A big thank you to everyone who has supported our Haiti appeal so far. Oxfam is now beginning to get aid through despite immense challenges. Our staff in Haiti are currently providing shovels and picks for local civil workers to clear rubble to search for trapped victims in the capital, but the destruction continues to severely hamper aid efforts. Our immediate priorities will be providing safe water and shelter materials for the people who have lost their homes.
A horrific picture of need, and the vast obstacles to getting aid to people in need, is emerging. While international efforts are focused on dispersing aid in the capital, the actual epicenter of the quake was in the countryside. There is no access to rural area, so no picture yet of the disaster there and scale of people’s needs.
Oxfam are planning a response costing several million pounds, and I’d like to ask you to do anything you can to help, and to do it as soon as you can. Could you contact your local supermarket, rail station or theatre and see if you could hold a collection there? You’ll be amazed at the generosity of others, especially while the earthquake is at the front of everyone’s minds.
One of our volunteers, Charli, spent Wednesday afternoon baking cakes. Yesterday, she went round the office block asking for donations in return for cakes – and made £137! This morning, she had just four left to sell – and from these four cakes, she made another £45 – amazing!
Our heartfelt thanks go to Charli and everyone else who is working so hard to raise money for Haiti. You can donate online at www.oxfam.org.uk. Whether you bake cakes, hold a raffle at work, shake a collecting bucket or organise a fundraising event, you can make a real difference – thank you. If you’d like any materials or advice on fundraising, please do give me a call on 07917 323 538.
When it comes to fantasy sports I’ll just be up front about it – I’m a tinkerer, a point-and-click guy, a pick-up junkie. I’m generally among the add/drop leaders in any pool I play in, and with that in mind it’s a good time to examine some rules of thumb as we’re trying to find good stuff cheap – help on the free agent wire.
• Follow the shots: Show me a guy who’s consistently firing the puck at the net and I’ll show you a guy who’s going to have fantasy value, even if the points aren’t falling his way right now. The Patric Hornqvist(notes) breakthrough was foreshadowed by a SOG spike, and the same goes for Niclas Bergfors(notes).
• Sort through the trash: Any free-agent trolling should always start with the recently-cut list of players; while some of those discarded guys clearly don’t hold any current value, you’re also likely to stumble on a few gems, guys who were cut because they were caught up in a numbers game from one of your deeper competitors. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as getting a producer for nothing and spiting your arch rival in the process.
• Pedigree matters: Be constantly on the lookout for a fizzled first-round pick that might be starting to put things together, or a highly-touted kid who’s finally getting a shot on a deep roster. And be aware that some positions take longer for players to mature; this is almost always true of taller defensemen and goalies as well.
• Cut many times, point and click once: Forget the seasonal stats when you’re strolling along the waiver wire; it’s more important to track what’s happening lately. Make sure you’re constantly looking at the leaders over the last month (and occasionally the last week), and make sure you also sort the FA list by any stat categories you might be light in. And again, when all else fails, shots on goal are a good way to break the tie.
• Life in a parallel universe: One of the advantages of being in too many leagues is the knowledge you can pick up by analyzing and comparing the player movement from pool to pool. The emerging forward you just missed out on in League A might be free for the taking in League B.
• It’s all about the power play: About a quarter of the scoring in the league comes on the man advantage, so it’s critical that you know who’s getting a chance on each team’s first and second units. Just monitoring the time spent on the PP has a value, it’s basically each head coach telling you how he feels about his personnel.
• When in doubt, get to the rink: There’s no better way to scout a player than to see him with your own eyes, whether it’s on TV (hopefully in HD) or in person at the arena. And don’t be afraid to give the radio guys some time, at least when you’re in the car; the announcers in this medium know they have to tell a more-detailed story and often the radio scouting tips are better than the stuff you hear on TV.
These are just a few of the ways we do what we do; what’s on your hit list? Let’s share some ideas in the comments.
Time and again, we get asked which cellular network is the best. The answer is: it depends completely on you and on varying factors outside of your control. Location, other network users in your area, and activities on the network at a given time all impact the experience. In the past, I’ve seen customized Google Maps where users can report local coverage conditions. But after speaking to the Root Wireless team at last week’s CES, I think there’s a better way to research and report cellular coverage data.
The company’s beta product is a small background application that runs on BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile devices for now. While so many of us focus on throughput, it’s only part of the equation — equally as important is the signal strength, dropped calls, and failed data connections. Combined with throughput, these factors help equate the experience.
