Category: News

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Betanews has 500 of them. One could be yours.

The mSpot private beta opened today. The concept is simple: Your music available, anytime, anywhere on anything. The streaming service initially offers clients for Mac, PC and Android 2.1 phones, so mSpot is still working on the anywhere. Perhaps that’s good reason for the private beta.

I’ve been asserting for years that the future of computing will be cloud services delivering anytime, anywhere access to anything — with the primary emphasis shifting to mobile devices. In the 1980s, computing and informational relevance shifted from the mainframe to the PC because of lower costs and broader availability. The same factors are driving the shift away from the traditional PC client-server model to mobile devices and cloud services.

With mSpot, users sync their music library to the cloud, then stream it back to any device supporting the service. I like the concept, but a full-streaming, no-upload service would be better — where users verify ownership that unlocks music already available in the cloud. Of course, music licensing restrictions limit what mSpot can do. Such an approach would better align with mSpot’s movie streaming service, which I see as being a much more accessible anytime, anywhere, on-anything service; granted there are additional fees.

My music library is over 80GB, which would mean paying for upgrades. How large is your music library? The private beta limit is supposed to be 2GB. Services don’t always strictly enforce such limits during private betas. We’ll see what mSpot does. The service also syncs playlists, which is a must-have feature for a service like this one.

With that brief introduction, I send you off to mSpot. Just go to the Website and use “betanews” to register for the private beta, which is scheduled to lift sometime in the second half of June. Happy streaming — well, for the lucky, first 500 registrants.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
















mSpot – Personal computer – Streaming media – Android – Cloud computing

Oddly enough, the New York Times health blog has an item on performance reviews, which suggests that they’re probably a bad idea.  In theory, they may enhance feedback between manager and employee.  But in practice, employees should be getting feedback a lot more often than once a year, and performance reviews may embody the wrong sort of feedback.

Annual reviews not only create a high level of stress for workers, he
argues, but end up making everybody — bosses and subordinates — less
effective at their jobs. He says reviews are so subjective — so
dependent on the worker’s relationship with the boss — as to be
meaningless. He says he has heard from countless workers who say their
work life was ruined by an unfair review.

“There is a very bad set of values that are embedded in the air
because of performance reviews,” he told me.

Not every expert agrees that reviews should simply be abolished.
Robert I. Sutton, a Stanford University management professor, says they
can be valuable if properly executed. But he added, “In the typical
case, it’s done so badly it’s better not to do it at all.”

All this is, of course, from the perspective of the worker.  But from the perspective of the employer, the review may not exist to make employees more effective, but rather, to give companies a paper trail.  Lawsuits brought by ex-employees for discrimination or other unlawful behavior probably aren’t as common as human resources managers might think–but even one such lawsuit is one too many.  So companies like to document a record of poor performance and warnings before they fire someone.

This doesn’t actually mean that jobs are any safer: if before, a boss could fire you because he didn’t like you, he can now write you a bad performance review, and then fire you because he doesn’t like to.  But no one ever said our tort system made a whole lot of sense.

Human resources – New York Times – Employment – Stanford University – Robert I. Sutton

When KFC introduced its bun-less Double Down sandwich in spot markets last year, bloggers and the lamestream media roasted it as as the gustatory equivalent of the Pontiac Aztek. But who’s laughing now? KFC announced today that it has sold 10 million Double Downs so far, and the chain has decided to keep it around beyond its originally proposed yank date of May 23. "This is truly an example of ‘popular demand,’ " Javier Benito, evp of marketing and food innovation at KFC, said in a written statement. "Our plans were to feature the product only through May 23, but millions of Double Down fans have spoken, and we won’t disappoint them. You’ll continue to be able to get the Double Down at KFC this summer." For all the hue and cry over the sandwich’s purported artery-clogging properties, KFC also points out that the DD contains just 540 calories, or 460 for the grilled version.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

As much as the iPad is cool, sometimes you just want to put your hands behind your head and relax without fear of it slipping off to the floor. So Lapworks has announced the availability of the iPad Recliner. Not only will it work well with iPad’s but other e-readers as well. This iPad stand adjusts quickly and easily to a variety of settings that allows you to enjoy the view of your iPad hands free. The iPad Recliner can elevate the iPad to almost 9 inches, and you can adjust the slant of the device so that it’s easier to see. There are a dozen positions to try and there is a rubber cushion rest at the foot of the iPad that will keep your device safe from slipping off.  The iPad & E-READER Recliner retails for $29.95.

