Category: News

GEMÜ has developed a completely innovative automatic system for the aseptic sampling of liquids such as WFI or AP water and pure steam in the pharmaceutical industry. With this new device, samples can be taken for both pure steam and liquids with the same unit.

In order to monitor sterile piping systems in the pharmaceutical, food and beverage industries, samples are regularly drawn from the ring mains for WFI, AP water or Pure Steam and analysed in the laboratory for a possible contamination. For this purpose, there are various systems, in which sampling is carried out manually or semi-automatically. The operator of the plant or the lab technician usually has to monitor the entire sample extraction procedure. GEMÜ has refined the BioStar sampling system for pure steam introduced in 2008, so that it can now also be used for the aseptic sampling of liquids.

The complete system consists of a multi-port sampling valve with pneumatic actuators, a sampling bottle as well as a compact control unit. The control unit is a Siemens PLC with a touch screen panel as part of the redesign. The new control system is more compact and provides improved menu guidance as well as easier operation. It is optionally supplied mounted on a mobile stand ready-to-connect or in two parts for fixed installation in a plant.

After starting the program, the parameterised control process runs fully automatically. In the first program step, the entire system is sterilised or rinsed. Afterwards, the sampling process starts automatically until the set amount of steam condensate or liquid is reached. The system switches off automatically after the end of the program. The advantage of this new system is its significantly reduced sampling time for a completely sealed, faultless sample extraction. The sample extraction process for liquids lasts approx. 30 sec. for 250 ml, time also being required for sterilisation or rinsing. The standard system is compact and mobile and can also be connected to other sampling points in the ring main at any time.

The parameters such as sterilisation time and condensate/liquid volume can be set individually between 15 (50) ml to 900 ml via the control panel. Once the parameters have been set, they are saved and enable direct reproducibility of the process.

by Jonathan Hiskes

The Deepwater Horizon rig, pre-explosion and pre-tipping.Photo: TransoceanReuters is reporting that
the 11 workers missing after an explosion on a Gulf Coast oil rig have been
found safe.

An explosion on a drilling rig 50 miles off the Louisiana
coast late Tuesday night forced the evacuation of more than 100 workers and left
the whereabouts of 11 in question. Seven others were critically injured and
taken to hospitals, the New York Times reports.

But the 396-by-256-foot rig is “leaning badly” and in danger
of tipping over, according to a local parish official. That can’t be good for a
marine ecosystem, even one accustomed to drilling, spills, and all manner of
heavy industry.

This comes within weeks of:

The awful coal-mine
explosion that killed 29 men under the criminal safety record of Massey
Energy CEO Don
Blankenship.
The crash
of a coal freighter into the fragile Great Barrier Reef as it tried to take
a shortcut from Australian mines to Chinese furnaces.
The Tesoro oil refinery explosion that killed five workers in Washington state.

The spillage
of 18,000 gallons of crude oil from a Chevron into a canal in the Delta
National Wildlife Refuge, also in Louisiana.

All in all, it’s been a pretty terrible month for fossil-fuel industry
workers, defenders of the energy status quo, and organisms unlucky enough to
live near coal, oil, or their shipping routes.

This isn’t to say accidents can’t happen within the clean-energy
industry—installing offshore wind farms must have its own risks, though they
lack the combustible materials of a drilling rig. The point is that these human
welfare costs should absolutely inform our national energy project. All the more reason to move to safer sources.

