Category: News

In the grand scheme of things, this is just a minor Project Natal detail, but it is still worth noting that it appears that the final look of the Natal camera motion sensor accessory will be white. In all the teasers for the product, it’s been black, and in live demos, Microsoft has always gone out of their way to cover up the camera so that no one would get a peek at what it looked like until they were ready. That said, German site RTL did a video feature on Project Natal, and in that video you are able to get a look at the camera.

Tags:
accessories,
hardware,
microsoft,
project natal,
rumors,
white project natal,
xbox 360,
xbox 360 accessories,

The oil leak growing off the coast of Louisiana could be set to make landfall soon, and may be destined to hit another coast line soon thereafter.

Worries are growing that after failed attempts to stem the flow of oil from the leak, it may grow and flow along the current towards the coast of Florida.

See what could happen in the next 72 hours here, and follow updates at the Florida EPA.

Here’s how to understand the EPA’s maps.

Source: Florida Department of Environmental Protection

After 24 hours…

Source: Florida Department of Environmental Protection

After 48 hours…

Source: Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Moving closer to Florida, after 72 hours…

Source: Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Worried about the oil leak? Check out just how big it is compared to cities around the world.

Here’s what the oil spill would look like on top of your city >

Join the conversation about this story »

From Green Right Now Reports

Photo: Nevada Division of State Parks

Lovers of California’s picturesque Lake Tahoe long have lamented development’s effect on the lake’s legendary deep blue water and high transparency. Now, a study by Miami University’s Global Change Limnology Laboratory suggests that the change may be a threat to native fish species, too.

According to the group, maintaining high ultraviolet (UV) transparency may be the key to reducing invasion of warm-water fish, such as bluegill. The study, led by Andrew Tucker, doctoral student in zoology at Miami, is published in the March issue of the journal Ecology.

The study examined how underwater UV radiation (UVR) can regulate warm-water fish invasion. Changes in the UV transparency of the waters of the sub-alpine lake have allowed warm-water fish species to invade and spread. Transparency has decreased over the past several decades, and a number of nonnative warm-water fish species have established populations in some portions of the lake.

“For example, invasive bluegill can only nest successfully when human disturbance such as shoreline development reduces UV transparency,” said Craig Williamson, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Ecosystem Ecology and head of the Global Change Limnology Lab. “This creates a UV refuge, an ‘invasion window,’ which enables the bluegill to spawn in the surface waters where the temperatures are warm enough for survival of its embryos and larvae.”

The study indicated that dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and chlorophyll were important regulators of variation in the UVR in near shore areas of Lake Tahoe. Regulating chlorophyll and “DOC inputs” or runoff could help stem future declines in UVR transparency and in turn help reduce invasion of nonnative fish.

An understanding of the mechanisms underlying UVR transparency in Lake Tahoe could “enable us to better understand how regional and global environmental changes related to the factors that mediate UVR transparency could, in turn, affect habitat invasibility in the large, highly transparent lake,” Tucker said. “We suspect that this framework and our results could be directly relevant to other transparent lakes.”

[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] on Monday filed a class action lawsuit [complaint, PDF; press release] in the US District Court for the District of Arizona [official website] seeking an injunction against the implementation of the recently passed Arizona immigration law [SB 1070 materials; JURIST news archive]. The ACLU is joined in the lawsuit by several other rights groups including the NAACP, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) [advocacy websites] as well as several individual plaintiffs. The suit is challenging the constitutionality of the law, stating that it violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution [text] as well as the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The complaint specifically states:

It is an impermissible encroachment into an area of exclusive federal authority and will interfere and conflict with the comprehensive federal immigration system enacted by Congress and implemented through a complex web of federal regulations and policies. According to law enforcement officials in Arizona and elsewhere, SB 1070 will cause widespread racial profiling and will subject many persons of color including countless U.S. citizens, and non-citizens who have federal permission to remain in the United States to unlawful interrogations, searches, seizures and arrests.

In addition to seeking an injunction against implementation of the bill, the suit is requesting that the entire bill be declared unconstitutional.

Monday’s lawsuit joins two others filed [JURIST report] last month challenging the constitutionality of the Arizona law. The bill, signed into law [JURIST report] in April by Governor Jan Brewer, has caused intense controversy. Earlier this month, a group of UN human rights experts indicated the measure may violate international standards [JURIST report] that are binding on the US. Mexican President Felipe Calderon [official website, in Spanish] has strongly criticized [JURIST report] the new law, claiming that it opens the door to intolerance and hatred. US President Barack Obama also criticized the law [JURIST report], and called for federal immigration reform. Under the law, it is designated a crime to be in the country illegally, and immigrants unable to verify their legal status could be arrested and jailed for six months and fined $2,500.

Mid Europa Partners, a London-based private equity and buyout firm focused on Central and Eastern Europe, has agreed to invest €60 million ($76.19 million) for an undisclosed stake in Energy 21 a Czech developer and operator of PV-solar power plants, it’s first investment in the clean energy space. Mid-Europa has indicated that it plans to grow its green portfolio and is looking for other opportunities.

Launched in 2007, Energy 21 controls 26 megawatts in installed generation capacity and has another 75 megawatts under development, all located in the Czech Republic. The company says it plans to expand beyond its home market, and the Mid Europa cash could help it do that.

“We are very pleased to have now realized our first investment in a very promising platform with significant growth prospects,” said Mid Europa’s Managing Partner Thierry Baudon in a prepared statement. He adds: “We intend to increase our exposure to the renewable space in Central and Eastern Europe, and hope that Energy 21 will serve as base for a series of attractive transactions to come in the near future.”