Blip.tv has raised a $10.1 million round of financing aimed at rapidly growing its business for the distribution and monetization of web video shows, the company said this morning. The funding round, Blip.tv’s third, was led by Canaan Partners and included existing investors Bain Capital Ventures.

Over the past year, Blip.tv has seen impressive growth in the number of videos it serves as well as the amount of advertising it’s been able to bring in. The company delivers about 90 million streams per month, and monetizes about 85 percent of those views with ads from blue-chip marketers like GM, General Mills, and AT&T. Now it’s looking to accelerate that growth by investing in new product development and audience development to help its content producers reach a wider range of viewers.

“We have a business model that works, and when you have a business model that works, you have to step on the gas and accelerate its growth,” CEO Mike Hudack said in a phone interview. “This [funding] will allow us to offer even more for our show producers, business partners and advertisers.”

Blip.tv recently opened an L.A. office and hired Epic Fu co-creator Steve Woolf to be its West Coast director of content development. It’s also been growing its sales force across the country and internationally. According to Hudack, the company has grown from about 20 employees at the beginning of the year to 27 today, and he expects that number to rise to 30 over the next few months.

This latest funding round is Blip.tv’s largest to date; the web video startup raised a $2.5 million round in June 2007, followed by a second round of financing worth $5.2 million in October 2008.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: A Guide To Online Video Monetization Options (subscription required)

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With no end to BP’s gushing oil leak in sight, attention has turned to trying to ascertain just how damaging the spill could be for wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) doubled the size of the fishing ban in the Gulf. Now nearly 20 percent of the water is off-limits because of the expanding oil slick.

Because so much oil is under the surface, and diluted but still dangerous, it’s hard to get a handle on just how bad things will be. But turtles seem to be the bellwether for worries about sea life. Since April 30, marine biologists have recorded more than 150 sea turtle deaths, and while they can’t immediately say all those were directly related to the oil spill, it’s a much higher number of deaths that is usual for this time of the year.

Necropsies, the animal equivalent of an autopsy, have been performed on 40 turtles so far. And tissue samples taken from as many specimens as possible are being analyzed for abnormally high chemical levels associated with oil contamination. Initial necropsy results are expected in a few days, but laboratory tests of the tissue samples will likely take weeks to complete. In many cases these results are needed to make a conclusive finding about the cause of an animal’s death [Reuters].

Turtles raise special concern because all five species that live in the Gulf region are endangered. And as spring turns to summer, they could be more in the path of danger.

The nesting season for the sea turtles runs until mid-July, and for most of that time the mothers will remain off Padre Island and the beaches of Mexico, where there is currently no oil. But then things become more chancy, as new sea turtle babies go off to sea, floating on currents in the gulf or on seaweed patches that could be covered by crude [The New York Times].

Meanwhile, back at the leak site, BP says that the siphon it successfully installed last week is now carrying 2,000 barrels of oil per day to a tanker on the surface. While the company trumpeted this as capturing 40 percent of the estimated 5,000 barrels of oil per day leaking in the Gulf, we noted last week that the 5,000 figure could be a gross underestimation. If the leak is truly 50,000 barrels and not 5,000, then the 2,000 currently being captured is barely a drop in the bucket.

In Washington, Democrats in the Senate are pushing a plan to raise the cap on liability for a spill from its present $75 million to at least $10 billion—a more than 130-fold increase. Republicans have blocked the measure thus far.

And in Florida, people are left to wait and see if Gulf currents bring oil their way.

Florida Democrat Senator Bill Nelson released a forecast by University of South Florida College of Marine Science experts who said part of the oil slick may reach the Keys in five to six days, and possibly Miami five days after that. “While I always hope for the best, this is looking like really out-of-control bad,” Nelson said in a statement before another round of congressional hearings on Tuesday [Reuters].

Recent posts on the BP oil spill:
80beats: Good News: BP’s Oil Siphon Is Working. Bad News: Florida Keys Are in Danger
80beats: Scientists Say Gulf Spill Is Way Worse Than Estimated. How’d We Get It So Wrong?
80beats: Testimony Highlights 3 Major Failures That Caused Gulf Spill
80beats: 5 Offshore Oil Hotspots Beyond the Gulf That Could Boom—Or Go Boom
80beats: Gulf Oil Spill: Do Chemical Dispersants Pose Their Own Environmental Risk?