With so many possible data points, how then is the information useful to consumers? That’s where the crowdsourcing concept enters in. Root Wireless aggregates data from the reporting handset clients to create detailed, low-level coverage maps. All data is self-reported, so there’s no input or other steps required from the participants, although users can “record” coverage in areas to help report dead zones. Root Wireless currently reports this data with all four major U.S. carriers in 16 different metro area maps, found here. The Root Coverage maps are interactive, so it’s easy to compare coverage by carrier or by signal, data or voice in a given location:
As part of the Consumer Electronics Show, Root Wireless used their own product near the Las Vegas Convention Center for six hours a day throughout the show. With just limited data, the company was able to create a useful graph of each carrier’s data performance. In fact, it verified something we repeatedly said throughout the show as our iPhones became useless bricks. Here’s the summary report from Root Wireless:
Over the four days tested, AT&T’s rank fell from first to last.
The first two days, Sprint’s data service provided faster service than recorded in greater Las Vegas in December. Then its download speeds slowed each of the following two days. Nonetheless, its service was among the fastest recorded Wednesday – Friday.
T-Mobile’s service never recorded the fastest download speeds, but it provided consistent performance day-to-day.
With the exception of Wednesday, Verizon Wireless outperformed its results recorded in December, and Verizon provided the fastest downloads on Thursday and Friday, presumably the show’s most congested days.
I think an automated crowdsourcing approach such as this is far more valuable that the various ambitious attempts to manually test the networks. There’s simply no way one person or one organization can test enough data points. But when you open the doors for millions of devices to test them for you, you really begin to gain some meaningful and useful data.
I caught up the other day with Jason Jacobs, the hyperkinetic founder and CEO of Boston-based FitnessKeeper, which is best known for its RunKeeper GPS fitness-tracking app for the Apple iPhone. That’s no mean feat, as Jacobs is one of those guys who walks the talk—he’s training to run in the Boston Marathon for the second time (whether he’ll do it in an iPhone costume again, he isn’t saying yet).
I wanted to hear more about two recent milestones at FitnessKeeper. The first came last weekend, when FitnessKeeper passed the 1-million-downloads mark with RunKeeper. The second, announced January 11, is that RunKeeper users who happen to own the Wi-Fi-connected BodyScale bathroom scale from Withings (pronounced Why-things) can now track their weight and body-mass index right alongside the online records of their runs at the RunKeeper website.
Jacobs says the RunKeeper-Withings integration is just the first step toward realizing what he calls “the initial vision” for FitnessKeeper—a kind of online fitness data empire, with tracking data coming in from numerous Internet-connected devices, all helping users work toward fitness goals.
On the downloads front, Jacobs says the combined count of iPhone users who have downloaded the free and $9.99 “pro” versions of RunKeeper passed one million last Saturday, January 9. And very soon—this month, Jacobs says—downloads of the free version will pass one million all on their own.
“Those are important numbers because they show the amount of leverage you can get from the iTunes App Store as a platform,” Jacobs says. But an even more significant number, he says, is the count of active users, defined as people who post at least one activity per month to their RunKeeper Web accounts. That number “continues to climb significantly, even through the winter,” which means RunKeeper isn’t one of those apps that people just download and forget.
The iPhone experience has been so important for the company that it will soon announce versions of RunKeeper for other smartphone platforms, Jacobs says. Android phones will probably come first. “We expect that the showdown between iPhone and Android this year is going to be epic,” he says. “I don’t think that either can be underestimated. Anybody that emerges as a viable smartphone competitor, we want to be there and be the leaders.”
But FitnessKeeper’s Withings announcement has bigger implications, overall, than the million-download milestone. If you happen to be a Twitter follower of Bob Metcalfe, the Boston-based venture capitalist and Ethernet co-inventor, then you are already treated to a daily report from Metcalfe’s own Withings scale. (Today’s update: “My weight: 224.7 lb. 46 lb to go. Goal is 179, as in 1979. http://withings.com.”) Jacobs says the Withings scale can be programmed to send its data to any online destination—including, now, the RunKeeper website, which will track users’ weigh-ins alongside the record of their runs.
That’s useful not just because it will help RunKeeper users track their weight over time, says Jacobs, but because the RunKeeper app needs up-to-date weight information in order to accurately calculate the number of calories users burn on their runs. And in the near future, the weight data will have many other uses.
