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Sometimes I like to come up with a theme for the theme review article. It’s neat to find three themes that have something in common and then write about them. Other times I like to just wing it. I come across more than a dozen themes every week, and this feature runs every two weeks, so I have plenty from which to choose. This week is the latter. I have tons of theme in my queue, and decided to just pick three of them. I only hope that the ones that didn’t make the cut will still be atop the queue next time around. They’re good ones, too.

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Here at ReadWriteStart, we’ve mentioned the importance of credibility as an entrepreneur when meeting with venture capitalists and potential investors, but it is also important to carry that credibility forward into your company as you interface with customers. Amid rumors that it was extorting businesses by offering to de-emphasize negative reviews in return for adverting purchases, social review site Yelp announced Monday that it would be “lifting the veil” on its review system and removing controversial features in hopes of securing customer trust.

Sponsor

Yelp features a review filter that sorts through reviews of local businesses to determine which is more trustworthy and places the top ones on the business’ profile page. Some have claimed that Yelp was helping businesses pick the best reviews to show if that company was purchasing advertising on Yelp, a clear case of extortion that the company has vehemently denied, calling the claims a “conspiracy theory.”

Now when users visit a business’ Yelp profile, they can choose to look over the reviews the filter has automatically reviewed by clicking a link near the bottom of the page near the pagination links (not exactly the easiest feature to find, I had to search for “filter” to find it). Yelp has put a CAPTCHA pop-up between the profile and the filtered results to keep robots from crawling the filtered data. Perhaps this is an attempt to prevent them from figuring out how to game the system.

When I tested this new feature on one of my favorite downtown Phoenix restaurants, LoLo’s Chicken and Waffles, I saw some similarities among the 25 filtered reviews. A handful were from users who live in other states or who are what Yelp calls “less established users,” and some were either very short, or filled to the brim with Internet abbreviations and misspellings or slang. Others, whose content was hidden from view, had managed to violate Yelp’s review guidelines or terms of service, which I can assume means a variety of things including profanity or obvious spam.

Yelp is also discontinuing the use of the “Favorite Review” feature, which Yelp packed with advertising deals to businesses. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says they decided to remove the feature in hopes of eliminating any confusion.

“Despite our best efforts to educate consumers and the small business community, myths about Yelp have persisted,” writes Stoppelman. “[The “Favorite Review” feature] led some people to the wrong conclusions about whether businesses could control the review content on their page. (They can’t.) So, to eliminate the opportunity for that misconception, we’ve eliminated the feature.”

By allowing users to go under the hood and see filtered results, Yelp is, I believe, taking a significant step in the name of transparency and openness. While they aren’t revealing any special algorithms for how they determine what makes trustworthy reviews, they are responding in a timely and appropriate manner to the continued allegations of foul play. Regardless of the merit of these claims, Yelp seems bent on securing the trust of their users, a practice every startup should mimic.

Also it is important to remember that a certain level of transparency is attractive to users, but not too much. There is a boundary between what should be shared with the community and what should be deeply guarded company secrets, such as fancy algorithms or the inner workings of the site’s major functions. Users can trust a company more when they feel they have some sort of insider’s view of the company through partial transparency.

Simply blogging about the company’s activity is sometimes enough to satisfy this need, but other times is may be appropriate, as Yelp has done, to incorporate features which help to underscore the product’s attempts at truth, honesty and validity, if those are major facets of your business.

Discuss

Sprint has an interesting new strategy: after you do an online chat with one of their customer service reps, they provide you with a transcript of the chat, but it’s missing a few important things. Namely, any specific numeric details like dollar amounts, dates, minutes, or months cited by the rep have been replaced with asterisks. Here is one such transcript:

(The names of the agent and the customer have been blurred out)

Perhaps they don’t want people using the transcripts later as proof in the event of a dispute over what was said? We’ve reached out to Sprint for comment.

General Motors has announced that it will build and sell a replica of its Camaro Indianapolis 500 Pace Car.

“We set out to build a collectible vehicle that will appeal to the die-hard Camaro and Indianapolis 500 fan,” said Jim Campbell, U.S. Vice President, Chevrolet Marketing. “We believe we’ve done just that with the 2010 Chevy Camaro Indianapolis 500 Pace Car Limited Edition.”

This limited edition replica includes all the features found on a top-of-the-line regular production Camaro SS, but adds some additional features unique to the actual pace car to be driven by Robin Roberts, anchor of “Good Morning America,” during the this year’s Indianapolis 500.

