Category: News

I’ve always felt bad for fish. Not just in that they’re fish, but that all those in captivity (and many in the wild) just spend all day swimming in circles. Take that great video of the enormous aquarium in Okinawa — there’s a freaking whale shark in there, used to cruising the ocean; now, even in the second-biggest aqua-enclosure in the world, it’s essentially doing laps. If only they had made a gigantic labyrinth aquarium like this one, the whale shark and its weird-looking friends might actually have somewhere to go.

Its little compartments and passageways are more suited to tetras and goldfish than whale sharks (alas), but it’s still an awfully cool little thing. Technically, the fish would have more places to go in a big cube of the same measurements, but that’s mostly open water, and I think we have all seen how much fish like to lick the sides of their enclosures.

Unfortunately, at $6500 it’s rather a luxury — not that you wouldn’t guess that, since it’s sold at a shop called “Opulent Items.” Add to that the cost of retaining a full time aquarium-scrubber, since the thing would be unbelievably hard to keep clean, and the cost really starts to skyrocket. I guess the question is whether your fish are worth it? I wish mine were.

[via 7gadgets, I New Idea, and Unpluggd]

Propriedades Medicinais da Videira

It’s the end of an era. MSN Direct has announced that their wireless data service will be shut off on January 1st, 2012. The service supplies a data feed to wristwatches, GPS units, and other portable devices.

MSN Direct was a great idea that never really took off. The service gave you the ability to see real-time traffic reports, news and weather updates, and in come cases, meeting reminders. There were a series of devices that used it, but in the end they were prohibitively expensive, and have been replaced by smartphones and the like anyway. So it’s not a huge surprise that MSN Direct has blamed reduced demand for their decision to shut the service down.

Honestly, there’s not much reason to panic at this point (if you were thinking about it), as MSN has given people using the service two years worth of warning that the end is nigh. But of course, there will be those few holdouts who will fight it right up to the end. Or, they could just go buy a Droid phone, and be done with it now.

[via Mediabistro]

President Barack Obama greets Louvon Harris, left, Betty Byrd Boatner, right, both sisters of James Byrd, Jr., and Judy Shepard, center, mother of Matthew Shepard, following his remarks on the the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in the East Room of the White House, Oct. 28, 2009.

Today the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act became law, and the President hosted a reception to celebrate a victory decades in the making and steeped in blood and pain. Amongst those attending were the families of the victims for which the law was named, as well as civil rights community leaders. Below are the President’s remarks in full.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you so much, and welcome to the White House. There are several people here that I want to just make mention of because they helped to make today possible. We’ve got Attorney General Eric Holder. (Applause.) A champion of this legislation, and a great Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. (Applause.) My dear friend, senior Senator from the great state of Illinois, Dick Durbin. (Applause.) The outstanding Chairman of Armed Services, Carl Levin. (Applause.) Senator Arlen Specter. (Applause.) Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House, Representative John Conyers. (Applause.) Representative Barney Frank. (Applause.) Representative Tammy Baldwin. (Applause.) Representative Jerry Nadler. (Applause.) Representative Jared Polis. (Applause.) All the members of Congress who are here today, we thank you.

Mr. David Bohnett and Mr. Tom Gregory and the David Bohnett Foundation — they are partners for this reception. Thank you so much, guys, for helping to host this. (Applause.)

And finally, and most importantly, because these were really the spearheads of this effort — Denis, Judy, and Logan Shepard. (Applause.) As well as Betty Byrd Boatner and Louvon Harris — sisters of James Byrd, Jr. (Applause.)

To all the activists, all the organizers, all the people who helped make this day happen, thank you for your years of advocacy and activism, pushing and protesting that made this victory possible. You know, as a nation we’ve come far on the journey towards a more perfect union. And today, we’ve taken another step forward. This afternoon, I signed into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. (Applause.)

This is the culmination of a struggle that has lasted more than a decade. Time and again, we faced opposition. Time and again, the measure was defeated or delayed. Time and again we’ve been reminded of the difficulty of building a nation in which we’re all free to live and love as we see fit. But the cause endured and the struggle continued, waged by the family of Matthew Shepard, by the family of James Byrd, by folks who held vigils and led marches, by those who rallied and organized and refused to give up, by the late Senator Ted Kennedy who fought so hard for this legislation — (applause) — and all who toiled for years to reach this day.

