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At $2 this app is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying any the materials necessary for your own dark room, and I can guarantee it’s less messy too. Though not quite as fun, I know. More »

Recycled Reading

When you’re done turning the pages of the book on your nightstand, consider turning it into something else. That’s the challenge issued by Harper College’s Library in its first annual Recycled Books Contest – a competition urging community members, students, staff and faculty to imaginatively reuse their favorite read in an entirely new way. “It’s kind of a different way to go green,” Instructor Michele Ukleja says. “We’re encouraging competitors to come up with new uses for a book that’s sitting on their shelf right now. It could be a work of art, or a functional object. As is always the case in the world of books, the possibilities are endless.” The contest is part of Harper’s celebration of National Library Week, kicking off Monday, April 12; other events include a book sale (10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, April 13 and 14 and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, April 15) and a “Library After Dark” open house featuring refreshments, games, prizes and activities. (5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, April 15). Entry forms for the Recycled Books Contest are available online at http://libguides.harpercollege.edu/natlibweek and are due by 10 p.m. Tuesday, April 13. Entries must be set up between 5 and 6 p.m. Thursday, April 15 in the Harper Library, Building F on the main campus, 1200 W. Algonquin Road in Palatine. They’ll be judged by popular vote at the Library After Dark open house. First prize includes four movie passes and a variety of other library-themed goodies.

Press Contact: Erin Brooks, Media Relations Specialist, 847.925.6159, [email protected]. 

Barn Photography

Students in one of Harper College’s newest classes will have unique homework after each session: leave the bustling Northwest suburbs and find a barn to photograph. It’s not as much a challenge as it may seem, Instructor Ernest Schweit says, and that’s part of the point: there are plenty of farms within a 45-minute drive of Harper’s campus, offering students a chance to digitally capture a bit of iconic Americana as they test their photography skills in the increasingly nostalgic arena of barn photography. “The simple way to photograph a barn is to snap a picture like you would for a real estate section,” says Schweit, the photographer behind a Farcountry Press book on Wisconsin barns. “But there’s also a way to approach it where you take just a piece of the picture. You capture those abstract angles and unique textures: a roof line, for instance, against the rounded curve of a silo.” His course, Barn Photography: Preserving an American Icon, is open to all local photographers. It combines classroom sessions on specific techniques and philosophy with individual photo shoots – Schweit will provide students with lists of public barns to photograph – and in-class critiques. “The sight of barns evokes a feeling of years gone by and recalls a time when life was simpler,” Schweit says. “In 20 years, a lot of them will be gone. In this class, we’re showing students how to preserve them through perfect digital pictures.” Schweit spent two and a half years traveling through Wisconsin, chronicling some 100 barns through his camera lens for his book. Raised in Chicago and the suburbs, he fell in love with farms as a college student traveling by train to and from school in Lincoln and Carbondale. His five-week course is $99 and runs from 7 to 9 p.m. Mondays, beginning April 12. It is a non-credit class and open to the public. Students should have a working knowledge of a single lens reflex camera and the ability to bring prints or digital files to class. To register or for more details, contact Continuing Education at 847.925.6300, or visit www.harpercollege.edu/ce.

Media Note: A jpeg image of Schweit’s book, which he compiled with Lake Barrington resident Nancy Schumm-Burgess, is available. For samples of Schweit’s barn photography, visit www.ernestjschweit.blogspot.com. For interviews with Schweit or photography students, contact Erin Brooks, Media Relations Specialist, 847.925.6159, [email protected].

Hot Health Careers

Jobs in Health Insurance Billing and Medical Transcription are on the rise nationally, with employment opportunities expected to grow by more than 15 percent. They’re also hot fields at Harper College, with prospective students filling up seats at related College information sessions. “Changes in America’s healthcare system are creating – and will continue to create – many new jobs in these two fields,” says Geri Kale-Smith, who oversees Harper’s certificate programs in Health Insurance Billing and Medical Transcription. “The positions are in-demand, can come with great salaries, and can be extremely rewarding. These programs give students who are interested in the healthcare field some new, viable career options.” The two programs are available at Harper in both traditional and Fast Track – Harper’s accelerated program for adults – formats, allowing students to complete their certificates in 15 months or less. The College’s programs also feature an externship component, giving a jumpstart on their careers by working in the field. Graduates can land a variety of jobs in medical clinics and offices. An information session for adults interested in the College’s Fast Track certificate programs in Health Insurance Billing or Medical Transcription will run from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 13 in the Student Center, on the main floor of Building A. An information session for students interested in the traditional certificate programs in the two fields is at 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 14 in Room X250, Building X in the Avante Center. Both sessions are free and open to all.