GM said it will build up to 200 replicas with a manufacturer suggested retail price of the replica is $41,950 (includes $850 Destination Freight Charge).

Based on a Camaro 2SS model with an RS appearance package, the replica includes the following content:

• 400 hp 6.2L V8
• 6-speed automatic transmission with remote start
• 20-inch polished aluminum wheels
• Full body White Pearl decal rally stripes
• Inferno Orange heritage front grille
• Inferno Orange engine cover
• Premium floor mats with accent colors
• 2010 Indianapolis 500 event logo decal on both doors and embroidered on driver and passenger headrests
• 2010 Indianapolis 500 event logo badges on front fenders

2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS 2010 Indianapolis 500 Pace Car:

– By: Omar Rana

Downtown ‘ghost building’ for sale:
Blogdowntown has an interesting story about a building that’s been uninhabited for more than 75 years and is now up for sale:

The seven-story structure at 216 W. 5th was built in 1906 as a 55-room addition to the hotel next door, but hasn’t seen any customers since the Alexandria closed during the Great Depression in 1934.

Food-truck lot opens: LAist reports on a lot near LAX that will host food trucks on Tuesdays:

The Century Lot is located at the Crowne Plaza near LAX… (On Tuesday it) hosted nine of the city’s mobile eateries: Worldfare, Don Chow’s Tacos, The Buttermilk Truck, Kabob N Roll, Komodo Food, India Jones, The Nom Nom Truck, South Philly Experience, and Reggae Jerk Chicken.

WeHo apartment building opens:
Curbed LA reports on a new, green, low-income apartment building that opened on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood:

The 42-unit building will provide low-income affordable housing for those with special needs. Many of the residents, who were chosen via a lottery system, have already moved in…

— Anthony Pesce

Have some news for Linking L.A.? Contact Times reporter Anthony Pesce.

If you’re truly interested in consuming the original Primal brain food, look no further than bone marrow: perhaps the first reliable source of large, fatty animal products our scrappy ancestors were able to procure. Yes, before we became spear-using cunning tacticians surrounding, stalking, and out-maneuvering large prehistoric ungulates, we feasted on the bones of fallen prey. Or, more accurately, we feasted on what lurked inside the bones (and the skulls, for that matter). Animal fat and protein improved the quality of our diet by making digestion less energy intensive. Bone marrow, especially, was highly caloric and nutrient dense, allowing early human ancestors to divert metabolic resources away from the costly digestion of roughage and toward bigger, costlier brains. This spurred the increase in hominid brain size that we still enjoy today.

That was around two million years ago, when Homo habilis used rudimentary stone tools to strip and smash bones. He was small and relatively diminutive – too small to take down big game – but he could hoist a big smashing stone overhead once the apex predators had gone. And he could probably fend off the hyenas, the vultures, and any other scavengers dead set on sucking the marrow. In fact, we may have learned about the delicious, nourishing paste by watching vultures drop femurs from the sky and pick out the marrow.

There’s clearly something special (nutritionally) about bone marrow. Animals go for the marrow, instinctively, for example. Wolves given access to full deer carcasses gravitated toward those bones with “high marrow yields,” taking care to “destroy the epiphyses” where the marrow was most plentiful. When I toss my dog a big smorgasbord of raw bones, organs, and muscle meat, he heads straight for the marrow before anything else, every single time. It goes marrow, liver, heart, muscle meat. It’s interesting to see what the high-powered, raw senses of a nearly obligate carnivore chooses when determining which animal product is best to eat.

As for the nutritional content, consider this data (PDF) on standard “African ruminant marrow”, courtesy of Loren Cordain. Three and a half ounces of the stuff contain 488 calories, 51 grams of fat (mostly monounsaturated, as I understand), and 7 grams of protein – extremely dense. I can understand why we were driven to come up with new methods of obtaining it. The way wild animals and traditional cultures prized it as much or more so than other fatty, rich cuts suggests that there’s more to marrow than just the fat.

As we all know, meat, especially fatty meat, contains more than just a lopsided macronutrient ratio. Meat, or any animal product, really, is the best, densest source of fat-soluble vitamins around. Liver, heart, brains, ribeye are all prize cuts for their taste, their nutrition, and the various bioavailable micronutrients that come loaded in every delicious bite. Plus, marrow isn’t just static stuff inside the bones. It fulfills a role. It fulfills many roles, actually. It’s made of osteoblasts (which form bone cells using minerals), adipocytes (fat cells), fibroblasts (which form connective tissue), and osteoclasts (which are responsible for bone resorption). I was unable to obtain detailed info regarding the mineral/vitamin content of bone marrow, but if it’s involved in bone and connective tissue formation/resorption, there are probably some choice components that make consumption particularly advantageous.

