Blog

How do you improve on an award-winner like Scribblenauts? Just makes it super. Initially reported to have a Fall 2010 release (qjnet/nintendo-ds/scribblenauts-sequel-targeting-fall-2010-release.html), the talked-about Scribblenauts sequel now has a name and a new release margin. From

Michael Giberson

At the Freakonomics blog, James McWilliams offers a review of sorts of Robert Bryce’s new book Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future.  McWilliams reports that the book is “a sustained attack on our irrational infatuation with wind and solar power.” Part of Bryce’s “sustained attack” is a chapter on Denmark and wind energy, and McWilliams’s piece mostly directs itself to explaining and commenting on the Denmark chapter.

Unfortunately, McWilliams’s review only convinces me I shouldn’t rely on his opinions on energy topics.

I end up not believing the review mostly because the explanations of Denmark’s situation feel incomplete and a bit ad hoc.  But rather than ask you to trust my feelings, let’s look at a point McWilliams made where fact checking is easy. Here is McWilliams:

It should be noted, in all fairness to Denmark, that its citizens have done something the U.S. seems unwilling to do: they’ve kept energy demand flat. Today, Denmark uses the same amount of per capita energy as it did in 1981. Remarkable.

Do you interpret these two sentences as McWilliams claiming that Danish consumers have kept per capita energy use level since 1981 and U.S. consumers have increased per capita energy use?

A few moments on the internet turns up data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on per capita energy use: per capita energy use was 332 million BTU in the United States in 1981, 327 million BTU in 2008, and 310 million BTU in 2009.  These numbers are from the 2008 Annual Energy Review and the 2010 Annual Energy Outlook.  A EIA spreadsheet from the 2006 International Energy Annual [XLS] has data on many countries, including the U.S. and Denmark, over the period 1980-2006. In general both countries have seen ups and downs in per capita energy use from 1980 to 2006, with the ups tending to reflect periods of low energy prices or stronger economic growth and the downs tending to reflect periods of higher energy prices or weaker energy growth. Unremarkable.

Since I can’t rely on McWilliams’s review, I don’t know yet whether I’m interested or not in Bryce’s book.  However, Bryce’s “Five myths about green energy,” an op-ed appearing in the Washington Post just before the his book was published, seems similarly incomplete and ad hoc in its analysis. (How critical for energy policy analysis is a calculation of watts of energy output per square meter of land devoted to energy production? It strikes me as reaching for a techno-scientific sounding statistic to dress up the author’s dismissal of wind power which is itself based on other grounds.) But op-eds are brief and by nature driven to anecdote rather than careful explication of data; maybe the book has more substance.

(A tip of the hat with link to John Whitehead at Environmental Economics for drawing my attention to the McWilliams review at Freakonomics.)

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Two months ago, VPN builder VirnetX was awarded $105.75 million by a Tyler, Texas jury, for Microsoft’s infringing upon its patented tunneling protocol for private networks. Realizing that this could actually be the first home run by VirnetX in the same turn at bat, Microsoft has opted to pay $200 million to VirnetX as a settlement for this and all future lawsuits.

The technology that triggered the initial award was a way for VoIP phones to conduct communications on secure channels, without the phone user having to log in using some kind of keyboard. What Microsoft wanted for its Unified Communications suite was a way to keep the same “dialtone” when a user picks up a voice receiver and dials a recipient, and yet keep the channel between the parties secure using VPN technology.

VirnetX definitely held a patent on something meeting that general description, though Microsoft’s challenge was that the basic innovation behind VirnetX’s twist on tunneling wasn’t much of a twist. After its fifth-of-a-billion-dollar payout, Microsoft will not be appealing that argument.

Instead, VirnetX will be putting its newfound revenue to use by funding something it calls the Secure Domain Name Initiative. Launched just last month, the company claims it will be utilizing the two patents it holds — the two upon which the jury said Microsoft infringed — to develop a system it describes as enabling always-on communications security between DNS endpoints, presumably using encrypted traffic. Imagine an HTTPS connection (or perhaps something more secure) where the browser doesn’t have to create the session key, and where all traffic is encrypted by default.

To get to a Web where that’s the case, apparently engineers will have to go through VirnetX’s channels; and that $200 million payout doesn’t just pave the way, but puts up guardrails, fences, and gates as well.

Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player now

View the full MSFT chart at Wikinvest

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Hamid Karzai went home to Afghanistan last week having reached a modus vivendi with the U.S. on the non-offensive in Kandahar. The Obama administration, the military, NATO and Karzai now speak of a “rising tide of security” taking hold over the southern city, with security operations playing a decisively subordinate role to governance and economic functions. But that’s vastly easier said than done. And McClatchy carries a blind quote casting doubt on whether the basic prerequisites for that “rising tide” are even in evidence:

U.S. defense officials and defense analysts said that McChrystal used 10,000 troops in Helmand to gain control of a rural river valley with about 50,000 residents. But in Kandahar, however, Afghanistan’s second largest city, with an estimated population of 800,000, he’s calling for just 20,000 troops.