Media Note: Reporters and photographers can attend Harper’s Health Insurance Billing and Medical Transcription information session to talk with prospective students about the career fields. Harper health careers faculty also are available to comment on the programs’ popularity. Contact Erin Brooks, Media Relations Specialist, 847.925.6159, [email protected].

Speech Team Victories

The Harper College Speech and Debate Team continued its winning tradition this spring, capturing one national championship and finishing fourth at another national tournament. The squad was crowned National Champion among community colleges at the annual Pi Kappa Delta tournament in Minneapolis, Minn. Fifteen of Harper’s 27 speeches won awards, and two students finished in the Top 10 at the tournament, which drew 60 teams from colleges and universities across the nation. At the Phi Rho Pi National Tournament in New Orleans, Harper’s team finished fourth in its division and took seven speeches to the Finals round. Teams from 64 community colleges competed. “Our team members continually impressed us with their strong public speaking skills, their teamwork and their leadership,” Coach Jeff Przybylo says. “These victories were a group effort, and all of us are extremely proud of our showing this season.” Przybylo also was victorious: he won the Distinguished Service Award, presented annually to a coach who exemplifies longtime leadership in the national organization. Przybylo, of Streamwood, is in his fourteenth year coaching Harper’s team, and has been a member of Phi Rho Pi since 1996, serving in various roles – including, currently, Vice President. Harper’s Speech and Debate Team has a history of success. The group has won six state titles. This year, the team came in second among two-year schools at the Illinois state competition, taking more than half of its 27 speeches to the Finals round and boasting one state champion.

Press Contact: Erin Brooks, Media Relations Specialist, 847.925.6159, [email protected].

Small Works Exhibit

Nearly two dozen pieces from artists across the United States are on display through April 22 in Harper College’s 33^rd annual National Small Works Exhibition. The exhibit, a Harper tradition, showcases small-scale photography, paintings, sculptures, ceramics, digital art and more. All works measure less than two feet. “This show is interesting because of the variety of approaches to the subject matter and the innovative uses of media,” Harper Art Curator Margaret Buchen says. “The small scale of the work creates a more intimate relationship with the viewer.” The Harper exhibit, which this year drew more than 1,040 submissions from more than 340 artists across the nation, requires every piece to measure 22 inches or less, including display frames. Submitted art was judged by Douglas Stapleton, Assistant Curator at the Illinois State Museum, Chicago Gallery. Several local artists – including Harper College students Kasia Stachowiak of Mount Prospect and Karen Murphy of Schaumburg – were among those chosen to be part of the show. Stachowiak is fascinated with color, patterns and structural forms, and incorporates those into her etched prints. Murphy explores various materials and forms in her ceramic sculptures. The Small Works exhibit is sponsored by the Harper College Educational Foundation. Viewing times are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays through Thursday, April 22 in Room C200, Building C, on Harper’s main campus, 1200 W. Algonquin Road in Palatine. Call in advance to confirm times, 847.925.6568. The show is free and open to the public.

Media Note: This year’s exhibit features work from several local artists, including residents of Glenview, Naperville, Chicago, Schaumburg and Mount Prospect. For more information, including a list of artists, contact Erin Brooks, Media Relations Specialist, 847.925.6159, [email protected]. High-resolution color images of the works also are available.

Visiting Author

In his 16-year-old novel “Greene’s Summer,” expatriate American author Thomas E. Kennedy drew on his experience as an editor on a psychiatric treatment handbook to shape a story of a man who struggles to overcome physical, mental and emotional scars after being jailed and tortured for political reasons. Kennedy will read from the book – which recently was republished in the United States under the new title “In the Company of Angels” – at noon on Thursday, April 15 in Harper College’s Drama Lab, Room L109, Building L on the main campus, 1200 W. Algonquin Road in Palatine. The reading is free and open to the public. Kennedy has published more than 20 novels and won many literary prizes. He’s now receiving national acclaim for his work in American publications, including the Washington Post and New Yorker Magazine. For more information on the reading, call 847.925.6242 or visit www.harpercollege.edu.

Press Contact: Terry Karow, Marketing and Public Relations Specialist, 847.925.6627, [email protected].

