Category: News

After EA Sports announced that it would be sticking by Tiger Woods and president Peter Moore reaffirmed that in a blog post earlier this month, it seemed pretty clear that Tiger was not in danger of losing his videogame endorsement deal. But at the very least, EA Sports seems to be investigating whether that decision is doing their brand any harm by way of a survey from Greenfield Online.

Among the Tiger-related questions in the survey are the following two (both pictured at Kotaku):

Q. EA Sports makes a Tiger Woods video game. Has the controversy made your impressions of EA Sports more or less favorable, or has it had no impact?

Q. Has the controversy made you more or less likely to buy a Tiger Woods related video game in the future?

Clearly, there is at least some modicum of concern that the Tiger scandal could reflect poorly on EA Sports. With Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online’s open beta launching later this month, it’s undoubtedly far too late to simply pull Tiger’s name off of it. But if the polling comes back overly negative, EA Sports might have to rethink its continued support of Tiger.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

Modern society, with its emphasis on material possessions and indifference to community, is making us mentally ill. It’s an argument that wouldn’t seem out of place on the Sunday talk shows, but in this case, it’s appearing in the academic journal Clinical Psychology Review, and the argument is backed by decades of data and a cognitive model that attempts to make sense of the process. The data suggests that there has been an increase in a standard measure of mental problems among individuals in their late teens and early 20s, and that the trend dates back at least to the 1930s.

The authors mention that a variety of studies have found mixed results when examining the time course of mental health within the US. Some of the studies that have attempted to address this problem have attempted to extrapolate trends using surveys of people in different age groups, but these studies suffer from two problems: mental health doesn’t remain static during an individual’s lifetime, and those with serious mental disabilities (such as clinical depression) tend to die younger than their peers.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

Found under: Google, Nexus One, Vodafone, Germany,,

Read More

Read more in mobile format

How to honor the late Dr. Sharples

Editor, The Times:

Your Jan. 9 editorial speaks well of Caspar Sharples, [“Honoring Dr. Sharples,” Opinion], the late and eminent Seattle physician whose career as a School Board member and one of the chief architects of the Childrens hospital was foundational to the humanitarian and educational character of the community.

There are two points you may have overlooked in the recent efforts to relocate the Sharples school dedication. The Sharples family is guided by a resolution enacted by the School Board in 2000 that prescribes that a new dedication to Sharples be equivalent to the old one in architectural, educational and civic importance. The family deemed that the old John Hay site did not meet those criteria. A reason for this — and not the least important —was that John Hay’s architecture and landscape are controlled by the Landmarks Board. A new dedication there would be compromised by the apparently irradicable signage that announces the place as the John Hay School.

With the concurrence of the president of the School Board, the Sharples family presented a “memorandum of understanding” in December whereby the family would accept the Hay site providing the school district agreed to make good faith and positive efforts over time toward reconciling these and other issues. However, the district dismissed the proposed memorandum out of hand and without discussion. At this juncture the family realized that the district’s rigidity was not conducive to an accord.

You also recommended “patience” on the part of the Sharples family and friends. We have demonstrated patience beyond measure these past 10 years. The thing that drove the family to reject the Hay site was the district’s intractable deadline of Jan. 6 to either accept or decline it. A little patience on that score would have been welcome. Meanwhile, the Sharples family stands by its earlier memorandum that bespeaks goodwill and patience toward resolving whatever issues impede conferring the dedication on a qualified school.

— Joseph C. Baillargeon, for the Sharples family and friends, Seattle

Filed under: Accessories, Cool tools, Odds and ends, iMac

iMacs are great, except when you have one sitting with its back to a wall and you need to plug something into the back of it. Particularly with the larger models, you end up having to pick up the iMac and swing it around to get to those ports on the back. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if you could just spin it?

That’s the idea behind the Rain Design i360, a turntable that encloses the base of an iMac or Apple Cinema Display, and then allows easy movement of the display. Want to show a co-worker on the “back” side of your iMac something? Just spin the entire computer around. Need to plug or unplug something? No problem — just swing the iMac or Cinema Display around and do it.