“None of this makes any sense,” said a U.S. defense official. “If it took you 10,000 (U.S. troops) to do Marjah, there aren’t enough troops (for Kandahar).” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

And Marja isn’t in any important sense done, either.

The Energy Information Administration just released their Annual Energy Outlook for 2010: Annual Energy Outlook 2010

It is about 220 pages long, and therefore I haven’t had a chance to read it thoroughly. But in my skimming of it so far, there are a few interesting items to note. One of the things I was most curious about was whether they would show this scary graph that appeared in the 2009 Annual Energy Outlook:

Let that sink in for a just a minute. What that says is that global production in 2030 is forecast to be 43 million barrels, demand is forecast to be 105 million barrels, and we really don’t have any idea how we are going to cover 62 million barrels per day of demand by 2030. We are going to need a lot of oil to cover the depletion, so it is up to “unidentified projects” – or we will deal with huge shortages.

Certainly there will be plenty of projects that haven’t been identified that will contribute to supply. But the key question is “Will those be enough?” This is especially true in light of the current mess in the Gulf of Mexico, because a lot of that new oil was expected to come from offshore. But as I originally predicted, I think this blowout in the gulf really slows things down. A relevant news story on that theme from today:

BP Disaster Strands Billions of Barrels of Offshore U.S. Crude

A regulatory crackdown on offshore oil drilling after the fatal rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico will delay development of U.S. deposits with billions of barrels of crude and may spawn industry job cuts.

“This oil spill was a disaster for the industry,” said Gianna Bern, president of Brookshire Advisory & Research in Flossmoor, Illinois, and a former BP crude trader. “It will ratchet up public debate on deep-water drilling by a couple of notches and put a lot of projects conceivably on the back burner.”

So this would seem to make last year’s graph even more ominous. But alas, so far I have not found that graph in this year’s report. In fact, for the most part this year’s report is pretty upbeat about future prospects. It suggests that CTL, GTL, and BTL will start to make significant contributions to global fuel supplies. It also suggests that in the U.S. high oil prices will finally make oil shale economical. This of course repeats the 100-year-old mantra about oil shale being just around the corner.

The report suggests that the 2022 cellulosic ethanol mandate will not be met “because economic and technological factors prevent cellulosic biofuel production from providing the credits that would be needed to meet the requirement.” They do forecast that by 2035 we will have figured it out and that “ultimately surpasses the RFS requirement as higher oil prices and lower production costs improve their competitiveness.”

Let me say that I have a lot of respect for the EIA, and use them extensively for data. I know they put a lot of hard work into this report. However, some of their predictions have become a running joke. If you want to have some fun reading, go back and look at some of their historical predictions from say, 2001. For instance, I always get a kick out of this graph, which makes an annual appearance:

It is always the same story. Sure, production has fallen in the U.S. for the past 35+ years, but starting next year things are going to turn around. You can see this same graph in every recent Energy Outlook. Then production falls for another year, and they move the line forward and forecast that the next year will be the turnaround year.

One other graph of note concerns their projections for growth of CTL, BTL, and oil shale.

I agree with them that there will be growth in CTL and BTL as conventional oil depletes, but I am still skeptical about whether oil can be produced from shale with a positive energy balance.

Anyway, lots of material to sort through, but I mainly wanted to call attention to the report so people can begin to digest it.

This is a guest by Robert Rapier from R Squared Energy Blog.

Join the conversation about this story »

Narrowly missing out on an item on sites such as eBay can be incredibly
frustrating.
Unfortunately this is beginning to happen more frequently as many
bidders are now resorting to sniping tools which enable them to bid for items
automatically, in the dying seconds of auctions, without even having to
be at their computers. Unless you are able to watch items twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week it’s inevitable that you’ll lose out on
some items. As this is the case for most of us, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way of easily monitoring and
bidding on selected items?

AuctionSleuth
3.0.9 is an application that enables you to outbid rivals
right at the end of online auctions. You can use it to monitor new ‘Buy it
now’ items so you can be first to know when they are made available as well as use AuctionSleuth to ensure you don’t lose out on the things
you want, to somebody who may be using a sniping tool themselves.

AuctionSleuth
3.0.9 link.

Captain Kibble was the first of a whole lot of you to send in actor/comedian/writer/etc. Peter Serafinowicz’s explanation for why he downloads unauthorized copies of things… including his own movies. The basic answer is convenience, but also a shifting view on media consumption. He does pay for some stuff, but only when it’s equally convenient or, as many have called it, “better than free.” It’s worth reading the whole thing, but there are a few key snippets. He notes that there is definitely promotion value in having the content up on file sharing networks — and notes that with his own show, obscurity is a much bigger threat than “piracy”:

The visibility argument certainly makes sense for my short-lived BBC show. I’m revamping my website right now and my web team asked me if I would like them to hunt down and put and end to the torrents and RapidShare links to The Peter Serafinowicz Show, which was recently released in the UK on DVD. I said no because the show is still relatively unknown and I’d like as many people to see it as possible. In fact, I’ve used the torrents myself when I haven’t had a copy to hand.

