Author: Serkadis

Are you going to be shopping today?

If you live anywhere on the East Coast, the answer is probably not. It’s likely too late for most online shopping to reach you by Christmas on Thursday. And there’s that monster blizzard that is working its way up the East Coast.

Retail sales will certainly suffer this weekend. Usually today is one of the largest shopping days before Christmas, which is why it is sometimes called “Super Saturday.” A storm like this one, hitting major population centers all over the East Coast, will have a major impact on shopping behavior.

Although the East Coast is a geographically narrow stretch of the United States, it is filled with shopping malls and big box retailers. Indeed, stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s, Walmart, and Toys R Us typically do as many as 60% of their sales on Super Saturday today. So even though last year’s pre-Christmas storms covered a bigger portion of the country, this year’s storm could have an outsized impact on overall sales.

“When you lose a day of sales between now and Dec. 25, you don’t make it up,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Richard Jaffe told the Associated Press. “If you’re closed for business on Saturday, you’re not going to do twice the business on Sunday.”

Even if major storms don’t materialize, forecasts could keep shoppers home. “When the radio says, ‘Stay tuned, don’t leave your house, this is the storm of ’09,’” that’s bad for business, he said.

Strapped local budgets may also make things worse. Many localities will have fewer plows on the road this year, and fewer police directing traffic.

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Filed under: Bentley, Design/Style

Swiss firm Zai makes high-zoot skis. When the company teamed up with Bentley, the result was an even higher-zoot ski kit called Zai Supersports, composed of handmade skis and poles, and a ski bag.

The skis themselves feature a special carbon fiber material called “Zaiìra” on top, with a natural rubber core, chromium-steel-infused carbon fiber for the twisty bits, and Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites to round out your lust for exotic materials. The poles use the ExoGrid tech usually associated with the world of golf clubs.

There will only be 250 pairs made, and because you knew they wouldn’t be cheap you won’t be surprised by the $9,800 purchase price. Get all the facts in the press release after the jump, and pretty pictures in the high-res gallery below.

[Source: Zai]

Continue reading Bentley and Zai launch Supersport skis

Bentley and Zai launch Supersport skis originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dollar bulls swamped the dollar-bullish exchange traded fund ‘UUP’ on Friday.

WSJ: Strong demand for instruments that take bullish positions on the dollar prompted one such exchange-traded fund to be halted on Friday, after it ran out of shares.

“The fund issued all of the remaining shares to its authorized participants,” said DB Commodity Services, which offers the ETF, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The PowerShares DB U.S. Dollar Index Bullish Fund is often referred to by its symbol, UUP.

…

DB Commodity Services, which offers the U.S. Dollar Index Bullish Fund, said in a prepared statement Friday that it filed on Dec. 8 to create 240 million additional shares of UUP “to manage exceptional investor demand.”

The surprising thing is that UUP hasn’t even rallied that much yet. These investors must be expecting a massive dollar move ahead, given how frenzied they have become. Check out the huge spike in volume since October::

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• This Deflation Is Why The Dollar Can Rally A Lot
• How To Hate The Dollar And Short The Gold Hype At The Same Time
• Bernanke: The Dollar Carry Trade Bubble Is Only A Problem If The Economy Gets Weak Again

2009 is coming to a close so what better time than to release all manner of interesting and exciting statistics and tops for all the family to enjoy. Symantec certainly thinks so and better yet, it’s tying in some marketing material for good measure. The company has released the top 100 searches for 2009 by kids, as measured by its very own OnlineFamily.Norton app for concerned parents with busy lives. It’s not the first one this year though, so it should be interesting to see how things evolved, if indeed they have.

Surprise, surprise, things haven’t changed that much since summer, but a few of the top terms have switched positions. Coming in at number two and the biggest search term of 2009 as determined by Symantec is “YouTube,” Google’s hugely popular video site, which is certainly replacing TV for the younger set. The second most searched term was “Google,” which it makes as little sense as it did the first time the results were released.

You’d expect some kids to search for Google, maybe even enough to make it to the top 100, but certainly not the second spot. Even if you account for searches in the browser’s search boxes and the searches on other search engines which may be the homepage, Yahoo has this great habit of taking over people’s homepages for example, it still couldn’t possibly … (read more)

Now its safe to say most of us will never get to hold a fashion phone like the Samsung Giorgio Armani B7620 Windows Mobile smartphone.  Mobilized was luckier, and in this 9 minute video gives the device a good going over.