 

Related Links:

Bolivia’s Morales slams capitalist debt to global warming

Brazil awards dam contract despite environmental protests

Each party has a clean-energy plan in U.K. election

by Jen Harper

High-fructose corn syrup in soda? Bad. Cocaine in soda? Depends
on whom you ask. We all know Coca-Cola used to contain trace amounts of the
narcotic back in the day, but, according to the UK
Guardian via Fast
Company, Bolivia’s kicking it old school with its coca-leaf containing soda,
Coca-Colla (note the second L—I smell copyright infringement; it’s also black,
sweet, and comes in a red-labeled bottle). Bolivia had previously tried to ban
the production of the coca leaf—the raw ingredient of cocaine—but now that coca
grower Evo Morales is president, the government is singing a different tune. And
I’m guessing it’s a tune that sounds a little something like this:

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

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Bolivia’s Morales slams capitalist debt to global warming

Power your house with poop

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At the end of this month the United States Trade Representative’s Office will release its annual Special 301 report, a review of global intellectual property protection and enforcement standards conducted by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Since 1989, the USTR has used the Special 301 Report to intimidate other countries into adopting more stringent copyright and patent laws by singling out particular countries for their “bad” intellectual property policies, naming them on a tiered set of “watch lists,” resulting in heightened political pressure and in some cases, the potential for trade sanctions, to encourage changes to their laws.

In previous years, the the USTR has relied heavily on submissions from the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries to compile the rankings for the Special 301 report. This has resulted in particularly unbalanced assessment criteria. Countries have been listed for proposing exceptions to their national copyright laws, for failing to sign on to controversial international treaties, and for not mirroring specific parts of US law in their national laws. In other words, countries have been listed for failing to adopt the enforcement norms from U.S. copyright law, but also for attempting to create the same type of balancing exceptions and limitations to copyright holders’ exclusive rights that have allowed user generated content and technological innovation to flourish in the U.S.

In 2006, the IIPA recommended that Chile be placed on the Special 301 Priority Watch List (a tier above the “Watch List” ranking) for considering fair-use style exceptions to copyright in Chile’s copyright law:

During 2005, several Chilean government agencies reportedly were trying to amend the bill to incorporate very broad “fair use-like” exceptions which would allow copyrighted materials to be used without the rights-holders’ authorizations. It is likely that these provisions, if included, would also meet with the objections of the copyright industries.

In 2009, Israel was placed on the Priority Watch List for refusing to adopt DMCA-style laws prohibiting the circumvention of copyright owners’ technological protection measures (TPMs) after intense parliamentary debate and doubts about whether DMCA-style anticircumvention provisions actually do anything to stop copyright infringement. This is an astute question, given that in the US, those provisions have caused considerable collateral harm to lawful users of copyrighted works while having no appreciable effect at stopping, or even slowing, digital copyright infringement. Again, this is not a matter of compliance with international law as it is frequently portrayed to be. Israel has chosen not to ratify the controversial 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, and so is not required to adopt legal protection for copyright owners’ technological protection measures.

In 2006, Canada was subjected to an Out of Cycle Review (because the USTR thought the country merited special attention outside the normal Special 301 schedule) after it released draft copyright legislation implementing those treaties that included legal protection for TPMs, but not close enough to the DMCA to satisfy the US copyright owners in the IIPA. And Canada drew the ire of the USTR again in 2009, for requiring its customs officers to have a court order before seizing items at the border — something that ACTA looks like it will overturn.

As EFF noted in our joint submission with Public Knowledge, Special 301 neglects critical US foreign policy goals. The policies it advocates ignore the importance of the free flow of information for social and economic development, and the the need to support US technology exporters seeking new markets. We argued that the Special 301 process should account for the interests of all stakeholders in the knowledge economy — not just IP rights-holders.

We also made a number of specific recommendations for addressing the procedural deficiencies in the Special 301 process, including that the USTR should make transparent the set of factors and standards it uses for evaluating countries in each year’s Special 301 Report, and arrange for independent external verification of country data and statistics submitted by the IIPA before making factual determinations based upon it; and that the USTR should provide a meaningful opportunity for public interest advocates to file comments in response to submissions provided by copyright industry rights-holders.