Much of it is already up on YouTube. If people like it enough they’ll want to buy, to own, the DVD, which has lots of great extra stuff, but the DVD isn’t even sold in the USA. The freely available content serves as a calling card for me, and for the other cast members and writers, hopefully enabling us to produce more hilarious stuff for the world’s discerning comedy fans.

Another point he makes is that it’s often the content providers own fault in making it so ridiculous difficult to legally get the content he wants to watch. He lives in the UK and is frustrated about TV shows getting to the UK much later, or other content that he can’t legally reach at all from the UK. And sometimes, it makes no sense at all to him, so he just fires up BitTorrent instead:

I recently wanted to show my son Disney’s classic Jungle Book and intended to get it on iTunes. Unfortunately, it is currently incarcerated within The Disney Vault. So I’m afraid I simply DL’ed a pixel-clear pirate copy which arrived in seconds. My moral justification for this? I once bought the VHS. It’s your own vault, Disney!

He also sees how annoying the legally purchased versions of things can be:

“Ownership” is starting to change its meaning. If you buy a movie from iTunes you “own” the right to watch it on certain devices within certain constraints. When you “own” a DVD, you have the right to watch it whenever and wherever you want. However: you must watch ten minutes of promos, trailers and anti-piracy threats. I’ll take the download, please.

Along those lines, he gets frustrated at ridiculous and unnecessary restrictions when he does by content — restrictions that unauthorized copies don’t have:

I own a physical copy of Anthony Lane’s brilliant collection of New Yorker reviews, Nobody’s Perfect. It’s a heavy read (around 3 lbs.) and I wanted to get a copy for my iPad. I tracked down an ePub version of the book at the Barnes & Noble site, assuming, since iBooks also uses the format, that I could tranfer it to my iPad. Only the iPad doesn’t read Adobe-encoded ebooks, not now at least. With the help of some sympathetic Twitter followers I then spent around ten futile hours installing Xcode and obscure Python scripts (not the funny ones) on two different computers in what seems to be the only method one can use to illegally decrypt Adobe ebooks. My moral justification for this? I’ve paid for the book twice.

Finally, he also has run into the ridiculousness of the recording industry. Earlier this year, we noted how insanely short-sighted it was of EMI to prevent embedding of the band Ok Go’s viral music videos. Serafinowicz came across the same issue on a video he made for EMI, which he solved by releasing it in an unauthorized manner:

I recently directed the music video for Hot Chip’s “I Feel Better.” Contractually, the video had to be hosted on EMI’s official YouTube channel, which disabled non-UK users from viewing it, limiting its audience by around 80%. Frustrated, I put it up on my own YouTube channel with no region restrictions, and at time of writing is just shy of a million views. EMI then remotely disabled embedding on my version, thereby limiting its audience again. If you’re in the business of promoting a band, why would you want to stop people watching their promotional video?

It’s basically the same story over and over and over again. People understand what’s possible and what they can do with technology, and the industry keeps wanting to restrict what they can do, because the industry doesn’t know how to deal with it. But that’s never going to stop people. Once you understand what technology enables, why would you ever purposely limit yourself? The various content industries have so many chances to get this right, and every time they get it wrong — to the point that even the folks who make their living from these industries are beginning to question the strategic aptitude of those in charge.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Over three years ago, I posed the question of whether I could cut cable TV from my life. It’s odd to look back on the online media landscape over that time. YouTube was less than two years old. Hulu wasn’t announced yet. Finding a Redbox or DVDPlay in your town was a rare joy. Streaming video was so new to Netflix that they didn’t have a Instant Queue until a little more than two years ago.

At that time I tried to cut cable television, I’d need three things:

• Polished DVRs with no subscriptions. I can’t have the OS crashing on me. I need an interface that everyone can use. Perhaps this is not a problem. I’ll need to research this. There is likely going to be a one time cost. Perhaps I can get something pre-built on Ebay.
• Slingbox and good bandwidth. The original Slingbox’s picture is okay for most television viewing, but it’s tough on sports with small details such as a baseball or football.
• I need to get one of those HDTV antennas. They are cheap and easy to get on the Internet. I’ll probably pick one up this weekend.

Looking back at that a few things jump out at me…

1. The idea of putting a Slingbox at a friend’s house and sharing a cable connection was a total cop-out. I think it was a great idea at the time considering the lack of alternatives, but a lot more can be done today. Some people mentioned it was even against Slingbox’s terms of service. To those people, I’d just say that I believe a company has to offer a service to offer a terms of service. If you buy a product that requires no service, you are free to use it as you see fit (as long as it is within the laws of the US).
2. The HDTV antenna that I tried was horrible. I think I simply went too cheap on that.
3. I was a horrible writer who relied on lists too much… even for short items that don’t require lists like this one.