I’ve had an i360 on my first-generation Intel iMac since just after I bought it, and I can’t count the number of times that it has saved me from having to pick up the computer and slide it around to plug something in. I’ve recommended the i360 to many of my Mac consulting customers who have iMacs or Cinema Displays, and many of them end up buying the device.

The i360 base has a bit of weight to it so it doesn’t move, and there are rubber feet on the bottom to insure that your desktop isn’t scratched. The computer or display base is held in place with a single screw, so installation is simple. The manufacturer’s teardrop logo cutout (seen above) has a clear plastic window, so you can put a picture or logo into it just for fun.

There are now two models of the i360. The original, available for US$39.90, works with the 20″ and 21.5″ aluminum iMacs, the 15″, 17″ and 20″ “plastic” G5 and Intel iMacs, and the 20″ and 23″ Cinema Display. To match the iMac you own, the base of the i360 comes in either painted white or in bare aluminum. The new model (US$44.90), called the i360 24″, fits the 24″ and 27″ aluminum iMacs and the 24″ Cinema Display. Alas, there is no i360 for the 30″ Cinema Display.

The i360 has served me well over the years, and it surprised me to find that TUAW hadn’t reported on this cool piece of hardware before. If you find your iMac sitting in the wrong direction often, it might be worth getting one and taking it for a spin.

TUAWRain Design’s iMac turntable sends the iMac for a spin originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

Found under: Nokia, N900, Ovi Store, ,

Read More

Read more in mobile format

Using a Peek lowers your intelligence by 3, and wearing three T-Shirts only gives you +1 to defense, but +20% cold resistance. [Dog House Diaries]

A slap in the face

A Seattle Times editorial published on Monday [“Appeal felon-vote ruling.” Opinion, Jan. 11] addressed the Washington state “felon disenfranchisement law,” which denies voting rights for persons who have been convicted of felonies and incarcerated. The editorial notes that “Washington has stripped felons of their right to vote as a punishment on top of time behind bars.”

I doubt that as a “punishment,” this law has any impact on felons. Nor would it have any impact as a crime deterrent. But what it does do — as the editorial points out — is compound a person’s “separation from civil society.” It is, as you suggest, an additional slap in the face for the felon.

Is this what we want, to further humiliate persons who have been convicted of crimes? We know that crime is in part the result of disadvantaged opportunity, discrimination and victimization, particularly when applied to youth and children. To pretend that this is not the case is to be blind to the realities of contemporary society.

Our goal in working with those in the criminal-justice system should be more appropriately directed toward rehabilitation. Providing access to education, employment and appropriate housing would serve as examples of activities that could assist this group to reintegrate into “civil society.”

Disenfranchisement, further stigmatization and alienation of this population will only impede rehabilitation and, as an additional outcome, put others in the community at greater risk of crime.

— Jere G. LaFollette, Mount Vernon

Exposes discrimination

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that felons should have the right to vote, because denying them that right disenfranchises minority voters disproportionately. It is long overdue that the issue of discrimination in incarceration is exposed.

While females comprise over 50 percent of the population, they make up less than 10 percent of the inmate population. Arrest rates of people younger than 30 make up a vastly higher proportion than their percentage of population. And if one studied the education level of inmates, one would see that people with college degrees are vastly underrepresented as compared to their population at large.

By using plain, provable statistics, it is obvious that the police are deliberately not arresting retired, white, college-educated females to the degree that they should be.

This reverse discrimination must stop.

— Tom Tangen, Edmonds

Uncomfortable with the notion

It’s nice to know that here in the state of Washington, logic and common sense have been buried under a steaming pile of political correctness.

I can’t say that I’m comfortable with the notion that I now have the same voting rights as gangbangers and level-three sex offenders. These people are felons for a reason.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it a lawyer’s job to uphold the law, not destroy it? It’s quite apparent that none of those [9th Circuit Court] judges have ever been robbed at gunpoint.