The USTR opened up the Special 301 submission process this year to all interested stakeholders for the first time and received over 700 submissions. While we welcome this new approach by the Obama administration, the real test for sound policy-making will be whether the 2010 Special 301 Report takes account of the views of all stakeholders. We’ll find out shortly.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning that Facebook will toss a policy that made developers and partners with access your data to delete it after 24 hours. Now they can just keep it. Turns out the privacy policy hindered growth:
Zuckerberg told Inside Facebook:

Zynga [makers of Mafia Wars and Farmville] has had to download user information 100 million times per day because of our policy. Developers were having to architect entire systems just to do this. There aren’t any other changes in the policies on how developers can use the data,

Coming soon after their announcement that some pieces of your personal information will never be private even if you set your profile to private, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Facebook won’t let a little thing like respect for its users get in the way of its quest for total internet domination. And why should it? Most users won’t hear about the changes, or care.

Facebook Removing 24 Hour Caching Policy on User Data for Developers [Inside Facebook]
Facebook Crushes Privacy with Impunity [Valleywag]

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Our current favorite iPad Twitter app, Twitterrific, has just been update to version 1.0.1, which includes a bunch of bug fixes and new features. Here’s the list:

New Features:

• Support for Instapaper via Settings app.
• Support for 3rd party push services like Boxcar.
• Audio notification control via Settings App.
• Support for screen names vs real names via Settings App.
• Support for old style RTs – Forward to Followers in reply actions.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a popover bug that could cause timeline scrolling to lock up.
• Fixed a bug that allowed direct messages to be re-tweeted.
• Fixed a bug that allowed direct messages to be marked as favorites.
• Fixed a crashing bug that could occur when viewing certain tweets.
• iTunes and map links now open properly in the mini browser.
• Subscribed Twitter lists now appear in the sidebar.
• Fixed a display problem when opening “full” TwitPic images.
• Fixed several display bugs associated with device orientation.
• Updated the scroll indicator to white for improved clarity.
• Several graphical tweaks & improvements.
• Security improvements.

You can grab, or upgrade to, the new version now in the App Store.

Tags:

By the time I got wind that Skyfire was looking for Alpha testers, the sign-up sheet had already been filled to the brim. Bummer, right?

Fear not! As luck may have (the “luck” here being for early adopters, if not necessarily Skyfire), a Beta copy just leaked out for all to enjoy.

The bad news: it looks like Skyfire might be sending takedown requests to anyone distributing the Beta. We were able to get our hands on it before the first links started going down, but we’re not going to be able to host a download of it. Google the relevant keywords – you’ll find a download link in no time flat.

I was hoping to do a full hands-on with the leaked Beta – but at this point, it wouldn’t really be fair. To sum up everything I would have said: Skyfire for Android needs work. There’s no multi-touch or double-tap-to-zoom support yet, so the only zooming mechanism is a little -/+ button in the bottom right (and boy, is it sloooow.) There also doesn’t seem to be any support for rich media like Flash and Silverlight yet, which, given that that’s Skyfire’s flagship feature, really lops the experience off at the knees.

With that said, remember: this is early, early stuff. We’ll check back in with Skyfire for a proper hands on a bit further along in the development process. In the mean time, enjoy some screenshots of the current state of things:

Another thing that Noah Shachtman got into during his interview Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the military’s newest command, U.S. Cyber Command, which will probably be helmed by Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency. At his confirmation hearing last week, Alexander indicated that he would focus CYBERCOM on defending the Defense Department’s information infrastructure from attack. “But,” Mullen told Shachtman, “there’s a blurring, if you will, in the speed of cyber between defense and offense. And so I think you’ll see that, as well.” And that blurring creates legal and policy concerns.

Imagine that the military finds its information networks under attack. An investigation determines that the culprit of the attack is using civilian servers in a friendly country to penetrate CYBERCOM’s defense. What to do? And who gets to do it?

My understanding is that there’s an ongoing debate within the Defense Department and the CIA about whose responsibility is to take out those servers, as well as who actually possesses the authority to do so. These are probably not going to be the sorts of things that the U.S. government is going to take credit for doing — in other words, those will be covert actions. And “blurring” the uniformed military into the realm of covert action is murky territory. The 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act also suggests that if it’s covert, the CIA gets to do it.