My idea of cutting the cable had been dormant after my failed attempt three years. Recently four factors have resurrected the idea. We had an accidental deletion of an episode of Glee (yes guilty as charged) and I had to resort to Hulu to catch up. I had a conversation with some friends who I haven’t seen in some time and they mentioned dropping their cable. They are exclusively using a combination of Netflix, Hulu, and MLB TV – a subscription service streaming live Major League Baseball games over the Internet. CNN Money says that 1 in 8 people will drop cable and satellite in 2010, which led to Lifehacker asking what would you need to ditch cable television? Finally, I learned that a new co-worker is quite adept at building polished media boxes from open source software (with no ongoing subscriptions) and he’s willing to help set me up with the software if I buy the hardware. This interface would give us easier access to Hulu and Netflix.

The mitigating factor is not that I won’t have enough to watch if I cut the cable. It’s not even the quality of what’s available online. The combination of Netflix and Hulu would give me more TV than I should be watching anyway. The problem is with live television – particularly sports. Like my friends, baseball wouldn’t be much of an issue because of MLB TV. That would cost us $110 a year. However that represents a savings from what we pay our cable company for MLB Extra Innings for out-of-town coverage of our beloved Red Sox. The next problem is getting NFL games. There is no NFL equivalent MLB TV available in the United States. It’s not because the NFL can’t do it, but it’s because DirecTV has paid the NFL handsomely so that they can have much of the exclusive rights to out-of-town football games. Since I don’t have DirecTV anyway, I’m still stuck going to the sports bar to bar to watch the Patriots. The only loss here is the ESPN coverage of Monday night games (2 Patriots games this year).

Have you cut cable television? If so, do you have any tricks or secrets that I missed?

Related posts:

1. Cutting the Cable TV There used to be time when all of America…
2. Save Money on Television In the past I’ve given a few tips on saving…
3. Major League Baseball Stole My Money… As some of my regular readers know, I’m a huge…
4. Major League Baseball and The Onion of Evil I made fairly sizable purchase last Friday. I called up…
5. Netflix vs Blockbuster The continuing television writers’ strike has greatly reduced the value…

In the smartphone world, it sometimes takes community involvement to encourage developers to bring the software we want to our platform of choice.  The webOS community generally, and the PreCentral community specifically, tend towards the more active side of the spectrum and when they want something, they’re more likely to get it.  P|C Forum member nulall has put together a thread linking to projects that that need your vote in order to come to webOS, including qik, Dropbox, Quickoffice, Seesmic, and plenty more.  Go ahead: pop in, and give your vote!

For this week’s Shooting Challenge, I asked you to shoot whatever you wanted. As the 116 photos that follow prove, this was a great decision. More »










Photography – Challenge Shoot – Business – Arts and Entertainment – Photographers

by Tom Philpott

As corals are particularly susceptible to oil detergents and dispersed oil, the results of these assays rules out the use of any oil dispersant in coral reefs and in their vicinity.
—From a 2007 paper by Israeli researchers, published in The Journal of Environmental Science

(USGS photo)After reading those words a few days ago, I became concerned about the deep-water reefs of the northern Gulf of Mexico, known as the Pinnacles. They lie just 25 miles north of the Deepwater Horizon leak, at depths of 230 to 400 feet along the edge of the continental shelf running from the Mississippi Delta to the DeSoto Canyon. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes them as a broad band of “drowned reefs” or “fossil reefs,” but while the reefs may be “fossil”—formed several millennia ago, when sea levels were lower—they remain ecologically vital. Says NOAA:

The Pinnacles are part of a shelf-edge reef complex throughout the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern United States that is considered to be critical spawning habitat for many commercially important species of groupers and snappers, and are home to many species that do not occur on shallow coral reefs such as the Spanish flag and roughtongue bass.

Well, vast plumes of dispersed oil are now hovering over these cradles of biodiversity. Associated Press reports that the dispersed oil is now over the western edge of the Pinnacles.

The reefs face two threats from the oil plumes. The first is oxygen depletion. “These plumes are being eaten by microbes thousands of feet deep, which removes oxygen from the water,” AP reports. The article quotes Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia who says that the abundant deepwater coral in this area “need oxygen. Without it, they can’t survive.”

The second threat is poisoning from direct contact:

Oil mixed with the chemical agent can disperse into the water more easily, rather than it staying on the surface, where it could bypass deeper banks like Pinnacles, said Edward Van Vleet, a chemical oceanography professor at the University of South Florida.The downside is that it causes oil to sink, coating corals and other reef organisms and smothering them, he said. When the dispersed oil is broken into smaller globules, he said they are more easily eaten by smaller reef organisms and can kill them or cause tumors or something else harmful.

And the Pinnacles aren’t the only reefs threatened by the underwater plumes. The Gulf loop current could carry them to the shallow-water corals off of the Florida Keys, AP reports.

