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CES is Engadget’s biggest event of the year, but for the most part we don’t have any requirements on what editors should bring other than “a laptop” and “a camera.” That means there’s usually quite an array of devices and tools on hand — and every year we try some new things that make an immediate impression. We threw out some basic gear statistics in our annual CES wrap-up post, but we also wanted to highlight some super-useful new tools we brought to Vegas with us this year. Some of it is state-of-the-art expensive, some of it is brain-dead simple, but all of it helped us rock out our biggest CES ever. Read on!

Continue reading Engadget’s gear of CES 2010

Engadget’s gear of CES 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not a completely new idea, accelerometers have been enhancing GPS devices for a while now with additional velocity and directional information when the GPS signal is weak, but now Casio is giving it a shot in its new Exilim EX-H10 prototype camera. The “hybrid GPS” shooter does the regular geotagging thing with its onboard GPS, but when signal is weak (like when indoors, for instance), the camera augments the location data with guesstimates gleaned from its onboard accelerometers. The camera also has pretty detailed maps, so you could almost use the device for navigation, though the “pushpin” view is a good start. Hit up the source link for some more shots.

Casio EX-10HG ‘hybrid GPS’ prototype taps into accelerometers for pinpoint accuracy originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Philips’ 2006 spin-off Liquavista hasn’t exactly had a lot to show for itself since it earned its independence, but things seem to finally be coming together for the company, which had a suite of e-paper displays to demonstrate at CES last week, a show that was absolutely chock-full of e-readers. Our very own spin-off, Engadget Spanish, got a chance to peruse the company’s suite of offerings, including a prototype device called Pebble. It’s a lovely, thin reader that’s unfortunately not intended for production — at least not yet. The video after the break shows displays that not only redraw far more quickly than existing production screens, but also mix in RGP effects and even multi-color backlighting. It’s good stuff; you’ll want to check it out.

Continue reading Liquavista’s monochrome and color e-paper displays get demonstrated (video)

Liquavista’s monochrome and color e-paper displays get demonstrated (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today in the New York Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin has a fun column consisting of a list of questions that he would like to hear the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission ask when it convenes tomorrow. He believes the questions would “help start some lively discussions.” He’s right, because the questions he lists are virtually all accusatory in nature towards the Wall Street bank CEOs who will be testifying. So while amusing, I think the commission would be prudent to consider more questions that are actually productive to its mission of better understanding “the causes and current state of the crisis.” As a result, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions of my own, just in case anyone on the committee happens to be reading.

Before getting into my own, let me give an example of the kind of questions Sorkin poses:

A question for all the executives about bonuses: We keep hearing that you plan to pay out billions in bonuses this year. Given that they come out of profits that, to a large degree, seem to be the result of government programs to prop up and stimulate the banking sector, do you think they are deserved, even if they are in stock? And, while we’re on the topic, given the market crisis of 2008, were you all overpaid in 2007?

For starters, bonuses had very little to do with what actually caused the crisis. Even if they were substantially lower in 2007, the bankers would not have behaved differently. They would have still sought the highest profit possible, because that’s what bankers do. The CEOs would likely respond that there were some divisions that did not perform well (MBS traders, for example), and their bonuses (and layoffs) will reflect that, but the majority of their employees performed at or better than expectations (M&A, corporate debt underwriters, etc.). Unfortunately, in this case, a few bad apples spoiled the bunch.

So rather than ask questions to purposely put these CEOs on the defensive, and produce no significant answers to actually help the reform effort, I’d suggest the following instead:

Imagine it’s 2005. You can change three decisions you made and alter the future. What are those three things that you would have done differently?

What do you believe the Federal Reserve could have done differently to prevent or lessen the severity of the crisis? Did it have the tools necessary at the time to do so, or was it incapable due to a lack of authority?

A popular regulatory goal of Washington is bank regulator consolidation. Would it make your job easier or more difficult to have to answer to one bank regulator, instead of several? Do you think this would harm or benefit the market?