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg; U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley.

Tomorrow evening, I’ll be appearing at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences for this event: “Who Will Tell the People? Science and Sustainability in the News” Scientists who study the environment and global warming warn us at every turn that dramatic changes are afoot. Why don’t media headlines convey a sense of urgency? What is the best way to get the climate change message to citizens? What obligations do the media have? What prevents them from telling the story? The May Urban Sustainability Forum will take a look at how the media covers issues of science, how shrinking budgets and disappearing science desks are impacting coverage, and how niche media sources are filling a void in sharing vital information. Beth McConnell, Executive Director of the Media and Democracy Coalition, will be speaking on the topic of media consolidation and its effects on journalism, specifically sustainability. Chris Mooney is a 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and author of three books, including Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum). Mr. Mooney and Ms. Kirshenbaum also co-write The Intersection blog for Discovermagazine.com, a contributing editor to Science Progress, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect magazine. He has been …

Man Vs. Machine (MVM) are designed by Jordan White and Charlie Browne. For Autumn/Winter 2010 the duo looks to the American Classics as the basis for their range. Aptly titled, “American Boy,” Mr. Browne exclaims, “For this coming Fall season we took from the American Classics – the classic tale that’s heard from generation to generation – a personal story that never changes and always inspires. If James Dean were alive today a true American Rebel he would wear these clothes.” Key pieces from the range include a Cropped Leather Shearling, Waterproof Harrington Jacket, and Cashmere Sweatpants.

Continue reading for more images.

Teachers at Bloomingdale High School in Valrico Florida lip-synch their way through Twisted Sister’s big ’80s hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and spoof their students in a video that’s gone viral on the web.

From Green Right Now Reports

Waste Management, Inc. today announced it participated in a $6.9 million strategic investment in MicroGREEN Polymers, Inc. as part of a Series B round of financing. Houston-based Waste Management joined Seattle-based WRF Capital, Northwest Energy Angels and other private investors in the funding.

MicroGREEN is a plastics company that uses patented technology to reduce the amount of plastic required for the production of consumer products, thereby significantly lowering raw material costs. The company said the new funds will be used to increase engineering, sales and marketing staff, and expand its commercial production capabilities for a wide range of consumer products.

Arlington, Wash.-based MicroGREEN said its Ad-air technology creates bubbles within solid-state plastics to expand the plastic and improve its functionality by creating an internal microcellular structure that is lighter in weight, more insulating, strong and highly reflective. The technology does not involve petrochemical blowing agents or volatile organic compounds in the manufacturing process, and is said to work especially well with recycled PET (rPET) – the world’s most recycled plastic, commonly used to create beverage bottles.

Later this year, MicroGREEN will begin offering a line of Ad-air enhanced rPET sheets in various gauges for converters to transform into consumer products and packaging. The company also plans to launch its first converted product – a low-density, thermally-insulating beverage cup that is recyclable and is itself made from recycled material. MicroGREEN is initially targeting consumer foodservice applications, which according to Global Industry Analysts will represent an over $16 billion market in the United States by 2015.

In a recent lifecycle inventory and analysis study of hot beverage cups conducted by Franklin Associates, Ad-air technology as applied to a recycled PET hot beverage cup has the lowest total amount of energy required to produce a hot beverage cup and the lowest total solid waste as measured in both volume and weight when compared to expanded polystyrene (EPS) and coated paperboard hot beverage cups, the two most commonly used in the market today.

Waste Management said the investment in MicroGREEN Polymers complements its recycling operations and will help the company meet two of its sustainability goals: tripling the amount of recyclables it processes by 2020, and investing in emerging technologies for managing waste.

“Investing in new technologies and companies, such as MicroGREEN Polymers, will enable us to extract more value from the materials we manage than anyone else in our industry,” Pat DeRueda, president of WM Recycling, said in a statement. “As North America’s largest residential recycler, we handle a growing stream of PET and other plastics that can provide the feedstock for Ad-air technology. This could create more value from the materials we recover at our recycling facilities every day.”