You understood that we must stand against crimes that are meant not only to break bones, but to break spirits — not only to inflict harm, but to instill fear. You understand that the rights afforded every citizen under our Constitution mean nothing if we do not protect those rights — both from unjust laws and violent acts. And you understand how necessary this law continues to be.

In the most recent year for which we have data, the FBI reported roughly 7,600 hate crimes in this country. Over the past 10 years, there were more than 12,000 reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation alone. And we will never know how many incidents were never reported at all.

And that’s why, through this law, we will strengthen the protections against crimes based on the color of your skin, the faith in your heart, or the place of your birth. We will finally add federal protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (Applause.) And prosecutors will have new tools to work with states in order to prosecute to the fullest those who would perpetrate such crimes. Because no one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love. No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are or because they live with a disability.

At root, this isn’t just about our laws; this is about who we are as a people. This is about whether we value one another — whether we embrace our differences, rather than allowing them to become a source of animus. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the mind-set of someone who would kidnap a young man and beat him to within an inch of his life, tie him to a fence, and leave him for dead. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the twisted mentality of those who’d offer a neighbor a ride home, attack him, chain him to the back of a truck, and drag him for miles until he finally died.

But we sense where such cruelty begins: the moment we fail to see in another our common humanity — the very moment when we fail to recognize in a person the same fears and hopes, the same passions and imperfections, the same dreams that we all share.

We have for centuries strived to live up to our founding ideal, of a nation where all are free and equal and able to pursue their own version of happiness. Through conflict and tumult, through the morass of hatred and prejudice, through periods of division and discord we have endured and grown stronger and fairer and freer. And at every turn, we’ve made progress not only by changing laws but by changing hearts, by our willingness to walk in another’s shoes, by our capacity to love and accept even in the face of rage and bigotry. In April of 1968, just one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King, as our nation mourned in grief and shuddered in anger, President Lyndon Johnson signed landmark civil rights legislation. This was the first time we enshrined into law federal protections against crimes motivated by religious or racial hatred — the law on which we build today.

As he signed his name, at a difficult moment for our country, President Johnson said that through this law "the bells of freedom ring out a little louder." That is the promise of America. Over the sounds of hatred and chaos, over the din of grief and anger, we can still hear those ideals — even when they are faint, even when some would try to drown them out. At our best we seek to make sure those ideals can be heard and felt by Americans everywhere. And that work did not end in 1968. It certainly does not end today. But because of the efforts of the folks in this room — particularly those family members who are standing behind me — we can be proud that that bell rings even louder now and each day grows louder still. So thank you very much. God bless you and God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

In the interests of transparency we wanted to give you another update on our efforts to limit the influence of special interests on government. As we indicated here in a previous blog post, the latest chapter in the Administration’s efforts is limiting lobbyists from service on government boards and commissions. Some of the lobbyists who serve on these boards objected (pdf) and we explained the rationale in this letter (pdf).

Today, we received this letter (pdf) from the American League of Lobbyists protesting this Administration’s steps to end the era of undue lobbyist influence on Washington. The letter makes a number of arguments with which we disagree, and to which we will respond, but our simple point is this: the system of lobbyists holding privileged government positions needs to be changed. This Administration has of course acknowledged that lobbyists can petition government on behalf of their clients. But lobbyists who represent the views of special interests should not do so from within government. That’s why we closed the revolving door that used to allow lobbyists to move freely to and from government jobs and that’s why the agencies are now taking this additional step.

Just like everyone else, lobbyists will continue to be able to air their views from outside government. But the days of lobbyists arguing not to the government, but from within the government, should come to an end-that is why the agencies are taking these strong steps with respect to the composition of these boards and commissions.

Norm Eisen is special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform

Yes~! I’m rooting for the Phillies over the Yankees this World Season because I’m a Mets fan, and I’d sooner root for Team Mars in an Earth vs. Mars Loser Leaves The Galaxy Match than root for the Yankees. Hopefully MLB 09 The Show’s prediction pans out, because it has Philadelphia beating The Bronx Bums in seven games.

