A magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck in the Sea of Okhotsk of Friday. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the epicenter of the quake was located just off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, in the far eastern part of the country. The massive quake was followed by a smaller (but still very large) magnitude 6.8 aftershock further out in the Sea of Okhotsk.
The quakes occurred deep in the Earth, with both centered at a depth of more than 600 km (about 372 miles). Neither the USGS’s West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center nor its Pacific Tsunami Warning Center have issued tsunami warnings connected to the Okhotsk quakes. No deaths have been reported as a result of the quakes.
Several large earthquakes have been reported in the past two months. In April 2013, an 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Iran caused extensive damage to rural communities in neighboring Pakistan. That massive quake was followed within days by a quake in Papua new Guinea that was measured at magnitude 6.8, a quake in northern Japan that was measured at magnitude 7.2, and another Papua New Guinea quake measured at magnitude 6.4.
Ed. note: The full text of the op-ed by Dr. Jill Biden is printed below. The piece is published today on The Huffington Post, and can be found here.
The year my son Beau was deployed to Iraq with the Delaware Army National Guard, my family learned how much simple acts of kindness could lift our spirits. From the notice in the church bulletin to the neighbor who shoveled my daughter-in-law’s driveway during a snow storm, these gestures meant the world to us.
This Memorial Day, I hope you will take a moment to offer your own gesture of thanks to our men and women serving abroad and at home, as well as their families, and reflect on the service men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
Over the past four years, First Lady Michelle Obama and I have had the privilege of meeting with military service members and their families all around the world. We’ve heard their concerns about school and career issues; we’ve shared their joy when service members returned from deployment, and we’ve tried to offer solace when they face difficult times. These stories and experiences – and our desire to say ‘thank you’ – inspired us to start the Joining Forces initiative, a nationwide effort to rally all Americans to support our veterans and military families.
Joining Forces brings together public and private resources to help with the employment, education and wellness of our returning servicemen and women and their families. Through the Veterans Job Bank and Veterans Recruiting Services, we’re connecting unemployed veterans with job openings. We’re working hard to encourage states to make it easier for military spouses – often teachers and nurses – to transfer their certifications across state lines. And we’re proud to have so many private sector partners committed to increasing the number of veterans they hire.
From a big initiative to a small gesture, Memorial Day is the perfect time to offer a simple act of kindness to our veterans and military families. You can send a message of thanks to our troops or a military family. Or pledge hours of service. Or even start your own volunteer project. And afterwards, please share your story – we want to hear about it!
DataDirect Networks (DDN) announced that University College London (UCL) has selected DDN to provide up to 3,000 researchers with a safe and resilient storage solution, that is expected to scale up to 100 Petabytes.
The first phase of the UCL project for enabling researchers to share, reuse and preserve project-based research data will use DDN object storage technology to store up to 600TB of research data.
UCL sought to remove the burden of storing and preserving research data from individual researchers and in doing so, lower the barriers of sharing and exploiting vital findings in order to improve research outcomes and overcome problems of global significance. With DDN WOS (Web Object Scaler) distributed object storage architecture, GRIDScaler parallel file storage system and tight integration with the Integrated Rule-Oriented Data Management Solution (iRODS), UCL forecasts it will save money –up to hundreds of thousands of UK pounds — by slashing hardware, power and staffing costs, as well as maintenance fees, associated with attaining and maintaining personal data stores across 100 departments, institutes and research centers.
“We were very interested in building a relationship with a strong storage partner to fill our technology gap,” said Dr. J. Max Wilkinson, Head of Research Data Services for University College London’s Information Services Division. ”After a thorough assessment, DDN met our technical requirements and shared our data storage vision. In evaluating DDN, we agreed that the WOS solution had a simple proposition, was high performance and had low administration overhead.”
Thanks to XDA user chaleen, new screenshots of a Nexus 4 in Thailand’s Mobile Expo 2013 running Android 4.3 have surfaced. So far nothing too interesting in the screenshots as it just shows the build and kernel info, but one of them was fairly interesting as it shows a slightly re-designed UI for Google’s stock camera UI. You can check out that screenshot right below.
Not much else is known about Android 4.3, but we expect it to be just a minor update much like how 4.2 was from 4.1. From previous reports, we should expect 4.3 to be pushed into Nexus devices sometime next month.
Robinson & Cole has expanded its private equity/M &A practice with recent hires in its New York City, Boston and Connecticut offices. Among the new partners are Stephen P. Hanson, Eileen Smith Ewing and Mitchell L. Lampert. Currently, the firm is representing Nielsen Holdings N.V. in its sale of Nielsen Expositions to Onex Corp.
PRESS RELEASE
New York, NY(May 23, 2013)– Robinson & Cole continues to expand its private equity/mergers and acquisitions (M&A) practice with recent hires in its New York City, Boston, and Connecticut offices. On May 20, 2013, the firm completed the relocation of its New York City office to the Chrysler East Building to accommodate its continued growth.