Rod Dreher mulls his bias toward declinism while evaluating Matt Ridley’s new book The Rational Optimist. Here’s a portion of Ridley’s argument:

But with new hubs of innovation emerging elsewhere, and with ideas spreading faster than ever on the Internet, Dr. Ridley expects bottom-up innovators to prevail. His prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

Dreher gloomily observes:

Well, I would certainly love to be wrong; neither I nor my descendants gain anything out of a world of decline. But it would be useful to go back and look at how 19th-century progressives expected the 20th century to be a wonderland of peace, prosperity and progress. Didn’t quite work out that way. I suspect the truth is that nobody knows anything about tomorrow, and that we can only make our best educated guesses based on history and the wisdom of experience.

Looking at the imaginings of past futurists is often pretty amusing. And Ridley’s projections of plentitude and prosperity seem to involve an extrapolation of the conditions of the past 200 years, whereby a greater and greater proportion of humanity has broken the shackles of the Malthusian trap. The reality is that for most of human history innovation was always immediately counter-balanced by population growth so that median wealth never increased. Only in the 19th century did a new social pattern and demographic dynamic emerge whereby prosperous individuals did not reproduce to a greater extent in keeping with their greater wealth. Rather, societies went through the “demographic transition”, and greater wealth for future generations became the new norm. There’s no reason that this doesn’t have to be a transient state between long epochs of Malthusianism, so I think assuming that the new normal is the normal forever more is a step too far.

That being said, it seems to me that we do truly live in a utopia in any objective terms when viewed from the 19th or early 20th centuries. The Dickensian lot of the poor no longer characterize the lower classes of the developed world, and obesity is actually a feature of the lives of the poor, as opposed to starvation. The period between 1800 and 1970 witnessed a massive shift in earning power to the working classes, and a closing of the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers. Infection has not been abolished, but it is no longer so deadly. Violence has decreased, despite the periodic outbreaks of industrialized genocide. And so on.

Utopia is always over the hill, and the new normal was the aspiration of the past, not the bliss of the present. But the past and the present and the future are actually instantiated simultaneously. Consider three airports which I have sharp experiences of. Dhaka airport is the past. John F Kennedy airport is the present. And Munich airport is the future. If you took a flight from Dhaka to Munich you would have thought that you’d been transported to utopia.

I don’t take these utopian dreams as an injunction toward complacency. Rather, we should appreciate all that modern science, technology and government has achieved, and be vigilant. Before we despair at all which might be lost, remember this famous chart:

Not long after the release of beta 3, iPhone OS 4 beta 4 has landed on Apple’s Developer website.  Though initial reviews of beta 3 were largely positive, past versions (beta 2) have been plauged with bugs and issues that we can only hope aren’t present in beta 4.  If you have access to a Developer account, go get your download on and report back with your findings!

Update: Looks like beta 4 enables tethering for those heavy data users out there.  Upon installing, a popup can be found that directs users to call AT&T to set up internet tethering.  That being said, the nation’s second largest wireless carrier has openly nixed the idea of tethering until “better network performance” can be attained, so don’t get your hopes up.

Via Engadget Mobile

Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier—you know, the guy who wants to sue tens of thousands of people for downloading his movie—has made two things very clear over email: pirates are morons, and let’s hope their kids are jailed. More »










Hurt Locker – Nicolas Chartier – AcademyAward – Email – Business

There are as many different types of boobs as there are shapes of women, and let’s face it — some shapes are nicer than others. While it’s true that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, when it comes to cleavage there are just some lines that must be drawn when a woman steps in front of a camera; it’s a harsh reality of life, after all. Without further ado, these are the 15 worst kinds of boobs — get to know your enemy.

The Bolt-Ons

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Nothing could be more terrifying than a hideous pair of bolt-ons suddenly appearing in your face as you’re minding your own business at the local 80’s night — except maybe seeing them at an awards show. One thing’s for certain here; while it’s true that money can buy just about anything these days, including fake breasts, Victoria Beckham has proven that it can’t buy common sense.

The Saggers

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Saggers are often cited as being every girl’s secret fear, which in the end is often realized due to the natural process of aging. In certain cases, saggers make their debut at an early age — and usually on women who don’t seem to realize the fact. Saggers don’t necessarily have to be large to earn the moniker, and be sure not to mistake a pair of saggers for pancakes. The problem with saggers is that they simply don’t make an effort to stay where you put them, and they certainly don’t belong in public spaces without a good bra.