HTC announced another Android smartphone, the HTC Wildfire, that looks similar to the HTC Desire yet has hardware similar to the HTC Tattoo headed for major European and Asian markets in the third quarter of 2010. It will ship with Android 2.1, latest HTC Sense UI with the bonus of HTC Caller ID which displays your contact’s Facebook profile picture, latest update, and birthday reminders. There will even be a widget that allows you to social share and recommend Android Apps via SMS text message, email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Photos of HTC Wildfire:

Below are Specs on the HTC Wildfire:

• Qualcomm MSM7225 528 MHz processor
• 512MB ROM, 384MB RAM
• Android 2.1 (Eclair) and Sense UI
• 3.2-inch QVGA TFT capacitive touch screen
• 5 megapixel camera w/auto focus, LED flash
• 802.11 b/g
• GPS, AGPS
• Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
• 3.5mm audio jack; microUSB
• Proximity sensor
• G-sensor
• Compass
• Light sensor
• FM radio
• Optical joystick

[Via AndroidGuys]

"I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to man than a fire engine." ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to have lunch and get to know another Milwaukee blogger, Nate St. Pierre.  What Nate has created, though, is much more than a blog.  He has really created a movement, based around his website, It Starts With Us. 

What is so unique about what Nate is doing, is how It Starts With Us (ISWU) has really become a place to bring people together – from all walks of life and every corner of the globe.  Brought together around the simple idea of doing good in our world.  And that's not to say there aren't a whole lot of opportunities to do that right in our own neighborhoods – as I'm sure there are.  This is really about small, easy acts of good (missions) that can be done –  with a common connection to people from all over the world! 

Please join me as I ask Nate some questions about what has brought him to this place he's at today.

1.  Tell us a little bit about who “you” are (family, career, any special life experiences you’d like to share, etc.)
I laughed when I saw the word "career" in the question. I don't think I've ever had a career as most people would define it. I started out as a janitor at age 14, then during high school and college I worked as a civilian hire for the Air Force. I went to college on academic scholarship to study molecular genetics and organic chemistry, then dropped out of school to go work at a fish cannery in Alaska. When I came back from there, I did some freelance technical writing and desktop publishing. During the dot-com bubble I taught myself basic web design and built a topic-specific search engine directory, which I ran for a while and then sold. From there I moved into land title insurance for a little bit, and then I became a web developer for a big company. After doing that for a while, I became the web team leader and ran that show for a couple of years, until I decided to quit and focus on ItStartsWith.Us full-time. Instead of having a solid career to back me up, I feel that I have a variety of different experiences to draw from, each of which has allowed me to develop a different skill set and perspective on life. I can't say that I'll run ItStartsWith.Us forever, but I can tell you that it's the first job I've ever truly loved.

Lance's Commentary:  The experience at the fish cannery in Alaska has to have some pretty interesting memories!  And…I think you have really hit upon an important thing:  Our life is not just about our career, it's really about our life experiences and the people we've met along the way.  Keep on really living life, my friend!

2.  What led to the creation of the It Starts With Us website?
I was attending a week-long leadership training course for my job in November of 2008, and one of the sessions focused on completing self-assessment exercises. "What are your skills, talents and interests, what do you enjoy doing, etc." – that kind of thing. After writing all that down, the idea was that you should try to do something in your life that would speak to those qualities. With that in mind, the instructions were to write for 20 minutes based on the question presented on the next page. When I turned to the page, I saw that it was blank, except for the phrase, "Next year, I will . . . " at the top. I scribbled furiously for 20 minutes, and when I was done, I looked back to see what I had written. Today I don't remember anything about that page except what I wrote for the first line: "Next year, I will change the world."

I thought about what that meant for a few months, and realized that I could never do very much on my own. But I thought that if I could build a system that would enable people to participate quickly and easily, feel like part of a team, have fun, not pay a dime, and actually see the life-changing results of their work, then they would engage with the project. And with so many people engaging, we literally could change the world.

Lance's Commentary:  Nate, what you have created with the It Starts With Us movement is incredibly soul-touching.  You ARE changing the world – in some amazing ways!

3.  Nate, when I think about your site, I think about how I can personally make a difference in the world – and how your site helps facilitate a way to do that.  Am I close to what you see your mission as?
Indeed. The vision of ItStartsWith.Us is to change the world. The mission – the way we do that – is to make a positive impact in the lives of the people around us . . . in just 15 minutes a week. Anyone and everyone can give 15 minutes a week towards helping out their neighbor, loving their family, working on their attitude, or joining us in one of  our shared missions, like writing a letter to a sick child or dropping a Love Bomb on someone in need. When I assign the weekly missions, I try to make them small enough to be attainable, but big enough to make a measurable difference in someone else's life, and also your own.

Lance's Commentary:  What's so great about this is the minimal time commitment that is really necessary to be a part of this.  Anyone can do it!!  And – the whole collective of this is so powerful!

4.  Tell us about the weekly missions, and how they have impacted you personally.
I like to think of the weekly missions as a gentle reminder to keep our eyes open to the good we can do in this world as we walk through life. There's no pressure to do them or not – nobody's keeping score. It's very easy to delete the email or unsubscribe from the list altogether. We've been running missions for right around a year now, and I've done every single one I've assigned. And you know what? It was hard for me. It made me stretch a little bit. I'm a huge introvert, and I'm not the friendliest person (my family and friends can attest to that). But doing these missions each week has opened my eyes to so many things I can do better in this life. I've found so many ways to make a difference for others, even if it's just as simple as a friendly smile, a quick chat on the street, or a small offer of help. And the surprising thing is, as much as the people I serve appreciate the little things I do, I'm the one who gets the biggest benefit. My outlook on life is better. My attitude is more positive. My days are more joyful. It's really been amazing, and it seems the old adage is true – when you serve others, you really do get back more than you give.

Lance's Commentary:  I've been a member since our lunch meeting back in late winter of this year.  While I haven't done every mission, I have done most of them.  And that's the thing.  Some weeks we get busy, can't get to every email that comes in, etc, etc.  And that's what works here.  I do this when I can.  And it's a win-win when I do.  Someone benefits from whatever "kindness" is being put out there this week.  That's not nearly it, though – I come away from all of this a better person, and am touched by each one of these missions that I participate in! 

5. Tell us one unexpected thing that has happened to you in the last year.
I think the most unexpected thing is what I mentioned just above – that I was changed as a result of this project. I began it because I believed in the idea and thought I could bring a lot of people together for the common good, but I was totally amazed by the way it transformed me right from the beginning.

