In September last year, Bandai has updated the Tamagotchi with a color version, causing dozens of teenage girls to leave comments on CrunchGear for the first time. And now the company is ready to roll out yet another model: The so-called Tamagotchi ID [JP] is named “ID” because it’s the first model you can customize to some extent. It’s also possible to install content off the mobile web on the device (but probably only in Japan).

The downloadable content can be anything from virtual items, backgrounds to mini games you first get on your (Japanese) cell phone from a special cell phone-only site and then transmit to your Tamagotchi ID via infrared. You can dress up your character, take him out to various places etc. etc. The device itself features a 1.44-inch TFT display with 128×128 resolution.

The Tamagotchi ID goes on sale in Japan on November 23 in six different colors and costs $57. Targeting mainly 7-9 year-old girls, Bandai plans to sell 500,000 units in Japan alone by March 2010.

Sorry, Tamagotchi fans, Bandai hasn’t said yet whether it will ever sell the ID outside Japan as well.

Summary
Northland College, an environmentally-committed college on the shores of Lake Superior, is currently doing a number of academic searches with special attention to diversifying its faculty. Among these, we invite applications for a full-time, tenure track position in Sustainable Community Development at the Assistant Professor level to begin in the fall of 2010.

Qualifications
The Department of Social Responsibility at Northland College seeks an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Community Development beginning Fall Semester, 2010. A Ph.D. in Community Development, Economics, Sociology, Political Science or a related subject, plus teaching experience at the college level, and a record of scholarly activity are required.

Responsibilities
Northland College features an integrated Liberal Arts program and an environmental focus. The Department of Social Responsibility has majors in Business and Sustainability, Sociology and Social Justice, and Sustainable Community Development. Teaching load is 3-3-1 (seven courses in two fifteen-week semesters and one four-week semester). Northland College has 620 students and 40 faculty and is located in Ashland, Wisconsin on Lake Superior’s south shore.

Position Description
To Apply:
A completed application includes 1) a letter of application, 2) a teaching statement on experience in, or work with, diverse communities, and 3) a curriculum vitae which includes contact information for three professional references in PDF format.

Northland College
1411 Ellis Avenue
Ashland, Wisconsin 54806-3999
(715) 682-1699

Summary
The Bro Professor of Sustainable Regional Development is made possible by an endowment that establishes, to quote the Memorandum of Understanding creating the professorship, “an outreach professorship at the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute to assist north country communities to develop sustainably.” The holder will be jointly appointed to an academic department and to the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. The appointment will be tenure-track.

Qualifications
Ph.D. required. Preference will be given candidates whose training enables them to support the environmental liberal arts mission of the college. Candidates must have outstanding communication and organizational skills and the ability to extend the boundaries of the campus into community relationships that enhance sustainable regional development. A proven track record of establishing experientially-based outreach courses and programs with successful outcomes assessment is strongly preferred. Evidence of success in matching students with opportunities for skills development, managing logistics and risk management of learning contracts, tracking and assessment of student and partnership outcomes, and grant writing is sought.

Responsibilities
The Bro Professor for Sustainable Regional Development will:

• teach four courses or course equivalents per year, to be determined in consultation with the Provost of the College
• extend the outreach of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute in the human dimensions of natural resources and in sustainable community development
• provide new experiential opportunities for students to be determined in consultation with the Director of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute and the Provost of the College
• identify, initiate, and develop opportunities for the support of collaborations that advance combinations of the following priorities: personal research program, Sigurd Olson Environmental outreach goals, expansion of student experiential opportunities, and sustainable regional development
• participate in college and Institute governance as determined in consultation with the Director of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute and the Provost of the College

Position Description
To Apply:
A completed application includes 1) a letter of application, 2) a teaching statement on experience in, or work with, diverse communities, and 3) a curriculum vitae which includes contact information for three professional references in PDF format.

Northland College
1411 Ellis Avenue
Ashland, Wisconsin 54806-3999
(715) 682-1699

Time Inc just launched a new technology blog called Techland, headed up by one of our former CrunchGear editors Peter Ha. Time magazine’s senior tech writer Lev Grossman is also a contributor. Techland covers the intersection of gadgets and geek culture, and is aimed at a mainstream audience.