New partners who have recently joined the firm’s Private Equity/M&A practice include the following:
Stephen P. Hanson: Mr. Hanson represents financial sponsors (including private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds), their portfolio companies, and other privately held companies in connection with domestic and cross-border M&A transactions, joint ventures, equity and debt financings, commercial contracts, and general corporate matters.Full bio
Eileen Smith Ewing: Ms. Ewing advises publicly and privately held clients, from modest biomedical start-ups to multinational pharmaceutical companies, on their strategic alliances, ranging from traditional mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and securities offerings to complex, cutting-edge drug discovery, development, and commercialization collaborations.Full bio
Mitchell L. Lampert: Mr. Lampert has more than 25 years of experience as a corporate and securities attorney. He has represented both issuers and underwriters in numerous public and private securities offerings, reverse mergers, and related transactions. Mr. Lampert has acted as general counsel for a publicly held digital media company and is a skilled negotiator.Full bio
Recent Deals
Robinson & Cole also announced its recent representation of clients in two major transactions:
The firm is representing Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) in its sale of Nielsen Expositions to Onex Corp. (Onex) (TSX: OCX) for $950 million in cash consideration. Nielsen Expositions isone of the largest operators of business-to-business trade shows in the United States, annually producing more than 65 conferences and trade shows that connect buyers and sellers across nine diversified end markets.
The Robinson & Cole team representing Nielsen includes partners Eric Dale, Eric Kogan, Bruce Barth, Christine Bromberg, Stephen Hanson, and Jacqueline Pennino Scheib.
Additional information is availablehere.
The firm represented EDAC Technologies Corporation, a diversified designer, manufacturer, and servicer of precision components for aerospace and industrial applications, in its acquisition by
GB Aero Engine LLC, an affiliate of Greenbriar Equity Group LLC. The aggregate equity value of the transaction was approximately $104.1 million. The transaction was structured as a cash tender offer and a second-step merger.
The Robinson & Cole team representing EDAC included partners Edward Samorajczyk, Matthew Guanci, Christine Bromberg, Bruce Barth, W. Richard Smith, and Kathleen Porter.
View the EDAC press release here.
More About Robinson and Cole’s Private Equity and M&A Practice
Robinson & Cole’s transactional lawyers regularly handle mergers and stock and asset acquisitions and divestitures for public and private companies. Our clients range from technology start-ups to multinational corporations. A significant part of our work involves cross-border transactions.
We meet the needs of start-up, emerging, and fast growth companies by coupling sound advice and responsiveness with a nimble and practical approach. We frequently guide clients, from formation to funding, through successful acquisitions or initial public offerings. Among other services, we help companies structure angel and venture capital investments; license core technology; prepare and implement employment, proprietary information, and noncompetition agreements; design and prepare equity incentive plans; negotiate strategic agreements and joint ventures; and achieve liquidity.
More about Robinson & Cole LLP
Robinson & Cole is an Am Law 200 firm with more than 200 lawyers in nine offices serving regional, national, and international clients, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Since 1845, Robinson & Cole has expanded to meet the changing needs of clients. The firm represents corporate, governmental, and nonprofit entities, as well as individual clients, in a wide range of matters, including corporate; business and insurance litigation; tax and tax-exempt; finance; public finance; land use, environmental and utilities, and real estate; health law; labor, employment, and benefits; intellectual property and technology; and government relations. For more information, please visitwww.rc.com.
With technology growing every day, many things are becoming a lot easier. Finding a nearby restaurant on your smartphone, for example. Or, cheating on a test. For that reason, a Canada high school issued statements to parents recently after school staff conducted a strip-search to find a missing cell phone.
The incident happened during Cap-Jeunesse High School’s final exams; each student had been instructed to hand over their phones to the teacher before class to prevent cheating. When one of the phones went missing, teachers thought it prudent to make the students strip down in an effort to find it.
“They put us in a small room,” an unnamed girl said. “(They said) ‘take off your bra, then raise your arms.’ They even tapped us on the back.”
The school board didn’t comment on whether the teachers responsible will face disciplinary action, but said an investigation is ongoing and released a statement.
“It was a disproportionate action under the circumstances,” spokeswoman Nadyne Brochu said. “These are not measures that are recommended by either the school or the school board. In the heat of the action, the decision seemed the best. Once officials heard what had happened, they immediately contacted the students’ parents to explain the situation.”
Redpoint Ventures brought on two VMware executives as entrepreneurs in residence, TechCrunch reports. Javier Soltero was CTO of SaaS & application services at VMware before joining the firm, according to a bio posted on the Redpoint Web site. He came to VMware after the company he co-founded, Hyperic, was acquired by SpringSource, which was acquired by VMware.
Kevin Henrikson came to VMware after the company he worked for, Zimbra, was first acquired by Yahoo and then by VMware, according to his bio.
One of the most annoying traits of many technology fans is their conviction that their favorite technology platform should by all rights crush rival operating systems and become the dominant OS in the smartphone or tablet market. In their narrow-minded little worlds, all rival technologies should go the way of webOS so that everyone can bask in might of their favorite operating system, thus proving that their personal preference for a particular type of technology was right all along.