The situation starkly illustrates the brutal dilemma faced by cleanup crews as they fight to limit damage from the ongoing spill. Use of chemical dispersants is no doubt reducing the size of surface slicks, limiting the potential for catastrophic damage along the Gulf’s environmentally sensitive shores. But dispersants also add to the size of underwater plumes, expanding the potential for catastrophic damage along the Gulf’s environmentally sensitive sea bottom.

The situation doesn’t clarify much about the wisdom of using dispersants. But it highlights the tremendous risks of deep-water oil drilling. And until we learn to use significantly less oil, deep-water drilling will only become a more entrenched practice.

Related Links:

The real trouble from the oil spill is brewing deep under the sea

MMS goes under the spotlight

Tube is suctioning one-fifth of spewing oil, says BP executive

Overview

What’s Good: Cute, compact form factor; Multitouch-aware capacitive display; Zune Pass compatibility; Hi-res still and video capture; Kin Studio provides automated Web-based backup

What’s Bad: Featurephone features at smartphone price; No calendar, games or downloadable apps; Limited syncing options; Poor ergonomics for camera use; Keyboard will be too small for some users

 

Introduction

Note: Kin One and Kin Two are basically identical in terms of software and general performance, including the 600MHz NVIDIA Tegra processor that they both employ. As such, appropriate portions of this review are shared with my Kin Two review.

 A few years ago Microsoft bought Danger, inventors of the Sidekick family of messaging devices. Time passed and little was known about what, if anything, the Danger group was working on inside of Microsoft HQ, save a few leaks about “Project Pink.” Pink was rumored to be Microsoft’s self-branded foray into the messaging phone category, and said to consist of two launch phones codenamed “Pure” and “Turtle.”

Then Microsoft killed off Windows Mobile and announced Windows Phone 7 (Series) and everyone kind of forgot about Project Pink. For a few weeks, anyway.

Fast forward to a rainy Monday morning in April, and “Pure, Pink and Turtle” became “Kin One and Two,” as Microsoft officially launched their new devices for “Generation Upload” at a nightclub in San Francisco. Complete with a new mobile OS and heavily visual user interface, an online component called “Kin Studio,” and Verizon as launch partner, Kin showed the world that the Danger group had in fact been hard at work since being folded into the MSFT’s world.

Question is, are Kin One and Two actually any good? Sorta, but they’re so overpriced (think monthly plan costs, not up-front sticker shock) that it’s impossible to see them only for what they are. Instead I keep comparing them next to the Android and webOS phones in Verizon’s lineup and seeing the Kins for all the things they’re not.

Design & Features

Kin One is the little sister to the bigger, higher-spec’d Kin Two. A portrait slider with a touchscreen and full QWERTY thumbboard, Kin One sort of resembles a smushed-down Palm Pre. The device measures up at 3.3 x 2.66 x 0.73″ and weighs 3.9 ounces. Kin One is finished in “Carbon” (dark grey) grippy plastic with white accents, and when closed the top (screen) half of the phone rests in the center of the lower half – unlike the Pre, a portrait slider whose two halves close flush to each other.

K1’s screen is a 2.6″ capacitive touch TFT display capable of 320 x 240 resolution. While the screen is fairly small by today’s standards, it looks and works quite well. Kin One supports multitouch input including single and two-finger taps, double taps, swipes, and pinch-to-zoom. There’s one hardware button on the front of the phone, mounted dead center directly below the display. A single press of the button takes you back one screen in the user interface, while a press-and-hold will bring you back to The Loop (home screen).

Kin One features 3.5mm audio and microUSB ports, and hardware buttons for the Camera, Volume Up/Down (rocker switch), and Power/Screen Lock. There’s an 5MP camera withwith LED flash, auto-focus and anti-shake technology on the back which also shoots VGA (standard def) video. Photos, video, and music are stored on 4 GB of internal, non-removable flash memory; there is no microSD expansion slot.

One big design flaw has to do with the placement and operation of the camera button. As bad as the camera button placement is on Kin Two, it’s worse here on K1. Whether you use the phone right- or left-handed, odds are you’re going to inadvertently block the camera sensor with your finger or hand when reaching for the camera button. I know I did, and moving my hand around to get a free shot resulted in my having a relatively shaky, very uncomfortable grip on the device. Poor choice of button placement, Microsoft and Sharp.

The QWERTY board on Kin One is pretty good, though. Again, I’m reminded of a Palm Pre, but with bigger, brighter buttons set on a wider keyboard tray. Though Kin One was designed for one-finger typing, I found I did pretty well on it with my two-thumbed approach. As with Kin Two, K2 employs a fairly standard four-row design marked by shorter keys on the bottom row. Key action was pretty good and I appreciated the quadruple-wide space bar even if I’m still annoyed that typing a comma requires hitting Function and Period. Periods should have their own keys. Period.

