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Hear that sound? It’s the combined sobs of New Yorkers as the deal to turn all 258 Duane Reade drugstores in the metropolitan area, as well as two distribution centers and Duane Reade headquarters, into Walgreens has now been made official.

The $623 million deal was signed off on yesterday, making Walgreens the largest drugstore operator in NYC. Previously, the Illinois-based company had only 70 stores in the Duane Reade-dominated city.

As part of the deal, Walgreens will also be taking on Duane Reade’s $457 million in debt.

Many New Yorkers, including yours truly, used to seeing a Duane Reade on every corner greeted the first murmurings of the deal back in February with a mixture of sadness and outrage.

But before you decide to boycott your local Walgreens (where ya gonna go anyway?), the usurpers – er, company, has said its plan thus far is to keep the Duane Reade moniker on NYC’s stores.

All I know is if I don’t have aisles filled with boxes of merchandise to step over and can’t hear the surly shrieks of “NEXT!!!”, I will not be happy. Step up, Walgreens.

Let’s all take a moment to remember our favorite Duane Reade moments, shall we?

Walgreen completes deal for Duane Reade stores [BusinessWeek]

Apple’s move to ban Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone compiler elicited shrugs from Adobe and complaints from Adobe loyalists. Digging deeper into the OS reveals another, albeit less dramatic slight: Apple scrubbed Google’s name from the new OS’s Safari search button. More »

It seems Russia is one of the last hold-outs for Windows Mobile smartphones, with Gigabyte recently shipping their low-end GSmart 1205 handset into that market.

The WQVGA handset does however have a reasonable feature set, including dual SIM support, WIFI and GPS, and a 3 month trial of the iDa navigation system with Russian NAVTEQ maps, which are tightly integrated with Google Search.

The full list of specs include:
    * Operating system Windows Mobile 6.5
    * Processor MT6516, 416 MHz
    * Memory (ROM / RAM) 256 MB / 128 MB
    * Memory card slot, microSDHC (up to 16 GB)
    * Cellular GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
    * Wireless protocols WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1
    * 3.2-inch resistive display with a resolution of 240×400 pixels
    * 3 megapixel camera (FF)
    * GPS Module
    * FM radio
    * Lithium-polymer battery 1300 mAh
    * Dimensions – 111 x 55 x 13,1 mm
    * Weight – 114 grams

The smartphones comes bundled with a SIM from Russian operator Megafon which includes 15 MB of data. 

The recommended retail price is 8 990 rubbles, which at around $310 makes it one of the cheapest dual SIM smartphones. The handset will be available from around April 10.

More at it-chuiko.com.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called Palin a conservative leader on energy issues. She has also emerged as a conservative thought leader on climate science.

Yesterday, at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SLRC) 2010 — “the most prominent Republican event outside of the Republican National Convention,” Palin launched into another anti-science diatribe.  TP has the video:

PALIN: We should create a competitive climate for investment in renewables and alternatives, none of this snake oil science stuff that is based on this global warming, Gore-gate stuff that came down where there was revelation that the scientists, some of these scientists were playing political games. I sued the Feds over this, I sued the Feds over this as Governor for some bogus listing on the ESA, just about got run out of town by the environmentalists. But now we feel a little bit vindicated because we’re realizing through Gore-gate that there was some snake oil science involved over the data collection there … We invented the Internet, unless that was just another Gore-gate thing too.

Palin is so practiced at repeating falsehoods — even in her supposed area of expertise (energy) — that during last year’s presidential campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.”  Her remarks here contain multiple whoppers.

Of course, Palin and her conservative allies have never supported creating a competitive climate for investment in renewable alternatives.  Indeed, they have bitterly opposed it:

• GOP proposes to cut solar technology funding and the clean energy jobs it would bring
• Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan
• The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma

Palin has been incoherently attacking climate science by pushing “The Scandal Formerly Known As Climategate” for many, many months — abetted by a media that values sensationalism over substance (see WashPost goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months — on climate science and the hacked emails!).