Some of the debut posts cover the movie 2012, Samsung’s new Android phone, and a recap of Apple’s legal victory over clone-maker Psystar. It’s a crowded field, but the appetite for gadget culture is seemingly endless.

…Another of this year’s notable topics, CCSSE also found that 77 percent of community college students have never “participated in a community-based project as apart of a regular course,” despite other CCSSE data that show such programs drastically improve student performance….

Read entire article in Inside Higher Ed

Microsoft has announced the addition of a number of new features to its Bing search engine. The company says it has been examining the trends in search and in feedback, and is working to accommodate these. Microsoft is referring to trends like the demand for faster access to knowledge, offering different user interfaces for different kinds of results, and an increased focus on "getting things done" with search.

Would you use Bing more if it added the right features? Tell us what it’s missing.

Bing is rolling out a new "task-focused" version of its home page. It looks relatively the same as before, but when you mouse over different categories, you will get more search options. For example, if you mouse over "Travel," you will get links like "find flights" and "find hotels," and you can conduct your search from there.

"There is also an interactive Instant Answer that allows you to enter your origin, destination, travel dates and…click…you are in Bing travel," says Bing Product Manager Henry Hall. "Within Bing travel you have fast access to flight purchase recommendations via the price predictor that tells you the least expensive times to fly. In addition to money, you’ll save time as well with Bing travel’s comprehensive flight listing results and links to top travel sites and airlines."

Bing is also enhancing local information for hundreds of cities looking for things like local attractions, points of interest, neighborhoods and other local information sources like newspaper web sites. Bing has developed enhanced city results, which include links to key information and high-resolution slide shows.

Bing is making it easier to find the preview feature. "We’re doing a better job mining things like contact phone numbers and email addresses from web pages and displaying them clearly under a Contact banner, and generally cleaning up the interface to make it easier to decide if this a site you want to visit," says Hall. "Last, we’re also integrating images in some preview results. We believe that all these features will allow for a faster decision about whether a site is right for your needs, which means less clicking on your browser’s back button."

Bing has also added a new Event Search feature, which gives users a summary of events for major cities, which can be filtered by things like performances, food & dining, fairs & festivals, music, etc.

Bing has also made it easy to share results for shopping searches on Facebook, a feature Hall deems ideal for passing on holiday gift ideas. There are also better results for health-related searches, including, conditions, medications, and hospitals. Each type of query will return more info and a more organized set of results.

Perhaps the biggest addition to Bing is that of Wolfram Alpha’s algorithms and "expertly curated data". Wolfram Alpha will help power Bing’s results for nutritional information and math searches.

When users search Bing for specific food items, they will get a nutrition quick tab that shows more information about it and a nutrition facts label at the bottom of the results page.

"Another helpful tool is the body mass index that tracks your workout progress," the Bing Team says. "We have introduced Wolfram|Alpha’s body mass index interactive form on our results page. If you search for ‘bmi’ you’ll get the option to enter your height and weight. Click ‘Calculate’ and you’ll get a detailed Body Mass Index analysis directly on Bing."

Bing will also rely on Wolfraph Alpha’s ability to solve complex math functions.

Bing says there will be more new features highlighted on the Bing Search Blog over the next few days. The features are just starting to roll out in the US, so it could be a while before you actually see them.

More on the newly announced features, read this post. For more on Bing’s integration with Wolfram Alpha specifically, read here.

Will the addition of new search capabilities increase Bing’s market share? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> Bing Maps Gets an Upgrade

> Wolfram Alpha Hasn’t Exactly Set the World on Fire

> How Does Bing Rank Tweets?

Having been on sale in other countries for almost two weeks, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 has finally made it to American soil. Now available from T-Mobile, the Bold 9700 is the first BlackBerry to have AWS 3G. Other features include a HVGA+ display, 3.2 megapixel camera, optical trackpad, and support for HotSpot @Home and Visual Voicemail, but anyone keeping tabs on Waterloo’s latest surely knows those specs by now. So how much will the Bold 9700 set you back? $199.99 on a 2-year contract (Even More) or $449.99 outright via Even More Plus with the option to finance the device at $22 per month over 20 months. Now then, how many of you are going to be picking this up?

