Author: Serkadis

Over the last decade or so, the public perception of online dating has shifted from being a bit odd to something that’s pretty normal. But even as people get used to surfing the web as they look for a potential date, there’s a new trend emerging: location aware, mobile dating services. Skout, a social dating service with a strong mobile component, decided to conduct a study to see how hesitant people are to make the move from mobile messaging to in-person meetups.

The company surveyed 1000 of its users 20-30 years old, with an even gender split. While everyone surveyed was a Skout user, the questions pertained to any mobile dating service. Now, obviously these stats don’t readily apply to the general public — everyone surveyed is already a Skout user, so they’re more likely than average to be inclined to use a mobile dating site. Here are some of the conclusions Skout came up with:

51 percent of the consumers surveyed have met another single person in the Real World that they initiated contact with on their iPhone. The survey findings show that:

• 69 percent are comfortable meeting up with someone they met on their iPhone
• 40 percent are using a mobile dating service while out in bars, clubs and restaurants
• 20 percent are only using the service outside of their homes
• 35 percent are using the service at work

The company also concluded that most people would rather be dating than hanging out with their families during the holidays (which is kind of sad):

• 29 percent of the surveyed consumers would prioritize spending time with family
• 36 percent would prefer going on “a date or two”
• 20 percent would prefer at least one “hook-up” and a few dates
• 15 percent would prefer multiple “hook-ups” and dates before the Holidays are over

Finally, in a strange twist, 20% of those surveyed already had a significant other. Half of them were participating on these social dating sites with their partner’s consent (huh?) and the other half were doing it behind their back. Of course, there are probably a good number of folks who lied on this question — I suspect the number of people who are secretly using these services is actually higher.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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

Read Original Article

This weekend, Naughty Dog is sharing the Christmas cheer in doubles. That’s right, they’re holding a Double Cash weekend, which means you’ll not only be earning double for your kills and medals, you’ll also be getting double

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg already has one of the more shiny resumes in Silicon Valley, a Harvard grad with stints at the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department and Google (GOOG), as well as a seat on the board of coffee kingpin Starbucks (SBUX).

She was also named one of Fortune magazine’s 50 Most Powerful Women this year, clocking in at No. 22.

Now, she’s been nominated to be a director on the Walt Disney Company (DIS) board, a position that will get rubberstamped at the entertainment giant’s annual meeting next year in March.

It’s an obvious pick for Disney, which needs to inject both Internet and social networking experience into the media giant, especially since it is one of the few such companies with such an iconic and personal relationship with its customers.

Mom and Dad must be so proud–not to mention the kids, since I am guessing Disney board members get to free passes to the front of the line at Magic Mountain.

Thus, BoomTown has commissioned a survey from SurveyMonkey, where her husband Dave Goldberg is CEO, about exactly how I can get on the board of Facebook, so I can query her on how to fatten up my resume.

To see her in action, here are two videos of interview highlights from Sandberg’s appearance at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference in 2008, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckberberg.

Part One

Part Two

And here is the Disney press release:

Sheryl Sandberg Nominated to The Walt Disney Company Board of Directors

The Walt Disney Company (DIS) Board of Directors has nominated Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook Inc., to be a new independent director, effective upon her election at the Company’s next annual meeting.

“Sheryl is an outstanding executive who can add incredible value to what is already a diverse and highly experienced group of directors,” said John E. Pepper Jr., Disney’s chairman. “She brings great expertise in the online world, considerable international experience and a deep understanding of consumer behavior.”

Sandberg has served as COO of Facebook, an online social utility company, since March 2008. In that capacity, she has been responsible for building Facebook’s operations globally and managing its sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, privacy and communications functions. Facebook is now considered the number one global social network with more than 350 million members.

Prior to joining Facebook, Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations for Google Inc., an Internet search engine company, a post she assumed in 2001. In that role, she built and managed Google’s online sales channels, which represents the majority of Google’s customers worldwide, for both AdWords and AdSense.

Sandberg, 40, is also a former Chief of Staff of the United States Treasury Department and previously served as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and as an economist with The World Bank.

“Sheryl has been at the forefront of a technological revolution that’s opened up a world of new possibilities for consumers and which has greatly affected the way we do business,” said Robert A. Iger, Disney’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Her unique insight, born of great practical experience, will be of considerable value to Disney’s shareholders.”

