Hi Folks,
I arrived safely in WASHINGTON, DC yesterday for NTI (a huge critical care nursing conference with 7,000 nurses!).
Here’s an update with a few photos. The internet is kind of slow in my awesome hotel, so expect a full update on Thursday or Friday.
Obviously, there’s been lots of talk about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in numerous areas. There have been various reports concerning Kagan’s supposed views on copyright, but those seem pretty blown out of proportion from what I’ve seen and in talking to folks who know Kagan. She was a big supporter of the Berkman Center at Harvard, but that was part of her job. Other than her recommendation in the Cablevision case, there doesn’t seem to be much to go on. In fact, I’m considerably more concerned with the idea that one of the leading contenders for Kagan’s current job of Solicitor General is one of the entertainment industry’s favorite legal attack dogs who led the industry’s case in Grokster and was a major player in the Jammie Thomas trial before being appointed to the Justice Department (where he didn’t last very long before moving over to the White House as associate White House counsel). Still, if Kagan really is a big supporter of fair use, you have to wonder what she thinks of the following situation.
With everyone digging deeper and deeper to find out more about Kagan, the website Red State apparently dug up her undergraduate thesis and posted it to their website… leading Princeton to demand that the thesis be taken down — not, of course, for political reasons, but copyright ones. The University is selling copies of her thesis, and apparently the commercial value just shot up:
It has been brought to my attention that you have posted Elena Kagan’s senior thesis online…. Copies provided by the Princeton University Archives are governed by U.S. Copyright Law and are for private individual use only. Any electronic distribution is prohibited, as noted on the first page of the copy that is on your website. Therefore I request that you remove it immediately before further action is taken.
Of course, ordering that the document be pulled down pretty much guarantees that it will get spread more widely — and there’s definitely a journalistic reporting defense for posting the document (though, I’m not particularly convinced that anything anyone wrote in college has much meaning once they’ve spent a few decades outside of college). And, of course, in trying to get the document taken down, it’s just going to lead conspiracy-minded folks to think there’s more to the document than there is (in actuality, it’s a rather bland historical analysis, but you wouldn’t know that from what some sites are claiming about it). But from a journalistic standpoint, it seems you could make a decent argument for fair use in distributing the document. In fact, publications like Newsweek are already sharing parts of the thesis as well (mostly to debunk the hysteria around it). It’s difficult to see what Princeton gained in issuing the takedown notice, other than to rile up people.
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The highly anticipated prequel to Kingdom Hearts now has a release date.
Square Enix has revealed that Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep is set for release in North America on September 7th exclusively on the PSP.
Adding an outstanding voice cast of Mark Hamill (most excellent), Willa Holland, Jesse McCartney, Leonard Nimoy and James Woods along with exclusive content included just for the North American release Square gives a much needed boost to the PSP library.
To accompany the release, a limited edition Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep PSP Entertainment Pack will be available on release day from Gamestop:
Until September 7th arrives, in the interim, enjoy the trailer below:
Land grabbing: is the EU the largest net importer of agricultural produce and ‘virtual’ land?
– OPERA/Research Centre of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (press release), May 11, 2010
The independent Research Centre OPERA* presented today (Tuesday 11th May 2010) in Brussels, a new research report that warns that the European Union must encourage agricultural innovation and productivity increases to avoid charges of territorial “land grabbing”.
Authors of the study are Professor Harald von Witzke of the Humboldt University of Berlin and Steffen Noleppa of agripol – network for policy advice. The research details the development of EU agricultural trade between 1999 and 2008 and quantifies the substantial acreage cultivated in other countries to fulfil Europe’s demand for food, animal feed and biofuels. It shows that in 2007/2008 almost 35 million hectares of land beyond European borders was used for the benefit of Europeans, with the EU the world.s largest importer of agricultural products.
“That’s an astonishing figure: it’s almost equivalent to the entire territory of Germany,” said Professor Ettore Capri, Director of OPERA Research Centre. “This is exactly why we wanted bring these figures to the table so that the decision makers can take them into account.”
The report is called “EU Agricultural Production and Trade: Can More Efficiency Prevent Increasing ‘Land-Grabbing’ Outside Of Europe?” It gives the most comprehensive analysis of agricultural trade with Europe, and the impact of this trade on land-use decisions outside the EU. It’s the first such analysis embracing all 27 European Member states and it covers approximately 40 crops and 240 tradable commodity groups – more than any recent study available.