So I asked Adm. Dennis Blair, the nation’s top intelligence officer, at today’s commemoration of the creation of his job five years ago, if U.S. Cyber Command and the intelligence community had established clear divisions of legal and policy authority or responsibility. “It’s a really dynamic area,” Blair replied. “Technology has developed far faster than [the] legal or policy framework.” So, in short, not yet. Blair added, “We’ll do what we have to to get it done.”

Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, observed that even outside of CYBERCOM, whose mandate remains rather unclear, there’s an “ongoing controversy about what kinds of military activities in the context of armed conflict with al-Qaeda are governed by the [legal] covert-activities requirement. That’s not even resolved, outside of the realm of cyberattacks.” Inside that realm, there are any number of questions about specific circumstances that would impact whether CYBERCOM is entering new territory. For instance, launching a direct attack on an enemy’s information network is a pretty traditional feature of warfare — you’re trying to disrupt his ability to command and control his forces. But what if elements of his offensive capability bounce around the world, through systems and virtual avenues controlled by parties that don’t have any stake in a given conflict? What if there isn’t a state of war declared?

In the case of taking out someone else’s servers, Martin mused, “It wouldn’t necessarily be a covert action, because you could argue that it’s closer to the military taking out a traditional supply line, and not using lethal force to do so.” So CYBERCOM might be in the clear there under existing authorities, even if Alexander told Congress that’s not the direction he wants to chart for the command. Or it might not be!

A spokesman for the CIA didn’t respond to a request for clarification. And I was unable to buttonhole Alexander at the ceremony today, although I saw him talking for a bit to CIA Director Leon Panetta and that naturally got my mind racing with speculation.

by Sean Casten

More breaking news from the Coal Isn’t Cheap department.

Duke Energy reports that the new 620 MW coal plant they are building in Indiana is now expected to cost $2.9 billion, or 23 percent more than they last estimated in November.

It’s worth always taking the time to do some math whenever these type of numbers get released. No one has invested in new coal assets of any significance in the U.S. in nearly 2 decades, for the simple reason that a coal plant is a lousy investment. Meanwhile, every new coal plant that has been proposed or commenced construction in recent years has proved the lousy investment theory wrong. They’re actually really, really, really lousy investments. And getting lousier.

The math:

$2.9 billion / 620 MW = $4,700/kW. 

They say that the plant will release 4 milllion tons of CO2/year. Given a CO2 emissions rate from a coal plant of about 1 ton/MWh, that implies generation of 4 million MWh/yr, or a 73 percent annual capacity factor on the 620 MW nameplate. That puts the coal plant just about at the capacity factor of the average U.S. fleet, which makes sense.

Now let’s look at what that means for economics:

Capital recovery: Let’s stipulate that Duke’s investors demand a 10 percent return on their investment, and are willing to wait 20 years to get their money back with interest. That’s pretty generous, but not atypical for utility economics. That means that annually, the plant has to generate $341 million dollars after paying fuel and operating costs to recover its capital. At 4 million MWh/yr, that implies that they’ll need to get $85/MWh just to cover their capital costs.
Fuel costs: Let’s assume this plant will operate at 40 percent fuel efficiency. Coal delivered to utilities has averaged $30 – 40/ton in recent years. At ~25 MMBtu/ton, that implies an average fuel cost of $1.40/MMBtu. Let’s assume no upward price pressure on coal over the next 20 years and no added costs associated with CO2 compliance to be as generous as possible to our economics. That works out to a cost of $1.40/40 percent x 3.413 = $12/MWh just to repay their fuel costs.
Non-fuel operating costs: There are additional plant costs associated with labor, fuel and ash handling, insurance, etc. In a coal plant, these costs typically add up to $10 – 20/MWh. Consistent with the prior, let’s take the most generous end of that range and add on another $10/MWh.
Delivery costs: Paying for the fuel, labor, and capital recovery is sufficient to get power to the generator terminals, but still doesn’t get it into anyone’s home or business. For that, we need additional revenue to cover capital recovery for the transmission and distribution infrastructure, line losses and various grid management fees. These costs typicaly add another $25 – 40/MWh onto the price of delivered electricity. Again, let’s take the most generous end of that range at $25/MWh.