Calling the device solid and smooth, he appeared pretty impressed by the device.

Read more at Mobilyz here.

There have been a couple of new developments in the past week regarding the Twitter API and, surprisingly, they don’t really have anything to do with Twitter at all. Rather they have to do with ‘old school’ blogging platforms WordPress and Tumblr adopting the Twitter API as their own. What this means is that people using third-party Twitter apps can now use them for WordPress as well, for example, to some degree as the implementations aren’t complete yet.

“We’ve enabled posting to and reading of WordPress.com blogs via the Twitter API. Any app that allows you to set a custom API URL will work,” WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg wrote about a week ago. “I see the Twitter API as one of the new de facto standards that as many applications should support as possible.”

It didn’t take long for Mullenweg’s words to take heed and up and coming blogging platform Tumblr also rolled out a similar feature. “Inspired by WordPress’ seriously clever use of Loren Brichter’s new Tweetie options, we’re launching our own Tweetie and Twitterrific compatible API. This Twitter-like API should make it easy for a lot of existing Twitter clients to start supporting Tumblr,” Tumblr wrote.

The support isn’t complete, for WordPress you can read and even write posts and you can geotag it as well, but more advanced fu… (read more)

The latest version of the world most popular self-hosted blogging platform, WordPress 2.9, is now out and available for everyone to download and install. It’s been quite a while since the last major update, more than six months actually, and the latest version comes with a few big new features and a bunch of smaller ones as well as updates, bug fixes, the works. The biggest feature is likely the new image editor which allows users to do basic photo editing inside the post editor without having to rely on third-party tools.

“I’m here on behalf of the entire WordPress development team and community to announce the immediate availability of WordPress version 2.9 “Carmen” named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae (whom we’ve added to our Last.fm WP release station),” Matt Mullenweg, Automattic founder, the company behind the open-source WordPress platform and the WordPress.com blog hosting service, wrote.

With the new built-in image editor, users can crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale images until they fit perfectly in the post. Seeing as these are 99 percent of the editing tools any blogger would ever need, the tool is a very welcome addition. It also probably means that you won’t need to fire up Photoshop, or maybe Gimp if you’re into open sourc… (read more)

Not the likeliest of partners, but common interest sometimes wins over other, more ‘ideological’ principles, YouTube and Facebook are getting a bit cozier with each other with the launch of a new feature that enables users to see what their friends share on the social network while on YouTube. It’s the latest social move for YouTube which is trying to actually deliver the tools needed for what is at heart a rather social experience, sharing movies.

“This week we’ve added another launch to the “social feature” list: a feed that pushes the YouTube videos your friends are embedding on Facebook back to your YouTube homepage. This feature is in test mode right now,” Chris Testa, software engineer at YouTube, wrote.

“But if you do want your YouTube-related Facebook activity to be syndicated back to YouTube, the key is that you just stay connected to Facebook. Alternatively, you can search for your friends using the friend finding module on the homepage, and that will also connect you to Facebook,” he added.

YouTube is just testing the waters for the moment so there may be a few hiccups and it’s not enabled by default. But if you really must know what your friends are embedding on the social network, you can test it out by going here and connect your Facebook account to your YouTub… (read more)

Some car trivia for the weekend was required as we get down to the business of Christmas cheer, and in this gallery we take a look at all the Car of the Year models from 1964 to today. This year, the humble Volkswagen Polo took out the title, marking the 47th since the award was incepted. The Car of the Year award is judged by seven European car magazine titles: Autocar in the UK, Stern in Germany, Vi Bilägare in Sweden, Autovisie in the Netherlands, L’Automobile Magazine in France, Auto in Italy, and Autopista in Spain.

The first Car of the Year back in 1964 was the Rover 2000, and things have come a long way since then. The Car of the Year must be a new vehicle that is available to at least five European markets in the year in question. Criteria such as design, comfort, performance, safety, practicality, ecology and economy, price and overall driveability are considered.