Usability & Performance

Before you read on, bear in mind that I’m a 30-something year old guy who’s tied to computers and smartphones all day for work, tweets his head off but rarely uses Facebook for personal reasons. So I’m not Microsoft’s target audience for Kin. That doesn’t mean I don’t have worthy opinions about Kin One, but it does mean that a 22 year old single woman with a super active nightlife and close ties to her social networking friends may feel a bit differently about the Kin experience than I did. That said …

 What’s Confusing: The Loop and The Spot

Kin is crazy. There’s support for four different social networks but no Calendar app or games. Contacts are automatically synced with your various social networking accounts, but there’s no way to auto-sync to address books, either on your local machine or on the servers of popular services like, y’know, GMail. Every photo you take, every video you shoot, every message and call you send or receive are automatically backed up to servers fronted by a timeline-based Web browser called Kin Studio.

And then there’s The Loop and The Spot. The Loop is your home screen. Your home screen is a giant mosaic of photos and text headlines that represent updates from your social networks and news feeds. Concepts like wallpapers, app icons and widgets don’t apply here: Kin is The Loop is the loop is your social network and you change the look and functionality of it by adding/removing feeds and friends. From The Loop you swipe one way to get to your apps menu and swipe the other way to dive into your contacts.

The Spot is this little dot at the bottom of most screens throughout Kin’s UI. When you want to share something with your peeps, you drag it to The Spot. The idea is that you can share most anything – photos, URLs, snippets of text, things posted to your Loop – with as many of your contacts as you like via The Spot. All you do is drag, in any order, some stuff and some peeps into The Spot, then open The Spot up and choose your method of sharing (SMS/MMS, Email, Post to Social Network) and that’s it. Easy. In theory.

In practice The Loop and The Spot are equal parts cool and frustrating. What’s cool is the unique, highly visual approach Microsoft took to Lifecasting and giving those always-connected Gen Upload kids a way to stay in touch. What’s frustrating are the limitations of the systems in place. To wit:

– Loop updates aren’t pushed to you in real time, they’re pulled on roughly 15-minute intervals. There’s no changing that schedule.

– There’s no Twitter client on Kin. The Loop is your Twitter client. That’s too bad because The Loop doesn’t support DMs, viewing @ replies or even just looking at your personal stream in one fell swoop. For any of that, you’ll have to visit twitter.com.

– The Loop is fun to look at first. And if you only have a dozen or two contacts it’s pretty fun to use. But if you’ve got upwards of forty or fifty friends across Facebook, mySpace and Twitter – let alone if you, like most members of Gen Upload have a network numbering in the hundreds – The Loop quickly becomes frustrating to use as a tool of any practical sort. At least it did for me. Scrolling through dozens upon dozens of differently-sized tiles chock full of photos and status updates and tweets and RSS headlines got to be laborious after a short time. Maybe I’m old and crusty, but I wanted some separation and I wanted a boring old list UI that was easy to scan for important information.

Microsoft programmed the loop to push updates from your favorites to the top of your list at any given time. They, like HTC and others before them, conducted some research that shows that people tend to communicate with a small percentage of their contacts a large percentage of the time. So The Loop has that going for it. But it’s still not customizable enough for my tastes. Motorola’s MotoBLUR may also be a somewhat overwhelming way of viewing social networks and feeds, but at least it lets me separate updates from other updates from RSS headlines to a greater extent.

What’s Great: Kin Studio and Zune Pass

Kin Studio is great. Except that it only runs on Silverlight-enabled Web browsers. In a nutshell, Kin Studio is an automated backup of every photo, video, message and phone log entry that’s wirelessly beamed from your Kin to Microsoft’s servers without your needing to do anything to enable it. When you visit your password-protected Kin Studio page, you can view your Kin life by way of a nifty timeline. Photos, videos, etc etc – it’s all there in chronological order for your perusal. Your contacts and feeds are also accessible via Kin Studio. You can also share things via The Spot from Kin Studio, including full-resolution copies of photos and videos shot with Kin One.

Zune on Kin is also great. Kin One and Two are basically the mythological “Zune Phones” finally made real. Kin Two features 4GB of onboard memory for storage of photos, music, videos and everything else. While that doesn’t sound like much memory for a multimedia phone (and only half as much as Kin Two has), remember two things: First, full-resolution photos are automatically backed up to Kin Studio and replaced with much smaller versions optimized for viewing on Kin One’s 320 x 240 display, a clever trick that should preserve plenty of room in K1’s flash memory. Second, Zune Pass.

If you’re going to get a Kin One and you listen to a lot of music, you really should consider a Zune Pass. I have a pretty sizable music collection and generally get my music on a purchase-to-own basis, but whenever I listen to satellite radio (usually in a rental car) or get a chance to demo something like Zune Pass or Rhapsody, I’m inevitably tempted to change my ways. Kin One comes with a 14-day free trial of Zune Pass, and after that it’s $14.99/month for unlimited streaming to your phone (and Zune HD and Web browser) and 10 songs you can download and keep. Yeah, it’s renting music and not owning it, but it’s a pretty good deal. Especially considering the size of the Zune catalog. The only issue with Zune Pass on Kin One comes when you’re out of cellular and WiFi coverage – no data means no music, except for what you’ve downloaded or sideloaded into memory.