It finds that the EU has become the world’s largest net importer of agricultural produce, and therefore the largest user of agricultural land that is not its own. In 2008 the 27 Member states of the EU exported US$127.6 billion of agricultural commodities, but imported produce valued at US$173.1 – a net import of US$45.5 billion.
The report’s authors use a complex indicator-based approach to convert the EU.s international agricultural trade data into trade in ‘virtual. land’ “For instance, if it takes ‘X’ hectares to produce one metric ton of wheat, then exporting that wheat to Europe is equivalent to exporting ‘X’ hectares of virtual land,” said Humboldt University’s Harald von Witzke, leading author of the “Land-Grab” report.
The EU is now a net exporter of virtual land in wheat and coarse grains only. It.s importing virtual land in all other commodities and commodity groups. Soybean alone accounts for more than 50% of the net import of virtual land.
“We.re quick to raise our eyebrows at the acquisition of land in other countries by resource-hungry nations,” von Witzke said. “But we’re doing exactly the same, albeit virtually through market forces instead of foreign investment.”
The Humboldt University/agripol analysis shows that between 1999 and 2008 Europe’s use of foreign land for its own agricultural production has grown by 40%, or 10 million hectares. It says the issue is compounded by change in land use in many virtual land-exporting countries, and increasing greenhouse gas emissions from the conversion from forests, grasslands and refuge into cropland.
It analyses the effect of three potential scenarios within a reformed European agricultural policy; enhancing agricultural yields, increasing area under organic farming, and expanding the use of biofuels. Of these, enhancing the yields in Europe, seems the solution to reduce circumvent externalisation of food sources.
The report maintains that encouraging agricultural innovation and increasing productivity in major crops by just 0.3 percentage points per year would reduce the need to farm 5.3 million hectares of cropland outside the EU. If annual incremental growth rate in the EU’s agricultural production had doubled between 1999 and 2008, it says, the importation of virtual land would have been about 10 million hectares less and would have remained roughly at the 1999 level. By contrast, expanding the acreage of organically farmed land to 20% would increase virtual land importation by almost 30%.
And policies to achieve the EU’s 10% biofuel objective would also increase the rate of land-grabs. OPERA’s Policy Team Coordinator, Alexandru Marchis says the EU is not only morally obliged to enhance agricultural yields and use its own land as effectively as possible, but should also be looking at the issue from a strategic perspective.
The term ‘land grabbing’ has hugely emotive connotations but the EU has to acknowledge the global implications of its policy decisions and the effects generated by not tackling the issue of competitiveness and productivity of European agriculture. “Long-term food security is a major issue. The EU should be working now to encourage all means of increasing the productivity of our farmland,” Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Mairead McGuinness said at the panel discussion which followed the event.
“The challenge is to produce more using less of our scarce resources; land, energy and water. The challenge is also to produce better in terms of high quality, high value produce. ” “To secure long-term productivity growth in agriculture not just in Europe, but around the world, it is necessary for countries to provide increased public funding for agricultural research and to create a policy environment that encourages private research investment,” added McGuinness.
The full study is available online at
http://www.opera-indicators.
Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Videos, Luxury
Mindless entertainment should still be entertaining, and the runway supercar shootouts posted by the folks at GTBoard.com always deliver. This time it’s two races pitting an 800-horsepower Switzer GT-R P800 versus the 806-horsepower Koenigsegg CCR Evolution; one in which the CCR gets its rolling start in second gear, the following in first gear. The P800 actually holds its own which isn’t so bad seeing that the CCR has walked away from pretty much everything. Follow the jump for the showdown.
[Source: GTBoard.com]
Continue reading Video: Switzer-tuned Nissan GT-R takes on Koenigsegg CCR
Video: Switzer-tuned Nissan GT-R takes on Koenigsegg CCR originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 17 May 2010 19:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A Audi Argentina anunciou nesse começo de semana a venda do modelo A1 no mercado argentino a partir de 2011.
O modelo A1, começou a ser produzido na Bélgica na semana passada, e é conhecido por ser o menor modelo já fabricado pela marca. A Audi também já tinha antecipado que o modelo seria feito para atingir o público mais jovem.
Vejo o comunicado do gerente geral da Audi: “Nós estimamos apresentado no mercado local, o novo Audi A1 no início do próximo ano, confiante que este novo modelo vai significar a possibilidade de acesso a Audi de mais muitos clientes na Argentina. Argentina Team Audi já está a preparar para este novo desafio que desembarcou em um segmento muito competitivo mas com potencial de desenvolvimento de uma marca de prestígio como Audi. ”
A marca também divulgou o seu mais novo comercial que aparece o modelo A1 sendo dirigido pelo cantor POP Justin Timberlake.