The Tipped Scale

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Every kid learns at an early age, much to their surprise and befuddlement, that a girl’s pair of girls aren’t ever exactly the same. One is always larger than the other — it’s just usually by an amount so trivial that it can hardly be quantified. In extreme cases of cup-size disparity, you get the tipped scale. More socially savvy women who happen to be afflicted with this nuisance tend to pad a cup to balance things out, but some girls just go commando and wind up as examples in the blogosphere.

The Perpetual Nipples

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Some people like to think that a good bra can cover anything, but with a pair of glass-cutters like these things mounted up front and center, it’s difficult to imagine just keeping a wardrobe without holes worn through every piece. The perpetual nipples aren’t just unsightly and embarrassing though — they’re potentially dangerous, too. It only takes one of them to put an eye out in the wrong situation.

The Pancakes

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Not to be confused with saggers, the pancakes tend to be most evident on girls who are often told to eat something before they die of malnutrition. Pancake boobies are like fossils or ancient ruins — they’re evidence that there was once cleavage where there are now only sad, flappy, forgotten bags of nothingness.

The Widow Makers

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We like to call these widow makers because of their obvious potential to suffocate would-be victims of a smothering hug-attack by the wearers. We say would-be because the odds of a girl sporting these monsters of modern medicine ever snagging a man are worse than winning the lottery.

The Wreck

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The wreck is quite literal, since it’s usually due to a botched plastic surgery, and most closely resembles body-damage from a car wreck. Unlike a car wreck, botched plastic surgery is often irreparable, and let’s face it — a dented boob is quite a bit more unsightly than a dented bumper.

The Anime Special

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Prepubescent boys will ogle and lust after the anime special, but once they grow old enough to realize what things like “poor taste” and “sad pathetic attempts to feel more beautiful” are, they learn that there is such a thing as being proportional. Women who have this done to themselves are generally on the lower end of the porn-industry’s totem pole, but there are some pretty notable exceptions.

The Justin Bieber

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Calling girls who are flatter than boards Justin Biebers may seem a bit mean, but let’s face it, Justin Bieber deserves it. These women spend their entire lives self-conscious of their chestlessness in the starry-eyed belief that someday they may actually grow breasts. Sadly for them (and us) that doesn’t usually happen without surgical intervention, but every so often, one of them grows up to become a Hollywood starlet.

The Migrators

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Migrators may start out in a fairly standard placement in the morning, but they tend to go wherever they please as the day goes on. Women with migrators are usually the type to shun their bras, and even worse, think they have extremely desirable cleavage and try their best to show it off to as many souls as possible. Some people may also refer to these wandering nomads as “drifters.”

The Uniboob

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Alongside the dreaded bolt-ons, the uniboob is quite possibly one of the most frightening and emotionally disconcerting sights to which anyone can be exposed, period. Uniboobs are a genetic oddity, much unlike the more ubiquitous unibrow. While it’s possibly for a girl to be born with these things, it’s much more likely that when you see it, you’re seeing the erred judgment of a girl who couldn’t afford a good plastic surgeon.

The Balloons

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Balloons happen when a woman, on a misguided quest through Breast Augmentation Land, arrives at the point where she officially has the anime special and decides that it’s simply not enough. When a woman has breasts so outlandishly bulbous that they make small children think that the woman may actually float away, the woman has failed.

The Grand Canyon

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The Grand Canyon is one of America’s most celebrated natural wonders. It’s also a great name for a pair of ta-tas that are perennially miles apart. Women with the Grand Canyon are almost always deluded enough to think that they actually have some sort of desirable cleavage on their chest, when in reality all they really have is a set of (usually) fake breasts positioned so far apart that they look flat-chested.

The Blow-Up Doll

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Another surprisingly literal moniker for a seriously disturbing type of boobage — the blow-up doll occurs when a particularly trashy woman decides that regular breast augmentation just isn’t enough for her control-freak attitude; she needs to be able to pump up her assets on a moment’s notice, and what better way to do it than to use an actual pump? Women who go this far have to be able to live comfortably with nozzles on the sides of their fake breasts, as well as the fact that no man will ever want to touch or look directly at them again.

Moobs

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Last but not least; since, after all, breasts are aren’t just a female feature, but mammalian one, are moobs. Moobs are both dreaded and celebrated (celebrated when spotted in hilarious ironic glory at a public swimming pool, dreaded in every other circumstance), and from a purely numerical standpoint, are likely far more prevalent in today’s society than every other type of horrifyingly bad breasts on this list. Unlike the other breasts on this list, moobs are easily corrected with diet and exercise, as they can most often be attributed to a combination of fast food and World of Warcraft.