“We are going to rolling out, quite soon actually, our first optional premium service,” says Jacobs. “We haven’t said a lot about it yet, but it’s called FitnessReports, and one thing that’s in these reports is powerful charting and analytics around your data. So you can see how your weight data is trending over time, and it can be correlated against other input types, such as weekly mileage or pace, so you can actually gain some insights into how your weight affects your fitness and how your performance affects your weight.”
For example, you might be the kind of person who loses weight faster by going on longer, less frequent runs, as opposed to shorter, more frequent ones. FitnessKeeper’s fitness reports would help you suss out that type of trend, Jacobs says. “It’s intelligence that helps you make meaningful changes to your routine,” he says.
Which gets at the really big picture for FitnessKeeper. From all outward appearances, the startup might appear to be just another iPhone app development house—but Jacobs says that’s just an accidental result of the company’s early product strategy decisions.
“The initial vision was, let’s get the data, no matter what the input is, and build a system to help people achieve specific fitness goals,” says Jacobs. “When the iPhone came along, we said, ‘Wow, this is a really powerful place to start,’ because it enables you to do things that you couldn’t do without these smartphones coming along. But now that we are expanding our reach to other platforms like Android and starting to integrate with other types of devices that give data, like the scale, you can see how we are going to have all kinds of different services wrapped around the data on the Web.” So keep an eye out for more device-integration news from FitnessKeeper.
Thurs Jan 21st
Swan River Yoga Downtown
2130 Chartres St, in the Marigny
8:30-10:00
Debt-based currencies controlled by closed syndicates of private banks are not the only way that humans can make an economy. Many tribal cultures have organized themselves around an entirely different way of exchanging value: The gift. Where our financial system expertly moves resources from the many to the few, gift-based cultures like to share what they have – as writer Lewis Hyde noted, “The gift moves toward the empty place.” At a time when billions are enslaved by passionless work while inequity reaches new historic heights, we are seeing a postmodern revival of sharing and gifting, with examples ranging from the open source movement to the annual Burning Man festival.
In this Spore, we explore the abstract theory and practical dynamics of gifting, the challenges of implementing this innovative, yet archaic, way of getting what you want and wanting what you get. We invite fellow Evolvers to bring their precious gifts – whether it be witticisms or wood-carved totems to the Spore and spread them around. Local Spores can screen “Burn on the Bayou,” a mini-documentary chronicling Burners without Borders gifting efforts during seven months of relief work in the Katrina-battered Gulf Coast towns of Biloxi and Pearlington, MS. Since that time, BWB has grown into an international, grassroots organization whose projects are based on the principle of gifting.
We will have Summer Burkes as a presenter. She is a longtime worker for the Burning Man festival outside Reno, Nevada, moved to New Orleans on April Fool’s Day of last year. Anyone who toils in the hot sun for three months at a time — staying in a van / tent / trailer in a landscape so harsh it harbors no living things — to help build and strike a temporary city of 60,000 people … learns a peculiar skill set, to say the least. Inspired by her crowd’s “Do Stuff” philosophy, and interested in seeing how the things she learned at That Place In The Desert could translate into the real world, Summer chose to migrate back home to the South to see what was up in the Lower Ninth Ward and how she could help. Currently, she has started working with Burners Without Borders and the Lower Ninth Ward Village to initiate a program called “Where’s Your Neighbor?”… and they need volunteers!
In an effort to add one more story to the list of reasons why Facebook already rules the world and can stop trying, we find that Facebook is the social-network-login of choice by nearly 2-to-1.
Widget provider Gigya sent us some numbers from their social network login tool and in a three company competition, Facebook came away with 65% of the traffic, Myspace with 18% and Twitter with 17%.
Sponsor
Gigya provides a number of widgets, from tools to share Web pages on social networks, to logging in to third party sites with your social network identity. Their widgets can be seen on sites like the Disney Store, ABC, Turner and Audible, and reach more than 250 million people each month.
Gigya also shared with us the numbers when two major email and search providers, Yahoo and Google, are thrown into the login mix. Facebook still comes out with a majority, 53%, of the logins, while Twitter takes second place with 14%. Google and Yahoo! sneak in with 12% each and Myspace stumbles in with only 9% of the take.
In their note to us, they made sure to mention that when a site offers more options for logging in, more people do, providing a greater variety of data on its customer base.
Emerging from a media firestorm over racially-charged comments he made during the Obama campaign, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate majority leader, has turned the spotlight back onto passing an effective climate bill. The move comes after nearly a month of post-Copenhagen malaise.
