Author: Serkadis

‘Afghan President Hamid Karzai protests
the US military’s targeting of civilians after a US raid killed at
least eight school children in the east of the war-torn country. Karzai’s
office on Monday issued a statement in which it condemned the killings
that reportedly took place on Saturday in Kunar province near the
border with Pakistan.

“Initial reports indicate that in a
series of operations by international forces in Kunar province… 10
civilians, eight of them school students, have been killed,” the
statement said.’

Read more…

Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList

‘US intelligence sources
have confirmed Iran’s assertions that a document published by a British
daily about Tehran’s nuclear program is a fabrication.

Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList

Zionists of a feather flock together…

‘British Foreign
Secretary David Miliband on Monday hailed the “great courage” of
pro-opposition supporters who took part in illegal protests in Tehran
one day earlier, during which several people were killed and public
property was damaged.’

Read more…

Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList

My penmanship is withered chicken scratch thanks to years of paperless endeavors, but this bullet pen looks intriguing for the two or three times each year that I need to write something down on paper.

And lest you think it’s merely a pen shaped like a bullet, let me tell you that it also writes upside down and underwater all NASA-like. It can even write on top of grease and oil. This is an extreme pen for extreme poets.

It costs $25. Not bad for a bullet pen. Forget about stuffing it in your carry-on for a little Sudoku on the airplane, though.

.375 Caliber Bullet Space Pen from Fisher [Vat19.com]

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

‘Yemeni human rights groups have
condemned orchestrated air raids by Yemeni, Saudi and the US forces
against civilians in the northern province of Sa’ada. The groups said
the attacks, which have killed scores of civilians including women and
children, amounted to “war crimes.”

The Yemeni National NGO Coalition for
Child Rights Care and the Yemeni Center for Human Rights also called on
the Yemeni and Saudi governments to stop the attacks.’

Read more…

Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList

Brace Yourselves, Teeners: After a three month romance that neither party ever confirmed, 20-year-old country sensation Taylor Swift and New Moon star Taylor Lautner, 17, have called it quits, according to a new report. “He liked her more than she liked him,” a source spills of the split in the Jan. 11 issue of Us Magazine. “He went everywhere he could to see her, but she didn’t travel much to see him.”

(Somewhere out there, an enraged Twithard just had a conniption…)

Swift has remained coy about claims she’s been secretly dating Lautner, 17, after the young lovers grew close on the set of the upcoming romantic comedy Valentine’s Day.

“It wasn’t really developing into anything, and wasn’t going to, so they decided they were better as friends,” says a snitch close to Swift. “There was no chemistry, and it felt contrived… They plan to stay friends.”

Filed under: Videos, Audi

New York Times and Automobile contributor Ezra Dyer may have found the perfect German exotic for New England winters: the Audi R8. True, the R8 is pretty low to the ground, but it also makes good use of Audi’s superb Quattro all-wheel drive system and thanks to its mid-engine layout much of the weight sits over the rear wheels. But even the best AWD is useless when providing spin for four summer tires, so the snow white model Dyer was piloting around the northeast winter wonderland also had four of the widest winter tires you can find.

Hit the jump to watch Dyer as he plows through his snowy driveway in pursuit of some “important” shopping. We’re pretty impressed with how the four-ringed, mid-engine thoroughbred handled the white stuff even when the pedal hit metal. We’re just wondering what Dyer needed so badly from Bed Bath and Beyond.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading VIDEO: Audi R8 is the chosen chariot for snowy excursions

VIDEO: Audi R8 is the chosen chariot for snowy excursions originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

At the beginning of this year, analyst firm Gartner released a report that highlights eight up-and-coming mobile technologies which they predict will impact the mobile industry over the course of the next two years. According to Nick Jones, vice president and analyst at the firm, the technologies they’ve identified will evolve quickly and will likely pose issues that will have to be addressed by short term strategies.

Sponsor

Editor’s note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we’ll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year – and ahead to what next year holds – we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It’s not just a best-of list, it’s also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

The eight technologies identified include the following:

Bluetooth 3.0

This is one of the no-brainers on the list. The Bluetooth 3.0 specification will be released this year and devices will start to hit the shelves by 2010. At this point, it’s expected that the 3.0 spec will include faster speeds, reportedly transferring files at 480 megabits per second in close proximity and 100 megabits per second at 10 meters. It will also feature an ultra-low-power mode that Gartner predicts will enable new peripherals, sensors, and applications, such as health monitoring. The technology will be backwards compatible, allowing old devices to communicate with new ones, so there’s no reason for it not take off in the upcoming years.

Mobile User Interfaces + Mobile Web/Widgets

Mobile user interfaces and mobile web/widgets were listed separately, accounting for two items on the list, but we think they can be lumped together. They all point to how mobile computing is rapidly becoming a new platform for everything from consumer mobile apps to B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-customer). (Gartner did not include B2B on their list.) Modern day smartphones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, the upcoming Pre, and others deliver better interfaces for browsing the web, thus making it accessible to more people. Widget-like applications, including those that replicate thin client technology, will become more common especially in B2C strategies. Yet the mobile web still has challenges ahead. For example, there are no standards for browser access to handset services like the camera or GPS, the report notes.

