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UPDATE: Just before going to D.C. GM Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre will hold a press conference at the company’s Fairfax, Kansas Assembly Plant.

General Motors’ CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. will make his first trip to Capitol Hill on Wednesday since taking the leading position at the Detroit automaker. Whitacre, who become permanent CEO of GM in January, will meet with Michigan’s congressional delegation during his visit to Capitol Hill.

According to the Detroit News, Whitacre’s aides have reached out to congressional leaders to schedule meetings.

A GM spokesman declined to comment on Whitacre’s visit.

All we want to know is if Whitacre will drive the Volt to D.C. or take a private jet? And if he’s taking a jet, will AT&T be paying for the trip?

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Detroit News

To date all the invisibility cloak tech blogging I’ve done has covered the rapid development of this branch of science. Here’s some virtual ink on the other side of the cloaking coin.

From the second link:

Since then, Baile Zhang and buddies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, have been busy looking for the weak point in this idea and now think they’ve found it. Today, they point out that carpet cloaks have a flaw that makes the objects within them detectable.

The problem, they say, is that isotropic cloaks cannot work perfectly. Here’s why. Light can be thought of as a series of wavefronts each with a certain amount of energy. Ordinarily, the direction of energy propagation is at right angles to these wavefronts.

However, in an invisibility cloak, this perpendicular relationship becomes distorted as the light waves are steered. That’s what an anisotropic material does. But an isotropic material cannot do this–the energy always propagates at right angles to the wavefronts. This limitation means that isotropic materials cannot hide objects in the way Pendry suggests.

Zhang and co go on to prove their assertion by tracing a ray that passes through the kind of isotropic carpet cloak that Pendry suggested. What they’ve discovered will shock carpet cloakers all over the world.

According to Zhang and buddies, carpet cloaks don’t hide objects, they merely shift them to one side by an amount that is just a bit less than they are high. Crucially the effect depends on the angle at which you are looking. So when illuminated at an angle of 45 degrees, an object 0.2 units tall appears laterally shifted by 0.15 units.

If Zhang and co are correct, this could be a substantial blow for isotropic carpet cloaking. It means that the carpet cloaking effect has a limited angle of view.

[JURIST] Kyrgyzstan’s provisional government on Monday announced a plan to institute democratic reforms, including a referendum on a new constitution. The plan seeks to move Kyrgyzstan toward a parliamentary republic with increased checks and balances and a reduction in the constitutional scope of presidential power. In order to increase the perceived legitimacy of the process, the government has stated it will invite UN officials to join Kyrgyzstan’s Central Election Committee. The pledge for reform follows an anti-government uprising earlier this month that forced president Kurmanbek Bakiyev from office and led to the formation of an interim government headed by former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva. The interim government has taken a number of steps, including suspending the constitutional court because of the court’s perceived support for Bakiyev. It was also reported on Monday that Bakivey had fled Kazakhstan, where he had been hiding since his ouster.
On Sunday, the interim Kyrgyz government announced that Bakiyev will be tried for killings that took place during the uprising. Last week, the Kyrgyzstan Prosecutor General’s Office announced that Bakiyev’s son faces charges of abuse of power and misuse of state credit. UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Executive Director Jan Kubis stated Friday that Kyrgyzstan needs international support in order to continue democratic reforms. UN officials have also pointed to concerns over human rights in Kyrgyzstan. Earlier this month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called on Kyrgyzstan to show “tolerance for diversity and media freedom.” Kyrgyzstan’s recent problems mirror many of those addressed in 2005 when Bakiyev assumed power in the Tulip Revolution.

What do women want? What do men need? Chris Noth’s got the answers!

In the May issue of Redbook (on newsstands April 20), Carrie Bradshaw’s Mr. Big shares a sneak peek into the eagerly-anticipated Sex And The City sequel, reveals his thoughts on playing a scandal-bitten cheating politician on CBS’ The Good Wife, and offers a look at his life with longtime squeeze Tara Wilson.

Chris On Sex And The City 2: “There’s a lot of humor, which I love. But it’s also a great look into Carrie and Big’s relationship and what marriage means to them. No matter how long you’ve know someone, marriage changes some things in unexpected ways. And it’s a learning process for Carrie and Big. I’m more excited about this movie than I was about the first one.”