Lance's Commentary:  I love this!!  When we transform ourselves in amazing ways, what a great place to be!

6.  If you had to pick one thing as your greatest achievement, what would it be (and why)?
With this project, or with life? Hmm. I'll pick the "with this project" option, because it's easier. With this project I'm most proud of the fact that we've been able to make such a difference for so many people. We started out with 18 members a year ago, and today we have over 2,000 members in dozens of countries. In just one year we've been able to get to the point where we're now pumping hundreds of hours of community service into the world each week in an organized, directed and effective way. And we've been able to do it with no funding – just a desire to make a difference. I wish I could share all the notes, calls and emails I receive on a weekly basis about what the team has done – we truly do touch hearts and change lives. It's incredible to be a part of that.

Lance's Commentary:  Hundreds of hours….fifteen minutes at a time!!  How cool is that!!

7. Anything new you have coming up?
Dude, I always have something new coming up.  Right now I'm working with a couple of people on two spin-off sites: Love Bomb and Love Drop. The Love Bomb subgroup is already very active, so we're going to turn that into a standalone project to better focus the efforts of those members. Love Drop will be a true 501(c)3 charitable organization centered around the micro-giving concept, where interested people join the group and donate either $1.00 or $5.00 a month, and at the end of each month we ask our members if they know of anyone who could use some financial help, and then we'll direct virtually all of that money to the chosen recipient. I try to keep the main ItStartsWith.Us team away from any monetary giving, so this will give interested parties the opportunity to give back financially.

The biggest thing I'm working on right now, however, is the business offering of the project. Last month I quit my job to focus on ISWU full-time (putting 30 hours a week into the project on top of my full-time job for the last year was getting a bit rough). I'm now working with large organizations and businesses to utilize the ISWU model to mobilize their members to give back in a fun, free and effective way. I've custom-built all the tools necessary for businesses to adopt this model and have the same kind of success that we're having, and I'm doing personal consulting to help them implement the system and make a real impact with it. Even better, when these organizations contract with me to adopt the ISWU platform, they also become part of the leadership network I've formed, and part of our quarterly initiatives . . . which will be huge missions consisting of people from different companies and groups all over the world, where we all work together to do something for one person, one family, or one organization . . . all at the same time. Imagine all of us coming together to grant a wish for a child in the Make-a-Wish Foundation, which is one of the places I'm going be looking to partner with. The world has never seen the kind of things we're going to be able to accomplish this year. It's going to make a huge difference – and be a lot of fun at the same time.

Lance's Commentary:  I've been a part of the Love Bomb group for several weeks.  What a moving experience, to be able to offer some words of encouragement and love to one person who has a lot they are dealing with.  And – how awesome that you are able to focus on ISWU full-time!  The whole idea of taking this into business, too, makes so much sense:  what a great way to unite a common group of people around a common cause!

8.  Deep down, what makes you uniquely “you”?
Had to end with a tough one, didn't you? Hmm. Okay, how about this? I'm a business-minded idealist. Meaning, I have the values, passion, dedication and drive of someone who wants to change the world, but I'm doing it in such a way that it makes sense to those with the money and power to help make it happen. I talk to executives about how adopting the ISWU platform will help with employee engagement, recruitment and retention, and about how the real-world results they get with their group will be worth much more in positive brand-building than what they're currently spending from their advertising and PR budgets. I show them how being a part of this network affects their bottom line and is actually profitable for them, and then when they join, I fly out to their headquarters and show them how to run their own group that touches hearts and changes lives. Yep. Just like what we're doing now. And since I give them all the tools and all the expertise they need for a very reasonable price, ISWU becomes a self-sustainable business . . . in the business of changing the world.

So that's how I feel I'm unique – I'm someone who believes that absolutely everyone is in a position to do amazing things for the common good. Passionate individuals, small companies, global brands, non-profits, educational organizations, celebrities, regular folk . . . as long as we work together in an organized, effective and sustainable way, we'll be able to do things that have never been done before. It is certainly possible. In fact, it's even easier than you think. And I'm excited about getting it done.

Lance's Commentary: Hey, I can't make all of these easy!!  You are creating something that is very special and meaningful for everyone involved.  That, coupled with the new directions you have planned – and you are indeed changing the world…in very life-connecting ways!

Closing Comments:  Nate, as I read that quote by Kurt Vonnegut up above…you ARE the fire engine!  And all these people signing up to be a part of the team become the water.  Wow!!  From this…WE are all changing the world!  Your creation of It Starts With Us is the catalyst for bringing together people to collectively make a big difference in our world, one step at a time!  I am honored to be part of this amazing movement! 

You can keep up with Nate and the It Starts With Us movement by visiting his website, following him on Twitter, and subscribing to his Facebook page.

How do you improve on an award-winner like Scribblenauts? Just makes it super. Initially reported to have a Fall 2010 release (qjnet/nintendo-ds/scribblenauts-sequel-targeting-fall-2010-release.html), the talked-about Scribblenauts sequel now has a name and a new release margin. From

Michael Giberson

At the Freakonomics blog, James McWilliams offers a review of sorts of Robert Bryce’s new book Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future.  McWilliams reports that the book is “a sustained attack on our irrational infatuation with wind and solar power.” Part of Bryce’s “sustained attack” is a chapter on Denmark and wind energy, and McWilliams’s piece mostly directs itself to explaining and commenting on the Denmark chapter.

Unfortunately, McWilliams’s review only convinces me I shouldn’t rely on his opinions on energy topics.

I end up not believing the review mostly because the explanations of Denmark’s situation feel incomplete and a bit ad hoc.  But rather than ask you to trust my feelings, let’s look at a point McWilliams made where fact checking is easy. Here is McWilliams:

It should be noted, in all fairness to Denmark, that its citizens have done something the U.S. seems unwilling to do: they’ve kept energy demand flat. Today, Denmark uses the same amount of per capita energy as it did in 1981. Remarkable.

Do you interpret these two sentences as McWilliams claiming that Danish consumers have kept per capita energy use level since 1981 and U.S. consumers have increased per capita energy use?