Southern Shakespeare

The National Players traveling drama company will bring Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” to the Harper College stage this month – with a bit of a twist. The play, originally set on the island of Sicily, will be set instead in the deep American south in the early part of the 20^th century. “The costumes are from the Dixieland Jazz period. The props have a decidedly New Orleans French Quarter feel,” says Clay Hopper, who will direct the troupe in its production of the Bard’s famous tale. The play tells the story of Beatrice and Benedick, a pair of would-be lovers who have engaged in a war of wits. They’ve disguised their true feelings for one another, and build a tangled web of obstacles and charades on their path to the altar. Founded in 1949, the National Players is celebrating its 61^st season. The self-contained group – members carry their own lights, set and costumes – performs across the country, with actors playing multiple roles onstage and offstage, as actors, managers and technicians. They’ll take Harper’s stage at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 18 in the Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Algonquin Road in Palatine. Tickets for “Much Ado About Nothing” are $15 for general admission, with discounts for seniors and students. For tickets or information, call 847.925.6100 or visit www.harpercollege.edu/boxofifce.

Press Contact: Terry Karow, Marketing and Public Relations Specialist, 847.925.6627, [email protected].

Disney-Style Success

Disney’s secret to success isn’t magic. It’s a thoughtful approach to customer service, honed over a half-century of experience in the face of fierce competition and the public’s ever-changing tastes and attitudes. Harper College will share tips and tricks from one of the world’s entertainment empires at a special daylong Disney Institute aimed at arming local businesses for success as the economy begins its economic rebound. “Disney’s Approach to Quality Service,” hosted by Disney Institute facilitators, is geared to all types of businesses – from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies – and will help owners and others anticipate customer demands, exceed client expectations, understand the need for consistency and create a service plan that promotes Disney-level quality. “We’re offering a rare chance to get Disney’s success secrets straight from Disney,” says Mark Mrozinski, Continuing Education Dean at Harper. “This program will challenge you to see your organization in a new light, and help you inspire your business leaders, energize your workforce and boost your bottom line.” The session, offered through Harper’s Continuing Education Department, is appropriate for all business sectors – from retail outlets and restaurants to healthcare providers, developers and government organizations. It runs from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 29 at the Wojcik Conference Center on the College’s main campus, 1200 W. Algonquin Road in Palatine. Registration begins at 7:30 a.m. The cost is $349. To register or for more information, call 847.925.6300 or visit www.harpercollege.edu/ce.

Media Note: Disney Institute leaders are available in advance of the program for interviews. They are able to offer tips for finding success amid a down – but rebounding – economy, and offer suggestions for preparing a business to thrive once the recession is over. Contact Erin Brooks, Media Relations Specialist, 847.925.6159, [email protected].

College Savings Aid

Statistics show the cost of college tuition, room and board at four-year public institutions rose by 30 percent from 1998 to 2008 – and it’s still growing. This spring, Harper College will host a free seminar aimed at showing parents, grandparents and others how to financially prepare for higher education. The “Saving for College” session is from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 21 in the Wojcik Conference Center on Harper’s main campus, 1200 W. Algonquin Road in Palatine. The event will offer tips from college experts and professional advisors, who will cover the basics of saving for higher education and provide tools to help attendees navigate the college savings process. “Whether the young person in your life is 4 or 14, it’s not too early – or too late – to start investing in their education,” says Katherine Sawyer, Associate Executive Director of the Harper College Educational Foundation. “Saving that money, though, can be daunting, particularly amid rising tuition and a gloomy economy. This seminar will give attendees the confidence and know-how they need to start saving the right way.” The event, hosted by the Harper Heritage Society’s Professional Advisor group – an offshoot of the College’s Educational Foundation – also will include Harper financial aid experts. To register, visit www.harpercollege.edu/foundation and select the Professional Advisor Seminar Series, or call 847.925.6490 for more details.

Media Note: Reporters are welcome to attend the event and talk with participants about the task of saving for college amid shrinking financial aid resources and rising tuition costs.

Press Contact: Erin Brooks, Media Relations Specialist, 847.925.6159, [email protected].