Perhaps surprisingly, the brand that has received the most awards in the history of the Car of the Year is Fiat, with a total of nine models, and that’s not including other Fiat Group brands such as Alfa Romeo or Lancia. Following Fiat, the company with the most success has been Renault, winning six times. The Volkswagen Polo for 2010 marks only the second time that Volkswagen has won the prize. After the jump is the full list of Car of the Year models from 1964 to 2010.

Car of the Year 1964 to 2010

1964 – Rover 2000
1965 – Austin 1800
1966 – Renault R16
1967 – Fiat 124
1968 – NSU Ro 80
1969 – Peugeot 504
1970 – Fiat 128

1971 – Citroen GS
1972 – Fiat 127
1973 – Audi 80
1974 – Mercedes S-Series W116
1975 – Citroen CX
1976 – Simca 1307 and 1308
1977 – Rover SD1
1978 – Porsche 928
1979 – Simca Horizon
1980 – Lancia Delta

1981 – Ford Escort
1982 – Renault 9
1983 – Audi 100
1984 – Fiat Uno
1985 – Opel Kadett
1986 – Ford Scorpio
1987 – Opel Omega
1988 – Peugeot 405
1989 – Fiat Tipo
1990 – Citroen XM

1991 – Renault Clio
1992 – Volkswagen Golf
1993 – Nissan Micra
1994 – Ford Mondeo
1995 – Fiat Punto
1996 – Fiat Bravo and Brava
1997 – Renault Megane Scenic
1998 – Alfa Romeo 156
1999 – Ford Focus
2000 – Toyota Yaris

2001 – Alfa Romeo 147
2002 – Peugeot 307
2003 – Renault Megane II
2004 – Fiat Panda
2005 – Toyota Prius
2006 – Renault Clio
2007 – Ford S-Max
2008 – Fiat 500
2009 – Opel Insignia
2010 – Volkswagen Polo

Source | Autoblog.it

Finally, here’s a study for coffee lovers everywhere! Researchers who analyzed previous studies involving thousands of participants found that people who drink more coffee, whether regular or decaf, appear to have a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Tea lovers may also rejoice. The same diabetes-reducing association was found for tea drinkers as well. The study results were published recently in Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers found that coffee drinkers enjoyed a 7% reduction in the excess risk of diabetes for each additional cup of coffee consumed in a day. Those who had three to four cups per day experienced 25% lower risk than those who consumed between zero and two cups of coffee each day.

For decaffeinated coffee drinkers who drank more than three to four cups per day, there was a one-third lower risk of diabetes compared to people who never consumed decaf. People who had more than three to four cups of tea had a one-fifth lower risk compared to non-tea drinkers.

Since decaf also curbed diabetes risk, researchers believe that the link probably isn’t solely related to caffeine. The study authors commented that other compounds in coffee and tea, such as magnesium, lignans or chlorogenic acids, may also play a role.

This study is timely as University of Chicago researchers recently projected that diabetes cases could double by 2034.

While this news sounds exciting, further research is needed before docs start prescribing coffee and tea. Plus, some people are more sensitive to the effects of caffeine and would need to consult with their physicians before increasing intake of coffee or tea.

What do you think of the association between reduced diabetes risk and coffee, decaf and tea?

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Coffee, Decaf & Tea May Lower Diabetes Risk

Twitter is continuously expanding its network and it integrates more and more functionalities to provide users with the possibility to update their existing accounts and to share their actions with the world. One of the latest services offered by Twitter is text messaging and it has recently become available to users from Indonesia and Ireland. The carriers that launched this service are 3 and O2, respectively, and the new service can be activated by all customers without any additional costs.

All those who want to enjoy Twitter SMS service will not even need to learn any new tip and tricks since it is basically the same as sending a regular text message to another phone. The difference is that subscribers will thus be able to let others know about their latest achievements or important events even if they do not have access to a computer. In other words, the users from Indonesia and Ireland can now simply send an SMS to Twitter and their status message will be updated.

Furthermore, all customers can choose to activate notifications for certain users they follow, just like they can also receive direct messages. Therefore, everybody can keep track of their buddies’ actions and be able to comment in due time.

In order to activate Twitter SMS service, Indonesia users will need to send the … (read more)

YouTube surely no longer needs any confirmation for its motto: ‘Broadcast Yourself’ and the one of the persons to have experienced it for himself is called Fede Alvarez. He was was offered a $30 million contract for a Hollywood movie after having uploaded a short video to YouTube.