A few moments on the internet turns up data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on per capita energy use: per capita energy use was 332 million BTU in the United States in 1981, 327 million BTU in 2008, and 310 million BTU in 2009.  These numbers are from the 2008 Annual Energy Review and the 2010 Annual Energy Outlook.  A EIA spreadsheet from the 2006 International Energy Annual [XLS] has data on many countries, including the U.S. and Denmark, over the period 1980-2006. In general both countries have seen ups and downs in per capita energy use from 1980 to 2006, with the ups tending to reflect periods of low energy prices or stronger economic growth and the downs tending to reflect periods of higher energy prices or weaker energy growth. Unremarkable.

Since I can’t rely on McWilliams’s review, I don’t know yet whether I’m interested or not in Bryce’s book.  However, Bryce’s “Five myths about green energy,” an op-ed appearing in the Washington Post just before the his book was published, seems similarly incomplete and ad hoc in its analysis. (How critical for energy policy analysis is a calculation of watts of energy output per square meter of land devoted to energy production? It strikes me as reaching for a techno-scientific sounding statistic to dress up the author’s dismissal of wind power which is itself based on other grounds.) But op-eds are brief and by nature driven to anecdote rather than careful explication of data; maybe the book has more substance.

(A tip of the hat with link to John Whitehead at Environmental Economics for drawing my attention to the McWilliams review at Freakonomics.)

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Two months ago, VPN builder VirnetX was awarded $105.75 million by a Tyler, Texas jury, for Microsoft’s infringing upon its patented tunneling protocol for private networks. Realizing that this could actually be the first home run by VirnetX in the same turn at bat, Microsoft has opted to pay $200 million to VirnetX as a settlement for this and all future lawsuits.

The technology that triggered the initial award was a way for VoIP phones to conduct communications on secure channels, without the phone user having to log in using some kind of keyboard. What Microsoft wanted for its Unified Communications suite was a way to keep the same “dialtone” when a user picks up a voice receiver and dials a recipient, and yet keep the channel between the parties secure using VPN technology.

VirnetX definitely held a patent on something meeting that general description, though Microsoft’s challenge was that the basic innovation behind VirnetX’s twist on tunneling wasn’t much of a twist. After its fifth-of-a-billion-dollar payout, Microsoft will not be appealing that argument.

Instead, VirnetX will be putting its newfound revenue to use by funding something it calls the Secure Domain Name Initiative. Launched just last month, the company claims it will be utilizing the two patents it holds — the two upon which the jury said Microsoft infringed — to develop a system it describes as enabling always-on communications security between DNS endpoints, presumably using encrypted traffic. Imagine an HTTPS connection (or perhaps something more secure) where the browser doesn’t have to create the session key, and where all traffic is encrypted by default.

To get to a Web where that’s the case, apparently engineers will have to go through VirnetX’s channels; and that $200 million payout doesn’t just pave the way, but puts up guardrails, fences, and gates as well.

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Hamid Karzai went home to Afghanistan last week having reached a modus vivendi with the U.S. on the non-offensive in Kandahar. The Obama administration, the military, NATO and Karzai now speak of a “rising tide of security” taking hold over the southern city, with security operations playing a decisively subordinate role to governance and economic functions. But that’s vastly easier said than done. And McClatchy carries a blind quote casting doubt on whether the basic prerequisites for that “rising tide” are even in evidence:

U.S. defense officials and defense analysts said that McChrystal used 10,000 troops in Helmand to gain control of a rural river valley with about 50,000 residents. But in Kandahar, however, Afghanistan’s second largest city, with an estimated population of 800,000, he’s calling for just 20,000 troops.

“None of this makes any sense,” said a U.S. defense official. “If it took you 10,000 (U.S. troops) to do Marjah, there aren’t enough troops (for Kandahar).” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

And Marja isn’t in any important sense done, either.

The Energy Information Administration just released their Annual Energy Outlook for 2010: Annual Energy Outlook 2010

It is about 220 pages long, and therefore I haven’t had a chance to read it thoroughly. But in my skimming of it so far, there are a few interesting items to note. One of the things I was most curious about was whether they would show this scary graph that appeared in the 2009 Annual Energy Outlook:

Let that sink in for a just a minute. What that says is that global production in 2030 is forecast to be 43 million barrels, demand is forecast to be 105 million barrels, and we really don’t have any idea how we are going to cover 62 million barrels per day of demand by 2030. We are going to need a lot of oil to cover the depletion, so it is up to “unidentified projects” – or we will deal with huge shortages.

Certainly there will be plenty of projects that haven’t been identified that will contribute to supply. But the key question is “Will those be enough?” This is especially true in light of the current mess in the Gulf of Mexico, because a lot of that new oil was expected to come from offshore. But as I originally predicted, I think this blowout in the gulf really slows things down. A relevant news story on that theme from today:

BP Disaster Strands Billions of Barrels of Offshore U.S. Crude

A regulatory crackdown on offshore oil drilling after the fatal rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico will delay development of U.S. deposits with billions of barrels of crude and may spawn industry job cuts.

“This oil spill was a disaster for the industry,” said Gianna Bern, president of Brookshire Advisory & Research in Flossmoor, Illinois, and a former BP crude trader. “It will ratchet up public debate on deep-water drilling by a couple of notches and put a lot of projects conceivably on the back burner.”

So this would seem to make last year’s graph even more ominous. But alas, so far I have not found that graph in this year’s report. In fact, for the most part this year’s report is pretty upbeat about future prospects. It suggests that CTL, GTL, and BTL will start to make significant contributions to global fuel supplies. It also suggests that in the U.S. high oil prices will finally make oil shale economical. This of course repeats the 100-year-old mantra about oil shale being just around the corner.

The report suggests that the 2022 cellulosic ethanol mandate will not be met “because economic and technological factors prevent cellulosic biofuel production from providing the credits that would be needed to meet the requirement.” They do forecast that by 2035 we will have figured it out and that “ultimately surpasses the RFS requirement as higher oil prices and lower production costs improve their competitiveness.”