Kin One supports audio-out via an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack and stereo Bluetooth. Plugged into good earphones or powered speakers, high-quality audio tracks coming forth from K1 sounded quite good.

 And Oh Yeah 

I could go on and on here, but real quick:

The phone functionality on Kin One is fine but not great. Call quality ranged from decent to pretty good, but you’re not going to mistake voice calling on Kin for voice calling on a Nexus One or Motorola phone with high-end noise reduction technology.

Kin One’s 5MP camera is really hampered by the issues with camera button placement that I mentioned earlier. To be fair, however, you can bypass the hard button and use the onscreen shutter control, instead. VGA videos shot with the device were pretty decent for a cameraphone.

 

Web browsing on Kin One is okay given the limitations of the display size. The browser supports pinch-to-zoom, which is great, but it’s built on Internet Explorer, which isn’t great. Browsing is better on Kin Two by virtue of its larger, widsescreen-style display.

Email isn’t great. Kin One struggled with HTML formatted Emails. But, hey, Gen Upload posts and tweets, they don’t Email.

There’s no IM client. None. *Scratches head*

Conclusion

Microsoft and Verizon are taking something of a chance with their new Kin duo of phones, what with their arrestingly different user interfaces, curious omission of features like calendars and IM clients, and smartphone-level monthly data pricing. Me? If I had to choose one Kin or the other I’d take Kin Two – I prefer its horizontal slider layout and two-thumb friendly keyboard, not to mention the extra memory and HD video capture not found on its little sister, Kin One.

But if I had the choice between either Kin and an Android or webOS smartphone also on Verizon? I’d take the smartphone, no question. Kin One is neat – it has a neat-looking UI and neat features like Kin Studio and Zune Pass. And K1 will definitely appeal to some folks on its cute looks alone. Problem is, the neatness wore off for me as soon as I found out I couldn’t easily sync contacts from Google or read HTML emails on the thing. And the lack of a decent Twitter option just made things worse. Then again, I’m not quite as interested in lifecasting as some other potential Kin buyers might be. So take my review with a grain of salt, Generation Upload. Kin One’s okay at what it does, but maybe you’re better suited to judge the value of what it does than I am.

Lexus is inviting customers to co-start in a new high-def interactive film called “Dark Ride,” which celebrates the launch of the new CT 200h. In the movie, the new hybrid hatchback from Lexus is piloted by Norman Reedus of the Boondock Saints.

While Reedus will be behind the wheels, he will be following direction of the person riding shotgun… you.

Click here to get prices on the 2010 Lexus HS 250h.

“With ‘Dark Ride’ we are creating a unique virtual test drive opportunity so consumers can experience this hybrid, that is like no other, months before it is available at dealerships in early 2011,” said Dave Nordstrom, Lexus vice president of marketing. “In it, consumers play a co-starring role as the fun-to-drive Lexus CT 200h is put through its paces. By guiding the driver and the CT through a series of adventures, customers will be exposed to ‘The Darker Side of Green,’ which is completely different than the way hybrids are usually portrayed.”

The film, which launches today at www.lexusdarkride.com today along with the trailer for the film, will appear in select movie theaters across the country.

Check out LexusDarkRide.com for more details along with the trailer for Dark Ride after the jump.

Refresher: Power for the Lexus CT 200h comes from a 1.8L VVT-i gasoline engine mated to a powerful electric-motor fueled by nickel-metal hydride batteries. Unlike a mild-hybrid system, the CT 200h has an EV (electric-vehicle) mode that allows it to run on only on its electric-motor for up to 1.2 miles at speeds of up to 28 mph.

2011 Lexus CT 200h:

2011 Lexus CT 200h:

Press Release:

Lexus Invites Consumers to Co-star in New ‘Dark Ride’ Interactive Film to Launch New CT 200h Hybrid

Torrance, Calif., May 14, 2010 — “Get in, buckle up and start talking.” Lexus customers will be calling the shots in a high-definition interactive film entitled “Dark Ride.” The film features Lexus’ newest hybrid, the CT 200h premium compact car, piloted by actor Norman Reedus (Boondock Saints franchise). Reedus is behind the wheel in this 12:30 action film, but he is following the directions of the person riding shotgun…the consumer.

The film releases online at www.lexusdarkride.com today along with the trailer for the film, which will appear in select movie theaters across the country. Visitors to the www.lexusdarkride.com site will get to insert themselves into the film, sitting beside “Tony” (Reedus), and navigating while he drives the CT 200h from the Nevada desert to a Los Angeles safehouse and protects it from a variety of enemies who wish to get their hands on the new prototype.

Consumers will use an array of interactive features in the film—allowing them to insert their own likeness (via a Webcam or profile pic), record their own dialogue lines, control the camera movement and POV, and make decisions that alter the path of the film so new situations arise each time.