“Disney has remained an entertainment icon around the world for over 80 years by enthusiastically embracing change and new technologies,” said Sandberg. “It’s a tremendous honor to be nominated to the Disney board.”

Sandberg is also a director of Starbucks Corp. and serves on a number of nonprofit boards including The Brookings Institution, The AdCouncil, Women for Women International and V-Day. She received a Master’s Degree in business administration from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor’s Degree in economics from Harvard University.

Disney shareholders will vote on Sandberg’s nomination and the re-election of the Company’s other 12 directors at the next Disney annual meeting, March 10, 2010 in San Antonio, Texas.

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

Read Original Article

Jawa Pos edisi Minggu, 20 Desember 2009, mewartakan rencana Depkes untuk menertibkan penggunaan label Internasional pada sejumlah RS, terkait regulasi menjelang ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) 2010. Sebenarnya bukan barang baru, namun kita perlu ikut mengawal upaya ini agar label Internasional bukan hanya sekedar papan nama. Sebagaimana diungkapkan oleh Direktur Jenderal Bina Pelayanan Medik Departemen Kesehatan (Depkes) dr Farid W Husain,  bahwa RS di Indonesia yang benar-benar terakreditasi secara Internasional hanya 2 (dua), yakni RS Siloam Karawaci dan RS Siloam Kebun Jeruk. Selebihnya hanya nama. Menurut dr. Farid, pemakaian label Internasional tanpa akreditasi sama artinya dengan membohongi publik. Lha !

PASIEN HENDAKNYA PANDAI MEMILIH

Sebagian masyarakat kita masih mudah tergiur oleh penampilan luar, iklan dan label. Pun demikian dengan label wah institusi layanan medis. Tak pelak anggapan kualitas tinggi dan harapan mendapatkan layanan medis kelas satu membumbung tinggi manakala mendengar label Internasional, label Plus dan label heboh sejenisnya. Apa lacur, ketika pengguna jasa layanan medis terlanjur terjerat, kekecewaanlah yang lebih banyak didapat ketimbang kepuasan. Ibarat jajan, bakpao serasa jemblem !

Repotnya, masyarakat tidak mudah mengetahui kualitas institusi layanan medis yang sesungguhnya, sebelum merasakannya secara langsung atau mendengar dari mulut ke mulut. Tidak semudah membedakan handphone berkualitas dengan handphone tiruan. Kasus Mbak Prita adalah salah satu contoh berharga untuk pembelajaran dan perbaikan.

Pertanyaannya, mampukah para top leader dan pengelola institusi layanan medis di semua tingkatan mampu menarik pelajaran lantas memperbaikinya ? Bagi yang peka, tentu mampu. Bagi yang tidak peka, mereka hanya sibuk bersilat lidah menangkis kritikan tanpa berbuat apa-apa. Alih-alih berupaya berbenah, boleh jadi mereka tidak mengerti hakekat pelayanan medis, merasa berkuasa atau mungkin hatinya terlanjur terbalut bara emosi.

TAK SEMUANYA BISA DIBELI DENGAN UANG

Kita tahu, pilar pokok layanan medis setidaknya meliputi 4 pondasi, yakni gedung, sarana prasarana, pelaksana pelayanan (SDM) dan sistem. Keempatnya saling berintegrasi dan bersinergi. Dibangun secara bertahap dan berkesinambungan dengan mendengarkan feedback pengguna pelayanan medis serta masukan berbagai pihak sebagai salah satu parameter untuk perbaikan. Tidak dengan cara instan Bung !

Mungkin para pemilik modal yang menginvestasikan kekayaannya untuk membangun RS Swasta, dan Kepala Daerah sebagai penguasa institusi layanan medis Pemerintah (RSUD, Puskesmas), beranggapan bahwa kualitas layanan medis dapat dibeli dengan uang. Okelah, gedung dan sarana prasarana dapat dibuat menjadi kelas VIP, serba mewah. Tapi tidak dengan SDM dan sistem. Celakanya, justru SDM dan sistem inilah yang kerap diabaikan. Mulai penunjukan pengelola, pemilihan dokter dan SDM lainnya, hingga sistem yang kompleks. Begitu mudahkah mendapatkan dokter yang berkualitas, SDM lain yang terampil serta sistem yang handal hanya dengan uang ?