Many have argued that capital and leverage levels weren’t prudent enough, which is part of what forced the government to recapitalize your banks with a bailout. How high would your capital levels have needed to be to avoid the crisis? What maximum leverage limit would have accomplished the same result?

One of the most significant regulatory proposals would be the creation of a non-bank resolution authority. The idea would be that, if something like the crisis happened again, a firm like AIG could be more neatly wound down. Do you believe it’s actually possible to resolve large, interconnected firms like AIG and your banks without causing economic crises in the process?

It’s been suggested that one way of accomplishing neat resolution of complex entities would be to require those firms to submit failure plans to be followed in a default event. If you had to draw up such a plan currently, could you do so with the confidence that the plan could be executed without causing a major economic disturbance?

What are your views on Fannie and Freddie? Is it a good idea from an economic perspective to have an entity with an implicit government guarantee to insure and purchase mortgages? What should the government’s role be going forward when it comes to mortgages?

Some believe that option adjustable-rate mortgages are financial instruments of destruction for consumers. Can you explain why dangerous, misleading consumer financial products should remain legal?

If independent financial research firms were to take on the responsibility of evaluating bonds, instead of the rating agencies, how would that change the market? Would investors be able to function without rating agencies? Do you believe during the crisis they were too reliant on the rating agencies without doing enough of their own due diligence?

All of Washington’s financial regulation proposals would force securitizers to keep some skin in the game, requiring them to retain a portion of the risk in the pools they create asset-backed bonds out of to sell to investors. How would that change the securitization market as we know it? How would that, in turn, affect consumer lending?

Explain the role that derivatives played in the crisis. What might have helped prevent the problems they created?

Why humans are not as “uniquinest” as we think. (Hint: similar equipment, different uses)

Bikers often encounter problems when it comes to choosing the right tires to suit their motorcycle and the road conditions they expect to face. Aside from creating the physical and visual connection to the road, tires are just as important as any other critical component of the bike. You cannot expect for your tires to go on forever, as they are a subject to depreciation. This is when various elements need to be taken into consideration, such as the category of the motorcycle you own and the rid… (read more)

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

Entrepreneurs scratching to find sources of startup capital in San Diego will soon be getting help from an unexpected source. The Rady School of Management at UC San Diego says it is launching its own venture fund that will use donor funds to make investments of $75,000 to $100,000 in startups commercializing new technologies.

The Rady Venture Fund, which the business school describes as the first of its kind in San Diego, is modeled after the Wolverine Venture Fund, founded in 1997 by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. The Michigan venture fund typically invests from $50,000 to $200,000 in seed and early-stage funding rounds in syndication with other VC firms and angel investors.

“Our objective is to provide hands-on educational experience to UCSD MBA students—not on making returns on our investment,” says Lada Rasochova, a Rady School alumna who put the fund together as director of entrepreneurship at the UCSD business school. Yet Rasochova noted the Wolverine Venture Fund has made some successful investments, notably in Irvine, CA-based IntraLase Corp., and Ann Arbor, MI-based HandyLab, which was acquired less than four months ago by Becton-Dickinson for a reported $300 million. The Wolverine Venture Fund is estimated to have made $2 million on a $300,000 investment in the medical technology startup.

An external advisory board made up of venture investors, entrepreneurs, and community leaders will help provide guidance on the fund and associated coursework. Rasochova says there also are two “safety checks” on venture investments made by the fund. She says a committee that includes venture industry veterans will make investment decisions, and investments only will be made jointly with another VC firm. Rasochova says Rady students will participate in the entire investment process, “so we would prefer to make investments in the San Diego region so our students can help them succeed.”

The program, which is open to both full-time and flex-time MBA students, includes a more academic course in venture finance and investment analysis and what Rasochova calls two “hands-on” classes that enable students to vet business plans, support entrepreneurs, and help manage the fund and its venture investments.

The Rady Venture Fund is expected to make only one or two investments per year in startups focused on high technology or the life sciences, although Rasochova says the fund has ruled out drug development companies because of the extraordinary time and costs involved.