This then gives us an all-in, delivered cost of $85 + $12 + $10 + $25 = $132/MWh for the power from this facility. Take a more conservative approach with respect to fuel, CO2, operating costs and another cost-overrun or two and these calculations could break $200/MWh.

Let’s put that in context: In 2009, the average price paid for power by all U.S. consumers was $98.90/MWh. In Indiana, the average price paid was $71.90/MWh. So in order for this plant to deliver a (very modest) return on invested capital, it has to earn a price that is nearly double the current rate paid by Indiana consumers.

Tell me again why we’re building coal? Tell me again why coal is cheap? 

Related Links:

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As with many great technological advances, at the forefront of people’s desire for unfettered access to the Internet lies… in porn. Just ask the thousands of Chinese web users who have networked together and shared their collective ingenuity in recent weeks, all in the name of accessing the Twitter page of a Japanese porn star.

When China-based fans of adult film star Aoi Sola heard that she’d started her own Twitter page a few weeks back, the hunt was on for a successful way to vault over, tunnel under or blast through the so-called “Great Firewall” the Chinese government has set up to forbid citizens from accessing Twitter and other sites.

And so Aoi fans began sharing and distributing their hacks for getting around the blockade. There is now an e-mail address, [email protected], that provides an auto response e-mail with instructions on how to access Twitter pages.

“In China you can get anything you want on the Internet, you just have to want to bad enough,” said David Wolf, a Beijing-based tech industry expert tells AOL News. “It’s simple for someone with some minimal technical acumen” to scale the Great Firewall… But that means that it’s too difficult for most of China.”

Aoi now has over 50,000 Twitter followers; it’s not known how many of them are from China. Additionally, it’s likely that many people are checking her Tweets without actually becoming “followers.”

Josephine Ho, coordinator of the Center for the Study of Sexualities at Taiwan’s National Central University, explains the lure of Aoi’s Twitter and other similar sites thusly:

The reason there’s such eagerness is because there’s such a strong clampdown on sex and sex-related information, not only in China but also in Taiwan and Hong Kong… Sexual information is hard to get at, and Japan just happens to have a sophisticated porn industry.

Porn Star Prompts Chinese to Jump ‘Great Firewall’ [AOL News]

Now here’s an odd matchup made in musical heaven!! Internet singing sensation Lin Yu Chun — dubbed “The Taiwanese Susan Boyle” for his rousing performance of Dolly Parton/Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” on a Asian talent show earlier this month — has performed a duet with Star Trek icon William Shatner that you’ll have to see to believe.

To check out William and Lin’s full side-splitting performance of Bonnie Tyler’s ’80s ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” by sure to tune in Lopez Tonight this evening, Wednesday, April 21, @ 11 PM on TBS!

Chun, 23, earned millions of views on YouTube for his eerie performance on Taiwan’s Super Star Avenue — only to be ousted just a week later. Shatner, on the other hand, has released several albums over the years, beginning with 1968’s The Transformed Man, which featured of cover of The Beatles classic “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

And the tussle over Flash keeps on tussling: Now Apple’s publicly sniping at Adobe. More »

The article reviewed here is ‘BioTorrents: A File Sharing Service for Sharing Scientific Data’ and available at Plos One as an open access article. This is a brief article which outlines the features and potential benefits of BioTorrents and is written by the authors of the software.