With 5 million sales already, the HTC One is on its way to help HTC reverse its downward sales and profits trend. Counting on a single product to effectively save a company is a risky strategy though. Perhaps that’s why HTC is now planning a “Google Edition” version of the HTC One even though it previously denied any such Android device.
Paul O’Brien of MoDaCo reported the change in strategy on Friday, with multiple sources saying the phone would be announced next week. Like Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 “Google Edition”, announced last week at Google I/O, the HTC One would lose HTC’s Sense software and run a plain, or stock, version of Android. This would be akin to the Nexus 4 phone, which Google sells directly through Google Play.
According to O’Brian:
“It seems as though the very existence of the Google Edition device has created considerable internal turmoil at HTC. There is a deep seated belief within HTC that Sense provides the best possible Android experience and there’s no reason to offer anything different – unifying behind a consistent message. HTC has always been a company however that is driven from the top and it appears as though the new device has been sanctioned by none other than Peter Chou himself, no doubt influenced by arch-rival Samsung’s recent announcement.”
It’s possible that turmoil is related to the key executives and resources that have left HTC as recently as this week, but that could be coincidental. There’s little, however, that HTC knows it needs to make major changes in product and vision if it wants to stay relevant in the Android marketplace.
A “Google Edition” HTC One could actually bring multiple benefits to help the situation. The current HTC One on sale now is an outstanding piece of hardware; possibly the best designed and built Android phone on the market today. But some have shied away from buying the phone because of HTC’s Sense user interface. A “pure” HTC One with nothing but Android on it could generate additional sales.
Another benefit could be found in marketing; an area where HTC greatly lags its peers. A “Google Edition” phone would likely be sold directly by Google in the Play store, meaning Google can help market the phone. It would also remove carriers from the equation and give HTC a little more control over the phone, pricing and software updates.
Major broadcasters filed a new lawsuit this week as part of an ongoing efforts to shut down services like Aereo that stream over-the-air TV to computer and mobile devices.
In a complaint filed Thursday, the broadcasters — ABC, Fox, NBC, Allbritton Communications and Telemundo — asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to issue an injunction to stop the service known as Aereokiller from streaming their shows.
Aereokiller, which is available from the website FilmOn, is operated by Alki David, a billionaire who chose the name to tweak Aereo, thehigh profile streaming service backed by media mogul Barry Diller. Here’s a closer look at Aereokiller streaming a live show on NBC:
“It’s nonsense,” David said by phone of the lawsuit. “Since 2010, we’ve been arguing that Filmoon is a virtual cable platform and that we want to pay retransmission fees.”
The new lawsuit is important because it’s part of a great game between the broadcast TV industry and Diller over how and when consumers can watch TV. Aereo won a major victory in April when an appeals court in New York ruled that the service did not infringe copyright because its tiny antenna technology delivers a private stream — rather than a public broadcast — to each subscriber.
Aereo’s victory, however, only carries force in New York, Connecticut and Vermont. And its prospects for expansion have been seriously undercut as a result of a California judge’s decision to shut down Aereokiller on the entire west coast.
The latest lawsuit, then, is part of the TV industry’s effort to gain more ammunition ahead of a likely Supreme Court challenge. The Hollywood Reporter, which first reported the story, suggests that the broadcasters likely chose to go after Aereokiller because it is an easier target than Aereo.
Aereo, meanwhile, is going live in Boston this month. CBS has threatened to sue it there too but has yet to make good on the promise. You can read the DC complaint for yourself here:
Ericsson engineers have begun experimenting with a new type of cell site – one embedded inside a window. As demand for mobile data grows, networks must get denser. That means building increasingly smaller cells and putting them much closer to mobile users. So why not take advantage of the glass surfaces that cover our homes, businesses and vehicles?
At CTIA Wireless this week, Ericsson Networked Society Evangelist Mats Guldbrand gave me a demo of the technology at the equipment maker’s booth. Basically, a small antenna element is embedded into a pane of shielded glass. That antenna can pick up Wi-Fi or cellular signals from nearby phones, tablets and laptops and then aggregate those connections, sending them as a combined transmission to the nearest LTE cell tower.
Guldbrand gave an example of a bus containing 50 people all surfing the internet on their smartphones. Each device is trying to connect separately to the same tower, and you wind up with a big mess. Not only are all of those signals interfering with one another, the network is trying to manage 50 simultaneous hand-overs between cell towers. The network might be able to pull it off, but everyone’s experience suffers, Guldbrand said.
If those 50 devices, however, were all connecting to localized antennas embedded in the vehicle’s windows, the bus could then link to the cellular network through a single transmitter mounted on the roof. It’s much easier for the cellular base station to handle a single high-capacity connection than a bunch of smaller connections. Everyone in the bus experiences greater speeds and more resilient links, and since each device isn’t reaching out to a distant tower, their device battery life is spared.
This might sound a bit like the repeater or range-booster kits you can buy to enhance your cellphone’s signal at home, but this technology is designed to integrate closely with the network. Normally a repeater would create all kinds of interference in a crowded network, but by using shielded glass Ericsson can limit the number of competing transmissions bouncing around the cell. The treated windows (and the steel frame) block signals trying to escape the bus, turning it into a kind of Faraday Cage on wheels.