Because the Rady Venture Fund is funded by donations to the business school through the UC San Diego Foundation, Rasochova says any investment returns will revert to the venture fund and the Rady School of Management. If there was a really huge return, she says, Rady School Dean Robert S. Sullivan would decide how any spillover funds would be used.

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The show featured "The next Anderson Silva" and a Mexican fighter with lots of potential but it’s starting to look like the best young prospect who should’ve emerged from Season 8 of "The Ultimate Fighter" was Evan Dunham. One problem, he wasn’t on the show. The native Oregonian said he would’ve loved to have been on the show but always seemed to find about tryouts too late. He got his revenge last night by taking out the TUF 8 champ Efrain Escudero and did it in scary fashion by nearly dislocating him arm. Escudero went to to the hospital where he was told there was tendon damage and he was fitted with a sling. 

It took only a few hours: Apple has banned ForChan from iTunes, a perfectly innocent, web-based, dedicated image browser for the iPhone. Its only sin: It could display porn. Well done, Apple. Let’s delete Safari now.

ForChan could connect to any image board web page and show pictures. Photos of dogs, cats, birds, food, cars, planes, flowers, scenes of summer, winter, and fall, or anything in between. Anything including boobs and buttocks:

It didn’t promote porn in any way. It didn’t have any ads for porn. Its icon was plain. Its explanatory text was perfectly innocent. And yes, while the developer mentions that it could be used to browse pictures of fully naked girls—and has some boards with that kind of pictures—the app itself is not a “porn app.” Actually, you had to click a few times in the web before getting to the smut. There was no magic “Show me the tits” button.

In fact, ForChan only has two options: Browse page after page of images, or enter a new URL to access a new web server containing different images.

Sounds familiar?

Yes, exactly the same as Safari. Enter any porn web site address in your Safari URL field, and you will instantly get connected to porn. Hardcore picture after hardcore picture, wet video after wet video, all the perversions imaginable, no niche left untouched.

So why is Safari in the iPhone? Is it because web-browser porn browsing is socially accepted, leaving the ultimate responsibility in the individual using the web browser—often with a convenient privacy mode?

If that’s the case, why delete ForChan from the iTunes Store? It’s a web browser too, no matter how image oriented it is. Apple is not selling porn in the Store when somebody purchases ForChan. They are selling a generic browser, just like the built-in Safari is. One that can only display images, any kind of images, just like the built-in Safari does.

Apple includes Safari with no restrictions because, at the end of the day, it is your responsibility to use your web browser according to your own set of moral and social rules. You can write a new web address and access Fleshbot instead of Gawker. Your action, your choice. Nobody is going to go to Apple and accuse them of selling a porn app because I can access porn online. And nobody can accuse Apple of selling porn by making ForChan available in their app store.

So why retire it? Just because we highlighted that it can be used to browse porn. So here’s a hint, Apple:

Time to delete Safari.

Protesters on Monday saw the North American International Auto Show in Detroit as an opportunity to complain about pretty much anything, Jalopnik reports.

Picketers brought signs protesting everything from Michigan’s high unemployment, to government bailouts of Citibank and AIG, to even green cars. (Apparently, they’re for fascists.)

One man held a sign criticizing single payer health care, while another’s read, “There are no teabaggers in soup lines.”

Then they started singing.

All in all, it was one of the strangest displays of Americans excercizing their first amendment right since, well, the Birthers.

Check it out:

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See Also:

• Pelosi: Healthcare Protests Are Un-American
• Detroit Is Partying Again: Photos From The Detroit Auto Show

A big topic in this morning’s Gartman Letter is China and its well-known real-estate boom.

The Gartman Letter: Moving on, the news of the People’s Bank of China’s move to again tighten monetary policy had the effect one might have expected upon Chinese equities: they fell and they fell rather sharply… initially. Interestingly, by the day’s end, after having sold off sharply, share prices in China rallied and rallied quite materially, finishing up nearly 2%! It was really most impressive action.

