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Do not expect UFC to look the other when it comes to online piracy of its various pay-per-view events. Dana White, the company’s president, recently told the Vancouver Sun that he and the UFC will do whatever it takes to eliminate piracy. “It’s gonna cost us a lot of money, but guess what, it’s gonna cost [the pirates] a lot of money. It’s gonna get to the point where it’s like, f*ck it, maybe we shouldn’t pirate MMA anymore.” This is not a very forward-thinking way of looking at the problem, no.

It was only a few weeks ago that I first made mention of UFC’s efforts against piracy. The gist of the argument was, just let it happen and concentrate on maintaining the company’s momentum. The UFC doesn’t want to end up like the music industry, having sued its fans into indifference, if not antagonism, toward its product.

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One of the key features of the Nexus One has nothing to do with its hardware. The latest and greatest Android phone also is the first device to come with the new Android 2.1 OS. And while other phones, like the Droid, are going to get it too (likely later this month), for now, if you want to play around with it, you’ll need a Nexus One. Or, starting today, you can also download the Android 2.1 SDK.

As noted on the Android Developers Blog, the team is releasing it before most devices have it so that developers can play around with and build for the new features introduced in 2.1. Though Google calls 2.1 a “minor platform release” over Android 2.0, there are a number of new elements such as voice recognition, live wallpapers, a new launcher, more home screens, and some WebKit changes. Those who have ported it over to the Droid note that the new OS is also faster.

Google also notes that there is a new USB manager available through the SDK Manager that supports the Nexus One. This may or may not be related to the new services that it seems like Google wants to include with the device, such as a new docking station for backing up your data.

You can find the new SDK here.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Chris Leben has plenty of experience and he’s shown a pretty well-rounded game at times but he’s always had a penchant to slug away standing. Leben clearly had a gameplan and it involved not playing into Jay Silva’s only strength, his stand-up game. Leben scored takedowns in all three rounds and rolled to a unanimous decision win, 30-27 on all three cards, to snap a two-fight losing streak.

"Everytime I go out there I look for the knockout but the strategy was working so well and I needed this win so badly that I decided to stay with the ground game."

Leben worked for a rear-naked choke for four-plus into the first round after quickly converting a takedown to the mount. Silva did a nice job of holding out. In the final two rounds, Silva simply wasn’t active enough to stay out of Leben’s clinch-game.

Silva was a great story on paper. A bouncer until 2007, he began training jiu-jitsu in the New York area and then befriended former UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton Jackson, who moved him out to California in 2008. Silva was fabulous in a debut loss to C.B. Dollaway but his takedown defense was weak in that fight. It really showed tonight against Leben, not exactly a guy who’s known as a top level grappler.

Leben (18-6, 8-5 UFC) needed this win. He’s fought personal issues and alcohol issues for years. He wad coming off terrible losses against Michael Bisping and Jake Rosholt. He tested positive after the Bisping fight and served a one-year suspension. The Rosholt fight was in his hometown, Portland at UFC 102, and he was put to sleep via arm-triangle choke. 

Then, the mondo Christmas bundle from Revolution disappears. I’m just sayin’.

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Do not expect UFC to look the other when it comes to online piracy of its various pay-per-view events. Dana White, the company’s president, recently told the Vancouver Sun that he and the UFC will do whatever it takes to eliminate piracy. “It’s gonna cost us a lot of money, but guess what, it’s gonna cost them [pirates] a lot of money. It’s gonna get to the point where it’s like, fuck it, maybe we shouldn’t pirate MMA anymore.” This is not a very forward-thinking way of looking at the problem, no.

It was only a few weeks ago that I first made mention of UFC’s efforts against piracy. The gist of the argument was, just let it happen and concentrate on maintaining the company’s momentum. The UFC doesn’t want to end up like the music industry, having sued its fans into indifference, if not antagonism, toward its product. It seems to me that, in the interest of the greater good, the UFC should ignore the streams that pop up. The greater good, of course, being continued and long-term growth at the expense of short-term profit (or, worse, revenge, because the tone Dana White has here screams nothing if not vengeance.)