But they provide no evidence whatsoever to undercut the ever-strengthening scientific evidence that humans are changing the climate dramatically and face catastrophic impacts if we listen to the do-nothing crowd now led by Sarah Palin:

• House of Commons exonerates Phil Jones:  Based on their inquiry and evidence, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason … to challenge the scientific consensus … that ‘global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity’.”

The “bogus listing on the ESA” is a bit jargony for the normally down-home ex-Gov, but then I suspect she didn’t want to actually explain to the audience in any detail that she sued the Bush administration (!) for listing the polar bear as an endangered species because of the threat warming poses to its primary habitat, the Arctic ice.  Yes, even the Bush’s uber- Conservative Interior Secretary Dirk Kepthorne had to admit the basic case (see Bye-polar Kempthorne: Polar bear IS endangered):

• The polar bears need sea ice for feeding.
• The sea ice is being destroyed by human-caused emissions, much faster than the models had predicted (see Study: “It is clear … that the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice”:  Physicist: “If temperatures change just a few tenths of a degree then this oh-so-thin ice cap is doomed”).
• Thus, the polar bear is endangered.

This is a very widely held scientific view:

“The survival of polar bears as a species is difficult to envisage under conditions of zero summer sea-ice cover,” concludes the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, by leading scientists from the eight Arctic nations, including the United States. Another 20 study, by Canadian scientists, agreed:

[G]iven the rapid pace of ecological change in the Arctic, the long generation time, and the highly specialised nature of polar bears, it is unlikely that polar bears will survive as a species if the sea ice disappears completely.

Fox put Palin on the wrong show.  They shouldn’t have put her on FoxNews, but in their scifi thriller “Fringe”

If you’ve been watching or reading much economic news, invariably you would’ve heard of the term yield curve. It refers to the interest rates on Treasury debt and it’s important because it can give us a quick glimpse at the health of our economy. If you’ve ever wondered what it was, here’s a crash course.

Vanguard, in their latest In The Vanguard, has a great explanation of what yield curves are. In short, there are three types:

• Normal – where interest rates rise as you increase the maturity time
• Flat – where interest rates rise in a nearly horizontal line as you increase maturity time
• Inverted – where interest rates fall as you increase maturity time

The yield curve means different things to different people, as we are always looking to invest and save in different products. For economists and talking heads, they are referring to the interest rate on Treasury debt, like notes and bonds. For the rest of us, the yield curve we care about is usually something like CD rates. Whatever the underlying asset, the idea is still the same.

Why are they popular for economics? Inverted yield curves have preceded many recessions. The yield curve inverted in 2000 just before the dot com bust. The yield curve was inverted again in early 2007, which preceded our more recent crisis. Is it a perfect predictor? No, but it’s good enough to keep some people on television.

How does it affect us? When the curve is normal or flat, we understand that we are getting a higher interest rate for locking up our money for a longer period of time. 5-year CD rates are higher than 1-year CD rates and we understand why. When the curve is inverted, we get confused because instead of being rewarded, we are being penalized for giving up flexibility. Fortunately, I’ve never seen a bank’s CD rates form an inverted curve.

While the yield curve has little impact on our daily lives, it’s still important to understand what it means from a broader perspective.

Jim writes about money at his personal finance blog, Bargaineering.com.

One of the more darkly amusing things over the past year has been how, whenever President Obama and Congressional Dems shiv the Democratic base on something, a loud and strangely organized chorus erupts from Obama’s habitual defenders to the effect that it’s not their fault as the poor man and the Dems are just too powerless to influence those big old mean Republicans controlling Congress with a 40- or 41-seat minority.

However, as Jane has documented copiously with health care reform and Bmaz and EW with legal issues, and Glenn Greenwald seconding them both, Obama has profound influence over both parties in Congress, and plenty of power on his own, and isn’t afraid to use it to get what he wants — such as the murder without trial of American citizens.

So let’s sit back here and create a list of the things for which Obama and the Democrats in Congress have really and truly fought for — and against. Time to nip this “Oh, he’s so pitifully powerless!” myth in the bud.