The man is from Uruguay and his movie presents giant robots destroying Montevideo, the capital of the country, featuring amazing special effects and explosions. “Ataque de Panico!” (‘Panic Attack!’) was uploaded in November 2009 and so far it has got almost 2 million views on YouTube. Its producer spent about $300 making the video and it lasts for 4 minutes and 48 seconds.

The Hollywood proposition came from Sam Raimi, the one who directed successful movies like Spiderman or Evil Dead series. The contract he offered to Fede Alvarez follows the line of the original short movie and is a science fiction that will be filmed in Uruguay and Argentina. It seems that Fede Alvarez wants to take things from the beginning and create a new plot for the story.

“I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios,” Alvarez told the BBC’s Latin American service BBC Mundo. “It was amazing, we were all shocked.” He also added that that created a pr… (read more)

Homebrew coder Copper has released the first version of Snowbros DS, a homebrew emulator that emulates Roma 6 sets of the MAME game Snow Bros. Nick & Tom.
 
 
Download: Snowbros DS v1.0 (http://dl.qj.net/nintendo-ds/homebrew-games/snowbros-ds-v10.html)
 

Today I went to see Avatar in Digital 3D and simply sat there in awe watching a movie so beautifully done. Frankly I have not been mesmerized by a movie like that before, and Avatar indeed pushed the limits of digital effects. 2010 is going to be 3D rage for your home and if this movie is an example of it, I am jumping on this wagon and buying the technology that brings a totally amazing and unforgettable experience.

Sony HD cameras were used to bring the magic of 3D appear so realistic in this new blockbuster movie.  However those HD cameras had to be modified some and here is an interesting piece of info I dug out from the Wired magazine, this is how it all started.

Cameron believed there must be a way to do it better. What he really wanted to talk about was his vision for the next generation of cameras: maneuverable, digital, high-resolution, 3-D.

Inventing such a camera wouldn’t be easy, but Cameron said he was ready to break new ground. He mentioned a mysterious, long-gestating film project that would bring viewers to an alien planet. Cameron didn’t want to make the movie unless viewers could experience the planet viscerally, in 3-D. Since no satisfactory 3-D cameras existed, he’d have to build one. He’d brought Pace on the Pacific adventure to ask if the underwater cameraman wanted to help. His goal seemed kind of extreme, but Pace thought it sounded interesting and signed on. “Jim had a clear ambition on the dive trip,” Pace says. “It was fun, but I didn’t really know what I was getting into.”

Two months later, Cameron sent Pace a $17,000 first-class ticket from Los Angeles to Tokyo, and soon they were sitting in front of the engineers at Sony’s hi-def-camera division. Pace was there to help persuade Sony to separate the lens and image sensor from the processor on the company’s professional-grade HD camera. The bulky CPU could then be kept a cable-length away from the lens — rather than struggling with a conventional 450-pound 3-D system, a camera operator would just have to handle a 50-pound, dual-lens unit.

Sony agreed to establish a new line of cameras. After three months, he had fitted the lenses into a rig that allowed an operator to precisely control the 3-D imaging.

The camera performed well, delivering accurate 3-D images that wouldn’t cause headaches over the course of a long movie.

According to PRnewswire “Avatar” used eight Sony HDC-F950 cameras for primary acquisition. Additionally, Sony HDC-1500 cameras captured speed shots during live action, with the then recently available F23 camera also used for specific shots.

“It was important that the actual shooting of the movie wasn’t impacted by the fact we were doing it in 3D, and these cameras allowed us to do that,” said Pace. “They allowed us to create a unique and completely immersive 3-D experience. I don’t think it could have been done any other way.”

I highly recommend checking this movie out in 3D ($11 bucks was so worth it) and be prepared for an exciting experience of 3D that very soon will be a part of your living room.

It’s like having a free option – interesting thoughts by Larry Doyle.  Plus check out my video selections – BC.

More Mortgage Lying – Larry Doyle – … Let’s turn the page as many mortgages are attempting to be modified. What do we learn? People are once again lying about their incomes, this time understating income in an attempt to have their mortgages modified to a lower level.  … What does this mean? In plain English, if a person intentionally understates his income level (that is, lies about his income), he no longer needs to restart the mortgage modification process but merely continues from that point based upon verified income level. In essence, this waiver will promote people to lie about their income levels. Why? There is no downside to lying…. more … – Sense on Cents

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And now, two bizarre Youtube videos about lying.  The first comes from a children’s TV program, and the second includes the ladies of Gilligan’s Island TV show.