There’s another reason – a big reason, actually – why animals of all stripes are drawn toward bone marrow and why you should head down to the butcher for some bones: the taste. A subtle, creamy nuttiness, sometimes a bit sweet, always extremely rich, is not to be casually disregarded. The taste is incredible, either eaten straight up with a touch of sea salt or as part of a rich, hearty stew. Its high quality fuel imbued with vitamins and minerals, but it’s delicious fuel that’d be worth eating even if it were devoid of nutrition. Luckily for us, though (and counter to what we’re taught about nutrition), what appeals to our taste buds on a basic level usually also nourishes. Marrow may be a “sinful treat” for most, but it deserves to be a kitchen staple for Primal eaters.

Bones are cheap, and most people that buy them buy them for their dogs. You’ll even see marrow bones marked as “dog bones” in shops. Personally, I’m glad they’re an underappreciated food. If people think of them as dog food, they stay inexpensive. Dogs crave them, love them, but they can’t really spur demand and constrain supply. They alone can’t drive the prices up. So, for the time being, marrow bones, even the grass-fed stuff, remain highly affordable.

Look for broad bones with big thick tubes of marrow. The bones themselves are great fun for making stock afterwards, but you’re paying for the marrow, so make sure you pick some meaty ones. I’d skip Whole Foods. They charge about four bucks a pound for marrow bones, and they’re from conventional, grain-fed cows. If you’re buying grain-fed, you might as well buy them from a local grocer for a couple bucks or, better yet, from an Asian grocer for less than a dollar per pound. Grass-fed is best, of course, and the best way to get quality grass-fed bone marrow bones is from local or online farmers. Try Eat Wild if your farmers’ market meat guy doesn’t carry any. A few of the bone-in cuts will also have a nice shot of marrow, so keep that in mind.

The simplest, best way to prepare marrow is to roast the bones upright at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes. Fat will leak out the bottom, and you want to eat it all, so use a pan, or at least catch the drippings with molded foil. When the marrow begins to slightly bubble, it’s ready to be eaten. Thicker bones may need a bit more time in the oven, or you could do what I do and eat it slightly pink. Buy from a trustworthy, reputable source and you’ll be fine. Use a narrow spoon or fork to scrape out the marrow (you can even use a dedicated marrow spoon, if you can find one) and top with a bit of coarse sea salt. Serve with a small parsley, shallot, and lemon juice salad to cut through the creaminess of the marrow.

Getting every last bit of marrow out can be hard for beginners. The interior of the bone isn’t smooth, but rather rutted and uneven. If your spoon or fork isn’t fulfilling its duty to your satisfaction, use a combination of applied suction and probing tongue. The suction will loosen any stubborn bits, allowing the tongue to snap ‘em right up. Another option entirely is to forgo the cutlery and apply suction directly to the loaded bone. It’s a tricky move, because you’ve got to strike a balance between warm enough to slide out and hot enough to burn your mouth, but if you’re able to master the preemptive slurp, nothing compares to a mouthful of gelatinous marrow.

If you haven’t tried it yet, get out there and buy some marrow bones. Beef is standard, but any other large mammals will work. And the next time you do a big bone-in roast, whether it’s beef, veal, random African ruminant, or lamb leg, treasure the bone. Don’t dump it into the stock pot right away. Instead, lay it out lovingly on a flat, sturdy surface. Slice it lengthwise if you’ve got the means; otherwise, take a sledgehammer or a big rock and reduce the bone to pieces. Pick the shards clean and suck them dry. Then, and only then, may you toss them in the stockpot (although seeing as how those shards went spelunking in your mouth, you may want to limit the resultant soup’s ultimate audience).

Sucking on marrow bones seems to unlock latent primal (small “p”) urges in all of us, but that’s okay (as long as you avoid it as a first date meal). If you find yourself turning progressively more feral as the marrow disappears from the bone, don’t worry. Even vegetarians have been observed scrounging, slurping, and gnawing at the remains of a bone marrow meal. When it comes to getting the last delicious bits of bone marrow, total paleo reenactment is the only justifiable course of action.

Are you a fan of bone marrow? Never tried it? Share your thoughts in the comment board. Thanks, everyone!