If you’re outside the US, and have just paid an exorbitant amount of money to an eBay reseller (or a shipping company) to get your iPad, you’ve probably realized by now that there’s a few hoops for you to jump through before you can start using it to its fullest. Read on to find out just how easy it is to get access to the App Store, iBooks and US-only apps like ABC and Pandora…

Tags: Apple,
iPad,
iPad Apps,
Paypal

Related Articles:

• iPad news roundup #2
• 300,000 iPads sold in first day
• Apple creates special information site for iPad
• Apple’s US$500 iPad – concise details of the announcement
• iPad news roundup
• iPad review roundup

If the 9-inch iPad is an enormous iPod touch, what does that make the rumored 7-inch version? An iPad mini? The iPad Portable? Or maybe just the product Apple should have made in the first place, since it will come at a lower price point and won’t require a special jacket just to carry it.

According to Digitimes, Apple is prepping a 5- to 7-inch iPad, which will retail for under $400, and could hit stores early next year.

Digitimes Research senior analyst Mingchi Kuo, citing talks with upstream component sources, said Apple’s smaller-size iPad will be priced below US$400 and will target the highly-portable mobile device market and consumers that focus mainly on reading and do not have a high demand for text input.

So, will this complete the iEcosphere — or will Apple introduce a 22-inch iPad maxi in a couple of years, along with a new line of carrying cases to haul it around?

Apple reportedly planning a smaller-size iPad for 1Q11 [Digitimes]

Having now been here a couple of weeks, I can say that Austin is possibly the best place I’ve lived–or at least ranks alongside New York. I’ll wait a few months to decide for sure, as it doesn’t count until I’ve made it through the summer heat. So far I’ve been exploring town on foot and meeting all sorts of friendly people. Breakfast tacos are the staple and there are fresh avocados everywhere. Dogs and bicycles are popular, flip-flops are ‘the Austin work boot’, and wildflowers abound thanks to Lady Bird Johnson. I’ve been hanging out with a lot of great folks involved in energy and recently toured a coal power plant. I also visited Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge which offers great birding opportunities. And since it’s Austin, it was easy to find a group of talented guys to play music with. Something about this place already feels like home. CM’s on the way over to visit, so I’m hoping the city inspires him to pick up his guitar again…

Prefrog sends word that French publicist and man-about-town Laurent Guyot has tweeted out that the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus will premiere on SFR France on April 27th. Les mobiles makes it clear that what he’s referring to is some sort of ‘sneak preview.’ Whether that means there will just be a rocking party or actual device availability is unclear – remember that SFR’s Pre giveaway ends on May 31st, a significantly more depressing time window.

Also unclear: the pricing. However a recent SFR survey seemed to peg the Pre Plus at €99.00 and the Pixi Plus at €49.00.

Thanks, prefrog!

Son coches que todo el mundo conoce, que han sido éxitos considerables de ventas en muchos casos y que tal vez quisieras volver a poseer o quisieras que se produjeran otra vez, algo imposible y utópico. Los coches de los años ochenta no estaban pensados para bajar las emisiones, ni para ahorrar gasolina (aunque el tema ya comenzaba a ser una preocupación), tal vez eran más divertidos y menos “corporativos” ya que no se parecían entre ellos como ocurre hoy, que algunos coches se confunden con otros.

Fueron los primeros años del BMW E30 con el motor 2.3 litros, El Audi Quattro, el Lancia Delta Integrale, el Ferrari F-40, así como el Testarrossa (todo un símbolo de los años ochenta), el Lamborghini Countach… Los coches más mundanos, que conducíamos todos los días, también dejaron huella: el Renault 5, Ford Fiesta, el Volkswagen Golf, Peugeot 505, Renault 18… no hago distinción de modelos ni los he ordenado de alguna manera en particular. Simplemente los he escrito a medida que los he recordado.

Particularmente, hay uno que recuerdo con mucho cariño por motivos familiares y que además siempre me ha gustado: el Ford Capri con el motor de tres litros de la tercera generación, uno de cuyos modelos ilustra este post.

Si eres un poco mayor de 20 años, seguramente recordarás a todos estos modelos. ¿Cuál fue tu preferido de esa época? ¿Has vivido alguna historia en especial sobre ese coche?