Tidak semua dokter berkualitas nan laris bersedia bekerja di RS mewah untuk menggiring pasien. Ada nilai-nilai sosial dan idealisme di balik layanan medis antara dokter dan pasien yang tidak dapat dibeli dengan uang seberapapun besarnya. Karena itu tak perlu heran jika misalnya ada pasien yang sudah terlanjur ke RS mewah menghabiskan lebih setengah juta rupiah sekali datang, ternyata sembuh di Puskesmas hanya karena sakit gudik ( scabies ). Bisa saja berkilah bahwa hal semacam itu sangat kasuistis, bahwa nol koma nol sekian persen bisa terjadi salah diagnosa. Apakah di mata pasien juga demikian ? Layaknya mencoba makan di restoran mewah, pasien akan bercerita kepada kerabat dan temannya: “ jangan berobat ke sana, sudah mahal, tak enak pula”. Tuh, kan.

Sistem dapat diadopsi dari manapun dengan mudah. Namun tak akan berguna tanpa dilandasi dengan pemahaman mendalam oleh segenap personil di dalamnya. Sia-sia tanpa komunikasi interaktif dengan pengguna jasa layanan medis. Pun akan hampa tanpa berlapang dada menerima kritik dan saran terutama dari para pasien serta keluarga mereka.

Harmonisasi ternyata tidak bisa diciptakan secara instan bukan ? Untuk membangun integrasi SDM dan sistem tak cukup dengan label, jargon serta promosi semata. Tapi juga diperlukan komunikasi internal yang intens dan yang tak kalah penting adalah menjaga jalinan komunikasi dengan pasien beserta keluarganya. Andai pengelola institusi layanan medis (swasta maupun pemerintah) meradang atau main tuntut hanya karena keluh kesah para pasiennya, cepat atau lambat, bersiaplah menuai badai gerakan damai rakyat jelata. Jika sudah begitu, tidak mudah memulihkan kepercayaan masyarakat. 

MASIH ADA HARAPAN

Konon Depkes memberikan batasan 2 bulan untuk melepas label International bagi RS yang memasangnya tanpa akreditasi Joint Commission International (JCI). Pelanggaran akan dikenai sanksi berupa peringatan. Kalau masih melanggar bagaimana ? Sayangnya tidak ada penjelasan lebih lanjut soal itu. Koq tidak tegas gitu ya… (tutup aja Bos).

Kita berharap, penertiban label Internasional merupakan langkah awal dari rangkaian upaya memperbaiki kualitas pelayanan medis. Bukan hanya RS swasta saja, tapi juga RS Pemerintah hingga ke tingkat Puskesmas, mengingat sebagian besar masyarakat kita masih menggantungkan pelayanan medis kepada Institusi Pelayanan Medis Pemerintah.

Akhirnya, kesungguhan semua pihak dan kontrol masyarakat diperlukan untuk memperbaiki kualitas pelayanan medis di semua tingkatan.

Semoga bermanfaat.

:: :: :: posting menggunakan WLW :: :: ::

Posted in Artikel, Berita, Gaya Hidup, Health, Informasi, Kedokteran, Kesehatan, Opini Tagged: Dokter, Indonesia, Internasional, Pasien, Pelayanan Medis, Rumah Sakit

Article Tags: ClimateGate, Nancy Neale

How do we know our medication is effective; that our vehicle is safe; that the bungee cord in our jump will not break? Most of the population has taken it on faith – faith in the integrity of the scientists – that these questions have been sufficiently studied and answered. And they have been, through effective communication of science in the scientific community. Knowledge is consistently exchanged using our currency, peer-review, until the point where the public benefits from the application of science in our everyday lives. We’ve had faith in the value of that currency, until now.

A few weeks ago, emails reportedly from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in England were published on the internet. With any illegally obtained information, the credibility of the contents should be questioned. However, if these published emails are genuine, the contents indicate a scandal in the climate science community that is an insult to the integrity of the entire scientific community. It’s an insult to truth.

Many scientists have had suspicions about the state of the climate science and the overstated solidity of its predictive ability for some time. I am not a ‘denier’, whatever a denier denies; but I, along with several others have been asking questions about the peer-reviewed science. We cannot conflate climate scientists with environmentalists and activists, though. The latter two have compiled predictive models by the former and asserted that we are headed for doom and destruction if extreme environmental policies are not enacted immediately. Many scientists and critical thinkers have dared ask fundamental questions, though. We have questioned whether the state of the science can allow any definitive conclusion about the significance of anthropogenic carbon dioxide on global warming, let alone its ability to predict future effects.