(Keep in mind that there’s no telling how many of these illegal streams are set up overseas where copyright laws are non-existent. There’s no telling how many of these streams are watched in countries where the local population has no other exposure to UFC, where they can’t buy an official stream for $10 per show. Why not let these people get a taste now, and in a few years’ time, when you’ve built up an international distribution infrastructure, come in and offer them legal ways of watching your content? Maybe hire Shane McMahon to figure that out? What, the ol’ “I didn’t pay for this before, so I’m not going to pay for it now?” song and dance? Those people aren’t your fans, nor will they ever be. Don’t worry about them.)

There’s a few more things to consider. The year 2009 was the company’s biggest grossing year on record, with a record 7.755 million PPV buys over the course of the year. That’s around $349 million in PPV revenue alone. Arguing that a couple hundred (or even thousand) people watching an illegal stream will ruin the company is a stretch at best. That number, $349 million, is likely to be the biggest number of any company of any sport on PPV ever, even bigger than boxing in its heyday (though boxing has been putting higher profile fights on plain ol’ HBO in order to grow an audience). There’s every reason to believe that 2010 will be even bigger, particularly if current UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar can get healthy. A fight between Lesnar and, say, Frank Mir would do extraordinary numbers on pay-per-view. That’s them up there, by the way.

Needless to say, the UFC is doing just fine.

This all started when the UFC filed suit against a Boston bar last week for showing an illegal live stream of the game. Yes: the bar literally hooked a laptop up to its TVs and had patrons watch that. Not only is that incredibly stupid on the bar’s part (the bar said that someone had set it up without its knowledge, which is incredibly difficult to believe), but, really, who wants to see an Internet live stream blown up onto a TV? It must have looked horrible. UFC wants $640,000 in damages. I hope it gets every single penny.

UFC plans to combat the scourge of live streams by sending subpoenas to Web sites that ask for every single IP address that connected to the stream. Then UFC would go after those IP addresses, just like the RIAA did back in the day. Never mind that I (or anyone with a modicum of tech-savvy) could spoof my IP address with my hands tied behind my back. Never mind that people could just connect to the stream using any number of anonymizers. And what if you live in an apartment building with a bunch of open Wi-Fi access points, or, just as bad, encrypted only with WEP? A ne’er-do-well could hide his identity any number of ways. An IP address is not someone’s unique genetic code, so let’s stop pretending it is.

Then think of the possible backlash. For all the money UFC is going to spend in and around the legal system by going after alleged pirates—and how long would we have to wait till it sues a single mother with three children, the oldest of whom connected to a stream for a moment just to see what all the fuss was about?—does the cost-to-benefit analysis work out? Maybe it does, I don’t know.

I don’t want it to sound like I’m defending the streams, I’m merely saying that it seems crazy to me to risk becoming the RIAA of this decade in order to prove a point. The UFC has every right to go after people who pirate its content, but it really ought to think about wether or not it’s even worth the trouble. Lawsuits didn’t eliminate music piracy. No, it was the proliferation of easy-to-use, legal alternatives (initially iTunes several years ago, and now things like the Zune Pass and Spotifiy and Pandora) that marginalized music piracy.

Suing everyone under the sun is not a method I would recommend to companies that are looking to grow.

Much of the background info via The Wrestling Observer Newsletter

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I feel like I’m missing something important with this concept. It appears that the keyboard slides out from the bottom of the monitor, but there’s no way to orientate it the way a keyboard should be. I’m not crazy, right? It looks like it only comes out vertically? I guess it’s still a concept, so they’ve got some time to work it out, but man, I wouldn’t type on a vertical keyboard for all the tea in China.

See what I mean? Is there any support there?

I would have stayed to ask, but they were being cagey about their other concept products, so I left in a huff.