Entrepreneur Help

Making a small business flourish can be a daunting task, particularly in a difficult economy. But it’s not impossible. With an eye on helping small business owners compete and excel in a continued rough-and-tumble climate, Harper College is hosting Entrepreneur’s Quest 2010, a daylong seminar filled with expert tips on marketing, sales, branding, business strategies and the latest technology. Social media trends – including details on promoting businesses, boosting sales and improving customer service via networks like Facebook and Twitter – will be among the topics. This year’s edition also will include a panel discussion offering strategies and wisdom from successful, seasoned entrepreneurs. “Staying in business can be difficult struggle for any small business owner anytime, but especially in a time when America is still battling the effects of a devastating recession,” Small Business Development Manager Bonnie Richter says. “This workshop will offer strategies for surviving and thriving despite economic challenges, and competing in the nation’s new business landscape.” If small businesses go out of business, many jobs go, too: more than 70 percent of jobs are created by small business clients like the ones Harper is targeting at the Quest event. Sam Glenn, an author, comedic speaker and founder of the motivational resource company EverythingAttitude.com, will serve as the keynote speaker. Glenn’s new book, “A Kick in the Attitude,” offers tips for using positivity to achieve success. The event also will feature Mike Muldoon, a marketing and management professor and president of a consulting and business coaching practice. Entrepreneur’s Quest 2010 runs from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 24 at the Wojcik Conference Center on Harper’s main campus, 1200 W. Algonquin Road, Palatine. The cost is $60 for those who register by April 1, and $75 afterward. That includes lunch. To register or for more details, visit www.harpercollege.biz, call 847.925.6520 or email [email protected]. The event is sponsored by the Small Business Development Center at Harper College, which provides free resources and one-on-one counseling and advice for small business owners and entrepreneurs. For appointments, call 847.925.6520.

Media Note: The Illinois Small Business Development Center at Harper College has had many success stories, despite the poor economy. To interview successful entrepreneurs for this story or others, or for comments on small business start-up tips, contact Erin Brooks, Media Relations Specialist, 847.925.6159, [email protected].

Photo Opportunities

Event: Visit from Geof Manthorne of Food Network’s “Ace of Cakes”

Time: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 13

Location: Sports and Wellness Center, Building M

Event: Book reading by author Thomas E. Kennedy

Time: Noon on Thursday, April 15

Location: Drama Lab, Room L109, Building L

Event: National Small Works Exhibition

Time: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays through Thursday, April 22

Location: Art Exhibition Space, Room C200, Building C

Event: Entrepreneur’s Quest 2010 for small businesses

Time: 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 24

Location: Wojcik Conference Center

Technology: CDMA
Announced Carrier: Verizon Wireless 
Rumored Release Date: First of May 2010

Kin One is what was leaked as “Turtle,” a vertical slider looks kind of like a slimmer, wider, shorter Palm Pre with a weird double-chin sort of design that leaves the sliding display flanked by the bottom half of the phone on top and bottom. The device will pack a five megapixel camera with SD video capture and flash, backed by 4GB of internal memory.  The Kin One and Kin Two will feature WiFi in addition to 3G connectivity via Verizon’s EV-DO network.

Check out our hands on pic and stay tuned for complete specs.

You only have a few days left to save $200 on your tickets to ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010! The ticket price goes up to $595 on April 15. Register now!

The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit will take place May 7, 2010, in Mountain View, California and will be an exploration of the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications.

Sponsor

As with our first event, the Real-Time Web Summit last October, the Mobile Summit will be in the “unconference” format. We discovered in October that the unconference is a perfect complement to our brand, because it encourages a high quality two-way dialog. Not only that, but the knowledge and ideas that came out of our Real-Time Web Summit were practical and useful – we got a lot of great feedback about that.

As with our previous event, the Mobile Summit will be facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin, who in our opinion is the best in the business at this style of event. We’re using the same venue too, the beautiful Computer History Museum.

Mobile was one of our top five trends last year and continues to undergo explosive growth, so our aim with this event is to help you navigate the opportunities. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of mobile! Because it will be you – the attendees – who ultimately set the agenda. You can begin adding your suggestions now.

We will have two main tracks at this Summit, Development and Business. Here’s a sample of some of the topics we’ll explore in both of these tracks:

• Geo-location services – what can you do using location as a platform?
• Commerce & Marketing – as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel?
• Content, Publishing & Recommendations – the technologies and best practices.
• Mobile Social Networking – how to tap into communities on mobile devices.
• Internet of Things – the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data.
• Augmented Reality – the technology and business applications of AR.
• Native App vs. Browser Based – Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian.

If you’re a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in helping sponsor this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information on the sponsor options.

The ReadWriteWeb team is excited about our second event and we can’t wait to discuss the opportunities in Mobile with you on May 7. You can find banners and logos to link to our event here, if you’re so inclined.

We hope to see you on May 7!

Discuss

It’s April 12, 2010. For those unaware, this date will be remembered in the annals of fast food and coronary surgery as the day that KFC unleashed its Double Down — once more, that’s the bacon-n-cheese sandwich that uses two pieces of fried chicken for bread — and Consumerist was there to do some tastin’.

