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Sinbad, the popular ’90s comedian and sitcom star, is reportedly into the IRS for some major money, and filed for bankruptcy in April

The 53-year old actor allegedly owes more than $8 million to the IRS and several hundred thousand to various creditors, but can only claim about $131,000 in assets. He was forced to put his Hidden Hills estate up for sale a while back in an effort to pay down his debts, and this is the second time he’s filed for bankruptcy. According to court documents, he brings in about $16,000 a month and simply can’t keep up with his bills.

Sinbad isn’t the only celebrity plagued by money problems; last year, “CSI” star Gary Dourdan filed for bankruptcy to get out of credit card debt. Wesley Snipes has also gone to court.

Maybe Sinbad can reprise his guest-starring role on “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” and make some quick cash.

Enjoy these cartoons from the June issue of HBR, and test your management wit in the HBR Cartoon Caption Contest at the bottom of this post. If we choose your caption as the winner, you will be featured in next month’s magazine and win a free Harvard Business Review Press book.

And congratulations to our May caption contest winner, Terence McIver of Cleveland, Ohio. Here’s his winning caption:

NEW CAPTION CONTEST
Enter your own caption for this cartoon in the comments field below — you could be featured in next month’s magazine and win a free book. Please submit entries by May 27, 2013 to be considered.

San Francisco-based Dijit launched the web version of it’s NextGuide app Monday, and after playing with it for a while, I have to say the company may be onto something here.

Dijit launched an iPad version of NextGuide last summer, aiming to reinvent the traditional TV guide with universal search for movies and TV content across live TV and iPad apps from Netflix, Hulu, iTunes and others. Users of the app can also define searches for very specific interests and get recommendations for any content related to their hobby or their hometown.

It all makes sense – but I just don’t find myself frequenting the iPad app very much. Maybe it’s the fact that I just don’t feel like I don’t have enough choices for things to watch. Maybe it’s due to my binge viewing habits: while I’m burning through a new show (mind you, burning a very relative term if you have a job and a family), I  don’t look for much else, and don’t need to know what’s on. Or maybe it’s just that the app is a bit too complicated for its own good.

But there’s something about NextGuide’s new web app sibling that is very intriguing. For one thing, it is a lot simpler than the iPad app, and it feels less like you have to turn thousand nobs before you get good results.

But the app also feels a lot more social, thanks to its Facebook integration: Users can easily browse the movies and TV shows any of their Facebook friends have liked on the social network, no matter whether these contacts are using NextGuide or not. The results are displayed in a Pinterest-like fashion, inviting you to aimlessly browse around and check out what your friends like to watch.

Once you find something that catches your interest, you’re able to see which services it is playing on, add it to your own Watchlist or subscribe to email alerts to be notified when new episodes are available online, or on the air. Essentially, it turns your friends’ Facebook likes into your TV guide, and that’s pretty cool. Oh, and you can also compile a list of your own favorites to display to the world.

Pre-populating a video discovery service with data from Facebook certainly isn’t new – but there’s something about this kind of Pinterest-like approach that just invites browsing. And TV fans will appreciate that their friends’ likes, which are otherwise scattered on Facebook, are all brought together in one place.

Sure, there’s still room to improve NextGuide on the web. Recommending the right resources to play content is one of those things. For example, for a show like the Daily Show, it only recommends Hulu, Amazon and iTunes, even though full episodes are also available on the show’s website.

But even with those shortcomings, I have to say that I enjoyed playing with the website, and I can see myself coming back to it much more often than to the app.

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Besides receiving federal subsidies and other financial incentives, the wind industry is getting special treatment from the Obama Administration: wind farms are allowed to kill protected bird species. The Associated Press has found that the Obama Administration has never fined …

“We use images like a weapon to fight for social causes,” says a man in the trailer for INSIDE OUT: The People’s Art Project, a new documentary that airs on HBO tonight. The doc tells the story of JR’s INSIDE OUT, a global art project in which anyone, anywhere, can send the artist a portrait and have a poster-sized version sent back to them for pasting in public spaces. JR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside outSince the project’s launch in 2011, when JR received the TED Prize, these oversized black-and portraits with a faded polka dot motif in the background have become a fixture on the walls, fences and sidewalks all around the world. To date, more than 130,000 INSIDE OUT posters have been pasted in more than 100 countries.