Fonte: Argentina Auto Blog
by Daniel J. Weiss
As hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil continue to gush from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico four weeks after the tragic BP disaster, AP reports that:
President Barack Obama will establish the commission by executive order. It will be similar to panels created to investigate the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a public announcement.
The New York Times reports:
The president will create the panel by executive order “in coming days,” a White House official said. “The commission will take into account the investigations underway concerning the causes of the spill and explore a range of issues including: industry practices; rig safety; Federal, state, and local regulatory regimes; federal governmental oversight, including the structure and functions of M.M.S.; and environmental review and other protections,” the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss the matter in advance of the presidential announcement.
White House sources indicated to CAP that an official announcement about this executive order could occur on Tuesday or Wednesday.
In addition to the horrible loss of eleven lives on the now sunken Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the BP oil disaster could be the most devastating environmental disaster to ever befall the United States. To understand what caused this oil nightmare, in early May CAP proposed that President Obama appoint “an independent commission to completely examine the causes of the BP disaster and offer guidance for how we can make sure it never happens again.”
This would enable investigators to conduct an independent assessment of the causes of the disaster, and determine the responsibilities born by BP, Transocean, and Halliburton. An independent inquiry would also be able to determine whether the Minerals Management Service of the Department of Interior fulfilled its oversight duties.
Representatives Lois Capps (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), introduced the “BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster Inquiry Commission Act of 2010,” H.R. 5241. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) have a companion proposal. These measures would create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the BP oil disaster.
Rather than wait for legislation, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan used executive orders to create independent commissions to investigate the near nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the Challenger Space Shuttle accident. The orders were signed two and one week after these events, respectively, and the panels completed their work six months and three months after the events.
These were discrete incidents, while the BP oil disaster is an ongoing event so it may take longer to investigate and draw conclusions about the causes and damages. By using an executive order, President Obama can get this inquiry started much more quickly than by waiting for Congress to pass legislation. This will enable investigators to question witnesses while their memories are still fresh, and promptly order BP, Transocean, and Halliburton to preserve all relevant communications and documents.
Related Links:
Limbaugh: ‘When do we ask the Sierra Club to pick up the tab for this leak?’
Obama and Dem senators call for spill inquiries; head of MMS retires
The real trouble from the oil spill is brewing deep under the sea
Facebook grew more popular than Myspace just about two years ago, and has been been enjoying steady growth while MySpace flounders trying to reinvent itself.
But the recent attention brought to Facebook’s privacy issues -specifically the complaint filed with the US Federal Trade Commission by EPIC pointing out that Facebook data isn’t as private as it once was– has opened a door for MySpace to jam its foot into.
The New York Times last week called Facebook’s privacy settings “A bewildering tangle of options,” with 50 settings menus with more than 170 options, and a privacy statement more than 1,200 words longer than the U.S. Constitution.
MySpace Co-president Mike Jones seized on this opportunity to announce its “New, simpler privacy setting.”
“We want our users to know we are planning the launch of a simplified privacy setting for our user profiles. While we’ve had these plans in the works for some time, given the recent outcry over privacy concerns in the media, we felt it was important to unveil those plans to our users now,” Jones said. “We believe users want a simpler way to control their privacy. That’s why, in the coming weeks, MySpace will continue to simplify its privacy settings to create a simpler, more intuitive approach that gives users greater control over their information. Setting options will include public, friends only, or public to anyone 18 or over. In making this change, MySpace will default the setting to ‘friends only’ for any user who previously had any granular page setting to ‘friends only.’ Users can change this option with one click if they choose.”
A small number of Facebook users with a disproportionately loud voice have pledged to shut down their Facebook profiles on May 31, the unofficial “Quit Facebook Day.”
From the site’s sub-heading that explains why users are quitting, it says: “For a lot of people, quitting Facebook revolves around privacy. This is a legitimate concern, but we also think the privacy issue is just the symptom of a larger set of issues. The cumulative effects of what Facebook does now will not play out well in the future, and we care deeply about the future of the web as an open, safe and human place. We just can’t see Facebook’s current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we’re leaving.”
Maybe they can be enticed to get behind MySpace.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Privacy – Mike Jones – MySpace – Facebook – New York Times
With its upgraded V6, the 2011 Ford Mustang could easily be considered a sports car. So we pit it against the 370Z and Genesis Coupe to see which coupe reigns supreme.