On relationships: “Guys talk about their relationships all the time! They never stop talking about women. You are here to stay in our conversation forever!”

On playing a politician in the middle of a career/marriage scandal in The Good Wife: “People make mistakes all the time, and not just celebrities and politicians. I do think couples can learn and move past their mistakes.”

On romantic gestures for his fiancee, actress Tara Wilson: “I always think it’s the little things that count … There are a million romantic little things I do. Love letters were a big part of my romantic life when I was younger. I feel sad that we’re living in a culture that doesn’t write letters anymore—it’s a lost art. It’s something that adds dimension to the romantic life. Emails and texts just don’t cut it.”

Although the iPad is the hands of less than half-a-million people, Lifetime is targeting those users with an ad campaign for this week’s season finale of Project Runway. The campaign features “behind-the-scenes” video from the series during Fashion Week. iPad users will also be able to to vote for which designer they think will win this season. The ad units are in HTML5—not Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) Flash, which doesn’t run on the iPad—so viewers can also watch full screen videos from the show. While the iPad is top of mind for this campaign, it will also run on Apple’s iPhone and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android phones as well.

The use of “rich media” in ad campaigns is hardly novel at this point. But with companies like Gannett’s PointRoll and Interpolls, which worked on the Lifetime campaign, gaining traction, the use of rich media as opposed to “static” banner ads is likely to become more prominent as online ad spending comes back. Online video ads will play a larger part of that. According to the last eMarketer forecast, spending growth for online video will run in the 34 percent to 54 percent range between last year and 2014—growing from $1.4 billion in 2010, to $5.2 billion in 2014.

Related

• A&E Television To Acquire Lifetime
• Lifetime’s Digital Strategy For Project Runway Includes Streaming On Demand For First Time

A while back Mark Proffitt sent in an interesting blog post that I’m just now getting around to writing up. In it, he wondered what an “abundance-based intellectual property” system might look like:

We already have systems that work like this. The X Prize is a bounty for achieving a desired technological goal. That can provide a one-time payment. But often the value of a new discovery is not realized until some time later. So we might make a slight change to the intellectual property laws.

Instead of the government granting the person that discovers an idea a temporary monopoly, the people as a whole through the government own the right and license it to everyone. Of course the government collects taxes so good ideas would increase tax revenue. The government would pay the inventor a small percentage, maybe 5 – 10% of the taxes collected on income from the idea.

This would eliminate wasteful intellectual property disputes. If you use the idea, you owe the tax and the government has the ability to collect it. And the tax is only collected if the idea is being vigorously promoted. The business and government share the same goal of promoting the idea. Society benefits because new ideas are discovered and brought to market. The inventor benefits because the government is collecting the royalties for them.

This system would drastically reduce the cost of medicine because every medical discovery would be generic from the first day. Companies would compete based on their ability to provide the highest quality products and service at the best price. Researchers could operate independently from manufacturers. This could become a great revenue source for universities.

There’s more to the idea than that, but that’s the basic summary of the concept. I’ve seen similar suggestions in the past as well, but I’m not convinced that it makes much sense. Would it be better than the existing system? Perhaps, but even that would require a lot more analysis and modeling. The problem with it, in general, is that you’re adding a tax where one probably isn’t needed, and the tax is too early in the system — taxing the use, rather than the income. We already have an income tax and taxing on top of that just seems problematic, taking away the incentive to actually innovate. On top of this, such a tax sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare. How would it be tracked? Who would know when to pay the tax and how it would be distributed? The traditional tax system doesn’t involve the government figuring out who to pay as well, and this would add a lot of overhead that makes this whole thing quite inefficient. I guess I just don’t see the need for such a system at all, if we can let competition in the marketplace itself focus on rewarding innovators.

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iPhone OS 4.0 will be arriving for iPhone owners this summer, and for iPad owners in the fall. The question is, what tangible benefits will it bring to your web working routine, if any? Luckily, I’ve had a chance to put the developer beta of the OS through its paces, so I have an early impression of how it might benefit remote workers.

Unified Inbox and Improved Email

I try to keep all my email routed through one central account, but that doesn’t mean I always necessarily succeed. In fact, I have multiple email accounts — which can become quite a hassle to manage, especially from a mobile platform like the iPhone, which doesn’t offer a unified inbox. Or hasn’t, until now.