INSIDE OUT: The People’s Art Project, directed by Alastair Siddons, isn’t about untangling the identity of JR  – who always appears in public wearing Ray Bans and fedora. Instead, it aims to show how people around the globe have made this fascinating project their own. Yes, cameras show JR in his Paris studio but, from there, they travel to Haiti, where photographer Benoit has pasted up dozens of images of those living in tent cities following the devastating earthquake of 2010. The message: that while hardship continues in the country, people remain infused with hope.

The film goes on to bring viewers to North Dakota and the West Bank, where major INSIDE OUT actions have been launched, as well as to Tunisia, where portraits of everyday people are revolutionary in and of themselves. “We were always seeing pictures of the dictators,” says an INSIDE OUT artist in the country. “Now it’s people—Tunisians.”

INSIDE OUT: The People’s Art Project premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in April. And tonight, the film makes its television debut on HBO at 9pm ET/PT. The documentary will also be available on demand through June 30. Find out more about the film and its airdates at HBO’s website »

See JR interviewed about the documentary by Christiane Amanpour last Friday »

Are you or someone you know interested in launching a worldwide project on the scale of INSIDE OUT? Nominations for the 2014 TED Prize are open, from now until June 16 »

This is a reference when the People’s Bank of China makes big decisions.

Source: Flikr creative commons

Problems are found at a local level too, however. While the current system sets local government officials’ bonuses for better GDP growth, there is no penalty for supplying incorrect data, neither are local government officials assessed on the jobs they create but via a points system. Instead local governments have ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ targets to attain, according to the panellists, some of which include environmental targets.

Then there is the issue of language. Some say data is more detailed in the Chinese language than in English, though official translations help bridge this gap. Quandaries remain, the resolution is still far from clear.

There was only one question on the minds of many after February’s PS4 conference – where was the console itself? Well, those desperate to see what the PS4 actually looks like won’t have to wait much longer.

Sony announced today that it’s E3 2013 press conference will be taking place on June 10 at 6 p.m. PST/9 p.m. EST. To hype people up for the press conference, Sony has also released a short teaser that kind of shows what the new PS4 will look like if you squint really hard:

Of course, we’ll have to wait until June 10 to see what the final PS4 hardware will look like. Well, that is unless somebody decides to leak pictures of the hardware before then. Sony isn’t exactly known for being leak-proof.

In other next-gen news, we’re likely to see the next Xbox hardware tomorrow at its unveiling event. We might even see the next generation of Kinect hardware. Just don’t expect it to be cheap.

Even if Windows 8 adoption rate could use some boosting, third-party developers continue to capitalize on the operating system’s lack of a start button for the desktop part.

Start Menu Reviver is one of the latest additions to the category and promises to deliver a fresh experience, in tune with the modern UI design promoted by Microsoft in the touch… (read more)

When Samsung debuted its Galaxy S 4 in March, the company said that some of the advanced software features would trickle down to last year’s flagship, the Galaxy S 3. It appears Samsung is soon going to make good on its promise: A leaked software update for the Galaxy S 3 shows Android 4.2.2 along with several cues from the handset’s successor.

Enthusiast site SamMobile got hold of the Galaxy S 3 software update and even has the file available for download if you have a Galaxy S 3 and you’re feeling particularly adventurous. The site suggests that Samsung is still working on the firmware and will likely include the Galaxy S 4 camera interface. That makes sense to me as Samsung representatives told me the company is trying to standardize the UI between its phones and cameras.

Don’t expect the Galaxy S 3 to see the touch-free gestures found on the Galaxy S 4 though: The latter device uses a special digitizer not found on the older phone. Here’s a partial list of the feature updates found by SamMobile, followed by a short video demonstration showing off the Galaxy S 4 bits running on a Galaxy S 3:

• Android 4.2.2 – Build ID: JDQ39
• New S4 Lockscreen: Multiple Widgets, two Unlock effects (Ripple and Light), improved ripple effect than Android 4.1.2, ability to change clock size and set a personal message
• New Screen modes (From S4): Adapt Display and Professional Photo
• Actionable notifications
• Completely revamped Settings UI (Tabbed interface – Exactly like the S4)
• Addition of Voice controls (Let’s you control various parts of the phone using voice commands – Galaxy S4 feature)
• New S-Voice (from S4)

The software update is expected next month, although that could change based on feature additions and testing by Samsung. What surprises me — in a good way — is that Samsung is doing this at all. Early on, the company wasn’t known for delivering Android updates too quickly. And instead of keeping the best features on the Galaxy S 4, possibly enticing some to upgrade early from a Galaxy S 3, the company is improving the experience on the older model.