That’s one of the biggest arguments against setting targets for slashing emissions (or capping carbon) — that it will hurt employment and growth in states dependent on fossil fuels and traditional power plants. Just look at Max Baucus (D-Mont.). A moderate Democrat, he still shied away from throwing his weight behind drafts of a climate bill because Montana is a major coal producer.
Even though it has these odds against it, the climate bill may still come to a vote on the Senate floor this spring, at least if Reid has anything to say about it. Not only is he certain that it will make it onto the agenda before the summer, but that it will pass after winning broader bipartisan support. Already, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been outspoken about the need for emissions reductions.
Strong words from Reid, delivered to geothermal energy supporters in New York, were partially motivated by a new amendment introduced to another bill by Senator Lisa Murkowski (D-Alaska) that would block the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing any limits on greenhouse gas emissions. In December, during the U.N. climate talks in Denmark, the EPA announced that it had declared emissions a danger to human health, placing them under the jurisdiction of the executive branch. The Murkowski amendment seeks to wrest away this new power.
But Reid isn’t being purely altruistic in his endorsement of a climate bill. He wasn’t speaking in front of a geothermal crowd for nothing. He told the audience that he hopes to include tax credits and federal funds for research for geothermal projects in whatever climate bill finally comes to a vote. His home state, Nevada, is prime territory for geothermal development, which could boost the state’s economy and employment rates.
Reportedly, the car is based on the outgoing MR2 platform and packs a serious punch by combining a 3.3 liter V6 to drive the rear wheels and an electric motor to power the front wheels using the company’s THSII hybrid system. The 4WD sports car develops 392 horsepower and apparently can go from 0-60 in under 4.5 seconds. Not only that, Autocar UK is reporting that the car has the ability to drive in electric vehicle mode in the city.
Burberry will once again take elements from militarism for their Fall/Winter 2010 collection. As evidence from these preview images, the large military issue coats such as bombers, naval peacoats, and other frontline outerwear will get the Burberry Prorsum treatment. Military influenced designs will always be present every season, and Burberry has found away to make the look all their own for Fall. With Fashion Week just around the corner, we’ll be sure to see more of how this collection will unfold.
Can you really play high-end games on your modest PC, with no downloads?
That’s a multi-billion dollar question. Entrepreneur Steve Perlman wants to make money by giving you a way to do that. Last year, he announced OnLive, a service that lets you play high-end games “on demand,” that is, over the Internet from a conventional low-end PC, and with no download. He has stirred the pot, and we couldn’t be happier that he will be the keynote speaker at our upcoming GamesBeat@GDC conference on March 10 in San Francisco.
Perlman is one of those rare technology pioneers who has stayed in the innovation game for decades, always trying to come up with disruptive technologies. We’ve already announced that John Schappert, chief operating officer of Electronic Arts will speak at a fireside chat at the event.
Perlman’s Palo Alto, Calif. company is still polishing his product — a service where gamers can play high-end games on any equipment that they own. The games are played over a network, with virtually no download required. A bunch of people say this can’t be done. But Perlman, chief executive and founder of OnLive, is betting big time that it can be done. And a number of rivals have surfaced — Otoy and Gaikai — that are pursuing the same dream.
If its technology works, OnLive could give consumers the freedom to play high-end games on low-end machines, eliminating the need to buy expensive PCs or game consoles. And it could help digital distribution take off, giving game publishers an alternative to selling their games in retail stores.
Perlman himself holds over 90 U.S. patents and has more than 100 applications pending. Previously, he created startups such as Mova, whose face-capture technology is used to create realistic animated faces in games and movies. (It was used to create the photorealistic computer-generated face of Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). He also founded Moxi, a new user interface for cable TV which was sold to Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures. He was the co-founder of WebTV, which Microsoft bought for $425 million. He is known as the developer of Apple’s QuickTime multimedia technology. And he remains the head of Rearden, a technology incubator that does research in a wide variety of fields.
Not all of the businesses were successes. But Perlman always tries to swing for the fences. OnLive is one of his biggest bets yet. And it’s one of the things that makes it so fun. Please be sure to catch his speech at GamesBeat@GDC.
The U.S. State Department told reporters today that it will deliver a formal statement to the Chinese government in the next few days, denouncing a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” through which the Gmail accounts of Chinese political activists were tapped. (For a detailed run-down of how the attack worked, see security software maker McAfee’s blog post.)