As noted above on p.1, the People’s Bank moved to allow its “auction” rate on year bills to rise 8 bps, after having allowed the auction rate on shorter term bills last week to do the same. The Bank is concerned about a “Bubble” in real estate prices all across the country, but most notably along the eastern seacoast in Shanghai, Tientsin, Guangzhou, et al…and it wishes to stop that Bubble from becoming worse.

The one certain way to do so is to raise interest rates and to make bank lending more difficult and more expensive. The Bank is doing precisely that, but in the process it is having an interestingly supportive effect upon stock prices. Perhaps the market believes that money will move quietly away from land and move toward equities, or perhaps the market is simply coming to understand that the global economy is strong and getting stronger and that profits shall soon be higher and rising.

Interesting, no?

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After nearly a year of debate within the House and Senate, the Affordable Health Care for America Act was passed and will soon become law. This bill’s primary aim is to extend coverage to the more than 30 million Americans without coverage today.

This bill has received stiff opposition from the Republican Party. It is quite an accomplishment to finally achieve some legislation to address an issue that has been pressing America for several decades. In close examination of both versions of this bill, there will certainly be some things that students on campus will find positive and certainly some that will be much less pleasing. The Editorial Board believes that there are some aspects of this bill, in particular, that will benefit the Stanford community greatly, and the bill’s shortcomings can be mended in the long run if we as citizens continue to follow the progress of health care in America.

A major complaint about this bill is that it presents immediate costs with delayed benefits. The bill mandates individuals to attain health insurance and requires that most employers provide insurance to their employees as well, a system not altogether different from the current system here at Stanford. College-age individuals, for example, receive a very immediate and significant benefit: extended coverage for young adults, which would allow college-age Americans to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until the age of 26, rather than the usual 19 or 21. This measure saves money for families across America and will prove useful to many members of the Stanford community, particularly in a time of economic recovery.

But the extension of health coverage in this country must come at a cost to everyone involved in the system. Estimates place the cost of this act at nearly a trillion dollars, to be added to the already ballooning national budget and deficit. The most efficient path to minimizing these costs is not to continue to ignore those Americans without coverage, but to place increasing pressure on the health care industry to make its costs more reasonable. The U.S. spends more than two times that of other developed nations, per capita, on health expenditures, despite the fact that our overall health as a nation suffers in comparison to Europe and other industrialized areas.

Now that this debate has taken place on a national level, we hopefully have entered an era where the issues of heath coverage and insurance costs is something very deliberately and openly discussed among the American public, and not decided by an oligarchy of politicians and health care institutions. When the Senate and House versions of this act are reconciled and finally adapted to law, Democrats and Republicans alike should not view this as an end to the health care debate in this country, but merely the beginning of an enduring challenge to make health coverage affordable and fair.

We always have a tiny flush of jealousy when we see those beautiful custom kitchens with perfectly fitted cupboards, and lots of pull-out cabinets that make great use of every narrow space. Well, you too can squeeze in a narrow pantry pull-out, with these rolling pantry shelves.

Pantry space for things like baking supplies, canned goods, and other staples has always been at a premium in our kitchens. Rental kitchens like ours also are not as thoughtfully planned out in terms of storage and functionality.

Slim carts like these are designed to help you get the most out of odd or narrow spaces, like the space between the fridge and the wall, or between a bank of cabinets and the door. Some are as narrow as 9 inches, so they can be slipped in many places.They pull out on wheels, and there’s no installation necessary at all, which makes them perfect for a rental kitchen!

Here are three slim rolling pantry shelves we found in our browsing:

• Six-Shelf Pantry Rack, $99 at Improvements. 10 inches wide and 56 inches high. We like the handsome chrome!
• Slim Cart, $24.99 at The Container Store. 9 inches wide and 30 inches tall. Skinny!
• Slim Household Cart with Wheels, $19.99 at Space Savers. 10 inches and 32 inches tall. Small and accessible.

Do you use any rolling shelves like these? How have they worked out for you? I would love to squeeze one of these in between the fridge and countertop, but it would be a tight fit!

It has been five months since violence erupted at California’s overcrowded men’s prison in Chino, but stories of abuses suffered by prisoners in the riot’s aftermath are now coming to light.