Source: dakotavoice.com

Read in full with comments »   

Article Tags: ClimateGate, Headline Story, Terry Hurlbut

The UK Meteorological Office released what it described as temperature data for over a century and a half from more than 1500 land weather stations throughout the world, along with what the Met Office described as the code used to plot temperature trends for the time frame in question. But the data are apparently not the raw data, and questions remain as to the validity of the adjustment of the data, an inconsistency in reporting a lack of valid temperature measurements in one year, and the accuracy of the source code.

The Met Office states that the land station records, going back to 1850, came from the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). This has long been the understanding of the genesis of the HadCRUT dataset: the CRU collected land station data, and the Hadley Centre collected temperatures from ships at sea.

John Graham-Cummings was the first person to take note of the release, and to examine the source code for accuracy. Within hours, Graham-Cummings had found two possible errors. First, he found an apparent error in the code that caused the program to use suspect data in its data plots. Graham-Cummings introduced a quick correction to the code, and was able to produce a trend line similar to the official version, with this difference: the data point for the year 1855 is missing, and this gap in the data is not shown on the official version.

Click source to read FULL article by Terry Hurlbut

Source: examiner.com

Read in full with comments »   

Article Tags: ClimateGate, Tim Ball

It was probably a whistleblower that released files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA)? If so then the information is admissible in court and we will get greater detail on the greatest deception in history.

Phil Jones, former Director of the CRU knew the potential damage and legal implications of the file’s content. Jones told the police the files were from CRU, and claimed a crime was committed. Ludicrously, he said the information had no value because it was criminally obtained.

Why an Insider?

Major clues suggest the leaks were from an insider. A few emails were sent to a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reporter Paul Hudson on October 12, weeks before full release. This indicates someone trying to draw attention, but Hudson did nothing. He knew of the wrath and reach of Michael Mann. As a CRU member noted on October 26 2003, Anyway, there’s going to be a lot of noise on this one, and knowing Mann’s very thin skin I am afraid he will react strongly, unless he has learned (as I hope he has) from the past….” He didn’t as his later reactions showed.

Source: canadafreepress.com

Read in full with comments »   

Article Tags: Letter

What do you do when “global warming” turns into global cooling? How does a “scientist” handle data that does not support his theory? What’s a “scientist” to do when he cannot prove man-made global warming after millions of dollars and many years trying? What do you do when 31,000 real scientists completely refute your contention of man-made global warming? What happens when your computer-generated models turn out to be 180 degrees out of synch?

If you are a global warming “scientist,” you do several things: Hide all conflicting data, erase or destroy data that doesn’t support your agenda, suppress any and all dissent from skeptics, tell everyone “the argument is over,” change your vocabulary from “global warming” to “climate change” and try your best not to let the real data come out.

Sadly, this is exactly what has happened in the persistent and continuing hoax called man-made global warming. In a series of leaked, and damning e-mails, the truth about the “scientists” who push this agenda has finally been made public.

Source: Lufkin Daily News

Read in full with comments »   

Not everyone’s feeling the holiday cheer. Section 8 developer, TimeGate, has filed suite against SouthPeak for allegedly withholding royalty payments and entering into a PS3 licensing deal with another company when it shouldn’t have.
 
 

Our guest columnist Megan Berry named Evernote one of the best productivity applications for the iPhone today, but it sounds like a new, just-released version of the app is even better.

The big change, according to the Mountain View, Calif. company’s blog post, is the fact that when you create a note (which can include text, photos, or a voice recording), it’s stored locally, on your iPhone. That means that if you have a bad cell connection or lose your connection altogether, you can still read the notes that were created on your phone and search through them. Users who have paid for the premium version can also download entire collections of notes, called notebooks, to their phones.

This seems like a pretty key improvement — being able to access notes anytime, despite the vagaries of my cell connection, means Evernote becomes useful in more places and less frustrating.

Other improvements include improved speed, a button for upgrading to the premium service (which costs $5 million a month or $45 a year) from within the app, and the ability to record audio notes that are 20 minutes long (twice as long as was previously available).

Evernote has raised $6.5 million in funding. When it announced its most recent funding in September, the company said it had 1.5 million users. You can get the Evernote iPhone app here.

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

Read Original Article

Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store

Evernote for iPhone [Free, iTunes Link] has received a major update to version 3.2.0, which went live late this evening in the App Store and should be arriving in App Store updates soon. According to our contacts at Evernote, the new app is much faster, with speed improvements in launching, searching, syncing, creating new notes, and browsing.