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The rumored successor to the HTC Butterfly, the HTC Butterfly S, has been spotted in a User Agent Profile XML file. The document revealed its screen resolution, 1080 by 1920 pixels, the same exact resolution as on the HTC Butterfly.

There’s plenty of room for speculation on other specs as further details have not yet been revealed, but it has been rumored that the phone will come with many features found on the HTC One, such as BlinkFeed, an Ultrapixel camera sensor, and Boom Sound audio with stereo speakers.

We don’t have any information on when the phone may be released, but a Q3 launch wouldn’t be a total surprise.

Source: HTC (XML file)

Come comment on this article: HTC Butterfly S screen resolution revealed, will adopt many HTC One features

Last week was, perhaps, the toughest week the Obama administration has yet faced. While congressional Republicans were still trying to turn the Benghaz attacks into a full-fledged scandal, two clearly real scandals have appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the past two weeks. One involves the IRS targeting the large influx of tax-exempt Tea Party-related groups for extra scrutiny. The other scandal involves the U.S. Justice Department seizure of Associated Press journalists’ telephone records in secret subpoenas.

It seems, however, that none of the negative press has affected President Obama’s approval ratings. According to a CNN/ORC poll released this weekend, the President still enjoys a 53% approval rating.

This is despite the fact that those polled knew about the recent scandals and even considered them important. 71% of those polled considered the IRS’s actions unacceptable, while 52% thought the Justice Department’s phone record seizures were unacceptable. Over 60% of these same respondents believe that President Obama’s statements about the IRS scandal have been at least mostly true.

Presidential spokespersons have been aggressively combating efforts to link Obama directly to the IRS scandal. White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer this Sunday hit the talk show circuit, stating that the President did not know of the policy before it hit the media.

The President himself did not address the topics this weekend. Instead, the President used his weekly address to speak about building up the middle class in the U.S.:

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have reportedly split up again, despite being seen in public recently holding hands.

The couple have been patching things up since Stewart cheated on her “Twilight” co-star with her “Snow White And The Huntsman” director, Rupert Sanders, but they appear to have hit another rough patch.

“They are going to stay living at Kristen’s house because of the dogs,” a source said. “It’s not fully over or he would have moved out.”

Pattinson reportedly didn’t show up to a birthday get-together Stewart threw for him recently, which started rumors flying about a potential breakup. But friends of the couple say they’ve been through hard times before and they always find their way back to each other.

Stewart released a public apology after she was busted with Sanders, saying, “I’m deeply sorry for the hurt and embarrassment I’ve caused to those close to me and everyone this has affected. This momentary indiscretion has jeopardized the most important thing in my life, the person I love and respect the most, Rob. I love him, I love him, I’m so sorry.”

This year’s Smart App Challenge by Samsung has arrived, and will focus on creative usage with its Chord SDK. The Chord SDK features quick peer-to-peer sharing, and allows for collaboration and sharing info/media between multiple devices on the fly.

There’s $800,000 in prize money at stake for 10 different applications. The possibilities are essentially limitless for this new technology, and perhaps the most impressive demonstration of what the SDK can do is featured in the surround sound speaker mode. Samsung will take entries from June 20th to August 31st and the winner will be announced this December.

This adds a fresh perspective to what Samsung is trying to accomplish and it will be exciting to see the outcome of the competition.

Source: Samsung Developer Site

Come comment on this article: Samsung’s annual Smart App Challenge has arrived, will focus on Chord SDK

Just when you thought Russian dash cams couldn’t possibly catch anything more insane than we’ve already seen, this clip, dated May 13th, comes along and forces a complete O_O.

If you want to skip right to it, go to about 30 seconds in. There, you’ll see a car launched at least 20 feet into the air, flip, and land off-camera.

If you’re looking for a Russian dash cam video that doesn’t scare the crap out you, check out this clip that captures to good in humanity.

[via reddit]

Search Engine Optimization has changed a lot over the years, and with mobile ecosystems rising in prominence, there are things that need to be taken into consideration that simply didn’t exist when the industry first came into being.

One of those things is the rise of mobile apps and app stores like Google Play. If you have a mobile app, you are presented with the challenge of getting it in front of people, and ideally doing so while they’re using their mobile device. Little is known about the Google Play search engine, however. In fact, this is the first time the company has even discussed the Google Play search or discovery engines publicly.

On day three of the event, Google Play’s Ankit Jain opened up about this stuff in a session called “Getting Discovered on Google Play”.