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I question the actually utility of this, except for in corporate ID badging. It is cool though, combining OLED, RFID, and 3D into an ID. Plus, how is that for an alphabet soup of acronyms?

Thanks to NetbookNews for the tip.

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Sega of America president Simon Jeffrey was very upbeat about the prospect of mature-rated games on Wii back in 2008. That was before MadWorld released last March, an event that made very little impact from a sales perspective by almost all indications, despite receiving almost universal praise from critics. Sega called early sales data “encouraging,” a stance they later backed off of. Throughout this period, Sega continued to claim that they would create M-rated Wii games. Much more recently, on an episode of the 4 Guys 1UP Podcast, Sega of America’s Constantine Hantzopoulo revealed that Sega isn’t, in fact, likely to make more mature Wii games.

Cut to Platinum Games’ Shigenori Nishikawa, director on the first MadWorld. Speaking with The Official Nintendo Magazine UK, Nishikawa spoke fondly of MadWorld and said Platinum would, in fact, like to work on a sequel. “I think MadWorld was very well received and was acknowledged for its innovative graphical style and gameplay,” he explained. “We would definitely be interested in making a sequel in the future.”

But is it a good idea to take the risk of making another mature Wii game? Nishikawa didn’t see any problem with it, referring to the Wii as “a very well-balanced piece of hardware.”

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Modern manufacturing techniques generally require high degrees of control and intervention to get materials linked together in precise configurations. But researchers have become interested in the prospect of self-assembling systems, which can simplify existing manufacturing and allow us to produce devices on the nanoscale. Above a certain size it’s possible to use gravity to drive self-organization; on the nanoscale it’s possible to use chemical processes, like the base pairing of DNA, to drive the assembly process. That leaves an awkward range of devices on the micrometer scale in between that aren’t heavy enough for gravity to drive assembly, but too big to be pushed around by substances like DNA. A paper that will appear in PNAS describes how it’s possible to use an oil-water interface to drive the self-assembly of 20 micron silicon solar chips into a functional array.

To give some context, this is a problem that goes well beyond academic interest. The authors, Robert Kneusel and Heiko O. Jacobs, note that the majority of silicon in a typical photovoltaic cell isn’t active—it’s there to provide structural support. And, although silicon isn’t expensive compared to many metals, there are certainly cheaper materials out there that could replace it, lowering the cost of devices. It should also be possible to incorporate small photovoltaic chips into flexible and transparent materials, much as was done with LEDs, which could greatly increase the places where solar devices could be deployed.

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New York City has long been a pioneer (for good or ill, depending on your perspective) in public health initiatives having to do with food. It was the first major city to work on banning artificial trans fats from restaurants and to require calorie counts on menus.

The city has also launched a campaign against soda consumption, and now the city is set to discourage salt consumption by encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains to cut the salt levels in their products.

As NYC goes, so goes the nation

The goal is to cut the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent in the next five years. Of course that food largely comes from places that aren’t in New York City, so such a campaign will require changes that will ultimately affect people who eat across the country.

The city says health officials from other cities and states support the plan, and health advocates predict such a drop in salt consumption would reduce the incidence of high blood pressure in America, probably also cutting some heart attack and stroke deaths.

It’s estimated that 80 percent of the salt we consume comes from prepared meals and processed foods.

Compliance may be difficult to get

The plan is voluntary and there is no legislation planned to force food companies and restaurants to curb their salt use. And that’s probably a good thing, because it would be incredibly difficult to legislate salt content, particularly since some foods — like bread and other baked goods — require a certain amount of salt to help with rising, browning, and, frankly, taste.

Because changing products for the New York City market would require changes nationwide, companies might not be excited to develop new recipes. But representatives of Subway and the A&P grocery store chain say they expect to comply with the proposed guidelines.

What the guidelines say

The city was expected to announce preliminary targets for sodium content in foods, to be followed up with final targets to be unveiled later in the spring. Reductions in salt content under the program range from 10 to 40 percent for 61 classes of grocery store items and 25 classes of restaurant food, according to the New York Times.