As TUAW heard during a November interview with Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, the updated app provides local caching and searching. Any note that is created or viewed on the iPhone is cached locally for viewing and searching, even when offline. Premium users can choose to have any or all of the notebooks they’ve created fully downloaded to their devices, once again enabling offline usability. Rich text notes can be converted to plain text for editing, and a copy of the original note is moved into the trash for future recovery.

Other new features include:

• In-app purchase of premium accounts
• A new “sync” tab
• Ability to search while syncing
• Additional languages
• A number of bug fixes and improvements to the app

A quick tour by the App Store on my iPhone this evening showed that the update was not yet available, but I was able to download the new version. For all Evernote users, this is a nice early Christmas present.

TUAWMerry Christmas Eve: Evernote for iPhone gets a major update originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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

Read Original Article

Back in November, at our Realtime CrunchUp event, I sat on the geolocation panel with members of Twitter, Foursquare, SimpleGeo, GeoAPI, Hot Potato, and Google. At one point, I raised the question if location was going to be the next battleground between startups large and small, much like social identity plays (Facebook Connect vs. Google Friend Connect) and status updates (Twitter vs. Facebook). All of the panelists indicated that it wouldn’t be, because they could all get along. How sweet. Sadly, I don’t believe them. I believe they might think that right now, because it’s still very early in the game. But it’s still a game, and people are going to play to win.

I’m sure some of them would counter that because location data is fairly standard right now, and moving easily between services, all of them will win. But that’s not true either. While location, as a whole, will win, there will be individual companies that end up ahead of others in the space. More to the point, there will be one or two services that people will go to for their social location data. That’s what we’re moving towards. And the bigger companies are starting to realize it. That’s why today we saw what may be the first maneuver in an upcoming rush to secure the location landscape, with Twitter snatching up Mixer Labs, the team behind GeoAPI.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams writes today that “We will be looking at how to integrate the work Mixer Labs has done with the Twitter API in useful ways…” and notes that they’ll be working on adding contextual local relevancy to tweets. But those vague statements don’t mean a whole lot. Here’s what likely really went down, based on what we’re hearing: Twitter scooped up some solid talent in the location space, on the cheap (in the mid-seven figure range, we’re hearing from multiple sources). Mixer Labs CEO, Elad Gil, for example, was the original product manager for Google Mobile Maps. Four of the other six Mixer Labs employees are also former Googlers, including co-founder Othman Laraki.

What Twitter likely won’t be doing is getting into the core location platform business anytime soon. Though GeoAPI says it has “no plans to retire the current GeoAPI” that seems quite likely to happen as Twitter will just cherry-pick whatever they want from it and merge those elements into its own location APIs. But again, this was mainly a talent acquisition. Twitter is unlikely to compete with what a company like SimpleGeo is doing (and what GeoAPI was doing) because their main goal is to attach location to tweets, for now. SimpleGeo wants to provide general location information to startups, tweets or not. “Unless Twitter was to change their policies regarding distribution of location tagged tweets (or there was a disparity in the availability of aggregated location data), the acquisition doesn’t change our approach at all. We’re still going to continue working with SimpleGeo,” Hot Potato’s Justin Shaffer tells us.

Going forward, however, Twitter is likely to try and position itself as the main syndicator of location. That’s likely to put them up against Foursquare, Gowalla, and yes, eventually, Facebook and Google.

Again, right now Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, and many of the other smaller players in this field play very nicely with one another. That’s because they all have a common goal: Getting location to take off. And it’s working. But the problem that the Foursquares and the Gowallas have is that their core product is based around location. If people decide that they’re getting sick of the gaming elements, or someone like Twitter or Google moves in to secure better local coupons based on location, the location-only players could feel the heat. Of course, both are also likely to be very pretty acquisition targets in their own right next year. And guess who will be buying? Twitter, Google, and Facebook.

In my mind, this is how this is shaping up. The companies with the clout (because they do other things) are going to start scooping up the smaller location-only services. Of those bigger players, Twitter is by far the smallest and weakest, but they’re smart to get started in the buying spree early with the GeoAPI purchase. Don’t be surprised if they scoop up another location service sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, Facebook has been dragging its feet (to say the least) getting into the location game. We’ve been hearing for months that they’ve been at work on their location solution, and at one point were even racing Twitter to beat them to it. Obviously, that didn’t happen. And last we heard, they were still a few months out mainly because of the privacy implications. But you can bet Facebook will enter the location space in a meaningful way in 2010. And if whatever they’re working on doesn’t get traction. Look for them to start making acquisitions in the field quickly.