Foto | Wikipedia

Here’s some exciting news  for you Google Voice users.  TechCrunch is reporting that Google is testing Voice on PC’s, allowing employees to make calls via their desktops.  This is a departure from having to link Google Voice numbers to an actual mobile phone or landline.

Google is “dogfooding” this application right now, which means that they are eating their own “food” in house and having employees test and use the software.  This type of application is seen to be the answer as to why Google acquired Gizmo5 last Fall, which was a competitor to Skype and other VoIP products.  There is no official launch date for a full rollout as of yet.  Most likely,  we will see it in  “beta” form, true to Google’s style.  Here’s to looking out for the launch of this new desktop application soon!

Might We Suggest…

• Eating My Words Never Tasted so Good!
  And of course, I would be talking about the Nexus One, the most glorious Android phone to date.  About four months ago, I wrote an article called, “Don’t Hold Your Breath…”, talking about the fact …

Currently, moving from one cloud to another is easy, and having multiple clouds to choose from gives customers the ability to utilize a range of features and service models to meet their varying needs. But proprietary next-generation databases, by locking customer code to specific clouds, remove the benefits of market choice, such as customized service experiences, competitive pricing and — most importantly — increased adoption.

To ensure continued advancement of the cloud, the industry needs to turns its support to an open cloud by using database technologies such as Cassandra and Drizzle Drizzle, which are portable to any public or private cloud.

Finding the New LAMP Stack for the Cloud

Many suggest that standards are the key to encouraging broader adoption of cloud computing. I disagree; I think the key is openness. What’s the difference? In the standards approach, a cloud would look and work just like any other. Open clouds, on the other hand, could come in many different flavors, but they would share one essential feature: all of the services they’d offer could run outside of them.

Such is the case with Drizzle, the fork of MySQL built for the big data needs of the cloud era, as well as the open-source Cassandra project, a next-generation database of the NoSQL variety and the engine powering the massive data needs of Twitter and Digg. These database technologies are the future of the webscale business — the next generation of the LAMP stack that helped drive down the cost of creating new startups in the first phase of the web.

The Million-user Problem

Five years ago, only Amazon, Google, Yahoo and a few others had to worry about millions of users and the data they create, which they dealt with by building a set of custom next-generation data technologies. Today, hundreds of companies are facing the problems associated with scaling their databases to a million or more users — and in another five years, thousands of companies will.

The first wave of web technologies that currently power most web applications (LAMP and .NET/Microsoft SQL stacks) are not adept at solving the million-user problem. Some companies have solved it with their own platforms — such as Google’s AppEngine, Amazon’s SimpleDB and Microsoft’s SQL Azure — but each is locked to its respective cloud.

The web needs an open set of tools to solve the million-user problem. Imagine a set of tools that could be run on any cloud. Drizzle and Cassandra are the leaders in this race to create the technical foundation of the million-user stack, and Twitter, Digg, Reddit and many others along with Rackspace are contributing to these tools in order to keep them advancing.

Open Not Free

The time is now to commit to an open cloud. Google and Amazon should make their data storage technologies open. That does not mean they must be free. Microsoft has hinted that its Azure technologies will eventually find their way into the core SQL products. This is good, as it will give the web another set of tools unconstrained by a particular cloud provider. As cloud providers and web companies continue to search for the next generation of technologies for building out webscale businesses, they, too, should support the efforts of Drizzle and Cassandra to help scale the web in order to meet its full potential.

Lew Moorman is the president of Rackspace’s cloud division and the company’s chief strategy officer

For an in-depth look at all things related to cloud computing, join us at our annual Structure conference on June 24th and 25th in San Francisco.

NetApp this week agreed to acquire Bycast, whose storage virtualization is used for large-scale digital archives and storage clouds — yet another investment by a major systems provider in scale-out storage aimed at tackling the growth of unstructured data. But while big systems vendors realize they need a new approach to solve the workloads generated by the web, cloud and data-intensive applications, are they really ready to ride the commodity hardware cost curve embraced by large web and cloud providers?