The city would look at sodium content over the range of a company’s offerings, which would allow them to keep some items saltier while cutting the salt in others.

Government guidelines suggest adults should consume between 1,500 and 2,300 milligrams a day of salt, depending on their risk factors for high blood pressure. Most Americans consume more like 3,400 milligrams daily.

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)

New York City to seek lower salt levels

As expected following the release of the 2.1-packing Nexus One, Android 2.1‘s SDK has been officially unleashed. No unexpected changes here, but it does indicate 2.1 will be coming to other Android handsets like the Droid soon. [PhoneNews via Android]

Luke Timmerman wrote:

ZymoGenetics, the Seattle-based biotech company, said today its underwriters have exercised their options to buy all the shares they were granted, bringing its net proceeds from the latest offering to $90.9 million. Investors and underwriters bought a total of 16.1 million shares at $6 apiece, ZymoGenetics said. The money will be used to support R&D, and to help market the company’s lone approved drug, recombinant thrombin (Recothrom).

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Even the most probing reporter couldn’t get a peep out of Tom Lawlor before his fight tonight at Ultimate Fight Night 20. The MMA world wanted to know what UFC’s clown prince would do for his ring entrance. At UFC 100, he entered to "Who let the dogs out?" with his buddy Seth Petruzelli alongside on a leash. At Sunday’s weigh-ins, he donned a mullet wig and glasses as a tribute to UFC 3 fighter Harold Howard. Tonight, who knows? Petruzelli does and he may have given away Lawlor’s secret.

The holidays are fading and the quiet days are winter are settling in. If you’re lucky enough to have a bit of land to devote to a garden, then it’s time to start that classic winter distraction: planning your summer vegetable patch.

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Intel presents energy management innovation as a proof of concept. …

… “Intel Home Dashboard Concept enables users to manage energy use, reduce costs, pay their bill and earn rewards. Family members can access the energy manager at any time for an at-a-glance view of utility rates, usage and billing. Users can set monthly energy targets and learn how to reach them, discover where energy is used and take control. ” …

Via Intel: Intelligent Home Energy Management Proof of Concept (PDF)

Filed under: iPod Family, Odds and ends, Apple, iPhone

Jason Schwarz over at TheStreet has written an article analyzing Apple’s current position in the marketplace and what Apple’s competition needs to do in order to catch up.

The article focuses mostly on Apple’s iPhone/iPod + iTunes ecosystem, which isn’t surprising. Though Mac sales bring in a fair amount of cash to the company, Apple’s handheld market is the company’s most current success story, and everyone from Microsoft to Palm to Google has spent the past several years trying (and failing) to duplicate that success.

Schwarz notes that Steve Jobs’s recent claim that, “We see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon,” doesn’t necessarily apply to the feature set of the iPhone or its integration with iTunes, but rather Apple’s financial success and brand impression. He has a point. Recent ads have been trying to sell the Droid on its feature set, telling us all the things that Sega does that Nintendon’t – er, I mean, all the things Droid does that the iPhone doesn’t, but trying to sell the Droid on features hasn’t exactly toppled the iPhone’s dominance quite yet, and all indications are that the Nexus One isn’t likely to take a big chunk out of Apple’s smartphone sales, either.

Schwarz argues that more and/or better features don’t mean a thing if the public has a poor impression of your product. For supporting evidence, look no farther than Windows Vista. Vista may or may not have deserved all the rabid criticism it received, but even if it had been the best thing to ever come out of Redmond, the damage to its reputation sealed its fate in consumers’ minds. Meanwhile, Schwarz writes that “Apple currently holds a monopoly on brand trust,” a claim borne out in numerous consumer satisfaction surveys. Google’s phones may not have a Vista-esque reputation, but they definitely have a very long way to go before they can approach the success of the iPhone in either marketshare or mindshare.