The third big player, Google, has Latitude, but they may be too far ahead of the curve with their thinking there. So far, the check-in model has proven to be the one people are gravitating towards. Latitude employs the “always updating” model. That may be the future, but we’re not ready for it yet, and it’s hurting Google in the location space. Again, a quick aquisition could solve that. Of course, Google had a perfect chance to be way ahead of the game when it bought Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley’s previous startup, Dodgeball, in 2006. But it badly dropped the ball (pardon the pun) with that one, letting the service die, as Crowley left in a huff. Because of that, a Google/Foursquare marriage may look to be out of the picture — but money heals all wounds, so never say never.

Location, as a trend, remains on fire. Startups are getting funding from big name investors left and right. And you can expect that to continue into 2010. And you can expect the big players to step up their game in the space as well, as they all look to connect the social online world with the real world — a real world that has also has a lot of money potentially tied to location.

I asked SimpleGeo co-founder Matt Galligan for his thoughts on Twitter’s move today. “I think it validates the Geo space in a very, very big way. One of the hottest companies just made a major bet on it,” he says. As he went on, his sentiments echoed mine, “I don’t think it’s far behind that we see similar plays from other big companies.” With its biggest rival now neutralized, that could include SimpleGeo down the road. Consider every location player now on acquisition watch.

Game on.

[photos: flickr/Serge Melki]

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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

Read Original Article

Managing a baseball team, school club, or fraternity can be a rewarding experience. It can also be a total nightmare, at least when it comes to getting everyone to cough up their dues. WePay is a very promising startup in private beta that’s looking to fix group payments for good. Earlier today news broke that the company had raised $1.65 million from August Capital and some angel investors. That’s obviously great news for WePay, but also impressive is the company’s roster of angels: as of tonight the company can count PayPal cofounder Max Levchin as an investor. Given Levchin’s experience in this industry, that’s a very strong endorsement. PayPal alum Dave McClure is also onboard, as are Paul Buchheit, Ron Conway, Mark Goines, Andrew McCollum, Joe Campanelli, and Angus Davis. WePay is also a part of the Y Combinator program.

So what exactly does WePay do that PayPal can’t? The difference stems from the way payment accounts are set up. With PayPal, your account is tied to your name, without any way to separate the payments associated with your soccer team from those of your fraternity or your own personal transactions. On WePay, you can create a unique, FDIC insured account for each of these. The account is still associated with your name, but you can keep each group account totally separate.

This gives you much more freedom than you’d have otherwise. If you want to share your fraternity’s transaction history with the entire group, you can do that without having to worry about a personal transaction ever popping up. The site comes with controls for specifying who can have access to these histories.

There’s much more to WePay, of course. The site can also fully manage the payments to and from each of these accounts. If you need to collect money from your soccer team, you can automatically shoot an Email to each player informing them how much they owe. They can pay immediately through the website using a credit card or direct account transfer, or they can submit a check. If they don’t pay soon, the site will automatically remind them a few days later. If you’re managing a WePay account, you can also sign up to receive a special WePay credit card that draws directly from the shared account.

WePay makes money by charging a 3.5% transaction fee (there’s also a different plan that charges 50 cents per transaction and limits you on the methods of payment you can accept).

WePay looks like it could be a winner. The company is solving a problem that nearly everyone has had to deal with, and they’ve got a proven way to make money doing it. Look for their launch early next year.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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

Read Original Article

One of the many lawsuits against file sharing sites/search engines around the world is the IsoHunt lawsuit — yet another case where the entertainment industry decided a marginal player in the space didn’t have enough attention and sued. While the judge in the case had earlier pointed out that the MPAA failed to show actual evidence of infringement of copyrights by US users on IsoHunt, that still didn’t stop the judge from granting summary judgment to the movie studios, saying that because IsoHunt induced infringement, it loses, no trial needed. This isn’t a huge surprise, given how courts have ruled previously, but there are some oddities in the ruling, which you can see below:

“Morally, I’m a Christian. ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ But to me,
even copyright infringement when it occurs may not necessarily be
stealing.”

The court seems to think this indicates inducement, but if that’s the case, then shouldn’t the Supreme Court itself be guilty as well for famously stating in the Dowling case:

“(copyright infringement) does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud… The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use.”