Forthcoming LTE-Advanced technologies will introduce network relay points mounted on bus rooftops and utility poles, which would route signals within the cell. The principle is simple: if you can narrow the distance between network hops you get more resilient and higher-capacity connections.
Ericsson has other plans for connected glass. Guldbrand said that as long as the windows are networked, you could embed all kinds of technology into their surfaces. As part of the demo, Guldbrand showed me a pane of plain glass with an infrared field on its surface. When you interrupted the field with your hand at specific points, you triggered actions like turning on and off the lights or skipping between songs on the stereo. So not only the windows in your future home access the internet, they could replace your light switches and remote controls.
Feature photo courtesy of Shutterstock user irabel8
For all of the books (thousands) written on leadership, individuals (millions) who have participated in leadership seminars and dollars (billions) invested in leadership development, too many leadership experts still fail to distinguish between the practice of leadership and the exercise of bureaucratic power.
In order to engage in a conversation about leadership, you have to assume you have no power — that you aren’t “in charge” of anything and that you can’t sanction those who are unwilling to do your bidding. If, given this starting point, you can mobilize others and accomplish amazing things, then you’re a leader. If you can’t, well then, you’re a bureaucrat.
To gain a true leadership advantage, organizations must be filled with individuals who understand how to maximize their own ratio of “accomplishment over authority.” They must believe it’s possible to do something big with a little dab of power. Think, for example, of Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the world’s largest compendium of knowledge. None of the thousands of individuals who’ve contributed to Wikipedia report to Wales, and yet, as a “social architect,” he built a platform that energized and organized an extraordinary amount of human effort.
What, then, are the attributes of individuals who can inspire others and multiply their impact?
They are seers — individuals who are living in the future, who possess a compelling vision of “what could be.” As human beings, we’re constantly looking forward, and we love to sign on with individuals who are already working on “the next big thing.”
They are contrarians — free of the shackles of conventional wisdom and eager to help others stage a jailbreak. It’s exciting to be around these free-spirited thinkers who liberate us from the status quo and open our minds to new possibilities.
They are architects — adept at building systems that elicit contribution and facilitate collaboration. They leverage social technologies in ways that amplify dissident voices, coalesce communities of passion and unleash the forces of change.
They are mentors — rather than hoarding power, they give it away. Like Mary Parker Follett, the early 20th-century management pioneer, they believe the primary job of a leader is to create more leaders. To this end, they coach, tutor, challenge and encourage.
They are connectors — with a gift for spotting the “combinational chemistry” between ideas and individuals. They help others achieve their dreams by connecting them with sponsors, like-minded peers, and complementary resources.
They are bushwhackers — they clear the trail for new ideas and initiatives by chopping away at the undergrowth of bureaucracy. They’re more committed to doing the right thing than to doing things right.
They are guardians — vigilant defenders of core values and enemies of expediency. Their unflinching commitment to a higher purpose inspires others and encourages them to stand tall for their beliefs.
They are citizens — true activists, their courage to challenge the status quo comes from their abiding commitment to doing as much good as possible for as many as possible. They are other-centered, not self-centered.
Critically, all these roles are rooted in the most potent and admirable human qualities — passion, curiosity, compassion, daring, generosity, accountability and grit. These are the qualities that attract allies and amplify accomplishments. These are the DNA strands of 21st-century leadership. Only by strengthening them can we fully unleash the latent leadership talents that reside in every organization.
That’s why we have launched the Leaders Everywhere Challenge in partnership with HBR and McKinsey & Company. Tell us what your organization is doing to encourage leadership everywhere. How is it working to escape the limits of top-down power structures? What is it doing to equip and energize individuals to exercise their leadership gifts, wherever they are in the organization? How is it nurturing the sort of leaders whom others will want to follow in a post-bureaucratic world? Learn more here.
Authorities in Luxor, Egypt say that ten men are accused of beating a woman and her two daughters to death in what they call an “honor killing” after the women were accused of infidelity.
The women were reportedly beaten with sharp objects and strangled before their bodies were wrapped in sheets, weighted with stones, and thrown into the Nile River. At least one of the men has been arrested and is in custody; police are searching for the remaining suspects. So far, only one of the women has been found.
The man who was arrested on Thursday freely admitted to the murders and said they’d done it to protect their family’s honor because the women were accused of having affairs.
Despite being against Egyptian law, these so-called “honor killings” are rampant in the Middle East. Last year, a husband and wife were thrown in jail in Pakistan after they murdered their 15-year old daughter by throwing acid on her. They said it was because she dishonored their family by looking at a boy.
In recent months, as violence against women grows more and more tension in the Middle East, females are starting to speak out about their rights, especially when it comes to sexual violence.
When I was in college my friends would head on over to a company called PPD to play lab rat in medical trials in exchange for pay. They would spend a day or a week sequestered in rooms where they were monitored, poked, prodded and fed a regimen of bills or placebos, all in the name of science spending money.
