing nonetheless. Check out all the action after the break.
Southland’s Kevin Alejandro has been cast as a love interest for Nelsan Ellis’s Lafayette on the upcoming third season of HBO’s popular supernatural drama True Blood, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
In a guest arc kicking off this spring, Alejandro will play Jesus, a Latino orderly assigned to care for Lafayette’s ailing Ruby Jean Reynolds at an assisted living facility.
The actor, who is still billed as a series regular on the gritty TNT police drama, joins the recently-cast Joe Manganiello, Lindsay Pulsipher, and James Frain on True Blood. He has also appeared in guest arc on Ugly Betty and Weeds.
Facing a great deal of pressure from EU law makers to reduce emissions, Porsche is planning on offering its next-generation Boxster with a new 4-cylinder or even a turbocharged 3-cylinder. According to the Boxster model line director Hans-Jurgen Wohler, Porsche is planning to offer an entry-level model with a downsized engine in a move that will help it reduce fleet emissions.
“A Boxster with a four-cylinder engine, or maybe even a three-cylinder turbo, could produce between 180bhp and 200bhp and emit just 180g/km of CO2,” Wohler told AutoCar. “Given the Boxster’s history — that it started with a 200bhp, 2.5-litre engine — I think this is possibly something that customers could accept.
“We are under a great deal of pressure from the EU law makers to reduce emissions, but we don’t know yet how much we’ll have to come down by,” he added.
In order to avoid fines, companies like Porsche that produce less than 300,000 units a year will have to reduce their fleet CO2 emissions by 25 per cent compared with 2006 levels in order to avoid fines.
Seorang ayah bercerita: “ Ketika anak perempuan saya masih kelas I SD, berulang kali kami selaku orang tua dipanggil ke sekolah oleh gurunya. Kami diberi tahu bahwa anak kami sering tidak menyelesaikan tugas menulis di sekolah sehingga harus pulang lebih akhir dibanding teman-temannya. Selain itu katanya anak kami suka menyontek tulisan temannya saat diberi tugas menyalin tulisan di papan tulis “. Si Ayah melanjutkan: “ Belakangan kami mengetahui mata anak kami minus 2,5 setelah konsultasi ke dokter.”
Sementara itu seorang Ibu berkisah: “ Putra saya memiliki hobi menggambar, tapi nampak tidak senang jika diminta menulis dan membaca. Dia juga suka banget menonton TV dan main game di layar komputer dalam jarak dekat sambil sesekali memicingkan matanya. Kata gurunya, putra saya kurang bisa menangkap pelajaran yang ditulis di papan tulis. Nilai raportnya kurang bagus terutama untuk pelajaran matematika. Atas saran dokter, saya memeriksakan mata anak saya. Ternyata minus 4. Setelah menggunakan kacamata, nilai pelajarannya berangsur membaik .”
Cerita seorang ayah dan ibu atas putra-putri mereka menunjukkan kepada kita bahwa peran orang tua dan guru sangat diperlukan untuk mengenali kemungkinan gangguan penglihatan anak melalui pengamatan di sekolah dan di rumah ketika anak sedang belajar, menggunakan komputer, ataupun bermain yang menggunakan fungsi penglihatan.
Mata minus atau myopia merupakan kelainan refraksi dimana sinar sejajar yang masuk mata dibias membentuk bayangan di depan retina mata sehingga obyek terlihat kabur apabila melihat jauh.
Myopia ditandai dengan kabur jika melihat jauh, melihat obyek lebih jelas dalam jarak dekat, mata mudah lelah dan kerap mendekatkan mata ke obyek yang dilihatnya.
Bagi anak yang mampu menyampaikan keluhan penglihatan, biasanya orang tua segera memeriksakan anaknya ke dokter. Namun anak yang masih kecil atau tidak mampu menyampaikan keluhan penglihatan, para orang tua dapat memantau fungsi penglihatan anaknya melalui pengamatan sejak dini.
Myopia dapat dikenali apabila anak menunjukkan gejala-gejala sebagai berkut:
Kabur jika melihat jauh.
Memicingkan mata bila melihat jauh.
Membaca dalam jarak dekat.
Mata mudah lelah saat membaca.
Kadang mengeluh sakit kepala.
Bagaimana menanggulangi myopia ?
Menggunakan kacamata, yakni dengan koreksi lensa negatif terlemah yang menghasilkan penglihatan terbaik.
Lensa kontak. Penggunaan lensa kontak terutama pada myopia tinggi dan anisometria.
Bedah retraktif, meliputi: (a) Bedah refraktif kornea, yakni dengan mengubah lengkungan permukaan kornea menggunakan laser atau operasi lasik. (b) Bedah refraktif lensa, yakni tindakan ekstraksi lensa jernih yang diikuti dengan implantasi lensa di dalam mata (intraokuler). Tindakan bedah biasanya dilakukan jika dengan koreksi kacamata ataupun penggunaan lensa kontak tidak memberikan hasil yang memuaskan. Hanya saja, para orang tua hendaknya menanyakan efek samping yang mungkin timbul pasca operasi.
FAQ SEPUTAR MATA MINUS PADA ANAK
Apakah vitamin A dan wortel dapat mengurangi mata minus ? Jawab: Tidak. Mata minus bukan karena kekurangan vitamin A tapi karena kelainan refraksi sebagimana penjelasan pada pengertian myopia.