Joined by fellow Consumerista Meghann Marco, I traveled north of NYC to Consumer Reports’ headquarters in Yonkers. CR is in the process of doing a proper, scientific taste test (more on that later) of the Double Down, but they were happy to let me and Megh tag along to do our own, utterly unscientific sampling.

My reactions — The Double Down is not for those who fear the following: salt, pepper, salt, greasy fingers, salt, salt and salt. Luckily, I kinda like salt. I ate the whole sandwich and barely noticed the bacon because the chicken was so overloaded with sodium. That being said, I wouldn’t shy away from having one of these again if I’m in the hunt for a fried chicken fix.

In terms of value, It’s a filling sandwich, so the $4.99 price tag didn’t seem exorbitant, though I can imagine a lot of people not finishing the sandwich, even if they enjoy the taste.

Megh’s reaction — She didn’t have much to say, as she wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance to sample the Double Down. Her facial reaction pretty much sums it up:

Posted by Hal Dardick at 1 p.m.

A key City Council committee today recommended approval of a $3 million settlement in the case of a young woman who suffered a permanent brain injury in a crash involving a stolen vehicle being followed by police.

If approved Wednesday at the council meeting, the family of Regina Varela would receive the $3 million. She suffers a host of cognitive problems as a result of the August 2004 crash.

Varela, who was 17 when the crash occurred, was a passenger in a car headed west on Addison Street at Kedzie Avenue when a stolen conversion van being pursued by police ran a red light and hit the car broadside.



The man driving the stolen van, a passenger in the van and a witness on the street testified police had been chasing the van for several blocks, according to a Law Department news release.



The officers involved, however, said they had just activated their emergency equipment and were several car lengths behind the van when the crash occurred, the release stated. They were disciplined for being outside their district without approval, it stated.

Last week, Mark Shuttleworth announced the codename for Ubuntu 10.10. Now, Canonical have announced the release schedule as well.

The first alpha is scheduled for June 3rd, the beta for September 23rd and the final release for October 28th.

Here is a brief overview of the Release Schedule:

You can view the detailed release schedule at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickReleaseSchedule.

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Release Schedule for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx [Roadmap]
• Ubuntu 10.04 First Alpha to be Released Today
• You’ve Seen What The Jackalope is Like; Now Discover The Karmic Koala
• Firefox 3.6 and 3.7 Release Schedule Confirmed
• Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week announced

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• Become a Techie Buzz fan on Facebook
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Filed under: Aftermarket, Sedan, Europe, Chevrolet, Misc. Auto Shows, Diesel

Fair is fair. If North American buyers will have the option of equipping their Chevrolet Cruze with the RS sports package – unveiled just a couple of weeks ago at the New York Auto Show – when it finally comes home to roost, don’t the Europeans deserve a little something to? After all, they’ve had the Cruze on the market there for a while. So to keep them interested, General Motors’ European operations have teamed up with tuning house Irmscher for a sporty little number of their own.

Irmscher has fitted the Cruze with a 25-mm lowered suspension, a rear spoiler and a set of nifty looking 18-inch turbine-style alloys. But the real news is the car’s freer-flowing exhaust system that gives the 2.0-liter turbodiesel engine a 36-horsepower boost to bring output up to 186hp and the 0-62 mph sprint down to eight seconds flat.

Best of all – for German customers, at least – the Cruze Irmscher Edition can be ordered directly from their Chevrolet dealers. The package was unveiled at the AMI show in Leipzig, Germany.

[Source: CarScoop]

Cruze RS, Euro style: Chevrolet unveils Irmscher Edition at AMI Leipzig originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been almost a year since the headlines about the latest bout of H1N1 swine flu first began to appear — so now it’s time for the why-wasn’t-the-flu-as-bad-as-it-could-have-been and could-it-have-been-handled-better probes to begin.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan today opened the first meeting of 29 experts looking into the response to what became the first pandemic of the 21th century. “We want to know what can be done better and ideally how,” she said.

One speaker at today’s session said that international preparations for the swine flu were aided by the outbreaks of the more deadly bird flu in recent years, but then what turned out to be the relative mildness of the H1N1 pandemic worked against it. “It wasn’t that mild when you see the number of deaths in the young, but the customer expected it to be much more severe,” Australian infectious diseases specialist John Mackenzie said in an AFP report.

WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda added that “H5N1 [bird flu] really sent up expectations not only among planners but also among populations. It really set the emotional tone.” He also said that the discovery that a single dose of swine flu vaccine was enough to provide protection for most people, instead of the two doses originally expected, had been “a big surprise,” according to AFP.