P.S. Nice job with the device pic, T-Mo.

Read

• Intro
• Archos
• Apple
• Microsoft
• Sony
• Creative
• Cowon
• iRiver

The daily use of applications are limited to just a few programs, such as web browsers, audio/video players, email clients or games, though the number of programs installed on the system is much bigger. A defrag tool, registry cleaner or hard disk clutter cleaner are instruments you run every once in a while. Programs with a bigger usage rate can be accessed simply by creating a desktop shortcut. However, plenty of us use the desktop to save temporary data or even longer lasting documents. In time, this space can shrink to the point that some items need to be cleared. And a cluttered desktop is not at all convenient to work with.

That is why a launcher is very useful. The basic idea is to add as many shortcuts as possible and organize them in different categories, in order to access your files with greater ease. The item sorting system is different from one application launcher to another. Some programs offer launch options using hotkeys, other using launch bars or floating menus. Able Launch Bar was designed to be a small tool that provides a launch bar for users to organize their files and thus access them in a more convenient manner.

It is an application really simple to use and configure that comes at the price of 9.95$. The only limitation is that the “Always On Top” feature is available for registered users (I th… (read more)

For some, the world of digital photography can be a bit daunting. Megapixels, digital zooms, aspect ratios. Huh? For others, the only question is which in my stable of cameras shall I bring on my next outing? Whichever camp you fall in, Kodak’s EasyShare cameras are a great choice for their quality, ease of use and attractive price-point. Get this one for a song and have a great camera in your pocket for your next photo op. It takes fantastic pictures. Point and shoot, that’s it. 10.2 megapixels means you can crop away at your images to get the perfect shot – without reducing image quality. Kodak’s EasyShare system makes it a snap to capture your photos, upload them, share them and print them. And this package comes with a Charger kit so you’re always powered up and ready to go.

According to a limited and (admittedly) flawed NHTSA study, hybrid cars seem to hit twice as many pedestrians as non-hybrids in certain low-speed maneuvers. The reason? Hybrids are nearly silent when operating in electric-only mode.

Specifically, the study states that:

…[when] a vehicle is slowing or stopping, backing up, or entering or leaving a parking space, a statistically significant effect was found due to engine type. The HEV [hybrid electric vehicle] was two times more likely to be involved in a pedestrian crash in these situations than was an ICE [internal combustion engine] vehicle…the incidence rate of bicyclist crashes involving HEVs [hyrbids] was significantly higher…

The data that this report is based on was only taken from a small number of states (13) and over the course of a relatively short time period (8 years). Therefore, the study is far from conclusive (and NHTSA has said as much).

But do we really need a study to “prove” that hybrids hit more people? Doesn’t it seem sort of self evident? Ask yourself the following questions:

1. When walking, do you rely upon your ears to alert you to vehicles outside of your peripheral vision?
2. Have you ever honked your horn when backing out of a low visibility parking space, pulling into an alley, or coming around a corner in a parking garage?
3. If you’ve driven a hybrid, have you ever accidentally “snuck up” on a pedestrian and scared them?

Chances are good that you can answer yes to 2 or 3 of these questions…here’s why.

You’re a human who uses your EARS. Hearing is one of two really important senses that people use while driving. It’s why our cars have horns. It’s why ambulances have sirens. It’s why it’s illegal in most places to drive your car while wearing headphones. It’s why there are laws against really loud stereos and exhaust systems.

While hybrid advocates are quick to point out that the study results could be explained by poor visibility, and that the study data is significantly flawed, (and they’re right), do we really care? Isn’t it obvious that hybrids don’t make noise and that as a result some pedestrians get hit?

There are three options going forward:

1. Mandate that hybrids make noise via some sort of regulation.
2. Conduct a better study.
3. Do nothing.

Option 3 is probably off the table, but just for grins let’s consider it. While hybrids were 50% more likely to hit pedestrians according to the flawed study, the total incident rate was less than 1% of all vehicle crashes. In other words, as bad as it could be, it pales in comparison to other problems. Animal strikes (cows, deer, elk, etc.) injure FAR more people than hybrids hitting people in parking lots. Maybe our energy is better spent elsewhere.