This past weekend’s 24-hour race at the Nurburgring provided plenty of thrills and chills, with one unlikely team taking the top spot from Audi and Porsche.
Hidden beneath that psychedelic camouflage is the 2011 LRX, and to our surprise and delight, the three-door ‘ute from Land Rover looks exactly like its conceptual predecessor.
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Continue reading Daily U-Turn: What you missed on 5.17.10
Daily U-Turn: What you missed on 5.17.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 17 May 2010 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
A lot of augmented reality applications we’ve seen thus far have seemed a little, well, excessive. But if AR can put me at peace with spiders, snakes, cockroaches, and the rest? That’s a feat deserving of a Nobel Prize. More »
Virtual reality – Philanthropy – Companies – Insect – Phobia
Trey Smith is Willard Christopher Smith III. Trey Smith was named after his father Will Smith, who is Willard Christopher Smith Jr. Trey Smith is the son of Will Smith to Sheree Zampino. The two went on divorce in 1995. Trey Smith was seen in his father’s music video for the 1998 single “Just the Two of Us.” Jada Pinkett Smith is the second wife of Will Smith to whom he had children… Jaden Christopher Syre and Willow Camille Reign.
Will married actress Jada Pinkett in 1997. Jada Pinkett Smith is an American actress, producer, director, author, singer and businesswoman.
Find out more on Trey Smith, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith…
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Head of Caltech’s Biological Propulsion Laboratory John Dabiri and two of his graduate students have turned to schools of fish to further our knowledge of how wind turbines work best and how to combat the lack of space we have for the traditional horizontal-axis wind turbines most commonly seen across the landscape.
“I became inspired by observations of schooling fish, and the suggestion that there is constructive hydrodynamic interference between the wakes of neighboring fish,” said Dabiri, associate professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at Caltech. “It turns out that many of the same physical principles can be applied to the interaction of vertical-axis wind turbines.” (more…)
Google is set to unveil Android 2.2 this week at Google I/O and Flash 10.1 will be one of the major features that gets highlighted. Adobe is already gearing up for the launch by highlighting a couple dozen sites that are optimized for the mobile platform. The guys at TechCrunch were able to locate the landing page that users will be directed to after installing the new Flash 10.1 beta.
The early focus appears to be on video and games, the two cornerstones of Flash. A slew of games will be provided by Kongregate, MiniClip, and South Park Studios while video will come from Sony Pictures and Warner Brothers. TV shows will be available from TBS, TNT, and BET. Other suggested sites include Google Finance, Wall Street Journal, Justin.tv, and many more.
For a complete list of showcase sites, see the Nexus One
and the Droid landing pages. Droid owners should be happy because I think this confirms our predictions that their devices will be among the first to taste FroYo Android 2.2.
Featured Flash sites include:
Oil spill has never been alarmingly destructive until now that gallons of it is polluting the Gulf of Mexico each day and worse spreading farther into the sea after previous efforts to contain it failed. What is more disturbing is it has entered a major ocean current and the repercussions may last for years. Investigation is on the way to measure how much of the oil has been released.
“So first you have oily water that may be toxic to certain organisms and also the oxygen issue…this can interrupt the food chain at the lowest level, and will trickle up and certainly impact organisms higher. Whales, dolphins, and tuna all depend on lower depths to survive,” said Joye who discovered the plumes.
A tube sipped more than 42,000 gallons each day while there is an estimated 210,000 more oozing from the damaged well every day and could be greater.
It appears that the damage outweighs the contamination efforts and it is just the tip of the iceberg. Washington Post points out the greater scheme of what lies below the depths of the sea rich in aquatic life still to be discovered.
“This is the unseen world imperiled by the uncapped oil well a mile below the surface of the gulf. The millions of gallons of crude, and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it, have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos, and scientists have no answer to the questions of how this unintended and uncontrolled experiment in marine biology and chemistry will ultimately play out.”
President Obama earlier held BP accountable and there is no way this calamity will be solved without its intervention.
No related posts.
Mobileblab is reporting that something very interesting has been found regarding Google’s Smart TV project while searching the Google Patent data base. What exactly could be so interesting? Well, according to the database, the new Smart TV will be Android powered, and come with a special Android app store with its own TV applications. This patent application was filled by Google and Sony for a “network media player with user-generated playback control.” That name sounds a little similar to their latest Android powered TV that should be announced soon.
From what I read, the Android powered TV is planned to be able to bring all your media players into one and allow you to play your movies from cable, satellite, online, and more all in one place. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.