— Jeremy Ghea, Federal Way

Should acknowledge slavery’s existence

Republican Bob Benze’s “Founding Fathers didn’t envision wealth distribution” [Opinion, Jan. 12] supplies important history that Americans overlook — at our own peril — respecting the original calculus underlying the U.S. Constitution.

The essay would be immensely more useful, however, if it explicitly acknowledged that central terms of that initial calculus allowed one human being to own another outright and calculating a value for slaves as chattel property at three-fifths of that of an enfranchised voter. This proved unacceptable to a one-term Whig congressman who would become the first Republican president [Abraham Lincoln] in 1861. Freeing and enfranchising slaves in the early 1860s drastically changed the calculus of the Founding Fathers forever.

Railing against the evolution since 1789 of our Constitution— after the Republican Revolution that followed the Declaration of Independence by four score and seven years — is less helpful than integrating at least the Republican Revolution underlying that evolution into a logical argument with intellectual honesty.

— Will Knedlik, Kirkland

Fathers did anticipate need to redistribute wealth

Whether or not the Founding Fathers “envisioned wealth redistribution,” they were intent on forming “a more perfect union to establish justice and promote the general welfare” of this newly formed country. The verbs “establish” and “promote” anticipate a sociopolitical process through which constant improvement is achieved.

It is estimated that, due to insufficient wealth or unwillingness to ascribe to a religious creed, half of all white males were precluded from voting after the Fathers crafted their preamble. Women and people of color were denied this basic right, as were men called upon to fight for their country but were too young to vote. So too, were Catholics, Jews, Quakers and others too far removed from mainstream Protestantism.

Fortunately, America did not remain fossilized after 1776, but became an evolving society, perfecting itself through a process of increasing inclusion and equality. As Paul Krugman notes on the same opinion page [“European social democracy works”], Europe is becoming even more dynamic — and prosperous.

There have been Americans who fought every step toward redistributing power and wealth; some are still among us. I can’t imagine the Founding Fathers supporting only wealth retention since they risked their assets and freedoms to expand ours.

— Bob Selby, Blaine

American versus European dynamism

Your Monday editorial page had an amusing contrast between two adjacent articles. It would be hilarious if the issues weren’t so serious.

In “Founding Fathers didn’t envision wealth distribution,” Bob Benze repeats the usual Republican theory that if the government redistributes the nation’s wealth via taxes and social programs, it will “invariably” inhibit the creation of jobs and industry and the incentive to work. He cites Western Europe — versus Eastern Europe — as an illustration.

But in “European social democracy works,” Paul Krugman demonstrates with facts, not empty theory, that although European taxes are higher than ours, their per-capita GDP, employment and productivity are almost the same as ours, while their social benefits — including universal health care — far surpass ours.

Benze’s article reminds us of the old quip, “Don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up.”

— Robert and Susan Stanton, Seattle

Donate allowance to cause

I learned in The Seattle Times that the Woodland Park Zoo is going to shut down the nocturnal exhibit [“Zoo plans to close nocturnal exhibit to save $300,000,” NWMonday, Jan. 11]. I am 7 years old and I have been going to the zoo since I was a baby. My favorite place at the zoo is the nocturnal exhibit.

I love the bats and the sloth especially. I learned at the nocturnal exhibit that we need bats so there aren’t too many bugs. Also, the nocturnal exhibit is a really dark and peaceful place.

I would like to donate $10 from the part of my allowance that I share. I have been saving up for something important, and this is important to me. I would like to ask the other children of Seattle, if they love the nocturnal exhibit, to give some of their allowance to support it too. I wonder if we could raise the $300,000 that is needed from all our money together?

— Asa Buehler, West Seattle

Who decided this?