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Related posts:

1. Calorie Restriction and Bone Loss
2. 10 Delicious DIY Salad Dressings
3. Your Belly Bone’s Connected to Your Brain Bone

Hyundai ha presentado en el Salón de Nueva York un nueva berlina híbrida. Se trata del Hyundai Sonata Hybrid y que hará uso de la tecnología de los nuevos motores Theta II de 2.4 litros y dos propulsores eléctricos que ofrecen de manera final una potencia máxima de 209 CV.

Su consumo estará situado alrededor de los 6 litros/100 km. Además, el Hyundai Sonata Hybrid podrá funcionar utilizando solamente su motor eléctrico con el que podrá acelerar hasta los 100 km/h. Por el momento desconocemos la autonomía del motor eléctrico.

Sus motores estarán asociados auna caja de cambios automática de seis velocidades. Inicialmente se venderá en Estados Unidos aunque se espera que también se comercialice en Europa.

Related posts:

1. Fotos espía del Hyundai Sonata 2010
2. Hyundai desarrolla un deportivo eléctrico para 2012
3. Infiniti M35 Hybrid

A Volkswagen programou várias atrações musicais durante todo o evento Gol Fest, que acontece no próximo sábado, dia 10, no Sambódromo, no Anhembi. Cinco bandas, selecionadas pelo público ao longo da semana entre um total de dez no hotsite do evento (www.vw.com.br/golfest), vão se apresentar no palco principal do Gol Fest. A rádio 89FM estará presente durante todo o dia e também trará uma atração a mais, a banda Replace, para abrilhantar a festa.

Uma atração à parte vai reunir música e design com a apresentação do Gol Vintage, uma surpresa preparada pelo Departamento de Design da Volkswagen exclusivamente para o evento. O carro, um Gol 1.6 branco, traz faixas decorativas externas em preto e acabamento interno exclusivo, que inclui revestimento em couro preto e branco. A cor branca aparece também em detalhes como os gatilhos das portas e nos aros das entradas de ar e da alavanca do câmbio.

A construção do modelo único contou com a colaboração da Tagima, maior produtora de instrumentos musicais do país, que fabricou as duas guitarras exclusivas, seguindo o mesmo conceito visual, que serão conectadas ao carro.

O veículo é dotado de sistema de amplificação de guitarra embarcado instalado no portamalas, onde ela é plugada. O termo Vintage é uma referência a produtos de forte tradição e personalidade, com características que transcendem o tempo, como ocorre com o Volkswagen Gol.

O Gol Vintage será apresentado num show especial com a participação do gerente executivo de Design da Volkswagen, Luiz Alberto Veiga – um talentoso músico amador – ao lado de guitarristas de renome.

O show que encerrará as atividades, será do grupo Titãs, com participação especial de Arnaldo Antunes. Quem quiser assistir terá que participar do evento no Anhembi até às 17 horas, quando os portões serão fechados. Após esse horário, somente será permitida a entrada de portadores de convites, que serão distribuídos pela rede de concessionárias da Volkswagen durante a semana.

Informações úteis:

Local: Sambódromo do Anhembi, Av. Olavo Fontoura, São Paulo
Data: sábado, 10 de abril
Horário de entrada: das 09h00 às 17h00
Estacionamento disponível no local
Faixa etária indicativa 16 anos, menores somente acompanhados por adultos (pais ou responsáveis legais)

Fonte: Volkswagen

The FDA today disclosed several warning letters it had sent to drug makers and weight-loss spas for “false” and-or “misleading” claims for their products. Here’s a rundown:

• Biogen Idec was cited for a promotional Webcast involving the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri because it minimized the risk of a serious brain infection, the FDA said. The letter also cited the company for failing to submit the Webcast for FDA review 30 days in advance. Tysabri is sold jointly by Biogen and Elan.
• Gilead Sciences was cited for a print ad for involving its HIV drug Truvada, which the FDA said overstated the effectiveness of the products and minimized the risks associated with the
  drug.
• Half a dozen spas offering “lipodissolve” injections to get rid of small fat deposits received letters because the FDA said the therapy hasn’t been cleared by regulators. “The claims made for your lipodissolve products are false and misleading in that they are not supported by substantial evidence or substantial clinical experience,” one letter said.

Update: A Biogen spokeswoman told Dow Jones Newswires that the company believed “the content and means for communicating this safety information was appropriate, timely, factual and non-promotional, and we plan to have further conversation with the agency.” Gilead said in a statement that takes the FDA’s concerns regarding the advertisements seriously “and we will be working to respond to the FDA promptly,” according to DJ Newswires.