Location Awareness

Location sensing, powered by GPS as well as Wi-Fi and triangulation, opens up new possibilities for mobile social networking and presence applications. Technology’s earliest adopters are already familiar with social networks like Brightkite and Loopt which let you reveal your location to a network of friends. But we’re still on the tip of this iceberg. Take for example, the iPhone IM client Palringo, they’re just now adding location services to their application. This allows users to see how far away their contacts are, introducing a whole new dimension to mobile communication. Over the next year or two, this sort of technology is expected to become more commonplace, but it will also raise questions about privacy. Will you want your network of online friends and acquaintances to really know your exact location? Will turning off location awareness signal that you’re up to something sneaky (so asks the suspicious wife, husband, boss, etc.)? As a society, we will have to answer these questions and more in the near future.

Near Field Communication (NFC)

NFC is a technology that provides a way for consumers to use their mobile phones for making payments, among other things. It’s something that has taken off in many countries worldwide, but certainly not all, and definitely not in the United States just yet. Unfortunately, Gartner predicts that the move towards mobile payment systems will still not occur this year or the next in mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe. Instead, NFC is more likely to take off in emerging markets. Other uses of the technology, such as the ability to transfer photos from phone to digital photo frames, will also remain elusive to more developed markets.

802.11n & Cellular Broadband

802.11n, a specification for wireless local area networks (WLANs), initially gave us pause. Although not ratified as an official standard yet, the technology is already commonplace. However, until it “goes gold” so to speak, it won’t really infiltrate the mobile world. Even the ubiquitous iPhone only supports 802.11 b/g at the moment. 

On the flip side, the other Internet connection technology, cellular broadband, has the potential to make Wi-Fi almost unnecessary, at least for achieving high speeds. In addition to mobile phones, laptop makers will likely continue to incorporate this technology into their netbooks and notebooks using modern chipsets that provide superior performance to our current crop of add-on cards and dongles.

Display Technologies

Display technologies will also see improvements in the upcoming years. New technologies like active pixel displays, passive displays and pico projectors will have an impact. Pico projectors – the tiny portable projectors we saw being introduced at this year’s CES – will enable new mobile use cases. Instant presentations in informal settings could become more common when there isn’t large, cumbersome equipment to set up. The different types of display technologies introduced in 2009 and 2010 will become important differentiators between devices and will impact user selection criterion, says Gartner.

For more information on these above technologies, you can read through the full report available here on Gartner’s web site.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments on how you think the mobile space will be impacted in the future.

Discuss

Disappointing news on the consumer front, courtesy of the latest charge-off numbers:

WSJ: The rate of charge-offs on U.S. credit cards rose more than a half-percentage point in November, snapping a two-month run of drops from an all-time high in August, and delinquencies rose for the fourth consecutive month, Moody’s Investors Service said.

Charge-offs, which are those loans a credit-card company doesn’t think it will be able to collect, were 10.6% for November, compared with 10% in October. The ratings firm also said the delinquency rate, which gives a glimpse of issuers’ potential losses and how much they may need to set aside in reserves, rose to 6.2% in November.

Read the whole story — >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Stiglitz: The U.S. Will Crash Again Unless We Pass Even More Stimulus
• Chris Dodd’s Incredibly Stupid Credit Card Rate Freeze Will Destroy The Consumer
• Desperate Retailers Bring Back "Layaway" Plans For The Holidays

This is the time of year when many of us think about resolutions – of changing something in our life to make it better, happier, more prosperous. 

As I watched the 1962 classic “The Music Man” this weekend, I was reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s quote, “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today” when Professor Harold Hill (Robert Preston) told the Librarian, Marian (Shirley Jones), “If  you pile up enough tomorrows, all you will have is a bunch of empty yesterdays”. 

Achieving “full” yesterdays that are aligned with your goals (avoiding the “woulda, coulda, shoulda”) may require you to make new habits or change old ones – something that cannot be put off until tomorrow.  Whether your resolution is to read more, eat less, work smarter, add a practice of meditation, exercise more patience, get to bed earlier, have a more positive outlook, be more organized, get fit – or any other goal – achieve it by starting now and by taking one small step at a time as you become aware of your opportunities to change. Ask yourself what is holding you back?  It is in the very moment when you notice what you could or should be doing that you have a choice and the power to make or break habits.  Don’t expect change will automatically happen because you made a resolution.  It will take multiple starts, a lot of awareness, successful repetition – and time – to adjust your thoughts and behaviors. 

As you start your new year, make a point to notice your opportunities each day, hour and minute to choose the action that will make your yesterdays full. 

Wishing you a prosperous, full and “woulda- coulda- shoulda-free” Happy New Year!

Shirley

Shirley M. Clark, CLC
President
CAREER TRANSITION NETWORK, LLC
Transition Coaching and Outplacement Services
[email protected]
www.careertransitionnetwork.net

(Many of MNC’s readers know Shirley.  She is a seasoned mortgage industry pro, with decades of involvement in all aspects of the business. – BC)

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, General Motors is offering huge incentives to dealers to speed up the sales of leftover Saturn and Pontiac vehicles on their lots. The move will essentially help GM report stronger December sales.