The “Dark Ride” film is the next step in the launch of the Lexus CT 200h and demonstrates Lexus’ marketing theme, “The Darker Side of Green.” This theme, which shines a different light on this new breed of a fun-to-drive hybrid, debuted at a star-studded event prior to the CT 200h’s North American debut at the New York International Auto Show in April. This initiative will continue through the launch period with in-market custom events and a VIP marketing program that will give tech-savvy influencers access to an edited “Dark Ride” list of restaurants, clubs, bars and lifestyle brands. Brand partners include Duncan Quinn bespoke suits, VeeV Açaí Spirit, The James Hotel and Grand Hospitality for The Soho and Tribeca Grand Hotels.

DIRECT FILM VIEWING LINK: www.lexusdarkride.com
CAMPAIGN LINK: www.darkersideofgreen.com
TRAILER LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0KhesoAZcI

The all-new CT 200h premium compact hybrid will go on sale in the U.S. in early 2011 as the first dedicated hybrid vehicle in the premium compact segment. Expected to lead its class in fuel economy, the stylish, sporty five-door also delivers a dynamic, fun-to-drive experience. The CT is powered by a 1.8L Atkinson cycle four-cylinder gas engine with Variable Valve Timing with intelligence (VVT-i) and Lexus Hybrid Drive technology. The CT will be equipped with four drive-modes: Normal, Eco, Sport and EV.

With its reputation for high-quality products and exemplary customer service from its 228 dealers, Lexus has been the top-selling luxury automaker in the U.S. for ten years in a row. In addition, Lexus is the luxury hybrid leader, now offering four hybrids, with a fifth on the way, that provide the best in innovative technology and first-class luxury. When Lexus was established in 1989, it offered two models of vehicles. Now, more than 20 years later, Lexus offers variations of 11 vehicles, from the entry-level IS 250 to its first V10 supercar, the LFA.

Note: Lexus Dark Ride is viewable with Internet Explorer (Versions 6 and most optimally, 7), Google Chrome, Safari and Mozilla Firefox. Your computer must be equipped with Adobe Flash Player Version 10, found here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

– By: Omar Rana

Filed under: Motorsports, Europe, Audi, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, Racing

The 24 Hours of Nürburgring took place this weekend with an enormous starting field of over 200 cars. The enduro features a huge array of classes, including GT2, GT3 and touring cars, with everything from Honda Civics to Aston Martin Vantages and even a Porsche 911 GT3 hybrid battling through the Green Hell through the day and night. The race is run over a combined course of the legendary Nordschliefe and the modern Grand Prix circuit for a total of 15.8 miles, and with only 36 pits available, up to eight cars must share each pit, so plenty of coordination is needed. Read on after the jump to read what happened after the green flag fell.

Continue reading Unexpected winner crowned at Nürburgring 24 Hours [SPOILER]

Unexpected winner crowned at Nürburgring 24 Hours [SPOILER] originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 17 May 2010 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

em>Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is lending his famous face to a suicide prevention public service announcement for The Trevor Project. Founded in 1998, the initiative is the nation’s leading organization devoted to suicide prevention efforts among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered teens.

“I grew up knowing a lot of gay men and it was never something that I even thought twice about — that some men were gay and some weren’t…I think it’s important for somebody from a big, commercial movie series like ‘Harry Potter’ and particularly because I am not gay or bisexual or transgendered. … The fact that I am straight makes not a difference, but it shows that straight people are incredibly interested and care a lot about this as well.”

A few weeks back a story broke about Seagate’s plan to release a 3TB 3.5mm hard drive this year. Well, apparently that’s the case although if your system happens to be running a 32-bit OS like XP, you’re going to be out of luck. This drive, and any other hard drive larger than 2.1TB, will require the a modified versions of Linux or the 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Vista. Sorry, kids. It’s time to upgrade.

It all goes back to the days of DOS when the LBA (logical block addressing) standard was developed. The original LBA standard developed by IBM and Microsoft sets an address for each sector of the hard drive, therefore limiting the compatible size to 2.1TB. Of course that size seemed absolutely gigantic back in the 80’s, but now it’s one of the many issues Seagate had to work through in this drive’s development.

32-bit OS’s will see the drives, but Seagate found that it might limit the available size to only 990MB.

But there’s other issues as well. MBR’s don’t like the large hard drives either and require a GUID partition table that’s built into the just-released UEFFI system. Even RAID systems and hard drive controllers will need new drivers for the larger drive.

Yet Seagate trudging on and still plans on releasing its first 3TB drive sometime later this year. Sure, there are issues to work through, but at least it’s clear Seagate is prepared to meet them head on.

The Gulf of Mexico is a mess and it’s going to take a massive clean-up effort. One method alone isn’t going to cut it alone and YouTube is full of solutions. Soon the Gulf of Mexico might full of hair, hay, pine shavings, fungus and nuclear waste.