With iPhone OS 4.0, that changes. You get a unified inbox for all of your email — although you can still separate it out into separate mailboxes if you wish, since many people will prefer not to “cross the streams.” And that’s not all. You also get great little improvements to email, like threaded messaging, which allows you see entire email exchanges with a tap instead of having to view them individually. It’s terrific for tracking down phone numbers, meeting times and other information that might otherwise get lost or misplaced in the shuffle.

Folders

Folders provides you with the ability to group related apps into, well, folders. It’s a feature that makes so much sense, and is so useful and intuitive, that I almost can’t remember what the iPhone OS experience was like without it. First of all, it finally gives me a way to get rid of all those annoying Apple apps that I never use, like Notes, Stocks and Weather. If it ended there, that’d be enough.

But it doesn’t end there. Folders means that instead of countless home screens, I have just two, and any app I could ever desire to access is only a tap away — a single tap, vs. however many it would take to find it on a home screen, or using Spotlight. Best of all, you can categorize apps by common function, which for business purposes is very useful indeed.

Multitasking

While only native Apple apps like Settings so far have access to this API, I can already tell it’s going to revolutionize the way I use my phone for work. Being able to pop in and out of a document I’m working on in Documents to Go just by double-clicking the home button will save time and headaches. And being able to run processes like compressing video or uploading a document without having to keep an app open translates to increased productivity on the go.

I’m sure my predictions for how multitasking will affect productivity software don’t even begin to cover how developers will put the new feature to use. I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us!

Bluetooth Keyboard

I’ve been pining for this feature for a long time, and it’s finally here. It was mentioned only briefly during the iPhone OS 4.0 event, but it’s huge news for web working, especially if you spend a lot of time traveling and aren’t interested in picking up an iPad.

In iPhone OS 4.0, pairing your iPhone with a Bluetooth keyboard is ridiculously simple. I set mine up with my Apple Wireless Keyboard, so I’m not sure how well it works with other brands, but all I had to do was disconnect the keyboard from my Mac mini and pair it to the phone by entering a code on the keyboard. It’s now paired with both, and can easily switch between them.

Typing on the keyboard is a game changer for the iPhone. With some kind of stand for keeping the iPhone propped up, it becomes a perfectly usable laptop replacement, weighs much less and takes up much less space in your bag.  I plan on using it for short trips in combination with Documents to Go, leaving the MacBook at home.

OS 4.0 is For Business

So many of the changes in OS 4.0 seemed geared towards business use, that it almost seems like that was the primary purpose of the update. If you’re a remote worker, and you have an iPhone, this update will change the way you do your job.

What changes in iPhone OS 4.0 are you looking forward to the most?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Apple Thinks Enterprise Is Ready for the iPhone

 

 

Through all of the recent talk and rumor surrounding what might come next for Palm, one constant theme has been the value of the company’s intellectual property, holdings that are by themselves worth between $8 to $9 per share according to MDB Capital Group.

There has been talk that perhaps the market has been undervaluing Palm’s massive patent holdings, but if the company’s IP portfolio is as potent as some of these analysts think is, a recent article posted on ars technica poses an interesting question: why hasn’t Palm done everything in its power to leverage that IP though lawsuits and licensing agreements to keep cash flowing into its coffers? The answer could, of course, be a simple matter of business practice, in which case Palm has been carelessly leaving money sitting on the table for quite a while now.  The answer could also be that the company’s massive war chest of patents has less relevance than we’d like to think. 

Thanks to govotsos for the tip!

Since when do humans personify other humans’ food cravings? They do in this spot from Allen & Gerritsen for the Ninety Nine Restaurants chain. It shows a fisherman who shows up in a family’s kitchen "representing one man’s craving for panko-crusted haddock" and a cowboy who represents "fire-grilled sirloin." The effort promotes the chain’s new, nine-item "Crave-worthy classics" menu. The ads, now airing on American Idol and Dancing With the Stars, remind consumers in "a fun way that we serve bold creative dishes that are real-size entrees for just $9.99," vp of marketing Brad Schiff says in a statement. Social media, online and radio ads fire up the cravings. Let’s hope the hungry don’t reach out and grab their waiter with a fork the next time they order.