Governments now are trying to figure out what to do with their excess vaccine supplies. See here and here for more on that.

Photo: Associated Press

Sure, they may have just announced the Kin 1 and Kin 2 (previously known as Project Pink) — and sure, they may not have release dates or pricing for them yet. But we had the good fortune of stumbling across a Kin 1 in its crazy greeen-ish recyclable packaging, and decided to strip it apart real quick. Check out our ultra hasty gallery after the jump.

This American Life had a great show on the NUMMI car plant, a remarkable joint venture between Toyota and GM. It sheds light on many of the reasons for the decline of GM and the American labor movement. More generally, it’s a story of a successful innovation that failed to spread, due to policy resistance, inability to confront worse-before-better behavior and other dynamics.

I noticed elements of a lot of system dynamics work in manufacturing. Here’s a brief reading list:

• Workers fear improving themselves out of a job
• TQM improvements can undercut themselves when they interact with existing organizational systems
• Firefighting is a trap that keeps lines running in a low-productivity state
• Engineering and production don’t get along (I think there’s more on this in Daniel Kim’s thesis)
• Systems have trouble making far-sighted decisions when confronted with worse-before-better behavior (but there might be good reasons)

Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone from the hero of Germany’s fiscal conservatives to one of their biggest offenders as the once stubborn leader has been forced into a pricey Greek bailout.

Germany is now on the line for as much of 8.4 billion euros ($11.4 billion) in the Greek bailout, according to Der Spiegel. That’s more than any other state in Europe and passes the buck of Athenian government responsibility to Berlin.

Opposing parties to Merkel’s leadership are rounding on her, suggesting the leader has stepped back from her previous promises, which some think were premeditated electioneering, according to Der Spiegel.

While the deal is anything but final, the impact on her domestic strength might make Merkel second guess her Greek call, and move yet again to hold up bailing out the troubled state.

Join the conversation about this story »

Bentley, which was amongst the world’s most popular luxury brands three years ago, is finally feeling the bottom of the recession as customers hold off on spending on luxury items and superluxury vehicles. Nonetheless, Bentley is remaining optimistic and says it expects sales to improve to about 5,000 units this year – even though that’s half of 2007.

Bentley “will come back to a successful phase — whether it is 8,000 or 9,000 cars,” said Franz-Josef Paefgen, CEO of Bentley Motors Ltd.

Paefgen said that the Chinese market is exploding and that “it is a big market and has the biggest growth” He said that the Middle East is pretty stable and America has been on the difficult side.

Bentley sales peaked in 2007 when the luxury brand sold 10,014 cars worldwide, including 3,990 cars in the United States. Bentley sold 1,367 cars in the United States last year, down 49 percent from 2008.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

Opera announced today that its browsers are now used by more than 100 million people worldwide, saying that the distribution between mobile and desktop users is a nearly even split at 50 million a piece.

While 50 million desktop users means just a tiny fraction of the browser market for home users, 50 million mobile users actually represents a dominance in the mobile browser market.

Sponsor

According to the latest numbers by StatCounter, Opera for the desktop comes in fifth (essentially last) place, behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Opera accounts for just under 2% of the browser market, while IE holds 53% of the market share, and Firefox comes in around 32%. Safari, Opera’s nearest competitor (and default Mac browser) accounts for twice as many users as Opera.

Looking at the mobile browser numbers, on the other hand, we see Opera Mini with 28% and iPhone’s native browser following with just under 20%. And all of that could change, of course, if Apple would just accept Opera Mini into the AppStore. Opera submitted its mobile browser just under three weeks ago at the time of this writing, but has a policy that prevents other browsers from operating on the iPhone.

While the numbers seem to say that Opera just isn’t cutting it on the desktop, Opera Mini has been holding the lead as far as mobile browsing goes and we’d sure love to see it on the iPhone sometime in the near future.

Discuss

Welcome Yahoo! Finance readers! Make The Money Game your new homepage non-stop market news and analysis.

Join the conversation about this story »

Comprehensive immigration reform, new technology, stronger oversight and collaboration with Mexico are among the proposals the Center for American Progress suggests for improving security along the U.S. border, according to a report released today.