Google has already threatened on Tuesday to pull out of China, which would mean closing its offices there and shutting down the google.cn website. A new Bloomberg report says Google executives tried unsuccessfully in December to get the heads of other companies to side with Google in calling attention to the attacks. One fund manager told Bloomberg, “The reluctance of companies to join Google in its initial announcement illustrates the pressure on them to protect their business in China, the world’s third- largest economy.”
Now, the U.S. government has gotten involved. Reuters reports that an unnamed senior diplomat met with a Chinese diplomat on Thursday. In the next few days, the U.S. will deliver a démarche — a formal diplomatic communication from one country to another — expressing America’s disapproval of the break-ins.
A State Department spokesman said at a press conference this morning, “It will express our concern for this incident and request information from China as to an explanation of how it happened and what they plan to do about it.”
Separately, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Bloomberg on Thursday that exiting China is “not something we’re thinking about” at Microsoft.
The TommyKaira tuning house has taken the Nissan GTR (R35), taught it its philosophy and is now releasing it to the world today at the Tokyo AutoSalon, as gtrblog.com reports.
There are two packages available: one is a complete kit for the whole car while the other only gives the supercar a revised front end. Both of them exclusively consisting of carbon fiber elements.
The first one restyles the front of the car with a new front bumper, front grill cover, front lip spoiler and front unde… (read more)
Well, what a difference a couple of months and a holiday season can make. Just after finding that the video game console market shrunk by a fifth in October, NPD is now back with a new report that finds that December was the video game industry’s “biggest sales month ever.” Specifically, the group found that console sales jumped 4% compared to last December, with the Nintendo Wii unsurprisingly leading the way with 3.81 million units moved (up from 2.15 million the previous year). That’s followed by the collective DS offerings at 3.31 million and, somewhat surprisingly, the PlayStation 3, which racked up sales of 1.36 million (its first time cracking the one million mark) compared to the Xbox 360’s 1.31 million. Of course, no one’s expecting sales to stay at quite that lofty level, but NPD says that the spike in December sales might well indicate that 2010 could be a recovery year.
Want to blast some BRAVIA Internet Video Link content from your PS3 to your million-inch Sony-built 3D OLED TV this year? Well, you’re half in luck. Sony’s bringing the Internet Video Link service to the PS3 (which seems to us to provide little that isn’t already possible on the PS3, but who are we to judge?) but won’t do any new OLED TVs this year. The problem is, naturally, cost, but hopefully 2011 will bring better things in sizes larger than 11-inches — LG won’t have a 30-incher until 2012 at least, and that seems too long to wait. Sony COO Stan Glasgow, in his interview with Sony Insider that turned up these nuggets, also is refreshingly non-bombastic about 3D. He points out that Sony’s doing 3D-capable TVs for essentially zero price differentiation, with separate glasses and emitters that can be bought after the fact, and calls the 3D channel rollout “complex.” But who knows, perhaps he’s just never seen enough of Taylor Swift in 3D to know what he’s missing?
Jonathan Martin at POLITICO reports that with about 72 hours to go until the Tuesday special election, Barack Obama will fly to Massachusetts on behalf of embattled Democrat Martha Coakley.
The future of healthcare hangs in the balance. We’re not too surprised.
Read here for more on how Martha Coakley got into this mess.
Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance Award Recognizes DCEO’s Energy Efforts
Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (MEEA) honored the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) with its Chairman’s Award at the sixth annual Inspiring Efficiency Awards gala last night.
The 2010 Inspiring Efficiency Chairman’s Award is presented to a member organization that has provided exemplary leadership in energy efficiency and support to MEEA throughout the organization’s history.
DCEO, formerly the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, was one of the founding members of MEEA. The organization has served on MEEA’s Board since its inception in 2000 and has provided oversight and strategic direction to help MEEA grow and flourish.
“The guidance provided by DCEO since MEEA’s formation has been instrumental to the success and continued growth of the organization,” said Wendy Jaehn, executive director for Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance.
“We’re proud to recognize DCEO’s commitment to energy efficiency and educating the community and businesses about energy efficiency and other important energy issues.”
Throughout MEEA’s existence, DCEO has consistently sponsored programs including:
Change A Light, Change the World Campaign,
Illinois Residential Lighting Program,
Building Operator Certification Program,
Lights for Learning™,
Illinois Residential Market Assessment,
Regional Refrigerator Rebate and Recycling Program,
Double Your Savings with ENERGY STAR Clothes Washer Campaign,
IL Energy Education Outreach Program,
Home Performance with ENERGY STAR Program Development, and
American Reinvestment and Recovery Act ENERGY STAR appliance program.