Let me say that I have a lot of respect for the EIA, and use them extensively for data. I know they put a lot of hard work into this report. However, some of their predictions have become a running joke. If you want to have some fun reading, go back and look at some of their historical predictions from say, 2001. For instance, I always get a kick out of this graph, which makes an annual appearance:

It is always the same story. Sure, production has fallen in the U.S. for the past 35+ years, but starting next year things are going to turn around. You can see this same graph in every recent Energy Outlook. Then production falls for another year, and they move the line forward and forecast that the next year will be the turnaround year.

One other graph of note concerns their projections for growth of CTL, BTL, and oil shale.

I agree with them that there will be growth in CTL and BTL as conventional oil depletes, but I am still skeptical about whether oil can be produced from shale with a positive energy balance.

Anyway, lots of material to sort through, but I mainly wanted to call attention to the report so people can begin to digest it.

This is a guest by Robert Rapier from R Squared Energy Blog.

Join the conversation about this story »

Narrowly missing out on an item on sites such as eBay can be incredibly
frustrating.
Unfortunately this is beginning to happen more frequently as many
bidders are now resorting to sniping tools which enable them to bid for items
automatically, in the dying seconds of auctions, without even having to
be at their computers. Unless you are able to watch items twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week it’s inevitable that you’ll lose out on
some items. As this is the case for most of us, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way of easily monitoring and
bidding on selected items?

AuctionSleuth
3.0.9 is an application that enables you to outbid rivals
right at the end of online auctions. You can use it to monitor new ‘Buy it
now’ items so you can be first to know when they are made available as well as use AuctionSleuth to ensure you don’t lose out on the things
you want, to somebody who may be using a sniping tool themselves.

AuctionSleuth
3.0.9 link.

Captain Kibble was the first of a whole lot of you to send in actor/comedian/writer/etc. Peter Serafinowicz’s explanation for why he downloads unauthorized copies of things… including his own movies. The basic answer is convenience, but also a shifting view on media consumption. He does pay for some stuff, but only when it’s equally convenient or, as many have called it, “better than free.” It’s worth reading the whole thing, but there are a few key snippets. He notes that there is definitely promotion value in having the content up on file sharing networks — and notes that with his own show, obscurity is a much bigger threat than “piracy”:

The visibility argument certainly makes sense for my short-lived BBC show. I’m revamping my website right now and my web team asked me if I would like them to hunt down and put and end to the torrents and RapidShare links to The Peter Serafinowicz Show, which was recently released in the UK on DVD. I said no because the show is still relatively unknown and I’d like as many people to see it as possible. In fact, I’ve used the torrents myself when I haven’t had a copy to hand.

Much of it is already up on YouTube. If people like it enough they’ll want to buy, to own, the DVD, which has lots of great extra stuff, but the DVD isn’t even sold in the USA. The freely available content serves as a calling card for me, and for the other cast members and writers, hopefully enabling us to produce more hilarious stuff for the world’s discerning comedy fans.

Another point he makes is that it’s often the content providers own fault in making it so ridiculous difficult to legally get the content he wants to watch. He lives in the UK and is frustrated about TV shows getting to the UK much later, or other content that he can’t legally reach at all from the UK. And sometimes, it makes no sense at all to him, so he just fires up BitTorrent instead:

I recently wanted to show my son Disney’s classic Jungle Book and intended to get it on iTunes. Unfortunately, it is currently incarcerated within The Disney Vault. So I’m afraid I simply DL’ed a pixel-clear pirate copy which arrived in seconds. My moral justification for this? I once bought the VHS. It’s your own vault, Disney!

He also sees how annoying the legally purchased versions of things can be:

“Ownership” is starting to change its meaning. If you buy a movie from iTunes you “own” the right to watch it on certain devices within certain constraints. When you “own” a DVD, you have the right to watch it whenever and wherever you want. However: you must watch ten minutes of promos, trailers and anti-piracy threats. I’ll take the download, please.

Along those lines, he gets frustrated at ridiculous and unnecessary restrictions when he does by content — restrictions that unauthorized copies don’t have:

I own a physical copy of Anthony Lane’s brilliant collection of New Yorker reviews, Nobody’s Perfect. It’s a heavy read (around 3 lbs.) and I wanted to get a copy for my iPad. I tracked down an ePub version of the book at the Barnes & Noble site, assuming, since iBooks also uses the format, that I could tranfer it to my iPad. Only the iPad doesn’t read Adobe-encoded ebooks, not now at least. With the help of some sympathetic Twitter followers I then spent around ten futile hours installing Xcode and obscure Python scripts (not the funny ones) on two different computers in what seems to be the only method one can use to illegally decrypt Adobe ebooks. My moral justification for this? I’ve paid for the book twice.

Finally, he also has run into the ridiculousness of the recording industry. Earlier this year, we noted how insanely short-sighted it was of EMI to prevent embedding of the band Ok Go’s viral music videos. Serafinowicz came across the same issue on a video he made for EMI, which he solved by releasing it in an unauthorized manner:

I recently directed the music video for Hot Chip’s “I Feel Better.” Contractually, the video had to be hosted on EMI’s official YouTube channel, which disabled non-UK users from viewing it, limiting its audience by around 80%. Frustrated, I put it up on my own YouTube channel with no region restrictions, and at time of writing is just shy of a million views. EMI then remotely disabled embedding on my version, thereby limiting its audience again. If you’re in the business of promoting a band, why would you want to stop people watching their promotional video?

It’s basically the same story over and over and over again. People understand what’s possible and what they can do with technology, and the industry keeps wanting to restrict what they can do, because the industry doesn’t know how to deal with it. But that’s never going to stop people. Once you understand what technology enables, why would you ever purposely limit yourself? The various content industries have so many chances to get this right, and every time they get it wrong — to the point that even the folks who make their living from these industries are beginning to question the strategic aptitude of those in charge.

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Over three years ago, I posed the question of whether I could cut cable TV from my life. It’s odd to look back on the online media landscape over that time. YouTube was less than two years old. Hulu wasn’t announced yet. Finding a Redbox or DVDPlay in your town was a rare joy. Streaming video was so new to Netflix that they didn’t have a Instant Queue until a little more than two years ago.