Scale-out storage differs from traditional scale-up architectures in that it horizontally adds new storage nodes (servers with internal disks) instead of vertically aggregating lots of individual disk drives behind one or two super-sized controller servers. Scale-out further implies a corresponding software layer that can make hundreds or thousands of nodes act like a single system. It has the potential to change the shape of the data center by displacing large, costly enterprise equipment with an easily sized pool of inexpensive servers.

Google and other web giants have found great success with scale-out approaches. Indeed, for web and cloud computing workloads, increases in users, objects, and capacities drive a need for innovative scaling approaches at low costs, and scale-out storage, by leveraging commodity hardware, fits the bill. (Data storage is just one of the issues we’ll be taking an in-depth look at June 23-24 at the GigaOM Network’s Structure conference in San Francisco.)

The race to capitalize on high-growth, scale-out data markets has led NetApp, HP and EMC to be spearhead acquisitions and new product development in this sector. In 2003 NetApp also acquired Spinnaker, which at the time was positioned primarily as a way to aggregate multiple file systems into a single larger file system, or what’s known as a single global namespace. The Spinnaker product resulted in a “tortuous integration effort” according to some, and obviously didn’t fit all of NetApp’s needs when it came to providing scale-out storage, hence the Bycast buy.

HP, similarly, has been around this block a couple of times before. In 2007 the company acquired Polyserve, a clustered file system that had integrated with Oracle solutions, and then in 2009 bought IBRIX, a scale-out storage provider with solid penetration in the animation arena.

EMC, meanwhile, has also had multiple product plays at work. Its first effort to tackle these new scale-out object-based workloads was Centera, which it positioned as a content-aware storage solution. More recently, EMC’s been working on Atmos, a cloud storage product aimed at turning service providers into purveyors of terabytes online.

For NetApp, one of the appealing features about Bycast’s offering is that it doesn’t necessarily replace the underlying storage systems, but rather aggregates existing solutions, including those by NetApp. IBRIX, which was once adopted by customers on a range of hardware platforms including a long relationship with Dell before the HP acquisition, now seems to be tightly packed with HP hardware. And EMC’s offerings do not come in a software-only flavor.

It seems like the appetite to reach the scale-out storage market is still carefully balanced with the existing product lines and systems that form the lifeblood of big vendor sales. But these moves also signal a recognition that scale-out is here to stay, and that NetApp, along with other major systems vendors, will not stop at one acquisition or product to capture the market.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

What’s Next for the Cloud? Distributed Architectures

Gary Orenstein is host of The Cloud Computing Show.

All this iPhone 4 news not doing it for you? Still got Windows Phone 7 on the brain? There’s a simple—and most importantly, free—way to try it out, right now, on your PC. More »

A veteran reality TV show producer cannot leave Mexico as authorities continue to investigate the slaying of his wife at a Cancun resort.

Bruce Beresford-Redman, 38, was released by state police in Mexico
on Friday after a day of questioning for hours concerning the strangulation death of his
wife Monica, who is the owner of a popular Westside nightclub.

He has denied any role in the slaying.

The couple had gone to Mexico for a romantic getaway that family members said was designed to revive a strained marriage.

His father, David Beresford-Redman, said in a statement that his son "loved [his
wife] and would never have harmed her. He has our full support as we
try to do what’s best for him and our grandchildren so they can be
reunited soon."

The statement continued: "We urge Mexican law enforcement authorities to identify those
responsible for this horrendous crime."

On Monday, Bruce Beresford-Redman, who produced CBS’ "Survivor" and
MTV’s "Pimp My Ride," reported that his wife was missing in Cancun. Her body was found Thursday in a drainage pipe near
their hotel. She had scratches on her face and there were signs that
she had been strangled, the newspaper reported.

Guests at the Moon Palace Hotel in Cancun reported hearing a loud
fight coming from the room the couple shared last weekend with their
children.

Monica Beresford-Redman, a native of Brazil, owned the Zabumba
Restaurant on Venice Boulevard near Overland Avenue.

Late Friday, authorities in Mexico reiterated that the producer needed to stay in the country but offered few clues into their investigation.