Several of these programs served as the foundation for energy efficiency programs prior to the passage of the Illinois electric and natural gas energy efficiency resource standards. DCEO also was instrumental in supporting passage of electric and natural gas Energy Efficiency Program Sponsors (EEPS) in Illinois.
“DCEO is pleased to accept this award from MEEA, an organization that shares our commitment to demonstrating the economic and environmental benefits of energy efficiency and renewable energy through programs and services,” said Agnes Mrozowski, Deputy Director, Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, Office of Energy and Recycling.
DCEO’s Office of Energy and Recycling promotes the efficient use of energy resources through a variety of technical and demonstration programs.
The division also teaches residents, students, teachers, and community and business leaders about important energy issues through educational outreach and energy conservation programs.
About Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance – The Source on Energy Efficiency
The Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (mwalliance.org) is a collaborative network advancing energy efficiency in the Midwest to support sustainable economic development and environmental preservation. MEEA bridges the gap between policy adoption and program implementation.
MEEA promotes the market transformation of energy efficiency technologies, processes and best practices within a 13-state area, through policy advocacy, program design and facilitation and piloting of energy technologies.
Energy efficiency is the critical first step in meeting our nation’s myriad energy challenges due to low entry costs, proven and emerging technologies, ease of implementation, fast return on investment and measurable results.
Through our diverse network of members and regional allies, MEEA possesses the practical experience and informed vision to effect positive change today by supporting the region’s stakeholders to achieve their efficiency goals for the future.
January 14, 2010 – This morning Narcotics Division filled the courtyard in front of the Pubic Administration Building for their formal inspection. It’s not often the men and women of Narcotics Division have the opportunity to get suited and booted in their class “A” uniforms but today they were shined from head to toe in blue and black.
Due to Narcotic Division being primary an undercover detail, many were not recognizable to other fellow officers since majority of them have not been clean shaven or have received haircuts in years but today marked a new day and a new look for many.
Chief Beck along with other command staff walked the many rows of detectives and officers inspecting approximately 250 uniformed personnel. Chief Beck laughed and briefly chatted with several rank and file during the inspection as he recognized many old partners and friends.
After 45 minutes of standing at attention, the large group gathered around the Chief to hear a brief but powerful speech. Chief Beck started out saying, “Thank you for the hard work you put in today, I appreciate what you do, I respect what you do and I am honored to be here today.” He continued by stating, “This is going to be a great year and I have the privilege to lead it.” The inspection ended with a group photo in front of the Public Administration Building.
“The Biggest Loser Couples” season 9 started with the couples weighing in, but instead of weighing in on the ranch, in front of their competitors, contestants revealed their weights in front of family, friends and neighbors.
Daris: 346 pounds
Cheryl: 227 pounds
Patti: 243 pounds
Stephanie: 264 pounds
John: 484 pounds
James: 485 pounds
Ashley: 374 pounds
Sherry: 218 pounds
Andrea: 298 pounds
Darrell: 413 pounds
Victoria: 358 pounds
Cherita: 277 pounds
Miggy: 240 pounds
Migdalia: 265 pounds
Melissa: 233 pounds
Lance: 365 pounds
Koli: 403 pounds
Sam: 372 pounds
Sunshine: 275 pounds
O’Neal: 389 pounds
Maria: 281 pounds
Michael (Mike): 526 pounds
After couples weighed in, they headed to the ranch where Alison greeted them. Everyone was raring to go, so Alison led them to the gym.
Earning the right to compete
Once inside, they were surprised to discover an empty gym. Then the curtains opened to reveal 22 bicycles! Alison told each contestant they had to ride 22.6 miles for their first challenge. It was no surprise that the first challenge would be tough for the couples, but the thing that hit them the hardest was when Alison announced that only nine couples would earn a spot in the house.
Naturally, their mouths dropped open, but when Alison told them the winning couple would receive immunity, it brought a small smile back to some of their faces.
Knowing they had to do their best to guarantee a place on the ranch, they began pedaling as fast as their legs would allow. Halfway through, the couples started feeling the pain but pedaled through it. The green team finished first, followed by the gray team, and then the black and orange team fulfilled their 22.6 miles.
Stopping before her time
“I’ve had two children and I’ve never felt excruciating pain like that,” Cherita said, slowing down. “I don’t care what I have to do. I’m fighting for my life. I cannot give up,” she continued when Dr. H approached her.