Or you can subscribe to the Ron Bennington school of thought and just tell everyone to shut up about the Phillies lest God hear our joy and happiness and cause the team to lose. (Yes, God is most concerned with a baseball game happening on a small stretch of land in North America.)

Sony is in full hype mode, knowing that this is the last few days that anyone will buy the game, so they’ve even put together a video highlight package, viewable right up there.

In other sports news, my condolences to all the Real Madrid fans out there. If you want, I can ask the manager at the local Pizza Hut if he wants to take Manuel Pelligrini’s place on the hot seat. He can’t a worse job 🙂

We’re always interested in cool “reasons to buy” that different content creators are coming up with, so thanks to TW for alerting us to AC/DC’s latest effort, involving a special box set that is packaged inside a working guitar amp. The box set is $200, but beyond just the music (rarities, memorabilia, etc.) the casing itself is a 1-watt guitar amp, one foot wide by one foot high and four inches deep:

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Bering Strait School District had a great Ed Conference this year.  Stebbins (WBB) and St. Michael (SMK) hosted the entire faculty of BSSD for a week of learning and sharing.  Keynote speakers, Lauren Giovingo and Holly Adkins, shared about “Response to Intervention“ and how schools work as teams to meet the needs of all our students.

The article reviewed here is a short report in the Lancet Neurology by Adrian Burton on the applications of YouTube in neurology with a particular focus on neurodegenerative conditions (Burton, 2008). Burton looks at a few channels on YouTube and provides opinions on the likely success of such channgels with the helpf interviews with relevant figures in the field. Although a number of channels are discussed, two in particular are focused on – the UK Alzheimer’s Society channel and the UCSF Memory and Aging channel. There is a discussion of whether these channels will remain in the ‘background’ in terms of viewings given the competition they face from other videos on the site which include those from television companies as well as viral marketing videos from large companies trying to reach a global audience.

At the time of writing, the Alzheimer’s Society channel has 53 clips uploaded. In this clip for instance, Neil Hunt, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Society talks about Alzheimer’s Disease. At the time of writing the channel also has videos in Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi and Bengali. There are also interviews with people with Alzheimer’s Disease who describe their experiences and discuss some of the stigma that has been associated with the condition as well as educating viewers about misconceptions which contribute to this stigma.

The University of California San Francisco channel contains a number of videos about dementia including one on cognition in dementia, moral reasoning in Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), FTD and emotions, and in this video Dr Bruce Miller explains how useful YouTube can be in education about dementia.

I had looked at videos on vascular dementia on YouTube in this post and concluded at that point that it required a lot of searching to find a few videos that were useful (which of course depends on the purpose of the video and the needs of the audience). However it is only a matter of time before this becomes a very useful medium. There are a number of reasons why I would expect this to become a more important medium for education purposes. Firstly it is not unreasonable to assume that the number of videos on YouTube will continue to increase. If a static proportion of these videos comprises useful educational material then such an increase would be expected in such educational material also. Secondly indexing methods may be expected to improve, be this within the YouTube site itself or through external sites which index some of the useful material in YouTube. The assumption here is that the videos will remain on YouTube indefinitely. Thirdly the methods for video production within the general population may be expected to improve with time as more sophisticated technology becomes available to the general population thus facilitating communication. Fourthly the proportion of the population (globally) with internet access will be expected to increase with time and assuming that a certain proportion of this population contributes videos to YouTube this would again be expected to increase the amount of educational material available (which ties in with the first point) but may also improve the drive for video production as there should be a larger potential audience for this material.

The article is a useful starting point for discussion around this topic and it will be interesting to see developments even within the next year in this field.

References

Burton A. YouTub-ing Your Way to Neurological Knowledge. Lancet Neurology. Vol 7. December 2008. pp1086-1087.

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LG showed off their newest project at the FPD-International 2009 show in Japan recently, a 15-inch transparent display. Are we seeing the future of TV and computer monitors? Who knows, but it’s interesting to see nonetheless.

Of course, it’s still a prototype, and we have no idea when we’ll see it in retail, how much it will cost, or anything specific. We do know that it uses AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) technology, but that’s about it. Other companies, like Philips, are also checking out this technology, and it was even rumored that Apple was going to create a device utilizing a transparent display. Nothing has really come to market yet (though the Zune HD screen has been getting good reviews), but we’ll keep you informed when and if something does.