En el marco del Salón Ecológico de Madrid, del que os daremos cuenta en nuestra habitual cobertura de los salones, se presentará otro modelo de GLP que ya estaba disponible para los profesionales, se trata del Skoda Octavia de GLP.

El motor elegido para funcionar con GLP es el veterano 1.6 MPI de 102 CV, que sufre las modificaciones pertinentes (inyectores, gasificador, un depósito a mayores…) para poder funcionar con gas licuado de petroleo. Lo mejor de este modelo serán los consumos, puesto que según Skoda tendrá un consumo de 9,2 litros de gas a los 100 km y 7,1 l/100 km de gasolina.

Estas cifras pueden parecer elevadas, sobretodo en el consumo de gas, pero hay que recordar que el litro de GLP se encuentra en el mercado a unos 0, 60 €/litro de media, al no estar sujeto al impuesto sobre hidrocarburos. De momento desconocemos los precios que tendrá esta variante de gas, pero si sabemos que las emisiones son bastante contenidas y además que contará con dos niveles de equipamiento Easy y Collection.

El primero de ellos va destinado más bien hacia profesionales, como taxistas, puesto que el Octavia es un coche muy usado por este colectivo, y el otro nivel de equipamiento viene de lo más completo con tapicería de cuero, climatizador o llantas de aleación incluidas. Si queréis saber más sobre el GLP podéis ver la prueba del Chevrolet Captiva de GLP donde explicamos de manera pormenorizada este combustible alternativo.

Fuente | Skoda

McMahon press aide Shawn McCoy dashed off a tweet last week about Rob Simmons’ stance on the Bush business and dividend taxes.

The Simmons’ camp cried foul, saying McCoy was misrepresenting the former congressman’s views. FactCheck.org, a respected and non-partisan group that monitors the factually accuracy of political speech, agrees.

To bolster his claim, McCoy cited Simmons’ criticism of millions of dollars in film and television tax credits that World Wrestling Entertainment received while McMahon was CEO. 

“Simmons’ campaign called the credits McMahon’s “own personal stimulus package.” But the Simmons camp said its issue wasn’t with the tax credits themselves. Instead, it criticized McMahon for campaigning against government “bailouts” while her former company was receiving millions in taxpayer dollars,” FactCheck states.

It’s the second time the McMahon campaign has been slapped by FactCheck for misrepresenting Simmons’ record.

 

Clothing lines clinched the number one spot as the major key player responsible for Target’s higher revenue from sales. Target’s profit clocked in at $671 million which is equivalent to 90 cents per share for the first three months of the year. Preceding year is at $522 million or 65 cents per share. While the giant conglomerate competitor Wal-Mart experienced an unexpected and alarming downfall in one of their discount stores last Tuesday, Target registered an augmentation of 2.8 percent. The rose of sales percentage was indexed in (Target) stores which are already opened for at least one year. Studies show that Wal-Mart loyal customers were found to be the ones more affected by the economic crisis felt by the nation in 2009. On the other hand, those who have been affected but have rather stable finances cling to retailers like Target for a number of considerations. With recession starting to retreat, consumers become wiser and opt to go to retailers and department stores for their needs. Unpredictably, credit card business performed better, taking into consideration the present fiscal predicament. This can be attributed to diminution in bad debt expense from the preceding year. Income from this group grew from $39 million to a whopping $111 million.

Related posts:

1. Wal-Mart 1st Quarter Soars, U.S. Same-Stores To Catch Up
2. Wal-Mart Paying $27.6 million to Settle a Lawsuit
3. GM reports first quarterly profit in almost three years

The fact that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) appears to be headed for a runoff doesn’t bode well for the incumbent’s re-election odds, according to history.

I consulted University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock, who co-wrote the definitive book on the subject, to confirm his study of runoff elections. Overall, whoever places first in a primary wins the runoff 71.8 percent of the time. (So far, looking good for Lincoln.) Things are even better for a Senate primary specifically — the Senate primary leader wins the runoff about 77 percent of the time. (Lt. Gov. Bill Halter beware.)

Not so fast. The odds of winning drop significantly when an incumbent is involved. If the incumbent is the leader in a primary race, he or she wins just 55 percent of the time. The premise behind this is if a voter is willing to vote against the incumbent once, the voter’s more likely to do it again in the runoff.