I was surprised to read that the zoo’s very popular Nocturnal House will soon be closing. My daughter and I are zoo members and consider this to be one of our favorite zoo exhibits. I don’t recall being asked for any input as either a Seattle taxpayer or as a member of the Zoological Society.

How was this decision arrived at and what other options are there that would keep this unique exhibit open? Seattle residents need some answers and explanations for what appears to be a very dictatorial decision.

— John Alwin, Seattle

Move the elephants to save money

In Susan Gilmore’s article about Woodland Park Zoo’s plan to close the popular nocturnal exhibit, the zoo claims it will save $300,000 by making this unnecessary move.

If the zoo were to do the compassionate and cost-effective thing, it would accept the Elephant Sanctuary’s offer to transport and keep the zoo’s elephants for life in a much more suitable environment: 2,700 acres of rolling and varied terrain to roam and explore, plus a 15-acre lake to swim in — all in a much warmer climate.

Our three elephants at WPZ need more than one acre and they suffer by being locked into a tiny barn for about 17 hours a day due to our colder climate. It’s funny that the figure for keeping three elephants in the zoo is about $400,000. This humane choice would allow the zoo to keep the Nocturnal House open with about $100,000 left over.

— Nancy Pennington, for the Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants, Seattle

The Children’s Place Association Serves Children and Families Affected by HIV in Haiti

The Children’s Place Association, a Chicago-based nonprofit, continues to monitor the situation in Haiti after at 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck the country late Tuesday afternoon and the status of clients and workers remains unknown.

The organization currently cares for more than 500 clients in Haiti.

The Children’s Place Association began programming in this poverty-ridden country to help families affected by HIV/AIDS meet the needs of their children.

“We have been attempting to contact our field workers in Haiti since we learned of the quake yesterday afternoon,” said Cathy Krieger, president and CEO of The Children’s Place Association.

“At this time we have not been able to reach our team or families and we are deeply concerned for their safety and well-being as the devastation in the area is wide spread.”

A relief effort is already underway.

“We have begun to mobilize support for our employees and clients.  While we do not yet know what the specific needs, monetary donations will help us to quickly provide aid once we are able to reach them.  We anticipate these needs will include medical supplies, clean water and food.”

Donations can be made through the organizations Web site, childrens-place.org, or calling 312-660-3030.

Supporters are asked to note the donation is for Haiti Quake Relief.

About The Children’s Place Association

The mission of The Children’s Place Association is to improve the present and secure the future for children, youth and families confronted by HIV/AIDS or other life-changing health conditions.

Founded in 1991, The Children’s Place Association serves as a safe haven for children in Chicago whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS through the Residential Center and Early Learning Center as well as Family & Community Services and Foster Care & Adoption programs.

Children’s Place International was launched to care for the 2.5 million children worldwide living with HIV.  Currently the program serves children and families in Haiti, and programming is under development in Guyana.

For more information on programs and services, visit childrens-place.org or call 312-733-9954.

Found under: Apple, Tablet, iPhone, ,

Read More

Read more in mobile format

Google's possible exit from China is all over the news.  Are there any trade issues in there?  Possibly:

Lawyers said that Google and the US might have a legal basis for suing China at the World Trade Organisation, a move that would further complicate relations between Washington and Beijing.

…

According to lawyers, the US could argue that Beijing’s censorship in effect discriminated against foreign services such as Google, contrary to its commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gats).

“If China imposes harsher web filtering restrictions on Google than on local search engines, such as Baidu, Google may have a WTO discrimination claim,” said David Spooner, a former assistant secretary of commerce, now at the law firm Squire Sanders & Dempsey.

The outcome of a case would depend on how a WTO dispute resolution panel classified search engines. Much of the WTO law addressing internet services and online products is unclear. The last global trade agreement was negotiated in the early 1990s when the technology was in its infancy. But trade experts said a succession of rulings had narrowed governments’ room for manoeuvre, and particularly their ability to use national security or the protection of public morals as defence for censoring words and images on the web.