Option 2 is less likely. Most people aren’t going to critically evaluate the current study, so they’re probably never going to learn that it’s flawed and that a better study is needed. Such is politics in America.

Option 1 seems most likely. It’s very easy for NHTSA and/or Congress to instruct auto manufacturers to add a noise maker to hybrids while operating in electric mode.

What do you think – which option makes the most sense? Is there an option missing?

Read user reviews of Tundra Accessories.

First reported in Japanese newspapers (and now on Reuters and PickupTrucks.com) it looks as if Toyota is voluntarily recalling nearly 3.8 million cars and trucks in order to fix and/or replace the accelerator pedals. If this is indeed the official “fix” (Toyota has yet to announce this formally), it’s a bit disappointing.

Since many Toyota vehicles have electronic throttle controls, a software upgrade to the engine management system would cure this issue. A software upgrade that prevents a vehicle from operating at full throttle whenever the brake is depressed would almost completely eliminate the possibility that a vehicle could careen out of control because of a stuck throttle. Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz vehicles with electronic throttles already have this feature – it’s called a “brake to idle failsafe” – but Toyota, Lexus, and Scion vehicles do not.

New gas pedals are probably a cheaper “solution” to this problem, but they’re not the best way to solve the problem.

As you probably know, this all started when Toyota issued a voluntary floor mat recall in late September, 2009 asking owners to remove their driver’s side floor mats pending a more permanent fix. This voluntary recall was in response to a tragic accident involving an out-of-control Lexus that killed four people.

The Lexus that crashed was a loaner car provided by a California Lexus dealership. After a comprehensive investigation, NHTSA concluded that this accident was caused by an over-sized floor mat that interfered with the gas pedal. The floor mat (which was the actual cause of the problem) was not designed for the Lexus it was installed in, nor was it secured. While this accident was tragic, it was NOT a result of a design flaw. It was simply the wrong floor mat.

Nonetheless, NHTSA and/or Toyota have decided to make some sort of change to the design of the gas pedal. Perhaps there is evidence of a more severe problem, or perhaps Toyota feels this is the best way to resolve this issue with the public. While there’s no reason NOT to change the gas pedal design (it’s probably reduces the possibility of a stuck pedal), changing the engine computer software seems like a much better fix. After all, the notorious Lexus loaner car accident wasn’t caused by a poor gas pedal design. There were a number of factors at work:

1. The driver’s floor mats (one on top of another) were too large. It’s certainly possible a smaller pedal would have helped, but the news reported there were TWO floor mats installed, one of which was a big rubber all-weather mat designed for an SUV. Pedal size might not have mattered at all in this particular case.
2. The driver was unfamiliar with the vehicle he was driving (he didn’t know how to shut it off, nor how to put the vehicle in neutral).
3. The driver was in a state of panic.

In all likelihood, none of these problems could have been prevented by a smaller gas pedal. However, ALL of these problems could have been prevented by a software fix that prevented the engine computer from allowing simultaneous brake and throttle inputs. There aren’t any normal driving scenarios where a vehicle’s electronically-controlled throttle should stay open while the brakes are being depressed (that’s a racing-only situation).

In Toyota’s defense, this was a freak accident that could have been prevented any number of ways. If the driver had been more familiar with the car he would have known how to shift into neutral and/or kill the engine. Had the dealership been more careful about the floor mats they used, the pedal might not ever have gotten stuck in the first place. Toyota really shouldn’t have to do anything here…but the negative publicity from this incident has led Toyota to take action.

However, if Toyota is really wants to fix this problem, why not update the engine computers? Toyota is famous for quality, yet this is a half-ass fix.

What do you think – is Toyota doing too much here or not enough?

Read user reviews of Tundra Accessories.

News reports continue to focus on the landmines that exist within health reform proposals. 