<< CLICK TO WATCH

    << CLICK TO WATCH

This two-minute video will warm your heart more than any paper Christmas card or holiday movie ever could. It starts with a sweet solo from Ellen, a 5-year-old patient at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Then things start to rock when several other patients join in.

If you agree this is the cutest holiday greeting of the year, (and I know you do) then please pass it along to a friend!

More about St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

There’s no way you can not love this place. Not only do they freely share their research findings with doctors and scientists all over the world, but families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance. St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center to offer such special hope, even when families can’t afford treatment.

Patients at St. Jude are referred by a physician, and they generally have a disease currently under study and are eligible for clinical research trials. No child is ever denied treatment because of the family’s inability to pay. That’s impressive, especially considering that the daily operating cost for St. Jude is nearly $1.3 million. St. Jude relies on public contributions.

As a pioneer in cancer treatment, St. Jude continues to improve childhood cancer survival rates. My brother was a patient at St. Jude many years ago. Even though he had a very rare and serious cancer, he survived and is doing great. You likely know someone who has been touched by the work at St. Jude. They have treated children from all 50 states and from around the world. Even if you don’t know someone who has been personally helped by St. Jude, it’s still great to know that this hospital is helping children all around the world, either directly as a patient or indirectly through shared research.

St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer center designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute. In addition to cancer, St. Jude researchers and doctors treat children with genetic immune defects and pediatric AIDS. Plus, St. Jude is a WHO Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Animals and Birds.

Find out more about ways to help St. Jude.

Post from: Blisstree

The Cutest Holiday Greeting of the Year

Mark Rosedale (an employee of O’Reilly) was the first of a few to send in David Pogue’s recent column in which he discusses the question of ebook DRM. Remember, just recently a Sony exec claimed that you couldn’t make money on ebooks without DRM. Yet, Pogue relates his own experience in running a test with his publisher (which is O’Reilly) in putting out a non-DRM’d ebook, and he found that sales increased:

As an author myself, I, too, am terrified by the thought of piracy. I can’t stand seeing my books, which are the primary source of my income, posted on all these piracy Web sites, available for anyone to download free.

When I wrote about my concerns a year ago, my readers took me to task. “For all you know,” went their counterargument, “the illegal copies are just advertising for you; people will download them, try them out, then go by the physical book. Either that, or they’re being downloaded by people who would not have bought your book anyway. Why don’t you try a controlled experiment and see?”

Well, it sounded like it could be a very costly experiment. But I agreed. My publisher, O’Reilly, decided to try an experiment, offering one of my Windows books for sale as an unprotected PDF file.

After a year, we could compare the results with the previous year’s sales.

The results? It was true. The thing was pirated to the skies. It’s all over the Web now, ridiculously easy to download without paying.

The crazy thing was, sales of the book did not fall. In fact, sales rose slightly during that year.

Now, it’s worth noting that it really was just last year that Pogue insisted that publishing digital versions of his books was a terrible idea, because he had tried it twice and they were pirated all over the web. So it’s really nice to see that he’s actually come to his senses and realized that piracy does not automatically mean lost sales, and he was willing to run an experiment and actually look at the empirical data.

He’s still not totally convinced however — as he notes that the reason his experiment worked was because it drove sales of the physical (paper) book. But he’s worried that when more people have ebook readers, then things might change. Of course, at the time of that last column, we used it to point out that the mistake was in thinking that “give it away and pray” is a business model. It’s not. Instead, you have to give people a reason to buy, and “hey, because I want you to” isn’t a particularly good one. Instead, the focus should be on adding real value. Again, this is a situation where O’Reilly is pretty good. We were just discussing how one of the “reasons to buy” it offers is the ability to buy into “living books” that keep updating, so your copy isn’t out of date. In that case, what they’re really selling isn’t the content, so much as the convenience and the knowledge that the information will always be the latest, without requiring any additional work or checking. There are lots of ways to compete with piracy that don’t involve locking the content down in a customer-unfriendly way.

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