One of the first questions asked of the audience at the beginning of the session is, “How many of you would like to make even more money on Google Play? If your answer to this question is yes, you should probably watch this.

“As an Android application developer, your goal is to get your app discovered,” Google says in the video description. “Google Play’s goal is to surface the most relevant content for Android users. In this session, we discuss best practices for app creators in view of both goals. We will demonstrate, through concrete examples, best practices to help your application rise above others in the Google Play Store. We will discuss the signals that go into creating the top and trending lists, personalized recommendations, and Google Play Search. Come hear the inside story from the person who leads search & discovery on Google Play.”

Android has seen 900 million activations.

One of the better deals in gaming today is a $99 Xbox 360 that’s subsidized with two years of Xbox Live. Rumors suggested that Microsoft would be doing the same with the next Xbox, but those plans may have been scrapped.

Paul Thurrot reports that Microsoft has ditched its plans for a subsidized Xbox. The news comes from a recent tweet that also said Microsoft would be showing off its IllumiRoom technology at tomorrow’s next Xbox reveal:

A couple of Xbox news tidbits ahead of the launch… Illumiroom will be part of Tues event, subsidized Xbox v.Next model has been scrapped.

— Paul Thurrott (@thurrott) May 20, 2013

For those unfamiliar with the rumor, it was said that Microsoft would be selling the next Xbox for $499 with a subsidized version going for $299. The latter would be subsidized with a two-year Xbox Live subscription at $15 a month.

Now, this might be a good or bad move on the part of Microsoft. As Thurrot later speculates, Microsoft might just offer the next Xbox at a straight up lower price than the competition. Game consoles are generally sold at a loss anyway, but it’s hard to imagine Microsoft taking a massive hit early on just to undercut Sony.

The more likely scenario is that Microsoft will just go ahead with its plans to sell the next Xbox for $499. That would mean the company is confident that its machine will have enough exclusive content to warrant a purchase. That was at least the line being fed to gamers over the weekend during the Major Nelson podcast in which Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg said that E3 would feature “tons of exclusives and world premiers” for the new console.

Still, many, including myself, think it’s unwise for Microsoft to ditch its subsidization plan entirely. The rise of smartphones have warped consumers’ perception of value and how much technology actually costs. The $350 price tag on the Wii U is evidence enough that consumers just aren’t up for paying that much for what many still consider a toy anymore. A subsidized model, even if it wasn’t “cheap” per se, would still perform better as people would think they were getting a deal.

All of this is nothing but rumor and speculation for now, but Thurrot does have a solid track record when it comes to Microsoft rumors. He reported the May 21 date for the next Xbox reveal two weeks before the official announcement from Microsoft. Even if Microsoft was ditching its plans for a subsidized Xbox, we probably won’t hear about it tomorrow. According to Greenberg, tomorrow’s next Xbox reveal will be about “the team, the people” behind the next Xbox.

Of course, we’ll be covering the next Xbox reveal tomorrow. It starts at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST.

[h/t: Neowin]

There’s a major project brewing in Delaware, with a group called The Data Centers LLC (TDC) planning a sizeable data center near Newark. TDC says it is planning to invest more than $1 billion in the project, with construction alone for the first two phases expected to be around $400 million. The group wants to construct approximately 900,000 square feet of space.

The massive project will also feature a large on-site energy component. The facility will draw no electricity from the grid; instead, the plan is to sell power back to the grid.

This means added redundancy will be built into the project. The plant consists of a proprietary configuration of natural gas turbines, steam turbines and gas engines, with two independent natural gas supply lines on site to provide the reliability to deliver uninterrupted, fault tolerant power to the data center.

Operating as a Grid-Free Island

“The patent-pending design combines best-in-class data center energy efficiencies with the efficiencies of on-site cogeneration and tri-generation plants that can operate as an island without relying on the electrical grid as a backup,” writes Bruce Myatt, CTO of The Data Centers, in a summary of the project. “That means that critical power generation with gas turbines, steam turbines, and adsorption chillers back up one another to power and cool the data center while excess power can be supplied to the grid to support demand response requirements. The facility will secure long-term gas contracts to keep operating costs low and competitive.”

TDC has signed a lease with the University of Delaware to occupy a site on the STAR Campus and has lined up over half of the construction funding with investment bankers. The STAR campus is a 272-acre property purchased by the University of Delaware from Chrysler during is bankruptcy back in 2009. TDC will lease 43 acres, and will be the second tenant there, next door to Bloom Energy, which makes solid-oxide fuel cells.