At that time I tried to cut cable television, I’d need three things:

• Polished DVRs with no subscriptions. I can’t have the OS crashing on me. I need an interface that everyone can use. Perhaps this is not a problem. I’ll need to research this. There is likely going to be a one time cost. Perhaps I can get something pre-built on Ebay.
• Slingbox and good bandwidth. The original Slingbox’s picture is okay for most television viewing, but it’s tough on sports with small details such as a baseball or football.
• I need to get one of those HDTV antennas. They are cheap and easy to get on the Internet. I’ll probably pick one up this weekend.

Looking back at that a few things jump out at me…

1. The idea of putting a Slingbox at a friend’s house and sharing a cable connection was a total cop-out. I think it was a great idea at the time considering the lack of alternatives, but a lot more can be done today. Some people mentioned it was even against Slingbox’s terms of service. To those people, I’d just say that I believe a company has to offer a service to offer a terms of service. If you buy a product that requires no service, you are free to use it as you see fit (as long as it is within the laws of the US).
2. The HDTV antenna that I tried was horrible. I think I simply went too cheap on that.
3. I was a horrible writer who relied on lists too much… even for short items that don’t require lists like this one.

Cutting the Cable TV

My idea of cutting the cable had been dormant after my failed attempt three years. Recently four factors have resurrected the idea. We had an accidental deletion of an episode of Glee (yes guilty as charged) and I had to resort to Hulu to catch up. I had a conversation with some friends who I haven’t seen in some time and they mentioned dropping their cable. They are exclusively using a combination of Netflix, Hulu, and MLB TV – a subscription service streaming live Major League Baseball games over the Internet. CNN Money says that 1 in 8 people will drop cable and satellite in 2010, which led to Lifehacker asking what would you need to ditch cable television? Finally, I learned that a new co-worker is quite adept at building polished media boxes from open source software (with no ongoing subscriptions) and he’s willing to help set me up with the software if I buy the hardware. This interface would give us easier access to Hulu and Netflix.

The mitigating factor is not that I won’t have enough to watch if I cut the cable. It’s not even the quality of what’s available online. The combination of Netflix and Hulu would give me more TV than I should be watching anyway. The problem is with live television – particularly sports. Like my friends, baseball wouldn’t be much of an issue because of MLB TV. That would cost us $110 a year. However that represents a savings from what we pay our cable company for MLB Extra Innings for out-of-town coverage of our beloved Red Sox. The next problem is getting NFL games. There is no NFL equivalent MLB TV available in the United States. It’s not because the NFL can’t do it, but it’s because DirecTV has paid the NFL handsomely so that they can have much of the exclusive rights to out-of-town football games. Since I don’t have DirecTV anyway, I’m still stuck going to the sports bar to bar to watch the Patriots. The only loss here is the ESPN coverage of Monday night games (2 Patriots games this year).

Have you cut cable television? If so, do you have any tricks or secrets that I missed?

Related posts:

1. Cutting the Cable TV There used to be time when all of America…
2. Save Money on Television In the past I’ve given a few tips on saving…
3. Major League Baseball Stole My Money… As some of my regular readers know, I’m a huge…
4. Major League Baseball and The Onion of Evil I made fairly sizable purchase last Friday. I called up…
5. Netflix vs Blockbuster The continuing television writers’ strike has greatly reduced the value…

In the smartphone world, it sometimes takes community involvement to encourage developers to bring the software we want to our platform of choice.  The webOS community generally, and the PreCentral community specifically, tend towards the more active side of the spectrum and when they want something, they’re more likely to get it.  P|C Forum member nulall has put together a thread linking to projects that that need your vote in order to come to webOS, including qik, Dropbox, Quickoffice, Seesmic, and plenty more.  Go ahead: pop in, and give your vote!

For this week’s Shooting Challenge, I asked you to shoot whatever you wanted. As the 116 photos that follow prove, this was a great decision. More »










Photography – Challenge Shoot – Business – Arts and Entertainment – Photographers

by Tom Philpott

As corals are particularly susceptible to oil detergents and dispersed oil, the results of these assays rules out the use of any oil dispersant in coral reefs and in their vicinity.
—From a 2007 paper by Israeli researchers, published in The Journal of Environmental Science

(USGS photo)After reading those words a few days ago, I became concerned about the deep-water reefs of the northern Gulf of Mexico, known as the Pinnacles. They lie just 25 miles north of the Deepwater Horizon leak, at depths of 230 to 400 feet along the edge of the continental shelf running from the Mississippi Delta to the DeSoto Canyon. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes them as a broad band of “drowned reefs” or “fossil reefs,” but while the reefs may be “fossil”—formed several millennia ago, when sea levels were lower—they remain ecologically vital. Says NOAA:

The Pinnacles are part of a shelf-edge reef complex throughout the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern United States that is considered to be critical spawning habitat for many commercially important species of groupers and snappers, and are home to many species that do not occur on shallow coral reefs such as the Spanish flag and roughtongue bass.

Well, vast plumes of dispersed oil are now hovering over these cradles of biodiversity. Associated Press reports that the dispersed oil is now over the western edge of the Pinnacles.

The reefs face two threats from the oil plumes. The first is oxygen depletion. “These plumes are being eaten by microbes thousands of feet deep, which removes oxygen from the water,” AP reports. The article quotes Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia who says that the abundant deepwater coral in this area “need oxygen. Without it, they can’t survive.”

The second threat is poisoning from direct contact:

Oil mixed with the chemical agent can disperse into the water more easily, rather than it staying on the surface, where it could bypass deeper banks like Pinnacles, said Edward Van Vleet, a chemical oceanography professor at the University of South Florida.The downside is that it causes oil to sink, coating corals and other reef organisms and smothering them, he said. When the dispersed oil is broken into smaller globules, he said they are more easily eaten by smaller reef organisms and can kill them or cause tumors or something else harmful.

And the Pinnacles aren’t the only reefs threatened by the underwater plumes. The Gulf loop current could carry them to the shallow-water corals off of the Florida Keys, AP reports.