Apakah mata minus pada anak harus sering kontrol ? Jawab : Ya. Mata minus pada anak sebaiknya kontrol 6 bulan hingga setahun sekali terutama pada awal penggunaan kacamata karena mata minus pada anak biasanya cenderung bertambah sampai usia sekitar 20 tahun.
Semoga bermanfaat.
Edisi cetak, file PDF 499 KB, silahkan download di siniataudi sini.
Referensi:
PDT Ilmu Penyakit Mata RSU Dr. Soetomo, Surabaya, edisi III, 2006.
Ilmu Kesehatan Anak, Jilid II, ceakan XI, FKUI, 2005.
Berapa biaya operasi Lasik ? Silahkan lihat di sini.
Jakub Kornfeil and Sturla Fagerhaug head for the 2010 125 World Championship, KTM announced today. Kornfeil, the 16-year-old Czech rider who won the Rookies Cup by just 2 points, has signed for Racing Team Germany, while Fagerhaug, the 18 year old Norwegian, runner up in the Rookies Cup, will race for the I.S.P.A. Ongetta, Worldwide Race Team.
Kornfeil knows very well that the step into the World Championship will be tough. "I know that the competition will be very very hard…. (read more)
But here’s one very important priority — reversing the direction of this chart. Via JP Morgan Imran Khan, it tracks the amount of money the company has been able to generate from every 1,000 page views:
As Khan notes, you can pin a lot of AOL’s (AOL) ad slump on the previous regime’s decision to sell much of the company’s inventory through its “Platform A” ad network, which stressed volume over price. That is, the AOL sales team was rewarded for selling as much as it could, no matter how much money it got for the stuff.
Armstrong’s solution sounds simple, and it’s one that other big Web players, like CBS (CBS) and Yahoo (YHOO) are trying to do as well: Sell less stuff, at higher prices. It won’t be that easy, of course.
And Armstrong’s task may be even harder then his peers’, because AOL’s sales force, once one of the top shops on the Web, has been in free fall for several years. It’s not a coincidence that Armstrong is a career sales guy, but the sotto voce criticism of his tenure at Google (GOOG) is that he never really needed to sell anything, because Google’s ad product sells itself.
That’s a gross simplification, of course. But the best way for Armstrong to prove his critics wrong is to turn that chart around.
Of all the many major issues to think about in the digital sector over the next year, perhaps the most important sector to focus on will be the mobile space.
And that’s why the swirl of controversy around the inability of AT&T (T) to maintain a reliable network for users of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone–especially in New York and San Francisco–is perhaps the flashpoint story of the coming year.
It’s not only an appalling predicament for consumers who have paid for promised service and been denied it, as well as a future Harvard Business School case study in corporate incompetence (or malfeasance, depending on your mood), but it is a really bad development for tech in general.
In other words, failed calls and glitchy apps are more than just annoying–they’re holding back a key spark of future innovation for computing.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens way too much in the digital space.
In fact, this AT&T debacle actually reminds me a lot of AOL’s busy-signal crisis of 1997, when the then-high-flying online service signed up too many consumers for its all-you-can-eat access and did not have the equipment in place to deliver what it sold.
At the time, its CEO Steve Case used the same lame excuses that AT&T has, pretty much asking users to buck up during the shortfall. But he quickly retreated, apologized and fixed the situation.
That particular self-inflicted mess is now but a distant memory and certainly did not stop the progress of either AOL or Internet use overall. But it was a stark reminder that the relentless march of innovation should not be throttled.
That’s more true than ever as computing moves into what I consider an entirely new era of development, all centered on portable “smart” devices, whose standard-bearer is the iPhone, iPod Touch and–soon–iSlate.
“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.”
That all means plenty of need for strong networks that can handle all the wireless data that is going to be pumped through it in ever increasing amounts.
Perhaps this looks like bandwidth hogfest by customers, but it’s the landscape now and AT&T must adapt or, well, you know.
So, following in the footsteps of a lot of really terrific work done pretty much by bloggers on the mess AT&T has created, it is probably a given that–as I have obsessively done with Yahoo (YHOO) and its management woes–I and many other journalists should stop making jokes about it and spend a lot more time monitoring what the telecom giant, as well as others, are doing or, really, not doing.
As usual, all tips and delicious memos appreciated, as well as suggestions of stories to look into.
It’s a new year, and it’s a time for big dreams. While you’re dreaming of losing ten pounds though, Square Enix wants to use the year to “take root” in an effort to eventually lead the entire entertainment industry.
It’s a common practice for Japanese companies to issue statements at the beginning of a new year. Square Enix’s message, titled “Taking Root,” suggests that video games will soon be competing with the likes of movie studios, if they aren’t already.
“In the near future, the rate of convergence between video games and other digital entertainment content will only continue to accelerate,” Square Enix president Yoichi Wada said in a statement (via Kotaku).
Rumor has it that the 
A few months ago, I walked into a 
Seesmic’s founder Loic Le Meur notes that he hopes that this acquisition will allow the company to speed up “its vision of becoming your default application to stay in touch with your friends and constantly managing your online social presence.” Through Ping.fm, Seesmic’s users will soon be able to easily update their status on a wide variety of 
Jakub Kornfeil and Sturla Fagerhaug head for the 2010 125 World Championship, KTM announced today. Kornfeil, the 16-year-old Czech rider who won the Rookies Cup by just 2 points, has signed for Racing Team Germany, while Fagerhaug, the 18 year old Norwegian, runner up in the Rookies Cup, will race for the I.S.P.A. Ongetta, Worldwide Race Team.