They patents talk of a way users could add their own graphics on top of a recorded videos.
“User-generated overlays can be used to create custom playback of content. For example, a user could overlay a frame image, add a ticket bar, place a logo in the corner of the screen, add a sound track, or perform any other overlay function.”
This information is great, but I still have a lot of questions for Eric and the crew. What do you guys make of these images?
Source: Mobileblab
Oklahoma, the state that gave the world Senator James “global warming is a hoax” Inhofe (R-Big Oil), has just passed a proposed 15% by 2015 Renewable Energy Standard, in the House. The Oklahoma Energy Security Act would have to pass its Senate too, to be the law. Or, as Senator Inhofe has described clean energy legislation; be “a job-killing agenda.”
If it does pass the state Senate, this would make Oklahoma a trailblazer among most Southern states, in passing legislation to add clean renewable power, albeit as a “goal.” The bill is unusual in that it encourages the development of natural gas, not normally considered a “renewable” source, but still one that has about half the global warming properties of coal.
In the 35 states that now have a Renewable Energy Standard (RES), greenhouse gases have been lowered, compared with states that have no legislation, and green jobs created by adding more renewable power.
Four of the RES states have actually achieved ambitious European-scale greenhouse gas reductions below 1990 levels – while growing their economies an average of 65%.
What’s Good: Good reception, decent battery life, roomy QWERTY keyboard.
What’s Bad: Resistive screen can be wonky at times.
Verdict: It’s a good mid-range device, but the screen isn’t always accurate.
The LG Rumor Touch offers a 3.0-inch resistive touchscreen with 262,000 colors and 240 x 400 pixels. Having worked with AMOLED displays in the past, it’s not the most amazing screen in the world, but will certainly get the job done. The device ships in a small box, complete with the phone, battery, AC adapter, 1 GB microSD card, microSD card adapter, and instruction manuals. Overall, it feels good in the hand, and isn’t too large (even when the keyboard is out).
Slide the device to the left to view the full QWERTY keyboard. With five rows, the raised keys made it easy to type long text messages and the like. Though navigating Sprint’s OneClick interface was easy as always, I had issues with the resistive touchscreen. As with all resistive displays, I had to push the screen rather hard to get it to register my gesture, and it would often register in the wrong place. As a result, it became quite frustrating to use, and I found myself relying on the QWERTY keyboard for most navigational tasks. I’m still working with it for the full review, but I haven’t been pleased to date.
The Rumor Touch offers a 2.0-megapixel camera, and while it works decently, it’s nothing to write home about. Featuring four resolutions, you can customize several settings (white balance, color tone, and brightness, just to name a few) to your liking. The phone also offers a camcorder, which can record in MMS-length or longer for storage on the microSD card.
I’ve been working with the Rumor Touch in the Charlotte metro area, and call quality has been very good. I’ve had no issues whatsoever, and when I took the device to a Sprint dead spot in the area, the device was able to hold the call despite being a bit choppy. During calls, users told me that they could hear me fine, and I had no trouble on my end. I paired the Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset to the device, and used it through conference calls with no issues.
The Rumor Touch offers 3G (EVDO Rev. 0) connectivity on Sprint, so the HTML web browser worked well throughout my testing. The mobile CNN webpage loaded in about 11 seconds, and the PhoneDog homepage loaded in 31 seconds. Other data-intensive tasks such as Sprint TV, Sprint Music, and Twitter worked incredibly well. Sprint’s 3G connectivity has been flawless during the time that I’ve been working with the unit; I can’t think of a single time I’ve seen it revert to 1X.
At the time of this writing, the LG Rumor Touch can be purchased at Sprint retail stores or online for $79.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and new two-year customer agreement. For more information, check out Noah’s video review, and stay tuned for my written review of the device!
AT&T has what it hopes to be an ace in the hole while it transitions to the Long Term Evolution fourth-generation wireless network technology — faster 3G over its entire footprint by the end of the year. How fast? Up to 14 Mbps through an upgrade to the HSPA+ technology standard, according to John Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T Operations, who spoke with me this afternoon.
In the interview Stankey confirmed plans for the nation’s second-largest carrier to move from the current planned rollout of HSPA 7.2 (which offers maximum theoretical speeds of 7.2 Mbps down and real-world speeds of about 3.5 Mbps) to a version of HSPA+ that will offer real-world speeds closer to 7 Mbps down. He said that, for less than $10 million, AT&T can upgrade its 3G network to provide HSPA+ network access to 250 million people by the end of the year. AT&T still plans to begin its LTE roll out in 2011, but for less than $10 million it can provide a fallback network that’s more robust than the 3G network offered by its closest rival, Verizon. My hunch is that it can also afford to take more time completing its LTE rollout while still competing with its rivals, which are boosting speeds on their networks.