But thanks to smarter connected devices, crowdsourcing trends and better medical data analytics and algorithms such clinical trials may become a thing of the past — or at least less of a burden. The launch this week of a crowdfunding campaign for the Scout, a home monitoring device that tracks, pulse, respiratory rate, blood pressure, temperature and other vitals, offers a perfect example of how clinical trials may change. As part of the company’s Indiegogo campaign for the Scout it’s inviting participants to opt into a what will become the usability study it submits to the U.S. Food and drug Administration for approval.
Before Scanadu Scout™ can become a medical device it will have to go through the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval process and this is where your help comes in. With the Scanadu Scout™ you will help us by Scouting yourself and giving us feedback to refine the Scanadu Scout™.
This will happen in the framework of official clinical studies in which you will be invited to partake, ONLY IF YOU OPT-IN. For each study, some of you will be contacted and will have to sign an Informed Consent form. With your help we can put Scanadu Scout™ through FDA to become an over-the-counter consumer-grade diagnostic tool.
Scanadu, the company behind the Scout, isn’t the first or only company to recognize the power of connected devices, crowds and data, Transparency Life Sciences, a New York company started by a refugee from the pharmaceutical industry is also tackling the problem of slow, large and expensive clinical trials with crowdsourced data. TLS has built an online tool to collect information from researchers, physicians and patients that will then take their input to design an FDA-approved protocol for a drug study.
The FDA in December approved the first TLS protocol for a study on the effectiveness of a drug for Multiple Sclerosis patients. An industry consultant wrote that TLS took a process that takes 6 months and completed it in 6 weeks thanks to its ability to gather data from multiple sources into its tool that then formats the data properly. The study relies on remote patient monitoring to cut down on office visits, something that the Scout may one day be able to help with.
Remote monitoring cuts costs but also increases compliance and participation in the study, because it reduces doctor visits. Patients in the study still have access to a nurse or doctor and regular check ins, but they no longer have to spend a chunk of their day traveling to an office and waiting. While TLS and Scanadu are using the web to help speed up the FDA trial process, other doctors are thinking about using crowdsourced data to eliminate some of them, instead relying on crowdsourced data to monitor the efficacy of certain drugs and medical devices after their initial approval. And there are tons of startups out there thinking about finding and cataloguing patient data outside of formal trials, such as PatientsLikeMe, Medify and others in this story.
Much as mobile connectivity has changed the way people hail cabs, book tables at restaurants and share photos, the internet of things and the resulting data from consumer devices may soon change the way we test the efficacy and safety of our drugs. Figuring out the right balance of oversight and self-reporting in this new paradigm will be crucial, but it’s something that should happen.
App store numbers grab headlines, but don’t matter to users. Both BlackBerry and Windows Phone boast constant ecosystem growth with more than 100,000 apps available in each store, yet neither of the two platforms has managed to assert itself as a viable alternative to Android or iOS. Why? Well, Canalys says that it’s the quality of the apps that matters not the quantity.
“At a certain point, how many apps are in a store becomes irrelevant. Offering 100 different unit converters or weather apps is not a valuable choice”, says Canalys senior analyst Tim Shepherd. “What is now far more important for BlackBerry and Microsoft is to focus on plugging inventory gaps and making sure they offer the right apps; to focus on quality and local relevance, not quantity”. According to the company’s latest report, both BlackBerry and Windows Phone fail to offer many of the popular titles available today, hindering their appeal to potential users.
Where Are the Apps?
Canalys analyzed the top 50 apps available in the free and paid categories on Apple App Store and Google Play and discovered that only 34 percent of them are present in either BlackBerry World or Windows Phone Store. That’s based on aggregated rankings over the first 20 days of May. Let’s break down the numbers.
Windows Phone Store delivers 16 free and 14 paid top offerings of the two respective categories from Apple App Store and 22 free and 13 paid top apps of the two corresponding categories from Google Play.
BlackBerry World features five free and nine paid top offerings of the two respective categories from Apple App Store and 11 free and 11 paid top apps of the two corresponding categories from Google Play.
Canalys took into account third-party and platform-exclusive offerings (like Find My iPhone) as well as utility apps “for which similar offerings with equivalent functionality are available”. As a result, the company says that the outcome is a tad more “optimistic” but still points out that there is a significant gap in BlackBerry World and Windows Phone Store which “cannot and should not be masked”.
“These stats underscore the scale of the job Microsoft and BlackBerry each still face in their respective bids to build up their app ecosystems, and to deliver still more compelling – and crucially – genuinely competitive offerings around apps, and both vendors must continue to work hard to rise to the challenge”, says Shepherd.
Keeping Users (Un)Appy
Users choose smartphones based on app availability, among other motivating factors, and “it will only become more so”, says Shepherd. The man also implies that if BlackBerry and Windows Phone don’t offer more quality apps, users might head to a different platform that does.
“Simply, Windows Phone and BlackBerry customers do not want to miss out on apps (or app features) from important and locally relevant brands, or the latest games, because of their choice of smart phone. It is therefore imperative for the success of both Windows Phone and BlackBerry that their respective app ecosystems attract and offer the high-quality content that consumers want and would otherwise miss”, says Shepherd.