The situation starkly illustrates the brutal dilemma faced by cleanup crews as they fight to limit damage from the ongoing spill. Use of chemical dispersants is no doubt reducing the size of surface slicks, limiting the potential for catastrophic damage along the Gulf’s environmentally sensitive shores. But dispersants also add to the size of underwater plumes, expanding the potential for catastrophic damage along the Gulf’s environmentally sensitive sea bottom.

The situation doesn’t clarify much about the wisdom of using dispersants. But it highlights the tremendous risks of deep-water oil drilling. And until we learn to use significantly less oil, deep-water drilling will only become a more entrenched practice.

Related Links:

The real trouble from the oil spill is brewing deep under the sea

MMS goes under the spotlight

Tube is suctioning one-fifth of spewing oil, says BP executive

Overview

What’s Good: Cute, compact form factor; Multitouch-aware capacitive display; Zune Pass compatibility; Hi-res still and video capture; Kin Studio provides automated Web-based backup

What’s Bad: Featurephone features at smartphone price; No calendar, games or downloadable apps; Limited syncing options; Poor ergonomics for camera use; Keyboard will be too small for some users

Introduction

Note: Kin One and Kin Two are basically identical in terms of software and general performance, including the 600MHz NVIDIA Tegra processor that they both employ. As such, appropriate portions of this review are shared with my Kin Two review.

 A few years ago Microsoft bought Danger, inventors of the Sidekick family of messaging devices. Time passed and little was known about what, if anything, the Danger group was working on inside of Microsoft HQ, save a few leaks about “Project Pink.” Pink was rumored to be Microsoft’s self-branded foray into the messaging phone category, and said to consist of two launch phones codenamed “Pure” and “Turtle.”

Then Microsoft killed off Windows Mobile and announced Windows Phone 7 (Series) and everyone kind of forgot about Project Pink. For a few weeks, anyway.

Fast forward to a rainy Monday morning in April, and “Pure, Pink and Turtle” became “Kin One and Two,” as Microsoft officially launched their new devices for “Generation Upload” at a nightclub in San Francisco. Complete with a new mobile OS and heavily visual user interface, an online component called “Kin Studio,” and Verizon as launch partner, Kin showed the world that the Danger group had in fact been hard at work since being folded into the MSFT’s world.

Question is, are Kin One and Two actually any good? Sorta, but they’re so overpriced (think monthly plan costs, not up-front sticker shock) that it’s impossible to see them only for what they are. Instead I keep comparing them next to the Android and webOS phones in Verizon’s lineup and seeing the Kins for all the things they’re not.

Design & Features

Kin One is the little sister to the bigger, higher-spec’d Kin Two. A portrait slider with a touchscreen and full QWERTY thumbboard, Kin One sort of resembles a smushed-down Palm Pre. The device measures up at 3.3 x 2.66 x 0.73″ and weighs 3.9 ounces. Kin One is finished in “Carbon” (dark grey) grippy plastic with white accents, and when closed the top (screen) half of the phone rests in the center of the lower half – unlike the Pre, a portrait slider whose two halves close flush to each other.

K1’s screen is a 2.6″ capacitive touch TFT display capable of 320 x 240 resolution. While the screen is fairly small by today’s standards, it looks and works quite well. Kin One supports multitouch input including single and two-finger taps, double taps, swipes, and pinch-to-zoom. There’s one hardware button on the front of the phone, mounted dead center directly below the display. A single press of the button takes you back one screen in the user interface, while a press-and-hold will bring you back to The Loop (home screen).

Kin One features 3.5mm audio and microUSB ports, and hardware buttons for the Camera, Volume Up/Down (rocker switch), and Power/Screen Lock. There’s an 5MP camera withwith LED flash, auto-focus and anti-shake technology on the back which also shoots VGA (standard def) video. Photos, video, and music are stored on 4 GB of internal, non-removable flash memory; there is no microSD expansion slot.

One big design flaw has to do with the placement and operation of the camera button. As bad as the camera button placement is on Kin Two, it’s worse here on K1. Whether you use the phone right- or left-handed, odds are you’re going to inadvertently block the camera sensor with your finger or hand when reaching for the camera button. I know I did, and moving my hand around to get a free shot resulted in my having a relatively shaky, very uncomfortable grip on the device. Poor choice of button placement, Microsoft and Sharp.

The QWERTY board on Kin One is pretty good, though. Again, I’m reminded of a Palm Pre, but with bigger, brighter buttons set on a wider keyboard tray. Though Kin One was designed for one-finger typing, I found I did pretty well on it with my two-thumbed approach. As with Kin Two, K2 employs a fairly standard four-row design marked by shorter keys on the bottom row. Key action was pretty good and I appreciated the quadruple-wide space bar even if I’m still annoyed that typing a comma requires hitting Function and Period. Periods should have their own keys. Period.

Usability & Performance

Before you read on, bear in mind that I’m a 30-something year old guy who’s tied to computers and smartphones all day for work, tweets his head off but rarely uses Facebook for personal reasons. So I’m not Microsoft’s target audience for Kin. That doesn’t mean I don’t have worthy opinions about Kin One, but it does mean that a 22 year old single woman with a super active nightlife and close ties to her social networking friends may feel a bit differently about the Kin experience than I did. That said …

 What’s Confusing: The Loop and The Spot

Kin is crazy. There’s support for four different social networks but no Calendar app or games. Contacts are automatically synced with your various social networking accounts, but there’s no way to auto-sync to address books, either on your local machine or on the servers of popular services like, y’know, GMail. Every photo you take, every video you shoot, every message and call you send or receive are automatically backed up to servers fronted by a timeline-based Web browser called Kin Studio.

And then there’s The Loop and The Spot. The Loop is your home screen. Your home screen is a giant mosaic of photos and text headlines that represent updates from your social networks and news feeds. Concepts like wallpapers, app icons and widgets don’t apply here: Kin is The Loop is the loop is your social network and you change the look and functionality of it by adding/removing feeds and friends. From The Loop you swipe one way to get to your apps menu and swipe the other way to dive into your contacts.