Verizon’s 3G network is based on a CDMA standard (EVDO Rev. A) that currently offers speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps (I generally get about 1.7 Mbps down on my modem). As Verizon upgrades to LTE (it plans to cover 100 million people by the end of this year and its entire footprint by the end of 2013) it’s going to offer its users two networks with widely varying speeds. In places with LTE, Verizon says speeds will range from 5 to 12 Mbps down, while in places it has 3G, users will see speeds drop significantly. This is one argument in favor of Verizon looking at deploying EVDO Rev. B in some places, which offers speeds of up to 14.7 Mbps down. Verizon denies this plan.
So, essentially AT&T wants to spend a fairly small chunk of change to make sure its customers have a network on which to fall back on without experiencing a steep drop in speeds. It also wants to buy itself some time to roll out an LTE network without looking like a laggard, speed-wise. Indeed, T-Mobile is deploying an HSPA+ network that’s delivering speeds of up to 8 Mbps in real-world tests.
AT&T also wants to make sure its customers have good devices and coverage while the vendor community gets the LTE ecosystem up to speed. Stankey has long been vocal about his belief that LTE won’t be ready for the mainstream until 2014, and said today, “The vendors are experiencing some challenges on certain features and software, and first implementations in 2011 will be…pretty vanilla.”
Among his worries are issues about roaming between 3G and 4G, and the handoffs between voice and data on 4G networks. He believes a wide variety of LTE handsets for the general consumer, as opposed to early adopters, won’t appear until 2014 — which is also the same time he expects voice to be delivered via VoIP on LTE. Until then, the handsets will be big, have bulky antennas and suffer from short battery life, he predicted. However, he also acknowledged that the HSPA+ handset ecosystem will take some time to develop and said the first products will likely be data cards — a forecast which effectively killed my hope of a fourth-generation iPhone that works with HSPA+ networks.
Even if the handset experience for LTE is lame through 2014, the market for data cards or service for devices like the iPad is a growing opportunity that AT&T can’t ignore. And that’s the main benefit to an upgrade to HSPA+ for Ma Bell: It gets double the speeds on its network for a low price, and it won’t fall behind as it competes with what would otherwise be faster speeds on Verizon’s LTE network, Sprint and Clearwire’s WiMAX network and T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network next year and beyond.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):
Everybody Hertz: The Looming Spectrum Crisis
Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user mrbill
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware of our 3-month-old, revitalized HumaneWatch campaign that’s exposing the deceptive “Humane Society” of the United States (HSUS) as the PETA-esque animal rights group that it is. Judging from the reaction of HSUS (and its head honcho “Humane Wayne” Pacelle) to our new efforts to keep the group honest, we’re having a serious, nationwide impact that threatens HSUS’s attempts to continue to masquerade as a pet-shelter umbrella group. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, after all.
Yesterday we upped the ante with full-page ads in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to make sure our message reached millions of Americans. And today we’re targeting Hollywood celebrities who lend their star power to this faux humane society with a full-page ad in Tinseltown’s must-read magazine, Variety.
You may not know it, but more than 100 celebrities, from Carrie Underwood to Harrison Ford, have aligned themselves in serious ways with HSUS. These stars (and their agents) may not know that HSUS is simply PETA in a suit-and-tie, so we’re happy to set the record straight:
You can see all of our HumaneWatch ads here.
There are a lot of augmented reality apps out there, some even worthwhile. Not all, however, are this practical. When you’re shopping for a new watch (which people do, I understand), it’s not always easy to tell how it’s going to look on your own wrist. How big is it, exactly? Does the face look cool upside-down? Will that silver color clash with the blue of my veins? Important questions all. Don’t worry, though. Tissot has your back with this new augmented reality app.
Hmm. I wish I could tell you a little more about how well this app works, but I haven’t had a printer for like five years, and so cannot print out the little paper watch you need in order to interact with the app. Wait, maybe if I….
Yes, it worked! Can’t really tell much about how it would look on my wrist (the G1 kept falling off when I tried to balance it) but that’s pretty funny. You too can do it, if you feel like downloading the 82MB (!) app. Eh, why not?
[via The Awesomer]