"He can’t leave the country," prosecutors said in a statement to the Mexican media. "We still can’t say that he is responsible, but that’s the
starting point of the investigation because we have witnesses who say
he was the last to see her alive."

— Sam Quinones

Photo: Monica Beresford-Redman. Credit: Family photo

The Shroud of Turin went on display this weekend for the first time in 10 years. The linen cloth is normally kept wrapped up inside a silver box, and only taken out for public display on special occasions.

While many believe this is the linen cloth that covered Jesus Christ after his death – and you can see a faint outline of a man’s face and arms on it – testing done on the cloth two decades ago suggested it dated from between 1260 and 1390.

However, those results have been contested, and other experts say contamination of the shroud over the years could have skewed the dating process.

In any case, the Shroud of Turin is always a major mystery, and the Turin Cathedral still draws millions of visitors every year, even when the linen is wrapped up and hidden away.

About two million people are expected to visit over the next six weeks while the original can be seen in the cathedral.

Is it the real thing, or a brilliant forgery? The Archbishop of Turin, Cardinal Severino Poletto, opts for real. “As a Christian I believe the Shroud is authentic,” Poletto said. “I can’t say officially, because it’s not my job, but either it’s a miracle, or it’s the real thing.”

Teatro Amazonas in Manaus

A beautiful opera house in the heart of Amazonia has recently restarted performances after a 90-year hiatus

The turn of 20th century was a wondrous era for the Amazonian region of Brazil. Flush with money from exports from its rubber plantations, the region flourished–particularly the capital city of Manaus. Here wealthy rubber barons tried to recreate the lavish lifestyle of the European elite, and what better way to do so then with an opera house, built in the middle of the rain forest: the Teatro Amazonas.
Construction began in 1884, under the supervision of Italian architect Celestial Sacardim. No expense was spared: roofing came from Alsace, furniture from Paris, marble from Italy, and steel from England. On the outside of the building, the dome was covered with 36,000 decorated ceramic tiles painted in the colors of the Brazilian national flag. The inside was decorated by Italian painter Domenico de Angelis.
The first performance was given on January 7, 1897, with the famous Enrico Caruso singing. Some say that entire opera house was built just to lure him to this remote corner of the world, so that the rich rubber barons of Manaus could hear him sing.
With the invention of artificial rubber, Manaus lost its main source of income. The wealthy left town, and the opera house closed down. There wasn’t a single performance in Teatro Amazonas for 90 years, excepting its cameo appearance in Werner Herzog’s movie Fitzcarraldo. But in 2001 the new populist government of the province decided it would try to revive the glory of the Teatro Amazonas, allocating 1.5 million pounds a year for this task (in a province where 60 percent of the population is poverty stricken and illiterate).
The plan worked and the Teatro Amazonas has become the home of an unlikely musical scene. Tempted by the promise of high salaries, many of the best musicians from impoverished countries, especially those of Eastern Europe, decided to move to Brazil to perform at the Teatro Amazonas.
Today, 39 of the 54-member Amazon Philharmonic orchestra are from Bulgaria, Belarus and Russia. The theater is also the location of an annual film festival.

Read more about Teatro Amazonas in Manaus on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Outsider Architecture
Location: Estado do Amazonas, Brazil
Edited by: stanestane, taborj, Dylan

In 2007, only seven Munchkins were still alive — most in their 80s and 90s. They were the last of the 124 diminutive inhabitants of fictional
Munchkinland who appeared with Judy Garland in the 1939 movie. They were
mostly midgets, with a few children thrown in.

— Shelby Grad

Photo: Former Munchkin Meinhardt Raabe attends the "Wizard of Oz" 70th
Anniversary Emerald Gala at Tavern on the Green in New York September 2009. Raabe, who played the Munchkin coroner in
"The Wizard of Oz," died. Friday at a hospital in Orange Park, Fla. Credit: Chalres Sykes / Associated Press

More: Explore The Times’ Hollywood Star Walk database.

A new Times database puts readers on the sidewalks of Hollywood, using more than a century of archives to track the lives of the stars, including current Oscar nominees Jeff Bridges, James Cameron, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep.