Back in August, I blogged about Thanko’s Catgirl Earphones, which were shaped like cat ears. And today, the notorious Tokyo-based USB gadget maker started selling the so-called Hot Cat Gloves [JP]. A big day for the Cosplay crowd, especially those with a penchant for dressing up as a catgirl.
These things may appear totally silly, but Thanko says that the Catgirl Earphones from the summer are still their No. 1 selling item. And the company has to make money to keep their three (!) brick-and-mortar stores in Tokyo going somehow.
The Hot Cat Gloves can keep your fingers warm if you connect them to your computer’s USB port (they have a built-in heater). They weigh 145g.
Thanko sells the gloves for $35. Since the English store closed down earlier this year, you might want to contact import/export specialists Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya if you feel like buying something silly today.
How many USB ports is too many? Not ten, apparently. Meritline.com is selling a ten-port USB 2.0 hub for an actually-reasonable price of $26 with free shipping.
Short of actually plugging this thing into a computer, you know what else it might be good for? A charging station for a large family or small office. Since just about every portable gadget and cell phone is rechargeable via USB nowadays, you could place this in a common area and use it to juice up all your devices.
You’ll have to figure out how to manage the rat’s nest of cables that’ll undoubtedly ensue but, hey, with great charging comes great responsibility.
By Sarah McBride, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The Showtime cable-television network has begun selling episodes of its hit series “Weeds” online, weeks ahead of the DVD release.
The tactic, by “Weeds” producer Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., is the part of a more aggressive effort Hollywood is taking to boost online sales of digital movies.
Studios have become bolder in how they push their shows and movies over digital channels. Earlier this month, Sony Corp.’s (SNE) Sony Pictures started making online rentals of its hit movie “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” available for owners of some Sony TVs and other devices, well before the film’s Jan. 5 release on DVD.
A Sony spokesman declined to say how many consumers were taking the offer.
For weeks we’ve reported that the wireless industry has been pressing the Federal Communications Commission to figure out ways to get the mobile services more spectrum licenses. Experts are darkly warning of a looming spectrum crisis, as consumers rush to buy bandwidth-gobbling smart phones. CTIA, the Wireless Association, says its member companies urgently need 800MHz of license space below the 3GHz mark.
Via Chris Anderson comes this rather odd news about plans for Berkeley High School to cut science labs as part of the school’s measures to “address Berkeley’s dismal racial achievement gap.” Apparently white students at the school do “far better than the state average while black and Latino students [do] worse.” Fair enough. That’s something worth looking into, but taking away science labs? According to one of the people who helped put forth the proposal, “science labs were largely classes for white students.” So, just do away with them? Why not explore why that is? Or see if there’s something more proactive to be done about it? Of course, it’s not even true that it’s just white kids taking science labs:
Science teachers were understandably horrified by the proposal. “The majority of the science department believes that this major policy decision affecting the entire student body, the faculty, and the community has been made without any notification, without a hearing,” said Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School’s science department, at last week’s school board meeting.
Sincular-Mertens, who has taught science at BHS for 24 years, said the possible cuts will impact her black students as well. She says there are twelve African-American males in her AP classes and that her four environmental science classes are 17.5 percent African American and 13.9 percent Latino. “As teachers, we are greatly saddened at the thought of losing the opportunity to help all of our students master the skills they need to find satisfaction and success in their education,” she told the board.
It seems like there must be more to this story than what’s being reported. The concept of cutting science labs because more white students take them just seems too preposterous to make sense.
SCVNGR offers a platform for businesses, universities and museums to build real-world, location-based games. Some are exactly what the name implies — a scavenger hunt with clues from your phone. Cities use them in tourism campaigns to promote places, while museums use them to point out works of art. Still others, like jewelers, use them for promotions. One involved burying a $15,000 diamond ring in the ground and giving it away to the finder.
It’s proving to be a rather profitable niche for the Boston-based startup. The company turned cash flow positive in the last half of 2009 and will bring in $1 million in revenues this year, all from being an idea that Priebatsch submitted to a business plan competition his freshman year.
While other companies in the location-based space are duking it out to attract hundreds of thousands of users and achieve the kind of scale that will make an advertising network run successfully, Priebatsch says he’ll use the new funding to focus on SCVNGR’s specialty.
“I had a choice to try and get bajilllion people right away, or create something enterprises would push out to lots of people,” he said. “In the end, I chose to be pragmatic because we didn’t have enough money to go the purely social route. Competing with Gowalla and Foursquare would be akin to us competing with Facebook.”
The round led by Google Ventures, also includes Highland Capital, which invested in the first round. Google Ventures’ Rich Miner takes a seat on the board. Priebatsch is doubling the size of the company from 20 to 40, which he says he can do on a $4 million round size because the company is cash-flow positive. The company will also build out more features that support its game-building community and focus more on selling their service to conferences. They recently partnered with graphics conference SIGGRAPH to help people find sessions that interested them through a game.
Trigemina, a pharmaceutical maker working on therapies for acute and chronic pain, has brought in $305,000 of an anticipated $999,000 round of equity and rights, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the company is backed by grants from the National Institutes of Health, as well as equity from private sources.
TriCipher, maker of the myOneLogin software for identity authentication on apps offered through the likes of SalesForce.com, Google and WebEx, has raised $3 million by issuing a new round of convertible promissory notes, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Los Gatos, Calif., the company is backed by ArrowPath Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Trident Capital, RBC Technology Ventures and Epic Ventures. It has now raised $33 million to date.
Skybox Security, provider of risk assessment and compliance enforcement software to companies and organizations of all sizes, has brought in $2 million through a fourth-round offering of preferred stock, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Jose, Calif., the company is backed by Benchmark Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mitsubishi, Carmel Ventures, Valley Ventures and Rembrandt Ventures. It has now raised $36.5 million to date.
The growth of data revenues was a huge story for the mobile industry in 2009, and those gains are sure to ramp up over the next few years as connectivity continues to expand beyond phones to new devices like netbooks, e-readers and a host of other consumer electronics. That uptake will increasingly be a double-edged sword for carriers, though, which are already struggling with ways to support the increased traffic driven by Apple’s iPhone and other multimedia-friendly devices.
Which is why AT&T and its competitors are beginning to discuss ways to minimize congestion on the network as they increase revenues from data-hungry consumers. There are lots of ways to attempt that, of course, from the current “unlimited” caps that generate disdain among users — and have largely failed to address bandwidth issues — to the congestion pricing that cable companies are beginning to toy with. But as Stacey points out in the latest report from GigaOM Pro (sub. required), each option has some important pros and cons. Variable-pricing models can be confusing to consumers who (like me) don’t know how much bandwidth they typically use. And while embracing alternative technologies like Wi-Fi can ease traffic on the cell network, it can also cut into the mobile-data revenues that will increasingly become crucial as margins from voice whittle away.
The dramatic surge in mobile data usage will continue to ramp up quickly as Android gains traction and superphones become more commonplace. Among carriers, the rich are getting richer thanks to that uptake, but they’re also beginning to experience the kind of network hiccups that invite users to move to rivals that can handle the traffic. The challenge for operators, then, is to figure out how to deliver — and monetize — data-heavy services to the relatively few users who demand that kind of bandwidth without sacrificing the connectivity required from more mainstream consumers. The carriers that can most effectively solve those issues will have a significant edge as we move from 3G toward 4G.
2009 Toyota Venza – Click above for high-res image gallery
Earlier this spring, our own Alex Nunez reviewed Toyota‘s latest crossover type thingy, the Venza, and came away rather impressed. I do a fair bit of traveling for my day job, which usually entails schlepping a sizable amount of video equipment around. Typically we pack up our A/V gear and FedEx it to a location since airlines charge so much for extra baggage and won’t guarantee arrival times. For one of our recent trips, however, we decided to hit the road and venture from our Ann Arbor offices down to western South Carolina. As it happened, a Venza was available for duty and appeared to be well-suited to the task at hand.
We loaded up cameras, tripods, microphones and other miscellanea before heading due south on US-23 for Ohio and parts beyond. Our Venza was finished in a unique Sunset Bronze Mica color with the same ivory leather interior that we sampled previously. Under the hood was also the same 3.5-liter V6 engine that we’ve enjoyed in numerous Lexus and Toyota vehicles with torque going to all four wheels via Toyota’s all-wheel-drive system.
As Nunez described, the Venza doesn’t really fit in the typical crossover category because it’s taller than a typical wagon yet shorter than vehicles like the Ford Edge or Chevrolet Equinox. It’s more like a tall Camry wagon than anything else – which, at least in theory – is just ducky by us. Find out how the Venza fared on our road trip odyssey after the jump.
Steve Jobs is “extremely happy.” But it’s not because Psystar is dead. And it’s not because he’s been named CEO of the Multiverse or some other such end-of-year award. He’s happy because that Tablet he’s been working on almost exclusively since he returned to Apple in the summer is nearing completion. We think.
Writing in the New York Times last week, Nick Bilton quoted two unnamed sources (so we really only have his word to go on) in a piece that definitely got Apple fans’ hearts racing and wallets twitching;
…the icing on the cake comes from a current senior employee inside Apple. When one of my colleagues here asked if the rumors of the Apple tablet were true, and when we could expect such a device, the response from his source was, “I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet.”
When El Jobso is happy, Apple is happy. When Apple is happy, they release stuff – shiny, sexy new stuff. And when Apple releases new stuff, we all get a little poorer.
Some species are already on the move because of climate change, but a lot more is needed for species & ecosystems to survive.
A new study by the California Academy of Scientists attempts to estimate how fast species and ther ecosystems will have to move to keep up with climate change. On average, the team of scientists have concluded that ecosystems will have to shift at a rate of 0.42 kilometers (or about a quarter mile) per year.
There are differences across all the different ecosystems, of course. And there are human factors that will come into play as well.
There is holiday racing on Monday at Santa Anita and our free horse racing pick for our forum visitors will come in the Eddie Logan Stakes. Its for two year olds going 1 mile on the Santa Anita Turf course. There are not many with experience running on the grass in this event. With our free horse racing pick we will play #4 Via Verde to win. The Eddie Logan Stakes is scheduled as the 7th race on the Santa Anita card today. Post time is at 7:07PM Eastern Time and you can watch it on TVG.
Via Verde will have jockey Joel Rosario in the saddle and he is trained by John Sadler. This two year old is a $250,000 purchase. He is coming off a first place finish on a turf event at Santa Anita back on October 17th with Rosario aboard. Via Verde in his three career starts has posted a win with two seconds. This trainer jockey combination is hitting 27% winners in the past 60 days. Take this colt by Cherokee Run to win the Eddie Logan Stakes.
Play #4 Via Verde to win Race 7 at Santa Anita 6-1 on the Morning Line
Vanessa Woods is not only one of my dearest friends, she’s also an extremely gifted writer. Currently at Duke University, she studies the cognitive development of chimpanzees and bonobos at sanctuaries in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Next June, Vanessa’s latest book, Bonobo Handshake, will be published–and I can’t wait…
Check out this video and read the description below:
Bonobo Handshake
In 2005, Vanessa Woods accepted a marriage proposal from a man she barely knew and agreed to join him on a research trip to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. Settling in at a bonobo sanctuary in Congo’s capital, Vanessa and her fiancé entered the world of a rare ape with whom we share 98.7% of our DNA. Vanessa soon discovered that bonobos live in a peaceful society in which females are in charge, war is nonexistent, and sex is as common and friendly as a handshake.
A fascinating memoir of hope and adventure, Bonobo Handshake traces Vanessa’s self-discovery as she finds herself falling deeply in love with her husband, the apes, and her new surroundings. Courageous and extraordinary, Almost French meets The Poisonwood Bible in this true story of revelation and transformation in a fragile corner of Africa.
With the introduction of the Ford Fusion Hybrid, the redesigned Honda Insight, and a slew of other hybrid-versioned mainstream models, 2010 will go down as the model year that the hybrid market blew open and progressed from being the ‘Prius’ market.
Though Honda is no newcomer to the hybrid market, the 2010 Insight is their answer to the Toyota Prius; the iconic hybrid that defined the inaugural generation of the gas-electric hybrid vehicle. The low, flowing design with sporty rear hatch gives the Insight a a sleek, competitive, and hybrid-centric design, while not embarrassingly screaming ‘tree-hugger on board’ as you drive by.
But how will it hold up to the 2010 Toyota Prius? Let’s find out.
Hit the jump to read more and to view the high-res image gallery (at the bottom of the post).
The exterior design of the 2010 Honda Insight is typical of what one would expect of a hybrid vehicle; it’s small, has a bit of an elongated shape, and a low front that opens up into a much broader rear-hatch. That being said; there is enough aesthetic appeal so that even the harshest critic of the hybrid look might not be totally revolted.
Sitting on 15″ alloys, the front of the Insight sports projector-beam halogen headlights with blue-tinted chrome bezels that give the car a bit of visual-pop during the darker hours, and LED brake lights.
As we said before, however, looks couldn’t matter less when shopping for a car in a segment where all of your options look like a wedge of cheese; it’s what is inside and under the hood that matters most.
Interior:
The Insight’s interior reeks of the Civic and Fit, but that is not to say anything negative. The dash has a very futuristic feel with the LED speedometer that sits in a nook carved out above the main dash of the steering wheel. Generally speaking though, the dash has a rather modest motif, but we feel that it suits the car well. The LCD navigation/radio display screen (on the EX trim package) sits square in the middle of the dash, to the right of the digital climate control buttons. One space saving feature we thought was rather intuitive was the replacing of multiple HVAC vent option buttons, with a single touch button that cycled through the venting options with each push. In the middle of the gauge cluster, situated right behind the steering wheel, sits another small LCD screen, or Multi Information Display, as Honda has dubbed it, about the size of a deck of cards, that updates the driver as to their statistics such as fuel economy, and battery usage.
Another cool feature on the Insight’s Multi Information Display is the EcoAssist feature; a system that provides feedback to the driver via an ‘eco score’ in order to help the driver operate the car more efficiently. The EcoAssist system even has a companion iPhone app that reports to the driver how efficient their driving is. The driver’s trip is rated in leaves, with three leaves indicating an optimally efficient trip.
Overall interior comfort is also pretty impressive, with sufficient rear leg room for your tree-hugging friends. The rear seat folds down 60/40 to expand the already ample cargo space located under the rear hatch, making the Insight a modestly-sized vehicle with ample space to provide for an active lifestyle. You’ll get 15.9 cubic feet of cargo space with the rear seats folded up, and 31.5 cubic feet with the seats folded down.
Our assessment of the interior did not leave us without complaint, however. The overall material use is of standard quality, the navigation system lags and seems very third-partyish, and the removable cup-holder is in the most asinine location (you can even remove a little piece that makes the cup-holders disappear).
Performance:
The technology employed by Honda to power the 2010 Insight is their Integrated Motor Assist engine, or IMA for short. The conventional motor is a 1.3-liter, i-VTEC 4-cylinder engine that puts out 98 horsepower and up to 123 lb-ft of torque. Figure in the integrated electric motor which sits between the engine and transmission, and the figures increase by 13 horsepower and and up to 58 extra lb-ft of torque. The IMA kicks in to aide the conventional engine during acceleration and uphill driving. The i-VTEC technology features its patented two valves per cylinder, and deactivates the intake when cruising at moderate speeds; this technology also aides in increasing fuel-economy, as does Honda’s CVT transmission. ECON mode, available as part of the EcoAssist system, offers a one touch feature that modifies the vehicles various systems to help minimize the overall energy expenditure of the vehicle, combining with the aforementioned attributes to provide an extremely fuel-efficient machine.
Though Honda employs these multiple fuel-saving technologies, the Toyota Prius still sits atop the hybrids as most fuel-efficient with its EPA estimated 48/51 mpg, and 50 mpg combined. The Insight gets an estimated 40/43 mpg, though we only averaged 35 mpg during our week-long test.
The only complaint we had with the vehicle’s overall performance was the jerk that you feel when the car switches between hybrid and conventional gasoline modes. Though the car performs decently, be in mind that it is a hybrid after all; top speed is about 112 mph and 60 mph comes in a sluggish 12 seconds.
Overall:
The Insight comes with a slightly more modest price-tag than does the Prius; pricing starts at $19,800, $21,300, and $23,100 for the LX, EX, and EX with Navigation trim packages, respectively. Compare these prices to those of the Prius; $22,400 for the Prius II, $23,400 for the Prius III, and $26,200 for the leather-trimmed Prius IV, and there is a considerable issue as to affordability.
Toyota though, offers more amenities and greater flexibility with regard to options on the Prius than Honda does on the Insight and as said before, the Prius trumps the Insight on fuel-economy as well. All in all we feel that the Prius represents a better buy in this segment.
One should bear in mind however, that Toyota has been chomping at the bit with Prius for quite sometime, and that the Insight represents Honda’s entry into the designated-hybrid segment, and it was in fact quite an effort. Honda also has an exciting new hybrid coupe in the pipeline, the 2011 CR-Z, which I’m eagerly anticipating.
It didn’t move us the way we need to. The science says that we’ve got to significantly reduce emissions over the next — over the next 40 years. There’s nothing in the Copenhagen agreement that ensures that that happens.
It made so few people happy, we included the deal in our list of green winners and losers of 2009 (GigaOM Pro subscription required). But as Obama says in his PBS interview, it’s his job to sell the benefits of a green economy to the American people now that the deal fell through on the world stage.
What was the big news that happened in your sector in Q3? Catch up with GigaOM Pro’s, “Quarterly Wrap-ups.”
If gold ends up rocketing higher as bulls expect, it could turn John Paulson into one of the richest men in the entire world, if not the richest.
This is because much of the world's wealthy lost money during the recent crisis and remain long the world economy, in contrast to Mr. Paulson.
Money Morning: On that famed list, at No. 33, is where you'll find Paulson today. The hedge-fund manager's financial acumen led to what is now being called the "the greatest trade ever." By shorting the subprime mortgage market, Paulson & Co. Inc. generated a $15 billion gain.
Paulson's personal net worth of $6 billion is impressive in its own right. But over the next several years, I believe that Paulson's trading savvy will vault him into the top spot.
And the vehicle that will take him there is gold.
It's an interesting thought, that Mr. Paulson could become the wealthiest person. It's actually possible, but would be very challenging to achieve.
According to Forbes, Warren Buffett's wealth comes to $40 billion at #2. Yet this wealth could be under pressure if the world economy stagnates and Mr. Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, merely grinds forward. Bill Gates was #1 at $50 billion, but has a similar problem as Mr. Buffett given that most of his wealth is in Microsoft.
Meanwhile John Paulson doubled his wealth to $6 billion in 2008 betting against the real estate market and is now near $6.8 billion. Now, he's a huge proponent of gold, which could conceivably rally while Berkshire and Microsoft go nowhere or fall. Far more importantly, unlike Mr. Buffett or Bill Gates, Mr. Paulson can earn juicy hedge fund performance fees off of the 30+ billion dollars in assets under management at his hedge fund Paulson & Co.
Thus a few killer years for the fund could earn a lot of fees. If you double $30 billion of assets, yet take a 20% performance fee, you earn $6 billion right there. Poor Warren Buffett doesn't collect these 20% cuts of other Berkshire shareholders' gains. He simply collects the profit from his own shares and takes a relatively small salary. Gates' wealth simply goes whereever Microsoft goes.
Hence if gold really shoots the moon, and say quintuples to $5000, there's a chance that Mr. Paulson's personal asset gains plus massive performance fees could vault him over Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' top spots.
Such a scenario would likely make him look like a new Warren Buffett, but there's a huge difference.
Paulson would make money on a giant speculative bet, and the majority of his wealth would likely be created via fees, not personal asset gains. Thus his personal performance would be vastly higher than his investors' and would be less due to investment acumen and more due to his sweet fee structure. This is a far cry from Mr. Buffett's no-fee, diversified, and conservative investment-built wealth.
How many USB ports is too many? Not ten, apparently. Meritline.com is selling a ten-port USB 2.0 hub for an actually-reasonable price of $26 with free shipping.
Ask 
It’s proving to be a rather profitable niche for the Boston-based startup. The company turned cash flow positive in the last half of 2009 and will bring in $1 million in revenues this year, all from being an idea that Priebatsch submitted to a business plan competition his freshman year.
Clearly the 