There is a clear introduction which outlines why BioTorrents is needed. Essentially in a network, relying on a single node (or server/computer) to distribute data to all of the other nodes in the network is less efficient than using many nodes in the network to distribute that data. This BitTorrents approach works because there is a successful protocol which involves labelling the data so that nodes in the network ‘know’ what data the other nodes have. This approach was developed for BitTorrents initially and was used for distributing generic data. However due to copyright issues of the distributed material on these generic networks, servers were shut down and hence these networks were to some extent unreliable due to the pragmatics of their operation rather than the underlying technology. Hence the BioTorrents variation on the theme in which only legitimate scientific data is transferred across the network thus avoiding the reliability issues described above. The result is that BioTorrents is a useful approach for sharing large scientific datasets across networks and the authors cite large genomic datasets as an example of the data that can be usefully transferred in this way.

I wasn’t clear on the aims of the paper and this is perhaps reflected in the absence of a methodology section. In effect, I think the article is to some extent is a description of the journey of the authors from the identification of the needs through to the construction of BioTorrents and their subsequent observations of the BioTorrents in action. However the structure of the paper is a fairly minor point and instead the technology that is being presented is fascinating and extremely useful.

Screenshot from the website (http://www.biotorrents.net/)

I navigated to the site (see address above) and found it was well organised and easy to understand. There is a FAQ section and the data is hosted on a server at the laboratory of Jonathan Eisen a coauthor of the paper. At the time of writing I could identify 26 datasets. There were a few points I was unclear about. The first was about the ethical aspects of hosting data on these servers. For human data, research should pass through a research ethics committee and data storage is a point for clarification. There is usually an endpoint after which the data must be destroyed. Having data distributed in this way means that potentially the data cannot be destroyed as it may end up on a server somewhere indefinitely. Thus this approach might have implications for ethics protocols. There were two associations that sprang to mind when thinking about BioTorrents. The first was the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative which involves a large dataset that can be analysed by researchers from around the world and this might be well suited to BioTorrents. The second was the wayback machine which stores a small percentage of the ‘internet’ indefinitely and two questions I had were whether this would be included in the archived material*

In any case, this has potential applications for research in psychiatry providing such data storage methods have been given ethics clearance and collaborators are located at multiple sites either within LAN’s or at different geographical sites.

* or whether the BioTorrents approach was a useful alternative and distributed method for archiving material of historical interest – a kind of distributed system for storing the internet equivalent of world heritage sites.

Call for Authors: If you are interested in writing an article or series of articles for this blog please write to the e-mail address below. Copyright can be retained. Index: An index of the site can be found here. The page contains links to all of the articles in the blog in chronological order. Twitter: You can follow ‘The Amazing World of Psychiatry’ Twitter by clicking on this link. Podcast: You can listen to this post on Odiogo by clicking on this link (there may be a small delay between publishing of the blog article and the availability of the podcast). It is available for a limited period. TAWOP Channel: You can follow the TAWOP Channel on YouTube by clicking on this link. Responses: If you have any comments, you can leave them below or alternatively e-mail [email protected]. Disclaimer: The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.

Found under: Garminfone, Garmin, Android, ,

T-Mobile has scheduled a new Android smartphone for later this spring the Garminfone which could be an interesting device for those people that happen to drive a lot around the U.S. since Garmin happens to know an extra thing or two about turn by turn navigation. The Garminphone will offer you driving walking and public transportation navigation and on top of that you will always have access to Googles Map Navigation solution. Extra features like voice directions automatic re-routi

Read More

Read more in mobile format

Posted by Ray Long at 3:35 p.m.

SPRINGFIELD — A push to eliminate free local bus and train rides to all but low-income senior citizens failed today in the Illinois Senate.

Under the bill, senior citizens 65 and older would have keep riding for
free only if they qualified for the state’s circuit breaker program. That means a single senior with a yearly income of less than $27,610 or a two-person household making less than $34,635 a year.

The legislation passed the House earlier this year but today failed in the influential Senate Executive Committee. Six senators voted for the restrictions on free rides while seven voted against the measure.

Sponsoring lawmakers had hoped to save mass transit agencies between $37 million and $50
million.