Even though Cherita was determined to finish the challenge, her stomach cramps worsened. Her daughter, Victoria, told her to stop and ensured her mom she could finish the challenge on her own. Cherita refused to give up, so Dr. H ordered her to stop.
“No, I can’t stop. I cannot stop,” Cherita cried out in pain.
Against Cherita’s will, Dr. H and another gentleman from the “Biggest Loser” medical team lifted her off the bike.
The pink team finished in fifth place, followed by the red team, and then the brown and white teams. Only one more team would move on, and it was between the purple, blue and yellow teams. Unfortunately, the blue and yellow team finished in the bottom two, which resulted in them being asked to leave the ranch immediately. Their hopes of becoming “The Biggest Loser” were crushed!
An at-home challenge
As the yellow and blue teams got into the limos, they hugged one another and cried. Each of them wondered if they’d be able to lose the weight at home, without Bob and Jillian’s help. But soon their limos skidded to a stop, and the contestants’ tears turned to cries of joy when Bob and Jillian opened their doors.
Bob and Jillian wasted no time in letting O’Neal, Sunshine, Victoria and Cherita in on a secret: their journey wasn’t over yet! The trainers explained to both teams that they would go home for 30 days. Then they’d return to “The Biggest Loser” ranch where the two teams would face off, and the team with the highest percentage of weight loss would be able to rejoin the competition. In addition, Bob and Jillian would be there to help them.
A dubious record
Back at the ranch, the “Biggest Loser” couples were sleeping, but the sound of the fire alarm — which Bob and Jillian pulled — woke them. Instead of rushing out of their rooms to safety, the couples knew it had to be something other than a fire, so they slowly made their way outside where Bob and Jillian were waiting. As soon as Bob saw the contestants he’d be working with this season he said, “We have got to have the biggest group I’ve ever seen.”
“The cast just gets bigger and bigger every year, and it’s not a good thing,” Jillian added.
Fired up and ready to go, the “Biggest Loser” couples headed to the gym for their first workout of the season, but seconds after the workout began, pretty much all of the contestants were throwing up. Some hung out the windows while others made their way outside the gym doors.
“We hadn’t even done anything yet,” Jillian commented through laughter.
It was back to the exercise equipment to try again, but before they started, Jillian stressed how important it was to keep hydrated by drinking water during their workouts.
With water bottles in hand, the workouts began. Jillian joined Cheryl at the treadmill. She told Cheryl she knew she was the one who puts everyone else’s needs before her own. Cheryl informed Jillian that she was right, and Jillian asked Cheryl if she was ready to change. When Cheryl didn’t respond, Jillian screamed,” Are you ready or not!”
“I’m ready!” Cheryl screamed back.
“Say it like you mean it!” Jillian demanded.
“I’m ready,” Cheryl replied with more force.
“Yeah?”
“Yes!”
“That’s better. I believe you. Now get off the treadmill,” Jillian smiled as she placed Cheryl in boxing gloves, and Cheryl put her whole heart into punching the crap out of the punching bag that lay on the floor.
“Cheryl’s a bad a**,” Jillian commented.
“D***!” Bob commented as he watched Cheryl.
When Cheryl screamed through her pain, Bob screamed too.
“Somebody wound up that mama and let her just spin like a top up in this gym,” Bob said, looking like an excited kid who got just what he wanted for Christmas.
Sharing stories and workouts
After what appeared to be a successful workout, the “Biggest Loser” couples gathered in the living room to introduce themselves and share their heartbreaking stories of being picked last, not experiencing the love they so desperately want or fearing their weights were going to send them to their graves too soon.
Later, it was back to the gym for a last chance workout. Bob had some of the couples working out in the gym, and Jillian had the others outside. A sudden leg cramp slowed Darrell down, but he fought the pain and completed what he’d started.
The biggest weigh-in
At the “Biggest Loser” couples’ first weigh-in on the ranch, Alison told Mike he’s the first contestant to weigh in at over 500 pounds. When Alison asked Bob what it was like to work with a contestant who weighed over 500 pounds, Bob said it’s daunting, because he and Jillian have some of the biggest contestants they’ve ever had.
Then Alison told James and John that together they’re only 31 pounds away from being half a ton; therefore, they’re the biggest team to ever be on “The Biggest Loser” ranch.
After Alison brought the couples back to the reality of the situation, she began the weigh-in with the team that won immunity.
Migdalia lost 16 pounds, and Miggy lost 13 pounds. The green team lost a combined total of 29 pounds (5.74 percent).