Here’s the complete list of CAP’s ten reform proposals for the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI), a program aimed at reducing illegal immigration and major drug trafficking operations, particularly along the U.S.-Mexico border:

1. Congress should address border security through comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
2. Continue to pursue technological solutions.
3. Reach out to local communities (“Border towns need to be brought into the discussion”).
4. Collaborate with Mexico on border security.
5. Draw on the expertise of academia and industry to shape a long-term border security blueprint.
6. The federal government should maintain tight control over the performance of con- tractors and agencies, while setting schedules with the understanding that they may need to be adjusted.
7. Allow a wider variety of businesses, including small technology companies and unsuccessful SBI bidders, to join in solving border security problems.
8. Improve inter-agency communications and planning and maintain flexibility in technology design.
9. The federal government should consider a more “horizontal” approach in which a single type of technology is implemented over a broad area.
10. Improve the viability and performance of border technology programs.

During a CAP conference call today, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), chairman of the House subcommittee on border, maritime and global counter-terrorism, echoed the report’s suggestions, saying collaboration with Mexico is essential and aid to the Mexican government for controlling cartel violence needs to be expedited.

According to the CAP report, SBI is flawed because of a border fence that is too heavily relied on for border security; management and oversight issues; a Department of Homeland Security that is too slow to address mistakes; and misguided spending decisions (namely on SBInet, a technology-heavy program designed to help Border Patrol detect illegal immigrants and smugglers along the border).

Cuellar said border security should, among other things, involve detention for immigrants as a deterrent for future illegal immigration — something that he said has worked in his district. He also said there should be more funding for the use of drones as a monitoring tool along the border.

Professor Mohammad H. Fadel, a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, will teach a class this spring at ND Law School titled Law and Islam.

This short course will provide students a basic introduction to the history of Islamic law, beginning with its religious origins, its institutionalization as a cosmopolitan legal order throughout the old world (including parts of Europe) in the middle ages, its evolution at the hands of early modern empires, and its transformation into an element of modern positive law in numerous jurisdictions (both having a Muslim majority and minority). The class will also offer an introduction to basic issues regarding the relationship of Islamic theology and ethics to the Islamic substantive law, and an overview of Islamic substantive doctrines in commercial law, family law, and the law of war.

Professor Fadel received his B.A. in Government and Foreign Affairs (1988) and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago (1995). He earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia (1999). While at the University of Virginia School of Law, Fadel was a John M. Olin Law and Economics Scholar and Articles Development Editor of the Virginia Law Review. Prior to law school, Fadel completed his Ph.D. in Chicago, where he wrote his dissertation on legal process in medieval Islamic law.

Fadel was admitted to the Bar of New York in 2000 and practiced law with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York City, where he worked on a wide variety of corporate finance transactions and securities-related regulatory investigations. Fadel also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

An amendment to the terms of Apple’s iPhone OS Developers’ Agreement, called Section 3.3.1, uncovered last week, would expressly prohibit developers from building apps for iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad that were not created exclusively for that platform, using Apple’s tools, and linking to no other APIs except Apple’s. That “clarification” threatens the existence of cross-platform support for the iPhone platform, not only from Adobe Flash (whose apps can be devised to run on iPhone), and Oracle Java (same story), but also from development tools whose apps don’t have to be jerry-rigged to run on iPhone.

Those include Unity3D, the 3D gaming platform originally for Mac OS that dropped Java in 2008 for Novell’s Mono; and MonoTouch, Novell’s extension of its .NET Framework-compatible platform for iPhone OS. In a notice on MonoTouch’s home page, the development team expressed optimism that Apple would find MonoTouch to be in compliance with the company’s new terms.

“If Apple’s motives are technical, or are intended to ensure the use of the Apple toolchain, MonoTouch should have little difficulty staying compliant with the terms of the SDK. MonoTouch runs only on Mac OS X, and integrates tightly with XCode and the iPhone SDK,” the notice reads. “Applications built with MonoTouch are native applications indistinguishable from native applications, only expose Apple’s documented APIs and uses a rigorous test suite to ensure that we conform to the iPhoneOS ABIs and APIs.”

But that optimism is based on hope that Apple will write a note back to the Mono team, which it evidently has not done yet.

Even if MonoTouch ends up being in compliance with Apple’s terms from a legal standpoint, it’s probably stands in defiance with the spirit of Apple’s motives. In an e-mail message to a popular Mac tools developer whose work may be affected by the new rule, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made it clear he believes intermediate software (presumably including runtimes such as Java and Mono) create one more layer of headaches for developers, separating them from the ability to properly use the hardware as its architects intended.