[via OLED Display]

Vizio has two new LCDs set to hit Best Buy shelves just in time for the depressing holiday season. Yippie. These two boys use LED backlighting to light the LCD screens and to be honest, they’re not to shabby in the specs department. The 23-inch is a 1080p model with 20,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and 300 nits of brightness. The 19-inch however is a 720p model but it too sports the same contrast ratoi and brightness spec.

Plus the screens have a USB port and SD card slot for photo viewing along with light sensors to automagicly adjust the brightness. Interested? The 19-inch VM190XVT and 23-inch VM230XVT carry MSRPs of $349 and $399, respectively. [via crave]

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

While most of the tech world today is reveling in the introduction of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 and its first host device, the Motorola Droid, there’s still plenty of Google left to talk about.

Earlier this month, Google Voice was subject to yet another inquiry by the US Federal Communications Commission — specifically the Wireline Competition Bureau. Its intent is to re-examine what Google Voice exactly is, evaluate whether it is unfairly blocking certain connections and how, and to determine how it should be regulated.

Today was the deadline for that inquiry, and Google responded with a 12-page letter responding to the five principal questions posed by the FCC. Two of the responses were kept confidential; they dealt with the total number of Google Voice users, and the third-party partnerships Google has made for providing access to telephone numbers, transmission of calls, and interconnection with local networks. Fortunately, the heart of Google’s response to the call blocking allegation was left intact.

The FCC’s key question was three-fold: “How does Google identify the telephone numbers to which it restricts calls? Does it restrict calls to individual telephone numbers, or to particular exchanges or NPA-NXXs? Why does Google Voice restrict these numbers?”

The simplest and most obvious answer to this last question is: cost.

“As a free service, Google Voice is predicated on the ability to manage operating costs aggressively. The vast majority of outbound calls to phone numbers in the United States can be terminated at reasonable costs, which allows Google Voice to provide free forwarding to US numbers and free calls to those numbers,” Google’s response began.

“However, through the application of a set of data filters, we have found that calls to a relatively small number of telephone numbers generate vastly disproportionate costs,” the letter continued. “These telephone numbers terminate to local exchange carriers located in comparatively high cost destinations, which in turn have set up various businesses to encourage inbound calling, that apparently include conference calling services and chat lines. If Google Voice were required to terminate calls to those specific numbers, and spread the costs among its user base, the free service model for all users could be jeopardized.”

In Google’s investigation, it found that the top 10 prefixes to US destinations (NPA-NXX) accounted for 1.1% of monthly traffic by volume (161 times higher than the expected amount per prefix), which meant this tiny number of prefixes accounted for 26.2% of all of Google Voice’s monthly cost. Google said its own underlying carriers assessed Google Voice calls to these numbers with these prefixes to be as much as 39¢ per minute and therefore restricted them.

Google goes on to say that it originally could only block by prefix, but now has the technology to block by the full telephone number, and the list of restricted numbers amounts to fewer than 100.

AT&T’s senior vice president for federal regulations Robert Quinn said that Google Voice’s blockage of such numbers is a luxury not afforded to its “competitors” the telephone companies, and is therefore a transgression of the Internet Policy Statement. However, it has not yet been determined if Google Voice is in fact in competition with the telephone companies, and further, as a free service, if it would be subject to the same regulations as subscription-based services.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

We’re still totally amazed at the Thru You album that Kutiman came up with earlier this year by mixing together a bunch of totally separate YouTube videos into a rather complete album of amazingly good songs that had never been heard before. Kutiman had to do lots of work to find the right videos playing the right music for what he wanted, but the next person looking to do something similar have a bit of help. Daniel alerts us to a new project that he’s created on YouTube, called Instrumentube, which is basically a series of simple videos of a single instrument being played in a specific way, matching up with a chart on the bottom, which perfectly aligns with the YouTube slider. Once you let the full videos load, you can just start clicking on the slider in the appropriate place to get the note you want. I was going to embed a few below, but for some reason I’m having trouble getting the embeds to be at the right size so that the notes line up with where the slider is, so if you want to check out a few individually, here’s a piano, electric guitar, standup bass and shaker.