But that 55 percent applies to all primary races — and last night’s vote was a particularly close one. In an email, Bullock wrote that there are two factors important in the outcome of a runoff: the primary leader’s margin and whether the race is for statewide office. As of this morning, it appeared that Lincoln’s lead was two percentage points or less. The fact that it’s a statewide race means her prospects are even dimmer. So her chances are, by historical standards, likely considerably lower than 55 percent.

To sum it up, “things do not look good for Sen. Lincoln,” Bullock wrote in an email.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Yesterday, Yahoo! Inc. announced it would be acquiring Associated Content Inc., and the transaction would cost the search company an estimated $100 million.

Associated Content calls itself the “People’s Media Company,” and is a media outlet consisting of more than 380,000 freelancers publishing news, photos, video, and other content on subjects chosen by the site.

“Combining our world-class editorial team with Associated Content’s makes this a game-changer,” said Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo! Inc. “Together, we’ll create more content around what we know our users care about, and open up new and creative avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers across our network. These are important aspects of building engaging consumer experiences on Yahoo!, and one of the reasons why we’re one of the most visited destinations online.”

Since Yahoo signed its 10-year search agreement with Microsoft last year, effectively bowing out of the search business, the company has been working on strengthening its other properties. This acquisition is a move toward having more of its own original content, which will give advertisers more opportunities to target users.

Associated Content will continue to run as it has been, with the same staff, but new people will be added to “augment platform development, programming, content programming and customer support.” Ultimately, the platform will move from being a U.S.-only entity to a global one.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
















Associated Content – Yahoo – Carol Bartz – Microsoft – Business

We’ve covered the ongoing fight over copyright termination rights lately, as it’s quickly becoming a big deal. While the whole concept shows part of how messed up copyright law has become, one element included to help artists (rather than just big companies) when copyright terms were extended, were opportunities for the original artists or their estates to “terminate” the assignment of copyright to a company. The details are highly technical and a bit of a mess, and the entertainment industry has worked hard for years to try to bury termination rights (most famously when the RIAA had a Congressional staffer — who was hired just months later to a high-paying RIAA job — slip some text into a bill in the middle of the night that took termination rights away from musicians, until musicians freaked out and Congress backtracked). Even so, the big entertainment industry companies have been fighting against every attempt at artists or their estates reclaiming their copyrights for years. The most famous case was the case over Superman’s rights — which concluded last year with the estate of Jerry Siegel winning back certain rights (while letting Warner retain other Superman-related rights).

The lawyer who represented the Siegel estate, Marc Toberoff, has been pushing content creators and their estates to understand (and make use of) termination rights for a long time. And it’s no surprise that we’re now seeing new efforts under way from musicians and others, including comic book artist Jack Kirby. Kirby, not surprisingly, is also represented by Toberoff, who isn’t just representing these artists in helping them get back their copyrights, but he’s apparently set up his own production studio to help make use of those copyrights once he helps the artists get them back.

Apparently, Warner Bros. (a frequent target of Toberoff) has had enough and has decided to sue Toberoff personally, claiming that… well… basically that he’s a jerk and a savvy business person, which I didn’t quite realize was illegal. Specifically, they seem to be claiming that Toberoff “manipulated” the creators of Superman, having them hand over a large percentage of the rights to the character if he was able to successfully manage the termination. Part of Warner’s complaint is that Siegel and Shuster had apparently signed agreements promising not to exercise their termination rights, but as I’m sure Warner’s lawyers know (they must know this, right?), you cannot contractually give up your termination rights, or all entertainment industry companies would require that in their standard contract.

Frankly, reading through the complaint — which you can read below — it looks like Warner is attempting to retry the Superman termination rights case that it already lost:

While I still think there are all sorts of problems with termination rights in copyright law, and have no doubt that Toberoff had plenty of reasons beyond helping artists get back their copyrights in agreeing to represent these artists, it is somewhat amusing to see Hollywood flail around so desperately to try to keep absolutely monopolistic control over these rights. Of course, if the copyright law that was in place when Superman was created was still in place, the character of Superman would no longer be covered by copyright at all today, but would, instead, be in the public domain. So, forgive me for feeling little sympathy for anyone involved in this tug of war over who gets to exploit the creation for more money.

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