After the long night of violence on August 8 when two housing blocks at the facility were burned and destroyed, some prisoners say they spent as long as four days straight in outdoor cages with no protection from the sun. Others say they are still waiting for health care services to treat injuries suffered during the riot.

A woman whose relative was locked up at the time of the riot has launched a website called “In The Riot” to share the first-hand stories of prisoners who suffered mistreatment in the days and months following the riot.

One prisoner writes: “It was hot in California in August and I received a severe sun burn because I lived in a dog kennel cage under the heat of the sun. The nights were freezing cold and I literally begged them to give me a blanket or some clothes, but they REFUSED. They also did not give me any medical attention for my stab wounds.”

Another: “I was another one who was zip-tied for hours, placed in cages for 3 days with no clothes and no blankets, not given food for hours.”

(more…)

Ryan McBride wrote:

[Updated and clarified—1/12/10, 2:30 pm ET, with timing of potential human study and other details] CardiAQ Valve Technologies, which is developing a catheter-based alternative to open-heart surgery for mitral valve implantation, reports today that it has raised $6.5 million in a Series A round of funding. The funding is expected to support R&D needed to advance the firm’s main product to human studies.

Rob Michiels, the former president and COO of CoreValve (now Medtronic CoreValve) and a board member at CardiAQ, led the round, which included angel investors that backed CoreValve in 2002, according to CardiAQ. Previous investor Broadview Ventures also contributed to the financing. The financing includes the conversion of $1.5 million in debt to equity in CardiAQ, meaning that there was a total of $5 million in new capital raised in the deal, said CEO J. Brent Ratz, in an interview. CoreValve, a California provider of a catheter-based system for aortic valve replacement, was acquired by Minneapolis-based medical devices giant Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) in April 2009 for an impressive $700 million. The deal was one of the largest M&A transactions in the medical devices industry last year. [The above paragraph was updated to add information about the firm’s debt-to-equity conversion in its latest round of financing.]

CardiAQ has garnered high praise from Michiels for its approach to treating mitral regurgitation, a heart disease in which the mitral valve fails to close and allows blood to leak backward between the two left chambers of the heart. The standard treatment for this problem is open-heart surgery, which poses health risks to patients such as heart attacks and infections. CardiAQ and other medtech startups such as Stoughton, MA-based CardioSolutions are developing techniques to avoid open-heart surgeries by either replacing or repairing failed mitral valves with catheter-based approaches.

“[CardiAQ’s] success in raising this over-subscribed round in record time is a dramatic endorsement of the strength of our transcatheter mitral valve implantation concept for patients who suffer from functional mitral regurgitation and are often too sick to have [open-heart] surgery,” said CEO Ratz, in a statement. “Our valve replacement technology will facilitate a non-surgical alternative that could be more effective than transcatheter repair and just as effective as surgical replacement in a mitral market that is estimated to be $1.2 billion by 2014.”

Ratz said that the company is aiming to begin human studies of its mitral valve-implantation system in 2011. Arshad Quadri, a cardiac surgeon at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, CT, is the founder and chief medical officer of the company. [This paragraph was changed to add information on when the firm expects to begin human studies.]

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Premier provides 2010 exploration update – 5 major drill programs totalling approximately 100,000 metres drilling

There were whispers about this last fall, but now it’s official: The Alphabet Network is forging ahead with plans to premiere The Bachelor All-Stars.

ABC has ordered a six-episode spinoff of its wildly-popular Bachelor series that will see 20 former contestants from the past 13 seasons of The Bachelor and past 5 of the Bachelorette residing under one roof for an “all-star” reunion series, The Hollywood Reporter said Tuesday.

Members of the house will compete in challenges with one contestant being eliminated at the conclusion of each show.

“All these people have been friends, been enemies, they date each other and bring all this great backstory to the show,” says Bachelor executive producer Martin Hilton. “It seemed like there was an opportunity to combine that world with a new competitive reality show.”

Bachelor Pad, hosted by The Bachelor’s Chris Harrison, is expected to premiere on ABC in the Summer of 2010.