—Posted by Elaine Wong

Former Palm/PalmSource chief completive guy, Michael Mace, has once again put on his punditry hat to chime in on his former employers latest misfortunes. In his latest editorial Mr. Mace aims to give us his take on the situation Palm finds itself in today.

He begins with a bold conjecture that “the current incarnation of Palm has failed.” From there he takes readers on a tour of the current sentiment on Palm in the valley and beyond, then approaches the question whether it was marketing or lack of thoughtful marketing focus that doomed them this time. All in all its a good read with some interesting points from someone who had a front row seat for many of Palm’s corporate blunders from the last decade.

CHICAGO (CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM)  — A Chicago Public Schools teacher was arrested and charged with felony possession of cannabis after she was stopped for a traffic violation Friday night on the South Side, police said.

In an unrelated incident involving a CPS employee, a vice principal of a Rogers Park elementary school was arrested for driving while his license was suspended late Friday on the North Side.

Jacqueline Hobbs Brown, 58, of the 10100 block of S. St. Lawrence Avenue, was charged with felony possession of cannabis and cited with failure to stop at a stop sign, according to police.

Hobbs Brown was driving a 2004 Dodge Neon east on 85th Street when she allegedly failed to stop at a stop sign at 334 E. 85th St., according to a police report.

In the report, Hobbs Brown told police she was a CPS teacher at an unidentified school.

A woman named Jacqueline Hobbs-Brown is listed as a teacher at Julian high school in the 10300 block of South Elizabeth Street, according to the school’s website.

Officers curbed the Neon and an officer saw a medicine bottle on the front passenger seat containing several white hand rolled cigars containing a green leaf substance that was suspected to be cannabis, according to the report.

The Neon was searched and officers found another cigar box in the same area with three brown hand-rolled cigars — each allegedly containing cannabis, the report said. She was arrested at 10:25 p.m. at 357 E. 85th St.

In an unrelated incident, Brian Metcalf, 35, and Vice Principal of George Armstrong Elementary School, 2110 W. Greenleaf Ave., was arrested at 11 p.m. Friday at 1327 W. Pratt Ave. and cited with failing to yield right of way and for driving on a suspended driver’s license, a police report said.

Metcalf was driving a 2004 BMW that was pulled over by police after failing to give right of way.

Metcalf, of the 5200 block of North Winthrop Avenue, was unable to provide a driver’s license and officers learned that he had an outstanding warrant issued by the Illinois State Police for driving while on a suspended license, according to the report.

A CPS spokeswoman was not immediately available.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Have you ever read the back of a calling card? This one takes the cake. I’ve seen, one and three, but this card billing calls in 5-minute increments. So if your call is five minutes and one second long, they’re going to deduct 10 minutes worth from the card. Yeeks. Better talk fast.

The way many calling cards work is that companies buy bulk minutes from the major telcos and then resell them in these cards. Profit comes from fee arbitrage. Calling cards, operating in a Wild West of regulation, are full of them. It’s neat, too, how they perforate the card to make it easy for you to throw away the part of the package that has the fees on it.

Have you ever used a calling card? I’m not talking about the one your mom gave you so you could call home from summer camp, I’m talking about the straight-up bodega-style card, sold for $2, $3, and $5. Did it have any exciting fees or did you find yourself surprised by how few minutes it had?

Once hunted for their pelts, beavers are back in demand, not for their bodies but for their minds—specifically, for their engineering skills. As changing climate leaves streams short on water in the summer, researchers are betting that the industrious rodents could provide a natural solution.

Based on a survey of how dams store water, the Lands Council in Washington State predicts that reintroducing beavers to 10,000 miles of suitable habitat in the state could help retain more than 650 trillion gallons of spring runoff, which would slowly be released by the animals’ naturally leaky dams…

On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission made a bombshell announcement: It is charging Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs with civil fraud for failing to reveal to clients that a hedge fund shorting the housing market had engineered the product they were purchasing to fail.

It seems that might not be the only allegation the bank will have to deal with. Michael Hirsch at Newsweek reports that Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who heads the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, believes there is “another big shoe to drop on Goldman,” without specifying any more details. The panel has been investigating investment banks’ role in the boom and bust in detail, and is due to hold hearings with Goldman executives next week. The unnamed source in Hirsch’s article says Levin plans to reveal the nature of the allegations as soon as tomorrow.