Gary Horlick, a leading international trade lawyer, said: “We will have to know a lot more about the facts, especially what the [Chinese] government is doing, but the Gats has a lot of unexplored obligations which might protect Google."

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Misc. Auto Shows, Alfa Romeo, UK

As far as Alfa Romeos go, the 8C Competizione is as exotic as they come. Still, some are looking for more. Originally, rumors surfaced that Alfa was working on a lightweight GTA version, but while we wait for that to pan out, Alfa tuner par excellence Autodelta is working on tuning the svelte supercar themselves.

Few details are known at this point, but a remapped ECU should squeeze out a modest 17 horsepower boost from the stock 444-hp, 4.7-liter Ferrari-developed V8. Autodelta is also working on fine-tuning the chassis, taking their 8C around some of the finest tracks in Europe to get it just right.

The result is slated to be unveiled at the Pistonheads Performance Car Show in Birmingham later this week, so stay tuned, and follow the jump for the press release in the meantime.

[Source: Autodelta]

Continue reading Autodelta takes on the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione

Autodelta takes on the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

At a time when there are few news organizations with the capital to put reporters on the ground in Haiti, social media is helping to fill the gap with information and financial relief for victims of the earthquake.

• More than $1,000,000 has been raised so far through the Red Cross’ mobile donation program, according to Jared Cohen, who is on the State Department’s policy planning staff. The Red Cross started a program today, allowing the public to donate $10 by texting “Haiti” to 90999. Music artist Wyclef Jean is also running a mobile donation campaign for his charity Yele. If you text ‘Yele’ to 501 501, $5 dollars will be donated. Both programs automatically add the charges to your cellphone bill.
• 1,500 status updates a minute mentioning “Haiti” are running through Facebook, according to Andrew Noyes, the company’s manager of public policy communications.
• Haiti URLs have seen a 1578% increase in traffic and a 5407% jump in bandwidth usage, according to Zscaler, a cloud-based security service for web traffic.

A number of citizen journalism projects are providing news and media from the ground. Global Voices, a non-profit blog aggregator for international news, has created Twitter lists of people on the ground in Haiti. So has The New York Times. The Boston Globe’s Big Picture also has a truly heart-wrenching collection of photos, which is where the top picture comes from.

Ushahidi, a non-profit project that uses mobile phones to crowdsource news and information in times of crisis, started up a Haiti site where hospitals can show what services they offer and people can post messages to search for family or friends.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

Bellevue, Wash. startup Visible Technologies announced it has raised $22 million in a fourth round of funding. The investment surely shows significant growth potential for social and digital media monitoring companies. It also suggests that big companies and brands might be starting to take out their wallets.

The ability to provide companies and brands with a way to monitor and measure is the stepping stone for them to take the leap of faith into social and digital media. While they may know that customers are having “conversations” about them, they want to make sure they have a good beat on who, what, where and when before they develop a presence on, say Twitter or Facebook.

Visible Technologies claims to have a strong data set in its TruCast platform, revolving around a listen, learn, engage and protect motto. The platform includes several additional solutions. TruPulse, an RSS feed web app, lets users listen to real-time discussions and determine influencers and activists. TruVoice, a set of response apps, allows the user to develop responses to any online conversations without having to leave the Visible Technologies platform. Finally, TruReputation is a set of services that helps you to maximize the positive information about your brand so it’s found by web searches.

Other social monitoring companies are working to strengthen their data sets as well. Yesterday, we saw two social monitoring companies Trendrr and Klout decide to share data to help strengthen each other’s platforms for users to better track trends and determine key influencers on the social web. Companies like Radian6 or Buzzlogic do the same type of analytic analysis and have similar solutions.

The funding was led by new investor Investor Growth Capital (IGC) and existing investors Centurion Holdings, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel and WPP. Financing will be used to strengthen it’s technology platform, discover news uses and expand into international markets. Added to a previous third round, Visibles Technologies now has a total of $34 million.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article