All of that having been said, even though Apple finds itself at the top of the music player market and within spitting distance of the top of the smartphone market (not to mention atop a gargantuan heap of cash), all it takes is one botched product to tarnish a formerly sterling reputation. That’s why I feel a slight trepidation about Apple’s supposedly forthcoming iSlate. Pundits the world over have been hyping this product and claiming it’ll be the Next Big Thing, that it’ll revolutionize the industry the same way the iPod and iPhone did for their respective markets. For Apple’s sake, I hope they’re right, because if the iSlate bombs, there’s every chance Apple could experience the inverse of the vaunted “halo effect” that brought increased Mac sales thanks to positive impressions of the iPod.

Brand loyalty is indeed crucial to Apple’s success. It is for any company, of course, but in Apple’s case, where it sells its entire product line as a tightly integrated ecosystem of products, it becomes even more critical. It seems highly unlikely that any of Apple’s competitors will catch up to or surpass Apple’s success in the near term on their own merits, in which case Apple’s only real threat to continued prosperity is Apple itself. It’s had a spectacular run over the past decade, but if Apple stumbles now, the company has no one but itself to blame.

TUAWThe Street: Features can’t sway Apple customers’ trust originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Over the weekend we had a chance to highlight Graphic.ly – a company that opted to release early (and imperfectly) in exchange for valuable user feedback. As companies look to their peers and audiences to help define product features, there’s a greater need for scalable testing platforms. Here’s a summary of 8 useful services that will help put you on the path to product greatness.

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1. UserVoice: In 2008 we wrote an article entitled, Why We Love UserVoice in praise of the Digg-like customer feedback platform. Rather than hiring an on-site focus group, UserVoice gives test participants 10 votes to use as they see fit. From here, audience members vote on priority features while the finite number of votes for each person limits the influence of the vocal minority. The service is priced depending on the number of voters you’d like to engage and offers a 15-day free trial for all premium services.

2. Silverback: Silverback is a usability testing software that allows startups to record both the screen as well as the test participant’s facial reactions and voice. Startups follow a subject’s eyes and cursor movements while also controlling the service via an Apple remote. Once a subject’s session is over, the startup can export the recording to a basic Quicktime video. The service offers a 30 day trial and costs $50 dollars flat rate after that. While it’s primarily meant to test site design, it can also double as a great screen capture software for quick demos.

3. Feedback Army: Feedback Army rallies its own community of testers to do your bidding. For $10 dollars you get 10 people to browse your site and offer feedback. The service offers quick turnaround on your projects and received favorable reviews on Hacker News.

4. UserTesting: UserTesting offers on-demand testers priced at $29 dollars per person. For each test session you receive a recorded video of your tester’s actions as well as a list of detailed notes. Some of the companies who’ve tested with UserTesting include Twitter and CNN Money.

5 & 6. IdeaScale and Crowdsound: Both IdeaScale and Crowdsound offer a Digg-style interface for voting where users decide their favorite features and what they’d like to see happen with your site. Crowdsound is priced at $10 per month for customizable widgets, iPhone interface and private suggestions. IdeaScale is priced at $15 per month and includes Twitter/email integration.

7.GetSatisfaction: Similar to IdeaScale and Crowdsound, GetSatisfaction offers a Digg-style interface for product ideas, issues and solutions. Companies tend to moderate questions and feedback themselves and users vote up and down the answers. This community has received praise from a number of media outlets and costs as little as $19 dollars per month. Earlier this year ReadWriteWeb named GetSatisfaction the leading idea aggregator.

8. UTest: UTest offers testing on a subscription and package basis. With packages, clients purchase a set number of test cycles in exchange for a dedicated project manager and feedback from 20-30 professional software testers. The company works with clients on mobile, web, gaming and desktop applications and the idea is that for about $1500 per month or for a set package of test cycles, you get to outsource your entire testing department.

Photo Credit: Dean Shareski

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