If the first is inducement, isn’t the latter as well? Furthermore, the court seems to take a quote that refers to “stealing from leechers” to mean inducing infringement, apparently not recognizing that leechers have a very specific meaning in the BitTorrent world, and the statement appears to have nothing to do with infringing on copyright.

That said, there are some other things that put Fung on much thinner ice, including helping people find certain files and helping explain how trackers work — though, again, it’s not clear that Fung would know for certain that the files being searched for were infringing. The court does find it (reasonably) damning that Fung presented a list of top box office films, with links to pages that asked people to share torrent files that pointed to the films themselves. You can certainly see how that could trigger the “inducement” finding.

But what may be most interesting (or troubling, depending on your perspective) is the court’s discussion on the DMCA, which basically says that DMCA safe harbors do not apply if it can be shown that the site turned a blind eye to infringement. If that reasoning is used, it could eventually implicate sites like YouTube, despite rulings like the one in the Veoh case. Expect IsoHunt to appeal, though given the details in the case, it seems quite unlikely that it will prevail. There are too many precedents against this sort of operation, even if the court misinterpreted Fung’s statements, which it deems as “most telling” in the ruling.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The AstraGene micro-volume spectrophotometer for DNA, RNA and Protein analysis was shown for the first time in Germany by Landgraf Laborsysteme (HLL) at the recent Biotechnica Exhibition in Hannover.

AstraGene is based on a novel, through-the-tip measurement technique, that removes the need to dispense the sample from the pipette and which it is claimed fully protects the tiny 2µl sample from any possible contamination and the effects of evaporative loss, while also enabling the confident re-use of the full sample volume.

Designed and built by AstraNet Systems Ltd in Cambridge UK, the manufacturer claims that this is the fastest and easiest method for measuring micro-volume samples. AstraGene removes the need to dispense the sample onto a measuring surface or into a sample holder and then the requirement to wipe it off or clean up after measurement, their through-the-tip measurement is claimed to completely eliminate these two time-consuming procedures.

AstraNet describe the spectrophotometer as being based on a high resolution, UV enhanced, CCD array detector, with sample measurement, including a spectrum scan, being completed in less than 2 seconds. They say their design uses no moving or mechanical parts, almost completely eliminating maintenance and the need for re-calibration, while enhancing reliability over traditional and other micro-volume spectrophotometer techniques.

Details of the AstraGene spectrophotometer have recently been added to the Landgraf Laborsysteme (www.HLL.de) and AstraNet (www.astranetsystems.com) web sites.

Everyday I troll SEC Form D Filings to discover new startups, fundings and investments. I put everything I find into CrunchBase.

For everyone else I give you the daily digest, a quick hit of the latest and greatest SEC Form D filings in the TechCrunch sphere:

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

Read Original Article

Contact lenses that act as a glucose monitoring system for diabetics aren’t exactly a new idea, but it looks like a group of researchers from the University of Western Ontario might be a bit closer to making them a reality, as they’ve now received a $200,000+ grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to further develop the technology. The secret to their contacts are some “extremely small” nanoparticles that are embedded in the hydrogel lenses which, like some similar systems (such as those pictured at right), react to the glucose molecules in tears and cause a chemical reaction that changes the color of the lenses — thereby informing the wearer when their blood sugar is too low or too high. What’s more, the reseachers say the same basic idea could also have a wide range of other applications beyond glucose monitoring — for instance, being used in food packaging to indicate if the food is spoiled or contaminated.

[Thanks, Yuka]

Researchers receive grant to develop color-changing contacts for diabetics originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Ecouterre  |  University of Western Ontario  | Email this | Comments

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

Article

We’ve tended to measure our success with sequencing genomes in terms of our ability to sequence the billions of bases in the human genome. But the progress has made completing the genomes of bacteria, which are typically a thousand times smaller, relatively trivial. For these organisms, we actually have the luxury of being able to do a thorough survey of genomes.

So far, however, the emphasis has been on sequencing the ones we know well: the lab strains, those associated with major diseases, etc. A new paper takes an approach that’s less driven by self-interest. Its authors surveyed hundreds of strains of bacteria and archaea that we know how to culture, and picked 200 of them that are broadly dispersed across the tree of life, based on the sequence of a ribosomal RNA gene. They’re now in the process of completing the genomes of all of them, and the paper serves as an interim report.

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

Article