Might We Suggest…

• Aspiro Brings Their Streaming Music Service to Android
  Aspiro, a big player in Northern European mobile entertainment, has announced their desktop and mobile streaming music service is now available for Android handsets.  As part of a partnership …

In spite of its recent moves to remain competitive, video rental dinosaur Blockbuster continues to lose ground to newer services like Netflix and Redbox. And a new report from analyst Michael Pachter with Wedbush Morgan Securities makes the scenario look even more bleak.

“Blockbuster is losing customers to Netflix and Redbox at an unprecedented rate, driving continued upside to Netflix’s financial performance,” Pachter wrote in a note to clients over the weekend.

He added that Blockbuster’s recent exclusivity deals with studios like Warner Bros. and Fox won’t be enough to stem the tide toward ultimate doom. “It had similar arrangements in place throughout its decline,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, he predicts significant increases in subscribers this year for Netflix. According to his math, the video delivery service should add around 4 million new users by the end of 2010.

Blockbuster Losing Customers at ‘Unprecedented’ Rate, Analyst Says [Home Media Magazine]

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has filed a civil lawsuit in an attempt to recover more than $16 million in the massive financial scandal involving highly touted investor Bernard Madoff.

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-state-suing-madoff-fraud-0419,0,6931001.story

[JURIST] Toyota Motor Corporation on Monday accepted a record civil penalty of $16.375 million imposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for a four-month delay in notifying the agency about a problem with “sticky” and “slow to return pedal” gas pedals in various car models. US Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that Toyota has acknowledged responsibility for violating its legal obligations to report any defects promptly. The fine, the largest ever assessed against a car maker, is based on a preliminary review of extensive corporate documents attained through an investigation launched by the NHTSA in February. Toyota declined to appeal the fine, and, if further defect-related violations are discovered, the NHTSA may increase the penalty. NHTSA statutes require that a vehicle manufacturer notify the NHTSA within five days of discovering a safety defect and launch a recall. The NHTSA has evidence that Toyota knew of the defect in late September, but notification and a recall were not launched until January.
Earlier this month, the US Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation (MDL) consolidated more than 150 pending lawsuits against Toyota and transferred them to the US District Court for the Central District of California where Judge James Selna ordered a May 13 pre-trial conference. In March, the NHTSA enlisted the help of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and NASA to conduct a 15-month investigation into the sources of recent safety defects. The agency has faced a hearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce and strong criticism regarding the effectiveness of its recent investigations into car safety defects. Previously, the largest fine assessed by the NHTSA was of $1 million against General Motors for failing to conduct a timely recall in 2004. At the time, the NHTSA was also criticized for appearing to be lenient on the American vehicle manufacturer. Toyota has been under federal scrutiny since December 2009, and has conducted three recalls.

Article Tags: ClimateGate, World Temperatures

Spinmeister Michael Mann is quoted in this article from the Telegraph as follows:

Prof Hand (Head of the UK Royal Statistical Society) praised the blogger Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit for uncovering the fact that inappropriate methods were used which could produce misleading results. “The Mann 1998 hockey stick paper used a particular technique that exaggerated the hockey stick effect,” he said.

Prof Mann, who is Professor of Earth System Science at the Pennsylvania State University, said the statistics used in his graph were correct. “I would note that our ’98 article was reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority in the United States, and given a clean bill of health,” he said. “In fact, the statistician on the panel, Peter Bloomfield, a member of the Royal Statistical Society, came to the opposite conclusion of Prof Hand.”

Mann has been repeating this arrogant duplicitous spin continuously since Climategate and refuses to acknowledge any problems whatsoever with his infamous doomsday hockey stick graph. Mann always refers to the subtly worded US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report as his ally because he knows McIntyre & McKitrick, the Wegman Report, Hans von Storch, et al, and now the Head of the Royal Statistical Society have minced no words debunking his hockey stick. But what did the NAS report and the authors actually say about the Mann hockey stick? In fact, the NAS report validated all of the significant criticisms of McIntyre & McKitrick (M&M):

Click source to read FULL report

Source: hockeyschtick.blogspot.com

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