Betanews asked the Mono team’s leader, Miguel de Icaza (also the co-developer of the GNOME graphical environment for Linux), whether he felt Apple could interpret the continuation of MonoTouch as a defiance of Apple’s intentions.
“We believe that there might be some valid concerns from a UI perspective in some cases if you use cross-platform tools that isolate the developer from the underlying platform,” de Icaza told Betanews. “It seems that Steve Jobs alluded to that in an alleged e-mail exchange that is making the rounds around the net.

“From that perspective, MonoTouch is in compliance: MonoTouch is not really a cross-platform tool in that it does not try to offer a layer on top of Apple APIs, so developers get full direct access, without a middleman to the native APIs. This has the unfortunate effect that code written for MonoTouch cannot be ported to other platforms, but it delivers native UI experiences which is what iPhone and iPad users have come to expect.”

In other words, as de Icaza sees it, the extra steps that a developer must take to make an app built with MonoTouch, or ported to MonoTouch from .NET, work with iPhone, may only be taken by individuals who intentionally write an app for iPhone. That should be the modicum of respect paid to the platform that Jobs is looking for.

A January 2009 Ars Technica article by Ryan Paul explains how Mono had been getting past Apple’s rules and regulations up to now: For iPhone, it uses a concept called ahead-of-time compilation, which involves pre-compiling the assemblies in such a way that the Mono platform can convert them into native code, before a JIT compiler would have done the equivalent.

As the Mono Project explains, “AOT compilation works in two stages. The first stage consists of precompiling the assemblies. As of Mono 1.2, this is a manual process that individual deployments must do. The second stage is automatic, the Mono runtime will automatically load any precompiled code that you have generated.”

Early in MonoTouch’s history, Novell representatives stated their intention was to bring mainstream developers who already work in C# (created by Microsoft), and who never would work in Objective-C (Apple’s object-oriented counterpart), into the iPhone development field. Training developers on a new language, they said, was an expensive process that could be avoided altogether through the use of what they have characterized as a cross-platform tool.

But Jobs’ motivation here is clearly to capitalize on the iPhone’s platform’s size and traffic level, by forcing developers to pay attention to it directly if they are to play ball with Apple at all. Doesn’t that motivation clearly exclude MonoTouch by definition?

“Our intention is to work with apple to get a clear understanding of their concerns, and we continue to believe that MonoTouch provides significant value to iPhone developers by liberating developers from manual memory management, but also liberating them from a whole class of bugs and problems that are endemic to C/C++/Objective-C programming and allow them to focus on innovating and building more powerful applications,” the Mono Project’s Miguel de Icaza told us.

“There is a downside to this approach: It means that developers who want to target Windows 7 or Android with our upcoming MonoDroid have to rewrite all of their UI, and all of their native integration with the platform as we strive to provide C# access to whatever the underlying platform offers, and we do not abstract that code. As I said at my presentation at MIX, this means that developers would have to split their code in ‘Engine/Core’ and ‘UI’ code if they ever want to reuse any of their code across phones.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Por fin parece que vamos a tener un modelo sensato para que los ayuntamientos puedan ofrecer WiFi a los ciudadanos bajo algunas circunstancias. Lo explican desde el blog de la CMT que, después de años multando a distintas iniciativas, abre la puerta para que los ayuntamientos que se apunten a su registro puedan ofrecer navegación a una velocidad máxima de 256 Kbps. Todo ello sin que se pueda dar cobertura a edificios residenciales.

Al final se empieza a entender que ofrecer conectividad como un servicio básico para la ciudadanía no debe ser algo perseguido sino sólo regulado. Es razonable que haya una velocidad máxima para que las administraciones públicas no se conviertan en la competencia de las telecos, sino que ofrezcan lo que una ciudad necesita: conectividad para acceso a servicios básicos (informacion, comunicación) y que impactan directamente en dos áreas clave, como son la productividad y atractivo como lugar de trabajo y el turismo. Sí, lo primero que haría un servidor es poner un cartel muy grande en el aeropuerto de Málaga explicando que nuestros visitantes tendrían Wifi en la ciudad para acceder a guías, mapas, correo…

When you see a free gift card offer on Facebook, just stay away. Last Friday a fake IKEA gift card scam attracted over 37,000 eager Facebook users, and it’s at least the third one to successfully go viral on the site since late March.

The offer will ask you to hand over contact info for your Facebook friends, then directs you to a site where you have to sign up for paid offers like Netflix or CreditReport.com. Of course, no gift card ever arrives, and in the meantime the skeevy Facebook page owner will have made thousands in affiliate fees, and will probably have sold your personal info to some other marketer.

“Ikea gift card scam takes in nearly 40,000 Facebook users” [MacWorld]