Sam lost 18 pounds, and Koli lost 29 pounds. The gray team lost a combined total of 47 pounds (6.06 percent).
Cheryl lost 14 pounds, and Doris lost 29 pounds. The orange team lost a combined total of 43 pounds (7.5 percent).
Andrea lost 14 pounds, and Darrell lost 30 pounds. The black team lost a combined total of 44 pounds (6.19 percent).
Twin brothers James and John both lost 23 pounds, which gave the brown team a combined total of 46 pounds (4.75 percent).
Melissa lost 19 pounds, and Lance lost 21 pounds. The red team lost a combined total of 40 pounds (6.69 percent).
Patti became the female with the biggest loss in week one, with her 23-pound weight loss. Stephanie lost 18 pounds. The purple team lost a combined total of 41 pounds (8.09 percent).
Ashley lost 21 pounds, and Sherry lost 17 pounds. The pink team lost a combined total of 38 pounds (6.42 percent).
Maria lost 13 pounds, and Mike set a new record for losing more weight in a week than any “Biggest Loser” contestant with his 34-pound weight loss. The white team lost a combined total of 47 pounds (5.82 percent).
Unfortunately, John and James fell below the yellow line. John and James’s fellow competitors knew it would be hard to break up the twins, but they had to, and in the end, they chose to send James home.
Update: James reported that he’d lost 100 pounds in two months by working out at a local gym and no longer eating out.
(By Misti Sandefur for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)
Duke Energy Generation Services has appointed Tony Dorazio as senior vice president for wind energy development, according to a company release.
Dorazio will lead project development for the Duke Energy unit, which owns and operates 733 megawatts of power generation at seven wind farms in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming.
Dorazio served briefly as chief operating officer at Tessera Solar in 2009. Prior to that he worked for BP Alternative Energy’s wind power business, where he put together a portfolio of 15,000 megawatts of potential wind power projects. As GER previously reported, BP scaled back its investments in renewables after Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward took over in March 2009.
He was also previously a vice president of Vestas-American Wind Technology in Portland, Ore.
He will be managing development of the unit’s projects, including site selection, permit application processes and marketing projects to electricity buyers.
Duke plans to bring 251 megawatts online in 2010 with the construction of farms in Wyoming and Colorado and 200-300 megawatts online annually for the next several years.
We are all finally back from Michigan after attending the 2010 Detroit Auto Show. All of us have caught up on many lost hours of sleep and have finally had some chance to look back at the show to pick our favorite debuts in Detroit.
Here is a list of what the egmCarTech team liked at the show – make sure you let us know what was your favorite debut from Detroit (one concept, one production).
Omar Rana (Editor in Chief): Production – Cadillac CTS-V Coupe; Concept – Audi e-tron. Stephen Calogera (Senior Editor): Production – 2012 Ford Focus; Concept – Volkswagen NCCHC. Kap Shah (Senior Editor – West Coast): Production – 2012 Ford Focus; Concept – Audi e-tron. Anna Tarasova (Editor): Production – 2010 Bentley Mulsanne; Concept – Audi e-tron.
Hit the jump to see the complete list of concept and production debuts from Detroit.
When it comes to fantasy sports I’ll just be up front about it – I’m a tinkerer, a point-and-click guy, a pick-up junkie. I’m generally among the add/drop leaders in any pool I play in, and with that in mind it’s a good time to examine some rules of thumb as we’re trying to find good stuff cheap – help on the free agent wire. 
In an effort to add one more story to the list of reasons why Facebook already rules the world and can stop trying, we find that Facebook is the social-network-login of choice by nearly 2-to-1.
Gigya provides a number of widgets, from tools to share Web pages on social networks, to logging in to third party sites with your social network identity. Their widgets can be seen on sites like the Disney Store, ABC, Turner and Audible, and reach more than 250 million people each month.
Emerging from a media firestorm over racially-charged comments he made during the Obama campaign, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate majority leader, 
Perlman is one of those rare technology pioneers who has stayed in the innovation game for decades, always trying to come up with disruptive technologies. We’ve already announced that John Schappert, chief operating officer of 
The U.S. State Department told reporters today that it will deliver a formal statement to the Chinese government in the next few days, denouncing a “
The TommyKaira tuning house has taken the Nissan GTR (R35), taught it its philosophy and is now releasing it to the world today at the Tokyo AutoSalon, as gtrblog.com reports.
Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (MEEA) honored the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) with its Chairman’s Award at the sixth annual Inspiring Efficiency Awards gala last night.