It’s a well known fact that Mark Zuckerberg is an insanely ambitious person. So, it’s not surprising that he wants to see Facebook everywhere on the web. And, when I say everywhere, I really mean it. Today, at the f8 developer conference in San Francisco, Facebook made a slew of announcements that will not only help it stay relevant but also propel Facebook to the next level. Here is a quick look at some of the stuff that really matters.

Open Graph Protocol: Facebook will be shutting down its Facebook Connect product. In its place, Facebook has launched a new protocol and API called Open Graph, which is based on OAuth 2.0. Facebook has already roped in big names like Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft as partners. The chief purpose of Open Graph is to make integrating external content with Facebook as simple as possible.

New Like Button: Facebook wants to know what’s hot and the new Like button will allow it to do just that. These buttons behave in an identical fashion to Like buttons in Facebook. The only difference is that you can an additional option to include a snippet with each Liked item.

Facebook Bar: Not content with just a button, Facebook will also be launching its very own persistent toolbar. This feature is yet to be unveiled, but you can head over to TechCrunch for more information.

Death of Privacy: Facebook has received flak in the past for its lax privacy policies and I suspect that it may be in for more trouble. The new Open Graph protocol will allow Facebook to auto-login users at websites they have never visited before. Not only that, Facebook also plans on automatically sharing basic profile information with these third-party websites. There are several other potentially troublesome clauses in Facebook’s proposed privacy policy amendment. For example, any data that has not been marked as private will now be available to developers, who are welcome to store it indefinitely.

The word Semantic Web has been floating around for quite some time. So far, no one has managed to get it quite right. However, with Open Graph and Social plug-ins, Facebook is in with a real chance to make sense of the web. The new Facebook will not only know what content you like but also know how you discovered that content, who did you share it with and what was your friend’s reaction to the same content.

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• New Facebook Privacy Settings Are Controversial
• Facebook Chat Will Support Google Talk and Jabber Soon
• Facebook: What to Expect with the New Interface
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• Facebook Launches Safety Center For Teens, Parents, Educators and Law Enforcers

Join Techie Buzz on Your Favorite Social Networking Sites

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Filed under: Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia

According to the comprehensive five-year plan which Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne unveiled today, the next generation of Alfa Romeos are slated to be based on a Chrysler platform.

Among those models will be the replacement for the current Spider, as well as the new Giulia sedan and wagon. These three models – which will replace the outgoing 159, Brera and Spider – were previously thought to borrow their underpinnings from a modified version of the C-segment platform that underpins the new Giulietta, but have now been revealed to be merged into Chrysler platforms, arriving in 2012 (Giulia) and 2013 (Spider). Although Marchionne didn’t specify which Chrysler platform this will be, sources suggest it could be a modified version of the antiquated Mercedes-derived architecture that underpins the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Challenger.

In addition to the Alfa’s adoption of Chrysler architecture, Marchionne indicated that Chrysler and Lancia are set to be further integrated, with common products (including a new compact minivan and the replacement for the Ypsilon supermini) sold as Lancias in continental Europe and as Chryslers in North America and the UK. With the exception of the Challenger, Charger and Viper, Dodge and Fiat products will be similarly integrated, while Jeep is slated for an increased overseas market presence.

[Source: Motor Trend]

Report: 2013 Alfa Romeo Spider, 2012 Giulia to be based on RWD Chrysler platform originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Maybe they are sentient after all, just like the commercials suggest, and they’ve decided it’s time for you to move on. A slew of Droid owners are reporting that their cellphones will sometimes randomly delete all of their text messages. That’s every picture of your baby your wife sent you, every hilarious exchange between you and your best friend, and every must-have address you’ve got stored as a text message.

Issue 5669, a Google Code forum thread devoted to the subject, has over 337 comments on the topic, and has been starred by over 230 people. Based on the comments, a number of people have had all their texts deleted more than once. No solutions seem to be forthcoming, and the issue has been going on since at least December, 2009.