Filed under: Crossover, Hatchback, Honda, Reviews

Its introduction was a case study in how to bungle an automotive social media campaign. Badly. It had people running for thesauruses to find new and fascinating synonyms for “ugly.” Its TV campaign has something to do with jazz music and animals. And yet, for all the hubbub, hysterics and lamentations that Honda had completely lost its mind, the 2010 Honda Accord Crosstour quietly showed up and began finding customers.

Last month – its best sales performance to date – 2,587 people drove the odd-looking hatchwagon home. Recently, we took delivery of our own Crosstour EX-L tester, loaded-up with all-wheel drive and navigation, to see how we felt about spending a week with Honda’s latest experiment.

Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Continue reading Review: 2010 Honda Accord Crosstour hatches a new niche

Review: 2010 Honda Accord Crosstour hatches a new niche originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Classifiers are a classic component of traditional AI systems ….

Official Google Research Blog: Lessons learned developing a practical large scale machine learning system

… Several years ago we began developing a large scale machine learning system, and have been refining it over time. We gave it the codename “Seti” because it searches for signals in a large space. It scales to massive data sets and has become one of the most broadly used classification systems at Google.

After building a few initial prototypes, we quickly settled on a system with the following properties:

Binary classification (produces a probability estimate of the class label)

Parallelized

Scales to process hundreds of billions of instances and beyond

Scales to billions of features and beyond

Automatically identifies useful combinations of features

Accuracy is competitive with state-of-the-art classifiers

Reacts to new data within minutes…

I can think of several reasons why they named it Seti. For one, HAL was taken.

We’ve all heard how tablet computers are the "next big thing" in mobile computing. Since the announcement of the iPad, there have been multiple vendors showing their take on the tablet computer. ICD has announced their Gemini tablet that is set to ramp up the arms war in the tablet computing sector. With it’s Tegra 2 SOC and 11.2 inch screen, this beast will have the power and multimedia capabilities to stand with the best. More after the break.

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Congratulations to S. Pearson of IL who won a brand new BlackBerry Curve 8330 for Boost Mobile on Wednesday April 7, 2010 at 12:45PM.  “Ive been playing the One Pawed Bandit for months thinking I’d never win, but today was my lucky day! Thanks for the phone!”

Screen legend Jane Fonda has been one of Hollywood’s most vocal aging divas when it comes to nipping and tucking. After famously vowing in 2000 never to have plastic surgery again, in February, Fonda revealed that she had once more had her face digitally remastered. Now the “Cat Ballou” star — a devoted Tweeter — is opening up to CNN’s Larry King about why she broke her 10-year-old vow to stay away from the scapel.

If you’re looking to add a splash of colour for Spring, here’s an easy and cheap way to do it. Sandra shows us how on her Lack bedside table.

I took a white Lack side table I had and some post cards (from postal free), glued them on the table and bought a glass piece to put on the top.

KNOXVILLE — Award-winning singer and songwriter Martina McBride, along with her manager and husband, John McBride, and an entourage of interactive marketing experts recently visited the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as guest lecturers.

Their visit kicked off an applied-learning project for an MBA marketing class, which is producing a social media plan for McBride’s newest CD as part of its course curriculum.

“The value that applied-learning experiences bring to our MBA students is significant,” said Jan Williams, dean of UT’s College of Business Administration. “The Martina McBride project enables students to build their skills, knowledge base and network while providing value to industry. We are delighted to be partnering with the McBrides in this way.”

The idea for the project originated with Michael Strickland, chairman of the global entertainment lighting firm Bandit Lites and UT College of Business Administration 2009 Distinguished Alum. Bandit Lites counts McBride as a client. Strickland joined the group for the presentation and was instrumental in bringing the project to reality.

Matt Myers, who is the Nestle USA Professor in Marketing, head of the Department of Marketing and Logistics, and course professor, sees value in using social media as a tool for implementing a sound integrated marketing communications strategy.

“Projects such as these give us the opportunity to introduce innovative ideas into the classroom. Our students leave the program with up-to-date knowledge that can be used in the workplace,” Myers said. “We are increasingly recognizing the power of social media for marketing and the opportunities that it creates for our students.”

For more information about the UT College of Business Administration, visit http://bus.utk.edu.

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PHOTO: Pictured left to right are Jan Williams, Martina McBride, Michael Strickland and Matt Myers.

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C O N T A C T :

Cindy Raines (865-974-4359, [email protected])