Three tenants have already agreed to occupy space at the TDC facility when the site is operational in late 2014, including the University of Delaware. Opportunities exist for additional tenants to reserve space in the first phase of the facility as well.

Project Boosted by Infrastructure Grant

According to TDC CEO Gene Kern, the site will employ approximately 370 full time employees (FTE) and is expected to attract “over 90 other workers from our tenants, vendors, consultants, and our tenants’ tenants.” The company has begun discussing its plans in recent weeks. Kern is a veteran IT infrastructure consultant and cofounder of WAKE Technology Services. The TDC team also include President and COO Robert Krizman, previously a senior VP at Jones Lang LaSalle, and Myatt, who is familiar to many in the industry as a co-founder of the Critical Facilities Round Table.

There’s a lot to like about Delaware, according to TDC. State officials have approved a $7.5 million infrastructure grant, with the usual caveats, including meeting certain conditions and documentation that state aid will be spent on infrastructure. State funds will help pay for bringing natural gas and water service to the site, with TDC planning to run two new, dedicated gas lines through Eastern Shore Natural Gas. Part of the $7.5 million grant will go towards building a new electrical substation near the building, which the city will own.

There’s a symbiotic relationship forming here, where TDC will bring jobs, strengthen the power infrastructure. making service more reliable in the southern part of Newark, and possibly lead to lower power costs for local residents. TDC will also lay down fiber, in addition to its secure lines, to help the university attract future tenants. Then there’s the taxes – the size of the project means that TDC will pay a combined $20 million in property taxes to the city, New Castle County, and the Christina School District

With its high reliability design and managed services capabilities, TDC says the data center has the potential to be an ideal location for high-performance computing and cloud computing operations.

Big Red is about to refresh their pre-paid plans a bit— starting today, existing customers will be able to enjoy raised data caps with no price change on their existing plan. The new plan will effect new customers starting June 6th.

The previous plan had two options, one for $60 monthly and 500MB, and another for $70 monthly and 2GB. Both had unlimited talk and text.

The new plan will keep the same pricing and unlimited talk and text, however the $60 option will offer 2GB of data while the $70 option will offer 4GB of data. Just remember, these plans are for 3G service only so don’t expect to get this bargain on a high-end device. Will any of you be taking advantage of the upped data caps? Let us know about your decision in the comments!

Source: Verizon Wireless

Come comment on this article: Verizon updating pre-paid plans, data caps to increase

WordPress might have quite a bit to gain by Yahoo’s purchasing of Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As noted, a bunch of Tumblr users are already freaking out about Yahoo buying the massively popular blogging platform (and the promise of new ads coming into the feed likely isn’t doing anything to slow the freak-out down).

Even before the acquisition was officially announced this morning, on onslaught of users importing Tumblr blogs to WordPress already began. That is, at least, according to WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg.

He writes, “Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000.”

Despite what would appear to be a mass exodus of users leaving Tumblr for WordPress, Mullenweg appears to think that’s not the case. After he initially wrote the post, he updated it to say, “Some people are reading too much into the import numbers — I don’t think there will be an exodus from Tumblr.”

He then pointed readers to the comments on this post, where he said, “I don’t think there will be any sort of exodus from Tumblr. For most folks habits overcome internet-outrage. Even if a million people left, that’s just about a week’s worth of signups.”

Even still, other blogging platforms are likely to get a little bump out of this.

According to a recent report from Pingdom, WordPress’ share of the world’s top blogs has already been on the rise.

Dwight Howard is scheduled to become a free agent this summer, and the Lakers are hoping to lock the NBA star down to a long-term contract. However, it seems that other teams may have an interest in the 27-year-old center.

A CBS Sports report this weekend stated that Howard is “far” from re-signing with the Lakers. The report also sparked rumors that Howard is intrigued by the possibility of signing with the Houston Rockets.

Citing unnamed “multiple people briefed on internal conversations surrounding Howard’s free-agent decision,” the report points out that Houston’s line-up could easily be adjusted to make room for Howard. The sources also stated that Howard could be very interested in the Dallas Mavericks. In addition to that, an unnamed “person briefed on [Howard’s] plans” also told CBS that Howard will be taking “a hard look” at several different teams.

Despite Howard’s apparent interest in Texas, the Lakers still do have the advantage over other teams when bidding for the star. As CBS points out, the Lakers will be able to offer Howard a five-year deal with a 7.5% annual salary increase, which exceeds the 4.5% annual salary increase other teams will be offering.