Are you a Droid owners? Has this happened to you? Sound off in the comments.

Issue 5669: Droid deleting all Messaging/SMS conversation threads at random or triple sending [Code.Google.com] (Thanks to Chris!)

In fact, not in most of Connecticut, according to this fascinating map by Patchwork Nation.

Windham County has the highest concentration of Tea Party members in the state — 5.01 for every 10,000 people. New London County is next, with 3.74 per 10K. Hartford and New Haven counties had the lowest percentages.

Patchwork Nation, a project of the Christian Science Monitor that is funded by the Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, scoured online directories to find people who have registered with Tea Party groups. It’s “not a perfect system but one that captures the overwhelming najority of registered members,” writes Dante Chinni on the Patchwork Nation blog.

(The methodology leaves one question unanswered: The Tea Party movement’s identity is wrapped up in the fact that it isn’t a political party in the traditional sense: no one registers as a member. It is a loose affiliation; no paperwork required, which makes tracking down “members” a challenge.)

 

 

 

Patchwork Nation carves the nation into 12 community types, based on certain socio-economic and demographic criteria. For example, rural Custer County, Nevada is dubbed “Tractor Country” and Miami-Dade County is “Immigration Nation.”

In Connecticut, Fairfield County is one of the “Monied ‘Burbs” and Windham County is a “Service Workers Center.”

The survey found the highest concentration of Tea Party members in “Boom Town Counties” – places such as Walton County, Ga. and Oldham County, Texas. “Tractor Country” and “Military Bastion” counties also had higher than average Tea Party membership.

The lowest concentrations? Not surprisingly, it was the biggest cities and places with larger African-American populations, Chinni writes. Hartford, dubbed an “Industrial Metropolis,” had a negligible number of Tea Party members. 

 

While Android users are speculating about what version 2.2 might offer, Canadian Motorola Milestone users are celebrating their ability to upgrade to 2.1. Motorola Canada released the update today, but skipped the over-the-air update in favour of a downloadable package from their website.

Users can download the package, extract it, then apply the update while their phone is attached to their computer via USB. Having just upgraded myself, I can say it’s a five minute affair. Users should take note that they are unable to make/recieve calls while updating, and will be required to restart their phones twice during the update process.

Release Notes can be found below. Something interesting to note is the ability to add even more homescreens, raising the cap to nine – I, personally, would not know what to fill them up with.

Animated Wallpapers and multiple home screens

– This additional wallpaper option enables you to select from a number of wallpapers that can move on your home screen<s>. A selection of animated wallpapers are bundled with the software upgrade – further wallpapers are available on the Android Market.
– The number of home screens you can have now also just got bigger – you can choose to have 3, 5, 7, or even 9 home screens – plenty of space for all your widgets and icons.

Facebook App and Widget

– A Free Facebook App and Widget is included in this upgrade. The Application enables contact importation including Names, Profile Pics and Status into your phones’ contacts. The Widget can be place on one of your home screens to stream live updates from your Facebook account.

Google Maps Updates

– Personalized suggestions: Google Maps on your Android device suggests (autocompletes) locations based on your personal search history on maps.google.com.
– Sync with desktop: synchronizes starred items between Google Maps on your Android device and maps.google.com. Sync and personalized features require a user to be logged in to myGoogle account while on maps.google.com
– Multi touch is now also enabled within Google Maps.

Other Enhancements

– Help : A new Help Center app is included that provides mobile access to your user guide, video tours of key features, tips and tricks, and FAQs to help you get the most from your device.
– Bluetooth support : support for Bluetooth headset multi function for initiating voice calls
– Security: Prevents unauthorized pattern lock bypass, allows for PIN security and local device wipe following PIN error input
– Music Player : Album art 3D gallery view supported in landscape orientation
– Battery life: ongoing battery life optimization
– Email account removal: Improvements to manual removal of email accounts

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