The Spot is this little dot at the bottom of most screens throughout Kin’s UI. When you want to share something with your peeps, you drag it to The Spot. The idea is that you can share most anything – photos, URLs, snippets of text, things posted to your Loop – with as many of your contacts as you like via The Spot. All you do is drag, in any order, some stuff and some peeps into The Spot, then open The Spot up and choose your method of sharing (SMS/MMS, Email, Post to Social Network) and that’s it. Easy. In theory.

In practice The Loop and The Spot are equal parts cool and frustrating. What’s cool is the unique, highly visual approach Microsoft took to Lifecasting and giving those always-connected Gen Upload kids a way to stay in touch. What’s frustrating are the limitations of the systems in place. To wit:

– Loop updates aren’t pushed to you in real time, they’re pulled on roughly 15-minute intervals. There’s no changing that schedule.

– There’s no Twitter client on Kin. The Loop is your Twitter client. That’s too bad because The Loop doesn’t support DMs, viewing @ replies or even just looking at your personal stream in one fell swoop. For any of that, you’ll have to visit twitter.com.

– The Loop is fun to look at first. And if you only have a dozen or two contacts it’s pretty fun to use. But if you’ve got upwards of forty or fifty friends across Facebook, mySpace and Twitter – let alone if you, like most members of Gen Upload have a network numbering in the hundreds – The Loop quickly becomes frustrating to use as a tool of any practical sort. At least it did for me. Scrolling through dozens upon dozens of differently-sized tiles chock full of photos and status updates and tweets and RSS headlines got to be laborious after a short time. Maybe I’m old and crusty, but I wanted some separation and I wanted a boring old list UI that was easy to scan for important information.

Microsoft programmed the loop to push updates from your favorites to the top of your list at any given time. They, like HTC and others before them, conducted some research that shows that people tend to communicate with a small percentage of their contacts a large percentage of the time. So The Loop has that going for it. But it’s still not customizable enough for my tastes. Motorola’s MotoBLUR may also be a somewhat overwhelming way of viewing social networks and feeds, but at least it lets me separate updates from other updates from RSS headlines to a greater extent.

What’s Great: Kin Studio and Zune Pass

Kin Studio is great. Except that it only runs on Silverlight-enabled Web browsers. In a nutshell, Kin Studio is an automated backup of every photo, video, message and phone log entry that’s wirelessly beamed from your Kin to Microsoft’s servers without your needing to do anything to enable it. When you visit your password-protected Kin Studio page, you can view your Kin life by way of a nifty timeline. Photos, videos, etc etc – it’s all there in chronological order for your perusal. Your contacts and feeds are also accessible via Kin Studio. You can also share things via The Spot from Kin Studio, including full-resolution copies of photos and videos shot with Kin One.

Zune on Kin is also great. Kin One and Two are basically the mythological “Zune Phones” finally made real. Kin Two features 4GB of onboard memory for storage of photos, music, videos and everything else. While that doesn’t sound like much memory for a multimedia phone (and only half as much as Kin Two has), remember two things: First, full-resolution photos are automatically backed up to Kin Studio and replaced with much smaller versions optimized for viewing on Kin One’s 320 x 240 display, a clever trick that should preserve plenty of room in K1’s flash memory. Second, Zune Pass.

If you’re going to get a Kin One and you listen to a lot of music, you really should consider a Zune Pass. I have a pretty sizable music collection and generally get my music on a purchase-to-own basis, but whenever I listen to satellite radio (usually in a rental car) or get a chance to demo something like Zune Pass or Rhapsody, I’m inevitably tempted to change my ways. Kin One comes with a 14-day free trial of Zune Pass, and after that it’s $14.99/month for unlimited streaming to your phone (and Zune HD and Web browser) and 10 songs you can download and keep. Yeah, it’s renting music and not owning it, but it’s a pretty good deal. Especially considering the size of the Zune catalog. The only issue with Zune Pass on Kin One comes when you’re out of cellular and WiFi coverage – no data means no music, except for what you’ve downloaded or sideloaded into memory.

Kin One supports audio-out via an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack and stereo Bluetooth. Plugged into good earphones or powered speakers, high-quality audio tracks coming forth from K1 sounded quite good.

 And Oh Yeah 

I could go on and on here, but real quick:

The phone functionality on Kin One is fine but not great. Call quality ranged from decent to pretty good, but you’re not going to mistake voice calling on Kin for voice calling on a Nexus One or Motorola phone with high-end noise reduction technology.

Kin One’s 5MP camera is really hampered by the issues with camera button placement that I mentioned earlier. To be fair, however, you can bypass the hard button and use the onscreen shutter control, instead. VGA videos shot with the device were pretty decent for a cameraphone.

Web browsing on Kin One is okay given the limitations of the display size. The browser supports pinch-to-zoom, which is great, but it’s built on Internet Explorer, which isn’t great. Browsing is better on Kin Two by virtue of its larger, widsescreen-style display.

Email isn’t great. Kin One struggled with HTML formatted Emails. But, hey, Gen Upload posts and tweets, they don’t Email.

There’s no IM client. None. *Scratches head*

Conclusion

Microsoft and Verizon are taking something of a chance with their new Kin duo of phones, what with their arrestingly different user interfaces, curious omission of features like calendars and IM clients, and smartphone-level monthly data pricing. Me? If I had to choose one Kin or the other I’d take Kin Two – I prefer its horizontal slider layout and two-thumb friendly keyboard, not to mention the extra memory and HD video capture not found on its little sister, Kin One.

But if I had the choice between either Kin and an Android or webOS smartphone also on Verizon? I’d take the smartphone, no question. Kin One is neat – it has a neat-looking UI and neat features like Kin Studio and Zune Pass. And K1 will definitely appeal to some folks on its cute looks alone. Problem is, the neatness wore off for me as soon as I found out I couldn’t easily sync contacts from Google or read HTML emails on the thing. And the lack of a decent Twitter option just made things worse. Then again, I’m not quite as interested in lifecasting as some other potential Kin buyers might be. So take my review with a grain of salt, Generation Upload. Kin One’s okay at what it does, but maybe you’re better suited to judge the value of what it does than I am.