Crusading Professor Challenges Dartmouth Atlas On Claims Of Wasteful Health Care Spending
KHN staff writer Jordan Rau reports on the dissenting views of Dr. Richard Cooper. As he raced through the U.S. Capitol this fall, Dr. Richard “Buz” Cooper, a 73-year-old University of Pennsylvania medical school professor, didn’t mince words. He denounced as “malarkey” a reigning premise of the health care debate — that one-third of the nation’s $2.5 trillion in annual health spending is unnecessary — and said that the idea came from “a bunch of clowns” (Kaiser Health News).

Reaction To Cooper’s Challenge Against Dartmouth Atlas
By studying how hospitals treat Medicare patients in their last two years of life, the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care has found wide geographic differences in how medicine is practiced. The research shows patients in some areas are more likely to get operations and tests than other areas (Kaiser Health News).

Health Reform’s Hidden Land Mines
After all the controversy over the public option, people might think that everyone can sign up right away if Congress passes health reform (Politico).

House Health Bill Includes Medicaid Relief For States
Wedged in the House health-care bill is $23.5 billion that looks a lot more like new federal stimulus spending than anything to do with national health-care reform (The Washington Post).

Healthcare Bills Could Jeopardize States’ Consumer Protection Laws
Healthcare overhaul bills working their way through Congress could jeopardize laws in California and other states that require insurers to pay for treatments such as AIDS testing, second surgical opinions and reconstructive surgery for breast cancer patients (Los Angeles Times).

Where Two Contentious Issues Intersect
That question of access to care for some immigrants, and who should pay for it, could well become one of the most contentious sticking points in the coming weeks as members of Congress sit down to reconcile the health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday with the yet-to-emerge Senate version (The Washington Post).

Drug Makers Raise Prices In Face Of Health Care Reform
Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years (The New York Times).

Health Bill Foes Solicit Funds For Economic Study
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama’s health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation’s economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official (The Washington Post).

Abortion Deal Spins A Very Tangled Web
Taxpayers currently provide deep subsidies for health insurance plans that cover abortion — a little-recognized fact responsible for much of the angst over an anti-abortion amendment attached to the House health care bill (Politico).

Catholic Bishops’ Influence On Healthcare Bill
For weeks, the Catholic Church has asked its U.S. parishioners to work toward ensuring that tough language restricting federal funding of abortion is included in healthcare overhaul legislation (Los Angeles Times).

AP Poll: Americans Divided On Health Care Bills
A new Associated Press poll shows Americans are divided about the Democratic health care bills advancing in Congress (The Associated Press/The Washington Post).

Report Details Billions Lost In Medicare Fraud
The government paid more than $47 billion in questionable Medicare claims including medical treatment showing little relation to a patient’s condition, wasting taxpayer money at a rate nearly three times that of the previous year (The Washington Post).

Kaiser Health News provides highlights of the health policy headlines from the weekend, including the latest on the Senate Democrats’ health bill, a CMS analysis of the House-passed reform measure and the continued fracas over abortion provisions.

Sign up to receive this list of First Edition headlines via email. Check out all of Kaiser Health News’ email options including First Edition and Breaking News alerts on our Subscriptions page.

Late (very late) Friday, Google and groups representing publishers and authors squeaked in just under the deadline and put forth a revised Book Scanning settlement agreement, designed to address at least some of the concerns and complaints raised by people over the last one. If you want a good breakdown over the changes, check out Danny Sullivan’s analysis or James Grimmelmann’s. Not surprisingly, the Open Book Alliance is not happy, but seeing as it’s a bunch of Google competitors, they were never going to be happy in the first place (and you know that press release was probably 95% written before the actual new terms were released).

In my mind, the biggest news is the new restrictions on countries from which it will scan books. From now on, the book scanning project will only scan books that have registered copyrights in the US, UK, Australia or Canada. This was mainly to address ridiculous concerns by some in Europe that this project — to help make all books more accessible — was somehow a threat to European culture. I was in Europe on Friday (well, Saturday there) when the announcement was made, and it actually pissed off the folks I talked to about it — who felt that their politicians were doing serious harm to European books by having them excluded from such a useful resource.