As a Windows Phone 8 user, I couldn’t agree more. Critical apps and games, like Instagram, Google Maps or Temple Run 2, are still missing from the Store (which now boasts 145,000 apps) and have been for quite some time. Time is ticking. BlackBerry tells a similar story with its own app store, which lags behind any of its competitors in regards to sheer numbers (120,000 apps) and popular offerings.
Microsoft appears to be on the right track with Windows Phone, offering a decent selection of apps from major international and local brands. But the software giant also has to target “the next few hundred popular, valued and sought-after titles in each market [Apple App Store and Google Play]” and “build hype and interest around its platform”, says Canalys.
The Windows Phone ecosystem however lacks momentum compared to BlackBerry World which received major titles like Skype and Angry Birds Star Wars (neither of which is actually new) and capitalizes on developer support. The platform gained more than 50,000 apps in merely three and a half months, which is a commendable achievement.
But can BlackBerry and Windows Phone beef up their ecosystems in a timely manner? Tick tock, tick tock…
For four years, artist Naomi Natale’s social art practice, the One Million Bones project, has used education, hands-on artmaking and public art installation to raise awareness of ongoing genocide and mass atrocities. On June 8, Naomi and the One Million Bones team will be joined by thousands of volunteers to lay down the one million human “bones,” which participants have made by hand, on the National Mall in Washington, DC — creating a striking visual representation of conflicts we cannot continue to ignore.
Here, we chat with Natale about where the idea for this fascinating demonstration came from.
You’ve been working on the One Million Bones Project for a long time, and it has grown from an idea into massive, global art project. How did you get here?
My background is in art and photography, and I’m especially interested in the intersection of art and activism — particularly the ways art can be used to bring issues that are physically far away close to home on an emotional level. I am deeply committed to the issue of genocide and mass atrocities, and One Million Bones is my way of addressing that.
One Million Bones called for individuals all over the world to create an artistic representation of a human bone, which would then be installed on the National Mall as a visible petition and symbolic mass grave. The installation will be happening June 8 through the 10, 2013.
There have been years of activity leading up to this moment. Tell us about the grass-roots education effort involved.
One of the biggest elements of the project has been the educational component, because so many young people and adults simply don’t know what genocide is — let alone that it is happening today. My concern is, “How will we ever know or look for solutions to an issue if we don’t know what it is and that it is happening?”
We designed curriculum from preschool all the way up to high school so that educators can bring the material into their classrooms in an age-appropriate manner. At the younger age levels, we talk about issues like values, ethics and respect. We talk about virtues and how our bones are like our virtues: they make us who we are though we can’t see them.
For older age groups, we talk directly about genocide and how we can take responsibility as consumers and voters — that our voices matter. The bones they make becomes a symbol of our voices. We then direct students to other organizations that are working on these issues on a deeper level in hopes that this sparks an interest in future activism.
This is a really difficult issue to bring into a classroom. We’ve heard this time and time again, with all the schools that we’ve been working in. But the fact that there’s an activity at the end really opens a space where students can learn about the issues, process them, and then put the intention for change into a direct action. The action piece is really important with an issue this difficult, because otherwise people can be paralyzed by that information, feel completely overwhelmed and want to turn away.
Through the project, thousands of students were able to learn about these issues and connect to their peers abroad. One Million Bones had the amazing opportunity to partner with Students Rebuild to launch a challenge in which each bone made generated a $1 donation, up to $500,000, from the Bezos Family Foundation towards CARE’s work on the ground in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In April 2012, 50,000 bones were laid in Congo Square in New Orleans. Photo: One Million Bones
What is the project’s reach?
We have had over 100,000 participants in schools in all 50 states and 30 countries. It’s been a completely grassroots effort. We laid our first 50,000 bones down in New Mexico in August of 2010. That was a critical moment for us, because it was the first time we could ever see the bones laid out, and we were able to capture a lot of reflections of how people responded. As a result of that event, we launched The Road to Washington ten months later. Thirty-five installations were laid out in 35 state capitals, all on the same day, all community-driven and organized. It was a way for volunteers who were really moved and stirred by the project to galvanize their own communities to lay down bones.
We laid 50,000 bones down in Congo Square in New Orleans in April 2012 as well. In that city, we drew a natural connection between genocide and mass atrocities and the local violence experienced there — a lot of the discussions from the students drew from their personal experience. When they learned about the violence on the scale it is in Sudan and Congo, I think there was this very deep connection and empathy. Students in New Orleans continued to make thousands of bones and have done installations and educational programming since then, often seeing the bones as a way to find their individual voices. It can really be an empowering experience to realize you can do something, can contribute to a larger cause.
Is there always an exhibit of some kind when teachers use the curriculum?
Not always. Sometimes students just make bones and send them in. Sometimes the school or an arts center will host an installation. And sometimes an individual champions the project and decides they’re going to put an installation somewhere public and get a lot of other people involved. We help them from our end virtually, and do what we can to support that process.
In September 2012, with our partners Students Rebuild, we were able to bring on 40 state coordinators, each brining the project into their local communities. Our Colorado state coordinator, Marianne Beard, got over 60 schools in Colorado to work on the project and to make bones. And they produced an installation. That’s just one example of how the project has grown.
How did you become interested in genocide as a topic for art and activism?
The journey began with a book I read in 2003: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, which was about the Rwandan genocide. I didn’t learn about the Rwandan genocide until long after it happened and, when I did, I couldn’t believe that I had never heard of it.
It’s hard to wrap your head around how 800,000 people were killed in 90 days predominantly by machetes. You think about the intimacy of killing somebody through a method that takes a lot of power and human energy. The international community absolutely knew what was happening, and we didn’t do anything. There were things that we could have done that wouldn’t have even required us to go in, and we failed to do even that. But it was reading about what happened in Rwanda, plus knowing there was genocide happening in Sudan as well as a conflict ongoing in Congo for years made me want to make Philip’s words come to life and bring it into my part of the world so that others could see it.
The One Million Bones project focuses on Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and Somalia. These conflicts have been going on for such a long time. Little attention has been paid to them. Next to no action has been taken.
Participant carrying bones for a bone laying installation. Photo: Joanne Teasdale
It was 10 years ago last month that the government of Sudan began a genocidal campaign against its civilians in Darfur. Over 300,000 people have died, and over two-and-a-half million people are displaced. It’s pretty inconceivable that President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court with crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and yet his regime still stands. In 2004, for the first time ever, the US government recognized a genocide in Sudan while it was happening, and we still failed to take any effective action to intervene.
I think that set an incredibly dangerous precedent because before, we wouldn’t call it genocide and we didn’t take action. But to actually call it a genocide and not take action — I don’t know how we can carry on and say “never again.” When we talk to students about this, it becomes something they want to learn more about, and they want to be more active and aware. So it’s so important to be able to have an opportunity to connect with our youth about these issues, as well as everyone else.
What are the bones made of?
Some are made out of clay. Some are made out of plaster gauze, which is really beautiful to do because it’s like bandaging bones. Some of them are made out of wood. Some of them are glass, metal, paper, and tape — all different materials.
I have to say, when they’re all together, when they’re all laid out, they’re quite striking and really, really beautiful. The main parameter is we ask that they are created in neutral colors. Some people have inscribed their names or prayers or thoughts on their bones as well.
And why a bone?
The bone was chosen as a symbol to attest to the gravity of these issues. But more significantly, it was chosen as a symbol and as a reminder that we belong to each other and that we’re responsible to one another. And that’s important: we’ve gotten a lot of pushback because it’s ultimately pretty out there to have kids making bones to address such an intense issue. But when we were able to explain the project to educators, walk them through it, and talk them through how these bones are ultimately about why we should take care of each other, they were able to embrace it. It’s very provocative, having a lot of children ultimately creating a mass grave on the National Mall. But it sends a message that’s much higher than that.
Bones made in Tallahassee, Florida. Photo: Jane McPherson
Are the bones in Washington DC all those that have been created through the program?
Yes, and they’ve been stored in hubs around the country. A lot of them were sent to our base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now for the last haul, they’re sending them to DC.
What will happen in DC?
On June 8, we will lay all the bones out on the National Mall, an action performed as a ceremony, starting at 3rd Street, which is the closest street to the Capitol. We ask people to come dressed in white. And we will lay the bones out right on the Mall. Our goal is to have 4,000 people to lay the bones out that day. That’s an incredible amount of people to organize in a city you haven’t had much time in. But we’ve done a lot of community outreach in the DC area, and we know people are coming in from all over. There’s a class of 20 kids from Tennessee who are making the trek for the entire weekend. We have a group of 60 people from the Great Lakes region who are coming out, from Tallahassee, from Boston — from everywhere. But it’s a call to everyone — so we want as many people there as possible to participate and witness. Anyone can just turn up, but we highly recommend that you register.
You were an inaugural Fellow from the TEDGlobal class of 2009. How has the fellowship had an impact on your work?
It’s been incredible. Hands down, this project would not have been able to evolve or carry on without the support and encouragement the TED community gave. It was such an out-there idea from the beginning, and the fact that the TED Fellows team really believed in it and in me was really huge and important. So I definitely feel that, as the project culminates, they’re all there for certain in their support. The people that I’ve met — the other fellows who are some of my dearest friends — have been extraordinary and so inspirational. And some of OMB partners have been made through the Fellows community, and that’s been extraordinary.
After the event at the National Mall, what’s next?
In the process of this project, our project manager Susan McAllister and I co-founded an organization called the Art of Revolution that is dedicated to creating works at the intersection of art and activism. Our hope is to continue to do these types of projects. We have no ideas confirmed, but we know that we really love working in this space and we want to continue to do that. And so we have a website called TheArtofRevolution.org, and we’ll just continue from here.
Will the One Million Bones website continue?
We’ve heard from a lot of different groups who work on these issues that they’d like to continue use the curriculum and educational tools. So it’s very possible that people will continue to make bones in the process of learning about these issues. We will keep the website up and see where that goes organically. In terms of where the bones are going afterwards, our goal is to create a permanent installation. We’ll wait to see how the event goes in DC and to see if we’re able to do that afterwards.
Having lived with the issue for so long, what have you learned about genocide and what it says about human nature?
Its definitely something very daunting to consider. We’ve known it to happen over and over again. I think about Raphael Lemkin who is the man who coined the phrase. He gave his entire life so that we would have a word that would describe this crime. Without it, we couldn’t create the Geneva Convention or an international response of law. Unfortunately, the real causes of genocide are very complex. Each country, each issue, each place is very different. Those are things that I don’t feel I have the capacity to change. What I have to offer is questioning how we as a world allow it to happen without our attention or concern.
Above: Watch a video made for the One Million Bones Albuquerque event on August 28th, 2011.
Google was rumored to debut a new version of Android earlier this month at its I/O Developers Conference. The event has come and gone, however, without a single mention of the operating system. Recent reports suggest that an update will be available in the coming months with support for a more power efficient Bluetooth standard, but little is known about the update. A forum member on XDA-Developers recently posted images of a Nexus 4 that appears to be running a test build of Android 4.3. The images reveal the new version will retain the “Jelly Bean” name, similar to Android 4.2, and will be only a minor update consisting of small changes and bug fixes. One change appears to be a slight cosmetic update to the Android camera software with the controls being relocated from the center to the side. A second image follows below.
It’s a known fact that some of the worst movies in existence feature some of the best car chases ever created. Films like Bullitt, Vanishing Point, The Wraith and To Live and Die In L.A. are terrible from a script standpoint. However add in a good car chase, and BOOM! Instant classic. The following is a montage of some of the best chases ever recorded on film and I’ve got to say that the way it was put together is pretty damn impressive.
An 18-year old girl who impersonates Taylor Swift to earn extra cash was recently bullied by some classmates, and she says it’s because of who she looks like.
Xenna Kristian says she’s bruised and possibly has a broken jaw after a girl allegedly pulled her by her ponytail out of her chair and kicked her repeatedly. The college student says things have gotten ugly since her classmates found out she’s a professional Taylor lookalike.
“Some girls at college had started making nasty comments, but it escalated really quickly,” Kristian said. “It just came as a complete shock.”
Kristian says her friends eventually intervened in the altercation, but not before she suffered several injuries to her face. Police are investigating the incident.
“I never expected anything like this to happen. It’s not nice to see people being nasty about you. Since I started being a lookalike people have been saying stuff. They must be jealous that I’m going off to do something with my life,” she says.
The pain of the violence will eventually go away, but for now Kristian says she’s upset that she has to cancel appearances until the physical marks go away.
A company called AoTerra is doing very well indeed on the German crowdfunding platform Seedmatch. At the start of this month it broke the record for the most crowdfunding received so far by a German startup, leading Seedmatch to raise the limit on its round (investors get a share of the startup’s profits) from €500,000 ($648,000) to €750,000. The limit may have to be lifted again: AoTerra hit it minutes ago, and it still has 24 days to go.
So what makes Dresden-based AoTerra such hot property? The fact that it does just that: heat properties. But these are no ordinary heaters. These are heating systems with servers in them.
AoTerra’s system comprises a server connected to a heat exchanger or heat pump, which is in turn connected to the property’s ventilation system, and a hot water tank. It’s intended for new-build and renovated properties that meet modern energy efficiency standards and, according to the company, efficiency is nearly 100 percent (the company also only uses “green” energy for its devices).
Each system has a broadband connection and forms part of a distributed, OpenStack-based data center. The result is AoCloud, which offers compute, block storage and object storage (all are currently in beta). Customers can be pretty sure their cloud is as green as it gets, but there are other benefits too – the distributed nature of the cloud should mean low latency, and AoTerra is touting security as a plus too.
AoTerra is also involved with a couple of Europe-funded projects, namely LEADS (trying to create a “data-as-a-service” model on top of geographically distributed micro-clouds) and ParaDIME (trying to making computing more energy-efficient).
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the idea of using waste heat from data centers to heat homes — London’s Telehouse West data center was going to do that, although the local council never set up the distribution network and the housing development never got built due to the recession, and Telus is planning something similar in Vancouver. But what AoTerra has come up with is a step beyond.
Property owners or developers pay €12,000 for the system (about the same as a normal heating system), but they don’t have any ongoing operating costs – from that point on, they get free heating and hot water. And AoTerra gets out of having to pay for air conditioning, which is a pretty major chunk of the cost of running a traditional data center.
Overall, AoTerra claims, its distributed data center costs the company about a tenth of the normal set-up costs for a data center, with its running costs being less than half and CO2 emissions around a third. The company has only been going for a year, and it already has 20 AoHeat devices with over 200 servers installed. It had a turnover last year of €100,000, and has already signed contracts worth €400,000 this year.
AoTerra says it’s negotiating €1.6 million worth of contracts at the moment, and has another €3.1 million worth in the pipeline. This year it wants to sell 100 AoHeat devices, and next year 500 – at that point, it would be one of Germany’s biggest cloud providers. They need the crowdfunding investment to grow the team to match demand, they say.