In a letter to dealers, GM said that it will give $7,000 for every new Saturn or Pontiac on showroom lots that is moved to rental-vehicle or service-vehicle fleets. That will allow the vehicles to be classified as used since the dealers will be the first owner. In turn that will allow dealers to sell Saturns and Pontiacs at a very steep discount, as much as 46 percent of the MSRP.

The offer is valid until Jan. 4, which is the last day of Dec. sales for cars.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Reuters

Here’s a big non-shocker. Eric Sprott, the Canadian gold bull who thinks the Federal Reserve is a gigantic ponzi scheme (literally), things we’re heading below our march lows. Look, if that’s true, and it turns out the government is just creating numbers out of thin air, we agree. Stocks are toast.

Bloomberg: The Toronto-based money manager, whose Sprott Hedge Fund returned 496 percent over the past nine years while the S&P 500 lost 32 percent, said the index’s 67 percent rally since March reflects investors misinterpreting economic data. He’s predicting the gauge will fall 40 percent to below 676.53, the 12-year low reached on March 9.

“We’re in a bear market that will last 15 or 20 years, and we’ve had nine of them,” Sprott, chief executive officer of Sprott Asset Management LP, which oversees C$4.3 billion ($4.09 billion), said in an interview Dec. 18.

Read the whole story — >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Eric Sprott: The Fed Is A Ponzi, The Treasury Purchase Data Is A Lie
• Sprott Jumps On Gold ETF Craze With New "Physical Gold" Trust
• Bob Prechter: "Quite Sure" Market Will Crash And Break March Low

Via That Kevin Smith (who has had his own share of run ins with the MPAA over bizarre ratings) comes the story of how the MPAA decided the romantic comedy It’s Complicated deserved an “R” rating, because it has one scene that involves two characters (played by Steve Martin and Meryl Streep) who smoke marijuana… and then giggle. Specifically, the MPAA appears to be upset that there are “no negative consequences” to the two characters smoking pot.

Now, I’ve never smoked marijuana (or ingested it in other forms either), but I’m at a loss to see how this makes something deserving of an R rating. The NY Times article quotes someone from the Parents Television Council — the group famous for bombarding the FCC with bogus indecency complaints — who says “The last I checked, smoking pot was still illegal, illicit behavior.” Indeed. But, then again, so is blowing up Los Angeles, and “last I checked,” the movie 2012 got a PG-13 rating.

The larger point, of course, is just how incredibly out of touch the MPAA is beyond just its laughable ratings system. This is a group that’s still trying to break your TV because it can’t figure out how to release movies on TV in a reasonable amount of time without doing so (even though its own studios have figured it out). This is the same group that argues that blames tech companies for its own inability to recognize and embrace what technology allows. This is the same group that insists that piracy is “killing” the movie industry as the industry scores yet another box office record. This is the same group that insists that ACTA is necessary, but won’t share what its own lobbyists helped write.

The NY Times article admits that the decision to rate this particular movie “R” is more of a political move from an organization that doesn’t want to be attacked during the next elections — and even that should be troubling. This is an organization that will do amazingly dumb things just to stay in the good graces of our politicians, so that it can continue to push through protectionist laws. One simple rating may not seem like a huge deal (and, by itself, it is not), but it’s yet another sign in how out of touch the MPAA really is, and how its actions are entirely about protecting its political power and helping its members get favors from the government, rather than anything else.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

It would appear that AT&T isn’t the only carrier in the world suffering from a horrible and nagging case of the iPhones. In an interview with the Financial Times, O2 head Ronan Dunne apologized to customers for the poor performance the network has been experiencing since the introduction of the iPhone to its airwaves this summer. Just as US customers (particularly those in dense, urban areas) have learned to struggle through dropped calls, the inability to make or receive calls, or weak data connections, our brethren on the other side of the pond have felt a similar sting. Says Dunne, “Where we haven’t met our own high standards then there’s no question, we apologise to customers for that fact,” adding that the carrier had fixes at the ready and that the issues would be “more than addressed” shortly. Unlike the widespread problems here, the O2 mess seems to be relegated largely to London, though it’s curious to know that AT&T isn’t alone in being hamstrung by a network clearly not prepared for the onslaught of data being pushed up and down its virtual pipes. Also unlike the AT&T situation is the fact that O2 has solutions in mind (including the installation of 200 additional mobile base stations in London), and they’re clearly taking ownership of the situation. Ahem, Ralph.

iPhone reception issues plague O2… too originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink All Things D  |  Financial Times  | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

Do you like me own way to much stuff and have a problem keeping it all organized?

Or maybe you are just a person who looses things.

No worries any more because now you can find your lost possessions.

The Loc8tor Lite comes with two fobs that you connect to things you always loose like keys, cell phones, glasses or even you pet. And then there is Finder that tells you where you things are. It has a range of 120 meters and will tell you with LED’s how if you are getting closer to your lost item.

The LOC8TOR Lite would be a great addition to anybody’s home.

Presenting Amber Rose, for your consideration.

(Amber Rose)