Of course, by themselves they might not be anything special, but start mixing them together… and maybe with some work (and some others) you can start to get something like this:

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How much you enjoy Forza Motorsport 3 entirely depends on the time you have to invest in it. If you’re able to put in the man-hours you’ll find a racing sim that’s a deep as you want it to be, and just as rewarding. If you’re only able to play a few minutes here and there, well, it’s not really the same thing.

The game presents itself as a driving simulator, but one that won’t punish you for not knowing the difference between a carburetor and a CD changer. And, incidentally, you’ll be changing the game disc as soon as you turn it on, for the game’s developer’s, Turn 10, couldn’t fit it all on just one; an optional content install prompts as soon as the game loads. You’ll need approximately 2GB of free space on your hard drive to get the entire FM3 experience.

From there a cheery British announcer guides you through the game—it’s as if you’re playing Top Gear. The standard modes are there, but it’s career mode that shows the game in its best light. You’re granted a low-level car—something that you yourself may well own in real life—then race from event to event, earning credits and plaudits from other car manufacturers along the way. The credits are used to buy upgrades, while after the occasional successful race you’ll get a message along the lines of: “Fiat thinks you’re a good driver, so they’re giving you this brand new car for free!”

Lather, rinse, repeat. You’ll go from Class Z clunker to Class A holy-cow-this-is-fast as you plug along in career mode, which will take some time. Better skip out on Heroes this week if you want to make the most of this game.

The game looks good, yes, but I’m hesitant to call it the best-looking racing game I’ve ever played: that title belongs to Racer Driver: Grid. (Note: I never bought Dirt 2 because rally racing doesn’t appeal to me.) I don’t know, things just look too shiny to me. The best way I can describe it is, remember the first few FIFA games for the PS3/360, and how “shiny” the player models looked? I get the same feeling here.

Not that we’re graphics whores ’round these parts, but I’d be remiss to not mention how the game looks.

To make another comparison to Race Driver: Grid, I do feel that the menus in the game, and just the way the game is presented, is less interesting than Codemasters’ hit. In Grid, menus fly by and spin in circles, you can see people walking about your garage while selecting a new paint scheme, your earned credits fill up in dramatic fashion, slowing down as you approach an upgrade point… It just seems more “next-gen,” more “hmm, now this is different” than FM3, which is very much “well, this isn’t anything special.”

So is the game good? Yes, of course; I dare you not to enjoy it. You will, however, have a much better time if you can sit there for several hours rather than treating it as a quick “hey let me kill 10 minutes” fix.

That’s it.

A lot of people loved our tech-focused segment on the all-new 2010 Mercedes E-Class and we’re following up with a nice video overview of the vehicle. We were lucky enough to meet with Bart Herring who is product manager for the E-Class series, and in addition to giving us a great presentation on the car, took some time to help put this video together.

One thing that that struck me when I first slid open the Motorola Droid is that the software must have been a non-shipping copy. Historically, when Verizon ships a phone, the stuff in the VCast Music Center, VCast Video, VCast Navigation, and VCast Electo Pet Shop – essentially bloatware that masquerades as value added software. Swiping through the Droid menus I found none of that. No widgets offering NFL sports scores, no Apps offering downloadable videos from Lady GaGa, just a clean, clear interface. I know most Android phones don’t ship with much extraneous software (MyTouch, for example) but for Verizon this is a real first.

What does this mean? It means carriers are finally resisting the urge to bling out their phones like NASCAR racers. Without massive branding you get a cleaner experience and although I love the Hero’s Sense UI, the Droid in this pristine state shows us that carriers, and Verizon in particular, has grown up.


None of this, please. Thank you.

If you’ll recall, the first iPhone had little, if any, AT&T branding. It was a phone with a few apps – a calculator, a stock app – and that was it. All of the extraneous junk was taken out.

This gives the buyer a sense that they are buying a standalone experience, not just another feature phone. The Android Market is front and center if you want to improve things, but Verizon clearly thinks this phone can stand on its own without polluting the deck with their dreck.

Other phones that did this include the Sidekick, another popular phone. I think Droid is, interestingly enough, Motorola’s savior. Whether they meant to make it as clean and attractive as they did is unclear but I’m glad they took a stand against mobile bloatware.