Separately, a lot of the focus on this new agreement, as with the old agreement, is over how Google treats orphan works. Again, I have to admit that I think most people are making a much bigger deal of this than it warrants. The orphan works stuff really covers a very small number of works. And giving rightsholders ten years to claim their rights seems more than adequate to me. I just don’t see what the big deal is here. The real issue is that we have orphan works at all. Under the old (more sensible) copyright regime, you actually had to proactively declare your copyright interest. The only reason we have orphan works at all is that we got rid of such a system in the ongoing effort of copyright maximalists to wipe out the public domain.

Anyway, I think this is all something of a sideshow. I still stand by my original feeling towards the settlement, which is that I’m upset anyone felt it was necessary at all. Google had a strong fair use claim that I would have liked to have seen taken all the way through the courts. And, of course, this settlement really has nothing at all to do with the main issue of the lawsuit (that fair use question) and is really a debate over a separate issue: how to take the books Google scans and trying to turn them into a “book store” rather than more of a “library.” And, in doing so, the important fair use question gets completely buried — which I find unfortunate.

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Based on recently released information by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Cactus Flight 1549 Accident Reconstruction [exosphere3d.com] contains a very detailed technical description accompanied with various visualization animations of US Airways Flight 1549, or better, how it ditched in the Hudson River earlier this year. The data depicted, includes 3D navigation, radar imaging, NEXRAD weather and voice communication retrieved from different sources, which were all mapped to a single animated simulation.

The quality of these visualizations is meant to withstand the rigors of qualification for presentation either as demonstrative evidence or, if sufficient witness testimony is available, real evidence. Interestingly, “The raw data files for each radar facility are more than 1 million lines each and must be sorted and reduced into meaningful information before they can be plotted on a map.“

Most people have not realized this, but the birds were visible on radar (at least on 2 separate radar facilities), before the event occured. After integrating the raw radar data and creating motion targets representing those radar returns associated with the flock of birds, the timeline clearly depicts the intersection of Flight 1549 with birds at a time of around 15:27:10. The NTSB Wildlife Factors Report has identified the feathers in the aircraft as Branta Canadensis (Canada Goose) by means of visual, microscopic and DNA analysis.

A Day in the Life of the MBTA [toddvanderlin.com] consists of 5 posters that visualize the MBTA (Boston’s public transport system) subway usage during August 12, 2009. Specific software programs were written in openframeworks to interpret data in order to emphasize different trends within the data.

Linear charts were used to display the activity of stations on a given line to show the geographic relation of activity throughout the course of the day. Circular 24-hour clocks were made for individual lines and stations in order to see the relative activity throughout the day. Pie charts were used to visualize rush hour commutes on each line, showing the contrast of activity during morning and evening rush hours. Histograms were used to show the breakdown of daily activity in a linear fashion. The final layouts were designed in Illustrator, and visualizations were combined in order to create the 5 individual MBTA line posters and overall MBTA poster.

More detailed, but unfortunately no larger resolution nor downloadable, depictions are available at Flickr.

Thnkx Brett. See also Subway Signage, Subway Ridership Chart, Subway Sparklines, Subway Bathroom Tiling, Redesigned NYC Subway Maps, NYC Subway Smell Map, London Travel Time Map and Time-Based Subway Map.

Japan sure has a penchant for weird alarm clocks, as we blogged many times in the past. And Clockman, a new model from major Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy, isn’t really normal either. Reasons: It looks creepy, it can speak, its eyes and mouth can move and Takara Tomy says it even has a personality and “blood type” (seriously).

There are four different versions of the clock, and each of them works differently. The Clockman with blood type A, for example, is the polite type. He wakes you up by saying “It’s time to wake up. Please wake up.”, while the one with blood type 0 will try to get you going in snooze mode by shouting “Fight! Make an effort! Stand up! Fight!” (in Japanese).

The Clockman is sized at 80×83×80mm and weighs 297g. Takara Tomy says each one can speak 300 pre-installed sentences.

The Clockman will hit Japanese stores November 19. It’s available for pre-order at the Japan Trend Shop for everyone living outside Japan (price: $57).

Watch the video (in English) below to see the Clockman in action. It’s creepy.

Via IT Media [JP] and The Japan Trend Shop